ership of the missionaries undoubtedly will, increase. For these reasons, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions took the following action July 2, 1900:

"As having reference to the question of self-support of the native churches on the mission field, and in view of the fact that some of its missions are proposing to increase the salaries of native preachers and helpers on account of the increased cost of living, the Board is constrained to look with no little apprehension upon the prospect of continuing and increasing demands of foreign aid in proportion to the contributions made by the churches themselves. Increased intercourse of eastern nations with those of the west has led and will still further lead to a gradual assimilation to western ways and western prices, and unless the self-reliant spirit of the churches can be stimulated to a proportionate advance, there is a sure prospect that the drafts upon mission funds will be larger and larger in proportion to the amount of work accomplished. In view of these considerations, it was resolved that the missions in which such increase is proposed be earnestly requested to arouse the churches to the purpose and the endeavour to meet this increased expenditure instead of laying still larger burdens upon the resources of foreign funds. The Board deems this necessary not merely to the interest of its expanding work but to the self-reliant character, the future stability and self-propagating power of the churches themselves."

There appears to be no alternative. And yet this policy, while adhered to, should be enforced with reasonable discretion and due regard to "this present distress." How can Christians, who can barely live themselves and pay a half or twothirds of their pastor's present support, suddenly meet this call for enlarged salaries? For reasons already given, it is harder for them to make ends meet now than it was in the old days of primitive simplicity, while in many places a profession of Christianity is followed by the loss of property and employment so that the Christian is impoverished by the loss of the income that he already had. In these circumstances, both boards and missions must simply do the best they can, and neither allow the emergency to sweep them into a mistaken charity that

would be fatal to the ultimate interests of the cause nor allow a valuable native worker to suffer for the necessaries of life.

"We need to bear in mind that the low salaries of China are not the product of Christianity, but of heathenism, and the ability to live on five or six Mexicans per month is not the result of a laudable economy unknown to Christian countries, so much as it is the result of a degradation of manhood to the level of beasts. The church is responsible for the knowledge of a better way of living. We have created the desire for a clean house, clean clothing, healthful food, and books, on the part of our educated young men. Shall we implant this desire for six or eight years and take the rest of the man's life in trying to squelch it? We have come as apostles of truth to a mighty empire, to the great and the small, to the rich and the poor, and if we had a native ministry which could appeal to a different class of men than most of them are now appealing to, would not the day of self-support be hastened beyond what we dare to hope? Is there not a feeling out for something better on the part of the well-to-do, the more intelligent, just as really as there is on the part of the lowest classes? Do not we have a mission to the man who can pay $100.00 a year to the church just as really as to the one who pays 100 cash? There is nothing so costly as cheap men. Let us have a higher grade of men and we shall have a higher grade of church membership. Is it not true that nothing more stands in the way of self-support than some of our native clergy? We must not turn down better men because they must have a little more to live upon than poor men." 1

It is idle, however, to urge as a reason for increasing the salaries of Chinese ministers that a qualified Asiatic can earn more in commercial life than in the ministry. Such arguments often come to mission boards. But religious work cannot compete

with business in financial inducements either at home or abroad. It is notorious that in America, ministers and church workers generally do not receive the compensation which they could command in secular employments or professions. The qualities that bring success in the ministry are, as a rule, far more liberally remunerated in secular life. The preacher who

1 Mr. F. S. Brockman, Address-"How to Retain to the Church the Services of English-Speaking Christians," Shanghai, 1904.

can command $6,000 or $8,000 in the pulpit could probably command three or four times that amount in the law or in business. Men who are as eminent in other professions and in the commercial world as the most eminent clergymen are in the ministry usually have incomes ranging from $20,000 to $100,ooo a year and have no "dead line" of age either. As for others, the Rev. Dr. B. L. Agnew, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Ministerial Relief, is authority for the statement that the average salary of Presbyterian ministers is $700 and that for all denominations it does not equal the wages of the average mechanic. A missionary writes:-" Practically all our native pastors are underpaid." The same thing might be said of all the home missionaries and of most of the pastors of non-missionary churches at home, one-third of whom receive only $500 or less.

The churches of America cannot, or at any rate will not, do for the native ministers of Asia what they are not doing for their own ministers. The world over, the rewards of Christ's service are not financial. Those who seek that service must be content with modest support, sometimes even with poverty. This is not a reason for the home churches to be content with their present scale of missionary giving, nor does it mean that mission boards are disposed to refuse requests for appropriations. The boards are straining every nerve to secure a more generous support and they will gladly send all they can to the missions on the field. But it is a reason for impressing more strongly upon the young men in the churches of Asia that they should consecrate themselves to the Master's service from a higher motive than financial support and that while the boards will continue to give all the assistance that is in their power, yet that the permanent dependence of the ministers of China must be in increasing measure upon the Christians of China and not upon the Christians of America. Hundreds of native pastors are already realizing this and are manifesting a self-sacrificing courage and devotion that are beyond all praise. Said Mr.

Fitch of Ningpo to a Chinese youth of fine education and exceptional ability:-"Suppose a business man should offer you $100.00 a month and at the same time you had the way opened to you to study for the ministry, and after entering it, to get from $20.00 to $30.00 a month, which would you take?" And the youth answered-"I would enter the ministry." "He is now teaching a mission school at $12.00 a month, though he could easily command $30.00 a month in a business position." The hope of the churches of China is in such men. Mr. F. S. Brockman declares :

"There is a wide-spread conviction among missionaries that the allurements of wealth alone are keeping English-speaking young men from the ministry. The facts do not bear out this belief. . . . In order to hold them in the ministry we need not appeal to their love of money. It is death to the ministry when we do it; we have opened the vial of their fiercest passion; we are doing what Jesus Christ never did; we are working absolutely contrary to the fundamental laws of the kingdom of God.

We must teach prospective ministers to look upon their lives as an unselfish expenditure of God-given power. For once make the allurement of the ministry the allurement of comfort, ease, or wealth, and we have closed up every fountain of the minister's power."

T

XXIV

COMITY AND COOPERATION

HE Hon. Charles Denby, then United States Minister at Peking, wrote in 1900:

"With all due deference to the great missionary societie, who have these matters in charge, my judgment is that missionary work in China has been overdone. Take Peking as an example. There are located at Peking the following Protestant missions: American Boards American Presbyterian, American Methodist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, International Y. M. C. A., London Missionary Society, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, International Institute, Mission for Chinese Blind, Scotch Bible Society, and the Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge. To these must be added the Church of England Mission, the English Baptist Mission and the Swedish Mission. The above list shows that of American societies alone there are seven in Peking, not counting the Peking University, and that all western Powers taken collectively were represented by about twenty missions. A careful study of the situation would seem to suggest that no two American societies should occupy the same district."1

It may be well to examine this criticism, partly because it was made by an able man of known sympathy with mission work, and partly because it relates to the city where, if anywhere, in China, overcrowding exists. In considering Peking, therefore, we are really considering the broad question of the practicability of withdrawing some missionary agencies in the interest of comity and efficiency. The Presbyterian missionaries themselves opened the way for the discussion of the question by proposing to the Congregational missionaries, after the Boxer uprising had been quelled, "an exchange of all work

1 Missionary Review of the World, October, 1900.