In large, well-organized missions, the educational department is now perhaps the most important and all-pervasive. As a mission grows, this department usually develops more rapidly than any other of its organized activities. This work is divided into three classes:
Schools for Non-Christians.
These are especially established with a view to reaching and affecting the non-Christian community. They have developed wonderfully during the last half-century and hold an important place in the economy of missions. They represent the leaven of Christianity in India. They are preËminently an evangelistic agency. They furnish excellent opportunity to present Christ and His Gospel of salvation to a large host of young people under very favorable circumstances. These institutions are of two classes—primary schools in villages and high schools and colleges at centres of influence and culture.
They have been the object of attack from men of narrow missionary sympathy and of limited horizon. These men claim that money expended on such institutions [pg 249] is a waste of mission funds. But they have failed to recognize the significant fact, which I have already mentioned, that these institutions undoubtedly furnish the best opportunity for missionary evangelistic work. And I fearlessly maintain that more conversions take place, and more accessions are made, through these schools than through any other agency, apart from the Christian Church itself. Not a few of the village primary schools become nuclei to Christian congregations, which flourish and develop into Christian churches. And through the higher institutions some of the best and strongest members of the Christian community have been won from Hinduism. All this, apart from the fact that these institutions perform an unspeakably important function in the dissemination of light throughout the whole Hindu community and in the leavening of the whole mass of Hindu thought and institutions. The good done by this class of institutions is beyond computation in that land.
Schools for Christian Children.
It is the worthy ambition of every mission and missionary to train the children of the Christians so that they may rise, not only in intelligence, but also in social life and position. Under this class of schools the native Christian community is being rapidly developed and educated, so that it is already in advance of any other community in general literacy.
Among these schools for Christians are industrial institutions for the training of boys and girls in manual labour. At the present time there seems to be [pg 250] a growing tendency to magnify this department of work. These schools are given to training in carpentry, blacksmithing, weaving, brass-work, rattan-work, etc. The Germans have entered more fully into this effort than any other missions in India. But they are not loud in its praise as a department of mission work. It certainly has both merits and demerits which we shall consider later.
During the last decade a few missionaries have launched out upon a new enterprise in the shape of Peasant Settlements. One object of these is to train the poor and improvident members of the community, especially the socially submerged classes, to habits of thrift, economy and independence. It is also conducted as a philanthropy for the purpose of raising the people socially and industrially through new methods and forms of agriculture. This movement is still in its infancy.
Training Institutions for Mission Agents.
It is the duty of every mission to train for itself an efficient class of men and women who shall conduct all the departments of missionary work and gradually relieve the missionary of many of his duties. These schools are of many kinds corresponding with the various classes of agencies required.
This may be illustrated by the institutions now found in the Madura Mission. Nearly every one of the twelve out-stations of that mission has a boarding school for Christian boys and girls. The best students who graduate from these schools, especially those who are deemed worthy to become future candidates for mission service, go to Pasumalai and to [pg 251] Madura for further, and professional, training. At Pasumalai young men may pass through the High School and even the college department. They are then placed in the normal department, to qualify them as teachers, or in the Theological Seminary, to prepare them as preachers and pastors. So, also, girls are placed in the Madura Girls' High and Training School and are there qualified for one of three grades of teachership. Or they may be placed in the Bible Woman's Training School where they receive a two-years' course of training for work as Bible women.
The only class of agents which is not trained by the Madura Mission is that of medical assistants. I trust that the mission's desire for funds to establish this work also may be gratified and that thus we may have the means of training suitable agents for every department of our missionary work. No mission can be complete unless it has some means of furnishing itself with an efficient agency to conduct all departments of its activity.
The only danger connected with the excellent educational department of work is, lest it should outgrow and overshadow all other departments. This danger is at present manifesting itself in some missions. It is an attractive form of work which allures the missionary; and, for several reasons, he yields to the temptation of emphasizing it out of proportion to its relative value and gives more time and money to it than a wise place in mission economy demands. The ideal arrangement for a mission would seem to be to keep well in front its evangelistic and pastoral endeavour, and to utilize all forms of educational work with a view to strengthening and furthering these. [pg 252] It is true that certain missions, like certain individuals, have a special genius or talent of their own; and their highest success will depend upon their following that bent. For instance, the Free Church of Scotland, in South India, has shown eminent ability and taste in the work of education. It has met with distinguished success in that line of effort, and its college for boys and high schools for girls in Madras bear testimony to its eminent success in this department. In evangelistic work it has thus far neither shown much interest nor large aptitude. The Wesleyan Methodists, on the other hand, are born evangelists and find their chief success as preachers of the gospel. Each mission should not only consider its field and its claims and needs, it should also study its own corporate gift and bent and then strive to develop its work mainly upon those lines which are most congenial to it.
