The Increasing Appropriations to Missions by Arthur Grosvenor Daniells

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 23, 1908

The Increasing Appropriations to Missions

By Arthur Grosvenor Daniells

THERE are good reasons why our appropriations to foreign missions are much larger to-day than they were a few years ago. In demonstration of this statement let us look at one part of our great field — the far East, including China, Japan, and Korea. Here are located nearly one third of the population of the whole world.

Eight years ago we had one missionary in all China, and he was eighty years old. Our annual expenditure amounted to about five hundred dollars. To-day we have between forty and fifty workers in China, at an expenditure of about thirty thousand dollars a year.

In 1900 we had three or four workers in Japan, but not one in Korea. Then our appropriations amounted to something like two thousand dollars each year. At the present time we have between fifteen and twenty workers assigned to Japan and Korea, while our annual expenditure has increased to at least fifteen thousand dollars. Thus in the far East we have increased the number of missionaries from five at the most, to about sixty, and we have enlarged our appropriations from two thousand five hundred dollars to at least forty-five thousand dollars.

This appears like a large increase when we look at it from the standpoint of our slender resources, and when we consider what we have done in other parts of our world-field. But it looks very small when we measure it with the great extent of territory, the vast population, and the marvelous opportunities for service which the providence of God has created.

The following statements from a missionary who seems to be well acquainted with developments in the far East, convey to us some idea of the mighty changes taking place there. These changes surely seem to be designed by an overruling Providence for the speedy proclamation of this last message to those millions who have for so many centuries been groping in their heathen darkness. This missionary says:—

It is perhaps impossible for any one who has not been actually living in the far East during the past three to five years to appreciate the colossal changes that have come over the Oriental nations bordering on the Pacific — what a ferment of new life, what a crumbling of old institutions, what a maelstrom of conflicting forces, what a yearning after something new! The spirit of change has touched every phase of national existence.

Throughout this entire region, whether one goes from Shanghai up to the shadows of the Himalayas, or to the borders of the Gobi Desert; or from Formosa to northern Japan, he will find the picture of George Washington in the rooms of the college students and in the primers of the little boys. He will hear Washington’s name on the lips of every statesman. Washington has become the political idol of this half billion people. Is it not eloquent testimony to the revolution in political ideals of the last decade?

Yet, perhaps, if you were to visit the far East, it would not be these political changes which would strike you so much as the industrial revolution. Instead of the tiny shops with the members of one family as the only workers, there are now coming vast modern factories. The forests of lofty chimneys which rise above Osaka, remind one of Pittsburg or Birmingham. Shanghai has a quarter of a million spindles, and a number of great silk filatures. Ten years ago China had one short line of railway. To-day nine thousand miles are under projection, and four thousand are complete. From Han-kow to Peking is thirty-six hours, where four years ago it was thirty-six days. A splendid railway with American coaches rushes you from the southernmost point to the northern border of Korea, the “Hermit Nation” of yesterday. The rich coal-mines of China, throughout countless centuries untouched, are yielding their thousands of tons to supply the needs of the new industrialism. It is only a brief period since old horseshoes were being picked up in London, shipped to Han-kow, and made into plows to cultivate the fields which lay over the immense iron beds of central China, but to-day the government iron works are shipping pig-iron from Han-kow to Seattle.

Wherever the breath of modern commerce has touched the coast of Asia, modern cities, seething with life, and nerved to the highest activity, have burst into being. No part of the world is more active. No streets of the world are crowded like the streets of Shanghai. Yesterday it was a river village; to-day the tonnage of its harbor is second only to that of Liverpool. But yesterday the island of Hongkong was a barren mountain, rising sheer out of the ocean. The mountain has in part been torn down, and thrown into the sea, and where was once the ceaseless beat of the waves, is now the countless tread of traders from every nation, and her princely mansions look down a harbor which, in volume of tonnage, stands mistress of the world.

More significant, however, than any of these changes in the far East — industrial, commercial, or even governmental — has been the educational revolution in China. In order to understand the full significance of this change, it is necessary for us to recall for a moment the nature of China’s old educational system. The only avenue into any position of influence in the nation was through a series of competitive examinations beginning in the district capitals, continuing in the provincial capitals, and culminating to the few successful candidates, in Peking. The result was that the nation was absolutely in the hands of about a million literati. Not only the form but the substance of this system had continued, up to less than a decade ago, practically unchanged for two thousand years. This was not the most striking fact, but rather that two thousand years ago it was then behind the times. Even then the one sole aim of the teaching was to win men from the degeneracy of the present, and get them to attain unto the civilization of two

thousand years before.

So, less than ten years since, China still had her eye fixed upon the golden age of four thousand years ago. She was advancing backward, and casting imprecations and pouring out denunciations upon the insistent modernism which was thrusting itself upon her. Here lies the explanation of China’s conservatism. For centuries her great intellectual force has been held with the manacles of an effete scholasticism. For two thousand years her intellectual life has been a worthless Sahara.

If I were to say to you that that old system of education had been changed, what a wonder it would be. But when I say to you that in September, 1905, by one stroke of the vermilion pencil of the Empress Dowager, in one single hour, that entire system from one end of the Chinese empire to the other was absolutely and forever abolished, and that there was put in the place of it not some effete system of medieval Europe, but there was adopted in its place the most modern education that China could discover; namely, the American system of education, which they took from us through Japan, then assuredly the change seems startling.

Missionary work in the far East to-day is entirely different from what it was even three years ago. This great movement, this immense wave, this change that has taken place, has been God’s doing; the ground is broken up and prepared for us. The old systems and institutions that have held millions during centuries have fallen to pieces, and half a billion people stand trembling upon the threshold of a new liberty, and hungering with a new desire.

From the character, purpose, and scope of the work we are doing, these great changes mean more to us than to any other people. And in view of them, who can feel that our appropriations to the far East are too large? If they are not, then how earnestly all should work to secure the full amount.

A. G. DANIELLS.