The Study of Missions by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 14, 1907

The Study of Missions

By W. A. S.

THE best material for the study of missions will be found in the reports, warm and fresh from the hearts of our workers in the fields, who are face to face with the needs, and who tell us of the onward march of this cause.

These reports from the fields ought really to be studied, not merely read. One needs to have conveniently near an atlas of the world, so that the significance of every onward move may be well understood. The incidents and experiences described, and the plans outlined by our missionaries, furnish weekly material for missionary and prayer meetings. Their proper study will keep the missionary zeal burning brightly in every heart.

Of literature on our missions in book form we shall doubtless soon have something. Our missionary history is just now rapidly in the making. For the benefit of teachers in our schools, the Mission Board some time ago put out a little pamphlet, “Outline of Mission Fields,” giving the barest record of facts regarding the opening of our different missions and the growth up to recent times. A call has been made for publication in book form of the more comprehensive studies on the beginnings of our missions which have been appearing in the Instructor from the pen of Sister L. F. Plummer.

A helpful book, which will be especially appreciated by leaders of missionary meetings, is “The Missionary Idea,” by Mrs. A. E. Ellis. (Published by the Union College Press, College View, Neb. Price, 75 cents.) The author has given special study to the home end of the foreign missionary idea for many years. As missionary secretary years ago in Minnesota, I believe, she inaugurated the second-Sabbath missionary study which has been adopted throughout our churches. Its many chapters give abundant variety of helpful suggestions, incidents, and Bible studies on missions. The book has been a labor of love for the cause of missions. It gives not simply the facts, but earnestly seeks to fasten the root idea of missions in our hearts and consciences.

For systematic study of the great heathen fields, their history, tribes, and their opening by missions, the volumes of the Student Volunteer Movement are most interesting, excellent, and very cheap. For 35 cents each, one can procure the following: “Africa: Daybreak in the Dark Continent,” “India and its Christian Opportunity,” “China: Dawn on the Hills of T’ang,” and “Sunrise in the Sunrise Kingdom” (Japan). The office of the Movement is 3 West Twenty-ninth St., New York City.

There is every facility for keeping informed as to the situation and needs of the great unwarned fields.

W. A. S.