p. 13 | Practical Preparation for Missionaries

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 23, 1909

Practical Preparation for Missionaries

REV. T. T. MATTHEWS, thirty years a missionary in Madagascar, speaking of the attainments of prospective missionaries, truly says: “The man who is not prepared to be anything and everything — a hewer of wood or a drawer of water — or who has not got above regarding this or that kind of work as beneath his ‘abilities,’ ‘culture,’ or ‘dignity’ to take part in or do, ought not to go to the mission field. Nothing which ought to be done should be regarded as merely secular, and least of all where it is to be a means of extending Christianity. Christianity touches everything, or it touches nothing. My experience fully bears out Dr. Livingstone’s statement that ‘if young missionaries for Africa would spend one half the time they have to spend over Latin verbs, in learning how to make a wheelbarrow, or mend a wagon, it would be infinitely more useful to them afterward.’”