THE LABORERS ARE FEW

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 47.

“THE LABORERS ARE FEW.”

This is especially true in what is known as the “regions beyond,” or “mission fields.” A contributor to the Examiner (Baptist) sums up the situation in part as follows:—

The Church of England Missionary Society has issued a “Call” for an increase of its income from £2,000,000 per year, to £2,500,000, within the next five years, and asks for 500 new missionaries within the same period. As might be expected, the call has awakened questions and some criticism. The Indian Witness has been making careful inquiries as to the need for any great re-enforcement in India, and prints the table which I quote to show how very far, even in this oldest mission field, we are from meeting the needs of the field. And no account is made of villages, yet India is a land of villages rather than of large cities. These villages very rarely have a missionary resident, but are commonly classed as “out-stations.” Only cities of over 100,000 population are mentioned.

Cities	Population in 1901	Missionaries
1. Calcutta	844,604	150
2. Bombay	770,843	75
3. Madras	509,397	76
4. Hyderabad	448,466	6
5. Lucknow	263,951	16
6. Benares	203,095	14
7. Delhi	208,385	31
8. Mandalay	182,498	7
9. Cawnpur	197,080	10
10. Bangalore	159,030	24
11. Rangoon	232,326	38
12. Lahore	120,058	22
13. Allahabad	175,748	23
14. Agra	188,300	28
15. Patna	135,172	2
16. Poona	111,385	80
17. Jaipur	159,550	3
18. Ahmedabad	180,673	14
19. Amritsar	162,548	25
20. Bareilly	117,433	6
21. Meerut	118,642	14
22. Srinagar	122,536	12
23. Nagpur	124,599	16
24. Baroda	103,782	6
25. Surat	118,364	5
26. Karachi	105,407	8
27. Gwalior	104,083	3

For yet another contrast let me take the Kongo Free State. The population is estimated in our Missionary Union “Hand Book” at 39,000,000, but the very lowest estimate I have ever seen puts it at 20,000,000. Now the State of Pennsylvania has 6,500,000 people living within its borders. In all the Kongo Free State there are but 214 missionaries, men and women. Pennsylvania has 651 ordained Baptist ministers, and thousands of other workers. There are nearly 5,000 ordained ministers of the evangelical denominations in the State. Of the 214 missionaries in Kongo there are some fifty-five ordained. In 1902 the twelve ordained Baptist missionaries in Kongo baptized 590 people, an average of nearly fifty each; the 651 Baptist ministers in Pennsylvania baptized 4,144 in the same year, an average of six each. These figures show at once the need and the hope of the work.

The scarcity of Gospel missionaries in foreign fields is further emphasized by the fact that only a few, a very few, of those accredited to these countries are preaching a full Gospel—“the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” The last great three-fold message that must be proclaimed to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” just prior to the coming of the Lord, will develop a people of whom it will be said, “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” See Rev. 14:6-12. But a very small proportion of the missionaries, either at home or abroad, are laboring with this end in view. Truly “the laborers are few.”