THE MISSIONARY METHODS OF THE MORAVIANS.
By Editor
Two weeks ago we presented an extract from a book entitled "Christian Missions," by Rev. E. S. Todd, D.D. (publishers, Hunt & Eaton, New York), in which was discussed the relative success of the two principal missionary methods which have obtained in the Christian church. These methods the writer calls stipendiary, in which the missionary is assured a certain stipend, or salary, by a mission board or society, and the martyr method, in which the individual, feeling called of God and burdened for soul, goes out trusting in Providence to supply him. Dr. Todd gives as examples of the latter method the work of the church in the first three centuries, the work of Columba and his colaborers from Iona in the sixth and seventh centuries, and the still later work of the Moravians. Of this latter movement he says:— It was not simply begotten by the Moravian Church—it was the church. As usual, the movement was great in proportion as the agents that carried it on were poor and obscure. The Moravian Church numbered only 600 poor despised exiles when they commenced to go abroad. So late as 1886 the home churches of Europe and the United States were only able to raise £16,803, though the proceeds of industrial enterprises and of schools connected with the missions brought up the sum to £50,000. This shows that the stipendiary plan, if adopted, must have dwarfed their undertaking to a point beneath the notice of history. Moravian missions are historic mainly because they were martyr missions. With such poverty and paucity of numbers they were able in nine years from the beginning to send missionaries to Greenland, St. Thomas, St. Croix, to Surinam, Rio de Barbice, to the blacks and Indians of North America, to Lapland, Tartary, Algiers, Guinea, Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon. In the year in which Perry gained his great victory on Lake Erie, a review of the past showed that, with 157 missionaries in the field, they had won a greater victory at 33 different points, where they had enrolled 27,400 converts. The method adopted for carrying on this work was essentially that of self-support. The missionaries were at liberty to state their wants to the home church, which supplied such of them as their limited means would allow. For the balance they depended on themselves and God. Christian David, the pioneer of the movement, wrote concerning his departure on this work:— "There was no need for much time or expense for our equipment. The congregation consisted chiefly of poor despised exiles who had not much to give, and we ourselves had nothing but the clothes on our backs. Being accustomed to make a shift with little we did not trouble our heads how we should get to Greenland or how we should live in that country." Yet they were not without plans for the future, for when asked how they intended to support themselves, providing they succeeded in reaching there, they answered that they intended to build a house and cultivate the land by the labor of their hands, that they might not be burdensome to any. When told that there was no wood in that country, they replied, "Then we will dig in the earth and lodge there." They proved their scheme to be feasible by carrying it out and making the Greenland mission a grand success. Leonard Dober, who had it on his heart to go to St. Thomas, said, "If no other way offers I will sell myself as a slave there." He commenced work at St. Thomas by hiring out as a steward to a planter. When the way opened, he devoted himself wholly to his chosen work, and won the praise of Bryan Edwards, the historian of the island, who testified to the sound judgment, evangelical spirit, and great success of Dober and his companions. Of the work of the brethren in South America, whither some of them went in 1738, we read: "After working some time in the company's plantation they took a piece of land on the borders of the colony and cultivated it on their own account, in the hope of at length finding an opportunity to make known the gospel among the pagan inhabitants." Others in 1847 established a mission among the Tartars, going first to St. Petersburg and then two thousand miles overland to Czarizin. "Here they began to erect the buildings necessary for their accommodation, to cultivate the land, and to work at their respective trades, with a view to the support of the colony." A physician of their number undertook the establishment of a mission in Persia in 1789. "His plan, which he carried out, was to practice as a physician in Cairo; to learn the Arabic language; to establish a correspondence with the patriarch of the Copts, and through him to form an acquaintance with the Abana himself." The leader of the company that in 1752 went to Labrador had before visited that region several times as mate of a fishing vessel. Small wonder that with such a practiced man in the lead "they took a house ready framed, a boat, various kinds of implements and seeds for the cultivation of the ground." The inability of the home church to supply the wants of those who went out made it necessary that they should be men who had had experience in the practical affairs of life and had some trade by which they could live. Aside from this it was the settled belief of this community of missionaries that the habits of a student were not so well calculated to form a person for that work as those of a mechanic. In 1795 thirteen single brethren left for Tranquebar, an island in the Bay of Bengal, where, "having purchased a piece of ground about a mile from the town, they built themselves a house, together with some workshops and outhouses, wrought at their trades, and met with good sale for the articles they made." The Cape of Good Hope was visited by George Smitd in 1736, who, on his arrival, after the manner of others, "fixed a spot for settlement and proceeded to build a hut and plant a garden." The method adopted by these remarkable men in their work is thus beyond question. It was essentially the same in all the three great missionary epochs. The revival of spiritual religion under Whitefield and Wesley was brought to this country in a like manner. A carpenter who wrought at his trade, a captain in his majesty's service, and a farmer were the earliest agents in this work. The self-supporting plan for missions is as old as Christianity, and the church has won all its great triumphs in the past by the use of this method. He then argues that the present method of stipendiary missions could, according to the present ratio, never evangelize the world nor arouse the spirit of sacrifice in the church, as the missionaries thus sent out were generally provided with "comfortable homes" (a very proper thing for the mission boards to do for their faithful men), and their "lot no longer calls forth special commiseration among the well informed." He closes this interesting chapter thus:— Christianity needs heroes and martyrs in the missionary work to inspire the self-sacrifice of the church, and this martyr missions can supply. The day is, perhaps, not far off when the voluntary and the self-supporting method by which the church has won most of her missionary success in the past will again take its place as the plan chiefly relied on in the last great struggle with paganism and antichrist.