The Missionary and His Home
By Mrs. J. N. Anderson
To a family constituted after God's own order was given the divine commission, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." This primitive family in Edenic purity, environed with Edenic beauty, was the original unit of society, the basis and model of a righteous social structure intended to multiply, or reproduce after its kind, till the earth should be filled with the dominion of the righteous. Family life has ever been the nucleus about which the kingdom of God is cultivated. The Christian home is the most permanent institution in society to-day. The decorum of civilized society, the church, the school, and even evangelistic and missionary enterprise, are products of the Christian home. Gospel work in foreign lands begins to-day just as the kingdom of God was founded in the beginning. A Christian family is planted in the mass of perverted humanity. Out from such homes is to proceed the power that leavens the dissolute heathen world. It will touch society at its foundations, and multiply families after its kind. Whether the heathen come to the missionary's chapel or not, they may be depended upon to come to his home. They may have believed all sorts of stories as to the composition of the foreigner's medicines, or the bewitching influence of his healing arts; they may be convinced that the proposed girls' school is a decoy, a slave catcher's trap; but the very first appearance of the missionary's family is an irresistible attraction. The strange-looking woman, in her odd clothes; the fair-skinned, blue-eyed baby in her arms; the other children, with their bright faces, fair hair, and live, active motions, stand out in clear relief against the background of uniformly dark-complexioned, dark-eyed, black-haired native people; and at once they become objects of curiosity and interest. The father's manly courtesy as he assists the newly arrived missionary family out of the boats, chairs, mule-carts, or whatever conveyance by which they have traveled, leaves its impress. He, the master of the house, makes himself a servant, and with his own hands ministers to the comfort of all the household. To the heathen this is a surprising course of conduct in one professing to be a teacher, a scholar, and a gentleman. "Christianity has its sweetest fruits and its most gracious work in the home." This new institution, with its equality of man and woman, with its parental authority modified and sweetened by parental devotion and self-denial, with its reciprocal love and confidence on the part of the children, is a great revelation to the heathen. It commands their respect and wins their confidence. In time the missionary home comes to be to many a Bethlehem — a veritable house of bread. Whether displayed in the mission house or on itinerating missionary tours, the Christian family is one of the most positive, most potent factors in all permanent missionary work. This truth, once recognized, throws upon the family very definite responsibilities. Each member of the family must yield himself to the carrying out of the missionary purpose. One writer has said, "The walls of the home must at least be translucent, that the light may continually shine through." The natives must be allowed to come into contact with the unvarnished life of the home. Its doors must often be open, its table sometimes spread, and the very inner sanctuary of its worship sometimes unveiled. This duty of social intercourse presents one of the most delicate and typical problems of missionary life. To extend Christian hospitality and cultivate Christian fellowship with a heathen people, and still preserve in the growing family high social and spiritual ideals, is not a light task. The church at home may well concern itself for the spiritual safety of its representatives abroad. A correlative responsibility rests upon the church at home. It has not merely employed a man, his family following him as an incidental. But into an uncongenial climate and unfavorable soil the church has transplanted a scion as a sample of the best fruits of the Christian faith. It thus accepts the responsibility to provide a dwelling suited to the development and expression of the family life. The surroundings of a missionary family in a heathen land are not less noxious, and often more miasmic, than the slums of a great Western city. Hideous sins, spurning the cover of night, parade the street with magnificent pomp in open day. The gambling den, the brothel, and the slave dealer go unrebuked. Diseases of the most loathsome character stalk the street unrestricted. On his daily rounds, the missionary may encounter victims of leprosy, cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, measles, or other diseases in their season. His home should at least be free from these harrowing, menacing intrusions. One of the essential features of the missionary home is privacy. It must at times be able absolutely to exclude all but the inner circle. The dwelling consecrated to missionary service must be not only Bethlehem to the multitude, but just as truly it should be Bethel — house of God — to its inmates. When self-preservation, either physical or spiritual, requires it, the missionary home should be able to close its gates, and still not suffer from lack of fresh air and purifying sunshine. To be most effective, missionary homes must be located in populous centers of influence; but in China the streets of such cities are often filthy, always narrow. There is no green grass; there are no shady parks. The hillsides on the outskirts are covered with graves of multiplied generations of the dead, and the gardens on the level ground are cultivated in such a manner as to render them unfit places of resort. Except on rare occasions the family must find its recreation within the limits of its own home. The missionary's home should afford an opportunity for the Western mode of life, that the children may be reared in the custom and practises of their native soil, and not degenerate into native practises. It is just as essential that the missionary preserve his own family in its native characteristics as that he refrain from alienating his converts from the customs and practises of their native life. The healthful, comfortable housing of missionary families in a foreign field, on a scale not too far below that maintained by their fellow laborers in the more favorable climate and more sanitary conditions of the home land, and a provision for the support and education of children when they arrive at a proper age to be returned to the home land, are among the most important responsibilities of the church. Just now at this present stage of our missionary work is the latest moment which we as a people may postpone definite active attention to this important detail of our business; namely, the housing of our missionaries. Already there has been some loss to our work in China by undue wear and tear, preventable sickness, loss of time in the field, and protracted furloughs at home, and in some instances the almost certain permanent abandonment of the missionary life. If all this has involved a considerable expenditure of consecrated means, what has it cost to individual lives in physical suffering, in mental anxiety and distress to their families and fellow16workers, sometimes augmented by the keener pain of disappointment in a career paralyzed in its rising? That there has been so little waste and loss under existing conditions in China is a cause of gratitude to God.