especially by sisters, and industrial work is being skilfully carried on by the handy fratres in many mission fields, especially in Africa, a service which has won the favour of many colonial politicians for Catholic

missions.

A dark shadow is cast upon Catholic missions by their association with politics, i.e. with secular powers, Christian as well as non-Christian, in order to obtain help from them directly or indirectly in gathering in as great crowds as possible into the fold of the Church, and in this way to accomplish the Christianisation of the nations not from beneath but from above. Apart from the mediaval and post-medieval model of the Catholic missionary enterprise in America and on the Congo, the famous Xavier is the classical authority for this political kind of popular Christianisation. It is not true, as Janssen apodictically asserts, that this great missionary missionised with cross and breviary alone." In India he called in the assistance of the secular power of Portugal in the most direct manner, not merely to attract the heathen and also converts by the prospect of earthly advantage, or, as he himself says, "by enchaining them with bounties"; but also to use force in the suppression of heathenism and in introducing Christianity. And in Japan he made it his express object above all to win the princes in order to oblige the common people to follow them. According to his authenticated letters, Xavier was of the opinion that "the power of royalty was (in India) more essential to the spread of the faith than the preaching of the Gospel." "Believe me," he writes to Rodriguez, "I am sure that if the favour of the king and his viceroy do not come to the help of the faith, all our endeavour is in vain. I have had more than enough experience of this. I know why it is so; but it is not necessary that I tell you." And on the strength of this conviction he desires the strictest injunctions from the king to his viceroys that the faith be propagated in India, and that "he threaten them on his oath," and hold the sternest punishments over them, if they manifest tardiness in this work.1 Indeed, in his distress over the unsatisfactory result of the actual missions in India, he goes so far as to urge the king of Portugal in a long letter that he positively commission the secular authorities with the conversion of India. "As long as the viceroys and governors are not forced by the fear of disfavour to make many Christians, your Majesty cannot expect that the preaching of the Gospel in India will have appreciable influence." And, modified by circumstances, these principles of Xavier, resting as they upon the Romish conception of the fealty of the secular powers to the Church, have remained the pride of the Catholic missionary enterprise all through its lengthy history.

do

The great problems concerning the aim of missions have not existed to at all the sanie degree for Catholic missions as for Evangelical ones. They also have, it is true, educated a native staff of teachers, and in the older fields their secular clergy are fairly numerous; but education to financial self-support is not energetically carried on; on the other hand, on the Philippines, for instance, and probably also in other provinces of

had already done in all countries with such wonderful success, that her enemies eagerly appropriated all the treasures which she had lavishly distributed, although these could be but the garbled image of the gifts, which lost all value in their coarse hands. The Catholic Church has published exact translations of the Holy Scriptures in the language of every people which she has gathered within her fold." And this rhetorician is even to-day extolled as the classical" authority upon missions, as a crown witness against Evangelical missions and on behalf of Catholic ones!

1 De Vos, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, i. p. 341 ff.

the Church acquired by missions, a considerable amount of wealth has been collected by the Orders of the Churches. The whole question of constitution and independence does not appear at all, because of course the Christianised mission fields with a bishop or even an archbishop over them become part of the Romish hierarchy. No native has yet been invested with the dignity of a bishop in the mission fields recently entered.

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CHAPTER VII

ESTIMATE OF THE RESULTS OF EVANGELICAL MISSIONS

299. WHEN Paul returned to Antioch from his first missionary journey, he gathered the congregation there and "rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles" (Acts xiv. 27). In this oldest missionary report the chief stress is manifestly laid on this, that it was God who gave the missionaries entrance and success; and it is profitable also, in view of the facts of present-day missionary history, to have regard to the Divine leadings and influences which are opening the doors, alike to the lands and to the hearts of the heathen. But at the same time the apostle in giving his report throws into prominence ὅσα ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς μετ' αὐτῶν. If we translate iou by "what," "all that," then we have simply the results of this first missionary journey recorded, without the addition of any verdict as to whether these results are to be reckoned as considerable or as not so. We may, however, also render the word by "how much," "how great things," and then the results are characterised as an important missionary success.

In the foregoing survey of the evangelical mission field of to-day, the attempt has been made to set forth in outline soberly and objectively what has been accomplished up to this time. Looking now at the state of the facts, can we say that what has been done is much?

300. In face of a non-Christian humanity numbering still about 1000 millions,1 the numerical result of about 11 million

1 According to what are indeed only relatively the most (Zeller in the Allgem. Mis. Zeitung, 1903, 3 ff.), the 1544 who inhabited the earth at the end of the nineteenth according to their religion as follows:

Christians.

Roman Catholics

Greek Church

Protestants

Others

Israelites

Mohammedans

accurate statements millions of mankind century are divided

534,940,000

254,500,000

106,480,000

165,830,000

8,130,000

heathen-Christians 1 is not much, especially when one considers that at present the non-Christian humanity is being increased yearly through births by 1 millions more than this total, if the accepted rate of increase of 12 per 1000 per annum is accurate. The number of heathen-Christians, it is true, increases much more rapidly in proportion through baptisms of adults and children than the number of heathen through births, and it is therefore a knotty problem in mathematics to calculate how many hundred years are required for missions to reach even a yearly increase equal to the yearly overplus of For missions at the outset indeed resemble, as has been sarcastically said, "a tortoise running a race with a railwaytrain"; but it is not true that "this tortoise lags farther behind, the longer the race continues." The statistical results of missions increase in ascending, though not regularly ascending, progression, just like a capital sum to which compound interest is added. Not to speak of the sporadic missionary

According to "Stimmen aus Maria Laach "(Kath. Blätter), 1903, 16 ff.; Krose, S.J., Die Verbreitung der wichtigsten Religionsbekenntnisse zur Zeit der Jahrhundertwende:

These reckonings are independent of one another, and have been prepared with equal care. In any case, they place it beyond doubt that among all the religions of the earth, Christianity has by far the largest number of adherents. Next to it comes Confucianism, and only in the sixth place Buddhism.

[This phrase is the common German expression for Christians converted from non-Christian religions through modern missions.-ED.]

1

activity of the eighteenth century, the statistical result of which amounted to scarcely 70,000 heathen-Christians, it is only since the beginning of the nineteenth century that we have carried on missions with gradually increasing energy. After about 80 years-up to 1881-there were (according to the second edition of this Outline, in which the negro Christians were not included in the reckoning) 2,283,000 native Christians; for 1902-3 the result (without including the 7 millions of negro Christians in North America) is 4,462,500, i.e. it has in 22 years nearly doubled. But if the statistical results in, let us say, the last quarter of a century are about equal to those in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, that is the statistical proof that the growth of Christianity far exceeds the increase by birth. We have no desire to lose ourselves in trifling calculations 2 as to how far, at this rate of progress, the tortoise will have gained on the railway-train in 100 years; this, however, is indubitable, that the missionary results of the future will at this rate of progress be greater than those of the past. Nevertheless, the present attainments of missions, measured by human standards, must still be described as small. This verdict cannot be essentially altered by a reference to the results of apostolic missions. The statistical results of these we can only approximately estimate; 100 years after the beginning of the apostolic mission there were perhaps a third of a million of Christians-to-day, after 100 years of mission work, there are 11 millions. Is that not much? By such a mechanical comparison,-yes! In comparison with the missions of to-day, apostolic missions had immense advantages, which may be described in a word as a gratia præveniens, such as no later missionary period has shared; all this was favourable to their success. On the other hand, there stand behind the missions of to-day a vast Christendom, with its civilisation and its temporal power, and an army of workers in comparison with which the workers of the apostolic and sub-apostolic times seem a very small company; and this has to be considered in estimating the success of the latter. For a just comparison both sides must be taken into account, and then the balance of much success hardly inclines to the side of the missions of to-day. The earth is not yet full of the knowledge of the Lord; only a small beginning has been made, and in face of this a sober

1 [Published in 1883.-ED.]

2 Such a foolish reckoning is one which was based on the supposition that in the year 1887 there were 60,000 baptisms of heathen, and this was regarded as the normal number, which should always remain the same. Now the number goes far beyond the double of that.