MISSION SURGERY
On many fields missionaries have found that ministry to the ills of the body has assisted in the conversion of souls. Thus in Formosa:
Dr. Mackay, a well-known medical missionary,
has found it a help to his work to
minister to bodily ills. He extracted twenty-one
thousand teeth in twenty-one years, and
thirty-nine thousand in all, and has dispensed
considerable medicine. Extracting teeth is
cheaper than dealing out medicine, for beyond
the instrument there is no outlay. The
natives have lost all faith in their old doctors.—Pierson,
"The Miracles of Missions."
(2043)
Mission Work—See Service with Hardship.
MISSIONARIES, MEDICAL
Africa has 135,000,000 inhabitants and 75
medical missionaries.
India has 300,000,000 inhabitants and 200 medical missionaries.
China has 350,000,000 inhabitants and 241 medical missionaries.
Japan has 42,000,000 inhabitants and 15 medical missionaries.
Turkey has 22,000,000 inhabitants and 38 medical missionaries.
Persia has 9,000,000 inhabitants and 11 medical missionaries.
Burmah has 7,500,000 inhabitants and 9 medical missionaries.
India alone contains 66,300 lunatics, 153,000 deaf and dumb, 354,000 blind and 400,000 lepers.
All missionary hospitals (Protestant) in the world can accommodate 100,000 in-patients and 2,500,000 outpatients annually.
These facts point to the need of men
and means in order that the world may
be Christianized.
(2044)
See Medical Missions.
MISSIONARIES' MISTAKES
Prof. Harlan P. Beach, in an address before the Fifth International convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions on the subject "Efficiency is limited and the kingdom is retarded by violating reasonable standards of taste or propriety," said:
In speaking on this subject, I can show its
importance, perhaps, by an incident which
happened about twenty years ago near Peking.
One night I heard a loud knocking at
the outer gate of our compound. The gate-*keeper
went out and was astonished to see
a dust-laden, wobegone new missionary. He
had arrived at Tientsin, his station, about
four days before. He found himself in a
new community, where he could not get his
bearings, and had come to our station to
learn what to do from two of our prominent
missionaries. I was glad to meet the newcomer,
but I said, "Why did you arrive so
late?" "Well," he replied, "I couldn't help
it." I looked at his cart; he had three mules
attached to it tandem by a great tangle of
ropes. He added: "The trouble is, I had
hardly gotten started from Tientsin when
this front mule, who is young, took a notion
that he would desert the beaten track. He
left the roadway suddenly before the carter
could prevent it and made a dash straight
for a china-shop. There was a terrific crash.
The ropes got caught between the legs of
the second mule and dragged him over into
a great lot of jars which went to pieces, and
even the wheel-mule, hemmed in by the vast
timbers that do duty as shafts in China,
yielding to the shock, crashed into the china-shop."
It took a long time to get that difficulty
righted, and hence he was late.
This incident illustrates my subject in six respects: (1) Missionaries, like those mules, make many breaks; (2) they usually make them at the start; (3) the breaks are genrally due to ignorance, or to wilfulness; (4) the work of missions is retarded greatly by these mistakes, just as my friend was delayed until late that night; (5) mistakes of missionaries involve their associates, as the action of this frisky front mule brought the whole outfit into disrepute; (6) what is most important of all, they bring loss to superiors. Those mules were mere animals, but there was a carter there and also my friend, who was anxious to hasten the coming of the kingdom that he took the trip at great inconvenience for that very purpose. Tho we missionaries are only rarely mules, we are all and always servants of a great Master, and are retarding His cause and bringing reproach upon His name and upon the Church of God, if we are guilty of such breaches of etiquette as are suggested by this parable.
(2045)
