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Why Are the Church People So
Unwilling to Learn the Facts
About Foreign Missions ?
r P HE Christian Index is making its periodic
1 howl for more money for the Boards, the
Missionaries, and the 100,000 “Converts” who
have to be paid to stay “converted.”
Why doesn’t the Index tell its readers the
whole truth, about the present methods of the
Boards and the Missionaries?
IT DOESN'T DARE TO.
The Index knows quite well that, if our
people really knew what is going on, they
would never give- another dollar, until the
whole system was put back on a Scriptural
basis.
An Alabama friend wrote me, a few days
ago, saying, that a Baptist preacher denied
that our Baptist Missionaries are paid SIOO.
for each child born into their homes.
' If ignorance of that kind prevails among
the preachers, how can you wonder that the
laymen are in the dark?
His Baptist preacher is like most of the
others, I suppose; and he is the collecting
agent for the system, which he himself does
not understand.
Regularly, no doubt, he preaches “a mis
sionary sermon,” and drools out the dreary
old drivel about the heathen-who sits in dark
ness, and who is sure to go to hell, if you don’t
hand out more ducats for the missionaries.
In the first place, the Bible distinctly
teaches that the heathen who live good lives,
according to the light thev have, do not go to
hell.
In the second place, the heathen to whom
we send most of our missionaries, and most
of our money, have been hearing the Gospel
for at least fifty years.
What is it that the Boards really want $20,-
000,000 a year for?
Doesn't your own common sense tell you
that twenty million dollars a year, spent on
mission work, for the last ten years, would
have sent the Gospel to every living creature?
With that prodigious sum of two hundred
million dollars, used to support such devoted,
hard-working missionaries as Judson and
Morrison and Livingston, they could have
reached every living creature, and given him
the same chance that Paul and Barnabas gave
him.
Don't you know it would?
A million Judsons and Morrisons, and Liv
ingstons could have been kept m the foreign
field with the $200,000,000.
A salary of S2OO a year, paid in Africa,
China, Korea, India and Japan, is equal to
SI,OOO paid and spent in this country.
If the missionaries were not so greedy
about salaries and luxuries, S2OO a year would
satisfy them.
That’s more than Paul got, more than Peter
got, more than Judson got, more than Wesley
got, more than Livingston got.
A million missionaries, whose hearts were
in their work, and. who went about from place
to place, preaching Christ, —as Christ himself
did, and as he commanded the seventy to do—
could have literally carried out the command
to preach the Gospel to every nation and
every living creature.
Why, then, are they eternally howling about
the heathen who have never heard the Gospel ?
How are the remote heathen ever to hear
the Word, if we keep on pampering the mis
sionaries by planting them in palaces, sur
rounding them w’ith luxuries, state-feeding
them, generation after generation, at Canton,
Shanghai, Tokio, Bombay and Seoul?
Do they suppose that the millions of
Chinese, who live on rats and rice in the
remote provinces, are ever going to hike to
Shanghai and listen to the
What Biblical foundation does this palatial,
stationary, sendentary, high-salary mission
ary work rest on ?
. ■* A.
THE JEFFERSONIAN
Upon what theory do they demand that
the missionary live at the same place all the
time, live in luxury all the time, have a three
months vacation_on full pay, every year, keep
at least three house servants, and draw SIOO
a year extra for every baby his wife has?
Upon what theory of Christianity or com
mon sense are we Baptists asked to maintain
hundreds and thousands of schools, colleges
and hospitals, in China, Japan and India,
when right here at home we see the Perry-
Rainey Colelge sink under a load of debt, and
the Bessie Tift flounder in distress?
It wrings my heart to read the letters from
our boys and girls, who pant for 9 chance in
life, and eagerly seek help toward an educa
tion—and then to read how such a grand old
Baptist as Hiram Rainey, had to see his col
lege pass out of Baptist hands.
It saddens me to think of all the years of
struggle that the good men and women at
Forsyth have spent trying to keep the Bessie
Tift alive.
Then, I turn to the magazines and books
that are dishonestly paid for out of mission
collections, and gaze on the pictures of the
magnificent kindergartens, high schools and
colleges that we Baptists have built for the
children of the Chinese, the Japanese, the
Koreans, and the Hindoos; and my brain
almost reels with bewilderment.
In the name of God! What does all this
mean ?
Are our preachers blind?
Can’t they see the dire needs of our own
children?
Can’t they see the bare poverty of our
people ?
Don’t they know that the Governments of
China and Japan have a far better system of
free public schools than we, and that every
child in those foreign countries can get a free
education?
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TREE.
Why, then, are we squandering twenty mil
lion dollars, every year, teaching school in
China, feeding the hungry in Japan, nursing
the sick in India?
We have one thousand hospitals in the for
eign field, built and maintained at the expense
of the churches of this country.
How many hospitals are maintained in this
country, by our churches?
How many doctors and dentists are em
ployed by the Home Mission Boards?
How t many surgeons and trained nurses are
attached to the pastorial staff?
How much free medicine, and food and
clothing, is your pastor authorized to use in
his work among the deserving poor?
How many agricultural stations are main
tained by our churches in this country to teach
our boys the better methods of farming?
How many of our . churches have print
shops, carpenter shops, technological insti
tutes, and schools for sewing, cooking and
housekeeping for the training of our boys
and girls?
Is there a kindergarten attached to each of
our home churches, in which benevolent men
and tender-hearted women can care for the
little waifs of our towns, our cities, and the
country side?
Is there a hospital to which your big-souled
minister can take the destitute sick, and have
them humanely doctored and nursed?
Ah, my countrymen! The churches are
losing the people.
And why? Because the services too often
lead to the collection of money, which is not
spent for the good of the people who cruelly
need it, here at home.
In the great State of Georgia, w r e Baptists
are trying to maintain one hospital for the
poor.
Think of it— just one!
Abroad in foreign lands, we have a thous
and.
Who told us to build them in foreign lands?
Those who were healed by Christ, were his
home folks.
Those who were healed by the disciples,
were their home folks.
We have reversed the Bible method: we
leave Lazarus to the dogs, at our oxen gate,
and we take ship, sail across the ocean, and
hunt up the Lazarus that lies at China’s
door.
Oh. it is all wrong!
And the pity of it is, that the pack-horses
of the whole commercialized system— the local
preacher and his wife — can’t be made to un
derstand the facts.
They don't know, and they refuse to learn.
The MurdeVons Spirit the
Roman Catholic Papers*
I T is a part of my business to keep tab on all
the Romanist papers and magazines, for
it is important that The Jeffersonian know
what those foot-kissing traitors are up to.
Never in my life have I seen any papers
and magazines so full of deadly and vituper
ative rancor against their opponents.
The intolerant hatred they manifest, is
absolutely murderous.
No matter how high a Protestant, or non-
Catholic, may stand, if he dares to open his
mouth against Italian popery, these Ameri
cans who are tlie foreigner's sworn subjects,
pour out upon him the vile bilge-water of
venomous abuse and misrepresentation.
For instance, there is Priest John Noll, the
editor of Our Sunday Visitor.
That man seems incapable of telling the
truth about anything, where his foreign
church is concerned.
In his latest issue, he spills scurrility and
lies all over* the Rev. Dr. Randolph McKim,
of Washington City.
Dr. McKim is one of the finest Protestants
in the Union, and his Virginia ancestry natu
rally inclines him to the highest standard of
patriotism.
But the blood of the Randolphs and the
Jeffersons is no protection whatever to Dr.
McKim: he has fought the encroachments of
the foreign church upon our politics, and to
the Romanist foot-kissers, he is a marked
man.
They abuse Dr. McKim as coarsely, and as
unscrupulously, as they abuse John Lind,
John Hay, General Miles and myself.
This fellow iNoll says that Dr. McKim
opposed the closing of the mails “to filthy
papers.”
The statement, of course, is a malicious
falsehood.
The law already excludes “filthy papers”
from the mails, and John Noll knows it.
What the Knights of Columbus and the
Jesuits were trying to do, when Dr. McKim
bravely combatted them, was to close the mails
to every book, magazine, paper, picture or
letter that “reflected on” the foreign church
of the Italian Pope.
These laws which these Romanists want,
and which Dr. McKim opposed, would have
outlawed the whole mass of Protestant litera
ture.
If these Romanists cared two straws for
morality, they would compel their priests to
marry.
If morality was what they desired to pre
serve, they would burn the confessional boxes,
and destroy the theological works of Peter
Dens and Alfonsus Liguori.
If morality was what they cared for, they
would not lock up 5(>,006 healthy young
women and hand the key to the unmarried
young priests.
If they cared a rap for morality, they would
go after the writers of amorous stories in the
magazines, and would close the mails to such
licentious novels as those of the Catholic,
D’Annunzio.
If they cared anything about “scurrility,*
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