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“The Best Thinking of the Best Heathen”: Humane Learning and the Missionary Movement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
It is now a common-place that the typical early 19th century missionary—visualized by David Livingstone as ‘a dumpy sort of man with a Bible under his arm’—was a fairly homespun character, from the forge or the shop (if he were English), or from the croft, the farm or the factory (if he were Scots). His formal education was not high, and, if an Anglican his social and educational attainments were not such as would have brought him ordination to the home ministry. It is almost equally accepted that by the end of the 19th century the situation had changed; not only were the numbers of missionaries immensely swollen; but the universities and the public schools could now supply a quota, for Africa as well as for the lands of the ancient Eastern civilizations. The evangelization of the world in one generation was to be accomplished essentially by the international student community. The typical missionary was now a conventionally educated man, and if that did not imply conspicuous intellectual attainment, nor did entrance to the home ministry.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1981
References
1 Cf. Walls, A.F., ‘Missionary vocation and the ministry: the first generation’ in Glasswell, M.E. and Fasholé-Luke, E.W. (eds.), New Testament Christianity for Africa anil the world. Essays in honour of Harry Sawyerr (London 1974) 141–156 Google Scholar; Piggin, F. S., ‘The social background, motivation and training of British Protestant missionaries to India’, 1789-1858 (Ph.D. thesis, University of London 1974)Google Scholar; Potter, Sarah, ‘The social origins and recruitment of English Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London 1974)Google Scholar.
2 Walls, Cf.A.F., ‘Black Europeans, white Africans : some missionary motives in West Africa’ in Baker, D., (ed.), Religious motivation: biographical and sociological problems for the Church Historian (SCH 1978), 339–348 Google Scholar.
3 The American veteran A. T. Pierson, expounding “the plan of God in the ages”, told a student conference of the multiplication of facilities and instrumentalities whereby world evangelization could now be effected. ‘Not one of you who is twenty-one years of age, but has substantially lived longer than Aristotle or Plato. There is not one of you who is blessed with University training, but knows more in the general province of knowledge than the great philosophers of a thousand years ago’ Make Jesus King. The report of the International Students Missionary Conference Liverpool January 1-5, 1896. (London 1896), pp 25f.
4 Cf. W[orld] Missionary] Conference], 1910. Report of Commission V. The training of teachers. (Edinburgh and New York 1910), p 67 ‘ ... it is evident that the Church does not secure an adequate proportion of the best intellectual results. The proportion of Pass-men to Honour-men ordained is about half as high again as amongst university men generally’.
5 Walls, Cf.A.F., ‘The nineteenth century missionary as scholar’, in Bloch-Hoell, N.E. (ed.) Misjonskall og forskerglede. Festskrift till Professor Olav Guttorm Myklebust (Oslo 1975) pp 209–221 Google Scholar.
6 Mungello, Cf.D.E., Leibniz and Confucianism: the search for accord (Honolulu 1977)Google Scholar.
7 Boswell, Life offohnson sub 1784 (Hill iv, p 309).
8 ibid sub 1776 (Hill iii pp 49f.) cf. sub 1769 (Hill ii p 73) and Rasselas chapter 2.
9 ibid sub 1781 (Hill iv pp 68-70) ‘I shall hope, that he who once intended to increase the learning of his country by the introduction of the Persian language, will examine nicely the traditions and histories of the East; that he will survey the wonders of its ancient edifices, and trace the vestiges of its ruined cities; and that, at his return, we shall know the arts and opinions of a race of men, from whom very little has been hitherto derived’. ... ‘It is a new thing for a clerk of the India House [his friend John Hoole] to translate poets [Tasso and Aristo]; it is new for a Governour of Bengal to patronize learning’.
10 In John Courtenay’s poem ‘Moral and literary character of Dr. Johnson’ occur the lines:
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11 Boswell and Johnson decided to have Oriental learning (taught by Jones) in the imaginary ideal college which they based on the members of The Club, (Journal of a tour to the Hebrides 25.8.1773; Hill v, p. 108).
12 The Life of Lord Teignmouth by his son is full of examples. Woodruff, Cf.[P.], [The men who ruled India I] (London 2 ed. 1963), p 153 Google Scholar ‘Perversely virtuous, obstinately middle-class, [Shore] spent his leisure mugging up Persian—and did not even pretend to be idler than he was’. Shore compiled the first memoir of Jones (London 1804).
13 See Arberry, A. J., Asiatic Jones : the life and influence of Sir William Jones (London 1946)Google Scholar; Marshall, P. J., The British discovery of Hinduism in the eighteenth century (Cambridge 1970)Google Scholar. After Jones’ death, H. T. Colebrooke was set to produce a translated digest of Hindu law, and for this purpose was transferred from the revenue to the judicial branch of the East India Company’s service. Colebrooke, Cf.T.E., The life of H. T. Colebrooke (London 1873) pp 71-108Google Scholar.
14 Cf. Woodruff, p 383. Spear, T.S.P., The Nabobs: a study of the social life of the English in eighteenth century India (London,2 ed. 1963)Google Scholar implies a different view.
15 Swanson, H. J., ‘The development of British Indology 1765-1820’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh 1979)Google Scholar, which discusses Jones and Colebrooke at length.
16 Jane Austen is a fair barometer: though not enthusiastic about Evangelical literature, she read and was moved by Buchanan. (Letter to Cassandra Austen, 24.1.1813, in Chapman, R.W. [ed.), Jane Austen’s letters (London 2 ed. 1932) p 292 Google Scholar. It is perhaps significant that Buchanan’s name is linked here with that of Thomas Clarkson, writer on the Slave Trade.
17 Davidson, A. K., ‘The development and influence of the British missionary movement’s attitudes towards India, 1786-1830’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Aberdeen 1973)Google Scholar assesses the effect of Buchanan’s writing.
18 See Laird, M. A., Missionaries and education in Bengal 1793-1897 (Oxford 1972)Google Scholar for a study of both vernacular and English education.
19 Duff, speaking in Scotland after twenty years in India says of his educational theory: ‘We thought not of individuals merely; we looked to the masses... we directed our view not merely to the present but to future generations. . . . While you engage indirectly separating as many precious atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can admit, we shall, with the blessing of God, devote our time and strength to the preparing of a mine, and the setting of a train which shall one day explode and tear up the whole from its lowest depths’. Smith, [George], [ The Life of Alexander] Duff (London 1881) p 68 Google Scholar.
20 Conference [on Missions held in 1860] at Liverpool (London 1860) pp 118-120.
21 Duff’s daughter describes his distress after hearing Robertson Smith lecture in Aberdeen. ‘He had been obliged to read all manner of sceptical books, because there was not a book of the negative sort which did not find its way to Calcutta, or an argument advanced by the sceptical school on the continent which was not soon in the mouth of Hindoos. But they were outside the Church and he always regarded the two things as widely different, the coming out of midnight darkness—when individuals were groping their way . . . and the deliberate turning from the noontide blaze of gospel light into the mischievous questionings of carnal reason’. Smith, Duff pp 45of.
22 Conference at Liverpool p 216.
23 Conference at Liverpool p 264. ‘The larger proportion of the missionaries have been drawn from the lower ranks of the middle classes, and the classes immediately below them’.
24 Letter to F. Monod, 5.2.1855, quoted in Knight, W., Memoir of the Rev. H. Venn. The missionary secretariat of Henry Venn. (London 1880), p 247 Google Scholar. On the training of missionaries in this period see Williams, C.P. [‘The recruitment and training of overseas missionaries in England between 1850 and 1900’. (M. Litt, thesis, University of Bristol 1976]Google Scholar.
25 The American wing of the volunteer movement laid particular stress on this; Harlan P. Beach of Yale gave a special explanatory talk at the 1896 Conference (Make Jesus King, pp 135-144). The conference organizers claimed to be presenting ‘the most complete set of missionary literature ever brought together’, and provided bibliographies for missionary libraries to cost respectively ¿1, ¿3, ¿5, £10 or £20. (ibid pp 276 f). The London Conference of 1900 went further with addresses on the topic by J. H. Bernard and George Robson, editor of the United Presbyterian Missionary Record (S[tudents and the] Missionary] P[roblem]. Addresses delivered at the International Student Missionary Conference, London, January 2-6, 1900 (London 1900) pp 230-245, and offered libraries ranging in value from ¿s to £63. (SMP p 147). The conference report included a fourteen page catalogue of recently published missionary books (SMP 540-562).
26 ‘Long ago it used to be thought that if a man was not good enough for the home ministry he might be sent out as a missionary. Thank God that... the question today is not “Is he good enough to stay at home” but “Is he good enough to go out?”. No man is too good to go to the mission-field, and very few are good enough.’ (F. Gillison, Make Jesus King, p 34). ‘Half the good in a university or college course is not the learning gained, but what it makes the student, and the work among the lowest in the mission-field needs often times the best equipped. . . . Do not think that a life spent among the outcasts of God’s children will be a throwing away of your talents. Jesus Christ threw Himself away, but what was the result?’ (Georgina Gollock, ibid pp 95f).
27 Make Jesus King pp 33-37. Thomas Gillison, M.B., CM. (edin.) was in charge of the hospital in Hankow from 1883 to 1918 (See Sibree, J., London Missionary Society: a register of missionaries, deputations etc. from 1796 to 1923 (London, 4 ed 1923)Google Scholar no. 801.
28 See Egerton R. Young, (Make Jesus King p 51); and, more guardcdly, C. F. Harford-Battersby, ibid p 236.
29 ‘God has given us our bodies to take care of, and a man is sinning against God, who thinks it of no importance to look after his physical health. The man who neglects to train his intellect, is throwing away five out of the ten talents which God has entrusted to his care’, ibid p 34.
30 Ibid p 35.
31 ‘There is nothing more important for a man who is going to the mission field than to learn to be methodical. He will find duties pressing upon him, and if he does not know what to do first, he will find a great many left undone.’ Idem.
32 Make Jesus King p 264.
33 Gordon, A. J., The Holy Spirit in Missions (London 1893) pp 201 Google Scholar f. Gordon did not approve of Xavier’s theology or methods but acclaimed this utterance of his: ‘It often comes into my mind to go round all the universities of Europe crying like a madman to all the learned men whose learning is greater than their charity, “Ah what a multitude of souls is through your fault shut out of heaven!” Ibid p 39. The S.V.M.U. organizers had hoped that Gordon would address the 1896 conference, but he died before it took place. (Make Jesus King, p 5).
34 SMP pp 173-180. It was given by T. W. Drury, Principal of Ridley Hall, who had been an effective Principal of the Church Missionary College at Islington. Stock, E., History of the Church Missionary Society (London 1899) III, p 262 Google Scholar.
35 The progress of worldwide missions went through many editions; a version of 1960 edited by J. H. Kane, was still being described by Neill, Stephen in 1964 as ‘indispensable’, Christian Missions (Harmondsworth 1964) p 579 Google Scholar.
36 SMP p 212.
37 SMP p 214.
38 SMP pp 226f.
39 SMP p 229.
40 SMP pp 222, 229.
41 SMP p 222.
42 SMP p 231. ‘You cannot teach everything in two or three years to a young clergyman any more than to a young doctor or lawyer.’
43 In particular he thought of the study of Arabic, and the production of a critical edition of the Qur’an ‘which shall point out the sources from which its puerilities are derived. ... Is it unreasonable to think that in this great assembly of students there may be one — perhaps of our own race, perhaps from Germany, that nursery of scholars—one who could take up this sorely needed task?’ SMP p 236.
44 SMP p 237.
45 WMC V, 39.
46 ‘In the vast majority of Societies, as in the denominations they represent, the ordained missionary is, and will always be, recognized as the representative figure and the most powerful factor in the whole movement’. WMC V, 115 f.
47 cf. WMC V, 42 f.
48 WMC V, 80; Cf 122f recommendations 3 and 4
49 WMC V, 107.
50 WMC V, 122 recommendation 2. But cf the minority report by Father Kelly of Kelham, 240-245.
51 WMCV, 109-114.
52 WMCV, 111 f.
53 WMCV, 118.