THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
converts. Much more recent than in Polynesia is the mission in Melanesia, which lies to the west and is inhabited by a half-savage population. Here the most successful and best occupied field is in the New Hebrides, which are divided into three groups. With the Melanesian Missionary Society, the Scotch, Canadian, and Australian Presbyterians do nearly all the work which has resulted in gathering about 20,000 Christians among 85,000 inhabitants. Here John G. Paton (q.v.) did his heroic work. The Melanesian mission extends to the Santa Cruz and Solomon Islands. On the Nickapu Island, belonging to the former group, Bishop John Coleridge Patteson (q.v.) died a martyr to his cause. Altogether the Melanesian mission carried on by the colonial church of New Zealand counts, on twenty-six islands of the three above-named groups, 12,000 converts. In the Bismark Archipelago, under the German protectorate since 1884, the Australian Wesleyans have established in New Pomerania, New Lauenburg, and New Mecklenburg a mission chiefly under the care of native Polynesian evangelists; it counts about 8,000 converts. In British New Guinea, the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodist and Anglican missions have gathered together about 18,000 Christian adherents; in Dutch New Guinea, where the Utrecht Mission has worked since 1885, and in the German Kaiser Wilhelmsland, where the New Dettlesau and Rhenish Missionary Societies have labored since 1886-87, they count 2,000 converts. In Micronesia, the English Gilbert Archipelago, and the German Marshall and Caroline Islands have been cared for since 1852 by the London Missionary Society and the American Board, mostly by means of native teachers. Altogether Micronesia counts 13,700 Evangelical Christians. In Australia among the Papuans, a dying race, consisting at most of 55,000 souls, widely scattered and of the lowest civilization, the United Brethren, the German Lutherans, and the Anglicans work with patient endurance but with little success; 4,000 to 5,000 are in the care of the missions. In New Zealand, the Church Missionary Society in 1814 took up the task, the Wesleyan Methodists in 1822; they soon had a surprising success, which unfortunately was much interfered with by the growing white immigration and the agitating land question resulting from the English occupation, which led to a bloody war with the Maoris. The number of Maori Christians is to-day 27,000.
General Summary op Results of Evangelical Missions.
Christians.
America 8,708,000
Africa 1,511,500
Asia 2,146,300
Oceania 292,500
Total 12,658,300*
11. Conclusions: Against one thousand millions of non-Christians and considering the immense missionary apparatus of the present, the 12,658,300 heathen converts do not seem a great success. But (1) this is the fruit of a foundation work, very slowly extended, opposed by innumerable difficulties and forced to pay dearly for lack of knowledge and experience; and (2) it is the beginning of a
♦Without the Negroes of the United States, 5,158,300.
harvest which will produce new seed. Missionary success increases in growing proportion with the duration of the work and the number of the workers; in the last twenty-five years, it has been greater than in the preceding three-quarters of a century. Besides this, missionary success in religion, morals and civilization far surpasses the results registered by statistics. The past must be compared with the present in order to estimate rightly in the separate missionary fields the progress due to missions. The comparison between what they have been and what they have become gives also the just measure for determining the quality of heathen concerts. The Christianity of the majority of these converts may be very elementary, but in comparison with the darkness of the heathenism whence they came, it is a dawn which promises the beginning of a new day. In spite of all its faults, the heathen mission of the present day is a work wherein God's greatness is manifested.
IV. Methodology of Missions: The methodology of missions also has its history. It is true that it has not yet been unified, and the diverse characteristics of the various missionary organizations, national, ecclesiastical, and pedagogical, scarcely permit unification; nevertheless, essential agreement regarding the fundamental principles has been gradually attained, even though in the practical application of these principles there are always variations, conditioned by the quality of the missionary organizations. Little by little a clearer view has been gained of the great problems, which became more and more apparent in the course of. the work; and if these problems are not all solved as yet, they are at least apprehended.
According to the idea held by almost the whole
of the older generation of missionaries, the task of
the mission was considered to be: (1) to convert
individual heathen and give them the
i. The blessing of faith, and (2) to gather
Purpose of these heathen converts into ecclesiolce,
Missions, which were formed entirely after the pattern of those in the home lands. Against this individualistic tendency of the missions, by which they hoped to form select " communities," there gradually arose a sober second thought, and the fact could no longer be ignored that the assembled communities did not consist exclusively of real converts, but were rather fragments of a species of native church with embryo Christians, the level of whose religious and moral life never rose above that of the average Christians at home, and often stood lower. The better this fact was understood the more the conviction grew that developed Christians could be the result only of a longer Christian education, not confined to individuals but directed toward the moral, spiritual, and social elevation of the whole life of the people, and toward a leavening of all the natural conditions of the people with the leaven of the Gospel. In this way the broader view of the missionary task prevailed against the merely individual one, and it was realized that in combination with the work of salvation dealing exclusively with the individual, there must be a missionary education of the people directed to the formation of a genuinely native Christianity. In the