intention of the founders of the institution. The difficulty arose
because there was no dominant purpose which governed the direction of
the mission. There was no purpose so strong and clear that it could
prevent the foundation of, or close when founded, an institution which
was leading it far from its primary object.

Again it is notorious that what we call the work of the evangelistic
missionary is so manifold and variegated that it includes every kind of
activity, every sort of social and economic reform. Our evangelistic
missionaries are busy about everything, from itinerant preaching to the
establishment of banks and asylums. Can we afford it? What purpose is
dominant, what aim really governs the policy of those who send out
evangelistic missionaries? What decides the form of their work and the
method by which they pursue it? It is hard to guess, it is hard to
discover, it is hard to understand.

Now when our missions are presented to us and we are asked to support
them on all sorts of grounds, as though a society with its slight funds
could really successfully practise every kind of philanthropic work, we
begin to doubt whether it can really be wisely guided. Each mission
station, each institution, seems to be an isolated fragment. The
missionary in charge often appeals to us as an exceedingly good and able
man, and we support him, and we support the society which sends him and
others like him. And we call this the support of foreign missions; but
foreign missions as a unity we do not support because we can see no
unity. The directors of foreign missions appear not to have hitched
their wagon to a star, but rather to all the visible stars, and we
cannot tell whither they are going. So we fall back on the individual
missionary, or the isolated mission which at any rate for the moment
seems to have an intelligible objective.