Hence the common conception of missionary work as small. We look at the
parts, and the smallest parts, because our minds instinctively seek a
unity, and only in the parts do we find a unity, nor there often, unless
we concentrate our attention on one aspect of the work. But by thinking
of foreign missions in this small way and speaking of them in this small
way, we alienate men who are accustomed to think in large terms of large
undertakings designed on large policies.

What we need to-day is to understand foreign missions as a whole. We
want to take an intelligent part in them viewed as a unity. We want to
know what is the grand objective and how the parts are related to that
end. We do not want merely to support this mission because this
missionary appeals to us; we want to know what dominant purpose governs
the activities of the different societies, directs, and controls them,
deciding what work good and excellent in itself the mission cannot
afford to undertake, what it can and must do with the means at its
disposal in order to attain an end which it has deliberately adopted.

We need more, we need to know on what principles the missionaries are
sent here or there. We need to know what facts must be taken into
consideration before any mission, evangelistic, educational, or medical,
is planted in any place, what facts decide the question whether work is
begun, or reinforcements sent, to this place rather than to that. It is
not enough to be assured that there is a need. There is need everywhere.
We cannot supply all need; but we can have some settled and clear
judgment what facts ought to weigh with us, what information we must
possess before we can decide properly whether the claim of this place is
more urgent than the claim of that. We ought to have same basis of
comparison. The mere appeal of an earnest and devoted man, the mere