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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

Missions and the Empire

Missions and the Empire.

In common with the majority of Colonial and Missionary Bishops, I have receved a letter from the S.P.G.; and in common with every Bishop of the Anglican Communion, I have received a letter from the United Board of Missions of the Provinces of Canterbury and York. Upon the matter of each of those page 54 letters I desire to make some remarks in the hope of stimulating your interest in their contents, and with a view of contributing something, however small, towards the formation of public opinion on the Imperial aspect of the Science of Missions. If we can enlarge our vision in this direction we shall do good to the Church of this Province in two ways: (a) We shall better appreciate the oneness of our Church and the magnitude of her activities. This knowledge will help us to keep our own thoughts big and to remember that what we, in this Province, think and do has an effect upon the Church throughout the Empire.

(b) We shall do a great deal to prevent ourselves from falling into the snare of narrow Parochialism or Congregationalism. Such a temptation is common both to Church and State in a colony like ours, where the population is so very small. We want all the help we can get to avoid yielding to the temptation of allowing our vision—either as Churchmen or citizens—to be no bigger than that of the inhabitants of "Little Pedlington."

First, what does S.P.G. ask us to think about? They put it in the form of a Resolution:—

"The Standing Committee, having had brought before them in a special manner of late the urgent calls for workers in many parts of the world, but especially in the great non-Christian fields of India, Burmah, China, Japan, and Siam, believe that the time has come to invite men and women in the Dioceses which they have helped to create in all parts of the world to aid them in supplying such lands with Missionaries."

The C.M.S. have already been given the privilege of sending forth some Communicants from New Zealand to the Mission Field. The S.P.G. exists, primarily, to follow the White Man with the Means of Grace. It has therefore a special claim on the love of every Colonial. But I do not quote the Resolution so much with the direct object of getting Communicants in New Zealand to volunteer for service in India, Burmah, China, Japan, or Siam; glad as I should be to send men or women forth from this Diocese for such work I quote the Resolution in order to lead your thoughts towards the oneness of the work of the Church, the page 55 S.P.G. has been permitted by God to plant or support Missions in all but fifteen of the one hundred and three Colonial, Indian, and Missionary Bishoprics of the English Church. New Zealand owes a special debt of love to S.P.G.—the possibility of George Augustus Sehwyn laying some of the foundations he did. And now this Society writes to 88 Bishops the following words:—

"Many Dioceses are now independent of all aid such as ours, and are themselves centres of Missionary effort. But our burdens grow no less weighty. Not only do our own people still need our aid in new regions of colonisation, but the great non-Christian races and Empires are not yet brought to Christ; and nowhere do we need help so much as among the great races of Asia, in India, China, Japan, Burmah, and Siam, as well as in Borneo.

"We approach you now as those to whom we have been permitted with joy to impart some spiritual gift in the past when you most needed it. We ask you to remember our needs in these days in respect of labourers, both men and women, in the Lord's harvest field.

"We do not forget that many of your Provinces and Dioceses have their own proper Mission fields among races within your own territories, and that you are evangelising them unaided by any Missionary Society. Such Missions are your first duty; we, too, in your behalf, are proud of such work. Nay, we have even ventured to look upon it as our own work as well as yours, since it is being done by those whom we have helped to build up in time past.

"The work is one. Why should not the call be to all alike, whether they belong to the older or to the younger Churches?"

Let me illustrate the oneness of the work:—Lately one of our Missionary Bishops of the Australasian Province sent me a letter enclosing an offer of personal service from a Native Christian in that grand Mission at Nazareth, Tinnevelly. That offer of service is now being considered by an experienced Missionary in Fiji. Wnether there is the right sort of work there for the man or not, does not affect my point: the work is one.

page 56

Again, whether we will or will not, the Colonial Empire, and New Zealand in particular, is bound up with the history of S.P.G. If the roots of the Maori Mission were planted in Salisbury Square, London, E.C., the roots of the Church of the Province of New Zealand were planted in 19, Delahay Street, Westminster, London, S.W. The work is one; for Missions and the Empire are, historically, indissoluble. Let me repeat: my point now is not to get your sons and daughters to volunteer for distant lands. It is to get you, and men like you, to think upon these things.

The work is one. Since I have been in the Colony I have seen, even more than at Home, how the work is hindered and suspicions (often unreasonable) are aroused by self-will in the Church at Home. Although we have no canonical concern with extravagances in any church at Home, we have a very direct concern in such things. They hurt our work here. By things unwise at Home being done, things unwise are said here, and men's sound judgment is hindered. One of the leading citizens of this Colony—a true and loyal son of his Mother Church—said to me one evening, as ha read out of the evening paper a cable describing some ritual and doctrinal troubles at Home:—"What a pity that men at Home can't see the harm they do to the Church in the Colonies by this sort of thing." It is sadly and lamentably true. The abnormal is the thing that is cabled to the newspapers out here. The man who does not know the facts thinks the abnormal is the normal. Because the Church is one, our work here is hindered in consequence.

The work is one. I can tell you of a real growing public opinion at Home in this direction. Men are getting hold of the conviction, more and more, of the oneness of Empire—"one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism." There is a definite stretching out of the hands of men to grasp the twin facts; that God called this Empire into being for His own purposes, that every Clergyman receives Holy Orders for work co-extensive with the world. The only difference that exists between the work of Bishop, Priest, and Layman, in New Zealand and in London, is:—the methods, because of the country. But the work itself is one. The Message page 57 is the same—"The Son of Gmod was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil."

Now, in New Zealand, we have to face the need of men and women for the Maori and Melanesian Missions. Those Missions, quite clearly, are our very first duty to coloured races, and, as I have already shown, we are falling far short of the standard such a duty sets before us.

But there is something upon which our Native Mission depends ultimately:—the Christianity of the White Man. To evangelize the coloured man and to allow the White Man to relapse into Paganism is entirely wrong. The coloured man as a whole, will not long believe in the religion of the White Man if the White Man's conduct is not Christian, if the White Man's Church is careless of her own children.

What we want to-day is:—whole-hearted, wholesome, Missionaries for our own flesh and blood; men with the Love of God in their hearts and common-sense in their heads, and good red Christian-Imperial blood coursing through their veins; men who do believe that Service is greater than Success.

Second, the letter from the United Board of Missions of Canterbury and York. The Lambeth Conference will (D.Y.) meet in 1908. It is intended to hold a great Missionary Congress of Churchmen from all over the world in connection with the Lambeth Conference. The general idea is:—between now and then for Churchmen all over the world to consider the great Missionary problems. [By "Missionary" is connoted work among white and coloured races.] Such consideration will be given in Synods, Conferences, Meetings, and the like. Men will talk among themselves. Gradually a volume of public opinion will be put together. Upon that information the Lambeth Conference will be able to take steps in the direction of better co-ordination of the Church's work at Home and Abroad; consolidation of efforts; construction of a great big Imperial policy suited to the change which has taken place in the world since good Thomas Bray was sent forth in 1696 by the then Bishop of London as Ecclesiastical page 58 Commissary for Maryland.* When the Congress meets, it is proposed to give a day each to the consideration of problems affecting the five Continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australasia.

I hardly think that you will have time, this Synod, to do much solid work in the directions aimed at by the Congress. But we might profitably engage in some conversation on the whole matter, and even possibly come to agree upon some sort of plan, either by way of recommendation to General Synod, or by way of organizing local meetings for information and consultation, whereby we, as a Diocese, might take our share in what is going to be an epoch-making Congress. At our Synod in 1904 I hope we shall definitely discuss some Resolution, and go on in subsequent Synods until we have got hold of something clear and sufficiently thought-out for submission, in some way, to that Congress.

But, though we cannot do much at this Synod, owing to pressure of business, we may remember one sort of problem that the Missionary Congress might discuss, and it is one upon which, ere long, the Lambeth Conference must act:—the establishment of Missionary Bishoprics. The thing is done in altogether too haphazard and "go-as-you-please" way now. We have the case of Tonga as a plain evidence for ourselves. And men are sometimes sent out as Missionary Bishops without the Church, as a whole, caring much about it, and the man is left terribly alone. For instance, how many Churchmen in New Zealand are concerned in the Bishoprics of Corea, Shan-tung, Lebombo, the division of the enormous Diocese of Perth, W.A., or many others one might name? How many Churchmen in the Province of South Africa are concerned in the Tonga question? In one sense, very few indeed. And yet, in another sense, every single man and woman in communion with the English Church is vitally concerned in all such matters. There ought to be, and must be, some sort of Federal Council of the Church page 59 on Imperial lines; some central authority, representative of our Communion, which shall be able to say:—this or that place is where you must concentrate your efforts: a Bishop is more wanted here than there; and such like things. Missions are a Science: they have to be studied and problems have to be solved by bringing intelligence to bear on them. Piety and lack of training do not spell competence to do the work of Missions; neither do ignorance and prejudice spell competence to pronounce judgment upon a question of real difficulty requiring technical knowledge. The last Lambeth Conference (1897) in appointing a Consultative Committee has already committed itself to the principle of the point I have just touched upon. The demand for federation and representation wants pressing. The wise development of such a demand will permanently guard against the erection of even a Patriarchate of Canterbury, although, as long as this Empire lasts, the Britisher will turn to the See of Canterbury as the centre.

I have written thus, only and entirely, with a view of getting you to think upon a matter that may be discussed at General Synod, and that, anyhow, I hope you will discuss at Synods for the next year or two. I have purposely confined myself to outline ideas.

* As a direct result of this Commission, S.P.C.K. was founded in 1698, and S.P.G. in 1701. See, for whole history of Christian Imperialism, "Two Hundred Years of S.P.G."