Transcribed from the 184 Macmillan & Co. edition by David Price,
PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS,
or
Recent Workers in the Mission field.
BY C. M. YONGE,
Author of “The Heirof Radclyffe.”
London:
MACMILLAN & CO
1874.
p. vINTRODUCTION.
It has been my endeavour in the ensuing narratives to bring together such of the more distinguished Missionaries of the English and American nations as might best illustrate the character and growth of Mission work in the last two centuries. It is impossible to make it a real history of the Missions of modern times. If I could, I would have followed in the track of Mr. Maclear’s admirable volume, but the field is too wide, the material at once too numerous and too scattered, and the account of the spread of the Gospel in thedistant parts of the earth has yet to be written in volumes far exceeding the bulk of those allotted to the “Sunday Library.”
Two large classes of admirable Missions have been purposely avoided,—namely, those of the Jesuits in Japan, China, and North and South America, and those of the Moravians in Greenland,the United States, and Africa. These are noble works, but they are subjects apart, and our narratives deal with men exclusively of British blood, with the exception of Schwartz, whose toils were so entirely accepted and adopted by the Church of England, that he cannot but be reckoned among her ambassadors. The object, then, has been to throw together such biographies as are most complete, most illustrative, and have been found most inciting to stir up others—representative lives, as far as possible—from the time when p. vithe destitution of the Red Indians first stirred the heart of John Eliot, till the misery of the hunted negro brought Charles Mackenzie to the banks of the fever-haunted Zambesi.
We think it will be found that, so far from being the talking,exaggerating, unpractical men that the critical and popular mind is apt to suppose, these labourers were in general eminently practical and hard-working. They seem to us to range themselves into three classes: one, stirred up by the sight of the destitution before their eyes, and quietly trying to supply those needs; one, inspired by fervid zeal to devote themselves; and one, selected by others, taking that selection as a call, andtoiling as a duty, as they would have toiled at any other duty set before them. Each and all have their place, and fulfil the work. The hindrances and drawbacks are generally not inthe men themselves, nor in the objects of their labour, but firstand foremost in the almost uniform hostility of the colonists around, who are used to consider the dark races as subjects for servitude, and either despise or resent any attempt at raising them in the scale; and next, in the extreme difficulty of obtaining means. This it is that has more than anything tended to bring Mission work into disrepute. Many people have no regular system nor principle of giving—the much-needed supplies can only be charmed out of their pockets by sensational accounts, such as the most really hard-working and devoted men cannot prevail on themselves to pour forth; and the work of collection is left to any of the rank and file who have the power of speech, backed by articles wher