Part 12

Married men make more efficient workers for many reasons. They enjoy better health and are better satisfied. They have a home to which they can go for rest and sympathy, and in which they can find agreeable companionship. They have the loving ministrations of a wife in times of sickness and despondency, and they also have the cheer and relaxation of children's society. All of these things tend to make the missionary healthier and happier, and enable him to do better work.

Again, he should be married because a man of mature years who is single is regarded with more or less suspicion. To the Japanese celibacy is an unnatural state, and it is seldom found. Most unmarried men here are immoral, and therefore the unmarried missionary is naturally suspected of leading an immoral life, which cripples his influence.

But the strongest argument in favor of married as against single missionaries is that the former {207} alone are able to build Christian homes. The homes of single men are very poor things at best, and certainly cannot be pointed to as models. But the married man establishes a Christian home in the midst of his people, and sets them a concrete example of what Christian family life should be. This example is one of the most potent influences for good operating on the mission field.

In home life perhaps more than in any other respect Japanese society is wanting. The renovation of the home is one of the crying needs of the hour. An open Christian home, exhibiting the proper relations between husband and wife, parents and children, will do much toward bringing this about.

This argument is not intended to apply against single women who come out to teach in the girls' schools. Their work is entirely different, and is such as can be done best by single women. The argument applies only to the missionary engaged in evangelistic work.

Such I believe to be the qualifications essential to successful mission work in Japan. To many the requirements may seem too strict. But the work to which the missionary is called is a high and noble one, and the ideal for a worker should be correspondingly high. The extreme difficulty of the work, and its great expense, make it imperative that only men adapted to it be sent out. {208}

While setting forth this high ideal of what a missionary to this land should be, no one is more sensible than the writer of the fact that many missionaries, including himself, fail to realize it. But he is glad to be able to affirm that a large per cent. of these desired qualifications are found in the majority of the missionary brethren in Japan.

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XII

PRIVATE LIFE OF THE MISSIONARY

It is our purpose in this chapter to show the churches at home something of the life which their missionaries lead in Japan. We will attempt to draw aside the veil and look at their private life--the holy of holies. This is a delicate task, and I hesitate to undertake it. And yet I think a knowledge of the trials, perils, discouragements, temptations, hopes, and fears of the missionary may be very profitable to those who support our missions.

Missionaries are men of like appetites, passions, hopes, and desires with those at home. They long for and enjoy the comforts and amenities of life. They have wives and children whom they love as devotedly, and for whom they desire to provide as comfortable homes, as the pastor at home.

There was a time when missionaries were {210} called upon to forego nearly all social pleasures and submit to endless discomforts, but that time is past. The mission home to-day is frequently as comfortable as that of the pastor in America. It is right that the standard of living in the home lands should be maintained by the missionaries abroad, and that they surround themselves with all available pleasures and conveniences. There is no reason why a man should lay aside all pleasures and comforts so soon as he becomes a missionary.

Those who live in the foreign ports in Japan have nice, roomy houses modeled after Western homes. Many of them are surrounded with beautiful lawns and fine flowers, and are a comfort and delight to their possessors. Most of the missionaries who live in the interior occupy native houses, slightly modified to suit foreign taste. By building chimneys, and substituting glass for paper windows, the native houses can be made quite comfortable, though they are colder in winter and do not look so well as foreign ones. The writer has lived in such a home during most of his residence in Japan, and has suffered little inconvenience. Some of the wealthier mission boards have built foreign houses even in the interior, and to-day there are a good many such scattered over Japan.

As has been before remarked, the mission {211} home is one of the most important factors in connection with the work; it is a little bit of Christendom set down in the midst of heathendom. It presents to the non-Christian masses around it a concrete example of exalted family life, with equality and trust between husband and wife, and mutual love between parents and children--things not generally found in the native home. It is a beacon-light shining in a dark place.

This is one of the many reasons why a missionary should be a married man. The single man cannot create this model home, which is to teach the people by example what Christian family life should be. In this respect Catholic missions are deficient, the celibacy of the priests precluding family life.

First, then, the mission home is an example to the non-Christian people around it. It is frequently open to them, and they can see its workings. They often share its hospitality and sit at its table. Their keen eyes take in everything, and a deep impression is made upon them.

Just here arises one of the greatest difficulties the missionary has to contend with in his private life. The people are so inquisitive naturally, the mission home is so attractive to them, and our idea of the privacy and sanctity of the home is so lacking in their etiquette, that it is hard to keep {212} the home from becoming public. People will come in large numbers at the most unseasonable hours, simply out of curiosity, wanting to see and handle everything in the house. It is often necessary, in self-defense, to refuse them admittance, except at certain hours. Not only are the seclusion and privacy of the home endangered, but the missionary also is in great danger of having his valuable time uselessly frittered away.

Notwithstanding all that the mission home is to the people, it is much more to the missionary. It should be to him a sure retreat and seclusion from the peculiarly trying cares and worries of his work. It should be a place where he can evade the subtle influences of heathenism which creep in at every pore--a safe retreat from the sin and wickedness and vice around it.

The mission home should be a Western home transplanted in the East. It may not become too much orientalized. It should have Western furniture, pictures, musical instruments, etc., and should make its possessor feel that he is in a Western home. It should be well supplied with books and newspapers, and everything else that will help to keep its inmates in touch with the life of the West. The missionary may not be orientalized, else he will be in danger of becoming heathenized.

For the sake of his children the missionary's {213} home should be as exact a reproduction of the Western home as possible. These children are citizens of the West, heirs of its privileges; and to it they will go before they reach years of maturity. Therefore it is but fair that their childhood home should reflect its civilization.

In order that the missionary may be able to build up such a home it is necessary that he be paid a liberal salary. While living in native style is very cheap, living in Western style is perhaps as dear here as in any country in the world. Clothing, furniture, much of the food, etc., must be brought from the West; and we must pay for it not only what the people at home pay, but the cost of carrying it half-way round the world, and the commission of two or three middlemen besides.

Most boards operating in Japan pay their men a liberal salary. They also pay an allowance for each child, health allowance, etc. All this is well. Man is an animal, and, like other animals, he must be well cared for if he is to do his best work. No farmer would expect to get hard work out of a horse that was only half fed, and no mission board can expect to get first-class work out of a missionary who is not liberally supported. The missionary has enough to worry him without having to be anxious about finances.

Especially is it wise that the boards give their {214} men an allowance for children. The expenses incident to a child's coming into the world in the East are very high. The doctor's bill alone amounts frequently to more than $100. Then a nurse is absolutely necessary, there being no relatives and friends to perform this office, as sometimes there are in the West. The birth of a child here means a cash outlay of $150 to $200, to pay which the missionary is often reduced to hard straits. If he belongs to a board that makes a liberal child's allowance he is fortunately relieved from this difficulty.

The allowance is also necessary to provide for the future education of the child. As there are no suitable schools here, children must be sent home to school at an early age. They cannot stay in the parental home and attend school from there, as American children do, but must be from childhood put into a boarding-school, and this takes money. Now no missionaries' salaries are sufficiently large to enable them to lay up much money, and unless there is a child's allowance there will be no money for his education, in which event the missionary must sacrifice his self-respect by asking some school or friends to educate his child. He feels that if any one in the world deserves a salary sufficient to meet all necessary expenses without begging, he does; and it hurts him to give his life in hard service to {215} the church in a foreign land, and then have his children educated on charity.

All mission boards should give their men an allowance for each child, unless the salary paid is sufficiently large to enable them to lay aside a sufficient sum for this very purpose.

The health allowance is also a wise provision because the climate is such as often to necessitate calling in a physician, and doctors' bills are enormously high. If the missionary is not well he cannot work; but if he is left to pay for medical attendance himself out of a very meager salary, all of which is needed by his wife and children, he will frequently deny himself the services of a physician when they are really needed.

The work of the missionary is most trying, and the demands on his health and strength are very exhausting. The petty worries and trials that constantly meet him, the rivalries and quarrels which his converts bring to him for settlement, the care of the churches, anxiety about his family, etc., are a constant strain on his vital force, in order to withstand which it is necessary that he should have regular periods of rest and recreation. Nature demands relaxation, and she must have it, or the health of the worker fails.

It is customary in Japan for the missionaries to leave their fields of work during the summer season and spend six weeks or two months in {216} sanatoria among the mountains or by the seashore. Here their work, with its cares and anxieties, is all laid aside. The best-known sanatoria in Japan are Karuizawa, Arima, Hakone, Sapporo, and Mount Hiezan. In most of these places good accommodations are provided, and the hot weeks can be spent very pleasantly. Large numbers of missionaries gather there, and for a short time the tired, isolated worker can enjoy the society of his own kind; his wife can meet and chat with other housewives; and his children can enjoy the rare pleasure of playing with other children white like themselves. These resorts are cool, the air is pure and invigorating, and the missionary returns from them in September feeling fresh and strong, ready to take up with renewed vigor his arduous labors.

It is objected to these vacations that they take the missionary away from his field of work, and that so long an absence on his part is very injurious to the cause. This is partially true; but a wise economy considers the health of the worker and his future efficiency more than the temporary needs of the work. The absence of the foreign worker for a short period is not as hurtful as one would at first glance suppose. A relatively larger part of the work is left in the hands of the native helpers in Japan than in most mission fields, and these evangelists stay at their posts {217} all through the summer, and care for its interests while the foreigner is away. The same need of a vacation does not exist in their case, because they are accustomed to the climate, and they work through their native tongue and among their own people.

The need of this missionary vacation is so evident that we need only give it in outline. In the first place, the unfavorable climate makes a change and rest desirable. As I have already stated, the climate of Japan is not only very warm, but also contains an excessive amount of moisture and a very small per cent. of ozone, and is lacking in atmospheric magnetism and electricity; hence its effect upon people from the West is depressing. Besides the climate, the missionary's work is so exhaustive and trying, and its demands upon him are so great, that a few weeks' rest are absolutely necessary. The same reasons which at home justify the city pastor in taking a vacation are intensified in the missionary's case.

Not least of these reasons is that the missionary may for a while enjoy congenial society. Many of us spend ten months of the year isolated almost entirely from all people of our own kind. The Japanese are so different that we can have but little social life with them; and it is but natural and right that, for a short period, we should have the opportunity to meet and {218} associate with our fellow-missionaries. The work which we do the remainder of the year is done much better because of this rest and fellowship.

Dr. J. C. Berry, in a paper read before the missionary conference at Osaka in 1883, discusses very fully this question of missionary vacations and furloughs. After elaborating the reasons for them, which reasons I have given in brief above, he says: "It therefore follows that, because of the numerous and complex influences operating to-day to produce nerve-tire in the missionary in Japan, regard for the permanent interests of his work requires that a vacation be taken in summer by those residing in central and southern Japan, the same to be accompanied by as much of recreation and change as circumstances will permit."

With all the care and precaution that can be taken, with systematic rests and vacations, there soon comes a time when it is necessary for the missionary to return to his home land, to breathe again the air of his youth, and to replenish his physical, mental, and moral being. All the mission boards recognize this and permit their men in this and in other fields to return home on furlough after a certain number of years. The definite time required by the different missions before a furlough is granted varies from three to ten years, the latter period being the most general. {219} But this has been found to be too long, and failing health usually compels an earlier return. Some boards have no set time, but a tacit understanding exists that the missionary may go home at the end of six or eight years.

At the end of the prescribed period the missionary family is taken home at the expense of the board, and is given a rest of a year or eighteen months. During this time, if the missionary is engaged in preaching or lecturing for the board, as is generally the case, he is paid his full salary. If he does no work he is sometimes paid only half his salary. This is very hard, as the salary is just large enough to support him and his family, and their expenses while at home are almost as great as while in the field. If the salary is cut down the pleasure and benefit of the furlough are curtailed. If the missionary in the service of the board exhausts his health and strength in an unfavorable climate it seems but fair that he should be properly supported while endeavoring to recuperate. When a church at home votes its pastor a vacation, instead of cutting down his salary during his absence, it is customary to give him an extra sum to enable him to enjoy it. Why should not the same be done for the missionary? He should at least be permitted to draw the full amount of his small salary.

Against these vacations is urged their great {220} expense to the boards, the greater loss to the mission because of the absence of the worker, and the moral effect of frequent returns upon the church at home. All of these objections have weight, but they are far outweighed by the reasons that necessitate the furlough. The accumulated experience of the different boards makes the judgment unanimous that these are necessary. The judgment of competent medical men also confirms the statement. Dr. Taylor said in the Osaka conference: "I am convinced that a missionary's highest interest requires, and the greatest efficiency in his work will be secured by, a return home at stated intervals." Dr. Berry said in the same conference: "The new and strange social conditions under which the missionary is obliged to work; the effects of climate, intensified in many cases by comparative youth; the absence of many of those home comforts and social, intellectual, and religious privileges with which the Christian civilization of to-day so plentifully surrounds life; the home ties, strengthened by youthful affections,--all these combine with present facilities of travel to render it advisable that the young missionary be at liberty to take a comparatively early vacation in his native land."

From an economic standpoint it is wise to grant these furloughs. It is poor economy to keep the workers in the field until they are completely {221} broken down, and then have to replace them by inexperienced men, who will not be able to do the work of the old ones for years. Far wiser is it to let them stop and recuperate in the home lands before this breakdown comes. It costs less money to keep a missionary well than to care for him during a long, unprofitable period of sickness. I quote again on this point Wallace Taylor, M.D., who, in the paper referred to above, said: "The present haphazard, unsystematic methods of most missions and boards is attended with the greatest expense and the poorest returns. Some of the boards working in Japan have lost more time and expended more money in caring for their broken-down missionaries than it would cost to carry out the recommendations herein made. Again, I observe that many who do not break down begin to fail in health after the fourth or fifth year from entering on their work. They remain on the field, and are reluctantly obliged to spend more or less time in partial work, while experiencing physical discomfort and dissatisfaction of mind. Very many of these cases would have accomplished more for the means expended by a furlough home at the close of the fifth or sixth year.... Over $90,000 have been expended in Japan by one mission alone in distracted efforts to regain the health of its missionaries."

These furloughs are also needed to keep the {222} missionary in touch with the life of the home churches. The West is rapidly progressing in civilization, in arts and sciences, and in theology as well. The missionary who spends ten or more years on the field before returning home finds himself in an entirely new atmosphere, with which he is unfamiliar. He looks at things from the standpoint of ten or more years ago; his methods of work, his language, all are belated. In order that he may give to the nascent churches of Japan the very best theology, the very best methods, and the very best life of the Western churches, it is necessary for him to return frequently to breathe in their spirit and life and keep up with their forward march.

For the missionary's personal benefit he should be permitted to come into frequent contact with the home churches. A too long uninterrupted breathing of the poisonous atmosphere of heathenism has a wonderfully cooling effect upon his ardor and zeal, and is trying to his faith. He needs to come into contact with the broader faith and deeper life of the home churches, and receive from them new consecration and devotion to his work.

The church at home needs also to come frequently into contact with its missionaries. Nothing will so stir up interest and zeal in the mission cause as to see and hear its needs from living, {223} active workers, fresh from the field. If missionaries were more frequently employed to represent the cause to the churches at home perhaps our mission treasuries would not be so depleted. Mission addresses from home pastors are abstract and theoretical; those from missionaries are concrete and practical. The former speak from reading, the latter from personal experience. The address of the missionary comes with power because he speaks of what he has seen and felt, and his personality is thrown into it.

For the sake, then, of the work abroad, of the missionary himself, and of the home churches, missionaries should be required to take regular furloughs at stated intervals, and should spend them in the home lands.

How long can the missionary safely work in Japan before taking his first furlough? That will depend upon the nature of the man himself, and the kind of mission work in which he is engaged. The average length of time spent here by the missionaries before the first furlough is about seven years. There are no men more competent to pass judgment upon this matter than Drs. Berry and Taylor, who have spent the better part of their lives here, in the service of the American Board, and who are thoroughly acquainted with the conditions that surround us. Dr. Berry says: "I do not hesitate to affirm that the {224} 'ten-year-or-longer rule,' still adhered to by some missionary societies, and by many missionaries as well, is too long for the first term.... I indorse what in substance has been suggested by my friend Dr. McDonald, viz., that the time of service on the field prior to the first furlough be seven years, and that prior to subsequent furloughs be ten years; this plan to be modified by health, existing conditions of work, home finances, and by individual preferences." Dr. Taylor says: "My observations have led me to the conclusion that the first furlough ought to be taken at the close of the fifth or sixth year, and after that once every eight or ten years."

We have yet to look at the trials and sorrows, the encouragements and joys, of the missionary. We have already looked into the missionary's home; let us now endeavor to look into his heart. If the former is his _sanctum_, this is his _sanctum sanctorum_; and I trust my missionary brethren will pardon me for exposing it to the public view.

We will pass by all physical hardships, such as climate, improper food, poor houses, etc. Although these are often greater hardships than the people at home know, they are but "light afflictions" to the missionary. His real trials lie in an entirely different sphere.