The bulk of the modern movement is without doubt greatly in excess of the early movement.  The number of men out in various fields, the amount of money being given annually by the Church in America and Great Britain and the Continental countries is so much greater as to leave comparison practically out.

In the thoroughness of organization, the elements of permanency, the great variety of means used such as hospitals, schools, literature, and industrial helps, the present probably exceeds by far the early movement.  The statesmanlike study by church leaders of the whole world-field, the steadiness of movement year after year, in spite of difficulties and discouragements, the careful systematic effort to inform and arouse the home church—­these are marked features of the present foreign-mission campaign.  They are such as to awaken the deepest admiration of any thoughtful onlooker.  In all of this the modern Church is making a wholly new record.

Ahead, But Behind.

Yet, while all this is true, it can be said just as truly that the Church, as a whole, is so far behind the primitive Church as, again, practically to leave comparison out of the question. They were so far ahead in the mass of their movement that we are scarcely in the lists at all.  Then the whole Church was an active missionary society. Every one went and preached.  The nearest approach to it in modern times probably is the movement of the native Church of Korea.  This foreign people seems to have caught the early spirit.  Our heathen brothers are taking their place as pace-setters for the Church.

By contrast with that, the modern activity has been by a minority, really a small minority, though a steadily growing one.  The leaders have struggled heroically against enormous odds in the backward pull of the majority.

Then they went everywhere.  That is, they went everywhere that they could, so far as open doors, or doors that could be pried open, let them.  We have gone actually farther, and to more places probably, but we haven’t begun to go everywhere that we could.

Our ability to go, and the urgent requests for us to come, would carry us to thousands of places not yet touched.  If we began to do things as the early Church people did, it would stand out as one of the greatest movements in the history of the race.  If a small minority of us have made such enormous strides what could the whole of us do if we would!

In a Swift Current.

The momentum of the present missionary movement has been startling.  It suggests that we are on the eve of an advance undreamed of by the most enthusiastic.  The last twenty-odd years have seen progress clear outstripping that of the previous hundred, though all built upon the foundations so well laid by the earlier leaders of the century.