souls, and the minds of men, is a proper object for the missionary to pursue, and the missionary should assist every movement towards a higher life in the heathen community as well as in the Christian, and should introduce every method and plan, industrial, social, or political, literary, or artistic, which tends to ennoble the life of men.  It may be so.  It may be true that the introduction of everything which tends to uplift and enlighten is a proper object for missionary activity, but we venture to argue not all at once, in the same place, nor even any one of them at the whim of any missionary at any time, anywhere.  Nor all in the same order.  There is a more and a less important.  And we do urge that if we are to take an intelligent part in foreign missions and to give those missions intelligent support, we must know what is the more important and what the less.  We are told that the duty of the foreign mission is to bring all nations into the obedience of Christ, and that “all the nations” means all the people of all the nations, and all the capacities, powers, and activities of all the people of all the nations, individually and collectively, and that any work which tends to bring any part of the collective action of any non-Christian people under the direction of Christian principles is, therefore, the proper work of the missionary, and that the most important is the particular social, industrial, or political scheme which the missionary who is addressing us believes to be the pressing need of the moment in his district.

So long as foreign missions are presented to us in that way, so long as any mission may serve any purpose, we cannot possibly take any intelligent share in foreign missions as a whole.  We are lost.  We cannot co-ordinate in thought the activities of the missions, as we see plainly that they are not co-ordinated in action in the field itself.  And it is practically impossible for us to imagine that the missions are directed on any thought-out policy, because a policy seems to involve necessarily the sub-ordination of the aim deemed to be less important to another which is deemed to be more important, and the less or the more must depend, not upon personal predilections, but upon closeness of relation to some one dominant idea; and, therefore, the definition of the dominant idea is the first necessity for the establishment of a reasonable missionary policy.

To some minds the idea of a policy in connection with missions seems to be abhorrent; but can a society with an income of something between half and a quarter of a million pounds, or even less, afford to aim at every type and form of missionary activity?  Is it not necessary that it should know and express to itself, to its missionaries, and to its supporters what forms of activity it deems essential, what less important, what aims it will pursue with all its strength, and what it will refuse to pursue at all?  It cannot afford to pursue every good or desirable object which it may meet in its course.  It must have a dominant purpose which really controls its operations, and forces it to set aside some great and noble actions because they are not so closely related to the dominant purpose as some other.