all other survey.  For instance, medical boards survey medical institutions.  Their sole concern is whether those institutions are well found and efficient.[1] But when a missionary surveys a missionary hospital (if the principle which we propound is accepted), he surveys it not qua medical establishment but qua missionary utensil.  The object is not to find out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary effectiveness.  It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view.  That may be true; but it is not certainly true.  Whether it is true or not, that does not alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not necessarily effective from a missionary point of view; it is not necessarily either missionary or Christian at all.  Then to survey medical missions simply as medical institutions is to ignore their real significance.  Missionary survey must relate the information asked for to the missionary purpose; and unless it is so related the survey is a medical survey, not a missionary survey.  The same holds good of educational work, and of pastoral work.

[Footnote 1:  We could produce surveys of medical and educational mission work which are essentially of this character, dealing solely with medical and educational efficiency.]

3.  The survey here proposed is designed for all societies so far as the societies can be persuaded to supply the information.  It would perhaps be more simple to provide statistical returns for one society of which the ecclesiastical organisation is known and the ecclesiastical terms used consequently fixed.  But survey of the work of a society, invaluable and necessary as that is for a society, is not sufficient by itself.  It is essential to-day that we should be able to place our work in the world in relation to all the missionary work done.  We can no longer afford to ignore the work of others and to plan our missions as though other missions did not exist.  As we try to point out from time to time no society can act rightly in ignorance of another’s work.  Therefore we have attempted to design a survey which would show what is the work of any mission in such a form that its work can be related in some sort to the missionary work of all, and not only to the other missions of its own society.

4.  Seeing that all survey is scientifically governed by the object for which it is made, it is essential that in a survey such as we propose the end for which it is made should be stated in each case as clearly and definitely as possible.  This involves often such a definition of the end as implies a certain missionary policy.  Realising this, we have not hesitated to set forth the policy implied in the terms which we use and the questions which we ask.[1] We are well aware that this lays us open to attack from men who may question the policy and dispute the value of the survey.  It would be far more easy to set