We make bold to affirm that no Society can be sure that it is spending the money entrusted to it wisely unless it has a satisfactory system of survey in operation, a system which takes account not only of its own work but also of the work of others.  We go further and say that the chances are the money is not bringing the maximum return.  When world need is so vast it is time to challenge a reasoned contradiction of this assertion.  If each Society did what in justice to its constituency it ought to do, a survey of an area such as a province or a country would be an easy task, and a survey of the world would be neither difficult nor expensive, and after all, until we know the whole, we cannot intelligently administer the part.

The missionary enterprise waits for the men who will take the comprehensive view and become leaders in the greatest and most fundamental task of all time.  Until these leaders appear, mission work, for those who seek to understand it as a world enterprise, will, as a layman said recently, remain worse than a jigsaw puzzle!

THOS.  Cochrane.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

The importance of A dominant purpose.

The modern demand for intelligent co-operation
The same demand in relation to Foreign Missions
The need for a definition of purpose
The failure of our present reports in this respect
Is definition of purpose desirable? 
It is necessary for formulation of policy
Societies with limited incomes cannot afford to pursue every good
  object
The admission of diverse purposes has blurred the purpose of Medical
  Missions
The admission of diverse purposes has confused the administration
  of Educational Missions
The admission of diverse purposes has distracted Evangelistic
  Missions
Hence the absence of unity in the work
Hence the tendency to support details rather than the whole
The need for a dominant purpose and expression of relations
The need for a statement of factors which govern action
The need for a missionary survey which expresses the facts in
  relation
This demand is not unreasonable

CHAPTER II.

Preliminary considerations.

1.  All survey is properly governed by the purpose for which it is
  made
The purpose decides what is to be included, what excluded
A scientific survey is a survey of selected factors
This is not to be confused with the collection of facts to prove a
  theory
The collection of facts is independent of the conclusions which may
  be drawn
2.  The survey proposed is a missionary survey
The difference between medical and educational surveys and missionary
  survey
3.  The survey proposed is designed to embrace