Hence it is obvious that self-support is an arbitrary standard fixed on no certain grounds; and progress towards self-support is simply a progress towards a line which the foreigner prescribes.  Just as each father among us here in England, according to his class and standard of living, fixes a standard for his son, saying, “When he earns so much he will be able to maintain himself,” so the society, or the individual missionary, fixes the standard for converts.  In this case, the foreigner insisted on the salary for the pastor, he created the building, its ornaments and expenses; and where this is done the day of self-support must be more or less delayed.  More or less, for what one man considers abundant another thinks hardly decent, simply because each has learnt in a different school different ideas of what is necessary or desirable.  Consequently one man makes the day of self-support easy of attainment, another loudly proclaims that his people are so poor that they cannot possibly be expected to provide for themselves.

Furthermore, we must observe that in the first case the converts arrived speedily at self-support because the foreign missionary never for a moment allowed them to be anything else, whilst in the second the missionary provided what he thought necessary until such time as the Church was sufficiently wealthy to pay for it.  The one Church decided for itself what it needed, and what it needed it took the necessary steps to supply:  the other accepted what was given to it and was asked to subscribe more and more to pay for it.  But when the provision is first made largely from some more or less mysterious foreign source, the converts will never subscribe to a fund so organised as they will to a fund which they raise and administer themselves to supply what they themselves want, and cannot have unless they provide the necessary money to get it.  Self-support then, as the word is most commonly used, means anything but genuine self-support, and does not represent the power of the people to supply their needs.  It means only the subscription of money sufficient to pay for certain things which are more or less arbitrarily fixed by the missionary or his society.

Neither is it any sure evidence of the zeal and liberality of the Church which is called self-supporting.  The existence of self-supporting churches is indeed sometimes used as an argument to show that the Church is growing in this Christian virtue.  But this is largely deceptive.  The existence of self-supporting churches does not necessarily prove Christian liberality.  Take the case which we quoted above where the Christians subscribed $5 a head.  It was said that when they numbered 100 members they would be self-supporting.  But, if they still subscribed $5 a head, there would be no more liberality in the Church of 100, which was self-supporting, than in the Church of ten, which was not self-supporting.  There might be more, if the ninety members added were very poor; there might be less if one wealthy man joined the Church.  Since the status of a self-supporting Church is one of honour and privilege, the members might even be tempted to admit an unworthy member who was well off in the hope that his subscriptions might aid them to attain that glorious position without much self-denial or effort on their own part.