INTRODUCTION TO MISSION WORK 7 



years he serves an apprenticeship in a very sympathetic 

 company. The older missionaries are eager that the 

 newcomer should find that work in which he can work 

 with the least friction, and the work into which he can 

 put all his heart and enthusiasm. The field is so great 

 and the task is so complex and manysided that the mis- 

 sionary can use his own particular talent to gain other 

 talents. No one method will meet all cases. Therefore 

 each missionary, as he keeps in mind his purpose, can 

 work out his life, according to his aptitudes and fitness, 

 to hasten the coming of that Kingdom for which we 

 daily pray. 



The scarcity of missionaries was such that the Mis- 

 sion College at Allahabad was unable to ask what the 

 teacher was best fitted to teach. It knew where its 

 greatest need lay and simply told the teacher to fill it 

 as best he could. The subjects upon which I was best 

 prepared were already well cared for. I was assigned 

 to a subject which I had taken at college simply for the 

 reason that it was required. They told me that I was 

 to teach Economics. 



The text books were English and American, the stu- 

 dents were Indian and were forced to do their studying 

 in a foreign language. Let an American undergraduate 

 whose mother tongue is English, be required to do all 

 his college work in a modern language, for example 

 French, and he will then understand the hard task set 

 the Indian student. Yet such is the curious situation in 

 India that English is the language of the educated. It 

 is the one language that will take one all over India. 

 There is no one Indian language that will do this, al- 

 though there are over one hundred different Indian lan- 

 guages spoken and written in India to-day. The English 



