THE RELATION OF SCIENCE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. Ill 



that is true, and no doubt some very valuable work, done for 

 missionary purposes in the way of comparative religion and 

 comparative ethics, owes a great deal to the parallel studies of 

 the scientific anthropologist. 



But, as was suggested above, there is more trouble when the 

 science comes to application. Where, then, does that happen ? 

 It is of course a familiar fact that the theoretical scientist is 

 often not the man to apply his theory. The writer of books on 

 anthropology may be a very different person from the man who, 

 somewhere, applies to practical life the results of the science 

 of religion or of morals. 



The sphere of application which will be noticed here is that 

 wherein the attempt is to be made Lo make men and women 

 moral without religion. There seems a grave danger of that 

 perilous enterprise being undertaken on a large scale. 



Commission V of the Edinburgh Conference said,^ " The 

 modern missionary situation is profoundly affected by the fact 

 that Western education is being given, and will be increasingly 

 given, throughout Asia and Africa apart from the Church of 

 Christ. We are confronted by the fact that the children of far 

 more than half of the human race may within the next generation 

 be educated without any reference to those spiritual truths 

 which are the only real and permanent support of social order 

 and personal morality. What has happened in Japan must 

 come to be the case in India and China, most probably in 

 Turkey, and, in time perhaps, throughout Africa. The Japanese 

 Government have created a complete system of universal educa- 

 tion. While moral instruction is required in all secondary 

 schools, the entire system is, and must be, non-religious, for 

 where modern education is given non-Christian religion cannot 

 live. . . . jSTo one who knows what part even the poorest 

 religion has played in sustaining social bonds, in affording 

 sacred sanctions for the crudest code of morality, can view this 

 situation without the deepest anxiety." 



We see too the civilised West deliberately educating and 

 influencing India, Egypt, and many parts of Africa on almost 

 identical principles. 



It may be fairly held that in such cases, at the best, the 

 proposal is to apply on a grand scale scientific ethics. 



The case of Egypt affords a most interesting example, and it 

 can be well studied in the frank discussion of the problem by 

 Lord Cromer in his Modern Egypt'\. Setting before his country 



Report, p. 7. 



t Vol. ii, pp. 564, 130, 132. 



