THE RELATION OP SCIENCE TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 113 



If we allow some very considerable margin for improvements 

 in the science of morals in the forty years since Ecce Homo was 

 written, and if we thankfully admit that much practical 

 experience has been gained in the meanwhile by honest labour, 

 nevertheless we must still conclude that, standing one against 

 another, the science of morals cannot claim to show a proved 

 success, while Christian missions are more and more able to 

 claim that they show no proved failure — no proved failure, 

 that is, of the Christian religion to provide an adequate moral 

 standard and power for all those peoples who truly live by the 

 " grace and truth " of its Founder ; and in e.g., Korea, Uganda, 

 Tierra-del-Fuego, the Southern Seas and the Arctic home of the 

 Esquimaux they have some most encouraging cases of success 

 in the conquest of new territories. For much of the world, 

 there must be, sooner or later, this choice between Christian 

 missions and this limited Science, and the former are not 

 well satisfied to leave the field to the science of morals. They 

 are rivals. Further, if the Science should in any case be 

 favoured by the powers that be to the hindrance of missions, 

 the latter will, as in a measure they already do, protest against 

 unwise exclusion or unjust restriction. 



Missions and Marvels. 



It has not seemed important to point out how much the 

 Christian Missionaries have done for Science as explorers, 

 collectors, and pioneers. Such help is incidental and not 

 rendered by reason of their Christianity. But there is one 

 direction, at least, in wdiich the Mission, by its very nature, 

 opens up a special field of enquiry for Science and submits 

 some striking phenomena for explanation. 



It is, of course, true that even in the familiar circumstances 

 of our home life the service of Christ occasions remarkable 

 tokens of a Divine providence, and of the fact that our daily 

 life is lived close upon the borders of a world of mystery. Here, 

 at home, we are in touch with the living God, and where He, the 

 Infinite, is found there is sure to be mystery. But to a degree 

 far exceeding the common experience of the Christian in 

 England, we are assured that Providence and Mystery are 

 manifested in the Mission Field. There is obvious reason 

 to expect this, if it be true that Missions are the extension 

 of the Kingdom of God by a process of conquest over " World 

 rulers of this darkness,"* as St. Paul said they were in his 



^ Eph. vi, 12. 



