In instituting a comparison between the direct and indirect results of
missions, between conversion-work and the diffusion of better
principles, he emphatically assigns the preference to the latter. Not
that he undervalued the conversion of the most abject creature that
breathed. To the man individually his conversion was of over whelming
consequence, but with relation to the final harvest, it was more
important to sow the seed broadcast over a wide field than to reap a few
heads of grain on a single spot. Concentration was not the true
principle of missions. The Society itself had felt this, in sending
Morrison and Milne to be lost among the three hundred millions of China;
and the Church of England, in looking to the Antipodes, to Patagonia,
to East Africa, with the full knowledge that charity began at home. Time
was more essential than concentration. Ultimately there would be more
conversions, if only the seed were now more widely spread.
He concludes by pointing out the difference between mere worldly
enterprises and missionary undertakings for the good of the world.
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