The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1910-07-14
THE EXPOSURE OF FOREIGN
MISSION FOLLY is COM
PLETE.

N7EAR SIR:-I have just recent
ly finished reading your book
let emitted Foreign Missions
Exposed, reprinted from your
Magazine, 1.-THE JeffersOnian''. 1t af-
fOrded me unusual peasure, and
have loaned it to friends, who are
reading it with equal delight and
satisfaction. have nowhere else
seen so clear, strong and effective an
expose of the folly of the methods
pursued by our churches in their for
eign missionary policy. You have
undoubtedly rendered your country
men service of the highest value, a
service, it may be, much greater than
you yourself realize. This book
ought to be in every household in the
land, and | trust it is being adver-
tised in manner commensurate with
it's merits. It will go a long way to-
wards setting well-meaning church
people right on great theme, where
the Church for generations has been
on the wrong track.
1t was pleasing to note that you
are not opposed to Foreign Missions
in the abstract. If rightly pursued
along Scriptural lines, and when such
work would do more towards the
eyangeliZation and Characterization
Of the world than the same effort and
money would do if expended at home,
it is evident that you would be one
of the first to favor Foreign Missions.
But seeing beyond any shadow of
doubt that the churches are under
%aT yfr1Cr Il
dreamed of by Christ or the apostles,
and in way that contradicts the
plainest dictates of a modern Christ
ian's common sense, and. too, when
the same effort and money would do
more good here at home in the light
of the awful conditions that prevail
here, you stand immovable in your
opposition to the present policy You
have portrayed with remarkable
clearness the needs Of the Church at
home. These needs seem to be over
looked by the foreign missionary en-
thusiasts. That they are overlooked
is proved by the reluctance with
which foreign missionary advocates
will admit the dangers and evils that
today are threatening the very exist
ence of Professionalism. They go
on their way raising more money, and
doing more talking for the foreign
cause with a degree of abandon that
is amazing to one who has any con-
ceptiOn of the virus that is eating
into the vitals of the American
church, and threatening it's very life.
We need more Of just such literature
as you have given to the Church, to
the end that it may be awakened
from it's age-long sleep, and arouse
itself from it's lethargy, and go to
work where the good God planted it
and where it was designed to do it's
work.
You do well, too, to emphasize the
fact that, other things being equal
our first duty is to our own. Ameri-
cans ought to be dearer to US than
the yellow, the brown and the black
races of other lands. We should be
more willing to see elevated our own
race, our own nation, our own kith
and kin, than to see any other race
elevated. And when it ought to be
clear that we cannot elevate all, we
ought to try to figure out where we
could do the most god, and center our
energies there. This is not only pa
triOtiSm and common sense, but it is
pre-eminently Christian. Why can
we not all see it?
1t is now coming to be universally
admitted that municipal gOYernm lent