Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/548

538 themselves in every direction, it would be little short of folly to expect men full of holy, aggressive zeal for God and souls to live for years and generations upon one bank of a great river, and refuse to carry the message which God has given them for all mankind to dwellers on the opposite bank.

There was something also in the ecclesiastical system which Dr. Butler introduced into his mission field which tended to make an extension of the work inevitable. Other systems may be equally scriptural and equally acceptable to God, but this system has some peculiarities in this special direction. It was not devised by any one man in a single day or a single year, but is the outgrowth of a movement extending over a long series of years; and as the product of an active movement it is adapted to the condition of things similar to that in which it first took shape. In other words, it can only work successfully while it is actively aggressive. It propagates itself as naturally as it makes provision for the immediate wants of that part of the work which is permanent. One of the most striking features of our work in India at the present time is the apparently natural manner in which Hindustanee presiding elders and superintendents of circuits adapt themselves to the system in which they have been religiously educated, and push forward their work into new regions.

The most successful workers that I have met in India are men who know very little about ecclesiastical systems, but who seem almost instinctively to use the system with which they find themselves connected to extend the work of God into new regions. A man, for instance, is given a new circuit. It consists of a central town, with three or four villages around him. At the end of two years he has ten or twelve villages within his circuit, in each of which is found a Christian congregation. Another year or two passes and a new group begins to form around each one of these villages or towns, and beyond these again there will be a further extension, until at length the man who originally had charge of a little circuit has a field large enough