ABSTRACT
The nature of missionary work abroad is dependent far more than that of the Church’s work at home on the current trend of popular theology. In Africa everything is part of the Church’s business, and any theory about the missionary’s work can at once be translated into action. The missionary motive which established the great missionary societies during the Napoleonic wars was the evangelical counterblast to the philosophy of the "belle sauvage". The missionary motive was an absolute command which required absolute obedience. A certain Anglo-Catholic missionary who accepted a call from the Government to run a Native boarding-school was visited by ostracism by the authorities of his own communion. More emphasis is laid on training, and such specialized subjects as anthropology, biology, agriculture, phonetics, and psychology have come to be almost essential to the missionary’s equipment. The wave of idealism that beat against the closed doors of the Peace Conference at Versailles gave the missionary leaders their opportunity.
