Chapter 14: The Canon Taylor Controversy (1888-1889)
In 1888 an Anglican canon wrote an article entitled "The Great Missionary Failure" which stirred up a huge controversy. Among other things, Canon Taylor wrote of the waste of money on the mission field and the inevitable slow progress of the gospel. Taylor assumed, based on current statistics, that it would take between 300,000 and one million years to convert the world. Pierson replied, "What if it can be demonstrated that, notwithstanding the Herculean labor of temperance reformers, it would take, at the present rate, a million years to make every man a total abstainer or even to clear the world of drunkards, would that prove the temperance work a failure or lessen the value of individuals already rescued and homes already redeemed from this curse_" (Missionary Review, February 1889:84).
Echoing back to the controversy over the terms evangelization and conversion, Pierson defended his own position by assuring readers that preaching the gospel to every creature "means no superficial, hasty, formal proclamation of the good news of grace." Once all had heard, evangelization was meant to lead to "thorough work, the implanting and erection of all the institutions of Christianity. Everywhere men are to be confronted with the Christian church and home, school and college, society and civilization. They are to see demonstrated before their eyes, and by the logic of events, what the gospel of Christ can do for the man, the woman, the child; what it can do to elevate labor, dignify humanity, abolish cruelty and even discourtesy, supplant caste by a true equality, and lift all society to a higher level" (Missionary Review, February 1889:87). And yet for Pierson the gospel should not be concentrated in one place before it was diffused to all peoples.
Not everyone agreed with the emphasis on diffusion. The great British missiologist, Edward Storrow, argued that new workers should be deployed to areas that were most promising. "Of course the gospel should be preached to every creature and nothing short of a supreme attempt to win the whole human race for Christ can satisfy Him or absolve His church from its solemn responsibility; but seeing that there is no probability of this being done in our day by united and well advised effort on the part of any considerable number of Christian communities, it may be of service to consider where missionaries may be sent with the greatest probability of finding "a great door and effectual opened unto them," and with the fewest adversaries to oppose their entrance and impede their endeavors" (Missionary Review, April 1889:264).
Once again Pierson responded, this time in an article entitled "The Mission and Commission of the Church."
Christ says: "The field is the world," and no part of it is to be left untilled and unsown. If we wait to "convert" our hearers, we shall never put our working force into the whole field. Just here has been the great mistake of the church even in her missionary era! Christ's principle is DIFFUSION; our practice is CONCENTRATION. We emphasize conversion, while he emphasizes evangelization; and so our human philosophy counsels us to convert as we go, and so increase the converting force. The effect is that we keep tilling a few little corners of the world field, sowing them over and over, until the soil loses power to yield, while tracts a thousand miles square have never yet borne the tread of the sower! Even disciples are asking, "Are there not heathen enough at home, that we send the flower of our youth to the ends of the earth_" (Missionary Review, May 1889:327) [Italics his].
H. Grattan Guinness could not understand why Canon Taylor would make his criticisms. He felt they were not helpful to the cause of world evangelization and wrote, "Our duty to prosecute missions in no way depends either on their hopefulness or their success...So that even if Canon Taylor's anticipation were correct, which happily they are not, it would in no way alter our duty as Christians to obey Christ" (Regions Beyond, January 1889:5-6).
Even the German missiologist Gustav Warneck could not resist a rebuff of Canon Taylor: "The apostles, Herr Canon, were probably not, like yourself, great arithmeticians, but they were heroes of faith. They believed, with full and firm conviction, what is written in the last of Matthew concerning the omnipotent omnipresence of their Saviour with them. Therefore, they said: 'To a minority with Jesus belongs victory and the future'" (Quoted in the Missionary Review, May 1889:360).
In another article entitled "Serving our own Generation," Pierson wrote,
We owe to our Lord an infinite debt; we can never pay it; all we can do is to acknowledge it by our service to our generation according to His will and in His name. Obviously so far as that debt can be paid, it can be paid only during the period which limits the generation of which we form a part. This proposition seems so simple and obvious as to need no argument. Yet, practically, it has never been accepted and acted on by the church in modern times, nor at any time since the apostolic age" (Missionary Review, July 1889:481).
Pierson conceded that there was much work to be done by Christians outside of evangelization, things that would provide for future generations certain inalienable rights. "But, meanwhile, we must not overlook what is even a more pressing duty and privilege, viz.: we must not permit this generation to die unsaved, so far as our consecrated labor can prevent it. No activity in providing for future generations can atone for our inactivity in providing for our own generation, which first of all we are to serve, by the will of God, with the gospel" (Missionary Review, July 1889:482) [Italics his].
Pierson challenged, "In simple obedience to that last command, without a secular spirit, a calculating hyper-caution, a dependence on worldly patronage, a distrust of adequate support, without waiting for the whole church to recognize her obligation or attempt to discharge it, those who do feel the mighty pressure of these great facts and truths must covenant with God and each other, that this generation shall not pass away till all this work is done!" (Missionary Review, July 1889:487) [Italics his]. He then concluded, "This conception of evangelism grows upon the writer until it is difficult to think of anything else" (Missionary Review, July 1889:487).
The Victory Assured
That victory was assured was not a question in the minds of many. Rev. E. T. Curnick wrote, "The present is emphatically a missionary age...In the light of present developments the reign of Christ on earth is beyond doubt; the only question is as to the time of his coronation" (The Gospel in All Lands, 1889:311).
At the International Christian Endeavor convention held in Philadelphia in 1889, Pierson was quoted by Francis E. Clark as saying,
I pray God to let me live long enough, after having given twenty years of the best of my life to the study and advocacy of this great proposition, to see this enterprise of Christian missions taken up by the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, by the Young Men's Christian Association, by the Young Women's Christian Association, by the Young Women's Temperance Union, by the great Missionary Crusade in the college, as well as by the churches of Christ in general, with a determination that before this generation shall pass away the world shall have known that Jesus Christ died for sinners (Clark, 1895:286).
Robert Arthington wrote to the Missionary Review, exhorting the editors, "How I wish you felt it your duty to write yourself in humble, simple, but prevailing language and keep to it, keep it up month after month, of those parts and populations of the world which never, since our Saviour's ascension, have had--and have not now--the Gospel according to Luke or John or the Acts, in their hands, perpetually in print!" (Missionary Review, December 1889:942) [Italics his]. Pierson's response revealed the broader purpose of the Review. "The sole aim of its editors has been to arouse the whole Church of Christ to breathe messages of life to the regions beyond...We are persuaded that in order to bring about that holy enterprise which will lead the Church to bear the tidings to every unsaved soul with the utmost possible speed, we must scatter information about every field, present every htmlect of the work, appeal to every class of motive, in a word, consult every variety of temperament to be reached and study every variety of hindrance to be removed" (Missionary Review, December 1889:943) [Italics his].
