Each mission station, each institution, seems to be an isolated fragment.

The missionary in charge often appeals to us as an exceedingly good and able man, and we support him, and we support the society which sends him and others like him.

And we call this the support of foreign missions; but foreign missions as a unity we do not support because we can see no unity.

The directors of foreign missions appear not to have hitched their wagon to a star, but rather to all the visible stars, and we cannot tell whither they are going.

So we fall back on the individual missionary, or the isolated mission which at any rate for the moment seems to have an intelligible objective.
Hence the common conception of missionary work as small.