In medicine it cannot afford to aim at a strictly evangelistic use of its medical missions and at a use which is not strictly evangelistic.

We hear men talk sometimes as if it were the business of a missionary society to undertake the task of healing the physical afflictions of the people almost in the same sense as it is the business of a missionary society to seek to heal their souls.

We hear them talk sometimes as if it was the duty of a missionary society to supplant the native medical practice by western medical science as surely as it is their business to supplant idolatry by the preaching of Christ.

And the tolerance of these ideas has certainly influenced the direction of missions.

The evangelistic value of medical missions has not been the one dominant directing principle in their administration, and the consequences have been confusion of aim and waste of power.