In this case, the foreigner insisted on the salary for the pastor, he created the building, its ornaments and expenses; and where this is done the day of self-support must be more or less delayed.

More or less, for what one man considers abundant another thinks hardly decent, simply because each has learnt in a different school different ideas of what is necessary or desirable.
Consequently one man makes the day of self-support easy of attainment, another loudly proclaims that his people are so poor that they cannot possibly be expected to provide for themselves.
Furthermore, we must observe that in the first case the converts arrived speedily at self-support because the foreign missionary never for a moment allowed them to be anything else, whilst in the second the missionary provided what he thought necessary until such time as the Church was sufficiently wealthy to pay for it.

The one Church decided for itself what it needed, and what it needed it took the necessary steps to supply: the other accepted what was given to it and was asked to subscribe more and more to pay for it.

But when the provision is first made largely from some more or less mysterious foreign source, the converts will never subscribe to a fund so organised as they will to a fund which they raise and administer themselves to supply what they themselves want, and cannot have unless they provide the necessary money to get it.

Self-support then, as the word is most commonly used, means anything but genuine self-support, and does not represent the power of the people to supply their needs.