Nevertheless, since this native Church is constantly presented to us as the dominant purpose of all our efforts, it is only right that we should make the inquiry here, as we did in the earlier chapters, and ask how the force in the field is divided.

It seems almost absurd that we should have no idea in what proportion medicals, educationalists, and evangelists should be employed in any field.

In some countries medical work is by far the most effective, if not the only possible form of propaganda; in some fields the evangelists can work effectively almost alone, and medical institutions are not the same necessity, and their establishment does not produce great results in the building of the Church when compared with the work of evangelists and educationalists.
In some places their aid was at first apparently necessary to success, but as time went on that first desperate importance ceased.

We have not so large a medical force that we can afford to use it for any but the most important and necessary purposes; yet, if the establishment of a native Church is the dominant purpose, large numbers of medicals are doing work which is (from this point of view only) of second-rate importance, whilst work which only they could do is left undone, and cries aloud for their assistance.

Similarly, if the establishment of a native Church is really the dominant object, educationalists are often wrongly directed and placed.