to try at once. One by one our pastors have been converted to the self-support idea. A few are not yet converted and the people pay them little. Our daily prayers and nightly visions have been 'Lord save the people and teach them to support their work.'" Who knows what was not wrought out in those "nightly visions and daily prayers." If one is looking for the "secret" of the amazing progress which we are now reviewing, we have already found it. It was not any clever scheme. It was three things combined-great vision, tremendous, persistent work, ceaseless prayer. The greatest single factor in every church is the education of the pastor to the objective, and the grim determination that come what may, this church must be self-supporting.

"Until we have pastors who suffer and work we can not reach the goal of self-support. The pastor who is lazy or unspiritual will have a hard time in obtaining a place which will support him. So long as the support came from the mission the people would tolerate a lazy man, but as soon as they begin to pay their own pastor they demand a day's work for every peso paid."

As one opens the leaves of 1917 reports he feels the thrill of ingenious experiments and of cumulative success. Rev. Klinefelter declares: "The Proportionate Plan, we feel, after a second year's trial, offers the best solution of the self-support problem. Our field gave 3500 and the mission gave 2000 for this year." And from the Cagayan Valley one reads that "Brother Calica has demonstrated the value of an organized Ladies' Aid Society. Through their help the self-support on his circuit has been increased fifty per cent." Rev. Housley's voice vibrated, doubtless, with joy, as he declared that "the vision of great possibilities in the hearts of our Filipino men and women inspired the greatest initiative that they have ever shown. A real wholesome independence has been declared among the men and women in charge. Self-support and evangelism are the conspicuous features of this independence and initiative.” 5

Stage Four: Shifting the Entire Burden to the Native Rev. Housley in M. E. Annual Report 1917, p. 78.

Church. The tide which has been rising for several years broke over the walls in 1918 carrying everything before it. "Every charge in the district," reports one superintendent after another, "went on self-support." In truth there was nothing else to do. The Finance Committee of the Methodist Mission announced that they had no more money for the support of churches, because the gifts from America had been stopped or diverted to some other channel. It was a case of "come up or close up"; and because the preparation had been thorough, the results were wonderfully successful. There were, to be sure, dozens of churches, just starting, which could never have supported themselves. These were provided for by the Domèstic Mission Fund, an indispensable factor in the complete achievement of self-support. This fund came from four

sources:

I.

The Home Missionary Society had sprung up in 1916 for the purpose of giving a helping hand to weak churches. Now every church organized such a society, and contributed not less than fifty centavos per month toward the Fund.

2. Each missionary, pastor, deaconess, or other paid worker gave one half of his or her tithe into the Fund.

3. Missionary collections were taken in each Sunday school in the first Sunday of each month.

4. Junior Missionary Societies were organized and the children were asked to contribute not less than twenty centavos from each society.

Even the churches which received gifts from the Fund were expected to contribute toward the Fund as faithfully as the stronger churches. Dr. Cottingham's words had proven abundantly true: "the Filipino will support the Gospel which he loves if we will patiently teach him his duty and a way to do it," and they find pleasure in doing it which they never knew when others were maintaining their work. "The people are happy and the pastors are jubilant," runs the triumphant report; and another problem, to our astonishment, was solved by the same stroke-the problem of inadequate salaries for the ministry. "The salaries are larger by twenty to forty per cent than last year. For the first time the preachers

have been able to look forward without fear to a life service in the ministry."

Only those who know how missionaries have prayed and longed for some light as to how to enter the multitudinous openings and at the same time pay adequate remuneration to the pastors, only those who know how pastors skimped and sacrificed, scarce daring to look forward to better days, can realize the new enthusiasm that was aroused by the discovery that efficient pastors can get more salary from the Filipino people than they ever got from the missions. When one man reached his appointment it was paying only thirty pesos a month. He soon had it paying 100. When he was changed to another church which had been paying 35 he was soon getting 120. This pastor declares, “Filipinos are not stingy, they are the most generous people in the world and if you and I will teach them, they will give abundantly. I am not afraid to test what I say. Give me the poorest place in the conference and I will prove it to you. . . . In my church we worked for six months to get rid of copper. King Copper is now dead and we worship the Lord with silver and paper." Agaton Pascual went to Polo in Bulacan and in the first year raised the salary from 45 to P90 and in a few months later had P125.

In 1918 in the

Manila district the average salary was only 26 per month. Four years later the average salary of the same ministers was 60 per month, an increase of 135% and it all came from the congregations. In 1918 the highest salary was 35, but four years later there were seven churches paying their pastors from 100 to 170 per month. The per capita giving in that district jumped from 1.70 in 1918 to 3.72 in 1922. The Methodist Church has stopped telling the pastors that they must sacrifice everything, and tells the people in the pews that they owe it to God to sacrifice for their pastors and their church. A man in the pews owes just as much to God as a man in the pulpit. The man who preaches deserves just as much remuneration as the men who listen to him preach and who are in the same station in life.

Dr. J. F. Cottingham, who has taken a leading part in