o understand, at any
rate in some degree, what place it takes in the mission work in the
province viewed as a whole. It is true that a great many missionaries
would refuse to admit that the recognition of other stations in the
planting of our own is an acknowledgment of the unity of our work; but
whether they acknowledge it, or whether they do not, it is so, and we
for our part recognise it with thankfulness and look forward to a day
when missions will not only recognise others by avoiding them, but by
planning missions deliberately to assist each other. For that seems to
us the necessary conclusion. The moment we recognise a station as a
Christian mission station which we must not disturb, we have gone a long
way towards recognising it as a mission station which our own must not
only not disturb, but must complement; and when we know that one mission
must complement another we are really not far removed from establishing
our missions with common consultation each to supply what is lacking to
the other.

Holding this view, we desire to discover what place each mission station
occupies when we take a wider view and survey the province or country.
Here we shall be able to adjust many apparent inequalities in the
mission stations viewed by themselves. From our previous survey of the
mission stations one by one we may have got the impression that some of
them as mission stations designed for work in a district were very
ill-balanced. The medical work, or institutional work of some kind, may
have seemed to be out of all proportion to the other forms of the work,
and this impression may remain when we view the province. But on the
other hand it may be seriously modified; because when we review the
work of the province as a whole, we may find that the institutional work
of the province as a whole is out of proportion to the evangelistic
work, and in that case we should think the disproportion at the station
more serious. On the other hand we might find the institutional work in
the province inadequate, and in that case the emphasis which seemed
undue in the one place, and may really be improper in that one place,
nevertheless, in view of the situation in the whole province, may be
shown to be reasonable in relation to the whole province. How then can
we gather together the returns from all the stations so as to present a
view of the work in the province? For that is the first thing. We cannot
put the station into its proper pl