Those in the home field are under a solemn obligation to support foreign missions, providing means for the establishment of the interests that are positively essential to give character to the work. Those who do not know the truth cannot be expected to support the missionaries who labor among them. Surely those who have become established in the truth are not so dull of comprehension as to suppose that those who for the first time hear what to them are strange and mysterious doctrines, will take hold readily of unpopular truth, and will support the work, building houses of worship and establishing sanitariums and schools.
How does God regard those who send His servants into a barren field without means and understanding of the work to be done? Shall the messengers of God, sent with strange and peculiar doctrines to a foreign land, be left to make their own way to support themselves and the work? God forbid! If God spares my life to bear my message to our people, the experience of the Lord's workers in Australia will never be repeated in any missionary field. It is a sad thing how hard the work was made with very little means to carry this important work in fields.
I am instructed to set this matter before all our people (not merely a few) in its true light. We are to know from henceforth how to use the talent of means more wisely than we have done in the past. God's money is not to be expended to indifferent ends. Let there be less display and more praying, more sanctified planning, and less show--fewer expensive buildings. This will testify that we believe that we are living near the close of this earth's history. Our people in the home field have been doing a good and grand work in lifting from God's institutions in foreign fields their burden of indebtedness. God will greatly bless them in doing this work.