Page 23 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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Thus as the first quarter of a century closed on the

Arabian Mission, there was much to be proud of and much to be

worried about. Prom a fledgling group of three inexperienced

young men the Mission had grown extraordinarily. There now were

twenty-four missionaries in the field manning five stations
and visiting three semi-permanent outstations. Over two hun­

-3. dred students were enrolled in the Mission’s eight schools.

Pour bookshops were distributing Bibles, tracts and educa­

tional books in English and Arabic, and over 23,000 patients

were being treated each year at the Mission's five hospitals.

Against this impressive record of accomplishment, however,

had to be placed a depressing record of evangelistic failure.

Phavif Allah and the first pioneer missionaries had, after

all founded the Arabian Mission for the express purpose of

evangelizing Arabia. Tet by 1914 they had gained pitifully

few converts and seemed no nearer to their ultimate goal than

when they had started. The debate over this problem, sor,sharp­

ly brought into focus by John Van Ess, was to be waged back

and forth by the missionaries for the next fifty years. But

for the moment the Arabian Mission, like the rest of the world,

was caught up in an even greater conflict, and everything else

was eclipsed by the outbreak of the World War in 1914.