Slavery is Not the Best Training for Liberty

Slavery is not the best training for liberty. It is only by exercise that powers grow. To do things for people does not train them to do them for themselves…. The work of the missionary is education in this sense: it is the use of means to reveal to his converts a spiritual power which they actually possess and of which they are dimly conscious. As the converts exercise that power, as the yield themselves to the indwelling Spirit, they discover the greatness of the power and the grace of the Spirit, and in so doing they reveal it to their teacher. But we are like teachers who cannot resist telling their pupils the answer the moment the difficulty arises… We cannot resist the temptation to do for them whatever we can do for them. We cannot sit by and see things done ill or ill in view of our ideas of well. That may be a form of government. But it is not education. The work of the missionary cannot be done by imposing things from without. The one result which he desires is the growth and manifestation of the Spirit from within.

Roland Allen, Missionary Methods