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THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS ; OR, THE VOICE OUT 
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EVANGELISTIC WORK IN PRINCIPLE AND 
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THE 



JDtwne (Enterprise of missi 



THE DIVINE 

interprise of 



A SERIES OF LECTURES 

DELIVERED AT NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J., BEFORE THE 

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE REFORMED 

CHURCH IN AMERICA 

UPON THE 

GRAVES" FOUNDATION 

IN THE MONTHS OF JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1891 
BY 

ARTHUR T. PIERSON 



NEW YORK 
THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO, 

740 AND 742 BROADWAY 



Copyright, 1891, by 
THE BAKER & TAYLOR Co. 



(prea* 

1 71, 173 Macdougal Street, New 



TO 

NATHAN F. GRAVES, ESQ. 

OF SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 

TO WHOSE DISCRIMINATING MUNIFICENCE THIS LECTURESHIP 

OWES ITS FOUNDATION J 

AND TO WHOSE DEVOUT AND INTELLIGENT INTEREST IN THE 
GREAT WORK OF A WORLD S EVANGELIZATION 

SO MANY OF 

THE FRIENDS OF MISSIONS TRACE THEIR OWN INCREASED ZEAL 
FOR THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 

THIS VOLUME 

IS AFFECTIONATELY AND MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 

BS tfce SUtttjor 



INTRODUCTION. 

BY REV. D. D. DEMAREST, D.D., 

PROFESSOR OF PASTORAL THEOLOGY, NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J. 




N introducing to the Christian public this 
volume of Lectures on Missions, deliv 
ered before the Theological Seminary of 
the Reformed Church in America, at New Bruns 
wick, N. J., it is proper that a brief account should 
be given of the origin of the lectureship. 

On the 1 6th day of April, 1888, Mr. Nathan 
F. Graves, an Elder in the Reformed Church of 
Syracuse, N. Y., and an active member of the 
Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church 
in America, addressed the following letter to the 
Rev. Prof. Mabon, of the Theological Seminary : 

"SYRACUSE, N. Y., April i6th, 1888. 
"Rev. Prof. W. V. V. Mabon, D.D. 

" MY DEAR SIR I understand that there is no Semi 
nary or Professorship of Missions in the United States. 
I may be mistaken, but I am quite sure that there is no 
adequate provision made for a service so important. I 
have noticed that the missionaries that are instructed at 
Basle have quite an advantage over those who receive 



io INTRODUCTION. 

no special instruction to fit them for their important 
work. 

" I write to enquire if the subject has ever been con 
sidered in the Seminary ; and if you consider it desirable 
and practicable to establish such a professorship, I will 
be greatly obliged for a reply at your convenience. 
" Very sincerely yours, 

" N. F. GRAVES." 

The Faculty having declared that, in their opin 
ion, it was desirable and practicable that some 
agency for missionary instruction should be estab 
lished in the Seminary, conferences were held by 
Mr. Graves with a Committee of the Faculty, with 
Rev. John Mason Ferris, D.D., for many years 
Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Reformed Church in America ; with Rev. Henry 
N. Cobb, D.D., present Secretary, and with vari 
ous friends of Foreign Missions. The result was 
a proposal by Mr. Graves to provide liberally the 
means for a course of lectures for the year 1888- 
89 ; the lecturer or lecturers to be appointed by 
the Theological Faculty in connection with the 
Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the 
Reformed Church in America, while further action 
of a more permanent nature was to be left for 
more mature consideration. 

Accordingly, a course of six lectures was deliv 
ered in the S. A. Kirkpatrick Chapel, the use of 
which was kindly granted for the purpose by the 
authorities of the College. The lecturers and 
subjects were as follows : 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 1 

1. Rev. Henry Stout, of Nagasaki, Japan 
The Unique Characteristics of the Missionary 
Work in Japan. 

2. Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., formerly of Con 
stantinople Fifty Years of Missionary Education 
in Turkey. 

3. Rev. Leonard W. Kip, D.D., of Amoy, 
China A Heathen Stronghold. 

4. Rev. E. M. Wherry, D.D., of Saharanpoor, 
India The Religion of Islam. 

5. Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, D.D., Secretary of 
the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian 
Church The Undesigned Testimony of False 
Religions to the True. 

6. Rev. John H. Wyckoff, of the Arcot Mission 
Brahmanism and Christianity. 

In their report made to the Board of Superintend 
ents, May 2oth, 1889, the Faculty said: "These 
lectures were able and instructive, and the impres 
sion made was so salutary that we earnestly hope 
that the thought so generously conceived by Elder 
Graves will be matured in permanency, and that 
hereafter our students may be able every year to 
receive instruction from men of wisdom and ex 
perience in this great subject. The thanks of the 
Seminary and of the Church are due to the Elder 
whose heart, in its deep sympathy with Christian 
effort in evangelizing the world, has projected the 
scheme, and inclines him to provide liberally for 
its accomplishment." 



1 2 IN TROD UCTION. 

Mr. Graves being satisfied with the experiment, 
very promptly and cordially expressed his wish 
and readiness to provide for a course of lectures 
for the year 1889-90, and also for one for the 
year following, so that the lecturer might have two 
years for preparation. He has since made pro 
vision for the future, including the year 1892-93. 

The second course was delivered in the winter 
of 1890 by the Rev. John Hall, D.D., LL.D., of 
New York City, embracing lectures on the follow 
ing subjects : 

1. The Bible Basis of Missions. 

2. The Missions of the Early Centuries of 
Christianity. 

3. Missions Previous to the Reformation. 

4. Missions and the Reformation. 

5. Missions from the Reformation to the igth 
Century. 

6. Modern Missions, their Difficulties and En 
couragements. 

The Faculty, deeming it to be right and wise 
that the Christian public should have the benefit of 
these lectures, and that ample opportunity should 
be afforded for the attendance of the largest num 
ber, obtained from the Consistory of the Second 
Reformed Church the use of their house of wor 
ship for the purpose. The spacious building was 
crowded every evening with attentive listeners. 

The third course, by Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, 
D.D., comprising the lectures contained in this vol- 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

ume, was delivered in the winter of 1891,* in the 
First Reformed Church, which was kindly granted 
for the purpose. The lectures were heard by large 
congregations with increasing interest to the end 
of the course. 

At the close the following resolutions, offered 
by Rev. Prof. T. Sandford Doolittle, D.D., of 
Rutgers College, were heartily and unanimously 
adopted by the large audience present : 

Resolved. I. That our hearty thanks are due to Rev. 
Arthur T. Pierson, D.D., for the zeal and efficiency with 
which he has presented so much valuable information 
in regard to the mission field and the claims of the 
Master upon us to act as missionaries in spirit, if not in 
person. 

2. That thanks are due also to the Faculty of the 
Theological Seminary for not limiting these lectures to 
their class-rooms, but for making them public in one of 
the churches of the city, so that the people of various de 
nominations are allowed the privilege of hearing them. 

3. That we take a special pleasure in exhibiting a 
grateful recognition of the wise and noble generosity of 
Mr. N. F. Graves in establishing this annual course of 
lectures for enlarging the knowledge and intensifying 
the interest in Christian missions. 

While the students of the Seminary for whom 
these lectures were especially intended have de 
rived inestimable benefit from them, it is gratifying 
to know that many Christian people of all denom 
inations have been sharers in the benefit. It is 
believed that announcements of future courses 

* In January and February. 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

will be received with great satisfaction by the 
Christian public. It is hoped that they may prove 
to be a great stimulus to missionary zeal, be pro- 
motive of unity in Christian faith and work ; and 
of intelligent and untiring service in the kingdom 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all the glory. 

D. D. DEMAREST. 



AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. 




|T was a wise maxim of Cicero, that, in 
the opening of an address, the speaker 
and his audience should come to a mutual 
understanding. Let the author thus early acquaint 
his readers with the supreme aim which has 
controlled his utterances. 

In the preparation of these lectures two paths 
lay open before the lecturer. He might, acting 
as an annalist, trace that march of missions, which 
is the marvel, if not the miracle, of this modern 
age ; or, like the historian, he might seek to ex 
amine into those fundamental laws and philo 
sophical principles which are the keys of history. 
In the Books of the Kings, for example, we have 
the historical annals of the Kingdom ; in the Books 
of the Chronicles, the ethical survey of the The 
ocracy : in one case a simple record of events ; in 
the other, a lesson on the faithfulness or faithless 
ness of the kings toward the King of Kings, with 
the rewards and retributions consequent upon such 
opposite courses. 

I have chosen, as the theme, The Divine Enter- 



1 6 AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. 

prise of Missions; and shall modestly attempt a 
Philosophy of History, dealing with the " Theoc 
racy " rather than the " Kingdom." The annals, 
both of ancient Israel and of the modern Church, 
record mingled success and failure. Whether it 
be the one or the other cannot depend on any 
chance or accident. There is no fatalism in his 
tory. Our instincts tell us that success must be 
the consequence and crown of conformity to the 
pattern shewed us in the mount ; and failure, the 
result of departure from the divine standard. 
Some golden calf which some Aaron may have 
cast, out of unhallowed offerings ; some carved 
altar, which some idolatrous Ahaz may have set 
up in place of the unhewn altar of the divine 
simplicity that is in Christ in a word, some dis 
placing of the pure and perfect type of doctrine 
and method, prescribed in the Word of God, may 
account for the withholding of blessing, and for 
defeat and disaster in our missionary work. 

We have need, perhaps, to begin again, and lay 
anew the basis of missionary enterprise ; or, if we 
find the former foundation firm and sound, we 
may need at least to see whether, on that founda 
tion, we have been building gold, silver, precious 
stones ; or wood, hay, stubble. Possibly, into the 
structure of our mission work some errors have 
been built, which are serious if not radical. To 
get God s own conception of missions informed 
and infixed in our minds, our hearts and our prac- 



AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. 17 

tical methods, might lead to the partial and even 
total revolution of our present mission work. 

Feeling the solemnity of this trust, as the in 
cumbent of this lectureship, for my own sake and 
that of my readers, and for the sake of a cause 
wider and broader than all, I have given myself, 
Bible in hand, to a careful, prayerful study of this 
theme, seeking to be rid of all bias, either of prej 
udice or prepossession, and to be led inio all truth. 
And, as the studies which, for more than a year 
before the delivery of these lectures, were largely 
limited to this one subject, have rent the veil from 
much that was hitherto hidden or at best obscure 
to my own mind, it will not be strange if some 
things which found utterance in the lecture-course 
may strike other minds as new, and even as untrue. 
The lecturer ventures to ask the confidence of his 
indulgent readers and, on their part also, patient 
study of the principles laid down. Let there be 
applied to them, not the test of human authority 
or opinion merely ; but the touchstone of the 
Word of God, and of His manifest working in the 
History of Missions. 

Human tradition is a dangerous ally of the 
Bible, for, too often, it " makes void the Word of 
God." At first only a vassal, it becomes a con 
sort, and finally a sovereign, usurping all authority. 
And, as Luther found it necessary to question 
even the venerable traditions of the elders, and 
separate the infallible Scriptures from all the chaff 



1 8 AUTHOR S INTRODUCTION. 

and alloy of mere human teaching, it behoves us 
to pray for grace to go back to the very beginning, 
and inquire of the Master himself what are the 
eternal and immutable principles of mission work. 

ARTHUR T. PIERSON. 

2320 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA, 
October, 1891. 




I. 

THE DIVINE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 

HEN, on the isth of May, 1618, after 
more than twenty years of patient ex 
periment, Johann Kepler completed his 
discovery of the so-called " Harmonic Laws," or 
the relations of the planets ; when the secret doors, 
that had waited six thousand years for a key, were 
at last unlocked by the theory of an elliptical orbit, 
the great astronomer of Magstatt, no longer able 
to contain his rapture, cried, " O Almighty God, 
I think Thy thoughts after Thee / " 

What the " Legislator of the Heavens " did, in 
the department of astronomy, we seek to do in 
the department of missions think God s thought 
after God. The words " idea " and " theory " are, 
to some linguists, sacred, because of a possible 
derivation of the one from the Latin, dcus, and of 
the other from the Greek, Qtoq and of a possible 
design by those words to express conceptions as 
they lie in the mind of God. If such be the real 
roots, the word idea (in deo) would mean a thought 
first conceived in God, and then expressed to men 
a theory would be a sacred image, pattern, or 
plan of God. The ancient Platonists used the 



20 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

word idea, of an eternal immutable and immaterial 
form or model of an object, an archetype, a pat 
tern.* In this sense, ideas were the pattern accord 
ing to which the Deity fashioned the phenomenal 
or ectypal world. t 

An idea y therefore, properly implies a perfection 
of image. If we can, at the outset, get before us 
the divine conception of missions, what a starting- 
point will that be, and to what an advanced goal 
might we hope to reach, if, true to our starting- 
point, we keep on our course without deviation ! 

The four Gospel narratives have, at the close of 
each as has also the Acts of the Apostles, that 
" Fifth Gospel," at its beginning, certain words 
of our Lord which are evidently meant for the 
guidance of His disciples, in all time to come, as 
to their great mission and commission. Each of 
these accounts contains something, different from 
the others, yet essential to the full and complete 
expression of our Lord s will and our duty. As, 
in a composite photograph, various facial forms 
and features blend, combining individual peculiari 
ties in one collective result, so, if we may project, 
as upon one sensitive plate, these five forms of the 
Great Commission ; and, instead of looking at 
them separately, behold them all, blent in one 
composite view, we may at one glance see the 
mutual relations of these various words of instruc 
tion and get the grand total. 

* Worcester s Dictionary. f Sir Wm. Hamilton. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 21 

With this aim, we may reverently venture to 
combine these five fragmentary utterances into 
one, without implying that, in our Lord s original 
teaching, they were thus blended ; or that it is 
possible to determine either their logical or chro 
nological order. We seek simply to frame a general 
summary, without omission of any particulars ; 
and to group together words of instruction or 
promise which, by affinity, belong together. The 
attempt so to arrange and combine has been at 
tended with such profit to the writer, that he can 
not but hope it may at least prompt abler students 
of the Word to improve upon the imperfect result. 
Close study of these farewell words of our Lord will 
reveal an exquisite poetry of thought, a certain 
rhythm and rhyme of conception, which need the 
aid of parallelism to convey this correspondence. 

I. 

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying: 

"PEACE BE UNTO YOU!" 

And when He had so said He shewed unto them His 
hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when 
they saw the Lord ; then said Jesus to them again : 
" PEACE BE UNTO YOU ! " 

II. 

"ALL POWER IS GIVEN UNTO ME 

IN HEAVEN AND IN EARTH. 

AS MY FATHER HATH SENT ^IE, 

EVEN SO SEND I YOU." 



22 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

III. 

Then opened He their understanding that they might 
understand the scriptures; and said unto them: 

" Thus it is written, 

And thus it behoved Christ to suffer 

And to rise from the dead the third day ; 

AND THAT 

REPENTANCE AND REMISSION OF SINS 
SHOULD BE PREACHED IN HIS NAME 

AMONG ALL NATIONS, 
BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM. 

AND YE ARE WITNESSES OF THESE 
THINGS." 

IV. 

"GO YE THEREFORE INTO ALL THE WORLD 

AND PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY 

CREATURE. 

GO, MAKE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS, 

Baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and 

of the Holy Ghost ; 
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have 

commanded you. 

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, 
But he that believeth not shall be damned. 

V. 

AND, BEHOLD I SEND THE PROMISE OF MY FATHER 

UPON YOU. 

Depart ye not from Jerusalem, 

But wait for the promise of the Father 

Which ye have heard of Me. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 23 

Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, 
UNTIL YE BE ENDUED WITH POWER FROM 

ON HIGH. 

For John truly baptized with water, 
But ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many 

days hence. 

Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost 
Coming upon you ; 

AND YE SHALL BE WITNESSES 
UNTO ME 

Both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, 

And in Samaria, 

And unto the uttermost part of the earth." 
And He breathed on them 

And saith unto them, 
" Receive ye the Holy Ghost." 

VI. 
"AND LO, I AM WITH YOU ALWAY, 

EVEN UNTO THE END OF THE AGE. 

And these signs shall follow them that believe : 

In My name shall they cast out demons ; 

They shall speak with new tongues ; 

They shall take up serpents ; 
And if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt 

them ; 
They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." 

VII. 

And He led them out as far as to Bethany. 
So then, after the Lord had spoken unto them, 

He lifted up His hands and blessed them ; 

And it came to pass, while He blessed them, 

He was parted from them ; 



24 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

And while they beheld, He was taken up, 

And a cloud received Him out of their sight. 

And He was carried up and received up into heaven, 

And they worshipped Him 

And returned to Jerusalem with great joy, 

And were continually in the temple 

Praising and blessing God. 
AND THEY WENT FORTH AND PREACHED 

EVERYWHERE, 

THE LORD WORKING WITH 

AND CONFIRMING THE WORD, 

WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING. 

AMEN ! 

Thus, combining all these farewell words of our 
Lord, and grouping together sayings that bear to 
each other a peculiar relation, we find that the 
whole naturally falls into seven parts. 

First, we have a double salutation of Peace. 

Secondly, a declaration of Divine Authority, and 
a distinct, authoritative Commission sending the 
disciples forth, a transmission of this authority. 

Thirdly, an unfolding of the essential truths of 
Redemption, the Atoning Death and Resurrection 
of Christ, and the substance of the message to be 
borne in His name. And here occurs that phrase 
central and vital to the whole commission, "Ye 
are witnesses of these things." 

Fourthly, we have the universality of the com 
mission indicated in three unmistakable terms : 
two of which are collective, " all the world," and 
" all nations," and the third of which is distribu- 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 25 

tive, " every creature," showing us that while 
the message is universal, it is also individual. 

Fifthly, we have the great qualification for the 
proper discharge of the commission ; the Endue- 
ment with Power by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. 

Sixthly, we have the assurance of the Saviour s 
personal presence, and of signs following those 
who believe. 

Finally, we have the Lord s parting blessing 
and ascension and the brief record of the fulfil 
ment begun, both of the duty of the Church and 
of the promise of her Lord. 

In this whole body of instructions there is one 
word, so central, so vital, so emphatic, that it is 
the only word which is made especially prominent 
by repetition ; it is the word WITNESS. " Ye are 
witnesses of these things " ; " Ye shall be witnesses 
unto me." The only other word that rivals this 
for prominence is the word "preach" which really 
conveys essentially the same meaning, since the 
soul of preaching is witnessing. 

It seems, therefore, that if, at the outset, we 
desire to grasp the divine idea of missions, here 
we shall find our starting-point toward the most 
advanced goal. It is like God to be simple ; and 
in that one word, witness, is condensed the whole 
wisdom of God as to this world-wide work. We 
are to be witnesses unto Him. Let us seek to 
enter more fully into this thought of God as con 
veyed in this word. 



26 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

The race of man is lost in sin lost to God, and 
to holiness and heaven. Beside the generic, fed 
eral fall of the race in its head, there has been a 
voluntary and personal fall, each sinning soul for 
itself, in departing from the living God. Jesus 
Christ, the second Adam, takes man s place. He 
obeys the law which Adam transgressed, and 
proves obedience possible ; then He dies in the sin 
ner s place to make his redemption also possible. 
We do not here tarry to consider the philosophy of 
the plan of salvation : the fact is enough that, in 
some way and sense, " He bare our sins in His 
own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, 
should live unto righteousness," and that " by His 
stripes we are healed." While the Word of God 
repeatedly and constantly affirms this fact, it never 
attempts to exhaust its philosophy. Nor need we. 

The only condition of salvation is the acceptance 
of God s free gift of eternal life through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. As Chalmers taught, this is the 
supreme glory of the Gospel, that it is simply to 
be accepted. Repentance is only that godly sorrow 
for sin and that sense of need which dispose us to 
faith ; obedience is only the natural fruit of that 
new life begun in believing. And so faith is cen 
tral and all-inclusive, and faith is believing, and 
believing is receiving. " To as many as received 
Him, to them gave He power to become the Sons 
of God, even to as many as believe on His name." 
That one verse proves that to believe is to receive; 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 27 

and, in all the instances in the Gospel according 
to John where that word, believe, occurs, we may 
substitute the word, receive, and find the sense 
unaffected. 

We need to take one step further, and we reach 
another equally simple but equally vital truth. 
" God would have all men to be saved and to 
come to the knowledge of the truth." The salva 
tion is broad enough to cover the sin of all man 
kind. The rescue is ample for the ruin of the 
race. How shall the unsaved be reached ? Be 
hold again how divinely simple is the thought of 
God : let every believer become a witness let 
every man, who is saved, seek to save. It is no 
irreverence to say that God s whole idea of mis 
sions may be found, in essence, in that one word, 
witnessing. The salvation of God is full and free. 
To accept it freely is immediate justification; to 
accept it fully is complete sanctification ; to witness 
to it fully and freely is complete service it is to 
be a missionary wherever we are. 

Let us dwell a moment on the simplicity of wit 
nessing for Christ. Nothing can be more primitive 
and simple. The word itself has a lesson : it is 
from the Saxon, witan, to know, the root of many 
kindred words, "wit," "wist," "wisdom." A 
witness needs, therefore, but two characteristics : 
knowledge and utterance. To know and to tell 
makes a witness, and hence even a h ttle child is 
now admitted to our courts of law as competent 



28 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

to testify. And in the higher Court of Humanity, 
the Parliament of Man, even a little child is admit 
ted, to bear witness to Jesus and the great salva 
tion, before the tribunal of public opinion ; be 
cause a child can sin, can repent, can believe, 
and can therefore tell what he knows of salvation 
by faith. In fact, no testimony is more convinc 
ing than that of a guileless child. 

This simplicity is in order to universality ; for 
it brings the privilege within the range of all be 
lievers. As the Gospel is marked by its universal 
adaptation to man as man, so the missionary charge 
is peculiar for its universal adaptation to believers 
as believers. It requires but the least measure of 
capacity, to sin, and whoever can sin, can be saved 
from sin ; and so it requires but the least measure 
of capacity to be a witness, for whoever can sin 
and can be saved, can tell of salvation. 

We repeat, it is simple that it may be universal. 
This duty, this privilege, is committed to all 
believers, and has reference to the whole race of 
man. It is therefore doubly universal ; all be 
lievers are to witness, and are to witness unto all. 
All who are saved are to bear testimony, and all 
who are unsaved are to hear that testimony. 

Here we meet, at the outset of this discussion, 
the first of those traditions of men which have 
practically made the Word of God of none effect. 
Believers commonly have no sense of either per 
sonal duty or responsibility toward lost souls. What- 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 29 

ever be their duty, it is believed it may be done 
indirectly and by proxy. Nay, during the ages, 
the Church of God has come to recognize a divid 
ing line, not found in the New Testament, between 
the clergy and the laity, so-called. A small mi 
nority of church members are set apart for the 
preaching of the Gospel and the care of souls. 
The very terms "preacher," "pastor," "curate," 
have come to embody this conception, that these 
men are especially ordained to preach the Gospel, 
shepherd believers, and care for souls. What, 
then, is the duty of the " laity" but to take care 
of the " clergy" hear the Gospel which they preach, 
keep in the fold, or follow with the flock where 
the pastor leads ; and to see to it that, while the 
" curate" is caring for souls, he shall be paid for 
his professional work ? This is the theory, judged 
by the practice. The great bulk of professing 
Christians have no systematic work for unsaved 
souls ; many of them have never yet even looked 
upon it as a duty to seek and to save that which 
was lost. In their conceptions of the Christian 
life this does not enter as a necessary integral fac 
tor. To go to church with reasonable regularity, 
to pay pew-rent punctually, to be honest and hon 
orable and charitable ; to behave like a Christian 
in the church, in the home, and in society, espe 
cially if, to all else, be added a generous gift now 
and then to missions at home and abroad ; this is 
to most professed believers to live the life of a 



30 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

disciple. O for the trump of Gabriel, to peal out 
this truth as with the voice of the thunder ! in 
all this a true child of God sees but the beginning, 
not the end, of holy living. Where shall we find 
adequate room for that grander thought of direct 
service to God in witnessing to souls in Christ s 
name ? 

We here unhesitatingly affirm that the concep 
tion of Christian life which leaves out personal 
labor for lost souls, is as radically wanting as that 
conception of salvation which leaves out faith : for 
believing is not more prominently connected with 
salvation than is witnessing connected with ser 
vice to God ! And, because all new energy or 
enterprise in missions hinges on a revival of this 
apostolic faith and practice, we give it intensest 
emphasis here at the outset of this discussion. 

Careful comparison of the various accounts, 
given by the evangelists, of our Lord s last inter 
views with his disciples, has led Rev. Dr. Robinson 
and others to conclude that the gathering on the 
" mountain in Galilee " was the occasion when, as 
Paul says, " He was seen of above five hundred 
brethren at once." * It was not needful that He 
should go into that northern province simply to 
meet the eleven, whom He repeatedly met in Jeru 
salem ; nor could it be any of them who " doubted," 
since even the sceptical Thomas had ceased to 
question, But Christ had spent the bulk of His 

* Cf. Matt, xxviii. 16 ; I. Cor. xv. 6. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 3 1 

active ministry in Galilee : there He had spoken 
most of His wondrous words and wrought most of 
His marvellous works ; and there most of His dis 
ciples were found. That parting interview in 
Galilee seems meant to commit formally and finally 
to the great body of His followers the work of wit 
nessing for Him. 

To clothe that closing scene, depicted by Mat 
thew, with such an environment, is to invest it 
with a new grandeur. Not to a few apostles 
alone, in some secluded chamber in Capernaum, 
but to a multitude numbering upwards of five 
hundred ; His pulpit a mountain peak ; His audi 
ence chamber bounded only by the horizon, and 
roofed in only by the canopy of heaven, the cathe 
dral of nature ! How fitting that the world s 
Redeemer, stretching out His pierced hands as 
though to touch the farthest limits of the globe 
from sunrise to sunset, where no narrow walls 
could confine His voice, should say to all His disci 
ples : " Go ye into all the world and preach the 
Gospel to every creature ! " 

This ought to be granted, as beyond all dispute : 
preaching the Gospel, in its original and proper 
sense, is the privilege and prerogative of no ex 
clusive class : it inalienably belongs to all believers. 
Those terms, " clergy " and " laity," are the inven 
tion of the devil in the Dark Ages. The former, 
from nXrjpcx;, a lot, is an Old Testament conception 
brought over into New Testament times. The 



32 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

tribe of Levi was the "lot," or heritage of the 
Lord ; and the " clergy " have been conceived as 
being specially and exclusively chosen, like the 
Levites, to perform this ministry. On the other 
hand, the term " laity," from Aaoc, the people, in 
dicates the current impression that the body of 
believers the people of God at large are shut 
out from the exercise of ministerial functions. 
As Gibbon says: The progress of ecclesiastical 
authority gave birth to the memorable distinction 
of the laity and clergy which had been unknown 
to the Greeks and Romans. The former of these 
appellations comprehended the body of the Chris 
tian people ; the latter was appropriated to the 
chosen portion that had been set apart for the ser 
vice of religion." 

The introduction of this distinction into the 
Church of Christ was not only an invention of the 
devil, but a master-stroke of Satan-craft. Where 
in the New Testament is to be found a trace of 
that rigid line that so sharply separated priests 
and people in the days of Judaism ? The older 
conception of a kingdom of priests,* which ante 
dates the separation of Levi s tribe for the service 
of the Tabernacle, now comes once more to the 
front. No believer finds himself fenced into an 
outer court, even the veil that hid the Holy of 
Holies is rent in twain ; and, without priestly or 
high priestly mediation, every child of God comes 

* Exod. xix. 6. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 33 

boldly to the mercy seat, having access through 
Christ by one Spirit unto the Father. Every be 
liever is, therefore, by right a preacher. No 
sooner does Andrew find Jesus than he goes after 
Peter ; or Philip, than he seeks Nathanael. Nay, 
even a woman, and she a Samaritan and an out 
cast, when she finds the Messiah at the well, 
immediately leaves her water-pot, in her haste to 
impart, as from an inner spring, greater than 
Jacob s well, a life-giving draught to thirsty souls 
in Sychar ! 

No more significant statement can be found, 
even in that great book of missions, the Acts 
of the Apostles, than that which follows the 
account of Stephen s martyrdom : " There was a 
great persecution against the Church which was at 
Jerusalem ; and they were all scattered abroad 
through all the regions of Judea and Samaria, 
except the Apostles : therefore they that were 
scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the 
Word." * 

With what divine care is this fact framed into 
sacred history ! The Spirit of God records a gen 
eral scattering abroad, but records also that, in 
that scattering, the Apostles are not included; those, 
then, that went everywhere preaching the Word, 
were simply ordinary believers. Behold them 
the elect dispersion, driven by the red hand of 
persecution into the remote parts of Judea and 

* Acts viii. 1-4; xi. 19, 20. 



34 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

Samaria, and afterward to the Phoenician coast, 
to Cyprus, to Antioch. Without one ordained 
apostle, even to lead the way, they preached the 
Lord Jesus ; and God, who by His Providence 
dispersed them, by His grace set His seal upon 
their work, for " the hand of the Lord was with 
them, and a great number believed and turned 
unto the Lord." * 

Thus far, certainly, we find no rigid line sep 
arating and dividing disciples in proclaiming the 
good news. 

Those who are infected with the " High Church" 
"tendencies of our day may do well to note that, 
in the Acts of the Apostles, there is not found 
any sacred line of limitation even in the adminis 
tration of the sacraments. Philip, who acted as 
an evangelist, and went down to Samaria and 
preached Christ with such power, also baptized 
both men and women, as he did the eunuch of 
Ethiopia ; f and yet this Philip was at best only a 
deacon, set apart, it is true, but not set apart as a 
preacher, but as a server of tables ; and one case 
of such exercise of sacramental rights is enough to 
break down the limiting line. The whole trend of 
New Testament teaching is in the direction of the 
universal priesthood of believers. In this divine 
Charter of the Church, these truths are self-evident, 
that all believers are new-created and equal in 
their inherent privileges, endowed with certain 

* Acts xi. 21. f Acts viii. 5, 12, 38. 



THE THOVGHT OF MISSIONS. 35 

original, inalienable rights, among which is wit 
nessing. 

It would be unfair to interpret these words as 
a fling against an ordained ministry. There are 
many good grounds for setting apart godly men to 
the service of pulpit and pastorate. We cordial 
ly concede this, in the interests of law and order, 
of sound doctrine and good government, of organ 
ization and leadership, of aptness to teach and 
wise, systematic curacy of souls. But to erect 
Christ s ministers into a clerical caste, to build a 
barrier between them and the rest of God s people 
in the matter of witnessing for Christ and winning 
souls that is both false to Scripture and fatal to 
missions ! We must turn back and retrace our 
steps and get once more upon the primitive apos 
tolic platform. We need another Luther who 
shall nail up his theses upon the doors of the 
" church of all saints," and assert, in behalf of all 
saints, their " Declaration of Independence," with 
these original, inalienable rights. We must brush 
away the rubbish of human inventions and devices 
of the devil, and plant our firm feet on the broad 
basis laid down in the Word of God, that, by 
right of redemption in Christ, all the Lord s peo 
ple are prophets, priests, and kings. Whatever 
function, inhering in believers, may, in the inter 
ests of expediency and for the general good, be 
conceded to a certain class, one universal right 
must be retained or if, in any measure, practically 



36 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

given up, it must be reclaimed and restored, viz. : 
the common right of all believers to proclaim the 
Gospel. This can be surrendered only with dis 
aster to the best interests both of the Church and 
of the world. No mistake can be more fatal 
fatal not only to a world s evangelization and re 
demption, but to the service, growth, and even 
spiritual life of the disciple himself. 

Often as this great truth has been wrested from 
the clutch of ecclesiasticism, it needs to-day again 
to be recovered and reasserted proclaimed as 
with the clarion voice of the Apocalyptic Angel. 
Three centuries, and nearly four, have rolled away 
since the lamp of the Reformed faith lit up the 
darkness, and still the subtle foe of Christian mis 
sions, both at home and abroad, is clericalism. 
The bulk of church members find their strength in 
sitting still it is only the few to whom it is a 
necessary part of a Christian life to bestir them 
selves, and serve to give alms and minister to 
want and woe to teach others the truth, to win 
others for Christ, to bear a dying world on the 
heart, and by prevailing prayer and daily testimony 
seek by all means to save some. 

This witness, which is thus simple and universal, 
is also experimental; and, in this sense, is not, after 
all, either so simple or so universal ; for it demands 
knowledge, not that of the schools, but of the school 
of Christ and is based on the high attainment of 
experience. It is because so few know, beyond 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 37 

doubt, because so few reach to the certainties of 
spiritual things, that so few are competent to 
give effective testimony. There should be fixed 
firmly in our minds this axiom of spiritual life, that 
experience limits testimony. We can witness only 
so far as we know. Settled conviction, intelligent 
and immovable faith, however narrow its bounds, 
is indispensable to convincing others or develop 
ing faith in others. Better like the blind man 
whose eyes Jesus opened to be able to say, " One 
thing I know," than to be half confident on many 
things ; for it is only the certainty of assured con 
viction that enables us to convince. 

This is an age of doubt, and not only so, but it 
is an age when it is fashionable to doubt. It is 
coming to be a mark of intellectual aristocracy to 
be sceptical. The first families in the world of 
intellect have adopted a new coat of arms ; their 
escutcheon is a shield, bearing an interrogation 
point. Faith is confounded with credulity. The 
simple confidence of a child-like believer, who 
takes the Bible as the Word of God, is met by the 
learned and cultured with a complacent if not 
compassionate smile and the Gospel is treated 
by some with even a lofty contempt, as though it 
would do for women and children and small men, 
but not for great minds and highly cultured people. 

It is well for us all to understand that, so far 
as doubt invades and controls our Christian life, 
our witness for Christ is at an end. There may 



3 8 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

be a formal testimony, but it is soulless and pow 
erless. The world, and the Church too, wait for 
men of strong conviction, who can, upon matters 
upon which others are uncertain, say "I know" 
and can give an answer to every one that asketh 
a reason of the hope that is in them. Emerson 
declared that we need positive men, not negative 
men affirmations, positions ; not denials, nega 
tions. Goethe, with a despair begotten of habitual 
doubt, cries, " Give us your convictions ! as for 
doubts, we have quite enough of our own." And 
Mr. Spurgeon quaintly adds : " It may be a great 
thing to doubt, but it is a greater thing to hold 
your tongue till you get rid of your doubts." 
Those who, in this sceptical age, are sowing the 
seeds of doubt, may do well to consider whether 
one firm conviction of truth is not of more service 
to mankind than a thousand denials, or questions, 
or uncertainties. 

On this subject, Rev. Dr. C. F. Deems has 
given young men a wise maxim : " Believe your 
beliefs and doubt your doubts. Never make the 
mistake of doubting your beliefs and believing 
your doubts." Faith and unfaith are both sus 
ceptible of nurture, of culture. He who presumes 
that what he has been taught to believe is, for that 
reason, to be questioned ; and that what he has 
been led to question is therefore unworthy of un 
questioning confidence, and that his doubts are 
more trustworthy than his faiths, will find him- 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 39 

self drifting away from all the moorings of truth 
and duty, on an open sea, where clouds hide 
the stars and fogs obscure all headlands ; and 
where, without compass, chart, or rudder, he is 
driving on blindly toward the utter wreck and 
ruin of all religious faith. 

Blessed be God ! it is possible to know God and 
the truth, and to find verity and reality even in 
the subtle, elusive, evasive sphere of the spiritual 
and eternal. There is an unseen world and we 
have senses more subtle than the five physical 
senses which, being exercised to discern both 
good and evil, become keen-edged, sharp-pointed, 
and acutely discriminating. Reason, which sep 
arates between truth and falsehood ; conscience, 
which detects the right and the wrong ; sensibility, 
which discriminates between the attractive and 
the repulsive, these are examples of these subtler, 
finer senses, which pertain to the sphere of the 
unseen. God has given us physical senses as 
media of communication with an external, material 
universe ; and so He has given us these more 
delicate senses, whereby to detect truth, right, 
beauty, and communicate with the invisible and 
the eternal. 

Columbus discovered the New World before 
he saw it. By the testimony of ancient writings, 
by a broad and clear induction from many facts, 
by the observations of other navigators, by the 
calculations of his own science, he had the evi- 



40 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

dence before him of a continent not seen as yet 
by European eyes.* And so it is possible by ex 
periment to know whom we have believed, and 
what we hold as true. Even God needs not to 
be " unknown," as at Athens. We may " taste 
and see " that He is good ; " hear and know " the 
truth ; " feel after " and " find " Him who is not 
far from every one of us, " handle " Him in the 
closet and " see " that it is He Himself. The 
Bible, referring to experiment in spiritual things, 
thus uses terms kindred to those that we ordinarily 
apply to sense perceptions, and applies them to 
spiritual cognitions and recognitions. 

When Professor Morse, the electrician, in the 
closing part of the session of Congress in 1842-3, 
sought aid to the extent of $30,000, to build the 
experimental line of telegraph between Baltimore 
and Washington, he had reached the last days of 
the session in apparently fruitless and hopeless 
endeavor, and was preparing for his return home. 
The committee appointed by Congress had met, 
and, after a morning s discussion, could reach no 
unanimous conclusion. During the recess, how 
ever, Mr. Morse had taken the chairman to a large 
room in the hotel, where a small telegraphic circuit 
was erected. Bidding him take a position at one 
end of the room, he himself went to the other, and 
for an hour the most satisfactory trial was made of 
the telegraph. And, when the committee re-as- 
* Exeter Hall Lectures, 1854-5. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 4 1 

sembled, the chairman said : " Gentlemen of the 
Committee When we adjourned this morning 
you were equally divided as to the expediency of 
recommending to Congress to make this appropri 
ation, and it fell to me to give the casting vote. 
I am now ready to give my emphatic decision in 
favor of the appropriation, for I have both sent 
and received messages across the wires ! " 

The wires are up between this world and the 
unseen ; and he who enters into his closet, and 
prays to the Father who is in secret, sends to the 
Throne of God the message of believing prayer, 
and gets back the answering message of a faithful 
God ! He can give his emphatic voice and vote 
for the reality of things unseen, for he has come 
into sympathetic, personal touch with God Him 
self. 

The oratory of the soul is also its observatory 
the place of observation and revelation ; and, if 
there were more constant and close fellowship with 
God, there would be more knowledge of God and 
more capacity for witness. Answered prayer is 
the open path that leads to knowledge of a prayer- 
hearing God. Obedience is both the organ of 
spiritual perception and the school of spiritual 
education ; for, " if any man will do his will, he 
shall know of the doctrine."* "To love God 
and keep His words, is to have the manifestation 
of God as it is impossible to the world." t It is 

* John vii. 17. f John xiv. 23. 



42 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

possible to walk with God and be in constant 
contact with Him. Our doubts, instead of being 
our glory, are our shame they come from mind 
ing earthly things, from living on a low level, and 
walking according to the course of this world. 

This witnessing, being thus based upon experi 
ment and experience, must therefore be confined to 
believers. 

Two words we have already found to be con 
spicuous in the Great Commission, "preach," 
and "witness." To preach is to proclaim as a 
herald ; to witness is to testify from personal knowl 
edge. The two widely and essentially differ, yet 
they complement each other. A herald is only 
the mouth of a message; a witness is the mouth of 
an experience. The public crier may announce or 
proclaim, for hire, tidings in which he feels no 
interest, and of the truth of which he has no knowl 
edge. But a witness can speak only what he 
knows and testify only what he has seen, heard, 
felt. He is a herald, indeed, and a herald of good- 
tidings, but he is more he is an example and 
proof of their verity and value. And therefore 
only a believer can be a witness. 

The Gospel ministry is not a learned profession 
into which men may go at their own option or at 
the beck of avarice or ambition. It is a divine 
vocation, to which men are called by the voice of 
an Indwelling Spirit, who qualifies them to bear 
witness for God, No man, however gifted or 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 43 

learned, is competent to preach, except so far as 
the truth he proclaims is the girdle which firmly 
and closely embraces his very vitals and holds in 
place all his other armor.* In countries where 
there is an Established Church, the danger always 
is that unconverted men will find their way into 
this sacred office, who, as Norman McLeod used 
to say, preach the truth truth which is the 
world s life and which stirs the angels, but too 
often as a telegraphic wire transmits the most 
momentous intelligence ; and who grasp that truth, 
only " as a sparrow grasps the wire by which the 
message is conveyed." Let this be engraven on our 
hearts : that no human being is prepared to pro 
claim the good tidings, unless, and except so far 
as, those tidings have become to him or to her the 
means of salvation and sanctification. If a man 
could combine in himself the intelligence of a 
cherub and the love of a seraph, he could not, 
even then, be a witness, if grace had not trans 
formed his own soul. 

Doubtless the angels would gladly have been 
the bearers of these good news. We are divinely 
told how they stand overawed before such a dis 
play of grace to sinners, and, as from the verge 
of some unfathomable abyss, gazed down into the 
depths of a love which they " desire to look into," 
but cannot explore. And, had they been entrusted 
with this message, on what joyful wings would 

* Ephes. vi. 14. 



44 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

their legions have swept round the world trump 
eting forth the blessed news ! It would not have 
been nineteen centuries before even one-third of 
the race had been practically reached with the 
Gospel. But there was one fatal deficiency in 
angelic preaching : 

" Never did angels taste above 
Redeeming Grace and dying Love ! " 

And so God crowds them back, and thrusts 
forward, into the coveted place, saved sinners. 
The poorest, humblest, most unlettered believer, 
who has known penitence and faith, can do a work 
for God to which Gabriel himself would be un 
equal. Thus only can we explain the fact that, 
while an angel hovers about the chariot of the 
inquiring Ethiopian,* he does not himself speak 
to the eunuch, but bids Philip approach and guide 
him ; and, even when the angel appears to Cor 
nelius and announces to him God s acceptance of 
his alms and his prayers, he is restrained from fur 
ther announcing to him the words of life and sal 
vation, and significantly says : " Send men to Joppa 
and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter ; 
he shall tell thee words whereby thott and thy house 
shall be saved." t 

How few believers appreciate this great truth, 
that while God is thus pressing upon them this 
solemn duty of preaching the Gospel, it is a/ra z- 

* Acts viii. 26. f Acts x. 1-5 ; xi. 13, 14. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 45 

lege so high and holy as to be coveted by angels ! 
An archangel himself could not preach the Gospel 
as you or I can. We can say, I was a lost sinner, 
but now by grace I am saved that, no angel of 
any rank in the whole hierarchy can say ; and, 
because God will have witnesses for His heralds, 
only believers are admitted to this privilege. 

But there is quite another side to this matter. 
If believing disciples are essential to witnessing 
for God, witnessing for God is not less essential to 
believing souls. In the Sermon on the Mount, 
our Lord "begins by a graphic portrait of a true 
disciple and immediately passes from character 
to influence, which He presents in two simple 
familiar figures : " Ye are the salt of the earth," 
" Ye are the light of the world." Salt that has no 
savor neither savors nor saves ; light that has no 
ray neither shines nor burns. In those very forms 
of figure our Lord is saying to us that a believer 
without a witness is worthless as savorless salt, or 
a rayless lamp. We must get beyond the con 
ception of service to God as a mere help to growth, 
it is a condition of life. Salt without saltness is 
no longer salt. A light without a ray is no longer 
a light. It is of the nature of the Christian life 
to witness, and, when there is no witness, is it too 
much to say, that, logically, there is no life? 

When we look abroad and see between thirty 
and forty millions of professed believers, the major 
part of whom impart no godly savor to season 



46 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

society, and bear no witness to the power of a 
saving Gospel to enlighten the world, it is only 
judging the tree by its fruit to say of such, 
"having a form of godliness, but denying the 
power thereof." We shall never reach the heart 
of the difficulty in our foreign missionary work 
until, by sharp, resolute, fearless thrusts of the 
sword of the Spirit, we reach the consciences of 
many professing Christians ; and dare to arouse 
them from a self-complacent apathy and lethargy 
by a bold application of the truth. We must dare 
to use God s own touchstone of piety. Down 
beneath outward ordinances and formalism thou 
sands of church members are living a life essentially 
ungodly and unregenerate. They are not " new 
creatures," in whom " old things have passed 
away, and all things have become new." There 
has never been a surrender to God ; the will is un 
subdued, the heart is unchanged, they are under 
the dominion of the flesh, the natural man, the 
carnal mind. Worldly amusements ensnare them 
because they have no relish for higher joys they 
are greedy of gain because they know nothing of 
the higher gain of counting all things loss for 
Christ. Their names are on church rolls, but are 
they on the Book of Life ? They cannot be 
depended on to work for God, or even to give, 
because their hearts are not right in His sight. 

Such words as these cannot be written or spoken 
without giving personal anguish to one who is 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 47 

compelled to utter such testimony. But let us 
remember Christ s own words : " If any man wil 
come after me, let him deny himself and take up 
his cross daily and follow me." Cross-bearing is 
the one condition and sign of discipleship. What 
is cross-bearing? In nothing, perhaps, has the 
tradition of men more made void the Word of God 
than in the common popular abuse of this phrase. 
We talk of " crosses," little and great. Every trial 
of our patience, every vexation of daily life, every 
thing that crosses our inclination, is a cross. We 
make crosses so common that we lose sight of that 
unique and sublimely solitary self-offering which 
our Lord meant to convey by the phrase. 

Let us notice that the word cross never in the 
Scripture occurs in the plural. There is but one 
cross : it is the cross of self-abnegation. To Christ 
the cross meant one thing, and nothing less : His 
sacrifice of Himself to save others. And that is 
what it must mean to every disciple. To take up 
the cross and bear it after Christ is to undertake, 
like the Master, a life of self-denial for the saving 
of others. It is to lose life and lose self for His 
sake. It is to be willing to die, if need be, that 
others may live. When our Lord hung upon the 
cross His enemies tauntingly said : " He saved 
others : Himself He cannot save." No sneer ever 
hid a truth so sublime. In the Christian life, 
saving self and saving others are utterly incom 
patible ; and the one great difficulty with the whole 



4 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

body of professed disciples is that most of them 
are trying to save themselves and yet be saved. 
And so it comes to pass that, while thousands go 
to church, come to the Lord s table, say their 
prayers, and bear the name of Christ, they live a 
life essentially worldly, are engaged in no soul- 
saving work, and have no relish for it ; they have 
no experience of the sweetness of a voluntary self- 
denial for His sake, and spend a thousand times 
as much on self-indulgence as they give to feed 
the hungry, clothe the naked, or even give the 
living bread to dying souls ! 

Consider what would be the immediate result, 
if every professed child of God could burn with 
Paul s passion for souls could know the " great 
heaviness and continual sorrow of heart " for the 
unsaved, that made it possible for him to wish 
himself accursed that they might be blessed ! 

That was cross-bearing ; he died daily, he was 
crucified with Christ, he bore the very marks, the 
OTi-yfiara, of the Lord Jesus. Could ten thousand, 
of the thirty or forty millions of professed Protest 
ant believers, burn with such a Christ-like passion 
for souls as that, for one year, the Gospel would 
within that year be carried round the globe ! 
But arguments and appeals are vain, while you 
argue with the deaf and appeal to the dead. 
Before the Church can " convert the world," the 
Church must be converted. The remedy for 
this widespread indifference must be radical. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 49 

The difficulty is not in unsanctified purses, or un- 
sanctified cradles ; it is deeper in unregenerate 
hearts. " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
If you have no witness for Christ, have you any 
thing to witness ? 

We strike here the very bottom of this divine 
philosophy of missions. We are to conceive such 
witnessing as a necessity to a truly saved soul. A 
light that does not shine, a spring that does not 
flow, a germ that does not grow, is not more an 
anomaly or a contradiction than a life in Christ 
which does not witness to Christ. " We cannot 
but speak the things which we have seen and 
heard," is the natural utterance of every believer 
whose eyes and whose ears have been opened to 
behold the charms and hear the voice of Jesus. 
He who has thirsted for God as the hart panteth 
after the water-brooks, who has known the gift of 
God, who has asked of Him and has drunk the 
living water, will find not only his satisfied soul 
thirsting no more, but he will find the water of life 
springing up within him, a living well. And, if 
there be a spring within, there will flow a stream 
without. " He that believeth on me, as the Script 
ure hath said, out of his inward being shall flow 
rivers of living water." If therefore there be no 
impulse outward, how can there be any life inward ? 
If there be no stream, is there any spring ? if no 
ray, is there any light? if no witness, is, there any 
experience? These are serious and searching 



50 THE DIVIXE ENTERPRISE. 

questions ; and, as Christlieb has hinted, that dis 
ciple who has no testimony for Christ, no spirit of 
missions, is rather himself the subject for Gospel 
conquest, presenting in himself a field for mission 
ary labor. He who has no passion to convert 
needs conversion. 

This is God s test of piety : " If any man have 
not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." If 
any one thing marks, above all else, the Spirit of 
Christ, it is the unselfishness of service. To seek 
even salvation, for its own sake alone, is utterly 
repugnant to the whole disposition of a thoroughly 
regenerate disciple who is recreated in the image 
of Jesus. 

In the Jem- McAuley Mission, in New York 
City, was a poor victim of drink and of vice who 
bore in his body the marks of his crimes. Nature 
herself resented his violation of her laws, and 
avenged herself in his person. He had become 
bowed and bent until he was a mere dwarf, and 
the very fibres and tissues of his throat had been 
eaten away until there was no palate, tonsils, or 
vocal chord, and he was without power of speech. 
When Christ found him, the grace that healed his 
soul bore help to his body, and, in course of time, 
the dwarf and cripple, like the woman with the 
spirit of infirmity that could in nowise lift up her 
self, was made straight and glorified God. And, 
though the lost vocal chords were never restored, 
this old man could not endure to be without his 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 51 

witness to restoring grace ; and, night after night, 
the assembled thieves and drunkards at 3 1 6 Water 
Street would behold him giving his testimony. He 
would first bend low and bow down, as if hope 
lessly crippled and crooked, and then raise himself 
to an erect posture, stretch himself to full length 
and lift his hands and eyes toward heaven, his 
face lit up with the radiance of inward peace ; and 
every beholder knew what all this meant. "The 
lame man leaped as a hart, and the tongue of the 
dumb " sang praise unto God. It was his witness 
in pantomime. If he could not testify to the ear, 
he must to the eye. The saved man was not 
content to have unsaved men go unwarned, and 
the saving power of God go unwitnessed. And 
the superintendent of that mission says that no 
audible testimony was more effective than that 
visible witness to Him who had lifted the cripple 
of sin into the erectness of a saved man. 

This word witness has in it a whole world of 
suggestion and inspiration touching the work of 
missions. It outlines, in one word, the great pur 
pose of our Lord in connecting His saints with His 
semce. In both Testaments it is one of the prom 
inent and dominant words. Around it the whole 
philosophy of missions crystallizes and the whole 
history of missions centralizes. 

The idea of such a witness to all men is sug 
gested in the Old Testament, like many other Old 
Testament truths a veiled revelation faintly seen 



52 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

and feebly grasped by Old Testament saints. It 
belongs to the gradual unfolding of that missionary 
idea, which may be traced like a silver rill back to 
its spring in that germinal promise that the seed of 
the woman should bruise the head of the serpent. 
In the New Testament the veil is withdrawn and 
the truth clearly revealed, but now it is the eyes of 
disciples themselves which are blinded ; even Peter 
slowly accepts the lesson thrice given him on the 
house-top at Joppa, that no man was to be called 
common whom God had cleansed. But in all 
ages, however dim the vision or revelation of this 
truth, witnessing to God has been the grand duty 
and privilege of disciples ; and from the martyr 
Abel until now every true believer has, by his life 
and death, witnessed to men the power of faith. 
This was the basis of apostolic succession and of 
prophetic succession yes, it lies beneath priestly 
and kingly succession as well. It is the golden 
thread which binds the ages together. God was 
the first, the original witness to Himself; then 
He committed that witness to prophets as He 
more and more withdrew Himself into the secret 
place ; then came the Last Seer, and prophets gave 
place to Him in whom all their witness terminated 
and culminated, the Lord Jesus Christ; then He 
became God s witness ; and, when He was received 
up into heaven, the Holy Spirit witnessed to Him, 
and qualified saved and sanctified disciples to bear 
witness, and so carry on the blessed succession 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 53 

until the end of the age, one chain of many links 
reaching from a Lost Eden to a Regained Para 
dise ! 

This is an " apostolic succession " indeed, in 
which the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the 
holy company of the apostles, the noble army 
of martyrs, Jesus Christ Himself, all take part, with 
.God the Father of all, in testimony to the truth. 
It may well be doubted whether he who bears no 
part in this testimony has any part in the salvation. 
Would that every reader might feel the full force 
of this paradox of missions : 

"Christ, alone, can save this world ; 
But Christ cannot save this world, alone." 

In the plan of God, every believer is a witness. 
In the wide field of the world, every disciple is 
needed as a workman. Without him, God cannot 
do this work, unless He abandons His plan ! The 
Church must be aroused to this great truth and 
fact, that both Christ and the world are waiting for 
disciples, as such, to become heralds of the Gos 
pel and witnesses to Christ ; that a few thousand 
missionaries, scattered through cities and states 
at home or empires abroad, can never overtake 
the awful destitution of a thousand million of souls 
who know not the Gospel. The only hope of the 
race is that, as in apostolic times, the whole 
Church shall become a body of evangelists, and 
every converted soul consider it a necessary part 



54 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of discipleship to witness to all men that Christ 
died for all. 

Christian missions originated with God. The 
commission of the Church is from Heaven, and 
can be wrought out, only as it was thought out, 
along the lines and within the limits drawn by a 
hand divine. Here there is no room for human 
invention or innovation : all such is interference 
and interruption to the plans of God. All human 
accretions forming about the pure thought and 
plan of God, like fungus growths and parasitic 
mosses about a tree, that both obscure its growth 
and endanger its life, need to be torn away that 
we may look again upon the plan of God in its 
bare simplicity. 

Our Lord s chosen definition of the work of His 
Church in this age, hangs on this same little word, 
witness : " This Gospel must first be preached as 
a witness among all nations ; * and then shall the 
end come." This was, first and last, His form of 
statement. The very terms used compel the in 
ference that not only is this work to be carried on 
to the very end of the age, as a limit, but that the 
end, as a consummation, somehow waits for this 
as a preparation and preliminary. This we believe 
and it is a mighty impulse to a world s evangeli 
zation that neither the complete salvation of the 
race of man nor of the Church of God can be 
reached until this condition is fulfilled. To you 
* Matt. xxiv. 14 ; eL^ fiaprupiov. 



THE THOUGHT OF MISSIONS. 55 

and me it belongs to " fill up that which is behind 
of the afflictions of Christ, in our flesh, for His 
body s sake, which is the Church " and so com 
plete, by our own travail, the travail of His soul ! 

The Gospel witness, that is thus simple in char 
acter and universal in obligation, natural and nec 
essary to a new-born soul, essential to the plan of 
God, experimental, and therefore effectual, is de 
signed to be also perpetual. 

If the Book of the Acts be carefully examined 
it will be seen to be the one incomplete book of the 
Bible. At the beginning we read " The former 
treatise " " of all that Jesus began both to do and 
teach, until the day in which He was taken up." 
These words, " former," " began," " until," imply 
something going before in the Gospel narrative, and 
imply that, in the book which follows, the writer 
is to give us the latter treatise of all that Jesus 
continued to do and teach by the Holy Ghost, after 
that He was taken up. And so the Book of the 
Acts implies something going before it. 

If we turn to the close of the book, we observe 
equally plain signs of something to come after. 
" And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired 
house, and received all that came in unto him, 
preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those 
things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with 
all confidence, no man forbidding him." The 
Gospel according to Matthew ends with a manifest 
conclusion, that leaves nothing to be added ; the 



5 6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Apocalypse ends with a special injunction, for 
bidding any addition or subtraction ; but here the 
curtain simply falls on Paul, teaching and preach 
ing, without even bringing to a close the scene in 
which he last appears. And the reason is because 
this book is the Book of a Witnessing Church, and 
that book never will be closed until that witness 
is also concluded : until the Gospel is borne to the 
uttermost parts of the earth and the last witness 
has been uttered, and believed or rejected. 

Any one of us, any believer to the end of the 
age, may write his own name where Paul s now 
stands and fill out the record with his own witness 
for Christ. Or, if he be too humble in his own 
esteem to venture on a record, there is Another 
who, while he is living and working for his Master, 
is writing a new chapter to record how he also 
passed the years teaching and testifying of Christ 
and of the grace of God. 

When the Bishop of Ripon read that narrative 
of John Williams labors in the South Seas, he laid 
it down, exclaiming, " There is the Twenty-ninth 
chapter in the Acts of the Apostles ! " Every be 
liever has only to take his place among God s wit 
nesses, and in his generation to testify to all men 
the Gospel of His grace, to be admitted to a place in 
the holy company of the apostles, and have his name 
and life history recorded in that unwritten sequel of 
the Acts, which is to be read before an assembled 
universe in the Day when the Books are opened ! 




II. 

THE DIVINE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 

HEN, on the site of Byzantium, Constan- 
tine, in the year 328 A.D., was himself, 
in person, marking out the boundary 
line for the proposed city of Constantinople ; and 
when his attention was called to the vast extent 
of the area he was enclosing, and the improbability 
that the City of the Caesars would ever occupy it, 
he calmly answered : "/ am following Him who 
is leading me." 

The Church has attempted a gigantic task, in 
extending and enlarging the place of her tent and 
stretching her canopy over a world-wide area. 
The work is so stupendous that it has inclined 
some to remonstrate, and even to ridicule. But, 
be it ever remembered, that in so doing we are 
" following Him who is leading " us. It is He 
who has bidden us " Lengthen our cords and 
strengthen our stakes." No task can be too 
colossal in magnitude if He plans it and entrusts 
to us the execution of what is really His plan. 
And here is the threefold dependence of His ser 
vants : the plan, the promise, and the providence 
of God. 



58 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

The idea, or thought of God in missions, as we 
have already seen, is this : a Gospel message, re 
ceived by faith in the heart, and proclaimed, by 
the mouth of every believer, in the ear of every 
other human being. 

The Plan of God is akin to His Thought; but 
though closely related to it, not identical with it. 
The English word "plan" from the latin planus, 
flat originally refers to a representation of any 
object or conception drawn upon a flat surface, 
like the map of a country, or the plan of a build 
ing. We can all readily distinguish, in our own 
minds, between the conception of a cathedral, as 
it lay in the brain of Brunelleschi, and the draught 
of Santa Maria s Cupola, as put upon paper. 
Now God has an idea of missions: He projects 
His thought upon the pages of His Word, and still 
more clearly defines it by the pencil of History. 
His idea and ideal become real in the practical 
plane of action ; and that is His Plan. 

The importance of studying and understanding 
His plan cannot be overestimated. The late 
Prince Albert said no wiser word to the younger 
men of his generation than this: "Find out the 
plan of God in your day ; and then beware that 
you do not cross it, but fall into your own place 
in that plan." Sydney Smith expressed the same 
thought in his quaint way, when he compared men 
to pegs, and their spheres of service to the holes 
into which the pegs must be fitted. 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 59 

Nothing perhaps is more fundamental to a truly 
serviceable life than to know what God s plan is, 
and knowing it, come into right relations to it. 
When His mind guides, no mistake is possible ; no 
failure is conceivable, when His will controls. 
Faber writes truly : 

" He always wins who sides with God, 
To Him no chance is lost." 

To God s chariots two celestial chargers are 
yoked : Omniscience and Omnipotence ; the rim 
of those chariot wheels is so high that it is dread 
ful, and full of eyes before and behind. To set 
oneself against God s purpose is to be trampled in 
pieces under the feet of those steeds, and ground 
to powder beneath those wheels ; but it is no less 
certain that, to work for and with God is to be 
borne along irresistibly toward the goal of con 
summate victory and final glory ! 

There are two ways of finding out God s plan, 
and they are to be pursued along parallel lines. 
One is to study His Word, and the other, to study 
His work; on the one hand to search the Script 
ures, and on the other, to watch that march of 
God in history which is His preceptive teaching 
wrought into the form of acts and facts. We say 
these two methods should be pursued side by side, 
for they mutually complement and correct each 
other, or, rather, our understanding of both. 

In addition to these, we need also, and above 



60 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

all, a receptive mind. There must be a clear-seeing 
eye, otherwise in vain is the plainest handwriting 
of God on the pages of the Word or on the walls 
of the ages. The " natural man " does not receive 
the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he 
know them, for they are spiritually discerned ; the 
" carnal mind is enmity against God, not subject 
to His law, neither indeed can be " : so far there 
fore as we search the Scripture with the natural 
mind only, we shall not see His plan ; and, so far 
as we approach it with the carnal mind only, we 
shall not obey, even if we perceive, His will. 

Scripture and history are the two books of 
God on missions, and each throws light upon the 
pages of the other ; but one may read both and 
still be as blind to their real meaning as is the 
Jew, who reads the prophecy of Messiah without 
seeing in it the forecast of history, and reads the 
history of Messiah without finding in it the fulfil 
ment of the prophecy ! 

To come to the study of God s plan of missions 
with the merely natural eye as the organ of vision, 
or the merely carnal mind as the organ of knowl 
edge, is to see double, if at all. Either the plan 
of missions, as seen in the Word, will be modified 
and distorted by our defective vision, or it will 
seem to be in conflict with that same plan, as un 
folded and developed in history. We shall either 
start with wrong conceptions and so misinterpret 
history ; or we shall start with correct ideas and 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 61 

then, misreading history, wander in a maze of 
confusion and perplexity, misled by the apparent 
failure of history to realize the ideal. 

We may therefore lay it down as an axiom that 
any supposed plan of God in missions which is 
not scriptural, cannot be really historic; nor can 
that be really historic which is not scriptural. In 
other words, the true plan of God must be read 
by these two guides. If we get the right focal 
centre, it will be seen that, like the twin pictures 
in the stereoscope, they harmoniously blend : if 
they do not, the fault is not in their disagreement, 
but in our seeing. 

The writer may be permitted to address the 
reader personally and familiarly. He wishes to 
be honest with God, his readers, and himself. 
For many years he confesses that he could not 
bring into apparent agreement the promises and 
prophecies of God s Word as to missions, and the 
providence of God in human history. From the 
lofty summits of Holy Scripture there was an in 
spiring outlook, a prophetic prospect, which lost 
all its reality, if not its romance, when one de 
scended to the lower level of actual fact, as the 
purple mantle and the golden veil of the mountain 
lose their soft enchantment as we come near 
enough to see and touch the bare, bleak, rugged 
crags of rock. There was an instinctive conscious 
ness that the conflict was only apparent, that the 
difficulty lay in my own vision: either I read 



62 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE: 

Scripture wrongly or I read history wrongly, or 
both. 

There was but one way out of the maze of per 
plexity : to retrace steps already taken and begin 
anew, to lay aside as far as possible all bias, 
whether of prepossession or prejudice, and, in a 
prayerful spirit, humbly, like a little child, seek 
open, unveiled eyes * wherewith to read the Word 
and will of God. The results are now, in brief, 
to be laid before the readers of these pages. Is it 
too much again to ask that, before pronouncing 
hasty judgment, the indulgent reader will under 
take to get at the truth in the same spirit ? 

Looking first at God s Word, one book in the 
Bible seems entitled to a special rank as God s 
own commentary on missions. The Acts of the 
Apostles is the Missionary Encyclopedia of the Ages. 
Here, if anywhere, will be found in full, both the 
Divine idea and the Divine plan. 

This book opens with the repetition of the Great 
Commission, and the prediction of the Great 
Anointing. It briefly outlines the whole scheme 
of missions, as Giotto drew a perfect circle at one 
stroke : " Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in 
Jerusalem and in all Judea; and in Samaria, and 
unto the uttermost part of the earth." t Then it 
proceeds to trace the history of the witnessing 
Church, through the first age the lifetime of one 
generation showing how God went before to 
* Ps. cxix. 18. \ Acts i. 8. 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 63 

open doors of access wide and effectual, and how 
the Church, following His lead, gave her witness, 
in the exact order which our Lord had indicated 
in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria ; then in the 
uttermost part of the earth, Rome, Greece, and 
the regions beyond. 

Surely this is no accident. The New Testa 
ment opens with four Gospel narratives, all of 
which end with the great commission, presented 
in four various aspects, like a building viewed 
from as many sides. Then immediately follows 
this fifth book, in which God s leadership of His 
witnessing Church by His providence and grace, 
during one entire generation, serves this double 
end : first, it stands as a permanent illustration of 
His purpose, and of the duty of every successive 
generation of believers toward those who at the 
same time live on the earth ; and, secondly, it fur 
nishes us a practical example of the general results 
which we are to expect to follow faithful witness. 
In one word, this book is the typical history of 
the first age of missions ; and a key to all future 
ages of Church history. 

The Queen of Sheba came to King Solomon, 
" to prove him with hard questions, and there was 
not one thing hid from her which he told her not." * 
Here, in this book of the Acts, is the perpetual 
audience-chamber of the Prince of Peace. No 
perplexity or difficulty has ever arisen, or will ever 

* I. Kings x. 1-3. 



64 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

arise, in the missionary work of the Church, for 
which there is not here an adequate answer and 
solution. We shall therefore reverently inquire, 
first of all, at this Holy Oracle ; and, possibly, 
even in this closing decade of the nineteenth cent 
ury, the Church may find something yet to be 
learned as to the true methods and principles of 
missions. 

Seven grand features are here plainly marked in 
God s plan: the ruling idea and word is still, 
WITNESS, but this witnessing is qualified by certain 
definitions and limitations : 

I. Its Purpose : the evangelization of the world. 

II. Its Result: the out-gathering of an elect 
Church. 

III. Its Order : to the Jew first and then to the 
Gentile. 

IV. Its Scope : a whole Church, witnessing to 
a whole world. 

V. Its Method : a division of the field, and a 
distribution of the force. 

VI. Its Stress : service rendered to the existing 
generation. 

VII. Its Power: essentially superhuman and 
supernatural. 

Within these seven landmarks will be found 
comprised the whole duty of the Church, with all 
those details which serve for her complete guidance 
in carrying out the great commission. 

These seven features it is our design, in course 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 65 

of these chapters, to survey. One of them, the 
duty of the whole Church to witness to the whole 
world, has been already touched upon in the pre 
vious pages, and others will naturally be considered 
later on. But, just now, we may confine ourselves 
to one great question : What is the purpose which 
God has in view, and what are the results therefore 
which we are .warranted in expecting ? 

This question we seek to answer in the double 
light of the Scripture and of history. We find it 
to be God s declared purpose to have the Gospel 
preached throughout the world, and thereby to 
gather out from the world a believing people, the 
Church or Bride of Christ. If this be so, then our 
true aim is divinely defined, and our reasonable 
hope is suggested, which need not be disappointed. 

Our Lord Himself defines the bounds of our 
work : First of all, the purpose of this world-wide 
witnessing is a world s evangelization. 

It behoves us carefully to notice our instruc 
tions, for they not only define our duty, but they 
limit our responsibility. In some matters absolute 
accuracy is indispensable ; as, for example, in as 
tronomical calculations. A soldier studies his 
orders, as an ambassador his instructions, mi 
nutely ; and, in this work of missions, we who are 
both soldiers and ambassadors need clear concep 
tions of the orders and instructions of our King. 

If we closely examine the entire commission 
entrusted to the Church by our Lord, we shall be 



66 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

struck by the peculiar words which he used. 
" Go ye," " preach the Gospel," " make disciples," 
" witness " ; there is another word, properly trans 
lated " teach" but that evidently refers to an after- 
training of those who have been first evangelized 
and made disciples. No unbiased reader can 
examine the body of instructions, given to the 
early Church by the Lord Himself, without observ 
ing that, first of all, He meant that there should 
be a simple heralding of good tidings, accompanied 
by personal witness to their truth and power, and 
a consequent making of disciples ; and, then, that 
these converts should be gathered into churches, 
baptized, and further trained in fuller knowledge 
of divine truth and preparation for service. 

To confound preaching and teaching, evangeli 
zation and indoctrination, is a mistake that is 
fundamental and initial. The didactic process is 
secondary and subordinate. Men are asleep 
dead in sin : they must be aroused, awakened, 
quickened. When a house is on fire, a ship is on 
a rock, a pestilence is raging, or an avalanche is 
falling, one does not wait to give minute instruc 
tions, but peals out the trumpet note, " Escape 
for thy life ! " So our Lord saw this world, lying 
in sin, and its millions going down to the death 
of the grave and the second death of hell with 
fearful rapidity ; and He urged a correspondingly 
rapid proclamation of the Gospel. He urged on 
His heralds He bade them not wait for others to 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 67 

come to them, but "go " to every creature sweep 
round the globe and trumpet forth the warning 
and the invitation until " every creature " shall 
have heard. 

Nor are we anywhere taught to wait for results. 
These we cannot command or control. Noah, 
the ancient preacher of righteousness, preached 
for a century preached an illustrated sermon, in 
which the Ark was his grand object lesson, and 
every hammer s blow punctuated and emphasized 
his appeal ; yet he made not one convert, and 
was compelled to see the whole world of the un 
godly sink, lost in the angry flood of wrath. 
Isaiah, the Messianic minstrel, sung in twenty- 
seven chapters the epic and lyric of the suffering 
Saviour ; yet he cried, " Lord, who hath believed 
our report, and to whom hath the arm of the Lord 
been revealed ! " And the Son of God Himself, 
who spake as never man spake, and wrought as 
never man wrought, found His words of grace used 
as traps and snares for His feet, and His works of 
love attributed to the agency of the devil. The 
disciple is not above his Master nor the servant 
above his Lord ; and there has not been one 
preacher of Christ in all the ages whose witness 
has not been met by more rejectors than believers. 
We are both to look for and pray for results, but 
we are not to gauge our fidelity or our success, or 
our Master s approval by the number of converts ; 
nor is the herald to wait in any one field until 



68 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

conversion has done its work, before he goes to 
the regions beyond. The danger is common to 
all; Death and Hell are mounted on their awful 
steeds, and are hotly pursuing the whole host of 
mankind : if those whom we warn will not hear 
and heed, perhaps others will; and, in any case, 
we owe to all the same privilege and opportunity 
of hearing and heeding. With all possible haste 
should the Church push her heralds on to the very 
limits of the globe. Without an hour s delay, for 
any cause, on any pretext, save only to receive 
power from above, should we who believe urge 
on this holy crusade for God until every living 
soul has heard of Christ. This Gospel of the 
Kingdom must first be preached among all nations 
as a witness and " then shall the end come." 
Whether these words refer to the end of the Jewish 
age, in the destruction of Jerusalem, or to the end 
of the Gospel age, in the second advent of the Son 
of Man, or to both, there is here indicated a vital 
relation which the general proclamation of the 
Gospel bears to the consummation of God s plan. 
He is working toward an end, and that end is con 
ditioned upon this world-wide evangelism. God 
told Lot that He could not do anything in judg 
ment upon Sodom until he should come to Zoar. 
The announcement of the Gospel, among all 
nations and to every creature, is the Zoar to 
which the Church of God must come, before 
those grand events move to their consummation 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 69 

which at once bring judgment to sinners and sal 
vation to saints. 

Notwithstanding the fact that " preaching the 
Gospel as a witness " is our Lord s own chosen 
definition of the work to be done, this phrase has 
met vigorous and violent opposition, and been 
pelted with the blows of ridicule as the sum of all 
absurdities. And yet, from first to last, this is 
His form of statement, alike before His death and 
on the eve of His ascension.* 

Is " witnessing," then, so superficial, artificial a 
process, that we are to picture to ourselves some 
flying courier, galloping on horseback through 
village after village, announcing the good news, 
and then hastening away, elsewhere ? To bear 
testimony unto all nations is no such short, hasty, 
inadequate proclamation of the Gospel message. 
However important the mere work of the herald, 
other forms of testimony are needful to confirm, 
corroborate, establish this witness. The conver 
sion of souls, which witnesses that this Gospel is 
the power of God unto salvation ; the out-gathering 
of converts from the world and their in-gathering 
into the Church, which witnesses both against the 
world, by separation, and unto God, by consecra 
tion ; the erection of the Christian home, which 
witnesses to what Christ can do, not for man only, 
but for woman and children, making the wife 
man s equal companion, instead of his slave and 

* Matt. xxiv. 14 ; Acts i. 8. 



7 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

victim, and the mother the radiant centre of a 
happy household ; the setting up of Christian 
school, college, printing press and medical mission 
these trees of life whose fruit is food and whose 
leaves are healing ; the whole array of Christian 
institutions which are the peculiar product of the 
faith which works by love all these belong to 
that "witness" for Christ which helps one to 
judge whether indeed " He is able to save to the 
uttermost all who come unto God by Him." This 
is the testimony which vindicates His claim to 
universal homage and world-wide dominion. We 
believe the work of witnessing in all the world will 
not be complete until, in every nation, the contrast 
between the teaching and practice of the true 
faith and of all false faiths shall thus be made to 
appear, somewhat as the Kho-Thah-Byu Memorial 
Hall in Burmah confronts the Schway Mote Tau 
Pagoda on an opposing hill, a witness to Christ 
that boldly faces and challenges that forsaken 
fane of idolatry, as though to assert and maintain 
the Supreme right of Jesus to worship and service. 
We are not jealous for any human theory, nor 
are we warring about words. But something is 
wrong. Our Lord, more than eighteen and a half 
centuries ago, urged an immediate and world-wide 
proclamation of the Gospel to every creature ; 
and yet, in this closing decade of this nineteenth 
century, at least one-half of the population of this 
globe remain as entirely strangers even to the fact 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 71 

that Jesus died for them, as though they were 
inhabitants of another planet ! We have been 
going about this work leisurely we have gone to 
nations here and there, set up the cross as a rally 
ing point, sought to convert the nations and 
subdue whole empires for Christ. We have waited 
to complete this work, while the regions beyond 
have remained in the unbroken shadow of death. 
All this seems, in some respects, directly opposed 
to our Lord s orders. 

Often as we hear in these days of the " conver 
sion of nations," and the " convention of the 
world," we shall in vain seek any Scriptural war 
rant for such phrases or such hopes. More than 
this, we need not be left either to doubt or 
conjecture, for God has revealed His purpose 
concerning His kingdom. It is to grow, not by 
assimilation and incorporation of worldly elements, 
but by their separation and displacement. That 
was an all-comprehensive saying of our Lord to 
Pilate : " My kingdom is not of this world." It 
is not to be built of earthly materials, sustained 
by human patronage, defended by worldly power, 
extended by carnal weapons. The strongholds 
of Satan are to be captured, not that they may be 
converted into the fortresses of faith, but that they 
may be " cast down and destroyed." 

Let us understand this sublime truth : God 
disdains to use for His holy ends even the " high 
towers, that exalt themselves against the knowl- 



72 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

edge of Christ." The turrets of an insolent and 
blasphemous infidelity or a defiant idolatry are 
never to be turned into spires for God s cathedral 
of the ages. Those who imagine that this world 
is to be gradually assimilated to God, until what is 
now earthly and carnal society shall be embodied 
in the Christian state, should carefully study, for 
example, the second chapter of Daniel. The 
image which Nebuchadnezzar beheld is the object 
lesson from which we are to learn out of what 
material God will build His kingdom which shall 
have no end. That head of massive gold sur 
mounted arms and breast of silver, belly and thighs 
of brass, and feet of iron and clay. A stone, cut 
out the mountain without hands, smites the image 
of world-empire upon its brittle feet ; then that 
stone moves and grinds like a millstone, and, with 
resistless force and weight, it crumbles and crushes 
that entire image into powder. Mark the emphasis 
of detail : " then was the iron, the clay, the brass, 
the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together 
and became like the chaff of the summer threshing- 
floors ; and the wind carried them away, that no 
place was found for them: and the stone that 
smote the image became a great mountain and 
filled the whole earth ! " * 

Words could not teach more plainly these two 
truths: first, that all these world kingdoms are 
alike doomed to fall; for that Kingdom "shall 

* Daniel ii. 35. 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 73 

break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms " ; 
and secondly, that God shall alike reject the clay, 
the iron, the brass, and even the silver and the 
gold ; they are to be broken in pieces together and 
swept away as worthless chaff before the wind. 
From worst to best, this material offers nothing 
worthy to enter into the composition of that Eter 
nal Kingdom, just as our flesh and blood, however 
comparatively fair and faultelss, cannot enter into 
the structure of that resurrection body, which is 
of the nature of the kingdom of heaven. 

King Solomon s " drinking vessels, and all the 
vessels of the House of the Forest of Lebanon, 
were of pure gold none were of silver ; for silver 
was nothing accounted of in the days of Solo 
mon." * In the imperial splendor of his revenue 
and riches, " he made silver to be in Jerusalem as 
stones for abundance " ; and he disdained to use 
such common metal even for his vessels, as the 
Phoenician sailors are said to have found silver in 
such plenty in Spain that they made their anchors 
and common implements of it. This was a type 
of greater things to come, when the Prince of 
Peace sets up His kingdom, and when even gold 
shall be only as the paving of streets. Everything 
is to be on a scale of such celestial magnificence 
and munificence, that no earthly material, however 
choice, shall be worthy to enter into that structure. 
The New Jerusalem is not to be made out of this 

* I. Kings x. 21-27. 



74 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

world s best elements ; but " let down out of heaven 
from my God " and only colossal pearls can 
represent its gates, and precious stones, burning 
with imprisoned fire, its walls. 

When God sets up His kingdom, it is "a stone 
cut out without hands " and growing of itself ; 
instead of combination we have comminution; for, 
in comparision with the elements out of which that 
imperial state is to be built, the best this world can 
offer is but chaff. 

Must we not reconstruct our conception of the 
kingdom which is to come ? When God sets up 
His kingdom in a human heart, it is by no recon 
struction of the old man, but by the introduction 
of the " new man which after God is created in 
righteousness and true holiness " ; and the growth 
of the new crowds out the old, somewhat as the 
farmer, by the patient culture of grain, displaces 
weeds and thistles. " If any man be in Christ he 
is a new creation : old things are passed away ; all 
things are become new." He learns the expansive, 
expulsive, explosive power of a new affection, that 
drives out every lower love or lust. So when 
God s kingdom fills this earth, evil will be over 
come with good. 

We lay stress on this, simply to maintain a 
Scriptural principle. So long as we labor or hope 
for a Christianizing and spiritualizing of the king 
doms of this world, our work is in vain and our 
hope is without fruition. Whatever assimilation 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 75 

there may be, it is external, superficial, deceptive ; 
it will never become transformation. That very 
closeness of contact between the Church and the 
world, by which the Church seeks to penetrate and 
permeate the world with godliness, endangers the 
Church-life, while seeking to transform the world- 
life. The mystery of endosmosis and exosmosis 
reappears in the spiritual realm. Currents flow both 
ways : the Church does permeate the world and 
make it more churchly, and outwardly, perhaps, 
more godly ; but, by the same intimate contact, the 
world permeates the Church, and makes it more 
worldly and even ungodly, till neither remains 
what it was and still would be in separation. In 
stead of what is decidedly " hot " and decidedly 
" cold," there is what is " neither hot nor cold, but 
lukewarm " and it is that which God hates. "/ 
would thou wert cold or hot . " 

The law of SEPARATION is written, as in huge 
capitals, all over the Word of God, inscribed as in 
flaming letters upon the altars of tabernacle and 
temple, typified in the separation of clean and 
unclean in the Levitical law,* and then whispered 
from Calvary with a still small voice as impressively 
and imperatively as when thundered from Sinai s 
summit : " Come out from among them and be ye 
separate, and touch not the unclean," etc. 

The stress of God s own Word upon separation 
impresses us as heavier, according as we ourselves 

* Levit. xx. 24-26; II. Cor. vi. 17. 



7 6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

become more imbued with the spirit of Scripture 
and the mind of Christ. The Church runs no risk 
to-day, whether in the sphere of holy living or of 
mission work, so great as that found in the un- 
scriptural notion that the world is to be won by 
courting it; that the severe standard of godliness 
is to be let down lower, that so worldly souls may 
the more easily step over into the Church. In 
this there has been alarming success, and the 
success is itself awful disaster. Our churches are 
largely made up of two classes, the wholly worldly 
and the worldly holy. The notions and maxims, 
treasures and pleasures, pursuits and policy nay, 
the very spirit of the world have found in the 
sanctuary of God their shrine and throne. Men 
who do not even confess Christ as Saviour and 
Lord, sit upon boards of trustees, and control the 
affairs of God s House. Godless musicians preside 
at the key-board of the instrument whose melodies 
and harmonies should accord with the harps and 
lutes of glorified saints and angels ; star singers 
from the opera are hired to displace the praise of 
the people of God by a concert display of a few 
artists. The ministry is degraded from a divine 
vocation to a learned profession, whose requisite 
is culture, and whose perquisite is whatever price 
it can command. Churches rival each other in 
garniture and furniture, costly architecture, and 
often costlier debts and mortgages ; the cross be 
comes the badge of a religious club whose exclu- 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 77 

sive, expensive privileges demand an elect, select 
membership. Pure, simple Gospel preaching gives 
way to intellectual essays, poetic effusions, moral 
lectures, or political harangues ; while prayer-meet 
ings languish or are turned into entertaining talks 
or church " conversazioni." 

The result is that missionary effort either ceases, 
or begets missionary converts on a level with the 
home churches. And if, in such churches, there 
be no flaming zeal for evangelism, it is neither 
strange nor to be much lamented, since it is doubt 
ful whether such a type of piety has much diffusive 
tendency, or whether it is even desirable exten 
sively to diffuse such a type of piety, even if we 
could. The higher the type of piety maintained 
by Christian disciples, the more rapid will be its 
diffusion and the more will such diffusion be an 
extension of the Kingdom of God, and not of a 
secularized Christianity. 

When we hear so much about "converting na 
tions" the careful student of Scripture cannot but 
ask, Do the Scriptures warrant any such hope? 
What is a nation but an aggregation of individuals 
under one government? It has no corporate 
existence or personality no mind to be convinced, 
no heait to be renewed, no conscience to be 
aroused, no will to be subjected. How any "na 
tion " can be Christianized, apart from the individ 
uals composing it, it is hard to see. But if, as 
such, a nation, by public official act, accepts 



7 8 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Christianity, acknowledges the Bible as the law 
of the land, the Sabbath as a sacred day of rest, 
protects public worship, and even establishes the 
Church as national, while some advantages may 
follow, is there not a peril involved, far greater 
than any danger from open opposition or malignant 
persecution ? 

How soon and how surely the form of godliness 
takes the place of the power / Political preferment 
beckons worldly men into the Church. To be a 
disciple comes to be in the fashion ; it is the way 
of the majority, which is always fraught with risk. 
The law of self-denial gives place to the habit of 
self-indulgence. Piety is the best policy, and 
heavenly principles are weighed in the brazen 
scales of earthly expediency. We dare to say 
that, through the whole Christian era, no nation 
has ever, as such, become nominally Christian, 
without introducing into the Church marked, mani 
fest, and rapid spiritual decline. And this fact is 
both so conspicuous and so significant that we 
need only to adduce a few historical examples, for 
the sake of the lesson which they teach us as to 
modern missions. 

When Paul sent from Rome the salutations of 
the saints, "Chiefly those of Cesar s household" he 
did not know that, in that greeting, a shadow, no 
larger than a man s hand, appeared on the horizon 
of Church life that was soon to overspread with 
dense clouds the whole heaven. Three centuries 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 79 

passed by, and in the year 310 A.D., the head of 
Caesar s household, himself, in camp near Mentz, 
claimed to see a flaming cross in the sky, with the 
motto : ev TOVTOJ, vma \ and thenceforth, on the 
shields of Roman soldiers and the banners of the 
Empire, that symbol shone. 

To the early Church the red hand of persecution 
brought no calamity comparable with the so-called 
" Christianizing of the Roman Empire." The 
bloody cross of the Ten Persecutions was infinitely 
more a blessing than the golden cross of Royal 
Patronage. 

The disciples of Christ found via Crucis, the 
way of self-sacrifice, changed to ria Lucis, the 
way of self-indulgence ; and ria Dolorosa, where 
they bore the cross after Jesus, changed to via 
Gloriosa, where they wore a crown with an earthly 
sovereign. To confess Christ was now to bid for 
place and power ; the millennium had come ; in 
the person of Constantine, the King of kings had 
mounted the throne of the world, and in the new 
capital, on the shores of the Bosphorus, was the 
realization of the New Jerusalem ! No more the 
little assembly of disciples, with doors closed 
against the world, but with Jesus within ; no more 
the Church of the Catacombs, hiding from pur 
suing foes in the bowels of earth ; no more a band 
of pilgrims, strangers, sojourners, taking joyfully 
the spoiling of their goods for the sake of that 
better country with their enduring substance ! 



00 THE DIVIXE ENTERPRISE. 

Henceforth, a court whose splendor outshone 
those of Oriental princes ; a hierarchy of officials 
which to this day remains the model of the most 
extravagant, elaborate, and voluptuous courts of 
Europe. To Constantine are traced the very titles, 
which in these modern skies of empire shine thick 
as stars " excellency," " right honorable," " seren 
ity," " duke," " count," " viscount." Enormous 
outlay, vast standing armies, gorgeous temples and 
elaborate ritual, became the features of the Chris 
tian State. To this day the Church of Christ has 
never recovered from that deadly blow at her very 
life ! A nation was converted indeed, but the 
Church was perverted. Petrifaction the loss of 
godly sensibility, and putrifaction the loss of 
godly savor, now marked the so-called " Body of 
Christ." The Roman Empire was transformed 
into a Christian state, but the true Republic of 
God, the Commonwealth of Christ, was deformed, 
and, not until a thousand years after, was it re 
formed. 

See how history is a commentary on the Word 
of God. Mark how He, whose hand is behind 
the shifting scenery of the drama of the ages, is 
teaching us what peril there is in the close alliance, 
or even contact, between His kingdom and the 
kingdoms of this world. To turn the household of 
God into the Court of Empire, means to exchange, 
for the Bride of Christ, leaning on her Beloved, 
the Scarlet Woman, seated on the beast and from 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 81 

him deriving power and authority ! The conver 
sion of a nation seems a goal of hope toward which 
the passionate ardor of faith reaches ; it is in fact 
an illusive vision, a dream of a misguided fancy, 
that draws the Church away from her simple work 
of witnessing, to follow a deceptive and even 
dangerous expectation. 

Modern history furnishes another example of the 
" conversion of a nation." On March 31, 1820, 
the brig Thaddeus anchored off Hawaii, with the 
first missionaries of the American Board. God 
had gone before them, and, instead of a long, hard 
fight with the bloody altars and human sacrifices 
of Paganism, they found that superstition had 
already struck down her own idols, and abolished 
the Tabu and priesthood throughout the islands.* 
Ten months before, Kamehameha I. had died ; 
and, strange to say, he forbade human sacrifices, 
whether, during his illness, for his recovery, or, 
after his death, in his honor ; and thus, before the 
missionaries landed, a professed idolater had dealt 
the first blow at idolatry. The High Priest, resign 
ing his office, first applied the torch to the fanes 
of a pagan faith. Idols came under the ban of 
law and temples were reduced to ashes. For the 
first time in history, a nation had flung away a false 
faith without a new one to replace it, and was 
without a religion. The first convert was the 
king s mother, Keopuolani, and, at the close of 

* Anderson. Hawaiian Is. p. 49. 



82 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

1825, Kaahumanu, the Regent, and nine chiefs, 
became members of the Church of Christ, after 
ward dying in the faith. Within six years after 
the missionaries landed, schools covered the islands, 
with 400 teachers and 25,000 pupils. 

As early as 1825, the Spirit of God moved 
powerfully on the hearts of the Hawaiians. 
About fifty families in Lahaina began to pray, and 
the number grew. Inquirers, and then converts, 
flocked like doves to the churches ; and, in ten 
years more, the American Board thought the 
beginning of the end of its missionary work in the 
Hawaiian Islands had been reached. 

To completely Christianize this group of islands, 
they here largely concentrated their working force, 
sending in 1836 thirty-two additional laborers. 
Scarcely had these new laborers come, when a 
tidal wave of revival swept over the islands and 
bore away on its crest all remaining traces of idols 
and their fanes. Three years more, and the Word 
of God was given to the people in their own 
tongue ; another three years and the professing 
disciples numbered 20,000. Mr. Coan, alone, 
admitted 5,000 in one year, and 1,700 in one day. 
And in 1863, less than fifty years after these labors 
began in the Pacific, the Hawaiian churches took 
their place among self-governing, self-supporting, 
and self-propagating churches of Christendom. 
The marvels of the Apostolic age seemed to have 
been reproduced after a lapse of eighteen centuries. 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 83 

This nation, thus Christianized within half a 
century, was boldly held up before the Church as 
a "glorious exemplification and proof of the power 
of the Gospel in missions, for the encouragement 
of the Church of God in its efforts for the con 
version of the world." * 

That the work here done was, and still is, one 
of the most marvellous triumphs of the Gospel in 
all modern times, the writer of these pages would 
be the last to deny : but here stands another warn 
ing to us of the illusiveness and deceptiveness of 
any hope of converting nations or converting the 
world, within the bounds of this Gospel age. If 
we trace the subsequent history of the Sandwich 
Islands, we shall find the story of the Christianized 
Empire of the Caesars, repeated on a minor scale, 
but teaching the same lesson. 

Rev. James Bicknell and others have been con 
strained to publish tracts, revealing the present low 
condition of religious life on the Hawaiian Group ; 
and, in crossing the Atlantic in 1888, the writer 
came into contact with an intelligent and prominent 
Christian gentleman, residing on the islands, who 
more than confirmed Mr. Bicknell s statements. 
He reluctantly conceded the existence of the Hoo- 
manamana idolatry. For a long time these idola 
trous customs have been concealed. Kaahumanu, 
herself both a convert and Christian teacher, re 
pressed them by edicts ; and the desire of the peo- 

* Anderson. Hawaiian Is. p. 25. 



84 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

pie to be respected by other Christian peoples, and 
the fear of being ridiculed with the opprobrious 
name of "pagans," acted as additional restraints. 
Those addicted to practical heathenism were kept 
from public avowal ; but, behind this show of Chris 
tian forms, hid a fetich-worship alarmingly com 
mon. The small pebble Kaue O Kapohakaa 
the wooden fetich, Kailaipahoa believed to have 
power to destroy life at bidding of its possessor 
and the counter-charm, Kauila, also of wood, with 
many others, each of which stands for a god, may 
be found worn on the person even of professed 
disciples ! The king himself boldly stands forth 
as an idolater, and is suspected of a design to take 
the headship of a fetich system. So says Mr. 
Bicknell. 

In a palace-room lies a copy of David Malo s 
" History of Hawaii," with the legends, traditions, 
and superstitions of the islands. Before reading, 
seven circuits are made around the sacred table ; 
then the book is reverently opened, and the cred 
ulous High Priest of this royal Sanctum believes 
himself in converse with the gods. This book 
furnishes the basis of the present system of Hale- 
naua, or the " House of Wisdom." That house 
has three divisions, embracing those devoted to 
astrology, chirography, etc. ; and four orders of 
Kahunas, who respectively practice medicine, in 
cantation, fatal imprecation, and represent divine 
power. And these Kahunas preface their idola- 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 85 

trous incantations with texts of Scripture ! There 
are, of course, different classes of adherents of this 
system : some who are actuolly worshippers, others 
who have imbibed the idolatrous spirit, and others 
who propitiate heroes all known by different 
names. 

The pulpit of these islands has not hitherto 
publicly exposed and denounced these idolatries, 
says Mr. Bicknell, and many professed believers 
think this fetich-worship harmless. But it is 
another example of a people, fearing Jehovah and 
serving their own gods. They read their fetichism 
into Old Testament narratives and New Testament 
miracles ; and even when death approaches, with 
its august exchange of worlds, they turn for relief 
to the Kahunas and their false gods. From the 
time of Kamehameha V. idolatry has advanced 
and Christianity declined. 

Of course, the mission work done on these 
islands is not a failure, nor are its results such as 
should dishearten any true believer. Everywhere 
the preaching of the Gospel has met the same 
obstacles ; in Christian Britain and America we 
have the same external lump of dough, with the 
same subtle leaven of worldliness and wickedness 
permeating and penetrating the whole three meas 
ures of meal. And so it will be until He comes 
whose New Epiphany is to smite the Man of Sin 
and put the chains upon Satan. 

On Christmas morning, 1814, the devoted Sam- 



86 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

uel Marsden preached in New Zealand, and for 
the first time told the natives the story of Christ 
and His cross. After a dozen years, a religious 
enthusiasm kindled its strange fires among the 
people ; the schools and sanctuaries were filled 
and thousands asked to be admitted into the 
churches ; and the very life of the people seemed 
to be undergoing transformation. In 1842, twenty- 
eight years after Marsden first announced those 
" tidings of great joy," Bishop Selwyn took charge 
of his new diocese, and he enthusiastically wrote 
home, " We see here a whole nation of pagans 
converted to the faith." These words glow with 
the fires of a sacred passion for the souls of men, 
and we do not doubt that of the 5,000 church 
members, there were hundreds who, as the good 
bishop said, exhibited " signal manifestations of 
the presence of the Spirit, and were living evidences 
of the kingdom of Christ." But the phrase, " a 
whole nation converted," then as now, became a 
deceptive golden veil, hiding the truth. The vast 
bulk of those 100,000 people were yet living in 
sin. The last instance of cannibalism was in 1 843 ; 
the/tf//.r, or fortified villages, have given place to 
unguarded homes and farm-houses ; barbarous 
tribal wars have quite ceased, and the sea fights, 
which were like ocean storms, have yielded to the 
potent voice which stills even the deep. But the 
bishop s enthusiastic report only prepared the way 
for bitter disappointment and morbid discourage- 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 87 

merit by encouraging the illusive hope that the 
nation was converted. After this glowing descrip 
tion had kindled the fervor and ardor of his fellow- 
countrymen to a confident expectation that in this 
manner the whole world was about to yield before 
the Gospel, it was found that this " converted 
nation " had only changed the form and complex 
ion of its ungodliness ; nay, to use Luther s phrase, 
had scarcely " washed the dirt from its face." 
European vices had taken the place of the vices 
of savagery ; beneath the garb of civilization hid 
an unchanged nature : and two years later serious 
wars again broke out, nor was peace restored until 
1848. The severe earthquake which followed was 
a type of volcanic fires which had only been 
slumbering, but were not dead. And although, 
in 1850, Canterbury province was settled on the 
basis of English ecclesiastical and aristocratical 
principles, with bishop, priests, lords, and baronets, 
as the province of Otago had been two years be 
fore settled by the Free-churchmen of Scotland, 
ten years later, in 1860-1, among these converted 
Maoris the new religion, the Pat Marire, was 
propagated by a body of natives called Hau-Haus, 
who pretended to the miraculous gifts of tongues 
and of prophecy ; hundreds who did not resume 
their old heathenism, at least renounced their 
Christianity ; with some the tomahawk and war 
paint again took the place of the decent dress and 
pious prayer-book of the convert ; and even those 



88 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

who retained the externals of Christianity at 
tempted to combine as they pleased the practices 
and doctrines of Christianity and heathenism. 
The Maoris, in their unconverted state, had a 
ceremony which was a sort of baptism known as 
rohi, or iruri; and the consternation of the mission 
aries may be imagined when, within twenty years 
after Bishop Selwyn had pronounced this a con 
verted nation, thousands of men who had been 
baptized into Christ, but had not put on Christ, 
were in one day baptized out of Christianity back 
again into heathenism ! * 

Nothing can be farther from the thought of a 
true advocate of missions than to belittle the 
triumphs of the Gospel or dishearten the heart of 
any hopeful disciple. But, if we would avoid and 
avert a disappointment which is almost suicidal to 
Christian effort, we must hold up before ourselves 
and others no unscriptural expectation. In every 
community where the Gospel has been preached, 
however grand its triumphs, it still remains true, 
from the days of Paul at Rome until the days of 
that modern Paul, the saintly Duff, at Calcutta, 
that " some " there have been " who believed not." t 
If we do our work of witnessing, expecting nothing 
more than the Scriptures warrant, we shall not be 
so liable and likely to give up in despair when 
only the common discouragements of all Christian 
work confront and baffle us. 

* Hodder s Conquests of the Cross, 1.35. f Acts xxviii. 24. 



7 HE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 89 

The warning notes which these modern exam 
ples peal out are louder and more startling, be 
cause God s trumpet sounds at our very ears, and 
not at the remote distance of ages. He warns us 
against a vain and misleading attempt to Christian 
ize men in masses and by the wholesale. Our work 
is with individuals, even as our message is to and 
for every creature. One by one men are born into 
the family of God. In the natural world, as the 
scale of being ascends, there is a strange decrease 
in the number of offspring at a birth. Among the 
lowest forms of life, the fertility is overwhelming 
millions in a day. But, as the grade of life rises, 
the number of progeny falls, until we reach the 
race of man, where even a twin birth is so rare as 
to be exceptional. Each human soul bears the 
stamp of a priceless worth, being coined in God s 
mint, one at a time. Every man may look upon 
himself as an individual bought by the blood of 
Christ, and say, " He loved me and gave Himself 
for me." 

The great snare of our day is the mad passion 
for numbers. The Diana of the modern Ephesians 
is the statistical table, and many are the makers 
and venders of these shrines of our great goddess. 
We have fallen upon a mathematical age. To 
report so many converts in one year, or boast so 
many accessions at one communion, is the devil s 
bait to catch the superficial winner of souls. We 
measure the prosperity of our churches, not by the 



90 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

spiritual strength of the members, but by the nu 
merical length of the roll, and some ministers lack 
courage to purge the roll of unworthy and even 
unknown and deceased members, lest it seem like 
a mark of waning prestige and declining popularity. 
Evangelists are too often caught in the same snare 
of numbers, and continually tempted to parade 
mere numerical results as a test of success, and so 
hundreds are counted as converts who rapidly 
relapse into their old life, while hundreds of others, 
swept into the Church on the crest of a revival 
wave, are as surely borne back when that wave 
recedes. This insane clamor for " numbering the 
people " is one of the main foes to missions. As 
in David s case, it leads to spiritual famine, pes 
tilence, or defeat and sometimes to all three. 
There was a year in the little church in Blantyre, 
Scotland, when but one convert was welcomed to 
the Lord s Table ; but that lad was David Living 
stone. Converts are to be weighed, not counted. 
One Cilician Saul is worth ten thousand like the Sa 
maritan Simon. Not how many, but how much, is 
the question. -When he who seeks souls is content 
with one at a time, and content even then only as 
that one is completely transformed by the power 
of the new life into a new man, we shall have a 
new era of Church history and a new epoch of 
missions. In this age, at least, God s kingdom is 
to come in the individual soul, by the slow annex 
ation of the little territory won by grace within 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 91 

that little world, a human heart : the kingdom of 
God comes not with observation. 

There are some who seem more concerned 
about getting everybody into heaven than about 
making anybody fit for heaven. In God s eyes it 
is of far more consequence that the Heavenly City 
should be clean than that it should be crowded. 
And we must learn, in our work for souls, that 
salvation is measured more by the depth to which 
it penetrates than by the surface over which it 
spreads ; and that it is for duty, not for results, 
that we are to be held accountable. 

All eyes now turn to Japan, the Island Empire, 
in which the rapid and remarkable changes of ten 
years have left "nothing as it was before, save 
the natural scenery " ; and where even missionaries 
have led us to hope that another decade will find 
the " Sunrise Kingdom " taking her place among 
acknowledged Christian nations. But just what, 
and how much, would that mean f England and 
the United States are leading Christian nations. 
Does God s sceptre sway our Congress and Britain s 
Parliament ? What atrocious iniquities, and even 
idolatries, have these foremost " Christian nations " 
both practiced and promoted ! See the great re 
public, holding in bonds 4,000,000 slaves, till God s 
hammer of War struck off their fetters ! Think of 
such " Christian nations " flooding Africa with 
rivers of rum ! of the land which sent Carey to the 
Indies, forcing opium upon China even at the 



92 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

cannon s mouth, and setting a premium upon lust, 
in Hindostan ! 

What does " Christianizing a nation " mean ? 
If it be anything short of the transformation of 
the individuals that make up the nation, it is dis 
aster. It is the mixing up of a profession of piety 
with political trickery ; it is clothing abominable 
abuses with the sanction of religion ; it is substitut 
ing popularity for purity, and the loud voice of 
the majority for the still small voice of the Spirit 
of God. The " witness " of the Church before 
the world implies not only separation, but antag 
onism, not amalgamation and assimilation. Strange 
to say, the way to win the worldly to Christ is not 
by courting them, but by making them hate us for 
our likeness to God and our unlikeness to them 
selves. To come to their broken cisterns keeps 
them from coming to the Living Fountains. 

Conscious that, in presenting these views, the 
writer represents a small minority, he takes courage 
both from the depth of his own conviction, that 
this is God s truth, and from the remembrance 
that, historically, the truth has never yet been on 
the side of the majority. Both God s word and 
God s working, even in this, the missionary age, 
teach us that during the present dispensation, our 
watchword is evangelization. We are not to look 
for a world s conversion, which, after all these 
centuries, seems perhaps no nearer than at the 
accession of Constantine. We are to evangelize 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 93 

the world, and if the result proves to be, not the 
world s conversion, but the out-gathering of the 
Church, the e/fKAT/ota, the called-out assembly, the 
Bride of Christ, is it not exactly the Scriptural 
goal of this age ? This is the only hope, warranted 
either by the Scripture or the history of missions, 
and therefore it is the only hope not possible to 
be disappointed. To some believers, this truth is 
so clear that it is a marvel that any reader of the 
Word or observer of history can doubt. In Acts 
xv. 15, the Apostle James in inspired words out 
lined, at that first Church council, the whole plan 
of the Divine Architect and Builder, and furnished 
a key to all evangelical history and a kind of min 
iature chart of the whole missionary age. 

" SIMEON HATH DECLARED HOW GOD AT THE 
FIRST DID VISIT THE GENTILES TO TAKE OUT 
OF THEM A PEOPLE FOR HlS NAME. AND TO 
THIS AGREE THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS, AS 
IT IS WRITTEN: AFTER THIS I WILL RETURN 
AND WILL BUILD AGAIN THE TABERNACLE OF 
DAVID WHICH is FALLEN DOWN ; AND I WILL 

BUILD AGAIN THE RUINS THEREOF, AND I WILL 
SET IT UP J THAT THE RESIDUE OF MEN MIGHT 
SEEK THE LORD AND ALL THE GENTILES UPON 
WHOM MY NAME IS CALLED, SAITH THE LORD 
WHO DOETH ALL THESE THINGS. " And the. 

apostle significantly adds, as though to assure dis 
heartened disciples that God s plans steadily 
advance toward completion, " known unto God 



94 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

are all His works from the beginning of the 
world." 

Here is plainly an election and out-gathering of 
the Church from the world. The discerning stu 
dent of the Bible and Biblical history sees a mani 
fest progress in the dispensations, but this elective 
principle is always present. 

In that former age, the Jewish, an elect nation, 
was called out to guard an elect truth, the unity 
of God, and to forecast, in type and rite, the 
advent of His dear Son. During that age, the 
body of believers was mainly confined to one 
nation, and the Holy Spirit s chrism was bestowed 
on elect individuals, such as prophets, priests, and 
kings. Then came this latter age, the Christian, 
when an elect Church, gathered out of every nation, 
is called out from the world, to proclaim a uni 
versal Gospel for the whole world, and in the elect 
body of Christ to incorporate all believers. And, 
now that the Son of God has come^ just as the 
altar of burnt offering in the Jewish age pointed 
back to the fall, and forward to the cross, so the 
Lord s Table witnesses backward to His advent, 
and forward, to His second coming. "As oft as 
ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show 
the Lord s death till He come." 

As, in this age, there is a widening of the elect 
body to embrace converts from all nations, so 
there is a corresponding widening of the Spirit s 
work. He is now bestowed on all believers of 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 95 

the elect Church. But, in all the New Testament, 
we search in vain for any promise that, during this 
age, the Church will be co-extensive with the world. 
There are glimpses of a coming age, sometimes 
mistakenly called the " world to come," when 
God s plan shall still broaden out when the 
world-wide proclamation of the Gospel shall be 
followed by a world-wide knowledge of Christ; 
when the Holy Spirit shall again, and still more 
plentifully, be poured out from on high ; not on 
elect individuals in an elect nation, nor on all be 
lievers in an elect Church gathered out of every 
nation, but, in a peculiar sense, " upon all flesh "/ 
and so Joel s words, which found their foretaste 
in the Pentecost, shall have their fulfilment, their 
fill-full-ment. Then, and not till then, is the family 
of God to become co-extensive with the family of 
man. And yet, even in that millennial age, the 
revolt at the end hints that there will still be 
those who persistently reject the Gospel and re 
fuse to have this King Jesus to reign over them, 
and are to be dashed in pieces like a potter s ves 
sel. It would seem that, until the very end of 
that millennial age, sin is not to be exterminated. 
The Gospel is to triumph more and more widely, 
but to the end there will be, as in Paul s day, some 
who believe not. 

Each successive dispensation has thus prepared 
for, and has ushered in, a greater age to come. 
At first a nation, chosen out of the world ; then a 



96 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Church gathered out from the nations ; and, finally, 
the nations of the world transformed into the 
Redeemer s people and subjects. In that age to 
come whereof we speak, all that was in the former 
and latter ages shall be found, and much more. 
Inclusion then displaces exclusion. And thus the 
three ages present three concentric circles, with 
ever-widening circumference. The circle of the 
believing brotherhood enlarges from Jewish nation 
to Christian Church, and from Christian Church 
to a saved humanity. The sphere of the Holy 
Spirit expands from elect individuals to a believing 
ecclesia, and then to all flesh. And yet those who 
held to such doctrine as this, scriptural as it is, 
are ridiculed and stigmatized as " pessimists ! " 

Hundreds and thousands of the noblest mis 
sionaries have been found to hold substantially the 
position here taken. David Livingstone, that 
" missionary general and statesman," early learned 
that the conversion of individuals is really a nar 
rower and more near-sighted aim than the evan 
gelization of the multitude. He was the last man 
to undervalue the conversion of one of the least 
and lowest -of God s creatures ; and, in the earlier 
part of his missionary life, bent his whole mind to 
work and pray for the salvation of a single soul, 
and with some small success. But though he 
neither grew weary of this work nor impatient at 
the slow fruit which was gathered, one by one, 
like a hand-picked harvest his view of God s plan 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 97 

widened. He saw that the universal spread of the 
good tidings and the wide diffusion of Christian 
principles was the greater good, and in the end 
would yield a grander harvest. "To the con 
verted " man, individually, his own conversion was 
of overwhelming consequence ; but with relation to 
the final harvest, it is more important to sow the 
seed broadcast over a wide field than to reap a 
few heads of grain on a single spot.* 

We repeat the caution, that we must beware 
how we measure our work or our success in this 
world-field by the apparent harvest. If, by the in 
gathering of a large number of converts, God is 
pleased to set His seal on mission work, as being of 
a godly sort, yet this is not the infallible criterion 
either of fidelity or of success. Many a devoted 
servant of God has, like Enoch and Noah, Isaiah 
and Jeremiah, Ezekiel and even Jesus Himself, 
met with what to human eyes is not only rejection 
but failure. The most honest and earnest witness- 
bearing seems sometimes not so much to deliver 
man from as to the just judgment of God ; and, 
instead of the hearers being justified by faith, the 
preacher is justified in his fidelity to souls, and God 
is justified in their judicial abandonment. In such 
case is the prophet or the preacher any less faith 
ful or is God s true servant any less rewarded be 
cause the hearer is faithless ? 

To measure success in missions in India, China, 

* Personal Life of Livingstone, p. 157. 



9 8 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Africa, or even in transformed Western Polynesia, 
by numerical results, would be a fatal mistake. 
No : the true criterion everywhere is the wide 
diffusion of the Gospel. It is a question of ex- 
tensity rather than intensity ; and hence the true, 
divine principle of missions is not concentration, 
but diffusion. 

The field is the world ; the seed is of two sorts : 
first, the Word of God ; secondly, the children of 
the kingdom; and both of these sorts of seed must 
be sown, and sown broadcast over the whole field. 
Depth is important, but breadth is of first conse 
quence. It will in time be seen that God s policy 
of diffusion was far better than man s policy of 
comparative exclusion and seclusion. Ultimately 
it will appear that the abundance of individual 
conversions will be in exact proportion to the 
wide-spread scattering of the seed of the kingdom. 
The Gospel message is, as we have seen, charac 
terized by two universal terms " the world," which 
is collective ; " whosoever," which is distributive ; 
but the great collective term, "all the world" pre 
cedes the distributive term, "every creature." 
Let us learn that our duty is to the world, and we 
must leave to God the " whosoever." 

We have thus sought to find by searching what 
is God s plan or purpose concerning the Church 
and the world. Certain we are that He wills the 
largest and promptest proclamation of the Gospel, 
the presence of witnessing believers and a witness- 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 99 

ing Church everywhere, even to the uttermost 
part of the earth. Beyond that we are sure of 
nothing save this, that His Word will not return 
to Him void, and that our labor will not be in 
vain in the Lord. 

To all believers the divine command is, that we 
outgrow our babyhood cease to be mere objects 
of care, and become care-takers ; that we enter 
into that divine plan which takes in the whole 
Church, the whole world, and the whole age. We 
must be satisfied with the hope that has its anchor 
age in Scripture promises, do our duty, and leave 
results with God undertake a world s evangeliza 
tion, and not be disheartened if we find that, to 
the end of the age, there is only an out-gathering 
of the Church ; and that, as in the Apostolic age, 
some believe the things which are spoken and some 
believe not. The stress of the command is on oc 
cupation, evangelization. A loyal servant or soldier 
simply obeys, implicitly, orders which are explicit. 
Here are our marching orders ; and to follow them 
is to win what is better even than apparent vic 
tory, the approval of Him who will say, " WELL 
DONE, good and faithful servant." 

Now of the things which we have spoken, this 
is the sum : Every saved soul is called to be a 
herald and a witness ; and we are to aim at nothing 
less than this : to make every nation, and every 
creature in every nation, acquainted with the Gos 
pel tidings. This is the first and ever-present duty 



loo THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of the Church : it is the heart of the whole mis 
sionary plan. God will give us souls as our hire 
and crown ; large results in conversion of indi 
viduals and the transformation of whole com 
munities will follow, as they always have followed, 
a godly testimony. But we are not to wait for 
results : we are to regard our duty as never done, 
while any region beyond is without the Gospel. 
Let all men have a hearing of the Gospel at least ; 
then, when evangelization is world- wide, we may 
bend our energies to deepening the impression 
which a first hearing of the Gospel has made. 
But, again, let it peal out, as with a voice of 
thunder, to be heard wherever there are believers ! 
The first need of the world is to hear the Gospel, 
and the first duty of the Church is to go every 
where and tell every human being of Christ, the 
world s Saviour. To stop, or linger anywhere, 
even to repeat the rejected message, so long as 
there are souls beyond that have never heard it, 
is at least unjust to those who are still in absolute 
darkness. Instead of creating a few centres of 
intense light, God would have us scatter the lamps 
until all darkness is at least relieved, if not removed. 
And if to any reader it appears that this is em 
phasizing a distinction that is of little consequence, 
let such an one stop a moment and consider what 
would be the result if our Lord s plan were fol 
lowed. 

There are, we will say, about forty million mem- 



THE PLAN OF MISSIONS. 101 

bers of Protestant churches, and at least eight 
hundred millions yet in entire ignorance of the 
Gospel. Let us suppose that the whole Church, 
under some mighty baptism of fire, should under 
take to bear the Gospel message to every living 
soul, at once. If every Protestant believer could 
so be brought into active participation in this work 
as to be the means of reaching twenty of these 
souls, now without the Gospel, the work would be 
done. All cannot go, but all can send. Let us 
suppose again that Protestant churches should 
send out one missionary teacher for every four 
hundred communicants ; we should have a mis 
sionary force of one hundred thousand ; and, by 
distributing this force in the entire field, each 
teacher would have to reach but eight thousand 
souls, in order to evangelize the world. Allowing 
twenty years for that work, each laborer would 
have to reach but four hundred of the unevan- 
gelized each year ! 

We must push this work let men call us fools, 
fanatics, madmen we can afford to bear it for the 
sake of doing the will of God. When Judson had 
buried himself in Burmah, and ten years work 
could show but eighteen converts, he was asked : 
" What of the prospect ? " His heroic answer 
was : " Bright as the promises of God ! " When 
John Wesley proposed to go to Georgia as a mis 
sionary to the Indians, an unbeliever ridiculed him : 
" What is this ? Are you one of the knights 



162 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

errant ? How, pray, got you this Quixotism into 
your head ? You want nothing, have a good pro 
vision for life, and a prospect of preferment ; and 
must you leave all this to fight wind-mills to 
convert American savages ? " Wesley calmly re 
plied : " If the Bible be not true, I am as a very 
fool and madman, as you can conceive. But if 
the Bible is of God, I am sober-minded. For He 
has declared, There is no man who hath left house 
or friend or brethren for the kingdom of God s 
sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this 
present time, and, in the world to come, life ever 
lasting ! " 

With such heroic missionaries as Adoniram 
Judson and John Wesley, we are content to follow 
our Lord s leading without regard to apparent 
results. The command is plain : " Go ye also 
into the vineyard," and the promise is sufficient : 
" Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive." God 
is a liberal rewarder, and He always exceeds His 
own promise. That workman is surest of blessing 
who does his Lord s work without the misgivings 
of unbelief or the exactions of a carnal spirit. The 
path of the missionary is the way to Calvary, but 
beyond the cross shines the crown. 




III. 

THE DIVINE WORK OF MISSIONS. 

ASTOR MONOD, of Paris, beautifully 
suggests that all true work done by a 
disciple is really a part of God s own 
eternal, universal work, assigned to the believer. 
If we conceive God s work as a grand sphere, 
filling immensity and eternity, then every disciple s 
work is a part of that sphere, a small segment that 
lies over against him ; and, if he has spiritual eyes 
to discern his duty, he may read upon that work 
of God which belongs to him to do, his own name 
and the date of the present year. In other words, 
in God s plan each one of us is embraced, and 
has a definite assignment, and, for each year, 
month, day, and hour, a specific duty to do. 
What dignity and beauty and glory such a con 
ception imparts to human life, to know that in the 
great mechanism of the ages, I am a part and 
have a place and sphere ! 

This thought I would now bring to the front : 
the work of missions is not only a toil for God, 
but a work -with God. This is very fully and re 
markably set forth in three principal passages of 



104 



THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 



Scripture, whose full force appears only as we set 
them side by side and carefully compare them. 



" For we are La 


" Who now rejoice 


" When the Com 


borers together with 


in my sufferings for 


forter is come, even 


God : ye are God s 


you, and Jill up that 


the Spirit of Truth, 


husbandry : ye are 


which is behind of 


He shall bear witness 


God s building. . . . 


the afflictions of 


of me ; and ye also 


We then as workers 


Christ in my flesh, 


shall bear witness, 


together -with Him, 


for His body s sake 


because ye have been 


beseech you also that 


which is the church, 


with me from the be 


ye receive not the 


whereof I am made a 


ginning." John, XV. 


grace of God in 


minister." Colos- 


26, 27 ; Comp. Acts, 


vain." I. Cor. iii. 9 ; 


sians, i. 24. 


v. 32. 


vi. i. 







Even in the New Testament no words can be 
found more pathetically beautiful. Here our work 
for souls is set forth as a co-operation with the 
Triune God, in three various aspects, as co-labor, 
co-suffering, and co-witnessing. But that which is 
far more remarkable and impressive in these pas 
sages is, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Spirit are individually, successively, and separately 
presented as personally sharing with the believer 
the dignity of this exalted service. 

In the passage from the first Epistle to the 
Corinthians a careful glance shows that the word 
God there means the first person of the Trinity, 
as distinguished from the others. As to the other 
two quotations, no doubt can arise, because, in 
one the person of Christ, and in the other the per 
son of the Spirit, is particularly mentioned. To 
compare Scripture with Scripture, to combine these 
fragments as in a mosaic, is to get a wonderful 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 105 

picture, in which the whole conception and execu 
tion of the plan of Redemption is spread before 
us in a new light, from its eternal idea and purpose 
in the mind of the Father, to its execution in the 
person and work of the suffering Son, and its 
divine application in the witness of the Spirit to 
the truth and by the blood. 

There is something awe-inspiring in the fact 
that, in each separate department of this work, 
and with each separate person of the Trinity, the 
believer is thus made a direct partaker ! God the 
Father is represented as beseeching men and 
building up a living temple out of believing souls ; 
and the believer also joins with God in beseeching 
men to be reconciled to Him, and in building 
upon the one foundation, the temple of living 
stones. God the Son is represented as vicariously 
suffering for the salvation of the lost, and gather 
ing believers into the mystical body of which He 
is the head ; and again, the believer is represented 
as sharing with Him this vicarious sacrifice and 
ministry, and as filling up somewhat, which, with 
out the believer, would be lacking. God the 
Spirit is represented as a witness-bearer, first of 
all to the truth which He brings to bear upon the 
mind and heart ; and then to the blood whose 
power he reveals in the death, and especially in 
the resurrection, of Christ ; and now, once more, 
the believer is presented as also witnessing with the 
Holy Ghost, as though needful to complete and 



106 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

confirm the testimony of the Spirit, according to 
the Levitical law, that in the mouth of two wit 
nesses every word be established. 

These passages, thus jointly considered, present 
the humblest human believer and disciple as a co- 
worker with God the Father, a co-sufferer with 
God the Son, and a co- witness with God the Spirit. 
Taken thus together, they suggest the highest 
dignity and privilege of every child of God. He 
is lifted to a divine level. His humble work for 
God is exalted to a work with God ; his sacrifice 
and service is raised to a plane that is higher than 
angelic ministry. These words of the Scripture 
hint, if they do not affirm, that the believer is 
necessary to the completeness and completion of 
the work of redeeming a lost world. He is a part 
of a divine mechanism, and, until he drops into 
his place and co-works with other parts to produce 
one result, something is lacking to complete ad 
justment, perfect movement, and ultimate success. 

I. How is this work of missions thus a co 
operation with God the Father ? 

We may take the exact thought of Paul, "As 
though God did beseech you by us." God, like 
a loving father yearning over a rebellious son, 
or a sovereign over a revolted subject, beseeches 
men to be reconciled to Him. But how does 
He beseech, save by us ? How is His yearning 
brought to the knowledge of the rebel sinner f It 
finds expression in the good tidings of the Gospel, 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 107 

but good tidings will not bear themselves ; they 
imply messengers, whose feet are shod with the 
winged sandals of the alacrity of the Gospel, 
whose hands hold forth the Word of Life, and 
whose lips send forth words, their errant daugh 
ters. The Gospel message needs a voice, and 
John the Baptist sublimely said : " I am the 
Voice." Observe, a voice, not a mere sound, 
but intelligent, articulate, sympathetic, soulful 
utterance. 

That word, " ambassador," used by Paul, holds 
in itself a whole body of divinity. It implies an 
authorized messenger, a representative of a gov 
ernment at a foreign court, with a definite mission 
and commission, and a specific body of instruc 
tions. So long as an ambassador acts within the 
limits of his instructions, the government which he 
represents speaks in his words, acts through his 
acts, and stands behind him with all the power, 
authority, and resources of a republic or an em 
pire. An insult to such an ambassador is a blow 
in the face of his sovereign, an outrage upon the 
whole nation, which the whole government resents ; 
while a respectful hearing accorded to him is an 
audience given to the monarch whose court he 
represents. In the ambassador, therefore, his 
government is virtually present. 

So far as the believer teaches God s truth and 
bears witness to Christ, he is God s ambassador. 
So long and so far as he keeps within the limits 



lo8 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of his instructions, faithfully speaking God s Word, 
it is God who speaks in and through him. Behind 
him stand all the authority and power of the God 
head. And so Christ says to such ambassadors : 
" He that receiveth you, receiveth Me, and he 
that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me." 
He who gives us a hearing hearkens to God, and 
he who rejects our words turns his back upon 
God. Not at the last great day, only, but all 
through the Gospel age, the Judge is saying, 
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 
Me." He would have us remember that, when 
ever we beseech men to be reconciled to God, 
God Himself beseeches through us. 

Again Paul uses the figures of " building " and 
of "husbandry" to represent this co-working with 
God. In both these common forms of labor, 
architecture, and agriculture, there are the superior 
and the inferior workmen, and both are essential 
to the perfect product. In building, the architect 
and contractor furnishes plan and material ; from 
his brain comes the idea of the structure, from his 
pencil, the draught in all its details, and from his 
quarry and shops, the material. But to the com 
mon workman are committed all the details of the 
actual work ; he receives the building material, as 
brought to the ground, he studies and minutely 
follows the plan, and according thereto puts in 
place stone and timber. The architect may fur- 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 109 

nish only instructions and material, and may him 
self never appear in person on the site. 

So in husbandry. The owner of the estate pro 
jects the improvements, furnishes the implements, 
and supplies material. His are the soil and seed, 
the field and crop. But he works the farm through 
his sen-ants, and may himself never tread the field, 
plough the furrows, sow the seed, or reap the 
harvest. 

The veil of parable does not hide the truth. 
God is building up a temple of believers. The 
plan and work are His ; He designs the working 
plan, He provides the building material, and, 
when brought to the temple platform, no tool 
needs to be lifted upon it to fit it to its foreor 
dained place in the great structure. But who are 
His builders ? Paul and other apostles, as wise 
master-builders, laid the foundation, in Jesus 
Christ, and you and I are to carry on and carry 
up the Temple of the Ages. 

The centuries go by ; God buries workman 
after workman, but the work never ceases. . The 
world itself is but the scaffolding about the Church 
of God, made to aid in its erection, but to be torn 
down and burned up when the cap-stone of God s 
cathedral is laid. 

The whole work is therefore one. Every dis 
ciple who faithfully witnesses to God, is one of 
God s builders. It matters not how prominent 
or obscure, however great or small in human eyes. 



no THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

He may be working down in the quarry, where 
the crude material is hewn and shaped for the 
building, or in the shops, where the timbers of 
immortal cedar are gotten ready for the frame 
work, or the beaten gold for the furnishing and 
garnishing; or he may stand on the platform 
where the living stones are lifted to their place, 
builded together for an habitation of God through 
the Spirit, and where the whole building, fitly 
framed together, groweth into an Holy Temple in 
the Lord ; but, wherever his place and whatever 
his work, he is building for God and working with 
God. God has chosen to work by him, and can 
not, without abandoning His eternal plan, do 
without him ; and when, in all its final glory, the 
building stands complete, each workman shall, in 
beholding its perfection, trace the living stones 
which his hands have shaped for it and placed in 
it ; and how could it be otherwise ? he shall 
share in the glory, as he has shared in the toil ! 
The Divine Architect of the Ages condescends to 
choose human beings to carry out His thought 
and plan, according to the pattern shewed in the 
Mount ; and so, reverently, let it be said, God waits 
for man s co-operation in His temple-building ! 

We turn to consider, a little more in detail, the 
agricultural figure : "Ye are God s husbandry," 
i.e., the product of God s tillage. But Paul says 
just before, " I have planted, Apollos watered, but 
God gave the increase." All our labor of plough- 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS, m 

ing, sowing, reaping, would yield no crop if He 
did not give soil and seed, sunshine, dew, and rain. 
Equally true is it, that all these gifts of God could 
produce no harvest, without human hands to till 
the soil and sow the seed, to put in the sickle and 
gather in the sheaves. God s harvest hangs on 
your toil and mine : it is the union of the divine 
and human husbandmen that gives the crop ! 

Yes, the field is the world, and the " good seed " 
is not only " the Word of God," but it is also " the 
children of the Kingdom" And for a double rea 
son. If the good seed of the Word of God is 
sown and scattered at all, the children of the 
Kingdom must be the sowers ; and if the blessed 
harvest of souls is ever to be reaped, the children 
of the Kingdom must sow not only the Word, 
but themselves, in the soil of society ! And so 
they of whom the world is not worthy, and of 
whom it contemptuously says that they "bury 
themselves out of sight among the heathen," do 
indeed " bury themselves," because seed never 
sprouts until it is buried in the soil ! Like their 
Master, they dread most of all to abide alone, 
and, like Him, shrink not from Gethsemane and 
Golgotha, so that, dying, they may no longer abide 
alone, but dying, live, and, living, bring forth much 
fruit. And, because there are some who, as God s 
good seed, are buried for His sake, this missionary 
age has its harvest- fields which give both seed for 
the sower and bread for the eater, THE FIELD 



H2 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

is THE WORLD ! * That, only, bounds missionary 
activity ; and who dares remove the ancient land 
marks which the Lord Himself hath set up ! The 
field is world-wide ; we must not narrow it down 
within a smaller circumference, nor select any 
portion of it as the exclusive or favorite spot for 
our tillage. 

Our Lord s figures of speech never veil the sense. 
His illustrations illustrate. They are windows 
that let in the light upon the inmost recesses of 
His doctrine, and we may walk safely so that our 
feet do not stumble. We have seen windows 
whose elaborate carved frame-work and stained 
glass patch-work seemed ingeniously devised to 
shut out light. But, when our Lord sets a window 
in the structure of His discourse, light pours 
through it unhindered, as through transparent 
panes. 

This metaphor needs no explanation. "The 
field is the world." What object more common 
and familiar to the eye of His hearers than a field 
at some stage of tillage ! And, when He would 
point disciples to the sphere of their work for God 
and for souls, He stretches His hands toward the 
cardinal points of the compass and says, "the 
world." Wherever on this globe man is, there is 
the soil for our sowing ; and so long as man is 
found on earth, so long is this holy husbandry to 
go on, until no part is left desert, or unchanged 

* Matt. xiii. 38. 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 113 

into the garden of the Lord. What a conception 
of work for and with God ! A field that has no 
limits of territory but the space of the habitable 
earth, and a labor that has no limits of duration 
but the Gospel age itself ! Wherever there is a 
human creature, and so long as the race survives, 
the work goes on. 

The field is the world. Vast indeed is this field. 
Probably two-thirds of the entire area of the solid 
surface of the globe is inhabited, and in some 
parts densely ; the aggregate population of the 
earth is close to 1,500,000,000, a number too large 
to be easily comprehended. A pendulum whose 
arc measures a second would take fifty years, day 
and night, to mark so many seconds ; in other 
words, it would take half a century, day and night, 
for this immense multitude to pass by a given 
point at the rate of one every second. And, in 
that august procession, we should find but one in 
fifty a member of any Protestant communion, and 
but one in two hundred and fifty thousand a mis 
sionary from Protestant churches to heathen lands ; 
and so the field lies yet waiting for the workmen : 
the larger part of it has yet to be broken up with 
plough and harrow and sown with the good 
seed. 

The field is not only vast, but it is one of ever- 
recurring need. We cannot till any field for all 
time to come. Every spring brings the sowing- 
time and every autumn the reaping-time, so that 



H4 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

every new season presents a new field for the 
plough and the sickle. And it is so with the field 
of the world. Three times in a century, the pop 
ulation of our globe gives place to a new genera 
tion ; so that if to-day the whole world were 
evangelized, within thirty years a new generation 
would present a new need of the Gospel message. 
And hence the greater demand for constant, per 
sistent, and world- wide missions: the more this 
work is neglected, and the longer, the more it gets 
beyond us : the thicker and ranker the vile growths 
become which must be uprooted to make room 
for the Gospel. Whereas, if the Church of Christ 
should once overtake the wants of one generation, 
it would be comparatively easy to keep the ground 
clear and occupy the entire field in the generations 
to come. We thus owe a double debt, first to a 
world lying in sin, to sow it in every part with 
the seed of the kingdom ; and secondly, to the 
Church of the generations to come, to prepare the 
way for the successful work of those who are to 
follow after us. 

Every nobler motive combines to inspire prompt 
and energetic world-husbandry. Delay compli 
cates the problem and duplicates the task. Once 
let the Gospel message be proclaimed to every 
living creature, and henceforth there has been one 
complete sowing of the whole field ; everywhere 
harvests begin to appear, and their yield supplies 
additional seed for another sowing. Once to meet 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 115 

the needs of the race is to render comparatively 
easy the supply of recurring need. 

But again, every field has its crises. When the 
sowing time comes, the seed must be put in the 
furrows it is now or never. When the harvest 
ripens, the sickle must be immediately put at work ; 
again it is now or never ripeness borders on rot 
tenness, and the crop which is not reaped is soon 
not worth reaping. So the world-field presents its 
crises. When the soil lies fallow and waits for the 
sower, if he goes not forth with his seed, he loses 
his chance ; and, when the fields are white with 
harvest, to wait is to forfeit both his chance and 
his crop. And, in some part of the wide field, it 
is always a crisis : either the sower or the reaper 
is in demand, and sometimes both, for sometimes 
God s harvests come so fast that the ploughman 
overtakes the reaper, and the treader of grapes him 
that soweth the seed. 

Our Lord, whose apt metaphor thus teaches us 
so many lessons about the field, is not less instruct 
ive as to the seed. It is a curious fact that, as 
already intimated, in the great chapter of the king 
dom, Matthew xiii., two parables out of the seven, 
and these the first two, present the sameyfr/c/, the 
world, but not the same seed. In the former 
parable the "seed is the Word of God" * in the 
latter, " the good seed are the children of the King 
dom." \ In this difference lies a sublime lesson. 

* Luke viii. n. f Matt. xiii. 38. 



n6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

God sows His field with two kinds of seed : His 
Word and His disciples. It is the Bible with the 
believer behind it the Gospel of salvation, with a 
gospeller, a saved soul, to proclaim it ; the message 
of life, borne by the living messenger, the Word 
of God with the witness of God. Both the truth 
as it is in Jesus and the renewed soul as he is in 
Jesus are necessary in this seed-sowing of the 
kingdom. 

But, more than this, there is a connection between 
these two parables and these two sorts of seed. 
At the first sowing, the Son of man Himself was 
the sower, and the seed was the Word of God ; 
but, when that Word sprang up and yielded fruit, 
that fruit was not a new message or word from 
God, but a believer. And thus we sow the Gospel, 
and the crop is a crop of souls; we get from that 
first sowing of the Word of God a harvest of the 
children of the kingdom, who, in turn, become 
seed for a new crop of believers. Here is the 
great hope of missions, and the real secret of 
God s plan. Were we to bear the seed of the 
Gospel at once into all the world, and faithfully 
sow it, there would be a crop of converts through 
out the world, who, in their turn, would become 
God s good seed, to sow the regions beyond. It 
is a very remarkable fact that the native converts, 
in" every land where missions have been estab 
lished, have within one generation furnished, on 
the average, five times as many evangelists, teach- 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. l\1 

ers, and native helpers as the original missionary 
force. - To-day, out of somewhat more than 40,000, 
that represent the total force of the workers in 
mission lands, over thirty-five thousand have been 
raised on the spot, as the crop of missionary labor. 
In China, India, Africa, the South Seas, by far the 
bulk of all evangelists are converted natives. And, 
if the Church could be aroused to such holy effort 
as would once insure the sowing of the whole 
world-field, within fifty years the number of native 
converts that would take up the work of missions 
among their own countrymen might make un 
necessary all foreign missions in the Church. 
Christian nations might speedily be left free to 
turn their attention to developing the life and 
power of the Church within their own borders, 
and to evangelize their own territory. 

Hence again appear the crime and folly of this 
long delay. Not only is the field left without the 
seed of God ; not only does the crisis of oppor 
tunity pass, and generation after generation perish 
without God ; but we are losing crop after crop 
that would furnish seed for the sower nay, would 
sow itself, and soon make our further work almost 
needless. A land like Japan or China or India, 
thoroughly occupied for Christ, once sown in all 
its extent with the Gospel, would be changed from 
barrenness to fertility, and be turned into a field 
of supply, like some vast stretch of waste land 
which has been overgrown with tangled thickets, 



n8 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

prolific thistles, rankest weeds, and poisonous 
creepers, transformed not only into a fruitful 
meadow, but into a gigantic seed-farm, from which 
all the supplies for future sowers might be drawn ! 

It would be a mistake not to call attention to 
yet another of those marvellous analogies sug 
gested by this figure, used by our Lord. No 
crop is perfectly developed or ripe until its " seed 
is in itself after its kind." Compare again these 
twin parables. The former presents four kinds 
of soil ; in the first, the seed gets no hold, but is 
borne away by birds of the air. In the second, 
the seed gets no root, and soon withers away. In 
the third, it gets hold and root, but no room ; the 
soil is preoccupied with germs, and they crowd 
the good seed : the consequence is that, while it 
lives and grows, it never attains perfection. A 
long thin blade shoots up, but it has no ear, and 
so no full-grown corn in the ear. It has in itself 
no seed of propagation and no power of reproduc 
tion : there may be straw, but not grain there is 
root and blade, but no ear or kernel. 

What is that but the professed disciple who 
does not believe, or takes no part in missions ! It 
would perhaps be harsh and uncharitable to say 
that such are not believers ; but, if so, they are so 
choked with cares of this world, deceitfulness of 
riches and lust of other things, that they bring no 
fruit to perfection. Life everywhere, in plant and 
animal, shows its maturity and perfection by the 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 119 

power to beget other life like itself. And hence 
the disciple that does not make disciples, the 
Christian that has no passion for souls and no 
power to win souls, who has no work for Christ, 
who is not himself a seed of God to drop into the 
soil and yield a crop of other holy lives, should 
candidly ask whether indeed he is himself a child 
of God ? The new life of God in man is never 
fully developed until it becomes life-producing, 
life-begetting. Where there is no seed, there is 
probably no genuine divine plant. 

No more alarming sign exists in the Church of 
to-day than this, that so small a part of our church- 
members ever convert a soul to God ! With all 
our so-called refinement, education, culture, social 
influence, the Church has but few who are at 
work for souls, and who will at last bring in arm- 
fuls of sheaves. 

It is a curious fact in botany, that we may 
cultivate a plant until we destroy the ovaries or 
seed-vessels, so that the plant can no longer prop 
agate itself. The wild rose, for example, has a 
fully developed ovary, but the beautiful double 
rose, full of leaves and beauty, the crown of horti 
culture, reveals no seed-vessel. We find an an 
alogous fact in the world of mankind. There is 
a sort of culture which is fatal to service. It 
develops a fine mind, a ready tongue, graceful 
manners, a beautiful person, but there is no love 
of souls, no power to win them no holy self- 



120 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

propagating seed of new lives. And, while the 
Church perhaps never stood so high as now in 
wealth, in culture, in commanding worldly in 
fluence, it is only here and there one blade in 
God s harvest-field that bears the ear swelling with 
the. full, ripe corn that God can use to sow His 
field, and bring thirty, sixty, an hundred fold re 
turns ! 

We seem more solicitous about large crops and 
thick crops, than about heavy crops. To have a 
great church-roll of cultured, distinguished people, 
to boast of numbers, social standing, riches, in 
tellect, is our snare. The beloved Moravians that 
lead the van of the missionary host have no pride 
of numbers, and care only for fruitfulness in ser 
vice ; and the genius of Herrnhut finds utterance 
in their Litany : "from the unhappy desire of be 
coming great, gracious Lord and God, PRESERVE 
us!" 

The attentive student of the Word of God will 
observe a progress of doctrine an unfolding of 
the Divine purpose as to missions. The Old 
Testament type of piety emphasizes the preserva 
tion and conseri ation of truth and goodness. The 
New Testament lays stress rather upon the pro 
mulgation and propagation of the Gospel. To the 
prophets of old, the body of believers was a flock 
to be shepherded, and the sacred courts, a fold 
for their in-gathering. But, when Christ begins to 
reveal to His disciples the genius of the NEW AGE, 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 121 

He says, " Follow me and I will make you fishers 
of men." In this one phrase, "fishers of men," 
there lies a little world of suggestion. While a fold 
suggests the Church, and the sheep, the disciples, 
and the shepherd, the pastor and teacher ; the lake 
or sea suggests the world ; the fish, the unevangel- 
ized and unsaved ; and the net, the means of grace 
by which they are to be surrounded, and, in a 
blessed sense, ensnared, or taken captive ; and the 
fisher stands for the evangelist who goes to tell the 
Gospel story to those who know it not. Sheep 
are not to be caught, but fed : fish are not to be 
fed, but, first of all, caught. In the New Dis 
pensation, whatever prophetic office the minister 
of Christ is to fulfil in shepherding the lambs and 
feeding the sheep, he is never to forget that the 
more important office, certainly the more emphatic 
function, is that of the evangelist. He is to look 
for his field, therefore, not in the church, alone, or. 
mainly : the "field is the -tvorld "/ and as we shall 
have occasion often to repeat believers, far from 
being merely plants in the Lord s garden, to be 
tended by Him, absorbing His thought and care, 
are themselves the " seed of the Kingdom," to be 
sown in that broad field of the world, as the germs 
of a new harvest for God. How many intelligent 
disciples there are, who have not yet gotten from 
the Old Testament into the New ! They still think 
of themselves simply as the objects of pastoral care. 
They are the Lord s frail plants, and not a few of 



122 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

them are very frail and need a great deal of tend 
ing. The pastor must move constantly about 
among them, digging about their roots, gathering 
out the stones, pulling up the weeds, watering 
them, shielding them from too much sunshine, 
plucking away their dead leaves, pruning away 
their dead twigs, tying up their drooping stems 
against a support, to prevent them from falling 
altogether prostrate. There are thousands of these 
sickly plants, that never grow healthy and strong 
in fact, the very means taken to remedy their 
feebleness keeps them sickly and dependent. And 
what is the result ? Our pastors cannot be evan 
gelists : it takes so much time and thought to care 
for the insiders that they have neither time nor 
strength to care for outsiders. The minister of 
Christ is resolved we had almost said dissolved 
into the mere shepherd, and ceases to be in any 
large sense a fisher of men. 

Beneath the very shadow of our church-spires in 
our great cities, the " great majority " lies, almost 
utterly neglected. The "bitter cry of outcast 
London " arises unheard and unheeded in the ears 
of hundreds of church members, who imagine that 
they have done their duty when they have built 
churches, hired ministers, and then themselves 
helped to fill the churches and claim the ministers 
as their own hired servants ! And if, in addition 
to this, they ring a church-bell and announce public 
worship, and provide preaching, they are not to 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 123 

blame if the great unwashed majority stay away 
and perish in dirt and sin ! 

The evil we are exposing and rebuking is a 
radical one so deep-seated that to uproot it would 
overturn the very soil of society. Church mem 
bers selfishly claim the minister, and even the 
evangelist. It has long been with the maturest 
disciples a question whether, in our Church econ 
omy, the place of the evangelist has not been 
perverted. Here, in our great cities, from one- 
half to two-thirds of the poorer workmen live in 
neglect of the Gospel. If there be any class of 
home heathen that has a claim on the evangelist s 
labors, it is those who, in " highways and hedges," 
do not yet " come in." It is to them that our 
Lord says, "Go ye." And yet, when evangelists 
come into our centres of population, instead of 
going down among these lost souls for whom 
nobody seems to care, they labor for the most part 
in our churches, where the people are often over 
fed and overfat on their fare. Nay, to assure the 
more eclat and enthusiasm of numbers, from three 
to twenty churches will unite, and call an evan 
gelist to labor among them ; and then Christians 
will crowd the places of assembly so that those 
who are not habitual hearers would find but little 
room if they came. 

That much good is done by these devoted men, 
who even in this fashion labor as evangelists, we 
are not disposed to deny. But whether this is 



124 .THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

the normal sphere for evangelistic work, we more 
than doubt. During thirty years of pulpit and 
pastoral labor, my own mind has been more and 
more impressed with the conviction that, instead of 
the Church s needing the labor of an evangelist to 
supplement that of the faithful pastor among his 
own membership, the pastor needs to reach beyond 
his own flock and be more than a shepherd, a 
" fisher of men," casting his net into the wider sea 
of the world ; and that, instead of encouraging his 
people to think of themselves as plants to be tilled, 
he is to instruct them, in God s name, that they 
are themselves to be fellow-helpers with him in sow 
ing the whole world with the Gospel, and planting 
this wide field with believers. Nothing needs to be 
emphasized more, in this Laodicean age, than this, 
that the Church is not the "field" but the "force ", 
not the object of the labors of God s husbandmen, 
but itself the body of laborers who are to be thrust 
forth into the field, which is the world. Until this 
is understood and felt, and practiced upon until, 
from the sphere of dim and distant idealization, it 
passes into prompt and practical realization, we 
shall have no new era of world-wide missions ! 

The whole Church of God should be a great body 
of evangelists ; and, instead of first absorbing pastor 
after pastor, and then, like insatiate sponges, de 
manding the ministrations of evangelists besides, 
church-members should say to their minister : " Let 
us alone, and go after the lost ; when we need 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 125 

you, we will send for you or come to you ; but we 
leave you free to seek the unsaved, and whatever 
we can do to help you, we are ready to do. Be 
our leader and we will follow lead us out into the 
world-field and set us at work lead us out into 
the battle-field and set us fighting." What a new 
epoch will dawn on the Church and on the world 
when disciples are ready, as soon as they have 
found Jesus, to leave even His immediate presence 
and go, like Andrew and Philip, to find a Peter 
and a Nathanael and bring them to Jesus ! 

We have not touched the depths of this great 
truth, even yet. Every witness for God who goes 
forth to sow the seed, and himself become seed for 
this harvest, prepares for not one crop alone, but 
many successive crops. And remember our Lord s 
singular words : " Thirty, sixty, an hundred fold." 
It is of the nature of crops that they are cumulative 
successive harvests advance, not by arithmetical, 
only, but by geometrical, progression. Each crop 
yields seed for the next, and every seed brings 
forth an ear, with seed in the ear. A single seed 
thus yields a blade, whose ear furnishes thirty fold ; 
and so the second crop is nine hundred fold, the 
third crop nearly thirty thousand fold, and the 
fourth crop nearly a million fold, upon the seed first 
sown. 

Let the seed and its harvest become to us God s 
own parable of missions. To measure the fruit of 
one life, or even of one witnessing word or godly 



126 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

deed, we must stand at the end of all things, when 
the sheaves of the last harvest are garnered. The 
immediate results of a life of labor for God often 
seem small ; but results which are effects, become 
in their turn new causes for new effects, and so the 
harvest multiplies, with a rapidity so marvellous, 
that the ultimate outcome of a single life staggers 
not only faith, but imagination itself ! Saul the 
persecutor voluntarily turned from a tempting 
worldly career to become Paul, the disciple of the 
Nazarene and the apostle of the Gentiles. Not 
to speak of the glory of his attainments, who 
became more and more radiant with godlikeness 
" as he neared the perihelion point," look at his 
service as a preacher, a winner of souls, an organ 
izer of churches, a writer of epistles ; and remember 
that the influence of his character, life, and writ 
ings is growing with every new year of Christian 
history ! 

An example may help us to form some slight 
conception of the possible fruit of one godly mis 
sionary life. In darkest Africa, in Chitambo s vil 
lage in Ilala, beneath a moula tree, lies buried the 
heart of that great missionary explorer, of whom 
Dr. Blaikie aptly says, that the Romans would 
have surnamed him Livingstone Africanus. In 
his rude grass hut he was found, at four o clock 
in the morning, not in bed, but kneeling at the 
bedside, his head buried in his hands, and both 
buried in the pillow, Without attendant or com- 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 127 

panion, on this furthest journey, he had, like 
Enoch, been translated while walking with God 
along the pathway of prayer. But, long before his 
pulseless heart had been deposited beneath that 
moula tree, that heart had been buried in Africa 
for Africa s redemption. And, for all time to 
come, it will be the germ and seed of other holy 
lives, both among the sable sons of that dark 
continent and among those who dwell in other 
climes. 

To-day there is one who walks among princes, 
on whose breast flash the shining medals of high 
honor, whose praise is in every mouth, and whose 
well-earned rewards fall about him like a rain of 
gems one whom History already crowns as 
Africa s great explorer whom we hope History 
may on her future scroll record as Africa s greater 
emancipator. 

Henry M. Stanley is himself but one fruit of 
that buried heart at Ilala. It was, according to 
his own confession, those four months and four 
days, spent in the same tent or boat with David 
Livingstone, which made of that intrepid explorer 
a new man. Mr. E. D. Young had already said 
of that lowly spinner of Blantyre, " He was the 
best man I ever knew." But, when Stanley sought 
to pay his tribute to that humble missionary, he 
could find no words adequate, except Pilate s con 
fession as to his divine Master, "I find no fault 
in this man / " Reviewing these months of com- 



128 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

panionship with Livingstone, he says : " My days 
seem to have been spent in an Elysian field ; " 
and, when the parting hour came, and he sought 
by one long, last look to fix those blessed features 
upon his memory, Stanley found that he could see 
but dimly. The hero of a hundred battles, with 
nerves of steel, was not a stranger to tears when 
he turned away from the man who was the great 
est blessing and benefactor of his life. Already 
had his sceptical habits of mind found their over 
whelming refuting argument in that saintly life 
whose every lineament was vocal with godliness. 

Two scenes in England s famous Abbey have 
already become historic. One was April 18, 1874, 
when, in the centre of the nave, the dust of Africa s 
great hero was laid to rest ; and when Stanley 
lifted his hand from the pall of his great friend, to 
lay it upon his unfinished work, and that same 
year start from Zanzibar to explore Equatoria. 
And the other scene was July 12, 1890, when, as 
he led his bride to the altar, the marriage proces 
sion halted to lay one more tribute on Livingstone s 
grave in token of the debt which could never be 
paid ! And yet Henry M. Stanley is but one 
fruit of that buried heart. Who shall say what 
harvests, world-wide and enduring as eternity, 
shall yet wave, as the product of the seed that was 
sown by David Livingstone in the soil of Africa, 
when he "buried himself" in the Dark Conti 
nent ! 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 129 

II. We are also represented as being brought, 
in the work of missions, into close fellowship with 
Christ. 

The language used by Paul, and already quoted, 
is extraordinary. Let us hear again his words : 
" Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and 
fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ in my flesh for His body s sake, which is 
the Church, whereof I am made a minister." 

Such language is startling : it suggests a sort of 
incompleteness in the sufferings of Christ, a lack 
which only the disciple can fill. To understand 
this, we must remember that the redemptive work 
advances to completeness by successive stages. 
When our Saviour, on the cross, said, " It is 
finished," " atoning death " was complete. When 
He rose from the dead, justifying work was com 
plete. When He sent the Holy Spirit, the applying 
agency was complete. 

But one more step must be taken. The cross, 
the rent tomb, the coming Spirit, needed a pro 
claiming voice, to tell of Him who was delivered 
for our offences and rose for our justification ; and 
to be the mouth of the inspiring Spirit. Three 
links there were in this golden chain by which man 
and God are to be reunited. There was the link 
which the cross supplied in the place of a broken 
link of Law; there was the link that the Resur 
rection supplied, in place of a broken link of Life; 
there was the link which the Holy Spirit supplied 



130 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

in place of a broken link of Love; but still the 
chain did not reach to man. It was one link 
short. How was the work of Christ on the cross 
and in His rising how was the power of the Spirit 
in His coming, to lay hold on men ! Hear this 
same Paul : " Whosoever shall call on the name of 
the Lord shall be saved. How, then, shall they 
call on Him in whom they have not believed? 
And how shall they believe in Him of whom they 
have not heard ? And how shall they hear without 
a preacher ? And how shall they preach except 
they be sent f " * Give us the Church, moved by 
passion for souls, sending forth the herald and wit 
ness give us the herald and witness, proclaiming 
everywhere the good news ; then we have men 
hearing, hearers believing, believers calling, and 
being saved. 

Will any one tell us how, without this last link, 
the other three are to reach mankind with saving 
power ? Is the blood-stained cross to plant itself 
on every hill and in every valley, and then the 
dumb Tree of Curse to speak to men of Him who 
on that cross bore their sins ? Is the sepulchre 
in the garden to transport itself into the regions 
beyond, and there repeat the awful scene that 
made angels rejoice and demons turn pale and 
soldier guards become as dead men ? How is the 
Holy Spirit to find utterance for these great truths 
of salvation, except through believers ? 
* Rom. x. 14, 15. 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 131 

Paul was neither extravagant nor irreverent ; 
yes, something remains, after Christ s finished aton 
ing passion and justifying work, after even the 
Spirit s descent, to "Jill up that which is behind" 
A preacher, a witness, who is cleansed by the 
blood, justified by the life of Christ, renewed by 
the Spirit, is needful, is necessary, if all this stupen 
dous display of grace is to reach the unsaved soul. 
The believer is the missing link add this, and 
God the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, brought into 
close contact with the lost, can apply the blood, 
the Word, the regenerating power. But, while this 
last link is lacking, what is to secure the needful 
contact and connection ? 

There is something awful and overpowering 
about this truth. Yet it is not too high to be 
apprehended. I have been wont as a pastor, like 
many of my brethren, to seek, in every case of 
conversion, to trace the human link by which the 
new soul was united to God. I have never yet 
found one case where some human agency had 
not been used by God. Some godly father or 
mother, sister or brother, Sunday-school teacher, 
pastor, evangelist ; perhaps a stray word dropped 
by the way, a simple invitation to a church service 
or a prayer-meeting, a tract or book slipped into 
the hand in some cases, nothing more than a tear 
that told of deep fountains of feeling, or an earnest 
look in which the soul found a voice ; but always 
a human soul somehow coming between God and 



132 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

another soul and filling up that which would other 
wise be lacking. 

We are not prepared to say that this rule is so 
universal as to be without an exception. Mission 
aries tell strange tales of souls prepared, like Cor 
nelius, for the visit of the preacher, before he 
came ; or led by some stray copy of a fragment of 
the New Testament, to call on the unknown God. 
But, even here, who can tell what human agency, 
that can no longer be traced, has left its footsteps 
on heathen soil may this not be the springing up 
of seed, sown in darkness, by some hand now 
again turned to dust in the grave ? And is not 
the very Bible itself the work of man, though it be 
the Word of God ? However many exceptions 
there may be, even exceptions prove the rule, and 
the rule is that, without the agency of believers, 
unbelievers are . not made believers. A saved soul 
always comes in to be the means by which sinners 
are turned to saints. 

It is the old story of rescue repeated on a more 
august scale of application. God s ladder will not 
reach the lost in this House of Doom unless you 
add your own length to the ladder! And so, as we 
are co-workers with the Father, we are co-sufferers 
with the Son. His cross is dumb, His tomb is 
dumb, until we give to them a voice. We are to 
tell men how He died, and rose. Even the Word 
of God needs a human witness. If we ask the 
Ethiopian eunuch who is intently reading the 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 153 

Messianic poem of Isaiah, " Understandest thou 
what thou readest ? " he answers : "How can I, 
except some man should guide me ? Of whom 
speaketh the prophet this, of himself or of some 
other man ? " And thus, even to those who have 
the Word of God, there is needed one who has 
learned, by experience, to interpret that Word to 
others. 

Paul uses a phrase which is itself an interpreta 
tion of his meaning : " For His body s sake, which 
is the Church." In a body, all is mutual depend 
ence and interdependence. " The eye cannot say 
unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again 
the head to the feet, I have no need of you;" 
"nay, much more, those members of the body 
which seem to be more feeble are necessary." * 
Here is the Divine parable of the Body of Christ. 
That body is one with many members, and all, 
however feeble, uncomely, less honorable, are 
necessary, if not to vitality, at least to vigor. The 
hand depends on the feet, and both, on the eyes 
and ears. Nay, even the head depends on the 
activity of the members over which it presides. 
If the head wills to go how can it unless the legs 
and feet bear it elsewhere or, if it would have 
some work done which the brain devises, how, 
unless the hands produce what we call handi 
work ? We have an exalted " Head " He might 
have been divinely independent of us ; but, when 

* 1. Cor. xii. 22. 



134 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

He chose to be Head and take the Church for His 
body, He chose also to depend on the co-operation 
of the humblest member. Henceforth, even the 
Head cannot say to the feet the highest to the 
lowest " I have no need of you ! " 

Now, whenever believers neglect souls, and, for 
the sake of their own indolence and indulgence, 
leave the lost to die unsaved and unwarned, there 
is schism in the body a%iona, rent, division. The 
head yearns to reach out and save, but the great 
nerves no longer act. It is as though a sharp 
blade had cut through the spinal cord, and motion, 
if not sensation, is gone ; the muscles and sinews 
no longer respond to the will, and, in sight of the 
lost, the body stands inactive. 

This universal evangelism is thus necessary alike 
to accomplish the will of God, overtake the wants 
of the world, and energize and exercise the life of 
the Church. It is the one thing needful from any 
and every point of view. If missions languish, in 
so far God and man part company, the human 
race sinks lower in vice, crime, and sin, and the 
Church runs the risk, not of apathy only, but of 
apostasy. 

Everything else depends on the health, strength, 
growth of the Body of Christ. As soon as missions 
fall into neglect, that body becomes enfeebled; 
and when any part of the body is inactive the whole 
body is more or less crippled, if not paralyzed. 
No truth is more enforced in the Word than the 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 135 

unity of the Body of Christ.* We are taught that 
both development and activity depend on the 
whole body s working together. Both edification 
and evangelization demand that " the whole body, 
fitly joined together and compacted by that which 
every joint supplieth, according to the effectual 
working in the measure of every part, maketh 
increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in 
love." t 

As Mr. Hudson Taylor well says, one may stand 
near a burning house or sinking ship and yearn to 
save those who are in danger of death ; but by no 
possibility can the outstretched arms reach one 
that is a yard and a half away, unless the legs and 
feet carry the whole body forward to the scene of 
action. It is comparatively in vain that a few 
members of the Church, which is Christ s Body, 
seek to be heroic in self-sacrifice for the lost, and 
to uplift and redeem heathen and pagan peoples, 
while the Church as a whole is idle and indifferent. 
The best effort is both restrained and restricted, 
and there can be no large outreach, no strong 
uplift ; the most consecrated missionary band 
finds, in an apathetic Church at home, a hindrance 
more fatal to success than the most violent opposi 
tion where Satan s strongholds stand. 

Never yet certainly not since the apostolic 
age has the whole body moved together in the 
* Rom. xii. ; I. Cor. xii. ; Eph. iv. 
f Ephesiaus iv. 16. 



136 THE DITINE ENTERPRISE. 

direction of missions. Whatever reaching out 
there may have been on the part of some of the 
more active and vigorous members, the body, as 
such, moves very slowly, if indeed it is not stand 
ing still. The Christian Church has volume of 
voice enough to make the whole earth hear the 
Gospel message, if the whole capacity of that voice 
were but used ; and if the whole energy of that 
body were once put forth the results would be 
astounding. 

Wherever there is a true passion for souls and 
a will to co-operate with God, no believer can be 
kept idle by any felt incapacity, or by the iron 
bonds of "circumstances." Tabitha may have 
been a bed-ridden cripple, to whom nothing was 
left as a means of serving but her hands. But she 
could hold a needle, and that needle was the angel 
of God to the poor orphans and widows of Joppa, 
and has been the suggestion of Dorcas societies 
ever since. 

There is in Matthew x. 41 a remarkable word 
of promise : " He that receiveth a prophet in the 
name of a prophet shall receive a prophet s re 
ward." To the Jew the prophet outranked both 
priest and king because, while they represented 
man before God, he, the prophet, represented God 
to man, the medium of divine communication. 
Hence a prophet s reward was regarded as highest. 
And it is noticeable that the only two human 
beings ever translated without death were Enoch 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 13? 

and Elijah, two prophets. Our Lord says that to 
receive a prophet for his office sake is to receive a 
prophet s reward, i.e., to rank as a prophet, and 
share his recompense. This is a wonderful unfold 
ing of God s method of administering rewards. 
But there is a divine philosophy in it. A prophet, 
however charged with a divine message and the 
Divine Spirit, is but a man compassed about 
with human infirmities and limitations. He has 
but the voice, the strength, the power, the life, of 
one man. You are not a prophet, but suppose you 
do, and can do, no more than make that prophet a 
greater power. You can welcome him to your 
home with a generous hospitality ; your board 
feeds his hunger and quenches his thirst ; your bed 
rests him when weary, your sympathy cheers him 
when despondent ; your love and kindly ministry 
put new vigor in his frame, new light in his eye, 
new force in his voice, new courage in his heart. 
He feels stronger and lives longer because you 
have been to him a source of help and hope. 
Have you not really shared his work, and is it not 
meet that you share his reward ? 

We may borrow from the two Testaments fa 
vorite forms of figure, given to illustrate God s 
thought ; the trumpet in the Old, the lamp-stand 
in the New. What is a trumpet but a mere means 
of adding volume to the voice, so that he who, 
otherwise, could reach but a few hundreds, may 
now speak with power to hundreds of thousands f 



138 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

What is a lamp-stand but an arrangement for rais 
ing a burning lamp so that its ray may pierce the 
darkness more effectually, by being lifted above 
obstructions ? 

The body of believers constitutes a trumpet, to 
give to the voice of the preacher penetrating power 
a lamp-stand, to lift the light of testimony so 
that it may shine farther. And, as every atom of 
the trumpet or lamp-stand contributes to the result, 
so every true believer helps to make the Gospel 
message and the Gospel witness sound louder and 
reach the farther. The dumb man may thus help 
the speech of others to be heard, and the most 
obscure disciple help to lift others to a higher level 
of service. And so, " if there be first a willing 
mind it is accepted according to that a man hath, 
and not according to that he hath not." Nothing 
can prevent you from being, if you will, a mis 
sionary, a prophet, a burning and shining light 
in God s eyes, you are what, with all your heart, 
you will to be; and the work you will to do, but 
cannot, is the work which to Him you do and for 
which you are rewarded. 

An example from history may help to make this 
plain. While Livingstone was in Africa, a Mrs. 
McRobert of Scotland, unable in person to share 
his toils, sought prayerfully to help his labors 
to greater effectiveness. She had saved twelve 
pounds, and gave her consecrated offering to him 
that he might hire a native African as a body- 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 139 

servant. This good woman received God s prophet 
in the name of a prophet. She sought to promote 
his comfort, spare him needless toil and the ex 
haustion and exposure that might bring a fatal 
strain to mind and body amid African wilds. 
Livingstone used the gift to hire the faithful 
Mebalwe ; and, when at Mabotsa, a lion seized 
Livingstone by the shoulder, tore his flesh and 
crushed his bone, there seemed no hope for his life 
except God should work a miracle. While that 
beast s paw was on his head, Mebalwe, that native 
teacher, diverted the lion s attention from his 
master to himself and risked, as he nearly lost, 
his own life, to save that of Livingstone. How 
little did that humble Scotch woman foresee that 
her twelve pounds would indirectly be blessed to 
the prolonging of that priceless life for the toils 
and triumphs of thirty more years ! And who 
shall dare to say that Mrs. McRobert was not, in 
God s eyes, a sharer in the wonderful work which 
he was spared to do in opening Equatoria ? Who 
shall presume to say that she who received a 
prophet for his office s sake, and after her manner 
and means helped him in his work after a godly 
sort, is not a sharer also in his reward ? That 
twelve pounds made Mrs. McRobert joint owner 
in those thirty years, witlrall their glorious fruit. 
Through David Livingstone she lived and wrought 
among Africa s sable children. 

Ah, ye who live at home and sigh for larger 



140 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

service ye whose are the silver and the gold, 
and the rich jewels of the cradle what if you, 
who cannot yourselves 0, would send! What if 
the fruit of your grounds, and brains, and the 
more sacred fruit of your bodies, were given to 
God ! How many large gifts would fill missionary 
treasuries to overflowing and make missionary 
hearts swell with even fuller hope and joy ! How 
many small gifts, bestowed out of the abundance 
of poverty, with self-sacrifice and prayer, like seed 
steeped in tears, God would use as He knows 
how, as the germs of a great harvest ! How 
many children, begotten in prayer, filled with the 
Holy Ghost even from the womb, would be sent 
forth from homes that had nothing else to give, 
and make parents partakers in the prophet s work 
and reward, by the giving of Samuels and Johns 
and Timothys to the work ! 

God invites us all to join Him in the work of 
missions. And once again, with solemn intensity 
of emphatic conviction, I record the growing, life 
long conviction, that the supreme charm of mis 
sions is that it represents God s own march through 
history ; and that, therefore, he who is most en 
amored and engrossed of this work of giving the 
Gospel to the destitute millions of the race, is most 
closely in link with God and in line with His 
march. There are modern Enochs and Elijahs 
whose close walk with God invites translation : they 
are the Careys, the Morrisons, the Livingstones, 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS, 141 

the Hanningtons, the Judsons, the Williamses, 
the Hunts, the Pattesons, whose absorbing pas 
sion is Christ and He alone and who in the 
sublime work of world-wide witness join the 
Triune God in winning the world for Immanuel. 

This explains the promise of Christ s personal 
presence with the witnessing host. The last com 
mand, " Go ye into all the world," is very emphatic, 
but not less marked are the preface and the con 
clusion between which it stands. Before it is the 
declaration : "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth ; " after it, the prophecy and 
promise : " Lo I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the age." By no accident is it that 
the perpetual command, " Go ye make disciples 
of all nations," is placed between this declaration 
and this promise : they are the buttresses of 
adamant by which that commission is supported. 
In that word, " Therefore," all the logic of mis 
sions is centred. Our Lord says, " Because the 
All- Power is mine, and my All- Presence is yours, 
all the days, even to the end of the age, THERE 
FORE go ye into all the world," etc. And, so far 
and so fast as the Church obeys, and goes every 
where and to every creature with the Gospel mes 
sage, the All- Power will be manifested and the All- 
Presence enjoyed ! 

We need then to think of Christian missions as 
pre-eminently God s work and ours, because it 
is God s and we are His and workers together 



H2 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

with Him, permitted to share this supreme priv 
ilege. The power and energy are not therefore 
human, but divine, and in any and every exigency 
we have but to appeal to Him, get new courage 
and confidence in the secret place of prayer ; and, 
because His trumpet never sounds retreat, we 
shall never take a step backward, but always for 
ward ; and even those steps which seem backward, 
if we are following Him, are really advances, as 
waves recede only to rise to a higher flood-mark. 
III. Our survey would be very incomplete 
without at least a glance at the believer s co-opera 
tion with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was especially 
promised as Christ s witness. "He shall testify of 
me," and will " guide you into all truth " ; for " He 
shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall 
hear that shall He speak"; and "He will shew 
you things to come." " He shall glorify me ; for 
He shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto 
you." This language is explicit.* The peculiar 
office of the Holy Ghost is testimony to Christ ; 
and, like any other true witness, He does not 
speak of Himself, testify to Himself, or glorify 
Himself. He brings Christ forward into prom 
inence His person and character, His obedient 
life and vicarious death, His resurrection, ascen 
sion, and second coming. He testifies to Him, 
before He comes, by the prophets He inspired ; 
then He testifies to Him, when He conies, by the 

* John xiv., xv., xvi. 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 1 43 

evangelists whom He guided and whose memories 
He quickened ; and so to each new believer He 
continues to open the word and unveil Christ s 
blessed person, and in the heart disclose His power 
to save and sanctify, and so to witness to Christ 
still. 

Our Lord says : "And ye also shall bear wit 
ness* " ; it is in the Greek, the same word as that 
applied to the Spirit. In what sense is this co- 
witness true ? 

Of course there was a special sense in which 
those early apostles and disciples witnessed to 
Christ, because they had from the beginning been 
with Him, and could testify to His words and 
works, His life and death and resurrection and 
ascension. But we have now to do with the wider 
question of the co-witnessing in which all true 
believers share ; and in its way it is fully as impor 
tant as the other. First of all, the believer testifies 
with the Holy Ghost to the power of Christ, as a 
personal and present Saviour. And it is no 
irreverence to say that believers can bear witness 
to some truths which even the Spirit of God can 
not so effectually attest. He can hold up the 
Christ of prophecy and the Christ of history 
present Him on the cross and on the throne ; and 
keep Him before our eyes as the object of admir 
ing, adoring Love. But the Holy Spirit knows 
nothing of sin and salvation from sin ; and, unlike 

* John xv. 25-27 ; Acts v. 32. 



144 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Christ, having never taken upon him our nature, 
knows nothing of our infirmities and temptations 
as one who has suffered in the flesh. The Holy 
Spirit, therefore, needs and requires the believer 
to witness, from personal knowledge, to the actual 
work of Christ in the soul, as He Himself witnesses 
to His worker the soul. 

We may pass this obvious thought, in order to 
develop another, far less obvious, but perhaps 
more important. The Holy Spirit needs believing 
witnesses as the channels of His utterances and the 
vehicles of His Power and grace to unbelieving 
souls. 

When our Lord first brings out clearly the work 
of the Spirit, He expressly says, " I will pray the 
Father and He shall give you another Comforter 
that He may abide with you forever ; even the 
Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, 
because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him ; 
but ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you and 
shall be in you." * Paul reminds the Corinthians 
that the natural man does not receive, and cannot 
discern, the things of the Spirit of God ;t and that 
even to the princely intellects of this world the 
wisdom of God is foolishness. 

The remarkable and emphatic testimony of these 
and kindred passages is that the Holy Spirit, who 
is perceived and recognized by disciples, who 
dwells with and abides in them, and is by them 

* John xiv. 16, 17. f I. Cor. ii. 12. 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 145 

received and known, is not in unbelievers, and is 
not by them either perceived or received, and 
cannot be. And, yet, we are taught with equal 
explicitness that, unless by the Spirit of God men 
are convinced of the sin of unbelief, are renewed 
in mind and heart and will, are -born again from 
above, and made new creatures in Christ Jesus, 
they cannot enter, or even see, the kingdom of 
God. At this paradox many have stumbled. The 
Spirit of God must work a saving and radical 
change in the natural and carnal man, and yet 
such a man is incapable of either receiving the 
Spirit or even knowing His nature. 

There is but one way to explain this enigma or 
resolve this paradox the Holy Ghost reaches 
ungodly souls through the godly. He dwells in, 
and works through, belici ers. He cannot abide 
in a sinful and unbelieving heart, but He can 
dwell with him who is of a humble and contrite 
spirit and trembleth at the Word of God ; and 
can use his faith and utterance and experience 
and witness, to lead unsaved souls to repentance 
and faith. Christ said to the woman at the well, 
" Whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give 
him, it shall be in him a well of water, springing 
up into everlasting life." Mark the rapid progress 
of thought : first a draught of living water received 
then a well or spring of water opened and 
gushing up within then a stream of water flowing 
out. The believer first drinks then becomes a 



H 6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

spring, and then a channel for the outflow. And 
so that woman no sooner drank, than the new 
spring of life sent out its waters even to the thirsty 
souls of Sychar. Again, at the Feast of Taber 
nacles, as the water from Siloam was poured out 
on the morning sacrifice, Christ cried aloud, " He 
that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow 
rivers of living water this spake He of the Spirit 
which they that believe on Him should receive." 

Now to what purpose does the spring send forth 
streams, but to quench the thirst of the needy ? 
Why does the Holy Spirit make the believer a 
fountain of life, but to flow through him to the 
souls of the dying ? Here is the grand mystery 
of this fellowship with the Holy Ghost : He 
chooses to employ human vessels and channels 
for conveying His own power and grace. 

If the New Testament be carefully examined, 
it will be found, in almost if not quite every in 
stance of conversion, that the Holy Spirit used a 
believer as His instrument. Andrew was used to 
reach Peter ; Philip, to reach Nathanael ; Philip 
the Evangelist, to teach the eunuch ; even Saul 
probably got his first impressions from the dying 
Stephen. Peter became the channel of the Holy 
Ghost to Cornelius and his kinsmen and friends. 
Paul and Silas were the vehicles of communication 
with the Philippian jailer; and, in brief, in the 
whole work of the Spirit upon unbelieving souls, 
He appears to have been dependent upon believers 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 14? 

as media of impression and communication. So 
far as we know, in all His ordinary workings, 
human agency is indispensable to the completeness 
of His operations. 

While we carelessly say that the " Spirit of God 
strives with ungodly men, moves in their hearts, 
is influencing their conscience and conduct," have 
we any warrant for affirming that the Holy Ghost 
in any case dispenses absolutely with this agency 
of the disciple ? or if He ever does, is it not, as we 
have said, so rare as to constitute an exception ? 

In the inception of the work in Japan, it is said 
that the first six converts to the Christian faith 
were the consequence of picking up a stray copy 
of a Testament that was found floating in the Bay 
of Yeddo, and of the inquiry thus aroused ; and 
that, before the first missionary had landed on those 
shores, the Holy Spirit had led these natives to the 
knowledge of Christ. But even here, exceptional 
as was this case, the Gospel narratives which were 
thus blessed to the conversion of souls were the 
work of human pens, witnessing to Christ. 

The bearing of these thoughts on missions is 
vitally important. We pray for the Holy Spirit to 
"descend upon all people," even upon those among 
whom no laborers have yet gone. How much war 
rant have we for such prayer ? What if no blessing 
can come to the souls in inland China or interior 
Africa, in the Soudan and in Thibet, until believers 
are there as channels of blessing ! What if this be 



148 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

our Lord s meaning, that the Gospel must be first 
preached as a witness, by a witnessing Church 
among all nations, before the end comes ! What 
if the one condition of the Spirit s descent "on all 
flesh " be that God s witnesses must be wherever 
"all flesh" is found, to become the medium for 
such descending blessing to call it down, and to 
receive, recognize, and convey it when it comes ! 

Let this very remarkable fact be duly empha 
sized that, in the whole course of missionary history, 
no people have ever been brought to salvation ; 
and, so far as we know, no individuals have re 
ceived the Spirit of God, until some one or more 
of God s messengers have been among them, either 
in person or through the products of their pen. 
Some wandering evangelist, colporteur, tract dis 
tributor it may be some simple unlettered dis 
ciple has passed that way ; a Bible, a tract, a word 
of counsel, a prayer, a testimony has been left be 
hind ; and, years after it may be, blessing has come. 
But the records of missionary biography and his 
tory may be searched in vain, to find a modern 
Pentecost without some Peter or Paul, some 
Dorcas or Lydia, some Philip or Priscilla, or at 
least some obscure human instrumentality, to be 
come a receiving and distributing reservoir for the 
water of life ! 

It is this deep conviction that the Spirit of God 
will not accomplish His sacred travail for souls, 
until believers are everywhere present as His 



THE WORK OF MISSIONS. 149 

human agents, that leads me to press, with persist 
ent exhortation and entreaty, the immediate and 
world-wide scattering of missionaries. While we 
concentrate our forces in a few fields we may in 
deed insure blessing to those fields but we are 
rendering blessing impossible where there are no 
laborers. If the Church would but obey her Lord, 
and take whatever men and means are at her 
disposal and distribute them over the whole world- 
field, the most important condition would be sup 
plied for an out-pouring of the Spirit on all flesh, 
because in every part of the habitable earth some 
of Christ s witnesses would be found ! 

Such thoughts may well absorb and entrance us. 
They set the ministry of missions in a new light. 
Round about the lowliest sphere of work for God, 
a rainbow bends, like that which curves its sacred 
bow about His throne. It gilds and glorifies the 
darkest cloud of trial, and turns even tears of an 
guish into radiant prisms of promise. In remotest 
regions beyond, in inland China or darkest Africa, 
there may be those who, unknown and unobserved 
of men, toil hard to teach the ignorant and to save 
the lost ; but there is not one of them all who is 
not intimately sharing the work of the Blessed 
Trinity, actually supplying some lacking instru 
mentality or agency, necessary to fill up to com 
pleteness, and carry to success, that divine work. 
How important even the most obscure worker is, 
only eternity can show. 



15 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

The work of witnessing derives its principal 
charm from its close association with God. When, 
in that eleventh chapter of Hebrews that " West 
minster Abbey of Old Testament Saints," Paul 
gives examples of the witness-bearers of past ages, 
next to Abel, the first martyr, comes Enoch, whose 
brief record was : "And Enoch walked with God." 
All witnessing to God is walking with Him ; and 
to bear witness to Him is to have Him bear wit 
ness to us, as He did to Enoch, who, before his 
translation, " had this testimony that he pleased 
God." This is, of itself, the all-sufficient reward 
and recompense of our worker Him: it is also 
work with Him, and brings us into close and 
conscious fellowship with Him. When we under 
take this world- wide witness to Christ, He comes 
and walks beside us, and His personal presence 
becomes our heaven. And, like Thomas of 
Aquino, when offered our choice of a reward for 
service, we could answer, "Non alium nisi Te, 
Domine" 




IV. 

THE DIVINE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 

|ORD LYTTON called color, "visible 
music." To study missions and become 
absorbed in this work, is to find in it the 
fullest visible expression of the invisible Spirit of 
God, the incarnation of godliness. 

Some motives and impulses belong to a low 
level, such as those which spring from appetite, 
avarice, and ambition, the lust of the flesh, the 
lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. One needs 
to be scarce more than an animal, at most an in 
tellectual animal, to feel the sway of such aims as 
belong to our grosser nature. 

Rising a little in the scale of motives, we reach 
a class that belong to a higher level, such as spring 
from man as a member of the household, of society, 
of the state, of the human brotherhood. We call 
these impulses domestic, patriotic, philanthropic. 
Self-love, if not selfishness, is largely mixed up 
with these three measures of meal, and leavens 
the whole lump. No human being who guards 
self-interest can be indifferent to the purity and 
harmony of the family, the unity and prosperity 
of the state, or the progress and welfare of man 



152 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

as man. We are not independent of each other, 
but dependent members of one body. 

To a yet higher level of motive, which few reach, 
it is now my privilege to point may I not also 
say? lead, my readers. But let us understand, 
beforehand, that this is an altitude in which the 
worldly and the carnal nature can no longer breathe 
freely. Such a height has an atmosphere of its 
own, too pure, too rare, for sensual, sordid, selfish 
souls to inspire. And, of those who have climbed 
to those lofty heights, and there abide, there is 
but one possible explanation : it is because God 
hath given them of His Spirit. The spirit of 
missions is not only akin to the Spirit of Christ : 
it is the Spirit of Christ. And we shall now try 
to find what it is which, in the missionary spirit, 
constitutes the divine and Christlike element, to 
which so few really attain. 

Our inquiry touches the work of missions at its 
root : "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he " : 
out of the heart flow the issues of life. Whatever 
lack there is in missions as an enterprise is to be 
traced to something wrong or wanting in the spirit 
of disciples. And here all new beginnings must 
themselves begin. Like Elisha, we need to follow 
the bitter and brackish stream back to its fountains, 
and cast in the salt at the spring ; then all that 
flows from it will give evidence of new conditions 
at the fountain head. Let us carefully search, 
then, the real source of our lack. 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 153 

The great practical problem, whose solution 
demands the prayerful and prompt attention of 
every believer, is this : How may the Church of 
Christ carry the good tidings round the world, 
during the lifetime of this generation? For the 
present generation of the saved to reach the pres 
ent generation of the unsaved, is the one question 
of the hour that leaves all others far in the dis 
tance. To the solution of that problem in God s 
own way, the Church, and every member of it, 
should bring all the brains, heart, conscience, will, 
money, intelligence, and enterprise at command. 
To aid, so far as we can, in the accomplishment of 
this work, it behoves each of us solemnly to give 
ourselves and our substance, our tongues and our 
pens, for whatever time may be left us. To this 
work let me once more earnestly invoke others. 

The solving of this problem is not a matter of 
method, or means ; but primarily of a mind and 
heart and will, that is according to Christ. All 
machinery, however complete, depends for effect 
iveness upon its motive-power. Here force is 
generated. Wheels and levers are but the chan 
nels through which power has play ; and, however 
intricate and complicate the mechanical adjust 
ments, there cannot even be motion, much less 
efficient action, unless and until force is created 
or applied. The gigantic ordnance-gun, ball, 
charge, all wait for the spark. And all our best, 
wisest, most complete methods of mission work 



154 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

will stand like a motionless machine, until the 
Spirit of God becomes in disciples a spirit of mis 
sions, and generates spiritual force adequate to 
move and to keep moving the wheels of Christian 
enterprise. 

1 . Of course, the Spirit of Faith is the secret of 
all other Christian attainment. This we assume 
as beyond the need of argument. What the root 
is to the plant, what the spring is to the stream, 
that faith is, to all the beauty and growth and 
power of a child of God. Not only in prayer, 
but in all our work, " without faith it is impossible 
to please Him." We must first of all receive 
Christ by believing, and in believing He must 
receive us, so that we are His and He is ours, by 
the mystic bond of unity. When we are in Him 
by faith, and He in us by love, all else becomes 
possible ; and without Him we can do nothing, 
and are nothing. 

Taking this as granted, we proceed to ask what 
are the real fruits of faith, which the true spirit of 
missions reveals and ripens in us ? 

2. We answer, first of all, the Spirit of Obedience. 
There is no justification for missions that is 

either possible or needful, except the plain, explicit 
repeated command of Christ. We have our 
" marching orders " : that is enough. " Go ye into 
all the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
creature." That settles the matter, and leaves no 
argument or vindication to be added or needed. 



777-6 SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 155 

The question, " Do missions/^ ?" is both irrele 
vant and irreverent. It always pays to obey 
authority, especially when authority is supreme. 
And so clear is our Lord s command, that the 
process, by which that command can be made of 
none effect, would make void the whole Word of 
God. Eyes that are so dim as to see no such 
duty enjoined on the Church must be blind. And 
only in the dark ages, when the very candlestick 
of God almost ceased to shine, was the debt of a 
Christian to a lost world even doubted. Nothing, 
to-day, is to the Church its shame and its crime, 
as is this, that, since Christ gave this last com 
mand, nineteen centuries have struck on the clock 
of the ages ; and more than sixty generations have 
lived, sinned, suffered, and died, with an aggregate 
population from ten to twenty times the present 
number of the human race. And yet, with this 
positive command standing before us like Christ 
Himself, and pointing to the great world-field; 
and with the facts of awful spiritual destitution 
staring us in the face, the great bulk of the human 
family has perished, and will, in this century, con 
tinue to perish, not unsaved only, but unwarned ! 
For such a state of things, no adequate apology 
or excuse is possible. 

Our obedience to our Lord s will should be im 
mediate. It has been long enough delayed, and 
the time is short. We firmly believe, and the con 
viction enters into the very marrow of our being, 



I5 6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

that the disciples of Christ should at once organize 
efforts and occupy the whole world ; that the 
whole field should be mapped out, and the whole 
force be massed together; that we should then 
proceed carefully to divide the field, so that no 
part should be overlooked ; and then to distribute 
the force so that no part should be unprovided 
for. This lesson is taught in the miracle of the 
loaves ; the first command of Christ was, " Make 
the multitude to sit down in companies of fifty 
and a hundred." That showed the disciples just 
how many people there were to be fed, and helped 
them to make sure that each company and each 
person should have attention, and provision for 
their needs. 

In apostolic days we have this miracle of the 
loaves translated into action. What were perhaps 
a thousand disciples, in all, among so many as the 
world s population ? And yet they undertook to 
"preach the Gospel to every creature." Peter 
and James went to the " circumcision " : James 
became bishop of the Church in Jerusalem, and 
looked after Judean Jews. Peter went to the far 
East, among the Jews of the " elect dispersion," 
and the peoples among whom they dwelt. John 
went to Ephesus, the centre of the Diana wor 
ship, and the gathering-place of vast multitudes. 
Paul went westward and travelled over most, if 
not all, of the countries of Europe, between the 
Golden Horn and the Straits of Gibraltar. Philip 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 157 

went down to Samaria, and, if tradition be trust 
worthy, the eunuch whom he led to Jesus went 
further down into Ethiopia and founded the Alex 
andrian Church. And, on this principle of division 
of the field and distribution of the force, the 
Church, when fewest in numbers and feeblest in 
strength, when there were no steamships or steam 
carriages, no printing-presses, or even New Testa 
ments, actually accomplished more nearly the 
evangelization of the world than the Church, in 
the pride of her prosperity and power, with every 
door open before her, and every facility that even 
modern progress has supplied, has ever done since ! 
The prompt and universal obedience, in the apos 
tolic age, to Christ s last command, made the very 
priests of pagan fanes tremble lest the altars of 
their false gods should be forsaken ! 

Our obedience should be implicit as well as im 
mediate. We should mark even the minutiae of 
our Lord s command, and follow exactly as He 
leads. For example : He indicated an order, " to 
the Jeiv first, and then to the Gentile." " Begin 
ning at Jerusalem " is a phrase constantly perverted 
to mean that home-work is to take precedence ; 
and we forget that its true meaning is that, first of 
all, God s chosen people were to be sought and 
taught. Those early disciples everywhere began 
with the Jews; whether at Jerusalem, Antioch, 
Rome, Alexandria, or Constantinople. Wherever 
Paul went, from Antioch in Syria, to Antioch in 



158 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Pisidia, to Salamis, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, 
Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, 
Troas, Miletus, Rome, he first went into the syn 
agogue of the Jews, or, if there was no synagogue, 
sought out and spake unto the Jews, wherever 
they resorted and he could get a hearing ; and 
only after they rejected his message did he turn 
to the Gentiles. Has it nothing to do with our 
comparative failure in modern missions, that the 
despised Jew has been perhaps more shamefully 
neglected than any of the worst heathen, lowest 
pagan, or most bigoted Moslem peoples ? Mis 
sions among the ancient Israel of God, as an 
organized movement, are but of recent date, and 
even now the eight millions of God s chosen nation 
are scarce approached by us. Here and there a 
few scattered laborers have been all that God s 
people have sent to open the blinded eyes of those 
who see the Messianic prophecies as yet through 
a veil. The grandest epoch of missions will not 
begin until God s Church undertakes to do as 
Christ bade her, beginning at Jerusalem. 

The way of exact obedience is the way of con 
stant blessing and of sure success. God has " not 
cast away His people whom He foreknew," and 
He will have the Gospel proclaimed to them first 
of all, not last of all. It is a noticeable fact that 
the missionary enterprises which to-day are reaping 
largest harvest in other fields are those which em 
brace missions to Israel among their forms of 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 159 

labor. To pass by the Jew in the effort to reach 
the Gentile, is a plain violation of the declared 
plan of God, and the slightest neglect of His plain 
command or revealed mind imperils all our other 
work. The blindness which is upon the mind of 
the Hebrew people, is no excuse for our neglect 
for only when they turn to the Lord can that 
blindness be taken away ; and how can any man 
be expected to turn to the Lord unless the truth 
is preached to him ? 

The Prussian army is the terror of Europe, be 
cause every citizen is a soldier, and, when the 
order goes forth, the army can be mobilized in a 
day. And it is only such faith and such obedi 
ence of faith that begets heroic courage. Confi 
dence in God takes no account of obstacles. When 
Martin Luther, at Augsburg, was asked, " What 
will you do now, with kings and priests, cardinals, 
and even the pope himself arrayed against you ? " 
" Put myself under the shield of Him who hath 
said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee ! " 
True missionaries are always heroes ; they have as 
their helmet, breastplate, and shield, the Divine 
promise, " Lo, I am with you alway," and that 
Presence is vanguard and rereward. To know 
that one is in the exact path of duty is to know 
that all things work together for good, in a divine 
harmony. 

Nothing will be so irresistible as, the Church of 
God when her obedience to her Lord is absolute. 



160 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

In the ayyth year of the Hegira, and, in the 
vicinity of Cufa, that famous Arabian preacher, 
Carmath, assumed the imposing titles of Guide, 
Director, Demonstration, Camel, Representative 
of Mohammed, John Baptist, Gabriel, Herald of 
Messiah, the Word, the Holy Ghost. After his 
death his name was even more revered by his 
fanatical followers. His twelve apostles spread 
themselves among the Bedawins, " a race of men 
equally devoid of reason and of religion " ; and 
so successful was their preaching that all Arabia 
was threatened with a new revolution. 

The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, and the 
secret of their power was a vow of blind and 
absolute submission to their Imam ; a secret and 
inviolable oath was their bond of brotherhood. 
Leaving tracks of blood, they moved along the 
Persian Gulf, and the province of Bahrein bowed 
before them ; far and wide the desert tribes lowered 
their standards before the sword of Abu Said and 
Abu Taher, his son, until they could muster on 
the field a force of over 100,000 fanatics. Their 
approach was like that of an avalanche they 
neither asked nor accepted quarter, and bore 
everything before them. 

Even the Caliph trembled as they advanced. 
They crossed the Tigris, and, with desperate 
daring, with only five hundred horse, knocked at 
the gates of the capital. By special order the 
bridges were broken down, and the lieutenant, in 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 161 

behalf of the Caliph, told Abu Taher that he and 
his force were in danger of annihilation. " Your 
master," replied the fierce commander, " has thirty 
thousand soldiers, but, in all his host, not three 
such as these." Then, turning to three of his fol 
lowers, he bade one plunge a dagger into his 
breast, a second leap into the Tigris, and a third 
fling himself from a precipice. Without a moment s 
waiting or a murmur of discontent, each one 
obeyed. " Go," said he, " and tell what you have 
seen ; and before the night falls, your general shall 
be chained among my dogs." It was so ; before 
the sunset, the camp was surprised and the threat 
executed ! * 

What could not our Lord do, against the most 
defiant strongholds of Satan, if He had even a 
little band of followers who, without hesitation, 
questioning, or reasoning, simply obeyed ? Nothing 
can stand before a Church whose only law is the 
Will of God, and the motto of whose crusade is 
"Dt us vuft" 

3. It is almost superfluous to say that the spirit 
of missions is a spirit of Love, for in Love it finds 
both its corner-stone and cap-stone. 

But Love itself is a virtue and grace which few 
possess, or even understand. There are two kinds 
of love : one is that of complacence, finding pleas 
ure in its object and evoked by the discovery of 
admirable and attractive traits. The other is the 

* Gibbon, v. 323-4. 



1 62 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

love of benevolence, which depends upon an in. 
ward impulse rather than an outward attraction. 
It is this latter sort of love which was not found 
in Greek philosophy. It was conceived as Jesus 
was, of the Holy Ghost, although, like Him, born 
of a regenerate humanity. It is not a personal 
affection, founded and grounded on moral esteem ; 
for such love in the nature of things reaches only 
to those whom we personally know, and to com 
paratively few of them. The love to which we 
refer now, is charity, good will expressed in good 
deeds, whether to friend or foe, and extending 
even to those personally unknown. While com 
placent love is exclusive and intensive, this love 
is inclusive and extensive ; it is universal and im 
partial ; and is not so much an affection as it is a 
principle, and so James calls it " The Royal Law" 
or rule of life. 

Only as we understand such love can we know 
the spirit of missions. God loved us when we 
were enemies, and in this commends His love 
both to our gratitude and our imitation. We are 
to love as He loved, without respect to the 
character of the object, or any recompense even 
in kind. Nay, the more unlovely and unlovable 
the object, the more will such love be drawn into 
exercise, for the greater is the debasement and 
need of the object, and therefore the more be 
nevolence is evoked. 

Such love embraces, of course, all being. It is 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 163 

absolutely a stranger to caste and all invidious 
distinction. To such love, no human being is 
remote. Selfishness counts all who are not neigh 
bors and friends, as barbarians, as Thales, though 
wisest and best of Greeks, looked on all outside 
of Greece ; and even those who are geographically 
near are often sympathetically remote, as the 
Samaritans were to the Jews ; for selfishness will 
have no dealings with those who give no promise 
of a return in temporal advantage or reciprocal 
favors. 

No barrier between man and man has ever 
been so formidable as caste; and whether based 
on blood and birth, brute force or brain force, 
money or culture, social position or religious pride, 
it still remains the most persistent foe to human 
brotherhood. Against its walls of adamant, Love 
arrays her mightiest artillery, and, could Love but 
sway all our hearts, these walls would fall like 
those of Jericho. In the brotherhood of faith, 
the Church of Christ, God meant that, for once, 
the world should find a true democracy, with no 
barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, male or female 
all, in Christ Jesus, one. And He meant that 
this Brotherhood of Christ should, in the whole 
world without, recognize one brotherhood of man, 
among whom no discrimination should be made, 
save in favor of the most distant, destitute, and 
degraded. And, where Love s law rules, the least 
and lowest, the worst and most worthless, actually 



164 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

take precedence in her holy ministry. All lines 
of color, race, blood, birth, clime ; all differences 
of intellectual development, emotional life, or even 
moral purity, are to fade away before the charity 
that, like the mantle of snow, falls from heaven to 
fill up all inequalities and cover over all defects. 
The caste spirit, wherever it prevails, is the fatal 
foe of Christian missions and of Christian brother 
hood. It is vain to abolish slavery and serfdom 
if this survives. It is possible to hold men in 
slavery by fetters of prejudice as well as of iron. 
There may be " uttermost parts of the earth " not 
a stone s throw from our churches and homes, be 
cause their inmates are absolutely strangers both 
to our acquaintance and sympathy. 

All this is impossible where Love sways her 
golden sceptre. She makes all mankind one 
brotherhood and all the world one neighborhood ; 
and every human soul that needs help becomes 
on that account our neighbor and brother. The 
negro is " God s image carved in ebony." Judea, 
which is at our doors, will not hide Samaria, which 
is near by but with an alien population, nor will 
either or both cause us to forget the regions be 
yond, even to the uttermost part of the earth. 

Nay, let it be repeated, if Love lays stress upon 
any class among the objects of her divine minis 
try, she will turn, first of all, to those most remote, 
because their darkness is deepest, their need the 
sorest, their degradation the most extreme : in this 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 165 

case distance is the measure of destitution and of 
the demand for help. 

That anonymous proverb, " Charity begins at 
home," if not invented by the devil, is appropri 
ated by him to serve his ends. Love counts every 
needy soul a neighbor, and counts no cost in re 
lieving with heart and hand every want or woe. 
If Love begins at home, it is only a beginning, a 
starting-point for the farthest goal of service. But 
selfishness begins at home, and stays there. To her 
a neighbor is one who will return favors by favors, 
and who pays in some form for every gift bestowed. 

It takes but little experience of worldly society 
to see how hollow and shallow it is. Even its 
courtesies and attentions, its generosity and cordi 
ality, have selfishness at the root. Parties are 
given, where every invited guest is one who has 
acted, or is expected to act, as host to those in 
viting ; presents are given to those who have laid 
the givers under obligation by their previous gifts. 
One call is a return for another, and if the friend is 
out and the card can take the place of the call, just 
so much time is saved. Courtesies are returned 
for courtesies, just as slights are returned for 
slights ; and how often, could the veil of decent form 
be removed, would it be found that the gift was 
grudgingly bestowed, the invitation reluctantly 
given, but a dire necessity compelled both, simply 
because it never would do to be under uncomfort 
able obligations. What is all this but a commercial 



1 66 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

system of exchange ? Hear our blessed Lord : 
" When thou makest a supper call not thy friends, 
nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich 
neighbors ; lest they also bid thee again and a 
recompense be made thee. But when thou makest 
a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the 
blind ; for they cannot recompense thee, for thou 
shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the 
just !" * " Love ye your enemies, and do good and 
lend, hoping for nothing again, and your reward 
shall be great and ye shall be the children of the 
Highest, for He is kind unto the unthankful and 
the evil." t Matthew adds, " Be ye therefore per 
fect even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect," but in the corresponding and parallel 
passage, Luke says, " Be ye therefore merciful 
even as your Father in heaven is merciful." The 
perfection we are to aspire to is the perfection of 
love, of unselfish benevolence. Ah, yes, that is 
the perfection of the missionary spirit. It asks 
only, who has need of vie, my money, my witness, 
my ministry ? No bargaining for returns in kind 
or otherwise, no thought of personal gains, now or 
by-and-by ; no calculating policy or worldly ex 
pediency. The seed is cast upon all waters to 
float, it may be, to most distant shores, where the 
harvest never will be seen until eternity reveals it. 
And in nothing do we need more a new spirit in 
missions than in the utter and final abandonment 

* Luke xiv. 12-14. f Luke vi. 35. 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 167 

of that selfish policy which bestows money and 
labor most lavishly only where the returns in some 
form are likely to be most abundant and rapid. 
In God s eyes many a gift, so called, is but an in 
vestment made on a commercial basis for the sake 
of the profits it is expected to yield to the giver. 

Paul wrote to the Galatians of the "Offence of 
the Cross." Wherein consists that offence ? Not 
only in this, that it demands the renunciation of 
self-righteousness as merit, of the world as an idol, 
of worldly wisdom as my pride, of personal achieve 
ment as my glory no, the cross is to the natural 
and carnal heart most of all an offence, because it 
teaches me that self must be crucified, that I am to 
give without hoping to get, and lose my life to 
save life ; to love where I am hated and to serve 
where I am met, even in serving, with the scourge 
and the thorns, the wagging head and the scoffing 
tongue, the mocking and the spitting in a word, 
the cross instead of the crown ! 

How utterly the Crucified lost sight of self! 
He emptied Himself of all that heaven held to 
come to earth, and then emptied Himself of all 
that earth had left Him, for the sake of Love s 
divine mission. Who was ever so poor as He ! 
He had nothing but a stable to be born in, noth 
ing but a manger to be laid in. He had not so 
much as a place where to rest his head ; even His 
cross was not His own, and His grave belonged 
to another. It is pathetically written that, to the 



1 68 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

traitor He left His purse ; to the soldiers, His robe ; 
to the beloved disciple, His mother ; to the dying 
thief, His promise of paradise ; to the penitent 
Peter, His pardon ; to His Father, His last breath 
and departing spirit, and to His followers, His 
peace. Naked He came into this world ; while 
here He got nothing, though He gave everything ; 
and naked He went the way to the tomb. Do 
you wish to follow Him ? Count the cost ; for 
along that way self must be left behind to walk 
with Him. This is bearing the cross, to accept 
self-abnegation as the badge of discipleship, and 
consent to lose ourselves to save the lost. 

The spirit of missions we need, for it measures 
our likeness to our Master and the value of our 
service. To cherish and cultivate that spirit is to 
grow in the image of our Lord. It will fill the 
heart to overflowing, and out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth will speak and the hand will 
give ; then, witnessing and working will react upon 
the heart which inspired them, and so the very 
love which compels utterance and endeavor is 
relieved, refreshed, and reinvigorated by the words 
and works of love. See how God ordains that 
duty shall bring delight ! The spring makes the 
stream, but the outlet helps the inlet. Choke up 
the spring and it ceases to be a spring. When 
water stops flowing it stops running. Only a rill, 
locked up in ice-bonds, becomes motionless. Ac 
tion reacts on the actor. 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 169 

And as surely as we grow God-like by cultivat 
ing the spirit of missions, we shall rapidly decline 
and decay, in all that is most vital to our soul s 
life, when we quench that spirit. While some are 
asking, especially as to the weaker churches, how 
can they do mission work or give to the mission 
cause ? I would ask, how can they live without 
it ? Of the Church, as of the individual, it is true 
that to save life by such means is to lose it. The 
Church that leaves the lost to die without the 
Gospel, risks its own destruction. It is therefore 
a question how, if we do not undertake to save 
the world, we can save ourselves. During the 
ages when missions to the heathen comparatively 
ceased, the Church scarcely survived ; and Bishop 
Thoburn has said that God would sweep away the 
Church from the earth if missions were deliberately 
abandoned. 

Dr. Burns Thompson calls attention to the fact, 
in botany, that the light, heat, moisture, and nutri 
tion which are so helpful to growth where life exists, 
actually promote and hasten decay where life is 
not. It is a corresponding fact in spiritual ex 
perience, that the most abundant blessings become 
only curses where they are not used for the ends 
which God designed, and the peril of our souls 
and of our churches lies in the very conditions 
which, if we are faithful, insure prosperity. 

It is not a question, therefore, merely of evan 
gelizing the world and fulfilling our mission : it is 



I 70 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

a more vital question of preventing heresy in 
doctrine and iniquity in practice from petrifying 
or putrifying the very life of the Church. Paral 
ysis in missions is the sign of death to piety. 

In Retzsch s illustrations of Faust, there is a 
representation which is not easily forgotten. The 
demons are contending for the soul of Faust and 
trying to drag him down into the abyss of ruin. 
The angels from above watch, with intent eyes 
and absorbed attention, the desperate struggle ; 
and, plucking the roses from the bowers of Para 
dise, fling them down, as though they were hail 
stones with which to pelt the heads of the fiends. 
And as those celestial roses fall, and pass into the 
sulphurous atmosphere of the pit, they are suddenly 
transformed into burning coals, which, as they 
touch those demon forms, burn and blister and 
torture. A parable lies in that etching. All bless 
ings, though they leave heaven as the very blooms 
of Eden, when they touch the disobedient and 
ungrateful soul turn to withering curses. The 
Church that leaves a dying world to die, a lost 
race to wander in the dark, feeling after the God 
whom the Gospel would reveal as not far from 
every one of us ; the Church that turns the very 
privileges which God gives her into a silken ham 
mock of selfish ease, and the very means of a 
world s evangelization into the provision for 
worldly indulgence ; the Church that, with large 
numbers, great wealth, high social standing and 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 171 

culture, perverts the golden sceptre God gave her 
for universal conquest, into the weapon of self- 
enthronement, sitting as a queen and revelling in 
luxury, making the courts of God her court of 
empire, and leaving a world in destitution, while 
she furnishes and garnishes her palaces, such a 
Church would do well to read that Epistle to 
Laodicea which contains perhaps the most terrible 
rebuke which God has ever administered to His 
professed people. 

We need this warning note to sound all around 
the horizon like a thunder-peal : the Church that 
does not take up her work for a world of lost souls 
is already a dying Church. To keep out Jezebel 
and the Nicolaitanes, to prevent the sanctuary of 
God being turned into the synagogue and seat of 
Satan, and the ardor and fervor of a first love with 
its first works from giving place to the disgusting, 
nauseating lukewarmness of a formalism that is 
neither one thing or the other, for all this disaster 
God s great antidote is this, to be all, always, and 
altogether engaged in bringing unsaved souls to 
the knowledge of the truth. This is the tonic, the 
stimulant, the preventive and preservative medi 
cine. 

There is now-a-days a Laodicean tendency to 
undue self-gratulation. We talk of our world-wide 
organizations for missionary work, of our millions 
of money given for Gospel triumphs, of our great 
army of 6,000 men and women, and 35,000 native 



I 72 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

evangelists and helpers. But how little do we 
think of the disgraceful disproportion between our 
opportunity and our endeavor, the laborers we 
send to the field and the immense multitude of 
disciples that remain at home ; the millions we 
give to missions and the billions of wealth we keep 
in selfish coffers or spend in selfish luxury. Think 
of some thirty or forty million of Protestant church- 
members, sending one man or woman out of every 
5,000 or 6,000 to the foreign field where one out 
of 500 would give us at least 60,000 missionaries ! 
Think of giving ten or twelve millions of dollars 
a year to represent all these millions of Protestant 
disciples a paltry pittance of forty cents a year 
as the average contribution, less than two mills a 
day ! Behold that awfully accusing pyramid of 
comparative expenditure, that reveals a diminutive 
apex of $12,000,000 for missions, while as we 
descend, we find twenty times as much spent on 
public education ; forty times as much on boots 
and shoes, and as much more on cotton fabrics ; 
fifty times as much on woolen goods ; sixty times 
as much on meat ; one hundred times as much on 
bread ; one hundred and fifty times as much on 
tobacco ; and from one hundred and eighty to two 
hundred times as much on strong drink ! One 
hundredth part of the annual income of professed 
disciples in Protestant congregations would yield 
to missions annually at least 200,000,000 dollars ! 
We congratulate ourselves that we are now 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. i?3 

completing a full century of organized missions ; 
but do we remember that it is but the first century 
of modern missions? that, after apostolic days, 
there were a thousand years when missionary effort 
so far ceased that we call that millennium the Dark 
Ages ! that, after the trumpet tongue of Luther 
sounded the clarion peal of the Reformation, the 
awakened Church waited three hundred years 
longer before even the debt to a dying world was 
commonly acknowledged ; and that, even now, 
not one-third of the church-membership are actually 
either working, giving, or praying for a world s 
evangelization ? If looked at from a true point of 
view, we shall see that all that is yet done or 
attempted is an insignificant fraction of what is 
both possible and practicable. 

Never, even in the joy of missionary conquests, 
can the thoughtful disciple forget this shame and 
reproach of the Church, that, since our Lord, as 
cending to His throne, said, " Go ye into all the 
world and preach the Gospel to every creature," 
sixty generations of men have lived and died, 
embracing an aggregate multitude estimated at no 
less than twenty times the present population of 
the globe ; that is, from twenty thousand to thirty 
thousand millions of our fellow-men ! a number 
so vast that if they could march, one by one, past 
a given point, one a second, it would consume 
from seven to ten centuries, day and night ! And 
yet again we put it on record with the command 



174 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of Christ in her ears and the word of life in her 
hands, the Church has permitted this immense 
multitude to go down to death, without even the 
knowledge that a Saviour has died, reaching the 
great masses of them ! 

4. The spirit of missions is the spring of tireless 
and ceaseless endeavor. May we not call it, Pas 
sion for Souls, and for Christ s conquest of the 
world ? 

The Moravians lead the whole missionary host 
in their devotion to a world s redemption. Their 
leader, Count von Zinzendorf, like John the Bap 
tist, seems to have fallen heir to a legacy of grace, 
and his whole life bore the seal of a peculiar con 
secration. When but four years old, he covenanted 
with Christ : " Be Thou mine dear Saviour, and I 
will be Thine," and from the window of his grand 
mother s castle used in his childish simplicity to 
toss out letters to the Lord in which he told Him 
all that was in his heart. When at ten he was 
Franke s pupil at Halle, he formed little prayer 
circles, and instituted the " Order of the Grain of 
Mustard-seed," whose members were bound by 
sacred pledge to seek the souls of others. Tho- 
luck s famous motto became his own : " Ich hab 
eine Passion und die est Er, nur Er." Parisian 
seductions and social cups of enchantment vainly 
sought to draw him from Christ. When he wedded 
a countess, it was still only in the Lord, and they 
two cast away all rank and riches, and girded 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 175 

themselves like pilgrims, ready to start for any 
field if God should show them His will. The 
world became his parish ; and his property, the 
Lord s offering. 

The seal of the Unitas Fratrum was a lamb, 
bearing the cross of resurrection, from which de 
pends a triumphal banner with the device : " Vic it 
Agnus Noster: Eum Sequamiir" No wonder that 
Dober and Nitschmann, at St. Thomas, were 
ready to sell themselves as slaves to reach slaves ; 
that Stach and Boemish were ready to go to the ice 
bound pole, Schmidt to the Bushmen and Hotten 
tots at the Southern Cape, and that Pagell and 
Hyde and Jaschke laid siege to the stronghold 
of the Grand Lama on the frowning heights of 
Thibet. Pagell and his wife spent at Poo a quarter 
century of toil, and then in death were not divided. 
For five months their colleague at Kyelang could 
not visit them, for the impassable snows of the 
Himalayas block the roads for three-fourths of the 
year. Pathetic as is the tale of their self-denial, 
sickness and death, the brethren at the Nicobar 
Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, perished after suffer 
ings that were even more extreme, and with not 
even a native catechist or solitary convert to close 
their eyes. Such are the men and women of 
whom the world was not worthy ; of whom even 
a worldly Church is not worthy. 

Where this enamoring passion for Christ 
and for souls is found, consecration of self 



I7 6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

and substance is as natural and necessary as 
breathing. 

On Henry Clay s sarcophagus Fred Graeff has 
chiselled this, Clay s noblest utterance : " I can with 
unshaken confidence appeal to the Divine Arbiter 
for the truth of the declaration that I have been 
influenced by no impure purpose, no personal 
motive have sought no personal aggrandizement ; 
but in all my public acts I have had a sole and 
single eye, and a warm, devoted heart, directed 
and dedicated to what, in my best judgment, I 
believed to be the true interests of my country." 
That is the voice of patriotism ; and shall the 
disciple not be able to say as much for the sake of 
his Redeemer and His Kingdom f Shall a states 
man s devotion to his country outrank our absorp 
tion in God ? 

Besser tells the story of a redeemed slave 
bought in a slave-market by a rich and generous 
Englishman for twenty pieces of gold, and then 
presented with a purse of sovereigns with which 
to buy a home and begin a freeman s honest life. 
" Am I free, to go where I will and do as I will ? 
Then let me be your slave, I owe all to you I 
have been by you redeemed.* " 

The same spirit breathes in the birthday resolve 
of Miss Frances E. Willard, to give herself wholly 
to her Redeemer and Lord, " for the fulfilment in 
the highest possible degree in body, soul, and 

* Lange. Commentary, I. Pet. p. 25. 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 17? 

spirit, of the declaration, A habitation of God 
through the Spirit. " When Elizabeth Fry, the 
"female Howard," died at sixty-five, after such a 
life of Christlike philanthropy as few women have 
ever known for half a century she had been able 
to affirm that she had never awakened from her 
sleep in sickness or in health, by day or by night, 
without her first waking thought being, " How best 
may I serve my Lord ? " * When not more than 
eighteen years of age she established a school for 
eighty poor children in her father s house. Fifteen 
years later the deplorable plight of the women in 
Newgate prison drew her to their side, and alone, 
unguarded, she entered the inner prison, where 
one hundred and sixty of the worst were immured, 
and won them by her mingled dignity and court 
esy, her holiness and humility. Many of them 
then for the first time heard at her lips the word 
of grace. Before three years more had passed 
she was a systematic visitor. Newgate s dark 
cells began to be lit up with the gospel of love, 
order, sobriety, neatness ; intelligence began to 
displace riot, lust, filth, ignorance, and indolence. 
She established schools within prison walls, found 
work for women and Christian instruction ; studied 
how to abolish slavery, advance education, and im 
prove the condition of British seamen ; and dis 
pensed her charities with an unbounded liberality. 
And, like many a saint whose name is not in man s 

* "Christian Womanhood," p. 241. 



178 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

calendar, she could say, " Nothing is too precious 
for my Lord Jesus Christ." 

Not until we can measure the value of the blood 
paid for our redemption can we measure the extent 
of our infinite debt to the Redeemer. There is 
but one way to pay that debt even in part we 
are " put in trust with the Gospel." Debtors to 
Christ and, for His sake, to a dying world ; and 
trustees of the Gospel of His grace that, with the 
boundless riches committed to us as trustees, we 
may discharge the obligation we owe as debtors ! 

No form of selfishness is more subtle and fatal 
to spiritual life than the polite form of fashionable 
greed. The worship of the golden calf is carried 
on in our very sanctuaries. Avarice is insatiate ; 
it cries give, give, and lives to get and keep and 
hoard, and feast the evil eye and lust of gain on 
the sight of its gold. 

In a British manufactory, a merchant comes in 
at 9 o clock in the morning, and goes out at 5 
o clock in the afternoon, having done nothing else 
but count his sovereigns, and arrange them in piles 
of ten ; and this he has done every day but Sun 
day for twenty years. Gold is his master, and he 
is an abject slave the sovereign is indeed his 
Sovereign. He himself has been electroplated 
changed into a coin has a metallic ring, and will 
"drop into his coffin with a chink." 

Passion for Christ and for souls checks such 
greed and makes all giving of our substance a 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 179 

free-will offering. Redemption includes not only 
me, but mine. A great German defines socialism 
as decreeing, " What is thine is mine," and Chris 
tianity as teaching us to say rather, " What is 
mine is thine." But Dr. R."W. Dale finely says 
that the epigram needs further correction. Chris 
tianity teaches us to say, "What seems thine is 
not thine ; what seems mine is not mine : whatso 
ever thou hast or I have belongs to God; you 
and I must use it according to His will." 

The revival of the Scriptural doctrine of stew 
ardship is the only hope of the Church in the 
direction of a larger and an adequate giving. So 
long as we think of our money as our own, we 
shall hold it as our own ; but when in our eyes it 
is God s, we shall learn to give Him back what is 
His own. 

The spirit of missions is the spirit of absorption 
in God. And, strange to say, we are never so 
strong and puissant in our own individuality and 
personality as when we are lost to ourselves be 
cause absorbed in Him. We find our lives in 
losing them, and find ourselves in losing ourselves. 
One of our current cant phrases is " losing our 
will in His will," and too often this condition of 
complete consecration carries with it the idea of 
a sacrifice of positive manhood, manliness, charac 
ter, power. We all feel that the will is the focal 
centre of all being ; in the will all other elements 
of power converge, and thence diverge again or 



I So THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

radiate into action. To have no will of our own 
suggests, to many, a body without a backbone 
like a flabby jelly-fish with no real energy even 
in resistance to evil, not to say in aggressive move 
ment. 

To be absorbed in God is the loss of nothing, 
but the gain of everything. It is the paradox of 
life, that you are never so fully and mightily your 
self as when you lose yourself in God. 

Here is a man whose mill is moved by a water- 
wheel. That wheel depends on a small stream 
which at times runs low and almost dry, and at 
such seasons the wheel moves slowly and feebly, 
if at all. But near by flows a mighty river, fed by 
exhaustless mountain springs and melting snows. 
He taps that river : he digs a channel from its 
banks to his own little rill ; he turns into that nar 
row sluice-way the mighty, steady momentum of 
those everflowing waters, and now he has not lost 
his rill he has only gained a river. 

Even so, when we surrender our will to God, 
there is no loss of human will-power, but only the 
gain of divine will-power. Through the narrow 
channels of our uncertain, unsteady choice, He 
pours the mighty flood of His resistless resolution 
the will of God energizes, quickens our will ; 
and the wheels of action move with a firmness, 
fulness, force, and fervor to which we were before 
strangers. In our weakness we are strong ; in 
our folly, wise. We can do all things and bear 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 181 

all things through Christ, who strengthens us. 
The youths faint and grow weary and the young 
men utterly fall, but we wait on the Lord and 
renew our strength ; mount upon wings as eagles, 
run and are not weary, walk and do not faint. 
Our Lord began His active career while yet a boy 
of twelve years, with a significant motto : " Wist 
ye not that I must be about my Father s busi 
ness ? " His identification with the Father was 
such that it was natural, necessary, involuntary, to 
be engaged always in His Father s work. And 
this makes all work easy, that I am doing it for 
God, with God, in God. He abides in me and 
I in Him ; I work for Him, and He works in and 
through me. There is no hurry or worry or flurry 
about a true work for God. Why should I be 
anxious and disturbed and careful if I am simply 
bearing His yoke the yoke which He shares, 
and in fact bears. Will He not take care of the 
burden and see that the load is borne or is drawn ? 
From the moment that you take God as your sole 
Master and Lord, remember this you are hence 
forth to take no anxious thought for the morrow 
to be careful for nothing, but trust and not be 
afraid, trust and be kept in perfect peace. If there 
be anything you are doing in which you find it 
needful to worry, be assured that is not God s 
work, but your work something you have taken 
upon yourself to do at the beck of pride, ambition, 
greed, or some worldly impulse. For if it is only 



1 82 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

God s work you are about, He is at the head and 
will not suffer it to come to naught. This lesson 
of perfect peace is the first and last lesson taught 
and learned in His school : if it were sooner 
learned, all life would be vested with heaven s 
charms. Take up your work as His commitment, 
do it for Him and unto Him, and in dependence 
on His Providence and Spirit ; nothing will so 
banish all undue anxiety and carefulness. 

There is no higher seal and sanction put by 
God on missions than this, that those who work 
in this great field manifest His spirit in a marked 
degree. Here is the apostolic succession because 
here is the apostolic mission and spirit. Faith 
begets implicit obedience, self-sacrifice, consecra 
tion, absorption in God, the marks of the highest 
heroism and loftiest unworldliness. Robert M. 
Cust, Esq., has pronounced the true missionary 
the highest type of human excellence, and his call 
ing, the noblest ; missionaries, he says, are the salt 
of the earth. 

May we not say even more, that they seem to 
be identified with the goodly fellowship of the 
prophets, the holy company of the apostles and 
the noble army of martyrs ? They have been the 
pioneers in all lands, like Carey in India, Perkins 
in Persia, Morrison in China, Judson in Burmah, 
Allen in Korea, Hepburn in Japan, Williams in 
the South Seas, Livingstone in Africa. They 
have gone nowhere without leaving the traces of 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 183 

God. They have compelled recognition, respect, 
and even homage ; as Mrs. Grant compelled Nes- 
torian bishops to think of her body as the temple 
of God, as Mrs. Judson won the Burmese so that 
they kissed her passing shadow, and Eliza Agnew 
at Oodooville led a thousand daughters of Ceylon 
to bow at the feet of her Saviour. To-day if even 
ungodly men seek the grandest types of manhood 
and womanhood they turn to Paul, to Eliot, to 
Brainerd, to Gutzlaff, to Schwartz, to Moffat, to 
Hunt, to Patteson, to Zinzendorf, to Mackay, 
to Scudder, to Taylor, to Thoburn, to Harriet 
Newell, Fidelia Fisk, Rosine Kraff, Melinda 
Rankin in fact, their name is legion, and it is 
vain to discriminate by individual mention, among 
such a host. 

In 1818, the Colonial Government, fearing the 
spread of leprosy, erected a temporary asylum in 
the romantic valley of Hemel en Aarde (Heaven 
and Earth), so called because, far from human 
habitations, it was walled in by rocks, with only a 
strip of sky above. In course of time a larger 
hospital was built, and Lord Somerset, the gov 
ernor, wrote to the directing board of the Mora 
vian Church, asking for a missionary to manage 
the institution and teach the inmates the faith of 
Christ. 

In January, 1822, Rev. Mr. Leitner and wife 
became voluntary exiles for Christ and entered 
upon their repulsive and self-denying work. They 



184 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

were in constant contact with those who were 
crippled and deformed by this loathsome disease, 
though they supposed such contact to be conta 
gious and fatal. Love transfigured their toil with 
celestial charms. For more than seven years they 
sought to heal and save the souls of those whose 
bodies were wasting away. And when Mr. Leit- 
ner died, in 1829, in the same devoted spirit his 
successors wrought for ten years more. In 1846, 
the hospital was removed to Robben Island, near 
Cape Town, and Missionary Lehman and wife 
followed the lepers to their new home amid the 
dangerous rocks of Table Bay, and were met by 
the joy of those poor lepers, who broke forth in 
praise to God. They began to teach ; and in 1860 
John Taylor left all to bury himself among these 
lepers and lunatics, where he likewise toiled till 
death. For forty-five years, and until the appoint 
ment of an English chaplain dispensed with their 
services, these Christlike Moravians clung to this 
leper home. 

Such absorption in God is the soul and secret 
of heroism. What has nerved timid men, and 
even delicate and shrinking women, to face death 
with every attendant torture, firm and fearless, but 
this that they were lost in God ? 

When Jerome of Prague was led to the stake, 
he embraced it with smiles of gladness. As 
around him the wood and fagots were piled he 
sang, " Hail, happy day ! " and then broke forth 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 185 

again into chanting the Creed, which, as he said 
to the throng about him, was the song of his Faith. 
When the executioner went behind him to light 
the pile, he said to him, " Come hither and kindle 
the fagots before my eyes ; for, had I feared, I had 
not come here, having had so many opportunities 
of escape." And when the flames leaped high 
and the wood crackled in the fire, high above rose 
the calm clear notes of the martyr s voice, while his 
body was consuming as a whole burnt-offering on 
the altar : " This soul of mine, in flame I offer up, O 
Christ, to Thee ! " And to this day few spots on 
the continent are more sacred to Christian pilgrims 
than the place where those last words proved that 
death had lost its sting. 

As I stood in April, 1890, on the highest tier of 
seats in the Coliseum at Rome, one scene of past 
ages stood most vividly, almost visibly, before my 
imagination. Beneath the canvas canopy a vast 
throng is gathered, of 80,000 spectators. Yonder 
on his raised marble throne sits the Emperor 
Trajan, and near him the proud senators, and 
vestal virgins with their lamps. Amid the surge 
and swell of this sea of human voices, impatient 
for the sport, an old man comes, trembling with 
age, into the arena, his long white hair falling to 
his" waist and mingling with his beard. It is 
Ignatius, the disciple of John ; and if tradition be 
true, the " little child " of Mark xi. 36. He bears 
the second surname, Theophoros, or the Christ- 



1 86 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

bearer ; and in his interview with Trajan showed 
himself so utterly unworldly that the emperor gave 
him the opprobrious name (KaKodaipw), one 
possessed of a demon, and condemned him to be 
led a prisoner from Antioch to Rome, and there 
fed to the wild beasts for the delectation of the 
people. 

As the fierce lions are let loose upon him, the 
old saint falls on his knees and is heard to say : 
" O ye Romans, know ye that not for any crime 
am I brought here, but that by this means I may 
attain to the fruition of the glory of God, for love 
of whom I am made prisoner. / am as grain of 
God s field, and must be ground by the teeth of lions 
that I may become bread for His peopk, fit for His 
table." 

How long, think you, the world would wait for 
the knowledge of this salvation, did the spirit of 
that martyr burn in Christian bosoms ! Such a 
flame of holy zeal consumes all greed, all pride, 
all ambition, all selfishness, while it burns and 
glows and shines with celestial fires, and makes 
life itself a reflection of shekinah glory ! When 
God s people would rather be ground between 
lions teeth than that the hungry souls should go 
without bread, the world will soon find spread 
from pole to pole the banquet board of Redemp 
tion. 

The spirit of missions not only brings its own 
reward ; it is itself a heavenly gift and its own 



THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 187 

compensation. Walter Scott puts into the mouth 
of Jeanie Deans, when pleading for her sister s life 
with the Queen, those memorable words : 

" It is not when we sleep soft and wake merrily 
ourselves that we think on other people s suffer 
ings. Our hearts are waxed light within us then, 
and we are for righting our ain wrangs and fight 
ing our ain battles. But when the hour of trouble 
comes to the mind or the body, and when the 
hour of death comes that comes to high and low, 
lang and late may it be yours ! O, my leddy, 
then it is na what we hae dune for oursells, but 
what hae dune for others, that we think on maist 
pleasantly." 

Yes, but long this side of that august hour when 
life passes before us as in procession, for review, 
the true child of God who hath partaken of His 
Spirit has learned the higher compensation of fel 
lowship with Jesus. His yoke is easy and His 
burden is light, and even His cross is no longer 
heavy. 

Somewhere I have met a fable, that when God 
first made the birds He made them without wings. 
With gorgeous plumage and sweet voices endowed 
they could shine and sing, but could not soar. Then 
He made wings and bade the birds go take up 
these burdens and bear them. At first they seemed 
a heavy load, but as they bore them upon their 
shoulders and folded them over their heart, lo ! 
they grew fast the burdens became pinions, and 



1 88 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

that which once they bore now bore them up 
toward heaven. The fable is fact. We are the 
wingless birds, and our duties are the pinions. 
When at the beck of God we first assume them, 
they may seem but burdens. But if we cheerfully 
and patiently bear them, they cease to be a load. 
The burdens change to wings they bear us up 
and on toward the cloudless heaven of His pres 
ence. As the beloved Samuel Rutherford says, 
" The cross of Christ is the sweetest burden that 
ever I bore : it is such a burden as are wings to 
a bird or sails to a ship, to carry me forward to 
my desired haven. 

"Sc/wla crucis est schola luds." 

Fellow-disciples, let us cheerfully take up our 
duties, and the wingless birds shall find those 
duties turned to delights, and the burdens borne 
for Christ transformed to pinions to bear aloft the 
burden-bearer to the cloudless realm of the divine 
presence ! 




V. 

THE DIVINE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 

ROM man s creation until now, one great 
question has occupied human research, 
viz : iVhat is Power ? 

Whence comes, in any sphere, the faculty or 
ability to do to accomplish a work, to achieve a 
result ? Back of effects lie causes, but many causes 
are also effects, and it is power which makes a 
cause efficient and sufficient to produce an effect. 
The question we now suggest concerns the origin 
of force and the primal secret of efficacy. 

What men have sought in the sphere of natural 
philosophy, we are now to seek in the sphere of 
the moral and spiritual. In the prosecution of 
Christian missions what is the secret of success, the 
source of power? In discussing this question we 
are getting further toward the heart of our great 
theme. We have seen what constitutes the spirit 
of a true missionary ; but this inquiry is even more 
radical. 

The secret of power is not human, but divine, 
and even so far as it is found in humanity has an 
element of divinity. The Word of God, which 



THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 



proves in all things such an adequate guide, teaches 
us the whole truth that we need to know upon this 
subject. 

We select two representative passages, which 
again we put side by side for comparison and 
completeness of view. 



" And Jesus came and 
spake unto them saying : 

"All POWER is given un 
to me in Heaven and in 
Earth. 

"Go ye therefore and 
teach all nations. . . . 

"And lo I am with you 
alway even unto the end 
of the age. Amen." 

Matt, xxviii. 18-20. 



"And behold I send the 
promise of my Father upon 
you ; 

" But tarry ye in the city 
of Jerusalem until ye be 
endued with POWER from 
on High." Luke xxiv. 49. 

" But ye shall receive 

POWER after that the Holy 

Ghost is come upon you." 

Acts i. 8. 



It will be noticed that here three times we have 
this word " power," and the repetition is significant. 
In the first case, it is associated with the Son, 
who here claims for Himself omnipotence, both in 
heaven and in earth. In the second case, it is 
associated with the Father, as proceeding forth 
from Him, and as His gift in connection with the 
mission of believers ; and in the third case, it is 
associated with the Holy Spirit, as His enduement 
and endowment. 

Again, it is noticeable that in one case the power 
is linked with Christ s promised presence ; and in 
the other it is distinctly termed " the promise of 
the Father." Where such manifest care is taken 
in the discrimination of language, it would be 



THE FORCE OF AflSSIONS. 191 

trifling to suppose that there is intended to be no 
corresponding discrimination in the thoughts. 

Long and close study of this theme satisfies me 
that the line of distinction here drawn is not only 
clear, but very important. The power, vested in 
the Son and exercised by Him, and the power, 
bestowed by the Father and realized by the Holy 
Ghost, resident in and exercised by believers, is 
not and cannot be the same. The subject touches 
all missionary work at points so vital that it is well 
to give careful attention to the exact language 
used in each case. The inspired Word of God is 
written with divine care and discrimination. It 
reminds us of a master-painting, in which not 
only the bolder and more prominent outlines and 
strongly contrasted objects repay close study ; but 
where the most delicate shades of color and lines 
of drawing have a significance, like the most 
minute features of the Parthenon where, as Penrose 
has shown, every line was the sign and fruit of 
artistic genius. 

Our Lord says, "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth ; and lo, I am with you alway, 
even unto the end," etc. The word here used is 
not power (dvvaptg), but (et-ovoia), authority, 
rule, dominion, jurisdiction. Christ is head over 
all to the Church, and governor among the na 
tions. His is administrative power, on the throne 
of universal empire and on the field of battle and 
conquest. This truth is further beautifully and 



192 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

impressively set forth in two conspicuous passages 
of Scripture, one of which is a didactic psalm and 
poem, the other a historic narrative which hides 
an undoubted allegorical meaning behind the 
historical fact. Comparing spiritual things with 
spiritual, we may draw from these Scriptures some 
grand and instructive and inspiring lessons ; and 
because they are representative passages, we may 
well examine them minutely. 

i. The first of them is the second Psalm. Here 
the Psalmist has a far-sighted vision of Messiah, 
as set by Jehovah, upon the throne of dominion ; 
and it clearly pertains, not to the triumphant, but 
to the militant period. All are not subdued under 
his sway, but in a state of rebellion and revolt. It 
is not a converted world over which Messiah holds 
the reins of empire, but over a godless and faith 
less host of rebels. " The heathen rage," as in a 
tumultuous" assembly, and the peoples of many 
lands meditate and cogitate in anger and malice, 
how they may overthrow the kingdom of Imman- 
uel. " The kings of the earth set themselves " in 
a posture of defiance, as did Goliath against the 
army of Israel and Israel s God, in resistance both 
to Jehovah and to His anointed Theocratic King ; 
while the rulers, like a great sanhedrin of Satan, 
meet in council to conspire against them, and, like 
yoked oxen that chafe under restraint, seek to 
break asunder their " bands " and cast off their 
"cords." There is no mistaking such a figure. 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 193 

We seem to see the enemies of God rising up 
against the Father and the Son with frantic tumult ; 
at first like the wild surge of a stormy sea, a dis 
organized mob of rebels, raging heathen, and 
angry peoples. Then the opposition takes form 
is organized under leaders ; their kings take a 
stand against God, and their rulers meet in council 
to conspire and combine in a league of hatred. 
Already they feel the bands of Messiah s yoke 
tightening about them and the cords of His rule 
holding them fast, and they toss and plunge like 
a mad bull to get rid of His restraint. The whole 
sound and movement of the original, by a rhythm 
that is as majestic as iambics and as musical as 
rhyme, conveys the fury and rage of these plot 
ting foes, who rashly rush against the bosses of 
Jehovah s buckler. 

But Jehovah, seated unapproachable in the high 
est heaven, laughs, scoffs, at their vain resistance, 
as the stars scoff in derision at those who would 
quench their eternal fires or shoot them down from 
their place in the heavens. God sees their plan- 
nings and kickings against Him to be vain ; they 
only hurt themselves on His goads ! 

In the midst of their vain boasting, and as they 
are gathering for organized assault, Jehovah in 
holy wrath speaks and acts. Herder and others 
compare the rhythm of the original and the choice 
of terms to words rolling like thunder, followed 
in the second clause by a deadly scattering of 



194 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

lightning-bolts. While they mutter helplessly on 
earth, God thunders from heaven and hurls down 
the bolts of His displeasure. 

" Yet" notwithstanding all this impotent rage 
" Yet upon my holy mount, as for me, I have set 
my King." The reference is to David, who, as 
type of Messiah, was thrice anointed and was 
God s acknowledged king on Zion, while as yet 
seven years of hostility were to intervene before 
all the tribes submitted to his rule. And now 
Messiah takes up the word of Jehovah and de 
clares the Divine decree. He says, " I will tell of 
a decree eternal, unchangeable by virtue of which 
I reign. Jehovah said unto me, Thou art my Son, 
and as Son, heir to my empire." " This day have 
I, even I, begotten Thee." As Messiah is repre 
sented as uncreated and eternally begotten, this 
cannot refer to existence, as then begun, but to a 
new existence, or career, a re-begetting by virtue 
of which Messiah now takes the throne of the 
world, and of all that it involves. What that day 
is, other Scriptures leave us in no doubt it was 
the day of Christ s Resurrection* Hebrew scholars 
tell us that the word here translated " begotten " 
may refer to either parent, but more strictly be 
longs to the mother. The earth, from her womb, 
His grave, on that day brought forth God s first 
born from the dead, henceforth to have in all things 
the pre-eminence ; and to reign over the earth 

* Acts xiii. 33; Rom. i. 4; Col. i. 18. 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 195 

that, in this new birth out of death, brought Him 
forth, declaring Him to be " the Son of God with 
power by the resurrection from among the dead." 

The examination of this psalm has been thus 
tediously explicit, because, upon our right under 
standing of the circumstances in which these 
words are spoken, all else depends. Jesus, rising 
from the dead, claims the throne of the world, 
which the first Adam forfeited by sin. The world 
is not ready for His rule, though He is ready to 
rule the world. His sceptre is in His hand and 
the decree has gone forth ; from that Resurrection 
Day when He rose for our justification and broke 
the power of death and the devil, the throne of 
the world was His. But the heathen and the 
peoples at large were yet in revolt both against 
Jehovah and against His Messianic King. Amid 
this confusion of tumult and riot, God again says : 

" Ask of me and I will give thee the heathen 
for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of 
the earth for thy possession." That is to say, like 
an irresistible monarch, even the revolted subjects 
are part of His " inheritance," and the uttermost 
parts of the earth that have neither yielded to His 
rule nor heard of His resurrection belong to His 
" possession." This verse has, in countless cases, 
been made the text for missionary sermons ; and 
from it have been drawn prophecies of Christ s 
gracious conquests in converting all mankind. 
But does this verse or this psalm bear any such 



196 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

construction ? Read the next verse : " Thou shalt 
break them with a rod of iron : thou shalt dash 
them in pieces like a potter s vessel." Remember 
the nations and their kings are in revolt, and they 
are broken with an iron sceptre, dashed into frag 
ments like a potter s vessel that cannot be mended. 
(Jer. xix. n ; Matt. xxiv. 51 ; Rev. ii. 27 ; xii. 5 ; 
xix. 15.) And what is the conclusion? The 
Psalmist counsels immediate and universal submis 
sion ; seeing the resistless power of Jehovah and 
of His anointed, and the impotency of human 
rage, He appeals to rebels to lay down their 
weapons, and, instead of kicking against the rule 
of Messiah, kiss Him in homage and serve Him 
with holy trembling and trust. 

This psalm may be regarded as the key to a 
large part of both New and Old Testament truth, 
and we have followed it, verse by verse, that this 
key might be in our hands with which to unlock 
the prophecies and open the real inner meaning 
of the promises. Christ, when He rose from the 
dead, ascended to the throne, and assumed the 
sceptre. He had already been secretly anointed 
for kingship far back in the ages of eternity. 
Now a second time anointed by the Holy Ghost, 
He took the throne with the concurrence of His 
chosen Church. The time is coming when, by the 
consent of a converted humanity, He will be once 
more anointed universal King, and reign over a 
regenerate earth. Meanwhile the sevenfold period 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 19? 

of resistance must pass, and in that period we are 
now. When Christ, risen from the dead and 
about to take another step upward to the throne, 
said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and 
in earth. Go ye therefore and disciple all nations, 
and lo, I am with you alway," He knew that 
hundreds and thousands of years lay before Him 
and His Church, during which that rule was to be 
disputed and antagonized ; He was sending dis 
ciples forth as sheep among wolves ; they would 
be persecuted, imprisoned, slain ; His witnesses 
would be martyrs death would be the end of 
their service and suffering instead of seeming 
victory, apparent defeat. And so He held out no 
false hopes no assurance that the time had come 
to restore again the kingdom to Israel, or to begin 
His millennial reign. He knew that, while two 
tribes might acknowledge Him, ten would be in 
revolt. Century after century would pass and still 
the world would not have Him to reign over them ; 
and even the Church would fall into apostasy 
and a form of godliness take the place of its power. 
But He says, " I go to my Father and yours, my 
God and yours," " I go to take my sceptre," "All 
power is mine in heaven and in earth. Go ye 
therefore make disciples from all nations every 
where preach bear witness. You shall be hated of 
all men for my name s sake ; you shall be scourged, 
put in prison, put to death, but all this shall turn 
to you for a testimony a part of your witness- 



i9& THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

bearing. You will find the heathen raging, the 
peoples plotting, kings and rulers conspiring ; let 
them try to demolish my throne and break the 
bands of my rule ! Their efforts shall be met 
with derisive scorn." The wrath of man shall 
praise Him, and the remainder of wrath will He 
restrain. When crises come which can in no 
other way be met, and violence reaches its height 
of daring and defiance, the Messianic King vin 
dicates Himself and His servants ; He stretches 
out His hand and with His iron sceptre breaks 
into pieces His foes. 

Here is the hope of missions in the darkest days 
this Psalm, so often applied to the Church 
Triumphant, was meant for the Church Militant ; 
and never was it needed more than now, when, 
in so many parts of the field of missions, we seem 
met, as among the Brahmans of India and the 
Mohammedans of Persia, by persistent resistance. 
Christ has all power and is on the throne, " Go 
ye," missionaries He is " with you alway," even 
to the end of this age of organized and violent 
opposition. When you find yourselves driven to 
the wall and the cause seems hopeless, appeal to 
Him, and He will appear for you: it may be in 
the conquest of grace, it may be in the awful con 
quest of wrath, but rejoice, He is King ! 

An example or two of this interposition should 
be put on permanent record. The year 1839 was 
the great pivotal year of Turkish missions. Per- 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 199 

secution bared her red right arm. The bitter 
hostility of the Armenian Church broke out in a 
storm. The despotic head of the Turkish govern 
ment, Sultan Mahmoud, united his civil power 
with their ecclesiastical, to extirpate the Christian 
heretics. The work, begun in 1831 by William 
Goodell, seemed likely, after twenty years, to fall 
in a crash into ruins. Mr. Sahakian, an evangel 
ical Armenian and teacher, was thrown into prison 
without trial, or even knowledge of the charges 
made against him. He and Boghos Fizika, an 
other of like character, were sent four hundred 
miles into exile. Der Kevork, a pious priest, was 
put in a cell. The Greek patriarch thundered out 
a bull of excommunication, and nothing less than 
the banishment of all the missionaries was deter 
mined upon. The persecution waxed hotter and 
fiercer, and the missionaries were formally accused 
before the Sublime Porte, and Messrs. Hamlin 
and Goodell, who were the only ones at that time 
in the country, expected summary orders to leave. 
An order was obtained from Mahmud for their 
expulsion, and that of all missionaries. Commo 
dore Porter could not interpose, as the treaty with 
the United States was only commercial, and there 
seemed no human hope. In that darkest hour of 
Turkish missions, the pioneer Goodell, in his 
peculiar way, said : " The Great Sultan of the 
Universe can change all this." The missionaries, 
sorely beset, took refuge in the 9 1 st Psalm. They 



200 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

besought the Lord to come down as in the days 
of old, and make the mountains flow down at His 
presence. While their hands were yet lifted in 
prayer, on July i, 1839, Sultan Mahmud died. 
Not only did God interpose, but by a series of the 
most striking providences on record in history, 
the power of their foes was broken. Six days 
before, the Turkish forces had been routed near 
Aleppo ; an exhausted treasury absorbed govern 
mental attention ; a fearful conflagration visited 
Constantinople, August gth, and from 3,000 to 
4,000 houses were reduced to ashes. God s hand 
was laid heavily on the Armenians who led in the 
persecution. And so marked was the evidence 
of a divine interposition that it was a common 
saying that God was taking the side of the perse 
cuted and vindicating their cause. In fact, a 
council was called and the exiles were recalled, 
and all rigorous measures suspended. The leaders 
were unchanged in spirit, but they were not un- 
awed. They saw an Almighty Hand uplifted to 
arrest the arm of intolerance, and they dared not 
go forward. 

Abdul Medjid, at sixteen, succeeded his father. 
God s work took a fresh start, and four months 
later, before a grand imperial Diet, he caused to 
be read to the august assemblage the first formal 
Bill of Rights, the Magna Charta of Turkey, the 
Hatti Sherif of Gul Hane, the primary charter of 
liberty which was the first of a series of constitu- 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 2OI 

tional guarantees culminating in the Hatti Huma- 
youn of 1856. When it is remembered that the 
Sultan s throne represents one of the most despotic 
governments ever known, nothing can account for 
such concessions except the power of Him in 
whose hands are the hearts of kings, and who 
turneth them whithersoever He will. 

Siam furnishes another marked illustration. 
From the time, in 1819, when the first Christian 
book, a catechism from the hand of Mrs. Ann 
Hasseltine Judson, was printed in Siamese, and the 
first step was thus taken toward the evangelization 
of that Oriental Eden, down to 1851, but little 
progress was made. Dr. Gutzlaff and Rev. Mr. 
Tomlin, who arrived in 1828, appear to have been 
the first Protestant missionaries to set foot on 
Siamese soil. They undertook labor among the 
Chinese residents in Bangkok, began to heal the 
sick, and distribute books. The Jesuits sought 
their expulsion ; the suspicious natives charged 
them with being spies and seeking to incite the 
Chinese to rebellion. Mr. Tomlin was taken ill 
and went back to Singapore ; Dr. Gutzlaff himself, 
after less than two years stay, sailed for China, 
leaving behind him the whole Bible translated into 
Siamese, and one baptized convert. Then, twelve 
days later, came David Abeel, the first American 
missionary to Siam. Dr. D. B. Bradley, of the 
A. B. C. F. M. ; and Dr. Wm. Dean, of the Ameri 
can Baptists, came in 1835 ; and the merit-making 



202 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Buddhists became jealous, and complained to the 
government. Various events conspired to excite 
the people and disturb the king, and it was rumored 
that a plot was on foot to burn down the houses 
of the mission. Five days were given the little 
band to leave the premises, and they were scattered 
in different directions, finding shelter as best they 
could. In 1840, the Board of Missions of the 
Presbyterian Church of the United States assumed 
the entire work of evangelizing the Siamese. Rev. 
W. P. Buell and wife, who came that year, had to 
leave in 1844. Three years elapsed and Rev. 
Stephen Mattoon and Samuel R. House, M.D., 
came in their stead. They undertook the work 
bravely, studied, preached, printed books, and 
practiced medicine. But the suspicious king, jeal 
ous of their growing influence and the " merit- 
making " of the physicians, actively though secretly 
opposed them. This malignant despot threw all 
his influence against the missionaries. He so con 
trolled his slavish subjects that none of them would 
sell or rent a house for the use of the mission 
aries, or even a site on which to build. Their native 
teachers were thrown into prison, their servants 
fled, and the people would not so much as sell them 
food. Opposition, carried to the point of star 
vation, seemed to leave room for no choice : they 
must leave Bangkok by the next steamer. To 
make things worse, Sir James Brooks, who came 
to treat with the Siamese king in behalf of Great 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 203 

Britian, was so insulted that he left in anger, threat 
ening to invoke the aid of force in opening the 
country. Humanly speaking, the missionary labors 
begun thirty-two years before were about to come 
to a disastrous conclusion. There was but one 
hope ; it lay in an appeal to the throne of Grace. 
The missionaries looked, for deliverance, to God. 
The kings of the earth again took counsel to break 
His bands asunder and cast away His cords. But 
at this critical juncture, when all these complica 
tions were culminating, He who sits on the throne 
stretched forth His rod of iron and broke in pieces, 
like a potter s vessel, this treacherous king. April 
3, 1 85 1 , he died. And, what is far more wonder 
ful, upon that death hung a change in the whole 
state of affairs, and all succeeding history was to be 
cast in a new mould. We write it in large charac 
ters, that he who runs may read, even at a cursory 
glance. There was one man in the kingdom, 
MAHA MONO KUT, in the cell of a Buddhist mon 
astery, who had been taught in language and 
science by Rev. J. Caswell, a missionary of the 
American Board. His heart was full of friendli 
ness toward the missionaries and of the liberal and 
catholic policy imbibed through familiar contact 
with his Christian teacher. Upon him the choice 
of the assembly of nobles fell, and the priest left his 
cell to mount the throne of the " Sacred Prabahts." 
For seventeen years he reigned, a scholar and a 
gentleman who appreciated civilization, and in- 



204 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

augurated the most enlightened and progressive 
policy ever known among Asiatic sovereigns ! 
Every condition was changed. Missionaries found 
permanent homes and even a welcome at court. 
And that very year the women of the mission were 
admitted as teachers into the royal harem. The 
work begun by the deft and delicate hand of the 
seraphic Mrs. Judson was, after a generation had 
passed away, carried on by her sisterhood. And 
from that time to this, during forty years, the world 
has looked with astonishment upon the attitude of 
the Siamese nation, that in one day was changed 
from hostility to friendship in answer to believing 
prayer. Maha Mong Kut proclaimed religious 
liberty throughout the land, in 1870, and his son 
has followed his example in all liberal policy. 

Chulalangkorn, who succeeded Maha Mong 
Kut, has been called the " wisest and best ruler " 
the kingdom has. ever known, and with his wife 
has been the friend of Christian missions. Born 
in 1853, he is now but thirty-eight years old, and 
has reigned since November n, 1868. 

These two instances, out of hundreds, are chosen 
as striking illustrations of Christ s divine adminis 
tration of missions. Here rulers conspired against 
God s anointed ; everything to human eyes threat 
ened the wreck of years of work for His kingdom. 
And, when the crisis came, He sent forth His 
word, and His invisible messenger brought death 
to impious monarchs. Like a potter s vessel, they 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 205 

were shivered in pieces, beyond repair or remedy. 
And of such interpositions of Providence mission 
ary history is full. 

2. The other passage which throws light upon our 
Lord s promised presence and power, is the story 
of the Capture of Jericho. No one can study that 
narrative without saying within himself, " Which 
things are an allegory." The book of Joshua is 
the book of a militant Church, the wars of the 
Canaanites ; it is the book of entrance and con 
quest, possession and dispossession ; even in the 
promised land God s people found long, hard 
fighting, and every inch of advance disputed. 
The capture of Jericho is the first great step, the 
typical conflict ; and notice how it was conducted. 
A strange personage appears on the scene and 
announces himself to Joshua as " the Captain of 
the Lord s host." Joshua perceives his divine 
character, and humbly and adoringly gives into 
his hands the sceptre of leadership. 

His directions were explicit, and were implicitly 
followed. The city was to be compassed about 
once a day for six days, and seven times on the 
seventh day. The Ark of the Testimony was 
borne the priests blew the trumpets, and at a 
given signal the whole host shouted with a great 
shout of anticipative victory. Then, without one 
blow being struck, or one carnal weapon being 
used, the walls fell flat, and it remained only for 
the host to march over the ruins and take the city 



206 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

captive. What an object lesson on missions ! A 
militant Church undertakes to take possession of 
the earth promised to her as her joint inheritance 
with her Lord and Head. At every step her 
advance has met with deadly opposition. But the 
Invisible Captain of the Lord s host is on the 
battle-field, and his orders are explicit. We are 
to surround every stronghold, we are to bear the 
sacred treasure, our testimony for God, in the very 
van, and blow the trumpet of the Gospel herald. 
We are not to meet violence with violence, or hate 
with hate ; we are to use no carnal weapons, rely on 
no worldly alliances of power or patronage, wisdom 
or wealth. It is not by power nor might ; the 
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty 
through God to the pulling down of strongholds, 
casting down imaginations and every high thing 
that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, 
and bringing every thought into captivity to the 
obedience of Christ. This is the way to fulfil our 
obedience, and so revenge the disobedience of 
men. Let men deride our methods ; as we scorn 
worldly policy and simply blow the Gospel trumpet, 
God is pleased by the foolishness of preaching to 
save them that believe that the excellency of the 
power may be of God, and not of us. 

This, then, is the dual power of Christ s promised 
presence. He is on the throne, watching over the 
affairs of His Militant Church. He scorns the 
impotent malice of His foes and, when they persist 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 207 

in rage, breaks them in pieces. The same sceptre 
that to His Church is golden the sceptre of de 
fence and protection and blessing is to implac 
able enemies an iron rod of destruction and wrath 
and cursing. And He, who from the throne sends 
forth law and judgment, from the battle-field directs 
the fray and leads on the host ; and, if we but 
cultivate the clear-seeing eye, we may behold His 
white plume and white horse as He rides forth 
conquering and to conquer. 

This story of Jericho is full of inspiration in the 
work of missions. It shows us the Invisible Cap 
tain of our salvation, standing sword in hand on 
the very field of battle, our General-in-Chief. He 
is not only our captain but, " Captain of the Lord s 
Host," i.e., the angelic host, for the armed men 
of Israel are never once called the host of the 
Lord though once, in Exod. xii. 41, referred to 
by a kindred title. And here again we observe the 
curious correspondence between the scene at Jeri 
cho and the words of that last commission. "All 
power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth " 
on earth, for He is Leader of a militant Church ; 
in heaven, for He is Captain of the angelic host. 
While we go on sounding the cornets of Jubilee 
and proclaiming the Gospel, surrounding the 
strongholds of Satan, He is with us, and com 
mands an innumerable company of angels ; the 
powers of heaven are arrayed on our side, and, 
were our eyes open, we might see the horses and 



208 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

chariots of fire they that be for us are more and 
mightier than all they that be against us. The 
angels of God encamp round about us and fight 
for us in the dark day of battle. Here, then, is 
the first and foremost hope and faith of the 
Church in her mission work. The Lord Jesus is 
on the throne holding the reins of empire, and on 
the field of conflict directing the campaign. No 
defeat is possible, for all the heavenly host are our 
allies. In the midst of the dust and smoke of 
battle, when victory seems to perch like a bird 
of evil omen on the banners of the foe, and when 
we know not which way the tide of battle is turn 
ing, we are to stand, like the famous gunner of 
Waterloo, by our guns and our flag, and lift the 
eyes of faith upward. 

And now, it may be asked, what more is 
needed? Let it be observed that, thus far, we 
have power, exerted on behalf of the Church, guid 
ing, guarding, and governing disciples, and assuring 
final triumph over all foes of the kingdom. This 
is administrative power. 

But there is another field for the display of 
power. The work of missions is primarily con 
structive, not destructive. It aims to save, not to 
slay, and seeks to destroy foes by making them 
friends. We want another sort of power, working 
upon the minds and hearts of men and converting 
the sinner into the saint, and the unbeliever and 
disbeliever into the believer. We need a power 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 209 

that shall induce men voluntarily to yield to Christ 
not simply compel them involuntarily to sub 
mit ; to take His yoke upon them of choice, not 
of dire necessity, like vanquished foes. And just 
this is the Power of the Holy Ghost, promised of 
the Father, and which our Lord counted of such 
importance that He bade disciples tarry until they 
were endued with this power from on high. Here 
the word is not authority, egovoia, but power, 
duva/z*c. A new dynamic force was to be communi 
cated. The Son of man came to seek and to 
save that which was lost not to destroy men s 
lives, but to save them. And therefore, while He 
holds the rod of iron, and when necessary will 
use it, He would have all men to be saved and 
come to the full knowledge of the truth. And so 
He holds this rod of iron in reserve, while He 
extends the golden sceptre of His grace and love 
and pardon. His holy anger tarries until the en- 
duement from on high has done its work on disci 
ples and wrought its sweet persuasion on unbeliev 
ers ; then, when only obstinate and obdurate 
and reprobate rejectors of grace remain, He turns 
about His gracious sceptre and uses the iron end 
of it for destruction. 

The promise of the Father, then, is the bestow- 
ment of the Spirit of all power and grace. Pente 
cost was the beginning of the fulfilment of that 
promise, and Pentecost was typical. We see how 
this power is to be manifested all through this Gos- 



2io THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

pel age, from the manifestation of it then. First it 
came upon disciples, an enduement and endow 
ment. It was a baptism, a chrism a clothing 
with heavenly energy, an anointing with celestial 
unction. This imparted to the whole man a new, 
pervasive, persuasive charm, which wrought won 
ders convincing the mind, persuading the heart, 
converting the will. Three thousand under one 
simple sermon yielded immediately to God. Here 
is power in the disciple, fitting him to witness, and 
working on the unbeliever, moving him to repent 
ance, faith, conversion, and confession. And now 
nothing more can be required. The full secret 
of success is absolutely found. The Church of 
God, tarrying at Jerusalem for the Divine anoint 
ing, now goes forth to work and to war. Her 
witness is convincing and persuading, and all be 
cause a heavenly and indescribable charm invests 
her messengers. Wherever they go, taught what 
to say, and how to speak, they win a hearing. 
Men tremble even on the throne ; peasant and 
prince alike bow before a divine message borne 
by a messenger who is manifestly clothed with the 
livery and insignia of heaven. 

Then, when, grace has done its work and per 
sistent foes who will not yield to love would con 
spire to ruin and wreck a believing Church, the 
power that Christ holds in reserve for the crises 
of His kingdom is brought into awful exercise. 

3. Moreover, it seems plainly taught us that there 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 21 1 

are times when this protective and destructive 
power acts co-ordinately with the grace that con 
verts and saves, both by way of preparation and 
co-operation. Judgment sometimes paves the way 
for mercy, so that mercy rejoices in judgment. 
The judgments of our King are abroad in the 
earth, and the inhabitants of the world learn right 
eousness. The penalties with which He visits 
evil-doers operate as a check upon ungodliness 
and turn the less obdurate transgressors unto God. 

Who has not been struck with certain phrases 
in the Old Testament, as when God calls the 
swarms of locusts, Joel ii. 25, "My great army 
which I sent among you!" And any one who 
has ever lived in tropical climes and witnessed the 
terrible devastation they leave behind, will under 
stand such a phrase. These swarms come like a 
living deluge ; they cover the entire face of the 
firmament. In Southern Asia and Northern Af 
rica they frequently appear in clouds that hide 
the sun and sky ; the noise they make in their 
marching and feeding is like that of a heavy rain 
or hail falling on a forest. And the fields where 
they forage are swept clean of every green thing, 
and a thousand miles is not an extraordinary 
stretch for them to cover with desolation. A great 
army indeed, both in their countless hosts and 
awful power. 

There is something awe-inspiring in the thought 
of the whole creation constituting God s obedient 



212 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

host of armed warriors, the winds His messengers, 
flames of fire His ministers, the sea moving at His 
bidding, and the lightning-flash acting as His vassal. 
Caterpillars and canker-worms, flies and locusts, 
floods and droughts, snow-flakes and summer 
heats, all obey and fulfil His Word. But let us 
consider that they not only avenge His broken 
law, but prepare the way for His Gospel ! How 
many doors has the skeleton key of Famine un 
locked in India, in China, in Persia, in Syria ! 
The floods recently prevalent in the Middle King 
dom were God s evangelizing agencies. The in 
habitants see the impotency of their false gods to 
avert calamity, and the indifference of their own 
people to their extremity, while the " foreign 
devils " deal bread to the hungry and clothing to the 
naked, and give shelter to the homeless ; and thus 
famine, pestilence, plague, drought, and a thou 
sand forms of evil are God s preachers, that with 
loud voice proclaim the powerlessness of all idol 
atry to save or help, and point to the living God 
and the cross of Christ, as the hope of the world. 
We need to get new conceptions of Christian 
missions and the Power behind the mission band. 
We are waging warfare against iniquity and idol 
atry ; the campaign is world- wide and age-long, 
the foes are daring, desperate, diabolical ; the 
strongholds crown every hill-top, and are seemingly 
impregnable ; but the Leader is Divine ; His 
strategy, His methods, His weapons, insure vie- 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 213 

tory. His hosts are not earthly and human only, 
but heavenly, and the Church has only to be 
obedient, cultivate unity within and loyalty to her 
Lord, and in faith blow the cornets of Jubilee and 
use the mighty rod of prayer, and His banner is 
over the whole host. Every Roman soldier saw 
in the outspread pinions of Rome s silver eagles a 
signal of two things : first, a triumphal flight in 
wars of conquest, and secondly, a sheltering wing 
for every Roman citizen in the hour of peril. So 
to us must the banner of the Cross mean victory 
and safety, conquest for Christ, defeat of all foes, 
defence for all believers. God is the guard of 
His people. " The nation and kingdom that will 
not serve Thee shall perish." Has our Lord given 
His Spirit to save and sanctify? He has also 
" created the Waster to destroy " ; He used Baby 
lon as a hammer wherewith to smite the nations 
on the anvil of judgment; and then broke the 
proud hammer itself in pieces. And, when the 
kings and rulers conspire to wreck His Church 
and break His rule, His holy wrath, like angry 
waves on the seashore, shall sweep over them, 
and as with the sand-hills and forts which children 
build on the strand,, leave not a trace behind ! 

4. Before bringing this discussion to a close, the 
power of the Holy Ghost should be considered in 
its relation to our fitness to proclaim the good tidings. 
The authority of Christ in government and warfare 
touches our security and final success. But this 



214 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

touches our duty and responsibility, and the extent 
to which His power is exerted in our behalf may 
depend upon the measure of our conformity to 
His will. Let us now therefore look, for a little, 
at the effect of the enduement of power in making 
the missionary mighty in his work for God. 

In all work in which man co-operates with God, 
the power is in part human and in part super 
human and divine ; or, to speak more exactly, the 
power is to be viewed from both its human and 
divine side, in order to be fully apprehended. 

Bearing in mind that great word, " witness," 
which is the key to our whole work, it is manifest 
that we can never separate from a complete con 
ception of power in mission work, the character 
and qualification of the witness-bearer. Buffon 
said of " Style, it is the man " ; and the manner of 
man the missionary is will limit even the exercise 
of the power of God. Power depends for effect 
iveness upon the appliances and instruments 
through which it finds play. Friction is resistance 
to motion, and practically, reduction of motive- 
power. Even God s power may be hindered in 
action. 

The element of naturalness in testimony is one 
of the first conditions of power. Constraint and 
restraint, if they do not tie the tongue, put fetters 
upon speech and limit its freedom. And besides, 
they are contagious and infectious. What embar 
rasses the witness, hinders the hearer from a ready 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 215 

reception and a frank response. But, when we 
speak out of the fulness of our heart, the speech 
is easy, fluent, ^natural, necessary ; we win a hear 
ing by our earnestness and absorption in our 
theme. He who " cannot but speak" will find 
others who cannot but hear. There is a strange 
eloquence, convincing, persuading, in any man 
who has a message which he must deliver ; there 
is about any speaker who is thoroughly enamored 
of his theme, a fascination which even an unlet 
tered and stammering utterance cannot altogether 
destroy. 

The efficiency of a true witness, set on fire of a 
deep heart experience, is next to omnipotence : it 
carries before it all opposition like a flame fed 
with oxygen and fanned by high winds. Again 
we affirm it : the power to convince and persuade 
is the power of being convinced and persuaded. 
A doubt on our part begets a doubt in others ; 
confidence that knows no hesitation draws others 
after us as a mighty ocean steamer draws in its 
wake smaller craft. Hence it was that Theremin 
defined " eloquence, a virtue." An uncertain 
utterance moves nobody : the whole man must be 
behind his message, the vir behind the vis. A 
positive man may be wrong, but like God s 
anointed king he melts or welds other wills into 
his own, by the white heat of his own conviction. 
And hence the simplest believer may attain a 
power as a witness which none of the princes of 



216 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

this world knew. It is not the rhetoric or the 
logic of the schools which charm and sway, fas 
cinate and captivate the souls of men. They 
listen as to musical sounds, or curious echoes, or 
the deep swell of the sea, but they are not moved. 
The Latins heard Cicero s enchanting speech, and 
they said, " How beautifully he declaims ! " The 
Greeks heard Demosthenes energetic, impassioned 
utterance, and they clenched their fists and said, 
" Let us go and fight Philip ! " 

Sir William Hamilton one day said to Dr. 
McCosh, "Your friend, Dr. Guthrie, is the best 
preacher I ever heard." He answered that he did 
not wonder at the opinion, but was surprised to 
hear it expressed, by so great a logician, of one 
not specially possessed of large logical power. 
Sir William replied with great emphasis, " Sir, he 
has the best of all logic ; there is but one step 
between his premise and conclusion." AVe are 
not sure that the great Scotch metaphysician ever 
uttered a profounder saying.* On the other hand, 
how we instinctively detect, through the glamour of 
fine oratory, the features of the disingenuous and 
dishonest man ! " Surely," said Dr. Guthrie himself 
to Dr. James Hamilton, " there must be something 
great about that man " referring to a demagogue 
who for some years had been drawing the people 
after him. " Well," said Dr. Hamilton, in his quaint, 
quiet way, " no doubt ; he is a great imposition . " 

* Life of Guthrie, i, 322. 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 



217 



Paul uses the significant phrase, " Demonstra 
tion of the Spirit." There is no process of logic 
that is equal to His, for convincing of sin, of 
righteousness, and of judgment. The most elabo 
rate human argument often fails to demonstrate : 
the Spirit of God opens the blind eye and flashes 
conviction instantaneously upon the soul. 

The pilgrim to Scotland reverently stands in the 
graveyard of old Greyfriar s Church in Edinburgh. 
Here, on the 25th of February, 1638, the National 
Covenant was signed, the old Earl of Sutherland 
setting the example. A moved and mighty multi 
tude surrounded a raised horizontal gravestone in 
the open air of heaven. And they were not con 
tent to sign that Covenant in ink. Ah, there were 
men in those days ; they were seen to open a vein 
in their arms and fill their pens with their blood, 
to mark how they would shed that blood when 
the battle-day came ; and nobly did they redeem 
their pledges." * That tombstone is vocal, and, 
when men want to be heroic, they go to that 
churchyard and stand mute before the martyrs 
tablet and the sacred slab, and breathe and drink 
in the spirit that makes hearts brave and wills 
strong. 

Paul s logic was this of the new life : " We also 
believe and therefore speak" ; and so, though they 
ridiculed his bodily presence as weak, and his speech 
as contemptible, wherever he went he got a hear- 

* Life of Guthrie, i, 363. 



218 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

ing, for there was that in him which compelled it. 
" Father Vassar," in Boston, had a marvellous 
fascination, which gave him access to those who 
seemed to repel all ordinary approach. One day 
he accosted a worldly and fashionable woman, 
and, although an entire stranger, asked her plainly 
whether she had ever believed in Jesus to her 
soul s salvation. When her husband, as worldly 
as she, came home to his dinner, she told him of 
the strange man who had met her and at once 
engaged her in conversation about her soul. 
" Had I been there," said her spouse, " I would 
have told him to go about his own business." 
" But, husband," said she, " if you had been there 
you would have thought that he was about his 
own business" 

" He that winneth souls is wise," but the wis 
dom is not learned in human schools. Experience 
of God s grace, a rich schooling in God s uni 
versity, is the only adequate qualification : this 
power to witness is the power of the Holy Spirit 
indwelling, and inworking, and then outworking 
though the lips and the tongue, and the grander 
utterance of the life. When God dwells in us and 
gives us a true, deep knowledge of Himself, He 
lays the foundation for power in testimony. It is 
the baptism of the Spirit that made such a mighty 
witness even of Peter, turning cowardice into 
courage, and the traitor into the leader, so that 
he, who once could not face an accusing maid, 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 219 

stood and faced the great Jewish Council, daringly 
defying the august Sanhedrin ! If we are to have 
new power in missions, we must have a higher 
standard of living. The believer who is trans 
formed into the likeness of Christ is himself the 
apologetic for Christianity ; for in him even the 
unbelieving, gainsaying world must see and read 
the " many infallible proofs " of a God, a Christ, 
a Holy Spirit, a regenerate character. 

And therefore do we steadfastly maintain that 
no great power can attend Christian missions, 
while in the Church Christian life sinks to a low 
level. Such a life can beget no life of a higher sort, 
and our missionaries will, in their work, represent 
our uncertain convictions and our divided affec 
tions, and their unbelief and worldliness will make 
God s many mighty works impossible on the foreign 
field. 

It was October 7, 1805, thirteen years almost to 
a day from the day when that mission compact 
was signed at Kettering, that Carey, Marshman, 
and Ward, at Serampore, drew up their famous 
spiritual " Covenant." It covered twelve printed 
pages octavo, and was read publicly at every 
station at least once a year. 

If any one would see what sort of men God 
chose to lead the van of His modern missionary 
post, let him study that " Form of agreement 
respecting the great principles upon which the 
brethren of the mission thought it their duty to 



220 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

act in the work of instructing the heathen." Dr. 
George Smith calls it a Preparatio Evangelica, 
and well adds that it " embodies the divine prin 
ciples of all Protestant scriptural missions, and is 
still a manual to be daily pondered by every mis 
sionary, and every church and society which may 
send a missionary forth." * 

We give here its most important parts, for per 
sonal reflection : 

"IT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY: 

1. "That we set an infinite value upon immortal 

souls. 

2. " That we gain all information of the snares and 

delusions in which these heathen are held. 

3. " That we abstain from all those things which 

would increase their prejudices against the 
Gospel. 

4. " That we watch all opportunities for doing good. 

5. "That we keep to the example of Paul, and 

make -the great subject of our preaching, 
Christ the Crucified. 

6. " That the natives should have an entire confi 

dence in us and feel quite at home in our 
company. 

7. " That we build up and watch over the souls 

that may be gathered. 

8. "That we form our native brethren to useful 

ness, fostering every kind of genius and 
cherishing every gift and grace in them, 

* Short History of Missions, p. 165. 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 221 

especially advising the native churches to 
choose their own pastors and deacons from 
amongst their own countrymen. 

9. " That we labor with all our might in forward 

ing translations of the Sacred Scriptures in the 
languages of India. 

10. "That we establish native free-schools and 
recommend these establishments to other 
Europeans. 

11. " That we be constant in prayer and the culti 
vation of personal religion, to fit us for the 
discharge of these laborious and unutterably 
important labors. Let us often look at 
Brainerd in the woods of America, pouring 
out his very soul before God for the perishing 
heathen, without whose salvation nothing 
could make him happy. 

12. "That we give ourselves unreservedly to this 

glorious cause. Let us never think that our 
time, our gifts, our strength, our families, or 
even the clothes we wear, are our own. Let 
us sanctify them all to God and His cause. 
O, that He may sanctify us for His work ! 
No private family ever enjoyed a greater 
portion of happiness than we have done since 
we resolved to have all things in common. 
If we are enabled to persevere, we may hope 
that multitudes of converted souls will have 
reason to bless God to all eternity for sending 
His Gospel into this country." 



222 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

In this solemn compact, which sounds like an 
apostolic document, twelve cardinal principles are 
carefully set forth. 

1. Valuing human souls at an infinite worth. 

2. Informing themselves as to their actual needs. 

3. Avoiding all putting of stumbling blocks in 
their way. 

4. Watching opportunity to do good unto all. 

5. Preaching Christ Crucified as their one 
theme. 

6. Inspiring confidence by a Christlike life. 

7. Establishing schools for Christian education. 

8. Watching over and training native converts. 

9. Raising up a native ministry for service. 

10. Translating the Holy Scriptures into the 
vernacular. 

1 1. Cultivating prayer and self-culture in piety. 

12. Surrendering self unreservedly to God and 
service. 

To this nothing remains to be added to give 
completeness and symmetry. It reads like an 
inspired paper. The marks of the Holy Ghost 
are upon it. And we commend it to all friends of 
missions, and especially to all who have in view 
or in thought the field of missions. It need be no 
matter of wonder that, although the first Hindu 
convert, Krishna Chundra Pal, was not baptized 
as a Protestant believer until 1800, fifty years 
after Carey s death, the native Protestant com 
munity, in 1884, numbered half a million, with 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 223 

ordained native pastors outnumbering the mission 
aries, and every decade witnessing an increase at 
the rate of eighty-six per cent. ! 

Let this covenant be to the Church of Christ, 
as we start on a new century of missions, a trumpet 
peal of God for a new advance. A higher type 
of piety is the great demand of our day. Spiritual 
power depends upon spiritual life. Never will the 
Holy Spirit set a premium upon low spiritual at 
tainment by resting, in Shekinah glory, upon a 
Church in whose courts are the idols of this world. 
While the Word of God is neglected, prayer de 
generates into a form, and worship into ritual ; 
while the line of separation is obliterated between 
the Church and the world, and the whole life of 
the Church is on the lowest level, we shall look in 
vain for the anointing from above. 

How preaching and witnessing may be made 
more attractive and effective is a question whose 
vital importance transcends almost any other. The 
great need of the modern pulpit is spiritual power. 
With all the learning and culture of the ministry, 
a nameless deficiency exists ; and the lack, to 
whatever traceable, is a lack of power. Even 
where preaching attracts, how seldom it effects 
that great end, the salvation of souls ! Why is it 
that even those sermons which gratify, do not 
satisfy, and many preachers who draw the crowd 
do not win men to Christ? There seem to be 
scholarship, intellectuality, and sometimes spirit- 



224 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

uality, and yet but little of that seal and sanction 
which the Spirit sets on the most successful preach 
ing by using it to convict and convert. 

The lack of power may exist where there is no 
lack of truth. Without God s truth there will not 
be God s power ; but there is not always power 
even where there is truth, for these two are not 
synonymous in this wicked world would they 
were ! We have carelessly adopted that pagan 
maxim : " Magna cst veritas et prcevalebit" though 
all human history shows its fallacy and falsity. 
Men have always known more truth than they 
have practised. God Himself preached the truth 
in Eden, yet even there Satan s lie proved mightier. 
Noah preached truth for a century in the antedi 
luvian world, and made not a convert. Greece 
and Rome and France knew truth enough to have 
saved them, but these, the most refined and martial 
and cultured of nations, have crowned falsehood 
and vice with the diadems of truth and virtue. 

Truth, spoken in a sinful world, finds wrong 
and error mighty enough to keep the mastery : 
the Gospel itself, the very truth of God, needs 
something added to make it the power of God ; 
and, what that is, the promise of the Father, ful 
filled in part at Pentecost, reveals. We are now 
studying the science of spiritual dynamics, and 
may learn what makes our witness a dynamic 
force : " Ye shall receive the power of the Holy 
Ghost coming upon you." Unction, as it is called 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 225 

by John, the Chrism (npiafia), is that anointing 
for service which helps men to reach, touch, move, 
and mould the mind, heart, will, of the hearer. 
Our mistake is fatal if we conceive of power in 
missions as human. Even the most convincing 
argument, the most captivating rhetoric, the most 
exalted eloquence, do not imply this power. 
Unction has a logic, rhetoric, eloquence of its 
own. 

The power to move men Godward is a power, 
purely of God, and must be carefully distinguished 
from all channels through which it flows, or means 
by which it works, as the lightning is distinct from 
the cloud it charges, or the wind from the wave 
it heaves and rolls. This enduement of power 
defies all analysis. The secret seems to lie now 
in the glow of ardor and fervor, and then in tears 
of tenderness ; now in the logic of reason on fire with 
conviction, and then in the logic of love warning 
and inviting. So also does it defy description, like 
savor, flavor, fragrance. But one may be pro 
foundly sensible of its presence or absence. A 
sermon may be full of learning, empty of life the 
mummy of the Gospel, the form without the soul 
dead orthodoxy, wrapt in the cerements of the 
grave and having the odor of decay. 

But, while we may not describe, define, analyze 
Unction, we may know its evidences and effects. 
First, when the power of the Holy Ghost comes 
upon us our eyes are anointed as with eye-salve, 



226 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

and we sec. We have a new apprehension of 
divine truth. Light takes color from the media 
through which it passes. Our minds and hearts 
and tempers and temperament give color to our 
notions of God. A tyrannical temper makes His 
will seem arbitrary and unreasonable ; a vindictive 
spirit gives His wrath a lurid glare ; a morbid heart 
makes even His promises seem gloomy, and a 
forceless, nerveless amiability makes even His 
mercy seem lax and His love insipid. 

No man is fit to teach God s truth until he is 
taught of God, and, to be taught, he must come 
into vital contact and sympathy with God. And 
so the power to witness implies a power to think 
rightly of God. Then we vividly see the real lost 
state of souls, and their awful need, and th.e won 
ders of grace and the possibility of salvation. 
This sense of reality of divine things no man has 
until the Spirit of God unveils his eyes and anoints 
them with His own eye-salve. 

Then we need power to present what is thus 
conceived. The modes of the preacher have as 
much to do with the effectiveness of his message 
as have the moods of the hearer. If he is clothed 
with power from on high, whether he thunders forth 
the peal of the law or with still small voice whis 
pers the grace of God, Sinai and Galvary will be 
alike subduing. 

God s preachers and witnesses are the interpreters 
of His truth. Like a musician, who gets beyond the 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 227 

mechanical performance or the originating genius, 
and enters into the secret life of the composer, 
the preacher must interpret to the hearer God s 
idea or thought. Many a humble man, who has 
no fluency of speech, or grace of gesture, no power 
to flash auroras or rain meteors, has power to 
make God s truth clear and cogent, and move 
minds far superior to his own in culture and power. 
This we must understand and feel as we never 
have felt it. As Dr. T. H. Skinner used to say, 
God may give to a church and its pastor every 
type of piety but that which is found in a sense of 
the powers of the world to come, and men will remain 
unconverted, but he who is to save souls must 
have this sense. This gives logic both of argu 
ment and feeling this makes words now like 
drawn swords, keen at the edge and keener at the 
point ; now like a hammer, that breaks even the 
rock ; and now like fire, that burns and melts. 
The hearer feels a spiritual force grappling with 
his convictions, conscience, will ; and, if he is not 
compelled to yield to Christ, he is at least com 
pelled to consider and make a decision. 

This power of the Holy Ghost is probably the 
one gift and grace that cannot be feigned. An 
unconverted man may build a symmetrical dis 
course, faultless both in matter and style ; a hypo 
crite may assume, like an actor, what he neither 
feels nor believes ; but to wield the sword of the 
Spirit so as to pierce to joints and marrow, that 



228 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

requires Holy Ghost power, holding, nerving, guid 
ing the arm. 

This promised " anointing " gives quality to the 
witness-bearer as well as to his message. The an 
cients thought purest virtue aromatic to the sense, 
and it is true that this divine chrism makes the 
whole man fragrant, investing even his person and 
presence with a nameless charm, so that, like Lord 
Chatham, " there is something in the man finer 
than he ever said." The anointed witness is like 
Aaron ; even to the fringes of his garments the 
holy oil runs down, and all his robes smell of the 
myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory pal 
aces of the Heavenly King. He becomes like 
some instrument, long played upon by some master 
musician, whose very fibre loses its harshness and 
coarseness and takes on a new quality. 

This power clothed Peter at Pentecost, made 
Stephen irresistible even before his stoners, and 
made Wesley and Whitefield the mightiest preach 
ers of the last century ; this power made Edwards 
at Enfield, and Nettleton, in the simplest repetition 
of a text, mighty to move and sway a whole audi 
ence. 

Be assured, the greatest lack of missions, both 
at home and abroad, is the want of this anointing. 
Tarry before God till you get it. No waiting for 
this is wasting time. Better one day, with power 
from on high, than a hundred or a thousand in its 
absence. God would not have us neglect the nat- 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 229 

ural basis of studious and systematic preparation, 
for grace sets no premium on sloth, and a mind 
and heart fitted by devout study of the Word of 
God is most likely to be endued. 

Nor would God have us neglect the spiritual 
basis, in general purity and piety of character. 
The anointing implies previous cleansing, as the 
Levites were washed with water before they were 
anointed with oil. But, beside and beyond this, 
God would have us feel our deep need of the 
promise of the Father. May the Spirit of God 
be to us all a Socrates, to bring us from ignorance 
and impotence unconscious to ignorance and im 
potence conscious. Then let our need drive 
us to God. Let the securing of this unction be 
our supreme aim and absorbing prayer. Putting 
away the ambition to originate brilliant and start 
ling thoughts, or weave the golden and silver 
tissues of ornate speech we must get so near to 
the heart of God that we shall care more for the 
groan of one wounded soul than for the shouts of 
thousands that praise the beauty of the bow or the 
grace of the archer. " Tarry until you are en 
dued with power from on high." What is needed 
is a heart that can hurl hot shot at the citadels of 
Satan ; not the iron tongue of passionate denuncia 
tion, or the silver tongue of flashing rhetoric, or 
the golden tongue of persuasive oratory, but the 
tongue of fire s,et aflame by a coal from heavenly 
altars. 



230 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Here reverently let it be recorded here lies 
the basis and bottom of all power in subduing this 
world for Christ. After the whole armor of God 
is endued, there must still be vigor and vitality to 
wear it and wield it. Our weapons are mighty 
only when we ourselves are first strong in the 
Lord and in the power of His might. The pan 
oplied soldier needs still the nameless charm and 
investment of a divine baptism and chrism. 

This, then, is the complex yet simple power of 
missions Christ on the throne ruling the Church, 
restraining the powers of darkness, and extending 
His shield over His own ; Christ on the battle 
field riding His white horse and leading His 
Church to conflict and conquest ; marshalling His 
heavenly host and the great armies of an obedient 
creation to bring His plans to consummation ; 
then the Holy Spirit, enduing His witnesses and 
making them the power of God to win souls. 
When our ministers and missionaries recognize and 
realize this need, cherish this aim, and breathe 
this prayer on every field of missions, a new force 
will be felt and a new power manifested. Then 
we shall see results on the whole field. Doors will 
open, until not a hermit nation remains or one 
shut gate confronts us. 

Gigantic barriers will be removed and walls of 
adamant will crumble. Converts will be multi 
plied till they spring up like grass along water 
courses. Congregations will gather, churches will 



THE FORCE OF MISSIONS. 23! 

be organized, schools will be established every 
where, even in the deserts, streams will burst forth 
and flow God-ward, turning the wilderness into 
Eden ; native evangelists will press into the regions 
beyond, opposition will only make disciples strong, 
and martyr fires only kindle flames of love to 
God and man. Before a Church that enthrones 
Christ in the heart and follows Him everywhere, 
before a Church baptized with the fire of the Holy 
Ghost, nothing can stand. Francis Xavier stood 
before China and saw its vastness loom up like a 
mountain that shut out the very sky, and he cried, 
" O rock, rock, when wilt thou open to my Mas 
ter ? " And that rock still stands, the Gibraltar 
of heathenism. God waits to be asked, and. wills 
to give us all this power simply for the asking. A 
dying world is about us nay, a dead world but 
the Word of Life is in our hands. O for the Spirit 
of Life ! Let Him endue us, and our speech is 
no more with enticing words of man s wisdom, but 
with demonstration of the Holy Ghost. In the 
Valley of Indecision the wind of Heaven breathes, 
signs of life appeftr the dry bones move bone 
cleaves to bone : the skeleton of creed is clad 
with the flesh of faith, and, where the slain of Satan 
lay, the hosts of God encamp. For such power 
from on high let us so earnestly seek, that every 
breath of spiritual life shall become a prayer ! 




VI. 

THE DIVINE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 

||HE fruit of missions constitutes a seal 
from God upon the work and the work 
men. 

When Mark brings his Gospel narrative to a 
conclusion, he significantly says, " And they went 
forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working 
with (them) and confirming the word with signs 
following." The Lord co-operated with His 
appointed and anointed workmen, and confirmed 
their work and His own word by appropriate signs. 
In the book of the Acts of the Apostles, at least 
one representative instance is given of the various 
signs promised. Take Paul s experience alone. 
At Philippi, he cast out the demon from the 
divining damsel ; at Ephesus, he laid his hands on 
disciples and they spake with new tongues ; at 
Melita, he shook off the deadly viper that fastened 
on his hand and felt no harm ; and at Ephesus 
likewise special miracles were wrought by his hands, 
so that from his body were brought unto the sick 
handkerchiefs or aprons,* etc. 

* Acts xix. ir, 12. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS, 233 

There are those who affirm that, at no time in 
subsequent Christian history, have supernatural 
signs ever been absolutely lacking, as evidences of 
the presence and power of Him who promised, 
saying, " Lo, I am with you alway." It is quite 
noticeable that, while this promise of the Lord s 
presence extends " to the end of the age," no such 
language is used about the signs; the difference in 
terms is very remarkable : " And these signs shall 
follow them that believe." Here it is not said 
that those particular signs shall continue to be 
wrought, alway, even to the end of the age ; but 
only that they " shall follow," as they did, for an 
indefinite time. Had our Lord meant to assure 
us that such signs should be as perpetual as His 
presence, it was easy for Him to add one word, 
" alway," to make that plain. But He did not, 
and we infer that there was and is a deep reason. 
He foresaw that, while some signs would always 
follow faithful preaching and true believing, these 
were not to be perpetually wrought ; and that, 
while some signs would always be needful to ac 
credit the work as His own, these particular signs 
might not always be necessary, or even expedient. 
As a structure rises from base to cap-stone, we 
find it best to change the form, face, and even 
nature, of the material. The huge unhewn blocks 
which are laid as the foundation would be awk 
ward, ungraceful, and unduly massive, in the super 
structure ; and so stones of lighter weight, chiselled 



234 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

into beauty and polished into lustre, wrought often 
into delicate forms, slender columnar shapes with 
capitals of exquisite tracery, airy arches and lance- 
like pinnacles, rise toward heaven. There is not 
more difference between the rough, bulky bulb of 
a hyacinth and the tender, slender petals, than be 
tween the rude and massive basal stones and the 
white blossoms which burst into stony flowers 
above them. But all are equally parts of one 
building. And so the primitive signs, wrought in 
the apostolic age, had their special design and 
served their special purpose. They laid the base 
of apostolic work and testimony ; but, when foun 
dations were thus laid, it was perhaps better that, 
as the structure rose upon this base, the supernat 
ural character of the work should be attested in 
different ways, and the form of such attestation 
change with the demand of each new age ; so that, 
while supernatural signs should never cease, they 
should acquire new force from their very variety. 
And, with Professor Christlieb, we firmly hold 
that, in the history of modern missions particularly, 
we find numerous occurrences which unmistakably 
remind us of the apostolic age ; * and, he adds, 
" We cannot, therefore, fully admit the proposition 
that no more miracles are performed in our day." 
In fact, it is not rash to assert that there are 
still, in this remote day, supernatural signs curi 
ously corresponding to the miracles of the first 

* " Modern Doubt and Christian Belief," 332. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 235 

century.* Perhaps we need not hesitate to call 
them " modern miracles," since a miracle is simply 
a wonder and a sign combined, i.e., something 
transcending the power of man, to which God ap 
peals as a sign of His power. " The blind receive 
their sight," when eyes, long blinded to sin and 
holiness, are opened to see the deformity of the 
one and the beauty of the other. "The lame 
walk," when moral impotency and inability are 
divinely displaced by power to resist even the 
most mighty temptations and to break the bonds 
of the most enslaving vices. "The lepers are 
cleansed," whenever the very blood becomes rid 
of the vile virus of lust, and the unclean beast be 
comes virtuous, humane, holy. " The deaf hear," 
when ears, hopelessly insensible alike to the warn 
ings of justice and the invitations of mercy, and 
which even the thunders of Sinai could not pierce, 
now catch the whispers from Calvary and the still 
small voice of that Spirit that comes not in earth 
quake, storm, or roaring conflagration. " The 
dead are raised up," when those who have been 
destitute of all the energy, the sensibility, the 
vitality, and the activity of spiritual life, waken 
like Lazarus to cast off the death-damps and 
grave-clothes, and walk with God and work for 
God, and war against sin and Satan ; when that 
upper story of our triple being, the true observa 
tory of the spirit, which sin turned into a death- 

* " Modern Miracles," by Lelia Thomson. 



236 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

chamber, again becomes the shrine and throne of 
the Holy Ghost. It is by no means certain that 
these moral miracles are not in their way more 
convincing signs of divine power than any others 
wrought in a lower sphere. 

That great Messianic prophecy and poem, in 
Isaiah,* more than hints that earlier signs may give 
way to later ones, not less convincing and conclu 
sive in their way. " Instead of the thorn shall 
come up the fir-tree ; and, instead of the brier, 
shall come up the myrtle-tree ; and it shall be to 
the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that 
shall not be cut off." 

The exact language here used must not escape 
us. In Genesis iii. 17, 18, we read: "And unto 
Adam he said, Because thou hast .... eaten of 
the tree of which I commanded thee, saying thou 
shalt not eat of it ; cursed is the ground for thy 
sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of 
thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring 
forth unto thee." A tree was the occasion of 
sin, and so the very soil which bore the tree was 
cursed, and thorns and thistles borne by the ground 
became signs of curse. 

When Jesus, the second Adam, bore up to the 
cross the sin that cursed the first Adam and the 
Adamic race, He bore on His royal head a " crown 
of f horns." Little did those soldiers know that in 
their mockery they were unconsciously prophesy- 

* Isaiah Iv. 13. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 237 

ing ; for He who lifted up the thorns on His own 
bleeding brow was to remove the curse even from 
the ground. The whole creation has a redemp 
tion, and in His crucifixion that redemption was 
signified and symbolized. As a tree brought the 
curse, so a tree bore the curse away. He who 
hung on the cursed tree has transformed the tree 
of the knowledge of good and evil into a tree of 
life, and He wore as His crown the thorns that were 
the signs of curse. And now hear the prophetic 
promise of what is to be the ultimate result- 
" God s word that goeth forth out of His mouth " 
shall be like " the rain that cometh down and the 
snow from heaven," pure, celestial condensations 
and distillations, and it shall not return to Him 
void, but shall accomplish His gracious pleasure, 
and shall prosper in its holy mission. Under the 
distillations of that life-giving Gospel, the earth, 
which caused to bud * thorns and briers, shall cause 
to bud a harvest of heavenly fruits which give 
" seed to the sower and bread to the eater." And 
the sign of this accomplished redemption shall be 
that, " instead of the thorn shall come up the fir- 
tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the 
myrtle-tree." 

Can any figurative expression be plainer? In 
stead of the vile, accursed, vexatious, and vicious 
products of the soil, shall be trees and plants, the 
most beautiful, useful, fragrant, and fruitful. And 

* Gen. iii. 18, Margin; 



238 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

this shall prove a divine husbandry. All the toil 
and skill of man has not been able, in six thousand 
years, to expel thorns and thistles. They are 
found everywhere, they spring up spontaneously, 
grow with great energy, hold with great tenacity, 
and multiply with inconceivable rapidity, so that 
one variety of thistle might from the fifth succes 
sive harvest of a single seed, supply seeds sufficient 
to plant every square foot of soil in the solar sys 
tem, from Mercury to Neptune ! But let the 
Divine Husbandman come, and with incredible 
swiftness the whole moral aspect of human nature 
is changed. In the soil of society, the vile and 
vicious and virulent growths of sin, that no effort 
of man has been able to extirpate, are surely 
eradicated. Forms of evil, of crime, of rebellion 
against God and revolt against humanity, that 
generations have vainly sought to destroy, or even 
reduce, disappear ; and, in their place, are found 
beautiful characters, with charms that never fade 
or fall, as does the foliage of deciduous trees, sym 
metrical lives, fruitful and fragrant, like the bowers 
of paradise. " Thy people also shall be all right 
eous ; " and it is surely no marvel if in such a 
transformation God says men shall see God s hus 
bandry " that they might be called Trees of 
Righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He 
might be glorified." * 

And now let us note that, of such results of the 

* Isaiah Ix. 21, Ixi. 3. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 239 

going forth of His word out of His mouth, God 
says, "And it shall be to the Lord for a NAME," 
i.e., a reputation or fame establishing His glory 
" for an EVERLASTING SIGN that shall not be cut 
off." This is the only sign that is called everlast 
ing, and " that shall not be cut off." Reverently, 
let us add, this is perhaps the only sign that is in 
its nature fitted to be everlasting. The progress 
of human discovery and invention has gone far 
toward ameliorating, relieving, and removing the 
ills to which the body is heir. Modern medicine 
and surgery have, by methods purely scientific, 
caused the blind to receive their sight, the lame 
to walk, the lepers to be cleansed, the deaf to 
hear, and even the apparently dead to be raised. 
What future medical, surgical, and sanitary art 
and science may do, like Pharaoh s magicians, to 
imitate with their enchantments certain miracles 
of God, we cannot say. But there is one point 
at which all competition is at an end, viz., the 
transformation of moral and spiritual character. 
The soul of man and the soil of society, even 
under the most careful culture, never lose sin. 
There is a.srrange sinfulness even in our nature 
that crops out everywhere, and at all times. Its 
forms of manifestation change from coarser and 
grosser, but are more subtle and dangerous even 
under their refinement. Education has never yet 
eliminated sin from man s nature or society. Here 
is a sign of divine power that cannot be counter- 



240 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

feited by science or art or culture, or even reform. 
Between moral reformation and spiritual regenera 
tion there is still a great gulf fixed, and man can 
not bridge it. The seven golden ages of Egypt 
under the Ptolemies, Greece under Pericles, Rome 
under Augustus, Italy under Leo the Great, France 
under Louis the Magnificent, Russia under Ivan 
IV., England under Elizabeth, were ages of 
awful profligacy, infidelity, and immorality. God 
has never given to man the key of life, though 
He may have given him the key of knowledge. 
Only He who is the Alpha and Omega has the 
keys of hell and of death, and can release the soul 
held in chains of hellish habits and deadly vices. 
And here is God s " everlasting sign which shall 
not be cut off." 

Those who have the widest acquaintance with 
the history and progress of missions, are rather 
oppressed with the sense of comparative ignorance, 
inasmuch as so much remains to be known, and 
the very vastness of the field baffles the industry 
that investigates it. But the further these studies 
are carried the deeper is the impression left on the 
mind, that the story of missions is, as the Bishop 
of Ripon finely intimated, a continuation of the 
Acts of the Apostles : yes, of the Acts of the 
Apostles, with all its essential supernaturalism. 
No exhibition of a Power unmistakably divine, or 
a Presence unmistakably divine, has ever presented 
to mankind proofs more obvious than those found 



CHE FRUIT Of MISSIONS. 241 

in these lew chapters in this modern Book of the 
Acts. The devout student of missions, but most 
of all the devoted worker in missions, bows before 
these evidences of a providential and spiritual in 
tervention which to his mind defy doubt, not to 
say denial. 

These proofs need only to be put before the 
candid and conscientious observer, to compel 
conviction. We read how, in the days of Christ, 
" the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb 
to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to 
walk, and the blind to see ; and they glorified the 
God of Israel." * Corresponding marvels are to 
be found in the history of missions, and, when the 
doubting disciple, or even the sceptical unbeliever, 
is confronted with them, wonder is excited, and if 
there be a readiness to be convinced by evidence, 
conviction becomes irresistible, and God is again 
glorified. Would that all who profess to be dis 
ciples would diligently read this new Book of the 
Acts, which is the book of facts of modern mis 
sions ! There may be seen features correspondent 
to all the most distinctive and distinguishing marks 
of the apostolic era. The same Pentecostal out 
pouring ; the same marvellous opening of doors, 
great and effectual ; the same call of God separat 
ing the modern apostles to the work of evangeliza 
tion ; the same grace, converting the Gentiles, 
purifying their hearts by faith, and anointing con- 

* Matt. xv. 31. 



242 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

verts for service ; the same transformation of 
individuals, and even communities, by the power 
of the Word and the Spirit ; the same overcoming 
of obstacles and triumph over difficulties ; the same 
supernatural answer to believing prayer. That 
great world s conference in London in 1888 
what was it but another gathering of the Church 
to hear the missionary laborers rehearse all that 
God had done with them ? etc. 

What a new epoch of missions will begin when 
the Church of God will but read with open eyes 
these new chapters in the history of grace, and see 
how God is yet present and powerfully working in 
the world, to honor the witnesses to His Gospel ! 

John Williams progress through the South Seas 
was a triumphal march. Even in the career of 
Paul as, from Antioch to Athens, and from the 
Golden Horn to the Pillars of Hercules, he went 
on his great errand of evangelism, there are not 
more convincing signs of God s power than in 
John Williams voyages, from the shores of Eimeo 
to the fatal coast of Eromanga ! His missionary 
career covers but twenty-two years, from 1817 to 
1839. Yet, like a flying messenger of Jehovah, 
with a flaming torch, he sped from island to island, 
and group to group, Aitutaki, Atiu, Raratonga, 
Mangaia, Raiatea, Samoa, and one unbroken 
series of successes crowned his work, till not only 
islands, but groups of islands, came in rapid succes 
sion under the sway of Christ s golden sceptre ; 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 243 

and until, in 1834, five years before he fell, he 
could calmly say : "At the present time, we do 
not know of any group, or any single island of 
importance, within two thousand miles of Tahiti, 
in any direction, to which the glad tidings of sal 
vation have not been conveyed ! " In some cases 
he saw the spears, which a year before were used 
in desolating warfare, serving as pulpit balustrades ; 
and the wooden images of the great god of war, 
ONO, and other similar deities, turned into sup 
ports for the roof of common wood-sheds, and 
other inferior buildings ! The inhabitants of these 
islands turned with unparalleled rapidity from the 
worship of idols and the practice of cannibalism, 
burned their Maraes, and laid their false gods at 
the missionaries feet as trophies of Gospel triumph. 

When Rev. Jas. Calvert was asked to give in 
one sentence a proof of the success of missions, 
he said, "When I first arrived at the Fiji group, 
my first duty was to bury the hands, feet, heads, 
and bones of the arms and legs of eighty victims 
whose bodies had been roasted and eaten in a 
cannibal feast. I lived to see the very cannibals 
who had taken part in that inhuman festival gath 
ered about the Lord s Table." 

The cannibalism of Fiji was not simply the re 
sult of an impulse of passsionate hate or revenge, 
but an institution inwoven with the very fabric of 
social life, and even religion. It was not the re 
sort of, hunger, for with plenty and variety of food, 



244 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

human bodies were regarded as a delicacy to be 
preferred. Rev. S. McFarlane, LL.D., has sug 
gested that the Fijians regarded cannibalism as 
an act of supreme revenge upon a fallen enemy ; 
a kind of vindication of the national honor, which 
patriotic pride demanded ; and to devour a slain 
enemy might also imply the transfer of his strength 
and prowess to him who ate him. But, more than 
this, Dr. Seemann suggests that cannibal feasts 
belonged to the ceremonies of religion. The 
ovens are never used for any other purpose, and 
whereas fingers are the only forks used in eating 
ordinary food, for human flesh a peculiar fork, 
with three or four prongs, made of hard wood, 
and each fork known by its peculiar name, is used. 
These forks are evidently regarded as sacred, and 
as profaned by the touch of a foreigner. Under 
the great banyan-tree, the sacred Akautabu, can 
nibal feasts took place, and certain parts of the 
bodies of victims were hung on this tree. Here 
the famous cannibal chief, Thakombau, kept his 
abominable revels.* 

Where this practice of cannibalism was thus 
associated with social custom, appetite, revenge, 
patriotism, and even religion, we might expect that 
the higher the rank the more .indulgence there 
would be in this revolting practice ; and the fact 
is, that many of the chiefs gloried in the number 
of human bodies they had eaten, and kept a regis- 

* "Among the Cannibals of New Guinea," 100-102. 



THE FRUIT Of MISSIONS. H5 

ter by making a line of stones, one stone being 
added for each body eaten. The stones thus 
placed by two chiefs, Wangka Levu and Ra 
Undre Undre, were counted by a native teacher, 
and found to number nearly nine hundred ; and 
as many as fifty bodies have been cooked for a 
single feast. What a dynamic power must be 
found in a simple Gospel message that could 
eradicate customs so deeply rooted in the very 
soil of society ! 

This story of Fiji it would be difficult to surpass, 
either for the depth of cruelty, iniquity, and idola 
try there confronted by the Gospel, or for the 
rapid, radical, and revolutionary changes which 
that Gospel wrought. Human life was held in 
reckless disregard. An Englishman named Jack 
son was witness to the sacrifice to earth spirits. 
A chief was building a new hut, and deep holes 
were dug to receive the main posts on which the 
house was to rest. To propitiate the gods to up 
hold the dwelling, men were forced to stand in 
these holes and clasp these posts while the earth 
was filled in and buried them alive. At the launch 
ing of a war canoe, living human bodies were used 
as rollers, and they were crushed to a shapeless 
mass beneath the weight. The sacrifice of human 
life was wanton, as though, instead of crime, it 
implied merit. 

In 1835 there was not a single disciple. When, 
fifty years later, in 1885, the Jubilee was kept, not 



246 THE DIl IXE ENTERPRISE. 

an avowed heathen was left in all the large group 
of eighty inhabited islands ; and the returns of 
that year show a total of 1,322 churches and other 
preaching places, 3,021 missionaries, catechists, 
and teachers, only ten of whom were white mis 
sionaries, and, out of a population of 110,000, 
104,585 attendants at public worship. To-day 
not a vestige of cannibalism, widow-strangling, 
infanticide and like cruelties, exists, and the Fijian 
Church sends native evangelists to other distant 
shores to preach Christ in other tongues. Mr. 
Calvert himself testifies : " We had no night of 
toil. God was with us from the beginning, and 
all along, even to the present time, and he Has 
ever confirmed His Word with signs following." 

That same chief, Thakombau, who, under the 
sacred Akautabu, cut out the tongue of a captive 
chief who with it was begging for a speedy death, 
and jocosely ate it before his face, afterwards 
built a chapel at Bau, and at his own death-bed 
preached to his attendants faith and salvation. 
Ten days after the big death drums had summoned 
the people to a cannibal feast, in 1854, those same 
drums were by his orders sounded as a signal for 
the assembling of the people for divine worship ! * 
The last act of Thakombau, in October, 1874, 
was to cede Fiji to Queen Victoria, and, through 
Sir John B. Thurston, his Prime Minister, present 
his war club to her Majesty, with the significant 

* Jas. Calvert, in. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 24? 

confession that, " until of late that war club was 
the only known law of Fiji." That club, with 
his yanggona bowl, may be seen in the British 
Museum. 

How little would Canon Taylor s and Mr. 
Caine s criticisms of missions affect minds that 
were familiar with the great facts of missionary 
biography and history ! For example, when Cap 
tain Cook touched at Tahiti, he wrote : " This 
island can neither serve public interests nor private 
ambition, and will probably never be much 
known." About the close of the eighteenth cent 
ury, William Carey and his fellows so aroused the 
dormant missionary spirit in the churches, that 
the London Missionary Society sent missionaries 
to this island. There was a long " night of toil." 
Sixteen years went by without a sign of blessing. 
One day a missionary, with a group of savages 
about him, read, from a manuscript copy of the 
Gospel according to John, the third chapter. As 
he came to the sixteenth verse, which Luther 
called " the Gospel in miniature," a rude warrior 
in the group asked him to read that verse again 
and again. Then he said, "This, if it be true, is 
for you only, not for such as me." But the mis 
sionary repeated that wonderful word, "Whoso 
ever" and dwelt upon its meaning. " Then," said 
the warrior, " your God shall be my God ; for we 
have never heard such a message as this ; our 
gods do not love us so." 



248 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

It is not yet seventy-five years since that first 
convert, who was also the first-fruits of all Poly 
nesia, was brought from darkness to light ; yet 
now in Polynesia there are about eight hundred 
thousand converts ; and the work has spread till 
it has reached New Guinea. A band of not less 
than one hundred and sixty young men and women, 
going from Tahiti and the neighboring islands, as 
evangelists, seek to carry the life-giving Gospel to 
other benighted tribes ; and, of all these native 
workers, not one has ever proved recreant or faith 
less. Yet these are the people who, at the begin 
ning of this century, had lost all idea of God save 
that, somewhere afar off, some strange being dwelt, 
who exercised sovereignty as .a tyrannical despot ; 
and at the graves of their ancestors, they were 
wont to go and beseech them to plead with this 
unapproachable Deity ! 

No more expressive and laconic tablet is to be 
found in the world than that raised by grateful 
native converts to Dr. John Geddie on Aneityum, 
one of the Loyalty Islands, or New Hebrides. It 
bears in their language the now famous but unique 
parallelism : 

"WHEN HE LANDED HERE 

IN 1848, 

THERE WERE NO CHRISTIANS J 
WHEN HE LEFT HERE 

IN 1872, 
THERE WERE NO HEATHENS." 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 249 

On most of the islands of Western Polynesia a 
similar tablet might be erected, a brief epitome of 
the wonderful work of God within less than a 
century. And in these lands, where missions have 
had their modern triumphs, some of the most 
heroic converts and evangelists have been found. 

Who has not read the story of Lugalama, the 
first martyr of Uganda ! The cruel Mwanga seized 
him and Seruwanga and Kakumba, his compan 
ions ; and, apparently from no other cause than 
because these lads had found their way to firm 
faith in Jesus while yet the king was halting be 
tween two opinions, he determined in a rage to put 
them to death by torture. Mujasi, the cruel 
wretch who wreaked upon these poor boys the hate 
of Mwanga, mocked them. " O, you know Isa 
Masiya (Jesus Christ), do you ? . . . . You believe 
you will rise from the dead, do you? Well, I 
shall burn you and see." The lads answered the 
mockery by a sacred hymn : 

" Killa siku tunsifer!" 

(" Daily, daily, siug the praises," etc.) 

A dismal swamp, Maganja, was the chosen 
Golgotha for these young martyrs. The jeering 
crowd build a rude frame-work and heap fuel 
beneath. First they mutilate Seruwanga and 
Kakumba, and fling their bleeding bodies upon 
the frame-work for the agony of the flame. Then 
the executioners approach Lugalama, and he cries, 
" O do not cut off my arms : I will not struggle 



250 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

nor fight only throw me into the fire ! " What 
a. sad prayer : " Only throw me into the fire ! " 
But cruelty insists on butchery, and the armless 
trunk is flung upon the frame-work for slow fires 
to finish what the sharp blade has begun. But, 
until their tongues are crisped in the flame, those 
martyrs continue to sing praises. Cranmer and 
Ridley and Huss and Jerome did not honor the 
Lord more truly ; and when Musali, standing by, 
was threatened with a like fate, he boldly said to 
Mujasi, " I am a follower of Isa, and I am not 
ashamed of Him." 

A young Sunday-school teacher, a poor seam 
stress, one Sunday gave to a rough street arab a 
shilling to go to Sunday-school. That boy, Amos 
Sutton, was converted, went to India as mission 
ary, and led the American Baptists to begin work 
among the Telugus. How little they knew the 
stupendous results that were to hang on that mis 
sion ! In 1853, the American Baptist Missionary 
Union, meeting at Albany, seriously considered 
whether it would not be best to give up that work 
altogether so unfruitful had it been. It was on 
that occasion that the poet, Dr. S. F. Smith, wrote 
the now famous verses, " Shine on, Lone Star." 
The mission was continued and reinforced. 
Twenty-five years after, that mission gathered 
ten thousand converts in one year a result of 
Christian labor which probably surpasses in mag 
nitude any other ever known in Christian history. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 251 

The work of the American Baptist Missionary 
Union covers seventy-seven years (1814-1891). 
Their first station was begun in 1814; six years 
of sowing passed before they had one convert to 
baptize, in 1819. At the end of ten years they had 
but one small church of eighteen, to reward a 
decade of trial, self-denial, persecution, imprison 
ment, and delayed fruit. Now, looking back over 
the whole period, and including that first decade, 
on their mission fields they have organized one 
church for every three weeks, or about seventeen 
a year, and baptized one convert for every three 
hours, day and night, or about three thousand a 
year over two hundred and twenty-five thousand 
in all. 

In 1819, one baptism; in 1886, 9,342. In 
1824, one church of 18; 1886, 123,580 members. 
In 1814, $1,230.26 income ; 1886-7, $35 l >&&9-69- 
In 1814, Mr. and Mrs. Judson the whole force; 
1887, 1,986 laborers. In 1814, Burmah the one 
field; 1886, sixteen fields. 

When Adoniram Judson found that some of 
the friends of foreign missions were beginning to 
lose heart, he exhorted them to " wait twenty or 
thirty years, and then perhaps," said he, " you will 
hear from us again." Once, while sick, he occu 
pied the empty cage of a lion which had just died. 
After the lapse of years, the King of Burmah, at 
his own expense, built a Christian church, a par 
sonage and a school-house, near the very spot 



252 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

where the lion s cage had stood. And the king s 
sons were pupils in the school taught by the Chris 
tian missionaries. 

In Turkey the missionaries have made seven 
new translations of the Word of God within one 
generation ; there are in Constantinople twenty- 
one sets of electrotype plates for as many editions, 
and over two million copies have been distributed. 
Rev. Charles Wheeler s work on the Euphrates is 
another example of the fruits of missions, and of 
the peculiar fruit of that field. All along that 
ancient river he planted little Christian churches 
of an apostolic sort. He taught the converts to 
give a tithe of their small income to the Lord, 
and so out of ten converts he would organize a 
church a self-supporting church ; for over such 
a little flock he could set a native pastor, who 
could live on the average level of his own people, 
since their ten tithes would assure him a support 
equal to their own. Probably no such self-sup 
porting churches are to be found elsewhere except 
among the Unitas Fratrnm. 

In the Mumahassa, or North Peninsula of 
Celebes, Riedel and Schwarr were the means, after 
1829, of turning to Christ more than half the popu 
lation of one hundred and fourteen thousand.* 
John G. Paton went to Aniwa, that little island 
where every atrocity and iniquity had a home, and 
in three years and a half saw a transformed com- 

* George Smith, " Short History," p. 180. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 253 

munity, the chief himself leading the way both in 
the espousal of Christ and the public confession 
of Him ; and no book of modern missions has 
more fascinated every lover of missions than the 
story of Aniwa. Wm. A. B. Johnson went to 
Sierra Leone in 1816. He found there the ac 
cumulated refuse of slave ships, thirty African 
tribes represented, horrible crimes of lust and drink 
and violence, holding Satanic carnival. He lived 
only seven years ; but before he died he saw that 
whole community transformed into a model state, 
like Duncan s Metlakahtla among North Ameri 
can Indians ; in fact, before eighteen months had 
passed, Mr. Johnson saw a revival so wide-spread 
and deep-reaching that it could be compared only 
to Pentecost. 

" Comparative theology," says Dr. Flint, " is a 
magnificent demonstration, not only that man was 
made for religion, but what religion he was made 
for." It is true that results have come slowly at 
the first in most cases, like the most valuable har 
vests. In the Hawaiian group, five years passed 
by before the first convert, the Regent Kauhumanu, 
yielded to Christ ; six years in Burmah, before 
Moung Nau, and as many years among the Karens, 
before Kho-Thah-Byu, rewarded the toil. In India, 
it was seven years before Krishna Chundra Pal 
was baptized ; and in Siam it was twelve before 
Nai Chune became the first-fruits. Mr. Henry and 
Mr. Nott waited at Tahiti sixteen years before 



254 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Pomare II., the king, took the lead in conversion, 
and at New Zealand Samuel Marsden lived on 
hope alone for twenty years. In Australia, in 
1860, Nathaniel Pipper was the first convert, after 
thirty-six years ; and so great was the event that 
a public meeting was called to celebrate it, with 
the governor in the chair ; and in the mountains 
of Na Vita Leva, in the Fiji group, paganism sur 
vived for more than fifty years after the first mis 
sionaries had landed. Notwithstanding the fact 
that the Fijians had, as a nation, long since 
renounced idols, paganism survived in this moun 
tain district till about ten years ago. 

But all this waiting has had its reward. The 
Hawaiian Islands more than twenty years since 
took their place among Christian nations ; where 
Adoniram Judson toiled there are now more than 
thirty thousand converted Burmese ; where Mr. 
Boardman baptized Kho Tha Byu in 1828, in 
1878, when the Memorial Hall was built to keep 
the Jubilee of that event, there were thirty thousand 
Christian Karens who had fallen asleep beside as 
many more who were living for Christ. Sir Charles 
Bernard recently stated that the Christian Karens 
number two hundred thousand, or fully one-third 
of the Karen people. About five hundred con 
gregations are practically self-supporting. They 
tithe the produce of their land for the support of 
their pastors. They also send missionaries to 
Siam and furnish all their support. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 255 

Where Carey and his colaborers sowed in tears, 
there are not less than eight hundred thousand 
baptized East Indians, and Christian communities 
numbering four or five times as many. That first 
convert of all Western Polynesia was the leader of 
a host now numbering eight hundred thousand 
living disciples in the South Seas. Samuel Mars- 
den s twenty years of patience has its reward : in 
1842, twenty-eight years after he landed in New 
Zealand, a bishop was sent from Britain to take 
charge of a diocese which included the- whole 
nation ; and among the Fiji group not one pro 
fessedly heathen village can be found since that 
last mountain citadel yielded to Christ. 

These are but a few examples among many. 
We might multiply them indefinitely, showing that, 
even where the laborers have been called to exer 
cise long patience, the latter rain has come though 
the early rain was withheld, and the harvest has 
proved abundant. 

Mission work proper began in China with the 
cession of Hong Kong in 1843. Then the labor 
ers were very few and the converts in all, seven ; 
in 1888, 34,555. The rate of increase is notice 
able : in the twenty-five years from 1863 to 1888, 
the rate was eighteen-fold ; at the same rate, the 
next quarter century would show over 850,000, 
and a half century more would show fifteen million, 
or one in every twenty-five inhabitants a professed 
disciple. This increase of ratio is one of the com- 



256 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

mon facts of missionary history : the progression 
is not " arithmetical," but " geometrical " not 
along the slow lines of addition, but by the rapid 
process of multiplication ; not, like a line, in one 
direction of length only, but like an expanding 
cube, in breadth and depth and height also. Let 
the Church but do her duty and God will show 
greater wonders still ; thirty-fold shall become 
sixty, and an hundred-fold. 

The fruit of missionary toil must be judged nega 
tively as well as positively by what it has displaced 
as well as by what it has created. 

Rev. William Ward gives the testimony of a 
Hindu Pundit, that in the province of Bengal 
alone, ten thousand children were every month 
put to death by their own mothers. On the coast 
of Malabar evil spirits have for centuries been 
worshipped by all classes except Brahmins, all 
other Hindus paying them homage. To the low 
est caste, that of slaves, is attributed the power to 
let loose upon men the evil demon, and exorcists 
are called in with noisy native drums, charms, and 
incantations, to drive out the malignant spirit. In 
the district of Canara alone were 4,041 temples 
to evil demons, beside 3,682 to other fanes, only 
as long ago as 1842; and it was emphatically 
"Satan s seat." 

Claudius Buchanan, in 1806, knew his approach 
to Juggernaut, when yet fifty miles off, by the 
human bones which paved the way. He called 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 257 

it " the Valley of Death," likening it to the valley 
of Hinnom, and Juggernaut, to the ancient Mo 
loch. He found the temples of this hideous 
monster decked with the symbols of sensuality, 
walls and gates bearing indecency, wrought in 
massive sculpture as in the buried city at the foot 
of Vesuvius. Two kindred idols, Boloram and 
Shudubra, brother and sister, were borne along 
with Juggernaut in festive procession. The priests 
taught the people that the great weight of the 
huge car would be moved only as they, the dev 
otees, pleased the hideous god with lascivious 
attitude, gesture, and song. The green slime of 
the leprosy of lust and the red stains of blood 
covered the worship of Juggernaut. And yet a 
quarter century ago the crowds were so great at 
his festivals that " one hundred thousand attend 
ants would not be missed." 

For two hundred and fifty years England 
seemed blind to Divine Providence in British oc 
cupation of the East Indies, and her rulers fought 
against the evangelization of India. Up to the 
time of the new charter of the East India Com 
pany, in 1813, the opposition was open, systematic, 
and often malignant and violent. Tongues and 
pens were used, and ignorance united with viru 
lence against missions. The arguments employed 
were so absurd that Dr. Duff has compared them 
to curious " fossil reliques of antediluvian ages." 

When, in 1793, in a bill pending for renewal 



258 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of the Company s charter, clauses were introduced 
meant to encourage the propagation of the Gospel, 
they were promptly and peremptorily negatived. 
A learned prelate in the House of Lords, a 
champion of orthodoxy, too, argued against any 
interference with the religion, laws, local customs 
of the people of India, alleging that upon English 
men rested " no obligation to attempt the conver 
sion of the natives," even were it possible which 
he denied ; and that " the command to preach the 
Gospel to all nations did not in this case apply ! " 

In 1813, in the British House of Commons, 
Mr. Charles Marsh likewise protested against the 
introduction of Christianity into India: 

" When I look at the peaceful and harmonious 
alliances of families, guarded and secured by the 
household virtues ; when I see amongst a cheerful 
and well-ordered society the benignant and soften 
ing influences of religion and morality ; a system 
of manners founded upon a mild and polished 
obedience, and preserving the surface of social 
life smooth and unrufled, I cannot hear without 
surprise, mingled with horror, of sending out Bap 
tists and anabaptists to civilize and convert such 
a people, at hazard of disturbing or deforming 
institutions which appear to have been hitherto 
the means ordained by Providence of making 
them virtuous and happy." * 

This was seventy-eight years ago ; and while 

* Exeter Hall Lectures, 1850-1. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 259 

Mr. Marsh was indulging his philippic against 
missions, a class of Hindu procurers, called 
" Panwas," made it their profession to provide 
victims for a hideous human sacrifice in the Meriah 
groves. These victims, or " Meriahs," might be 
selected without regard to age or sex, bought or 
stolen from the poorer classes ; then conveyed 
from the plains to the hills, they were sold for so 
many lives, i.e., cattle, sheep, pigs, or fowls, the 
medium of exchange where there is no metallic 
currency. As a life unbought would be an abom 
ination to the gods, a price must be paid. 

In all the villages young persons were reared 
and kept in readiness for this slaughter, and within 
a comparatively small district four or five hundred 
such sacrifices have been annually offered for 
probably two or three thousand years. Human 
blood enriches the soil in the spring-time, and in 
the autumn must sanctify the harvest ; and mean 
while drought, dearth, disease, and other crises call 
for similar sacrifices. 

Dr. Duff has described these horrid orgies of 
death : " In the centre of the sacred Meriah grove 
is an open space. The festival lasts three days, 
the first of which is consumed in riotous excess of 
drink and other abominations ; on the second, amid 
the clang of many instruments, the victim, in gay 
attire, is borne to the centre of the grove, fastened 
to a post, and there remains while lust and super 
stition revel in nameless indecencies. The victim, 



26 o THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

smeared with oil, butter, and turmeric, is the ob 
ject of homage and worship. The third day is 
the climax of horror and cruelty. The victim 
must neither resist nor be bound, so his arms and 
legs are usually broken to insure passiveness. A 
large tree or branch is brought, with a rift or slit 
up the middle, into which the neck is inserted, the 
ends being bound with cords ; and thus held fast, 
the poor creature is ready for the last rites. The 
hatchet of the priest strikes the shoulders as a 
signal, and then, with the swiftness and the fury 
of madmen, the whole multitude pounce upon 
him, tear every shred of flesh from the bones, 
and fling these bloody fragments over the fields, 
an offering to the deity." These are a part of 
those " means ordained by Providence of mak 
ing them virtuous and happy," those beneficent 
" institutions," the " hazard of disturbing or de 
forming " which filled Mr. Marsh with surprise 
and horror. 

It need not be said that, notwithstanding Mr. 
Marsh and his coadjutors, the Christian sentiment 
prevailed, and the new charter gave sanction to 
the efforts of missionaries, though, until the East 
India Company ceased, in 1858, to control, it was 
always the secret or open foe of missions. The 
teaching of the Gospel was a hindrance to greed 
and lust and all injustice and robbery ; and we 
can understand why one of the directors should 
have frankly declared that he would rather a band 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 261 

of devils, than of missionaries, landed in India.* 
We can also account for the spirit that led some, 
even amid the horrors of the mutiny and massacre 
of 1857, to throw up their hats and cry, " Hurrah ! 
We shall get rid of the saints." But instead, the 
saints got rid of them. 

Before the transfer of the Company s possessions 
in 1858, noble men led the way in the reformation 
of India. In 1829, Lord William Bentinck, gov 
ernor, decreed that all aid, assistance, or partici 
pation in any suttees should be construed and 
punished as murder. The Brahmins replied that 
their conscience dictated that the widow ought to 
be sacrificed, and asked whether Englishmen did 
not teach all men to obey conscience. Bentinck 
replied : " Obey your conscience: but the English 
man s conscience dictates the hanging of every 
one of you that is. a party to such religious murder. 
Follow your conscience, and I will follow mine ! " 
Infanticide has been similarly suppressed ; the last 
link between idol fanes and state patronage was 
broken in 1863, and Sir John Lawrence s utterance 
justified, that " Christian acts done in a Christian 
way will never alienate the heathen." 

Dr. John Wilson, of Bombay, enumerates as fol 
lows some of the benefits of British rule in India : 

Horrors and iniquities removed : 

I. Murder of parents by suttee, exposure on 
river banks, and burial alive. 

* Exeter Hall, Lectures, 1850-1, pp. 90-92. 



262 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

II. Murder of children, by dedication to the 
Ganges, to be devoured by crocodiles, by Rajpoot 
infanticide. 

III. Human sacrifices, in temples, by wild 
tribes, and in the Meriah groves of the Khonds. 

IV. Suicide ; by crushing under idol cars ; by 
devotees drowning themselves in rivers and casting 
themselves from precipices ; widows leaping into 
wells ; by Traga. 

V. Voluntary torment: by hook-swinging, 
thigh-piercing, tongue-extraction, falling on knives, 
and austerities. 

VI. Involuntary torment : by barbarous execu 
tions, mutilation of criminals, evidence under tor 
ture, bloody and injurious ordeals, cutting off 
women s noses, etc. 

VII. Slavery : hereditary, predial, domestic, im 
portation of slaves from Africa. 

VIII. Extortions: by Dharana, by Traga. 

IX. Religious intolerance : prevention of propa 
gation of Christianity ; requiring Christian soldiers 
to fire salutes on heathen festivals, saluting gods 
on official papers, managing affairs of idol temples. 

X. Support of caste by law : exclusion of low 
castes from office, exemption of high castes from 
appearing in evidence, disparagement of low caste. 

These results indicate the effect of British 
occupation of India, only in one direction ; and 
in spite of all the unfavorable impressions left by 
the administration of the British East India Com- 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 263 

pany and by all the disastrous mistakes of British 
residents and provincial governors and their sub 
ordinates. 

When Dr. Duff began work in Calcutta he 
looked upon female education as an impossibility. 
" You might as well try to scale a wall five hun 
dred yards high, as attempt female education in 
India." To-day there are in the province of Ben 
gal alone probably not less than 100,000 receiving 
instruction, and into the higher education not only 
the lower castes, but many of India s most gifted 
daughters, are pressing forward. What half a 
century since was the missionaries despair has 
now become their brightest hope : the far-off goal 
of fifty years ago, so remote as to be invisible, is 
the starting-point to-day, and will be left far be 
hind in the new starting-point of to-morrow. The 
keenest observers of India s condition, even the 
natives themselves, frankly confess that the future 
of that country is to be Christian ; and many of 
them have said that, while they cannot change, 
their children will forsake the gods of India. 

In 1834, Mr. Abeel, of China, moved the 
women of Britain by his appeals to carry the 
Gospel to women in India and China. This at 
tempt was the parent of zenana missions. At 
that time even Christians and missionaries held it 
to be impracticable it was attempting to force 
one s way through gates of steel and walls of 
stone, to seek access to harems, etc. In 1884, 



264 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

the Jubilee year of the " Society for Promoting 
Female Education in the East " found one hundred 
and sixty lady missionaries enrolled, and pupils in 
zenanas numbering thousands and, in day schools, 
tens of thousands. In prominent and populous 
cities, Bible women were entering the richest 
homes, and enlightened Hindus were clamoring 
for the education of their wives and daughters. 
At the Jubilee meeting Shaftesbury said: "The 
time is at hand when you will see the great dimen 
sions of the work you are doing : not only in 
India, but throughout the East, great changes are 
in the future." 

At that Jubilee year zenana missions were 
established in Japan, Africa, Egypt, Ceylon, Persia, 
etc. A prominent Hindu says : " If these women 
reach the hearts of our women they will soon get 
at the heads of the men of our country." 

The way in which, the key by which, these long- 
shut zenana doors were actually opened, is interest 
ing and suggestive. Mrs. Elizabeth Sale, of Hel- 
ensburgh, Scotland, writes me : "As soon as I knew 
enough of the language to make myself understood, 
I began going into the villages of India among 
the women, in 1852. In 1856, I got the first en 
trance into a zenana proper. In 1858, I began 
work in Calcutta, and worked more than a year 
in my first house before I got any one to take 
anything out of my hand. It was very difficult to 
get one of the ladies to look at a book, as they 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 265 

feared being made widows if they desired to know 
anything of the outside world. As soon as some 
little bits of work were finished, a little pair of 
shoes and a bit of canvas work, I had them made 
up, which so delighted the husbands and brothers 
that the " wonderful work " was taken to other 
houses, when invitations came to teach there also. 
The needle-work had to be made the bribe to 
learn to read. I had been so far blessed that the 
ladies in their zenanas were daily hearing the 
Scriptures read, and some had so far broken 
through their fears that they were learning to read. 

" In 1860, my husband was ordered to Europe. 
When I heard of the arrival of Mrs. Mullens and her 
daughters, I wrote to her of this opening, when she 
came and was introduced to the ladies of the three 
zenanas; and from that time the work rapidly spread. 
Now there is no need of work as a bribe to learn 
to read, so anxious are the women for instruction." 

It is perhaps worth while to compare the con 
ditions of woman s work in India in 1851 and 1881, 
and see the growth of thirty years. 

1851. 1881. 

Female workers, foreign and native . 1,390 2,485 

Boarding Schools 91 171 

" Pupils n,549 49,550 

Zenanas accessible 1,300 9,506 

" Pupils 1,977 9,288 

Total under Christian Instruction, 

male and female 77,850 234,790 

Sunday Schools none 83,321 



266 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

In thirty years the workers multiplied nearly 
twofold, the boarding-school pupils over fourfold, 
the number of open zenanas over sevenfold, and 
zenana pupils about fivefold, and total number 
taught, threefold. But as yet this work is but 
begun. The walls of age-long prejudice are but 
just giving way ; and what astonishing results may 
now begin to appear ! 

In such a stronghold of Satan as India, results 
cannot be estimated by the number of professed 
converts. Within the Madras Presidency, in the 
thirty years from .1851 to 1 88 1, churches multi 
plied eighteenfold, Christian adherents fourfold, 
communicants sevenfold, and lay preachers five 
fold ; but the Indian Witness, in 1889, makes the 
public confession : " Secret believers are rapidly 
multiplying. For every convert avowing faith 
are hundreds withholding confession for fear of 
their kin and caste. Thousands are ready when 
a break shall come." 

We, who live amid Christian institutions, can 
not understand the almost impenetrable barriers 
through which a convert in India must force his 
way. Here are 260,000,000 of people, sunk in 
poverty so deep that a hungry man will pray for 
tigers because they do not completely devour 
their victims, and he may, from what they leave, 
appease his hunger ; and in idolatry so low that a 
human being will pray to a hole in a rock ; and 
these millions are bound together in the iron bonds 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 267 

of a caste system which is a " cellular structure of 
society, with isolation so complete that the cells 
never interpenetrate," and yet to break through 
whose arbitrary restraints is to meet a penalty 
worse than death. What chance for woman in a 
land where two propositions form the unit on 
which all sects and classes agree : " The cow is a 
holy animal, and entitled to divine honors ; " 
" Woman is a wicked animal, entitled to no re 
spect!" 

A native Hindu paper thus summarizes the 
work of Carey, Marshman, and Ward, at Seram- 
pore : " They created a prose vernacular literature 
for Bengal ; they established the modern method 
of popular education ; they gave the first great im 
pulse to the native press ; they set up the first 
steam-engine in India ; in ten years they translated 
and printed the Bible, or parts thereof, in thirty- 
one languages." 

Hear another witness : " Missionaries come 
from Britain at a great cost, and tell us that we 
are in heathen darkness, and that a bundle of 
fables, called the Bible, is the true Vedanta, which 
alone can enlighten us. They have cast their net 
over our children by teaching them in their 
schools, and they have already MADE THOUSANDS 
OF CHRISTIANS, AND ARE CONTINUING TO DO so. 
They have penetrated into the most out-of-the-way 
villages and built churches there. If we continue 
to sleep as we have done in the past, not one will 



268 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

be found worshipping in our temples in a very 
short time ; why, the temples themselves will be 
converted into Christian churches ! Do yon. not 
know that the number of Christians is INCREAS 
ING, and the number of the Hindu religionists 
DECREASING every day? How long will water 
remain in a well which continually lets out, but 
receives none in ? If our religion is incessantly 
drained by Christianity without receiving any ac 
cessions, how can it last ? When our country is 
turned into the wilderness of Christianity, will the 
herb of Hinduism grow ? We must not fear the 
missionaries because they have white faces, or 
because they belong to the ruling class. There 
is no connection between the Government and 
Christianity, for the Queen Empress proclaimed 
neutrality in all religious matters in 1858. We 
must, therefore, oppose the missionaries with all 
our might. Wherever they stand up to preach, 
let Hindu preachers stand up and start rival 
preaching at a distance of forty feet from them, 
and they will soon flee away. Let caste and sec 
tarian differences be forgotten, and let all the 
people join as one man to banish Christianity from 
our land. All possible efforts should be made to 
win back those who have embraced Christianity, 
and all children should be withdrawn from mission 
schools." From a Tamil Hindu Tract. 

"At a recent missionary meeting in Bombay, 
Sir Charles Elliot, fearing they might be forgotten, 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 269 

restated the interesting facts presented two years 
ago, as to the numerical progress made by Chris 
tianity in Hindustan from 1870 to 1881, which 
showed that, while the general population of India 
increased by eight per cent, during the ten years 
closing with the year 1881, there was an increase 
of thirty per cent, during the same period in the 
number of Christians. In some portions of India 
there was a still larger relative increase. In the 
province of Bengal, while the increase in the num 
ber of Hindus in ten years was thirteen per cent., 
and that of the Mohammedans eleven per cent., 
that of native Christians was sixty-four per cent. 
In the province of Assam, in the extreme north 
east of India, while during the decade already 
mentioned the general increase of population was 
eighteen per cent., there was an increase of one 
hundred and fifty per cent, in the number of 
Christians in the eight valley districts, and in the 
Khasia hills, where a devoted band of Welsh mis 
sionaries are doing a grand work, the increase had 
been at the rate of two hundred and fifty per 
cent. ! What may have been the comparative 
results of missionary labors during the decade just 
closed, and according to the census recently taken, 
will be known in due time. It will undoubtedly 
present a greater relative percentage in the increase 
of native Christians in the sections now named, 
and also in others. In the face of such facts, he 
who assumes to say that missions are a failure, 



270 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

only shows his own ignorance or a perverse de 
termination not to recognize the truth." * 

Eighty-five years ago, says the Missionary Her 
ald, the Directors of the East India Company 
placed on solemn record : " The sending of 
Christian missionaries into our Eastern possessions 
is the maddest, most expensive, most unwarranted 
project that was ever proposed by a lunatic en 
thusiast." A few months since, Sir Rivers Thomp 
son, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, said : " In 
my judgment, Christian missionaries have done 
more real and lasting good to the people of India 
than all other agencies combined." 

And yet there are some who persist in belittling 
the work of evangelization. The London Ti/ucs, 
of 1863, accounted for "prevailing apathy as to 
the propagation of the Gospel by the lack of sat 
isfactory results"; and yet, already in 1863, mis 
sions had left on record some of the most apostolic 
biographies and histories ever written. Already 
the new book of the Acts of the Apostles had re 
corded the modern miracles wrought under Wil 
liam Carey, Robert Morrison, and Robert Moffat, 
William Johnson and Adoniram Judson, John 
Hunt and John Williams, Justin Perkins and Peter 
Parker, Latimer Neville and Dr. Krapf, John 
Geddie and Charles Gutzlaff, William Goodell and 
Charles Wheeler, Jonas King and Eli Smith, 
Henry Martyn and David Brainerd, Eliza Agnew 

* Correspondent of New York Evangelist. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 271 

and Fidelia Fiske, Rosine Krapf and Mrs. Grant, 
and Melinda Rankin, Dober and Nitschman and 
John Wilson and William Burns, and Chamber 
lain and Lansing and Hogg and Butler and 
Coleridge Patteson. " Truth against the world " 
is the motto on encaustic tiling in Tennyson s 
vestibule. 

Again, at the very time of the great World s 
Conference of Missions at London, the London 
Times gave the same challenge as that of a quar 
ter century before, as though a Rip- Van-Winkle 
sleep had meanwhile buried its editor in oblivion. 
On June 15, 1888, referring to the appeals for 
more men and money, the editorial thus closes : 
" Before the promoters of missionary work can 
expect to have greater resources confided to them, 
they will have to render a satisfactory account of 
their trust in the past. Their progress, it is to be 
hoped, is sure ; indisputably it is slow. A con 
gress like the present would be better employed 
in tracing the reasons for the deficiency in quan 
tity of success than in glorifying the modicum 
which has been attained. The cause it advocates 
has vanquished the obstructions interposed at 
home to the accomplishment of its aims. It en 
joys a sufficiency which, according to ordinary 
estimates, might seem an abundance of good-will 
and funds. Still it marches at a "pace which, un 
less it be registered by the enthusiasm of Exeter 
Hall, appears little more than funereal. If Carey 



272 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

could have foreseen the magnificence of the means 
which his successors were destined to command, 
and the removal as if by magic of all the barriers 
which hemmed him in, he would have supposed 
that the foes were beaten and the harvest was be 
ing reaped. Exeter Hall says it is, and that the 
only thing now to be done is to hold the conquered 
forts and to push on to fresh conquests. For 
eyes, not endowed with the second sight of the 
platform, the principal citadels of heathendom 
continue to flaunt their banners as before. If 
some people profess to believe, as one speaker 
deplored the other day, that they hear too much 
of foreign missions, the explanation is that they 
see too little of their results." The writer, who 
was a delegate to that World s Conference, was 
moved to say in answer to this challenge, that, 
whatever the editor of the Times might know of 
human Empires, he evidently knew very little of 
the progress of the Kingdom of God. 

It behoves not Christian nations, which owe all 
their civilization to Christianity, brought to them 
by missionaries, to depreciate missions. St. 
Jerome states that when " a boy, living in Gaul, 
he beheld the Scots, a people of Britain, eating 
human flesh ; and though there were plenty of 
cattle and sheep at their disposal, yet they would 
prefer a ham of the herdsman or a slice of the 
female breast as a luxury."*" 

* "Among the Cannibals," 100. 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS, 273 

The Scots then were once cannibals. When 
Julius Caesar landed at Deal, he found the Britons 
a mere horde of half -naked savages, living in rude 
huts, and clad in skins, sunk in ignorance and 
degradation. What has lifted Great Britain from 
barbarism and savagery to the foremost place 
among the Christian nations of the world, and the 
leadership of a world s missions ? 

From the middle of Elizabeth s reign to the 
long Parliament the British people were the people 
of a book, and that book the Bible. Elizabeth 
might silence or tune her preachers, but not the 
prophets.* And, while those who prepared the 
English Bible for the people were burned at 
the stake or treated with indignity, there was one 
martyr who prayed, " O Lord, open the King of 
England s eyes ; " and that king introduced, with 
out knowing it, that very Bible among the common 
people, as a mere stroke of state-craft ; and to that 
Bible, and to the missionaries of the cross, every 
nation that takes rank among the enlightened 
leaders of the world owes to-day all its lofty level 
of national life. That man in a Christian nation 
who ridicules missions is like the cub who kicks 
the dam by which he was born and suckled ! 

Yes, even modern missions have their " critics." 
As Oscar Wilde found fault with the Atlantic 
as monotonous, and with Niagara as wanting 
variety of line, there are those who stand and look 

* Green s Short History. 



274 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

on the marvellous work of a century, whose re 
sults, considering all the hindrances, and the feeble 
force employed, can be compared to no other ever 
wrought in human history, and find only occasion 
for blame ! 

Mythology tells us how Pan, the god of shep 
herds, opposed his rude reed music to Apollo s 
wondrous lyre ; and how Mt. Timolus pro 
nounced Pan defeated in the contest. Only 
Midas dissented from the decision, and, as a reward 
for his obtuseness and obstinacy, his ears were 
lengthened to the dimensions of an inferior animal. 
Midas tried to hide the ass s ears, and his attend 
ant, when he discovered the secret and could not 
keep it, dug a deep hole and whispered it to 
the mother earth. But the reeds that grew, moved 
by the wind, whispered : " King Midas has ass s 
ears ! " Let these critics who set their judgment 
against not only the verdict of wiser men, but the 
very facts of the age, beware lest the very soil of 
society bear witness to their stupidity, "preten 
tious inaccuracy " and " presumptuous ignorance." 

Mr. Darwin, though the apostle of materialism, 
was still too honest to withhold a tribute when it 
was due. In his recently published " Life and 
Letters," he has recorded his impressions of Tierra 
del Fuego, when he visited that land in 1833-4; 
he wrote : 

"The Fuegians are in a more miserable state 
of barbarism than I had ever expected to have 



THE FRUIT OF MISSIONS. 275 

seen any human being." He describes them as 
absolutely naked, in primitive wildness ; he says 
that, as they were seated on a rocky point, throw 
ing their arms wildly about, yelling, they seemed 
the troubled spirits of another world, the expres 
sion of their faces inconceivably wild, and their 
tones and gesticulations far less intelligible than 
those of domestic animals." * 

To Admiral Sir Jas. Sullivan, Mr. Darwin often 
expressed the conviction that, " to send mission 
aries to such a set of savages, probably the very 
lowest of the human race, was utterly useless." 

Subsequently, in 1869, and still later, up to 
1880, he bore witness that the recent accounts of 
the mission proved to him that he had been wrong 
in his estimates of the native character and of the 
possibility of doing them good through the mis 
sionaries ; as an expression and testimony of his 
interest in the Society s work he enclosed his 
check for ^5. He pronounced the success of the 
mission so wonderful that only the proof that it 
was fact made it to him credible. And he says, 
" I certainly should have predicted that not all 
the missionaries in the world could have done 
what has been done." t 

Similarly this same impartial unbeliever records 
his impressions of the work at Tahiti and New 
Zealand. " It is admirable to behold what the 
missionaries (both here and at New Zealand) have 

* Life of Darwin, i., 227. f Idem ii, 307, 308, 



2j6 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

effected ; I firmly believe they are good men work 
ing for the sake of a good cause. I much suspect 
that those who have abused or sneered at them 
have generally been such as were not very anxious 
to find the natives moral and intelligible beings. 
They forget, or will not remember, that human 
sacrifice and the power of an idolatrous priesthood ; 
a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other 
part of the world ; infanticide, a consequence of 
that system ; bloody wars, where the conquerors 
spared neither women nor children ; that all these 
things have been abolished ; and that dishonesty, 
intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly 
reduced by the introduction of Christianity. In 
a voyager to forget these things is a base ingrati 
tude ; for, should he chance to be at the point of 
shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most 
devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary 
may have extended thus far." "The lesson of 
the missionary is the enchanter s wand." 

After Rev. William Robertson, of Edinburgh, 
had made an address on missions, a man accost 
ing him said, " I was captain of the Ruby, that 
bore Bishop Sterling to Tierra del Fuego, and it 
was Bishop Sterling s reports of the work there 
that made Charles Darwin a convert to missions. 
There, where Allen Gardiner found the most de 
based savages, a society is now organized to 
rescue shipwrecked mariners." 

We reluctantly bring to a close this brief survey 



THE FRUIT Of MISSIONS. 277 

of the fruits of missions. Where the field is the 
world, it is impossible to bring even one blade 
from all its various harvests to show a specimen 
of what the seed of the kingdom yields. We have 
culled here and there what suffices to exhibit the 
proofs that in no part of the world have such fruits 
been lacking as prove that it is God s husbandry. 
In the islands of the sea, the Fiji and Hawaiian 
groups, Tahiti, Aneityum, and in the South Seas 
generally ; in the most ancient and colossal king 
doms, like Turkey, China, and India, where the 
most gigantic and stubborn growths of evil were 
found, and deep-rooted as the ages could make 
them ; where an iron caste system and the imprison 
ing law of zenana life and harem seclusion made 
all work seemingly fruitless ; again, among com 
paratively degraded and low caste tribes and peo 
ples, like the Siamese, Burmese, and Karens ; even 
where the " habitations of cruelty " seemed to 
have their stronghold, as in Malabar and Calabar ; 
where the people seemed, as Charles Kingsley 
thought, meant to show that it was possible to 
sink too low for even the Gospel to reach them, 
like the Australian aborigines, or the Maoris of 
New Zealand, or the Fuegians ; everywhere, among 
high and low, the Gospel has been the same power 
and wisdom of God to salvation. 

And now what is the grand conclusion ? God 
has not only fulfilled His promise to His mission 
ary band, but His royal challenge is, in the very 



278 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

successes of a century, thundering in our ears : 
" Go ye into all the world preach the Gospel to 
every creature " in every part of the field which 
is the world sow the good seed of the kingdom. 
And the fruit of the handful of grain shall yet 
shake like the forests of Lebanon. 




VII. 

THE DIVINE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 

MONG the attractions of the famous 
museum at Marseilles, the foremost is 
the great painting by Auguste Barthe"- 
lemy Glaize, of Montpellier, which is known as 
LE Pi LORI. It fills the entire end of the saloon, 
and is one of the most suggestive paintings in all 
France. Theophilus Gautier has described it in 
language scarcely less artistic than the picture. 

Occupying the central place in this group, is the 
figure of the Saviour, in whose stead Barrabas was 
preferred ; Jesus, who was scourged, bound to a 
pillar, spit upon, crowned with thorns, and hung 
upon the cross of slaves. Behind Him an angel 
unrolls a little scroll, on which we read : " Father 
forgive them ; for they know not what they do." 

At the bottom of the scaffold are four huge 
allegorical figures, symbolizing Misery, Ignorance, 
Violence, and Hypocrisy. These figures, placed 
back to back, and arranged in two groups like 
those of the tombs of the Medici, are a monu 
mental and Michael- Angelesque combination of 
sculpture-like forms. 



280 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Misery is a dismal looking female, wrinkled and 
ghastly, from whose dry breast an infant is vainly 
seeking to suck nourishment. Ignorance sinks 
beneath his flabby flesh in a careless attitude, and 
makes to appear conspicuous his shallow skull 
crowned with hairy ass s ears, like the head of 
King Midas or of Bottom. Violence swells his 
bloated muscles, contracts his knotted sinews, 
arches his athletic back, with the stolid indiffer 
ence of a murderer or hangman. The neck of a 
bull joins his huge shoulders to a bestial head 
which lacks brain. Hypocrisy holds a painted 
mask, with which to conceal at will her livid vis 
age, and the feet, which fold beneath her, end in 
the claws of a demon. These four monsters, are 
they not the persecutors of these great men, and 
is not their proper place at the base of the pillory ? 

We see standing on the right of the central 
figure, Christ, Socrates holding the cup of hemlock 
and pointing heavenward ; beyond him ^sop the 
fabulist, who was made a slave, and hurled from 
the rock, Hyampea, by the angry Delphian priests, 
in spite of the divine wisdom that dwelt in his 
distorted frame ; still further on, the beautiful and 
learned Hypatia, whom fanatical ecclesiastics, be 
coming in their turn persecutors, dragged from 
her chariot, tore in pieces, and whose palpitating 
members were drawn through the streets of Alex 
andria and burned. Beyond her, Kepler, who 
discovered the laws of the celestial mechanism, 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 281 

and died unable to procure from the imperial as 
sembly his arrears of 8,000 crowns; Galileo, 
recanting in presence of the Inquisition, and whis 
pering the famous words, "E fur si muove." 
There is Bernard de Palissy, the maker of the 
king s rustique pottery, and the predecessor of 
Cuvier, burning all his furniture for lack of wood 
for his furnace ; Correggio, selling his painting for 
sixty crowns and succumbing beneath the heavy 
sack in which he bore the copper coins received 
in payment. 

At the left of the Saviour stands Homer, whom 
seven cities claimed after he was dead, but who, 
during life, poor, blind, wandered about, his lyre 
hung about his neck, chanting his immortal poems 
to obtain a meagre alms ; Dante, the exile, out 
lawed, showing to mankind the golden ladder to 
Paradise, and then mounting the staircase of a 
stranger at Verona.* Cervantes is further on, the 
illustrious cripple who was maimed at Lepanto s 
battle, the " Captive " of Algerine Corsairs, sad, 
imprisoned for debt, burdened with infirmities, 
and buried in the convent of the nuns of Trinity 
without any tombstone until 1835, more than 200 
years afterward, forgotten even by his own coun 
trymen. Joan of Arc, whom the funeral pyre of 
Rouen recompensed for the heroism that made 
her the savior of France ; Christopher Columbus, 

* A reference to Can Grande della scala, with whom 
he took refuge at Verona, 1313-1318. 



282 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

receiving fetters as the price of unveiling the New 
World ; Salomon de Caus, locked up in the insane 
hospital of Bicetre, and with the grimace of a fool, 
showing the first outlines of the steam-engine of 
which Arago counted him the true inventor ; 
Denis Papin, the physicist and machinist, forerun 
ner of James Watt and Fulton, in a moment of 
despair breaking the model of the paddle-steamer 
which he had invented ; Etienne Dolet, the free 
thinker, hung and burned in Paris in 1546, who, 
marching to his death, and seeing the impatient 
multitude clamoring for his torture exclaimed : 
" Non do let ipse do let, sed pia turba dolet"* 

The picture bears at the extreme right-hand 
corner the name, GLAIZE, with the date, 1855. 
And beneath is the inscription, fit companion to 
such a work of art : 

They are persecuted ; 
They are hidden in oblivion ; 
Until, after a long time elapses, 
They have a monument, inscribed ; 

"TO THE GLORY OF THE HUMAN RACE." 

The critics and deriders of missions have often 
attempted to make out Christian missions a failure, 
but they have succeeded only in making themselves 
appear ridiculous ; and those whom they have put 
in the pillory of their derision are now beginning 
to be recognized as the heroes of the human race, 

* It is not himself whom Dolet bewails, 
But the pious mob that seeks his blood. 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 283 

and the far-seeing sages who beheld the true 
future which is to dawn on the world. The story 
of the successes of Christian missions is from 
many witnesses, and their testimony is unimpeach 
able. However " limited their knowledge, it 
cannot be set aside on account of the ignorance 
of others, however extensive." 

The contest between Christianity and paganism 
has been waged with all the advantage on the side 
of the powers of darkness. And yet, notwith 
standing we have sent out less than six thousand 
men and women to meet a thousand millions ; not 
withstanding the little band have to master foreign 
tongues, and often create a literature in those 
tongues ; have to overcome difficulties of climate, 
caste, customs, superstition, bigotry, depravity; 
have had even to face death by martyrdom for 
the truth s sake ; notwithstanding it was less than 
one hundred years ago that the Church of Christ 
began the organized movement in this direction, 
and has never given over ten or eleven millions 
of dollars a year even in these days of ample re 
sources, there is scarce a land into which the 
missionary has not gone; and, wherever he has 
gone he has planted the cross, and about it the 
Christian home, school, church, college, theolog 
ical seminary, printing-press, hospital, dispensary, 
and every characteristic institution of Christian 
lands. The work of modern missions, begun a 
hundred years ago amid innumerable obstacles 



284 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

and discouragements the very leaders in this 
grand enterprise being put in the pillory as the 
objects of derision, scorn, and ridicule that work 
has compelled from all intelligent and impartial 
observers the candid confession that, for the men 
and means invested, no success has ever been so 
great ! 

The Reformation period was a sort of signal 
gun in modern history ; and, if ever God unfolded 
a purpose of His own to men, He did it then. 
He sounded the signal for a rapid advance all 
along the lines. 

Dr. Croly,* in an admirable sermon, preached 
in St. Paul s, before the Bishop of London, nearly 
a half century ago, called the Reformation the 
" third great Birth of Time." There was a won 
derful conjuncture of events and inventions, all in 
dicating the opening of a new era of world-wide 
evangelism. The magnet, guiding all vessels over 
hitherto untraversed seas, opened the whole world 
to commercial intercourse. Then the steam- 
engine became the great motor, propelling vessels 
on the sea and carriages on the land, and shorten 
ing time of transit, so that where Ziegenbalg took 
seven months to reach Zanguebar, and Carey five 
months to reach Calcutta, we can go in three 
weeks. Then came the printing-press, which 
threw open the mind of the world to European 
literature, as the mariner s compass and the steam- 

* Exeter Hall Lectures, 1846-7. 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 285 

engine had thrown open the gates of empires 
and the ports of the sea! And now, while 
these three greatest inventions or discoveries of 
modern ages afforded all these facilities for mis 
sions, behold three of the miracles of history 
standing side by side, in their combination and 
culmination more wonderful than in their succes 
sion and accumulation. In the midst of this period 
comes the Fall of Constantinople, 1543. The 
storming of the Turks humbled the Queen City 
of the Golden Horn, but scattered Greek learning 
through the West. Then followed the passage to 
India, the solution of that problem of ages which 
was to find afterward a happier solution by the 
Isthmus than by the Cape, and all the quickening 
of opulent commerce was added to the contact of 
remote nations. Britain and India, the very 
centres of European and Asiatic civilization, were 
brought together, and permanently linked. And 
at the same great signal hour of history the cur 
tain rose that unveiled a New World. God gave 
mankind a new hemisphere in which to exercise 
all the accumulated power of five thousand years 
a new treasury of wealth, a new granary of 
food, a new arena of civilization and Christianity. 
" Never before was there such a series of brilliant 
excitements heaped upon the human race." All 
society felt the thrill, and the amazing combina 
tion of events dazed the very eyes that beheld 
them. Constantinople fell in 1453, Vasco de 



286 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

Gama turned the Cape of Storms into the Cape 
of Good Hope in 1497, and Columbus touched 
the shores of the West Indies in 1492. These 
three events thus occurred within less than half a 
century ! 

The mariners compass appears to have come 
into general use about 1400 ; the first book printed 
with movable types was brought out by Gutenburg 
about 1450, and the steam-engine seems to have 
begun to attain to practicable form under Blasco 
de Jaray in 1543. And now let us remember 
that just at this time, and in the very centre of 
this brilliance, Luther nails up his theses. Scarce 
twenty years before America was discovered, 
Luther preached his first sermon at Wittemberg ; 
and, scarce twenty years after he startled all Europe 
by his beating a hole in Tetzel s drum, the Bar 
celona engineer is said to have propelled a vessel 
by a water boiler.* 

Thus the Church, after a sleep of a thousand 
years, awoke once more to the sense of duty and 
debt to the lost race of man. If there be a divine 
providence if the end of all history is Redemp 
tion, and the goal of all redeemed life is the restora 
tion of man to the image of God, we should 
expect to see the most wonderful developments of 
history side by side with these awakenings in the 
Church. We should look to see at least three de 
velopments : first, the wide opening of doors, mak- 

* Appleton s Encyclopedia. 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 287 

ing the whole world accessible ; secondly, the 
provision of new and more perfect facilities for uni 
versal contact and communication ; thirdly, the 
more thorough organizing of the Church itself for 
the work. The first is a question of opportunity, 
the second of equipment, and the third of activity 
and advance. What are the facts ? Precisely in 
the line of these expectations have come the inter 
positions of God, only, as usual, when He does 
anything, it was on a scale of majesty, might, and 
overwhelming grandeur, the like of which man 
never saw, exceeding abundantly above all we 
could ask or think. Let us stop in our hurry and 
cast a backward look. 

Some of our readers may have thought it extrav 
agant language to affirm that the modern age, 
like the Apostolic, has abounded in the supernat 
ural. But the marvellous developments and coin 
cidences of history in the world and the Church 
admit no explanation without God. The unde- 
vout historian, like the undevout astronomer, 
must be mad, if he is not overwhelmed by these 
miracles of intervention. 

Another wonderful age has come to us ; may we 
not call it the Fourth birth-hour of human history ? 
Gladstone says that the first fifty years of this cen 
tury marked more progress than the previous five 
thousand, in art, science, invention, and discovery ; 
the next twenty-five, more than the previous fifty ; 
and the next ten, more than the previous twenty-five. 



288 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Probably the statement is not an exaggeration. 
God never sounded a louder signal-gun than now, 
and no combination of events ever startled the 
attentive observer like the present. William Carey 
led the way in the organization of the Church for 
modern missions in 1792. In rapid succession 
followed the organization of the great missionary 
societies and the sending forth of missionaries, 
until now between two hundred and three hundred 
societies are represented by 6,000 laborers. 

At this present time, we seem to have reached 
not only a crisis, but the crisis of missions. The 
whole world is open to missionary labor, but there 
are not enough workmen to occupy the field ; and 
again there are many workmen offering to go to 
the field, and there are not enough means at our 
disposal to secure them a support in the field. 
And, still worse, the missionary boards of most 
of our Churches are so crippled by debt or by 
insufficient funds, that, af a time when every voice 
of God or need of man cries " Expand " and 
" Advance," the only course apparently open to us 
is to contract the work and retrench the costs ! 

Nothing is more calculated to awaken surprise 
than to see how mistaken and short-sighted are 
the views of many intelligent members, and even 
ministers of the Church, as to the existing crisis. 

For example, it appears to occasion alarm and 
awaken hostile criticism. It is said, there is some 
thing wrong in the Church s work when its de- 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 289 

mands exceed the supply ; that our Boards ought 
to lay out no more expenditure than the receipts 
warrant that the work should be cut down to 
meet the income, etc. One would suppose that 
the present aspect of missions is one of dishearten 
ing failure, and that those who have charge of 
our missions are seriously to blame for allowing 
the demand for men and money to be so impera 
tive, and increase so fast. But let thoughtful men 
and women reflect, whether this is not an entire mis 
apprehension of the existing state of things. Like 
Elisha s servant, we need our eyes opened to see 
that, where some behold only cause for discourage 
ment, God means an incentive to joy and praise. 
Such a crisis in missions is sign and proof not 
of failure, but of success. Our keynote should not 
be set to the minor strain of despondency, but 
the major key of thankfulness. All this means 
growth, and growth always brings a demand for 
new conditions, provisions, accommodations. The 
growing plant must have more space, more room 
to grow ; the old pot must be discarded for a new 
and more spacious one. The growing boy must 
have new clothes ; he cannot wear the same suit 
that he wore a year ago ; the cripple who has no 
growth, and perhaps cannot move a foot or lift a 
hand, may wear one suit for years ; but not so the 
stalwart, growing lad. Who finds fault with these 
demands of growth? and who would exchange 
such a healthy boy for a cripple ? 



290 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

The growing family must have a larger house, 
a more ample board. A growing business needs 
new shops and factories, a larger stock and heavier 
outlay : no merchant complains when, because he 
has double the custom, there must be more care 
and cost, and more clerks and goods. 

Now, how comes it to pass that, when the work 
of the Lord outgrows all past provision for its 
successful prosecution ; when its very successes 
call for more room to grow, more men and money, 
more churches and schools and colleges, more 
preaching stations and evangelists, more books 
and Bibles, more medical missions ; and, in a 
word, more of everything that goes to supply the 
wants of an awakening community, we should 
begin to be heavy-hearted because what was in 
adequate ten years ago is absolutely and hopelessly 
unequal to the demand to-day ! This is certainly 
a paradox and anomaly. There is but one place 
where there is no new necessity created by growth ; 
and that is where there is no longer life. In a 
sepulchre or a cemetery, death is regnant. A 
mummy wears the same wrappings as when, 3,000 
years ago, it was embalmed. But Lazarus, when 
loosed from the sepulchre, left his grave clothes 
behind him, and it was the price of his resuscita 
tion that he must henceforth have food and rai 
ment. Life is costly, and growth adds to the cost 
even of life. And, because the work of missions 
is a growing child yet in its infancy, and not a 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS, 291 

cripple without a future ; because it is a living 
form and not a mummy, the conditions change 
and the demands increase every day. 

This crisis of missions is in fact an answer to 
prayer. It is not one hundred years ago since 
the whole world stood over against the Church, 
like a gigantic fortress with double-barred gates 
of steel. Devout disciples who, like Simeon, 
looked and waited for the Kingdom of God, were 
earnestly beseeching God that the doors of the 
nations might be opened and the way be prepared 
for the Church to carry out her great commission. 
It was because God heard that strong crying, 
and so marvellously answered, that, within the past 
fifty years, pagan, papal, and heathen territory 
which a century ago defied the approach of Prot 
estant missionaries with an open Bible and a pure 
Gospel, now admits, if it does not welcome, the 
message of life. 

So rare and exceptional is it that any nation 
like Thibet should yet lock itself in hermit seclu 
sion, that we may now say, with almost literal 
truth, that the whole world is now accessible, and 
that the Gospel herald may go where he will. A 
great door and an effectual is opened, though 
there are many adversaries ; and that door opens 
upon a domain that is world-wide. 

No student of political history needs to be told 
that changes in the attitude of governments 
toward questions involving popular customs and 



29 2 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

religious faith are effected very slowly. Centuries 
are the hours upon the dial of national life. To 
move a whole people is a process that often re 
quires the leverage of ages, so that we have been 
wont to think of Oriental peoples as petrified in 
their immobility. 

The rapidity with which these doors of access 
were thrown open, the keys whereby they were 
unlocked, the singular preparation for the entrance 
of the Gospel which they revealed, the fitness and 
fulness of times which marked these new and start 
ling developments, have impressed the writer s 
mind as nothing else ever has, in a life largely 
given to historic studies. 

One example might be cited in detail, as an 
illustration. The year 1858 is the "Annus mirabi- 
lis " of modern missions. Probably no one year 
in human history has been marked by changes 
more stupendous and momentous, as affecting the 
evangelization of the world ; and it is the more 
appropriate that it here have due emphasis, inas 
much as, so far as he is aware, the writer has been 
the first to set in array the wondrous events that 
marked that pivotal year of missions. 

First of all, the winter preceding had been dis 
tinguished by one of the most remarkable outpour 
ings of the Spirit known in modern times. In all 
parts of Christendom there was an almost simul 
taneous blessing, which suggested a gigantic tidal- 
wave that moves from equator to pole, that washes 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 293 

with its giant swell the coasts that border the 
ocean s bed, all along the shores of vast conti 
nents, and sweeps over those continents themselves. 
Churches in every part of the world were quick 
ened into new life ; converts sprang up like 
willows along the water-courses ; hundreds of 
thousands were gathered into the Churches, and 
to this day the grand results are visible. 

One special result of the revivals of that autumn 
and winter of 18578 was a new spirit of prayer 
for missions. As yet a large portion of the earth s 
vast population was shut out from Christian labor, 
and the awakened Church besought God to make 
bare His mighty arm and burst open the barred 
gates, that all the ends of the earth might see the 
salvation of our God. 

Behold the marvellous and majestic move 
ments of a prayer-hearing God ! Great Britain 
approaches Japan, which, from 1640 to 1854, had 
closed her ports even to the commerce of Christian 
nations. The Earl of Elgin, on August 26, 1858, 
concluded that new Treaty which broke down the 
barriers of two centuries between the Sunrise 
Kingdom and the foremost Protestant nation of 
Europe. About the time of the conclusion of this 
treaty, the reigning Tycoon died, and left the 
throne to his son, the present emperor, a young 
man of great intelligence and singularly liberal 
sentiments touching both commerce and politics. 
Here, by one master-stroke, the Island Empire, 



294 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

with nearly 40,000,000, became accessible to 
British ships and the Gospel loved by British 
Christians, while at the same time governmental 
changes took place which doubly assured progress. 
What was the consequence ? No nation has, for 
eighteen centuries, moved at such a pace toward 
Christianity. Ten years later, a vast number of 
Buddhist temples were confiscated for public uses, 
chiefly educational, and the Mikado pledged him 
self to promote complete religious toleration. 
How well he kept his word will appear from the 
decree of July n, 1884, that thenceforth there 
should be no official priesthood, and that all re 
ligions, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Christianity 
alike, should be impartially protected and occupy 
the same platform of legal equality ! Four years 
later there were reported 28,000 church communi 
cants in the Reformed or Protestant churches, and 
church buildings, Christian schools, theological 
seminaries, Young Men s Christian Associations, 
religious newspapers, and all the distinctive feat 
ures of a Christian community, were to be found. 
With a swiftness that reminds us of the rapidity 
with which dawn advances to full day, this empire 
has earned its right to its proud title that of " the 
Rising Sun." Where in 1853 there was only an 
impenetrable wall of exclusion, we have now, less 
than forty years later, a whole land penetrated and 
permeated by occidental influence. 

During that same memorable year, changes 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 295 

almost as great took place in China. We have 
seen what occurred in Japan, August 26. The 
day previous, the Atlantic Cable flashed across the 
Atlantic its first news dispatch that, after nearly a 
year of war, peace had been concluded between 
the allied forces and the Middle Kingdom. The 
famous Treaty of Tientsin, signed June 26, en 
larged the provisions of the Treaty of Nankin, of 
1842, which opened five ports to foreign trade. 
British subjects are henceforth allowed to travel 
for business or pleasure to all parts of the interior,* 
under passports issued by their Consul ; and, what 
is most significant, the Christian religion is to be 
protected by Chinese authorities. t The language 
is as follows : " The Christian religion, as professed 
by Protestants and Roman Catholics, inculcates 
the practice of virtue and teaches man to do as 
he would be done by. Persons teaching or pro 
fessing it, therefore, shall be alike entitled to the 
protection of the Chinese authorities ; nor shall 
any such, peaceably pursuing their calling and not 
offending against the laws, be persecuted or inter 
fered with." 

Thus, to one quarter of the population of the 
globe, access was given, in one diplomatic docu 
ment ; and the Church of Christ may now preach 
the Gospel through the Celestial Empire. It is 
difficult to apprehend or appreciate what such a 
step means : it is not a step, but a stride the stride 

* Art. ix. f Art. viii. 



296 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

of a giant in seven-league boots, from mountain- 
top to mountain-top. China is in itself a world, 
containing a population larger than the whole 
world at the time of Christ. And yet in one year 
that world of China was made accessible to 
Christian missions. 

Let us go still Westward. What is, during this 
same year, 1858, occurring in Iftdia, itself another 
great world of many languages and peoples and 
religions ? 

The mutiny of 1857, which, in the opinion of 
godless and greedy men who would make money 
out of traffic in human bodies or souls, was to 
rid India of the saints, opened India to them. God 
gave it to such Christian heroes as Sir John Law 
rence and Sir Henry Havelock and Sir Colin 
Campbell, to save the British army from massacre. 
It was this formidable revolt of 1857 which called 
attention to the mismanagment of East Indian 
affairs by the East India Company, whose powers 
had gradually grown, until, long before its aboli 
tion, it had become a court from whose decisions 
there was no appeal. And the result of investiga 
tion was that, not only in this memorable year 
1858, but in that same month, August (2d) all the 
territories previously under the government of the 
Company became vested in the British Queen, and 
Victoria became Empress of the Indies. This 
was a change that can be appreciated only by 
those who have studied minutely the history of 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 297 

the Company, which from the year 1600 had 
been growing more and more despotic ; who re 
member how, when the devoted Robert Haldane, 
in 1796, sold his estate at Airthrey and proposed 
to establish a new mission at Benares, the centre 
of Brahminical idolatry, at his own expense, the 
Company defeated his scheme, one director re 
marking that he " would rather a band of devils 
than a band of missionaries landed in India " ; 
who remember how Wm. Carey and Henry Martyn 
had encountered the bitter hostility of this same 
East India Company, so that the flag of Britain, 
now the symbol of a Christian civilization and the 
pledge of both civil and religious liberty wherever 
it floats, was in India the signal for hatred and 
jealousy of mission work. 

But now the 300,000,000 of India were brought 
under the sway of the British sceptre and made 
accessible to the mightier sceptre of the King of 
kings. Surely it was a momentous epoch in his 
tory which opened on the day when British courts, 
laws, and judges, churches, schools, and colleges, 
presses, books, and Bibles had freedom to plant 
over those wide domains the institutions of a 
Christian state ! Here opened another world, 
almost as large and populous as China, and some 
think that an accurate census would show India 
to be the more populous, as it is undoubtedly the 
more important of the two the pivot of Oriental 
life. Meanwhile, in that same India, another 



298 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

transformation was taking place, scarcely less 
important. 

We all know how heathen and pagan institu 
tions have shut women out from all contact even 
with the uplifting influence of knowledge. The 
zenana, like the harem and seraglio, has stood 
for thousands of years as the polite name for a 
domestic and social Bastile, in which, without 
cause, at the will of a domestic despot, in India 
alone one hundred millions of women and girls 
have been effectually imprisoned. 

Now that the zenana work has grown to such 
dimensions, there are more claimants for the 
honor of its origination than for the honor of 
cradling Homer; but, as near. as can be traced, 
it was in 1858 that Mrs. Elizabeth Sale, of Hel- 
ensburgh, Scotland, began work in Calcutta among 
the women, using needle-work embroidery as the 
key that unlocked these long-shut doors.* From 
that first attempt at organized work among women 
in the zenanas, the harvest has already become 
wonderfully fruitful. 

And now, to the marvellous events already noted 
which make 1858 the Year of the Open Doors, we 
must add three more. In that year the revolution 
ary changes in Papal Europe prepared the way 
for Free Italy and Protestant missions ; in that 
same year the revolution in Mexico under Benito 
Juarez paved the path of the Gospel in Central 
* Miss. Review, July, 1890, p. 554. 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 299 

America ; and in the same year David Livingstone 
sailed a second time for Africa to complete his 
explorations and pioneer a road into the interior 
for the missionary. Thus in Japan, China, India 
and its zenanas, Italy and papal Europe, Central 
America, and even Africa, 1858 was the great 
year when doors were unlocked for the Gospel. 

Thus, at risk of tediousness, we have expatiated 
on the providential interventions in answer to 
prayer which show that the crisis in missions, 
which is the result and the sign of growth, is also 
the direct proof of a prayer-hearing God. And 
what follows? That what appears to be an 
emergency to which we are unequal, is in fact a 
divine challenge to renewed prayerfulness, conse 
cration, dependence on God, and confidence and 
courage such as faith inspires. Such crises have 
occurred at various turning-points of Christian 
history ; and everything depends on how the 
Church meets the exigency. 

From the voluminous records of missions we 
select two representative instances of how every 
thing hangs upon the spirit in which critical and 
pivotal conditions are met by the people of God, 
in hopes that we may learn the lesson of the hour. 

The only way to meet such a crisis in missions 
is to appeal to God in believing prayer, and then 
take new courage. Even discouragements are 
thus transformed into incentives and incitements 
to duty. Where we have our Lord s plain com- 



300 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

mand, especially when backed by such providential 
openings and leadings, the apparent hopelessness 
of our task is only designed to try our faith and 
develop our courage. 

First, we may find a representative and impress 
ive example of this principle in the story of Tahiti. 

The missionaries seemed for fourteen years to 
have labored in vain and spent their strength for 
naught. Their zeal, their toil, their long journeys 
and faithful exhortations, did not even awaken 
interest or inquiry on the part of the natives. 
Not one instance of conversion had yet rewarded 
them. Not only so, but the missionaries, driven 
away from the island by war, their houses burned, 
were actually cut off from all communication with 
it. The first missionaries of the London Mission 
ary Society had landed in 1797, and so many 
years had passed in fruitless effort that, about 1813, 
the directors, disheartened, proposed to abandon 
the mission altogether. A few firm friends of the 
work resolutely resisted all such proposals. Dr. 
Haweis, for example, added to his former dona 
tions another of two hundred pounds, and pressed 
the society to new efforts and more earnest 
prayers. Rev. Matthew Wilks, John Williams 
pastor, joined with Dr. Haweis in remonstrance 
against such unbelief and abandonment of the 
Lord s work, and with his peculiar vehemence 
said, " I will sell the garments from my back be 
fore I will consent to give up this mission," and 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 301 

instead, proposed that a special season of prayer 
for the mission be observed. The suggestion was 
accepted, and in place of letters of recall, let 
ters of encouragement and hopefulness were de 
spatched to the discouraged laborers in the South 
Seas. 

Thus they vanquished Satan by the shield of 
faith and the rod of prayer. Nothing in human 
history is more remarkable as a proof of a prayer- 
hearing God than the events which now trans 
pired. The vessel which bore from England to 
Tahiti these letters of inspiration and encourage 
ment crossed in her passage another ship from 
Tahiti, bearing letters from the missionaries, an 
nouncing the entire overthrow of idolatry, and 
bearing likewise the rejected idols of the people 
brought by them to the missionaries and by them 
sent to London, where they now stand in the 
museum of the society. God had literally fulfilled 
His word : " Before they call I will answer, and 
while they are yet speaking I will hear." 

His set time to favor the work had fully come, 
and He chose a way to do it which would both 
glorify Himself and stimulate confidence in prayer. 
The missionaries had been compelled to seek refuge 
in the New South Wales, and Mr. Nott, at Eimeo. 
Reports suddenly reached Mr. Nott, and others 
who, in 1.8 1 1, had returned to Eimeo, that remark 
able changes were in progress at Tahiti. Messrs. 
Scojt and Hayward, by request, went to the island, 



302 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

and to their astonishment found praying men 
there, and two of them, Oito and Tuahine, the 
first natives that had ever prayed to the true God, 
returned with them to Eimeo, where the first great 
meeting was held in 1813. 

It appeared that these two natives, formerly 
servants in the families of the missionaries, had, 
unknown to them, received impressions which led 
them to pray to God after the expulsion of the 
missionaries ; so that on the return of the latter 
they unexpectedly found a people prepared of the 
Lord. From this time one unbroken series of suc 
cesses followed, in fact attended, the labors of the 
missionaries, so that island after island and group 
after group received the Gospel with a rapidity 
unknown before or since.* 

Another conspicuous example may be chosen 
from the later annals of missionary enterprise. 

Ongole, about 200 miles north of Madras, has 
been the scene of an in-gathering which perhaps 
exceeds any other ever known for the display of 
God s power. In the close of 1853 and the be 
ginning of 1854, Dr. Lyman Jewett, a missionary 
from Nellore, still living at Madras and connected 
with the American Baptists, was touring in this 
desolate though densely populated district, and 
upon the summit of a mountain near Ongole he 
prayed God to send a missionary there. But let 

* "Missionary Enterprises in the South Seas," John 
Williams. 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 303 

us enter more fully into details which deserve a 
permanent record. 

The first mission of the American Baptist Mis 
sionary Union had been planted in the Telugu 
country in 1835, at the suggestion of Rev. Amos 
Sutton, an English Baptist ; Rev. Samuel S. Day 
and wife sailing Sept. 22, 1835, for this field. In 
1837 Mr. Day made a tour of some 120 miles and 
back from Berhampore, visiting forty villages, of 
which one-half had probably never before seen a 
missionary, or even a Christian. In 1840, he, 
with Rev. and Mrs. S. Van Husen, were found at 
Nellore, which was regarded as a good centre for 
the work, being in the midst of a dense Telugu 
population and about midway from Cape Cormorin 
to the upper boundary of the Telugu country. 

In 1853, the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the 
American Baptist Missionary Union was held at 
Albany, N. Y., May 17. The moment was so 
critical that the very destiny of the Telugu mission 
hinged on the decision then reached. Mr. Day 
and Mr. Jewett and their wives were now at this 
Nellore station. Mr. Day had been in India 
eighteen years, and Mr. Jewett five, having sailed 
in 1848. As early as 1846, the executive commit 
tee had discussed the propriety of abandoning the 
work, but were prevented by the vigorous protest 
of Mr. Day, then in this country for his health. 
But now again, in 1853, the question of abandon 
ing this field was raised, no results that seemed to 



304 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

justify the expenditure having been attained. No 
more than three persons had been baptized since 
the mission was recommenced in 1849 ; there were 
no native helpers in training or in prospect, and 
the annual expense was over $2,600. 

At the evening session at Albany, the great 
question to be considered was "Shall the Telugii 
work be abandoned? " and one of the speakers, 
pointing to Nellore on the map, the only station 
in the Telugu country, gave it the name which 
has since clung to it "The Lone Star." That 
epithet inspired Dr. S. F. Smith, the poet, and his 
pen put on paper the following prophetical verses, 
which we here place on permanent record : 

Shine on " Lone Star ! Thy radiance bright 
Shall spread o er all the Eastern sky ; 

Morn breaks apace from gloom and night ; 
Shine on and bless the pilgrim s eye. 

Shine on "Lone Star" ! I would not dim 
The light that gleams with dubious ray; 

The lonely star of Bethlehem 

Led on a bright and glorious day. 

Shine on, " Lone Star " ! In grief and tears 

And sad reverses oft baptized : 
Shine on amid thy sister spheres : 

Lone stars in Heaven are not despised. 

Shine on, " Lone Star " ! Who lifts a hand 
To dash to earth so bright a gem ! 

A new " lost pleiad " from the band 
That sparkles in Night s diadem ! 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 35 

Shine on, " Lone Star" ! The days draw near 
When none shall shine more fair than thou ; 

Thou, born and nursed in doubt and fear, 
Wilt glitter on Immanuel s brow. 

Shine on, " Lone Star" ! Till earth, redeemed, 

In dust shall bid its idols fall ; 
And thousands, where thy radiance beamed, 

Still crown the Saviour Lord of All ! 

Those verses proved so prophetic that the very 
details of the prediction, ventured by the poet, 
have been accomplished. 

Notwithstanding all discouragements, it was 
resolved that the Telugu mission be continued and 
suitably reinforced. 

Toward the close of this eventful year another 
turning-point was reached in the mission s history. 
Mr. and Mrs. Jewett, with Christians, Nersu, Julia, 
and Ruth, touring northward, reached Ongole 
about the end of December, and on January i, 
1854, before sunrise, this little band, as stated in 
previous pages, mounted the hill which overlooks 
Ongole and the surrounding country. They saw 
the large, populous town with its mosques and 
temples, and counted fifty villages dotting the 
plains and all, like Athens, " wholly given to 
idolatry." There, kneeling, each in turn besought 
God to send to Ongole a true missionary, and en 
joyed assurance that they were heard. 

For a time Mr. and Mrs. Jewett were the only 
active laborers among the millions of Telugus. 



306 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

But the Union had, at Albany, settled the question 
that the Lone Star Mission should live, and Mr. 
Jewett earnestly pleaded in 1855 for a missionary 
to be located at Ongole, with its 10,000 people. 

Mr. Jewett s health compelled his return to 
America in 1862, and finding that again the ques 
tion of abandoning the Lone Star Mission was 
before the Board and Churches, he emphatically 
insisted it should not be deserted, and declared that 
he would go back, if only to die there. 

In 1865 he returned, with Rev. and Mrs. J. E. 
Clough, and arrived in the Telugu country. Of 
Mr. Clough one word ought to be said : he was 
trained as a civil engineer, and, not until his third 
application, was he accepted by the Baptist Union 
and sent to the field. 

The work went on for another twelve years, 
with slow progress ; the wail of disappointed hope 
went up to God, like Isaiah s cry " Lord, who 
hath believed our report < " The " lone star " had 
shone for twenty years, but how few had by it 
found the Light of the World ! 

In 1866, in September, the new station was 
opened at Ongole, seventy miles north of Nellore, 
and Mr. Clough took charge. Another feeble 
luminary was added to the " Lone Star " of 
Nellore; and in March, 1867, two converts were 
baptized. Mr. Clough undertook a tour among 
the villages around, sending out word that he had 
come to tell the people of Jesus. The next day 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 307 

after arriving at Tula Conda Padu, he found from 
thirty to forty persons, who had come to his tent 
iu the tamarind grove had prepared to stay for 
days, and brought not only provisions with them, 
but a change of clothes to put on when they were 
baptized, for they had come to learn of Christ, with 
the expectation of confessing Him ! On Sunday, 
January 20, twenty-eight were baptized, and a 
Pentecost seemed begun. Native preachers vis 
ited more than eight hundred villages lying about 
Ongole, and in 1867-8 the little church had swelled 
to seventy-five members. Meanwhile, the Canada 
Auxiliary, organized in 1866, had sent A. V. 
Timpany to Nellore, and the arrival of this new 
laborer and wife, in 1868, was the signal for a 
new era in the history of the mission. 

Mr. Clough had been singularly impressed that, 
if he could join Mr. Jewett in labor among the 
Telugus, 1 0,000 souls would be given them in one 
harvest. This, which was regarded as the sign 
of excessive enthusiasm, if not of unsound mind, 
by the members of the Baptist Board, was in fact 
a prophecy of coming triumphs. 

Many a time, when far away among the jungle 
villages, in 1869, would those words come to him : 
" Be still and know that I am God. I will be 
exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in 
the earth." In December, 1869, three hundred 
and twenty-four more were baptized ; and, sud 
denly, from one of the most unpromising, the 



38 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

Telugu field became one of the most inviting. 
And already, in 1870, the little church of seventy- 
five had grown to seven hundred and nine. In 
1871, Ongole had 1,200 members ; in 1872, 1,658 ; 
in 1873, 2,092 ; and the number of baptisms was 
limited only by the inability of the missionaries to 
visit the villages and examine and baptize converts. 
At Ramapatam, where, four years before, a mis 
sionary had preached the first Sabbath in his own 
sitting-room to a congregation of his own servants 
and a few others, there were, in 1873, 500 com 
municants, and a theological school for native 
ministry with fifteen students ! The field, of which 
Ongole was the centre, and over whose area of 
7,000 square miles a million of people were scat 
tered in 1,300 villages, was then divided into 
eight parts, and over each was placed a native 
preacher and assistant, to go from village to village 
telling the Gospel story. 

In 1873-4, 1,026 Telugus were baptized; in 

1875, Ongole reported 2,642 members; and in 

1876, the " Lone Star " mission, at Nellore, which 
in 1845 had not a missionary, and whose utter 
abandonment was so often considered ; which in 
1865, when the veteran Jewett was returning with 
his new recruit, Mr. Clough, had but thirty-eight 
living members ; had now 4,000 members, six 
stations, and twenty missionaries ! 

The famine of 1877 exposed hundreds of thou 
sands to starvation, and just now it became obvious 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 309 

why God had chosen a civil engineer for that field. 
Mr. Clough obtained a government contract for 
completing the Buckingham Canal, and on this 
work he employed thousands of natives, to whom 
the Gospel was preached after the day s work was 
done ; gangs of men, successively employed, heard 
the Word of Life, and the next year, thousands 
came forward to ask baptism. On one day 2,222 
were baptized ; between June 16 and July 7, about 
three weeks, 5,429 were baptized by Mr. Clough 
and his assistants at Ongole. And Mr. Clough 
adds : " Perhaps not one hundred had ever received 
from me, directly or indirectly, the value of a pice 
(one-quarter of a cent) from the famine fund, or 
ever expected to receive from me any financial aid." 
Up to July 31, in less than seven weeks, 8,691 
had professed faith and received baptism. In 
twelve years, a church of eight had thus grown to 
one of 12,000! The wild dream of John E. 
Clough, and the long waiting prayer of Dr. Jewett, 
had been fulfilled. Within less than twelve months 
the number of baptized converts had swelled by 
10,000 ; and to this day the revival work goes on, 
without interruption ; the last reported year is one 
of abounding fruitfulness, and one of the largest 
in the in-gathering of converts. 

This Telugu field furnishes another marked 
illustration of the answers to prayer. Mr. Clough, 
on coming to Ongole, was waited upon by high- 
caste citizens, who gave him support and placed 



310 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

sixty-two of their sons in his school and furnished 
the funds for carrying it on, without restricting his 
religious teaching. One day three low-caste men 
presented themselves as converts, and were made 
welcome ; but at once an indignant committee in 
formed him that if he had anything more to do 
with Sudras and Pariahs, the high-caste scholars 
would be at once withdrawn. Two more low- 
caste converts applied for admission. The crisis 
had come the school was likely to be wrecked 
against this Gibraltar of caste, and the social sea 
was in a wild tumult. 

Mr. Clough and his wife went at the same time 
to different apartments to pray for divine guidance. 
Each cried for direction in this great extremity, 
and each took up a Testament to seek in the Word 
of God guidance. In the hand of each the Tes 
tament of its own accord opened to the same 
passage I. Cor. i, 26-29: "Ye see your calling, 
brethren, how that not many wise men after the 
flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called : 
but God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen 
the weak things of the world to confound the things 
which are mighty ; and base things of the world, 
and things which are despised, hath God chosen, 
yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought 
things that are : that no flesh shall glory in His 
presence." 

" Ah, yes," said Mr. Clough, " I see it -I have 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS 3" 

not been building on God s plan : it must tumble 
down, and I must begin anew." And he left the 
room to go and tell his wife, whom he found 
coming into the study with her hand on the same 
Scripture. By this striking coincidence God led 
them henceforth to build from the broad bottom 
of the social pyramid, where the many are found. 
They at once announced their purpose, and every 
scholar left ! But, though the upper classes at 
once changed from friends to foes, God on this 
new basis built the greatest single Church of 
modern times, and the greatest revival since our 
Lord s ascension ; and of the thirty thousand 
Ongole communicants, more converts from the 
upper castes have been gathered than Mr. Clough 
ever would have hoped under the previous plan. 

These two instances have been previously re 
ferred to in these pages, but are here given 
somewhat in detail that they may stand as repre 
sentative examples of what blessing would have 
been forfeited had the Church of God at these 
critical times deserted her post and abandoned 
her work ! God had in store the greatest bless 
ings known since Pentecost one in the South 
Seas, the other in the East Indies. He allowed 
the faith and patience of His people to be sorely 
tried, and when they proved faithful He poured 
out a blessing. And so it will be to-day, if this 
new crisis be met in the true spirit. 

The great signal-gun of God is sounding out 



312 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

the call to ADVANCE ! Those old Greeks- 
princes in the wisdom of this world showed their 
sagacity in the Olympic games. Three pillars 
were reared in the ancient stadium, respectively 
at the starting-point, the midway-point, and the 
turning-point, or goal. Three Greek words were 
inscribed upon these pillars respectively : on the 
first a.piareve, " Do your best " ; on the second, 
G7TEv6e, " Speed you " ; and on the third, Kafnpov, 
" Stop." When the racer was starting, the first 
pillar incited him to show himself a man ; when 
he reached the third, he was reminded that he had 
reached the goal, or turning-point ; but it was at 
the middle pillar that he met the caution, "Speed 
you ! " "Make haste ! " 

There was philosophy in that. No risk is so 
great as the risk of over-confidence in a success 
but half attained. He, who at first outran the rest 
and at the middle of the course found himself 
ahead, would be tempted to relax his efforts ; and 
so some other racer, who had reserved his strength 
for the supreme effort at the end of the race, 
would pass him by and get first to the goal. 

Paul was in the spiritual sphere a trained 
athlete. His law of life was, " Forgetting those 
things which are behind and reaching forth unto 
those things which are before, I press toward the 
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus." Spinoza wisely said, that there is 
no foe more fatal to progress than self-conceit and 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 3M 

the laziness which self-conceit begets. To think 
and feel that we have already attained, or are 
already perfect, is the narcotic and sedative that 
brings on the sleep of the sloth and the sluggard. 
At the present critical hour of missions the banners 
of God s hosts should bear one word emblazoned 
in capitals: FORWARD ! 

The motto of the great Apostle to the Gentiles 
was, " THE REGIONS BEYOND." Satisfied with 
no work already done, content with no other 
man s line of things made ready to hand, he 
yearned to evangelize the regions beyond, where 
Christ had not been named.* That motto of 
Paul is the true watchword of this new age of 
missions. After all the work of a century, we 
have only just begun, and are not even at the 
midway pillar. God says, " Speed ye ! Make 
haste ! Forget what is behind, reach toward, 
press toward what is before ! Push for the re 
gions beyond ! " Our work is not done in a 
sense is not fully begun so long as there remains 
one country or people or family where the Gospel 
has as yet not been proclaimed. A salvation 
provided for all and free to all must be at least 
announced to all. 

The other signal word for this supreme hour of 
missions is PRAYER. In the Pantheon at Paris 
is a superb painting of the death of St. Genevieve, 
the patron saint of the city. And the picture sug- 

* IL Cor. x. 16. 



3H THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

gests the marked contrasts of history. Above is 
a triumphal procession entering the gates with all 
the pomp and pageantry of victorious war the 
legions of soldiery, the captives in golden chains, 
the spoils of priceless value, all suggest the im 
perial glory of human power in the insolent boast- 
fulness of conscious success. Beneath, in a dimly- 
lighted chamber, Christians gather about the rude 
couch of the dying saint. It is but a convent 
cell, and a little band of praying disciples ; yet in 
gazing you feel that this is the far grander scene 
and that, in the circle of prayer, and not in the 
march of battalions, lies the secret power which 
is yet to overturn the empire of the Caesars and 
make the banners of the Church more victorious 
than the silver eagles of Rome ! 

The autobiography of Charles G. Finney is 
confessedly one of the most remarkable narratives 
in the English tongue. At a time when the 
American Church was well-nigh enwrapt in a dead 
orthodoxy, and vital godliness was in peril, this 
wonderful man swept like a flaming evangelist 
through the churches, kindling into a fierce fire 
the smouldering embers on God s altars. Tens of 
thousands of formal Christians were quickened 
into life, and converts sprang up like willows along 
the water-courses. The power of that whole move 
ment was the power of believing prayer. Mr. 
Finney himself, from the very hour of conversion, 
had his hand on the throne of God. His princi- 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 315 

pal co-workers were men and women of marked 
power in intercession. Rev. Daniel Nash, famil 
iarly known as " Father Nash," had inflamed 
eyes, and was for weeks at a time shut up in a dark 
room ; but that room became a holy of holies, 
in the secrecy, solitude, silence, separation of which 
he communed with God at the mercy-seat. His 
closet was the throne-room of God, and as he 
could neither read nor write, Father Nash gave 
himself up almost entirely to prayer. From that 
hiding-place he went forth with a double black 
veil on his face to work for souls, full of the power 
which only prayer can bring. He had a " praying 
list " of persons for whom daily, and in some cases, 
many times in a day, he prayed. And his faith 
was so marvellous that the hardest hearts yielded 
when he began to beseech God for them. The 
bar-room of a low groggery would become a 
prayer-meeting room and the blasphemous bar 
tender the leader of the meeting. When the devil 
reared especially high bulwarks against the truth, 
and impassable walls seemed to defy progress, 
Mr. Finney and Father Nash would simply over 
come all obstacles by this one resort : they would 
go together to some retired place, a grove perhaps, 
and give themselves up to prayer until they knew 
that God heard and would answer; and often, 
while Mr. Finney gave himself to the preaching, 
his brother Nash would pray without ceasing, and 
the most brazen-faced and stiff-necked opposers 



316 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

would give way. Such mighty praying gave 
Father Nash the power of a prophet. For ex 
ample, when at Governeur, N. Y., a band of god 
less young men joined hand in hand by ridicule 
and every other means to resist the revival, Father 
Nash, coming forth from his closet with awful 
solemnity, as if he were striking chords from 
Ezekiel s iron harp, thus solemnly warned them : 
" Now, young men, mark me ! Within one week 
God will break your ranks, either by converting 
some of you or by sending some of you to hell ! 
He will do this as certainly as the Lord is my 
God !" Down came his hand on the pew before 
him, and the very house seemed to shake with 
the presence of God. He sat down, dropped his 
head, and groaned with agony for souls. 

Even Mr. Finney was startled at the boldness 
of the prediction. But two days had not passed 
before the leader of those young men, in the 
deepest distress, came to Mr. Finney and, broken 
down with contrition, submitted himself to God ; 
and at once went back to his companions, besought 
them to turn unto the Lord, and prayed with 
them. Before the week was out that band of 
mockers were rejoicing in hope. 

Abel Clary, of Rochester, was another of these 
praying saints to whom more than to his own 
pungent and powerful preaching Mr. Finney traced 
the mighty revival tide that swept over the Eastern 
and Middle States. Though he was licensed to 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 317 

preach, such were his hunger for souls and his thirst 
after God, that he forsook the pulpit for the closet, 
and gave to prayer his time and strength, night 
and day. The absorption of his soul was often 
such that he could not stand, but would writhe 
and groan as he travailed in birth for souls. He 
never appeared in public, but gave himself wholly 
to the secrecy of divine communion. Is it any 
marvel that the whole city was moved as it never 
was before or since ? How slow are we to learn 
that from the secret springs of the closet flow the 
rills and rivers of grace, by which the deserts are 
transformed into gardens of paradise ! 

In his revival lectures Mr. Finney tells of another 
man in New York State, whose name he does not 
give a consumptive, poor and sick, unable to do 
anything but pray. Yet his intercession brought 
answers to one soul and one community after 
another, and even to distant fields in pagan and 
heathen soil. Revivals sprang up as if spontane 
ously and unaccountably ; but after his death his 
diary revealed the secret cause. Daily he set 
apart certain hours for certain ministers, churches, 
communities, and mission stations. Often in these 
pages would be found such an entry as this : " To 
day I have been enabled to offer what I believe 
to be the prayer of faith for the outpouring of the 

spirit on , and I trust in God that there will 

soon be a revival there." And not long after 
would follow the record of the answer, even in 



318 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE, 

places as distant as Ceylon. What is more re 
markable, the revivals followed in the order named, 
as though to defy any explanation but that found 
in prevailing prayer. During his sickness, as death 
drew nigh, he was specially engrossed with prayer 
for the town he lived in. After he died, his works 
followed him, and that last prayer found gracious 
and abundant answer in the place of his residence. 
The prayer was recorded on high and his tears 
put into God s bottle ; and, though the praying 
lips were dumb, and the holy tears were wiped 
from his eyes, the prayers he had offered came back 
in converting grace, and the tears he had shed 
descended in abundant showers of blessing. That 
the Church of God can neglect a motor like prayer 
is a sure sign of apostasy ! Were it possible for 
one man to speak in a voice of thunder, that 
should peal around the world and reach every 
Church and every Christian believer, it would 
be my desire to sound, as the motto of the pres 
ent hour, these two words, viz. : " FORWARD ! " 
" PRAY ! " or they might both be included in the 
counsel given by that Japanese preacher, Dr. 
Neesima, lately deceased: "Advance on your 
knees ! " 

Could the whole Church just now determine in 
God s strength to allow no retrenchment, surrender 
no station, withdraw no workman, but rather mul 
tiply her laborers, enlarge her gifts, and at once 
vigorously push for the regions beyond could 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 319 

the Church but resolve that within this generation 
every human soul shall hear the Gospel proclaimed, 
there would come, as we solemnly and confidently 
believe, a new era of blessing, of which even 
Pentecostal outpouring was but a forecast and 
first-fruits ! All prophecy and promise paint a 
glorious future for the Kingdom of God. 

The visitor at Florence enters that grand apart 
ment in the Museum of Natural History known 
as La Tribuna Galilei. The walls are inlaid with 
precious stones and the ceiling is glorious with 
elaborate frescoes. Around are the master achieve 
ments of sculpture, each in its own little shrine. 
In the centre of a large and semicircular window, 
at the extremity of this temple of science, stands 
the colossal statue of the man who first with tele 
scopic eye penetrated to the arcana of the heavens. 
And around that central figure all else is clustered, 
and toward that all else in this costly Cabinet of 
the Medici seems to point. The surrounding 
busts of great men all face toward him who was 
greater than they all, and the very glories of that 
ceiling, which sets forth the leading events in the 
career of the famous Florentine, rains down on 
his head its lavish splendors. 

All history is the Tribuna of Jesus of Nazareth. 
He is the central glory of the ages. The very 
universe was built to be His temple. The greatest 
of prophets, priests, and kings, the foremost of 
poets, philosophers, and statesmen, the leaders in 



320 THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

art, science, and invention, turn toward Him who 
is greater, wiser, and mightier than all. The ages 
move about Him, and the very heavens shine for 
Him. His supernal glory a stable could not dim 
nor a manger hide. A hating world nailed Him 
to a cross of shame, but they were only lifting 
Him up to draw all men unto Him. His very 
crown of thorns became a diadem of royalty, and 
His death destroyed death and turned the grave 
into the gateway of paradise. The cross was not 
the symbol of defeat and shame, but of conquest 
and glory. 

By the cross of that Nazarene, the Church is to 
conquer. Missions represent, not a human de 
vice, but a divine enterprise. Its thought was a 
divine idea, and its plan, a divine scheme; the 
work is a co-labor with God ; the field is a divine 
sphere ; the spirit of missions is a divine inspira 
tion, and the fruit of missions a divine seal, an ever 
lasting sign that shall not be cut off. 

There are some watchwords which, as with 
trumpet tongue, should peal out all along the lines 
of the Church ; our great motto should be, " The 
world for Christ and Christ for the world, in this 
our generation." The Fulness of the Times has 
come. The cup of God s preparation overflows. 
The open door of the ages is before us. The 
whole world invites and challenges occupation. 
Facilities, a thousandfold multiplied, match the 
thousandfold opportunities. If it is the open door 



THE CHALLENGE OF MISSIONS. 321 

of the ages, it is also the crisis of the ages. Some 
one will enter these open doors ; if an inactive, 
indifferent Church delays, the arch adversary is 
always on the alert. Satan never yet lost his op 
portunity. He was in the garden of Eden as soon 
as man was ; he not only occupies, but preoc 
cupies ; with sleepless vigilance he watches while 
even disciples sleep. His missionaries are every 
where ; his synagogues and seats throng the great 
centres of population and plant their subtle influ 
ences through the hills and valleys ; his pioneers 
go before the boldest and bravest who pierce the 
unknown lands ; he sets up his printing-presses 
long before the Christian literature scatters its 
healing leaves. 

Christ is waiting for His final Coronation. The 
Kremlin, that island in a sea of domes, is the 
sanctuary of Russia. But, in all this maze of 
temples, towers, ramparts, and palaces, nothing 
impresses one more than that singular Treasury 
where are seen the many crowns worn by the 
rulers who swayed their sceptres over the king 
doms of Poland, the Crimea and Kasan, before 
they were absorbed in the ever-encroaching gulf 
of Russian conquest. 

The structure of the future has its Throne-room ; 
there lie the crowns of empire, waiting for Him 
to whom by right they all belong. And, when 
He shall return to mount His throne, these crowns 
shall be all laid at His feet. He waits for the 



322 - THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE. 

grateful suffrages of a redeemed people, brought 
out of every nation, before He assumes His right 
ful dominion. What can you and I do to hasten 
that consummation ! 

Let my closing appeal be to young men. Some 
of us have passed middle life and our sun is de 
clining ; with others of us the sunset hour already 
reddens the horizon. With you the dawn has yet 
to climb to its noontide. History is dense with 
its events. Every year, every day, every hour, is 
the prolific parent of opportunities that might 
make angels rejoice, and responsibilities that might 
make even angels tremble ! These pages are now 
bringing to a conclusion a series of appeals which 
have been written as with my heart s blood, and 
in them the energy and enthusiasm of the inmost 
life have found utterance. And now let the last 
words be put in capitals, as their emphasis de 
mands : 

GOD IS MOVING ON. 

HIS MARCH IS SWIFT, AND OUR TIME IS SHORT. 

NO SUCH AGE HAS EVER BEFORE SHONE ON THIS PLANET. 

NO SUCH DOORS EVER BEFORE OPENED TO HIS CHURCH. 

WHO WILL FALL INTO LINE WITH GOD, 

JOIN IN HIS MAJESTIC MARCH, 

AND IN THE SURE ADVANCE OF HIS PLAN 

REACH THE GOLDEN FRUITION OF THE AGES 



INDKX. 



ABEEL, Rev. David, 201, 263. 

Abdul Medjid, 200. 

Absorption in God, 179, 180. 

Abu-Said, 160 ; Abu-Taher, 
160. 

Acceptance of salvation, 26. 

Activity, tireless for God, 174. 

Acts of the Apostles, incom 
plete, 55 ; new chapters in, 
56, 240 ; the Missionary 
Manual, 62. 

Age to come, 95 ; Ages, 
Seven Golden, 240. 

Agriculture, to illustrate God s 
work, no. 

Albert, Prince Consort, to 
young men, 58. 

Alexandria, Church at, 157. 

Ambassador, 107. 

America, Discovery of, 285 ; 
Central, 299. 

American Baptist Miss. Union, 

251, 303- 
Aneityum, 248. 
Angelic Host, 207. 
Angels, Relation to preaching 

the Gospel, 43, 44. 
Aniwa, 252. 
Annus mirabilis, 292. . 
Anointing of the Spirit, 213 ; 

of Christ as King, 196. 
Apostolic succession, 53. 
Architecture, illustrating God s 

work, 109. 



Aristocratic titles, 80. 
Army, God s great, 211. 
Ass s ears, 274, 280. 
Avarice, Power of, 178. 

BABYLON, God s hammer,2i3. 

Baptist, John the, 107. 

Bau, Chapel at, 246. 

Believers, Needed as channels 
of Grace, 144 ; Secret, 266. 

Believing is receiving, 26. 

Benevolence, 161. 

Bengal, 256. 

Bentinck, Gov. William, 261. 

Bernard, Sir Charles, 254. 

Beseeching men, 106. 

Besser s story of redeemed 
slave, 176. 

Bible Translations, 267. 

Bicknell, Rev. James, 83. 

Birds without wings, 187. 

Birth hours of Time, 284. 

Blaikie, Rev. Dr., on Living 
stone, 126. 

Blantyre, Scotland, 90. 

Blessings, Turned to curses, 
169. 

Blood, Signing covenant in, 
217. 

Body of Christ, 133 ; its 
health, 134 ; its unity, 135. 

Boemish, 175. 

Botany, Curious fact in, 119. 

Bradley, Rev. D. B., aoi. 



324 



INDEX. 



British rule in India, 261. 
Brotherhood in Christ, 163. 
Brunelleschi, 58. 
Buchanan, Claudius, D.D., 

256. 

Buell, Rev. W. P., 202. 
Buffon, on style, 214. 
Building, God s, 108. 
Burdens and pinions, 188. 
Burmah, 101 ; Missions in, 251. 
Business, About the Father s, 

218. 
Byzantium, 57. 

CALCUTTA and Zenana work, 

264. 

Calvert, Rev. James, 243. 
Campbell, Sir Colin, 296. 
Canara, 256. 
Cannibalism in Fiji, 243 ; in 

New Zealand, 86 ; of Scots, 

272. 

Carey, 267, 271, 288, 297. 
Carmathians, 160. 
Carnal Mind, 60. 
Caste, 163 ; in education, 

church-life, etc., 310 ; in 

India, 262, 267. 
Caswell, Rev. J., 203. 
Celebes, 252. 

Chalmers on the Gospel, 26. 
Channels of Grace, 146. 
Charity, "begins at home," 

165. 

Children, Consecrated, 140. 
China, 91, 255, 295. 
Chitambo s village, 126. 
Christ, as Captain of Lord s 

Host, 206 ; Persona] pres 
ence of, 141. 



Christlieb, Prof. Theodore, on 
Miracles, 234 ; Spirit of 
Missions, 50. 

Chula Lang Korn, 204. 

Church, apostasy and death 
in, 171 ; Council at Jeru 
salem, 93 ; God s idea of, 
163 ; Influence on masses, 
122 ; Life and growth of, 
169; Militant and trium 
phant, 198 ; Outgathered 
from nations, 93, 94. 

Cicero, 216. 

Clary, Abel, 316. 

Clay, Henry, and sarcophagus, 
176. 

Clergy and laity, 29, 32. 

Clough, Rev. Dr. J. E., 306. 

Coan, Rev. Titus, 82. 

Coliseum at Rome, 185. 

Color and music, 151. 

Columbus and New World, 39. 

Commission, The Great, 20, 

3i- 

Complacent love, 161. 

Composite photograph, 20. 

Constantine, Accession of, 92 ; 
Conversion of, 79; Court of, 
80 ; Planning Constanti 
nople, 57. 

Constantinople, Founding, 57 ; 
Fall of, 285. 

Constructive Work of Mis 
sions, 208. 

Consummation of salvation, 

54- 
Conversion of men in masses, 

87; of nations, 71, 77, 83, 86, 

89,92. 
Converts, Native, 116, 117 ; 



INDEX. 



325 



made how, 131, 132 ; first, 

253- 

Co operation with God, 104. 
Coronation of Christ, 321. 
Covenant, Carey s, 219. 
Co-witness with the Spirit, 

143- 

Cows, Sacred in India, 267. 
Creation, obeying God, 211 ; 

sharing redemption, 237. 
Cripple, Testifying to Christ, 

50. 
Crisis in harvest-field, 115; 

of Missions, 288, 299, 300. 
Critics of Missions, 282. 
Croly, Rev. Dr., 284. 
Crops, Cumulative, 125. 
Cross-bearing, 47. 
Crucifixion of self, 167. 
Cruelties, suppressed in India, 

261, 262. 

Crusade for Christ, 161. 
Culture, False type of, 119. 
Cust, Robt. M., 182. 

DALE, Rev. R. W., D.D., 179. 
Daniel s prophecy, 72. 
Darwin, on Tierra del Fuego, 

274, 275. 

David, Thrice anointed, 194. 
Dean, Rev. Wm., 20. 
Deans, Jeanie, 187. 
Death-drums, 246. 
Debtors to man and to Christ, 

178. 

Deems, Rev. C. F., D.D., 38. 
Delay in fruits, 253. 
Demonstration of the Spirit, 

217. 
Demosthenes, 216. 



Dependence of members of the 

body, 133. 
! Destructive work of Missions, 

208. 
| Diffusion vs. Concentration, 

98 ; Diffusive piety, 77. 
Disposition and conceptions 

of truth, 226. 
Dober, Rev. Mr., 175. 
Dolet, 282. 

Doubt limiting testimony, 37. 
Duff, Rev. Alex., D.D., 257, 

259, 263. 
Duncan, William, and Metla- 

kahtla, 253. 
Dynamics, Spiritual, 224. 

EAST INDIA Co., 296 ; and 
Missions, 257, 270; new 
charter, 260. 

Edinburgh, Grey friar s Church 
in, 217. 

Education of women, 263. 

Efficiency of witness, 215. 

Eimeo, 242. 

Elect, Church, 94 ; Nation, 94. 

Elective Principle in God s 
working, 94. 

Elgin, Earl of, 293. 

Elisha, Casting in salt, 152. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 273. 

Elliot, Sir Chas., 268. 

Eloquence, defined, 215. 

Emerson, on positive con 
viction, 38. 

Empress of India, 296. 

End of Age, 54; Connected 
with witnessing, 68. 

Endosmosis, 75. 

Enduement of Spirit, 214. 



326 



INDEX. 



Enoch and Elijah, 136, 137. 

Ephesus,and John theApostle, 
156. 

Eromanga, 242. 

Eunuch of Ethiopia, 132, 157. 

Euphrates, Missions on, 252. 

Evangelist, Work of, 121, 123. 

Evangelist vs. Prophet, 121. 

Evangelization of the world, 
100 ; immediate, 100 ; neces 
sary, 114 ; practicable, 101. 

Evangelization, the watch 
word, 65, 92. 

Everlasting sign, 236. 

Exigencies, How to be met, 
299. 

Exosmosis, 75. 

Expansion needed, 288. 

Extravagance, 172. 

Eyes, and eye salve, 225. 

FABER, F. W., 59. 
Facilities provided, 287. 
Faith, Fruits of, 154 ; Spirit 

of, 154. 

Famine among Telugus, 308. 
Faust, Retzsch s illustrations 

of, 170. 

Feast of Tabernacles, 146. 
Female education, 263. 
Fetich worship, 84. 
Fidelity vs. Success, 97. 
Field and Force, 124. 
Field and Seed, 93, in. 
Field is world, in. 
Fiji Islands, 243. 
Finney, Chas. G., 314. 
Fish vs. Sheep, 121. 
Fishers of men, 120, 121. 
Flint, Rev. Dr., 253. 



Flock and Fold, 120. 
Following divine leadership, 

57- 

Form of godliness, 46, 78. 
Forms of society, 165. 
Fruit of Missions, 232. 
Fry, Elizabeth, 177. 

GALILEE, Christ s interview 

with disciples, 31. 
Galileo, Tribune of, 319. 
Gama, Vasco de, 286. 
Gardiner, Allen, 276. 
Gautier, Theophilus, 279. 
Geddie, John, at Aneityum, 

248 ; Epitaph to, 248. 
Genevieve, St., 313. 
Gibbon, on clergy and laity, 

32 ; on Carmathians, 161. 
Giotto, and the circle, 62. 
Giving, Generous, 172; Selfish, 

167. 

Gladstone, Hon. Wm., 287. 
Glaize, Auguste B., painter, 

279. 

Goethe, on doubts, 38. 
Golden Ages, and profligacy, 

240. 

Good Hope, Cape of, 286. 
Goodell, Dr., 199. 
Graeff, Fred., and Clay, 176. 
Grain of God, 186. 
" Grain of mustard seed," 

Order of, 174. 
Greed, 178. 

Growing demand, 289. 
Growing family, 290. 
Growth of Missions, 289. 
Guthrie, Rev. Thos., 216. 
Gutzlaff, Dr., 201. 



INDEX. 



327 



HALDANE, Rev. Robert, 297. 

Halenaua, " House of Wis 
dom," 84. 

Hamilton, Sir Wm., 216. 

Hamilton, Dr. Jas., 216. 

Hamlin, Dr. Cyrus, 199. 

"Harmonic Laws," Kepler s, 
19. 

Harvest, the ultimate, 126. 

Harvests, apparent and real, 
96. 

Hatti Sherif, 200. 

Hau-Haus, 87. 

Havelock, Sir Henry, 296. 

Hawaiian Islands, 81, 253 ; 
Revival at, 82. 

Haweis, Dr., 300. 

Head, Dependence of, 133. 

Hemel en Aarde, 183. 

Heralding good tidings, 66. 

Himalayas, Missions in, 175. 

Hindrances to Missions, 135. 

Hindustan, Progress in, 269. 

Holy Spirit s work, 96, 142 ; 
Co-operation with, 142. 

Holy Spirit, not received or 
discerned by natural man, 
145 ; works through believ 
ers, 145. 

Hoomanamana idolatry, 83. 

House, Rev. S. R., 202. 

Hunger in India, 266. 

Husbandry, God s, 108, 109, 
238. 

Hyde, 175. 

"!DEA" Word, 19. 
Idols of Tahiti, 301. 
Idolatry in India, 266. 
Ignatius, Martyr, 185. 



Ilala, 126. 

Illustrations in discourse, 112. 

India, British rule in, 261 ; 
Mutiny in, 296 ; Missions 
in, 257, 269 ; Opening to 
Gospel, 296 ; Passage to, 
285. 

Individualism on religion, 89. 

Infanticide suppressed, 262. 

Introduction, 9 ; Author s, 15. 

Inventions and Discoveries, 
284. 

Inventions, Theology of, 284. 

Isaiah s Preaching, 67. 

Israel, Missions to, 158. 

Italy, 298. 

JAMES and John, 156. 
Japan, 91, 293 ; Beginning of 

Missions in, 147 ; Rapid 

changes in, 91. 
Jaschke, 175. 
Jerichp, Capture of, 205. 
Jerome of Prague, 184. 
Jerome on Scots, 272, 273. 
Jewitt, Dr. Lyman, 302. 
Jews, Blindness, 158, 159 ; 

First in order, 157, 158 ; 

Missions to, 157. 
Joel s Prophecy, 95. 
Johnson, Wm. A. B., 253. 
Juarez, Benito, 298. 
Judgment, Preparing for the 

Gospel, 211. 

Juclson, Rev. Adoniram, 251. 
Judson in Burmah, 101. 
Judson, Mrs. Ann Hazeltine, 

201. 

Juggernaut, 256. 
Julius Casar, 273. 



INDEX. 



KAAHUMANU, Regent, 82, 83. 

Kahunas, 84, 85. 
Kamehameha I., 81. 
Kamehameha V., 85. 
Karens, 254. 
Keopuolani, 81. 
Kepler, Johann, 19. 
Key to all Church History, 93. 
Kho-Tha-Byu Memorial Hall, 

7, 2 54- 
Kingdom of God, How built 

up, 71. 

Kingsley, Rev. Chas., 277. 
Kremlin, 321. 
Krishna Chundra Pal, 222. 

LACK, Filling up a, 129. 

Laity and Clergy, 29. 

Lamp-stand and Trumpet, 137. 

Laodiceanism, 124, 170, 171. 

Lawrence, Sir John, 261, 296. 

Lazarus, and the tomb, 290. 

Leadership of God, 57. 

Lehman, Rev. Mr., 184. 

Leitner, Rev. Mr., 183. 

Lepers, Missions to, 183. 

Le Pilori, 279. 

Life implying growth, 290. 

Life, Sacrifice of, 245. 

Life, Spiritual signs of, 119. 

Light of world, 45. 

Link to be supplied, 130. 

Livingstone, David, 90, 96, 
126, 299 ; Burial, 128 ; Buried 
Heart of, 127 ; Body-servant 
of, 138, 139; His death, 126; 
Mrs. McRobert and, 139. 

Locusts, God s army, 211. 

London Missionary Society, 
300. 



London Times, 270. 

" Lone Star," 304. 

Lord Lytton on color, 151. 

Love of Benevolence vs. 
Complacence, 161,162 ; Law 
of, 162 ; Spirit of, 161. 

Lugalama, 249. 

Lukewarmness, 75. 

Luther, 286 ; at Augsburg, 
159 ; and Reformation, 173. 

MADRAS Presidency, 266. 

Maganja Swamp, 249. 

Maha Mong Kut, 203. 

Mahmoud, Sultan, 199. 

Malabar, 256. 

Malo, David, " History Ha 
waii," 84. 

Maoris, 87. 

Marching orders, 99, 154. 

Mariner s compass, 284. 

Marsden, Samuel, 86, 254, 255. 

Marseilles, Painting at, 279. 

Marsh, 258. 

Marshman, 219. 

Martyr, Rev. Henry, 297. 

Martyrs of science, 280. 

Martyrs of Uganda, 249. 

Massacre of Punjab, 261. 

Mattoon, Rev. Stephen, 202. 

McAuley Mission, 50. 

McCosh, Dr. Jas., 216. 

McFarlane, Rev. S. , 244. 

McLeod, Norman. 43. 

McRobert, Mrs., and Living 
stone, 139. 

Mebalwe, Servant of Living 
stone, 139. 

Mercy, Exercise of, 166. 

Meriah sacrifices, 259. 



INDEX. 



329 



Messengers, 107. 

Messianic covenant and reign, 
192. 

Metlakahtla, 253. 

Mexico, 268. 

Midas and ass s ears, 274, 
280. 

Mikado of Japan, 294. 

Militant church, 207. 

Millennial Age, 95. 

Ministry, An ordained, 35, 42. 

Miracle, Defined, 235; Loaves, 
156 ; Missions, 234. 

Missionary force, and its 
increase, 101, 172 ; Inade 
quacy of, 172. 

Missions, Opposition to, 258. 

Modern Miracles, 235. 

Moloch, Modern, 257. 

Money and its expenditure, 
172. 

Monod, Pastor, 103. 

Moral miracles, 236. 

Moravians, 120, 183 ; Their 
Litany, 120; Zeal, 174. 

Morse, Prof. S. B., 40. 

Motive power in Missions, 153. 

Mujasi, 249. 

Mullens, Mrs., and Zenanas, 
264, 265. 

Musicians and preachers, com 
pared, 226. 

Mwanga, Chief, 249. 

NANKIN, Treaty of, 295. 

Nash, Father, 315. 

National Covenant, Scotland, 

217. 

Native Converts, 116. 
Natural man, 60. 



Naturalness in testimony, 
214. 

Na Vita Leva, 254. 

Nebuchadnezzar s golden im 
age, 72. 

Needle and Zenanas, 298. 

Neesima, Dr., 318. 

Neglect of souls, 134. 

Negro, and God s image, 164. 

Newgate Prison, 177 ; Revival 
in, 86. 

New Jerusalem, 73. 

New Zealand, 86, 275. 

Nicobar Islands, 175. 

Nineteenth Century, 287. 

Nitschmann, 175. 

Noah s preaching, 67. 

Nott, Rev. Mr., at Tahiti, 253. 

Numbers, Snare of, 67, 70. 

Numerical results mislead 
ing, 90. 

OBEDIENCE and knowledge, 
41 ; Absolute, Power of, 
159, 160 ; Implicit, 157 ; 
Spirit of, 154 ; to be prompt, 
155 ; of soldiers of Car- 
math, 160. 

Occupation of whole field, 

99- 

Offence of the Cross, 167. 
Olympic Games, 312. 
Ongole, 250, 302. 
Ono, God of War, 243. 
Opening of doors, 286. 
Opium curse, 91. 
Opportunity, 287. 
Ordained Ministry, Reasons 

for, 35. 
Order of Missions, 157. 



330 



INDEX. 



Outpouring of the Spirit on 

all flesh, 149. 
Ovaries in plants, 119. 

PAGELL, 175. 

Pai Marire, 87. 

Pan, 274. 

Pantheon, Painting in, 313. 

Pantomime,Witnessing in, 51. 

Panwas, 259. 

Papal Europe, 1853, 298. 

Paradox of Missions, 53. 

Passion for numbers, 89, 120 ; 

Souls, 48, 174. 
Paton, Rev. J. G., 252. 
Paul an athlete, 312. 
Paul as miracle worker, 232. 
Paul s methods, 157 ; First to 

Jews, 158. 

Paul s service to God, 126. 
Paul s sphere of work, 156. 
Peace, Salutation of, 24. 
Pentecost, Typical, 209. 
Perfection of benevolence, 166. 
Perpetuity of witnessing, 55. 
Persecuted benefactors, 282. 
Persecution in timeof Stephen, 

33- 

Persecutions, The Ten, 79. 
Peter and James, 156. 
Peter at Joppa, 52. 
Philip baptizing, 34. 
Philip the Evangelist, 156. 
Phoenician sailors in Spain, 

73- 

Piety, a higher type, 223 ; 
Prevailing type of, 76, 77. 

Pipper, Nathaniel, 254. 

Plan of God, 103, 104; Mis 
sions, 57. 



Plan, the Word, 59. 

Planting of the Lord, 238. 

Plants in Lord s garden, 121. 

Polynesia, Missions in, 248. 

Pomare II., 254. 

Poverty of Christ, 167. 

Power of Holy Ghost, 23, 25 ; 
Spirit, 209, 210 ; in Missions, 
189. 

Prayer, 314 ; against becom 
ing great, 120 ; and con 
viction, 41 ; answered in 
Missions, 291 ; answered, 
309, 310. 

Preaching, lack of power, 
223 ; of primitive disciples, 

33- 

Preparatio Evangelica, 220. 
Presence of Christ, 25, 141, 

190. 

Printing, Discovery of, 286. 
Problem of Missions, 153. 
Progress of the race, 287. 
Progress of doctrines as to 

Missions, 120. 
" Promise of the Father," 22, 

190 ; Christ, 141. 
Propagation of Gospel, 118. 
Prophet, Receiving a, 136 ; 

Reward of, 136. 
Prussian army, 159. 
Psalm II., 192. 
Purpose of God in this age, 

64, 65. 

QUIXOTISM in Missions, 102. 

RATIO of conversion, 256 ; 

Progress, 256. 
Recompense not to be sought 

from man, 166. 



INDEX. 



33 



Reformation, 284. 

Regions beyond, 313. 

Resistance to Messiah, 196. 

Responsibility for lost souls, 
28. 

Results not to be waited for, 
67, TOO. 

Resurrection of Christ, 195. 

Retzsch s Illustrations, 170. 

Revival of 1857-8, 293. 

Revolt against Christ, 196. 

Reward, God s administra 
tion of, 97, 136, 137. 

Ridicule of Missions, 273. 

Ripon, Bishop of, 56, 240. 

Robben Island, 184. 

Robertson, Rev. Wm., 276. 

Robinson, Rev. Edwd., D.D., 
30. 

Roman citizens, 213. 

Roman Empire, Conversion 
of, 78-80 ; Soldiers, 213. 

Roses turned to burning coals, 
170. 

Rum curse, 91. 

SACRAMENTAL rights of be 
lievers, 34. 

Sale, Mrs. Elizabeth, 264, 
298. 

Salt of the earth, 45. 

Samaritans and Jews, 163. 

Sandwich Islands. See Ha 
waiian. 

Saving self, 47, 167. 

Scattering abroad of Early 
Christians, 33. 

Schism in the body, 134. 

Schmidt, 175. 

Schway-Mote-Tau Pagoda, 70. 



Scots and cannibalism, 272, 

273- 
Seed of the Kingdom, 111,115, 

116; for propagation, 118; 

Vessels, lack of, 119. 
Seeman, Dr., on cannibalism, 

244. 

Self-abnegation, 47, 167, 168. 
Selfishness, 178 ; in social 

life, 165 ; and self-love, 151. 
Self-sacrifice, 47, 78, 167. 
Selwyn, Bishop, 86. 
Separation, 75. 
Serampore, Carey, etc., 267. 
Sevenfold Plan of Missions, 

64. 

Sheba, Queen of, 63. 
Siam, and Mrs. Judson, 201. 
Sierra Leone Missions, 253. 
Silver accounted nothing of, 

73- 

Simplicity of witnessing, 27. 

Skinner, Dr. T. H., on preach 
ing, 227. 

Smith, Geo., LL.D., 220 ; Dr. 
S. F., 250 ; his poem, 304. 

Socialism, 179. 

Society for Promoting Female 
Education, etc., 264. 

Solomon and Queen of Sheba, 

63- 

Solomon s splendor, 73. 
Speed, when necessary, 312. 
Spinoza, on conceit, 312. 
Spirit of Missions, 151 ; Love, 

162. 
Spirit of Prayer, 293. 

TABITHA, 136. 

Tabu, system abolished, 81. 



332 



INDEX. 



Tahiti, 247, 275, 300. 

Tamil testimony to Missions, 

268. 

Taylor, J. Hudson, 135. 
Taylor, John, 184. 
Telegraph, First line of, 40. 
Telugus, Missions among, 250, 

33- 
Tempers of mind as affecting 

conception of God, 226. 
Tennyson, Lord, 271. 
Testament, Old and New con 
trasted, 121, 137. 
Testimony to Missions, 283. 
Testimony of Spirit to Christ, 

142. 

Tetzel, 286. 

Thakombau, Chief, 244. 
Thakombau, Last act of, 246. 
Thales, 163. 
Theory, Word, 19. 
Theremin, on eloquence, 215. 
Thibet, 219. 

Thinking rightly of God, 226. 
Thoburn, Bishop, On Church 

and Missions, 169. 
Tholuck s motto, 174. 
Thomas of Aquino, 150. 
Thompson, Dr. Burns, on 

botany, 169. 

Thompson, Sir Rivers, 270. 
Thorns, Crown of, 236. 
Thorns, sign of curse, 236. 
Throne room of Kremlin, 321. 
Tientsin, Treaty of, 295. 
Tierra del Fuego, 274. 
"Times," The London, on 

Missions, 270. 
Tomlin, Rev. Mr., 201. 
Touchstone of piety, 46, 50. 



Tradition, 17. 
Treasury, Kremlin, 321. 
Treaty of Nankin, 295. 
Tribuna Galilei, La, 319. 
Triumphs of Missions, 270, 

271. 
Trumpet and lamp-stand, 

137- 

Trustees of Gospel, 178. 
Truth against the world, 271. 
Truth and its interpreters, 

226. 

Truth and majorities, 92. 
Truth vs. Power, 224, 
Truth not sufficient, 224. 
Turkey and Missions, 252. 
Turkish Missions, crisis of, 

198. 
Tycoon s death, 293. 

UNCTION, 225, 230. 
Unfruitfulness, 120. 
"Unitas fratrum," Seal of, 

175- 

Universal priesthood, 32. 
Universal terms, 98. 
Universality of witnessing, 

28,35- 

VASSAR, " Father," 218. 
Vedanta, 267. 
Virtue, Aromatic, 228. 
Virtue, in eloquence, 215. 
"Voice," 107. 

Voice, Giving a voice to the 
Gospel, 132. 

WARD, Rev. Wm., 256. 
Ward, Rev. Mr., 219. 
Water, The Living, 145, 146, 



INDEX. 



333 



Weapons of war, 207. 

Wesley, John, in Georgia,ioi. 

Westminster Abbey and 
Epistle to Hebrews, 150. 

Westminster Abbey, Two 
scenes in, 128. 

Wheeler, Rev. Chas., 252. 

Wilde, Oscar, 273. 

Wilks, Rev. Matthew, 300. 

Will, Losing ours, gaining 
God s, 179. 

Willard, Francis E., 176. 

Williams, John, 56, 242, 300. 

Willing mind, 138. 

Wilson, Rev. Dr. John., Bom 
bay, 261. 

Winged sandals, 107. 

Winning the world, 76. 

Winning souls, 218. 

Witness among all nations, 
54, 69. 

Witnesses to Christ, 22, 25, 

2?) 142. 

Witnessing, confined to be 
lievers, 43. 

Witnessing, Efficiency of, 215. 

Witnessing, Experimental, 36. 

Witnessing, Naturalness of, 
214. 

Witnessing, Necessary to a 
saved soul, 49. 

Witnessing, simplicity of, 27, 
318. 



Witnessing, Universality of, 

28,35- 

Woman in India, 267. 

Woman of Samaria, 146. 

Word and Work of God to be 
studied, 59. 

Word Witness, a key to the 
Bible, 51-53. 

Working with God, 59, 103. 

World s conference, 272. 

World-field, Its character 
istics, 113. 

World, Kingdoms to be de 
stroyed, 71-74. 

Worldliness, Danger of, 76. 

Worldly society, Hollow and 
shallow, 165. 

XAVIER, Francis, 231. 

YEAR 1858, 292. 
Year, Wonderful, 29*.. 
Young, E. D., 127. 
Young men, Appeal to, 322. 

ZANGUEBAR, 284. 

Zenana Missions, 263, 298. 
Ziegenbalg, 284. 
Zinzendorf, Count von, 174. 
Zinzendorf, Count, conse 
cration of, 174. 



A Great Book on a Great Subject. 



THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS; 

Or, the Voice out of the Cloud. 

BY THE 

REY. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. 
Paper, 35c. Cloth, $1.25. 



" One of the most important books to the Cause of Foreign Missions 
and through them to Home Missions also which ever has been written. 
It should be in every library and every household. It should be read, 
studied, taken to heart, and prayed over." Congregationalist. 

"Surely if the inspiration and the force of this Crisis of Missions 
were imbibed and felt by the whole sacramental host, there would be a 
mighty uprising, a grand anointing, and a holy crusade to storm the 
kingdom of darkness all along the line, and speedily add the crown of 
earth to Christ s many crowns !" Homiletical Review. 

" This is a book for every Christian to read with prayer and a sin 
cere desire to know his personal duty in this great and glorious work." 
N. Y. Observer. 

"We do not hesitate to say that this book is the most purposeful, 
earnest and intelligent review of the mission work and field which has ever 
been given to the church." Christian Statesman. 

"A closely compacted array of facts, arranged under distinct heads 
and welded together by the strong rivets of logic, vivified and made almost 
a thing of life by the evident presence throughout its pages of the guiding 
power of the Holy Ghost." Right Rev. \Vm. Bacon Stevens, Bishop cj 
Pennsylvania. 



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^TUMBLING $TONES 

REMOVED FROM THE WORD OF GOD, 

By Rev. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D. 



18mo, Clothy - 50 Cents. 



In this little book many supposed difficulties of the Bible 
are shown not to be such in fact, and such simple rules of 
interpretation of a general character are laid down as to 
make clear the literal truth of many passages, which, to 
some minds, have previously been doubtful, or only ca 
pable of the explanation that they were used metaphori 
cally. The book is especially timely, now that general 
interest is turned toward the interpretation of the Scrip 
tures. 

" A little volume worth its weight in gold, in which many of the difficult 
and obscure passages of Scripture are made clear and easy to be under 
stood. Many persons find these hindrances to their faith, but, when ex 
plained in the light of the customs and circumstances of their day, the 
changes in the meaning of words, etc., they are simple and clear enough. 
It is a little book especially valuable to young Christians." 

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"This is a small book, but it contains a good deal removing many sup 
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one to be highly commended." Presbyterian Observer. 

" This little hand-book of Dr. Pierson s will be of great help to many peo 
ple, and we commend it to those who are anxious to have some of the com 
mon difficulties in the way of understanding the Word of God removed." 

Herald and Presbyter. 

" Fair difficulties are fairly stated and fairly dealt with in a kindly way. 
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EVANGELISTIC WORK 

In Principle and Practice. 

By Rev. ARTHUR T. PIERSON, E>.D. 
12mo, Cloth, $1.25. 



A new book on that method which has been one of the most 
potent means of building up the Christian Church Evangelization. 
It is written by an acknowledged master of the subject. 

" This book is preeminently a book for the hour. It is at once 
a fruit of the reviving evangelistic spirit and a welcome and powerful 
force for the promotion of that spirit among the disciples of Christ. 
All who are working for Christ, especially all ministers and teachers, 
ought to procure and study this book." Christian Statesman. 

" More truth, perhaps, than can be found in any single uninspired 
book, concerning evangelistic work, is included in a volume with 
this title, by Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. Truths of the first importance 
are spoken concerning methods and the treatment of the poor. After 
having set down the principle as he believes it to be, the author has 
enforced it in sketches of Whitefield, Howard, Finney, Chalmers, 
Moody, Bliss, and others. The book ought to have a wide circulation ; 
it cannot but be productive of the greatest good." Hartford Post. 

" Every phase of the question is discussed, the methods and 
merits of different evangelists are set forth, apostolic and modern 
preaching compared, and the causes of failure and success in minis 
terial work portrayed. It is a book to be studied by all church 
workers. " Indianapolis Journal. 

" The book is dedicated to Dwight L. Moody, and would seem 
to contain nearly all that can be said in the way of information, 
instruction, example, or exhortation upon the subject." 

Baptist Standard. 

" The chapters on the great Evangelists are delightfully written 
in a lofty and derout spirit. " Indianapolis News. 

" His views will be accepted as of orthodox authority." 

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THE ONE GOSPEL; 

OR 

The Combination of the Narratives of the Four Evangelists 
in one Complete Record. 

1SD BY RETV. ARTHUR T. FIERSON. D.D. 

12mo Flexible Cloth, Red Edges, 75 Cents. 
Limp Morocco, Full Gilt, $2.OO. 



The four Gospels have been aptly styled "Four Witnesses." 
In a Court of law, after witnesses have taken the stand, it is of great 
importance so to sum up their testimony with care and skill, as to pre 
sent at one view every particular detail of the evidence, avoiding 
both omission and repetition, and at the same time bringing unity 
and harmony out of seeming diversity and divergence. 

Somewhat such is the aim of this work. Each Evangelist furnishes 
some matter, found, if at all, not so fully in the other records. It 
has been sought to blend all the various features of the four narratives 
into one, without losing whatever is distinctive in each Where 
words or phrases are retained which seem almost equivalent, the 
risk of repetition has been preferred to that of losing even a slight 
shade of meaning needed to complete the inspired picture of the life, 
words and works of the Son of God, and it has been sought to secure 
a full rather than a smooth rendering. 

The text of the authorized version has been closely followed, with 
out the italics, which there mark words supplied by the translators; 
and to avoid confusion, using the word " demon " for " devil " where 
evil spirits, not Satan, are meant. Paragraph divisions, as determined 
by the plain sense of each passage, have also been adopted to avoid 
the loss of connection and continuity. 

Without taking the place of the four Gospels this book may be an 
aid in their study a commentary wholly biblical, whereby the reader 
may, at one view, see the complete and harmonious testimony of four 
independent witnesses. 



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MODERN CITIES 

AND THEIR RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS. 

By Rev. SAMUEL LANE LOOMIS. 

With an Introduction by Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D.X>. 

12mo, Cloth, $1.OO. 



" For all who love their fellow-men, this book will be a stimulus 
and a guide. It presents clearly and forcibly the increasingly difficult 
problem of the modern city, and will prove to be a storehouse of in 
formation to all workers in this field. Like Our Country, by Rev. 
Dr. Strong, this book is one of the most marked books of the current 
year. Every worker in city or country should read and inwardly 
digest this suggestive volume." Rev. A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D.D. 

" This volume is in point and substance the companion volume to 
be read in connection with Our Country, by the Rev. Josiah Strong, 
D.D. The author s sociology is sound. The chapters on methods 
of philanthropic endeavor, and especially those which show what has 
been done, are wise and helpful. We commend the book heartily to 
our readers. " The Independent. 

" This is an important little volume, and a fit companion to place 
side by side with the remarkable work by Dr. Strong, entitled Our 
Country. It is a book which will startle many and convince all who 
read it. It ought to go into every household in the land." Christian 
at Work. 

"The author has reached more nearly to the true cause of the 
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with whose works we are acquainted." Hartford Post. 

"A striking and sensible book one of the clearest and best things 
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Christian Advocate. 

"A timely book, well written, sensible, practical. A book that 
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" The present volume is directly to the point, wise, timely, and 
earnest." Christian Sanctuary. 

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A WORK OS THE HIGHEST CHURCH EFFICIENCY. 



THE WORKING CHURCH 

By CHARLES F. THWING, D.D. 



Wmo, Cloth, Gilt Top, 75 Cents. 



A careful treatise on the best methods of making the church 
organization an efficient instrument. Its topics .jre : I. The Church 
and the Pastor. II. The Character of Church Work. III. The 
Worth and Worthlessness of Methods. IV. Among the Children. 
V. Among the Young People. VI. Among Business Men. VII. 
From the Business Point of View. VIII. Two Special Agencies. 
IX. The Treatment of Strangers. X. The Unchurched. XI. Duties 
Towards Benevolence. XII. The Rewards of Christian Work. 
XIII. The Country Church. 

" It would be difficult to point to another work on the subject in which so 
much valuable material is furnished, and in so small a compass. . . . Not a 
word is wasted. Clearly, simply, forcibly, what is intended to be conveyed is 
stated. . . . But its chief charm and "assurance of value is its uncommon 
common sense." The Congregational ist. 

" Full of thought, vigor and push, of sound wisdom delightfully infused 
with devout feeling, it is sure to do good wide and long." 

Rev. R. S. Starrs, D.D. 

" Worth ten times its weight in gold. . . . To put into active -operation 
the sentiments contained in this volume would set every Christian to work, 
and soon turn the world upside down through the fire of Christian energy." 

Baltimore Methodist. 

" In the very front rank of all these most helpful books we place Dr. Th wing s 
new volume on The Working Church. " Golden Rule. 

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common sense the common wisdom of pastors and churches. The style is 
clear, crisp and always to the point." The Advance. 

" Every chapter is full of pith, bristling with points, wise, sound, and prac 
tical." The Evangelist. 

" Eminent for its brevity and fulness, its good sense and utility." 

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" A practical, exceedingly sensible, and thoroughly helpful book." 

Christian Statesman. 

" If every pastor had the spirit, and enterprise, and tact these pages call for, 
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EXPOSITORY THOUGHTS T H N E GOSPELS. 

By Bt. Eev. J. C. ETLE, D.D., Bishop of Liverpool, 

7 vols., 12mo, cloth, in a set, - $8.0O. 

Matthew, 1 vol. ; Mark, 1 vol. ; Luke, 2 vols. ; John, 3 vols. 

Each volume, - $1.25. 



The seven volumes, convenient in size and aggregating nearly 
3,000 pages, are devoted as follows : one to Matthew, one to Mark 
two to Luke, three to John. As indicated by the title, the work is 
pre-eminently expository in character. In his treatment of Mat 
thew, Mark and Luke, the author divides the text of sacred Scrip 
ture into passages of about twelve verses each, which, taken as a 
whole, serve as a basis for a continuous series of short, plain " Ex 
positions." To this method he adds, when treating the Gospel by 
John, the verse by verse exegesis. The practical lessons and infer 
ences from the passages given are followed by notes explanatory, 
doctrinal and hortatory, and the views of other commentators are 
presented from time to time. 

" It is the kernels without the shells." Cliristian Union. 

"It is the master work of a master workman, and shall abide among the 
noblest works of the noblest expositor of the truth of God." Religious Herald. 

" As practical expositions, these Notes on the Gospels are not excelled by 
any works on the Gospels in our language." Evangelical Repository. 

" We are always glad to get a new book from the pen of this admirable 
writer. His thoughts are warm, earnest, spiritual and practical. Indeed 
there are few modern writers who mo_re happily combine the instructive with 
the popular style of writing." A eic York Observer. 

" His commentary on the Evangelist John, is the best practical commentary 
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utter enemy of cant and shams of every kind." Southwestern [Presbyterian. 

" We regard them as taking the lead of all works of the same kind in respect 
to soundness of doctrinal views and in regard to clear and consistent state 
ments pertaining to the fundamental points of redemption. The Thoughts 
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value in the family, in the school, and in the; instructions of the llouse of 
God." Episcopalian. 



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A NEW BOOK BY DR. CUYLER. 



HOW TO BE A PASTOR. 

BY THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D. 



16mo, Gilt Top, 75 Cents. 



CONTENTS. 

I. IMPORTANCE OF PASTORAL LABOR. II. PASTORAL VISITS. 
III. VISITATION OF THE SICK FUNERAL SERVICES. IV. TREAT 
MENT OF THE TROUBLED. V. How TO HAVE A WORKING CHURCH. 
VI. TRAINING CONVERTS. VII. PRAYER -MEETINGS. VIII. A 
MODEL PRAYER - MEETING. IX. REVIVALS. X. DRAWING THE 
Bow AT A VENTURE. XI. WHERE TO BE A PASTOR. XII. JOYS 
OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 

"It is not everyone who has wisdom and opportunity, at the close 
of a long career of usefulness, so to take account of the results of his 
work as to bring to light the secrets of his success, and to present them 
in concrete form to those who shall come after him. This Dr. Cuyler 
has been able to do. In the little book before us we have the key to 
the pastor s triumphs over the difficulties and problems of a forty years 
pastorate a master-key indeed, whicli will fit the wards of many a 
young pastor s perplexities, and open for him the door into a large 
freedom in that dealing with the human heart which is his important 
work. " Evangelist. 

"The fruit of large native sense, long experience, wide observa 
tion, and devout consecration." Congregationalist. 

"If any man living understands the subject of this little book it is 
Dr. Cuyler. He writes briefly and to the point." Independent. 

"Ought to be read by all pastors, young and old. Dr. Cuyler has 
been, himself, almost an ideal pastor. N. Y. Tribune. 



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REVISION BASED ON THE CENSUS OF 1590. 

A NEW EDITION (150TII THOUSAND) OP 

OUR COUNTRY: 

Its Present Crisis and Its Possible Future. 

By Rev. JOSIAH STRONG, D. D. 



12mo 9 28O Pages. Paper, 3O Cts; ClotJi, GO Cts. 

The revised " Our Country])" is the first general application of the 
revelations of the last Census to the discussions of the great ques 
tions of the day. It shows the changes of the last ten years, and 
pictures the actual present situation. 

This edition has been enlarged by the insertion of a chapter on 
" Religion in the Public Schools," and by such additions to other 
chapters, that the book now contains more than one-third more 
matter than the earlier issues. Diagrams and a map have also been 
employed to forcibly illustrate the more startling statistical facts 
and comparisons. The book has been thoroughly revised from 
cover to cover, and much of it has been entirely rewritten. 

" The first edition made the author s name a household word all over this 
land, and in other lands also. The book in its present form has been en 
larged by the insertion of a chapter on Religion in the Public Schools, 1 
and by much other matter which the Census of 1890 enabled the author to 
introduce. Its facts are collated and marshalled with rare skill. It is a 
powerful and patriotic book. It stirs the blood; it warms; it inspires; it 
thrills and it instructs. It ought to be read by every citizen of the Repub 
lic; it will be read by all our people who wish to keep abreast of needful 
knowledge regarding our country. Get the book. Read and reread the 
chapter on Romanism; read every chapter. Read it just now next to your 
Bible." Christian Inquirer. 

" If the means were at our command, we know of no service we could per 
form more practical and effective for the cause of truth and righteousness 
than to place a copy of Our Country in the hands of every man and wom 
an in the land." Christian at Work. 

"More than ever, this book is the means by which a patriot may under 
stand the true condition of this land, and may learn what needs to be done 
to secure its future prosperity." Gulden Rule. 

" This is a new and revised edition of Dr. Strong s admirable work, based 
on the Census of 1890. It is an important and powerful book. The facts it 
presents are so momentous that every patriotic American should read it. 
Over 140,000 copies have already been sold, and we hope its circulation will 
reach a million during the present year." Lutheran Observer. 

" To the many thousands of former readers we would say, emphatically: 
Buy and read this newer one." New York Christian Advocate. 



For sale by all bookdealers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of the price, by 

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THE 

GREAT VALUE AND SUCCESS 

OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. 

PROVED BY DISTINGUISHED WITNESSES. 



BY REV. JOHN LIGGINS. 

With an Introduction by Rev, ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D. 
12mo, 249 pages. Paper, 35c. ; cloth, 75c. 



A POWERFUL presentation of overwhelming evidence, mainly from 
independent sources, and largely that of Diplomatic Ministers, Viceroys, 
Governors, Military and Naval Officers, Consuls, scientiic and other 
Travellers in Heathen and Mohammedan countries, and in India and 
the British Colonies. The book also contains leading facts and late 
statistics of the missions. 

"The best answc. >vhich could be given to recent as well as former attacks on 
foreign missionary work. A grand service has been done to the cause of Christian 
missions, and I am sure the book will accomplish a vast amount of good." Rev. 
S. L. Baldwin, D D., Secretary tf the Methodist missionary Society. 

"The author has performed a service of infinite value. His book will be a 
revelation to many and an inspiration to all " Rev. A. Sutherland, D. D., in the 
Missionary Outlook. 

"By far the most remarkable book on foreign missions yet published." The 
Church of To-Day. 

" I have been profoundly interested. It is one of the most graphic stories I have 
ever read " Bishop H~ hippie. 

"It is a settler. Send out the book as on the wings of the winds." Rev. 
Theodore L. Cnylcr, D. D. 

" A royal book. A mighty massing of testimony." Rev. A. T. Fierson, D. D 

" The book will be found of immense value." New York Observer. 

" A triumphant demonstration of the success of missions." Canadian Methodist 
ftlagazine. 

"An admirable work, and pre-eminently timely " Bishop Potter. 



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/