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THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

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THE DAY MISSIONS LIBRARY

CENTENARY

MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.

DELIVERED AT MISSIONARY CONFERENCES AND ELSE
WHERE, UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE AMER
ICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION,
IN THE YEARS 1S92 AND 1893.

" Christianity is missionary if it is anything."
Dr. John A. Broadus.

PHILADELPHIA :
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY,
1420 Chestnut Street.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, by the
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY,
In the Office of tlie Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Introduction  5
I. Christianity Essentially Missionary.
John A. Broadus, D. D., LL.D. ... 11
II. The Author of Missions.
Rev. W. R. L. Smith, D. D., . . . .28
III. The Horizon of Christ.
Rev. W. H. P. Faunce,  36
IV. Motives to Missions Among the Heathen.
Henry E. Robins, D. D., LL. D  46
V. The Home Relation to Foreign Missions.
Rev. Philip S. Moxom, D. D., . . .57
VI. Hindrances at Home to the Work op Foreign
Missions. George W. Northrup, D. D., LL. D., . .67
VII. The Appropriate Missionary Giving.
Rev. C H. Moscrip, D. D., . . . .89
VIII. The Cultivation op Personal Responsibility.
Rev. 0. P. Eaohes, D. D., . ' . . .99
IX. The Sphere op a Local Church.
Rev. Lemuel C. Barnes, . . . .112

4 CONTEXTS. PAGE
X. Separated for Mission Work.
Augustus H. Strong, D. D., LL. D., . -125
XL Endued with Power.
Rev. C. J. Baldwin, D. D  133
XII. The Cake for God's Prophet First.
Rev. John Humpstone, D. D., . . . 149
XIII. The Impelling Vision.
Rev. Philip L. Jones,  160
XIV. To Save One We Must Save All.
Lemuel Moss, D. D., LL. D., . . . 173
XV. The Influence of a Century of Missions on
Christian Theology.
AlvahHovey, D. D., LL. D  190
XVI. The Enrichment op Christianity Through its
Missions. Rev. Frederick L. Anderson, . . . 201
XVII. The Apostolic Ambition.
Rev. A. J. Gordon, D. D  217

INTRODUCTION.

The missionary conferences before which the following
selected addresses were given were unique meetings.
They originated in a deep conviction that if missions are
to be genuinely rather than perfunctorily extended, the
biblical and spiritual principles, out of which true mis
sions spring, must be freshly and repeatedly studied.
Though much employed in connection with the late
endeavors of the Missionary Union to enlarge its work
and increase its income, these conferences sprang from no
secondary motive. They were, primarily, a call to a
renewed study of the spiritual life and its practical corol
laries. They afforded also an opportunity for such study
and prayer as are impracticable at mere anniversary
meetings. Such study and prayer we hold to be basal to
any real advance in the method of extending Christ's
work in the earth. Any attempt to deepen missionary
zeal that overlooks the essential condition of a deepened
spirituality must ever prove abortive and futile.
In the range of thought and principles traversed in
these numerous meetings, held in representative sections
of the country, there was, of course, great variety of ex
pression. One ringing keynote, however, characterized
all the discussions. The keynote which prevailed was
this : that true missions- involve on the part "of Christ's
disciples a practical incarnation of the. Christ life and
Christ teaching among peoples historically ignorant of
5

6 INTRODUCTION".
the original incarnation, and so far lost to its' reality,
blessing, and power. Such a re-incarnation Paul had in
mind when he said, "For me to live is Christ " ;i. e.,
" For me to live is for Christ to live." It is not enough
for the missionary to bear a formal system of truth, how
ever divine, to the heathen. He must so hold and carry
that truth as that he becomes the personal embodiment
of it: The truth thus lives — the Word incarnate — in him.
Accordingly, as we thus conceive of missions, our
notion of three things, lying at the root of all, will be
vitally affected : our notion of motive to missions, our no
tion of individual consecration to missions, and our notion
of the form of effort in which missions are to be carried on.
Our thought of the motive to missions will be modified.
The motive to missions will be seen to be interior and
vital, instead of being external and formal. It has been
common to speak of " motives to missions " as if they
were several, and based on something without us.
Advocates are wont to appeal for missions on various
external grounds : such as the forlorn state of the heathen,
their ignorance, their poverty, their wretchedness, here
and hereafter, etc. These considerations are, properly
speaking, not motives at all, but rather occasions, in view
of which something deeper, and within the soul, acts.
This something, which is deeper, is motive. Truly
speaking, the real motive is always within ; so within as
that it is of the very deepest life of the man. The
motive thus becomes motor, charged with the very life of
God. It acts as God would act, and for the same reason,
because it is of its nature so to do. It exists and operates
quite independently of the outward conditions of men,
just as God's love does. It sjjrings, like the rays of the

INTRODUCTION. 7
sun, from deep internal fires. It runs as the streams run
down into the sea, because the hidden fountains impel,
and because the moral gravitation of the spheres . induce.
The true source of this motive in the missionary is the
Christ formed within him, " the new man," " the second
Adam," " the Lord from heaven," who is conforming the
disciple to his own image, and thus as a consequence
reaching and saving mankind.
Our notion of individual consecratidh to missions will
be elevated, in the light of our conception of what real
missions involve. It has been common in some quarters
to speak of Christian work as so much " done for God,"
instead of so much work "with God," or better still, as
the out-working of the divine life, "which inwardly
worketh itself mightily in us."1 Christian service in
volves more than the mere conscious labor of one person
ality rendered to another — its quality and value deter
mined mainly by tlie personal force of the individual.
Such a conception may indeed save one's metaphysics,
but at the expense of one's Bible. The true missionary
— the kind whom these missionary conferences have
sought to recuit — must be more than a mere agent for
God. He is to be, in some profound sense, a miniature
reproduction of the Christ; one in whom Christ is
formed ; one who can say with the apostle, " Always
bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that
the life also of Jesus" (namely, the resurrection life),
" may be manifested in our body." Thus the natural,
metaphysical personality in the biblical thought is
sunk in the-mystical personality, dual indeed, incident
to the re-incarnation of the Christ in the missionary.
1 Greek, iwpyiv, Col. 1 : 29; Eph. 2 : 2; 1 Thess. 2 : 18.

g INTRODUCTION.
Of such a personality mere philosophy may take no
account, but of this the New Testament takes special
account. It is, perhaps, Paul's fundamental, evangelical
conception that the old ego is dead and buried, and then
risen again in a new ego. It is the essential meaning of
baptism on the subjective side. "I am crucified with
Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me : . . who loved me, and gave himself for me." It is this
ego who is the essential Christian ; and such a Christian
is always, in turn, by virtue of his new nature, the mis
sionary according to Christ. With this conception of the
missionary in mind, he who is seen by the church going
forth on his perilous, or self-denying Christ errand, is
to be regarded, to all intents and purposes, as the Christ
himself on his own continuous mission of seeking the
lost. "He that heareth you heareth me; and he that
despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me
despiseth Him that sent me." The true Christian, or the
true church, will, therefore, no more think of being indif
ferent to the welfare of the missionary than he would be to
the welfare of Christ himself, were he still upon the earth.
If missions are thus conceived as the issue of the
Christ life continually re-incarnated in the church, our
notion of the form of mission effort to be rendered will be
correspondingly transformed. We suspect that it is com
mon for the church in its missioning to think of itself as
going forth to gain adherents, to recruit communicants, to
augment itself and thus ultimately, of course, to enrich
heaven. It is possible for such a conception uncon
sciously to glide into a refined form of self seeking.
Such propagation of Christianity readily becomes mere
propagandism, the primary aim of which is. usually to

INTRODUCTION. 9
get rather than to give. Such a form of religion thus
becomes an end to itself. This is one of the cardinal
errors of Rome, which, wlien finished, is paganism and
idolatry. Such is not the form of missions after Christ.
The essence of Christianity is grace — pure giving — some
thing for nothing. God's desire for this lost world is
that he may gratuitously impart himself to it. The
Divine love is but the infinite yearning of God to impart
his own form of blessed living to his rational creatures.
To compass this it stops at no cost. Hence the atone
ment — " the Lamb slain from before the foundation of
the world" — a constitutional expression of the Divine
nature in its infinite love and holiness reaching after men ;
not something done "to make God willing" to save.
Hence, also, Christ's characteristic expression of himself,
" I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might
have it more abundantly." Hence, also, the commission
which Christ gave to the twelve, "As a gift (gratui
tously) ye have received, as a gift (gratuitously) impart." l
That is to say, the church is gratuitously to impart the
grace and life which it has received on precisely the same
principles on which God gratuitously imparts grace and
life to it. The missionary, accordingly, goes to the
heathen primarily not that he may get, but that he may
give. He goes not that he may get even a convert, not
that he may win a church, not even that he may win
trophies for Christ, precious as all these are ; he goes that
he may impart his own spiritual blessedness to others.
He is not fit to go, nor is he divinely commissioned to go,
until he has this blessedness in overflowing measure to
impart. He goes as a spiritual capitalist, with measure-
1 Matt. 10 : 8 ; Bible Union Version, Imp. Edition.

10 INTRODUCTION.
less resources within and behind him ; resources not for
investment with a view of return to himself, but re
sources that he may give away outright, looking for no
return to himself except such as God's grace may be
pleased of his own good pleasure to bestow. Trophies,
indeed, will be won, compensations will come, enrichment
of heaven will certainly ensue ; but all these, and vastly
more, will be returned, into the bosom of the missionary,
incidentally to his own self-giving, on the principle of the
divine paradox, " He that loseth his liffej the same shall
save it."" ("Save it alive," "Give it a living birth." *)
The more the missionary imparts, the greater will his
riches become with which to continue to give ; the more
he loses the more will he save alive. " It is more blessed
to give than to receive." This, the crown of the beati
tudes, is his, and it is his only, who has entered into the
experience and habit of the Prince of givers.
When such a conception of missions as we have indi
cated shall come to prevail in the habitual thought and
life of the church, how different will be her working
attitude to the missions of the world, whether near or
far ! She will regard them, not as something extraneous
to herself; something optional, which she may engage in
or not at pleasure ; not as a mere annex to her working
apparatus, but rather as something constitutional to. her
very life, her new being, as they are constitutional to God
himself, and to Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, and
to the Holy Ghost, whose indwelling in us, as in a living
temple, is the sole efficiency of all Christian under
takings. Henry C. Mabie.
Boston, Sept., 1893. 1 Rotherhara's Version.

CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.

i.
CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY.1
JOHN A. BROADUS, D. D., LL. D.,
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
What was the most audacious word that was ever
spoken in human language ? Well, I think it was when
a young mechanic from an obscure village in an out-of-
the-way and despised part of the ancient Roman Empire,
surrounded by a company of followers, with a small inner
circle, after a few years of wandering about that little
country, and talking to people, lifted up his voice and
said : " Go, disciple all the nations to me." To him —
all the nations — it would have been out of all question ;
but you will please remember that he, whom I have
spoken of with such terms of limitation, had not long
before that risen from the dead, as he had predicted he
would do, and not long after that was to rise to the throne
of God. He was a missionary himself. He was the first
Christian missionary. God sent his Son into the world,
not to judge the world, but that the world through
him, might be saved. He was sent. He was a missionary
from heaven to earth. He had a very short period of
labor — some three years, more or less, and that is all.
1 Printed from a stenographic report. 11

12 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
He confined it, for the most part, to the little country in
which he lived. Yet there were glimpses of something
more. The only occasions I remember on which he
expressed especial commendation of faith were when he
commended tip faith of a heathen Roman captain, and
said : " I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel,"
and when on another occasion, in reference to a heathen
woman in Phoenicia, he said : " O woman, great is thy
faith." So when, two or three days before the end of his
brief career, one of his followers came to him and told
him that there were some Greeks who wanted to see him,
he said : " I . . . will draw all men unto me."
He sent out his immediate followers on a brief mission.
Some people have taken the instructions of that mission
and have applied them without the necessary changes,
without the changes he himself distinctly referred to
afterward, as if they were the law for all missionary
work ; but this was a little mission of a few brief weeks,
or a few months, in the little district where they lived,
where their own people would take care of them. He
told them himself before the end, that things were to be
otherwise with them. He sent them out at first on a
brief mission. But now — probably it was when the five
hundred were present, though we are not sure of that —
the eleven of the inner circle were present on a mountain
in Galilee, and he said: "Go! Go!" Before that he
said : " Go not unto the Gentiles." Now he says : " Go
unto all the world. Go, disciple all the nations." It was
a missionary business. It was a missionary idea. From
the beginning it has been missionary, if i{ has been any
thing. And very soon after that he did another remark
able thing about it. He appeared in the clouds of heaven,

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 13
amid a great light, and spoke in a voice which, to the rest
of the company, was but a strange sound, but which
entered into the mind and soul of one man who had been
the leading oppcser and persecutor of him and his fol
lowers, persecuting' him in their jiersons, and bade him
become a missionary, chose him to be the leading mis
sionary in the work of spreading the knowledge of him
and his salvation.
What does the word apostle mean ? All those present
who have dabbled in Greek at all know that apostolos
nfeans missionary. That was the very idea of the thing.
He names them missionaries. We make a distinction,
but the distinction is not there. And this man was to be
the head missionary. He was a man who would be use
ful anywhere. He seems to us peculiarly suited to be
useful at home. Why, when the Lord appeared to him
in a trance in the temple, and said: "Get thee hence,"
this young man, though he had never been wanting in
devotion, remonstrated, thought he knew better. You say
that is very strange. I doubt if there is a man on this
platform who hasn't had more or less of just the same
sort of experience. Sometimes the Lord seems, by his
providence and by inner admonitions,, to be indicating to
a man that he ought to do a certain thing, and yet he
thinks he knows best. This man, in his trance,, said :
" Lord, I am the very man to stay at home. They know
I persecuted thy servants. When the blood of thy first
martyr was shed, I was standing near and held the gar
ments. I am the very man. When I come to them they
listen to me." He said : " Hush ! Get out ! I will send
thee far hence to the heathen." A missionary, yes, a
foreign missionary, a missionary to the heathen.
2

14 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
He loved his own people ; and does anybody suppose
that a missionary doesn't love his own people? Ask one
of these men who have sorrowed and sighed in a foreign
land for the sound of their native language and the sight
of the old faces they loved in their homes. Ask them if
they don't love their own people. That isn't what it
means. He loved his own people, went to his own people
wherever he found them and tried to do them good. And
still he was a foreign missionary. In spite of all this
adaptation to stay at home he was to be a foreign mission
ary. And now I pray you to note this : That as a foreign
missionary, Paul the apostle, not only did the great work
we know he accomplished in the spread of the gospel
among those who were heathen, but he actually did, I do
believe, far more for his own people than he could have
done if he had stayed at home and confined his labors to
them. Dr. Morehouse, do you agree with me '! (Yes.) As
a foreign missionary he did more for his own people, the
Jews, than if he had stayed at home.
The case is not singular. It brings to my mind imme
diately Adoniram Judson. I never think of him without
emotion. I remember he was the first man to whom I
ever made a gift that amounted to anything. When six
teen years old, as assistant in a school, I gave a dollar
and a half to the foreign missionary collection, and
thought about Judson when I gave it. He was my mis
sionary and my hero in those days; and I remember
when the preacher came and preached two sermons and
turned the student of medicine toward the idea that he
would have to give it up and be a minister, the passage
that moved me most of all was that about Judson. If he
had staved at home he would have been a very useful

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 15
Congregational minister somewhere in New England, in
the Old South Church or somewhere ; or a very useful
professor in a New England college, but I never should
have heard of him in my youth. Now, Adoniram Judson
is a great electric light that shines all over the land, and
a star in the firmament of our modern Chribtianity that
shines all over the world. How much more he has done
for his own people than if he had stayed at home. Don't
you be afraid of the loss that will come to our own Chris
tianity from giving up the choicest of our young men
and the fairest of our girls, if they feel moved of God to
go hence to the heathen. The Lord knows what he is
about, and do you take care how you resist the leadings
of this providence and the leadings of this faith, for self
or for those you love.
Christianity, I say, was missionary from the start.
That is the very idea of the thing ; that is the genius of
the machine. It wasn't made to run on any narrow
gauge. Yon will need a broad-gauge track for it to run
on. It wasn't made to be run on any narrow principles.
It isn?t intended that it should run around in a circle, and
never get far away from where it started. Christianity is
missionary if it is anything.
Why did it ever cease to be so ? Well, for a long time
the early followers of the Founder of Christianity were
missionaries. What devotion they showed ! Nobody to
help them. The government all against them, persecut
ing them if it took any notice of them at all. Again and
again they perished by hundreds and by thousands. Far
and wide they went to spread Christianity, and all the
glory of its early history was its missions ; and, thank
God, that early movement did not cease till missionaries

16 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
from Greece or missionaries from Italy reached your an
cestors or mine, who were downright heathen. And while
thev had some good qualities, — these Germans, and most
of us are descended from that race, — while they had some
very noble qualities, as Tacitus describes and Csesar
mentions, yet they were heathen, real pagans. If it
hadn't been for some people in Greece and Italy who
believed it was worth while to carry the gospel to the
heathen, what would have become of all our European
and American civilization ? What would have come to
you and me? Those people, thank God, believed in
carrying the gospel to the heathen. Those people, thank
God, didn't give up if some of them were killed. They
kept on until they won our ancestors as triumphs of mis
sionary work.
What made the thing gradually wear out ? Well, it
was this way. They wouldn't let Christianity stay in its'
primitive simplicity as a movement for preaching to indi
viduals, regenerating them, winning them by teaching,
public and private, and by example and personal influ
ence. They became dissatisfied with that. This Christi
anity carried its missionary labors over to a place where
there arose in the Roman Empire a very skillful politi
cian indeed, who thought it would be a good plan to take
the new religion and make it a plank in his political
platform. His name was Constantine. He made it a
plank in his platform and he triumphed with it. He
undertook to patronize Christianity, and though Chris
tianity could get along with all the opposition of politics,
somehow it didn't get along with the friendship of poli
ticians; and I don't know but that it has sometimes
happened over here, right here,' that where religion and

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 17
politics go hand in hand, politics is mighty apt to get the
upper hand. It was so then. They Judaized Chris
tianity and they Romanized Christianity, and that took
tl p foreign missionary element largely out of it. They
- daized Christianity by introducing the idea of conse
crated houses and sacrifices, and all splendid ceremonies
that had religious power. They brought in the notion
that the two ceremonies of the Christian religion which
had the minimum of ceremony, were both of them to
have some strange, mystical nature, by which people were
to be regenerated by the first ceremony, and people were
afterward to be saved by the second. That was. Judaizing
Christianity ; it was taking away the idea of appealing
by instruction, appealing to the mind and conscience, and
substituting an appeal by ceremonies and sacred externals
and all that sort of thing.
And then the other thing was Romanizing Christianity.
The Romans had such a genius for government that they
were not only the greatest of the ancient empires that
lasted the longest and ruled the most powerfully, but
when they got hold of Christianity they infused their ge
nius for government into tlie organization of Christianity,
that lasts to. this day as the wonder of this world. But
it wasn't primitive Christianity. It was the idea that
you have got to rule over people to make Christians of
them ; you have got to organize and govern and make
them Christians; and if they won't, you will make them
suffer for it, if they won't be Christians and be the kind
of Christians you want them to be. All done by a grand,
centralized Roman organization, and the genius of
Christianity forgotten. And so it went on for many
centuries, this sorrowful- history ; but it seems to me that

18 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
is the history of the whole matter. That is the way the
foreign missionary idea . disappeared. Men undertook,
century after century, more or less, some work in the
countries around these Romans, but it never accomplished
very much. Or the Jesuits, organized particularly for
that purpose, did wonders, prodigies of magnificent
devotion, for which they deserve all eulogy and honor.
But then, when they got to China and got to Japan, it
was to make Christians of the heathen by a ceremony
and then to keep them Christians by another ceremony,
and that wasn't Christianity. No wonder they left such
a bad name in China and Japan that when the enemies
of Christianity in those countries want to talk against
your missionaries, the worst thing they can say is : " Don't
you believe that these missionaries are different from
those that came here three centuries ago." That is the
worst thing they can say against the missionaries to-day;
and yet the men who did it were men of noble devotion.
And now, what has caused the difference ? Well, I
think the reason why in the last one hundred years, amid
a thousand imperfections and ten thousand shortcomings,
the reason why things are becoming better and looking
really hopeful is that there is something like a return to
the idea of the original Christianity, to the notion that
vou have got to make Christians of people, not by force,
but by instruction, by persuasion and conviction, by in
fluence and example; making Christians of individual
ipeople who can think and understand you, not by cere
monies, not by compulsions, but just in the old-fashioned,
original way.
And that is true not alone of the little handful of de
spised people in England a hundred years ago— you don't

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 19
know how they do despise them there. I don't know but
what I will tell you a story. I remember twenty years
ago being the guest of a London merchant at his resi
dence in the country. He told me with some pride that
he was lord of the manor. The Englishman likes to be
lord of anything. We were playing croquet, the ladies,
my companions, himself and some others, and the wife
came out and sat on the rustic seat, and in an interval of
the game I sat by her side and took up her book. It
was a German book. She said she had brought over a
teacher from Hanover, and was learning German. It
was Schiller, and I turned over the pages pointing out
some of the poems I admired. She said innocently after
ward to one of the young ladies : " This gentleman is a
Baptist preacher. What, a Baptist preacher know Ger
man ? Why, I thought they were all shoemakers or
blacksmiths." The name we honor to-night was that of a shoemaker ;
he called himself a cobbler. They were a handful of de
spised people, but they all took hold. It seems to you
and to me that they had put Christianity on its original
foundation, and went at the thing in that way ; and then
a great many other good people who brought over to
America the traditions of the English establishment, of
the Scottish establishment, or who spread in America the
traditions of another establishment in the most celebrated
part of our country, have gradually taken up many of
those same ideas ; they seem to have gone about trying
to .convert people as individuals, preaching to them, and
instructing them, and praying for them until they have
done an amount of work in foreign missions which ought
to stir us. All honor to the missionary work of the

20 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
Congregationalists, the Methodists, the Episcopalians, and
others. But I do think they have been useful just in
proportion as they have returned, more or less consciously
returned, to the same primitive views of Christianity and
kind of work that were followed by the little despised
handful in England a hundred years ago.
And now I want to say this about it. It was .the
thought that occurred to me when 1 was asked to be here,
and after saying that I could not come, could not tear
myself away from busy work, — then, looking at the list
of engagements at home, found it was possible to stand
in this pulpit once more. It was this thought that
occurred to me. It was the English Baptists who started
this idea of the centennial observance, and then some
Americans got hold of it ; and now, in all parts, wherever
there are any Baptists, they are working at this thing.
I don't think we need to worry ourselves about organic
unity ; let Providence take care of that. We are Bap
tists together. I believe that means that we are trying
to illustrate and retain original Christianity; the idea
that men are to be made Christians by conversion and
not by baptizing them, and that people are to be kept
Christians by instructing them in the truth and not by
ceremonies. We are Baptists because we think that is
the genius of Christianity, and we are trying to maintain
it ; and I call upon all of you who are here to-night :
Be glad if, in the providence of God, you have been led
to be Baptists, and try to see more clearly than ever
before, how in the New Testament the very idea of
Christianity . is set forth, try to get all these original,
primitive conceptions of Christianity. Then, mark you,
don't get fussing about returning to the New Tes-

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 21
tament ideas of ordination and church government, and
stop there, and fail to return to New Testament ideas of
missions. The Baptist who stands up for believers' bap
tism, and for the independence of the churches and all
those things, which I believe in, and then isn't hearty in
the work of missions — well, the fact is, he is no Baptist
at all. He doesn't deserve to call himself that. Let
him go to reading his New Testament over again.
And I, — who live far away from here, yet feel somehow
curiously at home in this very place, and look around on
many faces of those I honor and love, — I come from
what everybody knows is the portion of the country
where we have lots of Baptists, and can't get much out
of them, but have grand expectations for them in the
future. Now, I say here to-night, let us American Bap
tists, and English Baptists, and all Baptists, make this
centennial celebration the occasion of realizing that we
are all Baptists together ; Baptists joined together by com
mon ideas and a grand common work, as brethren in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And so, what is the spirit of the whole matter from my
point of view ? That Christianity is missionary, or it is
nothing at all ; that Christian people who are not mission
ary lack one of the original, fundamental, essential, indis
pensable elements of genuine Christianity. Did you ever
know any of those Baptists they call " Hard Shells " ? They
are the delight of the newspapers, you know ; they can gej;
so many jokes about the " hard shell." I have known some
of those people, some of them intimately, who were, from
their point of view, as deeply devout in their feelings, as
honestly trying to serve God, in their way, as any people
I ever knew or expect to know. But they had got hold

22 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of one side of Christianity, and because they couldn't
reconcile with it the other side, its world-wide invitations
to everybody and the duty of sending invitations to any
body, they stayed on their side and tried to live consist
ently according to their conviction; and the result has
been that slowly, slowly they disappeared, • until they
hardly live at all now except to be the joke of the news
papers. Though they were dead in earnest, they had a
one-sided Christianity, a half-way Christianity, and it
was bound to decay ; and our Christianity will flourish
just in proportion as it is missionary, in proportion as we
are interested in the great missionary idea, which is as
wide as the world or it is nothing. Just in proportion as
we are working for the salvation of mankind, with gen
uine interest, with hearty effort, with true sacrifice, just
in that proportion everything that is nearer to us will
flourish also.
But didn't the Saviour say, " beginning at Jerusalem " ?
Repentance and remission of sins should be preached, be
ginning at Jerusalem. And doesn't that mean that I
ought to begin at Louisville, and you ought to begin at
Boston, and these ought to begin at Brooklyn and New
York, and some other people ought to begin at Smoke-
town, and everybody should begin at his home and work,
and work out in widening circles? I trow not, because
not one of these eleven lived at Jerusalem. It didn't
mean they should begin at home — their home wasn't at
Jerusalem. They would have to begin in various parts
of Judea. There was only one who lived anywhere near
Jerusalem, and he was Judas, the traitor. Why should
they begin at Jerusalem ? Because at Jerusalem the
great events of the Christian religion had taken place,

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 23
and if they hadn't made some converts at Jerusalem, they
couldn't have gone to foreign parts and expected people
there to believe these events at Jerusalem if nobody there
believed in them. That is one reason why they should
make some converts there. But a more important reason :
They should begin at Jerusalem because Christianity was
the offshoot of the old religion of Israel, and Christiani
ty's offers were to be made first to Israel. It was the
privilege of the chosen people, the one remaining privi
lege, — all their forfeited privileges passed away, — that
Christianity should be the power of God unto salvation,
as Paul, the foreign missionary, said, " to the Jew first."
Beginning at Jerusalem means beginning at the Jews,
and didn't mean beginning at Smoketown or at Brooklyn.
If you want to make Christianity flourish, take hold
of it according to the largeness of its true conception.
Interest yourself and your children and your church in
saving the people on the other side of the round world
and then you can get them to take hold of things near
home. That? is history ; that is not speculation. That is
history, that is experience, and everybody that will try it
will find it is so more and more. You remember how
Archimedes said when he was finding out the wonderful
powers of the lever : " Give me a place to stand on, and
with a lever I will move the world." Oh, men and
women, foreign missions are the place to stand on for
Christianity to do its work for the human race. Get your
church practically interested in foreign missions, so that the
members will pray for foreign missions in their prayer meet
ings, and give to foreign missions with great delight, and
then when the home missionary secretary appeals to them,
he will say : " Now that you have done some part of your

21 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
duty in sending it to the Chinese, you will do something
for the heathen nearer home." He couldn't possibly be
in a better position to reach them than just that. Get
your people to give to foreign missions and pray for
foreign missions and be willing to let their own sons and
daughters, God bless them, go to the heathen, if they are
called, and then your people will be willing to help our
educational enterprises, and our publication enterprises,
and everything we ought to do nearer home. It is the
place to stand your lever on to move the whole business.
And now I have just four things to add. The Founder
of Christianity said, — it is the only time that I remember
his urging people to pray for a particular object; he
often encouraged his followers to pray, but I do not
recollect that ever, except in that case, he named a
particular object of prayer: — "The harvest truly is
plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore
the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers
into his harvest." Oh ! isn't it strange, that the only
special subject of prayer that he named, as far as I can
recollect, at least, is so seldom heard in our pulpits?
Well, that is the way it is where I live, — I don't know,
maybe it is otherwise here, — so seldom heard in our
Sunday devotion, so seldom heard in our Sunday-school
classes, so seldom heard in our prayer meetings, so seldom
in our family worship, in our private devotion. Oh !
men and women, let us turn over a new leaf about that.
Turn it over. Now, over it goes ! Over now ! Now,
begin again. Paste that leaf down ; it isn't pleasant to
look at. The Saviour said : " Pray ye the Lord of the
harvest that he will send forth laborers into his harvest."
I live among young ministers. I have some occasion to

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 25
feel sympathy for them and know something about their
trials, besides having possibly recollections that are
personal ; and I tell you there is great need for special
prayer, for special blessing of the Spirit of God upon
young men who ought to be ministers. A great many ob
stacles are in their way, a great many temptations, a great
many discouragements. Look at the sacrifices that many
a young fellow has to make. He has dreamed a dream
of ambition, and he has got to give it all up and consent
to choke it all down ; and he leaves his own people, and
he is thinking now whether it isn't his duty to leave the
land he loved so well, and he doesn't know — Oh ! he
doesn't know whether Miss Lucy at home will be willing
to go with him. Poor fellow ! Now don't smile at
him overmuch, because it is a reality. He has got these
things to think about, and then it is so easy for him to
say, — we all get up a great deal of mock modesty when
we don't want to do something, — " Oh ! well, if I
were a better Christian ; I feel so unworthy." That is
just an excuse for not doing your duty half the time, and
most of the other half. It is so easy for the young
fellow to say : " I am afraid I haven't enough strength
of character ; I am not good enough to be a foreign mis
sionary." No, don't laugh at him. Pray for him.
Pray that the Spirit of God will make things clear to his
mind. And God be thanked that a man can see his
duty after struggles, it may be, and darkness ; a man can
see the path of duty open before him, and seem to hear the
voice saying : " This is the way. Walk ye in it." God
be thanked, a man can come to see his duty. Pray for
your young men, that they may come to see their duty in
the work of putting laborers at home and abroad in this

26 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
harvest that still waves over all the earth, and still the
laborers are few.
And then, if we pray in that way, we ought to be doing
something, we ought to be glad to encourage what we
think ; if they give us the opportunity, we ought to be
glad to support them. You have heard the saying, " We
will go down into the mine, but you must hold the rope."
Let us, as pastors and as people, look to our end of the
rope. It is pretty hard on these young fellows if one
not only has to decide to make all the personal sacrifices
that are necessary to go ; but then the Missionary Board
is in debt every year and it don't know whether it can
send him. What a difficulty he is in. Look out for
your end of the rope while you pray that many may be
called into the ministry of the gospel and into the work
of missions.
And the other two things. Jesus said, — I always stop
there and ponder, — "Other men labored and ye are
entered into their labors." Ah ! a great part of the joy
of this work of spreading Christianity has come from
wjiat the men of the past have sown. We sow, blessed
be God, what the men of the future shall gather. We
don't stand alone in this world. We are part of a great
host that has come out of the past and is moving now
into the future, but it is God's work and it is going to
succeed sooner or later. What a comfort it is to a man
when he can be satisfied that his work is bound to suc
ceed. That his work is bound to succeed ! Bound to
succeed, or the pillars of heaven would fall ! Bound to
succeed, or the word of the Eternal would be forfeited !
A work, as Judson said, that is as sure as the promises
of God.

CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY MISSIONARY. 27
When Jesus said : " Go, disciple all the nations," he
added, " Lo, I am with you all the days." That is what
it means. " Alway " isn't strong enough. It is emphat
ically, " all the days." " Lo, I am with you all the days,
unto the end of the world." He promised that he would
be with his people in carrying out his great command,
that he would be with them all the days, through all
generations and all centuries, and with each of them all
the days of his life. Oh, my brother, yes, we shall be
far apart before long, but he will be with you and he will
be with me. He will be with you. We are growing
old ; he will be with us as long as our days shall last.
He will be with you who are young all the days of your
life, if they are days spent in carrying out this, his great
commandment. In days of joys and days of sorrow, in
days of sickness and health, in the days of discourage
ment and in the days of high hope and rejoicing and
gratitude. Oh, pastor, when you step across the threshold
of some home of poverty and sickness, try to see how the
shadowy form and the kindly face steps across with you.
Oh, missionary, when you stand to preach in a strange
language, so far from the home you love, so far from
those loved ones you would so like to see again, try and
think that he who sent you is with you there and will be
with you all the days, all the days.

II.
THE AUTHOR OF MISSIONS.
REV. W. R. L. SMITH, D. D.,
St. Louis, Mo.
One of the most remarkable periods in the history of
the kingdom of God is the thirty years immediately
following the ascension of our Lord. During that time
the gospel was preached among the leading nations and
in the great centres of civilization. The middle wall of
partition, that for long centuries had divided Jew and
Gentile, was broken down ; and the body of the New
Testament Scriptures was almost completed. These
achievements are marvelous in our eyes. They changed
the currents of the world's history. Who originated and
consummated this work ? To whom does the credit of
the mighty spiritual movement belong? Not to Peter
and Paul. Neither wanted to do what he did. As well
might we ascribe the splendid edifice to the agency of the
trowel, the hammer, and the saw.
Those are significant words at the beginning of the
Acts. Luke says that in a former treatise he recounted
the things that Jesus began to do and to teach. The im
plication is that in the present treatise he will narrate
what Jesus continued to do. Ten days after the ascension
the thrilling scenes of Pentecost are enacted. Peter rises
to explain. The Lord has received the promise of the
Father, the Holy Spirit, and through him these august
events have been wrought. Until Jesus comes again, the
28

THE AUTHOR OF MISSIONS. 29
Holy Spirit is to be his representative. Not unto
apostles, then, but unto the Holy Spirit belongs the
honor. Such is the uniform testimony of all the holy
men who participated in the work of the thirty eventful
years. The Acts of the Apostles are more truly the acts
of the divine Spirit.
His authorship is expressed in the fact that he was the
enabling energy of the human workers employed.
1. He gave them power. Our Saviour made himself
like unto his brethren in becoming absolutely dependent
on the Spirit. To Cornelius, Peter testified, " that God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and
with power." To this divine equipment, Jesus directed
the minds of the apostles, when he said : " Ye shall re
ceive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you,
and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and
ill all Judea . . . and unto the uttermost part of the
earth." It is noteworthy that the men who did most for
Christ were said to be filled with this power. What was
the object of this anointing ? Not regeneration, nor com
fort, nor even the fruits of the Spirit. David and Sam
uel had these, as did also John the Baptist. It was for
service. The time had come when, at vast expense of
labor, self-denial, and suffering, a new message from God
was to be carried to earth's remotest bounds. The work
calls for uncommon qualification. The witnesses will
need clear conceptions, strong conviction^, undaunted
courage, and irrepressible enthusiasm.
2. He bestows special guidance and direction. The
witnesses are not to be left to their own judgment and
self-determination. To Philip, he said : " Go, join thy
self to this chariot ; " and afterward, by the same Spirit,

30 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
he was caught away. " Three men seek thee ; go with
them doubting nothing," was his explicit command to
Peter at Joppa. To the church at Antioch, he said:
" Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work where-
unto I have called them." The church sent them not;
the Spirit called them and appointed their field. On his
second missionary journey Paul wished to preach the
gospel in Asia. The Spirit forbade. Then he essayed
to go into Bithynia, and again the Spirit of Jesus suf
fered him not. Pressing on westward he came to Troas,
where, in a vision of a man of Macedonia, he heard the
words : " Come over and help us." Burdened servants
of God, charged with great missionary operations, find
comfort in the fact of his abiding presence and directing
grace. 3. His co-operation is as freely bestowed. His own
testimony is superadded to that of the human witnesses.
On his second trial before the Jewish council, Peter said :
" The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew,
hanging him on a tree. Him did God exalt with his
right hand to be a prince and a Saviour, for to give re
pentance to Israel and remission of sins. And we are wit
nesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit,, whom
God hath given to them that obey him." (Rev. Ver.)
Years later, in the first Christian council, it was agreed
not to burden the gentile convert with the ordinances of
Moses. The apostles wrote to the brethren in Antioch
that " it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay
upon you no greater burden than these necessary things,
that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols, and from
blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication."
(Rev. Ver.) In every place where Christ was preached,

THE AUTHOR OP MISSIONS. 31
there was the Spirit to corroborate and establish. When
difficult questions, involving the relations of law and
gospel arose, baffling apostolic wisdom, he brought solu
tion and deliverance. His authorship is demonstrated
by the victories won by the church over its enemies.
He delivered it from the dictation of the Jewish coun
cil. These bloody men proposed to exclude a certain
doctrine of the apostles. You must not preach in this
name. Preach, if you will, but omit the name of Jesus.
The issue is sharp and definite. , Never were the rulers
more grim and resolute. This Galilean ministry is daily
in the temple setting on them the brand of murder.
Though they had said in horrible imprecation, "his
blood be on us and on our children," they are maddened
to desperation when it is about to be accomplished.
Peter, filled with the Spirit, greeted their fierce look and
challenge with a calm dignity and steady voice, " We
must obey God rather than man." (Rev. Ver.) That
was the declaration of independence. Peter put the
whole world in his debt by this bold announcement of
the doctrine of religious liberty. Henceforth, the
apostles are the leaders of Israel.
By the same power they were delivered from the domi
nation of the State. King Herod stretched forth his hand
and slew James. This - brutal assault was doubtless en
couraged by the foiled and vindictive rulers. It pleased
the people. Peter was next arrested. The same fate,
awaited him, in the purpose of Herod. Sixteen soldiers
kept him secure in the prison until the end of passover
week should allow his execution. It was a supreme
crisis. The death of Peter would be the signal for the
destruction of all the apostles and leaders. How the

32 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
church could survive such a loss no disciple knew. Im
potent in the clutches of the king, the church betook itself
to prayer. God's angel came to the prison, the bolts fly
back, the doors open, the chains fall from Peter's limbs,
and he walks forth the Lord's freeman. The guards,
unable to account for the prisoner's escape, are condemned
to immediate death. A few days later the tyrant expired
in dreadful agonies, for God smote him. An awe of the
little flock fell on all the people. Better play with the
forked lightning than lay unfriendly hands on these men.
It is vain for rulers and arrogant men to kick against the
goads. God's eternal purpose in Christ through the Spirit
shall be brought to pass. This gospel of the kingdom
must be preached in Jerusalem and unto the ends of the
earth. The spirit of Jewish caste was another powerful and
dangerous enemy. The rooted prejudice and hate of cen
turies set itself against the Lord's Anointed. The middle
wall of partition may hem in the institutions of Moses,
but it cannot confine the grace and truth which came by
Jesus Christ. It must be broken down. Peter's apos
tolic labors brought him to Joppa, on the western limit
of his native land. Possibly he was looking out across
the sea, thinking of the needs of the people beyond, when
a vision appeared to him. He saw in a vessel, as it were
a great sheet let down from heaven, " the fourfooted beasts
of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and
fowls of the heaven." (Rev. Ver.) He heard a voice
saying, " Kill and eat." When this was thrice repeated,
and himself had been thrice rebuked for his hesitation,
visitors called thrice for him at the gate. They were mes
sengers from Cornelius the gentile soldier. The Spirit

THE AUTHOR OF MISSIONS. 33
bade Peter go "with them, making no distinction." (Rev.
Ver.) He preached Jesus to a gentile congregation;
they were converted ; the Spirit fell on them, and they
were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, aud Spirit-
Several days the apostle remained the guest of the cen
turion, thus making of him a social as well as a religious
equal. The principle of the religious equality of all men
under the gospel was distinctly admitted and established.
Later on trouble arose, in the church at Antioch con
cerning this matter. Some of the Jewish members were
declaring that the Gentile converts must obey the law of
Moses as a condition of salvation. They were conscien
tious in their view, and reverent of the old Scripture,
which really supplied them with powerful arguments.
Here is a theological difficulty which no human wisdom
can overcome The letter of the Old Testament seems to be
in irreconcilable conflict with the freedom of the gospel.
The council in the church at Jerusalem is called, and
Peter explains that the exaltation of the Gentile to equal
ity with the Jew in the gospel is the act of God. At the
command of the Spirit he had opened the door of faith to
the uncircumcision. The Holy Spirit inspired the decree
of the council which enunciated the fact that the Gentiles
are free from the law, and that salvation is all of grace.
With that sublime decree the partition walls of the ages
fell down, and the trammels of the law fell from the
gospel forever.
These mighty deeds of the sovereign Spirit are won
ders of grace and pledges of the world-wide triumph of
the cross. They are the ground of the lonely missionary's
hope and the inspiration of the noblest deeds of self-
sacrifice. The mighty working of the Spirit does not

34 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
excite our reverent wonder more than does his marvellous
wisdom. Under his guidance, how gentle and easy the
stages by which the movement spreads from Jerusalem to
the great centres of pagan civilization. Years of pros
perity and growth followed Pentecost. There was no
preaching abroad ; no heathen was invited to Christ. The
apostles were satisfied to remain in the holy city. Evi
dently a new type of men was needed ; men with broader
views and larger sympathies. The Holy Spirit brought
them in by springing an emergency on the church. The
Grecian widows were neglected in the distribution of
alms. Deacons became a necessity. Significant fact,
each one of them is a foreign-born Jew, except the last,
and he is a Gentile proselyte. Stephen and Philip, full
of the Spirit, begin to preach. Stephen awakens sudden
and fierce antagonism. He sees deep meanings in the
gospel, and the ultimate breaking down of Judaism before
it. He preaches his gospel, and the Jews stone him in their
wrath. This brought on deadly persecution, the church
was scattered, and for the first time the gospel got abroad.
Samaria is evangelized by Philip. Now we understand
why the Lord preserved this strange people for six
centuries. They are neither Jew nor Gentile. They are
a half-way race between. The social and religious chasm
between Israel and the heathen is bridged by these people.
Next follows the conversion of the Ethiopian, and the in
troduction of the gospel into Africa. Then follows the
conversion of Paul, a chosen vessel to bear the good
tidings far off among the reigning peoples of the earth.
Finally Peter opens the door of the kingdom to Cornelius,
when the gospel defined, vindicated, and established,
begins its magnificent career of conquest.

THE AUTHOR OF MISSIONS. 35
Standing in one of the streets of St. Louis, Mo., is a
large outline map of North and South America, curiously
constructed of incandescent lights. Looking at the frame
work in the night, one sees a point of light begin to trem
ble on the isthmus. Now two, now three, and in a flash
two continents stand out in lines of fire. Let the church
of God plant her missions all over the waste and desolate
places of the earth. To the unpurged vision of the world
it will seem a reckless waste. In moments of weary wait
ing the struggle may appear unequal and hopeless to the
church herself. Let us remember Him who started this
work, and whose presence is pledged to us forever. With
confidence in God we will touch the strategic points of the
world with Christian missions, expecting some good day
to see the Holy Spirit flash through them with amazing
power and fill the whole earth with the glory of the
Lord.

III.
THE HORIZON OF CHRIST.
EEV. W. H. P. FAUNCE,
Pastor Mfth Avenue Baptist Church, New York.
Jesus Christ had been speaking the parable of the
tares and the wheat. The disciples came to him privately,
asking for an interpretation of its meaning. The beauty
and power of a parable are in this, that it means much or
little, according to the calibre of the man who hears it.
A little man looks into a parable of Christ and sees the
reflection of his own littleness — an ingenious and amusing
story, nothing more. A great soul looks into it and sees
there the eternal principles on which the world is built.
So when the disciples cried, " Declare unto us the parable
of the tares of the field," they knew not what they asked.
They little dreamed what answer they would evoke.
Perhaps they thought Christ was talking about the
province of Galilee. At most he was speaking of Pales
tine, the abode of the divinely chosen race. But suddenly
Christ pushed out their horizon to an infinite radius with
one quiet sentence : " The field is the world."
First of all, let us reverse the thought and consider
how Christ teaches us that this world is a field. Said the
great dramatist : All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
And truly, when we see how men come and go in this
earthly life, how swift are the exits and entrances, how
36

THE HORIZON OF CHRIST. 37
transitory their achievements and how fictitious much of
their pomp and power and parade, we are all sometimes
tempted to say, " This world's a stage." This is the pre
vailing view of poetry, ancient and modern. The poet is
an idealist, looking at the eternal truths beneath the chang
ing outward forms, aud to him human history seems a
passing show, a series of phantasmagoria. The pessimist
and the Buddhist go a step farther and declare that life is
an evil from whose pain and delusion all mortals should
be glad to escape. Even Christian poetry is full of the
dramatic and scenic idea of life. One of the first poets of
our English tongue centuries ago said : " Life is the flight
of a bird through a lighted room at evening ; " and Ten
nyson in " Crossing the Bar," represents his own life as
the pause of a boat drawn up on the shore, that soon
sets out again to the infinite sea.
Sharply opposed to this poetic view of life is the
modern scientific view, which regards the world as a
mechanism, a soulless combination of powers, grinding
away under inexorable laws. Christian thought in the
eighteenth century commonly spoke of the world as a
skillfully contrived machine. We have now added to
this conception the idea of growth, of evolution ; but still
the prevailing scientific view of the world is that of a
pitiless, impersonal mechanism working toward some end
no man can discern.
Now Christ comes to tell us that both these views of
life are poor and insufficient. He teaches that the world
is not a fleeting show ; that we are dealing with sternest
realities ; that the present life is infinitely grand and its
issues are to last forever. So he teaches that nature is not
a mere blind working of forces, but that God the Father
4

3S CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
is above and around and within it. Then he gives us
his own conception, — the world afield, i. e., an opportunity
for the planting and the growth of the divine seed.
Constantly in his teaching he returns to this conception,
and in eight different parables he pictures the kingdom
of heaven as a divine growth out of human soil. In the
parable of the mustard seed, and of the vineyard, and of
the seed growing secretly, and in a score of other
passages, we see Christ looking on the world as one vast
field for the divine planting, and the world seems to him
made for nothing else than the implanting and develop
ment of the divine seed which God has entrusted to our
human keeping.
As we gaze on a great city to-day, we may well ask :
What is all this for ? These factories and mills, whose
ponderous wheels revolve through light and darkness,
whose tall chimneys belch smoke and flame, these libraries
and art galleries and schools, these churches and homes —
what are they all for ? Christ holds the answer, and if
we are to do his work we must share his view. All
these are a field, a great and splendid possibility. As
some owner of broad estates may gaze out upon them all
and see in his mind's eye future orchards and waving
yellow harvests, so Christ looks out on our seething
world of human action and sees in it all an inspiring
opportunity. Our organizations and undertakings, our
legislatures and universities, our business houses, our
unions in labor or science or art, all the toil and strife
and eager struggle of humanity — Christ sees in it all a
great opening, a splendid possibility, a field where the
divine ideal may be realized and divine truth may
blossom in human fruitage. The world in itself he

THE HORIZON OF CHRIST. 39
views as neither good nor bad, but a soil in which either
bad or good will grow ; a soil with powers of production
to be utilized either by Christ or by Satan ; a soil so
fecund that whatever is dropped into it tends at once to
sprout and spread and wax and put forth great branches.
Have we learned yet to stand beside Christ and take
his view of all the moving, striving powers about us?
The world as an opportunity — what an inspiring and up
lifting view is this ! As we study history, as we peruse
the newspaper, as we meet men and see their varied occu
pations, let this world be to us, as to Jesus Christ, not a
passing show, not a blind mechanism, but one vast and
glorious possibility, an opening for divine seed, a promise
of divine harvest. The world is a field, where the good
will grow as quickly as the evil, yellow wheat as easily
as noisome weeds.
But now look more closely at the thought as Christ
spake it : " The field is the world." The man who said
that was a Jew, and the Jews had been trained from time im
memorial to believe that they alone were the chosen field,
and the rest of humanity was arid desert. Indeed, all
of us are natural Ptolemaists — we think the sun, moon,
and stars, revolve about ourselves. The zenith is always
the point just over our heads, the nadir just beneath our
feet, and the most important work in the world what we
ourselves are doing. It is wholly right that for each
man the centre of interest should be his own task. But
men differ greatly as regards their field of vision. A
man standing on a plain may see perhaps two or three
miles in any direction. If we imagine such a man slowly
lifted into the air, ascending some height like the Eiffel
-Tower, his first sensation will be that of expanding hori-

40 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
zon. At the height of fifty feet his circle of vision may
be ten miles in radius ; at one hundred feet, twenty miles ;
at five hundred feet, fifty miles ; his ascent is marked by
a series of concentric horizons, and the man's altitude
above the earth is exactly measured by the width of his
horizon upon it. Now this is true in the spiritual realm.
A man's mental and moral altitude is measured exactly
by his circle of interest and sympathy. Some men live
in a well — their horizon is the well's mouth with a tiny
patch of sky above it ; others dwell on a mountain top,
and behold all the kingdoms of the world at every sun
rise. The extension of the gospel is hindered lo-day not
so much by the wickedness as by the littleness of men.
When a man is positively vicious we can apply rebuke,
and correction, and prison bars ; but when he is stub
bornly and persistently little, what remedy have we then ?
I have seen the Lord's Prayer written in microscopic
characters within the circle of a silver dime, every letter
perfect, but practically invisible. And I have seen men
whose Christianity seemed faultlessly orthodox, but so lit
tle, so circumscribed, as to be practically useless to mankind.
All of us know men whose horizon is bounded by
their business pursuits. They understand how to do one
thing, and do it successfully. But outside of that little
circle, which shrinks constantly as the years pass, they
have no vision, no enjoyment, no aspiration. To them
the field is the office, the store, or the study, and like
Noah floating in his ark they leave the rest of the world
to drown. One of the most eminent college presidents
this country ever saw, a man whose name would be
instantly recognized if I should pronounce it, wrote some
some years ago : " The men who least comprehend what

THE HORIZON OF CHRIST. 41
I am trying to do in this college, are the professors of
the college. They are noble, self-sacrificing men, but
each one considers his own department the only really
important one, and the idea of building up a university
is something none of them can grasp." Some of the
men who stand highest in our churches to-day have never
yet caught a glimpse of what Christ is doing on this
earth. Other men have a horizon bounded by the walls of
their own home. A beautiful nest they have built for
wife and children; there they retire from storm and
stress, there they find repose and sympathy ; but it has
never occurred to them that that home was given as a means
of blessing all other homes in the wide world. " I will
bless thee," said God to Abraham, when promising him a
home, " I will bless thee, and in thee shall all families of
the earth be blessed." A man whose horizon is the four
walls of his home has not reached any remarkable ele
vation either of intellect or heart.
Other men have enlarged their circle of vision till it
embraces a church, a religious denomination, but refuse to
extend farther. To them their church is practically
co-extensive with the kingdom of God. They spell their
church with a capital letter, all others with a small one,
or in some way indicate that it is the sole channel of God's
grace coming into the hearts of men. They unconsciously
begin to live for the church — they become propagandists
rather than preachers ; they make proselytes rather than
Christians. Other men there are whose horizon embraces a whole
city or State, or even an entire nation, republic or empire.
This constitutes the great work of the famous German

42 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
chancellor who stood so long at the head of the German
Empire. When Bismarck came to office he found scores
of little German duchies, independent cities, petty princi
palities, each one collecting its own taxes, making its own
laws, acknowledging its own sovereign ; and he pushed
out the German horizon, he lifted up before the German
peoples the great conception of a Fatherland, and through
that enlargement of horizon has come all the power and
glory of the German Empire of to-day. Will there ever
come a man who will do the same thing for the various sects
and denominations into which Christendom is sundered
to-day ? Yes, I believe the prophet will yet arise, who,
sacrificing no conviction and injuring no Christian con
science, shall yet lead all Christian hearts toward the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, make us all see
that the kingdom is greater than any corner of it, and ful
fill the prayer of Christ, " That they all may be one."
But wider yet is the thought of Jesus. The field is not
my city, my country, my church, nor all churches togeth
er — the field is the world ! Wherever man is found,
from sea to sea and pole to pole, regardless of all lines of
race and color and belief; all divisions, social, political,
religious, the field is the world — anything less is a cari
cature of Christianity, any smaller conception is a belit
tling of our faith ; any smaller endeavor unworthy of the
Christian name. The man who wants to work for Christ
must share the horizon of Christ ; the man who truly
stands beside the Son of God will see the world as he
saw it.
Here, then, is the true motive of foreign missions.
Not that the heathen will be punished eternally, not that
they are dropping into a pit of woe at the rate of so many

THE HORIZON OF CHRIST. 43
a minute. Such calculations will not help us. The ulti
mate fate of all souls we leave in the hands of the Infin
ite God. We are willing to say that what we know
about the future is little, what we do not know is im
mense. Our message is not a theodicy, but a gospel. It
is ours, not " to justify the ways of God to men," but to
rectify the ways of men to God. The ultimate motive is
this : We love Christ, and what he is doing we would do
also. We love Christ, and therefore wherever his pierced
feet lead the way, we must follow. We love Christ, and
therefore while he is saying "the field is the world,"
we dare not say : " The field is my church, my city, my
native land." As the Crusaders had one answer to all ob
jections — "Deus vutt," so our answer is only this, " It is
the will of Christ."
Often when we speak of the regions beyond, we hear
the cry, " heathen at home." Dear friends, are you not a
little weary of hearing that ? Are you not a little weary
of hearing that cry from men who never lift their finger
for the sake of the heathen at their door ? But I will
not pause to show how pitifully small that cry often is.
I will only ask this : Suppose the church bad always
acted on the principle of converting the " heathen at
home," where would we be to-day ? There was a time
when our Teutonic forefathers hunted and lived in the
German forests. Then the Irish monk Boniface felt the
missionary impulse, he crossed the channel, preached to
our rough ancestors, and baptized one hundred thousand
with his own hand. There was a time when our Anglo-
Saxon fathers were in England. "Not Angles, but
angels," said Gregory, as he gazed on their fair long hair
and blue eyes. He sent Augustine to that far-away for-

44 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
eign province. At Canterbury, where now stands the
chief cathedral of England, the preacher lauded with his
monks, carrying the cross and chanting a psalm, and
England has been through all the succeeding centuries a
Christian nation, because of men who would not stay at
home in the presence of the Macedonian cry.
Suppose we could induce the churches of New York to
close eyes and ears to all the world beyond, and make
the field simply Manhattan Island. How long do you
think it Avould take us to convert the heathen there, while
every steamer brings a new load into Castle Garden ? A
thousand years would be a small estimate, and at the end
of that time the churches themselves would have ceased
to exist. There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth;
there is that withholdeth, and it tendeth to poverty.
Here is also the true method of foreign missions. The
good seed are the children of- the kingdom. Not simply
certain truths are we trying to give to heathendom, not to
plant certain dogmas and watch their development, but
to plant living men and women in the heart of heathen
dom. We are to give not a theology, but a self; we are
to plant not Christianity, but Christians. Every gift is
great when the self goes with it, and every-gift is small
which has no heart behind it. The amount of self that
goes into the contribution box measures the effectiveness
of the contribution. Sometimes, in cases of illness, the
physicians prescribe a draught of ordinary water drunk
from a wooden cup fashioned out of some medicinal forest
tree. It is only common water that the sick man drinks,
yet that water resting in the hollow cup has absorbed into
it all the healing virtues of the forest tree. . So I have
known men who could give only a tiny gift, ten minutes

THE HORIZON OF CHRIST. 45
of time, a single dollar, it may be ; yet that gift, coming
from a Christlike soul, had so absorbed into itself the
quality of the giver, that it was full of healing and help
ing power for humanity. The good seed is not simply
propositions that we can promulgate, not simply institu
tions that we can transport, but men and women who are
the children of the kingdom who, because Christ has
touched them, are able to touch others into Christlike
life. We see, also, the true spirit of missions, — one of se
rene and quiet confidence. We are not beggars for Christ,
but ambassadors for Christ. We are not pleading and
arguing with men to give us their pittance for our pet
enterprise ; we are going forth in the name of the victori
ous Christ, having utmost confidence in him and in the
human soil where he has bidden us plant. We are doing
our own task most truly when we are remembering con
stantly the whole field which the Master has in view.
We cannot do his work until we see through his eyes.
You remember how in the picture of the Angelus the
two workers stand at close of day bending over the little
task they have completed, while the sun sinks in the
western sky and the convent bell peals out the hour of
prayer. It will not be long before all of us will stand
over our little life-work finished forever ; but let us re
joice that many others will stand beside us, and let us
remember amid the noonday toil, that the field is not
merely our task, but the whole world for which Christ'
died.

IV.
MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE
HEATHEN.
HENRY E. ROBINS, D. D., LL. D.,
Professor in Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, JV. Y.
Upon what motives may we rely to incite the people
of God to a vigorous prosecution of missionary work
among those who are destitute of the light of Christian
truth as conveyed to us in the Christian Scriptures ?
The real motive of human action is always within the
soul, neveE without. Outward conditions, often in common
speech called motives, are only occasions by which the
internal motives are brought into play, and can be called
motives only in a secondary, not in a primary sense.
Money as external to me is not my motive in seeking it,
whether I seek it for worthy or unworthy ends ; it is
rather my desire for it, that I may use it to sustain and
enlarge and enrich my life and the lives of others ; or that
I may hoard it to gratify the passion of mere possession,
or pervert it to secure power or station or luxury — self-
gratification in one or more of its protean forms.
Bearing in mind, then, that the motive which we seek
is within, we are ready to say that God himself is the
fountain of missionary motive. " God," said the Great
Teacher, " so loved the world, that he gave his only be
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not
perish, but have eternal life." God loves and desires to
save a world of sinners ; this fact, declared so impressively
46

MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN. 47
in the passage which we have quoted, is everywhere either
expressly affirmed or implied by the general tenor of the
word of God from beginning to end. The love of God,
not his complacent but his pitying love — to make a dis
tinction upon which the theologians rightly insist — the
love of God toward a world of sinners is the one only
motive sufficiently adequate in vitality and force, per
sistent in its energy and comprehensive in its scope, to
inspire the church to her stupendous task of the conquest
of the world for its Lord. A plan which the infinite God
only could conceive, he ouly can execute. A supernatural
work requires a supernatural motive.
But, you say, the love of God for sinners is a motive
for his action, not for ours. Let us see.
The love of God found its first manifestation through
him who shared it with the Father from the beginning,
even the incarnate Son of God, especially in his atoning
death, by which God's gracious relation to sinful men was
justified and made possible. The love of God toward a
world of sinners was the motive of Christ's action. But,
you say, the motive is still within the sphere of the Divine
nature. Admitted, but notice : It is God's plan in making
a channel for his love that, by union with Christ, by faith
in him through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit,
sinful men shall become partakers of the Divine nature,
children of God, so that the impulse of saving grace which
wrought in the Father and in Christ shall be operative in
them also — each one of them
No blind, urisharing instrument,
But joyful partner of his purpose.
Accordingly, our Lord said to his immediate disciples, and

48 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
through them to Christians of all time : " Ye are the salt
of the earth." " Ye are the light of the world." They
are constituted salt in order that, since it is of the nature of
salt to save, they may save the earth. They have been
constituted luminaries in order that, since it is of the
nature of light to shine, they may enlighten the world.
It is of the very essence of salt, as Bengel suggests, com
menting on this passage, to have savor and to give savor,
to have it in order to give it. If it neither has it nor gives
it, it is not salt, and is good for no economic use, fit only
to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. So lamps
are lighted, as the Great Teacher affirms, not to be put
under a bushel, but on the stand, that they may shine
unto all that are in the house. In harmony with this
teaching of our Lord, God's promise to Abraham, called
the father of believers of all time, since in spiritual char
acter they were to resemble their great progenitor, was :
" I will bless thee, and make thee a blessing. In thee
shall all the families of the earth be blessed." vGod's pur
pose, we see, is not attained when the individual soul is
made Christian. A man is regenerated rather in order
that, while he himself is " being saved " (Acts 2 : 47),
while the process of salvation is going on in him, and
ideally inseparable from it, he may save others also ; so
that, at last, the kingdom of God in the new redeemed
race shall be established. God's ideal plan is that his re
deeming love, kindled as a flame in the hearts of his
redeemed children, shall run like a prairie fire, each
ignited blade of grass kindling its neighbor until the
burning circle extends the whole horizon round. The
divine impulse of God's redeeming love for sinners within
the believer can be limited in its scope only by his ability ;

MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN. 4'J
however the environment of immediate duty may restrain
him, his love, since it is the love of God working through
him, embraces the world. He is in fellowship, com
munion, or, as Dr. Hackett used to emphasize the thought,
he is in co-partnership with God; what God loves, he
loves; what God seeks, he seeks. In a word, he is
a channel of divine grace, as Christ was. We have in this
manner disclosed the supreme, the only real motive upon
which we must rely, and to which we must make our
appeal. The love of God for a sinful world inspiring a
regenerate church in conscious, living union with her Lord
is the sole hope of missions among the heathen.
But there is a fact, attested by current observation and
church history, which, carefully considered, puts a strong
emphasis upon the truth we have discovered — viz., that
missionary zeal of a certain sort may be awakened and
missionary enterprises may be prosecuted by appeal
to motives operative in the unrenewed heart. Destitute
of love, a man may bestow all his goods to feed the poor,
may give his body to be burned, may compass sea and
land to make proselytes. Accordingly, missionary work
may be vigorously carried on, but in a loveless spirit, bur
dened by unconsecrated workers, unconsecrated money,
unspiritual methods, and nnspintual ends. You will
allow me to say, my brethren, that it is" my conviction
that in these loveless helps, in the alien spirit, we find our
chief hindrance in our work. A sort of moral paralysis
seems at times to steal over us, making our efforts abortive,
so that results are far from commensurate with the money
expended and the machinery set in • operation. I speak
as unto men spiritually wise ; judge ye what I say.
Passing this important point, deserving a fuller discus-
5

50 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
sion, with this brief allusion, let me now pass to say that we
are to seek by every means to awaken the regenerate
church to her sublime privilege and responsibility, as put
in trust by virtue of her regeneration with the redeeming
love of God toward a sinful world. And this we may do
by making it evident that, since Christ is the God of
providence, head over all things, administering the
government of the world in the interest of redemption, all
the vast resources of our material civilization are, so far as
they are within her power, facilities granted to the church
with the express design to enable her, as trustee of that
priceless thing, to make known God's love toward those,
the world over, for whom Christ died.
When on one occasion that seer of God, the late Jonah
G. Warren, stood watching a company of missionaries
standing upon the deck of a steamer just putting to sea,
he is reported to have exclaimed, as if at that moment
profoundly .impressed with the thought: "That is what
steamers are for ! " Yes, that is what steamers are for in
God's intent. The means of transportation, which mark
our age above every other which has preceded it, are
highways which Christ has cast up for feet shod with the
preparation of the gospel of peace; the means of commu
nication of intelligence so wonderful that a whisper
may be heard from city to city, and the touch of a child's
finger speed a message around the globe ; the accumula
tions of wealth in Christian hands greater than ever since
the Babe of Mary awakened to his mission in the manger
of Bethlehem ; Christian learning wider in its scope, and
more profound, and more exact in its acquisitions than
ever before ; Christian homes larger in number, and
realizing the Christian ideal of family life more fully than

MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN. 51
ever since the Christian calendar began to witness to the
supremacy of our Lord ; the social and political life of
Christendom testifying — I will not say notwithstanding,
but even in its conflicts and agitations to the resistless
working of the transforming power of the gospel — what
are all these but means which God's love may use in pour
ing itself forth through his children, as Christ poured
forth his blood for the salvation of the world. The
church of preceding times was never so equipped, never
had such resources at her command. The providential
indications of God's purpose in redemption were never so
clear; and hence Christians of earlier times were so
far excusable for their misconception of the mission
of the church ; but our opportunity is both index and
measure of our privilege and our duty. Alas for us if we
misinterpret Christ's meaning in blessing us so abund
antly, if we fail to detect in the profusion of his gifts to us
the yearning of his heart for lost sheep not of this fold.
What he has done for us is but a declaration, a vivid por
trayal before our very eyes, of what he desires to do for
others through us. Let us tremble with a holy joy that
the world's Redeemer dwells within us ; that it is his love
for earth's perishing millions that moves us. Let us im
prison our Lord no longer. Let us cease to restrain the
divine love that urges us along the pathway of the Re
deemer's mission. Is the printed word of God a living
thing to us, throbbing with the life of the living Word ?
Do we shudder with a sort of horror when we consider
how darkened and desolate our lives would be without it?
Have we seen Christ evidently set forth before our eyes
crucified ? Have we clearly apprehended the way of sal
vation through his atoning death ? Have we known the

52 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
holy joy, the sacred peace of forgiven sin? Have we
known the sweet sanctity of the Christian home and the
innumerable blessings of the Christian State ? What are
these but gifts of love of the strong Son of God, impell
ing us by the very richness of these gifts to give ourselves
no rest until Christ shall be to all the world what he is to
us ? May I quote here, as expressing my thought, from
Dr. Storrs' address, delivered at the eighty-second annual
meeting of the American Board, recently held in Pitts-
field : " Our aim," he said, "is to brighten humanity, by
making the heavenly temper universal among mankind ;
to make every house on eartli a Christian home, and every
community a Christian community, a perfect, vital, social
organization. ... It has been the idea in God's
mind from the outset that the heavenly life should finally
be experienced throughout the earth, until heaven and
earth blend at the horizon, and the heavenly Jerusalem
be founded on earth." Yes, it is the love of God in us for
a world steeped in the guilt and misery of sin that prompts
iis to pray, taught by the Saviour of men himself : " Thy
kingdom come ; thy will be done, as in heaven, so on
earth." Our transcendent privileges and the appalling
destitution, both spiritual and material, of heathen nations,
in their piteous ignorance of God and Christ, terrified by
the creations of their own darkened imaginations, the
dense gloom, the very shadow of death in which they
grope their way through life to hopeless graves, are fitted
to awaken the divine motive within us to its uttermost
urgency. Nor can any hope that, on scriptural grounds, we may
cherish for the regeneration of individual souls among the
heathen in any wise diminish the force of such an appeal

MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN. 53
to this motive. We do, indeed, rejoice in the fact that
Christ in his death " is the propitiation for our sins ; and
not for ours only, but also for the whole world " (1 John
2:2); that the atonement is as extensive in its scope as
human sin ; that the ministry of the Spirit, made possible
by the death of Christ so to apply its benefits, is as univer
sal as the scope of the atonement ; that the entire race is
thus under a real probation of grace, so that the death of
Christ not only makes salvation possible for all, but cer
tain for some in all ages and all lands. This, however,
is only to say that there is peril of the loss of the soul,
whether in heathen or Christian lands, and that whatever
motive impels us to preach the gospel at home has, if
right, equal force at least in impelling us to preach the
gospel among all nations. Beyond dispute it is certain
that the truths of the Christian Scriptures assimilated by
faith, wrought into the life of the soul by the joint action of
intellect, sensibility, and will, are essential to the realization
among men of distinctive Christian experience, essential
to the attainment of Christ-like character, essential to the
purification and reorganization of social and political life
according" to the Christian ideal ; and these in their turn
are essential to the realization of God's plan of the ulti
mate establishment of his kingdom in the heavenly state.
The unfolding of the ages is, we all believe, as the Script
ures teach, " according to the purpose of him who worketh
all things after the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1 : 11). What
we behold, then, of the triumphs of Christian civilization
in the world is in fulfillment of that purpose. Reasoning
from what we see that God has done, and interpreting
accordingly the intimations of the future given in the
Holy Scriptures, who will venture to say that the light

54 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDEESSES.
which has already fallen from the . Sun of Righteousness
upon our darkened humanity may not be the radiant dawn
of a perfect day, when the brightest visions of inspired
seers shall become accomplished fact ? At any rate, we
are working along the line of the Divine will, as un
mistakably declared in tlie providence of God, when
planting in the midst of the peoples churches of regener
ated men and women, instructed in the word of God, we
carry to them the force, the only force which can both
regenerate and civilize. Regeneration, evangelization
first, civilization afterward as its fruit, if God will. God
in the truths of the Holy Scripture has committed to us
the key of knowledge by which we have entered into the
heaven of Christian privilege which we enjoy. In this
sense, he has made the expression of his love to the na
tions dependent upon the fidelity of his church. In this
sense, we stand in the place of God to the heathen nations.
Amazing responsibility ! In view of it, how acute the
sense of our obligation ! In view of it, are we not com
pelled to say that vdioever neglects or refuses to obey our
Lord's last solemn charge to his church sets himself to
resist rather than to hasten the coming of the day of God,
assumes the attitude of an enemy of his race?
We are thus led to fix the place of the command of
Christ to disciple the nations as a missionary motive. As
external to man, it is a motive only in a secondary sense.
It can be a real motive only as addressed to a soul filled
with the love of God for sinners. A command can never
originate life ; it can only guide it already existing. We
may galvanize a dead body to a semblance of life by ex
ternal appliances, but not so can we quicken it to genu
ine activity. We may thunder the commission in the

MOTIVES TO MISSIONS AMONG THE HEATHEN. 55
ears of nominal Christendom till doomsday in vain. It
will never be heard save by those whose ears have been
opened by the Holy Spirit. Quicken the life of God in'
the souls of men, and they will run in the path of his
commandments, as the vine runs up the trellis which
guides but does not give it life, covering it with the beauty
of its foliage and the lusciousness of its fruit. To him
to whom an appreciation of it has been given by Christ
dwelling in him, the command to disciple the nations is
nothing less than a transfiguration ; it is a summons to a
fellowship in the purest, loftiest purpose that ever entered
the mind of man. Interpreted by the declaration with
which our Lord introduced it, " All authority hath been
given unto me in heaven and on earth," it assures love
shrinking from her great task that this shrinking and
apparently"; impotent love is nothing less than the infinite
love of God himself, energized with his infinite power to
love in spite of demoniac hate and bitterest opposition,
power to love even unto death, power to continue through
the centuries to love until a rebellious race has been sub
jected by self-sacrificial love to her rightful Lord. Lifted,
rapt by this divine passion of saving grace above the
possible plane of mere human action, the Pauls, the
Careys, the Judsons, the Livingstons, the Patons, the
Cloughs go forth with the cross in their hearts, the cross
in their lives, the cross on their lips, never doubting
that he who inspires them and he who commands them ,
will surely " not fail nor be discouraged till he have set
judgment in the earth " (Isa. 42 : 4).
Your time will allow me to mention now only one
more incitement of the great motive to missionary effort.
That incitement is the fact that there is hidden in the heart

56 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of every gift of God to us a meaning and sweetness which
only reveal themselves when the gift is shared with
others. Money hoarded notoriously makes a man a miser,
makes a man miserable. Intellectual acquisitions unused
for the benefit of men only increase sorrow. Indeed; the
best acquisition is secured in imparting knowledge— a
practical wisdom that finds its expression in the proverb,
" If you would learn a thing, teach it." And in the
highest realm, the spiritual realm, the truth to which we
call attention has its supreme illustration. No man knows
the possible sweetness of the gospel until he has instru-
mentally carried it to other souls. It must be true,
indeed, that no man knows anything whatever of the love
of God unless he has the disposition, at least, to commu
nicate it. It cannot in the nature of things, be selfishly
possessed. One of the most pregnant of our Lord's say
ings is the declaration of the principle; of universal appli
cation : " It is more blessed to give than to receive." It
is more blessed, because it is in giving that we get at the
kernel of the gift to us. Every parent knows that if he
would discover the superlative flavor of a fruit, he must
taste it through the palate of his child. The alabaster
cruse did not reveal the exceeding preciousness of the oint
ment which it contained until she of Bethany, whose it
was, poured it forth upon the Saviour's head ; then its
exquisite perfume was for her and for all that were in the
house. God's love for sinners, his most precious gift to
us, has within it, at its heart, a secret of blessing for us
as individuals^ as churches, as a nation, waiting to be dis
closed in richness beyond our highest thought in propor
tion as we obey the Master's injunction, " Freely ye have
received, freely give."

V.
THE HOME RELATION TO FOREIGN MIS
SIONS.
REV. PHILIP S. MOXOM. D. D.,
Pastor Pirsl Baptist Church, Boston, Mass.
The beginnings of Christianity are full of suggestions
to us. We make a mistake when we turn to apostolic
times for a fixed model of church organization or a fixed
method of Christian work. We make no mistake when
we look back to that time for impulse and direction, for
inspiration and tendency.
At first everything was plastic, even fluent. Every
soul that received "the good tidings" was naturally a
missionary. Believers, glad in the new gospel, went
everywhere publishing that gospel. The first preachers,
with few exceptions, had no official character nor formal
authorization. New communities were penetrated and
new churches were founded as spontaneously as fields are
sown with flowers by the vagrant winds and the birds.
But soon system began to appear. The gentile world
was to be opened to the gospel. The work of Christi
anity was to be consolidated and made permanent, as well
as expanded. Men were called by the Holy Spirit and
commissioned by the church to bear the gospel into new
fields — to plant the seeds and cherish the growth of the
new life. Paul and Barnabas are typical or representa
tive. The whole church of Antioch could not go into
Asia Minor. That would be not a mission, but a migra-57

58 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
tion. The propagation of the gospel is too great and too
exigent a work to be left to the spontaneous and unguided
impulses of everybody. The awakened heart requires
and produces an awakened intellect. Thought begins to
grow organic. Zeal begins to seek the discipline and
efficiency of method. A great genius arises who has the
strategy of a soldier, the diplomacy of a statesman, and
the practical constructive energy of a master engineer.
From the moment Paul appears on the field, appear the
beginnings of system in the extension of the Christian
faith and life. As the real aim of Christianity slowly
defines itself in the Christian mind of that early day,
the consciousness awakens that the work of spreading the
gospel requires chosen, qualified, and consecrated men,
whose whole business shall be to become mouths and
hands — speakers and builders—for the church.
All cannot do this work. Ail have close and vital
relations to it ; but they must have special agents, through
whom the wisdom and love of the whole church shall
speak and act with the skill and method of minds trained
to the specific work of organizing out of the chaos of
pagan life the fair structure, of the kingdom of God.
Ministers and missionaries arise out of the very exi
gency of the situation. The distinction between the pas
tor and missionary is not accidental The former con
serves what the latter conquers. To the whole church
was given the commission to " disciple all nations." The
church fulfills this commission by concentrating its ener
gies in chosen representatives, as the body concentrates
its energy in the eye and hand for the accomplishment of
a specific work. The missionaries do not assume the
obligation of the church ; they effectively express the

THE HOME RELATION TO FOREIGN MISSIONS. 59
energy of the church in fulfilling its obligation. The
missionaries are the church evangelizing. They are not
proxies but instruments — eyes and hands.
The growth of a specific function in the church always
brings a peril— the peril of separation of interests.
Historic experience impressively teaches us that the pas
tor must be bound with the church in one arterial circula
tion. He is the church teaching and nourishing itself
in the truths and life of the Spirit. The missionary also
must be bound with the church in one arterial circula
tion. He is the church invading and possessing new
territory, the church evangelizing, the church executing
the Great Commission.
A subtle error often lurks tinder the very question,
What is the relation of Christians at home to missionary
work in foreign lands? It is the error of thinking, or
unconsciously of assuming, that missionaries are people
in some sense apart from the church, who are worthy,
indeed, of our admiration and sympathy, and who not
unreasonably appeal to us for aid, but who are conduct
ing an independent enterprise for the promotion of which
we have no especial obligation. But this is to deny both
the vital unity of the church — a unity not of form or of
creed, but of spiritual life — and the universal aim of the
church as the means through which the kingdom of God
is to be realized on earth. There is in our thought on
religion often quite as much disintegrating individualism
as there is in our thought on social life.
What is the claim that is on us for missionary enter
prise in the broadest sense?
It is the claim of Christ, who seeks through his fol
lowers the salvation of the world. It is the claim of

60 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
that love which makes service the supreme law of life.
It is the claim of that solidarity of the race whic^ makes
the whole inescapably participant in both the good and
the ill of all families, tribes, and nations. The gospel
integrates men in thought and feeling as nature integrates
them in the physical order of organic life.
The Christian missionaries in foreign lands are not even
a mere detachment from the church ; they are the church
pushing itself forward into the world. They are not
doing something on behalf of the church for which they
should be supported ; they are the church doing its own
duty in unevangelized lands.
If now we clearly understand the true function of the
church as the depositary of the gospel, and the means
through which the kingdom. of God is to be realized on
earth ; if we see that missionary enterprise in foreign
lands is the legitimate and inalienable enterprise of the
church, which, from the nature of the case, must be
carried on immediately by specially chosen and qualified
workers ; and if we realize, not that these workers are
simply doing their own work nor that they are doing our
work for us, but that through them, as agents and rep
resentatives, as eyes, and mouths, and hands, we are
doing our own work ; if we clearly realize this, then we
may ask with profit : " What in detail is the relation of
the great body of Christians in evangelized lands to the
missionary enterprise in heathen lands ? "
That relation is :
1. A Relation of Responsibility : The churches at home
are responsible to God for the persistent and faithful
prosecution of this work. It is their great duty to pos
sess humanity with the truth, and love, and righteousness

THE HOME RELATION TO FOREIGN MISSIONS. 61
of Christ ; in a word, to make Christianity co-extensive
with the territory and the life of the world. Any con
ception of ths. church's missionary obligation less broad
than this is inadequate, and to rest content, with any aim
less inclusive than this, is to be unfaithful to' Christ and
to go contrary, to the very genius of Christianity.
The churches at home are responsible for the men and
means for the prosecution of this work. This responsi
bility involves : — (1) Search. Workers are to be found
who are ready and fit to be the representatives and
instruments of the church in its missionary enterprise.
The search is upward and then inward ; to God, and then
to the members from among whom, by the mediation of
the church, the missionaries are called. The search is (a)
prayer to God " that he will send forth laborers into his
harvest." Prayer is far more than formal petition ; it is
the pregnant spirit which produces workers and forces.
It is the strenuous and successful effort to rise to the
divine point of view, and to appropriate the divine wis
dom and power by which souls are impressed and
anointed and made efficient for the work to which God
commands them.
But prayer for fit agents of the church in carrying out
its mission is genuine and prevailing only as it is accom
panied by an expectant and intelligent quest for those fit
agents. It is inseparable, then, from (6) inquiry. Atten
tion must be turned earnestly and persistently toward the
possible workers. The divine injunction to faith is,
" seek " as well as " ask." We pray much with our eyes
shut. The attitude is symbolical of our too common
habit. The church asks for men, and God answers by
bidding her open her eyes and look for them. Prayer is
6

62 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
not a substitute for effort, but preparation and endowment
for effort. In all the churches there should be this trust
ful, keen-eyed, and earnest quest for men and women in
whom and through whom the organic Christian life shall
go into all the world. It was no surprise to the church
in Antioch when the Spirit said : " Separate me Barnabas
and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them."
It had its eye on these men. But the consciousness of
the modern church should be much clearer and wider
than the consciousness of the primitive church. The
early Christians grew slowly to the idea that they were
commissioned to possess the world for Christ, while that
idea belongs among the fundamental elements of our
Christian thought.
It is clear that the churches can meet their responsibil
ity only by asking God for missionaries, and by seeking
and finding missionaries.
The search must be not only a persistent, but also a dis
criminating endeavor to secure those who by endowment
and character are fit. for just this work of missionary
evangelization. The best ought to be the only tolerable ;
for these missionaries are not mercenaries and substitutes,
but the very body of Christ, projecting itself into far-
lying fields, for the purpose of reaching every lost soul,
and saving the world by the gospel and the indwelling
life of the Son of God.
Having found, and continually finding those whom the
Spirit evidently calls, the church's responsibility involves
(2) the hearty and authoritative consecration of these
chosen ones for their special work. "And when they
had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they
sent them away." Thus simply is the story told of that

THE HOME RELATION TO FOREIGN MISSIONS. 63
first foreign missionary movement. The consecration is
twofold ; it is of the church as well as of the mission
aries. No ties were broken. The heart of the church
continued to beat in the pulses of these men. Their
going was simply an extension of the Christian body.
The consecration meant, not that the church had fulfilled
an obligation, but rather that it had recognized an obli
gation on itself which it was now proceeding to fulfill in
the activity and devotion of representatives who were and
continued to be organically part of its own life. The
figure that represents the missionary as a worker lowered
into a mine by a rope which the church holds, is untrue
by defect. The relation is too vital to be expressed in
such a figure. In the very act of consecrating and send
ing forth missionaries the church says to them : " In you
goes the church of Christ. This is not your work alone ;
it is our work ; it is the work of all. You are unsevered
and unseverable members of the living body that is
quickened aud warmed by one heart and guided by one
Head." The responsibility of the churches at home involves :
(3) Support. The missionary life in heathen lands
always entails more or less privation and hardship. This
is inevitable. But we at home have no right to increase
the hardship by any neglect of our duty ; nor have we a
right to leave unmitigated any hardship that hinders the
largest fruitfulness of missionary labor. We are not
engaged in any charitable work of supererogation. Mis
sionary expenses are our legitimate expenses. They
belong in the regular budget of the churches. The Mis
sionary Union is not an independent personality, with its
own responsibility and obligation. It is merely the agent

64 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of the churches to facilitate the effort of tire churches to
carry on their work in other lands. One of the evils, or
at least disadvantages of organization, is the attendant
lessening of that sense of immediate responsibility which
ought to be quick in the mind of the churches. The
responsible person is not the Union but the church. We
talk much about giving to the Union. We give nothing
to the Union. The organization is simply the reservoir
that collects the thousand rivulets of missionary offerings
to concentrate them in large streams of well directed
power. The support which the missionary enterprise demands
from the churches at home may be divided into personal
and general.
(a) The personal support is such provision for the wants
of missionaries as shall be adequate. These workers are
not merely to be kept alive. They should be relieved as
far as possible from all such care for themselves and their
families as would prevent them from putting their undi
vided energy into their work. One does not tie three
fingers of his hand, or embarrass his arm with unneces
sary weight, when he puts it to any task. The mission
aries are our hands, doing the work to which we with
them have been called.
(b) The general support is such provision of means as
shall make work efficient and conserve its results. These
means include books, buildings, printing presses, schools,
dispensaries, vehicles, — everything that may serve the
constructive aims of the missionary. No expense is too
great if higher efficiency is thereby secured. Parsimony
makes waste more often than prodigality. We shall
never give too much. Think of the enterprise in which

THE HOME RELATION TO FOREIGN MISSIONS. 65
we are engaged. We are called to evangelize the world.
We are commissioned to make manifest in all nations the
kingdom of our God and of his Christ. What is wealth
for but to serve the ends of that redemptive process which
is making the history of man ? Its chief value lies in its
susceptibility to transformation into spiritual force and its
power thus to achieve spiritual results. We own Christ
as Lord. He is then master of our possessions as well as
the subject of our professions. By every consideration
of gratitude, of faith, of enduring interest, and of holy
love we are bound to give to missions the amplest sup
port. Only thus can we honorably meet the responsibility
that is laid upon us as disciples of Jesus Christ.
2. The relation of the churches at home to the mission
aries and their work in foreign lands should be one of
sympathy. This is not pity. No missionary desires the
pity of his brethren at home. His lot is not pitiable ; it
is most honorable, and his work is most rewarding. But
sympathy he does ask. What is sympathy ? Not merely
suffering with; for it has not regard only for sad and
painful experiences. Sympathy is feeling with. It is
entering into and abiding in a community of life. It is
sharing in all the varying experiences and emotions and
aspirations and endeavors that have place in a missionary
life. Such sympathy can exist only on the basis of a right
conception of the missionary enterprise, and of our vital
relation thereto. Having such right conception, we shall
feel that the missionary's work is our work. We shall *
sympathize with him in his trials and difficulties. We
shall sympathize with him in his attemjjts and achieve
ments. We shall feel all the sad or joyful pulsations of
that distant life as if it were our own. We shall make it

66 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
our own by our purposeful efforts to know the circum
stances and incidents of that life ; by our purposeful love
urging us into vicarious joy and sorrow ; by our purpose
ful solicitude of prayer by which we shall present to God
the needs and inspirations of those in whom we are ful
filling our obligation to " disciple all nations."
We need overcome the obstruction of physical remote
ness by establishing in our minds a continuous spiritual
proximity. By cultivating thus a conscientious and vivid
sympathy with missionaries,- we not only quicken our
sense of responsibility for the work,, but we also enlarge
our ideas and deepen our impulses of benevolence.
It is fair to measure our sympathy by our gifts, if we
measure our gifts by our ability. ' To feel genuinely is to
act. There is a shallow missionary sentimentalism. Every
genuine thing seems to be haunted by the ghost of a
counterfeit. But the counterfeit sympathy bears no cost.
It flies at the approach of the contribution box. Action
is the test as well as the expression of emotion. Sacrifice
authenticates professed purpose. If the men and women
who are our representatives in foreign lands are real and
living personalities to us; if we think of them with a
sympathy that makes us sharers in their experiences and
endeavors ; if we bear them on our hearts in prayers that
throb with the insistence of ¦ deep and devout longing
toward God on their behalf; and if our sympathy is
vertebrate with a strong sense of our responsibility ; then
our gifts will be abundant and our zeal will be as ardent
and enduring as it is rational and pure.

VI.
HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK OF
FOREIGN MISSIONS.
GEORGE W. NORTHRUP, D. D., LL. D.,
Professor in Chicago University (Theological School), Chicago, 111.
I purpose to speak of some of the hindrances at home
to the work of foreign missions, or some of the causes of
the comparative failure of the church to evangelize the
pagan nations. Before expressing my thoughts on this
subject, I beg. leave to utter a word of a personal nature.
It is possible that my remarks may not secure the approval
of all ; may, in fact, give offense to some who hear me.
If such shall be the case, let me assure you that I am not
moved by any pessimistic spirit, nor by a disposition to
disparage the missionary history of our people. I am
not willing to admit that I am inferior to any of my
brethren in loyalty to the denomination with which I
have been indentified for fifty years, and which I have
served in a public way for more than a third of a cen
tury. The feeling which I am most distinctly conscious
of, as I stand before you to-day, is that of heartache in
view of the apathy of Christian people, and especially the
apathy of our denomination, in regard to the temporal
and eternal salvation of the vast population of the pagan
nations. I have put the question to myself once and
again, within a few weeks past : " What can be done to
change this state of things — to awaken the feeling of love
07

68 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
and compassion which ought to exist for the hundreds of
millions of our fellow-men involved in the darkness, de
gradation, and misery of heathenism ? I speak in behalf
of a billion human beings, for every one of whom Christ
died, every one of whom has a place in the heart of God,
every one of whom is of as much worth in his sight as
any citizen of the great republic. ¦ It is certain that God
has done all that he could wisely do in bestowing grace
upon his people. It is also certain that if they would
use the grace bestowed with greater fidelity he would
give more and still more, "opening the windows of
heaven and pouring out a blessing, that there would not
be room enough to receive it." The speedy evangeli
zation of the pagan world, and shall we not also say, their
salvation, is, in a real and profound sense, in the hands
of the church.
1. Among the causes referred to, we notice, first, the
departure from the method of Christ in laying chief stress,
not on salvation here and now, the establishment of the
kingdom of God on earth, but on salvation in a narrower
sense of the term, as escape from the retributions of hell.
To use the words of another : " It has been too much
the habit of Christian people, in looking abroad upon
the heathen world, to regard it, not as a kingdom to be
conquered for Jesus Christ, but rather as a seething sea
of drowning men, a few of whom might be saved from
the general wreck by those whom the church sent out on
her gallant life-boat service." But certainly this is not
the conception which Christ emphasizes when he sets be
fore men the object of their immediate and supreme
devotion. He began his ministry by preaching the gos
pel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is ful-

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 69
filled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and
believe the gospel." He frequently called the kingdom
which he came to establish the " kingdom of heaven," not
because it is in heaven, but because of its heavenly origin
and nature. The prayer given by our Lord indicates
plainly the location and nature of the kingdom for the
establishment of which: he enjoined his disciples to labor
and pray : "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" —
where? In heaven? "Thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven." The objects presented in these two clauses
are identical; the petition, "Thy kingdom come," means,
" Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The end
here presented — universal obedience among men to the
will of God — is the burden of the gospel which Christ
preached, and which he commanded his disciples to preach
to "all nations," "to every creature" ; an end which in
cludes the whole duty of man, and in the accomplishment
of which the earth will reflect, in a degree beyond human
conception the love, purity, and blessedness of the heav
enly world. True, in a few instances, Christ spoke of the
infinitely diverse destinies of men in the future world ;
" but for once that he spake about the saving of the soul,
he spake fifty times about the kingdom." Since Christ's
method is the wisest and best, in the measure that the
church has departed from this method it must have lost
in religious power. How much power, in the way of
missionary appeal, has the doctrine of the eternal per
dition of the great majority of the pagan world ? I re
ceived a few months ago a letter from a missionary in
India, accompanied by a printed appeal to all evangelical
churches, in which he states that while last year (1890)
fifty thousand heathen had been rescued, twenty millions

70 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
had died, few of whom had heard of the lpve of God in
Christ. And he exclaims : "Twenty millions of immor
tal souls swept into hell in a single year !"
It is probably an approximately correct estimate that,
during the missionary year just closed, twenty million
pagans who had reached the age of moral accountability
have passed away, the great majority of whom never
heard of the gospel of the grace of God. Is there not, in
this fact, considered in the light of the commonly received
view of the Bible relation to the final doom of the
heathen world, a power of appeal to the people of
God sufficient to impel them to all possible labors and
sufferings necessary to make known the way of eternal
life to every pagan on the face of the globe? Have they
been greatly moved by this fact of overwhelming import
ance? How much have "the Baptists of the Northern
States, numbering eight hundred thousand, contributed to
aid in sending the gospel to the vast multidude who have
passed to the awards of the eternal world since the Union
met in Chicago (1890), one year ago? If we allow to
these twenty millions their due share of our contributions
according to their number, it will appear that the members
of our churches have given, on an average, not to exceed
two cents for rescuing from hell a number of our race
equal to one-third of the population of the United States.
Is hot this an amazing fact ? Does it not seem incred
ible? Does it not furnish a moral demonstration that
the idea of the exposure to everlasting punishment of the
pagan world has but an almost inappreciable influence
upon the great body of Christian people?
Brethren, I would submit the matter to you ; I would
ask you each one to state, clearly and fully to his own

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 71
mind, the considerations which render it credible that
the Baptists, represented by the Union, believe what they
profess to believe in regard to the final doom of the
heathen world, and yet give on an average not to exceed
one cent a week, to send the knowledge of the way of
eternal life to a billion heathen, and not to exceed two
cents to rescue from perdition the twenty millions whose
day of probation ' has closed since the last aniversary
of the Union. Would* it not seem difficult to find eight
hundred thousand non-Christian men, of average natural
benevolence, who would not give as much, if necessary,
to prevent the everlasting misery of an equal number of
irrational creatures? Is it a matter of wonder that the
world does not believe in hell, or that it does not believe
that the orthodox churches believe that the heathen " shall
go away into eternal punishment !" Do you say that for
the world to deny that Christians believe what they pro
fess to believe on this point, is to charge them with the
most culpable insincerity — a charge which involves,
logically, universal historical skepticism, rendering it
irrational to believe in the existence of faith and goodness
among men ? True, but we would inquire if the charge
involved in the other alternative is less damaging — the
charge well grounded, of continued practical indifference
on the part of the great majority of the members of all
evangelical churches to the eternal welfare of a thousand
million of their fellow-men, whom they profess to love, and ,
whom they are bound by the most sacred obligations to
love as they do themselves.
We would not have you misunderstand us at this point
— to regard us as 'doubting the reality or undervaluing
the importance of salvation as escape from the retributions

72 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of the future world. We believe that everlasting punish
ment will last forever; and we believe this awful truth
because it is taught in the Bible ; and we believe it is
taught in the Bible because it is a fact in the universe;
and we believe it is a fact in the universe because the in
finite God, in the plenitude of his resources, could not
prevent its existence, acting, as it behooves him to act, in
accordance with the immutable principle of his holy
nature; and we believe that this truth ought to have the
same place of relative importance in the instructions of
the pulpit which it has in the Bible. And yet we affirm
that Christ did not dwell chiefly upon salvation as per
taining to the future world, but as a good to be realized
here, through the reign of love in the souls of men, con
straining them to grateful and self-sacrificing labors that
the will of God might be done everywhere on earth as in
heaven. Salvation is deliverance from sin, and sin is of
all evils the essence and the sum. "It brings present
disgrace and ruin to body and soul, to home and country ;
it breeds distrust ; it enervates manhood and womanhood ;
it incites to murderous revenge ; it arrays class against class ;
it kindles the fires of volcanic social hate ; it is a menace
to peace, to social order, and to international amity;
and from all this there is salvation only by that personal
integrity and social righteousness which are the gifts of
God to man through Jesus Christ." Salvation in this
world involves salvation in the world to come ; the king
dom of God on earth is the foundation of the everlasting
kingdom of God in the heavens ; and in the measure that
salvation is wrought out here, and the kingdom of God ex
tends among men, will the end be accomplished which
Christ set before his disciples as the object of constant and

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 73
paramount devotion. The whole ministry of Christ was
a ministry of love to all the sinful, sorrowful, lost sons of
men. He was moved with compassion for the multitude
because he saw them " in distress," " scattered abroad as
sheep having no shepherd," living mean, ignoble, wicked
lives, ignorant of God and of the place which they occupy
in his infinite heart, with latent spiritual powers capable of
development, with solemn responsibilities of moral agents,
with features of the divine image not yet wholly effaced and
that might be restored. How strongly did he urge, by
word and deed, in life and death, the duty of self-sacrific
ing love for men, not merely for the souls of men, but for
men, women, and children, in all the relations of life ; and
how impressively did he emphasize, in the sublime pro
gramme of the judgment day, the decisive importance of
deeds of love and mercy. " Inasmuch as ye did it unto
one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me."
" Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye
did it not unto me." "Come, ye blessed of my Father."
" Depart, yecursed." Who are the brethren of Christ in this
judgment programme? His disciples ? Yes, but not these
alone. For the event which he describes is that of the gen
eral judgment, when all nations, all the generations which
shall have thronged the globe, will stand before his judg
ment seat, among whom there will be countless millions who
never saw one of his disciples. Tlie brethren of the Son
of Man are "the poor, suffering, sorrow*laden sons of #
men, and the principle on which the judgment proceeds is
that as men treat those, they would have treated the Judge
had they had the opportunity."
Are not the heathen among those who are in greatest
need of the offices of love ? Are they not hungry, fam-
7

74 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
ishing for lack of the bread of life ? Are they not sick,
consumed by the fever and leprosy of sin ? Are they
not poor, bankrupt in estate and character ? Are thev
not in prison, compassed about by walls which they can
neither scale, nor dig beneath, nor break through? If
this great passage does not teach that men are saved by
works of love, it certainly does teach that a faith which
does not produce these works is vain and dead, and that
those and those only who possess the spirit and do the
works described by Christ, are justified in regarding
themselves, or in believing that he regards them, as his
true disciples. The question for us to answer, as Mr.
Spurgeon is reported to have suggested, is not, May the
heathen be saved without the gospel, but, Will we be
saved if we do not carry the gospeJ to the heathen ? And
it may be confidently affirmed that those who cannot be
moved with compassion in view of the .wrath of God
which has come upon the heathen, will not be moved with
compassion in view of that which is to come upon them ;
that those Avho will not make sacrifices to rescue the
heathen from the hells in which they are in this world,
will not make sacrifices to rescue them from the hell of
the future world, which seems far-off, vague, unreal.
What, then, is the greatest need of the church of to
day? We answer, a divine enthusiasm; a mighty pas
sion for the kingdom of God on earth, embracing all the
populations of" the globe — all China, all India, all Africa,
all Europe, all America, and all the islands of all the
oceans ; a kingdom as wide-reaching as the manifold life
of man, involving obedience to the will of God in all
positions and relations — in the sphere of the family, of
social life, of business life, of political life; a kingdom

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 75
whose progress shall be marked by the growing consecra
tion of the people of God, the preaching of the gospel to
the poor, the overthrow of oppression, the extermination
of drunkenness, and the passions of lust, and the greed
of gain, the destruction of superstition, idolatry, and all
forms of infidelity, the sway of truth, and love, and
righteousness over all the earth, a divine enthusiasm, a
a mighty passion of love and loyalty, impelling the sol
diers of Jesus Christ to conquer for him all the king
doms of the globe on which his cross of shame and
agony was set up, and from which he uttered the cry of
expiring and redeeming love.
2. We mention, as a second cause, the failure of the
evangelical churches to apply at home the principle of
comity which they recognize in their foreign mission
work. It is estimated that there is on an average one or
dained minister to every three hundred thousand of the
pagan population of the world. There is good authority
for the statement that in China, and the population acces
sible to the American Board, there is only one missionary
for every six hundred thousand people. Moreover, there are
whole nations, numbering scores of millions, in which no
disciples have been made. We are confident that all who
have any adequate conception of the interests involved,
will admit that the two following statements are thor
oughly reasonable : (1) " That the Christian churches of
the world should be satisfied with nothing less than send
ing out one ordained missionary for every fifty thousand
of the accessible pagan population of the . world." (2)
" That no church ought to call itself thoroughly aggres
sive and evangelical that does not expend for the support

76 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of missions at large at least one dollar for every five it
expends for itself"
What would compliance with these propositions require
of the evangelical churches of the world ? Twenty thou
sand ordained missionaries instead of four thousand, as at
present ; an immediate reinforcement of sixteen thousand,
of which the quota of our denomination at the North
should be not less than one thousand two hundred, making
our foreign force of ordained ministers at least one thou
sand jive hundred. This would require our churches to
give annually five times as much as the committee planned
for expending during 'the current year, as authorized at
the last annual meeting of the Union, or two million five
hundred thousand dollars, a sum which, large as it may
seem, is four hundred thousand dollars less than would
come annually into the treasury of the Union if the
members of our churches should give on an average one
cent a day for tiie cause of foreign missions.
We ask you to consider most seriously the vast relative
waste in men and money involved in the condition of
things existing in all Northern States, the part of the
country represented by the Union.
To illustrate the matter which we have in mind, let us
take an example of numberless cases, with many of which
every one is familiar. Here are five fields, each having a
population of one thousand five hundred, and five evangel
ical ministers, — one Baptist, one Presbyterian, one Con-
gregationalist, one Episcopalian, and one Methodist, —
twenty-five ordained ministers preaching the gospel to
seven thousand five hundred people, while on the other
side of the globe there are twenty-five fields, each having
a population of three hundred thousand, and but one

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 77
ordained minister ;; twenty-five men preaching the word
to seven million five hundred thousand people, one thou
sand times as many as are under the care of the same
number of religious teachers at home. We ask now, in
all earnestness, Would it not be vastly more reasonable
and. Christian, if these several denominations would
apply at home the principle of comity which they recog
nize abroad, keeping five of these ministers here and
sending twenty to aid their brethren, each of whom is
confronted by nearly a third of a million pagans ? If it
would be wrong in the sight of God to put five ministers
of different evangelical denominations in a village of one
thousand five hundred people in China, or Africa, or Bur
ma, restricting their labors to that locality, is it not wrong
and equally wrong, yea, wrong in a greater degree, to do
the same thing here, while hundreds of millions of our
fellow-men are living and dying in the darkness and mis
ery of heathenism ? The field is the world. The whole
world is missionary ground. Every city, every village,
every neighborhood, in which there is one man, or woman,
or child who is not a citizen of the kingdom of God, is a mis
sionary field. We challenge any man to adduce reasons
which will approach to a justification of the course of the
Christian churches in distributing their forces over this
common missionary ground — the whole world — in such
an extraordinary uneven way, putting one minister in
eharge of three hundred people, many of whom are
Christians, and another, of no greater ability, in charge
of three hundred thousand, of whom all, or nearly all,
are pagans. If the great evangelical denominations would
act on the principle of comity here suggested, it would be
an easy matter for them to send an immediate reinforce-

78 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
ment of sixteen thousand men, so that there might be one
minister to every fifty thousand pagans ; and it would be
an undertaking of no difficulty for us to send our quota
of one thousand two hundred, and to furnish them with
adequate support.
Is it a violation of truth or charity to say that the
existing state of things is a great religious scandal, an
offense against God, and a crime against our brethren of
the heathen world, sitting in the region and shadow of
death, perishing for the lack of the light of life?
What are the lessons taught by these facts ? What are
the duties which they should impress upon us? One
duty, and that of paramount importance, as clear to our
mind as if it were written on the heavens in words of fire,
is this : That the evangelical churches ought to emphasize
strongly all points of doctrinal agreement and all methods
of Christian work in which they can unite, coming as
closely together as possible, and presenting a united front
to the enemies of God. Consider, we beseech you, the
most obvious facts of our condition. Here are the evan
gelical churches, in all but a few millions, confronted at
home by thiee hundred million members of two powerful
and thoroughly corrupt organizations, — the Roman and
Greek hierarchies, — and by vast masses of men connected
with no churches, dominated by sensuality, greed of gain,
lust of power, and social distrust and hate — tremendous
principles of evil which have brought to untimely de
struction cities and nations, many and great, all down the
ages,; and abroad, confronted by a billion heathen, all in
volved in deepest moral ignorance and most debasing
superstition, and half of them held in the thralldom of
j false philosophical systems of extraordinary, power ; and

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 79
joined with these forces, both at home and abroad, the
spiritual hosts of wickedness, under the leadership of the
god of this world. In such a war as this, fighting the
organized evil forces of earth and hell, the combined
powers of " the world, the flesh, and the devil " united
in the strongest compacts, shall we not all, soldiers of
Jesus Christ, stand together in the closest relations
possible, help each other heartily on the march and- in the
deadly assault, cheer each other amid the fire and storm
of battle, knowing that the Leader is one, the army one,
the foe one, the final triumph one, the eternal glory one,
— the glory due unto him who is " worthy to receive the
power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor,
and blessing ? "
But we hear objections, many and plausible, urged
against what some may be pleased to call an impracticable
and fanatical appeal.
1. It is said that we, as a denomination, hold the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; that it is of
supreme importance that we secure the widest possible
acceptance of our views at home ; that we dare not com
promise with error by consenting to give up any com
munity, however small, to the care of Pedobaptist
churches, etc., etc.
The question, then, for us to consider is reduced to
this : Shall we give over more of the population of our
country to the Pedobaptists, or more of the heathen
world to the devil ? Are we to regard the errors of all
Christian churches, other than our own, as more destruct
ive than the errors of heathenism ?
And, then, if we have the truth in its purity and
fullness, are we not, of all Christian bodies in the world,

80 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
under the greatest obligation to go to the regions beyond ?
Surely, the very fact of the purity of our creed immensely
enhances the claims of duty resting upon us to secure its
world-wide acceptance. What an inspiring and uplifting
event it would be to the whole Christian world, if we
should send out at once the number of missionaries sug
gested, — twelve hundred, — moved by the spirit of apos
tolic self-sacrifice and heroism, whose labors might be the
means, under the blessing of God, of winning to our pure
faith tens and hundreds of thousands in heathen lands,
creating at many points, as among the Telugus, Baptist
communities numbering fifty thousand ! Furthermore, is
it not evident that the fundamental principle of our
people ought to constrain them to go, in large and
increasing numbers, to the nations of the pagan world ?
For the fundamental principle of our churches, that of
which we boast and in which we glory, is loyalty to Jesus
Christ, implicit obedience to his commands. We discard
and repudiate all assumed authority of a human source,
whether of popes, or councils, or traditions, or creeds.
But loyalty to Christ, in order to be such in truth and
not in name only, must include obedience to all his com
mands, especially to those which are of supreme import
ance, among which stands the Great Commission. Does
our action as a denomination justify or contradict our
profession of loyalty ? What is the command of Jesus
Christ, as distinct and imperative as if we heard his
words ringing out from the height of heaven ? Is it not,
"Go ye, Baptists, preach the gospel to every creature,
make disciples of all nations ? " Is it not the belief of
our churches, that the Great Commission was given
originally, not to Presbyterians, or Congregationalists, or

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 81
Episcopalians, or Methodists, but exclusively to Baptists,
— the very people of whom we claim to be the only living
representatives? The first body of Baptists were right
loyal to their Lord ; they went everywhere preaching the
word ; they carried the good news to all quarters of the
known world. How is it with the people known as
Baptists in the last quarter of the nineteenth century?
Is their obedience such as to justify their claim to be the
true successors of those early disciples of Christ? Have
they discharged, are they now discharging, in any true
and worthy sense, the high and imperative duty imposed
by the risen and glorified Redeemer, loyalty to whom
they claim as their distinction and honor ? Is it obedi
ence to the command, " Go, make disciples of all nations,"
for a people, numbering eight hundred thousand, to con
tribute four hundred thousand dollars a year, — on an
average, one cent a week, — to give to a billion pagans a
knowledge of the incarnate Son of God, who loved them
and gave himself for them, and through whom alone they
can attain eternal life ?
Brethren, mere profession will not justify our claim of
special loyalty to Christ, nor will obedience to his require
ments in the matters of baptism, communion, and church
government justify it while the great majority of the
members of our churches are in a state of mutiny against
the Great Commission, saying, if not in words, yet
practically, We will not ourselves preach the gospel to the
pagan nations, nor will we make sacrifices to aid others in
the work of preaching to them.
How is it that the belief has come to prevail so widely
among all Christian people, that there is an enormous
difference, in culpability and danger, between disobedience

82 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
to Christ in rejecting what he requires them to believe,
and disobedience to Christ in disregarding what he com
mands them to do ?
Why is it that the heresy of unbelief is regarded with
such apprehension or alarm, while the heresy of inaction
is viewed with comparative indifference ? Is faith with
out works any better than works without faith? Are
they not alike dead and displeasing to God — equally vain
and perilous ? To the heresy of inaction, far more than
to the heresy of unbelief, is due the deplorable fact that
the midnight darkness of heathenism still envelops
nearly two-thirds of the population of the globe. What,
then, shall we do? The alternatives are: Either cease
to claim to be the true successors of the earliest Baptist
churches, or obey, with the devotion which characterized
them, the Lord's command, " Go, preach the gospel to
the whole creation."
2. But we hear another objection urged with great
frequency and confidence. It is said that the United
States is destined to be the leading nation of the future,
that it occupies a position of immeasurable importance in
the world's history ; so that whatever we do, or fail to do,
in relation to the evangelization of the pagan nations, we
must seek, hy all means in our power, to make our nation
thoroughly Christian. What shall we say of this utter
ance, heard everywhere, especially on anniversary occas
ions, in the pulpit and on the platform ? Is it not largely
an utterance of national conceit, inspired by national
pride and selfishness,- and utterly opposed to the example
and teaching of Christ and his apostles ?
Let us notice : (1) The ruling motive force of Chris
tianity is love ; and it is the nature, the irrepressible

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 83
instinct, of Christian love to help the most helpless, the
deformed in body, the feeble-minded, the moral refuse of
society for whom none care.
(2) Jesus gathered around him the weakest, the lowest,
the "publicans and harlots," the social outcasts, the
nobodies of his time, according to the prevailing standards
of the world.
(3) Does the Great Commission read, Go ye therefore,
make disciples of the leading nations, preach the gospel
to those who hold positions of great strategic importance ?
On the contrary, Matthew and Mark (Rev. Ver.), read
very differently, as follows : " Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations : " " Go ye into all the world
and preach the gospel to the whole creation."
(4) The history of the church justifies the method of
Christ. Christianity has won its most notable victories
among people of little account in the judgment of the
civilized nations, as among the Karens, the Telugus, the
Sandwich Islanders, the ancient inhabitants of the British
Isles, who, though they were regarded by the Roman3 as
too stupid and brutish to serve as slaves, have built up
the most magnificent empire known to history — an empire
which has endured for a thousand years, and is influ
encing now, as never before, the thought, and life, and
movements of the world.
(5) The only principle of missionary strategy recognized
by Paul, the foremost missionary of all the ages, — as
appears from the inspired record of his life, — was to preach
the gospel where men were thickest. And for the adoption
of this principle he had divine warrant ; for when he was
at Corinth, the Lord said unto him in the night by a
vision : "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy

84 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
peace ; for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee
to harm thee ; for " — what did the Lord say ? Corinth is
a city of culture, the eye of Greece, occupying a position
of great strategic importance ? No, no ; but — " no man
shall set on thee to harm thee, for I have much people in
this city."
Oh, brethren, can we not hear our Lord calling us one
by one by name, and saying, " I have much people in
China, much people in Africa, much people on all the
continents and islands of the globe?" Let us take
deeply into our minds and hearts Christ's idea of the
people ! the people ! the people ! He accounted man
transcendently great, not because of the external distinc
tions which gain for him recognition and honor in the
world, but because of what he is as man, the divine
image in him, his inherent powers of intellect, heart, and
will, which have revealed but an insignificant fraction of
their latent energy, even in the case of those who stand
forth in history as the greatest of the sons of men, and to
whose expansion and growth there is no goal this side of
the infinitude of God. In Christ's esteem, all men, of
whatever race, or rank, or condition, are of equal worth
in virtue of their divine endowments and immortal des
tination. The people have been of but little account in the past.
It has been the great ones of the earth — emperors, kings,
and nobles, the rich and the powerful; for these it has
seemed that all things were made ; for these the people
have labored, and suffered, and died like the beasts of
the field. But thanks be unto God for the signs, multi
plying on every side, betokening the growing power of
Christ's idea of the greatness of man as man, the worth

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 85
and dignity of the people. It cannot be doubted that
one of the chief causes of the agitations and revolutions
which are taking place in all Christian nations, working
the disintegration and overthrow of institutions of social
and political wrong which have survived the destruction
of dynasties not a few, is the growing consciousness on
the part of the people of their divine rights and powers
of manhood ; their dignity as moral agents, — deep calling
unto deep, — the strivings and aspirations of the human
soul, like the ceaseless ground-swell of the ocean, in re
sponse to the presence and quickening touch of the Spirit of
God. And as the Christian idea — which is Christ's idea —
of the people shall grow in power and splendor, it will
mold more and more profoundly all social and politi
cal institutions, and will constrain all the disciples of
Christ to labor with equal love, devotion, and joy for the
temporal and eternal well-being of all men, irrespective
of race, or nationality, or color, or sex, or social condition.
But who knows that the United States is destined to
be the leading nation of the future, that the Anglo-Saxon
race will rule the coming ages ? To whom has the assur
ance been given that God will not build up in China a
kingdom far surpassing in intellectual and moral power
the British Empire or the American Bepublic? Where
is the prophet who can foretell the destiny of the " Dark
Continent," having at the present time a population of
two hundred and fifty millions — four times that of the
United States ? Who can forecast the turnings and over-
turnings which shall precede the coming of him whose
right it is to reign, and who shall reign over all the
nations of the earth ? It is urged thai certain of the
pagan nations and races have no future, that they are

86 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
worn out, their powers of expansion and growth ex
hausted ? We reply that the judgment of those who thus
speak is certainly shallow, and probably false, because
they fail to estimate adequately the restorative and re
creative power of Christianity. The error is like that
involved in the conception of " a mechanical world and
an outside God." The idea has widely prevailed that the
material universe is a "closed system," — a system of
finite forces, acting and reacting upon each other, exclud
ing all Divine causality, — its goal, quiescence and death.
The conception is fundamentally false, because it does not
include, as it should include, God as the universal and
abiding ground of all being and all life, as immanent and
active in all chemical forces, in all vital forces, in all
souls — " His almighty will energizing throughout creation,
from the atom to the archangel." This view compels us
to reject, as irrational and incredible, the notion that the
goal of the material universe is quiescence and death, and
to affirm that, through the immanent and energizing
power of God, it will abide and pass on from lower to
higher stages, " from the nebulous matter to the glory of
the new heavens and the new earth."
But God is in history in a sense infinitely more real
and profound than he is in the realm of physical nature ;
and hence we believe that there are no effete and worn-
out peoples, no races whose powers of expansion and
growth are permanently exhausted. For though the
words of the apostle that " all live, and move, and have
their being in God " declare a universal fact of history,
yet, in these last times, God has entered, in Jesus Christ,
into new and more vital relations with mankind, and is
creating them anew by his Spirit^ awakening and invigor-

HINDRANCES AT HOME TO THE WORK. 87
ating their dormant and paralyzed powers, thus enabling
nations and races, as well as individuals, to enter upon a
new career, far higher and grander than would have been
possible to them before the advent.
In concluding these remarks, we desire to say that we
have spoken as truly and earnestly in behalf of the work of
missions at home as of the work of missions abroad.
The cause of home missions and the cause of foreign mis
sions are one in principle and one in interest. And,
therefore, along with the motto, " America for Christ,"
but high above it, we should place the motto, " The World
for Christ." And the speediest and the only infallible way
to gain America for Christ is to give to the world's evan
gelization the place of supremacy, in labors and gifts,
which it holds of right. This our churches, this the
churches of other denominations, have lamentably failed
to do. The most general and conspicuous act of disobedi
ence to Christ on the part of the Christian people of the
United States, is their deliberate and persistent refusal to
discharge the high and imperative duty to evangelize the
pagan nations — a work for the accomplishment of which,
within the period of the past twenty-five years, their re
sources in men and money have been ample. It is, in our
judgment, no exaggeration to say that the Baptist churches
of the Northern States could have done and ought to have
done, duringthe past year, as much for the cause of foreign
missions as has been done by all the evangelical churches
embraced in the same portion of our country.
Brethren, I would that one-half of the Baptist minis
ters at the North would give themselves to the work of
evangelizing Ihe heathen. Disastrous to our denomination
at home, do you say ? Impossible. It would bring to

88 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
our churches an unparalleled degree of prosperity ; the
places left vacant would be filled by men called of God
from the ranks of the laity ; ministers of other denomi
nations would be won to us, convinced that we were hold
ing the truth in its purity, and living it with apostolic
fidelity ; Christians of other names, moved by the power
of our example, would obey in a worthy manner the
Lord's final command ; and this powerful missionary
" movement " would confound infidelity at home, would
convince the world that Christianity is, indeed, what it
claims to be, and would mightily advance the kingdom of
God in all parts of our country.
May the Divine Spirit enable us to penetrate to the
heart of these great paradoxes in the kingdom of grace —
that we save our life, not by seeking, but by losing it ;
that we become rich, not by keeping, but by giving; that
we become great in moral power among men, not by self-
assertion, but by self-abnegation, by self-sacrifice, from
love to others ; that it is through our poverty that we are
to enrich the world, according to the way of him who,
" though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that
ye through his povery might become rich."

VII.
THE APPROPRIATE MISSIONARY GIVING.
REV. C. H. MOSCRIP, D. D.,
Pastor First Baptist Church, Rockford, III.
In Matt. 10 : 8, "As a gift ye received, as a gift impart,"
the Bible Union Version (Improved Edition) makes a
change which demands a word of explanation, as I use
tlie words as the basis of this address.
Tlie Greeks sometimes used the accusative of a noun as an
adverb. This was done in the case of the word for gift. The
force of the word as a noun, however, was not lost. In this
case the real meaning is brought out more clearly by giv
ing a literal translation, as is done in the version quoted.
This translation brings out very clearly the importance
of method. The command of the gospel is "Go." "Go
and do many mighty works." The believer is to go and
do in order that the sinner may be saved. Modern
Christianity has laid especial emphasis upon these two
phases of her work. There is, as a result, much going
and doing and even giving in the name of Christ to-day
that fails to advance his cause. While these are import
ant, the way in which they are to be done is equally
essential. Here we have failed. Here Jesus made no
mistake. He commands the twelve not only to go and
give, but to so go and to so give that those to whom they
give shall feel the gospel atmosphere — shall receive the
gospel as it came to the twelve themselves. The real
thing in Christian work is elusive. The freshness with
89

90 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDEESSES.
which it first came to men is lost. Christ here enjoins
upon his disciples the reproduction of this. They were to
so give the blessings of salvation as to cause those to whom
the blessings came to recognize that salvation was a gift.
Eternal life is a gift. We are saved by grace. Free
dom from sin and death is by ransom. It is because
" God so loved tlie world that he gave " his son to save the
lost, that we are to make our giving embody this wonder
ful fact and reinforce this divine influence. This age is
the dispensation of grace. Grace now reigns. Standing
in the morning shadows of this the gospel day, Jesus
commands his servants to emphasize the fact that it is
God's purpose to save without money and without price.
Sovereign grace bestows freely the gift of eternal life in
Jesus Christ. There are difficulties here. God is holy.
His justice knows no shadow of turning. He dooms the
impenitent sinner to eternal death. He is the stern Judge
who will hold every soul to strict account for the deeds
done in the body. These things must be preached. Can
they be harmonized with the doctrines of free grace ? I
am sure there was no conflict on these points in the
eternal counsels. We need not try to reconcile them now.
Jesus says, " I gave you eternal life. I ask you to give
to others as you received it. As it came to you it made
prominent the free grace of God. As you give it to
others see that you make this truth appear."
We have, then, as our theme : The Appropriate Mis
sionary Giving Emphasizes the Freeness of Divine
Grace. 1. In its Revelation of God.
(1) Missionary giving is a revelation of God. The

THE APPROPRIATE MISSIONARY GIVING. 91
Christian is a witness. Every act submitted to the in
spection of the world springs from hidden sources. Our
words and acts show what these sources are. We have
not made the most of our office as witnesses. Our giving
tells of .our sense of God's . goodness. . It shows the
strength of God's hold on the Christian's affections. It
magnifies the power of God over the believer. God is
made known as he appears to those who know him.
(2) God is revealed in the reproduction of the Divine
giving. God is revealed in the word first as the summar
tion of all power. To this is added the idea of lordship
as the ^outgrowth of the divine self-existence. In the
New Testament he is seen as Father and Saviour. In
this progress or growth of the idea of God he passed
from being simply Creator, or Creator and King, to the
idea of beneficence. He is no less Creator. He does not
cease from the exercise of his Lordship, but he presents
himself as the " God of all grace." He spends himself
that he may create, man anew in his own image. . His
giving is the logical result of his being. He makes
salvation a gift because he so loved. The present dis
pensation, is the visible expression of this divine principle.
The gift of a believer in so far as it is right will exhibit
this law of the divine life. It will imitate, illustrate, and
translate the feeling and purpose of God. God is brought
before the lost as the lover of the soul. Perishing
humanity feels the reality of God's love and the tender
ness of his purpose.
(8) It is a message from God. God speaks through
his witness. Modern Christianity has been dominated
by this idea. So strong has been the tendency that we
have been in danger of thinking that this was all. ,God

92 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSE
has blessed a faithful witness. He has multiplied our
work. His servants have seemed to lean on this as the
secret of success. There is in all our effort an influence
that eludes our analysis. God seems to use and honor in
directions. Much that we think should yield large results
comes to naught. Often the least thing brings such large
results. Somehow God makes his meaning clear. For
example, Jesus nowhere gives a complete definition of the
Trinity, nor do we anywhere in the word find an explana
tion of the union of the two natures in Christ. Still,
from what Christ has said, and what he was, the early
Christians were assured that the Godhead was three in
one, and that Christ was both divine and human so
thoroughly that neither destroyed the integrity of the
other. Now, in somewhat the same way the giving of
the believer is made to speak God's personal message to a
lost soul.
This revelation belongs to servanthood and stewardship.
Perhaps we have not made all we might of these.
Here, however, some of Christianity's glorious victories
have been won. The believer is a servant and a steward.
The things said are true, even though they may not be
all the truth.
We come to a deeper truth when we see that the appro
priate missionary giving emphasizes the freeness of grace
because, 2. It is a Manifestation of Life.
Dr. Mabie has not only struck a new note, but he has
planted himself upon and lifted modern missions to a dis
tinctly higher plane, when he says : " We must cease look
ing for the motive of missions in the need and degradation
of the heathen and find it in the Christian heart." This

THE APPROPRIATE MISSIONARY GIVING. 93
is God's thought. God is not quite content that we should
always be servants, stewards, or even ambassadors. He
has called us to be sons.
(1) The gift of grace is eternal life. Paul says so in
Rom. 6:23 : "The gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus." Jesus says (John 10:10): "I came that they
may have life." John says of Jesus (1 : 4), " In him
was life," and again (1 : 12), "As many as received him,
to them gave he the right to become children of God," and
again in (1 John 3 : 1), " Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
children of God." Once more (1 John 5 : 12), " He that
hath the son hath life." The whole of salvation is the giv
ing and receiving of life. At some time in the convicted
sinner's experience God puts the seed of the new life into
his heart. To believers, in some true sense, God has com
mitted this work. In some way missionary giving is, as
the Divine giving, an exercise of life.
(2) This gift of life demands the conquest of the world
for Christ. The reception of the new life introduces to
new relations. It is in its nature a new disposition. It
is sometimes said that a person cannot be a Christian and
not be interested in the work of missions. This is not the
best way in which to state it. The believer, made one
with Christ, a new creature, has a new nature, relation
ships, and purpose. He is not Christ's pet lamb to feed
out of the great Shepherd's hand, but Christ's* younger
brother, to partake of his power and to undertake his work.
Weak, feeble, tottering he is, but possessed of Christ's
life, interested in the same things, doing the same work.
Having received the divine nature he feels something of
God's antagonism to sin. His disposition, the permanent

94 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
trend of his purpose, is to overcome the world for
Christ. This is the thought underlying the prayer, " Thy
kingdom come." Power to say " Our Father," is son-
ship. Then the first cry of sonship : " Hallowed be
thy name." Then the activity of sons to secure the
Father's honor, " Thy kingdom come." Faith, the
motive force in sonship, necessitates the conquest
of the world for Christ. This is the demand of
every converted soul. Efface Christianity; take away
every Bible ; turn the churches into dance-houses ; let
wickedness rule ; leave only one true child of God in all
the earth ; let that one be chained in the deepest dungeon
Rome can find in which to hide her victims from the eyes
of men ; let him be old, decrepit, dying ; and yet that
single child of God, by the power of the undying faith
that cries to God, " Thy kingdom come," might so sum
mon tiie forces of God that the world should be won to
him again. Such, the power of the divine life, is the
force lodged in the appropriate missionary giving. It is
life manifested.
3. Such giving Emphasizing the Freeness of Divine
Grace becomes a Propagating Power.
Just where lies the power of the Christian life to repro
duce itself? At what point in its activities does God add
his touch to cause the dead soul to rise in newness of life ?
Many answers are in the air to-day. Many earnest phil
anthropists insist that money, rightly used, will heal all
human ills. Mr. Stead, the apostle of. the nineteentli
century humanitarianism, declares that there must be "A
Mission to Millionaires." They must, for their own good,
be made to use their own money for the common good.
Christian leaders are taking much the same ground.

THE APPROPRIATE MISSIONARY GIVING. 95
'¦' Money is concrete power," says Dr. Josiah Strong. In
one of the most remarkable contributions to recent mis
sionary literature, viz., the chapter on " Money and the
Kingdom," in " Our Country," l he pleads for the Chris-
tianization of this power. Yet only once does he touch
upon the real element of power in Christian missions and
the true source from which to expect the Christianization
of money. And here he speaks of it only incidentally and
as a result. He shows very clearly and justly that every
penny of Christian money should be used so as to honor
God. He then says : " ' But,' says some one, ' that prin
ciple demands daily self-denial.' Undoubtedly." He
adds : "And that fact is the Master's seal set to this truth,
' If any man would come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily, and follow me ' " (Luke 9 : 23).
In other words, Dr. Strong says give as stewards and
servants, recognizing God's right to the money, and by so
doing reveal him to the world. This is right as far as it
goes. The words, " As a gift ye received, as a gift im
part," however, introduce a strictly higher principle. A
servant or steward does not administer upon his own, but
his Lord's goods. But we have received not of God's
goods alone, but of his life. A steward cannot sacrifice
self. This is a function of life. Indeed, the very nature
of the new life is self-sacrifice. When Jesus uttered the
words just quoted concerning sacrifice, he spoke of that
which was essential to the Christian life. In his own life
and death he 3et forth the eternal constitution of the king
dom. He made the cross the sign of real being. Deatli
and life, life out of death, this is God's order. In God's
1Rsv. Ed., p. 239.

96 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
economy the freeness of grace is the power that repro
duces life. We have here then :
(1) The nature of the believer's life. This life is from
God and is divine. Its deathless purpose is to honor
God in the conquest of the world for Christ. Its ruling
disposition is one with the purpose of grace in the heart
of its author, God. In virtue of this purpose, God gave
the Son to die that men might live. Its effective method
is self-sacrifice. The believer by the very nature of his
life must repeat the sacrifice by which he came into pos
session of eternal life. As Christ went down into the
jaws of death that we might be born again, so are we,
though at an infinite remove, to enter into a death struggle
for the reproduction of this life among men. When
Jesus speaks of self-denial, when we look upon the ordi
nance of baptism, when we read Paul's words, " I confess
I die daily," or, " I bear in my body the marks of the
Lord Jesus," when we think of the fellowship of the
mystery, or of suffering together with him, we see the
truth that death, self-sacrifice, self-effacement is the deep
est principle of the eternal life we possess. As John,
looking at our victory, says : " They overcame him by the
blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony ; and
they loved not their lives unto the death." Every step of
Christ's earthly life is at once command, example, and in
spiration to us to reproduce for others the experience in
which life began for us. Self-sacrifice is not an accident.
It is not a strange freak of God's activity. It is a mani
festation of grace. It is a governing principle of the
eternal gift of life. In its exercise lies life's propagating
power. In it God lodges carrying force, so that souls
through our struggles, by his power, are born again.

THE APPROPRIATE MISSIONARY GIVING. 97
(2) The nature of self-sacrifice. Our true giving
must reproduce the freeness of divine grace. But in its
nature, giving is self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice is struggle.
It is first of all God's struggle with u-. It is the con
flict of the divine life with the undelivered remnants of
sin, and the unsubdued dispositions of selfishness that
remain in us. It is a repetition of the experience re
lated in the seventh of Romans. It is God's conquer
ing touch on our lives, the Spirit's call to better things,
the intense strain of growing pains as life seeks to break
the bands of death.
It is also our struggle with God. God incites us to
strive with him. It is the fai^h-eonfiict which is victory.
It is the prayer-wrestle at Jabbok. It is the Gethsem
ane agony. James expresses a wealth of meaning in the
words, " the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
availeth much." It is a whole philosophy of life.
Read it again as perhaps it should read : " The in
wrought prayer of a good man is very effective." God
brings us to this struggle before our giving is fitted for
his work.
And then self-sacrifice becomes God's struggle through
us for the impartation of the new life to others. In this
sense, the true giving is that exercise in which life passes
over from us to others. It is not only a revelation of
God, and a manifestation of life, but it becomes a propa
gating power. It is the reproductive function of Chris
tian it v.
Brethren, along this way lies victory. " When Zion tra-
vaileth she shall bring forth." So giving, God will charge
the message with power. In our abandonment to self-sac
rifice lies the salvation of a lost world. This flow of life

98 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
will carry with it all the money needed. When we rise
to these divine heights, the treasuries of Christians will
be opened, and fragrant as the box of precious nard will
our gifts pass to the ends of the earth. The freshness of
the divine life would be felt as in apostolic times. Life
offered thus would be gladly received. The light of Him
who is the life of men, would make the darkest heart of
heathendom the brightest place this side of heaven. " As
a gift ye received, as a gift impart."

VIII.
THE CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPON
SIBILITY.
REV. O. P. EACHES, D. D.,
Pastor Mrsl Baptist Church, Hightstovm, N. J.
The aim of the centennial movement is not the raising
of one million dollars. That is a small and insignificant
and incidental thing. That would concern itself with
pocket books and columns of figures. The aim is and
ought to be transcendently higher. It is the raising not
of money, but of men. It is a holy endeavor to raise
the membership to higher levels of thinking and living,
to create* wider horizons of outlook, to beget new concep
tions of duty and responsibility. The aim must be, pri
marily, not to collect money but to cultivate men. We
do not need to add any new words to our language in
order to make ten-fold larger members, to add ten-fold to
the effectiveness of our members, to increase ten-fold the
contribution of our churches. We have over one hundred
thousand words in our language, ready for use. We
need not new words, but a new emphasis, a new meaning.
We need to enlarge the meaning and force of that one
word, Responsibility. If we could, for twelve months,
see the length and breadth and depth of this one word,
responsibility (obligation) it would make a new era for us
as a baptized people, would create a new view of old things,
more men abroad, more money, more prayer, more interest 99

100 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
at home in -all the things that concern the kingdom of
Christ. 1. The development of spiritual power. What shall
be the outcome of the present movement, the twelve
months of organized effort for missions? If it shall
beget emotion, awaken enthusiasm, there may be one
million dollars in the treasury, but this will be all. If
there shall be a new conception of our standing before
God as under obligation, of our standing alongside of
God in loving and holy service, as partners and fellow-
workers in the salvation of the world, if there shall be a
new sense of the pressure from above, if there shall be a
new impelling power from within, then there will be the
creation of so much moral and spiritual capital perma
nently created for the missionary enterprise. And this
will mean the addition in one year of one million to our
membership. It was Emerson, the poetic, dreamy Emer
son, who was talking to practical farmers abo'ut more
productiveness for their farms. He said : " If you want
to double your farms in size, to add another farm to your
present farm, plough deeper, there is another farm beneath."
If we desire, with a deep desire, to double our member
ship, to more than double our contributions, it will be
needful to double the sense of personal obligation. Per
sonal obligation to what ? To the heathen sitting in
darkness and groping after God ? No. Personal oblio-a-
tion to the church that it may not be distanced by others?
No. Personal obligation to the missionary cause, illu
mined by the names of saintly men and women, by com
munities lifted up from savagery to holy living? No.
There must be personal obligation, simply and alone to
the one person, Jesus Christ. Jesus makes salvation

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY; 101
awakens love, creates service, places a yoke upon the
neck. Jesus Christ, rightly understood, means obligation.
2. The Christ spirit will beget the Christ life. The
feeling of obligation, of responsibility must come, not
from without, but from within. The true motive for
Christian living, for Christian missions, cannot be created
by heaping facts upon the mind, by tables of statistics, by
parading the millions of China and Africa' before the
imagination, by the knowledge of the needs of the people
in darkness, by the sense of the degradation of fellow-
men and women in other lands. The true, abiding,
growing, conquering motive will not be created until
there be formed within the Christ spirit. Other motives
will soon lose their grip. Other motives will be pitched
on too low a key. This motive, the obligation to Jesus
Christ, the allegiance to Jesus Christ, the fellowship with
Jesus Christ, this motive will be an all-controlling and
all-compelling motive. It will subordinate all other
motives to itself, it will be unfailing and unfading ; it
can never be paralyzed. It was just at this point that
Paul the man and Paul the missionary was made. He
said, uncovering the inmost part of his life : " It is the
love of Christ that impels and compels me, that puts me
under bonds." Love changes capacity into usefulness,
opportunity into achievement, duty into privilege. There
will never be the rising of the church to the high plane
of service and conquest until there be the Christ spirit
within. The Christ spirit will form naturally the
Christ life. There will come the Christ plan of life, the
Christ sense of obligation, the Christ joy in service.
Then will come, as a natural fruitage, the Christ conquest
of the world.

102 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
3. The Christian is to be like Christ, There was in Christ
a sense of obligation, of responsibility. He was in him
self an organized obligation, responsibility, stewardship,
service, duty. These words were more real to Jesus than
they have ever been to the most devoted man. He said :
" I must be about my Father's business ; " " I must work
the works of him that sent me " ; "I came to seek and
to save the lost " ; " It is my food and my drink, to do
the will of my Father." When Peter and others would
hold him within the limits of Capernaum, he said, I
must preach the gospel tD other villages, for this came I
forth. Jesus wore a yoke of service. Jesus was a con
suming fire. Jesus found delight in putting his own life
under the burdens of others. He was a medical dis
pensary and a society for helping the poor. He was a
training school and theological seminary ; a home mis
sionary and a social reformer. Jesus was u missionary
to men outside the Hebrew faith. The very essence
of the life of Jesus was his love for souls. With
more than the earnestness of a Salvation Army man did
Jesus delight to win a soul into a life of fellowship with
God. Jesus was not a performer of miracles, or a
teacher of high moral systems, except incidentally. The
one sole thing that made Jesus Christ, without which he
could not have been, was his absorbing love for the glory
of God. The love for God made him in love for the
souls of men. Apart from the desire to help men, Jesus
had no aim. Apart from the joy of saving men, Jesus'"
had no joy. When he led one Unclean woman up into
God's light, it made a meal for his soul. Jesus Christ in
the three years of his ministry, meant souls. This, how
ever, is only a fragment of the truth. Jesus Christ, in

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 103
his present ministry, means souls. Jesus Christ, to-day,
has only one thought in his heart for this round world,
this is the welfare of men. The providence of God in
the world, the guiding hand of God, the upholding power,
the rulership over all things, all these reveal God's
thought to bless and save men. Jesus Christ is to-day
concerned for men, their salvation, their completion in the
image of God, their upbuilding in righteousness, their
alliance with God in all holy ways. If we could get
from the Lord Jesus to-day an answer to this question,
" What are you living for ? what is the motive of your
life? what is your deepest concern?" the answer would
be, to change all men into the sons of God, to make God's
kingdom come.
4. TheChristian must not only represent Christ, he must
re-live Christ. The Christian life is only another name
for the Christ life. A Christian is a man that Jesus
Christ lives in ; a man that Jesus Christ thinks in ; a
niau that Jesus Christ lives through and acts through.
And, therefore, the Christian is to live over again in a
smaller mold, but in like way the very life that Christ
lived. He must have Christ's uplook, to live for' God
and his will ; he must have Christ's inlook, the sense of
a mastering passion for God and for men ; he must have
Christ's outlook, the life of yokeship and service. Not
in a pantheistic or mystic way, but as a real and control
ling power the Christian men, living in the midst of a
flesh and blood life, ought to be able to say, " It is no more
I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." The funda
mental plans and policies of the Christian life are founded
upon and molded by Jesus Christ. It was a Roman, a
heathen man, who said, " There is nothing which con-

104 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
cerns man that does not concern me." It was a noble
saying; it might fittingly have come from the lips of
Jesus. The Christian not only may say, but must say,
" There is nothing which concerns Christ that does not
concern me." It is not an incidental thing, therefore, that
a Christian is a doer of good, a helper of God to get hold
of men , to get hold ofthe world. It is the very essence ofthe
Christian life, it is that essential thing without which the
Christian life cannot be. The Christian is not converted so
much into peace, and joy, and happiness, and gladness, and
rest, as into service, into a life of fellowship with Jesus
Christ, into partnership to make God's kingdom come.
It is not optional with a Christian whether he shall be
concerned about saving men, it is not a question that he
may vote up or vote down at will, he must be concerned
about them, for Christ is concerned about them. In
Romans 8 : 29, Paul teaches that the design of the con
verted life is not safety, or peace, or heaven even, but a
transformation into a holy character, conformed to the
image of God's Son. It was said by Tyndall that some
where in the universe twice two might make five. If
that were conceivable, it could not be conceivable that any
where a man may be an intelligent disciple of the Lord
Jesus, a kinsman of Jesus, without being moved by his
impulses. Every Christian must say over again, after
Christ, " It is my food and drink to do the will of my
Father"; " I came to seek and save the lost " ; "I must be
about my Father's business '' ; "I must work the works of
him that sent me." Because the Christ life must be the
Christian's life, therefore the Christ's work must be the
Christian's work. The Christian may say it is my work
because it is his work. Martin Luther said the Chris-

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 105
tian life is the proper use of the personal pronouns, I,
me, mine. Assuredly no one gets into the secrets of the
Christ love until he can say, " Who loved me." Assur
edly no one gets up into the altitude of a true Christian
life until he takes Christ's work upon himself and says,
" His work is my work." And, therefore, what a Chris
tian man gives is not charity, it is not benevolence. He
is giving part of himself, his money, to his own work, his
own work because Christ's work. There are needed new
terms for the giving of money by Christ's people for
Christ's work, for Christ's sake.
5. The responsibility must be personal. The pressure
of obligation is not upon the church, or upon the sister
hood of churches, but upon the person for whom alone I
am, in strictness, responsible, that is myself. There are
two persons to be concerned in this great work of the
world's evangelization, Jesus Christ and myself. This is
my work, my duty, my responsibility, my obligation, my
opportunity. If the horizons of others are narrow, then
Jesus Christ and myself must begin the work as soon as
we can, as best we can of bringing the entire round world
into subjection to the Saviour. In the Year-Book of
1893, are enrolled three million, three hundred and
eighty-three thousand, one hundred and sixty baptized
believers. I am to be concerned with the one unit of the
millions that represents myself. The great need of our
churches is the sense of a personal obligation. We need
this to rest upon each one. The responsibility is not to be
transferred to another or to a society. No one can be a
Christ-like Christian by proxy. There must be a responsi
bility upon the churches, not in spots, but upon the entire
individual membership. In the "Christian Inquirer"

106 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of February 15, 1893, a Baptist church of five hundred
members is reported as giving one thousand seven hun
dred and sixty-seven dollars. Of this amount, nine persons
gave one thousand, four hundred and fifty dollars; the
Sunday-school gave one hundred and forty dollars ; leav
ing the church at large to give one hundred and seventy-
seven dollars. If there had been the ploughing in of a
sense of individual responsibility there would have been a
larger crop of contributors. It came upon the world a
startling discovery that the air so silent, presses upon each
square inch with a fifteen-pound pressure. It would
come upon the Christian world like the opening of a new
era if there should be upon each confessing Christian a
consciousness of what the Christian life really is, the
pressure of the Christ life upon every part of the Christian
life for three hundred and sixty-five days in the year.
6. The cultivation of the sense of obligation. How
may the sense of responsibility be enlarged ? It will rest
to a large extent upon the pastors and leaders in
Christian work. A ' church is, to a great degree, what
the pastor himself is. A church belongs to Christ, but it
is molded and shaped by the pastor. If he is a man
with a large sense of obligation, that sense of obligation
will, through training, become contagious. David Brain-
erd lived a large life amid little and seemingly insignifi
cant surroundings. He wrote in his diary: " Last year I
longed to be prepared for a world of glory, but of late all
my concern is for the conversion ofthe heathen, and for that
end I long to live." The largeness of that life touched
and moved William Carey. It touched and moved Samuel
J. Mills and Henry Martyn. In the same way, to-day,
a life touched by a sense of love, of duty, of imperative

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 107
obligation will influence others upward into the same kind
of life. Back of the church is the pastor. Back of the
pastor is the New Testament. Back of the New Testa
ment is Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ and. the New
Testament will reach the church through the pastor. In
a church multiplication table it would stand in this way :
One pastor, in his molding power, in his influence, is equal
to twenty-five, or fifty, or one hundred members, or to the
entire church combined. There is large need, therefore,
not of Baxter's reformed pastor, but of Christ's form
ing and transforming pastor.
For the development of the sense of personal responsi
bility there must be a crowding upon the membership of
our churches the essential idea of conversion. Our pre
valent molds of doctrine have a vast deal to do with
religious experience. In days when the pulpit magnified
the law, every convert passed through a deep emotional ex
perience j each convert had a slough of despond to be passed
through. We need to have this mold of doctrine, that each
one converted into the new life in Christ may be converted,
not alone into safety, peace, emotion, but also into service,
into a personal endeavor to bring in the kingdom of God.
One inquiry, " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do," is equal
to a vast deal of singing, " Oh, I am so happy in Jesus," as
a test of the Christian life. A small sense of the respon
sibility is equal to a large amount of emotion. There
must be in the unwritten covenant of each church this
large and scriptural teaching, that the confession of faith
in Christ is inseparable from the union with Christ in ser
vice for souls. Every Christian should be converted into
orthodoxy, into holy living, into fervent praying, into
consecrated service, into holy giving, into the dedication

108 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
of himself into entire loyalty to the Lord Jesus. The
Christian life is loyalty to Jesus Christ. We may not
pride ourselves on our orthodoxy in maintaining the
scriptural relation of the ordinances, if we are vastly het
erodox in looking a plain command of the Saviour in the
face and then disobeying it. The contribution box is as
much a test of orthodoxy as the creed. Loyalty to Christ
means obedience. Loyalty to Christ means the highest
motive. We may, therefore, lay aside for twenty years
to come the appeal to engage in the work of spreading the
gospel from the number of conversions, from the small
cost in money for saving one soul in India, from the mer
cantile value of missions. Loyalty to Christ would lead
to obedience to Christ if there were only one small island
in the Pacific, unlighted by the knowledge of Christ. It
is not the numbers of men unsaved that moves the
Christian, but the command of Christ. It is not success
that should stimulate the church, but the simple wish of
the Lord that should impel and compel. John Eliot
wrote in his grammar for the Indians, these words :
" Prayer and pains through faith in Jesus Christ will do
anything." The life of Eliot seems, at first sight, thrown
away. The Bible translated into their tongue, no one in
the world can read it. The Indians have perished from
the earth. But his life was splendid, is splendid, because
it was mastered by Christ's passion for souls. It grew
out of a consuming sense of personal obligation. That
which made him, will make men like him to-day. We
are to look on ourselves as put in trust with tlie gospel.
Every truth is a trust. Every opportunity is an obli
gation. Every responsibility is a privilege. Every Chris
tian must regard himself as a trustee of Christ, put in

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. 109
trust with the ministry of the Saviour upon the earth.
Three things lie side by side in the personal life — oppor
tunity, ability, responsibility. Opportunity says, I may.
Ability says, I can. Responsibility says, I ought. Then
the Christ spirit says, By God's help, I will.
7. The expulsive power of a new aifection. What if our
more than three million members should have in them the
spirit of an indwelling Christ, should be personally in love
with that one commanding Christ above, should put on the
yoke of service, would there not be the thrill of a new
life ; would there not be an aggressive power in the church ;
would not the awakened church drive out of the lan
guage such devil's words as dive, saloon, slum ; would not
China and Japan feel the power that would come from
this increased sense of responsibility? Is all this
Utopian, is it but a day-dream ? Here are the men and
the women, here is the machinery, here is the social
standing, here are ability and power, here are the open
ing opportunities, above is the one Christ with his heart
never satisfied until he gets hold of the world, there
stands in the Book the one supreme command to en
lighten the world, there is on the heart the blood of
redemption aud forgiveness. There is needed this, that
we shall live up to the confession we all have made,
that having been forgiven through the blood of Christ
we may be moved by the life of Christ. The sentence
in the hall of the Christian Workers at Boston is always
true, " Christ alone can save the world " ; but he cannot
save it alone. He needs the help of every confessing
Christian, and that begets the sense of responsibility.
If the baptized believers should get the meaning of that
word upon their lips and in their hearts, there would be
10

110 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
a reformation, a revolution. What tremendously signifi
cant words are those in 2 Peter 3 : 12 (Rev. Ver.),
" Hastening the coming of the day of God." The divine
movements wait on the human. Every Christian may
help to usher in the completed kingdom of God, or he
may hindsr. Out of this power to stand in God's way,
or to be God's right hand of help, comes a fearful respon
sibility. One of the most inspiring books of recent
years is Mackenzie's " History ofthe Nineteenth Century."
It shows the amazing advances made in recent years.
Gladstone says that the race has made more material
progress in the first fifty years of this century than in all
the preceding centuries ; in the next twenty-five years
a greater advance than in the first fifty; in the next
decade more than in the preceding twenty-five. There
must be alongside this marvellous growth in the material
life, a growth also in our conceptions of the Christian
life. Thirteen pounds meant a vast deal for the men of
Carey's time. Enlarging responsibility means for us, in
our day, contributions expressed in terms of a million
dollars and beyond.
8. The power of a personal Christ. If men can be
gotten under the control of the personal Christ, there will
be of necessity an alliance with Christ in all things.
Emerson said : " A personal ascendency, that is the only
fact much worth considering." If we can get ourselves
and others under the personal ascendency of the Lord
Jesus, there will be the contribution of ourselves. From
this will come prayer, service, money, intelligent interest
in God's work. Duty will mean doing; opportunity
will mean obligation ; ability will mean bestowal ; needs
will mean gifts.- The great missionary field of the

CULTIVATION OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Ill
world to-day is the church, that it may get to know the
Christ himself in an intimate way, for fellowship, for
service, for likeness in character. Christ for us means
salvation. Christ in us means holiness. Christ with us
means fellowship for work. Myself in Christ means
safety. Myself for Christ means service. Myself with
Christ means heaven. We need to-day to be more con
cerned about the yoke than the crown. We need to be
more concerned about getting heaven on the earth than
upon getting into heaven ourselves. The great mission
of the Christian life is the glory of God in the salvation
of the world. The great motive of the Christian life is
Jesus Christ in the heart. The great test of the Chris
tian life is not enjoyment, but responsibility and seivice.
The millennium will come when the individual Christian
by the million learns to say : " I am debtor to every man
and cause that needs, my help." Christ and the church
working together are invincible. God regenerates the
soul and presents it to the church. The church must
generate intelligence and training for fruitful service.
Jesus Christ makes us free from sin that we may be
bondmen of the Saviour and debtors to others.

IX.
"THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH."
REV. LEMUEL C. BARNES,
Pastor Fourth Avenue Baptist Church, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Two names have been given to the age in which we
live. Some have called it the "Age of Missions."
Others, from a different point of view, have called it the
" Age of Electricity." May we not give to the coming
era a name which shall include the main points in both
these and also many other important characteristics?
May we not call it the " Age of Fellowship " ? That is
the high significance in electricity. Pittsburgh and
London by its agency can hold communication in a few
minutes of time. America and India can talk with one
another in an hour. Chicago and Boston are literally
within speaking distance. By Gray's recently invented
telautograph a man in Portland, Oregon, may sign his
name to a document, and as he draws the marks the same
signature in ink may be recorded in Portland, Maine.
Electricity not only promotes fellowship in the com
munication of thought and voice and handwriting, but
also in bringing men close together in bodily fellowship.
While the suburbs of our cities are widely spreading out,
they are by electric transit drawing nearer than ever to
the centers. Edison tells us that there is no reason why,
before long, men should not be fired over the continents
at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. The
high significance in electricity is fellowship.
112

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 113
Now, if we had time, we might see that in many other
important departments of life, the characteristic word for
the age to come is fellowship. What characterizes the
business world? Vast combinations of capitalists. Fel
lowship ! Vast combinations of workingmen. Fellow
ship ! The key-jivord of the political economy of the
past was competition. The keynote of the economy of
the future is fellowship. So in education. You remember
that Pete Jones was fond of declaring to the Hoosier
schoolmaster that there was " no lar-nin' without lickin'.
Lickin' and larnin'. Lickin' and larnin' goes together."
But those who have read the series of articles in the
" Forum " concerning the public schools of our great cities
to-day, have seen that the city of Indianapolis leads them
all in the higli quality of its educational methods, being
so much in advance of most of them that there are only
three other cities on the continent — one of those three
being in the same Hoosier State — which rank in the class
with Indianapolis. What is the characteristic of the ideal
educational system according to the " Forum " critic ? He
tells us in other words to the effect that formerly the
ideal was " lickin' and larnin'," but now wise teachers
enter into relations of personal friendship with their
pupils and the pupils come to regard their teachers as
loving helpers. In one word, the new education is
characterized by fellowship.
What is our Christianity? The keystone of it is
fellowship, — the Son of God in perfect fellowship with
men, the Son of man in perfect fellowship with God.
There are two sides of the arch of which this is the key
stone. Their substance too, is fellowship. God shares
all his good with men. That half of the structure of

114 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
Christianity we have been trying always to learn and
have not sufficiently learned yet. But the other half we
are only beginning to bring to its proper place, namely,
that the children of God are to share ail the goods they
have with their fellow-men. I will not raise the question
how far the lowest kind of goods is included. The first
disciples, under the fusion of pentecostal fire, believed
that all the lowest goods were included. They may
possibly have been mistaken. But whatever we say of
the positive and the comparative, it is certain that all the
superlative goods which men possess are to be shared
with their fellow-men. The great New Testament word
"fellowship" or "communion" always means sharing.
The final teaching of Jesus was simply this. His
Great Commission was that his disciples should not hold
the goods they had from God, but share with their
fellows, even unto the ends of the earth.
Is it possible to do this ? Can we reach out so widely ?
Can we see so far ? Can our hands reach out what God
has given us to the ends of the earth ? It may be that
the brethren in Chicago, with their Ferris wheel and
their other great advantages for wide outlook, are able to
see to the ends of the earth ; but how can we, — how can
our little local church, yours and mine, not located per
chance in one of the great cities, but down out of sight in
some Sugar Hollow, away from all centers of life, away
from all mountains of observation and opportunity, —
how can we actively share with all men to the ends of the
earth in the good 'which God has given us ?
Instead of trying to answer this in a speculative way,
let us look at it in a concrete case. Instead of theorizing
about it, let us simply try to see a church in a place as

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 115
obscure and out of the way as our Sugar Hollow is^a
single small church which has actually done this thing
for more than a hundred and fifty years. If anybody
anywhere has been able, under such circumstances as ours,
to do this, we can do it in our obscure locality, in our
small church. You have already guessed, perhaps,- that
the church which I have in mind is the church in Herrn-
hut. Let us see how far the church in little Herrnhut
has reached. We shall have to fly swiftly to compass the
horizon of that church.
We are in Greenland. At a glance we discover that
the Esquimaux are among the lowest and most loathsome,
the most stolid and unresponsive of mankind. After six
years of patient teaching and appeal they do not show the
melting of a single line in their hardened faces. We are
gathered with them in a room where one of the Herrn-
hutters is transcribing the gospel story of the crucifixion.
He reads it aloud. While he reads, one of the most
hardened of these frozen faces begins to melt. The lines
of stolidity are broken. Soon the whole room is filled
with the manifest and throbbing spirit of Jesus Christ,
and many of the Esquimaux are won to his love and his
service. Fly six hundred miles across the straits to Labrador,
and a similar process is going on. Take the wings of the
north wind and fly on for thousands of miles down the
American continent until we come to our own territory.
See these Herrnhutters year after year and generation
after generation seeking to win the American Indian to
Christ. Fly on to the West Indies. There come from Herrn
hut two men, ready to be sold into slavery, that they may

116 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
bwng to the Negroes the fellowship of Christ. One, left
alone, is tending a watch-fire on a great plantation that
he may earn a pittance of bread by keeping guard over
the property of the planters, who hate him, and he
wonders if the Herrnhutters away in Saxony have for
gotten him. Toward the middle of the night he sees
two men stalking out of the darkness toward him and
wonders with what intent they are coming. As they
come nearer, and the light of the watch-fire gleams over
their faces, he sees that they are his brethren who have
come over land and sea to his help.
We cannot stop to recount the long trials and the ulti
mate triumphs of the gospel as brought to the West
Indies by this people. We must fly on over into Central
America, to the Mosquito coast — a suggestive name.
Along the lagoons of the Mosquito coast these Herrn
hutters have been winning to Christ hundreds of men
and women. Fly again, hundreds of miles farther, to
the north shoulder of South America. Go into the
woods where the low and dark and degraded natives of
that quarter of the globe are to be found, and the Herrn
hutters are there winning them to Christ. Stretch the
wing for a flight of thousands of miles across the Atlantic
to South Africa, and in two or three places in the dark
continent we find the men and women of Herrnhut win
ning to Christ men and women of Africa. Would that
we could stop to listen to the thrilling stories which clus
ter about the African mission of the Moravians ; but we
must fly across another ocean to Australia, and here Ave
come to that quarter of the globe where our evolutionist
teachers tell us we must look, if anywhere on earth, for
the missing link. Here are the lowest, most animal and

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 117
degraded of all mankind ; and here in the midst of them
are the Herrnhutters, making known Jesus Christ, and
lifting men up toward him.
We cannot stop here ; but in our great sweep around
the globe along with these Herrnhutters, we must hasten
another ten thousand miles to Alaska. The ship comes
only once in the year ; the rest of the time they are shut
away from all communication with the outside world.
There are two explorers who never have heard of these
Herrnhutters, but who are making an expedition through
Alaska, and their guides keep speaking to them about
the Kilbuckamucks, and they tell them what wonderful
ways the Kilbuckamucks have ; and these explorers —
scientific men — begin to think that they are on the trail
of a new species of the genus homo. They begin to get
eager to find what the Kilbuckamucks can possibly be.
They must be a strange and marvelous people according
to all accounts. By-and-by they draw near, and they are
told that just yonder over the hill they shall come upon
the Kilbuckamucks. When they come upon them, what
are they ? They are the Moravian missionaries, Mr. and
Mrs. Kilbuck, with their Indian converts. They are, in
deed, a new species in that part of the world — born of
Heaven. The kingdom of heaven is coming in Alaska ;
it is coming from Herrnhut.
It is now time for us to turn toward Herrnhut itself.
But on the way we have to climb over the roof of the world,
as it has been called, the Himalaya Mountains, reaching
farthest into the heavens of any section of the globe. We
go over one range after another, each higher than the pre
ceding, until we come to one so high that it is covered with
snow except three months of the year. Only for that time

118" CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
is it possible to cross into the valley beyond. We take our
chance and cross. There we find the Herrnhutters. The
rest ofthe evangelical world has been praying that Thibet
might be opened to the gospel ; has been praying and
praying ; but while we prayed, th€ Moravians have been
actually standing at the doors of Thibet for thirty years
and knocking, knocking, knocking. From this lofty
perch we must take wing again for Herrnhut. But on
the way we cannot fail to halt at Jerusalem.
The Holy City has become a storehouse of religious
superstitions. We are more interested in religious reali
ties. As we pass out of the city on our way to Bethle
hem, and we see beside the highway a great building, one
of the finest in Palestine, we say, "This must be the
palace of the pasha of Jerusalem ; no other could have
such a home." We inquire and find that the Herrnhutters
have come here and built this great palace. For whom ?
For lepers : those loathsome men and women whom you
saw, as you plunged into the valley of the Kedron on
your way to the Mount of Olives ; those people who come
creeping out into the center of the road almost under your
horse's hoofs, and whom you dare not try to describe, or
even picture again to yourself, because of their loath
someness. At Jerusalem the living Christ is to be sought
in the Moravian Home for lepers and not in the church
ofthe Holy Sepulchre.
Now let us come to Herrnhut itself, that we may see
what kind of place the center of this world-wide activity
is. It must be some great focus of modern civilization,
from which lines of electricity and rail, lines of financial
and political influence, are radiating to every quarter of
the globe, or else there could not be such a wide sweep of

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 119
activity on the part of these people. We are in Dresden,
where thousands of Americans spend months at a time, but
not one in a thousand of whom ever makes the little journey
which you and I are now to make. We are reluctant to go,
because here in Dresden, we are in the brightest blaze of
human art. Elsewhere we have been wearied with miles
and miles of painted canvas, having but now and then a
gleam of life. The artists who have been painting pietas
and other dead Christs for all the centuries, have more
than wasted their time ; that canvas might better have
been sewn into flour sacks for the hungry masses in
Europe, that paint might better have been used on the
dismal homes of the peasantry. Here we are at last in
the Dresden gallery, and we have hastened through its
long halls and corridors to that far corner room which
contains by itself alone the Sistine Madonna. But we are
out of patience, we do not believe in it, it is only a " fad,"
we say ; people must have some picture which they call
the greatest in the world and they have taken a notion to
call this the greatest. Look at that green curtain the
artist painted there ! Is it not as we thought, simply the
most famous waste of canvas and paint? We glance at
it once in a while, then we glance at it twice in a while ;
then our eyes begin to hold themselves to it, and we forget
the green hangings which the artist painted, we forget the
clouds, the robes, and even the cherubs, and our eyes cen
ter on the eyes of the mother of our Lord, and we find
ourselves entranced. The master has almost put soul and
spirit into the canvas, and we can hardly leave it. We re
turn to it again and again.
From the Dresden gallery and its Sistine Madonna we
start for Herrnhut. We go forty miles east on the

120 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
railroad and then change cars. " What train shall 1 take ?
This one?" " No, yonder is the train for Herrnhut."
The train ! I see no train. That thing ? There is a
little time before it starts, so you inspect it. It is a unique
structure. Here is a tiny first-class compartment, empty.
Next is a second-class compartment. But we are in
Germany, there must be a third-class for actual use.
Yes, our conveyance is a double-decker, the whole second
story is third-class. And where is the baggage car?
That is in another part of the same structure, first story.
Well, then, where is the locomotive ? A little farther
along in the same concern is the locomotive. I thought
I was going to the center of the world's widest enterprise,
but I must be going to "the jumping-off place." It is so
unimportant a corner of the earth that the whole estab
lishment for conveying people back and forth is this one
vehicle, which is three classes, and baggage, and express,
and mail, and locomotive altogether. We take it and go
nine miles to the end of the track. It is a very hot day,
and the friend with us cannot walk three-quarters of a
mile to the village ; a carriage must be had, but there is
no carriage here. " We must have a carriage." So off
they go to tackle up a rusty concern which after a long
time conies for us. If anybody goes to Herrnhut he is
expected to walk. They do not ride in Herrnhut. At
last we reach the little hotel owned by the community.
I wish we had time to look at its sanded floor and all its
antique, grandmotherly simplicity and delight. In the
early morning, we, stroll along a quiet street of cottages
and come to a building of archives, Moravian archives,
and the kindly old custodian takes us into a room lined
with simple cases having unpainted deal doors. He opens

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 121
them, and we see the archives of one hundred and sixty
years of Moravian history. The mere labels on the cases,
with their mighty sweep of contents, make one's blood
jump and his nerves actually tingle. " Greenland, Lab
rador, United States, West Indies, Surinam, South Africa,
Australia, Thibet, Alaska, Jerusalem ! " Here we are in
the midst of the records of the gigantic fellowship of this
tiny village of Herrnhut with the ends of the earth. We
go over next to Zinzendorf 's house, in an upper room of
which the Board which controls this world-wide work has
held its sessions for one hundred years. That Board is in
session, as it is nearly every week-day in the year, but
behind two separated and carefully locked doors, so
jealously do they guard their work. Meantime, till you
can get an opportunity for a long, never-to-be-forgotten
conversation with one of the kindly managers of the
stupendous Moravian enterprise, you stroll about the vil
lage. What kind of a place is it, this place which has such
a scope of energy that it reaches out and takes hold of the
Himalaya mountains and the Arctic circle and the tropic
regions and shakes the whole earth. Here is one of_ the
inhabitants coming out of her thatched-roof cottage, a
poor old woman, with a common sun- bonnet thrown back
from a wrinkled face, with no shoes on her feet, but only
sandals. She seems a fair specimen of the earthly estate
of the whole community. But as you look into her face
you see that there is something more than a peasant here,
that here is one, who, like the sandalled One of Nazareth,
has shining in the lines of the face the spirit of Almighty
God, sharing with all the needy world. You remem
ber that perhaps this woman was once a missionary in
Africa or in Thibet, or that perchance at this moment she
11

122 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
has a son or a daughter in some other quarter of the globe,
and you say to yourself, I am glad I left even the Sistine
Madonna to come here, because here I see, not painted.
canvas, but living flesh and blood, which throbs with the
spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. You begin to see how it is
that little Herrnhut touches the ends of the earth in its
mighty energy. It is not by wealth, not by great learn
ing, not by vast facilities, but by personal devotion.
There is no Eiffel tower here, or Ferris wheel, from which
to get a wide outlook, and yet the horizon of Herrnhut
is as wide as a great circle of the globe.
How have ihey done it? Listen to two instances only.
At the very beginning, a carpenter and a potter are dig
ging in the ground. A Negro has come from the West
Indies and told of the degradation of his fellow-blacks
there. It is in the heart of each of these men, " I wish
I could go." They have no money ; there is no mission
ary society. They dare not speak to each other of such a
wild project at first, but by-and-by one hints at it and
then the other says, "That was in my heart too." These
two young men drop their tools for a minute and kneel
down on the ground, and say, " O God, let us go to the
West Indies to preach the gospel. We are ready to go
into slavery, if need be." They soon presented a written
appeal to the elders of the church to let them go. The
elders- and the church read the appeal and shook their
wise head£, saying : " These young men are too rash. We
must take time to think of it." And they took months
to think of it, but by-and-by they said, "You may go."
The two young men start with a trifle over three dollars
each in their pockets. How ? On foot. Their baggage ?

THE SPHERE OF A LOCAL CHURCH. 123
Packs on their backs. Their first destination ? Copen
hagen, six hundred miles away. Every person with
whom they talk in all the weary six hundred miles,
except one devout woman, discourages them and says,
"You are foolish, go back home." And when they
reach Copenhagen, people say the same. At last they
secure passage to the West Indies. How do they go ?
In a first-class cabin ? In a second-class ? No, they go
in the hold, so cramped for space that they cannot even
sit, to say nothing of standing erect, the whole, long,
wearisome voyage. These young men are able to reach
in holy fellowship the ends of the earth, not with money,
not with learning, not with the facilities of advanced
civilization, but simply with the spirit of Jesus Christ
put in practice.
Recently, the man and his wife in Jerusalem in charge
of the home for lepers, after seventeen years of toil, are
worn out. It is a loathsome and nearly hopeless work.
Say nothing of the physical stench which pertains to
lepers, none of whom can ever be cured, think of the
fact that not one of them after six years of teaching was
able to learn even the alphabet, so degraded and
benumbed were their mental faculties. The appeal is
made for somebody to go into this living tomb. Three
are called for. Immediately^ twelve Moravian young
women say : " Here am I ; send me."
It is not standing on some vantage of earthly power
that gives a local church a wide sphere of fellowship, it
is the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth in each one of its
members and in all of them together. Oh, that we might
be sealed with the Moravian seal ! Its device is a lamb
holding a cross, significantly the resurrection cross, and

124 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
on that cross is a banner of victory, and the motto
inscribed is this : " Our Lamb has conquered. Him let
us follow." Our Lamb has conquered. Him let us
follow.

SEPARATED FOR MISSION WORK.
(Acts 13 : 1-3.)
AUGUSTUS H. STRONG D. D.,
President Rochester Theological Seminary, Rochester, N. Y.
This passage is one of the most important in the New
Testament. It is the turning point of the Acts of the
Apostles, It describes a great crisis in the history of the
church, the first formal organized movement for the uni
versal diffusion of the gospel. Hitherto Jerusalem had
been the centre, and Christ had been preached almost ex
clusively to Jews. Now Antioch became the. centre, and
Christianity started out to convert the whole Gentile
world. Fourteen years before, the ship of salvation had
been launched far from the sea ; all these years it had
been making its way down the river to the river's
mouth ; now it has reached the- ocean and, leaving the
country of its birth, it is to begin a voyage which will
not end till it has touched upon every coast, and has car
ried the good news of the kingdom to every nation under
heaven. If I had discovered a new variety of wheat,
and had but a half-dozen grains of it- at my disposal, I
would not introduce it by planting one grain in Japan,
another on the Congo, and so on, until I had but one left
to plant at home. No ; in that way they would probably
all be lost. I would, therefore, plant all six at home in
a teacup ; when they had germinated, I would transfer
them to a garden bed ; the fruit of these I would sow in
a field ; only when I had gotten a large crop from suc-
125

126 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDBE3SES.
cessive sowings would I send my seed abroad. So God's
plan was first to secure good seed. In that little land of
Palestine a single corn of wheat fell into the ground and
died. Christ's death was followed by resurrection and
ascension. Pentecost was the feast of first-fruits. Jews
were gathered in — those natural proselyters and propa
gandists. At last, after fourteen years of careful tend
ing, the seed corn has borne much fruit. But it has been
cherished for a time, amid these narrow surroundings,
only that it may grow strong enough to multiply itself
without end. And now at Antioch a great missionary
impulse seizes the assembled church, and for the first
time it puts the seed into the hands of sowers, and sends
them out to scatter it through the heathen world.
We believe that the Acts of the Apostles gives us
illustrations of the principles upon which God proceeds,
and upon which men should proceed, in extending the
kingdom of Christ. Since New Testament precedent is
the common law of the church, let us examine this critical
passage, and see what its lessons are for us.
The first lesson seems to be this : The Holy Spirit is
the spirit of foreign missions, and will lead every fully
developed church to pray for foreign missions. I regard
this passage in the Acts as a description of the second
great prayer meeting of the Christian church. The first one
had taken place fourteen years before at Jerusalem, just
after the ascension of our Lord. It was a meeting of
ten days. In answer to united and continued prayer, the
Holy Spirit moved the apostles to speak with other
tougues, and the gospel was preached to Jews. But one
by one, indications were given of a wider purpose of God.
The conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch, of Cornelius,

SEPARATED FOR MISSION WORK. 127
of a few Gentiles at Antioch, stirred up this particular
church to inquire what God's purpose was with reference
to the heathen. The church was drawn to prayer. The
fasting was an indication of a mind intent upon knowing
God's will. The prophets and teachers only led the
church in supplication, and expressed its longing that the
plan of God might be more fully disclosed. The second
great prayer meeting, like the first one which preceded
Pentecost, seems to have been a meeting of days. And
it was then that the Holy Spirit spake once more through
the church's ministers, not now in other tongues, but in
the tongues wherein they were born, saying to the assem
bled church : " Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the
work whereunto I have called them." The first great
prayer meeting resulted in the preaching of the gospel to
the Jews ; the second great prayer meeting results in the
preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. Now first the
Holy Spirit interprets to the church the meaning of our
Lord's parting command to go into all the world and preach
the gospel to the whole creation. Now first the church
breaks away from her contracted past, and from her
Jewish exclusiveness, and asserts her right to universal
dominion. The oak has been growing in a flower-pot
long enough, — it must streteh out now so that the birds
of Europe as well as of Asia may lodge in its branches.
Brethren, has not the Holy Spirit moved us to meet here
for prayer? If in our present meeting we seek the Hol^
Spirit's direction.as earnestly as those early Christians did,
may not some new and larger way of Christian service be
opened to us also?
The second lesson is, that the Holy Spirit leads every
fully developed church to organized and associated effort

128 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
in foreign missions. Up to the time of the great meeting
in Antioch, Christian work had apparently been spon
taneous and individual. This passage marks the begin
ning of concerted measures, of studied plans, of regular
efforts for the conquest of the world. From this time we
have something like co-operation, machinery, societies in
the church. As it was not the prophets and teachers only
who prayed, so it was not the prophets and teachers only,
but the church, that was bidden to separate Saul and
Barnabas for the work. These apostles did not go out at
their own charges — we may believe that as they gave
their lives, the brethren gave their money. They were
the church's representatives in the heathen world — there
fore, when they came back they reported what they had
done to the church that had sent them out. While they
were absent they were upheld and sustained by the
prayers of the brethren whom they had left behind ; those
hands that were laid upon their heads when they- set out
were symbolic of the prayer that was continually to cover
and protect them during their absence. The Holy Spirit
that commanded the church to send them brought all the
members of the church more closely together in that act
than they had ever been before. Well might the church
at Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians,
be the first church to undertake regular and united work
for the heathen ! Brethren, if we ourselves were more
worthy to be called Christians, would not the Holy
Spirit lead us to organize some great new movement upon
the kingdom of darkness ? When so large a number of
our prophets and teachers are gathered as are here to-day,
and when so strong a feeling of Christian union pervades
our hearts, are we not warranted in believing that the

SEPARATED FOR MISSION WORK. 129
Holy Spirit intends for us some closer and more effective
association in the work of foreign missions ?
The third lesson is this : The Holy Spirit leads the
truly spiritual church to give its best teachers and its
best men to the work of foreign missions. Not all of
them, but two-fifths of them, and they the best. Symeon
and Lucius and Manaen, the foster brother of Herod the
Tetrarch, were, doubtless, men of mark ; but Paul and
Barnabas were evidently their superiors, both in zeal aud
in experience. Were not such men as Paul and Barnabas
needed at Antioch ? Did not the many perils of the in
fant church, did not its heterogeneous membership, did
not its frequent subjects of controversy, demand the
guidance and instruction of these wise apostles ? Well,
it might seem so ai first sight. And yet the Holy
Spirit led that missionary church to see that it was safe
only as it was obedient ; that to scatter was the only
way to increase ; that in giving up its best teachers
to save others it best insured the presence with it
of Christ himself, the Great Teacher, and the Teacher
of all teachers. But I make no manner of doubt
that it cost something to that church at Antioch to give
up its best to God. I can imagine the tears aud the
benedictions that marked the parting. I can picture to
myself Paul, now thirty-seven years of age and in his
prime vigor ; Barnabas, the " son of consolation," with
an aspect so reverend and benign that the simple country*
people could take him for. Jupiter come down to earth.
This Paul and this Barnabas had been the chosen min
isters of the church's bounty to the poor at Jerusalem.
Each had his great gift ; the one of argument, the other
of exhortation. They stood high in the favor and the

130 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
confidence of the church. Both were most acceptable
to the Jews, and yet both are sent to the Gentiles ! Breth
ren, if we felt the needs of the perishing world as that
church at Antioch felt them, should not we also bid our
best preachers and teachers leave us to carry the gospel
into the heart of heathen Africa and Asia ?
There is a fourth and last lesson : In a truly spiritual
church the Holy Spirit will move many of his best min- ¦
isters to go on foreign missions. In his epistle to the
Galatians, Paul tells us that God had separated him from
his very birth to preach Christ among the heathen.
From eternity, indeed, he had been chosen; but only
nine years before this had he been called. Then, on
the way to Damascus, God's purpose was first revealed
to him. For him, a Jew, to be sent as an apostle to the
Gentiles was a thing so strange that it needed long medi
tation and long preparation before he could understand
it. And so for nine long years he waited for the special
sign that his work was to begin. Now, through the
voices of his breihren, the call of the church is added to
the call of God ; the Holyr Spirit gives the sign, and he
is formally separated, set apart, consecrated, to special
work for the heathen. It was like Christ's call to the
elder apostles, Peter and John. There was a first pre
liminary call on the banks of the Jordan ; then after
ward, in Galilee, when they had pondered its meaning
and prepared their hearts for the sacrifice, they received
the summons, and in a moment left their fishers' nets for
ever to follow Christ. During those nine years since
Paul's conversion, what longings must have filled his
heart ! With what sacred joy, yet with what deep sense
of responsibility, must he have recognized in these voices

SEPARATED FOR MISSION WORK. 131
of his brethren the Holy Spirit's witness that his prelim
inary training was complete, and that die great work of
his life was to begin ! My brethren, are there not a
multitude of Christ's ministers among us who feel greatly
drawn to the work of foreign missions, who at some past
time thought themselves called to undertake the work,
who have been long waiting for the way to open and for.
the sign to be given that their, time has come to go far
hence to the Gentiles? Why should we not expect the
Holy Spirit to say to us, as we consult with regard to the
needs of the great foreign field, " Separate me such and
such of your best and ablest ministers for the work to
which I have called them " ? I believe there are many
who would welcome with all their hearts such a call of
the Holy Spirit through the voice of their brethren, and
who would thenceforth count themselves as separated and
set apart to foreign mission work.
I have intimated that this action of the church at
Antioch only ratified and made definite God's call to Paul
at his conversion. On the way to Damascus he came face
to face with the risen Christ. That blinding glory re
vealed to him the fact that Christ was the infinitely Holy
One ; showed him by contrast his desperate sinfulness ;
proved that his Oivn works were vain, and that salvation
must be wholly by grace ; made known to him the perfect
sufficiency of Jesus' sacrifice and the universal validity
of his cleansing blood. That one view of Christ showed
Paul that Christ's work was for him and for all, for
Gentile as well as Jew, and so there was begotten in him
the absorbing desire to publish the news of his great
salvation to the whole world for which he died. Dear
friends, we have never seen the same outward splendor

132 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
ofthe Saviour's majesty which smote the apostle to the
earth. But we have had Christ revealed in us, just as
truly as he was revealed in Paul. His infinite holiness,
our unspeakable sin, his perfect sacrifice, the sufficiency
of his blood to cleanse a whole world of sinners, these are
arguments to us as well as to Paul to carry the gospel to
every creature under heaven. The Holy Spirit is the
spirit of prayer for missions ; he leads the praying church
to organize for work abroad ; he bids us give our best
men to the foreign field ; he would separate many of us
for personal service there. It is well for us that Paul and
Barnabas, and the whole church at Antioch, obeyed the
call of the Holy Spirit that was given that day. That
we are Christians now at all is due to that fact. We are
not Jews but Gentiles, and we can trace back our lineage
as Christians to that decision which sent out Paul and
Barnabas to the heathen. Aye, our whole modern Chris
tendom is the fruit of the seed that began to be scattered
abroad that day. Brethren, let us be obedient to the voice
of God as that church at Antioch was ! Then, in some dis
tant time and in some distant quarter of the world, may
souls redeemed to God trace back their spiritual lineage
to us, and declare that from this conference and from this
hour, proceeded a new and mighty movement for the
bringing of the world to Christ !

XL
ENDUED WITH POWER.
(Acts 1 : 1-8.)
REV. G J. BALDWIN, D. D.,
Pastor First Baptist Church, Granville, Ohio.
If the books of the New Testament were arranged in
the order' in which they were written, the series would
stand as follows : Thessalonians, Corinthians, Colossians,
Mark, Luke, Galatians, Romans, Philippians, Jude,
Titus, Timothy, Acts of the Apostles, Matthew, Peter,
John, Revelation.
Such would be the probable programme of the contents
of the New Testament, as they would appear on a chro
nological plan. But how inferior to the present arrange
ment in respect to the harmony of parts and symmetry
of the whole. Our Bible in such a form would be a mere
collection of heterogeneous elements, without logical order
or vital organization.
But the Holy Spirit presided over the arrangement
as well as the preparation of the inspired books;
and as a result the formers of the sacred canon were
guided to the present perfect system. By it we are pro
vided with a complete scheme of Christian evolution.
The New Testament presents a progressive view of Christ
in the various phases of his character and work. First,
the Gospels show us Christ in the flesh ; next the book
of Acts reveals Christ in the church ; then the Epistles
make known Christ in the truth ; and finally Revelation
describes Christ in the consummation of his kingdom.
12 133

134 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
Thus the twenty-seven distinct treatises which compose
the New Testament, written as they were by different
persons at various times and for a variety of purposes, —
and not one of those authors knew that he was produc
ing material for the formation of a Bible for the future, —
are found to make, when properly put together, a mosaic
picture of the origin, operations, and end of the grace of
God as given through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We are now to consider one of these factors at its
opening page.
The book of Acts occupies a central and commanding
position in the scheme of revelation. It furnishes the
transition point between the fountain head of the king
dom of God on earth, and the radiating branches of the
stream. To appreciate the value of this book we ueed
only try to imagine the consequences of its absence.
Suppose that the reader must step at once from the Gos
pels to the Epistles, with no knowledge of what took
place in the interval between them, what would he make
of such an inscription as this : " Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, to the saints that are in Rome " — or in
Corinth, Ephesus, Galatia ? " Paul ! " the reader would
exclaim. "Who is he? We have not heard of him in
the society of Jesus, nor do the evangelists mention him
in any connection. How came he to be in charge of the
gospel? And as for the saints that are in Rome,
Corinth, or Ephesus, we have read no record ofthe pass
ing of the truth from the Jews to the Gentiles."
Such questions as these would arrest and bewilder the
reader at every step while reading the Epistles. These
letters would appear dark with geographical, political,
and personal difficulties, which hostile critics would be

ENDUED WITH POWER. 135
prompt to point out, and devout believers might be
troubled by.
But as it is, the book of Acts supplies the missing
link, with its wonderful story of the endowment of the
disciples with the Holy Spirit, their organization into a
system of aggressive work, its development into a mis
sionary enterprise, and the far-reaching, all-pervading
power and success of its operations. This record is the
bridge between the Gospels and the Epistles, completing
the former, inaugurating the latter, and binding both
together in a blessed unity.
We are now concerned with the introduction of this
keystone book — the first eight verses of its first chapter :
"The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concern
ing all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the
day in which he was received up."
This book begins by taking hold of the past — linking
itself at once with the chain of previous history. And it
is a familiar hand by which this is done. The writer is
one who is well-known and dear to us. " The former
treatise" reminds us of that one of the evangelists who
was best fitted to write the sequel to their story. For
Luke's biography of the Lord comes nearest to the
modern historical method in its orderly arrangement, its
consecutive treatment, its attention to details and evolution
of principles.
It is well, therefore, that the reader should be inspired,
with this confidence in the author at the start. " The
former treatise " is the warrant which recommends the
new effort to our attention. Who Theophilus was, we do
not know; but his name is valuable as suggesting the
personal element which is so common in the New Testa-

136 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
ment. How many of its books are directed to individ
uals, or in their subscriptions mention the names of per
sons as being in the mind of the writer ! This is charac
teristic of the gospel itself. It is intensely personal in its
authorship and its aim.
But we observe in what light the writer of this book
regards his previous narrative. It was but a prelude that
he had written when he described " all that Jesus began
both to do and to teach, until the day when he was taken
up." The perfect life was not a finality: From the
manger to Olivet was but one act in a great drama whose
scenes were to unfold through the endless future. " Until
the day when he was taken up " marks the era of the
incarnation, with its manifestations of Christ in the flesh.
After that day another era had opened, which Luke is
now about to describe.
But the first stage of the divine process must not close
without due recognition of its great inspiring motive
power: "After that he had, through the Holy Ghost,
given commandment unto the apostles whom he had
chosen." Here is an appropriate reference to the part
taken by the third person of the Trinity in the earthly
life of our Lord.
The Gospels do not mention the agency of the Spirit at
all times and places, but they evidently assume it as a
constant quantity. Unto the Virgin the annunciation
made known that the Holy Ghost would be the paternal
cause of the incarnation. At the baptism of Jesus it was
the same Divine presence that bestowed on him the endow
ment for his public career. It was in the power of the
Spirit that he returned from the wilderness and began his
Messianic work : as it is written that " God anointed him

ENDUED WITH POWER. 137
with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about
doing good and healing all that were oppressed, for God
was with him." This, then, was the secret source of his
public abilities — of miracles, parables, and divine mani
festations of all kinds : they were the fruits of the Spirit
which God gave " not by measure " unto him. His life
had this for its animating principle ; and of his sacrificial,
meritorious death it is written that he, "through the
eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish unto God."
We can understand then why this book of Acts, which
was to make as prominent the personal presence of the
Spirit as the Gospels had presented that of the Saviour,
should thus throw a backward light on the preceding
narrative, showing that the Holy Spirit was not a new
comer on the scene. He who was to be the guide and
inspirer of the apostles, the ever-present energizer of the
church, had been equally near and necessary to the Head
of the church. It was " through the Holy Spirit that he
had given commandment to the apostles before his ascen
sion, and it was by the same Divine agent that he was to
be with them alway even to the end of the world."
Having thus struck the keynote of the new dispensa
tion by due reference to the old, the writer proceeds to
show that not only the animating cause, but the subject
matter of the two eras is the same. The dead Christ is
still the living Christ. He who was buried out of sight
has reappeared. The resurrection must be kept in mind
as the basic fact of the new order of things. That Christ
died and rose again is to be the text and sermon of the
gospel to the world, and therefore it must be fully estab
lished as a fact by the mouths of competent witnesses ; so
it is written, "He showed himself alive after his passion

138 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
by many proofs, appearing unto the apostles by the space
of forty days, and speaking the things concerning the
kingdom of God " (ver. 3). .
There were eight of these epiphanies as described .: to
Mary Magdalene, to the other women, to the two dis
ciples, to the ten, to Thomas, on the Galilean mountain,
to the seven, at the ascension ; these were some, if not
all, of the Divine appearances during those wonderful
forty days. Why the risen Lord did not abide continu
ously with his followers during that time ; where he
resided, and what he did when not with them ; whether
he was visible at all to any others besides them, are ques
tions that we cannot answer.
But the reason for the manifestations which are re
corded is evident in the foundation which he thus laid for
the faith of bis people ever afterward — that the resurrec
tion should be the corner-stone of his church. Who has
not longed, however, that some full record had been kept
of what he said when "speaking the things concerning
the kingdom of God " ? What ripeness of instruction
and fullness of revelation must have marked that teach
ing ! as witness a few of the remnants that are preserved
to us :
" Being assembled together with them, he charged
them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the
promise of the Father, which, said he, ye heard of me :
for John indeed baptized in water, but ye shall be bap
tized in the Holy Ghost not many days hence " (ver. 4, 5).
" The promise of the Father " was not that of a mate
rial kingdom soon to be established oh the earth ; it was
that of a spiritual endowment to be conferred on their
own souls. '-' The dispensation of their" endeavor- was to

ENDUED WITH POWER 139
open as his own Messiahship had been introduced — with
a public unction from on high. They all remembered
those dramatic scenes by the Jordan, when the kingdom
of heaven was announced by the great herald and mul
titudes of people prepared for it by the ceremony of bap
tism. But this was to be more than paralleled by an in
itiatory rite performed * not by human, but by divine
agency — they were to be baptized in the Spirit.
What was that new function ? When, how, was it to be
administered ? " Wait — wait at Jerusalem ! " was the
only answer. And well could he render such advice to
his disciples who had passed through a similar experience
himself. How long had he waited for the promise of the
Father given to himself ! From the age of twelve, when
his opening nature received its first full consecration, all
through those eighteen years of manual labor and ob
scurity he was waiting for the Divine commission. We
cannot tell when he arrived at a clear self-consciousness
of his divine-human nature and work, But that his life
must have been pointed toward a public career of some
kind during the carpenter's work in Galilee, we cannot
doubt. The pure and tender influence of his saintly
mother, who well knew what lay before her first-born
son, must have gently but surely moved his character in
that direction. The teachings of the Spirit bestowed on
him from earliest years must have filled his mind with
prophecies and promises of the future soon to be revealed.
And the ministry of angels, not withheld from the youth
or from the man, would lead his thoughts and ambitions
out toward a patriotic and a heavenly career for which
there was at that time such evident need. The enslave
ment of his country by the Romans,: the formal km -of the

140 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
priesthood, the corruptions of Pharisees and scribes, the
superstition of the people, the utter selfishness and world-
liness of the times, all tended to remind him of a great
necessity, a crisis, and an oppportunity which his growing
nature yearned to meet.
Thus appealed to and urged by outer and inner im
pulses, the cry " I must be about the things of my
Father " became the motto of his crescent spirit. To
proclaim the kingdom of God, to dispel the darkness,
reconcile heaven and earth, restore the throne of David —
these were the day-dreams and hopes, the resolves and
ambitions of the advancing youth. Let no one think of
the young carpenter as plodding through a dull routine
of unexpectant days, year after year, content with a dim
life on which the moving sun of revelation had not yet risen.
Rather imagine an expanding nature ever moving eastward,
and stirred with premonitions of the dawn each moment.
His was an attitude of readiness and eagerness, perhaps
not fully informed or self-conscious, but certainly not
wholly ignorant or idle. Ancient founts of inspiration
welled through all his being, the stories of Moses and
Elijah fired his thought, all the heroism of the past
was his natal endowment. Thus the boy blossomed into
youth and the youth ripened into manhood, fit and will
ing for something bey7ond the circle of the Nazarene hills.
But what was it ? When and where- would it be ? To
these questions, asked perhaps each morning with his
opening eyes, no answer came but: — wait ! wait ! And this
he did for eighteen years. What a trial of patience and
faith ! to feel the stir within him of ripening powers for
¦which there was no occasion at the carpenter's bench ; to
be conscious daily of an increasing life which even his

ENDUED WITH POWER. 141
own brethren did not suspect; to hear the inarticulate
roar of a nation's need sounding on the horizon like the
call of a sea that waits for the mariner to come and ex
plore it ; to know that some great destiny was looking
for him out in the world and wondering where he was ;
all this around him and before, but for him nothing but
wait, wait, through the long and weary years.
As we now see, this protracted experience was educa
tional ; it was the best possible preparation of his human
nature for the divine work before it, developing as it did
the virtues of faith and hope in the unseen, endurance,
patience, and courage, which his public career was after
ward to require.
It was then with a feeling of sympathy that he laid on
his disciples a similar burden to bear- — " wait for the
promise." They too must learn what it means to be still,
and know that " I am God." They must accept the bit
and bridle of discipline, the curb of self-control. Before
they were entrusted with the power of command they
must acquire the faculty of obedience. And for the
stern tests of the pilgrimage and the battle, public honor
and success, there was no better novitiate than this of
humble waiting and docility. It is always so. The
great Commander accepts no volunteer who will not
submit to this ordeal. Moses must spend forty years in
the wilderness ; David be driven into exile ; Paul pass
three years in Arabia ; and Jesus remain silent until mid
dle life. Such is the school in which heroes are made.
And how often in after years did the apostles look back
to those quiet days in Jerusalem with a pathetic apprecia
tion of their value. In the storm and stress of their
endless warfare, wandering and struggling and suffering

142 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
over the earth, fightings without and fears within, scat
tered far and wide to see each other no more in this
world, how tenderly did they recall that restful season of
waiting upon God. Spent in loving communion with
each other, and in solemn silence and fervent prayer, it
breathed on them a spell of holy peace which never
afterward passed away.
Thus were they prepared for the unction from on high.
When it came, with awful abruptness and confounding
splendor, it found them ready to receive this holy chrism.
All emptied of self, and purified from earthly elements,
their nature was fit to be made a tabernacle for the new
Shechinah — tlie grace of God that bringeth salvation.
That there was need for such a preliminary discipline
on their part is evident from the last question which they
asked of their Master before his departure. Just as he
was about to leave them on the mount of ascension, they
clung to him with the cry, " Lord, dost thou at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel ? " — so low and limited was
the horizon of their prospect, so dull a conception had
they of the spirituality of his work.
Accordingly it was necessary for him to remind them
of the limitations and the greatness of their function.
They must be content with a certain restriction and a
corresponding privilege. On the one hand, weakness ; on
the other, strength. " It is not for you to know times or
seasons which the Father hath put within his own
authority " (ver. 7). Such was their limitation, the side
of their ignorance, where they must walk by faith.
"But ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is
come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses both at
home and abroad " (ver. 8). Such was their limitation,

ENDUED WITH POWER. 143
the side of their light and strength where they might
walk by sight. We can understand why the dispensation
of ignorance was laid on them — "it is not for you to
know." This was of a piece with the injunction " wait."
It was part of the discipline of their preparation, con
straining them to cultivate humility, patience, faith.
Perhaps the Master himself had been subjected to such
a trial in the time of his immaturity, and he knew what
a developer of character it was — this groping forward in
the dark. If he referred to such a restriction of his
human vision when he said, "Of that day and hour
knoweth no man, neither the Son, but the Father only,"
he indicated thereby his sympathy with one of the
burdens of the Christian lot. For it is a burden some
times hard to bear — this obscurity where we prefer
enlightenment, this ignorance when knowledge would be
so desirable.
What pilgrim in the wilderness but has longed to see
the journey's end? What worker but has felt that if he
could only know the measure of his task, it would be so
much easier to do and to endure? This is the secret of
the perpetually recurrent agitation of the great themes
of eschatologv. Christian students and thinkers and
workers are found in every generation who insist on
times and seasons for the fulfillment of prophecy. The
Lord is at hand. The Second Advent is near. These
are the echoes of the ancient cry, " Dost thou at this time
restore the kingdom ? "
We need not, we cannot refrain entirely from such
conjectures or hopes. They are part ofthe natal impulses
of the child toward the absent parent — the wintry earth
for the summer sun. Cherished rationally and reverently,

144 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
they furnish Christian hope with some of its brightest
themes, and Christian faith with its strongest assurance.
Nevertheless, the true believer will always remember the
warning, " It is not for you to know " ; and he will accept
it with self-denial and patience. For side by side with it
comes the great compensation, " Ye shall receive power."
The word " power " stands in the English New Testa
ment for different words in the original Greek. In the
passage, " the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive
sins," it signifies ability — latent or potential force, which
may or may not be exercised ; so also in tlie passages, " to
them gave he power (right) to become sons of God";
" all this power (authority) will I give thee,." etc.
But this is not the meaning of the term before us.
As used here, the word "power" is in the original
"dunamis" — signifying active, applied force. From it
we derive the terms dynamite, dynamics — indicating the
most intense operative agencies. It is this tremendous
word whicli is used in the passages : " Jesus returned in the
power of the Spirit"; "there went virtue (dunamis) out
of him " ; " with great power gave the apostles witness
of the resurrection " ; " Christ the power of God." These
are specimens of Divine dynamics; — not ofthe possibilities
of grace, but of its actualities, — omnipotence let loose on
the world like electricity taking the form of a thunder
bolt. Thus we find the meaning of the promise, " Ye shall
receive power " ; that is, they were not to be endowed
with authority, — that had been already bestowed in the
Great Commission, — nor to be vested with potential energy
like a sword in the scabbard, to be used or not : nay,
there was to come on them an energy like the sacred fire

ENDUED WITH POWER. 145
of the Shechinah, a force all-mastering and compelling;
And such was the fact at last. The phenomena of
Pentecost were those of a volcanic eruption ; the results
which followed were those of an earthquake. The words
and deeds of the apostles operated on the world with an
explosive energy so wonderful so terrible as to leave all
previous miracles obscure. The gospel was indeed the
dynamite of God.
And observe the agent of this endowment : " Ye shall
receive power (dunamis) after that the Holy Ghost is
come upon you." This is tlie method and result of
divine empowering. The Spirit is ever the dynamic
agent of the Godhead. He comes upon, is poured out,
lavished on the objects of the Divine will ; as when he
brooded the abyss of chaos and cosmos was brought forth ;
when he passed into the nostrils of the form of clay a
man's living soul was born; when he came on the
Hebrew workmen and the tabernacle was built ; when he
inspired the prophets and they became oracles ; when he
overshadowed the Virgin and Immanuel was begotten ;
when he descended on man's Jesus and transformed him
into God's Christ.
Thus the Holy One is ever the animater, the energizer
by whom divine perfections are translated into human
abilities. Accordingly, when the disciples were to become
apostles they too must pass through this wonderful pro
cess, and thus be endued with dunamis from on high.#
This to the end that " ye shall be witnesses unto me, both
in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto
the uttermost parts of the earth."
" Witnesses (martyrs) unto me." Their mission was to
be one not merely of publication, but of testimony ; not
13

146 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
so much telling a story as adducing evidence, and that in
the presence of incredulity and opposition. They must
be brought before rulers and judges for the name of
Christ and there be arraigned and condemned. In them
the gospel must find advocates who would not fear, and
sufferers who could endure all that hostile courts might
inflict. As the Father sent his Son to witness a good con
fession before Pilate, so the Son sent his disciples to be
" witnesses " before the world.
And how soon the word witness came to mean
" martyr " history sadly tells. What it costs them to tell
the story of Jesus and the resurrection Stephen discov
ered before the Sanliedrin, and Peter before the chief
priests, and Paul at Athens. Well might they shrink
beforehand from such a desperate enterprise, remembering
what it had already cost their Lord : How could they
succeed where he, the miracle worker, had failed? Peter,
still sore and shamed from his denial, Thomas, from his
doubtings, and all of them with the memory of their de
sertion. What kind of witnesses would they be ?
But the promise of dunamis went with the commission,
and its fulfillment solved the problem. After that the
Holy Ghost had come upon them they became a " new
creation " in Christ Jesus, and then with great dunamis
gave the apostles witness of tlie resurrection, " and great
grace was upon them all." Then the preaching of the
cross, which was to the perishing folly, became to the
saved the dynamics of God. For it was not in persuasive
words of wisdom, but in demonstration ofthe Spirit, and
therefore it was like spiritual dynamite to the world,
casting down imaginations and every high thing.
What the world needs and the church must supply at the

ENDUED WITH POWER. 147
present time, is such witnessing as this. There is no lack
of preachers and teachers of the truth — at least here in this
land of religious light. Our churches and schools abound
in professional instructors and personal agents whose
office and pleasure it is to serve the gospel. But are
they always witnesses in the apostolic sense ? Are they
willing and able to render their testimony before the
judgment bar of hostile criticism? Can they carry it to
the enemies of the cross ? Will they go with it to the
uttermost parts of the earth ? And if they so do, what is
the result ? Is the gospel thus preached mighty through
God ? Is the word a sword that pierceth, a hammer that
breaketh ?
How well we know that now, as in the early days, there
is the same difference between the form of godliness and
the power, the letter that killeth and the spirit that
giveth life ! Who has not longed with agonizing desire
for some of the ancient dynamite with which the word
once rent asunder and demolished the barriers of sin?
And yet history assures us that the divine dynamics ofthe
gospel are not necessarily identical with the gifts of
miracle. All through the ages the heroes of the faith
have found that Christ was to them the power of God.
But always the apostolic conditions are required for the
apostolic success. " Ye shall receive power after that the
Holy Ghost is come upon you." His terms are always
the same : " Wait for the promise," with self-denial,
patience, and hope ; " it is not for you to know times and
seasons," but be content to walk by faith amid the mys
teries of Providence.
Thus let the humble, trustful soul, emptied of self and
open toward God, watch for the coming of the Lord in

148 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
his own time and way, and verily I say unto you,
the " promise of the Father " will be fulfilled in such an
opening of the heavens and a pouring out of blessing that
there shall not be room to receive it.

XII.
"THE CAKE FOR GOD'S PROPHET FIRST."
(1 Kings 17 : 1-17.)
REV. JOHN HUMPSTONE, D. D.,
Pastor Emmanuel Baptist Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
The famine was sore in Israel, and the drought also ;
but God's prophet did not starve. Fed by the ravens
and refreshed by the brook, Elijah's sojourn at Cherith
was a perpetual discipline in the life of faith.
But it came to pass after a while that the brook dried
up. What now? where next? were surely the ques
tions upon Elijah's lips. At last came answer from God :
Into exile ! — " Get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to
Zidon." And with the requirement an assurance : " I
have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee."
The command to fly and the promise to sustain, together
constituted a new test of faith. Phoenicia was the home
land of Jezebel ; the house of Baal was there ; thence had
come the desolation of Israel. And is God's prophet to
be nourished in the enemy's country ? and by a widow at
that ? He, a big and brawny man — is he to live as a
dependent on a widow's bounty ? But God's bare word
is the prophet's marching order. Wherever God sends
him there is the prophet's place. However God will
support him, that is his stipend : —
His not to make reply ;
His not to reason why ;
His but to do and die 149

150 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
if need be. " So he arose and went to Zarephath." But
when he arrived, what ? Famine sore in Phoenicia, and
drought as dreadful as in Israel ! A widow at the city
gate, indeed ; and so far an assurance to faith ! but a
widow in want, as soon appears. To the hungry proph
et's request for a morsel of bread, there came for answer
the wail of a calamitous house : " As the Lord thy God
liveth, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a
barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and behold, I am
gathering two sticks — two would suffice to bake such a
morsel as remained — that I may go in and dress it for me
and my son, that we may eat it and die."
How true to the life is every detail ! Each stroke of
the story has in it the verisimilitude of fact. It is as
graphic as the Gospel of Mark ; the perfection of realism
in narrative. One can almost see the woman's gaunt
face darken with the shadow of impending death.
And what said Elijah to such tidings? Did his heart
fall to his sandal's level ? Did his face blanch for fear ?
Neither, for so much as a moment ! Faith, that is worthy
of the name, does not falter.
" Fear not," said the prophet to the widow. That is
faith's constant watchword. " Go and do as thou hast
said : but make me a little cake thereof first, and bring it
unto me, and after make for thee and for thy son. For
thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal
shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until
the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth."
This is ever faith's way with God's promises.. It
honors them by use. It credits them by affirming them.
It tests them by putting them to the proof of the event.
Failh leaves results where they belong — with God. He

THE CAKE FOR GOD'S PROPHET FIRST. 151
has more at stake than his prophet has. When the prom
ise is given, all the prophet has to do is to voice it, to
fulfill its conditions, and to wait for God : —
To doubt would be disloyalty ;
To falter would be sin;
Here, then, is our first lesson : The life of God's
prophets is ceaselessly a life of faith. God is per
petually putting his prophets to the proof whether they
will believe his unattested word, and do his simple bid
ding as straightforward men. It is thus that he fits them
for further usefulness. Every Zarephath is the precursor
of Carmel beyond. God can use for prophet only the
man who is willing to learn a heroic, a dauntless, a daring
faith. If one who comes lo God "must believe that he
is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him," much more must they who go for God be ready to
take him at his word, and to live strictly by his promise.
If God can do no mighty works for them who stagnate
in unbelief, it is certain he can do no mighty works by
such. The ministry of the word is powerless in propor
tion as it is faithless.
And this is especially true of the prophets whom God
sends into exile. He whom God expatriates is shut up to
trust in God. The missionary enterprise, from first to
last, is a faith enterprise. Its enthusiasms are wholly
irrational to men who do not believe in the supernatural
facts of the gospel, and to some even who profess to
believe them. William Carey, with his watchword of
missions, — that utterance of sublime faith, — *' Attempt
great things for God : expect great things from God,"
was a subject of derision to Sydney Smith. But what
warrant have we for our purpose to displace the false or

152 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
partial religions of heathendom, but our faith that Jesus
Christ is God incarnate ? That he died a sacrifice, rose a
Saviour, reigns a King ? And our only sufficiency for a
mission with such a purpose is our faith in his guarantee
to be with us to the end. Our only motive, equal to our
task, is our confidence that what he says of men as lost,
and of his relation to them as Saviour, is true. Only as
faith rests upon the invisible Christ and his inviolable
promise, is any soul equal to the dangers, the duties, and
the trials of missionary life. So Mrs. Judson found,
during those dreadful months at Oungpenla. Let her
own words witness : " If ever I felt the value and efficacy
of prayer, I did at this time. I could not rise from my
couch ; I could make no effort to secure my husband ; I
could only plead with that great and wise Being who has
said, ' Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will
hear, and thou shalt glorify me ' ; and who made me at
this time feel so powerfully this promise, that I became
quite composed, feeling assured that my prayers would be
answered." So found David Livingstone, surrounded in
mid-Africa by the hostile tribes of Loanda. Hear his
journal : " Felt much turmoil of spirit in view of having
all my plans for the welfare of this great region and teem
ing population knocked on the head by savages to-morrow.
But I read that Jesus came and said, ' All power is given
unto me in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore, and teach
all nations — and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the
end of the world.' It is the word of a gentleman of the
most sacred and strictest honor, and there is an end on't.
I will not cross (the River Zambesi) furtively by night,
as I intended. It would appear as flight ; and should
such a man as I flee ? Nay, verily, I shall take observa-

THE CAKE FOR GOD's PROPHET FIRST. 153
tions for latitude and longitude to-night, though they may
be my last. I feel quite calm now, thank God ! " So
found John G. Paton, among the savages of Tanna. He
thus records an instance : " Dangers again darkened ¦
round me. One day, while toiling away at my house, the
war chief, his brother, and a large party of armed men
surrounded the plot where I was working. They'all had
muskets, besides their own native weapons. They
watched me for some time in silence, and then every man
levelled a musket straight at my head. Escape was im
possible. Speech would only have increased my danger.
My eyesight came and went for a few moments. I prayed
to my Lord Jesus either himself to protect me, or to take
me home to his glory. I tried to keep working on at my
task as if no one was near me. In that moment, as never
before, the words came to me, ' Whatsoever ye shall ask
in my name I will do it' ;• and I knew that I was safe."
But who am I, that I should talk thus of the mission
ary's life of faith in the presence of those who have
known, with Elijah, the testing of exile, and have made
proof of its trials ? Speak, veterans of the cross ! You,
of all men, , are the most eloquent witnesses that the
prophet's life is ceaselessly a life of faith.
But what of that poor widow to whom Elijah's mes
sage came ? Was there not a testing of her faith too, in
that audacious summons, " Make me a little cake first, and
after make for thee and for thy son " ? Have you ever
read the quaint comment of Bishop Hall upon that de
mand : ". Oh, what a trial is this of the faith of a weak
proselyte, if she were so much ! She must go spend
upon a stranger part of that little she hath, in hope of
more that she hath not, which she may have. She must

154 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
part with her present food which she saw, in trust of
future which she could not see. She must rob her sense
in the exercise of her belief, and shorten her life in being,
¦ upon the hope of a protraction of it in promise. She
must believe that God will miraculously increase what
she hath yielded to consume. She must first feed the
stranger with her last victuals, and then after, herself and
her son. Some sharp dame would have taken up the
prophet and have sent bim away with an angry repulse :
' Bold Israelite ! there is no reason in this request. Wert
thou a friend or a brother, with what face could thou re
quire to pull my last bit out of my mouth? Had I
superfluity of provision thou mightest hope for this effect
of my charity. . . Thou tellest me the meal shall not
waste, nor the oil fail ; how shall I believe thee ? Let
me see that done before thou eatest. . . If thou canst so
easily multiply victuals, how is it that thou wantest?
Do that beforehand which thou promisest shall be after
ward performed ; and there shall be no need of my
little.' "
Here, then, is our second lesson : The life of those who
are appointed of God to sustain his prophets is a life of
faith. They are required, in the exercise of their benefi
cence, as the stewards of God's gifts, to walk, not by
sight, nor by reason only, but by faith. They are asked
to put God's prophets first ; themselves and their children
after. To put him first, because he is God's prophet ;
and God, the giver of their store, will have him sus
tained. That they have but little, is no reason why they
should put self before the prophet. The poor, no less
than the rich, are taught to pray, " Thy kingdom come,"
before they ask for daily bread ; and as we pray we

THE CAKE FOR GOD'S PROPHET FIRST. 155
should act. They who can offer no larger gift are under
the same obligation to prefer God in their dovecotes as
the lord of the manor is to give the firstlings of his stall
or his fold. The widow, in her lonely struggle, made
still more strait by her dependent son, is as much subject
to God's summons as the wife whose husband still fills
her purse.
Nor are they to be excused who are but recently, and
as yet imperfectly, Christians. The woman of Zarephath
in heathen Phoenicia is called of God to nourish his
prophet. That missionary is false to the divine plan
who forgets to teach the convert from heathenism that
the blessedness of the new life is not in something re
ceived only ; but even more, in what is given. In Asia
and Africa, as well as in America and Europe, " It is
more blessed to give than to receive." True as all this
is, however, is it not the fact that, as a rule, the poor are
more ready to recognize this obligation than the rich?
That the Christians lately heathen are more prompt in its
discharge than the Christians who were born to the heri
tage, and live amid the opportunities of civilization?
How often do the offerings of the poor shame the gifts
of the rich ! From the almost empty barrel of many a
widow comes an offering more free, more generous, the
sign of a larger faith and the token of a less calculating
love, than the gifts of many wealthy persons, who cast
into the treasury of the Lord only a pittance from their
superfluity. Karens in Burma ; the Christian Congoese,
still half savage ; the low-caste, imdigent Telugus, are
readier to make the prophet's cake from their handful,
than some in Christian lands who could well afford to
bake loaves for his nourishment. The life of faith, as

156 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
it is related to the consecration of substance to the service
of God, is of larger growth, sometimes, in hut than in
palace. And what of this life of faith as it is related to the
questions of administration upon the great field of mis
sions? Have our executive committees and Boards of
management no lesson to learn at Zarephath ? Surely the
widow's barrel almost exhausted, the widow's cruse
nearly dry, have their frequent parallel in administrative
experience. Surely too, the widow's heroic faith might
teach officials, if they will ponder its significance, that cold
blooded calculation may not always control expenditure.
There is place for tbe heroism of a missionary faith in
the council chamber also. Faith has her ventures in
financial administrations, as in other realms. There too>
sometimes, the proverb holds, " Nothing ventured, noth
ing won." There are emergencies in the lives of proph
ets, famine epochs in the course of God's providence, when
they who would administer wisely must execute in faith.
Too often, at such times, as Dr. A. J. Gordon said so
finely in that remarkable paper, in the October (1891)
number of " The Missionary Review of the World," en
titled " The Faith Element in Missions " — too often in
times of emergency, " Prudence sits over against the
treasury watching the expenditures to see that faith does
not overdraw her account." More and more, therefore,
we must keep in mind that the matter of money for mis
sions is matter of faith.
Funds are already in the hands of those who are God's
appointed stewards sufficient to send every missionary
who ought to go, and to evangelize every people as yet
unreached by the gospel. Why, then, does not money

THE CAKE FOR GOD'S PROPHET FIRST. 157
flow in steady stream into the*treasury of the Lord, until
there is enough and to spare ? There is only one answer :
God's people are weak in faith. They have not yet risen
to that height of daring confidence in God to which this
Phoenician proselyte attained under a former and less
luminous dispensation of God's truth and love. We, who
have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,
are actually behind many to whom that sight was never
given, in the confidence of our faith, in our consecration,
in our spirituality. We prefer ourselves as creditors in
our accounting with God. We must take care of " number
one," whether God's prophet is cared for or not. When
we are not wholly selfish in our administration of our
substance, we are timid, calculating, over-shrewd. The
lesson taught us by the Zareptan widow is the lesson of
a wise daring in the surrender of what, unless God
were, and were true, it would be the rankest folly to
give. The money question is, after all, a spiritual question so
far as missions are concerned. The question of finance,
also, is a question of the Holy Ghost. Given pentecostal
blessing, and pentecostal consecration of property will
follow. No one but the Holy Spirit can overcome the
natural and ingrained avarice of some of the members
of our churches. No one but the Holy Spirit can incite
souls to that degree of faith which will lead them to set
at defiance the dictates of selfishness, the maxims of
worldly policy, the suggestions of over-cautious prudence.
If we are to dare for Jesus as he deserves, in the sur
render of our substance, our minds must be illumined, our
hearts inflamed, our wills impelled by the unselfish Spirit,
part of whose glory as a divine Person is, that he prefers
14

158 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRE-.SES.
the Son to himself in his administration of his own powers,
in the manifestation of his own life.
What, finally, of the issue to which this widow's testing
came? The sacrifice made was abundantly rewarded.
As Bishop Hall says, once more : " Happy was it for this
widow that she did not shut her hand to this man of God ;
that she was no niggard of her last handful. Never corn
or oil did so increase in growing, as here in consuming.
This barrel, this cruse of hers, had no bottom. The barrel
of meal wasted not, the cruse of oil failed not. Behold !
not getting, not saving, is the way to abundance, but
giving. The mercy of our God crowns our beneficence
with the blessing of store. Who can fear want by a merci
ful liberality when he sees the Zareptan had famished if
she had not given, and by giving abounded ? "
Here, then, is our third lesson : God rewards the faith
of his prophets and their supporters by gifts which enlarge
still further the disposition toward its exercise. " There
is that scattereth and yet increaseth." " Give, and it shall
be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken
together, running over." God delights to meet faith with
supernatural response, to bestow upon it ultra-natural
reward. She who gave a cake when she was about to
starve, and preferred God's prophet to herself and her
son, found that God would not leave her without a wit
ness of his power and love in another and even darker
extremity. She who pinched herself and her son for the
kingdom of God, received her son back again from the
dead, at the prophet's hand.
Still, there is reason to expect the fulfillment of Mala-
chi's prophecy : " Bring ye all the tithes into the store
house, that there may be meat in my house, and prove

THE CAKE FOR GOD'S PROPHET FIRST. 159
me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not
open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a
blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive
it." So that the converse of what was before said is true.
The way to secure a new Pentecost is to enlarge our gifts.
Those of us who are in any degree partakers of the spirit
of power, must put God to the proof for a wider, a larger
blessing. If we expect him to grant us, for the sake of
the church yet unconsecrated and the world yet unsaved,
some new and surprising access of spiritual power, we
must make to him some demonstration of our faith, daring
in its heroism, splendid in its measure, uncalculating in
its generous denial of self. Are we ready to do it?
Shall the centennial of modern missions furnish the
occasion ?

XIII.
THE IMPELLING VISION.
(Acts 16: 6-10.)
REV. PHILIP L. JONES,
Philadelphia.
Let me briefly review the circumstances of the
apostle immediately preceding the facts recorded in the
passage indicated above, on which this address is based.
Paul was on his second missionary journey. Human
infirmity had separated him from Barnabas, the friend
and companion of his first successful tour. To supply
the deficiency thus created, Paul associated with himself
Silas, one of the messengers of the council of Jerusalem
to the Christians assembled at Antioch, and who remained
there enamored seemingly of evangelistic and missionary
work. Together Paul and this new helper set forth,
commended " by the brethren to the grace of the Lord,"
after Barnabas had set sail for Cyprus. They journeyed
northwestward and came to Derbe and Lystra. Vivid
memories came to the apostle at this latter place. Here
he had been stoned and left for dead. Here afterward
most bravely he had returned and confirmed the disciples
whom he had won. Here now God had a blessed conso
lation for him. Here he found Timothy, destined to be
to him a son and helper as none other ever was, converted
to the Lord perhaps by the spectacle of his own dauntless
heroism. Ah, so often God transforms the field of our
suffering into the arena of our victory! This young dis
ciple Paul would add to his company. And he took and
160

THE IMPELLING VISION. 161
circumcised him for the Lord's cause, as before he had
declined to circumcise Titus for the same cause (Gal. 2 :
1-3). Consistent inconsistency. Blessed is the man
who when the right leads, above the law of the letter
can discern the more dominant law of the spirit.
With his company thus augmented Paul went onward.
And as he went he delivered the decrees of the first
church council, and strengthened the churches — made
them solid in the faith. He went in the name and might
of the Lord, and the Lord blessed him.
From the confirmation of his previous work in Lystra,
and with the reinforcements it had brought him, Paul
turned northward and then east and west of north, and
" went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia." Of
his ministry in the former province, which we are told
was not at this time susceptible of any definite geographi
cal limits, we have no record. That he visited Colossse
at the extreme southwest of the possible boundaries of
this province, as maintained by some, is declared by Dean
Alford to be " very improbable." We know far more of
Paul's work among the Galatians, however, those Celtic
or Gallic tribes that " emigrated eastward into Asia
Minor " nearly three centuries before the Christian era.
The historian of' the Acts, it is true, is silent regarding
this work ; but the apostle himself tell us of it in his
letter to the Galatian Christians. He was detained here
much longer than he had planned; perhaps by some
bodily infirmity, of which he speaks. He was received
with a welcome, warm and outspoken. Even their eyes
these converts would have plucked out and given him
had it been possible. Many were turned from their de
votion to idols by him, and some from the formalism and

162 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
lifelessness of the Jews, and the Galatian churches were
founded. Having finished his ministry here for the time,
Paul retraced his steps through the province, doubtful
in regard to his next field of labor. He was " forbidden
of the Holy Spirit," — " hindered summarily " by him —
to preach the word in Asia, the Roman province of that
name lying along the JEgean Sea. Wonderfully this
supremacy of tlie Roman eagles aided in advancing the
supremacy of Jesus Christ. " Every province conquered
by the emperor," Renan says, " was a conquest for
Christianity." ' So masterfully does God use uncon
scious instrumentalities to forward his purposes. ' But it
was the Spirit's will that at this time the gospel should
not be preached in this Roman province. In doubt still
as to his course, for the Spirit neither- then nor now
will make plain the whole path of a man at once, he
passed by Mysia, and " essayed, tried by way of experi
ment, to go into Bithynia," the territory lying to the
northeast. But again he was prevented. The Spirit —
the Spirit of Jesus, the Revised Version says — making
known his will by some internal impulse, or by some ex
ternal intimation, " suffered them not." And so, passing
by Mysia, not as avoiding it, but as regarding their
work done concerning it, they came to Troas by the sea.
" Paul was now " — says Stalker, as quoted by Dr. Clark —
" within the charmed circle where for ages civilization
had had its home ; and he could not be entirely ignorant
of these stories of war and enterprise which have made it
forever bright and dear to the heart of mankind."
Can we doubt that the apostle so cultured in the wisdom
of the world upon which he would not depend, and so
» The Apostles, p. 238. "

THE IMPELLING VISION. 163
susceptible to local influences which he could always
command, had his soul fired by great thoughts of the
opportunities lying just beyond the horizon? Yonder,
just across the narrow sea, was Greece — classic, storied,
immortal Greece. Athens was there, and Corinth and
Philippi. Did the restraining elsewhere mean a beckon
ing hitherward? Would the Christ, crowned now by
many a Jew, be homaged by the Greek as well ? These
thoughts we are sure must have come to him.
And then in the night a vision came. In his dream or
in an ecstasy, it matters little which, a man stood before
him. Because of some peculiarity of garb or speech, or
because of the past supremacy of the province, he was
denoted as from Macedonia. " Come over and helj) us,"
the figure said appealingly, imploringly. The vision of
the night inspired action when the day came. "We
straightway sought to go forth into Macedonia," the
historian says, changing abruptly from the third person
singular to the first person plural, because he, Luke, had
joined himself as companion, or as physician, or as both,
to the apostle. We sought — that is for means by which
to cross the sea — to go to Macedonia, " Concluding that
God had called us for to preach the gospel unto them."
All doubt "and uncertainty had vanished, and by the
direct guidance of God the pathway of the first great
foreign missionary after Jesus Christ was made plain.
1. Notice as one especial thought — The direct Divine
guidance of the apostle.
(1) See the agent of it. This was the Holy Ghost. —
the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost forbade" them to speak
the word in Asia, and the Spirit of Jesus — the Holy
Spirit still — would not suffer them to go into Bitliynia,

164 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
which they attempted to do. Whatever may be our view
of the being of the Holy Spirit, — whether it is that it is
modal, as some think ; or essentially personal, as most be
lieve, — the ministry ofthe Holy Spirit is real, and in the
formation and missionary activities of the New Testa
ment churches was universal. It was the Holy Spirit
who brought the thousands to their knees on the day of
Pentecost, as it was he in whose comfort the churches
walked and were multiplied. It was the Holy Spirit
"who sent Philip southward toward Gaza to meet the
Ethiopian, and it was he who, when the evangelist's
work was done in the desert, dispatched him at once to
Azotus "to preach in all the cities till he came to
Csesarea." It was the Holy Ghost who said to the
church at Antioch, " Separate me Barnabas and Saul," as
it was he who prohibited Asia to the latter that he might
turn his face toward Troas. Have, we in these days
somehow, without intending it, and while conscious of the
fact not knowing so well how to remedy the defect, lost
our grip on the Holy Spirit, and so have cut the sinews
of our power ? " The weakness of this age," I heard
the president of one of our theological seminaries say
awhile since, " is its lack of dependence on the Holy
Spirit." But without dwelling on the general fact, which is
deplorable as it is disastrous, is there no lesson for us in
regard to our missionary operations in that direct guid
ance of the apostle by this power, from on high? No
board, no committee, no church even, issued instructions
to this apostolic missionary, and told him where to go.
And yet could either or all have added aught to the wis
dom that shaped his course? I know the present, in

THE IMPELLING VISION. 165
this as in other things, must needs differ vastly from the
past which we are considering. We have our compli
cated machinery now. We must have it, probably. By
no word of mine would I throw discredit on its instru
mentalities, nor diminish aught of its influence. Nay,
rather would I augment the efficiency of both. And yet
do we not sometimes substitute red tape for inspiration ?
Do we not sometimes adhere to our plans forgetting that
some things may be planned otherwise than by us? Do
we not often emphasize unduly the spirit of man, not
watching sufficiently meanwhile whither the Spirit of
Jesus may lead ? Paul might need his orders from Anti
och ; it was better if he could get them direct from God.
(2) Note the method of this guidance. It came in the
form of hindrance first. Paul was hindered from enter
ing Asia, and Bithynia, and Mysia, toward which he had
set his face. God frequently begins in this way with his
servants ; but he does not stop with hindering. Nega
tions are not enough for him. Don't is an initial, and
not a final term in God's vocabulary. " Thou shalt not "
belongs to the decalogue ; "thou shalt" to the gospel. He
tears down that he may build up. He stops that he may
advance. He closes here that he may open there. He
keeps his servant from Bithynia that he may send him
into Macedonia. Carey might not go to the South Sea
Islands that he may do his mighty work among the
Bengalese. The ostracism of a commercial company
bars Judson from India that in Burma the pagodas of
Buddha might give place to the chapels of Christ. If
your way seems hedged, be not impatient, much less rebel
lious. Wait. If the east be closed, the west may open.
God turns back but to help forward.

166 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
By an open vision again, this guidance showed itself.
There on the shores of the -ZEgeanj amid. scenes crowded
with history, faced by a land just beyond the horizon
more historic still— -in the night a man from Macedonia
came, and stood beseechingly by Paul, and said, or seemed
to say, " Come over into Macedonia and help us."
Words these are that have prefaced more calls for mis
sionary service than any other ever penned or uttered.
" Come over and help us." Historic epoch-making
vision. " On this momentous event hung the Christian-
ization of Europe, and all the blessings of modern civili
zation." *
What was this figure whose coming was so moment
ous to the church ? Some would seem to give him an
objective reality before the apostle, and regard him as
expressing the actual desires and longings of the region
whence he came.
" In the person of the ' Man of Macedonia,' " says Dr.
Arnot, " Greece and Rome invite the apostles of the cross.
Weary and empty, the warriors, artists, and philosophers
of the empire thirst for the living water. Europe on the
west, as Ethiopia on the south, humbly stretches out her
hands to God." 2
Did the actual condition match these eloquent words?
We may be helped to an answer if we recall the fact that
no crowds of " weary and empty " ones greeted the apostle
and his companions as they landed on the west shore of
the JEgean, and that their first convert was not a man of
-Macedonia at all, but Lydia of Thyatira, an Asiatic, a
woman. None the less gratifying, for neither of these
1 Schaff's Apostolic Ohureh, Book I, p. 262.
2 The Church in the House, p. 284.

THE IMPELLING VISION. 167
facts was this first conquest on European shores; but
both of these facts would seem to indicate that to con
sider this vision of Paul truly, we must consider it other
wise than as objective.
It was the form of Jesus Christ, some have said, ap
pearing to the apostle in trance or dream, and assuming
therein the form of those whom he would have his
servant hasten to help. In a sense we may grant this
true — in the sense that Jesus is in all who need his help
— in the sense too, that the Spirit of Jesus did not
turn . his baffled messenger from Asia and Bithynia to
leave him to himself when he had arrived at Troas.
The moving hand of the Master was equally in the pro
hibition and the invitation. But why. bring in the super
natural where the natural will meet the conditions, save
as everywhere and ever the supernatural is above the
natural, as the heavens are above the earth.
Let me suggest this as the explanation of this beseech
ing Macedonian. Our waking thoughts project them
selves in dreams, and get therein sometimes a diviner
touch. As angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes
And into glory peep. — Henry Vaughan.
Paul stood fronted by a new, strange land. He had
been hindered from going whither he would. Before
him were wondrous opportunities. We cannot deem him
ignorant of the history that centred in the land beyond
the sea nor of the people who had played their part
therein. He doubtless longed to carry them the gospel.
And then in the night, his thoughts divinely touched,

168 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
" Transcend their wonted themes," and the man of Mace
donia stood before him, saying, " Come over and help
us " — run to the aid of those who cry for help.
So the men of the New Hebrides appeared before
John G. Paton. So Mackay, of Uganda, saw the people
of Central Africa. So the Burmese extended their hands
to Judson. And so likewise the Telugus theirs to Day
and Jewett, Clough and Downie. And so will it con
tinue, the needful stretching out their hands to the need
less, those who have not beseeching those who have, until
the terms of the Great Commission shall have been com
pletely obeyed and the gospel have been everywhere
preached as a witness to the peoples of the world.
And so too, as this figure was not objective, it was not
wholly individual. It was more than that. " Men make
man," Dr. Joseph Parker has said. This was not a man
but humanity. It was humanity too, beckoning aid to
the whole area of its needs. Has there been a time, alike
in our home and foreign work, when a part has seemed
greater than the whole ? When in the gospel, the promise
of the life that is to come has largely if not wholly over
borne the promise of that which now is? If this has
been so, it is_ so no longer, at least to the same extent.
The equipment and multiplication of the medical mis
sionary, and the added emphasis laid upon educational
work, prove how true that statement is as to our work
abroad, while numerous and increasing remedial measures
having reference to the lower life indicate its equal truth
as to that at home. You very likely will not agree with
me when I say : Grant, for the sake of the argument, that
the New Theology is right, and the shadow of the life on
earth does not of necessity project itself into eternity to

THE IMPELLING VISION. 169
be perpetuated there with an ever-growing hideousness
and gloom — are, therefore, the motive and inspiration
eliminated from missionary effort whether at home or
abroad ? I cannot so believe. I cannot so feel. Is it
nothing to. preach the gospel to the poor, even if its riches
were stored in no other than an earthly treasury ? Would
it be nothing to give the garment of praise for the spirit
of heaviness even though this life alone were involved
in the relief? In the latest product in fiction of the
skeptical thought of the day, and which is as perni
cious in its influence as it is able in its discussions, I find
this sentence : " There never was an honest invigorating
duty predicated on the hypothesis of another life, that
does not stand out boldly as a duty if this life is all." x
I know we are not closed within such narrow con
fines as this life alone offers. The vista of hope and
destiny is infinitely more far-reaching than that. But
even though it were not, the Macedonian figure would
still beckon us, and we should have motive to prompt us
to his help whether he stand amid the shadows of the
old world or in the turbid depths so rapidly forming in
the new.
2. We have the human response to the divine monition.
(1) It was an immediate response : " And when he had
seen the vision straightway we sought — sought the means
whereby — to go forth into Macedonia." There was no
delay. Immediately they sought for means to do what the
vision had made plain, and the change in the pronoun,
from the third person singular to the first person plural,
indicates that the historian Luke now formed one of the
party. He knew what he was talking about, and that
Calinire, p. 640.
15

170 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
there was the utmost dispatch to obey the Spirit's bidding.
We so often temporize. We dilly-dally and falter and
hesitate, and the voice becomes silent, and the vision
fades out, and the divine monitions pass by, and we are
left face to face with our uncertainity and the night ; and
sometimes because of this we doubt if the Lord's message
has come to us at all.
(2) It was an evangelical response, that which Paul
gave. He went " concluding (from putting one thing with
another) that God had called (summoned) us to preach
the gospel (announce the good tidings of the gospel)
unto them." He was not a messenger of philanthropy
primarily', but of regeneration. He did not go to attract
men with captivating forms of human speech, but to
make them wise unto salvation. If for a moment he
turned away- from this amid the culture of Athens, he
speedily turned back to it amid the corruptions of
Corinth. The path he trod is the path we must tread.
Christ is before all and beyond all. Whencesoever the
ethnic religions may have emanated, Christ is the substi
tute and consummation ofthe best, of which their highest
thought may have been prophetic.
Christ was the end, for Christ was the beginning ; •
Christ the beginning, for the end was Christ.
(3) It was a personal response. " We sought to go."
" The vision created enthusiasm and that enthusiasm was
contagious." They did not seek to answer the call by a
small donation. They went, Paul and Silas and Timothy
and Luke. They went, Carey and Judson and Hanning-
ton. They went, Vinton and Duff and Waterbury.
They went, d, whole host of them no less worthy of
mention, brave men and true women. Thev went.

THE IMPELLING VISION. 171
What there has been in this self-giving, of sundered ties,
of severed families, of shattered health, of early graves,
of heartache, of soul-ache, only God can know. But
always where this personal response has been the most
rich, the harvests ultimately have been the most abund
ant. So will it be to the end. The gulf between God
and man will be closed by men rather than by money.
In the old heroic days of Rome a chasm yawned before
the city, so fable tells. Nothing availed to close it.
At length the oracle said it would yawn still, vast and
unsightly, until Rome's most precious thing was cast in.
And then a Roman youth, radiant in mien and armor,
threw himself into the gulf and it closed and was seen no
more. Brethren, the most precious thing among men is man.
And where the chasm of sin is, be it iu Christendom or
in heathenism, be it far away or close at hand, it will not
close save as man shall enter it. The offering of this
essential element in the redemption of man has not been
so abundant as it should have been, but it has obtained
in a wonderful degree nevertheless, and never more
abundantly than during the hundred years that have
elapsed since the birth of modern missions. What a
roll-call it would be if we could repeat the names of those
who have not counted their lives dear unto them as pitted
against the cause of Christ. Secular battlefields could
tell of no such sacrifice, of no such heroism as their,
history would disclose. And the supply will not diminish
but enlarge. That in part is what is meant by the young
people's movement. Christian Endeavor, and the Baptist
Union, and the King's Daughters, and the Student's
Volunteer Association are bringing the flower of the

172 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
country's young manhood and womanhood, and preparing
to consecrate it to this personal ministry for men. And
the continuation of this method of giving man for
men is in exact accord with the beginning of the gospel.
Jesus Christ the first great missionary came. A man in
the highest sense was offered for men. This epitomizes
redemption. And he must still come. He must still go.
Allied to his consecrated servants, he must still make his
soul an offering for sin. Thus, only the man Jesus can
meet the man from Macedonia ; and this will he do, until
the vision of the natural man shall fade out and that of
the redeemed man rise up in his place, and the whole
earth be filled with the glory of the Lord.

XIV.
TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL.1
LEMUEL MOSS, D. D., LL. D.
Minneapolis, Minn.
The crowning discovery of modern physical science is
the unity of the universe — the oneness of all things,
visible and invisible, in this great universal system of
matter and force and law. The telescope and the photo
graph reveal to us the startling fact that there are a hun
dred million suns that can be made manifest to our senses.
And there is a conviction abroad that this vast aggrega
tion of a hundred million suns is as infinitesimal in
magnitude, when compared with the entire universe, as is
our solar system when compared with all that is manifest
in the majestic heavens above us.2 But we are also
1This address is here given from the stenographer's notes. No
attempt has been made to free it from the rhetorical expressions that
characterize it as a spoken rather than a written discourse.
2 " Summon up to your imagination the most distant star that can
be seen with the unaided eye. Then think of the minutest star that
our most potent telescope can disclose. Think of the tiniest stellar
point of light which could possibly be depicted on the most sensitive
photographic plate after hours of exposure to the heavens. Think,
indeed, of the very remotest star, which, by any conceivable device,
can be rendered perceptible to our consciousness. Doubtless that star
is thousands of billions of miles from the earth ; doubtless the light
from it requires thousands of years, and some astronomers have said
millions of years, to span the abyss Which intervenes between our
globe and those distant regions. I do not speak of the most distant
star which the universe may possibly contain ; I only refer to the
most distant star that we can possibly bring within our ken. Imagine
173

174 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
assured that, however far it may be to the rim of the
universe, all is bound together in one. Everywhere there
is a reign of law ; but the reign of law is the reign of
force ; and the fundamental, comprehensive, controlling,
unifying force is the force of attraction. Now we ask
a great sphere to be described with its centre at our earth, and with a
radius extending all the way from the earth to this last star knowable
by man. Every star that we can see, every star whose existence
becomes disclosed by us on our photographs, lies inside this sphere;
as to the orbs which may lie outside that sphere we can know nothing
by direct observation; The imagination doubtless suggests, with
irresistible emphasis, that this outer region is also occupied by stars
and nebulae, suns and worlds, in the same manner as the interior of
that mighty sphere whose contents are more or less accessible to our
scrutiny. It would do utter violence to our notions of the law of
continuity to assume that all the existent matter in the universe
happened to lie inside this sphere; we need only mention such a sup
position before we dismiss it as wholly indefensible. I do not make
any attempt to express the number of miles in the diameter of the
sphere which limits the extent of space known directly to man.
What the number may be is quite immaterial for our present purpose.
But the point I specially want to bring out is that the volume occu
pied by this stupendous globe, which includes within it all possible
visible material, must be but a speck when compared with the space
which contains it. Think of the water in the Atlantic Ocean, and
think of the water in a single drop. As the drop is to the Atlantic
Ocean so is the sphere which we have been trying to conceive in the
boundless extent of space. As far as we know it would seem that
there could be quite as many of such spheres in space as there are
drops of water in the Atlantic Ocean. . . "When we remember that,
by our telescopes and on our photographs, we can discern something
like one hundred millions of luminous stars in the sky ; and when we
further believe, as believe we must, that for each one star which we
can thus see there must be a stupendous number of invisible masses,
then indeed we begin to get some notion of the extraordinary multi
tude in which material orbs are strown through space. Even within
the 'distance which can be penetrated by our telescopes, the visible
stars cannot form the hundredth, probably not the thousandth, per
haps not the millionth part of the total quantity of matter." — Sir
Robert Ball, in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1S93.

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 175
ourselves, as we seek to rise to this high conception of the
material universe, in all its greatness, in all its splendor,
and in all its unity, if this is not a parable of something
higher and mightier and grander than itself.
If from the contemplation of mere material vastness
and grandeur we turn to the study of the relationship
between matter and life, a new conception of inherent
unity dawns upon us. Cuvier could take a structural
bone of an animal, even of an extinct species, and recon
struct the animal in its habitat, and sketch the relation
ship of its individual existence to the whole environment
and conditions of its life. Prof. Huxley can take a piece
of chalk and make it tell the geology of the earth, and
by telling the constitution ofthe earth, tell by implication
of the constitution and relationship of universal matter
and life as well.
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower. But if I could understand
What you are, root and all; and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. — Tennyson.
Such is the relationship of life and the unity of exist
ence, and the interdependence of all things ; for in this
solidarity1 of the universe, everything runs into every
thing, and each implies the whole. As we struggle to
grasp and comprehend this higher and more majestic
thought, we ask, " Is not this also a parable ? "
Again. We look at the relationship of man to man.
1 " Solidarity (a word which we owe to the French Communists)
signifies a fellowship in gain and loss, in honor and dishonor, in vic
tory and defeat — a being, so to speak, all in the same boat." — Arch
bishop Trench.

176 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
This is not onlyT far higher than the interdependences of
matter and force, but each individual man is greater than
the sum of the material universe ; and as we study this
human relationship, we see that there is an interdepend
ence which makes each man necessary to all, and all men
serviceable to each. What is society? What does the
word society mean, but brotherhood, interdependence,
unity of relationship, possible service and love ? A recent
writer, who tells the fascinating story of the dawn of
Italian independence, gives us the gratifying intelligence
that there is coming into the minds of the statesmen of
our day the thought that each historic and existing king
dom is necessary to all the rest ; that you cannot " harm
one bee in the swarm without harming all " ; and that
the new conception ofthe unity, of the human race makes
it clear that a crime against one nationality is a crime also
against all the rest.1 It is out of this true conception of
1 "It is evident that in the brotherhood of States, as in the family
or the community, the welfare of all must be attained through the
excellence of each of the members according to his qualities. Every
weakling, every idler, diminishes the common prosperity. To develop
each individual to the utmost limit compatible with the general weal
is the goal towards which destiny urges mankind. Hitherto, this
process has resulted in the formation of strong individuals, and in
concentrating and intensifying the traits peculiar to each race; for
the first commandment given to every creature in the physical world
is, ' Be strong, if thou wouldst survive.' But individualism, when
unrestrained and unspiritualized by the recognition of a larger com
munion of interests, is selfish and partial ; it uses its strength brutishly ;
its neighbor is not a brother, but an enemy, to be robbed or crippled
or enslaved. The past has witnessed the endeavor of race after race
to make itself supreme by absorbing all the power of its fellows and
by holding them in subjection. But we stand on the threshold of a
hew age, in which time and distance and the barriers of nature have
been overcome; when the products of one land can be transported
swiftly to other lands, and when the utterances and events in one

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 177
the interdependence and inter-relationship of all these
great political communities that arises the humane and
righteous scheme of international law, a potent and influ
ential form of the Christian proclamation of universal
brotherhood. One of the latest and most eminent writers on the
absorbing science of political economy makes it evident
that, in this unity and interdependence of the human
race, not only is each man and each community necessary
to all the others ; but that the welfare of each is the wel
fare of the whole.1 As our brethren prosper we prosper,
and their adversity is our misfortune. Famine and prof
ligacy and misgovernment in a nation, with their attend
ant poverty and crime, may create great need where they
hemisphere are known immediately in the other. And now we begin
to perceive that the fate of each people is interwoven with that of all
the rest. Interdependence is as necessary as independence, and
whatever law of trade, whatever intriguing of diplomacy, aims only
at selfish and local gain, though it seems for a time to benefit the
egotist, will inevitably weaken him, because it weakens his neighbors.
The swarm is harmed when a single bee is harmed. The old politics
took no note of this, nor have present ministries given heed to it;
but there is the fact, and all the inventions which make commercial
intercourse easy, and disseminate knowledge, are prophetic of the
ultimate solidarity of mankind. A crime against one will at last be
seen to be a crime against all." — The Dawn of Italian Independence,
by William Roscoe Thayer, vol. I, pages 2, 3.
1 "Economic science teaches as an absolute truth that everybody
is profoundly affected for the better by the prosperity of everybody
else." "Always in our science (Political Economy) the grand con
clusion is in sight, that the real welfare of everybody is bound up
with the real welfare of everybody else." — The Unseen Foundations
of Society, by the Duke of Argyll. Quoting these propositions, and
approving them, the Quarterly Review (for April, 1893, page 447)
says: "The earth is the Lord's. The earth has he given to the sons
of men— to the race, not to individuals; and not as absolute owners,
but as stewards."

178 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
exist, but they cannot make of such a nation good cus
tomers for other nations, nor fruitful ministers in the
world's service. Another Christian writer on the same
high theme declares that the whole tendency and scope of
the complex and vital interactions of society, under the
influence of Christian truth and love and law, is the per
fection of man through the perfection of society; that
man cannot be nobly and completely man without the
ministration of his brethren and without reciprocal min
istration to his brethren.1
Now as I seek to comprehend these high thoughts and
rise to this wide conception of humanity, — this oneness
of the race, this vital inter-relationship of all men with
all men, this dependence of the prosperity of all upon
the prosperity of each, this harm that comes to the in
dividual through the harm that comes to society, — I ask :
" Is not this also a parable ? " Does it not point to
something still higher and even more divine than itself ?
Is there not in it the beginning of a glorious and far-
reaching revelation, loftier, holier, and sublimer than all
that can be revealed through the limitless immensity of
the material universe, through the mighty generalization
1 "The end of Christianity is twofold — a perfect man in a perfect
society. These purposes are never separated ; they cannot be sepa
rated. N/o man can be redeemed and saved alone ; no community
can be reformed and elevated except as the individuals of which it is
composed are regenerated. . . If there were a man who had no
neighbor, he could not obey God's law ; he could not be a man, in
any proper sense ; he could not exercise the powers and functions of
the human nature; the perfection of manhood would be utterly
beyond his attainment. This vital and necessary relation of the
individual to society lies at the basis of the Christian conception of
life. Christianity would create a perfect society; it would bring
forth perfect men, and to this end it must construct a perfect society."
—Tools and the Man, by Dr. Washington Gladden, pp. 1, 2.

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 179
of human science, through statesmanship, through the
mere earthly relationships of any political commonwealth
or co-operative society? It seems to me that these are
but steps in the process by which God is uncovering to
the human mind that which is highest, deepest, and most
comprehensive in the divine and eternal relations of meii
to each other, and to all the intelligences of the spiritual
universe, through their relations to God.
Why was it, think you, that the choir of angels came
to sing over the manger at Bethlehem? What means
these celestial voices proclaiming " Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace toward men of God's good
pleasure " ? When Christ was born, I_ hear in it the an
nouncement of the solidarity of the spiritual universe ;
not simply the exultation and joy of holy beings over
the prospect of new and ever-increasing accessions to
their ranks as the centuries move on, but a declaration
that they were now finding their spiritual brothers and
participating in a sublime revelation from God of the
original and eternal unity of all rational beings made in
the image of God. These were some of the things that
the angels " desired to look into " ; that they might, if
possible, attain unto an apprehension of the thought and
purposes of God to be accomplished as the ages pass away.
Or, what is the meaning of that impressive declara
tion of our Lord : " There is joy in heaven over one sin
ner that repents " ? Is it simply the announcement of
the delight of the spiritual mind over the attainment of
like spiritual excellence by other minds? Is it not
rather the revelation, the uncovering of the momentous
truth that all spiritual beings, in heaven, on earth, in all
worlds, are akip ? What, again, is the meaning of that

180 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDEESSES.
exultant exclamation of the apostle, that " God created
all things; in order that now unto the principalities
and powers in heavenly realms, to the highest hierarchy
of the celestial hosts, there should be made known by
means of the church the manifold wisdom of God, accord
ing to the purpose of the ages which he purposed in Christ
Jesus our Lord " ? What is this but the inspired declara
tion of the deep, eternal, comprehensive, and all-inclusive
oneness of the spiritual intelligences of all worlds as the
children of God ?
What significance have all these disclosures of truth for
us? Where do they place our highest relationship?
What revelation do they make concerning our true kin
ship? What is the appeal which they bring to your
thought, to your imagination, to your anticipation, to
your hope, to your longing, to your present desire and
determination ? Oh, the height, and the depth, and the
length, and the breadth of the love of God in Jesus
Christ. In very deed it passeth knowledge, and draws
all spiritual beings unto itself, like the mighty attractive
energy that binds together the universe, like the incredi
bly swift and unfailing light that crosses every void and
goes everywhere throughout the limitless whole. The
love of God gathers within itself all these countless hosts
of spiritual beings, capable of apprehending, of knowing,
of revering, of loving, of resembling God. "Of him,
and through him, and to him, are all things ; to him be
the glory forever. Amen."
Now it must be that in this interdependence, this
mutual relationship of all spiritual beings, the welfare of
each is vitally connected with the welfare of all. No
man can be himself, in the fullness and completeness and

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 181
possibility of his being, unless all men are not only heirs
of like grace and like possibility, but also through the
ministration of each to all, all shall share in the endeavor
toward the realization of their perfection. What is the
profoundest fact concerning this humanity of ours ? Ask
our honored secretary what was the thought that pene
trated his being and binned itself into his inmost soul,
as he traveled among the different races of men ? I fol
lowed him in thought, as you followed him, through
Japan, through China,- through India, into Egypt and
into Palestine, by all the great rivers of the earth, across
all oceans, through all seas, among these various races,
apparently so unlike in feature, in speech, in dress, in
manners. But, think you, that it was this variety, this
diversity, this separation, this unlikeness, that forced
itself upon his thought, and commanded more and more
his sympathy, and interest, and attention ? Nay, I am
sure that again and again he said : " God indeed made
of one all nations of men that dwell on the face of the
earth." What he saw, what he felt, what he appreciated,
what he realized as never before, was this unity of
humanity — the oneness of the race in Adam, in Christ,
and in the heritage and possibilities of a divine life.
Man as a race is one in his origin. Whatever he may
be to-day, whatever you may find in him of alienation or
of degradation, be sure that there is at the bottom, there
is at the centre, in the inmost core of his life, this attesta-,
tion of his origin from God. They tell us that the other
day, in one of the great monasteries of the East, there
was found a most precious manuscript of the New Testa
ment. Upon examination it was found to be what in
learned phrase they call a palimpsest. And what is a
1G

182 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
palimpsest ? It is a parchment that has been used a
second time. In this case there was originally the writ
ing of the word of God, the teachings of Jesus Christ.
But one day an idle monk had a story to tell, some
fiction, some trivial chronicle, some worthless legend;
taking the manuscript of the divine word, he erased the
writing, and on the partially cleansed parchment he wrote
his worthless story, his trivial tale. By-and-by there
came one who discerned beneath this worthless writing
the pristine record of divine truth ; he cleansed away that
which was secondary, that which was temporary -and
valueless ; and he restored that which was original,
glorious, and eternal. Man is such a manuscript, a
palimpsest. I find in man's nature, at the core of
his being, the autograph of God, a divine writing
that can never be completely effaced. But oh, it may be
written over, as indeed it has been, by the foul scribbling
of sin, and thus made to read something very different
from the original self. There will come One, and One
does come, who, beneath that which is unworthy, that
which is false, that which is perversion from God, can
discern that which is original and divine, and which,
thanks to the subtle chemistry of God's love, can be
restored. Yes ; man has at the centre of his being the authentic
and indelible " image and superscription " of God. Let
him therefore " render unto God the things that are
God's." God is Spirit, and is seeking spiritual worship
ers. Man is spirit also, and therefore he can worship
God. He was made in the divine likeness. By his es
sential nature he is, as Paul approves the Greek poets for
saying, " the offspring of God," being of the same race

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 183
or stock, as parent and offspring are of necessity of the
same stock. Therefore, the mighty apostolic argument
goes on, God '' is not far from each one of us, for in him
we live and move and exist."
Speak to him, thou, for he hears, and Spirit with spirit can meet ;
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
— Tennyson.
Man is infinitely nearer to God than he is to the
highest earthly brute, whatever the scientist may say.
The brute is " far off from each one of us," and we do
not " live and move and exist " in the brute. We can
commune with God, but we cannot commune with the
brute, for there is no community of nature between us.
We are separated from the brute by " the whole diameter
of being." There is a bridgeless gulf between us and
the highest animal,, with no conception of any possible
intercourse across it. And why should there be ? The
animal has nothing to tell us, and no capacity for learn
ing what we might tell him. Between us and God there
is no gulf except the chasm made by sin, and this is com
pletely bridged in Jesus Christ. Augustine speaks for
all humanity when he cries out : " Thou hast made us, O
God, for thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in
thee." And so does the psalmist speak for the race when
he exclaims : " As the hart panteth after the water-
brooks, so panteth my soul after. thee, O God." 1 *
'Prof. Henry Drummond is quoted as saying (in a lecture in Min
neapolis, June S, 1893, and reported in the daily papers) that " it is
not hard for one to see a greater likeness between the lowest man
and the highest ape than between the highest and lowest man." That
is a gross exaggeration of mere superficial qualities, and a complete
overlooking of the essential and permanent. The lowest man has in

184 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
Moreover, this race of ours has not only the unity of
its divine origin, but also the unity that comes through
its one disease of sin. All men are sick of the same
sickness ; all men are depraved with the same alienation
from God. But it is a happiness to say they have also
this in common, that they are all alike capable of the re
newal and restoration of that which was the original
autograph of divine purity and truth and blessedness.
In a word, man is capable of salvation, capable of being
restored into the likeness of God and conformed again to
the divine image.
Now, what has this to do with us ? What is the great
lesson enforced upon us as to our relationship to our fel
low-men ? How shall this restoration take place ? How
shall men be brought again into this divine communion
and intercourse, and how shall these limitless possibilities
of man be realized, and man stand again in more than
his original glory, perfect before God through the com
munication of a divine life?
God has so ordered it that our fellows can rise only by
our leave and our co-operation. God has so made us our
brothers' keepers that they can realize in themselves that
which he intends concerning them only by the faithful
ness and completeness of our ministry to them ; by the
communication of all that, is implied in this inter-depen
dence and vital relationship of man to man. The salva
tion of all is necessary to the salvation of one.
him all the capacities and possibilities of the highest man. He can
know the universe and himself, he can know God. He can become
all that any man can become. Christian missions is demonstrating
this in India, in Africa, in Patagonia, and Terra del Puego. The
ape cannot become this. There is for it no such capacity or possibil
ity. Otherwise it would cease to be an ape and be a man.

TO SAVE ONE WE MUST SAVE ALL. 185
One of our political orators declared in one of the
great national conventions, in the fervor and earnestness
of his appeal, concerning the intimate political relations
of our own people, that " the vote of no man is safe un
less the votes of all men are safe." 1 And he spoke a
more magnificent truth than, perchance, he himself appre
ciated. But can it be that my salvation is dependent on
the salvation of my brother ? Can it be that no man is
saved until all men are saved ? Can it be that no man is
completely redeemed and restored to the likeness of God
unless all men are thus reached, and rescued, and re
stored, and perfected in the divine image ? I have been
told that this proposition of mine is Universalism... Uni-
versalism ! Why, the paralyzing and sterile Universal
ism that I have been accustomed to hear is, " That to
save all you need save none " ; that all men are saved
whether they will or not. What a movement there would
be through the few and scattered and very dry bones of
our American Universalism, were some one to stand be
fore them, and with the voice of a prophet and the heart
of an apostle were to tell them : " You cannot be saved
unless through your instrumentality the race is saved ! "
My brother, what do you mean by salvation ? Is it
simply taking refuge in the ark while the tempest and
the storm sweep over the great majority of the race ? Is
it simply the selfish bestowing of yourself in some strong
hold of security, while all the neglected world perishes
and goes down to ruin? What is your conception of
salvation ? Is it some easy process that takes place, as
it were, in one's sleep, in some unconscious dream that
1 Hon. J. Sloat Passett, at the National Republican Convention,
Minneapolis, June, 1892.

186 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
transfers you from one side of the safety line to the other
side of the line without touching any one, and without
any one else knowing it ? Salvation ! Do we know what
¦is its meaning? Have we risen to the height of its
thought? Do we comprehend the immense scope and
compass of salvation ? In its inception it is the faith
in Almighty God that anchors the soul to him. In its
process, in its unfolding, in its development, it is unques
tionably the companionship of God through the Holy
Spirit ; the divine intercourse and fellowship that culmi
nates in full likeness to Jesus Christ. When shall we
reach it ? What is the diameter of this mighty orbit ?
What is the infinite sweep of this mighty circle of signifi
cance that we strive to gather up in the wonderful word
salvation f How shall we reach it ? By selfishness, by
narrowness, by meanness, by the contractiou of our
thought, and aspiration, and sympathy, and interest, and
desire to the infinitesimal atom that constitutes our own
personality ? x How can a man be saved unless there
courses through his being the celestial tide of almighty
1 What a chorus of diverse and yet concordant testimony gathers
around this point. Aristotle, the Grecian philosopher, heathen though
we sometimes call him, was a man of marvelous insight into the
nature and the structure of society. He tells us that " a prince ex
ists for his people," and we have learned that the application of this
fundamental truth extends far beyond the sphere of political sover
eignty. "Nobility obliges" is the same thought enlarged as a,
maxim of polite society, though often perverted and reversed ; but
the obligation of loving service for all is the very essence of Christian
nobility. Christ gives the loftiest form and mightiest sanction to
this sentiment when he says: "Inasmuch as ye have rendered
needed and thoughtful service, or have not rendered it, unto one of
the least of these, my brethren, ye did it, or did it not, unto me."
Paul shows the same spirit: " Both to Greeks and to barbarians lam
debtor." "I could wish to be myself accursed from Christ for- my

to' save one we must save all. 187
love, elevating him and holding him in sympathy, inter
est, and aspiration to the Almighty and Eternal One, and
filling him with divine blessedness ? Yes ; " This is life
eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
Oh, I see the great apostle in the crisis of bis perilous
voyage from Csesarea to Rome. In the hour of disaster
and shipwreck he is in form and fact a prisoner, and yet
he is the sovereign of the ship and the master of the
occasion. I hear him say that the God whose he was and
whom he served stood by him in the darkness and in the
storm, and said : " Fear not, Paul ; thou must be brought
before Caesar ; and lo, God has given thee all those that
sail with thee." My brother, you are the centre of an
influence that goes around the globe, that fills the spiritual
universe, that has its source and seat in the heart of God ;
and in some way, and to some degree, God has given to
ypu all that sail with you, and your fidelity or neglect
shall affect their destiny.
To save one, we must save all. I know of no salvation
that can come into the human life except by personal
faith in Jesus Christ. I know of no other probation for
the human spirit than that which takes place in this
lifetime of its earthly experience. But oh, the extent of
the influence that goes from this lifetime of existence
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." " "Who is weak and
I am not weak? "Who is offended and I burn not ? " »
There be sad women, sick and poor,
And those who walk in garments soiled;
Their shame, their sorrow, I endure;
By their defeat my hope is foiled.
The Wot they bear is on my name ;
Who sins, and I am not to blame 7— Lucy Larcom.

188 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
throughout the human race and throughout the ranks of
all spiritual intelligences. It is like the point of light,
minute indeed, but the influence of it pervades the entire
universe. " Ye are the light of the world."
To save one we must save all. Do I tell you that you
cannot have a genuine life and faith in Jesus Christ
unless all men exercise a like faith in him ? No ; but I
do tell you that the only proof that you have a living
faith in Jesus Christ that unites you to the heart of God,
is that your sympathy and influence and longing go out
to every spiritual being whom God has made. You
cannot go to heaven alone ; you cannot be a Christian and
wrap yourself around with a selfish and isolated individ
uality ; you cannot expect to be close to the heart of God
unless you love as God loves. Is there anyr limit to it?
Is there any partiality in it ? " God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son."
You will perchance tell me that the Scriptures read :
" He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." Listen
now once more to this marvelous commission of our Lord
and Master : " All power, all authority, all prerogative is
given unto me in heaven and upon earth. Go ye, there
fore, into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature, to the whole creation. He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved ; he that believeth not shall be
condemned" — condemned. He that believeth not shall be
condemned with him that goeth not. They shall be con
demned together. Their condemnation shall be equal. He
that goeth and he that believeth shall rejoice together.
And is there no limit to our commission ? Is there no
creature excepted from the sovereign command that is
given us ? How can we hope for the perfection that is

TO SAVE ONE WE MUSr SAVE ALL. 189
possible to these capacities of ours, that allies us to the
angels, that allies us to the Saviour of the world, that
allies us to God. Jesus Christ is the measure, the model,
the archetype of our aspiration and hope. And how can
we expect to rise to the height of this perfection, to " the
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," unless
our sympathy and prayer and purpose and actual effort
circle the globe as his love has circled it, unless they em
brace every creature as his grace embraces all.
I ask no heaven till earth he thine ;
No glory-crown while work of mine
Remaineth here. When earth shall shine
Among the stars,
Her sins wiped out, her captives free,
Her voice a music unto thee ;
For crown, new work give thou to me ;
Lord, here am I.

xv.
THE INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MIS
SIONS ON CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY.
ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., LL. D.,
President Newton Theological Seminary, Newton, Mass.
When asked a few weeks ago to speak at this anniver
sary on " The Influence of a Century of Missions on
Christian Theology," I readily consented to do so. But
it is no more than honest to confess that my desire to
verify and explain the beneficent influence of missions on
the science to which the best years of my life have been
given, diverted my attention in some degree from the vast
amount of knowledge presupposed in a thorough treat
ment of the subject, an amount of knowledge which I
did not possess and could not acquire. For while it was
possible to ascertain with some degree of exactness the
notes of difference between the theology which was taught
by good men a hundred years ago, and the theology which
is taught by such men fo-day, it is an almost infinitely
difficult task to discover the many subtle and delicate in
fluences which have contributed to the change.
Christian theology teaches that God is partially revealed
in nature, and it has therefore been sensitive to all the
voices which have come to it from the closest students of
nature. During the past century such voices have been
exceedingly numerous and penetrating. Christian theol
ogy assumes that religious principles are to be examined
and co-ordinated by human reason, and it has therefore
190

INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. 191
been sensitive to all the cautions and encouragements
which have come to it from teachers of psychology or
metaphysics. These also have been numerous, but their
teaching has not been always to the same effect. Chris
tian theology is founded on historic facts made known to
us by written documents, and it has therefore been sensi
tive to the testimony of critics who profess to solve the
riddles of the past, and to correct the errors of our inter
pretation. Much of their work has been useful, but their
task is not yet finished.
Beyond question, this century of missions has been one
of movement, of invention, of discovery, of research, of
criticism, of speculation, and of progress. Never were so
many theories broached, so many customs changed, so
many hopes kindled, so many failures lamented, so many
advances made. It has been a great century, full of life,
effort, competition, co-operation. And Christian theology
has been in the heart of it all, warning or consoling or
inspiring, with a voice as little changed by the turmoil as
any that could be heard. Indeed, every other science has
had an eye to theology, and every human enterprise has
consulted or opposed it. And so it bears the stamp of
the century upon it, the clear impression of an age dis
tinguished above many others for its missionary spirit.
The foreign mission enterprise, started in England a
hundred years ago by William Carey, was a great religious
movement, and the influences of such a movement %re
always far-reaching and manifold. For nothing under
the sun is more certain than this, that belief and con
duct creed and life, act and react with silent cogency
upon each other. If it were not in our power to point
out doctrinal changes which could be traced to the

192 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
influence of missions more naturally than to any other
influence, it would nevertheless be safe to affirm the
existence of such changes. For the greatness of tlie
enterprise, appealing to the noblest impulses of the heart,
must have enlarged the range of Christian thought and
intelligence in the case of all who put their hands to this
work. But it is possible, we think,, to specify certain
differences of tone and emphasis and proportion in the
treatment of particular doctrines, which distinguish the
Christian theology of to-day from that prevailing at the
end of the last century.
Notice, first, that in speaking of God there has been a
perceptible transfer of emphasis from his natural attributes
to his moral, and especially from his absolute control to
his gracious love. In other words, God's sovereignty
filled a larger place in the teaching of Calvinistic divines
then than it does now, while his loving-kindness filled a
somewhat smaller place. There is no antagonism betvveen
these doctrines when properly stated ; both of them have
been held and taught by sound theologians from that day
to this, yet not at all times with equal clearness and
force. For the sovereignty of love is far more inscru
table than the sovereignty of power, moral supremacy is
far more incomprehensible than physical or dynamic.
At this point we may perceive the influence of a century
of missions on Christian theology — a silent, unobserved,
yet real influence, bringing the minds of thoughtful men
closer to the true nature of God's supreme authority over
moral beings. The pioneers of this great enterprise must
have perceived that God's eternal purpose to recover the
lost through his Son was to be carried into effect by
means adapted to their moral nature, not by the sole

INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. 193
energy of his omnipotence, re-creating their spirits without
any appeal to their reason or conscience or power of
choice, but by a method of working which employs these
high faculties of humanity and verifies the language of
Paul, that in some true and important sense " the word
of the cross is the power of God unto them that are saved."
But the spiritual discernment of William Carey was in
advance of his age. Multitudes then supposed that the
time had not come for God to convert the heathen, and
that it was not for them to anticipate the appointed hour,
or to begin so vast a work in the dark. The pillar of
fire must appear and go before them in visible splendor
or they could not undertake to preach the gospel to
every creature. They failed to recognize in the Great
Commission, or in the life of Paul, that pillar of fire;
and they failed to do this partly because they mistook the
nature of Christ's supremacy and the working by which
he will subdue all things to himself. For this working
is essentially moral; it is influence, not force; and it
reaches the souls of men through many channels as the
word of truth, the love and service of the members of
Christ's body and the more secret and transforming grace
of the Holy Spirit. This is now commonly believed.
Theologians emphasize the fact that Christ conquers by
the power of truth and grace. They speak of holiness
and love as being literally more potential than the forces
of gravitation which hold the planets in their track. Ancj,
while they gratefully acknowledge the presence of God in
all spiritual progress, they teach that he unites his own
working with that of his children, and reveals to them as
clearly as possible the glory of the " one far-off divine
event" to which all holy aspirations and efforts tend.
17

191 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
And this really higher view of the Divine sovereignty is
due to the slowly working influence of a century of mis
sions in a much larger measure than it is to theological
research or discussion. Theology is therefore a debtor to
missions for a transfer of emphasis from the omnipotence
of Gcd to his holy love, and this debt she will labor with
all diligence and cheerfulness to pay.
Notice, secondly^, that in speaking of Christian life there
has been a perceptible transfer of emphasis from faith to
love, from trust to service. Yet the theology of our day
is not at this point antagonistic to the theology cur
rent a century ago. For faith and love have never been
represented as opposed to each other. They are of the
same lineage, aud mutually helpful. Nor has their affinity
ever been called in question by intelligent divines. It
would be impossible to find, even in the writings of John
Gill, any intimation that faith is greater than love, or that
it can be genuine apart from works. On the other hand,
our own theology, which emphasizes love, does not overlook
the radical nature of faith or deny that it is indispensable
to divine life in the soul. It is therefore only a transfer
of stress or emphasis that we affirm. But the change is
not on that account unimportant. If in the right direction,
and not too great, it will tend to the perfection of Christian
life, and the richest fruit of divine grace in the soul will
issue in the highest service to mankind. The true reign
of God is within, and is described as " righteousness and
peace and joy in the Holy Spirit " ; but joy would be
empty without love ; and the same apostle describes the
fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, long-suffering;
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control."
And just these are the virtues which the missionary

'., . INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. 195
enterprise cherished. It calls upon Christians to obey the
command of their Lord. It sets the world in its sin and
sorrow, its darkness and woe, before them, and without
intermission, from year to year and lustrum to lustrum,
with a thousand voices says to them, " These are your
neighbors, your brothers, and you are to serve them with
a quenchless love." The whole atmosphere has vibrated
at times with appeals for help in giving the gospel to the
nations. The press has been associated witli the living
voice in declaring the magnitude and urgency of the work.
Periodicals, religious and secular, volumes, reports, pam
phlets, and leaflets, have been used as channels for mis
sionary light and eloquence. Statistics, vital, educational,
and moral, have been brought to bear on the hearts of
men and women throughout Christendom. Instances of
personal devotion and of combined effort have been
faithfully reported for the encouragement of fainting
spirits. And the principal stress has been laid upon love
and service. The practical side of Christian life has been
pushed to the front and the theology of our day has felt
its influence.
Doubtless the faith of God's people has also been
strengthened by the work of missions, especially the faith
which relies on the promise of Christ for success in evan
gelizing the world. For in the realm of spiritual action
we cannot give more than we have received. We lift up
our hands to God that he may fill them with the blessing
which is then offered by us to men. Apart from Christ
we can do nothing. Our missions prosper because the
promise of Jesus is fulfilled : " Lo, I am with you alway,
unto the end of the world."
But while the work of missions calls for genuine faith,

198 CENTENARY- MISSIONARY ADDRE-SES. . .
and gives it abundant exercise, there fs reason to believe
that its influence in cultivating love and the habit of con
secrated service, is still more pervasive and controlling ;
so that the point on which special stress is laid in our
theological creed has come to be love, rather than trust ;
and action, rather than devotion. " And now abide
faith, hope, love, these three ; and the greatest of these
is love." Notice, thirdly, that in maintaining the truth of the
Christian religion there has been a perceptible transfer
of emphasis from its miraculous to its moral phenomena.
The evidential literature of the last twenty years of the
century, when compared with that of the first twenty
years, furnishes ample proof of this statement. For of
late it has been frequently acknowledged by good men,
that a belief in miracles can only be justified by evidence
coming from other sources that Jesus Christ was a super
natural being, while a hundred years ago it was com
monly affirmed that faith in Christ as a supernatural be
ing is fully justified by the evidence which proves that he
wrought many miracles. The change is worthy of close
consideration. The efficient causes of it must be sought
in physical science and speculative philosophy. For the
unparalleled growth of physical science during the pres
ent century has shown with ever clearer light the regu
larity of all the processes of nature, and has cultivated a
distrust of all evidence for miracles. Moreover, the dis
trust thus fostered agrees with a strong tendency of
philosophical thought to classify events and reduce them
to a fixed order. This tendency is so powerful in many
minds as to make them willing to abandon their instinct
ive belief in human freedom for the sake of comprehend-

INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. 197
ing all parts of the universe under one kind of force and
law. It is not, therefore, surprising that the joint influ
ence of natural science and philosophy upon certain per
sons has rendered the record of miracles a stumbling-
block in the way of their accepting the entire gospel
narrative, though they recognize the spiritual beauty of
Christ's life and teaching, and on this account, perhaps,
believe in miracles.
. Meanwhile, the moral power of the Christian religion
has become more and more evident, and many able apol
ogists have appealed to it as the chief and sufficient, if
not the only, proof of its heavenly origin. " By their
fruits ye shall know them," is as fair a test of the quality
of religions as of trees, and it is one which distinguishes
the Christian religion from every other, and assigns it a
divine pre-eminence. What this religion does reveals
what it is, and assures the hearts of its friends that " the
gates of hades will not prevail against it." But the
moral power of their religion is revealed to Christians
in two ways : by what it does for themselves, and by
what it does for others ; by personal experience, and by
careful observation. In other words, its truth is verified
by their own consciousness, and by the effect which it is
seen to have on the lives of men. And the ever-increas
ing force of this kind of evidence for the Christian re
ligion has rendered many persons indifferent to the proof
from miracles, while it has led others to place moral
events of the present day in the foreground, and miracu
lous events of the first age in the background, when the
evidences of Christianity are grouped together.
Now while it is certain that the efficient cause of this
change has been the joint influence of physical science

198 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
and speculative philosophy, it also appears that the suc
cess of missions during the century has facilitated it by
making the moral evidence for our holy religion more
cogent and satisfying to reason. Looking at the change
from this point pf view we rejoice, though not without
trembling. For it should never be forgotten that the
truth of our religion depends on the supernatural birth,
personality, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that, if
these were facts, other miracles wrought at his word can
not be judged improbable. Nor should it be overlooked
that the more certainly miracles are proved to be alto
gether extraordinary and exceptional events, the more
conclusively does their occurrence in the life of Christ
prove that the author of our holy religion was in reality
from above, and divine as well as human. We cannot,
therefore, rejoice that the evidence from miracles is
treated with indifference or distrust by any Christian
teacher, though we do rejoice that the evidence from
Christian life has become more cogent and decisive than
it once was; and this may be attributed in no small de
gree to the influence of a century of missions.
Notice, fourthly, that in respect to heathen nations and
religions the tone of our theology is not precisely what it
was a hundred years ago. The difference cannot, indeed,
be weighed or measured, outlined or defined, but it may
be suggested by calling it briefly a change of tone. The
work of missions among the heathen has penetrated with
out violence their temples and shrines, their homes and
hearts, and has made us comparatively familiar with
their knowledge and ignorance, their habits and preju
dices, their traditions and fears. We have begun to look
upon them with brotherly kindness, and to appreciate in

INFLUENCE OF A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. 199
them the working of natural affection and of conscience,
together with a certain blind feeling after God. They
are much nearer and more real to us than they could have
been to our forefathers in 1792; and some ofthe re
ligions which they cherish are seen to possess a modicum
of truth in connection with dangerous error. To many
of them " the heavens' declare the glory of God, and the
expanse proclaims his handiwork." To many of them
" that which may be known of God " by his works " is
manifest " ; " for since the creation of the world, his in
visible things are clearly seen, being perceived by the
things that are made, even his eternal power and
divinity." A careful comparison of natural religions
with one another, and with the truth as it is in Jesus, has
given us, not only a better knowledge of those religions,
but also of the people who cherish them, and indeed of
the human heart itself; and the result is more charity,
more love, more desire to preach the gospel to all man
kind, and more hope that in the end " a great multitude
which no one can number, out of every nation and all
tribes and peoples and tongues," will receive it.
For the gospel has been proved to be " the power of
God unto salvation to every one that believes, to the Jew
first, and also to the Greek." Before our eyes, in these
latter days, it has been found a spring of life to human
souls the world over, and we may now say without fear
that whoever can be delivered from the bondage of sin by
any conceivable process that leaves him still a man, can
be delivered by the grace and truth of Christ. This fact
is represented by the change of tone in Christian
theology when it speaks of heathen nations. And the
change is auspicious. It betokens the approach of a bet-

200 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
ter age, an age of increased faithfulness on the part of
Christians and of greater success in their work. Many
look for the visible return of Christ to inaugurate and
glorify this age; but though I am unable to share their
belief on. this point, I hope for his presence in such
power and grace as will, fill all true hearts with joy un
speakable.

XVI.
THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY
THROUGH ITS MISSIONS.
REV. FREDERICK L. ANDERSON,
Pastor Second Baptist Church, Rochester, N. Y.
Up to the present day the greatest good conferred by
foreign missionary work on our common Christianity has
consisted in its reflex influence upon the churches in
Europe and America. Foreign missions have quickened
the church's zeal, they have strengthened its faith, en
larged its hope, widened its love, and deepened its life.
But from this larger and more important part of our
subject, we turn away this evening and shall attempt to
set before you the direct enrichment of Christianity
through its missions, a subject smaller and less important
than the other, if the past only is to be considered.
First of all : Foreign missions have enriched Chris
tianity with men and money. These are the sinews of
war. Men may sneer at numbers, and pick flaws in our
statistics, but the sentiment that underlies the confidence
in numbers and the love of statistics, is both scriptural
and sensible. The church of the living God is a mighty-
army, and, if the spirit is right, every man adds just so»
much to the fighting power of the army. Nay, we would
even venture the paradox of the president of Colby,
every true Christian, snatched from the devil, counts two
rather than one ; in fact, the increase in power is in geo
metrical rather than in arithmetical progression. This is
201

202 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
the very spirit of the gospel. We are sent to catch men,
not so much to save their souls as to turn them into
soldiers. We are sent to disciple all nations, not so much
for their sake, as for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
Now, our contention is that foreign missions 'have added
at least seven hundred and fifty regiments to the Chris
tian army of conquest, seven hundred and fifty thousand
men, who, had it not been for foreign missions would have
had their place in the devil's army, rather than in the
ranks of King Jesus. Let us now call the roll of these
regiments and brigades, the crown jewels of Immanuel :
One thousand in Central America ; one thousand in
Greenland ; one thousand in Siam ; two thousand in
Persia; three thousand in Egypt; thirteen thousand in
Mexico ; fourteen thousand in South America ; fifteen
thousand in Turkey and Syria ; nineteen thousand among
the aborigines of Australia and New Zealand ; thirty thou
sand in Japan ; thirty-three thousand in Malaysia ; forty
thousand in China ; fifty-six thousand in Madagascar ;
fifty-seven thousand in Polynesia ; seventy thousand in
the- West Indies; one hundred and one thousand in
Africa ; two hundred and twenty-two thousand in India,
besides the hundreds of thousands rescued to a pure gospel
from the corrupt Lutheranism, Romanism, and Greek
Church of Europe.
Like Xerxes' army, the divisions of this host differ in
features, dress, weapons, and speech,, but unlike his, they
all have one spirit, and burn with a loyalty to their king,
which utterly precludes defeat.
Notice the great strategic value of the position they
occupy. They are where we need men most, at the frorit,
where the enemy is strongest. One Christian in India is

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 203
worth a hundred in America, as far as the conversion of
India is concerned. These hosts too, are largely imbued
with the missionary .spirit. -of the Redeemer; in other
words, they have " the fight" in them. Whatever may
be said of America, there are no anti-mission Christians
in Asia and Africa. They have caught the evangelistic
fervor of their missionaries, and are themselves doing
missionary work. Thirty-eight thousand native preachers
work the home, that is the heathen^ fields ; but this does
not suffice. These converted heathen send missionaries
to the heathen beyond. The missionary-receiving coun
tries are slowly becoming missibnary+producing countries.
German, Swedish, and Norwegian Baptists have been sent
to the Congo, and to the millions of India and Japan.
The Hottentots, once supposed to be hardly men, now
redeemed and purified, not only send their own preachers
to the heathen at the north of tliem, but even pay the
salary of white missionaries to the same peoples. The
Karens, especially of Bassein and Toungoo, send their
brethren to preach among the Kach'ins, and to the wild
tribes of the eastern border. Polynesia is being evangel
ized to-day for the most part by Hawaiian, — who have
one hundred and one stations and out-stations, — Samoan,
Tahitian, and Fijian Christians. Thus our allies are
increasing, leaving us free for work in other fields, slowly
narrowing the territory not yet evangelized, and bringing
into the sight of faith the time when all the earth shall
know the Lord. The foreign missionary problem will
not forever increase in complexity and difficulty. The
work will grow easier by-and-by, if only the missionaries
adopt the policy of making every convert a soldier. With
these allies, ever growing in numbers and efficiency, we

204 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
shall some day get over the top of the hill of difficulty,
and view the valley of success. But just now, and for
the next hundred yTears perhaps, we are at a very steep
place in the road ; we must all get out and put our shoul
ders to the wheels, or we shall never pass the summit
at all.
These seven hundred and fifty thousand converts from
heathenism have greatly enriched Christianity with their
money. Almost every one of them comes into the king
dom possessed of something, and according to the grace
given him, this is laid upon the altar. To be sure, not
many rich, not many noble, have yet been brought to
Christ, but proportionally, and sometimes actually, the
poor give more than the rich. This money laid on God's
altar leaves us of America free to put our money else
where, and so the kingdom of God is strengthened and
increased. Every self-supporting station is a milestone
of substantial progress, and every station which in addi
tion contributes to foreign work, becomes doubly our ally
in spreading the glad news. Statistics on this point are
meagre and very unreliable. The " Encyclopedia of Mis
sions," for 1 890, places the total of native contributions for
the year for all purposes at one million twenty-nine thou
sand five hundred dollars. The " Carey Centenary Vol
ume " gives the American contributions for foreign missions
for lastyear as four million five hundred and fifty-one thou
sand dollars, and the native contributions — under Ameri
can auspices — for all purposes, as six hundred and forty
thousand dollars, an increase of one hundred and sixteen
thousand dollars during the last year. In our own Mis
sionary Union the figures are given : total home contri
butions, four hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars ;

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 205
native contributions, seventy-two thousand dollars, or
more than one-eighth of the whole sum needed, and
almost as much as was contributed by the States of New
York and Pennsylvania for the foreign field. In other
words, the Christianity of foreign lands is as greatly en
riched by the native Baptists of those lands as by all the
Baptists of New York and Pennsylvania. And as far as
foreign work is concerned, on its financial side even, our
native converts are worth as much to us as all our con
tributors in our two largest States. It is to be understood
too, that the above estimate of seventy-two thousand dol
lars does not include our European missions ; this would
bring it up to two hundred and twenty-four thousand
dollars. In addition to these expenses for Christian
work on their own fields, these missions have directly
poured into our Missionary Union's treasury out of their
great poverty, thirteen thousand four hundred dollars, an
amount greater than the combined contributions of the
States of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington,
North and South Dakota, Oregon, California, Colorado,
Nebraska, and Vermont, or to come nearer home, more
than half as much as the State of Pennsylvania. So
much for men and money in the past and present. Who
can tell what limits we may put to our hopes for tlie
future ?
2. Let us now consider the enrichment of Christian
thought and expression by these native converts. In this
particular, the past and present seem almost, but not
wholly, barren of results. Our face is toward the future,
in which we think we see native converts laying the
treasures of Oriental thought, pathos, and devotion at the
Master's feet. Why is it not probable that theology,
18

206 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
philosophy, hymnology, and devotional literature will
receive substantial additions from the Oriental Christian
mind? Dismiss, dear friends, from your minds that literary
bigotry which supposes that the only education consists
in an acquaintance with literature, and that consequently
uncivilized and unschooled races are a set of fools.
Many a man who can neither read nor write, has a better
memory, a livelier imagination, sounder reasoning powers,
and more sense than many a college graduate. It is ex
ceedingly doubtful whether William the Conqueror could
read, and most of the barons, who wrested the Magna
Charta from John, could not write their names. Ono of
the shrewdest and most successful men I know can only
with the greatest difficulty write a letter. Uncivilized
races contain their proper proportion of bright, and able
men. Indeed we have Plato and Julius Caesar for au
thority in saying that book learning in some respects
weakens and undermines the mental powers. The degen
erate Romans of later times knew how to read and write,
but the German barbarians knew how to conquer and be
free. There have been more " wise fools " than James the
First. More than one man has been able to speak seven
languages, and never had an idea in one of them.
After all, the end of education is mental discipline, the
power of analysis, good judgment, a retentive memory,
and a trained imagination ; in other words, it is the power
to bring things to pass. For such a result the discipline
of the schools seems best adapted ; but away with the lit
erary snobbishness which thinks it can be attained in no
other way, and which looks down with contempt on the
man who slips in spelling or grammar. He may be a man

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 207
for a' that. Mr. Henry Richards, our missionary at Banza
Manteke, on the Congo, told me that very soon after his
return from Africa to England, he was asked to preach
in a certain Baptist church. Accepting the invitation,
he discoursed on the flesh and the spirit from the eighth
of Romans. He noticed the congregation somewhat
wearied, and when he was done, the old deacon said to
him : " Well, Brother Richards, that was a good dis
course, but it was a little above the heads of our people."
"Indeed," replied Richards, "you quite surprise me;
the Congo people were wonderfully interested in that
same sermon, when I preached it to them a few months
since." Open the world of the book and the pen to
such people, and we may well expect the best results.
But all heathen are not rude and uncivilized. The
upper classes of China, India, and Japan are most cour
teous, pleasant, and talented. No boor should ever be
sent as a missionary to those countries. Dr. Mabie has
done an invaluable service in opening our eyes to the real
status of the Oriental world. Yet some of us had had
hints of it years ago. When I was a professor in the
old University of Chicago, we had a Chinaman as a stu
dent. He was the most accomplished gentleman I ever
knew. His faultless grace of manner always made me
feel awkward in his presence. He vvas a talented speaker.
Whenever it was announced that Long Lann Bo was to
speak, the old chapel would always be crowded. He
always had something worth the saying. My father, ten
years a college president, says that Long Bo was the apt-
est student he ever had in metaphysics. Original, keen,
and bright, all his college-mates acknowledged him their
equal or superior. When men like Long Bo are filled

208 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
with the gospel, China will have Christian preachers,
philosophers, and statesmen of whom she need not be
ashamed. And is not the Oriental mind, with its metaphysical
and poetic trend, to add much to our Christian inheri
tance ? Are not these nations to bring their intellectual
riches into our common Zion ? Is not this fresh contin
gent to strengthen, broaden, and balance our Occidental
theologies, add clearness to our exegesis, new life to our
devotion, and a new practicalness to our work for Christ?
Millions of heathen, for instance, are devil worshipers,
and have been for generations. Their whole lives are
dominated by this idea. .It is in the very web and woof
of their whole thinking. Now convert them, and it will
be a long time before the doctrine of a personal devil
will disappear from Christian theology. Fatalism rules
the Mohammedan and Buddhist worlds. The Oriental
mind seems to have no difficulties in accepting election,
predestination, and all that seems to be involved in the
sovereignty of God. And this is the reason why Paul
mixes up predestination and free-will in such a careless
manner, as it seems to us sometimes. He was an Ori
ental, and did not see the incongruity. Now, when fatal
ism is converted, renewed, and purified, will not the five
points of Calvinism find in it a wonderful prop and sup
port? Pantheism is rampant in India, China, and
Japan. Indeed, the great majority of the thinking part
of the race have always been pantheists. And when
pantheism is converted and Christianized, will not the
unity and immanence of God receive a wondrous acces
sion of strength. May there not from this Christianiza-
tion of pantheism come forth an ethical, a Christian mon-

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 209
ism, perhaps ; a something very unlike the pagan mon
ism of America to-day, but a something which is floating
in the air, and which we can hardly formulate or express ?
And will not this balance the bald tritheism so common
in evangelical circles, and the almost deistic conception of
the universe now so prevalent among the mass of our
church-members ?
And from this Oriental world I look for the influence
which will establish immersion as baptism finally and
forever. The Oriental mind is poetic. The language
of symbolism is its native tongue. It delights in emblem
and significant ordinances. The reason the Anglo-Saxons,
whh an open Bible in their hand, are not all immersionists
is because they are lacking in imagination. They are
practical, extremely sensible, fearfully prosaic. The
Oriental, on the contrary, asks the immerser : " What
does this rite mean ? " and when its beautiful imagery of
the death and resurrection of Christ, and of the believer is
set forth, the Oriental is straightway attracted to it.
When the sprinkler, asked the same question, can give no
explanation of his meaningless ordinance, the Oriental
turns away. So we see that though the Presbyterians
spend twice as much money as our Baptist Board in for
eign lauds, they have not a third as many converts. And
in Burma even Pedobaptists are forced to immerse their
converts. They will have nothing else. In fact, the
Bible is an Oriental book, and Christianity is an Oriental
religion, and when it jgets back to its native habitat it
will be reinterpreted in the spirit in which it was first
promulgated, and be enriched by elements of which to
some extent it has been robbed.
And shall we not expect too that the light-hearted,

210 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
warm-hearted Negro race will add a needed element of
warmth and joy to the final Christianity, and the China
man, strange mixture of conservatism and enterprise, a
practical and ethical element which will give a solidity
and permanency to the whole' kingdom ?
And what means this car of Juggernath in India?
this suttee ? these fakirs ? these weary pilgrimages ? these
self-inflicted tortures ? this mother casting her babe into
the Ganges? these ten thousand gods? Surely might
the missionary say to these Indians as Paul did to the
Athenians : " I perceive that in all things ye are very
religious." Religion dominates the whole life. Every
day, every hour, almost every act has some relation to the
man's religion. And when this exceedingly religious
people are renewed by the Spirit of God, will they not lay
their bodies on Jehovah's altar as a living sacrifice? Will
they not gladly suffer all privations, all persecutions, all
wearinesses for him who loved them and gave himself for
them?. Will not the money lavished on sacrifices and
shrines find its way into the Lord's treasury ? Will not
the infants, formerly reserved for Lord Ganges, be now
willingly dedicated to the service of Lord Jesus? Will
not the devbtion which supports ten thousand gods sup
port one with at least equal zeal ? I cannot but believe
that converted India will show, ns a consecration and
fervor beside which all western examples of self-surrender
will seem cold and tame.
And this earnest love for Jesus will naturally express
itself in a devotional literature with a sweetness and
tenderness all its own. The mystic trend of the Indian
mind will develop the holy thought of our oneness with
Christ and his presence with us as never before. Hymns,

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 211
too, will flow from Hindu and Chinese lips. Already
our hymnology is enriched by Krishna Pal's —
0 thou, my soul, forget no more
The friend who all thy sorrows bore,
Let every idol ,be forgot,
But, oh my soul, forget him not.
And Lakshmi Goreh's —
In the secret of his presence how my soul delights to hide,
Oh, how precious are the lessons which I learn at Jesus' side,
Earthly cares can never vex me, neither trials lay me low,
For when Satan comes to tempt me, to the secret place I go.
Nor are these all. Already Polynesia, Japan, China,
Burma, the Telugus, and .Madagascar have their native
hymn writers, many of whose productions are pronounced
"most excellent" by the missionaries. Christianity is
teaching the world to sing. Is it a prophecy of the
universal song of praise to Him who sits on the throne
and to the Lamb ?
3. Up to the present time, the most important direct
contribution of foreign missions to our religion consists
of its rich store of Christian experience. What the world
wants to-day is not theories, arguments, philosophies, or
even theologies, so much as life facts. Christianity in the
life form is always most instructive, convincing, and
inspiring. The test of Christianity after all is not that
it is logical, or that it makes men happy. The final
question is, "Does, it actually save men?" Is it the
power which can make men gentle, strong, and pure?
If Christianity can do this, the world wants it. If it
cannot, the world has no use for it, and the world is
right. The great battle of apologetics is to be fought and
won not so much in the study and in the pulpit, as in the

212 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
after-meeting, the inquiry room, and the Sunday-school.
Not by wit, not by pen, but " by my Spirit," saith the
Lord of hosts. This " everlasting sign, which shall not
be cut off," this exhibit of men regenerated, redeemed,
and purified, has often been the strength of Christianity
in spite of its defenders. " And seeing the man who was
healed standing with them, they could say nothing against
it." And What can be said against a Christianity which
does actually cleanse and purify a world? But of all
the departments of the church's working, foreign mis
sions supply the most striking and convincing proofs of
the living power of the gospel.
Notice this living power working in the lives of
the missionaries. See David Nitschmann and Leonhard
Dober, as with scarcely a dollar in their pocket, they sail
for St. Thomas in 1732, constrained by the law of Christ
to minister to the degraded slaves of the island, and de
termined to reach them with the gospel, though they sold
themselves as slaves to do so.
See the refined and sensitive Judson lying in the midst
of the filth and loathsomeness of the death prison at Ava,
or begging, ah me ! a little nourishment for his starving
babe from the native mothers of Oung-pen-la, pitied in
his wretchedness even by the tiger-hearted jailers. And
all this he suffered for Jesus.
See Morrison toiling on for thirty years in spite of a
thousand obstacles, and with scarce a convert, to lay broad
and deep the foundation of missions in China. This cer
tainly was the noblest kind of courage — patience, which
is courage long drawn out. And all for Jesus' sake.
See those Moravians, men and women, living and dy
ing in leper hospitals, and all for Jesus' sake.

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 213
And have you read the story of Captain Allen Gard
ner, of the Royal Navy, whose love for Christ and ne
glected South America would not allow him to rest ? See
him at last on the storm-bound coast of Terra del Fuego,
repulsed by the Fuegans, whom he came to save ; his
company dying one by one from starvation, and yet never
a murmur from his lips. Read the last two entries in
his journal, Wednesday, September 4 : " There is now
no doubt that my dear fellow-laborer— the last, save him
self — has ceased from his earthly toils, and joined the
company of the redeemed in the presence of the Lord,
whom he served so faithfully. Under these circumstances,
it was a merciful providence that he left the boat, as I
am too weak to have removed the body. He left a little
peppermint water which he had mixed, and it has been a
great comfort to me; but there was no other to drink.
Fearing that I might suffer from thirst, I prayed that
the Lord would strengthen me to procure some. He
graciously answered my petition, and yesterday I was
enabled to get out and scoop up a sufficient supply from
some that trickled down at the stern of the boat by means
of one of my India-rubber overshoes. What continued
mercies am I receiving at the hands of my Heavenly
Father ! Blessed be his holy name ! " Think of it,
friends ; think of it ! Oh, the pathos and the pity of it !
Thanking God for a little dirty water "in an old overshoe !
And all this for Jesus' sake.
" Friday, September 5. This is the last. Great and
marvelous are the loving kindnesses of my gracious God
unto me. He has preserved me hitherto, and for four
days, although without bodily food, without any feeling
of hunger or thirst."

214 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
" Here is the patience of the saints : here are they that
keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus
Christ. They hunger no more, neither thirst any more, for
the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed
them." Such life and facts are, however, afforded also by the
native converts. Christianity saves not only the Caucasian,
but the Chinese, the African, the Polynesian, and the
Fuegan. Among the ten thousand instances we select a
single one.
Kowia was a cannibal chief of the island of Tanna, in
the New Hebrides, where Dr. Paton first labored. Con
verted, he lived the new life of faith in Jesus, and was a
faithful missionary to his own people. Evil white men
brought the measles to Tanna. It almost swept the island
of its inhabitants, and in the midst of all Dr. Paton fell
sick. One day he was awakened from his feverish sleep
by Kowia, who whispered to him :
" Missi, I am very weak ; I am dying. I come to bid
you farewell and go away to die. I am nearing death
now, and I will soon see Jesus. Missi, since you became
ill, my dear wife and children are dead and buried. Most
of our Ancityumese (Christians) are dead, and I am dying.
If I remain on the hill and die here at the mission house,
there are none left to help Abraham to carry me down to
the grave where my wife and children are laid. I wish
to lie beside them that we may rise together in the Great
Day, when Jesus comes. I am happy, looking unto
Jesus ! One thing only grieves me now : I fear God is
taking us all away from Tanna, and will leave my poor
people dark and benighted as before, for they hate Jesus
and the worship to Jehovah. Oh, Missi, pray for them,

THE ENRICHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 215
and pray for me once more before I go ! " After Dr.
Paton had prayed with him he urged him to remain, but
Kowia replied :
" Oh, Missi, you do not know how near to death I am !
I am just going, and will soon be with Jesus, and see my
wife and children now. While a little strength is left I
will lean on Abraham's arm and go down to the grave of
my dear ones and fall asleep there, and Abraham will dig
a quiet bed and lay me beside them. Farewell, Missi, I
am very near death now ; we will meet again with Jesus
and in Jesus."
"With many tears," says Dr. Paton, "he dragged
himself away ; and my heart strings seemed all tied
around that noble, simple soul, and felt like breaking one
by one as he left me there on my bed of fever alone.
Abraham sustained him, tottering to the place of graves ;
there he lay down, and immediately gave up the ghost and
slept in Jesus. What think ye of this, ye scoffers at mis
sions ? What think ye of this, ye skeptics as to the reality
of conversion ? He died as he had lived since Jesus came
into his heart ; without a fear of death, with an ever-
brightening assurance of salvation and glory through the
blood of the Lamb of God, that blood which had cleansed
him from all his sins and had delivered him from their
power." And why multiply these instances? The world knows
the Christian heroes of the Imerina persecutions of Mada
gascar, the noble martyr deaths of Samoan and Fijian
missionaries, the death praises of the boys of Uganda as
in the flames tbey sang the name of Jesus. My friends,
theories all aside, the glorious fact remains, Jesus saves.
Foreign missions have not only furnished life facts

216 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
enough to convince any candid man of the living power
of our religion, but they have mortgaged the world for
Jesus. Some one may say, What is the use? Why
throw away these noble lives? See your missionaries
returning year by year permanently disabled. See the
graves which dot the shores of the Irawadi and the
Congo. Ah ! my friend, those graves are the most pre
cious of Christianity's treasures. They are the pledges
of victory. From the ground cry the voices of the dead
in tones which forbid retreat. So long as Anna Hasel-
tine Judson lies buried under the hopia tree at Amherst,
so long as the bones of her great husband whiten within
sight of the Burman shore, Burma can never be aban
doned by American Baptists. So long as the grass waves
over those green graves on the Congo, American Baptists
can never retreat from Africa. Aye, my friends, these
are the holy sepulchres of the new crusade, which will
take the world for Jesus. Still, still, the blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the church.
When William the Conqueror landed oh the beach at
Pevensey, he stumbled and fell. All cried aloud in
dismay at what seemed to them an omen of ill, but the
great conqueror closed his hand on the sand, and holding
it aloft cried, amid the cheers of the host : " See, I have
taken seizin of my kingdom of England." So by these
seeming omens of ill, has the church taken seizin of the
world for King Immanuel.
And now in the words of the great president, as we
are solemnly gathered in the presence of God, "let us
here highly resolve that these dead shall not. have died

XVII.
THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION.1
REV. A. J. GORDON, D. D.,
Pastor Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston.
Sometimes a train of thought is suggested by a very
trivial circumstance, as the train of thought was which I
shall pursue this evening very briefly. My son came to
me one day with a Greek Testament, and asked me this
question : " Is it right for a Christian to be ambitious ? "
I said, " Yes, I think so, in the right sense of the word."
Then he added another question : " Is it right for a
Christian to love honor and praise?" I said that didn't
seem to be according to the gospel. He said, " What
does this word mean, philotimeomai f" " That means
love of honor." I found that word used three times in
the Greek Testament, and I said, " Certainly that is a
good suggestion, to see it exactly as it means; not as
translated." The first instance is this. The Apostle Paul says :
" So have I been ambitious to preach the gospel where
Christ is not known, else I should build upon another
man's foundation." He sjoeaks there of being ambitious
to do it. That is a great principle, though it contains a
certain kind of paradox. If you were to have a lot on
which to build a house, you would have no objection,
other things being right, that the foundation already had
been put in so that you would have nothing to do but to
rear the superstructure. " No," says the apostle, " give me
i Printed from a stenographic report.
19 2"

218 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
a field where there hasn't been a sod turned, a turf cut.
I want to begin anew. This is my ambition." Now, I
remember when I graduated from the theological seminary,
I said, " I want to make the. most of life. I said, cer
tainly it is best to build on an old foundation where
you have years of culture and spiritual- training and
nurture, rather than to go to a new field."
But the whole history of foreign missions proves the
opposite. Do you think it was a mistake, as Judson's
mother and sister thought, that when he had that splendid
opportunity to be co-pastor in the Park Street Church of
Boston, and Ire said^ "My field is over the sea"; and
over the sea he went ? And Park Street Church numbers
perhaps eight hundred members to-day, while the churches
which have been gathered as the fruit of his labors in
Burma number thirty thousand members; It is always
safest to go in God's way. A man graduated twenty
years ago from Princeton College. Alexander Mackay
said, " I am going to find a field where the gospel has
never been heard." He went to Formosa and began a
work there, literally a repetition of the work of the
apostle in the hardships and trials and buffetings and
persecutions. At the end of twelve years he sat down to
the communion table one day with twelve hundred and
fifty disciples he had gathered out of that new field. Who
of us, laboring twenty years, thirty years, can point to such
a result as that? Built out of absolutely new material,
where a soul never had been brought to Christ or heard
the gospel. I just sketch this to show that it pays, in this
particular, to be ambitious exactly as the Apostle Paul
was ambitious to preach the gospel where Christ has never
been honored.

THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION. 219
The second suggestion is this. Writing to the Thessa-
lonians he exhorts them to be ambitious, to be quiet, and
to do their own business. I think that is a wonderful
suggestion. That is my point exactly. Brethren, our
great business is giving the gospel to those who have
never heard it. It is not our second business or our
third. It is our first business. Everything ought to be
subordinate to that. I want solemnly to ask you, as a
company of Christians, does it appear that you, does it
appear that the church of God, does it appear that our
great brotherhood is making the work of its foreign
missions its first business ? Look at it. A man puts his
capital in his business, doesn't he? Not simply some
small per cent, of interest. , Now the last estimate gives
the amount of money in the hands of evangelical Chris
tians in the United States to. be eleven billion dollars.
Perhaps you can compute that ; I can't. What do you
suppose the per cent, of contributions to missions of that
eleven billion dollars is by American evangelical Chris
tians ? It is computed to be one thirty-fourth of one per
cent. How many of you would succeed in . business if
you put as much of your money in proportion into your
business as that ? Take another fact. Of all the money
given for Christian purposes, ninety-eight per cent, stays
at home and two per cent, goes abroad to give the gospel
to the heathen. Does that look like business ? We have
only to act as Jesus Christ commanded us to act to reach
bright results.
I have sometimes thought, suppose that we believed
the Bible and took it literally. There is that declaration,
" For our citizenship is in heaven." A man pays taxes
where he lives, doesn't he ? The great trouble we have

220 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
in Boston is that people move out into the suburbs to
avoid their taxes. Suppose you join those two ideas,
pay your taxes where you live, and your citizenship is in
heaven. In that event a great many people would
probably move out into the suburbs. That is the great
complaint in the city of Boston ; I don't suppose it is so
in the city of Brooklyn or New York. Suppose those
Christians who have that magnificent honor, who are, in
no figurative sense, but literally, the sons of God, and
concerning whom that wonderful thing is said, that their
citizenship is in heaven ; suppose I say that they only did
what is right, and paid their taxes there. But just the
same trouble occurs ; a vast number of them move into
the suburbs of the woild somewhere, and the church of
God and the kingdom of Jesus Christ do not get their
taxes. We are not making missions our first business.
Then the apostle Paul says : " I am ambitious that
whether living or dying I may be approved of him."
That is the thing. I wish we could all act upon that
principle. Seek for nothing so much as simply for this,
that we get the approval of our Master. A friend of
mine, not long since, was coming into the station to take
the cars to a distant city. It was a frightfully cold night,
and they all had their overcoats buttoned up to the chin ;
but when they came to the gate there was a man demand
ing that every man should show his ticket, and every
man had to undo his coat two or three thicknesses, and
they were all very angry and were upbraiding this man.
When my friend came along, he said : " You seem to be a
very unpopular man this evening." He answered : " I
have no ambition but to be popular with one man, and
that is the superintendent." Now, that is exactly what

THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION. 221
the Apostle Paul meant, I suppose. He was ambitious to
be popular with one, even Jesus Christ, whether he lived
or died, that he might be commended of him.
This is just a sketch of what was suggested to me, and
now I want very briefly to sketch what we have, and
what we ought to do with what we have.
First of all, we have this immense mind of man, and
we have in connection with our advanced civilization, the
telegraph and the railroad and all that is covered by that
phrase, modern civilization. Dr. Mabie told you this
morning of that marvelous fact that the census of India,
two hundred and eighty millions, was taken in a single
day, less than twenty-four hours. I never read it with
out thinking, that if the government of Great Britain can
take the census of India within twenty-four hours, how
long ought it to take to give the gospel to all those in
India? It is perfectly practicable that we should let
every man, woman, and child of India hear the story of
Jesus Christ, how he died and rose again, before this
century closes. That would be business.
What else have we ? We have this Bible translated
now into two hundred and eighty languages, and not
only that but remember the startling fact, that by these
translations nine-tenths of the whole human race can be
reached with the Scriptures in their own tongue. Think
of what that suggests. I don't know what you believe
about the Bible in these uncertain times, but I will tell
you what I belieye, I believe that not only was it
inspired but is inspired. . I believe the very life of the
very God .pulsates in its every sentence and its very
.letters. If John Milton could say that. a. good book is
the life-blood of a master spirit,, how much more can

222 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
we say that this Book of books is the very life-blood
of God.
Now the story of what the Bible has done in heathen
countries is simply magnificent. If I had the time to
recite it I would hardly know of a single instance where
the work has not been begun through some direct, definite
application of a single text or a few texts of Scripture.
Notice for a moment what has been accomplished. In
the year 1622, you remember that Christianity had been
planted in Japan and had a vast following there ; but in
that year the Jesuits, having plotted to get political influ
ence, allied themselves with a certain political party, and
were stamped out in the most remorseless slaughter perhaps
that was ever perpetrated. In America, in 1622, a little
band of pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Two hun
dred years passed. A man born in sight of Plymouth
Rock is one day in command of a ship that sails into the
harbor of Yeddo. He takes Japan for Christ, and there
wasn't a cannon fired, there wasn't an ounce of powder
spent. Commodore Perry simply placed the Bible on
the capstan of his ship and in a loud voice read the
100th Psalm, and Japan was opened to the world.
A few years after, some ship sailing through that same
bay dropped accidentally a copy of the New Testament.
It floated ashore and was picked up by a Japanese gen
tleman ; curious enough to know what it was he asked
somebody, and they told him that he could find a transla
tion by sending to China ; he sent and read all the transla
tion of the New Testament. He read the story of Jesus
Christ's life and death and resurrection. He was aston
ished and went to a missionary and said : " I-desire to
believe on this Man of whom I have read." That was

THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION. 223
the beginning. That man was the first Protestant con
vert ; won simply by reading the New Testament.
Go to Greenland. Fifteen years later a missionary
labored without a convert, believing that you must civil
ize a people before attempting to regenerate them. After'
him came John Beck. Reading one day these words, the
6tory of Jesus Christ's agony in the garden and that three
fold prayer, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,"
that simple passage of Scripture opened the heart of
Kajarnack, the first convert.
Pass on to Labrador. Eighteen years ago the mission
aries were about to abandon the field, when one day the
missionary repeated the word, " The Son of Man is come
to seek and to save that which is lost," and' the message
reached an abandoned woman. As she listened, a strange
fascination came over her soul, and then she went that
night and slept in a dog-kennel. She said : " I feel un
worthy to associate with men since I have heard about
this Man. All night she stayed in that dog-kennel, con
fessing her sins, pouring out her tears and pleading for
pardon; she came out next morning and said she believed
in this wonderful Man. And after eighteen years of wait
ing, Labrador had its door opened by a single text of
Scripture. That woman became the first evangelist. The
missionaries stayed, and her word was the word of fire ;
until within a month there wasn't a place big enough
to hold the converts who would gather to hear the praise
of this wonderful Man who came to seek and to save
those which were lost. That is the history of missions
in Labrador.
The Bible, put into the language of the people, gives
God's own life infused in the language of the Bible.

224 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
The Bible brings about a kind of re-incarnation, entering
into the hearts of men, and they become in turn the temple
of God. We have a wonderiiil resource in that translated
Bible. Then we have not only that, but we have the Holy
Spirit. Have you ever thought of this : " It is expedi
ent for you that I go away ; for if I go not away the
Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I go I will
send him unto you." How is it that we can have any
good by his going away ? When he was here in the body
he could only be in one place at one time ; but he could
be in all places at all times in the form of the Holy
Spirit. Not simply some fraction of himself, not simply
some spiritual fragment, but Jesus Christ is in company
with two or three regenerated persons gathered in his
name in all the individual fullness and plenitude of his
personality ; not a part of Christ, but the whole Christ
where two or three regenerated and worshiping souls are
gathered together. Does the doctrine of the Trinity defy
our mathematics? What do you think of this doctrine?
Mathematics says the whole is equal to the sum of all
the parts. But we know of the Spirit that every part is
equal to the whole. Every church, every true body of
Jesus Christ has just as much of Christ as every other,
and each has the whole Christ : " Lo, I am with you all
the days even unto the end " ; " Where two or three are
gathered in my name, there am I."
Now, I think it is time we were unusually ambitious
to complete this work. I am not here to plead for money
to-night. I am not here to make anybody give to the
Missionary Union. I am just here to say a word to you
Christians about your own spiritual life. The Missionary

THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION. 225
Union can get on if you don't give what you can give,
but the question is, will you get on ?
I believe that the word of our Lord Jesus Christ, " Lay
not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
and rust doth corrupt, but lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven," that that word is just as binding as "Believe
and be baptized." We have separated from Christendom
in obedience to the last commandment, " Believe and be
baptized." I suppose if we should stand out on the other
we should be counted eccentric, perhaps looked upon
with suspicion. I believe Christ meant that as much as
the other. It is best for us to do exactly what the Master
commanded. I heard this said : " I have been forty years
in India. You think missionaries have many hardships.
I tell you, the greatest hardship of all in missionary life
is the parting with children, sending them home, being
separated from them. That is the missionary's greatest
trial ; but I want to say that in forty years' experience
I have never known a missionary's child to go wrong."
What a remarkable statement ! These men have obeyed
the Great Commission, and God has kept faith with them.
I have been nearly twenty-five years pastor of one church,
in a position where I have had an opportunity to see. I
want to say that, with two or three exceptions, I have never
known an instance where men have waited, and laid by,
and accumulated a great fortune to pile it upon the heads
of their children, that those children have not, with one
or two exceptions, gone wrong and been ruined. The best
way to save your money is to give it to Jesus Christ for
the work of preaching the gospel among the heathen. I
know of no security for it anywhere else. I know of no
security for Christians in doing anything else.

226 CENTENARY MISSIONARY ADDRESSES.
Oh, my friends, I am not talking about the Missionary
Union and its claims ; I am talking to you to-night. Do
you know that money is the greatest peril, if misused ;
that it may be the greatest power if rightly used ? Do
you know that what God has given you in return for
honest toil may be multiplied a hundred-fold if you will
use it in the work of giving the gospel to those who never
heard it. Therefore, I ask if we are making preaching
the gospel our first business when we are spending
ninety-eight per cent, at home and two per cent, abroad,
when multitudes upon multitudes never have heard of
Jesus Christ ? I say, if we mean business, let us sacrifice
the luxuries of our home work for the advancement of
work among the heathen.
And now I must close with just this suggestion. It is
a most solemn time in which we are living. The mag
nificent success that missions are making should lift our
heads with joy, but should set us to search our own hearts.
I am speaking now to Christians about their own spiritual
life. An English pastor has written a book of pastoral
reminiscences. He tells this story : " I saw a man year
after year gradually cutting off his contributions to
missions, gradually closing his hand. I became anxious
about it. I didn't know how far it had gone. I knew
he was prosperous. I knew that little by little he would
shut his hand until at last he gave almost nothing to mis
sions. One day I was called suddenly with the announce
ment that he was dying. I hastened to his bedside, said
a few comforting words to him, asked him if his hope was
in Christ. I said, now I am going to pray ; give me your
band, I like to take hold of a hand. He did not move
his hand. I repeated, it, thinking he did not' hear, I am

THE APOSTOLIC AMBITION. . 227
going to pray, I want to take you by the hand. No
response. I knelt by his bedside and commended his
soul to God. In a few moments he passed awav. When
they turned over the covering, they found both those
hands clasping his safe key." He said those hands were
clasped so that it was almost impossible to get them apart.
" I knew now," he said, " why he couldn't reach out his
hand to me." We want hands reached out to India,
China, Japan, Africa and the islands of the sea. Is it
possible that any redeemed disciple of Christ has so
clasped his hands that he cannot reach them out ? When
I die I want to be able to say, " Simply to thy cross I
cling." But I know that no man can hold two Avorlds
in his hand at once. If myr hands are clasped on my
safe key, they can't clasp the cross.
I beg you to be serious about this and to consider that
I am not speaking severely, for, I know that Jesus Christ,
who, though rich, became poor that we, through his pov
erty, might be rich, has put us in a place of tremendous
responsibility. Responsibility presses upon us more than
the atmosphere ; fifteen hundred pounds to the square inch,
a hundred thousand pounds to the square inch — a tremen
dous pressure upon us. Every blessing, eveiy particle of
our resources means simply added responsibility. My
God ! help us to understand it. "And the Spirit and the
bride say, Come;" I read those words this morning in
my room as I rose, and pondered them. You know that
commentators say now that probably these words, the first
part of that verse, point back and are in response to what
Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, has just said : " Surely, I
come quickly." Then comes the answer, "The Spirit
and the bride say, Come, and whosoever will, let him

228 Centenary missionary addresses.
take the water of life." Notice what an admirable, what
a beautiful ideal that is of a Christian life. With eyes
turned toward heaven, with hands stretched out to men,
with the voice growing fairer to the absent pilgrim,
" Come, Lord Jesus." And with hands stretched out to
perishing worlds, saying : " Whosoever will, let him take
the water of life."
Do you know what the best prayer-book is? That
(pointing to a map of the world) is the best prayer-book
that I can recommend. Get a map of the world and
spread it out before you when you get on your knees.
And what about the praying? You are not simply to
pray to Jesus Christ, or to pray through Jesus Christ,
you are to live with him. To me this is a most blessed
idea — I am simply to join with him in prayer. When
Moses stood upon the mountain top, and the two stood
on either side to stay up his hands, when they stayed up
his hands, the battle went for Israel ; when they were
dropped, it went against them. Now, Jesus Christ is
there on the mountain top. What is he praying for?
He is looking down upon the map of the world, all its
dark continents, its wretched millions, its lost inhabitants.
He sees them all and remembers he has purchased them
with his own life-blood. He is pleading night and day
as he looks down upon the continents. And the Spirit
and the bride are to hold up his hands ; the Holy Spirit
on the one side and the church on the other, making
intercession that his prayer may be answered. O my
God, help us in this solemn hour to take upon our hearts
a lost world, and resolve for the future that missions shall
be our first business.