EXTRACTS FROM PAPER ON "MISSIONARY SACRIFICES."
It is something to be a missionary. The morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy, when they first saw the field which the first missionary was to fill. The great and terrible God, before whom angels veil their faces, had an Only Son, and He was sent to the habitable parts of the earth as a missionary physician. It is something to be a follower, however feeble, in the wake of the Great Teacher and only Model Missionary that ever appeared among men; and now that He is Head over all things, King of kings and Lord of lords, what commission is equal to that which the missionary holds from Him? May we venture to invite young men of education, when laying down the plan of their lives, to take a glance at that of missionary? We will magnify the office.
The missionary is sent forth as a messenger of the Churches, after undergoing the scrutiny and securing the approbation of a host of Christian ministers, who, by their own talent and worth, have risen to the pastorate over the most intelligent and influential churches in the land, and who, moreover, can have no motive to influence their selection but the desire to secure the most efficient instrumentality for the missionary work. So much care and independent investigation are bestowed on the selection as to make it plain that extraneous influences can have but small power. No pastor can imagine that any candidate has been accepted through his recommendations, however warm these may have been; and the missionary may go forth to the heathen, satisfied that in the confidence of the directors he has a testimonial infinitely superior to letters-apostolic from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or from the Vatican at Borne. A missionary, surely, cannot undervalue his commission, as soon as it is put into his hands.
But what means the lugubrious wail that too often bursts from the circle of his friends? The tears shed might be excused if he were going to Norfolk Island at the Government expense. But sometimes the missionary note is pitched on the same key. The white cliffs of Dover become immensely dear to those who never cared for masses of chalk before. Pathetic plaints are penned about laying their bones on a foreign shore, by those who never thought of making aught of their bones at home. (Bone-dust is dear nowhere, we think.) And then there is the never-ending talk and wringing of hands over missionary "sacrifices." The man is surely going to be hanged, instead of going to serve in Christ's holy Gospel! Is this such service as He deserves who, though rich, for our sakes became poor? There is so much in the manner of giving; some bestow their favors so gracefully, their value to the recipient is doubled. From others, a gift is as good as a blow in the face. Are we not guilty of treating our Lord somewhat more scurvily than we would treat our indigent fellow-men? We stereotype the word "charity" in our language, as applicable to a contribution to his cause. "So many charities,--we cannot afford them." Is not the word ungraciously applied to the Lord Jesus, as if He were a poor beggar, and an unworthy one too? His are the cattle on a thousand hills, the silver and the gold; and worthy is the Lamb that was slain. We treat Him ill. Bipeds of the masculine gender assume the piping phraseology of poor old women in presence of Him before whom the Eastern Magi fell down and worshiped,--ay, and opened their treasures, and presented unto Him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They will give their "mites" as if what they do give were their "all." It is utterly unfair to magnify the little we do for Him by calling it a sacrifice, or pretend we are doing all we can by assuming the tones of poor widows. He asks a willing mind, cheerful obedience; and can we not give that to Him who made his Father's will in our salvation as his meat and his drink, till He bowed his head and gave up the ghost?
Hundreds of young men annually leave our shores as cadets. All their friends rejoice when they think of them bearing the commissions of our Queen. When any dangerous expedition is planned by Government, more volunteers apply than are necessary to man it. On the proposal to send a band of brave men in search of Sir John Franklin, a full complement for the ships could have been procured of officers alone, without any common sailors. And what thousands rushed to California, from different parts of America, on the discovery of the gold! How many husbands left their wives and families! How many Christian men tore themselves away from all home endearments to suffer, and toil, and perish by cold and starvation on the overland route! How many sank from fever and exhaustion on the banks of Sacramento! Yet no word of sacrifices there. And why should we so regard all we give and do for the Well-beloved of our souls? Our talk of sacrifices is ungenerous and heathenish....
It is something to be a missionary. He is sometimes inclined, in seasons of despondency and trouble, to feel as if forgotten. But for whom do more prayers ascend?--prayers from the secret place, and from those only who are known to God. Mr. Moffat met those in England who had made his mission the subject of special prayer for more than twenty years, though they had no personal knowledge of the missionary. Through the long fifteen years of no success, of toil and sorrow, these secret ones were holding up his hands. And who can tell how often his soul may have been refreshed through their intercessions?...
It is something to be a missionary. The heart is expanded and filled with generous sympathies; sectarian bigotry is eroded, and the spirit of reclusion which makes it doubtful if some denominations have yet made up their minds to meet those who differ with them in heaven loses much of its fire....
There are many puzzles and entanglements, temptations, trials, and perplexities, which tend to inure the missionary's virtue. The difficulties encountered prevent his faith from growing languid. He must walk by faith, and though the horizon be all dark and lowering, he must lean on Him whom, having not seen, he loves. The future--a glorious future--is that for which he labors. It lies before him as we have seen the lofty coast of Brazil. No chink in the tree-covered rocks appears to the seaman; but he glides right on. He works toward the coast, and when he enters the gateway by the sugar-loaf hill, there opens to the view in the Bay of Rio a scene of luxuriance and beauty unequaled in the world beside.
The missionary's head will lie low, and others will have entered into his labors, before his ideal is realized. The Future for which he works is one which, though sure, has never yet been seen. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. The missionary is a harbinger of the good time coming. When he preaches the Gospel to a tribe which has long sat in darkness, the signs of the coming of the Son of Man are displayed, The glorious Sun of Righteousness is near the horizon. He is the herald of the dawn, for come He will whose right it is to reign; and what a prospect appears, when we think of the golden age which has not been, but must yet come! Messiah has sat on the Hill of Zion for 1800 years. He has been long expecting that his enemies shall be made his footstool; and may we not expect, too, and lift up our heads, seeing the redemption of the world draweth nigh? The bow in the cloud once spread its majestic arch over the smoke of the fat of lambs ascending as a sweet-smelling savor before God--a sign of the covenant of peace--and the flickering light of the Shechinah often intimated the good-will of Jehovah. But these did not more certainly show the presence of the Angel of the Covenant than does the shaking among the nations the presence and energy of God's Holy Spirit; and to be permitted to rank as a fellow-worker with Him is a mercy of mercies. O Love Divine! how cold is our love to Thee! True, the missionary of the present day is only a stepping-stone to the future; but what a privilege he possesses! He is known to "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into Glory." Is that not enough?
Who would not be a missionary? His noble enterprise is in exact accordance with the spirit of the age, and what is called the spirit of the age is simply the movement of multitudes of minds in the same direction. They move according to the eternal and all-embracing decrees of God. The spirit of the age is one of benevolence, and it manifests itself in numberless ways--ragged schools, baths and wash-houses, sanitary reform, etc. Hence missionaries do not live before their time. Their great idea of converting the world to Christ is no chimera: it is Divine. Christianity will triumph. It is equal to all it has to perform. It is not mere enthusiasm to imagine a handful of missionaries capable of converting the millions of India. How often they are cut off just after they have acquired the language! How often they retire with broken-down constitutions before effecting anything! How often they drop burning tears over their own feebleness amid the defections of those they believed to be converts! Yes! but that small band has the decree of God on its side. Who has not admired the band of Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylæ? Three hundred against three million. Japhet, with the decree of God on his side, only 300 strong, contending for enlargement with Shem and his 3,000,000. Consider what has been effected during the last fifty years. There is no vaunting of scouts now. No Indian gentlemen making themselves merry about the folly of thinking to convert the natives of India; magnifying the difficulties of caste; and setting our ministers into brown studies and speech-making in defense of missions. No mission has yet been an entire failure. We who see such small segments of the mighty cycles of God's providence often imagine some to be failures which God does not. Eden was such a failure, The Old World was a failure under Noah's preaching. Elijah thought it was all up with Israel. Isaiah said: "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" And Jeremiah wished his head were waters, his eyes a fountain of tears, to weep over one of God's plans for diffusing his knowledge among the heathen. If we could see a larger arc of the great providential cycle, we might sometimes rejoice when we weep; but God giveth not account of any of his matters. We must just trust to his wisdom. Let us do our duty. He will work out a glorious consummation. Fifty years ago missions could not lift up their heads. But missions now are admitted by all to be one of the great facts of the age, and the sneers about "Exeter Hall" are seen by every one to embody a risus sardonicus. The present posture of affairs is, that benevolence is popular. God is working out in the human heart his great idea, and all nations shall see his glory.
Let us think highly of the weapons we have received for the accomplishment of our work. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual, and mighty through God to the casting down of strongholds. They are--Faith in our Leader, and in the presence of his Holy Spirit; a full, free, unfettered Gospel; the doctrine of the cross of Christ,--an old story, but containing the mightiest truths ever uttered--mighty for pulling down the strongholds of sin, and giving liberty to the captives. The story of Redemption, of which Paul said, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," is old, yet in its vigor, eternally young.
This work requires zeal for God and love for souls. It needs prayer from the senders and the sent, and firm reliance on Him who alone is the Author of conversion. Souls cannot be converted or manufactured to order. Great deeds are wrought in unconsciousness, from constraining love to Christ; in humbly asking, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? in the simple feeling, we have done that which was our duty to do. They effect works, the greatness of which it will remain for posterity to discern. The greatest works of God in the kingdom of grace, like his majestic movements in nature, are marked by stillness in the doing of them, and reveal themselves by their effects. They come up like the sun, and show themselves by their own light. The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Luther simply followed the leadings of the Holy Spirit in the struggles of his own soul. He wrought out what the inward impulses of his own breast prompted him to work, and behold, before he was aware, he was in the midst of the Reformation. So, too, it was with the Plymouth pilgrims, with their sermons three times a day on board the Mayflower. Without thinking of founding an empire, they obeyed the sublime teachings of the Spirit, the promptings of duty and the spiritual life. God working mightily in the human heart is the spring of all abiding spiritual power; and it is only as men follow out the sublime promptings of the inward spiritual life, that they do great things for God.
The movement of not one mind only, but the consentaneous movement of a multitude of minds in the same direction, constitutes what is called the spirit of the age. This spirit is neither the law of progress nor blind development, but God's all-eternal, all-embracing purpose, the doctrine which recognizes the hand of God in all events, yet leaves all human action free. When God prepared an age for a new thought, the thought is thrust into the age as an instrument into a chemical solution--the crystals cluster round it immediately. If God prepares not, the man has lived before his time. Huss and Wycliffe were like voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a brighter future; the time had not yet come.
Who would not be a missionary? "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Is God not preparing the world for missions which will embrace the whole of Adam's family? The gallant steamships circumnavigate the globe. Emigration is going on at a rate to which the most renowned crusades of antiquity bear no proportion. Many men go to and fro, and knowledge is increased. No great emigration ever took place in our world without accomplishing one of God's great designs. The tide of the modern emigration flows toward the West. The wonderful amalgamation of races will result in something grand. We believe this, because the world is becoming better, and because God is working mightily in the human mind. We believe it, because God has been preparing the world for something glorious. And that something, we conjecture, will be a fuller development of the missionary idea and work.
There will yet be a glorious consummation of Christianity. The last fifty years have accomplished wonders. On the American Continent, what a wonderful amalgamation of races we have witnessed, how wonderfully they have been fused into that one American people--type and earnest of a larger fusion which Christianity will yet accomplish, when, by its blessed power, all tribes and tongues and races shall become one holy family. The present popularity of beneficence promises well for the missionary cause in the future. Men's hearts are undergoing a process of enlargement, Their sympathies are taking a wider scope. The world is getting closer, smaller--quite a compact affair. The world for Christ will yet be realized. "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."