I grieve over the minimizing of Christ's nature and claims that is current in our day, because I believe that it cuts the sinew of our Christian faith and destroys the chief dynamic in our missions. I deplore the denial of our Lord's deity and atonement, the refusal to address him in prayer, the ignoring of his promise to be with his people even to the end of the world. To meet our needs in the conflict with towering systems of idolatry and superstition, we need a supernatural Christ; not simply the man of Nazareth, but the Lord of glory; not the Christ of the Synoptics alone, but also the Christ of John's Gospel; not a merely human example and leader, but one who "was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead"; not simply Jesus according to the flesh, but "the Word who was with God and who was God" in eternity past; not simply God manifest in human life nineteen centuries ago, but the God who is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever"; not simply the humbled, but also the glorified Saviour, who sits now upon the throne of the universe, all power in heaven and earth being given into his hand. When we believe in an ascended Lord at God's right hand, the God of Creation, of Providence, and of Redemption, we have a faith that can conquer the world. Without such a faith in the omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Christ, we are weak as water in the conflict with heathenism. We may set up Christ on a pedestal, in a pantheon like that of Mrs. Besant, with a statue of Krishna by his side, and the Hindu will laugh at the claims of the gospel. Only faith in Christ as very God can meet the demands of the hour. "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord." In every age Christ has lit that candle, so that it has given some light. But all who have come before him, pretending to be the Light of the world, have been thieves and robbers, stealing from Christ his glory and from man his blessing. Christ alone can so enlighten us that we can be light and can give light. Let us arise and shine, because our Light has come, and the glory of the Lord has arisen upon us!
XVIII
MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES
No result of my travel has been more valuable to me than the new impression I have received of the effect of missions upon missionaries. I came abroad with a lingering idea of my youth that missionaries were a class by themselves, a solemn set, destitute of humor, and so absorbed in their work as to be narrow-minded. On the contrary, I have found them joyful and even hilarious, broad in their views and sympathies, lovers of the good in literature and art. The mental and spiritual growth of students who left me years ago for a foreign field has greatly surprised me. Then they were boys; now they are men. The demands of the missionary work have drawn out their latent powers; they have found their new environment immensely stimulating; contact with new lands and people has widened their outlook; they have become thinkers and leaders of men.
It takes an all-round man to be a good missionary. The learning of a foreign language in which one has to construct his own grammar and lexicon requires persistent effort of the most disciplined mind. The missionary is often called upon to build his own house or church. He must be both architect and supervisor, for his masons know no English, and are bent on slighting their work. He has servants who steal and coolies who lie. He establishes, manages, and governs a native school, and generally has to evolve his own pedagogy. He comes into relation with English officials, American consuls, and native functionaries, and is obliged to know something of social customs. In fine, he is a jack of all trades, besides being a preacher of the gospel who must adapt his message to the understanding of the illiterate multitude and of the cultivated man of caste as well.
All this gives the missionary a training beyond that of any university course. Herbert Spencer asserted that a nation makes progress in civilization in proportion to the variety of its environment. The principle applies also to the development of the individual. Our missionaries thought perhaps that they were leaving culture behind them, when they left America for barbarous lands. But losing their lives for Christ's sake they found to be mental gain. Even on the Congo our men have learned more, and have developed stronger characters, than would have been possible if they had accepted ordinary pastorates at home. And they have not lost, but have won, that fine flavor of sanity and judgment, which belongs to men who have had large experience of life.
So far, I have referred only to the intellectual side of one's education. The spiritual equipment is even more important. In heathendom one comes in contact with towering systems of idolatry and superstition, venerable with age and rooted deeply in the nature and habit of the people. The Christian teacher realizes that, in his conflict with these systems, he is powerless, unless backed by Omnipotence. He is thrown upon the divine resources, and learns, perhaps for the first time, that, while apart from Christ he can do nothing, with Christ he can do all things. A new experience of the presence and power of the Saviour comes to him. The struggle that at first taxed all his energy is at last a glad walk over the course in the strength of Christ. Anxiety and fear have taught him lessons which he could not otherwise have learned. He has become a hopeful and joyful Christian.
All this tends to render the missionary doctrinally sound. Evangelization makes men evangelical. When you tell the gospel to a heathen sinner, you must put it in the simplest terms, or he will fail to understand it. Your effort to reach his mind and heart clarifies your own. To one condemned and lost, no mere human example in Jesus will suffice; you need an atoning Saviour. To one struggling with demonic powers and helpless in their grasp, no mere man of Nazareth, no Jesus, according to the flesh, will answer; you need the Lord of Glory, who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit who regenerates, sanctifies, comforts, and saves, becomes an indispensable element in preaching, and so becomes ingrained into the preacher's confession of faith. A personal and present Christ, Immanuel, God with us, is the source of the missionary's power; he has practical proof that the Holy Spirit is Christ in spiritual form, with his people alway, even to the end of the world. The reality of God in Christ, manifest in nature, ruling the world in providence, preparing the nations for judgment, sure to bring the world to his feet, becomes an article of the missionary's faith, and a constant subject of his teaching. The minimizing of Christ's nature and claims has no proper place on missionary ground. The missionary indeed is exerting an influence on the faith of the homeland equal to that which he exerts upon the heathen abroad.
It is indeed true that here and there a man who has come out as a missionary has been attracted and perverted by the very systems he proposed to subdue, and has turned out a teacher of Buddhism instead of Christianity. But such men had never the root of the matter in them, had never felt the galling yoke of sin, had never known the joy of Christ's salvation. They had gotten their preparation for evangelistic work from American teachers of comparative religion, who put Buddha on the same plane with Christ. The result has only shown the impotence of a man-made gospel to combat heathenism, or even to save the souls of those who preach that sort of gospel. In a sense precisely opposite to that of the apostle Paul, they have come to be opposers of the faith they once proposed to advocate, and destroyers instead of builders of Christian civilization. All this is a lesson to our missionary societies and churches at home. The colleges and seminaries which permit indefinite and unevangelical doctrine to be taught, and which retain those who teach it upon the ground that liberality in theology is a duty, merit the censure of God and man; for the school or the church that ceases to be evangelical will soon cease to be evangelistic, and when it ceases to be evangelistic it will soon cease to exist. In this way missions are the testing-places of Christian doctrine.