Thoughts on Missions

by Sheldon Dibble

Millions are squandered by professed Christians on a pampered appetite, in obedience to fashion, a taste for expensive building, a love of parade, and on newly-invented comforts and conveniences, of which the hardy soldiers of Jesus Christ ought ever to be ignorant.

Then, again, some who are economical in their expenditures, have little conception of what is meant by total consecration to God. There must be an entire reform in this matter. Every Christian must feel that his employment, whether it be agriculture, merchandise, medicine, law, or anything else, is of no value any farther than it is connected with the Redeemer's kingdom; that wealth is trash, and life a trifle, except as they may be used to advance the cause of Christ; and that so far as they may be used for this purpose, they are of immense value. Let every Christian feel this sentiment—let it be deeply engraven on his heart, and how long, think you, would pecuniary means be wanting in the work of the world's salvation?

And do we go and instruct the heathen as we ought? This is indeed the main point. To pray, formally at least, is quite easy; to give, is a little more difficult; but to go, in the minds of most persons, is entirely out of the question. Satan understood human nature when he said, "All that a man hath will he give for his life." Speak of going, and you touch the man, his skin and his bones. To go, requires that a man have such feelings as to begin to act in earnest, as men do in other matters. Men act in person, when they are deeply in earnest. In the case supposed of a sick child, does the mother simply express a desire that the child may recover? does she merely give money, and hire a nurse to take little or no care of it? No: in her own person she anticipates its every want, with the utmost attention and watchfulness. When a son is in bondage on a barbarous coast, does the father merely pray that his son may be redeemed? does he merely send money for his ransom? No: he chooses, if possible, to go in person and carry the sum, that no means may be left untried to accomplish the object he has so much at heart. Men who are deeply interested in an important matter, where there is much at stake, cannot be satisfied with sending; they choose to go themselves. This remark is true in all the enterprises and transactions of life the world over.

If then, after all, the measure of going is the true measure of interest, to what extent, I inquire, have Christians of America gone to the heathen? Alas! the number is few, very few.

Look at the proportion of ministers who go abroad. In the United States the number of preachers, of all denominations, is perhaps not far from one to a thousand souls. This is in a land already intelligent and Christian; in a land of universities, colleges, and schools; in a land of enterprise, of industry, and of free institutions, where the arts flourish, and where improvements are various and unnumbered; and more than all, in a land where more than a million and a half of the people are professed Christians, and ready to aid the ministers of Christ in various ways. On the other hand, even if missionaries from all Christendom be taken into the account, there is not more than one minister to a million of pagan souls, with almost no intelligent Christians to assist as teachers, elders, catechists, and tract distributers; no physicians, artists, and judicious legislators, to improve society and afford the means of civilized habits; no literature worthy of the name; no colleges, or even common schools of any value; no industry and enterprise, and every motive for it crushed by arbitrary and tyrannical institutions: the mind degraded and besotted, inconceivably so, and preoccupied also with the vilest superstition, the most inveterate prejudices, and the most arrogant bigotry. Who can measure the vast disproportion? What mind sufficient to balance extremes so inconceivably immense? On the one hand a minister to a thousand souls, with many helpers and a thousand auxiliary influences in his favor; on the other, one minister to a million of souls, with no helpers and no auxiliary influences, finding out an untrodden track amidst unnumbered obstacles, and penetrating with his single lamp into the dark and boundless chaos of heathenism. This is the manner in which Christendom shows that she loves her neighbor as herself; and in view of it, judge ye, whether American Christians go as much as they ought to instruct and save the benighted nations.

We said, that the number of missionaries to the heathen population is about one to a million of souls; but let not the conclusion be drawn, that every million of heathen souls has a missionary. By no means. The few hundred missionaries preach to a few hundred thousand souls. The millions and hundreds of millions of heathen, are as destitute of preaching as though a missionary had never sailed, as destitute of the Scriptures as though a Bible were never printed, and as far from salvation, I was about to say, as though Jesus Christ had never died. Men speak of operating upon the world. Such language is delusive. The present style of effort, or anything like it, can only operate on some small portions of the earth. To influence materially the wide world, Christians must awake to a style of praying, giving, and going too, of which they have as yet scarcely dreamed. The work of going into all the world and preaching the Gospel to every creature, has scarcely been undertaken in earnest. And how vain it would be to expect to make any material impression on the world, as a whole, when so small a company from all the ministers in the United States go abroad, and a less number even of lay members from the vast body of a million and a half.

The heathen are not lost because a Saviour is not provided for them. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." The preaching of the cross is "the power of God and the wisdom of God" both to the Jew and the Greek. Facts show, that in every nation, however barbarous and degraded, the Gospel of Jesus has power to convert, purify, elevate and save. These facts are irresistible.

Neither are the heathen lost, because the ocean separating them is rarely passed. For the sake of gain, men can visit the most distant and sultry climes. To solve a question of science or merely to gratify curiosity, they can circumnavigate the globe, or penetrate far into the icy regions of the poles. The improvements in navigation and the extension of commerce have united the two continents in one. The Atlantic ocean no longer separates you from Africa, nor the Pacific from China. The amount of intercourse between the seekers of wealth from Christian lands and almost every heathen country, is absolutely immense.

Why then are the heathen left to perish? There is a lack of earnestness in the church in the work of the world's conversion. What does the present earnestness of the church amount to? They contribute on an average two cents a month each, and they find that the pittance of money will more than suffice for the small number of men: and then the cry is "More money than men." A few men are obtained and then the pittance of money fails, and "More men than money" is the cry. A year or two afterwards the supply of men is gone, and the cry again is reversed. As if, in repairing the wastes of the New-York fire, the citizens collect together a small quantity of brick, and then find they have more brick than workmen. So they employ a few more men, and then find they have more men than brick. Was this the rate at which the ravages of the great fire were so soon repaired? Was this the measure of their engagedness in rebuilding the city?

Some derangement takes place in the Erie Canal: a lock fails, an aqueduct gives way, or a bank caves in. Is business stopped on the canal till the next season, because the times are hard, and it is difficult to obtain money to make repairs? Some derangement takes place in a railroad: is travelling postponed till next year? But in the work of doing good, the reverse of times is regarded as a sufficient excuse to detain missionaries, disband schools, and take other retrograde steps. We coolly block our wheels, lie still, and postpone our efforts for the world's conversion till more favorable times. Men are earnest in worldly matters: in digging a canal, in laying a railroad, or in repairing a city; but in God's work—the work of saving the nations—their efforts are so weak that one is at loss to know which is most prominent, the folly, or the enormous guilt.