MISSIONARY SACRIFICE
San Quala was one of the first converts among the degraded Karens. From the lowest state the gospel raised him, with a rapidity that no civilization ever knew, to a noble Christian manhood. His first impulse was to tell others of Jesus. He helped to translate the Bible into the Karen tongue, for fifteen years guided the missionaries through the jungles, and then himself began to preach and to plant new churches. In one year he had formed nine, with 741 converts; in less than three years the nine had grown to thirty, with 2,000 converts. He did his work without salary, and when the English Government offered him a position, with large compensation, he at once declined, tho his poverty was such as prevented him from taking his wife with him in his missionary tours.—Pierson, “The Miracles of Missions.”
(2057)
Missionary’s Gallant Action—See [Courage, Christian].
Missionary’s Liberation—See [Intervention, Divine].
MISSIONARY TESTIMONY
Mr. Darwin was not regarded as a Christian, but he had the greatest respect for good in Christianity, and was candid enough to acknowledge it. This is the way in which he answered some shallow critics of foreign missionaries:
They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifice and the power of an idolatrous priesthood; a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world; infanticide, a consequence of that system; bloody wars where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—that all these things have been abolished, and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity. For a voyager to forget these things is a base ingratitude; for should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have extended thus far.