OPPOSITION TO MISSIONARY WORK
I heard a little while ago of a member of one of our churches in Pennsylvania whose son graduated from a theological seminary and sent word home to his father that he had decided to be a missionary, and asking him for his approval; and the father sat down in a towering rage and wrote back to him something like this: “This is absolutely the saddest message I have ever received from you. I could have wished that you had died in infancy, as your brother did, rather than that things should come to such a pass as this. You never will get my consent to do such a rash and foolish thing. I will cut you entirely off from any share in my inheritance, unless you give up this idea forever; and I do not care to see your face again until you have given it up.” Imagine that kind of an answer from a professing Christian! In spite of it, the man is in Japan as a missionary to-day. Would it not be far more Christlike to take the attitude that my friends, Mr. and Mrs. Paton did over at Pittsburg three years ago, when their only child, a beautiful, clever, tender girl, came to them one day and said she wanted to be a missionary out in Africa? And they were so much in sympathy with Christ that they said, “We shall be very glad to have you go.” Then, as they thought and prayed over it for a few days, they decided that they could not let anybody else support their daughter, and so they sent word to the mission board that they wanted to have the privilege for the rest of their lives of paying their daughter’s salary while she worked over yonder in Africa. And when one and another of their friends came to them, protesting against this madness in sending their only child away off to bury her life in the heart of Africa, their simple answer to these critics was in words like these, “Our Lord has given His best to us, and our best is not too good for Him.”—J. Campbell White, “Student Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
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OPTIMISM
The following verses are by M. A. Kidder:
There is many a rest in the road of life,
If we only would stop to take it,
And many a tone from the better land,
If the querulous heart would wake it.
To the sunny soul that is full of hope,