The Church of Christ will not know more of the advancement of His kingdom or of its hindrances than it is told. God will not save us the trouble of the inquiry or the report. The Church of Christ will have no more enthusiasm in the work than it gets by entering into sympathy with those who do it, and with Him who died that it might go on.
And yet, in the light of all this already trite and quite self-evident truth, you hear it said, even by those who are concerned in the progress of the work, “What are we going to do with this increasing mass of missionary literature? We are quite flooded with it, and especially with these periodicals, these Missionary Heralds, and Home Missionaries and American Missionaries. Can’t we make it less? Can’t we combine them and double the thing up? It bothers us.” Ah, brethren, the wonder is that we do not cry for more and better. The wonder is not that so many take the missionary magazines, but so few, and that so few of those who take them read them.
Brethren, the time will come—if the time comes when men seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, not last—that Christian men and women will not want to wait a month to glance over the few pages of a missionary magazine; but will want to know the latest news of the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom in the morning before they look to see the stock-list or the scandal-list of the day before. When the question of the morning will be what new progress, what new delays, what new need for the advancing hosts of Christian warriors; and at night the thought will be, the sun has gone to shine on other fields and other laborers, and while we sleep this work goes on. And in those days it shall go on with speed and sureness.
Let our missionary literature then be not lessened in quantity or deteriorated in quality. Let not our agents think the time is lost in which they stop to tell us of the work. The growth of Christ’s people at home is as important as the conquests of His grace abroad, indeed, the last will be largely proportioned to the first. Let ingenuity and enterprise be put into these channels of communication. Let the facts be fresh and full—more fresh and full than ever. Let them be clothed in choice and skillful diction. Let us leave the arts which the satanic or the merely mundane press monopolize to their uses. Let us not grudge the cost. It is not cost of administration at all. It is not cost of collection, though it helps that department greatly. It is more than all the missionary work of each society for the constituency that supports it. Our churches and our Christians here at home need it for their own vitalizing and the direction of their awakened energies. If our fires be not kept up at home the warmth will not be diffused. These are days of organization. It used to be that if a man had lost his way in these then dark country roads some one must go out alone with his hand-lantern to guide him to safe shelter. Now your streets are full of lamps, and your illuminated signs band them at every corner. You may take all the care that is possible of the lamps and burners; it will do no good if you neglect to keep the fires up where the illuminating gas is made. If the fires go out there the lights go out in every street and home. Do not let us ask these organizations to lessen their efforts to inform, to quicken and to guide our missionary zeal at home, as though it were not an important part of their legitimate work.
REPORT ON CHINESE WORK.
The report of your committee on the Chinese Department of the American Missionary Association is as follows: The keynote of the year’s work is success. Four more schools, 256 more scholars enrolled, nine more teachers, with an increase of four Chinese instructors. The number of those professing to forsake idolatry in excess of last year, 19. There have 121 given good evidence of conversion—last year 106, making 400 who have embraced Christianity during the history of the Mission. Only seven thousand dollars of the nearly twelve thousand dollars expenses of the mission came out of the treasury of the Association. The number of local churches contributing has doubled. The receipts of the “California Chinese Mission” have gained 37 per cent. These gratifying facts inspire confidence that this work in purpose and method is blessed of God. They should beget a zeal commensurate with the hope they enkindle.
The new mission established by the American Board in Hong Kong—the natural fruit of this work—places peculiar emphasis upon its value, as its initial demand came from Chinamen Christianized by its influence. The Rev. Mr. Hager goes to this important control not only with the prayers of his American brethren behind him, but escorted over and welcomed by the devout supplications of specimen Chinese converts. It is an omen of profound significance that four or five Chinese workers for Christ, trained in these schools, contribute their invaluable services to the enterprise. It is equally suggestive that the Chinese Christians remaining behind cheerfully gave $500, adding to their faith, men, and to men, money, an evidence of the genuineness of their confidence. The past year’s experience alone demonstrates that most of the ingenious, infamous charges made against this people are lies. So Providence has opened a golden opportunity. The narrow and bigoted ignorance, lack of patriotism, lack of statesmanship, lack of humanity, lack of equitable dealing exhibited by our Government in its recent legislation on the Chinese question have corraled 75,000 of them on these shores. It is the open day for Christian privilege. Cannot the majority of these be surrounded by our faith, wrought on by the power of Christianity, saturated by a genuine Christian life and made the standing army for whom we shall send officers and soldiers to conquest the empire? If the teeming millions are appalling can we not subdue this installment isolated by inscrutable wisdom for this Christian experiment?
With such a present and pressing basis of appeal this work should have abundant means to reach without delay the limit of its capacity.
If there be not vital Christian warmth sufficient in the United States to resuscitate this waif upon our coasts, how can we hope to rescue the myriad nation? It is floundering in the Arctic Ocean of heathenism.