BV 2060 .J6 1909 Johnson, Thomas Gary, 1859- 1936. Introduction to Christian rm c c n r\-n c: INTRODUCTION CHRISTIAN MISSIONS BY ^ THOMAS GARY JOHNSON, Author of " The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney ;'''' " The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer :^^ ••John Calvin and the Genevan Reformation;" " The Presbyterian Church in the United States .-^ " I'irginia Presbyterianisni and Religious Liberty.^'' OR Sale by the PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION, Richmond, Va. Texarkana, Ark. -Texas. Copyright, 1909, BY THOS. C. JOHNSON. Printed by Whittkt & Shepperson, Richmond, Va. THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY WIFE, WHOSE HELPFUL SYMPATHY DESERVES A BETTER TRIBUTE. PREFATORY NOTE. For years the author had been conducting a brief study of Christian missions, using such text-books as had been available. He had given lectures supplementary to the text-books he at the time was using. His lectures had grown in volume, till he found little time for interlocutory study with the class after delivering them. These lec- tures had all along been informed by a unifying principle — the relation of the mental grasp of the Christian system to mission work. He had been asked repeatedly to publish them. Two years ago he began to rewrite those bearing on world-wide missions, as opportunity was given; and now ofifers these to the Christian public, and particularly to the ministers, elders, deacons and brotherhood-workers of his own communion. It will be found that they constitute an attempt at a philosophy of missions ; and, it is hoped, that they contain a relatively small amount of unessential detail. It has been a constant aim, at any rate, to burden the memory only with the essential facts ; but to stir the thought. In a word, the aim has been to introduce to the proper study of missions. T. C. J. Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. God's Ordained Missionary Society ; its Members ; Their Obligations as Such; and the Imperative and Exclusive Nature of Those Obligations 9 LECTURE IL The New Testament Principle to Regulate the Church's Missionary Effort; and Certain Corollaries Therefrom.. 30 LECTURE in. Paul's Sense of His Obligation to Missions and the Way in Which He Responded to It 53 LECTURE IV. Patristic Missions: Or Christian Missions from 100 to 590; and Nestorian Missions 70 LECTURE V. Mediaeval Missions, 590 to 1517. Raymund Lull 90 LECTURE VI. Erasmus' Missionary Ideals. Roman Catholic Missions, 1517 to the Present 106 LECTURE VII. The Attitude of the Protestant and Reformed Churches Toward Missions, 1517 to 1781 128 15 CONTENTS. LECTURE VIII. The Age of Voluntary Protestant Missionary Societies, 1781 to 1829 154 LECTURE IX. The Church Becoming Conscious of Itself as a Missionary Society. 1829 to the Present 171 LECTURE X. Some Motives to Missionary Endeavor 194 INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. LECTURE I. God's Ordained Missionary Society; Its Members; Their Obligations as Such; and the Im- perative AND Exclusive Nature of Those Obligations. In the treatment of this subject, our first contention shall be that, in ordaining the constitution of the Church, God made it a missionary society ; our second, that every member of the Church, in virtue of his Church member- ship, is a member of this missionary society and stands pledged to do his utmost as such; and our third, that the obligation to fulfill this pledge is imperative and exclusive. These contentions are as old as the Bible. They have been coming more and more fully into the consciousness of choice spirits of the Church during the last four-score years; but they have not yet attained the recognition which their importance and the large place given them in Holy Writ demand. Time would fail us to cite the many scriptures which, directly or indirectly, support one, or other, of the con- 10 Introduction to Christian Missions tentions. Accordingly, we shall endeavor to cite only some of the more typical passages, on which they may be rested severally. Our first contention is' that God, in ordaining the Church, made it a missionary society. In support of this, we point, in the first place, to the Ahrahamic covenant, zvhich zvas of zvorJd-wide mission- ary import. In the original form of this covenant, God said to the "father of the faithful," "and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xii. 3). In a subsequent form God said, "For a father of many nations have I made thee" (Gen. xvii. 5). This' promise, Paul teaches us, was made good to Abraham in his becoming the father of all them that believe, whether they be cir- cumcised or not; that is, in his becoming father to both Jews and Gentiles, so far as they should believe (Rom. iv. II, 12), on the Lord Jesus Christ. According, therefore, to the terms' of the Abrahamic covenant, the Church of God was missionary, as estab- lished in the family of the father of the faithful. The Church covenant, made with Abraham and his seed after him (Gen. xvii. 7, 8), looked to Abraham's becoming "the father of many nations." It looked to all earth's families being "blessed in him." But the Abrahamic covenant, on the basis' of which the Church was established in the family of the Patriarch, remains the fundamental Church covenant in every sub- sequent time. According to the teaching of Paul in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, it was not annulled on the introduction of the Mosaic dispensation ; nor on the passing away of that dispensation ; but re- mains in force under the Christian dispensation (Gal. God's Ordained Missionary Society ii iii. 17). Hence Paul also taught that the" Church was one and the same under both the Mosaic and the Chris- tian dispensations. He taught that the old good olive tree had been the same throughout the ages'. In his day branches from the wild olive tree were being grafted into the good olive tree (Rom. xi. 17, ff.), The Church of the New Testament was no new Church. It was the old olive tree with some new limbs inserted. Now, the Abrahamic covenant being fundamentally missionary and that covenant remaining the basal Church covenant under the new dispensation, the New Testa- ment Church must be conceived to have the same mis- sionary character as the Abrahamic. The primal cove- nant on which the Church was founded and on which it has stood to this day, is of world-wide missionary import. The Church of the Christian dispensation, informed as it is by the principles of the Abrahamic covenant, must be regarded as ordained a missionary society, of God ; and it must be clear that he has never looked upon it as destined to carry the Gospel to any one people, or to any group of peoples, merely ; in this original covenant, God showed that he intended his re- ligion for all peoples' and for every individual of them, who should accept it. TJic Church of our dispensation, then, is a missionary society by the ordination of God, as revealed in the Abrahamic covenant. In support of the contention that in ordaining the constitution of the Church, God made it a missionary society, we point, in the second place, to the missionary feature of even the particidaristic and separatist Mosaic dispensation. The Church of the Mosaic dispensation is spoken of. often, and regarded, as non-missionary; and, it is readily 12 Introduction to Christian Missions conceded that active and wide-spread propagandist ef- fort was neither a constant nor the most conspicuous characteristic of the Hfe of the Mosaic Church. The peculiar, preparatory work assigned the Church under that regime, ^wsis, perhaps, incompatible with large mis- sionary work in the field ; but we may easily overrate the non-missionary aspect of the dispensation. It really had a missionary feature, as the following facts show: Fact One. — The Mosaic legislation prepared for the work of making proselytes' and encouraged it. See Exodus xii. 48; Numbers ix. 14; xv. 15. The latter passages read: ''And if a stranger shall sojourn among you, and will keep the passover unto the Lord, accord- ing to the ordinance of the passover, and according to the manner thereof, so shall he do : ye shall have one or- dinance both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land." ''One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in your generations; As ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you." Thus did the Mosaic law prepare for and encourage proselyting — an enterprise of a missionary character. Fact Tzvo. — That the Church of the Mosaic dispensa- tion had a missionary feature is indicated by the Episode of Jonah. The mission of Jonah to the people of Nine- veh, in its purpose, was generically like the missionary work of the Church of other ages'. ' The object of Jonah's mission was the glory of God in the salvation of men. Nor is there any reason for supposing that the salvation desired was only temporal. This story of Jonah is a true episode in the Mosaic God's Ordained Missionary Society 13 economy. While more distinctly missionary than the history as a whole, it is not at all unnatural in its place. On the contrar}^, it comes in naturally and so points to the missionary character of the whole economy, while standing in contrast with the rest as especially missionary. Fact Three. — The prophets and Psalmists of the Mosaic dispensation are found holding aloft the mission- ary ideal of the Church. This appears in the prophecies of the Messiah and his kingdom, e. g., it appears in the second, forty-fifth, seventy-second, and one hundred and tenth Psalms, in the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah, and in other prophecies ; it appears also in prophetic prayers like that of Solomon (i Kings viii. 41, fif.) : the second Psalm grounds the prevalence of the kingdom in the Divine de- cree and in the heirship of the Son to the whole earth. The forty-fifth Psalm celebrates in triumphant strain the introduction of the heathen into the kingdom of God. The seventy-second Psalm prays for the coming of a greater King than Solomon, for the coming of the Prince of Peace, the righteous Defender of the Poor and the King to whom all kings and people shall do homage. It predicts of Him the blessing promised the father of the faithful in the Abrahamic covenant, "Men shall be blessed in him, and all men shall call Him blessed," and concludes with a doxology of vast evangelical richness, "Blessed be His glorious name forever and ever: and let the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and Amen." The one hundred and tenth Psalm predicts the final subjugation of the heathen by the King Christ, ascribing, in the most solemn manner to him the con- junction of eternal priesthood. The missionary import of the latter portion of Isaiah has inspired scores and, 14 Introduction to Christian Missions perhaps, thousands of missionaries. William Carey, in the years when he had no convert, stayed himself on Isa. li. 2, "Look unto Abraham, your father, and unto Sarah that bare you : For I called him and blessed him, and increased him." In Isa. ii. 2, we read, "And it shall come to pass in the last days, "that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the moun- tains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all the nations shall flow into it." In Micah iv. i, 2, "But in the last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob : and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." In Zechariah, viii. 22-23, "Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of Hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts. In those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you ; for we have heard that God is with you." It was the manner of the prophets to speak in terms of the past and present when portray- ing the future. Hence in setting forth the enlargement of the Church they suggest to the superficial the continu- ance and growth of the Mosaic economy. But to a pro- founder insight these predictions involve the doing away of that economy with its burdensome and hobbling cere- monial and the growth of the institution on which it had been superimposed. The seer Daniel saw that the God God's Ordained Missionary Society 15 of Heaven would set up a kingdom which should never be destroyed, and which should not be left to other people, but should break in pieces and consume all the other kingdoms and stand forever; for as much as Nebuchad- nezzar had seen a stone cut without hands from the mountains, breaking in pieces all that opposed, and grow- ing into a great mountain and filling "the whole earth." The wise man prayed "Hear Thou in Heaven Thy dwell- ing place and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for; that all peoples of the earth may know Thy name to fear Thee." Jehovah answered, *T have heard thy prayer and thy supplication that thou hast made before me" (i Kings viii. 41, ff.). In teaching that the Church shall share her truth with all the families of the earth ; that she is to become universal, they proclaim her essentially missionary character. For how shall the peoples hear without a preacher and how shall they have a preacher except he be sent? Fact Four. — The history of the Church in the Mosaic form shows that it had a missionary feature. In the days of David and Solomon the kingdom was enlarged by the extension of the theocratic rule to cer- tain heathen nations ; so that the prophet Amos, looking from his later standing point to one future to himself could say, as the Lord's mouthpiece, "In that day, will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins ; and I will build it as in the days of old : That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by thy name" (Amos ix. 11, 12). The later history of Israel saw nations brought into the theo- cracy, and in accord with the Divine will, which earlier had been excluded therefrom (Deuteronomy xxiii. 4). i6 Introduction to Christian Missions Not only so, history shows that women, Rahab and Ruth, originally heathen, were placed by Him who controlleth all events in the covenant line of whom Christ came; as if to mark its everlasting universality as well as temporary particularism. That the history of the Church in the Mosaic form shows that it had a missionary character finds forceful illustrative proof in the Synagogues of the Dispersion, previous to the coming of Christ. These were so many mission centers in effect. They had gathered about them many devout souls who waited for the kingdom of God. They had preached and thrilled to their depths these nobler heathen, with their lofty, monotheistic doctrine of God; had taught them that God is one, all-wise and powerful, the creator, the upholder, the governor, of all things, — an infinite spirit, just and loving, merciful and gracious. They had set forth the doctrine of a future estate of rewards and punishments, — the happi- ness of the true servants of God and the misery of those who should continue to walk in the ways of the wicked. They had inculcated the propriety and the obligation of being humble and penitent in heart, pure, true and faith- ful in life. Not a few of the Jews of the Dispersion seem to have been moved with great zeal in their missionary efforts. To win converts, they employed all forms of literary endeavor. They translated their Scriptures. They wrote commentaries on the Scriptures. They pro- duced philosophical works in which they tried to trace the great classic systems of philosophy to the teachings of Moses as their ultimate source. They exhibited and exulted in their history as showing the hand of God. They boasted of the venerable age of their nation and of its faith. God's Ordained Missionary Society 17 While some of the methods of the missionaries of the Dispersion were wrong, the teaching proper to the Syna- gogue had, and was' designed to have, a vast influence on the heathen. It was God's way of bringing His truth to the knowledge of vast numbers of His elect among the nations. The synagogue system amongst the Disper- sion was in practical effect a missionary system to the peoples amongst whom the dispersed Jews sojourned ; and they were found in considerable numbers, widely scattered throughout the empire. Nevertheless, the Church, in the Mosaic dispensation, was in the chrysalis or pupa state, — in an immature stage of development ; and to it was assigned a peculiar task which in that age was incompatible with universal active missionary enterprise. In an age of almost uni- versal polytheism and pantheism, of heathenism rampant, it was a task of Israel to be monotheistic, — to hold the doctrine of monotheism aloft ; a task to which Israel was competent only after years of training in a land at once isolated fram idolatrous peoples, and a highway of the nations through whom God chastised his people when, in spite of their isolation, they fell into idolatry. That Israel might receive, hold, and teach monothe- ism, God kept her largely to herself; forbade her mingling freely with other nations. In like manner, that she might receive, hold and teach "a true ethical ideal, such as is embodied in the Decalogue" ; and that she might set forth the need of redemption and the coming of the Redeemer, he kept her largely to herself. The Church, like the individual missionary, must first be filled with, and established in, the truth before it can do much in the actual work of missions. We do not claim that the Church of the Mosaic dis- i8 Introduction to Christian Missions pensation was largely occupied with distinctly mission- ary labors. What we do claim is that the one Church of all the ages, during that stage of its history, was in training for missionary work, even as our students for the ministry now are; and put forth effort enough of a missionary sort to show a missionary heart at bottom. But if we may argue with confidence that in the Church we have a missionary society ordained of God, from the unannulled missionary charter of the Abrahamic Church, a charter which underlies the Christian Church as well as the Abrahamic; if we can see that the Church of the Mosaic dispensation, restrictive though it was, was at bottom missionary, and looked to universal mission- ary work once its trammels were removed ; if we can see that it did much missionary work, especially through its synagogues, in preparation for the effort of the Apostolic age ; it becomes still more evident that the Abrahamic Church in its Christian, or New Testament, form is a missionary society ordained of God when we turn to the New Testament. This brings us to the strongest proof that God ordained the Church a missionary society In support of this contention we point, in the third place, to the fact that Neiv Testament teaching clearly makes the Church of this dispensation a missionary so- ciety by Divine appointment. The mass of New Testament matter available in the support of this position is so vast as to embarrass him who would make an adequate presentation of it. Noth- ing more is' attempted in this lecture than to present certain typical portions of the pertinent matter. ^ One such portion is the ever-recurring representa- tion that the Gospel is for the whole world. This is dis- God's Ordained Missionary Society 19 tinctly taught over and over again: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that zvho- soever believeth in him should not perish but have ever- lasting life." "The Son of man must be lifted up, that whosoez'er believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the zvorld; but that the zvorld through Him might be saved." "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come : he that will, let him take of the water of life freely." There is a wideness in the Gospel like the wideness of the sea. In a sense that the Mosaic Church could not be, the Christian Church is, for the whole world. Christ contemplates and teaches in the Gospel of a Church co-extensive with the earth in geographical limits and with time in duration ; and this' conception of the Gospel and of the Church visible is not only the prevalent but the universal conception amongst New Testament writers. This Divine representation of the Gospel as for all car- ries with it the implication of an obligation on those who have it to impart it to those who have it not. But not only does the New Testament teach that the Gospel is for all nations. Our Lord Jesus Christ re- peatedly laid the duty upon the Church of giving the Gospel to all peoples. In particular, he delivered a great charge, perfecting the constitution of the Church and, in the same breath, making it thenceforth the constitu- tion of an active and working missionary society. This charge he repeated in substance more than once. As re- corded in Matt, xxviii. 18-20, it reads, "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye and teach all nations, -v 20 Introduction to Christian Missions baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo, I am with you always, to the end of the world." This charge may be considered as a republication of the Abrahamic covenant with an improvement, — a change in the form of the seal of the covenant, viz. : the substi- tution of baptism for circumcision. But this by the way. Our present concern is' with the fact that this charge expressly enjoins the duty of being missionary on the body ecclesiastic. Let no one belonging to the Church of that day or any day since to the present, attempt to excuse the Church or himself from the burden of this command. The command was to the body in covenant, and all its' members are under obligations to obey the charge. The charge was not designed merely for the indi- viduals to whom it was first addressed. Christ could not have asked the physically impossible. It was impos- sible for the Apostles alone, or for the little band of disciples then on earth to have made disciples of all nations in the manner commanded, — a physical impossi- bility. The commentator and historian, Hanna, well says, "When Jesus said, 'Go ye and make disciples of all na- tions,' he announced, in the simplest and least ostenta- tious way, the most original, the broadest, the sublimest enterprise that ever human beings' were called upon to accomplish." He did not ask it of the Apostolic body; he did not ask it of the few feeble disciples then on earth. He asked it of the Church in which the Apostles exer- cised their offices' and of which the disciples were mem- bers. This appears still more clearly when we remark that our Lord regards, in this charge, the enterprise of God's Ordained Missionary Society 21 missions as lasting to the end of time. He says', ''And, lo, I am with you always, as you engage in this effort, even unto the consummation of the age," or of this world- period. The mission enterprise was to be only fairly begun when the Apostles and their contemporaries had seen their last earthly service. Yet as they represented the Church which was to endure throughout the ages, Christ spoke to them with propriety of his' going to be with them throughout the ages in the enterprise of mis- sions. He was going to be with the Church of which they were the present representatives to the end of this world age. But, my brethren, that the Church of God of the Christian dispensation is a missionary society ordained of God is made clear not only by New Testament repre- sentations of the universality of the Gospel and by the- great commission given by our Lord to his Church, the body in covenant with him and to which he granted the seal of Baptism ; but by the history recorded in the Acts -fof the Apostles. That history makes it clear that the Holy Spirit was careful to make and to keep the Apos- tolic Church a missionary Church. Christ told propheti- cally the history of this Church in the memorable words announced to the disciples who witnessed the ascension, "Ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusa- lem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." He foretold in these pregnant words the gist of Apostolic history. The Gospel began to be preached in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. The Church was missionary; all missionary in spirit; as appears from the record in Acts viii. 1-4. We 22 Introduction to Christian Missions there read that, after the stoning of Stephen, when the disciples were scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the Apostles', "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Disciples, taken in after the ascension, under the tuition of the Holy Ghost, felt the burden and the privilege of the great commission to the Church of which they were a part. Some preached Christ in a formal way; some in an informal way only, some talked and lived Christ merely. The Spirit moved the whole Church to be missionary as every member could. He moved certain men in a special way to their work. He said, "Separate me, Barnabas and Saul to the work whereto I have called them." Through them the Church at large labored in extraordinary wise in missions. Paul and Barnabas recognized this and made reports of their labors to the Church whence they were sent out. But not only through these great leaders did the Holy Ghost move the Church to mission efforts, as has appeared. These pre- eminent missionaries found fields prepared by obscure Christians, under the leading of the Holy Ghost, for their reaping. Church history in the Apostolic age, under the in- spiring impulses of the Holy Ghost, is mostly a history of missions'. What is New Testament literature, once you have passed the Gospels, but the literature of Apos- tolic missions? Three-fourths, and more, of the Books of Acts is' taken up with the history of the grand march of Apostolic missions. Paul's Epistles are letters to mis- sionary churches and missionary workers, and deal witli the problems arising on the various missionary fields. Large portions of remaining books are missionary. The Apocalypse is, in part, addressed to missionary churches, God's Ordained Missionary Society 23 in part, deals philosophically with the great contest be- tween the Church as missionary and the hostile power of the world arrayed against it. The New Testament Church had to be missionary or die. It had to live by missionary enterprise, as the Churches in our foreign mission fields to-day. And thus by environment, as well as by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by Providence as well as by teaching and inner direction, God made the Apostolic Church missionary. Our present contention, then, that in ordaining the constitution of the Church God made it a missionary society is beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt. This appears from the import of the unrepealed Abrahamic covenant, from the, at bottom, missionary character of the Church under the Mosaic economy and from the New Testament teaching so abundant and clear that a wayfar- ing man, though a fool, may read it as he runs. It may seem strange that the Church of Christ should ever have become dead to the obligation to be mission- ary, as such ; strange that real Christians should have thought themselves excused from the duty of actively pushing the cause of Christ, in the face of all this evi- dence to the contrary. But owing to vicious views of Christian doctrine and order which prevailed as early as the Patristic age of the Church, the Church as such and professing Christians for the most part lost consciousness of themselves as missionary. Only within the last four- score years have the Churches as such begun to re- awaken to their responsibilities. Only within a shorter period have the individual members begun to awaken in considerable numbers, to a sense of their duty. Even yet a large proportion of Church members have persist- ently refused to give practical recognition of their mis- 24 Introductiox to Christian Missions sionary obligations by putting their hands to the work. Hence our second contention that every member of the Church, in virtue of his Church membership, is a mem- ber of a missionary society, and stands pledged to do his utmost as such. That such is the case appears from the following simple considerations, viz.: ist. In the constitution of the Church as missionary, no provision appears for a non-missionary class of adult members. We shall not attempt to prove this negative. We have been able to find no such provision. The hearer is challenged, fear- lessly, to find anything of the kind between the lids of the Bible. Not all the members are required to be mis- sionaries in the technical sense of the term ; but there is no provision for members not missionary in spirit. 2nd. Christ has so fixed the conditions of membership as virtually to pledge all full members to the mission cause. It is amongst Christ's prerogatives to fix the con- ditions of membership in the body of which he is head. During his ministry, he set forth the conditions on sev- eral occasions and with varying fullness. The compen- dious expositions of these conditions must, of course, be interpreted in the light of the fuller. In Luke xiv. 25, fif, we have the conditions of discipleship set forth with some degree of fullness to a great crowd, many persons amongst which were inclined to profess discipleship with- out counting the cost. These conditions include a love to Him greater than that a man bears his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters', yea, and his own life also; and a readiness to bear the cross of Christ and follow Him in a life to the glory of God and the good of men. Everv member who, in be- God's Ordained Missionary Society 25 coming such, acted intelligently, professed this supreme love to Christ and allegiance to Him as his leader. Only thus did he become a Church member. But Christ, as has appeared, has laid on the Church, on all in covenant with him by baptism, by positive injunction, to make disciples of all nations. It is incontrovertible that every member of the Church of Christ is a member of a God- ordained missionary society, in virtue of his membership in the Church. A few decades ago this would have seemed strange doctrine, notwithstanding its evident Scripturalness. The members of the Churches were strangely dead to their obligations. And even now, were a canvass made of all the Churches a large percent, would be found asleep on this great business of their King, — a business in com- parison with which the greatest purely secular enterprises pursued in a purely secular Spirit, are but petty toy- making. There are many and gracious signs of a wide- spread awakening in our day. The members of our own beloved Church are; in considerable numbers, awaking to becoming endeavor in support of the mission cause. Yet the number of congregations in which every Chris- tian member, in a practical way, counts himself a member of a missionary society in virtue of being a Church mem- ber, is relatively small. It will be a part of your duty, my brethren, to try to arouse every member of your Church so to consider himself. The first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church South' sounded the true-note on this subject. That noble body passed a number of resolutions touching missions, amongst which was the following: "The General Assembly desires distinctly and delib- erate! v to inscribe on our Church's banner, as she now 26 Introduction to Christian Missions first unfolds it to the world, in immediate connection with the headship of our Lord, his last command : 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' regarding this as the great end of her organization, and obedience to it as the indispensable condition of her Lord's promised presence, and as one great comprehen- sive object, a proper conception of whose magnitude and grandeur is the only thing which, in connection with the love of Christ, can ever sufficiently arouse her energies and develop her resources as to cause her to carry on, with the vigor and efficiency which true fealty to her Lord demands, those other agencies necessary to her internal growth and home prosperity. The claims of this cause ought therefore to be kept constantly before the minds of the people smd pressed upon their consciences. The ministers and ruling elders, and deacons, and Sab- bath school teachers, and especially the parents, ought and are enjoined by the Assembly, to give particular at- tention to all those for whose religious' teaching they are responsible, in training them to feel a deeper interest in this work, to form habits of systematic benevolence, and to feel and respond to the claims of Jesus upon them for personal service in the field." It is yours to labor for the realization of these noble ideals in the hearts and minds of the people ; and to bring on the day when every member of the Church shall see that in joining the Church, he became a member of the missionary society and pledged himself to labor to the utmost in the cause. We are now ready for our third contention, that the obligation to fulfill this pledge is imperative and exclusive. Every consideration advanced in support of the pre- ceding contentions shows that the pledge, involved in God's Ordained [Missionary Society 27 the Church membership to be missionary, imposes upon us an imperative obHgation. The will of God that His Church should be missionary, the command of the Lord Jesus Christ on the Church and its members, makes the obligation imperative, as everybody should see, to be missionary as members' of His Church. This obligation is exclusive in the following respect: It forbids our doing our work as members of any society which takes the place of the Church. The Clnirch, with its members as such, has been commissioned of its Head and theirs to do this w^ork. Hence the local Church should be its own missionary society ; and the denomina- tion its own missionary society, as the Lord has appointed. The local Church may allow its' members to form themselves into groups for the study of missions and for mutual stimulation in giving, and otherwise laboring in behalf of the cause ; and the denomination may allow interorganization between the groups for the like ends. But the local Church should not allow a number of itsi members to form a volunteer organization to stand over against the rest of the Church and do its missionary work for it ; nor may the denomination allow a voluntary agency independent of the Church to do the missionary work of the Church for it. Nor should the members throw themselves' into such voluntary societies as are putting themselves in the place of the congregation or denomination in the mission work : God gave the work to the Church. It is usurpation for any man-made or- ganization to step into the Church's place in the work. God imposed the work on the Church with all its mem- bers. We should never do anything to relieve any Church member of the sense of the obligation resting on him as such to be missionarv. 28 Introduction to Christian Missions If it be said to you that the form of our Church organization is not of such a sort that the Church as such is' not suited to pushing the mission cause, for which compact organization is needed, then the answer should be, as in our own standards, God hath given in the Scrip- tures with sufficient clearness the faith the Church should hold, the government it should exercise and the worship it should engage in. To the Word with your Church, bring the Church into conformity with the pattern shown in the Word. Men are both incompetent to improve on the Bible teaching concerning the faith, government, or worship, of the Church and are interdicted from the at- tempt to do it. They are not fit to be the confidential advisers of the Most High about the means or the agent to be used in bringing the world to the foot of the cross. If it be said, our congregation or our denomination is dead to the call to this great cause, and unless individuals here and there get together and do the work which the Church ought to do but does not, it will not be done ; something may have to be conceded. Certainly, not a hundred and twenty years ago there was almost universal apathy on the subject of foreign missions, and when the Church "is largely dead to her duty, when she is" prac- tically apostate in respect to one great function, when she will not take up and push the great enterprise which the Lord has' committed to her, shall consecrated souls here and there not be permitted to unite in societies and push as volunteers this cause? We must say to them the rather, God speed you in your way for the present. It is better that you express your love for Him in thi§ vv^ay than not at all. We should also say to them, "Be- ware, however, of contentment with any mere portion of God's people as workers in the mission cause. The God's Ordained IMissionary Society 29 Church is of right the missionary society ; convert it into a missionary society. By prayer to God, by proclama- tion of the truth, by persuasive power of a godly walk, lead all the brethren of the Church to be workers' in this great cause; in the end resolve your independent volun- teer society which was begun independently of ecclesias- tical action into a committee of your Church. By all means annihilate the idea that the missionary obligations of the entire Church can be met by any portion of them called a 'missionary society.' " In some of our Churches in the past the whole burden of missions seems to have rested on the frail shoulders of a few women ; some of them hardly so much moved by intelligent devotion to Christ's cause as by the social element in the Hfe of their mission societies ; in some cases not one of them making any sustained effort to lay aside as the Lord had prospered her ; in some cases pay- ing with irregularity their small dues, and, for the rest, resorting to doubtful means to raise money; the men leaving the matter to the women, feeling that if they pa- tronized their suppers and purchased an occasional trifle for twice, or thrice, its commercial value, and contributed some loose pennies, — they had fully acquitted themselves. This' is Httle above childish, if not profane play at pushing the Lord's cause. It is yours, my brethren, in this dawn of a great missionary day, to help voice the imperative and exclusive claims of the Lord's missionary society; to teach every member of the Church, God's own mission society, that as such he must regard it as his highest duty to help take the world for Christ. LECTURE II. The New Testament Principle to Regulate the Church's Missionary Effort. In the first lecture we attempted to ascertain the atti- tude toward missions, proper to the Church, according to the teaching of the Bible. We saw that the Bible repre- sented the Church as a God-ordained missionary society ; every member of the Church as pledged to do his' part in the mission work of this society; and the obligation resting upon him in this capacity as imperative. The Bible making so much of missions, it is natural to expect in it some disclosure of a principle, or prin- ciples', properly regulative of the Church's missionary effort; which, if duly seized by the Church and given practical recognition in its life, will enable it to do the work with efficiency and success. Such disclosure may be looked for in the Book of Acts, which is the history of the spread of the Church under the special guidance of the Holy Ghost. Accordingly, we turn our attention to-day to that book; and, for convenience, somewhat narrowly on one verse of that book, a verse which may be called the Little Acts of the Apostles, and considered as an epitome of the whole book. That verse is Acts i. 8, "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: And ye shall he witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." These words are sometimes' spoken of as being one form of the Apostolic commission. They do contain, Church's Missionary Effort 31 by implication, a warrant granting certain powers and privileges' to, and imposing certain duties upon, the Apostles. But they do not constitute formally such a warrant. They are sometimes spoken of as setting forth the apostolic mission. They do set forth that mission — the work to which the Apostles' were to devote their energies and their lives; but they do so incidentally and not of primary intention ; virtually and not formally. The tenses used in the text are futures, not imperatives ; and not futures for imperatives. They are not mandatory, but declarative. There is a mandate in the words, in-i deed, but it is there by implication alone. The words are sometimes' spoken of as a promise. They undoubtedly carry a promise, two glorious promises with them : the promise of a divine power, and the promise of a future victorious witness-bearing. But they do not constitute in form a promise. In form and in design they are a prophecy. They foretell what shall be. Being a revelation of God's will in regard to the Apostolic Church and its work, the words show the Apostles and the Church the plan with which they should fall-in, show them that they have a commission, a war- rant, to go about doing the things which the prophecy declares shall be done ; show that their mission is, and is only, the accomplishment of what has' thus been pro- phesied. As the prophecy is of good things, of things which the Apostles, and all like-minded with them, de- sired to see fulfilled, the words stand to them in lieu of a promise. But in intention and effect they are, first of all, simply and solely a prophesy. This the Greek tenses of the text and the context show. The tenses are futures in form and should be construed as futures in sense unless there is evident 32 Introduction to Christian Missions reason to the contrary. Such "evident reason is not found." The context favors the view that they are future in sense as well as in form. The Apostles had raised a question about a matter which they had hoped would occur in the future. They had asked the Lord whether he would at that time restore again the kingdom to Israel. They were forecasting. They desired from him a pro- phecy. The Master told them that it was not theirs to know "The times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." Their wish with regard to this particular matter of inquiry was denied; the spirit of forecast was not rebuked, it was about to be redirected. He at once brought forth from the womb of the future something of which it could not be said: 'Tt is not for you to know." He uttered these pregnant words, "The Little Acts' of the Apostles." These words, every one sees at a glance, were spoken of the Church of the apostolic age — of the Church in which the Apostles themselves were to be the chief wit- nesses. But they contain a principle which should regu- late the Church's propagandism to the end of time. They have a twofold content. They set forth the principle or law of the Church's propagandism, and foretell the first great instance of its outworking in the actual life of the Christian Church. In other words, instead of announcing the abstract principle which is to condition the spreading of the Church, they predict a concrete em- bodiment of that principle. In regarding the instance we must not overlook the more important thing, the prin- ciple, which will be worked out over and over again. We must remember the canon for the interpretation of prophecy, announced by Bacon: "Prophecy hath springing and germinant accomplishment." In propor- Church's Missionary Effort 33 tion as the rapidity and soundness of the Church's growth increase, in that proportion, it will be discovered, has the law which governed the spread of the Church in the apostolic age been made the law again of the growing Church. We have, then, in Acts i. 8, the divinely preannounced principle regulative of the Church's effort at propagand- ism in the apostolic age; and, of right, regulative of its effort to the end of time. It is fair to conclude, a priori, that a proper study of the utterance would yield many valuable indications as to the way in which the Church of God to-day should go about its mission work. Let us, accordingly, proceed to this study. It will be helpful to study the fulfilment of the pro- phecy as wrought out in the history of the Apostolic Church. The principle underlying the divine method of working in missions will thus become clearly manifest. As we study the prophecy and its fulfilment, let us ask at every step, "Why?" Why wait at Jerusalem? Why bear witness first in Jerusalem and in all Judea? Why bear withness, second, in Samaria? Why bear witness, last, to the Gentiles? What is the core and heart of this prophecy for us? What is the principle which the Church should apply over and over? How would God secure the accomplishment of his plan? If our inquiry is an- swered by only a very moderate amount of light, it will be something to have set our minds going on the subject. There are four periods in the life of the Apostolic Church, all marked in the Acts, and all, likewise, dis- tinguished in the text: i. The period during which the disciples waited, according to Christ's bidding, in Jeru- salem. 2. The period of witness-bearing among the Jews. 3. The period among the Samaritan people. 4. The period amongst the Gentile nations. 34 Introduction to Christian Missions To take up these periods in their order : ist. Why the period of waiting? To the Apostles themselves the command to wait in Jerusalem until th^y should receive the promise might seem directly contrary to human wisdom. The disciples were few in numbers. They were obscure, despised and timid. They made next to no impression on the world. It was a time of weak- ness. It might have seemed that there was danger of their being crushed utterly in case of their not allowing themselves to be parted from Jerusalem, in case of their waiting there for the promise of their departed Lord. Or, escaping annihilation, it must have seemed that there was great danger of the utter disheartening of the dis- ciples by holding them in Jerusalem, waiting. It must have seemed that if they were to do anything for Christ, it behooved them to proceed to work at once ; for as the days passed would not all the devils of doubt tear at them? But Christ said, "Don't be parted from Jerusalem. Wait here for the promise : 'Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is' come upon you.' " Though we may not fathom all his reasons, we are pretty safe in naming the following: First, He proposed to develop the quality of courage- ous faithfulness in the Apostles, and to prepare them for the reception of a larger amount of truth. He would enlarge their fidelity to himself. He had a most self- abnegating life in view for them. He desired in them men who would do anything which his cause required, men who would ride through any moral Balaklava for him; and so he put them through this spell of waiting. He knew that it makes a man, as well as takes a man, to stand still on a sinking Victoria merely because the Church's Missionary Effort 35 order to "Stand still" has been given. He knew that, in consequence of the great strain thus to be brought to bear on these men, they would come through with iron in their courage for him ! and that by thus sticking to himself through those days, like brave soldiers of a for- lorn hope, they would get far along towards being in- vincibles' at the end of the test. Moreover, he had, at the end of the days of waiting, much truth to open to them. Mr. Frederick W. Robertson calls obedience "the organ of spiritual knowledge" ; and our Lord, himself, teaches that, "if any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." Obedience to God's known will fits for a larger apprehension of that will. A great growth was designed to go on in the disciples' while they were waiting; and did go on. The event which separates this period from the next, viz. : the out- pouring of the Holy Ghost, was so great, did so much to bring about the change in the attitude of the disciples toward the world, that we are in danger of forgetting the preparaion for the change which had previously been going on in the hearts of the disciples. We do well, however, to inquire whether, without the preparation, those vessels would have been able to receive the gifts in such measure as were poured out into them. A hogshead of water connot be put together in a gallon bucket. Nor can there be poured all at once the greatest wealth of spiritual gifts into a shrunken soul. There was a move- ment from both ends of the line about the time of the Pentecost: God poured out, from above, the heavenly gifts of the Spirit ; but they fell upon men, who, by their hard obedience to himself, had been lifted up and made able to receive his gifts. Now, this uplift in power to 36 Introduction to Christian Missions follow Christ, fully, and this enlargement of capacity for the reception of heavenly gifts, were most important reasons for Christ's bidding the disciples to wait till the Pentecost. Second, the disciples were bidden to wait because Christ saw that the effect of the outpouring would be greater at Pentecost than at an earlier time. There are nicks of time that are all-important. There were to be present at that feast representatives from almost every civilized nation under the sun. News' of the great event was to be carried widely over the world, and make in many directions for the spread of Christ's kingdom. Third, they were to wait because, again, they could not work with effect until God had sent down upon them the Holy Spirit ; until God had made them forever certain that he was with them and had made clear forever to their minds the true nature of Christ's work. The out- pouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost was a blessed rain that washed out the atmosphere. It was the glori- ous sunlight chasing away the darkness and enabling the Church to see the truth and that it had the truth. It was' something more than this — an enduement with miracu- lous powers, an enriching of their gracious equipment generally — an uplift of the whole nature ; but the com- munication of the truth and the certification to the dis- ciples that they had the truth gave the Pentecostal out- pouring its chief significance to the disciples. It made clear to them that their crucified, risen, ascended Lord was with them, their invincible leader through the agency of the Holy Ghost. The first period was, therefore, a period of great im- portance. The disciples had been elevated vastly in char- acter by the discipline of waiting, they had been taught Church's Missionary Effort 37 the propriety of looking for the strategic moment by the coming of the outpouring not earlier but at Pentecost. They had been prepared by infilling with the truth and certification that they had it, to preach with impelling conviction. The outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost made the first epoch. The equipment of the Apostolic Church for witnessing was thereby so far completed, that the Church was to proceed to the work of testifying at once. "And ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea." 2nd. Why was the witnessing to be first of all in Jerusalem and in all Judea? Why first of all to the Jews? Among the reasons which can be seen, we note: First, that men might have assured evidence of the resurrection of Christ. The disciples' of Christ began their testimony to his resurrection from the dead, not in remote Galilee, but in the town in which he had sufiFered, and in the hearing of those who had nailed him to the cross. The mediaeval miracles were generally first af- firmed in places and in time remote from those in which they were said to have occurred. The same is true of the "miracles of Mohammed." But the greatest miracle of Christ, his own resurrection from the dead, his dis- ciples witness to in the weeks succeeding its occurrence and under the eyes of his' murderers. This fact adds to the comfortable certainty of the Christian world till to- day. It was proper that the Apostles should at first work where they could best preserve to the Church of all the future the cardinal fact of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead. So doing was an essential condi- tion to effective work in propagating Christianity in every subsequent age of the Church. 38 Introduction to Christian ]Missions Second, God would magnify his mercies to the chil- dren of Jacob. Therefore, the witnessing was to be first to the Jews. The children of Jacob had strong race prejudices, and if they were to be converted, the change would be attended by less friction before their Gentile brothers should be led into the Christian fold. The previous acceptance of Christianity by the Gentiles would have made it much more unacceptable to the Jew- ish race. A Jew's embracing Christianity under such conditions had involved his taking openly into fellowship the uncircumcised and swine-eating Gentile. It is plain that the witnesses of Jesus were in the best condition for testifying effectively to the Jews concerning Jesus before they had, according to Jewish thought, contaminated themselves by preaching among the Gentiles. Not to have worked among the Jews first would have been to have treated them with less kindness' than the Gentiles. But God would fulfill his promise of a Saviour to Israel which of old he had called out of Ur of the Chil- dees, which he had brought up out of Egypt with a high hand and an outstretched arm, which he had brought back from Babylon, which he had ever kept in the hol- low of his hand. He would multiply his mercies upon Israel. He had already sent the Saviour even to death. But the people had not generally recognized him up to the time of his crucifixion. The crowning proof of the Messiah-ship was Christ's resurrection from the dead ; and that Israel might have unimpeachable evidence that the Saviour had been sent, it was fitting that they should have the fact of the resurrection substantiated beyond a doubt. God proved to them, therefore, under circum- stances which permitted the freest examination of the evidence that Christ had risen from the dead. He made the disciples witness to the resurrection first to the Jews. Church's Missionary Effort 39 Third, Jesus bade his disciples bear witness first of all in Jerusalem and in all Judea, that he might secure a missionary host with which speedily to take the rest of the world. Of all the peoples in the world at that time, the Jewish people were, perhaps, the best fitted to make Christians of a high order of usefulness in the further spread of the truth. They were eminent for civic and moral virtues. They had higher notions of the inviola- bility of truth, duty, and of God. They were ca- pable of nobler enthusiasm and stronger devotion. Such qualities in the first converts were matters of no inconsiderable importance, if the Gospel was to become widespread. God does not, as a rule, make Christians of the same power out of natural men of unequal power. The engines are of different sizes. God may fill each full of the fire and water of life; but the engines are not thereby brought to the same power. The witnessing was first to the children of Abraham, that that superior race once Christianized might become the source ol mighty instruments for the further spread of the truth. Fourth, Jesus' bade the witnessing first among the Jews, that economy of force might be used in the preach- ing of the disciples. The witnesses were all in Judea. The simple principle of the economy of force and time dictated that the land in which the witnesses were, all other things being equal, should be the first arena of witnessing. Every unnecessary change of place involves a loss of precious time. Fifth, the disciples themselves had need of being bap- tized into universal Christianity before they could witness to others than Jews. The question which the Apostles had asked Christ about the establishment of his kingdom 40 Introduction to Christian Missions (i. 6), shows somewhat of their circumscribed views. Their after history makes it plain that they were warped sadly by the narrowest prejudices. Before God could use them in their whole personalities in the spread of his truth among the Gentiles, he had to lift them to a plane clear above the childish and confined one on which they stood on the day of Ascension. They had to take in the truth which months before Christ had announced to the woman of Samaria, when he said, "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father . . . But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." The early Church had to be weaned from the juvenile pap of Juda- ism before it could witness abroad. The foregoing are at least some of the reasons which made Judea and Jerusalem the most proper field of labor for the apostolic band and Church during the second period of apostolic history. Gathering these reasons up, we note : During this period the Holy Ghost was leading the Church to work in the territory in which, in addition to gathering in great numbers, its incidental service to the Church throughout its entire history would be the greatest. He was leading the Church to go about its task of disciplining the whole world in a tactical and strategic way leading it to strive for converts from the Jews when with least of prejudice they could accept Christianity, leading it to endeavor to get out of these vigorous and powerful people a body of effective worker? to turn loose on the rest of the world as propagators of Christianity, studying also, economy in the use of the body of workers at command. In short, we see that He was leading the Church's Missionary Effort 41 Church of the period to labor where its toil would result in the most efficient working force of Christians for the achievement of the great task of the future. Acting, thus far, on Christ's plan, the disciples, by the Spirit's aid, had won for Christ a great body of fol- lowers among God's chosen people. Chapters ii. to vi., inclusive, of Acts, show that the progress of the Christian movement in Judea during this period became like that of a swelling river. At length the time came when the levees which confined this beneficent stream to Judea should have been cut by the disciples, and vivifying channels should have been carried into the arid wastes of the non- Jewish world. The work in Judea had reached the stage at which the witnesses of Jesus should have begun to go into the regions beyond. The truth of the resurrection had been amply confirmed. God had suffi- ciently magnified his mercy to the seed of Jacob. A host to work as missionaries had been secured. The economy of force now demanded the removal of a portion of the laborers to another part of the vineyard. The liberal- izing of the Jewish converts had been going on, as the speech of Steven shows'. Everything pointed to the fact that the time had come for the Church to widen its sphere, the time to take into the scope of its endeavor some more of the whole world which Jesus had commis- sioned it to disciple. But God's kindlier pointings of providence, as well as his' repeated commands, were not respected. The Almighty has often had to touch his people to remind them that he has spoken. He had to quicken the Apostolic Church at this juncture. Up to this time God had been holding in check the enemies of the Church and mightily confirming the disciples' testi- mony by granting signs and wonders' to be done, leading 42 Introduction to Christian Missions Joseph like a flock. Now he unleashes the hounds of persecution. The stoning of Stephen and the persecution that fol- lowed, recorded in the seventh and eighth chapters of Acts, make another epoch. The witnessing, well done among the Jews, while not discontinued there, is to be done now in Samaria ; and God sends the disciples there, though it takes a persecution in Judea to do it. 3rd. Why was the witnessing next in Samaria? As we have seen, during the previous period of witness- bear- ing, the minds of the disciples had been in constant preparation for wider work. The spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom had taken a fuller hold on them. They had come to regard heaven as the throne of God, the earth as his footstool, and no house or place as large enough to contain Him. Their absolute confidence in the support and guidance of the ascended Christ had been made firmer. Their likeness to him in his universal love for man had become more thorough-going. They were more able to feel his love for all men, Jews and Gentiles as well. Their personal devotion to Christ had been deep- ened. But, though freed, in a degree, of prejudice, the minds of the disciples were still biased. They were still Tews, with much of the Jews' sense of superiority to other peoples, and most of the Jews' horror at the life of the uncircumcised. And it was manifest that if a people existed outside the pale of Jewry with whom an affiliation was more easily possible that with any other, it was the Samaritan. This zvas, perhaps, the chief rea.son why the Gospel was to be carried next to the Samaritans. The Jewish Christians could mingle with Samaritans with comparative ease. The Samaritans were circumcised, and would submit to any Jewish rite which the older Church in Jerusalem might impose. Church's Missionary Effort 43 A second reason why the Gospel was to be carriea next into Samaria after its carrying into Judea, was the consideration that the Samaritans had some truth, and were thus prepared to receive more. They had the books of Moses, and from then an approximately correct notion of God. They had shared in the belief of a comins: Messiah. There were probably many earnest and devout spirits among them. They had received and profited by some wayside teaching of our Lord while he was engaged in his earthly ministry. Their receiving the first wit- nessing outside of Judea was an example of the general principle, "To him that hath shall be given." Reasons' analogous to some of those which dictated the evangelization of Judea first might be added as among those that determined the evangelization of Samaria second. But the suggestion is enough for the student. The cords of Zion were lengthened and the stakes strengthened by working the representatives of the cross where they were capable of working with effect, taking advantage of an open and convenient door. The field seems to have been worked rapidly and perhaps lightly; as befitted the history and nature of that religion mixing and generally unimportant people. In following God's plan as to the work in Samaria, the disciples had taken a long stride toward universal Christianity. They had opened their doors to a multi- tude which no man could number, which was not found in Samaria certainly. They had taken down the great wall of partition that cut off the blessed light from the non-Jewish world. The Jewish Christian Church nafl split its shell and prepared for a higher stage of life. In taking in the Samaritans, the whole Jewish Church in Christ had made ready for the final step into universal Christianitv. 44 Introduction to Christian Missions Meanwhile God had prepared two men, under whose leadership Jewish Christianity was to make the final step of transition into this universal Christianity. God had said : "Ye shall be witnesses' unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." The Church may lag, but God works ! He had prepared Paul and Peter. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church." The fruit of the martyrdom of Stephen was, in part, the Apostle Paul. Saul was allowed to continue for a time his persecutions, but at length, under God's further providence toward, and mira- culous grace upon him, he took up the work which had cost Stephen his life. Peter had heard the great commission from the lips of his Lord, to preach the Gospel to all the world, and the solemn words of the text, and much more to the same purport. But men are slow to learn, even inspired men and apostles, and God was under the necessity of teaching Peter again by providence and miracle. Accord,r ingly, by the vision of the unclean which had been cleansed, by the commission to go to the house of Cor- nelius, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the household of that devout Centurion, God had taught Peter to receive the Gentiles into his Church. Thus had God prepared them to lead his Church into broader views' of Christianity. Meanwhile, certain ob- scure Christians had begun to work in the regions beyond Judea and Samaria. Thank God for the good that ob- scure Christians have done, and can do. Some obscure Christians who had been driven from Jerusalem and had gone as far as Antioch, had preached there to the Gentiles. The Church of Jerusalem Had sent Barnabas' to take care of the converts and help on Church's Missionary Effort 45 the work. Barnabas soon called in Saul of Tarsus to help him. The fourth period of Apostolic history was now be- gun. Christianity had doffed its Jewish dress. Under the moving of the Holy Spirit the Church sends picked men, among them Barnabas and Saul, to the Gentiles beyond. The mighty missionary conquests of the Apostolic age were pushed with Napoleonic vigor and seraphic de- votion by Paul and his helpers. Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, and Spain perhaps, were overrun by this band of the army of Christ. Acts, chapters xvi.-xxviii., gives' us only a part of the course of Paul. The most reHable traditions indicate that what Paul was doing in one direction the other Apostles were doing in other directions. Now and again the Church had to pause to fortify herself in positions already taken. Such a pause was the council of Jerusalem, to stop the putting Chris- tianity back into its Jewish dress, which it had continued to wear as long as the converts were all Jews. But the pauses were brief. The world was hers ; and Christian- ity, the world religion, went forth to conquer the world to its uttermost part. In the conquering effort the Church used the methods, evangelistic, literary, medical, and, within limits, the educational and industrial. The law of missionary endeavor in this period among the Gentiles continued to be : To bear witness as filled with the Holy Spirit, first, to Jews, and then to Samari- tans, and then to Gentiles. The witnesses went first to the Jews, and then to the proselytes, and then to the Gentiles: "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you ; and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, 46 Introduction to Christian Missions and unto the uttermost part of the earth." The latter half of these words has more than a geographical signi- ficance. Their order is significant. The Gospel was to be preached, iirst, in one place, then in another, and then in the other. Their significance is still more inclusive. The gospel was to be preached to different kinds of peoples — peoples differently related to the kingdom of God, — in a given order. These words contain, in part, the plan of God for the Church's testifying, the divinely revealed principle to be applied in its propagation. It may be difficult to state the principle well. But taking the words in their setting, and bearing in mind the chief end of man, which must condition the interpretation of all such passages, they seem to yield the following: The CJiurch shall -first get the truth and the certainty that it has the truth, then it shall witness where its witnessing imll result in the most effective additional army of wit- ness-hearers, for the future. Perhaps we do best to leave the law as set forth in its living concrete form in Holy Writ, only endeavoring to see its' whole content of meaning. Having seen how this prophecy was wrought out in tl-ie apostolic age, and the principle that lay imbedded in it, it remains to draw from it some corollaries for the Church's guidance in our own day. Amongst these are : First. The missionary society of to-day, and the Church should be the missionary society, should know God's truth and know that it knows it, and have the cour- age to stand for it against all antagonists. Why were the disciples bidden to wait in Jerusalem until they should receive the outpouring of the Holy Ghost? In part that they might have developed in them a capacity of receiv- ing the truth and that Holy Ghost might make to them Church's Missionary Effort 47 unmistakably plain that the truth zi'as theirs, and that they had, in the truth, the instrument of salvation. He made more clear to them the truth they already had. He communicated other truth to them. And one of the things which a church of this age needs is to get hold, by consecrated effort and the Spirit's help, of the truth into which the Spirit led the Apostles, — is to know the truth we seem to preach, to knoiv it and know that ti'c know it. The disciples were bidden to wait in Jerusalem, in part also, that their fidelity might be tried and strength- ened. The Church would be better ofif to-day with fewer men and more Christian manhood. It needs men who dare to stand for it against all, and live faithfully. If the Church could preach the truth with apostolic cer- tainty, and live the truth with Apostolic fidelity, it would soon do its part in winning the whole world for Christ. Second. The Church should preach Christianity as a religion accredited by genuine miracles. Why did the Apostles linger at Jerusalem to witness first there? In part, to make the stronger testimony for the resurrection of Christ ; to make themselves the better able to preach a religion vindicated as divine in its origin by miracles. It is fashionable to-day in certain quarters of our country to instruct young missionaries' to make nothing of the miraculous side of Christianity. They are instructed to call attention rather to its superior moral code, "as the world does not receive the miraculous readily." Now. we are to be discreet in presenting religion, of course. But Christianity uneviscerated has to do with miracles, and can be ultimately proven to the spiritually unen- lightened only by miracle. Jesus of Nazareth bound up his system with the claim of miraculous powers and 48 Introduction to Christian Missions miraculous acts' in such a way that, on the one hand, miracles are a part of his teaching, and, on the other, his system cannot be proven true if his miracles are denied or disused. The Church should faithfully preach the Gospel, not bereft of the miraculous' element, though it may be foolishness to the Japanese and a stumbling- block to the Chinaman. Third. The Church should learn adequately the reli- gious condition of the world, so as to know where it can most effectively push its witnessing for Christ, and should push it there. If we have been even approximately right in giving the reasons why the witness was to be first in Jerusalem and in all Judea, then in Samaria, t^en in the Gentile world, then this duty of the Church of to-day must seem very plain. The Church cannot otherwise follow the plan of God ; cannot distinguish the Jew, Samaritan, and the Gentile ; cannot witness to the best effect, cannot wit- ness so as to make to-morrow's host of witnesses the most effective. Are our people, our elders, our ministers, earnest enough in acquainting themselves with the relative op- portunities in the different parts of the home fields — the relative opportunity in the Black Belt in Virginia, say, and in Arkansas — and the relative needs in the great regions beyond ? Do they ask, as they should, where they can work the work that will count most for Christ? Or, is there in missions case after case of zeal without knowl- edge — of blind hitting out, if, perchance, something may be done? Are there other cases where selfish considera- tions are all-determining, e. g., the desire to work up a little corner in one's own Presbytery because it is one's own ? Is not blind Sampson a good image of the Church Church's Missionary Effort 49 of to-day as it works? Thank God, the Church is doing great things' ! But is bHnd Sampson better than Sampson with his eyes, and looking equally to God, would have been? How much we lose by reason of want of com- prehension of the situation ! Who now does not believe that the ninth decade was the decade in which the Chris- tian Church should have taken the Japanese for Christ? The hour passed and Japan was not taken. To some the demand that the Church should get a good outlook on the condition of the world so as to judge intelligently as to where to strike for Christ may seem very large ; but is not God wont to make big de- mands of us ? And does he not demand the use of every power ? And has he ever granted to the man of business the right to wrap himself in secular affairs so as not to be able to study to see where he can do most to forward the kingdom of God? Has he given a right to any preacher to preach on, where he happens to be born, with- out asking where he can serve God best? The passage before us teaches that there should be the wisest circumspection — the fields of effort chosen with the greatest care and chosen with the simple view of forwarding the kingdom of God. It makes a demand for no inconsiderable knowledge on the part of the Church in general. It makes a demand for a commanding knowledge on the part of the ministers and leaders of the Church. No system of theological education can be complete which does not give the student at least some hold on the religious condition of the world ; which does not set before him with some precision the great problem in the solution of which he is to pour out his life ; which does not begin to answer for him the question as to where there is the greatest need of workers in order to 50 Introduction to Christian Missions the proper forwarding of the work. To hold any other position is to avow one's self a trifler. Especially should our secretaries of the work at home and abroad know the field and where the harvest is ripe. They, of all men, should never forget that the missionary is to search not for captives, but for recruits in the army of witness- bearers in which they are captains; that the Church should be hunting for the most effective additions to God's servants. Nor should they forget that they are to consult the economy of force and time, whetlier that economy demands concentrating of force on a given field, or scattering the force ; and that they are to consult the currents of race prejudice and a host of such like things. Fourth. The Church should select its instruments for the several parts of its witness-bearing according to their several kinds and degrees of fitness'. This is implied in the foregoing points, but deserves specific statement. It was illustrated in apostolic history. Should not our mis- sionary secretaries from year to year be writing to the Presbyteries to indicate to them their young men judged by them to be fitted for mission work? Under the guidance of the Church courts and the Holy Ghost, Paul was' sent to the Gentiles. Why? Be- cause by the breadth of his intellect and heart he was the fittest Christian of the day for the work. Previously, the Holy Ghost had sent Peter to receive, by baptism, the first uncircumcised converts into the Christian Church. Why ? Peter was the man for such a bold innovation on seeing that it was right. The Holy Ghost reveals not his guidance in such miraculous wise in the present. But he speaks through the Church when he will. The Church courts may act under his guidance. And the Church through her courts Church's Missionary Effort 51 should choose all her special agents carefully. The r> untary clement has had too large a place in missions at home and abroad, as it has had in determining zvho shall be ministers. It has too large a place now. The courts should pick the men for all the places, especially for the hard places. The Lord prefers to win his great victories by the three hundred chosen according to his own test, rather than by ten thousand simple volunteers, though they be men of courage. To illustrate, if our courts had picked with sufficient care, our home missionaries', that work would be better supported ; if they had picked with sufficient care our foreign missionaries, there had been fewer returned missionaries, and with larger results, perhaps. Fifth. Inclusively, the Church should study day by day to secure the most efficient additional army of wit- ness-bearers. It should study to know God's plan, and should fall in with it. God says' to the Christians of this age : "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you ; and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, in Samaria, and unto the ut-termost part of the earth." Ye shall witness in that order which shall result in the most effective increase to the army of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord give his Church the grace to do this great thing which he has commanded ! Sixth. While, in accord with the apostolic model, the evangelistic method should be largely used in the pro- pagation of the Gospel, the history of the apostolic effort shows that the literary arm, the medical and the indus- trial arms perhaps, have the sanction of apostolic example. In conclusion, the Church should consider whether God may not make it suffer if it lags in the outworking 52 Introduction to Christian I^Iissions of his plan. If his plan is such as' has been represented in the preceding pages, the Church, working according to any other, must have a relatively feeble growth. No plan can be so good for God's Church as his own. The adoption of any other plan is, that far, apostasy more- over, and the apostate always suffers'. Out of fear of the sons of Anak, the Israelites would not enter Canaan according to God's plan. Their bones strewed the desert. They tired of God's nile over them in the time of Samuel ; they got an earthly king, but he became possessed of an evil spirit. The history of the people of God is proof, the most convincing, that they should follow his plan, even if it does seem difficult. LECTURE III. Paul's Sense of his Obligation to Missions and the Way in which He Responded to It. In the first lecture we endeavored to show that the Church is the missionary society ordained of God, that all its members are virtually pledged as such to missionary effort; and that they rest under an imperative and rela- tively exclusive obligation to fulfill their pledge. In the second lecture we endeavored to set forth the principle, divinely revealed, which should regulate the Church's missionary effort, and to draw out some of the more evident corollaries, of proper application to the Church of to-day in its effort to propagate the faith. In ;this' lec- ture we propose to take up the great outstanding mission- ary of the apostolic age, observe his sense of the obli- gation to be missionary himself and how he responded to the obligation. That we may bring the truth home the better, when we have brought it out concerning him, we shall ask whether on some of the same grounds with Paul the whole Church of to-day should not be adjudged under obligations to be missionary ; and, finally, we shall raise the further ques- tion, whether Christians of to-day are meeting their obli- gations in the matter. Taking up Paul's sense of obligation to be missionary : He has left the world no possibility of doubt on this subject. He says, in Rom. i. 14, "For I am a debtor hath to the Greeks and also to the Barbarians; both to the wise and also to the unzvise." He tells us here that he 54 Introduction to Christian Missions owes the giving of the Gospel to these peoples. The context makes it clear that the thing be owed, the thing he had in mind when he says, "I am a debtor," was the giving of the Gospel. Before penning the text he wrote to the Roman Christians that he bad longed to see them, that he might impart unto them some spiritual gift to the end that they might be established, that he and they might be comforted together, by the mutual faith both of them and him ; and that he had longed to have some fruit among them also even as among other Gentiles. Having uttered the confession of obligation, "I am a debtor," etc., he immediately adds, "So, as much as in me is, T am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are in Rome also." Hence some of the best commentators, as Drs. Charles Hodge, and Shedd, supply the word ebajyeU^oodac which means to preach the Gospel, after the word debtor : "I am a debtor to preach the Gospel, both to the Greeks and also to the Barbarians." When Paul declares his obligation to preach the Gospel to the Greeks and also to the Barbarians, he makes a division of peoples' for the purpose of including all, — a division that was common among the classic Greeks. The Eleatic stranger in Plato's Statesman says, "In this part of the world, they cut off the Greeks as one species, and all the other species of mankind they include under the single name of 'barbarians'." Paul professes himself to be under obligation to preach the Gospel to all peoples according to opportunity, to the Greeks and to the non- Greeks. He is to preach, also, to the wise, to those who are cultured and learned, and he is to preach to the un- wise, to the simple, to those who are without culture and without learning. He is to preach to all peoples ; he is to preach to the wise of all peoples, and to the unwise of all Paul's Obligation to Missions 55 peoples, — to all classes of all peoples. In short he pro- fesses his obligation to give the Gospel to all the world so far as opportunity offers and ability enables. It ought to be a profitable thing for us, my brethren, to consider the grounds of this obligation which Paul professes as resting on him, to consider how he responded to it, to raise the question as to whether a similar obliga- tion rests on Church members of to-day; and if that be true, to consider the further question as to how we are responding to the obligation resting on us? I. In the first place, then, let us note the grounds on zvhich Paul had a right to conclude that he was under obligation to give the Gospel to all the zvorld, according to abilities and opportunities given him. We remark, ist, that Paul was under an imperative obligation to work for the increased zvell-being of all men, on the ground that he zvas his brother's keeper. The law which has' been expressed in the form, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," was concreated in the heart of man. Had God never said to man in words, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it would have been man's duty to love his fellow-man, — to be his brother's keeper. Had Paul known neither Gospel nor law, it would have been his duty to share whatsoever good things he possessed with those who lacked. His fellow-men were God's creatures as well as he. With them as' God's creatures, he God's creature and made in the divine image, was morally bound to share the greater riches he possessed. He was morally bound thus to serve God in the service of his creatures. The more valuable the gifts to him, the greater his obligation to share them with his fellows and thus give them occasion for gratitude and devotion to the common Creator and providential 56 Introduction to Christian Missions ruler. Give Paul the Gospel, and in the absence of ex- press command to carry his brother the Gospel, it is his duty to carry that good news to his fellow-man wherever he can be found the world over. As his brother's keeper, he is bound to share the Gospel with every accessible brother ; he is bound to try to secure access to the remote and hitherto inaccessible and to share it with him up to the limit of his powers and opportunities. It is his duty to declare the glory of God's grace to his brother as ex- hibited in the Gospel ; his duty to open the way for that brother's fuller appreciation of, and higher service of, God; his duty to give that brother a chance to secure a nobler well-being, and to evolve himself, as helped by the divine grace, into a nobler servant of God. Let us observe that this ground of obligation holds, however unworthy Paul's brothers may be. Suppose he knows that stoning awaits him at their hands as at Lystra, or stripes' as at Philippi, or bonds and imprison- ments as at Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome, he is still under obligation to preach the Gospel at Lystra, at Phil- ippi, at Jerusalem, at Caesarea and at Rome ; not, it may be, under obligations to these peoples in themselves con- sidered, but viewed as the creatures of God. He owes it to God to serve Him by serving God's creatures who need the service. This concreated law has been reinforced by its publi- cation in the Decalogue. In that code, God brought out in preceptive form the principles' which were of right in force prior to their annunciation in word. On the tables of stone the Almighty fingered the eternal principles of right, and gave to them the added force of articulately enacted law, divinely revealed precept. To Paul the law came not only as eternal principle, but also as the re- Paul's Obligation to Missions 57 vealed will of God. Hence he felt the obligation to give the Gospel to all men to be imperative. We remark, 2nd, the obligation implied in discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ, demanded of a man of Paul's gifts and opportunities that he should devote himself to the immediate work of spreading the Gospel among all peoples and all classes. Paul was wonderfully endowed to be a propagator of any faith he should espouse. Homely in appearance, per- haps, he was yet intensely magnetic. He drew men and bound them to him as' with bands of steel. He had the largeness of character that enabled him to appreciate men of all nations and all climes. Appreciating others, he was himself appreciated. He had a mind to grasp with mas- terful ease the great principles of his religious system, to discern with logical certainty and exactness their corol- laries, and to body them forth in language, always of vigor and power, sometimes of rare charm, beauty and sublimity. If to some ears his speech was wanting in polish, he was nevertheless a man of broad culture and the vastest learning. His energy of will and his power to execute his plans were Titanic. The man of this rare combination of gifts looked forth on fields white to the harvest to which our Saviour had pointed; he saw the fewness of the laborers, the vast extent of the field; and that there was no insuperable obstacle to his devoting himself immediately to the pro- pagation of the Christian faith. He knew that, when Jesus saved him from the conse- quences of sin, He saved him as his absolute Lord, — saved him that thenceforth Paul might be his servant. He heartily acquiesced in this. At the very beginning of his Christian life, he inquired of the glorified Saviour who 58 Introduction to Christian Missions had appeared to him on the way to Damascus, "Lord, what wilt thou have me do ?" He continued to hold that he ought to be devoted to the business of his' Lord. Far on in life we hear him say that Christ "died for all, that they which live, should not henceforth live unto them- selves, but unto him which died for them and rose again." Thus he makes the very purpose of Christ's death to have been that he should win men who should take up his work and carry it on. In becoming a disciple of Christ he had to do so on Christ's terms, he had to make a place in his heart and life for Christ and his cause which was foremost ; and this necessary condition of true discipleship was in accord with right. God in Christ had bought him with His own precious blood. He had sanctified him by His own Spirit. In due time He would take him to glory. Paul had no choice but to feel that his chief duty, as a disciple of Christ, was to spread the Gospel world-wide, to push for- ward the great cause that lay nearest the heart of his crucified Lord. Apart from any call to the Apostleship, Paul must have been a religious teacher to his people and time, unless he could have done more to secure the spread of the kingdom in some other way. For it was clear to him that the disciple must give himself to the course most furthering of his Lord's cause. We remark, 3rd, Paul had received an open and ex- press call to give the Gospel to those who had it not, and especially to the Gentiles, as an apostolic missionary. Paul's age was an extraordinary age. There was an extraordinary need ; he had an extraordinary designa- tion to his work. Rather, he received a succession of such designations'. The glorified Saviour, appearing to the arch-persecutor on the way to Damascus, said in an- Paul's Obligation to Missions 59 swer to Saul's "Who art Thou, Lord?" "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet : For I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee: Delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom I now send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me." (Acts xxvi. 15-18). Later, when Paul was come to Jerusalem, while he was praying in the temple, he was in a trance, and saw the Lord saying unto him, "Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts xxii. 21). Still later the Holy Ghost said unto certain prophets and teachers at Antioch, "as they ministered to the Lord and fasted," "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." Paul knew his kind of work in general. It had been particularly and miracu- lously designated to him. He had, also, specific and par- ticular directions at times about definite portions of his work. He could have no shadow of doubt as to what his work was, in general, according to God's revealed will. Often he had as little ground for doubt about portions of that work. Thus' the moral law, and the nature of the disciple- ship, and the expressed designation in a miraculous way, laid the obligation on Paul to give the Gospel to all men, as God might enable him. n. Let us note the way in zuhich Paul responded to the call of duty zvhich rested on him. He preached the Gospel over a wide extent of terri- 6o Introduction to Christian jNIissions tory. Stop with Paul a moment as he labors at Tarsus. Go with him to Antioch, as he makes his way thither upon the invitation of Barnabas. Abide with him there a whole year; see him meet with the Church and teach much people. Accompany him on his first missionary tour, through Cyprus, through Perga in Pamphylia, over the high passes of Mount Taurus with its snow-clad peaks and into the Pisidian Antioch, through Lystra, and and Derbe, back through all these again to great Antioch in Syria. Attend him on his second missionary tour, through Syria, through Asia Minor, across the Strait into Europe, to Philippi. Pass with him through Thes- salonica, through Berea, through Athens, through Cor- inth, and back three or four years' later, by way of Ephesus, Caesarea and Jerusalem to the Syrian Antioch. Follow him on his third missionary tour, to Ephesus, where he fixes the center of his missionary operations for about three years ; then visit with him churches' in Mace- donia and Achaia, and Corinth, whence he goes to Jeru- salem and to captivity by way of Philippi, Troas, Miletus, Tyre, and Caesarea. Go with him to Rome, whither he goes bound, for though he is in chains, the Gospel is not bound, and he carries the Gospel with him, as he had felt he ought. Now, reflect that, after all, the Book of Acts gives' us but a meagre account of the activity of Paul ; and that we have followed him only partially and cursorily through the account as given in that book. Surely Paul preached the Gospel over a wide field. His activity about the work of the Master was great. But if the field was wide, if his activity was great, his plans of work were no less wise and strategic. The principle of his working was that set forth in Acts i. 8. In whatever city we come upon Paul. Ave find him pur- Paul's Obligation to Missions 6i suing the tactics there enjoined. He is found preaching first to the Jews, next to the Samaritans, the Proselytes of the Gate, and next to the Gentiles. It being his duty to give the Gospel to all the world, and being limited as to time and place, he is found striking for the most strategic points — places where the Church, if set up, will be Hkely to maintain itself and spread. Thus we find him seeking the centres of trade, commerce and travel, whence the news of the new and wonderful religion which he preaches will spread ; passing by the proud and haughty university city of Athens with little effort and giving himself to protracted labor amongst the plainer and more unsophisticated but wide-awake, active-minded and intelligent populations of such live centres as Anti- och, Corinth and Ephesus. Paul did not scratch the ground simply. He preached the Gospel in its fullness, — the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, the Gospel, to an utterly and hopelessly lost and ruined world, of a triune God with a boundless love and grace to this lost world, the Father electing his own, the Son incarnating and humiliating himself to death that he might redeem them from the curse of the law, the Spirit quickening them, — one and all making it the Divine concern to render efficacious the truth which he preached and lived. He preached the Gospel uneviscer- ated, — miracles and all; he preached it leaning on the Spirit who only makes it fruitful, and he so preached that in many important centres great multitudes believed. We cannot follow him from place to place showing how thoroughly his work was done, in detail ; but let us take his work at Ephesus as an example. Let us go there in A. D. 45, before Paul had begun his work in that place. Let us visit the great temple of 62 Introduction to Christian Missions Diana, one of the most splendid temples of the ancient world, — one of the wonders of that world. Fix your mind not on the temple itself, as an architectural tri- umph ; not on the spacious lofty colonnades, thrilling the beholder with their beauty; but on the purpose of that temple. It is the temple not of the chaste huntress of the West, but of the Eastern Diana. Nor is the many- breasted Diana the only object of worship. There are images everywhere, images of divers kinds. The temple of Diana is a sort of pantheon. God's many are wor- shiped there. The temple is thronged with worshipers; and there is not a cult among them all that does not de- grade. Walk about the streets of Ephesus in the year 45. See signs everywhere of corruption. See particu- larly how given to magic the people are. The Greeks practice magic; and even the Jews, so laden is the very atmosphere with it, practice magic. Go into the homes ; see the idolatry and the fruits' of idolatry in them, — the fruits of the boasted Graeco-Roman civilization. You see a vast multitude of homes where the husband does not love his wife, and the wife does not honor the hus- band, where parents care not for their children and chil- dren are wanting in respect for their parents'; where the servants are merely eye-servants, and the masters and mistresses are heartless tyrants. Such were many of the homes in Ephesus' in 45. Such were most of them perhaps. They were places without pure love, places often without natural affection, places without virtue. Now, let the twelve years pass : return to Ephesus in the year 57. Visit the temple of Diana and see a dim- inished throng of worshipers. Visit the streets and see there signs of improved citizenship. Stop, however, be- side the shrine-makers' shops ; remark the fact that these Paul's Obligation to Missions 63 men have a dangerous look on their faces ; hear theii talk. They are mightily aroused against one Paul. One of these men says to his fellows something like this : "Men, ye know that by making shrines for Diana we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that there be no gods which are made with hands ; so that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised and her magnificence should be de- stroyed whom all Asia and the world worshipeth." Go further; visit an humble house. It may be a private dwelling or a little hall once used as a synagogue, or as the room of some teacher of rhetoric, or philosophy, to hold his classes in. See not only the- usual signs of humble, fervent. Christian worship; but a striking inci- dent to our eyes in this day's worship. Certain persons come forward and confess to the practice of magic. They bring parchments, papyri, and rolls, covered with mystic symbols. These have been their prized possessions. In some cases they represent bread to their owners. They had been making their livings by the use of these books. But now they make a fire of them. They burn them in the presence of all men. Hear the members of the Church remark to one another as they scatter to their homes. : Such books — books' of magic — have been burned by our people to the value of 50,000 pieces of silver. Go with some of these Christians to their homes. Rest there, for their home is getting to be a good place to rest in. It is a pure place, a sweet place. The husband loves' his wife. He is willing to give himself for his wife. The wife honors her husband. The children rever- 64 Introduction to Christian Missions ence and obey their parents. The parents provoke not their children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonitions of the Lord. Read the nineteenth chap- ter of Acts, you will see that such results followed upon Paul's preaching; and you may infer with certainty that Paul was doing all his work with thoroughness. He does' this work in the face of huge obstacles, and bitter persecuting opposition. Five times he received forty stripes save one ; thrice was he beaten with rods ; once was he stoned; thrice did he suffer shipwreck; he was in journeyings oft, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder- ness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Not only so but he gave himself incessantly to fortify- ing the work done. Upon him daily was the care of all the Churches'. He could say, "Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is offended and I burn not?" His epistles were all written to help rectify and build up Christians already won. The busiest missionary, evan- gelist and organizer of the apostolic age was the most prolific writer. To the Roman Christians' he wrote to give them in systematic form the great scheme of sal- vation by grace and to show them how to live in accord with it. To the Corinthians he wrote, to help them on various doctrinal questions, particularly to crush an ugly tendency to sectarianism, there being Petrine and Pauline parties in the Corinthian Church ; and to enlighten them on many practical questions', — the relations of the sexes, the proprieties of worship, the way to observe the Lord's supper, etc. To the Galatians he wrote, to bring them Paul's Obligation to Missions 65 back from an effort to rehabilitate salvation by law, by external observances, to salvation by grace. Paul so responded to his obligation to give the world the Gospel, that his work was abiding. He so firmly established the Church under the good hand of God that it lived and propagated itself in the centres in which he labored. Go to Asia Minor A. D. 107. Paul has been dead a good two-score years. He had done his great work there more than fifty years ago. We can look over the shoulder of Pliny, the Roman ruler of the region, and read a letter which he is writing to the Emperor Trajan. Pliny wishes to know what to do with the Christians. He writes that "that superstition," as he calls Christianity, is spreading not only in cities but in villages and even in the country, that it captivates' all classes, all ages, and both sexes. He declares that the temples of the gods are almost forsaken, and that there is hardly any sale for sacrificial victims'. He says that he is trying to stop its progress ; that he has condemned some to death, and that he has sent others to the imperial tribunal. He writes that he can find nothing against these men and women except that they worship Christ as God. He even writes that they pledge themselves by an oath not to do any evil work, to commit no theft nor adultry, not to break their word, nor to sacrifice property en- trusted to them. That work of Paul was still bearing fruit under the good hand of God in 107. And is it not bearing fruit to-day ? Are we not his' off-spring, and the off-spring of his helpers in that work down to this day? Surely Paul acquitted himself well of his responsi- bilities as called to give the Gospel to all classes of peoples. He preached over a wide extent of territory. 66 Introduction to Christian Missions He pursued wise tactics, preaching in order to Jews, proselytes of the gate, and Gentiles. He planned his work so as to make it count for the most, looking out strategic points and planting churches in them which would take all the contiguous territory. He so preached as to have much fruit in the lives of his spiritual children. He preached a full and saving gospel. He so preached as to secure great and efficient growth of the Church. He did his work in the face of tremendous difficulties'. He did his work so solidly that it was not evanescent but permanent. Good ground had he for saying, late in life, so far as this aspect of his course is concerned, "I have fouglit a good fight, I have finished my course." in. Let us ask whether a like obligation to that which rested on Paul does not rest on you, my brethren. We maintain that a like obligation does rest on you. As certainly as you are a man, so certain is it that the obligation to love your neighbor as yourself, to be your brother's keeper, rests upon you, even apart from its special injunction in the Decalogue. Moreover, as cer- tainly as you are a man, so certain is it that the second table of the Decalogue binds you to love your neighbor as yourself. The only way of escaping the force of this contention is to show that you are irrational and irre- sponsible, like the beasts of the field, incapable of regard- ing yourself as God's man by right of creation and pre- servation, and bound to serve him and his creatures. Thus you are under an obligation to be missionary. Again, you are members of the Church of Christ, which he ordered in his farewell address, to carry the Gospel to every creature. This obligation is laid by him on the Church, on the body in covenant with him by bap- tism. This covenant involving the doctrine that, what- Paul's Obligation to Missions 67 soever a man's special calling may be, he shall regard the great end of his life as that of discipling all nations and edifying the body of Christ. He may be a porter in a Church as poor as that of Philippi, he must try to do his part in pushing the cause of Christ to the utter- most bounds of the earth. If Providence favors and he can do more to forward the cause of Christ by becom- ing an embassador of the cross; he is under obligation, — an imperative obligation — to emulate Paul's work as to the very form of his life's effort. Christians are left to-day to their own, and to the sanctified, judgment of the Church (the Spirit working through them)' as to the special forms of effort which they shall give their lives to, in carrying out the great command of the head of the Church, to impart the Gos- pel to all the world. But the obligation is upon them — upon them, upon you, gentlemen, as really as it was on the Apostle to the Gentiles, It may be noted, by the way, that according the the Protestant theory of the ministry, that which is an official duty of the officer of the Church has its analogous duty resting on the private member. This burden is, therefore on every private member. Nay, it is' upon many unbelievers as well. Their un- belief does not free them from the obligation to seek the true welfare of their fellowmen. Their refusal to let Jesus reign over them does not absolve them from the responsibility of letting him reign over them ; nor from the responsibility of doing their work of giving the great riches' of the Gospel, which he offers them, to their fellow-men. No man who has ever had the Gospel offered him can show himself exempt from the obligation to share it 68 Introduction to Christian Missions with others according to his abilities and opportunities. It should be remarked, further, that the obligation to missionary effort lies with very peculiar force on our age: The opportunities are so vast. The doors of heathen nations are so wide open. The peoples in many of these nations are showing such unusual readiness' to hear the Gospel. The relations between Protestant Chris- tion peoples and these heathen are so intimate. The resources and instrumentalities of Christian peoples are so vast; think of their railways, steamships, telegraph lines, etc. Think how they can protect missionary work- ers as never before. Think of all the rich increment given to Christian civilization in the nineteenth century. This limitless range of opportunity, these measureless' resources, place an obligation on you, my brethren, and on your fellow Christians of to-day which is absolutely imperative. IV. Let us ask how are Christians of to-day measur- ing up to this obligation to give the Gospel to all men. It is a boast of the Church of our age that it is a missionary Church. It is contrasted with other ages of the Church to their disadvantage. And it must be ad- mitted gratefully that relatively ours' is a missionary age ; that the Church has responded with a degree of earnest- ness to its exceptional opportunities ; but is it awake yet to its responsibilities? Is it showing the Pauline spirit in regard to this' great problem and duty? Is it striving to preach the Gospel first in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth ? Are energy enough and force enough being used ? Is the the work done on the best plans, so as to count for the most? Is the Church with the eye of the true strategist or- ganizing new bodies in centres where they will maintain Paul's Obligation to Missions 69 themselves and take the contiguous territory for Christ? Is there the fearless proclamation of the whole Gospel? Is the preaching so done as to bring forth much fruit in the lives of the converts? Are the leaders of the Church adequate to leading the Church in this work? Are they trying to become so? Are the rank and file of the Church lifting themselves in intelligence about missions so as to be able to judge of the competence of their lead- ers? Is there adequate self-sacrifice in behalf of the cause? Are those fit in other respects to go, ready to go? Are parents ready to devote their children to the cause to the extent they should be? Not all of these questions can be answered in the affirmative. May the gracious Lord help his Church of to-day to give itself anew to Christ, that it may inquire with Saul of ^Tarsus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" May He make us ready to give the Gospel to the Greek and to the Barbarian, to the wise and to the unwise; and all to the praise of the glory of his grace! Amen, LECTURE IV. Christian Missions from ioo to 590. Nestorian Missions. In the first lecture we saw that the Church is the God-ordained missionary society; that every Church member, in virtue of his membership in the Church, is pledged to missionary endeavor; and under imperative moral obligations to be missionary in spirit and effort whether he actually go and preach after the manner of the Apostle Paul, go and live Christianity, talking it as well as he can, as the obscure Christians who founded the Church of Rome before ever an Apostle had set foot within the city, or whether he support the missionary who does go, as the Philippians who supplied the needs of the missionary Paul. He is missionary as a member of the body of Christ ; and to push the cause of missions he ought. In the second lecture we tried to set forth the re- vealed principle properly regulative of the Church's missionary effort, and at the same time to bring out the principles implied in that chief one, all of which underlay and gave shape to the missionary work of the Church in the Apostolic age. In the third lecture we took up the great apostolic missionary Paul, examined his sense of the obligations on him to be missionary, the manner in which he met his obligations ; and the similar obligations resting on the Church and its members in every subsequent age. Could we allow ourselves, in this series, the privi- Patristic Missions 71 lege of indulging the imagination, or could we build on legend, we might have taken as the subject of the fourth lecture, the missionary operations of the other disciples in the apostolic age. But, except concerning the work of Peter and John and Paul's assistants re- liable history has recorded little. Luke makes indeed a pregnant, if brief record, "They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Nor should such an intimation of truth be ignored. The service rendered by believers, too inconspicuous to send down their names in history, and who severally organized few churches ; or, in many cases, only one, were necessary in order to the grand success of the mission cause in the apostolic age. "Could we learn more fully the facts of the apostolic age we should un- doubtedly find that it led all the succeeding ages in the vigor of its individual effort. It was not a time of great leaders but of many leaders . . . There was a constantly increasing number of individual Christian believers, who, wherever they went, whether on their regular business or driven by persecution, preached Christ, and Him crucified, told the story of the cross, bore witness to its value for themselves, and urged the acceptance of the Saviour on those with whom they came in contact. Of missionaries in the modern sense of the term there were few ; of those who devoted their full time and strength to the work of preaching there were few; but of those who made their trade, their profession, their every day occupation, of whatever sort, the means of extending their faith, there was a multitude." * E. M. Bliss, A Concise History of Missions, p. 16. 72 Introduction to Christian Missions Our historical knowledge of the work of the Apos- tolic Church being so compendious, we turn, to the course of missionary history subsequent to the apos- tolic age. In our treatment of this history we shall attempt not to reproduce it, but to set forth some of its important features, and developments ; to compare its developments with New Testament principles, and to test them by their fruits. However humble the efifort to study missionary history philosophically, if to any degree the philosophizing be sane and sober, it must eventuate in practical good, guarding us against error and anchoring us to the truth. Hence the character of this attempt. The long course of missionary history naturally falls into several divisions. In the study of these divi- sions of the missionary movement severally, we shall keep the following questions prominently before us : What was the theoretical grasp of Christianity prevail- ing in the period and determining the character of the missionary effort? What was' the prevailing mission- ary aim? What respect did the workers pay to the principles set forth in the Acts of the Apostles to regu- late the mission effort of the Church? What instru- mentalities did they use in their work? What methods did they employ? The great missionaries of the period? The common missionaries of the period? The numbers won? Their character? The territory overrun ? So much for the plan to be followed ; now let us to the handling of Christian Missions from lOO to 590; and as the year 311 was epochal in the missionary movement as in other branches of Church history, dividing the movement into two periods, each having Patristic Missions 73 markedly distinguishing- features, let us take up first the period 100 to 311, the sub-apostolic and antc-Niccne age. The theoretical grasp of Christianity which pre- vailed during this period was substantially like that of the apostolic age. Various heretical teachers, anti- Trinitarian, Gnostic, Montanistic, arose ; but the anti- Trinitarians and Gnostics were excluded from the Church, and won after all, only small bodies of fol- lowers. The Montanists, whose false teachings struck less at that which is essential in Christianity than the others, were quite as much schismatics as heretics. Certain false practices, and subsequently the false theories back of them, of the Gnostics and Mani- chaeans, were indeed to creep surely, if slowly, into tlie Church. But their influence is to be seen rather in the periods following 311 than in the one now be- fore us. In the thought of some Christians evangeli- cal repentance was being substituted by penance ; godly sorro^v with endeavor after new obedience, by an effort to render satisfaction for sin, by confession, sighs and tears and saskcloth, which is to say, that in the thought of some work, righteousness was begin- ning to creep in. Belief in the magical power of water baptism was also creeping in, — the belief that in bap- tism, if the person baptized be not in mortal sin un- repented of, and oppose no bar of his own will, he is washed free of guilt by the Holy Ghost, in virtue of a connection between the water and the Spirit. Vagueness of conception and looseness of doctrinal grasp were the general characteristics of Christians. Neverthe- less, in the main, a sound, if unscientific view prevailed of man's hopeless condition if left to himself, and of 74 Introduction to Christian Missions salvation by the gracious work of tlie triune God. Men magnified the power of a living faith in the risen Lord. They longed to see this faith universal. They believed, however, that Paul may plant and ApoUos may water but that God alone must give the increase. Naturally the aim of a Church, with such. a faith, in its missionary work was much like that of the Apostolic Church. It too sought to win true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. It sought in addition, men so possessed of the Christian faith and the Christian spirit that they would declare their testimony in the face of all persecution even unto death. This period is the classic age of the Church under oppression. The ancient heathen priesthoods, the imperial power and the animosity against God natural to man's heart, were pitted unitedly against Christianity. Throughout most of the periods, persecution was waging in some quarter or other of the empire against Christians. Sometimes the persecutions were widespread. This bitter opposition and the probability that the new convert would soon have to face the fires of persecution made the Church prevalently desire only those who were believed to be thoroughly devoted to Christ. The persecutions helped to prevent the Church from desiring merely nominal converts ; and thus bolstered up the motives springing from an intelligent appre- hension of the true genius of Christianity. Thus it aimed to secure true witnesses for Christ and his cause. It cannot be safely asserted that there was much consciously strategic planning of the work in any large way, but there was some of it as will appear in the sequel. As for the immediate mission work of the Patristic Missions 75 rank and file, it was well directed, terminating upon the people with whom the Christians severally came into the closest contact. Within the limits fixed by their poverty, and their mental cultivation and intel- lectual grasp, they, in practice, applied well the prin- ciples laid down in the New Testament for the Church's guidance in its efforts to spread the faith. The word of God, in the Old Testament, and in such books of the New Testament, as circulated in any particular quarter of the Church, and this word as preserved in tradition, was the one instrument in general use. That word, preached, privately taught and lived by the disciples, was used by the propagators of the faith with absolute confidence. There was some use made, by learned teachers, here and there of heathen utterances, but in such a bird's-eye view as we are taking, this is hardly to be noticed. The word of God was universally regarded and applied by the Christians of the time as the effective instrument. As to the methods employed in this period : The evangelistic was the chief method. Ministers preached the glad tidings. The Christian men and women severally talked and lived the glad tidings. The literary method also was employed extensively as proven beyond a peradventure, by the translations of Scriptures which have come down to us from that early age. Amongst these are the Peshito and Cure- tonian Syriac versions for Syria and Mesopotamia ; the Memphitic, Thebaic, and Bashmuric for Egypt and the Upper Nile Valley ; the North African and Italian- Latin versions for Carthage and Rome. Copies of the Scriptures were multiplied in the Greek which pre- vailed so widely. The literary method in missionary yd Introduction to Christian Missions endeavor was applied in the production of letters, ex- positions of the faith, pleas for the faith, defenses of the faith, the "Apologies," etc. It is perhaps not far- fetched to say that in Alexandria we see an instance of the educational method in missions, in the catecheti- cal school, which, at the outset, was a school in which inquirers and neophytes were taught the simplest ele- ments of the Gospel, but which was soon developed into a college of divinity and evangelistic work, and in which Christians were trained to meet the repre- sentatives of the heathen systems. This school be- came an important source of mission workers. Other methods may have been employed but the evidence that they were is not conspicuous. There were some missionary workers prominent enough to leave their names dimly written on the pages of history. No one of them stands out as Paul's in the preceding age, or as the name of Patrick, or Columba, or Augustine in the next period. Of these, one was Pantaenus. He was the first teacher of the catechetical school of Alexandria whose name has come down to us. He is sometimes represented as the founder of that school. Previous to his conversion he had been a Stoic philosopher. He was highly esteemed for his services to Christianity by his contemporaries. Eusebius asserts that "Pantaenus is said to have showed such a willing mind towards the publishing of the doc- trine of Christ that he became a preacher of the Gospel unto the Eastern Gentiles, and was sent as far as India. For there were", continues Eusebius, and for what fol- lows he vouches, "there were then many evangelists prepared for this purpose, to promote and plant the heavenly word with godly zeal, after the guise of the Patristic Missions "77 apostles. Of these Pantaenus being one, is' said to have come into India, where he found the Gospel of Mat- thew written in the Hebrew tongue, kept of such as knew Christ, which was preached there before his com- ing by Bartholomew, one of the apostles, and as they report revered there unto this day."* Whether by India was meant the peninsula now known by that name, or Ethiopia, or the Upper Nile country, or Arabia Felix, is uncertain; but it is not a matter of importance in this connection. The uncer- tainty does not touch the fact that Pantaenus and '"many evangelists" were going out to missionary work. According to the French historian, Gregory of Tours, seven missionaries came into as many quarters of France about 250, and founded churches. One of these was Dionysius, the first bishop of the community where now is Paris. According to Gregory's account. Dionysius suffered death at his mission post dur- ing the Aurelian persecution. Another of the seven was Saturnin, one of the most famous missionaries and martyrs of the third century. He is represented to have been a native of Italy ; to have been sent as a missionary to Gaul by the bishop Fabian ; to have set- tled at Toulouse ; to have labored with much success, and to have been killed by an infuriated mob between 250 and 260. Other names might be laboriously transcribed, but little besides, of these ancient missionaries ; unless we should take as essentially missionary such a man as Irenaeus of Lyons. The accounts of their labors' have perished ; but Eusebius's reference to the " 'many evan- gelists' of Pantaenus's day prepared to promote, and *Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book V., Chapter IX. 78 Introduction to Christian Missions to plant the heavenly word with godly zeal after the guise of the apostles", shows that not a few gave them- selves up wholly to propagating Christianity. While remote cities and countries received some of these workers, the villages and towns within the immediate influence of the more important cities which previously had been made centres of Christianity, received a still greater number of them. Origin informs us that city churches sent their missionaries to the neighboring vil- lages in his day.* But the mass of the missionary work of the period was done by humble Christians who had no official title in the Church, and whose names have been lost utterly to the memory of man, though treasured in the Lamb's Book of Life. The Church grew so because the rank and file were possessed with the missionary spirit. Almost every Christian believer was a missionary and was aflame with love for Christ and with zeal for His cause. Justin Martyr meets' a venerable old man walk- ing on the sea-shore. They fall to talking. Justin is converted to Christ and becomes a valued defender and propagator of Christianity. "Every Christian laborer," says Tertullian, "both finds out God and manifests him, though Plato affirms that it is not easy to discover the Creator, and difficult when he is found, to make him known to all." Celsus jeered at Christianity, because he saw in mechanics, rustic and ignorant persons, its earnest propagators. The people were full of it — as full as shipwrecked sailors are of the story of their rescue. They loved to talk of it; and did talk of it. The mer- * Compare Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. II., p. 21. Patristic Missions 79 chant traders talked of it on their travels ; the soldiers on their marches and beside their camp fires. Neigh- bor talked of it to neighbor, father to son and to daughter and to wife and to servant ; the parents talked of it to their children, and the children talked of it to their parents. Slaves talked of it to their fellow- slaves and to their masters and mistresses. No mat- ter how humble a man might be, the possession of Christianity gave him a subject of such worth that on it he could speak to the greatest. It was the very greatest thing that had ever come into the life of man. It sweetened all life, however sordid otherwise ; it had robbed death of its sting. The very martyrs at the stake sang it, prayed it, talked it, lived it, gloried in it, rejoiced in dying for it. The Christian rank and file, busied in their various occupations, called in ques- tion by the civil authorities for practicing a new re- ligion, in dungeons, at the stake — were the most efifec- tive agents in the spread of Christianity in the ante- Nicene period. Oh, for a revival of this irrepressibly aggressive type of Christianity among our rank and file of Christians. The number of Christians increased with very great rapidity throughout the period. According to conser- vative estimates, at the close of the apostolic age, the number of adherents to Christianity had not reached five hundred thousand. At the accession of Constan- tine the Christians numbered ten to twelve millions. To put the matter in another way: At the death of the apostle John, only one man in two hundred and forty within the limits of the Roman Empire was a profess- ing Christian, whereas on the adoption of Christianity by Constantine as the religion of State, about every 8o Introduction to Christian Missions tenth or twelfth man in the Empire was a nominal Christian. The missionary triumphs of Christianity were a mat- ter which thrilled the early apologists. About the mid- dle of the second century Justin Martyr asserts that there is "no race of men, whether of Barbarians or of Greeks, or bearing any other name, either because they lived in wagons without fixed habitation, or in tents leading a pastoral life, among whom prayers and thanksgivings were not offered up to the Father and Creator of all things through the name of the crucified Jesus." About 200, Tertullian says in his address to the heathen : "We are a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you — cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp. 5-our tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies, our numbers in a single province will be greater." The rapid and healthful growth of the Church in this period is an undisputed fact. In the first three hundred years of its growth it won a good tenth of the population of the Empire, and it so impressed some of the leading statesmen of the times that they naturally looked to its adoption as the state religion. The territory overrun by the Christians had grown, less fast than the number of Christians but still ver}^ fast. Christian communities were found, by the close of this period, on the East, in Mesopotamia, Persia, Media, Parthia, and Bactria, and even in remote India ; to the southward, having gained a strong foothold in Egypt, the Church extended up the Nile to Nubia and Abys- sinia. It flourished greatly in North Africa. It was Patristic Missions 8i planted and had made a large growth in Gaul, Spahi and Britain before the end of the period. Christians had crossed the Rhine and made converts among the German Barbarians before the era of Constantine. The mission spirit of the Church was splendid. The Church of the time was not rich in this world's goods. It was poor and oppressed. It included no large percentage of the learned and the great. In some respects it was still the Church's day of small things ; but the believers generally took it as their great business to witness for Jesus. The blessing of God rested on this witnessing. The Gospel was carried throughout the civilized world of the day — the limits of the Roman empire ; and be- yond its bounds. Let us now review rapidly the missionary life of the next period, the period 311 to 590, the Nicene and post-Nicene age of the Church. I. The theoretical view of Christianity which pre- vailed early in the period was different in important respects from that which prevailed in the preceding and in the apostolic age. Certain evil germs planted in the Church in the period just left, some of them sown by heretics who had themselves suffered excom- munication, had flourished and brought forth much fruit of their kind. In the eyes of the Church at large, human works were assuming a large place as over against divine grace ; the highest human holiness was regarded as dependent largely on human works, and human works of an ascetic character ; the symbolic nature of baptism was obscured and, in the eyes of most, the ordinance was perverted into a magical rite. It came to be believed universally that, if he who administered baptism did it with proper intention, and if he who re- 82 Introduction to Christian Missions eeived it, did not determine that he would not receive its virtue and if he was not in mortal sin, such as adultery or murder, unrepented of, his soul would be washed white and clean from guilt, and his character would be in the same instant miraculously strengthened for the good. That is to say, the theory of baptismal regeneration prevailed almost universally. The doc- trine of the Christian ministry was rapidly changing, giving in the place of the New Testament minister a priest, with prerogatives over against the private members of the Churches like those enjoyed by heathen and by Jewish priests. The idea of the universal spiritual priesthood of all believers passed away to be resurrected only at the Reformation. Churchly functions once exercised by the people at large or by chosen officers, were regarded as of right to be exercised by the special priesthood only. The theory of ex operato efficiency of the sacraments generally, in the hands of the special priesthood, came into vogue. The growth of the evil seeds planted in a better age was favored by the rapid movement of current events which swept Christianity from the condition of a persecuted religion into the saddle as the religion of the state. This great change in the external con- dition of the Church, intoxicated and secularized it. Unconsciously perhaps, but nevertheless truly, it fur- ther changed its very theoretical grasp of itself to suit the demands of its new formal ally the state. II. As to the aim which inspired the missionary of this period : While not wholly unlike that of the apos- tolic age, it was largely unlike it. The aim of the mis- sionaries in the period was more and more to gather in the nominal Christians without much concern as to Patristic Missions 83 whether they were true believers or not. This change in the aim came in part at least from the change in the theoretical grasp of the Christian system. Believ- ing that men, not in mortal sin unrepented of, and not opposing a volition against receiving good from the rite, would be cleansed of all guilt by baptism, and re- newed in heart ; believing that should these baptized fall into sin again, there were other ordinances in the hands of the special priests with which they could be efficiently restored; and believing that baptism was necessary to salvation, they became exceedingly de- sirous not to win spiritual believers, but to get men under the sacramental manipulations of the priests, to make them the subjects of baptism, penance, etc., etc. Thinking that the application of the sacraments was essential to the salvation of any individual, they laid themselves out to secure that application. Pos- sessed of a legalistic, external, priestly and magical conception of Christianity, the missionaries were satis- fied with conformity to Christian customs and recep- tion of the Christian sacraments. They sought in their converts not for an effective addition to the army of witness-bearers. They wished to save units. The clergy would bear the witness. They wished to get the people within the sphere within which the sacra- ments worked, that they might be hoisted heaven- ward. III. As little attention was paid to the New Testa- ment missionary aim by the mission workers of this age, so little attention was paid to the New Testa- ment principles for regulating missionary endeavor. There was little strategic planning of such a sort as to impress itself on the mind of man, save in the efforts 84 Introduction to Christian Missions constantly made to get the hands of the priests first on the heads of the leaders of such tribes as the repre- sentatives of the cross came in contact with. The Church had put her meddling hand on so many features of apostolic teaching in the efifort to improve them, that the principles of the propagation of the Gospel current in the apostolic age had been largely lost to view. An occasional Christian, indeed, held pretty closely to the principles of the preceding ages ; and bits of work here and there were conducted in the old way. But such worker was the exception. IV. The word was no longer the sole instrument in general use by the missionaries. Bribery in veiled or open form, was in frequent, almost common use. Con- stantine the Great seems to have practiced it openly. His example would be largely followed in his own day. Evidence is not wanting that the great Church dig- nitaries used similar means to forward ecclesiastical interests including conversions. The Emperors gen- erally, showed more favor to Christians than to pagans. There were popular outbursts against not only the grosser and more impious heathen cults, but against the heathen cults generally. The physical sword as well as the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, was used. Ad hominem attacks on the heathen re- ligions and every other weapon deemed likely to prove effective were, on occasions, put into use ; it having come to be the belief of the age — a belief in which even the great Augustine concurred — that it was the duty of the Christians to compel men to come into the Church even at the cost of using physical force. V. As to the methods employed by the propagators of the Gospel during the period 311 to 590: Patristic Missions 85 I St. The evengelistic method was used. That is, some lived and preached an evangel. But the Gospel was presented in an increasingly paganized form. The missionaries rarely carried the pure Gospel. By their interpretation and traditions they gave the Gospel sac- ramental external, legalistic and ascetic overlardings, They mixed with it not a little of revamped heathenism. 2nd. They used the medical arm often, having larger knowledge of the crude healing art of the time than the peoples amongst whom they labored. Not infrequently they claimed to use miraculous power to heal; and seem often to have befooled a credulous peo- pie, counting it proper to deceive if thereby they could add to the praise and reputation of the Church. 3rd. The literary method was in use. Ulfilas for example, gave to the Goths the Scriptures in their own tongue. Miesrob gave the Armenians a Bible in their own tongue. Jerome gave the Latin speaking peoples a more perfect translation than they had hitherto en- joyed, in the Vulgate. Commentaries, expositions, apologies, polemical treatises, and religious works of various worthy kinds were produced ; legends of saints, angels, and wonder-working relics, intended to ad- vance the worship of those creatures, were multiplied, and became the most popular literature of the age. 4th. The educational method was little practiced. In the East, the catechetical and theological school previously established at Alexandria was kept up dur- ing the earlier portion of this period. A similar school flourished during a portion of the period at Antioch ; later another at Edessa ; and another at Nisi- bis. In these schools preparation for the ministry be- came the uppermost aim. In the West there were 86 Introduction to Christian Missions smaller dioscean seminaries whose purpose was the same. There was no adequate stress placed on teach- ing as a method of Gospel propagation. The current civilization was becoming effete and at the same time was being swept away by the flood of incoming Bar- barians. The time did not favor education; the very bishop, presbyters, missionaries had little of it as a rule ; the changed conception of the ministry, substi- tuting for the heralds of the Gospel the priest with magical power made education of the clergy seem re- latively unnecessary; and much more, education of the people unnecessary from a merely religious point of view. 5th. In applying the instruments of bribery and the physical sword almost any method was practiced that appeared to promise success. The churchmen aimed to win the strong man — the man in civil and military position — to their view. They frequently left it to his arbitrary will to choose the way in which he would herd those under him to the baptismal fount and to the priestly hand. VI. Some of the more distinguished mission- workers of the time were Ulfilas amongst the Goths; Gregory and Miesrob amongst the Armenians, whose labors resulted in quite a general spread of Christianity in Armenia; Frumentius and Edesius in Abyssinia; humble, simple hearted, self-sacrificing and efficient Patrick in Ireland, and Columba in Scotland. Stories have come down showing that here and there the old ideals had not utterly perished ; and that an occasional earnest child of God by a godly walk and conversation turned the minds of neighbors to Christ. The chief mission work of this period was home Patristic IMissions 87^ mission work. Every considerable section of the em- pire had been penetrated by Christianity as early as 311 ; but not over one-tenth perhaps of the population had become adherents thereto, at that date. In the period beginning with the union of Church and state, the other nine-tenth remained to be handled. The ministers of religion had, every one, abounding oppor- tunities for mission work. Nor is there reason for doubting that they had zeal of a sort; nor that they inducted vast numbers into the external religion into which they had so largely converted Christianity. VII. It is impossible even to conjecture the num- ber of adherents added. By 590 there had come a vast decrease in the population within the bounds of the once West Roman empire. Cities, towns and villages had been destroyed. The old population had been de- cimated over and over by successive waves of Barbar- ians, had suffered from the want of all things to the point of extinction in many quarters. The incomers had supplied their places only very partially at first, and had not multiplied rapidly owing to their ever-recurring wars on each other. In all Christendom there may have been thirty or thirty-five millions of adherents to the prevailing paganized Chris- tianity. Some have estimated the number of Chris- tians in 814 at thirty-five millions. This date is after the Roman missionizing of England under Augustine and his followers, after the work of Boniface and his co-laborers amongst the Germans, and after Charle- magne's work as a converter by force. But in 814, the Mohammedans had reduced the number of Christians in the East and in North Africa by as much as it had gained in the West between the years 590 and 814- 88 Introduction to Christian Missions All things considered it is not probable that there were more Christians at the end of Charlemagne's reign than at the end of the papal reign of Gregory I. The adherents in this age were largely nominal and external Christians. The Church had largely divorced morals from religion. Paganization had meant secu- larization for the great mass. VIII. The territory within which Christianity pre- vailed had been considerably augmented by 590. Be- yond the ancient bounds of the Graeco-Roman empire, Christianity had overrun Abyssinia, made inroads into Arabia and Persia, overrun Armenia, made conquests to the north of the Danube and overrun Ireland, and portions of Scotland. The Nestorians showed considerable missionary activity not only in this but in the next period. As they separated from the Graeco-Latin Church prior to 5go, it is convenient to indicate at this point, once for all, their missionary career. Differing from the Graeco- Latin Church in denying that Mary was the mother of God, in repudiating the use of images and the doc- trines of purgatory and transubstantiation, and in holding a more simple worship, they were driven out of the bounds of the empire ; found an asylum in Per- sia, and were favored by Persian kings. They spread from Persia with great missionary zeal into Arabia, India. China and Tartary, establish- ing schools and hospitals and ennobling the civiliza- tions of the peoples amongst whom they labored. A certain Nestorian monk, Sergius, is supposed to have given Mohammed his imperfect knowledge of Christianity. The sect received many privileges at Mohammed's hands, and exerted an influence on Patristic Missions 89 Arabian culture, and upon the development of science and philosophy amongst the Arabs. According to tradi- tion the Nestorians made converts among the Tartars in the eleventh century. They had previously spread into China. The Nestorian Church in the thirteenth century was quite extensive. But persecution came upon them and they were crushed. They have maintained them- selves, however, in Armenia and in the wild mountains and valleys of Kurdistan and in India. LECTURE V. Mediaeval Catholic Missions, 590 to 15 17. In our previous study of the history of Christian missions, we have seen that, after the year 311, the Church as a whole more and more ceased to take any interest in the work; that the popular effort to spread Christianity, which had characterized the apostoHc and ante-Nicene ages, stopped with the adoption of Christian- ity as the rehgion of the empire ; that such mission work as was done was undertaken by those of the clergy that individually were moved thereto. We have seen that the aim of the mission workers, for the most part, was now to bring persons under priestly manipulations ; that they were no longer careful to make the word of God their sole instrument in the work, but ready to use any- thing that came to hand, and to apply any method likely to be followed by success' in gathering nominal adherents to their religion. We have seen also that these differ- ences as to workers, and aim, and instruments used, and methods employed, were due to a change in the theoreti- cal grasp of Christianity; that the theory of Christianity obtaining in the apostolic and ante-Nicene ages had been replaced by the sacramental, legalistic, externalizing theory. We propose in this lecture to review mediaeval mis- sions, raising, as heretofore promised in regard to them, the questions : What theory of Christianity conditioned them? What was the aim of the work? What was the AIkdiaeval Catholic Missions 91 respect paid to the principles embodied in the Acts for guidance of the Church in its missionary effort? What the instruments used? The methods employed? Who the workers? What the number won? What the terri- tory over-run? I. The theoretical grasp of Christianity handed over to the Mediaeval Church by the Church of the post- Nicene age has been sufficiently described in Lecture IV. It must be added here that the Mediaeval Church, as a whole, not only did not improve on the grasp of Chris- tianity which it inherited, but made it more external, more legalistic, more sacramental, introduced more of paganism into it. There were, indeed, individuals, here and there, who saw more clearly some part of the system of genuine Christian truth ; as Retramnus, in the ninth century, and Berenger, in the eleventh century, on the subject of the Lord's Supper ; as Anselm, in the eleventh century, on the doctrine of the atonement ; as Wycliffe, in the fourteenth century, and John Huss in the fifteenth century, on many subjects ; but these views were either condemned and persecuted, or ignored by the Church at large. While great progress in power to state scien- tifically the actual faith of the Church and real advance in the apprehension of certain teachings of Holy Scrip- ture was made by the schoolmen of the period, it must be admitted that the whole faith of the Church as stated by them, at its best, was more external, more legalistic, more sacramental, and more pagan than the faith of the fathers which the Mediaeval Church inherited in 590: Human works were given a larger place in the outwork- ing of redemption ; more stress was put on the sacra- ments', their value and the theory of their ex opcre operato efficiency ; the value of a knowledge of the Holy 92 Introduction to Christian Missions Scriptures was more belittled; the reality of a special priesthood, though absolutely false, was more generally, resolutely, accepted; the universal priesthood of believ- ers was put more in the background; salvation by free grace was more definitely and specifically denied ; the false distinction between clergy and laity and the equally false distinction between the active and passive members of the Church were more pressed. With the sort of theological movement, here indicated, more and more prevailing, the student of mediaeval mis- sions can anticipate neither a missionary life on the part of the Church as a whole, nor the highest form of mis- sionary effort on the part of those individuals or orders who undertake to give Christianity to the heathen. II. The aiui of these workers throughout this long period was, as in the Patristic age, to bring men under the power of the sacraments and make them the subjects of priestly intercession and manipulation. A feeding on the word of God save in the broken and diluted and alloyed morsels, doled out in formularies of worship in second-hand homilies occasionally rendered, was seldom attempted; and, as the mediaeval world grew older, was more frowned upon. True, an exception appeared here and there, as in the great Alcwin. Called from the school at York, by Charles the Great, to become the teacher of Europe, and seeing how in the struggle with Saxon barbarism the emperor had imperilled the Church by seeking a conformity without knowledge and with- out faith, he said to him: "Carry on the publication of the Divine Words' according to the example of the Apostles." Of the Bishop of Salzburg he asked, "Of what use is baptism without faith? Faith is a matter of free will," he said, "not of compulsion, as the Holy Mediaeval Catholic Missions 93 Augustine says. Man must be instructed and taught by repeated preaching and especially we must implore for him the grace of God." But these views did not prevail. Finally, in Latin Christendom, the word of God was forbidden to laymen, save certain small portions of it. Nor could these portions be had in the vernacular. The very notion of New Testament discipleship seemed likely to be lost. The missionaries wrought not to make dis- ciples but to induce men to suffer the "clergy" to save them through priestly services of magical virtue. In the Greek Church a somewhat larger use was made of the word of God. III. He would be a rash man who would attempt to maintain that the New Testament was studied for the principles on which missions should he conducted and those principles consciously applied. Nothing of the sort is known to have been done by most of the mission- ary workers. They seem to have received by tradition from the Patristic age the principles which in that age had begun to supplant those of the apostolic age. The missionary strategy appears in the workers getting first a priestly hold over leaders, kings, nobles', etc., and sub- sequently prevailing on them to enforce the acceptance of the current Christianity on their subjects ; in their attacks on heathen superstitions and gods, and, coming off unhurt, arguing the victory of Christ over the god whose honor had been attacked, and in playing generally upon the ignorance and superstition of the people. There were, of course, missionaries of exceptionally worthy principles here and there. There was one so scriptural in the principles on which he would have had missionary work done, that a special place must be made for him in this lecture. Of him more will be heard fur- ther on. 94 Introduction to Christian Missions IV. The instruments used were as in the preceding period, the Scriptures and traditions, the Scriptures being made to bend to tradition, bribery, force, poHtical, dip- lomatic, mihtary, pious fraud, etc. V. The methods employed were also essentially the same as in the Patristic age. The evangelistic was one of their methods. But the evangel these missionaries carried with them to the mission fields had been overlaid by traditions, and bent to suit the traditions. The missionaries were ready to bend the Gospel further, too, to suit the occasions pre- sented in the new fields. They stooped to conquer. They further paganized the Gospel to suit the special tastes of those to whom they presented it. There was a crude employment of the medical method of missionary work. This was natural. The mission- aries were usually much more learned than the peoples amongst whom they worked, and knew more of medicine. In this age, too, the false claim of miraculous' powers was not infrequently made. The literary method was in application, used in cases worthily and with fine effect, as by the venerable Bede and Alfred the Great in England; often greatly abused, being made to forward the worship of saints, angels, or relics. Since the "clergy" were growing in unwillingness' to allow the people the Scriptures in their vernacular, and because linguistic learning was at a low ebb through- out most of the period, and because amongst most of the European peoples the vernaculars were insufficiently de- veloped to serve as good literary vehicles', few and feeble efforts were made to translate the Scriptures. The educational method was in vogue to some extent. The leading missionaries were in most cases monks as Mediae\'al Catholic Missions 95 well as priests or bishops. Monasteries were established throughout the continent of Europe and the British Isles. Some of them became seminaries of learning; generally very limited, indeed, but of great value to the people in the absence of anytWng better. Children of the neighbor- hood were frequently taught by a brother of the cloister, the sons of new converts of noble or royal orders were often sent to the monastery for training; children were sometimes dedicated to the monastic life, in their child- hood, and were trained therein for a measure of useful- ness to the living world not contemplated by the founders of monasticism. Under the forms of monasticism the industrial method also found extensive application. A monastery was as a rule an institution competent to supply the temporal necessities of its members. Some of the brothers gave a measure of attention to agriculture and dairying and stock-raising ; some to the mechanic arts ; in rarer in- stances, some to the fine arts and to learning. In the effort to support themselves and their work, they became, by example, teachers of the communities around them in many of the arts of civilization, and wrought for their material advancement along many lines. These were the chief methods by which the mission- aries sought to apply their much be-clouded and be- covered evangel to the minds and hearts of the heathen. As for the instruments, bribery, force, pious fraud, etc., those who used them, and they were very many, were not scrupulous or careful as' to the method of their appli- cation provided it appeared to promise success. VI. This was less an age of missionary endeavor on the part of the rank and file of the Church than the Patristic age. The missionaries zvcrc commonly monkish 96 Introduction to Christian Missions priests or monks grouped around a monkish priest. Such were Columbanus and Gallus, from the Irish Church, who labored in Gaul and Switzerland. Such was Augus- tine, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, whom, when abbot of the monastery of Saint Andrews at Rome, that other monk who had been thrust into the papacy and is known as Gregory the Great, had pitched upon to convert the fair-haired Anglo-Saxon ration whom he himself had longed to evangelize. Such was Willibrod, the Northumbrian monk, who labored amongst the Friesians. This Willibrod stirred up Saxon Winfrid, who had received a monastic training, and become a monk, to attempt his' great labors whereby he is known as "the Apostle of Germany," Boniface. This Boniface, as de- sirous of Romanizing independent Christian communities as of converting heathen, availed himself of every favor- ing wind of circumstance. In the wake of Charles Martel he finds the people of Hesse open to his mission- ary efforts. A temporary absence was abused by not a few of his converts to revert to heathenism. On his return he found many of them engaged in Thor-worship. He determined to strike a blow that would shatter all belief in Thor. In the presence of enraged heathen and frightened half-Christians, he cut down the sacred oak of Giesmar in Hesse. Seeing the mighty tree crash to the ground and the bold missionary unhurt, the people shouted, "The Lord, He is God." The tree was riven, and out of it a chapel was built. Converts multiplied. In the ninth century Ansgar, a monk of Corbie, was the leading missionary of the Scandinavian peoples. If we turn to missions amongst the Slavs, we find that the great missionaries to Bulgaria, after the middle of the ninth century, have come from the walls of a convent. Mediaeval Catholic Missions 97 Cyrillus had enjoyed unusual advantages for secular learning, but had subsequently entered the clerical state, taking up his abode in a monastery together with his brother Methodius. Thence they, Cyril and Methodius, set out to take the leading part in the conversion of the Bulgarian people, — to do for them what Ulfilas had done for the Goths of southeastern Europe in the latter part of the fourth century, — to give them an organized language and a version of the Bible therein. Just on the eve of the Reformation also we find monks, Domini- cans and Franciscans, particularly, enlisting in mission- ary enterprise in the New World. In Asia the most noted missionary worker of the long mediaeval era was the Latin, Franciscan monk, John de Monte Corvino, of the thirteenth century. Being more anxious to Roman- ize Nestorians than to convert heathen, he got into trouble and secured unsatisfactory results. Francis of Assisi's fruitless forcing himself into the presence of the Sultan of Egypt and preaching Christianity in his court may be mentioned as a further indication of a mis- sionary spirit amongst monastics. The influence of the founder of the Franciscan order was to swing his order in the same direction. The Crusades, beginning in the end of the eleventh and continuing till near the end of the thirteenth century. have sometimes been classed as missionary enterprises. No doubt some of the crusaders desired the conversion of the Mohammedans, but these seem to have made no worthy efifort to make converts, and the great body of crusaders were concerned only to wrest the holy places' from the Islamites. The crusades occupied an important place in the history of the progress of European civiliza- tion. They were educative instrumentalities in the hand 98 Introduction to Christian Missions of Providence whose value is hard to overestimate ; but they did not make in their own nature for the propaga- tion of mediaeval Christianity. Before taking leave of the missionary workers of this period, more than passing mention should be made of Raymund Lull. Living in the thirteenth century, he re- vived the apostolic conception of missionary ideals ; and may well be written down as, in principles, the most Pauline missionary from the time of Constantine to the time of William Carey. Raymund Lull was born in that age of world-wide confusion, when the vast power of the German Empire was on the wane, and separate states were crystallizing, when constitutional government was in its tottering in- fancy in England, when Tartars were overrunning European Russia, when the Christians were being driven from their last strongholds in the Holy Land, when the Ottoman Turks were rising into power, when Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes were flooding the lands of the East, when all Europe was poured together with expecta- tion of change, when the feudal system was breaking up, when the use of gunpowder and the mariner's compass and paper were proclaiming the coming of a new era, when scholasticism had reached its height, when physical science had made its beginning as with Roger Bacon, when the travels of Marco Polo were revolutionizing men's notions of geography, when the paganization of Christianity was reaching its extreme in Europe, when superstition was rank, when mediaeval mysticism and almost all things mediaeval were grown great. He was born in 1235, in the city of Palma in the Island of Majorca, and belonged to an old and distinguished Cata- lonian familv. He was accustomed to mediaeval luxury Raymund Lull 99 in his youth, his parents having a large estate and his father being distinguished for miHtary services. At an early age he became seneschal of James II. King of Aragon. In virtue of his office he had superintendence of feasts and ceremonies. He had unbounded opportuni- ties for pleasures of a worldly sort; and, according to his own testimony, he availed himself of the opportuni- ties. Though married and blessed with children, he sought the reputation of a gallant and had intrigues with various women, — lived a life of dashing profligacy. He prostituted fine poetic gifts and musical ability to the purposes of seduction. True, there were other hours spent in warfare, in horsemanship and in writing on thes'e arts. But his life was chiefly that of a dissolute courtier. The story of his conversion has been told in the fol- lowing words : "One evening the seneschal was sitting on a couch with his cithern on his knees, composing a song in praise of a noble married lady who had fascin- ated him but who was insensible to his passion. Sud- denly, in the midst of these erotic songs, he saw, on his right hand, the Saviour hanging on the cross, the blood trickling from his hands and feet and brow, look re- proachfully at him. Raymund, conscience-struck, started up ; he could sing no more ; he laid aside his cithern and, deeply moved, retired to bed. Eight days after, he again attempted to finish the song and again, as before, the image of Divine Love incarnate appeared — the agonized form of the Man of Sorrows. The dying eyes of the Saviour were fixed on him, mournfully pleadingly; "See from His head, His hands, His feet Sorrow and love flow mingling down: Did ere such love and sorrow meet Or thorns compose so rich a crown?" loo Introduction to Christian Missions Lull cast his lute aside, and threw himself on his bed, a prey to remorse. He had seen the highest and deepest unrequitted love. But the thought that "Love so amazing, so Divine Demands my soul, my life, my all, had not yet reached him. The effect of the vision was so transitory that he was not ready to yield until it again repeated itself. Then Lull could not resist the thought that this was a special message to himself to conquer his lower passions and to devote himself entirely to Christ's service. He felt engraved on his heart, as it were, the great spectacle of divine self-sacrifice. Henceforth he had only one passion, to love and serve Christ. But there arose the doubt, How can I, defiled with impurity, rise and enter on a holier life? Night after night, we are told, he lay awake, a prey to despondency and doubt. He wept like Mary Magdalene, remembering how much and how deeply he had sinned. At length the thought occurred : Christ is meek and full of compassion ; He invites all to come unto Him ; He will not cast me out. With that thought came consolation. Because he was forgiven so much he loved the more, and concluded that he would forsake the world and give up all for his Saviour." * He subsequently was led to think that he could devote his energies to no higher work than that of proclaiming the Gospel to the Saracens. But as he w3s a layman, and as the clergy were supreme, he concluded that he would best be^in his work by composing a treatise which should demonstrate the truth of Christianity and convince the * Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, pp. 34-36. Raymund Lull ioi warriors of the Crescent of their errors. This book would be unintelligible to the Saracens, unless it were in Arabic. Lull did not know Arabic. These and other difficulties almost drove him to despair. He was not to despair utterly, however. The fires of love were re- kindled by the words of a Franciscan preacher. Lull made up his mind once for all, sold his estates, reserved only a scanty allowance for wife and children, and gave the rest of the proceeds to the poor. His vow of conse- cration was as follows: "To Thee, Lord God, do I now oiifer myself and my wife and children and all that I possess; and since I approach Thee humbly with this gift and this sacrifice, may it please Thee to accept all that I give Thee and offer up for Thee, that I, my wife and my children may be Thy humble slaves." t He donned the coarse garb of a penitent; under the influence of the notions of the age, he made pilgrimages to various Clnirches on the Island of Majorca; and prayed for divine assistance in the work he had resolved to undertake. Love for the personal Christ welled up in his heart and moved his life. Hence the motto of his old age : "He who loves not lives not ; he who lives by the life cannot die." Hence also his readiness to attack the Mohammedan world in one of its most aggres'sive, most arrogant and most dominating periods ; and in a period when Christian misrepresentation and hatred of the Mohammedans was almost universal and extreme. In that age he wrote : 'T see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms'; but in the end all are de- stroyed before they attain that which they think to t Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, p. 42. 102 Introduction to Christian Missions have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way in which Thou and Thine Apostles acquired it, namely. by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and blood." * In order to make this conquest he purchased a Sara- cen slave, and with him as a teacher, set himself to learn the Arabic language. He spent nine years in this task, and in the contemplation of God, and in mentally tracing the outlines of the book with which he hoped to over- whelm Islam and demonstrate the articles of Christian doctrine. In his forty-first year he spent four months in writing the book and praying for the divine blessing upon its arguments. This work, "The Ars Major sive Generalis" intended for the special work of converting the Moslems, was to include also "a universal art of ac- quisition, demonstration, confutation, and to cover the whole field of knowledge and to supersede the inadequate methods of previous' schoolmen." Having completed his "Ars Major," and drawn at- tention to it by lecturing on it in public, he persuaded his king, James II., to found and endow a monastery in Majorca in wliich Franciscan monks should be taught the Arabic tongue, trained for disputation with Moslems, and acquainted with geography. He sought "to gain over the shepherds of the Church and the princes' of Europe" to the cause of missions ; he visited repeatedly Rome and Paris, in the hope of having similar missionary colleges founded. He plead in all quarters that monks of "holy lives and great wisdom should form institutions in order to learn various languages and be able to preach to un- * Quoted by Samuel Zwemer, Raymund Lull, pp. 52, 53. Raymund Lull 103 believers." From a council at Vienna, in 131 1, he at length secured a decree that professorships of the orien- tal languages should be established in the universities of Paris', Oxford, and Salamanca and in all cities where the Papal court should reside." t Meantime, he had tried to influence Christian men to go as missionaries by himself going on missionary tours. The very year in v^hich Acre fell into the hands of the Mamelukes, he set out to experiment whether he himself could not persuade some of them by conference with their wise men and by manifesting to them, according to the "divinely given method," the incarnation of the Son of God and the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in the Divine unity of essence." His efforts in Tunis in 1292 were not fruitless, though he was finally driven out of the country. Later he visited Cyprus' and Asiatic Turkey. Again he visited Africa, suffered imprisonment but was spared his life owing to the honor with which he inspired the Moslems by his magnificent courage. A third time he returned to Africa, this time to sacrifice his life in the effort to win the Moslems. Of Raymund Lull, Dr. George Smith well says: "No Church, Papal or Reformed, has produced a missionary so original in plan, so ardent and persevering in execu- tion, so varied in gifts, so inspired by the love of Christ, as the saint of seventy-nine, whom Mohammedans stoned to death on the 30th June, 13 15. In an age of violence and faithlessness he was the apostle of heavenly love." * VII. The numbers won in this long period were considerable. The thirty-five millions of 590 became t Samuel M. Zwemer, Raymund Lull, p. 78. * George Smith. Short History of Christian Missions, p. 108. 104 Introduction to Christian Missions one hundred millions. The rate of growth during the period, however, was small as compared with the Church between lOO and 311. Had the Church grown between 590 and 1 5 17 as it grew between 100 and 311, it would have numbered over three billions of people, that is, it would have overtaken the population of the globe and made the whole world Christian long before 1517. The rate of growth in this long period was only about one- thirtieth as rapid as in the post-apostolic age. Not only so ; there were perhaps amongst the nominal Christians of 1 5 17 few more genuine Christians than were in the smaller body of Christians of 311. The prevalent type of Christianity on the eve of the Reformation was so formal, so legalistic, so sacramental, and so vitiated in other respects as to hinder the free working of that por- tion of God's truth which it carried. The growth of the real Church was much less than it seemed. It is to be remembered, indeed, that such had been the destruction of civilization and of the arts by the bar- barian influx, such the confusion wrought by the Moham- medan conquests and such the disturbed state of society throughout the Middle Ages, when every one was doing that which was right in his own eyes, that one could not reasonably expect such growth in this long period as took place in the ante-Nicene and post-apostolic ages. But from the aims of the missionaries, the instrumentalities they employed, and the methods in vogue, and the whole manner of working, little better results could have been expected. VIII. Much territory was lost by the Christians in this age. The Mohammedans overran Arabia, and Syria, and Egypt, and North Africa, and Spain, and equally huge territories in the East. In many quarters they al- MediaevxVL Catholic Missions 105 most annihilated Christianity. Everywhere they reduced it fearfully. But in Europe large gains of territory were made for Christianity. Germany, save in its northeast- ern part, became Christian as early as the beginning of the ninth century. By 1050 Denmark became pretty thor- oughly Christian. Sweden and Norway followed; and afterward Greenland and Iceland were affected by Chris- tian teaching. In the latter part of the ninth century Bulgaria was added to Christian territory. Towards the end of the tenth century Russia received wholesale bap- tism ; and towards the close of the period the re-conquest of the portion of Spain long held by Islamites extended Christian territory in that quarter. Europe was nomi- nally Christian in 15 17. IX. Before leaving the mediaeval missionary work. which, as a whole, falls so far short of the apostolic standard in so many respects, let us remark the intense devotion and zeal of many of the missionaries. There can be no denial of the sincere and thorough-going con- secration to the building-up of the Church of most of them; nor of the devotion to the Church of not a few of them. In this respect they are an example and inspir- ation to the Church of our day. Let us remark, also, that we should be very grateful to God for them. What would have become of northern Europe and of North America had not God awakened this missionary zeal? How much of all that is rightly prized in the modern civilizations of these peoples, could never have been theirs down to this day, had these men not thus wrought for them ! LECTURE VI. Erasmus's Missionary Ideals; Roman Catholic Missions, 15 17 to the Present. A noble missionary ideal Avas entertained by Eras- mus amongst the representatives of the Roman Catho- lic Church in the early years of the Reformation Era. Erasmus was born about 1467, at Rotterdam. It is his glory to have given to his age the New Testament in the original Greek, with a Latin translation of his own which became the basis of Luther's matchless German version. He set a true missionary value on God's word. He longed that "the weakest woman should read the Gospel — read the Epistles of Paul;" he wished "that they were translated into all languages so that they might be read and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Sara- cens." He desired "that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he followed the plow, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle ; that the traveler should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey." In writings from various epochs of his life he is found expressing the desire for a universal knowledge of the sacred Scrip- tures. He is found going out toward the Turks in a way that reminds one of Raymund Lull. He writes: "The most effective way of conquering the Turks would be, if they were to see the spirit and teaching of Christ expressed in our lives; if they perceived that we were not aiming at empire over them, thirsting Erasmus's Missioxarv Ideals 107 for their gold, coveting their possessions, or desiring anything whatsoever, save their salvation and the glory of Christ." In the year before his death he gave to the world his "Ecclesiastes, or a Treatise on the Manner of Preach- ing," in four books. In the first book, he treats of the dignity, responsibility, piety, purity, prudence and other virtues of the preacher. Parts of it "read like a modern missionary address." After pointing to the illustrious examples of Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, who though burdened with the care of all the Churches, and weakened by sickness and disease, gave themselves to continual preaching and sent forth missionaries to distant regions, he writes with warmth : "We daily hear men deploring the decay of the Christian religion, who say that the Gospel message which once extended over the whole earth is now con- fined to the narrow limits of this land. Let those, then, to whom this is an unfeigned cause of grief, beseech Christ earnestly and continuously to send laborers into His harvest, or, more correctly, sowers to scatter His seed. Everlasting God ! how much ground there is' in the world where the seed of the Gospel has never yet been sown, or where there is a greater crop of tares than of wheat! Europe is the smallest quarter of the globe; Greece and Asia Minor the most fertile. Into these countries the Gospel was first introduced from Judea with great success. But are they not now wholly in the hands of the Mohammedans and men who do not know the name of Christ? What, I ask, do we now possess in Asia which is the largest continent when Palestine herself, whence first shone the Gospel io8 Introduction to Christian Missions light, is ruled by heathens ? In Africa, what have we ? There are surely in these vast tracts barbarous and simple tribes who could easily be attracted to Christ if we sent men among them to sow the good seed. Re- gions hitherto unknown are being daily discovered, and more there are, as we are told, into which the Gospel has never yet been carried. I do not at present allude to the millions of Jews who live among us, nor to the very many Gentiles who are attached to Christ merely in name, nor do I refer to the schismatics and heretics which abound. Oh, how these would turn to Christ if noble and faithful workers were sent among them, who would sow good seed, remove tares, plant righteous trees, and root out those wdiich are corrupt; who would build up God's house, and destroy all structures which do not stand on the Rock of Ages; who would reap the ripe fruit for Christ and not for themselves, and gather souls for their Master, and not riches for their own use. The King of Ethiopia, commonly known as the land of Prester John, lately submitted himself to the Roman See ; and he held no small controversy with the Pope, because the Ethiopians, although not alien from faith in Christ, had been so long neglected by the Shepherds of the world. And some good men, who are anxious to extend religious knowledge, com- plain that the Pilapians, who lived north of Scythia, and are wonderfully simple and uncultured, are en- slaved by some Christian princes ; but so hard pressed are they by the heavy yoke of man that they cannot take upon them the easy yoke of Christ. The wealth of others, moreover, has so spoiled them that the riches of the Gospel avail them nothing. But is it not well- pleasing and right in the sight of God, to enrich rather Erasmus's Missionary Ideals 109 than to spoil those whom we strive to win for Christ, and so to initiate them into our faith that they may rejoice to have become subservient to those under whose sway they Hve more righteously than they were hitherto accustomed to do? We have known wild and horrible beasts to have been trained either for pleasure or for ordinary labor ; but have we known men to have been so humanized as to serve Christ? Kings keep in their employment men whose duty it is to teach elephants to leap, lions to sport, and lynxes and leopards to hunt ; but has the King of the Church ever found men ready to call their fellows to the ser- vice of his dear Son? I know there is no beast to tame so difficult as the stubborn and hard-hearted Jew; but nevertheless even he can be brought into subjec- tion by kindness and love. But now I speak of nations who stray as sheep without a shepherd, because they have never had any Christian teaching. So true is this, that if we can credit the account of travellers who visit these regions the Christian princes themselves who rule them prevent any missionary of the Gospel from visiting their dominions, lest, gaining wisdom, their subjects should throw ofif the grievous yoke under which they labor. For these tyrants would rather rule brutes than men. "And what shall I say of those who sail around un- knovv-n shores, and plunder and lay waste whole states, without provocation? What name is given to such deeds? They are called victories. Even the heathen would not praise a victory over men against whom no war had been declared. But they say, the Turks de- light in such victories. This then is an excuse for razing cities to the ground ! I do not know whether no Introduction to Christian Missions the advancement of the Christian faith would ex- cuse the demohtion of a city by a Turk. There is the greatest difference between robbery and Chris- tian warfare, between preaching the kingdom of faith and setting up tyrants with their interests in this world, between seeking the safety of souls and pursuing the spoil of Mammon. Travellers bring home from distant lands gold and gems ; but it is worthier to carry hence the wisdom of Christ, more precious than gold, and the pearl of the Gospel, which would put to shame all earthly riches. We give too much attention to the things which debase our souls. Christ orders us to pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers, because the harvest is plenteous and the laborers are few. Must we not then pray God to thrust forth lab- orers into such vast tracts? But all offer various ex- cuses. Moreover there are thousands of the Francis- cans who believe in Christ, and a large number of them in all probability burn with Seraphic fire. And the Dominicans also abound in equal numbers, and it is admitted that very many of them have in them the Spirit of Cherubim. From among them let men be chosen who are indeed dead to the world and alive to Christ, to teach the word of God in truth to the heathen. Some excuse themselves on the ground that they are ignorant of foreign language. Shall princes have no difficulty in finding men who, for the purpose of human diplomacy, are well acquainted with various tongues? Even Themistocles the Athenian in one year so mastered Persian that he could dispense with an interpreter in his intercourse with the king. And shall we not suffer the same zeal in so noble an enterprise? "Moreover, food and clothing were not wanting to Erasmus's Missionary Ideals hi the apostles among the savage and distant peoples visited. God also has promised to supply all the needs of those who further his kingdom. But if missionaries labor among a people so ungrateful as to deny them bread, water, or shelter, let them follow the shining- example of Paul, that strong pillar of the Church, who worked with his own hands that he might be indepen- dent of all. He indeed stitched together goat skins for those believers to whom he gave the Holy Spirit and consecrated the body and blood of the Lord. Neither will miracles be denied, if circumstances de- mand them, only believe with holy love. Or at least a mind free from earthly lusts, a life of unbroken sobriety, a zeal to serve all men, long-suffering. patience, becoming modesty, and an humble demeanor, will avail instead of miracles. For even the apostles did not everywhere work miracles, but they owed their success in preaching the Gospel rather to those attri- butes which I have mentioned. For miracles which show the Spirit of God working in men, are ascribed by many to magic. "I have not dealt with the last excuse, that is, the risk of death. Indeed since man can die but once, what can be more glorious and blessed than to die for the Gospel. Travellers go to the utmost part of the earth to see Jerusalem, and in so doing expose their lives to danger. Nor do all such return in safety from their journey. Yet crowds of men go every year to Jerusa- lem to see all sorts of places, and give no excuse for the risk they run of being killed. To see the ruins of Jerusalem ! What, I ask, is great in that? But what a great achievement it is to build a spiritual Jerusa- lem in the soul ! How many soldiers there are who 112 Introduction to Christian Missions fearlessly rush into battle, counting their lives vile in comparison with human praise. And yet does the Lord of all, v^ho has promised as a reward, a crown of glory, find soldiers endued with a like mind? How much better it is to die as Paul did, than to be wasted by consumption, to be tortured for many years by gout, to be racked by paralysis, or to suffer a thou- sand deaths by the disease of the stone? Let us re- member also that death will not come before the time God has appointed. Death is not to be feared under the protection of Christ, who will not suffer a hair to fall to the ground without the will of the Father. Lastly, how does it happen that those who are called to the apostleship are deterred from their duties by the love of life? It is the first duty of an apostle to spend his life for the Gospel. Why, what account of life was taken by Crates the Theban, Socrates the Athenian, Diogenes of Sinope, and all those other philosophers who never knew Christ nor the apostles? "Bestir yourselves then, ye heroic and illustrious leaders of the army of Christ ; put on the helmet of sal- vation, the breast-plate of righteousness ; take to your- selves the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit, Avhich is the word of God ; have your loins girt with humility, your feet shod with holy affections ; in a word be clothed with the whole mystic armor for preaching the Gospel of peace. Address yourselves with fearless minds to such a glorious work. Over- turn, quench, destroy, not men, but ignorance, godless- ness and other sins. For to kill thus is only to pre- serve. Do not, however, make earthly gain the object of your labors, but strive to enrich the heathen with spiritual treasures. Count it great gain if you save Erasmus's Missionary Ideals 113 for the Redeemer souls snatched from the tyranny, and lead thousands in triumph to Him in heaven. It is hard work I call you to, but it is the noblest and highest of all. Would that God had accounted me worthy to die in such a holy work, rather than to be consumed by the slow death in the tortures I endure ! Yet no one is fit to preach the Gospel to the heathen who has not made his mind superior to riches or pleasure, aye, even to life and death itself. The cross is never wanting to those who preach the word of the Lord in truth. To-day even, there are kings, not unlike Herod, who mock at Christ and His doctrine. There are men like Annas and Caiaphas, there are Scribes and Pharisees who would rather see heaven fall than allow any part of their power, or authority to decline. There are craftsmen who rage as Deme- trius did of old at Ephesus against the apostles who endangered his trade by their preaching. There are still Jews, who appearing to be friends of Christ, would sell Him, and give His body to whosoever desired it. There are still crowds who cry with vindictive hate. Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"* This noble ideal, set forth by the Prince of the Humanists, can hardly have failed to bring forth some fruit in the lives of individual representatives of the Romish branch of Christendom to which he continued to cling. The ideals of mission work of the Roman Catholic Church at large, however, seem to have been little affected by it. There was no practical effort to put it into reality. This will appear in the review * Copied from George Smith's "Short History of Christian Missions", pp. 115-118. 114 Introduction to Christian Missions of Roman Catholic Missions, 1517 to 1908, now to be given. I. The theoretical grasp of Christianity held by the Roman Catholic Church has remained -fixed, for the most part, throughout this long period. The Council of Trent, meeting in the middle of the sixteenth century, gave fixedness to the faith. The additions to the creed of the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, in 1854, and the dogma of Papal infalli- bility and absolutism, in 1870, were, though import- ant, not radical additions ; and for the purposes of this review may be ignored. Besides, these doctrines were, from the reformation, practically a part of the creed of a large portion of the Romish body. In general the theory of Christianity obtaining in this modern era is essentially that which prevailed commonly in the Mediaeval era. The influence of the Protestant movement may be clearly seen, it is true, in the Trent creed ; and not only in the numerous anathemas which is called forth ; but in the modifica- tion of many doctrinal statements in a faintly Protes- tant direction. Protestant teaching had impressed the thought of the Papal Church to such a degree that partial, if slight concessions, to Protestant thought find expression in the decrees of Trent. Nevertheless, the theory of Christianity embodied in the creed is thoroughly legalistic, sacramental and priestly. Human works are given a large place in the outworking of redemption. Immense value is put upon the sacra- ments. Salvation begins with and is carried on and completed by them. The theory of their ex opere operate efficiency is maintained. The dogma of the special priest- Modern Romish Missions 115 hood finds the most definite and assured expression. If the universal priesthood be conceded formally, the concession amounts to nothing. He who is not of the priesthood has no immediate access to God. He can- not read God's words except under restrictions de- termined by the hierarchy. In some cases these re- strictions amount to prohibition entire and complete; in some cases they open the way to very important ethical and devotional parts of the Scriptures, shutting off from those portions more immediately concerned with the great doctrines of grace ; and in cases where certain are permitted to have a specified version of the Scriptures, they are not allowed to put any other interpretation on any essential part of the Scriptures than the interpretation which the priesthood puts. So everywhere the special priest is held to be a necessary mediator between God and man. The "layman" is a passive member of the Church. He must be carried by the priesthood. The Scriptural doctrines of a free access to the word of God, a free but reverent inter- pretation of it, a free and immediate access to the throne of grace, and of gratuitous justification, on the sinner's exercise of faith, were put under the ana- thema. With such a view of Christianity it was not to be expected that the Church as such, including the rank and file, should be missionary in spirit and conduct; nor that the aim, methods, means, or achievements of such orders and individuals as should engage in mission work shall appear generally commendable from a Bibli- cal point of view. II. The aim of these workers continued to be, to bring ii6 Introduction to Christian Missions men under the manipulation of priestly hands — un- der the power of the sacraments, and priestly inter- cession and under some little priestly tuition. Few of the missionaries were concerned to teach the men they nominally discipled more than a mere superfi- cial knowledge of the Decalogue, the Lord's prayer, and the apostles' creed. Few of them were concerned to discover in those whom they received into the Church the marks of a genuine follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic priest of to-day holds that pro- vided the candidate is not in "mortal sin" un- repented of, and does not oppose a bar in the shape of a volition of his own will not to receive good from the sacrament, he can by baptism regenerate him. He holds that by an indissoluble bond the spiritual graces symbolized in the sacraments are tied to the visible material elements ; and that he can do the thing sym- bolized. Such an one naturally seeks above all things to get men under his magical hands. in. It must be said that little respect has been paid by the Roman Church to the principles set forth in the Nczv Testament for the regulation of missionary endeavor. Naturally they turn to other sources for their principles ; since the New Testament looks not to get- ting men under the hands of intermediaries between God and them ; but to bringing them through an in- telligent faith into the adoption of sons, God Himself graciously working in them the power of that faith. The distinctive principles of modern Roman Catholic missions are largely referable to men's devising. They do not try to bear witness in any one period where their witness-bearing will result in the greatest effi- Modern Romish Missions 117 cient additional army of witness-bearers. Every mis- sion move has been directed toward the upbuilding of the power of the Church of Trent, the upbuilding of the power of the hierarchy and the Pope — an hier- archy undoubtedly most corrupt when considered as a whole. In this work the Church has shown much human strategy and tactics, for the most part as un- spiritual as that shown in the histories of secular powers. In short paganization and secularization had run to such lengths in the Romish Church before the time of the Council of Trent, that the principles which governed her missionary operations had become almost secular. They were about such as any secular power, with equal wisdom at its command, and with a natural religion which it was interested to spread, might have endeavored to apply. IV. The Instruments used in the effort at the propa- gation of the Church, have continued to be the Scrip- tures as interpreted by the Church, Church tradition to which the Scriptures have been made to bend, bribery, pious fraud, force political, diplomatic, or military, further paganization of the worship and life of Christianity and so forth, as occasions presented the opportunity and the temptation. A glaring but by no means lonely example of effort at wholesale bribery was given by Louis XIV., in his effort to convert the Huguenots. He and the Roman Catholic Church in France applied every form of political and military force also in the effort to convert the Huguenots, The history of every country of Western Europe, the his- tory of many sections in North and South America, the history of Japan, the history of Madagascar and of ii8 Introduction to Christian Missions India, etc., tell of similar instances of the use of secu- lar force to forward the progress of the Church.* Pious fraud and further paganization of Chris- tian worship and life have been resorted to wherever they promised to aid in getting control of a people, or a class, or individuals. The Jesuits have been most remarkable for their use of pious fraud and accommo- dation. Some extreme instances may be referred to with propriety in this connection. About 1606 Robert de Nobili, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine and the grand-nephew of Pope Marcellus II., "began in South India that system of conversion based upon a lie, which lasted for a century and a half before it ended in the collapse of the mission and the suppression of the order." He and many distinguished associates de- liberately professed to be Brahmans, made solemn oaths that they had sprung from Brahma. They lived as Brahminical penitents, clad in orange- colored dress, and sitting on a tiger skin; and joining in worship at once impious and in- decent. All this was to conceal their foreign origin, the knowledge of which they thought would be fatal to success ; and to enable them to do their priestly work on Brahmans who had no thought of abandoning their hereditary faith for Christianity. While this base and hypocritical course stank not only in the nostrils of Prostentants but also in those of multitudes of * "The doctrine promulgated by Benedict XIV., and re- affirmed by Pius VI. in 1791 is held in the Catholic Church: that the heathen are not to be forced into obedience to the Church, but that Protestants who have received baptism are so to be forced;" but. in practice, the Roman Catholics have not always been so liberal; and the principle itself allows the use of certain forms of force against the heathen. Modern Romish Missions 119 Roman Catholics, it was not, in generic character, other than could be duplicated on most Romish missionary fields. As early as 1579, Ricci had entered China. He lived a cunning life, allowed the worship of ancestors and of Confucius to be carried on along with the worship of Mary, that he might enjoy the favor of the Emperor and the government. He pretended to be a Buddhist priest. If this again is an extreme case, it is generically typical; accommodation, dissimulation, and indirection were characteristic of other orders than Jesuits. In Manilla, where the monks of the Augus- tinian, Franciscan and Dominican orders controlled the people ecclesiastically and politically during the Spanish occupancy of the island, "the Roman Catholic ritual became mingled in the most extraordinary man- ner with ceremonies borrowed from Paganism." V. The Methods employed have been, for the most part, those which the Church brought over with it out of the Mediaeval era. The missionaries have made use of a method analo- gous to the evangelistic. They have done considerable preaching of their partial and vitiated evangel. The method of Xavier may be taken as a worthy example of this species of work. His method, as pursued at Travancore in India, is thus described by himself: "As soon as I arrived in any heathen village where they sent me to give baptism, I gave orders for all — men, women, and children — to be collected in one place. Then, beginning with the first elements of the Chris- tian faith, I taught them there is one God — I made them each make three times' the sign of the cross ; then, putting on a surplice, I began to recite in a loud voice and in their own language, the form of general con- 120 Introduction to Christian Missions fession, the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the Salve Regina. Two years ago I translated all these prayers into the language of the country, and learned them by heart. I recited them so that all, of every age and condition, followed me in them. Then I began to explain shortly the Articles of the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in the language of the country. When the people ap- peared to me sufficiently instructed to receive bap- tism, I ordered them all to ask God's pardon publicly for the sins of their past life, and to do this with a loud voice and in the presence of their neighbors, still hostile to the Christian religion, in order to touch the hearts of the heathen and confirm the faith of the good. All the heathen are filled with admiration at the holiness of the law of God, and express the greatest shame at having lived so long in ignorance of the true God. They willingly hear about the mysteries and rules of the Christian religion, and treat me, poor sin- ner as I am, with the greatest respect. Many, how- ever, put away from them with hardness of heart the truth which they well know. When I have done my instruction, I ask one by one, all those who desire baptism if they believe without hesitation in each of the articles of faith. All immediately, holding their arms in the form of the cross, declare with one voice that they believe all entirely. Then at last I baptise them in due form, and give to each his name written on a ticket. After their baptism the new Christians go back to their houses and bring out their wives and families for baptism. When all are baptized I order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken in pieces. I can give you Modern Romish Missions 121 no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done, witnessing the destruction of the idols by the very people who lately adored them. In all the towns and villages I leave the Christian doctrine in writing in the language of the country, and I prescribe at the same time the manner in which it is to be taught in the morning and evening schools. When I have done all this in one place, I pass to another, and so on successively to the rest. In this way I go all around the country, bringing the natives into the fold of Jesus Christ and the joy that I feel in this is far too great to be expressed in a letter." Xavier labored with intense zeal, endeavoring to "evangelize" many countries. Superficially as his work was done, his teaching was probably not less effective in any one locality than that of the average propagator of the Roman Catholic Church. He was less inclined to paganize further the Gospel he carried than vast numbers of his fellow workers showed themselves to be. The Roman Catholic missionaries of this period have used medicine largely as an aid in mission work. We owe to them the use of cinchona which has made mission work possible in fever-stricken lands ; and ipecac, and many other remedies. Apart from such discoveries they carried with them into many coun- tries a larger, if crude, knowledge of medicine and sur- gery than obtained amongst these peoples ; and made it a means of winning favor and introducing the faith. Sham miracles were also wrought, hypocondriacs were made to think themselves cured by unscrupulous propa- gandists. Miracle working relics and shrines were in- vented. In cases not infrequent a vast hold was gained 122 Introduction to Christian Missions over credulous peoples by this counterfeit of the medi- cal method. The Literary method has been applied after a sort. Not being- much given to teaching, the Roman Catho- lic Church cannot be expected, on a purely foreign mis- sion field, to pursue the literary method save in a halt- ing and restricted way. Given to the invention of tales of saints and relics, it has made the literary arm sub- servient to the unworthy end of saint worship. The Educational method has found a limited applica- tion. Throughout a great portion of the period little attention was paid by the Romish missionaries to edu- cation. The Jesuits indeed, in their efforts to re-extend Romanism over portions of the German Empire, did make an effective use of the educational method. They got a hold of the youth of the middle and higher classes ; educated them for important civil positions, and at the same time turned them into biggoted and wiley disciples of their own order. It is not apparent that the general education of the people was desired by the Jesuits. They were the stoutest henchmen of the Papacy; and the Papacy can maintain its pretensions better amongst the ignorant and the learned sophists. Honest, open-minded, intelligent, but unsophisticated men, stumble at its doctrines. Little of an educative character was attempted by the Jesuits in the African, Asiatic, or American missions, prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hence conditions were not created favorable to the production of a strong Chris- tian character ; and when, two hundred and fifty years later Protestant missionaries entered the Asiatic field, "they found themselves without the slightest basis for Modern Romish Missions 123 work in the form of existing versions of the Scriptures." Within the last hundred years Papists have made con- siderable improvement, but for the most part only where driven by outside influence, as in the United States of America, in order to maintain their hold on the minds of the youth, or to derive advantage of support by some civil power, and prevent the making of anti-Romish impressions. An industrial method has found frequent applica- tion. For example, in California, the plan was pur- sued of gathering the natives into communities where their industrial as well as religious training was in the hands of the missionaries. There were no less than twenty-three such communities formed as early as 1823 within the bounds of California. Similar communi- ties were formed in other quarters. The reductions in Paraguay, under Jesuit auspices, were conspicuous examples of this method. These were the chief of the methods used by Rome in wielding her much be-clouded and changed evangel. In the use of her weapons of force, bribery, accommo- dation of the Christianity she carried, she has not been very scrupulous as to method. Now and then she has been pricked in conscience by the extremes to which certain of her representatives have gone in accommoaa- tion as has appeared already. VI. The missionaries were not of course mere pri- vate members of the Church, such members having little instrumentality in the spread of the Church, ac- cording to the thought of the Romish communion. The Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, have been fore- most in providing the missionaries. They were all missionary orders. Amongst these, the Jesuits have 124 Introduction to Christian Missions been most marked for ardor, zeal, and success ; and, Xavier, whose methods of work have been presented, occupies the rank of the most distinguished Roman CathoHc missionary of the modern era. Born in the kingdom of Navarre in 1506, he came in his youth and young manhood, very fully under the influence of Protestant doctrines, which were blessed of God to make him saintly in experience, aim and life. Having been saved, as he wrote, by Ignatius Loyola, from "the deplorable dangers arising from my fami- liarity with men breathing out heresy," he adopted the Romish theory of sacramental salvation. Hence, as has been seen, he thought it the important thing to baptize men and secure from them the recital of the creed and a few prayers. He commenced the foreign missionary work of the order, gave it an impulse "which was caught up by numerous successors, until the record of the sixteenth century, so far at least as the extension of the Church went, is one of the most won- derful in history." Receiving the appointment of apostolic nuncio for India, in 1542, he began his work in the Christian settlements about Goa, and extended it to the heathen along the coast both East and West. He exerted a marvelous influence wherever he went, won converts by the thousands. He worked for three years in South India, for the most part among the lower castes; thence passed to the Chinese Archipe- lago, Malacca, the Molucas, and other islands. In 1549 he went to Japan, labored there for two years with great success. He was about to enter China when his earthly career was cut oflf, December 2, 1552. Fel- low Jesuits carried on the work which he had inau- gurated in these several countries : and effected an en- Modern Romish Missions 125 trance into China. The vicious customs into which they descended, particularly in India and China, have been referred to. Amongst the most prominent Dominican mission- aries of the period was Bartholomew de Las Casas, who went to St. Domingo as a missionary to the In- dians in 1535; was made bishop of Chiapa, Mexico, in 1544; and spent his life in preaching to the Ameri- can Aborigines and in defending them against the cruelty of their conquerors. To rescue the Indians from the slavery to which their conquerors were re- ducing them, he sanctioned the scheme of supplying their places in the mines and pearl fisheries with negroes imported from Africa. He did this that his converts might be spared and because the Africans could better endure these labors. He afterwards, how- ever, regarded his course as a mistake and deplored it as unjust to the Africans. He died in 1566. The Franciscans were very active in missionary en- deavor; but produced no leaders of equal eminence with Las Casas, the Dominican, or Xavier, the Jesuit. During the sixteenth century these orders indulged in mutual jealousies and antagonism. Hence the need of some common controlling power to direct the various missionary hosts and to prevent friction, be- came apparent. After some experimentation the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith was established. This "congregation" was founded by the first Jesuit pupil who became Pope — founded June 21, 1622. It consists of cardinals, prelates, consultors and secre- taries, all appointed by the Pope ; and has vast preroga- tives. It was designed to propagate and maintain the 126 Introduction to Christian Missions Gospel in all parts of the 'world. It has long been a richly endowed institution. In 1627, Urban VIII., added to it, the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, founded by a wealthy Spanish noble, the two forming the richest and best equipped missionary institution in the world. It has grown richer with the passing years. It has affiliated with it seminaries and agencies for rais- ing money in every part of the Roman Catholic world. It overlooks the education and support of all mission- aries and determines what orders shall work in the several fields. VII. The numbers won were considerable. The con- verts made by the Jesuits in India and Eastern Asia ran up into the hundreds of thousands. The Domini- cans had already gathered in thousands of converts on the West shore of Africa, The Franciscans, Domini- cans, Augustines and Jesuits made vast numbers of converts in Mexico, Central and South America; and considerable numbers in the territory now covered by the United States and the Dominion of Canada. But, partly owing to the indifferent character of the races, and partly owing to insufficient instruction carried by this Church which makes so much of sacraments and priestly mediation, these converts have not developed strong self-propagating Churches. Rome has suffered leakages too, so that notwithstanding her missionary work the entire Roman Catholic population of the globe to-day amounts only to about 231,000,000. This may appear to some a considerable gain in view of the Protestant exedous at the Reformation and in view of the fact that much of the mission effort has been amongst peoples difficult to impress on the one hand and unstable on the other. But the rate of Modern Romish Missions 127 gain has been very slow, if compared with that in the apostoHc and ante-Nicene ages; for Rome controlled not less' than 100,000,000 men, women and children in the opening of the sixteenth century. To have in- creased by only 130 per cent, of itself in these four hundred years, argues a very small yearly growth, an average yearly growth of less than 1-3 of i per cent, of the number with which this Church entered the sixteenth century. Such a rate of growth argues no providential approval of the substitution of Mediaeval principles of Church propagation for those set forth in New Testament. VIII. The territories overrun in the imperfect man- ner heretofore described, include all the more habitable portions of North and South America, large portions ot Africa, of Eastern and Northeastern Asia, and large portions of European Protestant territories. The Romish Church now numbers amongst its members people of almost all races, nations and tribes. It is huge in territory loosely occupied. It outranks in point of numbers every other Christian sect, counting as it does all whom it baptizes as members. LECTURE VII. The Attitude of the Protestant and Reformed Churches toward Missions, 1517-1781. In the treatment of this subject it has been found convenient to divide the period at the year 1648; and to treat of the sub-divisions, 1517 to 1648 and 1648 to 1781, in order. I. Accordingly, we take up, first, the relation of the Protestant and Reformed Churches to missions, 15 17 to 1648. The great reformers, Luther and Calvin and their co- laborers carried their followers back so far toward the theory of Christianity which prevailed in the New Testa- ment age that were able to disapprove of false aims, instruments and methods employed by the Church of Rome in its missionary endeavor ; and so far that when their theory, by unessential but important modifications, in a subsequent period, had been conformed still more closely to the New Testament view, it was followed by a missionary period in character closely resembling in all fundamental respects the apostolic missionary period. In annihilating the doctrines of salvation by work, the special priesthood, the efficiency of the sacraments ex opere opcrato ; and in establishing the doctrine of jus- tification by faith, the doctrine of the universal spiritual priesthood of all believers, the doctrine that the reception of good from the sacraments was dependent on their re- ception by a true faith, and in making the Scriptures to be the sole source of authority in religion, the reformers Protestant and Reformed Churches 129 were conditioning a grasp of the true aim of missions, and were doing much to insure, when the teachings of Scripture about the Church should be more fully compre- hended, the recognition of the duty of the Church to be missionary. They were also doing much to lead the Church back to the God-given principles, instruments, and methods of missions. But these heroes of the faith fumbled in their attempts to set forth adequately the Scriptural doctrines concerning the Church, particularly in regard to its rightful independence of the state, and in regard to the relation in which it stood to the great commission, given by our Lord to the Church as repre- sented by the Apostles, to make disciples' of all nations ; they erred also in their theory of Christian eschatology. And, notwithstanding the immensely more Biblical theory of Christianity introduced by the Reformers into the spheres of their influence, their imperfect doctrine of the Church and their imperfect doctrine of last things,* as will appear, rendered them non-missionary save as against Romanism, for a hundred years after the Reform- ation, and has exerted a crippling influence on them down to this day. The Reformation fell in the most magnificent age of discovery, when a vast number of peoples were brought to a knowledge of the European Christians. The Roman Catholic Church by these discoveries was excited to un- wonted missionary efforts. The Protestants not only made little foreign mission effort, during the entire Reformation period, 15 17 to 1648, they showed little sense of an obligation on the Christian Church to do so, the way being opened. Their making little effort to give * This is more particularly true of Luther. 130 • Introduction to Christian Missions the heathen the Gospel has been explained, "and must be excused," in part, by the consideration that immediate intercourse with the heathen nations was not had by the Protestants during this period, save in the case of the Dutch and English as the period wore toward its close. At the beginning of the Reformation, the Spaniards and Portuguese had the control of the seas and were taking possession of the newly-discovered islands and contin- ents. No way was' then open to the Protestants ^nto the newly-discovered lands. Had they been desirous of sending missionaries in to those regions, they would not have been permitted to do so. Their making little effort to give the heathen the Gospel has been further explained and excused by the consideration that "the battle against heathenism within the old Christendom, the struggle for their own existence against Papal and worldly power, and the necessity of self-consolidation, summoned them primarily to a work of consolidation at home which claimed all the energy of young Protestantism." They, it must be allowed, had their hands full in the effort to maintain and spread the evangel amongst European peoples, in the face of the combined and aggressive opposition of the Papacy and the empire. The leading reformers not only did not attempt mis- sionary movements, they failed to apprehend the abiding missionary obligation of the Church as set forth in the Scriptures. Luther held that the obligation to universal missions rested on the Apostles alone; that such work had been practically done long before his age ; that no one in his day lay under the burden of such work, but that "each bishop and pastor had his appointed diocese or parish." He held also "that the end of the world was at Protestant and Reformed Churches 131 hand, that the signs of the nearness of the last day were apparent, Antichrist in the Papacy, Gog and Magog in the Turks, so that no time remained for the further de- velopment and extension of the kingdom of God on earth." He considered the Turks to be the obdurate enemies in the last time by whom God visits Christendom for its sins. He looked upon the "heathen and Jews as having fallen under the dominion of the devil — and that, too, not without their own fault." Melancthon ex- pressed some of the same views in more dogmatic form. "It was the general view, shared by both Luther and Melancthon, that the whole course of this world was divided into three periods of 2,000 years, and that the third 2,000 years beginning from Christ would be short- ened, so that in the middle of the sixteenth century, some time in the year 1558, the last day would come." These views, and especially this eschatological position of these Lutheran reformers, "resting on their whole conception of history, when taken in connection with the fact that the heathen world of their time lay quite beyond their sphere of vision, clearly explain how we find in them no proper missionary ideas." In the case of Martin Bucer we find a recognition of the fact that the evangelization of the world had not been completed; and the view that God is looking after these heathen nations and will call and send other "apostles" to them ; but no perception of a duty resting on the Church to be missionary and to send out representatives to the heathen world. The views of Luther and Melancthon continued to influence their communion throughout their century and beyond. During the first half of the seventeenth century the 132 Introduction to Christian Missions disturbed political conditions of Germany, and especially the Thirty Years' War, were unfavorable to the prosecu- tion of missionary enterprise. Here again, however, we not only find no mission work, we find little sense of obli- gation to it. This was owing chiefly to the continued prevalence of the views of Luther and Melancthon on the subject. It was held that the missionary commission was given to the Apostles alone, and that they had pro- claimed the Gospel to the whole world; and the extra- ordinary functions of the Apostles were magnified and inferences drawn from this that the Church had "no call to missions to the heathen and no authority to impart such a call." Such views were set forth by Joh. Gerhard, the great dogmatic theologian of Jena, who died in 1637. He attempted to demonstrate historically the alleged uni- versal extension of Christianity in the past, to demon- strate from Scriptural teaching that the obligation to preach the Gospel to the whole world ceased with the Apostles ; and to refute as absurd all the pleas that might be adduced in favor of a continuous missionary obliga- tion upon the part of the Church. Such being the prevailing views, naturally there could be no general sense of obligations to missions in the Lutheran Communion. There were, indeed, men in the body, between 1600 and 1648, with more or less' light on the subject. An occasional leader, while not recog- nizing a duty as resting on the Church to send out mis- sionaries, yet laid upon such Christian rulers as possessed heathen territories the duty of Christianizing them. Other theologians admitted in principle the missionary duty of the Church, while deeming the times and oppor- tunities unsuitable to the practical discharge of it. Still others were found, here and there, who affirmed that Protestant and Reformed Churches 133 missions are of right the business of the Church. These men, for the most part, raised their voices to complain of "the lack of the missionary understanding; or to re- mind the civil authorities of their missionary duties ; but buch voices Avere very feeble, and as they wanted prac- tical point, they died away almost altogether unheard." It is not impossible that the one-sided and legal stress which orthodox Lutheranism was' at this time laying on the doctrines of grace, and its failure to emphasize the duty of serving God which is involved in the acceptance of divine grace, checked energetic Christian living and activities, — checked, amongst them, all tendencies toward a missionary ideal. However this may be, we shall see that the rise of this ideal is connected historically with a rise in godly living. During all this Reformation period the Lutheran Church was practically non-missionary so far as the heathen world was concerned. In 1559, Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, made an effort to incorporate into the evangelical Church the Lapps, who dwelt in the northern part of his kingdom. Since the twelfth century they had been nominally Catholic Christians ; but in reality they had remained heathen. Gustavus's attempt, unsuccessful because his missionaries were unsuited to the work, has been called missionary, but it was rather a reforming act of terri- torial Church authority. Calvin did not hold that the world had been evan- gelized through the Apostles. On the other hand, while holding that the apostolate was an extraordinary office and has not been perpetuated, he taught that the exten- sion of Christianity is still in progress. His grasp of Christianity was, so far, better than Luther's, but he did 134 Introduction to Christian Missions not teach that an obhgation rests upon the Church to carry the Gospel to all nations. He does not deny it even by implication, but neither does he teach it. He did, however, teach "that the Christian magistracy has the duty of introducing the true religion into a still unbe- lieving land," — a view which, as has appeared, was, at a later time, developed among the Lutherans. A promise of better things is seen in the text on the title page of the first printed and official edition of the Scottish Confession, presented by the committee of which John Knox was' a member, to the Parliament in 1560: "And this glad tidings of the kingdom shall be preached throughout the whole world for a witness to all nations ; and then shall the end come." The promise was re- peated in the prayer with which this confession closes : "Arise, O Lord, and let Thine enemies be confounded : let them flee before Thy presence that hate Thy godly name. Give Thy servants strength to speak Thy word in boldness; and let all nations' attain to Thy true knowledge." Adrian Savaria, born 1531, for a time Reformed pastor in Antwerp, from 1582 to 1587 preacher and pro- fessor in Leyden, a clergyman of the Church of England after 1587, when for political reasons he had removed thither, published a treatise in 1590, the purpose of which was to vindicate the Episcopal office in Church constitu- tion. He contended that the Episcopal office was needed for the maintenance and strengthening of existing Churches and for the planting of new ones. In this con- nection he found occasion to speak of missions'; and shows' that the Apostles themselves could only have car- ried out the missionary command in a very limited meas- ure; and that this command applied not merely to them Protestant and Reformed Churches 135 personally but to the whole Church which they repre- sented. But this correct view of the missionary com- mand produced no effect upon his Protestant contem- poraries ; in part, it may be supposed, because they were not in close touch with the heathen, and, in part, because his exposition of the command was coupled with a fight over Church polity. The theory as to the obligation of Christian civil governments to extend Christianity into their unbelieving territories found practical expression about 1555, when a number of Frenchmen of the Reformed creed went to Brazil to found a colony, which should also be an asylum of their persecuted brethren at home. The project was encouraged by Admiral Coligny. Calvin was appealed to for pious Christians and preachers, that they might exert a good influence upon the colonists and declare the Gospel to the heathen. Four preachers and a number of other persons' of the Reformed faith were sent out from Geneva. But the enterprise had been placed under the superintendence of the unprincipled Durand de Ville- gagnon. He had become Reformed at a moment when fortune seemed to be on the side of the Protestants. But upon the rise of Roman Catholicism to commanding and merciless dominance, he treated all the Protestants in the colony as traitors and banished them from the colony. The majority of them made their way back to France amidst the greatest hardships. On some who were un- willing to trust themselves to the leaking vessels on which these exiles must cross the ocean, Villegagnon did capital execution. One of the clergymen, Richier, a few weeks after arriving in Brazil, had written that "they had purposed to win the native heathen for Christ, but that their barbarism, their cannibalism, their spiritual 136 Introduction to Christian Missions dullness, etc., extinguished their hope." The enterprise, on its most favorable, sober interpretation, hardly amounted to more than a fruitless episode in the Re- formed movement as inspired by John Calvin. It was at bottom neither more nor less distinctly missionary than Calvin's theory of Church-State. Calvinists found scope for similar enterprises under more favorable conditions after the opening of the seven- teenth century. About this time the Dutch and British began to divide the dominion of the sea with Spain and Portugal, — began that career which was to make them the lords of wide-spreading domains ; and, in part, at the expense of these same Spaniards and Portuguese. The Dutch, having emancipated themselves from the Spanish yoke, drove the Portuguese from much of their East Indian possessions and in a few years founded a considerable colonial empire in the Moluccas, Ceylon, Formosa, and the great Malaysian islands'. The Dutch Church had a noble opportunity which it might have used had it not been for the theory as to the proper re- lation of Church and State which obtained and the prac- tical application of that theory, resulting in enervation of the Church. It regarded the work of missions as a duty resting on the colonial government. This was natu- ral, since it was regarded as' proper that the State should support the Church at home. Accordingly the East India Company, founded in 1602, was bound by its state charter to care for the planting of the Church and the conversion of the heathen in the newly won territory. This com- pany very early began missionary work, — ^before there had been any Dutch Protestant missionary literature. Its missionaries had to undertake both the spiritual care of the European colonial officials and the conversion and Protestant and Reformed Churches 137 training of the heathen. At first the missionaries were untrammeled, but in the course of time they were made too much a part of the pohtical machinery of government. At first its missionaries were devoted to mission work; but the Company developed a concern that their mission- aries should give less attention to this work. The Dutch Church urged upon the Company the importance and the duty of pressing the work; but it never occurred to it to push mission work in these territories out of its own funds; and the majority of its clergy showed little dis- position to missionary work. If laudable aims, prin- ciples, instruments and methods characterize this effort in its earlier stages, these were not sufficiently maintained as time went on. There came to be too little preaching in the native tongue, too little Bible translation, too little education of native helpers in school and Church. A sham-Christianization of the natives went on. "Use was made of all kinds of pressure," inducements of outward advantage, physical force, prohibition of heathen customs. Thousands were received into the Church, by baptism, without any considerable instruction. The evil virus of the union of Church and State kept the Dutch Church from a theoretical recognition of its own obligation to missions', and introduced into the mission work of the civil power maxims and practices and instrumentalities foreign to the true character of the Church. The Dutch West India Company attempted mission work in Brazil ; but the early resignation of a mission- ary governor and the short life of the colony rendered it of no importance. England's mastery of the sea began with the destruc- tion of the Spanish Armada. 1588. Political and reli- gious struggles between parties in the liome land hin- 138 Introduction to Christian Missions dered the rise of the missionary spirit for a time; but stimulated the founding of colonies in North America; and thus indirectly led to interesting endeavors in behalf of American Indians contiguous to the early British col- onies. The struggles occasioned the large Puritan emi- gration from 1620 on. The Pilgrim Fathers "adopted the conversion of the native heathen into their colonial programme." A quarter of a century elapsed, however, before the beginning of real missionary work among the Indians ; and meanwhile much blood had been shed ; though the Puritans had in the main dealt fairly with the Indians at the outset, their treacherous fears had been excited by occasional ill-treatment, "mainly at the hands of other settlers," and they fell to perpetrating great atrocities against the colonists, who, moved by a sense of their perilous situation and of the base char- acter of the savages, slaughtered them in great numbers. But alongside this conflict, a noble missionary work was in progress. John Eliot was born in 1604, of parents by whom, to use his own words, "his first years were seasoned with the fear of God, the word and prayer." He was educated with unusual thoroughness, particularly in the languages, at Cambridge. Having, in the course of time, decided to devote himself to the ministry, and being a non-conformist, he came to America to escape the tyranny of Laud. He had promised some of his brethren who thought of coming to America that if they came he would be their pastor. On his arrival, 163 1, he supplied for a time the Boston Church. In 1632, the brethren who had exacted the promise, came over and settled at Rox- bury. Mr. Eliot at once became their pastor and con- tinued in the relation sixty years. Soon after settling in Roxbury, he became deeply interested in the Indians, Protestant and Reformed Churches 139 and resolved to learn their language that he might preach to them. He soon became able to translate the ten com- mandments, the Lord's Prayer, some texts of Scripture, and a few prayers. He was able to begin his preaching visits to the Indian camps as early as October, 1646. He rapidly gained in influence amongst the Indians. Wish- ing to civilize as well as Christianize them, he gathered those who were disposed to follow him into a community on their old camping ground, about five miles from Bos- ton, and called the place Nonantum. He drew them with great tact and skill toward a civilized life. A civil ad- ministration was founded. The General Court of Massa- chusetts founded a court for them over which an English magistrate presided. Native religious workers were trained also. Several Sachems within a radius of sixty miles from Roxbury besought Eliot's services in rapid succession. He responded as he could to their calls amidst great hardships. In 1648, Christians in England were so stirred that "about seventy English and Scotch clergymen, mostly Presbyterians" united in a petition to the "Long Parliament," that something might be done for the "extension of the Gospel in America and the West Indies." This evoked from the Long Parliament a manifesto in favor of missions, which was to be read in all the Churches of the land, and which called for con- tributions to foreign missions. In the next year, 1649, the Parliament incorporated "The Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel in New England." This society sent Eliot fifty pounds per annum to supplement his salary. He had long desired to gather his converts at one place. With his desire they sympathized. Generous aid from England and the colonial government enabled him I40 Introduction to Christian Missions to carry out this desire in 1650. A site was chosen on the Charles River, eighteen miles from Boston, and a tract of 6,000 acres set apart and named Natick. With the exception of one tribe, all the praying Indians were gathered here. He now began to train native preachers and teachers. In 1660, he formed the converts into a Church. Meanwhile, converts in other quarters' had been won. As they could not be carried to Natick, no less than thirteen other towns of praying Indians were formed. In 1674, he had under his immediate care 1,100 converts. In King Philip 's War they suffered from both Indians and whites. In this great work he had been moved by ( i ) a desire to glorify God in the conversion of some of these poor souls; (2) love for them as blind and ignorant men; and (3) a sense of duty to fulfill the promise given in the royal charter of the colony. He had done his work largely in accordance with the Bible principles, and by the simple use of God's word, preached, lived and trans- lated into the Indian tongue. A most important part of his work was the translation of the Bible, which he was enabled to publish by the aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, the- New Testament, in 1661, and the Old Testament in 1663. He also translated and composed other works' of value in the interest of his converts. He set others to doing similar missionary work, — notably the Mayhews throughout four generations. Eliot's mission was closer to the apostolic ideal in motive, aim, principles, instruments and methods than any other mission of the period. It began a voluntary mission by a Puritan minister, who had been exiled by the State-Church of England; secured the sympathy of Dawn of Protestant Missions 141 Presbyterian and Independent Puritans in England, who appealed for personal contribution to support the work and organized a society to further the support. That is, it began in that part of the Reformed Church between which and the State the connection was weakest, and where the dependence for support on the State was least keenly felt. Naturally, we shall find, in the sequel, that Dissenters, because cut off from the State, came more easily and freely to the full sense of the missionary obli- gation ; and, other things being equal, took to heart more easily the apostolic missionary ideals.* II. The Dawn of Modern Missions, i 648-1 781. During the first half century of this period, in the Lutheran world it continued to be the prevailing view that world-wide missions were a privilege of the Apostles alone; and that in the different ages of the world since the time of Adam, God had been preached everywhere. Theologians attempted to prove these positions from Scripture. But it was held that it belonged to the civil powers, which in any way had come to have non-Chrfs- tians under their sway, to establish the true religion amongst them, build Churches and schools and appoint preachers, so that everywhere the true knowledge of God should be spread. This position was sometimes maintained by a reference to the example of the kings' of Israel. How long the theological leaders of Germany would have maintained this wall of prejudice no man can say ; but men were coming forward from the ranks of the laymen who should lay trains for its effectual under * The quotations in this chapter are for the most part from Warneck's History of Protestant Missions to which I acknowl- edge my great indebtedness. 142 Introduction to Christian Missions mining. The first to come forward was Baron Justinian von Weltz. He was actuated by two great desires : ( i ) One was for the upHft of the Christian life, (2) The other was for a practical manifestation of that life by an effort to extend the Gospel to the non-Christian world. He regarded genuine Christian life and effort to extend the Gospel universally as intimately related. In 1664 he published two pamphlets. The first of these bore the title, "A Christian and Loyal Exhortation to All Faithful Christians of the Augsburg Confession concerning a Special Society, through zvhich with the help of God, our Evangelical Religion may be Extended, by Justinian. Put into print for notification — (i) To all evangelical rulers; (2) to barons and nobles; (3) to doctors, professors, and preachers; (4) to students' chiefly of theology; (5) to students also of law and medi- cine; (6) to merchants and all hearts that love Jesus." The second pamphlet was, "An Invitation to the Ap- proaching Great Supper and Proposal for a Christian Society of Jesus Having for its Object the Betterment of Christendom and the Conversion of Heathendom af- fectionately set forth by Justinian." He laid these treat- ises before the "Body of Evangelicals," at the imperial diet of Ratisbon, which was charged with caring for the interest of Protestants. But after some discussion the memorial was simply laid on the table. This treatment evoked a third treatise, viz. : "A Repeated Loyal and Earnest Reminder and Admonition to Undertake the Conversion of Unbelieving Nations. To all Evangelical Rulers, Clergymen and Jesus-loving Hearts, set forth by Justinian." In these treatises von Weltz gives a convincing refu- tation of the arguments of the theologians against prac- Dawn of Protestant Missions 143 tical mission work; and argues in favor of such work: (i) From the revealed "will of God to help all men and bring them to a knowledge of the truth (i Tim. ii, 4). (2) From the example of godly men, who in every cen- tury since the apostolic age have, regardless of cost, ex- tended the Gospel among non-Christian races. (3) From the petition in the liturgy that God would lead the erring to the knowledge of the truth and enlarge his kingdom; and (4) from the example of the Papists in founding the society De Propaganda Fide. He asked the Church such questions as the following: "Is it right to keep the Gospel to ourselves ? Is it right that students of theology should be confined to home parishes? Is it right that Christians should spend so much on clothing, eating and drinking, and should take no thought to spread the Gos- pel ?*' He sets, in the last treatise, "the high and honored court preachers, venerable superintendents, learned pro- fessors," before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, and asks them, "Who gave you authority to misinterpret the commandment of Christ in Matthew xxviii. ?" He urged the establishment in every Protestant university of a missionary college of three professors, — one of Oriental language, one of methods of converting the heathen, and one of geography, beginning with Paul's journeys. All his agitation was without practical results in his own day. In disappointment he received consecration, laid aside his' title, and went himself a missionary to Dutch Guiana, there soon to fill a lonely grave. The Germany of his day found hopeless obstacles in the way of evangelizing the heathen ; regarded the heathen as "dogs and swine," and because of having failed to keep the Gospel which had been preached to them, outside the pale of God's evangelizing agencies : 144 Introduction to Christian Missions and adjudged von Weltz a "dreamer." These views were voiced by Joh. Heinrich Ursinus, "superintendent" of Ratisbon, who was appealed to for an opinion on the missionary projects of von Weltz, by the "Body of Evan- gelicals" at Ratisbon. That an obligation rested on any save the civil power to do any evangelizing amongst heathen Ursinus could not see. But by his agitation and by his heroic example of self-sacrifice, von Weltz was to stir Germany of a later date. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." In every generation since his day men have arisen in increasing numbers to voice his desires in a more or less complete way. Thus we find Spener teaching that the obligation "rests on the whole Church to have care as to how the Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, and thus may continually be carried to other places whither it has not yet come and that to this end no diligence, labor, or cost be spared in such work on behalf of the poor heathen and unbe- lievers." We find him mourning over the fact that great Christian potentates show little concern in the matter and that Protestants are put to shame by the Papists. Other Pietists voice still more vigorously their sense of the obligation resting on the Church to be missionary. God stirred up the great philosopher Leibnitz, through his' intercourse with Jesuit missionaries to project the sending of thoroughly trained Lutheran missionaries to China, by way of Russia. These and other projects of the early part of the eighteenth century fell to the ground for want of support; but they were important parts' of the long agitation necessary to arouse sleep- ing Christendom. Pietism was now at work. Living, personal, prac- Dawn of Protestant Missions 145 tical Christianity was magnified. Pietism looked not for faith merely but for faith working by love. Seeking for fruit fulness in good works, and having its attention di- rected to the non-Christian world, it was bound in time to become subject to the missionary call. The Pietistic movement issued in the Danish-Halle Mission in 1705. Francke, the great pietist of his generation, which was after that of Spener, did more than any other man of the time, to beget the missionary spirit, find missionaries', and create congregations in the fatherland who would by their contributions support them. The initiative of the King of Denmark would have been fruitless without the aid of a Francke. Overburdened with his work at home, dependent for the support of his orphanage and other institutions on the free-will offering of Christians, Francke nevertheless felt himself in debt to the heathen to give them the Gospel. He made himself board of managers, secretary, apologist and everything that was needed for the mission cause. Under the Danish-Halle auspices many noble mission- aries have gone out. Under them Ziegenbalg and Plut- schau founded the famous Tamil missions in which much good was accomplished. After some years' Plutschau was driven back to Europe. Ziegenbalg died at the age of thirty-six, in 1719, leaving "a complete Tamil Bible, a dictionary, a mission seminary and schools," 355 con- verts, and a great number of catechumens. Amongst his successors was Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1726- 1789), — a man so noble in character and achievements that he deserves more than passing mention. At twenty he left his home for a career which closed with the words : "I am now at the brink of eternity, but to this moment, I declare that I do not repent of having 146 Introduction to Christian Missions spent forty-three years in the service of the Divine Mas- ter. Who knows' but that God may remove some of the great obstacles to the propagation of the Gospel ? Should a reformation take place among Europeans, it would no doubt be the greatest blessing to this country." Owing to the peace and protection afiforded him by the British East India Company, Schwartz was enabled to lay the foundations for the native Church in Southern India, which is now said to number half a million. He estab- lished a scheme of Christian vernacular schools, sup- ported by the Raja, his ward, and by the British Gov- ernment, later on. Having foreseen the famine of about 1780, he stored rice against the evil day, and was a great benefactor in that time of want. It is hard to name, in all the glorious pages of modern history, a man of more venerable and apostolic character, or one more in the esteem of all who knew him, whether heathen or Chris- tian, — a fact mutely set forth at the west end of the Tan j ore Fort Church, in Flaxman's' monument of Schwartz dying, with the loving Guericke, his faithful Christian friend and fellow-laborer, standing at his head, and the heathen but devoted Raja Serfoje holding the dying saint's hand. Next after the Danish-Halle missionary enterprise comes, in the Lutheran sphere, that of the Danish and Norwegian missions to the Lapps and to Greenland, 1716 to 1 72 1, and following. It was through the Moravians, at first a society with- in the Lutheran Church, that missions took their most decided step forward, prior to the end of this period. This society seems to have been prepared of the Lord for missions. Zinzendorf, its early head, had come as a boy to Francke for training — had heard there tidings - Dawn of Protestant Missions 147 of the Lord's cause throughout the earth as he could have heard them nowhere else ; had formed acquaintance with Ziegenbalg and other missionaries; had been fired by Francke's own consecration ; had early pledged himself to the labor of spreading the Gospel throughout the world, — a pledge which it was his pleasure to renew from time to time. He had an extraordinary capacity for lead- ership, for impressing men with his ideals, his ambitions, and his self-sacrifice, and inducing them to go anywhere and endure any hardship at his bidding. Amongst the brethren who had migrated for the sake of their faith from the land of their nativity to Zinzendorf's estate were men of the stuff to make heroic missionaries, — men ready to work as slaves with negroes in order to teach them, — men ready to brave the most adverse conditions. The contagion of Zinzendorf's faith and consecration seized these men. The missionaries began to go out as early as 1732, following as they supposed the openings of Providence ; and in the next score of years they planted more missions than all the rest of Protestantism in its first two centuries'; and they have never relaxed in their missionary zeal down to this day. They have planted and maintained missions on the most forlorn, the most hopeless and the most inhospitable shores of all the continents, and of their numbers three-fifths are found on the foreign fields. Much may be said in dispraise of the character of Moravian missionary work, as also of that of the piet- ists. Their missions were small, they undertook too many for the force at their command, they were com- monly in the hands of uncultured, uneducated and un- trained men. They were in behalf of tribes often the most obscure and savage, unfit material for the noblest 148 Introduction to Christian Missions types of Christians. Few of them were in behalf of a people which, if won, would have influenced greatly the rest of the world for Christ. But after all dispraise has been spoken it must still be said that the little body of Moravians has done a noble service in the cause of mis- sions. It has illustrated the sympathy of Christ in it for suffering man in his most unlovely forms. It has exhibited a pure and steadfast devotion to the cause in the presence of an infidel world. In the faces of the great Churches' of the world, long stalking in Pharisaic pride, it went out to the travellers fallen amongst thieves and did the part of the good Samaritan. It became a missionary centre without thought of colonial interest and without connection with political powers, from purely religious motives. But they had no large following. Dead orthodoxy was succeeded in Germany by the reign of Rationalism, which neither understood nor cared for missions. In the Calvinistic sphere less of actual achievement is seen between 1648 and 1780; but the dawn of a brighter morning is nevertheless visible. In Holland, indeed, the first zeal of the State Mis- sions had decayed. They had long been growing more mechanical. With the coming of Rationalism, mission- ary duty to the colonies was forgotten, or discharged in a very external and incompetent fashion by colonial clergymen. The native congregations' generally went to decay. Mohammedanism was increasingly countenanced for political reasons; and to the point of intolerance to the spread of Christianity. The British had now come into command of the sea and of colonial and other interests which opened the way for evangelizing the heathen, — particularly in North Dawn of Protestant Missions 149 x-\merica, in the East Indies and in Western Africa. But England was now wanting in pervasive and earnest piety. The overthrow of the Commonwealth and the restoration of the Stuarts was the occasion of an incoming flood of immorality and infidelity. Deism of three different types — intellectual, materialistic, and skeptical poured its floods' of hostile literature from the presses. The pulpits of the established churches for the most part altogether ceased to preach the doctrines of grace. They preached ethics merely and in so colorless a way that it was diffi- cult, according to Blackstone, to tell whether the ethics, were Confucian, Mohammedan, or Christian. The Dis- senters were at once infected with the new philosophical views to no small extent, and so depressed, that they ex- erted no adequate corrective. In Scotland, though mat- ters were not so bad as they were in England, Moder- atism obtained large sway. Before the British Christians could become mission- ary they had to be revived. Toward the end of the fourth decade of the eighteenth century that revival came. It came not through the literary work of those, such as Bishop Butler, who gave themselves to the refu- tation of Deism in one or another of its aspects, but by a baptism from heaven. God raised up the Wesleys, Whitefield and their helpers, taught them through the German Pietists' and Moravians; and let them into a living experience of salvation and stirred through them, in the course of the next half century, the British and American world — one of the most beneficent movements of which history gives an account. Thus the Church was being lifted to a pitch of piety necessary in order to evangelical missions'. Meanwhile, as early as the middle of the eighteenth 150 Introduction to Christian Missions century, the Quakers began to show some degree of mis- sionary zeal. Fox writes in his epistles : "All Friends, everywhere, that have Indians or blacks, you are to preach the Gospel to them, and other servants, if ye be true Christians, for the Gospel of salvation was to be preached to every creature under heaven." About 1661, several of his followers went on missions to the East, but without permanent results. A little later William Penn tried to secure the evangelization of the Indians in his colony. In 1701, "The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," was organized. It was orig- inally intended for work in the British colonies in North America. It never grew strong in the course of this period; but made some converts amongst Indians and negroes in North America. English Christians amongst whom Francke's writings had circulated gave consider- able support to Danish-Halle missionaries. In 1709, there was formed at Edinburgh a "Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge," which did some work amongst American Indians, after 1710. David Brainherd, one of their missionaries, labored amongst the Delaware Indians, in Pennsylvania, between 1742 and 1747. He was an American by birth, of no great learning, and accomplished no wide-spread results on his field; but he kept a journal in which he records his mistakes, shortcomings, regrets, along with his longing after God, and desires to glorify Him through the salvation of poor savages. That journal was edited and the life of its author written, by Jonathan Edwards, with the result that Edwards himself became a mission- ary to the Indians at Stockbridge. To these memoirs, Henry Martin traced his decision to become a mission- ary. To them William Carey was' indebted for impulses Dawn of Protestant Missions 151 to the choice of mission work and for principles on which he behaved as a missionary. Brainherd, with Edwards to present him, was epochal. At his death the English-speaking people were being stirred graciously by the Methodist revival, into a living piety. They had long ago come into close political ann commercial touch with the multitudinous heathen peoples. Persons here and there had come to feel their personal obligation as Christians to concert measures for the evan- gelization of the world. Things were converging toward a new era. A leader for that new era would be born within a score of years. Meantime, God had not only been preparing a mis- sionary party; but had been preparing the ways for that party — preparing highways for His own movements amongst heathen peoples. Many instances might be given. We shall present a few such instances — that seen in the work of the British East India Company, and some others. This company, under the Providence of God, in- cidentally aided in no inconsiderable way the cause of missions. At first the directors' professed the desire to Christianize the nations. They provided their central factories with chaplains. Many of the governors were good Christian men and did much to help on the evan- gelization of the natives. Indeed, most of the governors seem to have been favorable to missions, up to 1792. They protected the Danish-Halle missionaries, amongst whom we have noticed Schwartz. What the company had in this way done for missions was off-set, however, by the deportment of many of its employees; and about 1790, the company itself came to fear the missionary enterprise, lest it should, in enlightening and Christian- izing the people, injure its own financial interests. In 152 Introduction to Christian Missions the new charter of 1792, the followmg clause was re- fused: "That it is the pecuHar and bounden duty of the British legislature to promote by all just and prudent means, the interest and happiness of the inhabitants of the British dominions in India; and that for these ends such measures ought to be adopted as may gradually tend to their advancement in useful knowledge, and to tl religious and moral comfort." This could not be form- ally adopted till the charter of 1813, and was not carried out practically till 1833. For the next forty years after 1792 the company was unfriendly to missions. It force" William Carey in 1799 to find an asylum in Serampore, the little settlement of Denmark, and kept up this spirit for the next thirty years. It was nevertheless doing, under the overruling providence of God and without friendly intention on its own part, much for the cause of missions. The real missionary influence of this great company was like that of the ancient Roman empire, in the early history of the spread of Christianity. It res- cued from anarchy and reduced to order all southern India. It introduced roads, commerce, wealth, and it aroused the conscience of Great Britain and Europe by its very opposition to missions in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It thus worked under the all-ruling and gracious providence of God just as ancient Rome had done. God had set geographical discoveries again in the forefront, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and He was to keep them there for more than one hun- dred years. Through them he was to quicken more and more curiosity about an interest in the inhabitants of the lands discovered, and to lead to missionary endeavor in their behalf. This, subsequent history has proven; Dawn of Protestant Missions 153 for as Livingstone has said, "the end of the work of geography has become the beginning of missionary enterprise." With this was' combined an age of invention. To anticipate, it issued in new means of communication, rail- ways, steamships, telegraphic systems, bringing the world down to the dimensions of a neighborhood by making it so easy to pass from place to place. Moreover, nations, peoples, and tribes of the earth were beginning to come together for commercial reasons as never before. The new conception of the political rights and na- tural rights of men was finding voice in the struggle of the American colonies for independence, and in their teaching — a movement which God would use to bring His Church to a clearer conception of the religious rights' of the nations, and of the right of the heathen to the Gospel which long back he had commanded the Church to give to all the world. At such an epoch there was need for a leader. LECTURE VIII. The Age of Voluntary Missionary Societies, 1781-1829. William Carey was born in Northamptonshire, England, August 17, 1761. He was the son of a weaver, but at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker at Hackleton. By baptism he was a member of the Established Church, but became con- vinced of the Scripturalness of Baptist views and con- nected himself with that communion and became a Baptist preacher. After having preached at Paulers- pury, his early home, and at Barton, he became, 1786, the pastor of the Baptist Church at Moulton. As the congregation was very poor, to support himself, he trmght school by day, cobbled shoes by night, and preached on the Sabbath to his people. Having an in- tense desire for education and knowledge notwith- standing his poverty, he learned, before he was thirty- one years of age, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, French, and had acquired vast stores of general knowledge in the spheres of science, history, voyages ; and had the best command of the religious condition of the world of his day, of all the men of his century. Stirred by the voyages of Captain Cook, by Jon. Edwards' Memoirs of David Brainherd, and of God-given desires for the salvation of the heathen, from about 1781, when only about twenty years of age, he had pressed upon all who came within his reach, the obligation to mis- sions. This year accordingly, may well be called the Voluntary Missionary Societies 155 birLli year of modern missions — a year as significant in its way as the year 1517 was in its way. In 1786, at a conference of Baptist preachers, he submitted as a matter of discussion the subject: "Whether the com- mandment given to the apostles to teach all nations in all the world must not be recognized as binding on us also, since the great promise still follows it." The president, however, bade him to be silent, declaring, "You are a miserable enthusiast to propose such a question. Nothing certainly can come to pass in this matter before a new Pentecost accompanied by new gifts of miracles and tongues promises success to the commission of Christ as in the beginning." Carey turned to the press. He published, in 1792, "An In- quiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen ;" a work which was to have vast influence. He followed this by his famous sermon, on Isaiah liv. 2, 3, with the two mottoes, "Ex- pect great things from God and attempt great things for God," the effect of which was so profound that he was enabled to found "The Particular (Calvinistic) Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen," October 2, 1792. Carey had fixed his desires upon work in Tahiti, or Western Africa, but he offered to go wherever the Society might choose. The Society fixed upon India. In June, 1798, with Mr. John Thomas, who had re- sided in Bengal and engaged in missionary work, Carey and his family sailed for India. Owing to the opposi- tion of the East India Company, the party had been forced to sail in a foreign vessel. They reached Cal- cutta, November 11, 1793. Carey believed that it was the duty of the missionary, after receiving some help 156 Introduction to Christian Missions at first, to support himself. Accordingly he very soon undertook self-support. He undertook it too quickly. Before he could reach the position of self-support, he and his family suffered the utmost privations. He left Calcutta, and walked fifteen miles in the sun, pass- ing through salt rivers and a large lake to the Sunder- bunds, a tract scantily populated, of inhospitable climate, and notorious for wild beasts and pestilences. He intended to support himself by farming and to teach the people. About seven months had passed, his heroic attempts looked as if they would result in death or madness, Mr. Udney, a pious man in the ser- vice of the East India Company, ofifered him the super- intendency of his indigo factory. The position would not only give him support for his family and time for study, but a congregation of natives connected with the factory. It was situated at Mudnabatty in the dis- trict of Malda. Carey accepted the position ; and spent five years there. There he learned the Bengali, wrote a Bengali grammar, and translated into that tongue the New Testament. He held daily religious services with the thousand workmen in the factory, he itinerated through the district, a territory twenty miles square, a very populous territory. He won some con- verts and amongst them some of efifectiveness as Christian workers. He learned Sanskrit and the Botany of the region. He inspired other Europeans with his own heroic spirit to become his colleagues — such men as Marshman and Ward ; and kindled a flame in England and our country for mission work. In 1799 in consequence of an inundation the factory was closed. Being again without means of support and handi- capped by the unfriendliness of the company, Mr. Voluntary Missionary Societies 157 Carey seized an opportunity then providentially given to establish a mission in the Danish sphere of Seram- pore. Through the publication of his New Testament he was brought prominently before the Marquis of Wellesly, Governor General of India, who appointed him as Professor of Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi, in the newly established Fort William College, in Cal- cutta. He filled the position for thirty years. He did much to develop the knowledge of the natural history and botany of India. The publication of the entire Bible in Bengali was completed as early as 1809. When he died, in 1834, unaided or with the aid of others, he had made translations of the Bible in whole or in part, into twenty-four Indian languages. The Serampore press, under his oversight, had made the Bible acces- sible to above three hundred millions of human beings. He had prepared grammars and dictionaries of Mah- ratta, Sanskrit and Bengali. He had assisted in the establishment and maintainance of thirty separate large mission stations. He had labored for the aboli- tion of Suttee ; and seen it abolished in 1829. October 7, 1805, Carey, Marsham, and Ward, his great fellow-laborers in Serampore, had drawn up and signed a "Form of Agreement Respecting the Great Principles on which the Brethren of the Mission at Ser- ampore Think it their Duty to Act in the Work of In- structing the Heathen." "This agreement was read pub- licly at every station, at the three annual meetings on first Lord's day in January, in May, and in October." These principles include the following points : "(i) It is absolutely necessary that we set an infinite value on immortal souls; (2) that we gain all informa- tion of the snares and delusions in which these heathen are held; (3) that we abstain from those things which 158 Introduction to Christian Missions would increase their prejudice against the Gospel; (4) that we watch all opportunities of doing good; (5) that we keep to the example of Paul and make the great sub- ject of our preaching Christ the crucified; (6) that the natives should have entire confidence in us and feel quite at home in our company; (7) that we build up and watch over the souls that may be gathered; (8) that we form our native brethren to usefulness, fostering every kind of genius and cherishing every gift and grace in them ; especially advising the native churches to choose their pastors and deacons from among their own countrymen ; (9) that we labor with all our might in forwarding trans- lations of the sacred Scriptures in the languages of India, and that we establish native free schools and recommend these estabHshments to other Europeans; (10) that we be constant in prayer and the cultivation of personal reli- gion to fit us for the discharge of these laborious and unutterably important labors ; let us often look at Brain- herd, in the woods" of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen without whose salvation nothing could make him happy; (11) that we give ourselves up unreservedly to this glorious cause. Let us never think that our time, our gifts, our strength, our families, or even the clothes' that we wear, are our own. Let us sanctify them all to God and his cause. Oh, that He may sanctify us for His work! No private family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness than we have done since we have resolved to have all things in common. If we are enabled to persevere, we m^- hope that multitudes' of converted souls will have reason to bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel to this country." * * Copied from George Smith, Short History of Missions, pp. 166, 167. ^ Voluntary Missionary Societies 159 These principles approximate the principles of the Apostolic Church. But Carey's great part in the mission movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' is not found in the number and consequence of the converts ; nor in his numerous and valuable translations of Scripture; nor in his other literary services; nor in the eduction of relatively Bible principles for the conduct of missions; but in the arousing of Christians and groups of Chris- tians to a powerful sense of missionary obligation and missionary privilege, and, through these, and after a long period of resistance, the Churches of Christendom to a similar sense. As the Pietistic and Moravian missionary movement had to meet assaults from the orthodox Churches of the continent, so Carey and his' sympathizers had to run counter to the opposition of the Church authorities of Great Britain and America. Even among the Baptists, to whose communion he belonged, the majority of the leaders refused to take any part in missions. The Body of Bishops of the Established Church were hardly will- ing for the Churches to hear representatives of the mis- sion cause. The missionary effort was nicknamed "Meth- odism." It was thought to be a species of zeal without knowledge. The rationalism dominating the government of the Established Church and affecting the theology of all the Churches opposed the awakened life of faith, as an expression of arrogant fanaticism ; and missions as extravagant, foolish and hopeless undertakings. The at- titude of the Established (Presbyterian) Church of Scot- land was not different. The ecclesiastic authorities holding this attitude of opposition, it became necessary for the friends of mis'- i6o Introduction to Christian Missions sion enterprise to form societies independent of their Church organizations for the prosecution of mission work. Such societies' were suggested, probably, by the Moravian and Methodist bodies, which were societies inside estab- Hshed Churches during the earHer stages of their respec- tive histories'. It would be hardly possible to theorize such societies in a satisfactory way, where the Church itself was awake to the responsibility resting on it to be missionary. They set themselves to doing the work which God laid upon His Church, the body in covenant with Him. Their conduct is formal usurpation of the functions, powers and prerogatives of the Church. But this act of formal usurpation is, in spirit, not so. These members are, as desiring to obey the missionary com- mand truer to God and to rightful Church authority than the unfaithful ecclesiastical powers that oppose them and do not the work enjoined. The first great effect on the Protestant Christendom of Europe and America produced by the life of Mr. Carey in India was seen, then, in the rise of the numerous voluntary societies for the advancement of the mission- ary cause. The London Missionary Society, founded in 1795, was the immediate result of Mr. Carey's heroic early course in India. Two out of three of the men who brought about the formation of this society were inspired to the undertaking on hearing the first letters of Carey and Thomas read by Dr. Ryland, of Bristol, who had invited them to hear them. It was catholic in its con- stitution, and, in design, composed of "evangelical min- isters and lay brethren of all denominations." It was largely assisted at the outset by Presbyterians' and Epis- copalians; but in the course of time has come to be the Voluntary Missionary Societies i6i organ of the English Congregationalists. It has sent forth many great missionaries, pioneers and founders: Robert Morrison, a son of a Scotch Presbyterian elder, brought up as a last and boot-tree maker, becoming a scholar, was sent to China, landing at Canton, September 7, 1807. He labored under the greatest difficulties till 1809, when he was engaged as Chinese translator by the East India Company, at a salary of 500 pounds a year. This position gave him a legally recognized standing, enabled him to go about freely, and interfered little with his great purpose. He compiled his grammar of the Chinese, and his great dictionary, and translated the Scriptures'. He thus gave weapons to the Protestant mis- sionaries, ready to hand, on the breaking down of the walls and their admission. John Williams, apprentice to an ironmonger, con- verted at the age of eighteen, self-devoted to work in the South Seas, was sent out in 1816, to the South Sea Islands. Making, after a little, Raiatea, the largest of the Society Islands', his centre, he enjoyed remarkable success in Christianizing and civilizing the people. In 1823, he instituted work in the Hervey Islands, and met with similar success. In successive years he explored many groups of islands. He visited the Samoan Islands in 1830, and again in 1832, when, under the good hand of God, he made an amazing conquest of the people for Christ. He perished at the hands' of the savages of Erromanga, whither he had gone to establish a mission in 1838. He had been evangelist, pastor, teacher, trans- lator, and civil adviser and setter of social ideals for his peoples. Robert Moffat, trained as' a gardener, but devoting himself to the mission cause, was, after a term spent in i62 Introduction to Christian Missions special study, sent to South Africa in 1817. He sounded out the Gospel, during over fifty years of service, throughout all South Africa, giving to peoples whom he found in rankest savagery the entire Bible in their own tongue which he had turned into a literary vehicle. He had developed in them some power to appreciate the ways of civilized life. David Livingstone, ex-cotton piecer, trained himself in medicine and divinity, and would have gone as a medi- cal missionary to China; but was sent to Africa, in 1841. He opened Central Africa to commerce, division into spheres of influence, civilization and Christianity. The greatest explorer of modern times, to all solicitation to drop his missionary character he was ready with the answer that he could be an explorer only in a secondary sense. As a pioneer of mission forces he would "do geography by the way." Through these and a host of men and women less well known, the London Missionary Society has done a great work, in Polynesia, in South Africa, in Central Africa, in North India, in South India, in Travancore, in China, in Madagascar, and elsewhere. It had in these fields in 1904, 80,000 communicants, about four times as many adherents ; powerful ,and efficient religious plants in the most of these fields ; and an income of $720,000.00. The next societies to spring into being and into work were the Scottish missionary societies, — the "Edinburgh Missionary Society," which came into existence in 1796, and the Glasgow Missionary Society of the same date. These were due to Mr. Carey's influence and to the ex- ample of the men who had established the London Mis- sionary Society. They were of a similar catholic con- stitution. The members were in part from the Estab- Voluntary Missionary Societies 163 lished Church and in part from the secession churches. After some fruitless efforts elsewhere the Edinburgh So- ciety, which was known as the "Scottish Missionary So- ciety," transferred its efforts' to India, in 1822— beginnmg a mission remarkable for the labors of Robert 'Nesbit and John Wilson, D. D. In 1821, also after some dis- appointing enterprises, the Glasgow Society began in Kafraria a mission which prospered greatly under the Free and United Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, and is doing so now under the control of the United Free Church. Both the Edinburgh and Glasgow societies, after the Scotch Church had come to the consciousness of itself as a God-ordained missionary society, came to think of themselves as not needed and as out of place. Their work was all turned over, in the course of some decades, to the Church in one or the other of its branches. The Church Missionary Society was founded under the name of the "Society for Missions to Africa and the East," in 1799. It has ever been the organ of the noblest and most catholic part of the Church of England. It has outgrown all the British societies. Among its notable secretaries have been Thomas Scott, the commentator, Josiah Pratt and Henry Venn. The society waited four- teen years' for the sanction of bishops. Till 1813, Ger- man Lutherans only could be secured as missionaries. In 1841, two archbiships and several bishops joined the society. With varying fortunes the society has grown with the passing years. In 1904, its income was 400,000 pounds, or $1,920,000.00. The society's missions, be- ginning in West Africa, 1804, i" Madras in 1814, and in Calcutta, in 1820, extend around the world and include missions in Africa, in Palestine, in Turkish Arabia, in 164 Introduction to Christian Missions Persia, in India, in Ceylon, in China, in Japan, in New Zealand, in Northeast Canada, and in British Columbia. In 1902 they had on the roll of communicants 79,586. The Wesleyan Missionary Society was organized as early as 18 13, and soon afterwards had missions in America, the West Indies, Ceylon, and, a little later, in South Africa, in South India, later still in South China, and Australia, — many of which have been very fruitful. During the earlier stages this enterprise was in the hands of Dr. Thomas Coke, one of John Wesley's greatest lieu-' tenants, and one who was imbued with a missionary spirit as early as Mr. Carey himself. The Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, chartered in 1701, became a distinct mis- sionary agency as early as 1821. Founded largely for the promotion of the Christian religion in "our foreign possessions," it had been making grants for some time in the support of missionary work. It has continued to combine the pastoral care of English colonists with its missionary functions. It has become the organ of the Ritualistic, or High Church party in the Church of Eng- land. It has branches in many quarters of the earth ; and because of its emphasis upon the Episcopate and its re- garding itself as the representative of "the Church," it has been characterized by an absence of comity in dealing with the representatives of other Churches and societies. Its' arrogance has caused much confusion, placed it on an unfriendly footing with Protestant Churches and so- cieties, and played into the hands of Rome. Inasmuch as the society confuses in its accounts, its expenditures, etc., on British colonists and on heathen peoples, it is hardly practicable to say what the society is doing for distinctly missionary work. Voluntary Missionary Societies 165 The erection, or use, of all these British societies for distinctly missionary work is' traceable to the influence of William Carey more than to that of any other man. His influence was not apparent in Britain alone. It appears in America. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed in 1810. The influence of Eliot, Brainherd and Jonathan Edwards which had affected Mr. Carey, was repaid in the influence of Mr. Carey on America. Adoniram Judson and Samuel J. Mills, stu- dents in divinity in Williams College and Andover Sem- inary, started an agitation which led to the foundation of this society. Mills is credited with having originated the plan of the American Board. This board was' formed by Congregationalists, it became a joint agency of Con- gregationalists and Presbyterians in 1812, the Congrega- tionalists remaining, however, the dominant party. After the separation between the old and new school people of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the board lost the support of the old school wing, and on the reunion of these parties in 1870, the support of the new school wing. In 1857, the board had lost the support of the Dutch Reformed Church ; in 1858 the sup- port of the Associate Reformed Church ; and in 1865 that of the German Reformed; so that, since 1870, the Board has practically represented Congregationalists alone. Ac- cording to its constitution it has no ecclesiastical charac- ter, and no organic connection with any Church or body of Churches, and is amenable to no authority except that of the Massachusetts' Legislature, and to that only in case of violating the terms of its charter. Beginning with the Marathi Mission in Bombay, in 1813, the board has thrown its workers' into many parts i66 Introduction to Christian Missions of the world. It has done very notable work amongst the the corrupt Christian peoples of Turkey ; in the Hawaiian Islands, India, and China. As the Presbyterian Churches have withdrawn from its support, the board has turned over to them various of its' missions. In 1902, it received an income of $845,105.85, had on its roll of communi- cants as the fruit of mission effort, 55,645 names, and possessed fine plants consisting of churches, schools, col- -leges, printing presses, and so forth. The American Baptist Missionary Society came into existence in 1814, owing to the fact that Messrs. Judson and Rice, sent out by the American Board, had changed their views on the mode of baptism, severed their con- nection with the board, and were in need of support; it has grown greatly and carried on with great success' mis- sions in Burmah, amongst the Koreans, and amongst the Telugus of India ; it has successful missions' also in Siam and Assam, in China, in Japan, and elsewhere. It had in 1902, 111,650 converts in heathen lands, many schools of various grades', two of them being colleges, and seven of them theological and Bible schools. In addition to these missionary societies, William Carey's life was one of the great forces which helped to bring into being the Religious Tract Society, 1799, for the circulation of religious books and treatises' through- out the British dominions in foreign countries ; and the British and Foreign Bible Society, in 1804, whose total issues of separate books of the Bible, entire New Testa- ments and entire Bibles', in the first ninety-eight years of its life were 175,038,965, and whose great editorial committee in the year 1902, considered matters bearing on versions of the Scripture in 151 languages and dialects ; and the American Bible Society, 18 16, which has pub- Voluntary Missionary Societies 167 lished the Bible in whole, or in part, in more than eighty languages and dialects, and whose total issues, in 1902, were 1,993,558, of which 1,258,909 copies were distri- buted in foreign parts. Not only these but other missionary and subsidiary societies were formed between the year of the heroic venture of William Carey and the end of the first quarter of the ninteenth century. The rise of these societies was European and American Protestantism's response to the appeal of Mr. Carey and his fellow laborers in behalf of missions, in part. That which makes' his life epochal in missions is not so much what he achieved on the mission field, we repeat, but the lesson he taught Protestanism — the lesson of enterprise, of daring, of duty, of heroic faith which no obstacle could weaken. He was indeed himself given in answer to prayer in behalf of the mis- sionary cause. For decades, here and there. Christians had been praying with increasing fervor for the salvation of the heathen. "As far back as 1744, some Scotch min- isters agreed to observe the first Tuesday in each month as a time of special prayer that God would bless ?^' nations with the light of His glorious Gospel ; and sent out a memorial on continuing concert of prayer to this end." "Five hundred copies of this memorial reached America, and helped the life of Brainherd to fire the heart of Jonathan Edwards, in 1746, to write his famous essay on concert in prayer, for the advancement of Christ's kingdom," which essay, in turn, stirred the hearts of English Baptists, and became one of the factors that moved Carey to offer himself as the mission worker. Carey no more caused the mission movements' which were so closely connected with his life than Luther caused the Reformation amongst the German people ; but i68 Introduction to Christian Missions as Luther led and accelerated the one movement so Carey led, accelerated and gave his own character to early nine- teenth century Protestant missions. In this way he was helping toward the awaking of more than individuals, and groups of individuals to a sense of their responsibility to be missionary. If the winning of religious toleration was a preparation to the winning or religious liberty in Virginia, in Colonial and Revolutionary days, so the excitation into being of great voluntary missionary socie- ties was a preparation for something much better for the awakening of the Churches of Christendom to a con- sciousness of the fact that God's Church is the God- ordained missionary society, and that every Christian in virtue of his' Church membership is a member of a mis- sionary society, and as such is pledged to do his utmost for the disciplining of all nations. About the time of Mr. Carey's death the Churches begin to awaken to this conception of their nature, — begin to see that no Church which is not at bottom mis- sionary has a right to regard itself as having all the im- portant marks of a true Church. We shall attempt to trace the further awakening of Protestant Christendom in the next lecture — the awaken- ing of the Churches to the consciousness of their mis- sionary obligation as such. From the foregoing account of the Work of Mr. Carey and the rise of the voluntary societies', it has ap- peared that missions sprang up in the Calvanistic Churches just among those who had thrown out of their theory and practice the paralyzing connection of Church and State. Dissent had so far a truer theoretical grasp of Christianity; and God honored dissent by giving to Dissenters and to those in large sympathy with them, Voluntary Missionary Societies 169 to institute and support, for the most part, the mission effort in Mr. Carey's age. The aim of the missionaries who followed in his' train — the Protestant missionaries of his age — was once more as in the apostolic age, to make spiritual disciples. The instruments' used by them were almost univer- sally the word — the word taught and the word lived. The Biblical principles to regulate missionary effort, which tell one upon whom to work, where to work, how to dispose the forces, in a strategic and tactical way, if apprehended, were not generally applied, perhaps' because of the prevailing ignorance of the conditions of various heathen peoples. Of necessity these missionaries had to move largely in the dark. They were invading lands which they had to explore and report on in order to a better planned effort by their successors. Hence fiasco enterprises were not infrequent. They early put into application at least on some o"" the fields all the Biblical methods. The evangelistic was universal and the literary was hardly less general. The educational received a tentative trial on some important fields ; the missionaries being divided as to the Biblical sanction of the method. The age of modern medical mis- sions certainly had not yet come. Such missionaries as were possessed of medical intelligence and great common- sense, occasionally used such knowledge and skill wit)^' helpful effects. But such occasional services were too infrequent and inconspicuous to take rank as a form of missionary endeavor. The workers who had gone out in this period, 1781- 1729, were after all not many. They contained amongst them some men of undoubted parts, many men of heroic consecration, and some weak 170 IXTRODUCTIOX TO CHRISTIAN' MISSIONS and unworthy men. ]\Iany of them had insufficient train- ing and education for the onerous duties which devolved upon them. ISIany of them were not such men as the Churches should have sent. The Churches were not sending men. Tlte voluntary societies were sending such as they could get. Taken as a whole, though, they were people of common-sense, pious and devoted : and with them, that God of all grace, whose prerog-ative it is to use the weak to accomplish the mightiest results, did great things. He was using them to show strong men the wav ; and to awaken strong men and multitudes not yet born to tlreir duty to a perishing heathen world. In winning converts, signal triumphs were occasion- ally enjoyed, as by John Williams and his fellow-workers in the Society Islands and neighboring groups. But speaking generally, converts came in slowly and with great difficulty. It has been seen that the great heatlren world was touched in not a few places. But it had been hardly more than touched. Africa lay unexplored as to its whole interior, in 182Q. Japan. China, and Korea were tight shut, with Robert ISIorrison tolerated in Can- ton only because of his mercantile connections. Turkey was holding a sword over the Ireads' of the intruding representatives of the American Board, who had as yet been able to fix no pemianent station. Nothing appar- ently worth while had been done in Australia, no per- manent mark made. The little white spots in India and Oceanica could be made to appear only on large maps of those countries. A great providential movement had begun, nevertheless. LECTURE IX. The Church Becoming Conscious of Itself as a Missionary Society. (1829 to the present.) To stir the Churches of Protestant Christendom to a proper sense of their missionary obhgations, was a slow and difficult achievement. Even this was accomp- lished, in part, through the instrumentality of Mr. Carey and his helpers, fellow missionaries, and their successors and supporters. "Nothing succeeds like success." The success of the mission movement in- sured and brought about greater success. It became an effective instrumentality in the hands of the great Head of the Church, in awakening the Church to mis- sionary activity. As far back as 1796, two Synods of the Established Church of Scotland overturned the General Assembly of that Church touching missions to the heathen — the spreading abroad of the Gospel amongst heathenish and barbarous peoples. It was proposed to appoint "a collection for missions." But the measure met the stoutest opposition. It was con- tended that "to spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel amongst barbarous and heathen nations seems to be highly preposterous, in so far as philosophy and learning must in the nature of things take the prece- dence, and that while there remains at home a single individual without means of religious knowledge, to propagate it abroad would be improper and absurd." 172 Introduction to Christian Missions It was also contended that the proposal to appoint a collection for missions "would no doubt be a subject for legal prosecution." There was as yet no prevail- ing apprehension that the Church is missionary accord- ing to its divinely given constitution. It took long years to arouse the Church of Scotland — "the first Protestant Church as such to send out a missionary" — to the ap- prehension of itself as a missionary society. But this was at length done ; and Alexander Duff was appointed its first missionary. Dr. Thomas Chalmers and Dr. Inglis had been lab- oring for some years to bring their Church to this posi- tion. Two sermons of Dr. Chalmers — one preached before the Dundee Missionary Society, on Missionaries and the Bible — as "the two great instruments ap- pointed for the propagation of the Gospel," and pub- lished in 1812; and the other preached in 1814 before the Scottish Propagation Society, on "The Utility of Missions Ascertained by Experience" — followed by Chalmers' personal influence at St. Andrews, are said to have sent Duff to India. Moving him to the same course, however, was the appeal of Dr. Inglis, made to the people of Scotland in the name of the Church, in 1825. The example of the Church of Scotland illustrated and vindicated by tongue, by pen and by the divine blessing on its enterprise has had large influence over other Churches, and particularly over those having the Presbyterian form of government. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Old School, seems to have been the second Church to take the view that the Church itself is by the ordination of God a missionary society. Dr. John The Church a Missionary Society 173 Holt Rice was one of the men who, under the hand of God, did much to arouse his Church to the fact that her missionary work was her great work. In 1831, Dr. Rice presented to the General Assembly of the undivided Presbyterian Church his famous overture, containing principles which the undivided Church would not indeed adopt ; but which were destined to partial adoption by the Old School Assembly of 1837, and to increasing appropriation by the Church in its subsequent history down to the present. Dr. Rice's overture is as follows : "The Presbyterian Church in the United States of North America, in organizing their form of govern- ment, and in repeated declarations made through her representatives in after times, have solemnly recognized the importance of the missionary cause, and their obligations as Christians to promote it by all the means in their power. But these various acknowledge- ments have not gone to the full extent of the obliga- tions imposed by the Head of the Church, nor have they produced exertions at all corresponding thereto. Indeed, in the judgment of this General Assembly, one primary and principal object of the institution of the Church by Jesus Christ, was not so much the sal- vation of the individual Christians — for 'he that be- lieveth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved, — but the communicating, the blessings of the Gospel to the destitute with efficiency and united effort. The entire history of the Christian societies organized by the Apostles, affords abundant evidence that they so under- stood the design of the Master. They received of Him a command to 'preach the Gospel to every creature'; and from the Churches planted by them, the word of 174 Introduction to Christian Missions the Lord was 'sounded out' through all parts of the civilized world. Nor did the missionary spirit of the primitive Churches expire until they had become se- cularized and corrupted by another spirit. And it is the decided belief of this General Assembly that a true revival of religion in any denomination of Chris- tians, will generally, if not universally, be marked by an increased sense of obligation to execute the com- mission which Christ gave the apostles. "The General Assembly would therefore in the most public and solemn manner express their shame and sorrow that the Church represented by them has done comparatively so little to make known the saving health of the Gospel to all nations. At the same time, they would express their grateful sense of the goodness of the Lord, in employing the instrumentality of others to send salvation to the heathen. Particularly would they rejoice at the divine favor manifested to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions, whose perseverance, whose prudence, whose skill in conducting this most important interest, merit all praise, and excite the jo}?- of all the Churches. With an earnest desire therefore, to co-operate with this noble institution ; to fulfill in some part, at least, their own obligations ; and to answer the just expectation of the friends of Christ in other denominations, and in other countries ; in obedience also to what is believed to be the command of Christ. "Be it therefore, Resolved: i. That the Presbyte- rian Church in the United States is a Missionary So- ciety, the object of which is to aid in the conversion of the world; and that every member of the Church is a member for life of said Society, and bound in main- The Church a Missionary Society 175 tenance of his Christian character to do all in his power for the accomplishment of this object. "2. That the ministers of the Gospel in connection with the Presbyterian Church in the United States, are hereby most solemnly required to present this sub- ject to the members of their respective congregations, using every effort to make them feel their obligations, and to induce them to contribute according to their ability. "3. That a committee of be appointed from year to year, by the General Assembly, to be designated, 'The Committee of the Presbyterian Church in the United States for Foreign Missions,' to whose man- agement this whole concern shall be confided with directions to report all their transactions to the Churches. "4. The Committee to have power to appoint a chairman, corresponding secretary, treasurer, and other necessary officers. "5. The Committee shall, as far as the nature of the case will admit, be co-ordinate with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and shall correspond and co-operate with that association, in every possible way, for the accomplishment of the great objects which it has in view. * ♦ * t- >-fi :!: :!: "7. That every Church Session be authorized to receive contributions ; and be directed to state in their annual reports to Presbytery, distinctly the amount contributed by their respective Churches for Foreign Missions ; and that it be earnestly recommended to all Church Sessions, in hereafter admitting new members to the Churches, distinctly to state to candidates for 176 Introduction to Christian Missions admission, that if they join the Church, they join a community the object of which is the conversion of the heathen world, and to impress on their minds a deep sense of their obligation, as redeemed sinners, to co-operate in the accomplishment of the great object of Christ's mission to the world." The Old School party in the Church of 1831 had large sympathy with some of the views set forth in Dr. Rice's overture; but the New School party, wedded to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, defeated the effort of the former party to secure the erection of a Church committee or board, through which the Church itself might push foreign missions, till 1837, when the Old School peo- ple being in the ascendant, organized a board, appoint- ed by and directly amenable to the General Assembly through which the General Assembly should superin- tend and conduct, by its own proper authority, the work of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church. This Church splitting in 1838, New School people con- tinued to work with the American Board till 1870, when they withdrew to support the Board of Foreign Mis- sions of the re-united Presbyterian Church, North. In 1857, the Dutch Reformed Church went to doing mission work as a Church. In 1858, the Associate Reformed Presbyterians became a part of the United Presbyterian Church, and withdrew their support from the American Board, the united body beginning mis- sion work as such. In 1861, the Old School Church, South, came into existence. The constituting assem- bly which met in Augusta, Georgia, December 4, 1861, found on its hands interesting missions, with fifteen stations, twelve ordained missionaries and sixteen hun- The Church a Missionary Society 177 dred communicants. Notwithstanding the war waging at the time, this Church received this burden with joy; and inasmuch as certain of its sons were laboring in still other mission territories, it acknowledged its obligation to support them, the way being open. The Assembly took occasion "to direct the longing eyes of the whole Church to those broad fields where Satan reigns almost supreme, to India, Siam, China, Japan, and especially Africa and South America, which have peculiar claims upon us, where we are soon to be called to win glorious victories for our King if we prove faith- ful." It solemnly charged the Church, that, while in the convulsions that were shaking the earth the com- ing of His footsteps to take the kingdom bought with his blood was heard," they should be preparing to meet Him with their whole heart and their largest offer- ings." It said, further, "Finally, the General Assembly desires distinctly and deliberately to inscribe on our Church's banner, as she now first unfolds it to the world, in immediate connection with the headship of our Lord, His last command: 'Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature' ; regarding this as the great end of her organization, and obedience to it as the indispensable condition of her Lord's promised pres- ence, and as one great comprehensive object, a proper conception of whose vast magnitude and grandeur is the only thing, which, in connection with the love of Christ, can ever sufficiently arouse her energies and develop her resources so as to cause her to carry on, with the vigor and efficiency which true fealty to her Lord demands, those other agencies necessary to her internal growth and home prosperity. The claims 178 Introduction to Christian Missions of this cause ought therefore to be kept constantly before the minds of the people and pressed upon their consciences. The ministers and ruling elders and deacons and Sabbath-school teachers, and especially the parents, ought and are enjoined by the Assembly, to give particular attention to all those for whose reli- gious teaching they are responsible, in training them to feel a deep interest in this Avork, to form habits of systematic benevolence, and to feel and respond to the claims of Jesus upon them for personal service in the field." These words show that the leaders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in 1861 had a true mental grasp of the obligation of the Church to missions. But men in a Church may have such a mental grasp and yet not act on it practically; and leaders may have such a grasp and the people be lagging far behind in theoret- ical grasp and in the efifort at practical realization. It is a matter for thanksgiving that the Assembly of 1861 expressed so clearly its sense of the Church's duty and privilege to be missionary. In 1865, the German Reformed Church entered upon mission work. It heretofore has been narrated that the Church of Scotland led the way in reaching the consciousness of the missionary character of the Church as such. In 1843 came the Disruption over the abuses of lay patron- age. The Free Church was formed and all the mis- sionaries of the State Church, whether at work among the Jews, or in India, or in Kaffraria, went over to the Free Church, sharing the strong spirit of self-sacrifice which was associated with the formation of the Free Church. The Established Church found, in 1845, other The Church a Missionary Society 179 missionaries to take the place of those in India who had gone over to the Free Church ; and the Free Church made its missions a great concern of the Church from the start. This Church has a missionary- history of unusual interest and value. Dr. Duff, prior to the disruption and while still a missionary of the Established Church, had advocated an association of all the communicants in every congregation for prayer and giving on behalf of Foreign Missions. In the course of the fifty years immediately following the disruption, seventy-five per cent, of the congregations of the Free Church came to have such quarterly as- sociations ; and these associations had become "the sheet anchor of the Church's missions, not only finan- cially but spiritually." Through them the whole Church has been becoming missionary, and missions the business not of the few but of the many. Having a little over half the membership of the Established, and without state support, its funds for mission work were greater in 1900, than the mission fund of the State Church by one-third of the latter. In 1847, the United Presbyterian Church in Scot- land was constituted by the union of the Secession Church and the Relief Church. They had, before their union, through separate societies, been doing mission work in the West Indies, in West Africa, and in Kaffraria. After their union the mission work was brought into organized connecti9n with the Church. The Church had come to recognize itself as a missionary society. October 31, 1900, the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland united to form the United Free Church of Scotland. This Church carries on missions as a concern of the Church ; and is a most important missionary agency. i8o Introduction to Christian Missions The Presbyterian Church is "by its institution, con- stitution, object and early history ... a directly aggressive missionary power." "Presbyterianism sup- plies now, as in the time of the Acts of the apostles, just the agency and machinery wanted for Foreign as well as Home Missions, The gradation of courts, in which the laity are equally represented, from the Kirk-Session to the General Assembly, which appoints the foreign and other mission committees annually, and annually reviews their proceedings, enables the whole Church to act directly on the mission field, while it summons every member personally to pray and give, and attracts missionaries from the front ranks of divini- ty students and ministers. In the foreign field itself as converts become formed into congregations, Pres- byterianism — if honestly worked — enables them to call their own pastor, support their own machinery, and extend it around them as self-governing and self- developing communities. As the missionary enter- prise of Christendom grows, it must tend to work less through societies and more through Churches." Congregationalists and Baptists, having no fit or- ganization for the conduct of mission work, have been driven to continue the use of societies which have no organic connection with the Church. Nevertheless the missionary spirit has continued to grow in these Churches, the American and British, and in the great Methodist connections. Even the people of the Euro- pean continental Protestant Churches have been awakening in remarkable degrees to their personal missionary obligations. The zeal for missions has been made more wide- spread by certain inter-denominational movements. The Church a Missionary Society i8i such as the China Iiihuid Mission, founded by that genius of deep consecration, Dr. J. Hudson Taylor. This mission was founded, 1865, to preach the Gospel exclusively in China. It sought missionaries from all denominations, if only they had the old Scriptural faith. It made little of educational but much of spiritual preparation, and welcomed women as preach- ers as well as men. It sought missionaries who would look for no fixed salary, but be content with whatever God should supply. Under the influence of expecta- tion of the early return of Christ, it made the es- sence of mission work not Christianizing but evangel- ising; and it sought to throw the largest possible missionary force into the field at once. This society has not only thrown a large number of missionary workers intcJ the field, but provoked into being other societies of similar character, and through the "Cam- bridge Seven", and the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Mission, has been stirring Protestant Christendom down to the present. In 1884, the "Cam- bridge Seven" started a missionary fire amongst the youth of Great Britain. It spread to North America. "At a conference of students which Moody summoned to Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, in the middle of 1886, and which was held for some weeks and was devoted to the practical study of the Bible, there was formed, chiefly on the incentive of young Mr. Wilder, a band of students, or those of both sexes, preparing to be students, who made a written declaration, that they were willing to become missionaries if God per- mitted, and who chose as their watchword, "The evangelization of the world in this generation." The first hundred who so united themselves at Mount i82 Introduction to Christian Missions Hermoii, then organized an agitation in the colleges and seminaries, which, certainly not without Methodis- tical forcing and the rhetoric of enthusiasm, set a move- ment at work that in a comparatively short time made, it was said, over five thousand young people willing to join the band, which was now constituted as the "Stu- dent Volunteer Missionary Union,"* Sobriety has been injected into the movement as the years have passed. While the "rhetorical watch- word" has been retained, they are careful, many of them, to say that they advocate an effort to evangelize thoroughly ; and that this cry is an appeal to the present generation to do their utmost toward the evangeliza- tion of the world. Able advocates of this movement have endeavored to set it agoing in all parts of Protes- tant Christendom. These movements and the Moody and Keswick evangelistic movements have prepared the vv^ay for the forward movement in our own Church, in which the effort is made to get individuals, or local Churches, to support year after year one or more missionaries each. They have prepared the way in part, also, for the Laymen's Missionary Movement. The Head of the Church, unquestionably has used the Students' Volun- teer and subsequent movements to stir the evangelical Churches and societies to greater exertion. The Church has not yet been sufficiently aroused ; she can- not be regarded as sufficiently aroused until all the rank and file — every member — shall be doing his ut- most to push the cause of Christ; but she has shown increasing signs of life. *Robson's, Warneck: History of Pr&tcstant Missions^ p. ii8. The Church a Missionary Society 183 The missionary portion of Protestantism has held for the most part the simple evangelical theory of Christianity. It has already been remarked that cer- tain eschatological views of early Lutherans and that certain views as to the proper relations of Church and state, obtaining amongst Lutherans and Reformed alike, had made missionary effort unnatural to them. It has also been remarked that just where connection between Church and state was loosest, i. e., amongst dissenters and half-dissenters the zeal for missions first appeared. Not that dissent was enough to produce the missionary spirit. Evangelical dissent has been pushing missions as no other Protestant power since the death of Carey. It has carried representatives of state Churches in its train. Rationalistic and semi-infidel Christianity has made little attempt to propagate it- self on the foreign field. It has no sufficient motive. The evangelicals have furnished the men and the money for mission work. The aim of the workers has been almost universally to win true disciples ; and as the years have passed the purpose of "establishing in strategic places suffi- ciently equipped, self-maintaining and self-propagat- ing Churches, which shall themselves go on winning such converts, has become more clear and definite. It is desired to give to Japan, for example, a Christian plant like our Christian plant here at home though at once Japanese and thoroughly Christian, that can and will take Japan for Christ; and that will do it rapidly and solidly. Throughout a large portion of the period, mission work has been carried on with a certain simplicity "without entering much on questions belonging to the 184 Introduction to Christian Missions theory of missions" ; but as intelligence concerning the countries, peoples and tribes to be evangelized has in- creased, and as a better comprehension of the principles of apostolic missions has been acquired, the theory of proper missionary endeavor has received more atten- tion; and an increasing effort has been made to resur- rect and apply the principles applied under the imme- diate leading of the Holy Ghost in the apostolic age. There is a more generally conscious effort to work to- day so as to secure for to-morrow the largest addi- tional army of efficient witness-bearers. There is a less general disposition to seek for mere numbers with- out regard to efficiency. There is a more general recognition of the possibility of the relative wasting of forces, men and treasure, by going after this people instead of that; or going at them in great force now instead of on some favorable juncture. There is a more common conception of the urgency of the ob- ligations to capture for Christ great peoples in sea- sons of special openness. There is, in short, fuller recognition of the divine strategy and tactics of the apostolic age, and a greater effort to command men- tally the conditions of all the peoples to be evange- lized ; and to attempt their evangelization in a tactical and strategic way. It may be admitted, however, that an adequate theory of missions setting the principles in full and scientific form has not yet been furnished. The histrument used by the Protestant Churches and missionary societies in missions has been almost exclu- sively the word, taught and lived. It is probable that here and there a missionary has descended to the use of a veiled bribe ; that as Rice Christians were to be had by those who wished to purchase them, so oc- The Church a Missionary Society 185 casionally a missionary stooped to the purclrase. This sort of work has, however, been far from frequent. As to the Methods: The evangehstic has been the most generally in application. The evangelist has gather his own crowd of listeners in every legiti- mate way, and wherever they could be gotten to listen, and told them the story of redemption, told it in the simplest and most living manner he could command. For example, James Gil- mour working amongst the Mongolian nomads, is found, first of all, after reaching an encampment, dis- sipating the native reserve by tea-drinking, then pro- ducing and exhibiting a case of Scripture pictures, and stating the main doctrines of Christianity in connec- tion with them ; and "thus enabling even the stupid to apprehend his teaching and to remember it." Scarcely another evengelist has found a people so ready for evangelistic work as Titus Coan found those of Hilo in 1835. After the beginning of the great revival, 1837, "nearly the whole population of Hilo and Puna attended religious services ; the sick and the lame were brought in litters and on the backs of men ; and at any hour of the day or night a tap of the bell would gather thousands at the places for prayer and preaching." The years 1838 and 1839 were great harvest years with him. Seven or eight thousand professed conversion. They were slowly admitted to the Church. Great care was taken in examining-, watching and teaching the can- didates. But July I, 1838, 1,705 were received into membership ; and 2,400 communicants sat down together at the table of the Lord. During the five years, ending June, 1841, 7,557 persons were received into the Church at Hilo. i86 Introduction to Christian Missions The success of the evangelist Coan is explained in part by the work of preparation done in Hilo before his arrival. Missionary work had been done there al- ready. A small Church of thirty-six members had been gathered, about one-fourth of the population taught to read, and not a little Christian truth put into circulation. It is explained in part by the fact of Mr. Coan's peculiar fitness for the work; in part, by the fact that the people had been savages, without a cultus that could hold their respect and without a civilization comparable in any respect to that which the mission- aries brought them. It is easier to lead savages to Christianity than the civilized, or semi-civilized non- Christian peoples. In these remarks we are not for- getting the efficient and sovereign working of the Holy Ghost, without whose agency savage nor civilized can be won to a real Christianity. Many faithful and able evangelists labor for years with small results, feeling at times that they apparently would have done as much through months, if they had been preaching to, or conversing with, the waves of the sea. Still evangelistic preaching is relied on mainly to spread the Gospel ; and not less than four or five thousand ordained preachers, and a larger num- ber of unordained evengelists and catechists are preaching the Gospel to-day to heathen peoples. They are talking this Gospel, too, in private, as Christ did to the woman by the well, and to Nicodemus by night. Women are talking it in Zenanas and to their heathen sisters whom Christian men cannot reach. They are meeting objections. They are instilling the truth, drop by drop. The literary method came into large application as The Church a Missionary Society 187 has appeared in the time of William Carey, and it has been more and more used with the progress of the cause. It too, had an apostolic warrant, a large part of the New Testament being missionary literature. It has ever proven one of the most effective ways in which the missionary can present his message to the heathen. This method has had its largest and noblest application as yet in giving to heathen peoples the sacred Scriptures in their own tongues. Between five hundred and fifty and six hundred missionaries have made translations of the Scriptures. By far the larger proportion of existing versions are the product of the toil of missionaries on the field, and are used in foreign missionary operations ; the number of living and effec- tive versions is in excess of four hundred. Of only less importance is the interpretative and applicatory Christian literature — subsidiary to the Bible. Christian peoples in the home land would get on badly without such literature. It is not less needed on heathen soil for the support, comfort, and edifica- tion of the Christianized heathen. There are not less than one hundred and twenty-two printing houses on heathen soil devoted to publications of this sort. Only thirty of them are of considerable size, however, and as missionaries are working in about three hundred languages, and as these mission presses are not pro- portionately distributed, far less is being done along this line than should be done. Publication work of the sort is so essential to rapid spread of the Gospel and the permanent establishment and upbuilding of the Church that more strength should be laid out along this line. Particularly there seems to be a need for the improvement of the periodical output in the i88 Introduction to Christian Missions native languages ; and plans should be made for the development of a permanent Christian literature in all heathen lands. The educational method during the early stages of Protestant missionary enterprise had been regarded by very many as inconsistent with the true missionary aim. It was legitimated in the thought of the Churches first, as necessary in order to furnish Christian leaders for the growing bodies of converts to Christianity. By degrees it has come to hold an ever-growing import- ance in the minds of missionaries. It prepares the way for the Gospel by showing the falsity of the teach- ings of the heathen religions, the baselessness of their superstitions, the immorality of many of their time- honored customs, and their crude and childish expla- nation of physical phenomena. It prevents the vitiat- ing and hardening influence of the heathen education which would otherwise take place. It is as necessary to the high type of Christian character in the heathen land as it is in the home land. It is necessary to enable Christian converts to go to the front in business and professional careers and thus give the Gospel a more favorable hearing than it could otherwise have. It is, in many mission territories, necessary in order that people be enabled to read the word of God, and thus get that knowledge of the truth which God has been pleased to make the condition of regeneration. It has come to be a very pronounced method of missionary endeavor. There are at present more than 20,000 educational institutions of all kinds, with more than 1,000,000 pupils of whom about one-third are females. The preparatory schools have sprung into being in great numbers during the last twenty-five years. The Church a Missionary Society 189 The manner in which educational work is con- ducted in the mission fields is so similar in all re- spects to the way in which it is conducted at home that no description is needed. Hardly any new fad at home fails of its analogue on the foreign field. Educated ministers, taking the place of mission- aries and allowing the latter to devote themselves to superintendance and to further evangelization in new centres ; a better furnished body of laymen to countei- balance the undue influence of the ministry; the eleva- tion of the standard of Christian living by a knowledge of Christian customs in the home-land ; the elevation of womanhood ; and the proof to the heathen that Christianity cares for the whole man, are some of the fruits of the educational method. The medical method has had a remarkable develop- ment in recent mission history. Though there were forty medical missionaries on the field as 1849, it was not till 1879 that the value of this agency for reaching heathen peoples became fully recognized. Throughout the heathen world, Japan excepted, the practice of medicine is marked by dense superstition and carried on with unspeakable cruelty. Christian medical mis- sions open the way for the entrance of the evangelists, pastor and teacher. They propitiate the favor, often of the great, for the message which the missionary carries; they open doors into the hearts of their pa- tients for the Gospel, being fruit of Gospel grace. They secure protection and provision. They destroy social barriers to the spread of Gospel doctrine, e. g. caste. In principle at least, the medical is vindicated by the example of Christ, who was wont to heal the body and follow up with instruction touching that life which really is life. ' '' 190 Introduction to Christian Missions The industrial method has been Hmited thus far to a narrow range of missionary effort. "But in some portions of Africa, among simple and ignorant people, they have been found eminently helpful in giving direc- tion to life, and opening up a sphere of usefulness at the same time that they afford an opportunity for re- ligious instruction. They seem to rescue young lives from inanity and idleness, and give them a start in a career of self-respecting usefulness, with the Gospel planted in their hearts." The workers in this period have grown steadily in numbers from William Carey's day to the present ; but more rapidly since the organization of the China In- land Mission, the rise of the Keswick and Moody movements, the Student Volunteer Movement, etc. There were in 1900 not fewer than 6,850 missionaries, 470 qualified medical missionaries, 3,250 unmarried female missionaries, and 230 certificated women mis- sionaries, making a total staff of 10,800. The number has increased greatly since that date, certainly by more than the one-half of itself. While some socie- ties and Churches continue to send almost any ap- parently pious person who will agree to go, many of the societies and Churches prosecuting missions look more and more for men qualified by native endowments and training for leadership ; and the missionary ranks are marked not only by a high general level of Chris- tian consecration, but by not a few men of command- ing abilities and culture, and efficiency in a variety of conditions. Alexander Duff was a man of marked talent whom his Church would have had return to Scotland in 1846, on the death of Dr. Chalmers, to hold the office of principal and professor of theology in the The Church a Missionary Society 191 Free College. But he had a more important post in India in his collegiate institute with its 800 or more students, and he knew it. His "dauntless will, con- summate eloquence, impassioned piety, great self- reliance," place him close to Thomas Chalmers in the ranks of great Scotchmen. Great as Duff is he stands in company with peers, in Adoniram Judson, John Kenneth MacKenzie, Alexander Murdoch Mackay, David Livingstone, George Leslie Mackay, James Gil- mour, Titus Coan, Ian Keith-Falconer, Robert Morri- son, etc. These missionaries have been instrumental in set- ting to active work a great force of native Christian workers. There were in 1903 about 70,000 native workers, 24,500 places of regular worship, 23,527 ele- mentary schools, 900 higher educational institutions of learning, 553 hospitals, 147 publishing houses and printing establishments. These helpers, schools and so forth have been multiplied several fold in the last thirty years. The missionary workers have been very unequally distributed over the mission territory. Of late, for ex- ample, about two-ninths only of the entire missionary force have been at work among the 700.000,000 non- Christian peoples of India, China and Japan ; while nearly four-ninths of this entire force have been at work among 180,000,000 heathen of the lower and the lowest grades of heathenism. This has been due in part to the greater accessibility of these lower grades of peoples than the higher to the missionary. Thus God has been pleased to show favor to the poor Sama- ritans of the modern world. This distribution has been due in part, perhaps, to want of consideration 192 Introduction to Christian Missions on the part of the Church as to how the work might be done most strategically. It is believed that mis- sionary workers are now, as never before, looking for J:he right end at which to take hold of the great job before them — the taking of the world for Christ. The numbers won on heathen soil since the going out of Duff to India are not large ; but have been in- creasing with the decades. It is said that the total number of Christian adherents won from heathenism, and then living, did not exceed 70,000 in 1800. It is said that by 1881, the number of such adherents had grown to 2,283,000; and that by 1903, the number had come to be 4,462,500. During this period Protestantism, through its spawning power and home missions, has grown im- mensely ; and the results of its missions to the heathen cannot be measured by the number of the converts, unless these be regarded as seed in a soil that has been helpfully and increasingly stirred by a great variety of methods, evangelistic, literary, medical, etc., and which may be expected, after a little to bring forth, some thirty, some sixty, and some an hundred fold. The character of the converts won while not up to the level of Christian character in Europe and America, speaks of the uplifting power of the Gospel. For ex- ample, "In South India there is one convicted of crime out of 25,000 Christians, one out of 447 Hindus, and one out of 728 Mohammedans." The world has opened up to missions in this age as never before. India was opened up more and more after 1313. From 1858, the missionaries throughout all British India were certain of British civil protection. China has been opening by degrees since 1842 ; Japan The Church a Missionary Society 193 since 1853, and more rapidly after 1858; and Korea since 1882. Since 1870, a large part of the world has fallen open as never before. The Mohammedan world however, particularly that part of it under Moham- medan civil government, cannot be said to be really open for work on Mohammedans. Nor is Tibet open. This vast open territory the Church is trying to overrun; to build up fortresses here and there all over it, fortresses which shall, everywhere, become great recruiting camps for the armies of the Lord of Hosts ; and from which shall go out bands that shall at length take all the land. When the forces at work on the field, and the converts won, are compared with the one billion heathen the promise of an early conquest may look small. But Christianity is now the religion of, by far, the largest number of adherents of all the religions. The Christians control the politics and the resources of the world as the peoples of all other re- ligions combined do not. The Lord of Hosts is on the side of missions. Let Him stir Christian peoples in behalf of missions, and pour out His Spirit upon all flesh — upon heathen peoples; and nations shall be born in a day. This is an age of measureless opportunities, in the open doors, of measureless advantages in the Christian plants installed, in the impression already made on heathenism, and in the indications of the divine readi- ness to bless mission work. LECTURE X. Motives to Missionary Endeavor. In the course of these lectures we have endeavored to set forth the place of missions in the divine design of the Church and its life, the principles which the Church's Great Head would have her apply in her missionary efforts, the application of these principles in his missionary work by the apostle Paul. We have tried also to describe, in its more important aspects, the Church's missionary work, in all the several periods of Church history from the apostolic age to the present; and to show the real character of this work, in the several periods by comparing, or contrasting, it with apostolic teaching and example. In the course of these lectures many reasons have been brought to view incidentally wherefore the Church of our day should give itself to missionary endeavor. But mis- sions are of such practical importance that it has been deemed expedient to gather together for your consid- eration some of the more urgent reasons for missionary effort on the part of the Church. My brethren, do you understand the importance of missionary effort on the part of the Church? Do you feel its importance? Are you fully awake on this sub- ject? Have you determined that wherever you work and whatever you do you will push the mission cause? Whether you are pastors, or evangelists, or professors, or editors, you ought to be missionary in heart, aim- ing so to spend your lives as to spread the Gospel most Motives to Missionary Endeavor 195 rapidly and fully throughout the whole earth. Many of you should labor in the foreign field, perhaps. "My brethren, I am ashamed that there are so many of us here in this Christian land. We must go to the heathen,"* said Dr. William Armstrong to the minis- ters and Church of Richmond, Va., in 1833. Might not his words be repeated with fitness in many of the towns and cities in this land? There are too many ministers at home in proportion to those in foreign missions fields ; and too many in the older por- tions of the Church in proportion to the number in the destitute districts of the home land. When Gossner said, in Berlin, in 1844, to young men starting for India, "Up, up, my brethren, the Lord is coming, and to every one He will say, 'Where hast thou left the souls of the heathen? With the devil?' Oh swiftly seek those souls and enter not without them into the presence of the Lord," he was guilty of no empty hyperbole. By a man of sufficient earnestness, a like exhortation might well be addressed to the young men of to-day in behalf of the destitute in Foreign and in Home Mission fields. Let us, then, with a prayer for the Spirit's bless- ing upon our work, review some of the motives which should lead the Church of God of our day to give itself to spreading the truth from pole to pole and around the whole belt of the globe — some of the mo- tives which should make you willing to go anywhere and do any right thing in order to further most effi- ciently the discipling of all nations. Amongst the many forces which should lead the * A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 7. 196 Introduction to Christian Missions Church — which should lead you to missionary en- deavor, are : 1st. Love to God. Love to God should lead you to missionary endeavor. God desires that the Church should be missionary. He has shown this unmistakably by the constitution which he gave the Church in Abraham's day and on which he has kept it down to this day. He has shown it also by His providential dealing with it in history. He has shown it by all His revealed teachings concern- jog the design of the Church and the nature of the Gospel ; and He has shown it by laying the express injunction on the Church, "Go ye, therefore, and dis- ciple all nations." * He who studies the constitution of the Church as set forth in Scripture, the design of the Church and of the Gospel, the leading of the Church by the Holy Spirit, and the last charge to his immediate disciples of the Lord Christ, can have no doubt that the Church and its members can only meet the divine approba- tion by steadily and earnestly applying themselves to missionary endeavor. The God of revelation wishes the Church to give the Gospel to all nations ; and not mere- ly to all nations, in their mass severally, but to all of all nations ; not merely to Korea, and China, and Japan, and India, and Africa, but to all the Koreans, all the Chinese, all the Japanese, all the Hindoos and all the Africans. He wishes his followers of to-day to preach the Gospel to all who have it not ; to Hottentots, to Hindoo Coolies, High Caste Brahmins, Thibetians, * Matt, xxviii. 19, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Mark xvi. 15. Motives to Missionary Endeavor 197 the upper four hundred of New York, the lowest four hundred thousand in the same city — all every where who have not the Gospel. He wishes His Church not simply to preach the Gospel in the hearing of every creature, but to endeavor to make disciples of them by putting them into personal individual relations to Christ like those of the pupils to their revered Jewish Rabbi. There can be no question as to what the Church and what you must do if God is to be pleased ; nor can there be any question as to God's worthiness to be pleased. Of measureless power and wisdom and holiness and justice and goodness and truth; so loving "the world as to send His only begotten Son that who- soever believeth on Him should not perish but have everlasting life," "commending His love unto us in that while yet sinners Christ died for us," surely we ought to desire to please Him. Nor should it be for- gotten that the command to disciple all nations was given by that person in the blessed Trinity who at once occupied the most intimate relations with man and has purchased those relationships, at infinite cost to himself. The command to disciple all nations was uttered by the incarnate Son, as Mediatorial King. He had the right to lay this command upon his disciples not only because of his divine perfection, but because he had purchased the Mediatorial Kingship by His vicarious toils and sufferings for man. He had served God and man to death, and through death, and God had "raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all prin- cipalities and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this world, but 198 Introduction to Christian Missions also in that which is to come ; and put all things under his feet, and gave Him to he the head over all things to the Church, which is His body the fidness of Him that aileth all in all." Christ the Mediatorial King our Re- deemer, God, of infinite essential moral worth, and who hath also purchased, at the cost of His incarnation, humiliation and death, the headship over His own, bids them — you — go and disciple all nations. "Ko-Chat-Thing, a Karen convert, when in this country, was asked on one occasion to address a con- gregation respecting their obligation to send out mis- sionaries. After a moment of thought he asked with a good deal of emotion : 'Has not Christ told them to do it?' 'Oh, yes,' was the reply, 'but we wish you to remind them of their duty.' 'Oh, no,' said the Karen, 'if they will not mind Jesus Christ, they will not mind me.' No indeed ; if they hear not Moses and the prophets, if they hear not Him who has risen from the dead, whom will they hear?"* See what God's desire for His Church is, in the matter of missions, and that His desert of love on our part toward Him is infinite, and that in the person of the Son, He has laid by express command, the duty of world wide missions on his followers and His Church, love to God, if it be in us, must move us to give our- selves to missionary endeavor, it will say, with Paul, "For we have thus judged that in that Christ died he died that henceforth we who live, should not live unto ourselves but unto Him who for our sakes died and rose again." 2nd. Love to your fellow-man should move you to missionary endeavor. *A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, pp. 62 ff. Motives to Missionary Endeavor 199 We take for granted that you are possessed of this high quahty. It is of the very Spirit of Christ; and you are believed to be Christians. If you are wholly destitute of Christian love for your fellowman, you are no more akin to Christ than a hawk is to a dove. And does not this love say, "Thou shalt be thy brother's keeper?" Does it not sympathize with Paul when he says, "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the Church." * My brethren, love to our fellowmen should lead us to missionary endeavor. That is the way the heathen peoples think of it. The duty resting on us to give the Gospel to the heathen is not a "recondite matter of ob- ligation." Listen with John Eliot to the Indians at Natick as they inquire why the English have delayed so long to instruct them in the knowledge of God. Hear them say, "Had you done it sooner, we might have known much of God by this time, and much sin might have been prevented, but now some of us have grown old in sin." * Hear an aged warrior, on the Manitoulin Islands in the year 1840, say to a missionary, "I am the chief of a numerous people and I wish them to be instructed. We have heard that our brothers who are near the white settlements have received the Great Word. We have heard that the Great Spirit has told the white man to send the Great Word to all his children. Why does he not send it to us? I have been looking many *Col. i. 24. * A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 66; Francis's Life of John Eliot, pp. 88, 89. 200 Introduction to Christian Missions moons down the river to see the missionary's canoe, but it has not yet come." f Listen again to the African Sechele, Chief of the Bakwains, as he says to David Livingstone : "All my forefathers have passed away into darkness without knowing anything of what was to befall them ; how is it that your forefathers, knowing all these things, did not send the word to my forefathers sooner." % Go now to the Sandwich Islands, look on that aged woman moving about in great distress, beating her breast and wailing as she looks at thousands of happy Christian children gathered at a great Sunday School convention in Hilo. Hear her explain her grief : "Why did not the missionaries come before? These hands are stained with the blood of twelve children, and not one of my flesh remains to rejoice here to-day. Oh, why did not the missionaries come before ?" * The unenlightened heathen would seem to be able to teach no small portion of Christendom on this point. They see that simple love to man should move us to give the Gospel to them. It may be questioned whether we expound properly to ourselves the command to love our neighbors as our- selves. Certainly there is a radical defect in most of the current Christian ethical teaching on this matter of our duty to our heathen neighbor. Does the hearer know of a system of ethics taught in many of our col- t Robert Adler, Wesleyan Missions, London 1842, p. 29; A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 67. t Livingstone's Cambridge Lectures, Lect. i, p. 5; A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 68. *Miss West's Romance of Missions, pp. 609, 610; A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, p. 70. MoTiv'ES TO Missionary Endeavor 201 leges, or universities in which any sufficient emphasis is laid upon the subject of our duty to our heathen neighbor? In the ethical teaching of the great schools of Christendom to this day, is there not a spirit Phari- saic if not Sudducean? Is not duty to the heathen ignored? But according to the Scriptures, our neigh- bor is whomsoever we can help. He is every man on the globe that we can reach. To the lawyer who thinking to justify himself, said, "Who is my neigh- bor?" Jesus uttered the parable of the Good Samaritan, and thus forced the lawyer to admit that to be neigh- borly meant to show mercy to him who needed it, of whatever race he might be. If we would love our neighbors as ourselves then we must go to those races and tribes and persons who have fallen into helpless wretchedness and woe, because sorely smitten of sin. Christian neighborliness, brotherly love should move you to missionary endeavor. 3rd. Legitimate love to yourself should lead you to missionary endeavor. The appeal to self-love is sometimes stigmatized, owing to a confusion of self-love with selfishness. Selfishness moves one to seek his own welfare at the cost of the rights of others. Legitimate self-love never does, but moves to seek the well being of others along with one's own. That there is a legitimate self-love is evident from the repeated appeal to it in the Deca- logue, tfom the repeated appeals to it in the teaching of our Lord, as well as from the profoundest modern philosophic teaching, e. g.. Bishop Butler's. The makers of our Shorter Catechism did well in giving it a place in their answer to the first question : What is the chief end of man? Thev say, "The chief end of 202 Introduction to Christian Missions man is' to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever." Happiness is linked with duty, the two forming a complex end of the life of man. Now our present point is that a legitimate self-love should move you to mis- sionary endeavor. This appears from the following considerations : I. Regard for your reputation for a life consistent with your profession — a legitimate self-interest — should move you to missionary endeavor. You are the professor of a religion of right univer- sal. It is destined to be universal some day. The stone which Daniel saw cut without hands from the mountain and grow, become a great mountain and fill the whole earth, symbolized the growth of that king- dom which Christ set up. In accord with that prophecy, the Church believes, as the Psalmist as- serts, "that all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord ; and all the kindreds of the nations shall remember and turn unto Him" ;* believes that the day will come when "they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying know the Lord ; for all shall know Him from the least to the greatest." f The Church begins as a grain of mustard seed. It has gtown and will grow; but meanwhile the Church and you as members of the Church are pledged to labor for its growth. You have in professing Christianity pledged yourself to make Christ and His cause uppermost in your life. You re- peat this solemn pledge every time you take the Lord's Supper, and profess it, as often as you in any way * Psalm xxii. 27. t Heb. viii. 11; cf. Rev. xiv. 6. Motives to Missionary Endeavor 203 profess to be His disciple. On every such occasion, you profess that you are one of those pledged to follow Christ in His supreme love for God and Christlike love for man ; one of those pledged therefore to obedience to His great charge. Every time you repeat the Lord's Prayer, you pray, too, for the coming of the Kingdom of God. How plain it is then that a regard for your reputation for a life consistent with your pro- fession should move you to missionary endeavor. 2. Regard for your reputation as humane should move you to missionary endeavor. You deprecate and abhor inhumanity. Our age boasts itself as a humane age ; our race, as a humane race. Among the most generally pleasing stories to our age are stories illustrating the humane. What more pleasing anecdote of all those related by Boswell of Samuel Johnson than that of the great man's carry- ing a poor and degraded woman, whom he had found lying in a state of exhaustion in the street to his own home and there caring for her till her recovery? Per- haps, no story of the great Anselmn has wider circu- lation than that of his protection of a hare. Who of you has not heard the story of General Lee's care, in the midst of a battle, of a fledgling bird? It is even a fashion to be humane in our times. We have all sorts of asylums for a man and beasts. We grow in- dignant at instances of grave inhumanity, especially to suffering multitudes, as at those Russian specula- tors in grain in the year 1890, when in the face of a terrible drought, and widespread poverty, they cornered the bread stufif; and made the famine vastly more aw- ful to the poor people ; and as at similar speculators in Russia during very recent years ; and during the last year in China. 204 Introduction to Christian Missions But is there not danger of our doing a much more dreadful thing than these Russian and Chinese specula- tors have done. They withheld from their starving fellows material bread. They reduced many to death by starvation preceded by unspeakable wretchedness and suffering of the body and mind and heart as they looked on the agonies of starving dear ones. We may easily withhold the bread of eternal life and bring on them eternal wretchedness and woe unspeakable. It is inhuman not to give the Gospel to the heathen in the presence of their spiritual famine. The heathen are perishing for want of the Gospel. Let no one deny that the heathen need the Gospel. Granting that there was a possibility of salvation for adult heathen men and women without the Gospel, it would still be our duty to give the heathen the Gospel. Every reason which may be offered in behalf of giving the Gospel to the world at home may be offered also for giving it to the world abroad. The man who will not help his neighbor who has fallen among thieves simply because that neighbor will not certainly utterly perish deserves to be despised. Much more we, if we will not give the Gospel to the heathen, even supposing that they have a chance at salvation. On that supposi- tion it is ours to give them a better chance. But no honest and candid interpretation of the Bible favors the notion that adult heathen are saved without a knowl- edge of Christ. "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me," saith our Lord. "The Scripture saith whosoever believeth on Him shall not be ashamed. . . . For whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not Motives to Missionary Endeavor 205 believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear with- out a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?" These Scriptures present Jesus as the one way of salvation and some knowledge of Him as a necessary condition of salvation. Moreover, missionaries are said to have found no case of a man's having lived up to the light which he had in such a manner as to ground a hope of his salvation. Hence experimen- tally as well as on Biblical grounds the heathen seem to stand in imperative need of the Gospel. They are perishing from want of it. Hence, from this point of view, if you would not be written down as inhuman, regard for your reputation as humane should move you to missionary endeavor. 3. Desire to preserve our reputation as persons of ■fidelity and gratitude should move us to be missionary. We have received the Gospel and all Christian graces on trust to be imparted to others. God's truth is for the whole world. The oil and wine of Jesus' teaching is ours not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors wherever under heaven they can be found. The bread of life belongs by the bequest of God to the world of men to whom we have not yet given it. The bread is not exclusively ours. God has entrusted it to us that we may give light with it to all the world including the heathen in their conscious wretchedness. How we hate unfaithfulness to trust in affairs of this world — unfaithfulness in guardians of orphaned chil- dren, unfaithfulness in the use of funds given for speci- fic purposes ! How the world excoriates a Hippel ! But if we misemploy that which God commits to us to be 2o6 Introduction to Christian Missions used according to His own direction for the good of others, are we not, Aphobuses, Hippels, unfaithful? Again, we are ourselves the fruits of missionary effort. The civilization of European states and their offspring in America and the religion of these peoples would have been very different but for the messengers of the cross. Paul and the missionaries who followed him to Europe have made us forever their debtors. We owe a debt of gratitude to them and to that greater missionary, who came as such to this benighted world. How can we show our gratitude to these early mis- sionaries? How except by taking up the work which they would undoubtedly be doing were they alive and able to work this day. Paul would certainly be a mis- sionary, desiring to have fruit amongst this people and that, were he here unchanged in character. The thing that we must do to show our gratitude to Paul is to push the cause which he pushed; and we can express our gratitude to the Lord Jesus Christ better this way than any other. He will count work of this sort as though a favor done Himself personally. He will say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." If we have any gratitude it will out, and how otherwise? Desire, then, to preserve your reputation as capable of fidelity and of gratitude, and to escape being written down as ingrates, should move you to missionary en- deavor. 4. Desire to secure the helpful reflex influence from it, upon yourselves, and upon the- people of your Churches should lead you to missionary endeavor. In order to such missionary effort as was enjoined by Christ upon His Church, you must have informa- Motives to Missionary Endeavor 207 tion and the rank and file of the Church must have in- formation. The obligations to the work must be kept before the mind, the principles on which Christ would have it conducted must be kept before the mind, the opportunities, and open door, for such effort, must be kept before the mind, the world's sore need must be kept before the mind. If you get and give the needed information, press the motives to, expound the princi- ples on which, missions should be conducted, present the special openings for, it will give you, and all whom you specially influence, an intellectual and moral quickening, making them look on all historic move- ments with greater zest, and intelligence ; it will give a higher tone and vigor to your whole mental life. When you have become a pastor, you will have done no mean thing when you have lifted a congregation above a consideration of its own small local matters and made it look upon its commission from the Lord Jesus Christ as world-wide, when you have made it see that God has given to it a glorious task — a work which angels might well aspire to do. Think of the peasant Church of Hermansburg, Hanover, Germany, under the leadership of Louis Harms — establishing a theolo- gical school for the education of missionaries, build- ing a ship to carry its missionaries to Africa, planting eight vigorous colonies in that savage field, pushing missions over a wide territory, "reaching from the Zulus on the coast to the Bechuanas in the centre, and from Orange River to Lake Nyami." * What a men- tal and moral growth must have taken place in that congregation ! Moreover if you will lead your people * Hoppin, Pastoral Theology, p. 533. 2o8 Introduction to Christian Missions to active missionary work, you will give them more comfort, perhaps, than if you shall preach ever so much on the consolation of the Gospel for all those who mourn. Hear the testimony of old Andrew Fuller on this question. 'There was a period of my ministry," says Andrew Fuller, "marked by the most pointed, systematic effort to comfort my serious people ; but the more I tried to comfort them, the more they com- plained of doubts and darkness. ... I knew not what to do nor what to think ; for I had done my best to comfort these mourners in Zion. At this time it pleased God to direct my attention to the claims of the perishing heathen in India. I felt that we had been living for ourselves and not caring for their souls. I spoke as I felt. My serious people wondered and wept over their past inattention to the subject. They be- gan to talk about a Baptist mission. The females especially began to collect money for the spread of the Gospel. We met and prayed for the heathen ; met and considered what could be done amongst ourselves for them ; met and did what we could. And whilst all this was going on, the lamentation ceased. The sad became cheerful and the despairing calm. No one com- plained of want of comfort. And I, instead of having to study how to comfort my flock, was myself com- forted by them. They were drawn out of themselves, sir; that was the real secret. God blessed them while they tried to be a blessing." * Honest genuine missionary work gives a Christ- like conception of truth, duty, man, and God, and Christlike habits of character. Engage in it you will confirm your faith and your people's faith. As you * Quoted in A. C. Thompson, Foreign Missions, pp. 28, 29. Motives to Missionary Endeavor 209 throw yourselves into line with one of God's great pur- poses, you will come under the influence of a powerful persuasive of the truth of Christianity. There shall be verified in your experience the truth of that saying of our Lord, "If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God !" f Our limits do not allow the full development of the present point. What has been said may suggest a volume of what might be said along parallel lines in confirmation of the value of the reflex influence of missionary efifort on the Church. In pushing this work properly you will be at the same time lifting your- self and the Church in the home-land in the sphere of your influence. You will be enlarging mentally, mor- ally, and spiritually, your length, and breadth and heighth and depth, and that of your Church. You will be transforming by the power of the truth and the truth applied, yourselves and your churches. Let this suffice to confirm the present contention that, desire to secure the helpful reflex influence from it upon yourselves, and the Christian peoples whom you are in any wise responsible for, should lead you to missionary endeavor. 5. Desire to put yourself into the ranks of the noblest heroes of flie ages should lead you to be missionary. There are no names on the pages of secular history brighter than those of the missionaries, Paul. Schwartz, William Carey, Henry Martin, David Livingstone, Moffat, MacKay, and others. They were heroes, and their heroism has qualities rarely found in that of secu- lar history's most splendid and heroic men. t John vii. 17. 2IO Introduction to Christian Missions The self-denying worker for the mission cause though he spend all his days "in the home-land, may develop the same shining qualities. The genuine mis- sionary spirit must work in all, who are filled with it, somewhat of the same character. Hence the desire to put yourselves into the ranks of the noblest body of heroes known to history should move you to mis- sionary endeavor. 6. The desire to preserve your sense of right should lead you to missionary endeavor. Righteousness says, Don't be a hypocrite, profes- sing to be walking after your Lord's commands when you are not. Righteousness says. Be faithful to the trust committed to our hands. Righteousness says, Don't be an ingrate but be grateful. Righteousness says. Don't fail of self-sacrificing love. Righteousness says, Emulate noble example. Righteousness says, Don't be inhumane, be humane. How can you preserve your sense of right, now, without heeding the "don'ts" and the "do" of righteous- ness ; and this sense of right must be preserved in or- der to the highest manhood. 7. Desire to meet your responsibilities should lead you to missionary endeavor. Our light is the fullest, the command of God to dis- ciple all nations rings with unmistakable clearness. We have the amplest opportunities. The world, with the possible exception of the central plateau of Asia, lies open to the missionaries of the cross. Communication is easy. Steamships, railways, and telegraph lines have reduced the earth to the dimensions of a neighborhood. Enormous wealth and power have been put into the hands' of the Church, in your hands to some extent, which may Motives to Missionary Endeavor 211 be applied to the work of evangelizing the world. To whom the Lord giveth much, of him will he also require much. Everything in God's part toward you that calls for fidelity, for gatitude, for self-sacrificing love, for the emulation of noble examples, of Christian living, every- thing, severally, and all together, lay a heavy responsi- bility upon you to give yourselves' to missionary endeavor. God help you to meet the responsibility aright. Amen. INDEX, Page. Aim of Mission Effort: In Apostolic Age $1 In Ante-Nicene Age 74 In Post-Nicene Age 82,83 In Mediaeval Age 92, 93 In Modern Roman Missions 115,116 In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 183 American Baptist Missionary Society 166 American Bible Society 166, 167 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 165, 166 Anselm 91 Ansgar 96 Armstrong, Dr. Wm 195 Augustine 76, 96 Augustines 126 Berengar 91 Bliss, E. M., quoted 71 Boniface 96 Brainherd 150, 165 British and Foreign Bible Society 166 British East India Company 151, 152 Bucer, Martin 131 Calvin 127, 133, 136 Calvinists , 136, 148 "Cambridge Seven," The 181 Carey, William, 14, 98, 150, 152, 154, ff., 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 187, 190, 209 Celsus 78 Chalmers, Thomas 172, 190, 191 Charles Martel 96 Christian, Obscure, Part in Missions 41, 78, 79, 95 214 Index Christians of To-day : Under Obligation to Missions 24, 25, 66-68 How Meeting the Obligation 68, 69 Church, The, Ordained of God to be a Missionary Society, 9, ff The Members of, Pledged to Mission Endeavor 24, 25 Of Right, The, Missionary Society 11-29 Should Know the Truth 46, 47 Preach the Truth uneviscerated 47, 48 Learn the Religious Condition of Various Parts of the World 48, 49 Select its Instruments for the Several Parts of its Witness- bearing SO, 51 Work for the Most Effective Additions 51 May Suffer for Lagging 51, 52 Lost the Consciousness of Being Missionary 86 Began to Become Conscious of Itself as a Missionary Society 171, ff. Church, The Apostolic, the Four Periods in the Life of 33. ff- Church, Dutch Reformed 176, I77 Church, The Free, of Scotland 178, 179 Church, The German Reformed, 1865. 178 Church, The, of Scotland, First to Become Conscious of Itself as a Missionary Society 171, 172, 178 Church, The Presbyterian, Its Polity Adopted to Mission Work 180 Church, The Presbyterian Church, South, Committed to Missions 25, 26, 176, 177, 178 Church, The Presbyterian, in U. S. A 172, 173-176 Church, The United Presbyterian 176 Church, The United Presbyterian of Scotland 179 Church Missionary Society 163 Coan, Titus 185, 186, 191 Coke, Thomas 164 Coligny 135 Columba 76, 86 Columbanus 96 Converts Won: In Apostolic and in Ante-Nicene Age 79, 80 In Post-Nicene Age 87, 88 Index 215 Converts Won : — Continued. In Mediaeval Age 103-104 In Modern Romish Missions 126, 127 In Protestant Missions 192, 193 Covenant. Abrahamic, The Missionary Character of 10, flf. Crusades 97 Cyrillus 97 Danish-Halle Mission 145, 146 Dawn of Modern Missions 141, flf. Dispersion, The Synogogues of Missionary Centres 16 Dionysius TJ Dispensation, Mosaic, Missionary Character of 11, fif. Dominicans 79, 118, 123, 125, 126 Dufif 172, 190, 191 Edesius 86 Edinburgh Missionary Society 162, 163 Edwards, Jonathan 150, 165, 167 Eliot, John 138-140, 165, 199 Ephesus 61-64 Erasmus's Missionary Ideal 106-113 Eusebius 76, 77 Fabian "^-j Fox 150 Franciscans 97, 119, 123, 125, 126 Francis of Assisi 97 Francke 145-147 Frumentius 86 Fuller, Andrew 208 Callus 96 Gilmour, James 185, 191 Glasgow Missionary Society 163 Gossner 195 Gregory, the Armenian 86 Gregory of Tours TJ Gregory the Great 96 Huss 91 Hoppin 207 Inglis 172 2i6 Index Instruments in Mission Work: In Apostolic Age 46,- 47 In Ante-Nicene Age 75 In Nicene and Post-Nicene Age 84 In Mediaeval Age 94 In Modern Romish Missions 117-119 In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 184, 185 Interdenominational Movements 181, 182 Irenaeus ^^ Jesuits 119-121, 122. 123-125, 126 John de Monte Corvino 97 Jonah, The Mission of 12, 13 Judson, Adoniram 165. 166, 191 Justin Martyr 78, 80 Keith- Falconer, Ion 191 Keswick 182, 190 Knox, John I34 Ko-Chat-Thing 198 Las. Casas, Bartholomew 125 Law, The Mosaic, Missionary 1 1, ff. Laymen's Missionary Movement 182 Leibnitz 144 Livingstone, David 162, 191, 200, 209 London Missionary Society 160-162 Lull, Raymund 98 ff. Luther 127, 130, 131, 132 Lutherans 132, 133, 134, 142-148, 163 Mackay. Alexander Murdoch 191, 209 Mackay, George Leslie 191, 209 McKenzie, John Kenneth 191 Marshman 156, 157, 158 Martin, Henry 150, 209 Melancthon 131, 132 Methodius 97 Methods in Mission Work : In Apostolic Age Si, 52 In Ante-Nicene Age 75-76 In Nicene and Post-Nicene Age 84-86 In Mediaeval Age 94, 95 Index 217 Methods in Mission Work: — Continued. In Modern Romish Missions 119- 123 In Protestant Missions 140, 169, 185-190 Miesrob 86 Mills, Samuel J 165 Missions : Apostolic, 30, ff., 71, ^2 Patristic 70, ff. Nicene and Post-Nicene 81, ff. Nestorian 88, 89 Mediaeval, 91, ff. Modern Roman Missions 1 13, ft". Attitude of Protestant and Reformed, 1517-1781, to- ward 128, ff. Dutch State Missions 136, 148 Danish-Halle, 145, ft'. Moravian Missions 146, ft'. By the Great Voluntary Missionary Societies 154, ff. The Church Conscious of Obligation to Missions 171-193 Missions, Grounds of Obligation to 9, ff., 55, ff., 66, ff. Moffat, Robert 161, 162, 209 Mohammed 88 Moody 181, 182 Moravian Missions 146, 159, 191 Morrison, Robert 161 Motives to Missionary Endeavor 194, ff. Nestorian Misssions 88. 89 New Testament, Missionary Character of 18 Nobili, Robert de 118 Opening of the World to Missions 136-138, 151-153, 192-193 Origen 78 Pantaenus 7(>, 77 Patrick 76, 86 Paul, Prepared for Missions , 44 Called to Antioch 45 His Sense of His Obligation to Missions 53-59 His Characteristics 57, 58 Way in Which He Responded to His Obligation to Mis- sions 59-66 Penn 150 2i8 Index Peter, Prepared for Missions 44 Pietists 144, 145, 159 Plato, Statesman, quoted 54, 78 Pledge, The Missionary Pledge of the Church Member 26, 27 Pliny 65 Plutschan 145 Pratt, Josiah 163 Principle, To Regulate the Church's Missionary Effort 30, ff. Especially 45, 46 Illustrated in Paul's Labors 59, 66 Not Much Attended to in Nicene and Post-Nicene Age, 83, 84 Nor in Mediaeval Age 93 Nor in Modern Romish Missions 116, 117 More Attended to in Protestant Missions 183, 184 Propaganda, Institutions of Romish 125, 126 Prophets, Missionary 14 Providence, Making the Church Missionary 23, 41, ff., 138, 152, 153 Psalms, Missionary 13 Quakers 150 Ratramnus 91 Religious Tract Society 166 Ricci 119 Rice, John Holt 173 Overture of 173-176 Richier 135 Robertson, Frederick W 35 Ryland 160 Samaria, Apostolic Missions in 42, flf. Saravia, Adrian 134, 135 Saturnin ^^ Schaff, Philip, quoted 78 Schwartz 145, 146, 151, 209 Scott, Thomas 163 Scottish Confession I34 Sechele 200 Sergius 88 Smith, George, quoted 103, 106, flf. Society, For the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 150, 164 Index 219 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, 139 Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, 150 Societies, Volunteer Missionary 27, 154, ff. Spener 144 Spirit, The Holy, Makes the Church Missionary 21 Strategy in Mission Work: In Apostolic Age 48-50 In Ante-Nicene Age 74, 75 In Post-Nicene Age 83, 84 In Mediaeval Missions 93 In Modern Romish Missions 116, 117 In Protestant Missions . .. .140, 141, 147, 148, 157, 158, 183, 184 Student Volunteer Missionary Union 181, 182, 190 Taylor, J. Hudson 181 Territory Overrun by Missions : In Apostolic Age 45, 59, 60 In Ante-Nicene Age 80, 81 In Post-Nicene Age 86, 87, 89 In Mediaeval Age 104, 105 In Modern Romish Missions 127 In Protestant Missions 192-193 Tertullian 78. 80 Theory, of the Christian System: In Ante-Nicene Age 73, 74 In Post-Nicene Age 81, 82 In Mediaeval Age 91, 92 In Modern Romish Missions 114, H5 In Protestant Missions 128-136, 183 Thomas, John 155 Thompson, A. C, Foreign Missions 195, 198, 199, 200, 208 Udney 156 Urban VIII 126 Ursinus, Joh. Heinrich 144 Vasa, Gustavus 133 Venn, Henry 163 Versions Made in Interest of Missions: In Ante-Nicene Age 75 In Post-Nicene Age 85 In Mediaeval Age 94 In Protestant Missions, 186. 187 220 Index Villegagnon 135 Warneck 141, 182 Ward 156, 157, iS8 Wellesly, Marquis of 157 Welz, Von 142, 144 Wesleyan Missionary Society 164 Wilder 181 Williams, John 161, 170 Willibrod 96 Wilson, John 163 Winfrid 96 Workers in Missions : In Apostolic Age 21, 22, 44, 45 In Patristic Age 78, 86, 87 In Mediaeval Age 95, 9^> ff • In Modern Romish Missions 123-125 In Protestant Missions 19O) ff- Wycliffe 91 Xavier 119-121, 124, 125 Ziegenbolg I45. H7 Zinzindorf 146, I47 Zwemer, Samuel M., quoted 99-100, loi, 102, 103 Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01234 6567 Date Due fElb'yi Fr DE5 '52 Jf 22 '5i jyi7,. r» ^ D, ? ^