TALE UNrVBRSr

The Missionary Interpreta
tion of History
An article which appeared in the Methodist Review for
July, 1905, has grown to the present size, and is
commended to all who enjoy its story of triumph.

The Missionary Inter
pretation of History

By
Richard T. Stevenson, Ph. D.
OHIO WESLEY AN UNIVERSITY

im

CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM
NEW YORK: E A T O N A N D M A I N S

Copyright, 1905, by
Jennings & Grajiam

Sff Jig 3f ife

Contents

j&

Page

I.

The Coming of the Man,

- 9

II.

His Miracles,

21

III.

New Peoples, -

" 33

IV.

Brotherhood,

66

V.

Philosophy, ...

- 83

VI.

Enthusiasm, -

94

The Coming of the Man
It is not to be expected that this little
book is an attempt to solve the riddles of
history. It desires to present in its own
way the man without whose work in the
world we have not so far been able to get
along. It would emphasize an explana
tion of progress after the fashion of one
who believes profoundly in the leadership
of Him who came to do the Father's will,
and who gave commission to others to
finish the work He had begun.
"There is not only an economic inter
pretation of history, but an ethical, an
aesthetic, a political, a jural, a linguistic, a
religious, and a scientific interpretation of
history." 9

Missionary Interpretation of History
In such wise words Professor Seligman
sets forth the fact of the complexity of his
tory, and disposes of the exaggerations of
the school of thought that endeavors to ex
plain all movements of civilization from the
point of view of economics, even affirming
that Christianity was primarily an eco
nomic movement, and going so far as to
apply the theory, not only to religion but
also to philosophy. But the end of over
emphasis is near at hand. The reaction
has already set in, and the truth appears in
the vigorous phrases of Sir Oliver Lodge,
the eminent physicist, in the Contemporary
Review of July, 1905 :
"What we have to teach, throughout, is
that in no sort of way is man to be the
slave of his environment. ... It is
not himself which is to suit the environ
ment, but he is to make the environment
suit him. This is the one irrefragable doc
trine that must be hammered into the ears
10

The Coming of the Man
of this generation till they realize its truth
and accept it."
It is evident that we are come to a time
when the moral and spiritual forces in
human progress are getting truer recogni
tion than a few years ago when undue em
phasis upon economics minimized the
power of the motives which could not be
measured in bushel-baskets or weighed in
scales. Not only is the ethical life not sub
ordinated to the economic life, but, as the
race improves, its finer elements are to grow
supreme. As a mighty agent in the manifest des
tiny of the race let us study a peculiar
sort of man, whose presence and spirit in
history have to be reckoned with. Indeed,
there is no getting on without him. The
Christian Church is slowly coming to its
right mind. For proof, we note how hos
tility has effervesced in suspicion, and sus
picion has changed to indifference, and in-
11

Missionary Interpretation of History
difference has become interest, and interest
has leaped into loyalty, and, finally, loyalty
has been transformed into a notable pride
in the fruits of the toil of a singular type
of man. We have known too little of him.
We ought to know vastly more of him and
his works; for to remain in any wise ig
norant of him is not to know the trend of
history since Calvary. We were once Gen
tiles, and now for some ages have been in
trusted with the holy ark of God's Cove
nant of Peace with the world. We were
found by Him in the gloom of our ances
tral paganism. To make us inheritors of
the benefits of the grace of God He swung
open at great expense a mighty door,
that Christ might enter our hearts and na
tional life, and become through us the King
of the kingdoms of the whole earth. This
man k unique among men. He swings
down the centuries with a free and power
ful stride. His right to the path he has
12

The Coming of the Man
not allowed any one long to dispute. He
claims to have but one business, and to
breathe but one consuming passion. He is a
messenger of the King of kings, and has
his eye on the uttermost shores of earth.
At the foot of the tablet erected to the
memory of John Howard in St. Paul's,
London, are the words, "He trod an open
but unfrequented path to immortality." To
none other is this shining tribute to the
worth of the work of the Yorkshire sheriff,
who gave his life to the amelioration of the
harsh conditions of the prisoners in Euro
pean jails, more appropriate than to the
man who first started around the shores of
the Mediterranean to preach out of their
malign power the superstitions of a dark
age. In the following manner Frederick
Harrison, not the most sympathetic re
corder of peculiarly spiritual victories,
speaks of the first great missionary : "We
know how the first fellowship of the breth-
13

Missionary Interpretation of History
ren met; how they went forth with words
of mercy, love, justice, and hope ; we know
their self-denial, humility, and zeal; their
heroic lives and awful deaths; their loving
natures and their noble purposes ; how they
gathered around them, wherever they came,
the purest and the greatest; how across
mountains, seas, and continents the com
munion of saints joined in affectionate
trust; how from the deepest corruption of
the heart there arose a yearning for a truer
life; how the new faith, ennobling the in
stincts of human nature, raised up the
slave, the poor, and the humble to the dig
nity of common manhood, and gave new
meaning to the true nature of womanhood ;
how, by slow degrees, the Church, with its
rule of right, of morality, and of com
munion, arose ; how the first founders and
apostles of this faith lived and died, and all
their gifts were concentrated in one, of all
the characters of certain history doubtless
14

The Coming of the Man
the loftiest and purest — the unselfish, the
great-hearted Paul." Surely in no ordinary
pattern was this man cast, treading to im
mortality by a path open, but in his day
too little frequented even by unselfish souls.
Since that time he and his comrades have
been filling up the path and the end of the
journey is none the less immortality. Now
they seem to swarm in the world's high
ways, and even to give a new distinction to
the unfrequented byways. No one can in
terpret the long perspective and not have to
reckon with the missionary. He and his
fellows think, in the main, alike through the
long millenniums. They love, they toil, and
they die as if powerfully impressed with
the sense of absolute devotion to the orders
of the same great Commander. They go
out as if they never cared to return. Their
whole bent is centrifugal, not centripetal.
They claim to be constructive, yet they
leave houses, lands, wives, and children —
15

Missionary Interpretation of History
all; forsaking things that other men covet
having material values, and strain every
nerve and challenge every hazard to get to
"the uttermost parts." Nothing less than
the outer rim will satisfy their ceaseless
hunger for the last nation, the loneliest
habitation, the abandoned man. They are a
desperate set. Their fashion for marking
off the stages of their advance is novel.
They lie down and with their last breath
call out, for encouragement to their fol
lowers, "Another empire !" At first glance
they seem to be composing a sort of
triumphal procession of blunderers, and
their forward movement has to the un
initiated all the marks of an aimless quest.
I find no mention of this breed of men in
the forty-six parallel "Lives" and the four
detached "Lives" of Plutarch, nor does
Carlyle portray him for us in his "Heroes."
Emerson has on his bead-roll philosopher,
mystic, skeptic, poet, soldier, writer, but not
16

The Coming of the Man
the man whom history is coming to regard
as one of the "representative men" in race
progress since the Christ came to earth.
We have failed to discover any one to take
his place. His greatness does not appear to
be exhausted. He keeps succeeding him
self. He defies oblivion. Rotation may be
the law of nature, and people may say that
they explore the horizon in vain for the
successor of a great man, for his class is
extinct, as Emerson affirms; but the
world is not done with the missionary. To
the past he was a necessity, the present is
an epitome of his idealism, and the good
future is inconceivable with him as a minus
quantity. The philosophy of history is now
coming to take him by the hand for a cor
dial greeting on the level. For the homi-
letic classic he is still an immortal support
ing column. Romanticism in the pulpit
welcomes his everlasting freshness.
The infinite variations of his appearance
2 17

Missionary Interpretation of History
make him an unspeakable benediction to un
numbered pulpits and pews. One of them is
seen swimming through the angry surf off
the island of Malta; he is an expert in
prayer and in the swimmer's art. His ver
satility takes the breath out of our won
der. He got into history by the name of
Paul. Yonder are men in a boat off the coast
of Fife. They mourn the gloomy prospect :
"The snow closes the road along the shore,
the storm bars our way over the sea;" the
leader says, "there is still the way of
Heaven that lies open." It is Cuthbert
speaking, the glorious herald of Northum-
bria. And now, after long centuries have
slipped by, it is a man in the hot streets of
Goa ringing a hand-bell to attract the dusky
peoples to hear his strange but comforting
message. It is Xavier. Again, it is an
other swimmer cast on the coast of Mau
ritius, indeed twice wrecked before he ar-
18

The Coming of the Man
rives in India. It is a Scotchman, and they
call him Alexander Duff. Then the vision
changes, and we are watching a fugitive in
a jungle of India. Mutiny is astir; it is
midnight; the burden-bearers have de
serted; tigers prowl about. The man steps
out from the path, lifts his hat, in the time
of awful peril, and prays two minutes as
he had never prayed before. He steps back
into the path and there he finds the bearers
bent to their loads. It is William Butler.
And there in Calcutta goes a tall form,
with a white cotton umbrella overhead. He
is barefooted. It is Taylor calling the
Eurasians to Jesus. Once more: the blue
sky of the New Hebrides overarches a
placid form lying in a canoe; his breast is
covered with palms, and underneath are
five spear-wounds. The boat floats out into
the lagoon and is welcomed by weeping fol
lowers. It is the body of John Coleridge
Patteson, bishop, and like Bishop Coke he
19

Missionary Interpretation of History
is lowered for burial into the sea. As the
pictures of this man's wanderings and
apostolates and evangelisms rise before us,
the tribute to Livingstone comes to mind.
One night, in 1887, Henry Morton Stan
ley was on board the Peace, on the broad
bosom of the Congo, talking of Africa and
her degraded condition, and the only re
generation possible for her. Stanley said,
"If Dr. Livingstone were alive to-day I
would take all the honors, all the praise,
that men have showered upon me ; I would
put them at his feet and say, Here you are,
old man; they are all yours."
It begins to dawn upon us that the mis
sionary interpretation of history may in the
long run hold good. If so, it behooves the
Christian Church to adopt his theory,
breathe his spirit, and pray God for a share
of his power. What has he done? Look
a bit. What has he not done ?

20

II
His Miracles
In this light he makes his first appear
ance, a worker of miracles. If we had had
insight we might have surmised the truth;
for the Master, one day before He left him,
said that he would do greater things than
He Himself had done. It might take time,
but they would not fail of performance.
And now, behold ! Three centuries file by
in slow procession, each column bannered
with the insignia of a haughty imperialism.
A marvelous change takes place ; for in the
beginning of the movement Rome's eagle
swoops down upon conquered peoples with
all her old-time ferocity. In due time the
far-famed title "S. P- Q. R." "Senate and
Roman People," gives way to the "/. H.
21

' Missionary Interpretation of History
S.," the mystic letters leading in the spell
ing of the name of the Nazarene whose
triumph in the most distant lands was des
tined to make the victories of the Caesars
appear but the gains of a provincial cap
tain. The missionary has substituted his
own for the Roman's ancient standard.
None but the most wealthy and active im
agination can re-create this most tremen
dous conversion of all time. Renan, in
dulging in extravagant appreciation of
Greece, has this : "I will even add that, in
my opinion, the greatest miracle on record
is Greece itself;" and another writer, more
eloquent than sober, has said, "Except the
blind forces of nature, nothing moves in
this world which is not Greek in its ori
gins." Surely a scholar's strabismus. For
while Greece was easily the master of the
field of culture, and forever glorious, Rome
surpassed her in the field of practical poli
tics ; and yet the latter, long time illustrious
22

His Miracles
in imperial rule, found her master in the
humble evangelist. The same missionary
who left his message upon the hill with the
Athenian philosophers lifted the scepter of
the Nazarene over the Capitoline Hill. So
Professor Edward A. Freeman is right in
declaring, "The miracle of miracles, greater
than dried-up seas and cloven rocks, greater
than the dead rising again to life, was when
Augustus on his throne, pontiff of the gods
of Rome, himself a god to the subjects of
Rome, bent himself to become the wor
shiper of a crucified provincial of his em
pire." Not even the devotion of the able
reactionary Julian could restore the pagan
faith which this itinerant had so uprooted.
The missionary smiled at the helpless dis
gust of the emperor when he discovered
that, at one of the greatest shrines in Asia,
the hecatomb which should have been of
fered had shrunk to a paltry goose. The
itinerant knew as only he could know
23

Missionary Interpretation of History
why the statue of Victory, Rome's chief
patron in her last days, was voted
out and down by the rising Christian ma
jority in the Senate. The transformation
of pagan into Christian Rome took place
over his dead and often defiled body, but
it took place.
The swift spread of early Christianity
was an expression of its conviction that
the world was to be the field of its benefi
cent imperialism. Its dominion bordered
no neighbor's realm. It got its first mis
sionary center in Antioch, and then along
the great Roman highways the messengers
marched on and on. Peter entered Baby
lon; Mark gained Alexandria, an even
more important missionary arsenal than the
city on the banks of the Euphrates. Within
less than a century a network of Christian
Churches covered the Roman Empire. The
activity of the early Church has had no
rival in all the centuries until one reaches
24

His Miracles
the twentieth century. And this is the more
striking when we remember that the first
century leaped forth, as it were, from a
state of inertia preceding Pentecost, while
we now move on borne by the mighty mo
mentum of the past. Origen, writing later
on, speaks of the city Churches sending out
their own missionaries to preach in all the
surrounding villages. On the Roman roads
built for military expeditions, down the
current of strange rivers, into forest re
cesses, into the thick of city life where
the convention of culture and the cruelties
of paganism offered bitter welcome they
went forward to their destiny, evermore
dreamers who made the dream come true.
Their lot was not an easy one. They were
accused of atrocious crimes; lampooned;
cursed ; charged with treason ; outlawed by
the judges; and sent to the stake, when a
single word of acknowledgment of the
divinity of the emperor would have ensured
25

Missionary Interpretation of History
their liberty. Juvenal may have been an
eye-witness of the carnival in Nero's gar
dens when he tells how
"At the stake they shine,
Who stand -with throat transfixed, and smoke
and burn."
Their veins might supply rivers with bloody
tides ; their only honor be the accusation of
shameful deeds ; their homes be dens ; their
faith in Jesus be called "atheism," and the
lion's maw their goal ; but even so they went
smilingly forward — to victory.
Tender girls joined stalwart men in the
march to the grave. In one of the perse
cutions through which the early Church
rose to more vigorous life a number of
martyrs suffered in Carthage, among whom
were two young women, Perpetua and
Felicitas. All the prisoners were con
demned to fight with the wild beasts on the
birthday of the Caesar. One of the mar
tyrs, Saturus, was speedily released from
26

His Miracles
life by the bite of a leopard. Perpetua and
Felicitas were put into a net and exposed
to a wild cow. On her hair and dress be
coming disarranged, Perpetua quietly reor
dered them, modest to the last. Being
about to receive the death-blow, Perpetua
called to the soldier, Pudens, "Be strong,
and think of my faith, and let not all this
make thee waver, but strengthen thee."
They greeted one another with the kiss of
peace, and were slain with daggers. When
the gladiator came near who was to kill
Perpetua, his hand trembled. She took his
hand, guided it to her throat, and died as
calmly as if falling asleep. It needed no
prophet to tell the future of such assurance,
for the endurance of the Christians wore
out the hate of the heathens. No efforts at
annihilation could prevail when love had
armed the sufferer for the conflict. The
executioner might behead the Bishop Six-
tus in the Catacombs, and scatter his blood
27

Missionary Interpretation of History
on the spot where he had just celebrated
the Lord's Supper, and four days later
roast his deacon Laurentius in an iron
chair — the victory of the truth was sure to
fall to those who loved it sincerely, and the
crowning of martyrdom followed hard
upon the crowning of Caesarism.
From Rome to Madagascar and Poly
nesia is a long leap, but the same miracle-
worker is present to astonish us with his
power. What if Froude writes despair
ingly of the work in Zealand? Charles
Darwin declared that "the lesson of the
missionary is the enchanter's wand." Lord
Lawrence, viceroy of India, said, "I be
lieve, notwithstanding all that the English
people have done to benefit India, the mis
sionaries have done more than all other
agencies combined." What if Dr. Oscar
Lenz sneers in the London Times that mis
sions in Africa are a failure? James Rus
sell Lowell votes with mighty conviction
28

His Miracles
that they are not, and Count Limburg-
Hirum returns to Europe amazed at having
been "welcomed in the land of cannibals by
children singing hymns," and the father of
modern geography, Ritter, calls the work
of the missionary a "miracle" indeed. In
1819 the Church Missionary Society sent
to Sierra Leone a poor German laborer,
William B. Johnson, to a refuse population
in which there were twenty-seven tribes,
and as many dialects, and war was perpet
ual. In seven years Johnson died, but he
lived long enough to see the country trans
formed; every trade represented, even the
professions, a family altar in every home,
thousands of children at school, a church
— builded by natives — holding two thou
sand hearers. To work this miracle these
men have not canted, they have not cringed,
they have not despaired; they have not
halted before a hard job, nor made courage
wait on caution, nor hesitated to pay for
29

Missionary Interpretation of History
success at the expense of their own lives,
preferring death to failure. They earn the
encomium of the Lord's fools rather than
that of worldly wise men. The sheen of
dress parade is always more offensive than
the dust of the battle. They have not al
ways had the pleasure of choosing the alter
native of the Spartan mother, "either with
your shield or on it," for oftentimes it has
been neither, and Patteson is dropped into
the sea, Williams of Erromanga is eaten
by cannibals, and Hannington is decapi
tated, and his head likely set on a pole to
adorn the rude entrance to the hut of some
chieftain in Equatorial Africa. Living
stone's bones, it is true, get interment in
Westminster, but his heart is now mingled
with the dust of the shore of Lake Bang-
weolo, and so he holds two continents in
holy bonds for the redemption of both.
"The old, old story" has to do, not only
with the love of Jesus, but with the de-
30

His Miracles
votion of His disciples in all ages, and the
latest records of heroism in China are as
brilliant as any in the days of Nero. Ch'en,
the gatekeeper of the compound in Pekin,
welcomed the birth of a baby girl, and
named her Mary (pronouncing it Ma-li),
after the mother of our Lord. He became
a licensed preacher. The Boxers came. He
was urged to flee to the hills. "No," said
Ch'en, "I will not leave until all the mem
bers of my flock are first hid away." The
Boxer chief with his rabble, caught him,
with his wife, son, and little "Apple," as
his beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter
was called, demanded all his money, and
then whatever else he had. Ch'en gave up
all, and turning to the crowd of ruffians
said, "Now I am through ; you may do with
me as you like." The mob killed and be
headed the father; and then the mother,
the brother, and the girl were hacked to
pieces. Months later, when the third son
31

Missionary Interpretation of History
had gathered the mangled bits and given
them a decent burial, he was asked by the
officials, now anxious to curry favor with
the victors, what indemnity he wanted; he
said he wanted no indemnity. One request
he made: "I should like to go to that
church and preach the Gospel to the peo
ple who murdered my parents." They
gave him permission to go. And he joins
the host of world-saviors who, in the olden
time, put up Christ in the place of Caesar.
Love's miracle is to transform the earth.
The Master has said it ;
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that
believeth on Me, the works that I do shall
he do also; and greater works than, these
shall he do."

32

Ill
New Peoples
The missionary has always had his eye
on the nations of the future. He has never
failed to divine the regnant qualities that
lie latent in certain races. He must needs
work for the distant goal of the Kingdom
through those peoples, who, by reason of
their rapid growth, their instinct for ex
pansion, their industrial supremacy, and
their masterful ability in government, and
the long call of God, are to control the next
half hundred and the next half thousand
years. He is after the masters of men, to
bring them to the Master of all. When
he takes his stand at the base-line of what
Merivale calls the greatest event of secu
lar history, the fall of Rome, he rushes off
3 33

Missionary Interpretation of History
to seed down the new peoples with the
faith that is to conquer the world in the
future. They are worthy of being called
the founders of the new nations which
arose out of the chaos of the centuries in
which Rome was tumbling to her ruin.
The barbarian conquerors were not able
to secure to civilization what they had
wrested from the imperial city. The Goths
took Rome by storm; the missionary cap
tured the peoples of Western Europe by
love, and ushered in a more enduring con
quest. The Teutonic invaders, when at last
they overflowed Italy, were already tamed
and brought under law; their idolatrous
heathenism had become a thing of the past.
For three hundred years the missionary
was performing a double task ; he was both
mounting the throne of the Csesars, and
mingling with the half-clad men on the
frontiers of the Rhine and the Danube.
Now the missionary was a hostage, like
34

New Peoples
Ulfilas, who became the bishop of the
Western Goths, dying in 388 at Constanti
nople ; now a captive, like St. Patrick. The
latter was taken captive at the age of six
teen by the Irish. After seven years he es
caped ; but in 432 he returned to Ireland to
begin his wonderful labors, lasting thirty
years. His monastic establishments be
came outposts of civilization. Ireland soon
exhibited fervent ecclesiastical activity, and
got the name of the Isle of Saints.
There were hermits, like St. Severinus,
of noble origin from the East, who took
his journey to the Roman province of Nori-
cum, and near Vienna ministered to the
warriors of the invading tribes for thirty
years. The earliest patron saint of France
was Martin of Tours. He was a soldier by
profession, became a follower of Jesus,
won his mother to his Master, and laid the
foundation of a beautiful fame by his long
labors in Genoa and Tours. To the north-
35

Missionary Interpretation of History
west is seen St. Columba, who founded the
settlement at lona, to whose sacred ruins,
long centuries afterwards, Dr. Sam. John
son thought it not belittling to make a pil
grimage. Columba was a civilizer as well
as a preacher. In the opening of the fifth
century, when the Emperor Honorius,
weakling and craven that he was, fell down
helpless before Alaric, even then a monk
by name of Honorius redeemed the name
from dishonor by his devotion to the cause
of right, and sent from his home in Lerins
on the shores of the Mediterranean
numerous laborers to the south and west of
Gaul. As we turn our eyes to Germany we
note the contributions made by the teacher
Columban, and his pupil Gallus, in the
Vosges hills and around Lake Constance.
The sixth century bore witness to the
power of fresh consecration on the part of
the Benedictines, the first Catholic order,
not only in art, but also in the larger his-
36

New Peoples
tory of civilization. Monachism up to the
end of the fifth century presents a sorry
record of idleness, fanatic absurdities, and
false claims of superior sanctity. Benedict,
while not able wholly to clear himself of
the influences of his age, yet became the
founder of a really great and beneficent
movement. His followers were the bear
ers of the Gospel into the wilds of the
North of Europe, and made the hidden
places of Britain, Gaul, Saxony, and Bel
gium resound with the praises of God ; and,
as if in this revival of evangelistic zeal they
would include all good possible, they be
came the builders, the agriculturists, the
teachers, and the artists of mediaeval
Europe. When the rough Saxon swept back the
Briton to the west of the island, a new man
appears, and they call him Augustine, and
the seventh century starts out with a fresh
guarantee that the future is to fall in with
37

, Missionary Interpretation of History
the plans of this breed of men who live to
bring young and vigorous peoples to their
Master. The Saxon added permanence to
the evangelism of the emotional Celt. None
have left more inerasible footprints than
those of the good monk of Exeter, Boni
face, "the apostle of Germany." On the
shores of the Zuyder Zee and in the for
ests of Thuringia this man is paying back
the debt of England to the Continent, and
overpaying it, as with his kinsmen Wili-
bald and Wunnibald, and their sister with
her thirty companions, he gave permanence
to the earlier settlements, and expanded the
narrow confines of earlier labors. At sev
enty-four he hears the footfall of armed
men approaching his tent. Pagan inso
lence bears down the saint as he cries to his
followers, "Lift not a staff against them,"
and gains a martyr's death. In the ninth
century the periphery is pushed farther to
the north, when Ansgar, another apostle,
38

New Peoples
brings Norway in line with the trend of
the ages and the mercy, the patience, and
the love of God. "The far-off divine event"
draws a trifle nearer when the fiery vikings
of Scandinavia get the conviction that to
them, too, is committed the "faith once de
livered to the saints."
Ansgar was as willing to die the death of
a martyr as Boniface, and it is told how one
of his followers often discovered him in
tears because he was not regarded as
worthy of martyrdom, which he supposed
had been promised him by his Lord. From
Denmark to Norway is but a step. Thither
the Gospel is taken in the ninth century by
some sea-faring young men, and by 1033,
St. Olaf, the Christian king, earns the title
of the~patron saint of Norway. The con
version of the Northern nations saved those
countries of Europe which bordered on the
seas from the ravages of pirates.
Far to the northeast flames the holy torch
39

Missionary Interpretation of History
in the hands of the Greek missionaries,
Cyrillus and Methodius, whose gift of the
Bible in the vernacular of the Slavonic
tribes tempered the harshness of the mas
terful and turbulent folk of the plains of
Poland and beyond. However, the strength
of the Church lay to the West.
A dark cloud arose in the East. Arabia
sent forth her great man in the seventh
century to check the extension of the Gos
pel towards the sunrise. The power of the
Moslem carried the crescent with furious
charge over the north of Africa, and even
into Spain, where it got a foothold which
lasted for seven hundred years. Its expul
sion occurred in the era of the discovery of
America. But it seemed at one time as if,
pressing up from the West and from the
East, now beating at the gates of Paris and
then at those of Constantinople, the cause
which the missionary had taken so to heart
was to suffer extinguishment. The East
40

New Peoples
crowded hard upon the West. The mis
sionary got no great fruit of his labors in
the Orient for many a long age. A cen
tury of persecutions, far back in the fourth
century, nearly annihilated the Christian
Church in Persia, and the violently ag
gressive evangelism of Islam swept all be
fore it in Egypt, Syria, Persia, and the
African provinces. In Asia Minor noth
ing but the brilliant and stout defense of
Leo the Isaurian, in 717, saved Constanti
nople from falling into the hands of the foe.
For seven centuries the Mohammedan
hammered at the door which the Roman
emperors in their wisdom had put up
against the invaders of the East, going so
far as to remove the capital of the world
from the Tiber to the Golden Horn. But
at last it fell, and when, in 1453, the Turk
broke through all defenses, and changed
St. Sophia from a Christian Church to a
Mohammedan mosque, Christian Europe
41

Missionary Interpretation of History
looked westward for its destiny. True, the
Crusades had left their half-sad, half-heroic
story of an effort to beat back the tide of
invasion in the two centuries just before
Europe woke up from her sleep which men
call the Dark Ages ; but her triumph in that
direction was not essential, and she found
her highway to the Orient by way of the
Atlantic, discovering America as she went
thither. Dates often have little significance,
but it must be evident to the interpreter of
the ongoings of history that the year 1453
is out of the ordinary ; for at the very time
the Turks captured Constantinople, Eng
land ceased her attempts to conquer France,
ended the Hundred Years' War, and found
a fairer destiny awaiting her in the con
quest of the Spanish Armada and the set
tlement of North America.
In the Roman Catholic Church the mis
sionary spirit was by no means inactive,
nor were there lacking men who, even in
42

New Peoples
the days of the military expeditions against
the Saracen, saw the better way of spread
ing the truth. The illustrious Raymond
Lull was a second St. Augustine in his
wayward youth, and also in his later hum
ble spirit and tireless zeal for the Master
of scholars as well as of saints. He put his
vast learning at the feet of Christ, and ap
pealed to warrior popes for backing to
carry, not a weaponed, but a reasonable
Gospel to the adherents of Mohammed in
Northern Africa, and there in his old age
died a martyr's death.
The opening of the Western world of
fered an opportunity which Roman Cathol
icism seized for her expansion. In this she
had at first the advantage of Protestantism.
She was better organized. She had the
power that comes from centralization. She,
at first, controlled the seas. Contemporary
with the birth of Lutheranism she produced
the most marvelous order of its kind in
43

Missionary Interpretation of History
human history, the Society of Jesus. The
Jesuits had no limit set to their authority
touching things temporal and spiritual, and
while Protestantism fell into disputes in the
seventeenth century in the effort to adjust
itself to the new forms of life, political as
well as religious, and to justify itself be
fore human thought, the Jesuit flung him
self to the farthest shores. He outran even
the most ambitious commerce in his pur
pose to reach Asia, and even Central Africa
and South America. The new openings in
vited rare men; for when Xavier and Las
Casas, the former in the East and the latter
in the West, set the example of apostolic
surrender to a noble idealism, the world
was the richer for their living in it. The
College of the Propaganda, 1627, was ad
mirably fitted to train children of the Cath
olic faith for missionaries to all nations.
The idea of this institution had been real
ized by Ignatius Loyola in 1552. The work
44

New Peoples
of the Jesuits in India, where Xavier had
baptized probably one hundred thousand
pariahs and outcasts, was destined to give
way to Mohammedanism ; and even though
his zeal laid the foundation for a splendid
ecclesiastical establishment in Japan,
Buddha proved for a time too mighty for
the followers of the Christ, and by the mid
dle of the seventeenth century every vestige
of Christianity went down before the wrath
of the native pagans. The day of Japan
was not yet come. In China the charac
teristic disdain for everything foreign re
fused audience to the missionary until the
Jesuit Ricci, contemporary of Shakespeare,
and a famous astronomer, attained high
distinction and paved the way for the Gos
pel. In the West Indies the Jesuits did
some of their best work, and with genuine
courage pressed into the primitive forests,
and laid the foundation for the Republic
of Paraguay, prohibiting Spaniards from
45

Missionary Interpretation of History
getting control, and ruling in a patriarchal
style. Luther had said, as his eye took in the
rise of factions and the spread of strife in
Western Europe, "In a hundred years it
will all be over!" For a while a chill fell
upon the centrifugal ferment of Protestant
ism. Yet soon the Elijah mantle dropped
upon the shoulders of the colonizers of the
Western world.
It was Raleigh who made the first sub
scription for foreign missions, and the
diarist of Sir Humphrey Gilbert tells the
faith of the English mariner: "The sow
ing of Christianity must be the chief intent
of such as shall make any attempt at for
eign discovery, or else whatever is builded
upon other foundation shall never obtain
happy success or continuance." Now it is
broad day in the expansion of the Anglo-
Saxon race. The seventeenth century
walks into view leading John Eliot by the
46

New Peoples
hand. And the very year, 1649, m which
the faithless Charles Stuart lost his head,
saw the organization of the first Protestant
Missionary Society in England. Old
Europe is amazingly interested in the New
World and in Asia, in many ways with
abominable selfishness ; but at times, from
the anvil on which she is pounding out and
shaping destiny, there falls a bright spark
of idealism that lives on until it becomes a
star of the first magnitude. In 1705, Bar
tholomew Ziegenbald departs for India, and
August 7, 1707, he dedicates the first
Protestant Church in Asia. It was the
sense of the needs of the Colonial Church
in Maryland that led Dr. Bray from Lon
don as "ecclesiastical commissary," and he
it was who inspired the organization, in
1701, of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel. The modern movement is on,
and there is no stopping it.
In the seventeenth century theology had
47

Missionary Interpretation of History
lacked warmth, and polemical passion
usurped the place of spirituality. However,
towards the close of the Thirty Years' War
the lifeless skeleton of dead orthodoxy be
gan to feel the thrill of life. Spener was
the German Wesley. Francke, his pupil,
founded the orphan asylum at Halle and
made the university a radiating center of
light. At Tubingen, J. A. Bengel lifted
pietism to its noblest height. Closely al
lied to the Pietists were the Moravians,
with Count Zinzendorf as their bishop. His
life was romantic. He lived from 1700 to
1760. His followers vied with the Jesuits
in missionary zeal.
That ever-glorious eighteenth century,
though called by Carlyle "an unheroic age,"
gets its name upon God's honor roll, for
the year 1732 is no more great because it
is the birth year of Washington than
because it marked the matchless faith
and fine fervor of the Moravians at
48

New Peoples
Herrnhut to get to "the uttermost parts,"
for in that year, as if, too, in answer
to the "Lettres Philosophique" of Voltaire
just issued, two plain men, the one a pot
ter and the other a carpenter, Leonard
Dober and David Nitschman, left Herrnhut
at three o'clock one morning carrying hand
bundles, and with less than four dollars in
pocket, to begin a journey of six hundred
miles afoot, with four thousand miles far
ther to follow. In the years immediately
after this one, their missionary passion at
tained the most prolific proportions known
in history. And with the coming of the
matchless nineteenth century the Teutonic
peoples, who had thus far been shaping his
tory for Europe and America, now outdo
themselves in their set determination to fix
the standard for the rest of the world and
multiply missionary societies through the
century at the rate of more than one for
every two years.
4 49

Missionary Interpretation of History
We go too fast. What Christian David
was to the Moravians, what Antoine Court
was to the Reformers at Lausanne, what
Jonathan Edwards was to New England,
and Howell Harris to Wales, John Wesley
was to England, and, more, to the world.
In this way the able historian of England
in the eighteenth century, Lecky, speaks of
him: "Although the career of the elder
Pitt, and the splendid victories by land and
sea that were won during his ministry,
form unquestionably the most dazzling epi
sodes in the reign of George II, they must
yield, I think, in real importance to that
religious revolution which shortly before
had been begun in England by the preach
ing of the Wesleys and Whitefield." The
leader of the new spiritual impulse of the
century is a divinely gifted missionary. In
the same decade that witnessed the depar
ture of the two humble men from Herrnhut,
John Wesley goes as a missionary to
50

New Peoples
Georgia. Then he is back in England.
Then occurs the scene in Aldersgate Street,
of which the same philosophic writer just
quoted says, "It is scarcely an exaggeration
to say that the scene which took place at
that humble meeting in Aldersgate Street
forms an epoch in English history." And,
also, in future history, the world around.
From that time the people he gathered
about him took on the color and the power
of his enthusiasm, so that Justin McCarthy
is correct when he says, "All the early
Methodists were missionaries." The bit
terer the opposition, the more passionate
grew their zeal. This man who was by
common consent cut out for a statesman
"by his extraordinary powers of organiza
tion and reasoning," took the leadership of
the modern missionary movement; for
there has been nothing like it in the two mil
lenniums since Calvary. Hear Lecky once
more: "Methodism in America grew and
51

Missionary Interpretation of History
flourished beyond all its rivals, and it is
now the largest religious body in that great
country, which is destined to be the most
important center of the English race." Wal
ter Scott said of a sermon he heard
preached by Wesley that it was too collo
quial for the Scotch taste. It may be. But
his word has become the vernacular of the
world, and that is better still. All that is
wanted is, that Oxford scholarship shall be
tipped with "tongues of fire." Wesley's
frame of iron, his unflagging spirits, and
his lofty consecration gave to his wide
learning, his extraordinary knowledge of
men, and his unparalleled administrative
powers their largest influence and fruitage.
From his work may be dated the new im
pulse which has gone out to the ends of
the earth on the part of the evangelical por
tion of the English and American Churches.
The missionary is the man who is teach
ing the world that John Fiske was right in
52

New Peoples
saying that there is to be not less, but more,
of religion in the future. "The world needs
to know," says Dr. E. E. Hale, "when it
speaks of physical discovery and material
progress, that discovery itself is never phys
ical, and that progress is itself always spir
itual." In his emphasis upon this proposi
tion the man with the Book under his arm,
and in the vernacular of the new people he
faces, surveys a future of whose riches in
all the agents of progress — the newspaper,
the railroad, steamships, telegraph, schools,
factories, art halls, churches, and even its
militarism — he is the comprehensive
augury, exposition, regeneration, and
crown. For the multiplied agencies of our
advance are getting results like those to
which Sir James Mackintosh referred when,
in conversing with Henry Martyn, he re
marked that there was a striking analogy
between the situation of the English peo
ples in the Orient and that of Alexander
53

Missionary Interpretation of History
when he made the East Greek in order to
make way for the religion of the Lord
Jesus. In the same fashion we see the nine
teenth century striving after control of
peoples in Asia and Africa who are to have
a hand in the affairs of the future. They
must not become injurious users of the easy
privileges of modern intercourse among
nations, old and new, and they must be
won to Christ if those nations already
Christian are to be safe from evil contact
with twentieth century forms of heathen
isms. So William Carey reaches India in
J793- Dr. Morrison gets to Canton, China,
in 1807. Henry Martyn is in Persia in
181 1, • Adoniram Judson in Burma, 1812;
Dr. Duff in Calcutta, 1829, (the subsidence
of the Sepoy mutiny finds William Butler
at Delhi) ; and the stream has flowed full
since then.
The world has been eyeing that wonder-
child among the nations, come to power
54

New Peoples
within a half century — Japan. In 1859 the
missionary got a footing there, and won a
convert after five years; by twelve years
he had ten. Then behold : in twenty years
there were twenty-seven missionary so
cieties on the ground, and in the great war
just closed, Christian chaplains, officers,
and privates, and nurses prayed and fought
and died on the road to Harbin, winning
victories for progress far up in Manchuria.
The powder-cart is an uncouth chariot for
the King's agent to charter for a short pas
sage ; but somehow the Cause of causes gets
on, even if for a while the only music is
the vicious shriek of the cracking shrapnel.
Neither Russia nor Japan can ever be
closed to the Gospel. The fact to be ever
more remembered is, that this man with the
Book must now be in haste, tremendous
haste. Turn to this man's record in Afriea. At
the close of the last century but one, the
55

Missionary Interpretation of History
Moravians, renewed their grip there; in
1812 the Wesleyans entered; in 1832 Mel
ville B. Cox sails to Liberia, not to return ;
then in goes Livingstone, and soon Mac-
kaye at his heels, to be followed by Han-
nington, the last two dying — one of fever,
the other of spear-thrusts — but leaving in
their train a vigorous body of native Chris
tians in Uganda, able to preserve their in
tegrity and to propagate their faith. It
was my good fortune to hear Mr. Stanley,
just four days back from his Emin Pasha
expedition, address the Church Missionary
Society in Salisbury Square upon the work
of Mackaye. He declared it his profound
conviction that, if every vestige of Chris
tianity were erased from the earth save the
Church in Uganda, there was enough life
there, enough intelligent spirituality,
enough power, to start the Gospel around
the world again. Truly it was a wonder
ful people for whom the Scotch honor stu-
56

New Peoples
dent and the crack oarsman of Oxford gave
their lives just in time to get Equatorial
Africa in line with the plans of God for
the twentieth century.
This file-leader of civilization turns to
the Pacific Ocean in good time to make
things ready for some stupendous hap
penings in the present century whose
outcome none of us can know. Aus
tralia owes its wonderful rise in civili
zation during the last three-quarters of a
century largely to the missionary. Four
generations ago there was not a civilized
man on the Australian Continent. The in
fluence which this vast territory, half as
large as the United States, will exert upon
Polynesia and the Asiatic nations can only
be great. New Zealand is called upon to
line up with the forces of the one King
dom toward which all others are gravitat
ing. Williams of Erromanga is the first
martyr. James Calvert gets the hearts of
57

Missionary Interpretation of History
the Fijis and lives to see cannibalism trans
formed to a Christian civilization. In 1850,
Captain Gardiner leads the Gospel expedi
tion to Patagonia, and is the first to land
and the last to expire on that inhospitable
coast. Most precious seed is this "blood of
martyrs." At Aneityum, in the Samoan
group, is this legend on a memorial tablet
telling of Geddie : "When he landed here,
in 1848, there were no Christians, and
when he left here, in 1872, there were no
heathens." Surely too much was done there
for more not to be done. In these islands
savagism, infanticide, lust, cannibalism, ran
riot, yet in less than fifty years nearly thrice
twenty thousand had joined the Church,
and not a cottage lacked its Bible and
hymn-book. Thirty years after the first
missionary put foot on the shore at Hawaii
the native Church had organized a "So
ciety for the Promotion of Foreign Mis
sions," the very men who had offered
58

New Peoples
loathsome sacrifices now giving and get
ting money for the purpose. So when Mr.
M. D. Conway, a graduate of Dickinson
College, but later a liberal preacher in Lon
don, visited Honolulu he was disappointed,
on Sunday, at not finding the natives
"swimming around the ship in Arcadian
innocence," but, instead, the city quiet and
"paralyzed by piety." He had to go to
Church to see the people.
No one can have watched the swiftly
moving events of the last few years with
out a deepening conviction that in some
way, clear or clouded, but surely, America
is to be the influential factor in the com
mercial, the political, and the religious fu
ture of the peoples that bask or busy them
selves on the shores of the mighty Pacific.
Let it be recalled that we began our na
tional career, at a time when European
monarchs were skeptical of the experiment
of a democratic nation, on such a scale as
59

Missionary Interpretation of History
lay before us. The world's leading his
torian, Edward Gibbon, was giving his vast
talents to portraying the "Decline and Fall
of Rome." It was the past that charmed
him. On a memorable night in June, 1787,
he closed his ever-great history on the
banks of Lake Geneva. It was at the very
same time that the men of immortal fame
met at Philadelphia to fashion a working
frame of government for a new people who
were to keep step with God ; and they called
it the Constitution of the United States.
Never in all history has the itinerant
kept such step with the pioneer as in the
march of the American settler towards the
setting sun. He even anticipated him. The
story of the entrance of Oregon into the
Union can not be truly told, H. H. Ban
croft being witness, if the narrator leaves
out the work of the Methodist, Jason Lee,
the first on the ground, and the Congrega
tionalism Dr. Whitman, whose famous ride
60

New Peoples
back to the Eastern settlements is part of
our annals of heroism. George Herbert,
orator to the University of Cambridge,
wrote :
" Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American Strand."
These lines were first published in 1633.
The vice-chancellor objected to their pub
lication, but, on consenting, said, "I hope
the world will not take him to be an in
spired prophet." But that is what he was.
The first work of the American Churches
in the colonization of the Western Conti
nent was to solve the home missionary
problem. And right nobly was this done.
To keep in touch with the ever-shifting
frontier, and adroitly, bravely, powerfully
to mold the raw settlements for Christ, has
cost the various home missionary societies
$140,000,000 in the effort, as Dr. J. B.
Clark has said, "to leaven America." But
religion was not only to pass to the Amer-
61

Missionary Interpretation of History
ican strand, not only to cross the American
Continent, but to go far beyond with the
American ideals of life and of government.
God has some good purpose in pushing the
bearer of the Stars and Stripes past the
Golden Gate. Fresh witnesses repeat the
story of earlier ones. Sober fact becomes
the voucher for prophetic dream.
Bishop J. M. Thobum tells of a Scotch
man in India who, scarcely fifty years ago,
published in his paper an article with the
title "The Pacific Ocean an American
Lake," in which, as he looked to the ap
pearance of Commodore Perry in the Jap
anese harbor, he declared that events were
taking a shape which would give America
a paramount influence in the Pacific Ocean
in all the future. The thunder of Dewey's
guns before Manila, and the unexampled
influence of President Roosevelt in bring
ing Russia and Japan to end their bloody
strife, have so enhanced American prestige
62

New Peoples
in all the Orient that we must take up
whatever burden falls to us to carry in
righteousness. It looks as if we were des
tined to be the St. Christopher, "Christ-
Bearer," around the shores of the Western
sea. There is labor, and there is reward.
President Benjamin Ide Wheeler said at
the Educational Congress of the Lewis and
Clark Exposition, "The great problem with
which world-history will have to deal in the
next half-century concerns the assimilation
of Eastern Asia to the other world-half,"
and added, "Our nation was shaped for
the work of evangelization." To be known
as the world's peacemaker — what an honor !
to take the Hand of the Master and go
around the world quieting distrust, pro
moting peace, and becoming expert in
bringing in the Kingdom! Yet events
were moving that way even in our own
strife half a hundred years ago.
During the Civil War Colonel Vincent
63

Missionary Interpretation of History
Marmaduke was a bearer of dispatches
from Jefferson Davis to Mr. Mason, who
represented the Confederacy in England.
While in London he was advised, one even
ing, to hear John Bright, who was to speak
in the House of Commons. He afterward
said to a friend, who now tells the story,
that Mr. Bright, in the course of his speech,
which related to European affairs, stopped
for a moment and then remarked, before
resuming his argument: "Mr. Speaker, if
our kinsfolk on the other side of the At
lantic settle their Civil War satisfactorily,
and get back together in peace, in forty
years there will not be a gun fired in the
world without their consent." Colonel
Marmaduke has since admitted that Mr.
Bright's picture of the possible future of
this nation gave him some uneasiness of
mind, because he was striving to promote
permanent disunion. "I am glad," he said,
years after the close of the war, "that the
64

New Peoples
Almighty has preserved us for purposes of
His own, which will some day be unveiled
before the world."
The sum of it all is in the words of the
Master :
"Ye shall be witnesses unto Me, . . .
unto the uttermost part of the earth."

65

IV
Brotherhood
The preceding phase of the main sub
ject had to do with the flow of time and the
rise of new peoples. The present one treats
of humanity. In his idea of manhood the
missionary is typical of the new day.
Rather, he has always pointed to the pres
ent hour, and has been steadily leading
up to it. He has consistently held the ad
vance of the movement toward a truer
recognition of the world-wide fraternity
among men.
The missionary knew what he was sent
to accomplish, and so he began with the
only hopeful way of regenerating society,
and laid the foundation anew, in marriage
and in the family. The heathen world had
66

Brotherhood
allowed domestic life to fall into decay.
Marriage centered in the State, with its
end to produce citizens. Christianity made
marriage free. Contempt of marriage in
favor of celibacy did not attach itself to
the progress of the Church until long after
wards in an untimely environment. Of the
true Christian home, Clement of Alexan
dria finely said, "The children glory in
their mother, the husband in his wife, and
she in them, and all in God." This was
higher than heathenism. In the eye of the
early missionary the little children had for
the first time great recognition and justice
and love. The law of the Twelve Tables
of Rome gave the father the right to aban
don or to kill them. Christianity made
abandonment murder, for children were a
gift from God for which the parents were
responsible to Him.
Not less did the proclamation of the mis
sionary concern the slave. He went up and
67

Missionary Interpretation of History
down the shores of the great inland sea,
crying out of court heathen caste with the
words: "There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is
neither male nor female ; for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus." The accident of mastery
or slavery did not appear of note. The only
real slavery was the bondage of sin. So
Christianity did not immediately attempt
changes in civil society. Yet it was not
long ere the good seed sprang up, and men
began to manumit their slaves. Things were
not left as the first herald found them.
Master and slave were members of the
same Church. They adored one God, and
mingled their songs and prayers together.
A slave might be an elder in the same
Church of which his master was only a
member. When the spirit of freedom be
gan to fill the nostrils of men through the
work of the Church, it was common for
masters to bring their slaves to the altar,
68

Brotherhood
and before the congregation declare them
free, thus casting over the transaction the
sanction of the Church. In this undis
guised love for men as such, Paul espoused
the cause of Onesimus the slave, and wrote
to Philemon his master, "Thou shouldest
receive him, not now as a servant, but
above a servant, a brother beloved." Then,
too, and as a fitting accompaniment to the
new theory and practice, labor got to itself
a high estimate. It was now no disgrace,
but an honor. The Lord was a carpenter,
Peter a fisherman, Paul a tentmaker.
While the sages like Plato deemed manual
labor unworthy a freeman, Paul exhorted
that a man should "labor, that he may have
to give to him that needeth." Thus the
true end of labor was pointed out, and the
high ideal of toil for the salvation of the
other man was published to the world.
Things were starting on the upgrade. Self
ishness and stoic egoism were ready for
69

Missionary Interpretation of History
banishment. How unlike are the two
views, — that of Plautus, saying, "A man
is a wolf to a man whom he does not
know ;" and the golden counsel of the Mas
ter, "A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another!"
The doctrine and practice of the early
missionaries have won out in the march of
the ages, and nineteen centuries after the
apostle spoke his good word for Onesimus,
I see a man on the bank of the Nile writing
to his sister in Scotland, "I have just seen
one of my black sisters toiling up the steep
path, carrying a heavy burden;" and he
goes by the name of General Gordon, be
longing to the proud English race. And in
the same spirit the young aristocrat of
Eton, Coleridge Patteson, refused to call
the heathen of the South Seas "savages."
They were all "men" to him. Ziegenbald's
first converts in India were slaves. Once in
Cape Colony the words over the church-
70

Brotherhood
doors were, "Dogs and Hottentots not ad
mitted." But not for long. The French
governor of Madagascar told the first mis
sionary he could never make the blacks
Christians, for they were brutes. The mis
sionary waited a bit, and then published his
answer. Hundreds of churches and thou
sands of lay preachers, with their devout
followers, have long since removed the in
hospitable sign and stilled the inhuman
word. In his purpose to preach the Gospel to
the poor, the missionary is in line with the
German philosopher, Wundt: "Religion,
moreover, is always the point where the
man who is debarred from all higher inter
ests of intellectual culture can meet his fel
low-men." Sometimes good men err in
this matter, as when Dr. Durbin, in 1859,
said that his plan would be to marry into
the family of a rajah, and then, by means of
the inherited control of the destinies of a
71

Missionary Interpretation of History
few millions, he would speedily accom
plish the work of righteousness. The nod
ding of this Homer, however, did not pre
vent him from outrunning this sorry
dream with his masterful stewardship of
the policy of our Church. Let us not miss
the mark. Let us not follow the leaders of
caste in the Orient in their scorn of the
"lower classes." The mandarin Pung
Kwang Yen, at the Chicago Parliament of
Religions, advised missionaries to appeal to
the upper classes by offering them ad
vanced learning and technical information.
Our foundation is not culture first, and
then righteousness ; and if China is to trail
after the great Teacher she must have not
foremost the title "Bachelor of Arts," but
"Born Again." One B. A. is divinely fun
damental, the other is humanly inevitable.
When the economic reformer cries out, "I
am for men," it is high time for the Church
to pray again for a true vision of true duty.
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Brotherhood
Bishop Thoburn tells of the conversion
of a man in India who came from the low
est caste, if he was not indeed an outcast.
His surrender placed him and his family
upon an inclined plane upward going, and
now the son occupies a high social and of
ficial position as the confidential secretary
of the governor of the Northwest Province
of India. Schools? Yes, evermore yes;
but not unbaptized with the Spirit of
Christ. No one can read the story of the black
bishop of the Niger, Samuel Adjai Crow-
ther, without having forever a better base
line for computing the possibilities of man
hood when stirred by the grace of God.
He was born in 1812 in the West Coast re
gion of Africa, was enslaved at nine years,
and sold for a horse; bartered again, he
suffered intolerable cruelties; a third time
he was sold, for tobacco and rum; sold
again to the Portuguese, he was finally re-
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Missionary Interpretation of History
deemed from slavery and rescued by a Brit
ish man-of-war. His conversion, his train
ing in London, his consecration as bishop
of the Niger territory in 1864, are signifi
cant milestones in the life of a man of sim
ple piety, of great intelligence, and of mon
umental zeal.
The missionary has, all down the ages,
held before the eyes of men the vision of a
commonwealth of humanity. The prevail
ing conception of this commonwealth is
that of a common faith, of God as Father,
and Jesus Christ as Brother. In a thou
sand things unlike, in this alike. In a
thousand features of a progressive civiliza
tion differing, in this held together by a
common bond. And in all the implications
of the idea of brotherhood the missionary
is a notable contributor to progress, where
many least look for proofs of his influence.
He reaches down into the problems of labor
with mighty ability to secure settlement of
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Brotherhood
difficulties, and to gain for labor a high
place of honor in human progress.
No other type of leader in the ages has
so consistently realized the peculiar value
of the ideal he has held aloft in its rela
tion to man as a toiler, as a conqueror of
the natural world, as one destined to find in
commerce, in the exchange of goods,
whether across the banks of the Po or the
shores of the Pacific, an expression of his
larger life. For the life of trade is peace,
and the economic argument against war is
only the reverse side of the appeal of the
missionary to men to love one another.
Speaking broadly, the civilization of all an
cient times, as Mackenzie has emphasized,
was bottomed, not on the subjection of na
ture by man, but on the subjection of some
races by others. Naturally, with such do
minion there followed cruelty, luxury,
sloth, oblivion. On the contrary, a civiliza
tion which rests upon the undisturbed ac-
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Missionary Interpretation of History
tivities of man in his conquest of nature
has an endless task and an exhaustless field
before it; and once given peace, fraternity,
and love, labor gets its highest honor.
When man puts self foremost in his effort
to subdue the material world, he gains the
triumph of an hour, and dies sighing for
other worlds; but with Christ the inspirer
of labor, its very soul, giving it reverence,
a lifetime will not be enough to exhaust the
victory of toil, and one world will be more
than man can subdue.
When the good day comes for which the
herald of the cross runs to the ends of the
earth, the Carpenter's Son will be seen
building in unembarrassed and free power
with both hands, not, as some of old, with
a sword in one hand and a trowel in the
other, but commanding all His omnipotent
resources for the redemption of all the
needs of the world, and giving to the task
both hands with the same abandon of love
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Brotherhood
with which He stretched them out upon
the cross of Calvary.
It can not fail to attract the attention of
the thoughtful that, as man has gained
recognition in the capacity of the toiler, he
has reached up and secured a place in the
realm of government. Democracy is in
the air. The worth of the representative
republicanism of America is far-famed.
Mr. Bryce has said that the American type
is that to which all others are inevitably
tending. Cavour declared that "Society is
marching with long strides toward democ
racy. . . . Is it a good? Is it an evil?
I know little enough, but it is, in my opin
ion, the inevitable future of humanity." If
the form of government which is of, by,
and for the people is to be imperishable, it
will become so only as the world rises to
the high valuation set by Paul, by Aidan,
by Xavier, by Eliot, by John Hunt, by Al
exander Mackaye, by Henry Martyn, by
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Missionary Interpretation of History
James Thoburn, by Hudson Taylor upon
the common man of the world.
The larger field of the exercise of the
spirit of brotherhood affords a dazzling
view of what is to be the ultimate result of
the missionary experiment. If the dream
of peace on earth is to be realized, it will
be by pushing to its limit the ideals of the
missionary, who lifts into noble promi
nence, and with unfailing sanity of vision
and unconquerable zeal, moral and spiritual
causes of progress. He holds that the ex
planation of the willingness of men to be
ruled by majorities, in the spread of demo
cratic ideas, is not to be discovered in phys
ical force, as so often claimed on the
ground that three men are stronger than
two men, but in moral causes. In human
progress it is becoming evident, as Canon
Freemantle has pithily said, "We must, I
repeat, learn to lean on the unselfish much
more than on the selfish impulses of man-
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Brotherhood
kind." Apply this principle to the tangled
schemes of diplomacy among men to-day
and in the future. It may be that there is
no well-defined system of diplomatic pro
cedure, or such a thing as a concert of na
tions near at hand, to justify the optimist
in his hopes, but that we are on the trail of
the peacemaking itinerants of the ages is
evident from the statements of such great
writers on international questions as Blunt-
schli, who declares that the arbitration of
international difficulties is more difficult be
cause men do not know how to establish
necessary courts than because they are un
willing or have not the power to do so. In
any event, knowledge and will and power
can not fail to come to their proper king
dom when the popular mind and heart are
filled with the same vision of fraternity as
gave to the Master the unspeakable charm
with which He has woven a glorious spell
over an increasing host of souls in the pass-
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Missionary Interpretation of History
ing of the ages. His "Kingdom" is to
come. The character of "The Kingdom"
explains, demands, and secures its su
premacy. It is aggressive, missionary, and
not stationary. "The righteousness of
which both the Old and the New Testa
ment speak, is one which goes beyond its
possessor; not a righteousness which is
even with a law, but a righteousness like
that of Christ, loving, merciful, beneficent,
self-sacrificing, and universal in its appli
cation. It can never rest content until it
has assimilated to itself all the spheres of
life with which it has to do. This alone has
the promise of the Gospel attached to it.
But he who dwells upon the universal love
of the Eternal Father, and believes that the
self-sacrifice of Christ had the salvation of
the world for its object, will not find it
hard to believe in the full extension of that
which St. Paul called 'the mighty working
whereby he is able to subdue all things to
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Brotherhood
himself.' " With such a vision Freemantle
inflames our hearts.
The faith the missionary proclaims is
mighty, not because it is a fixed and un
changing expression of God's love for men
which he is called upon to defend against
all comers, but a spiritual power, windlike,
its origin and its goal often undiscoverable,
but its energy felt beyond all doubt. To
change the figure, it is leaven with exhaust
less energy and sure of spreading to the
limit of the mass of which it is any part
whatever, always its own best evidence, af
fecting for good all hearts and all institu
tions and all governments, and by its very
inmost principle of life tending to universal
triumph. And thus have the ends of the earth come
together; for though our file-leader of
progress goes out alone, he returns with
such tributes to his might as no other mes
senger ever garnered. Men are brothers,
6 81

Missionary Interpretation of History
the world over. Some quote the first two
lines of what follows, from Kipling, to
prove the irreconcilable difference between
the mind and character of the East and the
West; but they should finish the stanza:
"O, the East is East, and the West is West ;
And never the twain shall meet,
Till earth and sky stand presently
Before God's judgment-seat
But there is neither East nor West,
Nor border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
Though they come from the ends of the earth."
The final word is that of the great Apos
tle to the Gentiles :
"We warn every one, and instruct every
one, with all the wisdom we possess, in the
hope of bringing every one into God's pres
ence perfected by union with Christ."

82

V
Philosophy
The missionary has found the key, the
"master-key," to history. He has no such
mixture of views as Fourier, who had for
his key "the theory of universal harmony,"
and yet, in his deranged imagination, be
lieved the ocean should be lemonade, and
that there should be thirty-seven million
poets, philosophers, and writers like
Homer, Newton, and Moliere. He is not
inconsistent like Michelet, who, looking for
"ideas under events," put the Stoic above
the Christian, and made Christianity merely
a stage in the revelation of reason — a verse
in a universal Bible. Nor does he, like
Hegel, regard history as following the
course of the sun, going from East to
83

Missionary Interpretation of History
West. Nor, like Herder, does he count
history to be the manifestation of the
powers of nature in moral progress. Nor
is he like Comte, who finds the law of his
tory in the evolution of the intellect. Nor
does he, like Renan, regard religion to be
a sort of superior kind of poetry. The true
missionary is thoroughly practical. In the
exercise of his divine calling he counts all
good as the inspiration of his Lord and a
part of the Kingdom he toils to usher in
among men ; and he holds tenaciously to the
notion that the uplift he seeks is one which
includes all the various powers and activi
ties of men, played upon by every good
agency furnished by God, Jesus Christ be
ing the Chief Corner-stone of the whole
glorious structure; and thus, even more
than the heavens and the earth, he believes
that history declares the glory of God.
The missionary is not a captive running
a gauntlet, depending upon his fleet foot to
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Philosophy
win his freedom. He is an epitome of
Christianity on a march. He is an ever-
present challenge, not an obnoxious
apology, in the face of all faiths and creeds.
His victory is one of high practical advan
tage to the race. He is more concerned
about life than dogma. As the rationalist,
Lecky, has declared, he is the builder of
"the only example of a religion which is
not naturally weakened by civilization,"
and, we may add, the only example of a
religion having supreme power both to
adapt itself to alien peoples and to work out
their purification, unweakened by passage
of time, never so vigorous as now, and soon,
by the hand of God, to achieve after a fash
ion never dreamed of in past days the su
premacy of The Kingdom over all king
doms. The glory of his theory is that it works.
What he has done in the two millenniums
just closing is ample praise of the genius of
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Missionary Interpretation of History
the missionary for bringing things to pass.
All needed backing of approval that one
could wish is his. No one has had more
glorious success in applying a theory to
practice. If his program holds out to the
end of his days, he will need to show him
self approved to the most advanced thought
of progress. For the ages discover some
things in their march, and either sanction
for further usage unworn theories, create
new explanations of old deeds, or lay down
new programs for future action. But
human philosophy is still saying to the
plans, the prospects, and the progress of
the missionary, "Amen!" It is worth not
ing that the new philosophic tendency, the
latest school of thought, getting to itself a
fresh setting and emphasis on American
soil, is set forth in the opposition on the
part of Professor William James and others
to the overemphasis of intellectualism, the
rationalism of traditional philosophy. Man
86

Philosophy
is active, creative, and thought and intellect
are auxiliary functions in the process of
realizing his destiny. The ultimate princi
ple of mind is not therefore intellect, but
will. Intellectual interests are secondary to
practical interests, and derive their value
and content therefrom. Man is not solving
his problems in a vacuum, but "the degree
of his intelligence and the terms of his in
telligence are determined by the practical
needs of life." So the philosopher reaches
the conclusion that any theory is true that
works, that supports the interests of life in
volved in it. This makes belief a possible
program of action, and faith becomes the
living, active attitude of realizing an ideal.
Action, then, is man's true destiny. Only
thus can he fill his life with meaning. Only
thus can he justify his claim that life is
worth living, namely, by making it worth
while to live. So we have come to believe
that the practical grounds the theoretical,
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Missionary Interpretation of History
and not the reverse. "Be ye doers of the
work," is a genuine forecast of the latest
expression of truth on the banks of the
Charles. "The world will be richer in spir
itual realities in coming years as the crea
tive activities of those who believe in spir
itual realities bring it into being and give
it supremacy."
Thus is the word of the Master justified :
"Jesus answered them, and said, My doc
trine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If
any man will do [wills to do] His will, he
shall know of the doctrine."
If this is not a description of the char
acter and work of the missionary, it will be
hard to invent a truer one. His conquer
ing faith is his program of action. He is
evermore interpreting the world to itself, as
he goes about revealing God in His grace
to man. He lifts into high prominence the
prevailing tendency to look upon the de
fense of Christianity, not as a matter ex-
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Philosophy
ternal to, but part of, religion. The shift
ing of belief from the merely intellectual
to the moral portion of human nature is a
sign of the times that demands attention.
Each dogma may embody and express
truth, but only in part; and, after all, it
needs the vivifying power of that truth to
give it worth.
Herein is the unity of history. We live
in a moral universe. Prophets and apostles
saw a divine unity in the moral unfolding
of the ages. Where fruitless theorists
feared disintegration, they discovered a
glorious synthesis. Where others found
cheap content with fragmentariness, they
encouraged a noble curiosity and search
for the secret of the ages. They fastened
themselves to the center of things, and be
held with calm faces the living reality, abid
ing and undisturbed. They were spiritual
in an age of orthodox ritualists; patriots
in an age of orthodox traitors; heavenly-
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Missionary Interpretation of History
minded in an age of orthodox worldlings;
idealists in an age of orthodox materialists ;
faithful and positive in an age of orthodox
skeptics; and brave in an age of orthodox
cowards. Their visions helped to make his
tory after the fashion of God's thinking
and will. The spirit of the prophet is that
of the missionary.
We dare not get away from this view
of the world-movement. The missionary is
in line with the thought of a universal Gos
pel. He links hands with the Master in
His closing words in St. Matthew's Gospel,
he grasps the hand of St. Paul in Athens;
he echoes St. Peter's hope of the new world
in which dwelleth "righteousness;" he
anoints his eyes with the apocalyptic splen
dors of Revelation : "The kingdoms of this
world are become the kingdom of our Lord
and of His Christ."
The recognition of God and the moral
order inevitably tends to universality. Po-
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Philosophy
litical development tends to unity and or
ganization of moral relations. The human
race is being drawn together. Ideas are in
the mart for rapid exchange. Fellowships
and moral sentiments are not to be made
supports for selfish materialism. So the
philosophy of history is a sort of clearing
house of all human facts, and the purpose
of history is ever charming foremost minds.
The philosopher may have discovered the
stream of tendency, yet have hesitated to
define the goal. The missionary balks not
at this, for he sees the end of all things in
their holy consummation in Jesus Christ.
Kant dreamed of a sound political consti
tution; Herder pointed the path to mental
liberty and individual freedom; Guizot
looked to the complete sociality of the
process of civilization ; yet, in all, the vague
note and the dim vision sound in the
rhythm and grow dull in the color of the
dream. St. Paul and David Livingstone
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Missionary Interpretation of History
are so sure of the divine goal that they
calmly die and pass on to others their com
mission, the one on the banks of the Tiber,
the other in the marshes of pagan Africa.
And when the modern doctrine of evo
lution, with whatever modifications may
mark its further statements, sets before us
its view of unity, its tracing of a single
principle of life working through all known
forms of life, "so that the barriers fall
away which seemed to separate organic
from inorganic matter, or species from
species, or animal from man, or, to carry
the thought to its fullest result, ordinary
men from Christ," it will appear that this
is not other than to affirm the doctrine of
the Spirit and the Word working upwards
from the beginning to the end, evermore
keeping in eye the consummate form, and
the loftiest power, and the holiest ideal of
human development.

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Philosophy
These all unite in Jesus Christ, and the
Word fits once more :
"Wherefore God hath highly exalted
Him, and given Him a Name which is
above every name."

93

VI
Enthusiasm
In one other light the man of whom I
write has always been supreme: in his en
thusiasm. From the days when the Jewish
synagogue and the Roman Senate failed to
confine within its original limits the new
Faith, down to the days in which the East
India Company sent a solemn memorial to
Parliament declaring that "the sending of
Christian missionaries into our Eastern pos
sessions is the maddest, most extravagant,
most expensive, and most unwarrantable
project that was ever proposed by a lunatic
fanatic," this man put up against the stoic
spirit that dominated the Eternal City that
contagious sympathy with human suffering,
and against the infernal selfishness of the
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Enthusiasm
great commercial monopoly that sublime
devotion to the will of God, before which
adamant melts like wax. To-day the Com
pany is a bad memory, while hundreds of
churches dot the banks of the Ganges.
What will you call that which led Carey to
work seven years to get one disciple; or
the Moravians in the mountains of Tibet to
wait from 1856 to 1879 for their first bap
tized convert ; or that kept the Church Mis
sionary Society in Foochow for eleven
years, like the needle to the pole, without
a single addition? This spirit is supreme
after two millenniums of trial. It shows no
sign of degeneracy. The stamp of the
Divine is upon it. It comes to the home
Church at this time with power for inspira
tion just as men are saying that enthusiasm
is dying out.
This is the tercentenary of the publica
tion of the immortal "Don Quixote," and
well do Spaniards celebrate the fame of
:95

Missionary Interpretation of History
Cervantes. Heine said, "It was the great
est satire against human enthusiasm ever
penned." Is he right? He can not be.
"No one, not even a Cervantes, can make
a satire against human enthusiasm. On
that vast target every arrow must lose it
self." Cervantes shattered the dream of
Chivalry that he might give substance to
the hopes of true zeal, of real daring, and
of enduring self-devotion. He substituted
the modern for the mediaeval world, the
world of realities for that of shams, and
for the knight who took a tilt at windmills
he ushered in "the valiant man and true."
This divine fire will respond to all calls. It
makes good against all despair. It sees in
brown skins men for whom Christ gave
Himself to the Jerusalem mob. It pulls out
the Cambridge cricket champions, the
famous Studd brothers, from their round
of excitements in England, and extem
porizes a mission in Central China. When
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Enthusiasm
one man falls, it offers a score. James
Harinington is murdered in Africa. A me
morial service is held at Oxford with two
thousand men present to grit their teeth
and vainly grieve. A speaker in closing
asked, "Who will take Jim Hannington's
place?" Two hundred men rose to their
feet. It will not fail to make its appeal to
the home Church if pulpit and pew only
get to know of the endless jubilee in mis
sionary biography. It is the most transfer
able of all earth's riches. It gains by go
ing. The "Haystack Monument" at Wil
liams College, while it celebrates a noble
passion for souls in the hearts of Mills,
Richards, Rice, and Hall, will yet crumble
before the enthusiasm their self-surrender
generated ceases to exert its wholesome en
ergies for the good of men. A flaming life
is a perpetual stimulus. David Brainerd
led his class at Yale, gave himself to the
Indians, and burned to the socket, but not
7 97

Missionary Interpretation of History
till he set in motion an ideal passion for
men under which Levi Parsons, first
Protestant missionary to Jerusalem, and
Carey, Chalmers, and Martyn leaped at the
call of God. Adoniram Judson, first-honor
man of his class at Brown University, was
keyed up to his mission work by a holy de
termination under whose spur he defied
twenty-one months of prison life in the
East, part of the time in the cage in which
a lion had died. This expansive philan
thropy corrals whole families for service.
Dr. H. L. Gulick went to the Micronesian
Islands, and thirty-five years were not suf
ficient to wilt his dauntless spirit. His next
younger brother went to Spain, and a still
younger brother left for Japan. So they
are to go on till the King is universally
heralded. To no class of workers for the
uplift of humanity is the declaration of
Emerson so fitting as to the missionaries
of the cross : "Every great and command-
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Enthusiasm
ing movement in the annals of the world is
the triumph of enthusiasm."
We have spoken much of men engaged
in the cause of spreading the truth. But,
of late, they have been greatly re-enforced
by women, and a shining procession of
world-saviors goes by. There is Mrs.
Hannah Marshman, first woman mission
ary to India ; Lydia Mary Fay, the first sin
gle woman sent to China; Miss Clara
Swain, the inaugurator of the first medical
work among women in Asia ; Fidelia Fiske,
in Persia; Ann Wilkins, in Liberia; Mrs.
Hannah Mullens, who founded the zenana
missions in India; and Miss Isabella Tho
burn, whose work on the banks of the
Ganges is alive for evermove.
The enthusiasm of the missionary is
boundless. It reckons all is lost unless
Christ is enthroned. It confronts obsta
cles as if they were a plain path ; it glories
in matching its power, against opposition
99

Missionary Interpretation of History
of the most gigantic character ; it glows in
the heart that beats high with hope even
when the storm is at its utmost. It blazes
up from the passion of death-beds. John
Hunt lay dying. The attendant friends
noted how he kept on silently weeping. His
emotions increased, and he sobbed as if in
acute distress. N© longer able to with
hold himself, he cried out: "Lord, bless
Fiji ! save Fiji ! Thou knowest my soul
has loved Fiji; my heart has travailed in
pain for Fiji !" His own prospect was un
clouded. His treasures, wife and children,
were in the upper kingdom. Mr. Calvert
said to him, "The Lord knows you love
Fiji. We know it." For awhile he grew
quiet, but the burden was heavy. Finally
lifting his hand, mighty in its trembling, he
cried with passionate force: "O, let me
pray once more for Fiji. Lord, for Christ's
sake, bless Fiji, save Fiji!" Then he grew
quiet, and reached his end in unbroken
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Enthusiasm
peace. Such glowing love can have no fail
ure. It shares the omnipotence of God, in
spired as it is from contact with His own
heart. It looks at the world-problem from
the same point of view the Master had on
the cross. It sees, hears, feels, toils with
the eyes, ears, heart, and hands of the
Christ. It does not mark its sacrifices.
Hear David Livingstone addressing the
young men of Cambridge University: "I
never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought
not to talk when we remember the great
sacrifice which He made who left His
Father's throne on high to give Himself
for us; 'who being the brightness of His
Father's glory, and the express image of
His person, and upholding all things by the
word of His power, when He had by Him
self purged our sins, sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high.' "
The missionary joins the host of heroes
in all ages who have made free contribu-
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Missionary Interpretation of History
tions of trial, of toil, of love, of life itself,
for us and our children, who bear lighter
burdens now because they bore heavier
ones then. He gets into noble company,
and with fullest right of comradeship. He
holds rank with Milton, who was upheld in
his dishonored old age, blind, poor, and at
the mercy of an indecent Stuart rule, yet
in himself able to cheer coming ages with
the vision of a man reliant, tender, brave,
"amidst the ruin of all he loved and the
obscene triumph of all he despised." With
Dante, he walks forth outlawed and into
exile, yet singing a song of liberty and for
ultimate peace. He is as serene as the noble
philosopher of the French Revolution, Con-
dorcet, a victim of its fury, who, pursued to
his death, surrounded by all the chaos and
bloodshed of its bitterest days, spent his
last hours in sketching the vision of a
happy future, in which all nations should
rise to a common level, all separate peoples
102

Enthusiasm
should progress towards equality, and the
lot of man should achieve practical amel
ioration. It has not been many years since
Bishop Hannington, shut in by hostile sav
ages in the heart of Africa, and awaiting
inhuman death at their hands, composed
himself to write as usual in his diary and
to quote from Bickersteth the melodious
lines :
" Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown?
Jesus we know, and He is on the throne."
One of the graduates of Cambridge Uni
versity, in 1878, was Keith Falconer, third
son of the Earl of Kintore, taking principal
honors in Hebrew and Arabic, a foremost
athlete, and an earnest Christian. He went
as a missionary to Aden that he might
reach the Mohammedans of Southern
Arabia, and there, in 1886, this high-born
hero died on a bed of fever, as truly a
martyr as the Oxford oarsman, Hanning
ton, from the stroke of the savage. Surely
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Missionary Interpretation of History
the missionary is not lacking in power to
walk with the choicest of souls and to claim
fellowship with leaders of thought and of
action. After all is said,
" The greatest gift a hero leaves his race
Is to have been a hero. So we fail ?
We feed the high tradition of the world"
Dr. R. S. Storrs well expressed the glory
of the conquering faith of this man with
out whom history would possess another
meaning: "He expects long toil, dreary
wildernesses, battles with giants, and
spasms of fear in the heart of the Church.
But he looks, as surely as he looks for the
sunrise after nights of tempest and of lin
gering dawn, for the ultimate illumination
of the world by Faith. And however full
of din and dissonance the history of man
kind has seemed hitherto, seems even to
day, he anticipates already the harmonies
to be in it as, under the guidance of Him of
Galilee, it draws toward its predestined
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Enthusiasm
close, not sentimental or idyllic, but epic
and heroic." May the whole Church be
aroused by the contagion of this man's wis
dom, his faith, his heroism, to speed the
work of the world's redemption, until on
lookers shall not be skeptical when we cry
out, with Zinzendorf, "I have but one pas
sion, and it is He — He only!"
Thus will it be to the end of the mighty
task, and when the glorious triumph is
finally won :
"For of Him, and through Him, and to
Him, are all things; to whom be glory for
ever. Amen."

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