THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

MISSIONARY CULTURE.1

BY REV. JAMES G. VOSE, D.D., PROVIDENCE, R. I.

THE great work of Foreign Missions is now receiving unusual attention from all classes. The progress of the work excites astonishment, and its results can no longer be treated with contempt. In forming an estimate of the value of missions, an important element is to be found in the character of the missionaries themselves. Any great work, for society or for the nation, requires a lofty type of excellence in those who plan and execute it. While it may be true of many of the founders of great systems that "they builded better than they knew," it is no less true that their work was a part of themselves. The ideal is ever in some respects loftier than the achievement. The efforts of philanthropy must lower their expectations in view of the difficulties to be encountered. The aim of the leaders is loftier than can be made to appear from the result. This is true in education. While we boast of the diffusion of knowledge in modern times, the highest interest centres. about the great educators, who have inspired others. We see in the men themselves the model of what they would accomplish. So it is in all Christian leaders. We are first

1 The substance of this Article was delivered as an Address before the Society of Inquiry at Brown University, June 13, 1875.

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attracted by their work, but if it be great and genuine we always find something greater in themselves. We form an idea of what can be done for the race by what is seen in the individual. When Christianity was founded our Lord came himself into the world to show what he was in his own person. So when he commissioned his apostles, it was not only that they might bear a message for the rescue of mankind, but that they might attain with every step of their work a loftier manhood. The true Christian missionary in all ages has exemplified more or less in himself the power of the gospel to glorify mankind. It is the purpose of this Article to consider missionary culture in its most important aspects.

I. Spiritual Culture. In those engaged in missions we observe two especial features. These are faith and loyalty to Christ. While faith is always set forth in the Scriptures as the entrance to the spiritual life, the meaning of it is never so distinctly shown as in efforts to advance Christ's kingdom. Whatever dispute there may be as to the amount or quality of faith essential to salvation, there can be no question as to its necessity in all great achievements. Our Saviour himself showed his exalted faith in his methods of conveying truth to all conditions of men. None were too low to be beneath his sympathy or his prayers. And the same is seen, in humbler measure, in the case of Paul. Whoever may think that Paul exaggerates the importance of faith as a principle, cannot deny its immense power in his own life. It carried him through all dangers and conflicts, and made him equally fervent whether he preached on Mars' Hill or to the little company of women by the river side at Philippi.

In our age the missionary work has, in like manner, developed the power of faith. It has brought distant things near, by making men sympathize with the misery and degradation of the remotest tribes. Judson and Newell could not sleep wheney thought of the moral condition of those for whom Chris died. Faith also overcame the disparity between means and ends. It overleaped all barriers - want of

money, ignorance of languages, difficulty of treating with hostile governments, opposition alike of friends and foes. No greater derision could have been excited when David chose five smooth stones out of the brook, wherewith to assail the mailed champion of the Philistines, than when our early missionaries sailed for an unknown coast with every earthly probability against them. Truly had they need to remember Christ's saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." Nor did their faith encounter its main obstacles at the beginning. It was developed by trials, that for years seemed to increase at every step. It was developed too by successes. For as steel is tempered by plunging alternately into heated baths of mercury or oil and into cold water, so the early champions of the missionary cause passed, like David, through alternate straits and deliverances that brightened faith on every side. It was developed both by God's answer to prayer and by his delays. The power of prayer was taught them, both by extraordinary escapes wrought by the hand of God, and by the complete sweeping away of their hopes when they were tempted to trust too much to the favor of men. They learned with the Psalmist how "to tarry the Lord's leisure." They learned with Paul, how to be abased and how to abound. Thus has the great principle of faith, the rock on which Christ built his church, been glorified afresh in the advance of Christian missions.

The missionary work has also developed loyalty to Christ. To march under the banners of a victorious prince is easy, but to follow one who is despised, and whose progress is marked by scorn and insult, is a keener test of loyalty. We cannot estimate the pains endured by the missionaries of modern times, men and women alike, in the cause which they held so dear. Suffice it that this experience has brought out their love to the Master. Livingstone, after painting what has been well call a Pauline pictu: of the sufferings he had endured, says," do not mention "do not mention hese privations as if I considered them to be sacrifices, fo. I think that the

word ought never to be applied to anything we can do for Him who came down from heaven and died for us." And one of the English missionaries to the South Sea Islands, describing the sort of men he would like to have sent out as fellow laborers writes: "A man who takes the sentimental view of cocoanuts and coral islands is, of course, worse than useless; a man possessed of the idea that he is making a sacrifice will never do; a man who thinks any kind of work beneath a gentleman will simply be in the way." Such loyalty has been awakened among missionaries who, like the knights of the Middle Ages, have counted no service degrading that has been required by their liege lord. Thus have they been brought near to Christ. They behold his life, and enter into the compassion with which he looked upon all the wants of humanity.

Here, too, is revealed with intense vividness every man's need of Christ. The ambassador to the heathen goes forth with this absorbing thought, that Christ came as a light to all the nations of the earth, and that without him every man is in darkness. In this manner Paul read his first commission to the Gentiles," to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light" (Acts xxvi. 18). The whole work of missions is a restatement of every man's dependence on Christ. In his own words, " Without me ye can do nothing." This is the declaration carried equally to the educated Hindoo and the sensual Caffre. This is the truth newly impressed on Christendom as well. Repentance and conviction of sin are the same in every land. Peace is brought to the soul by the application of redeeming blood as truly in the most distant nations as in the soil of New England. And with every man's need of Christ appears also the truth that Christ has a right to every man. Henry Martyn, laboring for years in India and Persia, with no visible results from all his toils, had no less faith in what the future would bring. Under date of April 30, 1806, he writes: "How easy for God to do it; and it shall be done in due time; and even if I never 1 Life of Bishop Patteson, by Miss Yonge (Eng. ed.), Vol. ii. p. 29.

should see a native converted, God may design by my patience and continuance in the work to encourage future missionaries. But what surprises me is the change of views I have here from what I had in England. There my heart expanded with hope and joy at the prospect of the speedy conversion of the heathen; but here the sight of the apparent impossibility requires a stronger faith to support the spirits." 1 To him the people who rejected his Master none the less. belonged to Christ. He felt the claims that Jesus had on them. It was not for their sake only, but for his Master's, that he was willing to live and die to plant the gospel in the East. Those vast countries in which no ray of light appeared were Christ's by right, and should one day own his sway. The crusaders firmly grasped the idea that the holy places must be reclaimed for Christ; but to the missionary all places belong to him, and all hearts must be made holy by his presence and indwelling. Such loyalty to Christ is here learned; and piety has never appeared more genuine or more fitted to inspire confidence since the days of Paul, than that which has been witnessed in the life and death of these faithful disciples.

II. Moral Culture. The moral training of the missionary is no less to be admired. By this is meant that clear perception of the value of the moral law and of its indissoluble connection with the Christian religion which the missionary, beyond all other men, learns and enforces. In all the world's history there is a persistent tendency to dissolve the connection between religion and ethics. Although we cheerfully admit that in all systems of religion there are excellent precepts, such as if faithfully followed would greatly improve the life, yet practically there is a divorce between worship and virtue. The sacred books of the Hindoos and Chinese contain precepts rarely applied to life, and of which the world would know little by the results that are patent to the eye. While the Mohammedan code of morals is very defective, the Mohammedans themselves admit that they do not follow even

1 Memoir of Henry Martyn (Tract Society edition), p. 161.