628,75

V. The utility of missions appears from the fact, that they impose upon us the simplest kind of labor. It is true that there must be many complicated processes in preparing for the missionary work; but the grand and distinctive feature of this work is one which the veriest child can apprehend. For the conversion of the world we need not distract our minds with the machinery of war, for Christ has an easier and more harmless method of subduing his enemies than Mohammed and heathen priests have devised; nor need we resort to arts of diplomacy; for men are not to be inveigled into religion by cunning craftiness and deep laid stratagems. The spirit of the Gospel is guileless, open, frank. It is not chiefly by the circulation of books, that the heathen are to be reclaimed. The Savior might have commanded his disciples to remain in the large towns, and write on papyrus, and multiply copies of their epistles, and distribute them throughout all the world; and it might have been prescribed as our duty to publish books at home for every kindred and tribe under the whole heaven, and send these volumes across the deep to be read by every man in his own tongue. But if the books were sent, they might not be read; they might lie unopened, or be torn into fragments and burned. Or, if they were perused, they might be cast aside so soon as they began to make an impression; they would not themselves have life to follow up the good results which attended the reading of them; they would not accommodate their appeals to the varying and oscillating states of mind in which they were perused, and would in many other respects be inferior to the living teacher. Therefore does the Savior command, not, Stay at home, and write books; but, Go abroad, and preach the Gospel; unto all the world go, and utter forth my word; impress it by your tones and gestures; watch for its influence; and when it begins to stir up the minds of its hearers, then say just the right thing at just the right moment. Peripatetics have conversed with their pupils, but they and all other philosophers have relied mainly for the promulgation of their doctrines on written theses; and no scientific school has discovered the process of oral instruction as the chief and best means of advocating its themes. This method was too simple for the wise men of this world to invent; it was reserved for the penetration of Jesus, the wise man of Bethlehem. And the preaching which he enjoins is not that of mere philosophical theories. The missionary is not to speculate before the heathen on mere technical subtilties, or abstruse hypotheses, but his message is a single and a summary one," preach the life, and 13

VOL. XXVII.

especially the death of Jesus; he that believeth shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned." It has sometimes been queried whether it be advisable to send on a foreign mission such men as are addicted to recondite speculation, and especially such as adopt metaphysical theories at variance with our own. But all these scholastic niceties, useful as they are in their proper place, will soon be banished from the sermons of missionaries. These men go beyond the scaffolding into the building. They rise above the deep and dark relations of a truth, and live in the truth itself, which is luminous, and giveth light to all that dwell therein. They preach the total depravity of man; and stay not to answer before the perishing heathen all the recondite objections that Christian philosophers have had leisure to ferret out. They preach the absolute necessity of regeneration by the special influences of the Holy Spirit; and have no need of leading the simple-hearted Asiatic or African through all the mazes which have been trodden by inquisitive and curious theologians. They preach the atonement made by a divine Savior; and have no occasion for detailing the wire-drawn refinements of the schoolmen in relation to that ineffable mystery. It is the simple Gospel which they are to preach. Its fundamental and prominent truths they are to hold out foremost, uppermost, and to keep warm and glowing in the deepest and innermost recesses of their own hearts. They become themselves imbued with the spirit of these precious doctrines; permeated with it, assimilated to it; and it shines forth in their correspondence and in their life. They are, therefore, in a degree a living embodiment of spiritual Christianity. To us in these distant places, they speak and write in the tone of representatives of the truth as it is in Jesus. From their simple-hearted messages of love, we derive a freshness of Christian feeling. And in this particular do we receive one of the most signal advantages of the missionary enterprise. It withdraws our chief regard from the philosophy of religion to religion itself. It makes us more intimate with the doctrines than with the theories of Christianity; more conversant with its rudimental and essential doctrines than with such as are subordinate and secondary. It is beneficial, it is wise to meditate on the less important truths of the Christian scheme; but it is life-giving to commune with those principles around which the whole system clusters, and to which it all converges. It is useful to speculate on the theories of religion, on the philosophy of theology; but it is far more salutary, it is needful for our moral growth, to be at home in the temple to which all these theories and all this philosophy are but winding avenues. We should be diligent in our attention to the metaphysics of the gospel; but when we become too much absorbed in them, we are prone to undervalue the gospel itself, to alienate ourselves from our brethren, to press the non-essentials of religion out of their fitting place, and to make both ourselves and our adversaries mere schismatics in the church. It is the missionary enterprise which calls us away from our unhallowed bickerings, and says, "Ye are brethren, why strive ye?" It fixes our gaze upon the cross of Jesus, and it allures us away from all bitter disputations on themes which lie about, and round about that cross, but do not touch it. We behold our missionary brethren, from various schools, from diversified places of abode, with differing prejudices, and discordant methods of explanation, all unite together in proclaiming the simple message, "God so loved the world as to give his well-beloved Son for perishing sinners." We discover the bond of unity, we see the radiating point of our religion. Whatever theories we may have, we learn to cling to these facts, which are no theories, which are intelligible to the inmate of a Caffrarian kraal, as well as to the student of Con

fucius, and to the soofee of Persia; which are fitted to renovate the Buddhist, and the Brahmin, not less than the disciple of Leibnitz and Spinoza. These essential truths are the sun in whose light the converted heathen walk, and in whose warmth they live, and from the genial influences of which we must never wander in search of the stars or meteors of human science. We learn to fasten our minds on this simple scheme of religion, which is the missionary scheme. We will insist for our Christian fellowship on no more complex creed than this missionary creed; and although we will love to explore all truth, and seek out its most intricate windings, yet will we nourish and strengthen ourselves most of all on that central portion of truth, which is made the simplest because the most needful; which is the bread of the children of God, whereby they grow, and the wine by which they are made glad. We need no "World's Convention to teach us this liberality. The toils and sacrifices to which we submit for the heathen are more conducive to a union of the churches than are all our pleasant assemblages for speech-making. The alliance of ourselves with Christ in the simple enterprise of evangelizing the world, is the best form of a "Christian alliance."

VI. The utility of missions appears from the fact that they require of us the very kind of labor for inciting to the performance of which the Bible was originally written. This holy volume was at first composed to encourage a spirit of perseverance in doing good amid difficulties and dangers. It abounds in consolation, but we are inclined to feel, in view of our temporal affairs, that we have need to congratulate rather than console one another. It is replete with incentives to press onward against obstacles; to contend, like martial men, for a victory over the soldiers of sin; to struggle, like the trained band of the palæstra, for overcoming those with whom we are daily in contact. But surrounded as we are with Christian friends, we are more disposed to pass our lives in communing with them than in wrestling with the enemies of the cross. When of a Sabbath morn we leisurely walk, or else ride in easy cushioned carriages to the church, those sound like strange words to us, "In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep." While sitting by our cheerful firesides and looking upon the ceiled walls of our houses, we repeat the catalogue of woes:-" In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren;" and we feel confident that no such recital applies to our present or to our past history. But our brethren who are now in heathen lands are "in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." We sympathize with them and make their pains our own. When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. We labor by our missionaries. We push onward the conquest with them. We wrestle, we contend with and for them. Their friends are our friends; their foes, ours. We feel that we are one with them, and that we need, in a degree, their consolations. To-day we read in the Bible words of comfort to the persecuted; we then read in the Missionary Herald of the Armenians, who are driven houseless to beg their daily food, and we pray for them and contribute for their relief, and soothe ourselves with the sweet assurance, "Blessed are ye when men shall treat you despitefully and shall persecute you." Now we read in the Bible words of tenderness to the prisoner; and then we read of a Judson, of a Worcester and Butler, wearing