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a
The New Acts of the Apostles
r
:B^ Brtbur U. pferson*
THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES ; or, The
Marvels of Modem Missions. A Series of Lectures upon the Foundation of the " Duff Missionary Lectureship," delivered in Scotland, February and March 1893. With Map and Chart, &c. Crown 8vo, 6s.
THE CRISIS OP MISSIONS; or. The Voice Out of the Cloud. Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
THE DIVINE ENTERPRISE OP MISSIONS.
EVANGELISTIC WORK IN PRINCIPLE AND PRACTICE.
THE ONE GOSPEL; or, The Combination of the Narratives of the Four Evangelists in One Complete Record. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.
STUMBLING STONES REMOVED PROM THE WORD OP GOD.
THE HEART OP THE GOSPEL. 12 Sermons
THE
NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
OR
THE MARVELS OF MODERN MISSIONS 21 SctiCB Of Xectuted
UPON THE
foun5ation of tbe ''Duff OsiBeionax^ Xectureabfp''
Dblivbrkd in Scotland in Febeuary and March 1893
WITH A CHKOMO-UTHOGRAPHIC MAP SHOWING THE PREVAILING
RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, THEIR COMPARATIVE AREAS
AND THE PROGRESS OF EVANGELISATION
By ARTHUR T. PIERSON
AUTHOR OP "the CRISIS OP MODERN MISSIONS,' " THE -ONE GOSPEL," ETC
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
REV. ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., F.R.S.E.
EonVon JAMES NISBET & CO.
21 BERNERS STREET 1894
^ji'Cc'i *i.ci<^ -</CA/-i» L
/
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co At the Ballaniync Press
2>eMcatfon*
AS A GRATEFUL OFFERING TO THE MEMORY OF
THE REV. ALEXANDER DUFF, D.D., LL.D.
WHO, BEYOND MOST OTHER MEN OF THIS CENTURY OF MISSIONS, CONTRIBUTED TO THE NEW CHAPTERS OF ITS MISSIONARY HISTORY;
AND WHO,
HAVING " SERVED HIS OWN GENERATION BY THE WILL OF GOD,"
"BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH :"
AND, AS AN AFFECTIONATE TRIBUTE TO
THE REV. ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., F.R.S.E.,
OF EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND,
SENIOR MEMBER OF THE DIRECTORY OF THIS LECTURESHIP,
WHO, HAVING PASSED FOUR SCORE YEARS, AT HIS ADVANCED AGE
STILL HOLDS FORTH THE WORD OF LIFE,
PREACHING THE MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL
AND URGING THE CHURCH OF CHRIST TO GREATER FIDELITY
IN HER MISSION TO MANKIND,
THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED
BY THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION.
By Rev. Andrew Thomson, D.D., F.R.S.E.,
Edinburgh, Scotland.
THE DUFF MISSIONARY LECTURESHIP.
The Duff Missionary Lectureship was founded by William Pirie Duff, Esq., son of the Rev. Alex- ander Duff, D.D., LL.D. Dr. Duff was a man dis- tinguished alike by his fine genius, his glowing eloquence, and his Christian zeal — a man whose name, familiar as a household word in many parts of India at the present day, stands in the front rank of those great missionaries who have been incalculable blessings to India during recent generations. When Dr. Duff died on the twelfth of February, 1878, leaving his son, his heir, Mr. Duff immediately proceeded to make arrangements for the establishment and endow- ment of a quadrennial course of lectures on some subject ** within the range of foreign missions, and cognate subjects," as a suitable memorial of the venerable missionary. He was prompted to this at once by filial piety and by the fact that, during his later years, his father had repeatedly expressed a wish that, as a means of perpetuating his influence, a considerable portion of the bequest which he would leave behind him, should be consecrated to this end.
Trustees were appointed to arrange and admin- ister the trust, and these, being selected from the various evangelical denominations, fitly represented
viii INTRODUCTION,
Dr. DuflE's catholicity of spirit. In the same spirit, it was provided that the lecturer should be a minis- ter, professor, or godly layman of any evangelical church, and that he should hold the lectureship for four years. The course must consist of not fewer than six lectures on his chosen subject, and these must be delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow dur- ing the second year of his tenure of the lectureship, on consecutive Sabbath evenings in the months of January and February, and re-delivered at such other times and places as the Trustees might direct. A further condition, binding on the lecturer, was that he should print and publish, at his own expense and hazard, at least one hundred copies of his lectures, which he should distribute free of cost among the Trus- tees and libraries of evangelical churches and mission- ary societies at home and abroad, it being understood that then he should be at liberty to publish as many further copies as he might see fit, and the profits of which should belong to himself. In 1880, the ar- rangements had been completed, and, between that year and the present, four courses of lectures have been delivered, showing an interesting and edifying variety in the particular branch of the gfreat subject treated by the lecturers, but each and all making a valuable contribution to the literature of Christian Missions.
I.
The Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., professor of Evangelistic Theology in the Free Church of Scot- land, was chosen to deliver the first course of lee-
INTRODUCTION. ix
tures in the Duff Missionary Lectureship. Being amply satisfied with his qualifications in other re- spects, it was felt by the Trustees, as well as by Dr. Duff's own family, that there would be a seemly gracefulness in Dr. Smith's being appointed to lead the van of lecturers, arising from the fact that he had been associated with Dr. Duff in mission work, first in Bengal and afterwards in Edinburgh, for the long period of forty years, during all which time the friendship of the two men had been most intimate and uninterrupted; while, to quote Dr. Smith's own words, **he shared with the universal Church the sentiment of admiration of his gifts and veneration of his gfraces."
Dr. Smith's lectures were delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the spring of 1880, and were seven in number. His selected theme was Mediaeval Missions, and the lectures were'mainly historical and biogfraph- ical. But when we consider that the mediaeval ages extended over a period of a thousand years, namely, from the fifth century to the Reformation, and that the geographical range of the word included all Europe and even large portions of Asia and Africa, besides ; it will be seen that the history of Christian missions, during so many ages and over so vast a space, could only be touched by the lecturer at certain points, and many of them not referred to at all. Nevertheless, Dr. Smith has done much within his nar- row limits to increase our knowledge of those periods in which attempts were made to Christianize nations in the mass and at the point of the sword, and when the change effected was, of course, little more than nominal. In almost every page, we can discern
X INTRODUCTION,
evidence that the lecturer knew a great deal more on the subjects treated by him than he was able to compress within the compass of seven lectures. He has done good and permanent service in separating the fabulous from the real, in disentangling knots that had perplexed earlier writers, in shedding addi- tional information at times upon the struggles of light with darkness, and in giving us good reasons for believ- ing that, even in the midst of much error that was mingled on some occasions in what was written, there was sufficient truth to lead anxious hearts to Christ. At times men rise before us in the narrative who were not missionaries merely, but reformers, influencing extensive regions and trans- mitting their light to succeeding generations; and who, like St. Patrick in Ireland and St. Columba in Scotland, with the sea-girt island of lona as his centre of action, sending forth his evangelists over wide districts of Scotland to found Culdee settlements and ** houses of Christ," did almost Apostolic work, and helped to prepare the way for the glorious Refor- mation that was to come.
II.
The second of the Duff missionary lecturers was the Rev. William Fleming Stevenson, D.D., minis- ter of Rathgar Presbyterian Church, Dublin, and convener of the Foreign Mission Committee of the Irish Presb3rterian Church and Synod. He stood preeminent as a preacher among the ministers of his church, and his position as convener of its Foreign Mission Committee kept his mind in unbroken con-
INTRODUCTION. xi
tact with missions and missionaries. Everything was looked at by him from this sacred centre, and was coloured by it. Nor was this his only qualifica- tion; for before the period of his being engaged to be one of the Duff lecturers, he had visited nearly all the great mission fields in the world, especially those scattered over India, and had brought back with him gathered stores of knowledge from many lands, and a heart glowing with zeal and full of hope for the great future which seemed to brighten before him, for India and the world.
He chose as the title of his course, ** The Dawn of the Modem Mission," his intention being to restrict his lectures to the ages which immediately followed the Reformation, when the Protestant Churches had not yet been fired by the missionary spirit, or be- come alive to the all-embracing authority of the great gospel commission which included in it every Christian disciple: **Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.'* While indi- vidual men, such as Ziegenbalg and Zinzendorf and Schwartz, as if they had been bom before their time, did noble work in their narrow spheres, and were as morning stars which foretold the rising of the sun, the Churches themselves were not yet awake. It is not unlikely that Dr. Stevenson hoped to have time and opportunity to record the later history of foreign missions, when the Churches should have awakened to their responsibility, and the dawn of the mission should have passed into the day. But this was not to be. Even his course of lectures on the Dawn of the Mission was never completed. In 1884, he delivered four lectures in the appointed
xU INTRODUCTION.
places. And these, in so far as he had strength to give them a full revision, were worthy of himself, distinguished by vigorous thought, comprehensive- ness of view, and literary beauty. His finely appreciative and living portraits of the great pio- neers of missions whom we have named, and of many others, could scarcely have been surpassed in their rich colouring and felicitous touches by any writers of his day. But death came with its sad in- terdict, the effect of overwork, and **in the mid- time of his days " he was summoned upward. His accomplished widow, who had been **of one heart and soul " with him in all his cares and toils, super- intended the publication of the four lectures which he had delivered, under the felicitous title which he himself had chosen. In its incomplete form, the lit- tle volume is like a broken pillar, but the pillar is composed of the finest marble and it is chiselled with a master's hand.
•
III.
Sir Monier Monier Williams, the distinguished Orien- tal scholar, was the third lecturer appointed in con- nection with the Duff Missionary Lectureship. His chosen subject was Buddhism. And his first inten- tion was to present in seven lectures a scholarly sketch of true Buddhism. But he very soon per- ceived that in order to do justice to this form of false religion, which was the faith of so large a portion of the human race, it was necessary that he should ex- hibit it in connection with Brahmanism and Hindu- ism, and even Jainism, and also in its contrast with
INTRODUCTION, xiu
CHristianity. And as the subject expanded in his mind, he became more and more convinced that any endeavour to give an outline of the whole subject of Buddhism in seven lectures would be ** like the effort of a foolish man trying to paint a panorama of Lon- don on a sheet of note-paper." The result of this conviction was that the seven lectures multiplied into eighteen, the greater number of these far ex- ceeding in length the dimension of ordinary lectures which might be delivered in an hour. The literature of Buddhism has immensely gained by this expan- sion into a massive volume of 563 octavo pages; the parts which formed the lectures which were de- livered in Edinburgh in 1888 having been absorbed into the volume.
In a modest and manly preface, the learned author claims for his elaborate treatise an individuality which separates it from those which have been written on the same vast subject by others, — an individuality which, as he says, may "commend it to thoughtful students of Buddhism as helping to clear a thorny road, and to introduce some order and coherence into the chaotic confusion of Buddhistic ideas." The unanimous favourable opinion of Ori- ental scholars, and the continuous and extensive sale of the book ever since its publication, far more than realized the hopes of the accomplished scholar; while its value and authority are greatly enhanced by the fact that, on three occasions. Sir Monier Monier Williams travelled through the ** sacred land" of Buddhism, and carried on his investiga- tions personally in the place of its origin, as well as in Ceylon and on the borders of Thibet.
xiv IN TROD UC TION.
IV.
The fourth and most recent Duff Lecturer was the Rev.Arthur T. Pierson,D.D., of Philadelphia, U.S.A., whose name is pleasantly familiar to the Churches of Christ on both sides of the Atlantic. The title of his lectures, which form the contents of the present vol- ume, is, ** The New Acts of the Apostles ; or. The Marvels of Modem Missions," and their design was to compare the Christian Church in the nineteenth cen- tury with the Church in the first century, especially in their missionary aspects, and to bring out the fea- tures of resemblance and of contrast between them. They were addressed in the early months of 1893, to crowded audiences, not only in Edinburgh and Glasgow, but in Aberdeen, Dundee and St. An- drew's, and some individual lectures were also delivered in other places, as in Arbroath. I had the pleasure of listening to some of them, and knowing as I did, that they had been composed by Dr. Pierson while he was occupying Mr. Spurgeon's place iia the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London — a task which of itself would have exhausted and even overstrained the energies of most men — I was aston- ished at their power, and freshness, and varied excel- lence. They were as new and fragrant as the flowers of spring. His vigour and originality of thought, his extraordinary knowledge of all subjects connected with Christian missions, his ingenuity and skill in the exposition of Scripture, and in extracting from f ami^ iar texts new and unexpected stores of instructioi his inexhaustible command of anecdotes whic helped to enrich and enliven his addresses, his pow
INTRODUCTION, xv
of making external nature pay tribute to spiritual instruction, as well as the glowing fervour of his ap- peals— made multitudes listen unwearied for hours in hushed silence. I trust that the powerful impres- sions and healthful impulses, produced by his lectures when spoken, will be equalled in their influence and blessing when they are read, and I am sure that my honoured and beloved friend will own himself to have received in such results his richest reward.
ANDREW THOMSON. Edinburgh, March, 1894.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
In the winter of 1890, while wandering among the ruins of the picturesque abbey at Arbroath, Scotland, my eye rested upon an old and much worn headstone which had marked the grave of some member of that large family whose name I bear. Along the side of this slab could be distinctly traced the letters, PiERSON, and the ancestral **coat of arms" graven upon the stone had not been quite obliterated by the unsparing hand of Time. In presence of such a memorial of my forefathers, I felt like a lad visiting the old homestead where his ancestors had dwelt, and ready, in a filial spirit, to render to dear old Scot- land any service asked of me.
One might well hesitate to attempt to fill the ap- pointment to the ** Duff Missionary Lectureship;" to follow such men as the heroic missionary. Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., the seraphic advocate of missions. Rev. William Fleming Stevenson, D.D., and the accomplished scholar. Sir Monier Monier Williams; but, like Franklin at the Court of Ver- sailles, I may say, I come, ** not to succeed^ but only to follow " those who have gone before me.
To Dr. Alexander Duff, America owes a debt which can never be paid; and the visit of one of her sons to Scotland upon this errand was but a slight acknowledgment of that obligation, a tribute of the gratitude of my fellow-countrymen for that new im-
xtU
xviii PREFA CE.
pulse imparted to missions by that eloquent advo- cate, who, in the year 1854, visited our shores and set us all aflame with his holy enthusiasm.
By an undesigned coincidence, the opening lecture of this course fell, in Edinburgh, upon the exact anniversary of the death of Doctor Duff, February 12, 1893, fifteen years after the departure of that illustrious man, who was the Raimond Lull of our century.
One of the conditions of this trust is that each course of lectures shall, so far as practicable, be de- livered in the various academic centres of Scotland. Hence, I undertook to give the full course in Edin- burgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, and three lectures in St. Andrew's also.
Another condition of the lectureship is that the lectures shall, after delivery, appear in printed form. This made preparation with the pen necessary and proper, on a scale more extensive than was available for oral delivery, within the usual limits. In the lectures as given there was a fragmentary and perhaps disconnected character, which, it is hoped, may be relieved by that fuller and final form in which they now appear.
For many years my habit has been to speak not only without manuscript, but without much pen- work in preparation. It was perhaps well that the necessity of furnishing material for the press com- pelled the writing of these lectures; for the theme became so absorbing that, but for this check upon my utterance, the treatment of it, like some of our American railways, might have lacked ** solid foun- dations," ** close connections," and ** terminal facili-
PREFA CE. xix
ties." Even in seeking finally to revise the manu- script for publication, Rousseau's remark seems forcibly verified, that **one half a man's life is too little to write a book — the other half too little to correct it when written."
To make this volume as far as possible complete, I have undertaken, at no little cost* both of toil and money, to add to it a Map of the World, which may exhibit to the eye the prevailing religions of the world, with their comparative territory and area, and may also show the progress of the Protestant missions of the world toward permeating and penetrating the habitable globe. In this part of my work I owe especial thanks to my friend, Mr. William E. Blackstone, of Oak Park, Illinois, whose careful research largely forms the basis of this valuable addition to my published lectures.
It would be ungrateful to close this introductory word without acknowledging the many unselfish and untiring efforts of various friends who, in the several places of delivery, so largely contributed to whatever measure of success crowned my humble efforts to demonstrate and to illustrate the essential corre- spondence between the features of this missionary century and the age of the Apostles.
Arthur T. Pierson.
2320 Spruce St., Philadelphia, May, 1894.
CONTENTS.
r>ART I.
THE NEW LINKS OF MISSION HISTORY.
SBCTION PAGE
I. The New Chapters, .... 3
II. The New Pentecosts, . . . 11
III. The New Times and Seasons, . . 19
IV. The New Open Doors, ... 28 V. The New Era, 38
PART II.
THE NEW APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION.
I. The Calling of the New Apostles, 51
II. The New Pioneers, .... 63
III. The New Apostolate of Woman, . 133
IV. The New Lessons, . . . .141
PART III.
THE NEW VISIONS AND VOICES.
I. The Leading Voice — The Voice of
THE Master, 147
II. The Call to all Disciples, . .152
III. The Vision of the Field, . . 171
IV. The New Lesson of the Power, . 189
V. The New Ministry of the Spirit, . 196
XXll
CONTENTS.
F>ART IV.
THE NEW CONVERTS AND MARTYRS.
SBCTION PAGB
I. The Miracle of Conversion, . . 209
II. New Converts and Martyrs, . . 213
III. Transformed Communities, . . 249
IV. The New Witnesses and Workers, . 285
F»ART V.
NEW SIGNS AND WONDERS.
I. The New Miracles, . . . .293
II. New Opportunities and Preparations, 305
III. Providential Preservations, . . 309
IV. New Judgments of God, . . . 318 V. General Administration, . . .322
VI. Miracles of Grace, .... 329
VII. Rapidity of Results, .... 340
VIII. Answers to Prayer. . . . 352
F>ART VI.
THE NEW MOTIVES AND INCENTIVES.
I. The Look Forward, .... 375
II. The New Order of Things, . . 377
III. Medical Missions, .... 382
IV. The New Activity of Woman, . 386 V. New Lessons from Experience, . . 389
VI. New Incentives to Giving, . . 395
VII. The New Appeal of Man, . . . 405
VIII. Harmony with God's Purpose, . 410
IX. The Blessed Hope, . . . .414
X. The New Outlook, .... 428
Part I.
THE NEW LINKS OF MISSION HISTORY
A
THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Part I. — The New Links of Mission History.
THE NEW CHAPTERS.
God's coin has the mark of His mint, and bears His image and superscription. When His Son came to earth, though His divinity wore the disguise of our humanity, behind His robe of flesh there flashed upon His breast " the star of empire." And so, when the word of God came in the dress of human speech, it shone with the glory of God*
The manifold uses of the Holy Scripture grow clearer as we study the inspired book. It is the key that unlocks all perplexities. As Arthur Hallam said, it proves itself God's book, because it is man's book, fitting every turn and curve of the human heart. Bengel's motto was: ** Apply thyself wholly to the scriptures, and apply the scriptures wholly to thyself." The Son of God Himself found in His Father's word, His sword in temptation. His stay in trial, His guide in teaching ; its prophecies were the seals of His messiahship, its precepts the rule of His obedience, its promises the balm for His suffering ; through life He had no grander theme, and in death no richer legacy. Modem critics often handle it with irreverent hands, but to Him it was sacred in every part; and Michel Angelo's romantic devotion to the famous torso of Hercules in the Vatican, seeking to feel through touch • the thrill of delight no longer granted through his blind eyes, is but a faint image of the divine and holy rapture with which Jesus studied the inspired Scriptures.
. World-wide missions present for solution a most perplexing practical problem. Where shall we come
4 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
for guidance if not to these oracles of God ? Over these ** pillars of Hercules " is fore vermore written, ne plus ultra. Beyond this word there is nothing sat- isfactory, nothing needful. God has magnified His word above all His name, and here are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
This principle we seek now to apply to one book of the New Testament, which will be found to be both a history and a philosophy of missions in one. That book is the Acts of the Apostles. Here, what is found in the gospels in precept, is found in practice ; gospel teaching as set forth by the Evangelists, ap- plied actually and historically, by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Luke, who, in the gospel, tells us what Jesus ** be^ sran^^' in the Acts tells us what He ** continued^ both to do and teach," by the Spirit, through disciples, as to the kingdom of God. Here, as in the very order of the gospels, the door of faith is successively opened to Hebrew, Roman, and Greek believers. Pentecost links Old Testament prophecy with New Testament history. This is the book of witness : both man's witness to God, and Grod*s witness to man; the sequel of the gospels, the basis of the epistles; not so much the acts of the apostles, as the acts of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Redeemer in the person of the Paraclete.
Here the Spirit is seen, first applying the truth and the blood to penitent believers, then anointing believers for service, then sending them forth as heralds and witnesses to preach the kingdom, to make disciples, and to organize disciples into churches. What meaning is wrapt up in the fact that the period of time covered by this book is only about thirty-three years — the length of our Lord's human life, the average of one generation — as though plainly meant to teach us what may be and should be done in every successive generation, until the end of the world-age itself !
THE NEW CHAPTERS, 6
The Acts of the Apostles thus forms one great inspired book of missions : God's own commentary and cyclopedia for all ages, as to every question that touches the world's evangelization.
The opening verses of each gospel narrative show a fourfold completeness and comprehensiveness; and what Bernard calls **a progress of doctrine:"
MATTHEW:
"The Book of the Generation^of Jesus Christ, the Son of David," etc.
MARK:
"The-beeinningof the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," etc
LUKE:
. . .-'. "A declara- tion of those things which are most surely believed among us," etc
JOHN:
" In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word wasSf«rith God and the Word was God," etc
Thus Matthew links on messianic predictions of the Old Testament to the historic chain of New Testa- ment events, tracing our Lord's human beginning as bom of Mary but begotten of the Holy Spirit. Mark starts with His mature manhood, and shows the Divine messenger delivering his message. Luke sets forth an orderly statement of facts and truths held to be beyond dispute by primitive believers. John goes back beyond them all, to the eternity of the Divine Word.
So do the initial chapters of the Acts bear marks of design as the sequel not of Luke's former treatise only, but of all the four accounts which this book follows. It braids together into one their four strands of testimony. In the structure of the New Testament this is the entablature resting upon and uniting the four columns which support it and which it surmounts. Hence, to read this book aright, we must perceive its fourfold character or aspect. It is the book of the advent of the Holy Spirit, and of the generation of the Church of Christ, begotten of the Spirit in the womb of our humanity. It is the beginning of the gospel of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead. It is the orderly setting forth of the great fact and truth of the Spirit's outpouring, as most surely believed among those who were ey^-witjiesses pf His majestic advent. And
6 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
it is the first clear revelation of the person of Him who as the Spirit of God was in the beginning with God and was God.
In a word, just what the fourfold gospel is to Christ, the Acts of the Apostles is to the Spirit— the ins|iired account of His advent, and of the birth of the Bride of Christ; the beginninj^ of the gospel of the Spirit's presence and power ; the declaration in order of that supreme secret of all holy living and faithful service, His inward working; and finally, the unveil- ing of His eternal identity with, and procession from, the Godhead. Truly this book is the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
ThUs the advent of the Spirit, and His activity in alid through the Church, are the keys which open the doors to all the chambers in this House of the Interpreter. From the first chapter to the last, the thenie is the same : the coming of the Spirit, to apply the truth, arouse the conscience, soften the heart, subdue the will, anoint the tongue, and hallow the lip — to take the place of the absent Lord — ^nay, to make real to believers the promise of His perpetual presence, by becoming to every renewed soul all that Christ would have been had He remained on earth.
Upon one grand fact we lay great stress, and shall recur to it from time to time, that by blow upon blow repetition may deepen impression. This book of the Acts, which is to the Church the Principia embodying the great laws and principles for our gtlldance in the work of missions ; this book, which is the history of primitive missions, and like all his- tory is *' philosophy teaching by examples," illustrat- ing the practical operation of these laws and principles during one whole generation — this book is manifestly and designedly incomplete, unfinished.
This unfinished character is shown both by its be- ginning and its close. That " former treatise of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up/* implies this lattet trea«»
THE NE W CHAP TERS. 7
tise of all that He continued both to do and teach after that He was taken up. This introduction stamps this book as a continuance and sequel to a previous narra- tive, which is necessary to its full interpretation. Accordingly, we are prepared to see Christ in the Acts continuing His words and works through the Spirit. He who for forty days after His resurrec- tion gave in His personal presence many infallible proofs of the reality of that resurrection, here gives equally infallible proofs of His perpetual presence in the work of the Holy Spirit.
How Icmg will He continue thus to do and teach ? So long as He has a believing body of disciples who still go forth into all the world as witnesses bearing His message. The wondrous story opens with the en- duement of power, and throughout exhibits its effect in qualifying witnesses for their work : nor is there any hint that this Power ever was, or will be, with- drawn. The narrative stops, but the history goes on. Wherever devout disciples claim in prayer and by faith their iuU share in that Pentecostal fulness, they may go forth endued with power from on High. Wherever, from that day to tiiis, Christ's witnesses have gone forth in obedience to His word, the same essential marks as in the Apostolic age have attended their service and explained their success.
If now we turn to the conclusion of the Acts, we find a close so abrupt that it suggests yet again a con- tinuance and sequel. The curtain of silence suddenly falls upon a scene of continued action. Paul, dwell- ing in his own hired house, is still seen receiving all who come unto him, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only the act, but even the scene, is incomplete. Paul's life is not brought to a close, and his work at Rome is yet going on. Surely this is an unfinished picture ; the canvas awaits other touches and tints from the Divine Artist; new scenes in mis- sionary, history are to supply new material for sug-
8 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
gestion. These last two verses furnish a formula for record for all true witnesses through all aftertime. Change but the name, and the number of the years, and each successive disciple may here find a brief epitome of his life and labour; for whoever, by ful- filling his mission, adds one more impretending entry to this Apostolic record, belongs to the Apostolic suc- cession. You may think of yourself as less than the least of all saints, yet if, in obedience to your Lord and dependence on His Spirit, you spread the good tidings, to you is this grace given to add and form one more link in that golden chain that reaches from the upper chamber of the Jewish capital to the bridal chamber of the New Jerusalem, and which unites in one glorious succession all in whom Jesus thus con- tinues by the Spirit to speak and work.
We have therefore written intelligently and dis- criminatingly, in referring to the Acts of the Apostles, as closing rather than ending, for the story comes to no proper conclusion, and is desigfnedly left incom- plete. Here is the story of a generation ; and no gen- eration ever reaches completeness, but is linked and woven into the next, and its history merges into that of its successor as to-day melts into to-morrow. So, most of all is it in the work of missions. It is so far one work that no eye can trace the point where the mission of one of God's witnesses ends and that of another begins. Paul's preaching and teaching still form threads in the fabric of missionary history, and will imto the end.
But in a grander sense the Acts of the Apostles reaches no conclusion. When the late Bishop of Ripon characterized the thrilling story of the Apos- tle of the South Seas as the ** Twenty-ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles," he was but partly right. To that striking remark history adds one criticism and correction : that was a new chapter, but not the first new chapter added since Apostolic days. Long before John Williams sailed upon his holy mission,
THE NE W CHAP TERS. 9
many additions had been made to that unfinished book. Of some of these chapters we have no human memorial: they are written only by the Recording Angel in God's Book of Remembrance, to be un- sealed when those other books are opened and read amid the flaming splendours of the Great White Throne. But it is sublimely true that the triumph- ant advance of that Tottenham lad who became the great witness for the gospel in the Pacific Polynesia, added a new and glorious chapter to the annals of Apostolic Missions. And so far and so fast as Apos- tolic working and witnessing have survived and re- vived, so far and so fast have new chapters in the Acts been enacted, if not written. Nor will the age of missions ever end, until this Divine Mission of witness to men is accomplished. And therefore is this book left incomplete, as it always will be while one believer is left to teach and preach those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ and to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his own flesh for His body's sake, — ^which is the Church.
Our present purpose, then, is declared in advance. We shall treat the age of Modem Missions, and especially the century of organized missionary ac- tivity since Carey led the way, as an illustration of this continuation of the Acts of the Apostles. We shall note some points of comparison and of con- trast between the Apostolic age and our own. We shall look in this book for the clue to some of the in- tricate, complicate problems of missions, and care- fully and prayerfully search to find the secrets of success in world-wide witness.
As both brevity and unity of treatment will be conserved by setting proper limits to this discussion, we shall consider, first, the new Pentecosts and the new openings of doors; then the calling and sending forth of the new apostles; then the new voices and visions; then the new converts and martyrs; then the
10 - THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
new signs and wonders; and finally, the new hopes and incentives.
For such a study both the writer and reader may well invoke higher help. There is something un- usually solemn in treating such a theme. We are to occupy our minds with the New Chapters in the Acts of the Apostles. Only a spiritual eye can read them: only a spiritual mind interpret them. With no careless hand would we venture to fill out the sacred outlines of missionary biography and history, and, peradventure, add another touch to Grod's un- finished book. But if that same Spirit who g^ded the pen of the Evangelist as he wrote this latter treatise, shall deign to open our eyes and direct our gaze, we shall be able to read the records which history has imperfectly written, and gather inspira- tion for such holy living and heroic serving as shall add yet other chapters in the days to come!
II.
THE NEW PENTECOSTS.
Owen, in his Pneumatologia, afi&rms that every age has its own test of orthodoxy or apostasy, and that the criterion of a standing or falling Church in this age is found in its attitude toward the Spirit of God.
The gospel age is especially His dispensation. This divine person peculiarly fills the horizon as we study the Acts of the Apostles; and we cannot open the pages of this book of the Acts without starting an inquiry which is first in order and fundamental in importance. What is the actual place which Pentecost fills in Christian history? Was that out- pouring both the first and the last, or only the fore- most in a series of similar effusions? Was that revelation of the Spirit's power and presence full and final, or was it, like Christ's own advent, but the beginning of miracles and wonders with others to follow? and is that first advent of the Spirit to be succeeded by another, even more glorious, at the end of the age?
Christ's Incarnation was, in fact, a hiding of His true self behind a veil of flesh. His star in the East, seen by a few wise watchers, guided them to his cradle, and a few holy souls who waited for His salvation were not taken by surprise. A little band of disciples felt His charms and bowed to His claims: they saw His glory shine at times when, as in the Transfiguration and Ascension, His disguise was laid aside. In fact. His Baptism, Transfiguration, Resur- rection, Ascension, were so many stages of revela- tion of His glory, which is to be fully disclosed when, at His second coming, the curtain is finally lifted, and the last act in this divine drama completes
the marvellous manifestation.
11
12 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
There is a mystery of correspondence between Christ and the Paraclete. Possibly that upper cham- ber was but the cradle of the Spirit's revelation: other and higher unfoldings and unveilings of His grace and glory are yet to follow; more signal triumphs over Satan; louder and clearer voices and visions of God; new raptures and radiances when devout souls, transfigured in His presence, are changed from glory to glory by the Lord the Spirit, as they with open face behold His supernal beauty. That coming of the Spirit may have been, like the blush of the ** con- scious water " at Cana, only the beginning of mira- cles, wherein He showed forth His glory, a type and prophecy of things to come. This question is not one of idle curiosity, but of practical value; and is reverently raised at the vestibule of this theme, be- cause upon our answer all that follows is dependent.
It has been commonly assumed, without Scriptural warrant, that on the day of Pentecost the Spirit was, once for all, poured out, thenceforth to dwell in the individual believer, and especially in the collective body of believers — ^the Church; and some hold that to pray for the outpouring of the Spirit, either upon saints or sinners, implies absurdity and contradiction, since He is already bestowed upon and abiding in the Church.
To this position- exception may certainly be taken. First of all, there is in the way an exegetical diffi- culty. The inspired Scriptures are marked by an exactness in the use of words which shows that the Spirit guided in language as well as in thought. When Peter quotes that unique prediction of Joel, ** I will pour out of my Spirit upon all fleshy' his words are carefully chosen. He does not say : * * Now is fulfilled that which was foretold by Joel;" but, ^^ this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.''
Precision is one mark of perfection, and to perfec- tion nothing is trivial. Matthew's tmiform phrase, when he refers to the coincidences and convergences
THE NE W PENTECOSTS. 13
of prophecy and history is, **then was fulfilled," or **so that it was fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet" — often naming the prophet. But, when referring to Christ's residence in Nazareth, he, for the first and only time uses the plural — ** that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene;" because while no single prediction was thus accomplished, the trend of many prophecies is in this direction. So in the Gospel according to John, it is very noticeable with what accuracy of precision two prophecies are referred to in connected verses, yet in different terms. Christ's legs were not broken, but His side was pierced; and it is added, as to the former fact, ** that the Scripture should be fulfilled, a bone of Him shall not be broken;" but, as to the latter, "and again another Scripture saith, they shall look on Him whom they pierced." In this latter case the prediction is yet to be fulfilled,''' and hence while the language of pre- diction is applied to the event by way of correspond- ence, how carefully is the record guarded so as not to exclude its true fulfilment hereafter.
Peter might naturally have said, at Pentecost, **Now is fulfilled that which was spoken;" but Joel's predic- tion was not then fulfilled. The ** great and terrible day of the Lord " is yet to come, and the wonders in heaven above and in the earth beneath have yet to be wrought. And another and gfreater effusion — the universal outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh — ^is in the future. JoeVs prophecy, though not fulfilled, furnished the true philosophy of Pentecost, explain- ing what was then seen and heard. Spectators said, ** these men are full of new wine." Peter answered, that this was not spirituous intoxication but spiritual exhilaration; they were not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but were filled with the Spirit, the new wine from heaven's vineyards. Careful comparison of the second chapters of Joel and of the Acts must
* Comp. ReTeUtkm i, 7.
14 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
convince us that the cup of prediction has not yet been full to the brim, and waits for a more copious outpouring. Pentecost was the summer shower after long drought; the final outpouring will make springs gush forth and turn the desert into a garden, and a thousand rills, singing their song, shall blend in rivers of grace that roll like a liquid anthem to the sea.
There is also a grammatical reason for not limiting to the original Pentecost the Spirit's outpourings. Different prepositions are used to express the rela- tions of the Spirit to the believer. A sharp line seems drawn between ** in " or ** within," and ** on " or **upon." When the work of the Spirit in regen- erating, renewing, sanctifying, is referred to, **in" and ** within" represent His permanent work and abiding presence : for character must be perpetual. But when His office in qualifying for service by special enduement is referred to, ** on " and ** upon " are the prepositions commonly used to express that endowment or enduement which is not permanent but is for the period of such service.
This distinction is more than grammatical: it is philosophical. A renewed heart must neither lose its renewal nor let go its Renewer. But the anointed tongue needs its special unction only while it is used in witness for Christ. Charles G. Finney held that a true servant of God might have more than one en- duement, and that he who, even in spiritual self-cvd- ture, forgets his call to service, may forfeit his en- duement. It is possible to be so absorbed in the permanent ministry of the indwelling Spirit as to overlook the occasional ministry of the enduing Spirit.
Even if it be conceded that, on the d^y of out- pouring, the Spirit was once for all given in saving and sanctifying power, it does not follow that He does not, from time to time, come anew to saints in gifts of power for witnessing and working. Some careful Bible students regard Pentecost as a baptism
THE NE W PENTECOSTS, 16
wherein the Spirit was outpoured as into a vast reser- voir, and would now urge disciples to ask not for a baptism of the Spirit, but to be filled with the Spirit, like empty vessels dipped into this Divine fulness.
But our contention is not for a form of statement. The one practical question is, whether we are in faith and by prayer to seek for new effusions of power from on High, for tongues of fire to make our witness a Divine flame. Here lies the hope of world-wide missions. Without some new unction from the Spirit, we shall never feel that burning fire shut up in our bones which compels us to witness; nor will our witness without that be a power. If that lost art of Apostolic days may be recovered to the Church, it were worth while to learn it in the severe school of fasting and prayer. A Church half asleep, a world wholly dead, wait for such a renaissance.
Yet a third argument is the historical. As a fact Pentecost was not the last, but only the first out- pouring. It actually opened a series of such mani- festations. This book of the Acts records repeated wonders similar in kind if not in degree.
When Philip preached in Samaria, and the rumour of his success reached Jerusalem, Peter and John were sent thither by the Apostles; and when they came down they prayed for the Samaritan converts that " they might receive the Holy Ghost; for as yet He was fallen upon none of them." And they also received the Spirit, similar signs following as at Jerusalem.
Again, at Cesarea, when Peter first preached to a representative Roman audience, as he began to speak the Holy Spirit fell on them, and, as he ex- pressly adds, **as on us at the beginning." Here, once more, were the signs of the first Pentecost wrought, repeated even in the gift of tongues. The gathering of the kinsmen, friends and retainers of the Centurion in the palace of the Caesars is believed to have exceeded in number the original hundred
16 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
and twenty at Jerusalem ; certainly the results were proportionately larger, for the Holy Spirit fell on all those that heard the word, not only in advance of baptism but, apparently, of believing also. And here possibly we have a forecast of the final outpouring upon all flesh.
Yet again, at Ephesus, among the Greeks, Paul found certain disciples, probably adherents of ApoUos, who, like him, had not got beyond John's preliminary baptism of repentance ; and when Paul laid hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them also, and they spake with tongues and prophesied.
Thus, within the bounds of this book and the limits of one generation, three instances are on record sub- sequent to the day of Pentecost, when in each case, with language most explicit, the Spirit is said to have ** come upon," ** fallen upon," been ** received," by disciples. If within forty years there were four dis- tinct and separate outpourings in the Apostolic age, who is competent to say that in the centuries succeed- ing there have been no other Pentecostal effusions, and some of them scarcely less wonderful in some re- spects and aspects than that earliest endttement? May there not be modem saints .upon whom the Spirit has not yet fallen in the Pentecostal sense, but wovild come in power in answer to believing prayer ?
Recent history argues with the resistless logic of events that Pentecostal wonders may be repeated. This modem missionary century has been made both lustrous and illustrious by outpourings of the Spirit, in some respects surpassing any recorded in Apostolic days. Witness the story of Tahiti and all Western Pol)mesia; of the Hawaiian, Marquesan, Micronesian groups ; of New Zealand, Madagascar and the Fiji Islands; of Nanumaga under Thomas Powell; of Sierra Leone under William Johnson; of the missions in the valley of the Nile, in Zululand, and on the Gaboon River; in Banza Manteke under Henry Rich- ards, and Basutoland under Dr. Moffat, Read the me-
THE NE W PENTECOSTS. 17
moirs of Dr. Grant and Fidelia Fiske in Oroomiah ; of Mackay in Uganda and his namesake in Formosa. Fol- low the work of Judson in Burma, of Boardman among the Karens; of Cyrus Wheeler on the Euphra- tes, of Clough and Jewett at Ongole, of William Dun- can in his Metlakahtla and Joseph Neesima in his Doshisha. What are these, and hundreds more that might be cited, but instances of mighty outpourings, in all essentials reproducing Pentecostal signs and wonders, often on a scale of majesty and magnificence scarcely paralleled.
If this preliminary question seem to have undue heed given to it, it is for a purpose. Our supreme aim is to ojGEset the discouraging lack and need of spiritual life and power by the encouraging fact that from time to time, and in many cases, that original blessing of Pentecost has in its main features been repeated. The history of missions with uplifted finger points to the glowing and glorious records on her shining scroll, and solemnly attests the fact that, wherever the most consecrated witnesses have gone faithfull)%preaching the gospel, there Grod has exhib- ited His power and bestowed His new Pentecosts.
These divine marvels have been wrought especially in the following forms:
First, in the manifest calling and anointing of special messengers to bear the tidings.
Secondly, in the providential removal of the natural barriers of language, furnishing, for the rapid acquisi- tion of strange tongues, facilities which were imknown in ancient times.
Thirdly, in the preparation for the universal diflEu- sion of the gospel message, through numerous transla- tions of the word of God and Christian literature.
Fourthly, in the sudden and strange subduing even of hostile communities and rulers, when human influ- ences were wholly inadequate.
Fifthly, in marked and multiplied cases of conver- sion and the transformation of whole peoples.
B
18 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Pentecost may have been repeated in modem times without reproducing its exact original features. Sim- ilar effects do not depend on imiform causes, nor do similar causes always produce imiform effects. Facts assume various forms, and are independent of them. God does not waste power, nor use the supernatural where the natural suffices. When human hands may as well take away the stone. He does not bid it move without hands or send angels to roll it away. Th€ great Economist of the Universe works no needless miracles. He may choose not to bestow the gift of tongues, while He so stimulates philological re- search as that a hundred languages hitherto without written form have their alphabet and grammar, lexi- con and literature; and the word of God is without a miracle both preached and translated in over three hundred vernaculars. In our day, within a space of time in which Paul could scarcely have found his way to strange peoples, our missionaries learn to preach in their tongues, and then teach them to read and write their own language and present them with the word of God as the first printed book in their owi\ speech. So multiplied and marvellous are the facilities for the rapid acquisition of the great tongues of mankind that Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Sanskrit, may be learned in the XJniversities of England and America. This is something more than a triimiph of human scholarship; it belongs to the Theology of Inventions, and is part of God's wonder workings. In these and many other ways He who bestowed mi- raculous blessing at the Pentecost in Jerusalem is giv- ing in His own unique fashion New Pentecosts of privilege and power to a witnessing Church.
III.
THE NEW TIMES AND SEASONS.
' The work of a master hand is seen in the mutual fitness of all its parts. There are a few phrases which God meant should be the watchwords of mis- sions. They are trumpet tongued, they are fit sig- nals for advance, whose clarion call should peal all along the lines; and when heard by obedient souls, they have an electrifying power to arouse to action. Among them this is worthy to ring out like the blast of Gabriel's trump:
The Fulness and Fitness of Times.
Here is the hiding of a divine idea. In Abra- ham's day, judgment waited, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. The vividness of the metaphor is startling. We see the cup slowly filling, and then rtmning over with the blood-red wine of sin. Judgment calmly waits until the scarlet flood reaches tbe brim and overflows the iron chalice, and then He who is patient because He is eternal, empties the phial of His righteous wrath, and war, pestilence, famine, earthquake, pour their woes upon the earth. So oftentimes in human history, retribu- tioi^ waited for the fit and full season of judgment.
For blessing, as well as cursing, there is a fitness and fulness of times. The advent of Messiah waited till the world was made ready, and the fit and full time had come for Christ to be born. The obelisks of prophecy had for hundreds of years stood unread, waiting for the ChampoUion of history to interpret their hieroglyphs, and give meaning to their mysteries. All false faiths, weighed in the bal- ances, had been f oimd wanting. Persian civilization with its sun adoration, Greek civilization with its wisdom and art. Roman civilization with its law
19
20 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
and valor, Indian civilization with its philosophy of contemplation, Chinese civilization with its ances- tral worship— all these had utterly and confessedly failed to arrest decay; and even Judaism was but a skeleton-leaf of forms, whence the sap of piety had fled. There was a felt need of some great religious reform.
There wa& preparation positive as well as nega- tive. Roman roads had run a highway from the golden mile-stone in the Forum to the ends of the earth; and the Greek dialect had even in Syria forged swift wheels for the Gospel chariot to speed along the highway. Universal peace reigned, and war no longer set nations at variance, locking their gates and shutting their ports. The common and con- scious want of a more satisfying faith was the prophecy of a new teacher and deliverer; and in every land there were seers who watched for the star that heralded the advent of '*The Desire of All Nations."
Just at this time, the first and only point in the annals of the race where such converging lines met, while so many facts hinted one grand issue, and so many voices blended in one loud appeal, a virgin of Bethlehem felt in her womb the quickening of the Holy Spirit, and the greatest birth of the ages gave to man Jesus, the world's Saviour. When the fulness of time was come God sent forth His Son, to bring fulfilment to prediction and redemption to humanity. The advent of the long-promised seed of the woman had awaited its full hour. Both His cradle and His cross were ready; the believer and the betrayer were both at hand. Never before, as never since, had God's clock of the ages struck an hour so awfully meet for the crisis of history.
Here was another of what Dr. Croly, half a century ago, called ** the birth hours " of the race. Man's advent was the first; the advent of Christ, another; and the period of the great Reformation was another.
THE NEW TIMES AND SEASONS, 21
That religious revolution whose leaders were John de Wyclif and John Bunyan in England, John Knox in Scotland, John Huss in Bohemia, John Calvin in Switzerland, Luther in Germany, Savonarola in Italy, was, if not a new birth hour, at least a resur- rection mom, to the long-buried Apostolic faith. After a thousand years in the sepulchre of the dark ages, rolling away the stone of sacerdotalism, burst- ing the cerements of formalism and traditionalism, breaking the scarlet seal of Papal infallibility and inviolability, behold, coming forth into new life, the imperial truth of justification by faith !
When, one hundred years ago, the hand of William Carey rung out from the belfry of the ages, the signal for a new crusade of missions, a fourth birth hour of history struck; and even yet we are but half awake to the full significance of this new signal. It may be well for us to stop and ask how we are to recognize God's plan in our generation, and fall into line with His majestic march — in other words, what are the signs that God's fitness and fulness of times has come?
Our Lord rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees when they demanded a sign from heaven, because they were keener observers and safer interpreters of the weather signals than of the signs of the times. In the red and glowing sky of stmset, in the lurid and lowering sky of sunrise, they saw the forecast of the fair or foul day succeeding; but to God's signals that flame and flash on the prophetic and historic horizon, they were blind.
Behind this rebuke hides an indirect hint that to the devout watcher history becomes prophecy. The morning forecasts the evening; and to-day, to- morrow- God gives us premonitory and preparatory signs of His providential purpose, and we should be on the alert to detect them.
The imdevout historian is mad. Only the fool says in his heart there is no God in history. Of the
22 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
world of events as of the world of matter, it is true that **every house is builded by some builder; and He who built all is God." History is not a heap of ^^disjecta membra" but an articulated body, made upon a plan, and with joints and bands compacted. In God's book all coming events were written, when as yet there was none of them, in continuance to be fashioned as His eternal purpose should be wrought into form. Weather forecasts may fail, but God's signs and signals are sure.
Because the present, rightly read, predicts the future, because Gk)d's fit, full time gives prophetic and proyidential indications of its approach, of what immense importance is it for us to get a proper point from which to view the horizon, and then to keep up our watch ! The golden chalice which is filling is God's purpose; its flood is man's opportunity. And whenever God's full time comes, the angel whose stride spans sea and land declares: "There shall no longer be delay !" Then, or never, we fall into line with Grod's movement. His times and tides wait for no man. Swiftly His plan sweeps on to its goal, leaving behind the sluggard and the idler. Ye watchers, be ready, and when the full hour is come for the work and war of the ages, stand in your lot and be not found faithless !
How then are we to read God's signals, and what are the signs on our horizon?
To him who, in the study of current events would read the immediate future, God gives two guides: inspired prophecy and converging providence. When the two combine, practical certainty results; for when prediction nears fulfilment, and providential events converge toward the same centre, the true seer finds clear foretokens of what is at hand.
Let us apply these criteria to the great birth hours already noted. Christ's Incarnation did not surprise such devout seers as Simeon and Anna. They knew that the seventy heptades of years winch
THE NEW TIMES AND SEASONS, 23
were to elapse befote the coming of Messiah the Prince, wete about complete, and as students of the prophetic word, they were on the watch-tower look- vug toward Bethlehem. The universal exhaustion of. man's resources, the wide prevalence of peace, the common expectation of a coming Deliverer, were fingers all pointing in the same direction, and so prophecy and providence confirmed each other's wit- ness to the nearness of the Advent of Immanuel ; and so that **just and devout man" who was "waiting for the consolation of Israel " was not found stagger- ing in unbelief when the infant Jesus was laid in his arms; and that aged prophetess who came into the temple at that same instant, was prepared both to accept the Messiah in His swaddling clothes, and speak of Him to others who * * looked for redemption, in Jerusalem." To God's watchers, like them, the Advent was the crown of expectation and anticipa- tion.
The Reformation era came not without horizon signals. Long before, in parables, vivid as panoramic pictures, Christ had hinted the history and ** mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven," the sowing of the seed and the growing of the plant; the tares of hypocrisy and the leaven of heresy; the period of apparent decay, when the precious treasure was buried in the field or sunk in the sea, to be dug up and dived after. Such figures seem meant to forecast the accession of Constantine, with the inroads of formalism, secular- ism and scepticism, and the thousand years of night- shade when evangelical truth was buried beneath the rubbish of forms and falsehood. The next two scenes in this parabolic series hint the finding of the hid treasure and the recovery of the priceless pearl.
But if the forecast of prophecy was dim, converg- ing providences lit up the horizon with clearer rays that told of a new dawn after the dark ages. The marshalling of events was signally significant. In
24 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
the middle of the fifteenth century the fall of Con- stantinople had started the revival of learning. Greek scholars, dispersed over Europe with their manuscripts of the New Testament, opened the door and paved the way for the translation of the Word into other tongues and its wide dissemination among the people. In the last decade of that century, a new route to the Indies linked Protestant Britain with the heart of Oriental heathenism; also a new world was unveiled toward the sunset. This was like- wise the period of the fall of feudalism, and of the assertion of individualism with its doctrine of human rights and personal liberty.
The theology of inventions found grand illustra- tion. The reformation in philosophy ushered in a revo- lution in science. The mariner's compass then first coming into common use, began to act as a pilot over unknown seas. The printing-press in 1450 issued its first book, and that, a Latin Bible. The steam en- gine, too, between the meridian hours of that cen- tury and the next, supplied man with a new motive power. And so, just as Luther's hammer was heard nailing his theses to "All Saints'" door, God was loudly calling all saints to rally about the reformed standard, give the Bible to the common folk, and vindicate their right to read and interpret it for them- selves; and to go on swift keels and wheels to the very bounds of the globe with the message of the Reformed Faith.
We take one more illustration of the signs of the times, nearer to our day and pertinent to our duty.
That any of God's watchers could misread the signs of the times, in William Carey's day, is to us now a marvel. In all prophecy an age of world-wide evangel- ism is foretold; and in that prophetic panorama in the thirteenth of Matthew, the recovery of the treasure and the pearl is followed by the casting of the drag-net into the sea, and by great hauls of fish. AH prediction treads toward one goal. Abram had
THE NEW TIMES AND SEASONS. 25
the promise of a blessing to come through him to ** all the families of the earth;" and all down the ages, with voices growing ever louder and clearer, prophets had told of a day of world-wide missions. Christ plainly taught that before the end of the age the Grospel must first be preached as a witness among all nations.
Many fingers pointed to the close of the last cen- tury as God's time for the new era of missions. While the former half of the century witnessed an awful decline which threatened complete apostasy, the latter half was the most remarkable era of re- vived piety and evangelistic preaching since the days of Paul. Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Walker of Truro and Fletcher of Madeley, William Grimshaw and Wil- liam Romaine, Daniel Rowlands and Rowland Hill, John Berridge and Henry Venn, James Hervey and William Toplady, and others like-minded, began as the evangelists of a new era to stir a half dead Church to proclaim the Gospel to the poor and out- cast classes. The two Northamptons answered to each other across the sea, and Carey, whose cobbler's bench was a watch-tower, saw that for missions to the heathen God's fit and full time was come. For ten years he bore the brunt of sneer and taunt, and the worse hostility of inertia and indifference; felt the keen sting of Sydney Smith's wit and the sharp rebuke of John Ryland's hyper-calvinism. But when God lets loose a thinker and a seer — ^when a saint gets on his knees watching the dawn, and sees God's signals flashing — floods and flames cannot stay his progress. Between the Scylla of apathy and the Charybdis of antipathy, Carey boldly steered for India. While others slept he had been on the watch. He had seen God's signs and heard God's step, and he dared not falter or delay; he must move, though he moved alone.
26 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Another birth hour of history has now come, and blessed are the sages who see the star that gviides to the cradle of the new age of missions. Even yet, not every eye sees the vision of God or catches its full meaning. One of the wisest thinkers of the age says, that ** nothing but deep initiation into the Spirit of the Bible can enable us to form the faintest idea as to what historical events belong most to the divine plan, or have most relation to the Kingdom of the Eternities." If there be any defect in these words, it is in lack, not excess, of emphasis.
There was One who was in the world, and the world was made by Him and the world knew Him not. He came to His own possessions and His own people received Him not. This is the one parable and paradox of all ages. There is One who is in his- tory, and all history is His curious handiwork, and yet even historians recognize Him not. He comes to the age which is of His own framing and moves amid events which unfold His own eternal plan, and yet His own people too often receive Him not. But to as many as receive Him, recognize His majestic presence and beneficent providence, to them He gives authority to become co-workers with God, sharers in the glory of divine achievement.
The conviction grows upon us that the birth hour, now fully come, is in some aspects the most im- portant crisis of all history. It marks the nativity of twin offspring. Time has brought forth two giants: Opportunity and Responsibility. And as might be expected, never before has there been such combina- tion and concentration of world-wide signals. The whole horizon is aflame with aurora borealis lights — fingers of fire which reach toward the zenith as if to point man's gaze upward to God. Our risk is not so much that we shall not see these signs, as that wo shall not feel their force and read their lesson. Marvels are so common that they cease to be start- ling. The blare of God's trumpets dulls our ears by
THE NEW TIMES AND SEASONS. 27
its peal, and the flare and glare of His flash-lights dims our eyes by its glory.
This is no exaggeration of rhetoric or outburst of enthusiasm. The half of the wonders of this age have never been told, and their full meaning yet awaits an interpreter. Let any devout student of history, any sagacious seer of God who reads the signs of the times, tell us what is the forecast of the future. Behind the developments of our day is a divine directing power. A man's hand writes on the wall ; but the writing is a decree of God, telling of world powers and of false faiths, weighed in the bal- ances and found wanting; and of a Conqueror about to receive the Kingdom which human monarchs are unworthy to administer.
IV.
THE NEW OPEN DOORS.
That word Opportunity is a pictorial word. It sug- gests a ship, before the port, just sailing into har- bour after the fight with wind and wave. True opportunity is always God-given: ** Behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." But doors unentered do not remain open, and if God once shuts no man can open, and we may knock in vain. Unused opportunity never returns: it is forfeited forever. One fact is plain : open doors now challenge us to enter every land. Before us stands the opportunity of the ages. The rapid and sudden multiplication and accumula- tion of these openings compel us to wonder and adore, for He who only doeth wondrous things is at work, and so the iron gates open of their own ac- cord before His messengers and heralds.
A few familiar facts, which are leaders of a vast host, show that God is on the march, and summon- ing His Church to follow. Brevity compels classifi- cation: we must look at facts only in groups. And this age of wonders is but one century beyond that of Carey; yet within one hundred years what was local and exceptional has become cosmopolitan and universal. With the swift touch of God, He has opened the world, over which the Cobbler of Hackle- ton sighed, to the Gospel which he loved, and given to the Church the chance to occupy it for Christ.
Keeping in mind that our theme is missions, we select seven of the remarkable features of our own age, all of which are gigantic in character and cos- mopolitan in extent, and which constitute in our day the seven wonders of the world.
I. Iff orlA^-vfi&Q Exploration,
If we are to preach the Gospel to every creature
28
THE NE IV OPEN DOORS. 29
we must first go into all the world, and this has not been possible to any previous age as it is to ours, for all the world has hot hitherto been accessible or even known. At last the trackless pathways of the ocean have been crossed and the penetralia of all the con- tinents reached. Land and sea yield up the secrets of six thousand years. Navigation and exploration have been so thorough that we feel sure that no con- tinent is unveiled, nor even one island undiscovered. The frozen poles have been forced to unbar the gates of their ice castles and the flag of the triumphant ex- plorer is unfurled on their crystal battlements. For the first time since the world began man knows his own habitation and domain.
All this is full of meaning. When God set Canaan before His people, His word was: ** Everyplace that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you." That law is general. Every land of promise waits for possession, and possession hangs on appropriation. The first condition of a world's evangelization is its exploration; and, because the prows of our ships, ploughing furrows in every sea, have made the vast oceans harvest-fields of commerce; because the dauntless explorer has pierced Asiatic jungles and African forests, traced the rivers to their source, and scaled the mountains to their brow; be- cause the exclusion and seclusion of hermit nations has been invaded and the veil rent in twain before their closely-guarded fanes and shrines; because the public sentiment of mankind forbids locked gates and sealed ports, the way is open as never before for the Gospel chariot.
2. World-wide Communication.
This naturally follows, but not of necessity, for doors, wrested or wrenched open by sheer force, are closed almost as soon as opened. In this case, how- ever, the iron bars of resistance have been broken down, and the two-leaved gates have yielded to the gentler touch of diplomacy as well as to the harsher
30 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
hand of war, — to the still small voice of commerce as well as the louder threat of compulsion. Bonds of imion have been braided out of mutual treaties, and barriers that stood firm for ages have been razed to the ground, or fallen like Jericho's walls without a
blow.
Facilities for mutual contact and communication are so multiplied and marvellous that we scarcely recognize our own world. Within the century steam- ships have diminished distance, by shortening time to less than one-tenth of the period required for ocean voyages. Steam carriages cross the continents so swiftly that the limited express needs but a contin- uous track to run round the globe in three weeks; and the black-horse not only climbs the steep moun- tain side but bores his way through its rocky heart, bridges river chasms, tramps down thickest forests, and dares alike Sahara sands and Siberian snows. The postal union bears letters and papers from the great centres to the remotest outskirts of the earth in six weeks; and the telegraph wire and ocean cable yoke Grod's lightning to human thought, flash news to the ends of the globe; and, threading the vast body politic with its mysterious system of sensor and motor nerves, electricity makes the whole world thrill with instantaneous intelligence.
Now, at last, there are no distant lands, no foreign peoples; the whole world is one neighborhood; those who were afar off are brought nigh. Once, to love one's neighbour meant to love him who lived next door: but now everybody lives next door — and by that law we must love the race of man. Commu- nication such as this, making possible a contact so constant, so sympathetic, so universal, never entered into the wildest dreams of the ancients, and to our grandfathers would have seemed incredible. Had Carey foreseen and foretold what one century has made real, his prediction would have ranked him among madmen. The tales of the Arabian Nights
THE NE W OPEN DOORS, 31
are outdone in extravagance by actual facts. God has, through modem science, given to man the magic wand, the magic lamp. The genius of nature, with all bis mighty forces waits to do our bidding, helping us to carry out the last command of our Lord.
3. World-wide Civilization.
This comprehensive term includes all that builds mankind into a compact state or civil society, — intelli- gence and industry, enterprise and education, man- ners and morals.
Barbarism is the burglar of history; its deeds of wrong, robbery, violence, are of the night, and can- not abide the day which dawns when civilization sheds its light. In the flush of the morning, blushing for shame, it seeks the cover of darkness. Such crimes against God and man as infanticide and cannibalism, such orgies of lust and blood as the rites of Jugger- nath and the Meriah groves; such cruelties as those of the torture rack and suttee pyre, are things of the past.
Education is a revolutionist, overturning intellec- tual errors and superstitious faith. Cuvier knew too much to fear the ghost with horns and hoofs that came to his bed and growled out, ** I will eat you! " He coolly surveyed the sheeted form, and said to him- self, "Horns and hoofs! Humph! Graminivorous, not carnivorous ! that beast feeds on grass and grain, and won't eat me. " And so the comparative anatomist went to sleep. Knowledge is power. It destroys even where it does not construct. The Hindu cannot study astronomy and geology without seeing his absurd cosmogony fall in ruins; yet that cosmogony is so built into his religious system that the two fall . together, and he loses faith in the Vedas. The Chinese study geography and history, and learn that the Mid- dle Kingdom must reconstruct its map of the world and its notions of the race of man ; for the Celestial Em- jrire is but one among many great nations, and Confu- cius but oaa among many great teachers. The Siamese
82 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
cannot look into medical science without the uproot- ing of hoary superstitions; nor the degraded Hotten- tot learn common facts about earth, air and water, without finding that the witches he fears are not human beings nor demons, but miasma and malaria, to be exorcised by scientific drainage and sanitaiy conditions.
Civilization is in our day the forerunner of missions, not only in casting up a highway and gathering out the stones, but in putting into the hands of Christian and Protestant peoples the balance of power. That those nations where the most enlightened form of Protestant Christianity prevails hold the sceptre that sways the world, there is no doubt. Their sover- eignty is a conceded fact. The pillars of the world's ^rone are wrought not of brute force but of brain force; the granite columns of character and culture, intelligence and integrity. Great Britain and the United States, the giant empire of the east and the great republic of the west, joined by Prussia, the Pro- testant kingdom of the continent of Europe, wield jointly an influence which Papal, Pagan and Moslem powers, combined, could not resist. Such a fact bears the stamp and seal of God's design, and its bearing on world-wide missions cannot be measured.
4. World-wide Assimilation.
Communication promotes actual contact and com- munion. The intercourse of travel and the inter- change of trade have begotten new relations and suggest a new science which Lieber calls Catallactics— the exchange of thoughts. There has come to be a new trade in ideas, a commerce of sentiments. Hermit nations emerge from their cell and shell. From the sunrise kingdom young Japanese pour into western channels to absorb the secrets of occidental progress, and in their reflow, bear back the new ideas they have acquired. China sends her younger statesmen to study at the centres of Christendom the problems of human progress, and bring back
THE NE W OPEN DOORS. 83
their solution. The gods of the Celestial Empire actually ask questions of the foreign devils! Con- fucius, the Chinese Pope, no longer wears the tiara of infallibility. He who shook his own hand now shakes ours, respects the head that wears no queue, and the feet that are shod with elastic hide instead of unbending wood.
The barriers between peoples are down. Barriers of language once more impassable than mountains or oceans are silently crumbling. In Yokohama and Hong Kong, Cairo and Capetown, Calcutta and Con- stantinople, English is spoken: it is becoming the court-language of the world. Thousands in India and Japan flock to hear men like Julius Seelye and Joseph Cook, who use only their own mother tongue, and in some of the capitals of the Orient a translator or interpreter is becoming so far im- necessary.
Barriers of mutual misunderstanding and suspicion are falling. Acquaintance dissipates false impres- sions. The "foreign devils" are found to be brothers; there is no evil fascination in their eye, no curse in their speech, no fatality in their touch. Trust takes the place of distrust, and love the place of hate.
The era of tmiversal peace seems to be at hand. Men are learning the divine lesson that war is based not only on a bad principle, but a bad policy, and that O'Connell was not far wrong in stoutly main- taining that **no social revolution is worth one drop of human blood." Grenerous forbearance, mutual concession, fraternal conference and impartial arbi- tration, may settle any controversy without striking a blow. War is a serpent, with a crush in its coils, a fang in its jaws, and a sting in its tail. Its venom heats the blood for generations. France has never forgotten nor forgiven Waterloo, and the memory of conflicts more remote than the Crimean War, the Battle of Plassey, or even the fall of Constantinople,
84 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
rankles still; for though men die, nations survive. Waste of treasure and of life are bad, but waste of good feeling and kindly relations is worse.
God sits at His loom. With many shuttles He weaves into one fabric the threads of national life; and in the woof and warp the blood-red threads are getting scarce. Peaceful compacts guard the rights and promote the concord of men. Trade and travel bring men together, and they come to know each other, and to feel that war must be no more. In 1884, in Berlin, fourteen nations sent representatives to the conference that gave a constitution to the Congo Free State. That conference marks perhaps the first parliament of man and forecasts the federa- tion of the world; for Protestant, Catholic, Greek and even Mohammedan communities had delegates there. The various congresses and conferences con- nected with the Columbian Exposition would have been impossible half a century ago ; so marked was their testimony to the assimilation going on among men, that there seems risk of losing sight even of some vital distinctions.
5. World-wide Emancipation.
This is another marvel of this age. From the fall of man until now, human slavery has been the fatal foe of the best good of the race ; equally bad for master and slave. The nightingale will not sing in a cage imtil its eyes are put out. The light of man's intelligence must be quenched, the eyes of his intel- lect be blinded, before he will submissively wear his bonds. Hence the castle of human bondage has been built upon the base-blocks of ignorance and degradation, and buttressed with oppression and compulsion.
But, even when blinded, Samson was a safe victim of tyranny only while his hair was kept shorn; and so, close in the steps of human knowledge and en- lightenment, has followed the uprising of man in be- half of his fellow-man ; if the slave or serf did not burst
THE NE W OPEN DOORS. 35
his own bonds, civilization has broken them for him.
Great Britain could not further share this crime of the age without relapsing toward barbarism, and so British intelligence and integrity sounded the tocsin that on that memorable first day of August, 1838, pealed out liberty in Jamaica. It was not Clarkson and Wilberforce, but the *' Magna Charta," and the Bible, that original charter of human rights, that put beneath the walls where human beings were im- prisoned, a lever mightier than that of Archimedes. Even despotic Russia had to grant at least a nominal release to her serfs; and the late four years* conflict in America could not end while upon one slave there was left an unbroken fetter: those four millions of bondmen were God's '^contraband of war."
Who but He has brought it about that not one en- lightened nation dares openly to espouse slave traffic or maintain slave labour? The market for human bodies and souls has long been transferred from London and New York to Cairo and Constantinople. The voice of mankind is heard saying, '* Away with fetters ! " and appealing for a parliament of man in which there shall be no commons, but all shall sit as peers !
Emancipation means more than bodily freedom ; it brings individualism. Knock from the body its shackles and the mind begins to be free. Men begin to learn and think, to reflect and reason. Speech bursts its bonds and the dumb tongue is loosed. Instead of a mass in which individuals are lost, each man learns that he is himself a bom sovereign rather than subject, having a little empire of his own. He begins to assert himself and his inalienable right of self-rule. He learns the dignity and majesty of mind, and that no chain ever forged is strong enough to bind a thinker. He learns the grandeur of reason, and that truth is resistless like the waves of the sea, mighty enough to wreck the strongest bark of false- hood and grind to powder the age-long rocks of error.
36 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
And SO today we see intelligence, that great agitator, striding over the vast steppes of Asia and river high- ways of Africa, scattering the seeds of social revolu- tion; and a bloodless warfare of ideas is going on, be- fore which strongholds of error and injustice are falling.
When man begins to be free in body and mind he learns also the divinity of conscience. Grod has de- creed that no human device of tyranny or torture shall suffice to kill or curb man's moral sense; and the cell, the rack, the axe, the stake, have proved power- less to change that decree. Though blinded and made the sport of foes, conscience is still a giant, that has but to get hold of the pillars of Dagon's temple, to lift them from their foimdations and bring down to the dust the fabric of organized op- pression and regal wrong. Dr. Francis W. Upham says: **The conscience is the servant only of Grod, and is not subject to the will of men. Through His words, this truth, which reaches to social as well as re- ligious institutions, has an indestructible life. If it be crucified it will rise again. If buried in the sepulchre the stone will be rolled away, and the keepers become as dead men." *
Never before has liberty, both civil and religious, reigned among men so widely and wisely. The consequences are most significant touching the work of missions. For example: In most lands, persecution for religious opinion is already done away, or if it still survives it is a relic of a barbarous age, hiding in the darkness and resorting to the secret weapons of the assassin. Enlightened civili- zation which shut the gates of the arena also put out the fires of the stake. Years since in China, the last of the missionary martyrs who died by govern- ment decree, was beheaded. Where in Spain the dungeons of the Inquisition stood, harvests for God are growing out of the ashes of saints. India may
• St Matthew's Gospel, by F. W. Upham.
THE NE W OPEN DOORS, 2,7
ostracise, but dare not execute, converts. All this forecasts that wider emancipation of the soul of man, when such self-conscious sovereign shall learn to be the willing subject of the Lord of all, and find his highest freedom in the service of -a Higher Master. That will be the world's year of jubilee !
V.
THE NEW ERA.
Two of these seven wonders yet remain to be con- sidered, and they serve to inaugurate a new era ; for one of them puts multiplied facilities, implements, instruments or weapons into our hands, and the other organizes and mobilizes the forces available for the work and war of the ages.
The first of these is World-wide Preparation.
In one sense, all that has been said of other won- ders implies preparation. But there is one aspect of the present condition of the world which implies a preparation in itself so peculiar that it needs ex- tended reference ; namely, the obvious and providen- tial furnishing of facilities exactly adapted for, and preparatory to, a world-wide work of evangelization. These of themselves serve to introduce a new era.
There is a divine meaning in the fact that this cen- tury, most prolific of missions, has been also most fertile in invention, of all ages; the one great epoch of dis- covery, not only in political and social develop- ments, but in general progress in art and science, leaving behind all other centuries. The leading statesman of Britain is credited with sa3dng, that social advance has moved on such flying feet that in the first fifty years of the nineteenth century all previous history was outrun; that even this was sur- passed by the next twenty-five, and this again by the rate of progress of the next ten. If Mr. Gladstone's estimate be correct, one decade of years from 1875 to 1885 witnessed a forward stride of the race more gigantic than all the previous ages of history !
This is doubtless no exaggeration. Certainly since the world began no such epoch of improvement has beea known. We have seen huge strides, leaps for-
3S
THE NEW ERA. 39
ward which make all past advance seem like a snail's pace. During the years of this century the movement onward and upward seems, even to those who are borne on and up by it, incredible. Since Rome was founded the rate of progress has increased at least a thousandfold.
To appreciate this fact, we need to stop long enough to study comparative history. This is the world's golden age so far as invention and discovery, intelligence and material progress, can bring it. Measured by achievement each year is a century. This is the age of railway and steamship, photograph and phonograph, telescope and microscope, spectro- scope and spectrum analysis; audiphone and micro- phone, petroleum and aniline dyes; steam printing press and machine typesetter; typewriter and sew- ing machine; of the discovery of forty new metals, and the revolution of chemical science ; of the ocean cable and the signal service; of anaesthetics, and a score of new sciences and arts, of cheap postage and the universal postal union ; of newspapers, magazines and popular literature; of machine work instead of handwork; of free schools and universities for the people; of giant explosives and gigantic enter- prises. Most wonderful of all, this is the age of electricity, which already serves man as motor, mes- senger and illuminator, is to be applied to forging as well as plating metals, and no one knows to how many other uses.
In Robert Mackenzie's graphic sketch of •* The Nineteenth Century," he calls this feature of our times '* the great outbreak of human inventiveness which left no province of human affairs un visited." With strange and startling suddenness men's eyes opened to see how rude and crude were previous methods and appliances, and at the same time those eyes became endowed with a scientific insight and foresight almost superhuman. Man became not only scientist but seer; before him limitless paths of possi-
40 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
ble progress stretched toward a goal so advanced, yet so entrancing, that the enchanting vision quickened the pace of the whole race, as though men had on the mythical " seven-league boots," or the winged san- dfiJs of Mercury.
Wherever a high civilization has shone, mankind has felt the thrill of a new passion for investigation and im- provement. See the human form become practically transparent, as the speculum, stethoscope, laryngo- scope, opthalmoscope, microscope, and electric lamp guide the physician and surgeon in searching the darkest hiding places of disease. Lithotomy gives place to lithotrity. Limbs, once amputated, are now straightened and strengthened. Since 1 8 1 5 , the treat- ment of the insane has undergone a revolution as radical and significant as the new era of conservative surgery. Machinery now works cotton and wool, metal and wood, and new motors do our planing and carving, hammering and rolling, sowing, mowing, ploughing, reaping, threshing and binding.
We do not appreciate all this glory of achievement, because the wonders of the age dazzle our eyes and dull our vision.
Let us glance once more at the electric telegraph. As the earth's rotation on its axis takes a full day, points on its surface at antipodes to each other are twelve hours apart, reckoning by the sun. But tele- graphic signals flash instantaneously, and so far out- run the sun's apparent motion that an afternoon mes- sage, cabled from London, is read in San Francisco on the morning of the same day, and there are points further westward where we might have the paradox of publishing news of an event twenty-four hours before it takes place! This prompts Mackenzie to rank the telegraph as the first human invention which is obviously final. In the race of human im- provement, steam may give place to some yet might- ier power, as gas is already superseded by a better method of lighting; but, ** no agency for conveying in-
THE NE W ERA. 41
telligence can ever excel that which is instantaneous. Here for the first time the human mind has reached the utmost limit of its progress."*
This unparalleled progress belongs mostly to the half century now nearing its close. During fifty years the more prominent achievements of the age have been reduced to practical form. Almost the entire system of railway is the product of this brief period. The first sun-picture dates back but sixty years, just before the death of Daguerre, from whom it took its name, and already we have a score of new applica- tions of this principle. These inventions alone link the ages together, ushering in a new era of art and letters, making the sun himself the artist and sculp- tor of the coming era. Already the sim's ray has wedded the delicate lens, and given birth to micro- scopic photography; so that during the siege of Paris pages of the London Times^ photographed upon a square inch of surface, were borne by carrier pigeons to the French capital, there to be magnified and re- produced. And it would seem that the sunbeam, already used for a pencil and chisel, is about to surpass the pigments of the painter, using sensitized paper in place of canvas and giving us colour as well as form.
The phonograph, at first a scientific toy, has be- come an automatic clerk, recording and repeating a message, and has begun to be used for that difficult art, the analysis and reproduction of animal sounds and utterances; and it makes possible for future genera- tions to hear the words and voices of dead orators and statesmen, poets, and preachers. It is within this half century that the spectroscope has brought other orbs near enough to analyze their light and learn the substances burning in their photospheres; and the invaluable service of the spectroscope in re- fining and working metals, shows its possible utility in manufacture.
* The Nineteenth Century, 197.
42 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
Anaesthetics, which renders medical and surgical treatment comparatively painless and so reduces hu- man suffering to a minimum, is so recent a discov- ery that many yet living remember its well-nigh tragic beginning in Edinburgh in 1847. The giant explosives — ^nitroglycerine, dynamite, giant powder, etc., have already displaced older and tedious methods of clearing the earth's surface of stumps and debris, and opening its veins of metal and min- eral. Delicate photometers and micrometers, every form of monster machinery or delicate mechanism, belong to this age; while science teaches us drainage and irrigation, analysis and enrichment of the soil and secrets of fertility, turns deserts into gardens, and makes every spot available for building a habita- tion and earning a livelihood.
If such be the progress of this half century, nothing which men may imagine to do seems impossible in the new era just opening, when science promises to navigate air as well as sea and build ships to master winds as well as waves. Forms of force hitherto unknown are now undergoing experiment. Secrets, hidden even from this century, are yielding to human investigation, and a decade of years may witness a revolution greater than that which even in our day has turned the world upside down.
We have laid stress upon this march of human improvement, not so much because of the lightning pace of this advance, as because of its obvious connection with God's providential purpose. It is one great sign of the times. It marks this as the golden age of opportunity. A world's evangelization is not only possible but practicable, with a rapidity proportionate to progress in other directions. On the pages of history in large letters it is written that the periods of most marked progress exactly synchronize with the eras of most active missionary effort. Clear as the weather signals in the sky, is this glowing sign of God's plan in this generation. His mind is
THE NEW ERA. 43
the vital spring of man's intellectual life. He is the fountain of life, and in His light do we see light. It was He who kept a continent veiled for five thousand years, rending the veil only when a re- formed Church with an unchained Bible was ready to enter it and make it the theatre of new gospel triumphs. It was He who locked nature's secrets within her dark chambers, until a missionary Church was aroused to yoke to His chariot the new forces and appliances. God is surely speaking. To the reverent ear the still smaU voice is more impressive than peals of thunder. *^ Behold I have set before thee an open door." An open door to the nations — the world before us; an open door into Nature's Arcana, with all her machinery and forces to do our bid- ding. Opportunities are matched by facilities equally great. Never such a work to be done, never such tools to work with. What responsibility, if such opportunity be lost and such facilities lie unused !
The last of these seven modem wonders is world-wide Organization.
Organization is the watchword of the Age. Never before was there such a period of practical union among men for all the ends of material, intellectual and social improvement. Organization is rapidly extending and far-reaching; its triumphs are so mul- tiplied and magnificent that they constitute the peril of the age, threatening to erect a despotism whose iron sceptre shall be resistless and remorseless. Already the Giant is on the throne; he lifts his finger, and great railway systems are locked in in- action; factory wheels stop, ships lie in the docks, buildings wait for workmen, mines remain unworked; labor's hundred hands are chained, and action is exchanged for petrifaction. Man has created a Frankenstein, and knows not how to manage the monster.
While we cannot deny the risks attending organi- zation in reckless hands, we must confess both its
44 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
widespread influence, and its great utility when under rational control. What master organizations the Church already commands as helpers! The Young Men's Christian Association is an example, the creation of the last half century, yet a huge banyan, whose original root was in British soil, but throwing out branches on all sides, across continents and oceans into new countries, bending down to take root in papal, pagan, moslem and heathen communi- ties, until there remains scarce a land in any clime where this gigantic and beneficent growth has not reached.
The Young People's Society of Christian En- deavour is a yet younger giant, fourteen years old, yet in rapidity of growth, daring enterprise, boundless influence and burning enthusiasm, leaving already behind it any other organization ever known on this planet.
Let these illustrate the genius of the age when everybody organizes. Barristers and judges, physi- cians and surgeons, artists and artisans, underwriters and undertakers, cabmen and cartmen, shoeblacks and newsboys — every learned profession and every form of work resorts to organization. Were there some new trade to-day with only two engaged in it, they would begin by drawing up articles of associ- ation and forming a co-operative union.
The reason is plain. Men will dare attempt, and can together accomplish, what no one would try to do, or could do, alone; and so they resort to associ- ated effort. Great and manifold advantages spring from co-operation. When hand joins hand, the weak and timid get strength and courage, and momentum is imparted to a movement in which individual forces are combined and concentrated. Great enterprises are possible only to an epoch of organization, and so we find business schemes pushing triumphantly to the very borders of civilization.
Compare present history with past records. Before
THE NEW ERA, 45
the time of Christ, isolation was the law. Nations had little touch with each other. Universal empires were the aggregates of separate states, held together by those iron bands which conquest imposes and despotism rivets. The unity was that of frost, not of fire and fusion. To gather strange peoples under one sceptre, or conglomerate empires into one huge monarchy, insures no imity. Barriers are not broken down, and there is no sympathetic bond or brother- hood any more than between Jews and Samaritans.
How changed the whole aspect of affairs! We stand in the blazing focal centre of world-wide enter- prise. Discovery sends its heralds to trumpet its triumph from rising to setting sun. Invention yokes to its car steam and lightning, and flies as on the wings of the morning to the uttermost parts of the earth and sea. Many run to and fro ; and knowledge is increased. Material advance has its million messengers who haste to do its bidding. This is the world's Messiah, which bids disciples go into all the world and proclaim to every creature the good tidings of human improvement; and forthwith go the myriad mis- sionaries of invention and discovery, needing no second summons. The swiftest ships and carriages are not fleet enough conveyances for the new apostles of science and art. They dare the sea with its tem- pest and tornado; defy forest and jungle, river and mountain, plague and famine, hot sands and frozen bergs. And all for what? To tell men of the oil-lamp and the sewing-machine, the timepiece and the parlor organ; to sell ribbons and calicoes, fire-arms and rum-jugs, soap and flour, at the earth's ends. Trade and traffic, agriculture and manufacture, push their conquests by organizing and co-operating; and so, in quarters most remote, in inland hamlets as well as populous cities, and on islands a half century ago unknown, you may find to-day all the appliances of enlightened society.
The theme loudly enforces its own lesson and
46 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
appeal. To world-wide missions, organization and co-operation are essential. Shall the Church be slow to learn the lesson of the age? and her Master wait for willing feet to run on His errand of grace, His mission of mercy and salvation?
It is true the children of light have already re- sorted to organized effort in missions, William Carey was the pioneer, not of missions so much as of organization ; and since his day, this has become so distinctive a feature of Church activity that the marked success attained since 1792 is traceable to associated work. By organization it has already come to pass that, although we have not absolutely reached every nation, still less every creature, our network of missions stretches roimd the globe and covers the earth.
And yet, in many quarters, how large are the meshes and how far apart the cords of that network. We have more than one hundred and seventy mis- sionary boards and societies, and over one hundred and ten missionary organizations controlled by women ; and these all, nearly three hundred, are the outcome of this century past, and most of them of the last fifty years. Yet what are even these among so many ! We have but begun as yet our work of a world's evangelization.
The old command of Christ echoes down the long aisles of the ages. Evangelize ! And the new voice of the Providence that speaks through events in this missionary era, peals out. Organize! Lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. A love that is like Grod's, must multiply and extend a thousandfold its lines of holy effort, and drive ten thousand times as many stakes deep down into the intelligent conviction and unselfish affection of Christ's disciples.
Grod leaves His Church without excuse or even pretext, if missions be not prosecuted as a world-wide enterprise. In a sense never thought of when that promise was spoken, the Lrord is with us — ^with us,
THE NE W ERA. 47
unlocking the gates of hermit nations, battering down the wall of China, unsealing the ports of Japan and Corea, cleaving a path to the heart of Africa — ^with us to unchain the human mind and re- veal the secrets of nature. We may now go into all the world, and to every man in his own tongue give the word of God.
There was never such a work for the time, nor such a time for the work. The opportunities and facilities offered to us make even such a task easy and such a load light, turning weights into wings and burdens into pinions, to the willing soul. ICnow- ing God's season, the fulness and fitness of His ap- pointed time, it is also man's opportune hour, high time to awake out of sleep, and the world's critical hour of need and want. Dull and dead, indeed, must he be who sees not the signs of the times, hears not the voices that call and the signals that sound, and heeds not the approaching end of the age ! The Captain of our Salvation is blowing a blast on His bugle— ever3rthing echoes His command, Forward! Why do we delay .^
k
Part II.
THE NEW APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION
D
i
I.
THE CALLING OF THE NEW APOSTLES.
"There were giants in those days" is the terse record of the age before the flood.
Every age has its own giants ; some great in physi- cal stature, others mighty in mind, majestic in moral character, bom to command and control. Even in earth's golden ages the giants are rare, for God does not make such gifts too common ; but it is the few, always, whose words shake the world, whose deeds move and mould men, whose lives shape the history and destiny of the race. Carlyle calls history but the ** lengthened shadows " of the world's great men. Is it not rather the lingering twilight, prolonging their influence, perpetuating their memory even when their sun has set, and long lighting up the evening sky? Is not the horizon still aflame from many a grand and noble life, long since withdrawn from among men?
The modem missionary era has given birth to a royal race of giants; in fact, so mighty have been these men and women, so herculean their labors, so heroic their achievements, that they seem rather to have made the age than the age them. Some of them were before our day, but we trace the path they trod, by their gigantic footprints. Others we have seen growing to great stature and mounting to thrones of power; and still others yet walk among men, and make the continents shake beneath their tread. They have made the priests of idol fanes tremble with fear; and as the God of this world sees them, like their Master, working the works and speaking the words of God, he knows that his time is short. They are not always recognized as great by the world, for their greatness is not of this world nor measured by its standards. God's giants have not always great heads,
61
62 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
but they always have ** great hearts." His captains are not the princes of this world that come to naught, not the wise, mighty, noble in men's eyes; but those of great faith, holy love, who walk with God and work and war in His name, like those of old whose names are graven in that record in Hebrews — that ''Westminster Abbey" of Old Testament worthies — "who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. " Let us thank God for a type of gianthood to which all believers may both aspire and attain ! Not only venerable * * fathers, " but ** young men," in whom the word of Godabideth, may be strong, and even * * little children" may overcome the evil one ; because greater is He that is in them than he that is in the world. The fable of Hercules is in Christian History become fact; for new-bom babes while yet in the cradle of faith have laid hold of the serpent with a giant's grip.
The study of the missionary age is the story of the giants, and let us hope to read so well the lessons of their lives as to work wonders in the same Almighty name!
Every work must wait for workmen, trained to fitness in their work. And so this book of the Acts and facts of the Apostolic age, reveals the actors, the factors in this work for God. The history of primi- tive missions gives glimpses of the primitive mis- sionaries.
Because history is the record of facts which demand the personal factor, the key of history is biography, that most suggestive and instructive of all studies. To portray the lives of men is, as Dionysius of Hali- carnassus said, to ** teach philosophy by examples." By the analysis of character we detect the elements of success and the causes of failure. Principles and precepts are abstract statements of truth, but virtue and vice teach best through concrete forms; and
TIfE CALLING OF THE NE W APOSTLES, 63
hence this, best of all books, is a gallery of portraits, where we may study the lives of men, following their faith and shunning their faults and follies; a gallery where the picture of one perfect life, so lus- trous as to disdain even a frame of gold, forever challenges imitation.
Thus, then, our study of the Acts of the Apostles leads us to look at the actors who took part in mis- sions to a lost world. First there was Peter, to whom it was given to open the door of faith to both Jew and Gentile, and whose figure stands out boldly in the opening scenes of this history. But a more sig- nificant point, both critical and pivotal, is reached further on, in the formal selection and separation of Barnabas and Saul, to a distinct and distinctive mis- sionary career and service.
Let us place prominently before us the opening verses of the thirteenth chapter of the Acts:
Now THERE WERE IN THE CHURCH THAT WAS AT AnTIOCH CERTAIN PROPHETS AND TEACHERS; AS BaR- NABAS, AND SiMEON THAT WAS CALLED NiGER, AND Lucius OF CyRENE, and MaNAEN, which had BEEN BROUGHT UP WITH HeROD THE TETRARCH, AND SaUL.
As THEY MINISTERED TO THE LORD, AND FASTED,
THE Holy Ghost said, separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. so they, being sent forth by the holy Ghost, departed.
The oversight of the Spirit of God is plainly seen in the very words here used. What precision of terms, not one useless phrase or needless adjective; no su- perfluous suggestion to divert the reader from the one lesson God would teach! How majestic the march of the narrative ! How rapid and resolute the onward movement ! What an impact of impression ! A hundred words in the English, standing for but
64 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
eighty in the terse Greek, put on eternal record one of the grandest lessons that God ever taught His people about the work of missions. Well may we ask for the open ear and the teachable spirit, that we may learn.
All the surroundings comport with the august solemnity of the occasion. It is Antioch, the Syrian capital, the first gentile centre of Christianity. It is a season of worship, with fasting and prayer. At least five of the early prophets and teachers were there, for they are mentioned by name. While this devout assembly draws near to the secret place where Cxod dwells, the Holy Spirit, no doubt in an audible voice, through one or more of those prophet teachers, says;
** Separate Me Barnabas and Saul For the work whereunto I have called them !"
That was the signal for the birth hour of foreign missions, the true nativity, of which Christ's Ascension message of ten years before was the annunciation. Every circumstance and detail is precious, for it is a presage of things to come, a forerunner to guide the Church to the end of the age. God says, *' Write the vision and make it plain upon the tablets set up along the highway of missions, that even by a cursory glance he that runneth may read." All true mis- sionaries, most of all pioneers in mission work, always have been and always will be, those whom the Holy Spirit has singularly separated unto His work. Seldom, if ever, has the Church led the way in setting them apart; in almost if not quite every case, the pioneers have led the Church, and have found sometimes their main hindrance in the apathy, if not antipathy, of those who should have been prompt to encourage and help. As at Antioch, it was not the Church but the Holy Spirit of God that took the lead in selecting and separating the first foreign missionaries, so, always, God by His provi-
THE CALLING OF THE NE W APOSTLES. 56
dence and His Spirit has called out his servants, and the Church has sent away those whom the Spirit had already sent forth.
Thus it came to pass that in this earliest of gen- tile Churches, missions to the gentiles had their origin. The five prophet-teachers who there min- istered before the Lord stand for gentile peoples. One a Cyrenian, one from Cyprus, one perhaps from Idumea, like Herod, another from the Cilician gates, and the last may have been a black man. When the Lord called his pioneers of missions, he went out- side of the sacred circle of Jewish communities and turned from the mother Church to her first-bom gen- tile daughter. And, even then, had not the Antio- chan Church been fasting and praying, they might not have heard, or hearing they might not have heeded, the voice of God; they might not have sent away promptly, if at all, those whom the Spirit sepa- rated and called, and so would have forfeited that rich blessing that within two years returns to the bosom of the Church in that first missionary report !
In the New Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, if not as audibly, not less surely, has separated unto Him- self and His work His select servants. By unmistak- able signs He has set apart His pioneers. But instead of a Church praying, fasting, responsive, how often He has found a Church prayerless, feasting, secularized, corrupt. It is a sad chapter which records the separation of the New Apostles. Torpor and indifference, spiritual decay and death, ridicule and resistance often to the point of persecution, these holy men and women have found even within the **body of Christ!" Sometimes what should have been a sanctuary where the Spirit's voice was clearly heard and devoutly heeded, has been a sepulchre, where selfishness wound about God's messengers the cerements of inertia and would not loose them and let them go. s This lesson, so supremely taught in the inspired
56
THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
narrative, must have urgent emphasis. The one hope of missions is the faith that Grod's Spirit does select and separate unto Himself, call out from His Church and send forth into His work. His own divinely- appointed and divinely anointed messengers. . Such only can be the apostles of missions. For what is an apostle, or missionary, but one who is sent! Apostle is missionary spelt Greek-wise, and missionary is apostle spelt Latin-wise, But both words mean one thing: God-sent. Take fast hold of this thought, let it not go, for it is the life of missions ; and our daily risk is in losing sight of it and depending on human argument and appeal and the wisdom of man's selection, to furnish the force for the field. The new apostles, like the old, must be selected, separated, sent forth, by the Spirit.
Because this lesson is vital to success, let us linger yet longer to learn it fully. Two marked passages of Scripture stand confronting each other, like two pillars that hold up a grand arch : one gives us the theory, the other the practice — one the law, the other the example of God's methods. We set them side by side for comparison :
"'Then saith Jesus unto His disci- ples: The harvest truly is plenteous; But the labourers are few: Pray yb thbkeforb the Lord of
thb harvest, That He will thrust forth
labourers Into His harvest."
— Matt. ix. 37, 38.
" There were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers ;
"As they ministered to the Lord and fasted,
The Holy Ghost said:
Separate Me Barnabas and Saul,
For the work wherbunto
I have called them."
— Acts^ xiii. 1-4.
The correspondence here shows one hand and de- sign in both; they fit each other, like tenon and mor- tise, ball and socket. Our Lord, already foreseeing the harvest field waiting for seed and sickle, and the fewness of labourers ready to reap, also foretold us what was to be done. We are to resort from first to last, to Prayer.
We face a vast field of world-wide need. Where is the source of supplies, and who shall furnish
THE CALLING OF THE NEW APOSTLES. 67
T7orkers? Do you answer, they are to be found in the Church, in her colleges and theological halls? But who shall choose and make them willing, send them forth and give them power? What if the Church, like Sarah, be barren of offspring, or having sons and daughters, be loath to give them up to Grod? What if those whom the Church may choose, have not the self-sacrifice to go, but cling to the easy- chair of home comfort and careless indulgence?
Hear the voice which spake as never man spake : ** Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send — thrust forth — ^labourers into His har- vest !" Why are our eyes thus to be fixed on God alone? Because He only is liie competent Judge of who are fit for His work — ^because He only can make them willing, can train them to greater competency and higher efficiency, and then thrust them forth into the actual field.
This is the law, and of this law the narrative before us is both example and illustration. The mother church at Jerusalem was the natural cradle of missionaries to the gentiles; yet God passes her by, and at the breast of her eldest gentle daughter suckles His first messengers to the heathen. The first two missionaries selected are neither of them from Pales- tine: one is a Levite from Cyprus, the other a con- verted persecutor and blasphemer from Cilicia.
The Holy Spirit is the one prominent personality in their appointment. He spake in an audible voice and named the very men — declared, **I have called them," and demanded that they should be separated imto Himself. All that the Church at Antioch had to do was to hear and heed this Voice from above. In laying hands upon them and sending them away, those disciples took no initiative step, but followed where the Spirit went before, ordaining and separat- ing those whom He had first ordained and separated. Our last glimpse of them as they depart recalls not the action of the Church but of the Spirit: **So they
68 THE NEW A CTS OF THE APOSTLES.
being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed." Christ's words thus find an exact example. The Church prays the Lord of the Harvest, and takes no other step until He lays His hand on the very men He has chosen.
Not only this history, but all history, illustrates the same law. We cannot raise up workmen. We do not know God's chosen men and women. Our wis- dom is folly; our steps will be missteps and mistakes. We must resort to prayer. At our peril we seek to multiply workmen by human means. God must call, select, separate and send forth, those whom He ordains — ^who hear His call and willingly oflfer themselves; those on whom He sets His seal in their conscious calling to His work and evident knowledge of Him, those who prove their fitness by their passion for souls and the fulness of the Spirit — upon such the Church may safely lay hands, commissioning them with such authority as she can confer. All other choice of labourers is premature, officious, unsafe.
This book of the Acts opens with the election of an Apostle to fill out the original number. Peter is here conspicuous, and not the Spirit of God. It was before the day of Pentecost had set this Divine Leader in the foreground of Church history. Of Matthias we hear nothing more ; but, later on, Grod in His own marvellous way makes choice of Saul of Tarsus, and of his career the rest of the New Testa- ment history is full. Hence many reverent students of the Word have been constrained to ask whether, in the supplying of Judas' place, Peter was not hasty, acting in advance of the Spirit's leading; whether Matthias be not an example of a man chosen of men but not called of the Spirit, owned of men rather than recognized of God.
Whatever may be thought of Peter's course on this occasion, no reader can compare the first and the thirteenth chapters of the Acts without feeling the marked contrast. In one case the leading steps are
THE CALLING OF THE NE W APOSTLES. 59
obviously human ; in the other, as obviously super- human; and while we must resort to doubtful tradi- tion to follow Matthias further, Paul was the most active missionary of all history.
The New Acts of the Apostles adds emphasis to this lesson. The Potter sits at His wheel, with the clay in His hand. He needs the earthen vessel to bear His name to the gentiles, and He moulds it Him- self, and sometimes out of material the most un- promising, and into shapes most strange. But He knows what He wants and can use. The Church has her faultless machinery of pulpit and pastorate, home-training and theological school. The State erects great universities, and sets nmning the golden wheels of scholarly culture, at which preside the skilful hands of great educators. But all these never yet moulded one apostle or turned out of human clay one true man. The shelves of man's great pottery stand to-day full of choice wares — pol- ished porcelain, hand-painted with oriental designs and occidental art — brilliant and costly products of education, rated at the highest market-price, grace- ful and ornamental, the pride of nineteenth century scholarship. Yet, how often the Divine Potter passes them all by, and takes instead a rude, crude lump of earth from the slime pits, full of flaws and defects, and shapes it beneath His own hand as He wills. Then He puts it into His furnace, and in fires of hot trial bakes it into hardness and firmness, and glazes it with an unearthly lustre. Man's fine deli- cate wares cannot stand the fire, and crack with harsh handling. God's earthenware may be called common, but hard blows will not break it, and in fierce flames it only takes on a new glory like the face of Him whom John saw in apocalyptic vision.
As God only can choose, so He only can train missionary apostles. Human schools often spoil, puffing up with pride of learning and worldly wis- dom, self -consciousness and carnal ambition. What
60 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.^
an irreverent spirit is it, that under the guise of his- torical and literary criticism shamelessly and reck- lessly treads on holy ground, imawed by the burning bush of prophecy or the Shekinah glory of inspired history ; that puts the word of God on a level with Homer and Hesiod and Herodotus, Sophocles and Socrates, Plato and Milton, forgetting that only the spiritual man illumined by the Spirit is competent to perceive or receive the revelation of the Spirit. And so it is that God finds humble, imeducated be- lievers more ready to be taught the secrets of His word and will than many of the foremost scholars who lean to their own imderstanding and are wise in their own eyes.
Strange indeed are the theological schools wherein God trains His workmen. He sent Moses into the sheep pastures of Midian for forty years; Elijah into the caves of Carmel and Horeb; John the Baptist into the wilderness of Judea ; Saul, for three years, into the solitudes of Arabia. When that superb Alexandrian orator, ApoUos, the Apollo of the early Church, needed to get beyond the baptism of John and learn the way of Grod more perfectly, Grod chose two hum- ble disciples, tent-makers at Corinth, and one of them a woman; and their dwelling became a theological school, and Apollos the solitary student. God has his own educators, but they would not be chosen of man; and His own armoury for His soldiers, but it is not stocked with carnal weapons.
As our studies in the New Acts of the Apostles thus compel us to become familiar with the new apostles, no fact is more conspicuous than this fact and law of a divine selection — all the great pioneers and leaders of modem missions have been eminently God-appointed and God-anointed. Again we put this fact boldly to the front — ^the Church has not led the way in their choice, but they have often, if not always, led the Church. Had the Church chosen, they would not have been selected, for some of them have
THE CALLING OF THE NE W APOSTLES, 61
been a century in advance of their own times, derided as fanatics and fools, apostates of the anvil, the plough and the loom. God has first trained them in His own secret schools, equipped thein with weapons forged in the trial fires, then called them out from a reluctant and hostile body; and not a few of them have lived and wrought and died unrecognized as God's great ones.
This lesson can be learned only by examples, and it should be well learned, for it bears upon the com- ing age of missions. And here, again, we meet in our study of this grand theme an embarrassment of riches. The names of the consecrated men and women who belong to this new age of missions must be numbered by hundreds, by thousands. To pay even a passing tribute to all, we must use only the most gen- eral terms ; and many of the most eminent yet survive, and delicacy if not decorum forbids that the story of their heroism should now be written ; for there is an anointing which befits only burial, and the spices con- secrated for embalming the dead are desecrated when used for anointing the living. It seems best therefore to choose a few representative examples from those who in some department have been pioneers and whose earthly record is complete.
The study of missionary biography reveals a true and remarkable * * apostolic succession. ' * Missions are so vital to Church life that probably should they wholly cease the Church itself would die. Never since the day of Pentecost has Christ been without witnesses. The dark ages were a millennium -of death, yet the lamp of testimony, burning however faintly, never went out. No century or generation has been with- out its missionaries; and these lives have so been linked together, that, since the first link was forged amid the white-heat of Pentecostal fires, this grand succession has continued, without one break or mis- sing link in the chain. Who can fail to see God's hand in all this? At the same time, in different lands,
62 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
v/ithout knowledge of each other, messengers have been preparing to work side by side in the great har- vest field ; or at diflEerent times raised up so as to keep up the succession.
ii.
THE NEW PIONEERS.
Raimundus Lullius — Pioneer to the Mohammedans.
1236-1315.
To find the pioneer missionary to the Moslem field, we must go back more than six and a half centuries before Keith Falconer fell at Aden, to that young noble of Majorca, born in Palma in 1236. He was trained as a soldier, and thirty years of his life were wasted, not in frivolity only but in sensuality, in scandalous excesses. Even his scholarly culture and philosophical mind, like those of Augustine before him, were only like polished bow and arrow without practical purpose or unselfish love to give them ser- viceableness.
But God had for this prodigal son a grander career. While writing a song for the siren of lust, he had a vision of the Crucified, which left upon his soul not only its impress but its image. The Captain of the Lord's Host laid hold of the trumpet that hung idle and useless on the walls of society, blew a blast upon it, waked it to music and turned it to a warrior's bugle. The grace that changed the poet of passion into a saint, made the saint a servant of Christ and a witness to a lost world. Bom in 1236, he had from his cradle heard the story of the crusades. He conceived the noble purpose of beginning a new crusade against Saracen infidels, not by force of arms to rescue the Saviour's sepulchre from profane hands, but by prevailing prayer and preaching of good tidings to lead the followers of the false prophet to bow before Christ's cross and worship at His empty tomb.
68
64 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
He suddenly renounced the world and its pleasures, divided his estate among kinsmen and friends, took the Franciscan garb, and went into solitude to prepare for his sacred mission. He studied phil- osophy, theology and the ancient tongues. Learning Arabic from a slave, he made himself familiar with the works of Averroes — the Moorish Aristotle of Cordova — and other Moorish writers, and so derived the germ of that system of dialectics unfolded in his ^^Ars Magna,'* whereby he hoped to reform science and make converts to Christianity.
The rest of his life was one long and toilsome pil- grimage after the moving pillar. Old habits of sin, like Pharaoh's hosts in pursuit of Israel, would have drawn him back into bondage, but he dared a Red Sea of blood for the sake of following the " vision." Like the young Count at Halle, he had covenanted with God : * * To thee, O Lord God, I offer myself, my wife, my children, and all that I possess;" and be- ing free from all worldly hindrances he gave himself unreservedly to missionary service. Part of his plan for bringing unbelievers to accept the truth of Chris- tianity was to establish missionary training colleges, where young men might be taught Arabic and other tongues; for his was no petty ambition; he aspired to nothing less than to surround and subjugate the whole Moslem territory in Christ's name. There is something sublime in this solitary man, moving the King of Aragon to establish at Palma a monastery to educate monks as missionaries, and spending years in fruitless but tireless endeavour to kindle in successive popes and kings an enthusiasm like unto his own. Then, nothing daunted, crowning all else by going himself into Moslem territory to preach Christ — ^he was the first of the missionary martyrs to die for the sake of the Dark Continent.
Those who doubt the romance of missions should read the story, more fascinating than any fiction, of this, the first and greatest of missionaries to the Mo-
THE NEW PIONEERS. 65
hammedans, and deservedly wearing the title of the ** greatest missionary orator of history," whose work, on **Divine Contemplation," ranks with the Confes- sions of Augustine, the Meditations of Thomas d Kempis, or Bunyan's ** Grace Abounding." Follow this Spaniard, pleading with kings to found training schools for Franciscan missionaries, and with the "Vicars of Christ "to decree missionary institutes and lead on the new crusade. Then see him in 1292, just seven centuries before that famous meeting at Kettering when the first Baptist missionary society led the way, himself landing in Tunis, daring to go defenceless and alone to win converts where prosely- tism was a crime, and conversion was apostasy, and both punishable with death.
Scarcely had he broached his design, when he was cast into prison and then driven out of the country. He returned to Europe for aid, and again unsuccess- ful, went back to Africa in 1307, though threatened with stoning, and, at Bougiah, employed his^ ** great art" in an argument with a learned Mohammedan under cover of an inquiry into the truth of Islamism. His real design was detected, and he escaped death only through his antagonist's intercession. Again in prison, he wrote there a defence of Christianity, and compelled even his foes to respect the fanatical philosopher who risked life itself for the s^e of his faith and his mission.
He was a second time deported, and at seventy years of age we find him on a tour of the chief cities of Europe, like another Peter, the Hermit, preaching his crusade and declaring, " God wills it!" Once more unsuccessful, with a zeal that no dis- couragement could quench or even dampen, in 1314, at seventy-eight years of age, this grand old hero once more crossed the Mediterranean to Bougiah, and there, in his eightieth year, met death, like the first mart3rr, by stoning.
Whatever his faults or fanaticism, he had an iron
E
GQ THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
resolution and chivalric ardor seldom equalled, and on the scroll of missionary history the name of this noble of Palma has a grand record. Dr. George Smith says of him; ** No church, papal or reformed, has produced a missionary so original in plan, so. ardent and persevering in execution, so varied in gifts, so inspired by the love of Christ, as this saint of seventy-nine, whom Mohammedans stoned to death on the 30th of June, 13 15. In an age of vio- lence and faithlessness, he was the apostle of heavenly love." Let this motto from his own great book be adopted by all his true successors:
" He who loves not, lives not ; He who lives by the Life, cannot die."
Francis Xavier — Romish Apostle to the Indies.
1506-1552.
Five centuries stretch between Lull and Carey, and few are the missionary names that history meanwhile records, but sufl&cient to preserve the succession un- broken and show that God always has true children to become the seed of the Kingdom.
The Reformation period was not one of missionary activity: from the days of the Bohemian martyr to those of the Florentine, the reformers did little more than purge the Church of false doctrine; but the Re- formation moved the Romish Church to aggressive measures, and one of the most conspicuous fruits of mediaeval missions was Francis Xavier, the apostle to the Indies.
This remarkable and unique man, bom in 1506, was in youth tainted by association with Protestant ** heretics" but was, by Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, saved from these ** deplorable dan- gers." At forty-six he died on the Island of San- cian, or St. John, off the coast of China, in 1552, But what an all-consuming flame burned in his
THE NE W PIONEERS, 67
bosom during those last ten years and set the Orient aglow !
He was misguided, no doubt; but no other life, since Paul's, has shown such ardour and fervour, such absorbing zeal for the greater glory of God, such self -forgetting, self-denying passion for the souls of men, as that of the young Saint of Navarre, whose withered relics are still adored in the Church of Bom Jesus at Groa.
It was not until 1542, ten years before his death, that the Jesuit missionary landed in Portuguese India. Yet what labors abundant crowded that decade I For three years he toiled in Southern India; for nearly three more, in the Chinese Arch- ipelago; and the last four were given to India and Japan.
To the doctrine of free grace, unconsciously im- bibed in boyhood, he owed his genuine experience of faith in Christ, his strong hold upon Him, and the inspiration of an unselfish purpose. To his Papal and Jesuit training we trace that admixture of con- fidence in outward rites and good works which al- loyed and vitiated his otherwise superb service. To sprinkle holy water in baptism, to recite the creed and a few prayers, limited his methods and measured his success. His preaching practically knew noth- ing of the purging away of sin by intelligent faith in the atoning blood. He said, *'^ feci christianos'' — "I make christians"; and it is not strange if the disciples he made often shocked their "maker" by glaring vices and flagrant sins.
He mastered no oriental language, and was often without an interpreter ; sometimes, as among the pearl fishers of Tuticorin, he was, as he himself felt, but an adept in a dumb show, an actor in a pantomime. His was the gospel of sacraments and ceremonies, preached in mute action, but with what lofty enthu- siasm ! To baptize a new-born babe would save a soul; to mumble a few prayers would deliver from
68 THE NEW ACT^ OP TttE APOSTLES.
purgatory; and so he went on with wild passion for numbers, canying the counting of converts to the last extreme of error and absurdity. It was the last- ing warning against that mechanical theory which gauges the success of missions by numerical results.
In one month, in Travancore, he baptized ten thou- sand natives, and at the close of his ten years' work reckoned his converts by the million. In fact, with an ambition that knew no bounds, he planned the conversion of the whole Empire of the Rising Sun, and wanted only time enough to Christianize the Orient.
Yet, notwithstanding all these drawbacks, this Jesuit fanatic puts to shame all who read the story of his life, by the utter self-abnegation he exhibited. The man who on ship-board could night and day de- vote himself to watching over and nursing a crew sick with the scurvy, himself bathing their disgusting bodies and washing their filthy clothes; who could suffer the pangs of hunger, famishing himself to feed the starving; who could, imresting, make journeys over thousands of miles without care or thought as to personal comfort; who could cheerfully foiiake the paths of indulgence and scholarship for one perpetual pilgrimage amid the sickening sights and stifling air of oriental heathenisni; who could, on Grod's altar lay himself, with his brilliant mind and prospects of preferment, with youth, wealth, worldly ambition, all tempting him to self-seeking — and know only the glory of God — ^such a man cannot be simply set aside as a fool or a fanatic. If his mistaken zeal for Papal supremacy caused Japan to seal her sea-gates to all foreign approach for two and a half centuries, on the other hand his consecrated earnestness has lit a flame of devotion to Christ in hundreds who have wept over the story of his heroism.
Xavier might have chosen any career however illus- trious, and success would have had his crown ready. When at twenty-four, he was graduated at the college
THE NE W PIONEERS, 69
of St. Barbara in Paris as master of philosophy, and licensed to lecture upon Aristotle; when he taught with applause at the College of Beauvais, and in the Sorbonne gained the title of ** doctor," he was like a new star rising on the firmament of European civiliza- tion, and men asked whereunto his fame might not reach. But on August 15, 1534, he with five others, led by Loyola, took their vows in the chapel of Mont- martre, and from that time he never swerved nor looked back. After his ordination as priest, he went to Bologna, and there in his preaching and. visits to hospitals and prisons, evinced such apostolic zeal and love, that he seemed a combination of Peter and Paul and John in one; and, when missionaries were in demand for Portuguese settlements in the Indies, he was one of the first two selected. Bell in hand, he went through the streets of Groa calling upon Christian inhabitants to send children and slaves to be taught the true faith; went to the coast of Cormorin and the island of Ceylon, and many other parts of the East, reviving the dead faith of nominal Christians, and gathering flourishing congregations which he l^f t in the care of his disciples, himself pressing on- ward to the regions beyond. Intrepidly he met the intrigues and violence of Japanese priests, publicly dis- puted with the bonzes, and won many from the cultured classes; so that, on returning to Goa in 155 1, he left three great princes of the empire as con- verts and vast numbers of baptized disciples from the humbler ranks. He meant to pierce the Chinese wall of exclusion; and when the fatal fever laid hold upon him he could only look toward the Walled Kingdom, and cry, **0 rock! rock! when wilt thou open to my Master?" During these ten years this Romish "apostle" had planted the cross **in fifty-two different kingdoms, had preached through nine thousand miles of territory, and baptized over one miljion persons." In visions of the night when he saw the world conquered for Christ, he would spring
70 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
up shouting, '* Yet more, O my God, yet more!" and his whole life was a commentary on his own motto :
**Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam."
John Eliot — Apostle to the North American
Indians, i 604-1 690.
Like Ziegenbalg and Zinzendorf , properly belong- ing to the century before Carey, Eliot was one of those who formed the mould in which modem mis- sions took shape. He was a pioneer of pioneers, and history has yet to give him his true niche in her Westminster. His period nearly spans the seven- teenth century, and three features are conspicuous in his personality: first, a pious parentage with its rich legacy of character; secondly, his connection with the Puritan exile, Thomas Hooker, whom he followed to the New World; and thirdly, his absorb- ing passion for the souls of the red men. For sixty years he filled his sole pastorate at Roxbury , from this centre radiating influence over a wider sphere of effort.
A forecast of his work was seen in his early apti- tude for language. At nineteen, graduated from Cambridge, he had already mastered the original languages of the Bible, and shown unusual skill as a grammarian and philologist. At thirty-five, the colonial leaders chose him to aid in the new version of the Psalter, and his **Bay Psalm Book " was the first book printed in America.
He had barely taken up his pastoral staff at Rox- bury when his unselfish love was drawn out toward the Indians. Through a young Pequot, he got hold of their strange tongue, and in 1646, in Chief Waban's wigwam preached the first sermon in their language ever known on American soil. This memorable service in camp, near Brighton, lasted
THE NE W PIONEERS. 71
three hours. A new camp-fire was kindled, and the spirit of religious inquiry began to bum. Two weeks later, a second visit found an old warrior weeping lest it should be too late to find God; and a fortnight after, Waban himself was found talking to his followers 6f the strange story of the cross, in face of fierce opposition from the Indian priests.
What, two hundred years after him, William Duncan did in his '^Metlakahtla," Eliot did in his *'Nonan- tum," five miles west of Boston — building a model state for his * spraying Indians," who as such became known in history, like Cromwell's "Ironsides." The Roxbury pastor, aflame with holy passion to civilize and Christianize these wild men of the forest, organ- ized his converts into a commonwealth, with civil courts, social and industrial improvements and re- ligious institutions.
No circle of ten miles diameter could fence in such a man. Neponset, Concord, Brookfield, Pawn- tucket, felt his power, and from all quarters came clamorous appeals for new law-codes, Bible institu- tions and Christian teachers. Chiefs and their sons became converts, and then leaders; and, when Eliot's visits involved risk to him, the sachem and his brave warriors became his escort ; while fearless, if not heed- less of danger, alone on horseback, he dared perils and bore privations for Christ's sake.
Not only were snares of death laid for him by hos- tile and treacherous chiefs, but his own countrymen, not content to withhold aid, pitilessly pelted him with the hail of ridicule, or hurled at him the mud- dods of aspersion; they made him the butt of jest as a trader in fables, or charged him with selfish greed. But God "stepped in and helped." Before the cen- tury had reached its noon, his work had won a double victory; for it had both conquered the Indian ahd compelled recognition from Britain. Devout soids, across the sea, heard the fame of his deeds and felt the flame of his zeal ; and so it came to pass that,
72 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
more than half a century before the " Society for the Propagation of the Gospel," a similar organization was formed to propagate tlie gospel in New Eng- land, and sent fifty pounds a year to the Noncon- formist exile at Roxbury.
Like Livingstone, Eliot was a missionary general and statesman. In 1650, he gathered most of his converted Indians into " Natick," a tract of six thousand acres on the Charles River, where each family had a house-lot, where large buildings were erected for church and school, and where distin- guished visitors heard Eliot's prapng Indians teach and preach. The evangelist and statesman now be- came also theological professor, training a native ministry — that secret of the perpetuity of all mis- sion work. He who had toiled for thirty-eight years to gather about thirty-six hundred converted Indians into fourteen settlements in 167 1, left twenty-four native preachers behind him when he died in 1690.
This versatile man was not only preacher and pastor, general and statesman, founder of model set- tlements and trainer of native evangelists; he was also a translator. In 1661 the New Testament, and two years later the Old Testament, were published in the native tongue; and so that famous. Indian Bible, which has now not one living reader, was the first Bible printed west of the Atlantic. As Bayard Taylor said of Humboldt — ^it is **not a ruin but a pjnramid," no mere lonely relic of the past for the curious antiquarian, but a grand structure from whose lofty apex the red man got a glimpse of the City of Grod; and it is still a pillar of witness, testlfjring to one of God's kings who, against such odds, builded this monument to the glory of God! Both as a memorial of holy zeal and as a testimony to fine scholarship, it merits what Edward Everett said of it, that** the history of the Christian Church contains no example of resolute, untiring labour superior to it." Eliot likewise created for his beloved children
THE NE W PIONEERS. 73
of the forest a new Christian literature, translating such practical guides as ** Baxter's Call," and pre- paring catechism and psalter to follow grammar and primer. When age and weakness kept him at home, and he could not go to his Indians, he besought families to send to him their negro servants that he might teach them saving truth.
Southey pronounced John Eliot " one of the most extraordinary men of any country ;" and Richard Bax- ter said there was ** no other man whom he honoured above him." We claim for him a certain priority of pedigree in this apostolic succession. In a peculiar sense he was, on this side the sea, father and founder of modem missions; for it was his life and work that moved and moulded David Brainerd, James Brainerd Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Adoniram Judson, as also William Carey and others who followed him. Yet this stream of holy influence which watered so many trees of life, Eliot himself traces to its spring in the home of Hooker, ** When I came into this blessed family," said he, **I saw as never before the power of godliness in its lively vigour and efficiency." What a lesson in living! Eliot held for a time the position of usher in Hooker's grammar school, and the family piety he saw exhibited there led to his conversion and consecration. Thus do the streams whose fountains are beneath the Temple of God flow softly through their hidden channels, and come up to the surface, from time to time, in some Siloam basin or Bethesda pooL Hooker reappears in Eliot, Eliot in Edwards, Edwards in Carey, Carey in Judson, and so on without end.
The last words on John Eliot's lips were ** Welcome, joy !" and were probably the response of the depart- ing soul to the vision of bliss which glorified his dying moments. But there is a brief sentence written at the end of his Indian grammar which is the key to the lock of his life, furnishing at once the interpreta- tion of the man and the revelation of his secret. As
74 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
I Stood, in 1893, by the simple slab of stone that in a Boston burial-ground bears his name, that sentence seemed a fit motto for all true missions:
** PRAYER AND PAINS THROUGH FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST WILL DO ANYTHING."
Baron Justinian Ernst Von Welz — Pioneer to
Dutch Guiana.
The roots of modem missions reach back to the Reformation, and the plant that hangs with such abundant fruit is at least four centuries old. But much of this growth was below the surface; and a distinct and definite line marks the last hundred years as the period of organized missionary effort.
Luther, and his fellow reformers, revived primitive apostolic faith, which must be the precursor and prepare the way if apostolic life and work are to follow. The Church must always be evangelical before it is evangelistic. Soon after the reformed faith had laid hold upon the convictions of God's people, the debt of duty to a lost race began loudly to demand payment, and the Reformed Church felt the movings of a new impulse to spread the good tidings far and wide. But, after a thousand years of inaction, of spiritual sloth and sleep, apathy and lethargy loose their hold slowly, as the ice-bonds of an arctic winter 3n[eld to the summer sun. Here and there one man was reached and roused, his eyes opening to the fact that millions were dying without the gospel ; his ears opening to the cry of want and woe which, like the moan and sob of waves on the sea-shore, tells of storm and wreck. Now and then a man went forth, while as yet the Church as a whole seemed locked in icy indifference and insensibility.
Von Welz, who belongs before Spener, Francke
THE NE W PIONEERS, 75
and Zinzendorf , is one of the precursors of the coming era of missions. About 1664 he issued his invitation for a society of Jesus, to promote Christianity and the conversion of heathendom ; and the same year, another manifesto of like purport which, like Carey's Inquiry into the Obligations of Christians, a himdred years later, turned a powerful search-light upon the superficial piety of his day and laid bare its hollowness and shallowness.
There is something grand in this solitary man, blowing upon God's silver trumpet a solemn alarm to set in motion the camps. No such voice had be- fore been heard in the Reformed Church, but it awakened no sympathetic responsive echo. Those "light words," which are the ** Devil's keenest swords," pierced him again and again. Unsparing ridicule and contemptuous opposition swept over him, but only to fix deeper the roots of his holy pur- pose, as storms fasten the cedars to the xock-sides of Lebanon. Another manifesto still more searching succeeded: an appeal to court preachers and learned professors to establish a college for training mission- aries. Von Welz joined to the capacity of a states- man and organizer, the enthusiasm of a zealot, the persistency of a bom leader, and the courage - of a warrior. Because he would not keep silence but kept blowing his bugle blast in men's ears, summon- ing the sleeping Church to propagate the faith among tmbelieving peoples, he was laughed at as a dreamer and fanatic, and denounced as a hypocrite, heretic and blasphemer. Dr. Ursinus, severer in rebuke than Ryland was with Carey, prayed, concerning the proposed Jesus- Association, ** protect us from it, dear Lord God," as though the proposed missionary society and training college were to be classed with those malicious and seditious schemes from which the litany implores, '* Grood Lord, deliver us." The famous doctor of Ratisbon regarded the heathen as dogs to whom we are not to give that which is holy.
76 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
or swine that will wallow in the mire and trample under foot the pearls of the gospel, and he would have given them over to work all tmcleaimess with greediness.
When the proposal to send out artisans and lay- men to evangelize the heathen met, like other ap- peals, only rebuff and ridicule, that heroic soul that could not move others to action fotmd relief in self- offering. Ordained an apostle to the gentiles by Breckling, a poor priest in Holland, Von Welz, like Zinzendorf after him, left behind his baronetcy and his baronial estate, and himself became the humble messenger to Dutch Guiana, where he laid down his life. Like other seers of God and prophets of hu- manity, he saw farther than his contemporaries; and, had the bold originality of his missionary schemes found earnest co-operation, organized missions might have fotmd in the soil of Protestant Grermany their germination at least a hundred years before Carey and his humble twelve sat down in widow Wallis' parlor at Kettering.
Von Welz was another of the examples of which history is full, of great and extraordinary minds en- dowed with a consciousness of strength, impelled by a Divine impulse which is their truest and best ad- viser. There is a ** perspicacity of eye " which is the direct effect of that mystic anointing with Grod's own eye salve; and Grod's bom prophets must not be diso- bedient to the heavenly vision, though others see not the form and hear not the voice. Baron Von Welz could say of his manifestos what Thucydides said of his histories, ** I give these to the public as an ever- lasting possession, and not as a contentious instru- ment of temporary applause."
Such men are God*s agitators, sent to marshal the conscience of the Church, to mould the law of its life and the methods of its work in conformity with His word and will. They are educators of the race, but too often they find dull pupils, that, ever learn-
THE NE W PIONEERS, 77
ing, are never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. To us it now seems incredible that the Austrian baron, who would found a new Jesus so- ciety— ^not a Jesuit order — ^to rally to itself those whom the love of Jesus constrained to bear His gospel to the lost, and who offered the capital of 30,000 thalers as a fund whose interest should sup- port the missionaries in training, — should be met not only by. the sneers of the worldly, but by the unspar- ing, condemnation of leading Churchmen; that John Heinrich Ursinus, superintendent of Ratisbon, other- wise an excellent man, could so violently oppose a scheme which took all its inspiration from the New Testament! Yet, in so doing, he represented the general attitude of the Lutheran Church of his day.
The zeal of this first missionary martyr within the Lutheran Church, who found a grave at Surinam, may have flamed with excess of enthusiasm, but we cannot, with Plitt, dismiss him as a ** missionary fanatic." His motives were too unselfish, his purpose too lofty, his self-sacrifice too sublime, his appeals too scriptural and too spiritual, to be thus classed with the outcome of a half -disordered brain. How true it is that the madness of one generation is the wisdom of the next, and the fanaticism of one decade becomes the heroism of the next ! The men that are mart3rrs to the hatred and violence of one age, are the saints that a succeeding age canonizes. Would that we might not slay God's prophets, leaving a wiser generation to pay its too tardy tribute at their sepulchres!
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg — Pioneer to India.
1683-1719.
If we seek the pioneer in the East Indies, we must go back beyond Duff and Carey to those devoted pietists of Denmark, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Pliitschau, who, in 1706, just one hundred
78 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
years before Alexander DuflE was bom, landed at Tranquebar.
Ziegenbalg, bom in Pulsnitz, Upper Lusatia, in 1683, and dying in India, of cholera, at thirty-six, crowded into twelve years of missionary life such abundant service as few of the most devoted men have ever ofiEered to the Master on the altar of mis- sions. Trained at Halle in theology and biblical literature, and ordained at Copenhagen in 1705, he arrived at Tranquebar after eight months at sea, only to be imprisoned by the Danish authorities. Unknown to him and his fellow-student, by the same vessel on which they sailed, secret instructions were despatched by the Danish East India Com- pany, authorizing the governor at Tranquebar to block their way by every means and crush their mis- sion in the bud. And the governor did his best to obey instructions.
These first Protestant missionaries that ever trod the soil of India, had gone over the wide seas to win a new empire for Christ, and as they stood, on the night after they landed, with no shelter but the sky and no companions but the stars, left by the governor to shift for themselves, a pathetic interest invests their loneliness. What a task before them, and what a welcome to their new field ! One of the governor's suite took pity upon them and they found for the first few days a place of sojourn; then they were allowed to occupy a house upon the wall, close by the heathen quarters; and, all undaunted by diffi- culties, Ziegenbalg, six days after his landing, was busy at Tamil, though he had neither dictionary, grammar nor alphabet. He sat down with native children, writing with fingers on the sand to learn the strange language in which were locked up the secrets of access to the people and their religion.
By almost unparalleled industry and application, he could in eight months talk in Tamil. All day long busied with reading and writing, translating and re-
THE NEW PIONEERS. 79
citing, he managed not only to master the intricate construction of Sie lang^uage, but to catch the inflec- tion and tone in pronunciation, so that in 1709, Tamil was to him as his native German. He had now, however, made only a start, and applied him- self to the making of a grammar and two lexicons, which together contained nearly 60,000 words. Be- fore he had been in India two years, the translation of the New Testament was in progress, and within a third year completed. Then, when serious illness hindered other work, he began the Old Testament.
Here was a young missionary of twenty-six, preach- ing in Tamil, and giving the people the New Testa- ment in their own tongue. On the ship sailing from Copenhagen he had learned the broken Portu- guese dialect that all along the coast was used by the half-breeds, and he turned this to good use, opening a school and preaching service for such as could be reached by this language; and the first fruits of his labour were five converted slaves of Danish masters within the first year after his arrival, and, four months later, nine adult Hindus.
Against the persistent opposition of the governor, and the failure of funds to carry on the mission, in 1708, Ziegenbalg made his pioneer preaching tour into the kingdom of Tanjore, and at Negapalam began his friendly conferences with the Brahmans. He not only first gave India a Tamil New Testament and vernacular dictionaries, but he set up the first press.
Left alone by Platschau's return, he was himself driven home by sickness. In 1715 he suddenly ap- peared in Denmark; then hurried into Grermany to Francke and Halle, preaching to crowds that no church could hold; then with his newly wedded wife, hurrjdng through Holland to London, he went back to Tranquebar, where he found the governor who had tyrannically fought him displaced by a warm friend of missions. -" "
80 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
For two years more, as though he felt that death was approaching, with almost reckless enthusiasm he sped toward his goal — ^the winning of India for Christ, At Christmastide, 1 718, he preached, but a week later his voice was so feeble that he could scarce be heard, and he never again spoke in public. On the last Sunday his bed was his pulpit, and from his pillow he exhorted his native converts to hold fast the faith. Soon after morning prayer, February 23, 1719, the chill pf death was. upon him.
Two scenes, ouq at the beginning, the other at the end of this singularly devoted life, should be placed side by side for the lessons they teach. When his mother died she left to her children as her last legacy, **a great treasure," which she bade them seek in the Bible. "There," said she, **you will find it; there is not a page that I have not wet with my tears."
Ziegenbalg was very yoimg at the time, but he never forgot the impression of those words; and when he went to India, his mother's legacy to him was the treasure he sought to bequeath to his con- verts. And when about himself to 4epart, so in- tense was the glory that smote him, that he sud- denly put his hand^ to his eyes, exclaiming, **How is it so bright, as if the sun shone full in my f^ice!" Soon after, he asked that his favourite hymn might be sung, "Jesus, meine zuversicht" (my confidence), and on the wings of sacred song he took his flight, leaving behind over three hundred and fifty converts, cate- chumens and pupils, a missionary seminary and a Tamil lexicon, but best of all the Tamil Bible.
When, a hundred and thirty-four years later, Alex- ander DuflE stood in the pulpit where Ziegenbalg, as well as Grundler and Schwartz, so often told of Tesus, his heart swelled with emotion. To him the Dan- ish missionary was, among all that had gone to India, not only great, but "first, inferior to none, scarcely second to any that followed him." On the sides of a plain altar lay the dust of Ziegenbalg and Grundler,
THE NE W PIONEERS, 81
those two men of such ** brief but brilliant and im- mortal careers in the migfhty work of Indian evangeli- zation," whose " lofty.md indomitable spirit breathed the most fervid piety."*
As truly as Ignatius or Huss, Ziegenbalg was a martyr of Christ. But, as Shelley's heart was found unconsumed in the ashes of his pyre on Italy's shore, tiie heart of such a pioneer is still the inspiration of all later heroism. Whatever property Ziegenbalg had in himself was made over to God, imencumbered with mortgages; to him self-denial was a joy, and sacri- fice was amply compensated by service. Like the Maid of Orleans, he would ** rather have died than do any- thing which was known to be contrary to the will of God;" and, like Richard Knill, his contribution to missions was the oflEering of himself.
For courageous faith and patient faithfulness, for keen insight and practical wisdom, for imtiring indus- try and deep devotion, few missionaries anywhere have equalled Bartholomew Ziegenbalg; and we can- not but see him repeated and reproduced in that most conspicuous figure in India during the eighteenth cen- tury. Christian Frederick Schwartz, who like him was a German, a student and translator in Tamil, ordained at Copenhagen, and who sailed to Tranquebar. These two men, though one life measured but half the other's in years, wielded a power in India that can be meas- ured only at the last day.
Hans Egede — The Apostle of Greenland.
1686-1758.
We turn now toward that repellant clime, the frozen pole, to find another example of one whom Grod called and thrust forth to imfurl the flag of the cross upon the ice-castles of the north.
It was early in the last century that a humble Dane who was the village pastor in Vaagen, oflE the Norway coast, in the Lifoden Isles, felt oppressed
• SmUb'i Short History.
F
82 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
with the woe and want of the heathen a thousand miles away toward the pole; and, like Nehemiah at the court of Esther, his face betrayed his sorrow of heart, so that not only his wife but his parishioners sought a reason for his troubled looks. His was a secret that could not be kept. By a seeming accident Hans Egede had read of the discovery of Greenland by Norwegian sailors about the close of the tenth century; of the successful preaching of the gospel among the rude people of those climes; of the subsequent ice blockade, and the black pest which, in the fifteenth century, broke off communication, so that for nearly three centuries these poor heathen had been left to relapse into darkness without any man who cared for their souls.
Hans Egede could not say why he should feel such concern for those toward whom no one else seemed to be drawn; but he could rest neither day nor night for thinking of them; and he ventured at last to open his heart to his dear ** Elizabeth." But, like many another, she found the home-work a sufficient apology for staying at Vaagen, and could neither sympathize with nor understand this yearning for souls three hundred leagues away. Wife and children and parish were to her field enough for apostolic labors and denials, and she begged Hans to dismiss his anxieties, her earnest pleading waxing at last into virtuous indignation at the mistaken zeal that would turn him from duties close at hand to go on a vague mission to the ends of earth.
God was dealing with her husband, and he could only answer that the Lord would have him do some- thing for Greenland: of that he was sure. He was persuaded to wait, and four years passed away. Greenland seemed to find another ice blockade iil Egeide's heart. Then came three signs from God; two bishops wrote letters, respectively from Dron- theim and Bergen, both urging Egede to take up this
THE NE W PIONEERS. 83
mission; and a rich merchant made offer of transpor- tation, and help in founding a colony. Egede felt that God was both thrusting him forth and opening the door; but his reluctant wife was now joined by a sorrowing church, and again Hans Egede consented to ^ wait, but solemnly added: ** Twice God has called me — ^if again He calls, I go."
About a year after, the third call came; and this time it came through his wife, Elizabeth. Thorns had been planted in the household nest, and she was restless and unhappy. Some hostile elements in the parish made her home-life bitter, and Vaagen lost its charm. God was stirring up the nestling and pre- paring his eaglet for a flight. Half a night was spent on her knees. Then she asked little Paul, her youngest child, whether she should go with his father to the poor heathen across the sea; and out of the mouth of a babe and suckling God spoke once more, for he said, ** Yes, let us go; and I will tell them of Jesus and teach them to say, * Our Father !' " And so, after six years of waiting and watching for God's time to come, the wife, too, felt God thrusting her forth, and now her faith went beyond her husband's.
Early in 1721 the ship was ready to set sail: and when Hans Egede had his foot on the plank to go on board, some sailors warned him that death awaited him if he ventured to those inhospitable shores. They said they had come from Greenland and barely escaped being eaten by those cannibals who dwelt there and who had eaten some of their party. Was this God's voice of warning? The Vaagen pastor took his four children by the hand and turned back. But Elizabeth now led the way, crying, **0 ye of little faith !" and boldly crossed the plank. To her this was no sign that they were to stay at home; it was a test, from God, of their worthiness to under- take for Him; and taking her seat in the boat she bade her family follow.
They set sail, and, while the husband and children
84 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
wept, her face shone as if it were the face of an angel. They undertook as pioneers to preach the gospel in that foreign land, and with some forty settlers founded the Christian colony of which God-thaab, (God's haven) is the capital.
The story of Egede is one of severe hardship, but it is so full of startling marvels that Christlieb has referred to it as one of the many instances which modern missions furnish of that supernatural work- ing which seems to reproduce the apostolic age. Those stupid dwarfs, like the icebergs and snowfields about them, seemed frozen into insensibility; and, feeling that only some sure sign of Divine power could melt their stolid apathy, Egede boldy asked for the gift of healing, and was permitted in scores of cases to exercise it, while his wife received the gift of prophecy, predicting in the crisis of famine the very day and hour when a ship should come bear- ing supplies !
When Christian VI. disbanded the settlement on account of the severe hardships and bitter disappoint- ment of the half famished colonists, the work of Egede seemed to have come to naught. But by a very marvellous leading of God, where the mission of Egede ended, Moravian missions began. For, in 1 731, at the coronation of Frederick's successor to the throne, the young Count Zinzendorf represented the Saxon court; and meeting two Eskimo converts of Egede, learned that the mission work was to be aban- doned. This was one of the main influences that, in the next year, moved the young count, and through him the Brotherhood, to send to the West Indies Dober and Nitschmann, and to organize a mission work that should know no limits but the wide world.
Count Von Zinzendorf — The Moravian Apostle.
1 700-1 760.
To Philip James Spener, head of this pietist school,
THE NE W PIONEERS, 85
and to Francke, his greater disciple, this Moravian bishop's spiritual lineage must be traced. His grandfather, an Austrian noble, had for the Lord's sake given tip all his estates, and that heroic example of self-d^iial his grandmother and aimt had empha- sized by s«ch holy training, that the lad, at four years, formally covenanted with his ** dear Saviour," **Be thou Mine and I will be Thine." He so long^ for communion with his unseen Lord, that in child- ish simplicity he was wont to write letters to Jesus, in which he laid bare his heart, and, confident that He yrould get and read them, tossed them from the castle window.
When but ten years old, the pupil of Francke at Halle, we find him forming prayer circles, and the Order of the Grain of Mustard-seed, whose members were to sow in other hearts the seed of the Kingdom. Though drawn to classic pursuits and tempted by rank and riches, his life-motto was that of Tholuck after him: **I have one passion; it is He and He alone:" and it was this, that amid the gaieties of Paris and the snares of Dresden, held him fast to Christ. To this, even the new passion of love was at once brought into subjection; he would marry only in the Lord, and his unique covenant of wedlock in- volved a mutual renunciation of rank, a consecration of wealth, and a dedication of self to the Lord and His work. From this marriage-altar two pilgrims went forth, as from the paschal supper in Eg3rpt, with loins girt and staff in hand, for a new Exodus.
On their wedding-tour, they found the Moravian exiles taking refuge at Berthelsdorf , and welcomed them to build there, Hermhut; and the seal of the Unitas Fratrum became the coimt's true coat of arms — a lamb on a crimson ground with the cross of resurrection, and a banner of triumph, with the motto: "Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur." — **Our Lamb has won; let us follow' Him." Zinzen- dorf began with the resolve that wherever the Lord
86 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
had need of him he would find his native land; and a little later could say that he would rather be hated for Christ's sake than be loved for his own.
His history merges into that of the Moravian Brotherhood, which at the hundred and fiftieth aimiversary of its mission work, in 1882, had sent forth 2,170 missionaries, planted 113 stations, 211 schools, and 89 Sunday schools, with a total of 23,000 pupils, and expended 52,000 pounds yearly, at a cost of only three per cent, for administration.
The Unitas Fratrum is the pioneer church in mis- sions. This brotherhood is in the direct line of descent from the Bohemian martyr, Huss, and his contemporary Chelczicky. In 1467, a few Bohemi- ans formed themselves into an apostolic Church. Tradition traces the ordination of their first bishop to a Waldensian priest; and so the Moravians are linked to the martyrs both of Bohemia and of the Vaudois valleys. Their doctrine took form both in the mould of Luther and of Calvin, as became a Church that was to be known alike for its vigorous faith and its spirit of reform. Persecution wrought the red cross into the Moravian robe, and in 1722, Christian David, the carpenter, led a mere band of eleven exiles across the frontier into Saxony.
How God teaches us not to despise the day of small things ! They remind us of the eleven Apostles at Jerusalem and of the twelve Baptists at Kettering. Five years after they settled on the site of Hermhut, they were but three hundred strong, with Zinzendorf practically at their head; and August 13, 1727, is still kept as the spiritual birthday of the renewed Church. Ten years later the count became their bishop, and for twenty-three years, imtil his death in 1760, their ** advocate." To his leadership is due more than hu- man annals record. Each morning gives a new text as a watchword; and certain members of the band keep up the hourly prayer, as vestals guarded the sacred fires and lamps. Death is a joyous home-going to be announced with song and trumpet.
THE NE W PIONEERS. 87
• The Brethren caught the spirit of their leader; the ** seed com " at Halle has grown into the ** Diaspora " at Hermhut, whose principle, as its name implies, is Dispersion. God has given to the Moravians to prove the power of the spirit of missions, and to make real what too many even yet treat as an im- practicable ideal. The Diaspora is one hundred and sixty-seven years old, has over sixty central stations, numbers over seventy thousand members, and stands for the home mission. To contact with its working force the Wesleys and Whitefield owed their kindling of evangelistic zeal.
But it is the foreign missions of the Hermhut band that furnish us our most pertinent example. When in 1732 the settlement was but ten years old and numbered but six hundred, Dober sailed for the West Indies; and, soon after, the United Brethren were planting the cross in Greenland and Lapland, the Americas and Africa. Less than one hundred and sixty years later, there were one hundred and thirty-three stations and filials; three hundred and forty-three missionaries and nearly fivefold as many native helpers; thirty thousand communicants, and nearly twice as many more baptized adults; and two hundred and thirty-two schools with twenty thousand pupils. -
All Christendom may well stop to gaze at the uniqjue spectacle of a Church, having in its missions almost three times as many communicants and* baptized adults as in the home Church of its three provinces: British, German and American; a Church, which, while Protestant Churches at large send one member out of five thousand to the foreign field, sends o^e out of ninety-two! A like ratio throughout the Churches generally would put in the regions beyond three hundred and eighty thousand Protestant mis- sionaries !
Let us fix in mind the leading features of this fore- most missionary Church.
88 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
First, its Evangelistic Basis. It holds itself in debt to a lost worM, and in trust with the gospel : as trustees to discharge the obligation of debtors. All are trained to service, to work for the common good of the Brotherhood and the redemption of thexace; to have few wants, frugal habits and readiness for self-sacrifice. Missions are thus not the exception but the law. Prpmpt obedience to any clear leading of God is the bsise-block of daily life. Zinzeniiorf asked a brother if he would go to Greenland* ''.Cer- tainly." **When?*V "To-morrow." Any Church destitute of the spirit of missions is considered dead, and every disciple without service, an apostate.
Again, the law of preference. The worst and most hopeless fields have the first claim. Mary Lyon reflected thdr imselfishness when she advised her students at Holyoke to be ready to go where no one else would, or as a poor negro slave phrased it, * * where dere is most debbil." It was Moravian blood that impelled William Augustine Johnson to choose Sierra Leone, because it was the worst field known; and so Hans Egede became an exile in the land of eternal snow, Dober offered -to sell himself into slavery to reach the slaves of St. Thomas, and later martjrrs have scaled Thibet's mountain walls to unfurl the flag of the cross above the shrine of the Grand Lama.
Again, zeal for Divine approval. Wordly ambi- tion is ruled out of the Moravian life. Evangelism, not proselytism, is their principle. Increase of numbers is no object ; and hence there is no coimting of converts or overlooking of quality in quantity. Of denomi- national gr9wth they are not jealous, and rather pre- fer not to extend their borders. To them alone belongs the rare distinction of a litany with this unique peti- tion:
" From the unhappy desire of being great,
Good Lord, deliver us*"
Holy living, ceaseless prajdng, cheerful giving,
THE NE W PIONEERS. 89
constitute their conception of discipleship, and the open secret of that Brotherhood, which, fewest in numbers and poorest in resources, leads the van of missions.
Christian Friederich Schwartz — Founder of the Native Christian Church in India. 17 26-1 7 98.
Here was another of Grermany's contributions to the mission field. When at the University of Halle, he studied Tamil that he might superintend the issue of a Bible in that tongue; and, though this purpose was not carried into effect, he was tmconsciously fit- ting for a singularly useful work at the centre of oriental missions. Francke, knowing that he had learned Tamil, urged him to undertake a mission to India; and in January, 1750, the meridian year of the eighteenth century, he set sail, imaccompanied even by a wife, that he might be the more single-eyed in his devotion to His Master's work.
He was successiveljr identified with Tranquebar, Trichinopoly and Tanjore. But Schwartz left his track over all India, and he can be traced in footprints of light after one hundred and fifty years. Such was his influence as a man of God that both friends and foes alike looked upon him with an awe akin to worship. He was a day's man betwixt contending parties, a whole court of arbitration in himself. He acted as embassy to treat with Hyder Ali and saved Tanjore. The cruel and vindictive despot gave orders: ** Let the venerable Father Schwartz pass unmolested!" When, after nearly half a century of work in India, he was not for Grod took him, he was mourned by a whole nation. The prince of Tanjore wept over his bier and the Rajah himself built him a monument.
Bishop Heber described him as "one of the most active, fearless and successful missionaries who have appeared since the Apostles," and it is a curious exam-
90 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
pie of apostolic succession in missions that William Carey had been five years in Serampore, when Schwartz was translated to a higher sphere.
** Father Schwartz" wielded a sceptre in India more potent than even Zeigenbalg, who landed at Tranquebar twenty years before Schwartz was bom. It may be worth while to notice the steps by which such a career was prepared. Bom in 1726, he was left motherless while yet an infant. But, as his mother died, she gave her boy into the hands of her Lutheran pastor and weeping husband, with this solemn charge, which recalls the story of little Samuel: " For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him. There- fore, also, have I lent him to the Lord. So long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. Take him, and foster in him any aptitude which he may show for the Christian ministry. This is my last legacy."
The dying commission of this modem Hannah was fulfilled. His father trained young Schwartz to sim- ple, self-denying habits; sent him at eight years of age to the grammar school at Sonnenberg, where he got a good start in Latin, Greek and Hebrew; then eight years later he transferred him to a higher school at Ciistrin. There unhappily, his youthful passions, not yet under the discipline of moral re- straint, led him into dissipation, and it seemed as though his mother's **last legacy" would not prove also a prophecy.
But God remembered his covenant. The lad was kept back from presumptuous sins. He came under Francke's influence, became interested in his orphan houses, and studied at the university where Francke taught. That marvellous man drew him with cords of love, led him to a true consecration, and introduced him to Schiiltze who had been twenty years in India, and was then at Halle to print the Tamil Bible. Under the contagious enthusiasm of this saintly missionary, the seed planted in the boy's heart by
THE NE W PIONEERS. 91
his mother found its growth in the man's life and character.
But its full ripeness was reserved for the oriental clime. On the voyage to India, his remarkable lin- guistic powers were again brought into play, for he so acquired the English tongue as to be able to preach in that language on his arrival at Tranquebar. Within four months, he preached with ease in the native dialect; then mastered Persian, and so had access to the greatest of Mohammedan princes; by his ac- quaintance with Hindustani, he became invaluable in the service of the British Government; and fur- ther acquired the Hindu- Portuguese, that he might reach the mixed race descended from this double ancestry.
His passion to save men made all labour and sacrifice seem little. He studied the habits, modes of thought and idioms of speech, and even the mazes of mythology, which are the paths to the hearts of the Hindus, But above all he set himself so to live in God as by his life to compel men to think of God. No hin- drance was or is so serious to mission work as the utter and often shameless wickedness of those who in the eye of the native population stand for ** Chris- tians." The Indians of the West said of their Span- ish conquerors in Central America, " If they are to be in heaven, we prefer hell;'* and the Indians of the East replied to those who preached to them purity, ** If only the pure in heart can see God, it is sure that your countrymen will not be fotmd in heaven."
But the character of Schwartz was a sermon that convinced the gainsayers. He spared not himself nor counted his own life dear. With an energy and unselfishness that have almost no parallel, as they had almost no limit, early and late he gave himself to^work, and what his hands found to do he did with his might. His discourse before a small native con- gregation was prepared with as much care as if for
92 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
courts and crowned heads of Europe. The country became dotted with native churches.
He was but forty years old when events occurred which stamped his career as unique, even in the history of mission enterprise. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge chose Schwartz for its new mission at Trichinopoly. His whole allowance was fifty pounds a year. He lived in a small room and on a diet of rice and vegetables. A church was built to hold two thousand people, but he would not allow his work in an English garrison to hinder his greater work among the natives. With the humblest of them he conferred and counselled, and the proud Brahmans were often won by his argu- ments, though they, like the Pharisees, feared to con- fess Christ, lest they should be put out jcrf their ** sjmagogues." In 1769 he so charmed Rajah Tal- jajee by his thanks before meat, and his holy conver- sation, that when Schwartz left Tanjore, the Rajah persuaded him to return; and so great was his influ- ence on the Rajah's subjects that they declared that if their prince would set the example his followers would all become Christians; and the Rajah might perhaps have confessed Christ but for the violent opposition of his court.
Henceforth Schwartz went by the name of the ** Padre," and was free to go where he would, preach- ing and teaching. His life was a living epistle of Christ, a whole volume of Christian evidence and apologetics. One young nabob said, ''Until you came we thought of Europeans as godless men who did not know the use. of prayers." When chosen as the only man fit to treat with Hyder Ali, lest his hands should even seem defiled with presents he would take nothing beyond bare travelling expenses; and his candour and courtesy won even that tyrant, so that on a subsequent occasion he said, '* Send to me none of your agents, for I trust neither their words nor pledges: send me the Christian missionary and I will
THE NE W PIONEERS, 93
receive him." In the awful famine when Tanjore was laid waste, the Rajah said, ** We have all lost our credit; let us try whether the people will trust Schwartz," who was authorized to arrange as he could; and in two dajrs a thousand oxen and eighty thousand measures of rice were ready for the starving garrison.
This one man, by the simple force of his piety, was not only preacher and pastor, but patriarch. He made laws and gave judgment. He ministered to living and dead. When punishment for slight of- fences became necessary, the culprits besought that he might himself inflict the penalty, and from his judgment there was no attempt or desire to appeal* When, in 1787, the Rajah died, his influence pre- vented the suttee at the funeral. All unsought by him, the magistracy of the country was in the hands of this saintly missionary. Freedom from deceitful- ness and selfishness made him the organizer of cos- mical order in the midst of social chaos.
After forty-eight years of consecrated service he died, his clear voice still ringing out his favourite hymn:
« Only to Thee, Lord Jesus Christ."
The Rajah's heir, Serjofee, could not be kept, even by Hindu custom, from taking his place as a chief mourner; and three years later, at his own cost, built him a superb marble monument, executed by Plaxman, The epitaph he himself wrote, the fast English verse ever known to be written by a native Hindu:
♦* Firm wast Thou, humble and wise, Honest and pure ; free ixom. disguise ; Father of orphans, the widow's support ; Comfort in sorrow of every sort. To the benighted dbpenser of light, Doing, and pointing to that which is right Blessing to princes, to people, to me. May I, my Father, be worthy of Thee, Wisheth and prayeth thy Sarabojee."
94 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
William Carey — Pioneer in Organized Missions.
1761-1834.
To the Paulerspury *' cobbler," the famous mis- sionary, Orientalist, translator, has long been con- ceded a front rank among pioneers of modem missions and the new apostles.
He was bom the year after Zinzendorf died. At fourteen years of age a shoemaker's apprentice, he was converted at about eighteen, and soon after reaching majority joined the Baptists; three years later he was ordained minister, serving churches first at Moulton and then at Leicester; then in 1793, going with Thomas, as the first missionary from Britain to India. When he died at seventy-three he had for half a century been the leading spirit in modem missions to the heathen.
Several significant stages of progress are notice- able in this leadership. First the kindling of the fires in his own soul and the feeding of them with the fuel of facts; then the carrying of the live coals to other fireless altars, fanning the embers until they burned and glowed, and guarding the feeble flame lest it be smothered by the ashes of apathy, dampened by the atmosphere of selfishness, scattered by the breath of ridicule, or quenched by the wet earth of open hostility. A very distinct stride forward was taken in organizing that parent society at Kettering, among whose original twelve we strangely miss Carey's own name. Then, the next year he became its first representative, and actually arrived at Ser- ampore to give forty years of service to the field in India.
Carey's life is luminous with lessons. First of all, we learn the worth of hard work. He disclaimed genius, but claimed ** plodding," as his secret. He dug down deep into God's word to find His will. In the reading of Cook's '* Voyages," he went with him "round the world," to learn man's state and
THE NEW PIONEERS. 95
need, and so he yearned to bring God's word and that world together, that human want might find its supply, and human woe its solace. From shoe- shop at Hackleton to pulpit and chair at Serampore, he was the same tireless plodder. Up to 1832 he had issued more than two hundred thousand Bibles, wholly or in part, and in forty dialects, beside other printed matter, including valuable grammars and dictionaries of Bengali, Mahratta, Sanskrit, etc. For twenty-nine years he was Oriental professor at Fort William College in Calcutta,
Carey^s force lay in character. What he wrought as a missionary pioneer must find its main explana- tion in what he was, as a man of men, a man of God, Not what one seems, but what one is, fixes the limit of power; the level beyond which the stream never rises is the character which is its source and its spring. •* To ^^ or not to be, that is the question." Reputation is at best but the reflection of character, and often very imperfect and unfaithful; the echo, faint, feeble, far off; but if the man be what he ought, others may filch from him his ** good name," but he is not made poor.
Because of what Carey was, he bore without harm the brunt of a hard, long fight; even the keen blade of unsanctified wit, when used against him, only dulled its edge and blunted its point upon the shield of his manly aim and faith in God. To all accusers, tra- ducers, ridiculers, his life gave the lie.
The energy of his will, every purposeful soul may emulate and imitate. Life that is aimless is both restless and forceless. On the walls of society how many a trumpet hangs, as we saw in the case of young Raimund Lull, useless, voiceless, rusty ! it has no lustre and gives forth no music, and is losing the power to emit sound. What an hour of redemption, when some brave warrior lays hands on the long unused instrimient, puts it to his lips and blows a bugle blast !
96 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES,
Young men — you whose life hangs idle, aimless, mute, while the right is battling with the wrong, would that some hero-spirit might set you quivering and resounding with the clarion-peal of a holy pur- pose to serve God and man ! No work is so weari- some as doing nothing, no self-sacrifice so costly as self-indulgence. Could you wear the " magic skin " which makes sure the gratification of every selfish whim, it would shrink with every new carnal pleas- ure and so at last crush out all true life.
From the cradle to the grave an indomitable will, yoked to a consecrated aim, bore Carey onward, up- ward, like the black horse of the rail, over torrents, up mountains, drawing after him more passive and less positive and resolute souls. With little teach- ing he became learned; poor himself he made mil- lions rich; by birth obscure he rose to unsought eminence; and seeking only to follow the Lord's leading, himself led on the Lord's host.
Carey had passion for souls, and, therefore, en- thusiasm for missions: for human uplifting makes toil sweet, and loss, gain. Self-denial was his habit, and all the accumulations of his life in India were turned to the cause of Grod; when his income reached ;^i5oo he reserved less than fifty for his personal expenses, devoting the rest to the purposes of the mission. This reminds us of Wesley, who kept his personal outlay down to twenty-eight pounds a year, though his income rose from fifty to five hundred.
Carey's companions felt that God was behind him, and this constrained them no longer to resist what at first seemed the wild scheme of a fanatic, lest haply they should have been found fighting lagainst God, Dr. Ryland confessed that God himself had infused into him that passionate solicitude for the salvation of the heathen which could be traced to no other sufli- cient source. He who, like Bunyan, had been given to dishonesty and profanity; whose untamed tongue had been too familiar with the serpent-slime of filth
THE NE W PIONEERS, 97
and lies, was from the hour of conversion a new man. His native aptitude for linguistic study early led him to search into Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Dutch; and his deep sense of human need and gos- pel power, drew him into painstaking investigation into the state of the heathen, and into the Bible as the secret of saving grace.
Holy zeal consumed him. For ten years, with in- creasing ardour and fervour, he urged in private and public prompt and united effort for a world's evan- gelization. Whether mending a shoe, reading a book, or teaching a boy, he was '* absent-minded," for his thoughts wandered to the ends of the earth; he saw a thousand millions of lost souls without Bible, or preacher, or knowledge of Christ. He read Cook's ** Voyages " till he knew as much as the writer, of the degradation and destitution he had seen ; then he bought what other books he could, and borrowed what he could not buy; until he had picked up in fragments a mass of information so incredible that he became a living encyclopedia of missions, and even Scott was glad to stop at *' Carey's College" as he went from Olney to Northampton, and so the commentator sat at the cobbler's feet to be taught,
Andrew Fuller found him at Moulton, a map- maker. Out of such crude materials as a cobbler's shop could furnish, with paper, paste and ink, he had outlined the countries of the world, representing to the eye the appalling facts about the race and the awful darkness and death-shade in the various lands of cruelty and idolatry and superstition. It was thus that he was prepared, when but thirty-one years old, to publish his powerful "Inquiry into the Obliga- tions of Christians," and in the same year at Notting- ham to preach that great sermon which has given a movement and a motto to missions for a century past, and which led to the great step at Kettering,, the same year, which proved the turning point of missionary organization.
G
98 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Behold the strange retributions and revolutions of history ! Sydney Smith put Carey and his comrades in the pillory, and pelted them with pitiless mockery. To-day, not the Church only but the world honours with homage the name and memory of that *' sancti- fied cobbler." Let men ridicule ! There is a Nemesis of Providence whose hand holds a scourge, not of small cords, but of scorpion stings. The ** apostates of the anvil and the loom " have become God's apos- tles of the new Acts, and their witty clerical reviler is now in the pillory !
Ah, ye humble working men, who, like those prim- itive disciples who forsook ship and tax bench to be Christ's heralds, have left shoe-shop and shepherd's fold, forge and anvil, plough and shuttle, for the sake of the Kingdom, what crowns of glory await you when the final day of awards rights the wrong of the ages I
Robert Morrison — The Apostle of China.
I 782-1834.
This famous ** last-maker" of Morpeth always brings to mind one who was bom twenty-one years in advance of him, the cobbler of Hackleton: for as Carey wrought on boots, so Morrison wrought on boot-trees. Like Carey, he had but an elementary education, and yet had such burning passion for knowl- edge that he worked at his trade with book open be- side him and gave to study the spare hours even of the night. At fifteen years of age he joined the Scotch Church, and at nineteen — again like Carey — was digging deep among the roots of Latin and He- brew tongues, and the more intricate mysteries of theology.
While yet a student at Hoxton, Morrison chose the mission field, and in 1804 was accepted by the London Missionary Society and designated for China. Two years were given to special prepara-
THE NE W PIONEERS. 99
tion, Studying that strange language under a native teacher. He who undertakes the mastery of the Chinese tongue will find his patience and persever- ance tested. It has been said to demand '* a head of iron, a chest of oak, nerves of steel, the patience of Job and the years of Methusaleh." And yet we find Morrison plodding away undismayed at the task he had undertaken and laboriously copying Chinese manuscripts in the British Museum.
In 1807 he sailed for the Middle Kingdom as an ordained missionary at the age of twenty-five. But Chinese hostility to everything British com- pelled him to go by way of New York City, from which place he bore to the American Consul at Canton a letter from the United States Secretary of State, James Madison.
Reaching Canton in September, he took lodging in the humblest quarters, adopting for the time native habits both of dress and of diet. Forbidden to preach, he made closer search into the perplexi- ties of the native language, and in 18 10, three years after landing, he actually put in print the first copy of any portion of the Scriptures ever issued by a Protestant missionary in the Chinese tongue. Four years later he had completed the translation of the whole New Testament, and with the aid of Richard Milne, who joined him in 18 13, in four years more he had ready the entire Old Testament also. It seems incredible, but it is true, that in 1821, less than fourteen years after he set foot on Chinese soil, this one man gave to the Celestials the complete Word of Grod in their own vernacular. This was a herculean labor, and can be appreciated only by those who have undertaken a similar task amid cir- cumstances equally discouraging, disheartening and difljcult.
But this missionary Hercules has other ** labours," as worthy to be reckoned among gigantic achieve- ments. During the eleven years between 1807 and
100 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
1818, he had also prepared and published a Chinese grammar of three hundred pages, quarto; and a * * View of China, " for philological purposes. Verily, there have been giants, even in these modem da3rs, who have confronted, undismayed, foes more formid- able than the Anakim with their chariots of iron. To create a new version of the Scriptures — a first attempt, without either helpful precedents or ade- quate linguistic helps — was an undertaking from which any man but Morrison or Carey would have shrunk back dismayed.
These labours were literally colossal. The Old Testament alone formed twenty-one volumes duo- decimo; but even such tasks were followed by a greater, for he compiled a Chinese dictionary, which he published in the same year with the completed Bible, and which cost the East India Company five thousand pounds sterling to issue !
When Morrison died in 1834, he had devoted twenty-seven years to China as a missionary teacher, translator of God's Word, and distributor of a new and sacred literature. He had laid at Malacca in 18 18 the foundations of the Anglo-Chinese College, which was afterward removed to Hong-Kong; and himself gave toward the buildings and the support of the infant enterprise, twenty-two hundred pounds.
The University of Glasgow sought to pay a tribute to his great intellectual worth, when it conferred upon him, at the early age of thirty-five, the degree of doctor in divinity; and the nation honored him eight years later by making him a Fellow of the Royal Society; and George IV. granted him a special audience, on which occasion he presented the king with a copy of his translation of the Scriptures into the Chinese tongue.
But these honours pale beside the crown which God placed upon his head in permitting him to be the great pioneer in that most huge and hoary empire of Asia. What a conspicuous example is Morrison of
THE NE W PI0NEEH3. 101
that grand truth, so needful to be learned, that no man's true work can be measured by man's yard- stick, Morrison was only a pioneer. He led the way, and that is all. The end of his work as a phi- lologist and translator was but the beginning of the work of evangelization and education which others have done after him and are now doing. Morrison toiled hard but saw little fruit of his toil. He broke up the fallow soil, sowed the seed, but never saw the harvest and put in the sickle. The same year in which he gave the New Testament to the people, he baptized the first Chinese convert, and for four years Tsai-a-Ko adorned the doctrine, until he was called up into the true country of the Celestials, But Mor- rison's reward was postponed for a future day. He ordained to the ministry Leang-Afa, after eight years, during which he had tested his fitness for the work. To present a nation whose population repre- sents one-fourth of the human race, with the entire Bible; to lay the foundations of a Christian college among them ; to gather to Christ the first convert, and ordain the first native evangelist, is enough for one man. But, be it remembered, that as this work of missions is all *' God's building," he who lays the foundation-stones, down deep, out of sight, and whose work may be forgotten by man in the gran- deur of more conspicuous and famous achievement, has in God's eyes equal honour and shall have equal reward with him who lays the capstone upon a completed structure amid shouts of joy and triumph. The rough base-blocks lie beneath the surface, hid- den from human gaze — but they hold up the whole building. But for them the stately column with its delicate tracery, the graceful arch, the sculptured frieze and cornice, the tapering spire or pinnacle, or the glorious dome, were impossible. And so, when China's evangelization is complete, and the temple of God stands in perfect beauty, Robert Morrison's work will receive both its full recognition and reward.
102 THE NEW ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
Samuel J. Mills — Founder of Missions, in America.
1783-1818.
Here is another example of spiritual heredity. This son of a Toningf ord minister was from birth the subject of pious instruction; but the influence that shaped his character antedated even his birth, for his mother declared that she had consecrated him, while yet unborn, to the service of God as a missionary. And from the hour of conversion, he felt an unconquerable desire, which might better be called a passion, for service in regions beyond. This passion instead of cooling with years rather burned more hotly, and during his college career at Wil- liamstown, from 1806 to 1809, was a consuming flame. There he