True Romance of Missions

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 3, 1908

True Romance of Missions

THE preconceived ideas of almost every missionary are likely to receive a rude shock on reaching the mission field. The usual thought is that the heathen world is full of amiable people, eager to welcome the missionary, and to lend themselves immediately to the carrying out of all the teaching with which the missionary is charged. A very brief experience easily upsets all this. The “heathen” are found to be as tenacious of all their beliefs and modes of thought and habits as others; nor are they always ready to admit the value of the strange missionary’s message, nor to see why they should change their ways, derived from generations of revered ancestors. The missionary early learns that the taking of the heathen world for Christ is not a romantic gospel promenade, but a very serious piece of business, which taxes the utmost resources of the best endowed and most fitly prepared men and women through successive generations. Happy is that missionary who, when the mere romance of the foreign aspects of his work is staled by experience, falters no whit.—Selected.