In the Christian at Work, for January 13, we find an article from the pen of J. A. De Baun, D. D., which presents the subject of missionary work in a somewhat new light. As it is well for us occasionally to have our social or personal pride humbled by a reminder of the "hole of the pit whence we were digged," we give the article in full:
All through the Old Testament history, from the time of Abraham downward, the knowledge of God, the special favor of God, and the covenant of God were visited upon one nation. He revealed himself as the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Every divine proclamation was restricted to that one people, and—expressly, or by implication—invariably began: "Hear, O Israel!" and, if it were a message of mercy, no other nation on earth had share or concern in it. To the Jews, and to the Jews alone, the word of God was given. They, and they alone, had the covenant and the promises. To them the prophets came; for them burned the altar-fires; and no alien feet might defile the only temple of God on earth which was favored with the divine presence. They were the people; and all other people were outcasts and God-forsaken.
And when Christ came, he came to the Jews. Among them he spent his life and ministry, and to them he spake the words of the great salvation.
But his purpose of grace was infinitely wider than any national limits, and his last act, before he went back to sit upon his throne, was to break down the barrier-walls, and let the fountain opened in Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness flow out upon a ruined world, for the cleansing and redemption of whosoever would. He had finished his mediatorial work among the Jews, indeed, but with a heart and a love which yearned over sinners of every race, and every land, and every generation, and made his grace as broad as the whole round world. And so his last injunction was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." From that hour the church of God has been, not a church for the Jews, nor for Europe, nor for America, but for every creature that has a human soul. Consequently and necessarily, the church of Christ, ever since his ascension, has been a missionary church.
The blessedness of this fact to us who constitute the present church of Christ in this Christian land, we are strangely slow to realize. It seems as if we unconsciously think, though we know better, that we are all Jews—that the word and the worship, and the covenant, and the grace of God have belonged to us, and to our fathers before us, back to the very beginning.
When the Jewish nation had grown old, into the decay of a civilization which ran through two thousand years, and the gospel which they regarded with contempt began to be preached outside their exclusive and haughty limits, who and what were our forefathers.
We are a very mixed people, but we are safe in saying that all the blood that is in our veins is Aryan—of Teutonic, Celtic, Gallic, and Saxon origin, with probably other slight admixtures—but, except in most exceptional cases, without one drop of Israelitish.
When the gospel was given to the Jews, our fathers were not only heathens, but savages. In Britain, in Germania, in Gaul, they clothed themselves with skins; lived mainly by war and the chase; dwelt in caves and rude stone huts, and wattled hovels; and worshipped the sun and fire, and the thunder, and the north wind. Those who attained to more elaborate ritual sacrificed to Odin, the savage, celestial, blood-spattered conqueror of the gods, and looked forward to a final home in Valhalla, the heaven of heroes slain in battle, where they should enjoy the eternal felicity of mimic combats and hunting matches.
According to the wondering and shuddering accounts of their first more civilized visitors—themselves heathen—"in the gloomy recesses of their deeply-shaded oak grove temples, human victims writhed under the barbaric cruelty of their forms of sacrifice. Sometimes the victim was stabbed above the diaphragm, so that during a lingering death auguries might be drawn from the contortions of the sufferer, and the current and flow of his blood. Some were crucified; some shot to death with arrows. Sometimes huge images of wicker-work were filled with living men, or men and animals, and then set on fire, so that all perished together. Diodorus states that criminals were kept under ground for five years, and then sacrificed to the gods, by being impaled and burned in great fires, together with vast quantities of other offerings; and that prisoners taken in war were immolated, and with them the captured cattle destroyed. Cæsar says that they held criminals to be the more acceptable offering to the gods, but in default of such victims they sacrificed the innocent."
This is not written of South Sea Islanders, nor of the savage tribes of Central Africa, but of Britain, including Scotland; of Germany, including Holland. And it is written of them at that very time when Jesus Christ was laying the foundations of his church, and bidding his disciples go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. And it is because that command was given and obeyed, that our fathers were brought out of the awful darkness into the blessed light, and that you and I were reared Christians, and not heathen.
To the missionary work of the church of Christ we owe it that instead of being to-day the witnesses, the worshipers, or mayhap the victims, at the awful sacrifices to Wodin or Thor under the oaks of the Druids, we are sitting together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
If there is anybody on earth who has reason to help, and push the missionary work of the church, with might and main, with enthusiasm and self-sacrifice—with a perfect agony of energy—we, the children of converted heathen, who by gospel grace have come to form part of the Israel of God, are the very men and women.
Common, decent gratitude for the greatest of all possible personal blessings ought to make our ears ring and tingle with the command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." And a feeling of kinship which ought to grow, and glow into a burning sympathy of brotherhood, ought to set our hearts on fire for the poor, benighted souls who have that need of the gospel to-day which our fathers had when their hearts were all dark, and their hands red with the blood of human victims at infernal altars.