The Land of the Great Canal by B. E. CONNERLY

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 31, 1913

The Land of the Great Canal

By B. E. CONNERLY

B. E. CONNERLY

It is not more, neither less, difficult to work for the salvation of souls in Panama than in any other country. And it is not more, nor less, difficult to proclaim the advent message to these heterogeneous wanderers who have congregated around the canal than to the millions who have tarried in the fatherland. But, to the reproach of evangelism, for nearly four centuries after the Reformation no gospel missionaries ever interested themselves in Panama. She has been shamefully neglected, and her distress for the need of the true gospel still pleads most eloquently for help.

It is almost axiomatic that Panama has long needed a canal. Navigation has suffered untold loss for the lack of a waterway across the isthmus. But what loss have its semibarbarous people suffered for lack of the Word of God! Who today bemoans the delinquencies of the church? and who is willing to sacrifice to compensate the loss? Not one generation has passed since Charles V in which courts and congresses have not been petitioned for aid to construct

a canal; and finally, to accomplish the great enterprise, men, at tremendous cost in life and property, have penetrated fever-infested jungles and are soon to accomplish that for which they have sacrificed so much—the mighty furrow from ocean to ocean.

But who has loved the inoffensive Maya Indians enough to make a sacrifice for them that they might have a knowledge of God and thus inherit eternal life? Who ever brought a Bible to their millions of ancestors? Who has taken the time and energy to offer prevailing prayers for these Indians, that they might be delivered from a dogmatism that for centuries has hung like a subtle aura over their fair land?

The gospel has been denied this people. The world has remembered its own; for war, for plunder, and for suzerain tenures it has not failed to send its Balboas, its Morgans, and its Bolivars; but when did a Zinzendorf or a Paton ever sight this unhappy coast? When did any minister of the word offer to crimson this sod with life's blood that this people might be turned from devotions at the altar of the unknown god and from submission to dogmas that have long ago proved themselves anachronic and worthy to perish from the earth?

This is Panama as she was, and as she still is. Heard from, but still sadly neglected.

Ancon, C. Z.