An Incident of Missionary Life by S. M. Zwemer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 24, 1911

An Incident of Missionary Life

By S. M. Zwemer

Recognition

An Incident of Missionary Life

No man can be a pioneer missionary who does not have his convictions in regard to Christ and the gospel wrought out in his own life experience. The pioneer is dependent on his own resources; he stands alone. He must be not only a man with a message, but must embody that message in his own life and character. The pioneer missionary is, therefore, in a peculiar sense, the representative of Christ. Some years ago I was preaching in one of the hospitals in eastern Arabia, and spoke of the love of Christ,—its length and breadth and depth and height,—using the words of the apostle as the basis of my talk. I endeavored to present the subject simply, so that it could be understood by the uneducated people who had gathered in the waiting-room. At the close of the address, a Moslem, unprepossessing in appearance, who had evidently not been to the hospital before, stepped forward, and with Bedouin bluntness exclaimed, “I understand all you told us, because I have seen that sort of man myself.”

In the conversation that followed, this Arab, who came from a city about five hundred miles distant, began to describe, in response to inquiries, a stranger who had come to his city and taken up his residence there. “Why,” he said, “he was a strange man. When people did wrong to him, he did good to them. He looked after sick folks and prisoners, and everybody who was in trouble. He even treated Negro slave boys and sick Arabs kindly. He was always good to other people. Many of them never had such a friend as he was. He used to take long journeys in the broiling sun to help them. He seemed to think one man was as good as another. He was a friend to all kinds of people. He was just what you said.”

To my surprise, this rude, uneducated man had recognized, in the description which I had given of the love of Christ, a Christian missionary, and greater was my surprise later to find that it was my brother, Peter J. Zwemer, who, in 1893, opened work in Muscat, and died in the Presbyterian Hospital, New York, in 1898. That Mohammedan had not only heard the word of the missionary, but he had seen it exemplified in the missionary ’s life. What higher tribute could be paid to the daily life of one of God’s servants than the fact that an ignorant Mohammedan, studying him day by day, recognized Christ?—S. M. Zwemer, in Bombay Guardian.