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Note and Comment

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 3, 1910

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 87, No. 5.

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Note and Comment

No Mission Without Christ

Speaking of the effects of so-called Higher Criticism upon the theological training of young men, and the fact that some who have imbibed these ideas have found their way into the foreign mission field, Henry H. Jessup, D. D., for fifty-three years a missionary in Syria under the Presbyterian Board, makes these excellent remarks in the Bible Student and Teacher for January, 1910:—
If a man does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, what vocation has he among Moslems and Jews? If he does not believe in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, as portrayed in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the repeated utterances of our Lord and his apostles, what message has he to carry to the unevangelized world? Why should he put the church at home to the expense of sending him to tell the Hindu, the Chinese, and the African that he really does not know what he believes? Our message is the evangel, the gospel of glad tidings that Jesus Christ is the Saviour, and the only Saviour, of the world. This gospel he commanded us to go forth and preach to the nations, and promised to be with us always.
It would be well for every missionary, and every clergyman in the so-called Christian lands as well, to sense the force of Dr. Jessup's pertinent remarks. The work of the gospel minister or missionary is to preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he leaves this divine calling and begins to proclaim the theories of so-called Higher Criticism, which constitute an attack upon the authenticity of God's Word and the foundations of the Christian religion, he has surely mistaken the order and character of his calling. The name “Christian” applied to such a one is a misnomer. Sad indeed it is to see so many posing as spiritual leaders of the people who are preaching another gospel than that which came by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Blind leaders they truly are.