Why? by Lyman Abbott

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 15.

Why?

By Lyman Abbott

WHY should Paul have taken any of his missionary tours? Does not charity begin at home? And must not the child first be fed? Was Palestine yet converted to Christianity? Were there not Jewish synagogues yet to be converted into Christian churches, and Christian churches to be confirmed and instructed, in the great pagan city of Antioch? Was there not work enough to be done? If we possessed the spirit which characterized Paul, we should not be content to put five or six evangelical churches in single villages of one or two thousand inhabitants, while the great Southwest is dominated by Mormonism, and while pagan darkness still overspreads Africa, India, and China. Nay, we should not be content to sit Sabbath after Sabbath in our warm, lighted, and luxuriously-equipped churches, to enjoy our religion, while people swarm in sections of our great cities, and manufacturing towns, and in many of our rural districts, who as truly live in heathendom as though they never heard the sound of a church bell. It was because Paul believed in his very heart of hearts that Jesus Christ came to seek as well as to save the lost, that he went out through Palestine into Asia Minor, and thence into Europe, where the lost were—went out from the Christian fellowship of congenial companions, to be buffeted and beaten and mobbed and scoffed and scorned, by men who hungered not for the gospel, and received it now with vehement hate, and now with jeering harder to overcome. What would be the effect, reader, in our own town if, some Sabbath morning, the whole church should follow Paul's example, and turn its back upon its customary place of meeting, and should go throughout the town to find and to save the unchurched masses?—Lyman Abbott.