World-Wide Missions—The Opportunity
THE word “opportunity” means an open door, and the door of opportunity for giving the gospel to all mankind is wide open to-day in every land. God’s providence has broken down national barriers. A hundred years ago India was closed to the gospel, and the first missionaries that arrived in Calcutta were deported by order of the East India Company; but God has broken up that company, and by the most tremendous force has prepared the way of the gospel in all parts of India. One hundred years ago China was sealed against the foreigner, and Morrison, the first missionary, had to wait outside of Canton for one quarter of a century. Even twenty-five years ago there were but a few treaty ports open along the coast of China, and a little fringe of missionaries, while the interior was utterly closed. To-day every province of China is open and occupied. It is only a little while since Japan opened her doors to Western visitors. To-day she is in the van of civilization in the Orient. Korea, the hermit nation, was utterly secluded until less than a generation ago; to-day she offers the most favorable mission field in the world. Many of us can remember the geographies and atlases of our school days, when the heart of Africa was drawn as an unexplored and probably uninhabited page of black; to-day all Africa is open, and teeming with life. Some years ago Cuba and the Philippine Islands were hermetically sealed against the admission of Protestant missionaries. To-day Cuba is free, and dotted with Christian congregations, and the Filipinos are welcoming the gospel to their towns. The modern explorer and the advertising agent have blazed a pathway through every hidden corner of the heathen world. Eighty-five geographical societies are to-day pressing forward into the very heart of earth’s hidden lands. The commercial drummer has painted his advertisements on the trees and mountains, where even the missionary has not gone. Railroads, steamboats, and ocean cables are bridging every gulf that once divided distant nations. The first missionaries required a year to reach their fields. They can accomplish their journey now in a fortnight or a month. The flags of civilized nations assure them of protection on every heathen shore. A million men are working in the international postal union of the world, and keeping up communication between all quarters of the globe. In this and similar ways God has been going before and preparing the way for the message of the cross. The work of Bible translation is the greatest of these. The first missionaries had to make a language for the people among whom they went. The missionaries to-day find not only a written language, but the Word of God printed in it and ready for distribution among the people in hundreds of human tongues, reaching about three quarters of the inhabitants of heathen lands in their own language. The headway thus given to the modern missionary is of incalculable value. Moreover, he finds a certain tone of public opinion in heathen countries which has been slowly created in favor of Christianity through the lives and teachings of previous missionaries. The present generation is entering into the labors of other men who toiled and suffered in loneliness and apparent fruitlessness. The soil has been prepared by the Holy Ghost. The time was, not long ago, when the conversion of a heathen was looked upon as a kind of prodigy, and it was a grave question whether such a thing was possible. To-day the soil of every heathen land has been mellowed and fertilized by showers of blessing and glorious revivals. The heavens have been stored with prayers that are being answered every day, and the very air is charged with spiritual forces which the first missionaries looked in vain to find in the devil-blighted realms of heathen night. The spiritual forces of our age are intensely missionary. The air is full of it. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is falling upon earnest souls, and fitting them for great and heroic lives. There is a spirit abroad that is steadily deepening the conviction on earnest souls that the work of evangelizing the world is the greatest work of this generation, and is possible within our own lifetime. May God help each one of us to rise to the magnificent opportunity, and meet the solemn responsibility of our age!—The Christian and Missionary Alliance.