To the Women of the South-western Union Conference
By Mrs. C. C. Lewis
Dear Sisters: For a long time I have been wishing to talk with you about our Woman’s Work for India. Are we doing all we ought to do for that work? Are we really doing what we planned a few months ago to do? The fields are white already for the harvest. Many heathen lands are to-day opening their doors to us, and reaching out their hands, saying unto us, Come over and help us. The spirit of prophecy tells us that now is the accepted time to push the work in the “regions beyond.” The experience of the missionaries now in foreign fields proves this true. Mrs. John Davidson, the wife of a Friend missionary, in the Missionary Review of the World for April, says: “We are now living in such times as we never saw in China before. Years ago the people would crowd around us out of sheer curiosity. Now they crowd around us to ask about the doctrine, and to ask to have their names entered as inquirers. In the past we have had to give the people catechisms, Testaments, and hymn books; now they come and buy them; and when they have bought them, they read them, and, moreover, they know what they have been reading about. They come not by twos or threes, but by scores and hundreds.” My heart has been stirred as I have read this and similar testimonies concerning the open doors of heathen lands. How the Macedonian cry is coming to us from every country! How can this gospel of the kingdom be preached to all the world in this generation, if we do not awake out of this lethargy? Have we not reached a time when the Lord is going to do a short work in the earth? If we do not bestir ourselves, will it not be said of us, He is “joined to his idols: let him alone”? God forbid that we should be found asleep at our post of duty when all heaven is astir. We flatter ourselves that we are quite a missionary people, that we sacrifice for the message, but we need only to read the Missionary Review of the World, and see what other people are doing, to find that we have only a glimpse of the real spirit of sacrifice and missionary zeal. Think of Mrs. Warren, who recently died in India, where she has labored for the past twenty-seven years. Many years ago she and her husband were sent to that field, where he afterward died, leaving her alone in a strange land. Even when left alone, she refused to leave her field, but stood true and faithful at her post—alone, and yet not alone. Another worker in India, after speaking of the sordid, sunken lives of the people, exclaims, “What can we do for such a degraded people?—Save them! We did not come here because they were attractive, but because they were lost. We did not come because the work was easy, but because God was mighty; not because they loved God or us, but because he first loved us and them. And we are glad we came, glad a thousand times! However low they are fallen, their Christ has come to save them. We can begin with loaves and fishes, with the water of a well, or whenever we find them, with a gospel that can save them, body, soul, and spirit.” These illustrations might be increased indefinitely, of men and women who know nothing of the soon coming of the Lord or of the third angel’s message, yet who are giving their lives that others may know of Christ. Shall we, who have been favored with the special message for the closing days of the world’s history, be indifferent at such a time as this? If we are, surely the Saviour’s words concerning Chorazin and Bethsaida, will apply to us. If the truth that was given to us many years ago had been given to them, who knows but that, ere this, they would have been far in advance of what we are. We have taken it upon ourselves to support one, only one, zenana worker in India. Are we going to do this in a grudging, half-hearted way, or are we going to give of our means as God has given us of his truth? Dear reader, is the third angel’s message worth anything to you? Does the gospel of healthful dressing and healthful living save you any money? Does it save you any doctors’ bills, any suffering? Does the Christian’s hope and the knowledge of a soon-coming Saviour give you any joy and consolation? The Lord blessed Abraham that he might be a blessing to others, and that is what he wants each one of us to be. We want to see the time, and see it soon, when not only the Southwestern Union Conference shall support a foreign worker, but when every conference in the union conference shall have her own foreign worker in the field. The Lord blessed the beginning of this work, and he will bless it until the end if we are faithful and true to duty.