The Blessings of Missionary Work.
FROM the report of the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance, held last October at Princeton, N. J., we gather the following:— “As I sat in the gallery of the large church and looked upon the young men filling the floor below me—not one gray head amongst them—my mind was kindled by the spectacle. No material interest had summoned them; no civil or military crisis was exacting a sacrifice; no personal ambition clamored for office or authority, but silent, absorbed, decorous, they sat, listening with eager countenances to the papers read, as though each felt individually addressed by them; one faith seemed to claim them; one hope to animate them; one idea to fill their minds; one work to draw them one to another, in the tie of a common brotherhood, and that work, the salvation of the perishing. As I gazed at these perhaps five hundred men, from all sections of the country, and a number of different churches, enlisted in the dew of their youth in the service of an unseen Master, with utter abnegation of worldly plans, and with aspirations for that “recompense of reward” which is attained on the other side of the grave, something of the supernatural gathered about me, and a sense of a loving presence brooded over the consecrated assembly. “Central Africa was the subject of one paper, and it being brim full of exciting statistics seemed to inspire the speech of the whole assembly, which, this being the last great day of the feast, was the largest yet. A number of foreign missionaries seized the occasion, as well they might, to plead for the cause, to encourage the young men to enlist, and to testify to the fullness of the reward vouchsafed to the faithful missionary even in this life. Dr. Gerald Dale, from Syria, called forth a special interest. Besides him were brethren from China, India, Africa, Burmah, and other lands. . . . They were men, who, by years of missionary life—some as many as thirty years—had won the right to command our trust in their judgment and belief in their statements. They scouted indignantly the arguments so often presented by anxious and reluctant friends, to the youth agitating the question of the foreign field, that by going he would throw his life away. They would do anything but that, they assured them; for among the heathen there would be opened to them varied avenues of usefulness, unceasing demands for every mental accomplishment, and continual occasions for the development of the very highest intellectual power. “They would discover too that God would bestow rich blessings not recited upon their commission, or held out in the hour of their sacrifice. And that amid the labors and self-denials, the dangers and disappointments, and wearisome waitings for a show of results, they yet had much to comfort, to inspire, to support, and at last everything to be grateful for in that171glad sense of duty fulfilled, and that solid satisfaction in their work which they would not barter for all the awards of earthly fame or treasure. It was a convincing and moving scene, that of these scarred and furrowed veterans pressing eagerly forward to recommend the service and gain new recruits for the Master.” “They declared it a privilege, not a mere duty, to go to this work among the heathen. ‘Christ calls for volunteers. It is Christlike to go, as he went, to the despised and neglected.’” “The hardness of the labor and slowness of results, which are sometimes encountered, should be obstacles to no one. Mr. Wilder worked five years in India for his first convert; Judson, six or seven years for his first. One society in Bombay spent twenty years, and another in South Africa thirty years, for the first convert. Slow work, surely, yet the results are great. The whole world is not the value of a single soul. And where the point has entered, though by tedious process, now the whole wedge may easily be driven, if there were only workers enough to deal the blows. True, in some people, the building of sturdy Christian character can be the result only of generations of training. Yet the work is the Lord’s; and the joy is far above discouragements. “Of the whole mission field, however, results are very favorable. While the per cent. gained during the year 1881-82 in all Protestant Christendom may be represented by 1.21, the gain in all mission fields was 7.64; and in the year 1882-83 the gain per cent. in missions was sometimes as great as in all Protestant countries, and that, too, with their churches, Sunday-schools, and various religious influences, which the missions are without. Do missions pay? Is the work devoid of encouragement? Truly it is more encouraging than cultivating much of the sterile soil in our New England villages, to which many are consigned. “On the present hangs the future. As each of us answers the question, ‘Shall I be a missionary?’ so will the future be shaped not of us only, but of all who now sit in darkness to whom we individually might go with the light of the gospel. The missionary outlook depends upon our own inlook. The question is not, Who will go? or, Will you go? but, Shall I go? Older heads of experience and wisdom, acquainted both with us individually and with the needs at home and abroad, may give counsel and help us decide, but after all, final decision is personal, individual. Dr. Charles Hodge once said to a gathering of students, when the same subject was under discussion, ‘I wonder you don’t all go.’ The foreign field becomes a missionary’s native land. He regrets and repines for nothing unless it be, if necessity arise, that he must leave the place of his adoption for the land that gave him birth. Testimony to this statement was given by many. “R. G. Wilder, whose white locks had been bleached under India’s sun, rejoiced in thirty years of service and wished for more to give, with strength of body, for their privileges. R. M. Luther had come from Burmah because the seeds of fever had fastened upon his system and could not be shaken off. He called himself a failure; but declared it better to go and fail than not to go at all. No trial to him, not even the near and threatening approach of death, had been so bitter as the necessity of his return. Another eager to rejoin his station in China was remaining in this country only for the recovery of his wife’s health. The greatest happiness of his life had come to G. F. Dale by his being a missionary in Syria. . . . Scattered through the assembly were students of different nationalities. The seminary at Princeton furnished a Hindoo—a high caste Burman; Yale gave a Choctaw; Boston Seminary contributed several of our own American born negroes; Lincoln University sent a native African. There was a Japanese also, and a Jew.”