The East Indian Field by J. E. Fulton

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 7, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 14.

The East Indian Field

By J. E. Fulton

What a field for missionary effort! I would that I might describe it fitly so that you might understand its needs. I think there is no field so little understood. Of India and China we have heard much, for missionaries have been there for many, many years. Tourists also have traveled there and given accounts of the country and its people. But this field of which I speak is less known, and the least visited of any part of the globe. I especially refer to the Indian Archipelago. Why this is so, I can hardly imagine.

It is a neglected land. But in another sense is it especially so. Little has been done here along missionary lines. This is the greatest shame of Christendom! Here millions of souls as capable as any of receiving and understanding the truths of the Gospel have been left alone. And while almost everywhere the people know nothing of the Gospel, yet people from Christian lands have been living here for generations. What a sad tale! A helpless and dying race, visited by intelligent men from European lands, and yet hardly a word spoken to them to tell them that there is a God above who loves them and that He had given His Son to die for them. And where they have as much as heard that there is a God that the white men worshiped, they must have thought Him God for the white men alone, for few of the white men hold anything in common with the poor natives. What can be done to bring them help, to save these poor people?

While on a voyage among these islands, we saw from our vessel rockets sent up from a ship in distress which proved to be some ten miles out of our course. But notwithstanding we were on a European mail steamer, the captain quickly put the ship about and steered in the direction of the signals. As we came nearer we saw in the moonlight some small islands, between two of which the captain slowly and cautiously took the steamer, and we saw here at the extreme point of one of the islands a light which we knew was the vessel in distress. Soon a boat came off toward us, and we learned that a large, four-masted bark had stranded, and the men asked our help. What anxiety all showed, both passengers and crew. “Were any lives lost?” was on every tongue. And all were anxious to know what could be done. Any one was willing to lend a helping hand.

We think of the many wrecks of manhood in these islands, stranded on the rocks of superstition and heathenism, and crying out in their need to us. Shall we turn a deaf ear to their cry? Shall no help be sent? Or shall the help be so insufficient that only a few are saved and most all have no opportunity?

O may the Holy Spirit in some way impress our dear brethren and sisters with the importunate needs, with the pathetic appeals for help sent forth by these teeming millions! You may to some extent content your minds that many of your fellow creatures in your homelands had at least an opportunity of receiving the light many, many times, but here all is darkness, with only a faint glimmer of day. Many years have passed since the light of the third angel’s message reached America. How many shall pass before the same opportunity shall be given for those who are here! Souls are just as precious here as there, and they are far more abundant.

“O where are the reapers?” May the spirit of love and of sacrifice that brought Christ from heaven electrify His church everywhere, kindling the sparks of holy zeal and devotion that characterized the first great Missionary, and also many of His followers. What enthusiasm was displayed by Heaven on our behalf! See royalty itself retire and lay aside its robes of purple, its scepter and its diadem, and issue forth in the lowly footsteps of the Redeemer into this dark, sin-cursed earth to rescue its rebellious inhabitants! And at such a cost, at such a sacrifice! What love, what self-sacrificing love! Is not this condescension beyond a parallel? And shall we not reciprocate! Would that our enthusiasm might be kindled to burn like Moses’ bush and yet not be consumed. How cheering it would be to Heaven after giving its mightiest Prince, to see among the redeemed race more of the sons and daughters filled with an undying enthusiasm for a life of self-sacrifice like that of their Master! And never till there is a larger measure of divine enthusiasm diffused in the homelands will we see done what must be done in these fields that are ripe already to harvest. “Now, just now, is the time to work in foreign fields.”

J. E. FULTON.