“PRAY YE THE LORD OF THE HARVEST.”
The Christian commission reads, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Yet very few professing Christians seem to know what this means. With reference to the great need of missionaries in Africa, Dr. Charles E. Hurlburt, director of the Africa Inland Mission, says:— “If Africa is to be evangelized in this generation, there must be a speedy awakening to mighty intercession. Something more than interest is needed; more than thrilling tales of the darkness of Africa’s sin, more than word-pictures of possible dangers to be met. The present generation of African souls can hear the Gospel only through a great awakening in the prayer-life of God’s people, and such prevailing intercession as will speedily move the Arm omnipotent. “Let us look at a single section of one field, which is only an illustration of many others. The Africa Inland Mission has marked for its advance a line covering, with some windings, nearly a thousand miles to the Nile. Its nearest missionary neighbor, on the right of its frontier station, is nearly one hundred miles away, and on the left, over two hundred. Along the line of its proposed advance there are no stations for some hundreds of miles either way. This line is said by Sir Harry Johnston and13other English explorers to be as thickly settled as any part of Eastern Equatorial Africa. To establish a narrow lane of stations along this line, placing them twenty miles apart, and not more than two or three on a station, will require from one hundred to one hundred and fifty workers. . . . The new missions must be started as tho we had no stations; that is, unknown languages must be learned and reduced to writing, and the people must be taught to read; translations must be made of the Scriptures, and put in the hands of the people; we may not expect to reach all without native helpers, nor can there be strong Christian life without access to the Word of God. “Suppose that a new worker is able to take up a totally new language, learning it word by word without any help, reduce it to writing, secure a vocabulary, and master its peculiarities of construction in two years. This would be a good record for the most competent man. Suppose that in the next five years he is able to translate a large part of the Bible. How many of the people of “this generation” will have passed into eternity without a ray of Gospel light during the two years of learning the language? How many outside the narrow lines of the mission station will have passed away during the years of translation? But if the one hundred and fifty are not forthcoming this year, who can measure the loss involved in a year’s delay? If we double this line, and measure on a thousand miles beyond the Nile through a wholly unevangelized country, and add to this similar lines for every society working in this section, the field grows too vast to picture. “Let us look at another phase of the problem. The Church Missionary Society, the largest body of missionary workers in British East Africa, having a vast field, doing an aggressive Gospel work, reported last year in the East Africa Protectorate Year-book a staff of European workers numbering forty-four, and this after thirty-two years of work. Suppose their bishop should send home for three hundred or six hundred missionaries to come out at once, would not the society, which has the largest force of any society in the world, answer that only God could meet this request? “A still further reason for prayer may be found in the fact that the various governments among whom the continent has been divided are pushing forward rapidly to secure and develop their respective possessions. Occupation by so-called Christian governments does not mean evangelization unless missionaries keep pace with [or in advance of] the government forts. In East Africa, British occupation means the introduction of Mohammedanism through soldiers and servants, and thus a new and sore delay to the Gospel. To meet, then, the necessities of fields already occupied, and to go forward to occupy the unevangelized parts of the continent, demands at once a force of trained workers so vast that imagination would be staggered had not God revealed to His children His wonder-working power. “If the people of God would only think of this until they feel it, and study His promises until they believe them, then meet in little groups for definite, earnest, believing prayer that the Lord of the harvest would ‘thrust forth laborers into His harvest,’ then, and only then, will the light of God penetrate the darkness of the Dark Continent. Fellow-Christian, will you pray for Africa? Do not wait for numbers. Do it now. ‘Two or three’ are sufficient to meet for prayer and claim the Master’s presence. ‘Pray ye the Lord of the harvest.’”