The True Field of Missionary Effort by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 13, 1874

The True Field of Missionary Effort.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

It has become a reproach to Christendom, as represented by the popular churches, that, while they affect to be much concerned for the salvation of the heathen, and raise large sums of money to send men to, and support them in, heathen countries, they feel no concern for the heathen when they come near to our door. Many a man has earnestly prayed that God would hasten the time when: “Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands to thee;” and crushed under his heel in abject slavery the poor Ethiopian placed within his reach, and enacted laws making it a punishable offense to teach the Ethiopians to read God’s word!

Much money and labor has been spent to establish missions in China, but when the Chinese come by thousands to our own country, they are treated as brutes, kicked about without regard to the rights which belong naturally to even the lowest forms of humanity, and this abuse brings forth no protest from those who have apparently felt so deeply for the benighted Chinese. No effort has been made to teach them the value of our Christian and republican institutions. But they have been driven back to their own shores with stronger feelings of dislike toward the religion of Christians, and better satisfied with the traditions and heathenism of their native land.

There is a lesson on human nature contained in these facts which we shall do well to learn and profit by. Most men love to make money; and if they can be left to pursue their favorite avocations, they will often freely bestow their money upon others if the others will undertake to meet for them the calls of perishing humanity, and discharge in their stead those duties of life which call for self-denial and consecration to God and his cause.

It may appear to be singular, and yet it is truth, that men will give their money liberally for benevolent and Christian purposes, when, at the same time, they will not personally labor for those same purposes, if their worldly interests are likely to suffer thereby. They think they are benevolent—they think they have the real mission-ary

spirit, and that their feelings are unselfish and unworldly, as long as they are willing to give their means to carry on benevolent enterprises; but very often they rest under a great deception. The millionaire who puts ten thousand dollars into the treasury of a missionary society would be shocked at the base thought of going to the hovels of the suffering to minister to their wants, or of speaking words of kindness and instruction to the heathen whom he meets even in his own city. He is only a Pharisee, and has no feelings of true benevolence in his heart.

We must all remember that we are human, and are subject to like passions as other men, and are liable to fall under the same deceptions which prove their ruin. We need to be tested and proved as well as they. The tract and missionary work is well calculated to prove us; and herein we may learn whether our professed consecration to the service of God is practical or merely emotional. And some are not prepared for this test. There are those among us who are well qualified to labor in this cause, but their business will not permit; some such have a great abundance of this world’s goods, and some are making money so fast that they cannot afford the time to work for the cause of God and for perishing humanity!

I say this work is a test. Not long since, a minister visited a church and had some good, spirited meetings. The church seemed greatly awakened, and the report of their interest was so encouraging that the director of the T. and M. Society thought it would be a favorable time to introduce his work. He sent an appointment, but did not get enough of the members together to carry out the object of the meeting. I do not speak of this because I think they were sinners above all others, but to show that my moralizing is not without a point.

Another very sad mistake is made by some busy people. They think because their work presses upon them, they may be excused, and that there are those who have little or nothing to do who could do such work without any loss of time. But it will be found that they who have nothing to do—whose time drags on their hands—are not valuable workers, nor judicious managers. This cause is worthy of a good offering. It does not seem right—it cannot be right—to give to mammon the service of the industrious, the prudent, and the strong, and to leave for the service of God the improvident and the careless.

God has shown us his mind in this matter by placing at the head of the work the best administrative talent, and now it belongs to others, as the apostle has it, “to be co-workers with God.” And there is not a neighborhood where missionary labor cannot be bestowed with profit, if judiciously performed. And because it takes more consecration, humility, and self-denial, to do this work than to hire it done, it is the test we all need to fit us for the society of the angels, who “do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his words.” J. H. WAGGONER.