p. 507 | The Missionary Spirit

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 32.

The Missionary Spirit.

It cannot be impressed too deeply upon the mind and heart of every Christian that no church can afford to neglect its duty in the cause of missions. Christianity would have perished on the site of its birth, if the apostles had remained in Jerusalem till all the people in that city believed and obeyed the gospel. It is a suicidal policy that takes no thought of the regions beyond. Selfishness is as fatal to spiritual prospects as paralysis. The anti-missionary spirit is the spirit of anti-Christ. It may masquerade in the livery of Heaven, but its purposes are evil. Dr. Duff used to say that a church that is not evangelistic will very soon cease to be evangelical. Look at the history of the church and see if it is not even so. Those epochs in which the church was most prosperous were characterized by the greatest missionary activity. Periods of corruption and apostasy were periods of inaction. During the past eighty years those bodies that did the most abroad are the very ones that flourished the most at home. Those that did nothing to evangelize the world have been smitten with blight and mildew. It must be so from the very nature of the case. When the human body is in a healthy condition, the heart sends the blood to the remotest extremities. When the blood accumulates about the heart, death ensues. A running stream brings health and fertility to all the land. A stagnant pool generates malaria and pestilence. It is the light that extends the farthest, that shines brightest at home. We wish we could permanently engrave this truth on the memory of every preacher and elder. No church can afford to neglect its duty to the cause of missions.—Christian Standard.