The Missionary | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 13.

The Missionary.

The Christian Minister.

WILLIAM CAREY, the first English missionary, spent more than forty years in India, in earnest, self-sacrificing labor for the salvation of the heathen. His motto seems to have been, "Expect great things of God; attempt great things for God." In his life he illustrated the sentiment which he expresses in the following paragraph:—

"A Christian minister is a person who in a peculiar sense is not his own; he is the servant of God, and therefore ought to be wholly devoted to him. By entering on that sacred office he solemnly undertakes to be always engaged, as much as possible, in the Lord's work, and not to choose his own pleasure or employment, or pursue the ministry as a something that is to subserve his own ends or interests, or as a kind of by-work. He engages to go where God pleases, and to do or endure what he sees fit to command, or call him to, in the exercise of his function. He virtually bids farewell to friends, pleasures, and comforts, and stands in readiness to endure the greatest sufferings in the work of his Lord and Master. It is inconsistent for ministers to please themselves with thoughts of a numerous auditory, cordial friends, a civilized country, legal protection, affluence, splendor, or even a competency. The slights and hatred of men, and even pretended friends, gloomy prisons and tortures, the society of barbarians of uncouth speech, miserable accommodations in wretched wildernesses, hunger, and thirst, nakedness, weariness, and painfulness, hard work, and but little worldly enjoyment, should rather be the objects of their expectation. Thus the apostles acted, in the primitive times, and endured hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ."