THE SOUL-STIRRING THING ABOUT INDIA by William Ambrose Spicer

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jun 20, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 25.

THE SOUL-STIRRING THING ABOUT INDIA.

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE average friend of foreign missions likes to hear of soul-stirring things. Reports of wholesale conversions, of whole villages calling for the Gospel and making haste to turn from idols to serve the living and true God—this is the kind of thing wanted.

But, as a matter of truthful fact, mission fields rarely furnish such items. The demand for the marvelous has, it is to be feared, sometimes led an optimistic missionary to exaggerate in order to meet the wish at home. This vice of exaggeration has done a deal of mischief in foreign mission work, and has sometimes given so untruthful an idea of the situation that critics of missions have felt justified in scoffing at the whole thing, and have overlooked the work actually accomplished. False ideas of a temporal millennium, with all the world seeking the Lord, are no doubt responsible for much of the romanticism in foreign mission work.

The wise course is to face the fact that the world is not and never will be coming in crowds to learn the ways of God.

But there are plenty of soul-stirring facts about India and its needs. The work of missions is all commonplace in itself, glorified as such work always is, wherever it is done, by the fact that it is a ministry of life to the perishing. And here and there, according to the promise, “I will gather you one by one,” some soul finds life. All about is the sordid selfishness and devotion to pleasures of sense on the part of the many, and the sullen, grinding struggle for an almost barren life, with the soul bent down until it seems almost impossible for it to look up toward the true Light. These are the soul-stirring facts about India that one can never escape from.

While Paul stopped at Athens, waiting for his companions, “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” Here is an empire wholly given to idolatry. The sound of the bell, the beating of the tom-tom, the shouting of nightly songs to the gods, ring in one's ears in city or in country almost continually. Heathenism now is sunken into the pit deeper by nearly two thousand years than the heathenism of Paul's day. The literal truth of the Lord's words, “The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made,” is borne in upon one continually. There is but one life-line that can reach to the depths, and some are finding it; but few go even as far as the iniquity of the early Vedic hymn:—

“Who is the mighty God, O, say, To whom we mortals ought to pray?”

To see millions groping in the darkness, with God not far from any one of them, and yet sinking deeper and deeper into the mire, is enough to stir the soul of anybody who has eyes to see and a soul alive from the dead.

Ingenious minds have turned the statistics of India in many ways to make the figures live and impress the mind of the reader abroad with the facts of the situation. But nothing is really more eloquent of the facts than the simple statements of the little school geography. Here are India's three hundred millions, more or less. Everybody who knows the Gospel as an experience, knows his debt to those who do not know it. At any time the spectacle of weary and unthinking millions passing down to hopeless death in endless procession, must appeal to the soul. But, now that the last days are upon us, and the whole world is about to be brought to judgment, how the facts of the situation cry out to every believer to sound the message of the coming kingdom over India!

The only book that can create an interest in foreign missions is the Bible—say the Gospel in Romans to show the need and the remedy, and the three messages of Revelation 14 or the fortieth of Isaiah to urge every heart to the definite service at this special crisis. The interest that is created is the interest that counts. The interest that is worked up easily works down. The interest that comes from above lifts the believer up and never lets him down.

It is a soul-stirring thing in India to look out over the great empire, where one-fifth of the human race are gathered, of many nations and tongues and peoples, and to realize that, in spite of sin and darkness abounding, in spite of the tardiness of more favored lands to send the messengers and the means, yet the prophet actually saw the angel flying in mid-heaven bearing the everlasting Gospel to every one of these nations and tongues; and at the end the message, “Come out of her, My people,” must enlighten even these dark centers with the light of the glory of God, so that every honest soul will see the light. That means that the burden will actually be laid upon the Lord's children to rally to the work and do it in this generation. W. A. SPICER.