THE fulness of time has been reached for the accomplishment of God's great purpose among the nations of men. The last century has witnessed an awakening of Christian effort. The cry of a lost world has made insistent appeals to missionary endeavor, and on every side we see many and varied agencies springing into existence, prepared to execute the designs of the great Master in the world's evangelization. The preacher of the word, the teacher, the explorer, the empire builder, the commercial promoter, men of every ability and capacity, at some time and in some manner, have been used of the Lord in the promotion of his cause in the earth. Schools and printing-presses, hospitals and dispensaries, and church, philanthropic, and missionary societies, have all contributed to the sum total of Christian effort. It would be difficult to differentiate as to the relative value of all these great forces. In God's providence each has accomplished, and is still fulfilling, its allotted part. There is one agency, however, deserving of special mention on this occasion, the value of which has come to be recognized during the last century. We refer to the work of the medical missionary.
This method of Christian labor is coming to be regarded as more closely conforming to the work of the Great Teacher than any other method of Christian service. The idea is not a new one. It is as old as Christian effort. While meeting its highest exemplification in Christ, who in all his work combined efforts for both the physical and the spiritual well-being of mankind, the idea finds expression in the Old Testament Scriptures as represented in the labors of various prophets and religious teachers. The principles of health and sanitation enjoined by that great Jewish statesman, Moses, were quite as scientific and up to date as the enactments of our modern boards of health.
Modern Christianity has been slow to recognize the value of medical missionary work. Roman Catholic missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used medical treatment as an aid in mission work. Their knowledge, however, was imperfect, and their methods were crude. Dr. John Scudder, who went to Ceylon as a missionary in 1819, is reputed to be the father of modern medical missionary evangelism. His thirty-six years of earnest service in that needy field furnished many evidences of the value of this method of labor; but it was not until thirty years later that the total number of medical missionaries in heathen lands reached twoscore. From this time, however, this class of workers greatly increased, till in 1885 there were in active service one hundred seventy medical missionaries, and at the present time there are about eight hundred medical missionary physicians laboring in foreign fields. This does not include the large number of medical missionary nurses or native helpers who have been trained for this work.
Dr. Arthur T. Pierson said, "Medical missions are the last but not the least important and valuable of the keys by which God unlocks the doors of hermit nations." In the missionary advance in India, China, Turkey, and the islands of the sea, this kind of Christian labor has proved a key indeed. It was by the labors of medical missionaries that the hermit seclusion of Korea was broken through. The nephew of the reigning monarch had received in the civil war severe wounds which threatened his life. The native surgeons were endeavoring to stanch the flow of blood by pouring in melted wax. Dr. Allen, a devoted medical missionary, arrived on the scene. The native doctors stood back in amazement as they watched him clean and disinfect the wound, tie up the arteries, and apply proper bandages. The success of this effort led the emperor to exclaim, "We must have such medicine and such surgery;" and as a result, came the royal hospital with this young surgeon at its head.
"O rock, when wilt thou open?" were the words of Francis Xavier, in 1552, while trying unsuccessfully to force an entrance into the interior of China. But China's doors have since that time been unbolted to the effort of the gospel missionary, and among the most important agencies that have wrought miracles of saving grace in that mighty empire is the work of the medical missionary. In China, whose inhabitants comprise more than one fourth of the earth's population, there are no native hospitals, no native asylums for the blind, no quarantine regulations, no knowledge of hygienic measures, no knowledge of medicine, surgery, or dentistry. If the untold suffering of the millions of people in that empire is to be relieved, it must be done through the efforts of the Christian medical missionary. At the Hangchow medical mission hospital, and the dispensaries attached thereto, over fourteen thousand new patients are annually treated. This is but an illustration of the work being done in scores of places in that field. Many of these patients are reached by the gospel.
Dr. George E. Post tells of a Christmas festival held in Syria. About two hundred were gathered at this service, a motley company of English and Americans, Germans and French, Jews and Druses, Armenians and Mohammedans, natives from various countries and various fields,—from Jerusalem, the slopes of Lebanon, from Cyprus in Asia Minor, and Turkestan in Central Asia, from Bagdad in Arabia, from the great Sahara, and from the farthermost waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. From all these different sections they had come seeking healing.
James L. Barton says, in his excellent book "Daybreak in Turkey":—
"Medical missions in Turkey are less hampered by officialism and hindered by opposition than any other form of missionary work. Physicians are more generally welcomed, and their benefits more widely appreciated than anything else missionaries do. . . . Missionary physicians, their medical schools, hospitals, dispensaries, and practice among the people, have been a mighty force not only for alleviating suffering, but for breaking down the superstitions of all classes of people. . . . Perhaps the medical work of the missionaries in Turkey has accomplished more in breaking down the benumbing belief in fatalism among the Mohammedans than all other phases of mission work together."
And so we might go around the whole circle of missionary endeavor, to Japan, to interior Africa, to the East Indies, to the islands of the South Pacific, to Central and South America, illustrating the value of medical missionary effort by many pathetic incidents showing how by this means the missionaries have brought healing to the body, and in that way obtained entrance to the soul.21When we come to Protestant lands, to the great city centers of America, Germany, and Great Britain, the value of this method of ministry is fully as evident. A noble work indeed has been done by visiting nurses, treatment-rooms, hospitals, and dispensaries. Alleviation has been brought to many a sufferer. The channels of benevolence and philanthropy have been opened, and the money of the rich has gladly done service for the poor.
The denomination represented by this gathering to-night has not been slow to appreciate the value of this class of workers. Years ago schools for the education of missionary nurses and physicians were established in connection with its leading sanitariums. These, by the blessing of Heaven, have accomplished a noble work in training scores of young men and women for such labor among the needy and suffering millions of the various nationalities of earth. Our own medical missionary physicians and nurses may now be found at work, side by side with evangelical workers, in nearly every country to which our efforts have extended, and the same rich blessings which have resulted from the labors of the medical missionaries of other boards and societies are attending the service of our consecrated workers.