"Unto the Uttermost Part of the Earth"
By J. N. Anderson
IT is fully nineteen hundred years since Jesus gave his command to carry the gospel of divine love and salvation to "all the world." Then, as now, it could be said that "the field is the world," though with this difference, the entire world was then foreign mission territory. About one hundred years ago the era of modern missions began. Europe and America had become nominally Christian; Africa and Asia and the islands of the Pacific remained heathen and untouched. A mighty missionary impulse suddenly seized the entire Protestant church to send the living missionary with the Bible in the vernacular into every nook and corner of heathendom. This was the birth of the world missionary movement of to-day. As the correlative of this missionary movement, the advent movement set in about six decades ago, animated by the same spirit and identical in scope. The preaching of the gospel in the whole world is the sign and the condition of Christ's coming and kingdom. When the message of "repentance and remission of sins," and the "all things" enjoined by Jesus, shall have been preached in the "uttermost part of the earth," then it will be both possible and necessary for God to send "Jesus: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things." The present is a fitting time to review the past, to take an inventory of missionary achievements in relation to the masses of humanity, and thus get a clear and intelligent conception of the unfinished part of the task laid upon us by our Lord. We believe the present is the eleventh hour of human history, and that the last and final hour will strike when the gospel has gone to all the world. The Scriptures so testify, and in the very nature of things it must be so. The bringing in of the kingdom is the blessed goal of missions, of Christianity, of Christ's soul travail, of God himself in his eternal purpose for man. For this consummation every Christian, especially if he believes in the near approach of the advent, devoutly prays and labors. But what are the actual facts as to the status of world missions to-day? Among the great mass of Christians the belief prevails that the entire round world has been entered and quite fully occupied. Foreign missions (Protestant) to-day are represented by a force of about 23,000 foreign missionaries, 88,542 native workers located at 49,579 stations and out-stations, seconded by a body of 2,304,318 communicant members and an approximate body of 5,000,000 adherents. This force of living power is well distributed in all the main divisions of the non-Christian world, yet the pathetic fact remains that the heart of the two greatest continents (Asia and Africa), together with a score or more of smaller fields or sections of fields, is still untouched. These unreached portions of the earth are, as a matter of course, the most inaccessible physically, intellectually, and morally in the world-field, the very citadel of Satan's kingdom because of the prevailing moral degradation and spiritual darkness. These vast stretches in the heart of the two greatest continents are left out of the count by most persons, largely because they are unknown geographically, and because politically and commercially the outside world has little dealing with them. Central Asia, known as the "roof of the world," the watershed of the largest continent, is a great region of country lying between the Nearer and Farther East, with India on the south and the Siberian steppes on the north. Three great empires, India, Russia, and China, meet here. "Less known than Central Africa and in some places less thoroughly explored, it constitutes a vast area of ghastly deserts and fertile oases, of parched plains and navigable rivers, of perpetual snow and perpetual drought." The population is a great medley of races and tribes whose moral and spiritual degradation is appalling. The religion of the false prophet dominates that whole section, except Tibet, socially, intellectually, and spiritually, as absolutely as it does North Africa. The following survey of this region, given in the Report of the World Missionary Conference (1910), is a graphic picture of its vastness and its need of the gospel:— "Starting in Manchuria at approximately 125° east latitude, the province of Hilung-Chiang contributes 1,500,000 who are without any missionary provision whatever. Moving westward, the needs of at least 2,500,000 of nomad Mongols come into view, who live in the desert of Gobi and the stretches of Mongolia. Still westward lies the Chinese province of Sin-Kiang, including Chinese Turkestan, Kulja, Sungaria, and outer Kan-su, with a population of over 1,000,000. The establishment of three small mission outposts within this vast territory, at Yarkand, Kashgar, and Urumtsi, alone prevents its entire inclusion in this vast sweep of unrelieved darkness. Southward, through Kan-su, Tibet is reached. Here there are about 6,000,000 persons as yet wholly destitute of missionary ministrations. Westward is Afghanistan, with 4,000,000, and north of Afghanistan, Bokhara and Khiva, which, together with the Mohammedans of Russian Turkestan and Russia proper, represent a population of at least 20,000,000, all of them without a missionary." Here, then, is a population of 35,000,000 scattered over an area fully equal to that of the entire United States, which, with the exception of the three small missionary outposts, is not only unentered, but outside the scheme of actual and immediate plans and hopes of all Protestant missionary societies. There are, indeed, many physical difficulties to oppose the missionary pioneers into this unreached stretch of territory, yet on the other hand there are large sections of it where the march of Western civilization has made ready the highways of the King by the construction of railways, telegraph lines, and military preparations. Caravan routes are common, and in some places up-to-date steamboat service is available. Nor is this all; their physical destitution and misery is a door of entrance for the gospel of spiritual healing. The following utterance is to the point: "One remark is applicable to all the tribes that lie beyond the Indian frontier, to the Mohmands and Shinwaris, to the Kohistanis and the Chitrals, to the inhabitants of Swat and Dir, of Hunza and Yasin, that they are all to-day without the help of medical science and skill, and would hail with uncommon thankfulness the arrival of10the medical missionary with his dispensary and hospital, for the sake of which they would tolerate his Bible and listen to his exhortations, and learn to love the Saviour of all mankind." These facts, surprising as they may be, are not presented to discourage or unnerve, much less to weaken the faith of God's people, but rather that we may "look on the fields," and so become intelligent as to the actual missionary situation, and then pray, and plan, and labor with our minds full of information and our hearts touched with sympathy for the unreached masses in those distant lands of spiritual darkness. As a people, our cardinal doctrine of faith is that the gospel of the soon coming of Christ will be preached in all the world. What is the significance of the foregoing figures and facts in so far as our missionary hopes and plans are concerned? What bearing have they on our missionary giving? What have they to do with the education and training of the large number of young people among us who are soon to be the bearers of the message to all the nations? And what is still more vital, what do the unreached 35,000,000 of Central Asia have to do with us in the matter of the special preparation of missionaries? Would it not be a cause for rejoicing if we had a company of at least fifteen stalwart young men preparing to enter in among those needy millions? Why should it not be so? Washington Foreign Mission Seminary.