Another Missionary Son of a Missionary: Luther H. Gulick

Foreign missionaries often send their children back to America to be educated. And many of the educated sons of missionaries return to the foreign field to be themselves missionaries. The record of the Gulick family is worthy of note, as is that of many another missionary family although I have occasion to speak merely of those missionary families which have taught me personally some important lessons, or have by their life and words put on me their impress for good.

As my early life was at Stonington, where the whaling interests were large and important, I heard much of the Sandwich Islands, and I had occasion to know something of the South Seas and of Polynesia. I was acquainted with Hiram Bingham, a pioneer missionary to the Sandwich Islands. I was a school-mate and friend of Asa G. Thurston, a son of Asa Thurston who for nearly half a century was a missionary worker in that field. Among my schoolmates and friends were two children of William Richards, another valued missionary in the Sandwich Islands. Later I was an army comrade of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the noble son of a noble father, Richard Armstrong, who did an important foreign missionary

20& work in the Sandwich Islands, as his son came to do an important foreign missionary work in the home field. As I have said, I knew and honored Hiram Bingham, junior, while he was doing valiant service in the ocean cavalry line in Micronesia in the missionary brig, Morning Star. And among the missionaries in Poljmesia I came to know and to prize and to learn from members of the missionary family of Gulick. Of one of these I wish to speak more particularly.

Peter J. Gulick of New Jersey was a missionary in the Sandwich Islands. He went out there in 1827, and I read of him and of his work in my boyhood days in the Missionary Herald and in the Sailor’s Magazine. When the Micronesian mission was formed, Luther H. Gulick, a son of Peter J., was one of the founders of that. This was in 1852, at the beginning of my Christian life. As I was interested in that mission from my relation to the Sandwich Islands, I had a special interest in the Micronesian missionary from whom I heard from time to time. I had Micronesia in mind as a mission field to which I might go, when the Lord summoned me to a special field in which he would have me to labor for him. This was in the early days of my Christian life; but from that time onward I had a special interest in Micronesia and its missionaries. I met and heard, and greatly valued. Dr. Luther H. Gulick and other members of that missionary family. I do not know how many of them have been in actual missionary service; but I knew some time ago that of the seven children of the patriarch pioneer, six became missionaries, in Micronesia, in Japan, and in Spain.

When I first heard Dr. Luther H. Gulick it was on a Sunday afternoon in a church in Springfield, Massachusetts. In giving incidents of his missionary work, and in describing his field and the people among whom he labored, he spoke particularly of the religious side of their nature. He said they gave much prominence to thought of the gods. They recognized the power and the presence of mighty spiritual beings, and gave them deference and were ever laying aside costly gifts for them. He spoke of the expensive and attractive robes and mats of native manufacture, for the wear of their chiefs and for the adorning of their homes; and he said that the first and the best was always set apart for the gods. If you went into a native home you would see hanging against the wall the brightest and best mat recognized as devoted to the gods, and therefore not to be used for one’s own purposes. So as to the choicest and brighter-colored robe fit for a chieftain, and that had cost many weeks or months of patient toil. It was for the gods; no human being could appropriate it.

So he told of their costly and attractive canoes, of which the first and the best were always given to the gods. Some of these canoes which he had seen were things of beauty; but the most attractive, to the construction and ornamenting of which much time and expense had been given, were set apart to the gods and were devoted to their use exclusively. Thus it was with their native weapons of war, and with their fishing implements and gear; they could use nothing for their personal advantage until they had first given the choicest portion to the gods. As I listened to this recital, it seemed to me that the Micronesian natives must have the spirit that God approved, and that in that spirit they were an example to Christian believers.

“But now,” said Dr. Gulick, “you may ask, ‘Is not this all right so far as it goes? Is there anything lacking in the spirit of the Micronesian devotion to the unseen yet ever-recognized gods? ‘Ah! my friends, there is not a thought of love in it all. No native does anything of this sort because he loves the gods, or because he thinks the gods love him. All this giving and all this devotion is in the line of placating a hostile god; it is done with the thought not of paying for protection, but of possibly inducing the gods to let one alone. I never heard a loving word said of a Micronesian god, or an expression of gratitude spoken in view of any act of the gods. Hence it is that we desire to Ijave the heathen know of our loving God, who loves the children of men, and whom the children of men can love. And this is our missionary work.”

That missionary address was a revelation to me. I had never before realized the difference between the religion of Christianity and the best religion of the heathen world. That truth of truths as to the work of Christian missions I gained from the missionary son of a missionary in a missionary field that had been chosen for evangelization by converted heathen and their Christian teachers in an earlier field of missions. The lesson I then learned I have never since lost sight of, and I rejoice to know that which a missionary’s son impressed on me. Since then I have come to see how much of this heathen thought and practice, in giving and in living, is held by those who were brought up in Christian lands; and I want to do missionary work among the home heathen about me.