"Instead of Thy Fathers . . . Thy Children": Hiram Bingham, Jr.

GOD’S promises to those who trust him are to them and to their children, and we are constantly reminded in the history of godly families of God’s fidelity to his promises. It stands out prominently in the record of missionary families. It has been referred to again and again in these personal memories. Dr. John Scudder is already honored of God in the mission field to the third and fourth, and perhaps even now the fifth, generation. Isaac Bird has children and grandchildren in the mission field where he labored so faithfully. And the families of such men of God as William Goodell and Henry J. Van Lennep and Miron Winslow and Daniel Poor, and others of whom I have here spoken, give evidence that no legacy which a father can leave to his children is so precious or so sure a stay and support, even in this life, as a share in the covenant which is for a thousand generations.

Going out to the savage idolaters in the islands of the Pacific in the early days of American missions called for an exercise of heroic faith in the readiness of God to give to his people the heathen for an inheritance and the uttermost part of the earth for a possession. Yet the blessing on those pioneer missionaries and the success granted to their faithful labors were beyond what could have been at the beginning their best and brightest hopes. And the record of the families of those missionaries in the generations following is one to make believers glad and grateful, and it is a page of Christian history that glows with the ever-bright glory of the Sun of Righteousness.

Hiram Bingham was a pioneer missionary to the Sandwich Islands. When he and his associates reached those islands of the sea only barbarism and idolatry presented themselves. Before he was compelled by worn-out health to leave that field to others it was as “a garden of the Lord” in his sight and in the sight of the world. And a son of his born in those islands, and bearing his honored name, was not only following up his best later work, but was ready to imitate his early heroic labors in going to new and needy fields beyond in the trackless seas. While a young believer, I had reason to be interested in the labors of the godly son, as I had already become interested in the brilliant successes of the heroic and faith-filled father.

It was just about the time — a little more than fifty years ago — that I was brought to Christ, and while my heart was burning with its new love for the Saviour who had shown such lOve for me, that the missionaries and their children who had done such work for Christ in the Sandwich Islands were seeking to do a similar work beyond. And Sandwich Island natives who had been won to Christ by missionaries from distant lands were desirous of bearing the glad message of and from their loving Saviour to others in darkness and need on other islands.

“Micronesia,” or “Little Islands,” is a portion of the Pacific, including the groups of the CaroUne Islands, the Ladrone Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Mortlack Islands, and other groups, together with single islands. It is a little world in itself where souls are precious to Christ and to those who love him. But in 185 1 there was not a messenger of Christ in that crowded and waiting world. In 1852 three American missionaries with their wives, from the Sandwich Islands, Messrs. Gulick, Sturgis, and Snow, together with two native Hawaiian Christian helpers, began work in the Caroline group of Micronesia. A few years later, Hiram Bingham, junior, from his Island home, and Messrs. Pierson and Doane, with their wives, joined the others, and then Micronesian Christian life began in earnest.

But Micronesia was still apart from the rest of the world, having no regular means of communication with it. There were no lines of vessels touching at any of the islands of Micronesia, and in consequence months would pass before there was an opportunity to receive or send a home letter or to obtain needed supplies or needed assistance. For instance, the good mother of one of those missionaries died at her home, and it was two years before he learned the fact. And when a missionary’s wife was ill, and it was believed a change of air would save her, there was no way of securing it for her. Under these circumstances it was proposed that a special vessel should be built to be at the service of the missionaries, and go from island to island carrying letters and supplies, and enabling missionaries to visit and aid each other at regular or special times. The desirableness of such a missionary helper was apparent to all. And then the proposal of the mode of building and equipping such a vessel was one which widened and intensified interest in it.

The proposal was that a great stock company or “combine” of the children interested in the missions and missionaries of the American Board should be formed for this great undertaking. Shares of stock to the number of two hundred thousand were issued at the par value of ten cents a share. A certificate was issued for the share or shares taken by each individual, having on it a picture of the proposed missionary brig surrounded with the appropriate words: “He spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him” (Mark 3: 9). The name of the vessel was to be the Morning Star, as representing Him who is “the bright and morning star.” And each certificate bore the signature of the treasurer of the Board.

Appeals for aid in this good work were then made to ’ children in every Sunday-school and in every. neighborhood, large and small, in New England and beyond, where the American Board was an object of interest and support. And how the children responded and rejoiced, and with what a feeling of ownership and of sympathy did they look anew at the missionary brig and at the missionary cause, when they had paid for and received a ten-cent share! No multi-millionaire of to-day who has purchased a controlling interest in a great system of railroads has a more conscious or satisfactory sense of his invested capital than had the average boy or girl of that day who was a shareholder in the Morning Star capital.

As illustrative of this an incident was told of such a boy visiting the vessel builder’s yard in East Boston while the Morning Star was being fitted ouf. The boy clambered up the gang-plank with the air of one entitled to be there. When he was cautioned by an attendant not to interfere with anything about him, the boy straightened up and said calmly, as if he knew his place and rights, “Oh! I’m one of the owners of this vessel.” And in many a New England home the certificate of stock in the Morning Star was hanging framed on the parlor wall as a household treasure, and in consequence of it in after years there was added interest in the missions to the Micronesian Islands, among which the missionary brig was doing service.

Only those in whose young life the building of the Morning Star was a reality can understand how much that enterprise did for promoting and deepening the interest in missionary work in the Pacific among children in New England. Not only were those framed certificates of stock seen on the inner walls of many a home in city or country as a reminder of the interest taken in the missionary work, but there were other and even more attractive “object lessons” in many a house. There were blown-glass models of the missionary brig, about eight inches long and of corresponding breadth and height, showing the hulls and decks and masts and sails as they were, with the sea and waves about the vessel, while an inscribed pennant bore the name Morning Star conspicuously. And all this in a protecting glass case made an attractive ornament on many a mantel or corner stand in library or dining-room or parlor.

This glass model of the missionary brig was the basis of many an earnest talk about the far-off missionaries in the home circle, or as it was taken for a text for an address in the Sunday-school or the monthly concert of prayer for missions. Many a child in the back country, or among the hills of New England, or in the interior or Western states, who had never seen the ocean or a large vessel with such sails, received his first vivid impressions of what was being done for Christ in Micronesia as he looked at that model, while he listened to the story about it. That glass model was a treasure in my Hartford home, and my children learned to value it and its associations and history as the years passed on. When in 1875, I removed to Philadelphia, there was no incidental loss over which I grieved more than the breaking of the glass model of the Morning Star. But the memories and the lessons of it survived its breakage and loss.

It is a precious memory to me to have stood with the scarred veteran hero, Hiram Bingham, senior, the pioneer missionary to the Sandwich Islands, in his church and school in New Haven, when his form was bowed with age in his evening of life. It is also a precious memory of mine to have stood by the side of Hiram Bingham, junior, at the jubilee celebration of the Sunday-school in the First Parish of Charlestown, Massachusetts, while he was stalwart and erect in the maturity of his manhood as commander of the missionary brig, Morning Star. That chm-ch was the home of Jeremiah Evarts, who did so much to organize and establish the American Board, the first foreign missionary society in the United States, and to secure it a place among the nations of the earth. Dr. John Todd as a poor orphan boy had a home in the family of Jeremiah Evarts. He was a teacher in that Sunday-school when it was organized, and he also was present at the jubilee celebration.

Thus the beginning of foreign missionary work in America was there represented with the latter present and the hope of its future. And God seemed to be saying assuringly to those who had stood for him in the waste places of the earth when the missionaries seemed all alone in the world:

“Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, Whom thou shalt make princes in all the earth.”