Notable Missionaries Not Called Missionaries
It is the spirit of a man which makes him a missionary, and which gives him power for good in his mission. If in his spirit he is moved and controlled by a supreme desire to honor God and to do good to those whom God loves, he is at heart one who will be a missionary if God calls him to that service, or he will be ready and glad to help missionaries to the extent of his opportunities and abilities if God has called him to another sphere of Christian service. According to this measure and standard of service there have been and still are notable helpers of missionaries who are worthy of remembrance and honor in connection with any record of American foreign missionary work within the past century.
A marked illustration of this, for example, was Jeremiah Evarts, who was interested in this work from its beginning in America. He aided, and in fact led in the plans for sending out the first student volunteers, and in forming the American Board to sustain and direct them in the foreign field. His influence was a large factor in securing the action of Massachusetts to authorize and assist the Board in its novel and important undertaking, and in giving it a standing before the world. For more than ten years he was treasurer of the Board, — a position of no small importance in the start of such an enterprise. For another ten years he was corresponding secretary, having practically the oversight and direction of the varied operations of the new and great foreign missionary agency. He for years edited The Panoplist, the monthly periodical which was arousing and guiding public interest in the missionary cause, and keeping the public informed of the struggles and successes of the missionaries abroad. The ability and zeal and devotion of Mr. Evarts had much to do with the successful endeavors of the American Board, at home and abroad, in the first twenty-five years of its existence. It seems as if his personal labors in the sphere to which God called him had much to do with making the labors of the best missionaries in their several fields such a success. Not a few of them were trained under him for their special labors, in the mission house, or in occasional movements over our country in his company, before they went abroad. It is difficult for us to see how he could have done so much for Christ and for souls in any single foreign field as he did just where he was in the providence of God. As was said of him, by one who noted the first half-century of the Board’s success, when he had for half that time been laid to rest from his varied labors: “He had a mind and a heart that made him a prince in the domain of intellect and of goodness. He was far-seeing, cautious, earnest, firm, conciliatory, — everything, in short, to render him an eminently suitable person to conduct one of the grandest of human enterprises.”
His influence was felt for good long after he had ceased from his earthly labors. He had really laid foundations for the entire superstructure of policy and methods of action in the home relations to the foreign missionary field, which were accepted as precedents for the generations following. Moreover, when his son, the Hon. William M. Evarts, was the United States Secretary of State, he had occasion to show the important influence of his father’s estimate of foreign mission work, in the meeting of international questions raised by the treatment of missionaries in foreign lands.
And as it was with Jeremiah Evarts in the beginning of the foreign missionary cause in America, so it has been again and again since that day. The man of most importance to the foreign missionary cause for the time being is not always the missionary in the field. God is over all, and he is always ready to direct a child of his as to the field of service in which he would have him to be. Being desirous of, and ready for, God’s direction to service, every child can be sure of assignment to the most important, and hence the most desirable and useful, field and post of duty. Dr. John Todd, who did so much for Sunday-schools, and for young men, and for the world, was, as a poor boy, taken into the home of Jeremiah Evarts, and there influenced and trained for good. Although I did not know Jeremiah Evarts personally, I knew much about him through his son William M. Evarts, our Secretary of State, and through his ward, John Todd, who admired and revered him. And I am glad to have known thus much.
One studying American foreign missions, or indeed modern missions in the foreign field from America or England, should be familiar with Oliphant & Company, a firm of New York shipping merchants, who were interested in China and Chinese trade, or be sadly deficient in knowledge of modern missions. When at about the close of the eighteenth century an ancient manuscript was found in the British Museum, containing portions of the New Testament in Chinese translated in the early years of that century, the attention of the London Missionary Society was called to that vast empire.
But at that time the East India Company, which controlled Canton as the only entrance port to China for foreigners, was hostile to missionary efforts in their field; and the Chinese did not desire any teachers of a new religion. Hence there was no open door for Christianity in Cathay. But Oliphant & Company were ready and forward then as always to aid in any good work in behalf of a needy people, and in 1806 they took Robert Morrison, as the first missionary of the London Missionary Society, to China. In the same vessel went out some English Baptist missionaries for India. Yet this was before the first student volunteer movement in America. Samuel J. Mills and his associates had not yet gathered under the haystack in Williamstown to pray for the world’s conversion, nor had Adoniram Judson, junior, or young Samuel Nott, been drawn in thought towards the missionary work. Oliphant & Company’s interest in missions and missionaries was early and uniform and real.
For a while Robert Morrison had his station in a narrow strip of land outside of the walls of Canton, allotted to the factories of the East India Company. But before long he and other English residents were compelled to remove to Macao, an island in Chinese waters under the Portuguese government, where other of the early missionaries found a home. Robert Morrison, when he went out, received from James Madison (then our Secretary of State, and afterwards our President) a hearty letter to our consul at Canton which was of important service to him.
In 1829, D. W. C. Oliphant, of the godly firm of ship owners who had carried out the first English missionary to China, being greatly interested in the evangelization of that great people, wrote to the officers of the American Board at Boston and of the American Seamen’s Friend Society at ‘New York that he would be glad to give a passage to China to any missionary who would be willing to go there. At this Elijah C. Bridgman, and David Abeel volunteered for the work, and were taken out to the field. Mr. Oliphant from this beginning furnished more than fifty free passages for missionaries to China. As showing that his interest in the missionary spirit and work was hearty and real, it is said that Mr. Oliphant spent hours with Mr. Morrison in prayer and counsel in the Chinese field; and so again with later missionaries to China.
Nor was this all. From his home church in New York City he secured the gift of a printing press, to be called the “Bruen Press,” as a memorial of a deceased pastor. The young man secured to go out as a missionary printer with that press, and as its superintendent, was S. Wells Williams, who did such service for Christ and for all China and for the rest of the world, and whose name stands so high on the roll of missionary heroes of the nineteenth century. The vessel of Mr. Oliphant’s that carried out to China S. Wells Williams and the Bruen Press was named the Morrison in honor of the first English missionary to that empire. Indeed the Morrison is said by the officers of the American Board to have been “almost a missionary ship.” It certainly seems so.
Mr. Oliphant guaranteed the officers of the American Board against loss in publishing the Chinese Repository, if they would undertake it. He built for it an office which they occupied without expense for years, and not only that mission, but the world of scholarship, has been the gainer from this. And in varied and important ways this firm of ship owners was for a generation stimulating the mission boards and missionaries to new work, and enabling them to do more than they could have done without such assistance.
In 1837 the missionary outlook in Eastern Asia seemed far from encouraging. And Oliphant & Company purchased a brig at an expense of twenty thousand dollars for the purpose of exploring in the interests of Christ’s cause in the sphere of commerce and missions; for these two spheres were alwajrs considered together by these men, and of these two spheres the missionary interest stood first. On this voyage of exploration a missionary of the American Board and a representative of the British and Foreign
Bible Society went along. Again a second vessel, this time the Morrison, was sent out exploring. On this were seven Japanese rescued from a wreck on the Chinese coast, which it was hoped would win a welcome for the rescuers as they reached Japan. Dr. Peter Parker accompanied the expedition as a medical commissioner. S. Wells Williams went on the vessel because of his familiarity with the languages. Mr. King, a partner in the firm of Oliphant & Company, accompanied this vessel, as did Mr. Gutzlaff, a missionary of the Netherlands Society. And there were gifts for the natives whom they should meet. But the natives when met were readier to plunder than to welcome.
Yet, though the expedition did not seem to be a success, good came of it in unexpected ways. It enabled the missionary Dr. S. Wells Williams to be of important service to Commodore Perry, when later he accompanied his exploring expedition as its interpreter. And this enterprise is only one incident of many in the long-continued series of good deeds by Oliphant & Company while doing effective missionary work with aid for missionaries without being called missionaries. In all these good deeds of those good men I have had an added interest from knowing personally Dr. S. Wells Williams and Dr. Peter Parker, and from meeting in later years members of the veteran firm of Oliphant & Company on the coast of Florida, and honoring them for their Christlike spirit and for their work’s sake.
Another missionary who was not called a missionary, but who is worthy of honor for his service to missioRaries, was Christopher R. Robert of New York City. He adopted and educated a daughter of Miron Winslow the missionary to Ceylon and Madras, when her mother died. He picked out and assumed the care of quite a number of young men in order that they could go as missionaries in foreign fields. He went into missionary fields in order to see and supply the needs there. In Turkey he found that a college would be desirable, and he proposed to secure one for the missionaries. He himself gave nearly a quarter of a million dollars towards this enterprise, and he induced others to give other sums. And his gifts of money were not the best or greatest of his benefactions to missions. Although the college bears his name, the name was given by the missionaries against his protest, for it was, as they found, a desirable name in view of the prejudices of the Turks against other names. As it was my privilege to welcome Mr. Robert to my army tent above Richmond, during the Civil War, so I am glad to include him among the good missionaries and helpers of missionaries whom I knew and have honored. It has been this way in all the days of missionary service. Those who are called missionaries, and who are worthy of the good name they honor, are indebted for much that they are enabled to do to those who are not called missionaries. What two missionaries present or spoken of at the great Toronto Conference of 1902, were doing more in their sphere for Christ and for souls than John R. Mott or Robert E. Speer, who, whether at home or in their world circuits of the mission fields, are not called missionaries, yet are always more than missionaries?