The New Acts of the Apostles

The Duff Missionary Lectureship was founded by William Pirie Duff, Esq., son of the Rev. Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D. Dr. Duff was a man distinguished alike by his fine genius, his glowing eloquence, and his Christian zeal — a man whose name, familiar as a household word in many parts of India at the present day, stands in the front rank of those great missionaries who have been incalculable blessings to India during recent generations. When Dr. Duff died on the twelfth of February, 1878, leaving his son, his heir, Mr. Duff immediately proceeded to make arrangements for the establishment and endowment of a quadrennial course of lectures on some subject “within the range of foreign missions, and cognate subjects,” as a suitable memorial of the venerable missionary. He was prompted to this at once by filial piety and by the fact that, during his later years, his father had repeatedly expressed a wish that, as a means of perpetuating his influence, a considerable portion of the bequest which he would leave behind him, should be consecrated to this end.

Trustees were appointed to arrange and administer the trust, and these, being selected from the various evangelical denominations, fitly represented viii INTRODUCTION.

Dr. Duff’s catholicity of spirit. In the same spirit, it was provided that the lecturer should be a minister, professor, or godly layman of any evangelical church, and that he should hold the lectureship for four years. The course must consist of not fewer than six lectures on his chosen subject, and these must be delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow during the second year of his tenure of the lectureship, on consecutive Sabbath evenings in the months of January and February, and re-delivered at such other times and places as the Trustees might direct. A further condition, binding on the lecturer, was that he should print and publish, at his own expense and hazard, at least one hundred copies of his lectures, which he should distribute free of cost among the Trustees and libraries of evangelical churches and missionary societies at home and abroad, it being understood that then he should be at liberty to publish as many further copies as he might see fit, and the profits of which should belong to himself. In 1880, the arrangements had been completed, and, between that year and the present, four courses of lectures have been delivered, showing an interesting and edifying variety in the particular branch of the great subject treated by the lecturers, but each and all making a valuable contribution to the literature of Christian Missions.

The Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., professor of Evangelistic Theology in the Free Church of Scotland, was chosen to deliver the first course of lee-INTRODUCTION. ixtures in the Duff Missionary Lectureship. Being amply satisfied with his quaHfications in other respects, it was felt by the Trustees, as well as by Dr. Duff’s own family, that there would be a seemly gracefulness in Dr. Smith’s being appointed to lead the van of lecturers, arising from the fact that he had been associated with Dr. Duff in mission work, first in Bengal and afterwards in Edinburgh, for the long period of forty years, during all which time the friendship of the two men had been most intimate and uninterrupted; while, to quote Dr. Smith’s own words,” he shared with the universal Church the sentiment of admiration of his gifts and veneration of his graces.”

Dr. Smith’s lectures were delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow in the spring of 1880, and were seven in number. His selected theme was Mediaeval Missions, and the lectures were mainly historical and biographical. But when we consider that the mediaeval ages extended over a period of a thousand years, namely, from the fifth century to the Reformation, and that the geographical range of the word included all Europe and even large portions of Asia and Africa, besides; it will be seen that the history of Christian missions, during so many ages and over so vast a space, could only be touched by the lecturer at certain points, and many of them not referred to at all. Nevertheless, Dr. Smith has done much within his narrow limits to increase our knowledge of those periods in which attempts were made to Christianize nations in the mass and at the point of the sword, and when the change effected was, of course, little more than nominal. In almost every page, we can discern

3t INTRODUCTION.

evidence that the lecturer knew a great deal more on the subjects treated by him than he was able to compress within the compass of seven lectures. He has done good and permanent service in separating the fabulous from the real, in disentangling knots that had perplexed earlier writers, in shedding additional information at times upon the struggles of light with darkness, and in giving us good reasons for believing that, even in the midst of much error that was mingled on some occasions in what was written, there was sufficient truth to lead anxious hearts to Christ. At times men rise before us in the narrative who were not missionaries merely, but reformers, influencing extensive regions and transmitting their light to succeeding generations; and who, like St. Patrick in Ireland and St. Columba in Scotland, with the sea-girt island of lona as his centre of action, sending forth his evangelists over wide districts of Scotland to found Culdee settlements and “houses of Christ,” did almost Apostolic work, and helped to prepare the way for the glorious Reformation that was to come.

The second of the Duff missionary lecturers was the Rev. William Fleming Stevenson, D.D., minister of Rathgar Presbyterian Church, Dublin, and convener of the Foreign Mission Committee of the Irish Presbyterian Church and Synod. He stood preeminent as a preacher among the ministers of his church, and his position as convener of its Foreign Mission Committee kept his mind in unbroken con-INTRODUCTION. xi

tact with missions and missionaries. Everything was looked at by him from this sacred centre, and was coloured by it. Nor was this his only qualification; for before the period of his being engaged to be one of the Duff lecturers, he had visited nearly all the great mission fields in the world, especially those scattered over India, and had brought back with him gathered stores of knowledge from many lands, and a heart glowing with zeal and full of hope for the great future which seemed to brighten before him, for India and the world.

He chose as the title of his course, “The Dawn of the Modern Mission,” his intention being to restrict his lectures to the ages which immediately followed the Reformation, when the Protestant Churches had not yet been fired by the missionary spirit, or become alive to the all-embracing authority of the great gospel commission which included in it every Christian disciple: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” While individual men, such as Ziegenbalg and Zinzendorf and Schwartz, as if they had been born before their time, did noble work in their narrow spheres, arfd were as morning stars which foretold the rising of the sun, the Churches themselves were not yet awake. It is not unlikely that Dr. Stevenson hoped to have time and opportunity to record the later history of foreign missions, when the Churches should have awakened to their responsibility, and the dawn of the mission should have passed into the day. But this was not to be. Even his course of lectures on the Dawn of the Mission was never completed. In 1884, he delivered four lectures in the appointed xii IN TR OD UC TION.

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