The New Witnesses and Workers
The New Acts of the Apostles tells, as we have intimated, not only of converts, but of those who as unmistakably belong to the ‘’noble army of martyrs” as did Stephen or James. Converts from tribes the most debased have given proof alike of genuineness and heroism by the voluntary endurance of suffering, torture and death for Christ’s sake.
When the capricious and treacherous King of Uganda panted like a wild beast for the blood of Christian victims, he seized young lads whose only crime or offence was their ardent attachment to Jesus, and the consistency that, in them, rebuked his fickleness and inconstancy; and they were led away to die. The crowd followed them with jeering and mockery, led on by the ‘’high priest” of the king’s cruelty. But ridicule and sneer expended their darts in vain upon the shield of faith borne by these young disciples.
They were, like their crucified Lord, taunted with their faith in God and their trust in His promises, and were burned to ashes to test their new doctrine of the resurrection. But the answer to all this was that of the prisoners in the Philippian jail — prayer and praise to God. The place of their death was the edge of the dismal swamp — Maganja; the bed of their torture a wicker framework built over a slow fire; and the prelude to this awful agony was mutilation — the knife, then the flame. Butchery without mercy — then roasting with fiendish cruelty! Not a murmur of complaint — songs of praise to Jesus, mingled with moans of agony and sobs of anguish; and then the long silence that tells of the end! Yet when another young convert stood by and saw all this and was threatened with a like fate, he only dared these human fiends to do their worst, declaring that he was not ashamed of Jesus.
Japanese converts have had to risk martyrdom. When in 1876, forty pupils of Captain Janes’ school in Higo, in Kiushu, pledged themselves to Christ, it was the signal for open war. The leaders were withdrawn from the school, held as prisoners, some of them for over three months, and subjected to all sorts of intimidation and indignity; parents vowed to commit harakii’i, unless their sons abandoned the Christian faith; but they stood firm. Their Bibles were burned, their physical strength in some cases failed, and death was threatened; but all in vain. One of them was made the slave of the servants in his own home, and they were bidden to treat him as a devil-possessed man without human rights. He became an outcast in his own father’s house, but stood like a rock.
It must be remembered that, notwithstanding all the missionary literature of our day, the history of the work of the past century is but fragmentary, like the Acts of the Apostles. Especially is this to be borne in mind, that most of the facts concerning the development of native disciples on foreign soil have been gathered from incidental references in the biographies of missionaries. The major part of the history of native converts and churches is yet unwritten. For example, there is as yet no published account of Dr. G. L. Mackay’s work in Formosa. Who shall tell us the full story of converts and martyrs who belong to the New Acts of the Apostles? We must wait till God’s Book of Remembrance is read!
Martyrs — yes, and missionaries too, have come from the ranks of these converts. Not only have noble disciples, but valiant witnesses and apostoHc preachers and evangelists, come from the Maoris of New Zealand, the Hottentots of the Southern Cape, the cannibals of the South Seas, the brutal Malag-asy, the Australian aborigines — Nazareths of paganism whence even Christian disciples once thought no good thing — certainly no prophet — could come.
The ministry is the flower of church life, and, therefore, its highest product — its consummate fruit and hope; for in that flower is not only the bloom of the beauty of the divine plant, but its fruit and seed — the secret of propagation. In the Acts, we trace the results of missions in the creation of new heralds who spread missions. And, in the new Acts, converts have scared)^ been gathered into churches upon heathen soil, before, by a spontaneous movement of the new life, these converts themselves have been found going to the other unsaved souls about them with the good news — and outrunning the mother churches of Christendom in zeal and activity. The first mission to Micronesia was organized and manned by Hawaiian converts. It was the South Sea disciples that John Williams sent forth as pioneers to new islands and island groups; and they won triumphs and bore away trophies where no white man had ever set foot. Bishop Patteson’s ten years’ work in Melanesia was full of pathetic heroism; and his native boys proved how sincere was their love to Christ and how ardent their zeal for His kingdom, when they offered to go and undertake work on other islands. The SoiitJiern Ci’oss, in the year of Patteson’s death, bore twenty-nine of them from the missionary college at Norfolk Island to spread gospel light at their homes; and when the year ended, three hundred were at work, and they represented most of the islands from the New Hebrides to the Solomon group.
The total force at work now on the foreign field is close to fifty thousand; and while not more than one-fifth of the number come from Christian lands — including wives of missionaries and other women who are teaching — the other four-fifths are native evangelists, preachers and pastors, teachers and helpers! So that the missions, recently begun among heathens and pagans, have already given to the mission field four times as many workers as the churches at home have sent forth! When converted Raiateans organize missionary associations, establish missions in surrounding islands and support them with offerings of cocoanut oil; when the Samoans surprise the missionary by declaring that they are ‘’ Sons of the Word,” and in eighteen years every island, within a circle whose diameter is four thousand miles, has heard the gospel, and all this mostly at the mouth of native converts, — the Church may well stop to ask whether mission-harvests have not yielded more of the seed of propagation than the crops that grow at home!
When, from Erromanga’s shore, the relics of Williams’s devoured body was borne to Upolu, his Samoan converts resolved to rear the cross on the spot where he fell; and at risk of like fate, again and again, they made the attempt. When Bishop Selwyn knelt on that tragic shore to ask God to open a door of access to those debased natives, it was a converted pagan teacher who knelt beside him. And when at length, forty years ago, the chief, whose club killed Williams, surrendered that club as a trophy of missionary triumph, it was two natives from the Hervey group who had effected entrance.
Thus the triumphs of the cross are already to be found among all tribes and races, classes and conditions of men. As Dr. Flint has well said, ‘* Comparative theology is a magnificent demonstration not only that man was made for religion, but for what religion man was made.” What missions can do is sufficiently demonstrated and illustrated by what has already been done. The individual is the type of the universal, and one community, of all others like itself. God has chosen enough of the highest from among the heathen to prove that none are so elevated as not to need the gospel; and sufficient from the lowest, to show that none are so degraded as to be beyond the gospel’s reach. Whatever doubt may have existed as to the expediency and efficiency of Christian missions, that greatest logician, Experience, has now demonstrated such doubt to be unreasonable and unfounded.
The most hopeless fields have often been the most fruitful in the end, and the harvests that have been longest in ripening have often been the largest in yielding. History is already so fulfilling prophecy as to render the most glorious predictions no longer seem incredible. God has thus emphasized His own command by the encouragements of rewarded toil. Facts are His new trumpets that sound His new signals. The world lies before us, open to access; a thousand millions of human beings wait for the message. To go and give the gospel is to impart infinite blessing, and yet increase our own riches of grace in imparting. Every motive — whether drawn from the voice of authority that spoke on Galilean hills, or from the wail of human woe and want that comes up like the moan and sob of many waters telling of wrecks and drowning souls — every conceivable incentive, whether found in devotion to our Lord or passion for men; in the humane sympathy that would relieve man’s present misery, or the holier self-sacrifice that would uplift and redeem immortal souls — every motive and incentive unite to urge us to bear to the earth’s utmost end the tidings of the cross. Let us tell men what Christ has done for the world and its sins and sorrows — let us assure them that the Son of David even now rides triumphant and comes near to His temple — that they may meet him with their waving palms, and holy hosannas, and cry, ‘■’■ Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!” — and so the final Palm Sunday of the ages shall be ushered in when out of millions of mouths of babes and sucklings, new-born into the kingdom, His praise shall be perfected!