The Look Forward

It was a saying of Immanuel Kant that every man should propose to himself three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? and for what may I hope?

Motive is that which moves, or produces motion. All action is the result of incentives; and the more numerous and powerful the inducements, the more prompt and energetic the activity. Hope is, therefore, the greatest motor of human life; it is the very sculptor of character and conduct; the architect of history and destiny. Hope is so connected with happiness that its perfect crown is heaven; and Dante was not less philosopher than poet when he wrote over the gates of the Inferno, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”

The matter now claiming attention belongs at the conclusion of our studies, for it is the apex which, naturally and fitly, forms that culmination.

To tarry, at any point of progress, simply to dwell on past successes, is the forfeiture of further advance. The backward glance is helpful only when the retrospect enables us to apprehend the aspect and appreciate the prospect; when memory inspires and energizes hope; when the review acts not as a sedative and a narcotic, but as a tonic and a stimulant.

Motives and incentives cannot stimulate to action until their value and virtue are felt, and to be felt they must be appreciated. Their weight in the scale will depend upon the attractive power they possess to our minds; for the scale whose beam they turn is the judgment. God will guide with His eye those who keep their eye fixed on His; but the Divine Eye cannot guide without this answering look. Otherwise we must be guided by sterner restraints and constraints, like the beast whose mouth is held in with bit and bridle, leather reins in place of gentler glances.

To this closing part of our great theme we may well approach with thoughtf ulness, for all new progress in missions finds here the hiding of its power. If the new century, now beginning, is to write new and grander chapters in the Acts of the Apostles we must feel the force of the mighty motives which God puts before us. He means that the hundred years ahead shall be as much more abundant in effort, intelligent in zeal, and glorious in achievement, as the century which began with Carey’s sermon at Nottingham surpassed that which went before it. And so countless are the new motives and incentives now yoked to missionary effort, that if they move and draw us as they should, our advance will be not by an arithmetical but a geometrical ratio, and the world’s evangelization will go forward not by slow steps but by gigantic strides.