A New Order of Things

First of all, a new order of things has been divinely created for our encouragement. So novel are the conditions of missionary labour that nothing seems old and unchanged but the gospel message and the converting Spirit. Instead of a world locked against us, with walls to be broken down and gates to be forced, an open highway to the heart of Asia and Africa; in most parts a welcome; in almost all, an undisputed entrance. Instead of the barriers of a century ago, — obstacles between the Church and the heathen world, which hindered approach and access, intercourse and impression; and obstacles within the Church itself, which hindered action and co-operation, — an aroused Church, in sympathy with the work of missions, confronting a world-wide field, everywhere inviting the sower with his seed, and in many parts presenting a harvest calling for the reaper with his sickle.

It has been reserved for the nineteenth century to behold the whole world open to the missionary. God has flung wide the gates of India, broken down the wall of China, unsealed the ports of Japan; Africa is girdled and crossed, Turkey and Siam, Burma and Corea, invite missionary labour, and France and Spain, Italy and Mexico, welcome an open Bible and a simple gospel. These long-locked doors God has curiously opened with the keys of commerce and common schools, the printing-press and medical science, as well as arms and diplomacy. In some cases, still more strangely. He has used His great army” of locusts, caterpillars and cankerworms, famine and fever, drought and flood, to force entrance into Satan’s strongholds. What inspiration to holy activity and zeal, when His shining Pillar moves before us to assure of victory through His presence and power! Moreover, our work may now be done, in almost every land, with comparative immunity from danger. M. Schoffler, missionary to Cochin China, was publicly executed at Sontay by order of the grand mandarin, for his preaching of Christ, contrary to the laws of the land, on May 4th, 185 1. This was the last such execution in the Flowery Kingdom, and from it dates the new era in Chinese evangelization. Resistance we shall probably continue to meet everywhere, but the more violent, the less likely to be prolonged.

There are three stages of missionary work: First, the pioneer period, when as yet the missionary is met with such distrust and suspicion, that little headway can be made; secondly, the period of action., when early obstacles have been removed or surmounted, opposition is overcome, and the cross is actually planted, and converts are multiplying; and, last of all, the period of establislnnejit when native churches become self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating. During the first stage it is vain to send many missionaries to the field; during the third, they may be withdrawn as no longer needed; but during the second they should be especially multiplied; the opportunity is grand but brief, and must be promptly improved; and, in most fields, we have actually reached this middle period, when the need of men and money is most imperative.

Is it no significant sign of the will of God that just at this time of peculiar crisis, such increased capacity should exist in the Church to meet this greatly increased demand? Fewness of numbers and smallness of means the Christian Church can no longer offer as an excuse or extenuation for inaction.

To-day the evangelical Protestant Churches have a membership of nearly forty millions of communicants. One from every hundred, which is a smaller proportion than the small community at Herrnhut actually is sending out — would give us a missionary army of about four hundred thousand — fifty times the present available force. As to money, wealth is in the hands of this vast membership to an extent perilous to piety. From careful estimates, the average income of Protestant Church members, the world over, is reckoned at not less than one hundred pounds annually — a low estimate, considering what hoards of treasure are in the coffers of so many; and yet this yields a sum total of four thousand millions of pounds sterling, or about twenty thousand millions of dollars — a sum too immense for us to conceive.

If of this, a tithe were given, there would pour annually into missionary treasuries four hundred millions of pounds, or two hundred times the amount now given to missions. And imagination fails to paint the grandeur and glory of mission conquests, with a consecrated Church sending nearly half a million men and women into the world field, and furnishing an annual income approaching five hundred million pounds to sustain them in the combat with idolatry and iniquity!

The gifts that idol worshippers lavish upon the fanes and shrines of false gods, put to shame the worshippers of Jehovah. The ‘’Peacock Throne” of the Great Mogul, in the Hall of Audience at Delhi, cost more than two and a half millions of pounds sterling — or twice as much as missions in India since Carey went to Calcutta! And the cost of the new twin temples of Hon-gwan-ji, in the ancient city of Kyoto, Japan, will be as much more. The ‘’Eastern” and “Western” structures belonging to this Japanese fane are superb in expenditure. The latest built of them is erected entirely from free-will offerings of Buddhists; precious woods, metals, money and jewels were given without stint; and the offerings of human hair remind us of the maidens of Carthage and Tyre, who furnished from their ringlets the bowstrings and cordage for archers and war-ships. On one of the platforms could have been seen twenty-four heavy coils of rope, from three to four inches diameter, attached to which was the inscription:

‘’Since the thirteenth year of Meiji (1880), when the rebuilding of the two halls of the Eastern Hongwan-ji was begun, the faithful laymen and laywomen of every place have been unanimous in presenting to the principal temple, Hon-gwan-ji, strong ropes wrought of their own hair, to be used in the work of re-erection. The number of these ropes reached fifty-three, twenty-nine of which became worthless from use. The total length of the remaining twenty-four is 4,528 feet, and the total weight, 11,567 pounds I”

Beside these ropes lay several large coils of hair — several of them gray, the gifts of the aged — which came too late for use, but not too late to express devotion.

One feature of this new order of things is found in the changed relations of so-called CJiristian nations to the rest of the world, God has not only opened doors of entrance to all other peoples, and supplied avenues and facilities for this world-wide occupation; but He has given to the great Protestant peoples of the earth the sceptre of the race. To Great Britain, the United States, Prussia, belongs the undoubted supremacy of the world; for, to the nations most deserving to be called enlightened Christian, the rest of mankind tacitly yield homage. Mohammedanism most stubbornly resists the approach of the gospel; yet Dr. Schreiber, of Barmen, says, of 175,000,000 Moslems, that 100,000,000 are already in subjection to Christian powers, and that before long the other 75,000,000 will be. The political downfall of the False Prophet is thus already an accomplished fact.

The gret pro?ninence of missionary literature sup-A A^EW ORDER OF THINGS. 381

plies another new incentive. When Christ gave his last command, there was not one Christian book — even the first gospel narrative was not yet written. The Church, for nearly a century, had no literature, and had to wait fifteen centuries for a printing-press; and for three centuries more, for any missionary literature outside of the Acts of the Apostles. Some who are yet living can remember when the ‘’ Evangelical Magazine “promised its readers a page of missionary intelligence, ‘as soon as enough matter could be found to fill a page.” To-day missionary hymns are in our hymn-books, missionary magazines and reviews throng our mails; and about one-seventh of our religious publications deal either directly or indirectly with missions; and even our secular dailies devote columns and pages to the subject! We have chairs of missions in our colleges and theological schools, and missionary lectureships. There are some three hundred societies organized for promoting missions, and as many translations of the Bible into the languages and dialects of the peoples whom we need to reach with the message.