The New Appeal of Man
We tarry to make more emphatic what has been already referred to — that voice of Jiinnan need which constitutes a new incentive, for it has never been heard as now, and heard all round the horizon like a thunder-peal from all quarters at once. Never until now have we known what heathenism and paganism mean. The numbers which they represent, so great that in India alone it would take seventeen years to give each woman and girl a Bible, at the rate of 20,000 a day! And if the unevangelized passed day and night before us, one by one, the procession would be endless, for a new generation would have grown to majority before the present living host could march by! The need so awful and the woe so mournful that no words can do justice to it, and no figures illustrate it.
What increased knowledge of the wants and woes of heathendom! What a book might be written on the condition of mankind in pagan lands — especially of women and children; the curse of caste, of dishonoured labour, of human slavery and human torture; of the prostitution of virtue in the name of religion; of infanticide, parricide, suicide; and the countless, nameless enormities and cruelties that have made the places where paganism dwells, the habitations of demons. ‘’In Darkest Heathendom” is a volume not yet written, but it needs to be written. The facts are not new, but the knowledge of them is new. The dark places of the earth were full of the habitations of cruelty in the prophetic and Apostolic ages, but the midnight had not then been penetrated, even by the explorer’s transient lamp. Now we know the horrors and abominations of pagan, papal, heathen, and moslem lands — the awful superstitions and degradingrites that even “the Light of Asia” leaves undispelled.
Near Mauch Chunk, in Pennsylvania, is a burning mine at Summit Hill. For thirty-five years every effort made to quench it has failed, and at a thousand points steam and gas escape; vegetation is gone and the rocks are so hot as to blister the hand at the touch. That burning mountain is the awful symbol of heathenism. The unquenched fires have burned for ages. War has been the almost constant curse of a Christless paganism, and, asHenry the Fifth said: ‘’War’s three handmaidens are Blood, Fire, and Famine; and Famine, awful as it is, meekest of the three.”
Nevertheless, there are great possibilities waiting for development, even in the heathen world. General Grant, after his circuit of the globe, pronounced Li-Hung-Chang one of the three greatest statesmen of the age, ranking him with Gladstone and Bismarck. Surely a country that can produce such a man ought to be permeated and penetrated by the gospel. Sir Bartle Frere witnessed to the indirect effect of Christian teaching, that it everywhere dignifies labour, sanctifies marriage and family life, and uplifts manhood; that, even where it does not convert and renew, it checks, refines, and reforms; and where it fails to sanctify, it, at least, subdues.
There is great need of new enterprise in the department of missions, and there is every encouragement for it. Christ still says: ‘’Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” Like Talleyrand, it behooves the Christian disciple to keep his watch ahead of the rest of mankind, and rather surpass than fall behind worldly men in enterprise for God. The time is coming when Christian disciples will look back to this age as radically deficient in energy and holy activity, just as we now look back to the age when William Carey sought to rouse England.
The men who are watching the times are oppressed with the incentives God gives us to immediate action. Hudson Taylor appeals for the evangelization of China within the present generation. Not one-hundredth part of the people have yet been reached. He has proposed that, within five years, a thousand more workers should be put into this special field; that two years should be allowed for the study of the native tongue, and three years given to direct labour; and he says that, estimating the population at about fifty millions of families, to reach fifty families a day, for one thousand days, by one thousand workers, would bring the first proclamation of the gospel to all.
We know also how critical is the condition of the world field, and an incentive to new diligence and greatly increased zeal and self-denial, is thus supplied. If ever in human history delay meant danger, nay, certain disaster, it is now. The seasons for sowing and reaping, planting and plucking, are fixed, and their limits are set by natural laws. A season is a fit time, and for all work there is but one fit time. The sower wastes his seed if he sows it after sowing time; and when the harvest is ripe the reaper must put in the sickle, or soon the harvest will not be worth the reaping, for ripeness borders on rottenness. Immediate is God’s word: now or never. In all parts of the mission field it is either time to sow or time to reap; and in some cases the field invites both sower and reaper at once; for there are some who need the saving message, and others who have heard and are ready for further and fuller steps of teaching, training, ingathering, organizing. We must not think that, because the Church is more aroused than a century ago, it is safe to rest content with the present measure of interest and that we need only to maintain it. The Church of Christ has, thus far, not yet begun to deal in earnest with her duty to the human race. Four-fifths of the territory of heathenism and paganism yet remains to be occupied; and as to the Moslem millions, they are scarcely as yet approached! Even where civilization has gone, its contact with paganism has often been a curse rather than a blessing! Christian nations have been identified in India and China with opium traffic and licensed lust, and in Africa with firearms, slavery and whiskey! This century has known no document more pathetically significant than that first letter written in English by a Congo native, who thus addressed the Archbishop of Canterbury:
” Great and good chief of the tribe of Christ: Greeting: The humblest of your servants kisses the hem of your garment, and begs you to send to his fellow servants more gospel and less rum. In the bonds of Christ — Ugalla.”
There are other developments, besides those of time and tide, which ‘wait for no man.” In the field given us to till, God’s work cannot and will not wait. While we sleep Satan is busy. He will sow his seed if we do not sow God’s. And his pre-occupation will double the difficulty when we do undertake for God. Yes, if disciples do not sow the wide and open fields of the world, demons w411. We must not sleep, for the devil never does.
In some cases heathenism is now a house without an occupant, ‘’empty, swept, garnished;” people tired of idols and ignorance, fling away their false faiths and yearn for knowledge. When man is left without any religion, he is in greatest risk. Satan watches to take possession of the empty house, wth sevenfold disaster to the soul. Apathy — neglect of opportunity — -this is all that is needed on the part of disciples, and irreparable damage wall ensue. While we are sending forth one out of five thousand Protestant Church members, to carry gospel tidings, and giving less than a tenth of one per cent, on our average income to keep them at work, the consecration of self and substance is so far behind that of the Apostolic Church that it hints an apostasy.
Watch Satan as he enters every open door, sending his agents everywhere, poisoning the minds of young Japanese and Hindus with Western scepticism before we have got our Christian books and tracts ready, flooding the Soudan and the Congo valley with the drink that drowns reason and conscience, before we have sent missionaries there!
Opportunity never lingers, and when, if ever, it returns, like the Sibyl its price is more costly and its precious treasures are less. The Emperor of Brazil accounted for the great inferiority of Brazil to the great Republic of the north, in one sentence. He said: ‘’My countrymen always cry manana! — to-morrow, to-morrow; but the United States citizen says to-day f’ Would to God the Church would stop all boasting of to-morrow and improve to-day.