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THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA 



THE CALL OF THE 

NEW ERA 

ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 



WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L. 



EDITED BY 

GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

150 NASSAU STREET NEW YORK 



To my Wife 



Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 

in 2010 witii funding from 

University of Toronto 



littp://www.arcliive.org/details/callofneweraitsOOmuir 



PREFATORY NOTE 

BY 

GEORGE SMITH, CLE., LL.D., F.R.G.S., F.S.S. 



rpHE unique value of " The Call of the New 
-■- Era" lies in the fact that (1) it is written 
by a minister of the Gospel to every fellow- 
minister and student, to every member and family 
of the Christian Church ; (2) the work combines 
a scholarly exegesis, spiritual discrimination, and 
accurate history, all eloquently enforcing the call 
of the new era. Though the writer makes no 
direct reference to Neander — the most neglected 
though still the spiritually ablest of the Church 
Historians — he shows the same spiritual insight 
and logical power as that great scholar who passed 
from Judaism to Platonism, and was led by the 
Holy Spirit to Evangelical Christianity. The 
Author states and enforces the Missionary Call to 
every progressing Christian, from the Old Testa- 
ment era of preparation, through Christ and the 
successive Christian centuries to the new era of 

vii 



Prefatory Note 

to-day. As a Scotsman familiar with the history 
of the evangelisation of his countrymen, he lightens 
up the period of Mediaeval Missions to and by our 
own fathers, who first received Christ themselves, 
and hastened to tell the glad tidings to England 
and to Europe. 

God's providential development and the Church's 
Christian duty are pursued to the irresistible con- 
clusion — the obedience of every Christian to the 
Lord's command and the heavenly vision. 

G. S. 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

The Opportunities and Responsibilities of the New 

Era ; it mat be the Last Era . 
A Christian Regeneration or a Pagan Renaissance 
The Whole Orient astir as "never before 
Even Mohammedanism is moving 
Who is to be the Master of Awakening Africa? 
How THE Call comes with all History behind it 
The Apocalypse of the Ages 
The Cumulative Appeal .... 
The Teaching of the Holy Spirit through History 
How Obedience brings Blessing 

CHAPTER I 
THE ERA OF PREPARATION 

Hints and Anticipations in Old Testament 
The Method of Seclusion divinely chosen 
Analogy from Expulsion of English from France 
Ezra's Reformation and the Purpose of its Ex 

clusivism ...... 

The Message of the Prophets 

The Apocrypha and Foreign Missions 

The Doctrine of Tribal or Local Deities 

Hebrew Law about Oppression of Strangers . 

Jeremiah and the New Covenant . 

Salvation for Heathen still means Absorption in 

Israel ; The Choice of Israel . 
Simeon and Anna, and those " that looked for Re 

demption" ...... 

The Coming of Christ .... 

ix 



3 

4 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
10 



13 
13 

14 

15 
16 
17 
18 
19 
20 

21 

23 
24 



Contents 



PASB 

The Preparation among Heathen Nations . . 25 

The Effects of the Diaspora . . . .26 

The Fulness of Time . . . . .28 



CHAPTER n 
THE APOSTOLIC ERA 

From Pentecost till Pliny sent his Letter to 

Trajan ....... 33 

Our Lord and Missions . . . . .34 

The Great Commission implicit from the first . . 35 

The Significance of Pentecost . . . .35 

Persecution required to disperse the Disciples . 35 

The Decisive Steps often taken by Nameless 

Evangelists . . . . . .36 

Revival among the Samaritans . . . .36 

The Gentile Cornelius converted . . .37 

The Beginning op the Foreign Mission Era . . 37 

The Apostle of the Gentiles at his Post . . 38 

The Holy Ghost the Great Propagating Power . 38 

The Beginning of the Struggle with Imperial Rome . 39 
Paradox that some op the Best Emperors were the 

Worst Persecutors . . . . .41 

Little known of the First Missionaries . . .41 

The Value of Traditions regarding their "Work , 42 

Peter and John . . . . . .43 

Paul's Fruitful Journeys . . . . .44 

New Light now falling on this Era . . .45 

How THE Different Churches grew up. Rome and 

Galatia ....... 45 

Primitive Christianity self-propagating . . .46 

Influence of Christian Philanthropy . . .46 

Shown by Persecution. References in Classic Writers 48 
The Kind of People won. Educated Citizen Class as 

WELL as Poor . . . . . .49 

•Christians in the Middle Classes and among the 

Aristocracy . . . . . .50 

Pliny's Letter and its Testimony . . . .51 

Every Believer a Missionary . . . .52 

X 



Contents 



CHAPTER III 
TILL THE EMPIRE WAS WON 

FAOB 

Two Centuries — 112 a.d. till 313 a.d. . . .55 

Mystery op Iniquity at Work . . . .56 

The Blight of the Priest . . . . .56 

Disappearance of Miraculous Gifts . . .57 

Gibbon's Estimate of Christian Population in 313 . 58 
Enemies within the Church as well as without . 59 

Gnosticism : Ebionism : Easter Dispute : Montanists : 

Sabellianism . . . . . .59 

The Apologists were really Preachers and Mission- 
aries . . . . . . .62 

The Great Strategic Vantage Points occupied for 

Christ ..... . . 62 

Christianity an Illegal Religion . . . .64 

The Triumphs op the Gospel . . . .67 

The Beginning of the End , . . . .68 

The Decree of Milan, 313 . . . . .69 

Christians had everywhere perforce been a Separate 

People . . . . . . .70 

Entire Christian Army mobilised and on War 

Footing ....... 72 

PoLYCARP : Justin Martyr : Tertullian : Origen . . 73 

The Wonderful Fruits of Missionary Work , . 81 

The New Dangers which came with Imperial Recogni- 
tion ....... 82 



CHAPTER IV 
MEDIAEVAL MISSIONS 

Disappearance of Flourishing Churches . . 87 

How the Blight came and how Complete its Evil 

Work ....... 88 

Periodic Recrudescence of Paganism, which was never 

quite destroyed . . . . • .89 

Spread of the Gospel among the Barbarians . . 90 

Not a Story of Uninterrupted Progress . . 91 

xi 



Contents 



Mohammedanism ..... 

Scotland's Story typical of what was going on Else- 
where ...... 

Traces op the Evangelists to be found in Place- 
Names ...... 

NiNiAN. Tendency to relate everything to Komish 
Influence ...... 

Palladius and Servanus .... 

Kentigern or Mungo. Glasgow Coat of Arms . 

CoLUMBA. What Monasteries were then 

How they gradually degenerated. 

loNA. How New Ionas sprung up as Mission Centres 

Many Barbarians received the Gospel through 
Corrupt Channels .... 

Romanising Zeal. Disappearance of Missionary 
Zeal ...... 

God never left without a Witness 

Marco Polo's Story of Evangelisation. Friar John 
OF Monte Corvino .... 

The Work in China ..... 

Attempts to state Progress numerically. 



CHAPTER V 
THE REFORMATION AND MISSIONS 

The Significance of the Reformation 
Only the Germanic Peoples were won 
A Revival of Heart Religion 
The Natural Result of New Life 
Luther : Wishart : Tyndale : Knox : Wille : Gabriel 
The Great Place given to Preaching 
Yet Foreign Missions have hardly any Place . 
Rome was busy among the Heathen 
Franciscans and Dominicans 
Mission Work followed the Flag . 
The Preoccupation of the Reformers at Home . 
Counter-Reformation. Social Problems . 
How the Confidence of the Poor was lost 

xil 



PAGE 

91 

92 

93 

96 
98 
100 
101 
103 
104 

110 

111 
112 

113 
115 
116 



121 
123 
123 
124 
125 
126 
129 
130 
132 
134 
135 
136 
137 



Contents 



PAGB 

Keflex Influence of Missions .... 138 

John Knox and Election ..... 139 

SiK AValter Ealeigh in Virginia .... 141 

The Expected End of the World .... 142 

The Gospel to be a Witness . . . .142 

The Appeal of Erasmus ..... 144 

Admiral Coligny and Calvin : Gustavus Vasa : 

Frobisher and Wolfall. . . . .146 

The Reformation Attitude could not remain Nega- 
tive ........ 148 

Warneck's Two Inferences very Questionable . . 149 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ERA OF DEFORMATION 

How Neglect deepened into Rejection . . . 155 

The Vicious Circle op Cause and Effect . .155 

Baron von Welz's Appeal and Example (1664) . .156 
Caret's Experience (1786) ..... 158 

The Scottish General Assembly's Decision (1796) . 158 
Calvinism had become Fatalism .... 159 

But Many still take up the Same Attitude . .160 

The Fire on the Altar never quite went out . . 164 

The Jesuit Missions. Superficial and Unreal . .164 

Xavier's Unhappy and Unworthy Methods . .166 

Mission Work in New England. John Eliot and 

David Brainerd . . . . . .169 

Pietism and its Fruits. Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg . 170 

The Moravian Brethren. Zinzendorf . . .172 

Their Divergence from Apostolic Methods . .173 

The Darkness before the Dawn . . . .174 

Even the Missionaries came under the Blight . . 176 

Missionary Hymns . . . . . .177 

Schwartz : Carey .. . . . . .178 

Influence of East India Company. India's Claim on 

Britain . . . . . . .183 

xiii 



Contents 



CHAPTER VII 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 

PAGir 

Only less remarkable in Missions than First Century 191 

The Methodist Revival. John Y^esley a Supreme Gift 192 

The Potver op Unbelief. Blackstone's Testimony . 194 

Hannah More's Testimony and Limitations . . 194 

Opposition to Work among the Heathen. . . 195 

Preparation through Union in Prayer . . . 196 

Revival deepened by Missionary Enterprise . . 198 

State op the Churches in 1791 . . . . 200 

Outburst op Philanthropy. End of the Slave Trade. 202 

The Healing Salt of Revival .... 205 

Missionary Societies come with a Rush. Tract and 

Bible Societies ...... 205 

The Revival on the Continent. American Missions . 210 
Optimism as to the Future and its Grounds . .213 

Instances of how the Fire spread . . . 215 
Thomas Chalmers : William Wilberforce . .216 

Gracious Interaction op Spiritual Forces . . 219 

Charles Simeon : Alexander Duff . . . 219 

Cambridge and St. Andrews. Moulin and Serampore. 222 

CHAPTER VIII 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Greatest of all the Centuries except the First . 227 
The "Gift of Tongues" of the New Era . . 229 

Began with Fresh Sense of Hope, and op the Rights 

op Man ....... 231 

Enormous Progress made. Some of the Wonders 

wrought ....... 232 

Mr. Churchill : Sir George Le Hunte : Mr. Roosevelt 234 
The Light scattering the Darkness. Story of China 

and Japan ....... 237 

The Extent and Value op Romish Missions . . 242 

Some Dominating Features op Nineteenth-Century 

Work . . . . • • .246 

Different Types of Organisation .... 247 

xiv 



Contents 



PAGE 

Death of Ln'iXGSioNE, A^'D Martyrdom of Hanningtox 248 

The Cambridge Sevex. Student Volunteer Movement 251 

Specialisation and Differentiation . . . 253 

Educational Work. Industrial Work . . . 254 

Medical Missions. Women's Work . . . 255 

Colonial, Continental, and American Missionaries . 260 
How Xames have become associated with Lands. The 

Legion of Honour ..... 261 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

Situation both Critical and Acute . . . 267 

Predominance of Social Problems .... 268 

The Situation in the Far East .... 269^ 

A Making or Marring Time .... 270 

The Xew Imperial Way of Looking at Missions . 272 

The Missionary Inheritance of the Twentieth Century 275 

The Native Churches. Their Moral Difficulties . 275 

Mission Literature ...... 279 

Hostile and Disintegrating Influences also at Work 280 
" The Higher Criticism." Dislike of the Supernatural 

A3I0NG Many . . . . . .281 

"Comparative Religion." The Temperature lowered 

FOR Some ....... 283 

Difficulties about Eternal Doom .... 285 

The Predominance of the Material . . . 288 

The Critical Spirit also at Work Abroad . . 291 

Godless Learning in India. Craving for Education 

in China . . . . . . .292 

"The Immemorial East" . . . . .294 

The Crisis in the Nearer East. Mohammedan 

Missions ....... 295 

Extreme Urgency of Situation in Soudan. Sir 

Reginald Wingate ..... 296 

Professor Warneck's Testimony. Mr. Mott's Appeal . 298 
Interaction and Reaction between Home and Foreign 

Fields . . . . . . .302 

Obedience the Necessary Condition of Success . 304 

XV 



Contents 



CHAPTER X 
THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA 

PAGE 

Its Supreme Urgency ...... 309 

Concerns Governments as well as Churches . . 309 

The Case of China. Other Cases .... 309 

Inventions and Discoveries should all be Con- 
secrated ....... 314 

Paganism not quite Unknown in the Homelands . 317 

Paganism Positive and not Negative merely . . 319 

Every Christian should do Mission "Work . . 321 

The Call to Unity. Reunion began in Foreign Field 322 

The Activity op the Enemies op the Gospel . . 325 

The Appeal to the Heroic in the Church , . 329 
The Whole Truth should be told. The Intelligence 

Department ...... 331 

Ignorance still Stupendous and Shameful . . 332 

The Gospel alone reintegrates Society . . . 335 
Wisdom op Serpent and Harmlessnbss op Dove both 

NEEDED ....... 336 

The Lessons of the Ages : — 

1. "Behold, all Souls are Mine" . . . 337 

2. "Preach the Gospel to Every Creature" . 338 

3. Every Believer ought to be a Missionary . 338 

4. Blessed Circles of Grace and Vicious Circles 

OF Sin , . . . . . .339 

5. The Best may be Short-Sighted and One-Sided 339 

6. Disobedience the Pathway to Rationalism and 

Doom . . . . . . .340 

7. The True Impulse op Humanity knows Nothing 

OP Geographical Limitations . . .341 

8. The Debt of the Home Churches to the 

Churches among the Heathen . . . 342 

9. Now is the Judgment op this World, the Crisis 

of the Church ..... 342 
10. The Call of the New Era both Urgent and 

Inspiring ...... 343 



XVI 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 

ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND 
RESPONSIBILITIES 



N.E. — I 



" Now is the judgment of this world. . . . And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me."— John 12. 31, 32, 

" Human crimes are many, but the crime of being deaf to God's 
voice, of being blind to all but parchments and antiquarian rubrics 
when the Divine handwriting is abroad on the sky — certainly 
there is no crime which the supreme powers do more terribly 
avenge." — Carlyle. 

" We must take a long run that we may leap the better." — 
Montaigne. 

"Upon the great world's altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God." 

Tennyson. 



THE CALL OF THE 

NEW ERA 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 

ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND 
RESPONSIBILITIES 

npHE sense of being on the verge of a new era, 
-*- and some think on the verge of the last 
era, is widespread among those who have under- 
standing of the times or are sensitive to the 
Divine leading in providence and grace. Every- 
where those who are at the front and in touch with 
spiritual movements, whether at home or abroad, 
feel that somehow the situation is critical to a 
supreme degree. They are in fear and great joy, 
and join trembling with their mirth. They are 
amazed at the unique opportunities of the new 
epoch, they are bewildered by its unparalleled 
responsibilities and dangers. 

3 



The Call of the New Era 

We seem to have reached an age when nations 
may be born in a day, but when there is also the 
possibility that the awakening nations may be 
perverted in the very hour of their birth. There 
ought to be a Christian regeneration ; there may 
be a Pagan Renaissance. We have come to another 
of the great watersheds of history, for only the 
first century and the sixteenth can be compared to 
the twentieth : and, just as a soul which has been 
faced by the claims of Christ can never be as it was 
before, the choice for the nations now is nothing 
less than that between reformation and deforma- 
tion, between the peaceful sea and the frozen tide. 
The call of the new era, like that of Christ Himself, 
must be a savour either of life unto life or of death 
unto death. 

It is the primary duty of the Church of 
Christ to enter in and occupy for her Lord when- 
ever and wherever she can ; and there were never 
so many open doors as there are now, each with 
its eloquent appeal for those who bring tidings of 
great joy. For all who have ears to hear, the 
summons to obey the call of the new era is coming 
with a peculiar emphasis, with the assurance that 
this command too has the promise bound up with 
it, and that wherever there is the will to obey 
there will also be the power. The whole Orient is 
astir as it never has been before. AVhat with 

4 



Its Opportunities and Responsibilities 

unrest in India, many-sided awakening in Korea 
and Japan, and revival here and there in the vast 
Chinese Empire, the willing worker hardly knows 
which of the open doors to choose. 

In 1908 there were seven hundred Korean 
students at Tokio, two hundred more than the 
year before ; and of these a hundred were in Bible 
classes and over forty were baptized Christians. 
Even among the Mohammedans, so long con- 
sidered impenetrable, there are signs of a shaking 
among the dry bones, of a moving among the 
imperturbable and hitherto immovable ; and the 
defiant attitude of followers of the False Prophet 
is being strangely modified. Unknown to the 
Christian w^orld, conferences have been held to 
discuss the decay of Islam, and prevent its disin- 
tegration in presence of the modern spirit of inquiry 
and change. The first of these was held at Mecca 
in the year 1899, and the second at Cairo in 1907, 
the subject of conference then being, " The Causes 
of the Decay of Islam." 

In view of the history of Islam, the significance 
of this is overwhelming, showing as it does that 
not even Mohammedanism can stand against the 
pervasive influence of the Bible and of Bible-inspired 
civilisation. Whatever else Modernism is doing, 
it is breaking up the fallow ground, and is at work 
in all lands ; and who knows how soon there may 

5 



The Call of the New Era 

be a religious movement in the Mohammedan 
world analogous to that of the Young Turks in 
politics, which has already worked such wonders 
in regions far too long regarded as practically 
hopeless by many Christians. That the new 
movement in the Turkish Empire has brought 
Mohammedans and Christians into line with each 
other, and that unbiased observers say it is due 
most of all to the beneficent leavening work of 
the Robert College and the American Missionaries, 
are striking reminders that the new era has dawned 
in the Near East as well as in the Far East. In 
Persia there is the promise of freedom of thought 
hitherto unknown, while in Morocco the new ruler 
is inclined to be friendly. All through Africa, too, 
there is a great crisis wherever the New Moham- 
medanism is at work. In vast regions in the 
Soudan and Central Africa, the supreme question 
just now is whether Islam or Christianity is to be 
first in the field, whether Mohammed or Christ is 
to be the Master of awakening Africa. 

For those who have been ground down by witch- 
craft and slavery, and enveloped in the most cruel 
darkness, even Mohammedanism would mean an 
uplift ; and its work of evangelisation is easier than 
that of the Christians, since it is a religion for the 
natural man, and no moral or spiritual conversion 
is needed for transference from one side to the 

6 



Its Opportunities and Responsibilities 

other. But if in any sense it is a good, it is the 
good which is the enemy of the best. 

Nor is it for Eastern peoples alone that the crisis 
has come. The present predominance of social 
interests in the homelands is but the proof that 
empty hearts are crying out in their loneliness for 
the living God. If the Churches in Great Britain and 
America have no eyes for the beckoning hands, no 
hearts to thrill with glad response to the dawn of 
the new day, they will doom themselves to disaster 
and decay, to blindness and false doctrine. Surely, 
when the enemy is beginning to waver at the very 
centre, the time has come to call up all the reserves 
and win the day. 

Our gracious God is never before His time, nor is 
He ever behind. If we are to hear this new call 
as we ought, we must know something of the 
long train of events which have given it birth, and 
how it has grown out of the ages which are long 
since gone. Goethe had it that the universe, as 
we know it, is the living garment of God ; and that 
is even more true of the history of the ages from 
the Christian view-point, as His purpose of grace 
has been unfolded and is being unfolded still. 
Similarly, for Carlyle history was a larger Bible, 
which contains, for all who have an eye and a soul 
to read aright, a clear record of God's dealings 
with men. If we are to be in full sympathy with 

7 



The Call of the New Era 

the message and appeal of our own time, we must 
follow with reverence the apocalypse of the ages 
and see what God has wrought. To company with 
Christ in His glorious march down through history, 
and see Him " weaving the living robe of divinity 
upon the rushing loom of time," is to come under 
the power of an appeal which is cumulative and 
irresistible. 

For the most part, God's revelation of Himself 
has been made through historical events. He has 
clothed His message of salvation in gracious con- 
crete deeds ; and there is no reason for believing 
that He has ceased either to intervene in the affairs 
of men or to show forth His purpose and glory 
to loyal souls. The Holy Ghost Who taught 
the Apostle Peter, through his intercourse with 
Cornelius, that Christianity could be no mere 
appanage of Judaism ; who taught Bunyan that 
men must not be allowed to silence those whom 
God has commanded to speak ; and who taught 
Whitefield and Wesley, through men and women 
won at field-preachings, that they must have done 
with the prejudice that the Gospel could be pro- 
claimed only in consecrated buildings, or by those 
on whom the hands of a bishop had been laid, 
is teaching us that the Great Commission of 
the risen Lord to preach the Gospel to every 

creature was meant to be taken literally, and 

8 



Its opportunities and Responsibilities 

that Cliristiaus can disobey it only at their 
peril. 

Beyond question the Foreign Mission work of 
modern times has done much to deepen the life of 
the Church through that light which obedience 
never fails to bring ; but Christians everywhere 
must follow on in that pathway still more strenu- 
ously, if the discoveries and inventions of the new 
era are to be a blessing and not a curse. To study 
the Divine revelation as it has been made histori- 
cally in Divine deeds, and is now culminating in 
the ends of the earth, is not only to be in line with 
modern thought at its best ; it is to follow the 
stream of grace all the way from its source in the 
heart of the Eternal, and to see beauty and blessing 
spring forth wherever it flows. 

Those who accustom themselves to listen to 
God's voice in the past cannot fail to hear what 
He is saying now. They know the voice of the 
Good Shepherd, even when He speaks in unwonted 
ways ; and He is ever speaking to reverent and 
God-fearing souls, since for them to hear is to obey. 
In speaking of the triumphal entry of our Lord 
St. John says : " These things understood not His 
disciples at the first : but when Jesus was glorified, 
then remembered they that these things were 
written of Him, and that they had done these 
things unto Him." 

9 



The Call of the New Era 

So as the years went past, and the Empire was 
won, and there were Christians all over the earth, 
new light was shed on the universality of the 
Divine love and on the magnitude of the Divine 
purpose, as well as on the methods of the Divine 
working ; and in this new light many a prediction 
and event in Scripture became instinct with fresh 
meaning and power. Nor can it be otherwise with 
believers yet, if they journey with the self-reveal- 
ing God of all grace, as He has made Himself 
known throughout the ages, and has never left 
Himself without a witness even in the darkest 
days. 



lO 



CHAPTER I 

THE ERA OF PREPARATION 



II 



" Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill 
shall be made low." — IsA.. 40. 4. 

" Israelite prophetism was a journalism speaking in the name of 
God."— Renan. 

" I know the right and say the right and yet the wrong pursue." 
— Latin Sayinrj. 



12 



CHAPTER I 
THE ERA OF PREPARATION 

THE roots of the universality and spirituality of 
Christianity are without question to be found 
in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and in the 
great historical interventions of the self-revealing 
Jehovah therein recorded. All through that Dis- 
pensation there were hints and anticipations of the 
Divine purpose of salvation for the heathen — fore- 
casts and prophecies of the Messiah, Who in the 
fulness of time was to break down the walls of 
separation and claim the whole world for Himself. 
Nor does this depend on the testimony of par- 
ticular texts. It is the whole burden and meaning 
of a Dispensation which was manifestly a time of 
preparation for the coming Christ, Who was to speak 
to all the heavy-laden, and to be lifted up from 
the earth that He might draw all men unto Him. 

As far back as the Book of Genesis, Israel is 
set forth as an ordinary branch on the stock of 
humanity ; and when Abraham was called, it was in 



The Call of the New Era 

order that in him all the families of the earth 
might be blessed. The very thought of Israel as 
the first-born of God implied that the other nations 
were to share in their Father's grace and love. 
Jewish exclusiveness has often been set over against 
Christian universality by way of contrast ; but the 
purpose of that exclusiveness must be borne in 
mind if it is to be understood. St. Paul, who grew 
up in the midst of it and knew it from within and 
at its strongest, thought of it as the preparation 
for the universality which was to follow, and to 
which he was so loyal. The method of seclusion 
was Divinely chosen and insisted on with a view to 
the grand result in Christ. The nation through 
which the whole world was to be blessed could 
only advance in the knowledge and service of the 
true God by being temporarily secluded from all 
other nations. 

It is obvious now to students of history that 
the defeat of the English by the French in the 
days of Joan of Arc was a conspicuous blessing 
for the Island Kingdom. But for that expulsion 
which drove her behind her natural boundary, the 
sea, England would have been part of a great 
continental power, and could never have developed 
her true national life, nor would she have become 
the home of freedom and the mother of parliaments. 
Isolation was necessary for ultimate expansion ; 

14 



The Era of Preparation 

separation was the pathway to growth. And it 
was even so with Israel of old. But for the walls 
which shut them in, the chosen people could never 
have done the unique work to which they were 
called in the election of grace ; nor could the 
Branch which was yet to flourish in every land 
have grown up within the sacred enclosure as He 
did. 

The reformation in Ezra's time, for example, 
deliberately aimed at fostering that spirit of exclu- 
siveness which gave such offence to the other 
nations, and lent some colour to the charge made 
by Tacitus and others, that the Jews were the 
enemies of the human race, a charge responsible 
for much persecution. Yet it has been shown that 
even then, and side by side with this separatism, a 
proselytising spirit was developed ; and Josephus 
expressly states that even Gentiles who were not 
proselytes might have sacrifices offered in the 
Temple. The walls were built in the interest of 
those without in the wilderness, as well as of those 
within in the garden ; and they were not only to be 
kept standing until the Messiah came — they were 
to be kept standing in order that He might come. 
Jewish exclusiveness, in short, when rightly under- 
stood, was no more contradictory of the ultimate 
spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth than 
the separation to which Christians are still called 

^5 



The Call of the New Era 

is contradictory of the Great Commission to preach 
the Gospel in every land. 

It was inevitable, perhaps, that multitudes of the 
Jews should forget that they were not chosen for 
their own sakes alone, and that many should become 
Separatists or Pharisees in an unworthy sense. 
But the choicer spirits, who saw things in the light 
of the eternal, were always aware, and aware most 
of all in the dark days of captivity and declension, 
that the enclosure was only temporary, and that 
the walls were to be thrown down whenever their 
Divine purpose had been served. Even while 
among those who were nursed in religious pride, 
there grew up a bitter hostility to the idea of the 
conversion of the heathen, and their participation 
in the covenant mercies of Israel, there was always 
something of a Missionary conscience among the 
nobler Jews. The prophets foresaw the day 
when all nations would be gathered into the one 
family of God, and would enjoy the blessings of the 
law which went forth from Jerusalem. 

The Book of Jonah, for example, exposes the folly 
of the jealousy which some cherished, and shows 
that God had permitted repentance even to the 
Gentiles ; while Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were 
peculiarly the evangelical prophets, taught that the 
Golden Age was still to come, and that when it 
did come the Gentiles would share in its glory 

i6 



The Era of Preparation 

and righteousness. Their great visions are still 
full of inspiration and hope. The earth is to be 
filled with the knowledo-e of God as the waters 
cover the sea. God's judgments are sent that the 
nations may learn that Israel's God is the God of 
all the earth. The moral beauty of Israel's laws 
and the righteousness of the Messianic King are to 
draw the eyes of the heathen to the true God. 
Israel is to be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a 
blessing in the midst of the land. The sons of the 
stranger are to be brought to God's holy mountain, 
and made joyful in His house of prayer. From 
beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, Jehovah's suppliants, 
even the daughters of the dispersed, are to bring 
their offering. 

Much else there was which has already been 
fulfilled, along with much also which our eyes are 
yet to behold of the redemption of the whole earth. 
In the last chapter of his prophecy, Isaiah reaches 
the unique height — unique, that is, even for him 
— that those of the Gentiles who escaped the 
great overthrow would themselves carry the Gospel 
of God's mighty deeds to the most distant heathen 
lands. 

Even the Apocryphal books are not without 
hints of a purpose of grace for the whole world. 
That it is not at all pronounced there, may 
be due in part to the fact that these books date 

N.E.— 2 1 7 



The Call of the New Era 

from a time of Jewish subjection to Gentile EmpirevS, 
cruel and oppressive. But it is there, as for example 
in Wisdom vi. 1-21, xi. 23-26 ; Tobit xiii. 3, 4, 
6, 11 ; 2 Esdras i. 24, viii. 6. 

All through the Old World the doctrine of tribal 
or local deities prevented anything like Foreign 
Missions in our sense. Every god had his own 
domain, and ruled his own people alone. There 
was one deity for the mountains, and another for 
the plains ; one for Edom, and another for the 
Philistines ; and each nation was content that it 
should be so. Converts in our sense were not 
sought for ; and proselytes were apt to be looked on 
as renegades as well as turncoats, disloyal to their 
nation as well as to their gods. Although the 
Jews in this, as in so much else, were partly an 
exception to the rule, they were also influenced by 
this conception, and tended to look on Jehovah as 
a tribal deity like Chemosh or Dagon. From the 
earliest times they had been taught that there was 
one only living and true God, and that all the 
other gods were idols, deaf and blind and dumb. 
But it was long before they realised all that this 
involved ; and Jonah seems to have imagined that 
he could flee from Jehovah to a land where His 
arm could not reach him, very much as fugitives 
from Britain used to flee to Spain because no ex- 
tradition treaty was in operation there. Yet there 



The Era of Preparation 

was always a note of universality in the prophetic 
outlook ; while all through the history, in such 
events as the call of Abraham and the reception of 
Ruth, there were premonitions of the glad time when 
Messiah would come to take away the sins of the 
whole world. The election of Israel was an election 
of grace, that through them all men might come to 
know the Lord ; and their walling-in was a step 
towards the ultimate conquest of the world for God. 

It is not easy to reproduce now the tone of con- 
tempt, and even loathing, with which the Greeks 
spoke of the barbarians — that is, of all who had not 
the culture of Greece. As for the Romans, their 
word " hostis," which at first had meant simply a 
stranger, came to mean a foe, as if the two were 
very much the same. But all through there had 
been a very different law for the Hebrews — a law 
both beautiful and pathetic : " Thou shalt not 
oppress a stranger ; for ye know the heart of a 
stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of 
Egypt." And so Christ still says to believers: "Ye 
know the heart of those who are still in the dark- 
ness, seeing ye were once in the darkness your- 
selves " ; and the walls which shut Israel in were 
never so high that eyes with the love-light in them 
could not see over them. 

In some respects these Old Testament premoni- 
tions of the better time which was coming, of the 

19 



The Call of the New Era 

Golden Age which did not lie away back in Eden 
but was to come in Christ, reach their high-water 
mark in Jeremiah's wonderful prophecy of the New 
Covenant. Although that was written in prison, and 
in the midst of the siege which was to complete the 
Captivity, the great word looks out over the evil 
present with a truly Christian optimism, and tells 
of a covenant which was to be universal, because it 
was to be spiritual, and of a glad time when all 
shall know the Lord, from the least even to the 
o;reatest. 

What this meant was made explicit only when 
Christ Himself came and sealed this New Covenant 
with His blood, which was shed for many for the 
remission of sins. And for long the full perception 
of the truth that the Gentiles could enter into 
full participation in the blessings of salvation 
otherwise than through the portals of Judaism, was 
only for those who were caught up into the third 
heaven and saw the unspeakable sights. It broke 
slowly even on the Apostles, with all their training 
while Jesus was with them and through the Holy 
Ghost Who came at Pentecost. It only became 
explicit, indeed, in the supremely Missionary 
ministry of St. Paul. There is no indication, for 
example, that even Isaiah, who delighted in the 
Mission of Israel to be the light of the Gentiles, 
ever regarded conformity to Israel's laws as un- 

20 



The Era of Preparation 

necessary on their part. Salvation then meant 
absorption in Israel. Not that we are warranted 
in holdinof that Isaiah would have held that con- 
formity involved what the enemies of St. Paul said 
it must involve. They held that in order to be- 
come Christians the heathen must also become Jews. 

There is indeed a very real sense in which the 
heathen must still conform to the laws of Israel if 
they are to enter the Kingdom, as St. Paul was the 
foremost to assert. The Christian is not under law 
but under grace, whether he be Jew or Gentile to 
begin with ; but the moral law of Moses comes 
with a new imperative, and with the most sacred 
sanctions, to those who are now the children of 
God and under the perfect law of liberty. It is 
no more than the truth to say that for the heathen 
salvation still means absorption in the Israel of 
Abraham and Isaiah, of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. 
For that true and spiritual Israel the ritual law 
was never more than a temporary expedient which 
has long since served its day. 

This is not the place to discuss at length why 
the Covenant of Grace was made with Israel and 
not with another race. It may be, indeed, that the 
Semitic peoples are distinguished above all others 
by what has been called a capacity for religion, 
and that they were specially marked out as fitted 
to be the depositaries of revelation. They are also 

21 



The Call of the New Era 

without special capacity for speculative thought. 
The revelation committed to Israel retained its 
practical simplicity, and remained a religion without 
becoming either a philosophy or a theology ; which 
could not have been had it been entrusted to such 
a people as the Greeks. But for Israel herself it 
was enough that God had chosen her to be the 
medium of His choice of others and of His grace 
to others. That must meanwhile be enough 
for us too. The whole history of Israel was her 
preparation for the work of world evangelisation, 
which was to begin when the Dayspring from 
on high arose to give light to them who sit in 
darkness and in the shadow of death. 

Yet in some respects the universality which 
underlay the Old Testament was less in evidence 
when Jesus came than it had been at many an earlier 
epoch. The exclusiveness of the Jews culminated 
in the post-Exilian period, when, in default of the 
political influence they had lost, the Jews became 
more resolute in their devotion to the worship of 
Jehovah, and surrounded their faith and worship 
alike with an elaborate system of ritual. The 
nearer heathenism came to them as a nation, and 
the more vigorously it penetrated into Palestine, 
the more did those who were loyal to Jehovah feel 
called on to oppose it fiercely. The position of 
the pious Israelite was indeed difiicult in those days 

22 



The Era of Preparation 

of Roman occupation and of the inroads of Greek 
culture. On the one hand, there was daily contact 
with the claims and menace of heathenism ; while 
on the other hand, the zeal of the scribes was 
constantly increasing the number of ways in which 
such contact might bring defilement none the 
less real that it was only ceremonial. Never had 
the walls of partition risen so high as when Christ 
came ; nor had Jewish exclusiveness ever gathered 
round it heroism more splendid than in the days of 
the Maccabees, that Indian summer of the old era. 
Yet, in spite of all these adverse and alien in- 
fluences which were at work, when the fulness of 
time came, there was a sacred plantation of the true 
Israel which was indeed the garden of the Lord for 
the reception of the seed of salvation. The story 
of Simeon and of Anna, the reference in the sacred 
record to those in Jerusalem " that looked for 
redemption," combined with the welcome which 
the common people gave to our Lord, all indicate 
that when in due time Christ died for the ungodly, 
there were many eyes with the far-off look in them 
which told that they saw Him Who is invisible, and 
had never altogether lost sight of the Divine 
purpose of their seclusion as a nation. Then at 
last the walls were thrown down, and the great 
deeps of the Divine love and pity were disclosed to 
Gentile and Jew alike. 

23 



The Call of the New Era 

The God of salvation had ah-eady looked down 
in compassion on His people ; but now He came 
down among them, and Christ took up and com- 
pleted the work which had been begun. The 
principles of universality and spirituality which 
had been so long shadowed forth, and had so 
often been obscured, were now made explicit in His 
doctrine that the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom 
of righteousness and love ; and in His doctrine that 
God is a Spirit Who is to be worshipped in spirit 
and in truth, and is the Father of the souls of men, 
welcoming the returning penitent on the sole con- 
dition that he repents and has faith. He taught 
men that God is the Father of all, and that the 
terms of acceptance with Him are such as all men 
can and ought to fulfil. 

But this era of preparation takes us far beyond 
the narrow confines of the Holy Land. Negatively 
and positively alike, the whole world-history had 
been a preparation for Christ. For one thing, this 
came out in the strange eclecticism, the pathetic 
expectancy, which was manifesting itself in so 
many ways when Christ came to die for those who 
were finding out that they were without strength. 
The utter failure even of the best that had survived 
from the religions and philosophies of the Old 
World to satisfy the yearnings of those who had 
been made for God and could only find rest in 

24 



The Era of Preparation 

Him, rendered many unexpectedly amenable and 
receptive. Even in the heathen world there was 
something akin to the spirit which had led Simeon 
and Anna to wait for the redemption of Israel, 
For as^es the best and the worst alike had been 
experimenting ; their experiments one and all 
had ended in disaster and death. 

The history of the philosophy of Greece, of the 
law system of Rome, and in some respects even 
of the religion of the Jews, had made it obvious 
that unless God in His mercy came to the rescue, 
hope must utterly disappear from the earth. That 
very discovery, however, was one of the proofs that 
God had come to the rescue and had been preparing 
mankind for the great Rescuer, even Christ. Nor 
can we ignore the work of preparation which was 
done by the Roman Empire, that triumph of 
organisation and rule. Renan doubtless exag- 
gerated when he said that if Alexander and Csesar 
had not preceded, Christ had not followed ; but 
that was the exaggeration of a sublime truth. By 
welding the nations into one political state, by 
making Latin and Greek known everywhere, 
and by its splendid laws and administration, 
the Empire did much to open up a way for the 
first preachers of Christ and salvation to the 
heathen. Our God is a sovereign Lord, Who 
still lays claim to wireless telegraphy and all 

25 



The Call of the New Era 

the wonders of modern science for the work of 
evangelisation. 

The Empire did much also for the work of ex- 
pansion by the universal peace it secured among 
all the civilised peoples, and by its splendid means 
of communication which did so much for the first 
Missionaries of the Cross. The means for travel 
were better in the days of Paul and John than at 
any subsequent period right up to the time when 
the inventions of our own era began to change the 
face of the earth. 

There was yet another way in which the work of 
preparation was being done, and in that the Empire 
and the Jews may be said to have joined hands in 
claiming all the world for Christ. This was the 
extraordinary dispersion of the Jews, which familiar- 
ised the Gentiles with the thought of monotheism 
and a spiritual religion. It is not easy now to 
realise how great was the educative work done by 
those Jews of the Diaspora. The Hellenist Jews, 
the Grecians or Greek-speaking Jews of the Acts 
of the Apostles, far outnumbered the Jews of the 
Fatherland, and were to be found not only all over 
the Empire, but far beyond it. There were, for 
example, many of them in Parthia, which still 
maintained its independence, and must therefore 
have had attractions for the Jews, who hated Rome 
as the tyrant in the homeland. One captivity after 

26 



The Era of Preparation 

another had carried Jews into foreign lands, and, 
as their wont was, they had thriven in their exile. 
Besides these, many had gone voluntarily from 
their homes in Judea and Galilee to the centres 
where their compatriots were already settled, in 
search of employment and a wider sphere of activity 
than Palestine in its degradation afforded for those 
who were able and ambitious. 

How enormous the numbers of the Dispersed 
were may be gathered from the fact that a census 
taken in the reign of Nero showed that more 
than 2,700,000 of them were at Jerusalem for a 
Passover feast ; and it is said that even more were 
able to be present at the Feast of Pentecost. There 
were multitudes of Jews in Egypt, where Alexandria 
was their headquarters, as well as in Arabia, Cilicia, 
and Gyrene. As for Rome, the extent of the 
Jewish colony there may be estimated from the 
fact that in the reign of Glaudius as many as 
4000 Jewish freedmen were banished at one time 
from the Imperial city to Sardinia. And many 
representatives of these foreign Jews, who, as is so 
often the case, were more Jewish in their sympathies 
and their allegiance to the old ways than the Jews 
in the homeland, hiherniores hibernicis ipsis, 
were won for Ghrist on the ever-memorable Day 
of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came on the 
waiting Ghurch. Their return to their homes all 

27 



The Call of the New Era 

through the Empire and beyond must have done 
much to prepare for the preachers who were ere 
long to follow. 

Then further, when the evangelists who were 
scattered abroad after Stephen's death went out on 
their Mission, we are specifically told that they 
went to these Jews of the Dispersion. So also 
when Paul was at his Missionary work, although 
he was the Apostle of the Gentiles and had them 
allotted to him as his special sphere, just as Peter 
was pre-eminently the Apostle of the Diaspora, 
we find that he always went first to the Jewish 
headquarters in a town, and began by preaching 
in the synagogues of his fellow-countrymen. Nor 
should it ever be forgotten that although many of 
these scattered Jews were fanatically and even 
malignantly hostile, many of them were also 
pioneers of the faith, noble Missionaries of the 
Cross, and that even from among the Pharisees 
and the Sadducean priests, so alien to begin with, 
there were not a few who believed and gave heroic 
proofs of their loyalty to their faith and their 
Lord, 

This, then, was the world, so marvellously 
prepared for Him, into which Christ came in the 
fulness of time. And most of all, then as now, 
men were prepared for Him by their utter need. 
The world was very weary and sated as it cried 

28 



The Era of Preparation 

out in its dumb strivings, " Who will show us 
any good ? " In the great mercy of our God, the 
answer came in Christ. Little real belief in the 
old systems was left, and the truth of the terrible 
picture in the first chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans, as to the state of morality, is borne out 
in endless ways. Nor was philosophy one whit 
more influential than religion so far as stemming 
the evil tide was concerned. It was into a world 
corrupt to the core, and hopeless in its unbelief, 
that the light of the Gospel first shone, and the 
era of preparation came to an end in the ever- 
blessed era of evangelisation. 



29 



CHAPTER II 

THE APOSTOLIC ERA 



31 



" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
creature." — Mark 16. 15. 

" This is a fallen world, but it is a redeemed world." 

" Our dear Lord's best interpreters are faithful human souls. 
The gospel of a life like theirs is more than creeds or scrolls." 

"It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an 
ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries 
has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has 
shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, 
conditions ; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue but tlie 
highest incentive to its practice." — Lecky. 



32 



CHAPTER II 

THE APOSTOLIC ERA 

rriHIS wonderful period of expansion, the new 
J- era even more than our own, may be taken 
as extendino- from the Ascension of our Lord till 
the end of the first century, when the long life of 
St. John was either just coming to an end or had 
not long ended. For our purpose, however, it 
may more conveniently be taken as extending 
from Pentecost to the year 112 or thereby, when 
Pliny sent his famous letter to the Emperor Trajan. 
Pliny was one of the most accomplished men of his 
time ; and this official document throws welcome 
light on the situation when the Church was 
entering on the work of the second century, 
and had no longer the guidance and help of 
the inspired Apostles who had seen the Lord. 
His testimony, too, as to the extent to which 
the Gospel had spread in Asia Minor, and as to 
how the life of the Christians had impressed an 
impartial outsider, is of unique value as showing 



The Call of the New Era 

what had been achieved in the era which had just 
closed. 

In the days of His flesh, our Lord Himself never 
left the Holy Land, except perhaps when He went 
into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. But He laid 
deep and broad the foundations on which His 
people were to build in the days to come ; He 
began that work of the Kingdom which cannot 
but be universal, since it is spiritual ; and already 
in vision He saw the peoples of the East and the 
West, of the North and the South, rallying round 
His Cross. His instructions regarding Missionary 
work are more definite than those about any other 
form of service. Time after time He gave orders 
that such work was to be done, from the day when 
He called the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee to 
be fishers of men, till the daj^- when as the Risen 
Lord He commissioned His Apostles to make 
disciples of all nations. The very name Apostle 
indicates that those who bore it were to be 
messengers or Missionaries, first to the lost sons 
of their own house, then to the cities of the 
Samaritans, and then on the highways of world- 
trafiic, which led to the most distant heathen 
nations. 

To carry the Gospel to the Gentiles was a work 
so novel and so difficult that commands and en- 
couragements alike were multiplied in order that 

34 



The Apostolic Era 

it might be done. The earlier orders to go to 
their own countrymen had been only temporary ; 
but when the standing orders to go out among 
the heathen came, they only made explicit what 
had really been implicit from the first. His 
followers were called to be *' the salt of the earth " 
and " the light of the world." His great parting 
Commission has indeed been pronounced to be the 
product of a later age ; but there are no good 
grounds, either critical or other, for doubting that 
we have here Christ's own words. The Trinitarian 
formula is " foreign to the mouth of Jesus only in 
the sense that any saying uttered for the first time 
by any man is foreign to his lips." 

The Descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost 
vividly illustrated both what the Great Commission 
meant and how it was to be obeyed ; for then as 
now the supreme question was one of power. 
Yet even the Apostles were slow to lift their 
anchors and adventure out on the deep. One 
object-lesson after another was required for the 
interpretation of what seems clear enough now in 
the light of its exposition in history. Indeed, 
persecution had to come before they went every- 
where preaching the Word. But when once this 
violent dispersion had released the slumbering 
powers of expansion, every man and woman of the 
dispersed became a Missionary. After Stephen's 

35 



The Call of the New Era 

death, for example, they went as far as Phenice, 
Cyprus, and Antioch which ere long became a 
second Christian metropolis. Perhaps some went 
as far as Rome, for Andronicus and Junia, who are 
mentioned in the Epistle to that church, were 
disciples before Paul. Indeed, one of the striking 
features of the expansion is that often the decisive 
steps seem to have been taken by nameless 
evangelists, who did not keep silence about the 
new faith for which they were wanderers and 
exiles. The whole theory of Apostolic Missions is 
summed up in the words of St. Peter : " We cannot 
but speak the things which we have seen and heard." 
Their message grew out of their own personal 
experience, and was attested by it. 

The first decisive indication of God's purpose 
regarding the regions beyond came to the Church 
throuo'h a revival which broke out among the 
Samaritans : for then, as always, the Divine mes- 
sage came most clearly in aotual events. These 
Samaritans, who were half-heathen by descent, 
professed a corrupt form of Judaism, and Philip 
the Evangelist was honoured to be the preacher 
under whom many of them turned to Christ. 
Our Lord Himself had, of course, done tender, 
gracious things among them during His earthly 
ministry ; yet that revival came as a revelation, 
we might almost say as a surprise, to the Apostles 

36 



The Apostolic Era 

at Jerusalem. They were, however, ready to 
follow wherever the Spirit led, and were prepared 
to be surprised. They saw the Gospel passing 
beyond the confines of the Jews, and they knew 
by the fruits of Philip's preaching that he had 
done right in going among the Samaritans. 
They knew it then just as in later years 
Bunyan knew that God had opened his lips, and 
Wesley knew that it was right to preach in the 
open air, by the blessing which God gave them. 
Then the wholly Gentile Cornelius followed the 
half-Gentile Samaritan into the fold of Christ, 
and his conversion ranks with that of St. Paul 
himself as a great landmark in the history of 
Missions. 

The extent to which it was epoch-making can 
be estimated in part by the space given to the 
details of the story by the sacred writer, as well as 
by the way in which St. Peter had to vindicate his 
action in baptizing a man who had never been 
circumcised. For part of the significance of what 
happened lies in the fact that Cornelius became a 
Christian without also or first becoming a Jew. 
The conclusion to which the authorities at 
Jerusalem were led by the blessed logic of events 
marks the beginning of the Foreign Mission era : 
" Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted 
repentance unto life." They realised what God 



The Call of the New Era 

was saying to them in the concrete events through 
which He rendered His purpose of grace visible to 
those who had eyes to see, and they gladly followed 
on to know the Lord. 

And it was well that they were thus prepared 
for the next emergency, which was near at hand. 
For meanwhile, some of the scattered preachers, 
pressing on in the pathway which the Holy Spirit 
was opening up for them, were boldly preaching 
the Gospel to the Gentiles in Antioch, and there 
also the blessed fruits of their daring were showing 
that they were doing the will of God. We cannot 
tell whether these preachers had heard of the con- 
version of Cornelius ; but that precedent enabled 
the Jerusalem church to deal with the new situation 
in the right way. God had graciously prepared 
His people to meet the emergency. Barnabas was 
sent down to see what God was doing, and to give 
guidance in the crisis. With a prescience equally 
Divine, St. Paul was brought in to be his colleague 
in the work which grew out of the Antioch revival, 
and then the work of winning the Gentiles for Christ 
was begun in earnest, and the great Apostle of the 
Gentile world was at his God-assigned post. 

From the time of Pentecost onwards it was 
clearly indicated that in this work of expansion the 
Holy Ghost is the great propagating power. Ours 
is a Missionary era because it is the era or dispcnsa- 

3^ 



The Apostolic Era 

tion of the Holy Ghost. It was He who inspired 
the first Missionaries, such as Peter and Stephen, 
Barnabas and Paul, for the work of winning man- 
kind for Christ — " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul 
for the work whereunto I have called them " ; and 
we shall only understand the secret of their 
triumphs, or see them repeated in our day, when 
we too are wholly loyal to the ever-blessed Third 
Person in the glorious Trinity, and are obedient 
unto Him. 

From the first, too, these Missionaries of the 
Cross found that they were called to conflict ; and 
that in their onset for God and His truth they were 
in direst opposition to the dominant world-powers, 
political and ecclesiastical alike. Christianity had 
scarcely emerged from Palestine when she found 
herself engaged in a life-and-death struggle with 
the whole strength of Imperial Rome. The 
Romans, who had a genius for government as well 
as for conquest, were accustomed to tolerate all 
religions if only these were old and national and 
had no secret gatherings which might cover con- 
spiracies against the State. But from the first 
they were at least doubtful about Christianity, 
which was neither national nor ancient, and which 
had a worship they could not understand. 

Even their wisest statesmen seem to have felt 
an instinctive dread of this new religion, which had 

39 



The Call of the New Era 

neither temples nor idols, and which rose superior 
to every local or racial limitation, claiming the 
whole earth for its Lord. They felt somehow that 
Christianity and Rome were alike imperial in their 
aspirations and outlook, and that war between them 
was inevitable. Either the one or the other must 
conquer. There was no room in the Empire, vast 
as it was, for both ; and the prevalence of this 
conviction among the best of the Romans gives 
us some idea of the courage and consistency with 
which the early Christians did their work. 

There was room in the Pantheon for all sorts 
of tribal deities. The presence of their idols there 
only made the glory of Rome seem all the greater, 
and increased the triumphs of her returning 
soldiers. But there was no room either in the 
Pantheon or the Empire for this new religion, 
which was sometimes called "atheistic" because 
it lacked the ordinary external symbols, but which 
had gone out conquering and to conquer, measuring 
its might w^ith that of Imperial Rome herself. 
When Christianity, with a sublime audacity, 
assailed the Empire which in itself had almost 
become a religion, with the Emperor as its concrete 
and deified embodiment, the onset was made on no 
ignorant or degraded system, but on a vast organ- 
isation, hoary with antiquity and flushed with 
success over every foe. 

40 



The Apostolic Era 

In many ways, indeed, the work of the first 
evangelists was not unlike that which our own 
Missionaries have to do now among the educated 
and self - satisfied Hindus and Mohammedans. 
This explains the paradox that some of the 
best emperors and noblest Komans, from the 
view-point of the Empire, were the most strenuous 
foes and persecutors of the Gospel. They saw, as 
St. Paul did in his unconverted days, that there 
could be no half-measures where Christianity was 
involved. They felt that they must either yield 
to its claims or set themselves to crush it out. Thus 
it was that it was into a world at once strangely 
prepared for them, and yet bitterly antagonistic 
to them, that the first Missionaries went with their 
story of salvation for the worst, on terms of free 
grace. 

It is very remarkable how little we know about 
these first evangelists themselves, although many 
things have come to light even in our own time 
to show how devoted and fruitful their work was. 
Some of them we know by name — men like Timothy 
and Titus, Barnabas and Mark, Epaphroditus and 
Apollos — and that is all we know even of the 
majority of the Apostles. We know a little about 
Paul, a little less about Peter and John, and that 
is practically the whole. There were no religious 
newspapers in those days, nor any Missionary 

41 



The Call of the New Era 

reports ; but their names are in the Lamb's Book 
of Life, and they live in their work, which is ever 
so much better than living merely in the pages of 
history. Through the mists of envious oblivion, 
broken here and there by shafts of light, we can 
see brave soldiers of the Cross, as they faced every 
danger in their devotion to their Saviour and their 
compassion for the souls of men, and pressed out 
into the deeper darkness beyond the boundaries 
of the Empire as even the dauntless soldiers of 
Rome did not dare to do. Within the first 
Christian century they had penetrated the wilds 
of distant Scythia and Caledonia, perhaps even 
so far as India ; dying for their faith if need be, 
bringing hope to many a despairing soul and 
kindling the love-light in many a sorrowful eye. 
In the absence of any reliable information, 
tradition has been busy with many of these un- 
known workers and their work. But its only value 
is that it embodies the general impression of the 
striking results of their undoubted enterprise. 
Andrew is represented as preaching in Scythia, 
Thomas in Parthia, Matthew in Arabia. Matthias 
is said to have devoted himself to Ethiopia ; James 
the son of Alphseus to Egypt ; Simon Zelotes to 
Mauritania and Libya ; and Judas Thaddeus to 
Mesopotamia. The Spaniards claim James the 
brother of our Lord as their national evangelist ; 

42 



The Apostolic Era 

the French say that the Gospel came to their land 
through Dionysius the Areopagite and Lazarus ; 
while as regards Britain, it is claimed that Simon 
Zelotes, Joseph of Arimathea, and even Paul, 
preached the Gospel there. But all this is little 
more than a determination to apportion territories 
to the men whose names have come down to us. 

It is very striking how little is known even of 
John and Peter, the pillar Apostles. They are 
prominent in the early chapters of the Acts, where 
they are closely associated with each other ; but 
after that we are left largely to conjecture as to 
what they did and where they did it. St. John's 
later doings mostly gather round Ephesus, where 
he seems to have lived almost, if not quite, to the 
end of the first century, and to have perished by 
martyrdom in the persecution under Domitian. 
He has left us three Letters ; the Gospel which 
bears his name ; and the Book of the Apocalypse, 
or unfolding. 

As for St. Peter, his name became associated, 
probably against his will, with the Judaising party, 
who in their opposition to Paul declared, " We are 
of Cephas." There has been much discussion as 
to whether he was ever in Pome. There can be 
none as to the fact that he was not the founder 
of the church at Rome, as Romanists allege. Many 
modern scholars accept the tradition of a visit to 

43 



The Call of the New Era 

the seven -hilled city ; and by the end of the second 
century the conviction prevailed that he was 
martyred there. But there is no proof whatever 
of this in the " dry light," and there is much to 
support the contention that he had no association 
whatever with the Roman church. His Epistles 
seem to connect him very specially with the four 
Roman provinces which we now call Asia Minor ; 
and we must think of him as for the most part in 
that region, and specially as labouring among his 
fellow-countrymen according to the concordat with 
Paul, until he too won the martyr's crown. 

The conversion of St. Paul, about the year 35, 
was of infinite significance for the work among the 
heathen ; and it is his Missionary energy which 
most of all fills the New Testament. We have 
some details as to his three great Missionary 
journeys ; and what with references and allusions 
in his Letters and what we learn from the Acts, we 
can draw at least a profile picture of the man, 
unquestionably one of the supreme leaders of our 
race. His first journey began at Cyprus and ended 
at Antioch, and saw many converts won and not a 
few churches organised. The second journey began 
in the year 52 and took him into Europe, where 
he founded a church at Philippi and spent two 
years and a half in Corinth. The third journey, 
which brings us down to the year 55, took him 

44 



The Apostolic Era 

from Antioch through Asia Minor to Ephesus, 
where he remained more or less constantly for 
upwards of two years. Thereafter we find him in 
Jerusalem, where he was apprehended and finally 
sent to Rome, which he had long desired to visit. 
After two imprisonments there, and much literary 
and other work, he died for the faith for which he 
had lived splendidly so long, in the year 67 or 68. 
He was the greatest Missionary who has ever lived, 
perhaps the greatest servant our Lord has ever had. 
We can only find out indirectly how these 
Apostolic Missionaries did their work, and what 
was the outcome of their obedience and consecra- 
tion. But this indirect evidence is continually 
increasing in interest and value. The ends of 
the earth are now coming on us, and new light 
is constantly being thrown on the rapid and 
inevitable spread of the Christian religion. Take, 
for example, what we now know of the difi'erent 
ways in which the various churches were founded 
and grew up — such as those in Rome and Galatia. 
The Roman church was not founded by an 
Apostle, and no great name is associated with its 
origin. Some have attributed its beginnings to 
preachers who came from Pentecost filled with 
the Good News. Probably, however, its existence 
was due rather to unknown emigrants, and to the 
constant communication which was always taking 

45 



The Call of the New Era 

place between the capital and the rest of the 
Empire. From the first, too, the large Jewish 
element in the city would be specially interested 
in what was going on and was turning the 
world upside down. A thoughtful modern writer 
prefers to account for its origin by what he calls 
the "process of quiet and as it were fortuitous 
filtration" which was everywhere going on — a 
pregnant suggestion well worth following up. 

Primitive Christianity was self-propagating. 
The great farewell Commission, as a formal 
injunction, came to be unnecessary. The impulse 
was in the Gospel itself. Not that the method 
of filtration was the only method at work. In 
G-alatia we know that the church was founded 
by the great Missionary of the Gentiles, who was 
taken there on one of his epoch-making tours. 
He was passing through the district, probably 
without any intention of remaining in it, when 
he was struck down by his thorn in the flesh, 
whatever that was, and had to remain for a 
time. But Paul could never be anywhere, even 
in sickness, without being an evangelist ; and the 
result was a community or church of the living 
God. And so with the other churches. Each 
has its own gracious history, and each tells of 
faithful workers known or unknown. 

Among the agencies at work. Christian philan- 
46 



The Apostolic Era 

thropy was one of the most persuasive. All that 
men needed was to be found in Christ ; and in 
that era He was preached and lived by those for 
whom He had been everything and through 
whom His glory shone forth. It was not prose- 
lytes they sought. Their efforts were not put 
forth to secure numbers or authority, but to bless 
men through Him Who alone could understand 
or save them. The true Missionary enthusiasm 
depends on being possessed by the Divine passion 
of love to seek and save the lost. 

Much discussion has gathered round the extent 
to which the Mission work of the Apostolic Era 
was successful alike extensively and intensively ; 
in point of numbers and in point of influence. 
One calculation which has been often handed 
round has it that at the close of the first century 
there was a Christian population of about five 
millions ; whereas another has it that there were 
probably about two hundred thousand, a dis- 
crepancy wliich at least shows how little 
definite information we possess. We know 
enough, however, to suggest that the smaller 
figure is a gross under-estimate, and that the 
larger is probably nearer the truth. 

Some idea of the extent of the progress made 
may be derived from what took place during the 
persecutions under Nero and Domitian. Tacitus 

47 



The Call of the New Era 

says that during the dreadful Neronic persecution 
an immense multitude suffered for what he calls 
their superstition ; and it was not otherwise in 
the later persecution under Domitian which began 
in the year 95. There are also various references 
in the literature of the period to events in Rome, 
which support the contention that very great 
progress had been made. As early as the year 
52, for example, according to Suetonius, the 
disturbances in the Jewish quarter in Rome, 
owing to disputes between Jews and Christians, 
were such that the Emperor Claudius was led to 
banish all Jews from the city. Then, only six 
years later, in the year 58, Paul himself, in his 
letter to the Romans, speaks of their faith as 
"proclaimed through the whole world"; while 
other six years after, that is in the year 64, as 
we have just seen, "an immense multitude" in 
the Imperial city suffered for their faith in 
Christ. 

Light is also thrown on the extent of the 
Christian conquest during the first century by 
what we now know about the kind of people 
who were being won. The ordinary idea is that 
progress was made mainly among the uneducated 
and the slave population ; and it goes without saying 
that the Gospel must have been specially welcome 
among the masses of despairing men and women 

48 



The Apostolic Era 

who were wearing out their lives in bitterness 
and sorrow. But Sir William Ramsay, who has 
done so much to reconstruct the first century 
for us, and whose interest in this theme is as 
remarkable as his scholarship, says that at first 
Christianity spread more rapidly among the 
educated than among the uneducated. The 
German writer Schultze, too, says : "It was 
not the base elements which came into the 
Church, but, on the contrary, the better strata of 
the Roman population — the artificers, the shop- 
keepers, and the small landed proprietors ; there- 
fore preponderatingly the under and middle 
portion of the citizen class, who in the general 
moral and religious dissolution of heathenism still 
proved themselves the soundest classes in the 
community." Dean Merivale also has it that at 
first the Gospel was embraced by persons 
approaching to what we should call the middle 
classes in their condition, their education, and 
their moral views. 

In the year 57, a lady of illustrious birth, 
Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, 
the conqueror of Britain, was tried before the 
Senate on the charge of being tainted with 
" foreign superstition" — that is, of being a Christian. 
In the reign of Domitian, too, we read that 
Flavius Clemens, the consul, and Domitilla his 

N.E.— 4 49 



The Call of the New Era 

wife (the husband being the Emperor's cousin and 
the wife his niece), were put on trial for " atheism " 
— that is, for being Christians. Well may Harnack 
say regarding this incident : " What a change ! 
Between fifty and sixty years after Christianity 
reached Rome, a daughter of the Emperor 
(Vespasian) embraces the faith ; and thirty years 
after the fearful persecutions of Nero, the pre- 
sumptive heirs to the throne were brought up 
in a Christian home." 

In addition to these illustrious converts, others 
not less renowned were at the same time accused 
of being Christians ; among them being Glabrio, 
who had been consul with Trajan ; and who 
died for his faith. He belonged to one of the 
wealthiest and most illustrious families in the 
State. The impression created by such Con- 
fessors is borne out by the incidental testimony 
of Scripture as to the kind of converts the 
first-century Missionaries won for their Lord. 
There were many from among the debris, many 
of the flotsam and jetsam, and the common 
people heard the Word gladly. But we hear also 
of Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus ; of 
Publius, the Roman ruler in Malta ; and of the 
Asiarchs or chief rulers of Asia at Ephesus, as 
on the Saviour's side. In the same company of the 
redeemed we also meet men like Dionysius, a member 

50 



The Apostolic Era 

of tlie Council of Ai-eopagus at Athens ; Erastus, 
the public treasurer at Corinth ; the centurion 
Cornelius, the physician Luke, and Crispus, the 
ruler of the Jewish synagogue at Corinth. 

Finally, we have the remarkable testimony, 
borne alike to the extent of the conquests of 
the Apostolic Era and to the character of the 
converts, which is to be found in the letter 
sent by the Roman Governor Pliny to the 
Emperor Trajan about the year 112. In this 
important State document, the perplexed Governor 
asks for directions as to how he was to deal 
with the Christians with whom he was con- 
stantly coming into contact. It sets forth that 
the Christian religion was professed by " many 
of all ages and ranks, and of both sexes " ; that 
the "movement was not confined to the cities, 
but had spread into the villages and country " ; 
that the temples of the old religions were " almost 
deserted"; that the sacred rites "were inter- 
rupted " ; that the victims for sacrifice could 
find "very few purchasers"; and that all this 
had been going on for a long time. Pliny wrote 
from Bithynian Pontus, an extensive province in 
Asia Minor, and there is no reason for thinking that 
that province was in any way exceptional in regard 
to the extent to which it had been evangelised. 

Beyond any question a great and glorious 
51 



The Call of the New Era 

work had been accomplished by the Missionaries 
of the Apostolic Era, known and unknown ; 
accomplished in the face of difficulties and 
dangers which might have daunted the bravest, 
and in spite of the fact that Imperial Rome 
itself, that power which had swept everything 
else before it, had once and again set itself to 
crush out the new and obnoxious faith with all 
its might. But then, as now, the Gospel of the 
grace of God was mightier than the mightiest. 
Everything that the world counts mighty was 
hostile to the Christians ; yet they overcame, 
because they were true to their Lord and to the 
spirit of His Gospel. 

The outstanding characteristic of the era from 
the Missionary standpoint is that every believer 
was a Missionary. " They that were scattered 
abroad went everywhere preaching the Word"; 
and they who were allowed to remain at home 
preached the Word too. They had, indeed, no 
choice. The whole social order was such that a 
Christian could only remain a secret disciple by 
denying his Lord, and a disciple who does that 
is no disciple at all. Necessity was laid on 
them ; they had to let their light shine ; and it 
was inevitable that they who knew them should 
be convinced that they had been with God, " A 
city that is set on a hill cannot be hid." 

52 



CHAPTER III 
TILL THE EMPIRE WAS WON 



53 



" They shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you." — 
Luke 21. 12. 

" He wlio would destroy evil must build up good in its place, 
otherwise he is no architect of God." — Boehme. 

"Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 
The lion's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong." 

Whittier. 



54 



CHAPTER III 
TILL THE EMPIRE WAS WON 

A PERIOD of almost exactly two centuries 
elapsed from the year 112, when Pliny's 
letter to Trajan threw a flood of light on the 
Church as it emerged from the Apostolic Era, and 
the year 313, when Constantino's Edict of Milan 
told that the long-drawn battle between the 
Empire and the Church was at an end, and that 
the Galilean had conquered. 

In dealing with these centuries from the Mission- 
ary view-point, covering as they do what are called 
the sub-apostolic and the post-apostolic eras, it is 
impossible not to be conscious of a certain fall in 
the temperature as we proceed, even although it is 
a journey to victory. As we pass from the fellow- 
ship of the New Testament saints to meet even 
those who were nearest the Apostles, we seem to 
have left much of the sunshine behind, and to 
have entered a region encompassed with clouds. 
Yet this change may be more apparent than real. 

55 



The Call of the New Era 

There was still much sunshine, if only we had an 
inspired record of it ; while even in the time of 
the Apostles there were many clouds, as the un- 
biased story so clearly shows. 

Great as the superiority of the New Testament 
writers is to the sub-apostolic fathers and the 
apologists who followed them, it is a blunder to 
imagine that everything was ideal even when the 
Church was still guided by inspired leaders ; and 
it is difficult to understand how those who have 
the New Testament in their hands can think of 
the golden age of the Christian Church as in that 
far-distant past. Beyond any question, the best 
is yet to be ; and the crowning day is coming. 
It may even be near at hand. Yet it is 
true that the temperature gradually fell as the 
Apostolic Era receded into the past. The mystery 
of iniquity, of whose empire St. Paul had such sad 
forebodings even in his time, soon manifested its 
power, and the blight of the priest, so strikingly 
absent in New Testament times, soon fell on the 
young Missionary Church. Paganism began to 
avenge itself for many a defeat by creeping into 
doctrine and practice alike, especially along sacer- 
dotal lines. Christ had bruised its head ; but it 
bruised His heel, until ultimately it had converted 
the evangelist pastor into a sacrificing priest, the 
sacrament of the Supper into a sacrifice, and the 

56 



Till the Empire was Won 

communion table into an altar. Long before the 
Empire was won, tbe cloven hoof of priestly 
hankering after domination had begun to show 
itself, with disastrous results, for there is no canker 
or dry rot so deadly ; and just in proportion as 
that subtle and evil change took place, the 
Missionary spirit of the Church was perverted or 
disappeared. 

These passing years, too, saw the gradual dis- 
appearance of the miraculous gifts which the 
Church had formerly enjoyed. She exchanged 
power with God for power with men. It may be, 
indeed, that these gifts were granted only for the 
era in which the ship Ecclesia was being launched, 
and were as the manna which ceased when there 
was the corn of the land ; but it is by no means 
certain that the ministry of healing would not 
have persisted along with the ministry of preaching, 
had the Church remained loyal to her first love, and 
allowed nothing whatever to come in between her 
and her Lord. 

When at length, in the year 313, the official 
authorities of the Empire recognised the much- 
suff'ering Church, and she passed from the trial 
by persecution to the far more dangerous trial by 
prosperity, it has been calculated that at least one- 
twentieth of the entire population of the Empire 
had become Christian. That means that out of 

57 



The Call of the New Era 

a population estimated to have been about one 
hundred and twenty millions, there were six 
millions of Christians. That was Gibbon's 
estimate, and most have adopted it as fairly 
accurate. At best, however, it is only a guess, 
alike as to the population of the Empire and the 
proportion which had been won for Christ ; and 
recent investigation has thrown such light on what 
the Gospel really achieved during these centuries, 
that the tendency now among those who speak 
with authority is to claim a much larger proportion 
for Christianity than was allowed by Gibbon. 

Some who have much to say for their conten- 
tion hold that in Constantine's day a tenth of the 
people rather than a twentieth were on Christ's side. 
Some scholars even say that there is warrant for 
claiming as many as a fifth — that is, four times as 
many as have been usually claimed. But even on 
the lowest estimate, we have a record of marvellous 
progress, especially when we bear in mind the 
extraordinary ferocity of the persecutions through 
which the Church had passed. It may be true that 
the blood of the martyrs has often been the seed 
of the Church, but there were exceptions to the rule 
where the persecutors were sufficiently determined ; 
and it has to be borne in mind that these terrible 
persecutions were just at an end when the recogni- 
tion came, and that the seed so liberally sown and 

58 



Till the Empire was Won 

watered had had little time in which to bring forth 
its Divine fruit. 

In the interests of the work which has still to 
be done, our business now is to discover as best we 
can how such progress was made in circumstances 
so adverse ; and how the Church passed at once from 
persecution to fashion and favour, and the mighty 
forces of paganism were forced at last to cry out 
that Christ had conquered in the strife. There 
are other lines of investioration connected with this 

o 

formative era as the Empire was won for our Lord 
which might be followed with profit. In particular 
there is the haunting question, which will not be 
ignored, as to how the progressive perversion and 
degradation of the Church can be reconciled either 
with such a splendid triumph, or with the promise 
of Christ that He would be with her to the end 
and that the Holy Spirit would abide with her 
for ever. But the Missionary problem is all that 
can be faced here. 

During this period of stress and strain the 
Church had increasingly to face error from within, 
as well as heathenism from without. She had to 
do battle with Gnosticism, a subtle foe which 
appeared in many a guise. It would have turned 
the Gospel of God's grace, which is for all man- 
kind, into a philosophy which at best could 
only have been for the cultured few. She had 

59 



The Call of the New Era 

also to face Ebionism, which was in reality a phase 
of the protean opposition that St. Paul had to 
combat all his days. It sought to degrade the 
universal religion of the Cross into a sort of Jewish 
sect, and held that in order to be true Christians 
men must also be Jews. 

During this period the militant Church, just 
beginning to find her feet among men, had also to 
turn aside at many times and in many places from 
her aggressive work, to deal with strifes within 
her own borders. There was the dispute as to 
the right day on which to keep Easter, a dispute 
which never seems less fundamental than when 
our eyes are on the regions beyond. If only men 
were to cultivate the far-off vision which strains 
after those who are still without, they would 
acquire more of the grace of proportion. Then 
there was the strife over those who were called 
the Montanists, a sect which had this merit, at 
least, that they led to increased attention being 
given to the Person and Work of the Holy Sj)irit — 
a theme which has never received the considera- 
tion it deserves, and which has been bestowed on 
the kindred theme, the Person and Work of our 
Lord. 

We depend for our information about these 
sectaries, if sectaries they were, on their professed 
and bitter opponents ; and, personally, I have 

60 



Till the Empire was Won 

always a liking for heretics whose error grows out 
of excess of zeal. Our troubles have seldom come 
along that line ; and, deadly as fanaticism is, what 
has been called fanaticism has often only been 
misguided enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is too rare 
to be needlessly driven out. In addition to these, 
there was the strife over what has been variously 
described as Sabellianism, Patripassianism, and 
Monarchianism. This heresy arose out of a 
genuine desire to vindicate the mysteries of the 
Christian faith. Those who fell into it, however, 
dealt with the distinctions between the Three 
Persons in the Trinity and the Two Natures of 
our Lord in such a way as really to explain away 
what they sought to elucidate. And so it was 
that from the middle of the second century the 
Church, which had to contend with so many foes 
from without, had also to do battle with dangerous 
tendencies from within ; and the need was increas- 
ingly felt for the defence of the faith against 
popular, literary, and philosophic attacks from 
many standpoints. Ere long the great race of 
Apologists arose in response to the demand. 

We have only to deal with these doctrinal 
discussions in so far as they bore on the work of 
evangelisation which we are seeking to trace ; but 
in an important sense they formed part of the 
aggressive work to which believers were then called, 

6i 



The Call of the New Era 

as they obeyed the marching orders of their risen 
Lord. Many of the Apologists were devoted 
preachers and Missionaries, and there were classes 
in the Empire who could only be won along 
such argumentative lines as they pursued. It 
is impossible not to be filled with admiration 
for the combined wisdom and courage with 
which the many-sided attack on heathenism was 
made. 

Following the example of St. Paul, the Church 
set herself to seize and occupy the great vantage 
points all over the Empire, in such centres as 
Corinth, Antioch, and Ephesus. When the 
modern Mission movement began, more than a 
century ago, brave men and women were content 
to bury themselves in obscure places of the earth, 
and to go out into veritable wildernesses after the 
wandering and lost. But, with all its heroism and 
self-abnegation, that method was probably a mis- 
taken one ; certainly it was not the method by 
which the Apostles triumphed and the Empire 
was won. The Christian Missionaries in the post- 
apostolic era struck boldly at the main centres of 
wealth and trade ; and measured their strength with 
paganism at its best and its worst, in its mightiest 
strongholds. They followed the great trunk-lines 
of Imperial intercommunication, and the farthest- 
reaching; victories of the new faith were won in the 

62 



Till the Empire was Won 

very places where the influence of Greek and 
Koman civilisations had been most felt. It was 
in cities like Rome and Corinth, Antioch and 
Alexandria, Carthage and Lyons, the strategic 
centres of government and commerce, and where 
the conflict was keenest and intellectual life most 
acute, that the Christian Church early attained her 
greatest influence and numbers. 

The rate of progress varied, of course, in diff'erent 
parts of the Mission field, and the tide sometimes 
ebbed as w^ell as flowed. But by the end of the 
second century even the fragmentary documents 
which have come down to us make us feel that 
we are in presence of a system long and firmly 
established. Every congregation was still an out- 
post, and necessarily and inevitably a Missionary 
centre ; but it is everywhere manifest that the 
initial stage was long since past. Even thus 
early, according to Keim, the Christian population 
numbered probably a sixth of the whole population 
of the Empire, and the Good News had spread far. 
In North Africa, for example, probably a tenth of 
the people were already Christian, and here as 
elsewhere the proportion was greatest in the cities. 
It was where life was keenest and men were most 
intelligent that the truth prevailed most, and at a 
Council held at Carthage in the year 225 there 
were present no fewer than seventy bishops or 

63 



The Call of the New Era 

representative pastors from North Africa and 
Numidia. 

Throughout the two centuries now under review, 
the Christians were practically under sentence of 
death ; and it depended on the temper or the 
character of the Emperor or his subordinates how 
far that sentence was carried into effect or kept 
in suspense. Their religion was illegal, a religio 
illicita, and they themselves were outlaws. Thus 
it was that sometimes there was persecution in 
one part of the Empire while there was peace in 
another. Sometimes, too, there were years of 
quietness, and then suddenly the sky was darkened, 
and the storm broke over the faithful, and swept 
many of them away. And, strangely enough from 
one view-point, as we have seen, it was often the 
best emperors who were the keenest persecutors. 
It was their patriotism which made them hostile 
to the only rival they dreaded. 

Hence the fact, which has puzzled not a few, 
that some of those who have survived as monsters 
of cruelty and infamy in ecclesiastical annals and 
traditions have come down in the ordinary histories 
as great statesmen and thinkers. But a little 
reflection soon shows how this is so. We have 
only to think of St. Paul in his unconverted and 
persecuting days, to understand how the very 
loyalty of the good emperors to the laws and 

64 



Till the Empire was Won 

ideals of tlie Empire, as they understood them, 
might rouse them to the most determined efforts to 
crush out the new religion which seemed to them 
to be disintegrating the Empire and setting itself 
to destroy everything for which the Empire stood. 
As for the facts, there is no room for doubt. 
Marcus Aurelius, for example, who reigned from 
161 till 180, was a wise and patriotic ruler, whose 
wise maxims and reflections are valued by thinkers 
yet. But history records that it was in his reign 
that Christians were first systematically persecuted, 
and a determined efibrt was made to eradicate the 
Gospel and its disciples by sheer extermination. 
The Emperor regarded the Gospel as one of the 
evil superstitions which were sapping the life- 
blood of the Empire and undermining the old 
Eoman strength and virtue. During his reign the 
Christians suffered terribly, alike from the fury of 
the populace and the action of the Government. 
Again and again the mob rose against them, as 
responsible for the terrible calamities from which 
the Empire was sufifering. For there was not only 
constant warfare, there were floods and earthquake, 
famine and pestilence. There was a plague in the 
year 166, from the destructive eff'ects of which, ac- 
cording to Niebuhr, the Empire never recovered ; 
and for all these ills the blame was laid on the 
Christians and their alleged impiety. 
N.E.-5 65 



The Call of the New Era 

The same phenomenon may also be seen in con- 
nection with the work of Decius, who reigned from 
249 till 251. Once again the Empire had fallen on 
evil days, and the Emperor was bent on bringing 
back the virtue and order of former times, and on 
restoring the unity and vigour of the ages which 
were gone ; and he also set himself to achieve 
nothing short of the extermination of the Chris- 
tians. He did not, of course, know what Christianity 
really was. He was an old Roman, in his faults as 
well as in his virtues ; but he believed that the 
Gospel was the enemy of Rome, and he saw clearly 
that the persecution waged heretofore had neither 
greatly diminished the power of the ominous 
religion nor prevented its growth. Hence his 
determination to destroy the Christians every- 
where, root and branch. These were ordered to 
appear before the magistrates, and there abjure 
their faith in Christ and offer sacrifices to the gods 
of Rome ; and the persecution which ensued was 
so systematic and ruthless that many yielded to 
the Decian terror. Fortunately, however, it was 
very short-lived, and the Church breathed freely 
once again. 

An illustration of the same phenomenon, but 
from the other side, is to be seen in the career of 
Commodus, who succeeded Marcus Aurelius and 
was the unworthy son of a great father. In his 

66 



Till the Empire was Won 

time the clmrches had comparative rest; not because 
he had the slightest sympathy with the Gospel, 
but because he was not enough either of a man or 
a patriot to care for the interests of the Empire or 
for the perpetuation of the old Roman principles 
and virtues. 

During the greater part of the second century — 
till the year 180, that is — there were four great 
emperors : Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and 
Marcus Aurelius ; and when the last of these passed 
away, there is reason for believing that, in spite of 
all opposition and persecution, the Gospel had 
obtained a hold on every province throughout the 
vast Empire of Rome. It had also spread in its 
Missionary career over a considerable part of the 
Parthian Empire, and into the remote regions of 
the Far East. It had likewise been carried across 
the frontiers of the Empire among the barbarian 
tribes of Western and Northern Europe. As early 
as the year 170, a Christian prince, Abgar Bar 
Manu by name, ruled in Edessa, the capital of 
a small province in Mesopotamia, and his coinage 
was the first to bear the sign of the Cross. 

After the four great emperors there was a period 
of unrest, which lasted for more than a century, 
and which saw no fewer than twenty-six emperors, 
only one of whom died a natural death. These 
political troubles of the Empire were on the whole 

67 



The Call of the New Era 

favourable to the growth of the Church, inasmuch 
as the frequent changes rendered any settled policy 
antagonistic to it impossible, and most of the rulers 
who flitted across the scene were too much taken 
up with their struggle for existence to interfere 
with it. Yet even during these years of tumult 
there was many a sporadic attempt to suppress the 
truth. But whether on a larger or a smaller scale, 
these attempts were equally vain ; and during the 
last forty years of this time of upheaval rapid 
progress was everywhere made by the Missionaries 
of Christ. " Who can describe," asks Eusebius, 
"those vast collections of men that flocked to the 
religion of Christ ; and those multitudes crowding 
in from every city, and the illustrious concourses 
in the houses of worship 1 " 

This period of unrest in the State and progress 
in the Church came to an end with the accession of 
Diocletian, another great emperor who was also a 
notable persecutor, and who is far better known now 
as persecutor than as statesman. The Church, how- 
ever, had become too strong to be seriously shaken, 
even by such a foe as Diocletian ; and after eight 
more years of direst sufl'ering, she emerged as 
conqueror, and was on the eve of Imperial recogni- 
tion when Diocletian died. Again the anvil had 
worn out the hammer. " During these years of 
woe," says Schaff', " there was no alternative but 

68 



Till the Empire was Won 

apostacy or starvation " ; for one device was to 
sprinkle all the food in the markets with sacrificial 
wine, so that the Christians could not use it. In- 
genuity was exhausted to find out new means of 
torture and disgrace for the faithful, and many 
apostatised. The great majority, however, stood 
firm, and the crowning day w^as near. 

Already in the year 261 the Emperor Gallienus 
had acknowledged Christianity as a religio licita, 
an allowed religion, although that recognition 
was soon withdrawn. From his deathbed, in 311, 
the Emperor Galerius admitted that persecution 
had failed, and actually besought the prayers of 
the Christians. Then, in 312, Licinius issued 
decrees in favour of the Christians ; and finally, on 
28th October of the same year, the epoch-making 
battle of Milvian Bridge was won by Constantine — 
fighting, as he claimed, under Divine guidance, 
with a banner with the cross on it and the legend 
in hoc vince, against an enemy who had put 
himself under the protection of the old gods of 
Rome. 

After this victory, Constantine at once issued a 
decree in favour of Christianity, and in 313 the 
famous Decree of Milan appeared. It spoke "in 
the name of the Deity whose seat is in heaven," 
and granted " both to the Christians and to all a 
free power of following the religion which each 

69 



The Call of the New Era 

willed to choose." And so that phase of the great 
world-conflict between Christ and Antichrist came 
to an end, and the Empire was ofi&cially won. The 
enemy had failed signally where frontal attacks 
were involved, and now he set himself to endeavour 
to destroy the Gospel by more subtle devices ; but 
the open conflict was over for ever. 

Throughout this long period of conflict and 
conquest it may be claimed generally that still, as 
in the Apostolic Era, every Christian was a Mission- 
ary ; and every Christian community, even if it 
were only a family or two, was an outpost in the 
war. The conditions of life everywhere — social, 
domestic, and political alike — were such that 
believers were forced to be a separate people, and 
as such were mighty for good wherever they were. 
The salt had nowise lost its savour. The progress 
of the Gospel meant the victory of goodness and 
purity, and of the service of God through the 
service of man. The whole round circle of life in 
the Empire involved constant recognition of the 
idolatry on which everything was founded ; and 
thus it was impossible for Christians to share in it, 
and equally impossible for them to conceal their 
faith in Christ. Whenever persecution broke out, 
either on the smaller scale or the greater, it was 
easy to discover those who served the only living 
and true God. Thus believers were letting their 

70 



Till the Empire was Won 

light shine ; and such was the surrounding dark- 
ness, that it accentuated their light even as the 
midnight brings out the stars. 

That interesting little book, The Teaching of 
the Twelve A'postles, which was discovered, in 1875, 
in the library at Constantinople by Bryennios, tells 
of travelling evangelists who were supported by 
the churches and went everywhere preaching the 
Gospel. It is also true that it indicates that 
already, in the generation immediately succeeding 
the Apostles, precautions had to be taken against 
some who are called " Christ-trafi&ckers " — those 
who made merchandise of Christ. But such an 
abuse could not have arisen so soon unless there had 
been a very widespread system of itineracy. There 
were, of course, permanent office-bearers in the 
Church who did not itinerate, and the organisa- 
tion of the local communities grew rapidly as 
new needs arose. Yet it is manifest that a high 
importance attached to those who went from place 
to place. 

The feature, however, which calls for strongest 
emphasis, as bearing on the problem of all the ages, 
is that the Church of that era was Missionary not 
so much because she supported Missionaries, or 
preachers, but because at every point all who 
named the name of Christ set themselves, and had 
to set themselves, to win the heathen for their 

71 



The Call of the New Era 

Lord. The entire army was mobilised for service. 
The whole army was kept on a war footing. 
Not only was every believer a Missionary, and 
necessarily so ; all the unconverted were in 
heathenism. And even yet, while there are forms 
of work in which only a minority can share, and 
where those who would help must do so by deputy, 
there is Mission work in which every believer can 
take a part. Indeed, it is not too much to say 
that those who do nothing directly are doing 
nothing indirectly in any adequate sense, no 
matter how much time or money they may spend 
on the foreign field. A Missionary Church must 
still mean a Church composed of Missionaries. 

Probably the best way, therefore, to set forth 
the character of the Church's service during the 
two centuries which elapsed from the time of 
Pliny's Letter until the appearance of the Edict 
of Milan, is to see a little of some of the more 
prominent workers whose names have survived. 
As in the earlier era, so also in this, the vast 
majority of the brave and consecrated souls who 
lived and died for Christ and won the Empire for 
Him are buried in oblivion, so far as history is 
concerned ; although their names are all written 
in the Lamb's Book of Life, and their record is 
luminous in the light of the eternal. But there 
are names here and there which are known to us 

72 



Till the Empire was Won 

and whose heroic service is on record, and through 
what we know of them it is possible to form some 
conception of what they and others like them 
were doing, and of the sort of Missionaries they 
were. There are four of these heroes of whom 
enough is known to give us an idea of the nature 
of their work — Polycarp, Justin Martyr, TertuUian, 
and Origen. 

There are but few who have never heard of 
Polycarp's reply to the Roman proconsul who 
urged him to save his life by denying his Lord. 
" Fourscore and six years have I served Him, and 
He has done me no wrong. How then shall I 
curse my King and Saviour ? " Recent investiga- 
tion has put the date of his martyrdom at Smyrna 
as far back as the year 155 ; and if he were eighty- 
six years old then, he must have been a grown 
man before St. John passed to his rest. Indeed, 
Irenseus, his pupil, expressly states that he had 
not only listened to the teachings of the venerable 
Apostle, but had conversed with many who had 
seen the Lord in the flesh. The extreme im- 
portance of this fact in connection with the 
authorship of the Gospel according to St. John 
has often been pointed out. 

The only one of the writings of Polycarp which 
has survived is a short Epistle to the Philippians, 
in which he appeals frequently to the memory of 

1Z 



The Call of the New Era 

the Apostles as one who had known them at first 
hand, and which gives ample evidence of the 
maturity of his Christian life. He sets himself to 
redress some of the abuses which had crept into 
the church at Philippi, especially in connection 
with the love of money, which had led to grave 
disorders. He is particularly emphatic in his 
denunciation of heresy, which was already a 
serious factor in the situation. His long life in 
one way and another was spent in seeking to win 
the heathen for Christ ; and after living for his 
Lord, he died for Him, spurning every temptation 
to escape by recantation or denial. 

As his name testifies, Justin Martyr, like so 
many of his contemporaries, was honoured by 
being called to give up his life for his Saviour. 
He died at Rome, probably about the year 165, or 
ten years later than Polycarp. He had been a 
student of philosophy before his conversion, and 
had in vain sought satisfaction for his spiritual 
yearnings in the various schools of ancient thought. 
About the year 131 he met a venerable stranger 
on the seashore, probably somewhere in Palestine, 
and through him he was led to find in Christ the 
satisfaction for heart and intellect alike which he 
had been unable to find anywhere else. As has 
so often been the case in Mission work, it was an 
obscure worker who thus gave Justin to the Church 

74 



Till the Empire was Won 

and to us. Behold how great a matter a little 
fire kindleth ! 

The lowliest worker may win some great 
standard-bearer for the truth. Justin was an 
eager, warm-hearted man, full of courage ; and 
just as he had hungered and thirsted for the light 
before he knew the Lord, so after he had found 
the great Light he was eager to carry it everywhere 
to those who were still sitting in darkness and in 
the shadow of death ; and he became a Missionary 
along the lines of his philosophical experience and 
equipment. He put all his gifts and training at 
the service of Christ, and two elaborate Apologies 
or vindications have come down to us from his 
pen, as w^ell as a treatise written to win and con- 
vince the Jews. Dating as they do from about 
the middle of the second century, these works 
are of very great value, especially as historical 
documents. 

The splendid testimony which he bears in his 
first Apology to the moral triumphs of the Gospel 
may be quoted as typical of the bold line which 
the apologists of those days usually adopted. 
" We who once delighted in adultery," he writes, 
" are now become chaste ; once given to magic, 
now we are consecrated to the One Good God ; 
once loving wealth above all things, we now hold 
all our goods in common and share them with the 

75 



The Call of the New Era 

poor ; once full of hatred and slaughter, now we 
live together in peace, and pray for our enemies 
and strive to convert our persecutors." What 
Gibbon called his " splendid exaggeration " may 
also be quoted as typical of the aggressive spirit 
of those early evangelists. " For there is not one 
single race of men," he says, "whether barbarians 
or Greeks, or whatever they may be called, nomads 
or vagrants or herdsmen dwelling in tents, among 
whom prayers and giving of thanks are not offered 
through the name of the Crucified Jesus." 

The conquest of the world for Christ through 
sheer devotion and goodness born of His Spirit 
was proceeding apace, and the Church was not yet 
" sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 
When Justin was before the Roman tribunal on 
trial for his life, he was asked to define his Christian 
philosophy, and gladly availed himself of the 
opportunity to tell in forceful words of his faith 
in the God of heaven and earth, through Whom 
he had found peace and rest after long and weary 
quest. The judge, with ill-timed raillery, asked 
him whether he thought he would ascend into 
heaven when his head was cut off. "I know it," 
he replied to the interruption. " Yes, beyond all 
power to doubt I know it." When he was urged 
to save his life by offering sacrifice to the gods, 
he said : " Our great desire is to sufi'er for Christ ; 

76 



Till the Empire was Won 

for that will give us confidence before His awful 
judgment-seat, at the bar of which the whole 
world will have to stand." Sentence of death 
was then pronounced, and was carried out the 
same day. Taking him all in all, Justin is one of 
the most interesting workers of his age ; and his 
Missionary labours were all transfused with a 
glow which came straight from his ardent, eager 
soul. 

Tertullian, for ever famous as a defender and 
exponent of the Christian faith, is the outstanding 
representative of the North African Church. He 
was born at Carthage, "not later than the year 160, 
and became a Christian when he was about thirty- 
two years of age. He was a highly educated man, 
and his extant writings show him to have been a 
keen debater, witty, sarcastic, and intense, the 
most human of all the Fathers. " Let the Tiber 
overflow its banks," he says in one passage, " let 
the Nile fail to inundate the country, let the 
heavens be of brass, let the sun be darkened, let 
famine or pestilence visit the land, and at once 
the cry is raised, 'The Christians to the lions.'" 
His great claim, too, is of interest yet to every 
student of Missionary enterprise. " We are a 
people of yesterday ; and yet we have filled every 
place belonging to you — cities, islands, castles, 
towns, assemblies, your very camps, your tribes, 

n 



The Call of the New Era 

companies, palaces, senate, forum ! We leave you 
your temples only. We count your armies ; our 
number in a single province will be greater." 

In this also we have the buoyancy of youth. 
This was what could be proclaimed at the begin- 
ning of the third century, when the work of world- 
evangelisation was hardly begun. Tertullian's 
vehemence and asceticism led him to join the 
Montanists, a step he took some time between 
199 and 203. These sectaries, who have probably 
got scant justice from the orthodox historians, 
even as they got scant justice from the orthodox 
Church of the time, were loyal to all the great 
verities of the faith, and diflered from the main 
body of believers along three lines, which are full 
of interest as showing some of the tendencies 
striving for expression in those stirring times. 
They rejected the current doctrines regarding 
the government of the Church ; they were in- 
clined to asceticism, perhaps even to fanaticism ; 
and they attached so much importance to the 
revelations of their prophet-preachers as to inter- 
fere with the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. 
It is not easy, however, to say how far they were 
actually in the wrong, and how far they were 
driven to extremes by their opponents ; and it is 
not at all unlikely that they represent an ex- 
aggerated opposition to the worldly tendencies 

78 



Till the Empire was Won 

which were already manifesting themselves in the 
Church. 

The fact that Tertullian associated himself with 
them would seem to support this view, and it is 
not our part to pass any sweeping condemnation. 
It may be easier to place them, both in their 
weakness and their strength, when we find that 
they claimed for themselves the title " the 
spiritual," and described the ordinary Christians 
as " the carnal." As for Tertullian himself, 
although he shared to the full in the persecution 
of the time, he does not seem to have been called 
on to seal his testimony with his blood. The 
glory of his work is that everything centres round 
the great doctrines of sin and grace, and probably 
no one in all that early Church had an influence 
equal to his. Even yet his pages glow with en- 
thusiasm and quiver with passion. His writings 
embody his whole soul, and never did a writer 
more fully infuse his entire moral life into what 
he wrote. 

If Tertullian be the greatest of the Latin 
Fathers, Origen is the greatest of the Greek 
Fathers. He was born in Alexandria about the 
year 185. His father was a Christian of some 
standing, and he received a liberal education, being 
so thoroughly trained in Scripture that he early 
knew many portions by heart. In harmony with 

79 



The Call of the New Era 

such a good beginniDg, his best-known work is his 
Hexapla, or six-version edition of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, which was the greatest work of its kind 
until twelve centuries later Erasmus gave the 
Church the Greek text of the New Testament. 
Origen's father died as a martyr in the year 202, 
and as one result the son found himself utterly 
destitute at the age of seventeen. Till he was past 
middle life, his home was in Alexandria, where he 
did splendid service as a teacher. In this work he 
was successful in winning many of his heathen 
pupils for Christ, a fact which emphasises the 
truth that the Church was then Missionary at 
every pore and in every sphere. He had also a 
reputation for bringing those who had wandered 
into heresy back to the orthodox fold ; one of 
those whom he thus rescued from error, a wealthy 
man named Ambrosius, who had been a Gnostic, 
putting a costly library at his disposal for the 
good work, along with seven shorthand writers 
and a number of copyists. 

In various cases where trouble had arisen, Origen 
was sent or invited to visit churches in their 
distress, and was able to heal their divisions. As 
a preacher, too, he went to Csesarea, where in 
later life he found refuge from his adversaries. 
About the year 218 he was summoned by the 
mother of Alexander Severus, afterwards Emperor, 

80 



Till the Empire was Won 

to instruct her in the faith of Christ. He was a 
great Missionary teacher and preacher, and his 
reputation as a writer was such that they used 
to say he had written six thousand books. Broken 
by suffering, he died in the year 254, one of his 
favourite sayings in his passing being : " Love is an 
agony, a passion." To love the truth so as to 
suffer for it ; to love all mankind with a yearning 
to bring them to Christ ; to love if need be to the 
death — that was the creed and the character of 
Origen. 

It was through workers such as these, known 
and unknown, that the Empire was won for Christ. 
The Missionaries were of all sorts, of all ranks and 
classes — slaves and patricians, humble girls and 
famous scholars, statesmen and rude labourers. 
And it was a wonderful work they did for humanity 
and God. Through their influence, all the relation- 
ships of life were softened and sweetened. The 
old paternal severity was transformed, the relation 
of husband and wife was purified, children were 
educated, labour was dignified, and the slave sat 
beside his master at the Table of the Lord. 
Liberty was born in that early Church ; middle 
walls of partition were broken down ; the power of 
the new spirit was everywhere felt. And so the 
tide rose higher and higher until the Edict of 
Milan became a moral and spiritual necessity. 

N.E.— 6 8 1 



The Call of the New Era 

There are obvious limits to the power of an 
oppressor, even when he is an absolute autocrat ; 
and when the Gospel lays hold of the common 
people, the persecutor is baffled. The poppy-heads 
may be struck off, but not the blades of grass when 
once they have spread all over the plain. If only 
the Empire had stopped short with recognition, all 
might have been well. That is all the Church of 
the living God should ever seek, whether it be in 
China or Britain— a fair field and no favour. The 
State should be Christian, just like the Church, a 
holy institution of God. But when the State takes 
the Church under her wing and patronises her, 
she does more harm than good ; and it is open 
to question whether even yet the Church has 
recovered from the hurt she received when the 
favour of the Emperor led multitudes to crowd 
into her courts, converted by Imperial Edict and 
not by the grace of Christ. Certain it is that 
under the new auspices, and in the sunshine of the 
Imperial favour, the mystery of iniquity, of which 
St. Paul had such sad forebodings, developed apace, 
until the tyranny of the priest took the place of 
that of the pagan oppressor, and the sacerdotal 
spirit led to many features of paganism being 
incorporated into the doctrines and practices of 
the Church. 

And thus, on the very morning of victory, 
82 



Till the Empire was Won 

the whole problem became complicated and the 
whole situation became perplexing after a new 
sort. " As soon as ever Christianity is cast 
into the world to begin its history," says Mozley 
in his University Sermons, "that moment there 
begins the great deception." "There are to be 
false Christs and false prophets, false signs and 
wonders ; so that it is the parting admonition of 
Christ to His disciples, 'Take heed lest any man 
deceive you,' as if that would be the great danger." 
The explanation of this "mass of deception," 
according to the preacher, lies in the solemn power 
of Christianity " not only to bring out the truth 
of human nature, but, like some wonderful alchemy, 
to elicit and extract the falsehood of it ; not only 
to develop what is sincere and sterling in man, but 
what is counterfeit in him too." And so there are 
warnings as well as inspiration for the great 
Missionary enterprise from this marvellous era of 
tribulation and triumph. 



CHAPTER IV 

MEDIEVAL MISSIONS 



85 



" For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek ; for 
the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him." — 
EoM. 10. 12. 

" Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced." — Comte. 

" I believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from 
which the Christian Church has ever suffered, has been the effort 
to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation ; and that the reason 
that preaching is so commonly ineffectual is, that it calls on men 
oftener to work for God, than to behold God working for them." — 

RUSKIN. 



86 



CHAPTER IV 
MEDIAEVAL MISSIONS 

ALTHOUGH the period from the Edict of 
Milan, with its Imperial recognition of 
Christianity, till the Reformation in the sixteenth 
century is a long one, it may be traversed swiftly 
so far as Missions are concerned. It is true that 
these centuries, sometimes so silent, and these ages, 
sometimes so dark, raise many problems in con- 
nection with Missions, but for the most part it is 
enough to state these and carry them forward. 

In this era Christianity spread over the whole 
of Europe, with the exception of the far North. 
On the other hand, and sadly enough during this 
era, too, the mystery of iniquity — which had begun 
to manifest itself at an earlier stage, mainly in the 
form of sacerdotalism, and had been so strongly 
reinforced by Imperial favour — actually obtained 
the mastery within the Church. Not only so, but 
during this mediaeval era flourishing churches like 
that of North Africa, the church of Tertullian, 

87 



The Call of the New Era 

decayed and disappeared, owing mainly, as some 
think, to the fact that they had ceased to be 
Missionary churches. It is of the very nature of 
the case that a Missionary church alone can be 
healthy and progressive, and it is also of the nature 
of the case that churches which are not progressive 
must be retrograde. 

So completely did the blight of paganism fall 
on the life and doctrine of the Church, that on the 
eve of the Reformation the official head of Christen- 
dom, Pope Leo x., could describe the Gospel as 
having been a profitable fable for him and his. 
The Reformation was a return to New Testament 
simplicities and purities, a great movement back 
to Christ. It was the resurrection of the Church 
from the grave of pagan corruption, a revival of 
heart-religion. 

As has been already indicated, Christianity 
suffered the most deadly injury when the sunshine 
of public and unwonted favour brought many into 
her membership who had been converted by the 
Imperial Edict and not by the power of Divine 
truth. Men and women crowded into her ranks 
who brought with them their heathen philosophies 
and their love of pagan ceremonial, corrupting 
the simplicity of the Gospel alike in faith and 
worship ; so that to this day every branch of the 
Church suffers from the insidious invasion. So 



Mediaeval Missions 

true is it that tlie paganism which had been 
conquered proved deadlier than the paganism 
which had power to persecute and kill. Victi 
victorihus leges dederunt — the conquered gave 
laws to the conquerors. 

Historians have sometimes dated the final dis- 
appearance of paganism as having taken place in 
the fifth century, but it is certain that it has 
not disappeared yet. Such phenomena as the 
immoralities of the Europe of the Rennaissance, 
the rationalism, moderatism, and Socinianism of 
the Europe of the eighteenth century, and the 
materialism and indifference to revealed religion 
of the Europe of to-day, are due not so much 
to periodic backsliding as to the periodic recru- 
descence of the paganism which has never yet been 
quite destroyed, and which has its perennial ally 
in the unregenerate human heart with its hatred of 
the supernatural. 

Our business now, however, is to see how the 
truth as it is in Jesus spread all over the Empire 
and beyond it, among the barbarians subsequent 
to the conversion of Constantine. Inroads had 
already been made on the territories which lay 
outside the Empire and beyond the bounds of 
civilisation. Tertullian could boast that regions 
which were inaccessible to the armies of Rome had 
been brought into subjection to Christ. Before 

89 



The Call of the New Era 

the close of tlie third century, Christian captives 
had carried the Gospel among the Goths, and at 
the Council of Niceea in 325 there was a representa- 
tive of the Goths present. Yet it is quite correct 
to put it that in the time of Constantino the work 
which lay before the Church, the Missionary work 
of the Middle Ages, was to win for Christ the lands 
which lay outside the Empire, or were too far from 
the centre for effective rule. Nor was the work 
any the easier that many of those who had thus to 
be evangelised were migratory tribes. It was an 
important feature of the work, too, that now it had 
often to be done among peoples who were wholly 
barbarous, and no longer among those who were as 
truly civilised as the Missionaries themselves. The 
extent to which this was accomplished may be 
estimated in part by the respect for the Church 
shown by many of the barbarians who ere long 
swept down on the Empire. 

One other noteworthy feature of the mediaeval 
Mission work of the Church was that those who 
did it were not unwilling at times to use the arm 
of flesh which was now sometimes at their disposal. 
That was one of the by-products of the Imperial 
recognition and the new Erastianism, and it was no 
more helpful to true spiritual work than the re- 
course of some Komanist Missionaries to the moral 
support of gunboats has been helpful in our time. 

90 



Mediaeval Missions 

By the thirteenth or fourteenth century Mission- 
ary effort had practically ceased. Europe as a 
whole was by that time nominally Christian ; the 
New World was not yet opened up, and the great 
Eastern empires were closed against the truth. 
But even up to that point the story is far from 
being one of uninterrupted progress ; for Moham- 
medanism had long since devastated what had been 
Christian territories in Northern Africa, and the 
lands which had witnessed the early triumphs of 
the Missionaries of Christ. It has been remarked 
that although the Church very early gave a place 
in her public devotions to prayers for the conver- 
sion of the heathen, there was no actual organisation 
for that end. That was probably due to the fact 
that for long the whole Church was such an 
organisation, and that, strictly speaking, there 
should be no other. Yet as the Church became 
world-wide, the absence of some such definite 
organisation may have hastened the cessation of 
overt efforts to win the heathen for the Lord. 
Forms and organisations have their drawbacks, 
but they have this advantage, that even if some- 
times, when the tide of spiritual life has receded, 
they may be little more than forms, when the tide 
rises again they are there to be reinfused with the 
spirit of power : and historically that has often 
meant much, 

91 



The Call of the New Era 

To enter fully into tlie history of mediaeval 
Missions, fragmentary as it often is, would mean 
following the career of men like Ulphilas, the 
Apostle of the Goths, who was a boy of seven 
when the Council of Nicsea met ; Valentinus and 
Severinus, who evangelised the tribes of the Upper 
Danube ; Martin of Tours, who wrought among the 
Franks ; Augustine, who was sent to the men of 
Kent ; Aidan, who was the Missionary of the 
Northumbrian Saxons ; Gallus, who preached in 
Switzerland ; Killian, who spread the light in 
Thuringia; Virgilius, who penetrated into the 
darkness of Carinthia ; and Columbanus, who told 
the Burgundians of the Vosges of the grace of 
God. Many such names still survive, sometimes 
as nothing more than names, to remind us of the 
multitudes who braved every danger that they 
might hand on the light which had illumined their 
own souls, and share with the weary and heavy- 
laden the joy which had come into their own lives. 
But we must divide if we are to conquer, and from 
one sphere we may learn all that is essential in the 
rest. 

We shall therefore take what was done in 
Scotland as typical of what was going on all over 
the outlying regions of Europe. We shall trace with 
some detail the work of the early Missionaries who 
came into that little grey Northern land and made 

92 



Mediaeval Missions 

it, by the grace of God, not only the mother of 
many stalwart men and gracious women, but the 
mother of many of the best Missionaries who have 
ever adventured out into the regions beyond. 

All over Scotland there are place-names such as 
Kilbride, Kilmarnock, Kilkerran, Kilwinning, Kil- 
ninian, Kilconquhar, Kilpatrick, Kilmary, and 
many another, which serve to remind the genera- 
tions following of what St. Bride, St. Marnock, St. 
Patrick, and other Missionaries did in the olden 
time when a man could only live through his work. 
In some instances these and similar landmarks are 
so widespread as to show that the influence of the 
evangelists in question was not confined to any 
one district or tribe. St. Bruic, for example, who 
survives in Bute, survives also in Brittany. All 
over the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, 
too, there are places called Kildonnan, in memory 
of St. Donnan, who is said to have been martyred 
at Eigg, a small island North of lona, in the year 
617. Not only so, but there is a Kildonnan in 
Wigtonshire in the South, another in Ayrshire in 
the West, and yet another relic in Auchterless in 
Aberdeenshire, where there is a cattle market held 
annually called Donnan Fair. 

Another of these early itinerant evangelists has 
his memory preserved in this singular roll-call of 
the saints in a little island off the shore of South 

93 



The Call of the New Era 

Knapdale in Argyleshire, called Eilan ]\Ioir Vic 
O'Chormoig — tliat is, the island of the great Cormac. 
In the small island of Bute alone there are traces 
of the blessed and fruitful work of at least seven 
of these old-world workers for God — Marnock, 
Chattan, Blain, Ninian, Michael, Bruic, and Bride 
or Bridget. 

As interesting a case as any is one only recently 
authenticated. All through Argyleshire there are 
scattered sites or remains of ecclesiastical build- 
ings coming under names with a generic similarity, 
such as Kilmary, Kilmory, Kilmorich, Kilmora, 
and Kilmoray. In Eoss-shire, too, there is the 
beautiful mountain lake. Loch Maree ; one of its 
islands, called Eilan Maree, has many ecclesi- 
astical traditions clustering round it. For long 
it was thought that these were reminiscences 
of the worship of the Virgin Mary in the early 
Scottish Church ; but it is known now that they 
commemorate the work of an itinerant Missionary, 
Maelrubha by name, whose memory is said to be 
perpetuated throughout the North and West of 
Scotland by no fewer than twenty-one place-names. 
Strangely enough, and as an instance of how the 
battle between error and truth came and went in 
these early days, the incursions of the pagan Danes 
undid the work of this saint so completely that, after 
the Revolution of 1688, the Presbytery of Dingwall 

94 



Mediaeval Missions 

in Ross-shire had great difficulty in putting down 
the practice of offering yearly sacrifice to this same 
Maelrubha. The Christian Missionary had actually 
been transformed into a heathen deity, and was 
worshipped as such for generations after the Re- 
formation. 

In like fashion all over Scotland there are traces 
of the work of men like Cuthbert, Kenneth, 
Baithean, Aidan, and many another of the Scottish 
legion of honour. The story of St. Patrick affords 
an interesting glimpse and proof of how their good 
work had been going on from very early times. 
He seems to have been born on the banks of the 
Clyde about the year 397, at Bonavern, afterwards 
called Kilpatrick in memory of its greatest son. 
It was a Christian village in the midst of heathen- 
ism, and his father was a deacon in the church of 
the community ; his pre-baptismal name showing 
further that he belonged to a native family. We 
cannot now tell whether these Christians had come 
to Strathclyde to make disciples, or whether, like 
so many other Missionaries, they had been driven 
into the wilds by persecution ; but however they 
came, they had gathered others round them. 
England received the Gospel from Rome and the 
East. In due course she sent it North to Scotland, 
and then in turn Scotland sent Patrick to Ireland. 
Later on, when the former light had been quenched, 

95 



The Call of the New Era 

Ireland paid her debt with interest by giving 
Columba to Scotland. Thus the three countries 
were early bound together in a true union of hearts, 
and by the most precious and gracious ties of 
mutual indebtedness and mutual faith in the One 
Saviour and Lord. 

There are three names which rise out of the 
obscurity of these early days in Scotland in such 
a fashion as to merit special consideration — Ninian, 
Kentigern, and Columba. Ninian was a century 
and a half before the other two, who were partly 
contemporaries. Speaking approximately, the 
three divide Scotland among them. Ninian is 
the saint of Galloway and the Southern Picts, 
although he seems to have penetrated as far North 
as Stirlingshire and Perthshire. Kentigern, or 
Mungo, as he is sometimes called, is the saint of 
Glasgow and the West of Scotland ; while Columba 
did his main work among the Scots of the Western 
Isles and the Northern Picts, crossing the Grampians 
in his travels, and perhaps going as far North as 
the Orkney Islands. 

St. Ninian, or, as the name sometimes appears, 
St. Rinian or Ringan, was born about the year 
360. His birthplace is uncertain ; but it is 
probable that he was of noble birth, and one of 
the old stock of the land. He is said to have 
made his way to Rome, which is not improbable ; 

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Mediaeval Missions 

altliouo-h one of the weaknesses of the monkish 
annalists is to relate everything to Rome and 
Romish influence in the most uncritical fashion. 
On his return from the Continent, about the 
beginning of the fifth century, he landed in 
Galloway, and there built, with the help of masons 
he brought with him, what was the first stone 
church in Scotland. Because of its glittering 
appearance, this building was called the Candida 
casa, or white house, which in Saxon was 
Hwitherne, or, as it is now, Whithorn, the centre 
from which Ninian's influence mostly radiated, 
and round which his fame mainly gathers. From 
his white house he wandered far and near on his 
errands of evangelisation, getting at least as far 
North as Perthshire. 

The old Romans have left camps and walls to 
tell of their presence in the cold, stern regions of 
Caledonia. Ninian has left churches and wells 
and even villages to bear his name. There are 
DO fewer than twenty-five Churches which have 
thus borne his name and perpetuated his work 
and worth throusjhout the districts in which he 
laboured. When he died, in 432, he left behind 
him a noble monument of his heroism and faith 
in the Picts whom he won for his Lord ; and 
although his memory fades away into the shadowy 
past, his work endures and will endure for ever. 

N.E.-7 97 



The Call of the New Era 

For ages after his death bands of pilgrims were 
wont to resort annually to his shrine at Whithorn, 
among those who went in 1474 being no less a lady 
than the wife of James ill. In 1507, James iv. 
himself made the pilgrimage on foot that he might 
pray for the recovery of his wife, testify his resig- 
nation to the death of his two infant children, 
and express his penitence for his rebellion against 
his father. To this day, on the seashore about 
two miles from Whithorn, a cave is pointed out 
as the place where Ninian lodged, and it is now 
scheduled as a national monument. 

During the eighty years which elapsed between 
the death of Ninian and the birth of Kentigern, 
two other names appear in the story of Scottish 
Missionary enterprise which deserve mention. 
The first is that of Palladius, whose memory 
survives at Fordoun in the Mearns, where there 
is not only Paldy's Well, but Paldy's Fair. The 
other is that of Servanus, or Serf, as he is more 
familiarly called. He appears to have been the 
head of a sort of Missionary institute from which 
trained evangelists went forth into the surrounding 
darkness to tell of the love of the Eedeemer. 
He carried on his work first of all at Culross on 
the Forth, and then on an island in Loch Leven 
which still bears his name. 

One day in the year 514, while the Mission 
98 



Mediaeval Missions 

school was still at Culross, a small boat was 
driven ashore with one solitary, terror-stricken 
occupant, the daughter of a Pictish chief, who had 
broken the seventh commandment, and had been 
cast adrift for her offences to perish in the stormy- 
waters of the North Sea. St. Serf received her 
in a kindly fashion, and by and by the son to 
whom she gave birth was baptized Kentigern, 
which means a chief lord. 

The boy grew up in the community of the 
Missionaries, and Serfs pet name for him, Munghu, 
"My dear one," gave rise to Mungo, that other 
name by which he is now known. Along with 
the others there, he shared in the training of the 
school ; and when his training was over he went 
out like the rest, with the love of Christ in his 
valiant young heart, to tell the story of salvation 
to others. He set his face towards the South, 
and settled by the banks of the river Clyde, with 
which his memory is so much bound up. When 
he was twenty-six years old, he had to flee from 
Strathclyde for a time, and betook himself to 
Wales, and there also his work is still com- 
memorated. In 560, however, he was back ao-ain 
in his old quarters, bringing new workers and 
scholars with him ; and for forty years he laboured 
there with much success, dying in the fulness of 
years in 601. 

99 



The Call of the New Era 

Those who are familiar with the Glasgow coat 
of arms will remember that it consists of a tree 
with a bird on it, a bell, and a salmon with 
a ring in its mouth. All these are connected 
with Kentigern's career, and aflford a happy- 
instance of how the legendary and the historical 
have been mixed up in the record of these early 
ages, and how needful it is to use many grains 
of salt when we deal with them. The bird has 
reference to an incident in the Missionary's school- 
days. One of his comrades had killed a robin 
redbreast, and had thrown the dead bird into his 
lap in order to incriminate him. But his innocence 
was marvellously displayed. The bird came to life 
again rather than that he should suffer unjustly, 
and from his shoulder it poured forth its song of 
praise and vindication. The tree has a double 
reference. By itself it tells of another miracle, 
when one frosty night the saint was saved from 
perishing of cold through fire being breathed into 
a frozen tree. But taken along with the bell, 
it tells of his calling the people to the worship 
of the true God by means of a bell swung on a 
tree in a clearing in the primaeval Caledonian 
woods. The fish with the ring in its mouth tells 
of a time when a ring was imperatively required to 
vindicate injured innocence, and was miraculously 
found in a salmon which he drew from the Clyde. 

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Mediaeval Missions 

This halo of the miraculous is not the only 
indication that already the superstitions of Rome 
were beginning to rival the superstitions of the 
heathen. Even if we distinguish between the 
evangelists and their biographers, who represent a 
later age, we can see how^ the mystery of iniquity 
was at work even in the far-off Mission field, and 
among those who were at the very front and right 
in the firing line. The asceticism which Kentigern 
is said to have practised is but one out of many 
proofs of this. His bed, we are told, was a 
hollow stone, and at the second cock-crowing he 
rose to plunge himself into the cold, rapid stream 
in summer and winter alike — there to recite from 
the Book of Psalms. No wonder he had power 
over the savages accustomed to yield to every 
appetite and impulse ; but it was not the highest 
kind of power, inasmuch as it was not purely 
spiritual, and such practices had in them the 
elements of decay. Asceticism, however im- 
pressive it may be, is not Christianity. The 
service of the Lord Jesus is not emaciation, 
but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost. 

St. Columba, the third of the three mighty men, 
was born in Ireland in the wilds of Donegal in 
the year 521. The royalty of two lines united 
in him ; and had his ambitions been worldly, he 

lOI 



The Call of the New Era 

might have made his way to a throne. His 
mother, however, was a godly woman, and early 
imbued her child with a love for Scripture which 
he never lost. He soon gave indications of the 
strength of character and the thirst for purity 
which distinguished him in later years. From 
the first he devoted himself to Missionary enter- 
prise, and attended the great schools at Moville, 
Clonmel, and Glasnevin, which even at that early 
period flourished in the Isle of the Saints. He 
not only studied theology there, but music as 
well ; and it is not unlikely that his powers as 
a bard, poet, and singer in one had more to do 
with his magnetic influence in later years than 
even his preaching had. 

Before he was twenty-five he had been set apart 
first as a deacon and then as a presbyter ; and 
before he crossed to Scotland he had founded 
monasteries in Derry and elsewhere. It must be 
borne in mind, however, that there was little 
resemblance between the institutions which he 
organised and what were known as monasteries 
in the Church of Rome as medisevalism developed 
and the monastic orders multiplied. Columba's 
monasteries, alike in Ireland and Scotland, were 
the headquarters of men who had consecrated 
themselves to the work of evangelisation, and 
were there to be trained or to help to train others 

102 



Mediaeval Missions 

for service. They were Mission institutes and 
divinity halls in one. They were schools of the 
prophets, and Bible Societies in addition. Far 
from being places to which men fled who were 
seeking to abandon the world to itself, they were 
the temporary retreats of those who had put 
themselves into the Lord's hands to go wherever 
He might send them. The ascetic spirit was all 
that was common to the two kinds of monasteries ; 
but, unfortunately, it was through that spirit that 
the healthy Evangelical communities which men 
like Columba founded gradually degenerated until 
they became hotbeds of indolence and all that 
indolence brings. 

But that evil consummation was still centuries 
distant when, on a May morning in 563, an open 
boat made of wicker covered with hides left Loch 
Foyle for the shores of Scotland. It was a war 
galley, but it carried neither sword nor spear. It 
had instead some blacksmith's and carpenter's 
tools, some implements of husbandry, some fishing 
nets, and a handmill, along with a sack or two 
of barley for food, and as much for seed. There 
was also a leather bottle full of milk, and another 
with water. Besides that, there were some manu- 
script copies of the Scriptures and a hymn-book, 
with some parchment and pens and ink. 

There were thirteen men on board, all of them 
103 



The Call of the New Era 

men of education and kinsmen of their leader. 
Those who were not barefooted wore shoes of hide, 
and their clothes were of undyed wool. Their 
chief was a man at whom we do well to look, as 
a type of the noblest Missionaries of the Cross. 
He was forty years of age, and of great strength 
and stature. His voice could be heard above 
the noise of the storm more than a mile away ; 
and when he sang the Psalms of David, they 
echoed down the glens like the sound of a distant 
waterfall. His grey eye could be soft as the dew 
of the morning, but it could also flash like the 
lightning out of the thunder-cloud. He was a 
born leader of men, who inspired the respect of 
all who knew him, and who was profoundly loved 
by those who knew him as companion and 
friend. 

The tradition is that these warm-hearted Irish- 
men had determined that wherever they went 
they must be out of sight of the land they loved 
so well. They could not settle, therefore, in 
Kintyre, for there the far-distant shores of Erin 
were still visible. Even when they passed on 
to Isle Oronsay, the faint outline of the land of 
their birth could still be seen. And so they 
came to lona, that island which has been famous 
ever since as their home and the centre of their 
blessed campaigns for Christ and Scotland. Dr. 

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Mediaeval Missions 

Johnson spoke of it as " that illustrious island 
which was once the luminary of the Caledonian 
regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians 
derived the benefits of knowledge and the bless- 
ings of religion." And, as he adds, " that man is 
little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain 
force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety 
would not grow warmer amid the ruins of lona. 

Columba's coracle had been borne thither by 
the winds and the waves, but God's hand was 
on the helm. The island was peculiarly adapted 
for the work which these Missionaries had to 
face. It- was free from many of the dangers of 
the mainland in these dark days, when war was 
not the exception but the rule. It kept them 
apart and free for the study of the Word and 
for the transcription of copies of the sacred 
oracles. For Zona was a Bible Institute, as well 
as a Theological College and Missionary head- 
quarters. Nor could any spot then have been 
better adapted for the training of those who 
were to adventure themselves in search of new 
worlds to conquer for their Lord. It was a 
splendid centre for men who could brave the 
stormiest seas. Thus it was that ere long we 
find Missionaries from lona passing from point 
to point all along the Western coasts, as far 
North as the Orkneys, establishing a network of 

105 



The Call of the New Era 

Christian agencies and civilising influences wherever 
they went. They went Southwards, too, and the 
Angles and Saxons of Northern England shared 
in the light which streamed from the island 
sanctuary. 

Before Columba died, his fame had spread as 
far as Gaul, and even beyond the Alps. As for 
Scotland and his work there, no fewer than 
fifty-three places have wells or churches which 
bear testimony to the extent and the beneficence 
of his labours. For thirty-four years the great 
evangelist laboured in lona, training workers 
for the service which lay so near his heart, with 
occasional interruptions when he journeyed to 
found new churches or to encourage those already 
planted. Tradition asserts that in the year 584 
he visited Kentigern, and saw how the work in 
the West was progressing. 

His first great journey seems to have been to 
Inverness, the fortress of Brude, King of the 
Northern Picts. Columba knew that if the king 
could be won the subjects would follow, for in these 
cruder days that was a matter of course. That is 
one reason for the fact that throughout these early 
ages provinces which were Christian in one genera- 
tion became pagan the next. That simply meant 
that a Julian had succeeded a Constantino, that a 
pagan chief had followed one who had at least 

io6 



Mediaeval Missions 

declared himself a Christian. This feature of 
the situation tends to introduce an element of 
unreality which is sometimes very disconcerting. 
Yet there was true work for God going on apart 
from the conversion of chiefs, apparent or real, and 
work was being done which has endured from then 
till now. 

Columba was successful in winning Brude to the 
new ways, and all his wide domain was opened to 
the itinerant preachers of the Gospel. Columba 
for one took full advantage of the open doors. 
On foot he penetrated the glens and straths and 
crossed the hills wherever heathen families were 
to be found, proclaiming his message of the re- 
deeming love of God. Scotland has seldom if 
ever had a preacher so well fitted for this work. 
A princely presence, a joyous countenance, a mag- 
nificent voice, a graceful manner as of one used to 
courts, an extraordinary knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures, strong faith in God, and intense sympathy 
with men — he was an ideal preacher of Christ. And, 
like Luther and Wesley, and many another of the 
same build, he was more than a Missionary — or 
rather, he was a Missionary of the supreme kind. 
He was a leader of men, who inspired others with 
his ideals and sent them out to do work like his 
own. He was a born organiser, a man of a con- 
structive genius, who laid the foundations deep and 

107 



The Call of the New Era 

broad for the perpetuation of the work after he and 
his immediate disciples were gone. 

New centres, with lona as their model, sprang 
up in many places. Bands of devoted Christians 
occupied the strategic points ; and such was the 
universal confidence in Columba's wisdom, and so 
great his influence, that so long as he lived he 
could deal as he pleased with those in command at 
these centres. He was only a presbyter in name, 
but in deed and in truth he was a true bishop ; 
for bishop means an overseer, and by the Divine 
right to rule, which can never be really gainsaid, he 
guided and regulated the whole. The tools belong 
to the man who can use them. 

As the end drew near, he was privileged to see 
much of the fruit of his labours. In 563 he had 
found lona practically a desert island. In 597 he 
left it crowded with those who had offered them- 
selves freely as living sacrifices to God, and a centre 
from which trained workers were constantly going 
forth to serve in many a land. In 563 he had 
found Scotland all but pagan ; the work of Ninian 
almost forgotten, that of Kentigern just begun. In 
597 he left it largely under the influence of Chris- 
tian truth, and in many parts actually won for 
Christ. He had not only sown good seed, but he 
had seen the first-fruits of the great and gracious 
harvest. 

io8 



Mediaeval Missions 

His biographer Adamnan makes him say good- 
bye to the scene of his labours in memorable and 
prophetic words : " Unto this place, albeit it is 
small and poor, great homage shall yet be paid, not 
only by the kings and people of the Scots, but by 
the rulers of the barbarous and distant nations 
with their people also. In great veneration too it 
shall be held by the holy men of other churches." 
The work in lona went on for long after he passed 
to his rest ; but prosperity brought wealth and 
luxury, and by and by superstition brought decay, 
until at last the light all but died out, and reforma- 
tion of the most drastic sort was urgently required. 
The corruption of the best becomes the worst. 

This story of these old Scottish Missionaries has 
been told with some detail because it is typical of 
what was going on at all the outposts of Europe 
among Goths and Huns, among Celts and 
Slavs, among Germans and Scandinavians. It is 
typical, indeed, not only of the devotion, self- 
sacrifice, and success of the Missionaries, but also 
of the ultimate corruption and decay which ensued. 
It was through men like Ninian and Columba that 
all Middle and Northern Europe were won from 
paganism ; and even as lona came under the papal 
blight in the ages which followed, so it was every- 
where after the Missionary enthusiasm had died 
out and popery was developed. 

109 



The Call of the New Era 

Never has there been such a gigantic object- 
lesson in the power of pagan conceptions and 
practices to poison the very springs of the Church 
and to sap its strength, as was given on a large 
scale during these centuries when the light so 
marvellously kindled was almost quenched. In 
the long doctrinal conflicts which followed the 
Imperial recognition, orthodoxy won as against 
Arianism and other heresies ; but by and by she 
went down before her still more insidious foes — 
her old enemies, the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. 

Even in the most modern Mission enterprise, 
this object-lesson should be borne in mind ; for the 
same enemies are busy yet — as busy as ever they 
were. It has to be borne in mind, too, that many 
of the European peoples received the truth through 
corrupt channels, and that the Gospel came to them 
after the deterioration at the centre had begun. 
The first inroad on the heathenism of Iceland, for 
example, was not made till 981, and it was even 
later than that before Greenland was invaded by 
the Christian Missionary. Many of the Vikings 
carried home the tidings of the new and strange 
faith with which they had come into contact in 
their wars and wanderings, and that was how the 
Norsemen first heard the Good News. The intro- 
duction of the Gospel among the Poles and 

no 



Mediaeval Missions 

Hungarians did not take place till the tenth 
century ; and it was as late as the twelfth century 
when it was introduced among the Pomeranians, 
the Finns, and the Lithuanians. 

Nor can it be denied that some of the latter- 
day j\Iissionaries made it only too obvious that they 
themselves had come under the influence of the re- 
actionary forces which were by this time at work 
everywhere, although doubtless many of them 
were better than their theories. They were often 
characterised by Eomanising zeal, rather than by 
yearning to win souls for Christ ; and they had 
nothing but bitter opposition for the simpler and 
uncorrupted forms of the faith when they came into 
contact with them. They would have no fellow- 
ship, for example, with married priests, but called 
them adulterers ; and they constantly affirmed that 
there could be no real union with Christ apart 
from union with the Roman See. Nor were they 
averse in many cases to avail themselves of the 
arm of flesh for the extension of the Kingdom of 
Him who had specifically forbidden the use of the 
sword for such an end. Some of these emissaries 
of Christianity, indeed, were warriors rather than 
Missionaries ; a fatal fact, since here if anywhere 
force is no remedy, and they who use the sword 
perish by the sword. 

Long before the Reformation, Missionary zeal in 
III 



The Call of the New Era 

the ordiuary sense of the term had disappeared 
from the earth ; and it is hardly possible to recog- 
nise the faith or practice of Paul or Polycarp 
in the superstructure of superstition with which 
they had by that time been overlaid. Yet, if once 
we admit the pagan sacerdotal conception that the 
Christian minister is a sacrificing priest, who can 
stand between immortal souls and their God, and 
can pronounce absolution of their sins, it is com- 
paratively easy to account for all that grew out 
of it. Historians have indeed traced the various 
stages of the monstrous growth. Yet care must 
be taken to avoid exaggeration even here. There 
were always some who were faithful at heart even 
during these centuries of apostasy and decay. All 
through the Dark Ages there were simple, loyal 
souls who kept the fire burning on the altar and 
were true to their Saviour King ; and ever and 
anon the smouldering embers burst out into a 
blaze which presaged better and brighter days. 
Although the Church was grieving and even 
quenching the Holy Ghost, He was w^orking in 
society, in the nobler aspirations of humanity, in 
many movements of thought, in poetry and art ; 
and the reception given to the Evangel when it 
was proclaimed by men like Wyclif and Luther, 
Zwingli and Knox, showed that there were many 
who had never bowed the knee to Baal, and very 

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Mediaeval Missions 

many whose hearts were crying out for the living 
God. 

Dark as the Dark Ages were, they were not per- 
haps quite so dark as some imagine. There are 
Romish writers who look back on the pre-Reforma- 
tion era as full of unity and beauty and peace, an 
ase of faith ; and there are writers in the other 
camp who see nothing in Mediaeval Europe save the 
weird fact that the mystery of iniquity was now 
fully manifested, that the Catholic Church was no 
longer Catholic, that the Holy Church no longer even 
presupposed that her priests should be clean, and 
that the Apostolic Church had turned her back on 
almost everything characteristic of those who had 
seen the Lord. 

Yet there were rays of light here and there 
among the shadows ; and when we turn, for example, 
fi'om the ecclesiastical arena to such a writer as 
Marco Polo, the greatest of the mediaeval travellers, 
it is impossible not to rejoice in what was being 
done in the worst times to make the Gospel 
known to the heathen, even if it was being made 
known in somewhat strange ways. In his memor- 
able pictures of South Indian manners and modes 
of life, he tells about the Christians of St. Thomas, 
the native church of India, and of the Thomas 
shrine, '* where few traders to-day go, but many 
pilgrims." 

N.E.— 8 I 1 3 



The Call of the New Era 

As for Socotra, he reports that the people were 
Nestorian Christians, with a bishop of their own in- 
dependent of Rome, and subject to the Archbishop 
or Patriarch of Bagdad, whose diocese stretched 
from Socotra to the Sea of China. These Nestorian 
Christians of Socotra continued, in ever-deepening 
corruption, till the seventeenth century, when 
Islam took possession. Marco Polo has also some- 
thing to tell of the Christians of Abyssinia ; nor is 
he the only traveller who has light to throw on 
our theme. 

At the very time when he was passing through 
the Southern seas, the Friar John of Monte 
Corvino, the Missionary founder of the Latin 
churches in India and China, was staying in the 
Deccan. The Dominicans penetrated to Tiflis 
about 1240. In 1260 the Pope corresponded as 
a Father in God with Hulagu, the conqueror of 
the Abbasids. In 1318, in spite of the triumphs 
of Islam, which was destined to triumph still 
more, we read of the inauguration of a complete 
Persian hierarchy. And efforts of the same 
sort, more or less Missionary, were being made 
among others of the Far Eastern peoples. In 
China, for example, where Nestorian Missionaries 
had established a flourishing church in the 
seventh and eighth centuries, inroads were being 
made. 

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Mediaeval Missions 

In 1278, while the travellers, the Polos, were 
still in China, Pope Nicolas iii. dispatched a 
religious Mission to Tartary of which nothing is 
now known beyond the fact of its organisation 
and the text of its credentials. In 1291, Monte 
Corvino set out for Cathay, and his second extant 
letter, dated from Cambaluc or Peking in 1305, 
tells how he had already laboured there for 
eleven years alone in the Celestial Empire, and 
how in 1303 he had received a colleague in 
Friar Arnold of Cologne. His only other extant 
letter, which was written probably in February 
1308, has a fine record of steady progress. 
Buildings had been erected, more than five 
thousand baptisms had taken place, and the 
Khan was desirous that the Roman authorities 
should send an official embassy to the Flowery 
Land. 

In the spring of 1307, Monte Corvino was 
made Archbishop of Peking, and seven bishops 
were dispatched to be his suffragans in the 
further work of converting Cathay. Three of 
these reached China in 1308. The best days of 
the China Mission of that era came to an end 
with the death of its founder in 1328 ; but when 
the news of his decease reached Europe in 1333, 
a successor was appointed, and he set out for his 
post with twenty monks and six laymen. It is 

115 



The Call of the New Era 

not known, however, whether they ever reached 
their destination; the one thing really beyond 
doubt being that the Chinese national reaction, 
which broke out about 1368, put an end for 
centuries to Western Christianity and European 
trade in the Middle Kingdom. 

This story, however, throws some light on what 
was going on even in these dark ages which were not 
wholly dark. Low as the fire might burn, it never 
quite went out ; nor was the flickering light ever 
altogether quenched. The true spiritual ancestry 
of the Missionaries of modern times is to be found 
in the humble, faithful men and women, all through 
the ages, who had the new life in their hearts, and 
never quite abandoned the ideal that all the world 
should be won for Christ. 

Attempts have been made to state in figures 
the progress which was made by the Gospel 
during these long, dreary ages, which saw the 
inroads of the barbarians and the breaking up of 
the Empire into Eastern and Western ; the appear- 
ance of Mohammedanism as a great menace to 
Christianity, and its ultimate conquest of the 
Eastern Empire ; the development and decay of 
feudalism ; and the formation of the nations of 
Europe very much as we have them now. Start- 
ing from Gibbon's most inadequate estimate that 
there were 6,000,000 Christians in the Empire 

ii6 



Mediaeval Missions 

when the Edict of Milan appeared in 313, it is 
calculated that by the end of the fourth century- 
there were 10,000,000 ; by the end of the eighth 
century, 30,000,000 ; by the end of the tenth 
century, 50,000,000; and by the end of the 
fifteenth century, 100,000,000. But such specu- 
lations are of little value, especially when we 
bear in mind what we have seen as to how 
little Christianity sometimes meant by the year 
1500. The same statisticians calculate that there 
are now some 500,000,000 of Christians, or well- 
nigh one in three of the world-population ; and 
each can judge for himself how far it is true, 
in any worthy sense of the term, even of the 
homelands, that one in three can be accounted 
genuine followers of Christ, to say nothing of the 
proportion which may fairly be claimed in the 
regions beyond. 

All that can be said with safety, as the result 
of what had been achieved during the centuries 
from Constantine to Luther, is that in the 
sixteenth century all Europe was nominally 
Christian, with the exception of Turkey ; that 
the lands which witnessed the first triumphs of 
the Cross were now buried under the drifting 
sands of the religion of the false prophet ; and 
that under the prevalent ignorance and super- 
stition there were many loyal souls who were 

117 



The Call of the New Era 

truly united to Christ through repentance and 
faith. This also may be affirmed with safety, 
that when in God's grace the Reformation came, 
it was necessary beyond the power of words 
to portray. 



ii8 



CHAPTER V 

THE REFORMATION AND 
MISSIONS 



119 



" If any man will do Hia will, he shall know of the doctrine." 
—John 7, 17. 

" Every man has the defects of hia qualities." — French Saying. 

" The whole moral effect which is produced nowadays by the 
religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the sermon, was then 
produced by the Bible alone. ... A new conception of life and of 
man superseded the old. A new moral and religious impulse 
spread through every class." — J. R. Green, 



1 20 



CHAPTER V 

THE REFORMATION AND MISSIONS 

TT is quite beyond question tliat the Reformation 
-^ in the sixteenth century was the greatest 
event in the history of the Christian Church since 
the earthly ministry of our Lord. It was a 
revival of heart - religion so far - reaching and 
widespread, and withal so absolutely necessary, 
that it renewed the face of Europe as nothing 
else has ever done. There have been revivals 
since, and especially the revival with which the 
nineteenth century began ; but there has been 
nothing so widespread in its beneficent results or 
at all so momentous. It is the yearning hope 
of some and the heartfelt prayer of many more, 
that this new era of ours will call us to some- 
thing even grander and more universal. 

In the sixteenth century Europe was susceptible 
to a catholic uplifting as she has never been 
since. St. Andrews and Aberdeen were then 
ruled from the same centre as Canterbury and 

121 



The Call of the New Era 

York ; Frankfort and Copenhagen obeyed the 
same ecclesiastical lords as Vienna and Marseilles. 
This universal system had led to the same kind 
of abuses in every land ; for in all alike the 
greed and corruption of Eome were felt and 
resented, and in all alike the godly and sincere 
had been alienated from the Vatican and pre- 
pared for the Reformation. The English scholar 
and the Scottish peasant, the German merchant 
and the Swiss shepherd, the Flemish weaver and 
the French noble, had all alike suffered from the 
papal system ; and every nation in Christendom 
had grievances hard to be borne, against the 
ignorant, licentious priests and friars who swarmed 
everywhere. 

Nor should it be forgotten, in connection with 
the reach of the movement for reform, that all 
Europe had then one literary language, which 
scholars everywhere read and spoke. So truly 
indeed was Europe one and indivisible then, as 
it never has been since, in virtue of its common 
faith and grievances, and its common literary 
medium, that at times it almost seemed as if 
the Reformation might renew every part of the 
Roman Church. When the first great shock of 
battle, however, was over, it was found that it 
had triumphed only among the Germanic or 
Teutonic peoples, and had won the Germans 

122 



The Reformation and Missions 

and the Swiss, the Danes and the English, the 
Scots and the Dutch. On the other hand, Eome 
had kept for obscurantism the great Latin or 
Komance peoples, the French and Spanish, the 
Italians and the Austrians. Not only so, but 
the line still remains where it was drawn then. 
The progressive peoples became Protestant, and 
are Protestant yet ; or perhaps it might be 
better put that the Protestant peoples have 
proved themselves progressive, while the others 
have continued to be superstitious and decadent. 

It is only when it is seen how distinctively 
the Reformation was a religious movement, a vast 
and widespread revival of true heart-religion, 
that it is possible to understand what its 
principles really were or why it took the course 
it did. When the Holy Ghost works in human 
souls, He creates a longing for freedom from sin, 
a yearning not merely for pardon but for holi- 
ness — for likeness to Christ, that is. But in 
the Church of Rome, after the mystery of iniquity 
was complete, no one of himself could draw near 
to God. The priests and the entire pagan- 
sacerdotal system of Confession and the Mass 
completely and perpetually blocked the way. 
Hence the first thing which the Reformers had 
everywhere to do was to proclaim the priesthood 
of all believers, and to sweep aside every barrier 

123 



The Call of the New Era 

which popery had placed in the way. It is 
open to question whether they went as far in 
this direction as they ought to have done, in 
loyalty to the New Testament ; but in the best of 
all ways they knew that men can and ought to 
draw near to God. They had themselves been 
face to face with Him, brought nigh in penitence 
and faith. 

Inevitably, therefore, the Reformation was a 
great Home Mission movement. Evangelism of 
the most aggressive and strenuous sort was its 
foremost characteristic in every land. In the 
earlier movings which told that the day was at 
hand, the first rays of light which were the 
harbingers of the dawn, the movement was 
Missionary very much as that in the first century 
had been. The first inroads, for example, on the 
gross darkness which had settled down on Scotland 
after the ill-omened triumphs of Margaret and 
the Sore Saint, were made by two wandering 
evangelists, Paul Craw and John Reseby, the one 
a Missionary preacher from Bohemia and the 
other from across the English border. That 
they were both refugees from persecution only 
increases their resemblance to the Gospel preachers 
who fled from Jerusalem to Cyprus, Phenice, and 
Antioch long before. They were sparks from 
the flame which had been kindled in Bohemia by 

124 



The Reformation and" Missions 

John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and in England 
by John Wyclif, the Morning Star of the English 
Keformation. 

Wyclif s name reminds us, too, of his "poor 
preachers " — poor, that is, in estate, and not in their 
preaching — who did the work of evangelisation 
so splendidly in England long before Martin 
Luther was born. They show^cd, what is obvious 
to all who know the history of Missions in any 
age, that whenever men and women are filled 
with the love of God, and are rejoicing in salva- 
tion through Christ alone, they cannot but tell 
others about it. Necessity is laid on them, the 
supreme necessity of the soul; and mere geo- 
graphical limitations are of little significance. 
Home and Foreign Missions are the natural and 
necessary outcome of new life and ardour, and 
without them the new life cannot expand as it 
ought to do. 

How true this is, is very abundantly evidenced 
by the history of the Reformation movement itself 
when once the day had fully come after the long 
and dreadful night. The work of evangelism, of 
preaching the Gospel, or Home Mission work, that 
is, was everywhere carried on as the foremost duty 
and privilege of the enlightened and liberated 
soul. 

Luther himself was a preacher of the first order, 
125 



The Call of the New Era 

a Gospel preacher above all else, and one of the 
greatest the Church has ever had, alike by word of 
mouth and through his writings. He sometimes 
preached every day for weeks together. He often 
preached three times in a day. As early in his 
career as Lent in 1517, he preached twice a day in 
addition to his University lectures, which were also 
preaching of the best sort. And all this he did 
without fee or reward, because his whole being- 
was on fire with the love of God and the passion 
for souls. 

True to the new life and its behests, he yearned 
to share with others the great gifts he himself had 
received through the free grace of Christ. Where- 
ever he went on his journeys, he preached the glad 
tidings of salvation ; and whenever he preached, 
men crowded to hear the Word of the Living God. 
There had been nothing like it since Pentecost, 
except perhaps some phases of the preaching of the 
Crusades, and that was on an altogether different 
plane. At Zwickau, when he preached on one of 
his journeys, the market-place was crowded by 
twenty-five thousand eager listeners, and he had to 
preach to them from a window. On his way to 
Worms, too, he could not get away from the crowds ; 
while at Erfurt, the great church was often so 
crowded that they feared it would fall. 

And the same prominence was given in these 

126 



The Reformation and "Missions 

stirring times in other lands to preacliing the 
Gospel — that is, to Home Mission work among the 
ignorant and the depraved. All the Reformers, 
great scholars and theologians as most of them 
were, were primarily evangelists, preachers, and 
translators of the living Word. The Scottish 
reformer George Wishart, for example, was a noted 
preacher under whose Gospel ministry many were 
converted ; while the English reformer, William 
Tyndale, was an evangelist whose soul was fired 
with the sublime purpose that every ploughboy 
should be able to read the Scriptures in his mother 
tongue. AVe read of Wishart that he came forth 
for his work of preaching after whole days and 
nights of prayer and meditation, and his success 
was one of the chief reasons why his enemies felt 
that they must silence him at the stake. When 
he heard that Dundee had been visited by the 
plague in 1544, he hastened to the stricken town 
as eagerly as others were fleeing from it, and took 
his place at the head of the east gate, the infected 
standing on the one side of it, and those who 
were free on the other. When not preaching, 
he was constantly employed in visiting the 
sick and ministering to the wants of the poor, 
exposing himself without fear to the risk of 
infection. 

Through the preaching of John Knox at Dieppe, 
127 



The Call of the New Era 

too, although it was mainly as he passed through 
it on his various journeys, so many were won for 
God that the city earned the proud title of the 
Rochelle of the North. Similarly in Holland we 
find the Reformation movement in the same 
intimate alliance with the preaching of the Gospel. 
Motley tells of audiences of six thousand and ten 
thousand ; and on one occasion as many as twenty 
thousand gathered at Tournay to hear a preacher, 
Ambrose Wille by name, a follower of Calvin, who 
was there with a special price on his head. All 
through Flanders, too, gatherings of immense size 
and significance were held for the preaching of the 
Word. 

The historian has described one in detail which 
was held near Haarlem. Tens of thousands were 
present, he says, many of them armed, and guards 
were posted. The service began with the singing 
of a Psalm, and then for four long, uninterrupted 
hours the preacher, Peter Gabriel by name, who 
had once been a monk, held the multitude 
enthralled under the blazing July sun. His text 
was the eighth, ninth, and tenth verses of the 
second chapter of Ephesians ; as he spoke to his 
great audience of the grace of God and of faith 
in Jesus Christ, Who had come to save the lowliest 
and the most abandoned, if only they would put 
their trust in Him, his hearers were alternately 

128 



The Reformation and Missions 

exalted with fervour and melted to tears. At 
times not a dry eye could be seen. 

There can be no doubt that the proclamation of 
the Gospel of God's grace had a great place in 
the Eeformation movement throughout, and that 
it was a Home Mission movement on the most 
extensive scale that Europe had ever known. But 
the astounding and puzzling fact remains that, so 
far as Missions to the heathen in foreign lands 
are concerned, hardly anything was done by any 
of the Reformed churches in Reformation times. 
When we refer to the Reformation and Missions, 
it is not so much to tell what was achieved, as to 
try to explain how it was that in the midst of such 
fervour, and with so many gracious tokens of the 
favour of God and the power of His Word, the 
old marching orders of the Church — never repealed, 
and once again laid bare with new sanctions — were 
so thoroughly ignored. This is a problem which 
no student of Missions, historically considered, can 
afford to neglect ; and that all the more that during 
this very period of stress and strain in Europe the 
Church of Rome set herself to win the heathen 
with unwonted vigour, as if she would redress her 
losses in the Old World by her gains in the New. 

During the three centuries which preceded the 
advent of Luther, Foreign Missions in the ordinary 
sense had practically ceased. The exceptions only 
N.E.— 9 129 



The Call of the New Era 

prove the rule. But now, in the very midst of the 
upheaval at home, the papacy is found once more 
at work in foreign lands. 

In 1541, Francis Xavier was sent to India, and 
thereafter was busy in the Far East until his death 
in 1552. The whole problem of the moral and 
spiritual value of Romish Missions and of their 
unhappy history will be dealt with later on ; mean- 
while it is enough to say that in the true sense of 
the term what Xavier did can hardly be called 
Mission work at all. As Dr. Julius Richter has 
pointed out, he "never learnt the language of any 
of the lands he visited, least of all one of the 
Indian tongues." And truly the lands he visited 
were many. In his brief career abroad he laboured 
among the Europeans of Goa, the Paravars, a fisher 
caste near Cape Comorin, and in Travancore. He 
had also visited the Island of Malacca, and founded 
a Mission in Japan, and was on his way to 
China, ere death closed his eyes at the early age 
of forty-six. 

But this recital of the travels of Xavier suggests 
what was probably the foremost reason why, at 
this stirring and revolutionary epoch, the claims 
of the wider world were so little responded 
to by the Protestants. It also suggests why 
the Romanists were first. The maritime nations 
then were Portugal and Spain, popish peoples 

130 



The Reformation and Missions 

both of them, to their own great loss as 
well as to the detriment of mankind, as their 
subsequent decadence so clearly indicates. To 
them the Papal See had audaciously gifted the 
whole of the New World after its discovery, and 
they alone at that time were in touch with the 
great pagan regions of the Far East. That meant 
that they alone had the means of entering or 
even reaching the doors which were beginning to 
be opened, or which might now be forced. 

The same sort of conditions, but with the entire 
situation almost wholly reversed, have brought it 
about that in modern times the opening doors have 
opened first and mainly for the English-speaking 
peoples, and that the great lines of travel and 
intercommunication are largely in their hands. 
Owing to their superior enterprise, and to the fact 
that coal is almost altogether " Protestant," Great 
Britain, Germany, and America now occupy, in 
respect to maritime power and intimate association 
with the regions beyond, the position that was 
held in the sixteenth century by Spain and 
Portugal, and used by them as the willing agents 
and emissaries of Rome. 

When Vasco da Gama first rounded the Cape 
of Good Hope, and in the year 1498 reached the 
Malabar coast, he opened up the way for Portu- 
guese colonisation and for planting the banner of 

131 



The Call of the New Era 

the Cross in India and the Islands of the East. 
All through, the spirit of adventure and greed 
which so largely inspired these early pioneers of 
Empire was mingled with the desire to propagate 
the Eomish faith in the New World and the Far 
East. Unfortunately, however, the Jesuits and 
the Franciscans were far from being worthy ex- 
ponents of the Gospel ; and it is not too much 
to assert that the evil which was done far out- 
balanced the good, and that the labours of these 
Missionaries were of little avail. To this day, for 
instance, the progress of the Kingdom of God alike 
in South America and Central America is sadly 
hindered by the bitter fruits and memories of these 
early expeditions and Missions. 

Columbus also was imbued with religious feeling 
in his voyages ; and just as the Franciscans ac- 
companied the Portuguese navigators, the Domini- 
cans entered in the train of the emissaries of Spain. 
Rivals in the Old World, these monastic orders 
were rivals also in the New. 

Not only so, but both Spain and Portugal were 
using the monks for their aggressive and political 
ends, just as France still makes use of them in 
Syria. 

Amons: the Dominicans was Bartholomew de 
Las Casas, the most eminent Missionary of his 
time. He was the first to receive priestly ordina- 

132 



The Reformation and Missions 

tion in America, and his father had been with 
Columbus during his first voyage of discovery. 
He set himself to deliver the hapless natives out of 
the slavery to which they had been reduced by the 
Spaniards ; but those with whom he had to contend 
were usually able to thwart him and defeat his 
plans. In his eagerness to help the aborigines, 
"he crossed the sea twelve times; he traversed 
every then-known region of America and the 
Islands ; he made repeated journeys from Spain to 
Flanders and Germany, to see the Emperor on the 
affairs of his Mission"; yet all the while his 
literary labours would have been remarkable even 
in a scholar who had no calling outside of the halls 
of some college or the quiet of some private 
study. The one blot on his reputation — and it is a 
serious one — is that he sanctioned the beginnings 
of the African slave trade and the introduction of 
negro slaves into America. 

His reasons for doing so were that he wished 
to spare his converts, and that he knew the 
Africans could toil in that climate without the 
same danger to health or life. But that was doing 
a manifest evil in the interests of a very problem- 
atic good, and he lived to deplore bitterly what he 
had done. But it was then too late to undo the 
mischief. He was dealing with men who were 
besotted by the lust for wealth and power, and the 

133 



The Call of the New Era 

vile traffic went on and grew in spite of liim ; 
just as the degradation of tlie natives continued 
too. Nor is it at all difficult to understand how 
that was so, in view of all that still persists on the 
Congo, in spite of every protest against it and 
every effort at its abolition. 

It is said that trade follows the flag, and it is 
also true that to some extent Mission work must 
follow the flag, although there are notable excep- 
tions where the flag has followed Missions. It is 
not to be wondered at, therefore, that in Reforma- 
tion times, when all the open doors were in the 
hands of Romish peoples and under Romish flags, 
and the distances were so vast, none of the 
Reformers were brought into touch with the 
heathen nations in such a compelling fashion as to 
hear the appealing cry or to see the beckoning 
hand. They did not realise how imperative the 
Great Commission still was, and it is not our 
business to apportion the blame. 

What we have to do is to discover, if we can, 
how it was that they seem to have been almost 
unaware that there were heathen lands waiting 
for Christ. And this we shall do all the better 
if we reflect how much it has meant in our own 
time for Protestant Missions that the Union Jack 
floats over such vast territories where paganism 
still persists, and that wherever it waves there is 

134 



The Reformation and Missions 

all a Missionary should ever ask — a fair field for 
Christian efifort, even-handed justice for all, and 
stern opposition to slavery in every form. To 
revert to the disgraceful instance of the Congo, 
what a difference it would have made in that sad 
region if Great Britain had been in power there 
instead of that abomination miscalled a Govern- 
ment which has been such a hindrance and snare ! 
This, then, was the outstanding reason for the fact 
that there were no Protestant Foreign Missions 
in the great days of the Reformation, although 
others were already in the field. 

But there was another, and very obvious as well 
as commonplace, reason for the absence of effort 
abroad on the part of those who were doing such 
heroic service in so many fields at home. They 
were so preoccupied with the struggles against 
the forces of superstition and reaction in the 
European countries, with their own internal 
troubles and divisions, and with the work of 
organisation and setting forth their doctrines in 
presence of those who were their foes to the death, 
that it is hardly to be wondered at that they 
attempted nothing except the work at their own 
doors, colossal as that was. This requires neither 
proof nor exposition. It will be peculiarly 
obvious to those who know anything of the 
enormous difficulties they had increasingly to 

135 



The Call of the New Era 

face as the counter-Reformation took shape and 
grew. 

The social problems, too, which gathered round 
them, such as those which culminated in the woe- 
ful Peasants' War in Germany, and which grew out 
of it, must have been a most portentous barrier 
to work abroad. As a matter of fact, these diffi- 
culties, and the way in which they were dealt with, 
did much to hinder the work at home. 

It is, of course, open to argument whether some 
of their troubles might not have been averted had 
the Reformers been more obedient to the duty which 
is never in abeyance ; and also whether we have not 
here another of those vicious circles which are so 
often to be met with in the history of Missions. 
Had the Reformers been even greater than they 
were, and been loyal from the first to what is the 
world-wide Mission of the Church in all ages and 
all circumstances, it is not improbable that they 
would have been able to deal with the social 
problems of their age more wisely and more 
Christianly than they did. It is not open to any 
one to deny that in this respect they came far short 
of the Gospel standard ; and that in particular 
Luther abandoned, if he did not betray, the peasants 
from whose ranks he had come. 

In his Essays on the Social Gospel, Harnack says 
that "in spite of the high esteem in which Luther 

136 



The Reformation and" Missions 

always held civic authority and the State, his 
original intention was to reconstruct the Church 
on the simple basis of government by the con- 
gregation. He had visions of a congregational 
life founded on fellowship and on principles of 
Christian liberty, fraternity, and equality. It was 
further his idea that the national element should 
find free expression, only the nation then meant 
the Koman Empire of German nationality ; and he 
had in view an improvement in the general 
economic condition of the country, an increase in 
the culture, and the upraising of the downtrodden 
classes." But in his dread lest the religious move- 
ment with which he was identified should be made 
responsible for the social uprising of the serfs, he 
ended in joining hands with the ruling classes in 
their determination to crush out the revolutionary 
movement, with every accessory of cruelty and 
bloodshed. It is not clear that since these dark 
days of reaction and betrayal Protestantism has 
ever enjoyed to any large extent the confidence 
of the very poorest. 

It is also probable that hearty obedience in those 
days of Reformation to the appeals of the perishing 
beyond the seas, and outside the pale of civilisation, 
would have done much to prevent the dreary ages 
of dogmatism and death which followed the great 
era of revival and reform. Even if it be the case 

137 



The Call of the New Era 

that their preoccupations at home prevented the 
churches of the Reformation from going forth among 
the heathen, the fact remains that the blight of 
the deformation soon came on them, and did much 
to degrade their work in the homelands. 

The reflex influence of Missions is enormous ; 
and if there be grounds for holding that the 
flourishing North African Church of earlier days 
came to an untimely and unhappy end because it 
was not a Missionary church, it may also be argued 
that the Church of the Reformation soon ceased 
to be healthy, because there can be neither progress 
nor purity unless there be obedience to plain 
commands. And it is full of significance that in 
the second generation of the Reformation era, John 
Calvin, the prince of exegetes, and as fearless as 
he was learned, in his commentary on the words 
of our Lord, '* Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," had not one word 
to say about the present duty of the Church to 
those who were sitting in darkness and in the 
shadow of death. 

Another reason which is sometimes added to 
these explanations of the inaction of the Reformed 
churches even in the first flush of their new life 
is that they were influenced by their strong pre- 
destinarian views. And in this connection it has 

138 



The Reformation and Missions 

always to be borne in mind that Luther's doctrine 
regarding election and reprobation was just the 
same as that of Calvin ; and that Anglicans and 
Independents alike at first occupied the very same 
position as to the decrees which was held by the 
Presbyterians, and which finds its best expression 
in the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith. 

It is by no means certain, however, that any of 
the Reformers held such predestinarian views as 
could account for their lack of Missionary en- 
thusiasm. It was only in the subsequent era of 
degeneration that these doctrines became a snare ; 
and in the best days of the Reformation, so long 
as the revival of heart-religion continued, election 
was always thought of as a means of grace. It 
was not looked at from the standpoint of meta- 
physics, but from that of religion, and therefore 
was not calculated to blind men to the needs of 
the regions beyond. 

The significance of this distinction is well 
brought out in the experience of John Knox. It 
was in the doctrine of the Divine electing love, 
he tells us, that he first found rest for his soul. 
For him "predestination was no cut -and -dry 
doctrine." It came to him full of life and meaning 
from the Person of Christ. " God hath predestinated 
me," meant " He hath made me dear by that 
Beloved " ; "as God hath loved Him," thus he 

139 



The Call of the New Era 

argues, " so hath He loved me ; for I am one 
with Him." 

This truth laid hold of the Scottish Reformer by 
a threefold cord. He felt it to be the one immov- 
able ground for faith, the most powerful argument 
for a new and humble life, and the greatest incen- 
tive to gratitude and love. From what source, he 
asked himself, did this proceed, this light which he 
had received in the midst of so much darkness, 
this sanctification in the midst of so much wicked- 
ness ? " Not from nature," answered conscience ; 
for nature had made him a child of wrath even as 
others. " Not from education, or his own study," 
experience replied. Many who had been nursed 
in virtue had yet become most filthy in life, while 
many who had long remained without any virtuous 
education had yet in the end attained to God's 
favour. The only source which remained was 
" that infinite benefit which exceedeth all measure 
of free grace and mere mercy." 

It is true that Calvinism did harden into the 
anti-Mission attitude, and was used to buttress 
it ; but that was only one of the many proofs of 
the declension which had taken place — another 
indication that election had been removed from 
the realm of religion, and had entered the realm 
of philosophy. We can see its true spirit and 
bearing before the days of decline came, when in 

140 



The Reformation and Missions 

the year 1560 we find Knox imprinting the great 
Mission text on the title-page of the first Confession 
of the Church of Scotland : " And this glad tidings 
of the Kingdom shall be preached throughout the 
whole world for a witness to all nations, and then 
shall the end come." 

The same spirit is also manifest in the instruc- 
tions which were issued in the name of Edward vi. 
of England to the navigators whose work resulted 
in the formation of the East India Company. In 
the words of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, they were 
to the effect that "in the sowing of Christianity 
must be the chief interest of such as shall make 
any attempt at foreign discovery, or else whatever 
is builded upon other foundation shall never obtain 
happy success or continuance." Nor was this 
altogether theory, and without any corresponding 
practice. Sir Humphrey's half-brother, Sir Walter 
Raleigh, took steps to secure the conversion of the 
natives in the first English colony, that which 
bore the name of the virgin queen ; and the first 
baptism of a native is recorded as having taken 
place on 13th August, 1587. And all this is borne 
out and further illustrated by the fact that, when 
at length the modern Mission movement began, it 
was inaugurated by those who were loyal Calvin- 
ists, some of them even more Calvinistic than 
Calvin himself. The blame of the inaction of the 

141 



The Call of the New Era 

Reformers can hardly, therefore, be put on their 
doctrine of predestination. 

Yet another reason, however, has been suggested 
for this inaction, an inaction which happily has 
all along been felt to require some explanation. 
That is, that Luther was so convinced that the end 
of the world was at hand, that he thought the 
final lines of demarcation had been drawn, and 
must be left where they ran. " Let the Turks 
believe and live as they choose, just as the Pope 
and other false Christians are allowed to live," he 
wrote. He seems to have come to the conclusion 
that the power of Antichrist had reached its 
climax ; that the nations destined to accept the 
message of salvation were already gathered within 
the fold ; and that the Gospel having now been 
preached in its purity, the time of the dissolution 
of all things was at hand. 

How far this was a determining consideration 
with Luther and his co-workers it is not now easy 
to say ; but it may be remarked that any such 
arguing gave a wrong turn to the great words 
which Knox quoted on the title-page of the Scots 
Confession, as to the Gospel being preached through- 
out the whole world for a witness to all nations ; 
and that this text still suffers in the same way at 
the hands of some who are eager supporters of 
Foreign Missions. To introduce any vindictive 

142 



The Reformation and" Missions 

element into such a realm of action is peculiarly 
unfortunate ; and whatever his theory may be, it 
is not easy to imagine anyone going among the 
heathen to preach the Gospel as a witness against 
those who reject it. It is more than likely that 
this plea for the Reformers, or this plea of the 
Reformers for themselves, is one of those which 
are post hoc sed non propter hoc, and which are 
so easily found to buttress unworthy practices, 
after the event. 

In the midst of all these explanations as to why 
the Reformers did not engage in Foreign Mission 
work, it is needful to bear in mind that even then 
God did not leave Himself without a witness, 
although such a historian as Kurtz can only say 
that " the Reformed Church made one Missionary 
attempt in the year 1557," and devotes only 
fifteen lines to the Protestant Missions of that 
great and formative era. 

Strangely enough, the wisest and bravest words 
which were then spoken on behalf of Missions to 
the heathen came from Erasmus, who is hardly to 
be numbered among the Reformers at all, so half- 
hearted was he in the final issue, although his 
monumental edition of the Greek New Testament 
had so much to do with guiding the evangelical 
movement wherever scholars were to be found. 
Nor was it students alone that the great scholar 

143 



The Call of the New Era 

of Rotterdam wished to help ; for we find him 
declaring that the Scriptures ought to be read by 
clowns and mechanics, and even by the Turks, 
and should be translated into every tongue. 

In his great treatise on the art of preaching, 
Erasmus appeals to the example of Basil, 
Chrysostom, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, 
who, although burdened with the care of all the 
churches and weakened by disease, gave themselves 
to continual preaching, and sent forth Missionaries 
to far-distant lands. Eloquently, and in a spirit 
truly evangelical, Erasmus goes on to urge that 
Missionaries should be sent to those who had 
never heard the Gospel, and even to its most 
uncompromising enemies, the Mohammedans. 
Some of his sentences have not yet lost their 
point or force, and are well worthy of being quoted 
once again : — 

"We daily hear men deploring," he writes, 
" the decay of the Christian religion, who say that 
the Gospel message, which once extended over the 
whole earth, is now confined to the narrow limits 
of this land. Let those, then, to whom this is an 
unfeigned cause of grief, beseech Christ earnestly 
and continuously to send labourers into His 
harvest, or more correctly, sowers to scatter His 
seed. Everlasting God ! how much ground there 
is in the world where the seed of the Gospel has 

144 



The Reformation and" Missions 

never yet been sown, or where there is a greater 
crop of tares than of wheat ! Europe is the smallest 
quarter of the globe ; Greece and Asia the most 
fertile. Into these countries the Gospel was first 
introduced from Judea with great success. But 
are they not wholly in the hands of the Moham- 
medans and men who know not the name of 
Christ ? What, I ask, do we now possess in Asia, 
which is the largest continent, when Palestine 
herself, whence first the Gospel light shone, is 
ruled by heathens ? In Africa what have we ? 
There are surely in these vast tracts barbarous 
and simple tribes who could easily be attracted to 
Christ if we sent men among them to sow the 
good seed. 

"Regions hitherto unknown are being daily 
discovered, and more there are, as we are told, 
into which the Gospel has never been carried. I 
do not at present allude to the millions of Jews 
who live among us, nor to the very many Gentiles 
who are attached to Christ merely by name. Nor 
do I refer to the schismatics and heretics who 
abound. Oh, how these would turn to Christ if 
noble and faithful workers were sent among them, 
who would sow good seed, remove tares, plant 
righteous trees, and root out those which are 
corrupt ; who would build up God's house and 
destroy all structures which do not stand on the 
N.E.— 10 145 



The Call of the New Era 

Rock of Ages ; wlio would reap the ripe fruit for 
Christ and not for themselves, and gather souls 
for their Master and not riches for their own use ! " 

What a proof that there is nothing new under 
the sun ! But although the appeal to the churches 
came thus trenchantly and eloquently, it came 
from an unpopular hand, and bore but little fruit. 

The one definite attempt to do Foreign Mission 
work in the Reformation era seems to have been 
that made by Admiral Coligny, the famous 
Huguenot, who perished in the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, and made by him in co-operation 
with John Calvin. Like the English Puritans in 
later days, when they sought freedom to worship 
God as they pleased in another realm across the 
Atlantic, Coligny had dreams of a freer and 
happier France in the New World, and readily 
fell in with a request made by Villegagnon, the 
Vice- Admiral of Brittany, to send him Protestants 
to minister to those of that religion in the colony 
he was about to found in Brazil. This Villegagnon 
had been at the University of Paris with Calvin ; 
but, unlike him, he had remained a Romanist, and 
by and by he played the traitor. 

In the year 1555, Calvin selected Richer and 
Chartier, who were joined by twelve others ; and 
as the persecution deepened in France many others 
desired to follow them. Owing, however, to the 

146 



The Reformation and Missions 

treachery of Villegagnon, they had all to return to 
France, with the exception of five whom he hurled 
over a precipice for their loyalty to the faith. 
The Portuguese completed the ruin of this colony, 
of which Coligny would have made a new Father- 
land in the New World, the first free church in 
the first free land, as the Pilgrim Fathers were ere 
long to do in North America. So long as they 
were allowed to remain, these Protestant preachers 
were busy among the natives as well as among 
their fellow-countrymen, and their hearts were 
cheered by many conversions ; but that work also 
shared in the common ruin, and it was so far 
incidental merely, that we can hardly claim even 
this Mission as a Foreign Mission pure and simple. 
One other effort was made some three or four 
years later by Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, who sent 
Missionaries among the Lapps, the only people in 
Northern Europe who had never been Christianised 
at all. Schools were opened and books translated 
into the language of the people ; but neither then 
nor since has any great progress been made in that 
inhospitable region. It may be, however, that 
more was being attempted and done than is on 
actual record. A hint that that was so may be 
found in what Hakluyt tells us of Frobisher, the 
first of the great English navigators. He says 
that when he set out in 1576 in search of the 

147 



The Call of the New Era 

North-east passage from the Atlantic to India, he 
had with him a chaplain, Master Wolf all, who had 
left wife and children and a good living with the 
desire of saving souls and reforming infidels to 
Christianity. And who knows how many such 
brave and loyal souls there were who went out 
thus into the darkness with the candle lighted by 
the Lord in their hands ? 

There were no Missionary reports in these days 
to record their deeds of devotion and love. Yet 
with the best will we cannot claim that much was 
being done, and not the least of the evil effects of 
the negative attitude which the Eeformation leaders 
entertained towards Foreign Missions was that it 
gave the tone to the following generations, which 
had not their difficulties to face nor their excuses 
to plead. It was not possible that such an attitude 
could remain negative merely among those who 
were quite unable to plead preoccupation as the 
Reformers might have done, although, as a matter 
of fact, they never did so. Nor were they long 
able to plead, as those in earlier years might have 
done, that the open doors were all in Romish 
hands, or that the Protestant Churches had no 
direct contact with the heathen lands. But by 
that time the pith had gone out of the Reformed 
Churches, and rationalism had begun to lay its 
blight on them. But that takes us to a later era. 

148 



The Reformation and Missions 

A German writer on this theme, and no less an 
authority than Dr. Warneck, makes two inferences 
from the fact that in the era of the Reformation 
it was the Church of Rome, and not the Reformers, 
who were busy in the foreign field. These are, 
that a church may have a vigorous spiritual life and 
yet not prosecute Missionary activity ; and that a 
church may be active in Missionary operations and 
yet be spiritually dead. He holds, further, that 
this period teaches that there are two conditions 
of true Missionary activity — spiritual activity, and 
geographical openings ; and from the failure of the 
attempts made by Coligny and Gustavus Vasa he 
deduces that the time for Protestant Missions had 
not yet come. 

These deductions, however, can hardly be ac- 
cepted without material qualifications. On the 
side of Rome it might be suggested that in spite 
of the fact that the Romish Church, as such, can 
claim no credit for Foreign Mission work, and that 
the Romish powers used the Jesuits, Domiricans, 
and Franciscans for their own political ends, it 
may have been spiritual life which led some of 
the humbler agents to engage in work abroad, 
and thus get away from the distractions and 
abominations which prevailed in their Church at 
home. On the side of the Reformers it might 
also be suggested that more was wanting than 

149 



The Call of the New Era 

geographical openings to induce them to break 
ground among the heathen, inasmuch as the 
Reformed Churches were slow to avail themselves 
of such openings when they came at length ; and 
that by and by their theologians even argued 
learnedly and laboriously against engaging in 
Foreign Mission work. 

The truth is that, however their inactivity may 
be explained or condoned, it stands condemned at 
the bar of history, and goes far to explain the 
unhappy trend of affairs in the subsequent genera- 
tions alike in the Lutheran and the Reformed 
Churches. There are spots on the sun, and even 
the Reformers were not perfect. Not only so, but 
it is quite open to the student to argue that such 
obedience to the plain command of the Lord, ere 
He ascended, as was then possible would have 
done much on the one hand to save the Pro- 
testant Churches from the errors into which they 
soon fell in connection with social and political 
problems ; and on the other hand, would have 
delivered them from the fearful doctrinal degenera- 
tion which soon followed the Reformation. 

Every generation has first of all to do with its 
own duty, and not with that of any other ; and 
with its own failings, and not with the failings of 
those who have gone before. Yet when men so 
great and learned and holy as the Reformers were 

150 



The Reformation and Missions 

can come so far short as they undoubtedly did, 
those who come after may at least conclude that 
they must be constantly on their guard lest they 
fail too, and be ever eager to follow on all the way 
to know the Lord. 



151 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ERA OF DEFORMATION 



153 



" The end of these things is death." — EoM. 6. 21. 

" Cold is the malady of the soul." — French Saying. 

" When the best is corrupted it becomes the worst." — Latin 



Proverb. 



" Miss not the occasion ; by the forelock take 
That subtle power, the never-halting time ; 
Lest a mere moment's putting off should make 
Mischance almost as heavy as a crime," 



154 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ERA OF DEFORMATION 

IF the worst that can be said about the Re- 
formers and their attitude to Foreign Missions 
is, that they neglected a duty which can only be 
neglected at the risk of losing all that is worth 
preserving, it cannot but be said of their 
successors that the great majority of them went 
the length of actually rejecting the appeal of the 
regions beyond. The negative attitude of the 
Reformation era, due in part to preoccupation 
with home problems and domestic difficulties, soon 
hardened into a positive attitude of aversion, which 
necessarily reacted sadly enough on the life and 
thought of the Protestant Churches in all the 
European nations. 

Nor can it ever be otherwise when any part of 
the Divine law is ignored in theory and practice. 
The Socinian or anti-supernatural movement — 
called rationalism in its German manifestations, 
latitudinarianism as it affected England, and 

155 



The Call of the New Era 

moderatism as it affected Scotland — in the weary 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was beyond 
question one of the bitter fruits, the sad effects, 
of this disobedience to a plain command, of this 
neglect of an undoubted privilege. But it also 
deepened the disobedience and neglect in one of 
those vicious circles which have so often worked 
woe in the Church of Christ. 

The late Professor Masson said that in the 
Moderate preaching as Scotland knew it, " the 
events of Judea " were deemed needless ; and when- 
ever that is the case, Foreign Missions, aye, and 
Home Missions too, must be unfruitful or unknown. 
But it is also one of the many questions which 
that unhappy time addresses to our happier age, 
how far the events of Judea cannot but cease 
ere long to be thought essential in any church 
which neglects the perishing in the great lands of 
heathenism, and does not set itself to give the best 
it has to those for whom Christ died. The reflex 
influence of work abroad on the home churches 
has often been insisted on ; but the reflex influence 
of the neglect of such work is equally important, 
and it is not improbable that all the serious 
doctrinal heresies could be traced back to that 
great practical heresy. 

As soon after the heroic days of the Keformation 
as the year 1664, when Baron von Welz issued an 

156 



The Era of Deformation 

appeal to " all right-believing Christians of the 
Augsburg Confession, regarding a special Society 
through which, with the Divine help, our Evan- 
gelical Religion could be extended," his plans 
were stigmatised as a dream by a prominent 
theologian, Ursinus by name ; and the very 
thought of casting the " holy things of God " 
before such "dogs and swine" as the heathen 
were, was treated with indignant scorn. Welz 
returned to the attack, however, and demanded 
whether it was right that those who had the 
Gospel should keep it to themselves ; that 
students of theology should be confined to the 
home parishes ; or that Christians should spend so 
much on clothing, eating, and drinking, and take 
no thought to spread the Gospel. He pleaded 
that Missionary colleges should be established in 
every Protestant University, and that bursaries 
should be founded for the encouragement of those 
who were desirous of becoming foreign Missionaries. 
Nor was that all that this true nobleman did 
in his courage and zeal. He gave himself to the 
work for which he pleaded, and went out to Dutch 
Guiana, taking 36,000 marks with him for the 
necessary expenses. Yet out among the heathen 
he only found an early grave, in the midst of 
those for whose salvation he yearned so much ; 
while at home he seemed to the Christians of his 

157 



The Call of the New Era 

time as one who dreamed ; held fast as they were 
in bondage to the prejudices which had come down 
to them through the attitude and practice of their 
nobler predecessors. 

Nor did these prejudices quickly pass away 
before the appeals of the Gospel or the needs of 
men. As late as the year 1786, when William 
Carey asked, in a company of Baptist ministers at 
Northampton, " Whether the command given to the 
Apostles to teach all nations was not obligatory on 
all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, 
seeing that the accompanying promise was of 
equal extent," he was met, as everyone knows, 
by the rebuke from the chairman : " You are a 
miserable enthusiast for asking such a question. 
Certainly nothing can be done before another 
Pentecost, when an effusion of miraculous gifts, 
including the gift of tongues, will give effect to 
the Commission of Christ." 

Ten years later, in 1796, after the Evan- 
gelical Eevival had really begun, after both 
the Baptist Missionary Society and the London 
Missionary Society had been founded and were 
actually at work, a' majority of the General 
Assembly of the Church of Scotland declared 
"that to spread abroad the knowledge of the 
Gospel among the barbarous and heathen nations 
seems to be highly preposterous, in so far as it 

■58 



The Era of Deformation 

anticipates, nay, it even reverses, the order of 
nature." And these fathers and brethren, too, 
came to that decision, even after Dr. John Erskine 
had said, " Rax me down that Book," and had read 
the plain and unequivocal command of their risen 
Lord and Master to preach the Gospel among all 
nations. 

It is not easy to imagine what the Gospel meant 
either at home or abroad for men who held such 
views, and followed such practices, with the name 
of the Lord Jesus on their lips. But so it was, 
even as Christians used to support slavery, and 
Christians still have no horror of war ; and it was 
not till the year 1824 that the pathetic finding 
of the Venerable Assembly was reversed under the 
genial and illuminating influence of the blessed 
Evangelical Eevival. The truth is that for very 
many, Calvinism, once a means of grace, had 
become fatalism ; and that what professed to be 
the Evangel had either emasculated the Gospel or 
had turned the grace of God into lasciviousness. 
Whenever the blessings of the Gospel had become 
real for the churches at home, they began to hear 
the bitter cry of those who were still in the dark- 
ness, and to respond to their appeal to come over 
and help them. Those who say they do not 
believe in Foreign Missions are not bearing a very 
lofty testimony as to what the Gospel has done for 

159 



The Call of the New Era 

themselves. The true proof that Christ has done 
great things for us is the desire to share the 
blessing with others. 

For after all it is not so difficult to understand 
the attitude of indifference of the great mass of 
professing Christians all through the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries, when it is borne in mind 
that in practice that is still the attitude of a very 
large number of those who in one way and another 
bear the name of Christ, and that it is still even 
the theory of not a few of them. Many who 
ought to know better still declare that it is cruel 
to disturb the idyllic state of nature in which the 
heathen rejoice ; the hideous cruelties of the dark 
places of the earth being ignored or forgotten. 
Those who know the pagan peoples at first hand 
can never say that we ought to leave them as 
they are, unless indeed they go to the opposite 
extreme of holding that, far from being idyllic, 
their state is so degraded that it is not possible to 
do them any good. 

Then there are those who take up the cry that 
the preaching of the Gospel spoils the natives, and 
that alike in India and South Africa it has made 
them greedy, intractable, and dishonest ; which in 
practice either means that the Gospel is blamed 
for the results of a bastard civilisation, or that 
it has helped to make the natives into men and 

1 60 



The Era of Deformation 

women with new rights, and no longer mere 
chattels to be bought or sold. There are even 
Christian teachers and moralists who maintain 
that there are tribes of men for whom the worship 
of the False Prophet is a necessary preparation 
for the worship of the true God, and that their 
becoming Mohammedans will open up their way 
to becoming Christians. The same critics some- 
times also hold that Missions to Mohammedans 
are altogether vain and fruitless. 

In addition to all these enemies of the Mission 
enterprise, for whom certainly the plea cannot 
be oifered that they have been led astray by 
their ultra-Calvinism, there are not a few who 
show their bent by doing nothing whatever to 
promote Mission work of any kind, and make it 
manifest that they grudge all that is spent on 
such work, and deem it thrown away. Sometimes, 
like the old latitudinarians or Moderates, they pro- 
fess to take up this position in the interests of the 
work at home ; and like them also, they neglect the 
work at home just as they ignore the work abroad. 
It is still, as it was in the dreary ages of the 
Deformation — when the Church was frozen by 
formalism and dogmatism — and as it has always 
been, those who are callous about the perishing 
abroad are just those who do least to spread the 
Good News in the waste places in the homelands. 

N.E.— II i6i 



The Call of the New Era 

Those who declare that they have more to do than 
they can undertake in their work at home seklom 
seem to be overburdened by it, and their leisure 
is very ample. The truth is that those who do 
not believe in the need for the Gospel abroad, or in 
its Divine power to regenerate and purify the most 
degraded in any land, have little faith in its power 
to regenerate men at home. Nor are they greatly 
troubled as a rule by the need for regeneration 
either of those at home or abroad. It is not 
merely the great parting command of the Lord 
they ignore ; they ignore also the great and funda- 
mental word which meets us on the very threshold 
of His ministry : " Ye must be born again." 

It is well to be perfectly frank in a matter so 
vital, and there is indeed no difficulty in under- 
standing why rationalists and latitudinarians alike 
were in no way eager to carry a Gospel abroad 
which they ignored and even denied at home. 
The only difficulty lies in understanding how such 
views and practices came to prevail in churches 
which had been born in the great revival other- 
wise known as the Reformation, and which had 
been used of God to do such marvellous things for 
the sinning and suffering sons of men in so many 
lands. 

The most obvious contribution towards the solu- 
tion of this problem is just what has been seen 

162 



The Era of Deformation 

as to the neglect of Foreign Missions during the 
revival era itself, however that neglect may be 
accounted for or may remain unaccounted for. 
This is borne out by the fact that whenever the 
Church began to live at home, and got a wider 
outlook, a new interest was shown in the work 
abroad. The new era in Home Missions and 
philanthropy, which is so well named the Evan- 
gelical Revival, w^as coincident with the new era 
in the work abroad, and with the birth of all the 
great Missionary societies. 

The whole history of the Church has made it 
clear that, so long as these two halves of the one 
whole grow side by side, both will prosper : and if 
this be acted on, the dread ice-age, which proved so 
disastrous to the sub-Reformation churches, will not 
again come with its terrible blight. But to avert 
such a doom, it must be constantly recognised that 
these two halves of the one whole have been joined 
by God, and that men and churches can only put 
them asunder at their extreme peril. In many 
respects a dead orthodoxy is not essentially 
different from a dead heterodoxy, and all through 
this period of reaction the attitude to Missions of 
those who were grimly orthodox in their creed 
was exactly the same as the attitude of those who 
had come under the power of a Socinianism which 
could not but make the Gospel of none effect. 

163 



The Call of the New Era 

It is well to remember, however, that even 
during these dreary centuries of death the fire on 
the altar never quite went out, and the embers 
which were to be fanned into the bright blaze of 
the Evangelical Revival were never wholly ex- 
tin g;uished. 

Unhappily, the controversies and complications, 
and even the corruptions, of the ecclesiastical 
situation in Europe were being carried among 
the heathen. In the homelands the followers of 
Ignatius Loyola had set themselves to undo 
the work of the Reformation, and were able at 
least to limit it and to prevent the reformation 
of Rome herself, a consummation which at one 
time seemed not improbable. One result of their 
campaign was that the various European nations 
had to make their choice, and a portentous choice 
it proved to be. Those peoples which then chose to 
be free from Rome are free still ; while those which 
stood by her then are still, willingly or unwillingly, 
in her toils, and sharing in her degradation. 

But the representatives of Rome also sought to 
redress her losses in the Old World by conquests 
in the New World as well as among the ancient 
heathen peoples on the other continents. The 
great territories of the Far East which were still 
closed to Protestantism were open to them wherever 
the flags of Spain and Portugal waved. But while 

164 



The Era of Deformation 

they often met with apparent success, a success 
which was all the more rapid because it was so 
superficial and unspiritual, in not a few^ cases the 
end was terribly disastrous. In Japan, for example, 
we have an outstanding instance of how their work 
was done, and of what ensued. To this day the 
evil reputation of these early Romish Missionaries 
survives among the Japanese, and has been a 
serious barrier to the Gospel playing its proper 
part in this era of the regeneration of w^hat may 
yet be the Britain of the Eastern Seas. Before 
the end of the sixteenth century it was claimed 
that the Jesuits had no fewer than 600,000 ad- 
herents in Japan. It has, however, to be borne 
in mind in connection w^ith this and similar 
claims that they are often quite unfounded and 
unreliable. That is admitted even by Roman 
Catholic authorities ; as, for instance, when the 
Secretary of the Congregatio de propaganda 
fide says in a report to Pope Innocent xi. (1676- 
1689) that "it seems to be the constant opinion 
of all the members of the conoTco-ation that little 

o o 

credit is to be given to the Relations, Letters, and 
Supplications that come from the Missionaries." 

In any case, the Japanese authorities became 
suspicious, as well they might, that the Missionary 
invasion was in reality a Western conspiracy for 
the destruction of their national independence, and 

165 



The Call of the New Era 

resolved to crush out the new movement. From 
1615 onwards a bitter persecution was waged, and 
in 1624 all foreigners except the Dutch and the 
Chinese were expelled from the country, and the 
long seclusion of Japan was begun. The strange 
thing about the persecution, however, was that 
although, as Guysbert points out, the martyrs knew 
little about the Christian religion except the Lord's 
Prayer, the Ave Maria, and a few other church 
prayers, and were quite destitute of the Scriptures, 
they met their fate with much heroism. Not only 
so, but when Japan was opened up at length in 
modern times, traces w^ere found in the villages 
around Nagasaki of the work done in the seven- 
teenth century, inadequate and even unworthy as 
that work had been. To all intents and purposes, 
however, the edifice which the Jesuits had reared 
was entirely demolished, and another illustration 
was given of the fact, too often overlooked, that 
the blood of the martyrs is not necessarily the seed 
of the Church. 

History declares with no uncertain sound that 
the work of the Jesuits in the Far East left no 
perceptible impression on the moral and spiritual 
character of the people among whom they laboured, 
a truly remarkable result of movements which 
seemed so successful for a time. Yet their failure 
can easily be understood if the description which 

1 66 



The Era of Deformation 

Xavier himself has left of his Missionary methods 
is borne in mind. 

Speaking of his work among the pearl fishers of 
Tuticorin, he says : " In each village I leave one 
copy of the Christian Instruction. I appoint all 
to assemble on festival days and to chaunt the 
rudiments of the Christian faith ; and in each 
village I appoint a fit person to preside. For 
their wages, the Viceroy at my request has as- 
signed four thousand gold fanims. Multitudes in 
these parts are not Christians only because none 
are found to make them Christians." "Here I am 
almost alone from the time that Anthony re- 
mained sick at Manapar ; and I find it an incon- 
venient position to be in, in the midst of a people 
of an unknown tongue without the assistance of an 
interpreter. Roderick, indeed, who is here, acts as 
an interpreter in the place of Anthony ; but you 
know well how much they know of Portuguese. 
Conceive, therefore, what kind of life I live in this 
place, what kind of sermons I am able to address 
to the assemblies, when they who should repeat 
my address to the people do not understand me 
nor I them. I ought to be an adept in dumb 
show. Yet I am not without work ; for I want no 
interpreter to baptize children just born, or those 
whom their parents bring, nor to relieve the 
famishing and the naked who come my way. So 

167 



The Call of the New Era 

I devote myself to these two kinds of good works, 
and do not regard my time as lost." 

Nor is it in the Far East alone that such methods 
and such results are found. In the region of 
the Congo, too, where such magnificent triumphs 
have been won by modern Missionary effort, 
spasmodic attempts were made by Portuguese 
Missionaries from the fifteenth century. By the 
year 1584, a native king had even been baptized 
and a cathedral built at Ambasse (Sao Salvador). 
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, 
however, the Portuguese Government expelled 
all religious orders ; and when the Baptist 
Missionaries began their work in 1879, the 
Congo territory was to all intents and purposes 
a heathen land. Nor is it surprising to find that 
these Missions, and others like them, were dogged 
with failure when it is found out what conver- 
sion to Christ in their case often meant. There 
also evangelisation by the language of dumb show 
has been weighed in the balances and found 
wanting. 

It is all very strange, even weirdly so ; and it 
reveals how widely the poison of pagan superstition 
had spread in the Romish Church, and how com- 
pletely sacerdotalism in its worst forms of magical 
efficacy had taken hold of Romanism at its best. 
History has passed its verdict on these sub- 

i68 



The Era of Deformation 

Reformation Missions of the Romish Church, and 
has put the stamp of unequivocal condemnation on 
them and on all who follow in the ways in which 
they went. He that hath ears, let him hear what 
the Spirit says. 

Nor were the Protestant churches altogether 
idle or indifferent throughout this sad time of 
declension. What may be thought of as the 
first Protestant Missionary Society was formed 
by the Long Parliament in 1649, through the 
creation of a corporation called the " President 
and Society for the Propagating of the Gospel in 
New England." This was done in response to 
a petition sent to Parliament in 1641 by some 
seventy English and Scottish ministers, and a 
resolution of the General Court of Massachusetts 
which ordered the County Courts to see to it that 
the Indians residing within their respective shires 
should be instructed in the knowledge and wor- 
ship of God. The Red Indians were the first 
heathen to become British subjects ; and on the 
principle of beginning first at Jerusalem, Crom- 
well and the Puritans naturally began Foreign 
Mission work among them. That they did so 
affords some proof that there is something in the 
plea that the inaction of the Reformers was largely 
due to the lack of opportunity and geographical 
propinquity. 

169 



The Call of the New Era 

Among others who were aided and encouraged 
by this Society was John Eliot, the earliest 
Puritan Missionary of note. He was born in 
Essex in the year 1604 ; and when he died in 1690, 
at the age of eighty-six, with the words " welcome," 
"joy," on his lips, he had the satisfaction of know- 
ing that there were eleven hundred Indian members 
in the six congregations he had been able to form, 
and that two of these congregations were under 
native pastors. The good work begun so well, 
even if somewhat tardily, was carried on by other 
like-minded pioneers, among them being David 
Brainerd, the ever-memorable Missionary to the 
Indians. This latter died in 1/47, at the early 
age of thirty, but his brief Missionary career of 
three years was full not only of ceaseless labours 
but of abundant fruit. And even as the British 
colonists in North America were thus endeavour- 
ing in some little measure to realise their respon- 
sibilities to those among whom their lot had been 
cast, so it was also to some extent with the 
Dutch colonists who had now in the providence 
of God replaced the Portuguese in the Far East. 

On the continent of Europe, too, the influence 
of Pietism was beginning to be felt ; and, under 
the power of sporadic revivals of heart-religion, 
many were being stirred by pity for the heathen 
out in the wilderness. Whenever men feel the 

170 



The Era of Deformation 

true worth of the Gospel for themselves, they soon 
begin to pity those who know nothing of the 
comfort and gladness which it brings. 

The earliest Mission to grow out of this move- 
ment was begun in Denmark by Dr. Lutkens, one 
of the Royal chaplains, and in his endeavours he 
had the support of King Frederick the Fourth. 
The men whom he sent out to Tranquebar, on 
the South-east coast of India, had been trained in 
the atmosphere of German Pietism. The Mission 
itself, indeed, owed more to the efforts of Francke, 
the renowned founder of the orphan house at 
Halle, than it did even to the Danish king and his 
good chaplain, and it is appropriately called the 
Danish-Halle Mission. 

The two Missionaries who were sent out first 
were the famous Ziegenbalo; and a brother in arms 
called Plutschau. They did not reach Tranquebar 
till July 1706, having spent more than seven 
months on the way. From the Cape of Good 
Hope, at which they touched and where the Dutch 
were then masters, they sent home such a lan.ent- 
able account of the condition of the Hottentots 
that the Moravians were moved to begin the first 
Mission to South Africa. There were indeed in- 
dications of a new spirit now in various quarters, 
and a new readiness to respond to the appeal of 
need ; and the accounts which Ziegenbalg sent to 

171 



The Call of the New Era 

Francke, regarding the progress of the work at 
Tranquebar, raised up many friends for the novel 
enterprise. Amongst others, King George the 
First of England, a strange personage to be in- 
terested in Missionary effort, sent a letter rejoicing 
in the work, and expressing gratitude that in 
England too a laudable zeal for the promotion of 
the Gospel now prevailed. 

The great Missionary church of the Moravian 
Brethren also received part at least of its first 
Missionary impulse from the same Pietists who 
inspired the work at Tranquebar. In that con- 
nection there now appears the name of the famous 
Count Zinzendorf, on whose estates the perse- 
cuted fugitives from Moravia had settled in 1722. 
Incited by the story of the sufferings of the 
negroes in St. Thomas, in the West Indies, and of 
the patient although unsuccessful labours of Hans 
Egede, a Norwegian pastor, in Greenland, Zinzen- 
dorf and his friends determined to send two of 
their number to each of these fields of service. 
This was in the year 1732 ; and ere another quarter 
of a century had elapsed, eighteen Missionaries had 
gone forth, without purse or wallet, from Herrnhut, 
to plant stations in the waste places of the earth, 
and to gather a community from among the 
heathen which was destined by and by to out- 
number far the community in the mother church 

172 



The Era of Deformation 

at home. The distinction of the Moravian Church 
among all other Missionary churches is that ever 
since 1732 it has been Missionary in the sense in 
which the Early Church was Missionary — that is, 
every member is a Missionary, and the question 
of his sphere is simply a matter of geographical 
arrangement. 

Yet these Pietist Missions for long were no more 
than points of light which made the surrounding 
darkness the more visible. The organised churches 
of the living God stood aloof as yet in their 
ignorance and selfishness, and the influence of 
these early heroic Missionaries was less than might 
have been expected. Perhaps the time had not 
yet come for the great forward movement ; 
and these brave Missionary pioneers were not 
only few in number and often untrained and 
even uneducated, but they entirely reversed, as 
we have seen, the method of the Missionaries 
of Apostolic and post -Apostolic days in one 
very important particular. The Apostles and 
their successors assailed the strategic centres, 
and went where Satan's synagogues were. These 
eighteenth-century Missionaries, on the other hand, 
went to tribes so obscure or so savage that even 
successful w^ork among them hardly told on the 
great citadels of heathenism, or on the great non- 
Christian and anti- Christian systems. " It was 

^73 



The Call of the New Era 

magnificent, but it was not war " ; and while the 
men of every age must seek to face the new duties 
and appeals of their time in the new light which 
the Holy Spirit never fails to send, the Apostolic 
method in this respect was most abundantly 
justified by the result. 

In any case, the fact remains that, as the Evan- 
gelical Revival drew near, it can hardly be said that 
modern Missions emerged from these eighteenth- 
century efforts, any more than it can be said that 
the Reformation grew out of the work of " the 
Reformers before the Reformation." Indeed, as 
has so often been the case, the darkness seemed 
only to grow deeper as the dawn drew nearer. 
During the second half of the eighteenth century 
it almost appeared as if Evangelical religion had 
died out in the churches. The Reformation had 
apparently spent itself, and the time of the next 
awakening had not yet come. 

An apologist for this era of reaction and death 
says that the Reformed Churches spent the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in presenting 
the Gospel to Europe, and then in the nineteenth 
century went out to declare it to the heathen. 
But such a statement does more credit to the 
writer's imagination and to his powers of anti- 
thesis and generalisation than to his historic sense, 
for nothing could be a more inadequate description 

174 



The Era of Deformation 

of what actually took place. In the closing decades, 
Methodism apart, the Gospel was hardly ever 
preached either in Europe or among the heathen, 
if by the Gospel is meant the glad tidings of the 
grace of God. Here and there in England and 
Germany a few scattered communities of Moravians 
and Methodists, of Puritans and Baptists, heard 
the good news of salvation for the world, and 
received it ; although even they often seemed to 
be afraid to take their Father, too literally, at His 
word. 

In Scotland, too, during these years what were 
called the Praying Societies arose, little gatherings 
of cottars and weavers in town and country, who 
drew together around Christ, and ultimately became 
centres of light and leading when the day broke. 
But even in the homelands the Gospel was chilly, 
as became the Evangel of an ice-age ; and the 
grim reality of the frost may be imagined when 
we discover that the blight of rationalism and un- 
belief fell even on the Missionaries out at the front, 
where for a time the lights had been shining like 
stars in the thick darkness. 

That the very light had become darkness gives 
some conception of how dense the darkness was. 
But this was only another reminder that the work 
of God is one and indivisible, although the re- 
minder comes to us in an unusually pathetic way. 

175 



The Call of the New Era 

It is not only the case that Foreign Mission work re- 
acts on the life of the churches at home, and brings 
blessing there, and that those who are not loyal 
at home will not be very eager abroad ; it is also 
the case that the home churches may so react on 
the work abroad as to bring decay and disaster 
on them. They cannot but stand or fall together ; 
and instead of it being specially easy to keep the 
spiritual life fresh and pure out at the front, it is 
very easy to be influenced adversely by the impact 
of heathenism and the persistence of the heathen 
atmosphere. The Church abroad must continually 
draw inspiration from the Church at home, as well as 
convey such inspiration back in return. A healthy 
church must be active on both sides of the im- 
aginary line which men draw, and which God in 
His providence persistently ignores. 

What a portent it was that even the Danish- 
Halle Mission, associated for ever with the names 
of Francke and Ziegenbalg, was ultimately under- 
mined by the same subtle foe which had sapped 
the churches at home ! That Mission had indeed 
begun most hopefully. Within ten months of the 
arrival of the Missionaries at Tranquebar, they had 
the joy of baptizing five adults, heathen slaves of 
Danish masters, while only four months later nine 
Hindu converts were baptized. Yet ere the 
fatal eighteenth century had come to an end, the 

176 



The Era of Deformation 

Mission was only saved by being taken over by 
some Church of England Missionaries, who cared 
for it until the Dresden-Leipzig Lutheran Mission 
took it up again in happier days of revival and 
quickening. 

The dawn, however, was now at hand ; and 
among the harbingers of its coming were some 
of the Missionary hymns which are still in use. 
The Church is never so winsome and attractive, 
nor yet so aggressive, as when she is engaged in 
praising her Lord. Early in the eighteenth 
century the first foreign Missionary hymn 
appeared, that of Bogatzky, " Wake up, thou 
spirit of the first martyrs," as it is in its English 
dress. Watts' hymn, " Jesus shall reign where'er 
the sun," was written in 1719 ; and Williams's 
hymn, " O'er the gloomy hills of darkness," in 
1722; while "Arm of the Lord, awake, awake," 
" Behold the mountain of the Lord," and " Sing 
to the Lord in joyful strains," all appeared before 
the middle of the century. 

Once again, therefore, it must be insisted on 
that there has always been a faithful remnant ; 
and even during this degenerate age this was 
made evident in various ways. Among those 
who helped to redeem it, there are two names 
which towards its close stand out in special 
splendour, and who also did much to hasten the 
N.E.— 12 177 



The Call of the New Era 

brighter time which was to come — Christian 
Friedrich Schwartz and William Carey. 

The former of these heroes, who was born in 
1726 and died in 1798, was a Prussian. From 
his birth his mother dedicated him to the service 
of the Saviour, and in due time he was sent to 
study at Halle, under Francke. It is one of the 
features of this period that in the story of it we 
are continually coming across the name of Francke, 
wherever good work was being done either at home 
or abroad. Nearly everything that was then done 
to extend the Kingdom of Christ can be traced 
directly or indirectly back to one common con- 
secrated source, that of the German Pietists. So 
much can even one ray of light do to illumine the 
darkness. 

At Halle, Schwartz came into contact with 
Schultze, one of Ziegenbalg's earliest colleagues 
at Tranqucbar, who was at home arranging for 
the printing of a new edition of the New Testa- 
ment in Tamil. Schwartz himself went out into 
the firing line in his twenty-third year, in spite of 
all the protests of his friends ; and in those days, 
and from the standpoint of that generation, it must 
have seemed peculiarly insane to do such a thing. 
But long after, and when his work was nearly at 
an end, his own testimony was this : "I am 
now on the brink of eternity, but to this moment 

178 



The Era of Deformation 

I declare that I do not repent having spent forty - 
three years in the service of my Divine Master 
Who knows but God may remove some of the 
great obstacles to the propagation of the Gospel ? 
Should a Reformation take place among the 
Europeans, it would no doubt be the greatest 
blessing to the country." He did not live to see 
it, but many of the obstacles which he deplored 
were ere long to be swept away by the mighty 
hand of God. 

When Schwartz went out to India, the East India 
Company — which later on was to be at first un- 
friendly to Carey and others — not only gave him 
a free passage, but afforded him such countenance 
as secured him peace in his work. And he did 
a great work, alike in the Company's territories 
and in Mysore. He laid the foundation of the 
Native Christian Church of India, which on its Pro- 
testant side alone has now more than a million 
members. He was the first to establish Christian 
vernacular schools ; for, like all the other great 
Missionaries, he put much importance on the work 
of education. He was the first, too, to anticipate 
famine and make provision for it, after 1780, by 
storing rice which went to feed not only the dying 
natives but also British troops. His ward. Raja 
Serfoji, erected a Christian church and manse in 
his fort ; and when the Missionary died, both this 

179 



The Call of the New Era 

Hindu Prince and the East India Company erected 
splendid memorials to him. As a proof and 
instance of the kind of influence which he exerted 
and of the impression which his work made, it 
is on record that when the Madras Government 
were negotiating with the famous Hyder Ali, he 
said : " Send me the Christian : he will not 
deceive me," 

The noble work for India which was done by 
Schwartz was greatly extended by William Carey, 
who appeared at the seat of war in 1793, five years 
before his forerunner died. Carey, who was the 
first Englishman to become a Missionary to the 
East, was born in Northamptonshire, on 17th 
August, 1761, just when the darkness before the 
dawn was at its worst. He was apprenticed to 
a shoemaker when he was fourteen. Four years 
later he was converted and became a Dissenter. 
When he was twenty-six he was ordained as 
Baptist minister at Moulton. Thereafter he was 
minister at Leicester, in the congregation which was 
afterwards presided over by the famous preacher, 
Robert Hall. 

He grew up amid the forces which in France 
brought about the epoch-making Revolution of 1789, 
and which in reality were revolutionary on both 
sides of the Channel. In this country these forces 
were only prevented from culminating in horrors 

i8o 



The Era of Deformation 

like those which desolated France, by the new 
religious influences which, without observation of 
men, were beginning to lay hold of the very classes 
that would otherwise have been most dangerous. 
The same yearnings which, when they were per- 
verted reared the guillotine in France, when they 
were sympathetically directed sent Carey across 
the seas to his work among the heathen, and 
roused Wilberforce to his saving, healing work 
at home. 

Carey was a shrewd thinker, a keen observer, 
and very diligent and studious withal ; while 
his linguistic powers were of the most remark- 
able order. In spite of vast hindrances, he ac- 
quired Latin, Greek, French, Dutch, and Hebrew. 
From 1781 he never ceased to insist that it was 
the Church's duty to send the Gospel to the 
heathen ; and steadily, if slowly, the influence of 
his appeal grew. Scott the commentator speaks 
of the cobbler's shop at Hackleton as "Carey's 
College," while Andrew Fuller tells how he found 
him at his stall in Moulton, with a map of the 
world pasted up on it, and on this the religious and 
political statistics of all the nations were set forth 
as they were then known. 

In 1792 he published his book entitled An 
Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to 
use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen, a 

i8i 



The Call of the New Era 

wonderful and unique combination of accurate 
information, wide generalisation, and impassioned 
appeal. Eventually, on the second day of October 
in that same year of grace 1792, the Baptist 
Missionary Society was founded at Kettering, in 
a house which is still visible to passers-by on the 
Midland Railway. A constitution was drawn up, 
and a collection was taken in a horn box which 
was exhibited in 1908 at the Orient Exhibition in 
London. The twelve ministers present contributed 
no less than £13 2s. 6d. It is well worth noticing 
that these heroic founders of the first English Mis- 
sionary Society were all predestinarians, and that 
they were loyal to what they believed to be true 
Calvinism — the Calvinism of Paul and Augustine 
and Columba, the Calvinism which makes election 
a means of grace, the Calvinism of Wyclif and 
Knox and probably Calvin himself, as distinguished 
from the false teaching which had emasculated 
Christianity and arrested the Church of the 
Reformation. 

William Carey landed in India in 1793, and after 
forty-one wonderful years spent in Bengal without 
a break, he died on 9th June, 1834, having rendered 
to the cause of the Gospel services which can never 
be forgotten. He served Christ and India with 
the best he had, which was much ; his linguistic 
work, for instance, being invaluable not only to 

182 



The Era of Deformation 

the cause of Missions but to the science of philology. 
During these fruitful years the Scriptures were 
translated into the vernacular, schools and the 
Serampore College were opened, Medical Mission 
work was begun, converts were won and trained 
to win others, and churches were established. In a 
word, the foundations were wisely and firmly laid 
for all the wonderful and varied Mission work 
which is now being carried on so zealously and so 
successfully in our vast Indian Empire. 

The careers of these two outstanding Indian 
Missionaries suggest a passing reflection on the 
influence, in connection with the spread of the 
Gospel, which has been exerted by the East 
India Company. At first, as we saw, it had a 
religious basis, which Charles Grant, as twice 
its Chairman, and his sons, Sir Robert Grant 
and Lord Glenelg, always built upon. But 
by and by, and perhaps necessarily, that disap- 
peared ; and those who directed its truly Imperial 
affairs concerned themselves only with trade, and 
with Government merely as an incident of their 
trading operations. As was noted, they gave 
Schwartz a free passage and encouraged him in his 
work ; but when Carey went out they did all they 
could to hinder and hamper him, for political ends. 
Indeed, he had to go out to India in a Danish 
vessel. The same policy drove Newell to Ceylon, 

183 



The Call of the New Era 

and Judson to Burma, and was thus overruled by 
God for tlie extension of His Kingdom. It likewise 
kept out the Haldanes, although unconsciously 
this brought much blessing on the homeland, and 
especially Scotland. 

Yet it cannot be gainsaid by any reverent 
student that God gave India to Great Britain 
for gracious ends, and in order to subserve the 
progress of Mission work in Asia. At its best, 
the Company was little more than neutral, while 
at its worst its officials were persecuting ; but, all 
the same, it proved to be a great prceparatio 
evangelica all over Southern Asia, It did for the 
Missionary in the Far East something not unlike 
what the Roman Empire did for the Missionaries 
in the first Christian centuries. It secured order 
where there had been anarchy, and it brought 
peace where there were only interminable wars. 
It made roads and even railways, it developed the 
postal system and means of intercommunication 
generally ; and in many ways it helped to quicken 
the conscience of the churches at home, when by 
and by the Evangelical Revival had begun to create 
such a conscience. 

At times, it is true, the Company may have 
done this through its opposition to Missions ; but 
it also did it by those pensioned officials who 
came home after their work was done, and who 

184 



The Era of Deformation 

were able to tell what it was that India really 
needed most. And it helped in other ways, as, 
for example, when, moved by Charles Grant, 
Charles Simeon was able to arrange for five 
Evangelical ministers to go out technically as 
chaplains but in reality as Missionaries. Their 
names are sufficient to show how truly they were 
more than official chaplains : Henry Martyn, 
Claudius Buchanan, Daniel Corrie, David Brown, 
and Thomas Thomason. 

One of the Directors of the Company once said 
that he w^ould rather see a band of devils landing 
in India than a band of Missionaries ; but these 
chaplains of the Company did splendid Missionary 
work alike among the Europeans and the natives. 
We find as proof of this that Carey wrote in 1806 : 
" A young clergyman, Mr. Martyn, is lately arrived, 
who is possessed of a truly Missionary spirit. We 
take sweet counsel together, and go to the House of 
God as friends." And at another time we find him 
writing: "Wherever Mr. Martyn is placed, he will 
save us the expense of a Missionary." 

Most manifestly God gave India to Britain that 
that great Empire of the East might be brought 
under civilising and Christianising influences. It 
is not Jingoism or even blind Imperialism to say 
that no political factor has done so much for the 
development of Mission work as the Empire of 

185 



The Call of the New Era 

Great Britain in the East — the Opium Traffic and 
much else notwithstanding. But there is another 
side to all this — and it is becoming more and more 
evident that, unless, along with Western culture, 
Britain gives India and her awakening millions the 
civilisation which the Gospel alone can secure, it 
will not be possible for her to retain her hold. If 
she dissociates herself from Christianity, she robs 
herself of her strength, and destroys her Divine 
and even historical warrant for being in India at all. 
The East India Company was primarily a commercial 
concern, and may have been afraid of its profits, if 
the light of Divine truth shone too clearly in the 
land ; doubtless some things were done which could 
not stand a very close scrutiny. But so far as 
the Imperial Government is concerned, she has 
nothing to gain and everything to lose by turning 
a cold shoulder to the Missionaries, who are the best 
friends she has ; and not a few of the noblest of 
our Indian statesmen are the foremost to declare 
that she already owes more than tongue can tell 
to what the Missionaries have done. 

AVhat her debt will be when all that great 
Empire has been illumined by Divine truth and 
won for Christ, who can estimate ? But may 
the time soon come for trying to form such an 
estimate 1 The disintegrating forces cannot now be 
kept out of any land, and they are nowhere busier 

i86 



The Era of Deformation 

than ill India. The Gospel alone can reintegrate. 
The Gospel alone can put the social order there, 
or anywhere, on an enduring foundation. The 
cry, " India for Christ," should come with peculiar 
significance and power to all British Christians. 



187 



CHAPTER VII 
THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 



189 



" How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace." — IsA. 52. 7. 

" The tools belong to the man who can use them." — Napoleon. 

" Christianity is more human than Calvinism, more divine than 
Arminianism, and more Christian than either." 



190 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL 

" rpHE Evangelical Revival in England, together 
-L with the new sympathy for humanity which 
manifested itself in the social and political move- 
ments of the later years of the eighteenth century, 
ushered in a period of Missionary activity ; an 
era which, in the history of Missions, is only less 
remarkable than the first of the Christian centuries." 
Such is the testimony of one who is at once a 
thoroughly competent theologian and one of the 
wisest of modern Church historians. And it is 
a true witness to what was achieved in those 
wondrous years of quickening from the presence 
of the Most High God, of which we are still en- 
joying many of the fruits. It is a moderate 
estimate, too, of the place which the Evangelical 
Revival occupies in the growth of the Christian 
Church, and especially of Christian Missions. 

There had been local and sporadic revivals here 
and there all through the eighteenth century, re- 

191 



The Call of the New Era 

actionary though it was, especially in Great Britain 
and America. Of these the most outstanding was, of 
course, the upheaval which will always be associated 
with the great names of Whitefield and the Wesleys. 
Through that awakening, the doctrines of the 
Reformation — justification by faith alone, and the 
direct access of the penitent to God — first became 
real for the common people of England. Until 
then it had never been quite correct to say that 
they had heard the Gospel gladly. In some ways 
it could hardly be said that they had heard it at 
all, and in that regard the Methodist Revival did 
for the people of England what the Reformation 
revival had done long before for the poorest both 
in Germany and Scotland. 

There have been few greater gifts of God to 
His Church in any age, even the Apostolic, than 
the gift of John Wesley. The non-enthusiastic 
Lord Macaulay says that " Wesley conducted one 
of the most wonderful moral revolutions the world 
ever saw. His eloquence and his piercing logic 
would have made him an eminent literary man, 
and his genius for government was not inferior 
to that of Richelieu." Mr. Lecky, too, who was 
still farther removed than Macaulay from any 
enthusiasm for evangelism, expressly asserts his 
conviction, that it was the influence of Wesley and 
those who were associated with him which saved 

192 



The Evangelical Revival 

Britain from horrors like those in which the 
eighteenth century expired in France. Nor was 
the English revolution any the less real or effective 
that we were spared the horrors. 

Strangely enough, however, the Foreign Mission 
side of the Methodist movement was not developed 
at first ; and towards the end of this period of 
declension and death which has just been dealt 
with, it would almost appear as if even the 
Methodist Kevival was beginning to lose its 
power, so subtle and all-pervading was the in- 
fluence of the unbelieving spirit of the age. And 
who knows whether even it might not have come 
under the power of the blight like the other 
movements of that era, had not the appeal of the 
perishing multitudes in the regions beyond been 
heard in time to prevent a collapse? With the 
story of the post-Eeformation Church before us, 
it is impossible to say what depths might have 
been fathomed, had believers continued to be deaf 
alike to the cry of the perishing heathen and to 
the clear and unequivocal command of their 
Lord. 

In many respects the last decades of the 
eighteenth century present noteworthy analogies 
to that time when the Lord Himself, the Almighty 
Christ, could do no mighty works among His own 
people because of their unbelief, and when He 
N.E.-13 193 



The Call of the New Era 

could only heal a few sick folk amongst them. 
There never was a time when some were not 
being healed, but the general state of the Church 
was almost incredible in its torpor and death. 
It is, indeed, somewhat difficult for us in happier 
times to realise how terrible was the condition 
of things on the eve of the new Pentecost, so 
much has the outcome of it changed the whole 
appearance of the world and the Church alike. 
But the testimony borne to the reign of deepest 
and almost unbroken darkness is overwhelming. 

The eminent lawyer Blackstone, writing in 
1780, says that on his removal to London from 
Oxford he sought out every outstanding preacher 
in the metropolis, and this is his report of what 
he found : " I did not hear a single discourse 
that had more of Christianity in it than the 
writings of Cicero. I never could discover from 
what I heard whether the preacher was a follower 
of Confucius, or of Mohammed, or of Christ." 

Hannah More, too, gives us a vivid glimpse of 
the state of affairs when she tells that on one 
occasion she " saw but one Bible in the parish of 
Cheddar, and that was used to prop a flower-pot." 
And even she was somewhat under the influence 
of the upas tree, for in her plea for elementary 
education she confined the curriculum to the Bible 
and the Catechism and " such books as may fit the 

194 



The Evangelical Revival 

children for servants. I allow of no writing for 
the poor." 

" There is a general decay of vital religion in the 
hearts and lives of men," wrote Isaac Watts ; and 
among the peasantry, at least in England, there 
seems to have been no moral or religious training 
of any kind. Nor were their " betters " in any 
way superior, as may be gathered from the reply of 
the Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, 
who had asked her to go with her to hear White- 
field. " I thank your ladyship for the information 
concerning the Methodist preachers ; their doctrines 
are most repulsive, and are strongly tinctured with 
impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, 
in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks 
and to do away with all distinctions. It is 
monstrous to be told that you have a heart as 
sinful as the common wretches that crawl on 
the earth ; and I cannot but wonder that your 
ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at 
variance with high rank and breeding." 

As for the almost universal indifference or 
opposition to Foreign Missions, the Bishop of St. 
David's, who questioned the right of one people 
to send their religion to any other, may be taken 
to represent the feeling of the Establishment in 
England ; while the reception which William 
Carey got from his colleagues in the Baptist 

195 



The Call of the New Era 

ministry may be taken as indicative of the 
attitude of the Nonconformists. Tradition has it 
that when once he was urging his fellow-Christians 
to discuss the matter of Missions to the heathen, 
he was met with the response : " Young man, sit 
down. When God wishes to convert the heathen. 
He will do it without your help or mine " ; which 
was, of course, just what God was not prepared 
to do. God alone can save the world, but God 
does not save the world alone. 

As it has been with all truly spiritual move- 
ments, the Evangelical Revival began quietly and 
without observation of men. There had been 
preparation both positive and negative, and above 
all there had been prayer. It is true that some 
of those who prayed hardly knew what they were 
praying for, and did not recognise the answer 
when it came, but that has always been the case. 
But again and again during these dreary years in 
that waste century of rationalism and indifference 
we come across appeals for union in prayer, and 
better still, response to the appeals. 

In the year 1723, a Presbyterian minister in 
Paisley, for instance, published a History of the 
Propagation of Christianity and the Overthiviv 
of Paganism, in which he powerfully urged prayer 
as the first of nine means which he enumerated 
for the conversion of the heathen. We read that 

196 



The Evangelical Revival 

from 1744 to 1746 prayer that God's Kingdom 
might come was offered by many all over Great 
Britain, every Saturday evening and Sabbath 
morning ; and that those who joined in the circle 
of prayer were so much encouraged that in August, 
1746, they sent a memorial to Boston inviting the 
Christians of North America to join with them in 
it for the next seven years. 

Then again, in 1784, we find the Baptist ministers 
of Northamptonshire agreeing to wrestle with God 
for the effusion of His Holy Spirit, that there 
might be a revival of the churches and the general 
cause of the Redeemer. They unanimously agreed 
to exhort all the congregations to engage heartily 
and perseveringly in prayer to God on the first 
Monday of each month, and at the same hour. 
They called on them specially to pray for the 
spread of the Gospel to the distant parts of the 
habitable globe, and to do what they could to get 
other societies and denominations to join with 
them in their praying. That they were not 
always loyal to the logic of their intercessions, 
and often failed to see what was involved in such 
prayers, is not to be wondered at. In any case, 
their lack of insight and response has unhappily 
been far from unique in the history of the Church 
in prayer, and they had not yet realised how 
serious a thing it is to wait on God in such a 

197 



The Call of the New Era 

fashion, or to how much they were thereby com- 
mitting themselves. 

In addition to prayer in concert and alone with 
God, it would appear that, also without observation 
of men, there had been quite an unwonted circula- 
tion of writings about the Holy Spirit and His work. 
Such a notable book, for instance, as Marshall's 
Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, which has been 
described as "Keswick doctrine for hard heads," 
was among the books which were called for and 
read widely, with the most blessed results. But 
after we have done our best to trace the revival 
back to its sources, all we can say with certainty 
is that the Breath of God began to breathe, and 
that ere long there was a great army of living 
souls where before there had been nothino; more 
than the grim disjecta membra of the battlefield, 
a weird valley of dry bones, bones very many and 
very dry. To seek to discover whether the 
revival or the Missionary outbreak came first 
would be a vain task which has not even an 
academic interest. To ask this question is like 
asking whether the egg or the hen is first ; for in 
a very real sense these movements were not two, 
but only one. 

All the same, there can be but little doubt 
that it was the prompt obedience to the Divine 
command shown in the new Missionary enterprise 

198 



The Evangelical Revival 

that did most to deepen the revival when it had 
come, and to make it permanent. If it be claimed, 
as it well may, that it was the revival in turn 
which made such obedience possible at all, that 
just means that once more we are in presence of 
one of those blessed circles of grace which, equally 
with vicious circles of unbelief, are so often to be 
met with in the records of the Church. 

In his Short History of the English People, 
Mr. Green says that it was not till the Wesleyan 
movement had done its work that the philanthropic 
movement began ; and probably we are on lines at 
once safe and scientific when we treat the Methodist 
movement, which, with all its collateral outgoings, 
was one of the few glories of an inglorious 
age, as the beginning of the still greater revival 
which was to follow and make all things new. 
It prepared the soil in which there grew up 
the choice plants of Mission work at home and 
abroad, of world-wide philanthropy and Gospel 
efi'ort in an outburst which has only once been 
equalled in the history of the race. For then, as 
always, when it is not perverted, the true love of 
God went hand in hand with the true love of 
men ; for we only know that we love God Whom 
we have not seen when we love our brethren 
whom we have seen. 

To quote Mr. Green again : " The passionate 
199 



The Call of the New Era 

impulse of human sympathy with the wronged 
and afflicted raised hospitals, endowed charities, 
built churches, sent Missionaries to the heathen, 
supported Burke in his plea for the Hindu, and 
Clarkson and Wilberforce in their crusade against 
the iniquities of the slave trade," And thus it 
was that when men were obedient to the will of 
God, the clouds broke and showers fell where there 
had only been drops before. They who do the 
will of God shall know of the doctrine ; and they 
who hear the cry of the perishing abroad hear 
the voice of the self-revealing Jehovah at home. 
The state of affairs in the various English 
churches on the eve of the Evangelical Revival 
was somewhat as follows. When John Wesley 
died, in 1791, the Methodists had 294 preachers, 
and nearly 72,000 members in the United King- 
dom ; in addition to some 50,000 more in other 
lands, who had been gathered in in loyalty to 
Wesley's claim that the world was his parish. In 
the English Establishment there had also been a 
quickening ; and an Evangelical party had been 
formed, well-known men like Romaine, Venn, John 
Newton, Thomas Scott, and William Wilberforce 
being among its leaders. Charles Wesley remained 
in communion with the Church of England to the 
last ; and by the end of the century these Evan- 
gelicals were a numerous and compact body, not 

200 



The Evangelical Revival 

without influence. The older English Noncon- 
formists, too, had felt the breath of revival. 
Earlier in the century they had had Evangelical 
leaders like Watts and Doddridge ; while later 
there w^ere leaders like Andrew Fuller and Robert 
Hall. 

In Home Mission work and philanthropy there 
were many signs of an unwonted stir, as if 
already the river had been caught in the swirl 
of the Niagara which was now so near. In 1781 
Robert Raikes began the great work of Sabbath- 
schools. At the World Conference held in Rome, 
in 1907, it was reported that there w^ere then 
nearly 250,000 Sabbath - schools throughout the 
world, with 25,500,000 teachers and scholars. 
In 1773, John Howard began his epoch-making 
work of prison reform ; and although he died at 
his post far away on the shores of the Black Sea, 
only seventeen years later, while attending a girl 
sick of the jail fever, the most beneficent results 
still flow from what he did so nobly. Later on 
his work was taken up by Elizabeth Gurney Fry 
and a devoted band of women and men, an unusual 
proportion of whom were Quakers, a people whose 
record in connection with such philanthropy is so 
remarkable. 

During this spring-time, too, the work of re- 
forming the criminal law was begun by Sir 

20I 



The Call of the New Era 

Samuel Romilly and carried on by Sir James 
Mackintosh. Even war, that monstrous evil, felt 
the healing touch of the Son of Man ; for in 
1795 the work of the Geneva Convention was 
anticipated in part by the establishment of an 
ambulance by a Frenchman. 

As for slavery, that sum of all villainies and 
all wrongs, reform came with a glorious rush, 
which culminated, in 1833, in what John Stuart 
Mill declared was the most rio;hteous act ever 
done by a nation — when Great Britain paid 
£20,000,000 for the redemption of her slaves in 
the West Indies. Good men had been denounc- 
ing the vile system since the beginning of the 
eighteenth century ; but nothing is more remark- 
able in connection with moral movements than 
their slow growth up to a certain point, unless it 
be the progress which comes with a rush when 
nations are born in a day. The blindness of 
good people to clear moral issues, before the time 
comes when the day breaks and the shadows flee 
away, is very puzzling. In 1747, for example, 
no less a man than George Whitefield expended 
£300, which the people of Charleston had given 
him, in buying land and negroes ; and by his 
will he bequeathed not only his orphan homes but 
his negro slaves to the Countess of Huntingdon, 
for the same purposes as he himself held them. 

202 



The Evangelical Revival 

The first concerted action for the abolition of 
the slave trade — the abolition of slavery itself 
was not yet thought of — was made by the 
Quakers, who in 1761 agreed to exclude from 
their Society all who took part in it. In the year 
1772, through the efforts of Granville Sharp, a 
decision was obtained from Lord Mansfield that 
no slave could be held in England, or carried out 
of it. And then, at last, the beginning of the 
end came, when the iniquitous traffic was pro- 
hibited by Denmark in 1802, by Great Britain 
in 1807, and by the United States in 1808. 
Slavery itself, however, was not abolished in the 
British Empire till 1833 ; and it only came to an 
end in the United States of America some forty- 
five years ago, after a bloody war. But the 
Evangelical Revival sealed its fate, even as the 
preaching of the Gospel and the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper doomed it throughout the Empire of 
Rome in the first centuries of our era. 

In the history of human progress, and the 
contribution of the Gospel thereto, the Evangelical 
Revival ranks with the early Christian centuries 
and with the Reformation era ; and just as the 
Reformation came when the New World was being 
opened up, and when the Renaissance in letters, 
the invention of the printing press, and the 
discovery of the new continent of the West 

203 



The Call of the New Era 

were uniting to make everything new ; so the 
Evangelical Kevival came amid the upheavals of 
the French Revolution which remade Europe, 
and when the nations were stirred to the depths 
by the great social and industrial changes conse- 
quent on the invention of the steam-engine, even 
yet the most wonderful instrument which human 
industry has had put at its command. 

To bring out the inwardness of this period of 
unexampled expansion in things material and 
spiritual alike, these dates regarding trade may 
be added to those already given about religion : 
Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations 
in 1774; the spinning machine was invented in 
1768; the spinning jenny in 1764; and the 
spinning mule in 1776. Even as the Reformation 
consecrated and claimed the printing press, the 
Evangelical Revival did much to consecrate the 
new mechanical appliances which had just been 
put at the service of man. It also did something 
to mitigate the misery which was one result of 
the long wars and the vast industrial changes. 
To some extent it was more successful than the 
Reformation era in facing its social problems. 
For the picture of the time when this revival 
came is far from complete, unless it be realised 
that it found enormous social distress prevail- 
ing ; that sheer hunger was everywhere common 

204 



The Evangelical Revival 

among the poor ; and that the public life of the 
community was very corrupt. It was into this 
maelstrom of striving, sinning, suffering men and 
women that the healing salt of genuine religious 
quickening was thrown ; and since then, with many 
an ebb and flow, things have never quite lost the 
regenerating impulse which they then received. 

Now that we have seen something of the en- 
vironment of this new era of the Spirit, we 
may look more definitely at what was being done 
in the realm of Foreign Mission work ; and it soon 
becomes clear that the river of God was running 
there, not only deep and broad, but swift as well. 
As we saw, it was in May, 1792, that the 
Baptist Missionary Society was formed by the 
men whom William Carey had been teaching to 
expect great things from God, and to attempt 
great things for God. But even before that 
the Basel Society for Spreading Christian Truth, 
out of which emerged the Basel Bible Society and 
the Basel Missionary Society, had been founded 
in 1780. Then in 1795, only three years after 
the Baptists had shown the way, the London 
Missionary Society was formed by a union of 
Independents, Presbyterians, Methodists, and 
Episcopalians. Their only strife was to be this — 
" not to promote the interests of a special section, 
since Christ is not divided ; but with united 

205 



The Call of the New Era 

earnestness to make known afar the glory of His 
Person, the perfection of His Work, the wonders 
of His Grace, and the overflowing blessings of 
His Kedemption." 

It has been truly said that the Church realises 
her unity in her sacred songs ; but it is also true 
that she likewise realises it in her efi'orts to bring 
the light to those who are sitting in darkness 
and the shadow of death. Although the shadow 
of separation still lies on her, and hinders her 
greatly, that union for Foreign Mission work more 
than a century ago was a sure prophecy, not only 
of the brighter day which is to come, but also of 
the direction from which it is most likely to 
come. Already, in India and elsewhere, churches 
which are still separate at home have come 
together at the front, where they are face to face 
with the foe, and have found out that no excuse 
is ever needed for union, but only for separation. 
That prophecy, too, was none the less real that as 
the other churches have gradually formed their 
own special organisations, the London Missionary 
Society has necessarily become practically the 
Society of the Independents or Congregationalists 
alone. 

In 1799 another big step was taken, when 
sixteen ministers of the Church of England, 
encouraged by Wilberforce, the great anti- 

206 



The Evangelical Revival 

slavery champion, and others like-minded, 
founded the organisation which, in 1812, became 
the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the 
East, and which has had such a splendid career 
ever since. Then, in 1808, the London Society 
for Promoting Christianity among the Jews was 
formed; while, in 1813, the Wesleyan Missionary 
Society was added to the number of active 
agencies. Nor were the Presbyterians far behind, 
if at all, in spite of the notorious finding of the 
Scottish General Assembly, in 1796. In that 
very year the Scottish and Glasgow Missionary 
Societies were founded, and went on their way 
rejoicing ; until they were merged later on in 
the organisations of the churches, when these 
laggards at last overtook the more daring of 
their members. 

Already, too, there were two auxiliary Societies 
in existence which were destined to play a very 
important part in winning the world for Christ, 
and to be the most valued allies and handmaidens 
of every Evangelical Mission. These were the 
Religious Tract Society, founded in 1799, and 
the British and Foreign Bible Society, which 
began its beneficent career in 1804. There are 
now more than eighty Bible Societies at work in 
the homelands and among the heathen ; and in 
the year 1909, the British and Foreign Bible 

207 



The Call of the New Era 

Society alone circulated nearly 6,000,000 copies 
of the Bible, in whole or in part, in 409 lan- 
guages ; while Dr. Dennis computes that when 
the twentieth century began no fewer than 436 of 
the peoples and tribes of mankind had the Word 
of the Living God provided for them in their 
mother tongue. 

It is not easy to realise how much work of the 
noblest sort all this has involved ; nor is there any 
kind of service in the foreign field which deserves 
our admiration more than the self-effacement of 
those Missionaries who spend years in preparing 
grammars, dictionaries and translations, when 
their whole soul is on fire for other forms of 
work which seem more immediate and active. 
But the work which is done in this way multi- 
plies indefinitely the influence of every other 
worker who goes out with the Bible in his hand, 
and adds years to the life of usefulness of those 
who enter into the labours of the grammar and 
dictionary maker. 

There are no truer Missionary Societies than 
the Bible Societies, and the societies for providing 
literature in the vernacular ; and all the friends 
of the Gospel rejoice in their wonderful activity 
and their perennial youth. Nor is it adequately 
known or understood how much the Church and 
the Foreign Mission cause owe to the consecration 

2o8 



The Evangelical Revival 

of scholars of the first rank who have given their 
years to this work of translation. 

Dr. Wright, who spoke with such authority 
on the subject, has well said : " Let none despise 
the uneducated Missionaries who go forth with 
hearts full of love to tell the simple story of 
Jesus of Nazareth to the common people who 
hear them gladly. But there is cause for joy in 
the Church of Christ when our polished scholars 
go forth to the heathen. If on arriving they find 
a poor translation, then, like Bishop Steere of the 
Universities' Mission, they make a better. If 
there is no translation, like Mr. Batchelor of the 
Church Missionary Society among the Ainu, they 
make one. If the translation is very good, but 
ought to be better, like Mr. Cousins of the 
London Missionary Society and his colleagues in 
Madagascar, they revise and perfect it. Where 
there is no written language, like the Presbyterian 
Missionaries in the New Hebrides, or Mr. Calvert 
of Fiji, they catch the sounds from the lips of 
the people, and fix the winged words in permanent 
forms. They pluck the flowerets of savage speech 
and weave them into chaplets for the King of 
kings. All the scholarly Missionaries of the 
different Missions become philologists in the ser- 
vice of the Bible Society, in the service of God, 
and hence the ratio of progress in translation 
N.E.— 14 209 



The Call of the New Era 

aud revision." The various Bible Societies are 
now putting as many copies of the Scriptures into 
circulation every year as were in all the world 
when the Evangelical Revival began. 

Nor must it be overlooked that while this 
Evangelical Revival showed its power mainly 
among the English-speaking peoples, it brought 
blessing also to the continent of Europe, although 
it came there later and with diminished force. In 
1836, Fliedner founded the Institute of Deaconesses 
at Kaiserswerth, which has become the pride of the 
Evangelicals in the Fatherland ; and the Dresden 
Society has also done much to guide and develop 
the work of the Lutheran churches among the 
heathen. The Swedish Mission to the Lapps, one 
of the solitary Foreign Missions of the Reformation 
period, was resumed in 1825. Hahn of Livonia 
is the apostle of the Hereros. Gutzlaff of Pomer- 
ania occupies a high place among the first Mission- 
aries to China. The Rhenish Mission which went 
to Borneo in 1835 did good work among the 
heathen Dyaks. Dutch Missionaries, too, have 
long been busy in Java. 

As for the doings of the American churches 
and Mission Societies, they would require chapters 
for themselves. Their operations in the Turkish 
Empire, begun in 1831, are one instance out of 
many of work done which, because of its ex- 

210 



The Evangelical Revival 

ceeding value, will never be forgotten by those 
who admire consecrated efficiency. The wondrous 
and almost bloodless revolution which has recently 
transformed the whole outlook in the Near East 
is but one of the many striking testimonies to 
the immense influence for good of their Kobert 
College with all its related agencies. Even when 
nations are born in a day, the preparatory work 
is often long and arduous, as it was in this case ; 
and Turkey is a most unexpected encouragement 
to all faithful workers, and not least to those 
who have to face the unique discouragements 
incident to the conflict in Mohammedan countries. 
How quickly everything changes when the sun 
comes out 1 

Such, then, are some of the main features of the 
unexampled Missionary revival with which the 
eighteenth century ended and the nineteenth 
century began. It is not easy for us to realise 
nowadays that it is hardly a century since Dr. 
Chalmers, the great Evangelical leader of the 
Scots, published those memorable sermons of his 
in which he pleaded for Missionary enterprise in 
Scotland ; that it is little more than a hundred 
years since the Church Missionary Society sent forth 
its first representative to AVest Africa, its earliest 
agents being Germans ; or that the first Missionary 
in modern times to China, the ever-famous Robert 

21 I 



The Call of the New Era 

Morrison, only reached Canton in September 1807, 
to begin that assault on the mighty Empire which 
is now so full of promise. Even then he only 
began the study of the language with a view to 
attempting the translation of the Scriptures into 
Chinese. 

Yet these are the facts of the situation ; and 
when we think of what was the state of affairs 
then, and of what has since been accomplished, 
in spite of all the disappointments and drawbacks, 
we can only cry out in gratitude and wonder, 
What hath God wrought ! In their impatience 
and short-sightedness men sometimes express 
surprise that so little progress has been made 
and so little fruit gathered in, when there are 
so many thousands of devoted workers busy in 
every clime. Some even join in these expressions 
of surprise who themselves are sharing in the 
" arrested progress " which is bewildering and 
saddening so many in the homelands. But when 
we remember the unbroken darkness which reigned 
until our own time in many of the heathen lands, 
and all the imperfections of the work even where 
it has been done best — its fragmentariness and 
lack of continuity ; its divisions even at the 
front and on the battlefield in presence of the 
King's foes ; and all the hindrances which have 
had to be overcome, and are not wholly overcome 

212 



The Evangelical Revival 

yet ; the hostility of the carnal heart to the 
evangelical doctrines ; and the unbelief and wicked- 
ness of some who represent Christendom in govern- 
ment and trade — our wonder might rather be that 
so much has been accomplished. 

There are nations which are now sending out 
Missionaries themselves who far less than a century 
ago had never heard of the Saviour Christ. Multi- 
tudes are now faithful believers who were born 
in unbroken heathenism, many who themselves 
were once revilers and persecutors. And there 
are not a few earnest waiters on God who live 
and labour in the belief that, even if they 
themselves are not spared to see the Gospel 
preached to all mankind, and the Kingdom come, 
some now alive will yet share in the glory of 
the crowning day. Some, too, of those who 
are most patient are also among the eager; and 
even while they remember that it took three 
centuries to win the Empire, and eleven centuries 
to win the Barbarians throughout Europe, and 
that neither of these victories was quite com- 
plete at that, they cannot but recall also that the 
Church has only too often limited the Holy One of 
Israel, and that in this dispensation of the Spirit 
believers in the Risen Christ ought to see greater 
things than these. 

Christian optimism about Missions does not 
213 



The Call of the New Era 

mean forgetting the difficulties which have to be 
faced, any more than it means blindness to the 
fact that, as there have been failures in the 
past, there may be failures in the future ; but it 
does mean remembering that the Lord is not slack 
concerning His promise, and that His heart yearns 
over all the sinning and suffering, that they may 
find their all in Him. There may be too much 
impatience of a sort, but there may also be too 
much patience of a sort ; the patience of those 
who are altogether lacking in the zeal of God's 
house, and who cry to the Lord for help when 
He is crying to them to go forward ; and who 
profess to be waiting for God, when all the while 
He is waiting for them. 

There are some Christian workers who are very 
much afraid of excitement. But there was excite- 
ment when Jesus was here on the earth, and men 
saw things they had never seen before. There 
was excitement in the time of the Reformation 
Revival, and in the time of the Evangelical Revival, 
when God was renewing the face of the earth ; 
and there will be excitement again when the whole 
Church of Christ rises up to serve in obedience to 
the command to make disciples of all nations, and 
realises that every such command is a promise of 
power to those who are willing to obey. 

Just because it was such a deep spiritual move- 
214 



The Evangelical Revival 

ment, it is not possible to detail the history of 
the Evangelical Revival, or to trace all its blessed 
fruits. We are not able to say, " Lo, God is here," 
or " Lo, God is there," as the light was diffused 
and one after another came under the mighty 
power of the Holy Ghost. But there are two fine 
instances of how the fire spread which may be 
narrated as serving to show what was going on 
in numberless lives. They are both taken from 
the history of the movement in Scotland, but 
even so they bring us into touch with two of the 
outstanding leaders in the English movement as 
well. The best entente cordiale is always that 
which gathers round the spread of the Gospel, 
and the most enduring unity is that which is 
evidenced there. 

In all the history of Scotland since the days 
of John Knox and Alexander Henderson, there 
has been no figure more massive, nor any 
character more fruitful, than that of Thomas 
Chalmers, whose reputation as a preacher and 
philosopher, as a theologian and social economist, 
as a churchman and a statesman, spread far beyond 
the narrow confines of Caledonia ; and the story 
of his conversion tells how the tide turned, not 
only in his life but in the life of the nation as 
well. The history of any movement is but the 
history of the individual soul writ large. William 

215 



The Call of the New Era 

Wallace made Scotland a nation. John Knox made 
her reformed and free. Thomas Chalmers brought 
her into the full stream of the river of blessing 
which flowed from the Evangelical Revival, and 
had worked such wonders in the South, turning 
the wilderness into the garden of the Lord. 

On the other hand, one of the most striking and 
attractive figures among the Evangelical leaders 
in England in that era of grace was William 
Wilberforce. After her first conversation with 
him, Madame de Stael said : " I have always heard 
that Mr. Wilberforce was the most religious man 
in England ; but I did not know that he was 
also the wittiest." He was born in the year 
1759 ; and his circumstances and gifts were such 
that soon after he came of age he was elected 
to Parliament ; he retired from the House of 
Commons in old age after forty-five years of 
active service. He was rich, witty, and fond of 
society ; but when he was only twenty-six years 
of age, and in the full enjoyment of all the gaieties 
of the time, he was converted to God. This 
change took place partly through his study of 
Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
Soul, but mainly through his study of the New 
Testament in the original Greek. 

From that time onward his life had a new bent, 
and all his energies, gifts, and opportunities were 

216 



The Evangelical Revival 

diverted into a new channel. In every sphere of 
public and private life he became the champion and 
the friend of the growing Evangelical party, and 
at the same time did much to guide the movement 
along sane and helpful hues. For one thing, he 
saved it from being in any sense a clerical move- 
ment ; and it was due to him more than to any 
other that Great Britain abolished the slave trade 
in the year 1807. Not only so ; but just three days 
before his death, in 1833, he had the joy of knowing 
that slavery itself had followed the slave trade, 
and had been abolished all through the wide 
domains of the British Empire. Like Simeon, 
he could say : " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy 
servant depart in peace." 

His life-work was such a rounded whole as few 
lives are permitted to be. In the year 1797 he 
published an epoch-making volume entitled, A 
Practical Vieiu of the Prevailing System of 
Professed CJiristians in the Higher and Middle 
Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real 
Christianity. Five editions of it were sold within 
six months, which meant vastly more then than 
it would mean now with our enormous reading 
public. Nor is it possible to overestimate the 
good that book did all over the land, and especially 
among the well-to-do classes. It is not possible to 
go far in the records of the time without meeting 

217 



The Call of the New Era 

it or finding testimony to its unique and un- 
paralleled influence. 

And now our Scotsman and our Englishman 
meet. Among those who read Wilberforce's book 
was Thomas Chalmers. In the hands of the 
Almighty Spirit it proved to be the torch which 
was to set his great soul on fire, and through him 
to shine into so many Scottish homes and hearts ; 
and through them into the regions beyond, with 
the light of the wondrous compassion and pity of 
the saving grace of God. Chalmers was thirty- 
one years of age at the time, and had just been 
struck down by a serious illness in the midst of his 
labours, being brought to the very gates of death. 
In the quiet hours of his convalescence he read 
Wilberforce, and passed from death to life, and 
from a learned and respectable Moderatism to a 
living faith in a living Lord. Never was the 
great change greater or more thoroughgoing. 
All his marvellous gifts were now consecrated to 
the service of his Master ; and from that time 
till he fell on sleep, thirty-six years later, Thomas 
Chalmers spent himself for God, and the whole 
nation responded marvellously to the mighty 
appeal. 

Thus it was that the Evangelical Revival came 
in power to Scotland, and what had only been 
local and sporadic before became national through 

218 



The Evangelical Revival 

this man's conversion. Nor was it in Home 
Mission work and philanthropy alone that Chalmers 
made his influence felt, after such a fashion that 
Scotland still retains the impress of his work. 
That was no longer the spirit of the Church or of 
such as were being saved ; and of necessity he 
turned his attention to the needs of the heathen 
and to the appeal of the perishing. In two famous 
sermons he directed the attention of the nation to 
this subject, first of all in 1812 and then in 1814. 
Through these, followed up as they were by personal 
contact later on, he kindled a yearning in the 
heart of Alexander Duff which ultimately took that 
truly apostolic Missionary to India, as the first 
accredited agent of the Scottish Church in the 
foreign field — yea, be it added, as the first accredited 
agent of any Home church, as a church. And 
thus England and Scotland and the Empire, the 
statesman, the theologian, and the Missionary, were 
bound together in gracious ties. Thus also were 
the ties between the work at home and the work 
abroad once more made manifest. 

But Dr. Dufi''s name brings us to the other 
illustrative example referred to as to how the 
Gospel light was spreading in these wondrous 
formative days, from heart to heart and from land 
to land. In the year 1796 Charles Simeon, who 
was so splendidly occupying the pulpit of Trinity 

219 



The Call of the New Era 

Church, Cambridge, and kindling there a fire which 
was never to go out, and the same who had 
secured entrance into India for the five chaplain- 
Missionaries, made a tour in Scotland in company 
with James Haldane the evangelist, who had in- 
tended to be a Missionary, but who for the greater 
glory of God had been kept at home to serve in 
Scotland and to carry the Evangelical Revival to the 
far North — as far, indeed, as the Shetland Islands. 
For as John Newton once asked : " Why should 
not the Orkney and Shetland Islands deserve atten- 
tion as much as the Islands of the South Seas ? " 
When the travellers were at Dunkeld, in the Perth- 
shire Highlands, Simeon had arranged to drive to 
the famous Pass of Killiecrankie, intending there- 
after to hurry back to Glasgow. 

But man proposes, and God disposes ; like the 
Apostle of the Gentiles in Galatia, Simeon " felt 
poorly," and had to postpone his flight. As one 
result of this, he paid a visit to Moulin, some four 
miles from the Pass, to see the minister of the parish, 
Mr. Stewart by name. The outcome of this inter- 
course was that Mr. Stewart "changed the strain 
of his preaching, determining to know nothing 
among his people but Christ and Him crucified." 
Later on he became minister at Dingwall in Ross- 
shire, and then in the Canongate of Edinburgh ; 
and in both of these places, as at Moulin after 

220 



The Evangelical Revival 

his great resolve, lie was a living force for the 
salvation of the souls of men and women : and, 
long after, Simeon blessed God for the happy 
indisposition which sent him to Moulin in spite 
of his plans. 

Before Mr. Stewart brought his ministry in 
Perthshire to a close, among those who came under 
the power of the Gospel through his regenerated 
ministry were two of his young folks, who were 
ultimately to become husband and wife, and to 
whom as such the future Missionary Alexander 
Duff was born on 25th April, 1806 — a great gift of 
God to them and the Church. Thus did the heal- 
ing waters of the grace of God flow through Simeon 
and Stewart and that Highland father and mother, 
all the way from Cambridge, to the lad growing up 
in his far-off Perthshire home, and through him to 
multitudes still farther ofi" in Bengal and Hindustan. 
Truly the river of God is full of water. Nor would 
we forget the share Chalmers and Wilberforce had 
in sending Duff to India ; for when the lad went 
as a student to St. Andrews, he came under the 
spell of the great preacher, who was now a professor 
in the University there, and wielding a far-reach- 
ing influence for the evangel. 

Nothing is more striking about the Evangelical 
Revival than the fashion in which all who shared 
in it were linked together in influences like these. 

221 



The Call of the New Era 

For the instances given are only a few out of many- 
proofs which this blessed time of renaissance and 
reformation affords of the truth that our world is 
very small ; that from the Christian view-point it 
must be looked at as one and indivisible ; and that 
the whole round earth is every way bound by gold 
chains about the feet of God. While, for example, 
Duff was still a student at St. Andrews, he met Dr. 
Marshman, who was home from Serampore, and full 
of the gracious work which Carey and he were 
doing there. Duff was also brought into contact 
with Dr. Morrison, the pioneer of Missionaries to 
China, who had come home to tell about the work 
in Canton, and to interest the churches in the 
teeming millions of the Flowery Land. And 
besides all this, in Duff's making as a Missionary 
there was the growing influence of Chalmers him- 
self, of whom he spoke in 1847 as "the leading 
Missionary spirit in Christendom." 

Thus Cambridge and St. Andrews, Moulin and 
Serampore, Canton and Calcutta, joined hands 
round one consecrated life at the summons of 
human need and of the great Divine provision 
which has been made for that need in Christ. And 
this was v/hat that glorious spring-time which we 
call the Evangelical Revival was doing all over 
Christendom and far beyond ; to let believers see 
that they were all one in Christ, and to make it 

222 



The Evangelical Revival 

manifest that the seal of their unity must be the 
deliverance of those who were still sitting in dark- 
ness and in the shadow of death. " Wilt Thou not 
revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in 
Thee ? " 



223 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 



N.E.— 15 225 



" The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
waters cover the sea." — Isa. 11. 9. 

"A candle loses nothing by having another candle lighted at it." 
— Hegel. 

" And not by Eastern windows only, 

When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ; 
But Westward, look, the land is bright." 

Clough. 



226 



CHAPTER Vlll 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

rpHE nineteenth century was in every respect, 
-L moral and spiritual, social and political, the 
greatest of all the centuries except the first ; and 
even the first excels it only in the one outstanding 
fact that it saw Him come who is the Desire of all 
nations, and the Eternal. In the realm of Missions, 
it has been claimed for the nineteenth century 
that its crowning glory has been that it inscribed 
on its banner the command of the Lord to disciple 
all nations, and that the thought of consecrated 
service distinctively characterises its conception of 
the nature and aims of the Church. Many volumes 
would be required for the record of what was 
achieved throughout its years for the glory of God 
and the good of men, as it went forward in loyalty 
to this great ideal. 

It must always be borne in mind that the rise 
of modern science, and the appearance and applica- 
tions of modern inventions, made the difierence 

227 



The Call of the New Era 

between the nineteenth century and even the 
eighteenth vastly greater than that between the 
eighteenth and the third, or the ninth, or any other. 
The difference was not so much in degree as in 
kind. Modern science may have been unfriendly 
to the supernatural in some respects, partly be- 
cause that has been sadly misunderstood ; but in 
many other respects it has been the willing hand- 
maiden and ally of the Gospel, and has come to 
the help of the Lord against the mighty. 

The first steamer which spanned the Atlantic was 
the Savannah, which crossed in the year 1819, and 
took twenty-five days to do so. It was not for five 
years after that that a steamer went from England 
to India. The first railway over which goods and 
passengers were carried by a locomotive engine 
was not opened till 1825 ; and the electric tele- 
graph was not made use of in Britain until the 
year of the accession of Queen Victoria to the 
throne. That meant that Constantine, the Koman 
general ; William of Orange, the deliverer ; and 
Charles James Fox, the statesman and orator, all 
travelled from the Continent to England in very 
much the same fashion ; and that the fashion by 
which either Abraham or Isaiah would have had 
to travel had they wished to do so — that is, by the 
aid of the wind or of oars, and with no other 
mechanical aids whatsoever. It means, too, that 

228 



The Nineteenth Century 

men waited for the news of Waterloo very much 
as their predecessors had waited for news of 
Marathon or Bannockburn. They had all the help 
that horses and sails and signals could render them ; 
but they knew nothing of the electric telegraph 
at the latest of these battles any more than at the 
first. As for wireless telegraphy, with its accumu- 
lation of marvels, or dirigible aeroplanes, we our- 
selves have not yet become accustomed to them. 
But it is easy to forget that so much which is 
commonplace now, and in everyday use, was as 
unknown to John Wesley and George the Third 
as it was to Justin Martyr or Julius Caesar. 

For us the supreme significance of all this is, 
that all these aids to intercommunication amonaj 
the nations came for the first time when the Evan- 
gelical Revival was still moving men everywhere 
to show that they loved God Whom they had not 
seen by their love for the brethren whom they had 
seen. They were like another gift of tongues for 
the new era ; and they came at the very time 
when they could be harnessed to the Gospel 
chariot, and used by those eager to tell all the 
world of their Redeemer and what He had done for 
them. These changes made the world one and in- 
divisible after a new sort, and enabled Mission work 
to be carried on with a new kind of efiiciency ; and 
as one result of their operation, the nineteenth 

229 



The Call of the New Era 

century saw barriers between the nations every- 
where broken down in the most marvellous way. 
The nineteenth century, like the first, could say : 
" We never saw it after this fashion." 

There were also vast social and political changes 
which opened up the hermit nations of the Far 
East to the influences of the West. A century 
ago, China, Korea and Japan were all either un- 
known or altogether closed against the Gospel. 
Australasia, too, with all its vast promise and power 
in the Southern Seas, was still inhabited by un- 
known savages ; while Africa, with the exception 
of Egypt and the Cape of Good Hope, was so 
much a terra incognita that it was believed to 
be mainly desert. The nineteenth century saw 
the world at one and the same time grow vastly 
larger and vastly smaller than it had been before ; 
and it is more than remarkable that, just as the 
revival in the sixteenth century came when the 
printing press was beginning its wondrous career, 
the revival in the nineteenth century came when 
the steam-engine had just become the stupendous 
servant of man. Who can tell whether the aero- 
plane may not be as marvellously allied with the 
new era into which we are entering now, and be 
as graciously allied with another revival, another 
world-wide quickening from on high ? 

When the nineteenth century began, all Europe 
230 



The Nineteenth Century 

was shaken to its very foundations by the Revolu- 
tion in France, which sealed the death-warrant of 
the old despotism and absolutism not only in 
France but everywhere. The new century, with 
all its travail and sorrow, began with a fresh sense 
of hope and expansion, and with a new sense of 
the rights of men as well as of their duties and 
responsibilities. As it has been well put, the same 
new enthusiasm of humanity which gave birth to 
the theories of the " social contract," and inspired 
the Marseillaise, sent Elizabeth Fry to her work 
in the prisons and William Wilberforce to his life's 
work for the slaves, just as it sent Carey to India 
and Moffat to South Africa. 

No great remedial movement, and least of all 
that which issued in the Foreign Mission enter- 
prise, can be understood if it be not looked at in 
its place in the great world-struggle for liberty, and 
light, and God. The Lord our God is One Lord ; 
and when the Spirit is at work among men as He 
was then. He ever impresses His seal of unity on 
the doings of those who are obedient to His will. 

" Careless seems the great Avenger ; History's pages but record 
One death -grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the 

Word ; 
Truth for ever on the scaffold, Wrong for ever on the Throne — 
Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim un- 
known, 
Standeth God within the Shadow, keeping watch above His 
own." 

231 



The Call of the New Era 

The statisticians say that whereas in the year 
1800 there was a Christian population through- 
out the world of only 200,000,000, there was a 
similar population of 500,000,000 in the year 
1900 ; and if this be little more than a surmise, 
the fact remains that at the beginning of the 
twentieth century, for every square mile of the 
earth's surface governed by non-Christian peoples, 
four miles were under Christian rule, or eighty-two 
per cent, of the whole. Yet in his conceit and 
ignorance Voltaire prophesied that before the nine- 
teenth century had begun Christianity would have 
vanished from the earth. 

The value of such estimates, and even of such 
facts, is, however, only comparative and relative. 
Even when we endeavour to arrive at actual figures 
as to the sum total of the agents, resources, and 
achievements of the various Missionary organisa- 
tions, it is not easy to get at the facts ; they 
are so complex, and are so often compiled from 
different standpoints. Yet there are some facts 
which can be ascertained which carry the most 
obvious lessons with them. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, for 
example, there were at most only half a dozen 
societies for work abroad, and these were nearly 
all just newly organised ; whereas at the end of 
the century there were at least 300. There 

232 



The Nineteenth Century 

are so many now, indeed, that it is not easy 
to keep an account of them all. Dr. Dennis, in 
the elaborate and valuable details which he com- 
piled at the close of the century, says that if we 
include those which aid the work indirectly, there 
were then no fewer than 558 organisations at work 
in connection with Foreign Missions. During the 
century, too, the amount spent annually by the 
various organisations on this work rose from about 
£10,000 to £4,000,000; and in 1909 to £4,922,615. 
When the century began, there were about 50 
Missionaries at work, all of them men. When it 
ended, there were 6600 men and 4000 women ; 
or, if the wives of the Missionaries be included, as 
most of them ought to be, there were some 14,000 
men and women at work in the foreign field. 

Of even greater significance, if that be possible, 
is the fact that during the century the number of 
native ministers rose from none to 4000 ; and of 
other native helpers from 80 only to 78,000. 
When this wonderful century came to an end, 
there were 1,500,000 native communicants, as 
compared with 7000 when it began ; while the 
catechumens had increased from 5000 to 4,500,000. 
According to Dr. Dennis, indeed, these figures are 
too modest, inspiring as they are. He adds, too, 
that when the century ended some portion of the 
Scriptures had been translated into no fewer than 

233 



The Call of the New Era 

436 tongues or dialects. But figures apart, it is 
abundantly manifest that the progress during this 
unique and gracious century was altogether extra- 
ordinary. Some of the incidents of the progress 
make that even more vivid and impressive than 
any array of statistics could do. 

And here the difficulty is to know where to 
begin and where to end, the embarrassment of 
riches is so great. In Sierra Leone, for example, 
where MiF.=ion work did not begin until the year 
of Waterloo, there is now a self-supporting, self- 
governing, self-extending church, and seven out 
of every eight of the inhabitants are professing 
Christians. Bishop Tucker baptized his first con- 
vert in Toro, in Central Africa, as recently as 
1896, and less than twelve years later there were 
nearly 3000 professing Christians in the region, 
and nearly half of that number had become com- 
municants. In Uganda, in the five years preced- 
ing 1909 as many as 35,000 people were baptized, 
the greater number of them being adult converts 
from heathenism. 

During his visit to that territory, in the year 1907, 
the Right Hon. Winston Churchill was so deeply 
impressed — as w^as Mr. Roosevelt, who visited the 
same region in 1909 — by what he saw of the 
wondrous change which had been wrought, and the 
wonderful moral triumphs which had been w^on by 

234 



The Nineteenth Century 

the Gospel, that he has borne the most emphatic 
testimony to the vahie of the work done by the 
Missionaries. He found that a great Christian 
nation had been born in the very heart of the 
Dark Continent. He most emphatically declares 
that nothing makes for peace and progress, and 
for the removal of the great open sores under 
which Africa groans, like the work and in- 
fluence of the Missionaries. AVhen he opened 
the Orient Exhibition in London, he quoted with 
approval the testimony of Sir George Le Hunte, 
who spoke with even greater authority than that 
of a mere traveller in Africa. Speaking of New 
Guinea, he said : " The Government owe every- 
thing to the Missions. I wish I could make you 
fully realise what Missions mean to the Adminis- 
tration. It would have to be doubled, perhaps 
quadrupled, in strength if it were not for the little 
whitewashed houses along the coast where the 
Missionaries live. So every penny contributed to 
these Missions is a help to the King's Government, 
every penny spent on Missionaries saves a pound 
to the Administration ; for the Missions bring 
peace, and law, and order." 

What a change from what was once the ofiicial 
attitude, to find a Governor of a British territory 
making such a statement ; and to find it taken up 
and made his own by a Cabinet Minister, because 

235 



The Call of the New Era 

of what he himself has seeu. It seems as if it 
were but yesterday that the authorities both at 
home and abroad were inclined to look on Mission- 
aries with suspicion and dislike, and as potential 
disturbe-rs of the peace ; or since Missions were 
made the butt of many silly and insolent jokes 
and of much impertinence. And it is the light 
which has scattered the darkness. 

The testimony as to Uganda can be paralleled 
from many another Mission field. After fifty 
years of labour in the Sandwich Islands, the group 
has not only ceased to be ranked among Foreign 
Mission districts, but has taken its place among 
the Christian communities. In the Fiji Islands 
work began in 1835; and only half a century 
later thirteen churches could be counted, and it 
could be claimed that in no part of Scotland were 
there fewer homes without family worship. Yet 
confessedly the aboriginal savages in Fiji stood un- 
rivalled as a disgrace to mankind ; and as a proof 
of the depths to which paganism can sink a com- 
munity. Crime seemed to be inwrought in the 
very soul of the people. The grossest vices pol- 
luted every hearth, gave force to every social and 
political institution, and turned religious worship 
into orgies of surpassing horror. 

Less than a century ago, Henry Marty n, having 
made but one Moslem convert in the course of his 

236 



The Nineteenth Century 

brief but bright career, declared the conversion of 
a Hindu to be a miracle as stupendous as raising 
the dead. Yet now not only are there 1,000,000 
members in the Indian churches, with many 
Hindus among them ; but for the last fifty years 
the progress in the membership in these native 
churches has represented fifty per cent, for each 
decade. If there were growth like that in the 
Home churches, what a change would be wrought, 
and how little we would hear about arrested de- 
velopment, or another ice-age ! The conversion 
of the Karen people in Burma is one of the 
most encouraging stories in all these glorious 
records. They accepted Christ en masse, and are 
now a Christian nation, with a church in nearly 
every village, in which Karen pastors supported 
by the people minister to Christ-loving flocks. 

Nor is the story of China one whit less wonder- 
ful — it is even more wonderful, if that be possible. 
The first Missionary for Christ in modern times 
entered that vast Empire in 1807, after the nine- 
teenth century was well begun ; and as late as 
1842 there were only six Missionaries among so 
many. In 1853, there were still only 52. Even 
in 1870, although there had been a notable in- 
crease, there were still only 262 among all the 
teeming millions. And such as they were, these 
were all on the nine seaboard provinces of Eastern 

237 



The Call of the New Era 

China ; and the nine inland provinces, with a 
population estimated at 150,000,000, were still 
utterly untouched. But since 1880 there has 
been an extraordinary expansion ; so that in 
1900, including the wives of Missionaries, there 
was an army of 2800 Protestant Missionaries at 
work. It is estimated, too, that when the present 
century began the number of converts in connec- 
tion with the Protestant Missions was 100,000, 
as against 13,000 only twenty-two years before. 
And although in that same year, 1900, the sky 
was darkened and the whole outlook changed by 
the unhappy Boxer rising and massacres, the blood 
of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church. 

Since 1908, a veritable year of grace, the tidings 
from Manchuria, where that seed was so plentifully 
sown, have told of something very like another 
Pentecost in that much-enduring land. No one 
can say how far the tidal wave may spread. It 
may even touch the homelands in all their sorrow- 
ful impotence. We might call it the irony of 
God if the great revival for which the Church is 
everywhere longing, and which many are expecting 
to come soon, should come by way of the foreign 
field ; but that would be in harmony with much 
else in history, and if only the awakening comes, 
it matters not how it comes, whether from the 
East or the West. 

238 



The Nineteenth Century 

As for Japan, the truth there seems stranger 
than fiction, as it seeks to set forth what the 
nineteenth century has witnessed of the grace and 
might of God. For more than two centuries — 
from 1637, that is, when the Jesuits were finally- 
driven out and all traces of their work had 
been swept away, till 1853, when her modern 
history began — Japan lay completely shut off" from 
the rest of the world. Even after the treaties of 
1854 it was as much shut off" from the Gospel as 
before, and more determined than ever to remain 
a forbidden land. But God Himself invaded the 
hermit nation to which He seems to have assigned 
such pre-eminence in the Far East. 

One day an English New Testament was found 
floating in the Bay of Yeddo, and this proved to 
be the good seed out of which the tree of modern 
Japanese Christianity was destined to grow. No 
one knew English, but an interpreter was found. 
Such was the interest which was evoked, that 
help for the right understanding of the Book was 
invited from Shanghai, and the good work was 
begun which was to result in making the Britain 
of the Eastern seas Christian as well as civilised. 
The first baptism took place in 1864; but the 
progress was still so slow that seven years later 
there were only ten baptized converts. The 
infant Church was, however, vital enough to invite 

239 



The Call of the New Era 

persecution and overcome it. As recently as 1868 
— little more than forty years ago, that is — a decree 
newly issued against Christianity could be seen 
on the notice boards throughout the Empire ; and 
until 1872, the "vile Jesus doctrine," as it was 
called, was prohibited by the law of the land, on 
pain of death. It was not till 1888 that the 
Japanese got the whole Bible in their own 
tongue. 

In the year 1876, however, a big step was 
taken on the upward w^ay, when the Christian 
Sabbath was made an official holiday by the 
Government ; and in the following year the 
Missions of the American Presbyterians, who had 
been the first in the field, joined hands with the 
Missions of the other American Eeformed churches, 
and the Scottish United Presbyterians, in forming 
the Union Church of Christ in Japan. 

Since then there have been both ups and downs ; 
the former being due to genuine revival and true 
growth, and the latter to the craving of the proud, 
and it may be conceited, Japanese to develop 
a native type of Christianity all their own. So 
far as their desire is a protest against carrying the 
peculiarities of Western Christianity into the Far 
East, it is altogether right and proper ; but it has 
often meant more than that. It has sometimes 
meant a determination to build up a new system 

240 



The Nineteenth Century 

which would not be Christian at all. All the 
same, Christianity is now a power in the land. 
There are Christian members in the Parliament of 
Japan ; Christian judges in her courts ; Christian 
professors in her colleges ; Christian editors in 
charge of some of her leading newspapers ; 
Christian officers, generals, and admirals in her 
army and navy. 

At the close of the nineteenth century, it was 
estimated that there were in Japan some 40,000 
Protestant converts, 25,000 belonging to the Greek 
Church, and 54,000 Eoman Catholics. The Pro- 
testant Missions, it is said, have been most success- 
ful among the educated classes, and the Romish 
Missions most successful among the poor. Mean- 
while, however, the forces of reaction are in the 
ascendant both among the masses and the classes ; 
and the hardest battle which the Gospel has to fight is 
against the tide of national pride and independence 
which set in after the victory over Russia. Japan 
is now a great naval and military power, even if 
she is by no means so great as she imagines herself 
to be ; and she is unwilling to bow any longer 
before anything in religion or government which 
has to be borrowed from the West. But the truth 
of God will vindicate itself as it has done before, 
as indigenous to the Orient as truly as to the 
Occident, and as the universal religion. 
N.E.— 16 241 



The Call of the New Era 

This reference to the Missions of the Church of 
Rome in Japan suggests a word here as to these 
Missions as a whole. It is not necessary to discuss 
their value at length ; but it is necessary to note 
that during the nineteenth century they have 
attained vast dimensions. At the end of the 
century, a Paris Society, the largest Roman 
Catholic Society for Missions in the world, the 
Societe des Missions iStrangers, had 34 bishops, 
1100 Missionaries, 680 native priests, and a native 
following of nearly 1,250,000 all over Eastern 
Asia. At the same period, too, the Jesuits had 
116 Missionaries in Europe, 233 in Africa, 988 
in Asia, 550 in Oceania, 1246 in North America, 
and 856 in South America — or 3989 in all. 

In 1895, the Propaganda returned the number 
of those in the heathen world who adhered to the 
Church of Rome as 3,606,000. And while it is 
impossible to rejoice in their work, it would be 
ungenerous to ignore the devotion and enterprise 
of many of the agents of Rome, whatever may be 
thought of those who send them. On the Congo, 
for example, in some ways they divide the honours 
with the Protestants; a band of Cardinal Lavigerie's 
white-robed Fathers having been at work in that 
benighted region since 1883. Even there, however, 
they have shown the cloven hoof in condoning the 
iniquities of the late King Leopold's agents against 

242 



The Nineteenth Century 

the unanimous testimony of all other Missionaries, 
apparently for political reasons. Nor is it possible 
to forget that, whatever may be the zeal and 
ardour of her humbler agents, the motto of Kome 
as a system is semper eadem ; and even although 
it may appear intolerant to say it, it is never- 
theless cause for sincere regret that so many of 
those who are being called out of heathen dark- 
ness are getting their first impressions of Christ 
and His salvation through channels which have 
been defiled by pagan sacramentarianism and 
corrupt sacerdotalism. 

This subject was fully discussed at the great 
Missionary Conference which was held in London 
in 1888 ; and the men who are most in love with 
Missions, and who know the truth at first hand, 
all spoke sorrowfully and solemnly of the objection- 
able methods and the baneful results of Roman 
Catholic Missions, as they had come into actual 
contact with them. Men of such varied experience 
and ecclesiastical connections as the late Dean Vahl 
of the Danish Evangelical Missionary Society, Rev. 
Henry Stout of the Reformed Church of America 
at work in Japan, Dr. Post of the Syrian Pro- 
testant College in Beyrout, Rev. J. A. B. Cook of 
the English Presbyterian Mission at Singapore, 
Rev. G. W. Clark of the China Inland Mission, 
Rev. H. "Williams of the Church Missionary Society, 

243 



The Call of the New Era 

from Bengal, the late Dr. Murray Mitchell, and 
many others, had all the same sad tale to tell. 
They testified that Roman Catholic Missions often 
make use of unworthy and unjustifiable means ; 
that they trust to catechisms, the crucifix, the 
adoration of angels, the Virgin, and the Host, as 
well as to the confessional, austere penances, and 
gorgeous ceremonial, rather than to the Gospel and 
the Word of God. In his Missionary Achieve- 
ment, Dr. W. T. Whitley tells of " a Protestant 
visitor to South India twelve years ago who 
watched a Roman Catholic open-air service for 
twenty minutes under the impression that it was 
a gorgeous heathen function." 

These witnesses showed conclusively that Scrip- 
ture has a very small place in their propaganda. 
They also made it clear that when they are looked 
at over a wide enough expanse of years, the results 
of the difi'erent systems abundantly justify the 
confidence which the Evangelical Missionaries put 
on the power of the truth and of the Spirit of 
God, as well as on the influence of the holy lives 
of men and women who are the temples of the 
Holy Ghost. 

In Canada, for example, only a small and feeble 
remnant is now left of the Romish Missions which 
have been in existence there for three centuries. 
So, also, there is now hardly anything to show for 

244 



The Nineteenth Century 

three and a-half centuries of work in California, 
Mexico, and Central Africa. In South America, 
where there were once extensive Missions on the 
Orinoco, the Rio Negro, and the river Plate, all are 
practically gone. And it is so also with the early 
Romish efforts in India, China, and Japan. The 
Missionaries took to do with politics and trade, and 
were the tools of European powers seeking only 
for markets and territorial expansion ; and they 
often incurred the contempt and hatred of those 
among whom they worked, instead of winning 
their affection and respect. Their boasted celibacy, 
too, with some advantages has had many draw- 
backs ; and those who speak with authority say 
that one Christian Missionary home, with a 
Christian wife and family, does more to humanise, 
elevate, and evangelise a corrupt community than 
twenty celibate men. 

And so, with every desire to be generous as well 
as just, we can but renew our expression of regret 
that any heathen nation should only know Christ 
as Rome proclaims Him, or should begin the 
Christian life by coming under the Romish yoke, 
which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. 
"In noting the Missionary character of the Church," 
says Dr. Horton, "we must be careful to remember 
that it is essentially bound up with the ethical 
evangel. Nothing is more alien from Christ than 

245 



The Call of the New Era 

to proselytise with the effect of making men worse 
or leaving them as they were. Islam proselytises 
in the interests of Allah and his prophet. Christ 
seeks men only to save them, and His Church 
works in the same way. Christ does not seek 
His own glory, nor does the Church. But in her 
burns that love which is of God, the passion to 
save. The Church loses its intrinsic character if 
it ceases to be missionary ; but still more does 
it lose its intrinsic character if it becomes prose- 
lytising. The effort to swell her numbers, to 
increase her dominion, to strengthen her authority, 
is a departure from her Lord. And if she adopts 
the tricks and whiles of the world in the enterprise, 
sacrificing humility, truth, justice, mercy, com- 
passing sea and land to make one proselyte, 
scheminof, intrio^uino;, fightino; in councils or on 
backstairs, endeavouring to conquer the world by 
the world's ways, to gain men as her subjects, 
rather than to save them, she loses the first note, 
the intrinsic quality which identifies her with the 
original society of Jesus. She may even become, 
like Rome herself, ' the mother of harlots and of 
the abominations of the earth.' " 

And now we may turn to some of the more 
outstanding and dominating facts and features 
of the Foreign Mission history of this nineteenth 
century, by way of seeking inspiration and guidance 

246 



The Nineteenth Century 

for our own new era. It was a century of expansion, 
differentiation, and consolidation. It was a century 
of fresh outgoings and experiments, when work was 
done or attempted along many lines. In some cases 
the work has been done by Church Mission Boards 
and Committees directly responsible to those who 
appointed them. In other cases it has been done 
by Missionary Societies responsible only to their 
members and subscribers, and representing either 
more churches than one, or some special section 
in one great Church. There have also been cases 
in which the work was done by purely personal 
Missions, under no control of Church or Society, 
and able therefore to act freely ; and doubtless 
there has been room and need for all the ways of 
it. Personal Missions have their obvious risks, 
inasmuch as there may be neither permanence 
nor continuity of policy ; while Missions carried 
on by Societies have difficulties to face also when 
their converts must be organised into congregations 
and churches. But many of these dangers probably 
exist in theory rather than in practice ; and where 
there is loyalty to the Spirit of God, He w^ill guide 
those who are in the work to the appropriate 
organisation. And in that connection Church 
Missions may have their dangers too. There 
may be too great a desire to reproduce creeds and 
constitutions in Asia and Africa, which have grown 

247 



The Call of the New Era 

up in circumstances which are altogether different, 
and which have little meaning apart from their 
historical development. 

Within recent years, however, there have been 
many examples of union and co-operation in the 
Foreign field ; and neither the Home Churches nor 
the Home Societies have shown any disposition 
to impress their own peculiarities on the young 
Christian communities which are springing up in 
the regions beyond. The only exceptions to this 
rule are to be found among those who are dominated 
by sacerdotalism and sacramentarianism. For, if 
we take the term in its wider acceptation, it is 
still true, both of the work at home and of the 
work abroad, that clericalism is the enemy. 

It is very striking to find how much the deaths 
of prominent Missionaries have had to do with 
Missionary expansion in the nineteenth century. 
The Churches at home felt that they could never 
retreat from the lands in which they had become 
infeft by the burial of their dead. Two fine in- 
stances of this are the death of David Livingstone, 
at Ilala, in Central Africa, on 1st May, 1873, and 
the martyrdom of Bishop Hannington among the 
Masai, in October, 1885. Most of the Mission 
work now being carried on in Central Africa owes 
its origin to the spirit which w^as evoked by the 
story of Livingstone's death ; and it is undoubted 

248 



The Nineteenth Century 

that the murder of Hanniugton also touched the 
heart and conscience of the homeland deeply and 
fruitfully. 

The birth and boyhood of David Livingstone 
take us back to the time when Scotland was 
comino- under the influence of the Evangjelical 
Revival. The first of Chalmers's great Missionary 
sermons was preached the year before the future 
Missionary was born, in the year 1813 ; and the 
second the year after he w^as born. Livingstone 
was accepted by the London Missionary Society in 
1830, and set out for Africa two years later. It 
is worth noting that he had set his heart on going 
to China, and was deeply disappointed that he 
had to go to the Dark Continent, with which his 
name and fame are now so inextricably bound up. 
In 1844 he married Mary Moffat, the daughter 
of Robert Moffat, the famous South African 
Missionary. From that time till his death, in 
1873, he laboured for Christ with an unflinching 
and self-sacrificing energy and courage, which 
entitle him to rank among the great and strong 
who have been able single-handed to influence 
human progress and the advancement of human 
knowledoe. 

His body was brought home and laid with all 
honour in Westminster Abbey, amid tokens of 
mourning and admiration such as are accorded 

249 



The Call of the New Era 

only to the supremely great. Nor was that the 
best, for everywhere the claims of Africa were 
anew and impressively brought home to the 
Christian community as they had never been before ; 
and since then enormous strides have been made, 
alike in the work he loved, and in the land for 
which he died. The great Mission of the United 
Free Church of Scotland, under Dr. Laws, which 
bears Livingstone's name, and in connection with 
which there has been continuous revival in recent 
years among the natives around Lake Nyassa, is only 
one of many of the fruits of his life and death. 

As for Hannington, he is among the most 
lovable and winsome of the modern heroes of the 
Mission field. As a lad he was known as " mad 
Jim"; but in his "harum scarum " heart there 
grew up a great love for Christ, and a great com- 
passion for those who were in ignorance of Him 
and His grace. He was only thirty-eight when he 
laid down his life for Africa and his Lord ; but he 
was lion-hearted all throuo-h his sufferings and 
cruel death, and even in his dying he called others 
to follow on and take up the work. And others 
heard and obeyed. One of the marvels of modern 
Mission work has been the way in which conse- 
crated men and women have been eager to enter 
in where the pioneers have fallen at their posts : 
and great as many of our Missionaries have been 

250 



The Nineteenth Century 

in their living, many of them have been even greater 
in their dying, and more fruitful far. Those whom 
they have inspired have done much to redeem our 
materialistic, pleasure-loving, money-seeking age 
from the accusation that the ages of heroism and 
faith are gone ; and many Christian hearts are 
filled with the conviction that the Church can 
never abandon the territories where her heroes and 
heroines have laid down their lives, and where her 
dead have been laid. 

As a contrast to this infeftment by burial, and 
yet in strict harmony with it, is another of the 
outstanding and picturesque facts of the Mission 
history of the nineteenth century — the departure 
for China in 1884 and 1885 of the Cambridge 
seven, including Mr. Stanley Smith and Mr. 
C. T. Studd, in connection with the work of the 
China Inland Mission, through which so much 
enduring service has been done. Even as the cry 
of the dying veteran out in the wdlds, " Build me 
a hut to die in," touched many hearts and lifted 
up many lives to a new level, so the consecration 
of these bright, cultured young lives in the midst 
of comfort and plenty went home to many a heart 
which might not otherwise have been touched, and 
led to many a dedication of everything to God 
for service wher-ever He chose to use the sur- 
rendered lives. 

2^1 



The Call of the New Era 

Until 1815, most of the Missionaries who had 
gone out to the front had had no definite training 
for the work, and in not a few instances they had 
not even received a special training of any sort. 
Many of them were artisans and peasants by birth ; 
and while they were none the worse for that, but 
in the same company as Luther and the Apostles 
and our Lord Himself, it is full of significance that 
now all ranks and classes are joining in the service, 
and that so many are volunteering who are able 
to go at their own charges. 

A signal instance of how the new conception of 
the work is spreading is to be found in the rise of 
the Student Volunteer Movement, through which 
so many of the brightest and best of the young 
men and women of our time have devoted them- 
selves and their gifts and training to the service 
of Christ in foreign lands ; many of them inspired 
by the conviction that even in this generation the 
whole world may hear the story of redeeming love. 
They do not seem to be all at one in their inter- 
pretation of their battle-cry, but they are in no 
doubt as to its inspiring power. 

This fruitful movement was initiated in America 
in the very year, 1886,^ which brought home the 

1 Four years before that, in 1882, twelve divinity students of the 
Free Church of Scotland's New College, Edinburgh, volunteered 
and were all sent to the Mission field, save one who was rejected 
by the doctor for tropical service. 

252 



The Nineteenth Century- 
sad tidings of tlie martyrdom of Hannington, and 
it was organised in Great Britain in 1892. Within 
the ten years which followed no fewer than 1880 
students in colleges in the United Kingdom signed 
a declaration expressing their purpose, "if God 
permit," to be Foreign Missionaries ; and, more 
noteworthy still, during that period as many as 
733 actually went out and began work in the 
foreign field. 

Probably, however, the most outstanding feature 
of the growth of the Mission work of the nine- 
teenth century, as it has reached the enormous 
dimensions already indicated, has been the way 
in which it has been specialised and differenti- 
ated, so that the attack on heathenism might 
be made in every possible fashion, and that the 
gifts of the Mission agents might be best em- 
ployed in the attack. Along with the " harmless- 
ness of the dove," the simplicity of spirit which 
cannot but characterise those who have given 
themselves wholly to God, there has also been 
much of the "wisdom of the serpent" — strenuous 
endeavour to make the most of the ways and 
means and of every varying circumstance, and 
to be original and ingenious in the determination 
to give the best to God. 

From the first it was seen that educational work 
is of surpassing importance, especially among such 

253 



The Call of the New Era 

ancient civilisations as those of India, China, and 
Japan. In India in particular, with its non- 
Christian and anti-Christian schools and colleges, it 
has been felt to be imperative that there should 
be a great system of educational Missions. And 
as the years go by there is a new unanimity in 
this respect. Of old there was a certain jealousy 
of such work, as a departure from the imperative 
duty and privilege of preaching the Gospel ; but it 
is now recognised that there can be no more splen- 
did opportunity to preach Christ than in Christian 
schools and colleges. Even the China Inland 
Mission, so honourably associated with the deter- 
mination not to know anything among the heathen 
save Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, have now the 
courage to raise the triple cry as descriptive of 
their work : " Itineration, Organisation, and Edu- 
cation." They truly say, however, that the basis of 
all their educational work must be essentially 
Christian, otherwise they would only produce 
polished pagans, which is " no part of the duty 
of the Missionary of the Cross." 

Industrial Missions, again, have been found to 
be of the utmost value in Africa ; in India among 
famine orphans ; and among tribes formerly given 
up to pillage and warfare. Even as it was among 
the barbarians who once menaced the Empire in its 
decadent days, so it is with the African aborigines. 

254 



The Nineteenth Century 

They can only be saved from idleness and savagery by 
giving them something to possess and protect, and 
by teaching them the arts and crafts of civilisation ; 
and what are called "Artisan Missionaries " have 
been among the most devoted servants our Lord 
has had in the dark places of the earth. This 
same tendency to specialisation has led along 
somewhat different lines to such special Missions 
as those to the lepers, and to special districts, as 
the China Inland Mission, with its beneficent 
services in the interior of the vast Empire of 
China. 

Of all the developments, however, which the 
nineteenth century has witnessed, it is in no way 
invidious to say that the most epoch-making 
have been those connected with medical Mission 
work, and with the work of women Mission- 
aries, both for other women and for Mission work 
generally. Medical Missions are now recognised 
everywhere to be an all-important branch of 
the work of world-evangelisation. When it is 
borne in mind how crude and cruel many of the 
native methods of dealing with disease and sick- 
ness are, it can be readily understood how miracles 
of healing have been wrought in many lands com- 
parable only with those of Apostolic days, even if 
they be on a difierent plane. It is an almost 
incredible boon, amid the empiricism and brutality 

255 



The Call of the New Era 

of pagan ways, to get the benefits of modern 
medical and surgical skill, and the benefits also of 
modern nursing. Such Missions are of peculiar 
value in Mohammedan lands, where the open 
preaching of the Gospel is so difficult, and where 
it is sometimes altogether impossible. 

The obstacles to a public avowal of faith in 
Christ in such a country as Morocco, for example, 
are almost incredibly great. In some parts, at 
least, of that land, even where the most self- 
sacrificing work has been done for many years, 
there has been no instance of baptism ; and 
nothing but the immense sujDeriority of the 
medical and surgical skill of the Missionaries would 
secure them an entrance at all. Such Mission work 
is just one of the lines along which we may fairly 
expect nations to be born in a day ; and it is no 
wonder that every year sees rapid development of 
this branch of the work ; or that already there are 
more than 500 fully qualified Missionary doctors at 
work, both men and women. Of these, 400 labour 
in connection with British Missions alone. 

In the year 1898, it was calculated that in 
British Mission hospitals there were over 30,000 
in-patients, and that in that same year nearly 
1,500,000 visits were paid to out-patients. Ac- 
cording to the figures compiled by Dr. Dennis at 
the end of the century, there were 480 medical 

256 



The Nineteenth Century 

men and 220 medical women at work in the 
foreign field, and in connection with their benefi- 
cent work there were 379 Mission hospitals and 
783 Mission dispensaries, in addition to 100 homes 
for lepers, and kindred institutions. The in-patients 
in these institutions in one year were given as 
85,169 ; the individual patients as 2,347,780 ; and 
the total treatments as 6,442,427. 

Who can tell how much this has added to the 
sum total of human comfort and happiness, or how 
many doors it has opened to the entrance of the 
Healer Christ ? It is the great apologetic, the great 
exposition, and the great Evangelical appeal, given 
in a form which can hardly be misunderstood. 
This work reaches every rank and class, the highest 
as well as the lowest, as no other does ; it enters 
the most closely-sealed doors of harem or zenana, 
and it speaks to every heart in accents which 
cannot but break down the loftiest barrier and 
destroy the most inveterate and hoary supersti- 
tions. Not only so ; but in its association with the 
Lord Jesus Christ it stands out in blessed contrast 
to the native methods of dealing with sickness and 
disease, many of which are not only incredibly 
absurd, but are usually associated with their pagan 
priests and their pagan worship and beliefs. 

As for the development of w^omen's work, which 
has proceeded alongside of this and has been a part 
N.E.-17 257 



The Call of the New Era 

of it, that also has been very important and very 
beneficent. According to Dr. Dennis's figures — and 
in these figures he has laid the Church under lasting 
obligations — if married women are included, as most 
of them most assuredly ought to be, there were 
more women than men at work in the foreign field 
at the close of the nineteenth century — an extra- 
ordinary contrast to the state of afi'airs when that 
century began. There were then no unmarried 
white women at work as foreign Missionaries at 
all ; there were only a few Eurasians.^ 

From a very early date the wives of married 
Missionaries were, of course, doing noble service ; 
but it was only as recently as the last quarter of 
the bygone century that either the Church Missions 

1 Dr. Dennis's actual figures are that in 1900 there were 8220 
women and 7280 men at work as Missionaries in the regions beyond. 
Even since then great progress has been made all along the line, as 
the following figures compiled by Rev. Dr. D. L. Leonard, which 
may be introduced here, abundantly prove : — 





1908. 


1909. 


Advance. 


Home income . 


£4,569,293 


£4,922,615 


£35.3,322 


Income on field . 


968,763 


971,921 


3,158 


Total Missionaries 


19,875 


21,834 


1,959 


Ordaiued native helpers 


4,999 


6,929 


930 


Stations and out-stations . 


41,563 


43,934 


2,871 


Communicants . 


2,056,173 


2,097,963 


41,790 


Baptized during year 


164,674 


135,141 


— 


Adherents . 


4,285,199 


4,866,661 


581,462 


Schools 


28,164 


29,190 


1,026 


Scholars . 


1,290,582 


1,413,995 


123,413 



Only in one respect has there been a decline. It, however, is in the 
most important matter of baptisms. 



The Nineteenth Century 

or the Missiouary Societies encouraged the sending 
out of unmarried women to any appreciable extent. 
But, when once women's work was fairly begun, it 
commended itself so much that its extension has 
been phenomenally rapid. Not only do Christian 
women make splendid workers in the ordinary 
service and in specialised forms of service alike ; 
in the spirit of those who were first at the tomb 
and last at the cross, they have been offering them- 
selves for this work in very large numbers, and 
bringing an infinite variety of gifts and graces to 
the service of the Kino-. 

During the closing fifteen years of the last century 
the Church Missionary Society alone sent out no 
fewer than 500 women Missionaries ; while in the 
year 1900 the China Inland Mission alone had 
300 unmarried women on its roll. If the total 
number of British Missionaries be taken as approxi- 
mately 7000, they arc made up of 1900 married 
men and their wives, 1400 unmarried men, and 
1800 unmarried women — figures which bring out 
in a very striking way how the women's side 
of the work has grown, and how boundless are 
its possibilities. These women Missionaries do 
medical work, educational work, and evangelistic 
work. They visit from house to house, often where 
men could not enter, and from village to village. 
They conduct classes for female inquirers, and classes 

259 



The Call of the New Era 

for training native agents, and much else of the 
utmost importance. Most manifestly women can 
do much for the home and for their sister women 
which men could never do, and which nevertheless 
lies at the very basis of all else. Not only so, but 
women's work for men is also proving itself to be 
of infinite worth. 

It is in no way necessary to dilate here on the 
noble Mission work which the nineteenth century 
has seen done by Missionaries who came from 
other parts than the British Islands. The Colonial 
Churches, the Continental Churches, and the Ameri- 
can Churches alike, have all been at work and 
doing noble service ; and in addition, some of the 
foreign Mission Churches have themselves become 
Missionary, as they are all bound to do as soon 
as they can look over the nest and can hear the 
appeals of human ignorance, and misery, and need. 
Their liberality has often been beyond praise, 
both as regards men and means. And here once 
more we see that the most enduring entente 
cordiale is that which is found in the foreign field. 
French and Germans can work there in spite of 
Alsace and Lorraine ; Dutch and Danes, Nor- 
wegians and Swedes, agree in claiming, and in 
joining to claim, the whole round earth for their 
one Lord and one faith. 

As for the American Missions, they deserve a 
260 



The Nineteenth Century 

volume to themselves. Their Missionaries are said 
to number over 14,800, and in many lands they 
are doing splendid and original work. As for 
the different Societies, there is a constant rivalry 
among them, at least in the homeland, which is 
often holy and always keen. The newer Societies 
are said by the older Societies to have more 
zeal than discretion ; and the older Societies 
are said in turn by the newer Societies to have 
more discretion than zeal. But it cannot be 
claimed for any of them that their zeal has outrun 
their discretion. There is always abundance of 
discretion in all Christian communities, and it can- 
not be truthfully alleged even of the newest Societies 
that there has been too much zeal. Both there 
and here there has always been enough discretion to 
keep all the zeal there was in check ; and no matter 
how much the zeal increases, it is probable that 
that will always be the case. 

A deeply interesting and picturesque feature of 
the Mission work of the bygone century is the 
way in which great names have become associated 
with the various lands which have been already won 
in whole or in part. Many of these are destined 
to go down to posterity with a sort of territorial 
dignity which is as well deserved as it is unique. 
We are wont now to speak of Gilmour of Mongolia, 
of Chalmers of New Guinea, of Patou of the New 

261 



The Call of the New Era 

Hebrides, and of Mackay of Uganda, as if they were 
peers of the realm. And truly they are the aristo- 
crats of the Kingdom of God by a Divine creation ; 
members of the Legion of Honour of the Mission 
enterprise, arbitrarily chosen, like most legions of 
honour, yet erring not in those whom it includes, 
but in some which it has not enrolled as yet. This 
new roll-call of the heroes of the faith is already so 
long that time would fail us to tell of it in detail 
or even to name those members of it of whose 
worth and work we happily know. 

Eternity alone will reveal all that humanity and 
the Church owe to men and women like Dr. Jacob 
Chamberlain among the Telugus, or Miss Annie 
Taylor in Tibet ; like Dr. James Stewart in Love- 
dale, or Dr. Laws in Livingstonia ; like Bishop 
Selwyn and his friend Coleridge Patteson in 
Melanesia, or Fred Arnot in Garenganze, or Bishop 
Border anK)ng the Eskimo and the Indians ; like 
John Williams, the apostle of the South Seas, or 
William Burns, the pioneer of North China, and 
Hudson Taylor, the pioneer of Inland China ; like 
Damien among the lepers, or James Calvert among 
the cannibals. They had " trial of cruel mockings 
and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and 
imprisonment ; of whom the world was not 
worthy." But they, and others like them, have 
brought joy to the sad, rest to the weary, and 

262 



The Nineteenth Century 

liberty to the captive. They have gone where 
soldiers could not force an entrance. They have 
proved that the consecrated pen is mightier than 
the sword, and the Gospel mightier than either 
or both. They have opened up the way to all 
sorts of social reform. And many of the greatest 
and best and most heroic of them are on no other 
roll-call than the Lamb's Book of Life ; and well 
content were they, and are they, that it should 
be so. 

And the very thought of this great array of 
names and achievements shows how true it is that 
the nineteenth century stands out as the great 
Mission century, ranking even with the first. 
When the new era, which is now calling believers 
to the fray, leaves it far behind, as it can and must, 
it will still be the peculiar glory of the nineteenth 
century that it made the twentieth possible, and 
that it furnished the twentieth with its most 
inspiring examples, as well as with many of its 
keenest and most useful tools. 



263 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 



265 



" The night is far spent, the day is at hand."— Rom. 13. 12. 

"Christ alone can save the world, but Christ cannot save the 
world alone." 

"Each new time its new thought 

Must in new Avords tell, 
And the old primary heart tones 

The new music swell ; 
And ever in grander theologies 

Higher truths be sown ; 
But unchanged amid all changes 

God's heart and our own." 



266 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

rriHE history of the twentieth century has still 
-^ for the most part to be made ; and forecasts, 
even the cleverest and most scientific, are poor 
substitutes for the actual record of what God has 
wrought. Yet it is much to be able to realise 
that the clay is still plastic, that the die has yet 
to be cast ; and the sense that we are on the verge 
of a new era — it may perhaps be the last era — is 
everywhere present with those who seek to discern 
the signs of the times, and to be loyal to the 
leading of the Holy Spirit. The conviction, too, 
is both widespread and strong that the situation, 
as the Church must now face it, is both critical 
and acute. 

If the nineteenth century began with a new 
enthusiasm for the rights of man, which showed 
itself in reform both at home and abroad, and 
in unwonted Mission enterprise everywhere, the 
twentieth century has been ushered in amid the 

267 



The Call of the New Era 

unquestioned predominance of social problems. 
There are not a few of these problems which must 
be solved somehow, and that ere long — solved 
peacefully, if that be possible, but possibly also 
in violence and strife. The yearning prayer of 
every believer must be that the solution may come 
under the leadership of Christ and in harmony 
with His revealed will. It would be supremely 
shameful if, in this Christian land, the nation were 
to go forward under an alien flag to succour and 
deliver the poor, over whom He yearns and who 
used to hear Him gladly. 

There is, indeed, a certain danger that this pre- 
dominance of the social yearnings and needs of our 
time may divert attention from Foreign Missions, 
and give point to the cry that until things have 
been put right at home there can be no call to 
go abroad. But when that cry was raised in 
the stirring times with which the last century 
began — and it could be raised then as appropri- 
ately as now — it was not admitted as valid, 
and probably that will prove to be the case again. 
Spiritual beings are not built, like ships, in water- 
tight compartments ; and it has been proved that, 
when consciences are stirred and hearts are tender 
about the poor and needy in the homelands, they 
are also most keenly sensitive about the claims of 
the downtrodden and overshadowed beyond the 

268 



The Twentieth Century 

seas. AdcI the converse is equally true, as all 
history avers. Those who set up the needs of the 
home field in opposition to the needs of the 
regions beyond are seldom seen to be crushed by 
the needs of the homelands ; and similarly, those 
who are truly loyal to the call of the new era at 
home will not be found wanting in connection 
with the cry from abroad : " Come over and help 
us." Nor will those ever be found wantino- at 
home who are loyal to the Great Commission, 
which is the charter, to the end of the ages, of 
the regions beyond and of those in the great lone 
lands of the shadow of death. 

As a matter of fact, the situation among the 
great heathen communities, especially in the Far 
East, is such as to arrest the attention of all who 
have ears to hear and hearts to understand, with 
an imperative appeal which makes itself heard 
even amid the din of the social strife and turmoil 
at home. None can question that the situation at 
home is critical both in Church and State ; but it 
is equally unquestionable in connection with the 
work abroad, alike from the blessing which God 
has been giving to the workers and from the open 
doors which are crying out for those who will 
bring the message of the King, that a new and 
intensely critical era has come. Both at home and 
abroad — and the two are so inextricably combined 

269 



The Call of the New Era 

that it is hardly possible to put asunder what God 
has joined — the appeal to the Churches is such that 
the summons to all of them ought to be irresistible, 
to vote the matter urgent, as is sometimes done 
in foreign parliaments, and make a great combined 
advance all along the line. In our day, we seem 
to have reached one of the making or marring 
times on which all else depends ; those who are 
deaf to the new appeal not only condemn them- 
selves to disaster and death, they pass judgment 
on themselves, and show that they are not right 
with God, 

On the threshold of this new era, and on the 
verge of the unknown, the prayerful inquirer is 
conscious that there are many diverse and antagon- 
istic forces at work all over the battlefield ; and 
that while some of them make for the prosecution 
of Foreign Mission work more vigorously than ever, 
not a few of them are bitterly hostile. Foremost 
among the favourable forces must surely be put 
the new way of looking at Missions and the Mission 
problem which is now dominant in the State as 
well as in the Church. In the State it may be 
seen in the manner in which the various European 
nations are now inclined to regard their Missionaries 
as pioneers of Empire. 

The changed outlook has its obvious drawbacks. 
It may lead to the Gospel becoming identified in 

270 



The Twentieth Century 

the minds of native Governments and peoples with 
schemes of aggrandisement with which they can 
have no sympathy ; while it may also react on 
the Missionaries themselves in such a way that 
their work may suffer, as it has suffered both in 
China and on the Congo, through the attitude of 
the representatives of Rome. And yet, with all its 
dangers, it cannot but be acknowledged to be a 
grateful change from the time, not so far distant, 
when the various Governments did all they could 
to repress Missionaries as disturbers of the peace 
and troublers of their Israel, and boycotted them 
through their representatives abroad, as those who 
spoiled the natives. It is a poor affair for the 
ambassadors of the Prince of Peace to enter a 
land behind Maxim guns ; but it is only right and 
proper that they should get the protection of their 
flag when it is being used to promote peaceful 
expansion. The modern Missionary as w^ell as the 
ancient Missionary may say, " Civis Romanus sum,' 
when that will aid him in his w^ork for Christ. 

There was a time not so remote when our 
statesmen thought that the British Empire was 
big enough, and their responsibilities already too 
great. But that time has gone in the demand for 
new markets, and the process of partition has 
only ceased because meanwhile there are no more 
territories to divide or annex. Along with that 

271 



The Call of the New Era 

attitude has also disappeared, at least among the 
far-seeing, the way of looking at Foreign Missions 
which used to commend itself to critics like 
Sydney Smith, as well as the view which com- 
mended itself to critics like Charles Dickens ; to 
say nothing of the view which commended itself 
to foreign traders and globe-trotters, whose 
dogmatism was in an inverse ratio to their 
knowledge. The new Imperialism may have its 
drawbacks in the sphere of Missions as in the 
sphere of politics, and may sometimes be flam- 
boyant and vainglorious ; but even so, its advent 
is full of significance and full of possibilities of 
conquest of the waste lands in the near future. 
It is foremost among the more modern forces 
which should be consecrated to the service of 
Christ all over the earth. 

In the Church this new attitude to Missions 
may be taken as manifesting itself in such a 
movement as that of the Student Volunteer, 
backed up, as it has been of late, by the Young 
People's Missionary Movement ; the Laymen's 
Missionary Movement ; and the movement for 
Mission Study. There may, indeed, be some 
element of loss in the growth of the conviction 
that Foreign Missions are not to be looked on as 
exceptional, but as something which ought to have 
a place in every Christian congregation and in 

272 



The Twentieth Century 

every Christian life. But there is also the un- 
speakable gain which comes through seeing things 
from the standpoint of the Divine, and therefore 
getting away from the merely accidental to that 
which is essential and eternal. 

Beyond any question, the normal state of affairs 
should be that Foreign Missions are not to be 
engaged in merely when everything has been 
attended to at home — as if everything could ever 
be right there along such lines ; but that such work 
should form an integral part of the regular opera- 
tions of every Christian church and congregation, 
an integral part of the living interests of every 
Christian life. Opposition to Foreign Missions 
from within the Church ought to be treated just 
as opposition to the work of ingathering at home 
would be — as an aberration, that is, which hardly 
requires to be met by serious argument. To say 
that it is better to leave the heathen nations as 
they are, should be held as akin to saying that 
evil social conditions should be left as they are, 
and that it is unwise to stir up strife with the 
selfish and callous by letting the light of the 
Gospel shine in on their unworthy practices. 

Nothing but good can come from the serious 

and systematic education of the young people in 

the implications of the Gospel and the needs of 

the heathen ; and the more picturesque the educa- 

N.E.— 18 273 



The Call of the New Era 

tion is the better, since Christ's service demands 
our best. Similarly, nothing but good can come 
from the effective organisation of the " laymen " 
for the study and support of this work ; and if 
many of them pray themselves into the work 
abroad, who never meant to go there, that also 
is an incidental by-product which likewise can 
do nothing but good. 

Mr. Spurgeon has it somewhere : " You ask me 
if the heathen will be saved if you do not send 
them the Gospel ; I ask if you will be saved unless 
you do ? " Nothing can be as it should be at 
home until there is frank obedience to the plain 
command of Christ ; and it may be that the social 
problems are overwhelming as they are just now, 
because there has not been such frank obedience 
all along the line. Guidance comes along the 
line of loyalty to clear orders ; and even if for 
most the duty at home may seem the duty 
" nearest us," the command to make disciples of 
all nations is so explicit that it too is among the 
duties nearest all who wish to obey their Lord. 
Nor will it be other than good if this unification 
of the two sides of the one whole should put an 
end to the disastrous conviction that the call to 
work in the foreign field is something quite 
different from the call to labour at home ; and 
that anyone who goes abroad and comes home 

274 



The Twentieth Century 

again, for any other reason than ill-health or old 
age, is a near relative of Lot's wife. 

God calls men and women to serve in all sorts 
of ways, and there is no warrant for the idea that 
He may not send a man abroad to work for Him 
there, and later on send him home again to do 
work there. Yet the fear lest they should incur 
the reproach of being deserters has prevented 
many from going abroad who felt that they had 
no warrant for binding themselves for life, although 
they were willing to go abroad at the time. It 
is one of the wise features in connection with 
the Methodist ministry, that men may pass to and 
from the two branches of the one work without 
any fear of being misunderstood, and such honour- 
able coming and going is all for the good of the 
whole Church. 

The twentieth century has inherited much from 
the nineteenth century which ought to aid it 
mightily in its Mission operations. There are, 
for example, the many native Churches which now 
exist and flourish to show what can be done, 
as well as the gracious lives and deeds of the 
many noble men and women, no longer with us, 
through whose devotion and perseverance they 
came into being. A century ago the most 
grotesque misconceptions prevailed, and the 
friends of Missions had to argue against the most 

275 



The Call of the New Era 

extraordinary theories. Now we have a great 
body of gracious facts, which speak eloquently for 
themselves ; and if it be true that the native 
Churches are not all perfect, and the native 
Christians not always as like their Master as 
they ought to be, that is still unfortunately true 
of Churches and Christians at home. 

In this connection, nothing is more striking 
than the lofty standard which some critics of 
Missions — traders, travellers, and others in foreign 
lands — set up for all who profess to have come 
under the influence of the Missionaries. Men who 
are church members, but are nevertheless living 
careless lives, are greatly shocked if those who 
have just been digged out of the miry clay of pagan- 
ism are not flawless and without reproach; and 
if they are disappointed in a servant who was 
ever in a Mission school, they write home that the 
Missionaries are spoiling the natives. It is not 
merely that they criticise without adequate 
knowledge, and without seeking for adequate 
knowledge ; they denounce Missions as failures, 
and their converts as frauds, on grounds which 
would condemn the best of the home Churches 
without hope of recall. 

Even the friends of Missions in the homelands 
are often most unreasonable in their expectations 
regarding the first generations of those who have 

276 



The Twentieth Century 

been rescued from heathenism, and have still to 
live in a heathen atmosphere. They are cheered 
and uplifted when they hear of men and women 
and children who have been redeemed from 
superstition and degradation by the power of the 
grace of Christ ; but they sometimes forget how 
much has still to be done, and how formidable 
the obstacles are. They do not realise as they 
should the evil forces of heredity and environment 
with which these converts are beset ; forces so 
formidable that even the Missionaries themselves 
groan under their malign power, and feel them 
to be like great cloud-banks of black fog for ever 
tending to bewilder and lead astray. They forget, 
too, what the Epistles of the New Testament 
reveal regarding the faults and errors of the first 
generation of converts to Christ, even when men 
like Peter and Paul and John were the Mission- 
aries. 

It is hardly possible for those at home to 
imagine what the constant impact of heathenism 
means for those who are continually faced by it ; 
and especially what it must mean for those who 
have its allies not merely in their homes but in 
their blood and bones. Some of our best Mission- 
aries have spoken of it as laying hold of them 
even while they were still out at sea, as they 
were returning to their posts, like some pestifer- 

277 



The Call of the New Era 

ous mist sending a chill to their hearts ; and it is 
probable that it would be better if more of the 
Missionaries were to be explicit as to how things 
actually are, and were to let the moral difficulties 
of their converts, not to speak of their own, be 
better known at home. It is not their business 
to offer apologies either for little growth in 
numbers, where that is the case, or for slow growth 
among their converts in likeness to the Lord. It 
is their business to be perfectly frank, and to share 
their responsibilities, perplexities, and disappoint- 
ments, as well as their victories and joys, with 
the Church and those who are behind them at 
home. 

In return, it should be the business of the 
helpers at home to envelop those abroad in such 
an atmosphere of prayer and faith as shall counter- 
act and conquer the evil atmosphere in which they 
and theirs have to work. It is part of the reflex 
influence of Foreign Missions on the Church at 
home that it tends to keep those at home nearer 
the rudimentary and essential needs of unre- 
generate men, and nearer the Divine provision 
which alone prevails ; and it is all for good that 
the eternal antagonism should be more and more 
clearly realised both there and here. 

In addition to the rich inheritance which the 
twentieth century has in the Churches which have 

278 



The Twentieth Century 

been built up among the heathen during the 
nineteenth century, there is also the abundant 
Missionary literature to which the new era has 
fallen heir, and to which it is constantly making 
such worthy additions. There is what may be 
called the working plant of the Church as Mission- 
ary — the translations, dictionaries, and grammars, 
and much else of the same sort — which has come 
down to us through the toil of the most self- 
effacing labourers the Church has ever known. 

But these labours have been as fruitful as they 
have been self-forgetting ; and when we add to 
them the momentum which is now derived from 
the vast organisation which is everywhere at work 
in the sacred cause, both at home and abroad, it 
is manifest indeed that our century has entered 
on its work with enormous advantages compared 
with the century which has gone. And there are 
also the literary records of much that has been 
achieved, the best proofs that truth is stranger than 
fiction, the noblest apologia of the faith as it is in 
Christ ; these might well inspire our generation to 
hasten to complete the work, and to share in it ere 
there is no more such work to be done. 

There are not only the classic biographies, such 
as those which tell of Carey and Judson, of 
Martyn and Heber, of John AVilson and Duff, of 
Williams and Livingstone ; there are volumes like 

279 



The Call of the New Era 

Dr. Lambert's Romance of Missionary Heroism, 
which show how far it is from the truth to suggest 
that the age of faith or heroism is over. There 
is no need to patronise sensational and unhealthy 
fiction in order to find stirring adventures and 
thrilling narratives, when such books have been 
placed at the disposal of young and old alike 
as Calvert's Cannibals a7id Saints, Mackay's 
From Far Formosa, Miss Taylor's Pioneering in 
Tibet, Ashe's Two Kings of Uganda, Thomson's 
Tlirough Masailand, Gilmour's Among the 
Mongols, Chamberlain's The Cobras Den, Miss 
Wilson Carmichael's Ovemveiglits of Joy and Lotus 
Buds, and many another record of the wonders 
wrought by the knights who have gone out to do 
battle with all evil and wrong under the banner of 
Christ and His Cross. 

There is, however, another side to all this. There 
are also many forces which are bitterly hostile, as 
well as many which, without being actually hostile, 
are sapping the strength of the Church and 
weakening its enthusiasm for Missions ; and of 
these some are quite modern and new. A century 
ago, for example, when influences of a negative or 
destructive kind assailed the faith, they always 
operated from without ; whereas now almost all 
the power of such forces arises from the fact that 
they often operate from within. 

280 



The Twentieth Century 

There is, for iDstance, the effect on not a few of 
what is called the Higher Criticism, which was 
not born a century ago, although there were 
anticipations of it. No one can assert that all the 
criticism which has been indulged in within recent 
years from within the citadel has been either 
helpful or believing, or that it should have been 
oft'ered by professed friends. We must, of course, 
be loyal to the light wherever it leads, and 
welcome truth even when it comes in unwonted 
ways ; for God fulfils Himself in many ways. 
Nor has any enterprise less cause to fear the light 
than the Mission enterprise. But, owing to their 
instability and ignorance, there are many for 
whom a passage in the Old Testament or an 
incident in the New is never quite the same after 
it has been assailed, no matter how unwarrantably, 
by a AVellhausen or a Schmiedel. 

There is only too much cause for fearing that 
in many subtle ways, especially as it has affected 
the ill-informed, for whom a little knowledge is a 
dangerous thing, the Higher Criticism has tended 
to weaken the impulses which have hitherto in- 
spired some of the best Missionaries the Church 
has had. That may be only a part of the truth 
and a passing phase ; but it can hardly be ignored 
in an attempt to estimate the forces which are 
meanwhile at work in connection with Foreign 

281 



The Call of the New Era 

Missions. When once men and women find them- 
selves in the stream of tendency which flows from 
an incipient dislike of the supernatural — that is, 
which is in reality rationalism in the making if 
it does its perfect work — they must either sink 
or swim across. It is not possible to go back to 
mere traditionalism when once the soul has been 
in the flood ; and only too many who find them- 
selves in these depths lose their hold of the old 
without getting any efl'ective grip of the new, and 
thereby cease for the time being to be of any 
account in the battle of life. This is not the 
place for attempting an estimate of the merits 
and demerits of the modern critical movement ; 
but that it has an unsettling and disconcerting 
tendency for some, and cannot but continue to 
have such a tendency while the transition stage 
lasts, can hardly be denied. It is probable, in- 
deed, that no one would question this ; and for 
the crowds who never go farther than this un- 
settling stage there are phases of criticism which 
seem to rob the Word of God of its supreme 
authority and of its Divine fascination and power, 
a loss which is immeasurably great. That they 
may know criticism only at second hand, and on 
its negative side alone, makes the loss none the less 
real. 

Then there are others for whom the rise of what 
282 



The Twentieth Century 

is called Comparative Religion lias acted directly 
or indirectly in very much the same way. It does 
not matter that it ought not so to act, or that the 
Missionary enterprise itself has more than anything 
else rendered this study inevitable, and has pro- 
vided the material for it. The fact remains that 
the uniqueness of Scripture, and even of the 
Christian religion, has vanished for not a few ; 
and that even the Gospel of the grace of God in 
Christ has come to be thought of by them as one 
way out of many, and not as the only revelation 
of the one living Way and of the Name which is 
above every name. They lose themselves among 
the Sacred Books of the East, and in their con- 
templation of the glories of Gautama and Con- 
fucius. It makes no difference, apparently, that 
the more we know of its rivals the more does the 
unique glory of the Gospel appear. There are so 
many who have only a smattering, or even a reflec- 
tion of a smattering ; and for such the fascination 
has gone, the spell has been broken, the truth has 
lost its power, when once they have embarked on 
these speculations and comparisons. Even those 
who lecture on Comparative Religion from the 
Christian standpoint have sometimes so much that 
is good to say about the great pagan systems as 
to leave the impression that the supremacy of the 
Gospel is a matter of degree rather than of kind. 

28.-. 



The Call of the New Era 

Missionaries face to face with the facts have another 
tale to tell. 

Nor can we afford to ignore the fact that the 
Higher Criticism and Comparative Religion affect 
many who know nothing whatever about them 
through any personal study or knowledge. They 
hear the shout of the enemy that the fortress 
has fallen ; and even when they do not join in 
the cry, they conclude that the great verities and 
realities of the faith are at least open questions, 
on which discussion may be looked for and widely 
differing opinions held. They hear about myths, 
interpolations, anticipations, tendencies, and much 
else, until they cannot but drift unless their feet 
are actually on the Rock of Ages, and they have 
had personal transactions with Christ Himself. 
Not only so, but these and kindred studies have 
begotten an attitude to revealed truth which has 
found its way into the magazines and newspapers ; 
and although the stream of tendency which trickles 
down to the general public may become very much 
attenuated, it works all the more mischief that it 
comes without anything of the nature of the 
corrective which fuller knowledge would bring. 

Even for those who resent the tone of much 
modern writing as irreverent and unworthy, it 
lowers the temperature and sends a paralysing chill 
to their hearts which is the sworn foe of Mission 

284 



The Twentieth Century 

enthusiasm. "Cold is tlie malady of the soul," 
says Comte ; and many who have no notion how 
the cold blasts have come, and no sympathy with 
them, are suffering from chill in their souls because 
of the icebergs of criticism and doubt which have 
floated into their zone. In the spirit as in the 
body, many of the deadliest maladies begin with 
a cold. 

It is also probable that among the weakening in- 
fluences which are at work sapping the enthusiasm 
for Missions of many in this twentieth century 
not the least mischievous is the change, intangible 
but intensely persistent and real, which has passed 
over the minds of so many in connection with 
the belief in eternal punishment. The spirit of 
Tennyson's dream — 

"But yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill ; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 

That not one life shall be destroyed, 

Or cast as rubbish to the void. 
When God has made the pile complete," 

has aff"ected very many who would probably 
repudiate the suggestion. This at any rate is 
indisputable, that whether men now believe in 
eternal punishment or not, the preachers of our 
time, and even our evangelists, have ceased to pro- 
claim it as it was once proclaimed ; that the fear 

285 



The Call of the New Era 

of it has faded out of the popular belief and,,^im- 
agination with startling rapidity during the last 
quarter of a century ; and that this change has 
brought other changes with it. 

It is, of course, quite impossible to tell how far 
those who have gone forth into the lieathen dark- 
ness, with the torch of Christian truth in their 
hands, were driven forth by their belief in the 
eternal doom of those who die in their sins, and by 
their yearning to tell them of a Deliverer. Yet it 
is obvious that it must have had a place along with 
other motives ; and with some it does seem to 
have been the determining motive. It is equally 
impossible to tell how far men and w^omen will 
continue to go forth in large numbers if they are 
convinced that, in taking the Gospel to the heathen, 
with the likelihood of blessing some, there is 
the fearful risk of worsening the state of others 
who may reject the message they deliver. But it 
is more than likely that the crude, indefinite, hazy, 
and even cowardly conceptions about doom which 
are shutting the mouths of so many at home are 
weakening the hands and slackening the zeal of 
some who would otherwise have been Foreign 
Missionaries, and it may even be of some who are 
out at the front and in the very firing line. 

The nobler the work, and the more spiritual the 
ties, the more sensitive are they to any such subtle 

286 



The Twentieth Century- 
change as this. And there is nothing in regard to 
which guidance from Word and Spirit should be 
sought for more earnestly and persistently in this 
connection than that Christian men and women 
may everywhere know the truth regarding this 
terribly solemn and difficult theme, in such a fashion 
that they will be able to feel strongly and speak 
convincingly about the fearful doom of moral evil ; 
of the fearful cursing, corroding, destroying power 
of sin wherever it manifests itself, whether in 
Christian lands or far away in heathen darkness 
and unbelief. 

The end of these things is death, and cannot but 
be death. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth 
death ; yet meanwhile only too many are silent 
about these dread facts, after a fashion which can 
only work woe. The fear of hell may be nothing 
higher than a " hangman's whip to haud the wretch 
in order " ; but there are so many wretches who 
must be kept in order, that the whip cannot be dis- 
pensed with. It must either be brought into use 
again, or some adequate substitute found for it. 
The whole truth of God's Word must be ascertained 
and faithfully proclaimed, no matter what the con- 
sequences are, or all Mission work will suffer alike 
at home and abroad. 

In addition to these more or less doctrinal hostile 
influences, which are meanwhile at work in opposi- 

287 



The Call of the New Era 

tion to the spirit which sends labourers into the 
vineyard, a place must also be found for the pre- 
dominance of the material — the love of comfort, 
pleasure, and ease, and the keen appreciation of 
what money brings, which mean so much in 
modern life, and nowhere more than in the Church, 
official and unofficial. It is, indeed, in connection 
with Mission work alone that the heroic any longer 
survives to any appreciable extent even in this 
new era, with all its unique calls to action. Even 
in trade and commerce it is becoming increasingly 
difficult to find those who are willing to endure 
hardness, or to burn the midnight oil ; while in 
learning and research fewer than ever are to be 
found who are ready to face privation and danger 
in search of knowledge. 

Beyond any cavil, one of the menaces of the 
twentieth century is the spirit of materialism, which 
has crept so subtly into much of our modern 
life and thought, and which is aftecting our 
generation so adversely and in so many ways 
through the weakening or the destruction of the 
ideals set before young and old alike. Multitudes 
no longer believe in anything which they cannot 
cut with a dissecting knife or see through a glass. 
Many even of those who are seeldng for the good 
refuse to seek for the best ; and thus the very good 
which is the glory of our era, its richest inheritance 

288 



The Twentieth Century 

from the days which are gone — its inventions, and 
its sensitiveness to injustice or need or wrongs, 
and its yearning to secure comfort for all — is made 
the enemy of that best which still lies in front, 
that golden age which is still calling the faithful 
and courageous to further quest. 

At the present time the primary need of the 
Foreign Mission field is not money alone, as so 
many suppose, but men and women. Not long since, 
even for Manchuria, where the tide of blessino; has 
been flowing deep and broad, and in spite of the 
Student Volunteer Movement and much else of the 
same sort, both doctors and teachers were being 
appealed for in vain. An eminent Missionary 
from China recently visited several colleges in 
Scotland, seeking men to go out as ordained 
ministers, and did so in vain, although adequate 
salaries were already in hand. This phase will doubt- 
less soon pass away ; and even now it is probable 
that a "labour exchange" or a "Mission clearing 
house" would put matters right. The likelihood 
is that there were never more workers willing to go 
abroad than there are now, taking the field as a 
whole ; but even as a temporary or local phase of 
the situation, it is disconcerting to find such a state 
of aff'airs, and it seems to be only too manifest 
that the materialistic spirit is very far-reaching in 
its operations, and that it can assail the best. It 
N.E.— 19 289 



The Call of the New Era 

is, indeed, to perfected organisation, rather than to 
any conspicuous self-surrender or heroism, that the 
Church must meanwhile look for her workers in any 
sphere ; but as she does this duty which is nearest 
to her, the way to the heights will assuredly open 
up once again with all its holy fascination and its 
irresistible appeal. 

And all this only makes the fundamental thesis 
clearer and clearer that the work at home and the 
w^ork abroad are not two, but one ; and that the two 
sides of the one whole must stand or fall together. 
Everything is hardest for the man who is down, 
and every difficulty is accentuated for the Church 
when the temperature falls as it has fallen now. 
Every evil microbe gets its opportunity when 
vitality is low ; but loyal obedience all round the 
circle of the world's need would soon put doubts 
and fears to flight. Obedience to the call of the 
new era, with all its possibilities of weal or woe, 
would speedily bring that fuller light in which 
the Church would see clearly and find perfect 
peace in the service of her Lord. Nothing less 
than such obedience, however, can scatter the 
clouds of materialism, put the mists of worldli- 
ness and unbelief to flight, and bring the fuller 
revelation of the grace and power of God. God 
must have a willing people in the day of His 
power. 

290 



The Twentieth Century 

In thus trying to detail and describe the forces 
which are against world-evangelisation as well as 
those which are in favour of it, there is, of course, 
no suggestion that the forces which are hostile are 
worthy to be compared with those which are 
friendly to the work of spreading the Light. It is 
not possible to measure forces of that sort in such 
a fashion as to be able to estimate their relative 
influence. There is no common denominator. 
Majorities do not count in the realm of the spirit ; 
nor can averages be struck in dealing with spiritual 
forces either for or against. Yet it is necessary 
that Christians be on their guard lest they despise 
the foe ; and it must be clearly understood that 
while this generation engages in the work of 
winning the world for Christ, on terms vastly more 
favourable than those on which our grandfathers 
entered on it, there has been loss as well as gain 
in the enormous changes which have taken place in 
so many spheres. 

As an instance, however, of the difficulty of 
opening any exact profit and loss account in this 
realm, it must not be overlooked that the modern 
critical spirit, which can take nothing for granted, 
and has thrown into the melting pot so many 
things which used to be taken for granted, has on 
its destructive side been even busier in the foreign 
field than at home and that it has been dis- 

291 



The Call of the New Era 

integrating many of the forces which once were 
mightiest on behalf of paganism. 

In India, for example, the outcome of the 
advance of Western science and the spread of the 
Western spirit has been that, consciously or un- 
consciously, the educated classes no longer believe 
in the old cosmogonies, and that much else has 
gone out of the faith of the multitudes which was 
altogether vital. Many may still be as Samson 
was when he wist not that the Lord was departed 
from him ; but the realities have disappeared, only 
the forms remain, and nothing can be again as it 
was in the past. Rays of emancipating light are 
even stealing into the darkened zenanas, the last 
strongholds of the old faiths. The attempts which 
are being made to reform and reconstruct Hinduism 
and Mohammedanism in India show how conscious 
some are of the change which has taken place, and 
of the impossibility of maintaining the status quo. 

And it has to be borne in mind that much if not 
most of this disillusionment — for it is nothing more 
as yet — has come under the auspices of a science 
which is taught by those who are frankly non- 
religious. The Christian Missionary has often to 
pull down the ancient edifices of faith, but he does 
so that he may build up again. He has no 
pleasure in destruction for its own sake ; and very 
often he destroys by first of all building up, so that 

292 



The Twentieth Century 

the new is there before the old departs — like the 
new leaves on the beech hedge in spring which 
push their predecessors off. But it has been far 
otherwise with many of the teachers of modern 
India. Their learning is godless. Their work is 
wholly negative, so far as religion is concerned, and 
sometimes it has been even malignantly so. There 
have been Europeans who have done their best to 
indoctrinate the educated Indians with the vileness 
of the basest in the home countries ; but even where 
that was not the case, many of India's teachers 
have ignored the fact that man was made for God, 
and have nothing for the empty yearning hearts 
which they profess to guide. Hence the present rest- 
lessness, which is full of danger if it is also full of 
the possibilities of endless advance, and the dangers 
can only be averted by the immediate response of 
the Churches to the blessed possibilities. 

In China, too, the modern spirit is working 
extraordinary changes ; and, especially in connec- 
tion with education, a situation has been created 
which would have been incredible only a year or 
two ago. It is indeed difficult for any but those 
who are experts, or are on the spot, to realise how 
swiftly changes of infinite moment are taking place 
in that great Empire and among that deeply 
interesting people, for whom all who labour among 
them seem to have such an affection. If education 

293 



The Call of the New Era 

is not already universal and compulsory, it would 
appear to be from the lack of teachers rather than 
from any lack of desire on the part of the rulers. 
It is true that meanwhile they wish education for 
purely utilitarian ends, and in order that China may 
acquire the military, naval, and financial learning 
of the West, and may no longer be the prey of the 
Western nations. But even so it is more than 
probable that the present generation will see 
repeated in China the phenomenal transformation 
which the last generation saw coming over Japan ; 
and if only the image and superscription of Christ 
can be put on her education while China is still 
plastic and in the making, the gain to humanity 
will be incredibly great. 

In spite of all that has been said at Conventions 
and elsewhere about this, it does not seem to be 
sufficiently understood yet. If it were, there 
would be awe in every faithful heart. Never in 
the history of mankind were such vast numbers of 
people undergoing such radical changes as now in 
the Far East ; and the call of the new era is there, 
sounding very loud and clear for all who have ears 
to hear and hearts to understand. The old phrases 
about the unchanging East, the immemorial East, 
the inherent conservatism of the East, will soon 
have no meaning ; and those who truly know the 
Lord can never hesitate as to what China needs 

294 



The Twentieth Century 

most of all and first of all. Those, too, who know 
the two peoples at first hand all seem to put the 
Chinese before the Japanese as a people of infinite 
possibilities and notable qualities, and to cherish the 
most wonderful expectations as to how far they 
may go if only they find the true Lord. 

As to what may happen if China's regeneration 
as an Empire comes under other auspices than the 
Christian, that is a matter for the Governments as 
well as the Churches. The Yellow Peril might 
then become a peril indeed, and China has many 
accounts to square with the Western peoples which 
might all be squared then with compound interest. 
The possibilities are weirdly striking, and the 
yearning of every believing soul must be that this 
nation which is being born in a day may soon 
come under the spell of Christ ; and it can only do 
so if the Christian Church everywhere responds to 
the Divine summons which is coming in a fashion 
so impressive and so momentous. 

In the nearer East, too, as has been already seen, 
there is a stirring among the Mohammedans which 
cannot but spread. The imperturbable Turks, the 
apparently impenetrable Moors, and the hopeless 
Persians are all alike undergoing epoch-making 
changes, so that they can never again be as they 
were ; and with political changes so far-reaching, 
there cannot but come a renaissance which will 

295 



The Call of the New Era 

affect tlieir theological and religious outlook. 
Already in India the movement has taken shape 
in an attempt to remove the most obvious ex- 
crescences of Islam ; and the strivings for political 
liberty in Morocco, Persia, Turkey, and Egypt, 
cannot end there. A man is not many but one, 
and real freedom will soon tell all round. 

One of the most noteworthy proofs of the new 
spirit which has entered Islam is the great Mission- 
ary efforts which are being made to win converts 
for Mohammed from other religions. It is said, 
and it may be correct, that just now the religion 
of the False Prophet is gaining more converts from 
the most degraded tribes in Central Africa, than 
the religion of the True Prophet is winning from 
all sources whatsoever. Not only Christian Mission- 
aries in the Soudan and elsewhere, but statesmen, 
like Sir Reginald Wingate, the Sirdar of the Eastern 
Soudan, are warning the Churches that Moham- 
medanism will win in the race for the African 
tribes which have not yet made their choice, unless 
many more labourers are sent forth at once into 
that corner of the vineyard. And where men do 
not know about Christ, it cannot but appear to 
be an actual uplift to become followers of Islam, 
and to know about Allah, the one God, even 
through that corrupted channel. 

The Professor of Arabic at Cambridge has asserted 
296 



The Twentieth Century 

that one reason why Mohammedanism is mean- 
while gaining more converts in Africa than Christ 
is that converts to Islam, no matter to what 
race they belong, are on the whole admitted 
freely and ungrudgingly to the social privileges, as 
well as to the obligations of the community with 
which they have cast in their lot ; and that the 
same affirmation cannot be made regarding subject 
races which have become Christian. If that be so, 
we must not be above learning from the enemies 
of the truth. They have clearly been learning 
from us, for it is of the very essence of the Gospel 
to bring its converts in by the front door. They 
themselves may be willing to take the servant's 
place, but they are received as sons and daughters. 
The Father's response to the cry of their penitence 
and humiliation ever is : " Bring forth the best robe 
and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and 
shoes on his feet " ; and that must also be the spirit 
of the Church's welcome too. But the point for 
us meanwhile is, that the twentieth-century spirit 
of yearning for reform, which is so active at home 
and among the great Eastern peoples, is also at 
work along several lines among the Mohammedan 
peoples all over the world. 

In these circumstances, it is manifest that the 
outstanding feature of the Foreign Mission situation 
in this first decade of the twentieth century is its 

297 



The Call of the New Era 

extreme urgency. A tide has come in the affairs 
of the world and the Church which must be taken 
at the flood, unless there is to be declension and 
decay. Now is the judgment of this world ; and at 
such a crisis the doom of disloyalty to the Divine 
call can only be estimated by the blessedness which 
obedience would assuredly bring. The twentieth 
century may prove to be the crowning epoch in 
the history of the Kingdom of God, and cannot but 
be so if the followers of Christ are equal to the call 
which the new era has brought. But, on the other 
hand, it may prove to be one of the darkest in 
history if there be failure and betrayal of sacred 
trusts and holy interests. 

Two authorities, one representing the older 
generation and one representing the new, have 
spoken lately on this aspect of the situation, and 
their testimony is final as to the supreme urgency 
of the appeal which is coming from every part of 
the earth. Warneck, of Halle, is now a veteran 
in this department of knowledge, and his testimony 
is very vivid and conclusive : " Never since Christian 
Missions began have such world-wide opportunities 
been given for the extension of Christianity as recent 
years have brought. From South and East and 
West the ways have been opened up deep into the 
interior of Africa for the messengers of the Gospel ; 
Japan seeks a new religion ; the Chinese giant 

298 



The Twentieth Century 

has awaked out of his sleep of ceDturies, and is 
thirsting for Western culture ; through Korea 
a mighty Christian movement is passing like 
a spring storm ; and in India there is beginning a 
striving for national independence such as did not 
exist before — Divine signals in the history of the 
world that the time is fulfilled for great Mission- 
ary action. 

" The older Missions, too, in which the formation 
of native Churches is already in process, and through 
which there is passing a more or less earnest seek- 
ing of ecclesiastical independence, are presenting 
new tasks in respect of organisation and education 
of the most far-reaching significance : tasks which 
include all manner of reforms with regard to the 
training of Missionaries and the administration of 
Missionary directorates. 

" Finally, where there are open doors there is no 
lack of adversaries. With Missionary opportunities 
are associated Missionary dangers, and victory can 
only be won through conflict. In Eastern Asia, 
where now the hottest battle will be joined, on the 
one hand the influence of an irreligious Western 
science threatens with moral chaos the nations rooted 
in their traditional heathen view of the world ; 
and on the other hand, the older cultured religions, 
idealised and almost transfigured with flattery by 
European scholars, threaten Missions with new 

299 



The Call of the New Era 

temptations to syncretist formations. The striving 
for ecclesiastical independence in the native Chris- 
tian world, while gladdening in itself, exposes — 
and that not only in Africa — the Church to dis- 
order, and Christianity to the danger of a religious 
and moral relapse, should an unwise doctrinarianism 
grant complete independence from the Missionary 
administration, when maturity of religious and 
moral experience and character has not yet been 
reached. At home, too, Missions are being more 
and more drawn into the great theolosjical strife of 
the present time, and a Missionary method is being 
recommended of a different order in its motives and 
tasks and aims, which places in doubt the absolut- 
ism as well as the universality of Christianity. 

"All this taken together shows us that the 
present great Missionary time is also a very critical 
Missionary time : that it demands men who redeem 
the present great Missionary opportunities with 
courageous faith and a resolution ready for sacri- 
fice ; who will, no less with believing loyalty and 
the wisdom taught by the Word of God, overcome 
the manifold temptations which threaten the very 
life of Christianity and of Missions. It is ap- 
parently just Missions which are to furnish the 
touchstone by which will be proved the different 
religious value of the old Apostolic Gospel and the 
new humanistic Christianity." 

300 



The Twentieth Century 

Such is the weighty deliverance and manifesto 
of one who in his old age is still young, and 
looks out on the new era with eyes filled with 
the wisdom of God and the fullest experience of 
the past. Nor is the testimony of Mr. Mott, the 
General Secretary of the World's Student Christian 
Federation, who faces the problems of the new age 
with all the ardour of consecrated youth, and with 
eyes filled with the yearning to see the Gospel 
preached to all mankind before they close in death, 
any less impressive and far-reaching. " The present 
urgency and crisis in the extreme Orient is un- 
matched by any other crisis and opportunity which 
has confronted the Christian Church. It involves 
the destiny of nearly 500,000,000 of people of 
Japan, Korea, China, Manchuria, and Mongolia, 
i^mong these millions massed around the Pacific 
Basin, the forces of youth and age, of radicalism 
and conservatism, of growth and decay, are seeth- 
ing and struggling for the mastery. What religion 
shall dominate these changing peoples ? Or shall 
it be no religion ? 

"It is a time of supreme crisis in the Far East, 
not only because of the triumphs of Christianity 
and the desirability of pressing the advantages 
which these triumphs afiford, but also because of 
the stupendous changes now in progress in that 
Far Eastern world, especially on the mainland of 

301 



The Call of the New Era 

Asia ; and the great desirability of Christianity 
bringing its full influence to bear while the con- 
ditions are still plastic. ... It is also a time of 
supreme crisis in the Far East because of the 
rising spirit of nationalism and of race patriotism. 

" If I were to mention another reason why this 
is a time of supreme crisis, it would be because of 
the grave and even disastrous reflex influence upon 
the Church in the West of failure to improve the 
unparalleled opportunity in the East. I confess 
that my anxiety is not lest there be [not] a great 
awakening in the East, but lest there may not be 
a corresponding awakening of the Church in the 
West. One result may be that we will become 
callous and hardened, and unresponsive to the 
moving of the living Spirit." Truly the call of 
the new era is very solemn as well as very urgent, 
and is coming to all who love the Christ. 

There are many Mission problems which arise 
out of the history which has thus been hurriedly 
traversed in order that we might get the race 
which precedes the leap, and be open to the full 
impact of the call with which the new era has 
come, and one of the most important is just that 
to which Mr. Mott here alludes — the strange 
processes of interaction and reaction between the 
home and foreign fields of service which may be 
seen all through. How manifest the Holy Spirit 

302 



The Twentieth Century 

lias made it, as He has clothed His gracious 
purposes in historical events, that these are not 
two fields, but one ; and that there cannot be pros- 
perity in either, full and abiding, unless there is 
loyalty in both. To go no farther back over the 
ground already traversed, who can doubt that the 
revivals with which the nineteenth century was 
blessed, like the revival with which it began, were 
largely due to the growth of obedience to the 
orders of the King? 

On the other hand, it may very fairly be argued 
that the loss of the first glow of Missionary 
enthusiasm consequent on the emergence, neces- 
sary as that may have been, of organisation and 
machinery, led in no small degree to the arrested 
development of the work at home which so many 
are meanwhile deploring. The reflex influence of 
Missions on the Church's life must obviously be 
great ; but it is probable that the reflex influence 
of Missions on the Church's doctrine is in no way 
less. Again and again new light has been thrown 
on Scripture, on Old Testament predictions and 
New Testament organisation, by events in the 
foreign field. And when the Church deals, as she 
ought to do, with the doctrine of the Holy Ghost 
on some such scale as that with which she has 
dealt with the doctrines of the Father and the Son, 
nothing will be of greater value to her in her 

303 



The Call of the New Era 

quest than her Mission records. We know the 
Spirit in His works of grace and might. 

Those who are led by the Spirit of God can 
never get away from the conviction that obedience 
to the great Missionary Commission — which knows 
nothing of any division of the fields into home and 
foreign, as if Christ were divided, or as if the 
Eternal Spirit w^ere nearer London or Edinburgh 
than Tokio or Shanghai — is the constant and neces- 
sary condition of success anywhere. The world is 
but one parish, and the Church is the one agency 
which can occupy the one field. A living home 
Church is essential to success among the heathen, 
and obedience among the heathen is essential to 
o-ood work at home. It has been said that a man 

o 

will rise no higher than his wife will let him ; and 
certainly the work among the heathen will rise no 
higher than the workers at home allow, nor will 
the Church at home ever get away from the reflex 
influence of the Church in the regions beyond. 
The royal road to universal success and world-wide 
revival is a hearty response to the appeal of the 
open doors and the empty hearts which are every- 
where crying out for help in the name of the Lord. 
Obedience brings revival, and revival brings the 
power to obey ; and thus the ever-widening circles 
of grace spread out, and ever farther out, to the 
ends of the earth, like the circles on the surface of 

304 



The Twentieth Century 

a pool when a stone has been thrown into it. If 
there is to be recovery of power, there must be 
unity and prayer, and in turn nothing will make 
for unity and prayer like the recovery of power. 

It may even be that the waves of revival which 
are to make all things new at home and to deliver 
the Church from heresy and indifference, worldli- 
ness and unbelief, will come homewards from the 
foreign field. That would be one other of the 
pathetic ironies of history ; and there are many such, 
for God fulfils Himself in many ways. " The wind 
bloweth where it listeth"; and God may yet rebuke 
the pride of the Church of the white man by send- 
ing quickening and fresh revelation through the 
black man, or the yellow man, or the brown. But 
even so, the prayer of all who are truly in sympathy 
with the gracious purpose of salvation will be : 
*' Come, Holy Spirit, come." " Come directly, or 
by way of the Far East, as seemeth good to Thee ; 
but oh, come, and come quickly ! " 



N.E.— 20 305 



CHAPTER X 
THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA 



307 



" The niglit cometh, -when no man can work." — John 9. 4. 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
On such a full sea we are now afloat; 
And we must take the current when it serves, 
Or lose our ventures." — Shakespeare, 

"One God, one law, one element. 
And one far-off divine event. 
To which the whole creation moves." — Tennyson. 

" Nothing great was ever done without passion." — Diderot. 



308 



CHAPTER X 
THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA 

IT has already been insisted on that the supreme 
feature of this call is its urgency ; but it is 
hardly possible to lay too much emphasis on this, 
or to reinforce it too strongly. In a quite unique 
sense this is the psychological moment for the 
Church and the regions beyond. Unless the 
Gospel enters by the opening doors, evil spirits 
will enter in to be the allies of those already en- 
trenched, and the combination may be a menace 
even to the Christianity of the West, as well as to 
its Governments. The pagan deluge from the Far 
East may yet sweep on to the Nearer East, like 
the deluge from Mecca long ago ; and who can tell 
whether there will be another Charles Martel to 
check it in its desolating career, or where the 
colour line might be drawn ? 

It is probably no exaggeration to say that so far 
as China is concerned the next ten years will 
decide its fate. That vast Empire, which is now 

309 



The Call of the New Era 

awakening so marvellously from the slumber of cen- 
turies, and which has in it such infinite possibilities, 
cannot remain as it is in religion, any more than 
in politics or trade. It may become Christian, 
or it may become agnostic. That Western civilisa- 
tion will do its destructive work is certain ; the 
only question is whether the Gospel will also 
do the constructive work which it alone can do. 
There is no lasting advantage in covering over 
red heathenism with a veneer of culture ; and in 
sheer self-defence, if for no other reason, the 
Christians of the Occident should do their utmost 
to win the teeming millions of China for Christ 
while the golden moments last. 

In recent years as many as 15,000 Chinese 
students have been in Tokio at one time ; and 
no fewer than 1500 Japanese teachers are now at 
work throughout China. There are probably as 
many as 1000 Chinese students in attendance at 
the universities of Europe and America, picked 
men, who will go back with a message to them 
who sent them. The revolution is assured ; the 
only question is under whose banner the awakened 
peoples are to move, and words cannot convey 
how all-important it is that they should be under 
Christian influences at such a formative time. All 
else depends on that. 

Nor is it to China alone, or even to the Far 
310 



The Call of the New Era 

East alone, that this plea of urgency applies. 
Those who are entitled to speak say that, away on 
the very roof of the world, the new era, the psycho- 
logical moment, has come also for the long-isolated 
land of Tibet ; while among the semi - pagan 
peoples of South America, that continent which 
has been neglected so long, under the grotesque 
misconception that it was already Christianised, 
there are also strivings and yearnings which are 
equally full of promise and peril. But, indeed, 
that would seem to be true of all the pagan nations 
in this newest of new eras. It seems to be every- 
where as it was in Europe on the eve of the 
Reformation ; and vast changes are impending for 
weal or woe. 

As set forth in the statement of the aims of the 
1910 World's Missionary Conference in Edinburgh : 
" The contact of the East and the West is giving 
rise to a ferment of ideas in the world of human 
thought. It is hardly possible that the hoary 
civilisations of Asia should be subjected to the 
inrush of new ideas without an intellectual up- 
heaval comparable to the movement which shook 
the life of Europe at the Renaissance, and possibly 
surpassing it in the far-reaching influence of its 
eflects. Such a period of living mental activity at 
once afibrds an exceptional opportunity for the 
rapid spread of Christian ideas, and constitutes a 

311 



The Call of the New Era 

peril that will make severe demands on the courage 
and faith of the Christian Church. Of no less 
significance, from the Christian point of view, is 
the wakening of a new national spirit among non- 
Christian peoples. If enlightened and quickened 
by a true vision of Christ, this new spirit may be 
the means of regenerating the national life ; while, 
on the other hand, if Christ should seem in the 
eyes of these peoples to be Western only, it may 
build up barriers that may exclude His Gospel 
from these lands for centuries." " There can only 
be one issue," it has been said ; " the strongest life 
will prevail." 

But there can be no question as to which is the 
strongest life, if only it is brought to bear on the 
situation in the right way. " What East London 
needs is Christianity," said a social worker once. 
" No," said another ; " what East London needs is 
Christians." And he was right. What the heathen 
peoples need is Christians, for even the Gospel must 
become concrete in human lives before it can 
carry everything before it ; and it is not so much 
Christianity as Christians who are on their trial 
now, and who can doubt what their response would 
be if they could only realise what the actual issues 
are ? When continental parliaments have voted 
any question urgent, they suspend all other busi- 
ness until it has been dealt with. They sit die in 

312 



The Call of the New Era 

diem until it lias been settled, on the principle 
that everything else must wait. 

So at this juncture the Church and the State 
alike should vote urgency for the appeal of the 
new era and the awakening lands, yielding to its 
summons or lure, and claim all its possibilities for 
Christ in that Divine strength which the making 
of such a claim never fails to bring with it. Even 
as Cato had it in the Roman Senate at all times 
and seasons, '' Delenda est Carthago" — Carthage 
must be destroyed — so the Christian patriot should 
have it in season and out of season : " The heathen 
must be w^on for Christ"; "Christ must be the 
Leader of the new nations, the supreme Hero of 
the new era." It mattered not what else Rome 
did so long as her cruel and remorseless foe was 
not crushed ; and unless the Gospel can use this 
new opportunity, and prove itself Divine in this 
ordeal of the nations, nothing else the Church may 
do in theology or social enterprise will long avail. 
It may even be now or never so far as this era 
is concerned, and not a few think it may be the 
last era. And whether that be so or not, it is 
certain that we have come once again to a flood- 
tide in the affairs of men ; to one of the formative 
periods or water- sheds in history, to a supremely 
critical era, which must be a savour either of life 
unto life or of death unto death. 

313 



The Call of the New Era 

Decisions made at such an epoch have a sadly 
weird permanence which is all their own — ^just as 
no nation is Protestant now which stood for 
obscurantism and privilege after the first shock 
of the Keformation conflict was over. After 
Niagara is passed, the stream may soon seem to 
flow as peaceably as it did before it was caught in 
the mad swirl of the flood ; but in reality it can 
never be quite the same after it has gone down the 
falls. 

But, further, this new era comes with a call to 
the whole Church to avail herself of all the inven- 
tions, discoveries, and political changes which have 
thrown the world open to the Missionary as it 
never was before. All these must be claimed and 
occupied for Christ and His service. How small 
the Mission world has recently become, and how 
manageable, compared with what it used to be ! 
Yet at the same time, how large it has become all 
at once ! There are so many open doors now that 
men have ceased to remark about them. Indeed, 
all the doors are open now ; hermit nations and 
walled-in lands no longer exist in the old sense. 
Think, too, of how difl'erent a voyage to the East is 
in our day, with swift and well-appointed liners, 
compared with what it meant for Ziegenbalg or 
even for Dufl'. Think also of what steam and 
electricity have done to render for ever impossible 

314 



The Call of the New Era 

the terrible isolation into which Livingstone and 
even Paton entered when they passed beyond the 
zone of civilisation and entered the heathen wilds. 
A Missionary from Great Britain at work in Man- 
churia is now not a month apart from his friends 
at home, and may be said to be in continuous 
touch with them. 

The ends of the earth have come on us, and ere 
long the aeroplane may join hands with wireless 
telegraphy, as another Divine agent for the con- 
quest of space and for the advancement of Christ's 
Kingdom in the regions beyond. And every 
modern invention ought to be consecrated to the 
highest of all ends and made use of in the service 
of Christ. " From Him all skill and science flow "; 
and it is part of the charm of the new era, just as 
it is one of the reasons why there is a new era at 
all, that so many new forces are offering themselves 
that they may be harnessed to the Saviour's car. 
The Bible Societies and the Societies for the spread 
of Christian literature in the vernacular through- 
out the different lands must be strengthened and 
developed with all the resources of civilisation. 

The enemy is using the printing press to flood 
lands like India and Japan with the worst pro- 
ducts of Western infidelity and hatred of Christ ; 
and the children of the Most High must be as 
ingenious and original as their foes in making 

315 



The Call of the New Era 

use of every agency to spread the knowledge of 
salvation through Christ. Even as Paul did, when 
Christ was preached through envy and strife, let 
us rejoice in everything which makes Him and 
His unique claims and gifts available for those 
who are ignorant of Him and His grace. 

Those must be deaf indeed who do not hear in 
all the social and political changes which have 
been taking place throughout heathendom, alike 
amid the nations with ancient civilisations and 
the tribes which are still savage, an imperative 
summons to enter in and make disciples of all 
these peoples in obedience to the Lord's command. 
The separating w^alls are crumbling to the dust. 
" Come over and help us," is the cry which is being 
borne on every wind, and may be heard in a 
multitude of tongues. Nor is it in any sense an 
indefinite call, although it has been so often slurred 
over as if it were. It is being expounded by a 
myriad of commentators for all who have eyes to 
read and hearts to understand. It is as clear and 
binding as any other command in the Word of 
truth. It is not for the elite alone, but for all 
who love the Lord Jesus and can tell in any way 
what He has done for them. It can be truly and 
effectively obeyed by all who wish to do His will. 

Only some, of course, can obey it literally and 
go out to foreign lands. But far more might obey 

316 



The Call of the New Era 

it literally than do so, and even those who remain 
at home can and ought to obey it too. There are 
still many in the homelands who are not disciples ; 
and the Christian call, as at first was the Christian 
practice, is to be a Missionary wherever one finds 
oneself. Then, as regards the work abroad, those 
who must stay at home can not only attend to the 
commissariat, and hold up the hands of their 
delegates and representatives at the front by their 
sympathetic, intelligent interest and their unceas- 
ing prayers ; they can assail the same paganism as 
their comrades abroad. 

Just like Mission work, paganism is one ; and 
paganism in Britain is not essentially difierent 
from paganism in Japan. Nor is there any land 
where primaeval paganism has ever been quite extir- 
pated, nor any land where it may not again lift up 
its defiant head as the very Antichrist whom Christ 
must yet put under His feet. As we have seen in 
connection with the work in the Middle Ages, a 
great mass of paganism survived both outside and 
inside the Church of Rome, even in Europe. It 
was only scotched at the best, and never quite 
killed ; and on the eve of the Reformation Pope 
Leo X. could speak of Christianity as having been 
a profitable fable for him and his. Philosophy 
had gone back to Aristotle, and Christian doctrine 
had been forced into pagan forms ; while art had 

317 



The Call of the New Era 

gone back to naturalism. The Virgin and the 
saints as well as the Lord Himself took the place 
of the deities of Greece and Rome, to say nothing 
of still fouler cults. And although it is the case 
that the theology of paganism is now largely a 
thing of the past in the lands which have been 
Christianised, and that its science has not been 
able to abide the advent of the printing-press 
and the steam-engine, it would be a grievous 
blunder to imagine that paganism itself is extinct 
or effete even in the Christian lands. 

Its temples are everywhere falling to pieces 
before the light of civilisation. That is part of 
the crisis which we have now to face. Yet 
heathenism not only endures, but is adapting 
itself to new conditions. It is even becoming 
Missionary in its old strongholds, while it is reacting 
in more ways than one on the religious life of the 
homelands. Until the nations have been actually 
won for Christ, in reality as well as in name, the 
dark shadow of paganism will remain, even where 
men know that the theoretical basis of the old 
faiths is ridiculous and incredible. 

It has been calculated by experts in such matters 
that over against the 3,000,000 of converts who 
were won from heathenism by Christian Missions 
during the nineteenth century, the population of 
that heathen world increased by no fewer than 

318 



The Call of the New Era 

200,000,000 during the same period. It is a 
colossal error to think of paganism as if it were 
negative merely, the absence of light ; or that all 
that is needed for reformation is that the light of 
the truth should shine into the darkness. Nothing 
is farther from the truth than that the heathen 
nations are so conscious of their defects that they 
welcome the truth whenever it is rightly presented 
to them. Paganism is positive in its opposition 
to the truth ; a dense enveloping black fog which 
distorts and bewilders, and which persists when, 
according to every theory, it ought to have vanished 
for ever. The alternatives with which the Church 
of Christ is faced are not, either to let things go 
on as they are, or win the nations for the Gospel. 
They are in reality, either to conquer heathenism 
in the strength of God, or to be conquered by it. 
Nothing is more obvious from what has taken 
place in the past than that the sands of paganism 
can drift in from the desert until the garden of 
the Lord is only a waste, and the candlestick has 
been removed. 

And after all, in many essential respects, modern 
materialism, as it is practised and as it works out 
in ordinary life, is simply paganism brought up 
to date and adapted to the conditions of AVestern 
culture. Even its morality tends to become pagan, 
and indeed cannot but be pagan when once the 

319 



The Call of the New Era 

restraints of the Christian traditions and the 
Christian environment, which may persist long 
after faith has departed, have finally passed away. 
It does not even deliver men from superstition, 
and still less does it set them free from intolerance 
or the odium tlieologicum ; for nothing in modern 
life has been more persecuting than some of the 
attacks of the secularists, in high stations and in 
low, on the freedom of the children of God. 

Materialism ends by destroying the sense of 
personal responsibility. There is no Supreme Being 
left to whom man can be accountable ; nor, indeed, 
is there any man left to be accountable. For what 
meaning has either praise or blame, or such terms 
as good or bad, for one who is no more than a 
fortuitous concourse of atoms ? There is not much 
left that is worth having, after it has been authori- 
tatively announced that "we are what we eat." 
Charity and compassion are ridiculous and per- 
nicious interferences with the only sacred things 
that are left — the gods of the materialistic Israel, 
the survival of the fittest, and the struggle for 
existence. Whenever materialism is logical, it can 
have no more respect than paganism has for free- 
dom of opinion, noble motives, patriotic yearnings, 
or strivings after holiness. Indeed, it has less 
respect for such things than paganism at its best, 
since for it they are but the necessary outcome 

320 



The Call of the New Era 

of inevitable and impersonal molecular changes. 
Materialism, just like paganism, would crush out 
as peculiarly hateful everything connected with the 
love and grace of God ; and especially everything 
connected with that great doctrine of the forgive- 
ness of sins which lies at the foundation of the 
Christian hope and is the inspiration of those who 
labour among the weary and heavy-laden, the 
corner-stone of salvation by the blood of Christ, 

There is therefore Mission work at his own door 
which every Christian is called to do, whether he 
is in a foreign land or in a Christian land ; work, 
too, in which enormous difficulties must be faced, 
and in which glory may be won. Indeed, it may 
be questioned whether Foreign Mission work can 
prosper unless Home Mission work is being eagerly 
carried on, any more than the work at home 
can prosper if the great lone lands of the heathen 
are overlooked. Every Christian at home ought 
to have his deputies abroad if he cannot go there 
himself; but no believer can do all his work by 
deputy. He can only work through others in 
proportion as he is doing work himself. He can 
only do his part in the great organism of the 
Body of Christ through co-operation with all the 
other members of the Church ; and for that he 
must find work to do among the heathen wherever 
his lot has been cast. Those who are blind to 
N.E.— 21 321 



The Call of the New Era 

the hands which beckon in either sphere will not 
be of much avail in the other, whichever it may- 
be ; and to this it may be added that those who 
can listen without anguish and effective response 
to the dumb yearnings and the summons too deep 
for words of the empty hearts and broken lives 
either here or yonder — and there seem to be many 
such — have but little ground for believing that 
Jesus of Nazareth, Who came from heaven to earth 
to seek and save the lost, is their Saviour and 
Lord. At any rate, they have little of His spirit 
or mind. 

This call of the new era, further, comes with 
a most impressive appeal to all the scattered 
branches of the Church of the living God, alike in 
the homelands and in the foreign field, to make 
their unity manifest, and to be one in presence 
of all the forces which are contending for the 
mastery, that the whole world may believe that 
the Father sent His Son to be Saviour and King. 
The work is far too great to be done by any section 
of the Church, and while there may be advantages 
in emulation and even in rivalry up to a certain 
point, the work which endures is not done along 
these lines, but through a Church at one in its 
consecration. The work is sufficient to tax all 
the resources of the Church ; and there should be 
no waste, nor any useless competition in one field 

-522 



The Call of the New Era 

while other fields are left unoccupied. What is 
needed is consecrated unity, and a great supreme 
effort all along the line such as will submerge all 
the miserable divisions and rivalries at home in 
an all-absorbing yearning and endeavour to win 
all men for Christ. 

It will not suffice to employ the utmost resources 
of our modern civilisation, unless we also supply 
the unity which, as Christ has so clearly indicated, 
is a condition of success in this very w^ork of con- 
vincing the world that He is the Messiah. In spite 
of all the painful travesties of it which history 
has seen, Catholicism must be the Church's ideal ; 
and she must earnestly seek to attain it, and be 
prepared to make sacrifices to attain it, in face 
of all obstacles. The schismatic spirit is hateful 
and treasonable anywhere ; but it is peculiarly 
obnoxious in presence of the heathen, as if Christ 
were divided. And it is full of sisjnificance 
that the work of reunion has begun on the foreign 
field, and that already Churches which have not 
yet been able to unite their forces at home have 
united them out at the front, where Satan's syna- 
gogue is. Just as in Canada the movement for the 
union of the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Con- 
gregationalists in one great Evangelical Church — a 
movement which is full of hope as it is of daring — 
has been inspired and mightily reinforced by the 

323 



The Call of the New Era 

needs of the Far West into which emigrants are 
for ever pouring, so it is the pressure of the 
problems of heathenism which is forcing the 
Churches into line with each other in the regions 
beyond. 

In India the representatives of no fewer than 
six Churches have become one Presbyterian Church, 
and it is said that others will join them. And this 
young Church is making very gratifying progress. 
Its congregations increased from 115 in 1906 to 
125 in 1907 ; its communicants from 15,772 to 
16,085 ; and its baptized adherents from 31,335 
to 37,514. During that same year the number 
of baptisms was 5220, of which not fewer than 
2674 were those of adults. In Calcutta, too, the 
colleges of the Established Church of Scotland and 
of the United Free Church of Scotland have now 
joined their forces and become one institution for 
permeating the new learning in India with the 
doctrine and Person of Christ and for the train- 
ing of native Indians to evangelise their fellow- 
countrymen. The same unifying process is going 
on in Madras, and its great Christian College. 
The State connection, which is still a barrier 
between these two Churches at home, does not 
exist abroad, and so they can be one there, 
although still separated in Scotland. 

In Japan for years now there has been union 
324 



The Call of the New Era 

among the converts of the various Protestant 
Missions ; and in all new Missions care should be 
taken to heal the breaches before they are made, 
by working in unity from the first. It is far 
from improbable that, just as the great revival for 
which Christendom is agonising, and without which 
she cannot live, may come by way of the foreign 
field, the impulse and power which are needed 
for the union which Christ desires may come 
from the same quarter. It may well be that the 
pressure from abroad will enable the home Churches 
to see things from the Divine standpoint and in 
their right relations and proportions, and promote a 
true unity, in which there will be room for charity 
in all things, along with unity in essentials and 
liberty in non-essentials, combined with the wisdom 
truly to distinguish the essential from the non- 
essential, and to see past everything else to their 
Divine Head. Well may all believers pray and work 
for such a consummation ; for it is thus that God 
incites His people to obedience and reveals Himself 
to those who do His will in child-like simplicity 
and sincerity. 

This loud call of the new era is greatly accentu- 
ated and reinforced by the extraordinary activity 
of the enemies of the Christian faith. They too 
seem to be impressed by the urgency of the crisis, 
and are making use of all the resources of civilisation 

325 



The Call of the New Era 

and all the inventions and changes through which 
God is inciting His people to dare and do great 
things for Him. In only too many instances, in- 
deed, there is a malignity in the opposition which 
is shown to Christ and those who are forward to 
serve Him, and especially to those who go out 
into the heathen darkness with His light in their 
hands, which is comparable only to the w^ork of 
the demons who assailed our Lord when He was 
here on the earth in the days of His flesh. 

Once again the Satanic kingdom is measuring 
all its might with the might of the King. The 
powers of darkness are all alive to the full signifi- 
cance and possibilities of the new situation, and 
are on the alert to attain the victory for that 
" mystery of iniquity " which from Apostolic times 
until now has worked so much woe. There is a 
certain encouragement in all this activity, and it 
should nerve every Christian to the utmost to 
secure the conquest for Christ. For all we know, 
it may be that these evil forces, these unclean 
powers of the pit, are marshalling for the 
Armageddon in which the last battle will be 
fought out ; and unless believers everywhere unite 
to enter in and occupy when their Lord is ready 
to march at their head, their opportunities may 
quickly be lost, and the black flag of the enemy 
of souls may float over the strongholds which 



The Call of the New Era 

should have been won for the King. That the 
enemy is so active and so mischievous and malig- 
nant is, of course, a tribute to the activity of the 
Church in spite of all her divisions and worldliness ; 
for he is always ready to leave the Church alone if 
she leaves him alone : but it must never be taken 
for granted, in any particular conflict, that the 
enemy of souls is bound to be overcome. 

Truth is great, and will prevail. Christ is to 
reign until He has put everything hostile under 
His feet ; but there may be many victories for the 
evil before the final victory of Christ. This is a 
fallen world, but it is a redeemed world ; and it is 
inconceivable that the final result can mean any- 
thing else than victory for the pure and true : yet 
the enemy who triumphed in Asia Minor and 
North Africa, the enemy who sowed the tares of 
Socinianism and Unitarianism in the Churches of 
the Reformation, the enemy who has sowed 
sedition even among Missionaries with the black- 
ness all around, may triumph once again and for 
a time in Great Britain or Japan. In presence of 
a materialistic science, which is seeking to replace 
the old paganism with the new ; in presence of 
Islam, with its efi'orts after expansion and its dreams 
of reform ; in presence of rationalism eating into 
the vitals of Protestantism, and sacerdotalism de- 
grading so much of Romanism — there is everything 

327 



The Call of the New Era 

in tlie call which the new era addresses to the 
faithful in all the Churches that can appeal to 
courage and heroism, to loyalty to Christ and com- 
passion for the souls of men. 

The battle will not be won either by mechanism 
or magic. In the final issue, neither mere ortho- 
doxy nor mere organisation will avail. There must 
be living faith in Christ, prompt obedience to His 
call ; devoted, grateful service even to the death. 
This kind goeth not out but by prayer ; and no- 
thing less than a living, self-denying Christianity 
can conquer heathenism as it now confronts us 
for freedom or truth. All else is but ploughing 
the sands or beating the air. 

But, further, this call of the new era comes to 
us not only reinforced by the activity of the King's 
foes, but also by the very difficulty and complexity 
of the situation. Those who think merely of open 
doors are seeing only one side of the shield. In 
every sense of the term, the situation is critical, 
and there is the utmost need for the organisation 
of all the Church's resources even from the view- 
point of self-defence. There are those on the other 
side who dream dreams of sweeping Christianity 
out of the way. At best, we are told, it can only be 
incorporated, and taken up into the new religion, 
which is to embody all that is best in all the older 
theologies and faiths, as something which may have 

328 



The Call of the New Era 

been of use in the evolution of the race, but has 
had its day, and must now give place to something 
better which will preserve all that is good in it. 

The battle which is now joined is one in which 
no terms will be given. It is a battle to the 
death — or rather, as Christians believe, to the 
life. It is a battle, too, which can only be won 
by a citizen army, and the whole army must not 
only be mobilised but actually engaged on the 
field. Ingenuity and originality must be shown 
in the strategy ; and we should not only never 
despise the foe, we should be willing to learn from 
him. Every atom of strength must be used ; and 
instead of slurring over the dangers and difficulties, 
they should be insisted on as adding to the urgency 
of the appeal. It is more than probable that the 
heroic element in the Church would respond eagerly 
to such an appeal. As a matter of experience, it 
is not the call to a '' walk over," or to a " demon- 
stration in force," which has hitherto roused the 
Missionary spirit most and made common men 
heroes, but the summons to endure hardness as 
good soldiers of Jesus Christ. 

It has been remarked of the Church of Rome 
that she never abates her claims, and that that has 
been one of the secrets of her success, such as it 
has been. And if this sometimes becomes an 
appeal to carnal pride, it need not be so ; even 

329 



The Call of the New Era 

as Christ appealed to His own generation to leave 
all and follow Him, so He still appeals to the best 
and noblest in man, and calls for those who will 
storm the breach and face the hope which is for- 
lorn only in name, since He is Leader and Lord. 
Nor should the failures and defeats of the campaign 
be concealed from the rank and file, lest they 
should be discouraged and faint in their minds. 
There has never been such readiness to confess 
Christ as when confession meant pei'secution and 
perhaps death ; and the men and women through 
whom the world will be won for righteousness and 
truth are just those who will be incited by the 
difficulties and dangers of the situation ; true 
knights of God as they assuredly are. 

In this connection it is noteworthy that what- 
ever posts may appeal in vain for volunteers, that 
has never been true of the places which meant 
facing the deadly fever and taking up the work of 
those who had fallen on the battlefield. If it be true 
that even in the midst of the revival in Manchuria 
it has been difficult to get workers from the home- 
lands, it is also true that out on the Congo, where 
so many have fallen, there has never been lack of 
true-hearted men and women to take their places. 
The fascination of Africa has been felt in the 
Mission field as well as in connection with travel and 
exploration ; and that so many have perished in 

330 



The Call of the New Era 

its wilds has not hindered, but has rather encour- 
aged, others to follow in their train. 

From all this it follows that the Intelligence 
Department in the Missionary warfare should be 
specially busy and well equipped, and that know- 
ledge should be spread everywhere regarding the 
present crisis, with all its promises and all its risks. 
It is all very well to " muddle through somehow " ; 
but it is far better to give the King of our very 
best in every department, and to go through with 
open eyes and intelligent outlook. 

The idea which is now being developed of 
Mission Study Circles is splendid, and capable 
of vast usefulness. God never works by magic, 
other than the magic of faith ; and if the Church 
is to see her sons and daughters respond to the 
cry, " Come over and help us," she must bring 
every legitimate influence to bear on them, and 
let them know the facts of the case. Obscurantism 
is of no avail ; and no part of the Church's work 
has less need to fear the light than the imperialism 
of the Gospel, which claims the whole round earth 
for Christ, and therefore for civilisation and 
freedom. It was through Mission study — the 
circle or band sometimes consisting of only one 
member — that the best of our Missionaries were 
sent out to their work. Carey made his cobbler's 
shed a Missionary college. It was the reading 



The Call of the New Era 

of Missionary letters in his Sabbath-school by the 
minister of an obscure country congregation which 
made James Chalmers determine as a boy that, 
God helping him, he would be a Missionary. 

Those who think that men can be swept into 
this work by blind impulse know little of its 
history. Splendid as it is when the brightest 
and best among our youth volunteer under the 
influence of stirring appeals, it is altogether 
necessary that their decision to be Missionaries 
should be based on knowledge of what is to be 
done and how it must be done. And it is a 
lamentable fact that even yet, in spite of the 
liberal use which is now being made of the print- 
ing-press, the ignorance which prevails about 
Missions all round is as stupendous as it is shame- 
ful. The ordinary press may have ceased to sneer 
at Missions, but it is as little interested as ever in 
their real work. Not a few, too, even of those 
who contribute mechanically and regularly to 
Mission funds, do so without any adequate know- 
ledge or interest, and are consequently unable to 
follow^ their givings with their prayers as they 
ought. Nothing but ignorance, alike of the Bible 
and of what is being done for perishing souls, can 
account for the indifference of many who say that 
Christ has redeemed them ; while as for the actual 
opposition of some who profess to be Christians 

2>Z^ 



The Call of the New Era 

even iu this new and inspiring era, it can only 
perish through the truth, as to what is being done 
and what ought to be done, falling on it, like 
some foul fungus which cannot abide the light. 

It may readily be admitted that Missionaries 
have not always been heroic, or their supporters 
always wise ; and that we may learn many things 
from the nations beyond the pale, and be interested 
in " native ways of expressing sacred truths," 
without acting as if believers iu Christ have any 
alternative to obeying His express orders and 
making Him known everywhere. Philosophers may 
discuss whether Christianity is the final religion ; 
but it is treason for Christians to act as if that 
could conceivably be an open question for them. 
Yet some who bear Christ's name speak of it being 
better in some cases to leave heathen men and 
women in their heathenism, and of it being 
necessary for some tribes that they should reach 
Christ by way of Islam. Truly the need for 
knowledge, and of knowledge that will move the 
heart and touch the emotions as well as inform the 
mind, is very great ; and some who cannot go 
abroad might give compensation by collecting and 
scattering such knowledge all around, and putting 
the darkness to flight. 

There ought to. be the same keen interest among 
Christians at home in what is going on among 

333 



The Call of the New Era ' 

their brethren in the foreign field that there is in a 
time of war in what is happening at the front. 
It is said that Sunday newspapers, that unhappy 
product of modern civilisation, got a footiug in 
America during the, Civil War, because the people 
could not wait till Monday for the Sunday's news ; 
and that eagerness for information is a picture of 
the interest w^hich the Church at home should take 
in the doings of her soldiers away out in the con- 
flict with heathen darkness. 

But the contrast between that, or anything like 
that, and what actually obtains is very obvious. 
All the resources of literature and the platform, 
of the printing-press and lantern-slides, should 
be employed to spread the light, and everything 
should be up-to-date. It is more than time that 
some of the stock pictures, of tidy little congrega- 
tions listening to a preacher in full clerical attire, 
under a grove of palm trees, and the like, found 
their way to the limbo of forgotten lore. If 
only the boys and girls, the young men and women, 
who are growing up in the Church, knew better 
what is being done, and how much might and 
ought to be done, there would soon be kindled 
such a fire of enthusiasm as would bring sturdy 
volunteers everywhere into the field, and would 
cause the Church to rise as she has never yet 
done to the height of her calling in Christ. Nor 

334 



The Call of the New Era 

need there be any fear as to the result of intro- 
ducing disintegrating forces among the tribes and 
nations to which we carry the mighty solvents of 
Christianity and civilisation. 

The call of the new era is to give all men 
everywhere the very best we have, and that 
involves giving them the Gospel of the grace 
of God. Tremendous as is the responsibility of 
introducing such a disintegrating spirit into the 
life of another civilisation, it is a vastly greater 
responsibility for Christians to refuse obedience 
to the Divine command, and fail to introduce the 
only power that can truly reintegrate society 
and reconstruct it on a permanent and just basis. 
So Ions: as Christians are actino- in obedience to 
their Lord, and do it in His spirit, they may 
leave the responsibility and the results to Him. 
Sin has already done the disintegrating work, and 
those who know the Gospel are called to throw 
the healing salt into the springs of life. In any 
case, we may take it that Herbert Spencer was 
right when he said : " The highest truth the wise 
man sees, he will fearlessly utter : knowing that, 
let what may come of it, he is thus playing his 
right part in the world ; knowing that, if he can 
effect the change he aims at — well ; if not — well 
also, but not so well." 

The wise Missionary will never seek to transplant 

335 



The Call of the New Era 

what is accidental iu Occidental Christianity into 
the Orient, or what is merely Anglo-Saxon in 
Church government amongst races altogether alien 
in habit and origin. Nor will he ever allow 
himself to be a political agent, or the mere fore- 
runner of the trader. In his love for those among 
whom he labours, and in his loyalty to their 
national aspirations and love of freedom, he will 
be jealous for all their rights, and will put his 
trust in what is essential in the Gospel, and make 
Christ Himself the Alpha and the Omega, the 
Beginning and the End. And thus, in the 
great work of winning the heathen for the Lord, 
there is need for infinite wisdom, just as there 
is scope for the exercise of every other gift and 
grace. 

The equipment of the Missionaries of the 
twentieth century is set forth in the high calling 
of the Evangelist of the first. They are to unite, 
as those sent forth as sheep among wolves, the 
wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of 
the dove. They are to have that good sense and 
insiofht without which the work can never be 
carried on with success. They must be able to 
make the most of their circumstances, and be men 
of afiairs, wise administrators, and statesmanlike 
leaders. They must reflect deeply on the ways 
and means which will lead them to the goal, and 

336 



The Call of the New Era 

choose the best. Yet alongside of this there must 
also be the simplicity of the dove, lest humble 
trust in the Divine guidance should be replaced 
by self-seeking and self-conceit. The union of 
these two sets of qualities is the ideal set before 
the Missionary by his Lord. Mere cleverness or 
even ability is not enough, and yet there is no 
virtue in being gullible. But to add the harm- 
lessness of the dove to the wisdom of the serpent 
is the highway to victory. 

Thus does the Call of the New Era come to us, 
with all the ages behind it to give it weight and 
emphasis ; and not one accent of the messages of 
the past need be ignored as we listen to the orders 
for the new day, rememljeriug always tliat with 
every new summons to service there comes the 
promise of grace to obey, if there be the will to 
obey, and that as our days are so shall our 
strength be. And now is the judgment of this 
world. 

1. The era of Old Testament preparation, 
within the fence and beyond, unites with the new 
era to say that the will of God is that all men 
should be saved. " Behold, all souls are Mine," 
is still the Divine reminder ; they are all of one 
blood, and the knowledge of the Lord shall yet 
N.E.— 22 337 



The Call of the New Era 

cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea= 
" Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain 
and hill laid low." 

2. The first Christian century unites with the 
latest to say that there must be no geographical 
limitations in the outlook of the believer ; that 
the Gospel is meant for all and adapted to the 
needs of all ; that it can lay hold of all who need 
it, and that all men need it. Other religions 
have their zones of vegetation, beyond which 
they cannot thrive ; but Christianity can flourish 
wherever man can live. It is for the Bushman 
and Eskimo, as well as for the cultured and de- 
veloped peoples ; for the ancient and the modern, 
for the Occident and the Orient alike. " Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
every creature," is still the Divine command and 
will. 

3. The generations which saw the Empire of 
Rome overrun by the emissaries of Christ unite 
to say to our generation that every believer is 
called to be a Missionary, and that every con- 
gregation of the saints should be a centre of light 
in the midst of the darkness and sin. Wherever 
the Christian finds himself — in peace in his own 
home, or in flight as a martyr for the truth — to 

338 



The Call of the New Era 

the extent of his opportunities, he must let his light 
shine, and claim everyone he meets for the service 
of his Lord. The anvil wears out the hammer ; 
and even if there is still persecution for those 
who are loyal to the Saviour, God honours courage 
and faithfulness; and the " Galilean " Who conquered 
long ago will assuredly conquer in the days to come, 
and the crowning victory may be near at hand. 

4. The era of Missions to the Barbarians 
throughout Europe reminds our era that in the 
Kingdom of Christ there is to be neither Jew nor 
Gentile, Barbarian nor Greek ; and that Christ is 
the great Leveller, who always levels up. It 
reminds us, too, that just in proportion as the 
spirit of priestcraft enters into the work, the 
hankering to lord it over Christ's heritage, so the 
true Missionary spirit dies out, and faith, on which 
all else depends, disappears with it. A little leaven 
leaveneth the whole lump alike for evil or for 
good ; and the " mystery of iniquity " can creep in 
like a blight or an untimely frost, until even the 
garden of the Lord becomes a dreary waste. 
There are blessed circles of grace in the history 
of the Kingdom ; but there are also vicious circles, 
in which unbelief strengthens the forces which 
gave birth to it at first until the very sources of 
life are poisoned, the darkness accounted light, 

339 



The Call of the New Era 

the evil worshipped as good, and the Gospel 
wounded in the house of its friends. 

5. The era of the Reformation, with all its 
grandeur and glory, has a very solemn message 
for our time. There may be clay mingled with 
the iron, and even the greatest and best may be 
short-sighted and one-sided. It is only as men 
do God's will that they can know His doctrine ; 
and absorption in home problems and domestic 
struggles may exclude Foreign Mission work so 
that there is failure all along the line, both at 
home and abroad. The home problems cannot be 
solved except by a Church which is loyal to the 
whole counsel of God ; there can be no enduring- 
triumphs in the conflicts at home unless there 
are also victories abroad ; the deadliest blow 
which can be struck at the work at home is 
to make it everything. Never was the unity 
of the work in all its branches more vividly en- 
forced than in that age of giants, and never 
was the doom of one-sidedness more tragically 
set forth. 

6. The Deformation era and ours agree in pro- 
claiming that nothing can flourish unless Foreign 
Missions flourish ; that heresy both in life and 
doctrine is inevitable unless there is obedience to 

340 



The Call of the New Era 

the marching orders of the Church, which are also 
its standing orders ; and that paganism will not 
be neutral in the strife, even if the Church would 
fain come to terms with its ancient foe. The end 
of these things is death, and disobedience is the 
pathway to rationalism and doom. Everything 
which tends to drive the supernatural out of the 
ordinary daily life, and to belittle the miraculous, 
tends also to destroy the desire to win men for 
Christ anywhere ; and equally, as a matter of 
course, whatever makes men haul down the flag 
of the Cross out at the front will send a chill 
to the heart of the Church at home and make 
everything common and unclean. 

7. The wondrous Evangelical Revival with which 
the eighteenth century — that era of reaction and 
unbelief — came to an end and the nineteenth 
century — that era of enterprise and expansion — 
began, is the converse of all this, and sends on the 
same message to us from the other and gracious 
side. Carey is the co-worker of Simeon ; Claudius 
Buchanan joins hands with Wilberforce in the 
work of reform ; Ziegenbalg and Francke conquer 
space in the unity of the Spirit and of the Body 
of Christ. The true impulse of humanity knows 
nothing of geographical limitations, and the tide 
of reform which comes through the revival of 

341 



The Call of the New Era 

heart-religion flows into every creek. The feet 
of him who brings the good tidings cross the seas 
and tarry not until he has been in every land. 
Not only are the home and foreign departments 
one, when seen from the standpoint of the eternal ; 
social and religious reform are but one when the 
love-light of the Gospel is in men's eyes, and 
their hearts are tender because of what the great 
salvation has done for them. 

8. The nineteenth century unites with the 
twentieth to tell of the first-fruits of the great 
harvest which is yet to fill all the earth with joy ; 
and to show how every gift and grace, every 
revolution and discovery, can be consecrated to 
the highest and holiest ends. The increase in 
the Church abroad has been vastly greater than 
the increase at home ; and although some imagine 
that everything is lost which is spent in the 
foreign field, that sphere is in no way a debtor to 
the Church at home. Nothing has brought such 
blessing to the Church in modern times as the 
work among the lieathen ; and, if only it be carried 
on to perfection, it will make all things new in 
heaven and on earth. Already many a promise 
has been illumined ; whole tracts of Scripture 
have been interpreted by God's marvellous doings ; 
and the entire theology of the Evangelical Churches 

342 



The Call of the New Era 

has been interpenetrated by a new and more 
tender spirit, as they have shared with Christ in 
the fellowship of His travail when nations long 
in darkness and death have been born in a day. 

9. The twentieth century has opened with fulness 
of promise, but also with that fulness of responsi- 
bility which such promise never fails to bring. To 
all who have the vision of the unseen, or know 
anything of the open secret of God, it is saying 
that this is the judgment of this world and the 
crisis of the Church ; that it may be now or never ; 
and that what ought, in the great mercy of our 
God, to be a savour of life unto life, may be so 
perverted as to become a savour of death unto 
death. Never were events combining to say to all 
earnest and loyal souls with such solemnity and 
intensity : " Work while it is day, for the night 
cometh when no man can work." 

10. As for the Call of the New Era, all the 
eras unite with ours to make it both urgent and 
inspiring. In some ways ours is an age which is 
*' sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and 
burdened with problems for which some see no 
other solution but through the destruction of law 
and order. But all around in the Mission field 
there is the sense of promise, almost of youth, as 

343 



The Call of the New Era 

great nations are casting off the sleep of ages and 
goings forth as a stronoj man to run a race. 

Once again God has come to His people with 
vast ojDportunities, and is calling all who are 
obedient to His will to use them in the light of the 
successes and failures of the ages which are gone. 
The Golden Age of the Gospel lies in front. It was 
not in Eden, but is still to come. " The best is 
yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was 
made." " He that hath an ear, let him hear what 
the Spirit saith unto the churches." 



144 



INDEX 



Abgar Bar Manu, 67. 
Abraham, 13, 19. 
Abyssinia, 114. 
Adamnan, 109. 
Alexander the Great, 25. 
Alexandria, 27, 63, 79. 
Andrew the Apostle, 42. 
Andronicus, 36. 
Anna, 23, 25. 
Antioch, 36, 38, 62, 63. 
Antoninus Pius, 67. 
Apocrj'pha, 17. 
Apollos, 41. 
Apologists, 62. 

Justin Martyr, 73, 74. 

Origen, 73, 79, 80. 

Polycarp, 73, 74. 

Tertullian, 73, 77, "i 
89. 
Apostles, 41. 
Arabia, 27. 
Areopagus, 51. 
Arnold of Cologne, 115. 
Asceticism, 101. 
Asia Minor, 44, 51, 327. 
Asiarchs, 50. 
Athens, 51. 
Aulus Plautius, 49. 

Barnabas, 38, 39, 41. 
Bible Societies, 208-10. 



Bithynia, 51. 
Blackstone, 194. 
Bohemia, 124. 
Brazil, 146. 
Britain, 43, 92. 
Bryennios, 71. 
Banyan, 8, 37. 
Burma, 237. 

Cairo, Mohammedan conference 

at, 5. 
Calvin, 128, 138, 141, 146. 
Calvinism, 159, 182. 
Carinthia, 92. 
Carlyle, 7. 
Carthage, 63. 
Casas, Las, 132. 
Celts, 109. 

Chalmers, Dr., 215, 218, 249. 
Chaplains, Missionary, 185. 
China, 114, 115, 237, 330. 

modern spirit in, 293-95, 310. 
Christianity, Imperial, 40, 272, 

331. 
Spiritual and Universal, 24, 

34. 
Churchill, Right Hon. Winston, 

234. 
Cilicia, 27. 
Claudius, 27, 48. 
Coligny, 146. 



345 



Index 



Commission, The Great, 16, 35, 

269. 
Conimodus, 66. 
Comparative Religion and 

Missions, 283-84. 
Congo, 135, 168, 330. 
Constantine, 55, 69, 89. 
Continent, Evangelical Revival, 

210. 
Missionary Societies, 260. 
Corinth, 44,^62, 63. 
Cornelius, 8, 37, 38, 51. 
Crispus, 51. 
Culross, 98. 
Cyprus, 36, 44, 50. 
Cyrene, 27. 

Danube, 92. 
Decius, 66. 

Dennis, Dr., 208, 233, 258. 
Diaspora, 26, 27, 28. 
Diocletian, 68. 
Dionysius, 43. 
Dominicans, 114, 132. 
Domitian, 43, 47-48, 49. 
Domitilla, 49. 

Easter controversy, 60. 

Ebionism, 60. 

Eclecticism when Christ came, 

24. 
Edessa, 67. 
Eigg, 93. 

Epaphroditus, 41. 
Ephesus, 43, 45, 50, 62. 
Erasmus, 80, 143. 
Erastus, 51. 

Erskine, Dr. John, 159. 
Eternal punishment, doctrine of, 

and Missions, 285-87. 
Eusebius, 68. 



Evangelical Revival — 

began quietly, 196. 

associated with prayer, 196. 

in Britain, 195, 200, 201 seq. 

on Continent, 210. 

in America, 210, 211. 

and inventions, 229. 

eve of, 200. 
Expectancy when Christ came, 

24. 
Ezra's reformation and ex- 
clusivism, 15. 

Finns, 111. 

Flanders, 128. 

Flavins Clemens, 49. 

Fliedner, 210. 

France, 43. 

Franciscans, 132. 

Francke, 171, 341. 

Franks, 92. 

French Revolution, 180, 193. 

Frobisher, 147. 

Fry, Elizabeth Gurney, 201, 

231. 
Fuller, Andrew, 181. 

Gabriel the preacher, 128. 
Galatia, 45, 46. 
Galerius, 69. 
Gallienus, 69. 
Gallus, 92. 
Genesis, 13. 
Gentiles, 37. 

Germanic peoples and Reforma- 
tion, 122. 
Gibbon, 58, 76. 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 141. 
Glabrio, 50. 
Glasgow, 100. 
Gnosticism, 59. 
Golden Age, 16, 20. 



346 



Index 



Gospel, 29. 
Goths, 90, 92, 109. 
Greeks, 19, 22, 25. 
Green, J. E., 199. 
Greenland, 110. 

Haarlem, 128. 

Hadrian, 67. 

Haldane, 220. 

Halle, 171. 

Harnack, 136. 

Heathen world, moral state, 

28. 
Hebrews, 19. 
Herrnhut, 172. 
Higher Criticism and Missions, 

281-84. 
Hindus, 41. 
History, God in, 8, 10. 
Holland, 138. 

Holy Spirit, 39, 60, 112, 123. 
Howard, John, 201. 
Hungary, 111. 
Huns, 109. 
Hunte, Sir G. Le, and Missions, 

235. 
Huntingdon, Lady, 195. 
Hus, John, 125. 
Hymns, Missionary, 177. 

Iceland, 110. 

Imperialism and Missions, 272, 

234 s«2. 
India, 113, 180, 184, 237. 

East India Company, 183. 

modern spirit in, 292, 293. 
Intelligence Department, 331. 
Inventions and Missions, 204, 

229, 315. 
lona, 104 i^en. 
Ireland, 102. 
Isaiah, IG, 20. 



Isolation necessary for expan- 
sion, 14. 
Israel, why chosen, 21. 

James the Apostle, 42. 

Japan, 164-65, 239-41. 

Jeremiah, 16, 20. 

Jerome, 125. 

Jerusalem, 27, 45. 

Jesuits, 132. 

Jews, 15, 22, 26, 46. 

Joan of Arc, 14. 

John the Apostle, 33, 43, 73. 

John of Monte Corvino, 114. 

Johnson, Dr., 105. 

Jonah, 16, 18. 

Joseph of Arimathea, 43. 

Josephus, 15. 

Junia, 36. 

Justin Martyr, 73, 74. 

Kaiserswerth, 210. 

Keim, 63. 

Kilmary, etc., 93. 

Kingdom of God spiritual and 

universal, 24, 34. 
Knox, John, 112, 127, 139, 

141. 
Kurtz, 143. 

Lapps, 147. 

Latin peoples and Reformation 

123. 
Lecky, 192. 

Legion of Honour, 262. 
Leo X., 88. 
Libya, 42. 
Licinius, 69. 

Literature, Missionary, 278-80. 
Lithuanians, 111. 
Lord's Supper, 81. 
Loyola, Ignatius, 164. 



;47 



Index 



Luke the Evangelist, 51. 
Luther, 112, 117, 125, 129. 
Lutkens, Dr., 171. 
Lyons, 63. 

Macaulay, 192. 
Maccabees, 23. 
Marco Polo, 113. 
Marcus Aurelius, 65, 66, 67. 
Masson, Professor, 156. 
Materialism and Missions, 288. 
Mauritania, 42. 
Mecca, conference at, 5. 
Merivale, Dean, 49. 
Mesopotamia, 42, 67. 
Messianic King, 42, 67. 
Methodists, 192. 

and Foreign Missions, 193. 
Milan, Edict of, 55, 69, 87. 
Mill, John Stuart, 202. 
Milvian Bridge, 69. 
Missionaries in early ages of 
Christianity — 

Aidan, 92, 95. 

Augustine, 92. 

Baithean, 95. 

Blain, 94. 

Brude, 106. 

Bruic, 93, 94. 

Chattan, 94. 

Columba, 96, 101 seq. 

Columbanus, 92. 

Cuthbert, 95. 

Kenneth, 95. 

Kentigern or Mungo, 96, 99. 

Killian, 92. 

Maelrubha, 94. 

Martin of Tours, 92. 

Michael, 94. 

Ninian, 94, 96 seq. 

Palladius, 98. 

Patrick, 93, 95. 



Missionaries in early ages of 
Christianity (continued) — 
Ulphilas, 92. 
Valentinus, 92. 
Virgilius, 92. 
Missionaries in later ages of 
Christianity — 
Arnut, Fred, 262. 
Brainerd, David, 170. 
Buchanan, Claudius, 341. 
Burns, William C, 262. 
Calvert, 262. 
Carey, 158, 180 seq., 185, 195, 

279, 331, 341. 
Chalmers, 261, 332. 
Chamberlain, Jacob, 262. 
Damien, 262. 
Duflf, 219, 221, 279, 314. 
Eliot, John, 170. 
Gilmour, 261. 
Hannington, 248-50. 
Heber, 279. 
Horder, 262. 
Judson, 279. 
Laws, 250, 262. 
Livingstone, 248 - 50, 279, 

315. 
Mackay, 262. 
Marshman, 222. 
Moffat, 231, 249. 
Morrison, Robert, 212, 222. 
Baton, Dr., 261, 315. 
Patteson, Coleridge, 262. 
Plutschau, 171. 
Schwartz, 98. 
Selwyn, Bishop, 262. 
Smith, Stanley, 251. 
Stewart, James, 262. 
Studd, C. T., 251. 
Taylor, Annie, 262. 
Taylor, Hudson, 262. 
Tucker, Bishop, 234. 



348 



Index 



Missionaries iu later ages of 

Christianity (continued) — 
Welz, Baron von, 156. 
Williams, 262. 
Wilson, John, 279. 
Wolfall, 148. 
Xavier, 130, 167. 
Ziegenbalg, 171, 314, 341. 
Missionary methods — 
Ai^ostolic method, 62. 
educational, 254. 
going among obscure tribes, 

173. 
industrial, 255. 
medical, 255-60. 
specialising, 253. 
Study Circles, 331. 
women's work, 257-60. 
Missionary Societies — 

American Societies, 210, 260- 

61. 
Baptist Missionary Society, 

205. 
Basel Societies, 205. 
China Inland Mission, 243, 

251, 254, 259. 
Church Missionary Society, 

207. 
Continental Societies, 210, 

260. 
London Missionaiy Society, 

205. 
Presbyterian Societies, 207. 
Romish Missions, 130, 149, 

164, 165, 242-46. 
Tract and Bible Societies, 207, 

208-10. 
Wesleyan Missionary Society, 

207. 
Missions — 

enemies of, 161, 270, 273, 

281-88, 315, 325-28. 



Missions (continued) — 

fruits of, 160. 

Home and Foreign, interaction 
of, 124, 163, 219, 231, 268- 
69, 278, 290, 302-305, 321. 

inventions and, 204, 229. 

Materialism and, 288. 

Methodists and, 193. 

Modernism and, 5, 

neglect of, 129, 150, 155, 163. 

Old Testament and, 13. 

Rationalism in, 176. 

trade and politics in, 271. 

union in, 260, 322-25. 
Mohammedanism, 5, 6, 41, 91, 
117, 161. 

Missions to, 236, 256. 
Mohammedans, modern spirit 

among, 295-97, 327. 
Monarchianism, 61. 
Monasteries, ancient and modern, 

102. 
Montanists, 60, 78. 
Moravians, 171, 172, 173. 
More, Hannah, 194. 
Morocco, 6. 

Mott, John R., 301, 302. 
Mozley, 83. 

"Mystery of Iniquity," 56, 113, 
123, 326, 339. 

Native churches — 

their defects, 276-78. 

their testimony, 275. 
Nero, 27, 47, 48,^50. 
New Covenant, 20. 
New England, 169. 
New Guinea, 235. 
Nicsea, 90, 92. 
Niebuhr, 65. 

North Africa, 63, 64, 87, 91, 
327. 



349 



Index 



Numbers of Christians, 47, 48, 

57, 116, 117, 232, 234. 
Numidia, 64. 

Obedience the pathway to light, 

9. 
Old Testament and Missions, 13. 
Origen, 73, 79, 80. 



28, 



iism, 56, 89. 
still survi-\dng, 317-21. 
Pantheon in Rome, 40. 
Parthia, 26, 42, 67. 
Patripassianism, 61. 
Paul the Apostle, 14, 20, 

37, 43, 44, 46, 64, 316. 
Peking, 115. 
Pentecost, 20, 27, 33, 35, 38, 45, 

158. 
New, 194. 
Persecution, 48, 50, 64, 65, 66, 

127, 238. 
Persia, 6. 
Peter the Apostle, 8, 28, 36, 37, 

43. 
Pharisees, 16. 
Phenice, 36. 
Philanthropy, 46. 
Philip the Evangelist, 36, 
Philippi, 44, 74. 
Philosophy, its failure, 24. 
Picts, 97. 
Pietism, 170, 172. 
Pilgrim Fathers, 147. 
Pliny, 33, 51, 55. 
Poles, 110. 
Polycarp, 73, 74. 
Pomeranians, 111. 
Pomponia Graecina, 49. 
Popery, 122. 

Post-Reformation Church, 193. 
Prayer in Mission revival, 175. 



Preaching, 125. 
Predestination, 138, 182. 
Prophets, 25. 
Protestantism, 123. 
Publius, 50. 

Quakers, 203. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 141. 
Ramsay, Sir William, 49. 
Rationalism, 176, 327. 
Red Indians, 169. 
Reformation, 88, 129, 162. 
Religio illicita, 64. 

licita, 69. 
Renaissance, 89. 
Renan, 25. 

Robert College, 6, 211. 
Roman Empire, 26, 38, 40, 52, 

55, 67-70. 
Rome, 19, 36, 43, 63. 
Romish Missions, 129, 149, 164, 

168. 
Roosevelt, 234. 
Ruth, 19. 

Sabbath -schools begun, 201. 
Sabellianism, 61. 
Sacerdotalism, 56, 87, 110, 112, 

168, 248, 327. 
Samaritans, 36. 
Sardinia, 27. 
Scandinavian^;, 109. 
Schaff, 68. 
Schultze, 49. 
Scotland, 92 seq., 96, 175, 216. 

place-names in, 93, 94. 

Church of, 158-59. 
Scythia, 42. 
Semitic peoples, 21. 
Serampore, 183. 
Sergius Paulus, 50. 



350 



Index 



Severinus, 92. 
Sharp, Granville, 203. 
Sierra Leone, 234. 
Simeon, 23, 25. 
Simeon, Charles, 219, 341. 
Simon Zelotes, 42, 43. 
Slavery, 133. 

abolished, 203, 217. 
Slavs, 109. 
Smith, Adam, 204. 
Smj'rna, 73. 
Social questions, 7. 
Socinianism, 89, 155, 327. 
Soudan, crisis in, 6. 
South Africa, 171. 
Spain, 42. 

Spencer, Herbert, 335. 
Stephen, 35. 
Student Volunteer Movement, 

252, 289. 
Suetonius, 48. 
Switzerland, 92. 

Tacitus, 15, 47. 

Teaching of the Ttoelve Apostles, 

71. 
Tertullian, 73, 77, 78, 87, 89. 
Thaddeus, 42. 
Thomas, 42. 
Thuringia, 92. 
Tibet, modern spirit in, 311. 
Timothy, 41. 
Titus, 41. 

Trajan, 33, 50, 51, 55, 67. 
Tranquebar, 171, 176. 



Tribal deities, 18. 
Turkey, 117. 
Tyndale, 127. 

Uganda, 234. 

Union in Missions, 260, 322- 

25. 
Urgency of situation, 267, 297- 

302, 309 seq., 337 seq. 
Ursinus, 157. 

Vasa, Gustavus, 147. 
Vespasian, 50. 
Vikings, 110. 
Villegagnon, 146. 
Vosges, 92. 

Wales, 99. 

Warneck, 149, 298-300. 
Watts, Isaac, 195. 
Wesley, John, 8, 37, 192. 
Whitefield, 8, 192, 195. 

and slavery, 202. 
Whithorn, 97, 98. 
Wilberforce, 216, 231, 341. 
Wille the preacher, 128. 
Wingate, Sir Reginald, 296. 
Wishart, George, 127. 
World Conference, 1910, 311. 
Wyclif, 112, 125. 

" Yellow Peril," 295, 309. 

Zinzendorf, 172. 
Zwingli, 112. 



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