An event had taken place at Jerusalem, in which every son of Adam on the wide surface of the earth was interested, which was to bring unnumbered multitudes to Heaven, and thus greatly to influence the records of eternity. And Christ, looking steadfastly upon the faces of his chosen followers, and thinking of the multitude of sinners which then thronged this miserable world, and of the countless generations then unborn, who afterwards were to be blessed by his salvation, uttered these most emphatic words: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.”
The estimate formed of the state of religion in the present day will, of course, entirely depend on the views we form of what true religion is, and on the standpoint we occupy when we examine the religious aspect of society. If we think of religion as embodied in the men who profess it, if we judge of it entirely by the attainments in the knowledge and experience of its living representatives, our estimate of its present state must not, we fear, be a very favourable one. As compared with the divines of other days, what dwarfs are those who represent the theological attainments of the present!
The circumstances which led to this statement were briefly as follows. For some time past the writer’s mind was much drawn towards foreign missionary work. The knowledge of this circumstance led the Committee of the General Assembly on Missions to inquire into his willingness to enter upon their missionary service in India. This communication from the representative body of the Church, as a Presbyter he laid before his brethren for counsel: and after full procedure, in the course of which his Congregation presented a Memorial expressive of their interests and feelings, and the Presbytery delivered their mind both on the Call and the Memorial, he was led to the decision recorded in the following document. In a day when, on the one hand a carnal fanaticism would counterfeit, and on the other an earthly intellectualism would supplant, the self-evidencing and personal operations of the Holy Spirit, Christian men, however timid, ought not to shrink from avowing their grounds of spiritual judgment.
The history of Free Church of Scotland Missions in India redounds to the credit and splendour of the Christian work done in Calcutta and elsewhere in that country. In 1830, Dr. Duff (1806-1878) established the General Assembly’s Institution, now known as the Scottish Church College, with the expressed goal to train non-Christian young Indian men in the English language, literature, science, etc. At the forefront of his mind, Dr. Duff nurtured the hope that many of these young men would be converted to Christ and serve as missionaries to their enslaved countrymen shackled to the pagan darkness of Hinduism, Islam, and Parsiism.
One of the greatest preachers of modern times is a Chinese man named John Sung. It is thought that, in China today, there are at least one hundred million Christians. This wonderful fact is, under God, owing a great extent to the remarkable preaching of John Sung, who, after a very powerful ministry which swept thousands into the kingdom of God, passed away in 1944. His labors and influence deserve to be known more widely in the English speaking world.
For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. (Phil. 2:21) We cannot suppose that the apostle intended by these words to characterize all his fellow Christians—the whole multitude of believers—many of whom were conspicuous for a spirit and temper the very reverse of that which the apostle here condemns. He speaks in the context of Timothy as one who, “as a son with a father,” served with him in the gospel (Phil. 2:22). And a little after, of Epaphroditus, his “brother and companion in labour,” who, “for the work of Christ, was nigh unto death, not regarding his life to supply their lack of service” towards him (Phil. 2:25, 30). And in the foregoing chapter, he tells us that “many of the brethren, waxing confident” by his bonds, “were much more bold to speak the word without fear” (Phil. 1:14).
We ought never to forget the great work which early Christian missionaries did to promote the Gospel in different parts of the world and in different languages. One of these eminent missionaries was John Eliot, who has been called “The Apostle to the Indians,” because he was among the first to dedicate his life to the strenuous task of taking the Gospel to the American Indians in the seventeenth century.
