A Tour of the Missions: Observations and ConclusionsStrong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
East Asia -- Description and travel; Missions
Justice Renade, in his social reform movement of the last fifty years,
has carried the spirit of philanthropy into practice, more fully than
did Vivekananda or Mrs. Besant, and without any of their fantastic
self-exaltation. Renade recognized the elements of truth in both the
Hindu and Moslem systems, and he saw in Christianity the influence
destined to unite them. He would not throw away the old, but he would
utilize it while he added the new. And with this acknowledgment that "he
who is not against us is on our side," we may well close our sketch of
reformers before the reformation. We sum up the lessons of history when
we recognize in Hinduism the two great ideas of divine immanence and
incarnation, in Mohammedanism the two equally essential truths of divine
transcendence and personality. And we see the absolute dependence of
India upon Christianity for its true Reformation. India needs the
missionary more than she needs the schoolmaster. Let us pray that she
may have a religious revival that shall turn the intellectual awakening
into moral channels. That religious revival will furnish a center of
unity in Christ, the one and only Revealer of God; not in a Hindu
philosophy, nor in a Moslem Koran, but in a living Person, present with
all his people, the soul of their soul and the life, and imparting to
them his own Spirit of love and brotherhood. In Christ alone can India's
renaissance become a complete reformation.
XV
MISSIONS AND SCRIPTURE
The world of scholars has recently been startled by the pretended
discovery that the "Great Commission," "Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations," is not an utterance of Jesus himself, but
only one attributed to him by some enthusiastic follower of his in a
later time. This pretended discovery is on a par with the earlier one
that there never was such a person as Jesus at all, but that his
personality is simply a myth that gradually grew up in the minds of some
Jewish fanatics who sought a fulfilment of Messianic prophecy. We might
treat these perverse and subversive conclusions as only curious
instances of a wrong method of criticism. But they filter down from the
scholars to the masses of Christian believers and weaken their faith. It
becomes a duty to deal with the method which leads to such results, and
threatens to destroy all our missionary zeal. Hence I proceed to test
the value of the method itself, even though it is commonly called "the
historical method" by those who adopt it. If we can bear a somewhat
roundabout way of treating the subject, we shall gain a new and valuable
light upon our missionary theory and practice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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