"When I found Livingstone I cared no more for missions than the veriest
atheist in England. I had been a press reporter, and my business was to
follow armies and to describe battles; to attend conventions and report
speeches, but my heart had not been touched with sympathy for missions.
When I found this grand old man I asked: 'What is he here for? Is he
crazy? Is he cracked? I sat at his feet four months and I saw that a
power above his will had taken possession of his life, and given him a
hunger to lead poor heathen folk out of their darkness.
"I have heard the same voice speaking to my heart, 'Follow me,' and I go
back to Africa to finish Livingstone's work."
This was a few years ago. To-day there are fifteen Christian Bishops of
our communion in Africa. Eight were present at the Lambeth Conference.
One of them, Bishop Crowther, was captured when a boy ten years of age
on a slave ship, placed in a mission school, transferred to a high
school, then to the university, graduated with honors, and went back to
Africa as a Bishop. As I looked in the face of that black man and
thought of his wonderful history, I remembered another man from Africa
that carried the cross of my blessed Master up the hill to Calvary, and
that this aged servant of Christ was following in his blessed footsteps.
Another of these Bishops was one of the manliest men that I ever looked
upon; Bishop Smythies, the picture of manly beauty, honored by his
university, beloved by friends, a face gentle and loving as that of St.
John. When I thought of this man going on foot in the interior of
Africa, perhaps to die for Christ, I could not keep back the tears, and
I went to him and said, "My good brother, I cannot tell you how my heart
goes out to you in loving sympathy." He smiled and said, "Bishop, when
the Church in Jerusalem had more work than it knew how to do, the Holy
Ghost sent one of its ministers upon a long journey to convert one
African. Surely it is not much for the Christians of Christian England
to send a Christian Bishop to millions who never heard there is a
Savior."
And now I turn to the opposite quarter of the globe--Australasia, New
Zealand, and Polynesia. When I was a boy there was but one English
settlement, and that was known throughout the world as Botany Bay, the
abode of the most abandoned criminals of English civilization. There
are to-day twenty-one Bishops in those islands. I wish I could tell the
story inwrought in the lives of Selwyn, Patteson, Williams, and a host
of others, some of whom have laid down their lives for Christ.
To-day cannibalism is a thing of the past. Human sacrifices, thank God,
are to be found nowhere on the earth. There is not one of those islands
without its Christian church, and in some of them the last vestige of
heathenism has passed away. They have thousands of Christian men and
women under their native pastors. Surely this is no time to talk about
the failure of Christian missions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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