The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 12, December, 1883Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 37, No. 12, December, 1883
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
And there are others still upon the field, whose names may or may
not be known to any wide fame with men, and women, too, who have
hazarded their lives for the privilege of preaching and of teaching
in the name of Christ. We cannot afford to lose the records of such
positive and aggressive Christianity for their stimulus to the
Christian character of those at home and those whose characters are
forming yet.
Dr. Goodell names as one of the ten ways by which the world is to
be saved, that we keep the home and Sunday-school libraries full
of that most interesting and profitable of all our literature
for the young, the books written by Christ’s soldiers upon the
field of battle. I would emphasize even more than that—the books
written about these heroes of the faith and their lives of earnest
and joyful sacrifice. Who will not acknowledge that we need the
inspiration in our day?
If the Christian world needs for its own sake the information
and the inspiration which can only come from the literature of
missions, the missionary work itself needs equally this means to
make its opportunities known to the Christian world.
That is only in part, if at all, a Christian church which is not a
missionary church as well. The salt which has lost its savor is no
longer salt. It will save deception if you take off the label. It
is “good for nothing,” and is to be cast into the street only to
get rid of it, and not because it is good for a road.
The true Church of Christ is concerned about the progress of his
kingdom, is in earnest sympathy with those who are at the front,
is eager in its outlook for new opportunities of service. To
such a waiting ear—and, brethren, it is waiting—come through the
missionary press the tidings of opportunity, the sound of doors,
long closed, creaking on their hinges as they fling open for the
feet of the delaying messengers of grace. This is the telephone
which summons to instant response. It sounds in the counting-rooms
of our men of business, and invites them to new investments in
behalf of those for whom God goes security, for “he that giveth
to the poor lendeth to the Lord.” It rings its summons in our
Theological Seminaries and among our younger brethren in the
ministry, and calls them to occupy until He comes. It goes into the
offices of the organizations through which the churches reach the
needy east and west, north and south, and says not pull down your
barns, but build greater ones; for, as are the broad farms of the
West to the old New England homesteads, so are the harvests to be
reaped to those which have been already gathered in. It mixes in
our homes, and calls on our sons and daughters to the waiting work.
And neither we at home, nor those in the broad field, can afford to
be left unnoticed or uncalled. They need it that souls may be born
into the kingdom; we need it that we may by pure toil and sacrifice
grow unto the stature and the likeness of our risen Lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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