I think of James Chalmers, the martyred missionary of New Guinea. How
well I remember the last time I met him; his big, powerful body, his
lion-like head, his shock of rough hair, his face with such a strange
commingling of strength and gentleness, indomitableness and grace! And
what he went through in New Guinea in carrying to the natives the story
of our Saviour's love! And then, having gone through it all, he stood up
there in England, on the platform of Exeter Hall, and said: "Recall
these twenty-one years, give me back all its experiences, give me its
shipwrecks, give me its standings in the face of death, give it me
surrounded with savages with spears and clubs, give it me back again
with spears flying about me, with the club knocking me to the ground,
give it me back, and I will still be your missionary." What is happening
in Europe just now that can put that exploit in the shade? I do not
wonder that when that man thought of heaven he used these words: "There
will be much visiting in heaven, and much work. I guess I shall have
good mission work to do, great, brave work for Christ. He will have to
find it, for I can be nothing else than a missionary." James Chalmers
went back to New Guinea to tell and retell to the natives why Jesus came
to thee and me and all men, and he won the martyr's crown. The love of
Christ constrained him. And again I ask, what incidents in carnal
warfare are not eclipsed by shining heroisms like these?
I might go on telling you these glorious exploits of grace, but I hasten
to say that it is our privilege to continue the story. To-day carnal
strength is stalking in deadly stride through a whole continent. And
to-day the Church must do something so splendid and so heroic as will
outshine the glamour of material war. This is the hour when we must send
out more men and women who are willing to live and toil and die for the
Hindu, and for the Turk, and the Persian, and the Chinese and the
Japanese, and all the dusky sons of Africa. I verily believe that if the
apostle Paul were in our midst to-day, with the war raging in Europe, he
would sound an advance all along the line. He would call us in this hour
to send out more men and women to save, and to comfort, and to heal; men
and women who will lay down their lives in bringing life to their
fellow-men. We must send forth new army corps of the soldiers of Christ,
and we must give them more abundant means, endowing them so plentifully
that they can go out into the needy places of Asia and Africa, and
assuage the pains and burdens of the body, and dispel the darkness of
the mind, and give liberty to the imprisoned spirit, and lead the souls
of men into the life and joy and peace of our blessed Lord. If the
Church would, and if the Church will, she can so arrest the attention
and win the hearts of the natives of Africa and Asia with the grace and
gentleness of the Lord Jesus, a grace and gentleness made incarnate
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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