The following was taken from "The Missionary Enterprise: A Collection of Discourses on Christian Missions by American Authors". I know it may be a long read for some, but it is worth the time to see what the views of how the Gospel needs to be proclaim during the 19th Cent.
EFFICIENCY OF PRIMITIVE MISSIONS
BY REV. BARON STOW
PASTOR OF BALDWIN PLACE CHURCH, BOSTON.
Delivered in New York, before the General Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States, April 25, 1838.
These are Excerpts from the Preaching
Who were the first preachers and advocates of the Christian religion? What was their number? What their origin, their standing, their education, their personal influence? Were they the agents that human sagacity would have selected for such an undertaking?
What was the character of the religion which they would propagate? Was it such as the world, Jewish and Pagan, would be likely to welcome with grateful enthusiasm? What were its doctrines? What its precepts? What did it prohibit? What require?
What was the state of the world, the whole world, to which they were commanded to preach the gospel, and for whose subjugation to Christ they were pledged to labor even unto the death? Had Judaism become superannuated and decrepit, so that its hold of the children of Abraham could easily be relaxed, and Christianity, with little difficulty, be substituted in its place? Was paganism in its dotage, and “ready to vanish away?” Did the systems of philosophy, then popular, pre-dispose the mind of the age to a prompt reception of such a system as that of Jesus of Nazareth?
What were the malignant and persevering efforts, not only to obstruct the progress of the new religion, but to suppress and exterminate it from the earth? So far did one emperor, Diocletian, proudly imagine that he had succeeded, that he caused a medal to he struck with the inscription, Nomine Christianorum deleto,—the Christian name obliterated.(P.99)
Yet the disciples of Christ, nothing daunted, went forward as bidden by their Lord, and, transcending all barriers, and pressing their way through all difficulties, conveyed the life-giving doctrine to millions of the perishing, and caused earth and heaven to exult together over its wide-spread and salutary triumphs. This we have called a remarkable fact. The unbelieving Gibbon so considered it, and, without venturing to question its reality, exhausted his rare ingenuity in the attempt to account for it upon principles that should exclude all recognition of the divine original of the system.
There is another remarkable fact, that we are sure will be so regarded by future generations, and that will be no less perplexing to the philosophic historian;—and that is, The slow progress of the gospel in the nineteenth century. The Karen inquirer says to our missionary, “If so long time has elapsed since the crucifixion of Christ, why has not this good news reached us before? Why have so many generations of our fathers gone down to hell for want of it?” But these are not the questions which we would now propose. We ask not, How is it that, after eighteen hundred years, so much of the world is covered with pagan darkness? We ask not, How has it happened that for more than a thousand years so large a proportion of the pagan world has been suffered to remain unvisited by Christian heralds? We leave it for our fathers, now in eternity, to answer for themselves to their holy Judge. We simply inquire, How is it that now, as the church professes to understand her obligation, she does not feel its pressure and act in accordance with its dictates? How is it, that with her present knowledge of the heathen world, her aggregate of numbers, her intellectual and physical resources, her triumphs are so comparatively limited?
Just in proportion as our missionary endeavors, in character, motive, spirit, resemble those of the primitive church, they are unquestionably as effective. But let us compare our circumstances with theirs, and who will account for the mighty difference between the results of their missions and ours?(P.100)
They did not find the heathen more accessible or more susceptible of impression than we find them. The minds which they addressed, like those which we address, were pre-occupied by opinions, and moulded into habits, all directly and sternly repugnant to the spirit of Christianity. Every thing that most powerfully influences and tyrannizes over the human soul,—as superstition, custom, policy, interest, pride, passion, law, philosophy, religion,—was decidedly hostile to the genius and claims of the gospel.(P.101)
If in our main object, the salvation of souls from sin and death, they see no point of attraction, yet in the subserviency of missions to literature, science, commerce, civilization, they find something that is congenial to their taste, something which as scholars, philanthropists, merchants, they can admire, something to prompt them to be liberal to a degree that ought to shame the Christian for his parsimony. Foreign missions have acquired a character and a position in the public mind, to which in the days of the apostles they were strangers.
Yet notwithstanding circumstances are so much in our favor, they made advances in the production of effect, such as we have never witnessed. Without the world’s favorite instrumentality, learning, eloquence, wealth, arms,—nay, with all these leagued against them, and in the face of them all, the primitive church expanded, and achieved triumph after triumph,—all the triumphs of truth and holiness. All the apparatus of torture and death was brought out and arrayed in her path to arrest her progress, but heedless of its terrors, she moved forward to the execution of her lofty purpose. Some of her most malignant foes became her devoted champions, and even martyrs, and every day new territories were added to her growing empire. Persecution often kindled her fires, and with her blood she as often extinguished them. Her progress from place to place was marked by the dethronement of idol deities, and the fall of idol temples; on the high places of idolatry she planted her banners; and in all lands, known to the merchant, the traveller, the warrior, the trophies of her power were multiplied. “So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.”(P.102-3)
The question recurs:—How shall we account for this difference in efficiency, between their missions and ours? The suggestion of a few considerations by way of reply may not be unsuitable.
I. THE TYPE OF THEIR PIETY.
The piety of not only the ministry, but of the church in general, was missionary piety. Just suppose that the great majority of Christians were as spiritual, as dead to the world, as active for God, as we require our missionaries to be, and as some of them actually are, and you have an approximation to the true idea of the religious character of the early church. When believers then gave themselves to Christ, it was a bona fide transaction. They did not enter his service as an experiment, or on probation, but unconditionally, unreservedly, and for eternity.
The distinguishing traits of their piety were strongly developed, and obvious to all.
1. Great love. On no part of the Christian character does the New Testament so frequently and strenuously insist, as on this—on none does it pass so many and deserved encomiums. Whatever else a man might have, if deficient in love he was regarded as defective in the primary and essential element of evangelical godliness. They understood that “love is the fulfilling of the law.”
The early Christians had great love to the Saviour.(P.103)
When Dr. Doddridge entered the dungeon of a prisoner, with a reprieve which he had obtained for him, the poor man fell down at his feet and exclaimed, “I will be yours! Wherever you go, I am yours! Sir, every drop of my blood thanks you, for you have had mercy upon every drop of it!” Similar were the feelings of the first Christians towards their redeeming Lord,—similar their protestations of gratitude, attachment, and allegiance. “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” The love of Christ,—both his love to them, and their love to him,—the latter being only a reduplication of the former,—constrained them to live, not unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again. To please him was their primary object. To please him they cultivated personal holiness. To please him they labored for the conversion of souls. To please him they urged their missionary inroads into remote regions, encountered the most appalling dangers, endured the severest hardships, and faced death in its fiercest forms.
This love unquestionably exists in modern Christians in a degree, but alas! in a too diminished degree. It is not in us, as it was in them, a burning passion, a fire giving impulse to the whole machinery of our being. If it were, it would impel us onward to similar sacrifices, labors, conflicts, victories.(P.104)
Assimilated by the grace of God, and fused and welded by the fires of persecution, their affinity and cohesion rendered them the admiration of the world that hated them, and gave them a moral power which the modern church does not possess, and never will possess, until brotherly love shall resume its ancient influence, and become, as it then was, a “bond of perfectness,”—until “the multitude of them that believe” shall be “of one heart and one way,” keeping “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”(P.105)
The love of the early Christians comprehended mankind not only as a whole, but in detail; and in order to do good to the whole, they sought the improvement of the individuals. If fanaticism be, as defined by an able writer, “Enthusiasm inflamed by hatred,” they, admitting them to be enthusiasts, were certainly not fanatics. Militant and aggressive as were their movements, not an enemy, however embittered and prejudiced, could charge them with malignant motives. Their enthusiasm was inflamed by love, and “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” Tender and affectionate, as if they had just come from leaning on the bosom of incarnate compassion, their words melted like honey on the hearts of the people, and by an invisible, irresistible influence, won them over from hostility to friendship. O! yes, brethren, love, love, was one of the secrets of their power. Love of souls was with them both a principle and a passion, and, under its exhaustless impulse, what did they not endure, sacrifice, accomplish! (P.106)
2. Vigorous faith. Nothing so debilitates a moral being, as unbelief. Nothing so girds him with strength, and renders him energetic and efficient, as intelligent confidence.
The primitive Christians had strong faith in the inspired account of man’s condition and destiny. Confiding in revealed truth, they looked on him as deeply depraved, guilty, condemned, and, unless saved by the gospel, sure to perish for ever. This they believed in respect to the heathen as well as the Jews.
They believed it,—they acted as if they believed it. They went forth and labored “unto the end,” under the full persuasion that every unbeliever would be damned. With such faith, how could they be inactive? And is not our comparative inertness attributable to our unbelief? “Lord, increase our faith!”
They had faith in the adaptedness of the gospel to the necessities of a depraved and perishing world. They believed what they said, that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth,”
Can we, with no misgiving of conscience, with no fear of contradiction, adopt their language? Have we a confidence like theirs in the suitableness and efficacy of the gospel? Do we believe that it is the thing, and the only thing that can save the heathen from eternal hell?
They had heard from the lips of their Master, the remarkable words, “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you,” and they had thence learned that their mission was identical with his, a continuation of the one grand design,—the salvation of “a multitude which no man could number.” They regarded the cause as his, devised by his love, sustained by his power, and sure to prevail.(P.107)
They believed that the work assigned them,—the preaching of the gospel to every creature,—could be done. Consequently they were the people to do it. A doubt as to its practicability would have unfitted them for the service. Brethren, do modern Christians,—do we believe, that the heathen world can be converted to God? Do we believe that with proper effort the earth can be “filled with the knowledge of the Lord,” and the kingdom of Christ be made to outstretch its borders, until it shall encompass “all nations?” “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”
They had the Saviour’s promise to be with them and defend them, and give them success. His own words, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth,” were engraven in the metal of their souls, and they felt that he was able, with “all power,” to make his promise good. How could they hesitate or falter? “Lo, I am with you,” was enough to brace up their courage, and retain it firmly at the desirable point. Hence timidity was not even an accident of their character.
Such, and more than, such was their faith, and under its invigorating and impulsive influence they went forward, and quit themselves like men, Christian men. Brethren, is there a large amount of this faith in the existing church? Should the Son of Man come, how much of it would he find on the earth?(P.108)
3. Rigid self-denial. When they gave themselves to Christ, they
counted all things loss for him and his salvation; and the surrender was an honest, whole-hearted transaction, never to be reconsidered, never to be regretted.
Reputation was with them a matter of trivial consequence. We have often so much character to obtain, or to preserve, that we can spare neither time nor resources for the great work of promoting Christ’s glory. But the early Christians, bishops and all, while they were careful to maintain consciences void of offence towards God and man, were not very sensitively concerned whether they stood high or low in the world’s estimation. It therefore cost them very little to keep up a good reputation. That they left where they left their life, “hid with Christ in God.”
They consulted not with flesh and blood, but sacrificed personal ease, and submitted to hardships and trials of which we know comparatively, most of us, absolutely nothing. They were “men that hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Yes, for their religion they were ready to die, and for it they did die by hecatombs, and by dying for it they often accomplished more than by living and laboring for it. Hence the triumphant remark of Tertullian had quite as much truth as poetry:—“The more you mow us down, the thicker we rise; the Christian blood you spill is like the seed you sow; it springs from the earth and fructifies the more.”(P.109)
4. Simple obedience. They understood Christ to be in earnest, when, standing but one step from the throne of the universe, he said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
Have we this spirit of obedience to the last command of the Lord Jesus? Let us not evade the question, but answer it. Why then is it necessary for so much to be said and done, by the pulpit and the press, by corresponding secretaries and travelling agents, to obtain our scanty supply of missionaries, and gather from a half million of Baptists, at the rate of a dime each, enough to send these few missionaries to six hundred millions of perishing heathen? O Jesus! is this thy church? Are these the people whom thou didst redeem by thy blood, and who with the first throbbings of the new heart have severally inquired, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” When Ko Chet-thing, the Karen convert, was in this country, he was urged on a certain occasion to address a congregation in respect to their duty to send out and support more missionaries. After a moment of downcast thoughtfulness, he asked with evident emotion, “Has not Jesus Christ told them to do it?” “O yes,” was the reply, “but we wish you to remind them of their duty.” “Oh no!” said the Karen, “if they will not obey Jesus Christ, they will not obey me.” He in his simplicity considered the command of the Master as paramount and all-sufficient.(P.110)
It has been often said that in the hearts of our brethren there are fountains of benevolence. Ice-bound, it is acknowledged they may be, and pent in the rocks of ignorance and prejudice; yet if but a Moses go to them, and smite those rocks, the streams of charity, it is said, will flow forth to gladden all the desert. Indeed! And had the primitive Christians such Horeb hearts, yielding nothing to the cause of God, nothing to the claims of a suffering, dying world, until smitten by foreign force? Was the missionary enterprise in their day, a crouching mendicant, wandering among the churches, soliciting with a pauper’s importunity the shreds and parings of liberal incomes, and then proclaiming at every corner the name and residence of every donor of a half shekel, lest, forsooth, unless his reluctantly bestowed contribution should be loudly trumpeted, he might cease to care for the will of the Lord Jesus, and lose his interest in the salvation of a world, and the missionary treasury feel no more of the overflowings of his benevolence? Tell me, men, brethren and fathers, were such the Christians of the age of Barnabas, and Philemon, and Polycarp?(P.111)
5. Fervent prayer. It has been remarked respecting a modern preacher, whose labors while living were eminently blessed in the conversion of his hearers, and who, “being dead, yet speaketh,” that the secret of his success lay in his devotional habits. He dwelt on the border of eternity, and carried with him into his pulpit, and into all his intercourse with his people, the very atmosphere that circulates around the throne. Hence a member of his congregation once declared,—“When our pastor prays, it is right into the heart of God. When he preaches, it is right into the heart of the sinner.” This description, true perhaps of a few moderns, is truer still of the great body of the ancient preachers. They had peculiar access to the hearts of men, because they had peculiar access to the ear and heart of God. With him and the glories around him they were familiar, and ever as they came forth from his presence, they brought to the people, fresh from the tree of life, the leaves that are for the healing of the nations,—sparkling from the river of life, the waters “clear as crystal,” that purify the unholy, and refresh the way-worn and weary.
Another pastor, whose success was proverbially great, when asked how it happened that under his ministry “the word of God” so “grew and multiplied,” returned the significant answer, “I have a praying church.” The early church was eminently a praying church. The sin of indevotion could not be laid to her charge. The oft-repeated and unanimous request of the apostles, “Pray for us,” “Pray for us that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified,” was never made in vain. Indeed, the request scarcely needed to be made. The Christians of those days waited not for a specified season, but at all times and every where they remembered before God the cause of missions, and the self-denying missionary laborers. In the closet, in the family, in the church, the burden of their prayer was, “Thy kingdom come.” Every prayer-meeting was a concert of prayer for the universal spread of the gospel of Christ. And theirs were the effectual, fervent prayers that avail much. They knew how to touch that delicate chain which Jesus had passed over the throne, and by which the faintest spark of holy desire may be easily transmitted; and through it they sent a continual stream of invisible but powerful influence away into the deepest recesses of heathenism.
Such, in five of its aspects, was the type of their piety. Perceive we not good reasons why they were so amazingly successful in propagating the gospel of Christ? And see we not, by comparison, satisfactory reasons why the gospel in our hands is so limited in its efficiency?(P.112)
II. THEIR PLAN OF ACTION.
1.Unity of object. They considered that it was their calling, their very business as Christians, to propagate the religion that they loved. Hence, every one felt it incumbent on him, whether others joined him or not, to do whatever he could for the object. “I cannot speak for Christ,” said a martyr on his way to the flames, “but I can die for him.” That was the pervading spirit. “If I cannot do every thing, I can do something. ‘This one thing I do;’ I labor, ‘according to the ability that God giveth,’ for the conversion of the world.” This was the end they contemplated with unwavering eye; this the point toward which they pressed with unfaltering movement. To this end they devoted their thinking, feeling, acting, praying. For this they earned, for this they gave their money, and ever found it, as you may find it to-night, “more blessed to give than to receive.” For this they toiled, and suffered, and counted not their lives dear unto themselves. O, they were Christians worthy of the name! Like their Master, they had one thing to do, and how were they straitened until it was accomplished!(P.112)
What was the master passion of the primitive church? What but a burning desire for the salvation of the guilty and the perishing of their race? Hence, having one object, their feeling and action were intense, and they moved onward with a momentum which the nature of mind forbade to be more, which the principles that actuated them forbade to be less. We occasionally see an individual of our own circle, cherishing the same high purpose, living as if he had one, only one object,—the glory of God in the salvation of souls. But the instances are rare,—rare as light-houses on the North-West Coast. Our sympathies and energies are distributed among a variety of objects. Our eye is not single,—our heart is divided. Undertaking too many things, our resources are dissipated, and we do nothing effectively. Our life is but a span, and our ability is finite; let us endeavor to do one thing, and do it well.(P.113)
2. Simplicity of means. It is an assumption of modern wisdom, that the gospel cannot be made effectual among the heathen, unless civilization precede and prepare the way. “Send first the schoolmaster and the mechanic, and the agriculturist; afterwards the missionary.” This counsel we hear not only from the world, but we regret to say from too many of the church. But besides betraying a secret infidelity respecting the real efficacy of the gospel, it is a virtual impeachment of the wisdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has arranged an order of things entirely the reverse. Moral reform, it is said, must precede the triumphs of the cross. And by these specious theories, have thousands of the people of God been unhappily deluded, and, leaving their appropriate work of preaching the gospel and distributing the Bible, they have seized the pickaxe and gone to beating down the obstacles which they have learned to think the Christian religion can neither remove nor transcend.(P.113)
They understood that moral reform proceeds best in the train of Christ and his cross, and hence, for the regeneration of a degraded and miserable world, they used no other instrumentality. They, in their simplicity, regarded the gospel as the divinely appointed catholicon,—the one efficacious remedy of all moral evils. They supposed that if individuals or communities could be brought completely under its influence, they would renounce all sin, and cultivate all righteousness. Brethren, if the gospel does not rectify what is wrong in man, can you inform us of any system of truth or of agencies that will do it? You cannot predispose men’s hearts to welcome the truth of God by any external means whatever,—not even by the potent influence of grammars and lexicons, globes and orreries, spelling-books and newspapers, spinning jennies and steam engines. But the simple story of the cross does execution in all places,—in the German university and the Northumberland colliery, in the Louisiana cotton-field and the Lowell factory, in the Putawatomy wigwam and the Karen jungle. And when sinners are once converted by the grace of God, then they begin to estimate rightly the importance of their being; then they recognize their relations to Jehovah and to one another, and the work of improvement may proceed successfully, for it has a basis and an object. “Seek first the kingdom of God,” and all these minor results shall be superadded.(P.114)
3. Judicious application of their means. You may cool water downward, but you must heat it upward. So with society; it deteriorates downward and improves upward. If the upper classes become vicious, they descend; if the lower become virtuous, they rise. This fact was manifestly recognized by Christ and his apostles, for they directed their attention chiefly to the lower strata of the social mass. So with society; it deteriorates downward and improves upward. If the upper classes become vicious, they descend; if the lower become virtuous, they rise. This fact was manifestly recognized by Christ and his apostles, for they directed their attention chiefly to the lower strata of the social mass. They wrought upward, and the results amazed even themselves. We reverse the order, and work downward, and then wonder that the effects are so limited. Let us conform to the simple order of nature, as well as to primitive example, and both at home and abroad, PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR, and we shall soon rejoice in enlarged success.
In rearing the temple of the Lord, we expend largely upon the scaffolding, what they devoted to the edifice. We pay great attention to modes of usefulness; they, willing to do good in the way prescribed by their Master, were intent solely upon the usefulness. We engage freely in matters remotely connected with our great, our appointed business; they “let the dead bury their dead,” and went every where preaching that men should repent and turn to God. How long is it since an ecclesiastical body in a single session, squandered seventeen years of ministerial time in the discussion of points very slightly associated with the work assigned them by the Head of the church? As the result of the whole, has there been, or is there likely to be a single soul converted? Alas! results of a very different character may be apprehended, results over which demons will exult, and seraphim weep.(P.115)
4. Personal effort. The primitive Christian regarded himself as a centre from which the voice of truth was to go forth over the whole circle of his influence. Every individual added to the church considered himself as an agent for propagating the news of salvation to his neighbors, who were in turn to communicate it to others, and they to others beyond them, and thus onward, till a chain of living voices should have been carried around the globe, and earth from the equator to the poles made vocal with the cry of those whose feet are beautiful upon the mountains, who bring glad tidings, and publish peace. Cherishing a conviction of individual responsibility, they were not content to do good merely by proxy. Their piety, in all its aspects, was essentially missionary, and each member felt himself to be consecrated, by his very profession, to the great work of evangelizing the world. When, therefore, a man was converted, he was immediately found moving among the impenitent, persuading them to flee from the wrath to come. And this he did, not more from a desire for the salvation of souls, than from love to the Saviour, and a conviction that it was his appropriate business,—an essential part of his “high calling.” In the aggressive movements of the “sacramental host,” he considered himself as drawn to serve, and he neither sought nor desired exemption. In the great cause at issue between God and man, he felt that he was subpœnaed as a witness for his Sovereign, and when his testimony was wanted, he was never among the missing.(P.116)
Missionary was than the highest style of ministerial character. The principal men, the most capable and influential,—the “sons of consolation,” and the “sons of thunder,”—not satisfied with remaining at home, and sending men of inferior powers and endowments, went themselves to the work, and with their own lips related the story of Calvary, and bared their own heads to the tempests of persecution. Let us not wonder that modern missions, when compared with the ancient, are so limited in their efficiency. We probably expend more money in the enterprise than they did; but our piety is not like theirs, missionary piety; our zeal is not like theirs, missionary zeal; our activity is not like theirs, missionary activity. We probably talk and write as much about converting the world as they did; but we act less, we give less of personal labor.
To the many designations given to the present age, we may properly add “the age of resolutions.” Under the head of “Resolved,” we all announce what we believe and what we deny, what we desire and what we deprecate, what we have done and what we intend to do. But the most of these resolutions, contemplating action, are never executed, simply because no one of the conclave that passed them feels personally responsible for their execution.(P.117)
Not thus did the primitive Christians manage their matters. If anything was to be done, instead of calling meetings, making speeches, passing resolutions, and then leaving the work undone, they went directly themselves and did it. How rightly is one book of the New Testament named, not the Resolutions, but the Acts of the Apostles, Non dicta, sed acta Apostolorum.(P.118)
Anxious, on the one hand, to avoid a blind, headlong impetuosity, we have, on the other, diverged too far into a cold, calculating policy. Acting with cautious reference to the state of the treasury, we lose sight of the promises that encourage adventure, and choose rather to walk by sight than by faith. Reluctant to trust the great Promiser for a long time, or to a large amount, we treat him too much in a commercial spirit, and under the pretext of doing a safe business, we do comparatively nothing. When he sent forth his first missionaries, did he charge them to wait till funds were accumulated? Did he not rather bid them go at once, and assure them of his own gracious presence until the end of their course? Did they ever deal with him as if they suspected either his ability or his faithfulness?
We need more of the spirit of evangelical enterprise; the quenchless spirit of love that glowed in the bosoms of Paul and the primitive disciples; of Luther and his associate reformers; of Brainerd, and Schwartz, and Carey; and more than all, in the bosom of Him who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
The energy we want is that which springs from sympathy with the grandeur of our object, and an assured confidence that we have the coöperation of the mightiest agencies in the universe. We need a zeal that shall be kindled by an unclouded view of the condition and prospects of a guilty world; a zeal that shall burn as if fed by visions of the cross—of Heaven—of Hell; a zeal sustained by so much principle as that it can afford to be reproached as extravagant, and to wait until we are laid in the grave to be appreciated; a zeal that no discouragement can repress, no opposition smother; a zeal like that of the incarnate Son of God, which urged him on to his baptism in suffering; a zeal that shall admit of no repose, and intermit no exertion, until the gospel shall have been fully preached to the last of the species, and the Redeemer, surrendering his mediatorial commission, shall proclaim to the universe that he is SATISFIED.(P.119)
