The challenge
of the unoccupied fields of the world is one to great faith and,
therefore to great sacrifice. Our willingness to sacrifice for an
enterprise is always in proportion to our faith in that enterprise.
Faith has the genius of transforming the barely possible into actuality.
Once men are dominated by the conviction that a thing must be done,
they will stop at nothing until it is accomplished. We have our
"marching orders," as the Iron Duke {Arthur Wesley, Duke of Wellington}
said, and because our Commander-in-Chief is not absent, but with
us, the impossible becomes not only practical but imperative. Charles
Spurgeon, preaching from the text, "All power is given unto Me…Lo
I am with you always," used these words: "You have a factor here
that is absolutely infinite, and what does it matter as to what
other factors may be. "I will do as much as I can, says one. Any
fool can do that. He that believes in Christ does what he can not
do, attempts the impossible and performs it."
Frequent set-backs and apparent failure never dishearten the real
pioneer. Occasional martyrdoms are only a fresh incentive. Opposition
is a stimulus to greater activity. Great victory has never been
possible without great sacrifice. If the winning of Port Arthur
required human bullets, we cannot expect to carry the Port Arthurs
and Gibraltars of the non-Christian world without loss of life.
Does it really matter how many die or how much money we spend in
opening closed doors, and in occupying the different fields, if
we really believe that missions are warfare and that the King's
Glory is at stake? War always means blood and treasure. Our only
concern should be to keep the fight aggressive and to win victory
regardless of cost or sacrifice. The unoccupied fields of the world
must have their Calvary before they can have their Pentecost. Raymond
Lull, the first missionary to the Moslem world, expressed the same
thought in medieval language when he wrote: "As a hungry man makes
dispatch and takes large morsels on account of his great hunger,
so Thy servant feels a great desire to die that he may glorify Thee.
He hurries day and night to complete his work in order that he may
give up his blood and his tears to be shed for Thee."
"An Inverted Homesickness"
The unoccupied fields of the world await those who are willing to
be lonely for the sake of Christ. To the pioneer missionary, the
words of our Lord Jesus Christ to the apostles when He showed them
His hands and His feet, come with special force: "As my Father hath
sent Me, even so send I you" (John 20:21). He came into the world,
and it was a great unoccupied mission field. "He came unto His own,
and His own received Him not" (John 1:11). He came and His welcome
was derision, His life suffering, and His throne the Cross. As He
came, He expects us to go. We must follow in His footprints. The
pioneer missionary, in overcoming obstacles and difficulties, has
the privilege not only of knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection,
but also something of the fellowship of His suffering. For the people
of Tibet or Somaliland, Mongolia or Afghanistan, Arabia or Nepal,
the Sudan or Abyssinia, he may be called to say with Paul, "Now
I rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill to the brim the penury
of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body's sake which
is the Church" (Greek text, Col. 1:24; cf. Luke 21:4 and Mark 12:44).
What is it but the glory of the impossible! Who would naturally
prefer to leave the warmth and comfort of hearth and home and the
love of the family circle to go after a lost sheep, whose cry we
have faintly heard in the howling of the tempest? Yet such is the
glory of the task that neither home-ties nor home needs can hold
back those who have caught the vision and the spirit of the Great
Shepherd. Because the lost ones are His sheep, and He has made us
His shepherds and not His hirelings, we must bring them back.
Although the road be
rough and steep,
I go to the desert to find my sheep.
"There is nothing finer nor more pathetic to me," says Dr. Forsyth,
"than the way in which missionaries unlearn the love of the old
home, die to their native land, and wed their hearts to the people
they have served and won; so that they cannot rest in England but
must return to lay their bones where they spent their hearts for
Christ. How vulgar the common patriotisms seem beside this inverted
home-sickness, this passion of a kingdom which has no frontiers
and no favored race, the passion of a homeless Christ!"
James Gilmour in Mongolia, David Livingstone in Central Africa,
Grenfell on the Congo, Keith Falconer in Arabia, Dr. Rijnhart and
Miss Annie Taylor in Tibet, Chalmers in New Guinea, Morrison in
China, Henry Martyn in Persia, and all the others like them had
this "inverted home-sickness," this passion to call that country
their home which was most in need of the Gospel. In this passion
all other passions died; before this vision all other visions faded;
this call drowned all other voices. They were the pioneers of the
Kingdom, the forelopers of God, eager to cross the border-marches
and discover new lands or win new empires.
The Pioneer Spirit
These forelopers of God went not with hatchet and brand, but with
the Sword of the Spirit and with the Belt of Truth. They went and
blazed the way for those that followed after. Their scars were the
seal of their apostleship, and they gloried also in tribulation.
Like the pioneer Apostle, "always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, and approving themselves as ministers of
God in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in watching, in fasting."
Thomas Valpy French, Bishop of Lahore, whom Dr. Eugene Stock called
"the most distinguished of all Church Missionary Society missionaries,"
had the real pioneer spirit and knew the glory of the impossible.
After forty years of labors abundant and fruitful in India, he resigned
his bishopric and planned to reach the interior of Arabia with the
Gospel. He was an intellectual and spiritual giant. "To live with
him was to drink in an atmosphere that was spiritually bracing.
As the air of the Engadine (a favorite tourist ground in Switzerland)
is to the body, so was his intimacy to the soul. It was an education
to be with him. There was nothing that he thought a man should not
yield - home or wife or health if God's call was apparent. But then
every one knew that he only asked of them what he himself had done
and was always doing." And when Mackay, of Uganda, in his remarkable
plea for a mission to the Arabs of Oman called for "half a dozen
young men, the pick of the English universities, to make the venture
in faith," this lion-hearted veteran of sixty-six years responded
alone. It was the glory of the impossible. Yet from Muscat he wrote
shortly before his death:
"If I can get no faithful servant and guide for the journey into
the interior, well versed in dealing with Arabs and getting needful
common supplies (I want but little), I may try Bahrein, or Hodeidah
and Sana, and if that fails, the north of Africa again, in some
highland; for without a house of our own the climate would be insufferable
for me - at least during the very hot months - and one's work would
be at a standstill. But I shall not give up, please God, even temporarily,
my plans for the interior, unless, all avenues being closed, it
would be sheer madness to attempt to carry them out."
"I shall not give up" - and he did not till he died. Nor will the
Church of Christ give up the work for which he and others like him
laid down their lives in Oman. It goes on.
The Apostolic Ambition
The unoccupied provinces of Arabia and the Sudan await men with
the spirit of Bishop French. For the ambition to reach out from
centers already occupied to regions beyond, even when those very
centers are undermanned and in need of reinforcement, is not Quixotic
or fantastic, but truly apostolic. "Yes, so have I been ambitious,"
said Paul, "to preach the Gospel not where Christ was already named,
lest I should build on another man's foundation; but as it is written,
they shall see to whom no tidings of Him came, and they who have
not heard shall understand" (Romans 15:20-21). He wrote this when
leaving a city as important as Corinth, and goes on to state that
this is the reason why he did not yet visit Rome, but that he hopes
to do so on his way to Spain! If the uttermost confines of the Roman
Empire were part of his program who had already preached Christ
from Jerusalem to Illyricum in the first century, we surely, at
the beginning of the twentieth century, should have no less ambition
to enter every unoccupied field that "they may see to whom no tidings
came and that those who have not heard may understand."
"There is no instance of an Apostle being driven abroad under the
compulsion of a bald command. Each one went as a lover to his betrothed
on his appointed errand. It was all instinctive and natural. They
were equally controlled by the common vision, but they had severally
personal visions which drew them whither they were needed. In the
first days of Christianity, there is an absence of the calculating
spirit. Most of the Apostles died outside of Palestine, though human
logic would have forbidden them to leave the country until it had
been Christianized. The calculating instinct is death to faith,
and had the Apostles allowed it to control their motives and actions,
they would have said: 'The need in Jerusalem is so profound, our
responsibilities to people of our own blood so obvious, that we
must live up to the principle that charity begins at home. After
we have won the people of Jerusalem, of Judea and of the Holy Land
in general, then it will be time enough to go abroad; but our problems,
political, moral and religious, are so unsolved here in this one
spot that it is manifestly absurd to bend our shoulders to a new
load.'"
It was the bigness of the task and its difficulty that thrilled
the early Church. Its apparent impossibility was its glory, its
world-wide character its grandeur. The same is true today. "I am
happy," wrote Neesima of Japan, "in a meditation on the marvelous
growth of Christianity in the world, and believe that if it finds
any obstacles it will advance still faster and swifter even as the
stream runs faster when it finds any hindrances on its course."
Hope and Patience
He that ploweth the virgin soil should plow in hope. God never disappoints
His husbandmen. The harvest always follows the seed time. "When
we first came to our field," writes missionary Hogberg from Central
Asia, "it was impossible to gather even a few people to hear the
glad tidings of the Gospel. We could not gather any children for
school. We could not spread gospels or tracts. When building the
new station, we also had a little chapel built. Then we wondered,
will this room ever be filled up with Moslems listening to the Gospel?
Our little chapel has been filled with hearers and still a larger
room! Day after day we may preach as much as we have strength to,
and the Moslems no longer object to listen to the Gospel truth.
'Before your coming hither no one spoke or thought of Jesus Christ,
now everywhere one hears His name,' a Mohammedan said to me. At
the beginning of our work they threw away the Gospels or burnt them,
or brought them back again - now they buy them, kiss the books,
and touching it to the forehead and pressing it to the heart, they
show the highest honor that a Moslem can show a book."
But the pioneer husbandman must have long patience. When Judson
was lying loaded with chains in a Burmese dungeon, a fellow prisoner
asked with a sneer about the prospect for the conversion of the
heathen. Judson calmly answered, "The prospects are as bright as
are the promises of God." There is scarcely a country today which
is not as accessible, or where the difficulties are greater, than
was the case in Burma when Judson faced them and overcame.
Challenge of the Closed
Door
The prospects for the evangelization of all the unoccupied fields
are "as bright as the promises of God." Why should we longer wait
to evangelize them? "The evangelization of the world in this generation
is no play-word," says Robert E. Speer. "It is no motto to be bandied
about carelessly. The evangelization of the world in this generation
is the summons of Jesus Christ to every one of the disciples to
lay himself upon a cross, himself to walk in the footsteps of Him
who, though He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through
His poverty might be rich, himself to count his life as of no account,
that he may spend it as Christ spent His for the redemption of the
world." Who will do this for the unoccupied fields? The student
volunteers of today must not rest satisfied until the watchword,
peculiarly their own, finds practical application for the most neglected
and difficult fields, as well as the countries where the harvest
is ripe and the call is for reapers in ever increasing numbers.
The plea of destitution is even stronger than that of opportunity.
Opportunism is not the last word in missions. The open door beckons;
the closed door challenges him who has a right to enter. The unoccupied
fields of the world have, therefore, a claim of peculiar weight
and urgency. "In this twentieth century of Christian history there
should be no unoccupied fields. The Church is bound to remedy the
lamentable condition with the least possible delay."
Make a Life, Not a
Living
The unoccupied fields, therefore, are a challenge to all whose lives
are unoccupied by that which is highest and best; whose lives are
occupied only with the weak things or the base things that do not
count. There are eyes that have never been illumined by a great
vision, minds that have never been gripped by an unselfish thought,
hearts that have never thrilled with passion for another's wrong,
and hands that have never grown weary or strong in lifting a great
burden. To such the knowledge of these Christless millions in lands
yet unoccupied should come like a new call from Macedonia, and a
startling vision of God's will for them. As Bishop Brent remarks,
"We never know what measure of moral capacity is at our disposal
until we try to express it in action. An adventure of some proportions
is not uncommonly all that a young man needs to determine and fix
his manhood's powers." Is there a more heroic test for the powers
of manhood than pioneer work in the mission field? Here is opportunity
for those who at home may never find elbow-room for their latent
capacities, who may never find adequate scope elsewhere for all
the powers of their minds and their souls. There are hundreds of
Christian college men who expect to spend life in practicing law
or in some trade for a livelihood, yet who have strength and talent
enough to enter these unoccupied fields. There are young doctors
who might gather around them in some new mission station thousands
of those who "suffer the horrors of heathenism and Islam," and lift
their burden of pain, but who now confine their efforts to some
"pent-up Utica" where the healing art is subject to the law of competition
and is measured too often merely in terms of a cash-book and ledger.
They are making a living; they might be making a life.
Bishop Phillips Brooks once threw down the challenge of a big task
in these words: "Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger
men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers
equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle,
but you shall be a miracle." He could not have chosen words more
applicable if he had spoken of the evangelization of the unoccupied
fields of the world with all their baffling difficulties and their
glorious impossibilities. God can give us power for the task. He
was sufficient for those who went out in the past, and is sufficient
for those who go out today.
Face to face with these millions in darkness and degradation, knowing
the condition of their lives on the unimpeachable testimony of those
who have visited these countries, this great unfinished task, this
unattempted task, calls today for those who are willing to endure
and suffer in accomplishing it.
No Sacrifice, But
a Privilege
When David Livingstone visited Cambridge University, on December
4, 1857, he made an earnest appeal for that continent, which was
then almost wholly an unoccupied field. His words, which were in
a sense his last will and testament for college men, as regards
Africa, may well close this book:
"For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed
me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in
spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice
which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing
to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which
brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness
of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny
hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought!
It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety,
sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of
the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us
pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink, but
let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared
with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us.
I never made a sacrifice.
I beg to direct your attention to Africa. I know that in a few years
I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open; do not let
it be shut again! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path
for commerce and Christianity; do you carry out the work which I
have begun? I leave it with you."
When a visiting missions speaker challenged Samuel Zwemer to advance
the Gospel, he and his younger brother both organized a mission
to Arabia with other students at the college they were attending.
They left with very slim chances of survival in the harsh conditions
of Arabia, and even slimmer chances of success among the resistant
Muslims. After a few short years of ministry Peter, his younger
brother, died. His first two girls also died in the harsh, diseased
conditions of Arabia, and on their tomb stones Zwemer wrote, "Worthy
is the Lamb to receive riches." After 23 years with the Arabian
Mission in Basrah, Bahrain, Muscat, and Kuwait, and service as the
first candidate secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement, Zwemer
began a career of speaking and writing that radiated out to the
Muslim world from an interdenominational study center in Cairo.
A prolific and gifted author, Zwemer wrote books and articles to
challenge the church in Muslim evangelism, provided scholarly studies
on historical and popular Islam, and produced writings and tracts
in Arabic for Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. For 36
years he edited "The Muslim World," an English quarterly review
of current events in the Muslim world and a forum for missionary
strategy among Muslims, complementing this service with personal
evangelism among the students and faculty of Al-Azhar, Cairo's famous
training center for Muslim missionaries. Among his good friends
was Oswald Chambers, who died while serving God there in Cairo.
James Hunt observed of this statesman, "He may be said to have been
a man of one idea. While his interests and knowledge were wide,
I never talked with him ten minutes that the conversation did not
veer to Islam..." "The Glory of the Impossible" is taken from His
book, The Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia, Published
in 1911.