An Essay On Missions

Once there were six young men in college together who decided, inspired by the lectures of their professor, to start a missionary society. This society wasn’t just one that gave itself a self-important name and did nothing worthwhile. Each of these six men went on to devote their lives, some much too short, to the Great Commission, with most becoming missionaries (and one dying before he made it to the field). Today they are known as the St Andrews Six, the young men from the 1820s who under the guidance of Thomas Chalmers changed how a nation understood missions. 

One of these six was John Adam. Through preaching and participation of the St Andrews missionary society Adam became a Christian and soon after realized his call to missions. While in the society, he wrote an essay about missions. All in the society were to write an essay arguing in favor of missionary endeavors. Below is the one written by John Adam, which emphasizes the plan of God and encourages us in our endeavors. Starting first with God Himself then moving to missionaries from the Bible, Adam pushes us to go forth confidently. 

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In contemplating the works of God, we must ever have been struck with the beautiful adaptation of means to produce the ends He has had in view. It might have seemed natural to suppose that the Almighty would have had no need of instruments to fulfil His purposes; that He who said to light, be, and it was—who speaks, and it is done—to whose power no obstacle can be opposed—and whose wisdom is perplexed by no combination of difficulties—we might have thought that reiterated commands and the instantaneous fulfilment of them, would have been the general order of His procedure. Nothing seems to give us such exalted ideas of high and commanding authority, as a magnificent effect springing forth immediately at the slightest bidding; and they who have affected supreme authority amongst mankind, have aimed at securing the promptest obedience to their commands. 

But in this, as well as in many other instances, God's ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. For we find that when once His creating energy had been exercised, God instituted a succession of dependent causes and consequences, linked in an unbroken chain one to another; and instead of hourly making a lavish display of Omnipotence, He has committed the accomplishment of His designs to others. He brings about His purposes by the intervention of means often the most trivial and contemptible; He orders a mere bank of sand to resist the infuriated waves of the ocean, but “though they roar they shall not pass over it.” 

In the affairs of men, the revolutions of empires are often effected by the most insignificant instruments, and from events the least noticeable the greatest perpetually originate. But whatever be the nature of the second causes, they are always made to intervene in all His dealings with mankind. If men are to be nourished, food is provided for them: if the earth is to be watered, a reservoir of clouds is constructed on high, which, being supplied from the ocean, descends in refreshing showers. 

And, like the communications of nature's benefits, are the still more cheering communications of his mercy. Here, too, God by one summary act might have assembled His offending creatures, and with a voice of paternal tenderness, have announced to them His proclamation of pardon. And if once were not sufficient, as generation succeeded generation, successive eras might have been fixed upon, when to the congregated multitudes of earth's population, the plan of salvation might have been unfolded; so audible might have been the voice, so impressive the revelation, that no ambassadors of peace would have been needed to convey the blissful tidings. It might have been so deeply engraven on the memories of all, as to need no inspired records, either to confirm to them, or to bring afresh to their remembrance the heavenly oracle. 

All this is not beyond the limits of possibility; but the question which we are concerned with, and which leads us directly to the subject of the present Essay, is, the way in which God actually makes known His dispensations of mercy; and here we find the same method existing as in His other works. He avails Himself of the services of inferior agents. Angels have been employed in announcing both his edicts and his gracious invitations. Prophets raised up from among their fellows, receiving their commission from Him, as His heralds, have made known the declarations of His will. 

At particular junctures, He has endowed them with more than ordinary authority, enabling them to work miracles, as tests of their divine commission: but in general, we are told by an Apostle, it has “pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them which believe.” Here then is an instrument, confessedly weak in itself, but which by Him, on whom all things depend, has been preferred to all others. Doubtless an infinite variety of expedients could have suggested themselves to the Divine mind, and all would have proved equally successful in His hands, but He has chosen rather to entrust this important embassy to men, to some of their fellows. 

Such then is the establishment of the Christian ministry, and such are Christian missionaries. The only difference that exists between them is, that the one is more stationary than the other, and that they have succeeded to those who had long laboured before them; they find the ground already cultivated, instead of having for the first time to remove the bushes and to break up the soil. The one is sent into a garden, already enclosed and watered, its trees in bloom, and some laden with fruit; the other is sent into a wilderness, bleak and barren, untrodden but by the wild beasts of the forest, which there roam and seek their prey. 

But, though the one is easier and more delightful, yet it is not more honourable than the other. He who withstands the rudest assaults, and vanquishes the most powerful obstacles, is entitled to more esteem than he who has merely kept his ground, when there were comparatively few enemies to struggle against. The Apostle Paul speaks on this subject as if he would rather have thought it a disgrace to have followed the track of another, whilst any regions remained which had not yet been explored: he talks of not having built on another man's foundation, by which, if excellence is conceived to dwell in his character, he would teach us to consider the Missionary's a more honourable and important office. 

He himself was the noblest example of a Missionary's zeal, and of a Missionary's toils: in perils by land and by sea, amongst the heathen and his own countrymen, he travelled everywhere, declaring to all, the message he had received from Heaven. He had completely severed the ties of kinsfolk, and of citizenship, feeling a brother's sympathy with the woes of his fellow men, of every nation and of every clime; seeking ever to promote their eternal interests, and in his own emphatic language, considering himself “a debtor both to the wise and the unwise, to the Greek and the Barbarian, to the bond and the free.”

The first preachers of the Gospel seem to have been all Missionaries, in the very sense which is now annexed to the terms. “They went every where,” we read, “preaching the Word;” and this seems to have been the practice of our Savior Himself, for we seldom read of His remaining stationary for any length of time—“He went about doing good,”— “He went through all the villages preaching the Gospel.” From Galilee He passed and repassed to Jerusalem, and thence He travelled to the banks of the Jordan, and to the shores of the lake of Gennesaret. He addressed the multitudes assembled by a river side, or under the shade of a wood, by the fountain of Siloam, the garden of the brook Kedron, and the Mount of Olives.

But it is an objection which is often made, that now those miraculous powers are withheld, which enabled the first messengers of the cross to speak with fluency the languages of the different nations they visited, and by the accompanying signs which they wrought, to give convincing evidence of their divine commission; and that, if God had intended it to be made known to all people, He would not so soon have withdrawn the attendant testimonials of his approbation. 

But this objection can only be urged on the supposition that there are no direct injunctions which bind it upon us as a duty; and so long as "Go, teach all nations," yet unaccomplished, remains on record, so long can no objection whatever release us from this solemn engagement. And again, we may reply, that though the actual power of working miracles is withdrawn, yet does the authentic narrative of those miracles which were wrought remain with us; and the miracle of prophecy, so far from diminishing, is rather augmented by the lapse of ages. 

Moreover, the Word of God is still with us; the inspired writings have not yet been erased, nor even dimmed, by the hand of time. The lamp of truth still burns as brightly as when first kindled in the sanctuary; and the answer of Abraham, "If they believe not Moses and the Prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead," would teach us, that where it fails to enlighten by its own native effulgence, there is little hope from mere outward means, though the most powerful and convincing. 

And then we know that an agency, quite distinct from mere external evidence, was then essential to a cordial reception of the truth, and that many who witnessed the most astonishing displays of divine power, were rather the more hardened in their infidelity, than won over from it. We know that then a sacred and peculiar influence was needed to accompany a preached Gospel, though proclaimed by men girt with a kind of omnipotence, and without its constraining power all would have proved ineffectual. 

And these influences are not now withdrawn; they never have been, nor shall be, so long as the promise remains unrevoked. "Behold I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." An inward process was then, and is now necessary to form a counterpart to the external accompaniments. In a word, unless that Spirit who “bloweth where he listeth,” breathe upon the soul, it shall remain unbelieving in the midst of the most unanswerable demonstrations of external evidence. 

Knowing this then, the Christian Missionary may confidently go forth, and though more numerous and more trying obstacles impede his progress, yet let him remember that the main object of his embassy, even the conversion of the heart of man, is found as difficult in a civilized country, and (considered in itself alone) in the age of miracles, as in our own times, and in the most barbarous nations. Let him hear one, placed in the most favoured circumstances, where civilization and an outward reception of the Gospel have done their utmost, and who, on having read the account of Missions, said, he had seen in these accounts “that the fishing-boat and the tomahawk and the cap of feathers excepted, the Christian Minister has to deal with just the same sort of creatures as the Greenlander and the Indian, amongst civilized nations.” 

This then, can form no just ground of objection against embarking in so difficult an enterprise; or, should the argument prove insufficient, experience shall abundantly evidence its futility. There have not been wanting in periods not far removed from our own, those who animated with the spirit of the primitive Apostles, have forsaken country and home, to make known to savage tribes those “glad tidings of great joy which are for all people.” Nor shall ever be forgotten the names of those who have so gloriously achieved these spiritual conquests in foreign lands—a Whitfield, a Brainerd, a Buchanan, a Martyn, together with that galaxy of lesser luminaries who, in our own days, have shed so bright a lustre into the very gloom and shadow of death. Who can read of the unexampled success of these despised Missionaries, without seeing the absurdity of all such objections? 

And who that really believes in the Scriptures as a divine communication from Heaven, can read of these almost miraculous transformations of individuals, and even nations, without feeling his confidence confirmed in their supreme authority, and at the same time, a kind of tacit rebuke of his own negligence, and want of interest in the everlasting destinies of his fellow-men? Who can read of the mighty effects produced in Greenland, and remain unmoved? There, literally, the desert has been made to blossom as the rose, and the solitary place has been made glad by them. Its miserable inhabitants, perhaps the most grossly stupid and depraved of any people; the slaves of the most abominable vices, and the dupes of the most childish superstition; so unaccustomed to thought, that their attention could not be secured for a few moments, and so ignorant, that their language could scarcely be made the vehicle of conveying any intellectual ideas; these, the very off-scouring of the species, have been converted in great numbers. The attempt, though apparently chimerical, has not failed, in the words of the poet,

“To plant successfully sweet Sharon's rose On icy plains, and in eternal snows!”

so that now we may address them in the words of the same poet,

“Truth is thine, remote, unenvied isle! And peace, the genuine offspring of her smile. Far brighter beams than his who fires the skies Have risen at length on your admiring eyes, That shoot into your darkest caves the day, From which our nicer optics turn away.”

So great has been the accompanying change in their civil and domestic life, as to need no sympathy in the religious feeling to be interested in such accounts as these. The merest and most common-place philanthropy cannot but be cheered with so refreshing a prospect. To see a barren land now cultivated, and participating in all the blessings of husbandry—the arts beginning to flourish—civilization daily extending itself, and order, prosperity, and peace, spread over the whole face of society; the heart of the mere sentimentalist may well exult and almost weep for joy at this delightful scene. 

But we must look still higher, would we duly appreciate the nature of this surprizing transformation; these are only the accompaniments of a far nobler renovation, which, though not extended to all who are sharing the outward privileges, is yet, we cannot doubt, to a very considerable number, but as the least and most inconsiderable, in a long train of blessed consequences, to be only consummated in eternity; and if ever appearances are to be relied on, as indicative of the state of the heart, we must conclude that many amongst them have come to a full and perfect acquaintance with that truth, which in our favoured land is professed by so many, but whose life-giving energy is experienced by so few. And though this is one of the noblest of Missionary triumphs, yet is it not the noblest, nor does it stand alone as a solitary instance; in Otaheite and the neighbouring islands the change has been still more remarkable: here, a whole people, with its princes and nobles, have relinquished idolatry, and have embraced the Christian faith, and, as concomitant blessings in its train, the decencies and the comforts of civilized life are rapidly disseminating themselves amongst them. 

But the time would fail us to tell of what is doing in Africa and America; in the East and West Indies. So expeditiously has the work of translations gone on, that it has become a delightfully fatiguing task, merely to read over the nomenclature of the languages into which the Scriptures have been rendered. These, we trust, are the never-withering fruits of the persevering and assiduous labours of these devoted men. Though no other good should have flowed from their endeavours, yet thus they have bestowed the most precious of all gifts on thousands of their fellow-creatures now living, and on generations yet unborn.

Thus, both by arguments, and an appeal to facts, may we answer the often repeated objection, which would brand every Missionary attempt as chimerical and absurd. And we conclude, by calling upon all to assist in promoting the spread of the everlasting Gospel; and if they do not feel themselves called to “Go over and help them,” at least, by their contributions, their influence, and their prayers, to unite in co-operating with these devoted men in furthering a cause which is peculiarly God's cause. If they are Christians, and have felt the power of the truth on their own hearts, we think we need only remind them of their duty, as laid down in the Scriptures; refer them to the prophecies not yet accomplished, and which assure us of final success; or, by fixing their attention on the miserable state of the heathen, their degraded condition here, and their fearful prospects beyond the grave, to excite a feeling of sympathetic commiseration and pity; if possible, to rescue them from a doom which, if not sure, is yet involved in the gloom of a most alarming uncertainty. 

But though some are unable to sympathize with us in these higher and nobler objects, to which we would render every other subservient, yet they may be won to unite with us in promoting the cause of humanity and beneficence throughout the world. Them also we would call to come forward and bear their share in the necessary expenses of Missionary labors: if they are really desirous of bringing about an object in which they seem so enthusiastic, let them join with us in furnishing a means which, more than all others, has proved effectual in spreading the blessings and the arts of civilized life through every quarter of the globe.

March 8th, 1825.

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