THE 
 
 ee ee N 
 
ee 
 
 Dedicated 
 
 WITH MUCH RESPECT, 
 
 TO THE 
 FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Bangalore Telugu Mission. 
 
 POOSOGESQCO0G00) 
 
THE ORIGIN, NEED AND VALUE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE. 
 
 To some it may appear quite superfluous, and, possi- 
 bly, to more as strange, that when the Missionary 
 Enterprise, as we now understand that phrase, has 
 run its course for over a century, any attempt should 
 be made to advert to its origin, to enforce its need, 
 or, to indicate its value. But a surface look over 
 any part of the great Missionary Field discloses facts 
 that can only be explained on the ground, of either 
 an imperfect conception of the real origin of this great 
 work, or, of a very defective apprehension of its value 
 and of its need. 
 
 In what follows an attempt is made to assist in 
 realising the true origin of the movement, and, if it 
 may be, to incite to a more ardent pursuit of the 
 noblest object that can occupy the attention of the 
 Church of God; whether as active workers in the 
 Missionary Feild, or, as loving co-adjutors in the 
 Home lands.. et 
 
2 
 
 When the late Duke of Wellington, said ‘“ that the 
 Church had her marching orders in Matthew xxviii,” he 
 was right, but only as to the fact of orders given. He 
 did not go back to the reason why these orders were 
 given. We must, however do this if we are to receive 
 the full inspiration which the origin of the movement 
 imparts. The enterprise is too noble, and its issues too 
 important to allow of our bemg moved by anything 
 short of a just conception of the real reason why our 
 Lord gave this commission to His Chureh. Or, if 
 this statement should appear too strong, it may be 
 modified so far as to say, that where the enterprise is 
 entered on only from regard to the fact of a duty im- 
 posed, as in Matthew xxviii and Mark xvi; the full 
 incentive to the work is not realised and possessed. But 
 in view of the ordinary difficulties of the work, and, 
 sometimes of its exceptional perils, it will be found that 
 the stronger and deeper the motive that impels us, the 
 more likely will it be that weshall be persistent in the 
 face of difficulties, and stedfast in the midst of oppo- 
 sition and of danger. 
 
 The tap-root, if the figure may be allowed, of the 
 Mission of the Church to the world is to be found 
 in the heart of God; whose desires, in the Eternity 
 past, for the blessing of the human race that was to 
 be, were crystallized in His Eternal purpose, as 
 subsequently unfolded in the New Testament. But 
 we need not go further back than Isaiah xlii to see 
 the origin of the Commission of Matthew xxyiil. 
 
3 
 
 There are three prophecies of the Lord Jesus, 
 as the servant of Jehovah, near to each other in 
 the book of Isaiah—in chapters xlii, xlix and_ iii, 
 and while there is service in each case the services 
 differ. For example. In chapters hi and liii, it is 
 mainly a service of suffering—and suffering which 
 reached its climax when His soul was made an offer- 
 ing for sin, and that service was finished. And ‘ the 
 things” [7.e., the suffering things ] ‘‘ concerning Him 
 had an end,” as He said they would in Luke xxii, 
 a¢. . The foundation. thus being, laid for all Divine 
 operations in grace. 
 
 Next, in chapterxlix He was commissioned to pre- 
 sent Himself to the House of Israel; and, as the 
 promised, and so, possible Redeemer and Restorer to 
 National blessing and supremacy. This service He 
 fulfilled, partly in person aud partly by His Apostles 
 as John i, verse 11; but with the result foreseen in 
 Isaiah ‘*‘ He came unto His own” [place] ‘and His 
 own [people ]” received Him not. And the lamenta- 
 tion of Isaiah xlix and 4 became fact. ‘I have 
 laboured in yain, I have spent my strength for 
 nought and in vain.’ A service of rejection that 
 entailed a sorrow we are quite unable to realise, 
 and which produced the holy tears of which we read 
 in Luke xix. 
 
 Further, in chapter xlil His service was two- 
 fold, as specified in verses 6 & 7.. He was first of 
 
4 
 
 >] 
 
 all to be “for ‘a covenant of the people ;” and we 
 read in Romans xy, 8 that He was a Minister, or, 
 servant of the circumcision—that is of the Jewish 
 people. To them He ministered first in His own 
 person ; and, next, by His Apostles whom He special- 
 ly commissioned ‘ to go the lost sheep of the house 
 of Israel ;” and as definitely forbad their going to 
 any others. Then as now it was “to the Jew 
 first ;” but then tothe Jew exclusively. And it is 
 not too much to say that Jesus Christ never preached 
 a single sermon to a purely Gentile audience. Hence 
 the second part of His commission in Isaiah xlu, 7 
 was not so much as begun by Him; because the 
 failure of His Mission to the Jews prevented His 
 further Ministry to the outside World. Instead 
 of going to the Gentiles to be their “ light,” He was 
 taken back to heaven at His ascension, as a witness 
 of the righteousness of God in His government, and 
 as the result of its exercise, as He Himself said 
 John xvi, 10. 
 
 Human wickedness may delay the execution of 
 Divine purpose, but it cannot alter that purpose, or, 
 prevent its ultimate accomplishment. So what our 
 Lord could not do personally has, since His departure, 
 been done in measure by deputy. 
 
 A clear and very distinct illustration of the 
 whole principle of deputed service consequent on 
 personal rejection, occurs in Luke viii, 26 to 39. 
 
5 
 
 Jesus went, in the execution of another commission 
 I John iii, 8, to where the suffering demoniac was 
 bound in chains and fetters ; and did His work as a 
 .deliverer in casting out the Demons. Having done 
 so, two results immediately followed : 
 
 The sufferer was healed, and 
 The Healer was asked to depart. 
 
 He complied with their wish, but He left His mercy 
 and compassion behind Him. So when the healed 
 one wished to accompany Jesus He forbad Him ; 
 and, instead, bade him go home to his friends and 
 tell them what great things the Lord had: done 
 for him. He did so, and all Decapolis heard the 
 story of his deliverance. What Jesus Christ could 
 not do in person, because of His departure through 
 human wickedness, He did by deputy. He could 
 cause His power to operate through an agent, as He 
 mercifully does to-day. 
 
 The conyersion and commission of Saul of Tarsus 
 exactly corresponds with the fact-picture, of Luke 
 vil. The terms of his commission are recorded in 
 Acts xxvi and are a passing on to Paul, on Christ’s 
 behalf, of the commission entrusted to the Lord in 
 Isaiah xlii, 7. Paul was to go to the Gentiles, the 
 Heathen of to-day as verse 8 proves ; the commission 
 of our Lord “to open blind eyes, &e., &c.,” being 
 transferred,to Acts xxvi, 17,18. And Acts xxii shews 
 that after years had elapsed the commission remained 
 
6 
 
 unchanged. Paul was to “ depart,” and to be sent, 
 “far hence to the Gentiles.” Paul was a concrete 
 embodiment of the Church: so that Paul’s com- 
 mission is the commission of the Church to-day. ’ 
 And as Paul had to fill up what was lacking in the 
 sufferings of Christ, so, the Church to- “day” has to 
 continue the work. 
 
 The special revelations given to Paul shew how the 
 execution of His Commission was possible. To Paul 
 it was given to make known the previously hidden 
 mystery of God, as to His Church ; and, as a neces- 
 sary consequence, there was added the announcement 
 of the great fact of positive union to Christ, in the 
 ease of all who believe on Him. So that as Christ 
 and all who are His are one, Christ, by His life and 
 spirit in us, can still work in the world, while per- 
 sonally absent from it. Given the realisation of this, 
 and the origin of the Missionary enterprise is learned. 
 
 Do we realise what to Jesus Christ His resurrec- 
 tion was? And what to us union with Him is? 
 That Jesus Christ was, as all who are His still are, 
 independent of the body for His true personality, is 
 self evident. His death was the separation of His 
 spirit from His body, and involved His exit from this 
 world ; and His resurrection was His re-entrance 
 into this world by the resumption of the bodily state. 
 It was a bodily state. in new conditions, being a 
 spiritual body in contrast with a natural body ; but it 
 
od 
 d 
 
 was a condition that admitted of His discharge of 
 bodily functions in a way that He could not while 
 absent from the body, or, since His removal to heaven. 
 If He wished to join disciples going to Emmaus, and 
 eomfort them by word and act, He had bodily capaci- 
 ties that enabled Him to do it. But His ascension 
 to Heaven was His personal removal from Earth, 
 rendering it impossible for Him to go from place to 
 place, or, to speak and act directly. Hence, if He is 
 to complete His commission to the Heathen, it can 
 now only be by his dwelling in all who are His, 
 through His life being imparted to us, and by using 
 the members of His mystical body, so as through 
 them to speak, or, act, or, go. 
 
 The primary question, therefore, for every believer 
 in Christ is not so much what, he, or, she may desire 
 to do, or where be required to go; but what does the 
 Lord desire to Himself do by us—using our lips 
 through which to speak, and other bodily functions 
 through which to act. That the nineteenth century 
 should be nearly run out, and some thousand millions 
 of the human race-have never heard the name of Jesus, 
 shews, with a vividness no language can pourtray, 
 ‘how the wish of the Lord to complete His work 
 among the Heathen has been frustrated by either the 
 ignorance, the supineness, or, the indifference of His 
 people. 
 
 We think and speak of Carey, Moffat and others, 
 and we admire their deyotion while rejoicing in their 
 
8 
 
 work. But after all it was not so much Carey in 
 India, Moffat in Africa, or, Burns in China, as it was 
 that their devotion to the interests of Christ enabled 
 Him to go in them, to work by them ; and through 
 them, among hitherto unvisited peoples, to proclaim 
 by their lips His love towards them, and His will- 
 ingness and ability to save them. And if these 
 heroes of a not distant part extort our admiration, 
 let us not forget that to every member of Christ 
 to-day there remains the possibility of becoming, 
 if we have never yet been, the same mediums of 
 the activities of the personal Christ, as existed in the 
 case of Paul and his successors. And it will be a mark 
 of spiritual health whenever the heart is prepared to 
 respond to the call ‘‘ Whom shall I send’ by the 
 ‘Here am I send me.” . And as in the great 
 majority of cases this cannot be by personal service, 
 the spirit of the response can always find appropriate 
 expression in loving co-operation with those who 
 have gone, or, are desirous and willing to go. 
 
 THE NEED 
 
 of the Missionary Enterprise is generally considered 
 to arise from two causes 
 
 First, from the multitudes who in Heathen lands are 
 living and dying without the true knowledge of Christ, 
 and, 
 
9 
 
 Next, because the Lord has commanded His people 
 to make Him and His gospel known to. these 
 multitudes. And when Heathenism is seen ‘“ at 
 home,” in its naked deformity, this need is found to 
 be indeed great. But as relieving human want is the 
 lowest motive so it is the weakest ; and the true and 
 primary need of the enterprise arises elsewhere. 
 
 The Scriptures shew plainly that God’s first desire 
 is to bring honor and gladness to His Son; and 
 especially that, thereby, He may see of ‘the travail 
 of His soul.” The primary question, therefore, is 
 how far the Missionary Enterprise is needed in the 
 interest of the Lord Jesus. 
 
 That He has required and still requires it in order 
 that He, Himself may, through His members, com- 
 plete His unfinished commission to be a “light to 
 the Heathen,” elevates the work to the level of a 
 Divine necessity. Because He said that as He was 
 sent by the Father, so, He the Son, sent His mem- 
 bers and followers. And as the Father worked in 
 and by the Son, so, Christ now works in and by 
 those who are His. All true Christians are, therefore, 
 intended to be His duplicates, representatives, and 
 working substitutes. And if this is seen and realised, 
 the highest conceivable motive is supplied to engage 
 personally in the work, or, to energetically help those 
 who are already in the field. For we at once lose 
 sight of self in the consciousness that we are needed 
 
10 
 
 instruments for the Lord Himself to work, as He 
 otherwise cannot work by reason of His personal 
 absence. Of course He, as Supreme, could work 
 providentially, by employing natural forces to awaken 
 the Heathen mind apart from human agency, and 
 the Scriptures intimate that, later on, this will possibly 
 be done; and ona large scale. But now it is “ How 
 shall they hear without a preacher?” The Living 
 Christ now speaks to human hearts and consciences by 
 the lips and tongues of His members; and the lips and 
 tongues must be among the Heathen, or Christ can- 
 not speak there through them. And whether we 
 regard Christ Himself speaking in us by His life 
 which we possess, or, the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of 
 Christ operating, so to speak, on His behalf, it is one 
 and the same thing. For while the Holy Spirit is 
 one with the Son and the Father, and, so, may be said 
 to be in Christ, He indwells all who believe in Christ, | 
 because Christ Himself is in them. As Paul wrote 
 “Yet not I but Christ liveth in me.” So that 
 according to Divine arrangement, the unfulfilled com- 
 mission of Jesus Christ, as the servant of Jehovah to 
 and for the Heathen, can only be completed as the 
 presence of His members in the Heathen world per- 
 mits of His working there by them. , 
 Other considerations arising out of this primal one 
 could be mentioned, such as the interest of the Lord 
 in the completion of His Church, the gratifying of 
 His loving heart in His yearning desire to save the 
 
11 
 
 Jost, and His no less ardent longing to recover and 
 restore His own ancient people ; but which now waits, 
 and must await the glorification of the Church. To 
 which should be added that His return for His 
 people is necessarily hindered until all who are in 
 the Heathen world given to Him as part of His 
 Church are actually gathered out. But space forbids 
 more than the mention of these facts. If Jesus 
 Christ did not hesitate to die in agony and ignominy, 
 in order that we might have forever the gladness of 
 God as the joy of our heart, can we hesitate to go to 
 the Heathen at His bidding, or, refuses to help those 
 who have already gone, when compliance with His 
 wish will add to the joy of His heart? Is it too 
 much to say, that the full realisation of this need for 
 God will yield a new inspiration to the Church of 
 God? And that hearts and purses now closed will 
 spring open, when it is seen and felt that the heart 
 and the purse are needed for Christ Himself to work 
 
 thereby, — 
 THE VALUE 
 
 of this enterprise is to be estimated by its im- 
 portance ; and its importance cannot be estimated 
 by us because of our inability to compute the worth 
 to God of an agency indispensable to Him. Of 
 course there are subsiduary considerations, such 
 as the value of souls to God when saved, and the 
 value hereafter to a worker, or, helper in this great 
 
12 
 
 enterprise, when the Lord will bestow his rewards of 
 service, partly out of regard to our fidelity to our 
 ‘trust, but, probably, much more in view of the value 
 our service bere has been to him. But these are 
 lower considerations, and fall into nothingness in 
 comparison with the value to God of the existence, 
 in the Heathen world, of an agency He has con- 
 descended to make indispensable to Himself. It 
 is very wonderful that this should be; but the 
 whole arrangement of church existence and agency 
 demonstrates that the Lord Jesus works, and will 
 now only work by the agency of His people ; because, 
 ina sense incomprehensible to us, He and His 
 people are one. 
 
 If the foregoing statements are only approxi- 
 mately correct, there follow certain conclusions that 
 must be worthy of the consideration of all believers in 
 Christ. 
 
 First, the Missionary Enterprise is thereby placed 
 in the very front rank of grandeur, nobility and im- 
 portance. Itis a noble work to witness for God and 
 thus to be a willing instrument through which the 
 Lord Jesus Christ can work in the civilized world ; 
 and the value of this to God is not to be underrated. 
 But in Christendom the servants of Christ abound 
 and superabound—Christian agencies over-lapping 
 in every direction, until the competition to secure 
 a conyert to ‘us’ is the scorn of the ‘world, 
 
13 
 
 and the shameof the Church. The consequence is that 
 the Lord, so to speak, has a choice of instruments; and 
 if one is lacking, or, unfit, He has others close at hand. 
 But it is far otherwise in the realm of Heathendom. 
 For not only, as before stated, are there about one 
 thousand millions utterly ignorant of the True God 
 and of His son, the Saviour Jesus Christ ; but those 
 seryants of Christ who are in the mission field have 
 so many thousands and Millions at their doors, as 
 to render it impossible for them to reach and speak 
 to all. A Missionary in India very lately, in 
 describing his field of labour, stated he was the only 
 herald of Christ to two millions of souls. And, to go 
 no further than our own sphere, we have 50,000 
 souls and six workers ; while to 20,000 women and 
 girls we have two young ladies, And why is this ? 
 
 First, because the grandeur, the honor and the 
 nobility of the work is unrealised. 
 
 Next, because, in many cases individuals are 
 reluctant to surrender the comforts of home 
 and civilization, 
 
 Then, in not a few cases, parents will not give 
 up their children, and 
 
 Further, Christians will spend upon themselves, 
 what can well be spared without injury to health, or, 
 even diminution of comfort, but will not pour their 
 
14 
 
 offerings into the lap of the Lord; so that He may 
 have the opprotunity of going in and by His mem- 
 bers to the perishing Millions of heathendom. 
 
 To those who have in degree realised the tieed to 
 God and man of this great enterprise, and have, in 
 measure, caught the inspiration derived from appre- 
 hending its true origin, no exhortations are needed, 
 
 either to personal devotion, or, active co-operation. 
 And in the 
 
 ' “COMING, CROWNING DAY” 
 
 there may be found, undreamt of now, transcendant 
 honor and reward awaiting those who in, possible 
 humbleness, but in real earnestness have willingly 
 placed themselves at His disposal among the Heathen. 
 Considering it to be their chiefest privilege that, in the 
 day of His rejection and absence from Earth, they 
 went to the 
 
 “ REGIONS” ‘“ BEYOND” 
 
 that He, going in them, might Himself, through 
 them, gratify His heart in telling out His love. And 
 while it will be blessed beyond conception to hear from 
 His lips the “ well done good and Faithful servant,” it 
 may be that there awaits a richer, a fuller, and a more 
 *~tense joy for those who haye willingly yielded them- 
 
15 
 
 ‘selves, their children, or their substance to enable the 
 Lord to complete His unfinished commission. 
 
 He has fulfilled 
 
 “THE COVENANT FOR THE 
 PEOPLE.” 
 
 When will the Church enable Him to be also 
 
 “THE LIGHT OF THE HEATHEN?” 
 
 Perhaps the answer to this question rests more with 
 us, than some of us have hitherto realised. 
 
 G. W. GILLINGS, 
 Bangalore. 
 South India. 
 June 1895. 
 
 ‘Higginbotham & Co., Bangalore—1905, 
 
| vial E One tsa 
 TR ae 
 
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