‘ogTYV,, <£ 9-23 Ejod’g purpose Dui 1 privilege. A MISSIONARY ADDRESS MRS. 0. W. OATES, OF BOSTON. Delivered before the Convention of The Women's Iiaptist foreign Missionary Society of Ontario , AND PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. TORONTO : DUDLEY & BURNS, 18S4. tjod’s purpose and Our privilege. A MISSIONARY ADDRESS MRS. A. 0. GATES, OF BOSTON. Delivered before the Convention of The Women's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of Ontario, AND PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. TORONTO : DUDLEY & BURNS, 1884. [{od’g purpose and Oui 1 privilege. — -♦ — — In addressing you, shall I say “ My cousins,” because we are daughters of one common mother- land ? No, there is a tenderer tie, my sisters, that binds us to our one Elder Brother, at whose call we meet, and whose will we seek to know. The busy, bustling world is shut outside for the hour, and we, in mutual confidence, wait to hear and interpret the whispers of His gracious and far-reaching purpose, for in all the confusion of marching and counter- marching events, as they have come, and now come, filing down through the centuries, there is the golden chain of a purpose that binds each of us and all things to the throne of God. Far back in the eter- nity past, you and I were in His thought of love, as we now are and as we shall be through the eternity to come, when He has brought us home to His glory. If anyone doubts that her Lord has a purpose to be fulfilled in her life, let her read, on bended knee, that wonderful 17th chapter of St. John, and with melting heart and streaming eyes, and a new meaning in her words, she will say, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” 4 god’s purpose and our privilege. The purposed work which Christ has undertaken for this lost world, is to bring it back to God ; and not one of His purposes fails. His church and its individual members are the chosen instrumentality that He will honor as fellow-laborers in His work. His changeless command has been given, “ Go, dis- ciple all nations,” and, leading on, He cheers the host with His promise, “Lo, I am with you.” On the pivot of the Divine purpose hidden in this com- mand and promise, all the events that have made up the world’s history from the day of His ascension till now, have turned, and will turn to the end of time.” “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, and then shall the end come.” This is the all-including plan of our Saviour King — a plan of which you and I are a part. Have we an in- terest in its unfolding ? and what are the precious privileges which it offers us 1 The field is the world. Until a century ago, little was known of the peoples of the populous East. The East India Company had opened Southern Asia to English commerce ; America had touched the Dark Continent through the African slave trade ; China and Japan were a sealed book that none might read. The "reed of Christian nations had enriched itself O with pagan gold, knowing little— and, shall I say, caring less for the bodies and souls, the men and women made of their own flesh and blood in the like- ness of a common Father, till an infinite, pitying god’s purpose and our privilege. 5 Christ moved a Carey and, later, a Judson, to go and find the lost souls in idolatrous India. Seventy — one hundred — years have passed, and how much has been learned of the woe and degradation of the na- tions that “know not God.” How much there is yet to be learned ! Mrs. Jewett, of Madras, in a recent letter to me, writes, “ O that the women of America would go down with us into heathenism just one afternoon, and see the way in which we try to get at the depths of this depravity and darkness.” It was a rare pleasure that I had a few weeks since to hear a missionary address from your noble country- woman, Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness, of London, Eng. She spoke of Africa, and told how a river is turned out of its channel and a deep pit dug in its bed, into which a score of women are huddled, two of them standing upon all-fours, and upon the backs of these the dead body of a man is laid. He was once their husband. The chief wife is brought, and to her is extended the mercy of strangling. L T pon this living mass the earth is thrown back, an equal number of male servants are beheaded, their blood poured upon the mound, and the river turned back again to How on to the sea. Is it any wonder that the waves of ocean break with a moan upon every shore of Christ- endom ? Not long ago, in some of the South Sea Islands, young girls were fattened like oxen and sold in the stalls for food. How recently in India has humanity stopped her ear from the shrieks of widowed 6 GODS PURPOSE AND OUR PRIVILEGE. women burning on the funeral pyre ! And in China and Hindustan how many smothered cries of new- born daughters have been heard by the ear of heaven alone ! Thank God, your Christian Government has made some of these horrors forever things of the past, and thank God Christianity is wiping out some others, but still the wail of suffeiing womanhood in heathen lands makes our hearts stand still with pity, while the moaning “billows of humanity” surge on to swell and break upon the shores of eternity. Every Chris- tian woman who speaks our mother tongue, echoes the words of your gracious Queen, as she heard the story of this woe, “ We had no idea it was so bad as this ; something must be done for these poor creatures ; ” and her royal womanhood added, “ We would wish it generally known that we sympathise with every effort made to relieve the suffering state of the women of India.” In that domain of a widowed Empress there are 21 millions of Hindu widows- widow#/ half of them were never wives — and so wretched and help- less is their lot, that they pray, “ Let no more women be born in this land.” There are 400 or 500 millions of women in pagan lands — our sixt.rrx — of finer fibre than are the men about them — the mothers and daughters of our race, made for a crown and glory to its manhood, who miss their mission and grope in darkness to go down to unlighted graves, unless you and I, mothers and daughters of Christian England and America, send them a light — nay, verily, go mid god’s purpose and ouk privilege. 7 carry it ; a light to illumine their darkness and shed its beams across the gloom of death and the grave. In the supreme hour of Christ’s redemptive work for our race, by the side of His open grave, he gave to a woman the first commission to proclaim His triumph. All through the history of the church woman has had her place and service. It is, indeed, an honored ser- vice to which the God of Missions calls us, English- speaking women, in the end of this nineteenth cen- tury. Let us arise because He calls, and joyfully do His bidding. Much pioneer work has been done on Baptist mis- sion fields ; thousands have been converted, churches established and educational work undertaken. The wives of our missionaries have wrought loyally by the sides of their husbands, heathen women have been taught and helped most patiently, and heathen men, despising womanhood in the mass, have been com- pelled to admire and confess that the civilization which produces such a type of woman, is better than their own ; and, admiring, they are asking for their wives and daughters a culture that shall make them like their western sisters ; in a few rare instances are asking it so that they may become benefactors of their race and sex. This silent, indirect influence from Christian missions has opened the zenanas of the higher classes of India, and Christian women, as teachers or physicians, may go in, carrying the light of Christ’s gospel and glory. The desolate, empty 8 GODS PURPOSE AND OUR PRIVILEGE. lives of these secluded women, make them receptive of loving influence. They are idle and childish, but what should we have been if, for a thousand years, our maternal ancestry had been immured within four square, bare walls, knowing so little of what lay be- yond that the picture of a tree would be held inverted and no conception formed of the object which it repre- sents ! A few shining examples among them prove what the women may become, and their readiness to receive the missionary teacher is our medium of giv- ing an impulse to their lives which, by its pulsations, shall move the very heart-life of the nation. Society and the intellect of India are being thrilled by the magnetic touch of western life. Shall currents, warm and strong from the heart of Christ, sent through your hand and mine, quicken by the voice of eternal truth, and illuminate by a heavenly light ; or shall the batteries of hell, with deadly charges of irreligion and infidelity, like scorching blasts, sere and blight this field all ripe for Christian endeavor ? In the open zenanas of India is a rare opportunity for cul- tured Christian womanhood to project its wealth of life and influence into coming generations— and through eternity. They ask our civilization ; let us give them the Christianity which makes our civiliza- tion. The physical ills from which heathen women suffer, and our ability to relieve them by our medical skill, are another avenue along which we may carry the cod’s PURPOSE AND OUR PKIV11.ECK. 9 richer gifts of the world’s great Healer. You will allow me to quote a recent American traveller who enjoyed rare opportunities for observation. Mr. Joseph Cook says : “ Who doubts that medical science ought to be carried to the doors of Hindoo households by women '! An angel from heaven itself, as has been often said, would not be welcomed in many zenanas more cordially than a well-instructed female physician. “ There comes a new life into the world, and in those sacred hours when a mother trembles between this world and the next, she is usually treated as a thing even in the best orthodox Hindoo-Pagan fami- lies. She is put into the worst room, probably, and for days and weeks no one is allowed to go near her. The air of the room may be like that of a miniature black hole of Calcutta, and yet there is no attempt made to purify it. She has oidy coarse food. Any touch of this mother by other members of the house- hold is pollution. Many lives have been lost simply by this barbaric exposure, under circumstances when all human instincts call for the use of the highest medical skill. Send India, then, medical missionaries, equipped with the best learning of our Occidental science ; send medical missionaries, females, with their hearts aflame for the gospel, and, beyond any doubt, you will be doing for India what Christ, our Lord, meant His disciples should do when he said to them, ‘ Heal the sick, preach the gospel.’ The two things 10 god’s purpose and our privilege. go together, and we are to follow them to the ends of the earth.” A slight knowledge of medicine is indis- pensable to a missionary, but trained physicians, who, in spirit, are first missionaries and then professionals, are needed. No doubt, also, many expensive journeys might be spared to mission families in remote and isolated stations, if such a physician were ready to come to their call ; and, in our Society, we have found a professional nurse, free for service, to be a great comfort to our sick ones. But school work, in connection with our missions, doubtless offers the most direct means of permanent influence. Woman is the educator of the race ; she puts her hand upon the mainspring of the world, and by a God-given right and privilege controls its destiny. When a mission has been planted, converts made and churches gathered, schools are next demanded, be- cause there is at once begotten in the native Christian a desire for education. In the Madras Presidency, where your missions are side by side with ours, we are told that not one in a hundred of the Telugu con- verts can read, and one in two thousand of the women. Coming out of the ignorance and idolatry of centuries they cannot become stable Christians, able to give “a reason of the hope ” within them, till they are taught to read the Word of God. All history proves that Divine revelation cannot be preserved pure by tradi- tion, hence these disciples must read the Bible for themselves, so as to be “ rooted and grounded in the GODS PURPOSE AND OUR PRIVILEGE. 11 truth, able to teach others also.” The object of Christian missions after