* v. 
 
 ID<si>Y>ey, "R.L, 
 
 WORLD \\ 
 
 R E A P 
 
 T H E 
 
 hiite to harvest 
 
 ; OR, IT PERISHES. 
 
 / 
 
®be ®Url* $tbitc to fiarbtst:— ; or it geris^es. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED FOR 
 
 TIIE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN 
 
 CHURCH, 
 
 IN NEW YORK, MAY 2, 1858. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. ROBERT L. DABNEY, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND POLITY, IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF THE 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, VIRGINIA. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS, 
 By Edward 0 . Jenkins, 26 Frankfort Street. 
 
 1858. 
 

 
TIIE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST REAP ; OR IT PERISHES. 
 
 A. SERMON. 
 
 “Beiioi-d, I say unto you. Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. - ' 
 — John iv. 35. 
 
 The most familiar truths are the most influential. This is a fact which 
 our ambition to be novel often causes us to overlook. Much that is 
 ingenious, and at the same time correct, has been said upon the commer- 
 cial, civil, and social results of missions and of Christianity. There is 
 some danger of our prosecuting the evangelical work from these consid- 
 erations, to the exclusion of the more sacred motives drawn from eternity* 
 In them must ever be the main spring of the Church’s zeal. The same 
 vast, old, familiar truths, which made Paul, Peter, Jesus Christ mission- 
 aries, that the whole human race are children of wrath, and in the high- 
 way to everlasting ruin ; these must move our missionary efforts also. 
 Our faith should constantly recur to these great facts, to receive from 
 them fresh impulses of their might. This is just the method of our 
 Saviour in the text, when he introduces the enforcement of gospel effort 
 by saying : “ Lift up your eyes and look on the fields.” And the preacher 
 of the gospel ought to be far more ambitious to be able to re-state these 
 trite, but potent doctrines, with a seriousness, fervor, and palpable faith 
 appropriate to their awful importance, than to win the applause of his 
 brethren by an eloquent or ingenious novelty. There is the more reason 
 that we should recur to our principles, now that Infidelity so boldly 
 charges, that the church is no longer impelled in her evangelical toils, by 
 a vital and actual faith in the threatenings of sacred Scripture-against “the 
 nations that forget God.” They have found, alas ; but too much pretext 
 for the taunt, in the biting contrast between the tremendous urgency of 
 our creed, and the sluggishness of our endeavors. 
 
 You recognize the text as a part of the discourse uttered by our Saviour 
 after his interview with the Samaritan woman at the well. She had gone 
 for a moment to the town, to call her friends to hear the gracious Teacher. 
 Meantime the disciples returned with supplies for our Saviour’s weariness 
 
4 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 which had arrested him first at that spot. But now, they find the claims 
 of hunger and fatigue silenced in him by his more consuming zeal for 
 souls ; his meat, his solace for toil, his cordial for fainting nature, is to 
 fulfil his great mission as Teacher and Redeemer of the perishing. He 
 proceeds to assign the reason for his self-denying diligence in this work, 
 in the words ; “The fields are white already to harvest.” This illustra- 
 tion is a favorite one with our Saviour.* Its propriety is evidently in this 
 fact ; that when the pale yellow of maturity colours the fields of wheat, the 
 precious grain must be gathered at once ; or else it will fall to the ground 
 and perish. The harvest labour of the husbandman is peculiarly one 
 which admits no delay. When the golden crop beckons him with its nod- 
 ding plumes, he must bestir himself, disregardful of scorching heat and 
 panting fatigue : next month it will be too late ; for mildew and rot will 
 have reaped his fields before him. So, the labour of the spiritual husband- 
 man is also harvest-toil. The harvest of souls awaits no man’s sluggishness 
 — Death is a field with his flashing scythe mowing down the nations, and 
 gathering his sheaves for hell fire ; so that the work of redeeming love for 
 them must be done at once, or never. In this is the point of our Saviour’s 
 reasoning. This is obviously true of each generation of sinners, as to its 
 own generation of Christian labourers; on the supposition that the whole 
 world is indeed subject to condemnation. Our Saviour evidently extends 
 the application of the fact to all his servants in the harvest, as well as to 
 himself. But I am persuaded that his words include a meaning more 
 extensive and profound. Not only is the short lifetime of each genera- 
 tion the harvest time of its souls : some eras of the world are harvest- 
 seasons as to many preceding and subsequent generations. There is then 
 a conjunction of rare influences and circumstances, rendering evangelical 
 labours practicable and successful, so that a hundred fold as much may 
 be done, as afterward, when that conjunction is dissolved. Such a season 
 the sacred Scriptures clearly describe the era of Christ and his apostles 
 to have been — Then “ the fullness of time had come,”f chosen by God to 
 bring his first begotten into the world. Then was fulfilled the gracious 
 and golden hour, foreseen by Isaiah,:}: for Christ to call to the isles and the 
 people from afar, “ in an acceptable time, and in a day of salvation.” So 
 deemed Paul, when he said,§ to the men of his age : “ Behold, now is the 
 accepted time : behold now is the day of salvation.” 
 
 If this apprehension is correct, the text will be found to carry for us 
 a twofold meaning. The first of the two important truths which it teaches 
 
 * Matt, ix, 37, 38. Mark iv. 20. Luke x. 12. 
 
 f Gal. iv. 4. J Isaiah xlix. 8. ? 2 Cor. vi. 2. 
 
reap; or it perishes. 
 
 is this : that the souls of this generation of mankind will quickly perish, 
 unless they be saved by the gospel efforts of Christ’s church. You will 
 perceive, my brethren, that we are confronted here, with that solemn 
 question, on which professed followers of Christ are by no means agreed: 
 Whether the souls of the heathen will certainly perish without the gospel. 
 Let us look briefly for the answer the sacred Scripture gives it. For if 
 the present ignorance of the heathen exempts them from the curse of a 
 broken law and a fallen nature, while their instruction in revealed truth 
 would subject them to it, like ourselves ; and if we may anticipate the 
 probable success of that instruction in turning them to Christ, by the 
 obduracy of sinners at home ; then the result of our misplaced zeal may 
 mainly be to scatter broadcast the gratuitous seeds of an aggravated dam- 
 nation. It were better to centre all our energies on the rescue of sinners 
 at home, who have certainly made themselves subject to the curse, by 
 their neglect of Christian light. But if the heathen are also destined to 
 perish inevitably unless the church thrusts forth its labourers into the 
 harvest; then here is the great, the dreadful motive, next to God’s glory, 
 which should strain every nerve of every redeemed soul, to rescue all 
 he can. 
 
 I. It has been urged that a just God cannot punish the breach of a law, 
 or neglect of a gospel, which the heathen could not know. I answer : 
 He will punish no one unjustly. But hath He left himself without wit- 
 ness among them ?* “ The heavens declare the glory of God ; and the 
 
 firmament sheweth his handiwork.” Idolatry and its crimes are not all 
 sins of ignorance. f “ For the invisible things of God from the creation 
 of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
 made, even his eternal power and godhead ; so that they are without 
 excuse.” They who have no Bible may still look up to the moon walk- 
 ing in brightness and the stars watching in obedient order: they may see 
 iu the joyous sunbeams the smile of the Universal Father, and in the 
 fruitful shower the droppings of his bounty ; they hear the rending thun- 
 der utter his wrath, and the matin jubilee of the birds sing his praise ; 
 the green hills are swelled with His goodness ; the trees of the wood 
 rejoice before Him with every quiver of their foliage in the summer air; 
 and the floods clap their hands in praise, as their multitudinous waves 
 leap up flashing the laughing sunlight from their crests. Are they then, 
 without blame, who turn aside from all this, to worship abominations ? 
 Nature, by her universal anthem, says, No ; % “because that when they 
 knew God, they glorified him not as God.” 
 
 * Ps. xix. f Kom. i. 20. 
 
 J Rom. i 21. 
 
6 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 Or shall we suppose that, while every nominal Christian sometimes 
 disobeys his own conscience, heathens are so much purer, that they never 
 do ? To many moral distinctions they may be blind ; but among them, 
 as everywhere else among our fallen race, men’s light is better than their 
 walk. When the pagans bow down to vile stocks, or defile themselves 
 with universal fraud and lies, infanticide, murder of parents, and all 
 abominations, shall we be told that natural conscience utters no protest ? 
 Be it as besotted as it may, it cannot wholly tolerate these things. It 
 were a libel on Him who made man in his own image, to say that even 
 heathen idolatries and crimes could so crush out the moral sense, the 
 noblest trait of His handiwork in us. No; there is not a rational heathen 
 in the world who, however blind his conscience, does not sometimes vio- 
 late that conscience. There, at least, is sin : there is ground for the 
 righteous judgment of God against him.* “ For as many as have sinned 
 without law, shall also perish without law. Nor need we tarry long for 
 that other objection : That a merciful God will surely smile upon that 
 man who sincerely desires to do his duty ; and who lives honestly up to 
 the best creed which it was possible for him to know, erroneous though 
 that creed be. The short answer is, that among Adam’s sons, there is 
 no such man.f “ For we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, 
 that they are all under sin.” Every man comes short of his own creed, 
 whatever it may be. 
 
 These objections lie too near the surfuce of the question to detain us 
 long. We are compelled to admit the sorrowful truth by reasons far 
 more profound ; and one of these is suggested by the pleas which have 
 just been set aside. It is this : 1. That while all are guilty, no pagan, no 
 infidel scheme provides an adequate atonement. The necessity of this 
 full atonement for pardoned sin is declared by every attribute of God, by 
 every interest of his universal government, and by all the teachings of 
 his word and works. Do not these attributes and principles direct his 
 government of pagans, as well as of nominal Christians? Is not God 
 everywhere the same? He “ will render to every man according to his 
 deeds, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile : for there is no respect 
 of persons with God.”:j: Yea, the heathen conscience has itself written 
 
 this necessity for atonement all over their superstitions, in horrid charac- 
 ters of torment and blood. Their ablutions, their penances and self-tor- 
 tures, their costly and ceaseless oblations, the sweat and dust of their pil- 
 grimages, the abhorrent offerings of the fruit of the body for the sin of 
 the soul, confess at once a sense of guilt, and a conscious need of satisfac- 
 * Rom. ii. 12. f Rom. iii. 9. J Rom. ii. 6, 10, 11. 
 
reap; or it perishes. 
 
 7 
 
 lion for it. And in the more refined creeds of Islam and Deism, we read 
 the same confession, in their proposal to compensate for their guilt by 
 alms, good works, reformations, or repentings. 
 
 But all these atonements are inadequate :* “ for it is not possible that 
 the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” Least of all 
 would those speculative persons, with whom Bible assertions are of little 
 weight, admit that these spurious virtues or senseless abominations can 
 atone for guilt, they only add to it. The only atonement is that which 
 God has provided for us in the sufferings of his divine Son. And the 
 only way by which any one can share this atonement is the exercise of 
 evangelical faith. Our argument then, is this : that all pagans are self- 
 convicted of some sins, at least against the light of nature ; no sin can 
 be pardoned without atonement : but the gospel is the only proposal of 
 atonement to man. 
 
 2. Paganism is also fatally defective with regard to the other great 
 want of the human soul, moral renovation. Here we take our stand 
 upon the great doctrine of our confession :f that all the race are “ dead 
 in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body.” 
 However men may differ in degrees of wickedness, the best, equally with 
 the worst, are wholly prone to worldliness instead of spirituality ; and 
 the hearts of all are fully set in them to disobey some of God’s known 
 commands. The natural will of every man dislikes and rejects the holi- 
 ness, the communion, and the service of God ; and this by the perpetual 
 and certain force of those innate dispositions which determine rational 
 volitions. No power but one from without and above can renew that 
 will ; because all within it is of course determined by those controlling 
 dispositions. I shall not affront you by supposing it necessary to offer 
 proof of these statements. Such is the inheritance which our own eyes 
 see all in Christian lands deriving from their first father. But we have 
 the testimony of God, that all the heathens bear to Adam the same rela- 
 tion. “ He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on 
 the face of the earth. And if our smaller vices mournfully substantiate 
 this view of man’s moral state here, how much more may we assert it 
 of the heathen, from the general and loathsome corruption of their lives ? 
 
 Now, “ except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of 
 God.Ӥ Here is a prohibition, not pronounced only by the divine jus- 
 tice, but made inexorable by a natural necessitjn The carnal mind can- 
 not enjoy a holy and spiritual heaven ; but this is the only state of real 
 and everlasting welfare which a holy God can appoint for moral beings. 
 
 * Heb. x. 4. f Conf. chap. vi. sec. 2, 3. J Acts xvii. 26. § John iii. 3. 
 
8 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 To be unholy is to be unhappy. Were the justice of God dethroned, 
 and the very throne of judgment demolished, were all his holy attributes 
 repudiated, and all the interests of his kingdom disregarded, still the 
 truth, “ ye must be born again,” would remain a flaming sword, turning 
 every way to keep the path to paradise. But no pagan creed provides 
 means or agency for the new birth. The very conception is strange to 
 them. Their languages lack the very terms for expressing the holiness 
 which it produces. So far are their theologies from any sanctifying influ- 
 ence, their morals are immoral, the deities which they invite man to 
 adore and imitate are often impersonations of monstrous crime, and the 
 heaven which is to reward their zeal is a pandemonium of wickedness 
 triumphant and immortalized. 
 
 Where now are the claims of those virtuous heathens, a Confucius, a 
 Numa, an Aristides, who are supposed to have walked uprightly accord- 
 ing to that scanty light of nature vouchsafed by Providence ? We might 
 waive the considerations that every earthly child of Man is condemned 
 by his own standard, and that justice must be satisfied for these short- 
 comings. Where is the upright heathen who has shown true spirituality 
 of heart ; whose gratitude and love towards a holy God, whose hunger- 
 ings for sanctification, whose delight in communion with heaven, have 
 proved him “ meet for the inheritance of the saints in light ” ? Ilave trav- 
 ellers or missionaries found such hearts, formed under the tutelage of 
 paganism? Now if we decide (as we must), that the most magnanimous 
 gentleman in this Christian land, the most amiable wife, mother, or sister, 
 whose understanding approves the Bible, and whose social life is regulated 
 by higher ethicks than ever Aristides dreamed, that he also must be new 
 created unto holiness, before he can see God ; it is simple absurdity to 
 talk of heathen men admitted to heaven for the uprightness of their 
 intentions. But let us speak of the common grade of pagans ; of those 
 whose whole life was brutal vice, whose hearts were all uncleanness, 
 whose very worship was a carnival of lasciviousness and blood. What 
 would that heaven be to them, which we awfully recognize as too pure 
 to admit the most ingenuous of our sons, the loveliest of our daughters, 
 whose social graces are the perfume of our homes and hearts, while they 
 are unregenerate ? Let us suppose that the whole sentence of God 
 against the gentiles were : “lie that is unjust, let him be unjust still ; 
 and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.”* Then look at that earthly 
 hell of destitution, domestic tyranny, public barbarity, revenge, and 
 unbridled passion, which heathen society often makes in this life; and 
 
 * Rev. xxii. 11. 
 
\ 
 
 \ 
 
 reap; or it perishes. 9 
 
 judge what these elements will evolve, when let loose in the world of 
 spirits, without social restraints or the illusions of hope, and deprived 
 of those animal enjoyments which now form their chief happiness. In 
 fine, the heathen, like us, are depraved ; they need a new birth. There- 
 fore they cannot be saved without the gospel, which is the only instru- 
 ment of regeneration. 
 
 We know there are Christians who reject this conclusion, thinking 
 God cannot justly condemn any man who is not endowed with all such 
 means and ability for knowing and loving him, as put his destiny in every 
 sense within his own choice. These means the heathen do not fully pos- 
 sess where their ignorance is invincible. The principle asserted is, that 
 God cannot justly hold any one responsible who is not blessed with both 
 natural and moral ability. I answer, that our doctrine concerning the 
 heathen places them in precisely equal condition with those unhappy 
 men in Christian lands, who have the outward word, but experience no 
 effectual calling of the Spirit. God requires of the latter to obey that law 
 and gospel of which they enjoy the clearer lights ; and the obstacle which 
 ensures their failure to compl3 T , not indeed with any physical constraint, 
 but with a moral certainty, is a depraved heart which is unwilling to 
 submit. Of the heathen, God would require no more than full obedi- 
 ence to that limited light of nature which his providence has granted 
 them ; and the obstacle which ensures their failure also is the same — a 
 depraved will. When God holds the heathen responsible for their light 
 therefore, he deals with them no more unfairly than with the finally im- 
 penitent under the gospel. 
 
 This is too obvious to be denied; and hence it has been found neces - 
 sary, in order to maintain the moral ability of sinners, to assert that every 
 human being, Christian and pagan, enjoys a common sufficient grace, 
 consisting of various influences alluring him to the right, which restores 
 the depraved will to its equilibrium. And it is said, where any heart 
 yields to this common grace, God’s mercy and fidelity stand pledged to 
 second those movements of the yielding soul, and bestow all the helps 
 necessary to redemption. And if a poor pagan, guided by this universal 
 light, begins to feel after God if haply he may find him, surely the Father 
 of Mercies will not leave unrewarded the strivings which his own grace 
 has awakened; but will find some way to give saving knowledge and 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The fatal answer is, that the Scriptures, properly understood, are silent 
 concerning such universal sufficient grace. Our experience contradicts 
 
 i 
 
10 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 it ; for we usually see the actual operations of God’s grace far less exten- 
 sive than the means. IIow then can it be plausibly said that, in other 
 cases, the grace is extended so far beyond its outward means ? So for is 
 God from extending a universal gracious influence sufficient to restore 
 equilibrium to a perverted will ; Paul tells us that “ whom he will he 
 hardeneth.” * And of the pagans, especially, it is said; “Even as they 
 did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a 
 reprobate mind.” f Once more : if this grace is sufficient, why does it 
 not bring all alike to God ? If it is successful in some cases only because 
 He adds something to its influences, then, in the other cases, it was not 
 sufficient grace. If he added nothing, then the different result would 
 show that the common grace found in those cases less perversity of heart 
 to overcome. All men would not be in the same spiritual condition to- 
 wards God : as the Bible most distinctly asserts they are. “ They are all 
 gone out of the way ; they are together become unprofitable.” % “ Who 
 
 maketh thee to differ from another ; and what hast thou that thou didst 
 not receive? ” § 
 
 We find then that the foundation-truths of redemption forbid us to 
 hope for the escape of the heathen — we can only indulge the thought at 
 the expense of those prime axioms on which our whole theology and our 
 own salvation depends ; while the customary palliations of their danger 
 do but touch the surface of the terrible case. Every child of Adam, 
 Christian or pagan, must have justifying righteousness; and he must 
 have a new heart. We know not that adult and rational men can obtain 
 these gifts, save by the intelligent reception of the Gospel : I say not the 
 reception of the full details of the New Testament, but of that rudimental 
 gospel and those great primal conceptions of God, holiness, sin, gratui- 
 tous justification, and sanctification, embraced by a living faith and hope, 
 which pervade the patriarchal as well as the evangelical revelations. 
 “ Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name 
 under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” || 
 
 But admitting all this, may we not still hope that there are elect Gen 
 tiles, objects of God’s sovereign and omnipotent grace, and that they 
 receive from Him those gospel rudiments in some way extraordinary and 
 unknown to the Church? Would God that we had abundant grounds 
 to hope this; but alas, experience and revelation, while they may not 
 absolutely denounce its possibility, command us to act just as though all 
 
 * Itora. ix. 18. f Rom. i. 28. See also, 2Thess. ii. 10 — 12. 
 
 J Rom. iii. 12. g 1 Cor. iv. 7. || Acts iv. 12. 
 
REAP; OR IT PERISHES. 
 
 11 
 
 depended upon the agency of the Church. Have our missionaries found 
 among the heathen hitherto untaught of man, the fruits of such divine 
 teachings? Have they told us of men, who, while they may not have 
 learned to worship Jehovah by the names we use, yet know and love a 
 Being of true godhead and holiness ; who hate sin, trust in free grace, 
 strive after righteousness and triumph over death by hope? We fear 
 the instances are few and doubtful ; if there are cases which relieve the 
 common picture of selfishness, fraud and lust, they are but instances of 
 worldly uprightness. The heathens, like the unredeemed of our own 
 land, are found to live in bondage to evil desires and a guilty conscience, 
 and to die in superstitious delusion, or beastly apathy, or despair. 
 
 And while God has not said that he sends his saving truth as the 
 medium of his saving grace by no hand but that of Christian effort, every 
 example and precept of the Scriptures bid us act as though this were true. 
 The Great Commission is, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gos- 
 pel to every creature,”* as though every human being under heaven were 
 dependent on this loving ministry of the church. The inspired preach- 
 ers by their consuming zeal in the missionary work, implied the same 
 truth. Why did Paul, for instance, submit to dangers of deaths oft ; f to 
 receive of the Jews forty stripes save one, five times ; to be beaten thrice 
 with rods ; to be stoned ; to spend a night and a day in the deep ; to endure 
 varied perils, weariness, watchings, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness? 
 Like his Divine Master, he believed that a harvest of precious souls was 
 perishing for lack of Christian reapers. And when the charge of insanity 
 was provoked by his gigantic labours, from men too dead in unbelief to 
 comprehend him, his simple solution was, “The love of Christ constrain- 
 eth us; because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all 
 dead.” % And in one word, God gives us the rule of our hopes and 
 duties as the unevangelized world, in the Epistle to the Romans. “ There 
 is no difference between the Jew and the Greek : for the same Lord over 
 all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon 
 the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him 
 in whom they have not believed ? and how shall they believe in him of 
 whom they have not heard ? and how shall they hear without a preacher? 
 And how shall they preach except they be sent ? ” § 
 
 We conclude then, that the church should feel and act towards the 
 human race substantially as though all without the gospel were perishing 
 forever. Do any murmur at our earnest, yea, vehement zeal, to drive 
 the dread conviction home upon you ? I answer ; it is not because we 
 
 * Mark xvi. 15. f 2 Cor. xi. 23—27. } 2 Cor. v. 14. § Rom. x. 12—15. 
 
 f 
 
12 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 are glad to have it so; but because we sadly know it is so. "We think 
 our true compassion is to face the dire reality, and thus rouse ourselves 
 and you to that burning activity which alone can mitigate it. That is 
 but a false and puling tenderness, which professes not to see it, in order 
 that its indolence may evade the toils of the rescue. Should I discover 
 one of these dwellings burning over its sleeping inmates, while you, their 
 neighbors, were skeptical of their danger, my cry of fire would be no ar- 
 gument of my delight in the catastrophe, but of my zeal to arrest it. And 
 now that I see a world threatened by the devouring fire of hell, while 
 the church slumbers that ought to stay the destruction, must I not lift up 
 my voice like a trumpet? Oh, if we could but relieve the danger of the 
 heathen by arguing that it was slight, how joyfully would we plead the 
 glowing theme ? 
 
 But this cannot be. Here then is the vast yet simple case ; at least 
 four fifths of the thousand millions of our race are without the Bible ; and 
 must therefore sink into hell as fast as death can mow them down. In- 
 about one third of a century, the generation of our cotemporaries will be 
 forever beyond the reach of our love. We seem often to imagine that 
 India, that China, that Africa, will still remain a century hence, awaiting 
 our tardy zeal ; but it is a terrible delusion. Unless we bestir ourselves 
 now, the India, the China of to-day will be gone ; and another India, 
 another China, inheritors of their crimes and miseries, will be there, to 
 wait a little time upon the succour of another Christian generation, and 
 then, unless our successors be more prompt than we have been, to 
 plunge into perdition in their turn. 
 
 Now, have we thought what a plunge this is? Have we followed with 
 our minds the ruin of one poorest, darkest, weakest pagan soul, through 
 its progressive depravity and despair, through its increasing capacities 
 for sinning and suffering, and through the never ending, ever widening 
 vistas of its immortality, till the woe is vaster than the wreck of a world ? 
 And do we remember how frequently this ruin occurs ? Every blast of 
 war, or pestilence, or famine, which shakes the human crop, strews hell 
 with precious seed of lost souls, as thickly as when the November wind 
 sweeps the sere leaves of some trackless wood into its silent lake. If the 
 deaths of this generation of sinners were perfectly regular in series, it 
 would furnish well nigh sixty for every minute ; so that while we sit 
 here deliberating in cold debate, somewhere in this field of death, every 
 second of time marks the dying gasp of a human being! Hark to the 
 fatal beat! Each stroke of the pendulum tolls the knell of another soul 
 
REAP ; OR IT PERISHES. 
 
 13 
 
 that drops ; each stroke is another plunge into the pit, and a new burst 
 of another everlasting wail joining the many-voiced threnody of despair. 
 Oh terrible world, in which to live ; oh dread responsibility of this living, 
 harvest; in the reaping of which we must race with death ! How can 
 our sluggish feet overtake the swift angel, to snatch the prey from his 
 grasp ; when the baleful shade of his wings is seen flitting over isle and 
 continent, even as the gathering gloom of night would appear to some 
 watcher from the skies, to sweep around the revolving globe ? Should 
 we not shrink in shuddering horror from the tremendous competition, 
 till we recur to our Divine Master, to infuse us with his strength, and to 
 wash out the sin of our sluggishness with his blood ? Yet let us not be 
 cast down ; we remember that so swiftly as the dark edge of night de- 
 vours the surface of our world from sight, even so swiftly does the 
 advancing flush of day revolve behind it, and reconquer it to light and 
 joy. Thus will the light of the Sun of Righteousness follow and outrun 
 the shadows of death, until they darken the earth no more. 
 
 II. There are eras in the world’s progress, which, compare with other 
 ages as harvest seasons for Christ : and such an era our Saviour evidently 
 considered his own generation to be. I cannot suppose that when he 
 pronounced “the fields white to harvest,” his all-seeing eye, which de- 
 clared “ the field is the world,” embraced only the approaching clusters 
 of Samaritans summoned by the startled woman to the well ; or only the 
 teeming villages of Galilee and Judea. Doubtless he meant to include 
 that general preparation for the gospel, pervading the civilized world at 
 that day, which had brought in “the fulness of time,” and “the accep- 
 table year of the Lord.” 
 
 Many important elements concurred in this preparation. Both Jews 
 and Gentiles were aroused by a general hope of a divine intervention, 
 and the clear announcements by which Hebrew prophets had heralded 
 the coming of the Messiah, were repeated in the fainter echoes of eastern 
 Magi and Latin poets. It was also the Augustan age of mental activity, 
 when the languages of antiquity had received the finishing touch of their 
 cultivation ; and human speculation had borne its maturest fruits. The 
 Greek tongue, fittest of all for expressing moral distinctions, and already, 
 in virtue of the Septuagint version, a sacred language to God’s people, 
 was diffused throughout the civilized world, as the language of polite 
 intercourse and traffic. The Macedonian arms had carried it from Ionia 
 to the jungles of Hindostan and the cataracts of the Nile; and even after 
 Greece herself fell before the Roman, the rough conqueror, by adopting 
 his captive as his tutoress, had spread it throughout the West. More 
 
14 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 than this; in “every nation under hfeaven” were found the Jews of the 
 dispersion, nursing the great spiritual doctrines and worship of the Old 
 Testament, and that most often in the Greek scriptures ; so that to what- 
 ever place of note in any land, the evangelist might go, he found in the 
 bosom of paganism a place and audience, familiar with at least the rudi- 
 ments of his system. Yet, more; the civilized world was at length at 
 peace. The empire of the Caesars, so vast, that it proudly styled itself 
 by a name synonymous with the habitable globe, had consolidated the 
 nations under its iron rule, and stilled their jars with a force too mighty 
 to be even assailed. From the Atlantic to the Euphrates, her armed 
 police protected the freedom of travel and traffic, so that the stranger of 
 every tongue was safe in every other land, whatever the lawful purpose 
 of his journey. The barriers of danger and prejudice which fenced peo- 
 ple from people were levelled, and mankind were mingled in a fermenting, 
 inquiring mass. Once more ; the pagan mind had outgrown the swad- 
 dling bands of its mythologies. Understandings, sharpened by the 
 dialectics of Athens, Tarsus, Alexandria, rejected the puerile theogonies 
 which impressed the awe-struck fancies of their rude fathers. And while 
 human depravity, thus educated, disdained the fears of a fabled Rhada- 
 manthus and Tartarus, and rushed to every excess of crime ; thoughtful 
 minds felt the instinctive craving for a creed and a resting-place, and 
 recoiled from the blank unbelief and chaos of moral corruption, which 
 threatened to absorb every hope of humanity. The race had now fully 
 wrought out the long experiment, whether “ man by his wisdom could 
 know God,” and stood aghast at its disastrous failure ; when Christ pre- 
 pared “ by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believed.” 
 Such were the features of this harvest time. The apostles and their 
 fellow-reapers thrust forth into the field, with the vigour inculcated by 
 the example and injunctions of their Master, to gather fruit unto life 
 eternal. Divine wisdom taught them to comprehend the emergency ; and 
 the result was, that they carried the gospel in ffne century from the Indus 
 to the Pillars of Hercules. The energy and speed of the heralds of the 
 cross was not unworthy of the symbol by which prophecy impersonated 
 them ; “ an angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting 
 gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, 
 and kindred, and tongue, and people.” * 
 
 These favourable circumstances continued but a few generations. Let 
 us suppose that the primitive Christians, instead of toiling with the 
 urgency of harvest labourers, had contented themselves with a few 
 
 * Rev. xiv. 6. 
 
reap; or it perishes. 
 
 15 
 
 decent exertions, resigning themselves, for the rest to a snug and selfish 
 religious epicurism. After the first generation came fiery and bloody 
 persecutions, which seemed for a time almost to drown the churches in 
 their own slaughter Next came the decay, the internal convulsions, the 
 workl-rcsounding fall of the Empire, whose arts and arms had all con- 
 curred to make a highway for the Prince of Peace. Barbarian and pagan 
 hordes ravaged and dismembered the mighty fabric. The language of 
 the gospel, of science, of civilization, became a dead one, except to one 
 people, the rare accomplishment of the learned few, and the curse of 
 Babel again separated nation from nation. Literature was banished 
 by the din of wars and rapine ; order, commerce, travel were almost at 
 an end; and at last there remained only the chaotic sea of the middle 
 ages, strewn with the eddying wrecks of the ancient world, and tossed 
 with perpetual storms, from which a new order was slowly and painfully 
 to emerge. 
 
 Now, need we state the contrast between the probable success of mis- 
 sionary effort in this dreary and turbulent winter, and in the glorious 
 summer of the Christian era ? True, it was still the duty of the Church 
 to endeavour to obey the perpetual injunction, regardless of gigantic ob- 
 stacles ; for with her almighty Head all things are possible. True, it was 
 still her privilege to hope that faithful toil would not be wholly fruitless, 
 even in the most untoward seasons. But still, Christ does not wholly ab- 
 rogate the force of natural causes in his providence over his kingdom. It 
 was also true that the Church was now bereft, not only of her golden 
 opportunity, but also of her gifts, (miracles, tongues, prophecy,) and of 
 much of her primitive purity. But the possession of these, as well as of 
 the opportunity to employ them fortunately, was among the things whose 
 concurrence made the harvest season ; and their lack will account only 
 in part for the failures of the Church. She was not forgetful of the work 
 of missions in the dark ages ; but how scanty and difficult were the con- 
 quests ! The first century sufficed for her to run the circuit of that Medi- 
 terranean Sea, around which were then grouped the civilized races of 
 man ; but now she consumed four hundred years in creeping doubtfully 
 from the Bhine to the Vistula; and in most of the new ground which she 
 essayed to tread, her footprints were obliterated as she passed, as though 
 they had been made in the shifting sands. 
 
 Consider next, how long this impassive reign of darkness continued. 
 Only in the fourteenth century did the twilight begin slowly and dimly to 
 emerge, which at length in the sixteenth broke into the new dayspring of 
 the Reformation. From that day to this there has been a steady progress 
 
16 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: — 
 
 in the rearrangement of all the influences which can facilitate the world’s 
 redemption; “And now behold, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, 
 for they are white again to harvest.” Never since the era when Christ 
 sent forth apostles and evangelists into the whitened crop, has the world 
 seen a second season so propitious as our age for the ingathering of the 
 people to him. Let us see how many of the elements of favourable pre- 
 paration have been reproduced. 
 
 One of these was the mental activity of the Augustan age. But ever 
 since the triumphant insurrection of the human mind against Popery, 
 thought has been increasingly free and active, until this age claims it as 
 its peculiar glory. The whole realm of science known to the ancients has 
 been reoccupied, and other domains have been added, as unknown to 
 them and as magnificent by comparison with theirs, as the new world 
 which Columbus opened to our industry. Everywhere the human mind 
 ferments, inquires, and discusses. The printing press, though four hun- 
 dred years old, still developes new magic in its powers : an agency for 
 which Paul would probably have gladly exchanged his gift of tongues. 
 We even see the strange fact that Papists and Brahmins eagerly employ 
 this engine of light, and with judicial blindness accustom their people to 
 its use, only to destroy their own empire of darkness. 
 
 Second ; no universal monarchy now dominates over the world, com- 
 pelling the nations to a temporary and enforced brotherhood. But in its 
 room we have the benignant sway of imperial Peace, with her handmaid 
 Commerce, more potent over human passions by the blessings she confers, 
 than was ever Assyrian or Median, Greek or Roman conqueror, by the 
 devastations which he threatened. For even where the short and partial 
 wars of our day prevail, Christianity has so narrowed their operation to 
 actual combatants, and legislated for their atrocity, that the peaceful la- 
 bours of traffic, letters, and religion are scarcely suspended in their pres- 
 ence. And under the wings of this peace and commerce, the Christian 
 may go to more peoples and tongues than were ever dreamed of by the 
 fabulous geography of the ancients, with a safety as great as was in- 
 voked by the proud challenge, “ I am a Roman citizen ! ” Need I refer 
 to those wonders of modern science by which distance is abridged, and 
 we may almost say, with prophecy, “ there is no more sea ” to divide the 
 nations ? 
 
 Third ; in place of the common language of antiquity, we have now 
 the English, a tongue yet nobler, and spoken in more different tribes, and 
 in more of the hives of men, than was the Greek in the days of Paul. 
 And with this language goes the prestige and fear of the British people, 
 
REAP; OR IT PERISHES. 
 
 17 
 
 protecting us almost equally with them. For such is the community of 
 tongue, race, character, religion, and interests, between Britain and 
 America, that in the pagan world men fortunately almost forget to 
 distinguish between us. What silent sea or ancient river is not vexed 
 by their prows, and visited by their enterprise ? In what mart do not 
 their flags inspire fear and respect? So that — to omit their vast depend- 
 encies, more ample than the empire of Augustus — there is scarcely a 
 province in the pagan world where Protestant power and enterprise have 
 not so preceded, that the Protestant teacher may enter securely, and per- 
 forin his mission under the shield of their protection. For even China 
 and Japan, the last strongholds of exclusive jealousy, Avill doubtless be- 
 fore long disclose their mysteries before the inevitable forces of the age. 
 
 When we turn to the lands of the Beast and the False Prophet, we see 
 there also a rapid relaxation of hinderances. Moslem fanaticism burns but 
 feebly in our day, for decrepitude and dependence now compel those pow- 
 ers, once so terrible to Christianity, to purchase the protection of the most 
 Protestant nation at the price of a tolerance of Christians which they were 
 little wont to exercise. How wondrously hath God wrought here! Even 
 Poperv, enemy of the gospel more inexorable than Islam, is compelled by 
 triumphant moral influences to relax its exclusiveness. In Sardinia, 
 France, Belgium, in Brazil and the other states of Central and Southern 
 America, soon to be seats of tefeming empires, a partial liberty is yielded to 
 the gospel. And as though it were not enough to open every door to us 
 abroad, Providence has precipitated a part of the destitute into our arms 
 at home, by directing the emigration of Popish Europe to our Atlantic, 
 and of Pagan Asia to our Pacific border. 
 
 While God has thus prepared the field for us, he has also prepared us 
 for the field. In those Protestant nations to whom he has virtually given 
 the empire of the world, he has given to his churches the numbers, the 
 wealth, the education, the moral influence, requisite to enable them to go 
 up and occupy the ground. Never since the Christian era has there been 
 a second concurrence, such as this, of everything which promotes the 
 facile and successful spread of Christianity. “ The fields are white to 
 harvest.” 
 
 But now, let us solemnly remember, that a harvest season is from 
 its very nature short. Let us review these advantages, not in the 
 spirit of pompous self-gratulation too often seen, but with a trembling 
 sense of the duties which they imply. For, be assured, this fortunate 
 juncture cannot be permanent. It is too good to last , unless it be improved. 
 As reasonably might we hope that two planets, which had been wheeling 
 
18 
 
 THE WORLD WHITE TO HARVEST: 
 
 their long cycles in devious opposition around the remoter verge of Sat- 
 urn, when at length they meet one instant in our field of view, would ar- 
 rest their ceaseless courses to remain in conjunction. It is the attribute 
 of human affairs to revolve. And when this great living wheel of Prov- 
 idence, which “is so high that it is dreadful,”* shall have once more 
 turned away its auspicious segment from the Church, who can tell how 
 many ages may elapse before its stately revolution will restore it to us ? 
 Let us take a probable warning from the past. The harvest time enjoyed 
 by the primitive Church was spent, and it returned not again till a mighty 
 year had rolled around, of which the months were ages, and winter the ten 
 dreary centuries of barbarism and the frosts of spiritual death. So, if we 
 waste this summer which seems at length returning, after so long a winter, 
 so tedious a spring, and so many capricious frosts blighting the rising 
 promise of the Church, when will the third harvest for the world return ? 
 By what second series of dark ages, by how many national convulsions 
 and retributive woes, may not God chastise the Church for its neglect ; and 
 then, by how many throes of great, struggling souls, by what strifes and 
 toils, by what streams of martyr blood, may she not be required to earn 
 for mankind another season as propitious as the one we now waste? 
 
 And should this picture be realized by the shortcoming of the Church, 
 history suggests another probable warning, of special significance to us as 
 Americans. It is not likely that our land will be one of those which will 
 be honoured to send forth that third day-spring of gospel light to the race 
 of man. When once the soil of a country hath been polluted by the 
 failures and apostasies of God’s church, he removes his special favours 
 from it, to return no more for long and disastrous ages. Look at those 
 lands on which the Hebrew and the primitive churches enjoyed, and mis- 
 used, and sinned away their splendid opportunities: how blighted, how 
 benighted, how accursed have they lain ever since ! God sought out 
 other lands, which had lain in reserve in virgin wilderness, untainted by 
 the Church’s treason to his cause, or else which had undergone the lus- 
 tration of centuries of chastisement, in which to relume the light of the 
 gospel. So, if we waste this golden season, it is probable that America 
 will not be the land to which the Gentiles will come for the Church’s 
 light, and kings to the brightness of her rising. While this fair domain 
 will lie blasted by the guilt of its inhabitants, some new church on some 
 soil now pagan, will enjoy the privilege of sending forth to a benighted 
 world, and to our degenerate posterity, the dayspring of the millennium. 
 
 And what, my brethren, is the catastrophe of a series of human genc- 
 
 * Kzek. i. 18. 
 
reap; or it perishes. 
 
 19 
 
 rations, mainly lost through the betrayal of that critical one on which 
 Providence thus partly stakes the fate of many of its successors ? W e 
 have endeavoured to grasp the evil implied in the death of one pagan 
 soul, but found it too great for imagination. We have endeavoured to 
 represent to ourselves the immense interests of the generation of our 
 pagan cotemporaries, who are directly dependent on us for their rescue 
 from perdition, but the mind staggered under the vastness and the 
 frightfulness of the thought. We must now add this further truth: 
 that the destiny of our critical age may largely determine that of 
 many coming after it ; and then we begin to see the weight of our 
 responsibilities. Take this great and dreadful fact home to your medi- 
 tations, and let it grow upon your comprehension in the hours of silent 
 thought and of communion with God. Had I the tongues of men 
 and of angels, it would still be mere mockery for me to seek words by 
 which to exalt your conception of it ; for words cannot utter the unut- 
 terable. 
 
 And now we doubtless all feel that the discussion of such themes as 
 these should have but one conclusion, the enforcement upon our own 
 hearts of the duty of most intense exertion in this awful yet blessed work 
 of the world’s redemption. But who shall dare to define and paint that 
 energy, or to fix the standard of that zeal which is commensurate with 
 the vast exigency ? Who, that had not, like Isaiah, received the touch 
 of a live coal from off the altar upon his bps, or, like Paul, been caught 
 up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, would be sufficient for 
 the task ? Let me not attempt it. But there is a picture of the love, 
 the effort, the liberality which the occasion should inspire ; a picture 
 accurate, and equal to the case. It is the living image of the Saviour’s 
 own example, when he came as the Missionary of Heaven. See, then, in 
 Him, and not in the stammering words of man, the application of his 
 truth. Let us .learn to describe our labours for the lost in his words : 
 “ My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his 
 work.” * And when we give of the abundance with which God hath 
 blessed us, let us consider “ the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, 
 though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through 
 his poverty might be rich.” f 
 
 * John' iv.' 34. 
 
 f 2 Cor. viii. 9. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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