THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH BY THE REV. GEORGE ROBSON, D. D I LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH TO MAKE CHRIST KNOWN TO ALL MANKIND An address delivered before the Fifth International Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement, Nashville, Tennessee, March 1, 1906. By THE REV. GEORGE ROBSON, D. D. Copyright, 1907 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions The Supreme Business of the Church to Make Christ Known to All Men The theme assigned me to-night is but the translation into a modern thesis of the last command of our Lord. On the eve of His ascension and having in view the constituting of His Church on earth by the sending of the Holy Spirit, at His final meeting with the initial leaders of His Church He summed up the task before them in the words, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” To-night, on this opening day of our Convention, being gathered together in the name of the Lord and with Him in the midst, is not our first concern to apprehend clearly His present will concerning His Church, that this and nothing else may be the basis and the guide and the goal of our proceedings? The primary charge stands unfulfilled and unrepealed. The presentation of Jesus Christ to ail mankind is still the supreme business of the Church. 1. Included in this thesis are four points. The first is that the Church is the appointed organ of missionary enterprise, to initiate it, to order it, and to maintain it. Now that may seem to you a mere truism, but it is no small gain to have it accepted as such. It took the Churches of the Reformation three cen¬ turies to learn this truth; for you must remember that the Re- 4 THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH formation was simply a great revolt against the tyranny of Rome, a revolt which by recognizing the supreme authority of the Word of God liberated the faith of the Church from papal prescription and the government of the Church from papal autocracy. It did not by any means effect the re-forma- tion of the Church on the Apostolic basis; it only made the process of such re-formation possible. Ever since the initial act of emancipation this process has been going forward, by slow steps it is true and through tangled and painful conflicts, but with growing hopefulness. Again, you must remember that the civil power, the organized state, was in the providence of God the shelter and the bulwark of the Reformed Churches against the Papacy. In each land the Church emancipated from the Papacy was reorganized as an entity within the state, and the state cared for its order and maintenance. No better solution of the situation may have been practicable under the cir¬ cumstances of the times, but it was a solution disastrous for the realization of the missionary function of the Church. In effect it made the exercise of that function dependent on the state. In Germany, Justinian von Weltz, the noblest advocate of missions in the 1 7th century, addressed his summons, not to the Church, but to the Diet of the Empire, and its rejection there left the Church missionless for two centuries. In Den¬ mark it made the sending of Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant missionary to India, exactly 200 years ago, an affair of the Court, from which the Church held itself unsympathetically aloof. In Plolland and in Britain it led the state to avow a missionary design as a pious reason for planting colonies and THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 5 seizing territories in newly discovered lands beyond the seas, and the Church was brought in simply as an auxiliary to that design. Even the work of John Eliot among the Indians was vindicated by him as an implementing of the obligation im¬ posed in the charter of the colony. But the wonderful story of that work gave to men a new vision of the opportunities within their reach. The work of evangelization was seen to admit in many ways of free co-operative endeavor; and forth¬ with there began to spring up little societies for disseminating knowledge, for promoting prayer, and gathering contributions to aid the work in the colonies. Then came the strong religious movements on both sides of the Atlantic in the earlier part of the 1 8th century; and the close of that century brought the splendid birth time of what are now the great missionary societies of the Protestant world. These societies, however, were at first only ecclesiolae in ecclesia , groups of Christians voluntarily associated for mis¬ sionary purposes, who while remaining within their churches were far from committing the churches to their special en¬ deavor. Almost everywhere indeed the Church in its organized administration held aloof from these societies and even disap¬ proved their constitution and methods, if not their aims. Grad¬ ually, however, and in recent times with wonderful rapidity, the misconceptions of the past have rolled away like morning mists before the sun; and in the clearer light of a wider day al¬ most all have come to see what the Moravion Church per¬ ceived from the beginning of its history, that the Church as such, is the institution entrusted with the Gospel for mankind. 6 THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH There are still indeed diversities of method. There are churches which conduct their missionary operations as a work organized by the Church itself; and there are churches which conduct their missionary operations through an independent so¬ ciety in close alliance with itself; and there are societies con¬ ducting missionary operations by means of the co-operation of members of various churches in the work. But whatever be the line of action along which we seek to give practical effect to the common obligation, we are one in recognizing that the Church as such, of her own inherent right, in virtue of her constitution, and at her own charges, is the appointed organ for the evangelization of the world. At last we have won this rich fruit of the Reformation in the recovery and acceptance of the Apostolic conception of the Church as the instrument chosen, fashioned, and endowed by the ascended Savior for the work of gathering mankind into union with Himself. 1 1. This brings me to my second point. If the Church has been divinely formed to be the organ of the missionary enterprise, what exactly is the missionary enterprise entrusted to her? I venture to say that it is most truly conceived when we recognize that its essence and sum is the presentation of Christ—that before all, that through all, that beyond all. This enterprise is not a mere campaign to overthrow the beliefs and worships of heathendom by the introduction of Christianity, but is a campaign to present Christ as the light of the world, who lifts into fulfillment the scattered prophecies of truth and aspira¬ tions of good, conserved and struggling in the religions of heathendom, and who at the same time compels the grateful THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 7 abandonment of the whole mass of what is false and evil in those religions. The missionary enterprise is not a scheme for creating foreign extensions or dependencies of the home churches, but it is a scheme for presenting to those of other kindreds and tongues the Christ, who is the Way for all to the Father of all, and in whom there is for all nations a fellowship of equal and eternal brotherhood. The mission¬ ary enterprise is not a movement for the expansion of com¬ merce and culture and civilization, but it is a movement for the making known of that Divine Lord who, wherever His influence is received, guides human life to nobler uses, en¬ riching alike the individual and the community. May I add that if you have regard simply to the task of the Church, the missionary enterprise is not even an endeavor to convert the heathen; for conversion is distinctively the work of the Holy Spirit, and the work committed to the Church is only that of so making Christ known that He shall be seen to be the Redeemer of mankind. How, then, is Fie to be made known? In three ways. He is to be declared in missionary preaching. The message entrusted to the Church is a proclamation of Christ. It is the story of His birth into the human family, of Flis unique life in the flesh, of His death of awful mystery upon the cross, and of His wondrous resurrection from the dead. But it is more than a story. It is a statement of these facts so that they become the certification of a Savior who is the gift of God to all time and to all mankind. True, the missionary has to show to men their sinful and lost condition, but it is in 8 THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH the beholding of Christ that the reality and the sinfulness of sin are most convincingly brought home to the conscience. True, the missionary has to educate men in ethical practice, but the supreme ethical standard, as well as the supreme ethi¬ cal dynamic, is Christ. “The true morality, O bleeding Lamb, is love of thee.” Christ, therefore must be the all- transcending, all-pervading, all-dominating theme of missionary preaching. The Christ is also to be revealed in missionary life. There is sometimes a preaching of Christ which is unaccompanied by any personal reflection of His image. When this occurs in a foreign field it is quite possible that the missionary may still be highly honored for the impression he gives of superior culture, of Western civilization, of foreign power, but the fail¬ ure to give any impression of the distinctive quality of Christian saintship is failure in the very essence of the enterprise. For, just as at home the Christian pastor should be the most Christ- like man in the congregation, so the missionary who goes among heathen people goes not only to carry tidings of Christ, but to let them see a vision of Christ in the manner of his own life and spirit. And Christ is to be attested also by missionary benefi¬ cence. “The works that I do in my Father’s name,” said Christ as He stood on the earth, “they bear witness of me.” The works done in His name on the mission field bear witness of Him still. The dispensary, the hospital, the school, the production of Christian literature, the industrial institution, the manifold influences that create pure homes and social order and THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 9 peaceful well-being—these have their place in the missionary enterprise simply because they are inseparable from the spirit of Christ living and working in His servants who are face to face with the needs of heathendom; and all these in their various ministry to the good of men are but a part of the reve¬ lation of the all-embracing Saviorship of Christ. Thus the essence and the sum of the missionary enterprise is to make known the Christ—the living, divine, eternal Christ, who is present among us in the power of His Spirit, who through us is seeking and saving the lost, and is mighty to save them to the uttermost. And wherever the missionary enterprise is suc¬ cessful, there is in the human heart an instinctive recognition of the revelation of Christ as the basis and crown of the whole change which has been wrought. It was put in a nutshell by the little Manchurian girl, who, in speaking of the flower- planted grave of her baby brother, said, “The grave has be* come a new place to us since Jesus came to our village.” Our work is simply to make Him known, who wherever He u welcomed makes all things new. III. My third point naturally follows. The scope of the missionary enterprise is conterminous with mankind. The Christ is to be made known to all men everywhere. For this reason among others, our Lord ascended to the right hand of the Father, that the revelation of Him might no longer be conditioned by connection with a particular locality or nation, but that he might place Himself in equal relations to all men everywhere. And, correspondingly, the coming of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to glorify Christ, is not affected by race 10' THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH or by color, but is free as the wind which bends alike the Northern pine and the Southern palm. Most emphatically does the Book of the Acts of the Apostles teach that national¬ ity, climate, territory, have no place among the foundations of the City of God. Geographical considerations may order the procedure of the enterprise, but they are forbidden to limit its scope. And so the distinction between home and foreign missions, while convenient in administration, has no spiritual basis. The true home land of the Church is defined by the v/ords, “In Christ Jesus”; and all who know not Christ, wherever they be, whether within the walls of your city, or the boundary of your state, or beyond those boundaries among neighboring nations, or in the uttermost parts of the earth, these constitute the one outland, the field of missionary enter¬ prise. And in that outland is there a single class of society at home, is there a single tribe or sect in the non-Christian world of which you are prepared to say that the incarnation of the Son of God has no meaning for them. His life no message for them. His atoning death no value for them? that they are beyond the embrace of His love, or above His power of blessing or beneath it? Those who know not Jesus may use such language, but we who know Him cannot. Have we not seen among the most vicious in the cesspools of our crowded city life, as well as among the bloodthirsty cannibals of New Guinea, and the brutish weaklings of Tierra del Fuego, and the lustful idolators of India, that even those in the very lowest depths of degeneration the love of Christ is mighty to rescue and renew? Amd have we not also seen how in the mission fields THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH II among Eastern nations the evidence is every day accumulat¬ ing that not in their ancient religions but in Jesus Christ the most earnest souls are finding the truth which satisfies the intellect, the power which regenerates life, the hope which illumines the future? So to all nations, made of one blood, dwelling on the face of the earth, to all the children of men created in the image oi God, to every human being in whose flesh the Son of God has come—to all He is to be made known; for to their need of Him there is no exception, and to His power to save them there is no limit. He is the gift of the Father to all; He died to make atonement for the sins of all; He has been lifted up to draw all men unto Him. IV. If these things be so, I need not elaborate my closing point, which is this, that the presentation of Christ to all man¬ kind is the supreme business of the Church. I clo not speak now of the final purpose of the Church. That will be seen when she is completed in multitude and perfected in character. Cur view at present is limited to that generation of the universal Church which by the will of our Lord is living now in this present world; and the question before us is, what is the pur¬ pose of our Lord in locating and maintaining this super¬ natural organization in the midst of mankind, and what is our plain duty as determined by His purpose? It is placed beyond question by His parting charge. After His own per¬ sonal work on earth had been accomplished, He furnished a pregnant foreword to the new era of redemption in the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension; and of that whole foreword the new and triumphant characteristic was the 12 THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH one great charge, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’’ “Make disciples of all nations.’’ “Ye shall be my witnesses . . . unto the uttermost part of the earth.’’ Through all these centuries the charge comes down to the present generation telling of a task yet unaccom¬ plished, of a purpose and a desire in the heart of our ascended Lord for whose fulfilling He is waiting at our hands, if per¬ chance we are ready to do His will. It is not the mere author¬ ity of His commandment which summons us to this duty, im¬ perative though that be. His commandment is in reality the declaration of an obligation involved in the very nature of the case. Consider what Christ really is and desires to become to the world of mankind and what mankind is to find in Him; and consider, on the other hand, the position of the Church between the two, knowing Christ and living by Him, and yet in direct contact with the world. Is it not plain that even if no missionary commandment had ever been spoken, still the Church could not be answering to her divine ideal nor fulfilling her sacred function, if the end of her manifold labors were anything less than the presentation of Christ to all mankind? What, then, is the present practical requirement? In the first place this, that the life of every individual Chris¬ tian should be adjusted to this end. For, whatever be his call¬ ing or station, the very fact of membership in the body of Christ implies that he is called through some form of service to co-operate in the common task; and when once his heart has learned to beat in sympathy with the love that bled on Calvary, and when once his will is resolved to seek to make THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH 13 Jesus King, then his life will promptly yield its meed or help toward the great end, and the yielding of it will be to him the honor and the joy of earthly existence. Secondly, it is necessary that the congregational life be adjusted to this end. At present the life of far too many of our congregations is sterilized by its self-centered character. The world-wide duty of the congregation is relegated to a secondary place, and the congregation is proportionately non- efhcient for the chief purpose of the Church. What is needed in order that it may come into line with the will of Christ and may fulfil its function in His Church is that all its en¬ deavors should be so ordered as to subserve and culminate in world-wide missionary service. And, thirdly, it is necessary not only that the life of every denomination be adjusted to this end, but also that there be a genuine co-operation of all the Churches to accomplish it. We have had conferences international, ecumenical, which have been helpful toward co-operation in various ways; but whit we are yet waiting for is a conference of authorized delegates from the various Churches who may arrange that, instead of the independent action which to-day is crowding missionaries of many denominations into one limited area, while other and larger areas are wholly unoccupied, there shall be a concerted plan for the systematic distribution of their combined missionary forces, so as to secure a united advance into every field of heathendom for the presentation of Christ to all mankind. It needs, dear friends—I venture to say, it only needs—the full consecration and the wise application of the vast unused or 14 THE SUPREME BUSINESS OF THE CHURCH misdirected resources of the Church of Christ on earth through¬ out her whole membership, in order that a presentation of Christ to all mankind may take place within a single generation. And the immediate urgency of this task is emphasized by co-operative movements in the divine government of the world. Never was the opportunity for the task so favorable as it is to¬ day. The opening of almost every land for the evangelistic enterprise, the undoing of forces that threatened to bar the progress of the Gospel, the ever growing facilities of com¬ munication between remotest places, the ever growing inter¬ course between different nations, giving a new accent to the recognition of a common humanity, the racial and the inter¬ national problems that are pressing to the front and for which we see an effective solution only in a living Christianity—- these things, together with the mighty outpourings of the Spirit of God on far separated fields at home and abroad and the manifest trend in the Churches toward union in the face of the common foe, all these things discover to us the magnificence of the present opportunity and bid us seize it. Who knoweth but thou, each delegate in this Convention, art come to the Kingdom, to thy Kingdom, for such a time as this? The time gives to us the opportunity of need, the opportunity of power, the opportunity of devotion. In this Convention, then, at the feet of our ascended but present Lord, let us yield ourselves anew to Him, that being cleansed from sin and being endowed anew with power from on high, we may in this our day endowed with power from on high, we may in this our day and generation bear witness of Christ unto the uttermost parts of the earth. The price of this pamphlet is 5c. per copy, 40c. per dozen, $2.50 per hundred, express charges prepaid.