CHAPTER IV

GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Authority and Purpose of Foreign Missions-Supreme and Determining Aim -Source of Power-Obligation of this Generation.

Authority and Purpose of Foreign Missions

REV. AUGUSTUS H. STRONG, D.D., LL.D., President Theological Seminary (Baptist), Rochester, N. Y.*

Pascal, the French philosopher and theologian, once said that "Jesus Christ is the center of everything, and the object of everything, and he that does not know Him knows nothing of nature, and nothing of himself." In the spirit of Pascal's aphorism I make but one reply to the questions proposed to me to-day. What is the

authority for foreign missions? I answer: Christ. What is the purpose of foreign missions? I answer: Christ. He is the source of all authority, and the object for which all authority is exercised. If I can justify these statements, I shall justify this Conference, and all our foreign missionary work.

Authority is the right to impose beliefs or to command obedience. As the etymology of the word indicates, authority is something added-added to abstract truth and duty. The thing added is the personal element-obligation to a person. We are ignorant of much that we need to know: there are persons from whom we are bound to learn. We are indisposed to do our whole duty: there are persons whom we are bound to obey.

The only ultimate religious authority must be a person, the highest person, and that person made known to us. Pantheism can

give us no authority, for it has no personal Being who can add his witness to truth or duty. Rationalism can give us no proper authority for reason is not the highest-it is fallible and dependent—İ can safely trust and follow it only as it represents God, who is absolute rationality and absolute righteousness. Nor is even God an authority, except as He is made known to me. Agnosticism can give me no authority, for it declares God to be unknown. Christianity alone gives me a proper authority in matters of religion, because it presents to me a God made known, partially in reason and conscience, most fully in incarnation, atonement, and resurrection. Because Christ is a person, the highest person, and that person made known to me, He can truly say: "All authority hath been given unto me, in heaven and on earth.

* Carnegie Hall, April 23.

The Scriptures give us two reasons why all authority belongs to Christ. On the one hand He is the eternal Word, the only revealer of God, and Himself God. He is the creating, upholding, and governing God-the only God with whom we have to do. Behind all subordinate and delegated authorities, such as parents and the State, the Church and the Scriptures, stands the personal Christ. He alone has original and independent right to tell me what truth and duty are. The revelation in nature and in history derives all its authority from our apprehension of some personal presence and authorship in it all; and, though men may not understand it, that personal presence and authorship is Christ's. Christ is the Light that lighteth every man, even though the Light has shined in darkness, and the darkness has comprehended it not.

All authority belongs to Christ, on the other hand, because He has undertaken to dissipate this darkness of the world by a special manifestation of God. He has joined Himself to humanity to save it. In Him is all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form; He is God manifest in the flesh; the God who was before invisible is declared and revealed in Christ, for He that has seen Him has seen the Father. This manifestation of God's personal love and righteousness in Christ's life and death has added a witness to the truth, and a motive to obedience greater than any which abstract reason and uninstructed conscience could ever furnish. The throne of God has become the throne of the Lamb. And from that throne of the Lamb, the throne of the once crucified but now exalted Saviour, proceeds the authority for foreign missions.

Foreign missions are Christ's method of publishing God's redemption, and so of re-establishing God's authority over an apostate and revolted humanity. Without any uttered command of Christ they would have claims upon us, for they are founded in right reason and in the best instincts of our nature. But that uttered command has been added, and to-day I derive the authority for foreign missions from Christ's express direction, from His single word Go." His one injunction to the unbelieving world is "Come ""Come unto me." But His one injunction to all His believing followers is" Go "-" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation"; "Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations." It is the sublimest order ever given on earth. When I think of the breadth of the world that was to be subdued, of the time it has taken to subdue it, of the small numbers and the narrow views of those disciples, the audacity of that command seems almost insanity, until I realize that He is God, and that all other authority is but the shadow of His.

The authority for foreign missions is the authority of Christ's character, of His work, of His love, of His life. How slowly that authority has dawned upon the minds of men! At first it must have seemed hardly more than the authority of a human teacher and example. But it was teaching about the fatherhood, and the nearness, and the compassion of God, about the simplicity and the spirituality of God's requirements, and all this emphasized and exemplified in Christ's own perfect character and life. The disciples

knew nothing as yet of Christ's divine nature or of His atoning work, but His character compelled their trust and allegiance. Noblesse oblige-nobility lays under obligation-not only its possessor, but all who come in contact with it. We feel bound to imitation. When Christ said " Go," His disciples went, because they saw Him going, to teach, to help, and to save.

Thus far the authority for foreign missions might be something external, and obedience might be matter of duty. There has been much religious propagandism of this sort. But there is something better than this. Authority may take internal form and manifestation. In the case of the disciples it did become, and I trust it has become in us, the authority of an inward impulse, of love to Him who died for us. That love breaks through the bonds of isolation and selfishness, and moves us to go out to the sinning and suffering with a compassion like that which Jesus felt for the lost and perishing multitudes. When Christ bids us "Go," we wish to go. The outer word has become an inner word. Woe to us, if we preach not the gospel. We can not but speak forth the things which we have seen and heard. The authority of Christ is now the authority of love, the authority of our better nature, the authority of reason and conscience emancipated from the long slavery of sin and endowed with the glad liberty of the children of God.

There is a larger conception still of the authority for foreign missions. It is the authority of Christ as the inmost life of the Church and of the universe. We learn that this love of Christ which constrains us is not simply our love to Christ, or His love to us, but rather His love in us-His love overflowing into our souls and manifesting itself in us who are joined to Him and have become partakers of His life. When I hear the word "Go," I hear no arbitrary command. It is the echo of the word "Go" which the Father spoke to Him, and He sends us only as He was sent by the Father. He imparts to us His own longing to redeem; He reveals to us the heart of God; He communicates to us the very life and movement of the Trinity; He takes our little boats in tow on the broad current that sets in the direction of that one far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves.

That word "Go" discloses to me the secret of the universe. Since all things were created through Christ and for Him, and in Him all things consist, I can interpret by that word the whole course of history,-for humanity sundered from God feels its destitution and misery, and its struggles for deliverance are due to a preparatory working of Christ's Spirit. By this word I can interpret the inarticulate groaning and travailing of nature-the plaintive song of every bird, the sighing of every breeze, the mighty currents of the ocean, the steady pull of gravitation itself, all these exist to waft His story, all these co-operate with one who goes to proclaim His gospel. The sun shines, and the heart of man beats within him, in order that this command may be obeyed. For this word "Go" is not simply the word of one who lived and died 1900 years ago in Palestine, but of Him whose goings forth are from

everlasting, and who is Himself the very truth, and love, and righteousness of God. The authority for foreign missions is the authority of Christ's character, of His work, of His love, of His life; the authority of Christ as a human example, as a divine Redeemer, as a Spirit of self-sacrificing love, as an immanent and universal Lord; and this authority includes that of reason and conscience, of the Church and the Scriptures, of all nature and all history; for all these are but faint reflections of Him who is God over all, blessed forever, in whom we and all men live, and move, and have our being.

What is the pur

The authority for foreign missions is Christ. pose of foreign missions? Still I answer: Christ. Paul was the first great foreign missionary, and he tells us the purpose of foreign missions, when he says: "For me to live is Christ." For Christ is Christianity, and Christianity is Christ. We say that the purpose of foreign missions is to proclaim the truth, but Christ says: "I am the Truth." We say the purpose of foreign missions is to diffuse the spirit of love, but Paul says: "The Lord is the Spirit." We say that the purpose of foreign missions is to give new life to a dead humanity, but Christ says: "I am the Life." Truth, and love, and life are personal. Christianity is not merely the spirit of Christ,— it is Christ Himself. The Christian Church is not only called "the body of Christ," the body of which Christ is the soul, but it is said that "the body is Christ," and that the Church is the fullness of him that filleth all in all.” The Church is the expanded Christ, and the purpose of foreign missions is the purpose of the universe, to multiply Christ, to reincarnate the Son of God, to enthrone Christ in the hearts of men, to make all men the temples for His personal indwelling, that He may be the first-born among many brethren, and may fill the world with Himself.

66

So, through the ages one increasing purpose runs. Let our thoughts be widened to take in that purpose and to make it ours. Christ is all in all. As His authority is supreme and universal, so His purpose is supreme and universal also. The prince in the Arabian story took from a walnut-shell a miniature tent, but that tent expanded so as to cover, first himself, then his palace, then his army, and at last his whole kingdom. So Christ's authority and Christ's purpose expand, as we reflect upon them, until they take in, not only ourselves, our homes, and our country, but the whole world of sinning and suffering men, and the whole universe of God. I take this great gathering of representatives from all the earth as proof that the earth has begun to hear the word of the Lord, and is preparing to obey. May this Conference mark the beginning of the end! May it be a sign of the coming of the King! May the Lord cut short His work in righteousness and make this one day as a thousand years! There is but one authority for foreign missions, and that is Christ. There is but one purpose of foreign missions, "For of Him, and through Him, and unto To Him be the glory, forever, Amen."

and that is Christ. Him, are all things.