But now there is renewed enthusiasm and
enterprise.
This long lapse of interest should certainly make us moderate in our
interpretation of Scripture. Here were the Saviour's words, clearly
before the eyes of the church for sixteen hundred years; and it seems we
did not see or hear them. He commanded us--and it was one of his last
commands--to preach the Gospel to the world. But we took almost no
notice. The world might have been dying in heathenism, but we seemed not
to care. We had not the spiritual alertness to realize that the words of
Christ had any application to ourselves. Such torpor of spiritual
understanding and sentiment, I say, ought to keep us from being unduly
positive, or self-assertive, in our interpretation of Scripture. Happily
there is renewed interest now; and in this all the churches are agreed.
WHAT BECOMES OF THE HEATHEN?
But what is the basis of all missionary enterprise? I have said that it
is the command of Christ. It is not necessary to believe that the
heathen who do not hear the Gospel are lost. There were certainly some
heathens who were not far from the kingdom of God. The possibility of
men being raised to such a high spiritual level, even without the
Gospel, gives us a hint of the ways and means that God can use for the
ultimate salvation of the heathen world.
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