Isaiah 49:6 And he said, It is a light thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel… 1. To look at the question, even from a comparatively lower plane, is there not something elevating in the whole history of missionary enterprise? Is it not a good thing, an inspiring thing, to have lifted up before our eyes the noble examples of the men who have gone forth sacrificing their earthly prospects and encountering privation and suffering and the martyr death that they might preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ? They have gained no earthly reward; they have looked for none. They have reformed men sunk in the lowest depth of degradation, misery, and crime. They have exhibited the Christian graces of domestic purity and truth and love. They have, indeed, enriched the world; they have been the pioneers in civilisation. The splendid heroism of our missionary martyrs has given us a loftier conception of duty, and made our hearts throb with holier emotions, and put to shame the weakness, the cowardice, the selfishness of our lives. Surely on this ground alone we may say that the work of the Church at home is a light thing compared with the mission work of the Church abroad. 2. This mission work abroad gives us new impulses and new motives, because it is done in simple obedience to the command of our risen Lord, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," and a simple trust in His promise, "Lo, I am with you." 3. This mission work is a greater work because of the grandeur and far-reaching compass of its conception, as putting no limits beyond those of the habitable globe to its aims; greater, because it is not bounded by the bounds of a parish or Church; greater, because it bears in its bosom the inspiring truth that the kingdom of God is one, and that all work for Christ is essentially one in its range, and power, and objects, however manifold it may be in the forms which it assumes, or in its application to the various phases of society, and the infinite diversity of the needs which it meets. 4. It is greater because, as all experience shows, it breathes a new life into all the work at home. It is a sovereign, antidote to that selfishness which is so often a canker in our work. 5. The missionary work of the Church is a greater work because of its regenerating power m the revival of the whole Church. No one can question this who has watched the development of missions and the relation of that development to the work of the Church at home. It must often have awakened our surprise that at the great Reformation which shattered the fetters of superstition and brought out a nation beloved of God into the glorious liberty of her children, and gave them the Word of life, no attempt was made to carry the precious treasure to the rest of the world. It may be that the work they had to do at home was the work to which God had called them, and that it so absorbed all their thoughts and interest, it left no room for anything else. There is no more striking instance of the reflex action of missionary efforts than this, that it has been made in God's hand the instrument of a mighty revival in the Church at home. Compare it with that other revival which dates from Oxford some sixty years ago. The earlier Evangelical revival, striking as were its results in the awakening of souls, and turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, left out of sight the corporate unity of the Church. Its weakness was there. It was mighty in its spiritual intensity, but it forgot that Christ came not to convert individuals only, but to establish a Church. The Oxford Movement on the other hand dwelt too exclusively on this aspect of the truth. Ritual darkened the spiritual life. The work of God the Holy Ghost held a subordinate place in its teaching. The power of the Great Commission has gone forth. The Church is sending forth missions, and it is the reflex action of missions which is not only winning fresh victories for Christ abroad, but is breathing a new life into the Church at home. It does not despise sacraments or ordinances, but it puts them in their proper place. (Bp. Perowne, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth. |
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