New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-01-25
THE ACTS or TIE APOSTLES


THE ACTS or TIE APOSTLES.
Clearly it is not the vocation OF daily
newspaper to sustain the tenets or the pros
elytism of any sect. But the annual reports
of the various Missionary Associations may
incline even secular editor to moments
consideration of the worldly value of missions,
outside their peculiar claim to Other-w0rid-
illness.
II is plain, VIC think, that the missionary
spirit in the Protestant Church is the only ele-
mept which answers to the ardOr OF the
Church of Rome. Long ago, DR.. Newman
declared that Sin the present day mlStlness
" is the mother of wisdom. The hope OF the
" Church is said to be he who can guide 1t
" through the channel of nO-meaning, between
"the Scylla and Charybdis of Ay and NO"
And Robertson, who was certainly as orthodox
as he was sweet, found popular Christianity
to be "at once devotional, slanderous. timid,
" gossiping, narrow, shrieking, and prudish."
But tho solitary men and women who, with
courage above that of armies, penetrate for
eign and hostile lands, there to live or to die
for an idea, recall the apostolic days ana the
dauntless faith of the primitive CHRISTIANS
Their work is either QuixOtio or inspired, as
one looks at it. But their attempt Is sublime.
They plant tho outposts of civilization.
Doctrines send them where dollars could not,
and commerce and the arts follow in the
track they have cleared. They carry with
them that vast engine of progress, the English
language. In Asia and Africa, alone, they
have reduced to written characters nineteen
barbarous tongues which must give place to
English speech. They have built school
houses They have taught habits Of decency,
order, sObriety.
We observe, with some surprise, that the
good fathers in Israel speak deprccatinely OF
educational and civilizng agencies, and exhort
the missionaries to remember nothing save
Christ and Him cruciied. Schools, farms, and
saw-mill5 are well enough, but church-mem-
bership is prerequisite, they believe. In their
order, baptism precedes civilization But all
history shows that neither men nor nations
can long hold to a faith which is higher than
their intelligence. They will observe rites and
ceremonies, they will repeat formulas, they
will offer lip-service. But their hearts are
where their civilization holds them. The
Christianity of the year 1900 had no claim to
the name of its Founder With fourteen cen
turies in which to ripen, it had rotted because
of the ignorant superstitions of men. Mr..
Moffat found, among the Bechuanas, that an
eagerness to understand the mysteries of the
white mans dress-making, tailoring, cooking
in pots, preceded any eagerness to divine the
mysteries of the white mans religion. He OBJ
served, also, that they discovered candle-making
to be bowitching employment, and that after
they had run numberless candles it occurred
to them that books to read by candle-light
| and capacity to spell out the books would be
excellent acquisitions. On which revelation
they acted. The explanation of the prosperity
of the South African mission at Genadenthal
| is not far to seek. There the missionaries
have established q grist-mill, smithy, drug
store, printing office whence issue two
| monthly periodicals. and in the tidy chapel a
Hottentot plays the organ on Sundays. 1t
| is, however, the negro cousins of these con-
verts, across the straits in Madagascar, who have
| fought their good fight and finished the faith.
| Holding already a rude and partial ciyiliza-
ton, these Madagassy gave ready welcome to
the new doctrines and new industries of the
missionaries, the king himself laying the
cornerstone of the first school-h0use. Five
years of royal protection developed thousands
of nominal Christians, OVERLOOKING schools,
trained carpenters, weavers, artisans Of all
trades The king dying, there followed twenty
seven years of such persecution as Rome de-
creed in the first century. The victims were
| tortured, manned, flung from precipices, tossed
| to wild beasts, chained to the dead, loaded
with letters and thrust into caverns to starve,
boiled in oil, sawn asunder, burned alive.
| And they neither hinched nor recanted. Yet
these later Latimers and Ridleys owned the
black skins, the fattened features, the thick
lips, and curly hair which conservatism pro-
nounces incapable of civilization. Their an
cestors were sold in our slave markets. Their
kindred fought under our flag. And the most
enlightened nation of Christendom debated
for years the fitness of such blood for freedom
and tho franchise.
But il the missionaries had not fastened
civilization, and if the converts had all back
Sudden, we should still hold the value of mis-
sions to be incalculable For unselfshness
keeps the world sweet. Grandeur of charac-
"ter,n says Emerson, "acts in the dark, and
"succors those who never saw it, Were n
new Acta Sanoto,rtm to be written, there would
be set within il the name of John Eliot who
gave seventeen years TO making an Indian
Bible. Il would tell the story of sad David
Brainerd wearing out his feeble life emong
the sn,accs. alone. sick. IN peril. torn with