Mission work

“ There is, however, a fascination about mission work, as every one who is in the field will testify. Furloughs are taken because it is an absolute necessity for the missionary to go away for a time from the unhealthy climate and from the absorbing labors which sap the very vitality. ”

“ So the three parts of mission work go hand in hand, for preaching and prayer will heal the ills of the soul, the medical mission deals with the ills of the body, and the educational mission makes the mind healthy and strong. ”

“ We need to know what facts must be taken into consideration before any mission, evangelistic, educational, or medical, is planted in any place, what facts decide the question whether work is begun, or reinforcements sent, to this place rather than to that. ”

“ While I believe that a certain amount of endeavour, by a mission, for the temporal good and social betterment of its people is legitimate and desirable, extreme care should be taken, in the present early stage of progress, lest this form of activity become prominent or dominant; and, above all, lest it, in any way, interfere with the conviction concerning the supreme importance and prime urgency of the spiritual training and growth of the people. This class of work can very easily, by changing the people's ideas of a mission's aim and purpose, demoralize them. ”

“ Turning now from the force at work we must consider the force in training, for this is prophetic. Let us then take first a table which shows the proportion in which students are being trained for pastoral and evangelistic work, for medical mission work, and for educational mission work, in the province or country, regardless of the place at which they are being trained, whether that place is inside or outside the area under consideration. ”

“ Now when our missions are presented to us and we are asked to support them on all sorts of grounds, as though a society with its slight funds could really successfully practise every kind of philanthropic work, we begin to doubt whether it can really be wisely guided. Each mission station, each institution, seems to be an isolated fragment. The missionary in charge often appeals to us as an exceedingly good and able man, and we support him, and we support the society which sends him and others like him. ”

“ Medical and school work have one other advantage besides those that have been mentioned, for they enable a class of men to participate in mission work who as ordinary evangelistic missionaries would be useless. ”

“ And all of the work should be done through the missionary society which alone can rightly coördinate and unify the whole work of the particular mission.
Faith Missions, so called, represent a genuine and a worthy spirit among many of God's people today. To them the somewhat lumbering business methods of the large missionary organizations savour too much of worldly prudence and seem subversive of the deepest Christian faith. They maintain that the old method is one that looks too much to men and too little to God for support. ”

“ By-and-by, when by God's blessing things are more ripe for definite departments of work, and men can have distinct duties at once assigned to them, and our mode of carrying on the Mission has been fairly tested, then it will be high time to think about first-rate men. ”

“ They contact a preacher and ask him to come and work for them. They contact some church or churches and ask them to support the man while he works for them. Whenever there is enough leadership in the mission field to take such initiative, that’s all right. But that is presupposing a goodly degree of leadership in a mission field! There are many mission fields which do not possess such leadership. Sometimes the few members who live in these mission fields are relatively indifferent. They are not always so. Sometimes they are the finest people on the earth, but often they are not. ”

“ Viewing the peculiar nature of this enterprise it is impossible to resist the conviction how entirely the work of missions is the work of the Lord. He must appoint the men for it; He must endue them with the needed qualifications ”

“ We cannot doubt that missions have a high place in forming this opinion; and among mission agencies I believe there is no one which has told and is telling more beneficially on the people than our mission schools. ”

“ To promote correspondence with churches, Sabbath-schools, missionary societies or individuals who will undertake work of a special character, such as the support of missionaries, aiding of students, supplying clothing, furnishing goods, and meeting other wants on mission ground. ”

“ When our former Mission school boys are found taking hold of agricultural work according to present-day methods and earning a support for their growing families, building their meeting-place, and making some contributions to the church work abroad, we feel that the foundation of a Christian community is being laid. ”

“ The whole of that mission at its commencement presented a most forbidding aspect, and really had so many discouraging features that men were compelled to work by faith and not by sight. Now, however, the soil is blessed, the climate is delightful, and plenty and prosperity attend the labors of the people. ”

“ A special feature of his method was the return of the missionaries, after an interval of some months, to the scene of their labours to consolidate their work by what was called the "renewal of a mission." ”

“ Already, since the movement began, 600 young men and women have entered the mission field, and thousands of others are waiting on a hesiPage 256tating church to furnish the means to send them to work in foreign lands. ”

“ In the past the appeal has been rather to blind obedience, and immense stress has been laid upon the "command"; the appeal has been to the emotions, and love for Christ, love for the souls of men, hope of eternal blessings, hope of the coming of the Kingdom, and (for direction of the work) trust in the wisdom of great missionary leaders or committees, have been thought sufficient to inspire all to put forth their best efforts; but to-day, as in the labour world, as in commerce, as in the army, so in the world of missions, the intellect is taking a new place. ”

“ NECESSITY FOR ALL TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR MISSIONS. He that sent his Only Begotten Son into the world to accomplish the mission which he did, also sent every soul within the sound of my voice, and indeed every man and woman in the world, to accomplish a mission, and that mission cannot {313} be accomplished by neglect; nor by indifference; nor can it be accomplished in ignorance. We must learn our duty; learn the requirements that the Lord has made at our hands, and understand the responsibilities that he has placed upon us. ”

“ DUTY OF A PERSON CALLED ON A MISSION. When a man is called to go on a mission, and a field of labor is assigned to him, he should, I think, say in his heart, "Not my will be done, but thine, O Lord."—Deseret Weekly News, Vol. ”

“ The question about missions would not be so lightly put, nor the answer so lightly listened to, if men realized that what is at stake is not a mere scheme of us missionaries, but the validity of their own hope of eternal life. Yet I am bound to say that the questions put to me, on returning from the mission field, by professedly Christian people often shake my faith, not in missions, but in their Christian profession. ”

“ Their mission is to go about in the dress of workmen, living as they do, and preaching from the steps of buildings, at the cross-roads, and in the fields. To the rich, the obligation of working for and befriending the poor; to the poor, the duties of sufferance and respect; to all the world, the love of God and the church which he has made the depositary of his graces. What might not be accomplished by such missionaries of love, labor, science, and peace? ”

“ All honor to the men and women of character and ability who, as Home Missionaries, are devoting their lives to such fields—the most difficult in the world—where no picturesqueness of scenes or people relieves the strain—where sordid sin, monotony, crudity, and newness prevail, but where the returns in character-building contribute to the life of a nation whose mission is the world. ”

“ The greatest need of a mission is a good, strong, native agency. And in its desire to furnish this agency the mission, as well as the individual missionary, eagerly seizes upon every boy and girl who shows any signs of promise as an applicant to be trained for missionary service. ”

“ I am charged to open—and keep open, if possible—all such districts and countries as I may explore for the commercial world. The mission is supported by a philanthropic society which numbers noble-minded men of several nations. ”

“ We wish the brethren to understand the facts just as they are; that is, there is neither man or woman in this Church who is not on a mission. That mission will last as long as they live, and it is to do good, to promote righteousness, to teach the principles of truth, and to prevail upon themselves and everybody around them to live those principles that they may obtain eternal life. ”

“ We do not for a moment doubt that all Christian missions do exercise an influence of this wide and far-reaching character, and from time to time we can see results which clearly spring from it, but we cannot think it wise to set out this vague influence as the primary purpose of a mission. We believe that the Christian missions which aim directly and primarily at the conversion of men and the establishment of a living native Church produce this fruit by the way. ”

“ To succeed thus, as I have already said, precept must become more powerful than example. Commit the work of converting the world to your children, and they will commit it to your grandchildren. Try instruction in the nursery, try instruction in the Sabbath-school, try instruction from the pulpit: it will fall powerless as a ray of moonlight on a lake of ice, while contradicted by the example of mothers, of Sabbath-school teachers, and of ministers. Urge young men into the missionary field without going yourselves? ”

“ If I were presiding over such a man I would send him home, so that I might get rid of the poisoning influence of his company. I want a man: that is going on a Mission to say wife, children, the Lord gave you to me, I will go and do my duty, and hereby show to him and to all men that I am worthy of you.
In this case the Mission to which you, brethren, are called is to build a city; it calls for wives, children, for machinery, for mechanics, for every thing that is calculated to add to the comfort and happiness of the citizens of a city. ”

“ But to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron and the wit of a hundred men. And from the iron they take the strength, and from a hundred men's brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, they appear in all departments of life. ”

“ This new compilation of missionary stories tells of inspiring lives of Christian converts on the foreign field. Workers in Sunday Schools, missionary meetings, and mission study classes, and also preachers of missionary sermons, will find them very usable and effective. ”

“ We know in quantitative terms the work to be done, we know the relative force of missionaries, we know the relative strength of the native Christian constituency, its communicants, its workers, its education, its wealth, in relation to the work to be done. ”

“ A great many boys are educated and trained at mission expense to be evangelists, medicals, and teachers in mission employ, who serve indeed for a period according to their contract and then disappear into Government service or private practice. ”

“ Who will not acknowledge that we need the inspiration in our day?
If the Christian world needs for its own sake the information and the inspiration which can only come from the literature of missions, the missionary work itself needs equally this means to make its opportunities known to the Christian world. ”

“ The missionary should not only study the records of his own mission and draw from them every possible lesson for his life; he should also enter heartily into the spirit of the mission and endeavour cordially to bring himself en rapport with its highest wisdom, deepest purposes and most cherished schemes for the future. It is not necessary that he be satisfied with all that the mission has done; he should also aim, in the spirit of humility and of patience, to constitutionally influence his brethren to his own new views and better way of thinking, if he have any. ”

“ But while the necessity of thus facing the evil seems laid upon the Church Missionary Society, and a new field of labour opens up, calling for fresh exertion, for a new Mission, we are compelled to appeal to the friends of Missions in our Church for the funds necessary to the proper support of our vast existing agency. ”

“ Since the organization of our missionary societies—less than a century ago—there has been an important change of emphasis in the matter of missionary motives. The progress, I might almost say revolution, in theology has worked towards this change. The recent discovery of new sciences, and the utilization of the wonderful modern means of communication whereby a new knowledge of non-Christian peoples has been made possible to us, has affected our consideration of the whole problem of missionary work and has especially modified the missionary motive. ”

“ From the very commencement of your missionary life, cultivate a spirit of enterprise. Without such a spirit, nothing great will be achieved in any human pursuit; and this is an age of enterprise, to a remarkable and unprecedented extent. ”

“ I can talk to the brethren to-day on the same principle—there is not a man in this Church but what is capable of doing good if he has a mind to do so. Here are Elders who say, "I want a mission; I want to go and preach ”