Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 34:135 (Jul 1877)
Article: Missionary Culture
Author: James Gardiner Vose

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BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 401

Missionary Culture1

Rev. James G. Vose

The great work of Foreign Missions is now receiving unusual attention from all classes. The progress of the work excites astonishment, and its results can no longer be treated with contempt. In forming an estimate of the value of missions, an important element is to be found in the character of the missionaries themselves. Any great work, for society or for the nation, requires a lofty type of excellence in those who plan and execute it. While it may be true of many of the founders of great systems that “they builded better than they knew,” it is no less true that their work was a part of themselves. The ideal is ever in some respects loftier than the achievement. The efforts of philanthropy must lower their expectations in view of the difficulties to be encountered. The aim of the leaders is loftier than can be made to appear from the result. This is true in education. While we boast of the diffusion of knowledge in modern times, the highest interest centres about the great educators, who have inspired others. We see in the men themselves the model of what they would accomplish. So it is in all Christian leaders. We are first

BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 402

attracted by their work, but if it be great and genuine we always find something greater in themselves. We form an idea of what can be done for the race by what is seen in the individual. When Christianity was founded our Lord came himself into the world to show what he was in his own person. So when he commissioned his apostles, it was not only that they might bear a message for the rescue of mankind, but that they might attain with every step of their work a loftier manhood. The true Christian missionary in all ages has exemplified more or less in himself the power of the gospel to glorify mankind. It is the purpose of this Article to consider missionary culture in its most important aspects.

I. Spiritual Culture. — In those engaged in missions we observe two especial features. These are faith and loyalty to Christ. While faith is always set forth in the Scriptures as the entrance to the spiritual life, the meaning of it is never so distinctly shown as in efforts to advance Christ’s kingdom. Whatever dispute there may be as to the amount or quality of faith essential to salvation, there can be no question as to its necessity in all great achievements. Our Saviour himself showed his exalted faith in his methods of conveying truth to all conditions of men. None were too low to be beneath his sympathy or his prayers. And the same is seen, in humbler measure, in the case of Paul. Whoever may think that Paul exaggerates the importance of faith as a principle, cannot deny its immens...

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