The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.9

98

The Fundamentals tion with the great, because He poured out His soul unto death.” From this they have their battle cry: “To win for the Lamb that was slain, the reward of His sufferings.” The only way they can reward Him is by bringing souls to Him. They are the only compensation for His suffering. (Ecumen­ ical Conference Report, I, 79.) ■ To show the place and power of the atonement in missions I have time to give only one illustration from each of several different mission fields. In 1721 Hans Egede left Holland for Greenland. His idea of mission methods is given in his own words: “The first care taken in the conversion of heathens is to remove out of the way all obstacles which hinder their conversion and ren­ der them unfit to receive the Christian doctrine, before any­ thing can be successfully undertaken on their behalf” ( “Holy Spirit and Missions,” p. 122). For fifteen years this heroic soul toiled amid the ice and snow without a single convert. At the end of that time he gives up in despair, preaching the last time from: “I have labored in vain: I have spent my strength for naught: yet my judgment is with the Lord and my work with my God 1” ( But in 1730 Frederick Beck went to the same field. The natives' travestied and ridiculed his doctrine. In the meetings they pretended to be asleep and snored. They would ask him to sing, only that they might drown the music with howls and drums. They pelted him with stones, broke into his hut and broke or stole his needed things. They destroyed his boats, and when on the verge of starvation would sell this brave Moravian no food. Awful was their condition; dwarfed in body, they were still more dwarfed in soul. Mothers licked their children as a cat does her kittens, and they wallowed like swine in their filth. After eight years, Beck was translating the Bible, and the natives were curious to see how paper could hear, remember and repeat the Word of God. He read them the story of the

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