CHAPTER V WHAT MISSIONARY MOTIVES SHOULD PREVAIL? “The love of Christ constraineth us” (1 Corinthians 5 :14) BY REV. HENRY W. FROST; DIRECTOR FOR NORTH AMERICA OF THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA VARIOUS KINDS OF MOTIVES When we contemplate the motives which largely prevail in these days in respect to missionary service, we meet with a surprise. Instead of discovering, as we should anticipate in such a relationship, that these are always upon the high plane of the divine and heavenly, we find often that they are upon the low plane of the human and earthly. And it is to be noted that this condition, as compared with the past, marks a change in the kind of motive which is being presented to men in order to induce them to give themselves to missionary ser vice. There was a time—within the memory of many—when the motives proclaimed were markedly scriptural and spir itual. But more recently there has been in many quarters a positive decline in this respect, the scriptural and spiritual giv ing place either to the selfish or to the simply humanitarian. And this has resulted in a development of weakness, both in the appeal and in its results. It is certainly true, as men say, that non-Christian nations are in a pitiable state, govern- mentally, educationally, commercially, socially and physically; and it is equally true that nothing but Christianity will alter the conditions which are existing. But such conditions do not constitute the appeal which God makes to His people when He urges them to Christianize the nations. The conditions above named are all “under the sun,” and they have to do with the present temporal life. Besides, though a total t«rans~ 85
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