Present Enthusiasm for Missions--Former Lassitude--The Basis of
Missionary Enterprise--Supposed Damnation of the Heathen--If Really
Believed, Would Drive Us to Frenzy--Ministers' Monday Meeting
--Pretence Cuts the Nerve of Enthusiasm--Restoration the True Incentive
--Effective Because Reasonable--Torment Not Really Believed--The Heart
Often Truer Than the Head--Necessity for Preparatory State--Could not
Have Details Revealed--Orthodoxy of the Torment View--Trying to
Believe It--Be Not Afraid of the Truth--Extreme Calvinists Signally
Honored--The Reason Why--Our Innate God-given Convictions--Meagre
Expenditure for Missions--Tacit Acknowledgement That Endless Suffering
Is Not Believed.
Would not the doctrine of Restoration, as I have tried to commend it,
cut the nerve of enthusiasm for missions? No, I think not; but it would
provide a saner basis for them. For what is the true basis of missions?
Is it not the command of our Lord to preach the Gospel to
every creature?
That the command extends down to our own time is clear from the fact
that the disciples were commanded to go into all the world. They could
not do so in their own time; so the command extends to their followers.
Moreover, Christ said he would be with them until the end of the world.
But they were not to continue to the end of the world; so the command
was intended not only for them but those who would succeed them. Thus
the duty comes home to the Christian church now, and cannot be evaded.