THE PLAGUE AND THE PULPIT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11346, 14 April 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PLAGUE AND THE PULPIT.

[by ROMANES.]

Noble causes, cspacHly those depending more on influence than en method, are often injured by their friends. Who can tell how much missionary work has been hindered by unwise advocates? For the ideal is so lofty j that it is seldom, or never, quite realised. [ The worker is often badly educated, narrow, prejudiced, unable to assume the latent good that lies hid in "all visions strange and wild"—'dim growings after the Divine. And yet the ideal cannot be marred because the means are imperfect and inadequate, and the realisation almost hopelessly far off; for still the quiet, persistent* persuasive entreaty, that is more than a command, is never entirely silenced—" Do this for Me." The very existence of an aim at something higher than the physical or intellectual needs of this life is in itself an encouragement— almost an attainment. Indeed, so much more powerful may personality become than mere action, that a man may be a great missioner and convert thousands, and yet never leave the quiet of his home. A little book by a humble Rhinelander lias lived for centuries, and has been both in health and in the last dread hour a comfort and a guide to a countless companysoldiers, statesmen, churchmen, the hopeful, and the weary. And why? Because there was a simple loving heart, that suffered and bided and conquered, and out of the fulness of its trial and knowledge and experience and earnest self-conviction, told of something that was certain and eternal. There was no need to seek for a Country. The City was known, the way was clear, the gates were already seen by the eye of faith. Thomas Haemerken, of Kempen, was one of the greatest of missionaries. His small and fragile body was unfit for travel, yet his words have'gone "unto the end of the world." And if the missionary influence of a quiet man, who spent his life in the cloister, has been so great, that "he being dead, yet speaketh," how transcendent must be the persuasive power, the bodily presence, the spoken word, the speaking face, of a Francis Xavier, or a Coleridge Patteson? But a new view has been put forward in our midst, and the old order is reversed. Missionary work is represented in rather a mechanical aspect, and as much for our own material safetv as for the good of the heathen world. Epidemic diseases, we are told, come chiefly from the East, because the Orientals are dirty, vicious, and unchristian, and we are exhorted not only to aid these benighted beings, but also to protect our bodily health by increased missionary effort, This is surely a misapprehension alike of the objects of missions and of the nature of diseases. Do diseases above all other things come from the East because it is un-Christian? -Is not the explanation rather that when the world was young nearly all things came from the East, and that diseases which have a natural history of their own, follow the same course as other things, good or bad. From the East came Light and Life. The Garden was there. The East was the cradle of the human race. There arose superstitions, religions, arts and sciences, wars and famines and plagues. Things pure and impure came from the East, not because it was dirty s|nd un-Christian, or immoral above other lands, but from natural causes. The beginnings of the human race were there, and westward migrations carried with them both the good and the evil of primitive civilisation' Christianity and pestilence are alike gifts from the Orient. . "All the;great pestilences of history," we are told," "take their rise in China, Egypt, or Africa"—Egypt does not seem to be in Africa—" or among some other people stricken by heathenism and vice. No desolating pestilence is known to have arisen among a, Christian people. There are no Christian plagues." These" words may be nothing more than an involved way of expressing the fact that epidemics, like governments and religions, came into existence before the Christian era, but they may lead indirectly to a. wrong conclusion. They rather obscure the fact that Christian armies, navies, and colonists have been powerful agents in the dissemination of disease. And yet Christian soldiers, sailors, and colonists no more spread plagues simply because they were Christian, than epidemics arose in the world's early history in heathen lands simply because they were heathen. " There are no Christian plagues. _ Dirt and plague go together." But dirt is not necessarily a heathen vice. The Greeks and Romans "were a bathing people. The Brahma of to-day are in their persons more clean' than most 'Europeans. Cleanliness and the Cross have not always gone together. The preacher then goes on to describe the ways of Providence in a manner that raises ideas of a Vendetta or the Reign of Terror. " To save, as it were, His own reputation, to vindicate at once His holiness and His power, God marches out against the defiant rebels, and by fearful works ill righteousness gives visibility and energy to the moral law." We are also told that if we are deaf to milder warnings "we are made by means of pestilence and plague to see and hear and feel that there is a God behind all life, and that He is no incarnation of infinite good nature, but just and mighty and jealous of His honour." Perhaps it is not too much to say that if these words really represent the modern teaching of Scotch Presbyterianism, then the followers of John Knox defaced Scottish ecclesiastical architecture to little purpose, and it may not lie altogether unnatural to exclaim with the Persian poet—

Oh, Thou who didst with pitfall and with gin. , . Beset the road I was to wander in. Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute ray fall to sin.

What, indeed, would be thought of a farseeing and powerful earthly ruler who knowingly allowed his people to advance in evil and rebellion that he might from time to time destroy them en masse— innocent with the' guilty— to prove to them in a striking way how powerful he was? Finally, we are given some peculiar reasons for missionary work. "There is a class of men who laugh contemptuously at foreign missions. They forget that as missions prosper, the danger of plague decreases. The missionary prepares the way for trade, for when natives become Christians they soon demand soap, and the demand for soap means better health." Is this argument, or an ill-timed attempt at wit? And more wonderful things follow. 'The moral is that, if for no better reason, one ought to send the Gospel to the heathen in sheer self-defence. Send them the Gospel, or they will send us their plagues, and keep sending them." What can be the motive of these words? Can it really be meant that missionaries and those who support them are to be influenced by bacilli and soap and self-defence? Will these arguments alter the ideas of " men who laugh contemptuously?" Will they not rather add to the number of those who smile sadly, or keep a sadder silence? No. it is impossible to believe that this farrago of cruelty and self-interest has anything to do with mission work. Is mission work not rather an unconscious obedience to the Heavenly .Vision, a lofty example of self-sacrifice to Christians; to the heathen a revelation of something that raises man above the miseries of this present world ; a teaching that does not represent, war and famine and plague as the deeds of capricious and malignant deities, who must be propitiated with temples and altars, garlands and libations; to all men an effort to follow Him who pleased not Himself? But it is unreasonable to expect too much. "Because the preacher was wise he still taught the people knowledge," hut sometimes in ihese days enthusiasm without discretion makes even the earnest and the wise Bay they know not what. :