Speeches on missions

Preface

A PREFACE to such a book as this can scarcely be too brief.

By his zeal and eloquence Bishop Wilberforce did more than any man of modern times to promote the Mission Work of the English Church, and by his death the cause of Missions sustained an almost irreparable loss. His energising spirit and loving persuasiveness, which led men to consecrate their lives to Mission work, was no longer felt ; and his voice, which pleaded for Missions as none other could plead, was no longer heard.

To my own great gain I had heard some of his Mission Speeches, and read others. I felt sure that the reports of many such speeches had been preserved, and it occurred to me that if they could be collected into a volume, the loss which the cause of Missions had sustained by his death might in some measure be repaired. He, being dead, would by them yet continue to speak to us of that which had been so dear to his heart.

To my appeal for the loan of such reports, many friends, to whom I take this opportunity of returning my best thanks, responded, and the result is the present collection.

Where the same subject has been dealt with in several speeches, I have, to prevent repetition, given only extracts iv Preface,

from such speeches ; and I have arranged the whole of them with a view to a sequence of subjects, rather than in chronological order.

Bishop Wilberforce was for many years so constant an advocate of Missions, that a single volume must be very far from comprising all that he said on the subject, but I believe that nearly all his most celebrated speeches will be found here.

So vast was the supply of his ideas, and of the arguments by which he enforced them, that, while these speeches cannot fail to be a storehouse of information for the student of Missions, they constitute, I conceive, no mean memorial to one of England's greatest Prelates.

I have only to add that this volume is published with the full and hearty consent of the Bishop's family, and that the profits arising from its sale will go to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

HENRY ROWLEY.

London, May 2'jth, 1874,

Contents

1. Upon the Principles and Mode of Working of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Manchester, Oct. 12, 1863 i

II. Upon the Standing-place, Work, and Prospects of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Exeter, Oct. 1859 . . . 19

III. Upon the Special Characteristics of the Society

I

Upon the principles and mode of working of the society for the propagation of the

GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS. — MauchesicTy Oct 12, 1863.

I NEED not, I am quite sure, say anything to you as to the general duties of Christian people, because they are Christian people, to extend their Christianity to those who do not yet possess it. I should think it lost time to argue with any set of professing Christians whatever, the abstract proposition of the duty of preaching the Gospel to others. That duty lies ^ )upon the very simplest and broadest statement of the Chris- .'tian faith. No man receives from God any gift to consume it ^selfishly upon himself. Stewards we are, one and all of us, ' ^ of whatever talents we have been intrusted with — stewards for ithe mighty Master, labouring for the great account. And if this applies to every talent committed to the" stewardship of man, the responsibilities of that trust must rise just in proportion to the greatness of the deposit. He that has received much shall have to give an account for more. And if this be so, what is, for this world and for the world to come, the greatest deposit which the Almighty can have intrusted to His creatures ? Surely it must be the knowledge of Himself, the ) revelation of His wdll, the knowledge of His being, and of His \ / '1 own person and character, and the principles of communion ]\, ^- with Him, of obtaining oneness with Him, of being made like in

A

2 Dttty of Christian Membership.

the humility of the creature's lesser sphere to the great Creator Himself in His unapproachable greatness. This is Christianity

this is to be indeed the Christian Church— to have come to

the general assembly and Church of the First-born that is written in heaven. Impossible, therefore, is it that this should have been intrusted to any one except upon the condition of com- ^ municating the blessing, and not selfishly consuming it himself. | Therefore, to have been made mem.bers of the Christian Church entails of itself upon every one intrusted with that membership the duty, according to his power, of extending the boon to all mankind around him. This being the first broad position upon which all Christian missions rest their claim for support, there comes next the very important question of what instruments men should choose to do this work which they are bound to do.

Now, so blessed is the work, so lar^e |s the field in which it is to be wrought, so plainly earthly and sensual are the difiiculties which are to be overcome in leading m^n to do it, that I for one rejoice in every single instrument by'which the work is being accomplished, and instead of looking with a scrutinising and somewhat jealous eye upon the instrumentality, and being ready to find a fault with it if it be possible, my own inclination is to rejoice in every lawful instrument which can be employed, and which men can be got to use in order to undertake this mighty work which God has committed to them. Therefore, I will never appear before any body of Christian men to urge one society to the depreciation of another. I will— and I think I should not be fit to speak to you if I did not avow it— I will always take what I beheve to be the best and most effectual instrument, or the one which has the greatest claim, but not as depreciating the others for the purpose of exalting that. This seems to me to be a plain intelhgible Christian proposition. If a man will not join with me in using the instrument, I say to him, " Go and use another, and / do it heartily, and give it your prayers and self-denial; only] do not be an idler and make-beheve in the work. Do not use as an excuse for doing nothing the miserable pretext that you

Relation of the S. P. G. to the Church. 3

cannot join with this man or that man, and that everything is not squared exactly as you would have it." As if in a town beleaguered, when men's lives and women's honour were at^ stake, one man would refuse to use the piece of ammunition which had been provided for him because there were figures struck upon that tube the exact shape of which he did not admire. No ; let us use all the instruments God has given us in this righteous and noble warfare.

But in anything I may say, think not I wish to depreciate any other instrument, while I am bound in Christian honesty to show you the peculiar advantages which attend that Society which I am going to speak about. These advantages seem to me to rest upon two things — first, the relation of this Society to the Church and to the nation at home; and, secondly, the relatiorf of the work of this Society tQ,the spread of our peopkgn^istant parts. These are the only peculiarities of this Society. If any of you come here expecting to hear from me that this Society is the advocate of any peculiar notions in the Church of England, I must disappoint you. It is bf'cause I believe it to be the organ of no peculiar opinions in the Church of England that I think it has a special claim upon us. Mark, I pray you, how the relation of the Society to the Church is maintained. Supposing a society, in the main within the Church of England, wished to stamp upon its missionary work some peculiar character of its own and not the character of the common Church, How can it be done ? It must be done by forming a committee of management, who, instead of being left to assume naturally the colour of the Church at large, shall be obliged to assume a peculiar distinctiveness of colour within that common body of the Church. The committee so selected would be able to carry out its purpose in this way. It would select as the missionaries who went out to do its work, men of the same colour as themselves. They would be instructed to select for their use books the very covers of which bore upon them the very same tint, and so there would be one pervading hue running from the book to the missionary, from the missionary to the book, and, if

4 Relation of the S. P. G. to the Chirch.

possible, from the book and teacher to the convert. Now, the tendency of all that is to cultivate party feeling within the Church at home — to make that peculiar Irue which has been adopted the substitute for the general catholic truth of the whole body of the Church, and so by degrees~to become one-sided, or what I may call societyish, if I might venture to invent a word. So, instead of the great object of those who are banded together being the spread of the Church of Christ throughout the world, it will be the propagation of the p?.rticular society, and the spread over the earth of that particular society's theological tint.

The Gospel Propagation Society, in order to avoid that, has adopted this method. It has said it is not safe to commit to a shifting committee the great task of judging of the fitness of the missionaries who are to go out to prea"cTi the everlasting Gospel. It therefore has divested itself of — call it patronage, or responsibilities, or what you will — it has divested itself of the work of settling who is fit to go and who is not, and it has committed the work of choosing to the chief rulers of the Church in your own Church at home. It leaves it to the two Archbishops of the two provinces, and to the metropolitan Bishop; because, by a long tradition, as I think, of misunderstandings, it is supposed that the Bishop of London is a sort of oecumenical bishop throughout the earth. But, however, from that misunderstanding has come this good result, that the Bishop of London is joined to the two Primates, and with them appoints tlie clergymen who every year act for the Gospel Propagation Society as a body, who examine all the missionaries who are sent out to distant parts of the earth (clergymen and schoolmasters), with the single exception of the men whom colonial bishops, when in England, select to take back with them to their own dioceses. Even the colonial bishop, when in his own diocese, if he requires a man to be sent out, has to send that man to be examined as to his fitness for the work to this committee, appointed by the two Primates and the Bishop of London. And so, if it is possible for a human society to have divested itself of every opportunity of cultivating or increasing party spirit in the Cliurch, the Gospel Propagation Society has done it. It has identified itself, as far as it is possible for a human instrument to do it, with the Church, 1 as the Church lives, and feels, and ^rays, and acts here at ) home throughout all the dioceses in this great country.

This is the first point ; and the second is exactly parallel with it. The affairs of the Society are administered by a Board, of which officially the archbishops and the bishops in the United Church of England and Ireland, and every colonial bishop, are, without exception, members, capable of attending — and, for the most part, throughout the time their duties call them to London, actually attending — upon the weekly administration of the missions of this Society. So that here, again, as being identified with the universal episcopate of your Church, this Society is, as far as it possibly can be, not a Society of a party, but of the Church.

In the next place, the relation of this Society to the nation is the other distinctive feature of its work. By that I mean, that instead of picking at will spots upon the earth to which it will send out its missionaries to bear the Gospel message, it lays it down as a primary proposition that where the nation | touches heathendom the nation incurs the double responsi- J bility — first, of securing for its own poor emigrants the minis- ^ trations of the Word and Sacraments as they are ministered at home ; and next, the responsibility of conveying to tlfe' heat'lien \ people around them the blessed message of the everlasting : Gospel ; and that this being God's appointment through His providence, is to be taken as the rndTcativ^ finger marking where the w^ork is to be begun, and where, therefore. His blessing, without which all is vain, may be expected. And I think, if you come for a 'moment to reflect upon it, you will see that this must be the right principle in Christian missions, because they depend altogether for success upon His blessing. Only transfer yourselves in thought to thcry earliest times, when the Gospel of our Lord was struggling [ for expansion through the earth. You then saw it settled/ where the apostles and apostolic men should go, and where

&i^f»ste^

6 Llission Fields determined by God^s Providence^ they should not go. It was not left to their own individual caprice ; it was not left to their own private choice. The blessed Spirit indicated to those who were carrying the banners of the cross where they should make their first inroa37 and from what places they should for the tim.e abstain. You remember where we. read that they were disposed to go to^Asia, but the Spirit suffered them not. You will also remember the man in Macedonia beckoning over the apostle St Paul in a vision, beckoning him away from those interests which were dearest to him, beckoning him away from that peculiar line of missionary vv^ork which it is perfectly plain he had chalked out for himself. St Paul, remember, was an Eastern man, and full of the love of the East which belongs so essentially to every Eastern man. Plainly we may gather from the whole account, that had he listened to the dictates of his own inclination, the Lesser Asia would have been the great sphere of that man's work. But to come to Europe, with which he had little sympathy — no sympathy at all at that time, except as he sympathised with every fallen human being, because he saw for every one the

V cross of his beloved Lord, and the redeemins: d rops of his

I^Iaster's blood ; to come from the beloved East, with its ancient calm, with its loved traditions, with its beloved voices, and to cast himself instead into the strife and turmoil of Europe, was altogether against the natural inclination of the man. But the vision beckoned him, and the apostle obeyed. And if he had not obeyed, if, instead of that, he had leant upon his own inclinations, and had gone whither they would have led him, can any one of us for a moment doubt that that mighty success which attended him would have been withheld, because the Spirit worketh in the willing instrument which bows itself to the lightest intimation, and not through the self-willed heart which sets its own will up against the will of the Almiglity. If Eit that time the duty of thus spreading the Church of Christ was to listen entirely, and with such childlike obedience, to the intimations of the will of God, must not it be the same with us? Must not we just as much be bound at this moment to see that where the finger of God points is our sphere of

Worldly'Poiver on Side of the CJmrcJi. 7

labour, if we desire in our time to have the whole support of God, and His whole Spirit with us? The only difference must be this— we are not to look for the supernatural intimation of that will, but we are to read the intimations of that will in the ordinary communications of God to us.

Now, how are these ordinary communications made ? They are made by the unseen presence and power of God working through material things; shaping the flow of the stream of X time as it runs onward, bending it now in this and then in that direction, and leaving for us, studying carefully His will in His revealed Word, and His ways in the world aroundU^, to see what His intimation to us at the time is as to the duty which at that moment is ours. And how, then, are we to gather it as to this? Consider for a single moment the posittUTi of Christendom now as compared with the condition of Christen-/ dom when the father-apostles the fishermen of Galilee, went* out against the united world to spread the truth. Surely we can see at once, that whereas then the ignorant were against y. the learned, the tmcivilised against the civilised, the complratively despised against those who were rich in all the learning and power of this' world ; now, on the other hand, the riches, the power, the political strength, the intellectual vigour of the earth are gathered upon the Church's side against the Church's opponents. We know perfectly well now that what we call civilisation is really another word for Christianity in some \ shape or other. Where is there at this moment civilisation ^ ^ upon the earth where there is not Christianity, and where Christianity has not be.en ? You see, then, the difference that has come over the whole aspect of the conflict. It is now this world's might of inteHecTTTFis world's power of arms, on the! side of Christianity, against the uncivilised barbarous world in I its ignorance not only of Christ, but of all other mighty agencies \ in the world around.

Now mark what follows from that distinction. When those who were preaching the Gospel of the kingdom came as the ignorant to the learned, how could they obtain a hearing ? What was ^ necessary for them in order to enable them so to command a

T/^c Purpose and Effect of Miracles, the attention of the world as that the world would listen to what they had to say, and give to what they had to say the opportunity of producing its proper results ? You see at once that something was needful. That something manifestly was the power of working miracles. When a man went among the heathen people of that time, who were his superiors in philosophy, his superiors infinitely in art, the superiors of hi* own nation in political power — when the poor Galilean fisherman came to argue, for instance, with the learned Greek or with the powerful Roman, what had he to command so much as a moment's quiet attention which would leaH that man without the utmost scorn to listen to his words? God provided that power as His Church needed it in the power of miracles — credentials from the other world, credentials from the ]\Iaster of Life, creating the first listening and attention to the word which that messenger bore, which word was to produce its effect upon the listener's heart. This was the power of miracles. It was not that the miracle itself converted the heart. It is a most shallow view that signs and portents~(Io convert the heart. They do not touch thewill, in which lies the mighty secret of conversion. They do"not move the affections, which must be stirred before the stubborn will yiefds itself, and in which, in their final flame heavenward, is the accomplishment of the mighty sacrifice of the heart of man to his God. Prodigies and portents touch not these things. There are deep notes in the mighty composite instrument of humanity which the sign and the miracle cannot make to speak. No ; it was the message of the love of God, then, as it is now, the message of reconciliation, brought home to the man in whom the gnawing sense of internal dissatisfaction was breeding a desire to have questions answered which from his youth up had been sounding unanswered within his heart — it was this message of the Lord to him which, under the breath of the Everlasting Spirit, was then, as it must be now, the single instrument of the conversion of the heart. The miracle, like the voice of the trumpet, did but awaken the attention which was to be given to the received messaore.

Power of Christianity a S^cbstittUe for Miracles, g riA^

Is there anything provided at this moment which answers to that ? It seems to me that the reply is patent, inasmuch as the superiority of the holders of the deposit of the faith over the whole race of man who have it not, is now plain, intelligible, and certain. They can, by the demonstration of that superiority, command the same first listening to the message that they have to deliver which the gift of supernatural power administered to the first preachers. Now, mark you, that is not saying that civilisation can convert nations — not a bit •- nor that the superior power which waits upon the possessio*:: of the Gospel converts them. I ventured to say even that the power of supernatural works could not convert the heart, and no more can these supreme powers of intelligence and civilisation. They have no gift of themselves of converting the heart, but they have the gift of exciting the listening attention of those who can appreciate them, and so leading them to listen to the message, which message, under the power of the Holy Spirit, is the converter of the heart to God. If, then, this is so, first it becomes the duty of Christian nations to use tTfat supremacy God has given them for this purpose ; and next it becomes their duty, in chooimg the field of their operation, to f select those places where those powers God has given them [ will best enable them to demand the attention they need for j i^^f^ \n the reception of their message. Therefore, observe, wherever*^^" a Christian nation has_been bv God's providence connected in its national character with a heathen people, there the finger of God points out a place for you to begin your work. If there be, through His providential arrangenieilt; any part of the earth in which a Christian nation possesses the command of a great multitude of the heathen, where they, therefore, w^ill appreciate the power which these strangers possess, where they will see with their own eyes what civihsation has done for them, — there is the indication of the hand of i^

L.

God : there is the man of Macedonia standi in a vision, and saying, " Come over and help us ;" if we can read the signs of the times, as apostles read them, that should show us that we should go over, gathering assuredly that God has calleU^s to lO

Those who Emigrate.

the work. This is the principle of the Gospel Propagation Society. After identifying itself with your Church, it identifies itself with your nation. It distinctly says :— Wherever the people of England spread throughout the earth, there rests a twofold duty upon the community at home — first, that it should give to the emigrants the power of maintaining their faith; secondly, that through the Christian communities settled in foreign lands, it should show in the eyes of the heathen people what the power of Christian civilisation is; and so command a hearing for the message of the Word of God, and an opportunity for the spread of the sacraments of| the Gospel. This has been, and I trust always will be, the principle of the Society.

And now mark in detail how this principle works. The distresses of a manufacturing population at any particular moment lead necessarily to a certain amount of emigration from our - shores. Many of us may think it very dangerous to encourage it, may be very glad to see it stayed, may fear, and not without » reason, the removing skilled hands, and leaving therefore the I mighty arts by which the nation's wealth has been formed without material hands wherewith in future to produce them. I have nothing to do with that question— I deal with the fact. Any mighty stir in the population at home does necessarily— from a community girdled into so small a space as the British people are, bound in by the narrowness of these islands — does necessarily drive away a wave of emigration to the less \ peopled part of the earth. And who go ? You know perfectly I well that it is the poorest and least provided who go. You know, again, that it will continually happen that, in point of icharacter, the people go who have the least of fixed regulation in their own moral character at home ; who are ardent, who are impetuous, who are somewhat ungoverned, who are a little undiscipHned, who have found the strait-laced sobriety of home life a little irksome. They are the readiest to slip their anchor, to seize the first breeze, to dare the intermediate sea, and to venture upon the unknown continent beyond. It must be sb. The well-furnished, and the rich, the comfortable, the respect-

Condition of Emigrants in the Backzvoods. ii

able, the creators of impressions in society, and the ready '

recipients of society's impressions, — they are the men who are

the least willing to go. They get, even if they are poor, into

their corners, and wait until the storm has swept by, while the

little crowd of canoes in which the less-disciplined poor have

entered have been borne away over the trackless sea to their

distant work. But now follow those canoes — follow that wave

of English life breaking upon some distant shore, — and what is

its condition ? Those men have a hard struggle before them. Lu./ ^^4

The abject among them will sink down into menial offices in

the great cities upon the coast of the Atlantic opposite. The LjJ*^^

daring will press on into the back settlements of society. The

wood will ring again with the woodman's merry axe, and the

earth be subdued before the enterprising family. But it is a

hard fight, it is a great struggle. There is poverty to be met, • A**^

not as it is met with here, with hands always ready, thank God, '

to be stretched out to relieve a man in his sickness, and in his

extremity; but in deep, dark woods, where there is not eC] ^/^

Christian near, where there is no hand ready to be stretched/ o-^^*^

out but the unseen hand of the supreme Lord. There, with

fever, it may be, laying low the strong arm upon which the j

whole family depends, laying low the mother upon whose 1

presence everything within that rude hut depends, even for I

health as well as comfort, — there is to be accomplished that ^

mighty strife against the rebellious elements of this fallen world

of man, their dethroned lord. And what is to be the issue of

it? Life or death? God knows. Almost always this struggle

waits upon the advanced guard of the advancing civilisation ;

and how can you expect those men to be the planters of your

Church in those remote deserts ? Even if they desired it, how J(^ A>f

could they? They have neither the time, nor the education,

nor the means. It is with the utmost exertion of every power

of labour God has given them that they can win from the

reluctant earth the very necessities of supporting their family, i

No ; that first wave of emigrant life as it breaks upon those

distant shores cannot by any possibility bear within itself the

elements of reproducing the Church of Christ. Then whose spiritual Provision for Emigrajits.

^vftj^w-w^

/duty is it to see that they have it ? Ah ! you hold undoubtedly ' that it is the duty of the nation that sends them out into that I wilderness, to do it. How if we suffered these people to go without the means of reproducing their own natural life in that distant West ? How if the Government of this country freighted vessels, and sent men out unfurnished with the necessary implements for that struggle which they have got to maintain in the forest, and cast down a shipload of them in some distant part, there to starve and to die? How would the Enghsh people think of the dealings of that Government? How if they sent them out in some time of trouble in ships that were not seaworthy, knowing that they were not seaworthy, trusting to the stream of the Atlantic to rid them of the troublesom.e mouths ? How would the people of England deal with such a Government? Would the tenure of office 'of the most popular Government that this land has ever known be worth a week's purchase if one such dereliction of duty could be traced home to it? I trow not, and thank God for it. But what, then, shall we say of the duty of a Christian people of sending out with those emigrants the means ■ of reproducing their better possession of the Church of Christ, of the means of grace, of the hopes of glory? Can it be, that that which would be so dire a dereliction of duty as to things earthly, in an earthly^overnment, shall be no dereliction of duty as to things heavenly, in the spiritual community of the Church of Christ? No; surely, my friends, the conclusion is certain. We are bound as a Christian community to send out with these poor emigrants the means of reproducing the Church of Christ among them.