THE END AND THE MEANS

OF

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.

A SERMON 1 PREACHED BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, ON THE DAY OF INTERCESSION FOR MISSIONS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1873.

Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And Paul said, I would to God, that not only thou, but all that hear me this day, were both almost, and altogether such as I these bonds.

am, except

Ὁ δὲ ̓Αγρίππας πρὸς τὸν Παῦλον ἔφη· Ἐν ὀλίγῳ με πείθεις Χριστιανὸν γενέσθαι. Ὁ δὲ Παῦλος εἶπεν· Εὐξαίμην ἂν τῷ Θεῷ, καὶ ἐν ὀλίγῳ καὶ ἐν πολλῷ οὐ μόνον σε, ἀλλὰ καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἀκούοντάς μου σήμερον γενέσθαι τοιούτους, ὁποῖος κἀγώ εἰμι παρεκτὸς τῶν δεσμῶν τούτων. ACTS xxvi. 28, 29.

WHEN I preached on a like occasion last year, I spoke at some length of the prospects of Christian missions, and I ventured to give seven grounds which the peculiar circumstances of our time afforded for

1 This sermon, which was preached by the Dean of Westminster in the forenoon of Wednesday, December 3d, 1873, and in which his reasons are stated for inviting a layman to speak on the subject of missions in the evening of the same day, and within the same sacred precincts, is here reprinted with his kind permission.

2 Prospects of Christian Missions, a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on December 20, 1872. Strahan & Co., London.

greater confidence in the future. First, the better knowledge of the Divine nature acquired by the extinction of the once universal belief that all heathens were everlastingly lost; secondly, the increased acquaintance with the heathen religions themselves; thirdly, the instruction which Christian missionaries have gained or may gain from their actual experience in foreign parts; fourthly, the recognition of the fact that the main hindrance to the success of Christian missions arises from the vices and sins of Christendom; fifthly, an acknowledgment of the indirect influences of Christianity through legislation and civilization; sixthly, the newly awakened perception of the duty of making exact, unvarnished, impartial statements on this subject; seventhly, the testimony borne by missionary experience to the common elements and essential principles of the Christian relig

ion.

On these the peculiar grounds for hope and for exertion in this our generation-I content myself with referring to the observations which I then made, and which I will not now repeat.

I propose on this occasion to make a few remarks on the End and on the Means of Christian Missions; remarks which must of necessity be general in their import, but which for that reason are the more suitable to be offered by one who cannot speak from personal and special experience.

The text is taken from a striking incident in the life of the greatest of apostolic missionaries. It was in the presence of Festus and Agrippa that Paul had poured forth those few burning utterances which to Festus seemed like madness, but which Paul himself declared to be words of truth and soberness. Then it

was that the Jewish prince, Agrippa-far better instructed and seeing deeper into Paul's mind than the heathen Festus, yet still unconvinced - broke in upon the conversation with the words which in the English translation have well nigh passed into a proverb, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." The sense which they thus give would be in itself perfectly suitable to the halting, fickle character of the Herodian family, and would accurately describe the numerous half-converts throughout the world—"Almost,” but not quite, "thou persuadest me to join the good cause." But the sense which, by the nearly universal consent of modern scholars, they really bear in the original is something still more instructive. The only meaning of which the Greek words are capable is an exclamation, half in jest and half in earnest, "It is but a very brief and simple argument that you offer to work so great a change; " or, if we may venture to bring out the sense more forcibly," So few words, and such a vast conclusion!" "So slight a foundation, and so gigantic a superstructure! " "So scanty an outfit, and so perilous an enterprise!" The speech breathes something of the spirit of Naaman, when he was told to wash in the Jordan "Are not Abana and Pharpar better than all the waters of Israel?" It is like the complaint of the popular prophets in the time of Hezekiah, whose taste demanded stronger flavor than the noble simplicity of Isaiah, "Thou givest us only line upon line, precept upon precept." It breathes the spirit of the Ephesian Christians who, when they heard St. John's repeated maxim of "Little children, love one another," said, "Is this all that he has to tell us?" It expresses the spirit of many an one since, who has stumbled at the threshold

of the genuine Gospel-"So vague, so simple, so universal. Is this worth the sacrifice that you demand? Give us a demonstrative argument, a vast ceremonial, a complex system, a uniform government. Nothing else will satisfy us."

It

As Agrippa's objection, so is Paul's answer. would have indeed borne a good sense had he meant what in our English version he is made to say, "I would that thou wert converted both 'almost and altogether.' Halfness or wholeness- I admire them both. Half a soul is better than none at all. To have come half way is better than never to have started at all; but half is only good, because it leads towards the whole." Nevertheless, following the real meaning of Agrippa's remark, St. Paul's retort, in fact, bears a yet deeper significance—“I would to God, that whether by little or by much, whether by brief arguments or by long arguments, somehow and somewhere, the change were wrought. The means. to me are comparatively nothing, so long as the end is accomplished." It is the same spirit as that which dictated the noble expression in the Epistle to the Philippians: "Some preach Christ of envy and strife, some also of good will. The one preach Christ of contention, the other of love. What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is preached."1

And then he proceeds to vindicate the end which makes him indifferent as to the means. Agrippa, in his brief taunt, had said, "Such are the arguments by which you would fain make me a Christian." It is one of the few, one of the only three occasions on which that glorious name is used in the New Testa

1 Phil. i. 13-16.

ment. It is here charged not with the venerable meaning which we now attach to it, but with the novel and degrading associations which it bore in the mouth of every Jew and every Roman at that time. -of Tacitus or Josephus, no less than of Festus or Agrippa. "Is it," so the king meant to say, "is it that you think to make me a Christian, a member of that despised, heretical, innovating sect, of which the very name is a sufficient condemnation?"

mony to one of the theological truths

It is only by bearing this in mind that we see the force of St. Paul's answer. He does not insist on the word; he does not fight even for this sacred title; he does not take it up as a pugnacious champion might take up the glove which his adversary had thrown down; he does not say, "I would that thou wast a Christian.' In his answer he bears his testigravest, the most fruitful, of all that it is not the name but the thing, not the form but the reality, on which stress must be laid; and he gives the most lucid, heartstirring illustration of what the reality is. "I would that not only thou, but all those who hear me were (I ask for no ambiguous catchword or byword, but) what you see before you; I would that you all were such as I am such as I am, upheld by the hopes, filled with the affections, that sustain my charmed existence;" and then, with that exquisite courtesy which characterizes so many traits of the Apostle's history, glancing at the chains which bound him to the Roman guard-"except these bonds.' This, whether you call it Christian or not, is what I desire to see you and all the world.” "You see it before you in the life, the character, the spirit, of one who knows what Christianity is, and who wishes that all