The Missionary Idea

John B. Willis

Love for our fellow-men being the truest evidence of our love for God, it follows that the missionary spirit is vital to the Christian life. Faith is individual, but it cannot be isolated or exclusive: loving and alert interest in the betterment of others is no less an incident of the Christ-mind than is radiation of light; the two are inseparable. This has always been more or less clearly seen, and some of the most inspiring chapters of religious history are those which portray the splendid sacrifice and heroism of many who have found their pattern and their inspiration in the life of the great "Missionary to the Gentiles."

While recognizing the importance and the accomplished good of organized missionary work, it can but be seen that it has not proved wholly satisfactory or sufficient. His delegated place and prerogatives have tended to lessen the freedom and larger growth of the missionary. and to extend the ills of sectarian religion where unity of thought and effort might otherwise have been realized. Yet more serious disadvantage has appeared in the temptation which has been presented to the many to think that having contributed generously to this line of endeavor for others they have fulfilled their personal obligations in the matter. It is far easier to give gold to a neighbor and authorize him to present the Christ-ideal to men, than it is to bring that ideal into daily demonstration for one's self and for others. And yet upon this last, as is manliest, the vitality and effectiveness of Christianity depends. All missionaries declare that their preaching to the irreligious, whether at home or abroad, is largely in vain because it is not emphasized and commended by the life and conduct of Christian people. It is the demonstration of the sovereignty of the Christ-ideal, by the individual over coming of sin and sickness, which alone convincingly and adequately witnesses for divine Truth. Nothing less than this is demanded of every follower of Christ and in no other way can the missionary work of the church be accomplished.

To this more embracing, more exacting, more inspiring, and more effective idea of Christian responsibility and privilege respecting our brother men, Christian Science gives its pronounced adherence. It is emphasized on well-nigh every page of Mrs. Eddy's writings, and she expresses her own consecration and adherence thereto when she says. "I repeat again, follow your Leader, only so far as she follows Christ" (Message to The Mother Church, 1902).

Everyone must be both thrilled and saddened as he thinks of what it would have meant for the world if during the past eighteen centuries the demands of this ideal had been pressed upon the attention of every Christian believer. if his worthiness and acceptability had always been measured to him in these terms and he had been stimulated and impelled, as is every Christian Scientist to day, to bring forth the "fruit of the Spirit" in practical healing and redemptive work! Who can picture what the civilization of the twentieth century would have been as a sequence of the rule of this higher sense.

The growth of population and the impulses of legitimate trade have brought and are still bringing professed Christians into touch with every nation. kindred, and community, and if each and all were bearing about with them "the marks of the Lord Jesus." if they were commending Christian truth by healing the sick and sinning through the ministries of a pure and loving neighborliness. the Master's command. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." would be grandly and efficiently obeyed. As did the early church, Christian Science places the greater emphasis upon the individual demonstration of the Christ truth as the only authorized and adequate basis of Christian appeal to the un-Christian, and the wonderful spread of Christian Science in all lands gives evidence of the wisdom and propriety of this emphasis.

John B. Willis.

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