“I have frequently heard it objected to foreign missions that there are works of philanthropy still to be done here.  The objection is absolutely irrelevant.  The work of missions is not an indefinite ‘doing good.’  It is the bearing of a specific good to those who have not received it.  It is not, per se, the bettering of temporal conditions.  It is the securing to those who believe its message the best eternal conditions.  It is not a matter of ’elevation’—­it is a matter of translation.  Not into a bettered life, but into a new life with an eternal outlook—­into a new realm altogether, and that divine—­the Gospel we carry ushers its believers!  How would the poor, irrelevant argument I have quoted have affected Paul?  Looking across the sea to Spain, and to Rome by the way, he was leaving behind him in Judea, in Asia—­in all the region unto Illyricum, hungry people still unfed and the naked still unclothed.  Want and misery still stretched out their hands to be relieved.  But they could not stay the feet of the Apostle.  He had heard the supreme call!  God had a supreme gift to bestow; the world had a supreme need; and to bring the need and the gift together was his absorbing, constraining zeal.  Would God it were ours also!  Friends, my plea for China is not for its temporal needs; it is not that its women’s feet are bound, that its men are opium-stupefied, or that it needs our Western ideas, as it is waking from its Eastern way.  It is this:  God has an unspeakable gift for its people, and we must bear it to them.”

His tall figure was leaning forward and his burning eyes chanced to rest fully upon Hubert.  The latter started, and a half audible groan burst from his lips.  Was it the burden of a new motive, or the sudden smiting of a chord he knew right well?  The “unspeakable gift!” Yes, he knew it; and its glory was ineffable beyond the highest earthly good he had known.  Happy the man under commission to bear such a treasure, though it be to the uttermost parts of the earth!  And the great Giver longed to bestow it on the millions of His creatures, but waited the unwilling feet of His messengers!  It was heart-breaking!  But was there no other way?  Why should an infinite God limit Himself to finite man in carrying out His great design?  Mr. Carew continued: 

“You may ask why does God restrict Himself to the human instrument in bearing the tidings, and through the tidings the effective result, of the Redemption?  I cannot tell you why, but I see that it is so.  A light from heaven may overpower a Saul of Tarsus, and he may hear words straight from the ascended Christ.  But a Christian man—­Ananias—­must be sent to tell him how to wash away his sins, and to minister the Holy Spirit to him.  An angel may communicate with Cornelius, the Centurion, but he stays his lips from uttering the Gospel of Christ.  That privilege is reserved for the human lips