ing.

its being shed.

death was in the

Christ's Victory over Death.

685

sently powerful, exactly as in the instant of its first transactHis blood cleanseth now precisely as in the moment of In like manner this victory of Christ over power of an endless life, and it liveth and abideth for ever. Christ adopts you into the participation of it now by faith, precisely as if in that very moment He had carried you with Him in His triumphal entry into the realms of death. Would you have been afraid then? There is no more reason for being afraid or subject to bondage now.

Jesus draws near to you in the preaching of the Cross and the call of the Gospel (both of which, to them that believe, are the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation). He sets Himself forth to you therein very specially, as manifestly crucified. Altogether unlike the "Scotch Pulpit" (socalled) of the current day, in which, to the indignation and astonishment of all Christian readers, Christ is not set forthnot to say "manifestly crucified," but not even perceptibly in that aspect at all. All Gospel divine dealings with your soul for its salvation point first of all, and last of all, and throughout all, to Christ and Him crucified. He deals with you, chiefest of all, exactly anent His crucifixion and His death. He will have you meet Him and strike hands with Him exactly here-at His Cross-or not at all. Precisely as if He were this moment about to "accomplish" that decease at Jerusalem, He draws near and says, 'O my brother, partaker of flesh and blood as I am, I am going to pursue yon routed host-death, and him that hath the power of death, and the principalities of darkness: wilt thou go with Me? Wilt thou cast in thy lot with Me, and die with Me? See how different a thing this dying is when you find it in Me—not falling under the power of death, but conquering death, destroying him that hath the power of it. I go not as the victim of death, but as the mighty Conqueror of death. Wilt thou seize the opportunity and go with Me? Thou mayst have thy physical pain, O my brother, O thou partaker of flesh and blood-thy pain, hard for flesh and blood to bear. But seest thou not how in this also I have fellowship in thy suffering, as thou hast in my victory? For because the children were. partakers of flesh and blood, I also myself likewise took part in the same. And now, seeing I am death's plagues and

death's conqueror, do thou also thyself likewise take part with Me in the same-in the same victory and endless life. Behold, I descend as the life everlasting into the valley and shadow of death; and even there-there very specially-I am the light of life, shedding light and glory over all the realm; and even there, therefore-yea, very specially there-if thou go with thy Lord, even there thy Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. Seize this instant-the instant of my victorious descent into the realm of death-for examining what to thee, in fellowship with Me, the valley and the shadow of death will be. And as I go down into that dreaded realm, and pour the floods of light and glory round all its dark domains, and trample down all its boasted power and dominion; and as thou seest all shades of terror put to flight, all principalities of tyranny stripped of every shred of energy, and trembling in dismay and in fastly coming conscious rottenness; and as thou tracest to my person, standing here, all the light and glory and triumph and endless life that are quenching the power of death in death's own domain, bear in mind concerning the place where I now am, and concerning the just effect of my being there, that if any man will be my disciple let him follow Me, and where I am, and as I am, there and so shall my servant be. Very specially, concerning my descent into the realms of death, "Follow me!" To thee, in that case, these realms of death are the path of life, the gate of heaven, and the very vestibule of glory.' Just as for malicious apostates there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, so for humble believers there remaineth now no more death, but only a sleep in Jesus. It is enough. Halleluiah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and reigneth to keep His people's souls alive even in famine. Where is thy sting, O death? Begone, thou helpless, stingless, toothless shade! We shall not die, but only sleep

"Asleep in Jesus! blessed sleep,

From which no soul awakes to weep."

We shall be satisfied when we awake in thy likeness, O Lord our God. Even now our cup runneth over. death, and given us the morning star.

Christ hath abolished
Goodness and mercy

shall follow us all the days of our life, and we shall dwell in

the house of the Lord for ever.

μ.

Medieval Missions.

687

ART. V.-Missions and Missionaries.*

PUBLISHED in the beginning of the month, the close of

which saw the author Professor-elect of Missions, Dr. Thomas Smith's volume of lectures may be taken as his diploma picture, from which it can be gathered what sort of service he may be expected to render when he enters upon the duties of the chair which had Dr. Duff for its first occupant. The lectures themselves form an interesting contribution to the literature of missions, containing a series of sketches of persons prominent in the propagation of the gospel in the Western and Eastern world from A.D. 500 till A.D. 1500. Our only regret is that the learned lecturer confined himself within these limits. For the result has been that he is compelled, although with evident reluctance, to exclude from his picture-gallery one of the most interesting characters of the Middle Ages-Patrick, the apostle of the Irish, who was born close upon the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century. Had Dr. Smith not been a born mathematician, he would probably have set aside what he rightly terms "the arbitrary line" that forms the boundary of his period, and in doing so would have offered no violence to historic propriety by including Patrick among his mediæval missionaries, only, in fact, following the example of Neander, to whose memory he pays a graceful tribute of respect, and who, in his Sketches from the History of Missions in the Middle Ages,

*1. Mediæval Missions. By THOMAS SMITH, D.D., Edinburgh. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1880.

2. Protestant Foreign Missions: their Present State. By THEODORE CHRISTLIEB, D.D., Ph.-D., Bonn. Second Edition. London: James Nisbet & Co. 1880.

3. Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn, D.D. By the Rev. H. W. Tucker, M.A. Two vols. London: William

5. The Life of Alexander Duff, D.D., LL.D. BY GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E., LL.D. In Two volumes. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 1879.

assigns the first place to the Scotch preacher of the gospel to the Irish.

What was the radical and fatal defect in all mediæval missions? In what respect do modern missions differ from them? What features of resemblance can be detected in Protestant foreign missions to primitive missions which have their record in the books of the New Testament? These are inquiries which it would have been exceedingly interesting to have had handled by such a man as Dr. Thomas Smith. But as neither by Dr. Smith nor by Professor Christlieb, in his ably compiled and well stored survey, are the questions so much as raised, we shall, in a sentence or two, indicate the direction in which answers to them may be found. Even at the risk of disturbing the shade of Neander, and of incurring the resentment of Maclear and Smith, we venture to affirm that there were no such things as missions, and no such persons as missionaries in the Middle Ages. This seems very certain, that the so-called missions of these days were far from being according to the pattern shown us in the missionary record of the Church Apostolic. Here and there, now and again, an individual Christian, under the constraining of love to Christ and of compassion for the perishing, set out upon an evangelistic crusade, and having reached a foreign shore, unfurled the Red Cross Banner, built a cottage for himself, a college for his scholars, and there laboured till he died. But the man was not a delegate of any church, representing other Christians who, since they could not go themselves, sent him and accompanied him with their sympathies and their prayers. He went on his own responsibility, at his own charges, not relying for support upon, and not reporting progress to, those left behind. Such a man was not a missionary; he was a crusader or a knight-errant. Very different was the state of matters in the primitive Church. In the days of the apostles, work in the foreign field was the work of the home, Church-the Mother Church of Jerusalem or of Antioch. was done by the Church in terms of her great commission, and not left to be done by any one who might think he had a call and capacity; done through men set apart and sent, who thus became what one of the first and greatest of them calls "messengers of the churches" (2 Cor. viii. 23). What took place

It

Medieval and Modern Missions contrasted.

689

in the case of the missionary just referred to and his companion? It was not simply put into the hearts of these men to carry the gospel to regions beyond; it was said to the church at Antioch, of which they were members and officebearers, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." And when the command thus given was carried into effect, the two missionaries of the Mother Church of the Gentiles went forth upon their work under a double sending-"sent away" by those who had "fasted, and prayed, and laid their hands on them," "being sent forth by the Holy Ghost" (Acts xiii. 3, 4). They were not volunteers, they were not knights-errant; they were, in the fullest sense of the word, missionaries. And that distinctive feature of foreign mission-work in the Apostolic Church is never afterwards lost sight of in Scripture record, but comes up again and again in a variety of interesting details. Of these we shall only specify one-the frequency, namely, with which the missionary returned to head-quarters, and the fulness with which he reported what God had done with him and for him.1 The reporting on such occasions was not the giving of an address, such as may be done in the present day by a missionary on furlough at an Exeter Hall May meeting; it was the reporting diligence and progress on the part of a deputy to those who were not only interested in the work, but who were for it responsible, and with it, in all its stages, identified. Now, it is the reappearance of this primitive feature in the missions of Protestantism that causes them to differ from missions mediæval so-called, and that brings them into close affinity with the work chronicled in the New Testament. The missionaries of the present day do not form a handful of men who have gone forth taking their lives in their hands, and leaving Fatherland and Mother Church, never it may be to see either one or other again, cut off from all sympathy and support, fighting the battle single-handed. They are representative men, delegates of the churches or societies under the auspices and instructions of which they go forth, having the interests and the prayers of all awakened Christendom to back them and to cheer them on. They come back, and they are ever welcomed as often as they so come, to tell the Home 1 Compare Acts xiv. 26, 27; xv. 3, 4, 12; xviii. 22; xxi. 19. VOL. XXIX.-NO. CXIV.

2 Y