AUSTRALIA AND THE PACIFIC.

EUROPE, ETC.

THE MISSION FIELD.

JANUARY 1, 1867.

THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT.

THE MISSION FIELD enters this day upon the twelfth year of its existence. Month by month it has recorded in its 132 numbers the progress of Mission work as carried on by the Missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel over the vast field of its operations. The object of the Society in this publication has been to lay the great facts of Missionary labour before all who may be willing to read its pages; and, by the communication of these facts,

Object of the "Mission Field."

to enlarge and to deepen the Missionary spirit among us.

It will not therefore be unsuitable in this opening number of the new year to speak a few earnest words on the Missionary Spirit, with special reference to the influence of Missionary work, zealously done, upon the Church at home.

The Basis of Missionary Zeal.

The primary motive, no doubt, of Missionary exertion must always be the sense of duty founded upon our LORD'S command. This duty, as all other duties, but this perhaps pre-eminently, draws its life and vigour from the two great commandments, on which "hang all the law and the prophets." But by GoD's abundant goodness every loving duty fulfilled brings back a blessing on the doer; and in no case is the reward more certain than in this great labour of love. Nor is this a selfish consideration for it is not merely upon this or that individual soul that the dew of God's blessing falls in return for prayers, and alms, and active exertions on behalf of the souls that yet lie in

The Reflex
Benefit.

darkness and the shadow of death: it is upon whole parishes; it is upon the Church at large.

New

Labours.

The bringing home of tidings by the pioneers of the Christian army has from the very first caused joy in the hearts Testament of the more settled Churches. The record of MisRecords of Missionary sionary progress forms a large portion of the New Testament Scriptures. THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES is the first Missionary record, and contains within itself the ts of counterpart of the proceedings of our Missionary the Apostles. Societies, at home as well as abroad. In the 14th chapter we find the first-recorded Missionary meeting. In the 27th verse we read of St. Paul and St. Barnabas, that when they had come to Antioch they "gathered the Church together," and "rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles."

In the 15th chapter is a record of the effect of Missionary tidings upon the several Churches to which they were communicated by the same Apostles on their journey towards Jerusalem. "They passed," we read (ver. 3)" through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.” And when they arrived at Jerusalem their first impulse was to declare to the Apostles (ver. 4) " all things that God had done with them;" and further (in ver. 12), "All the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders GOD had wrought among the Gentiles by them."

The

Epistles.

In St. Paul's Epistles we find the like readiness in the Apostles to communicate to the elder Churches the prospects and results of his Missionary labours: and the utterance seems to have cheered his own heart, while it tended to stir up the sympathy, emulation, and charity of those to whom he wrote. To the Corinthians he writes (1 Cor. xvi. 9), "A great door and effectual is opened unto me;" and again in the 2d Epistle (ii. 12, 14), after using the same expression, he exclaims, "Thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in CHRIST, and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place." In writing to the Colossians he claims their sympathy in

his Missionary work, and asks their prayers (iv. 3, 4), "Praying for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of CHRIST. . . that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak." In other passages we see how, by mutual salutations, and various acts of intercommunion, the cords of love were strengthened at the same time that they were lengthened (1 Cor. xvi. 19: Rom. xvi. 1, 15, 21—23); and, lastly, the Apostle makes use of his great success in carrying the light of the Gospel into heathen lands to stir up the Churches to rejoice in the glory of CHRIST, as he himself rejoiced. (Rom. xv. 6-21; Phil. i. 12-20.) If, then, the report of the progress of the Gospel among the heathen was deemed, even in apostolic times, a means to be freely used for kindling the love, exciting the sympathy, stirring the emulation of Churches founded by Apostles or Evangelists, in which spiritual gifts abounded, in which prophecies were uttered, miracles wrought, strange tongues spoken, and spirits discerned, how much more do we, in these days of abounding iniquity and cooling love, require, and how eagerly should we accept, the warmth of love and zeal which tidings from the great Mission field kindle in willing hearts!

Our Need

Greater.

Examples.

SelfDevotion,

Liberality.

We have much to learn from the Churches founded by emissaries sent forth from the Church of England. The lives and labours of many of our Missionaries put to shame us of the clergy in our comfortable parsonages, and comparatively-speaking limited parishes. The generous liberality of our colonists, giving freely, often of their deep poverty, for the maintenance of their pastors, the building of churches and the furtherance of the Gospel, gleams as the light of a good example upon our small and infrequent offerings. The awful struggle between good and evil, which we may trace in the story of individual conversions, while it draws our hearts towards those who, however base their condition may be, are subject to the same sense of guilt which we have experienced, hear the same pleadings of conscience within, and are attracted by that beauty of holiness and love of goodness which has, if so be, touched our hearts, may

Earnestness.

Fervid Worship.

also be a means of deepening our sense of sin, and of inciting us to noble emulation of their new-born love. The fervour of worship among the newly converted should stir us to a greater warmth of devotion. The constancy of Constancy. martyrs, patient in imprisonment, unsubdued by tortures, braving death itself for the name of CHRIST, will not, with GOD's blessing, be without its due effect on those who, following out the story of our Missions in a loving spirit, find that even in these seemingly peaceful days persecution is not extinct, and that there are still found, even on the extremest borders of the REDEEMER'S Kingdom, those who "count not their life dear unto them so that they may win CHRIST, and be found in Him.”

The Witness.

To prove that this is not mere imagination, but sober fact, it will not be necessary to go beyond the pages of the last volume of the MISSION FIELD. There may be found records of real martyrdoms; services instinct with the life of a true devotion; liberal almsgiving, not on the part of colonists only, but of native Christians, recent converts, who have banded themselves together in prayers, free-will offerings, and personal service to carry the Gospel into the regions beyond them; and there is the story of more than one life of unsparing and unconscious self-devotion in hard labours of love for the sake of those souls for whom CHRIST died.

The history of the spread of the Gospel is the same in all ages. There are the same trials, difficulties, and disappointments.

Conclusion.

Satan

now, as of old, is stirred up to new outbursts of rage, and puts forth new and monstrous forms of error wherever the Gospel is preached with faithful zeal. We have seen it in India, in South Africa, in New Zealand, as of old it was seen in Samaria, in the Churches of Asia Minor, or in Corinth. There are like encouragements; if not so great in measure, yet the same in kind. Many, like the Philippian jailor of old, cry trembling, "What must I do to be saved?" Many hearts are opened gently, like Lydia's, "to attend to the things which are spoken," if not " by Paul," yet by those who speak according to their measure in the same most Holy Name. Many walk sadly by the way, like the disciples on