Drilling the Recruits
Establishment of the Boston Missionary Training-school— Administration on faith principles—The assault on the school— Dr. Gordon's reply — " Short-cut methods "
IN the winter of '89 a new agency was started for the fur-
therance of evangelistic work throughout the earth. In various ways Dr. Gordon had been made conscious of the stirrings which were profoundly moving men in the common walks of life to missionary service. He had noticed also, with sorrow, the deficit of laborers for certain difficult fields.
" In Africa," he wrote in a letter, " we nearly forfeited our opportunity for want of men. I determined, therefore, to do what I might to find them for that field. We have learned what such men can do from the example of, who has been in Africa three years and has proved a master missionary. The sum of my wisdom on this point is what I have learned at the Missionary Board. I think of those whom we hesitated over and at first rejected because of a want of the qualifications which we considered of first importance. And then to see how God has rebuked us by showing how wonderfully he could use them! I must speak in confidence, but that is the history of three within my memory, every one of whom now stands as a confessed leader in his field. I think that I, for one, have learned the lesson, 'What God has cleansed, call not thou common or unclean.' The experience of years has demonstrated that there are scores of men, from thirty to forty years of age, who hear the call to missionary service at home or abroad. What shall be done for such? This is a question over which I am more sad than hopeful. It is not easy to persuade them that they may do acceptable service for the Lord, and besides this, there is the humiliation of the 'short-cut' stigma now on so many lips. Altogether, it is hard to inspire them with confidence. Well, may the Lord direct us all into the perfect knowledge of his will, and make us ready to do that will as it shall be revealed to us... ."
After much prayer and long consideration, the Boston Missionary Training-school was opened in the old Bowdoin Square Church, Its aim was to exercise men and women in practical religious work in the neglected parts of the city, and to furnish them with a thoroughly biblical training. For this project there were high precedents. In a volume published later* Dr. Gordon described the extraordinary work accomplished on these lines by Pastors Harms and Gossner. The results which attended the labors of these pioneers doubtless constitute an important plea justificatory, if such is required, for the policy of providing, as Gordon phrased it, " plain men with a plain outfit." " It is the sacrilege of Christianity," so he writes, "that the church has so often undertaken to manufacture missionaries by priestly ordinatto7i or by literary training. The prerogative of fm-nishing the ministry for his own church is subUmely accorded to Christ alone. It is his office to give the various orders of the ministry, ours to ask for them and to receive and recognize them when sent." To furnish preparation for those who were thus burdened with a divine call— the laymen desirous of doing evangelistic work, whom the seminaries seem hardly to care to train, the women who hoped to undertake zenana work abroad or slum work at home, the Christian engaged during the day at ledger or in
* " The Holy Spirit in Missions."
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shop, who might wish to obtain evenings a systematic knowledge of the Bible, the candidate for the foreign field of advanced age and slight resources— in short, to supplement the work and to enlarge the constituency of the seminary by establishing a sort of seminary extension, this enterprise was cautiously and humbly launched.
The move was made not without much hesitation. Indeed, it would never have been made at all except from a feeling of divine constraint. A burden of this character is not assumed lightly by a man whose hands are full. That Gordon considered it the Lord's work is evident from the distinct way in which, as the condition precedent to his own participation in it, he required of Him the supply of all its pecuniary needs. To those of the committee who brought out at the first meeting little subscription books with the purpose of soliciting funds, he gave a point-blank refusal. He " declined once for all to make the Lord Jesus a pauper," and refused to allow any connected with the undertaking to " wait in rich men's countingrooms, hat in hand," for subscriptions to the Lord's work. In a letter engaging an instructor he wrote, " Of course we begin without funds, depending on the Lord for help; but we shall try to look after our fellow-helpers."
In continuous, strenuous, unremitting prayer, however, there was no slackening; and the prayers were not unhonored. From the inception of the enterprise to the present time its needs have been invariably provided for. To recount the numerous incidents illustrating the reality— the concrete, definite, proving reaUty— of answer to prayer, would be here impossible. Money was sent from entirely unexpected quarters. On one occasion, for example, a large wooden box came by express from a back town in Indiana— evidently from one who did not venture to trust the banks or the government to transmit his funds— containing a great, bulky roll of one- and two-dollar bills, perhaps the frugal saving of years. Again, an envelop was handed the treasurer by an unknown person, which was found on opening to contain four one-hundred dollar bills. The donor has not been seen since. At another time, when the needs of the school were unusually pressing, Dr. Gordon was in his study asking of the Lord some token of his watch-care and of his continued provision. On reaching home he found that one hundred and fifty dollars had been left by a stranger, one who, as it was afterward learned, had been healed in answer to prayer, and who was now determined to give even out of poverty to the important work of preparing men and women for a missionary life.
Such instances— and there are many others in the outline handed to the writer— are not unique. They are the natural sequence of the prayer of faith the world over. Like cause has produced like effects in the work of MuUer, of Spurgeon, of Guinness, of Simpson, of Christlieb, of Hudson Taylor, of Gordon. If the Vine is interested in the life of the branch, it must be even more so in the prosperity of the fruit. It is not supposable that He would refuse to it the life-giving sap through the agency of which it can alone be filled and developed. " How long do you expect to carry on this work?" was frequently asked. " Until the Lord forgets to supply its needs,"
was the unfailing answer. And the Lord never forgot. We
all remember Sancho Panza, hanging desperately from the window all the night long, his toes within three inches of the ground, his forehead beaded with perspiration, in abject terror of the supposed abyss beneath. A parable, truly, of most Christians, and a type of the conduct of many Christian institutions! Here was one, however, who had dropped and had found beneath him the great round globe of God's care.
The new work was not begun without serious trial and opposition. Hardly were the doors of the unobtrusive and modest institute opened before the assault began. Cold controversies, like cold dishes, leave so disagreeable a taste that
264 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDoM
one would willingly pass them by. Yet there is a lesson in the very unaccountableness of the storm of criticism which followed. In the church to which both critics and criticized belonged there is supposed to be complete freedom of action. 7'he ideal of the statesman, local self-government, is here, as hardly elsewhere, fully attained. Yet this happy absence of a central authority is a standing temptation to men of a pontifical spirit to assert themselves and to adopt the principle, Ubi Petrus ibi eccksia, substituting, consciously or not, their own names for Peter's. This is especially true of those who are intrusted with the management of the denominational press. The excathedra utterance is heard quite as loudly from behind the roll-top desk of the editor as from the recesses of an ecumenical council. Baron Bunsen, so his biographer tells us, was wont to have by his bedside a candle-extinguisher wrought in the shape of a Jesuit padre, who very properly and significantly, we may imagine, rejoiced in his function of putting out lights. The editors of certain religious weeklies would have made equally suggestive figures. What was worse, in the present case Dr. Gordon's assailants seem to have been very much of the disposition of John Lilburn, the Puritan, of whom it was said that, if he could get no one to fight with him, he would set the John against the Lilburn and so precipitate a quarrel.
Now Gordon was wont to say, in speaking of the training of humble men for Christian work, that " he preferred a little man with a great gospel to great men with a little gospel." Whatever the reason— whether the worship of our American fetish, education, or that temper of mind which stickles for the conventional method and for a lawn-tied uniformity, as of bobbins in a cotton-mill; whether it was the spirit which accepts nothing unless " hammered on its own anvil " and having its own die, will take no coin save that with the image and superscription of an accepted system— whatever the cause at bottom, it is certain that these great men of the press did furiously assail the champion of the " Little man." To reah'ze the bitterness with which the school was attacked one has only to turn back the files of the New York " Examiner " to the winter of '89. "The short-cut plan," a characterization peculiarly pleasing to these critics, was denounced as "a method fraught with grave perils to our denomination." It was questioned whether such schools "could be established without both brains and money and a great deal of both." It was doubted whether " the strong common sense of the Baptist laity, from whom the money was to come, could be brought to support " this novelty. It was claimed " that the new school could do a great deal of harm, and that the sooner denominational opinion was decisively expressed against it, and its abandonment secured, the better for every cause that Baptists have at heart." " The Bowdoin Square craze " was denounced as " a movement for reversing educational qualifications among the Baptists, and as an accusation of incompetence against our seminaries." The demand for " half-educated but self-confident men " was ridiculed, and finally (indicating perhaps the real animus of the attack) the doctrine of the ever imminent return of the Lord Jesus derided as the mainspring of this piece of educational fanaticism.
No direct reply was made to these attacks at first. A symposium, however, was arranged between the opponents of the school and Francis Wayland, who, as the father of higher education among the Baptists, would perhaps be listened to with respect. A clever appeal was thus made to denominational precedents. From the neutral position of moderator Gordon could, without participating directly in the discussion, enjoy the sight of the denominational Nestor rebutting the aspersions of the editors and discomfiting the " young professor of divinity who has proposed an assignment of our effects, though as yet we have incurred no debts, and who has named the parties to act ' as reversionary heirs.'
The contrasted views were ranged in deadly parallel down
a column or more of blanket-sheet. We have indicated
the positions taken by the complainants. The reverent, spiritual, kindly, and yet shrewd and far-seeing defense which President Wayland makes of a varied ministry and of the mission of the unprivileged as workers in the kingdom of God we cannot here quote at length. It suffices to say that it rebuked those children of the Sorbonne who in America and in our day are so strongly emphasizing mere ecclesiastical standing. He declared that a refusal to employ " every laborer " was "equivalent to abandoning the effort to evangelize the world." He objected " to giving to education a place not authorized by Jesus Christ, thus establishing a ministerial caste." He declared that if it were true that a Baptist is " not to preach the gospel without years of heathen learning, or if he does that he is nothing but a backwoodsman of whom every one ought to be ashamed, we are dead and plucked up by the roots'^ And finally says, " Of those called by God to the ministry some may not be by nature adapted to the prosecution of a regular course of study. Many others are too old. Some are men with families. Only a portion are of an age and under conditions which will allow them to undertake what is called a regular training for the ministry; that is, two or three years in an academy, four years in college, and three years in a seminary. Therefore theological training should be so adapted as to give the greatest assistance to each of these various classes. Let each take what he can, and then the seminary is at rest."
It was characteristic of Gordon to turn attention from himself and his work and to avoid controversy in this admirable and satisfactory way. It was equally characteristic of him, when a friend was ungenerously and unjustly attacked, to enter the lists in his behalf. For when " the chorus of indolent reviewers " turned on Mr. Guinness, the reply from Gordon's pen was immediate. No one who reads it will question to whom belonged, in this instance, that perennial advantage which the courteous and quick-witted have in every controversy.
SHORT-CUT METHODS
" They were indignant at the assumptions of this man, who, without having attended a beth-ha midrash (house of instruction), and without being able to show up a horaah (certificate of ordination), had ventured to become a teacher."— Delitzsch's " A Day in Capernaum."
" The ' Examiner's ' recent editorial on ' new short-cut methods seems to demand a word of reply. A dislike of controversy has restrained us hitherto. But since this article has been followed by two others equally misleading and injurious in their implications, we now take in hand to set forth the whole matter.
" Early in the year, Dr. Guinness, of London, became my guest. I found that he was deeply burdened for Africa, literally bearing it on his heart night and day with tears. As the founder of the Congo Mission, he longs that we should go in and possess our heritage on that great ' Baptist river.' Our mission there is confessedly the most prosperous of any in the region, fifty in a month having been baptized during the last year at one of the stations, where there is now a church of four hundred baptized believers. And yet, when Dr. Guinness, who planted this mission at such cost of life and money, and who five years ago gave it to us, arrived here, we had not sent to that field a single native America?i ordained missionary, for the reason that we had sought in vain for such to go. Without a word of criticism of this fact, he began to visit our theological schools and colleges, white and colored, to beg for reinforcements. All this he did at his own expense, holding missionary meetings almost daily, during the summer months, and working nights on the Scriptures, so that, by the aid of an African boy whom he kept with him, he translated the entire Epistle to the Romans into the Congo dialect, in order to help on the work of our missionaries. I am sure that he did all this from the most disinterested motives, and with the sole desire to forward the work that lies nearest his heart. I am therefore the more sorry that the ' E.xaminer ' should seek to create prejudice against him by slurring him as ' a Plymouth Brother ' who is attempting to shape our missionary policies. The simple fact is that he is not a Plymouth Brother, and never was; but a Baptist minister, for twenty years a member of Rev. Archibald Brown's church in East London, who, in addition to his great labors for the foreign field, has constantly worked as an evangelist in that wretched region of the great metropolis, and as the result of his labors has gathered and organized two or three flourishing Baptist churches.
" I am equally sorry that the scare of premillenarianism should be raised in this connection. If the writer belongs to this school in obedience to what he believes to be the literal teaching of Scripture, he considers himself neither better nor worse than his Baptist fathers, many of whom have held this view. Indeed, it is interesting to recall that one of Mr. Spurgeon's predecessors in the ministry, Benjamin Keach, was put in the pillory for several days on the two charges of Anabaptism and premillenarianism. But it was a lord chief justice of the Episcopal Church who inflicted this humiliation on a Baptist pastor, and it furnishes no precedent for a Baptist paper's attempting the same thing on Baptist pastors of to-day. As touching the question of missions, premillennialists maintain nothing peculiar except that during this dispensation the doctrine of ' election according to grace ' holds true, and that the scriptural promises concerning world-wide conversion are to be completely fulfilled only in the next or millennial age. And is it possible that any of our denominational papers have
DRILLING THE kECRUlTS 269
become so Arminianized that they must be constantly deriding consistent Calvinists for holding this doctrine of election, as though it were some novel article of faith? But let it be remembered that, in connection with the subject under consideration, no one has raised this question except the ' Examiner,' and no one has intended to do so.
" How can we secure more missionaries? Dr. Guinness, seeing the earnest, soul-saving work going on constantly under the ministry of Pastor Deming in the Bowdoin Square Tabernacle, suggested to him and myself that we open in that church and in the adjoining buildings ' a recruiting-station for lay missionary workers.' The enterprise was designed to give practical experience in evangelistic work, and a course of systematic biblical study. So far from intending to interfere with any higher schools of biblical learning, or to encourage a short cut into the ministry, we undertook the work solely for the benefit of such as could not by any possibility avail themselves of these advantages. In our prospectus this sentence occurs 'All students whose gifts and age warrant them in taking full college and seminary courses of study will be strenuously encouraged to do so.' It will thus be seen that the ' Examiner has raised a false issue, and has undertaken to set us by the ears with those with whom there can be no controversy. The applicants for admission have come from the carpenter's bench, from the painter's pot, from the tailor's shop, some of them confessing to a desire which had burdened them for years to give themselves to foreign missionary service, but seeing no chance till this door opened. They are all poor, and have undertaken, while engaged in study, to work for their board in such places as the Tabernacle Employment Office may furnish them. With the superb opportunities for higher culture which our denominational colleges and schools afford, is it quite gracious to grudge these poor men this very humble opportunity for instruction in the Word of God?
2^0 ADONIRAM JUDSON GORDON
" But will it do to encourage such candidates for missionary service? We have three or four precedents to which we can appeal for an answer, and in every instance the result has been satisfactory. A member of my own church, for example, was sent to India by the Executive Committee of the Union as a lay missionary on half the usual pay. He had absolutely no theological training except that received by the Spirit's work in his heart. Yet, after five years of most self-denying service, his co-laborers have asked for his ordination, one of them, in a letter to his pastor, acknowledging that in intelligent zeal and in practical success he has proved himself not a whit behind the very chiefest of missionaries on that field. This example, seconded by others eminently satisfactory, suggests that, by inviting such men as this to enter missionary service, we may do much more than we are doing to meet the great emergency which is upon us.
" The question raised, therefore, by all the training-schools referred to in this connection is simply this: ' Shall earnest men and women who hear the call to missionary service, but whose age and circumstances absolutely bar them from obtaining any higher education, be helped to such biblical preparation as a few pastors, out of their very meager store, may give them, and then be sent forth, provided always that there are missionary boards willing to employ them? ' This last question is declared by one of the most eminent missionary secretaries of this country to be one that is now confronting every great missionary society. And it might have modulated the ' Examiner's ' outburst of sarcasm against ' Boanerges Jones and Chrysostom Smith,' with their ' aggravated attack of big head ' in presuming to undertake the work of saving souls without college or seminary preparation, to have known that the conservative Church Missionary Society of England is the first board to settle this question, having recently resolved to call out and put into the field a large body of lay workers, who shall consent to go on a limited salary, no other preparation being insisted upon than a simple knowledge of the way of salvation as revealed in. Scripture.
" This whole outcry against an uneducated ministry we hold to be not a mark of genuine culture, but of intellectual snobbishness. The following sentence, from a recent article in the ' Independent,' by Professor Samuel I. Curtiss, on the late Professor Christlieb, is instructive in this connection
" ' Perhaps,' says Professor Curtiss, ' he was the only theological professor in a German university who has ever knelt in a prayer-meeting. He was accustomed to meet with a small circle of earnest evangelical Christians in the Scotch- Irish church in Bonn. After the death of the pastor, Dr. Graham, he purchased the church and the house connected with it as a place for training evangelists. It was called the Johanneum. It was his earnest desire to raise up godly young men who should engage in evangelistic work in Germany. In his later years, in connection with more abstemious habits in the use of wine and cigars (! ), he became a premillenarian in his theological views.'
" The ' Johanneum ' here referred to was started for precisely the purpose of which we have been speaking. Professor Christlieb sorrowfully recognized the fact that the German clergy, with all their high culture, were utterly failing to reach the lower classes, especially in the great cities. Therefore he conceived the idea of calling into the service plain men artisans, clerks, and laborers— who, with a simple knowledge of Scripture, might be able to address these people in their own dialect. He gave himself to the work of raising up such a class, teaching theology in the university, and at the same time humbling himself to instruct in the Bible these lay workers. His work was met with the same conservative frown which has been turned on less pretentious eiTorts in this country. The feeling raised against this movement in Germany
272 ADON/RAM JUDSON GORDON
was such that Christlieb was obliged to appeal to America and England for help in training and sending out these lay evangelists. I had the honor to serve as one of the American committee for receiving and transmitting funds, and I had by this means considerable opportunity to learn something of the blessed and soul-saving results of this much-despised work.
" Let it be clearly understood, in fine, that this undertaking is not for promoting any ' new ministerial short cut,' as the ' Examiner ' affirms, but is an humble effort, undertaken without funds and without any intention of seeking an endowment, to enlist for lay missionary service men and women who otherwise might not find their way to the field. If the word ' recruiting-station ' be kept in mind, none will be misled. Those of us engaged in this enterprise propose, in our missionary addresses and evangelistic tours and by correspondence, to appeal for volunteers for the foreign work; as we secure such, to test them by a year's experience in city mission work, and if we find those whose age and circumstances warrant them in going to college or seminary, to help them in their way thither; to others we will give the best practical and biblical instruction we can."
The interpretation of the new movement as antagonistic to higher theological education was as false as uncalled for. That the founder of the school was as friendly as ever to the seminaries can be easily seen from the following letter. Its real import is made more clear when it is known how largely the financial weight of his own enterprise pressed upon him, and how busily his pen wrought in those days to earn money for continuing the modest work which was being so acrimoniously criticized. For during the first year more than eight hundred dollars of his own salary was turned over to the school, and in succeeding years all the proceeds from copyrights and articles, as well as his entire income as coeditor of the " Missionary Review."
" December 17, 1890. " To Professor Charles R. Brown:
"... In regard to your appeal for Newton, I have been
waiting for a favorable time to invite you and Burton to present the matter. In the crisis in the aiTairs of the Missionary Union— a debt of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars being inevitable unless immediate help is forthcoming— I have thrown my church into the breach. We are raising an extra five to ten thousand dollars before January ist. After that, or before the end of the year at least, I will try to give the matter attention. I wish to be put down for fifty dollars myself, and hope to continue the same yearly. I trust the work on the hill is greatly prospering."
The attack on the school served to advertise it. Students began to come in from all parts of the country. Contributions to its support followed. One lady wrote to the head of the school that she had read the " Examiner " articles, and that, though she had no knowledge of the working of the new project, was sure it must be a " good thing," else the " Examiner " would never have assailed it. She sent in the letter a large check and in each succeeding year gave generously toward current expenses. Later results richly repaid the investments of time and labor. Prayer and self-sacrifice are justified of their children. Graduates of the school are now working in all parts of the globe— in Algeria, in China, in India, on the Congo, in Barbadoes, in Oklahoma, and in the Soudan. Many have become efficient and prized city missionaries and pastors. One has charge of a chapel car and has founded a hundred or more new churches since he began his work. Of the apostolic labors of those who have fallen in Africa and elsewhere, we;
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might speak at length.* Suffice it to say that they died for the testimony of Jesus after much toil and suffering, and that their praise is on all lips. Of the summer work of students in the destitute parts of Maine and among the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire we have spoken elsewhere. The letters which come back from the graduates are full of gratitude and affection for the school, for the instructors, and for the founder. Finally, the numerous institutions of a like character which have sprung up all over the country constitute a reinforcing justification for the establishment of the Boston Missionary Training-school. They point to a recognition of the need of such schools, and of the adequate way in which the need was here satisfied.
* David Miller in the Soudan; Richard Jones, Banza Manteke, Free State of Congo; and Idalette Mills, Barbadoes.