MR. YATES' SEVENTEENTH SPEECH.
MODERATORS AND RESPECTED AUDIENCE:

I want to call your attention to one thing. Brother Potter has told you of a great many things he has proved to me. This book will show, when it comes out, how much he has proved. He said that I did not notice his argument about the Roman Catholics inspiring or encouraging the Protestants to engage in the Foreign Mission work. Now, I have answered that; that is all down. I showed you how that was. I did it from the good authority of Mosheim himself. It is all there, my brother. Mosheim tells how men were brought down on their knees by the Roman Catholics, who forced their nominal religion on them. I have proved during this discussion that the Protestant Foreign Mission work of today is employing the ordained agencies and means of God, as revealed in the New Testament, in the prosecution of the gospel work. I have proved also from first-class authority - viz., Harris' "Great Commission," the statements of which are corroborated by Mosheim's Church History and every other ecclesiastical history of note - that the Foreign Mission work, in its very principles, design, and object, has been carried on through all the centuries of the past, from the days of the apostles up to the present time. In trying to evade the force of Harris' statements in his "Great Commission," which I have brought as testimony in support of the unbroken historical identity of the Foreign Mission work, my opponent said I ought to have read it from Mosheim. He knows this would have taken too much time and labor, for this work is in several volumes. Mr. Harris took time and pains not only to cull the facts from Mosheim's Church History concerning the mission work of the Church through the past centuries of Christian history, but has given a digest of all the authoritative works upon this subject, thus making this work a better witness than Mosheim, or any other single authority, in support of this point. It gives the harmonized and condensed 
statements of all the reliable writers on the subject, and its pre-eminent merit in this respect has been acknowledged by the representative talent and piety of the Church in Europe. Brother Potter knows that it would have taken too much of my time to have quoted Mosheim's extended accounts of the Church-work of each century. His objection, therefore, in this particular, is a mere quibble. On the first day of the discussion he said if I could show him a missionary like Paul, who, he claimed, supported himself in the work by the labor of his own hands, he would indorse him and his work as authorized in the Scriptures. So I referrd him to the case of the Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission, showing how he and all his collaborators - 180 in number - supported themselves with their own hands, or by voluntary and direct contributions by friends, without the assured aid of any organized missionary board with the great resources of a Church behind it, and how God had blessed and owned the work. And the poor dodge he made to keep his dear brethren from seeing his shameful and overwhelming defeat was to raise a laugh by saying, "He must be a Regular Baptist." He was so completely caught, and his defeat was so terrific, that this 
reply, absurd as it was, was the best he could make. J. Hudson Taylor is not a Baptist at all, and his mission work is carried on by laborers from all denominations. It is a Christian union work - a work very different indeed, in both belief and practice, from that of my worthy opponent and his brethren. I showed from Brother Potter's own admission that the fruits of the China Inland Mission alone were sufficient to demonstrate the fact that the Protestant Foreign Mission work is authorized in the Scriptures and owned and blessed of God. He knows I had several times disproved his assertion in regard to the Roman Catholic mission work surpassing the Protestant work of missions. I have sent for a book, my brother. I have you right there. I showed you here, time and again, from the very best authors in the world, and these people know it, that the Protestants pay annually to the Foreign Mission work five times as much as the Catholics; and here is a minister of the gospel after we have debated six days, who has the face to get up before these people 
and argue, as my opponent does, with all the proof against him, and it is upon record. I exposed him in his books. He read from Jones, a Baptist historian. I whispered to him at the time that Jones was a liar, and told him he had better not read from his book, because this author had been exposed. Brother Potter does not deny it. If he denies it, I will publish it. He read from Jones in regard to the missionaries of the early centuries, as though those men who did that work in those centuries were Regular Baptists. I took Harris and disproved this, and showed again that Jones told a falsehood, as he had done about the Waldenses. In the first day's speech my dear brother said the 
apostles carried the gospel into England. I tried to handle him kindly in regard to this, but he persisted, and then I took the books and disproved his statements. This I did from Mosheim, and 
Knight's History of England.
He told us about the civilization in Egypt and Greece, and how Nimrod originated it in Egypt. He now denies that he has ever, during this discussion, placed the civilization produced by heathen culture on a level with the civilization produced in heathen lands by the gospel. Why, then, was he talking about that civilization, if he was not putting it side by side on equal grounds of merit with the Christian work on the foreign field? When he said he would prove that the missionary work in Madagascar was backed and prosecuted by the protection and force of balls and bayonets, I took the work which he brought to prove his assertion, reading his own marked quotation, not only disproving his assertion thereby, but also proving from the same authority that there never had been an attempt to protect the missionaries by the force of arms, and that the war waged against the Hovas by the British and French on account of the massacre of their colonists, was detrimental to the Foreign Mission work on that island. The grand triumphs of the work were brought about by missionary efforts alone, as approved and blessed by Divine favor. When my opponent found himself driven to the wall in regard to this, he declared that he was not talking about the Foreign Mission work of that island at all, but civilization; he was talking about the Foreign Mission work. In either case he is in the same dilemma, for the Christian civilization of Madagascar was produced by the Foreign Mission work. Now, when I was driving him from point to point in the discussion of the missionary work, he claimed that Paul, when he visited Antioch, went as a missionary. He said that in making this trip the apostle set an example, showing how a missionary should do when called. Missionaries, he said, should go immediately - as Paul went to Arabia - without conferring with flesh and blood; that is, without waiting for the consent of the Church, or the 
provision of means for support, as missionaries do today. I defied him to show a word, or hint, in Paul's statement in Galatians, or in any other passage of the Word, justifying the assertion that the apostle's object in going to Arabia was to perform missionary work. This he has failed to do. I showed that the Scriptures give no light as to the object of Paul's visit to Arabia, and that the opinions of the most eminent Biblical scholars are against my opponent's interpretation. This statement I quoted from page 116 of the "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," by Canon Farrar, who is acknowledged to be one of the best scholars and profoundest theologians of Europe or America. Farrar says that it is the opinion of most Bible students that Paul went to Arabia for meditation. This does away with Brother Potter's objection, which he based upon this groundless interpretation of the object of Paul's visit to Arabia. We showed from Acts xiii. that all laborers, the apostles not excepted, were sent out to the foreign field by the Holy Spirit, through the voice of the Church, and that there is nothing said in the Word of God as to how much time should be spent after the call of the workers before they start on their journey to the mission field. I showed, also, from the Apostle Paul's second letter to the Church at Corinth, that the primitive Church supported its missionaries by contributions, and paid them regular salaries, just as the Protestant Church pays its missionaries today.
I do not want to spend much time in considering Brother Potter's reference to Psalms, but I will turn to Psalm lxv. 4, the passage he quoted.
My brother is a fine philologist; he makes a great deal out of the personal pronoun. Look what a scholarly philolgist he is. He says that the word "man" in this passage, "Blessed is the man whom thou choosest," has reference to one man, and not a class. No, my brother; the word "man" used here represents a class. Let us see if that is not so. In the third verse, the verse immediately preceding the one we are considering, it is said, "Iniquities prevail against me; as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away." He was speaking of the nation. Hence, "the man" here chosen by the Lord represents that class or part of the nation whose service is approved of the Lord. It refers to those who accept God's offers of pardon and cleansing, and who are obedient in his service. Therefore, God is said to cause this class to approach unto him. Brother Potter claims to believe in personal responsibility, and has resented my statements that he believes the opposite; yet he attempts to prove by this passage that man has first to be absolutely chosen by God before he can approach unto God; that is, a man must be absolutely saved before he can make any movement toward salvation.
If men have to be saved before they can accept the message of salvation, what is the meaning of those expressions in the Bible about the blood of those who reject the gospel resting upon their own heads? I will turn again to the passage in Proverbs. Brother Potter has fled from that passage. He had to own that he could not answer it. Proverbs i. 24-29: "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord." They rejected him, did they not? Why, if they had been chosen before, they could not have done that.
I have here in my hand a book of which Professor Christlieb, of Bohn University, Berlin, Prussia, is the author. Now, Brother Potter will tell you that Professor Christlieb is a missionary, and therefore not good authority. I hope, if he feels like it, that he will say that to this audience; it is going into a book. I want the people to see how it is, and weigh the testimony. Listen to Professor Christlieb's testimony: "Eighty years ago the total sum contributed for Protestant missions hardly amounted to L50,000. Now the amount raised for this object is from L1,200,000 to L1,250,000 - about five times as much as that of the whole Romish propaganda." The Propaganda is the society charged with the management of Roman Catholic missions, and the sum expended by it shows how much Roman Catholics contribute yearly to advance their mission cause. Professor Christlieb goes on to give us an estimate of the number of converts who today belong, in the heathen countries, to the different Churches of the Protestant world. Listen, will you? Brother Potter says there has been nothing done. I will quote from Christlieb a part of what I have quoted already from Bainbridge, who gave Christlieb's estimate: "There are 310,000 in the West Indies" - that don't amount to any thing; O no! my opponent does not believe it; it is all of man. I want you to see his nice arguments and views about this being of man, and how much it will take to convince him - "400,000 to 500,000 in India and Farther India" - pretty good, is it not? - "40,000 to 50,000 in West Africa." Brother Potter says that is little. He seems to look at it just as if Africa was not much bigger than its representation on that map. Why, we are representing the world with that map - "130,000 in South Africa, over 240,000 in Madagascar" - and my opponent said they were heathen. Look how long his Church has been existing, and it has but 40,000 members today, and he is arguing here for numbers as an evidence to show that God blesses and owns a gospel work. He has been arguing during all this debate that numbers are no evidence at all of God's approval and blessing. He has referred to the Catholics, time and again, to show that numbers prove nothing, and now, at the close of this discussion, he comes out and cries, "Numbers." He is the very last man in the world that ought to do it. I want the people to know it, and see it just as it is. 45,000 to 50,000 in China; over 300,000 in the South Sea Islands." Then the Moravian sect, up in Greenland, are about 16,000. Pretty good progress, my brother, since 1792. These statistics of the foreign work by Prof. Christlieb reach no farther than 1877; 
consequently eight years of mission work have passed by, with their wonderful triumphs, since these reports were made up. During this time from 600,000 to 800,000 heathens have given up their idolatry and adopted Christianity as their religion, and from 300,000 to 400,000 during this period have professed a saving faith in Christ. In the heathen world 125,000 have professed a saving faith in Christ during the last twelve months. Brother Potter told you that in the first century more people professed conversion and were brought into the Church, than the whole number of the converts in heathen lands since the revival of Foreign Mission work. My brother certainly ought to know better than that. Sharon Turner, a high authority on statistics, prepared an approximate estimate of the number of professed believers in Christianity at the end of each century since the beginning of the Christian era, embracing the eighteenth century. He estimated the number of professed believers in Christianity at the end of the first century to be 500,000. Eighty years ago there were 50,000 heathen natives who had professed to give up their idols and believe in Christianity. According to the latest statistics there are now 2,600,000 nominal Christians in heathen countries, and nearly 800,000 communicants in the different evangelical Churches planted in the foreign field. Thus within eighty years the number of converts to Christianity, brought in by the Foreign Mission effort, has been five times as great as the whole number of converts during the first century, and the triumphs in every other department of gospel work have equaled this, if not surpassed it. That is the way my brother has been giving his arguments for the last six days.
He told us Paul supported himself, and that was the kind of a missionary that he believed in. I turned his attention to II. Corinthians xi., where Paul said to them: "Have I committed an offense in abasing myself that ye might be exalted, because I have preached to you the gospel of God freely? I robbed other churches, taking wages of them, to do you service." You ought to have seen how he looked when that came out. Chapter xii. 13: "For what is it wherein ye were inferior to other churches, except it be that I myself was not burdensome to you?" How do you suppose Brother Potter tried to escape the force of this passage? You cannot keep him any where. If he has taken one position during this debate, he has taken a dozen. How do you suppose he tried to get out of this dilemma? He said Paul was not a missionary, he was a pastor. That is the way he tried to prove his point. He will explain it for you some way, if not by argument by assertion. He finds no trouble in explaining things. But I am here now to help him. I have but a brief time to continue this review of his speech. He says they (the missionary workers) have much better opportunities in prosecuting its work in these days than the Church had during the first century. What do opportunities amount to with him, when men are elected and God is pushing them through by the wholesale without any agencies or means? And what do railroads amount to? According to his theory, how can the telegraph contribute to the success of the gospel work? I want the people to look at this calmly. If everybody had believed as my brother has been teaching, not one 
of us would have had these blessings of Christian civilization. But then all God's people are elected and every thing was fixed from eternity, and only 40,000 are absolutely right; all the rest 
of us are in error.
Now, I wish to continue to follow out my line of argument. First, I will take up the quotations I commenced to give in my last speech, on the fruits of the work. The following is from The Gospel in All Lands, page 187, written by Prof. Williams, of Oxford: "It (the Foreign Mission work) substitutes for the celebrated saints of Pantheism a basis of living rock, which may be afterward thankfully occupied by evangelizing missionaries as a common stand-point when the gospel is confronted in argument by the Veda and the Koran."
I will now read an extract from Lord Napier's speech at Tanjore, in 1871, taken from the same paper: "The advance of Christianity has at all times been marked by occasional fitful and spasmodic movements in India. The present period is one of moderate progression, but it does not exclude the expectation of rapid and contagious expansion."
Another extract from Sir Herbert Edwards, in Exeter Hall, in 1866: "Amidst a dense population of two hundred millions of heathen, the little flock of native Christians may seem like a speck, but truly it is that little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand which tells them there is to be a great rain. Every other faith in India is decaying. Christianity is beginning to run its course. It has taken long to plant it, but it has now taken root, and by God's grace will never be uprooted. The Christian converts were tested by persecution and martyrdom in1857, and they stood the test without apostasy; and I believe that if the English were driven out of India tomorrow, Christianity would remain and triumph." But my brother does not believe it. It is of man, and not of God, he says. I now quote 
from Max Muller's lecture in Westminster Abbey. He is the great linguist of Oxford - one of the grandest of living scholars and thinkers: "If we think of the future of India and of the influence which that country has always exercised in the East, the movement of religious reform which is now going on appears to my mind the most momentous in this momentous century. The foreign missionaries feel constrained to repudiate it as their own work; history will be more just to them than they are to themselves. And if not as the work of Christian missionaries, it will be recognized hereafter as the work of those missionary Christians who have lived in India as examples of a true Christian life, who have approached the natives in a truly missionary spirit, in the spirit of truth and in the spirit of love, whose bright presence has thawed the ice and brought out beneath it the old soil ready to blossom into new life."
Now, I have not time to go further, though I have many more valuable witnesses here to quote in regard to the success and Šgospel fruits of the Foreign Mission work. I have showed the fruits of this work in the transformation of character. These men in those heathen countries were brutes and cannibals, who fed upon their enemies, but they have been transformed by the gospel into Christian men and women. I have shown that the gospel, through the labors of these earnest missionaries, has given these people Christian homes and Christian governments; hence the Foreign Mission work itself conclusively evidences that it is owned and blessed of God. In my last speech, in summing up the arguments which I have given in support of the affirmative of the 
proposition, I had time to name only five particulars in which there is a perfect identity of the Foreign Mission work of today with the gospel work of the New Testament. I will now resume the 
summing up of the points I have made:
6. My sixth argument is that the identity of the Foreign Mission work with the gospel work of the New Testament is seen in the identity of the civilization produced through the missionary effort in heathen lands with the civilization of Europe and America, which is the product of the divine transformation of character through the gospel.
7. The identity of the process by which the work of the world's evangelization is prosecuted by the different Churches of Christ who engage in the Foreign Mission work of today with that employed by the gospel Church of the first century.
8. The spiritual prosperity with which the Churches that are engaged in the Foreign Mission work are blessed. When we love missionary work, and engage in it, we are blessed in the act. I showed how these faithful and active Churches have grown, how their influence has spread, while they have been lifting up the heathen into the sunlight of heaven.
9. The identity of the Divine preparation and enlistment of Protestant Christendom for the evangelization of the heathen world with the preparation and enlistment of the gospel Church 
for the evangelization of the ancient Gentile world. Divine providence has in this century opened up the way of access to the heathen by social and political revolutions, just as the same Providence prepared the way for the triumphs of the Christians of the first century among the Gentiles. I showed that the boards and measures employed in the Foreign Mission work are only methods and means used by the Church in the work. I showed also that, as the Christian Church in the first century propagated the gospel in both the home and the foreign field at the same time, so today the Churches which engage in the Foreign Mission work are also doing most at home.
10. The great blessings which Protestantism has conferred upon the world. The Foreign Mission spirit give birth to Protestantism. Protestantism is but the outflow of the increased spiritual life of the Church; so also are Foreign Missions. Therefore Protestantism itself is a mammoth demonstration that Foreign Missions are authorized in the Scriptures and blessed and owned of God. I have shown that the first Church was a Missionary Society. The word "mission" means to send. A missionary is one sent. Hence this word, when applied to our life-work, means a trust committed, a work to be performed. Is not that what the Protestant Christian world is doing in carrying the gospel to the heathen nations of earth? I have showed that the Foreign Mission work is a godlike work. It is the carrying out the very spirit and object of the Church's great commission given by the Lord. Foreign Mission work has not only bestowed civilization upon the heathen, but it has given them the Bible translated into more than three hundred languages. It has built colleges, hospitals, and churches. Under its influence the school-house and the church go up side by side, and poor, degraded heathens are lifted up and transformed into the image of God.
11. The history of Christianity, from its very origin up to the present time, forms one grand and unbroken chain of conclusive testimony that the Foreign Mission work of today is authorized in the Scriptures and blessed and owned of God. I showed that in all the work of the Christian Church, in all its victories, it has but carried out the Foreign Mission spirit in pressing the work into the most remote regions of the world. As civilization is the result of Christianity in this nineteenth 
century, I proved the identity of the gospel work of the New Testament and the Foreign Mission work of today in heathen lands by showing that the civilization produced by the mission work in 
those benighted lands is the same as the civilization produced by the pure gospel in every century of Christian history in the past.
12. The identity of the Foreign Mission work with the work of the gospel is also evidenced in the fact of its absolute conformity to the principle of the universal brotherhood of mankind as taught in the Bible, its leading principle being supreme love of Christ, the perfect Man and representative Man of the human race, and universal love for mankind for Christ's sake. This is the great inspiration and motive-power of the mission work.
13. In my thirteenth argument I showed that the universal call for the gospel, and the great opportunities now extended to the Church to enter the unevangelized portions of the earth, prove that those who labor to convert the heathen are following the Divine guidance, and that this work is owned of God. These things are Divine indications that God is calling the whole Church to enter and take possession of the heathen world as its promised inheritance. This I illustrated from God's manner of guiding the Apostle Paul in his work among the Gentiles, indicating to him where he would be received.
14. In my fourteenth argument, as an evidence that the Foreign Mission work is owned and blessed of God, I called attention to the rapid progress Christianity is making against heathenism in all its degraded forms in the foreign field, inducing its votaries by the thousands to cast away their idols and come to Jesus and be saved. We saw that the ratio of increase in the foreign field, in proportion to the laborers and means employed, far exceeds the ratio of progress in the home field. The following statistics, showing the ratio of the increase of Christianity in India, were published by that great Missionary Conference which met at Calcutta in the spring of 1883. In that remarkable gathering were representatives from all the provinces between the Himalayas and the seas. They met to offer devout thanks to Almighty God for the progress of Christianity in India. Since the time of the apostles the rapidity of this progress has never been equaled any where on the 
earth. In India proper, and in Burmah and Ceylon, in 1851, there were 102,951 native Christians, or those who had given up idolatry and accepted Christianity as the only true religion, but had not realized an experimental knowledge of it. Of this class there were, in 1881, 528,590. In thirty years their number had increased more than five fold. In the countries named (India proper, Burmah, and Ceylon), the number from among the heathen who professed to be born again, and were communicants of the different evangelical Churches in 1851, was 17,306. In 1881 the number was 145,097. Thus the number of heathen who professed to be regenerated by the power of God through the gospel had increased more than eightfold in thirty years. From 1851 to 1861 the ratio of increase was 53 per cent; from 1861 to 1871, 61 per cent; from 1871 to 1881, 86 per cent.
15. In my fifteenth argument I showed the Foreign Mission work to be authorized in the Scriptures, and blessed and owned of God, by proving from God's Word that the wonderful progress and triumphs of this work today in the Isles of the Sea, in superstitious India, in benighted and degraded Africa, in the Sunrise Empire of Japan, in Australia and New Zealand, in the dominions of Islam and the pope, is the fulfillment of prophecy. I went clear through the Book, and showed how God has marked it out from beginning to end, and how the history of the Foreign 
Mission work is but an echo of prophecy.
16. I showed that God's approval of the work is evidenced in woman's work for woman. Woman's heart has been touched. God has opened the way for woman to work for Jesus. I told you of those poor, unfortunate women in heathen countries. Men could not reach them, and God opened a way, as I have before described. Not over twenty-five or thirty years have passed away since God, through the work of the embroidering of a slipper, opened the first home of the high-caste heathen in India to woman's work for woman; today there are in India, China, and the Moslem countries, thousands of such homes accessible to female missionaries. The Christian women of the Protestant world operate through fifty-one missionary societies of their own, cooperating with all other missionary societies. Their object is to teach and save their sisters in all of earth's benighted lands. They have established training schools, colleges, and seminaries, orphan homes, and zenana missions - that is, missions for woman's work for woman in the heathen homes alone. As a sample of what the Christian women are doing in unevangelized lands, I call attention to one 
institution out of many which they have built in great centers - viz., the large seminary for the education of native girls, erected at a cost of $50,000 by the Christian women of America on the heights of Scutari, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, overlooking mosque of St. Sophia and the sultan's seraglio and palaces, in Constantinople. "It is fitting that this institution should stand there in sight of the leaders of the whole Turkish and Moslem world as a rebuke to their degradation of women, and a warning that she shall receive a social and religious elevation, despite their cruel tyranny and beastly lusts." And this same class of institutions, built by Christian women, gives the same voice of warning at every other point where they are established. Before woman entered the field for woman, attention had been directed to general preaching, teaching, and translation. There 
has been little done in searching out the degraded, ignorant, and secluded women of heathendom; but how much has been done since woman entered into the Foreign Mission work! and how much is being done today! While there are many thousands, and even millions, at home, doing all within their power to advance this work, there are thousands of Christian women in heathen lands telling the story of Jesus and his love, and light is dawning around them. Infant marriage is passing away, caste is passing away, crime, and degradation, and heartache, are passing away. India, and China, and Japan, as well as the lands of the sultan, are being lifted up into the light through the influence of these Christian women. The doors of opportunity for the missionary work of Christian women in heathen lands are opening more rapidly than they can be entered. The zenanas in India and the harems in Moslem countries are rapidly being unbarred to the women 
missionaries. What an opportunity is now being opened up before the women of Christian lands to honor their blessed Lord in becoming the instruments in the overthrow of heathenism and the 
salvation of the heathen people. There are perhaps 80,000,000 women in Moslem harems, unloved, uncared for, except as tools of lust, whose harts are breaking. There are 90,000,000 more in the most abject slavery in body and soul to Hindoo lords; and 300,000,000 more are living under the sway of Buddhism, with no hope beyond this world except the dim possibility of being born again a man. Thus the great multitude of women in the degraded and wretched state of heathenism numbers 471,000,000. They are crying out for the gospel, and it is the great object of the Foreign Mission work to meet this demand. And when we, in this Christian land, contrast our condition to theirs, does not gratitude to God call upon every Christian woman to respond to this call? Is it not the voice of God in the wail that is borne across the seas to us, telling us in this many-voiced call to move at once to convey to these perishing souls the Bread of Life? In the heathen lands the fields are white and ready for the harvest, and the laborers are few in proportion to the pressing need. O how the voices ring over the waters all around the world, "Come over and help us!" Today the heathen are begging the missionaries to tell them of Jesus and his love, and are taxing them beyond their strength, and making it impossible for them to meet the demand. Think of those Christian homes of the Bechuanas over here in Africa, men who were bloodthirsty and cruel when Moffat went there, but are now Christians. Think how the sunlight shines there. Now, think of that one dying up there (pointing to Africa on the map), a degraded wretch, a slave, who never heard of Christ! Contrast these wretched heathen with the Christian Bechuanas. Does not this picture to us the great importance of sending the gospel to them? Does it not say that the Foreign Mission work is owned and blessed of God? But my brother says "it makes no difference, for God, in his own good time, will do it." Why, my brother, what more unmistakable indications will God give you that he is doing this work than he has already in opening the ports of heathen countries, and the wonderful fruits that have been developed by missionary effort?
17. The attitude of the Church of Christ toward the evangelization of the heathen one hundred years ago in contrast with its attitude today. Then, not one in ten thousand countenanced Foreign Mission work; now, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of the most intelligent and pious people of the Church of Christ heartily indorse it and warmly support it. I proved from the history of this work that its fruits in heathen lands and its blessings to the workers in the 
field at home have been such as to furnish a monumental demonstration that Foreign Missions are blessed and owned of God. The most incredulous of those who have studied these results have 
been forced to confess that they are of God. Hence nearly the entire Christian world has become enlisted in this cause. My friends, if you take this matter and study it with the Bible open in your hand, if you rightly read the words of Jesus, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," God will teach your heart, and then you will know what a blessing it will be to your home. It will give you a new knowledge and deeper sympathy with suffering humanity. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." How the Churches which have done this have been blessed! They have grown at home and have grown abroad. As a demonstration that God approves and blesses the Foreign Mission work I will close this, my last speech, with an incident which was told me by missionaries who witnessed it personally. The missionary who had the experience which I am going to relate was the Rev. E. P. Scott. His wife, Mrs. Anna Scott, to whom I have referred before in this discussion, was sent, with her husband, as a missionary to India, from the church of which I was at one time pastor. This was some years before I had charge of the church. Mr. Scott died in Assam, and she returned with her children to her native land, and united again with the congregation among whom she had spent that part of her life preceding her missionary work in India. So I received this incident from her lips. One day, while Mr. Scott was on the street of a village, during one of his inland missionary tours, he met a very strange-looking native, who proved to be from an interior tribe of murderous mountaineers, to whom the gospel had never been preached, and who came down once a year to trade with the more civilized tribes of Assam. It was so hazardous to go among them that no missionary hitherto had dared to venture into their country. As Mr. Scott beheld this cruel-looking human being, he was stirred with an earnest desire to break unto him and to his tribe the bread of life. He went to his lodging, fell down on his knees, and sought Divine direction. Arising, he packed his valise, took his violin (for he was a sweet performer on the violin), and started on a journey to the home of these savages. His fellow missionaries urged that he was exposing himself to needless peril, and said, "If you go, we shall never see you again; it is madness for you to go." But he said, "I must preach Jesus to them." After two days' travel he found himself in the mountains, suddenly confronted by the members of the tribe which he sought. They pointed their spears at his heart. He was expecting that any moment might be his last. He knew that these Oriental people loved music, and instantly drew forth his violin, shut his eyes, and, while in his heart he prayed for Divine protection, played and sung in the native language,

Am I a soldier of the cross,
A follower of the Lamb?

At the close of the hymn he ventured to open his eyes, and found a very different state of affairs. Their spears had been dropped, and tears were in their eyes, and the chief asked him to do that again. Then he played and sung in their own language,

All hail the power of Jesus' name!
Let angels prostrate fall.

When he reached the stanza, "Let every kindred, every tribe," the tears fell freely from the eyes of the savages. At the conclusion of the hymn they invited him to their homes. It was the commencement of two years and a half of labor among them, and the results were great. His labors were so richly blessed of God that when he was compelled to leave them and return to America, 
on account of fast-declining health, they followed him with weeping eyes and tender hearts, saying, "O missionary, come back to us again!" He could not resist their entreaties. He went back and labored until he sank into the grave among them. He lived to see them change their spears into pruninghooks. He introduced the Bible into their houses. Their cruel, murderous natures were transformed by the gospel, and they became a civilized Christian people. And today, from many homes and from many Churches in that distant land, grand hallelujah's go up to 
God, and thousands of voices sweetly sing from consecrated hearts, "All hail the power of Jesus' name!"


MR. POTTER'S SEVENTEENTH SPEECH.
BRETHREN, MODERATORS, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:

Brother Yates says, What is up in here? referring to the map. He says that I argue that it does not make any difference about the people up there, God will convert them. How do you understand me on that? I do not want this forgotten. This is the most serious objection I have to the whole thing - that is, that those people here, where there are no missionaries, where you see none of these colors, all over these countries, are lost; they are going to hell; and he speaks of me as saying, and speaks of it in a manner to make you know he does not believe it, that I say it is all right; God will convert those people, and calls on me for the evidence. Now, then, I introduced a chart here the 
other day, with glowing figures on it, that said 100,000 heathen are dying daily. I have it here yet, and will show it, if any body wants to see it. It is a missionary chart. One hundred thousand people in these vacant places, where there are no marks of the missionaries, are dying daily. Now, then, if God does not convert any of them, where do you say they go to? If he does not take charge of them, and does nothing for them, simply because the minister has not gotten there, don't they go to hell? That is the doctrine I oppose. That is the doctrine I am here to oppose. That is the reason I oppose it. I oppose it on account of its doctrine; it limits the salvation of God to where the preacher and the Bible get to, and denies that God saves anybody anywhere else. And today a large percentage of the human race are in heathenism; and missionaries say 100,000 of them are dying daily. I object to the idea that God is sending that many people to hell every day, simply because missionaries do not get to preach to them. I said in the outset of this debate, and some of 
Brother Yates' friends snickered when I said it, I knew they did not understand my position; and one reason is, there has never been but one side of missionism presented to this community. You 
have always heard the missionaries talk about missionism, and they have always spoken favorably of it. The people seemed surprised that a man would get up in the latter part of the nineteenth century and say that he did not believe that the missionaries had ever been, or ever would be, instrumental in the salvation of a solitary soul that would not have been saved without them. And yet, while they snickered at me for saying it, it took Brother Yates until the fourth day of this debate to differ from it. It took him until the fourth day in the evening to oppose that. He did not tell you that in his summary. I told him to tell it, but he did not do it. Notice, while it seemed to surprise others that I would take that position, Brother Yates was appealed to time and again before he would take a position against it, and it was then on th fourth day of this discussion; and when he did do it, he said that the missionaries were the means and instruments in saving souls that would be lost without them. That is the reason I object to this missionism, because of its doctrine. I do not object to preaching the gospel every where, neither do I believe that doctrine. I do not believe it is absolutely essential to their salvation. Not only that, Brother Yates is not all the one. In addition to saying that he believed they had been instrumental in the conversion and salvation of some that would have been lost without them, he challenged me to show a solitary conversion without the gospel. That settles it down into the doctrine that salvation is limited to the places where the gospel is preached. These vast places are thickly populated, and I do not think they are a small portion of the world. It is the map of the world that Brother Yates has here. These people can see where the gospel is, and where it is not, and the proportion. The missionaries say we are surrounded by eight hundred millions of people who are heathen, and that a hundred thousand of them are dying daily. The missionaries say they are lost; when I ask, What becomes of them? they go to hell. What for? Because they do not get the gospel. That is why. That is the only reason assigned. Let us see if that is it. I have the American Baptist Missionary Union as proof of this, which I have already quoted from a tract called "The True Test." It says:
"Christian friends, we have no fires of martyrdom now to test our fidelity to Jesus Christ; but we are not left without a test. God is testing us all continually - testing the measure of our faith, of our love, of our devotedness to his Son, by the presence of eight hundred millions of heathen in the world. It is a tremendous test, so real, so practical. It is no trifle, no myth, no theory, no doubtful contingency, but a great, awful fact, that we Protestant Christians, who rejoice in our rich gospel blessings, and claim to be followers of Him who gave up heavenly glory, and earthly ease, and life itself, to save these heathen, are actually surrounded by eight hundred millions of 
brothers and sisters who must perish in their sins unless they receive the gospel. This gospel they have never yet heard. This is a fact that too many forget; a fact none can deny; a fact of which we dare not pretend to be ignorant; a fact that ought to influence our whole Christian course from the moment of our conversion." That is the doctrine of missionism. That is the principle upon which it was invented at the start - that it was necessary to the salvation of the heathen, and none of them could be saved without it. Now, I object to it because it contradicts God's Word.
I am now going to sum up a few things that I have referred to as a reason I do not believe that. I do not believe it from the fact that God said to Abraham, "In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Now, notice - all the families, all the kindreds. I quoted Scripture to show that; and, in addition, I quoted Scripture to show, in Revelation v. 9: "And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." Now, they came from all those nations. John saw this. The missionary doctrine is they do not come from those nations, and kindreds, and people, unless the Bible gets there. The Bible says they do. That is the reason I object. Again, Revelation vii. 9: "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number." I have appealed to Brother Yates twice, showing him that when he gets the aggregate of all his conversions, then we have a text of Scripture that outstrips them all, and says, "a great multitude that no man can number." He can number his converts. He has been numbering them here during this discussion; the statistics are shown every 
year, and almost every month, in the periodicals. It is no hard matter to tell how many there are in the world. Brother Yates has never come to this but once, and he said that would be when the world was conquered by the gospel. If that is so, it looks to me like it is going to be a long while. Let me tell you this - what John said would absolutely be, not dependent upon the contingency that people would be willing to divide their goods and send missionaries there, for the missionaries seem to have a hard time to get a sufficient amount. I said that the Missionary Baptists, sending one million to Japan for one year, cost them over $20,000, and that their institution was in debt today about $50,000. Does the salvation of men depend on an institution that cannot pay its debts as it goes along? Does the eternal salvation of the heathen depend on that? I quote again from the language of the Saviour concerning his sheep on that point. He says, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have." Now, notice - those other sheep are sheep among the Gentiles, among the heathen, exclusive of the Jews. He claimed to own them when he was here. "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." Again, in the same text, Jesus, in speaking of his sheep, as well those that are abroad as those in this fold, speaking of all of them, 
he says: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me; and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish." Where are they? They are out yonder, all over the earth, and we have the word of Jesus that they shall never perish. Why? "My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." Now, if Jesus had a people that he called his sheep in all heathendom, and they had not yet heard of him - and we have his word they are coming to him, and they shall never perish - and as I showed from this Commentary that this was what he meant, that this was not a prediction that they would hear the gospel and be brought that way. No, sir; but that it meant an inward calling of grace, by which they would be infallibly drawn to Jesus. That is what the text means, and I have shown it, and it has never been contradicted. There has been a nibble at it a time or two, but there it stands. We have the Saviour's word for it. Instead of damning about six out of eight as they pass, we have them all saved from every country, tongue, nation, kindred, and people, in heaven, singing songs. Well, you say that is not applicable to the proposition. I say it is not either; but it shows it to be false that there is any Scripture applicable to his proposition, because the Scripture says nothing about the proposition. We say, then, that Jesus saves his people out of every kindred, tongue, nation and people, and that they shall never perish, and no one shall pluck them out of his hand. He does not depend on the will or voluntary action of men to do that great work.
Then I argued yesterday - and that argument has not been noticed - that Jesus Christ was the only mediator between God and man. I said, in that argument, that the work of the salvation of the people was committed to God's Son, and he was the only mediator between God and man, and that this missionary doctrine infers that all the ministers are operating between God and man, and that they are essential to the salvation of man. Jesus Christ is the only one. Brother Yates' answer to that was that if God did not commit the salvation of the people to his Church, to whom did he commit it? I showed you, in connection with one of his texts this morning, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself - not in the Church, but in Christ. He is the mediator, the only one. That argument has never been met.
Another argument. I have an objection to the eternal damnation of all those that fail to hear the gospel. I say, as far as that part of it is concerned, that if they must go to hell just because they do not hear the gospel, that they go there for what they are no more to be blamed than I am to be blamed because I was not born in England, and for what they are no more to be blamed for than a man is to be blamed because he is not six feet high. Now, we see that this doctrine limits the salvation of God. We have been arguing it all the week; we argue it yet; it stands yet; it is the missionary doctrine. They want everybody to subscribe to it; but they will have to take away the Bible, or else quit preaching that doctrine. Jesus came to save.
I argue also that they contradict God's word, upon which I proposed, if Brother Yates would show me a text in the Old or New Testament, I, and my brethren with me, would join them in a 
minute. They profess to be teaching the people to know the Lord; and I said that man is not to teach man to know the Lord, and I said, if he would show one text that said he was to do it, I would join them. He cannot do it. If there is such a text as that, why has it not been produced? There is no excuse, except that it is not there. You would have seen it stuck up in almost every Sabbath school room over this country. But we do not see it; instead of that we hear the language of the new covenant say, "And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know him, from the least to the greatest." And when we come to hear who that teacher is, the Bible says it is God. I referred to th 54th chapter of Isaiah, where it says, "The people shall be taught of God," and not that they may be, upon any contingency. Jesus said, "All the Father giveth me shall come to me." Show me the man that does not come, and I will show you one that was not given, for those that are given shall come. Why? Jesus says, "I came down from heaven, not to do my will, but the will of him that sent me, and this is the Father's will that hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day." That is the reason they come. Let us not say that Jesus came into the world to save everybody from love to them, and after he had done all his work, which was grand, and noble, and well-pleasing to the Lord, that he then delivered up the application of the work and the balance of it to man. Let us not say that. He is still at the head of the operation, and holds the reins. What I mean by delivering it up to man is depending upon their will and cooperation in taking the gospel to the heathen, as we have been having it presented to us during the week just past.
Another text I referred to - and based such an argument as this upon it: that as Jesus died for them, so they should be saved - is in the 53d chapter of Isaiah, where it is said that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Why did it please God to bruise him? Because it says, "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul" - that is, he shall see the fruits of the travail of his soul - "he shall see his seed, and shall be satisfied." What is necessary to satisfy Jesus? Nothing short of the salvation of the objects of his redemption. Hence he shall see that; God said so. Shall we, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, after our fathers have stood by, and lived and died by this doctrine taught in God's word, shall we contradict it now, and say it is not so? Shall we say we have made a new discovery at so recent a date, and that God has left out for so many centuries one thing that is so essential to salvation? No; I have opposed that during this discussion, and do now. He has not left out any thing that is essential. He did not inaugurate Foreign Mission Boards in order to carry on his work; he told the apostles to go and preach, not to offer salvation. It contains no conditional offers of salvation at all; it publishes it. He did not tell them it was essential to eternal salvation, and as I have shown you on Brother Yates' own text, where he undertook to prove we were saved by the gospel, that the people who were saved by the gospel were first saved, before they were saved by the gospel, this way: "For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God." Now, notice, it is foolishness to all that are not saved. I made the argument then, after that, that it is the salvation of something else instead of eternal salvation. They are saved from that first, before the gospel is the power of God. Then, in addition to that, I argued that Jesus will see his 
seed, will see of the travail of his soul, will be satisfied. Why? Because God promised that he should; he would be satisfied, and the pleasure of the Lord "will prosper in his hands" - not in the hands of the ministers, but in the hands of Jesus. He has given his work to Jesus, and he is the one to do the work. Jesus is exalted at the right hand of God to give repentance to Israel, and it comes through him, and there is not a text that I know of that says it always absolutely must come through the preaching of the gospel. It has not been produced. Six days we have called for it and looked for it. We read the Bible ourselves; we are ready to sit down at the feet of any man, and learn more and more. We do not profess to possess a great deal of wisdom, but we do profess a willingness to learn. This being true, we take the position that modern missionism is wrong in its doctrine, because it limits salvation to where the Bible and preacher go.
I argued that salvation is by Christ, and while it is by Christ I find I am not alone in arguing that way. I find that our brethren of the Church to which my worthy opponent belongs agree that the "Holy Spirit, operating through the written word, and through such other means as God in his wisdom may choose, or directly without means, so moves upon the hearts of men as to enlighten, reprove, and convince them of sin, and of their lost estate and need of salvation, and by so doing inclines them to come to Christ." This is the doctrine, not of the Regular Baptist Church, but of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church - that without means - that means without the gospel, without the Bible, without the preacher. Then, if they preach that, why do they get up, with so much importance attached to it, this Foreign Mission work, and say all those people in all those blank places on the map where the missionaries have not been are dying and going to hell? One or the other is wrong. One or the other is a mistake. 
Now, let me appeal to you in the conclusion of this discussion. I want to say that if we are wrong, we want to be righted, and not only that, but we have shown you the disadvantages under 
which the early Christians had to work; and we have not only shown that, but have shown in addition, from a missionary man himself - to wit, Mr. Carpenter - that he himself accuses the apostles of not obeying the commission when it was given. He says "They might have tarried at Jerusalem until they had died ingloriously, had not God sent the besom of persecution which swept them out among those nations which were perishing for lack of the knowledge which the apostles alone could give." He here means ability - "could give." Could not God give it without them? That is what Mr. Carpenter said; that has been introduced here time and again during this discussion. And instead of the apostles leaving Jerusalem in about ten days, which Mr. Carpenter says they should have done, they remained at Jerusalem about a thousand days - about three years - and then might have died ingloriously had not God sent the besom of persecution among them, which drove them out to do the work they would not do otherwise. I say that is a slur on the apostles, it is a slander upon God's servants, a censure on the apostles, who received the commission immediately from the Almighty, and who were told to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high.
I introduced a text of Scripture to show that they did not remain there so long. Where do we get the authority? In the Acts of the Apostles. On the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was showered down upon them, the apostle preached the most noble sermon that has ever been preached at all in the world, with one exception - that is, the Sermon on the Mount; and not only that, but the record says, "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers." Yet, missionaries of the 19th century say they remained in Jerusalem three years after being commissioned; and not only that, but after they had been sent abroad, and had preached the gospel, and through this persecution the gospel was spread, after awhile, after the apostles died, that the Church slept for forty or fifty generations; that the spirit or germ of it was well-nigh lost; that the Church lay with arms folded in lazy lock for about 1,500 years, and that they died and went to judgment to meet the heathen and their Judge, and that they were not doing their duty. This missionary says they must have understood the commission. They did not do it. What did they do? We call upon all people here, what does that say for John Wycliffe, who went from England to Germany, and went further and did more to oppose the real errors of popery than Luther himself ever did, although he lived about a century and a half before Luther? Forty years after he was buried his bones were dug up and burned in contempt of the doctrine he preached while he lived, and his ashes spread upon a running brook. Then, he must have been one of those that died and went to judgment to meet the heathen, for he lived at that time. What does that doctrine say of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who yielded their lives for the gospel? And yet a missionary, favored with all the advantages we have in the world, says that they slept, and were not shut up to only hints. He said a hint of the Master's will ought to have been 
sufficient. But they were not shut up to hints; they had the gospel, and yet they did not obey it. Is that necessary for the propagation of the doctrine of modern missionism? If it is, it is wrong. Brother Yates tried to get around that in this way. He labored over that, and then came in and said he admired Carpenter. Next morning he came in and said that some of his brethren may have been wrong. When he spoke of the commission to the apostles, he said himself that the apostles were slow to learn. That is Brother Yates, not Brother Carpenter. I charged him with it yesterday, and he has not said any thing about it, and it will appear in the book that he charged the apostles with being slow to learn. How does that look for a man in the nineteenth century, who knows the apostles were all put to death - none of them, with one exception, but what was put to death? - all but one, John, and he was banished to the Isle of Patmos; and their successors - Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and others - for nearly three hundred years, suffered violent persecutions from pagan Rome - burned at the stake - then for about twelve hundred years from papal Rome. The emperors, and authorities, and governors, were all against, and none of them in favor of them. They were 
hunted like the beasts of the forest; mothers were drowned, and their daughters sewed up in sacks and thrown to wild beasts to be devoured; Latimer, Ridley, Philpot, and others, were burned at the stake in Smithfield, England; Hooper and others were roasted by a slow fire. Not only that, but English ladies had one eye gouged out with a spear, and then seared with a red-hot iron; and molten lead was run down the back of a person, all molten hot; and they were persecuted in every way imaginable.
I want to say now that I desire to return my thanks to this respectable audience for the respect and kindness with which you have treated me during this long discussion. I want to return my thanks to the brethren moderators, for the dignified manner in which they have presided over this debate. I want to return my thanks to Brother Yates for the kindness and good feeling manifested toward me in this debate, and I want to thank the Lord that we have had the privilege of discussing the question, and that everything has been gone over so pleasantly during this contest.