There are ten millions of souls in Mexico alone, without speaking of regions vast and populous of Central and South America, who are without the gospel, save in a very limited degree.
Mexico has had no reformation. Romanism has reigned supreme over heart and conscience, body and soul, and left with scarce a ray of light these millions, save as Protestants have done some of love's labor among them. God has, in His wisdom, and with purposes of grace, smitten the power of the pope of Rome, and through liberalism, (often another name for infidelity,) opened the door for the proclamation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Statistics, lately published, give as the number of workers, of all shades of opinion, foreign and native missionaries, schoolmasters, etc., 442; and of communicants, 12,135. Some devoted men, according to the light they have, are found in the ranks of these workers, whom Christ will reward in that day, and of whom we dare not say they do not serve Him, though they follow not us, nor are in, as far as ecclesiastical position goes, the truth. All honor to those who with less light have risked their lives to make Christ known! Of these, 62 have won the martyr's crown, while others still languish in prison upon false charges, in places where Rome has most power left her. On the other hand, some unworthy men and means have been used, which has of course hindered the work. These millions know, for the most part, absolutely nothing but certain Christian names which are connected, in their minds, with superstition and falsehood, and which convey to them no fragment even of the truth of the gospel. Purgatory is their expectation after death, out of which the prayers and masses of the priests alone can deliver, and this only obtainable through the last cent extortion can wring from them, though it be the bread of their children, which yet Rome calls them to give up in exchange for her lies.
(At a place in New Mexico, the native missionary read Jno. 14:, and his hearers ridiculed it, and said, " We did not know He had a Father;" and went to him afterward and asked what he meant by saying His Father had a mansion?)
When the prophet was convicted deeply of his sin in the presence of the glory of Christ, and the live coal from the altar had touched his lips and cleansed them, he heard a voice saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" The ready answer came, "Here am I:send me." Paul gives us as the spring of his service this:"The love of Christ constraineth us," etc. How many who have learned that to give their hearts to God is not the gospel, who yet have not practically learned what Paul writes of the Macedonians, viz., " They first gave their own selves to the Lord." Neither Isaiah nor Paul kept back from the Lord what was His by the double right of creation, and what was infinitely more costly-redemption.
Much of the sorrow and division so ripe among saints to-day has its root in the spirit of the world, which has had so large a place in the church.
The mass of the population round us has had and refuses the truth. Where this obtains, God commonly sends a famine of the Word. The ten millions in Mexico have had no such trial, and are in danger of learning the corruption and infidelity of apostate Christendom before they hear the truths of redemption and the love of God. Who will help tell them of Him who came to seek and save what was lost? and who has left behind those wonderful words for us to reflect on, " There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.""And how shall they hear without a preacher" that gospel which brings "repentance unto life"?What I have written is with no desire to distract from their work the Lord's servants laboring in other fields. Still less to urge any to go unsent where disaster and defeat at the hands of the enemy will meet them as quickly as any where, and perhaps in a worse way. But are there none who are holding back from what the Lord has laid upon them, and who would do well to search their hearts as to this, and seek His mind? The day, one hopes, is not far distant, if the Lord tarries, when the difficulties which still hamper the work will be further relaxed. What is intended by the reform laws as a check upon popery hinders also the progress of the truth, undesignedly. But the popish effort to regain control will probably lead to a further blow at her power, and the removal of the restrictions upon the efforts of others. May we not also pray for a fresh working of the Holy Spirit of God, to cause the seed sown to spring up,-"to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." Robert T. Grant.
El Paso, Texas, May 17th, 1888.