Our Mission Sorrows

It has pleased God to allow us, as a people seeking to spread the gospel of His grace in foreign lands, to pass through a series of sorrows which should lead us all to enquire Why?-a why addressed humbly to God. Some time ago He took to Himself our brother R. T. Grant, who was a pioneer in sending the gospel in print to the Spanish-speaking peoples of South America, Central America, Mexico, the Philippine Islands, and other countries. Counting upon God alone to sustain him in his work, he built up at Los Angeles, California, a publishing plant from which a large quantity of gospel papers went year by year in every direction, carrying the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ to the multitudes under Romish idolatry and superstition. Here we have abundant reason to praise God for His providing our brother W. H. Crab tree to continue the work.

Some time before our sister Mrs. Margaret Dillon, a faithful and devoted witness of our Lord Jesus Christ in Honduras, passed away. During all her widowhood her house had been a shelter for the desolate and afflicted, and all who loved the Lord.

Early this year came the death in Nicaragua of our brother J. A. Messmer, a quiet, devoted man, whose keen sensitiveness concerning evil made him a constant sufferer amid the scenes of depravity and human degradation he witnessed there continually.

Now it is our brother E. N. Groh who is taken away. He had patiently gone on in Central America for seventeen years, suffering much in health from the climate, until recently he came home ill to his father at Omaha, Neb., where he succumbed to his illness. His godly life is said to have had much weight among the people where he moved.

Then the Honduras mission seems to be greatly crippled, if not altogether ended, by the forced return to the States, through ill-health, of our brethren C. Knapp and C. Armerding. Only Miss Arthur remains there, and brothers Hoze, in the Canal Zone, and Aviles in Costa Rica.

Finally, the mission in the French West Indies is halted, for the present at least. Our brethren Germain and Ruga, who have faithfully, and with manifest blessing, labored there for a few years, being forbidden to continue by order of the highest authorities, being suspected of espionage for Germany-doubtless the hand of Rome to get rid of the light.

Thus, from whatever causes, our first efforts to pass to our neighbors the blessing we ourselves enjoy in Christ, have been halted. God knows why, and if we sincerely desire also to know, we but need to enquire of Him, and in due time shall know why. Meanwhile, let us encourage the hearts and strengthen the hands of such as desire and seem fitted for fields so forbidding and dangerous.

The missionary field in this land too is immense. There are yet hundreds, yea, thousands, of towns and villages which have never yet heard any other gospel than that of Moses, "Do this, and thou shalt live." They know nothing of the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ which says, Believe and live; then do. They are therefore an easy prey to the errors of "Higher Criticism, "of "Christian Science," of "Russellism," of "Seventh-Day Adventism," and other nets of Satan, to turn men away from the Saviour of sinners. Not one of the many religions which men have invented teaches that man is a lost sinner. Only God's religion teaches that, and reveals that God Himself has provided a perfect Saviour for man in that condition. How deeply earnest ought we to be, who know that Saviour, to make Him known to our fellows all about us. " The night cometh when no man can work."