The Church Is A Missionary Society, And The Spirit Of Missions Is The Spirit Of The Gospel: The Missional Piety Of The Southern Presbyterian Tradition

By Caleb Cangelosi

When it comes to finding models for Christian theology and practice, nineteenth-century Presbyterians in the American South are often overlooked by modern Reformed Christians. Sometimes this is out of mere ignorance; many have never heard of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, James Henley Thornwell, John Lafayette Girardeau, or Robert Lewis Dabney, much less William Swan Plumer, Thomas Smyth, John Leighton Wilson, John Bailey Adger, Daniel Baker, Charles Colcock Jones, George Howe, Stuart Robinson, Thomas Ephraim Peck, Moses Drury Hoge, or any of the other Southern Presbyterian pastors and teachers. [1]

At other times, however, they are overlooked out of prejudice against those who were prejudiced. The Southern Presbyterians, both antebellum and postbellum, were not exemplary in every way, and they were children of their age; but the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bathwater when we neglect or dismiss a group’s total body of work due to positions many held on race, slavery, and secession. John Piper has warned us against such a facile and dismissive approach to those who have gone before us in the faith: “From a distance we can make distinctions. We can say: This was an admirable trait but not that. This we will celebrate, and that we will deplore.” He wrote these words to suggest that we treat Martin Luther King, Jr. in the way we treat America’s founding fathers. Recognizing the irony, I suggest we do the same with the Southern Presbyterians and the Southern Presbyterian Church (formally known after the Civil War as the Presbyterian Church in the United States). Knowledge of King’s theological and ethical errors, argues Piper, “should not prevent us from reminding our people about the truth and vision he so eloquently proclaimed.” [2] Likewise, the blind spots of the pastors and theologians of the nineteenth-century South ought not to hinder us from mining the rich depths of pure gold we find in their lives and writings. Specifically, as this article seeks to illustrate, the Southern Presbyterians proclaimed with eloquence a missionary vision for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we ignore or remain ignorant of it to our great loss.

The Southern Presbyterians’ devotion to missions has not been forgotten by those familiar with that storied tradition. Recently, C. N. Willborn wrote an excellent introduction to Southern Presbyterianism in general and its emphasis on missions in particular. [3] William Childs Robinson, in his thorough study entitled Columbia Theological Seminary and the Southern Presbyterian Church, devotes a large section to “The Missionary Enterprise of the Southern Presbyterian Church.” [4] Ernest Trice Thompson not only highlights the missionary focus of Southern Presbyterians throughout his three-volume Presbyterians in the South, [5] but he also published a separate work on Presbyterian missionary labors in the American South. [6]

This article will not attempt to cover the same ground these men have so adequately surveyed. Rather, we will seek to let the Southern Presbyterians speak for themselves, aiming thereby to demonstrate the missional piety that pervaded the entire tradition, and to spur us in the twenty-first century on to a similar passion for the souls of the lost and the glory of the gospel of God in Jesus Christ. Four representative Southern Presbyterians will guide us: Benjamin Morgan Palmer and Moses Drury Hoge, on the biblical and theological foundations of the missionary enterprise; William Swan Plumer, on the call to labor as a missionary; and James Henley Thornwell, on the gospel motivations for missionary effort.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer And Moses Drury Hoge—Biblical And Theological Foundations Of The Missionary Enterprise

The Southern Presbyterians were thoroughly committed to the Scriptures as the inerrant, infallible Word of God, and to the Westminster Standards as the sound exposition of the Scriptures. [7] Thus as they reflected on the grounds upon which the work of missions—foreign missions in particular—took place, it is no surprise to find them appealing to the Scriptures and the theology of the Standards.

Benjamin Morgan Palmer

In March of 1869, some eight years after the formation of a distinct Southern Presbyterian Church, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1856-1902, wrote a four-week series of articles on foreign missions in the Southwestern Presbyterian. In the first three articles, he responded to three objections to the work of foreign missions: 1) that efforts to evangelize the entire earth are highly unlikely to succeed; 2) that the church has too much to do at home to spend time bringing the gospel to the uttermost ends of the earth; and 3) that it is possible that unbelievers might be saved apart from the gospel. [8] In the final article, he sets forth several grounds upon which the duty of bringing the gospel to the nations is to be enforced.

The first is simple: upon the plain command of Christ Himself. The Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 is “the charter upon which the Church claims all her privileges—the broad commission upon which she fulfils her important functions. The sole warrant upon which she preaches the gospel to one single human being is the command to preach it to every human being upon the face of the earth.” [9] Palmer connects Christ’s command just preceding His ascension to the miraculous gift of tongues on the Day of Pentecost. This manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s outpouring “indicated that this gospel should be proclaimed in all the languages into which the unity of human speech had been broken….To us it is most impressive, that in the first exercise of His royal power, by which our Lord furnished evidence of his exaltation as a Prince and a Savior, He should also symbolize the Church’s work, and pledge her triumphant success.” [10]

The second ground that Palmer gives is related to the first: the idea of the gospel as a trust. “Every Christian must exclaim with Paul, ‘the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust [I Tim. 1:11]!’” [11] What we have freely received, we must freely give. This was even the case in the old covenant; how much more in the new covenant? Palmer notes Paul’s words in Romans 3:2 that the Jews “were entrusted with the oracles of God,” and remarks:

Stationary as that Church was, anchored by her very ritual to one land, yet her mission was to keep the light of Divine knowledge burning brightly upon her altars, that its rays might pierce the surrounding darkness, and woo the nations within her pale. And it is an instructive fact that, when faithless to her sacred trust at home, she is cast forth, a weeping exile, to bear witness for Jehovah “by the rivers of Babylon.” For whilst that dismal captivity was visited upon them as a punishment for sin, it was none the less a Providential arrangement by which the heathen world was prepared for the advent of Christ. If stationary Judaism was thus transformed, against its will, into a missionary agency, how much more must the Christian Church go forth upon her grand itinerancy—the trustee for the nations of this great salvation?

Palmer’s third and fourth grounds upon which the missionary enterprise proceeds are more theological in nature. The third is the fundamental truth that the heathen are sharers with us in the common ruin of the Fall. We share a common nature, a common guilt, a common corruption, and a common misery. “We are united by common toil and grief in a fraternity of sorrow…. [The nations] lie, equally crushed, beneath the ruins of the first covenant; and to be insensible to their wretchedness, is to violate the law of humanity with most atrocious cruelty.” [12] In the sense of Paul’s thought in Acts 17:26, observes Palmer, there is a universal brotherhood of every human, against which we sin when we refuse to bring the only remedy to those in dire need.

Palmer notes as the fourth ground that this duty is doctrinally involved in our living union with Christ, our Head. As Jesus is anointed as Prophet, Priest, and King, so likewise we who have been united to Him in vital union are to function in our relation to the lost among the nations. We, too, are “the Lord’s prophets, to bear the words of His revelation around the globe [13] …. We are in Him ‘a royal priesthood,’ to bear His own great atoning sacrifice, and lay it before the heathen, in the room of their bulls and goats, which can never take away sin…. He hath appointed us as kings with Himself; that, sharing in the toil of conquest, we may share in His final victory, and sit down with Him upon His throne.” [14] In a similar way, Palmer insightfully locates the Son’s response to the Father’s invitation in Psalm 2 (to ask for the nations as His inheritance) not only in the Son’s “simple presence in heaven, where He points to the stipulations of the covenant, and authoritatively claims His own,” but also in the Son’s “sealing His own petition upon the lips of His own believing people, and by teaching them to pray to this Father, ‘Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven!’ Sweet and tender thought! That in all our toils, and alms, and prayers, it is the Christ in us who longs to ‘See of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied!’” [15] As Paul discovered on the road to Damascus, the relation between Christ and His people is inexplicably intimate—and for Palmer and the Southern Presbyterians, this union has profound missional implications.

Moses Drury Hoge

The theological foundations of the missionary enterprise are made even clearer by Moses Drury Hoge, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, from 1845-1899, in an address he gave in May of 1897 on the relation of the Westminster Standards to foreign missions. [16] Though he acknowledges that the relation “is not at once apparent,” and that it is “difficult to trace, historically, with satisfactory clearness, any such immediate influence as would place Presbyterians in advance of other Protestant denominations either as to priority in time or successful activity in missionary work,” [17] yet he affirms that the Standards “ought to have kindled the missionary spirit as it did the spirit of civil and religious liberty.” [18] Indeed, Hoge avers, “the duty of the church in reference to the conversion of the world is everywhere implied in these Standards, and may be logically inferred from their teachings, inasmuch as the whole theory and trend of the Calvinistic system makes the evangelization of the nations the chief enterprise of the church.” [19]

It is especially in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith (“Of the Church”) that Hoge finds the “true theory of missions.” This theory “is one that clearly recognizes the fact that the great head of the church has not only committed to it the truths necessary to salvation, but has provided it with the government, the laws, the offices, and the equipment for building up the kingdom of God and extending its conquests through the world.” [20] Such is precisely the teaching of the third section of chapter twenty-five: “Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world; and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto.” For Southern Presbyterians, the foundation of the missionary enterprise is found in the divine constitution of the church, which “is in itself a missionary society of which every communicant is a member….” [21]

This language of the church as a missionary society is in large part polemical. As John Leighton Wilson reminds us, the early decades of the nineteenth century saw the Presbyterian Church cooperating with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions in promoting and sustaining the work of foreign missions. [22] But by the time of its formation in 1861, the Southern Presbyterian Church had come to understand that the church had no need, nor any right, to delegate (really abdicate) its calling to other bodies (what we would today call “parachurch organizations”). Hoge notes that the Reverend Dr. John Holt Rice, the first full-time professor at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and the nephew of David Rice (“The Apostle to Kentucky”), had asserted as much in an overture to the General Assembly of 1831. The overture declared in part, “That the Presbyterian Church in the United States is a missionary society, and every member of the church is a life member of the same, and bound in maintenance of his Christian character to do all in his power for the accomplishment of that object.” [23] James Henley Thornwell made the same point in the coming decades, [24] leading in time to action by the first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church, in which (in the words of Thomas Carey Johnson)

the cumbrous and Scripturally unwarranted machinery of boards, as well as voluntary societies, is done away with. The fifth wheel of the chariot is cast aside; a simple committee, directly and immediately responsible to the General Assembly as the Assembly’s executive agent, does the work which had in the Old Assembly been done at one time by voluntary societies, and later by largely irresponsible boards. The Assembly had quietly made a long stride toward a more Scriptural form. [25]

The leaders of the Southern tradition realized that this unique theological foundation had profound practical ramifications not only for the church as an organization, but also for the church as an organism. Hoge tells us that Rice’s overture to the 1831 General Assembly also enjoined church sessions to tell new members that they were joining a community whose goal was the conversion of the world, and “to impress on their minds a deep sense of their obligation, as redeemed sinners, to cooperate in the accomplishment of the great object of Christ’s own mission to mankind.” [26] Hoge believed that the missional nature of the church itself is “calculated to enlist the sympathies, to deepen the sense of responsibility, and to stimulate to the most earnest, practical activity on the part of every member of the great household of faith.” [27] Southern Presbyterians believed that every member (including children) had a responsibility to further the cause of missions. Every Christian is to possess a “missionary spirit”—that is, “to be anxiously desirous that…missionaries should be sent, and the gospel made known to all that are ‘perishing for lack of knowledge’;” [28] and every Christian is to engage in “missionary practice or habit”—that is,

the habit of carrying out this desire, first, by praying that such missionaries may be raised up ‘and sent forth by the Lord of the harvest, into every part of his vineyard’; secondly, by contributing as far as we can towards meeting the necessary expense of sending and supporting these missionaries, and supplying what is necessary to establish schools and print bibles [sic], and other needful books; and, thirdly, by uniting with zeal in such efforts as will promote this spirit, and secure this habit. [29]

Perhaps no better statement of every member’s missional calling can be given than that of the first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church itself:

The General Assembly desires distinctly and deliberately to inscribe on our church’s banner, as she now first unfurls it to the world, in immediate connection with the headship of our Lord, his last command: ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’; regarding this as the great end of her organization, and obedience to it as the indispensable condition of her Lord’s promised presence, and as one great comprehensive object, a proper conception of whose vast magnitude and grandeur is the only thing which, in connection with the love of Christ, can ever sufficiently arouse her energies and develop her resources so as to cause her to carry on, with the vigor and efficiency which true fealty to her Lord demands, those other agencies necessary to her internal growth and home prosperity. The claims of this cause ought therefore to be kept constantly before the minds of the people and pressed upon their consciences. The ministers and ruling elders and deacons and Sabbath-school teachers, and especially the parents, ought, and are enjoined by the Assembly, to give particular attention to all those for whose religious teaching they are responsible, in training them to feel a deep interest in this work, to form habits of systematic benevolence, and to feel and respond to the claims of Jesus upon them for personal service in the field. [30]

In the Presbyterian Church in the United States, missiology was founded firmly in ecclesiology, and the implications for every member were vast.

William Swan Plumer—The Call To Labor As A Missionary

Though Southern Presbyterians believed that each of their members was to possess a missionary spirit and be marked by a missionary practice, not everyone was called to be a missionary in the specific sense of being sent out by the church to labor under her official auspices. An 1835 pamphlet by William Swan Plumer, who planted several churches in Virginia and North Carolina in the late 1820s, is illustrative of the Southern Presbyterian understanding of who was called to this work and how God called them. [31] He wrote this pamphlet, which specifically dealt with the call to labor as a foreign missionary, for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions before the church had taken full ownership of its calling to be the sending and overseeing agent. Yet the content of Plumer’s lengthy discussion of the qualifications of God’s call and his brief notice of the means of God’s call gives insight into typical Southern Presbyterian reflection upon the matter, and particularly highlights the role piety played in the ascertaining of one’s calling.

Plumer, who believed that the work of foreign missions is “by far the greatest work, to the accomplishment of which the church is now called to make sacrifices, endure hardness, practise [sic] self-denial, and make full proof of her power with God and man,” [32] begins by giving several general observations on the subject of whether one is called to be a foreign missionary. First, he notes that every man—whether currently a minister or seminary student, or whether currently engaged in secular service to God—is obligated “to inquire, not only what God will have him to do; but also, when, and how, and where he will have him to do it…[and] where he may compass the most good in his short life-time.” [33] Second, he affirms that the foundation of a call to preach the gospel to the heathen is a call to the work of the ministry in general. Thus the first matter of business is to ascertain whether one is called by God to gospel ministry. [34] Third, Plumer contends that, assuming we are called to gospel ministry, we must not wait for anyone to present to us the matter of whether we are called to foreign fields, but rather we are bound by God to “a most solemn, honest, and thorough canvassing of the question, ‘Shall I go to the heathen?’” [35] The way we phrase this question is most significant, however. We must not ask, “Why should I leave home, and country, and friends, to go abroad?” but, “Why should I cling to home and country, and friends, when hundreds of millions of my race are ready to fall into an eternal hell, and have not one to point them to the Lamb of God?” To ask the former question betrays, in Plumer’s opinion, “gross ignorance of the state and claims of the heathen world, or a disregard of those claims when known, or a cowardly selfishness, which shrinks from self-denial and duty, because not pleasant to flesh and blood.” [36]

On the basis of these general comments, Plumer next proceeds to delineate twelve qualifications for those whom God would call to labor abroad. He begins with a qualification that in his opinion was over-emphasized in his day: a vigorous constitution and sound health. Though not unimportant, yet Plumer points out that if one is sick, he might as well be sick telling other people about Jesus, and in a foreign land rather than in his own country. God has given us examples both in the Bible (Timothy) and in church history (he mentions Richard Baxter, Thomas Scott, James P. Wilson, David Brainerd, and Henry Martyn) of men whose ministries were blessed in spite of physical afflictions. Plumer mentions in passing that a change of climate might well restore a man’s health, but he presses a far more profound argument to the claim that “A man must take care of his life, and must not endanger his health”:

Is this true? Does the Bible speak thus? Hear the word of the Lord. ‘I count not my life dear’—‘I am willing to spend and be spent’—‘I am willing, not only to be bound, but to die, if need be.’ ‘He that hateth not his life cannot be my disciple.’ ‘He that saves his life shall lose it.’ The Scriptures are full of sentiments very averse in the carnal reasonings of men. [37]

A missionary must have sound health, to be sure, but he must also be willing to get sick and to die for Jesus.

Related to Plumer’s caveats on the importance of health is the second qualification he lists: patience in enduring privation and want of a temporal kind. Of course, a lack of patience does not excuse a man, especially in light of Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 2:3-4. So Plumer calls on us to exercise ourselves in this point of godliness, “put[ting] ourselves on a course of rigorous self-denial, court[ing] hardship as we can possibly bear it,” that we might “be ready for any good work in any place.” [38]

A third qualification is cheerfulness of mind, an habitual buoyancy of spirits, and an elevated frame of feeling. Plumer desires to “qualify” this qualification as well, so to speak. He acknowledges that some people who have a “great natural timidity, and tendency to despondency…are unfit for usefulness any where, until they shall learn to live nearer to God.” [39] Yet what is required in a foreign missionary is not a “bubbly,” “charismatic” personality type, but a divinely given buoyancy along the lines of Isaiah 40:29-31. Again, the Bible and church history defy those who would select missionaries on the basis of personality: Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, and David Brainerd are examples of those whom God used in spite of their morose propensities. Nor did Paul wait to go to the Gentiles until the “great heaviness and continual sorrow in [his] heart” (Rom. 9:1-2) became merriness of heart. Natural cheerfulness is not indispensable to missionary service, and Plumer turns the superficial argument on its head: “It is hardly to be questioned, that the happiness of many in Christian lands would be augmented, were they willing to go to the heathen. As they now are, worldliness, selfishness, tedium and ennui, are rotting their bones.” [40]

Sound knowledge of human nature is a fourth characteristic necessary for a missionary, though again Plumer is careful to knock down the defenses of those who might use their lack of this quality as an excuse not to go abroad. To be sure, the more one understands human beings, the more useful he will be. But “he, who has a good sense, and a pious heart, and is willing and able to understand and receive the Bible account of man, will soon learn all the great principles of human nature, and will readily acquire some skill in dealing with it…. Study the Bible and learn mankind.” Human nature, Plumer reminds us, “is the same in all countries, ages, and grades of society. Supreme selfishness governs all unrenewed men.” [41]

The fifth qualification necessary for a missionary is a capacity for acquiring, with some degree of facility, a knowledge of languages. Once more, however, Plumer is aware that many would too quickly plead their inability in this matter as an objection to their being called. “While it is true, the greater our capacity for any valuable acquisition, the better; yet the way is as open on the score of [learning a necessary] language, as a man of good sense and deep piety need desire it to be.” [42] If businessmen are willing for the sake of earthly profit to learn a new language, ought not Christians be even more zealous to learn a language for the sake of heavenly gain, both for themselves and for the lost?

Plumer next notes that the foreign missionary would reap the full advantage of that which is desirable in any gospel minister: so much of a calculating mind, as can lay a judicious plan, and prosecute it for years, or for life; providing at the same time, against sudden reverses and unexpected difficulties. This qualification is of relative importance in Plumer’s mind, as he deems it most important for those in the highest positions of responsibility and leadership on the mission field. Thus the seventh characteristic is even more important for the bulk of men: a willingness to obey, to be second, yea, to take the very lowest place assigned us by our brethren. “Pride, ambition, self-conceit, self-will, and all kindred sentiments must be mortified, if we would be fully prepared for this work. No man can well command, who knows not how to obey; no man can well direct, who has not himself submitted to direction.” [43] In this way, Plumer connects what we typically view as a natural virtue (being a good planner) with a supernatural virtue (humility).

The following three qualifications also show the comprehensive view of true piety of this representative Southern Presbyterian. The eighth qualification is the all-important ability or tact in adapting one’s self to occasions, so as to be kept from fatal surprisals. On first glance this flexibility may seem, like planning skills, a mere secular asset, not to be included in a list of qualifications necessary to be called as a missionary; but Plumer argues it is incalculably valuable to all ministers, and especially foreign missionaries. [44] The ninth condition is easily understood as necessary for missionaries: ardent love to the cause of missions, which is “nothing but love to souls and to Jesus Christ, shown in a particular way.” As he did under earlier qualifications, Plumer pulls the chair out from any who would seek to stand on their lack of this love as a reason not to go to the nations:

Of course, he, who loves not the cause of missions ardently, is not fit to be a minister in any place or country. And the piety of any man is nothing worth, if it do not lead him to yearn with bowels of tender compassion towards the dying heathen. Besides: if you have not ardent love to the cause of missions, it is your crime, your sin, and not your excuse. Every man is verily guilty concerning his brethren—is truly condemned by the law of love…. [45]

Plumer does not mince words regarding a halfhearted devotion to Christ, the lost, or the cause of missions. Nor does he speak any more gently to those who fail the test of the tenth qualification, great personal industry:

If men will creep, and crawl, and lounge, and rust, and rot, let them stay at home; let them not go to bring odium and death on Christian precepts in heathen countries, by an example of slothfulness…. None but the Infinite One can tell what hundreds of ministers, and thousands of their people are this day suffering in the world of woe, on account of this dreadful sin. And if industry be important at home, it is still more so, if possible, to him who goes abroad. To be ever on the alert, watching for opportunities of usefulness, making every hour in the day advance the cause, is the only way to make a life eminently useful at home or abroad, but especially abroad. Well prepared as Henry Martyn himself was for foreign labors, even he lost the best opportunity of usefulness, which he had for months in India, and simply for want of giving good heed. Let no man comfort himself and sit down quietly, thinking himself not called to engage in foreign missions, because he has not industrious habits. If he have them not, he is guilty, and will continue guilty until he acquire them. Any minister without such habits is pre-eminently guilty, be his station and talents what they may.

The more one reads the Southern Presbyterians, the more one realizes that diligence and assiduousness marked them all, and due to words like Plumer’s, not least their foreign missionaries.

Having mentioned the eleventh qualification, an unconquerable willingness to go, Plumer asserts as he has essentially done so in many of the previous ten, “Unwillingness…is rather a hindrance to the church in sending us, than an evidence that we are not called.” As Plumer points out, Jonah was called to go on a foreign mission, yet he was unwilling at first, and made willing through God’s fatherly discipline. If we are not willing to go, it is no sign that we are not called, for God may as easily make us willing to go—and He will do it, if He is calling us. Thus let us pursue willingness: “A man may feel an aversion to any plain duty, yet that aversion does not excuse, but rather condemn him. If the path of duty be otherwise plain, let it be our constant aim to be willing to be, to do, or to suffer any thing for Christ’s sake, and that joyfully. The more willing the better.” [46]

The final qualification Plumer brings up is strong faith in God. In particular, missionaries must have “a firm belief in all the promises respecting the final conversion of the world.” [47] Faith sustains the missionary in his sufferings and leads him through the storms of service. Faith in “Scripture prophecy and promise…settle[s] it unwaveringly in his mind, that Jesus Christ shall have the heathen for his heritage, and every part of the earth for a possession…[and] that the day of the Lord draweth nigh, and that the year of his redeemed is not far distant.” [48] Without faith in these gospel realities, missionaries will not be able to stand.

Looking at these twelve marks as a whole, it is clear to see that Plumer had a holistic view of piety. He freely intersperses what some might consider “unspiritual” or “secular” marks (sound health, knowledge of human nature, a capacity for learning languages, a calculating mind, flexibility, diligence, a willingness to go) with more overtly “spiritual” qualities (patience, joy, humility, love for Christ and the lost, faith in God and His Word). Of course, to Plumer, this distinction is artificial. The majority of these qualifications are marks of godliness to some degree, and as we pointed out so often above, a lack of them does not necessarily mean that one is not called by God. Plumer recognizes that many have moved to the mission field who were never called, but his greater fear is that many are called and yet remain at home. [49] “When piety is low,” he maintains, “those fields of labor that are pleasant to the pride, or slothfulness, or voluptuousness, or any other sinful quality of man, will be sought after; while those, demanding much self-denial, will be compelled to call long and loud before they will obtain a candid practical hearing.” [50] Low piety, as demonstrated in the possession of the disqualifications related to each qualification, is not an excuse, but sin to be repented of:

[They] may often justly hinder the church from sending the person in whom they are found to the heathen, while they furnish him with no excuse for not going. By self-discipline, watchfulness, and grace, he ought to rid himself of them. No man is excusable for not possessing, in a good degree, every requisite moral qualification for the missionary work…. If we have not these qualities, or any of them in a sufficient degree, yet if we can and shall by any means acquire them, then our way is clear. [51]

Thus Plumer presses upon all his readers the very distinct possibility that God is calling them to labor personally as a foreign missionary.

How does God evince this call? Plumer mentions briefly two ways in which God’s call comes home to an individual: God’s providence indirectly leads one to the mission field, and God’s Spirit directly works on the heart of the one being called. The dispensations of God’s providence “generally relate to the fact and manner of bringing the subject of missions before the mind; riddance from the duties and embarrassments created by the indispensable obligations of justice, faith, mercy, or filial piety, and provision for our maintenance, while in the field of foreign labor.” [52] In these external ways God makes His will known. Internally, the Spirit’s work, though “of more difficult explication,” consists not only of equipping one with the requisite qualifications, but also of engaging in “a frequent, and often involuntary drawing of the mind to the great subject of missions, the awakening of a lively interest in their success, the granting of the spirit of special prayer for their increase and prosperity, and the holding up to the eye of the mind some of the moral grandeur and captivating beauty of the work, so as to make it appear any thing else than ‘a dull and melancholy exile.’” [53]

The Southern Presbyterians, as exemplified by William Swan Plumer, inextricably linked piety to the call to engage in missionary activity. The bar was high, and yet pretexts and justifications for not serving God abroad were given short shrift. It is not too much to say that for Plumer, piety is for the sake of missions; that is, the graces described in his pamphlet are used by God to bring about the salvation of His elect from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Ultimately, these qualifications will be supplied by the Spirit in those whom God had ordained to call to the work of a missionary. The same Spirit will bring home to His appointed instruments the reality of untold numbers of individuals proceeding headlong to an eternal hell, as well as the gospel motivations of the Mediator of the new covenant, who declares, “By these hands, and these feet, and this side that did bleed, by all my bloody sweat in the garden, by all my grace in your personal salvation, by all my love and authority as head of the church, I command—I beseech you, that ye speedily ‘go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to EVERY CREATURE.’” [54] We turn, finally, to a deeper understanding of those cross-centered motivations, as explained by James Henley Thornwell.

James Henley Thornwell—Motivations For Missionary Effort

On May 18, 1856, the Board of Foreign Missions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Old School), appointed James Henley Thornwell to preach on the Lord’s Day in the First Presbyterian Church of New York City. Thornwell preached a sermon on John 10:17-18 entitled, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort.” Dr. Addison Alexander, the third son of Archibald Alexander (who was the first professor at Princeton Theological Seminary), remarked that “it was as fine a specimen of Demosthenian eloquence as he had ever heard from the pulpit, and that it realized his idea of what preaching should be.” [55] For our purposes, however, what is most striking and enduring about Thornwell’s sermon is the way he grounds and motivates missionary effort in the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly His priestly sacrifice on the cross.

Thornwell absolutely agreed with the statement that by his time had become proverbial: “The spirit of missions is the spirit of the gospel.” In his mind, it was “of the last importance that the Church should be aroused to a full conviction of its truth. Zeal for the propagation of the Gospel, upon proper principles and for proper ends, is the highest exhibit of Christian integrity.” [56] Starting from the truth of our union with Christ, Thornwell compares our adoption into the family of God to our being made kings and priests unto God: in the same way that we are sons in Christ, so we are also priests in Christ, “in the sense that we must be animated by the same principles which pervaded His offering, and that we must really express them in outward works in the full intensity of which they are susceptible in our hearts.” [57] To be sure, our sacrifices are not expiatory, meritorious, or properly redemptive, as were Christ’s, but in other respects Thornwell sees a “striking correspondence betwixt the priesthood of the Church and the priesthood of Jesus.” [58]

His sermon is an exposition of the priestly sacrifice of Christ in all of its glory, and in his application he unpacks in four particulars the ways that our priesthood is to mimic Jesus’ priesthood. First, that supreme reverence for the glory of God which prompted Jesus to regard not His life dear unto Him, provided His Father’s honor were maintained, must be the dominant principle of action in every Christian heart. For Thornwell, Jesus’ death was first and foremost an act of piety and profound worship. He lay down His life out of “an intense sense and admiration of the holiness and justice of God, and a corresponding sense and detestation of the sinfulness of sin.” [59] He knew that without the shedding of blood there could be no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22), because God’s glory demanded the punishment of the guilty. As Thornwell puts it, “Jesus could not brook the thought that man should be saved at the peril of the Divine glory, and whatever His Father’s honor demanded He was prepared to render at any cost of self-denial to Himself.” [60] In the same way, he contends, a passion for God’s glory among the nations must be the primary motivation of missions and sacrifice in missionary labor. [61] “To be a Christian is to love God, and to love God is to reverence His name,” and our jealousy for God’s name is not only the “steady, settled, pervading principle of the Christian life,” but of missions as well. [62] We want to see sinners converted first and foremost because we are passionately concerned for God’s honor and name, which their rebellion defaces and slanders. “The spontaneous dictate of love is to maintain the rights and vindicate the worth of the object to which it is directed,” and so the standard of our zeal must be the love of Christ for His Father displayed in the cross. [63] Thornwell avers, “All that is demanded of us is to speak. We are not to energize commensurately with that holiness [i.e., we are not to expiate guilt by our sufferings]; we are only to proclaim it, and to proclaim Him in whom it has been conspicuously displayed. Let us look at His work and then at ours, and can we, for very shame, settle down in indifference?” [64]

Second, the form which our zeal for the divine glory is to take—that is, the works to which we should be impelled by it—is determined by the influence of the other motive which entered into the sacrifice of Christ, namely, pity and compassion for mankind. For Thornwell, the strangeness of grace was not that Jesus loved God with all His might, but that He made our fallen race the object of His condescending love. “The Son might have maintained His Father’s honor by consigning our race to perdition. But pity moved His heart….” [65] Jesus’ zeal was not only for God’s glory, but our good—to the point that “no ingratitude or cruelty could quench its fires.” [66] In the same way, our motivation in missions must be compassion for the guilty and miserable. Thornwell appeals to his hearers,

Is there nothing in this spectacle of a world in ruins to stir the compassion of the Christian heart? Can we look upon our fellows, members of the same family, pregnant with the same instincts and destined to the same immortality, and feel no concern for the awful prospect before them? They are perishing, and we have the bread of life; they are famished with thirst, and we have the water of which if a man drink he shall never thirst; they are dead, and we have the spirit of life. We have but to announce our Savior’s name, to spread the story of the Cross, and we open the door of hope to the multitudes that are perishing for lack of knowledge. The secret of their misery is sin, and nothing can do them effectual good but that blood, offered through the eternal Spirit, which purges the conscience and destroys the dominion of this monster. We have but to erect the Cross, and the millions who are dying from the stings of the fiery serpent may look and live. Was there ever such an appeal to the charities of man—a dying world stretching out its arms and imploring by the mute eloquence of its miseries our sympathy and aid? [67]

Third, the love to God and the compassion to man which reigned in the Savior’s breast were not permitted to evaporate in sentiment or to expire in transient desires, but expressed themselves in sacrifice. As priests in Christ, we are to present ourselves as living sacrifices, denying ourselves for the sake of the lost. Sacrifice is the whole of the Christian life, and the “the law of sacrifice is consequently the law of Christian effort.” [68] Of course, as we have seen, we can make no expiation for guilt. Yet, in Thornwell’s words, “As Jesus by His sacrifice purchased redemption, we by ours must make it known; and as there were difficulties which He had to remove before He could bring salvation to our race, so there are difficulties which we have to encounter in spreading it abroad.” [69] Unbelievers can only be saved through the word of the gospel, and that word cannot get out to every tribe, tongue, people, and nation unless there are sacrifices; indeed, we are to fill up “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24). “It would be contrary to the whole analogy of our religion, contrary to the very genius and constitution of Christianity, to suppose that those whose life has sprung from death, whose holiness is repentance, whose great business is to die, should be excused to laziness and ease. They are called to sacrifice…. [Our sufferings] are the crosses which precede the crown, the tribulations through which we pass into glory.” [70] All that God has given us, we must be ready to part with for the sake of the gospel—whether our children, our riches, our comfort, our health. Living in America has made us averse to sacrifice; the same was true in Thornwell’s day. But the work of missions cannot proceed without it. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Thus we need to hear Thornwell’s conclusion to this section, “Let us gird ourselves for the sacrifices…let us follow in His tracks—we shall know them by the blood.” [71]

Finally, as there was a joy set before Jesus, for which He endured the cross, despising the shame, so there is a glorious recompense of reward attached to our sacrifices and labors of love. Jesus’ reward was won “upon the strictest principles of right,” whereas the reward in our case is “exclusively of grace.” [72] Our reward is twofold, according to Thornwell: success here, and glory hereafter. “The first is not sufficiently understood, nor the latter sufficiently contemplated.” [73] With regard to our success in missionary effort in this life, Thornwell declares,

I have no hesitation in laying down the proposition that no real sacrifice of the Christian heart is ever lost, even in this world. If it is an exercise of some personal grace, the exercise strengthens the habit and improves the principle of grace in general. If it is an effort for the external kingdom of Christ, it enters as a link in the chain of providence, and contributes its part to the final consummation…. The corn of wheat must lie under the ground and seem to perish before it can vegetate and bring forth fruit. In this enterprise, therefore, we are not to be disheartened by unpromising appearances. The day of triumph will come, and our defeats and disasters will be the means of advancing it. [74]

For the joy set before us, we must endure our crosses, even as Jesus endured His. God has told us that His Word will not return to Him empty, without accomplishing what He desires, and without succeeding in the matter for which He sent it (Isa. 55:10-11). Therefore we do not need to be afraid, but can go on boldly proclaiming salvation in Christ alone, knowing that the Father will draw His elect to Christ (John 6:44). And on the last day, when Jesus returns, we will hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21).

Thornwell makes clear that the gospel of Jesus Christ, particularly His priestly offering on the cross, is the chief motivation in our missionary efforts throughout the world. We are to be motivated by love to God and love to our fellow men; we are to sacrifice even as Christ sacrificed; and we are to look to the reward even as He looked to the reward. The cross shapes our missional piety and practice, for Jesus has sent us into the world even as the Father sent Him into the world, not to be served, but to serve, and to give our lives for the sake of others (John 17:18; Mark 10:45).

Conclusion 

It would be a mistake to suppose that the missional emphases we have seen from Palmer, Hoge, Plumer, and Thornwell were unique to each of them. Rather, they are the tip of the iceberg. Even in the brief glances we have given to the writings of these four men, we have seen the parallels, the cross-pollination of principles and practices. The entire nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian tradition gloried in its God-given, biblically grounded, theologically driven, Christ-centered, cross-motivated, church-sent, piety-pervaded work of bringing the gospel of Jesus to the nations dead in sin and wallowing in misery. The Presbyterian Church in the United States saw itself as a missionary society whose missionary spirit was the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This distinctive missional piety, funneled through the church and permeated by the gospel, not only set apart the Southern Presbyterians from their contemporaries, but also distinguishes them from the modern church. We have much to learn from our fathers in the faith. May the Lord enable us to attain to the goal toward which this tradition directs us, eschewing their failures and imitating their zeal, so that the nations might be glad in Jesus and might continue to spread through all the earth the glory of His name.

Notes

1. See Henry Alexander White, Southern Presbyterian Leaders: 1683-1911 (1911; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), for a biographical introduction to these men.
2. John Piper, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2002), 200.
3. C. N. Willborn, “Southern Presbyterianism: The Character of a Tradition,” in Confessing Our Hope: Essays Celebrating the Life and Ministry of Morton H. Smith, ed. Joseph A. Pipa, Jr. and C. N. Willborn (Taylors, S.C.: Southern Presbyterian Press, 2004), 293-328. For more on the Southern Presbyterian tradition, see Morton H. Smith, “The Southern Tradition,” in Reformed Theology in America: A History of Its Modern Development, ed. David F. Wells (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1997), 187-207; and Morton H. Smith, Studies in Southern Presbyterian Theology (1962; repr., Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987).
4. William Childs Robinson, “Columbia Theological Seminary and the Missionary Enterprise of the Southern Presbyterian Church,” in Columbia Theological Seminary and the Southern Presbyterian Church (np: Wm. C. Robinson, 1931), 106-46. John Leighton Wilson, the Secretary of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, wrote a similar piece entitled “History of Foreign Missions, as Related to the Southern Presbyterian Church and Columbia Seminary,” in Memorial Volume of the Semi-Centennial of the Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina (Columbia, S.C.: Presbyterian Publishing House, 1884), 157-77.
5. E. T. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 3 vols. (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1963-1973). Thomas Carey Johnson’s history of the Southern Presbyterian Church also speaks in detail of its missionary impulse. Johnson, “History of the Southern Presbyterian Church,” in Volume 11 of The American Church History Series (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1914): 313-479. Johnson’s work can be found at http://www.pcahistory.org/ebooks/index.html (accessed October 18, 2012).
6. E. T. Thompson, Presbyterian Missions in the Southern United States (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1934).
7. See Smith, Studies in Southern Presbyterian Theology, as well as these words of Robert Lewis Dabney: “The Southern Presbyterian Church wholly disclaims everything except the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as either an infallible or authoritative rule of faith and practice. It claims, therefore, for its Standards no rightful influence whatever over the consciences of either clergy or laity except so far as their propositions are sustained by holy writ. We hold, as did the Synod of Dort, that in constructing our Standards we are bound to build exclusively upon the sacred Scriptures, teaching nothing except what is expressly set down therein or what follows therefrom by good and necessary consequence, and asserting nothing upon the authority of any human philosophy, ethics, or of any uninspired theologians.” Dabney believed that the Westminster Standards did indeed build solely upon the Word of God, and, as the Word of God abides forever, so “the structure which is built exclusively upon this is, like it, permanent. In this we find the chief glory and value of our Standards. It is for this reason they remain as well adapted to the eighteenth and nineteenth as to the seventeenth century, to America as to Britain, to a popular as well as to a regal commonwealth. It is for this reason that the Confession will need no amendment until the Bible needs to be amended.” Dabney, “The Doctrinal Contents of the Confession: Its Fundamental and Regulative Ideas, and the Necessity and Value of Creeds,” in Memorial Volume of the Westminster Assembly: 1647-1897 (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee on Publication, 1897), 103; 94-95.
8. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 1,” Southwestern Presbyterian, March 4, 1869; “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 2,” Southwestern Presbyterian, March 11, 1869; “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 3,” Southwestern Presbyterian, March 18, 1869.
9. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4,” Southwestern Presbyterian, March 25, 1869, emphasis his.
10. Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4.”
11. Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4,” emphasis his.
12. Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4.”
13. Cf. the remarks of Francis Beattie on Christ as our prophet: “Those to whom this revelation of God’s will is first made are stated. The position of the Standards is here plain and unmistakable. It is to the church that he reveals God’s will. This, of course, follows from his place and service in the covenant of grace. As Mediator of that covenant he acts for his elect seed, given to him by the Father. This seed is the whole body of the elect, and this constitutes the church in the sense of the invisible church. But, as the visible church stands, with her divinely-ordained laws and appointed ordinances, as the concrete form of the invisible church at any particular age, the visible church is also to be included in the view now taken of that body to which the revelation is made by the prophet of the covenant. To this body God makes known his will in this way, and this same body having received the divine oracles, is also the appointed custodian of them. She is also to be the interpreter of the revealed will of God, and also its exponent and herald to the world. Hence, according to the Standards, God does not reveal his will directly to the world by his Son, Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, in a general or indiscriminate way, but he reveals that will primarily to the church; and, then, it is the duty and privilege of the church to make it known to the world. Here, in its covenant aspects, emerges the fundamental principle of all forms of missionary effort, both at home and abroad. God, through Christ, by the Spirit, has given the message of life to the church, and the church in turn is to give this saving message to the whole world.” Beattie, The Presbyterian Standards (1896; repr., Southern Presbyterian Press, 1997), 142, emphasis mine.
14. Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4.”
15. Palmer, “Thoughts on Foreign Missions—No. 4.”
16. This address, along with ten others (including Dabney’s mentioned above), was given at the Presbyterian Church in the United States’ 250th anniversary celebration of the Westminster Assembly and the formation of the Westminster Standards at its General Assembly meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. The eleven addresses were later published under the title Memorial Volume of the Westminster Assembly: 1647-1897.
17. Moses Drury Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” in Memorial Volume of the Westminster Assembly: 1647-1897, 190.
18. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 191, emphasis his.
19. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 193. Beattie writes, “The Standards, therefore, exhort the church to forget not her true mission among men in the world. She is to be the living mouthpiece of God, through Christ, by the word and Spirit, to the world.” Beattie, 145.
20. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 201.
21. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 202. James Henley Thornwell saw the office of Evangelist as the peculiar feature that gives Presbyterian ecclesiology its missionary character: “It deserves to be remarked that, according to the American Standards all extraordinary offices are not necessarily temporary. The Evangelist is an extraordinary officer, and yet is to be continued in the world as long as there are frontier and destitute settlements in which churches are to be planted and the Gospel established. This peculiarity is essential to the perfection of the Presbyterian system, and makes it what, it strikes us, no other system of church-government is, an adequate institute for gathering churches as well as governing those which are already gathered. Episcopacy, whether Diocesan or Parochial, supposes a Church already formed; Congregationalism implies the previous existence of the Brethren; Pastors has relation to a fixed charge; and the Evangelist is the only officer who is set apart for the express purpose of making aggressive attacks on the world. He goes where there cannot be Bishops and Pastors: he prepares the way for these messengers of Christ by making ready a people called of the Lord. It is this feature in our system which makes ours so pre-eminently a missionary Church.” Thornwell, “The Call of the Minister,” in The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume IV, ed. B. M. Palmer (1875; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), 18, emphasis his.
22. Wilson, “History of Foreign Missions,” 157, 166.
23. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 202, emphasis his.
24. See Thornwell’s Collected Writings, Volume IV, 143-295. Palmer remarks, “As to the conduct of Missions, while insisting on the competency of the Presbyteries and preferring their control to that of the Boards, he did not object on principle to the Assembly’s undertaking the management of that work, provided that its control was direct through a mere Executive Committee. No man had more to do than he with the organization of our present Executive Committees. In fact his principles regarding Boards have been fully and cordially adopted by our Church.” Thornwell, Collected Writings, 144, emphasis his.
25. Johnson, “History of the Southern Presbyterian Church,” 340.
26. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 203.
27. Hoge, “Relation of the Westminster Standards to Foreign Missions,” 202.
28. Thomas Smyth, “The Duty of Interesting Children in the Missionary Cause,” Complete Works of Rev. Thomas Smyth, D. D., ed. J. Wm. Flinn (Columbia, S.C.: The R. L. Bryan Company, 1910), 332. Later, Smyth fills out this definition: “It is utterly impossibly to have a missionary spirit, unless the heart is full of love and devotion to the cause of Christ; unless we can with pleasure give up every thing however much it might add to our present comfort or happiness if it interferes with our duty; and unless we can bear all sorts of privations and trials that we may meet with in that narrow path. In short, to be able in all things to give up self, and think only how we can best serve God, promote his glory, and do his will, this alone is a real Missionary spirit. But this is the very spirit which must be shown, if we would see God’s glory promoted, in every situation of life in which it may please him to place us. And hence we have seen some people who never went ten miles from home, do as much good in winning souls to Christ, as if they had left their country and travelled thousands of miles to reach the heathen. Missionaries, therefore, in the true sense of the word, but above all, a Missionary spirit, are needed every where! and in every condition of life.” Smyth, 345.
29. Smyth, “The Duty of Interesting Children in the Missionary Cause,” 332. Thomas Smyth was the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1832-1873. He was devoted to engaging children in the missionary enterprise, and wrote this provocative article in 1846. Smyth was one of the leaders in Southern Presbyterian missions; his brother-in-law John Bailey Adger (a missionary to Armenia and subsequently pastor to the slaves and professor at Columbia Theological Seminary), recorded his influence: “If the South Carolina Synod has been ever since about 1833 peculiarly alive in some degree (but oh! how small that degree) to the claims of the foreign mission work, I here record what will be generally acknowledged by those who know best, that this has been due, through Almighty grace, in very large measure, to the missionary zeal of Dr. Thomas Smyth.” John Bailey Adger, My Life and Times (1899; repr., Stoke-on-Tent: Tentmaker Publications, 2007), 84.
30. Johnson, “History of the Southern Presbyterian Church,” 342.
31. William Swan Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Missionary Paper No. XIX (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1835). This pamphlet may be found online at http://williamswanplumer.wordpress.com/pamphlets/ (accessed October 25, 2012).
32. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 3.
33. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 3, 5.
34. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 4. Cf. Thornwell’s comments on the office of Evangelist above, note 22. If space permitted, we could examine Plumer’s understanding of the nature of the call to the ministry in general. See his “The Scripture Doctrine of a Call to the Work of the Gospel Ministry,” The Annual of the Board of Education of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, ed. John Breckinridge (Philadelphia: Russell and Martiens, 1832), 20-54; reprinted in Princeton and the Work of the Christian Ministry, Volume Two, ed. James M. Garretson (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust: 2012), 101-122.
35. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 4.
36. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 5.
37. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 6.
38. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 7.
39. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 8.
40. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 8-9.
41. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 9.
42. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 9-10.
43. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 10.
44. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 10.
45. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 11.
46. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 12.
47. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 12.
48. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 13.
49. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 14.
50. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 14-15.
51. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 12-13.
52. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 13.
53. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 14.
54. Plumer, “A Call to Personal Labor as a Foreign Missionary,” 16.
55. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” in The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Volume II, ed. John B. Adger (1871; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1986), 409.
56. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 427.
57. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 427.
58. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 428.
59. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 420.
60. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 420.
61. Cf. John Piper’s now-famous statement at the opening of his book on missions, Let the Nations Be Glad: “Missions exist because worship doesn’t…. Worship is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory…. But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. When the flame of worship burns with the heat of God’s true worth, the light of missions will shine to the most remote peoples on earth.” Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010), 35-36.
62. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 428.
63. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 431.
64. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 431.
65. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 431.
66. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 422.
67. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 432. Thornwell goes on to suggest that the reason we still see the church languishing in apathy is that there is “a lurking skepticism in regard to the perils of their state. There is a secret feeling, where there is not a developed conviction, that after all they shall not surely die.” Thornwell, 434. His discussion of this question is important in our own day of relativism and multiculturalism.
68. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 437.
69. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 437.
70. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 437-38. Unfortunately, even in our labors for the conversion of the world, laments Thornwell, “there is so little sacrifice for it. We pray; but what is there of agony in our prayers? Who wrestles with God? whose soul is burdened with the weight of a perishing world? or who takes an hour from his sleep or foregoes a single meal in order that he may plead the cause of the millions upon millions who know not God? And are such prayers sacrifices? Are they more than breath?—and can there be any wonder that mere breath should not move the Lord of hosts? What was the spirit in which Christ prayed when He made His soul an offering for sin? Again, we give; but who, like the widow, gives all his living? Who denies himself one luxury or refuses one indulgence that he may have the means of contributing more to the cause of the Redeemer? How many give only what they think they will not miss!…Are such gifts sacrifices, and is it any wonder that they should stink in the nostrils of the Lord of hosts?…If these things are so, it is painfully obvious that the Church collectively is not animated with the spirit of its priesthood; it makes no sacrifices for the heathen world, it detains the victims from the altar, and the darkness continues to cover the earth and gross darkness the people.” Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 442-43.
71. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 441.
72. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 441.
73. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 442.
74. Thornwell, “The Sacrifice of Christ the Type and Model of Missionary Effort,” 442, 444-45.