SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 May 1921, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

the fate of the heathen.

Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.”—Acts, X., 35-36. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.)

Cornelius marks a new departure in the religious life of the race. Like the first flower in spring he is the herald and the sign of new forces at work changing the face of the world. His life story carries us to the centre and citadel where was being waged the decisive battle between the narrow and. fettering forces of Judaism and the catholic energies of Christianity. Cornelius ■stands at the head of Gentile Christianity. What John the Baptist was to Jesus Christ, Cornelius was to the Apostle to the Gentiles. Coming up out of the darkness of heathenism, he burst on the vision of the Church like a meteor in a wintry sky. No prophet announced his advent; no visible teacher prepared him for his work. He was outside the Church, yet within the kingdom. He did not belong to the elect nation. He was numbered with the people,’’“'whom we roughly classify as “pagans,” yet through him God was pleased to cast out of the primitive church the lingering remnant of exclusiveness, and announced the universalism of Christianity, and so changed a tribal faith into a worldwide religion. So that, although it is true that this centurian is one of the minor figures of the New Testament, it is also true that outside the Apostles themselves, no roan did more for the expansion of the Kingdom of God than Cornelius of Caesarea. . . .

■Saint Luke’s portrait of the man is sharp and clear. Cornelius is a Roman. He bears a distinctly Roman name, dwells in a Roman city, holds a Roman office, and is typically Roman in his serene strength, soldierly promptitude, and fine loyalty. Further, he is “a devout man,” who holds communion with God and lays himself open to visions and voices from the unseen world. Note, too, that with his openness of soul, he blends the wise ordering of his household, so that some of his rough soldiers feel his infectious goodness, and share his> desire for fuller light and knowledge. Cornelius is so “just,” so radiantly and transparently good, that the Jews forsook their prejudices and confessed his fair-mindedness. This man, though the representative of an alien power, would not pillage and plunder them. Finally, note that his social sympathies were as strong as his religious instincts. “He gave much alms.” He feared God, and had a care for his foreign neighbors. There were many barrier* between him and the Christian fa'ith. “Gentile,” “Roman,” “Soldier,” “Centurian,” each word represents a fence within a fence, to keep the grace' of God at bay; yet that grace, with the mighty sweep of a full tide, carried all the obstructions-away, and this representative of paganism, supplies proof that God is “no respecter of persons,” or races; not a local and tribal deity; not a person of partialities and favoritism; but “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.” God’s kingdom is not Abrahamic or Mosaic, but universal. He is the Father, Redeemer, Restorer of All. Churches are His chosen instruments, but not cltwehes only. Governments, politics, science, education, and social service are His instruments and servants. “On His head are many crowns.” Thus did God call out of the vast heathen world a man who expanded the spiritual vision of Saint Peter, broadened the horizon of the church, added to its fund of working ideas, and supplied another example of the truth tfcat “the ways of men are narrow, but the gates of Heaven are wide.” For it was Cornelius who was -instrumental in leading the church to confess, “Then to the Gentiles hath God granted repentance to life,” and Christianity, which was born and cradled in Judaism, left its birthplace, and its swadling bands, to work amongst the Latin races, and through them to conquer the western world. . . Now, the story I have roughly outlined would be a story of absorbing inters!, studied simply as a departure in religion; another stage in the evolution of a pure, spiritual, universal faith. But it has other uses. It suggests a question which, try how we will, cannot be ignored, the question of the relation of the vast heathen world to God, and the fate of these countless millions of darkened souls. The Bible is concerned chiefly with one nation, the Jews, and it only incidentally touches other nations vastly more ancient and vastly greater than the Hebrew tribes. Think of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and other Empires. They rose and flourished, and passed away without so much as a whisper of the Christian gospel, and absolutely no knowledge of Jesus Christ. Think of India, and China, and Africa, which we know better. For ages on ages they knew nothing of the gospel, and even now it is only the fringe of their vast populations who have the slightest knowledge of the Christian religion. The great majority of the human race have belonged, and still belong, to the classes we usually designate “heathen,” and untold millions have gone down to the grave without, ever once hearing the name of Jesus. These millions have not been destitute of religion. Their religion has been rudimentary, debased, and defective; theirs is starlight, ours is noon; but man is essentially a religious being, and these nations have been religious. What/ is their fate? Most of us were taught to believe that, these nations are irretrievably lost, that millions beyond human calculation, who never heard of Jesus Christ, are suffering in endless woe! Our first missionaries believed that. Exeter Hall rang with impassioned appeals, based on the conviction that these millions were doomed to adamantine chains and penal fires! There are still men, of whose kindness of heart we have no doubt, who will tell you how many heathens perish everlastingly each hour of the day and night. If they really believed such things they ought never to smile again. If we believed it we have no right to be here to-day; our place is out under the burning suns of India. But the people who say these things enjoy life, eat and drink the good thingo of the table, dress well, and drive hard bargains, like other folk, and their dreadful creed has no real hold on their life. The vision of

“Ten thousand sages lost in endless woe, For ignorance of what they could not knoiV, has ceased to Influence them. It isn’t a working article of their belief. . . . The doctrine of Holy Scripture is that outside of Jesus Christ there is no salvation; “For there is none other Name given under Heaven whereby we can be saved,” Are we, then, to say that the unnwhergd ipjlHcw who never heard Christ are kat? That pure and

mi nous souls who from time to time shone as lights in heathen lands l]£.ve ail gone down to a hopeless doom, simply becausse they lived in an age and a land to which the Christian Gospel never came? Are men like Buddha, Socrates, and Epictetus, consigned to perdition and treated as the refuse of the world? If I thought the Bible taught that millions of souls will be lost because they never had the chance of salvation, I would close the Book and never preach again. I know it is said by some that the Holy Book is silent on the subject, but those who say this don’t know the Bible. So far from being silent concerning the fate of the heathen, the Bible has a good deal to say. The promise made to Abraham is exceeding broad, that in him should “all the families be blessed.” Job was not a Jew; he was an'Arab s'heik, dwelling in the black tents of Uzz, and wrestling with grave problems that puzzle us yet. Naaman, the Syrian, belonged to the heathen world; so did Rahab, so did the Syro Phoenecian woman, so did he of whom Christ said, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” Saint Johh’s doctrine of the “Logos” is that He “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Our Lord taught that the fruit of the Atonement is not limited to those who heard about it. The efficacy cf the Cross is universal and transcendent. “He tasted death for every man.” “He is the propitiation for the eins of the world.” Just as in the physical world myriads of people eat bread and drink water of whose chemical constituents they know nothing, so in the spiritual world souls are nourished, and refreshed, and saved, by a power they cannot analyse and explain. Calvary is a low hill that casts a long shadow. Wide knowledge does not necessarily save us, neither will pardonable ignorance condemn the heathen. Amid the multitudes of the redeemed there will not be one who does not owe his salvation to Jesus Christ; but there will be many who never heard His name till He Himself declared it. The death of Christ avails for infants who died ere they heard of His love, and made intelligent choice of Him; and what arc the heathen nations save

Children crying in the night, Children crying for the light. And with no language but a cry,

The death of Christ was a crisis, not in His life alone, or the life of the Jewish nation; it was a crisis in the life of the race. It swung back" in its power through all the ages behind, and it pressed forward in its redeeming virtue to generations unborn. This is a redeemed world. There is an unconscious faith in an unknown Christ. There may be loving obedience to Him on the part of heathens who never knew His name. In any ease, as Saint Paul reasoned, they will be judged by the light they had, and not by the light they had not. Why, then, send the Gospel to the heathen? It might be enough to answer, because Christ commands it. The motive to Christian missions is not fear, but love. We have a gospel the heathen needs to know. We jjiave a good thing we wish others to share. Christ would have all men know Him, know Him by name, know Him in the fullness of His Divine Grace; and if any man claims to know Christ and still has no wish to spread the good news, that man’s religion is vain. The fate of the heathen involves our own fate. We have the twofold task of accepting Christ for ourselves, and then of sending the glad tidings to the regions beyond. Our acceptance of Christ must be conscious and deliberate, for at the bar of judgment we cannot plead ignorance. Let us beware lest- in that great day some whom we call “benighted heathen” shall rise up and condemn us, because they, true to imperfect light, found the way of life, and we, blinded by the very abundance of revelation, went stumbling down the way that leads to eternal night. As Spurgeon, with his robust common-sense, stated it, “The question is not will the heathen be saved without the Gospel, but this, shall we be saved if we do not send the Gospel?” or, as R. W. Dale phrased it, “Christ died for the world; and the world ' ought to know it.”