and the Gentiles. The process of nationalizing the Messianic hope and ceremonializing the law fed the Jewish pride as being the elect people of the earth and made them recreant to their divine mission. And yet, in spite of this blindness and unfaithfulness of Israel as a nation, God's purpose of grace was accomplished, and in the old dispensation the foundation was laid for world-wide missionary enterprise in the new dispensation. All the missionary thoughts and words we have considered were preparatory steps and stages in the development of the divine plan and the execution of the divine work of missions.

To these preparatory steps belong also the providential leadings of Israel, the calamities which came upon the unfaithful nation, occurrences amid which the Jews were led to perform, in part, their mission to the nations. Consider, for example, the following:

The dispersions. The growth of the expectation that all nations should some day know the one true God advanced most rapidly just when those who were able to make Him known were being scattered most widely among the nations.

It is estimated that 350,000 Hebrews, first and last, had been carried captive to the Euphrates and beyond. Fewer than 50,000 returned. By the beginning of our era these had increased to millions.

In the time of Philo about a million Jews dwelt in Egypt-about one-eighth of the whole population-and the influence of Alexandrian Judaism upon the cultured Greeks and Romans was particularly great.

Jews were carried by captivity and by commerce throughout the Roman world and even into India and China.

The missionary trend and tendency of all this is

evident. The people, under castigation, became penitent and bethought themselves of the blessings which they had possessed, but had neglected. In exile they were more thoughtful and more faithful than they had been in time of prosperity. They bore witness to Jehovah, the true and living God, and continued to worship. Him in the strange lands whither they had been carried, This witness and worship were not without effect upon. the surrounding heathen. Thus real and telling missionary work was performed.

The Septuagint. This Greek translation of the Old Testament, prepared during the period between 280 and 150 B. C., served an important missionary purpose in providing the Word of God not only for the Jews of the dispersion who were more and more forgetting their mother tongue and the language of the Old Testament (a service akin to home mission work), but also for heathen who came in contact with them in their places of worship and there heard the Word of life in their own language.

This version of the sacred Scriptures was the most. important missionary work of the Hebrew race before. the advent of Christ. Such work of Bible translation is a large and important factor in the pioneer work of Christian missions. It was the chief service and achievement of Carey and Judson, of Morrison and Henry Martyn.

The synagogues. Besides the synagogues, where the Old Testament was read and expounded, there were regular places of meeting for worship under the open sky, just as the Greek theaters were built without roofs. There was such a place of prayer at Philippi, for in

stance.

These synagogues throughout the empire made

monotheism visible, as it were, to every passerby. They set before the heathen the possibility of a religion without idolatry. They were as lights amid the darkness of heathenism. Later many of them served as places where Christ was preached.

All this may be regarded as indirect and preparatory missionary work on the part of the people of the old

covenant.

CHAPTER XII.

MISSIONARY THOUGHTS IN THE GOSPELS.

1. Introductory Reflections.

I.

Interesting as is the contemplation of the missionary thoughts of the Old Testament, the study of the Gospels leads us into a missionary gallery whose sketches and scenes fascinate the interested student, into a missionary treasure-house of inexhaustible wealth, to the very mountain top where the blessed Savior, ascending to His Father and to our Father, stretched forth His pierced hands in blessing upon His chosen apostles, and in them upon the whole Church of the Christian dispensation, having given to them and the Church of all time, until His return, this wonderful Commission:

ALL

LL power is given unto Me in heaven and in
earth.

Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, bap-
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to ob-
serve all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
And lo, I am with you always, even unto the
end of the world.

To trace the missionary thoughts in the words of Christ, from the beginning of His earthly ministry until its culmination on Mount Olivet, will prove a delightful and profitable occupation to every Bible reader and mission worker.

As Christ is the foundation and head of the Church, so He is the central figure and the centralizing force of Christian missions. As He is the fulfillment of Old

Testament types and prophecies, so the missionary thoughts of the Old Testament are developed in and through Him and find clearer and fuller expression in His words.

Contrasting the missionary thoughts of the new dispensation with those of the old, we may affirm in a general way that, while in the Old Testament we find missionary roots, evangelical principles, and evangelical forces wrapped up, as it were, in the seed, in the New Testament we find the missionary plant developed, bearing foliage and fruit. In the Old Testament the foundation is laid for world-wide misions; in the New the superstructure is erected, and the work is actually begun. In the Old the universality of salvation is expressed in prophecy, held out as a glorious hope to be realized in due time; in the New this universality begins to be fulfilled and carried into effect, fully realized in apostolic missions and directed for all future ages to the end of time by the Great Commission of our Lord to His Church.

In the fulness of time Christ appears, the Great Missionary, sent from the realms of glory, working out the world's redemption and training a band of efficient missionaries to go forth and inaugurate the era of world-wide missions. His words and teachings from the beginning and throughout His ministry, are permeated with missionary thoughts. Without being able or attempting to arrange and classify His missionary words and declarations in strictly chronological order, we can observe a gradual development in clearness and fulness, culminating in the direct and explicit missionary command after His resurrection. In this appears the wisdom and tact of the Great Teacher, in view of the national exclusiveness and particularism of the Jewish