PART III - THE FRONTIER AGE

Summary

Our Lord Jesus Christ, a little before his departure, commissioned his apostles to “Go, and teach all nations”; or, as another evangelist expresses it, “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” This commission was as extensive as possible, and laid them under obligation to disperse themselves into every country of the habitable globe, and preach to all the inhabitants, without exception or limitation. They accordingly went forth in obedience to the command, and the power of God evidently wrought with them.

But the work has not been taken up, or prosecuted of late years . . . with the zeal and perseverance with which the primitive Christians went about it. It seems as if many thought the commission was sufficiently put in execution by what the apostles and others have done; that we have enough to do to attend to the salvation of our own countrymen; and that, if God intends the salvation of the heathen, he will some way or other bring them to the gospel, or the gospel to them. It is thus that multitudes sit at ease, and give themselves no concern about the far greater part of their fellow sinners, who to this day are lost in ignorance and idolatry . . . .

We must not be contented however with praying, without exerting ourselves in the use of means for the obtaining of those things we pray for . . . .

Suppose a company of serious Christians, ministers and private persons, were to form themselves into a society, and make a number of rules respecting the regulation of the plan, and the persons who were employed as missionaries, the means of defraying the expense, etc.

William Carey An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, 1792