A MISSIONARY
CRY
By
R. A. JAFFRAY
A hundred
thousand souls a
day
Are passing one by
one away
In Christless guilt and gloom;
Without one ray of hope or light,
With future dark as endless night,
They're passing to their doom.
The Master's
coming draweth
near,
The Son of Man will soon appear,
His Kingdom is at hand;
But ere that glorious day can be,
This Gospel of the Kingdom we -
Must preach in every land.
O let us then
His coming
haste,
O let us end this awful waste
Of souls that never
die.
A thousand million still are lost,
A Saviour’s blood has paid the cost,
O hear their dying cry.
They’re
passing, passing fast,
away,
A hundred thousand souls a day,
In Christless guilt and gloom.
O Church of Christ, what wilt thou say,
When in the awful
judgment day
They charge thee with their doom?
This
missionary hymn is one of Dr. Simpson’s earliest
missionary hymns,
published, indeed, as early as 1890. Some
of us can never forget the first time we heard these words, "A hundred thousand souls a day are
passing one by one away
in Christless guilt and gloom, without one ray of hope or light, with
future
dark as endless night, they're passing to their doom." The writer was a young man
full of life and
zeal, but when these words fell on his ears, and sank down into his
heart he
was bowed very low before God. He
can
well remember when, as a student in the Bible
School in New York, before the Bible
School
moved to Nyack, in
the noonday missionary prayer-meeting, we used to sing softly this
missionary
hymn until our hearts were moved and the tears flowed freely.
The
first of this missionary hymn points to the very foundation of all
sound
missionary enterprise. Too
often, it is
feared, the foundation truth of the lost condition of the heathen is
either
frankly disbelieved, or, at least, ignored. Sentimental
sympathy and patronizing pity for
the temporary miseries that are the result of heathen superstitions,
and a
desire to meet such by social reform, movements, do not touch the
fundamental
principle of the soul’s need of eternal Salvation. It
is only when we realize that "A
thousand millions are still lost" and that
they are "in Christless guilt
and gloom, without
a ray of hope or light, with future dark as endless night",
that we
will truly consecrate all we have to a life of missionary service.
Dr. Simpson
emphasizes the real main-spring of true missionary work,
the hope of the Lord’s speedy return. "The
Master’s coming draweth near, the Son of Man will soon appear, His Kingdom is at hand. But ere that
glorious day can be, this Gospel of the Kingdom, we must preach in
every land."
How true it is that
only people who know
that they are saved through the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus, who
are fully
yielded, and filled with the Holy Spirit, and know how to trust Him for
body
and soul, and are waiting and watching for the coming again of the
Lord, can
truly be possessed of this all-consuming missionary vision. If ever the lost
tribes of earth are to be
reached with the witness of the Gospel, we believe it must be
accomplished by
men and women who know by experience the power of this full Gospel, and
the
love of His appearing. In
the last
analysis the Lord is depending upon such to complete this unfinished
task, to
lay everything else aside, and make this the only worth-while object in
life. Let us never
get away from this, "They are
passing, passing fast away, a hundred thousand
souls a day in Christless guilt and gloom." In the life of
a true
missionary this sound of the Niagara of passing souls is ever in his
ear, and
is the impetus to never-ceasing, self-sacrificing service for the
salvation of
the lost.
- The
Pioneer.
--------------
NOTE.
"Deliver
them that are
carried away unto death, and those that are ready to be slain see that
thou
hold back. If thou sayest, Behold, we knew not this
:
Doth not he that weigheth
the hearts consider it? And
he that keepeth thy soul, doth he not know it? And shall not He render
to every
man according to his work?" R.V.
(Prov.
24: 11, 12).