John Urquhart, part 13: Pushback

You would think that if any gifted young man declared his desire to be a missionary, the news would be greeted with celebrations and encouragement. Though John received small measures of these, he generally faced the opposite. To put this in perspective, we need to remember what the commitment to being a missionary meant in those earlier days. To stand on the dock and wave goodbye to a loved one bound for distant places was—in all probability—not a bon voyage but instead, a final farewell. Life was incredibly uncertain in those days, not only for those who stayed at home, but even more for those who ventured into tropical climates without modern medicines. When to that uncertainty was added the difficulty and slowness of travel, it’s not hard to imagine the pain at such partings. (When Robert Morrison first left for China, there were few options for getting there. For political reasons, the East India Company would not take missionaries as passengers. In an early January he sailed from England to America to find another ship to take him to China. He did not arrive in China until early September, eight months after leaving England.) Fundamentally, these reasons may have been selfish, but certainly understandable from the perspective of a parent. It takes special grace in the heart to release children into such an unknown future.

The potential permanence of such a decision was not the only obstacle faced by aspiring missionaries. Some objected that for a highly gifted person to sail to lands of illiteracy was to unnecessarily throw away years of academic training. But the objection that John battled the hardest was the decision to go to far-off places when there was so much work to do in England. Over and over again he faced this objection, but he became more and more convinced that it did not bear the scrutiny of Scripture. Though he did not live long enough to step on board a ship bound for Africa or India, the insights that he gained have been preserved for subsequent generations who face a similar challenge.

Almost every person I have spoken with on the matter, urges me to focus on the needs of our own country. Assuredly, if our own country were more neglected, or even as much neglected as other lands, I would feel the weight of that argument. I do think that our own countrymen have the first claim upon our attention, and I am inclined to think that the first preachers of Christianity would have declared the message of mercy first to the Jews, even if no direct command had been given to preach to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. But I cannot see how the claims of a native land can be stronger to a Gentile, than the claims of their own favored nation were to the Jewish Christians. On this account, I think we are quite safe in taking the apostles for our example, in their conduct towards their countrymen. They did not wait till every dark corner of Judea was fully evangelized; far less till every heart had been savingly impressed by the truth. It was no argument to them to remain in Judea, that there were many who heard their message, who in the end refused to receive it. On the contrary, this was the very signal for their departure (Acts 13:46, 27:24-29). I do feel much for the dark places of our own beloved country; but it does seem to me that the evangelical ministers of Britain could, with very little effort, publish the gospel most fully to every individual in the land. And they would do well to examine how far they are not guilty of the blood of souls, in not working harder to take the gospel to the heathen near their own homes. If a pastor of a church cannot do the work of an evangelist, let a separate person be maintained by every body of Christians, for this purpose; or, if each church cannot accomplish this, let a number of churches join in order to do so.

We will see next time that Urquhart faced these objections with a fortitude that came from grace. He realized that there was a romantic sense of adventure that sometimes mixed itself with a pure desire to preach the gospel. The fact that his desire grew, rather than faded, in the face of this opposition gave him a growing assurance that he was indeed heading in the right direction.