The daily newspaper placards on the streets announced in large letters “A MISSIONARY KILLED AND EATEN BY CANNIBALS.” This strange and gruesome story was found to be only too true, for as the facts became known, the public learned that a devoted and zealous Scotchman, who had for many years made known the glad tidings of God’s salvation to the South Sea islanders, had, while seeking to bear the Gospel message to a tribe of cannibals on the Airo River, been massacred, beheaded and eaten by the cruel natives, instigated by their chiefs. The sad story awakened fresh interest in the difficult and dangerous work of spreading the Gospel among the Polynesian and Malanesian groups of islands which stud the Southern Seas, to which many had already gone forth with their lives in their hands, to make known the story of a Saviour’s love to the dwellers there. The story of the Gospel’s progress and of the conquests it has won on these distant shores is well worth telling. It is here told simply, with the object of interesting our young folks in the great and glorious work to which many have given themselves in the morning of their years, and in which their lives have been honorably spent, or sacrificed.
It is no romance of fiction, but a story of real life. The men and women who were honored to go forth and give themselves to the great and glorious work of spreading the Gospel of God’s mighty grace among the dwellers on these inhospitable shores, amid scenes of barbarism and cruelty, were well known persons, who, in their youth, had been brought to know Christ as a personal Saviour, to rejoice in the knowledge of a present salvation, and constrained by the love of Him who gave Himself for them, they yielded themselves to God, and at His call left all that earth counts dear, to go forth with His message to the millions who had never heard His Name. Theirs was a noble and honorable service, and in that day when the Lord shall reckon with His servants, it will receive its full recompense, however little heard of here, or esteemed among the sons of men.
May the hearts of many of our boys and girls, and young men and maidens be opened to receive the Gospel, unto their own personal salvation, and then, rejoicing in its blessings, and full of a holy enthusiasm to make it known to others, go forth to spend and be spent in “telling it out,” to those who have never heard its joyful sound.