John 4:35-38 Say not you, There are yet four months, and then comes harvest? behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields… Men read what the Missionary Herald tells them of the progress of the gospel among the heathen; and there are those that take out their pencils and say: "The whole missionary world numbers so many millions, and there have been about so many hundred people converted by the influence of this amount of capital. That is about tea thousand dollars for one soul. It is rather dear work, ain't it?" There are such moral arithmeticians that sum up the fruit of moral seed-sowing under arithmetical proportions. But the whole world has been stirred up by the mission cause. I am what I am because Henry Obookiah, from the Sandwich Islands, was taught at the Cornwall School in Connecticut, and in my boyhood came down to my father's house, and produced an impression on me which has undulated, and propagated, and gone on influencing me. Some of the enthusiasm which I have felt for moral conditions came to me from seeing him. Who can tell what the retroaction of foreign missions is? Who can tell what benefit may be received here from our Western missions? Who can tell what is the effect of sending our abundance to the waste places of our own land, and to the torrid and frigid zones? It stirs up that which is not reportable. Ten thousand more leaves are born every year than the botanist ever sees. Ten thousand times more storms blow on every sea than are ever registered on charts or log-books. (H. Ward Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. |
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