Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission

Excerpt

HARRIET NEWELL, THE PROTO-MARTYR.

Several centuries ago, the idea of driving out of Jerusalem its infidel inhabitants was suggested to a mad ecclesiastic. A shorn and dehumanized monk of Picardy, who had performed many a journey to that fallen city, who had been mocked and derided there as a follower of the Nazarene, whose heart burned beneath the wrongs and indignities which had been so freely heaped upon the head of himself and his countrymen, determined to arouse a storm which should send its lightnings to gleam along the streets, and roll its deep thunder to shake the hills which in speechless majesty stand around the city of God.

Pope Martin II. entered into his daring scheme, convened a council of bishops and priests, and gave the sanction of the church to the wild enterprise. This council Peter addressed, and, with all the eloquence of a man inspired by a mighty project, depicted the wrongs and grievances of those who yearly sought, for holy purposes, the sepulchre wherein the Savior of man reposed after his crucifixion. He was successful in inspiring the people with his own wild enthusiasm. All Europe flew to arms; all ranks and conditions in life united in the pious work; youthful vigor and hoary weakness stood side by side; the cross was worn upon the shoulder and carried on banners; the watchword, "Deus Vult," burst from ten thousand lips; and the armies of Christendom precipitated themselves upon the holy land with the awful war cry, "God wills it," echoing from rank to rank.

In later times a mightier, nobler enterprise was originated, and the great system of American missions commenced. The object was a grand one, and awfully important. It contemplated, not the subjection of a narrow kingdom alone, but the complete overthrow of the dark empire of sin; not the elevation of a human king, an earthly monarch, but the enthronement of an insulted God, as the supreme object of human worship; not the possession of the damp, cold sepulchre in which Jesus reposed after his melancholy death, but the erection of his cross on every hillside, by every sea shore, in vale and glen, in city and in solitude. It was a noble design, one full of grandeur and glory, as far surpassing the crusade of Peter the Hermit as the noonday sun surpasses the dim star of evening. Its purpose was to obliterate the awful record of human sin, flash the rays of a divine illumination across a world of darkness, and send the electric thrill of a holy life throughout a universe of death.

At first, the missionary enterprise was looked upon as foolish and Utopian. Good men regarded it as utterly impracticable, and bad men condemned and denounced it as selfish and mercenary. The Christian church had not listened to the wail of a dying world as it echoed over land and ocean and sounded along our shores; she had not realized the great fact that every darkened tribe constitutes a part of the universal brotherhood of man; her heart had not been touched by the spirit of the great commission, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

But the sun which ushered in the present century dawned upon a missionary age and a missionary church....