Jesus, in the same sense and with the same intention, died for every one of these people, and authorizes us to offer to each a free and conscious salvation through repentance and faith in Christ, we earnestly urge its acceptance upon them, as we do on sinners at home. The Holy Spirit indorses the teaching and the offer, and the poor “weary and heavy laden” heathen turns from his idols to the living God and accepts Jesus as his Redeemer, and the work is done. He is saved, and knows it and rejoices, and then goes and tells others “what a Saviour he has found.” This is all, and it is enough.
It may be doubted if converts anywhere have ever sought Christian baptism under a more intelligent impulse than what has led these thousands to us. Look at the facts. For thirty-five years our agency has been going through their villages teaching the way of salvation, distributing the Holy Scriptures, tracts, and books among them. We have also been giving a Christian education to thousands of their children, and the boys and girls have daily taken to their homes and there repeated and sung the texts and hymns which they have learned in their classes. For years these people have been discussing together this wonderful faith, brought thus to their doors, and now upon the good seed thus sown so widely the Holy Spirit has graciously descended and given it vitality, and this wonderful ingathering is the blessed result. In every one of our schools the Bible is read, hymns sung, and prayer offered. The first thing is to teach them to read the Bible in the simple village school; then follows the Anglo-vernacular school for wider training; then the orphanages, to raise teachers and preachers; then the boarding and high schools; then comes the Christian college, male and female, for special training. Adding the theological seminary, we have thus amply provided for the wide Christian culture of our membership and ministry. To all these we might add our numerous camp-meetings, which are practically for those people high schools of instruction in Christian experience as well as helps to its attainment. There has been no undue haste in our baptisms.
