The Heroism of Foreign Missions.
I. The first element of heroism is the quality of ideality the power, that is, of getting hold of the idea of any cause or occupation, or of life in general, so that the cause, the occupation, or life becomes a living thing to which a man may give himself with all his powers. That quality of ideality is the essential thing in heroism. Along with this primary quality of heroism there go two others, closely related to it. They are magnanimity and bravery. These qualities make the heroes. These are what glorify certain lives that stand through history as the lights and beacons of mankind.
II. If Christianity is heroic life, the missionary work is heroic Christianity. This arises not from any mere circumstances of personal privation which attach to the missionary life, but because the missionary life has most closely seized, and most tenaciously holds and lives by, the essential central life-idea of Christianity. What is that idea? That man is the child of God. The true Christian idealist is he whose conception of man as the redeemed child of God has taken all his life, and moulded it in new shapes, planted it in new places, so filled and inspired it, that, like the Spirit of God in Elijah, it has taken it up and carried it where it never would have chosen to go of its lower will.
III. The missionary life is heroic, not because of the pains it suffers, but because of the essential character it bears. Pain is the aureole, but not the sainthood. So they have marched of old, the missionaries of all the ages of the religion of the Incarnation and the Cross, idealists, believers, magnanimous and brave, the heroes of our faith. They have been heroes because of their faith, because their souls supremely believed in and their lives were supremely given to Christ.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord,p. 163.
References: Acts 13:2; Acts 13:3. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 24.Acts 13:4. Ibid.,vol. v., p. 308. Acts 13:7. J. M. Charlton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 113; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 429.