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Cameron, G. Gordon. Our Jewish Mission Cause. Edinburgh; Glasgow: United Free Church of Scotland, 1922.

Our Jewish Mission Cause

Rev. G. GORDON CAMERON, B.D.

BATHGATE

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UNITED FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND

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232 St Vincent Street, Glasgow

1922

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[3]

OUR JEWISH MISSION CAUSE

I. THE OBLIGATION.

IT was a memorable occasion in the missionary annals of our Church when her Commissioners to our Jewish Stations laid their report upon the table of the General Assembly in 1921. It was at once a revelation and a challenge: a revelation of the open door to the mind and heart of Jewry; a challenge to the faith and consecration of the Church.

Yet it may be questioned how far the imagination of the Church has really visualised the problems and possibilities of her Jewish Mission, or how far her heart beats true to the purpose of God for Israel. It may, therefore, not be amiss

to try once more to define the grounds on which this enterprise may be urged.

We owe it to the Jew that we should bring him the Evangel.

"The Jew?" some may retort, with an impassioned and impatient reminder of those countless iniquities and that inherent crookedness and meanness that have made the Jew so despised and hated. As if the worst that can be said about the Jew is not the most cogent and urgent of all reasons for evangelical endeavour on his behalf.

Let no one disparage Jewish Missions on the ground that Judaism is good enough for the Jew. Apart from such a pathetic confession as this of a Zionist: "Judaism has no message of salvation for the individual soul such as Christianity has," how can that plea be maintained in face of the fact that it was to the Jew that Christ came first of all? If there is any one

with whom we must long to share our faith in Christ it is the Jew.

We owe it to our Christian Faith.

Only by sympathy and service can we wipe off the stain left upon it by the shameless wrongs perpetrated in its name upon the hapless Jew. By no Christian standard can we justify such a revenge upon his acknowledged misdeeds as pogroms, the ghetto, and the futilities and barbarities of anti-Semitism. If only to give the Jew an object-lesson in the real spirit of Christianity, well may the Church redouble her efforts to extend to him all the sympathy and help she can. What an opportunity she has in her schools and hospitals.

We owe it to Christ.

As Christian people we have to face this question: Is an unconverted Jewry good enough for Christ? Can He be satisfied

with the lost sheep of the House of Israel perishing through ignorance, prejudice or unbelief? Can it be a matter of unconcern and indifference to their Messiah that He should be still misunderstood and rejected? Whether His compassion for Israel is to find expression, whether His longing for her salvation is to be satisfied, whether His rights over Israel are to be won, depends upon the devotion and efficiency with which the Church carries out her great and sacred trust.

We owe it to the Church herself that we should rise to the new call coming to us for Christian effort, especially from Eastern Europe.

When we consider the difficulty and danger that attended the founding of our Mission in Budapest, the singular success with which God has blessed the work through the years and the place it has won for itself in the confidence and esteem of the Hungarian Church and people;

when we reflect upon the marvellous way in which the Mission has been preserved in an enemy country through all the risks and strain of war, we cannot but realise its immense value and our grave responsibility. We must not fail those who with such heroism and faithfulness have laboured in the years that are gone.

II. THE OPPORTUNITY.

Naturally we think, first of all, of our Mission in Glasgow, carried on amid such great difficulties, but with such quiet fidelity. It is at once a Home Mission and a Foreign Mission. It is a Christian enterprise on behalf of some 40,000 Jews, resident for the most part in the Gorbals, the vast majority of whom are alien alike in race and in religion.

What a splendid sphere of service offers itself here. It calls for patient and

sympathetic house-to-house visitation, when the gospel message on the printed page, in the spoken word, or in the loving deed can be brought. There is an opportunity of helping in that most interesting and promising work, the work among the children. Assistance can be given in what is perhaps the most important and fruitful work of all—the outdoor work, by which many are reached who do not dare, or care, to enter any hall. It surely should never be possible to report of work like this, carried on in a city like Glasgow, by a church like ours, that it suffers from "a lack of voluntary workers."

In Palestine a situation of quite extraordinary interest and appeal is developing. The Church may play no small part, through the Missionary Societies, in fostering that freer and more generous atmosphere in which racial animosities will find it difficult to thrive. Nothing can satisfy us short of making our schools and hospitals absolutely the best in the land.

What form of Christian activity should appeal more strongly to the heart of our youth than the endeavour to secure that the religion of our Lord and Redeemer be represented at its very finest and best in the land of its birth; that the best education, the finest medical skill, the most gracious and sympathetic service there shall be those inspired by Jesus Christ and offered in His Name. It needs only a slight exercise of the imagination for the thrilling romance of the work to grip the soul and to catch fire in the heart of our chivalrous youth; for them to feel the pressure of the Master's Hand as He calls: "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?" and for the willing reply to come, "Here am I, send me."

In Constantinople work is being gradually resumed after a lapse of seven years. It is welcome evidence of the co-operation that now exists between missionary societies working among Jews that the Anglican Society, the London Society for

Propagating Christianity among the Jews, has voluntarily left this field to the Presbyterians, and that the United Free Church and the Church of Scotland have united forces to carry on the mission as a joint enterprise.

The work is at present mainly educational and the school was re-opened in September 1921 with 290 pupils, 75 per cent. of whom were Jewish. The "Old Boys' Club" testifies, with warm appreciation, to the moral and spiritual advantage its members have received, and how their training in the school has stood them in good stead in difficult and testing times. To make the most of the splendid opportunities this promising field affords, the staff requires to be considerably enlarged.

The situation in Europe is exceedingly interesting. Some Jews assert that, with the break-up of the Ghetto and the emancipation of the Jew, there is little hope of retaining the Jew for Judaism, except

through a Jewish State established in Palestine. We must remember that there can never be more than a fraction of the Jewish population of the world settled in the Holy Land. Nor is it by any means certain that any Jewish State will be able to retain for Judaism the Jews of the Dispersion.

Of the Jewries outside Palestine the most important by far is that of Eastern Europe. If Jewish Orthodoxy, entrenched in Palestine, fails to retain this for Judaism, whither will it drift? The answer is very largely in the hands of the Church, and of none more than ours. According to Dr John R. Mott our Mission in Budapest occupies a strategic point for the evangelising of the Jews of Eastern Europe. What an appeal we have in this to capture the Jew for Christ, as he drifts from his spiritual moorings and seeks an anchor for his soul that will hold in the storms of doubt, temptation and sorrow.

The Church has the greatest reason to

thank God for the magnificent opportunity for Christian service offered by her Jewish Mission, and to be encouraged by the signal tokens of divine blessing that have been vouchsafed to it. How full of promise is the hour!

Think of our Hungarian Staff, so splendidly loyal through all the difficulties and hardships of the war years and after. Think of record attendances at the Schools, full to overflowing. Think of the spiritual re-awakening of the whole community. Think of the numbers baptised during the past two or three years—between six and seven hundred, the majority of them men, all of the educated classes, and most of them having been reached by the educational or evangelistic work of our Mission. Think of twenty inquirers coming every day to our Missionary and that for weeks on end! Could work possibly be more full of promise?

One remembers the poet's words about the tide in the affairs of men. Surely the

tides of the spirit are flowing full and strong in Eastern Europe. What if the Church, impelled by its vision and compassion, and moved by the Spirit of God, seized this all-but unexampled opportunity! It would speed the dawning of the day envisaged by the great Apostle, the day of the "receiving" of the Jew—the day that is to be a veritable springtime to the Church.

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