194
THE LIVING FORCES OF THE GOSPEL
of conviction is the only thing that begets confidence in the words heard ; the certainty of the preacher communicates itself to the hearers. It is important to notice also that this bearer of certain knowledge has, by the purity of his life, shown himself to be trustworthy, and has led the heathen to put faith in his words. ,vhen such an one accompanies his proclamation of the saving acts of God with the emphatic declaration : We are His witnesses, His testimony cannot fail to make an impression. Clearly, then, the testimony of living men has advantages, many and great, over that of the written or printed word. The printed book certainly brings a sure and authoritative knowledge, but it lacks the support of a trustworthy witness, staking his life on the truth of his message. Among uncivilised peoples a personal offer of the Gospel is the necessary thing. The written or printed word is ineffective for the most part, at least, in purely heathen regions. Its power of testimony is only among peoples whose faculty of judgment is more developed. 1 Missionary preaching must therefore take the form of assertion. It was so with the preaching of the Apostles. They testified of what they had seen and heard. They did not prove or persuade, but asserted ; they starved, suffered, and died for the truth of their words, so they won hearts, mastered by the certainty of a message in itself strange and paradoxical. Certainty about the declared acts of God is never produced by proofs or disputations ; it leaps up in the hearts of the hearers like the electric spark. The thing proclaimed lies in a region inaccessible to logical or historical proofs, on the further side of better understanding or want of understanding. The dogmatic 1 Tracts and Christian literature can only be of use in those parts of the heathen world where men are accustomed to draw their knowledge from books, or where some knowledge of the Gospel has percolated from neighbouring regions and awakened curiosity to learn its contents. Moreover, the heathen is prone to connect superstitious notions with the '' book " of the missionary, which he supposes to be a book of magic (c/. p. 167, note 3). It is often advisable to leave the hook at first in the background. It has no authority where God is not yet known.