To the Ends of the Earth

It gathers the missionary journals — Brainerd in the forests, Taylor in China, Carmichael in India, Crowther on the Niger — the gospel carried at any cost. Its keynote is Acts 1:8, "ye shall be witnesses unto me... unto the uttermost part of the earth": the shelf follows the great commission into the hard places, in the first-hand records of those who obeyed it.

Among them are "The Life and Diary of David Brainerd," Hudson Taylor's "A Retrospect," "Separation and Service," Amy Carmichael's "Things as They Are," Samuel Crowther's journal of the Niger expedition, Amanda Berry Smith's autobiography, and collections of the lives of those who gave everything for the gospel.

"Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" is the commission under the whole collection — the widening circle that ends only at the ends of the earth. It sets these journals not as travel writing but as obedience to Christ's last command, carried into forests, deserts, and closed lands.

Hudson Taylor's own account of his early years and the founding of the China Inland Mission — the story of a man who went inland where others would not, adopting Chinese dress and ways to reach the unreached millions, and who trusted God for every need. It brings to the shelf the pattern of a mission staked wholly on prayer and obedience.

Costly ones, told first-hand. David Brainerd's diary records a young man praying to exhaustion among the Native peoples of colonial America; Amy Carmichael's "Things as They Are" refuses to romanticise the mission field in India; Amanda Berry Smith's autobiography follows a freed slave's evangelism across four continents; and Crowther's journal carries the gospel back into Africa by an African.

They overlap and reinforce each other. Revival & Missions pairs the missionary lives with the lectures and seasons of awakening; To the Ends of the Earth focuses on the journals themselves — the day-by-day records of the gospel carried into the uttermost parts, at whatever cost to the ones who carried it.

Brainerd's diary is the classic entry, both moving and searching; Hudson Taylor's "A Retrospect" shows a mission built on faith; and Amy Carmichael's "Things as They Are" gives the honest, unromantic cost of the field. Together they carry the reader to the ends of the earth in the company of those who went first.

Because the great commission still stands, and these journals show what it costs and produces — lives poured out among the forgotten, the gospel carried where no one else would go. They stir the reader not with argument but with example, and press Acts 1:8 home: that the witness is not finished until it reaches the uttermost part of the earth.