Was it a hymn that prompted Dr Clement Chesterman to become a medical missionary in Congo? And if so, which hymn?

This well-known gospel song says “Bear the news to every land/ Climb the steeps and cross the waves.” A call simply to go.

Other hymns described the “heathen” people that missionaries would find there as “oppressed”, “forever weeping”, “groping to find light”, and “in blindness bowing down to wood and stone”. There was even a vignette of child sacrifice.

One mid 19th century hymn tried to understand these “heathen” practices:

   “Still God looks on human faces

Heavenward turned, but not to Him;

Slaves in bondage, worse than of fettered limb.”

Why did this writer think that the human faces were not turned to God? Most missionaries had no idea how to tell the difference between superstition and God-given traditional understandings of life.

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