Send the Light: Lottie Moon's Letters and Other Writings.

Send the Light: Lottie Moon's Letters and Other Writings. Edited by Keith Harper. Macon: Mercer University Press, 2002. 458 pp.

When telling the story of Southern Baptist international missions, the life of Lottie Moon is central to the story's early stages. Her life is significant because of her personal passion and sacrifice in taking the gospel to China and because she was not timid in communicating her conviction to the churches back home that many more should be serving alongside her as well as giving to the cause of Christ in that land. Most likely, her story would not have been so widely known and passed from generation to generation had not the Woman's Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention determined to name their foreign missions offering the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in 1888, an offering that has since raised over two billion dollars (p. 445).

The major and most recent biography of Lottie Moon, simply titled The New Lottie Moon Story, was written by Catherine B. Allen and published by Broadman Press in 1980. This biography is well researched and obviously draws from the primary sources of Lottie Moon's writings. But Mercer Press has done Baptist historians a marvelous favor by collecting and publishing Moon's writings under the title Send the Light. Edited by Keith Harper, this volume includes Moon's letters to work associates, family, and friends. It also includes articles that she wrote for The Foreign Mission Journal while on the field in China. These personal writings give an intimate glimpse into her life and thought. They reflect her honest struggles, her inflamed passion for evangelism, her opinionated critique of mission methodology and, most of all, her undying devotion to the Chinese people.

Although Harper stipulates from the beginning that his purpose is not to provide a biography of Moon and refers his readers to Allen's work, it still seems that a better summary of Moon's life and work in the introduction would have been an asset to the project. Harper does provide some interesting photographs of the principal people in her life and scenes in China.

For readers already familiar with the life and work of Moon who desire an easily accessible resource for digging deeper, this volume is the perfect answer. For readers not as familiar with her story, it is more useful to read this volume alongside the Allen biography. Either way, the wonderful thing about such primary material is that it enables us to know this meticulous, courageous, intelligent, and passionate Christ follower in a way that no secondary resource can offer.--Reviewed by Deirdre LaNoue, church historian and author, Irving, Texas.