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Ripe He ; THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON 1925 cs AN OF FAMERS, / ~~ “4 \/ JUL 2 1929 | ul icy ; \ id BAL SEAS THE FOREIGN MISSIONS“ CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON 1925 ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT - THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA PEE DIATAOWASEHING LON 2 DEC. JANUARY 28 TO FEBRUARY 2, 1925 EDITED BY FENNELL P. TuRNER AND FRANK KNIGHT SANDERS NEW YORK FOREIGN MISSIONS CONFERENCE OF NORTH AMERICA FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY NEW YORK AND CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONFERENCE OF NORTH AMERICA FOREWORD The 1925 Foreign Missions Convention of the United States and Canada, held at Washington, D. C., January 28 to February 2, inclusive, has passed into history. It was the latest and not least impressive of a series of noteworthy foreign missionary gatherings during the last half century, each registering progress in the diffi- cult art of expressing the increasing conviction of Christian men and women that in practical service the bonds that unite are stronger than the forces that would separate. Cooperation in Christian Missions calls for two kinds of as- semblies: those which come together to discuss a common program and policy and those which are distinctively inspirational. Each is equally important. The former affords opportunity for the inter- change of opinion and for the adoption of measures essential to the formulation of plans to enlist the energies of great constituencies. The latter contributes to an increase in intelligent loyalty to the cause of missions through the inspirational messages of experi- enced and recognized leaders. The former must necessarily be limited in size; the latter permits bringing together great numbers. Of the former class are the regular annual sessions of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, the agency through which the foreign Boards of Canada and of the United States act together in dealing with the current problems of foreign missions. ‘These annual sessions, which are attended by officially appointed delegates, afford a distinctive example of the way in which earnest men and women of markedly different opinions and views on many details of church and missionary administration may reveal a true unity of spirit and purpose to act together in devel- oping a common constructive program. The Conference reviews, year by year, the progress of missions as furthered by our North American churches and carefully considers plans for normal en- largement. The value of these annual gatherings in promoting cooperation and a world-wide approach to the problems of the mis- sionary enterprise of today cannot well be overstated. This value is increased by the fact that similar organizations, also holding an- nual gatherings and representing the Protestant churches of vast areas, are found in other parts of the world, both in Europe and in the Orient. These are the Conference of Missionary Societies of Great Britain and Ireland, the Deutscher Evangelischer Mis- sionsbund in Germany, Societe des Missions Evangeliques de Paris, the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish Councils, the National Christian Council of India, Burma and Ceylon, and the National Christian Councils of China and of Japan. Binding all these and other national missionary organizations into a truly representative v FOREWORD t fellowship is the International Missionary Council. The stated meetings of the International Missionary Council and of its standing committee afford the opportunity for discussion of missionary prob- lems by representatives of different nations. In size these meet- ings are small enough to provide for thorough discussions. These discussions are carried on by men and women whose knowledge of the missionary work and whose administrative responsibilities give weight to the conclusions reached. To the other type of assemblies, represented in the past by various missionary gatherings, such as the memorable one of 1900 in New York City, preceded by others at intervals as far back as 1854, belongs the recent Convention at Washington. While this gathering made provision in its program on three afternoons for discussions in simultaneous conferences upon a wide variety of themes, its purpose was inspirational, as indicated by the following statement, printed in the first announcement issued by the Com- mittee of Arrangements: “The primary purpose of the Convention is for the informa- tion and the inspiration of the churches of Canada and the United States. It will be an educational, not a deliberative or legislative, assembly. It will not deal with questions and problems of adminis- tration on the mission field. Its messages will be designed to en- large the interest and deepen the conviction of the Christian people at the home base as to their foreign mission responsibilities and obligations.” Testimonies concerning the wide range and impressiveness of the Convention program are emphatic and many. From first to last a singularly deep conviction seemed to dominate the vast assembly, representing the churches of North America, as it faced an out- look over the world and into the problems of missions, hitherto un- equalled in completeness, range and power. Whatever success may have attended the Convention was due to both the careful preparation and to the devout spirit of prayer that dominated the committees which worked in its behalf and the mission Boards which were behind it. For two years it had been under consideration. On January 11, 1923, the Foreign Missions Conference took action requesting the International Missionary Council to consider the advisability of holding a world missionary conference within the next two or three years. Another resolution was adopted directing its standing committee (the Committee of Reference and Counsel) to consider the advisability of holding an international conference for North America, if the way did not seem clear for a World Conference. In July of that same year the International Missionary Council concluded that the time had not arrived for another great world missionary gathering like that of Edinburgh in 1910. The Foreign Missions Conference of North America, at its annual session in January, 1924, expressed its def- vi FOREWORD inite approval of the proposal to hold in North America an inter- national convention in 1925. It authorized the Committee of Re- ference and Counsel to organize a Committee of Arrangements to be responsible for the development of the plan and program; it voted that the Convention should be a delegated body, representing the churches through the mission Boards; and it approved the sug- gestion that measures be taken to give the program a “strong inter- national outlook and message.” At the meeting of the Committee of Reference and Counsel, February 20, 1924, the following Committee of Arrangements was appointed: Rev. James L. Barton, D.D., LL.D.; Miss Helen B. Calder; Rev. William I. Chamberlain, Ph.D., D.D.; Rev. Stephen J. Corey, LL.D.; Rev. George Drach, D.D.; Rev. James Endicott, D.D.; Miss Mabelle Rae McVeigh; Mrs. Thomas Nicholson; Rev. Frank Mason North, D.D., LL.D.; Rev. Eugene H. Rawlings, D.D.; Rev. Joseph C. Robbins, D.D.; Mrs. Charles K. Roys; Rev. William P. Schell, D.D.; Rev. Egbert W. Smith, D.D.; Mrs. Hume R. Steele; John W. Wood, D.C.L. The Committee organized as follows: Dr. Barton, chairman; Dr. Robbins, vice-chairman; Mr. Alfred E. Marling, treasurer; and Mr. Fennell P. Turner, secretary. On this Committee rested the responsibility for the Convention. During the period from February, 1924 to January, 1925, it held eleven regular meetings in addition to many sub-committee meetings. On special occasions it invited into the deliberations of the Committee leaders in educa- tional and mission work who were not officially related either to the Committee of Arrangements or to missionary administration. There were held also special consultations with leaders and experts, going patiently over every aspect of the varied program. Not only were secretaries of the mission Boards thus consulted, but leaders in other activities—especially men and women who have recently visited and studied first hand the work of missions in the field. No pains were spared in order that the meetings at Washing- ton should adequately express the purposes of the Foreign Mis- sions Conference. The outcome of all these labors was the Conven- tion program, covering over three hundred separate appointments which were, almost without exception, carried out as planned (See pages 411-427). Much of the credit is due to the exceedingly efficient service of the organization which was formed for the handling of the Con- vention at Washington. The personnel of this organization will be found on page 430. The statistics of the Convention, as presented by the registrar, Mr. Leslie B. Moss, were as follows: Eighty-five mission organiza- tions and eleven missionary training schools were represented in the gathering, making ninety-six bodies in all, with 3,419 registered delegates. In addition, 1,150 tickets were taken by the Washing- vii FOREWORD ton churches and used by different people, so that probably over eight thousand Washington people attended one or more sessions of the Convention. The presence of important delegates of the historic churches of Europe and of the rising churches of Asia and South America, representatives of different countries and national organizations, was a notable feature of the Convention, as their participation contributed a very helpful element to the program of the main sessions as of the simultaneous conferences. Formal welcome was given to these foreign representatives at one of the sessions of the Convention. In the minds of those who were permitted to share in this Convention there is a profound sense of gratitude to God that it reached such heights of understanding and devotion. It stood upon a high plane of international and interracial thinking; it faced un- flinchingly the problem of reaching the men and women everywhere with the saving gospel; it embodied in itself the spirit of coopera- tion, without which the world can never know that the Son of God has been sent for its redemption; it experienced blessed hours of devotional and spiritual fellowship. At every session declarations of loyalty to Jesus Christ were put forth and repeated; and throughout, as the Convention sang and prayed and sought the way together, there was engendered a spirit of mutual confidence and a common purpose to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of eternal love, while all renewed their consecration to Him whose we are and whom we serve. FENNELL P. TURNER, Secretary. Vili CONTENTS FoREWoRD eeerereeowr ee eewert tse eee er ete eee ee eee este eee esses ee eneeeeeeeeeeseeae aE IPENING®? ADDRESS Sone eet ool ee ace vou otia't Fork. Sein nte's Hath eke The Reverend James L. Barton, D.D., LL.D. PRESS Aire ee aera ake he cht ot eh eet aN 95s sa'e ¢ pie. Sarees eane aed a President Calvin Coolidge. ee SRE RU PORTTHI NV HOLES VWORLD: das casi vaet sinc beeen ef caine The Compelling Character of this Message. Bishop Edwin D. DIGIOR SUL o aay Cee ese RN Pee re er Se hte esa oes The Continuous Promise of Our Lord. Miss Jean Kenyon MACKetIete iene Mn wee Ee Cow ke Part oa tw «url uietele RPh He Te ke (UHEL LREGENT c\VOGLDY DITUATIONT | vias siulacroe hbase Tae bae CORO s.: The Situation inthe Far East. Bishop Herbert Welch, D.D., LL.D. The New Peacoat of Turkey. The Reverend Fred F. Good- Bere LE PD pe tee ce a eae Be ott a Melee ius es RA de hee eam Oe The Situation at Home. Bishop Charles H. Brent, D.D....... Curist: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD........... His Message to the Individual. The Reverend John B. McLaurin His Message to Society. Miss Mabel K. Howell............... His Message to Nations and Races. Mr. Joseph H. Oldham, M.A. The Aim and Motive of Foreign Missions. The Reverend E. STD CTIA eS aVECR AY BM © sehen oe Be ohn Ae es aR I ae Mee LP AN Intercession: The Transforming Power of Christ. President W. Dinar iascomiackenrigns Lilo doch wen are Chto ae Geldalr ab tees HEP ROAM ATION OF THE: (s0SPRI Uc se oe dace Ke elt sain oo ea ela ees The Gospel in a Great Oriental City. The Reverend William Pac Ifige sh SpE Pence eta Se RK! er gta ti Pu Te skca's tales etalt Winning a Province. The Reverend Watts O. Pye............ The Evangelistic Methods in Honan. The Reverend Jonathan CrOmOr three Se tee che see ete Os bce cued oh abs oa Res, Movements toward Christ in India. Professor John Jesudson CCORTELIIIS Hie co Loe TT eT a rs a CA ads ROE Evangelism in the Native Church. Bishop Brenton Thoburn EET LP ats SES se oS Ap Bye Sa BASE SS orl Wea rere OE RY ge ater tsnSspely ainond eo ritmtve 2b CODICES 74 pair cy Saas oa ok Nace tae acue The Reverend Henry C. McDowell....................... BHGPREVET SOU Uah ess hehe LUTDUrts yes ce pee tee ne eto ealeeelee CHRISTIAN EpUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD..............--ecce0: The Significance of Christian Education in the Evangelizing Process. President James M. Henry, D.D............... The School as an Agency in the Building of Character. Miss Ida Bele OWRD N eee een tat oe oes cine Gil tie Patients Christian Education and Christian Leadership. Dean J. D. MacRae Christian Education and Christian Womanhood. Dean Helen K. PATS ere viene RG Sn ethane oie st Vile as od aso sisi Cae URE R Union and Cooperation in Education in India. The Reverend Pee RA nC Meee eee a lanes ook wae th bee epee Christian Education in Relation to Government Developments. BIPAe sete Lis POAT VT etna cn gine ide's datineccds ape ava The Period of Intercession: The Reverend Robert Forgan, D.D. ix PAGE CONTENTS CurRIst REVEALED THROUGH Deeps oF Mercy AND LovE............. Medicals\ Missions? Ty Dwieht.Sidane MUN ae eae. fate ane Women and Children in Industry in the Far East. Miss Mar- Pavel. Le WO ULE i sie iaieieeeaelees ok fe oo Rie crete inl cated a ERE on ea Sixteen Years’ Campaigning for Christ in Japan. The Rev- erend: ‘Toyohiko +} Karawa (2c. isortsceleee Ge arate eteetr he outa eine Should Missions Carry on Social Work? The Reverend Alden ES Clark Vag ee Pa Usa ale Soe Oe On tee tie Was Moe eacialna ee mene mar The Contribution of Christianity to the Womanhood of the Orient. President Mary E. Woolley, Litt. D., LL.D......... The Power of Christ Revealed in Personal Life. Professor Rutuss Vi Jones cali. el ete retary ac ste Omen et oer esr DHE GAURCH XEN THE? WEISSION SHIELD pc eat Laven. Shy ceiec a amet ten The Church in Latin America. The Reverend J. H. McLean, DD... The Church in India. The Reverend Bhaskar Pandurang Hivale The Church in the Far East. Bishop Henry St. George Tucker, D.D. The Imprisoned Splendor of the Orient. The Reverend Harris Ee Viarlke! CD Di ae aad Us ta semen ai the SOOT cee Ue erates THE Forercn MisstonARy MOovEMENT IN RELATION TO PEACE AND GOODWILL =A. MONG HINATIONS yl seals suiere tae Male oR ea oleae “Of One Blood.’ Bishop Michael Bolton Furse, D.D......... Education for Peace and Goodwill. Mrs. Thomas Nicholson... The Will for Peace. Professor William I. Hull, Ph.D......... The Christian Spirit in International Relations. The Honorable Newton Wi howell eee cicada ea el Rea ane eee The Period of Intercession: John Wilson Wood, D.C.L......... THE CONVENTION? SERMON 2 cols ce aiptoatatte oie ne nee aitene tee aera The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. The Reverend Canon H. J. Cody i Dab A Dee ees ie rads A ie al Lane INTERCESSION: Spiritual Qualifications for Missionary Service at Home and Abroad? Mr. Robert. Pa W thderwen Soe iio ae eee a oe New. Forcrs |); RELEASEDs BY \GOOPERATION .), Ui uo vuateete sk ees ease bn John R. Mott, LL.D., Chairman, International Missionary Council. Tue PLAce oF ForetIGN MIssioNs IN THE CHURCH AT HoMEe........ Why Foreign Missions? Rev. Arthur J. Brown, D.D., LL.D... The Adequate Foreign Mission Program of a Denomination. The Reverend Ralph E. Diffendorfer, D.D................ The Adequate Foreign Missionary Program in a Congregation. The? RevetendsS2W.. Herman: «iia oer eee ga cats The Layman’s Responsibility for the Foreign Missionary Move- ments! Mir Robert; A; Doant 09. ae acter ocisla bee Mateeerens The Responsibility of Woman in the Foreign Missionary Move- ment, . Mrs*Charles "Kirkland! hovetsse ss id te emer huge The Pastor’s Responsibility for the Foreign Missionary Move- ment; The, Reverend High T. Kerr: D.Don svivasieas North America Christians and World Missions. The Reverend William! }P2\ Schell sD: Dicocry 6! enaauian eas 5 acca nee eeeramie ad The Appeal of Foreign Missions to the Individual Christian. The Reyerend’ James ‘Endicott, DoDoan se. co aerwels pee oe Intercession: President J. Ross Stevenson, D.D. ............:> x PAGE 123-147 123 128 134 138 141 144 148-170 148 152 156 162 171-193 171 176 180 184 190 194-208 194 203 209-222 223-272 223 227 233 237 245 252 pA 262 268 CONTENTS THE EpUCATION OF A CONGREGATION IN MISSIONS............ee000 What One Congregation Did in Missionary Education. Pro- FESSOP TON ALO MA TOUET dots he oe eee ies wee Sues slut eae SY The Objectives of the Missionary Education of a Congregation. PEOCSSOLy Crave e Mater ee toss eed, cles ci Na, cae sake The Place of Missions in the Church School. The Reverend BLELDELH Wer tsAtea tee ores Cae bor Teen oe vomte sien The Home as an Agency for Missionary Education. Mrs. E. pin Cronk eae tee etna ae cost Oy Le Ae Fees MALE CN an REASONS FOR BECOMING FOREIGN MISSIONARIES........s-cccecccceees Testimonies of Student Volunteers. DiTee Ev ater LeNlte a. eis ae ele ead Oe be Oe eee Mises Lvridasiceties Goodsell oie ecru nee urea ein he nee ake WV AITOE PLUG soeN aaa cl alee ae CR at ONC RE RS Gd coat ASPECTS OF THE MOHAMMEDAN PROBLEM........ccccecceccecceceess Intellectual Movements among Moslems. Dean Robert S. DiGtteie an eels L hao) oneness RG Ave oases ee Moslem Aggression in Africa. Professor Dr. Julius Richter... God’s Love for the Mohammedans. The Reverend Samuel M. BZ WOCMer el). Ls be AG dy sree eae shaighe Statice ah oe he Ris ans AES PROGRESS (OF JMISSIONS ING THE: DUTCH LNDIES« s.\.ocvtir ts aide ae cee A Brief Survey of Dutch Missions. Baron van Boetzelaer MAT EL TI MELatilapecee 0 os with erase tas he ewok rca ak ae ens The Revival in Nias. The Reverend A. Bettin............... BOMEC ISA TINY} MERICAN ROBE RMS <2 0 Ast cocks ies c cpaciewe tie cise vlad ~ Special Fields of Service in which Latin-Americans Need and Welcome the Help of the Christian Forces of other Coun- Trea NLT Peat ones tO tice MILLS Wie ruth Neil ae RCL 6 Recent Outstanding Social Developments in Latin America and their Significance and Appeal. The Reverend J. H. WC Pea is ars tets ae ofr eee LA 6 site andes tos se Mis Gee lnc ees The Indians in Latin America: The Appeal They Make and the Obligation We Face. The Reverend H. C. Tucker, D.D.... LCPIRISTEANS WGITERATURE IN; THE) MISSION ID TEED 2 coc ose nies vib ele oo wie Cooperation in the Development of Christian Literature. Dr. A. PSV ATUIS IITs 1c aR aE eat ie ctl aia by unmitats Ue eS id. bdatis Training and Development of Good Writers. The Reverend Per aitibe creek TASS pees eee Witig catia NDEs Ginn Siese tuatdls Lica @ The Work of the Literature Committee of the National Chris- tian Council of India. The Reverend John Aberly........ THE BIBLEVIN SCHR MISSION SFRIREDIT. Coes cs todo dete eee alicnoub we Its Place and Power. The Reverend Robert Forgan, D.D...... The Bible and Women. Mrs. Henry W. Peabody............. Circulation of the Scriptures in the Near East. The Reverend PRET NUT es Rall oles eer atere nets c cntin MUTANS eitirld so hale see me The Bible in Latin America. The Reverend H. C. Tucker, D.D. The Problems of Bible Translation. Professor Oswald T. sie TORSTEN PSE YS ORT So A Sher, Sy Ua annals A Pian, gc, wean Translating in the Miskito Language of Central America. The Reverend: Georeeminrceresthre.s. sat, od akc peticn mele sees Translating in Portuguese East Africa. The Reverend E. H. ICHAT OTe ne fe er et Ree ane Re deme Pena. 8 The Translation of the Malay Bible. Professor W. G. Shella- Ryser d se TD. Pore ie etary hci oe eee eae ita Nin mek W dit alk ges Din Sim lone Kia th shevs William Tyndale. The Reverend W. B. Cooper, M.D., D.D...... X1 PAGE 273-283 281 284-289 284 285 287 290-305 290 295 299 306-311 306 309 312-323 312 316 320 324-331 324 327 330 332-360 332 336 341 345 347 351 Bo cLY | 359 CONTENTS PAGE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD.............000cceeees 361-365 (Notes of a Conference). Mr: ‘Joseph: HivOldhann eMiAs fae nw aes Se aupnap Reeprey es a 361 Dre Wi Gand ee eons Bae eA Cae tar oa OME Ce a 362 Mer Wi Fae Eee aes VS acon aes shat aie ere eB Ca 363 Dri Martin } Sehtitike ayo oie tee eater ke eva Ue mecam ee Re enue 364 Professor. “Lewis: Hodouss tpi te he ete oe as Betas Sense ra 364 The Reverend (Ray ACg Browitis ies wakes elonb neato ar Oe eee 365 Pastor Daniel Gatiyer uae ui eee a tieen tees cea etn itis eer cat 365 The Reverend Frank Mason North, D.D...................45.. 365 The; Reveretid “Eric: Ms Northiee Pisce. wa see a ee ee elec 365 AGRICULTURAL AND’ INDUSTRIAL ’ MISSIONS Fides veda os es Bacteria 366-374 (Notes of a Conference). Dr, Thomas J esseag ONS Yo sinc cat ee ean Une ee teen oa eee 366 Mra Was Fy Meee soins acc fc Satasatctay tee ered, cud oe aha ee eer Mae 369 Meru We Herniry* Grant: w. coo oy neti stir sis malts Wire ns Saree ee ee 370 The Reverend. homas 7s. Donohtteiw a vines tea gee ee ee eth 371 Mer. Letoystockman oss wines ska aes ae seinen einge oii eine ase Dr? Willtam ASS Taylot i: Ue st cae ae he eee arene ee ea 372 Dr. Homer Leroy Shantza Co eae Wane a. ee ein ta 373 STEWARDSHIP “AND, FOREIGN; MISSIONS) su c5 sean aa oe a aeidaees a eee 375-380 (Notes of a Conference) Mr: ? Elarry. Sih Myereat ace oe oe eae oe Ai a ea 375 The Reverend} Haro Bruen ee ee eee cae 376 The «Reverend ) David! MtConationy co.uk wet ba ne es 377 Dr Wits Denison 2.26 ere atc sh on ee ee eee aan eee 3 378 The Reverend Mi Es Melvin, "Diba sire ww. enna tee eee 379 GREETINGS 10) THES CONVENTION 3a none fate te ney Mean ate ato es ouea 381-394 Messages by Cable from Japan; from China; from India; from the Near East. Read by the Reverend Frank Mason North, D.D., Chairman, Foreign Missions Conference of North’ Americaige Giataive ean cae tuccee ree aces caine ea 381 Greetings from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. Pre- sented by Associate Director Daniel Couve .............. 382 Greetings from the Swedish Missionary Council. Presented by Secretary. Jakob, Ev Lundahl: 252, vias op ake suk ce eae te 384 Greetings from the German Evangelical Missionary Union. Presented by Missionsinspektor M. Schlunk ............ 385 Greetings from the Committee of Advice, The Netherlands. Presented by Baron van Boetzelaer van Dubbeldam..... 387 Greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Presented by the Right Reverend Michael Bolton Furse, D.D., Bishop of the /Diocese Of) St. cA bans ca aon cee ae eee eee 388 Greetings from the Conference of Missionary Societies in Great Britain and Ireland. Presented by the Reverend Robert Forgan, 419. Ds Ooi kva ateeti eae ne are etw aie a ere aan eeenaae need 389 The Response on Behalf of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. The Reverend William I. Chamber- lain, Ph.D., Chairman, Committee of Reference and Counsel 391 THE CALL oF Our UNFINISHED MISSIONARY TASK........-0-00 eee 395 Dr. Robert E. Speer. STATISTICS 2 boc wk u ciohn whine ara we ch etk Eee ae ale ne eee 410 PROGRAM? 55'S Coa ORE ees toate eee an vane eens, mune a 411 OFFICIADS. jh. sect iande Po a ale eee Le RAO Le eee 428 “WHo's WWHO" fi Saiki dcccc wh et eied tea palace Gein iil tae ee 431 TNDEX! 24 och gee ce aee vals sorties bine Sige | ce aad Ao ae eee ee 44] THE OPENING ADDRESS THE REVEREND JAMES L. BARTON, D.D., LL.D., BOSTON, MASS. Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements This Convention is both interdenominational and international. It is held under the auspices of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, as representing the foreign mission Boards and sending Societies of Canada and of the United States, and it re- joices in the participation of similar Societies in England, and on the continent of Europe. In times past the reproach has been levelled against Christendom, with some justification, that in the Church of Jesus Christ there have been many and bitter divisions and controversies through which the body of our blessed Lord has been dismembered and its physical and spiritual resources wasted. It is therefore a significant fact that in the realm of foreign missions the Church of Christ with exalted idealism has entered upon practical measures of fraternal cooperation such as have never been experienced in any other field of Christian activity. When the Protestant churches of various denominations entered upon the seemingly impossible task of imparting to the hundreds of millions of the non-Christian world a saving knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they were so overcome by an overwhelming sense of inadequacy and responsibility that they began to submerge sectarian differences and to unite alike upon the eternal verities of their common faith and upon a common program of activity. For thirty-two consecutive years the foreign mission Boards of North America have assembled by official delegates at their annual conference to consider and put into operation methods of practical cooperation in all forms of missionary endeavor in the foreign mission fields. Some one hundred Boards, Societies and organizations are now united in the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, which, through its standing committee, the Committee of Reference and Counsel, acts in an increasing num- ber of categories in the interest of all. This Committee, through its seventeen organized sub-committees, puts into practical opera- tion the decisions of the Conferences. As a result of such cooper- ative measures, vast improvements have been made in the scientific handling of missionary operations on the field, and in the bettering of conditions of missionary service, and important union enter- prises have been developed and are maintained. Significant prog- ress has been made in the unification of missionary interests both at home and abroad, so that every type of ability or form of re- source is becoming available for practical use in the steady ad- vancement of the Kingdom of God in mission lands. The Boards participating in the Foreign Missions Conference and in this Con- 1 2 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON vention receive annually from their respective constituencies and disburse in the support of their work more than forty millions of dollars. They sustain and direct in the foreign field over eighteen thousand American missionaries. There are assembled at this great Convention the delegates from nearly one hundred missionary organizations in North Amer- ica, including with a few exceptions, all the Protestant ecclesi- astical bodies on the American continent. These organizations are represented by their executive officers, by the members of their missionary Boards and by their sustaining constituencies. There are organizations similar to our Foreign Missions Con- ference, in Great Britain, on the Continent of Europe, in Aus- tralasia, in South Africa, and on the great mission areas. These organizations, representing in the same comprehensive way the churches of each nation and area, demonstrate in a fresh and con- vincing way the welding power of a mighty task undertaken under the imperative of a divine command. They have not only united in order to carry forward with efficiency the missionary enterprise in their own districts, but they have all united in the creation and support of an International Missionary Council which represents the Protestant foreign missionary interests of the whole world. This Convention does not represent a novel idea. It is the immediate successor of the historic Edinburgh Missionary Con- ference of 1910, which in turn follows the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in New York City in 1900. But that conference was antedated by others—by one in London in 1888, preceded by a similar one in Mildmay Park, London, in 1878, which was pre- ceded by one in Liverpool in 1860, antedated by two in 1854, one meeting in New York and one in London as conferences in the interests of the great foreign missionary enterprise shared in by representatives of many Christian communions. Thus for no less than seventy years the different denominations most deeply inter- ested in the foreign missionary work of the church have been putting the differences which separated them into the background and have been emphasizing those fundamental elements of Chris- tian belief and practice on which they were willing to unite for the achievement of their great common task. The times are propitious for the assembling of this great body to consider together the application of the principles laid down by Jesus Christ to meet world conditions. Economic, social, po- litical, national, international and.religious revolutions have swept over the world since the conference at Edinburgh. “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.” Many pan- aceas are being offered for healing the world’s sorrows and allevi- ating its pains. Many of these have their proper place in any scheme of progress. But we are here assembled under the over- whelming conviction that not by education or culture or civiliza- THE OPENING ADDRESS 3 tion or treaties or disarmament, however helpful these may be, can the world be redeemed. The only way is by implanting in the hearts of men and in the hearts of nations the seeds of the king- dom of our Lord Jesus Christ. There must be created in the souls of men of every nation and kindred, and translated into their life, the will for self-surrender, for peace, for personal sacrifice, for unhesitating loyalty to Jesus Christ. There must be an under- standing recognition that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men.” Only by the practical application of, what Jesus Christ calls “my gospel” to this sin-sick and passion-torn world can the world be saved. In devout reliance upon the God of missions and believing that we serve under his divine commission, we are assembled in this Convention to submit ourselves and the causes we represent to that unerring guidance that shall lead us into all truth. ADDRESS PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE It is a pleasure to receive and welcome here the members of this international conference in the interest of Christian missionary work throughout the world. One of the most Christian things I have observed about organized Christianity is the missionary spirit which pervades it. It was this spirit which from the beginning gave to the gospel of Christ its power over the hearts of men. For it is of the essence of Christian ethics and spirituality that those who have once felt their full inspiration are thereafter enlisted in carrying these blessings to all who need them. Whoever will study that wonderful story of the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world in the early centuries of our era, must get from it a deep conviction of the service which was rendered. In a time when old pagan systems were breaking down, when civilization was falling into decadence and unspeak- able corruption, the Christian faith came with its new and better conception of life. It revealed a real justice and a real mercy. It brought promise of immortality, a vision of man as the possessor of a soul that should not perish. To a world in which the vast majority were born to lives of hopelessness and misery, it brought realization of a new destiny. The basis of this new concept was brotherhood. Its essence was an unselfishness which, flowering into the wonderful missionary movement of those early centuries, sought to carry the new dispensation to all mankind. Those early Christians, living so near to the time of the apos- tolic mission, were animated by a zeal and a simple faith which, if they could be revived in all their early power, would bring to our world a great blessing. We have come upon a time which men often compare to the later generations of Roman history. Just as, in that older time, there was need for the spirit of Chris- tianity in the world, so now there is need for a revival of faith, for a dedication to the works which that revived faith would show to us as the need of the race, and for a renewal of the spirit of brotherhood at all times and in all places. The Christian nations have become, in an intensely practical as well as a highly spiritual sense, charged with a great trust for civilization. Whatever misgivings we may sometimes feel about their administration of the trust, we cannot doubt, as we survey the world, that it has been imposed upon them. They are the custodians of a faith which, despite momentary lapses and some perversions, has on the whole been a continuing inspiration to human betterment. Wherever it has gone, there the light of a bet- ter understanding has shone; there the works of charity, of benev- 4 ADDRESS 5 olence, of mutual helpfulness, have prospered. Intolerance has been lessened. Education has been summoned as an ally in the struggle against ignorance and bigotry. Science in a thousand realms, the mechanic arts in all their varied departments, have been laid under contribution to improve the estate of men. For Christianity, let it be impressed, is a highly practical, as well as a profoundly spiritual, mode of life. It loses nothing of its spiritual quality because of its practical helpfulness; but it touches all its practical workings with the spirit and purpose of lofty as- piration. Our confidence in it is justified by our knowledge of its accomplishments. Wherever it has been carried and made a force in the affairs of men, it has wrought for their good. But we must recognize also that it has added greatly to the complexity of human life and problems. Its encouragement to education, to knowledge, to scientific advancement, has created new forces in the world. The spirit of our organized, industrialized, machine- made and inter-related world has touched men wherever they live, and profoundly affected their modes of life and thought. It has aroused in them new yearnings and new aspirations. It has truly converted this planet into a brotherhood of races and nationalities, interdependent in a thousand ways, tending more and more to develop a common culture, a common thought and purpose toward the great business of living. The problems which in this new order of life present themselves, will not be solved except through a greater and constantly greater projection of the spirit of neigh- borship and cooperation, which is the true basis of the Christian code. As Christian nations have assumed the responsibility for bringing this new and higher civilization in touch with all peoples, so they must recognize their responsibility to press on and on in their task of enlightenment, education, spiritualization, Christian- izing. There can be no hesitancy, no cessation of effort. Not only must they go forward with this great task, but they must be sure that they go with the right purposes. They must carry help and real service. Let us look this part of our problem fairly in the face, and see if we can find what is demanded. Not everything that the men of Christian countries have carried to the other peoples of the world, has been good and helpful to those who have received it. Our civilization is yet far from perfect. Its aims are liable to much distortion, when it comes in contact with peoples not yet ‘equipped through generations of race experience to absorb, to understand, to appreciate it. One of the greatest things that a missionary movement could do for the less favored communities, would be to assure that all who go out from the Christian to the non-Christian communities, should carry with them the spirit, the aims, the purposes, of true Christianity. We know that they have 6 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON not always done this. We know that the missionary movements have repeatedly been hampered, and at times frustrated, because some calling themselves Christians, and assuming to represent Christian civilization, have been actuated by un-Christian motives. Those who have been willing to carry the vices of our civilization among the weaker peoples and into the darker places, have often been more successful than those who have sought to implant the virtues. The Christian churches and governments have no greater re- sponsibility than to make sure that the best, and not the worst, of which Christian society is capable, shall be given to the other peoples. To accomplish this is the dominating purpose of a true missionary movement. It is one of the most important, most absolutely necessary movements in the world today. We shall ourselves be the gainers, both spiritually and materially, by our efforts in behalf of those whom we shall thus help. The early Christians fairly burned with missionary zeal. Our missionary efforts will be the more effective, just in proportion as we shall render them in the same spirit of brotherhood and charity which marked the earliest Christian efforts. Such a service as you aspire to do for mankind, can be ren- dered only under the inspiration of a broad and genuine liberalism. It must rest on toleration. It must realize the spirit of brother- hood. And the foundation of all missionary effort abroad must be toleration and brotherhood at home. The most effective mis- sionary work will be that which seeks to impress itself rather through example in living rightly than through the teaching of precept and creed. The works of charity and benevolence, of edu- cation and enlightenment, will best lay the foundation upon which to rear the permanent structure of a spiritual life. Our liberalism needs to be generous enough to recognize that missionary effort will often build better on foundations already laid, than by attempt- ing to substitute a complete new structure of morality, of life, and of ethics. Indeed, those who shall go out from among us, carrying the missionary message into the twilight places of the world, will there find much that is worthy to be brought back to enrich our ideals and improve our life. They will learn many lessons of industry, of humility, of reverence for parents, of respect for con- stituted authority, which may quite conceivably become adorn- ments to our own social fabric. If those who bear our message abroad shall realize and accept the lessons that may be learned from the humbler and simpler peoples, they will be the more suc- cessful in planting the spiritual truths of Christianity. Beyond that, they will be able to bring back much that will serve us well. We have not all the wisdom that has been diffused among the sons of men. But we have been greatly favored and have much where- ADDRESS 7 with to aid those less richly endowed. A becoming modesty, a discriminating sense of our real opportunities and responsibilities, are altogether to be desired as helps in the great work we wish to do. The missionary effort of the nation cannot rise higher than its source. If we expect it to be successful in this field, we must provide the correct influences for it at home. THE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD THE COMPELLING CHARACTER OF THIS MESSAGE BISHOP EDWIN D. MOUZON, D.D., NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE The great missionary enterprise moves forward by the com- mand and under the authority of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Back behind His command is His authority. After His resurrection from the dead He said to His disciples, “All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations.” His authority is the author- ity of His divine personality. His authority is the self-evidencing authority of His message. His authority is the compelling authority of His cross. His authority is the authority of the risen and reign- ing Lord. The compulsion of the missionary enterprise, then, is the compulsion of the Divine Christ. I mean something more than that we must carry the message, because He has commanded us to carry it. I mean to say that upon those of us who have heard His voice and whose hearts have been opened to His influence, His divine personality lays its compelling power; and we must needs carry it, because He com- pels us to acknowledge Him as the Master of our thinking and the Lord of our lives. The earliest disciples did not believe in Him as Christ because He had first announced the fact that He was Divine. The power of His personality was brought to bear upon them, until little by little and more and more they were com- pelled, almost in spite of themselves, to cry out, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God; my Lord and my God.” If today we do not have this message to give to the world, and if we do not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, there is upon us no compulsion and there can be upon us no compulsion. Jesus Christ, the son of God, our Lord and our Savior, this is He that we bring to the world in a message of salvation, and never was the world in greater need of that message than today, never was the world more hungry for that message than today. I say, then, that the compulsion of the Gospel is the divine com- pulsion that has been laid upon us by the personality of Jesus Christ. About him we sing with the saints of all ages: “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” No lesser Christ than this is sufficient for the needs of the world today. The call of all the nations is for the Christ of the New Testament, the Christ of Christian history, the Christ of liv- ing personal experience. 8 THE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD 9 Again the compulsion of the missionary enterprise is the compulsion of the self-evidencing message that Jesus Christ has brought into the world. It is altogether commonplace—we have heard it always and we read it in all books—to say that Jesus Christ is the greatest ethical teacher that the world has ever seen. But in these recent months, having again made a careful study of the teachings of Jesus, it has been borne in upon me that there has never been any teaching in all the world like the teaching of Jesus. The intellectual superiority of the teachings of Jesus— mark you, I am saying “the intellectual superiority of the teaching of Jesus’—over all ethical teachers that have ever lived, over all teachers of sociology that have ever lived, is the outstanding con- sideration in our thinking today. The fact is, the Christian world is now as never before brought face to face with the question whether or not we are going to be Christians, whether or not we are willing to be Christians, whether or not we dare to follow Jesus. Dare we be Christians? Dare we cease to compromise? For let it be confessed that throughout all these years we have compromised. The nation has compromised ; the church has compromised; we ministers have compromised; in- dividual Christians have compromised. But now the compulsion of the message of Jesus is upon us, as he tells a distraught world anew that God is the Father of all men, that all men are brothers, that there is no value like the value of the soul, that the law of the cross must prevail everywhere, that the principle of self- sacrificing service is the only principle that is going to save the world. We have come to see that the teachings of Jesus must apply, not merely to the individual, and not merely to the home and to the school, but to all economic conditions whatsoever, and to all interracial relations whether in America or in Africa, or in Japan, or elsewhere; and that the principles of Jesus must be made to apply in all international relationships. One finds out that when our greatest sociologists, having made a scientific study of human conditions, state their principles and say, “only thus and thus can the world or society be saved,” they have simply restated in modern and scientific form the marvelous things that Jesus said in Galilee and in Judea in the long ago. But as you know, we have been much more concerned about being theologians than about being Christians. The one supreme “heresy” that the Church confronts today is the heresy that has to do with the building of the Kingdom of God in human society. We must, therefore, ask ourselves, if we dare be Christians, if we dare follow Jesus Christ, if we dare make our religion a prac-_ tical thing, having to do with all the affairs of life in this world. As modern Christians we are convinced that only this way lies the salvation of human society. 10 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Again, the compulsion of Jesus, the compulsion of the mis- sionary message, is the compulsion of the Cross. “In the Cross of Christ I glory, Towering o’er the wrecks of time, All the light of sacred story, Gathers round its head sublime.” “The Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to min- ister and to give his life a ransom for many.” So said Jesus, and in order that the law of the cross and that the truth of his atoning sacrifice might forever be in the very center of our thinking, he instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,—“This bread is my body, broken for the world.” “This wine is my blood, shed for humanity.” “Tf you pluck the Cross out of the New Testament, you have plucked out its heart. If you take the Cross out of our message, you have taken out the Christ message. It would be far better to keep the Cross central in our thinking, although it might be in the crudest and rudest and even in a very uncouth theology, than to give to men the latest refinements in theological thinking and lose the significance of the Cross where Jesus died. This is what the world is hungering for. Christianity is the religion of redemption. The deepest human need is the need of redemption. As one seems to hear the cry that goes up from human hearts all over the world, it is this cry, “Help! help! help!” Thank God, He has laid help upon One that is mighty. The hand of the Redeemer, the pierced, blood-stained hand of the Redeemer, is reached down to the men who are crying “help,” to render the only help that will heal the hurt of the world and bring redemption to a sin-cursed race. The story is told of a missionary in India how one said to him, “Stop telling that story of the cross. We have many religions here, and we have many stories here, but we have no such story as the story of the cross. Stop telling that story. If you keep on, people will cease to follow us and will all go to following Jesus.” What I say to you, gathered together here today from many lands and many ecclesiasticisms, is this: Tell the story of the Cross unceasingly ; and as you tell it men will turn away from their false gods and will go to following Jesus. Heine dreamed that he was at the supper of the gods. Heavenly wine was brought and they all drank and lived at ease. Then, in the midst of the feast, the door opened and a pale form came in, staggering under the weight of a great cross, which he flung down upon the table. Then the faces of the gods turned pale and, one by one, they vanished away. Which is a parable. As Jesus Christ and his Cross come into this world the faces of false gods everywhere turn pale and vanish out of sight. “All hail the power of Jesus’ name! Let angels prostrate fall.” THE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD 11 Once more, the compulsion of our message is the compulsion of the risen and reigning Lord. It is the compulsion of him who says: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore.” The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a two- fold fact. It is a fact of history and it is a fact of experience. The fact of the empty sepulcher and the recovered and victorious faith of the disciples—there is the fact of history. But throughout all the centuries we have had the fact of experience. The saints of God, the men who have followed Jesus, have come to know him not merely as a marvellous character written about in an ancient book, but have come to know him as one with whom they have fellowship, one whom they meet not merely in the sanctity of their closet, nor in the holy places of the temple of worship, but one whom they meet as they sit by the side of the broken- hearted, as they minister to the dying, and as they go out where men toil and suffer and wonder and fall and die. They have met the living Christ there; and unless you and I have some personal knowledge of Him who lived and died and is alive forevermore, there will be no compelling power in our message and there will be no particular reason why we should carry what we may choose to call “the gospel” to the uttermost parts of the earth. Are we ready, then, to be Christians? Are we ready to make the surrender, the absolute, the complete, the eternal surrendet that is necessary, if the great task remaining to be done is done? Are we ready to attempt the romantic enterprise? Pardon me for telling an old story. You remember the story of Douglas and the heart of Bruce, how Bruce had longed that he himself might win the holy sepulcher, but had died without doing so, and how he charged Douglas that, if he ever made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he should carry Bruce’s heart in a casket of silver and deposit it at the sepulcher of his Lord. So it came about, by and by, that Douglas was on his way to the Holy Land, when he encountered a band of Saracens who challenged him to mortal combat. As he got ready for the fray he unloosed the casket from about his neck and threw it into the midst of the band of Saracens, crying after it, “Go, heart of Bruce, and where thou leadest Black Douglas will follow thee, or die.” Here, then, this day, in the presence of God, one and all, let us say: “Lead on, O Son of God, and where thou leadest, we will follow thee or die.” 12 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON THE CONTINUOUS PROMISE OF OUR LORD MISS JEAN KENYON MACKENZIE, FORMERLY OF AFRICA I was listening with a very great interest to the speaker who preceded me and thinking how surely in Christ’s plan for us the promise has followed the commission, and that before He sent us forth with the commission upon us, He assured us of His great power, and that it was the power through which this work was to be done. I seemed to see on a moonlit path in Africa, with a machine, the engine for a saw-mill, resting upon the path. Mr. Fred Hope, who was taking the machinery into that forest country, was sleeping beside the engine with a friend of his, the moon lying over all. A group of people were walking by. People walk at night in our country, who can do so, to escape the sunlight on the highways that the white man has put through the African forests. Mr. Hope says that he heard a little controversy on the far side of the path where the engine had been placed. The women and the men, who were carrying loads on their backs, spoke together. They were speaking in fear of that strange thing so unknown to them, so potential in its unknown power. There was in that caravan a person of the tribe of God. She was dubiously asserting her power to pass this monster. She said it was a thing of the people of the tribe of God, and could do her, who was a person of the tribe of God, no harm. So she agreed that she would pass it with due caution; and that if she arrived safely beyond where it was, then her friends might dare to do as she had done, and might pass it too. In the moonlight her brown body slipped by the passive engine, and no damage was incurred. One by one each member of the caravan followed after and went on rejoicing, doubtless to tell in many villages how one may pass the strange and fearsome creature of the saw-mill, provided he is a person of the tribe of God, or walking in the company of such. Now, I do not regard that attitude—a belief that it is not going to do us any harm—as the ideal attitude toward the power of Christ in this world. Rather is it true that here upon the path- way of this world is the great power of Christ as he promised it to us, not to be slipped past quietly in the night, but abundantly available to those of us who will put our hands upon it for the making of a new clearing, for the making of a new town, for the making of a new order. I remember how mightily I have seen the power of God at work in the world and I want to declare, first of all, what we all may know, that it comes to us most fully in our weakness. We have a saying in Africa, “The little stream does not fear the forest.” It does not, because the forest is its element. And God has made for us too a native element, which is the power of God THE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD 13 at work in this world. All of us have been at some time in a close room crowded with people, noisy with the clamor of voices. Going into the open, we have felt our very being expand with the freshened vital air we breathed. Some such experience we missionaries have had when first we went out into the work and found that Christ was there before us in all His power. How we expanded, how we felt, at last, as though we were in our native element. The power of Christ at work in the world gives such a setting for the human soul. No one will deny that the best of us are very weak. We realize this weakness when we attempt to do the work of Christ. Yet how wonderfully we have found that Christ keeps His prom- ise about His power, and that it is made perfect in weakness. This declaration we must never forget. The power of God is made perfect in our weakness,—as if our weakness were a little boat and the power of God were the cargo,—as if our weak- ness were a slack sail and the power of God were the wind; as if our weakness were an empty purse and the power of God were the gold piece,—well, we know whose would be the superscription on the money. But, not only in power is our Lord to be with us, but in per- sonal companionship. It is the most lonely people who are to be most conscious of that personal companionship. I am thinking of such people all over the world. We all know how much happier any kind of a task becomes, if someone does it with us, but many a task has to be undertaken alone. I think now especially of student volunteers, of young people turning over within their own hearts, in their own families, in their own college circles, the lonely way in which they seem to be starting out, and wishing very much that they had some one who was such a companion, that they could sincerely discuss the secret things of the heart. Jesus said to Nathaniel, “I saw you under the fig tree.” When and where was that fig tree? No one has ever told its story of that secret companionship, of the presence of Christ with Nathaniel in some lonely hour when Christ himself was present, though Nathaniel himself was unaware of his nearness. What a precious thought for puzzled young people that truly in decisions, truly in dreams, even perhaps truly in resentments against the world as it is, Christ can be present, though unseen. I am thinking also of people who are called upon to make pecuniary sacrifices for His sake. Many a one has put his hand into his pocket and has drawn out what was there, not lightly, and has laid it aside for God’s work in the world. I want to remind them that Christ is present with them in that effort. You remember the widow who put her two mites into the treasury. Jesus was there to see that high resolve and to bless it, though I 14 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON suppose she was unconscious of His presence. Many here are going to go back home to make severe financial sacrifices, but it is a glorious fact that in every stage of that sacrifice our Lord is present. I once saw a youth in Africa give away a pair of green trousers. One sees many astonishing things in Africa, whether they are curious animals, or women with their bodies painted red, but I never was more surprised than when that youth on Sunday when the great collection baskets were passed, put in his pair of green trousers. It was the extreme of sacrifice. I am likewise thinking today of ministers on the night before they make their plea for their budgets and when they have made their final collections. J think of Board treasurers, men and women who carry the great financial burdens of God’s work in the world and who feel themselves lonely indeed among such cares. They go to conventions; they address meetings; they seem to be sur- rounded by people who eagerly listen to what they have to say; but when the last gong is sounded and the last convention door is shut and the family itself is asleep in their beds, there is a window lit and a man above a desk and he is watching in the third watch. But One there is who says, “Blessed is he,” and that is our Lord Jesus. Sleeping at night in trains, knocking about in steamers, going hither and yon upon the things of our Lord’s kingdom in this world, the Lord’s messengers do not go alone. Casting up your accounts at the last and putting in your two mites at the last, encouraging a congregation to rise to the emergency that lies before it,—these efforts are not without witness,—our Lord is with such even to the end. Let me turn from these lonely efforts to think about the church invisible in the world. There is a kind of disreputable herald that goes before the great caravan of God’s people. He is always shouting, “It can’t be done.” I speak to the young and to the old alike. When you wake to the sound of the trumpet that says “It can’t be done,” rise to your feet, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. After that disreputable herald there comes another and he says, “All power,’ and that is the herald of our Lord. After them come the great company of the redeemed who voice their acclaim. Some of them look rather disreputable. If Mr. Couve, who is here from Africa, and my fellow-missionaries from Africa could trail our crowds of converts into this assembly today, they would not be as impressive as if Dr. J. C. R. Ewing were to come in with his Indian people; but one and all, we follow the man who says, “All power,” for that is our Lord. I was spending the night in an African village. Because I had a headache, my tent was turned away from the village. I was putting all the affairs of the village out of mind, it might be, THE GOSPEL FOR THE WHOLE WORLD 15 because in those villages, when one of the tribe of God sleeps there, all the people come to speak about all the things of God as practiced in the village life, and especially about the keeping of the ten commandments. So I said to the head man, “It is going to be a moonlight night. I wish you would not drum for the neighbors to dance.” On many and many a moonlight night the drum has been beaten and the neighbors have danced during the night and I have slept, but on this night I begged them not to make a noise. He said he would not, and I went to bed. The moon rose rather late and with it there arose a great clamor of drums, a clapping and shouting and all the music of a dance in the village. Presently going out into the moonlight, I looked for the great company that should be dancing there, and there was none, not a soul, yet I heard a sound of drumming in the back yard of the village. When I went back of the huts, I found a man at a drum who looked at me. There were three little girls who had been dancing. They stopped. In the moonlight all these brown faces were looking at me kindly and attentively to hear what the white woman would be saying. I said, “Where are the dancers and the drummers?” “I am the drummer,” he said, “and these are the dancers.” “And is that all?” “Yes,” he said, “that is all.” And that was all. No neighbors, no company, only the members of a household at play in the moonlight. I had just imagined the uproar. When I look at this great company I see that this is not that kind of gathering. If I should say to our presiding officer, “Where are the neighbors?’ He would say, “Why, here they are.” At least one hundred Boards are represented here, people of all sorts who are followers of our Lord. The drummer at the drum and the one who causes us to come together in one common cause under one roof, is our Lord. Having come from our villages to unite as neighbors, and lovers of Christ, let us do so and rejoice. He is present with us, even to the end of this convention, and of the efforts of our denominations, and of the goings forth of ships with missionaries, until that day shall come when, one and all, to the sound of a common drum we shall gather at His good pleasure and at His good place, and in His good way. THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION THE SITUATION IN THE FAR EAST BISHOP HERBERT WELCH, D.D., LL.D., TOKYO In the thirty minutes allotted to me, I have been asked to speak of the present world situation with special reference to the Far East. One might as well be asked to take all the air in this large auditorium and condense it into a quart jar. The thing can be done, but it demands enormous pressure and perhaps cer- tain low temperatures which I may not be able to command. Asia is the continent of contrasts and of superlatives, In Asia the highest mountains of the globe, off the coast of Asia the deepest seas. The single continent of Asia contains about three-tenths of the land surface of our planet, and the population not only surpasses that of any other one continent, but even that of all the other continents put together; for more than half of the human race dwells in Asia. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at when one remembers that, so far as our knowledge goes, human life had its origin on the continent of Asia, and that civilizations of an advanced order had an early development. From Asia in ancient times came practical inventions, science, philosophy, true contributions to the resources of the world. From Asia, more significantly, have come all the great religions of the race, and on the soil of Asia was born of Mary our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. It is not strange, as it seems to me, that in our day the eyes of the world are turning again to Asia with peculiar interest. Gen. Jan Smuts of South Africa, worthy to rank, I judge, with many a man in more eminent position as a world statesman, has indeed declared that the scene has shifted away from Europe to the Pacific basin and the Far East, and that the world problems of the next fifty years or more are the problems of the Pacific. When one considers the vast populations, the enormous possibil- ities, whether in peace or in war, of those hundreds of millions, the wealth that is still undeveloped and the markets that are still uncaptured, it is not strange, I say, that the thought of the world should be turning to Asia with peculiar interest. If Asia be regarded, especially eastern Asia and southern Asia, from the purely missionary standpoint, the outlook is by no means discouraging. The best available statistics show that in the last twenty-two years the number of Christian communicants in India, where Christianity has advanced, so far as numbers are 16 THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 17 concerned, far beyond any other Asiatic country, has been mul- tiplied by more than two. The number of Christian communicants in Japan and China has been multiplied by more than three. In Korea—little Korea, that Benjamin among the peoples, that Holy Land of Eastern Asia, where twenty years ago the number of Christian adherents was still very small—the multiplication in the last twenty-two years has been by more than a dozen to produce the present Christian church. Yet, after that is said, how insignificant the number of pro- fessed Christians in the Far East—not more than two per cent of the population in any one of these lands, a “contemptible little army,” it might seem, setting out to capture the strongholds of heathendom. However, I am very glad to be able to report in this survey that the influence of Christianity is vastly extended beyond the boundaries of the Christian church itself, and in this land and in that, it may be found permeating the thoughts and the activities of almost the entire population. Let me draw my illustrations for this from Japan, and re- mind you that the temperance movement in Japan, that daring movement which has ventured to take for its slogan nothing less than “Prohibition for Japan,” is led by Japanese and American Christians. The social purity movement of Japan, which is seeking to blot out the commercialized and legalized vice that is the disgrace of the Sunrise Kingdom everywhere, is led by Christian men and Christian women. The labor movement, which is raising the standards of life and unifying those forces which are gaining increasing influence in the Empire, is led by a Christian man, Mr. Suzuki. The movement for international peace, which is causing Japan to stretch out friendly hands to all the rest of the world, is molded on Christian ideals. A very high authority in Japan, not himself a Christian, has recently declared without qualification that the popular concep- tions of liberty and humanity throughout that Empire have been influenced directly or indirectly by the teaching of Jesus Christ. Even the old ethnic faiths are being touched, if not pos- itively transformed, by the power of Jesus Christ. I do not mean simply that Japanese Buddhism, for example, is organizing Young Men’s Buddhist Associations, that it is planting Sunday-schools by the thousand, up and down the country, whose methods and whose very songs are taken from our Christian Sunday-schools ; but that the thinking of Buddhism is being permeated by the thoughts which came first from our Lord and Saviour. Doubtless some of you have read that Japanese drama entitled “The Priest and His Disciples,’ written by a Buddhist, from a Buddhist stand- point throughout; a book in which any Christian may find great spiritual profit, yes, which is thoroughly Buddhist, except for the 18 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON fact that its loveliest thoughts are Christian and not Buddhist at all! Jesus Christ is coming to His own in the Far East in a larger degree than the number of listed Christians would indicate. The attitude of the populace, the attitude of governments toward Christian institutions is changing. A generation ago our mis- sionaries had to go out and pay children to come in to their schools or to gather in the waifs from the streets in order that classes might be full. Today we are turning away not hundreds, but thousands, every year, from the schools which have no room to receive those who desire to place themselves under Christian edu- cational influences. May I say that the Government of Japan, in Japan and Korea,—that Government which sometimes has been reputed to be determined ito stamp Christianity out of the Japanese Empire, is subsidizing many of our Christian schools in order that they may be brought to a higher degree of efficiency. On .the other hand, one finds in the Far East an opposition to Christianity which, while not altogether new, has some recent and disagreeable developments. Take, for instance, the move- ment among the Chinese students of higher schools, not ‘merely anti-religious in general but anti-Christian in particular, an oppo- sition belligerent and determined, led by members of the faculties of universities, and based upon the belief that Christianity is opposed to modern science, from which they hope for great things for their growing republic, and that Christianity means militarism and capitalism, which systems they do not desire to have ‘fastened upon their own land. Now, this recent opposition, I think one may say, is only a new development of an attitude of fear and suspicion regarding the West which has obtained in the East for more than one generation. China found years ago that these foreigners, admitted and welcomed, were endeavoring to exploit her wealth, to control her trade, to mix in her politics, to interfere in her purely domestic concerns, until the name “foreign devils’ seemed all too fit from the Chinese point of view. More than that, as the Oriental peoples have been watching the progress of the white races (under the dubious leadership of the Kaiser, there was talk here of the “yellow peril’), there has developed some talk in the Far East of the “white peril.” A certain newspaper in the Orient not long ago uttered such bitter words as these: “The so-called Anglo-Saxon domination of the world is being steadily carried into effect. All the sweet juice of the world is about to be sucked by them. Will God make them really happy?” What is the occasion for such suspicion and fear? May I remind you of what Mr. Basil Mathews recently set forth in very picturesque form—that in the year 1450 or thereabouts, the white THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 19 races were confined practically to Central and Western Europe, hemmed in on the east and on the south by men of other races and other faiths; and that then in the latter part of the fifteenth century came two great discoveries—the discovery of America by Columbus, and the discovery of the route to India around the Cape of Good Hope—two discoveries that set the white race free on a career of world expansion. You will remember how America, and the Pacific Islands, and Australia, and continental Asia (Siberia and India) and Africa have gradually, through these four centuries, come under the political, if not the complete financial and social, control of the dominating white race. Then you will also remember that in the last decade of the nineteenth century, just four hundred years after Columbus had sailed the Western seas, came the Russo- Japanese war, whose historical significance has scarcely been ap- preciated to this day—a war that put a stop to the aggressive career of the white race. The red man had been pushed back, and the black man and the brown man had been pushed back, and encroachments upon the rights of the yellow man were steadily proceeding. Foreign concessions and foreign courts and foreign post-offices and extra- territoriality, where it had not been almost by force repudiated— all sorts of aggressions in the seizure of ports and of foreign rights were crowding back the yellow man, until Japan, as the champion of the Far East, stood out and fought to a standstill great Russia, the first European race, in modern times at least, to be conquered by an Oriental people. More than one-half of Asia had come under the control of European races, and the significance of this halt to which the white race was brought bears very directly upon our missionary as well as our political problems. The President of the United States said with absolute accu- racy this afternoon that not all of the things sent to other countries from this dear land of ours had been for their blessing. When one remembers the rum that went with our Bibles, and the arms that we have exported for our profit for the use of contending factions, and the vulgar films and the narcotics which we have sent to the Orient; when one remembers how much of Western civilization of the purely materialistic type has been almost forced upon the Far East without the moral and spiritual dynamic which should enable those old civilizations to rejuvenate themselves and to use wisely the new powers put into their hands, he may indeed believe that Western contacts have not been an unmixed blessing! What we see before our eyes in the Far East today, if we are to name some of the outstanding and obvious changes, is this: A partial Westernization in athletic sports, in architecture, in dress, in food, in music, in medicine, in practical and in pure 20 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON science, in law, in social customs, in education, and in political institutions. By the spread of the English language and its literature the West has been steadily infiltrating into those stranded and staid civilizations of Eastern Asia. ‘The natural result is ferment— material progress, intellectual and social awakening, a new outlook for womanhood, the foisting of all the evils and the horrors of our Western industrialism on a people ill prepared to bear them, and a state of unrest and turmoil, behind which it seems to me is a great spiritual hunger. One of the outstanding facts of the Far East is the progress of democracy; for if you have been thinking what democracy has been winning through these decades, you must remember not sim- ply Germany, Russia, shall we say, Turkey perhaps, Persia and the rest of them—you must remember also China, with its Re- public in form not yet fifteen years old, but with a people resolute to make representative government a fact in its great national history. You must remember Korea, where five or six years ago the “Independence” movement produced a new people, alert, ambitious, in touch with the currents of world life, eager for the best the world has to offer. And you must remember Japan, sometimes called “the last of the world’s great autocracies,’ never deserving that title, but coming slowly to be one of ‘the world’s democracies. The labor movement, the woman movement, the student movement, the in- creasing freedom of press and speech and assembly, the demand for universal manhood suffrage, the tendency toward a party gov- ernment with cabinets responsible directly through the represen- tatives of the people to the people themselves—all speak of the growing influence of democratic ideals in the Empire of Japan. Still another of the outstanding facts is the growing national and race consciousness of these Eastern peoples. This touches very directly our missionary problem. It was not an iconoclast, but a balanced and sagacious Chinese leader, who said a little time ago that foreign missions had been a big, capable, kind nurse to the Chinese Church but that foreign missions must now come under the Christian Church which they had nurtured. Our inter- est is not simply in the application of this feeling to missionary affairs, but also in wider circles, I cannot forbear to make very definite the thing that I am trying to say by applying it to the immigration question. Not that I am going to discuss the immigration question in the United States as a, whole (it is a highly complicated and difficult problem, with its economic and its social factors); not that I am going to lay down any platform, such as I think might be projected, which might give a basis at once American and scientific and Christian on which an immigration policy might be based; much less am I THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 21 speaking for the Far East to touch upon the question of inter- marriage and the amalgamation of races; much less am I to ask for any open gate, which all the thinking people of our country, I doubt not, oppose. We believe unanimously, I take it, for the present at least, in the close restriction of immigration, until we can do better justice to those whom we have already admitted to residence within our borders. But I am bound to say that this immigration question, touch- ing not simply the admission of aliens but the treatment of aliens after they are admitted, has a very direct connection with the progress of Christianity in the Orient. The Conference on Dis- armament held in this city some four years ago cleared the sky of the clouds of suspicion that had been hanging low. It pro- duced a new sense of safety, a new sense of confidence in the intentions of the United States of America in particular; and when the marvelous relief was poured out by this nation after the great earthquake of September, 1923, the hearts of the Japanese people were moved in gratitude to an extent that was positively pathetic. But the feeling of confidence and of affection, based upon these two historic incidents, has very largely been destroyed by the Japanese Exclusion clause of the “Immigration Act of 1924” passed by our Congress last spring. I do not mean to exaggerate the situation. Its effects have not been wholly evil. It has pro- duced in Japan a movement toward religious fellowship, which has found expression in certain gatherings of Christians with the Shintoists and the Buddhists, not with any purpose (as the press reported), of amalgamating those three religions into one, but simply that the representatives of all the faiths of Japan might act together in certain social and political objectives. That move- ment is to be praised. My friend, Bishop Harris, used to say that most of the good people in Japan were Buddhists, a thing which, I take it, was literally true; and fellowship with every man everywhere who stands for righteousness and for truth, for holi- ness, is the privilege as well as the obligation of the Christian. However, I do not want to see any such movement toward re- ligious fellowship based upon an anti-foreign sentiment. We have had a new movement toward self-support, and that in itself is wholesome, that the Japanese church should take upon its shoulders more of the burden of its own support and of its own extension; but I do not want to see churches become self- supporting with a feeling of resentment and alienation from the churches of Great Britain and America. There has been a new movement toward friendship with China and Russia. Have you noted that the treaty recently signed between Japan and Russia, by which Japan exchanges certain economic advantages for the political profits that may come to Russia, was signed in Peking? Have you noted that first Russia, 22 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON) and then Japan, is changing the rank of its representative at Peking to that of ambassador? Have you noted that Russia has re- linquished in China its right of extra-territoriality, treating the Chinese as though they were its equals rather than its inferiors? Have you noted that the man coming nearest apparently to su- preme power in China at this moment is Chang Tso-lin, the Man- churian war lord, who for years has been reputed to be the close friend of Japan; and that Sun Yat-sen, coming from the south to join in the consultations in the capital city of the north, is the man who has been the leader of friendly sentiment for the Soviet government ? Now, the movement for friendship between China and Japan is one that I would gladly foster, but I do not want to see that friendship based upon an antagonism to the Anglo-Saxon world. We have a new movement for racial solidarity, a quickened race consciousness, not only in the yellow but in the brown peoples of Asia as well. Rabindranath Tagore has been this last summer lecturing in China and Japan on the arrogancies of the white race, and summoning the colored peoples of Asia, to resist this aggress- ive and would-be dominating race of the world. I want to see a new fellowship between men of different colors, but I want to see included in such a fellowship, the white race itself. If there can be but one new fellowship, it ought to be a fellowship between the two strongest races, numerically and otherwise, that the world holds—the white race with about half the world’s population, and the yellow race with about one-third of the world’s population. Do you remember the lines written by Edwin Markham, the great poet of democracy? “He drew a circle that shut me out, Heretic, alien, a thing to flout; But love and I had the wit to win We drew a circle that took him in.” Christianity is always on the side of the larger circle, in- clusive and not exclusive; and we, the favored peoples of the West and of the white race, are the ones who should be drawing the larger circle of a common interest and a common fellowship that would go to fulfill the words of our Lord and make all men one! The missionary problem of the Far East is to be met most of all not by new methods of missionary administration but by sheer friendliness, by a new assertion (as the President said this afternoon) of the fundamental doctrine of human brotherhood, a brotherhood which is absolutely real and not merely theological, a brotherhood which is absolutely inclusive of men of all colors. The West has given charity to the East. Will it give brother- hood? The challenge of the East to the West lies more than any- where else at that point—will you give us brotherhood, a brother- THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 23 hood on which your politicians shall base their legislation, a brotherhood which your leaders shall carry out in social affairs as well as in the life of the Christian church? “Come, clear the way, then, clear the way, Blind creeds and kings have had their day; Break the dead branches from the path, Our hope is in the aftermath, Our hope is in heroic men Star-led to build the world again. To this event the ages ran, Make way for brotherhood, make way for man.” THE NEW LEADERSHIP OF TURKEY THE REVEREND FRED F. GOODSELL, D.D., CONSTANTINOPLE Pity, prejudice and confusion of mind are words which char- acterize most Western people, as they think of the Near East today. This is not a new difficulty. In the Near East we always face a conspiracy of misinformation. It reminds me of a homely story. A certain generous man had a donkey which he was ac- customed to loan occasionally to those who wanted it. One morn- ing a friend came and asked him if he might use the donkey. For some reason the man did not want to comply that day and so said, “No, I can’t loan it to you today.” But the borrower was insistent. He said, “I must have that donkey, I have something very important to do.” “Well, you can’t have it.’ The borrower was still more insistent and finally the owner said, “No, I tell you the donkey isn’t here. I have loaned him to some one else.” Just at that instant the donkey burst out of the stable and an- nounced his presence as only a donkey can. ‘Now I can take him, can’t I?’ “No. Are you going to believe that beast rather than me? ” Cyrus Hamlin, something over fifty years ago, said that when he listened to an address on the Near East or took up a newspaper article with reference to the Near East, he felt like praying the good Lord to endow him with an adequate sense of unbelief. I know that there are many perplexed people in this convention, perplexed when they consider how the cause of Christ may be promoted today in the Near East. I have talked with some of them. I have listened to their questions. All I can bring you at this time is a personal word of humble testimony, after living and working for seventeen years in the Near East. I am convinced that the Near East has entered upon a new era. The last two years have witnessed developments of creative significance. Few individuals in the Western world have even begun to take account of the changes that are taking place. Every segment of life in every land from Abyssinia to Jugo-Slavia, and from Afghanistan to Albania and Morocco, is feeling the thrills 24 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON of rebirth. Governments and peoples, particularly the student class, are plastic for good or for evil as they have not been for centuries. The fires of nationalism, fanned to high flame by the Great War, are melting the traditions and destroying the land- marks of the ages in every land. On the surface, this great upheaval seems to be a political movement, and some of its Western interpreters are inclined to say that it is simply a protest against Western political domina- tion. I don’t deny that there is an element of protest in it, but I see there something far deeper and far more significant. This turmoil is a hungering and a thirsting for life. This restlessness is an ill-guided search for a regenerating power, something that will lift and satisfy. It is a muffled cry for social justice, and social justice on an international scale is something which has begun to inspire the imagination of misled multitudes throughout the East. Recent events and present tendencies in the Republic of Turkey are raising that country to a place of leadership. The re- birth of Turkey is fact, not fancy. I am thinking of a friend of mine who bade me goodby four weeks ago on the quay at Con- stantinople. He is a professor of law in the University of Stam- boul, a trusted friend and adviser. He said to me, “Don’t forget to tell your friends in America that there is a new country here.” I am thinking also of a notable utterance of Professor John Dewey of Columbia University, who recently visited the Near East. What measured words he uses! He seems to be convinced after close observation that we should attribute to Turkey a genuine change of spirit and aim, and he adds this remark, “The ultimate ground for confidence is in the fact that the Turks have that in- tangible something we call character. They have virility, sobriety of outlook, and sincerity of purpose.” The rebirth of Turkey is a fact; it is no idle fancy. The year 1922, or rather its Moslem equivalent, 1338, may prove to be the 1776 of Near Eastern civili- zation. Let me assure you that at the back of the diplomatic triumph of the representatives of Turkey at Lausanne, lay the iron resolution and the untold sacrifices of a reborn Turkish nation. I stood four months ago in the little hall in a school in an interior town of Asia Minor. There in that hall the present lead- ers of Turkey, and some of their friends gathered to swear to each other in the spirit of Patrick Henry, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Have we Americans no sympathy with them? Western diplomats at Lausanne had great difficulty in realizing that they were dealing with a new Turkey, a reborn nation. As a matter of fact, military movements had been of far less signifi- cance than social tendencies. This has become increasingly evident since then. The Sultan has been deposed; the Caliph himself has been deported. The church has been separated from the state. A republican form of government has been established. Complete THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 25 national sovereignty has been achieved. With unprecedented rap- idity the Republic of Turkey has been relaying the foundations of a vigorous national life. Let me be more specific. While the two great events which justify the assertion that there is a new Turkey are the establish- ment of the Republic and the complete separation of church and state, estimate, if you can, the significance of these evidences of social change, some of them trifling, some of them tremendous, some of them wholesome, some of them harmful. Freedom to travel is a fact. I wish I could say ease of travel was likewise a fact, but you would be surprised, perhaps, to learn that you can travel today from Constantinople to Angora in a sleeping car as comfortably as you can travel from Washington to New York. Censorship on periodicals and books has been removed. This is true even though, as in some other countries, complete freedom of the press and of speech is still a storm center. The traditional Moslem law regarding the use of liquor has been set aside. Un- fortunately, intemperance is increasing very rapidly throughout the country. Many of the most striking changes center about the position of women. ‘Modern women in Turkey have discarded the veil. Recently by government order the heavy curtains separating the men’s apartments from the women’s apartments in the street cars were removed. The University of Stamboul has opened its doors to women. Polygamy now is bad form and there is a strong movement to outlaw it. Men and women mingle freely in such organizations as teachers’ associations and in other public gatherings. Changes like these make those who knew Turkey ten years and even five years ago rub their eyes to see whether they are in a dream. And the end is not yet. Shortly before I left Con- stantinople the editor of an outstanding Turkish fortnightly journal came to me with a request. He asked me to translate a statement of the principles which govern him in the administration of his paper and which are really a part of his convictions. He prints the statement frequently in his magazine in French and in Turk- ish, and he wanted to put it into English. I know that my editor friend means what he says. I know that he has great influence through his books and articles as he champions those principles. I know that his ruling passion is to banish war from human so- ciety. I cannot read the entire statement but I wish to read six brief items which he makes in that statement of principles: “Of all forms of liberty, that of the liberty of conscience is the most essential and the most sacred. A man who is not free to choose and to declare his belief loses half his soul. “Tt is a capital error to believe that the misfortune of one nation constitutes the good fortune of another nation. The interdependence of peoples is inviolable. An injustice done to a single one is a menace to all. 26 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON “War is no means for the solution of international questions. Every aggressive war is wicked. “The real greatness of a country does not inhere in its density of the population nor in the fertility of its soil nor in the extent of its territory, nor in the military power of its government, but in the social value of its citizens. “One of the chief reasons why the Orient is more backward than the Occident is the position of woman. “There is only one civilization and that is the inheritance of the great human family.” One cannot come into contact with a Turkish editor of the influence of this man who champions such principles without realizing that changes are going on in the thought life of Turkey today. If I were asked to point out the most significant, the most challenging fact in the new Turkey as I see it today, my mind would run back to a series of interviews which I had with the minister of education at Angora not very long ago. We were dealing with the subject of religious education in mission schools. I know now why Turkey expelled the Caliph; I know now why they separated the church and the state. As I went out from his presence, I realized that he and his associates had come to the reasoned conclusion that religion as an organized, constructive, social force in human society has failed throughout the world. It was not simply that Christianity or Judaism failed in his estimation, but religion, including Islam—religion, as such, had failed. Therefore it ought to be excluded from public life and from the consideration of the statesmen. As I went out to think over somewhat in detail what he had said to me so frankly, so honestly, and indeed in such a friendly way, as an American, I seemed to see him pointing at great Christian Russia and saying, “Your religion is worthless. You yourselves have discarded it.” I seemed to see him pointing at Christian Europe and saying, “Your religion is worthless. Look at your hostile and deceitful and unfriendly secret diplomacy and your heavy armies.” I seemed to see him pointing at Christian America and saying, “Your charity is fine; your passion for freedom is glorious; your strength is unmeasured; but I do not see that religion plays much part in your life. Look at your pub- lic scandals; look at the way you treat the negroes; look at your industrial injustices.” He knew all about these things. The lives of the so-called Christian nations of the world are an open book to the non- Christian world today. The thing that most of them, including Turkey, are reading is that the Christian nations of the world do not take the teaching of Christ seriously. From this and from her own experience, Turkey has drawn the conclusion: “We can expect no help from religion, from any religion, in the rebuilding of our national life.’ This is truly a tragic crisis. THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION ee What are we going to do about it? I know what we ought to do about it. The real tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that the leaders of Turkey realize that they must get into contact with some regenerative power. They are turning to education, to economics, to social enterprises. In this seeking they are turn- ing to America for help. They admire America in so many ways. A member of the Grand National Assembly said to me recently, “As we shift our national life from a military to an economic basis, we need your help. We used to ask Englishmen to come and help us strengthen our navy. We used to ask Germans to come and help us rebuild our army. We want you Americans now to come as social experts and help us to build a new society.” Will we co-operate? Are we big enough in heart and soul to be fair and friendly with the new Turkey? Are we deeply enough in earnest to purge our own national life of its incon- sistencies? Are we single-minded enough to pursue our mis- sionary purpose so patiently, so humbly, and so_ intelligently that even the most prejudiced in that misunderstood land may understand? Are we Christ-like enough to give ourselves as well as our money? If we are, let us instruct those who go out to represent us in the world of Islam to exclude ecclesiasticism in all its forms from their missionary activity and to make Christ supreme. Ii we are, let us find a way to ratify that treaty of amity and com- merce with Turkey. I would that every American citizen here this evening might write soon to his Senators and stress the moral necessity of ratifying it at once, without acrimonious de- bate. If we are, let us find a way to join the nations of the world in giving Turkey a new place in the family of nations, and challenge her to make good. To the Americans I would say: The United States cannot fill her great trust in the Near East by charity alone, colossal though it may be. The United States, and at the heart of the country, the Christian churches, born again according to the Spirit by self-giving service and genuine aggressive, interna- tional good will, must prove to the peoples of the Near East, and especially to Turkey, that in Christ alone can abundant life be found. DEE SOLO UATION A TSHOME BISHOP CHARLES H. BRENT, D.D., BUFFALO, NEW YORK It would appear to me that I can make my best contribution to this convention and this subject by confining myself to a study of the character of the Christianity which is being, not professed, but lived in so-called Christian nations. I shall as- 28 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON sume that the United States of which I am a citizen, is a fair sample. May I begin by expressing to you the joy that I ex- perience in standing in the presence of such a multitude of people whom I know to be Christian at heart and probably more Christian in character than I myself. It is told, and I believe with truth of a great American sculptor, that prior to his last, or one of his last, great works of art he had occasion to make a special study of the gospel. At the conclusion he said, “Now that I have come to know this Christ, anything I have is His, and where He is I want to be.” He became a true follower of the living Christ. Today, if we are to realize the hope of an evangelized world and of the Orient brought to the Lord Jesus Christ, then the so-called Christian nations, includ- ing the United States of America, have to be really converted to Jesus Christ. There is no other solution of the missionary problem. We are in our day searching for leaders, clamoring for them; and when we get our leaders, we are very apt to criticize them, if we do not crucify them. But the great need of the world is not for leaders, it is for followers. When He whom we call Master walked in the midst of men, His chief invitation was, “Follow me.” He talked little about leadership, but this curious thing happened+—those who became’ the truest and most loyal followers by this very fact became the most powerful leaders. It was as one would expect it to be. If we scrutinized the life of Jesus Christ, we would realize that He is not an end in Himself and never so professed. He, too, was a follower who came, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him, and by virtue of the fact that He became lost, that He was always lost in the will of the Father, He was the greatest leader that the world has ever seen. Today, whether it be in little communities, in the nation or in the world at large, what we need is men and women who are so completely followers that they have lost their self-con- sciousness in the larger consciousness of a noble cause, of the church, of God Himself, so that all their vitality is preserved, not for self-aggrandizement, not for the lust of acquisition, but for service of the highest and deepest kind. Today the only thing that is going to save Christianity or Christian civilization is a higher type of Christianity, a conversion to the living Christ, so that His way will become our way, His thoughts our thoughts, His will our will. We are here, this vast throng of people, to further the greatest enterprise on earth. All other enterprises are of no avail without it. Taken alone they are but a great mass that has no meaning and no cohesion. Until some unifying force THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 29 comes into the intricacies of society and trade, of national and international life, there cannot be that which God has purposed for the human race, and which my predecessor so clearly enunciated—a brotherhood binding man to man and nation to nation. It is the function of the West to minister to the East. Why? Because we have a privilege that they yet do not possess; we have the Evangel. We have tried it. In a measure it possesses us. We have reached a certain stage in missions, where there must be an advance in the Christianity of the church and of the nations, if there is to be an advance in China and Japan and India. In the early days of missionary enterprise, the oceans divided the continents. Today the waves of the sea unite the shores they separate. In the old days a heavy curtain hung between the East and the West, and when we sent out our mis- sionaries who were our very best, names that are written in the annals of fame, those to whom they were sent took for granted that they were sample Christians. Inasmuch as they did not know how the part of the world from which these men came was living, they assumed that it was living the gospel which was being preached by its representatives. They saw only a very high type of Christian in the mission field, men and women of heroic mold, true to the precepts of Jesus Christ, who would endure anything rather than relinquish their faith. Now the times are changed; the veil is torn down. Yonder Orient knows only too well how the Christian churches and the people in those churches are living, and how in so many instances and in such wide areas of life they are betraying the gospel that is being proclaimed to the yellow and brown and black races. What we expect in the mission field, we must do ourselves. Is it not so, that we are disappointed if the records that come from so-called foreign fields do not show a high type of Christian being produced; and do we not rejoice when in- stances are brought to us of how this man or this woman has broken away from the heathen customs, perhaps has been ostracized by those of their own blood in homes where they have hitherto lived in peace and quietness? Do we not inscribe on the roll of the martyrs those who have stood true till death? This is what we send our missionaries out to do, to equip people with such a knowledge of God, to introduce them into such fellowship with Jesus Christ that they will be able to stand against all temptations, move out of their old environ- ment, and if need be, lay down their lives for the gospel’s sake. Have we any business to expect such things unless we our- selves are doing them? Is our Christian society (I am speak- ing now of all the so-called Christian nations) so completely 30 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON devoid of heathen elements that we can trust ourselves to ac- cept its conventions without challenge and so move in the midst of the great populations which compose the Christian countries as to make it indistinguishable who are Christians and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their leader and who are the pagans and the heathens? That is the situation in the United States of America in the year of our Lord, 1925. There is no one com- pact body of persons whose bearing and character declare them to be Christians. In the first place, we demand of those who become Christ- ians that they put away their heathen gods and then that they put God as revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ before all else. There is a mystical side to religion, the binding of the individual human soul to the living God in Jesus Christ. We, of the Western world, can hardly appreciate just what this means to the Oriental who is contemplative, who loves to dwell upon the mysterious, who has eyes to see the invisible and the immortal, as perhaps we have not. Our gospel of today, at least, is a gospel of activity and of doing, but if this Western civilization of ours is to be saved for the fine service it can render to the whole world, it will have to become more meditative, more ready to learn the meaning of worship, more empowered to use silence, until God once more burns His power and His life into our human life, so that we can turn our practical affairs into means of exhibiting the Christian truth. The second step for us to take who desire to help foreign missions, as they are called (the term is wrong; we are all so closely knit together now there is nothing foreign), is to en- deavor to apply at whatever cost the principles and truths by which Jesus Christ lives, first to society, as we know it, and as we move in it; then to industry; then to politics; and then to the relations between nations. No more can we think of one- day-a-week religion, when we will be pious for a brief space, and quite regardless of religion and of its deepest and most refined principles during the rest of the week. The home is the great shrine of religion, but it stands today in need of a considerable amount of regeneration. I am within hailing distance of old age. I have one great fear lest I should consider that the freedom which I demanded for myself when I was young was so complete a thing that now that I have got to old age or am approaching it, I must see to it that the young folk only come within my definition of freedom and that they be denied the freedom that I demanded for myself when I was young. We talk about the revolt of youth today in this country and in Europe. We bemoan, as very probably our parents be- moaned over us, the new ways of youth and their lack of THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 31 obedience. We may be right, in some instances without doubt we are right; but let us remember that if we are to win the youth of to-day, we must with Christian sympathy in the home discover what their idea of freedom is and guide them and help them sympathetically, instead of constantly carping. Again, is the license of youth to-day wholly due to the rebellious character of the children of the new generation? We talk of their lawlessness—how can the daughter or the son of a bootlegging father be anything but lawless? A short time since a young girl of sixteen said to her father, “I don’t see why I can’t drive your car.” “Because,” said he, “the law of this State forbids it. You are not of age, and I am a law-abiding citizen.” “Oh, are you?” she said, “Then what about those cases of liquor that are constantly coming into the house?’ A large part of the lawlessness and the evil-doing of the youth of our land is directly traceable to the home and to the lack of any Christian principles being definitely applied to all departments of life on the part of the parents. Then again, what shall I say about industry and the eco- nomic world as we know it to-day? Can we say it is Christian? Do we wonder that the Orient is rather alarmed that our ideas of economics should be passed on to them? It is a gratifying fact that today in the various industries in this country, there are something like eight hundred distinct codes of ethics. That is a move forward, but I maintain that until and unless the truths and principles by which Jesus Christ lived are applied intelligently and definitely to every department of life, industry, and economics as well as to the domestic affairs of the home, we are failing in what the Master of Life, Jesus Christ, expects of us. I once said not long ago to a prominent citizen of the State of New York, that the next step for the churches to take was to endeavor to apply the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to practical affairs, and especially to industry. ‘Well,’ he said, “If you do that, you will declare war.” Possibly this is so, but it would be a holy war. As to politics, what shall I say about politics in this city? There is no phase of life in our nation, and so far as my ob- servation goes, in all other nations, the nations of Europe, that is so much in need of religion, as politics. So far as I can see, it has no code of ethics. We rejoice in the separation of church and state, but it is a separation, and not a divorce. There was a time (and this exists in some countries still), when the church and politics were entangled in a very embarrassing embrace, but they broke away. They were separated, yet not divorced; each has its own sphere, but neither can stand without the aid of the other. They should be mutual servants, and not, as in 32 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON many cases they seem to be, enemies. I thank God that in this country we have a separation between church and state, and I also thank God that there is no divorce. So far as religion is concerned, the moment you take religion out of politics, then you have begun to destroy the state. I am of the mind that every citizen who believes that in a democracy he has a living share in the legislation of his country, should watch legislation and use that powerful influence which is his to register what he thinks in Christian terms by telegrams and letters to Congress- men and Senators on any question of moment. Do not think for one minute that these telegrams and letters are put into the waste paper basket with little or no notice. Far from it. They are scrutinized with care. If the citizens of our country would register their Christian judgment on pub- lic questions in this way, we would have a higher type of legis- lation, and we would not have some of the legislation that is enacted. Now I come to what, to me, is the great opportunity of Christians and the greatest opportunity of this nation of ours. What is the relation of nation to nation today throughout the world? What does international intercourse mean? I have just come from the League of Nations, where, by appointment of our own Government, I sat as a plenipotentiary in an International Conference for the creation of a treaty or the amendment, rather, of a treaty, dealing with an extremely intricate and difficult problem—a moral question, a question that has to do with com- merce, a question that has to do with health. Some forty nations were there represented. I am not going to discuss the procedure of the Conference. It was stormy at times but a calm has descended upon it. I will simply say this—that the international treaty for which that conference stands is one of the chief means of bind- ing the nations of the world together in mutual understanding . and cooperation when there is any great question to be dis- cussed that all the nations have in common. An international treaty is quite distinct from the kind of treaty which is agreed upon by two nations. For instance, this country has a large number of individual arbitration treaties with other countries. They are admirable as far as they go. But distinguish between the scope and the value of such in- dividual treaties and a mutual compact between all the nations of the world. More and more must we who believe in the estab- lishment of good will between nations stand for international treaties. There are three distinguished—the most distinguished that the world has yet known—expressions of this type of treaty at the present time before mankind. One of them, the Covenant of THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 33 the League of Nations, has been too much discredited in this country by prejudice and by ignorance. At a largely-attended meeting last week, I had not had opportunity to discover the mind of the people present. I asked how many had ever read the Covenant. Perhaps ten persons held up their hands. I said, “If there are those of you who did not hold up your hands who have taken an antagonistic position toward the League, I would ask you by what right you have done it? If you are going to be an enemy of a thing, be sure that you know the character of that of which you are an enemy. You have no business to oppose the League unless you at least have read the Covenant.” I am not appealing tonight for adherence to the League. I am only saying that here is a distinguished instance of an at- tempt of the nations of the world to gather together in good- will, to live at peace. The Covenant may be poorly drawn, or it may be well drawn, but it is a glorious endeavor, and the world has never seen anything lke it before, it is taking the Christian ideal, if you read the first words of the Covenant, and trying to put it into practical form on an extensive scale. Then there is the World Court. I speak of these things, my friends, because they are Christian in their aim and in their possibilities. The Christian Church and individual Christians can no longer dally about this matter of war. It is time for the Christian Church to declare just exactly under what conditions, if any, what we ordinarily call murder can become a glorious virtue. The Christian Church has got to say in no uncertain voice whether it accepts war as an evil necessity and will sup- port war when it arises, or whether it believes that it is a bar- barous atrocity, that there is a substitute for it, and that we must discover and use that substitute. The time has come when this decision must be made and when in no uncertain terms the Church of God must speak. I say for myself, and I say it in the name of Christ, I am against war, I hate war and I think it is an atrocious barbarity and must be dethroned from the posi- tion which it has usurped. Let me be perfectly clear so that no one will misunderstand me. Never while I live will I allow one whisper against the glory of that body of youth, the best of our land and of other lands, who thrilled by an ideal which they saw clearly, responded (as I did) to the call of country and went forth. I happened to survive, but many of them laid down their lives and their names are written forever in the annals of our national fame. But, just as a day came in the history of religion when God laid His hand on the arm that was uplifted to offer human sacrifice and said, “No more of this, there is a better way,” so now God has laid His hand upon the Christian nations and has 34 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON said, “No more of this, there is a better way.” All our hatred of war, all our abuse of war will be of little avail unless we get war’s substitute. What is war? It is the abuse of force and not the use of force. It is guile and deceit added to force. I stand for the use of force under righteousness and law. The idea of a police force suggests the legitimate use of force, but here is what we do in connection with disputes between nations. We say that we will decide who is right and who is wrong by asking Chief Justice War to decide. We have no certainty that force will ever take its side, or will always take its side, with the right, avoiding the wrong; indeed, it is conceivable that more often it will choose the wrong than the right. At any rate, that happens. Now are the great- est problems that come before mankind to be settled in this way, when we would not think of so settling a dispute between two neighbors? One might just as well appeal to the trial by fire as to appeal to such an arbiter. So, what must we do? We must do what our President is trying to lead us to do, and which, when a certain stubborn group in our Senate come to their senses, we will be able to do. I speak as an American citizen who has won his citizenship. I want to see the con- stitution of our country obeyed; I want to see the Senate of the United States advise the President in matters pertaining to foreign affairs, but I refuse to be silent, when any clique or group, whatever they may call themselves, in the Senate block the way to the will of the people. I am speaking not only as a citizen; I am speaking as a Christian. Now, I know all of the weaknesses of the Court. I have studied its statute, which is the creation of one of our very best minds and one of our foremost statesmen, Elihu Root. At least, he had a larger share in it than any one else. In that Court I see in embryonic form a Supreme Court of the World, which, when any question of dispute arises between nations, will be able to give judgment, and its judgment will be accepted as quietly and as simply as when our own Supreme Court gives judgment, as it has done in eighty-seven cases between two States that have had disputes. There is no other course. We must insist that our nation take its place in good faith and in good will by the side of all other nations in this attempt, and, please God, it will be a successful attempt, forever to turn out of the Supreme Court of the World Chief Justice War, and put in its stead Chief Justice Law. | There is still another great international treaty before the world for consideration. It has in it a note that is full of inter- est and which every Christian and every citizen should study. I refer to what is called the Geneva Protocol. I am giving these THE PRESENT WORLD SITUATION 35 instances of an attempt of the nations of the world to express good will toward one another, and to outlaw war. In that Protocol, war is placed exactly where it ought to be placed. It is made an outlaw; and, as was said in Geneva at the time the Protocol was born, “he is the aggressor who will not arbitrate or bring his cause to a Court of Justice.” I have spoken out of the fullness of my heart and out of some- thing that is akin to a passion. I see but two things to live for: one of them is the unity of the church of God; the other is the good will among the nations that will forever banish war. More than ever the mission field demands that there should be unity of the church in the homeland. That cannot come in a moment; but at any rate, we can think unity, we can pray unity, and toa large extent, we can practice unity. I was sectarian enough once to be shocked when some one who did not belong to our own branch or part of the Christian Church came in to fellowship with us, and we happened to think that he did belong, and afterwards discovered that he did not. But let us start in a new and better way. Let us always look on a Christian as a brother and be ready to give him, even if he does not belong to our own special group, our fullest Christian confidence. I believe it is with that spirit, more than by any formal meetings or endeavors, that we will cultivate the spirit of Christianity, and in the end the unity of the Church of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! All these things to which I have made reference have to do with the coming in of the Kingdom. But are you and I thinking only in terms of this world? Are we merely trying to build up something that will make the world of tomorrow better for our children, happier, more prosperous, more spiritual? If so, there is something wrong in our Christianity. | At a meeting of Copec*, as it is called in England, within the last year, a distinguished German, a theologian, went away inspired by all that he had taken part in, but puzzled. He said, “Here are a group of Christians who have been together for two whole weeks, and yet the second coming of Christ has never even been mentioned.” (Laughter.) Don’t laugh. Remember that Germans today who have really suffered, are men who now are not looking (and this also is true of some of the great sufferers of other nations in Europe) for anything in this world in the way of comfort and joy, but they are looking beyond into the Kingdom as it is just on the other side of that divide which you and I before many years at longest, will cross. i *The Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, held in Birming- ham, England, April 5-12, 1924. 36 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON The Church has lost too much of other-worldliness. How Christ shall come and when none of us can say, but if He does not come in some dramatic way and wind up the universe as the literalists may believe, He will surely come to everybody in this auditorium before a century passes, and then what? Why, then we shall move out into that great Kingdom for which we are here on earth to prepare, and to gather material, wherewith to build it. It is not that we are going to get something from that Kingdom when we enter; it is rather, that the Kingdom is wait- ing for us to come with our arms full of sheaves as good reapers, and that, therefore, our horizon must not be confined to this world, but a new and a higher type of other-worldliness must descend upon us. Then, I think, there will be a higher type of faith in our midst. There is not only unity between East and West, but also between here and beyond. Faith today is very often nothing more than very wise calculation, but the kind of faith that God has for His Church on earth is of a higher sort. It will open our eyes so that we will be able to see—as we cannot now see—where the key lies and what is its shape that will unlock the doors that form barriers between races and nations and peoples. A Church full of faith that works for the beyond and not merely for time is the Church which God will endow with His blessing and with His power of sight and wisdom, as well as with His strength and vitality, of which today the Church is scant. The good Lord is with us, and I know that He has seen my desire at any rate to help you, His children, my brethren, and that He will forgive what I may have said amiss and that He will bless what I have said in accordance with His will. Eiht bts Goa OL TET RS PROBEEMS OF THE WORLD HIS MESSAGE TO THE INDIVIDUAL THE REVEREND JOHN B. MC LAURIN, INDIA It is my very great privilege this day to speak to you of what Christ means to the individual;’and I do this the more gladly because we have found in missionary work that the transformation of the individual in Jesus Christ is not only the basis, but also is the vindication of all that we are doing through Him, and that He is doing through us, throughout the world today. It is the basis of all that we are doing, absolutely funda- mental to all our work. We have seen many ambitious schemes collapse and we have seen many noble enterprises fail. They had organization behind them; they had wealth behind them; they had consecrated service behind them; but they came and they grew and they passed, because they were not surely founded on that one rock, Jesus Christ. There are cities in India today where, in the sixteenth century—so we are told by travelers who went through the Mogul Empire—there were great churches. The largest build- ing in the royal city of Agra was a Christian church, and the chimes in the tower of the church could be heard to the farthest confines of that great city. If you go there today you will find that not one stone is standing upon another of that church. There are no Christian chimes which can be heard for more that a few blocks, much less to the confines of that city. Founded upon diplomacy, founded upon cleverness, those stately edifices were—yes, but something was lacking, something which brought them under the condemnation of that uncompromising text, “Every tree which is not planted of my Heavenly Father shall be uprooted.” It is indeed fitting that we should turn our attention to what Jesus Christ will do for the individual and to His message for the individual, because it has been found over and over again, sometimes at the cost of much life and treasure, that there is no other permanent foundation. The new life in Jesus Christ in the heart of a man ransomed, redeemed, saved and transformed; there you have the basis, there you have the living stones with which you can go on and build the city of God throughout this world. Not only is it absolutely foundational to all our work, but it is the vindication of all that 37 38 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON we are doing. The educated Hindu of today (and I presume the thinking Chinese and Japanese as well), cannot believe that there is a power in Christ which will solve the problems of sin, of impurity, of self-seeking in the social group and in the nation, if that power is not able to solve those problems in the heart of the individual man. Today the thinking Indian (and I presume, the thinking men of every country of Asia), is looking for a salvation for his beloved land. A new spirit of patriotism is abroad. In those Eastern lands you can feel it rising about you like the incom- ing tide; and the genius and heart of that new spirit is simply this: Where can we find some power which can lift our beloved nation and country out of those chains and out of that darkness which now bind and imprison her and place her shoulder to shoulder with any other nation on the face of the world; so that she may go forward and fulfill her national destiny? They are asking this question today, and in asking the question they are judging our Savior and our holy faith by what it can do down among the scavengers, among the outcasts, among the middle classes, the artisans, the farmers as well as among the Brahmans of India. If we can show truly that this transforming power exists, that in Jesus Christ life is made new and victorious; if we can show that in the individual heart sin and all that is low and mean can be stamped out and conquered forever, then the old gods will pass, and they will look more and more to the Savior who has saved this one and that one as the One who is to be wel- comed with open doors into their land. This principle is the vindication of all our work, because it is always true that the individual and not any social group is the common denominator of the race. It is not because we have a sense of obligation to others of our family or to others of our race that we have this divine obligation to all the world; but the heart that has truly experienced, as we have heard stated so eloquently from this platform, the transforming power of Jesus Christ, that through Him has won the victory, that heart leaps forth to give that message to the farthest bounds of the human race, because it has found for itself the secret of victory over sin. It is such a heart that knows Christ, that knows there is no difference, “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” It is because J am a man and as a man I have a man’s temptations and a man’s possibilities, the tempta- tion conquered in Jesus Christ and the possibilities developed, that I know that Jesus Christ has a similar message for my CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 39 fellowman, no matter where he lives, to the farthest bounds of this world. In order that I may make these points clear this day, I am going to bring to your notice, two instances which have come under my personal observation. I will draw one of these from the lowest level of Hindoo society, and one from the very high- est levels of that society. The first individual of whom I am thinking belonged among the scavengers of India. I can not say the "scavenger caste’ because you know that below the caste system are the untouchables, one-fifth of the population of India. You probably know something of the conditions under which they live. Still, below these there is another group of slaves, the scavengers, even more wretched, their religion even more of a devil worship, their social life more of a human pig sty. Such are the conditions of grinding poverty under which those poor people live, the nature of the work that they must do, which they share with the swine and the dogs of an Indian village, that such conditions would smother any human soul in a week, and crush out of it all possibility of rising superior to such circumstances and of laying hold of the living God. The one I have in mind was a woman, a small, fair, frail creature, in a certain town of South India. Among her other duties she came daily to sweep out the mission house. She at- tended the prayer services held in the house and in the town, and duly the regular teaching of the life of Christ, the words of eternal life and the deeds of healing began to have their effect. One day, she announced that she would follow Christ, that she had accepted Him as her Savior and her Master. The missionaries were frightened. They knew the conditions under which that woman lived. They knew that beyond the village there was the outcast settlement about which a certain text in the Hindoo scriptures writes, “They shall be outside the habita- tions of man and their wealth shall be dogs and donkeys.” They knew that beyond these untouchables, and untouchable by the untouchables themselves, was the little group of scavengers, four huts, one occupied by the man whom I cannot call the hus- band of four women, one of whom at his desire and his command lived with him, the other three living with their families in the other three small huts awaiting their turn. He came up on the mission house verandah one day to talk over her salary. The missionary was not very sympathetic for the simple reason that he knew she would never see anything of the salary herself. I remember him as he stood there, a powerfully-built man, the dirt on him in flakes, his matted hair roped with dirt. As I looked into his face, I saw stamped there pure bestiality as I have never seen it before or since. It came like a blow in the face that any one made in the image of the living God, could 40 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON possibly sink so low, as I looked into his eyes and saw the swine, and the fox and the snake leering out at me in a sort of degraded self-confidence. He commenced to talk. We carried on a conversation for a while. He was sent home unsatisfied. He took a five-foot staff, beat the woman until she fell unconscious on the floor. She was carried out by her own children, some water from the nearest ditch was thrown on her, and the next one took her place. She lived her life’ under these unspeakable conditions, carrying on the work she had to do, day by day, going through that village as a scavenger. So, when she announced her intention to follow Christ there was a missionary council. What could be done? Could she be sent back to her own parents? Certainly not. They knew no other manner of life. They would at once send her back again to this beast. Could she be kept near the mission house? Certainly not. How could we kidnap her, as it were? Besides, she did not care to come. She seemed to have an idea that-she should go back and fight her fight and win her victory where she lived. She was never allowed to join the Christian church, but she went back to her home, after making her decision, and announced it there. Impossible and incredible as it may seem, there under that cloud of lust and cruelty and bestiality, day by day, she showed forth the true white witness of a Christian life. As she came to Christian prayers on Sun- day the men sitting on the right of the church and the women on the left, this little fair creature would be sitting up in the front row and at the mention of the name of Jesus Christ, you could fairly see her face shine with hope, and joy and love, and the patience of Jesus Christ. How could she do it? I doubt whether one of us would have lasted a week under her trials without the inner power of the heart which she had found, the power of Christ which can take one from the very mire, can transform and cleanse, can strengthen and glorify and can place as a light in the darkness, walking like the few in Sardis, in white garments. It is a miracle. There is no other explanation for it. The other instance of which I wish to speak as I said, is one from the very highest, or one of the very highest, grades of Hindu life, a Neyogi, one of the highest sub-castes of the Brahmans. ‘Their life was very different. The largest house on the village street—a village of about twenty thousand inhabit- ants—had a deep cool verandah, floored with mud it is true, but at the same time deep and cool, and within could be seen the courtyard and the rooms on each side. There this boy lived with his elder brother and his mother. CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 41 He was a graduate of Madras University in Arts and in Law. You could go into their house, and if they would allow you to go into the kitchen or their dining room, you could eat your dinner off the floor, spotlessly clean—the brasses, the pots, and the pans shining, until you could see your face in them. They were the lords of several hundred acres of land, the center of the social life of the whole village, “Proud were they of their name and race,” and that pride was not altogether without justi- fication. Culture, refinement and education had been traditional in that family for generations and perhaps for centuries. Ananda Rao went down to Madras, and came back with his legal degree and with his arts degree. His heart was burning as he looked forward to a successful legal career, and there was in his heart too a great passion for India. He longed to find the Divine Power, to have the message which should lift India out of the weakness and degradation which makes the young Indian today grind his teeth, as he contemplates Western nations. He was eager for some power which should strike the shackles of caste and idolatry from India’s wrists and which would place her in the light of true freedom. As he looked about him and took stock of his native village, his task resolved itself in his mind into two problems—the problem of purity and the problem of service. Where would he find the one who could cleanse his heart, who could give him the secret of victory over sin, and where should he find the one in whom he would find his ideal of service for others? He walked restlessly down the streets of that town, he went into this place of worship and that, and read many books. One day he met the pastor of a little group of Christians in the out- cast hamlet. They became friends, and the friendship deepened. Then the young pastor very wisely gave him a copy of the four Gospels. Ananda Rao went home and sat on his little string cot, reading it by the light of his tin lamp on the wooden stand. You and I know what he read. He read about the leper by the road- side and how with his eyes on the eyes of Christ, he came nearer and nearer until he went to the feet of Christ with that cry, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean”; and, how Christ touched and cleansed the leper with the words, “I will, be thou clean.” Out of that sacred page there came a hand, a wounded hand, and it touched the heart of that boy, so that he rose to his feet and said, “I have found the power and I have found the Savior.” He threw down his old books, went out and got hold of the hand of our Christian preacher and said, “I am with you; I have found it. I am with you for Christ forever.” It was hard to give up his inheritance and to meet with the execration of his townsmen. His elder brother cursed him and spat in his face, and his mother came with disheveled hair and 42 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON torn garments and threw herself at his feet and wept. Aye, but he knew what Jesus Christ meant when He said, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” and with many another he knew what Christ meant, when he said, “He that would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” The proud Brahman did forsake all, going to the seminary he became a Christian preacher, and found his ideal in purity of heart and in loving service with Jesus Christ to the point of suffering and sacrifice with Him. Jesus Christ, what does He do for the individual? He saves them and he saves them to the fullness of the Christian life, for there is “no other Name given under heaven amongst men where- by we must be saved.” HIS VVMESSAGE LOR SOCiin ley MISS MABEL K. HOWELL, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE While we have been listening to the one who has just spoken, our hearts have rejoiced that in the great message that Jesus Christ gave to the world there is that which will trans- form and redeem all the individuals whom God has made out of all the nations. We have never known in all its fullness the wonderful story of the twice-born men of all the peoples of the earth. We can but rejoice this morning that our Christ gave to the world a message and a gospel that is adequate to save the individual. But I am here this morning to call your attention to the other side of the gospel message. I am here to tell you that society must be saved, that the social order must be redeemed, that the group mind, the group will and the group conscience must be brought into harmony with and be vitalized by the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ. This in no way con- troverts the belief that the message of Christ was spoken to the individual, but assumes that we would not be presenting the whole gospel of Jesus Christ were we not to claim for Him the power to redeem all the associated life of men. Do we need another religion to save the social order? There are men today, leaders in the thought life of the world, who would make us think that the gospel of Jesus Christ was not sufficient for the salvation of the associated life of men, and that the world awaits a great new teacher, a great new social philosopher, who shall speak the word which will redeem the life that we try to live together as peoples, as races, as nations throughout the world. Are we, this morning, prepared to say as a great missionary conference that because Jesus Christ has not had His chance to redeem the world in all of these interrelation- CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 43 ships, His message is not adequate for the redemption of the world? Or are we ready to say with Charles A. Ellwood in one of his recent books entitled “Religion and Social Recon- struction,” that Jesus laid a foundation in religion and ethics \ that is as solid and as stable as the foundation that was laid by Copernicus in astronomy and by Darwin in biology. If I understand why we are here this morning, it is to face together whether or no, we, as a great body of missionaries, as a great body of Christian leaders of all the churches of the United States and Canada, are ready to proclaim a great new crusade to bring all the relationship of this world of ours into captivity to the principles and the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1. Jesus knew that His message had in it the power to redeem society. He knew that in the word that He spoke, which became the watchword on his lips, the Kingdom of God, was to be found the principle which would redeem mankind. Jesus knew the value of that word. In that expression, the Kingdom of God, He answered, as you and I well know, the two great fundamental cries of the heart of humanity, those cries that were voiced by Philip when he said, “Show us the Father and it sufficeth us.” And by that young lawyer who came and said, “Who is my brother?” In that wonderful enunciation of the Kingdom with its sonship to the Father based upon regenera- tion, and its brotherhood based upon a common fatherhood, are the principles, ideals and teachings which, if applied, will redeem the associated life of men today. Jesus knew He was bringing into the world a teaching which ultimately would revolutionize the social order; and yet He also knew that individuals had to be won as a basis for that social order. So He gave his time, thought, labor, and prayer to the winning of a considerable body of sons who would serve as a basis for the social order that would be redeemed under the great thought of the brotherhood of man. But as we turn from Jesus and come down through the ages, we realize that, 2. The .aggressive and missionary leadership of the world throughout the ages has realized that in the message of Jesus was that which would save the associated life of men. The early Christians knew it. They were conscious that they were being called upon to be the stewards of a revolu- tionary doctrine that if applied would destroy the great Roman Empire. Those men put into practice the principle of brother- hood. They brought together into their organization the Jew and the Gentile; the rich and the poor; the master and the slave; the ruler and the tax collector; binding all together by the tie of Christian brotherhood. Missions’”’ 44 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON We know today that the teachings of those early men, like Peter and James, dealt with these great problems of the interrelationship of men. We know too, that these great Christian leaders gave their lives in martyrdom, not so much because they, as individual men, were the followers of Jesus Christ, but because the Roman rulers knew that in the doctrine they professed, in the Master to whom they were loyal, were to be found the principles and the teachings which would ultimately overthrow the Roman Empire. Their very death as martyrs is a proof of the social mission of those early Christian fathers. As we come down into early missionary endeavor in all the missionary fields of the world, we find that the men and women who were sent out from the churches of the United States and Canada and from other nations to speak the word to the nations beyond, in no sense separated in their thinking the great message of Christ to the individual from His message to the new social order in which they found themselves. This assertion needs no proof before this body. Several years ago, Mr. Robert E. Speer described forcefully the social conscience, and the social activity of that early group of missionaries. It is a marvelous story of im- proved agricultural methods, of the manufacture of cotton cloth and silk, of the introduction of steam engines, in short, of the bring- ing to the economic life of the peoples of the world that which would make it possible for them from the economic standpoint to live the Christian life.* But what of our later missionaries—the missionaries who are working as our representatives in all the mission fields of the world today, what do they say? ‘There is a new conscious- ness on the part of the missionaries today that they must inter- pret the full gospel of Jesus Christ, that they must give to the peoples that they are teaching the brotherhood side of the gospel of Jesus as well as the sonship side of his wonderful message. As one goes about among missionaries it is evident that they are consciously feeling that they must, in some way, bring to the thought and conscience of the peoples to whom they are ministering the fact that in Jesus and in His teachings is the power to redeem the life that they live together politically and industrially, as well as the life that they live as individual sons of the Lord Jesus. There is a new technique in the missionary body. It comes from the great social work of the West. But after all the thing that characterizes the missionary on the mission field today, as I see him at work, is a great social passion to see even whole *See a ad by Dr. Robert E. Speer, “The Social Ideals of the Founders of Modern th Foreign Missions Conference Report, 1921. CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 45 communities redeemed by the power of Jesus. It has seemed to me, as I have stood at the side of some of these men and women on the mission field, that they were looking out over their villages, as in Korea, or over their cities and rural communities, as in China, with the heart of Jesus when he said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how would I have gathered thy children together even as a fowl gathereth her brood under her wing, but ye would not.” There is a realization in the missionary body that if they truly present the full message of Jesus it will, because of its principles, redeem that community life and bring it into touch, sympathy, and alignment with the great cause and pur- pose of Jesus Christ. One of the most inspiring sights on the mission field today is the way in which the social passion has taken hold of the native Christian churches. In all of these lands, where the Christians are coming into self-consciousness and organizing their associations, as they have done in China in their China Christian Council, you come face to face with a program for the redemption of society. I have sat in conferences in China and heard them discuss how they could apply the principle of Christian brotherhood to the new industrial order that is emerging; how they could apply the principle of the worth of the human personality to the condition of womanhood in China; how they could reach out into all the difficult and un-Christian phases of their society and bring to bear upon it the wonderful principles that are to be found in our gospel of Jesus Christ. And so today, it seems to me, that the native church in the mission fields has caught a vision of the fullness of our gospel such as probably none of the churches that sent the missionaries forth had at the time it sent them forth. 3. Public opinion in the world today is demanding that the church of Jesus Christ release the principles and teachings of Jesus and apply them to the social order. We can not say that too forcefully. The church of Jesus Christ has a stewardship of those principles that in the opinion of mankind today will save the world in all of these relationships of life. It is needless ‘to elaborate upon this. The great social reformers of the world today are saying it from their platforms. They have tried the transformation of the social order without the spiritual part of Jesus’ message and they know it does not work. They know it is superficial, they know it will not stand and it will not abide, but they are beginning to realize that in the Christian gospel of divine sonship through regeneration and of brotherhood through common sonship is to be found the principle that will ultimately redeem mankind. The leaders in the social science world today are saying that our gospel is the perfect social religion, that it has in it every element that is needed for the 46 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON salvation of the social life that we live together. What is the trouble, men and women of this convention? We have not applied it. Today we are thwarting the carrying of the message to the uttermost ends of the earth, because our great inter- relationships in America and England and among the nations do not represent the great social principles and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. The Church is ready. The Church is convinced; the church wants to go forward in this great new crusade; she wants leadership. Time does not permit the development of this theme. 5. The youth of the world today is ready. The students of our colleges and churches, as we met them at Indianapolis, were saying, “We want as missionary volunteers to put into effect a crusade to bring to pass the ‘Jesus way of life’ in all the world.” Yes—the Church is ready and the young life that is to be the foundation of the missionary leadership of the world for the next generation is ready. 6. Are we ready? Will there go forth from this great Con- ference representing the very heart of the missionary spirit of the churches of Christ of America and Canada, leadership in the application of the teachings of Jesus to all the inter-related life of men? Are we here this morning to start that crusade? God wills it. HIS MESSAGE TO NATIONS AND RACES MR. JOSEPH H. OLDHAM, M.A., LONDON Secretary, The International Missionary Council When I was asked to speak on this topic the first question which suggested itself to my mind was whether Christ had a . message to nations and races. In a deep and true sense, as Mr. McLaurin has reminded us, Christ’s message is addressed primarily to the individual. I know no way in which we can get a better world except through the conversion of individual men and women. I know no way in which the Kingdom of God can come except as individual men and women by an individual act of repentance turn from their false ideas and their selfish ways and by an individual act of faith receive the new life which is the gift of God in Jesus Christ. And yet I think it will be apparent to all of us that it was indispensable that such a topic as this should have a place on the program of this Conference, if we reflect on the extraordinary transformation which has taken place in the world since the missionary movement began. Since the day when William Carey more than a century ago preached his great sermon, since CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 47 many of the great Boards that are represented in this Confer- ence were born, we have witnessed the invention of the locomo- tive steam engine, of the steamship, of the automobile, of the airship and the airplane, of telegraphy, of the telephone, of wire- less telegraphy. Accompanying these inventions, and, to a large extent, due to them, we have seen more fundamental changes take place in the structure of society. We have wit- nessed the growth of the industrial revolution with a social order based largely upon capital and the growing power of organ- ized labor. We have witnessed the extension through the world of representative institutions with the power passing into the hands of the people. We have seen coming into existence in the West and now beginning to come into existence in Asia and Africa the powerful engine of popular education. We have seen the growth of the press with its enormous influence. We have seen the rise of the modern, highly-organized bureaucratic state. We have seen the increasing growth of international commerce and international finance, so that every part of the world in which we live has become economically dependent upon every other part. I have been very much interested in the last few months in missionary conditions in East Africa, which as you know, was visited last year by the Phelps-Stokes Commission under Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones. What is the keyword in regard to all the colonies in East Africa? The keyword to the situation there at the moment is cotton. Why is that the keyword? It is because the mills of Lancashire cannot get from other sources a suf- ficient supply of raw cotton to keep them going. Therefore, they have to develop new sources of supply. That is but one illustration out of a hundred of the way in which the fortunes of the different peoples of the world have become economically linked together. What I wish to suggest to you is that all these new con- tinents of human life and human activity which have come into existence during the past century are just as much a part of the world to which the Christian witness has to be borne as the physical continents of Asia and Africa where the gospel has to be preached. That was the truth that Bishop Brent so power- fully and impressively put before us last night. It is not my purpose to enlarge upon that theme but to deal only with one aspect of it, viz., that those individuals in the world to whom we have to carry our gospel exist as members of nations and races, and that that fact, that sense of solidarity that they have with those of their own nation and their own race, is something which may color the whole texture of their minds. 48 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON I do not myself believe that there is anything in racial dif- ferences which need separate men from one another, or inter- fere with spiritual fellowship and unity; but when these racial differences are associated, as in fact they are associated as we find them in the world today, with different civilizations, with different political systems, and with different economic systems, then you may have in that fact of national solidarity, or racial solidarity, something which determines the attitude of men to those who belong to a different nation or race than themselves. Consequently, this sense of nationality, or the sense of race, may come to constitute an insuperable barrier between minds and minds, so that men are unwilling to receive a message from those to whom they are nationally or racially opposed. A hundred years ago those who were interested in the mis- sionary cause were praying that the doors might be open. China was a closed land. Today, physically, the world is open to the preaching of the gospel; but a very serious fact still remains to be faced in that, while the doors are physically open, there may grow up in men’s minds that which closes them to the preaching of the gospel. It may be of no advantage to us to be physically present in the continents, where we desire to preach the gospel. We may be living in a world of illusion in thinking that we are necessarily preaching the gospel to people’s minds, because we have mis- sionaries located in these different centers, if there grows up through national and racial prejudice a consciousness which closes their minds. Bishop Brent reminded us last night that the cause of in- ternational good-will was a fundamental humanness. That is profoundly true. It is also a fundamental missionary interest. What then has Christ to say to us in a situation like this, a situa- tion that touches the missionary cause at its very heart? I have time to speak this morning of only two adjustments, two personal changes which, if we will allow our Lord Jesus Christ to reign over our hearts and lives, will give Him the opportunity of transforming the situation in which we find ourselves today. In the first place, if we will allow our minds to be converted, if, as St. Paul says, we allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our minds under the influence of the mind of Jesus Christ, we shall be delivered from the danger to which we are constantly subject of losing sight of the individual in the nation or the race. In the Christian scheme of things a man is intended to live in human relations as a person with persons. The whole tend- ency of modern life, with its increasing complexity and organ- ization, tends to make us forget this fundamental human and Christian truth. Life during this past century has become im- CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 49 measurably more complex. We deal with corporations, with organizations and federations of employers, with organizations of labor, and even with nation over against nation and race against race. There is no more fundamental need of our modern life, than that of humanizing the relations of men with one an- other. That is profoundly true of races. The tendency all the time is to lose sight of the individual Indian in an abstraction which we call India, of the individual Japanese with his human need and his human aspirations in an abstraction called Japan, of the individual negro in an abstraction called the negro race. What we have to do if we wish to be Christian, or truly human, is to rediscover the individual in all his unique and ap- pealing individuality, to see him as Christ saw him, as an in-| teresting human being, as one who has human needs. The only power that is going to enable us to do that adequately is religious faith. In a naturalistic view of the world the indi- vidual has no such value. Life is plentiful, human life just as plant life. It is plentiful and it is cheap; and the only real rea- son, if we think it out, why the individual has a value, the kind of value that is attributed to him in the Christian view of things, is because there once lived on this earth a carpenter who took upon himself our human nature and conferred upon it an immeasurable dignity; because every individual, no matter what race he belongs to, is an object of God’s care and God’s love, and therefore must be an object of interest and care and love to those who know and understand God’s purpose; because that individ- ual, no matter how humble his circumstances, how backward his race, is an individual for whom Christ died. It is this Christian view of things that is going to enable us to bring to civilization, to this world situation what it sorely needs, the rehumanizing of the relations of men with one an- other through the discovery of the individual. That in itself will not provide a solution of our racial problems, but it will set to work in the world a new creative force, without which no solution of these problems will be possible at all. In the light of this Christian and human way of looking at life we get at the only solution that matters of the problem of equality. The only equality that is worth talking about is the equality of men as human beings, and the fact that a great deal of this discussion which is so common in our day, as to whether races are equal is, in the Christian view of things, quite beside the point. It is no more relevant to the difference in humanity than to differences in the members of a family. There are all kinds of differences of gift and capacity in a family, but the members know that they are equal as members of one family. The real meaning of equality is quite irrespective of differences of gift and capacity in the different races. Men are equal as human 50 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON beings; and as we get this Christian outlook upon our fellowmen, and see them in their human need and their human potentiali- ties, as those who have been born to grow up into sons of God, we establish a genuine equality within which all differences find their proper place. Just think what an emancipation it would be in the world in which we are living, if we could break free from the prison house into which we shut ourselves by our hates and our pre- judices and our fears and could go out to breathe the ampler and freer air of a world in which nothing human is alien to us and in which we live in human relations with our fellowmen as persons with persons. St. Paul tells us that the end of the whole creative process, what the world is waiting anxiously for, is the manifestation of the sons of God. I believe that the sons of God are those who, like the great Son of God Himself, live on earth with their fellow- men of every class and of every race in the relation of human friendliness and helpfulness and love. Now that is what Christ will do for the world, if we allow Him to reign over our hearts and minds and convert them, and so to transform our outlook upon life. The other change that He will bring about in us is this. He will emancipate us from the error of supposing that differences between people are necessarily causes for antagonism. That idea is extraordinarily deeply implanted in the mind of our time. We have got to root it out. If one keeps his eyes open to what is written in the press or in our fiction, to what he finds written even in works of science, he will find this utterly ungrounded assumption that because men are different they are necessarily opposed to one another. I was reading recently the work of a scientist in which several hundred pages were devoted to the careful and exact measurement of a human skull. While throughout these hun- dreds of pages the book proceeded with these mathematical calculations, on the last page I came across an astonishing state- ment. After describing the great powers of the Yellow Race this writer allowed himself to use a sentence to this effect: “With this race (the Yellow Race) so richly endowed the dom- inant White Race must engage in the greatest conflict in all its history.” What right had he to such a conclusion as that? There is no more reason, because the skulls of these two races differ in their measurements that they should engage in a suicidal con- flict than that I should strike my friend suddenly in the face, because I observe that he has dark eyes, while mine are light. CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 51 Differences do not need to divide. They may enrich. They may be complementary as in the case of sexes. There is no more reason why races should fight because they are different, than that husbands and wives should always be quarreling because they are different. St. Paul taught us a great truth, when he said that what constitutes a body is that it is made up of dif- ferent parts. If it were all hands or all eyes, it would not be the body. The conception of human society that Christ would help us to reach is one in which the parts are seen to be comple- mentary one to another. I am proud of my Scottish ancestry; I am proud of the contribution that Scotland has made to the world, but I believe the world would be a less rich place, if it were composed entirely of Scotchmen. America has something to give to the world that Scotland does not have. I believe that China and India have something to give to the world that Scotland lacks. The trouble is not with the fact that men are different. The trouble is entirely with this false idea, so deeply implanted in men’s minds. It is extraordinarily widespread, and our task is to root it out and to plant in its place that truer conception of human society which Jesus Christ has enabled us to reach. That is to say, our task is to root out of men’s minds this thought of people separated from one another, incapable of mutually understanding one another, of people necessarily opposed to one another, because of their differences. We must assist the mind of our time to be captured by the much truer picture of a bewildered and groping humanity, a humanity born to a high destiny, called to sonship of God, but held in fetters and chains by poverty, by disease, by ignorance and by sin, and waiting for its deliverance. If we could plant in men’s minds this truer picture of the meaning of this strange and tragic scene of human life, we should learn to think of all our fellowmen as potential comrades in the great fight against these enemies of human life, disease, and poverty, and ignorance, and sin, as potential allies in the common search of humanity for truth and beauty and goodness, and as companions in that long, upward march toward the City of God. Now, that is the difference that Christ will bring to us, if we allow His outlook upon life to dominate our thoughts. That is the great and high task to which we are called. The mean- ing of this Convention is that by the grace of God we should go away committed, dedicated to Him to change the mind of our time, to root out of men’s minds these false ideas which dominate them and to plant in their minds those truer ideas of human relationship which we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ. The future of civilization itself depends upon whether we can achieve that task, or whether we can make the mind of our 52 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON time more humane, more Christian, richer in its conceptions of human relationships, and the power to do that comes from the fact that we have seen the truth and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. THE AIM AND MOTIVE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS THE REVEREND E. STANLEY JONES, D.D., INDIA There is a good deal of misunderstanding as to what con- stitutes the aim and motive of foreign missions; and there was never a time when we needed more to clarify the issue. We are told that we are “international meddlers,’ that we are creed- mongers to the East, that we are the religious aspect of imperial- ism, that we are the forerunners of capitalism, that we represent a great hunger to see an ecclesiasticism prevail around the world. There was never a better time to face the problem and to face it squarely; and, under the closest scrutiny to tell what we are after, what we are trying to produce, just what we are trying to give. There are two places where we can battle this thing through. One is in the quiet study, where we brood over human motives and human ends to find out where we should emerge. The other place is in the thick of the battle, in the struggle of interests where ideas and civilizations meet. I have come to my own personal conclusion in the thick of the battle. I have been brought to cer- tain ends and aims and motives by the sheer exigencies of the battle itself. When I first went to India I was trying to hold a very long line, one that reached clear from Genesis to Revelation and on to Western civilization and the Christian church. I was bobbing up and down the line, fighting behind Moses and Abraham and Jesus and Paul and Western civilization and the Christian church. There was no well-defined issue. The non-Christian invariably pitched the battle at Moses or at Western civilization. He always seemed to get away from the central thing. Then I saw that I could shorten my line, that I could refuse to know anything before the non-Christian ‘world save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, to take my stand there and make Him the sum total of the aim and the motive of my message. Then it seemed that the way was cleared, that missionaries were not sent to make converts into pale copies of the West, but were there to respect anything that was fine in their civilization, contributing to their struggle upward after God. We were there not to wipe out that struggle, but to give them a person—that person, Christ. We were to ask them to interpret Him through their own national CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 53 genius and history and to express Him in a living, first-hand and real way. Then the issue began to clear in my mind. May I say that up to that time we missionaries in India seemed to have been up against a stone wall. Christian missions seemed to have come up to a certain plane of the thinking of the educated mind without penetration. We were making great progress among the outcasts, but we were scarcely making any progress among the educated classes; but when we clarified the issue and made this the one issue, there was a new burst of power. We found ourselves in the midst of a revival of interest in Jesus as a person far beyond the border of the Christian church, captivating the mind and thought of the East. Men said, “Is this the issue?’ They had seen standing amid the shadows of Western civilization a Person. That Person greatly attracted them, but they thought they would have to take both, if they took either, if they took Christ, they would have to take Western civilization also. But when the revelation dawned. upon the minds of the East, as it is dawning more and more, that.they can have Christ. with as little or as much of Western civilizdtion as they desire,» there came a new outbreak of spiritual power and interest in Jesus Christ that far surpasses anything of which we had dreamed or thought. Some time ago, in thinking over this matter, I tried to com- pare what the different religious systems tried to produce, what the aim and end of the whole progress has been. Here was Greece; Greece said, “Be moderate; know thyself’; Confucianism says, “Be superior, correct thyself’; Buddhism says, “Be disil- lusioned, annihilate thyself”; Hinduism says, “Be separated, merge thyself’; Mohammedanism says, “Be submissive, bend thyself” ; Shintoism says, “Be loyal, suppress thyself”; Judaism says, “Be holy, conform thyself”; Modern materialism says, “Be industrious, enjoy thyself”; Modern dilettantism says, ‘““Be broad, cultivate thy- self’; Christianity says, “Be Christlike, give thyself.” Now, if the end in view of Christian missions is to produce Christlike character that it may give itself as Jesus gave Himself, I suggest that we have no reason to apologize in the slightest degree for that end and motive, since there is nothing higher for God or man than to be Christlike. The end of Christian missions then is not to propagate Western civilization around the world nor to project an ecclesi- asticism throughout the world, but we are in a land frankly and without apology, openly and without the slightest hesitation to say that we think it is worth while to make men like Jesus Christ. We think, first of all, that this is a worthy end for our own lives. We ourselves would like to be like Him. We too would 54 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON like to catch His spirit, His thought, His mind, His purpose, and His power. We too, would like to give ourselves after the manner in which He gave Himself. If the end of Christianity is to produce men who will catch the Spirit of Jesus Christ and will give themselves as He gave Himself, I see no slightest reason in the world why we should hesitate for one single moment to make that the end and motive of our lives and of Christian missionary en- deavor. For in Him I see the summing up of human life. Jesus is not a way of life. He is life itself. He came not to bring a set of truths to set alongside of other truths. Jesus came to be truth itself. In him I see truth looking out at me from sad eyes and touching me with redemptive hands, loving me with a warm, loving heart. Jesus came not to bring a reli- gion, as Dean Inge says, “to set alongside of other religions”; Jesus came to be a religion itself. If we go deep enough into religion, we must stand face to face with Jesus, who is religion itself in its final expression. We have no apology whatever in regard to this as the aim and motive and end of our missionary life. Jesus sums up the finest of the East and the finest of the West, and supplies a supreme motive for Christian missions. Greece said there were three things that caught her atten- tion in worship, the good, the beautiful and the true. That sums up the finest thinking of the West. The East, brooding over these same problems, has come to the conclusion that there are three other ways out, namely the gyan marg, the bhakti marg and the karm marg. The gyan marg is the way of knowledge. The bhakti marg is the way of devotion. The karm marg is the way of action or works. But Jesus said, stand- ing midway between East and West, “I am the way, the truth and the life.’ I am the way—that is, the good. I am the truth, that is, the true. I am the life—that is, the beautiful. He is what the Greeks unconsciously desired. Turning to the East he says, I am the way—that is the karm marg—a way of life, a method of acting. J am the truth— that is the gyan marg, the way of knowledge. I am the life—_ that is the bhakti marg or the way of devotion. He is what India has unconsciously desired.. Jesus then stands midway between East and West and fulfils every thing that life strives for, and East and West will one day find in Him what they need. I was talking one day to a group of men. A lawyer rose in the crowd and said, “Mr. Jones, is that what you are after? Do you want to give us Christ and Christ alone?” I said “My brother, I have got nothing else to give. That is what I want to give.” Then he said, “I do not see how we Indians can object. I thought you had come here to wipe out our whole past and CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 55 all our culture. If your aim is to give us Christ, to let us take Him and interpret Him through our own genius and life, I do not see how we Indians can oppose.” I said, “My brother, we have no other motive whatever.” When we put our finger upon that one single motive and let Jesus touch men with his own vital presence and power, there comes a new vitality into the whole work of evangeliza- tion, for Jesus appeals to the soul as light appeals to the eye, as truth fits the conscience, as beauty speaks to the aesthetic nature. Christ and the soul were made for one another; and round the whole world, if we can bring a soul into contact with Jesus Christ, we will find that it sees in Him not a way of life but life itself, not a truth but truth itself, the one thing that life craves. I was in a group with some prominent men one day. I turned to them and said, “My brothers (they were all non- Christians), here are 60,000,000 outcasts. We want to raise them, to lift them higher.” I didn’t talk as though India was foreign to me, for, frankly, India is no longer foreign to me. I was born here in America. - I love her rocks and rills, her woods and templed hills, but India has become my home, India’s people are my people, her prob- lems are my problems, her future is my future. I would like to wear her sins upon my heart, if I could lift her to my Savior. I said to these men, “Brothers, what are we going to do with these 60,000,000 outcasts? They are a millstone around our national neck, and we can never be strong until we lift them.” A non-Christian arose and said, ‘Sir, it will take a Christ to lift them.” I said, “Yes, my brother, a Christ to lift them and to lift me and you and to lift the rest of us. I see no other way.” That non-Christian brother, standing amid his problems and searching for some redemptive force put his finger upon Christ as the one way out. Nine years ago Dr. John R. Mott was speaking in Victoria Hall in Madras. In the midst of his address, he used the name of Christ. The audience hissed him. Nine years later we were in that same hall for six nights with one topic: Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The crowd increased, until on the last night people were standing around the windows and doors and every- where. That last night I did something I had never dared to do before. I asked men publicly, openly and frankly to give themselves to Jesus Christ. Generally the best we had been able to do, hitherto, was to take a man away privately for such testimony in order to shield him and shelter him from the storm that would break upon him; but, that night, I said “Brothers, I have nothing to cover; will you frankly and openly give your- selves to Jesus Christ? Will those who do so come and take 56 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON these front seats?” If one had come, I should have been grate- ful. If five had come, I should have been overwhelmed. But that night between 100 and 150 came from among those leading men, and took their stands frankly and openly as followers of Jesus Christ in the very hall, where nine years before the name of Christ had been hissed. It was not the difference in the speakers, for every thing was in favor of the first speaker, but in the meantime a new revelation has dawned upon the mind of India, that Christ belongs to her need and to her future as much as He belongs to the West. That new revelation is bringing us face to face with one of the most wonderful facts that the Christian church has ever faced, namely, that Christianity is breaking out far beyond the borders of the Christian Church. The question that we must face in this Convention is this: is the Christian Church going to be big enough and great enough and Christlike enough to be the medium through which Christianity will express itself before the non-Christian world? If so, there must be a finer and more utter abandon to Jesus Christ than there has ever been in the past, less of the supercilious, less of racial patronage, less of that bending over the East and saying, “I come to do you good,” and more of the catching of the spirit of service that animated Jesus, and of the feeling of real brother- hood that throbbed in His every act. The leading social thinker of India said to me, before I left India, “Mr. Jones, Western civilization was never at a lower ebb in our estimation, but your missionaries never stood higher. You come not to exploit us but to serve us.” This man put his finger upon the touchstone of the future. If one goes to serve, if he goes in the spirit of Jesus Christ, the whole East is wide open, there will be a universal response to that touch of service. One who goes with the thought of patronage finds the East closed to him. A friend of mine was talking to a Brahman gentleman, who said, “I do not like the Christ of your creeds and the Christ of your churches.” This friend with swift intuition replied,“ If you do not like the Christ of our creeds and the Christ of our churches, how would you like the Christ of the Indian road?” The Brahman gentleman thought a moment—the Christ of the Indian road, can we picture him, with long flowing garments alongside the road with the crowd about him, touching blind eyes, and letting the light stream in, his hands upon the heads of unclean lepers, sending them back to healing and to health, announcing the good tidings of a new kingdom to stricken humanity, and telling of the coming brotherhood that is to be, dying upon a wayside cross for men, and rising again? Such a Christ would be one with the Christ of the Galilean road. We CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 57 must take our Christ to be naturalized upon the Indian road, and upon Chinese pathways and upon the highways of Japan, letting every nation find in Him the true expression of its own national outreaching of heart and see in Him what they have craved and longed for through the weary centuries. I was talking to Mr. Gandhi one day. I said to him, ‘“Ma- hatma Gandhi, I am very anxious to see Christianity naturalized in India, not something identified with foreign people and with foreign governments, but a part of the national life of India, contributing its power to India’s uplift. What would you sug- gest that we do, in order to make that possible?” He thought a moment and then replied: “If you are going to do that I would suggest to you four things: First, that all you Christians, mis- sionaries and all, must begin to live more like Christ.” I knew that he was not speaking alone. Through his eyes three hun- dred and twenty million people were looking, and through his voice those millions were speaking. The leading non-Christian of the world there looked me in the face and said, “If you would come to us, you must come in the spirit of Jesus Christ, and if you come in His spirit we cannot resist you.” I do not know of any greater or more compelling challenge that should send us to our knees in humble search after a finer, deeper, more Christlike living than that simple phrase, “Be more like Jesus Christ.” “Secondly,” he said, “I would suggest that you must prac- tice your religion without adulterating it or toning it down.” Now, I was amazed at that remark. I] would have thought that any getting together might mean compromise and toning down in order that we should meet the non-Christian world half way. But let me say this: I do not believe that the non-Christian world wants a toned-down Christ. I do not believe that the non-Christian world wants the heart of the gospel taken away. The non-Christian world has discovered its high challenge, its amazing appeal, its mighty call, and it says to us, “Do not adulterate these or tone them down; take Christianity in its rugged simplicity and in its high demands and live out its life; then we cannot resist you.” Are we doing this? Some one has justly declared that we are inoculating the world with a mild form of Christianity so that it is practically becoming immune to the real thing. Why should we offer the East a mild form of Christianity? I am not interested in giving India a mild form of Christianity. I would wish her to take Christ just as He is in His mighty, saving, overwhelming power to change human nature and to make men new. I would offer the real thing, expressed in utter abandon to Jesus. 58 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON “Thirdly,” he said to me, “I would suggest to you that you put your emphasis upon love, for love is a central thing in Christianity.” Note that the Mahatma did not mean love as a sentiment but love as a working force. If God is love, then the highest power is love; the highest power of omnipotence was revealed at Calvary, and the one way out of our world’s diffi- culties is just to catch the spirit of love that Jesus Christ exhibited and to embody it in race relationships, in international relationships, in every single relationship of life. “Fourthly,” he said, “ I would suggest to you that you study the non-Christian religions more sympathetically to find out the good that is in them, in order to have a more sympathetic approach to their peoples.” He was quite right. We should be unafraid of truth found anywhere because Christ is the fulfill- ment of that truth. It is sure to be a signpost that points toward Jesus who is truth itself. Put your finger again upon those four suggestions of the Mahatma: Live more lke Jesus Christ; practice Christianity without adulterating it or toning it down; put your emphasis upon love; be unafraid of truth anywhere. The leading non- Christian of the world says to us, “If you will come to us in this spirit and in this way we cannot resist you.” As a Christian, that challenges me; it sends me to my knees to search for a finer, bigger and greater life. May this missionary Convention mean, to every one of us, a deeper searching of motive and of life. We cannot go to the Orient and glibly say, “We give you Christ”; we must rather say, “We give you Christ expressed through our lives. We give you Christ, not merely described in a book, but written in looks and outlook and in the very temper of our lives.” We find the East helpful as a teacher. Many of us are better men because we have been in contact with its gentle heart; but it is our honest conviction that the one thing that India and the whole East needs is just what we have our finger upon this morning, namely, Christ Himself. A leading non-Christian said to me, one day, “Can you put your finger, Mr. Jones, upon something that you have in your religion that we do not have in ours?” I said, “Shall I tell you in‘a’ word?’ a He said;- lfi-you can: wl said) Tecan: ty ouchave no Christ.” That is the heartbreaking and pathetic lack of the non-Christian world. Its peoples have no Christ. I see no one anywhere around the world who is getting along well without Christ. I see no hope for any one around the world except along this one way of Jesus Christ. I make no apology, then, for being a Christian missionary, since the making known of Jesus Christ is the supreme and controlling motive of the mis- sionary’s life. CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 59 I was, one day, in a great meeting of non-Christians. The judge of a native state was the chairman of the meeting. When I got through my appeal, he said this, “You have heard tonight what it is to be a Christian. If to be a Christian is to be like Christ, then I hope you will all be Christians in your lives, though I am not one myself. I see nothing better than for you to be Christians, if to be a Christian is to make you like Jesus Christ.” Then he turned and in a very gracious but very compelling manner said, “May I say one word to you who are Christians here? If you Christians had always lived more like Jesus Christ, if you would live and talk and act like Him and have His outlook on life, this process of conversion would go on much more rapidly.” ‘If this Convention will mark a new era of emphasis upon Jesus Christ, not an emasculated Jesus, but one able to do all things that human nature needs to have done, a Christ that is sufficient and compelling; and if out of this convention will go a new Christo- centric emphasis in this whole missionary propaganda, then I[ believe there will be a new burst of spiritual power around the world. I believe that obstacles that have looked like stone walls will suddenly reveal open doors, for Christ, the risen and trium- phant Lord, can enter through doors that have been closed. He can find His way into the crannies of human life and can meet men face to face in a new and living way. I was talking to the leading philosopher of India, a man deeply read in the philosophy of East and West. I said to-him, “Professor, I want you to tell me what you think of Christ.” I knew that his criticism would be keen, for he was a very keen-minded man. I steeled myself for the shock of his criticism. He said, “Mr. Jones, we had high ideas of God before Jesus came, but Jesus is the highest expression of God that we have ever seen; he is conquering us by the sheer force of his own personality even against our wills.” © majestic Christ, thou who art walking across the nations, and bidding for the heart of the world, give us something of Thy touch, Thy presence and Thy power. I listened to another address by a leading lawyer of Calcutta. The man stood there in Eastern garb, in the simplicity that the East so dearly loves; and addressed the audience on this topic, “The Inescapable Christ.” He said, “We have not been able to escape Him. He confronts us. There was a time when our hearts were bitter and sore against Him, but we have not been able to escape Him. He is melting our hearts by the sheer force of His own Person.” May I speak out of the seventeen years’ experience that I have spent in India in evangelistic work among these leading men. I see no other way out. There are scars on every word that I am saying just now. I see no other way out for East or West than 60 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON the way that Jesus offers, namely, Himself. I see no other hope for human character save to be made like Jesus Christ. I see no other way out of the world-troubled situation than the way that Jesus would point. I see no other way except Jesus, who Himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life. A Hindu professor in South India once said to me, “My study of modern history has shown me that there is a moral pivot in the world. The best life of the East and the West is more and more revolving around that moral pivot. That moral pivot is the person and life of Jesus. Around that center the best life of the East and the West is revolving. If we have slipped off a bit into denomina- tionalism and denominational propaganda merely, if we have felt that our business was to create a kind of supremacy of the white race through Christianity, if we have got off the center a bit and have gone off into other interests, then this conference should bring us back to that center. Let us work out from that center to our problems. He must be real to us. We cannot talk about Christ in the East, we have got to take Him; we can’t talk about God, we must bring Him. A leading man, a thinker of India, said to me, “My brother, what do you think of Jesus?” He said, “Mr. Jones, there is nobody else who is seriously bidding for the heart of the world except Jesus Christ. There is nobody else on the field.” Really there is no one else seriously bidding for the heart of the world except Jesus Christ. The missionary enterprise has many critics; but no real rival; there are other great religious founders, but none with such an aim, namely, to make this world a Christlike world, giving itself for the sake of all others, as Jesus Christ gave Himself for the sake of us all. If the motive and aim of Christian missions is to produce this sort of Christlike character, I have no apology for being a missionary. INTERCESSION: THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF CHRIST PRESIDENT W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE, D.D., HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT We have been holding high fellowship this morning. We have been dealing with the highest relations of the human spirit. We have been trying to understand a little of those relationships both towards God and between man and man. We have allowed ourselves to place no limits upon our conception of that human spirit. We have accompanied with it, as it appears among primitive men in the jungle. We have held fellowship with the cultured Eastern saint in his lonely search for God. We have accompanied with our brother the missionary of Christ, whether like His Master He is speaking to the individual or toiling with the multitude. We CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 61 have thought of the church of Christ lavishing itself upon human- ity and finding itself again, like our Lord Himself, confronted with the fierce forces that are resident in this heart of man, making havoc of his earthly life, and darkening the future. We have allowed no limits to the range of our great task or to our conception of the power of God over this human nature of ours. We have watched Him as he came in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ, to the individual seeking to enter into fellow- ship with the lowliest and lifted him to the loftiest of human experiences. We have stood with the toiler among the masses both at home and abroad, as he tried to deal with the great and tragic divisions that exist even within the national lives of men, class against class, interest clashing with interest; and we have once more tried to see the living God in Jesus Christ entering into that strife with his own sorrow and his ancient love, to make peace. We have watched Him once more dealing with nations and with governments of the world, and we have remembered Him, who is called in the last book of the New Testament, “the ruler of the kings of the earth,’ and our hearts have been lifted with that strange pride and exaltation known only in all history to the Christian spirit, when we have said to ourselves, “He is our King; and the Lord God Almighty, the source of all being, is speaking in Him to all the kings of the earth, to the governments of all the nations of the world.” And we have been holding fellowship with the missionary, the man, the woman, whom we have sent out from these shores all over the world, (18,000 of them from North America alone), all entering into the fellowship of human hearts, and all of them living in the fellowship of the living God in Jesus Christ. I have been asking myself, sitting here, What is the tre- mendous power that is resident in that Name of Jesus Christ? What is the secret of this strange, unmeasured influence, which He is exercising over all men? The teacher? Yes. The prophet? Yes. The friend? Yes. The healer of diseases? Yes, all these and more than all these. For our source of power lies in the fact that in Jesus Christ God has entered into the fullest, the most complete fellowship with man of which we can conceive. It is the act of God in Christ that redeems the world. Behind that name of Christ there is always that mystery of God. When Gandhi, and ' Indian professors, and learned men say, “He is our Master,” some- how through the word “He” their spirit is feeling up toward the mystery that is beyond and hidden, to find in Jesus Christ the liv- ing God that speaks in Him. And when we remember that the great and secret power of the gospel of Christ lies in the fact of God’s fellowship with man in Him, we ask ourselves the next natural question, How has that 62 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON fellowship been manifested? Where is it in the story of Jesus Christ that the fellowship of God with human nature comes to its climax? Where is it that at last we find the fountains of eternal power over the souls of men opened and the waters of life flowing over the deserts? Where is it? The answer is obvious, for we know that there is carried over the world a certain symbol that gives the answer. We know, though we Protestants carry no crucifix upon our persons, we know that in our imaginings and in our words there goes everywhere, with every kind of missionary, into every corner of the world, that word, that picture, that sym- bol, that revelation of God which we call the Cross of Jesus Christ. To worshippers at the stately altars of the East, in presence of the crescent and the cruel scimitar of the Mohammedan, before the dull imaginations of primitive tribes, 18,000 missionaries today, representing these churches of North America, are presenting this cross of Jesus Christ. He died on a cross and in His death God entered into the deep- est conceivable fellowship with the human spirit, that spirit even in its sin, in its blindness and weakness. There He entered into all the darkness, all the crime, all the horror, all the shame of human na- ture and of human history. He came indeed, that He might serve. And the world likes to think of Christ as the servant of humanity. But He served even unto a death that He called “ransom for many.” In that fellowship of God with the human spirit we find the secret of the transforming power of Jesus Christ. No Oriental philosopher surely ever forgets when he speaks his admiration for Christ the Teacher, the Master, the Leader, the Inspirer of men, that Christ was crucified, that the world did Him to death, that God, His Father, allowed Him, the Prince of Glory on that won- drous Cross, to die. What is that fellowship of God with humanity on the Cross which has changed the very name of God for us all and changed the very name of man for God? There are a hundred and one theories, are there not, of what the Cross did, of what the theo- logians call the “atonement”? Somehow or other, when I read any one, even the poorest, of these, I always find there is some truth there; and when I[ read the best and the greatest, I lay down the book and say, “Still, still, there is more in the Cross of Christ than the greatest has ever seen; something there in that com- munion of the eternal with the temporal, of the infinite with the finite, of the holy with the sinful, of God and man, in the mingled horror and glory of that death,—something there which will always elude and surpass our utmost theories of what the Cross means.” We have to think of it largely in pictures, if ever our theories are to become food for the soul. Let me just name three such CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 63 pictures, to make the divine power of the Cross vivid for us today. The first is from our Christian lyrist when he surveys the won- drous Cross. “See,” he says, “See from his head, his hands, his feet.”” What is it that he bids us see? It is not just physical life- blood, but the life-blood of the soul. It is “sorrow and love flow mingling down.” Whose sorrow, whose love? The sorrow of God, the love of God, before the eyes of men—flowing, mingled in the red life-blood of Jesus Christ. “Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?” There is the redeeming power of the eternal God. Then another picture. One of the ancient families of Scot- land has a strange device, a crest that I often have brooded over, for it is the crest of my mother’s clan. In the center of it there is a red, red heart, life-blood showing in that heart. Above it there is a glorious, glittering crown of majesty; below it is a scroll, and on the scroll is the word, “Forward.” On each end of the scroll there is a wing, and the two wings seem to be carrying that crest FORWARD, the red heart and the glittering crown between them. That has been to me for many, many years, a picture of what hap- pened when God entered into that intimate fellowship with man on Calvary. The red blood revealed and proved for ever the sor- row and love of God; and through that sorrow and love came his power, his crown rights over the human spirit; and the wings of the Divine Spirit are carrying that message right around the world, “forward” into light. ‘“Your God,” it says to every man, “the One Being that made us all, the living God is the God of the red heart and the conquering crown. Forward into the eternal life.” That is the atonement. Another picture is from a very recent and tremendous event in which many of you shared. For I stood, last Saturday morn- ing, and watched that awe-striking transaction of God in the great eclipse. When the weird light broke upon the buildings and streets around me, my soul seemed to shudder with affright, in sympathy even with the animal world. And as I gazed at the sun, suddenly, when that moment of supreme darkness swept over me, and the dark, obliterating moon was centered on the sun, the corona broke out—the corona that is always there, the colors that have been there since the sun began its history, which I had never seen before. But it needed the dark, black, centered mass of the moon to come between me and the glory of the sun that I might see the corona “of the sun. And methinks something like that was what happened when Peter, and James, and John, and ‘Mary the mother of Jesus, and others saw Him die on the Cross. It was all black, and all despair. The night had fallen upon their souls, and no light seemed to be possible again for their eyes, no hope for their shattered hearts. 64 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON A few days later and more clearly a few weeks later they learned to see in the new world. And now when they gazed back upon that Cross as they had seen it through their streaming eyes and with breaking hearts,—when they saw it now, their souls saw it in a great vision of joy. They looked upon the blackness, and it seemed that that which had obliterated God revealed him. Behold around the Cross of Jesus Christ the corona of God! So for us, and for every missionary, and for every hearer of the gospel throughout the world, there is always this story of Jesus, who died,—having lived, having taught, having mastered human life as a human being, and then died, crucified. Wherever the story is told, somehow or other the eyes of human beings see the glory, the majesty of the sorrow of the Eternal God coming home, home to their own hearts; the eternal love of the everlasting Creator and God, lifting, lifting each individual and all men and all their fellowships into the light of His holiness and His love. We now come to pray; pray we must. Let us do it at the foot of the Cross that has become a throne, at the foot of the throne of God who revealed His sorrow for us, His love for us, for human beings there, supremely, tragically, triumphantly, and made that darkness and that story the pivot of the history of the world. Let us pray! O Thou Living God, Eternal Father, in whom our very being is grounded, in whom every living man in the world today has his existence, before whom the darkest and the best are present as living children of Thine eternal love, we pray to Thee, Thou hearer and answerer of prayer, ,Thou creator of the spirit that must speak with Thee, Thou awakener of the desires that must rise to Thee. We beseech Thee to look down upon this Convention. Pour, this morning, Thine own spirit upon all our hearts, that spirit of sorrow and of love, of personal penitence and personal confidence, of personal humility and yet of personal and ambi- tious devotion. Do Thou look down upon all who represent Thee through our churches in the far lands. Grant unto them the spirit of Jesus Christ in a very real, in a very actual, in a very powerful manner. Grant them to realize that their words are the chan- nels of the life of God; that their own lives are the manifesta- tion of the sorrow and the love of God; that their manner of ministry must be a continuous revelation of the meaning of Calvary, and the presence of the throne of Christ. CHRIST: THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD 65 Do Thou draw them into deeper fellowship with Thyself that they may be thus manifestations of Thee, O holy and loving God, to the hearts of all men among whom they labor. We pray that Thou wilt comfort them in their distractions and perplexity; that Thou, O Christ, who hast faced crowds that hated Thee and derided Thee, that Thou wilt be with them when crowds deride them and when they face eyes that are shot with hate. We pray that Thou wilt be with them in the joy of delivering Thy message, that it may come pure and straight from the fellowship of God with man in Jesus Christ, His present fellowship with that man, that woman, who speaks the word to others. We pray that Thou wilt be with them in their own secret and inner life, giving them the joy and the reality of that divine fellowship. O God, who didst so love the world, who hast not withheld the greatest of all conceivable deeds of love from man, do Thou look down in Thy mercy upon the nations of the world, upon all the distractions and class hatreds within Christendom. O God, let them not forget that the centuries have fled, and that Christ’s name has been stamped upon their names. Behold we confess with shame and sorrow the divisions and the hatreds, which mar the name of Christendom. O Lord, forgive; cleanse the heart of Christendom, that we may be ashamed that the dominion of Christ has not been fully accepted even among ourselves. We pray Thee, O Father and Lord of all mankind, to look down upon the nations of the world Thou has created, all the races. In the mystery of Thy purpose they have been divided by color, and by residence, and by all the environing experi- ences of their nativity. We pray that Thou wilt overcome all the bitterness and strife which spring from these differ- ences and separations, O Thou Son of God, who lovest every color Thou hast made, who seest through it to the heart that makes us all one, who didst shed Thy blood for the blood that is in the heart of all humanity. Do Thou draw the races to an understanding of their relations in Thy presence, in Thy name, that they may know how to live with one another in the dis- tinctions of earth, and in the unities of heaven. We pray Thee, Lord, to look down upon all preachers and teachers of Thy truth at home and abroad, giving to them the end and the motive that comes from Thy heart. O Thou God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant unto them not to be ashamed at any time of the Gospel which is the power of God, the power that is able to save human nature in every individual instance of it, and in all masses of it, even to the end of the world. 5 66 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Heavenly Father, beyond all our dreaming and asking, beyond all our vision and faith, do Thou continue to act. For we know not what to ask for our world, but we feel the presence now of a spirit wiser, greater, than ours, that with divine groan- ings which cannot be uttered, pleads with Thee, Thy very heart, O God, speaking of Thyself in our hearts. Answer these prayers; fulfill these purposes; reveal these glories, establish these kingships over the hearts of men. All this we ask in the Name of Him who is our Lord, and the Lord of all men, our Savior, and the Savior of all the generations, even Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL THE GOSPEL IN A GREAT ORIENTAL CITY THE REVEREND WILLIAM AXLING, D.D., TOKYO The dreamy, tranquil Tokyo of fiction and fancy is gone. In its place there is a city of two and one-half million people. It is a city that holds its head high, as the proud capital of Japan’s empire of 4,000 sea-girt islands and the metropolis of the Orient. Japan is a fast moving nation, and Tokyo is the pace-setter. In the far-flung fields of culture, commerce, indus- try and politics Tokyo sets the ideals which sway men’s minds and manners all over the Empire. The life of Tokyo colors the life of the entire nation. Here have come to the birth all those movements that have created modern Japan and have made her mighty. More than this, Tokyo stands at the cross-roads of the nations. Here meet the surging tides of life that sweep in from the Occident and from the Orient. Here are focussed all those creative as well as destructive forces which flourish in the cities of both the Eastern and the Western world. Here the good out of these two civilizations is at its best and the bad at its worst. Into this teeming, throbbing city, with its ancient scenes and setting, its modern movements and life, the gospel of Jesus Christ has come as a challenging dynamic force. It followed the age-long course of first coming to grips with individuals, here one, there one, until pivotal personalities, transformed by its power and incarnating its ideals and its spirit, were gradually planted all up and down this cosmopolitan center’s crowded life. These twice-born personalities project their potent selves upon their environment, and lo! the age-long miracle repeats itself. Kobayashi, captain of industry and king in the dentifrice industry, is a typical example. He became a Christian, adven- turing with Christian ideals in Tokyo’s industrial and commer- cial life. His business was transformed from a mad race after gold to a far-flung arm of opportunity to serve. In his factory there are hours not only for work, but for prayer and for play. Fair hours, a living wage, profit-sharing, educational and recrea- tional privileges made his concern a pioneer in applying the Jesus way of life to Japan’s new industrial age. In his relation with the customer and the public Kobayashi’s master motive is not to get but to give. He looks upon his business as a God-opened channel through which to benefit the 67 68 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON other man. Onward he goes blazing a shining trail for Christ right through the heart of Japan’s industrial world. Other industrial concerns have come under the spell of the same Christ and the same ideals. —The Mikimoto Pearl Concern, far famed for its cultural pearls, is pioneering in the same high Christlike fashion. The Fuji Spinning Company and the Kane- gafuchi Spinning Concern, two of the largest industrial organi- zations in the Orient, though not entirely under Christian man- agement, have thrown open the doors of their manifold plants to a straight-from-the-shoulder presentation of the gospel to their hundreds of thousands of employees. Gradually the leaven is spreading and all along its path is bringing lives and commercial concerns under its power and blazoning new ideals and new standards across Japan’s industrial sky. It works, the gospel works, it works wonders in this work- a-day world of Tokyo. Converts from one of the Fuji Spin- ning Company’s factories have multiplied, so that on their own initiative they have launched a church organization, manned by their own men, supported by their own means, and are aggres- sively attacking the task of evangelizing their factory-fellows and their neighborhood. Some two hundred churches, scattered like beacon lights across Tokyo’s seething sea of ‘life, are carrying forward the preaching and teaching program of the Christian faith. All of these are manned by Japanese pastors, many of whom, in cul- ture and character, in brains and faith, are the peers of their colleagues in the Western world. Many of their churches are self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. Among them the spirit of cooperation is strong. Repeatedly, they line up as a solid phalanx, advance with a united front and carry on city-wide evangelistic campaigns and public service efforts. Some twenty Christian schools are annualiy throwing 8,000 of Tokyo’s finest sons and fairest daughters into the Christian mould and planting them as potent personalities all up and down the Empire. Institutions and organizations like the Tokyo Misaki Taber- nacle, the Christian Center of the Woman’s Christian Temper- ance Union, Mr. Kagawa’s Christian Settlement, the Salvation Army and others, less ambitious but not less effective in their field, with seven-days-a-week programs planned to reach the last man, woman and child, are digging in and laying siege to whole communities and using the method of mass attack. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associa- tions, the Waseda Brotherhood and other groups are in the campaigns for special classes, pushing the battleline into the city’s great student centers and into the fields where Tokyo’s young men and women flock. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 69 The gospel in Tokyo finds the child heart wide open. Approximately two hundred and fifty Sunday-schools are turn- ing the children Christward. When the world’s Sunday School Convention met in Tokyo, a few years ago, 25,000 of Tokyo’s children turned back the thundering traffic and sang their tri- umphant way through the city’s most crowded thoroughfares. Not only Tokyo, but far and wide Japan, wide-eyed and won- dering, stopped and listened to that joyous, irrepressible song. Those of understanding hearts realized that the gospel of Christ had laid hold of the very heart strings of the capital and of the land. In September, 1923, when twenty-seven square miles of this fair city were turned into earthquake-wracked and fire-swept debris, the Christian forces made a forward run with the flag of Christ and planted it right in the citadel of Tokyo’s child world. The city authorities saw the children, 200,000 strong, sitting among the ashes and the ruins, sad and dejected beyond their young years. Fearful of the effect of this on their plastic mental and spiritual life, they sought for a way to broadcast hope and cheer across that wreckage and to turn the children’s hearts again to music and to song. But where could hope and joy be found in such a dark and tragic hour? Where, except in the hope-giving and song-inspiring gospel? Only the tri- umphant, radiant, singing Christ could answer that high chal- lenge. Instinctively, they turned to Him. And ere many weeks had passed, the educational authorities of that great Oriental city flung open the doors for expert tellers of Bible stories and masters of Christian song to team up and go from primary school to primary school, giving the Christian message in song and story in every one of Tokyo’s hundreds of schools of this grade. Strange though it sounds, even this is not the end of the story. A group of Christian Japanese laymen, sensing this strategic opportunity, have launched a supporters’ organization, and purpose to put this unique work on a permanent and con- tinuous basis. Osaka with its 1,500,000 people had pioneered in this field with Christian laymen as promoters. Thus it hap- pens that in Japan’s two largest cities the gospel has found a triumphant entry into the public primary schools. This for- ward march of the gospel into the heart of a nation’s child world probably cannot be paralleled in any age or in any other land. Certainly it cannot be paralleled on the pages of the history of missions in foreign lands. The gospel in Tokyo has fired the souls of her native sons with a passion to broadcast its story. Kagawa, the apostle to the poor, Kanamori, the Moody of Japan, Kimura, Japan’s Billy Sunday, Colonel Yamamuro, the Japanese General Booth, Bishop 70 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Uzaki of the United Methodist Church of Japan, Pastor Uemura, editor and educator, Dr. Kosaki, dean of Japan’s pastors, Uchi- mura, the Christian mystic, and a great host of others are carry- ing the gospel like a flame of fire all up and down this city’s thronging ways. There is no area in Tokyo’s life where this conquering gos- pel has not won its victories. In the courts of culture it has its devotees. Christian professors are conspicuous leaders on the faculties of the Imperial and Waseda Universities. Other insti- tutions and professional schools have an outstanding group of Christians on their teaching staff. Many of these Christian professors are national figures, exerting a potent Christian influ- ence far beyond the confines of the nation’s capital. In all of these institutions there are great groups of Chris- tian students bringing the impact of the gospel to bear upon Tokyo’s vast student host, an army 100,000 strong. ‘These Christian students are the flower of the nation’s youth today, and will be its leaders tomorrow. In the political world are Christian men who are mighty; Matsumoto, Tagawa, Ozawa are but a few of Tokyo’s political leaders who sit in Parliament, who make the Empire’s laws, and from this high source bring the impact of Christian ideals to bear upon the city’s and the nation’s life. The city of Tokyo has in recent years launched an unbe- lievable number of welfare institutions as a part of its municipal program. And it is a notorious fact that the army of welfare workers connected with these centers is led and honeycombed with men and women who were chosen because they had learned from Jesus the genius of service and have caught from Him its inward spirit. The gospel has also captured the pen of men who loom large in the world of letters. Three of the city’s leading daily papers are wholly or in part under Christian control. Christian ideas and ideals have permeated the capital’s literature. Of late years Mr. Kagawa’s Christian novels “Across the Death Line” and “Piercing the Sun” have been the best sellers at Tokyo’s innumerable book stalls. Translations of such books as the Fosdick series and Papini’s Life of Christ have had an unpre- cedented sale. The gospel has focussed its white light on moral standards and sanctions that wreck character and undermine society. These standards and sanctions had gone on unchallenged and unquestioned across the years until the gospel came to Tokyo. Under its white light these practices hoary with age stand challenged and ashamed and the fight to outlaw them is on. The gospel in Tokyo has passed on to the dying ethnic faiths a new lease of life. Its impact upon them is causing THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 71 them to dream new dreams, to think in new terms and to speak a new language. Buddhism and Shintoism are throbbing with new ideas, new ideals, a new program, and a new life, all of which are borrowings from the gospel. The gospel in Tokyo has come to grips with the most challenging and baffling task of our time—the adjustment of race prejudice and of racial pride. It is blasting the color line and laying the foundation for a world brotherhood, rooted in God and centered in Jesus Christ. Following the enactment of America’s exclusion law a small group of Christian men in Tokyo attempted to start a move- ment to oust American missions and missionaries. In response the Japanese Christians arose in a body in protest. They de- clared that in the Christian brotherhood there should be no color, nor race, nor national distinctions. They insisted that Christians of all lands are brothers in a great world brotherhood and col- leagues in a great world task, and the movement died before it was born. I shall never forget standing a few days after the earth- quake and the fire in the door of our gutted Tabernacle in Tokyo with a prayer in my heart and a question mark stalking through my brain. The whole situation seemed appalling. I was wondering what to do and where to begin. Suddenly there appeared a non-Christian Japanese physician, trained in the best schools of the Japanese empire, and in the best schools of Europe, standing at the very head of his profession, and offered his services. With his help we turned the entire gallery of our auditorium into an emergency hospital, built an operating room and opened a free dispensary. In January he gave himself to Christ. He came to us in September with a desire to serve, but in January, when he had crowned Christ as his King, the pas- sion to serve literally flamed and flashed in his heart. He went in and out among the refugees like a flaming torch. I became greatly concerned about him. Again and again, I called him aside and warned him that the pace which he was setting for himself was too stiff. He never argued the matter. He always answered me with a smile. He seemed to say, “You have not yet sounded the depths of my soul.” Then he was back and at it again. | In March he broke. We found that his nerves were shat- tered and that the fever was running through his veins and arteries like a forest fire. In May before I left for America I had to lay him away. After the funeral service I went back to our emergency hospital, the operating room and our free dis- pensary and looked over the record; I found that this man with the help of two nurses, in six brief months of time, had handled 72 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON with his own hands and taken into his own heart over 22,000 calls and cases. Many of these were major operations. Six months, and the chapter of his life had closed! But oh, what a chapter! He lived more in those six months than many of us will live in sixty years. Was it worth while? Is it worth while to link a heroic spirit like that up to Jesus Christ and to send him out like a flaming torch into the heart of some great need or of some great opportunity? And do you suppose, as I worked with this colleague of mine across those tragic months, that I could be conscious of or for one brief second remember that he belonged to the yellow race and I to the white? Never! Never! When I felt the beat of his heart, it was the heart of a brother. A brother who shamed me and challenged me by his fine heroism, his great passion of soul and his flaming spirit of sacrifice and service. Thus in every field the gospel in Tokyo is not only a chal- lenging but a conquering force. It is winning its way into every phase of the city’s life. In its wake men are transformed, insti- tutions come under the spell of Jesus’ way of life, and society starts off toward a new and ever upward-moving goal. Japan’s capital in its quiet sober moments is conscious that a renewing, uplifting force has been flung into its midst. Many discerning spirits have caught the vision and walk in the presence and under the power of the compelling, conquering Christ. WINNING A PROVINCE THE REVEREND WATTS 0. PYE, SHANSI, CHINA We have been hearing during the last few years that there is great unrest in China. It is the unrest which comes from progress. The people want something better. In spite of the political chaos which now exists in China, the country is mak- ing sound progress commercially, industrially, and intellectually. Under cover of political disturbances which appear on the sur- face, a national consciousness is taking definite shape, giving rise to a strong undercurrent of new thought that is making itself felt more and more every day. This progressive spirit is deeply permeating the Christian movement of China. There is an increasing admiration of Jesus on the part of the more educated classes of the country. There is also an increasing appreciation of the practical value of Christianity. It is what Christianity does rather than what it says, that has won the confidence of the Chinese people. There is, too, an increasing sense of responsibility within the Chinese church itself for maintaining its own work. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 73 To show how this is working out, in practical experience in the Christian centers of China, I am to review briefly the development in one of these centers. It is in the city of Fenchow, located in northwestern China, a field which includes a portion of west-central Shansi and northern Shensi. When Dr. Watson and I took up again in 1907 the work which had been largely destroyed by the Boxers in 1900, we knew little of what the nature of this field might be or of what it contained, and we had practically no Chinese leadership. The first step then was, on the one hand, making a careful survey of the field as a whole; and, on the other, the training of a band of preachers, teachers and doctors who might inaugurate the work. This survey was intended to show the resources of the country, the occupations of the people, the lines of communi- cation and where the centers of population might be, in order that we might know a little more intelligently where the cen- ters of Christian work should be opened in order to bring about the Christian occupation of the entire field. Our available maps at the outset of this enterprise showed over this area of some forty thousand square miles only twenty- eight cities, towns and villages definitely identified and located ; but as a result of our surveys carried on through these years in district after district, we are now able to identify something over eight thousand cities, towns and villages in the same area. Our policy in the occupation of the field was to open centers of Christian effort from twenty to forty miles apart, that is to say, one day’s journey by mule-back, our only means of travel in the mountainous regions. In the opening of these centers themselves certain principles were used. In the first place, we determined, so far as possible, to see that the centers were opened only with Chinese leadership, the foreign missionary keeping in the background. We did this in order that, on the one hand, the people themselves might not come to feel that the Christian movement was a foreign movement, or one con- nected with foreigners. On the other hand, we felt that it would give to the Chinese leader his proper place, we foreigners supporting him with sympathy, interest, loving inspiration and help at every step of the way. In the second place, we definitely aimed to reach in the beginning the more influential classes of pecple in the com- munity, because through these the community would be opened to the Christian movement in the future. The way this worked out, we soon came to see, gave us immediatel; the opportunity of reaching the entire population of the district. I have myself spoken, day after day, to multitudes, ranging from hundreds to even thousands, speaking sometimes three and four times in a 74 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON single day, the people having been gathered through the influence of some influential man of the place. In the third place, we tried to follow, as far as possible, the Chinese customs of the place in which we were at work. For instance, all through that area of China, it is a regular Chinese custom that whenever a business man brings into the com- munity a new business enterprise, such as a shop, he must call upon the other business men of the town to explain the new business which he desires to introduce. We make use of this custom. We plan to open a place of business in a new com- munity. Therefore, we call upon the Government officials, upon the public institutions, upon the school teachers, upon the gentry, upon the business men, up and down the streets, pre- senting to them the cards of the church, explaining what we have come for, what Christianity stands for, and telling them that on such a street we have opened a chapel, inviting them to drop in for a visit. Now, Chinese custom also requires that such a man called upon must make a return call. In the commercial world this is merely an advertising scheme. Any business man may be certain that at least once in his career, if never thereafter, every influential man in the community will visit his place of business and see with his own eyes what he is doing. It works the same way with us. We make our call and pass on. In a little while the one on whom we called takes his card and goes down the street to the place of which we have told him. He is met at the door by two men who are there for the purpose. He is ushered in. He has a little visit with our preacher. Once again and this time too from the lips of one of his own fellow countrymen, he hears a clear, concise explanation of what the Christian movement is, and what the Christian church intends doing in that community. This means that by the time any man has done what, according to Chinese custom, simple etiquette requires him to do, he has listened to two explanations of what the Christian faith is, not enough to convert him—that seldom happens—but enough to enlighten his ignorance. It has been enough generally to overcome any suspicion or any opposition which otherwise such an one might have, and which might linger in the community for years to hinder the progress of the work. The whole movement is forced into the open; every one knows what it stands for and what it intends to do. Now, from the beginning down to the establishment of the church center, all of this work has been done by the Chinese leader himself. Some of these faithful men, living such consecrated, devoted, self-sacrificing lives as would put the rest of us to shame, are the men who today are responsible for THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 75 carrying forward this movement. The foreign missionary stands in relation to him, somewhat as John the Baptist did to Jesus, when he said, “I must decrease, but He must increase.” For the development and the nurture of the Christian com- munity which has in this way been established, we have been working along certain definite lines of policy, which are making especially prominent the work of our Chinese collaborators. We are trying in the first place to place upon the members of the church themselves the responsibility for the winning of new people. “Every Christian a missionary” is our motto; and many of the rank and file of our church membership are today themselves bringing in during the year from one to five, even twenty, thirty, and forty new people into the Christian life. The responsibility of the preacher is to train, instruct and prepare for church membership those whom his people thus bring within the range of his influence. In the second place, with the church at the center devel- oping, and with new strength and new energy exerting itself within the church, we are seeking to lead each one to reach out into the district round about for the gathering of little vil- lage groups. I said a moment ago that these centers were located some twenty to forty miles apart. That means that each church has a field of its own from twenty to forty miles square in which may be located anywhere from one dozen to one hundred other towns and villages. The pastor at the center has the oversight of little village groups as they begin to develop in the surrounding district. This larger parish is but the old circuit-rider system brought down to date. In the next place, the religious education program calls for the training through short courses of a lay leader in each of these village groups, the man thus trained goes back to his village and to his former occupation, but to become the leader of the little Christian group developing in his town. Through institutes held at different times during the year means are provided for the training and inspiration of these lay leaders. In the fourth place, we are making the church the com- munity center, not alone for spiritual teaching, but also for com- munity service, for sanitation, for public health, and popular education programs. Our people are agriculturalists. For the Province of Shansi the average farm is less than four and one- half acres, ind the average income from that farm for each family is only $34 for the year. This means that we must help our people to new standards of living, if they are to be in a position to meet the legitimate expenses of their church and of their schoc! and community work. Working in these ways, whereas in 1907, there were no organized churches or church centers in the field, due to the 76 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON destructiveness of the Boxer year, we today have some two hundred church centers developing; whereas there were no Christian leaders, we today have an earnest, consecrated, de- voted band of something over two hundred and fifty; whereas the Christian constituency in 1907 was but one hundred twenty- seven, today it is nearing the 15,000 mark. In these ways we are seeking to do our part in meeting the most pressing task of the church in China, namely, to show that the faith which it holds is truly an interpretation of hard facts for daily needs. We are seeking to make the church itself stand in the com- munity as the embodiment of the spirit of the Servant who sought to serve every need. THE EVANGELISTIC METHODS IN HONAN THE REVEREND JONATHAN GOFORTH, D.D., CHINA Thirty-seven years ago I went to China, firmly believing that the Lord Jesus Christ could and would win the Chinese to himself. In the early years I preached in a district containing two or three million of people. I sowed beside all waters, on village streets, at market towns, and at fairs and theatres. At times I met with serious opposition when clods, etc., were hurled, but on the whole I have been well treated by the people I sought to help. I preached the gospel depending upon the Holy Spirit to make it all powerful. At the story of God’s love in Christ Jesus I have seen people convicted and con- verted the first time they listened. Once two of the evangelists said to us, “We have watched the effect of your preaching on the unsaved crowds for more than a month, and every time we notice that one or more are under conviction; tell us the secret.” I replied, “If there was not that'result I would be alarmed lest I had grieved the Spirit of God.’ Some of our best evangelists were raised up and tested under fire in those early days. I always had the conviction that the Lord of the harvest had more concern in getting his harvest reaped than I could have. It was my part to pray for and his to send the reapers. I was always on the look-out for the men he called to reap. I did not delay until I saw that they were perfect before I invited them to come and help reap. During my thirty- seven years in China the Lord has used me to introduce about thirty men into the work of an evangelist. Of necessity there are times when the missionary must be at his home center. There, as far as possible, Mrs. Goforth and I kept open house for the Chinese. When thirty years ago, my wife and I went to open the city of Changteh-fu we resolved that every one, even a beggar, must have liberty to approach THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 77 us, if he wanted to hear the gospel. This sometimes kept us busy, for one day we showed over one thousand men through the house and hundreds of women besides. Every group listened to the gospel message for a time, before they were shown through the house. Some may think that this makes the missionary cheap, but we have proven that it makes him effective. We have never felt a call to work solely for any one class, but when the opportunity came we concentrated all ef- fort to save that class. For example, under the old system of education, at times there would be four or five thousand students coming up for examinations who were in the city for a month. The evangelists kept the preaching going on at the front, while all through the day I would be handling the stu- dents in my study. With a globe and maps and astronomical charts we would explain to these students the fixed stars, and by that time they were so awed and humbled that you might say what you liked about God the Father and his Son the almighty Saviour. I have given as many as fourteen talks to students in a single day. It made friends all over the districts so that I was welcomed in almost every scholar’s home. In one of our districts the inspector for boys’ schools is an elder in our church and in the same district the inspector of girls’ schools is also an elder in our church. There are many other scholars in that county in the church, so that the educational work of the district is under the control of Christian men. Another kind of work which we carried on after 1900, was the opening of new centers throughout our field. My wife joined me in this and we took our children along. We would rent a compound and stay at least a month at a center. This had the decided advantage in that it reached the women as well as the men. A man may hear the word of God and believe, but his heathen wife or mother can make it hot for him at home. In this way we opened many centers of light. Now we have proved it so often that we have a conviction that we could go into any unevangelized center in North China, with an earnest band of male and female workers, and within a month have the beginning of a church for Jesus Christ. The doors are open and the fields are white unto harvest. These dear people could be saved, if we had a sufficient number of Spirit-filled harvesters to reap the fields. We could carry the gospel to all the Chinese in this generation, if we were only energized and impelled by the spirit of Jesus. Still another kind of work which we have seen to be very effective is the evangelistic band. We spent five months last winter with one of these bands going from outstation to out- station in Honan. Our tent would seat about five hundred, but so many men and women came that often the sides had to be 78 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON taken down to enable all to hear. We held four meetings a day, the first commencing at seven a. m. and the fourth closing around ten p. m. I gave on an average more than two ad- dresses a day. Much of my time was spent in personal dealing with the chief men of each center. The local church leaders always brought these men to me hoping that they would be converted to God. To give some idea how the gospel is the power of God unto salvation let me run over the results at a few of the centers visited. At one place in four days, seventy- three men and women gave in their names as enquirers, among them being the three leading men of the district. At the next center we spent three days and the mayor of the town and about sixty others: turned to God. During four days at the next market town one hundred and three names were taken down. Right after that in three days seventy names were received, two of them being teachers in the government school. Then at a large pottery town in four days one hundred and twenty-four gave in their names. In that town one of the big- gest kiln owners is out and out for Jesus. At the next place in four days eighty-seven turned from idols. It was now time to go home for the annual mission meeting. Just then several converted scholars from a district where there was no local church, came and asked that our band go to them for a few days. We replied that there was no time, for the whole five months’ itinerary had been planned ahead. “We notice,” said they, “that you have nothing on from the second to the sixth of our new year month.” “Yes, that is true,” we replied, “but your Chinese people so completely give themselves to feasting and gambling, especially in the early part of the new year that our going would be in vain.” “Come,” said they, “and we will secure the crowd.” We arrived at that center in a snow storm, scraped and swept the snow off the threshing floor and put up the tent, and in four days, ninety turned to the Lord. Right after that, in four days at another outstation, one hundred and one names were received. The elder at that center is headmaster of one of the largest government schools in the county and the parents all know that he stands four-square for Jesus Christ. When our band was at that center dozens of the boys turned to the Lord. Thus we might multiply instances of gospel triumph for five months of last winter. MOVEMENTS TOWARD CHRIST IN INDIA PROF, JOHN JESUDASON CORNELIUS, LUCKNOW, INDIA A few months ago there was a world conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Springfield. There were THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 79 delegates from all parts of the world; among them were a few of us from India. We were asked to wear our turbans while there. As we went from our hotels to the auditorium and from the auditorium back again we created not a little excitement in that quiet city. One day as we were on our way to the auditorium, a school having just closed, a number of little boys streamed forth into the street. whose attention was suddenly arrested by our peculiar head-dress, the like of which they had never seen before. A group of them followed us, block after block. Their curiosity, aroused by our turbans, became still greater, when they became conscious that we were speaking a language which they did not understand. When we noticed their interest, one of our group turned round and said, “Boys, what is it you want?” You should have seen their faces! One little fellow immediately brightened up, and turning to his comrades, said, “Oh boy! It speaks!” We are standing today at the threshold of the greatest period in the history of missions; I say it is the greatest, be- cause India speaks, and in no unmistakable terms, to the nations of the world. In what way is she speaking? What, indeed, is her message? Why is it that a single figure, slender and slim, whom some have called the pocket edition of a full-grown man. that great individual known as Gandhi, is having the largest following today that any one man has ever had in human his- tory during his own life time? What has made him the most compelling personality of the day? Why is it that so much is being said and written about his greatness and his influence? Is it not because that day, which missions have long looked for, has come, namely, the day for India to interpret Christianity © to the world? A century or more ago, the good Christians of Western lands sent out to foreign countries their beloved sons and daughters. These forsook the comforts of their homes, left their loved ones behind, and in the face of overwhelming obstacles, made their way into these great non-Christian lands carrying the gospel of Christ. Those who returned to their homes from India brought back the message, that the people of India possessed a soul, that they had as their heritage a spiritual genius, that when the right time came India would in- terpret the teachings and principles of Christ as no nation has yet been able to do. I am standing before you bearing testt- mony and thanking God that that day has come, and that we are at its very threshold. Is not Gandhi’s most uncompromis- ing attempt to live Christ’s way of life a challenge to the relent- less application of His principles by the West? My subject for this evening is: Movements toward Christ in India. What are these movements? ‘The first one is the movement of politics toward Christ. I am not satisfied with the 80 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON way I have worded it, but it carries best my meaning. In the West the history of the church is full of the stories of the struggle of the state to separate itself from the church and of its final separation. Now the life of the church is different from that of the state. The activites of the church are supposed to be peculiar to herself, and that of the state, peculiar to her- self. Organized Christianity thus became more and more an organization to evangelize peoples, but not to socialize societies. This differentiation of functions and the tremendous emphasis on organization are choking the spirit of the gospel, and we are failing, therefore, in the conscious control of human and social evolution. Form remains while substance is fast van- ishing. Ministers preach because it is Sunday, people go to church because it is Sunday. Is it not tragic to think that the teachings of Christ, without permeating the very life of our society in all its activities, has become rather a religion of the Sabbath day? Christianity is becoming more and more a matter of form. During the time of the war the question, “Has Christianity failed?” was frequently asked in the Orient, as it was in the Occident. I am glad to say that though India is non-Christian, she said as often as the question was raised: “It is not Christianity that failed, but it is Western materialism that failed. The West has chosen mammon rather than God.” Can Christianity fail? Thank God it never can fail. If there is any- thing that fails, it is politics. We find today the greatest movement the world has ever known, the movement of non-violence on a large scale, a move- ment based upon the ethical principles of Christ. That move- ment has found congenial soil in the land which is clearly and unquestionably the home of religions, and it is within that hospitable atmosphere that it has taken root. It is now teach- ing the people of the world that belief in, and the practice of, such principles as, “might is right,” “survival of the fittest,” reduce human beings to the level of beasts. It is soul force and not brute force, which raises men to the heights of gods; in spirit is the real source of strength. I have heard over and over again that the gospel of Gandhi, that of non-violence, is the gospel of the weak. Is it really so? Is physical force then the gospel of the strong? Let us see for a moment what the product of physical force, the world war, cost mankind. Historians tell us that it is the greatest war ever fought. It was the greatest demonstration of the power of or- ganization; never in human history was science applied so effectively for the destruction of humanity as in that great war. What did it mean after all? Please listen to the story. The human cost was as follows: 10,000,000 dead soldiers, 3,000,000 THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 81 dead but unidentified, 13,000,000 dead civilians, that is, 26,000,- 000 total dead; 20,000,000 wounded, 3,000,000 prisoners, 5,000,- 000 widows, 10,000,000 refugees. At the time of war, when the Lusitania was sunk, there were some 1,000 souls lost. America was greatly indignant when that happened, but to equal this 26,000,000 dead would require the sinking of a Lusitania every day for seventy years. Such, indeed, has been the cost of this great war, in human life. What about the cost in money? The total cost has been estimated at 332,000,000,000 dollars. We can form no idea of what so many billions mean. Let me put it in another way. The total cost of war equals $20,000 for every hour since the birth of Christ. Is this all? What about the moral cost of war? The moral loss is inestimable. Have we not seen the tremendous increase of fear and suspicion, of bitterness and hatred, of licentiousness and lawlessness, of disbelief and moral unrest, of poverty and misery? Do we not see that physical force means nothing but destruction? Shall we then speak of this brute force as the gospel of the strong? Not long ago, there was a conference of the leading scientists of the world in Philadelphia, some 300 of these wonder workers—men who are harnessing nature to serve human needs. At one meeting, a professor, who is known as the father of poisonous gas, made the state- ment that now he is attempting to produce a gas, which, when spread, would put a whole nation to sleep for twenty-four hours. The world war is over, but we are still thinking in its terms. When I think of all the advances we are making in scientific knowledge without an equal advance in morals, my heart sinks within me, and I feel sad at the thought that humanity is still marching forward toward its own destruction. As long as our advances are purely along economic and scientific lines and not along moral lines, we can be sure that we are heading the wrong way. _ Therefore, I say that Gandhi’s movement in India is cer- tainly the first movement of its kind showing not only that the Sermon on the Mount can be practiced by any individuai, but that its application should be carried into politics, and into all international relationships. We are, therefore, glad that India, true to her spiritual heritage has taken the first step in that direction. Mr. Gandhi, in reply to an address given to him after his release from prison, said: “For me humanitarian serv- ice is religion and I draw no distinction between such religion and politics. Indeed, I cannot conceive a life of full service apart from politics. I am endeavouring to prove by my experi- ments that politics without a religious background is a danger- ous pastime, resulting in nothing but harm to individuals and 82 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON nations indulging in them; but I see that my attempt to intro- duce religion as here defined into politics has frightened some of my best friends and co-workers. While these friends fear my attempt to treat politics in terms of religion, another group would have me restrict myself to what they imagine is social service. I believe the time is fast coming, when politicians will cease to fear the religion of humanity, and humanitarians will find entrance into political life indispensable for full service.” We have certainly fought shy of religion entering politics. Can we think of anything greater than what Mahatma Gandhi is experimenting on—the introduction of religion into politics? Every activity in which humanity is engaged must be the reli- gion of man. This, then I say, is the movement of politics to- ward religion. There is no time to deal with this question more fully. The next movement I wish to call your attention to, is the movement in mind toward Christ. The Bishop of Madras spoke of the great movement in thought of the educated classes to- ward Christ’s way of life, as “the mass movement in mind.” Unfortunately Christianity came to us from the West, and be- came identified with the lives of men who came to India singing: “‘Ship me somewheres east of Suez, Where the best is like the worst, And there ain’t no ten commandments, And a man can raise a thirst.” They both sang and lived that kind of life. Therefore India was not as hospitable to Christianity as she might have been. We are, however, witnessing a new appreciation of Christ’s teaching which has resulted in a critical attempt to dis- sociate and disentangle Christianity from Western civilization. I do not wish to spend more time on this point, important as it is, since it was very well presented to you this morning. In passing I should like to mention that at the political congress which was held a year ago last December, the president, who happened to be a Hindu gentleman, made use of some seventy quotations from the Bible, in his presidential address. Does not this show a greater appreciation of the ethical teachings of Christ? The third movement toward Christ is the movement of un- touchables. You have already heard that there are something like sixty millions of people who are considered “untouchables.” It is the message of the gospel that really uplifts them and emancipates them from their social bondage. We thank God that Christ came into this world not to be ministered unto but to minister to those who needed His ministry. These poor people wedded to filth and degradation needed Christ first; and it is they whom Christianity first reached. We have seen some THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 83 wonderful sights in connection with this great mass movement of untouchables towards Christ. In a recent report based upon the census reports for the last thirty years, these facts were given: In the Church Missionary Society Missions the number of baptized persons increased between 1900 and 1923 in the Punjab from 6,000 to 30,000; in Western India from 3,000 to 10,500; in the Telugu section from 13,000 to 53,000. In the Church Mission- ary Society Missions in India, during the last twenty-three years, there has been a growth from 130,000 to 265,000. Under the Wesleyan Mission in Hyderabad, the Christian movement in six- teen years grew from 7,000 to 33,000, while in the next eight years, the number, including adherents, passed 50,000. These figures, huge as they are, sink into insignificance, when the mass movement in North India is considered. There the Methodist, the American Presbyterian and other Missions are truly overcome by the tre- mendous tasks of attending and properly instructing these great masses. For four years, from 1915 to 1919, the Methodist Episco- pal Church baptized on an average 31,000 people a year. The aver- age increase in the last thirty years has been at the rate of 2,000 per week. It is a great task to get people to come to Christ in such great numbers, but the greater task is to properly care for them and give them the instruction they need. We do not have forces adequate to cope with this situation; and this fact alone is enough of a challenge for greater zeal. It is not the number baptized that counts, but it is getting them to live the Christ way of life, which is of paramount importance. What gratifies me most is the fact that the social gospel of Christ, which has begun to uplift these untouchables, has also aroused a new consciousness in the higher classes. Mahatma Gandhi himself has made the vow that one of his life purposes would be to efface untouchability from India. To that end he has adopted a girl from an untouchable family ; he has not only done that, but has infused into the hearts of the higher caste people a determination such as India had never known before, bent on wiping out this blot from Hindu social life. Christian missions have undoubtedly prepared the way for the mobilizing of thought power in India. During the last hundred years the missionaries have fought all debasing social evils without fear and without ceasing; they have founded schools and colleges in the various sections of the country; and today we are reaping the results. It may be that the missionaries have not received their full share of credit, but let us all thank God that the work has been done, and that the people have now begun to shoulder the responsibility of fighting social evils. Friends, has this movement toward Christ in India any meaning to you? Has it a message for the people of the West? If there is a movement toward Christ, as I have tried to point 84 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON out, then does it not come to you as a great challenge? Let me not give the impression that India is ready to be bap- tized; no, not by a long way. While there is a movement toward Christ, while India is turning her face towards Christ hanging upon the Cross, yet, she is incessantly asking the ques- tion: “Is Christianity practicable? Have the West proved to us that it can be practised?” For two thousand years the West has prided herself on the possession of Christianity, but to what extent has she lived the principles of Christ in her social life, and in her international relationships? Never has there been a time in human history so critical and so challenging. At no time was Western civilization so ,much discredited in the Orient, as today. The West and the East have become closely intertwined through commercial and territorial expansion. Such expansion has really made the practice of Christ’s principles almost impossible. Has not the time come for the West to appraise its own civilization, to rethink and reévaluate its ele- ments? Has the expansion of the West been on the principle of selfish exploitation of the weaker peoples, or has it been on the other—regarding contributive principle? Is there more race hatred and bitterness in America? Is there selfishness so great as to stand in the way of America’s making her contribution to the greatest effort ever made to help human families live in peace? Is American civilization tending to crowd out religion? Is it really incapacitating Americans for religion? Is America making scientific and economic advances ends in themselves? Is material progress making Americans forget the necessity of moral progress, without which society will go to pieces? An- swer these questions frankly and then ask yourself the ques- tion: Is there need for a movement toward Christ in America? Last night Bishop Welch referred to the Asiatic movement in the Orient, saying that Mr. Tagore had sounded the call in Japan and in China for a compact of the yellow, brown, and black men. Why has this call come? What has given rise to this Asiatic consciousness? Have not the Western races merci- lessly and unscrupulously exploited the weaker peoples of the world? Has not the West wilfully forced opium upon an un- willing people, driving them to a life of degradation and de- bauchery just to fill its own coffers with blood money? Have not the Western races, driving away weaker races, robbed their natural resources, and in many cases even their lands? When such things have been done in the name of civilization, is it any wonder that the peoples of the Orient, after suffering for many decades unspeakable misery and humiliation, are now working for an Asiatic compact to rid themselves of such de- basing domination? The weaker races of the world have been THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 85 nailed to the cross by the nails of poverty and filth, illiteracy and superstition, suffering and sorrow. The Western races must not forget that they are responsible to a great extent for such conditions which have been brought about by Western expansion for selfish purposes, and that they are under a tre- mendous moral obligation to those weaker peoples. Once the East had great conndciice in the West but, alas! now she is mentally armed against the West. Is this not a grave situation? If the East has so armed herself, because of the behaviour of the West, then the only thing that the West can do is to help her to disarm herself mentally. Such disarm- ament can only be brought about by arousing in the peoples of the East confidence in the integrity of the Western nations. To this end, I make the plea that while there is a movement toward Christ in the Orient, a similar movement should be set afoot toward Christ in the Occident. This can only be brought about if the people, I mean the Christians of America, will band them- selves together, and say, “We are through with the mere preaching of the gospel; we are from now on going to see that Christianity is applied or practised in our personal lives, in the lives of groups, in the lives of nations and in all international relations, irrespective of what it costs.” When that is done you may rest assured that the Orient will go more than half way to join hands with the West to bring about this democracy of God. I thank you for giving me this opportunity of bringing to you this message; it is my prayer that God should bless you even more abundantly to carry on this good work, so that some day it will be your privilege to see the non-Christian nations of the world joining the Christian nations to crown Jesus Christ Lord of all. | EVANGELISM IN THE NATIVE CHURCH BISHOP BRENTON THOBURN BADLEY, INDIA Evangelism is perhaps the greatest word in our work in India. The people of that land are more interested in religion than in anything else, and the fruitfulness of Christian Missions in India may be judged by the fact that while in the past ten years the population of that land has increased by one and two-tenths per cent, the Christian community has grown 33 per cent. In the Pun- jab during the same period the Christian community increased 92 per cent, while the highest increase of any other religious com- munity was only seven per cent. The Methodist Episcopal Church during the past twenty years has baptized 600,000 people in India. 86 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON A great necessity at the present time is for the utmost co- operation between the missionary and the indigenous workers in the task of evangelism. There is a very real danger in the mis- sionary becoming so absorbed in administrative work and in the general work of our great institutions as to leave very few men with any time for direct evangelistic work. It would be a serious mistake to suppose that the work in India can be satisfactorily carried out if the missionaries cease to be preachers of the Word and turn their main attention to finance and educational affairs. Not only is the cooperation of missionaries essential in this work, but also their example, so that our Indian brethren may clearly see that the highest importance is attached to the actual ministry of the Word. Recent years have shown a real tendency towards emphasizing organization and education and finance at the ex- pense of evangelistic work on the part of the missionary body. The best results can only be achieved when the missionary cooperates in the fullest way with all the evangelistic undertakings of the Church. It is also of the utmost importance that the missionary should have the fullest and most sympathetic touch with national ideals and movements on the foreign fields today. The temper of the people of Asia, in particular, is such that unless a man is able and willing to show his interest in all the rightful aspirations of the people for the development of their national life, he can hardly ex- pect to have any influence in appealing to these people through his message. This also means that the training of our Indian preachers should be more practical, with a more direct thought of the growing national life of the people, and that there should be less of Western elaborations in all our plans for training preachers. Movements in these directions are clearly in evidence, but many forward steps are yet to be taken. The use of lay workers in connection with evangelistic work is of supreme importance. The method by which Mohammed- anism uses its ordinary membership to propagate its teachings, is one that should be taken more to heart by the church in her ap- proach to this question. In the Mass Movement, considerable use has been made of a class in North India called Chaudhris, or village head-men of certain low caste people. In many instances such men, without any ordination and with only little teaching regarding Christianity, have gone out among their people and pre- pared hundreds of them for baptism. The task of evangelists, who come into a situation such as this, is very different from what it would be, had the field not been prepared. Not only is this a good method for spreading the work but it is the best possible way for the development of Christian character. It is of the utmost consequence that the evangelist, whether missionary or Indian, should give the message through his life as THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 87 well as his teachings. India, in particular, is insisting today that we live up to the level of the teachings that we seek to introduce. The wonderful hold of Sadhu Sundar Singh upon the people of India is due not only to his preaching in simplicity and power the message of the Christian gospel but to his living the Christian life in all humility, self-sacrifice, love and devotion. No foreigner can expect to preach successfully on the Beatitudes or the Sermon on the Mount unless he can himself exemplify the virtues that Christ has so highly commended. The East is demanding today not only that we preach the gospe! but that we live it. For the evangelistic worker it is necessary to remember that not sermonizing but witnessing for Christ is the real need of our times. India says, “Tell us your Christian experience.” So far as the Bible is concerned, multitudes of them can read it and the number is very rapidly increasing, but when it comes to incarnat- ing this Evangel, any people to whom the Christian gospel is first taken have need of great help. There can be no true passion for evangelism which does not come from a glowing heart, and it is quite conceivable that we have gone far in the matter of training men to prepare sermons and give expositions of Bible texts, when we have done little to cause them to maintain the spiritual glow within. For any church, whether on the foreign mission field or at the home base that is undertaking to preach the gospel, it is of fundamental importance to remember that the task is vain unless there be adequate spiritual power for it. A Hindu once spoke to a Christian preacher in India at the end of a sermon and said that he had read the New Testament and had noted that the men who carried the Evangel were men of amazing power, and then asked this preacher whether he had received what they had found in the Acts of the Apostles. The Hindu was thinking, of course, of the second chapter of Acts and of the pentecostal power, and his ques- tion was not only proper but a most searching one. Is it not too frequently necessary for evangelistic workers in all parts of the world to ask themselves this question after they have preached? Any Hindu can tell the difference between a Peter before Pente- cost and one after Pentecost, and unless there be that power in the life of the preacher, there are very meager results for him. Christ still says to His disciples, “Go . . . but tarry.” I have stood in India on a plain where 3,000 laymen of the Chamar (tanners and leather dressers) caste, met for three days to consider the one question as to whether their entire community should adopt Christianity. They represented 30,000 people in that region, and after three days’ discussion they agreed that they would all be baptized. When, however, they came to ask for baptism it was found impossible to shepherd so vast a multitude all at once 88 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON and the Church was unable to give them what they asked. I have known of some districts in India where 10,000 names of people from the depressed classes were on the waiting lists for baptism year after year. These are but instances of the embarrassment that Christian missions have faced in India during recent years, and indicate that the task of evangelism is not merely to proclaim the gospel until people are willing to accept the message, but to care for the multitudes who are ready to accept Christ and to give them the spiritual shepherding through the years that alone can make it possible to develop these vast communities into true Chris- tian congregations. In India it is generally true that only a small part of the work has been completed when families have been baptized. Evangelism is the one continuous task of the whole Church. THE GOSPEL AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES THE REVEREND HENRY C. MC DOWELL, OF ANGOLA, AFRICA I have the good fortune to represent the great interior region of West Central Africa, where conditions are still primi- tive, where people are still very interested in the simple gospel and where the impact of so-called European civilization is just being felt. In the past five years I have done some pioneering in an untouched region in the Southern part of Angola, Portu- guese West Africa. During my travels in that part of the country, entering some regions where the people did not even know the term “Jesus Christ,’ I have been able to introduce (and I use that term advisedly, because it has been merely introducing) many, many thousands of people to it. I count it a great privilege to stand before an audience of people and say to them, “I have the pleasure of introducing Jesus Christ, the Lord of all” and truly it is a wonderful privilege. I remember one time especially, when I was far down in the southern part of the colony in a region where the people build their villages differently than the Ovimbundu where we live. Our villages are not very large; very often, not more than fifteen hundred people live in a village, but down in the lower parts of the Ganguela region there are some villages with as many as six thousand people. While touring in that country I sent heralds ahead to the paramount king of the region announcing my coming. I hap- pened to be the first foreigner to go into that country since a Portuguese captain had passed through, some thirty-five years ago, when the country was subjugated by the Portuguese. They proclaimed a great holiday. I was not acquainted with the customs of that particular tribe and did not know how they THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 89 received their guests; so I was considerably disturbed when, about three miles out from the village, I was met by several hundred people. My carriers were a good way behind me; I was riding a bicycle perhaps thirty or forty minutes ahead of them. When I met this grand number of people I stopped and greeted them. They greeted me, and then one man proceeded to take my bicycle. Two others lifted me up bodily and put me in a hammock that was made of banana leaves. I had no blanket under me, and since it was a cold morning, those banana leaves were not very comfortable. The cavalcade started off down the road singing songs and having a great time. I took it as easily as I possibly could under the circumstances. When I reached the village, I found that the king had decreed that nobody was to leave the village that morning. All the women stayed away from their fields. No men went to the woods to hunt. Everybody was at the village. I was quite at a loss as to how best to greet that great multitude of people and make myself heard. We have no amplifiers in Africa, and I would not have been seen or heard standing amidst the crowd. I, therefore, climbed up into the fork of a tree and began to intro- duce that great body of people to Jesus Christ our Saviour. I look back upon that experience as one of the richest of my life. As soon as I had finished, the king told me that he had sent word to all of the headmen of the villages round about so that they were expecting me to visit them. Their villages were anywhere from two to five miles distant. On that same day I spoke in eight of those villages. I can conservatively esti- mate at sixteen thousand the number of people to whom I spoke on that single day. I was received as the guest of the king. However, it has been my task and pleasure, to merely in- troduce the people to Jesus Christ. We must depend upon the natives that are being trained to better acquaint the people with Jesus Christ. I am glad that in Africa we have no difficulty at all in having a missionary church. The church is naturally missionary. It is missionary from the beginning and every Christian is an evangelist. It is very often quite embarrassing to the missionaries, because the native Christians don’t always understand these delimitations of territory and a great many other points of polity. They just go out to make Christians of their fellows; and too often, we with our organizations seem to run greatly behind. At our boarding school in Southwest Africa, we have a custom that everybody on the place is expected to do some definite piece of evangelistic work at least once a week. The young people of the boarding school take Sunday afternoon as the time when they can best render that service. On Satur- 90 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON day evening at our prayer meetings, we find out just where the various groups are going, so that too many groups will not go to the same locality. One Saturday evening one of our young Christians stood up before the people and gave them a charge. I was greatly interested by his remarks. He began to say, “Now, fellows, as we go to our people back in the villages, let’s go sympathetically; let’s realize that they are still blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh.” Then, he added this illustration: “You know that as boys all of us have herded cattle. When we let the cattle out of the pen early in the morning, some- times, when we have just taken one or two sticks off of the fence, three or four of the cattle will stick out their heads and can get no further; then you have to beat them on the nose to get them back so that you can remove some other sticks and then all of them can pass. This door of opportunity has just been opened a little bit and many of us merely have our heads through and as the main body of this thing is still left behind we have got to get that in too. All of us have got to go along together. You never have seen a cow whose head could travel any faster than the tail, so that all of us oe got to move as a body.” This desire is one of the things over which we rejoice greatly. Another matter over which we rejoice about our peo- ple down there in Southwest Africa is the fact that they are anxious to help others too, not only those of their tribe. One of the bravest acts I think I ever performed in my life was on the first Sunday in March, 1924. I stood before our young group of Christians and preached to them a missionary sermon. I told them about people in other parts of the world who did not know the Lord Jesus, and who were suffering perhaps more than they were. I did not know just how my message was going to be taken. I thought they ought to know such facts, that their horizon ought to be broadened. That day, before I had finished my dinner, our living-room was crowded with peo- ple. When I came out, they said to me, “Teacher, we have been greatly touched by your message this morning. We want to do something about it. It hurts us to feel that there are other people who are suffering the way that you indicate.” “All right,” I said, “I will be glad to have you do some- thing. What do you suggest?’ “We have been talking it over. This is the time of the year when we haven’t very much to give, but we have decided that if you can give any sort of em- ployment to us here during the coming week, we will come and work a whole week. Whatever we earn during that week, we will contribute next Sunday for foreign missions to help other people not so fortunate as ourselves in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus.” THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 91 I was greatly surprised. I had not expected any such re- sult. I had to invent many jobs on the place so as to have something for them to do to encourage them. Not only the native Christians, but also many others came. In the villages around they got some others who were interested. On the following Sunday morning, when we took an offering to help others in other parts of the world, I was greatly interested to find that not a single one of the envelopes that we had passed out as the pay envelopes on the previous Saturday afternoon, had been broken. Many of them were inscribed, “For the sake of the Lord Jesus” and “For the sake of spreading the Gospel.” “For the sake of carrying the God News.” Some envelopes carried a verse of Scripture, but all had deposited those en- velopes just as they were. That offering came to $30. I have had considerable experience with that $30 since then. We sent part of it to the Woman’s Board of Missions of the Interior, and they sent it back to us. They didn’t know how to accept it, but the people in Africa are anxious to help others in other parts of the world, and it is just a sample of what might be done, In my work among the primitive peoples of Africa I have been greatly interested to note their reactions on a great many things. There are many matters, of course, of which they have never heard before. Many thoughts are quite new, hence, to note their reactions is most interesting. I am going to state two experiences that I have had to show how my own spiritual life has been deepened by some of these reactions and how they have really led me into deeper paths in more ways than one. We had considerable trouble, during the opening days of our work there, in getting a concession of land from the Portuguese government. One evening about eight o’clock a message came from the administrator of that district, the Portuguese local Governor, who had his seat of authority about sixty-five miles away, to be at his office the next morning at nine o'clock to discuss some matters pertaining to our concession of land. My only means of transportation was a bicycle. There was not a very good road through that region. Those sixty- five miles didn’t look very near. I dropped the suggestion to some of the fellows that they would do well to pray for me. The next morning, when I came out of our house about three o'clock, I was surprised beyond measure to find about a dozen fellows standing outside of our door. They said that they thought perhaps I would be coming out about that time and so they came to escort me to the main path, about three- quarters of a mile away, because I would have to cross a stream where there was not a very good bridge and they were going to take my bicycle. 92 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON When we got to that main path, before I knew it, they formed a circle around me. They joined hands and then one of them spoke and said, “Teacher, we wish that we could go for you, but we can’t. We have decided that the only thing that we can do is to pray you there.” I told them that I thought myself that would be about the only way I would get there. Then the most beautiful prayer I have ever heard in my life was offered. One fellow began to pray and he prayed that the Lord would really give me strong legs, and that my bicycle would not break down, and that as I came to the different streams I would find that there were bridges there that had not been washed away. Then he said, “As our teacher reaches that arid region, it will be just about time the sun comes up. As the sun comes up and takes the dew off the grass and off the flowers and off the trees, somehow or other, Lord, have that get into the throat of our teacher, so that he won’t be thirsty when he passes through the arid region.” As I listened to that wonderful prayer and jumped on my bicycle that morn- ing, and started on my journey, why you can see I had a wonderful prayer band behind me. That trip came out all right, but the simplicity of that prayer, the straightforwardness of it, I have not been able to get over to this day. At another time I had an experience that caused me to have great regard for my people. That was when an old man in a village about four miles from us who had been attending our services quite regularly and who a few Sundays before had told me that he wanted to confess, sent word over one morning about four o’clock for me to come at once to him for he was dying. As soon as I could get ready I went. When I reached the village the old man told me to get the better mat and place it on the bed that was there, that he was soon going to pass away. I began to make those preparations and then he said to me, “Call in some of the people here who can sing some of the songs, because I want to have a few about me as I pass over.” I called in some and I asked “What songs shall we sing for you?” Then with a smile he stretched out his hands and told me. At his wish we began to sing a rendition of “Father, I stretch my hands to Thee, no other help I know.” To this day that experience has been the symbol to me of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands unto God. We talk about the time when Ethiopia is going to stretch forth her hands unto God. Friends, I have seen young Ethiopia, old Ethiopia, dying Ethiopia, stretching forth her hands unto God. Too often, instead of that hand being placed into the hand of God and poor Africa led sympathetically to a better life and to a higher life, it has been placed in charge of the slave driver and Africa’s children have been scattered to the ends of the earth; or it has been placed THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 93 in the hand of the exploiter and Africa has been bled white. Poor Ethiopia is still stretching forth her hand unto God. God grant that we shall answer that call and give the blessing to poor Africa, of which she stands in sore need. Would to God that I could plead here tonight! I feel quite seriously over this thing. We American Negroes have a tre- mendous love for Africa. We want to help Africa so that she shall be able to make her contribution to the Christ that is to be; but, friends, just let me say this one word. I thoroughly believe that the real task, the real test of the motive of the Christian nations is going to be faced and is going to be worked out in Africa. Poor Africa stands there helpless with her hands tied behind her. Anything that is done for Africa must be done from sources outside of her. We-have said to Africa, “You are not to think for yourself, you are not to work out your prob- lems for yourself, we take you as a mandate.” What are we going to do with those mandates? God grant that we may really see the great task that we have in the redemption of Africa. Recall the great law of sacrifice and suffering. I thor- oughly believe that if the law of suffering and sacrifice holds true, God must have some high destiny for Africa. Has she not a price? She has passed through great suffering and still the dawn does not seem to be near. I am glad that in my five years in Africa I have had occa- sion to get a real faith in at least one thing. I have found out that God can be trusted. When I say that, I have delivered my message. Off in primitive Africa, time and again, when we have not been able to do anything but call upon God, I have found that He can be trusted. Back yonder in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when I was the pastor of the church there, before I went to Africa as a missionary (it was before I was married and my mother was living with me) this challenge came to me straight from the shoulder and I tried to face it in the same way. One night my mother and I knelt down beside her chair and we prayed over this matter. We talked it over. When I went to my room that night there was very little sleeping that I was able to do. The next morning I went down to my study at the church, and wearily sat down at my desk. Haphazardly I opened my Bible and in a moment my eyes were fastened upon those wonderful words of promise to Israel “Fear Not, for I have redeemed thee. When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee; thou shalt walk through the fires and_ shalt not be burned, neither shall they kindle upon thee, for I am Jehovah, thy God, the Holy One of Israel.” 04 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON This came back to me at one time during the early part of the dry season when they burn the bush in Africa. I was making a journey. My wife and my little boy were along in a hammock. We had about a dozen carriers along with us. In the distance we saw smoke. We paid little attention to it. Our route led down into a valley. As we mounted the other side, the natives gathered around me saying, “Teacher, we are surrounded by fire. What are we going to do?’ In just a moment the small buck and the rabbits and other small animals were running by us, almost over us. I looked around, and took in the situation and I said to my wife, “I guess the only thing we can do now is to look to the Lord.“ Yet, of course, I did what I could to save my wife and baby. Every man took pieces of brush and we began to beat down the fire on both sides, while those with the hammock followed closely behind. In a few moments we were outside the danger zone and the natives began to tease one another about it. It became a great joke as soon as it was over. I told the fellows that I didn’t see how they could take it as such a great joke. “After you have passed through trouble,” they said, “the next best thing to do is to for- get it.” I have found that was pretty good sense, too. But it was not much fun to me as I looked into the faces of those men who had walked through that fire with my wife and baby and I thought again, “Thou shalt walk through the fire and shalt not be burned.” Friends, God grant that we may see the fields in Africa white unto this harvest, and that from the Convention forces may be released so that we missionaries in the heart of Africa shall no longer have to continually say to the throngs of people, “T am sorry, we have not the room,” but may we soon be able to say, “Africa, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated so that no man passed through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy to many generations.” THE GOSPEL AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES THE REVEREND CHARLES E. HURLBURT, AFRICA A maritime steamer had stopped for a few hours at Djibuti at the east end of the Gulf of Aden. As a few of us walked about the quaint old scattering town, we found one of the greatest missionary statesmen that any age has ever produced, sitting on a little stool, drawing the picture of one of the quaint old mosques of that little town. For Bishop Tucker was an artist as well as a missionary statesman. As we talked a little later, I asked him the question, “How is it that you have been THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 95 able to do so great a work as has been done in the tribe that murdered Hannington, lying on the east of the Nile to the north of Lake Victoria.” The substance of that story was this, “I turned aside to other places for men sent out by the Home Committee and waited until I found a warm-hearted Irishman. I sent him into that tribe. That one man by the power of the gospel of Christ has transformed it in a very short life service. That tribe, the lowest according to anthropological estimates of any of the tribes in either the Nile or the Congo Basin, has become one of the most productive, one of the most peaceful and one of the most nearly Christian of any of the tribes of Central Equa- torial Africa.” When Roosevelt came out to visit East Africa he came to our headquarters station in what is now Kenya Colony. After asking a few questions and looking about the station a bit he said to me, “I want to see your finished product.” I said, “What do you mean?’ He said, “I want to see your Christian men and Christian women; I want to see a Christian home.” He went to two or three of these homes and found, instead of the little grass huts that he had been in the habit of seeing during his hunting trips, houses where the men themselves had built fireplaces, real homes with doors and shutters. Even the missionaries had no glass windows, so of course, these houses had none, but they had chimneys and were clean and the food that he examined was clean. He then inquired what they were doing and what they were earning. When I gave to him the facts, still true, that one-fourth of the baptized Christians were giving their entire time to preach- ing the gospel to their fellows; and that their homes and their lives were truly transformed so that men who had been in- different to the rights and privileges of women were learning as the first experience of their Christian life to carry the wood and the water and to do the deeds of kindly service for their wives, he said, “I like your finished product. It is the right sort of thing.” A year ago there died by accident, away up in the Masai Reserve in Kenya Colony, a young giant in body, in mind and in spirit. We shall lament him for many a day, for he was the first native out of the twenty-four tribes in Central Africa in which we, as a mission, are working, who has, almost unaided, translated the whole New Testament into the language of his tribe. He was a handsome man, a man of gentlemanliness, and of Christian power, whose life was transformed by the gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Six years ago, a tribe away up on the west of Lake Albert, on the high hills of that country, degraded by corrupted Baal- 96 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON worship, one of those tribes with a very difficult language, mixed with the three great groups of Africa, that seemed to government officers and to ourselves to be almost impossible to reach, said that it had no word for us and wished no word from us. Within three months the word has come to us that that very tribe wants a Christian teacher in every chief’s village. About forty of those most sorrowful of human creatures, lepers, gathered about our mission station in far Northeast Belgian Congo, two or three years ago, thinking they might get some help. I said to them one night as they gathered together, “Tf you will stay here, we will provide homes for you, we will give you gardens. You may remain here permanently, and we will do what we can to help you.” In the morning all were gone. They were afraid of being confined or segregated. A letter received a week ago from the nurse in charge of the Leper Home said, “We have more lepers than we can take care of. Several have gone back because quarters were so crowded. Some who have all their fingers are cooking for those who have none, and they are helping one another. Do pray for a doctor, and do pray that we may treble and quadruple the quarters for the many lepers wholly untouched and unreached.”’ But of what value is it to us who are gathered here in the capital of Christian America tonight to assure ourselves again that the gospel of the grace of God has transforming power to change a nation, to change a home, to change the individual life, to transform a tribe of people? Every man who is born from above knew that before we gathered here; and our gathering would have been in vain if, it only reassured us that omnipotence is omnipo- tent, that omniscience is omniscient and that God’s grace has trans- forming power, if we do not give that knowledge to Africa. Shortly after that visit with Bishop Tucker, I took a journey of six hundred miles in what was then German East Africa, and camped for a few nights on the very place where Livingstone, more than a generation before, had pitched his tent on his way from Lake Tanganyika to the Indian Ocean. I realized that in that six hundred miles of journey, I had not found a Protestant mission nor a Protestant missionary, and that since Livingstone died a whole generation had passed into eternity utterly unwarned, though the entire Christian world knew that Africa’s door was wide open. What value will it be to us if we consider China, and India, Japan, andAfrica, and the whole wide world tonight and fail to tell them what our fathers knew and what we knew when we learned to know God, that “the Gospel of Christ has power to transform human life?” Two great facts need to be faced. One is that there are still hundreds of tribes in Africa that have never heard the gospel of Christ. Another is that both we and THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL 97 our fathers have sinned in the belief that men and women of inferior education might reasonably be sent to the great Dark Continent as missionaries. There are today not only some hundreds of tribes where the language has never been reduced to writing, but there are at least scores of tribes where men and women of limited ability are seeking to translate the Bible into the language of the people. There is scarcely a mission anywhere in Africa that is able to staff adequately the schools that are training thousands of young men who are preparing, and should be better preparing, to be teachers and preachers and the leaders of their own people into the reality of this transformed life. The second great fact we need to face is what the great- est missionary statesman of his age said, “It is God who said, ‘Out of darkness light shall flame,’ who hath kindled a flame in my heart to make me a world’s beacon of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Until we, who attend missionary conferences, realize that God has given us light in order that we may be “world’s bea- cons” and that it is our obligation not simply to know the transforming power of the gospel, but also to make that fact known to every kindred and tribe and tongue, and until we send our sons and our daughters and our very best, and carry this message of redeeming grace, we have failed and our knowledge is in vain. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE EVANGELIZING PROCESS PRESIDENT JAMES M. HENRY, D.D., CANTON, CHINA Where there is no vision the people perish. The churches and Christian communities that have been weak and backward in their development are those which among other failings have been weak and backward in the matter of education. Who can fully evaluate the work of Christianity’s intellectual leaders, Paul, Athanasius, Augustine, Erasmus, Luther, and all the others past and present? Who can estimate the contribution of Christian education and of educated Christians to the world of government, of art, of literature, to the onward sweep of the Kingdom in that part of our world which is the seat of what we call Christian civ- ilization, to the revealing of ever higher and more compelling ideals of conduct and aspiration? Without the highest training of the intellect and the soundest scholarship under the guidance of His spirit, how shall the more excellent way be commended, the truth illumined, the life quickened, and Christ Himself lifted up even in our own Christian lands, where every phase of life is sat- urated in one way or another with Christianity? Today in Christendom itself strange new forces are being felt, old values are changing, new emphases are being made, much of life is in a kind of blind revolt against established custom and the habits of the past. What some call the creative urge, an in- sistence upon the right of individual self-expression and develop- ment, is setting itself up as a kind of new god demanding uni- versal worship. On every side we hear fears expressed, we see apprehension for the future of our youth, and we look to our edu- cated Christian leadership for guidance. But we believe that God’s spirit of wisdom will speak to the mind of the church and show it the next step, that in Christian education lies the solution to many of the most pressing problems of the day. Far away from our shores and below our horizons a new world outside of Christ is fast emerging. In the Near East, in India, in China, in the Antipodes, a mightier transformation than the world has yet seen is in actual process. And here again who can evaluate the part which Christian teaching and Christian edu- cation have already had in the breaking up of the old and in the inspiration and preparation for the new? Who can say what 98 CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 99 Christian education in the Near East, in India and in the Far East has already meant? ‘The social and political development of the Balkan States and of Turkey, the emancipation of the womanhood of those lands, has been profoundly influenced by Robert College and the Woman’s College of Constantinople. The graduates and students from the great university at Beirut, coming as they have from Syria, Greece and Armenia, and latterly in increasing numbers from Egypt as well, from the Sudan, from Persia and Mesopotamia, with last year a remarkable accession from the hitherto almost unreachable sect of Shiites, one of the strictest and most fanatic of the Moslem sects, are having and will increasingly have an almost unbelievable influence in the remaking of these varied communities and nations. In the new life throbbing throughout India, of which we have already so movingly heard, the influence of Christian leadership is being strengthened and more effectively felt at Lahore, Luck- now, Madras, Madura, Vellore, Jaffna and at the other centers which train the students thronging educational halls in Chris- tian idealism and lift up Jesus Christ before them. And in China, where if any one class of the population rather than another has been potent in developing a national spirit, in fostering and promoting progress and national ideals, it has been the student, the educated class, name after name comes to mind, products of Christian education and of a Christian environment. T. T. Lew, Chang Po-ling, C. T. Wang, C: C. Wang, W. W. Yen, David Yui, even Dr. Sun Yat-sen himself. How different these might have been had it not been for Christian education! The traveler with any insight at all, who goes from Peking in the north to Canton in the south and sees the work of the Christian colleges and universities in that coming master nation of the Orient, sees the marvelous, undreamed-of opportunities that are there for Christian conquest and for the advancement of His Kingdom, that kingdom of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. The so-called general work of evangelism on the mission field is a wonderful thing. It is carried on by personal work, in chapels and churches, through Christian literature, through the divine work of healing in Christian hospitals. In so far as it deals with those whose characters are already formed it is a sort of salvaging, the making over of old material, the altering and adapting of old machinery; and it is but a further proof of the wisdom of God and His power that this can be done, a further proof of the magic of the divine alchemy that elements already fixed can through His spirit be changed into the gold and precious stones of His Kingdom, that men can really be reborn. It makes the true heart burn to hear of it, to observe it, to be privileged to 100 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON take part in it. But to have as your parish the tender souls of the youth of any land, not the chaos of adult confusion, the welter of warring passions, burning prejudices, and selfish habits, but the sweet plastic precious clay of God’s kingdom, to have them under your guidance in the most impressionable period of life, when they still trail their clouds of glory, are still attended by the vision splendid, are still of the stuff itself of which Christ said the Kingdom of God is made, full of faith, vibrant with idealism, is one of the most moving experiences of life. It is an experience which makes one so privileged cry out as Isaiah of old, “I am a man of unclean lips’ and to long to be touched with the fire from God’s own altar that in His strength and His wisdom so matchless an opportunity can be met. Will you look through my eyes at the scene of one such opportunity? It is our own campus at Canton Christian College. I speak of this spot because I know it, but with minor local varia- tions, the same exhibit may be seen at any other of the great Christian campuses in God’s countries overseas, in Beirut, in Con- stantinople, in Peking, at the Doshisha, in Judson College, Burma, in Lucknow and Lahore. A thousand students are there, ninety per cent of whom come from non-Christian homes. A thousand students are living in dormitories side by side with teachers, Amer- ican and Chinese, whose great desire is to share what Jesus Christ has given them. A thousand students, influenced not merely by Bible classes, the chapel services, the Sunday services, the Boy Scout or athletic activities, the Student Christian Association work, full though the campus life is of every form of Christian social service, but by the rich Christian tradition of the campus, by its living spirit of service, by the quiet influence of the strong Chris- tian character and the true Christian devotion of a Christian staff and by the steady but unobtrusive solicitude of their fellow students, who having known Him whom to know is life eternal, are eager to share that knowledge and that life with their fellow students. What a sacrament you would have experienced could you have seen the culminating service on Sunday of the annual “harvest” week last Spring, when ninety-one students, twenty-three workmen and six women servants publicly took their stand for Christ. There, a few weeks hence, the same story will be repeated. What a fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost, what a quickening of faith, what an ache of longing would be yours, could you stand before this great body in some public assembly as, fired perhaps with some patriotic message, their very souls are revealed and you realize that before you under your very hand, is the future of a great people! And when you learn that eighty- five per cent of those who stay two years or more in this environ- ment pledge their allegiance to the King of Kings you gain some CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 101 idea of the matchless, incomparable significance of Christian edu- cation for pure evangelism. And when you see buildings on that campus given by Chinese in Java, or the Federated Malay States, when someone tells you that its chief Chinese executive officer has just raised over $80,000 from the Chinese in South America for its work, and when you have pointed out to you Chinese boys from South Africa, from Australia, from Europe, from Canada and from the United States, whose parents have entrusted them body and soul to this Christian institution for their education, you see the streams of Christian influence and power pouring out in unsuspected ways and reaching regions and communities and individuals otherwise utterly inac- cessible. And again when you see the women students, the flower of the nation’s womanhood, and reflect on the influence of the Christian home, especially of the homes which these Christian students, women and men, are going to make, you begin to realize the unique, the complete, the blessed significance of Christian education for evangelism. The gospel evangel for the world is awaiting the enriching and creative contributions yet to be made from these Oriental lands. Over India, we were told last night, the day of Christ has begun to dawn. But He is the Christ of China, the Christ of the Andes, the Christ of Africa, the same yesterday, today and for- ever, and yet ever new and ever giving a fresh revelation of God! But how can He be thus uplifted save as the Indian mind, ‘thet Chinese mind, the Latin mind, the African mind, become conse- crated, inspired, illumined by His spirit? The leaven which can leaven the whole Jump, whether it be Islam as such, or the Indian civilization with its unique religious texture or the civilization of the Far East, of China and Japan, with its sturdy substructure of Confucian ethics, is the leaven of Christian education, and the real hope of the winning of all this to Christ is the nurturing and train- ing and inspiring of its youth, its coming leadership under thor- oughly Christian auspices. God has opened such doors today as men never dreamed to exist. Have His people, His church, the faith and the will to enter these open doors? The educational commission which visited China three years ago, after months of the most careful survey and expert study, made as its considered conviction the statement that “Christian . principles may yet become the controlling force in Chinese life. If Christian education fails, the growing stream of non-Christian education and of anti-Christian influence will submerge the Chris- tian movement and reduce it to a place of minor importance.” What is true of China is true of other lands: of India, the Near East, Africa, South America. The coming leadership of the com- ing world! Christian principles, the controlling force! Has the 102 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Kingdom of God ever been more nearly within our grasp? Have the hills of that far country ever been so near to our horizon? May He, our Master and our King, who took the little children in his arms and blessed them and said, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,’ may He, as He sees the opportunity for Christian education and the controlling of Christian leadership throughout the world, open our eyes, that we may see with Him and may in Him and through Him consecrate every purpose, every resource of our lives and of the church to bringing in the Kingdom through His spirit and in His way. THE SCHOOL AS AN AGENCY IN THE BUILDING OF CHARACTER MISS IDA BELLE LEWIS, PH.D., CHINA Jesus said, “Let the little children come unto me.” He is the only great religious teacher who set the child in the midst. Go where you will, where Jesus has not been known, and you will find the children neglected. They die. They are allowed to grow up in ignorance, but the school has always followed the banner of Jesus Christ. He brings light and life more abundant to the children of mankind. i Furthermore, it is the children who come to him. Doctor Athearn made a study of 6,194 persons, joining the church in one year in forty-three states. They were Methodists, Baptists, Con- gregationalists, Presbyterians and Disciples. The median age of these church members was fourteen years, four months and twenty- two days. The median age for the Methodist Church was eleven years, nine months, four days; for the Congregational Church was fifteen years, ten months, fourteen days. The children come to Jesus. Those older usually do not. Early youth makes the life choice. If any race is to be won to Jesus Christ, the children must be won to him. Childhood is the habit-forming time. William James says that by the time an individual is twenty years of age his personal habits are, for the most part, fixed. The stimulus-response bonds are fixed; behavior under the ordinary routine of life has been determined. The miracle of Christ’s power is that he does change men, sometimes after they are grown; but such cases are miracles, and are not the rule. The rule is this: The habits of Christian behavior: kindliness, truth telling, service, prayer, . . . must be planted deep in the growing child, if he is to become Christlike, In Christian lands these life decisions and the formation of habits are influenced by four dominant factors: the home, the church, the school and the social order. All these powerful factors CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 103 uplift Jesus and his teachings. The home is especially strong. Mr. A. R. Pierson of Chicago asked one hundred boys why they attended Sunday-school. Out of seventy-two answers forty-one said they came because of the rule of the home. How many of the people in this room today are active Christians because of the leadership and inspiration of fathers and mothers who made a Christian home? / Contrast this with the struggle of the young girl who came to a Christian school in China and learned a new way of life. Her father had seventeen wives. She was the daughter of the thir- teenth. She hated the home and all it stood for. In Christ’s teaching she found the rule for the purity of the home she sought. At first she dared not tell the people there that she had determined to follow Christ. But her great secret could not be kept. It was revealed in her whole attitude toward those with whom she lived. One day the fifteenth wife called on the principal of the school. You will remember that this pupil was the daughter of the thir- teenth. Said she, ““What makes Edna so different, since she came to you? Before, she used to be hateful and mean to all of us who are younger than her mother, and proud and distant to those who are older. Now she seems to love us all. She teaches songs to all the little children and tells us women stories. What has made the change?” The principal answered, “Edna has let Jesus come into her life as Lord and Master. She obeys Him first. He has com- manded us to love each other.” “Then,” said the little concubine, “if that is what being a Christian means, I should like to become one, too.” The Christian school makes a miniature Christian social order in which the children live. It frequently reaches out and touches the home into new ideals. Drop the Christian school, leave the church to work alone with the problems of home and social order, and the task will be well-nigh impossible. We must keep the Christian school and we must keep the school Christian. This is done only when everything in the school is permeated by the spirit of Christ. Too often there.has been a tendency to give the Bible in memory hunks, trusting that the mere mechanical swallowing will produce the needed nourishment. It is not strange that this has brought indigestion and distaste for this food upon which strength of soul depends. The Bible must be taught, but it must be made a delight as well as a necessity. The Oriental child may understand it better than we do. Quick as thought they see the story pictures and their meaning. Dramatization and illustration follow naturally. Let us bring the children to Jesus through the Bible and they will love him. But the curriculum, be it ever so theological and psychological, can never make a school Christian. The teacher is the interpreta- 104 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON tion of Christ to the little children who watch her day after day and year upon year. Is she kindly? Is she gentle? Is she just? Is she always loving? These are the questions to which they will have an answer. There is no judge more astute than a child. When a teacher has been weighed in the balances and not found wanting, the children receive her into their heart shrine. She never takes the place of the mother, for that place is always sacred to one alone, be she ever so ignorant and unwise. But the place of a Christian teacher is holy, when the children make her their confidant, their guide and their ideal. Her example is irresistible in the formation of character. The teacher also makes the atmosphere of a Christian school. There can be no deep-seated hatreds and jealousies between the pupils, if true Christianity is taught. Games, gardening, love for birds, beasts and fish, happy cooperation in schoolhouse sanitation may bring keen appreciation for the finer things of life. It was the day before a great fete in a village school in China. The children decided to take a holiday and clean up. Some washed the benches, others scrubbed the floor; a committee bought fresh oiled paper and fixed the windows. A group of the wee ones went out and pulled the weeds from between the bricks in the court, and the pride of every pupil in “our school’ overwhelmed the pride in new garments. They had found the joy of working together. Perhaps the greatest element in the building of character is the habit of service. Christian schools have developed this to a large degree. From Hwa Nan one hundred and thirty-five school girls go out every Sunday to carry the message of truth to the surrounding villages. Fukien Christian University, Gamewell School and Yenching in Peking, Ginling at Nanking and many other schools dedicate Sunday to evangelistic service in their im- mediate vicinities. : One day, eleven years ago, I stood on our upper veranda and looked off across the Tientsin plain. There were twenty villages within sight that had never heard of the Gospel. When the chal- lenge was given to the highschool girls, the six seniors declared their purpose of going, if I would go with them. So we started off to the nearest village, eight minutes’ walk away. Although we were so near, the women of that village had never before seen a white person. They saw us coming along the paths and gathered in a knot at the village edge. ‘Come and see the sight,” they called to their neighbors. “Come and see the sight,” but when we came near, they were frightened and shouted, “Here come the big feet.’’ Then they rushed into their houses and closed the doors. But women, the world over, are curious, and when we passed, they opened the doors a crack and peered through. Then it was that the student girls reached them. “Come to the end of the village CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 105 street,” they invited, ‘we are going to sing a song and tell a story.” The first week fifty women dared to come. The school girls chose a wise story, Ruth and her mother-in-law. The obedience of Ruth touched the hearts of those toothless Chinese women. “Yes,” they nodded, “that is a good doctrine. We believe that daughters-in- law ought to obey.” The next Sunday a hundred women came; the third week one hundred and fifty, the fourth week two hundred, and the fifth week two hundred and fifty. The schoolgirls loved it. Said one of them who wore a dainty silk dress, “I didn’t know our people lived like that in the villages. I think we ought to know it. At first, I didn’t want them to touch me, but now I understand them, and I really love old Grandmother Wang,” and often the dainty educated girl slipped along the village path to have a cup of tea and pass the time of day in the mud hut of dear old Grandmother Wang. But the Christian schools serve not only in the evangelistic field, but also in the educational field, A very large proportion of the schools support at least one charity school nearby. The boys of Hwei Wen, Tientsin, are poor and have no money, but the mission mule died and the stable was empty. This the boys cleaned out and fixed up with old benches. They advertised a free school, and fifty youngsters arrived. The boys could not afford a teacher, so they divided up the free time of their own school day. Number One, who has a nine o’clock free period, taught arithmetic; Number Two, who was free at ten o’clock taught reading; Number Three came at eleven and played games with the children; Number Four taught history from eleven-thirty until twelve-fifteen. Thus the day was divided, and the school flour- ished. The school boys have carried on this work for three years. The government schools have taken up the idea; and the question, “Have your students a charity school” almost always brings a flush of pride and eager stories of service to the children who live near. Thousands of students carry the daily vacation Bible schools to the villages of China in the summer time. In many industrial centers, students are helping the factory workers. In rural dis- tricts, agricultural students instruct the farmers. Christian stu- dents cooperate with the government schools in the popular educa- tion movement, They unite in health campaigns. They are help- ing others, it is true, but they are also forming ideals and habits of service that will become an integral part of their own lives. If character is to be built, we must have the Christian school. The school must be Christian. Then truly “Our sons will be like saplings, grown tall in their youth, Our daughters like corner pillars, carved as in a palace.” 106 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP DEAN J. D. MAC RAE, SHANTUNG, CHINA I speak with some conviction on this subject, after ten years spent as an evangelistic missionary among the villages of North China, an experience which taught me that what the Orient needs is not so much improved methods and better policies, although it does need these, as men and women of dynamic personality, the secret of whose influence is to be the life of the spirit. We need a Chang Po-ling, David Yui, C. Y. Cheng, C. T. Wang, T. T. Lew, Feng Yii-shiang and many more such, multiplied indef- initely and at once. These men and women would be the first to admit that what they are they owe largely to Jesus Christ and to Christian education. Five years in university education has only served to deepen my own impression of the paramount importance of Christian education in the Orient today. 1. In the Sphere of Personal Religion: In the sphere of personal religion, the Orient is calling out for reality. It needs men and women who have had an inner, personal experience of Jesus Christ, in what China speaks of as the “innermost heart,” a living faith. We are apt to rest content when we see growing up on the soil of China a replica of the church in which we have been born and nurtured. The real question is whether or not the religion of Jesus Christ has been rooted there. A short time ago a student who is now in London in post- graduate work, spoke in a moment of confidence of his own per- sonal experience. He had been brought up in a home where he was subject to the cruelty of an opium-using father. His little sister had been sold into captivity; his mother had been almost beaten to death; he himself had finally come to a position where he found his richest possession in his personal experience of Jesus Christ, and so he said, “What China needs is more Jesusism.” There are scarcely any fixed stars in the firmament of the religious thinking of young China today. When Dewey or Ber- trand Russell visit the East, there is produced, at once, a whole crop of young philosophers of this school or that, and these per- sist only until there comes some other influential visitor, and then a new movement is set on foot. A “New Tide” has been sweeping over China and has brought with it literary revolution, social up- heaval, moral chaos, and bewilderment in the sphere of religion. What we need today is the leadership of men and women who have had a real religious experience. I take off my hat to the first Chinese Christians, the men and women who were born out of the testing times of the Boxer days and of other times like them. What we need for our new day in CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 107 the Orient is a race of men and women who, with sound education, the best personal culture, discipline, character, personality and qualities of leadership, will combine a personal religious experience as real as those men had “of whom the world was not worthy.” 2. In Home, Social and Industrial Relationships: We may smile at the old type of Chinese home, but it was a great contribu- tion out of China’s past. It had about it a kind of moral sanction which has contributed more than all else, perhaps, to maintain the moral life of China upon a high level. There were some things which the Wang family would not and could not do. But the large family is giving place to the small. The stationary family is being broken up into more mobile ones. The marriage rela- tionship in China tends to become less permanent. [Earlier mar- riage is giving away to later marriage. Everything is changing in home relationships. In industry the Orient is making tremendous strides. Think what that means! For instance, China, industrialized and without Christ—I ask you, can you contemplate that with equanimity? Yet that is the change which is taking place very rapidly. My mind goes back to a match factory in the heart of China where there are employed perhaps three thousand people, for the most part women and children, at work under conditions which, from the point of view of physical health and moral health too, are the very worst possible. They are at their posts for ten, twelve, fif- teen hours a day, driven by a boss whose sole aim is to turn out matches and more matches. Then when their hour of work is over, they go stumbling out into the street or into quarters which have been prepared for their existence between work and work. Now the significant fact is that upon these vital questions not even Christian thought has quite crystallized itself as yet. There are organizations like the Young Women’s Christian Asso- ciation which have been pioneers in the field of industrial reform. There are a host of missionaries over in the Orient who would fain do something to help in the confusion as to family conditions. Perhaps they have achieved most of all by the Christian homes with which they have dotted the Orient. But, it is clear that what the East is calling for today is for men and women who know the social psychology and the social traditions of their own people. There is a clarion call for men and women of this type to lead— to do constructive work in helping to solve these great problems. Hence the demand for Christian education; to delay here is fatal. 3. Citizensip: One reads with a sigh the reports of civil war and of political chaos in China. What are we doing to change such conditions? Stable government waits on general knowledge, discipline, character, personality. In this sphere Chris- 108 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON tianity has always shown itself to be creative, and nowhere more than in the Orient. The few Christian leaders of today exercise an influence out of all proportion to their numbers. That latent moral sentiment, admired by all keen observers, which is widespread among a people like the Chinese, stands in need of leadership which will call it forth into courageous action, on behalf of the well-being of a great nation hard beset by her own internal foes. China once moved with decision to suppress opium ; with disinterested leaders such as she is now producing, only greatly increased in numbers, she will not fail to deal it a death blow again and set her own house in order. In commercial life the old ideals of honesty and loyalty which have stood the test of centuries and have gained respect for the Chinese merchant wherever he has touched the life of the West— these priceless ideals, through the coming of the Western contract system, and somewhat superficial imitation of what is least worthy in modern business practice, are losing their influence. It is the leadership of Christian business men which must restore these old and sound Chinese principles to the place which they must occupy in the commerce of the nation, that she may rise even higher and far surpass her glorious past in the scale of commercial integrity. Common honesty and reliable character are the supreme requisites for genuine progress on the road to national wealth. We have given to the Orient the externals, the mere “clothes” of our Western civilization. Shall we keep back the better gifts of the soul which make men and make them noble? 4. Nation and Nation: There is deep distrust and sus- picion around about the Pacific on the other side. The history of the impact of the West upon the East, in the past, does not make some of the questions which arise more easy of answer. Who are to be the people in China, or in India, or in Japan who, in spite of daily happenings to the contrary, will be able to keep their minds firmly fixed upon the good intent and the better spirit of Christian people in the West? Who are those who will have the courage to discount the discourtesy between nation and nation—the mistaken policies which emerge almost every day, and resolutely fix the mind and heart of the peoples of the East upon the real desire in the West for carrying out the principle of brotherhood? I take it the answer is to be found in such a docu- ment as the manifesto issued by the Church of Christ in China a year or two ago, “The Message of the Church.” It was a message from the very heart of the Church of China, through the mind of some of her choice young leaders, the product of Christian educa- tion; a group of men who have caught the vision of China for Christ and Christ for the world. Christian education alone can answer these questions. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 109 5. The Church of Christ: The Church in the West has had a large part in building up branches of the Church out in the East, in China, in India and in Japan. We have passed through, one may say, three stages. We had, first, the period when the missionary did the work and was in control; we then had the stage where the missionary was in charge, with his Chinese fellow workers as associates. As I see it, we have now entered upon the stage where it is to be the Chinese leader, the Indian leader or the Japanese leader with his missionary fellow workers as associates. Note the difference in the order. Thus it is clear that the demand today is for Christian educa- tion, in order to produce the kind of leadership which is required for that growing and developing church. We must never permit our attachment to any kind of work, however close it may lie to the heart of the church at home, not even, may I say, the great and glorious task of getting the Gospel preached, to come into competition with the demand for Christian education of the highest quality. For I wish to assert, and that most emphatically, that Christian education is in itself closely linked with the work of evangelism. The two cannot be separated. One is essential to the success of the other. May I ask secretaries and members of Mission Boards when faced with budgets and possible deficits not to take the evangelist, with his enthusiasm for the preaching to the people on the street, in the market place, or in the chapel—the magnificent figure that he is—and put him in competition with the teacher who, through the slow, difficult processes of the school is seeking both to sow the seed and to cultivate the plant. It is a mistake to assume that the work of the teacher and that of the evangelist are in com- petition. Christian education, as we know it in the Orient today, is one of the greatest evangelistic forces in the world. I am pre- pared to say further, that Christian education is evangelism, pure and simple, and, therefore, it deserves your solid support and sympathy. See to it that you do not fail to facilitate the training of the leader, because the process is costly, difficult, and slow, and will produce results for the future rather for today. 6. Education: There is growing up in China, as in Japan, a government system of education, led by a group of younger men, who are forward-looking in the very best sense of the term. It is being improved in method and technique day by day. Alongside that, and in close association with it, comes the demand for Chris- tian education, which must be characterized by the highest quality, from the point of view of science and education itself. Will you help young China, and young India, and young Japan through their Christian forces, to build up such a system of education? It is ours, aS we are engaged in Christian education, for in- 110 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON stance, to establish a tradition as to the practice of medicine in those lands. It is ours to impress upon medical students who are to be leaders, the fact that the profession of medicine is an avenue for service, to be rendered in the spirit of Him who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” That such a tradition is being created is proved by an incident like this. In March of 1921, there swept down from the North, outside the great wall of China, a terrible epidemic. So far has medicine advanced, that it is possible now by the skilful use of all forces to combat such an epidemic. So the medical men were called on. Among the group was one young Chinese doctor. He gave himself with complete abandon and enthusiam to the work of fighting the epidemic. In the end he was taken down with it himself. Just before he died he passed on in writing a message to his own family. I cannot recall the whole message, but it contained one or two sentences like this, “I have no complaint. I die for my people.” Can that be beaten on this side of the Pacific? It is the privilege of those engaged in education to create a tradition as to the work of the teacher among the young, in the East, a conception to which China, in particular, has already made a contribution out of the past. I sometimes look with longing to the old village dominie, with his long gown and little pill box cap. He was a man of simple life, and often of quite blameless character; a man who was a real influence in his own community. Everybody went to him for advice; his students retained toward him an affection, a respect and a loyalty which remained throughout their years. But he is passing, and who is to create the standard for the teacher of the new day, if it is not men and women who have been trained through Christian education and the Christian schools? Who will present the idea of what is meant by genuine social betterment, if it is not men and women who have caught the spirit of Christ? The Christian pastor, too, who propagates his faith among the people not only by teaching but also by preaching, is a new type in the social life of China. It will take constructive thinking, it will take positive work by many a young leader to make clear to the society of China and the East what his proper function is to be. 7. The Challenge: JI will throw out the challenge to you along two lines: Firstly: The Church in the West must realize that the responsibility for carrying on Christian education in the East, for the present at least, is hers. There are many types of education which can pay their way; but the education of which we have been speaking will draw its human material, for the most part, from humble homes, and it will ask men and women to enter vocations where there is little remuneration, where the standards are not set by silver dollars. And so you must be satisfied, while CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 111 China and India and Japan experiment in’ Christian education, to do your part largely in the form of helping to pay the bills. You must devise large and generous things for Christian education in the East, and secondly, you must cease to look upon education in the East as a replica of that which you know in the West, for clearly, thought, and truth, and science must take new and differ- ent shape in the minds of China and India and Japan, and the whole East. So you must be satisfied to give the privilege of self-expression to those peoples in working out their systems of Christian education. I camped a short time ago, on Tai Mountain, in company with a group of students. A short distance away was the resting place of Confucius, the great Chinese sage. In the rear rose the mountain with its procession going up daily, a procession of pil- grims extending back into the centuries. Among those young men, clean, straight and Christian, one saw the hope of the new day. As surely as morning by morning the sun rose over the shoulder of Tai Shan and cast its light over that great plain, the scene of human activity, spread out before us. It is because Christ is the Light that I, at least, count it the greatest privilege of my life to have a part in Christian education in the East today. CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND CHRISTIAN WOMANHOOD DEAN HELEN K. HUNT, RANGOON, BURMA The work which must be shouldered by the Christian people of the world is growing so heavy and so complicated, that we cannot consent to limit the workers to any country or any class. Every country and every class must labor together, if so heavy a load is to be moved, and the world is to go forward. We have long recognized our responsibility for the depressed classes and rejoiced in their developing powers, which promise great things for the future. We must have the help of the women, too. The Christian women of the West have done more than can be meas- ured. What may we not hope for, when the women of the East have equal training and vision! Are the educated Christian men of the Orient not to have wives whose background of reading and thinking will enable them to understand and sympathize with their husbands’ hopes and plans for their country? Too often we have seen men eager to throw themselves into some form of unselfish service, with small salary and little recognition, only to be thwarted by wives who were not willing to share in such a gift of life. Why should these women be ready to give what they value most when they have caught no glimpse of the vision which lures their husbands? TI THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON We know how strong national and race consciousness is growing in both East and West. Hardly a village in British India has escaped the irritation of the political agitator, and as a result of constantly increasing pressure and demand, more and more power is being given into the hands of the people. Democracy is always their slogan, but the very conception of a government for all the people, regardless of wealth or class, is as yet incompre- hensible to the masses. Democracy is not fostered by a Hinduism which justifies and defends the continuance of the privileged Brahman and the hopeless untouchable; it can not be a real part of a Mohammedanism which preaches a Holy War; and it must be foreign to Buddhism for no Buddhist can help another, but must work out his own happiness and prosperity. Democracy, with its whole social program, is a heritage of Christianity. We shall never stop the terrible epidemics so common in the Orient until quarantine is enforced. That will be an impossibility just so long as the women of the towns and villages refuse to submit to it; and there is no hope of persuading them to accept it until at least some of them know enough of science to understand the reason for it. In every department of public and private health the women hold the balance of power, and all men’s efforts to better laws will prove fruitless as long as the women quietly but persistently refuse to obey them. These prejudices, due to a lack of under- standing must be broken down by women and by women of their own race. Time after time a Western woman’s careful explana- tion is met with courtesy and an unchanged attitude. But watch a woman of that country tell a story, or perhaps quote a proverb which does not seem to us to even apply to the case, and her listener’s attitude changes as if by magic. It requires minds that understand, as well as hearts that feel, to win and direct the co- operation of women with men toward such movements as the lessening of infant mortality, the segregation of lepers, the proper care of the insane, pure food regulations and the other myriad lines of improvement that touch the home so intimately. We cannot expect children in the lower schools to grasp the biggest and hardest problems that we are all thinking about these days the world around—the clash of class with class, race and race, East and West, peace and war. But a Christian college in the Orient is a laboratory in which these elements are daily being tested. In the college where I teach there are somwhat more than three hundred men and women students. They represent the fol- lowing races: Burmese, Karen, Anglo-Indian, several national- ities of Indians, and pure Chinese. The faculty includes repre- sentatives of all these races, plus British and Americans. Month by month we see these young people, most of whom have not per- sonally known these other races before, working together and CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 113 watching each other. It is not necessary to include courses on internationalism in the curriculum. No student can avoid practical experiments. I have heard many conversations among those col- lege girls, indicating minds and hearts waking up to subjects bigger than gossip; and they intend to have something to say about the working out of these questions in their own country. The by-products of our Christian education are often far greater than we realize. One day a Burman Buddhist girl came to me and confided to me her day-dream. Her father is one of only three Burmans entrusted with the supervision of a whole dis- trict. She was one of the first two Burman Buddhist girls to ever receive a bachelor’s degree. She said, “It seems to me I ought to be able to do something. You know my father travels all through his district and at every town and village he stops and calls to- gether the officials there and they go into such questions as the public finances, public health, prevalence of crime and such things. I would like to travel with him, and then when he summons the officials to meet him, he could call the women to meet me some- where. And if he summoned them they would come! Then I would like to talk to the women about the care of the children and food for children and how to take care of sick children.” Where did she get that idea? Certainly not from Buddhism. I said, “Have you said anything at home about this?’ “Yes, I told my mother.” “What did she say?’ “Well, she said she thought I must be crazy.” I then said, “Did you say anything to your father?” “I told him. He didn’t say anything for a while and then he said he believed it would be a very good thing.” This summer I have had letters from her, telling about the greatly increased activity of the country women of the district there, who are being aroused to violent opposition to the govern- ment by a group of the priests. She, a Buddhist girl, accused these priests of both ignorance and malevolence, but we have women suffrage in Burma and the priests want to get these women. How could those ignorant country women find the inconsistencies in the men’s harangues? She ended with a wail, “I wish I were not the only woman in this whole district who had ever studied logic.” It is the trained women of the Orient upon whom we must depend to teach the girls who are crowding our preparatory schools, and who but Christian college women can built these schools into what we dream for them? Where can you find a more alluring quest? To do for the Orient what our great women educators have done for us, is a task which will call forth all that is best in Oriental womanhood. And to whom but Christian college women in the East can we appeal for pioneers? The world still has frontiers, physical frontiers as well as those of mind and spirit. Among primitive 114 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON races, only women who know the thoughts of women can draw their minds and hearts. Some will say that it is useless to talk of pioneer work for women now in the East, that the bonds of custom and convention and habit and public opinion are so strong that for many centuries yet it will be impossible for the Oriental women to break through and enter such new and unaccustomed spheres. But the pioneer, whether he is a man or woman, is always a sur- prise. He never does the expected. Already Pandita Ramabai and our fine group of Oriental women physicians have shown what may come, and even now the East is travelling too fast to measure her own rate of progress. Our pioneers are sure to appear, but shall we ask them to undertake such great tasks without the best of thought and training? The women of the Orient have courage and keenness. They are just beginning to look out beyond their own families, and desire to know and have a part in the activities of the world as as well as their nations, a number too large for our knowledge and too powerful for our imagination. But must they make all the blunders that we have made and waste all of time and life that we have lost? Shall we not share with them all we have won by painful effort, and then go forth together in Christ’s name, working for all the human family? UNION AND COOPERATION IN EDUCATION IN INDIA THE REVEREND J. ROY STROCK, MASULIPATAM, INDIA Union and cooperation have been thought of in India, par- ticularly along the lines of colleges, theological seminaries and teacher-training institutions. Advantages derived through such cooperation are, among others, the following: (1) These forms of education are comparatively expensive and the needs of the missions are varied and pressing. Hence the necessity of avoiding wasteful competition. (2) The need of today is for fewer but more efficient insti- tutions. Quality is essential at present or the years of missionary education are numbered. Efficiency on the educational side and effectiveness on the missionary side can be achieved only by means of the concentration of our resources and our men. (3) The bringing together into one college of the strongest missionary and Indian Christian teachers and also practically all of the Christian students of an area will provide conditions most favorable for an effective presentation of Christ and for the in- fluencing of character. (4) The college will give convincing testimony to the essen- tial oneness of all Christians in Christ. The moral effect of this upon the Indian public will be great. te ei = ee CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 115 (5) No mission can of itself have the influence on the gov- ernment and on the University that a union college will have. It is certain that the only way for Christian educationalists to have influence in regard to higher education in India today is by main- taining efficient colleges. The influence that the Madras Christian College has had on the University of Madras for many decades shows clearly what a really efficient Christian College can accomplish. (6) Instead of becoming a gradually diminishing factor in the life of India through the spread of national education, Chris- tianity, by means of first-rate and centrally located colleges, will become a positive, determining force—a growingly important influence. In India—and I refer especially to South India—we have two types of union institutions. One type is represented by the Women’s Christian College, Madras, and the Vellore Medical College for women. These institutions have been established and are main- tained by various missions cooperating on a basis of equal con- tributions and equal representation. Other institutions of the same type are the Bangalore Theological Seminary and the Teachers’ College for Women in Madras. The other type of union institution is represented by the Madras Christian College in the city of Madras. This college was founded many years ago by the United Free Church of Scot- land, with the promise of assistance in respect of maintenance from the Church of Scotland. Gradually, however, through the course of the years, other missions have been joining with these in the support of the institution, so that at the present time, al- though the United Free Church of Scotland is the predominant mission, seven missions are actually having a share in the support and conduct of the college. Another institution of this type is one which is just now being founded, namely, the Teachers’ Col- lege for male graduates in Madura. In this case several missions will cooperate in the maintenance of a college established by the mission of the American Board. At a meeting of the Andhra Christian Council, in December, 1923, the Council came to the conclusion that it is absolutely essen- tial for the missions to have a strong Christian college in the Telugu or Andhra country. It decided, in view of the inability of most of the missions working in that part of the country to enter into a scheme depending upon equal contributions from all, to urge the American Lutherans to undertake the establishment of the college and to propose a basis of cooperation for other mis- sions to have a share in the work. This invitation of the Andhra Christian Council was considered by the United Lutheran Church at its convention in Chicago, in October, 1924, and was accepted. 116 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Funds are now being raised for the establishing of the Andhra Christian College. The two Christian colleges now in existence in the Telugu country, namely, the Lutheran Junior College at Guntur and Noble College at Masulipatam, will discontinue their college class and will function as Christian high schools from the date of the opening of the new college. It is obvious that thi's college will be similar to the Madras Christian College. It is the idea of the Andhra Christian Council that this new college should have as its first care in every respect the youth of our Christian Church in India. It will, however, admit as many Hindus and Mohammedans as conditions may make it practicable or advisable to admit to its privileges, and thus it will be not only a training ground for Christian leaders but also an evangelizing force. In order that the Christian influence of the institution may be as strong as possible, the number of students will be limited. In order that those who have gathered at this conference may realize the spirit in which the missionaries are now attempting to solve some of the large problems which are coming before them, I shall quote a passage from the official report of Noble College for the past year. This report was written by a missionary of the Church of England who is now acting as principal of that college: “What was the Church Missionary Society doing to help? The Church Missionary Society sorely hindered by accumulations of deficits during the war, has promised $17,000 towards capital expenditure and two missionaries on the staff. It has promised the “good will’ of the Noble College, after eighty years of pro- gressive work. It has the humility to see that if more powerful shoulders can bear a heavier burden of finance for the sake of a finer college, it should cooperate and let the more powerful mis- sion take the lead. Selfish worrying as to who is the greatest should have no place in the cooperative glory of noble educational and Christian work. ‘AIl in one’ is the root of our strength. The prospects for a more glorious Andhra Christian College are as bright as we could hope for.” CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN RELATION TO GOVERN- MENT DEVELOPMENTS MR. JOSEPH H. OLDHAM, M.A., LONDON, ENGLAND I doubt whether in the whole history of Christianity there has been anything more striking than the contribution which Christian schools in Asia and in Africa have made to the develop- ment of the peoples of these continents. In Japan, in China, in India and in the Turkish Empire their contribution has been re- markable. Up to the present, ninety per cent of the education CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 117 given to the African race by the West has been given to them through Christian schools. The fundamental fact however with which we have to reckon is that conditions are changing out of all recognition. During the Great War there arrived one day at Simla, the summer capital of the Government of India, two representatives of one of the hill tribes. They had heard, they said, that the King-Emperor was having trouble with his enemies, and their chief had sent them down with two rifles and a bag of gunpowder as a contribution to the struggle. The attitude of some Boards to the new condi- tions which are emerging is perhaps not very different from the understanding possessed by this chieftain in the Himalayan moun- tains of the conditions of modern warfare. Everywhere, throughout the countries of Asia and Africa, Governments are entering the field of education. The State is assuming the responsibility for education. The missionary schools have been pioneers, but it may be that in a relatively short time they will be put out of the business. This is not inevitable, but it is certainly a possibility. Even if they are not put entirely out of the business, they may be put out to a great extent. Mr. T. Z. Koo said to me not long ago that what he feared in China was not that the Christian schools would be left without pupils, since the task of education was so gigantic that for a long time to come there would be pupils for every school, but that Christian schools might have only those pupils who were not able enough or ambitious enough to go elsewhere. When I was in Lahore, twenty-five years ago, there were four colleges there—a govern- ment college, a Mohammedan college, a Hindu college and the Forman Christian college; and of these the Forman College got the pick of the students. It is quite possible that this situation may be reversed, and that Christian schools may have to take the leav- ings from the others. The missionary task is always to be in the central stream of the world’s life. If we are to seize the present opportunity four conditions must be fulfilled: In the first place we must act together. The determining voice in education is always that of Government. If we have twenty or thirty different policies Government will go its own way. Whatever we may think, Government will inevitably treat private effort as a unity. Secondly, we must have a clearly thought-out philosophy of education in our own minds. We must believe that it is a sound thing from the national point of view that in the national system of education there should be a place for private effort. It leaves room for experiment. We have high educational authority for believing that this is sound policy. We must also have strong 118 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON convictions that religion is an essential element in sound education. I have a profound belief in the efficiency of truth, and if the edu- cational convictions to which I have referred represent the truth we may hope that if we stand for them firmly, reasonably and temperately, we shall achieve success. : Thirdly, we must make our schools national. No Govern- ment likes to see education in the hands of aliens. If we are to retain our schools we must at all costs make them as national as we can. This means giving as large as possible a share in their control to the people of the country. It means also that we must take the lead in bringing into our curriculum the best that there is in the past of the nations among which our schools are working. This is what Mr. Fraser is setting himself to do in the work to which he has gone in Achimota, on the Gold Coast of West Africa. Fourthly, if we are to maintain our position we must make our schools good, better than any other institution. The challenge is one that we must not be afraid to meet. The aim of sound education is the formation of character, and our business as Chris- tian missionaries is also the formation of character. We ought not to shrink from the test that boys and girls educated in a Christian school bear the marks of the Christian training they have received in strong and trustworthy character. If we achieve that kind of result there is good reason to hope that even a, non-Christian Gov- ernment will not put an end to schools which are serving the nation in this way. THE PERIOD OF INTERCESSION THE REVEREND ROBERT FORGAN, D.D., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND Before we unite in our common intercession at this time let us listen for a few moments to the voice of Jesus Himself as He taught the multitudes and set Himself also to educate His chosen disciples. From the substance and quality and method of the Master Teacher, missionaries and ministers and all Christ’s fellow- workers may learn the secret of all true teaching. “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of Him through all the region round about. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. “And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. “Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plente- ous, but the labourers are few; CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 119 “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest. “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. “And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. “And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor; other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors. “And seeing the multitudes, He went up into a mountain; and when He was set, His disciples came unto Him; “And He opened His mouth, and taught them, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- ness, for they shall be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. “Ye are the salt of the earth, but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your - good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” We have been listening this morning to a most interesting and helpful discussion upon Christian education. All expert edu- cators in these days attach supreme value to what they call “at- mosphere” in their colleges and schools. By that word they 120 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON describe what they desire to be the moral and spiritual tone which should prevail among teachers and pupils. Unless the right spirit pervades an educational institution, the highest and best results cannot be obtained. It is all-important, therefore, that in seeking to impart a Christian education in our different mission fields, our educational missionaries should give careful attention to securing a high and pure spiritual atmosphere in which to carry on their work. Our risen Lord realized the need of teaching, when He gave His last command to His apostles, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations.” Literally the word used here in the original Greek means “make disciples’ or “learners” of all the nations. The nations had much to learn then, as they have much still to learn today. They required to be taught, and our Lord went on to explain both what was to be the substance of the apostles’ teaching and what was to be the spirit in which they were to fulfil their commission. ‘Teaching them’’—and here the Greek word is quite different; it is the technical term for “imparting instruction’’—the former word “teaching the nations” meant “mak- ing disciples” that they might learn. But now we have the def- inite word which signifies technical instruction, “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway.” So their teaching was to be carried on by the apostles and Christ’s followers through all the coming gen- erations in His presence. “Lo, I am with you.” He Himself was to be there, unseen yet near, in every school the apostles set up, as He is present in every school His missionaries set up today. And the substance of the teaching was to be “all things whatso- ever He has commanded”; and He also told his apostles how they themselves were to learn the things they were to teach. The spirit of truth was to come upon them, and that spirit was to lead them into all the truth. And that Spirit, receiving the things of Christ, still reveals them to His followers that they in turn may go and teach them to the world. Our theme today lies very near to the center of world evangeli- zation. We call it education, Christian education in the mission fields, and we have been considering various aspects of that theme this morning. The importance of religious education has received fresh attention in the home lands of late years, as well as in the mission fields; and if we put a sufficiently deep meaning into the word, it is not too much to say that, broadly, Christianity has for its supreme aim the education of mankind. A liberal education is a Christian education. Teach men to know, and with the knowl- edge give them understanding. Teach men, above all, to know God as Jesus Christ reveals Him, and you have solved the riddle of the universe, the problems of our generation and of each new generation that will arise; for in so educating men you have freed them from the darkness of ignorance, from the tyranny of the CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE MISSION FIELD 121 unworthy and the base, and have lifted them to the level of the sons of God. The aim of all true education is the making of character. So all our wisest modern educators are agreed. And it is certainly true that the aim of all Christian education, whether at home or abroad, is the making of Christian character. In particular, in the mission field our missionaries have come to realize that edu- cation is not a mere adjunct or auxiliary in the task of world evangelization, but one of their principal agents, one of the best of their evangelizing instruments. There should be no sharp line of demarcation between educational and ‘evangelistic misgiorts. Rightly understood, the two are one. So now, after all we have heard this morning, we do well, do we not, to draw near into the presence of God, to make united intercession for the progress and prosperity of all earnest endeavor, by means of education, to enlighten the minds, to purify the hearts and to elevate the character of the children of men. Let us bow before God and in silence pray for teachers and their pupils in all Christian lands :— O, God, our Father, do Thou so inspire and guide all-parents and all other responsible educators that they shall recognize the education of the youth of this generation as at once the noblest and the gravest task committed to their charge. Set before all teachers, we beseech Thee, the true ideal, and grant them the vision and the faith, the patience, the firmness, the love and the under- standing, which will fit them for the worthy fulfillment of their task. Let us further remember before God all universities, colleges and schools of learning in which any of us here have a special in- terest, whether in our different home lands or in the mission fields which are best known to us :— O God, the Fountain of knowledge and Source of all wisdom, we entreat Thee that in all these halls of learning which we have now named in our hearts, the search for truth may be undertaken, not only with diligence and perseverance but with humility and reverence; that the teachers and students may find Thee as they study the work of Thy hands in nature and in history. O Lord God, we pray that in science, in art and in literature Thou wilt control the thoughts of men and reveal Thy glory, and suffer no pride of discovery or joy of achievement to hinder men from rec- ognizing that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that in Jesus Christ, Thy Son, dwelleth all fulness of knowledge, both for the life that now is and for that which is to come. And shall we now give thanks to Almighty God for all He has already accomplished through the agency of Christian mis- sions in the opening of blind eyes, and in dispelling the darkness from the minds of men and nations by the rising of the sun of 122 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON righteousness, by the revelation of Jesus Christ who proclaimed Himself here upon earth to be the Light of the world, the Light and the Life of men? Let us recall with gratitude the progress made among prim- itive peoples, as in darkest Africa and the islands of the sea; and also among peoples who have inherited an ancient civilization which needs the light of Christ to lift it to a higher level :— O God, the Father of all men, of every race and every color and every tongue, we pray that whatever of good exists in the life and character of the peoples who, as yet, have not received the full and gracious revelation of Thyself in Jesus Christ, may form for those peoples a stepping stone and may be used by Thee to raise them to the fulness of the knowledge of Thy salvation and of all that that means for their life here and hereafter. For all institutions devoted to the training and preparation of educational missionaries we make our common intercession, that those thus trained and equipped may go forth in the Spirit of the Master to prepare and train men and women in the far lands who, in their turn, shall become the leaders of their own peoples. O God, our Father, we bless Thee for all we ourselves have learned, for all that we have been taught by the gracious operation of Thy Spirit in our hearts, for all that we have learned by the lessons of Christian living in our Christian lands up to this present time. We pray that Thou wilt enlarge our hearts’ desires that we may bear before Thee the burden of the needs of this world and of all our fellow men, that they may share those sacred priv- ileges which we have enjoyed and be brought to a knowledge of the truth as the truth is in Jesus. Most gracious God, let Thy blessing abound toward us in this great convention; and in all the various gatherings in which we assemble ourselves together may the Spirit of all truth work mightily among us that in due time we may return to our differ- ent tasks with a fresh inspiration and a fresh consecration of our- selves and of all we hold nearest and dearest to that great service of the Kingdom of God upon the earth to which Thou has called Thy Church. These things we pray for in the name that is above every name, the all-prevailing name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE MEDICAL MISSIONS T. DWIGHT SLOAN, M.D., PEKING, CHINA Some fifteen years ago, before I had gone out as a medical missionary, I was asked why I had decided to take up this work. These three reasons flashed into my mind. First, because I believe it is the best professional strategy. Dr. Osler has stated that the aim of modern medicine is to create an environment in which health, and not disease, will be the normal thing. Vital statistics in America and in Europe will show that we have progressed far in the achievement of that ideal, yet I knew that the strongholds, not only of the common contagious diseases, but of leprosy, small pox, cholera, plague, and many other great scourges as well as the most un- favorable sanitary conditions, were not to be found in this country, but in the so-called mission countries. I wanted to get in where the line was farthest-flung, and where I believed I could make the greatest contribution to the professed aim of modern medicine. Second, because it is the truest patriotism. I knew that with increasing trade relationships and better communications we were more and more threatened with diseases brought in from the Orient. We had been reminded of this very forcefully just at that time, as we have been only within the last few months again reminded, by an outbreak of bubonic plague in California, this last time, in its pneumonic form; and we have not only paid the toll in the lives of our citizens, but we have expended millions of dollars in stamping it out. I said to myself that it would be a more patriotic thing to attack such diseases at their source and to help to clean them up than to wait till they had actually attacked us. Moreover, I was even then thoroughly convinced that it was a real patri- otic service to promote friendly relationships with other peoples by a spirit of helpfulness. I could think of no finer instance of this spirit than the service of the medical missionary. Third, because it affords the opportunity to put the Chris- tian stamp on the ethics of the coming medical profession of these countries. I was thinking of China especially, because it was to that country that I intended to go. Each one of these reasons has proven true, far more true than in my moments of greatest enthusiasm I had been able 123 124 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON to imagine; but experience on the field has taught me an added reason for this work, namely, it has put within the hands of the Christian church on the field a most effective means of reaching men for Christ. The Christian hospitals speak a mess- age which is understood by Christian and non-Christian alike. This was strikingly illustrated several years ago in Nanking, China, when it seemed probable that the University hospital would have to be given up. The University Medical School had amalgamated with the school of the Shantung Christian University in another city. Many believed that this would force the closing of the hospital in Nanking. There was much discussion concerning it. Pastor Swen, who was in charge of one of the Presbyterian churches in the city, came to the super- intendent of the hospital, much alarmed by the rumors which he had heard. “Why,” he said, “if you close the hospital, we had just as well close our churches, too. We simply must have the hospital.” This was, of course, an extreme way of stating the case; still, Pastor Swen knew that the community needed the practical expression of Christianity at work for men which the hospital afforded. He felt that to lose the medical work would seriously handicap all Christian effort. That the non-Christian community held the hospital in high esteem will be seen from the statements of the Vice-President of the Chinese Red Cross Society. When civil war was threa- tening with Nanking as the prospective storm center, he re- quested the superintendent of the University hospital to be- come the honorary head of the Red Cross organization which was to care for the wounded. The superintendent asked his visitor which of the local hospitals under Chinese management could be counted upon to share in the work. “Not one,” he replied, “we propose to use only the mission hospital.” The Nanking hospital was not closed and remains today an in- creasingly outstanding witness of a living Christian faith in that community. Similar testimony to the esteem in which mission hospitals are held could be obtained from every section of the mission field. Here in America we take these institutions largely as a matter of course. Not so in non-Christian lands. Here we often forget the Christ whose influence inspired the enterprise. We may even set up a charitable institution, flaunting perhaps an anti-Christian front, while at the same time capitalizing the stimulus, example, and sympathy of those made charitable through the direct or indirect influence of the Christian message. Out yonder, however, these Christian institutions are recognized, by all as the embodiment of the spirit of the Christian message. How important it is, then, that they worthily represent the cause! CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 125 This at once suggests the type of men and the character of the plants that are required for this work. When we think of the type of men, our minds instantly revert to some of those great pioneers who blazed the way for medical missions; Drs. Parker, Lockhart and Kerr in China, Drs. Thomas and Scudder in India, Dr. Hepburn in Japan, David Livingstone in Africa, and many other noble souls of like motive. Women as well as men have played a most important part in this work. Dr. Clara Swain, pioneer woman physician in India, heads a long list of noble names of women who share with the pioneers already mentioned the honor of opening the way. With scant equipment these leaders accomplished seemingly impossible tasks. How eagerly we cherish the heritage they have left us! But what shall we say of the type of men required at the present time? It is true that in the past medical missionaries have been very generously judged by what they had, and not according to what they lacked. We have, however, now arrived at a time when, if we are to maintain the commanding in- fluence of medical missions, we must provide a personnel thor- oughly abreast of the latest developments in modern medicine, and furnished with a physicial equipment in which standard medical work may be done. Training that was acceptable even ten or twenty years ago will not suffice for today’s require- ments. A plant and equipment that were formerly considered good may fail utterly to meet the present demands. Many of the citizens of non-Christian countries have al- ready become familiar through travel and study abroad with the best hospitals in Europe and America. They are in a posi- tion to know whether mission institutions are efficient or not, and to criticize their shortcomings. Nine years ago at a meeting of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, where an extensive report of field investigations was presented, and where resolutions were adopted looking forward to improv- ing medical mission work, there was unanimous agreement to the principle that there must be a decided advance in the methods hitherto employed. Among the statements quoted were the following: Dr. Venable of China, one of the ex-presi- dents of the China Medical Missionary Association said, “I do not wish to disparage the medical mission work of the past, but I believe the time has come for making radical and sweeping changes in our work in the direction of consolidation and con- centration. We have spread out too thin.” Dr. Norton of Korea added, “The time has come when we can no longer get along with the scanty outfit and the slipshod methods of ten years ago. I think every hospital should be outfitted to do the most careful and scientific work.” Dr. King of Banza, Congo, was quoted as saying, “A doctor goes through years of long, 126 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON hard preparation and then on the field finds his hands tied through lack of hospital equipment.” Nine years ago they were saying these things, and yet only this week one of the medical secretaries of a large mission Board said to me that it seemed to him as if his Board in its medical policy was standing still. It simply must not be allowed to stand still. Not to advance medically is to recede, for the procession is marching forward. We must face squarely at this point our objective. Is our aim to be quantity or quality production? Should we aim to treat the greatest possible num- ber of sufferers, or should we aim to treat only so many as we can handle creditably and in accordance with the best medical traditions? In the past the former view has perhaps been the dominant one. We are now shifting to the latter. It is manifest on a moment’s reflection that we can after all treat only the merest fraction of the sick of the non-Christian world. ‘The entire output of all the schools of medicine and of nursing in the United States and in Canada, if it could be made available, would not suffice for China’s need alone. All, therefore, that the few who can respond to this need can do is to furnish an example and by training a few leaders of a future medical profession, to lay the foundation on which an indigenous modern medical system may be developed. Our present duty seems to be two-fold: First, to send out men and women who measure up to the best standards of professional training and ability, who also possess, together with this training and ability, the requisite spiritual qualities. Sec- ond, to provide in each case a physical plant and equipment such as are required for doing creditable work. If we do these, it will undoubtedly mean that we will take the next step, which is a corollary to these two: namely, we will abandon some of the isolated poorly-manned and badly-equipped centers of med- ical work, which cannot within a comparatively short time be brought up to a minimum standard. This does not mean that there is no place for the itinerant type of pioneer in missionary work, since manifestly there is . still demand in some remote regions for this type of physician, but it does mean that a sounder policy would be to strengthen and improve existing centers of medical work, rather than to continue the process of expansion at the sacrifice of efficiency in the centers that have already been established. It will also mean union and cooperation with other societies in certain spe- cial centers, where a number of societies are at work. This would permit specialization on the part of the doctors in those hospitals, which tends to efficiency. Moreover, this program will require a far more thorough- going cooperation in medical education of the various societies CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 127 in order that adequate provision may be made in a few selected centers for the careful training of physicians and nurses. Yesterday in the Conference that was held on medical work three themes were considered: First, the “Contribution of Med- ical Missions’; second, “The Present Policy of Medical Mis- sions”; third, “The Most Urgent Needs of Medical Missions.” From each of these angles the discussion invariably focussed on medical education as the pivotal point in the program. It must be so. I am profoundly interested in maintaining a high standard of scientific efficiency in these schools and hospitals. I am even more concerned that along with professional excel- lence shall go the Christian ideal. A good beginning has been made at the Shantung Christian University Medical School in Tsinan-fu, at the Hunan-Yale Medical College in Changsha, Hunan, at the Severance Medical College in Seoul, Korea, and in other centers too numerous to mention. It would be difficult to over-estimate the influence of © these schools. In addition to all this, the program will compel a well- planned campaign of popular education in health matters in order to create a strong supporting public sentiment. A striking example of what can be done in health education is afforded by the very excellent work of Dr. W. W. Peter and his associates in China. By means of arresting exhibits, lectures, and demonstrations, and by creating a considerable body of health literature, they are attracting the attention and securing the interest of large numbers of people in health matters. In this case, however, as in every phase of the program, which we are proposing, we would insist that the quality rather than the quantity of the work done is to be emphasized. Another very effective means for improving the quality of medical mission work is the recognition on the part of the Mission Boards of the necessity for periodic post-graduate courses for medical workers. Occasionally, satisfactory courses may be offered by some institution within the bounds of the country in which the missionary resides, as, for instance, at the Peking Union Medical College in China. More often, however, provision for post-graduate studies must be made during fur- lough. Some Boards very wisely provide more frequent fur- loughs for medical workers than they do for those less likely to suffer from the overcrowding and isolation of missionary life. No one feels that so much as the physician. Already the missionary body is demanding improved standards for hospitals. In China, for example, the China Med- ical Missionary Association, following the example of the American College of Surgeons, appointed a committee to formulate certain minimum requirements by which the accept- 128 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON ability of a hospital could be judged. The standards proposed, modest as they are, will, when accepted, probably place a ma- jority of the mission hospitals in a non-approved list. They will not, however, remain long in the unacceptable class, if we, who are here ‘representing the home base as well as the workers over there, do our duty. The requirements proposed by the Committee relate to the keeping of satisfactory records, the provision of reasonable laboratory facilities, and the securing of a plant, staff, and equipment capable of rendering efficient service to the patients. The technical details do not concern us here. When these standards are put into effect, it will be evident to all that the missionaries themselves recognize that a new era in medical work is already upon us. Surely we will not fail them in their endeavor to maintain this work at such a high standard of efficiency that it will continue to be a mainstay to the cause. Anything short of the best will not suffice. What, then may we expect men and institutions of the type that I have been endeavoring to portray, to accomplish? In the light of experience, the following facts seem established: (1) They create an atmosphere favorable to all forms of Chris- tian work; (2) They form the groundwork and furnish the example on which an indigenous medical profession strongly influenced by Christian standards is to be built up; (3) They conserve the health and working efficiency of the entire mis- sionary body; (4) They promote public health education; and (5) They reach many untouched by other Christian agencies. In the hospital with which I am at present connected, a woman had undergone a dangerous and difficult surgical opera- tion and was convalescing. One morning, just after her dress- ing had been finished, she said, “I want to be a Christian. Be- fore I came here, I did not understand much about Christianity. I did not imagine before that there was such kindness in all the world as has been shown me by all the doctors and the nurses who have attended me in this hospital. I want to be baptized.” I tell you, it is worth while to follow the Great Physician, as we thus minister to the physical and the spiritual needs of men. I can think of no work which furnishes so much of the real joy of living as this. WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN INDUSTRY IN THE FAR EAST MISS MARGARET E. BURTON, NEW YORK Several of us in this room are wearing hair nets. I wonder how many of us, as we put them on, were conscious of the fact CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 129 that in all probability the fingers of Chinese women and little girls made those nets. Comparatively few of the women who still use hair nets realize that the great center of the hair net industry is in the city of Chefoo, China. And probably even a smaller number of those who have discarded nets for bobbed locks are aware that they have thereby contributed to the unemployment of hundreds of women in that far-away city of north China. Yet only a short time ago a letter from a friend in Chefoo contained this sentence: “T don’t know what will happen to us, if you women in America don’t stop cutting your hair. We are all losing our jobs. There were 18,000 women and girls in the hair net factories here two years and a half ago, and now there are only a few over 2,000.” Modern industry has come to the East, and has suddenly pre- cipitated upon ancient civilizations all the bewildering problems which have arisen in the Occident during a hundred years of experience with modern machinery. Nations which have for cen- turies been sustained by agriculture and handicrafts are suddenly called upon to meet the problems which arise with the substitution of great factories for hand industries; the substitution of the im- personal relation of corporation employers to employees for the side-by-side cooperation of master and apprentice in the little shop; the questions arising from the emigration of thousands of workers from the rural community to the industrial centers, the congestion of population in cities, and the far-reaching changes in family and social life brought about by the employment of women in factories. Whether or not we regret the industrialization of the East, it has come, and it has come to stay. There is no possibility of stemming the irresistible tide of modern civilization of which it is a part. There is no question that it will be a factor of tremendous importance in the future life of the East. But there is still ques- tion what kind of a factor it will become. One of my Chinese friends has summed up the situation in words which refer to China, but might also be applied to other countrids of the Orient. “Whether the development of our national resources will be a bless- ing to mankind, or a curse to humanity in the future, will greatly depend upon the attitude of mind of thinking people. Shall modern industry serve a few people at the expense of thousands of human beings ?” You will notice that my friend does not say, “Whether the development of our national resources will be a blessing to China or a curse to China.” She does not even say, ‘Whether they will be a blessing to Asia or a curse to Asia.” She says, “Whether they will be a blessing to mankind or a curse to humanity.” The spirit and conditions which govern modern industry in any part of the world today will inevitably either bless or curse men and women in every part of the world. For our scientific discoveries and 130 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON inventions have, as ‘Maude Royden has put it, created “the kind of a world in which no one can prosper without helping others to pros- per, and no one can suffer without causing others to suffer.” It is a far cry from Wilkes-barre, Pa., to Tokyo, Japan. But when, a few months ago, the girls in a silk mill there petitioned for higher wages, their employer said that to grant their request would mean the failure of his business. When pressed for an explanation, he gave competition with the silk mills of Tokyo as the reason for his answer. This summer, I described to some women of the South the conditions I had seen in cotton mills in Shanghai. When I had finished a woman who has been working for better labor laws in Georgia told me that when she had gone to a cotton mill owner of Atlanta to ask him to support an eight-hour day, he had blazed out at her, telling her that if she knew what he was up against in competition with Shanghai mills, she would not talk to him of an eight-hour day. Paul’s long-ago words are true of a world today. If one member suffers, all suffer; if one is honored, all rejoice. Because we are citizens of a world, and because the conditions under which industry in the Orient develops will affect every part of the world, we cannot but be profoundly concerned about them. And then too, because we are Christians. He, whose Name we bear, came that men might have life and might have it abun- dantly. May I share with you two pictures of industrial conditions as I saw them in China, and ask you to judge for yourself what opportunity there is, under such conditions, for abundant life— physically, mentally, socially or spiritually. It is almost exactly three years ago today that I went froin the cold, raw winter air of a Shanghai January into the almost intolerable humidity of a silk filature. I can close my eyes and see it again—a long, narrow room, down the length of which stretched two rows of tables, on one side of which sat Chinese women, on the opposite side of which stood little Chinese girls. In front of each woman and of each child was an open kettle of steaming water—the whole room was so full of steam that those of us who had on glasses had to take them off to see. The women were unwinding the silk from the cocoons floating in the water, and the children were keeping a fresh supply soft in the caldrons, stirring them constantly lest they become waterstained. I watched one mite for a long time. She did not keep her cocoons moving gently in the water—she stirred them so hard that my arm ached in sympathy with hers. I measured where her head came on me. It was just to my waist. I asked how old she was. The women opposite her said that she was seven, Chinese count, which means that she was six, or even five, as we measure age. CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 131 We asked the owner about wages and hours and age limits. He said the women and children came at five in the morning and worked until seven in the evening. The women received 20 cents and the children 10 cents a day. Ten cents for fourteen hours work, standing! We asked him what his age limit for the employ- ment of children was. He said he had none, but that if they were too young they were not much use. The report of the Municipal Commission appointed last year to study child labor in Shanghai shows that this situation is true for practically all Shanghai’s industries. ‘The commencement age’ the report says “varies with the nature of the employment, but it can be asserted that, generally speaking, the child begins its work in the mill or factory as soon as it is of any economic value to the employers.” What hope have these little girls of a abundant life, even of physical life? A recent article in the China Medical Journal calls attention to the high percentage of tuberculosis and other pul- monary diseases among the women and especially the children who work in the hot and humid atmosphere of silk filature or cot- ton mill. Paul Hutchinson, in his book “‘China’s Real Revolution,” tells of the effort of a group of Christians to bring a little cheer into the lives of these little silk mill girls, by giving them a Christ- mas party. “One hundred and twenty of them came,” he says— one hundred and twenty morsels of dismal humanity—the tips of their fingers white from constant dipping into the hot water in which the cocoons are handled. These children, ranging from six to twelve years of age, were curious to see what was in store for them. But the best efforts of the most accomplished recreational leaders of the city could do nothing to arouse them. They had been utterly beaten down by the monotony of the factory. Their young strength had been mortgaged, even before they were born.” And with the most reverent recognition of the power of the Christian spirit, it must nevertheless be admitted that the utmost efforts of the most earnest and consecrated Christians can never succeed in bringing abundant life to men or women or little children who live and work and have their being under such conditions as these. Let me give you one other picture of a cold January night, three years ago, when, at four in the morning, I went from a quiet, dark street into the glare and heat and din of the night shift of a cotton mill going full blast. My memories of the hour spent in that mill are of almost unbearable heat, air filled with cotton fluff show- ing white against the black Chinese heads, and of exhausted workers, too weary even to look up at the most unusual spectacle of three foreign women going through their mill between four and five in the morning. Especially, I remember a little huddled heap, a little girl perhaps eight years old, sound asleep between two rows of whizzing and wholly unprotected machines. 132 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON One of the friends who was with me that night sent me after I had left China, a laconic little clipping from a Shanghai news- paper. It read: ‘An inquest was held yesterday by Magistrate Li and Mr. Jacob on a child employed in the Anglo-Chinese Cotton Mill, who met her death in tragic circumstances. She was drawn into the machinery from underneath a handrail by her feet while asleep at four o’clock in the morning.’ My friend had written on the margin, “You remember the weary little bodies we saw that morning.” The article in the China Medical Journal to which I have already referred reports, “We find the children in factories have the highest accident mortality. In seeking the cause for this, we are reminded of what has already been said, that it is among the young and inexperienced that accidents are most frequent and severe.” “The young and inexperienced!’ The article reports an injury to a factory worker of five years old. Such youth, such inexperience, has no place in factories at all. But in the cotton mills of China at this moment, hundreds of little boys and girls are working on a twelve-hour shift, one week on a day shift, the next on a night shift. They are working at unprotected machines, and when, especially on the night shifts, the utter exhaustion of sleep-denied childhood brings relaxed vigilance, it is not surprising that tragedies occur. What are we going to do about it? There would be no use in bringing you these harrowing pictures of what I myself saw of modern industrialism in the Orient, unless there is something we can do. Of many things, which might be said, may I briefly make four suggestions: First of all, because we have made the world so small and closeknit a neighborhood, anything that we can do to help to bring a Christian way of life in industry in this country, will help to make things better in the East. Bishop Brent reminded us that our own industrial life is far from what it should be—it is full of wrongs which we must right—and the righting of them will have its immediate effect in far-away countries. A letter from a woman who has spent the last few years in Japan gives a vivid picture of her visit to a glass factory there. “An unlighted shed, pitch black except for the blinding flare from gas ovens—scores of little ten to fourteen-year-old girls and boys, darting from oven to cooler, to annealing oven, blowing the fiery mass of molten glass into bottle shape—numbed, stupefied, expres- sionless little gnomes, feeding a fiery monster. No color in the little thin faces, no response to my smiles, no interest in anything outside the task that was set for them; for nine hours to plod in this blackness, choked by the fumes from the seething glass, eye brows and eyelashes singed—at the end of the long day to receive CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 133 from fifteen to thirty cents—a pittance less than the cost of the coarse rice that the little tired body needs to keep going.” And she added, “I was sick at heart—but more depressed still to have the owner tell me that he had visited over 100 glass factories in America and had studied our methods.” Just what he had learned from those factories, which of his methods he had patterned from them, I do not know, but I do know that Oriental employers are studying industrial conditions here and are being greatly influenced by them. A friend who has been pouring her life into China during the last few years in an effort to help create a public opinion that will do away with the child labor which I have described, says that no one who has not been there can realize the disastrous effect in China of learning that America had declared its national child labor law unconstitutional. Again and again I have heard her say “Nothing will mean more for the cause of the child laborers of China than to have the states of America, ratify the child labor amendment to the Constitution.” If one member suffers, all suffer. Yes, but it is also true that if one is honored, all rejoice. For we are all members one of another. Another way in which we can help is to set ourselves stead- fastly against the investment of money from Christian countries in industries where such conditions as those I have described exist. When I was in China, my attention was called to an article which appeared in a trade journal. There was nothing secret, or confi- dential, in this report—anyone who would might read it. Let me give you a part of it. “The profits of the ————————-_- factory again surpassed $1,000,000. For the past two years it has been running night and day with scarcely any intermission. The number of hands employed is 2,500 and the following is the wage table per day: IL AE era teen dais aiate eS lchg era ta bee x ale ateutec ovine dele te orae 15 to 25 cents WV GIDE Mera laa dvid's/ dia aie Hele hls Sak h dipls bieiy Maleinate SE be 6 10 to 15 cents Boys (Abt 15 ears hoc yo de Cases ons Geiss Hea en > vaip 10 to 15 cents Garin: CHOU (LOLS WEAIE EE Fite avec ea tes eatin & Ghieiate e's ace 5 to 10 cents Small boys, (about 10" yeara) sis sis oiste to adietes us a wiele's 3 5 to 10 cents Smalls gitis: (about 210s Yemen uk views ye dave wes es 3% to 5 cents ‘The working hours are from 5:30 A. M. to 5:30 P. M. and from 5:30 P. M. to 5:30 A. M. No meals are supplied by the factory. It will be seen that the company is in an exceptionally favorable position, with an abundant and absurdly cheap labor supply to draw on, and no vexatious factory laws to observe; it is not surprising that their annual profits have exceeded their total capital on at least three occasions.” Whatever the nationality of this company may have been, the unashamed acknowledgment of such conditions as are here described, reveals a situation to which every nation which is in any way participating in the industrial development of China has a relation. Citizens of Christian nations must do nothing which would help to increase or perpetuate such conditions. They must rather help China to avoid the tragic mistakes of the West. In the third place, this situation demands a goodly number of missionaries who are equipped both by thorough training and 134 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON experience to be helpful cooperators with the people of the Far East in dealing with these complex and difficult problems. The Christian churches of the East have already manifested their pro- found concern. You will remember, for example, that the Church of China in its first national conference adopted three labor standards, one pertaining to child labor, one to one day’s rest in seven, the third to the protection of workers. And the National Christian Council of China has appointed a Commission on the Church and Industry which is carrying on a most vigorous and intelligent campaign of education. At a conference held in England last Spring, on the prepara- tion of missionaries, attended by delegates from practically all mission fields, I,was interested to find this statement: “One memo- randum after another referred to the spread of an industrialism which reproduced in more aggravated form, and without essential safeguards, conditions which are imperilling society in the West.” “The resulting situations,’ the report goes on to say, “bear at every point upon stich questions as the type of missionary who will be welcomed, the attitude he should take, the work he must be prepared to do.” Only as we have missionaries, thoroughly prepared by definite training and special experience to deal with these perplexing prob- lems, can we give the most effective cooperation to the Christian churches of the East in their courageous and determined facing of this situation. | Just one thing more. It is a commonplace to say that much of the most effective education and influence comes through demon- stration and example. We must make sure that all enterprises for which our Mission agencies are responsible are above criticism. Are the builders who erect our mission buildings given one day’s rest in seven? Are they working for reasonable hours and under safe conditions? Are all of our Bible women and village pastors and village teachers receiving an adequate living wage? If we can answer, without embarrassment, all such questions as these, then we are in a position to join all our forces with the Christians of the Orient to help hasten that day when His Kingdom shall come, and His will be done on earth—as it is in heaven. SIXTEEN YEARS’ CAMPAIGNING FOR CHRIST IN JAPAN THE REVEREND TOYOHIKO KAGAWA, TOKYO It was just fifteen years ago, on a cold evening, the night before Christmas in 1908, I entered the slums of Kobe to live. Then I was twenty-two years old and a student in the theological seminary. I rented a small house which had altogether only five CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 135 mats (a mat is three feet to six feet wide) one room with two mats and the other with three. The man who led me to the slums was twenty-four years old, two years older than I. He was a drunkard, a murderer and an ex-convict just out of prison. He had found me a house where a man had been killed so that nobody liked to live in ‘it, thinking that it was haunted. This man had set fire to a house in order to rob it with the result that more than two hundred neighboring houses were burned down. He was caught and had been in prison full nine years. He had learned his alphabet for the first time in prison from his New Testament. After getting out of the prison he came straight to me and declared that he wanted to be a Chris- tian minister. I was then suffering from tuberculosis and thought that I would not live very long. Therefore, I desired to do some good thing before I died, and I prayed my Lord that He would give me strength to help the needy in the slums. That first night I had no light, no fire and no shoji in my room. I went to bed early, praying to God that He might give His light, His fire, and His protection even in that terrible slum district. Early the next morning—it was Christmas—I had to welcome a, guest. I had only seven dollars and fifteen cents for my own support for a month. The rent of the house was only three and a half cents a day. Had I been alone I could easily have lived for that money, because, in the slums of Kobe, over 11,000 people live on less than two dollars and a half a month today. ‘My Christmas present was an old man who had a habit of drinking strong liquor and hated to work. One of the chief gamblers accompanied him to my house and told me that he ought to live with me. It was pretty hard to live on only seven dollars and a half for two persons, but I had no other way than to let him live with me. The next day, another man came and on the following day I had to add one more. There were now four big fellows to support with only seven dollars and a half. At first, when I had only two men to care for, I cut off my second meal and shared the available food with them, but when two more were added, I could scarcely get hard rice enough for two meals. I had to put more water in my rice. For many weeks we had only thin rice and later rice soup “okai’ but we were contented even with this soup as we sat to- gether without any table or any napkins, taking our food like bar- barians. The meaning of the Lord’s Prayer—‘“Give us this day our daily bread’”—for the first time dawned in my life. The first year of my sojourn (1909) I had to bury fourteen corpses, because the people there had no money to bury their dead. I took alcohol or hot water and washed the dead bodies before putting them into a coffin, but usually I took them to the 136 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON crematory. It was quite a trying experience at first, but the Lord blessed me and I was willing to do His work. The second year I had to bury nineteen more. Aside from this work, I had to look after the sick people, who had no place to lie down, as most of them came to me from lodging houses. At one time I had six- teen patients in my small room. The policeman did not like this arrangement, but I could not help it, because nobody else cared for them. My pulpit was at the street corners. After preaching there, I usually invited all who would to come to my small five-mats room to a service. At times, I had over seventeen people there. Dr. H. W. Myers helped me not a little in my slum work. I went down early on Sunday morning to baptise those whom I had led to Christ. There were about fifty converts in four years and eight months. Three of them were murderers, many were ex-convicts, some of them secret prostitutes. There were half a dozen most promising young working- men. I liked them and helped them, with others, teaching early in the morning at five o’clock and also early in the evening. The class, even though composed of both sexes, was very small, not more than four at one time. Yet one of them is now my wife, and another has become my successor in the slum work of Kobe. He is the chief of the city employment bureau, and preaches at night for us in the slum district. His name is Mr. Masaru Takeu- chi, and his unselfish devotion to the cause of Jesus Christ is worthy of mention. While I was studying at Princeton University (1915-1917) Mr. Takeuchi with a group of young men organized a self-support- ing church. They practiced religious communism; they pooled all their savings, taking what was required for the help of the poor and needy, and dividing the remainder equally among themselves. After I went back to Kobe in 1917, I found the church more pros- perous than before. Small-pox was raging in the slums of the city at that time. Seventeen were taken at one time on the ninth of May, 1917. I felt that it would be wise to organize a free clinic and a free dis- pensary, to help the poor people in their need. I asked Dr. C. Majima, a graduate of a medical college, and his sister-in-law, to help me. We started settlement work in a district of Kobe where in a small area over 6,500 outcasts lived. Some laborers invited me to organize a labor union for them, so I helped, not in a Bol- shevistic spirit but in the Name of the Carpenter of Nazareth, in the organization of a Federation of Labor in West Japan. I sup- ported these men in calling strikes. Three times I was taken to court and fined. I was asked to contribute to newspapers and magazines. My books began to be read pretty well, so I continued to write. I CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 137 taught in three schools at the same time to get money to help the poor people around me. I preached day and night at any time whenever I could find the time and piace. I usually got up at four o’clock every Thursday morning to preach to the people at the docks. In the evening I preached at the street corners. There were many converts. The story runs in a similar way to that of Mr. Harold Begby in “Twice Born Men,” or of Hadley in “Down in Water Street.” Sometimes I was greatly discouraged upon finding that many of my Sunday-school girls had been sold to the brothel houses, or that some of my boys had become pickpockets, influenced by the chief of gamblers. The results sometimes seemed meagre, consider- ing the energies which I spent upon my work. Still the public gradually began to give attention to what I was trying to do, and I found my friends quite willing to help me. “i The labor movement was quite successful, but the road was not smooth. I had to fight on through many misunderstand- ings and persecutions from the authorities. I wanted Japan to be more democratic in politics and in industry. I expressed freely what I thought was right in order to improve the conditions. in Japan, applying Christian principles. Many times, I was called to appear before the court and was put in prison for sixteen days in connection with a general strike in Kobe city in 1920. I was glad to be there. For a long time I had not had a good rest. I was able to make a special study of the Gospel of Mark. When I was set free I turned my attention to the desperately poor tenant farmers. I organized a Tenant Farmers’ Union. There were over 5,600,000 peasant families, nearly half of them being without a single lot to cultivate. The annual income of a family was not more than $200. They paid an average rental of 55 per cent of the whole product of a farm, sometimes 75 per cent. Now the Union has power to better these conditions. There are 600 branches and some 50,000 family members. A novel which I wrote when I was nineteen years old, at- tracted a publisher’s attention, so I added about one-third more and published it with the title ‘““Across the Death Line,” in Jap- anese—‘Shisen wo keete.” It gained a large circulation, so with the income of the book I started a labor school in Osaka, the Man- chester of the Orient, and a campaign to organize the miners in the coal field of North Kiushiu. With some of that money we have also sent a missionary to evangelize the “aborigines,” the “head hunters” of Formosa. I organized two cooperative con- sumers unions, one in Osaka and one in Kobe. I preached or lectured on trade unions almost every night, somewhere in the big cities and whenever I was asked, I gave lectures from four to five days successively. The Lord was so merciful to me that we had many converts at those meetings, 138 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON After the earthquake I organized a relief organization in Tokyo. It afforded an opportunity to preach. I preached 124 nights continuously and the Lord gave nearly 5,700 converts in and around Tokyo. I told these that if they wished to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ, they could sign their names and addresses on the cards. I am now looking forward to doing more evangelistic work among the laboring classes in Japan. There are thousands of farmers in the Japanese villages, 4,500,000 factory laborers, 2,500,000 fishermen, 400,000 sailors and 300,000 miners. Among these multitudes the Christian gospel has not made progress. If God permits me, I shall be His servant to them in Japan. I am willing to renounce all else if my countrymen may be saved for Christ. I want to be one of the disciples of our Lord, who is worthy to be called a Christian, who is ready to bear the Cross for His sake. SHOULD MISSIONS CARRY ON SOCIAL WORK? THE REVEREND ALDEN H. CLARK, INDIA It seems almost unnecessary to ask ourselves this question. Yet perhaps it may not be amiss to put our answers together in some clear-cut way. Surely we need not ask the question “why” in regard to such emergency social service as is rendered in times of famine, plague and flood. Probably no one would question that these are a natural and inevitable part of our missionary task. Here are six brief answers to the general question why we should follow the regular lines of social service. 1. In the first place, we should do so because it erie be a re- versal of mission policy begun and followed by the pioneer mission- aries not to go forward in social work. From the first missionary who ever left America until today, a great majority of the mis- sionary force have engaged in some form of social work and their services along these lines have met with the success that cannot be interpreted otherwise than a proof of the blessing of God. Gordon Hall, arriving in Bombay in 1813, found crowding the streets of the city a throng of little children who had no schools; and before he and his associates had been in the land for five years, they had gathered some 550 of these little children into their schools. Soon was started the process of preparing school books for them which went on under missionary supervision for gen- erations, until the Government became aroused to this need. When Gordon Hall was making a tour in rural India, he found himself in a place of pilgrimage which was undergoing the ravages of an epidemic of cholera. Naturally he threw himself into the work CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 139 of relief. Always in such touring work he carried with him a case of medicines. These he gave to the stricken people, and when at last medicine and strength were exhausted, he himself was at- tacked by the dread disease and died, a witness to the fact that from the very beginning missionaries not only preached but prac- ticed the Gospel. I think of that great missionary, Samuel Fairbank (1822- 1898), who established himself in a center of village life in India. He used to walk about among the villages, stopping in the fields to talk to the farmers about their crops, bringing them suggestions about improved seed, starting a model farm himself, opening schools for their children, acting as umpire in cases of dispute. He was followed by his like-minded sons. For over sixty years they have been living in the district until every one looks to the bungalow of the missionary as to the home of their best friend. Although Indians love law-suits, no law-suit has ever gone to the courts from the village of Vadala because the people have trusted the missionary, and he has solved their problems with such wisdom and such kindly good-will that they have accepted his decisions. No wonder that in such a district as this Christian- ity has progressed more rapidly and more significantly than in any other part of Western India, sending out to all parts of that language area a stream of Christian workers and reaching all classes of the people. New methods of social work we may bring in with the new experience of the West and the new industrial needs of the East; but in so doing, we are simply carrying to its logtcal next step the work of our predecessors. The question is not why we should do such work; it is rather why should we not. 2. We should emphasize social work because of an acute and growing need for which the West is primarily responsible. It is Western industrial civilization which is bringing its newest and most difficult problems to the East. Where a few years ago the Oriental people were predominantly rural and the vast major- ity of the cloth was woven on country looms, we are now facing the. great movement toward factory production with all that that means of disorganization of the old and need of reorganization of the new. It is not at all to be wondered at that Gandhi, seeing the evil results of the present industrial movement, should speak of all industrial civilization as diabolic. Yet we know well that the movement cannot be arrested as he would have it. It is bound to go on and increase. It is, therefore, peculiarly incumbent upon us of the industrial West to help the East solve this primarily Western problem which we have thrust upon them. 3. We should emphasize social work because we have been accumulating in the West experience in such work which can be 140 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON of the greatest value in the East. I do not mean to say that the Eastern problem is identical with that of the West or that we can transfer without alteration the methods of Western social work; but I do mean that experience is abundantly showing that the problems are so nearly alike that we can carry a surprisingly large share of the best experience of modern social work in our own country into the Orient, adapting the details and conserving the principles. We have, therefore, the two great elements of a compelling appeal, a great need, and a peculiar ability to meet that need. 4. We should emphasize social work because our Western young people are filled with the social passion, and many among them who have this passion want to express it in service in the Orient. If, in our missionary work, we are to conserve this fine enthusiasm and the growing body of experience of our young people, we must do so by emphasizing the social work which they believe to be the crying need of the hour. “What I have given unto you” is and must be a fundamental principle of service. Our coming generation most emphatically has a social gift to give. 5. We should enter such service with increasing confidence and joy because it is growingly clear that it was Christ’s way of service. We are coming to see as we never saw before how great an emphasis he placed on the Kingdom of God, that is, on a re- deemed social group. As we read the story of his life, we realize that again and again he emphasized deed ahead of word. “Go and tell John the things which ye have seen and heard,” he said; and in that hour he not only preached, but he healed and ministered to the varied needs of the people who came to him. It was as though he sent word to John the Baptist, “Here, in one who gives himself to homely service to the common needs of humble people, you must find the Messiah.” 6. An emphasis on social work gives us a unique approach to the growing body of non-Christian men of good-will in the Orient. In such service as this they and we can work in a common task. The suspicion is still very strong among Orientals that we missionaries come from some ulterior and unworthy motive. They often think of us as mere propagandists, caring for nothing but the adding of numbers to our lists of converts. But if we work © side by side with them in attempting to solve the great modern social problems to which they are becoming increasingly alive, we shall be making clear the real spirit and motive of our work and shall open the way for them to understand the compelling attract- iveness of Him who gave Himself to such ministries to his fel- lowmen. These, then, are some of the answers which might be given to the question “Why?” It is not as a supplement to our great CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 141 task that we enter social work; it is as a vital, throbbing expres- sion of it. May we so effectively labor in this field that Jesus will have his rightful influence in the efforts of the Orient to meet its social problems. THE CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE WOMANHOOD OF THE ORIENT | PRESIDENT MARY E. WOOLLEY, LITT.D., LL.D., SOUTH HADLEY, MASSACHUSETTS My subject must be narrowed, practically, to China, since five months spent there gave me more right to speak about that country than two weeks in Japan and no first-hand knowledge of India. The influence of Christianity upon the women of China may be considered from several angles, and the first is the educa- tional angle. Education, in the modern sense, is the gift of the Christian West to the women of China. It began with the Chris- ‘tian missionary, before the middle of the last century, when the opening of the five treaty ports to foreigners made possible the English missionary school at Ningpo in 1844, soon followed by American schools, eleven in the treaty ports between 1847 and 1860, one in Peking and one at Tientsin in 1864, and the pioneer school in Central China at Kiukiang in 1873. These schools marked the beginning of an era, since, although the girls of Old China, in the more privileged and progressive families, had some share in instruction under private tutors in the home, being taught penmanship, painting, poetry, music, and committing to memory many of the classics, as well as being trained in ethics and etiquette, this was quite exceptional, the great mass of girls receiving no education, not even learning to read or write. Truly it was a humble beginning, for the little girls in these schools, almost without exceptiton were the very poor, fed and clothed as well as taught, but the confidence in the potentialities of Chinese womanhood shown by Christian teachers has been more than justified. One has only to visit the Christian colleges for women, like Yenching, affiliated with the University of Peking, or Ginling in Nanking, to be convinced that the seed sown seventy-five years ago has borne fruit a hundredfold. What has Christianity contributed to the womanhood of China through education? It is impossible in these few moments to do more than touch upon some of the conspicuous features in the preparation for service. Beginning at the foundation, much has been accomplished by physical education not only for the Chinese woman herself, but also for the general welfare, through her in- creased capacity for service. As I speak, recollections of Chinese scenes are almost as vivid to me as this audience. For example, 142 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON I seem to see a great drill ground on the outskirts of Hangchow, on a brilliant November day, with thousands of Chinese spectators, intent for hours on the athletic exercises of the annual “meet,” in which girls from Christian and Government schools had as im- portant parts as the boys and performed them—at least from the point of view of one feminine spectator—quite as well. Another picture is of an autumn morning in Central China on the Yangtse and of a class of girls with all the freedom and abandon of our American students, running through the charming garden of the Rulison School at Kiukiang and into the gymnasium for their “setting-up” exercises before beginning the day’s work. Most significant, perhaps, was the impression made by the young women teachers of physical education in government schools of typical Chinese cities like Wuchang, teachers trained in the Young Women’s Christian Association School of Physical Educa- tion in Shanghai, now affiliated with Ginling College, significant because government schools, with their insistence upon physical education, would admit Christians to their staff in this subject, if in no other. In no field of education for service has the contribution of Christianity been more marked than in the training of teachers. China’s extremity has been in a peculiar sense Christianity’s oppor- tunity. In a country where the last census indicated that of the 70,000,000 children of lower primary school age, less than 5,000,000 had an opportunity for such education, no argument is necessary to prove the importance of the education of women along this line. Ginling College, in a recent letter, traces the develop- ment of its work in education from theory alone to theory and practice combined, with special emphasis on the training of teachers for the middle schools and including such courses as music, phys- ical education, biology, social problems, English, Chinese and Chinese history and religion. If it is true that “The education of its citizens is the safeguard of a republic,” the contribution which Christianity has made to Chinese women in this line alone justifies the cost. It is not strange that among China’s outstanding women are her physicians. Medical care and health efforts have long been a, crying need and the call to Christian service in this line is an imperative one. I can think of no more direct way of converting those who are skeptical as to the value of Christian missions, than by taking them to see the Chinese women physicians—and their hospitals. My experience in speaking of what education has done for the women of the West, has taught me that it is expedient to allude to preparation for the home. Women are likely to take that for granted, knowing the homes of educated women, and CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 143 realizing that they speak for themselves. That is true, also, of the Christian Chinese home. In a way, it offers the most eloquent testimony of the contribution of Christianity to the women of the Far East. No one familiar with China needs :to be reminded that the country is in the early stages of a great industrial transformation. In some typical cities like Wuchang, the industry of the Middle Ages and that of the twentieth century exist side by side. Already there is opportunity for women in social service, an opportunity to which the alert, earnest Oriental is fully alive. Increasingly, the changing industrial conditions, the rise of the factory, the employment of women and children, the partial substitution of Western types of manufacture for the home crafts, with all the social problems involved, are leading to new vocations or avoca- tions for Chinese women. The ideal of service and the prepara- tion for it, in the face of these social and industrial problems, rightly called “as difficult and complex as they are grave and pressing,” are a part of the contribution which Christianity has made. The political and social as well as educational ideals of the New China, place women on an equality with men, the result, at least in large measure, of Christian teaching. In this day of a troubled political China, a prediction may not be out of place. The hope for the New China lies largely in her leaders. If they are self-seeking, disloyal, treacherous, with low ideals—a long and difficult way stretches before the new civilization. If they are patri- ots in the true sense of that word, loyal, trustworthy, idealistic, the new political East may have much to give to the family of nations. When that day comes to China, her women as well as her men, will have a part in shaping her future, a part for which they have been prepared by the education that in its most complete develop- ment, has been the gift of the Christian West. The greatest contribution of Christianity to the womanhood of the Orient, has been the knowledge and appropriation of the spirit of Jesus. In the meeting with the women of Japan, in Tokyo and Kyoto and Kobe; in the more intimate knowledge of the women of China,—in Peking and Shanghai, and the character- istic Chinese cities of the interior; in the friendships with the Indian girls from Ceylon and Madras and Lahore—wherever one has known the women of the Far East, there has remained the impression of dignity and charm. To them, in this age of transi- tion, in the days when the inrush of the new saps at the foundations of the old, Christianity is a stabilizing as well as the progressive force, affording a sense of freedom without a loss of dignity, an equality with men based on the best that each has to give, a Christian standard of the home, ideals for life and the strength to 144 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON press toward their attainment. The supreme contribution of Christianity to the womanhood of the Orient, in all relationships of life, is the knowledge of Jesus’ way. THE POWER OF CHRIST REVEALED IN PERSONAL LIFE PROFESSOR RUFUS M. JONES, LL.D., HAVERFORD, PENNSYLVANIA There was a man driving through a country town in the State of Maine along what seemed to be a road that went endlessly uphill. He stopped a native farmer and asked him whether there was any end to this hill. Said he, “I have been riding for more than two hours continuously up this hill.” The old farmer said, “Hill? Why, stranger, there ain’t no hill here. You have lost off your hind wheels.” Somewhat so the hills of difficulty which now confront the world are due, not so much to the contours of external nature as to the breakdown of something in ourselves, loss of spiritual power, feebleness of faith and vision, failure to make our contacts with eternal realities. As we toil at our tasks, we are very much like children trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle when some of the pieces are lost. They are in the baby’s crib, maybe, and in trying to make the puzzle go together there is nothing but failure possible. Some of our pieces are lost. They are the very foundation pieces with which we ought to be building our world; and we shall never succeed until we learn how to reconstruct ourselves. We must find new spiritual forces, a new driving power, a new dynamic. Men built Babylon out of their own Babylonish hearts. They built the kind of world they wanted. They built the kind of Babylon that suited their lives, and we have been building a kind of world which we wanted, the kind of world which fitted our lives. We have been building out of fear and hate and suspicion and rivalry and jealousy and selfishness and greed and materialistic aims: Now we must learn how to build our world out of faith and hope and love. We must make the great discovery that our universe at bottom is a spiritual universe with inexhaustible spir- itual forces, and we must learn to see that the mightiest thing on earth is a person who has learned how to let the life of God, the power of Christ, flow through him. Emerson once said, “If you hold a straw parallel to the Gulf Stream, the Gulf Stream will flow through it.” The most signifi- cant thing about St. Paul was his discovery that he could make his life an organ of the spirit and power of Jesus Christ. That was the Aegean Gospel, the Gospel that St. Paul preached and demon- strated in the great cities around the shores of the Aegean Sea, the Gospel which St. John, in one of the cities on that same sea, CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 145 preached and demonstrated in the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle, the Gospel that, though He is no more visible, Jesus Christ is life and spirit and can pour His life through men and can work effectively through receptive and responsive souls. St. Paul’s great word is dynamos, “power,” and he learned how to be the transmitter of that power. “It is no longer I that live; Christ lives in me.” “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” “We are more than conquerers through Him that loved us.” “I can do all things through Christ who puts his energy in me.” “We are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” To which we add St. John’s great say- ing, which he flung out against all the forces of the Roman em- pire: “That which is born of God overcomes the world.” All the great advances in mechanical science have been made by the discovery of new ways of letting the immense energies of the universe break through and operate. The dynamo makes no electricity; it is a contrivance which lets electricity break through and do its work. The magnetic needle creates no magnetism. It merely lets vaster energies operate. That is what the broadcaster and the transmitter of the telephone and the coherer of the wire- less does. They all let energies break through and manifest themselves. We used to think of gasoline as a dangerous explosive, but we have invented a carburetor that lets the gasoline explode in minute quantities, very rapidly; and presto, it makes our Ford go and raises our aeroplane! As soon as we learn how to invent a contrivance for it, we shall also be able to liberate the boundless atomic energies of matter, and then every teaspoonful of water will give us 175,000 horsepower, and every copper penny you carry in your pocket will have energy enough to drive a freight train two and one-half times around the globe. I hope you will be able to make some use of those pennies! Some years ago, some of students at West Point took an old cannon and wound ten miles of copper wire about it and then charged it with a dynamo. That turned the old cannon into a magnet. When you brought a cannon ball up anywhere near the cannon it leaped up and hung under it. When a man came up and backed up against the cannon and became charged you could stick spikes all over him, and they stuck to him till he was all covered with them. Anybody who got anywhere near the man was charged through him. Twice every day the invisible energies of the moon lift a great plateau of the ocean several feet above the level of the surrounding water, and, as the earth revolves, that great plateau of water bursts up in our shores and up into our creeks and inlets and makes our tide, an irresistible energy if we only knew how 146 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON tc utilize it. Well, energies of a greater sort break through human life. The real business of being a Christian is discovering how to be a transmitter of spiritual energies. Like tides on the crescent sea beach When the moon is new and thin; Into our hearts high yearnings come, Welling and surging in; Come from that mystic ocean Whose rim no foot has trod. Some call it “yearning,” But others call it God. These spiritual energies are no more mysterious than any other energies are. Energy is ultimate. We can never get in behind energy. The great thing is the discovery of how to trans- mit and utilize energy, and the early Church is as great a demon- stration of spiritual energy as the trolley car is a demonstration of electricity, or Niagara Falls a demonstration of gravitation. In a talk with one of my students, he said, “I am going to make my life a miracle.” I can see him still—his radiant face, his inspired look—and that young man is making his life a miracle. He is letting the spiritual energies of Jesus Christ work through his personality. It is not in spectacular ways that we want to be revealers of spiritual energy. It is not in startling and abnormal fashion that we want to work this great miracle of spiritual power. We have had a demonstration here this evening of precisely what it means. It is in the normal, simple, every-day way of daily life that the greatest miracles are wrought. The stupendous forces are not thunder and earthquake but tiny rootlets and the capillary oozing of water, the small continuous every-day forces. The stu- pendous things that move the world and transform life are revela- tions of faith and hope and of a love that knows no frontier. “They who wait for God shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” I hope you will notice the climax. It is not climbing Mount Everest and seeking for north and south poles that are, after all, important things in the universe. It is learning how to walk among men in the every-day affairs of life and be a revealer of the divine life in a love that never lets go, that never fails, that believeth all things and hopeth all things and endureth all things and is never provoked and thinks no evil. The simple inter-relationship of spiritual life of man with man is what transforms the world. God invaded Africa through Livingstone. God invaded Europe through St. Paul. God invaded England through George Fox and John Wesley. God is waiting to invade the countries we represent here today through us. He is invading Japan through the man who preceded me. He wants to invade our country that we love so much, in whose capital we meet tonight, and the in- CHRIST REVEALED THROUGH DEEDS OF MERCY AND LOVE 147 vasion will be an invasion of spiritual energy through personal lives. One of my great mystic friends of the fourteenth century said, “I would fain be to the eternal God what a man’s hand is to a man,” the organ through which he does his work in the world. “The Christian’s life is the book in which God is now writing His new testament,” is the saying of another great mystic of the sev- enteenth century. It is through lives like ours that the New Testa- ment of today is being written by the spirit of God. “You are the body of Jesus Christ,’ St. Paul said, “You are the body of Jesus Christ and each one a particular member of it.” We look in vain for that body of Jesus Christ in some holy sepul- chre of the East. The greatest discovery St. Paul made was that Christ is making His new body out of us, out of men. We are the body through which He reveals himself in the world today . There was a little drummer boy in Napoleon’s army, a little boy who had caught the spirit of the Emperor, who had the same daring and the same courage. One day he had received a bullet wound. In the hospital the surgeon was probing for the bullet. He bent over the little drummer boy and said, “Do I hurt you?” The boy answered back, “Never mind whether you hurt me or not, go on probing for the bullet. If you probe deep enough into me, you will find the Emperor.” We want personal lives that are so close to Christ and so filled with His spirit that if you probe deep enough into one of them you will find the Christ living there. “Leave me not, God, until—nay until when? Not till I am with Thee, one heart, one mind; Not till Thy life is light in me, and then Leaving is left behind.” THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD THE CHURCH IN LATIN AMERICA THE REVEREND J. H. MCLEAN, D.D., CHILE My theme lacks what the photographers term “sharp defini- tion.” Nevertheless, if you remember as I do with gratitude the masterly presentation of Christ’s onward march throughout the earth, how his servants from Great Britain, Canada and the United States have been the messengers of his everlasting gospel to Europe, Asia, Africa and the islands of the sea, please remem- ber that Latin America is the rest of the earth. And if Christ with his bleeding hand has traced upon your heart a chart of humanity, Latin America is on that map. Between the Rio Grande and the Straits of Magellan, there dwell seventy million souls for whom Christ died. Unlike India, Latin America has no untouch- ables. Neither has Latin America any unmentionables although Latin America has been so infrequently mentioned at this gathering. We here are very close to the headquarters of the Pan- American Union. Not far from where we sit there are the chan- celleries of nineteen South American Republics. These states are our neighbors. Is it not true that such a gathering as this calls for the highest display of good-will and international candor? Even if the walls have ears, let them hear some expression of loving-kindness from those who are met in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone can save the people from their sins and enrich all nations with His own abundant life. When He, who has all authority, instructed His disciples to preach the gospel to every creature, who has authority to exclude from the scope of His redemption our brethren who have just been described? Latin-American peoples have always been in some respects, far in advance of their contemporaries. The Latin-American nations gave to the League of Nations its first president, and have no reason to be ashamed of their contribution. The Latin-Ameri- can nations repeatedly have submitted their disputes over territory to courts of arbitration, and are firmly convinced that this is not only the best mode of settlement, but one inspired by Christ Him- self. Almost 100 years ago, they confessed, regarding their spir- itual problems, what has repeatedly been admitted and bemoaned _ upon this platform, viz., that conventional religion and daily living, both private and collective, needed to be made Christian. Just such appeals as we have heard from this platform evoke the response of men and women who believed it Christlike to serve wherever their fellowmen yearned for Christ. Paul has planted, Apollos has 148 THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 149 watered, God has given the increase, and we have the native church of Latin America. Let us devoutly thank the Lord of Harvest that this church exists and functions in that country. We are not dealing with an objective, but with an entity, with another con- firmation of the claim that faith in the Son of God is adaptable to all nations, and that His life is essential to their highest interests. What unsung heroisms lie behind this achievement! There is the same fascinating record of fearless witnessing, of patient loving, of continuance in well doing; and the divine element in the evangel, coupled with the divine dynamic in the messengers, has wrought its marvel in the human product, so that all over Latin America the seed has taken rootage in new soil and modified by racial tinge and social environment, has brought forth fruit after its kind. Our natural Christian organizations are not state churches under official patronage, but groups of disciples upholding the best traditions of New Testament Christianity. Let me speak in gen- eral terms, so as not to burden you with statistics, of “the first hundred thousand,” that expeditionary army that will make pos- sible, we believe, the final triumph of our adorable Lord in Latin America. All honor to these comrades of the Cross! They were and are the brave and true and the loyal. Booker Washington once observed that it is much easier to be a descendant than an ancestor. They are the pioneers of the new day in Latin America. It is estimated that there are seventy-two thousand of them in Brazil alone; and we must remember that, back of the professing church in Latin America, there lies a circle of men who, like Nicodemus, are waiting for the shades of night to fall, or who express their admiration before they surrender their hearts. There are enrolled in the Church in Brazil some of her most eminent citizens, and her scroll of honor would take too long to describe in such a gathering as this. But let us not forget that Brazil has offered hospitality to Christ in greater measure than any country in Latin America. And of Argentina and Uruguay let it be said that their prestige among the nations of the Atlantic seaboard is due to their ready acceptance of the ambassadors of Christ, to their willingness to sit in council and the cour- age of their faith in trying the program of Jesus. If you should visit the capitals of these countries, or even any of their remote hamlets, you would have reason to rejoice that there the fruit of the spirit is the same as in North America. And so, the total of all of those who have received the word with gladness and have endeavored to live it out simply, humbly and sacrificially through Central America and Mexico is “the first hundred thousand.” And as the men who took part in that memorable campaign and formed the nucleus of a victorious host now relate to their children’s chil- 150 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON dren that this was the day of their opportunity and of their high distinction, so some of us will thank the Lord forever that we were permitted to share in the trials and the labors of this first epoch in Latin America’s evangelization. There are servants of our Lord Jesus Christ in those lands whom you ought to be proud to call brethren, for Jesus Himself is not ashamed of them—the saints, the martyrs, the men and the women who have hazarded their lives for the gospel’s sake and who have been the most delightful brethren in daily fellowship and toil. One of them, as he lay a-dying, summarized for you and for me, in words as admirable as any from Carey or Livingstone, the task before us and the resources behind us when he said, “Sin, how terrible; grace, how wonderful; time, how short; the gospel of Christ, how glorious.” In those lands almost three thousand of their choicest sons and daughters have enlisted in the service of Christ as pastors, teachers, evangelists, nurses and as members of the staffs in the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations. Just imagine this vast concourse on the ground floor of this auditorium as the contribution of the first two generations in service to our Lord Jesus Christ! They are scattered over a vast territory; but, bring them together and we should be convinced that Jesus Christ sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied in Latin America. Now, a word or two concerning the type of church that is found there and its tendencies and ideals. It is a church of evangelistic fervor, kindled with the vision of conquest and aglow with the throes of brotherhood, a church of passionate dévotion to the welfare of mankind; a church in which sacrificial giving is the rule and not the exception; a church of commendable ambition to deserve and achieve self-government and self-extension, to embody the ethic of our Lord Jesus Christ in the daily lives of its members and in the communions which they have organized. This church has little patience with the rivalries of denominationalism or with the controversies of theologians and dogmatists. They consider them not merely fruitless, but highly detrimental to Christianity. They have emphasized the essentials, and ‘have deprecated every effort to promote minor issues, honestly striving to fulfil the supreme function of a living church on this earth—to evangelize the non-Christian population, to foster self-support by maximum giving and to follow a scheme for permanent expansion. This church has an appeal to its brethren in this land. Let me act as advocate for the remaining moments, presenting it to their mother church and to their sister churches. They would have you remember that new occasions teach new duties, that we have entered upon another stage of development in Latin America, THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 151 that today the balance of contribution has been transferred from North America and Europe to Mexico, Central and South America, and that today they wish to see some measure of adjustment be- tween their brethren here and themselves on the field. There is no lack of appreciation, of genuine thanksgiving, for they have oftentimes charged me, whenever I stood before a congregation in this land, to express in the kindliest terms their sincere gratitude to their Christian brethren in North America who had sent them the gospel, for in so doing they say, “You have conferred upon us an inestimable benefit, far beyond comparison with anything that any land has ever done for these republics of ours.” There is in them no spirit of rebellion, merely of friendly cooperation. Hitherto the missionaries who have been sent to Latin America have been chosen as most Latin-American brides are selected,—by foreordination. Two couples, representing the older generation, meet in solemn conversation in the front salon and, before the session is ended, thesdestiny of two members of the rising generation has been determined. We may smile at that method in matrimony, but I trust we may grow indignant with that method in missionary administration. The time has come when our brethren to the south of us, who have given every evi- dence of worthy partnership ask reasonably for a larger participa- tion in the choice of those who are to serve them, in the disposition of forces, and in the expenditure of funds. We ought to be magnanimous enough to grant them every responsibility which is properly placed on Christian brethren. These republics have produced from among their own sons and daughters great emancipators, statesmen, educators and re- formers; and these men and women, touched by the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ, awakened to the possibilities of human life through Christian witness and daily living in the land where they were born, and whose people they understand,—these people, I firmly believe, will, in the days to come, be the men and women in the vanguard of the Christian movement. The slogan of our missionary enterprise has been “leadership.” That is a word of sinister connotations in Latin America, where there are at present five undisputed leaders of their fellowmen but whom we call “dictators.” We have spoken of brotherhood and partnership, but let me leave with you as the watchword for our effort, for the next decade, the word “comradeship.” There abide leadership, partnership, and comradeship, these three, but the greatest of these, palpitating with the love of Christ and a signal honor to His trusted servants, is comradeship, divine com- radeship on earth. 152 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON THE CHURCH IN INDIA THE REVEREND BHASKAR PANDURANG HIVALE, BOMBAY, INDIA When talking recently with an American evangelist in India, he referred to the Indian Christian Church as a “poor, pale and dependent thing.” I have Indian Christian friends who regret the continuation of this foreign institution in my country. Some non-Christians have argued its uselessness by saying that organized Christianity failed when the Great War confronted humanity a few years ago. The ministers of the churches, both. in the allied world and in Germany, claimed that God was on their respective sides and prayed for complete victory. There are many abler members of my profession to defend this course of action, but I want to say that I am not afraid of the word ‘foreign.’ If we study the history of nations, I think we get a pretty good idea of the way in which civilizations are built. Your Western civilization did not start from nothing. I believe one can find therein traces of the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Hindu, the Egyptian, the Greek and the Roman civilizations. The problem in India, therefore, is not how to throw away everything foreign and keep everything Indian. No, we are going to keep the best that the Indian genius has produced, and yet take the best that your Western civilization is offering to us. We have, as a matter of fact, already adopted a Western system of education. Our legislatures are functioning as effi- ciently or otherwise, as they are in other parts of the world! The real solution is bound to come through a right sort of union of the two cultures—Oriental and Occidental. No doubt, the church in India is poor and dependent on for- eign help. India is one of the most poverty-stricken countries in the world. Several million people in my country are so unfortunate as not to have two square meals a day. The churches share the poverty of the country. I have been in America for some years and have watched the methods of raising money in your churches. You raise large sums. And yet how much more is spent for chewing gum than for Chris- tian work in the mission field! The money that is given by you comes from consecrated business men and women. I believe our well-to-do people in India will more and more catch the vision of stewardship and support the churches. But the difficulty at the present time is, since the visit of Dr. John R. Mott and Dr. Sher- wood Eddy, in 1911, that many students, who have the ability to make a good deal of money, are responding to a call of sacrifice and consecration and are giving their entire selves to direct Christian service! In my undergraduate days, when I came to a definite con- clusion that the best way to spend my little life was to give it for Christ in the service of my motherland, I looked round about me THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 153 to find the best avenue and decided that the Indian Christian church was the one. Never since have I regretted my decision. As a matter of fact I am feeling more and more hopeful about the future of the church and [I shall give you my reasons. The first is that the denationalization of the Indian churches has been arrested. In the early history of the church the mis- sionary had to arrange for all the converts to live together in his compound, away from all other communities, partly because he was afraid of un-Christian influence and partly because the Hindus refused to have anything to do with the converts. The result was that the average Christian community became denationalized. A few only realized that their destinies were bound up with the des- tinies of the whole of India. There are certain communities in my country, who keep aloof when others agitate and may have to go to jail; but as soon as the British Government makes conces- sions, they scramble for a share. Only the other day the leaders of the non-Brahman movement of Madras, including the Christians, appeared before the Viceroy. After hearing their various demands, Lord Reading had to remind them that they were asking for their respective communities only and not for India. What other com- munity in India has higher ideals and examples of service than the Christian church? And I am glad to say that more and more Christians are getting into the national movement. They will purify it and strengthen essentially Christian attitudes, like that of Mahatma Gandhi. At present the national spirit is influencing all activities in India. And I am not ashamed of being a Nationalist even on this platform, where the dominant note has been international. Of course, I know of a narrow nationalism which says, ‘“My country first, right or wrong,” but I know also of a “wishy-washy” inter- nationalism. A healthy nationalism is necessary for a real inter- nationalism. If we do not love our brother, how can we love God? If we are not proud of our country, if we are not going to love our country, how are we going to love the world? If the nationalisms of the world could only be built on Christian love! The Church in India has begun to make its contribution to the national life. The second reason is that the superiority complex with which the Christian Church started is gradually disappearing. There was a time when some devout Christians believed that Christianity was the only religion given by God, and that all others were the handiwork of the Devil. The hymn about India’s coral strands that you have just sung, has two lines in it, “Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.” Now what shall I say of America the beautiful? I have certainly found “brotherhood” as I have travelled in thirty- 154 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON seven States from ‘“‘sea to shining sea.” J have admired her “purple mountain majesties” as I have stood on her “fruited plains” among the “amber waves of grain.” But may I tell you confidentially that I have also discovered in your country the particular species of the genus homo described in Heber’s great hymn! And I might add that my researches were not confined to the daily papers. When I was a little boy (I am a Christian of the third gen- eration, my father having been a preacher), I distinctly remem- ber that I felt superior because I was a Christian. The heathen, I thought, bowed before the idols and added to their sins, but I knew the truth and the key to salvation. I pictured in imagination flying around heaven, while my Hindu friends would be suffering in hell! But I have grown. If reverence towards the universe is the beginning of religion, what right have we to look down on the different systems of religion that have flourished in my land? Thousands of years ago the Hindus used to pray, “From the unreal lead me to the real, from darkness lead me to light, from death lead me to immortality.” Who can believe that God did not at least partially reveal Himself to them? The modern missionary presents Christ as the fulfiller of In- dian aspirations. Dr. Farquhar calls Jesus the crown of Hinduism. The liberal missionary of today does not dole out charity. Dr. Alden H. Clark speaks of “bringing brotherhood in Bombay,” Prof. D. J. Fleming writes about “Building with India.” I see a great day coming when the Christians can approach other nationals with due appreciation of the old culture, with sympathy and with gen- uine Christian love. The third reason is the opportunity opened out for evangeliza- tion on account of the missionary spirit seen in the Hindu religion. We shall now hear less of persecution and more of the triumph of the individual conscience. At the Unity Conference, called by Mahatma Gandhi, in which the Metropolitan Bishop of India and Dr. S. K. Datta represented the Christian church, there was the unequivocal recognition of tolerance for every sincere religious expression and of liberty to convert and be converted, provided it was not done by unworthy means. ‘My fourth reason is that the spirit of service is not confined to the Christian Church but is gradually permeating the whole fabric of the New India. A large increase of work in education, social service and in other activities is being carried on by the non- Christians. Until recently Christian groups took no part in these non-Christian efforts. But we are learning that “those that are not against us are for us.” Soon the Servant of India Society, (Seva-Sadan) and the Social Service League will find Indian Christians offering their services. THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 155 As in Europe in the middle ages, so in India at the present time, the Church has to busy itself, not only with the impartation of religious instruction, but with social service, schools, agriculture and hospitals. The time is bound to come when idol-worship will disappear, when the caste system will be crushed, when our agricul- tural and hygienic conditions will be perfect. And since specializa- tion is the order of the day, even religious education will be han- dled by the experts in that line. Will there be any further use of the church then? My conviction is that the function of the church will be all the more glorious. Modernize your business and educa- tion to their highest efficiency, humanize industries to any degree, rationalize all morality and yet the church will be needed. The church is a dynamo; it will not only explain the whys and the wherefores of all these activities, it will give people power! It is quite true that the Church in India is poor, pale and de- pendent. But did not Prof. Rufus M. Jones tell us last night that spiritual energy seeks a medium? My conviction is that the Spirit of God will achieve wonders through this comparatively “small church with only about five million souls. All we need to do is to make it worthy of His abode! The Church has already started on its program of introducing indigenous methods of worship and instruction. We may have to eliminate certain Western ways and adapt others. We shall have to add what our religious experience teaches us, as we go on. I believe in the glorious future of the Indian church. I have been speaking to you of the Church militant. Those of us who believe in the ultimate triumph of the good, those of us who have a faith that our souls have only started on the journey towards being as perfect as our Heavenly Father, need not be told how blessed it is to set other souls along the right path! The hopeful thing is that hundreds of Indian young men are catching a glimpse of this great vision. They are willing to give their entire selves for it! I have no doubt that this Church of God is going to triumph. This great city of God, this community of loyalty, this great king- dom will surely flourish. The Church in India has been founded on the great sacrifices of thousands of missionaries and Indian workers. And now when it has begun to function so hopefully it is your privilege and mine to strengthen it. It is true that few are now called upon to suffer the inconveniences the earlier mis- sionaries experienced. But India appreciates the sacrifices of today. Every missionary has to leave relatives to go to far-away lands. An even greater sacrifice for Christ is when their children have to leave for their education ten thousand miles away. I know an American mother who could not sleep for nights, when her young- est daughter was about to leaye! But missionaries, the noble sol- 156 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON diers of the cross, have been willing to suffer for the founding and nurture of this church. The Indian workers have stood by the missionaries, though receiving a mere pittance. It is our privilege to inherit these responsibilities and to carry on. THE: CHURCH: IN «THE \FAR “EAST BISHOP HENRY ST. GEORGE TUCKER, D.D., FORMERLY OF KYOTO, JAPAN My theme takes a wide range. I shall, however, limit what I have to say to the church as I know it in Japan, because the princi- ples involved are, I think, the same in all mission fields. It has been said very often in this convention that the first purpose which we put before us in our missionary work is the bringing of the influence of Christianity to bear in a general way upon a non- Christian country, in order to Christianize, if one may call it so, the public opinion of that country, to introduce the practical standards of Christianity, to do away with whatever prejudice may stand in the way of Christian work, and to create a sense of moral obligation which will render the appeal of Christianity intelligible to the people. The second great purpose we have before us in the primary stage of our mission work is the creation of a native church, because if, through our general work we create the oppor- tunity for the evangelization of the nation, it is the native church which alone is fitted to take advantage of this opportunity. I shall not speak of the first aspect of Christian work except to say that so far as Japan is concerned, its public opinion has been to a very large extent Christianized. That is to say, where- ever one goes in Japan, one can assume that the Japanese people from the highest to the lowest will appreciate the moral standards and the social standards of Christianity, and that they will give their support to any program which looks to the realization of those standards. But we are particularly concerned this evening with the church which we have been laboring to create, and the church which we are going to send forth to utilize the opportunity that we have made for its work. What of the Japanese church? First as to its membership. It is not a particularly large church, and yet, it is one whose mem- bership is peculiarly representative of modern Japan. It includes men and women who represent every class of society. I think, for example, of two churches in Tokyo, in one of which there is on the vestry a man who is a son of one of the old Japanese noble families, an official in the Imperial household. In the other church only a short distance away, two of the vestrymen are reformed criminals. The Japanese church includes in its membership, men and women of all classes of society, and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is able to be the Saviour of every kind of Japanese. THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 157 Then again the Japanese church includes among its members just that element in the population of Japan which is fitted by its nature and by its training for the task of leadership. Our Chris- tians have been drawn to a large extent from what are known as the student classes in Japan. This means that the Christians rep- resent the men and women who are leaders in the various depart- ments of life. It would be interesting, if we had time to show to how large an extent Christianity is represented in the govern- mental classes, among the leading lawyers, the leading doctors, the leading business men of Japan. But it is sufficient to say that the Christian church is made up of men and women who are qualified for the work of leadership. Then again, if we consider this church from the point of view of the Christian faith, I feel it is not too much to say that our Japanese Christians have demonstrated that both in their prac- tical zeal and in their real appreciation of the teachings of Christianity, they are worthy to be compared with the Christians of any other country or any other time. And yet, in considering the Japanese church as it exists today with regard to its qualifications for the tasks that lie ahead of it, there are two qualifications we ought particularly to note, because any church which is to be able to carry Chris- tianity to a great nation like the Japanese must at least have these two. It must be:a church led by its own people and it must be a church maintained by its own people. I don’t think that Japan is ever going to be influenced to any large extent by a Christianity which is under foreign leadership. Therefore, self-government and self-leadership are primary requisites for any widespread evangelistic work in Japan. No one who knows the results that have been obtained in Japan can fail to recognize that whatever failures may have been made there, at least the Japanese churches are singularly rich in native leaders who have proved by long years of serv- ice their practical ability, their thorough understanding of the Christian teaching and their capacity for interpreting Chris- tianity in terms their countrymen can understand. It would be interesting if we had time to give concrete illustrations of the work that has been done by native Christian leaders, and of the type of men who represent Christian leadership in Japan. Then again, when we come to the question of self-support, self-support has made remarkably rapid progress in Japan. Some of you may have heard Dr. Kagawa say yesterday that last year Japanese Christians gave somewhere in the neigh- borhood of $2,000,000 for the support of their own work. Here it is sufficient to say that in the larger cities of Japan the Chris- tian churches are already today, for the most part, self-sup- 158 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON porting, able to carry on at least the normal work of the church with contributions derived from their own countrymen. This is a matter of great significance, because I feel that Christianity can never have any widespread influence in Japan, until the Japanese feel that it is a Christianity that is supported by themselves. The question which I wish particularly to consider today is the adequacy of this church for the task that lies ahead of it. Up to the present, we have been engaged in creating an opportunity. Now, we are faced with the need of utilizing that opportunity. How far is the Japanese church by itself qualified for this task? I have mentioned some of its qualifications. Let us for a moment consider what we might call its lack of qualification. In the first place it must be perfectly evident that in a country of sixty million people, looking at the work extensively, it is impossible for a church so small and so lacking in resources as the Japanese church to meet the opportunities that confront it, unless it has the cooperation of the churches throughout the world. Financially speaking, the coming to age, as it were, of the Japanese church, the fact that it is capable of supporting its own work does not at all mean that we should cease our financial cooperation with that church. On the contrary, if we are going to enable the Japanese church to use its trained men and women to their full capacity we must give it more financial cooperation in the future than we have given it in the past. The sacrifice which we will be called upon to undergo in order that we may carry our work forward to completion will be greater than that which the work up to the present time has entailed. Then, again, take the question of missionary cooperation. I do not think that the fact that the time has come, when the leadership of work in Japan should be placed in the hands of the Japanese Cliurch, means that all missionary aid should be withdrawn from Japan. On the contrary, it may be that if the Japanese church has the cooperation of the church at home, it will call for more missionary aid in the future than was needed in the past, because the time has come when per- haps the appeal for Christianity can be made to the Japanese nation as a whole. If that appeal is to be made, it seems cer- tain that the Japanese will need missionaries, not so much to dominate the work, but to stand by and to help Japanese Chris- tians both to extend the work further than their own ability would enable them to do and to act as their counsellors in the very difficult task of interpreting Christianity to the Japanese. THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 159 But it seems to me that perhaps the greatest task that lies ahead of the Japanese church in the near future is not so much what you might call the extensive side of the work as it is the domestication, if I may call it so, of Christianity in Japan. We have made wonderful progress in Japan and yet to a large ex- tent Christianity has failed to catch the imagination of the great masses of the Japanese people. Why is this true? Is it not because Christianity up to the present in Japan is largely our American or European Christianity transferred to that coun- try? Christianity has not as yet established points of contact with the ancient modes of thought and the ancient customs of the Japanese people. One cannot but feel that earnest as are our Japanese Christians, much as the Christian faith has meant in the lives of the Japanese, Christianity even today, in Japan, is so expressed that it would be difficult for Christianity to compete with the ancient religions of the country, so far as the great masses of the people are concerned. This is no mere theory. If any one has studied the religious movements which have taken place in Japan during recent years and has seen religions rise up which are crude in their beliefs, which are full of superstitious practices and which yet have spread to an extent that far surpasses anything we have been able to do in our Christian evangelistic work, one will recognize the tre- mendous importance of placing Christianity before the Japanese people in such a way that all that is true in their old religion, that all that is useful in their old customs and modes of life shall be baptized, as it were, into Christ. This is a task which Christianity can only accomplish in Japan, when the leadership for Christian work has been trans- ferred to the hands of the Japanese church. So I feel that per- haps the greatest problem that lies ahead of the Japanese church during, say, the next half century is the Orientalizing, if I may call it so, of the Christianity that has been taken there, of its creeds, of its modes of worship, of its customs. Christianity must be expressed in such a way that the Japanese will find in it not only the truth but will recognize in it the fulfilment of all that is true in their own past, that they will be able in Christianity to find in it a satisfaction for those customs, those things that mean so much to the ordinary person which as yet Christianity has failed to imbue with its own spirit. Yet, while this is a task that calls for Japanese leadership, it is not one which the Japanese church can accomplish by itself. It must have our cooperation. We have made re- markable progress in Japan and yet it seems to me we have only begun the work of the evangelization of the country as a whole. It may seem to us a matter of course that when a people, 160 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON who feel the need of religion so deeply as the Japanese do, have to decide what religion they will accept, they will choose Christianity. But it will not be at all a matter of course. Japan has religions which are older than Christianity. These religions are beginning to show renewed signs of life. Unless Chris- tianity is able to present to the Japanese all that is true in their old religion, unless it is able to come to them in Japanese form, I think it is quite a question as to whether the people, certainly as they are today, would choose Christianity or would choose these old religions with all their defects, if that were the issue that had to be presented to them. We have thus before us the most difficult part of our Christian work, the in- terpretation of Christianity into forms that will be appreciated by the Japanese, the making of Christianity at home in Japan, without at the same time losing anything that is vital to Chris- tianity itself. | Now, in this work, it seems to me the Japanese church does need the cooperation of the home church. I spoke of the financial cooperation. ‘Take for example one aspect of that cooperation, our educational work. A great part of our success in Japan has been due to the splendid Christian schools and colleges which have been established there, schools and col- leges which have enabled us to select from the young men and women of Japan those who can be trained in Christian truth and who can go forth as Christian leaders among their own people. There never was a time when Christianity in Japan needed leaders trained in Christian schools and colleges so much as at the present, and yet, if these schools and colleges are to be maintained in a way that will enable them to compete on equal terms with the magnificent government schools, it is certain that the Japanese church must have our financial aid. I am sure that we don’t realize that our Christian schools and col- leges have got to be tremendously strengthened, if Christianity is to continue its progress in Japan, and if it is to be adequate to the great task that lies ahead of it. Or take again, the question of literature. We have in the past produced some good Christian literature in Japan, but if Christianity is to make its way among the great masses of the people, much more will have to be done in this way. Literature must be produced which will make an appeal to the reading public equal to that of the very interesting and the cleverly written literature that is being produced by the ancient religions of Japan. Here again the Japanese church needs our cooperation. But then when we speak of the cooperation which the Japanese church needs from us, why, I imagine that the great- THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 161 est cooperation that is called for at the present time is the demonstration on our part that Christianity is able to produce in human lives the result that it claims to be able to produce. The Japanese church has only a short history behind it. When it goes to the Japanese people to present Christ as the Saviour the Japanese church can only point back to the older churches of the West and say that in our lives they can find a proof that Jesus Christ is able to save men from their own human passions, and to raise them above their own human selfishness in a way that the other religions are failing at the present time to do. This is the kind of cooperation that is most urgently needed at present. The Christianity that we have developed hereto- fore has perhaps been adequate to enable us to carry our mis- sionary work through its primary stage. It is not a ques- tion today as to whether we should have done better or not. The problem is this; if we are going to carry our missionary work from the primary stage into the next stage; if the oppor- tunity which we have created in Japan and China and the other countries of the Far East is going to be utilized then cer- tainly we have got to offer to the young churches which are acting for us in the East a very much better brand of Chris- tianity than we are offering at present. We are told by a great American bishop that our task is to carry Jesus Christ to Japan and leave Him there. Yet we need to remember that we can only carry Jesus Christ to non-Christian people to the extent to which Jesus Christ is realized in our own lives. Take some of the difficulties that le ahead of the Japanese church: Why is it that the 200,000 Christians in Japan are not adequate for the task of carrying forward the Christian cam- paign in that country? One obvious reason is that those 200,- O00 Japanese Christians are divided up into twenty or thirty different denominations. Our forces are divided. We cannot present a common front to the task that lies ahead of us. There are a good many people who feel that Christian unity will probably be accomplished on the mission field, al- though it does not seem to be very easy to accomplish here at home. It seems to me that exactly the opposite should be our attitude. We are face to face with a tremendous opportunity to advance the cause of Christ. If Christian unity is the condi- tion on which alone that cause can be successfully carried for- ward, we should feel our responsibility to an extent that makes us rise above our differences here at home and present to our churches on the field, a Christian church that is one in Christ. The same thing is true with regard to our Christian con- duct and our Christian apprehension of the truth. Our Lord 162 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON has said that the Spirit will guide us into all truth. What does he say? The Spirit will guide us into all truth. It seems to me that these words indicate that the full Christian truth will be revealed, not to a church which is sitting still and trying to satisfy its own curiosity, but to a church which is earnestly engaged in carrying out our Lord’s commission to take his gos- pel to all nations and preach it to every creature, and that in the accomplishment of that task, in the endeavor to surmount the difficulties which that task presents to us, we shall be led by the Spirit into all truth; and the things which seem to us today to be such problems, even among ourselves, will be re- solved for us as we consecrate ourselves more entirely to the task which Christ has left for His church to accomplish. THE IMPRISONED SPLENDOR OF THE ORIENT THE REVEREND HARRIS E. KIRK, D.D., BALTIMORE, MARYLAND I speak to you in a spirit of daring tempered by fear; for even to suggest what may be coming out of the Orient fur- ther to illuminate the face of God in Christ is a hazardous ad- venture; but to do so in the presence of experienced leaders makes one conscious of ignorance and limitation. I am to speak on the imprisoned splendor of the Orient. By Orient I mean China, Japan and India, the great nations that are leading the East. The direction these nations take in the next century will determine not only the character of Oriental development as a whole, but also influence very materially the status of the Western world. For the explosive center of intellectual and political interests is gradually moving towards the East; and soon we shall be looking no longer to Europe or America, but to the Orient to determine the moral and political temperature of the world. By splendor I mean the indigenous capacity of these peo- ples to give an original contribution to the comprehension of Christianity. For if Christ be the seed, human nature is the soil in which the seed is to grow; and the soil always makes an original contribution to the life history of the seed. By im-. prisoned splendor I refer to the discovery and release of this original capacity, through mission work; which when fully ex- pressed shall add lustre to the glowing light of spiritual reality which shines through missionary efforts in these great countries. At the outset the duty of the Christian church appeared to be very simple. It consisted in giving to these peoples a religion which they needed, and with which in advance of mis- sionary effort they were unacquainted. To give light to those sitting in darkness; to bring good news from a far country, this THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 163 was the first task of the missionary; and the finest chapter in religious history of the past hundred years is the story of how this work was done. The seed was well sown, but now that the plant is be- ginning to mature, a new factor becomes evident, namely the influence of the soil on the seed. For wherever Christ is preached there new and unsuspected capacities are revealed, and as the seed develops it draws into it what is latent in the soil. By giving this unknown element clarity and definiteness it brings to light what was before hidden; so that missionary effort, which began in giving the people what was supposed to be without, gradually comes to be the releasing of what has been imprisoned in the native mind. As I conceive it, to recognize and develop this aspect of human nature is at present the most delicate and important problem of missionary endeavor. As Browning puts it: “To know Rather consists in opening out a way, Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.” This then is my thought:—the mission movement in the East has now reached a point where it is gradually ceasing to be the impartation of something supposed to be foreign to the native life, and is beginning to call forth and develop what is latent in the Oriental soul. The imprisoned splendor is beginning to escape. That is why there is a justifiable belief among mis: sionary leaders that an indigenous church controlled by native peoples, rather than a complex of mission activities under foreign direction, is the logical goal of wise missionary policy. This was the profound conviction of men like Dr. Timothy Richard more than a generation ago; and when we contem- plate the intellectual and spiritual ferment in the Orient today; a ferment due in large measure to the active leaven of Chris- tianity, the necessity of a wise transference of control from foreign to native leaders becomes an irresistible conviction. So far then from regarding the demand for an indigenous church as a recent or dangerous innovation, we should recognize it as a clear evidence of Providential direction. For as churches with religious beliefs organized according to indigenous mental aptitudes developed among gentile peoples in apostolic times, quite unlike the type of church functioning at Jerusalem, so shall churches informed and guided by the native spirit of the East rise upon modern mission fields, as the permanent fruit- age of foreign endeavor. For it stands to reason to suppose, if we cannot impart Christ to the Orient, and then entrust this great gift to indigenous responsibility, mission work would re- 164 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON main an alien influence, attached to the outside of life, instead of becoming, as it should, an essential and informing part of the native spirit. If, then, we are disposed to recognize that there is an im- prisoned splendor in the Orient, our problem becomes this: How shall we release and guide it until it is able to stand on its own responsibility? This is the most difficult and delicate of all missionary problems just now, to the solution of which it is hoped this great convention may contribute some durable and enlightened policies of missionary adjustment. If there be such a thing as a philosophy of development to be drawn from providential leading of the Christian church, it would appear that while Christianity begins with the lowest, it must eventually spread to the highest circles of life, if it is to have a decisive influence upon the racial history of peoples. At the outset God is interested in the sheep; but eventually the destiny of the sheep is determined by the character of the shepherds. And it goes without saying that methods suited for the interpretation of religion to the highest and most thoughtful elements of a people must differ from those found effective among the lowest. A missionary method suited to coolies, amahs, and children, will not interest highly intelligent people. Milk for babes, and meat for strong men, is the logical way of growth. This suggests the most difficult task of the missionary at the present moment: how to appraise properly the deeper trends of the Oriental mind, to ascertain what re- actions are taking place when such a mentality is confronted with the gospel of Christ. Simple phrases, unexamined propositions, and dogmatic deliverances will not do. We have contributed to the education of the Eastern mind; we have stimulated its intelligence and awakened its criticial powers as well as arousing its appreciative receptivities. The Oriental mind of today is dominated by a spirit of intense criticism of all things Western. The missionary must be able to meet this Spirit. with generosity, sympathy, and capacity if it is to be permanently influenced by missionary endeavor. One pressing need then, if we are to contribute further to the awakening of the East, is such a re-examination of our own conception of Christianity as shall enable us to approach this critical temper: not with certain provisional concessions made to a supposedly darkened intelligence, but as an actual confession on our part that we have not fully understood Chris- tianity, and furthermore that perhaps we have defiled it by allowing it to be too closely associated with something that is not essentially Christian at all—Western civilization. The time has surely come when we should be giving heed to the painful contrasts that appear between our civilization and that of the THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 165 Far East. The time has happily gone, let us hope forever, when we shall be sending out crowds of inexperienced enthusiasts. impregnated with the idea that our civilization is not only the best, but a normal expression of Christianity itself. It is surely a very limited notion that our duty is confined to a proclama- tion of the gospel to non-Christian nations. This easy under- standing of mission work has led to a deal of condescension and impertinent patronage of peoples, the cultural aspects of whose civilization are as high above ours, as was that of the Roman above the Goth, and whose antiquity as compared with ours is as the cedars of Lebanon to a mushroom of a night. We must be prepared to confess that Oriental dislike of our civilization is well founded; that superficially it appears ugly, hurried, without philosophic direction or moral control, and altogether too much of this world; that it has often been menacing and greedy in its demands on other peoples, and that frequently the voice of the missionary cannot be heard because of the strident clamor of the business man, or the rough bellowing of the soldier. And to allow the impression to become fixed that Christianity and Western civilization are not only identical, but that one is the legitimate fruit of the other, is forever to block the way for understanding Christ and the gospel. The Western church has almost forgotten the truth that Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world; it is too inti- mately associated with the dubious and questionable policies of foreign peoples, and we need not wonder that the moral trend of the West is one that is giving the Oriental peoples cause for serious concern. ‘They are fully justified in asking questions, and such questions must be answered, not by the patronizing manner of the mission conventicle, but by hard, straightforward arguments among equals. And, above all, until we can dis- sociate the mission of Christ’s church from a dubious civiliza- tion too much indentified with trade expansion and sphere of influence, we have no right to ask the Orient to take our form of religion. But here we touch an even more difficult question. We have allowed the impression to get about that Christianity is a Western religion. Nothing of course could be more mislead- ing. If we should associate its origin with geographical posi- tion we should have to confess that Christianity came from the East. But Christianity has never been a localized religion; it belongs to all mankind. It is true that it moved westward, but has not the time come for us frankly to acknowledge that something happened to it in its westward movement? St. Paul says that God has given us treasure in earthen vessels. The treasure is admittedly the glorious gospel of the blessed God. The justification of missions is the intelligent advocacy of a 166 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON complete Christ. The Orient will never take a crossless gos- pel; neither can it become permanently interested in a religion of an ethical life, which, after all is said and done, turns out to be a worn-out and discredited legalism. The East is more familiar with the idea of incarnation and atonement than the West, and that which gives meaning and power to mission work is the stable conviction that the gospel of Christ is the adequate power for the salvation of all mankind. Moreover the gospel is a fluid sort of treasure and must be contained in vessels. I have little sympathy with the impressionistic notion that you can propagate a religion without convictions, creeds and theologies... We cannot do it, first, because we can no more carry the gospel without categories, than we can convey water without vessels. We cannot do it in the second place, because we are so constituted that we cannot believe in anything effec- tively, unless we can formulate a reasonable philosophy of its meaning and purpose. Let us admit this frankly and then en- deavor to remember that while the gospel is treasure, and must be carried in vessels, it must never be identified with the vessels. The gospel is heavenly in origin, and therefore eternal, but the vessels are of the earth, earthy. Look now at the Western spread of Christianity in Apos- tolic times. How different is the preaching of Paul in gentile communities from that which prevailed among Jewish peoples in Palestine. Follow this movement into the early church and see how essential it was, if the priceless essence of the gospel was to be imparted, vessels suited to those times be found to contain it. In other words, if Christianity was to move west- ward, it was necessary that its eternal truths should be caught and contained in those categories of thought which were indi- genous to the West. Our thinking is dominated by Greek con- cepts, and in no other way could we have held on to our price- less heritage. As I have said, while having no sympathy with those who think they can retain the treasure without some kind of containing vessel, I am entirely in sympathy with those who refuse to identify the treasure with the vessel itself; or suppose, if you transfer it from one vessel to another, you lose its pre- cious essence. One result, a defect of the qualities of the Western mind is that where you have vessels, you are likely to have divisions and denominations; and with this I shall find no fault here; save only to suggest that unless the Eastern mind is used to the same kind of containers, we cannot expect it to accept as a permanent form of Christianity, our Western credal, denomi- national expression of it, even though in the beginning we are obliged to present it to them in this form. What we should look for and encourage is the formulation of Christianity ac- THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 167 cording to the deep structural qualities of the Oriental mind; see to it that we impart the whole of the precious essence; exer- cise the greatest skill and patience in transferring it from one vessel to another; but be willing, nay, even happy to see it transferred to those forms which are native to the Oriental mind, and which give the largest possibilities to the develop- ment of an indigenous church. Look again at Christian history; wherever the Lord Jesus has been preached as the world’s Saviour, there the truth of God has expressed itself in the thought forms indigenous to the people who received Him. We should never forget that God Himself is conducting this enterprise. What He has died for He means to have. The treasure is eternal, but the vessel is earthen, of this perishable life, and we must never identify the treasure with the vessel. Let us preach a full gospel of a com- plete Christ, but let us gladly believe that this tremendous power can express itself in forms that are indigenous to native peoples: else why such a difference between Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian conceptions in Apostolic times? Let us believe with all our hearts in the precious essence of the gospel, but also recognize the limitations of the container; and be ready with a generous hospitality to welcome the original contribu- tion to the comprehension of Christ which the Oriental peoples are now ready to offer. And when this spirit of generosity dominates the Western Christian mind we shall note at least three great contributions the Orient can make to our apprehension of the Kingdom of God: 1. Its natural capacity for mystical experience. Have we. of the West, with all our religious thought and activity, ever appreciated this primary element in religious life? The con- versation of our Lord with the woman of Samaria wherein He told her: “God is a Spirit,’ slips over our Western mentality, leaving hardly a trace. We confess our need for mystical ex- perience only as something forever beyond us, or acknowledge it in some eccentric or superstitious fashion which soon loses itself in pantheistic delusions. Our life is hurried and fretful, and while deeply and painful aware of our insecure hold upon the eternal realities, we cannot keep quiet long enough to listen to God. For that deep quiet resting upon the Eternal; the ex- ploration of the grave silences of the higher life; for the experi- ence of the immediacy of God in the processes of the human spirit we must look to the Orient, and discern beneath its rest- less changes, its labored social and political ferments, a native capacity for being still, a sense of living in the hospitable omni- presence of the eternal God, to which when Christ is revealed, as one long sought for and loved, the native spirit will respond 168 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON with eagerness and joy. Goodness, godliness, is the only cur- rency that circulates at par in all lands. Once Timothy Rich- ard came into a region in China where a brother missionary had recently checked a smallpox epidemic and learned that a Chinese scholar had been led to read the New Testament. On asking him what was the impression made on his mind he received this reply: “The most wonderful truth here is this, that a man may become the temple of the Holy Ghost.” It may yet be that the Orient will lead us of the West to lay aside our limitations of outlook and teach us how to discern God face to face, and know that we are spiritual beings, belonging to an eternal order, and not merely creatures of a civilization at- tached externally to moral reality, indifferent to the deeper movements of the Divine Spirit. 2. The Orient is still the home of the creative joys of life, simply because it is as yet uncursed by a civilization founded upon the machine. In the East, the eye, the hand, and the mind work together in the fabrication of things of necessity and beauty. The most lowly toil imparts something of durable sat- isfaction beyond the price of material reward. In our Western world we spend much of our time in pulling levers, and press- ing buttons, and because there is no necessary connection be- tween the eye, the hand and the mind, while our wealth in- creases, and with it leisure to enjoy, our discontents grow apace, our demand for sensual indulgence overpowers our feeble moral purposes; and most of us become splendid slaves, richly clad and apparently free, but mentally and spiritually weak- ened and without vision of that high region from whence cometh the peace of God which passeth understanding. Is not this why our religious interest is too often pitched to the low note of disillusion, instead of being the expression of a glorious communion with the most High God? Is not a perception of this truth; that creative joys dwell only with those whose bodies and minds work together—the reason why Gandhi in- sists that the people of India forsake the machine of Western civilization, for the hand labor of the native; and who knowing the deep significance of this primitive relation to happiness, can say that he is wrong? A Japanese art critic has recently been telling us that Asia is no longer dazzled with the splendor of our material civilization in some such words as these: “Asia knows, it is true, nothing of the fierce joys of a time- devouring locomotion, but she has still the far deeper travel culture of the pilgrimage and the wandering monk. For the Indian ascetic, begging his bread of village housewives, or seated at even-fall. beneath some tree, chatting and smoking with the peasant of the district is the real traveler. To him a countryside does not consist of its natural features alone. It is THE CHURCH IN THE MISSION FIELD 169 a nexus of habits and associations, of human elements and traditions, suffused with the tenderness and friendship of one who has shared, if only for a moment, the joys and sorrows of the personal drama.” This same acute writer says that the difference between East and West is found in this that while the man of the East loves to contemplate the ends of life, the man of the West loses himself in the particular, and in the search for the means of material existence. This may be an exaggeration, but it suf- fices to remind us of a real distinction. We excel in science, organization, economic efficiency, while they in philosophy, contemplative brooding, and in the high visualization of the fundamental ends of existence, which give rational meaning to labor, and add patient endurance to suffering. We of the West often say, ‘““We do not know where we are going, but we are on the way,” identifying life with movement; but the man of the East will humbly confess, “I know where I am going, but I am not yet sure of the way,” identifying life with inquiry and the pursuit of a way, and ready to follow anyone who knows. Here at bottom is a real difference between West and East; the man of the East is more tractable, teachable, and suscept- ible to religious influence. Why then should it be thought an incredible thing that he should yet bring deliverance to the West, by an original expression of the gospel of Christ. 3. The Oriental intuition of a durable bond of human so- cieties. We of the West, in spite of the spirit of Christ, have become obsessed with the idea that the only durable bond of human societies is organized force, so that war becomes a periodic and lawful expression of our civilization. The Great War was not an accident, but the perfect flower of our philo- sophies of life. As Jeremiah would say, “It was the fruit of our own thoughts.” The Orient, in spite of grave exceptions, is at heart deeply persuaded that war is wrong, and still thinks of the durable bond of human societies in other terms entirely. While we with our advancing scientific notions beat our plow- shares into swords, and our pruning-hooks into spears, the Orient is striving to reverse the process and attain unto true progress. The Orient has reason to believe in a higher prin- ciple, for is it not true that the Emperor of China was the only great ruler who never wore a sword, that in China the scholar has ever been first and the soldier last in the scale of import- ance, and that China has never in the long centuries of her history been fully organized for war, and on that account is the only ancient nation that has survived until the present day? It is in such high terms of racial relations. that young Christian China is seeking to express its thinking. Last summer after a long conference in Peking with some of the leaders of the 170 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON indigenous church I seemed to hear the voice of the Orient say- ing unto me: “Go back, O man of the West, and tell your people, that while the East has every apparent reason for or- ganizing itself for war and strife, the purpose of the Orient in response to its racial spirit is to win its place in the sun by the power of a peaceful ideal.” To me this came as a new vision of Macedonian opportunity. Here then is the chance to ex- press our firm faith in providential leading; to consider wisely and well how and by what means we shall release the im- prisoned splendor through wise missionary endeavor; and by throwing these great people upon their spiritual resources may we not hope that there may yet break out on these our in- dustrial ages that splendor of God of which Carlyle used to speak; which shali not only be the justification of mission work in the East, but shall enable us of the West to possess ourselves of those durable blessings of the gospel of Christ which shall enable us to realize the brotherhood of man and the Kingdom of God, when the kingdoms of this world shall become the Kingdom of God and His Christ. It may at first dishearten us to look back over the slow and painful way we have reached our present perplexities, for the westward path of Christianity is not always an encouraging spectacle; but there is another vision if we turn our eyes west- ward, as the gospel is going home again to the Orient. Look upon this and rejoice! “Not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes the light; In front the sun climbs slowly, But westward look, the land is bright.” THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN RELATION TO PEACE AND GOOD WILL AMONG NATIONS “OF ONE BLOOD” BISHOP MICHAEL BOLTON FURSE, D.D., ST. ALBANS, ENGLAND Why do we want peace and good will among nations? Be- cause we have seen war, its cruelty, lust, barbarity, futility, its blood and tears? If we desire peace and good will, because we do not want war, the motive behind our wish is fear. There is a whole crowd of people today who don’t want war because they are afraid of it. But fear never stopped war. Fear is a thing that produces war. It is the main cause for war. We, as Chris- tians, have got to face this question squarely. We want peace and good will among the nations of the world, because we believe that is God’s will and purpose. It is of no use to talk glibly about “no more war,” unless we are prepared to get right down to business and uproot the causes which produce war. What are the causes of war? As a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he.” That, I believe, is as true of nations as it is of individuals. The World War, as I see it, was the logical result of wrong thinking and wrong ideas. It was the logical outcome of the principles upon which we had been building, and are still building, our so-called civilization. These are the principles of the jungle—get, grab, and keep, if you can. These principles are based upon the idea that a man’s life and a nation’s life con- sist in the number of things they possess. I know we camouflage this idea; I know that in this great war, which is going on today, this industrial and commercial war, we have appointed our am- bulance brigades to pick up the dead and dying and to make our actions look all right; but, if we are honest, the principles on which we have built up our industry and commerce are on the idea of getting what you can. We said hard things about the profiteer in the war, but, after all, he was only doing what he was brought up to do, to make what he could when he could; and, as peoples, we have been doing it since. We were at war before 1914, potentially. We are at war today, potentially. We shall continue to be so, so long as those principles dominate men and nations. If you go into the jungle, as I have been myself, both in India and in Africa, you will find that what gets hold of you 171 172 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON right away is the feeling of fear. It is all around you. Fear is the dominant factor in the jungle; and fear today is the dominant factor in the world. I believe fear is the devil. If we could eliminate fear we would get more than halfway to where we want to get. There is only one power that can cast out fear, and that is “perfect love.” In the Christian interpretation what does “perfect love’ mean? It does not mean a wishy-washy sentiment; it means something real and severe; it always means giving. If you are out to give somebody something and to serve him, you are never afraid of him. What is needed, as far as I can see today, if we really want peace and good will among the nations, is a new idea of life, a new idea of industry, of commerce, of patriotism and of international relationships and a new spirit. What are these new ideas and new ideals, and above all this new spirit? Our answer is, “Christ, the Prince of Peace.” What are Christ’s conceptions of life and of the world? Quite shortly, life in Christ’s mind is giving, not getting; it is personal and national service, not personal and national success; it is coopera- tion, not competition; it is sacrifice, not selfishness. What is Christ’s idea of the world and the human race? “Of one blood made he all the nations of the world,” one family. He summed up God’s idea of the world as a home and a family in the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father’; one blood, one Father, one common stuff running through the whole of the human race. And so it was that when God chose to make Himself fully known to men, He used the one language which is common to the whole world, the language of a human life. God became incarnate. If you go into the heart of Africa tomorrow, you will prob- able not understand a single word that the native says; nor will they understand a word you say, but they will size you up very soon. They will know all about you. You will take longer to size them up, because, as you know, children size up grown-ups very much quicker than grown-ups size them up. You can fool most people, but you can’t fool children; they see through you, as parents well know. So it is with child races. In spite of all the differences of color, language and custom, there is in all races that common stuff of humanity. Every nation understands the language of a human life. Now, there is little value in generalities; so for a moment or two, let us consider what this Christian conception of the world as a home and a family really entails. First of all, a family is made up of various members all of whom differ from one another. There are a certain number of people who appear to think that the world would be a much better FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 173 place, if everybody was exactly like themselves! It might be better but it would certainly be much duller, if at every corner one turned he ran up against himself. I.was a member of a large family, and fortunately for me, I came more or less at the end of it. It is the best education one can get. The Christian conception of the human race as a family is that every nation has its own special contribution to make to the richness and the glory of the home. Secondly, in the home there is law and order. You can’t get away from this. Otherwise the home becomes a bear-garden. But that law and order are not enforced at the business end of a big stick. Occasionally one may have to use something of the kind in order to make an impression for a time on some member of the family. I had impressions made upon me which lasted for quite a time, but they were not the basis of the law and order in the home; it was good will, persuasion, reason and common sense, not force. It may be needful to use the big stick when one member of the family of the human:-race runs amuck, just as one has to do with some children, but what we Christians have got to stand for is that ultimately there can be no peace in the home, unless it be through good will, persuasion, reason and common sense. People must be treated as reasonable beings. In the third place, every member counts in a family. There is no question of counting the eldest son only, we younger ones see to that. And there is no question of one member of the family being superior to the other. Nor is there such a question in the family of the human race. For two things you and I are not re- sponsible, our parents and the color of our skins. If one happens to be white, why should he stride about for the rest of his natural existence thinking that he is such a superior person to those of another color? People say, “Yes, this idea is all very well; but it is “a wishy-washy cosmopolitanism’! Nonsense. I believe in race and nationality, because I believe God made mountains and rivers and oceans and continents. And that brings me to the fourth characteristic of the family: in the family every single member has to work making his con- tribution to the welfare of the whole group. So in the family of the nations of the world I hope to see every nation making the best of itself and developing its resources to the utmost, not for self-aggrandizement, but in order to make the biggest contribution to the welfare of the whole human race. But some will declare that this cuts out all competition, which is the very life and soul of industry and progress. Was there any competition in the war? Of course there was. I saw it in France and in East Africa; in England, and in South Africa. But what was the competition? It was not the competition of “get- ting,” but it was the competition of “giving”; it was to see how 174 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON much one could give and not how much he could get. Men and women of all kinds rose to that great appeal; never again must you or I allow people to say that human nature cannot be stirred to its finest and best, except by some sort of mean, material reward. Such a declaration is simply untrue: the facts are against it. We human beings, made in the image of God, can rise to the highest appeal. And what is the next characteristic of the family? It is this: the weakest in the home does not go to the wall, but is the first concern of all the other members of the fam- ily. You hear no talk about “charity’”—when one is looking: after the sick or lame or blind member of his own family! He does it, because it is the right thing to do. And so, in the family of the nations of the world, the young and little and weak, perhaps sickly nations have a right to exist, and it is up to the big and prosperous and strong nations to help them, not in a condescending way, but declaring, “as a member of our family you have a right to exist and to develop to the fullest possible extent.” And lastly, what is it that keeps the family together as one in the one home? It is the spirit of love and good will and brother- hood. And this spirit is caught by the children from the mother and father. It is their spirit of love for their children which is passed into them day by day, and from them goes back to their parents and so to one another. Just so, we Christians believe, must it be in the family of nations. The only thing which can keep that family together is the right spirit, the Spirit of God, mediated to man through His Son Jesus Christ in the living power of the Holy Spirit. If there is to be peace and good will among the nations of the world, we believe that it can only be through the unifying spirit of love, mutual service and brotherhood; that is, by every member of the family of nations catching that spirit from God through the media- tion of our Lord Jesus Christ in the living power of the Holy Spirit. That as IJ understand it is the Christian faith. As I conceive the enterprise of Christian missions, it is to disseminate the right ideas and to demonsttate the right spirit. We have heard a good deal during this splendid convention of how we must not go to other nations in the East, or in Africa, or wherever it may be, with the message of Jesus in a superior way. Well, why? I quite agree, but what is the sound reason behind the suggestion? As I see it, the reason is this: superiority of that kind is really devilish. That is to say, it is not of God. How does God treat us? As a superior person? Never. He made us and took us into partnership with Him. He made us free men and said, “Come along and develop this undeveloped world. And among other things your undeveloped character.” When we rejected that partnership, when sin entered the world, what happened? God in his infinite love and patience did FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 175 not turn away, but sent His Only Begotten Son to humble Himself and take our nature upon Him. And what did our Lord do? He did not tell people in a superior way that they were not good: He did not appeal to people to save their own souls. He said, “Come and give me a hand in the biggest job in the whole world, which is to make the world what God really means it to be, because I need you.” Now, when somebody comes and begins to tell me that I am not as good as I ought to be, I know that is quite true, but I do not like to have him say it. There is in me an instinct of self- preservation. When I am attacked physically, I am a little apt to get my hands up. When I am attacked morally, I put out my defenses, a sort of primal instinct asserting itself. But when somebody comes along and says, “You are exactly the man I want and I can’t do without you,” I pull myself together, stand up to my full height and say, “Yes, that is all right,’ and I come along! That is the way God treats us. That is why we must go to other nations, not as superior people conferring a benefit, but as ordinary human beings, as brothers, and say, “Now, look here. We are in an awful mess in the world, and we simply cannot get on without you. Will you come and give us a hand?” How did our Lord deal with men. He “drew them with cords of a man by the bands of love.” It is only that spirit of Christ, not the wit of man, not even great statesmanship, not wealth, not power, not greatness in one’s own esteem,—the spirit of Christ, and that alone will ever persuade the nations of the world that this is God’s plan for them. I come to my last word. We must preach these ideals, and proclaim these truths. There is real danger of too much talking and too little prayer. Why doI say that? Because prayer is the means, Christ’s ordained means, of making our own those great spiritual resources which are put at our disposal by God. Prayer is cooperation with God. Prayer is switching on to the power station. Prayer is getting into line with Him so that the “living waters” may flow freely into us. Such prayer we must learn how to offer. There is a science, an art of prayer, and one must give time, study, thought and devo- tion to it, as to the pursuit of any other science or art. One must set aside a portion of the day, of every day, in which to fll up with the spirit of Christ. Otherwise our work may look very fine, very big, and very efficient but it will be quite useless and futile in the long run. My one regret over this glorious convention has been that sufficient time has not been given to sit in silence, each one of us getting into touch with our Lord that we may spread throughout this great continent and throughout the whole world His spirit of love and wisdom and power and life! We want less 176 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON preaching and more teaching; less talking and more silence. It is only in the power of that spirit that we shall ever be able to see visions and dream dreams. Where there is no vision the people perish. Only by that spirit are men’s hearts touched and their consciences quickened and themselves turned to the living God. We know it can be done. If God could turn my heart to Him, I know He could turn other hearts. One need never despair, if he will give God His chance. That is all He asks. It is not we who are climbing up to God, it is God who comes down to us that He may lift us and all humanity up to Him. Dreams! visions! visionaries! yes, thank God for them, because we know that those dreams will come true, if we just hold on and do our bit. “Dreamer of dreams, we take the taunt with gladness, Knowing that God beyond the years you see Has wrought those dreams which count with you for madness Into the substance of the world to be.” EDUCATING FOR PEACE AND GOODWILL MRS. THOMAS NICHOLSON, DETROIT, MICHIGAN War, in the life of civilized man, is an anachronism. It is a “vestigial remainder” of barbarism, a survival-of paganism. Man has conquered many of the foes to which he-was heir. He has conquered the elements, harnessed destructive forces, and com- pelled them to run his machinery. War, the greatest enemy of the race, has, so far, withstood him. He must end war, or war will end him. The fight is on between man and his arch-enemy. Why has war persisted despite man’s evolution from the level of the brute? Why has it wound its loathsome way through the stages of his upward struggle, entangling his feet, dragging him back, limiting his powers, menacing his very existence? Why has man not vanquished his ancient foe? Because of false ideas, wrong premises, mental perversions and obsessions. He is not born with them, but by tradition, precept and example, they are bred into him. He is taught that war is instinctive, inevitable, in- separable from the life of the race, inherent in ideals of sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism. Each generation teaches its children’s children that “men always have fought, they always will”; that, as pagan | Rome taught, “’Tis sweet to die for country,’ and that the hon- ored and glorious men and deeds of history have been those asso- ciated with war. Thus has war been bred into the race. And thus it can be bred out! A noted social scientist said, “It is indisputable that an entire nation can be completely altered in character, outlook and motive in a single generation by the education of its youth.” Japan, the Hermit Nation, made literate and Western in a generation affords a striking example. A generation ago, two people entered the FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 177 public schools of their respective countries, Frances Willard, to teach scientific temperance; Nietzsche, to teach the doctrine of the superman. The result in the one case was the Eighteenth Amend- ment, in the other, the World War. What you would put in the life of a nation you must plant in the heart of its childhood. Here is hope for the world reformer, for Every day is the world made new, Every day is a new beginning— in that a new generation comes daily on the world’s stage. The Protocol of Geneva, agreed to by representatives of forty- eight great nations, marks a mile post in the progress of the race, by its declaration that “a war of aggression constitutes . . . an international crime.” At last, war is outlawed, or at least stigmatized as “crime.” But epithets and promises do not end war. “Nations rarely fight without a conviction that their cause is just and that those who fight for it are heroes and martyrs.” Tribunals and courts to pun- ish the aggressor will act as a deterrent, but the hopes of a war- weary world must rest on something more fundamental. Com- pacts and courts, tribunals and treaties must find their confirmation in spiritual values, and these cannot be imposed by governments or leagues. There must be the will to peace, the desire to co- operate, a sense of kinship and interdependence, mutual respect. All these are inherent in the teachings of Christ and are corollary to his doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The Church of Christ holds its commission and charter to teach these ideals to all the nations of the earth. It is in itself a League of Nations functioning now, through its representatives, in every land. It is a recognized educational agency, training not only the intellect but the will and spirit. The missionary has opened schools where there were none, created written languages where none existed, produced literatures for people who had never seen books. In other lands where learning was restricted to the few he has extended its blessings to outcasts and coolies, to women and unprivileged childhood. We are in a new day, which we have helped create. Science has knit the ends of the earth together. The opening and acquis- itive mind of the East is asking many questions and drawing some conclusions. For instance, it wonders whether yesterday it did not concern the isolationist that “the heathen in his blindness bowed down to wood and stone.” Today, it is of supreme moment how the native of Central Africa reacts to the radio report that a misguided negro, in New York has consecrated a negro Virgin Mary and Child. The laborer in Battle Creek, Michigan, who loads a power press addressed to Johannesburg, may well consider 178 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON what the black man who unloads it will read on the pages it prints. So far, nine-tenths of the education in Africa is in the hands of missionary agencies. Here is a supreme, if a passing opportunity for the Church of Christ to teach not only the three R’s but the religion which unites while it liberates. Says Dr. Aggrey, that eloquent African, ‘We did not know we had any rights in South Africa until the missionaries told us. Now we know it and we want them. This newly awakened passion is a Niagara and will engulf you or it may be made a dynamo to drive the wheels of a new civilization.” During the war it was found that by chemical processes which were identical up to the seventh stage two vastly different things could be produced. If, at the seventh stage the chemist used charcoal there resulted those lovely blue and purple aniline dyes which brightened and beautified life. If, at the seventh stage he employed alcohol he produced instead mustard gas which burned, blistered and blasted. The world is at this seventh stage. It has started something it cannot stop. Restless, yearning classes and races will never return to their former stage of submission and acquiescence. They will become either Niagaras of destruction or the dynamos of a greater civilization. The seventh stage is critical, pivotal, potential. If by divine alchemy the Christian ethic be applied to this new cre- ative force the race will move forward. If not, it is doomed. Can these riotous, clamant elements, brought into sudden prox- imity and aware of their possibilities live together in mutual re- gard and helpfulness? Or must frontiers be fortified and each group work out its destiny behind the barricades of color, class or nation? If so, a warless world cannot be achieved. Paul said to the Ephesians, ‘““You who sometime were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of par- tition between us.” Only as Christ is our peace will the dividing walls of human- ity be broken down without destroying the entities on either side. The citizen of Ephesus was not less an Ephesian because he could look across the debris of his dividing wall into the friendly eyes of a Christian Jew. In Christ alone may the unity and brotherhood of the human family be attained. But a limited Christ cannot do it. A partial Gospel cannot achieve it. If the church teaches at home and prac- tices abroad a bigoted racialism or narrow patriotism she bows to Mars. If she omits from her teaching the Christianizing of human relationships she foments rather than lessens human strife. If she permits a non-Christian Hindu to accept and apply more fully than she has done her Lord’s teachings, she can at least acknowl- edge her failure to interpret her Lord. FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 179 Clearly, the Church of Christ is on trial. Not without some cause have the nations of the East so far misinterpreted it as to call it “militaristic.” Let us not argue the point, but whatever our prejudices or predilections, let us vow not to project this mis- conception of our Lord’s teachings into other lands. By dint of prayer, sacrifice, and much effort the combined missionary agencies of the Western World raised forty-four million dollars last year for the purpose of extending the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace. The World War cost nine million dollars an hour. Five hours of that ghastly struggle would have exhausted our combined re- sources. Such losses may be retrieved in time, and so may even the losses in personnel, but the moral losses, the loss of confidence, of prestige, of power are not so easily regained. The Church failed to avert the World War. She will do her part to prevent the next war. What more effective means can she employ than “the one outstanding possibility that has never been given a fair and full trial,’ namely, the processes of Christian education? It was her Master’s method, “first the corn, then the blade, then the ear.” She has His command, His program and plan. Love is the fulfilling of His law. He set the child in the midst, and declared “of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Cnhil- dren have no racial bigotries, no national antipathies nor inher- ited hatreds. Let us not pervert them by false teaching, but let us insist that the Church in its educational activities at home and abroad promote friendship, justice and goodwill among the children of all the world. As missionary agencies this is our unique respon- sibility. We dare not dodge nor shift it. We are making the minds of the children who throng our schools around the world. We can train this contemporaneous generation to think corpor- ately and cooperatively on this theme. Let us, as Board officers and members and missionaries for- ever be done with a patronizing attitude. Let us be done with the glorification of war, or even with condoning it in our day. Let us insist that in our educational activities at home and abroad there be selected or prepared not such ideals as “my country right or wrong” but such as; first: Develop national pride in its praise- worthy acts and attitudes, and patriotism that will glory in service to the race; and second: give accurate and unbiased information regarding facts of history as related to other peoples; third: in- culcate ideals of justice and fair dealing, and fourth: recognize the gifts, inheritances and potentialities of other peoples and foster comradeship, confidence, mutual understanding and respect. Let us seek to understand the deep-seated causes of war; economic, political, psychological, social, and to bring to play upon them the full gospel of Christ whatsoever it may cost us. Let us determine that our mission schools shall produce thinkers instead of fighters,” 180 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Not popular passion to arise and crush, But popular conscience which may covenant For what it knows. In hearts too young for enmity There lies the way to make men free When children’s friendships are world-wide New ages will be glorified. Let child love child and strife will cease, Disarm the hearts, for that is peace. Let us wage peace under the white flag of the Prince of Peace. THE WILL FOR PEACE PROFESSOR WILLIAM I. HULL, PH.D., SWARTHMORE, PENNSYLVANIA Eight centuries ago, all of Western Christendom was moved to war by the cry, “God wills it.” The Pope, the ecumenical coun- cils of the church, the regular and secular clergy, wrought upon the minds of the people and led them forth against the Moham- medans who held the Holy Land. MHermits, saints and sages, abbots, monks and missionaries, appealed by all the arts of rhet- oric to all the fears and loves and lusts of men to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidel. And all sorts and con- ditions of men, from emperor and king to villain and serf,—men, women and children, old and young—responded en masse to the appeal, and set forth on that series of wild and weird expeditions by land and sea which continued generation after generation for two hundred years. Hundreds of thousands of peasants left their whitening bones along the route of half a thousand miles; tens of thousands of Jews were sacrificed to the crusading zeal; terrible excesses were committed upon fellow-Christians in Hungary, Bul- garia and the Eastern Empire. Jerusalem, captured after one month’s siege, was made the scene of a frightful slaughter, the blood of the Moslem slain filling the streets and splashing with the crimson hue the Christian warriors as they, rode or strode “with sobs of excessive joy’ to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In such fashion did the men of that age try to find their way to Christ and to make God’s will prevail on earth. Most fortunately for man, then as now, God can and does make good come from evil; but sounding through the ages is forever the eternal doom, “Woe unto him through whom evil comes.” A thousand years before the Crusaders, St. Paul and the first Christian missionaries exemplified another method of interpreting God’s will. They went forth into the world of unbelievers as lambs among wolves; they feared not those who could kill the body, but could not kill the soul; they rejected the might and the power of earthly hosts, and relied upon the spirit of the Lord. Roman citizens though some of them were, they turned their backs FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 181 upon the materialism, the imperial autocracy, and the militarism of the mighty Roman Empire which dominated the civilized world, and they set their minds and hearts to the task of establishing the Kingdom of God within the empire of the Cesars. On gallows, in prison, and in the jaws of beasts, their lives here on earth were snuffed out; but the Kingdom which they established in the minds and hearts of men engulfed the mighty temporal empire of their time and has outlived it by fifteen hundred years. What a dramatic contrast does history afford! On the one hand, the short sword and shield of the Roman legion, the spear and armor of the crusading knights; on the other hand, the un- armed spirit of the Christian missionary; the mailed fist, and the pierced hand; the flashing eye of hate, the flaming heart of love. Which of these methods, these interpretations of the will of God, was justified—in itself and by its results? What is the verdict of the last two thousand years of history, during which the crusad- ing method and the missionary method have both been tried over and over again and in every century and every land? From Con- stantine to Wilhelm IJ, the warrior-heads of every people have dared to interpret the symbol of sacrifice of self and love of others as a sign that in its shadow they might conquer their fellowmen: while the Christian Church has surrendered the cross of its leader into their blood-stained hands and urged its children to follow in the paths of war. Meanwhile, also, the spirit of Calvary and of Paul of Tarsus has brooded over the earth, and countless mis- sionaries have found and pursued the ways of peace to the sinful hearts of their fellowmen. Such, through the centuries, have been the two pathways trodden by the feet of men. Such are the two sign-boards before which humanity constantly finds itself pausing in doubt and dread. The war-method, usually urged for some generations now, only for high and holy purposes, and reluctantly sanctioned by the Church of the Prince of Peace; the peace-method, usually scorned by the principalities and powers, the logic and the worldly wisdom of the wise men of earth. The war-method, with its slaughter, its pestilence, its famine, its heaped-up mountains of human misery, its dragon’s teeth sown as seeds of endless future war; the peace- method, with its Christian sanity, its brotherhood, its cooperation and its crops of human welfare. What of our own age? Which road are we choosing? On which of these sign-boards do we read the will of God? “God wills it, God wills it,” is still the cry. What does He will for us? In making His will our will, do we take the road to war, or the road to peace? Has peace or war become, even now, despite the frightful lessons of the recent war, a fundamental question of morality and Christianity? Does the Christian world as a whole— 182 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON not merely individuals scattered here and there—take it with deep and serious and vital earnestness? A recent incident, doubtless well known to us all, is perhaps significant of the continuation down to this very day of this age- old problem, and of the diverse way in which it is answered. Twenty-five American missionaries in China, repudiating military force and even pecuniary bribes for the safe-guarding of them- selves and their families, are said to have been told by the Ameri- can legation that no exception would be made in their favor and that the same ‘‘usual procedure” would be adopted to protect them as is used for other Americans. These “messengers of the gospel of brotherhood and peace” expressed their belief that “the way to establish righteousness and peace is through bringing the spirit of personal good will to bear on all persons under all circumstances, even through suffering wrong without retaliation.” That is to say, the Kingdom of God, with its laws, has come at least for them, and they desire to try out, to the uttermost if need be, the law of non-retaliation, the law of love, of not resisting evil with evil, but of overcoming evil with good. And what of us who live at home in comparative safety? Are we ourselves in need of such missionary service, or have we too become worthy citizens of that Kingdom of God, obedient and loyal so far as in us lies to the letter and the spirit of its laws, inscribed on Sinai’s tablets and inspired by the Sermon on the Mount? Have we the will to peace? Have our prayers been answered for us that God’s kingdom come here and now, that His will be done on earth among men and nations as well as in Heaven among cherubim and angels. Quo vadis? is still the in- sistent question pressing in upon our twentieth-century Christian consciences. Which way are we going? Which way do we will to gor There is truth as well as encouragement in the old adage that “wherever there’s a will there’s always a way.” This is true in the peace movement of our time, and it is most encouraging, perhaps essential, to our half-willing spirits and wholly weak flesh. There are ways to peace among nations as among individ- uals, and these have succeeded whenever and wherever they have been whole-heartedly tried. Good offices, mediation, conciliation, commissions of inquiry, arbitral tribunals, the Hague Court of Arbitration, the Hague Court of Justice, conferences on disarma- ment, the Secretariat and Assembly of the League of Nations, and scores of commissions for accomplishing the real, constructive work of the world, for promoting science, for alleviating the woes of humanity, and for giving a fair chance to the children of the race: such are some of the ways which the will to peace has FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 183 found and used and made eminently successful. For more than a century, they have been resorted to with increasing frequency and success. But the lamentable state of the world today, in spite of God’s marvelous gifts and opportunities lavished upon us, His children of this generation, is all too melancholy proof that these peace ways have been followed with halting will and backward looks. The will to peace is still infirm; it is still vitiated by a hankering for the delights of Sodom, the flesh-pots of Egypt; it is still blunted by a fear of, or reliance upon, the chariots of Pharaoh, the mighty men of war. The reverse of the old adage is equally true: Where- ever there are ways to succeed there must be a will. And, blessed be the Christian’s faith that where there is a single-hearted will to peace, it is purified by Christ’s own spirit, rendered invincible by God’s own omnipotence, and made gloriously successful by applying it in the ways which God himself has pointed out to achieve and perpetuate peace. The will to peace, the ways to peace: they are both within our reach. Have we grasped them fully? Let us not be deceived. The God of Peace is a jealous God. We may have no other gods than Him. We must love Him, and Him alone, with all our heart, our soul, our mind. We cannot serve two masters. We cannot build up and rely upon armaments, and at the same time hope or expect that our professions of peace will prevail. We may call upon the name of the Prince of Peace, “Lord, Lord”; but if our hearts are far from Him, we shall have war, despite all the ways to peace. And even though our hearts are with Him, the full and reasonable loyalty includes our minds and wills as well. We cannot justify the preparation, the use, or even the threat of armaments, on the plea that we are seeking to preserve the peace. The quality of peace is not strained; it cannot be en- forced. We may make a desert, a charnelhouse, a land of children’s hospitals and cemeteries, and call it peace. By any name, military and economic coercion of nations will still be war. And let us not be misled by the will-o’-the-wisp fancy that if we simply prepare the will and the ways to peace we can forget or ignore the instruments and the ways of war. War is not to be gotten rid of by indirection. A direct, conscious, whole- hearted struggle alone can dethrone the hoary god of war. The old Adam must be destroyed before the Christ-man can be born within us. We must cease to do evil before we learn to be good. Spears must be beaten into pruning-hooks, swords into plow- shares, before the nations can learn war no more. National arma- ments must be discarded, our will to war must be destroyed, before our will to peace can make our ways to peace succeed. Interna- tional courts and the promising paraphernalia of international gov- ernment have been in the past and will be through all the future 184 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON mere gossamer threads, mere spider webs, in binding Mars as long as the nations continue to bring to his altar the resources of their land, the bodies and minds of their sons. The will to peace, a negative and positive task, two halves of but a single whole; namely, the utter rejection of the ways of war,—disarmament of body and of mind; the utter acceptance of the ways of peace—the Christianization of mind and heart and will. Is it a large task, a great task, a divine task? Is it worthy of the devotion of the Church and the followers of Jesus Christ? THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THE HONORABLE NEWTON W. ROWELL, LL.D., OF TORONTO I approach the consideration of this subject from a somewhat different standpoint from that of the speakers who have preceded me. It has been my duty to take part in the administration of public affairs, to share with my colleagues in the Government the responsibility of enlisting, training and sending men to the front to take part in war, to visit them in the trenches, to call upon the wounded in the hospitals, and to bow the head beside the graves of the fallen. It has also been my privilege, after the war was over, to meet with representatives of other nations, to discuss and plan for the preservation of peace. I, therefore, approach the consideration of this great question this morning from what one may be permitted to say is the practical standpoint, and to ask the question: “Is it possible that the Christian spirit has any con- tribution to make toward the solution of our international problems?” Or, is the international sphere an area of human life and activity which is to the Christian church a foreign field and a foreign field with closed doors into which the church cannot usefully enter? At the time when the spirit of nationality was in its infancy, and when nationalism, as we know it today, was just commencing to exert its powerful influence on the thinking of men, Machia- velli proclaimed his theory of the state, his theory of international relations. He proclaimed the theory of the unlimited sovereignty of the national state, of its duty to exert its power solely in its own interests, unrestrained and irrespective of all moral considera- tions. It is said of Machiavelli that he was not proclaiming a theory of his own invention, but was simply interpreting the hard facts of his own time. A leading statesman of our own day in Europe has openly and publicly proclaimed his adherence to the Machiavellian ideals of statesmanship; and he is endeavoring to put them into actual prac- FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 185 tice, both in domestic and in international affairs. Those who share his views would say that he, too, is but recognizing the hard facts of this present time, and that, however far statesmen of other countries may have departed in the domestic government of their own states from Machiavellian ideas, they still practice those ideals in international relations, and there may be some justification for that view. Machiavelli, while he believed that some form of religion was a good thing for the masses of the people, because it made them more obedient to governments, openly proclaimed him- self a pagan; and undoubtedly he drew inspiration for his con- ceptions of the state, its place and its functions, from the pagan ideals of ancient Rome. Machiavelli’s conception as applied to international relations is essentially pagan in its spirit and outlook, and yet, that essentially pagan conception dominated the spirit of international relations for between three and four hundred years. Has the Christian Church any theory of international rela- tions? Is there any Christian conception and ideal of interna- tional relations to set over against the Machiavellian and pagan conception? If it has not, if it has no substitute to provide, then let it confess its impotence in the face of some of the gravest problems of our time. But, if the Christian Church has some theory of international relations, which it can set opposite the Machiavellian theory, then is it not incumbent upon all Christian people to seek to put that Christian conception into actual practice? I believe there is a Christian theory of international relations. May I venture to suggest to you, as Mrs. Nicholson brought out so admirably in her address, that the thinking of our peoples will determine their attitude on these great questions, so that it is of fundamental importance that we should have a clear conception of what such a Christian theory involves and solid ground upon which to stand in considering these problems. What lies at the very basis of a Christian conception of international relations? The President of this Republic, speaking at the Commercial Club of Chicago on December 4th, 1924, is reported to have said: “! am profoundly impressed with the fact that the structure of modern society is essentially a unity, destined to stand or fall as such. At the last, those of us who are partners in the supreme service of building up and bettering our civilization must go up or down, must succeed or fail, together in our one common enterprise.” That is a statesman’s form of stating the essential unity of our common humanity. The Bishop of St. Albans this morning gave us the Christian leader’s form of statement of that same great truth, that “God hath made of one blood, all nations.” We start as the very basis of any Christian conception of international relations with this fundamental proposition, the essential unity of our common humanity, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And then, what is the next essential element? It grows out of the first, a logical development from it. It is not the Machiavel- 186 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON lian theory that morals have no relation to the state of international affairs, but the Christian theory that we must recognize the su- premacy of public right and of moral law in international affairs just as truly as in domestic affairs. We can make no real progress in dealing with the problems of our time unless nations recognize the vital place of the spiritual and moral considerations and of moral forces in the relations of nation to nation. And so we must lay down the supremacy of public right as the second proposition. In the time at my disposal this morning I can offer little more than an outline; you must fill it in yourselves. Then the next is the recognition that all the nations are mem- bers of one great family which we call the Family of Nations. The Bishop of St. Albans has so clearly expressed the thought I intended to endeavor to convey on this point that I shall simply adopt his argument and proceed. The members of the family of nations must have relations with one another; they are in continuous contact. How are those relations to be governed? What are the principles that should underlie the relation of one nation to the other? The attitude of men’s minds to these questions does not depend upon national boundaries; it oversteps all boundaries. You hear in your country, and we hear in ours, that the state is sovereign. We recognize no power or authority above or beyond the state. The state must act in the interest of the people it represents, and in their interests alone. There are those who would add in private, if not in public, “We stand for our country, right or wrong.” That is only another way of stating the Machiavellian conception which has left us where we are today. We acknowledge allegiance to our city, and our duty and responsibility as citizens. We acknowledge allegiance to our state or province, and our duty and responsibility as citizens in the state. We acknowledge our allegiance to our national government, and our duty and responsibility as citizens,to that government. We do not find that the one allegiance conflicts with the other. The man who is the best citizen in the community, in the city, is the best citizen of the state and in the nation. We are not re- quired to do away with these allegiances, but, recognizing their full force and power, we need to add to them one other, our alle- giance to the cause of humanity under the leadership of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And that carries with it obligations just as binding, just as inescapable for every honest Christian man and woman as the obligation to the city or the state or the national government. We think of our city as a unity, we think of our state as a unity, we think of our nation as a unity. We must broaden our horizon and take in the sweep of all the nations; we must think of our FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 187 humanity as one great unity, the children of a common Father, bound together by the ties of human brotherhood. This was that great conception which St. Augustine set forth in “The City of God,” that great conception of worldwide unity which dominated the thought of Europe for one thousand years. In modern times the spirit of nationalism has led us away from that great Christian ideal. The problem we face today is how to reconcile and har- monize the two—the idea of nationalism with that of worldwide unity—to recognize the facts and forces of today, and yet inspire all men with the Christian spirit and the recognition of the unity of our race. How then are the relations of the members of the family of nations to be governed? I have already pointed out that there must be the recognition of public right, the moral factor in the relation of nation to nation. There must be an earnest anc honest effort to understand and appreciate the point of view ol other nations. One of the most difficult things for any people is the recognition and the sympathetic appreciation of the point of view of other races and other peoples. We cannot understand each other and work together as different races and different nations, unless we honestly seek to understand and appreciate the point of view of other peoples. That is one of the very first steps on the road to good international relations. We must endeavor to secure a more Christian method than war for settling the differences which arise between states. One recognizes the great importance of disarmament, and may I not pause to pay a tribute to that distinguished man who is still Sec- retary of State of the United States, Mr. Hughes, who has con- ferred such benefits upon humanity by the great service he rendered in connection with the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments in Washington? But, important and far-reaching as are plans for disarma- ment, they do not touch, I venture to think, the fundamental issue. Let me illustrate—during the last great war, in all the bombard- ments of the city of London from the air some twelve and one- half tons of explosives were dropped upon that city. Such has been the improvement in the art of aerial navigation and in the destructive power of explosives that aeroplane bombing machines exist in Europe today which could drop sixty tons of explosives, five times the total amount dropped during the whole war upon the city of London or any other city, in one day! They could keep that up perhaps for a few days, and for a longer period could drop from thirty to sixty tons a day. We may limit arma- ments today, but such is the progress of modern science and the skill of man, that though the nations might have limited armaments to start the war, before many months had passed they would be thoroughly equipped to carry on the war in the most destructive 188 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON way. We have got to go deeper than any question of disarmament if we are to find the solution to this problem. We must try to find a substitute for war as a means of set- tling disputes between nations. We have an illustration in the life of the United States and Canada. There was a time in the early history of our race, when men settled their disputes by private war, the blood feud and revenge. You may have some illustrations of this in your own country at the present time, if one may judge from the press reports. But it was recognized that if these conditions continued, human progress was almost impos- sible; and men were compelled to submit their disputes to courts of law. By slow degrees we have built up courts of law and the rule of law and justice, so today disputes are settled by peaceable and lawful means. The progress made in the establishment of courts of justice and of the rule of law has registered the progress and advancement of our Anglo-Saxon civilization. I ask you. has not war become so destructive today, so wide-reaching in its effect and consequences upon innocent people, as well as partici- pators in the struggle, that humanity has the right to say to any mation and every nation: “If you cannot settle your disputes by negotiation with another nation you must choose some method of settlement less destructive than war.” I believe humanity has the right to say that; and just as in the old days we substituted courts of justice and the rule of law for the blood feud and private vengeance, the time has come when in this family of nations, we should substitute courts of justice and processes of conciliation for the settlement of disputes between the members of the family of nations. May I pay a tribute to the part the United States has taken in promoting the establishment of a Permanent Court of International Justice which is now func- tioning at The Hague, and upon which sits one of the distinguished jurists of the United States, Mr. John Bassett Moore? We need more than a permanent court of international justice ; we need some common order through which the nations can meet together for conference and cooperation. You cannot have coop- eration—effective and continuous cooperation—between the mem- bers of the family of nations widely separated as they are, unless you have some organ through which that cooperation can be expressed. I am not now concerned with any particular form of organization. I am only pleading that some form is necessary if our Christian conception is not to evaporate into thin air, but is to assume concrete form and actually influence the life and conduct of nations in international affairs. Now I come to the last question. Is such a plan practicable? Is it possible that international affairs can be regulated by the application of a Christian theory? I believe they can. I venture to submit to you that the culmination of the materialistic and FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 189 pagan Machiavellian theory of international relations was found in the last great war; and the last great war, J hope, was the final condemnation of any such conception of international relations. Against that conception and what resulted from it, humanity re- volted in the latter years of war, and the heart of humanity ‘cried out for some new and some better order. That voice of humanity was expressed with incomparable clearness and force by the Presi- dent of this Republic at that time. The War came to an end on the basis of an agreement nego- tiated by the Government of the United States, which set forth fourteen points which were to be embodied in the Treaty of «Peace. Let no one misunderstand. I was a member of a government at the time to which was submitted the terms of peace. As a mem- ber of the government, I had to give my assent or dissent. The jwar came to an end on the basis of an agreement proposed by the Government of the United States, accepted by the enemy and allied forces. It may have been vague, it was vague in certain of those fourteen points. There may have been difficulty; there was difficulty in giving those concrete expression in a Treaty of Peace, but unfortunately, when the war was over, there was a _ slump in the high idealism that marked many of the aspects in its concluding stages, and the revolt of humanity against its barbarity and atrocity. We had a treaty of peace which did not fully carry out those fourteen points. It was not because of the attempt to carry them out that we have suffered since; we have suffered, and the world has suffered since because the Treaty of Peace did not adequately express and carry out those fourteen points. But in one respect at least the Treaty did carry them out and that was the stipulation that provision should be made for some form of international organization through which the nations might cooperate for the preservation of peace. I want to pay my tribute to this nation, for unless you had stipulated in the very agreement upon which the war came to an end that such an organization should be estab- lished, I doubt if it would have found its place in the Treaty. What the attitude of any nation should be toward the League of Nations is a matter for that nation alone to determine unaided and uninfluenced by advice from others. But speaking as a Canadian, and the Canadian delegates to this Conference will con- firm what I say, we thought when the Covenant of the League was submitted to us, that although we did not like all its provi- sions, it was a great advance on anything heretofore attempted, and as we had joined in agreeing upon the terms of peace we felt it our duty to join and cooperate in the work of the League of Nations. For that course we have no apologies and no regrets. But whether one likes that form of organization or not, the problem which faces all the peoples of all the nations is this: How 190 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON can the members of that one family so order and arrange their affairs and their relations the one with the other that peace and justice may be preserved in the world? And if there be one func- tion of the Christian Church as important—I won’t say more im- portant—as any other, surely it must be to endeavor to establish and maintain peace between the nations, to promote harmony and cooperation between the races of mankind, harmony and coopera- tion in the advancement of civilization, in the promotion of human welfare, and to aid in ushering in the triumph of the Prince of Peace—for He must reign until He hath put all enemies under His feet. THE PERIOD: OF CIN FERGESSION JOHN WILSON WOOD, D.C.L., NEW YORK It has been made abundantly clear in all that has been said this morning that peace must rest upon the practice of Christian con- viction. Therefore let us, as we stand, repeat together that common symbol of our belief, recorded in the Apostles’ Creed: I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord; who was con- ceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty ; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. Amen. Let us listen to the voice of God speaking to us through his servants of old: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young Other sheep I have, which are ote of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 191 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the moun- tain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and the people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob. And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plow- shares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward men. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth . . . that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him. : And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away .. . I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. Then said Jesus . . . Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. 192 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Let us pray. Let us pray that God will pour His love into our hearts, that we may love others as ourselves. O God, our Father, we dedicate ourselves anew to Thee and to Thy service. Put into the heart of each one of us such a love for Thee that we may truly love our neighbor as our- selves,—a love that leaps the boundaries of race or color, or creed or kind. Fill our lives with the single motive of service, and of love, and use us for Thine own purposes just as Thou wilt, and when, and where. Let us pray for that higher patriotism of which the Bishop of St. Albans spoke this morning. O God, whose Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom, and whose dominion endureth from generation to generation, abase our pride and shatter our complacency. Open our eyes to see the vanity of this world’s riches and renown. Make us to understand that there is no wealth but life, that living men are Thy glory, and that our life is the vision of Thee. Keep us from being swayed by wealth and influence, or beguiled by pleas of custom and expediency or distracted by the glamour of prosperity and power. Keep us securely in Thy way of righteousness and truth. Let us pray for justice in all international relations. Grant, O Lord, that we may approach every question of foreign policy from the point of sight of our creed, that so our thoughts may be purified and strengthened; that we may check in ourselves and in others every temper which makes for war, all ungenerous judgments, all presumptuous claims, all prompt- ings of self-assertion, the noxious growths of arrogance and passion, that we may endeavor to understand the needs, the feelings, the aspirations of other peoples, that we may do gladly and patiently what lies in us to remove suspicion and mis- FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT—PEACE AND GOODWILL 193 understanding, that we may honor all men through Jesus Christ. Let us pray for humility and understanding and pure mo- tives. Overrule, we pray Thee, O God, passion and designs of men. Let Thy strong hand control the nations and bring forth out of the present discord a harmony more perfect than we can conceive, a new humility, a new understanding, a new purity, and sincerity of love, a new sense of reality, a new hunger and thirst for Thy love to rule the earth. Let us pray for the reconstruction and the restoration of our sorely wounded world. O Thou, in whose hands are the hearts of Thy creatures, shed abroad Thy peace upon the world. By the light of Thy Holy Spirit quench the pride, the anger, and greed which cause man to strive against man and people against people. Lead all nations in the way of mutual help and good will and hasten the time when the earth shall confess Thee indeed for its Saviour and its King. Let us pray for confidence in God’s ever-present and over- ruling providence. O Lord God, in whom we live and move and have our being, open our eyes that we may behold Thy Fatherly pres- ence ever about us. Draw our hearts to Thee with the power of Thy love. Teach us to be anxious for nothing, and when we have done what Thou hast given us to do, help us, O God our Saviour, to leave the issue to Thy wisdom. Take from us all doubt and distrust. Lift our thoughts to Thee and make us to know that all things are possible to us through Thy Son, our Redeemer. Bless us, O God, with the vision of Thy beauty that in the strength of it we may work without haste, and without rest for the coming of Thy Kingdom of righteousness and peace. And now let us lift our eyes to the Cross of Christ. Blessed Saviour, who at this hour didst hang upon the Cross, stretching forth Thy loving arms, grant that all man- kind may look unto Thee and be saved through Thy mercies and merits, who livest and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever One God. THE CONVENTION SERMON THE ONSEARCHABLE RICHES OMe GER TS 1 THE REVEREND CANON H. J. CODY, D.D., LL.D., TORONTO “Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ’? (Eph. 3:8). During the sessions of this Convention we have been list- ening to tales of missionary accomplishment. Our hearts have burned within us, as we have heard what great things God hath done among the nations. We have realized afresh the sense of the urgency of the need. We have heard the call fur Chris- tian statesmanship and service coming from various lands in the world. The opportunity is as great and as challenging as ever. At no distant date issues of vast moment to the whole human race, such as those which concern the clash of color, must inevitably be decided. And unless these issues are de- cided in the light of Christ’s own truth and according to Christ’s own principles, the results will be regrettable if not disastrous. This gathering has been informed and thrilled and chal- lenged by the message from the high places in the field- And yet outside this group of interested folk there is a whole world of indifference to these conditions and to the call that comes from the missionary leaders. Why this indifference among the “men in the street” and the average Christian? May I sug- gest some reasons as they have arisen in my own experience? First, the ordinary Christian is inclined to distrust assured diagnoses of vast conditions such as those that obtain in India and China and Japan. He is not profoundly impressed, when we assert that something will follow inevitably, if something else is not immediately done. He has a latent consciousness that ultimately all things are in the,hands'of God, and that it is a mistake to suppose that vast world movements so abso- lutely depend upon us. Let us indeed always remember that while God works normally in us and through us, he may also by His Spirit, work beyond us and above us. Again there is some reaction against the almost hyper- organization of plans to do the spiritual task of evangelizing a world and against the military metaphors that we use. There is a recollection of Christ’s words about the Kingdom of God coming secretly and working among men as leaven. There is further a common sense of proportion in the human mind. That sense of proportion rebels when even a good cause seems at times to be presented out of focus. There 194 THE CONVENTION SERMON 195 are many ordinary church members whose hands and whose minds are fully occupied with the legitimate duties and cares of life. Their families and their business, their debts and their taxes, their political problems and their religious duties to their immediate society seem to them real and urgent. They may grow impatient when we, pleading the missionary cause, seem to disparage or minimize these regular and rightful responsi- bilities. There is perhaps in these mental attitudes something that may give us missionary enthusiasts cause for thought. Let us prune our words, and keep our appeal always within the bounds of reality. And yet does it not remain utterly unassailable that ex- pansion is of the very essence of the Christian Church; that the Church is really a mission, a sending by Christ; that Chris- tianity is a missionary religion or it is not a worthy religion at all? This expansive enterprise is a fundamental, vital, urgent element in the history of world civilization today. Foreign missions are not merely a realm of sentiment; they have passed out into the region of world statesmanship. It is of the very essence of the church’s world-task to send into all parts of the world in need men and women who are spiritually wise enough and spiritually humble enough to help in the building of the world of the future. Christians are in the world to trans- form it in accordance with the purpose of Christ. Furthermore, is it not unassailably true that always the primary call to the indi- vidual Christian is the call to more intimate personal contact with Christ? We were, indeed, immediately after the cataclysm of the world war, prepared to reconstruct politics, to reconstruct educa- tional systems, to reconstruct industry, to reconstruct social life. But the one realm in which, speaking generally, we were not ready and willing to pursue the policy of reconstruction was in personal life. The most vital reconstruction is personal reconstruction through Christ. It has been aptly said that some people do not believe in missions, because they have little right to believe in missions; they do not believe enough in Christ. Perhaps my task this morning should be this, to emphasize that what we most of all need in our churches at present is not only interest in missions as a movement, but also interest in Christ and His evangel. Unless there is deeper, wider and fresher interest in the ever- lasting gospel, faith in Christ as our Savior and our Lord, we shall in vain await a response to missionary appeals. But in the gospel itself there is something that forthwith creates mission- ary interest, because the gospel has no fitting correlative except the whole world. 196 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON What, therefore, we need (may I repeat it), is not so much new interest in the non-Christian world as new interest in the gospel of Christ; not so much men and women who wish to preach the gospel in the heathen sphere, as men and women who cannot but preach and teach and live Christ wherever they are. Lives that are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and indwelt by His glorious spirit will solve our problems at home and broad. Nothing else can really touch them. Our subject, therefore, this morning, is the fundamental Christian motive and message. A great Scottish teacher, Pro- fessor A. B. Bruce, once said to a group of his students in class, as they were discussing some approaching convention, “Gen- tlemen, go to this conference or that convention if you will; but do not forget to go to Bethlehem,”—1. e., remember Christ incarnate, dying, rising, living. In this circular letter which we call the “Epistle to the Ephesians,” St. Paul’s great themes may be broadly summed up as follows: (1) Humanity in its whole range is the subject of the redemption by a universal Saviour. The only barriers henceforth that may exist are moral barriers. (2) Christ is the head of the church. (3) All Christians are one in Christ, whether they recognize that unity or not. (4) There are un- explored possibilities of spiritual fellowship with Jesus, our living Saviour. St. Paul briefly presents his own conception of himself as an ambassador, and of the message he was to carry, in these great words of our text; “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, that I should preach unto the nations the wunsearchable riches’—the unexplorable wealth—‘of Christ.” 1. First, then, you have the man who speaks, “Unto me, less than the least of all the saints.’ St. Paul’s personal insigni- ficance and unworthiness are compared with the vastness of the field and the glory of the message. St. Paul is constantly bowed or exalted, I know not which, with amazement, that he should be chosen to possess this wealth, and then proclaim it to others. How profound is the humility of the greatest Christian since the days of Christ! As he realizes that he is but an in- strument in the hands of his Master, he coins a word to describe himself “less than the least’; it is the comparative of a super- lative; it is as though he said, “more least.” “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints,” that sentiment is no wild flight of rhetoric, but the strong and true result of a profound view of the mercy and the glory of Christ. As St. Paul grew in holiness, he grew in humility. He called himself when he wrote to the Corinthians, ‘the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, be- cause I persecuted the church of Christ.” How often, I ask THE CONVENTION SERMON 197 you to remember, as St. Paul looked back in the days when he was scorning the riches of his Master’s kingdom, and was per- secuting his Master’s church, does he suffer the most poignant regret. He thinks of those days that were lost, those days when he lived a rebel to Jesus. Writing to the Romans, he sends his greeting to those “who were in Christ before me’— in Christ, serving, teaching, while he was the implacable foe of Christ. As he grew in grace he called himself in these words to the Ephesians, “less than the least of all saints.” Then, drawing toward the end of his mighty missionary march, he described himself in his letter to Timothy, as “the chief of sinners.” The man or the woman who feels unworthy or not self-sufficient will always be kept receptive towards the grace of God. ‘Who are we that we should have been chosen to be ambassadors for Christ, messengers of His eternal grace?” I remember reading that the famous preacher at the City Temple in London, Joseph Parker, was once greeted by an in- quiry after the sermon, “Why did Jesus choose Judas to be a disciple?” His answer was, “It is a mystery, but I know of a greater mystery still. I do not know why Jesus chose me.” What was the real place of St. Paul? That old Puritan father, greatest of Cromwell’s preachers, Thomas Goodwin, wrote these words; “In his own opinion St. Paul was the least of all saints, but in my opinion he is the highest saint in heaven and sits nearest the glorified God-Man Himself.” What a man he was! He was the great theologian of the Christian Church who set himself to expound the meaning of the person of Christ and of the work of Christ on the Cross and of the continued work of the risen Christ and of the mystery of the body of Christ, His church. What a great Christian he was! He is the living example to all time of what the grace of God can do with a mighty intellect and a great heart. What a many-sided man he was! He did not say, “This one thing I do.” That is only a rough paraphrase. He did many things and he did them supremely well; but one mark of consecration was upon them all. To us he appears as the great master-builder of the Chris- tian Church, the missionary statesman of all the ages. He sought to achieve in the spiritual sphere what the Roman Empire had achieved in the sphere of government. Was not the church (this was the thought that came into the mind of St. Paul), a waster empire even than Rome? The church, the Kingdom of Christ, has a citizenship open to all, not merely to a privileged minority. Its King is Christ, and He wields and will wield a wider sovereignty than any Cesar. Its unity was closer than 198 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON that in the Roman Empire, because it was based on love and brotherhood. St. Paul had one supreme aim—to lay the firm foundations of this heavenly Kingdom, to plant it in the Roman empire, and to take the gospel to the city of the seven hills itself and claim all for his Master, Christ. In that atm how marvelously he succeeded—for breadth of vision, for Christian statesmanship, for all the practical gifts that make an ideal missionary he stands without a rival. Still God chooses prepared men for the place for which He needs them. Still He bids us make glorious the place of our service wherever it is. Our faithfulness alone will define its ultimate importance. St. Paul was a titanic man; but let us never forget that God can choose men and women of very ordinary ability and lift them up to such a level of divine vital- ity that they can do spiritually that which will resound through the high heavens. Even yet the vision of Jesus Christ and the exhibition of the world’s needs which have been presented to us in this convention may awaken a wonderful response from generous youth, so that young men and maidens will fling away moderation and worldly discretion and material ambitions and give themselves without reserve to the cause of God and those for whom in Christ He died. Reconstructed and consecrated personality like that of St. Paul and of the humblest, are still the greatest forces in the world. II. Secondly, after the man, you have the mission. “This grace was given to preach,” to tell the glad tidings. With pro- found humility St. Paul mingled an absolute confidence. However shrinking and timid he might be about himself, when he thought that God had chosen him and endowed him with His grace, he was radiantly and triumphantly confident. You may recall Crom- well’s pungent remark upon George Fox in his own genera- tion, “He has an enormous sacred self-confidence.” St. Paul had that in effect; but St. Paul called it, in essence, an enorm- ous “God-confidence.” “This grace was given me.” The con- descending love of God bestowed upon me this commission and this inspiration, that I should preach Christ. Men and women, let us at this time remember afresh how great, how glorious is the privilege of being an ambassador for Christ. It is a grace, it is a gift, it is something unspeakably good and gracious, something beyond all the dreams or deserts of a man, that he should be commissioned, that he should be endowed with power, to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. Let us, wherever we are, awake to a renewed sense of the apostolic estimation of the function of the messenger. It is a grace, it is a marvelous privilege. That which is a gift immediately to the THE CONVENTION SERMON 199 missionary or the messenger is a gift to the whole church, be- cause through the missionary the whole church may, in some measure, express her own heart and her own sense of am- bassadorship. Let us emphasize this consciousness of the grandeur of the missionary function. We who come from churches in the home land, have been in company with God’s great ones from the high places of the field; and we are dignified by the association. The ambassador is one who is in perfect understanding with the power that sends him forth, one whose supreme quality is that he should be faithful to the mission entrusted to him. He is called upon, not to invent his message, but to deliver it and to say that this is the message. What gives the message its unspeakable value? It is that it is the unsearchable riches of Christ. St. Paul felt himself, as every one of us may feel himself, to be the representative of Christ. The heart of Christ was beating in his own bosom towards his converts. The mind of Christ was thinking on the high themes of salvation and world redemption through his brain. He was continuing the work of Christ, filling up whatever was lacking, even in the sufferings of Christ. The wounds of Christ were reproduced in the very scars upon his body. Thus was deepest humility blended with boldest expression, for to him to live was Christ—and so it was to preach, or to suffer, or to write, or to comfort a friend in trouble, or to organize a church, or to collect gifts for the poor or to help save the crew of a wrecked ship. To die—to die was gain because dying was not death; that also was Christ. From the hour on the Damascus road when Paul saw that the crucified Jesus whom he had persecuted was not a heretic Jew, but the true living Christ of God, his many- sided life was organized around a single purpose—to make this Christ known by every means in every relation to every man on the face of the earth. Jesus truly made Paul—made his thought and work and letters and gospel—verily he still can make us. The urgency of St. Paul’s message was like a fire; it burned in his bones. This urge has been marvelously expressed by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, in his great poem: “St. Paul.” “Then with a rush, the intolerable craving Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call. Oh to save these! to perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for them all.” Without this grace there is no herald and no evangel. What the world needs still is individuals possessed by spiritual pur- pose, receptive of the grace to love Christ, to live Christ, to give Christ. 200 {HE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON III. Thirdly, we have growing out of the grace, the motive. Upon that I need speak but briefly, because you have heard from this place the masterly presentation of the “why” of missions from the lips of Dr. Brown. We may analyze the missionary motive and find in it the stewardship of grace and truth, human compassion, and loyalty to divine commands. I wish, however, to take two great phrases of St. Paul, and bind them together, as constituting for all ages the inspired missionary motive. The first is “The love of Christ constraineth us.” (2 Cor. 5:14.) The words mean not our love to Him, but His love to us. That was.always the motive of St. Paul’s preaching—‘the love of Christ to me.” That is a safer basis than any merely personal emotion. This constraining power of Christian ministration is more effective and stable, when it is based on the love of Christ to us, than it would be if it were based upon our variable affections. The love that is in Christ Himself constraineth me. The love that constrains is the love that went to all lengths, the love that died; and that love always craves in turn to be loved and evokes a re- sponsive love. The other great motive is found in St. Paul’s phrase, “I am a debtor, both to the Greek and to the barbarian, to the wise and to the unwise.” (Rom. 1:14.) Suffer a word of exposition here. The secret of St. Paul’s missionary enthusiasm gives us a revealing glimpse into the very heart of the man. In form this is a paradox. St. Paul represents himself as lying under some deep, personal obligation to the whole world, to all the nations, Jew and Greek alike, and to every grade of culture, wise and unwise. What had they done for him that he should spend his life in the effort to discharge this overmastering debt? The debt explains his tireless energy, his unbounded devotion, his unquenchable ardor that urged him from city to city, from land to land, from continent to continent, preaching to all the unsearchable riches. These words in principle reveal the key to the life of St. Paul, the missionary. Here is the one master motive of his missionary efforts and of all missionary effort in every age. St. Paul lived always under the sense of undeserved good- ness received from God; salvation was a gift; nothing in him deserved it; his need evoked it. How could he ever show his gratitude to God for his emancipation and for his illumination? Would he try by personal penance, would he endeavor by un- told material offerings, would he seek to pay the debt by glori- ous and gorgeous ceremonial? No. The only way in which he could pay this debt in the realm of the spiritual was to pass on to others the benefits of the spiritual grace he had himself received from Christ. The gift thus became a debt, a debt of service and a debt of helpfulness. Henceforth St. Paul gave his THE CONVENTION SERMON 201 life to spread the gospel among Greeks and barbarians, wise and unwise, believing that only so could he prove his gratitude to God and pay back something of the debt to Christ for His unspeakable gift. That is still the abiding missionary motive. You know how the spiritual law works. In the realm of the material you can pay a debt directly to the person to whom you owe it; the law of the land compels you to do so. But in the realm of the intellectual and spiritual you seldom can pay back your debt to the person to whom you owe it. How shall we ever pay back our debt to the prophets and the psalmists and the poets and the martyrs and the human servants of the past? They are dead; they have gone to the higher service. How can you pay your debt to them? Only by passing on to the present and to the future the inspiration, the illumination they have given you. How can you pay your debt to your own father and mother? Perhaps they have gone beyond before you have realized your unspeakable gift from them. You can pay your debt only by passing on to your children and your children’s children the inspiration and the godliness and the illumination you have gained from your parents. How shall you pay your debt to Christ? By passing on the gift to others. St. Paul thus felt himself a debtor to the nations, because of what he owed to Christ. But as he witnessed the transforming power of the Gospel when accepted by the nations, his own faith in that gospel was strengthened. He felt indebted to them because of their witness to the power of Christ. The apologetic value of Christian missions adds to our obligation to evangelize. IV. Fourthly, as to the multitude—the nations—I need not now speak. The field has been described again and again. The world is one; the world is a neighborhood. We must think in continents. V. Fifthly, so I close with the mighty message, the substance of the apostolic preaching, “the unsearchable wealth of Christ.” The word “unsearchable” is suggestive and vivid. It is a picture in a word; it means “that which cannot be traced out by foot prints.” It is as though you were in the northern regions of our broad Dominion of Canada, where under the pre-Cambrian shield is hidden away untold mineral wealth. You cannot fully explore it. You go on, lode beyond lode, mine beyond mine, and never can you exhaust that wealth. Or it may suggest to you a mighty continent like America. Colum- bus discovered it, but we are still exploring its almost limitless natural resources. So the unexplorable wealth of Christ is be- yond all limit. At its end we never arrive. How better can I express it than the great apostle himself has expressed it in that one phrase, “The Jove of Christ which passeth knowledge?” 202 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON How broad is it? As broad as humanity. How long is it? As long as the age-long purpose of God, as long as to out- reach all human sin, as long as to go the uttermost lengths of sacrifice upon the cross. .How deep is it? Far down under human sin and sorrow and need. How high is it? It can lift us up to the throne where in heavenly places we may dwell with Christ. The facts of redemption are on a scale so vast that they can never be confined to one locality or to one race. If true at all, they are true for all. But one missionary application, specifically, I would like to make. We shall never begin to interpret or understand the unsearchable riches of Christ, until men and women of every race, of every color, from every land, shall have made their own contribution to that interpretation and shall have found in the unexplorable wealth that section of it, shall I say, that especially expresses their genius. In Christ the Greek found truth and beauty. In Christ the Hebrew found holiness and tender mercies. In Christ the Roman found the embodiment of righteousness and a law that was loved and that created a flexible organization. The Teuton found the fresh consecra- tion of individuality. Bishop Westcott, one of the greatest interpreters of St. John’s writings, said that we shall never have the ultimate in- terpretation of the writings of St. John until some Indian with all the Indian’s and the Oriental’s mysticism shall have heard the message, assimilated and reproduced it. Will not the Chinese and the Japanese and those from Africa and the islands of the sea find in the unsearchable riches of Christ something that evokes the answering thrill, something that will express the highest genius of their race? Men and brethren, surely if this wealth is so unexplorable, the highest and most ennobling task of any human being must be to share it with men and women the whole world over. Cromwell said, on the day before the battle of Dunbar, “We are upon an engagement very difficult.’ So we are in this spiritual enterprise, but we go not on our own charges. The treasury of the unsearchable riches of Christ is ours; the abid- ing presence of the glorified Christ is ever with us; and faintly steal from the distance the glorious notes of triumphant song. Mr. Gandhi was once returning from one of his earliet trips in the interests of India in other parts of the wrold. When he came back to Calcutta a vast meeting of fifteen thousand Bengali had been convened to hear his message. The head- master of Eton College in England tells this story as he heard it from one of his friends, who was the only white man present at the meeting. The orators who had been called on spoke for hours in praise of Gandhi and of their own local heroes. At INTERCESSION 203 last Mr. Gandhi arose and made a speech of one sentence. This is it: “The man to whom I owe most, the man to whom India owes most, is a man who never set his foot in India, and that was Christ.” That was his speech. To proclaim that Christ is our task. God grant that this convention may mean the be- ginning, as my fellow citizen of the British Commonwealth, Prof. Cornelius expressed it, of a new movement to Christ in America. INTERGCESSIGN SPIRITUAL “OUALIFICATIONS:,” FOR MISSIONARY SERVICE AT HOME AND ABROAD MR. ROBERT P. WILDER, NEW YORK To men who had been three years in intimate fellowship with Jesus Christ, of whom he said, “Already ye are clean, because of the word which I have spoken unto you,” who had seen His mir- acles, who had themselves wrought miracles, who had been taught by the Master to pray, who had been sent out by the Master to preach, He said, “Tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from on high.” “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” First, the world within their hearts was to be filled by the yower of His Spirit and then the outer world was to hear of His unsearchable riches. First the intensive, then the extensive; for, “It is expedient for you,” the Master said, “that I go away: for if I go not away, the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you. And He, when He is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judg- MeOtag ee hry tLe otidllsoiide yournto althe truth 1 te shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” In the words of Pastor Tophel, “The work of Christ is, in | fact, the cause and indispensable condition of the work of the Spirit; on the other hand, it is the Holy Spirit who glorifies Christ in the heart of believers, and causes the Person of Christ to dwell in them. It is therefore the life of Christ, the nature of Christ, the. sentiments of Christ, the virtues of Christ which the Spirit communicates to believers; it is after the likeness of Christ that He fashions them.” The late Dr. Jowett said that there are many Christians who are pre-Pentecostal as far as their experience is concerned. “We are living,’ he said, “too much as men lived before the Holy Ghost was given. We have not occupied the new and far-stretch- 204 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON ing land of Christian privilege . . . Therefore, many of the gifts and graces and perfumes of the Apostolic age are absent from our modern religious life.” So that man of God, McCheyne, said, “Whatever you fail of, do not fail of the influences of the Holy Spirit, for only in this way can you move the hearts of men.” But should not the leaders of the missionary enterprise at home have the same spiritual qualifications, as those abroad? Have we the right to expect the missionary stream abroad to reach a higher spiritual level than that reached by the church, which is the source of supply at home? One other thought. There are 14,000 foreign students in the universities of Canada and the United States. If the church at home is at a high spiritual level, many of these foreign students will find the unsearchable riches of Christ, while they are in our midst, and the Christian foreign students will be strengthened in their devotion to Jesus Christ; but on the other hand, if the church at home is at a low level spir- itually, some of these Christian foreign students may lose their faith while they are with us, and the non-Christian foreign students will return to their countries confirmed in unbelief. Last August, at the meeting of the World’s Student Christian Federation in England I heard the representative from India say, “When Christianity first came to India, the non-Christians said, ‘Christianity is not true.’ They have had to abandon that position because of the evidences of the Christian faith. “Then,” he said, “the second line of attack was, ‘Christianity is not new,’ and they tried to parallel from their own sacred books what is found in the Bible; but, he added, “that position has been in the main aban- doned, because there is no one like Christ in the Hindu sacred scriptures,” ‘Now, however,’ he added, “the line of attack is this: ‘Christianity is not you, Christianity is not you.” Sometime ago there appeared in Japan a book with this strange title, “Why I Am Still a Christian, Though I Have Studied in the West.” What then are some of the spiritual qualifications necessary for missionary work at home and abroad? The first I wish to mention is what our Lord mentioned, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” I die daily,” said the great missionary, Paul. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me,” said Jesus. When Scott was preparing for his Antarctic expedition, enough men offered their services, each bringing one thousand pounds, to man and to finance that entire expedition; but not one of those men was accepted, for Scott did not look upon them as fit for that diffi- cult and dangerous task. At the height of His popularity when our Lord had dined in the home of a ruler and the multitudes were thronging and pressing upon Him, He turned to them and said, INTERCESSION 205 “Whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” Can we not imagine the disappointment on the part of Peter on hearing these words? Can we not hear him saying to John, “Why did the Master speak thus? The Kingdom was about to be restored to Israel. Everyone is favoring our cause; why did he not show a little more tact?” Jesus knew the hearts of men. He wanted disciples who would go all the way with him, even to Gethsemane and Golgotha. ‘We must bleed to bless,” said that great leader Baron Nikolai, who brought a new religious epoch to the students of Russia. A second qualification needed is humility, which Andrew Murray of South Africa characterized as the root of all the virtues; the gentleness that gives no offense, the meekness that receives no offense. I have seen a proud Brahman in India so amazed at the humility of a learned missionary that he was willing to study about the man’s Master, “who, being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant . . . He humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.” A learned Hindu said to students in Cal- cutta, “What India needs for her regeneration is not simply ser- mons and addresses and Bible texts, but the presentation of a truly Christian life, the gentleness and meekness and forgiveness, such as your Christ exhibited in His life and death.” This will not be a weak humility, for “faithful are the wounds of a friend.” A third qualification is faith. “This is the victory that over- comes the world,” wrote John, “even your faith.” “That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” wrote Paul to the Galatians. “Said I not unto thee,’ were the words of Jesus, “that if thou believedst thou shouldest see the glory of God?” Faith is not sight, but faith is the road to sight. How thankful we should be that in our day there are missionaries of whom we can say, “Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war.” Another qualification is love, the first grace mentioned in that cluster of the fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians. No amount of eloquence or earnestness, no ability to organize or skill in administration can make up for the lack of love. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowl- edge; and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.” When a missionary in India, through his 206 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON love for Christ and the people, was winning converts, there appeared in one of the vernacular papers an article warning parents and guardians to keep away their sons and wards from the influ- ence of that man, and the article closed as follows: “The love of the Christian is more dangerous than the sword of Mohammed.” A fifth qualification is patience. When I went out to India to begin my missionary work, an earnest Christian said, “Remem- ber, the sign of an apostle is patience.”’ You recall how the great missionary apostle wrote, “strengthened with all might according to His glorious power unto all patience and long suffering with joyfulness.” Sir Henry M. Stanley, the explorer, once said, “Trav- elers in Africa suffer far more from mosquitoes than they do from lions.” It is these little mosquito troubles that often tempt a mis- sionary to be impatient. My sister, who was a missionary in India, once said that she sometimes found a girl who had been willing to leave America to go to India, was willing to learn a difficult lan- guage, was quite resigned to living in a trying climate, but who was not willing to have a curtain hung a little differently from what she liked in the zenana mission house. Three years ago, when I was in an inland province in China, I was told of some devoted missionaries who had a misunderstanding as to which of two stoves should be used during the winter months! I am sure these mosquito troubles are not limited to the mission field. They some- times get into our Board rooms, do they not, and into the homes of the leaders of the missionary enterprise in this country also? A sixth spiritual qualification is a deep and effective prayer life. Seventeen months ago a few Student Volunteers in a New England university were burdened because of the spiritual dead- ness of the campus. A prayer group was started. By the end of the year it grew into two prayer groups. Last year, a devo- tional meeting once a week was added to corporate prayer. Two months ago the overflow started, through the mission of friend- ship. One Volunteer led fourteen fellow students to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour; another Volunteer led twenty- one fellow students to Christ—there were eighty-five decisions for Christ that week. Of the ten men who engaged in this work eight were Student Volunteers. What better spiritual preparation for work abroad could these Volunteers have than the winning of fellow students to Christ in the homeland? And, abroad, the same spirit of prayer will produce similar results in souls won to Christ. This has been illustrated over and over again in the lives of missionaries like Hyde and Forman of India, like Mary Slessor and Donald Fraser of Africa, like Nevius of China, also in the lives of indigenous Christians like Pandita Ramabai of India, Neesima of Japan and Ding Li-mei of China. The final qualification I mention is fellowship with Christ. Does this not sum up all the qualifications necessary for missionary INTERCESSION 207 service at home and abroad? Moses endured as seeing Him who is invisible; the great missionary leaders have thus endured. They have set the Lord always before them. They have walked with God. They have practiced the presence of God. They know that if they are to walk with God they must give time daily to put aside those things that displease God, for two cannot walk together except they be agreed. Hence these missionary leaders take time, most of them, early in the morning, in order that they may deal rigorously with self in all its moods and tenses, in order that they might do what Gordon described in a letter to his sister when he said, “I have spent half an hour alone hewing Agag in pieces,’ that is, dealing firmly with self. Dr. Haas, a medical missionary in Turkey, told me that his rule was to give at least one full hour every morning to doing two things: the first was going through a system of auto- massage and making himself physically fit; but most of the hour was given to prayer and Bible reading. When he began the day thus he found himself fit for anything. Paul in the last verse of the first chapter to the Colossians writes (I am translating freely from the original), ““Whereunto I also am spent with toil, agonizing like the athlete in the public games, according to His energy that energizes in me in power.” Here we see the great missionary stripped for the race, using every bit of physical and mental energy he possesses in the cause to which he has devoted his life, not according to his own weak energy, but according to the divine energy that energizes in him in power. Shall we then turn to prayer, and as I mention differ- ent requests, shall we pray in silence? Let us, first of all, praise God for the unsearchable riches of Christ. Let us thank Him because the book in which we read of these unsearchable riches has been already translated, in whole or in part, into 800 different languages, and made available for many millions of people. Let us thank God for the indigenous churches in mission lands. Shall we turn now to confession of sin? Let us confess our own sin that we have not appropriated more of these unsearchable riches of Christ, that we have not experienced in our own lives more of the exceeding greatness of the power which raised Him from the dead, that we have not spent more time in prayer for ourselves and for others. How often has it been the case, as James writes, that we have not because we ask not, and that we ask and receive not because we ask amiss? “If we confess our sins He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And now shall we bring our petitions before him? Let us pray for the church in the mission field that its members may have 208 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON so much of this spiritual power that the church will grow in grace, winning many to Christ and may soon become self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating. Let us pray for the foreign mis- sionaries that they may be willing to decrease while the indigenous church leaders increase. Let us pray that the leaders, foreign and indigenous, in these countries may be examples to believers in word, in manner of life, in love, in faith, in purity. Let us pray for the home base that the home church may bring into the storehouse the whole tithe of prayer, money, lives, for foreign work, so that God may be able to open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing at home and abroad that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Let us pray for the missionary candidates who cannot at present be sent to the needy mission fields because the boards are in financial difficulties. Let us pray that the church at home and abroad may be so quickened spiritually that the whole world will be evangelized in this generation. Let us pray for every delegate to this convention, that the love of Christ may so constrain each one of us that we shall gladly do or suffer according to His holy will. Father, we gather up our unspoken petitions in the cry of our hearts that we may have more of these spiritual qualifications in our own lives and that we may be faithful in the ministry of prayer and faithful in serving our fellowmen. “Take us, Lord, O, take us truly, Mind and soul and heart and will. Empty us and cleanse us throughly, Then with all Thy fulness fill. “Make us in Thy royal palace Vessels worthy of our king; From Thy fulness fill our chalice, From Thy never-failing spring. “Father, by this blessed filling, Dwell Thyself in us, we pray, We are waiting, Thou art willing, Fill us with Thyself today.” NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION JOHN R. MOTT, LL.D.. NEW YORK Chairman, The International Missionary Council Christian Missions have led the way to the most beneficent and fruitful cooperation between Christian communions, between na- tions, and between races. This Convention in itself has constituted a convincing demonstration of the practicability and incalculable value of all of these aspects of cooperation. It has also presented one continuous summons, to the Christian forces of all the denomi- nations, nationalities, and racial groups represented here, to devise and to enter into more adequate plans of cooperation and unity. The Christian church needs today, as never before, to employ what the French in the War termed “grand strategy.” By this they meant the strategy that took in all fronts, in fact, the whole map. They also meant united action on the part of all the widely extended and scattered forces on land and sea. Before we indicate new forces which will be released through cooperation, let us remind ourselves of the reasons why larger and more efficient cooperation is today absolutely essential in the world- wide missionary enterprise. It is necessary in order to counteract the marked growth of the divisive forces among men. The world is still filled with misunderstanding, suspicion, fear, friction, and strife. All the arguments in favor of cooperation used in 1910 at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh are now accen- tuated tenfold. Christian missions are indeed the great and the true internationalism. Our 29,000 missionaries are ambassadors, interpreters, and mediators in the most vital aspects of inter- national and inter-racial relationships. The 300 and more mission Boards and societies, and the hundreds of other auxiliary agencies abound in activities the indirect as well as the direct results of which make powerfully for right relationships among the various peoples of the world. If we give ourselves unitedly, in well con- ceived cooperative plans and efforts, to promoting just, courteous, and kindly relations between our respective denominations and between national groups, we can do more than all other factors combined to relieve the present impossible international and inter- racial strain. Such cooperation is essential to enable the Christian church to give her true testimony. What is her true testimony or wit- ness? We answer, the absolute and unique ability of Jesus Christ and His church to meet the deepest needs presented by the inter- national and inter-racial situation. Unless the principles and spirit of Jesus Christ can’ be applied successfully to such relations, the witness of the Church is inevitably impaired. Our different Chris- 209 210 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON tian communions preach, “Love your enemies,’ and yet today how much we see on every hand of racial superiority and un-Christian nationalism. If we cannot have successful cooperation among the Christian forces, where else can we look for this desired and nec- essary relationship. Moreover, if we have other kinds of inter- national cooperation, without being able to achieve missionary cooperation, what other conclusion can the outside or unbelieving world form than that the Christian church has lost her way and vacated her spiritual leadership. International cooperation, as well as interdenominational co- operation, is. essential, as never before, to emphasize the truly catholic and ecumenical nature of the Christian church. The early Christians made it clear that the church brought men into a fel- lowship which included all nations, races and social groups. In fact, they looked upon themselves as in a sense a new nation, a people of God united in a bond before which all earthly distinctions faded. In reality, the church of Christ consists of all those of all nations united by the gift of a common faith, loyalty, and experi- ence; but genuine cooperation only can best demonstrate “this as a fact. The magnitude, complexity and great cost of the world-wide missionary enterprise on the one hand, and, on the other, the rel- atively meager resources in available funds and highly qualified workers, absolutely necessitate and demand cooperation on the part of the Christian forces. Ours is literally a world-wide under- taking, more so than any other. It involves the whole range of the life of every man. It concerns every human relationship. What hope is there to spread adequately the network of Christ’s ministry over this vast and complex area of human need, apart from concerted planning and effort on the part of the hundreds of separate missionary agencies? The baffling difficulties and grave dangers today confronting the Christian movement at home and abroad, are such as to make the task impossible, if we seek to accomplish it with divided ranks. In all my thirty-five and more years of work among the nations, never has the missionary undertaking seemed to me to be so diffi- cult. Never have our forces seemed to be so inadequate. At a meeting of Christian workers the other day I stated that in my judgment the next fifteen years will be the most difficult in the history of the Christian religion. Why? Not chiefly because of the forces which oppose us; not because we are called upon to deal with so many great issues simultaneously; not because of the stern challenges that are sounding in the ears of the churches of all lands; but also and principally for the very encouraging reason that never before have so many Christians awakened to the awful implications of the Christian gospel. Thank God, we NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 211 have come to a time when large numbers of His followers seem to think that He meant what He said, believe with depth of con- viction that He must be Lord of all or not at all, and are dominated by the vision of the kingdoms of this world becoming the king- doms of our Lord and of His Christ. At such a time, only the united and mobilized wisdom and experience and the sacrificial devotion of Christians of every name and clime will suffice. Need it be added that the extreme urgency of the present world situation summons us irresistibly to present a united front through constructive cooperative effort? Every field represented here today, which means nearly all the battlefields of Christianity, is wide open to the unselfish ministry of our faith. The nations just now are in a plastic state. There are unmistakable signs of the breakup or disintegration of non-Christian systems, including Mohammedanism. On the other hand, the forces of irreligion are manifesting fresh vigor and activity. Most important of all, however, are the rising tides of spiritual interest, and the fact that the Christward movement in so many fields is growing in volume and momentum. It is a startling fact that in the face of such a situation, it is entirely possible that in this critical and fateful hour, the Christian forces may fall short, simply through failure to com- bine in time. May God help us not only to see, but likewise to seize the present unprecedented opportunity. Through all these considerations do we not hear the imperative summons to draw together in order that there may be liberated fresh and greatly augmented energies? In the first place, what are some of the new or added forces which will be released for the missionary movement through in- terdenominational, international, and inter-racial cooperation? Without shadow of doubt, such cooperation will augment the finan- cial resources placed at the disposal of the missionary movement. Today almost every church and missionary organization is ham- pered through lack of sufficient available funds. In not a few bodies represented here the financial situation is truly alarming. What is the difficulty? The situation is surely not because ade- quate financial resources do not exist. Within a few days, the New York “Times” has called attention to two documents recently issued by the government,—one by the Bureau of the Census, based on information available up to 1922, and the other by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, also based on data in hand in 1922. These two publications estimate that the wealth of the United States, that year, was not less than $320,000,000,000. This rep- resents a ten-fold increase within fifty years. The striking fact about this colossal figure is that, even without including the wealth of Canada, it is more than the equivalent of the estimated combined wealth for the same year of Great Britain, Ireland, France, Ger- 212 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON many, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. You will recog- nize that this catalog of countries includes virtually all of the other home base countries, that is, the countries which send missionaries. Nor is the financial embarrassment of the missionary cause due to the fact that people in this country are not disposed to devote their money to unselfish causes. Recently, the Boston “Tran- script” stated that, in 1924, Americans gave $2,500,000,000 to altruistic causes, apart from all they gave toward religious objects, and apart from all that was given toward welfare enterprises by municipalities and state governments. No other countries in the world have a record at all comparable to this. Nor is the present cramped financial position of our missionary Boards due to the fact that there are not abundantly sufficient resources in the hands of the Christians of our country. Recent studies of lists of donors to various unselfish causes, including not only those making gifts toward religious objects, but also toward general philanthropy and education, show that between seventy and eighty per cent. of the persons on these lists have ecclesiastical connections, that is, are members of churches. These studies also show that the gifts come from only about ten per cent. of the people, and that they are by no means confined to the rich. Why, then, are not the financial energies of our constituencies more largely liberated for the missionary cause? There are dif- ferent answers to this question, but one of the most important is that our. policies and plans do not impress those who should give as representing the wisest, most economical, and most productive use of funds. They are not at all staggered by the magnitude of the sums required for world-wide missions; many of them are fa- miliar with the requirements of large business enterprises. On the contrary, they cannot but wonder at the smallness of our plans and demands. They do not object to large expenditures, but they do object to any waste due to unnecessary duplication of expendi- ture and of effort caused by the failure of different groups of Christians to cooperate. Time after time you and I have hora donors commend what we might call the zoning plan, followed in Korea and Mexico, by which each of certain denominations assumes financial responsibil- ity for the work in a given part of the country; or the economical and effective method employed by the Boards that unite in the sup- port of union colleges and other educational and philanthropic insti- tutions in different parts of the mission field; or the highly multi- plying value of the work accomplished by the National Christian Councils of China, India, and Japan, or by the Committee on Co- operation in Latin America, or, above all, by the International NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 213 Missionary Council, all of which agencies have united in study, in planning, and in action, the various Churches and missions re- sponsible for work in certain great areas. Without doubt, well conceived plans of cooperation will result in relating new tides of power to the missionary enterprise. You may be interested in a recent incident which illustrates this point. A certain American citizen, whose name, I fancy, you would not be able to guess, was impressed with the un-Christian differences manifested among the Christians in Jerusalem and in other parts of the Holy Land. On the other hand, he learned of the cooperative plan by which the Young Men’s Christian Associa- tion in Jerusalem, representing and serving all our churches, has united to such a remarkable degree in membership, in spirit, and in practical effort, the Christians of so many names, and even others in sympathy with the Christian program. He went to one of the banks in New York shortly after Christmas, and deposited $400,000 toward a modern Young :Men’s Christian Association building for Jerusalem, and did so on two conditions: one, that his name should never be made known; and the other, that when the building is completed there should be placed in it a tablet in- dicating that the building has been established for the glory of God, and in memory of His Only Begotten Son. You will agree with me that that is what we should call unselfish giving. When the fact was mentioned, a few days later, in the hearing of another Christian layman, he said, on the same condition that his name should not be mentioned, ‘‘I would like to give as much as $25,000 toward installing in that building a pipe organ to further the ex- pression of praise to the Redeemer.” Another man on Wall Street, learning of this action, has promised as much as $12,000 toward placing chimes on the building, when it is erected, desiring, as he said, “that the praises of Christ may sound out over the hills where He taught and prayed and gave His life for the sin of the world.” When my friend, Dr. A. C. Harte, mentioned these gifts to one of the leading Jewish lawyers, this man promised that either he alone, or he in company with his fellow religionists, would pro- vide $50,000 toward the undertaking, because of its unifying in- fluence, not only among Christians, but in establishing fraternal relations between Christians and Jews. In the second place, a policy of cooperation entered into heartily by our various Christian denominations and by the Christians of different nationalities will inevitably result in strengthening the intellectual leadership of the missionary enterprise. Here our need is admittedly great. It reminds one of an article that appeared in the London “Spectator” entitled, ‘“‘“First-Rate Events; Second-Rate Men.” In the world today, events of the first magnitude and significance are transpir- ing, but is it not true that we have far too few leaders of the 214 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON highest ability and furnishing to cope with these great and press- ing issues? We need on every hand in the Christian missionary movement more thinkers and fewer mechanical workers. We must discover more of the leading minds in the Churches, and relate their constructive abilities to the missionary tasks. There are all too few creative minds. There is need, as has been already pointed out in this convention, of something new to be born, as the for- eign missionary movement itself was generated. Great indeed is the need of men and women who can re-think, re-state, re-interpret the missionary message, and, where necessary, revise the mission- ary methods. I repeat that there are never, in any sphere, too many leading minds. There are seldom enough of them in any given denomination or country. It is maintained that sound policies of cooperation, widely extended, will result in releasing the desired new intellectual forces. How can this be? In the first place, cooperation among denomina- tions, as among different nationalities, will result in stimulating one another to good and better intellectual works. Every number of the “International Review of Missions” is a demonstration of this fact. Take for example, the article by Professor Hogg of Madras Christian College, in the January number entitled, “To the Rescue of Civilization.” This article is based on a penetrating and sympathetic study of the writings of Dr. Schweitzer, the famous German medical missionary working in the heart of Africa. This quarterly magazine, going as it does to thousands of the most thoughtful persons in all parts of the world, makes possible the bringing of the fruitful work of these two stimulating German and Scotch minds to bear on the thinking of missionary admin- istrators and scholars the world over. If it had not been for the cooperative plan which called this periodical into existence and maintains it, it would not be possible for the leading minds of the various countries to make their contribution to one another, and thus to enrich all. Cooperation, again, augments the intellectual resources of every cooperating body through pooling the intellectual abilities and contributions of all. It would be difficult to overstate the ben- efits which have come to all the Churches at work in China, and to every missionary society interested in that field, from the work of the Educational Commission composed of President Burton of the University of Chicago, Professor Roxby of Liverpool, President Butterfield, President Woolley, Bishop McConnell, and Dr. Rus- sell, together with their able Chinese collaborators. International cooperative plans have made available to all agencies interested in the uplift of Africa, both missionary and governmental agencies, the results of the discerning and constructive studies of Dr. Thomas Jesse Jones. Mr. W. J. McKee, a Presbyterian industrial mis- NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 215 sionary in India, has accomplished an educational work of great originality and of the utmost practical value. His experiences and conclusions should be made available to a score of other mission Boards, and some cooperative plan should be devised to ensure that this be done. It is expensive business for each mission to have to acquire in its Own way a rare experience like this, which, through coopera- tion, can be shared with all. In these days we hear a great deal about group thinking. Emphasis placed on this process is emphasis wisely and productively placed. It is the very essence of coopera- tion, thus to make possible the thinking of one complementing or supplementing that of others. The need for the enrichment of mind and comprehensiveness of view which comes from such united study and thought is more imperative just now than ever before. Why should certain denominations, missions, and national groups continue longer to suffer intellectual impoverishment, and fall short of the intellectual mastery of their problem, and fail to afford a real intellectual leadership, through intellectual isolation, due in turn to the failure to cooperate? Thirdly, cooperation on the part of the Churches, as well as of the different nations which are engaged in missionary under- takings, will develop a larger and truer statesmanship for the Kingdom of God. Senator Elihu Root one day remarked to me that we may judge of the stage of advancement of the statesman- ship of a nation by its ability to cooperate with other nations. I sometimes think we might reverse his statement, and say that only through cooperation do we have supplied the conditions which make possible the development of the most advanced type of statesmanship. True it is that some of the finest exhibitions of Christian statescraft are those which have come through the con- certed thinking and planning of the Christians of different com- munions and nationalities in great worthwhile common under- takings. The manner of life of far too many administrators, Board members, and church leaders is not conducive to the development of Christian statesmanship. One has in mind the fact that such a disproportionately large amount of their time and attention is today given to promotive activities. We need to be drawn out of the meshes of our ordinary financial and administrative routine into fellowship with kindred minds of other bodies. Every genuinely cooperative, unselfish enterprise brings us out into a land of larger dimensions. The greatest contribution of the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh, and of its eight related international and interdenominational Commissions, was that it yielded a few missionary statesmen, such as Oldham, Watson, Allegret, Richter, and Cheng Ching Yi. Great is the need right now of augmenting such leadership of the missionary forces of the world. God grant 216 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON that the processes again set at work here at Washington may like- wise result in giving us another and larger group of men and women who will exhibit in the coming years the true marks of Christian statesmanship—vision, comprehension, foresight, rever- ential regard for the past, unselfishness, power to cooperate, and unselfish ability. Again, the missionary message will be wonderfully enriched through the most intimate cooperation of all true believers. In fact, is not genuine cooperation and unity absolutely essential to ensure the giving of full orbed expression to the message of the Church of Christ? Christ has not revealed himself solely or fully through any one nation, race, or communion. No part of man- kind has a monopoly of His unsearchable riches. Every national and denominational tradition has a contribution to make which can enrich the whole Body of Christ. The help of all who bear His name and who have had experience of Him is necessary ade- quately to reveal His excellencies and to communicate His power. For as in Christ who is the Head, there is ‘neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free’—not because He is none of these, but because He is all of them—so the Church—which is His Body—cannot be perfected until “they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it,” that is to say, until the spiritual characteristics of every race and Christian name have been, not submerged, but brought to their individual perfection in a perfect whole. The reason why you and I, as Americans or Canadians or Europeans, or as Methodists or Baptists, value that which is most distinctive to us, is not because it is ours, but because we honestly believe it is the truth. Should we not, therefore, wish to come into such relations to all other Christians, of whatever name or sign, that we may share our priceless possession with them? Every race, every land—small as well as great,—every denomination, not only has the right, but should also have the opportunity, thus to express itself and thus to make its contribution. How shall this be accomplished, save through cooperation or Christian unity? What deep and inspiring spiritual significance this lends to every such cooperative enterprise as the International Missionary Council, the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, and similar bodies in different parts of the world. How much the rising national Churches, to which so many references have been made in the sessions of this Convention, will be profited from entering into such cooperative relations as will keep them in touch with organized Christianity of other lands. Surely every Church will profit from preserving intelligent con- tacts with historical Christianity. Name the century in the life of the Christian religion which does not have its rich contribution to make to every living Church of today. The same is true of credal NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 217 Christianity. Name the creed of Christendom which does not em- body and state truths in terms which will help to buttress and strengthen every Christian communion. Moreover, what cannot each rising and struggling, as well as each strong and expanding Church, gain from the most intimate relation to vital and applied Christianity wherever it is found the world over. In the fifth place, such cooperative relations will not only enrich our message but also, therefore, enrich our lives, enrich our spiritual experience, and wondrously enrich our spiritual fellow- ship. This leads us into one of the most profound mysteries and most transforming truths and processes of the Christian revela- tion. Well may we ponder, and ever and again ponder, the en- riching and unfathomable ideas contained in the words, “Until we all come in the unity of the faith, and (as well as) the knowl- edge of the Son of God unto the perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Thus, through the knowl- edge of one another in the pathway of sacrificial service for one another in the great cooperative and unifying activities of the Kingdom, as well as through the knowledge of the Son of God, we are indeed perfected. How little have we entered into the marvelous power of gen- uine Christian fellowship, we of different Christian names. What an incalculable reinforcement of power will come to each one of us, if we enter into such fellowship. Was it not such a fellowship that Christ created, and has forever made possible? It was such a fellowship that conquered the Roman Empire. It has been such a fellowship which has furnished the spring of power of the ‘Moravians, who have so beautifully and triumphantly illustrated the power of international and inter-racial cooperation. In a meas- ure, Edinburgh yielded such a fellowship. One wonders what might have resulted from that fellowship had it not been for the war. Zinzendorf prayed that he might be baptized into a sense of all conditions, that so he might enter into fellowship with all. May we not reverently, the five thousand of us here from so many Christian bodies, and representing so many lands and races, make the same intercession, and, as we go forth from this place, ever lend ourselves to those attitudes, spiritual exercises, and cooperative policies which will result in our entering into an abundant answer to our united prayers? Again, the apologetic power or influence of the Christian reli- gion will be enormously increased through genuine cooperation and unity. The unity or oneness among His followers down the gen- erations, for which Christ prayed, was not to be regarded as an end in itself, but rather as a means to ensure the great central end of Christian missions, namely, “that the world may believe.” Thus, this is the great, the triumphant apologetic. Wherever and when- 218 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON ever we find the Christian faith failing to sweep the field in triumph, we do well to examine ourselves as to whether one of the chief causes, if not the chief one, may not lie right here. Divi- sions among the Christians—denominational, national, racial—have ever been a stumbling block; but with the recent rapid shrinkage of the world, these divisions have become more serious and intoler- able than ever. In my recent visits to different parts of the Moslem world, I was solemnized and humbled to find that the principal argument the Mohammedans were using against us is that of our divisions. ‘The same is true, when we get to the bottom of it, with reference to the attitude of unbelievers everywhere. To preach the brother- hood of man, and then to stand aloof from one another on the mis- sion field, or at home, or to fail to fraternize or to cooperate, belies our teachings, and creates the impression that Christianity, like other religions, has lofty ideals, but that the practice of its followers or promoters shows that it is impracticable. We must do away with this stumbling block. To this God is unquestionably calling us. If we can forget that we are Americans, Canadians, British, Chi- nese, Dutch, French, Germans, Indians, Japanese, Scandinavians, or that we are Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, Episco- palians, Friends, Methodists, Presbyterians, LLutherans;—in the work of making Christ known to peoples in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or Europe, or of North America, we have gone a great way toward proving to unbelievers who are moved by facts, that the religion of Jesus Christ is the great solvent of the racial and national alienations of the world, and, therefore, is the mightiest force operating among men. The present is the time of times to present this apologetic. In the seventh place, well considered policies and measures and rich experiences in the realm of cooperation will give the mis- sionary cause a fresh power of appeal to men and women of large affairs, of large capacity, and of large influence. We stand in need of just such a power of appeal. We have lost something which in the pre-war days we had in the interdenominational and international Laymen’s Missionary Movement. I am _ reminded that the man to whom God first gave the vision of this movement, and who gave himself with undiscourageable enthusiasm to its realization, was John B. Sleman, one of the most useful laymen of Washington. He told me that the vision came to him when he was attending a great convention of the Student Volunteer Movement in Nashville. Shortly after that he came to discuss the matter with me in my office in New York. I am ashamed to say that I was not more responsive to his vision and plan. I had ac- quired the habit of discouraging, on general principles, the launch- ing of new organizations. Time soon convinced me, however, that NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 219 his vision was God-implanted, and I ever afterward counted it a privilege to collaborate with him. What was it which enabled the Laymen’s Missionary Move- ment to make such a powerful appeal to the imagination and the will of countless leading laymen on both sides of the Atlantic? In the first place, it was the largeness of the task presented. It took the combined programs of all our Churches to make possible such a presentation. In the second place, these men of large vision and large affairs were appealed to by the wholeness of the task. Above all, in the third place, they were impressed by the presentation of the oneness of the task; in other words, it was presented as a colossal, cooperative undertaking which could not be accomplished apart from the united planning and effort of all the Christian forces. This was, and still is, the language which the modern mind, espe- cially of men and women of large views could understand, and it _ never failed in any land to call forth from them a great response. Such persons are accustomed to see and to deal in large dimensions. I think just now of one of the three men of largest affairs in America, if not in the world, a most efficient and helpful lay- man of one of our principal communions. He is admittedly one of the busiest men in the nation. If we had gone to him for one hour of his time, we probably would have failed to get it. We went to him, however, and asked for three full days of his time, in order to think through with us a large plan for constructive cooperation on the part of all of our Christian bodies. That idea and possibility gripped him, and he gave us, without begrudging, the three days. He became so interested by that time, that when we asked him to join us in a five-day gathering for exposing a large body of laymen and clergymen from all over the country to the cooperative plan, he not only came, but likewise brought his wife, and was an invaluable factor in developing the vital con- structive program. Still later, he gave large blocks of his time to advocating the principles underlying the proposed cooperative effort. This is not an isolated case. It could be readily enforced by like striking examples in different countries. To ensure even arresting the attention, still more enlisting the collaboration, of such men we must present to them something really worth while. They do not want to deal with fractions. No sectional appeal will call forth from them a truly great response. But the vastness of the true unity of the sublime undertaking of world-wide missions will draw them like a magnet. As we think of enlisting, as we must enlist if we mean to win out, a large number of the busiest, most important, and most influential laymen of our day, we may well seek to illustrate again the creed of Saint Augustine, “A whole Christ for my salvation, a whole Bible for my staff, a whole church for my fellowship, a whole world for my parish.” 220 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Again, the great powers of the new generation will be en- listed through large programs and plans of cooperation, federa- tion, and unity, whereas a failure at this vital point may lose this generation to our cause. We do well to remind ourselves that we have a new generation to win to the missionary program. They have by no means been won, as I can testify from first-hand con- tacts at home and abroad. At present, our plans do not powerfully appeal to the young men and young women of from twenty to thirty years of age. I have in mind the new generation, not only as we find it in North America, Europe, and Australasia, but also throughout Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa. We must present to them a challenge vast enough to appeal to their imag- ination, dificult and exacting enough to call out their latent en- ergies, absorbing enough to save them from themselves, tragic enough to counteract and overcome the growing habits of luxury, love of ease, pleasure, and softness, and overwhelming enough to drive them to God. Moreover, to win their whole-hearted alle- giance, we must be able to show them that ours is a united task. Their minds are made up that they will not stand for divisive policies and plans. Never has the indispensability and victorious power of united planning and action been so burned into the con- sciousness and so anchored in the convictions of a generation, as in the case of the young men and young women whom we have in view when we speak of the new generation. Their intimate col- laboration with us, and their increasing acceptance of the burden of responsibility for initiative and leadership, are indispensable to us. They have powers to bring to us which we simply must have. I refer to their abounding hopefulness, which alone can adequately counteract the pessimism which still so largely obtains even among Christians. They will bring to us a flood of idealism, for, thank God, many of them are still living on the mountains, and have re- fused to come down into the mists of the valleys in these days of reaction. They will bring to us that priceless power, the power of vision, for this is a distinguishing characteristic of youth. While some old people have the power of vision, is it not true that in nearly every instance the visions which command them were im- parted to them in the days of their youth? This new generation will enormously augment the spirit of adventure in the Christian ‘ Church, and this is supremely desirable, for we are entering upon a period of unexampled warfare. As I have already pointed out, the next half generation bids fair to constitute the most difficult period in the life of the Christian religion. This means warfare. You and I of an older generation stand ready to die fighting in our tracks for the same ideals and the same vision which command so largely the most discerning and unselfish of the new genera- tion; but we will not live long enough to fill in the vision, Our NEW FORCES RELEASED BY COOPERATION 221 years will not be sufficiently numerous to effect those extensive, and still more, those profoundly intensive changes which are essen- tial to the establishment of the new order, wherein righteousness, unselfishness and world-wide brotherhood are to dwell. The new generation, however, have at their disposal the necessary unspent years to fill with living content of reality this vision. And, finally, effective, fruitful, triumphant cooperation is ever accompanied with fresh accessions of spiritual power. The reason is a simple one, but one that we are so prone to forget, namely, that the cooperation we so much desire can never be realized apart from the help which comes from superhuman wisdom, superhu- man love, and superhuman power. Therefore, wherever it is achieved, it is found to be in line with the tides of Divine power. No other great desirable process and result is beset with such diffi- culties. There are the difficulties of isolation—geographical, linguistic, mental; difficulties resulting from narrowness and prej- udice—denominational, national, racial; difficulties due to pride and selfishness—personal, ecclesiastical, as well as that of nation- ality or race; difficulties due to conservatism—inertia, fear, and lack of vision. Moreover, there are unquestioned dangers which attend the development of cooperation between churches and between nations. Wherever new and great energies are liberated, very real dangers are to be found. Chief among these dangers are those due to ignorance, to neglect of sound guiding principles, to lack of clear thinking, to want of forethought or to failure to count the cost, to lack of sufficiently close collaboration, or of continuous vigilance on the part of all concerned. These difficulties and dangers, how- ever, are in a very real sense our salvation. They will inevitably drive us to God, and serve to deepen our acquaintance with Him, and thus lead to the discovery of His ways, His resources, and, therefore, His abundant adequacy. If we who cherish the vision of a coming better day of cooperation and unity, were not con- fronted with situations which we honestly know are too hard for us to cope with, not only singly, but also collectively, we would by no means be so likely to seek His face, and to come to know His wondrous power. Some churches, nations, and races are more in danger than others of relying on their strong human or- ganization, their money power, their brilliant intellectual leader- ship, rather than on the limitless power of God. Cooperation has invariably failed to realize its highest values when it has not rested on the solid ground of a deep spiritual unity. Jesus Christ was familiar with the problem of disunion, lack of concerted effort, and want of love and spiritual solidarity among His professed followers. His solution was strikingly unique. He summoned them to love one another, to serve one another, and thus actually to unite with one another. By His own example and 222 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON teaching He made it forever clear that this wonder work of vital union among those who bear His Name, is the work of God. He took them to an upper room. He washed their feet, and then said, “If I being your Master wash your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.” He thus revealed the irresistible unifying power of mutual, humble service. He took some of them to the Garden. While they failed to watch with him one hour, their memory did not fail them, and later they pondered the depth of the meaning of His agonizing intercession, and of His sacrificial obedience even unto death, which broke down forever the middle wall of partition, and thus made possible the unity of all believers. He sent His disciples later to another room with instructions to tarry until they entered into a corporate experience—an experience where, as a result of having their differences submerged or gath- ered up into an unselfish comprehension, the conditions were real- ized which made possible the outpouring of the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven, and the triumphant progress of the early Christian Church. That through all time there might be no doubt among Christians, and that we might not miss the way, with ref- erence to the deepest secret of achieving not only triumphant co- operation but genuine spiritual unity, He Himself set the example by praying that His followers through all time might be one. Only as we enter into the mind and heart of Christ, by simple reliance upon a Presence and a Power infinitely greater than our own, will we gain the spiritual dynamic essential for the realization of gen- uine cooperation and unity. There are a sufficient number of Christians in this convention, if they would but form the undiscourageable resolution to under- stand each other, to continue and extend the atmosphere of belief, the vision, the fellowship of these never-to-be-forgotten days, and to unite in planning, action, and intercession,—to advance by unbe- lievable leaps and bounds the world-wide missionary enterprise. Let each delegate dedicate himself afresh to the Lord Jesus Christ, and resolve so to act with reference to his fellow Christians of other communions, nations, and races, that if his colleagues here would under his influence do likewise, a great many scattered all through this great assembly might not taste death until they see the King- dom of God come in power. THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME WHY FOREIGN MISSIONS? THE REVEREND ARTHUR J. BROWN, D.D., LL.D., NEW YORK The reasons for promoting the foreign mission enterprise must be strong, else why have several thousand delegates come to this convention? Else why have 28,000 foreign missionaries, the best types of Christian character and culture, left their homes and native lands to go to the distant parts of the earth? Else why did the Christian people of Europe and America last year give $44,448,000 to maintain the missionaries and their work? Such effects must have an adequate cause. But since I have been asked to discuss it, J enumerate a few considerations. This audience, of course, requires no argument on this question. First, because Christ commanded his disciples to preach his Gospel in all the world. I spend no time upon this. For all who count Jesus Christ as Lord, his word is final. “Should we try to convert India?” asked a young clergyman of the Duke of Wellington. “What are your marching orders, sir?” was the stern reply. However, there are other reasons which would be decisive in themselves, even if Christ had not spoken thus. So I add: Second, because a true Christian experience prompts us to seek all men. Christianity is a world faith. Ruskin quotes Southey as declaring that no man was ever yet convinced of any momentous truth without feeling in himself the power as well as the desire of communicating it. Bishop Wilberforce said: “If my faith be false, I ought to change it; whereas, if it be true, I am bound to propagate it.’ We believe our faith to be true. That conviction prompts us to give it to all who do not possess it; and by one of the paradoxes of the Christian life the more religion we give away, the more we have left at home. Propagation is a law of the spir- itual life. The genius of Christianity is expansive. A living organ- ism must grow or die. The church that is not missionary will become atrophied. All virile faith prompts its possessor to seek others. Christ commanded us to go, but we should have had to go, anyway. Our Lord did not add a new duty. He simply voiced the most inspiring and imperative conviction of the regenerated human heart in that categorical imperative: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Obedience is not a grudging duty, but a natural expression of Christian experience. 223 224 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Third, because all men need the Gospel which we possess. It was not given for us alone. God is not a national deity, but the Sovereign and Father of the race. Jesus Christ is “the pro- pitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” We are told that non-Christian peoples have religions of their own; but if Confucianism and Buddhism are not good enough for us, they are not good enough for the Chinese and the Siamese. Judaism is the best non-Christian faith that the world has seen, but the Son of God came to reveal something better. What right have we to regard as a white man’s preserve a faith which was announced for all mankind? If we need Jesus Christ, we may be sure that Asiatics and Africans need Him, for they are our brother men, made in the image of God like ourselves. He who has knowledge that is essential to the welfare of his fellow men is under solemn obligation to convey that knowledge to them. It makes no difference who those men are, or where they live, or whether they are conscious of their need, or how much inconvenience or expense he may incur in reaching them. The fact that he can help them is sufficient reason why he should do so. We have the revelation of God which is potential of a civilization that benefits man, an education that fits him for higher usefulness, a scientific knowledge that enlarges his powers, a medical skill that alleviates his sufferings, and, above all, a relation to Jesus Christ that not only lends new dignity to this earthly life, but prepares one for eternal companionship with God. “Neither is there salvation in any other.” Therefore, we must convey this Gospel to the world. There is no worthy reason for being con- cerned about the salvation of the man next to us which is not equally applicable to the man far away. Our “neighbor” is man everywhere. The only race is the human race. It was Cain the murderer who said that he was not his brother’s keeper. I am sometimes asked: “What becomes of those who die without having heard of Christ?’ I can only reply that God will decide that, but that the practical question for us to consider is: “What will become of us if, knowing Christ, we fail to tell the world about Him. Does the world need the Saviour? The lurid glare of its need is writ large upon the earth. Shall we not enter with new intensity of passion into the agony of spirit which led St. Paul, when he looked out upon the world of his day, to cry: “I am debtor !” Fourth, because Christ can do for all men what He has done for us. Missionary experience of a hundred years has shown that additional chapters in the book of Acts might be written. Trans- formed lives and great social reforms testify to the continued power of the Gospel. A Chinese merchant was converted. How do we know that he was converted? Well, he went home and THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 225 destroyed his scales and bought new ones. Conversion to him meant sixteen ounces to the pound. There are some merchants not so far away as China who need that sort of Gospel. A Sia- mese chief was converted. How do we know that he was con- verted? He had the reputation of being a hard man. Well, he called his neighbors and friends together and told them his de- cision. He put away all his wives and concubines, except his first wife, making provision for their support so that they would not suffer. He paid his debts, surprising his creditors who had never expected to get anything out of him. He asked the pardon of all persons whom he had wronged and his desire to make resti- tution. Then, kneeling down before the assembled company, he solemnly dedicated himself and all that he had to the service of Jesus Christ. It has been demonstrated that many non-Christian peoples needed only the regenerating touch of the spirit of God to awaken to new life. The peoples of China, India and Japan are higher in the scale of civilization than our ancestors were when the first foreign missionary found them. Why should we doubt that Christ can accomplish in them what He has accomplished in us? There is a phrase that was formerly common in missionary circles which I trust that we have abandoned—“poor heathen.” Good taste for- bids such phariseeism in talking about peoples whom we wish to win. Benjamin Kidd declares that there is no scientific ground for regarding one race as inherently superior to others, that the qual- ities which have given preeminence to the white race have been wrought into it by centuries of Christian teaching. Let the same Christian teaching operate upon the non-Christian world and even more remarkable results may be witnessed. We are not sending missionaries to these people because they are our inferiors, but because they are our brethren, bearing the same burdens, meeting the same temptations, weeping under the same bereavements, and needing the same God as ourselves. We know that Christ can help them, because He has helped us. I have seen something of the meaning of the Gospel to them. There rises to my vision a never-to-be-forgotten scene in Chairyung, Korea. We had ar- rived at a late hour, hot and tired and dusty. We wanted to go to bed. But we were told that the Christians had assembled in the little church and were expecting us. So we went over. Being too weary to speak, I asked them to tell me what Christ had brought to them. One by one they eagerly jumped up all over the room. “Forgiveness,” said one. “Joy,” said another. “Strength to meet temptation,” “peace,” “guidance,” “eternal life,” “comfort in sorrow,” added others. Deeply thrilled, I said, “Let us pray.” And lo, the whole company bent prostrate with faces to the floor, 226 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON and all began to pray at once in audible voice, until my heart was stirred, and I felt that the windows of heaven were opened, and that again angels were chanting as they did over the hills of Judea, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” Fifth, because we have passed the age of provincialism and entered the age of cosmopolitanism. Thirty-five years ago my predecessor said that foreign missionary effort was for the peoples who did not touch our lives at any point. He could not say that today. Steam and electricity have brought together the most dis- tant nations. China is nearer to New York than California once was. The inter-relations of Asia and America have become so close that we can no longer be independent of Asiatics, nor can they be independent of us. We must make them better or they will make us worse. Today, as never before since Christ spoke, the field is the world, and we cannot leave any part of it out of our thought. How swiftly, portentously, the non-Christian na- tions are changing! There is something fascinating and yet some- thing appalling in the spectacle. Asia, where the race was born and where the greater part of it still lives; where art and science, literature and philosophy first appeared; where all the great re- ligions arose; where Hebrew sage and prophet spoke; where the Son of Man walked visibly before men; and where stood the great altar of the world on which the Lamb of God laid down his life for men—Asia is awakening from the torpor of ages! “The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm, The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form.” Sixth, because we must Christianize racial relationships. My time is passing and I cannot enlarge upon this. May I simply say that we must have done with the heresy that men can be Chris- tians as individuals and pagans as nations. The time has come for us to say that the law of the jungle shall not determine the policies of governments in their relations with one another; that Christ is for all life and for all the relations of life, and that no man becomes exempt from the law of Christ, when he is elected to a political office. Seventh, because we want to face the whole problem of the Church. No Christian program today is adequate which ignores the major part of the world. No narrow provincial or sectarian undertaking will stir the modern layman. He is planning big things in other spheres of action, and he is ready to plan big things in religion. It is a vast undertaking which confronts us; nothing less than winning the world for Christ. We like it the better because it is vast, because it summons all the strongest and noblest within us to dare and to do for Christ and the world. Foreign missions is the world program of the Church of God, the international mind THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME = 227 upon the highest level, the emancipation of the church from the parochial and provincial into the wide spaces of the Kingdom of God. Such work calls for breadth of mind to comprehend, for statesmanship to plan, for volunteers to go, for money to equip, and for large-hearted men and women at home to sustain the majestic enterprise by sympathies and prayers, as well as by gifts. Eighth, finally and as supplying the power for these mighty tasks, because “He is able.’ These three words of Scripture should fire the soul of every missionary worker. We are not dealing with an impotent Christ, but with the Lord and King of the whole race of men. We do not undertake the task in our own strength. We are too weak for it; but “He is able,” “able to save to the utter- most,’ “able to subdue all things unto Himself,” “able to do ex- ceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’ We face this stupendous undertaking in His name and in His might. Remem- ber that Paul defined the Gospel in terms of power. ‘The Gospel,” he said, “is the power of God,” stupendous, magnificent power. Advancing science, wider knowledge of the universe and its laws, have given us a more and more overwhelming conviction of the mighty power of God. And we are co-workers together with God in giving the Gospel of His Son to every tribe and nation. This is our splendid task; this our inspiring privilege. Therefore, not with doubt, but with confident faith we say in the words of the familiar hymn: “March we forth in the strength of God With the banner of Christ unfurled; That the light of the glorious gospel of truth May shine throughout the world. Fight we the fight with sorrow and sin To set their captives free, That the earth may be filled with the glory of God As the waters cover the sea.” THE ADEQUATE FOREIGN MISSIONARY PROGRAM OF A DENOMINATION THE REVEREND RALPH E. DIFFENDORFER, D.D., NEW YORK It is becoming increasingly clear that any program adopted by any foreign mission Board or any group of Boards in America at the present time must be acceptable, at least in its method, to the great majority of our churches and the people in our churches. The day has passed, when we can adopt resolutions or frame a program in our Boards and expect that mere adoption to mean acceptability in our churches. Those of us who are concerned with the so-called cultivation of the home base are confronted today by what may be called “the rising consciousness of the churches in America.” In order that any program of foreign mission effort 228 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON for a denomination in the future may become an expression of the normal Christian life of our people and our churches, it must be promoted, I think, throughout our denominations, not so much in a series of speeches, as through a series of round-table confer- ences for the interchange of opinion and for the reaction of mind upon mind, until it has been accepted. What I have to say this morning looks toward that method of procedure, and that only. There is time here merely to outline what is in my own mind with reference to the foreign mission situation in the decade ahead of us. First, the foreign mission Boards must lead off in a new study and a continual study of the foreign mission motive. This is fundamental. Our methods of work throughout the world, our approach to our home constituencies, our relationship to our na- tional Christians, in fact, our whole program will depend upon the motive of our foreign mission effort. There was a time when people said that the Gospel must be preached to the whole world, because it was commanded that it should be done, and many people today are moved by this worthy motive. Once, compassion and pity, especially to save people from the wrath to come, was a very compelling motive for the preaching of the gospel to the non- Christian world. There may be some people still who are moved by that motive. There was a time when the desire to be of help or of service to the world was a very compelling motive to many people, and this is true even in our own day. I am sorry to say, however, that, in the words of one of our nationals yesterday, the service motive is sometimes tinged with what he called “an offensive superiority complex,” that makes it difficult for us to proceed in these days with just that kind of motive. Today we must raise for discussion, and have accepted by our people, a motive that rests squarely upon love. Christian love recognizes the worthwhileness, the inherent value of every man throughout the world in his own right and in his own name, not because of any country or any race or of any color, but because through his nostrils there is breathed the breath of the living God. In our preaching Jesus Christ to every creature and to all creation we are releasing forces hitherto unrecognized by the world, forces that can cooperate with us in establishing the world-wide brother- hood of righteousness and love. This is the only motive, too, that will satisfy the leaders who are now arising in the new churches of the non-Christian world, who themselves desire in their own way to help in the work of bringing in a Christian world. Now the chief responsibility for studying these motives, for discussing them with our people and for proclaiming them to our churches rests upon the foreign mission Boards. This duty cannot THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 229 be left to others, and we must proceed in all of our educational and programizing processes with this very fundamental responsi- ility defnitely in mind. In the next place (and answering many people who think that our foreign mission task is finished), the facts as they come to us from the world field show that there are still many unoccupied regions and many millions of people, who have not yet a single witness of Jesus. And as in former days so now, any adequate foreign mission program must take into account these untouched groups. However, in times past, we have programized these un- touched groups almost entirely in terms of geography as “unoccu- pied territory.” While I do not desire to minimize this conception, keeping in mind especially the hinterlands of South America and of the continents of Asia and Africa, yet we should realize that when the geographical frontiers are broken down, it amounts to little if we have agents of Christ in territories throughout the world, where the minds of the people are closed against us, and where whole groups in these so-called open countries have not yet been touched by the gospel message. In other words, our “unoc- cupied territory” has become more than territory. It is untouched groups and non-Christian phases of social living that must be won for Jesus Christ. In the future we will choose our noblest young men and women and send them forth to preach the gospel, and they will go with a conception of the gospel that can be proclaimed to all groups of men and will touch all phases of human living. A third factor, in an adequate foreign mission program for a denomination is very akin to the second. The first two points have been commonly accepted by us; the third one may not be so clear. The time has now come when the foreign mission Boards of North America must make it an avowed part of their program to see to it that our contacts with the non-Christian world are all Christian. By this, I mean that it is the concern of foreign mission Boards that our race relations shall be Christian, and that every vestige of race prejudice in America and throughout the world is eliminated. It is of concern to us to know whether the govern- ments are proceeding in their mandates to exploit the weaker peoples of the world. It is of prime concern to us that in our industrial and political contacts throughout the world the gospel of Tesus shall be predominant and preeminent, and that these con- tacts shall be Christian in every sense of the word. We will not be justified in the future in sending our messengers into the world only to have their messages neutralized by these un-Christian contacts. Therefore, I plead that we shall, from now on, take it as a legitimate, normal part of our foreign mission program in America to insist with all of our power and with all of the strength of our massed forces that the agents of so-called Christiar nations throughout the world shall be Christian indeed. 230 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Furthermore, in the fourth place, we must have the coopera- tion of all the agencies concerned. This note has been sounded many a time in this gathering and I am only mentioning it in passing. We certainly cannot make any plans for the unevangelized groups of the world, and face the last problem which I have just mentioned, that of making all our contacts Christian, unless we approach them in a united way. Just as in all the sessions of this convention, there has been so little of that denominational con- sciousness to mar our unity, so from its close let us go to our various Boards united on every phase of this work, until we make an impact upon the world that is really felt. These co- operative relationships will extend beyond our foreign mission groups. The more I study the task, the more I feel that the pro- gram of foreign missions is interrelated to our home missionary problem. It is certainly intricately related to the work of our educational institutions and to our whole system of religious edu- cation in America. For instance, what a challenge of Christian opportunity there is in our educational institutions today with the presence of hun- dreds, yes, thousands of foreign students? What type of friend- liness do they find? We can handle this problem of friendship, however, if we will only go about it in the right way through the introduction of these students into Christian homes. We ought to be concerned, though, with the teaching they are receiv- ing, the philosophy of life they are getting, and the examples of Christian living with which they are surrounded, for while we are sending our tens and tens as missionaries throughout the world, there go from our American institutions every year, hun- dreds of these well-trained students from Oriental lands, who are in a real sense missionaries of what America has to teach and to say. If, today, I desired to place my finger upon one matter im- portant for the future of foreign missions, I would like to say to the presidents and the deans and the professors of every edu- cational institution in America, that the days for the minimizing of religion and the days for the ridicule of the spiritual life in the class room and on the campus are gone and gone forever! There is no justification at all for our thinking that foreign mis- sions is an unrelated problem that stands off to one side in our denominational life. There is no hope of our making an impact upon the complex and the closely-knit social world of this day, unless it is a definite part of our program that all Christian agencies are linked together in certain, common tasks. The fifth factor in an adequate foreign mission program of a denomination arises out of our relations with the national churches, Some plan must be developed in our basic ecclesiastical THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 23] policies, as well as in our normal foreign mission and social con- tacts, for cooperation with these national churches. There is a chance now for us to swing too far to the left with reference to this matter. It has been an avowed purpose of foreign missions that we should go to the mission fields and help to establish the church as a Christian agency. Now we are coming to realize (and may it increase too!) that we must gradually withdraw ourselves, especially from all administrative positions. The kind of cooperation to which I refer is not the coopera- tion of supervision, nor is it the cooperation of withdrawal. There is as much danger in the latter, as there is in the former. But, a new problem is arising for us to work out in the basic organiza- tion of our church and ecclesiastical life; that is, a plan by which we may cooperate with these rising churches, and link their forces, newly released, with ours, in order that we may bring in the Kingdom of God. This is one of our most difficult program factors, as we think of the organization of what is technically called the “Mis- sion” on the field, and its relation to the groups of national churches. Such a plan of cooperation goes to the very heart of our ecclesiastical life in North America. It is just as important also that the churches upon the mission field should understand this point of view. It is one of the great opportunities of foreign mission agencies, in a world knit together as ours is today, to promote plans for cooperation between the Japanese churches and the Chinese churches and between the Chinese churches and the Indian churches, and between the Indian churches and the African churches and between the African and the European churches and the Latin-American churches. It is a problem which nothing else than a great united movement like an International Christian Council can possibly undertake and solve for us. Those who are studying the great currents of life around the world and especially the great migrations of peoples, are feeling acutely that there are points of contact which only the churches of the non-Christian lands can possibly make. Think of East Africa and the Indian migration; of the problems in Argentina and Uruguay and Chile and other Latin-American countries with ref- erence to Europe, and those of the islands of the South Seas in relation to the Chinese churches and elsewhere. This was brought very forcibly to our attention yesterday when a group talked about using Christian negroes from the West Indies to evangelize the Indian population of Central America. In a sort of maze these relationships rise up before us and demand the greatest states- manship and the most far-sighted policies on our part, as we present to our candidates, our missionaries and our ecclesiastical officers throughout the world this great big world-family concep- 232 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON tion of the Christian churches of the world united in a common task. The last point, which it seems to me is the most important of all for this day, is the need of a very greatly enlarged program of missionary education and of a very greatly enlarged conception of missionary education. Some of us who have been studying these problems for many years feel that our missionary education has come to a crisis in its development and must be seen in per- spective once more, in order that it may be related to these new needs that are now arising in the programizing policies of the Boards. There was a time when missionary education consisted pretty largely in telling people about the land, the people, the government, the history, the early missionaries and the present policies and the outlook for Christian work. Each book had just seven or eight chapters, written uniformly about all the countries. Many of these facts are now the common talk of our leaders and our people, the information being available through many other agencies than our own. We have come now to a place where our great missionary enterprises, especially foreign missions, should be related to these great currents of religious thought that are now running through the world, and those great vital religious interests that are stirring the multitudes of people everywhere and out of which there is a deep longing that a new world will be born. There is a relation between war and foreign missions, and it ‘is for us, the leaders of the foreign missionary enterprise, to interpret that relationship to our people in the biggest missionary education movement that we have ever undertaken. Race relations have a relation to our foreign mission enterprise and it is for us, the most vitally interested group in all this country, to interpret race relations of a Christian sort to the people of America. It is for us to study the problems of economic imperialism, and not to confine the study to some one curtained in some far away office, but bring them out in the open, so that the great mass of public opinion can be brought to bear upon them, in order that we may not have our messages neutralized anywhere in the world by these problems and policies of government. When economic imperialism becomes a policy of any free government, it is the right and duty of such peoples to urge that the policy be so admin- istered as to yield justice and righteousness in these relationships. In the same manner our educational program will relate foreign missions to the exploitation of natural resources of weak peoples for private or corporate gain, and to the spread of modern industry. Miss Burton, last night, proposed that we secure a certain well-trained type of missionaries to deal with these problems, but I cannot see that in a world of international and industrial rela- tionships, we can depend on a small group of missionaries and of THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 233 weak churches upon the field to grapple with this question. There may come a day when you and I will have to be discriminating about the things we buy, using a sort of union label of international significance, in order that we may get right industrial relations throughout the world. Our missionary education must reach out into these new fields, and our immediate problem is to integrate these great living vital issues before the world, with our foreign mission policies and programs. In closing, I think we must go one point further. The foreign mission agencies have the opportunity to interpret the life of God to the world and especially to our people at home, so that He will be to them a missionary God. The God that many of our people worship does not lift them beyond their own confines. The father- hood of God and the brotherhood of man are not vitally related to race problems and industrial conflicts, and to world-wide in- ternational relations. Our God is a comfortable God. To many He is a God of enlightened self-interest. There is no group in America upon whom the responsibility rests, as upon this group of foreign mission students and leaders, to interpret the univer- sality of God and of the provisions of His gospel, and to extend our vision and enlarge our sympathies. It may easily be seen that from my point of view the foreign mission task is far from finished. It will not be finished in the coming decade or quarter of a century. I see in it an enlarging, and ever enlarging program, until the churches of Christ all over the world are united in one common endeavor for the establishing and maintenance of justice, peace and good-will among all the races and nations of men. THE ADEQUATE -FOREIGN MISSIONARY PROGRAM IN A CONGREGATION THE REVEREND S. W. HERMAN, D.D., HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA Since I began to think upon this theme, phrased as it is, one word has haunted me day and night. I speak truthfully. That word has been “adequate.” Most of us have some sort of a pro- gram in our congregations along missionary lines, but when tested by this word “adequate,” we do not feel satisfied with any program which we have been using. An adequate program of foreign missions in the local con- gregation is a theme to challenge our thought and mind today. However we may have evaded the direct issues and thrusts of some of the previous addresses, here there is no chance to dodge. Every last delegate here belongs to some congregation, and we may advisedly ask ourselves at this moment, in relation to this great question, the striking question: 234 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON “What kind of a congregation would my congregation be, If every member were just like me?” The heart-searching quest for each one of us in this hour ought to be in relation to the congregation with which we are identified. Thousands of congregations are represented here in this great convention. They are the units upon which the de- nominational Boards depend for the carrying on of their work. What would be the significance of all that preceding speakers have said and said so marvelously and challengingly, if what they said cannot be referred directly to the congregations involved and re- ceived sympathetically by them. Some one in a heart-searching moment decided to make some sort of an analysis of conditions in his congregation. He tried for one year to determine certain percentages. He discovered that about fifty per cent of his congregation attended services; that about eighty per cent of his congregation came to the communion at least once a year; that about eighteen per cent or less were reg- ular contributors to the budget of current expenses and benevo- lences of the church. | I should like to have this question considered honestly and sincerely and truthfully answered. “What is the percentage of efficiency in my congregation in relation to an adequate program for foreign missions?’ Am I wrong when I say that I believe not ten:per cent of the congregations represented by the Boards here have any adequate program for foreign missions? If it still is true that the most imperative command of our Lord Jesus Christ was to go and teach every creature and baptize them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost—if that is true, then what must be the measurement of our efficiency when this can be safely said? I pause just long enough for each of you to think over your congregation in the light of the knowledge which has fairly de- luged us in these days of this great convention. The past ought not to hold us; the future demands our most careful consideration and attention now. For my remaining period, I desire to state certain things that I believe ought to be in every adequate pro- gram adopted by any congregation of any denomination. In the first place, there must be perfect sympathy and co- operation on the part of a congregation with the great program announced by the denominational boards. We have heard denomi- national Board secretaries declare that the great difficulty has been that congregations, as such, seem to have no interest in studying the whole question from the standpoint of the Board; that the congregations were only too willing, without making any very great effort to enter into an understanding of the principles and methods of the Board, to criticize most bitterly and destructively its efforts to carry on their great work. You have noted the tre- THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 235 mendous sweep which was presented in the viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the Boards of this great question. Was there a heart here unthrilled by such a demanding call to an understanding and an undertaking surpassing all understandings and under- takings of any other department of human activity? The second thing I should like to emphasize is the necessity of making a most constructive effort in every congregation to develop a thorough educational program that will cover the whole field of the foreign missionary enterprise. It would be a very easy thing for any of us to go into an average congregation of any denomination and submit that congregation to an examination upon their fields of activity, the types of work carried on in the fields, the personnel in the fields, the finished product, if you will, of the fields. You could safely predict that in the replies to such an examination ten per cent correct answers would be a liberal esti- mate. The time has come when the church needs to approach this whole question from a constructive educational standpoint. Into every department of the church’s activity must come this educational process along foreign mission lines. There came back to our shores sometime since a young mis- ‘sionary upon his first furlough, his face aglow, his heart eager to tell his story. Six months after he had returned I happened to meet him. The change was pathetic. His eyes seemed dull; his heart seemed broken. This was his explanation: “I can’t be- lieve it, I can’t believe it. The home church seems so utterly indif- ferent, so utterly unmindful of the great work of foreign missions, there is no adequate response, no adequate appreciation of the great privilege of carrying on this, the greatest work that God has given.” I wonder how many of our missionaries on furlough would echo those tragical words of that young missionary who, as he went back to his field, said lie hoped to go back and stay and die and be buried among the people that he loved and that Jesus loved. There is a partial explanation. The explanation comes through the lack of information. We do not rebuke unduly or criticize too severely that vast number of men and women who have not entered into an appreciation of the values in the great literature of our centuries, seeing that they can’t read, never having been instructed. Why should we be unduly severe upon great masses of our Christian folk who have never been taught concerning these great fundamental matters pertaining ‘to the advancing of the Kingdom of God in the hearts of men every- where throughout the world? I should like to suggest that the only adequate program in my congregation must take into consideration the education of the little children, and the boys and the girls, and the men 236 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON and women in every department and organization of the church’s activity. Let us, for a little while, forget this eternal struggle to have the best preachers or the best choir or the best church building or to be most successful in promoting so- cial activities, or this or that or the other thing, and get down to the business of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ at home. Now, to the third point; I do not believe that there can be any adequate missionary program in any local congregation until there has been an adequate stress of the great funda- mental principles which have to do with the conservation of spiritual resources. It seems to me that there must be estab- lished in the congregation a real effort to have folks appreciate their Christian resources, a new appreciation of faith, faith that will lead men, as we heard last night, to die, a new appreciation of the power of prayer, that great lever that will lift the whole world up to God and marvelously lift us out of ourselves to meet the great requirements that God has put upon us—a new appreciation of the values of prayer, a new appreciation of the values of life service. Twenty-eight thousand foreign missionaries are at work, but in one segment of my denomination, in 1917, more than that number of young people responded to the call of their country, willing to lay down their lives at once, if need be, for the sake of what they believed to be great principles. In the whole denomination ten times the number of the whole group of missionaries representing the Christian Church on the foreign lands responded to that call. What is each church doing to challenge our young manhood and young womanhood to give themselves in full-time service to the cause of the Kingdom? I attended a church meeting some time since, at which there was a tendency to boast of their one hundred years of con- gregational history. I said, “Tell me how many men and women have you sent into the Christian ministry and into the service of Christ in your one hundred years?” ‘They said, “Not one.” What a chance there is for a program in that congrega- tion. There needs to be an adequate stress upon the resources of substance that are commanded by the Christian forces of this land. How our hearts thrilled when we learned of that great railroad down through Africa, three hundred million dol- lars expended, two millions of men giving their services for years, mountains lowered, rivers drained, bridges built, to get at three billion dollars’ worth of raw materials in Africa. In Africa one soul is worth more than all material resources. Just one more fact. Each congreation to have an adequate foreign missionary program ought to support a missionary or missionaries, an evangelist or evangelists, a catechist or catechists, a teacher or teachers, a protege or proteges, thus THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 237 linking up in a living way with this great enterprise in the foreign field. What a dignity and sanctity will be given to the work of the congregation when it realizes that it is working at an adequate program and that this program is going on to larger things. Originally the request was made to me, “Will you tell of the experience and ideals of a pastor?’ Let the experience go, but the ideal is this: that the congregation that we are privi- leged to serve shall always be proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, every hour of every day in some part of the world. May I use in closing, the figure of speech somewhat trans- formed as used by Professor Jones last night? J am thinking of the great Son of God, symbolized in this great sun, that Sun of righteousness who shines so magnificently and so gloriously and so savingly everywhere. I am thinking of the moon, that great body that shines with reflected light and lifts with its tremendous power great plateaus of water. I am _ thinking of that great body of foreign missions that shines by the reflected light of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am thinking of this great body of foreign missions, lifting up all of these con- gregations represented here, and all of these Boards, lifting them up out of their narrowness, out of their selfishness, out of their miserliness, out of all the things that bind and con- strict, and churning them into a great passion of love that will send them dashing everywhere throughout the world, until every coast shall be touched, every valley, and every hill shall be inundated with this great passion of love for Jesus Christ and for our fellowmen. I challenge you, members of congregations, to take this living gospel of the living Christ to dying souls by means of all the agencies and instrumentalities in your power lying respondent and potential. THE LAYMAN’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT MR. ROBERT A. DOAN, COLUMBUS, OHIO As laymen we dare not consider the introduction of Christian- ity into foreign countries as a mere business proposition. Vastly more of a selling proposition is involved in foreign missions than in the sale of Sun Maid raisins, Camel cigarettes or Westinghouse electric bulbs. The salesmanship methods used in disposing of these commodities in the crowded areas of the world could be studied with profit by those engaged in foreign missions. But when one is asked to discuss the layman’s responsibility for the 238 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON foreign missionary movement one is compelled to go far deeper than the consideration of advertising methods or the spending of money for propagation purposes. For more than a year I have lived among peoples of various races and nationalities whose only estimate of Christianity is that which they form by observing those who call themselves Christians. Most of these peoples I have visited repeatedly in the past ten years. Their countries are being asked to accept a new religion. They see no reason for accepting a purely foreign doctrine. They will never be induced to embrace Christianity until, if ever, they observe that it is a life and not a mere dogma. I was startled at a banquet of Christian men in India, when one of them remarked in an after-dinner speech in which he was sending a message to Christians in America, “Tell them that what they are, we want to become.” Involuntarily my heart cried, “No, no, not what we are.” Quite in contrast to the complimentary message that earnest Christian would send to you are the words of an Indian quoted at the Glasgow Student Conference in January, 1921. “What be- wilders the alien observer is not the occasional aberrations of the Christian nations, but their habitual conduct and organization; not their failures, but their standard of success; not their omission to live up to right principles, but their insistence that wrong principles are right. Your creed is exalted, but your civilization is a night- mare of envy, hate and uncharitableness. I would forego the former in order to escape the latter.” Honesty compels an approach to this theme from the standpoint of the genuineness or the falsity of our own Christianity. 1. Practicng Christianity at home is more essential than preaching it abroad.—Sending missionaries to other lands is a crazy proposition, unless we admit that the teachings of Christ which they carry have never been literally lived by any nation. We would do well, then, to consider the Christian layman’s duty today as a citizen of his own nation and of the world. Our world today is suffering from too much national sensi- tiveness. Every nation is “touchy.” All of us seem obsessed with the determination to stand on our rights. Nations of power are full of self-conceit. I was in China recently when that nation observed the annual holiday known as “humiliation day.” It was for the purpose of reminding the Chinese of the injustice done them by a nation which thought only of itself. I have just spent three months in India, where many claim that the ruling power considers only its own welfare. A month in the Philippines reveals very clearly the intensity with which some of the citizens claim unjust restraint on the part of the United States. In like manner we might call the roll of nations around the world and discover similar conditions. In the light of the sensitive temper and strain THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME = 239 in which we find the world today, I ask you in shame what influ- ence we may expect to exert as laymen in the foreign mission program of our church, when our own Congress passes an immi- gration law made possible by our false assumption that we have a right to do as we please in otir own country without due considera- tion of others? I was in Japan when that act was passed. It was impossible to explain to the Japanese why an ideal religion of love which had entered the United States with its first settlers had so failed. The program of foreign missions in your church and mine is useless, until Christian laymen rid themselves of a race prejudice which often amounts to hatred. I am not speaking abstractly. I have encountered multiplied instances among men in the United States and abroad who are called Christians who deny all Christ’s teaching about love by their attitude toward foreign people. I do not attempt to discuss the merits of the claims and counterclaims of the various nations. But the spirit back of them all—both on the part of those who claim injustice and on the part of those who may be furnishing the occasion for such a claim— is essentially selfish. The spectacle of the contending nations of today has never been duplicated in history outside of actual war. Our travels in the past year not only reveal this supersensitive condition between nations, but also make clear the intensely selfish attitude between groups within each nation itself. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the failure of the non-cooperation movement in India to see in advance that there are certain irre- concilable elements in the population which will prevent any united movement as long as those differences exist. The world is drunk with a desire for selfish power. There is an almost entire forget- fulness of the rights of others. I tremble and search my own heart again, when Tagore in his arraignment of Western civilization says, “The bartering of your higher aspirations of life for profit and power has been of your own free choice, and I leave you there, at the wreck of your own soul, contemplating your protuberant prosperity . . . The West has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency.” What is our duty? As citizens of the world we must be on the alert that loyalty to our own country does not obscure our belief as Christians that we belong to a common brotherhood. We hear the expression “family of nations” frequently these days, but what a quarrelsome family it is. Every true Christian layman must dedicate his life to the purpose, not of proclaiming that all in the world are brothers, but by living in his own nation as though he believes it. In order to do this we must oppose powerful influences. Some time ago, one of the big newspapers in this country said, “The churches have wisely, we think, interpreted the sayings of 240 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON Christ as ideals for the inspiration and comfort of man, as ideals toward which we strive and hope the race will some day attain. : But the altruism of Christ would have destroyed those who adopted it literally, and its very survival has been conditioned upon its limitation in practice.” Such a statement is a menace and it is untrue. Literal adher- ence to the ideals of Christ may cost life. It has done so in the past, beginning with Jesus Himself. But it did not destroy Chris- tianity. The statement that the survival of Christianity has de- pended upon the limitation of the practice of its ideals is as danger- ous a doctrine as the devil could devise. Our adherence to Christ compels us to accept a world brotherhood regardless of race; other- wise we are not Christians. We must believe that it is possible for such love as Christ taught to prevail in the world today, or we must admit that our Christianity is but another religion of fine phrases which mean nothing in this practical day. Let us not be misguided into believ- ing that in these days of abominable world politics, Christianity 1s too ideal. Let us prove it is not, or die in the attempt. Our participation as laymen in the missionary program of the church is in vain, unless upon every possible occasion we encourage and commend those who stand boldly and courageously against anything of an un-Christian character that would offend another nation. We need, what Dr. Hodgkin calls in his “Christian Revo- lution” a converted nationalism. ‘There is a great encouragement in the increasing boldness of those who believe in the redemption of the world from war by the adoption of ideals that are essen- tially Christian. Our program in the church for foreign missions compels the acceptance of some such position as outlined by Dr. Fosdick in the introduction to Kirby Page’s book on war. He says: “But this I do see clearly: that war is the most colossal and ruinous social sin that afflicts mankind today; that it is utterly and irremediably un-Christian; that the war system means everything which Jesus did not mean; and means nothing that He did mean; that it is a more blatant denial of every Christian doctrine about God and man than all the theoretical atheists on earth could ever devise. What I do see is that quarrels between fundamentalists and liberals, high churchmen and low churchmen, are tithing mint, anise and cummin, if the church does not deal with this supreme moral issue of our time: Christ against War.” Above all else, then, let us as laymen understand that our part in any foreign missionary program of the church is a farcical per- formance, if we deny the ideals of Jesus by our denial in practice of a world brotherhood. We must quickly prove we believe in that idealism, or we shall prove on the other hand, to the non-Christian world at least, that H. L. Mencken was right in his indictment of THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 241 Christianity in the “American Mercury” for November. His con- cluding sentences were these: “Christianity is sick all over this pious land. The Christians have poisoned it. One blast upon a bugle horn and the mob will be ready for the wake.” 2. If our Christianity is worth carrying to China or Japan or India it must be inclusive. The day is rapidly passing, when lay- men may be stirred to any sacrificial depths upon a plea for de- nominational supremacy or rivalry. In the past I have heard secre- taries or missionaries plead for the establishment of work in certain centers with the argument that, if it were not done quickly, some other denomination might enter. Not alone in America, but in other lands have I listened to the arrogant assumption of superior- ity on the part of some denominationalist for his own sect. We laymen will be moved as little by that kind of an appeal as we are by the statement of some partisan that every county seat in America must have a church of our denomination. Such appeals no longer grip. I favor denominational loyalty only when it con- siders itself a part of the whole of Christianity. I could as easily be loyal to Ohio and disloyal to the United States, as I could be a partisan for my own denomination to the exclusion of the greater movement of Christianity. Last summer in Japan I heard a Japa- nese speaking of the work of his own denomination. One reason he gave for its lack of success was that they had too readily given way to other denominations in the observance of Christian comity. So easily does our narrowness spread! I want to be clearly understood at this point. I believe in working through existing organizations, because I have seen the folly of individual or unorganized effort. But I believe laymen as spiritual stockholders in these organizations should have a voice in shaping the way in which our Boards should work. When you make your investment in time or money or influence, you do wrong, if you do not see to it that what you invest goes to enlarge the spirit of Christ in the hearts of men, and not to build a denomina- tion. Where was the influence of the Christian laymen of Canada and the United States, when it became apparent that neither the Boards in those countries nor the Christians in Japan intended to make a united move for the cooperative planning of all Christian work in Tokyo and Yokohama following the earthquake? I wit- nessed that disheartening spectacle in Japan, when those with a vision of unity out of the disaster waited with eagerness, but in vain, for encouragement from the Boards which would make it possible for them to get together. I cannot believe, I do not want to believe, that our theological differences obscured our vision of an expectant Christ, as He waited amid the ruins of those great cities for the beginning of the fulfillment of His prayer that we might all be one. 242 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON So far as I know, not a single union Christian enterprise has emerged from the earthquake. I am pleading for more than organic union, though I believe that must come. I am pleading with every atom of strength I possess that a common faith in Christ be our test of fellowship everywhere in the world. As long as there is a divided church, Christianity must linger on the edges of the distracted, restless masses of the races of the earth. There can be no peace, no surcease of spiritual sorrow and pain, no social deliverance, no redemption of a people for Christ, so long as Christianity hugs to itself the delusion that a house divided against itself can stand. As laymen, we must sia for ourselves and impart to others the new situation in lands where religions other than Christianity prevail. For the first time in any serious way, those whom their own religions have failed to satisfy are making comparisons with Christianity. No delusions about so-called Christian countries any longer exist. All religions, including Christianity, are under scrut- iny. Along with this investigative study comes the demand from other peoples to be allowed to try each religion in their own way. That reasonable request must be heeded by Christianity. Christ must be set free in the lives of Christians in these lands, to whom He is speaking with a startling clearness. Sectarianism must give way to Him. This new situation is saving the faith of many of us in Christian missions. It is the light of a new day which cannot be hidden. We are recognizing as belonging to the nationals many of the prerogatives we have too long egotistically held as our own. Let us form a great world comradeship with the lovers of our Lord everywhere, but let us cease to be dictators. 3. A daring but not a blind faith will be the motivation for the layman’s participation in foreign missions in the days ahead. Just above the horizon of the dawning of a new day in Christian experience, I can see the beginning of an intelligent interest in foreign missions on the part of the laymen of:our churches. It is an interest born of a fuller conception of the commission to “go.” Perhaps it has for its basis a gradual realization that they have borne the name of Christ, while they have fed upon the husks of unworthy ambitions. Not a large group of Christ’s men are seeing clearly as yet, but the awakening has begun. There are certain things which must be heeded by those now interested in the foreign missions enterprise if they would see this mighty dynamic of a layman’s revival properly directed. The foreign missions program must be conducted along broad lines. These laymen will not be interested merely in saving souls from hell. They will insist that the example of Jesus who healed and fed and comforted people on the spot, regardless of their religion or race, be followed. Theirs will be a faith which will be so deeply spiritual that they will dare THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 243 anything, but its foundation will be practicality. They will be interested in bringing men into comradeship with Christ in a real, personal relationship, rather than in securing them as subscribers to a particular interpretation of what Jesus or His Apostles may have said. (I have spent ten years in closely studying foreign missions first-hand and can hardly be accused of speaking hastily or thoughtlessly. ) This breaking of a new day already reveals much for which many hearts are praising God. It is eliminating our conception of all those of other religions as ignorant “heathen.” It is helping us to recognize that they have some light from God which need not be destroyed, in order that the master light may shine in. It is even discovering to us that they are able to reveal to us some spiritual depths which in our religious arrogance we had not seen. I think the laymen will demand that any interpretation of God which is taken to other lands by Christians shall be in line with that expressed years ago by that prophetic missionary to Japan, John H. DeForrest, when he said: “We are learning that the word of God is of no use until it is interpreted, first into the thought of the age, and, second, into the living experience of those who teach it. Any revelation of God is powerless until it is the discovery of man. . . . Whatever in the Bible helps me . . . to see God in the lives of others in all churches— Catholic, Greek, Protestant—in all nations, whatever the color of the people, makes my message great, deepens my sympathies with these peoples of the East, because they are God’s dear children, is to me inspired. Inspiration is intensely personal.” This great brotherhood which the Christian men of the West desire to bring to humanity in all the world is beginning to mani- fest itself in its wider implications. My heart leaped with a spiritual joy, such as I have not often felt, when I read in the newspapers a few days ago of the gift of $1,600,000 by a Christian layman for the re-establishment of the library of the Imperial Uni- versity of Tokyo. I thanked God that a man who professes to follow Christ should contribute of his wealth to enable the youth of Japan to have access to the books of the world. Well does he know that Christianity must bear the investigation of all published knowledge, if it is to endure. He was not deterred from this kindly act by the challenge sent to the missionaries many years ago by the President of this same University in which he said, “If you want to capture Japan for Christ, you must capture this University.” What an example of unprejudiced love that gift was! It was given without restrictions to be administered by intelligent Japanese. No less abandon should be manifest in giving to Christian insti- tutions. The laymen of our churches are bound to be moved by plans that look to the establishment of Christian enterprises that 244 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON shall be controlled and managed and inspired by the nationals. With a daring faith they will follow Christ as He reveals. Himself to these peoples without the hindering confusion of creeds. Foreign missions is experiencing a re-birth; and we may confidently expect an eager, intelligent participation of the laymen with a zeal not manifested when the plan was only that the heathen be saved. What a day it will be when business men will realize that the repre- sentatives they send abroad must be of such high character as to disprove the present conception held of us as selfish, brutal money- grabbers! What a rejoicing there will be in heaven and on earth when, in the Name of Jesus, every humanitarian enterprise in the world will be supported without regard to denominational preferment! Thank God that time is approaching! Universal brotherhood can become a fact only when an international conscience fully rec- ognizes the rights of all. And that day can come only when we have daringly demonstrated Christ’s love by actually loving all mankind as He did. Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, says, “My religion has no geogra- phical limits. I have a living faith in it which will transcend even my love for India herself.” Viscount Shibusawa, a Confucianist, said to me last summer, “My religion does not permit me to re- taliate against the United States by a boycott.” Jesus says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” All of these are mere declara- tions. We are witnessing before our very eyes the attempt of men of various religions to demonstrate their practicality in a world of hate. We must welcome the comparison, though we tremble. I believe I represent here this morning a vast number of Chris- tian laymen whose hearts are burning within them to show their faith by their works. They do believe Christ was sent by God as no other through the ages. They do believe He declared and lived a universal gospel. They do believe He is the world’s only hope and that He must be lived, not taught. “For me to live is Christ.” But, oh, my friends, the daring of their faith demands that the winning of the world shall be attempted only with the winsome personality and love of Jesus of Nazareth. They are not con- cerned with mere theology. They are deeply anxious because the people of the lands which are called Christian have absolutely failed to prove the genuineness of their claim, because of the way in which they have treated others. The laymen will accept the chal- lenge. They believe Christ is supreme. The world constitutes an open court. The deeds of no land may be hidden. The day of trial is here in a world which is desperately, distractingly, feverishly seeking a Saviour. Shall it turn to Confucius, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or Christ? Let those who constitute the rank and file of Christendom answer. May that answer not be a denial of our Lord. —————— THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME) 245 THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WOMAN IN THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK MRS. CHARLES KIRKLAND ROYS, FORMERLY OF CHINA In considering woman’s place in the missionary enterprise our thought may profitably center around four aspects of the subject. First: Is there for woman a peculiar driving power in the missionary .movement? Secondly: What has been woman’s achievement in missionary effort in the past? Thirdly: Are there elements of success in the past which should be con- served in future effort? Lastly: In the adequate foreign program of the church, what place shall be assigned to women? That the missionary enterprise has from the beginning held a compelling interest for women needs no argument. Who should throw themselves wholeheartedly into missions, if not those who owe to Christ their very ability to espouse any cause? The peculiar driving power for women in the mission- ary effort lies in the determination to open up for others the life of freedom, service and endless possibility which Christ has given to them. Consider also certain characteristics with which woman is endowed by nature; her protective, tender instincts which are aroused by accounts of suffering womanhood and unprivileged childhood—needs which only woman in her work for woman could meet; her adventuresome faith which is undaunted by distance or difficulty. Columbus would have had a poor time with his proposed voyage of discovery, had he dealt solely with men. It was a woman who believed it could be done. I ask you to think of woman’s achievement in that far greater ad- venture of the discovery for other women of the fair land of fulness of life and freedom. A brief historic perspective on the emergence of woman into missionary activity reveals certain significant facts: Two months before Carey baptized his first convert in India, the “Boston Female Society For Missionary Purposes” was or- ganized, uniting Congregational and Baptist women. Twenty- five years before Perry’s fleet entered the harbor of Yeddo, and thirty years before the Protestant Episcopal Church sent its first pioneer missionary to Japan, a group of women in Brook- line, Massachusetts, organized and met regularly to pray for Japan and to contribute to its evangelization. In New England the early societies rejoiced in the name “Female Cent Societies,” and of these not a few have existed to celebrate their jubilee. With what consternation the men of the churches watched these doings of the women is an old story. Turning in despera- iton to his elders, one Michigan pastor implored them to see to it that an elder be designated to attend each meeting, lest 246 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON the women be indiscreet enough to offer voluntary prayer. There was no telling what women might pray for, if left to themselves! A Board secretary is on record as having said to his associates, “I can not recommend bringing the women into this work.” Of all these men one courageous soul stands out who staunchly maintained in the face of the other men “the help of pious females must not be spurned.” The economic condition of our country in the early part of the nineteenth century was such that money was difficult to obtain. Outside the spheres of domestic service and dress- making there were no opportunities for women to earn money. The contributions to the missionary society, therefore, came in small amounts, and represented chiefly the profits from sell- ing eggs or butter or rags. No more illuminating illustration of the value of small gifts from many sources can be found than is revealed in the activity of those indefatigable women who went from door to door gathering small sums for the cause. : How eloquent are the records found in the treasurers’ books of that day! Consider that first legacy received by the American Board, which was given by one Sally Thomas, a domestic whose wages never went beyond half a dollar a week, but who left to that Board three hundred and forty-five dollars and eighty-three cents! Or listen to this letter written to the Treasurer of the American Board in 1813: “Bath, New Hampshire August 17, 1813 Dear Sir: Mr, —————————————- will deliver $177. into your hands. The items are as follows: From an obscure female who kept the money for many years for a proper opportunity to bestow it upon a religious object..... $100. From an aged woman in Barnet, Vermont, being the avails of a ; small -dairy’ the. pasty yeatiaeas's Duke lease Glare ka es een 50. From the same being the avails of two superfluous garments.... 10. From the Cent Society in this place, being half their annual sub- SCripten > |v, sis aa acqeleb Aicaletes Dw aioe owe ois pid ae roteioe mee enh Mae hi: Erom a "woman vin sextremes indigencelien sis sick sake cites My own donation, being the sum expended hitherto in ardent spirits in my family, but now totally discontinued........ 5. In recording the gifts of women in these early days it is only fair to make note of the fact that much of the earnings of one at least of the Cent Societies was gained from making false bosoms for the shirts of the theological students in Princeton Seminary. The only pattern the good women of the society had was for a man weighing some two hundred and fifty pounds. In the record of missionary self-sacrifice full credit THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 247 should go to the poor young theologians who bought the false bosoms from the women of the missionary society and suf- fered the inconvenience of ill-fitting collar bands. You will find, if you look through the record of gifts in those early days, that the name of the woman donor is often suppressed, while the name of the transmitting pastor or elder is recorded in full, as for example, “From a female friend of missions per the Rev. John Thomas Green.” There is, therefore, revealed in woman’s early missionary activity a remarkable, far-seeing faith, prevailing prayer, and conspicuous self-denial. Missions held a tremendous appeal for women. Of zeal and devotion there was no lack, but there was sore need of organization and revision of methods. The Civil War called forth from the women of our land a service in hos- pital and barracks and home which developed as no other ex- perience could, an organizing ability hitherto unknown. At the close of the Civil War women carried this newly-acquired ability in cooperation and in systematized effort to the unorgan- ized missionary endeavor. Women who formerly had been content to sit at one end of the family pew and watch their husbands at the other end putting into the collection box the family contribution to the work of the church, had experienced during war years the exhilaration of handling money by them- selves. They now gave themselves to organizing the finances of their own missionary societies and Boards. Those men who viewed with misgiving the activity of women in the beginning were not so stupid after all. Something had indeed been started! The women of the churches were prepared by thirty years of prayer and effort for missions to respond at once to the appeal made in 1834 by an American missionary from China who urged them to organize and undertake the work in non- Christian lands which only women could carry. The denomi- national Boards stoutly resisted this dangerous innovation, and for thirty years or more prevented the organization of women’s Boards. The urge to organize these Boards could not, however, permanently be held in check. Timid women who in small so- cieties had been almost prostrated by the thought of reading aloud a portion of a missionary letter, were so inspired by the necessity of an organization of women to conduct work for women, that a perfect epidemic of woman’s organizations soon occurred. In 1861 the Woman’s Union Missionary: Society in New York, an interdenominational organization, came into being. Other organizations soon followed, and by 1900 nearly every leading denomination had a Woman’s Board. Today there are over forty Woman’s Boards with a combined annual income of over six million dollars. There are an equal number of Woman’s Boards of Home Missions with an annual income 248 THE FOREIGN MISSIONS CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON almost as great. The work of these Boards and the perfection of their organization is well known. The same genius which characterized woman’s efforts in the realm of temperance and suffrage has organized in volunteer service a mighty host of eager, intelligent, purposeful women in community, county, state and nation. No phase of missionary activity is so justly appraised at its full value. Men and women alike are sound in their clear appreciation of it. Consider for a moment the tremendous range of achieve- ment of the woman’s missionary societies in practically all the non-Christian lands of the earth: they hold property; rent build- ings; recruit and educate thousands of evangelists, Sunday School specialists, teachers, editors, doctors and nurses; pro- vide an educational system from kindergarten through college; maintain hospitals; staff nurses’ training schools and medical colleges. In many languages they edit women’s and children’s magazines and publish books. The culmination of the efforts of women is found in the establishment of seven women’s col- leges, founded by the Woman’s Boards of Scotland, England, Canada and the United States. Eighteen Woman's Boards brought to this united effort many diverse methods of organ- ization, but one great aim inspired them all—namely the pur- pose to train a Christian leadership for the women of the Orient. Three million dollars was recently raised in the United States for these colleges under the able leadership of Mrs. Henry W. Peabody. The colleges are growing, enlarging their equipment and capacity; but they are holding absolutely to their Chris- tian purpose for existence. They are Christian to the backbone. Add to this achievement on the foreign field the conspicu- ous success of woman’s work; first, through long years of mis- sionary education in the home churches which now touches even the most remote corner of every State in the Union; and who can contemplate this accomplishment without asking, how is it done? Surely we can with profit ask, as we review the achievement of women, what has been the secret of the effec- tiveness of women in the past? I am confident that the men of the Church wish above all things to conserve the rich herit- age of woman's service for missions. I am equally sure that no adequate missionary program can be carried on, unless certain features of woman’s service in the past be counted among the dynamics of our missionary endeavor. Let me be very explicit. Two facts underlie the conspicu- ous success of woman’s work; first, through long years of in- defatigable effort the women of the churches have built up a system of communication from national Board headquarters down to the most remote individual church. This unbroken continuity of function has been accomplished in a brief half THE PLACE OF FOREIGN MISSIONS IN THE CHURCH AT HOME 249 century. It is so effective in its working that, like Lincoln’s rat-hole, it will bear looking into! Ruthlessly to disrupt by any form of reorganization a system established by such incalculable effort and proved to be of such undeniable efficiency would be little short of madness. The second secret of woman’s success in the past is psycho- logical. Women respond to a definite financial responsibility. They like to raise their own budgets. They enjoy a dual rela- tionship to missions as church members and as members of the woman’s organization. Any missionary program for a church which casts aside this wonder-working system of distinctive financial responsibility of women is doomed to failure. I speak for the immediate future. Personally, I am not at all con- vinced that the remote future may not hold a better plan. For the coming decade, however, I am confident that no adequate missionary program can be built up by the churches which dis- regards these two aspects of the achievements of the past. The logical masculine mind may not follow this form of argument, but it will be a sad day for missions, if the women of the Church come to feel that any form of reorganization has taken from them their distinctive responsibility, and that their task as women is done. In most denominations a new phase of the missionary pro- gram has been reached. In several communions an entire reorganization of the Church Boards has been effected which unites men and women on equal terms in Board membership and on the staff of administrative officers. Women who in the past have shown an invincible spirit of entire consecration, and have done for the churches a monumental service without proper equipment, with inadequate salaries, and devoid of tech- nical training, are now entering a new phase of activity, facing a wider opportunity in the work of missions. At this transi- tional stage, the church may well give its best thought to the subject of the partnership of men and women in this work. There are certain attitudes in the church at large and in Boards in particular, which will ensure success in our common effort; certain others spell unmistakable failure. I am no suffragist, but I can not refrain from emphasizing certain per- fectly clear elements in the situation in our churches today. Have we the courage to face all the far-reaching implications, and to make all the necessary readjustments which are in- volved in this partnership of men and women of which we so glibly speak?