1&T PRINCETON, N. J. ^J Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2060 .L38 1902 Laughlin, J. W. 1858- How missions pay How Missions Pay A Study In the Triumphs of Christianity By J. W. IyAUGHLIN, D.D. Late Superintendent of Missions of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church' Nashville, Tennessee THE CUMBERLAND PRESS 1902 CONTENTS Testimony 5 Introduction 7 I. Individual Character 9 II. Nations in a Day 15 III. The Schoolmaster Abroad 18 IV. Scientists and Pioneers 23 V. Dollars and Cents 30 VI. The Future That Shall Be .... 35 TESTIMONY. I cannot forbear to pay my passing tribute, nay my homage, to missionaries. I have no words to express my admiration of these men. I count it one of the privileges of my life to have seen their work. Henry Drummond. To discountenance a religion which has done so much to promote justice, mercy, freedom, the arts of science, good government and domestic happiness; which has struck off the chains of the slave, mitigated the horrors of war, raised women from servants and playthings into com- panions and friends, is to commit high treason against humanity and civilization. Lord Macaulay. Missionaries deserve a vote of thanks from the commercial world. Robert Moffat. As for the spread of education and the con- sequent raising of the standard of civilization the value of missionary effort has been simply im- measurable. D R - Clark. It is of doubtful expediency, yea a demon- strated disadvantage, to press civilization upon barbarous and savage communities, since their incapacity to assume it makes it a demoralizing force and an overwhelming burden. Prof. Flinders Petrie. 5 6 HOW MISSIONS PA V In my judgment the Christian missionaries have done more real and lasting good to the people of India than all other agencies combined. They have been the salt of the country and the true saviors of the empire. Sir Augustus Rivers Thompson, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. Speaking simply as to matter of experience ^nd observation, I assure you that whatever you may be told to the contrary, the teachings of Christianity among the hundred and sixty mil- lions of civilized, industrious Hindus and Mo- hammedans in India are effecting: changes moral, social and political which for extent and rapidity of effect are far more extraordinary than any- thin? you or your fathers have witnessed in mod- ern Europe. Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Bombay. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and com- merce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies. The mis- sionary inspired by holy zeal p^oes everywhere and by degrees foreign commerce and trade fol- low. M* R - Denby, United States Minister to China. INTRODUCTION. ^^ "|NE hot and dusty summer day, ^3 as tne train on the Mexican Cen " |iyiy| tral wound its way among the 1111111 mountain spurs and over the sandy plains of northern Mexico, I fell into a conversation with a fellow traveler, who quickly asked my business, and as quickly replied, when I told him, that he did not think it was very profitable. I was a missionary and he was a merchant. He had seen but one side of missionary life, and without investigation had concluded that missions do not pay. 1 gave him a few facts which I had gleaned from vari- ous sources and was glad to hear him say that he had not before seen it in that light. He was a twentieth century man. He was wide awake, keen, and accustomed to Does it ask the value of everything he Pfl y ? touched. He asked me what return had been made to the world for all the money and men used in preaching the gospel, in building churches and in 7 8 HOW MISSIONS PA Y establishing schools and hospitals in for- eign fields. It was not a new question. From Job's time down men have asked : "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?" Our age is peculiarly sensitive, however, to the question of profit and loss, and 11 it can be shown that as a result of mis- sion work the sum total of the world's knowledge has been increased, natural science illumined, philology and geog- raphy advanced, commerce and civiliza- tion stimulated, we have gone a long way toward answering the question which the spirit of the times is continually suggest- ing: Do missions really pay? I. INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man." HE noblest thing in the world is Christian character. It is not a product of race, but of grace. It is not a result of good blood, but of divine blood. Mission work is product- ive of magnificent character wherever tried. Ever since the wild man of Gadara was clothed 'and put in his right mind by coming in contact with Jesus, men every- where have been transformed by the same power until the world has been con- strained to say, "Behold what God hath wrought." This is a realm where mathe- matics play no part. No earthly stand- ards can measure results in this sphere. The forces that exalt man's nature are divine. 9 10 HO W MISSIONS PA Y A half century ago a boy was born in the Japanese empire. By some fortunate providence a copy of a Chinese transla- tion of the Bible fell into his hands. Soon a glimpse at a map of the United States gave him a desire to see the new world, but Japanese law forbade emigration and Japanese he was compelled to run away. Push. j^ e stole on board a ship at Shanghai and worked his way to Boston, where he came under the influence of Mr. Joseph Hardy, a Christian philanthropist, who offered to educate him. He entered college and became a Christian. He took Mr. Hardy's name. He finished his col- lege course with honor and went back to Japan to become the first native evan- gelist of his race. He collected money with which to erect the Doshisha, the first great Christian school of the empire. He used to say that he could have been nailed to a literal cross with less suffering than he was compelled to endure while at work upon that school. But by no tempting offer of personal gain could he be induced to turn aside from his course as a mis- sionary, and when he died there were hundreds of young men and women all INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 11 over the empire who testified to the in- fluence which the life of Joseph Hardy Neesima had upon them for good. In China a native preacher has this story to tell of his life for Christ : Soon after his conversion he got a box for a pulpit and began to preach. A mob Chinese gathered, knocked him off the Courage. ^ QXf ^eat \^ m w i t h bamboo rods and threw him over the walls of the city for dead. He revived, went to a brook and washed off the dirt and blood, then went back and began again to preach. The mob again gathered, again beat him with rods, dragged him through the streets and threw him again over the walls for dead. He came to again and knelt down and prayed, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Then he went back and began again to preach. The mob gathered the third time. The police, fearing that they would have to answer for the preacher's life, arrested him and put him into a prison that opened upon a square. Here the mob gathered and yelled and threw stones and tore their hair and cried for his life. The preacher went to the window, put his hand out and 12 HO W MISSIONS PA Y beckoned to them to be quiet ; then, lean- ing his bruised and bleeding face against the prison bars, said : "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." Did any of the old martyrs do any better than that ? Did ever Anglo-Saxon blood show ma- terial for sturdier character than that? In a little rude hut on the banks of the Bangweolo, in the heart of Africa, David Livingstone gave his heroic life back to African God. At the time of his death Devotion. fo e was attended by six black sons of the soil, whom his devotion had won for Christ. They found him in the morning dead. "They were six thousand miles from his native land, and fifteen hun- dred from the coast. The circumstances which surrounded them were enough to embarrass the most expert. The body must be preserved, but there were no means of embalming it. It must be trans- ported to the coast, but there were no carts or wagons', no roads or beasts of burden. What should be done? It re- INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER 13 quired but a moment to decide. In a crude, primitive fashion they prepared the body for transportation by removing the heart and viscera and burying them under a tree ; then it was exposed to the sun for a number of days, and, when reduced to the condition of a mummy, sewed into a covering of canvas and so made ready to be borne between two men on their shoulders. Then these black men of the forest, who had known Livingstone's God, looked to him for direction and started upon the most remarkable funeral march on record. Watch them as for forty weeks they run all manner of risks, now going by some circuitous route to secure a safe passage, now compelled to resort to stratagem to get their precious burden through the country, now forced to fight their foes in order to complete their holy mission. Follow them as they ford rivers, traverse trackless deserts and dare perils from wild beasts and wilder men. On and on, never fainting, never halting, they go, until they lay at the feet of the British consul at Zanzibar, in love and gratitude, all there was left of Scotland's noblest hero, except that buried heart." Has the 14 HO W MISSIONS PA Y world ever seen an exhibition of courage, tenderness, gratitude or devotion which surpassed that? When such results as these are found on mission fields, may we not ask whether we are not justified in doing missionary work at any cost? II. NATIONS IN A DAY. 'Righteousness exalteth a nation: But sin is a reproach to any people.' RANSFORMATIONS no less radical than those mentioned on preceding pages have been seen in entire communities. There is a large and beautiful group of islands in the southern Pacific Ocean', called the Fiji Islands. These number about two hun- dred. Only eight of them are inhabited, and the largest two are only about ninety- miles in length. The inhabitants are a fine race, of fair intelligence, and, accord- ing to the measure of their simple wants, reasonably industrious. Having been left to the undisturbed control of bad influ- ences, they became extremely vile and degraded. Cannibalism was a recognized institution among them and was practiced to a frightful extent. Infanticide was a 15 16 HO W MISSIONS PA Y general custom and the burial alive of the sick was common. Polygamy with all its inseparable evils was established through- out the group. About fifty years ago James Calvert and John Hunt, two men from the Wes- leyan church, began work among these christian islands. The language of the F 'J'* people having never been written, the missionaries had to supply an alphabet and reduce the language to writ- ing, so as to give the people a knowledge of the word of God in their own tongue. In the face of this stupendous difficulty the work was begun. In faith and hope the seed was sown, and the result is a permanent transformation of the people. They have schools with forty thousand children in attendance. They have thirty thousand Christians, with an average at- tendance of one hundred thousand people at public worship. Fifty years ago there was not a Christian in Fiji, now not an avowed heathen can be found. Canni- balism is no more, and other customs of barbarism and cruelty have disappeared. Similar transformations have been wrought in Sierra Leone and Equatorial NA TIONS IN A DAY 17 Africa, in New Zealand and Uganda, in Japan and Siam, in the New Hebrides, Tahiti, Hawaii and Madagascar. China and India have not been converted, but movement in that direction is so striking in its character as to insure the final re- sult. III. THE SCHOOLMASTER, ABROAD. "My people are destroyed for lack of knowl- edge." |T is a delight to consider the edu- cative force of mission work. It has never been the policy of heathen governments to educate the masses ; hence, in lands where mis- sionaries labor, schools are seldom found. Sometimes the spirit of trade leads men to start and maintain for a time institu- tions for qualifying themselves and their sons for business. But such schools are short-lived, and as soon as the present need disappears they collapse. The truest a college and therefore the most abid- in Syria. j n g interest in education is that which, appreciating the value of the gospel and desiring to perpetuate its ben- efits, builds a college to raise up men who can grasp the truths of the Bible and set 18 SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD 19 them forth before the world with power. With this thought in mind the mission- aries of Syria decided to erect the Syrian Protestant College of Beirut. It has a literary department, with dormitories, cabinets, lecture rooms, library and chapel. It has a medical hall, containing medical libraries, lecture rooms, dissect- ing rooms, chemical and pharmaceutical laboratories. It is conducted strictly on evangelical principles and is open to all who comply with its regulations. Every student is made acquainted with the dis- tinctive principles of the gospel and the Bible is one of the text-books through the week in all the classes. The preparatory department was started in 1865, the college proper in 1866. The first class graduated in 1871. At the time the college was established no woman could be heard of who could read. None was considered capable of learning. "Of what use could it be?" they said. "Could she light her husband's pipe any better or bring his slippers any quicker? Educate a woman? You might as well educate u cow." 20 HO W MISSIONS PA Y Now, contrast the city fifty years ago with the city to-day. Then it had a popu- lation of 8,000, to-day the population is 80,000. Then there was not a school, hardly a book, not a printing press, carriage road, glass window, nor a set of European furn- iture, to be seen anywhere. To-day it has the Syrian Protestant College on the west, a second Protestant church on the east, macadamized roads, stage coaches, water supply from a neighboring river, new Oriental houses with modern conven- iences, furniture and books in almost every home. It has four colleges, five female seminaries and ninety-three schools. A similar work has been accomplished by Robert College in Constantinople. It was erected under the direction of Cyrus Hamlin, at a cost of $300,000. It is lo- cated in one of the most important cen- ters of influence in the Old World. Its teaching is based on the Bible and on the perfect freedom of the conscience. It has Beside the its graduates in the army, on Bosporus. tne civil list, in schools, in business, in the professions, in banks and on newspapers, showing they occupy posi- tions of influence throughout the country. SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD 21 Besides these, what shall we say of the Doshisha, established in Japan through the influence of mission money, which has in Many had such happy effect upon Lands Afar. t J le men w ho are high [ n the service of that young giant among the nations of the east ; or of the Girls' Seminary in Ceylon, where Eliza Agnew spent forty-three years training Cey- lonese girls and became known as "the mother of a thousand daughters," not one of whom went through the' entire course of study without becoming a Christian ; or of the work begun by Alexander Duff in India, where it was said that a cow had higher rank and more rights than a woman, but where to-day one hundred thousand women and girls are under in- struction ; or of the splendid work done in Persia by Fidelia Fiske, who for six- teen years labored among the degraded women in the "land of Esther," seeking to reproduce the system of instruction which at Holyoke, Mass., made Mary Lyon's school for girls so famous ; or of the hundreds of other schools in Japan, in China, in India, in Africa ; of industrial institutions, of training schools, of hos- 22 HO W MISSIONS PA Y pitals and dispensaries where boys and girls, men and women are taught to read and write, to work, to care for their bodies and to appreciate the environments of a civilized life? Of the ten thousand mis- sionaries on the foreign field to-day every one is an educator, and there are a million pupils under instruction. Is it nothing to stimulate the mind of a boy? Is it noth- ing to give a man the power of thought, to open for him a new world of mental activity and send his soul on reaches toward the infinite ? Let him answer who in ignorance and stupidity says that mis- sions do not pay. IV. SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS. "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . Who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy." ^^ tO ME of the most important ^^| modern discoveries in the field rcjgwgd of science have been made by sSI? missionaries. There is a good deal of talk about philology, or the com- parative study of languages, in these days. It has been called "the search-light of the sciences." It is well to remember that this science was born in the hut of a mis- sionary. William Carey, the pioneer of modern missions, was not only a student of the Bible and of nature ; he was also a stu- dent of languages. He prepared numer- ous philological works, dictionaries and grammars, and became a world-wide au- 23 24 HO W MISSIONS PA Y thority in Oriental languages. Not only by Mr. Carey have such services been rendered, but the work of scores of mis- sionaries in India 1 , Africa and other coun- tries has been turned toward the advance- ment of scientific research. Zoology, bot- any have been enriched by the work of missionaries, while commerce and civ- ilization have been so notoriously guided in their extension by the information re- ceived from the emissaries of the Cross that the pages of history are blank to the man who scoffs at their work. Moffat Beside ah and Livingstone in Africa, Waters. Morrison in China, Judson in Burmah, Titus Coan in the Hawaiian islands, have all made valuable contribu- tions to science. It was Titus Coan who first gave us a knowledge of the animals of Patagonia. It was O. H. Gulick who first studied the volcanoes of the Sand- wich Islands. It was Samuel Parker who first observed for us the hairy seal, the salmon, the rock cod, and other land and water animals of our own country west of the Rocky Mountains. It was a mis- sionary who first exhumed the buried mysteries of Babylon and flung a new in- SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 25 tercst over the book of Daniel. It was a missionary who rolled back the tide of twenty-two hundred years and reproduced the times and the trials of the Greek war- riors. It was a missionary who first dis- covered the quarries from which came the blocks for Nimrod's palace. It was a missionary who found out how Baalbec was built and how the Pyramids arose from the desert sands. It was a mission- ary who rebuilt on paper the reservoirs oi Carthage, retunneled the subterranean magazines of Tripoli and thus reflected a new light upon the aqueducts of Rome. It was a missionary who gave us the first reliable map of China. It was a mission- ary who wrote the best book in any lan- guage on Palestine and thus flung the spell of a new enchantment over the study of Bible lands. Those were missionaries who introduced the reading public into the frozen regions of Greenland; who opened to the world the doors of For- mosa, Corea, New Zealand, Raratonga, Tierra del Fuego ; who discovered the Hittite inscriptions, the Stele of Mesha, and the Nestorian monument. Their work is acknowledged by all the leading scien- 26 HO W MISSIONS PA Y tific societies in the world, among them the American Oriental Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, the International Ex- ploration Society and the Oriental Topo- graphical Corps. Missionaries have care- fully collected and faithfully transmitted to these societies knowledge which it would have cost millions of dollars to se- cure in any other way. They have not gone forth as professional scientists, but being keenly alive to the beauties and wonders of nature they have discovered facts and witnessed phenomena never be- fore revealed to enlightened hearts and minds. The contribution which David Living- stone, alone, made to geography is mar- velous. He traveled twenty-nine thou- sand miles in Africa and added to the known world about one million square miles. He discovered the five lakes of central Africa and made known the won- derful Victoria Falls. He was the first He Made European to travel the en- New Maps. t j re length of Lake Tangan- yika and to give the world its true ori- entation. Lie remade the map of Africa and swung the Mountains of the Moon SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 27 across the country the other way. His discoveries were never mere happy guesses or vague descriptions from the accounts of the natives. Each spot was determined with the utmost precision, though at the time his head might be giddy from pain and his body burned with fever. Dr. W. M. Thomson, in his "The Land and the Book," shows himself to be with- out a peer in the variety of his contri- butions to the geography of Syria and Palestine. The Bibliotheca Sacra says of his work: "If the Syrian Mission had produced no other fruit, the churches which have supported it would have re- The " Fifth ceived ample return for Gospel" Read. a jj t h e y j iave expended. It is an interesting description of the mountains and valleys, cities and rivers of Bible lands. It makes real the stories of the Jordan, of Canaan, of Sinai, of Egypt and of Sodom, by adding to our knowl- edge of the topography and geography of the Holy Land." What is more picturesque than Marcus Whitman as he stands, dressed in his buffalo robe, fresh from the Rocky Moun- 28 HO W MISSIONS PA Y tains, in the presence of Daniel Webster, pleading for that marvelously productive country on the Pacific slope — Washing- ton and Oregon ? Mr. Whitman and Rev. Henry Spalding, with their wives, were the first white people that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains. There these mis- sionaries discovered a well-planned scheme to secure this valuable region for Great Britain, not only by emigration, but also by creating the impression that wagons could not possibly cross the mountains from the east to the Columbia river. It was in the autumn of 1842 that these missionaries were sitting at a table He saved the at Fort Walla Walla when a West. messenger announced that some British emigrants had arrived. Toasts were drunk, and one of the guests said, "Now let the Americans whistle. The country is ours." Dr. Whitman ex- cused himself from the company, and, after some hurried preparation, donned his buffalo robe and started to cross the continent in midwinter, risking cold, star- vation and hostile Indians to save Oregon for this country. He reached Washing- ton in the spring, frostbitten and ex- SCIENTISTS AND PIONEERS 29 hausted. He called upon Daniel Web- ster 1 , Secretary of State, and told his story. The secretary treated him with perfect indifference and informed him that he was about to exchange that worthless territory for some valuable cod-fishery concessions in Newfoundland. The in- defatigable missionary then turned to President Tyler and told the same story. The President said, "Mr. Whitman, since you are a missionary I will believe you, and if you will take your emigrants over the mountains, the trade shall not be con- summated." A few months later Mr. Whitman started with one thousand emi- grants, whom he led safely, after months of travel and toil, pain and hardship, over Whitman pass into the Willamette Val- ley, and that magnificent stretch of terri- tory comprising Washington and Oregon was saved to our republic by the patriotic energy and enterprise of a missionary. V. DOLLARS AND CENTS. "What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?" EVERY business man should be in- terested in missions because of their relation to commerce. One cannot do business without capi- tal, capital cannot be obtained without se- curity, and security cannot be given in an uncivilized, unsettled state of society. The commercial value of missions is abun- dantly illustrated by their effect upon the Sandwich Islands. The history of these islands shows that fifty years ago they had no commercial standing whatever. Protestant work was begun in 1819, and Your Money a million dollars was used Back. j n evangelizing the peo- ple. To-day they are a part of the United States and have an annual trade with a 30 DOLLARS AND CENTS 31 net profit of twice the cost of their evan- gelization. Before Christianity trans- formed the Fijians, the commerce of their islands was nothing. To-day their trade amounts annually to over a million dol- lars. Samoa was positively shunned thirty years ago by the nations of the world. To-day the people are nominally Christian and the commerce of the islands is sufficient to tempt Germany, United States and Great Britain to seek its con- trol by intrigue. For every dollar spent in mission work the commercial world re- ceives forty in return. Before Christian- ity made any progress among the Dakota Indians it required $120 a head to support them. After missionaries went among them and began to exemplify the practi- cal workings of the Christian religion it cost the government only $7.20 a head to support them. Bishop Fowler says he saw a Digger Indian get his breakfast one morning in the Yosemite Valley, under the inspiring influences of that sublime scenery, out of an ant's nest, with a sharp stick for a fork. His breakfast cost him nothing, and his dry goods bill for a whole year would 32 HO W MISSIONS PA Y not exceed ten cents. What sale could we get for our surplus products among such consumers? Suppose we had a sur- plus of ready-made clothing. Could we Christianize- ship such products to the Civilize. savages? Not at all. Be- fore we send tailors and milliners we must send the missionary. You cannot civilize a man by compelling him to wear civilized clothing. You cannot civilize by beginning on the outside. You must be- gin by planting the civilizing force on the inside. Whenever the grace of God touches the heart the whole man wakes up. Every instinct of progress is stirred and a new being is born. The first want created in the savage heart when he be- comes a Christian is for clothing with which to cover his nakedness. When he gets a shirt and a pair of duck pants on he can no longer squat on the ground, but seated on a three-legged stool he feels raised a thousand miles above his former self. Presently his wife wants a bonnet, a pair of shoes, a dress, some gloves and ribbons. Then the children want pictures and books. They will work and trade ; DOLLARS AND CENTS 33 you can buy and sell; and that means commerce. The people of Oriental lands are en- tirely satisfied with the customs of their ancestors. When left to themselves they aspire to nothing better. No contact with western civilization has ever roused them from their apathy. It is only when the mind and heart are warmed into life by the gospel truth that they awake and be- gin to want something new. It has been said that if trade relations could be es- tablished with barbarous and semi-bar- barous nations so as to introduce them to civilized life it would civilize and enrich them. This was tried about twenty-five years ago among the Zulus of Africa. Plows and wagons and oxen were shipped to them with a view of civilizing them. The result was that the Christian Zulus adopted the new method of cultivating the soil and made great progress in the art of agriculture. But the heathen Zulus harnessed their women to the plows and while their wives were plowing the soil they sat down and ate up the oxen. Peo- ple appreciate the conveniences of mod- ern civilization only when the heart and 34 HO W MISSIONS PA Y life have been touched by Christianity. The great civilizing influence goes on be- fore, embodied in the missionary ; after him comes commerce in the form of plows and harrows, picks and shovels, wagons and harness, clocks and carpets, knives and forks, dishes, axes, books, maps, pic- tures, windows, chairs, telephones, bicy- cles, railroads, and ten thousand other things which go to make up civilized life. The commercial value of any nation is determined bv the degree of Christian civilization it enjoys. The annual busi- ness of England is $100 for every person in the kingdom ; of the United States, $75; of France, $50; of Japan, $15; of China, $4; of Africa, $2.50. When we shall have Christianized China and Africa, with all the islands of the sea, what new markets will have been opened and what millions will have been added to the com- merce of the world ! VI. THE FUTURE THAT SHALL BE. "This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man." THESE triumphs which have been achieved through missionary ac- tivities lead one very naturally to remark upon the wide sweep which the Church takes in its evangelis- tic efforts. There is nothing narrow in the conception which it has of the work to be done. It touches every department of life. By its influence the springs of human activity are affected in every di- rection. The conception the world has had of the Church and its relation to hu- manity has always been narrow. A casual glance at the New Testament shows that in the mind of Christ the king- aii Kingdoms dom of which he speaks Christ's. is the lifCj and the church is the manifestation of that life to the world. "In him was life ; and the life was 35 36 HO W MISSIONS PA Y the light of men." He was "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Is there any- thing narrow about that? Anything contracted or small? It is as wide as human heart-beats and touches every- thing that touches the interest of man- kind. "The kingdoms of this world" shall "become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." Not the temporal and earthly kingdoms only ; not those alone of England and of Irfdia, but the king- doms of science and commerce, of edu- cation and wealth, of agriculture and in- dustry, of politics and music. Kingdoms in which you and I may become kings and queens and potentates. Had the Church grasped that idea a thousand years ago, says Dr. Strong, her history would have been differently written, her victo- ries more complete, her triumphs more marked. And yet 1 have not one pulse of sympathy for those who cry out against the successes achieved or depreciate the measures employed. If the Church has not saved the world, she has at least kept it from rotting. If she has not been its full salvation, she has been the salt whose FUTURE THAT SHALL BE 37 saving power has been vast and precious. And when we remember how small a part of her possible force she has been able to use and in how narrow a sphere her in- a Great fluence has been exerted, how Harvest. s h e j ias k een hindered and crippled by our mistaken notions, there is kindled within us a hope that when she rises to the true conception of her mis- sion, availing herself of the forces at her command, she will mightily hasten the day of Christ's enthronement over all the world. Missions do pay. They are grandly triumphant. They are heaven-ordained, and through them the world will ulti- mately be brought to the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ. A great opportunity is be- fore us. The instrumentality is within our hands. The command has already been given. Who is there to answer nay? Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01234 6773