liiiuHiiiiiiuHniiununiiiuiiiHiiiiuiiiiii!!;: "^ PRINCETON, N. J. ^ f> Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2060 .G7 1911 ^ Goucher, John Franklin, 1845 -1922. Growth of the missionary '% bclibereb before ^pracuffe ®[nifaer£fitp \ >. ^^^/cIl SEUj^"' GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT Wo. JOHN F. GOUCHER NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM Copyright, 1911. by EATON & MAINS CONTENTS PAGE Preface 5 I. The Impossible 9 II. The Improbable 45 III. The Imperative 81 IV. The Indispensable 119 V. The Inevitable 163 PEEFACE Eew men are as able and as qualified by travel and personal observation to discuss the mission fields of the world as Dr. Goucher, who delivered the last lectures of the E^athan Graves Founda- tion at Syracuse University. His clear, lucid style and convincing logic, and his absorbing in- terest in missions, invest these lectures with unusual interest and value to all who wish to study the subject of missions in its philosophical, its broadest, and its practical aspects. His discussion of China is at a time when that vast empire is awakening to Western thought and beginning earnestly to seek it, and also at a time when Western nations are commencing to appre- ciate that remarkable people. No people have contributed so much to their awakening as the missionaries of our own and other churches. Fifty years of sowing is being rewarded with clearly apparent verdure and promise of abundant grain. Along with appeals of salvation have been in- structions and examples in the best forms of our civilization. Schools and hospitals, with sanita- tion and domestic purity and a new order of com- munity life, have been the peculiar, as for many 5 6 PREFACE years they were the exclusive, offerings of the missionaries to a people that left all physical con- ditions to blind fate and superstition. Young men and women are now seeking our schools by hundreds with an eagerness seldom seen in our own country. They surround you and anxiously inquire how they may reach America and have the benefits of our schools, and, returning, serve their own country. The leading men of China are recognizing the value of our mission work to Chinese citizenship. The influential classes are beginning to send their sons to our missionary schools. Their daughters are found in the schools of the Women's Society. The missionaries have opened the highways of commerce and are creating the demands for the products of civilization. They have introduced elevating practices and uses of the domestic arts — their houses lighted with kerosene, their habits of reading and social intercourse, object lessons to Chinamen. Little kerosene lamps from our country are burning with bright flames in hun- dreds of thousands of humble country and village homes where men and women sat in darkness and shuddered at their fears and gloomy thoughts, or were abandoned to vile and degrading habits. The missionaries have awakened in the minds of the young a desire for learning. Buddha no longer appeals with the old power of superstition PREFACE 7 to tke intelligent young men and women who even come indirectly under the influence of Chris- tian missions. They seek the truth in religion and the knowledge of the sciences and the arts. They are the equal in natural ability and apti- tudes of our best young people; in stature of striking appearance. They impress you as of capacity that waits development by Christian learning into the foremost ability and achieve- ments of the world. It has been a mighty work for our missionaries to counteract the perverting influences of much of godless commercialism in the persons of corrupt and profane men known to the Chinese as Chris- tians but known, to the missionaries as more wicked than the Chinese; to withstand the in- justice of governmental practices of Western na- tions; to resist the inferences from the drunken- ness and licentiousness of soldiers and sailors; to explain the backslidings of some of their own numbers, though happily of rare instances, and to make a positive and convincing advance into the dense ranks of superstition and capture by the forces of the kingdom of peace, and of purity, the strongholds of darkness and sin. What could not have been done had every secidar instrumentality and enterprise been as Christian as its name, instead of giving the lie and a black slander to the character of the pure 8 PREFACE Christianity by which these missionaries were seeking to convince and save China and India! This has been an appalling obstruction in all the missionary work. If Dr. Goucher's lectures awaken the deep and appreciative interest in those who are so fortu- nate as to read them that they did in the minds of those who heard them at the University, they will serve their purpose in far-widening circles of influence and become a positive force in the salvation of the mighty Orient. James R. Day. Syracuse University, February 3, 1911. I THE IMPOSSIBLE With God nothing shall be impossible. — Luke. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible unto you. — Matthew. 10 THE IMPOSSIBLE "Christ alone can save this world, but Christ can't save this world, alone." These two proposi- tions contain the philosophy of Christian mis- sions, and the growth in our missionary concept is measured by the clearness with which we per- ceive their practical import. Those who have concentrated attention upon the difiSculties involved, and considered the problem of the world's evangelization but super- ficially, pronounced its accomplishment impos- sible. Those who have studied the problem more thoroughly are persuaded that the varied, inher- ent, articulated, and obstinate conditions in- trenched in the present order of things make its solution improbable, unless God brings to bear upon it the subtle, persistent, inclusive resources of divine power, directed by divine wisdom and inspired by divine love. That Christ has limited himself in the solution of this problem to the cooperation of human agents accounts for the slowness of the process, but makes our cooperation Imperative. That Christ has assumed the world's salvation as his 11 12 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT special mission makes his relation to it Indispen- sable, and is the guarantee that the complete solu- tion of the problem is Inevitable. In all our thinking we should keep well to the fore these two fundamental facts: (1) The prob- lem is God's — not forced upon him, but under- taken by him ^'according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" ; and (2) in the solution of this problem of human salvation God has limited himself to human co- operation. There is no case on record where God has con- verted a human soul without the precedent co- operation of some other human soul. ^Notice the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. He was an excep- tional man, living in an exceptional age, to be prepared for an exceptional work, and with him, if anywhere, we might expect an exceptional method. But there was no waiving of this essen- tial condition, though adherence to it required that Christ should make two personal appear- ances, one to convict Saul, the subject to be con- verted, and the other, a few days later, to com- mission and persuade Ananias to cooperate with him as the required human agent. Saul was on the road to Damascus, with letters authorizing him, ^'If he found any that were of the Way," to "bring them bound to Jerusalem." Suddenly he was smitten to the earth by a great THE IMPOSSIBLE 13 light, and ^^heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" He "was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision," and cried, "Who art thou. Lord?" "What wilt thou have me to do?" And the Lord said to him, "Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." He went into Damascus, and "was three days without sight, and did neither eat nor drink," while he waited for further instructions. The Lord did his work thoroughly with Saul. He both prepared him for and showed him the method of his liberation ; but in order to complete his conversion the cooperation of a human agent was necessary, and the Lord appeared in a vision to a certain disci^^le in Damascus, named Ana- nias, and told him he had Saul in that city, under personal instruction, indicated the street and house where he would find him, and assured him that Saul's attitude of mind and dominating pur- pose were radically changed, and that he had in- formed him by a vision of the coming and min- istry of his disciple. Could anything have been more considerate of human weakness ? Nevertheless, Ananias pleaded fear of Saul, and attempted to instruct the Lord with some gossip several days old about Saul's authority from the chief priests, and his purpose in starting to Damascus. The Lord, with great 14 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT condescension, gave Ananias an extra sunrise bulletin, setting forth Saul's present attitude, and again commanded him to go, and encouraged him to do so bj assuring him of the high esteem in which he held Saul, as "a chosen vessel," and the great service he was to render the church, saying, ^'I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake." It was not by human might nor power that the results were to be realized, but by the Spirit of God, who sought a willing and unobstructed human channel through which to communicate his grace. The ministry required of Ananias was so simple that a child who could speak might have performed it. He "entered into the house; and laying his hands on him, said. Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest, hath sent me that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Spirit." Human indifference may restrain the manifestation of divine energy, for God makes the miracle of infinite grace depend upon the ministry of human weakness, that he and man may be laborers together, and, consequen- tially, joint heirs in the outcome of the world's salvation. Again, when the eunuch was returning from Jerusalem, as recorded in the eighth chapter of Acts, he was deeply stirred while reading from THE IMPOSSIBLE 15 Isaiah the prophet. In his intense desire to understand the prophecy he was reading aloud, when Philip said, ^'Understandest thou what thou readest?" Philip's inquiry arrested the eunuch's attention, and seeing a Jew quickened his desire into expectancy, so he besought Philip to ride with him, and expound the mysterious scripture. The Jews who knew that that scripture referred to Jesus were very few; that Philip, who was one of the few who had attained to that knowl- edge, should be in that desert place at just that moment was not a thing of chance. He who gave the revelation, and had preserved it, had also pro- vided for the exposition which was necessary to the eunuch's conversion. Mark the divine schedule and exact conjunc- tion by which this was realized. Philip was in Samaria. A great work of grace was in progress, and apparently only well under way, when the angel of the Lord said, "Arise, and go at noon unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza; the same is desert." How strange that command must have seemed to Philip, as he saw God's cause prospering about him, with such demonstrations of power as led him to expect larger triumphs ! But "he arose and went" promptly. The eunuch, who had been worship- ing in Jerusalem, was returning to his home in the capital city of Queen Candace. The road 16 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT was long, but the command had been so timed that Philip's step, accelerated by the expectancy of eager obedience, and the eunuch's chariot, re- tarded by his deep meditation upon the Scrip- tures, brought them face to face just when the eunuch's mental processes had recognized diffi- culties which were inexplicable without assist- ance, and which he was anxious to have explained. Note further, in their joint progress along the way which was desert, they came to water just when the eunuch was ready for, and desirous of, baptism. While the realization of the divine purpose is limited to human cooperation, the schedules of Divine Providence arrange for efficient conjunc- tions with absolute exactness. God's invariable method is to secure the progress of his kingdom through the cooperation of human agents. Blessed is that person whose prompt obedience keeps him on schedule time with God's gracious purpose. Such obedience requires of the agent a vital faith in God; that is, belief in his teachings and reliance upon his promises. Whoever has such faith finds nothing impossible in his appointed path, for he becomes a part of God's plan, scheduled through obedience, with silent, prear- ranged, irresistible forces and influences, which compel nations and cults, physical conditions and THE IMPOSSIBLE 17 human peculiarities to serve as willing or uncon- scious allies. Every mission field presents striking examples of how the apparently impossible aligns itself re- sponsive to the purpose of God when a willing agent interprets that purpose through personal obedience. By way of illustration, let us con- sider somewhat in detail the opening of Protes- tant mission work in China, and note the certainty of success when Divine Providence finds oppor- tunity through human faithfulness. January 5, 1782, at Puller's Green, E'orth- umberland, England, a babe was born, and named Eobert Morrison. His father was a Scotchman, his mother a !N"orthumbrian, and a loving wel- come awaited his expected advent as the youngest of eight children into their humble Christian home. His parents moved in 1785 to Xewcastle-on- Tyne, where his childhood was spent. There was nothing extraordinary in his early life; but, on the contrary, it is recorded of him that "for some time he showed slowness in learning." In that Morrison was like Sir Isaac Newton, Adam Clarke, Goldsmith, Chalmers, Disraeli, and many others. He left school at the age of fourteen, and went into his father's shop to learn the trade of last- making, where also, in his youth, worked George 18 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT Stephenson, who, after a struggle of thirty years, invented the steam engine. In 1Y98, at the age of sixteen, Morrison was converted. That was something extraordinary. It was not extraordinary that he should be con- verted, but conversion is always extra-ordinary. This wrought a radical change in Robert's whole life. It quickened his active powers, awakened his dormant powers, and gave high purpose to all that he did. He consulted with the wisest friend many a youth had ever had, namely, his pastor, who gave him sympathy and direction, and he who before his conversion had been averse to study developed a passion to acquire knowl- edge. He moved his bed to his workshop, where he often pursued his studies until one or two o'clock in the morning. He kept his book on his bench beside him while he worked during the day, eagerly conning hard tasks which he recited to his pastor in the evening. As a member of a praying band, he exercised the privilege and realized the power of interces- sory prayer. He expressed and strengthened his Christian sympathy by regularly visiting the sick, and giving a part of his scanty earnings for their relief. Friday, June 19, 1801, he wrote in his diary, ^ "This day I entered with Mr. Laidler to learn Latin." That is a brief statement of an impor- THE IMPOSSIBLE 19 tant event, which bulked large as a determining factor in his future life. In 1802, at twenty years of age, after a per- sonal struggle, and notwithstanding the serioils opposition of his parents, young Morrison offered himself for the work of the ministry, and soon after left home to attend Haxton Academy, and in 1803, after the death of his mother, went to London to further his preparation. During one of his frequent visits to the British Museum he found some queer old Chinese books. He did not happen upon them; there is no room for happenings, nor luck, nor chance, nor any such thing in a life quadrated with the divine purpose. ^'The steps of a good man" — that is, the details of his progress — ^'the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way." He found those Chinese books, and those Chinese books found Morrison, just at the time in his life when they could have the farthest reach of ministry to him, and through him. He was greatly interested in the strange char- acters, so much so that he borrowed from the Eoyal Society a manuscript volume which was an attempt at a Latin-Chinese Dictionary. This was cumbersome, incomplete, and very inaccurate, but it had a peculiar fascination and suggestiveness for young Morrison, who was diligently pursuing his study of Latin, and it became an important 20 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT factor in his lifework. Its quaintness arrested his attention, its mysteries teased his acquisitiveness, its difficulties challenged his persistence. He not only studied it with gi-eat care, but he found a Chiijese in London from whom he learned to write the Chinese characters, and copied the dictionary with great labor. Morrison persistently exercised the grace of prayer, had an insatiable hunger for learning, a passion to save souls, and a peculiarly affectionate nature which coveted companionship, but at fre- quent intervals the moral desolation of the Christ- less nations brought into the horizon of his think- ing the demands of foreign missionary work. Before this assumed the nature of a personal call his mother exacted a promise that he would never leave her while she lived. She, like his father, was a devout but low-visioned Christian, who did not recogiiize the supremacy of God in every detail of life. He was not required to face the call until after she had entered into rest; but when the problem did confront him it was still complex and seriously involved. His father in- sisted that he should remain in Great Britain, where he might give him financial assistance dur- ing his declining years. Had Robert been the eldest son instead of the youngest, he might not have disregarded this claim. His theological teachers counseled him to remain at home because THE IMPOSSIBLE 2i he promised efficiency in soul-saving. His attend- ance at one of the Scotch universities was made possible and urged upon him, as offering a prov- idential opportunity for ^scholarship and service. His fiancee refused to marry him if he persisted in going as a foreign missionary ; but none nor all of these things outweighed the claim of his Lord. He wrote in his diary, under date of March 18, 1803: ''O how great is that God in whom I trust! How able to deliver! ]\Iy soul, rest on God in Christ, as thine only hope and portion.'^ And to a friend he wrote, ^'It is the great busi- ness of our lives to testify the gospel of the grace of God." May 27, 1804, he offered himself to the London Missionary Society for work in the foreign field. After detailing his conversion and call, he ex- pressed one special desire, namely, ^^that God would station him in that part of the missionary field where the difficulties are the greatest, and to all human appearances the most insurmountable." This spirit is precious to God, highly appre- ciated among men, and the sure token of great usefulness. He who covets immunity from diffi- culties is bidding for discouragement and plan- ning for defeat. Any person can do an easy thing. God is seeking for men, courageously obedient men, to whom he may intrust his high commis- sions. The only thing in the whole universe diffi- 22 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT cult for God Almighty to do is to find a man re- sponsive and thoroughly loyal, willing to meet the full responsibilities of a man, faithfully obe^ dient to divine direction. Sometimes it requires two or three centuries to find such a man; but when he does find one, and the divine purpose has opportunity to manifest itself through human obe- dience, God's plans unfold as silently as thought and as irresistibly as destiny. The committee of the London Missionary So- ciety accepted of Morrison — of course it would — and purposed to send him to Africa. He desired to go to Africa, as Livingstone desired to go to China, but the wisest man cannot predetermine where his life will count for the most. Joseph would not have chosen Egyptian bondage, nor Paul the Philippian jail nor Roman prison, nor John the stone quarries on Patmos. In working out his plans God reserves to himself alone the ad- justment of his servants, and assigns them with unerring wisdom. If a soul will be thoroughly faithful to God, God will bring it off more than conqueror, and neither incompetence nor malevolence can mis- place that soul, nor so circumscribe its opportuni- ties as to make impossible its most efficient serv- ice. To such a one a prison is but the vestibule to the throne, indignities the precursors of exalta- tion, and crucifixion a prelude to ascension, for the THE IMPOSSIBLE 23 command is. ^'Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him ; and he shall hring it to pass." By peculiar providences, which were not under- stood, but which proved conclusive, the commit- tee was led to assign Morrison to China. This he accepted as providential. Certainly it was in alignment with his expressed desire for the most impossible field on earth. Protestantism had not attempted to evangelize that vast empire, and one faces the difficulties of a proposition at their maxi- mum where he has had no predecessor. Morrison undertook the mission with a clearly defined pur- pose to accomplish four things in particular: to master the language ; to construct a grammar ; to compile a dictionary; to translate the Bible, so that the Chinese could have access to the Word of God, and Protestant missionaries could have access to the Chinese. The difficulties which con- fronted him in this work were far beyond our thorough understanding. Among many others there were four, any one of which seemed to make it impossible: 1. The language ; its bulk and detail, its subtle distinctions and intricate relations had baffled the cupidity of tradesmen, the ingenuity of scholars, and the zeal of ecclesiastics. It was confidently asserted no European could master it. During the hundred and forty years preceding, about five hundred Roman Catholic missioners had been 24 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT sent to and resided in China, many of them skilled in philology, and one of their own chroni- clers said, "E'ot one of them could use the Chinese language so as to be intelligible to the Chinese." A Jesuit missionary schooled in linguistic studies, who had persistently struggled with its problems, is on record as saying, ^^The language is an inven- tion of the devil, made to keep the gospel out of China.'' The language is monosyllabic, and was said to have 60,000 characters. That was a mis- take; it has only 24,235 separate and distinct char- acters, and something over 20,000 modifications of these. We know the difficulty of learning twenty-six characters, and, I doubt not, I am speaking to persons who cannot tell b from d ex- cept from the context. 2. The Chinese were prohibited by law from teaching their language, or ever selling, bartering, or giving a Chinese book to a foreigner, under penalty of death. 3. 'No Englishman was permitted to reside in China unless he were actively engaged in com- merce, and then only in Canton. 4. The East India Company, by act of Parlia- ment, had charge of all matters pertaining to Eng- land in Eastern Asia, and would not consent under any condition that a missionary from England should reside in Eastern Asia, or even have pas- sage in an English vessel to any Asiatic port. THE IMPOSSIBLE 25 These obstacles did not daunt Morrison's cour- age, nor jostle his determination in the least. In him was a triunity of forces which were so con- sequentially related each to the others that they worked to a unity of result and assured success. He had a great purpose; he had a great faith; he had a great God. A great God is necessary to a great faith. We may speak of our God as Love, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, but if to any extent whatever we discount these limitless attributes, to that same extent we depreciate our God and emasculate our faith. Morrison's great faith linked his great purpose to his great God, and made success as certain as that high noon will follow earliest dawn. The Missionary Society made repeated and per- sistent effort to find at least one companion to accompany Mr. Morrison on his exceptionally lonely and difficult mission, but signally failed, being prevented by unexpected providences in every attempt. Application was made to the East India Com- pany to let Mr. Morrison take passage in a vessel destined for India, China, or any of the islands of the East. They refused. Every possible pressure was brought to bear upon the agents of the com- pany, moral, social, political, but to no avail. Their refusal was peremptory, and they would not consent under any condition to further con- 26 GROWTH OB^ THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT sider the request. Their commercial spirit and the Sermon on the Mount were so essentially an- tagonistic that they could have no fellowship, and they would prevent by anticipation the complica- tions sure to arise by excluding all Christian mis- sionaries from the possibility of preaching God's Word in the field they were exploiting. The plan of the Missionary Society seemed thwarted, but God's plans have a wider sweep in their outwork- ing than the thinking of men ; his world is broad, and somewhere among its many agencies is one prepared, commissioned, waiting, eager to serve his purpose. On January 28, 1807, Morrison wrote in his diary, ^^Enable me to encourage myself in thee, my God," and in the early afternoon of the 31st he went on board the Remittance, and sailed from Gravesend for New York, but the ship was de- tained for some time in the Downs, waiting for a favorable wind. "On the night of Tuesday, February 17, a vio- lent gale sprung up, which occasioned immense devastation among the shipping, so that ouit of a large fleet which was anchored in the Downs, a number of vessels went on shore, some sunk, and the Remittance was the only one that was able to pursue her voyage," and Morrison arrived safely at New York April 20, having been at sea one hundred and nine days. THE IMPOSSIBLE 27 Mr. Madison, secretary of state under President Thomas Jefferson, gave Mr. Morrison, while in this country, a letter to Mr. Carringtou, United States consul at Canton, in which Mr. Madison wrote to our consul, ^^Do all that you can consist- ently with the interests of your country to further Mr. Morrison's designs." Mr. Morrison sailed from l^ew York in the Trident May 12, and arrived at Canton September 7, 1807. He was received with great kindness by the United States consul, occupied for a time a room in his home, as his guest, and, presumably as a citizen of the United States under the protec- tion of the United States consul, he was permitted to remain. ^'All things work together for good to them . . . who are the called according to his purpose.'' The inability of Morrison to reach China in an English vessel, and the necessity for him to sail in a United States vessel, made it pos- sible for him to remain when he did arrive; for had it been known that he was an English sub- ject, he would have been compelled to leave China by the return vessel. The first apparent impossibility was overcome; Morrison was in China, and the obstacles which blocked his path secured to him an abundant en- trance through the enforced circumstances of his arrival. The expense incident to his entertainment at 28 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT the United States consul's, and the limitations upon the use of his time, led Morrison to change his quarters, and Mr. Milnor, a United States merchant and shipper, shared his rooms with him in the French Factory until he found other ac- commodations. The next difficulty was to secure the services of a competent teacher. 'No European knew the Chinese language; it was impossible to find a Chinese who knew any English other than that used by the traders and their hangers-on. Usually that is too ejaculatory and inverted to be of ready service to a theologian. Any attempt to teach the langiiage to a foreigner, or even to furnish a for- eigner with a Chinese book, was punishable with death. But no emergency can arise in the service of God which he has not anticipated. In the year 1581, two hundred and one years before Morrison was born, Roman Catholicism was introduced into China by ^latteo Recci. That was not the first attempt of the Roman Catholics to establish themselves there. About 1293 they had made an effort, which, however, they aban- doned; but in 1581 Matteo Recci made the at- tempt w^hich has been followed by continued effort and results. He accompanied ecclesiastical func- tions with great pomp, permitted ancestral wor- ship, substituted for the idolatry he found, Mary- olatry, a form of idolatry which appeals more THE IMPOSSIBLE 29 subtly to human pride, and thus made consider- able headway. Shortly after Morrison was born some Roman Catholic priests at Peking took into their service a Chinese lad, to whom they taught the Latin lan- guage through many years with great carefulness. He was five years Morrison's senior, and his name was Abel Yun. These two lads, Morrison and Yun, on opposite sides of the world, one in Eng- land and the other in far Cathay, were studying the Latin language at the same time. They were unconscious of each other's existence, though to be providentially related in the outworking of God's plan. Yun was doubtless the only man in the whole world who could really serve Morrison in realiz- ing his jDurpose, and he was a Chinese, a Roman Catholic, in Peking, and Morrison did not know of his existence. But about the time Morrison landed in Canton Abel Yun arrived in the same city, having been sent as their agent by the Roman Catholic missioners from Peking. Sir George Thomas Staunton, president of the Select Committee of the East India Company in China, secured this Roman Catholic Chinese from Peking, to whom the Latin language had been taught with such exactness, as teacher for Mr. Morrison, the Protestant missionary direct from England via the United States. The schedule by 30 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT which Philip and the eunuch met in the "way which was desert'^ was to the schedule by which Morrison and Yun met in Canton as the schedule of a suburban electric car to that of a transcon- tinental limited express. But both were alike exact, for nothing is complex with God, who "knoweth the end from the beginning.'' Abel Yun was not indifferent to the penalty which attached to his work, and he always carried poison on his person, that by a speedy death he might escape the torture to which he would have been subjected if apprehended. Morrison was familiar with the Vulgate, or Latin translation of the Bible, and had his copy of the manuscript Latin-Chinese Dictionary which he had transcribed in London with such painstaking labor. Incomplete and inaccurate as the old curiosity was, it had a striking signifi- cance, and was immensely important, in view of the careful instruction which both he and Yun had received in the Latin language. With divine thoughtfulness and infinite patience God goes be- fore his humblest servants, and always places within their reach the factors essential to success. Blessed is he who is faithful in occupying his op- portunities. Morrison and the one man in all the world most capable to serve as his helper were together in China, and the second apparently insurmountable THE IMPOSSIBLE 31 difficulty had been leveled at his feet, for nothing is impossible to God. Mr. Morrison secured two small rooms in a "godown/' or cellar. They were poorly lighted and badly ventilated, but were the best he could get. In them he ate and slept, studied and exer- cised, prayed and grew. He imitated the Chinese in dress and manner of living, as a precaution against detection, and for inexpensiveness. Under the circumstances, a wife or any English com- panion would have complicated his problem, and been disastrous at this state of its development. The things which God withholds are ofttimes the least appreciated, but among the most gracious and necessary of his providences. The impure air, unusual food, insufficient light, close confinement, and severe application seriously impaired Morrison's health, so that he was threatened with loss of sight, and a complete breakdown, and he wrote in his diary, ^'I only fear that I may injure my health by excessive ap- plication, and manifest thereby a culpable want of patience.'' His progress in the language was remarkable, and after a few months he commenced the pub- lication of occasional tracts. The East India Company employees disliked these tracts; they recalled early memories and prodded their con- sciences, so they protested that if they continued 32 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT to be issued, Chinese relations with all foreigners might become seriously strained. In the year 1808 China issued an imperial edict banishing from Canton all foreigners who were not actually engaged in commerce. With im- paired eyesight and broken health, Morrison needed a change, and was compelled to go, but ^vhere could a place be found in which he might continue the Lord's work ? God is never taken by surprise. ^'The young lions do lack and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing." In 1516, tAVO hundred and ninety-two years be- fore this imperial edict was issued, a Portuguese navigator, Rafel Perestello, sailed along the east coast of Asia. He was the first person to conduct a European vessel to Chinese waters. In 1537 the Portuguese began a settlement on Macao, an island ninety miles from Canton, and afterward acquired the southern part of the island. It rises abruptly out of the sea, with its air tempered by the ocean breezes, and as a sanatarium is unex- celled in all the Orient. The desire of the East India Company employees to get rid of Morrison and his tracts, and this nearby and exceptionally healthy Portuguese possession, combined in sug- gesting relief for his impaired eyesight and over- strained health; but such was Morrison's devo- tion to his work that the issuance of this imperial THE IMPOSSIBLE 33 edict, banishing him from China, was necessary before he would go to the sanatarium; and the edict was issued. I imagine when that island emerged from the ocean, or the ocean receded from its rocky sides, God, who ^^delights to be gra- cious" and is "the God of deliverances," looked upon it with special satisfaction, and possibly smiled in his pleasure, because it was to be such a surprise and help to his devoted servant at this crisis in his mission. At Macao he found refuge and recuperation. With unflagging diligence, renewed strength, and loving devotion, he applied himself to his task with increasing energy, and his progress in master- ing the language was extraordinary. There is nothing too insignificant to serve the purpose of Him who pencils the wild flowers, scents the breezes, and notes the sparrow's fall. Some English sailors, in a drunken carousal while on the island of Macao, killed a Chinaman. What had that to do with the coming of the kingdom? Considerable. The prosecution of the kingdom through all human affairs is the one business of God in this world, and "he maketh the wrath of man to praise him." The sailors were placed on trial before a Chi- nese official, and were being disadvantaged be- cause their counsel did not understand the intri- cacies of the Chinese language, and no foreigner 34 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT was known who did. Morrison, who dropped in at the hearing, seeing that some of his countrymen, though seriously at fault, were not having a fair statement or consideration of their case, volun- teered his services as an interpreter, and he created a great sensation by his comprehensive knowledge and correct use of both the mandarin and common dialect. It was a revelation and an astonishment to both Chinese and Europeans. That Chinese yaman furnished the background, and the deed of death, done in the frenzy of drink, furnished the dark lines, which brought out in high light Morrison's exceptional attainments and simplicity of character. As his health improved he issued tracts more frequently, and published selected portions of the Bible. Paul says the gospel is the power of God — • that is, the ^^dunamis," the dynamite of God — • "unto salvation." Morrison's publication of por- tions of the Bible excited renewed and increased opposition. The Chinese and East India Com- pany employees were joined by the Portuguese Roman Catholics in their protest against Bible publication and Christian teaching, and it seemed that Morrison would be forced to leave Macao, and his work be seriously interrupted. During his residence at Macao Mr. Morrison met, wooed, and was engaged to be married to an English lady. Miss Morton, You may ask how THE IMPOSSIBLE 35 came he to find a wife in that country. Why not ? That was where his work was, and it is written, "E^o good thing will God withhold from them that walk uprightly." Again it is written, ^'Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord." It is also written, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him." God had a .friend once who had no wife ; in fact, at that time there was no woman in all the world for him to marry ; and the Lord said, "It is not good that the man should be alone," so the Lord created a wife for Adam, and "he is no respecter of persons." Many a man would be more happily mated and more efficient in his ministry if his wife had been of the Lord's providing, and many a woman would have lar^e increase of usefulness and greater joy if the adjustment of her heart life had been di- rected by God instead of being determined by ex- pediency. Morrison thought he gave up a wife for the Lord when he consented to go to China, but that was one who was not in sympathy with his life- work, and when a wife would have made impos- sible his mission. When a wife would increase his efficiency the Lord provided him with one who shared his labors and blessed his toil. It was arranged that the evening after the marriage, 86 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT February 20, 1809, he and his bride should sail for Penang, an island under the authority of the Dutch, where, unmolested by Chinese, East India Company employees, or Portuguese Roman Cath- olics, he might do the best he could until matters in China were more favorable to him and his work. The Lord never gives a wife without providing for the housekeeping, and He who placed Adam and Eve in Eden planned differently for Morri- son and his bride. December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to ^^The Governor and Company of Mer- chants of London trading to the East Indies.'' For two hundred and eight years the East India Company, under various names, combinations, and charter modifications, had amassed wealth and in- creased its influence until it came, by authority of Parliament, to represent Great Britain in the East. It paid its president $100,000 annually. Its power was almost absolute. It dictated poli- cies to governments and defied opposition. Its ramifications extended far and wide in all direc- tions. Such were its varied, delicate, and intri- cate relations with the Chinese government that it was continually in danger of embarrassment from want of an exact and comprehensive under- standing of their language and customs and a clear insight into their character. Morrison had acquired these more accurately than any other THE IMPOSSIBLE 37 man in the whole world, and had given a sample of his acquirements at the trial of the drunken sailors. The morning of the very day he was to be married, after his books and possessions were on the vessel, and ready to sail for Penang when the marriage ceremony had been performed, Mor- rison was offered, and urged to accept, the posi- tion of interpreter to the East India Company. They assured him limited hours of service and a salary of £500, or $2,500, per year. They were^ urgent in their tender of the position, and he ac- cepted it, and from that time he relieved the Mis- sionary Society from supporting him. As an officer of the great East India Company he could command everything necessary for prosecuting his study of the language, was intrenched by the power Avhich would have prevented his arrival, and the third apparent impossibility became his ally. While he was faithful and efficient in his office, he was increasingly successful in his loved mis- sion. He continued the translation of the Bible, and printed various portions from time to time. He prosecuted his work on his grammar, and pushed the preparation of his dictionary. He published a catechism, and continued to issue tracts. In 1813 the Portuguese Eoman Catholic bishop of Macao issued an anathema against any 38 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT one who communicated with Mr. Morrison, re- ceived his publications, or supplied him with hooks. The Chinese government became dis- turbed and issued an edict prohibiting the teach- ing of Christianity, and, not being able to reach Mr. Morrison, it expelled four Roman Catholics from the empire. The East India Company, recognizing that this opposition focused about Morrison, warned him to desist from his Christian work, or they would have to get some one else to fill his position. He assured the Company their service was but inci- dental to his great work, and under no conditions would he compromise his mission. They could find no one else so capable or faithful, and re- tained him in their employ until his death in 1834, and increased his salary to $5,000. If a person will adhere loyally and simply to his di- vinely appointed work, and become an expert in the thing which God assigns him, he need have no anxiety as to his opportunity, for it is written, ^^No weapon that is formed against thee shall pros- per; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord." After eight years of incessant application he had his grammar ready for publication. The East India Company examined the manuscript, and found it so thorough and simple that they THE IMPOSSIBLE 39 asked the privilege of printing it at their own ex- pense, which was done at their agency in India, in 1815. In 1819, after twelve years of persistent toil, he completed his translation of the Bible, and it was printed by the British and Foreign Bible So- ciety. All the leading institutions of Europe vied with each other to honor him. He had been buried in his work, and he realized the resurrection of achievement. There is no resurrection to the larger life without death to the world and its allurements. In 1823, after sixteen years of persistent labor, his dictionary was ready for the press. He had accumulated and absorbed ten thousand Chinese books in its preparation. Again the East India Company examined the manuscript and asked the privilege of printing it, which they did, having the plates engraved and the book issued by their agency in India, so as not unnecessarily to an- tagonize Chinese prejudice. It cost them $60,000, but they had collected for Caesar the things which were Caesar's, and, according to an irrevocable law, they were rendering unto God the things which were God's, by making accessible to the mis- sionaries facilities foi extending the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Friday, January 30, 1807, the night before Morrison embarked for China via ISTew York, he 40 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT preached to a little company of. his friends from ^^Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me," and, walking confidently with God, as his providence appointed, his every step was going from strength to strength to- ward vantage ground which made possible larger achievements till he realized complete success in the problem assigned him. With a strain upon his filial affection, he had refused his father's en- treaties to abide at home, that he might aid the family financially, but from his liberal and unan- ticipated salary he rendered more substantial as- sistance during his father's declining years. The learning he acquired in China was more in- tensive and constructive than though he had mastered the courses in the^ Scotch university, and attained the position of its chief professor. His contribution to the evangelization of the world has been more productive than it could have been if confined in the British Isles. He was denied mar- riage to one whose want of sympathy with God's purpose for him would have prevented success, and at a time when any woman must have been a hindrance rather than a help to his peculiar mission; but at the proper time was given a wife in the land of his appointed labor, who contributed to his efficiency. These were but a small part of the all things working together for good — some of the by- THE IMPOSSIBLE 41 products, mere incidentals to the achievement of his lifework — and nothing proved impossible as he pursued his divinely appointed mission because an unquestioning faith identified him with the great God, who promises to withhold no good thing from, and to secure the cooperation of all things with, ^^those who are called according to his pur- pose." China furnished the problem. England grew the man, mingling Scotch persistence and ISTorth- umbrian simplicity. Christianity supplied the ideal, motive, and inspiration. The British Museum furnished suggestions, and stimulated thoughts about China. The Royal Society loaned the rudimentary Latin Dictionary. Commerce brought Yong San to London, who taught him to write the Chinese character. The Latin served as a means of communication with his teacher and an introduction to the Chinese language. The Lon- don Missionary Society — an organization of dis- senters outside the Established Church — provided initial support and unfailing sympathy. The United States contributed his transportation, and secured his preliminary residence in Canton. Roman Catholicism unintentionally prepared his teacher, and afterward excommunicated him. The Portuguese conserved his health by reluc- tantly affording him an admirable sanatarium. A sailors' carousal and the Chinese yaman brought 42 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT into favorable notice his extraordinary acquire- ments. The East India Company selfishly in- trenched him in their service, supplied the finance for maintenance, books, and assistance, and pub- lished at great expense his Chinese grammar and dictionary. India served as neutral ground in which to print and from which to issue these pub- lications. The British and Foreign Bible Society of London published his Chinese translation of the Bible. Working in Morrison, working through Morri- son, and working about Morrison, was God, who had called him to fellowship in opening China to missionary activity, and God scheduled every necessary influence to timely cooperation with his servant, for, *'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation V^ ^ot one of the many agencies which had been developing in and converging from all quarters of the world through all the centuries failed to co- operate as need required, because ^^the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein," and Morrison's unfalter- ing obedience kept him on time with the schedule of infinite grace. Morrison's life is not excep- tional in the history of God's kingdom, unless it be in the quality of his obedience. He simply classes as anyone of like devotion is sure to class THE IMPOSSIBLE 43 with those "who through faith wrought righteous- ness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed might j in war, that they might obtain a better resurrection," "for with God nothing shall be impossible," and it is written, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, . . . nothing shall be impossible unto you." II THE IMPROBABLE 45 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. — Isaiah. Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying. All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. — Matthew. 46 II THE IMPKOBABLE The curve in a line cannot be determined by a single point, but from a series of related points its trend may be calculated, and if a circle, its radius, sweep, and area accurately figured. So a single fact in history, or an isolated providence of God, may not have much significance, but when considered consequentially in connection with its causes and results it may suggest with unerring accuracy both trend and outcome. To him who reads history as a catalogue of un- related events the ultimate triumph of righteous- ness seems very improbable, because he fails to perceive that ^'Through the ages one unceasing purpose runs" ; that the providences of God are anticipative, corrective, cumulative, always articu- lated with his unchanging purpose, and make for righteousness ; that history is but prophecy in proc- ess of fulfillment; that ^'Christ is either Lord of all, or not Lord at all" ; and that which Christ has pledged himself to accomplish is surely coming to pass. ^^History is mystery unless read as his story." In the year 1823, the same year that Morrison 47 48 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT completed his dictionary of the Chinese language, a child was born in the State of 'New York, and named Judson Dwight Collins. I know not how far the name he bore influenced the development of the lad's ideals and convictions, nor how far it interpreted the atmosphere of his home, but it has a missionary flavor which is very suggestive. While he was yet a child his parents moved to Ann Arbor, in the State of Michigan, and in the winter of 1837-38, when he was fourteen years of age, an event occurred in the life of young Collins which was of transcendent importance for time and eternity. Under the ministry of the Rev. E. H. Pilcher, Collins was converted. Do you appre- ciate what being converted means ? It means be- ing changed ; it means being transformed by the incoming of the Holy Spirit ; it means being made a partaker of the nature of God, so that he who is converted loves as God loves, and hates what God hates, seeks the things God seeks, and resists the things God resists. The conversion of young Collins was thorough, like that of Saul of Tarsus, and when the power of God came upon him he was regenerated in the likeness of God. He became a replica of the in- carnation, and shared with Christ his divine hunger for souls which grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. For years he had a clearly defined conviction THE IMPROBABLE 49 that it was his duty to go to China as a mission- ary. This was suggested not from without but from within. It was strengthened not by manifest opportunity but by a growing sense of its neces- sity. It did not reflect an insistent popular de- mand but interpreted his passion to make Christ known, his spirit of sacrifice, and his personal commission. This became the central hope and controlling purpose of his life. The University of Michigan, which had been planned in 1817, established by law in 1837, and located at Ann Arbor, was opened to students September, 1842, just as Collins was eager and ready for college training, and he entered with the first class, seeking equipment for the service to which he had consecrated himself. He wrote of his aspiration to Dr. Durbin, secre- tary of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and offered himself for mission work in China, to which Dr. Durbin replied, ^^The Methodist Episcopal Church has no work in that land, and China is not open to missionaries.'' Collins knew both of these facts, and was not dis- couraged in the least either by their restatement or by the manifest indifference of the ofiice to the plan. He knew whom he had trusted, and was persuaded that he was able to guard that which he had committed unto him, and, while he relied upon God to develop the plan by which he was to ac- 50 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT complish liis mission, he busied himself in testing all avenues which suggested possible approach. He sought an interview with Bishop Janes, who gave him an answer similar to that of Dr. Durbin — utterly devoid of encouragement — but that did not weaken his faith nor cause him to swerve from his purpose. On the contrary, the absence of ap- preciation in others made clearer the necessity for his persistence, stimulated him to greater industry in preparation, and led him to seek closer fellow- ship with God, the author and perfecter of his faith. He read diligently, and studied carefully everything he could find concerning China, and continued his preparation as though his appoint- ment had been made. Meanwhile changes were taking place in the Celestial Empire, and China was being prepared for the arrival of the messengers of Christ. He who said, ''Let there be light, and there was light," directs his servants and controls national condi- tions. Satan may pride himself in his assumed sovereignty over the world, but it is beyond his power to prevent openings and demands for the incoming of truth and righteousness. The cupidity and disregard of human rights of the East India Company, the irrational self- complacency and arrogance of the Chinese, to- gether with other abnormal conditions, led to the "Opium War." This eventuated in the treaty / THE IMPROBABLE 51 with Great Britain of August 29, 1842, by which four ports other than Canton — Foochow, Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai — were opened to commerce. China's treaty, in 1844, with^ this country ex- tended the advantages we already possessed, and included the "most favored nation'' clause; that is, it stipulated that whatever China should ac- cord in the future to any other nation should automatically apply to the United States also. Toleration was accorded to Christianity, and pro- tection granted its teachers in the five open ports, by treaty with France in 1845. For nearly a decade, in the face of indifference, refusal, op- position, ridicule, apparently impossible and positively improbable conditions, Collins had been preparing to preach Christ to the Chinese with as cheerful, persistent industry as if they had been eagerly awaiting his coming; and the very year he took his B. A. degree, 1845, the teaching of Christianity was made possible by treaty stipu- lations secured through Roman Catholic France. Collins's purpose, which had been unswerving during the years of his preparation, became as- sertive and irresistible at the moment of oppor- tunity. He wrote to Bishop Janes, "Engage me a place before the mast, and my own strong arm will pull me to China and support me while there." His zeal became contagious. A wave of missionary enthusiasm swept from section to sec- 52 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT tion. Missionary mass meetings were held, and missionary societies were formed in various places to make provision for teaching the partly accessi- ble Chinese. The whispered desire which had been heard here and there within the church for some time became a trumpet call, sounding an immediate advance. In 1847 the first company of Methodist mis- sionaries sailed for China, leaving Boston April 15. It consisted of Judson Dwight Collins, Mr. White, and Mr. White's young bride. Foochow was determined upon as the center of their opera- tions, and they reached that port, after a voyage of nearly ^ve months, on September 6. What might be expected from the impact of these three lives upon the 400,000,000 Chinese ? True, there were here and there a few other Protest ant mis- sionaries animated by a similar purpose, but they were isolated by long distances, and separated by diverse ordinances, modes of worship, and historic emphasis ; so that there was but little, if any, unity in their action. There were also some Koman Catholic mission- aries, as there had been for many decades, but these had exerted their influence in political inter- ference, assumed princely state and luxury, too often disregarded the simplest canons of virtue, and so misrepresented Christ as to make the name of Christian odious wherever they were known. THE IMPROBABLE 53 When these two striplings and that young bride reached Foochow their commission was to preach Christ crucified, and their expectation was that through the foolishness of preaching the Chinese would be converted, and China become Chris- tianized. Did you ever consider Avhat it meant to undertake that mission? China is the oldest na- tion on earth. When the Anglo and Saxon an- cestors of these missionaries were drinking wassail from the skulls of their enemies slain in battle, or had not differentiated themselves from the skin- wearing savages of North Germany, China had been strengthening her organized form of govern- ment, and recording history for millenniums. Before Israel was called out of Egyptian bondage, China had her philosophers, statesmen, poets, and system of education, and her examination halls were thronged with ingenious youth. Before Cadmus founded Thebes, or the semifabulous Thessalian Jason undertook the legendary Argo- nautic expedition, China was embodying the same principles of government and social life which obtained when Collins landed upon her shoresT More than a thousand years before Kome was founded China possessed a well-developed national life, with established traditions, far-reaching poli- cies, and recorded history. Of all the nations mentioned in ancient his- tory, or referred to in the Bible — and there are 54 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT about seventy of them — China alone has main- tained her organized existence to the present time. Ancient Egypt is dead; Edom and Philistia are dead; ISTineveh is dead; Babylon has been dead more than twenty-five hundred years. 'No con- temporary of her youth, or witness of the first half of her unfolding civilization, survives as a nation to-day. Yet the land of Sinim is occupied by the same people who for centuries had been directing her affairs when Abram was called to go out from Ur of the Chaldees, ^^not knowing whither he went." Her one predominating, assertive, con- structive characteristic is reverence for the past. Her great philosopher, statesman, and teacher, Confucius, "The Uncrowned King" who lived B. C. 500, styled himself a "Transmitter of the past for the reformation of the present," and all her innovations have been supposed to be based upon a more perfect exegesis of her ancient clas- sics. Remote antiquity and buried ancestors have been the livest factors in her development, and, though frequently overrun by the armies of aliens, her immobility has conquered her conquerors, com- pelled them to give up their ideals and identity, and fuse themselves with her national life. In all their paganism the Chinese never deified lust or vice; in all their heathenish ways they never introduced woman upon the stage in their theaters, never legislated for a courtesan class, and THE IMPROBABLE 55 have no legally protected castes of any kind. The art of printing, the mariner's compass, and gun- powder were ancient things in China when Enrope first came to the knowledge of them. ^Notwithstanding her permanence and conse- quential relations, China is a nation of contradic- tions. While, like their master, Confucius, the Chinese have always been agnostics as to the future life, the ceremonies of ancestral worship constitute their real religion. While, like Men- cius, the great expounder of their classics, they are materialists in the essence of their philosophic system, they exalt heaven and earth to the position of deities, and worship them as having a spiritual significance. While their system of education has produced among the masses a compulsory illiter- acy, they have a universal reverence and respect for learning, extending even to the characters which embody it. While their central government is autocratic in form, its local manifestations pre- sent endless variety, with substantial unity and practical indestructibility. The overwhelming influence of her inherent forces, accentuated by her comparative isolation, ancestral worship, and extraordinary system of education, made continuity a fundamental char- acteristic of the Chinese civilization, so that to break with the past was looked upon as suicide for the nation, and the uncondonable crime for the 56 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT individual. Yet the one business of the mission- ary was to proclaim a new object of worship, a new body of doctrine, new ethical principles, a new personal relation, compelling those who re- ceived it to assume a new center of life and new horizons of activity. The worship of ancestors, imperatively required by "filial piety," matched the dependence of the living upon the dead by a like dependence of the dead upon the living, and thus unified the past and present. It has been said, "Every Englishman is an island, and every American is a Declaration of In- dependence" ; so we may say that every Chinaman is a stolid embodiment of traditions, which through forty centuries have outlived the mutations of twenty-five dynasties. The ancient and pervasive doctrine of ancestral worship had submerged per- sonality in the family, linked devotion to the past, paralyzed initiative, and produced a deep-seated aversion to everything which is new. This had strengthened the clannishness of the Chinese, se- cured to their government a stability which had resisted all influences from without, and registered four millenniums of continuous history. The Chinese prided himself on his civilization, was satisfied to spend his monotonous existence with- out an experience or object, hope or fear, which was foreign to his ancestors. \ He was indifferent THE IMPROBABLE 57 to hardship and poverty, treasured tradition as his most valued possession, loyalty to it being his gauge of influence, and immobility his measure of success. The doctrine which the missionaries expounded, reiterated, and insisted upon as essential and un- compromising, presented the kingdom of God as spiritual and progressive, a kingdom of ideas, of principles, of personal emancipation, and Jesus Christ as the perfect Ideal, the divine and human Lawgiver and Judge, Sovereign and Saviour, and that "there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.'^ Because of the limitations of the Chinese lan- guage, these doctrines, radical as they were, could be stated but imperfectly. The only Chinese words by which they could designate sin and sin- ners meant to the Chinese crime and criminals. The message of Christianity is to the individ- ual ; its goal is the transformation of the mass. These three young people believed it to be their duty to go to that nation, the most materialistic, complacent, and fossilized on earth, with the con- fident expectation that if they simply preached Christ, and lived like Christ, the vitality of the message and the demonstration of consistent liv- ing would induce the Chinese to abandon their re- ligion, accept Christ, be converted, and China would become a Christian nation. Could any- 58 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT thing on the face of it appear to be more im- probable ? The Chinese with their written language were a homogeneous people, compacted by millenniums of development, common traditions, and clearly articulated customs, most difficult of disintegra- tion or reconstruction. They believed themselves, ^ ^dwelling within the four seas," to be superior to all others, and looked upon others with contempt as mere outsiders and barbarians. They were self- complacent over their achievements, and proud of their antiquity and their stability, their history and their learning, their philosophy and their virtue, their art and their social order. Christianity is the gospel of personality, of liberty from the bondage of sin through faith in Christ, of life through sacrifice, enrichment through ministry to the living, and hope which reaches far beyond this world. The message the missionaries had to bring insisted upon certain facts which carried with them definite and far- reaching corollaries. Among others were these: The Chinese, with all their acquirements, had not the knowledge of God. God is the only Sovereign who has the right to one's supreme allegiance. Any other allegiance which does not acknowledge his supremacy is sin. God has revealed himself and his will in Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible, therefore they must accept the Bible as the THE IMPROBABLE 59 law of their lives, repent of their sin, and be con- verted, or be lost. From these postulates the in- f(?rence seemed inevitable that the gods of the Chinese were false, their teachers deceivers, their philosophy foolishness, their virtues vices, their religious history fable, their art impure, their lives immoral, and that to place the emphasis upon anything they possessed as sufficient for salva- tion was absolutely futile. These youthful mis- sionaries, among a people who reverenced age, in- sisted in the name of their Lord that the ancient and self-respecting Chinese should accept the doctrines they brought, with their various conse- quences and requirements, because they were true; yet they were without proof of their truth except the inner witness borne by the conscience of the Chinese themselves. They had no army, no insignia of office, no gift of tongues, no power to work miracles, no physical credentials, only the indwelling power of the Spirit sustaining their faith, directing their energies, and transforming their lives more or less completely into the image of the Christ they proclaimed. If any man in all China accepted their teach- ing, and sought to conform to its requirements, he must abandon the altars of his ancestors, renounce their faith, reconstruct his life, disobey the regu- lations of the government as to feasts, festivals, and public worship, be mistunderstood, ostracized. 60 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT persecuted, disinherited, have his property con- fiscated, his business destroyed, his family con- sider themselves disgraced, and probably be slain — and for what ? For an idea, a conviction, an experience clear to his own consciousness, but so intangible and unreal to others that they did not believe it to have any existence except in his imagination, and which he could not prove to them in their state of mind. '*Yet the only alternative they set before the Chinese was, they must accept the teachings of the Bible, repent of their sin, be- lieve in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, or be lost/ ^^The victories in every age have all come from the assertion of positive and exclusive truths." God is not gathering a community of weaklings and cowards, characterized by indecision and tim- idity, but God is building a kingdom of men, of just men, of just men made perfect, who count not their lives dear unto themselves, but who, like their Lord, for the joy set before them endure the cross, despising the shame. Jesus Christ never hides his scars when he seeks for loyalty ; he never promises ease to those whom he invites to com- panionship. The moral solvent of this world is not rose water, but good red blood, warm and vitaL With the assurance that all authority is given unto him in heaven and on earth, Christ promises all who loyally keep company with him that they THE IMPROBABLE 61 shall be brought off more than conquerors, not through their own prowess but through Him who hath loved them, and given himself for them. "Through persecution they must grow in the knowledge of God and the love of Jesus, which comes as the most precious of gifts and bides as the supreme command." What reception was accorded the missionaries? They had not been invited ; they were not wanted, and they were not received with either courtesy or even scant welcome. They were merely tol- erated and treated with indifference, or at times with obtrusive curiosity. Foochow, which had been determined upon as the port at which they were to commence their work, was a city of six hundred thousand souls, surrounded by a wall nine miles in circumference, and situated two miles from the river Min, thirty miles from the sea. Six or eight miles above the city the river divided, and came together again about the same distance below, forming an island two or three miles wide. Between this and the north bank of the river was Middle Island, con- nected both with the mainland and the larger is- land by a stone bridge, known as the "Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages." A thoroughfare connecting the south gate of Foochow and the island was thronged with all classes going to and fro at all hours of the day. Within a half day's easy walk 62 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT there were two million people clustered in villages about the city. JSTowhere within the city walls or along that great thoroughfare could the missionaries buy or rent a house, or even a single room, or secure a foot of land. But on Middle Island, sixty feet or more from the main street, they secured a tumble-down bungalow, and, after repairing it, made it their headquarters. There they devoted themselves to studying the Chinese language, which they had commenced on shipboard with a missionary bound for Amoy. In February, 1848, they opened a boys' school and a girls' school, with native teachers whom they had employed; the missionaries conducted the religious exercises and gave instruction in the Bible and singing of hymns. In March they or- ganized a Sunday school, and as soon as they were able they began talking about Jesus with such people as would listen, and busied themselves dis- tributing tracts and portions of the Bible, trans- lated into the Fukien dialect. In April the mission was strengthened by the coming of the Eev. R. S. Maclay and the vRev. Henry Hickok and their wives. In 1851 the Kev. I. W. Wiley, M.D., and the Rev. James Calder and their wives and Miss Mary Seely arrived, making twelve missionaries sent in four years. They were diligent in the study of the language, THE IMPROBABLE 63 industrious in distributing tracts and portions of the Scripture, faithful in teaching the boys and girls gathered in the schools, and persistent in preaching on the streets and in the market places, so far as health and opportunity permitted ; but in 1854, after seven years of faithful eifort, the in- ventory of visible results indicated that success was very improbable. An attack of typhus fever in 1850 left Collins a physical wreck, but he wrought in the mission, and heroically struggled for health as best he could until, reduced to a mere skeleton, he sailed for California in 1851. In the midst of his physical disability he wrote concerning the situa- tion in China, "Considerations which history suggests justify it in the past, satisfactorily ex- plain its present aspect, and leave an unclouded future, bright with the radiance of gospel prom- ises." In 1852 death promoted him to his heavenly award. He had lived on the plane of his high commission, never slinking away from duty into the shadows below the serene heights he was called to occupy, and it has been recorded of him, "Seldom has one so young accomplished so much." Mrs. White had died and Mrs. Wiley had died. Hickok's health was so shattered that he and his wife remained only one year. The health of Dr. Wiley and his two daughters and of Mr. White's 64 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT family had been so^ impaired that they returned to America. Calder and his wife resigned from the mission. Three deaths, two desertions, and five compelled to withdraw from China because of im- paired health left only Maclay and his wife on the field, and they had to spend some weeks in Hongkong to recuperate, but returned in the fall. In 1854, after seven years, notwithstanding the extraordinary devotion of the missionaries at Foochow, not one convert had been secured; the government persisted in its refusal to let them build a church; they were unable to secure an eligible piece of ground on which to build if the government gave them permission; their schools were all closed; their scholars were all scattered; and revolution was threatening the territory around Foochow, disturbing the people, increasing the difficulties, and decreasing the possibilities of missionary success. What would you have done under the circum- stances? Lost faith, become sour, deserted, re- turned to America, and printed a book criticizing those who remained at the front, and calculated to undermine the confidence of those who were only partially informed at home? Such things have been done, but not by any of that China band. They worked on, trying to master the language THE IMPROBABLE 65 with the helps Morrison had prepared, and such others as had been created since; they distributed portions of the Bible, knowing that "no word from God shall be void of power," and taught as oppor- tunity offered; they returned kindness for perse- cution, ministry for abuse; increasing difficulties stimulated their devotion; strengthening opposi- tion gave them opportunity for greater patience; and, encouraging themselves in God, they called upon the church for reenforcements — not a bad program to live by in the home land. The proving of faith precedes the attaining of victory. The superintendent wi'ote of "the in- estimable privilege of being permitted to live and labor for God in this vast heathen empire," and again, "the enjoyment of God's gifts constrains us to sing of mercy." In 1855 the mission was strengthened by the arrival of the Rev. E. Went- worth and the Eev. O. Gibson and their wives. In speaking of the death of Mrs. Wentworth, which occurred in less than four months after her arrival, one wrote, "The example of her trium- phant death is a precious legacy to our mission and to the heathen people." During the year 1855 they secured a piece of property on the great thoroughfare running from the south gate of the city to the "Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages," and in the ninth year of the mis- sion, without a convert, with only a suggestion of 66 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT a floating congregation and no adherents, they built a good-sized and substantial church of stone and brick, facing that busy street, and placed in the front of it a stone tablet bearing the inscrip- tion carved in Chinese characters, ^'Church of the True God.'' The latter part of that year, 1856, they completed a second church of stone and brick on Middle Island which they called "The Peace of Heaven." This building of their faith into temples of stone, providing for success in the face of stolid indifference and apparently insuperable difficul- ties, testified to such a compelling confidence as caused the Chinese to consider. They said, "What is the object of their persistent effort, what fruit- age do they expect from their patient seed-sowing, what is the motive of their unselfish living, and what can be the secret of their confidence ?" [^Ton- Christian people are sure to interpret the mission- ary before they become interested in his message. If his life is not persuasive, they care not for his teaching. The two substantial and impressive church buildings, added to the faithful testify- ing of the missionaries, contributed greatly to in- crease the respect of the Chinese for Christianity, and, as the missionaries wrote home, "What peo- ple are induced to respect we may suppose they will finally imitate." ' On June 14, 1857, after nearly ten years of THE IMPROBABLE] 6? prayer and labor, tbey baptized Ting Ang, their first convert, or, as they wrote: "It is now onr grateful privilege to refer to the laying of our first 'lively stone' in the 'spiritual temple,' which has been founded in this city. It was to us an occa- sion of grateful joy, and we trust it shall ever mark the initiation of a glorious period in the history of our mission. It is evident we are on the eve of great changes in this mighty empire. The former things are ready to pass away, and a loud call is now made upon the Christian Church to give to these perishing millions the bread of life." Thirteen adults and two infants were baptized during the remainder of that year. Some per- sons of character living in the neighborhood of the church buildings commenced to show a growing interest and to attend the services regularly. One of these was TIu I^gieng Mi, who had not con- fessed himself a Christian but had listened in- telligently to the preaching and read the New Testament with care. Occasionally when persons would ask confusing questions and lead the mis- sionaries into discussion where, because of their limited knowledge of the Chinese language, they were at a disadvantage, Hu IN'gieng Mi would say, "Friends, I think the teacher means to say" — and then he would explain the Bible teaching. He was a man whose age, character, and family con- 68 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT nections were thoroughly respected. He and his family and many of his friends came into the church, and became devoted Christians. His son, Hu Po Mi, who had been a successful mili- tary man, was the first native itinerant Methodist preacher in China. Devout and industrious, he wrought conscientiously, and died only a few months ago. Another son, Hu Yong Mi, who had been a successful artist, also entered the ministry and became a veritable apostle in saintliness, self- sacrificing labors, strategic initiative, and con- structive influence. The work gradually grew in strength, reached out into the country in various directions, and, as Providence opened the way, occupied Kiu Kiang, Peking, Chung King and other new centers. Members from the Foochow Conference removed to the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and elsewhere, Imt took their transforming, contagious experience with them, and the work among these, as well as among the Chinese in the Straits Settlement, Java, and at other points, is prosperous. I have dwelt thus at some length upon the mis- sion of the Methodist Episcopal Church because it is typical of all Protestant missions in China. The Presbyterians waited ten years at Canton and another church waited twelve years for their first convert, but Christianity has not taken root at any point without the living seed being planted THE IMPROBABLE 69 by some consecrated life in personal demonstra- tion of the redeeming and keeping power of Christ. From 1807 to 1843, a period of thirty-six years, only eighteen Protestant missionaries had been able to enter China proper, but to Malacca, Batavia, Penang, Singapore, Bangkok, and Borneo, where Chinese colonists were found in great numbers, forty-one others had been sent, making fifty-nine in all. Of these ten had died and eighteen had been retired, leaving thirty on the field, represent- ing three British and four American organiza- tions, and these reported a total of but six com- municants. 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, . . . which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, ... it be- cometh a tree." During the next third of a century, from 1843 to 1877, both the opposition and the work became more intense, and Christianity was greatly ex- tended. Dr. Ashmore, speaking of the attitude of the Chinese and missionaries toward each other, said : ''We were mobbed in the Fu city, mobbed in the district cities, mobbed in the large towns. We got so used to being pelted with mud and gravel and bits of broken pottery that things seemed strange if we escaped the regular dose. ... We went out from our homes bedewed with the tears and benedictions of dear ones, and we came back plastered over, metaphorically speaking, with 70 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT curses and abjurations from top to bottom. . . . Our chapels were often assailed, roofs were broken up, doors were battered in, and furniture was carried off. There was nothing else to do but to keep at it. Driven out of one place, we betook ourselves to another, according to instructions, but we did not leave the country, as the literati de- sired, and we did not intend to. We wore them out, as the anvil sometimes wears out the ham- mer." This shows the character of those who partici- pated in the propaganda. Men and women of strong convictions, unquestioning consecration, indomitable courage, marked personality, heroic mold, who counted not their lives as dear unto themselves if they might but finish their course with rejoicing, were developed and sustained by grace sufficient for every need. The converts born in these troublous times were like unto their leaders, and bravely endured the anathemas and persecutions of their neighbors for conscience sake. IN^othing can withstand the testi- mony of loyal consecration to Christ, for he has promised, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me." In 1877 373 missionaries, representing 29 so- cieties, were residing at 91 centers. Nine prov- inces had been entered, 312 native churches established, with 13,035 communicants, medical THE IMPROBABLE 71 and educational work widely introduced, woman's work inaugurated, and millions of pages of por- tions of the Scripture and of tracts had been cir- culated broadcast throughout the land. The leaven of the new life was getting into the conscience, the thinking, and the social fabric of the Chinese, and subtly working by evolution or revolution toward its mastery. During the next fourteen years famine and war gave opportunity and emphasis to the spirit of Christianity, and He whose right it is to reign largely advanced his kingdom. The famine of 1877-78 was one of great sever- ity, but differed from others only in degree. It is estimated that from nine and a half to thirteen millions perished. Foreigners contributed half a million dollars, of which the missionaries were the almoners, and four died from overwork and exposure in trying to relieve the famishing. These and similar manifestations went far toward eradi- cating prejudice, breaking down distrust, and establishing good will. In 1900 China was rocked from center to cir^ cumference by passions and fanaticism which had been fostered by an almost unbroken record of robberies, contemptuous treatment, insults, and in- juries practiced by foreign powers through the generations of China's enforced relations with them. The unconscionable scramble of foreign syndi- 72 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT cates to exploit and absorb her most valuable mining, transportation, and commercial interests; tbe iniquitous attempt to partition China among foreign nations, carried so far that by 1899 there was not in all her coast line of more than two thou- sand miles a single harbor where she could mobi- lize her own ships without the consent of the predatory, mendacious, intrenched, and hated for- eigners; the introduction of machinery driven by steam, which in England and elsewhere had caused serious economic disturbances among less densely populated and less conservative peoples; necessary and expensive sanitary changes de- manded by the requirements of Western science as it touched the conditions interpreting anti- quated teachings of remote centuries ; the neces- sary adjustment of their educational content and methods ; the smoldering and ineradicable aversion to the Manchu domination in the central govern- ment; the cry of designing priests that the "gods are attacked,'^ filled China with unrest and pro- test, and furnished a variety of inflammable con- ditions, easily ignited, w4iich resulted in the Boxer uprising. "No so-called civilized nation would have manifested like patience under a frac- tion of China's provocation, or have exercised more self-restraint in the effort of her long pent- up passion to defend her honor and protect her life. THE IMPROBABLE 73 Neither the missionaries nor Christianity was Jhe cause or direct object of their hatred, but the Boxers had bound themselves by a terrible oath "to establish the empire by the extermination of . the foreigner." The Christians and their leaders were an interpretation of, and closely related to, that which was foreign, and, being widely scat- tered, less protected, and more accessible, they re- ceived the brunt of the attack. With loving loyalty to their Lord, men, women, and children, natives and foreigners alike, chose death rather than apostasy, prayed for their mur- derers, and, unjostled from their faith, magnified the power of love by enduring martyrdom without resistance to or animosity for their slayers. One hundred and thirty-five Protestant missionaries and fifty-three of their children, together with forty-four Komanists, and about twenty thousand Chinese Christians sealed their testimony with their blood, and enriched the church and humanity by a record of simple and unswerving devotion un- surpassed in any land or any age. This depleted the ranks of the church, seriously scattered many of its organizations, and bereft it of loved and trusted leaders. But, sad as were the personal ex- periences, they profoundly impressed the Chinese, broadened their knowledge of Christianity and strengthened its influence, purified, compacted, and energized the native church, gave it a deep 74 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT consciousness of and a strong confidence in sus- taining grace and spiritual power, caused new leaders and new methods of interpreting church life to emerge, and greatly advanced the interests of the kingdom of God. Even a brief comparison of some of the out- standing facts in 1900 and 1904 will demon- strate this: In 1904 285 physicians treated nearly 1,000,000 patients, or 200,000 more the third year after the Boxer uprising than in any year previous to it. There were 50,558 scholars in the Christian schools, or 10,000 more than in 1899, and 1,925 more native Christian helpers engaged in the activities of the churches. There were 131,400 Protestant communicants, and more of these had been added during the three years pre- vious than the total enrollment in 1879, seventy- two years after the landing of Morrison. ^^The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened." In 1907 there were 191,958 communicants, that is, during the second three years after the Boxer uprising, or from 1904 to 1907, the additions ag- gregated 60,581, or more than the entire enroll- ment gathered during the first ninety years of Christian activity in the empire. Assuring and inspiring as are these evidences of rapidly accelerated growth, it is not to them alone THE IMPROBABLE 75 we would look for an indication of the ultimate triumph of Christianity in China. There are other clearly related facts and influences, though less tangible, lying about these, which, together with their tendencies, we must study in the large if we would understand the progress and promise of the successful solution of that stupendous problem. The spirit of Christianity, which is love, has so established and reproduced itself among the Chi- nese that in the personal circle of scores of thou- sands of redeemed lives it is compelling admira- tion and persuading to acceptance. You may walk from Canton to Shanghai, a distance of six hundred miles, and not travel more than twenty miles a day, and stop each night in a village con- taining a Christian community. ^'Many of the officials and scholars of the land have studied Christian literature, and are so impregnated with the spirit of the gospel that they are Christian in almost everything but name." In Manchuria during the last few 'years thirty thousand have been received into the church, and not more than one hundred of these were received as the direct result of foreign missionaries. When a man among them is raised by the lifting power of the accepted gospel of Christ above his monotonous environment into clear vision, high purpose, and holy living, the spirit of clannish- 76 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT ness inherited from and established by centuries of unchanging order becomes a powerful asset in the advancement of Qhristianity, drawing his family and kin about kis ennobled character. The Chinese discovers a strong tendency to com- promise with his prejudices when they antagonize his hope of gain; in fact, his acquisitiveness de- fies the restrictions of past ignorance and the tricks of priestly chicanery, and, distinguishing between the incidental evils and necessary benefits of foreign intercourse, he gradually outgrows his aversions when they are in the way of his inter- ests. This is not an exceptional characteristic to human nature. The first railroad in China was fourteen miles long, and was built by the British in 1876 from Shanghai to Woosong. As soon as it was com- pleted the government bought the entire outfit, tore up the tracks, and dumped the engines into the river. The superior carrying power and economic value of the engine to the coolie, of the passenger coach to the mule litter, and of the freight car to the wheelbarrow were easy to demon- strate, and to-day there are many hundreds of miles of railroad in successful operation, and many thousands of miles projected. Seventeen Ameri- can locomotives were recently landed at a port in China from the hold of one ship, and they were but an advance shipment of an order for two THE IMPROBABLE 77 hundred and three. The transforming significance of that one fact is beyond estimation. Woman is the strategic personality of civiliza- tion. No community grades above the ethical, cultural, or social status of its representative women. Every system of religion reveals its most characteristic fruitage in the condition of woman. Christianity is the only system which from the beginning has antagonized every form of evil, stood for her personal liberty, and steadily wrought for her elevation and full ministry. Confucius consigned her to the position of a slave, and, as a result, when Christianity found China woman was a burden-bearer; she competed with the roughest men, performed the most menial services, had no personal name, was not considered able to determine anything for herself, was sub- ject to "the three obediences — to her father, her husband, and her son,'' and her condition was bur- dened with the evils of foot-binding, girl slavery, concubinage, enforced ignorance, spiritual incom- petence, and inherent inferiority. In harmony with the high Christian ideals of personal liberty, the supreme obligation of every personality, whether male or female, to attain to the fullest likeness of Christ, and to realize the largest efficiency in service for which Christianity stands, all her unnatural limitations are being lifted. Foot-binding, prohibited by Christian •78 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT teaching and discouraged by imperial influence, is doomed. Girl slavery is under the ban of official condemnation. Woman is dignified by Christian marriage, as the honored and loved Vvdfe of one man for life. The Christian girl's schools have so demonstrated her capacity and essential rela- tion to a noble future that provision, personal and governmental, is being made for her general edu- cation. She who by being last at the grave and first at the tomb of her Lord manifested her love by ministry to him, is being exalted in China, as in all the world, by the ministry of his love for her. The enrollment of one girl the first year in that boarding school, opened in 1853, when the entire family attended to see that no harm was done her, is an indication of conditions so difi'erent from those which obtain to-day that we are unable to estimate the immense progress. The following is but a suggestion of the mag- nitude and radical character of the changes in the larger problem of general education : For more than a score of centuries China had a system of education which consisted of a series of articulated examinations, with their carefully regulated supervision and awards, but she had no organized schools. These were introduced by the Christian missionaries, whose devoted work in that direction served as model, stimulus, and directing influence for the development of these latter days. J THE IMPROBABLE 79 The first six universities to teach foreign learn- ing in China were organized with presidents from among the missionaries. Now there are 40,000 schools, colleges, and universities teaching foreign learning, and the passion for Western learning is insatiable. In 190G one publishing house in Shanghai sold 526,000 readers and primary geographies. In 1907 the Presbyterian press in Shanghai published 1,600,000 copies of religious books and tracts. The British and Foreign Bible Society in Shang- hai sold 1,900,000 copies of portions of the Scrip- ture, and the Central China Tract Society sold 1,500,000 tracts and portions of the Bible. Yuan Shih Kai, viceroy of Chile, has established 5,000 primary schools in his province. Chang Chih Tung, viceroy of Ilupeh and jSTunan Provinces, has ordered that the 'New Testament shall be taught along with the Chinese classics in all the schools among the 58,000,000 in the provinces over which he presides. There is no renaissance of education recorded in history comparable with the movement which is sweeping over China at the present time. Christianity is love incarnate, or the divine life expressing itself in terms of human living. Love is the great social dynamic ; it cannot abide alone, it must transform its environment into its like- ness, for its life is service and its expression is 80 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT contagious, China records the transforming effect of this reorganizing power in that the attitude of her dominating influences, social, industrial, edu- cational, and governmental, have all been changed from antagonistic to cooperative or tolerant. The Chinese are no longer pagans because of their desire to be so. Practically every barrier to the spread of the gospel has been broken down. They are no longer satisfied to face the past and mark time, but they are facing the future and try- ing to catch the swinging step of the Christian na- tions. The improbable of yesterday has become the insistent of to-day. The Chinese who were breathing threatening and slaughter have seen a great light, and, glimpsing the Lord of heaven as revealed in history, providence, and experience, have heard a personal call and are crying, ''Who art thou. Lord? What shall I do?" while the Christ is urging his church, this timid, hesitating twentieth-century Ananias, to go in adequate force to the Chinese and minister the sight-giving touch, because they are a chosen vessel to bring his name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. Ill THE IMPERATIVE 81 Whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? — John, Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of Jehovah. Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, Because they came not to the help of Jehovah, To the help of Jehovah against the mighty, — Judges. 82 Ill THE IMPEKATIVE Jesus came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill, and spake as never man spake. His teach- ing penetrated every subterfuge, swept away all the incrustations of tradition and officialism, re- stated essential principles in their simplest terms, and gave new emphasis to old truths. When, in answer to the captious inquiry of a self-complacent lawyer, "which stood up and made trial of him," he propounded the discriminative and incisive parable of the good Samaritan, our Lord did three things in particular: 1. He revealed the true ideal of service. The object of living is the conservation and develop- ment of life. Subjectively, this is realized by ex- pression; objectively, by impression. He who interprets himself through the use of his posses- sions — material, mental, spiritual — by helpful ministries to others, enriches his personal char- acter, and is serving, that is, living according to the purpose of God, for God is love, and serving is the life of love. 2. He illustrated the fundamental principle concerning the relations of demand and supply, 83 84 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT that ability is mortgaged to need. ^'If thou seest thy brother have need, and shutteth up thy bowels of compassion, how dwellest the love of God in you ?" We are stewards of the manifold grace of God, and debtors to his bounty. He gives to the needy, as they may deserve, a draft on any of his stewards who may be able to minister to their emergency, payable at sight, and indorsed, '^Inasmuch as ye did it, or did it not, unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it, or did it not, unto me." It is a serious oifense for anyone to dishonor a legitimate draft drawn upon him by his creditor, and it will be a time of hopeless bank- ruptcy and confusion to some of us when our neg- lected opportunities, charged against that which we hold in trust, are balanced in the ledger of God's advances to us. 3. He taught that the obligation of neighborli- ness is imperative, that he who ministers to the needy is neighbor to the one he helps, and that opportunity to relieve measures the responsibility of neighborliness. l^ecessity and accessibility make neighborliness possible to him who is able to offer assistance, but the character of neighborliness is only attained by him who occupies the oppor- tunity through personal ministry ; that constitutes its value and gives neighborliness its flavor. In this parable Christ subordinates the academic question, ^'Who is my neighbor ?" to the practical, THE IMPERATIVE 85 character-testing question, "Whose neighbor am I ?" Thus he lifted the term '^neighbor" out of the literal, local, mechanical meaning of the near- dweller, depending upon the accident of juxtapo- sition, into the broad, spiritual, significant rela- tion established by a personal act of the will through ministry to the needy. Paul had caught this idea, for while he had such affectionate re- ga'rd for his countrymen that he could wish him- self accursed for their sakes, if his love could thus compass their salvation, he recognized that he was confronted by other obligations, that the urgent need of the outside world gave it such an indu- bitable claim upon him that he confessed, "I am a debtor both to the Greeks and barbarians" — not a debtor because of what he had received from them, but because of what he might do for them. This debt was so urgent that he cried, "Woe is me if I preach not the gospel," and he was ready to the full extent of his ability to meet, as a part of his indebtedness, his obligation to the need of the Romans, the oppressors of the Jews, or, as he said, "So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you also that are in Rome." -o, Measured by this standard, the missionary obli- i gation of Christian America to the non-Christian world is large and imperative. This world respon- sibility is too vast and varied to be discussed at this time. Let us, therefore, by way of illustra- 86 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT tion, consider our imperative obligation of neigh- borliness in its relation to a single country, say China, recognizing this as but a sample of our larger obligations to the world. The evangelization of China is essential to the establishment of the kingdom of God, for the evan- gelization of the world must include China, and Jesus commanded his disciples, "Go ye into all the world, preach the gospel to the whole creation, and make disciples of all the nations." The need of the Chinese, their accessibility and our ability to minister to them require no argument. For a people whose chief characteristic has been, for centuries, an aversion to change, to be in a state of transition and, as the Chinese are to-day, with- out the conserving and directing influences of an ethical religion, threatens disaster to themselves and is a menace to the world. The former viceroy of Hupah and Nunan says : "Confucianism as now practiced is inadequate to lift us from the present plight. Why retaliate by scoffing at other re- ligions ? 'Not only is such procedure useless, it is dangerous." The heart is confessedly a region which neither their government nor their religion can control. They are conscious that something more authori- tative, more efficient, is necessary to check and purify the malignant passions of men. They have no books which they believe to be of divine origin. THE IMPERATIVE 87 We have the Word of God, we have the experience of acceptance by him, and we have the command of Christ, "Freely ye received; freely give." The obligation is imperative, but it may be more clearly apprehended if we consider some of the conditions which emphasize our obligation to render China prompt and adequate assistance in attaining a Christian experience. I. Let us consider its strategic importance. China constitutes so large a part of the world that she cannot be kept out of the horizon when any problem is being discussed which concerns hu- manity. Her population, according to the latest estimates, numbers 429,000,000 ; that is, ^ve times the population of continental United States, or more than one fourth of the total population of the world. If her national life were thoroughly or- ganized, she could place an army of 60,000,000 men in the field and not seriously disturb her do- mestic industries. Such is her virility that she doubles her population in eighty years, not, like America, increasing by immigration, but by generation. It is estimated that by the close of this present century her population may number 1,000,000,000. Her area, including her depend- encies, covers 4,2Y7,170 square miles, which in- cludes one tenth of the land surface of the globe. She is as large as the United States and Alaska plus several times the area of Great Britain, or 88 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT one third larger than all of Europe, and is rich in navigable rivers, vast forests, fertile soil, and ap- parently inexhaustible mineral resources. ^^No country can compare with her for natural facili- ties of inland navigation." In addition to her more than 2,000 miles of coast line, with its estuaries and harbors, she has 12,000 miles of navigable waterways. She has 600,000,000 acres of arable soil, very much of it unsurpassed in fer- tility. Bengal, the most populous province in India, supports 495 persons to the square mile; Belgium, the most populous state in Europe, 599, but China in the River Provinces has about 850 to the square mile. The soil yields two or three crops per annum, has been under cultivation for more than a score of centuries, and is at least as fertile as at any time in the past. Four hundred and nineteen thousand square miles of her terri- tory are believed to be underlaid with coal; it is estimated there are 600,000,000,000 tons of an- thracite, and coal enough in the one province of Shen Si to supply the entire world for one thou- sand years. !Near these coal mines are iron ore deposits of superior quality and incalculable quantity. There is an equally lavish supply of oil, gold, copper, and other minerals wait- ing to enrich the new civilization when it shall have the skill to command them for its enlarged activities. THE IMPERATIVE 89 China occupies the zone of power, that belt be- tween the sterilty of extreme cold and the lassitude of extreme heat, which furnishes a temperate and stimulating climate with an environment condu- cive to manly vigor, where the greatest mental activity can be most steadily maintained and the greatest aggressiveness and achievement may be ex- pected. What England and Germany are to Eu- rope, and the United States is to America, China must become, in an enlarged sense, to Asia. While desire for posterity and love of money are among their ruling passions, the chief characteristics of the Chinese are conservatism, persistence, indus- try, poise, endurance, and adaptability. Their staying quality is unequaled — an inheritance of the centuries developed by limited ambitions, fed upon small margins, and dominated by the crystal- lized ideals of their student life. They thrive in any climate, and succeed in competition with any people. They are the moneyed men of Penang, own two thirds of all the property in Singapore outside of the government buildings, and are the accountants, confidential clerks, bankers, import- ers, and exporters of the Indian Archipelago. They have established themselves in the Malay Peninsula, Java, Australia, ISTew Zealand, South America, and Mexico, and are colonizing around the Pacific Ocean very much as the Latins did about the Mediterranean Sea, and their competi- 90 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT tion is SO feared in the United States and Canada that they have been excluded from residence. Hitherto China has been exclusive; simply en- deavoring to embody the human ideals and teach- ings of her ancestors, relying upon human muscle, scantily supplemented by animal power, and liv- ing out of the soil. What may be expected of her if she accepts the ideals of God, is energized by the Holy Spirit, avails herself of the mighty poten- tialities in steam, electricity, and mechanical de- vices, commands her mineral resources, operates great manufactories and attains to her legitimate place in the family of nations ? There are locked up in her future unlimited possibilities for weal or woe. We must aid her to the best or reckon with her when she is aligned with that which is below the best. We must enter the doors of op- portunity into which her need and accessibility invite us and establish the relation of true neigh- borliness, or face her threatening influence as a neglected near-dweller. We must take to her chil- dren the spiritual inheritance intrusted to us, or our children will reap the curse of our crime through the selfish aggressiveness of a nearby strong, willful, godless power working confusion among the nations of the world. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." If indiffer- ence to her need is our sowing, indifference to our interests will be our enormously multiplied har- THE IMPERATIVE 91 vest. If she is influenced to the attainment of a Christian civilization, she will become a most powerful ally to the kingdom of God. Our respon- sibility is imperative. We must convert, conquer, or be conquered. II. Our obligation to China is accentuated by her crisal condition. The ancient has been shot through and through with the modern. The whole empire is in a ferment with new ideas, new rela- tions, new objectives, new methods. She has been jostled out of her stolidity and immobility, has abandoned her unifying principle of ultraconserv- atism, broken with the past, modified her estab- lished order, and lost her equilibrium. Every- thing is in flux. Contradictory forces are contend- ing for the mastery. Dazed but not discouraged, suspicious but credulous, inexperienced but com- pelled to advance, assertive but dependent, she needs counsel, but knows not whom she can trust. There is not a European nation with whom she has had intercourse which has not been insolently contemptuous and disregardful of the simplest in- stinctive rights of manhood in its relations with her. They have expoliated her territory north of the 55° and south of the 10°, appropriated her colonies and outlying possessions, and intrenched themselves in her best harbors. The Portuguese acquired a footing in Macao by the most shame- less duplicity, and their "factories," as the treaty 92 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT ports were termed, were tke centers of extreme law- lessness which incensed the Chinese to the last degree. The Spanish, desiring to possess an out- post of the empire, perpetrated an indiscriminate massacre lasting several days, and killed all the resident Chinese. The Dutch seized the Percadese Island with no claim upon it other than their de- sire to have it, and forced the Chinese to build them a fort, that they might defend the stolen property. France has persistently encroached upon her southern border, and shamelessly ex- tended herself elsewhere. For two centuries Russia has practiced stealthy absorption of Chinese territory. England gradually intrenched herself through the conscienceless aggression of the East India Company, seized strategic points, forced the Chinese to consume her opium, and compelled and enforced treaties which she herself disregarded. Limited by treaty regulations with the powers which have deceived and defrauded her, and com- pelled to consult them in her reorganization, China faces a crisis without a parallel ; but act she must, and her program will be determined and her trend fixed within the next decade. The following decade will make these most difficult to modify. Now is the day of supreme opportunity. Because of her peculiar responsiveness to America and our peculiar relation to her, this is the day of our im- perative obligation. THE IMPERATIVE 93 III. Her inability but courageous efforts to re- form her gigantic wrongs and solve her stupen- dous educational and governmental problems give urgency to our obligation. 1. Opium has been a greater curse to China than V7ar, famine, and pestilence combined. ''Millions upon millions have been struck down with the plague," which weakens the moral nature, ener- vates the mind, undermines the health, consumes the wealth, and destroys family and civic depend- ableness. Two centuries ago China tried to grapple with this growing evil, and issued a strong edict against it, but was defeated in her effort to control it. About the middle of the last century England committed one of the greatest crimes against China ever perpetrated by one nation against another, and all to gratify her mercenary spirit. The balance of trade between India and England was steadily in favor of England, and kept India heavily in debt to her, while England's purchases from China far exceeded her sales to China. India could pay England with opium if England would find a market for the deadly drug. England dare not curse her homes with it, and she determined to compel China to purchase it. China heroically resented this unprecedented danger, issued her imperial edicts against its im- portation or use, and was led to her first two for- eign wars in her efforts to protect the life of her 94 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT subjects from the debauching influence of this in- sidious poison ; but England forced her to consume it, blighting millions of Chinese physically and morally that she might collect her debt from India, and at the same time pay her debt to China. At the beginning of the present century "the annual loss to China was estimated to be not less than 856,000,000 taels; that is, the total amount of the Boxer indemnity, heavy as it is, is only half of what China loses every year through the consump- tion and cultivation of opium" (Honorable Tong Kai-son). The opium war of 1842 opened the way for the entrance of the gospel into China. Christ, "who healeth all our infirmities,'^ cured the habit in those who received the Holy Spirit through him. The testimonies of thousands of men, thus redeemed from its curse, like Ling Ching Ting, were evan- gels against its use and influence. The gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, brought hope to the Chinese and gripped the conscience of the Englishmen. Opium had become the largest single import into China ; immense areas of her best land were being used for its production, and no other commodity involved such large, varied, and intricate financial and civic interests; the western and northwestern provinces depended for the greater part of their revenue upon it, yet in 1907 China issued an imperial edict declaring that THE IMPERATIVE 95 the area under poppy cultivation should be re- duced one tenth annually for ten years, so that at the end of that time no opium would be produced, and the use of the drug should cease. "The de- cree ordering the discontinuance of the use of opium was directly due to missionary influence. In May Dr. C. DuBose, of Soochow, president of the Anti-Opium League, had an interview with the governor-general of the Eiver Provinces, his Eminence Chou Fu, and was told that if a me- morial signed by missionaries of all nationalities were sent to him he would forward it to the throne. Thirteen hundred and thirty-three signatures were secured, bound in a volume covered with yellow silk, and sent to ISTanking, reaching there August 19, whence it was forwarded to Peking, and the imperial edict was issued September 20." The same year, the House of Commons by a unanimous vote passed a resolution that "the export of opium from India to China is morally indefensible," and requested the government of India to put an end to it. The next year, 1908, the British govern- ment consented to an ordinance whereby the ex- port from India should be reduced one tenth an- nually. Both of these deliverances of Great Brit- ain followed important petitions, many publica- tions, frequent discussions, earnest personal appeals, and organized effort upon the part of the Christian ministers and laymen. 96 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT In China the zeal for reform has outrun the conditions of the edicts. At the expiration of two years the consumption and production had de- creased about one third, and in eight provinces the growth of the poppy had practically ceased. In Foochow not one of the three thousand opium joints in the city is left open. This was brought about by the cooperation of the Anti-Opium So- cieties with the officials, who, under instructions from Peking, promulgated the order October, 1906, that the dens should be closed before the first day of the fourth Chinese moon, or May 12. Opposed by dealers, manufacturers of accessories, the users, and others, a petition was presented for one month's delay. This being refused, they urged one day of grace. Any concession would have broken the force of the decree in the minds of the people. The leader offered a bribe of $1,000, but he was thrown into prison, and the most vigorous measures adopted to enforce the decree. The anti- opium forces organized, appointed vigilance com- mittees, Foochow and suburbs were divided into districts, assigned to special committees for super- vision, and only three or four dens kept open after the date fixed, and the keepers of these were promptly seized and sent to jail. Great demonstrations were made to celebrate the closing. Long processions of students paraded the streets with lanterns, banners, and flags ; hun- THE IMPERATIVE 97 dreds of shopmen decorated their places with bunt- ing and the like; many meetings were held, and Chinese officials, together with the missionaries, spoke to enthusiastic crowds. The trade will be restricted to a very few shops, and only licensed persons, duly registered after a careful examina- tion as to the condition of their health, will be permitted to buy. The quantity they may buy will be reduced from year to year, and the price will be gradually raised. Large moneys are being withdrawn from the trade and invested in other industries. The land used for its cultivation is being used for other crops, and sanitariums are being opened and help provided for the victims of the habit. In the provincial city of Hangchow all the public opium dens, to the number of more than eight hundred, were ordered to be closed six months after March 1, 1907, and strict orders were issued by the provincial counselor to all his subordinate officers that after the third month of 1908 no opium smoker would be tolerated among the subalterns, or rank and file, and, if found smoking, the officers in charge would be tried by court-martial. In some places the municipalities purchased all opium pipes at twenty cents a piece, and a fixed price was paid for other apparatus. One Taotai gave one thousand taels toward the fund which 98 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT was rapidly supplied to carry this arrangement into effect. The Cantonese closed their dens, gave free pas- sage to those wishing to return home, and four dollars to each victim of the habit to start a new business with. Similar results have been regis- tered in other cities, and between one and two million opium dens have been closed within the past three years. "The avowed aim of the gov- ernment is to sweep away nine tenths of the opium evil by the close of 1910." One serious hindrance to the larger success is found in the for- eign concessions, which are under the authority of the so-called Christian nations. Within these concessions the opium joints are not closed, are making money out of the restrictions elsewhere, and cannot be controlled directly by the Chinese government. But as no officer will be permitted to continue in office who uses opium, the busi- ness and habit have been struck a staggering blow. An incidental effect is a great stimulus in the tobacco trade, especially cigarettes, as they con- tain the most nicotine of any form in which it is used; and opium cures, containing more or less morphine, are being exploited, but these are only temporary conditions. The increased productive- ness of those who are freed from its enervation, the stimulus to food industries and other helpful THE IMPERATIVE 99 occupations, the improved moral condition of the people, and a growing desire for education are sure to follow as permanent and increasing re- sults, and are already manifesting themselves. The end is not yet, but the cause of reform has been greatly advanced and is on the way to- ward complete establishment. Many causes and forces have contributed to the progress already made, but the native Christians, the students from Christian schools, and the missionaries were prime movers in the great achievement, and China will be redeemed from this gigantic evil if Christian people meet their imperative obliga- tion to strengthen their forces and adequately aid the heroic struggle. If, as said Salmon P. Chase, ^^the way to re- sumption is to resume," and as demonstrated by the Chinese, the way to prohibit is to prohibit, may not the practical Americans who believe in sobriety, temperance, and civic decency conclude that the way to kill the most pampered and per- nicious business in this land is to kill it ? 2. The ancient custom of foot-binding, which ' dates from the Tang dynasty, has persisted for about thirteen hundred years and has brought ex- quisite torture to multiplied millions of infant girls, resulting in the death of a considerable per- centage of them and crippling the rest for life. Its introduction was without any pretense to 100 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT utility, and its evils have been recognized by many of their more advanced thinkers and statesmen, but for more than a millennium China has been powerless to change the custom. Kang Hsi (1662-1723), a great warrior, able scholar, and wise ruler, whose reign of sixty-one years, two centuries ago, was the most brilliant of any in China, endeavored to stop foot-binding, and issued edicts prohibiting it. He brought all the resources of his wisdom, prestige, and power to aid him in his purpose, but it developed such a combined and growing opposition that he with- drew his edicts and abandoned the effort, lest its prosecution should cost him his throne. In 1872 Miss Mary Q. Porter, a missionary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, opened a school for girls in Peking. She was afterward married to the Rev. Frank D. Gamewell, the pioneer and engineer missionary who survived the riots in West China and was the heroic, resource- ful, and successful defender of Christians and foreigners at the siege of Peking. Miss Porter made it a condition in her school that no child whose feet had been bound should be admitted, un- less she permitted her feet to be unbound. This was a great innovation and thought by many to be impossible of enforcement; but patiently, kindly, firmly, it was insisted upon, and though the school grew slowly at first, it had set up a new standard THE IMPERATIVE 101 and introduced a new order making for righteous- ness, and it could afford to wait. Almost universally the missionaries throughout the empire have taught and used their influence against the cruel and crippling custom. Interest in the matter gradually spread, and Mrs. Archi- bald Little devoted ten years of her life in China to organizing and leading the campaign to liberate the women of the empire from the evils of this ancient custom. Within a few years the education of the girls had so appealed to the Chinese that the empress became the founder and patron of schools for them. She set apart a large Lama convent and had it transformed into a school for girls. Members of the noble families have imitated her example and opened schools in their private palaces for their daughters and personal friends, and provision has been made for public schools for girls in Peking. By order of the Board of Education, no pupils whose feet are bound are admitted to these schools. Attendance is not compulsory, but the benefits of attendance are very manifest, and the schools are popular. Many young men who had received Christian or Western education asserted their right to have some say in the matter of their own marriage, and agreed not to marry any woman whose feet were bound. 102 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT Imperial edicts, proclamations by governors- general and other officials, books, tracts, all con- tributed, and these, together with other influences, proved persuasive, so that when Mrs. Archibald Little was leaving China in l^ovember, 1906, she turned the direction of this reform movement over to the Chinese, and the greatest interest was manifested bj those highest in authority. This is the first reform movement taken over by the Chi- nese from the foreigners. The opium habit and foot-binding custom are cited only as examples suggestive of the variety, range, intricate relations, obduracy, and gigantic proportions of China's reform problems. If our sympathy is challenged by her Herculean labors in the attempt to right these wrongs, which have suc- ceeded only in so far as the reforms were energized by and had the cooperation of Christian purpose, her courageous but unequal struggle to solve her constructive problems, which is an immensely more difficult undertaking, must emphasize more fully, if possible, our imperative obligation to move speedily and adequately to her assistance. 3. China's great task is her educational problem. This takes precedence of her governmental prob- lem, for which she may find a few intelligent, educated, broad-minded, clear-visioned statesmen who can study governmental principles as unfolded by other nations and from these evolve a plan of THE IMPERATIVE 103 closely articulated details which might be nearly ideal, but that would not settle her governmental problem. In 1906 China, the oldest, largest, and most conservative of the last three absolute monarchies of the earth, sent two Imperial Commissions to the West to study constitutional government. They visited the United States and all the principal countries of Europe, and their report was fol- lowed by an imperial decree intimating a purpose to establish a constitutional form of government and ordering the people to prepare for it; and China is now engaged in organizing a system of democratic government for the cities and larger towns ; has decided that certain classes are unfit to exercise the franchise, and has included among these barbers, play actors, Christians, and coolies. By imperial edict graduates of Christian colleges are denied the rights in this connection granted to graduates of government institutions. But that has not made her strong. The strength of a gov- ernment depends upon the quality of the governed. Important as may be the form of government, that is secondary to the reliability and solidarity of its citizens. Patriotism is not a purchasable commodity. Faithfulness in office is not guaran- teed by appointment to office. In the absence of a deep-rooted loyalty to high ethical ideals, crime is a question of opportunity. Restrictions from without cannot permanently control impulses from 104 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT within. A stream cannot rise above its fountain nor a pure life proceed from an impure heart. China's primal need is not a new civilization but a Christian experience. A newborn babe possesses nothing but aptitudes and necessities. The relieving of the latter de- velops the former. All that any man has beyond his original endowment he has acquired, and the process of acquiring constitutes his education. Where nations, communities, parents are wise, they will select with utmost care, establish at great cost if need be, and direct through the choicest agents the educational processes to which their children and youth are subjected until their ac- quirements, ideals, principles, purposes, and methods of procedure become valuable assets to the sura total of reliability, righteousness, honor, wealth. Failing in this, every other attainment has in it the seeds of dishonor, ultimate weakness, and death. The educational system of China, being confined to its ancient classics, was neither initiative nor constructive, but memoriter and illustrative. Its iron-clad requirements both as to content and method have resulted in the development of the passive rather than the active virtues, in the sup- pression of individuality, and the evil effects which come from neglecting the study of nature and domestic training, which are the heritage and THE IMPERATIVE 105 boon of Western civilization. The mental activity which the Chinese have retained is not by reason of their education but in spite of it, for being imi- tative and servile, ^'its tendency was to stunt genius and drill the faculties into a slavish adher- ence to venerated usage and dictation." The educational problem which China is facing is not to modify an existing system nor to estab- lish a system where none exists, but to supersede an old, carefully elaborated system which for cen- turies has been closely articulated with her re- ligious, social, and governmental conditions ; to adapt and adopt a new system which in almost every particular must contradict the established one. This involves one of the most extraordinary revolutions the world has ever known. Possibly the most accomplished of China's long list of monarchs was Li Shi Mi, the second em- peror of the Tang dynasty. "Famed alike for his wisdom and nobleness, his conquests and good government, temperance, cultivated taste, and patronage of literary men," he ranks with Mar- cus Aurelius and with Charlemagne, who came to his throne in the next century. Under his in- fluence the system of education which began be- fore Abram migrated from Ur of the Chaldees and continued until the present century, took on the most of the characteristics presented In modern times, so that A. D. 607 may be taken as the real 106 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT birth time of this method of preparing statesmen bj study and selecting them by literary examina- tions. The colleges, if such we may call them, were coordinated with Peking, and the oflicers of the empire were recruited from successful competitors in their progressive examinations. About one million students underwent preliminary tests at seventeen hundred and five matriculation centers before they could enter the lists for the first-degree examinations. Some Y 6 0,000 candidates com- peted biannually for the first degree, while about 190,000 competed tri annually for the second de- gree. These figures do not include those who com- peted for the third degree, which was open for competition triannually at Peking. The examinations consisted of quotations from the Chinese classics or papers prepared in imita- tion of indicated passages. The competitor re- ceived his subject and was conducted to a desig- nated stall, generally of brick, about three feet wide, four feet deep, and six feet high, contain- ing nothing but a table and a bench. These stalls were arranged in rows on either side of aisles, with sometimes 14,000 or more within the one inclosure. There, with a limited supply of food and water, the candidate remained three or four days under close surveillance, that none might communicate with him until his paper was completed. ^NTot in- THE IMPERATIVE 107 frequently so much had been involved in his prepa- ration, and so much depended upon his success, that the candidate died under the nervous strain. Emperor Quang Hs'u, in 1898, inaugurated an era of educational reform, but was imprisoned in the interest of the Opposition by the empress dow- ager, and a reaction set in. By his order all tem- ples at which sacrifice was not required by edict were to be turned into schools and colleges for the newer learning, and all who graduated from these new institutions were to be accepted in the govern- ment service. In 1901, after the Boxer defeat, the empress promulgated the very educational re- forms for which the emperor had been deposed less than four years before, and by an imperial edict, September 2, 1905, practically the whole ancient scheme of literary and civil service ex- aminations was abolished. Beginning with 1906, all competitive examinations for the literary de- grees were to cease, and henceforth no one could pass the competitive examinations who had not pursued with success the required courses of modern learning. I have visited the old examination stalls in va- rious cities and found them falling into decay or being torn down to make place for modern educa- tional institutions. At Peking it is planned to erect new buildings on a site of twenty-eight hun- dred acres for the new Imperial Chinese Univer- 108 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT sitj, which is to supersede the old Peking Uni- versity. Dormitory accommodations for twenty thousand persons are to be provided and a portion of the grounds set apart for agricultural experi- ments. The site of the present university is to be utilized for a school for the daughters of j)i'iiices, nobles, and high officials. China is eager to de- velop her new education and willing to make any necessary sacrifice to make it efficient. The commissioner of police in Tientsin, in 1906, issued an official notification prohibiting the hold- ing of celebrations or the making of offerings to the dead on the great Festival of All Souls, and strongly advised the people to contribute to the educational fund the money they intended to spend in offering sacrifices to the spirits. At the request of the Educational Commission and the Commer- cial Association, the Shanghai magistrates issued a proclamation urging the people to divert similar moneys to their educational fund. About $350,000 was spent annually for these sacrifices. The World's Chinese Student Federation stands for a close federation of all students for modern education, translations, and publications, for mu- tual practical assistance and for a common lan- guage. The new regulations require the mandarin dialect to be used in all government schools. The Chinese ambassador in the United States assembled all the Chinese students in our country THE IMPERATIVE 109 at Amherst for three dajs during the summer of 1906, to consider how they could make their stay abroad useful to their country, and he has ar- ranged to hold three such meetings annually hereafter. Schools of Western learning are being developed in every one of the eighteen provinces. They are also founding medical and industrial colleges, agricultural institutions, schools for normal train- ing, mechanical engineering, electrical engineer- ing, and the whole range of technical instruction. There are forty thousand schools in China more or less closely related to the Western learning, but only one man in twenty and one woman in a thou- sand can read, and China is planning to have a million schools established as necessary to meet the demands of her vast population, that is, an addition of 960,000 schools to those which have been opened. The Chinese are losing faith in their religion, and when the command went forth to appropriate as many temples as might be needed and turn them into schools, the people did not protest, and the missionaries were not astonished. By using her temples and developing her re- sources, she may handle the material side of the problem, but her insuperable difficulty is to get teachers. She must do the best she can. Like a drowning man grasping at a straw, she is giving positions to half -educated Japanese and Chinese — 110 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT men turned out wholesale from tlie inefficient get- educated-quick schools opened in Tokyo to exploit the China emergency, men who have read Herbert Spencer and Haeckel, but know nothing of the world, the Bible, ethics, or educational meth- ods. In 1907 there were sixteen thousand Chinese students in Tokyo. Some of these spent less than two years in the study of English, the sciences and literatures of foreign lands, and yet have been en- gaged to teach these subjects. This influx of blind leaders of the blind, forced in a pagan environ- ment to a premature appearance of maturity, is supplying for leadership persons who have gulped down an unassimilable dose of Western learning and acquired a most grotesque idea of their own cleverness, whose influence will be to deflect and make more turbid the currents of thought and progress. The new scientific learning will drive out idols and the grosser forms of superstition, but only the gospel of Christ can save China from gen- eral skepticism and rank materialism. China is seething with the spirit of progress. She may get technical training from France, Ger- many, and elsewhere, but where can she find men, consecrated men of sturdy character, grounded in ethical ideals, with vision and poise for general leadership ? She has awakened to a national con- sciousness. She is evolving an embryonic but genuine national patriotism. She is learning to THE IMPERATIVE 111 read. The transformation so widespread, and wider spreading, througli the missionaries, com- merce, railroads, postal service, newspapers, and other innovations transplanted from Christian na- tions, must be guided and given tone, or its very momentum will make for madness. Success of Christian influences in begetting this desire for better things intensifies our responsibility to make it possible for China to realize the best. To urge her out of her old, well-beaten way, and then leave her to grope in confusion for she knows not what, because of our failure to lead her to the only true and living way, would be the crime of crimes. Christianity must dominate the intellectual life of China or fail in adequate leadership. This must not supersede but supplement her spiritual ministry to the heart life. A commission ap- pointed by the Shanghai Centennial Conference issued an urgent call for 3,200 men and 1,600 women to engage in direct evangelistic work. There is on the average for all China but one missionary for every 132,000 souls; in the most favored province (Chung Kiang) one to 43,000. In Honan, where the riots occurred recently, there is only one missionary on the average for every 380,000. You cannot save the people unless you teach them, and you cannot teach them unless you reach them. The United States has the position, possessions, confidence, which make her respon- 112 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT sible for the future of China as no other nation can be, and this leads us to consider — IV. Our imperative obligation as emphasized by the crime of our neglected opportunity. The Chinese diplomatic service dates from 186Y, and to our American minister, ]\fr. Burlingam^, is due the credit of introducing it, and to this day in- telligent Chinese recall v^ith gratitude the services which he and America through him rendered their nation. In times of great distress our secretary of state, Mr. John Hay, set before them an ex- ample of Christian statesmanship which came as a sunburst in their darkness, and exemplified the spirit of neighborliness which they never fail to commend. In the hour of her decrepitude, when the ghoulish powers were waiting to administer upon her effects, and with unseemly haste were entering upon her expoliation. President Roosevelt in- terested himself, and she was assured that the United States stood for the maintenance of her autonomy. The services of Mr. Conger, the pa- tience of our admiral who refused to fire upon her fleet, the refunding of the Boxer indemnity, the exemplary conduct of hundreds of American missionaries, physicians, and teachers, constitute a record which has impressed the Chinese with confidence and would make them willing and eager to counsel with us. THE IMPERATIVE 113 About the middle of the century just past students from China, young men of initiative and high purpose, prepared in the Christian schools and stimulated by the devoted, forceful lives of the missionaries, sought personal equipment for service in the colleges of America. Others went to Europe, but the United States was the chosen land of the vast majority. Although it meant threat- ened expatriation, or, when they returned, perse- cution and imprisonment, they dared these and came. They were few at first, but the number gradually increased as the benefits became mani- fest, the opposition decreased, and the Christian schools enlarged, until a notable company of China's choicest young men were enrolled in our institutions of learning. The relations of our country with China had not been ideal in every particular, but they were far and away more just and more neighborly than those of any other nation, and the God of all grace, who gave us grace to command China's confidence, gave China grace to place in our hands in rapidly increasing numbers the training of her young men. These young men were to furnish the embodied ideals for China's transformation, give guidance to her development, form to her government, and in large measure determine her immediate future. Had we been true to our great trust and excep- tional opportunity, the Boxer trouble might have 114 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT been averted; or, if not, there would have been thousands of educated men occupying official posi- tions, embodying the Christian principles which underlie and permeate our national life, ready and able largely to meet China's crisal require- ments and direct her governmental, social, and educational development. But — In 1882 (August 4) "The Chinese Exclusion Act" became operative. In 1887 (March 4) the treaty prohibiting the importation of Chinese labor for twenty years was signed. In 1892 (May 4) "The Chinese Exclusion BiH'' was passed and approved. In 1893 (May 15) the Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the "Geary Chinese Ex- clusion Act." In 1893 (August 10) the first Chinaman was deported. I do not propose to discuss the wisdom or un- wisdom of excluding contract labor from the United States, and I concede that much can be said in its favor, but the manner in which the law was enforced was barbaric and inhuman to an ex- tent that would be a shame to a tribe of savages. Truculently subservient to the demands of a selfish, disorganizing, imperious, unchartered, and irresponsible labor union, and cringing to a venal political propaganda, both of which were unameri- THE IMPERATIVE 115 can and godless, the officers of the United States government subjected Chinese officials, gentlemen, merchants, and students, who sought to enter our country for business or study, to indignities to which it would be a disgrace to subject the lowest class of coolies. Chinese who were resident in this country were abused, their homes destroyed, their property looted, their persons maltreated, and, not infrequently, they were killed by hood- lums whose idleness was shamed by the industry of their victims, and whose reckless dissipation placed them at a great disadvantage in comparison with the temperate and patient thrift of the ones they injured. The government fathered the bru- tality and disgrace by refusing adequate redress. This was deadly to the Chinese student tidal wave which had set toward our colleges. Many were deterred from further study, many were de- flected to atheistic and materialistic institutions in Europe. Thousands found their way to the schools in pagan Japan. These are in the high places of power to-day, exerting an influence for evil, or fail- ing, because of our crime, to exercise the construc- tive influences for good which are essential to China's greatness. Had we treated the Chinese with common decency, which is infinitely below neighborliness, the crisis which confronts her to- day as a nation would not be so acute, and we would not stand condemned at the bar of God for 116 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT cruelly neglecting an imperial privilege and im- perative obligation. When Jesus was asked by his disciples to teach them to pray, he gave them what is commonly called "The Lord's Prayer/' commanding, accord- ing to Luke, "When ye pray, say" — and according to Matthew, "After this manner pray ye" — mak- ing the prayer he taught a part of the daily ritual and the model for the prayers of his disciples in all ages. The object of this prayer is the adjust- ment of man to God as everlasting Father and uni- versal Sovereign, and it is as suggestive in the consequential order of its petitions as in their con- tent. The jDetition, "Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth," is not, as many assume, a repetition of the petition "Thy kingdom come," which immediately precedes it, but a consequential extension of it. It is not supposable that Jesus would have duplicated a petition in a formula so condensed that much is included only by implica- tion. '^Thy kingdom come" is a plea that the sovereignty of God shall come to and be estab- lished at the point from which the petition pro- ceeds. We would not say "Come," meaning thereby to designate China, India, the isles of the sea, even our neighbor, or any point other than that from which the petition emanated, unless we so specified. "Come" localizes and personalizes the petition, and necessarily means "Come" to the THE IMPERATIVE ny one praying. ^'Thj kingdom come" in my heart, in my life. It implies personal consecration to God and pleads for the establishment of his abso- lute sovereignty in the personal life of the one offering the petition. It is the intensive prayer for personal acceptance and adjustment. The pe- tition, ^^Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth," is the extensive prayer for the adjustment of all the rest of the world to God's sovereignty. The petition personal and intensive must precede the petition general and extensive, for it would be absurd and blasphemous for a person who is in rebellion against and resisting the sovereignty of God in his personal life to pray for the establish- ment of God's sovereignty over a rebellious world. China can be readily redeemed by Christianity, and will be when we exemplify the principles it teaches, consecrate ourselves to the work it re- quires, and identify ourselves with God in his pur- pose to bring salvation to the Chinese. Through faithful obedience to God the impossible became the actual, the improbable became the insistent, and by our response to the imperative we will be approved or condemned in the sight of God and before the nations of men. China cannot redeem herself. Spontaneous generation or regeneration, physical and spiritual, are contrary to the laws of life. Life must be com- municated from without. China has felt the new 118 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT impulse. She is eager to realize the new power which Cometh from above, but all manner of evil influences are plying her on every side, and from within, and she is unable to compass her emanci- pation and enfranchisement without the assistance of those who personally know the life of God. ''The regeneration of China becomes the question of transcendent importance ; a question demanding the broadest statesmanship, and the supremest effort; a question involving the destiny of the race." We have the ability, we have the responsibility. Our obligation is imperative. We must face the divine inquisition, ''Whose neighbor are we ?" She may be redeemed without us, but we will undercut our claim to discipleship if we fail adequately to aid her in this hour of her supreme need. "Whoso . . . seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" IV THE INDISPENSABLE 119 Thou Shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins. — Matthew. Neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved. — The Acts. 120 IV THE INDISPENSABLE There are many things essential to our well- being which are either unrecognized or under- valued. Their withdrawal would disorganize so- ciety, change cosmos into chaos, and destroy the possibility of life. They are so intimately asso- ciated with our lives that we have never seen them in their true perspective. Even in our thinking we have rarely considered their character, or our dependence upon them, and have ignored them or depreciated their value. Take, for example, the atmosphere about us. We never saw it. We scarcely ever have given it a serious thought unless it were to complain of its impurity, its unsatisfactory temperature, its ex- ceptional stillness, or its breaking the speed limit of our convenience, and yet the equilibrium of its pressure in every direction ; its mobility, its availa- bility, the purity of its elements, the stability of their composition are essential to physical life. If the oxygen were extracted from it, we would die. If there were any portion of time when we could not have access to it, we would cease to live; but who of us have put into the estimate of our annual 121 122 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT living necessities the amount of oxygen we have required, possibly an average of a ton a year, ever since we were given life ? Nor have we appre- ciated God's gracious adjustment whereby we find it waiting for us wherever we go. If on the first day of January each of us should have doled out to him the ton of oxygen necessary to meet his needs for the succeeding twelve months, what could he do with it, how could he carry it with him, how could he travel without it, where could he store it, how could he protect it, how maintain its purity ? If it were possible for some corporation to form a combine, and control the output and distribution, what would be the con- dition of the rest of humanity? We would cease to live before we could secure an injunction to break the Satanic corner in this one of the neces- sities of life, or negotiate for the required supply. And yet who of us has ever said, ^^I thank thee, Lord, for the atmosphere I breathe, everywhere available, always ready to fill my lungs, to main- tain the temperature of my body, to aerate my blood, and to serve me in a thousand uncatalogued ways as provided for, by thy bounty"? Take that institution which is most distinctive of the Christian civilization, and fundamentally related to Christianity, the home. Who has ever appreciated it as he should ? If any of us have a home in the full^ rich sense of the term, it is more THE INDISPENSABLE 123 necessary to our best living than any other one thing pertaining to this world. We would rather part with anything else which we possess than have our home broken up. He forfeits his claim to respect as a man who would not part with his life, if need be, to maintain its honor or protect it from invasion. How unutterably sad to see an individual disarticulated from this fundamental institution, an outcast among men, no part of an inner circle of sympathy in which he might nor- mally interpret his truest, most tender, and con- structive personality for the blessing of others, and from which draw personal strength, confi- dence, inspiration, courage, according to the needs of his nature! If you were asked what makes home the joy and inspiration of childhood, the haven of youth, the dream of young men and maidens, the incomparable prize of the mature, the sanctuary of the aged, the most conserving and constructive institution of Christian lands, you could readily answer. It is not the building. There may be other houses more commodious, in which the home is less beautiful or helpful, and it may be there are less commodious houses where the home is per- vaded with a subtler, sweeter atmosphere of peace, confidence, strength. It is not the location. You may recall a hamlet standing under a hill, shut in from any broad outlook upon the world, but in 124 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT which a saintly and now sainted mother and father lived for each other and their children, ministered perpetual blessings to your early life, laid the foundation of, and gave inspiration to, your char- acter, and from which the memory of their strong, devoted lives comes down through the years like a breath from heaven. It is not the luxurious car- pets, elegant furniture, expensive works of art, or elaborate decorations. These and many other things may be accessories, ministering comfort and refinement, but they are not the essentials of a home. There are many things which unite to create the pervasive atmosphere of a genuine home and help to make it to those who possess it the truest type of heaven and dearest place on earth. Chief among these is love, reciprocated and unrestrained in its expression, interpreting itself in mutual sympathy and helpfulness. Here each desires the blessedness of the others, and hungers for their enlargement ; here each interprets the condition of the others and rejoices or sorrows with them; here each delights to aid the others as need may be, with cordial cooperation and joyous ministry. It is love, alert to express itself in sympathy and helpfulness, which makee the home the place of rest, the place where one is always rated at his best and counts for most; where there is unobtru- sive, continuous, appreciated thoughtfulness, each THE INDISPENSABLE 12S for the others; where the best in one's life finds natural expression, and there come back to him perpetual dividends of joy far larger than his original investment. This is home. That nation is strong, sure of the future, and greatly blessed where the homes enthroning mutual love are numerous and securely guarded by mutual appre- ciation and confidence. You may travel where you will and you will not find a true home among the non-Christian peoples of the world, except where it has been inspired by Christian influence. You may find many resi- dences, even palaces, both large and elegant — for there are persons of great wealth whose houses are of imposing appearance — furnished with barbaric splendor and every luxury, including many slaves and retainers, but the relationship between its members does not interpret mutual love ; sympathy does not dominate and helpfulness does not direct their activities. jSTeither the pagan nor Moham- medan religion contributes to the development of homes. There are two reasons for this: 1. The home is the highest expression of social- istic altruism, where each lives for the others, and all live for each. This makes the home the nur- sery and interpretation of the family, but the essentials of true family life are not fostered by the non-Christian religions. The family is no civic device nor human invention, but a divine in- 126 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT stitution, inseparable from the normal develop- ment and highest interests of humanity. It is God's thought of humanity reduced to its simplest terms. It includes three persons, of one substance and essential equality in their organized relations. The family, including the father, the mother, and the child, is the human trinity, and constitutes the unit of the Christian civilization. The individual is not the unit. He is but a fraction of the unit. The unit, that which includes all the essentials necessary for the continuance of the race, is the family. It embodies in embryo all social rela- tions, and is the type of the kingdom of God. The completeness of the family is destroyed by the elimination or undue limitation of any one of its three essential personalities. Among all non- Christian peoples the condition of woman is one of limitation, humiliation, and sorrow. Kept in ignorance, doomed to the most menial service, held as a slave or pampered as a mistress, and usually denied the possession of a soul, mutualities are im- possible, and her place of residence partakes of the nature of a prison. In pagan and Mohammedan lands the child is under the absolute authority of the father to give away, sell, kill, or treat as for any reason he may determine. Wherever woman is held in contempt, or the child is depreciated, or ruled with selfish caprice, it is impossible for genuine family life to THE INDISPENSABLE 127 develop or exist, and its interpretation is of neces- sity a far call from the ideal home. God in Jesus Christ, by the supreme expression of irrepressible love, redeemed the race. He exalted the redeemed woman to equality with the redeemed man, not for the purpose of duplication or substitution, but for supplemental and coordinated relations, mak- ing the twain one, as the body, though having many members, is one body. He also enfranchised childhood, setting the child in the midst, as the chief care and hope of its parents and the race. Thus out of the redeemed factors he made pos- sible the reforming of the true family, the unit of the Christian civilization. 2. As there can be no home without a family, so there can be no family, in the true sense of the term, without mutual love. The growth and con- tinuance of love require, as its object, an accessible and sympathetic personality, of real, imaginary, or possible purity. The gods which non-Christian religions present for worship are impersonal or impure, selfish or unapproachable. Individual life interprets religious belief, and as love is not em- bodied in any god, nor set forth in the teachings of any religion other than Christianity, the family and the home are neither normally developed nor even fostered under non-Christian influences. Jesus stated a great ethical truth, which finds ample historic illustration, when he said to his 128 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT disciples, ^^A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you." The pages of history record, at rare intervals, conspicuous examples of devotion and service, and there are many more inconspicuous ones, which suggest and illustrate more or less distinctly the nature and possibilities of love. There has been in all ages more or less refined selfishness, and much selfishness unrefined, which masqueraded as love. But in the light of the revelation which God, who is love, has made of himself in the face of Jesus Christ, who is his express image, all these pale into obscurity. The life, teachings, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ gave to love a new significance, one which never had been assigned to it before. It is the revelation of life and immortality in essence and operation, and his commandment that "^^e love one another, even as I have loved you," sets up a standard of being and a requirement of expression which never be- fore had been attained or conceived. It was a '^new commandment." New in its application — "God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 'New in its intensity — "The love of Christ con- straineth us." New in its endurance — nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." l^ew in its THE INDISPENSABLE 129 spirit — "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," that is, the spirit of sacrifice measured by need and ability. 'New in its motive — "That whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life," that is, the motive of the largest blessedness to the needy who will receive its ministry. The love which Christ embodied and com- manded is not the play of an occasional emotion, not the expression of a variable passion, not an agreeable ministry to those closely related, but a clearly defined and established quality and atti- tude of soul with a controlling and sustained pas- sion to bless the needy through personal ministry, by sacrifice. So radically new was this command- ment that God himself assumed our flesh in the person of Jesus Christ to reveal its significance to man in terms of human living. It is the fulfilling of the law, the interpretation of God, the infallible test of discipleship. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one for another." In New Zealand the Lord's Supper was being celebrated. The first rank having knelt, a native rose up and returned to his seat, but again came forward and knelt down. Being questioned, he said: "When I went to the table I did not know whom I would have to kneel beside, when suddenly I saw by my side the man who a few years before 130 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT slew my father and drank his blood, and whom I then devoted to death. Imagine what I felt when I suddenly found him by my side. A rush of feelings came over me that I could not endure, and I went back to my seat. But when I got there I saw the upper sanctuary, and the great supper, and thought I heard a voice, saying, ^By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.' That overpowered me. I sat down and at once seemed to see another vision of a cross with a Man nailed to it, and I heard him cry, ^Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' Then I returned to the altar." So far as a missionary manifests in his life the compassionate love of Christ, he presents a com- pletely new thing in a non-Christian community, and it is the first thing that makes an impression upon the heathen heart. "They meet enlighten- ment with indifference or the teachings of their tradition, but all their weapons miss fire against merciful love, and it awakens within them feelings of whose existence they themselves were unaware. The sermon in action is understood long before the sermon in words." When Christ uttered this "new commandment," and proclaimed love to be the test of disciples, all the great non-Christian faiths of the world had been, or were, in active operation, and had proven themselves incompetent to meet the world's needs. THE INDISPENSABLE 131 Only Mohammedanism has arisen since, and while it teaches there is but one God, and that he is great, it ignores the love of God, as revealed in Jesns Christ, and for twelve hundred years has been sterile as to constructive men in the realm of thought and unable to lift a single tribe into virtue. Every other religion than the religion of Jesus Christ bases devotion upon fear or selfishness, compels service, embodies no controlling expres- sion of sympathy, and ignores love. Heathenism has no compassion for the widow, the orphan, the weak, the oppressed, and provides them no advo- cate. "If we address our consideration to the prac- tical results which flow from heathenism rather than the structure of heathen thought, we will find that misery in various forms is its inseparable attendant." About eighty-seven per cent of the Burmese are Buddhists, and Buddhism has existed among them for more than twenty-five centuries; for fourteen centuries it has been their dominating religion, therefore Burma will furnish a proper place to study the characteristics of Buddhism. Buddhism is an absolute atheism. It has no personal god, but believes in a personal devil, and in good spirits and bad spirits, called Nats. The Buddhists do not worship nor pray to the good spirits because, according to their teachings, these spirits are doing the very best they can for hu- 132 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT manity. If they could do any better, they would ; and if they cannot do any better, why waste time in making offerings to them? They present all their offerings and make all their ]3rayers to the evil spirits in order to placate them. The most meritorious work a Buddhist can perform is to build a pagoda, that is, a solid piece of masonry, conical in shape, which serves no purpose except to attract the attention of the evil spirits, flying back and forth, who, it is hoped, will be reminded that the one who constructed it fears their malevo- lent influence, seeks to placate them, and would persuade them not to harm the one who thus ap- peals for their good offices. You can stand on an eminence in Burma and see hundreds, or, moving through the land, you will pass thousands of these pagodas. It is no merit to repair one, for while it might bring im- munity to the one who built it, according to their views, it would add no merit to the one who re- paired it. There are but four exceptions, the Shwedagon at Rangoon, and one each at Pegu, Prome, and Mandalay. These are sacred because of their an- tiquity, their magnificence, and the relics they contain. The Shwedagon at Tvangoon, because of its age, its relics, and its splendor, is the most sacred shrine of all Buddhism. The relics which it enshrines are eight hairs of Gautama and a THE INDISPENSABLE 133 priest's garment, a water dipper and a staff of three previous incarnations of Buddha. The range of mountains running north and south in Burma stops abruptly just north of Ran- goon, and at 166 feet above the city level a plat- form was constructed 900 by 685 feet, and on that the pagoda has been erected. It was commenced in the year B. C. 585, attained its present propor- tions in 1546, and has been gilded with pure gold seven times; the last time was in 1887-88, and re- quired 86,110 packages of gold leaf, at an expendi- ture of 300,000 rupees. The pagoda is 365 feet high, and composed of twelve sections. The ninth section, the Hti, or umbrella, is thirteen and one half feet in diameter, made of seven iron rings, plated inside and out with gold, weighs a ton and a quarter, and is valued at about 650,000 rupees, without the ornamentation, which is valued at about as much more. The under side of the um- brella is heavily incrusted with jewels: 3,664 rubies, 541 emeralds, and 433 diamonds vie with each other in brilliancy and reflect the devotion of the worshipers, who donated them. Hanging down from the inside of the umbrella are 107 bells of pure gold, some weighing six pounds; 1,335 bells of silver, some weighing as much as seventeen and one half pounds ; and 24 bells of mixed gold and silver, making 1,466 bells, each with its own musical tone. Every bell has a slightly concave, 134 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT leaf-shaped clapper, suspended in it. In the bril- liant sunshine the pagoda is a thing of superb beauty, looking like a great shaft of light piercing the very heavens. Under the mellow light of the Oriental moon, when seen towering above and re- flected in the Royal Lakes, its softened outline looks as though it might be the ghost of a dream. The slightest passing zephyr caught by those delicately suspended concave clappers, sets them swinging in those 1,500 bells of more-than-crystal tone, and there comes sifting down through the air the sound of a pervasive music of unearthly sweet- ness, as though the whole sky had been turned into an ^olian harp, or a choir invisible were render- ing some celestial chorus. This music, soft as the soughing of summer breeze through a solemn cypress grove, echoes and reechoes over the plat- form where the worshipers, dressed in the garb of almost every land, are bending by the hundreds, and at times by the thousands, having come by weary pilgrimages to present their offerings, and make their prayers — and to what ? To the malev- olent spirits. 'No sentiment of affection, no sense of gratitude, no aspiration for holiness is theirs, but in the midst of architectural beauty and the sweetest harmony of sound servile fear is seeking by painful journeyings and lavish expenditures to placate the evil spirits, and thus avert their sinister purposes either from the devotee or those THE INDISPENSABLE 135 near to him of kin. There is not a scintilla of love, not a thought of helpfulness, not a suggestion of sympathy; and what can be the character of the abodes dominated by a religion in which fear is the actuating motive to worship? The domination of fear is even more manifest in the Hindu religions. While in Calcutta dur- ing the winter of 1897-98 I attended Christmas morning service at ^ve o'clock in the Daramtalla Street Church. The main audience room was well fdled with natives and foreigners who had come to show their love for Jesus, their Creator and Re- deemer, and to celebrate his nativity. The old, old story of inexhaustible sweetness was read, hymns of praise were sung, prayers breathing confession and thanksgiving, hunger of heart and loyalty of soul were offered, and testimonies to God's good- ness were given by many. The hour quickly passed, permeated with heavenly peace and fellow- ship. At the close of the service Dr. Warn in- vited the entire congregation to the parsonage to cJiotahazari, that is, little breakfast, consisting of a cup of tea, a banana or an orange, and "a toast." I had made an arrangement with a friend to go after service to the Kalighat, where sacrifices are regularly offered to the goddess Kali. As we passed the telegraph office I stopped long enough to send a Christmas greeting to my family in the United States, The message started from Cal- 136 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT cutta at twenty minutes past eight Christmas morning, and they received it at my home in Balti- more at half past eleven o'clock the night before Christmas, so they had the pleasure of knowing I had been well the next day. Calcutta received its name from the Kalighat, which is about two miles from the center of the city. According to one account in their sacred writings, Kali was the wife of Seva, and daughter of Himavati, the Himalaya Mountains. She de- stroyed herself because of a slight her father showed her husband. Seva journeyed through India carrying her dead body on his shoulder, to show the cruelty of her father, and at every place he stopped for a night a plague broke out, till Krishna, the seventh incarnation of Brahm, cut her body into fifty pieces, and scattered them broadcast over the land. Wherever one of these pieces fell a temple sprang up, and the Kalighat stands where the second toe of her left foot is said to have fallen. The present temple, of red sand- stone, is about three hundred years old, and its appearance suggests neither beauty nor grandeur. The goddess has two characteristics, the one mild and the other fierce, but it is for the latter she is worshiped as Durga, the inaccessible; Kali, the cruel ; Chandika, the fierce ; Bhairavi, the ter- rible one. The thugs who used to kill unsuspect- ing travelers were under her protection, and made THE INDISPENSABLE 137 their offerings to her before setting out to waylay their victims, and expected her to protect them from detection. She delights in any kind of blood, but especially in human blood, and thousands of victims were offered to her before the British gov- ernment prohibited the offering of human sacri- fices, but it is said there is not a Bengali family of prominence in Calcutta from some member of which a libation of blood has not been presented to her. You may offer to her a buffalo or goat and secretly call it by the name of an enemy, real or fancied, and she is supposed to see to it that the person thus named will die within the year. Behind the temple, say eight feet away, is a building about twenty feet square, open on the four sides, with its roof supported by columns. The floor is thirty inches or more above the pave- ment, and so-called "holy men" and priests sit there, reading the sacred writings, or reciting prayers. Behind this building is the place of sacrifice. The goats, which are kept in pens near by, are taken to the river, ceremonially cleansed, and sold to the worshipers. When the fees have been agreed upon, and the sacrifice is ready to be offered, the goat is taken to a block in which are two firmly fastened wooden uprights, four inches apart, with holes through them in which a wooden bar can be slipped above the neck of the victim, to hold its head in position. The assistant draws 138 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT the front feet of the goat back and above its shoulders, and takes them in his left hand, grasps the hind feet in his right hand, and, lifting the animal with a swinging movement, throws its neck between the uprights. The one who is to slay the offering slips the bar in place, and, holding a knife with a blade twenty inches long, edge up, slips it along the back of the goat till it comes to the front of the shoulder blade, and then, swiftly raising and turning the knife, strikes off the head with a single blow. The goat, bleating piteously in its painful position, continues to bleat for some time after the head has been severed from its body. As the blood spurts from the body, the onlookers vie with each other in shrieking, "Jai, jai, Kali, jai. Kali, jai' — ^'Victory, victory, victory to Kali." The shriek is the most metallic, Satanic, soul-sickening cry I have ever heard from human throats, for it has in it so much of hate and fear, with no suggestion of reverence or love. When we had watched the sacrificing for awhile we found the high priest and told him we wished to see the goddess. Kali. The priest spoke excel- lent English. It was book English, pure and classic, entirely free from slang which cheapens the talk and vitiates the taste of so many Ameri- cans. We started to go between the prayer house and temple to the gate in front of the image. All about in every direction was a crowd of worshipers. THE INDISPENSABLE 139 There were women and men, aged and infirm^ who had their grandchildren by the hand or in their arms, kneeling in prayer, that they and theirs might be saved from evil. There were yonng men and maidens, apparently just crossing the thresh- old of the broader life, kneeling and praying, that they might avert the baneful influence of Kali's malign pleasure. All classes, educated and ignorant, rich and poor, were bowing together with their eyes toward her shrine. When they saw us approaching the door with the high priest, many of them, hoping to get a glimpse of the goddess, arose, pressed forward, and wedged themselves between us and the temple. Two lusty fellows, possibly twenty-five years of age, edged their way through the crowd and cried, ^^Stand back; let the priest advance." When the crowd did not and it seemed could not move back, they shoved them aside as far as they could, and then mercilessly beat those nearest at hand. Their clubs fell on the shoulders of old women and men, and all the worshipers whom they could reach, with a sickening thud which bruised them cruelly, and started the blood at times. But why not? They had gathered to worship the goddess of cruelty, and it was all in keeping with the spirit of the place. When the crowd had been driven back the doors were thrown open and revealed the most horribly 140 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT disgusting sight I have ever looked upon. There stood the goddess in the figure of a woman, dark blue or black, about twelve feet high, with four arms and hands. In one hand she held a drawn sword smeared with blood ; in another she held by his hair the head of a giant she had slain; one hand was beckoning the crowd to approach, while another was repelling them, showing her dual character ; her long, disheveled hair, blown by the wind, waved like writhing snakes about her droop- ing shoulders ; her eyes were bloodshot, like the eyes of a drunkard after a debauch ; two dead men in miniature hung at the sides of her face for ear- rings; a necklace of human skulls reached to her knees; her tongue, protruding to her chin, had been smeared with blood, as were her breasts ; her only garment, if such it might be called, was a girdle of dead men's hands about her waist, and she was standing upon the prostrate form of her husband, whom she is said to have trampled to death. There stood the hideous monstrosity whose decoration had exhausted malevolent ingenuity, the goddess of cruelty to whom multiplied mil- lions of the people of India make their prayers. So repulsive was the appearance of the goddess that a shudder seized men, women, and children alike, and they recoiled with affright, but fearing their manifest dread would displease her whom they had come to worship, they nerved themselves THE INDISPENSABLE 141 and stared at her with a steely gaze of desperate earnestness which poorly concealed the disgust upon many of their countenances. Yet she is the object of their worship, and it is little wonder if their lives, like hers, become sterile of the kindly and tender emotions. In the month of February, at the time of one of their great religious festivals, I mounted an ele- phant and went out to the bathing Ghat at Alla- habad, where three sacred rivers, the Ganges, the Jumna, and a river which runs in their imagina- tion and which is said to join the other two at their confluence, make a place exceptionally sacred. The Ganges has several banks rising one above the other, the highest being thirty feet or more above the lowest. I stood upon the upper bank and looked over the plain toward the river, which at that season was flowing between its lowest banks. This plain was not covered with sand but with an alluvial deposit left by the river as it receded. This had been trampled by the feet of the crowds until it was as fine as flour, so fine you could not feel the slightest grit when pressed between your fingers, and it floated away like smoke from a puff of your breath. There was a vast multitude of men, women, and children, dressed in gaudy cos- tumes, or very scantily clothed. It was estimated that there were over one hundred thousand of them. I do not know, I cannot tell the difference between 142 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT fifty thousand and one hundred thousand in a crowd like that, but there were acres and acres of them. Here and there were long avenues kept clear, that those who wished might go to and fro without undue detention or trampling upon each other. Anxious to study their religion as they interpret it in their manner and objects of wor- ship, I went down among the people. Along some of the avenues beggars were obtrusively advertis- ing their deformities and infirmities, and appeal- ing for gratuities, while along other avenues the fakirs, or ^^holy men," were displaying themselves and their claims for worship. Each beggar had a piece of cloth eighteen or more inches square lying in front of him, on which he hoped persons in the passing crowds would cast some small offering. So I said, ^'If I tarry here, I may see some mani- festations of charity, for there surely would not be such large provision for receiving unless there were a reasonable basis for hope of help." Pres- ently a man came along with a basket of rice to give to those beggars, and I thought, surely this must be because of his sympathy for them, so I followed to see what he would do. As he ap- proached a beggar — and he treated them all alike • — he took a handful of rice and looking anywhere except toward the poor fellow, tossed the rice in his general direction, in the most indifferent manner, without the slightest effort or desire to drop it on THE INDISPENSABLE 143 the cloth in front of him, where it might be gathered up without loss or painful effort. This seemed to be the habit, for each beggar had a sieve made of rice straws with which he was trying to separate the few scattered grains from the dust about him. Perchance he was a leper with his hands eaten off, or paralyzed, or blind, in which case a small child beside him sifted the dust for him. After watching and considering I came to understand that the worshiper was not primarily intending that rice for those beggars, and it was not an act of sympathy at all. He had been taught that if he gave away some rice, he would secure a corresponding amount of merit to his own soul, and as a commercial act he was giving away some rice, disregardful of the recipients, selfishly and solely for the benefit that might come to himself. He knew nothing of the essential principle of benevolence as stated in the promise, '^Blessed is he that considereth the poor," where the reward is not added to the act but derived from it. While I was meditating on the scenes about me a Hindu of exceptional physique drove up, attended by two sais, or runners. He was dressed in Scotch tweed, was about five feet ten inches in height, and light-colored, with clearly defined Aryan fea- tures, which proclaimed his high caste. His horse was a splendid high-stepper imported from Aus- 144 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT tralia; he rode in a stylish drag which, with the silver-mounted harness, had been imported from England, and in the back of his drag were fifteen or twenty blankets he had brought to give the beg- gars. Everything pertaining to him and his outfit indicated intelligence and culture, wealth and in- fluence, a combination which should interpret his religion at its best. Inadequate food, scant cloth- ing, and the enervation of disease made the blood in the veins of the beggars thin and slow-creeping, so that nothing could be more acceptable to them than a blanket, for, while the days were warm, the nights were very chill. With a blanket in his hand, the Hindu went among the mendicants, looking where its bestowal would best interpret his purpose. He passed men and women enfeebled by age, others incompetent, or deformed from birth, and others consumed with leprosy or some other form of disease, almost ready to pass from this life. But the aged and infirm, the crippled and extremely ill did not appeal to him; he passed them by and gave the blanket to a sturdy young fellow who should have been in the workhouse, had paganism possessed such an in- stitution. I followed him, puzzled to detect the basis upon which he bestowed his gratuities. Pres- ently a poor, palsied fellow saw him coming his way, and with the little strength he could com- mand rose and tottered toward him, and putting THE INDISPENSABLE 145 his hands together in the attitude of prayer, pleaded most plaintively for a blanket, saying, ^'Sahib ! Sahib ! Sahib !" He was aged and de- formed, but the Hindu, casting upon him a look of contempt, passed on and gave the blanket to another. With the little strength the poor fellow had left, he got around in front of the Hindu again, and begged a second time, but received only a look cruelly cold and disgusted, while again the blanket was given to one of the lusty young beg- gars. With great effort the poor old man got in front the third time, and thought the blanket was going to be given to him because the Hindu looked a little less disgusted, and so he reached out his hand for the gift, when that stalwart Hindu, who had come there to distribute his offerings as a re- ligious act, smote the poor old palsied beggar man a terrific blow in the face with his clinched fist. The blood burst from his thin, lacerated lips, as he lay senseless at the feet of the worshiping Hindu, who passed on unheeding, and the incident caused not a ripple of surprise in the crowd about. The Hindu, without the most remote thought of sympathy or love, was selfishly giving his blankets to the strongest and youngest he saw, those who would probably live the longest, and say the most prayers to his credit. I turned away, heavy of heart, and went to the avenue along which were ranged the fakirs, or so- 146 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT called ^'holy men," who had worshiped their gods so faithfully that they were supposed to have be- come like them, and were worshiped as their repre- sentatives. There was one standing on his left foot, with the sole of his right foot resting against his left knee. He leaned his chest against a board about eighteen inches long, which was fastened by a rope at each end to a post eight or ten feet high set in the ground behind him. The ropes passed under his arms and kept him from falling while he slept. There he had been standing for six years as an act of worship to his god, fed by his devotees, and had become so holy that they wor- shiped him rather than the god himself. Near by another was sitting on the ground with his left hand uplifted. He had been holding it in that position for four years. The nails had grown four or five inches long and curled around between his fingers, the muscles of his arm had atrophied, and the joints had become rigid. I took hold of his arm and tried to move it, but the joints had lost their suppleness and the arm was as immov- ably attached to his body as the branch to a tree. Another was lying upon a bed which consisted of a board about eighteen inches wide and four feet long, into which had been driven very firmly iron spikes three and a half inches long and one and one quarter inches apart. The man was lying on the spikes with nothing but a loin cloth about THE INDISPENSABLE 147 his person. I said to him, ^'What are you doing here ?" He said, ^'I am worshiping my god." I asked, "Who is the god who likes to be worshiped in this way?" He replied, "I am worshiping Davi, the same god you worship, only you call your god Jesus." I said, "O no ! the God I worship is the God of love and sympathy and helpfulness. He does not desire to see his creatures suffer, but is long-suffering toward them and delights in mercy." We had an interesting conversation, in which I told him about Christianity and the love of Jesus, after which I said, "I understand you have be- come very holy; turn over and let me see what effect these spikes have on you." His skin seemed thickened or calloused like the palm of your hand, and the spikes made a dent in it as they might have upon a hand toughened by manual labor. I asked him, "Does it hurt you very much?" He said, "When I first commenced it nearly killed me, and as long as there was any sin in my body I could scarcely stand the pain, but in about eighteen months, after I got all the sin out of my body, it ceased to hurt." He did not tell me that he had taken henna, a strong narcotic, to deaden the pain while he was getting toughened. While we were talking I loosened one of the spikes down near his knee where he could not see me doing it, and then I said, "I wish you would let me have one of the 148 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT spikes out of your bed." He said: "I cannot. I have been lying upon these spikes for nine years, and my touch has made them as holy as I am. They have touched the board and made it holy as they are, and if you were to try to pull one of these spikes out, the spikes, the board, and I would all come up together." I replied : ^'That might be so for a Hindu, but I am an American, and there is a spike I think wants to go with me to America. !N"ow look," and I took hold of the very tip of the spike I had loosened, and it came out of his bed with scarcely a touch. I hardly think he would have been more surprised if I had struck him. Then I said : ^'I want you to let me have this one to take to America. We do not sleep on spikes in America, and if I could show this one out of your bed some of our people might be persuaded to try it." He replied, ^'If I were to sell you that spike it would be a sin, and all the pain would come back into my body." I took a small coin from my pocket, and said : "I have not said anything about your selling this spike to me. I want to make you a present of this coin, and you can do with it as you please; and you make me a present of this spike, and I can do with it as I please." He put his hand over his face and winked through his fingers, and we exchanged presents. While this was going on his poor deluded fol- lowers were kneeling about us and making their THE INDISPENSABLE 149 offerings to him, because he seemed superior to pain, and they hoped he might have influence for them with their gods who delight in cruelty. If any one of these devotees endures his self-imposed torture for twelve years, he will have accomplished a cycle, and he believes that if he accomplishes twelve cycles he will be absorbed into Buddha, which is to them the height of aspiration. It takes one hundred and forty-four years of torture in twelve various forms to secure the extinction of one's personality, and that is the acme of their re- ligion. The sunshine in that land is so deadly to a for- eigner that if it falls directly upon him, he is likely to suffer from brain fever ; and if even its reflection falls upon him, it may make him ill. The natives have lived there so many centuries they can go about with bared heads and suffer no inconvenience. But if some one among them wishes to worship his god by subjecting himself to the most severe pain, he will sit upon a rock or the sand, and without taking nourishment of any kind he will keep his eyes fixed upon the sun from the time it first rises while it climbs the bright empyrean and descends behind the western ho- rizon. During this time he neither moves nor winks his eyes more than necessity requires. Dur- ing the night he may take food, and rest if his aching eyeballs will permit, but the next morning 150 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT his eyes again salute the first appearance of the rising sun, and he never closes them nor turns them away for an instant until it sets behind the western sky. This he continues to do till it burns blisters on his pupils; still he continues his daily vigil, looking toward the sun till these blisters be- come putrid sores, his eyes run out, brain fever sets in, and if he has a strong constitution and does not die, but recovers, then with empty sockets day by day he turns his eyeless face toward the east, and with the light forever extinguished, me- chanically turning his head, follows the sun as it crosses the heavens and sets at the close of day. This he does to worship his god, and in return re- ceives the worship of his followers. These fakirs, who are feared and worshiped because they have distorted or cruelly limited the use of various members of their bodies, and are apparently superior to pain, appeal to the super- stition of the people, and feed upon their credulity. They make no literary nor devotional contribution to the uplift of humanity, nor addition of any kind to the wealth or advancement of their people. Malodorous and deformed, lazy and willful, im- pure and vicious as are most of them, these so- called "holy men" who interpret their gods to the people by mutilated bodies and uncomplaining endurance of pain, are a cancer and a curse, and there are ^ve million of them in India alone. THE INDISPENSABLE 151 If you had in your employ persons to whom you had furnished the most delicate instruments and appliances with which to work, and they de- liberately destroyed them, asserting that they were trying to please you, what would you think of them? And yet here are people whom God has enriched with feet, hands, eyes, and bodies with which to praise him through service, and they deliberately destroy them by what they call acts of worship, and are worshiped by their fellows in proportion as they mutilate these trusts, all be- cause they believe their gods to be gods of cruelty, who rejoice in their suffering, and they, in turn, interpret in their places of abode the spirit which they worship. Whatever personal devotion there may be in exceptional cases, there is no genuine home, in the full, rich significance of the term, where the Lord Jesus Christ, ^'who came that men might have life, and have it more abundantly," has not revealed that love which is the "new com- mandment." How does the religion of Christ affect these people? Can it do anything for them? As food relieves hunger, as light pleases the eye, as music brings its joyful harmonies to the responsive soul, Christianity is suited to their every need. Let me give you a typical incident. Jacob Jacobs was the son of a pariah, an out- cast, a scavenger. Going along the street when a 152 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT little fellow, about four years of age, he passed d Sunday school and heard the singing. Attracted by the music, he stopped to listen, and the teacher, seeing his interest, asked him to come in. He was clothed in the inadequate fold of a single string about his waist, and he went into a Sunday school where all the children under six years of age wore nothing but their complexions, decorated occa- sionally with a smile. There they sat and smiled and wondered, and were instructed in the truths revealed in the Bible. His teacher asked him to come the next Sunday, which he did, and the next, and many more, and they persuaded him to attend the mission day school. He was responsive and in- dustrious, and acquired a knowledge of the things that were being taught — simple fundamentals of education, together with the profound truths of Christ. A child can grasp these to the extent of its needs as well as a philosopher, and even better. So this son of a poor outcast passed from form to form, through the primary to the secondary school, and completed the course in the high school with a substratum of gospel truth underlying his educa- tion, to which the Holy Spirit gave his vitalizing power, and Jacob was transformed into the like- ness of the Son of God. The Hindu religion had stamped him an outcast because his father had been born an outcast, and within human power that stamp was indelible ; but through the quicken- THE INDISPENSABLE 153 ing of the Holy Spirit he became a joint heir with Jesus Christ. In the power of his newly found life, master of himself, he passed on to and through the government school, and after some experience in teaching he was made head master in the mis- sion high school at Moradabad. There was a wonder in India : Jacob Jacobs, the son of a pariah, had become transformed, conscientious, indus- trious, cultured, capable, alert, because love domi- nated his heart, substituted hope for fear, begat within him dcfiniteness of purpose, keenness of in- terest, responsiveness, resourcefulness, and conse- cration to the highest ideal. It came to pass after a very few years that every boy who went up from that school passed the government examinations. It occurred the next year also. That was very un- usual, and presently it was bruited about the city that for two years every boy who had been recom- mended from the Moradabad high school had passed the government examinations. There were some Brahman and Mohammedan teachers in that city who said, ^^This will never do; we must undercut the influence of Jacobs or we will lose our patron- age." So they had some large placards printed in different colors, on which they stated that Jacobs was the son of an outcast, that if he should correct or touch a high-caste boy, the boy would lose his caste, the parents would suffer pollution also, and to prevent this dire result all high-caste boys ought 154 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT to be withdrawn from the influence of the pariah teacher. These they had posted all through the city, and one was placed on each side of the door in the high school where Jacobs taught, so that every child who came that morning should see them. Jacob Jacobs had the third blessing. You have heard a great deal about the first blessing, so called, which is justification by faith; and the second blessing, so called, which is sanctification by the Spirit; but Jacobs possessed the third blessing. Some peoi:)le try to get the second blessing before they get the first, but it never comes that way, and there are some people who get so much of the first, you could scarcely discover they have not the second ; but Jacobs had the third blessing. The third blessing is very rare ; sometimes it comes be- fore the first, sometimes after the first, and before the second, and sometimes it comes after the sec- ond ; frequently it never comes in this world at all. It is the blessing of common sense. Jacob Jacobs had a great, workable stock of this third blessing, common sense. When the Almighty finds a man who attains unto this third blessing he always has an agent through whom he does things ; but even the Almighty has a hard time doing things which are worth while with a man who does not have common sense. Jacobs knew the limitations of his calling; he THE INDISPENSABLE 155 knew he was not set for the defense of himself; he knew he was set for the illustration of the gos- pel, and he knew also that the Lord would take care of him if he was faithful to his commission. He did not become angry and say, ^^I am as good as the people who put up those posters." E^either, in chagrin, did he tear his hair — that was worn short ; and he would not have torn it if it had been long. Duty led him between those posters, there he went and opened his school as usual; for he knew it was written, "Give place unto wrath. . . ^ Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," and he was sure the Lord would satisfy the claims of justice in mercy better than he could if he should undertake to do it himself. His commis- sion was to illustrate his faith in God, by making his school a success. So he went in and taught his school as if nothing had occurred. School was dis- missed ; and he taught it the next day, and school was dismissed; and those posters disappeared about as they went up, he didn't know how. But the posters had made an impression ; the Brahman and Mohammedan bankers, and other business men, the cultured and rich men of Moradabad, asked, "Why are these posters abusing Jacob Jacobs placed all over the city at this time?" Others, whose sons were at the school, answered: "Don't you know why that is? Jacob Jacobs is the head master of the Moradabad high school, and 156 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT every boy he has sent up to the government exam- inations for the past two years has passed. The Brahman and Mohammedan teachers have put these posters up for fear all their pupils will go to Jacobs' school." And these shrewd business men said, "You say every boy he sent up passed?" The reply was "Yes." "Well," they said, "that is where we want our sons to go." And its halls were soon crowded so that the school has been self-sup- porting ever since. The Lord would work many miracles of grace for us if we did not inter- fere and spoil his plan, that is, if we had common sense enough to do our allotted work faithfully, and let the Lord care for his servant in his own way. A young woman whose parents were outcasts had gone through the mission schools, become a Christian, and graduated from the high school; she also graduated from the Lady DufPerin Hos- pital at Delhi, and just about this time returned to Moradabad as a trained nurse. It is marvelous what beautiful exactness there is in the adjust- ment of Spirit-filled lives. When this woman re- turned with her diploma the head nurse of the hospital at Moradabad was very ill, and there were some extreme cases in the wards which needed special care. The physicians were anxious to find a nurse very promptly, and some one said, "Miss So-and-So, who recently graduated at Lady Duf- THE INDISPENSABLE 157 ferin Hospital, has just come home," and in the emergency she was sent for to assist until they could find some one of larger experience. She stayed till the end of the week, and they had not found anyone else. That was part of the divine schedule. The physicians said : ^'The cases are as critical as they were when she came, and she is do- ing so well she must stay a month. Any change would be dangerous." So she stayed, and proved to be so efficient that they made her head nurse at a salary of 125 rupees per month. Many persons had asked Jacobs why he did not marry. He had common sense, and replied that he had no time to get married while he was getting his education. It is a disgrace in India for a woman to pass fifteen, and among the low castes to pass twelve years of age, without being married, so this trained nurse had been asked very frequently why she did not marry. She also replied, ^'I have no time while I am preparing for my lifework." She, too, had the grace of common sense. These two had had an understanding for years, and when in the providence of God she became head nurse, she and the head master were married, and through the development of a Christian family Moradabad was enriched by the creation of a Christian home. She is still nursing, and is called to attend Brah- man women, Mohammedan women, and the for- 158 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT eign women, for while there is no power on earth which can make a low-caste person superior to the condition of his birth, when the Lord God puts love into the humblest soul it is lifted into efficient manhood or womanhood, for the indwelling love of Jesus Christ is the universal dynamic which transforms all with whom it abides into the life of righteousness and power. ^^The gospel has completely transformed entire tribes and whole nations, delivering them from idolatry. It has turned their swords into plow- shares, their rule of might into a law fashioned by Christian principles ; it has naturalized hu- manity and civilization in their midst." Buddhism is a form of atheism with fear as its motive, and makes its appeal to selfishness. Hin- duism is a form of pantheism, with fear and lust as its chief characteristics. "The central fact of the Indonesian religions is a feeling of dependence, amounting to fear, not of the Deity but of sinister powers, spirits, and souls. It is fear of these powers which alone impels those heathen to seek ways and means of averting their pernicious influence." "Prayer with the Hindus is not a question of divine worship freely offered, but a necessary means of averting a calamity. The average deity must be appeased, his jealousy averted, his ill will set aside. He does not pray to him in the usual sense of the word, but attempts THE INDISPENSABLE 159 to conjure or constrain him, to negotiate with him, or to flatter him'' (Warneck). Confucianism in its essence is agnostic with a materialistic development, but is inconsistent with itself and paralyzing. Mohammedanism is a form of monotheism, but has emphasized sensuality as its prime motive and the sword as its chief evangel. ^^To the animist, what threatens most danger de- mands most careful service and propitiation." ^'Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism embody numerous forms of animistic origin, and have nowhere conquered this most tenacious of all forms of religion ; they have not even entered into conflict with it, it is only overcome by faith in Jesus Christ." The various religions of the ancients, whether Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Syrian or what not, were a mingling of fear and lust, and knew not love. This is evidenced by the meanings attached to the various words for ^^love" as used in the Greek, Latin, and every language which attempts to designate it. In the entire catalogue there is not one term which could be used with its usual meaning to express the love of Christ. Christianity stands alone. It occupies a unique position among the religions of the world. It is the only one which enthrones love as its central dominating principle. In all others man is at best but groping after God if haply he may find him. 160 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT while in Christianity God is revealed as engaged in a loving, persistent quest after man. Fear is paralyzing, and sensualism is disintegrating, set- ting the members and passions, where it is opera- tive, at variance, the one against the other. This is destructive and deadening, for a house divided against itself cannot stand. Love, the only uni- versal, coordinating principle, indispensable to permanent unity and strength, must win, and Jesus Christ, who is Love incarnated, must reign till he has put all things under his feet. This is not an arbitrary enactment of Almighty power, but is written in the fundamental constitu- tion of the universe. It interprets moral order; anything else is anarchy. It interprets human need; anything else is a mockery and repellent. It interprets the purpose of God; anything else is unthinkable. Because Jesus Christ expresses the supreme manifestation of love beyond which God Almighty can make no interpretation to the human understanding, because there is no persuasion in the passion of God, no resource in the wealth of God, no revelation possible for God, beyond the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins. Every one who is not persuaded by, or who refuses to accept him, is lost, for '^he that be- lieveth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God." THE INDISPENSABLE 161 Chunder Sen, though not a Christian, ex- claimed a quarter of a century ago, '^Xone but Jesus, none but Jesus, none but Jesus is worthy to wear India as his diadem, and he shall have it.'^ One infinitel}^ greater than Chunder Sen, greater than any mortal, Almighty God, the everlasting Father, hath ordained that whosoever cometh to Jesus the Christ he will in no wise cast out, and every knee must bow and every tongue confess him Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Christ Jesus is the Indispensable. For "neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved." V THE INEVITABLE 163 To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. — Romans. For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. — 1 GorintMans. 164 THE INEVITABLE ^The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and thej that dwell therein." He made it "by the word of his power," and he redeemed it "according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." Everything which pertains to the world has its reason for being, in the furtherance of this pur- pose. Failing to serve, it ceases to exist, for serv- ing is the law of being. A self-directing will and an imperial conscience were intrusted to man as part of his original en- dowment. Moral perception, self-direction, and personal responsibility are as inseparable from him as personality. Therefore man is invited to become a laborer together with Christ in the out- working of his divine purpose, that he may be a joint heir with him in the glory of the outcome. Everything else pertaining to this world, animate and inanimate, is under the divine compulsion, and can no more cease to serve the divine purpose than it can cease to be without the divine permis- sion, l^ot a sparrow f alleth to the ground without the Father. 165 166 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT God's ultimate purpose in this world, the one to which he has pledged himself, the one which he pursues without cessation, and to which he subor- dinates everything else, is the establishment of his kingdom of grace over willing hearts. He is seeking to secure the loving loyalty of every man based upon personal faith in himself. His pre- liminary purpose is to make his love so manifest that all men, everywhere, shall acknowledge his goodness and will to have him rule over them. As a means to this, God has ordained that man shall be the objective and beneficiary of everything per- taining to this world. ^'All are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ's is God's." ''All things work together for good to them that . . . are the called according to his purpose." When studied in the light of their trend and permanent results, all history, physical, intellec- tual, and spiritual, and all progress, economic, social, and ecclesiastic, demonstrate his love. 'No social or economic condition is permanently ad- justed until it makes for the enlargement of hu- man opportunity. Whatever may have been the motive, the policy, or the steps by which it has been advanced, civilization is established upon order, ministry, solidarity. All real progress is in alignment with, or is working without cessation toward, the establishment of the kingdom of God. This is the primary purpose of God in this world. THE INEVITABLE 167 To this the stability of his throne is pledged. He sees to it that the outcome of every conflict, the steady pull of every force, the ultimate direction of every movement is on the side of his throne. Everything v^hich is permitted to be, is under com- pulsion to serve this purpose, and of necessity works for the enlargement of man's opportunity and the enrichment of humanity as citizens of his kingdom. Every material thing — chemical, physical, or what-not — exists in harmony with the laws of its being, and is defined by its limitations. Only in obedience to these laws can they be combined or manipulated. Within these established conditions they may not refuse to serve. That which is in- herently true of the unit is necessarily true of the aggregate, organized or otherwise. 'No matter what may be the object for which the units are brought together, or the thoroughness with which they are organized, they must pay tribute to God by contributing to the betterment of man and furthering the kingdom of heaven. Failing in such service, they are adjudged injurious and must give way to that which is helpful. There is no exception. ^Nothing may escape. Temporarily, organizations and movements may render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, but ulti- mately they must render unto God the things which are God's, for whatever of their influence 168 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT abides makes for righteousness. Their inception maj have been unutterably iniquitous, but God maketh the wrath of man to praise him, and the outcome is the furtherance of his kingdom. The introduction of opium into China by the British government seems to have been an act of unmitigated selfishness, as reprehensible an exer* cise of power by a great nation as history records. Its immediate effect was dissipating, enslaving, a deadly curse, but it furnished the occasion for forc- ing China to open five of her ports to commerce, and to-day, in the providence of God, every port and all of China is open to Christianity ; and this oldest, largest, and most stolid dynasty on earth is in a ferment with the leaven of the new life, and the Chinese, including one fourth of the world's population, are eager to accept Christian teaching and the transforming power of Christ's love. Australia was set apart as a penal colony, and for years Great Britain deported her criminals to that island continent; but to-day Australia is guided by Christian statesmanship, is keeping step with the march of Christian progress, and is reaching out with Christian sympathy and sacri- fice for the uplift of those about her. The mercenary, dividend-seeking East India Company laid the sordid hand of its cupidity upon India. One of its representatives said in Parliament, ^^I would rather send a shipload of THE INEVITABLE 169 devils to India than a shipload of missionaries/' showing the spirit of the organization. A century and a half later this disregard for human rights fruited in the Sepoy mutiny, and the British gov- ernment put the East India Company out of com- mission, and assumed government direction, and during the last decade there has been no greater manifestation of Christian achievement on the globe than that which is registering itself by trans- forming human lives in pagan and Mohammedan India. Everything has its human side and its divine side, its John-the-Baptist cry, ^'Prepare ye the way of the Lord," and its Christly spirit, "I delight to do thy will, O my God." God has not abdicated his throne. As long as the whole is greater than any of its parts he cannot. So history records no organization and no movement which does not make more or less directly for righteousness. May we illustrate this by taking an extreme case, following its workings somewhat in detail, and noting in a number of particulars the regis- tration of its influence ? That the witness may be free from any prejudice in favor of the proposition we seek to prove, let us call the most extreme case we can find, one whose motive for being and spirit of procedure are most foreign to righteousness. It is an aphorism that ^^Corporations have no souls" ; it is also an aphorism of general acceptance 170 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT that ^^Commerce is organized selfishness." Let us choose a commercial corporation, therefore, which, if these proverbs are correct, would be a soulless organization maintained to prosecute its selfish greed. If we can find such a one, which has had opportunity to register its influence within a va- riety of conditions, it should illustrate our proposi- tion pro or con. ]^or do we have to look far for our witness. It is conceded by many, and possibly by most, disinterested persons that among the varied commercial corporations of civilization none is more characterized as soulless and selfish, im- perious and mercenary, than the railroads. It is frequently asserted and largely believed that their methods disregard the rights of individuals, com- munities, and municipalities ; that they reach out like a monster octopus, gathering everything that is worth absorbing; that they prosecute their ob- ject by any means which will further their ends, and all to serve themselves. ISTot stopping to argue whether these statements are true or otherwise, but because they are so widely accepted, let us consider some of the regis- tered influences of the railroads. If, notwithstand- ing the objects of their organization and the methods of their management are, primarily if not solely, for the sake of material gain in the shape of dividends for their stockholders, it should ap- pear that these mercenary, commercial corpora- THE INEVITABLE 171 tions are unintentional but veritable missionaries of Christianity, and pay tribute to the kingdom of God by preparing the way for it, we may say that it must be true also of any and everything else. Let us examine some of their results in the two extremes of society, in a Christian and in a pagan civilization, and see what have been some of the recorded tendencies of the railroad's influence, as related to the kingdom of God, within these diverse conditions. 1. We need not go far afield to find a Christian community; none will be more serviceable than the one with which we are most familiar. The United States is the most closely identified with the evangelization of the world of any nation among men. This may be conceded because of our position in the highway between the Pacific and Atlantic; because of our relations to Asia and Europe ; because of our marvelous history, in which the hand of God can be seen at every stage ; because of the character of our stanch Anglo-Saxon people, with their genius for Protestant Chris- tianity; because of our vital, constructive Chris- tian institutions ; and because of the evangelistic spirit of our churches, which are reaching out and laying hold of the strategic points of the world, sending to the ends of the earth converted. Spirit- filled, energetic, tactful, persistent, cultured, and efiicient missionaries, who delight in sacrifice, 172 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT know naught of hardship or discouragement, in- form every soul they can reach with the Word of God, and transform every land they touch. What is the tendency of the railroads in this country as related to the kingdom of God ? If the United States is to fulfill its large mission in fur- thering the world's evangelization, there are, among the many essential things to be developed, ^Ye which may be named as of prime importance : (1) wealth, (2) solidarity, (3) temperance, (4) Sabbath observance, and (5) Christianity, includ- ing Bible knowledge and experience. Do the rail- roads further any of these ? 1. I have placed wealth first because the ex- tension of the kingdom of God is retarded by the lack of money to meet the necessary expenses. In fact, it may be said that the world's salvation has come to be a question of money. This is the one element lacking. On the divine side all things are ready. Jesus Christ has accomplished the atone- ment. That is finished. We are living in the dis- pensation of the Spirit, the manifestation of which is given to every man to profit withal; and full salvation is provided for every man, so that whosoever will may take of the water of life freely. The three things essential on the human side of the problem are accessibility, efficient agents who know him and will show him, and the command THE INEVITABLE 173 of sufficient money to bring the agents into per- sonal relationship with those who are accessible. I need not speak of the accessibility. God has heard the prayers of his church that he would open wide the doors of opportunity that the gospel might have free access to the multitudes in dark- ness. He has answered these prayers by removing the doors from their hinges, so that to-day there are no excluded places, there are no peoples from whom the missionary is barred, there are no re- mote lands ; but there is a multiplied Macedonian cry coming up from the weary hearts of sin, from the dark habitations of cruelty, from the uttermost ends of the earth, ^'Come over and help us with the gospel of love and the ministry of Christ.'' The prayer which our Lord gave his disciples, "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers," has been so far fulfilled that there are literally thousands of young men and maidens, cultured and consecrated, richly endowed of God, with discipline and vision, who courageously covet the opportunity and are eagerly pleading, "Here am I ; send me." The accessibility being complete, and the agents eager to go and ready to multiply more and more if opportunity is assured, the church is confronted with the fact that the only essential element lack- ing for this world's salvation is command of mone}' sufficient to meet the necessary expense of placing 174 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT these called and consecrated agents in the focal points of need, where by their Christly living they may nourish into life those who are dead in tres- passes and in sin. Therefore I speak of money as the urgent, essential, human condition. Have the railroads done aught toward developing and dis- tributing wealth ? On the last day of June, 1909, there were 333,776 miles of single track railroads in this country, representing an investment of about $19,000,000,000, with gross annual earnings of $2,407,000,000, of which $1,689,000,000 was dis- tributed as operating expenses. This is only a suggestion of their wealth-producing and diffusing power. They distribute annually as wages $775,- 321,000. During the past fifty years they have expended every day on an average $400,000 for construction, and much of this was in the slightly populated sections. They have made vast agricul- tural and mineral resources available, and de- veloped gi'eat centers of population for handling and distributing the expanding passenger and freight traffic. They have transformed the fron- tiers and practically removed them, for they have made remote places as central and convenient for purposes of commerce and travel as those near at hand were a decade ago. They save labor, health, and expense, and multiply time, power, and re- sources. Being organized and maintained to make THE INEVITABLE .175 money, that they are being extended is practical evidence of their success. God's providence has anticipated necessity by preparing humanity to meet each condition funda- mental to the establishment of his kingdom as it has arisen. 'Now when the kingdom tarries for lack of available money to meet its necessary ex- penses, it is more than a coincidence, it is a star- tling and suggestive fact, that available wealth is accumulating in the nations of the earth in direct proportion to their loyalty to Christianity. He giveth the power to get wealth. America, the land most vitally related to the kingdom, has about one half of the railroad mileage in the world, and is developing wealth far more rapidly than any other nation among men. 2. If we as a people are to have the initiative and constructive force essential to success in our high commission, we must have great solidarity, welding and moving us in close unity. We are confronted with a most serious danger — many of them — ^but one among these to be especially reck- oned with is an intense, abnormally developed, dis- integrating individualism. It is easy to account for this tendency among us. The opportunities on every hand for an aggressive life; the large re- turns for persistent, purposeful activity ; the prev- alence of sharp, strenuous competition; the fun- damental doctrine of justification by faith, which 176 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT individualizes every soul; and the instruction of our schools, looking to the production of person- ality, all contribute to the development of indi- vidualism in personal character, in commercial relations, in institutional life, in manufacturing enterprise, in municipal government, and in State- hood. This threatens our destruction because of its tendency to develop such sharp and intense competition as may front each one against all and all against each. If these tendencies to dissipating individualism v^ere not corrected, and individuals so coordinated as to secure unity of motive and activity with their development of personality, the end would be weakness and the nation be de- stroyed. Solidarity is the spirit of democracy, the life of a republic. The railroads are a mighty force in conserving solidarity. The Centennial observance in Phila- delphia in 1876 marked the beginning of a new epoch in the history of this nation. It inaugurated the era of travel. The railroads sent out a propa- ganda to induce the people to visit the great Cen- tennial exhibit. They organized community ex- cursions, city excursions, State excursions, craft excursions, educational excursions — all kinds of excursions — taking specially organized and con- ducted companies from all parts of the country to Philadelphia and returning them at small cost and little personal effort or inconvenience. The ease THE INEVITABLE 177 of travel, its pleasures and profit, became a new consciousness to hundreds of thousands. The broadening of vision, the increase of knowledge and appreciation of the resources of different parts of the country became the personal experience of multitudes. From being provincials we as a peo- ple commenced to broaden our horizons and be- came a nation of travelers. But travel extends acquaintance, acquaintance begets appreciation, appreciation secures intercourse and commerce ; these develop respect and sympathy, and ripen into interdependence and unity. So the railroads are an unconscious but potent factor in counteracting sectionalism, destroying exclusiveness, mitigating prejudice, and promoting homogeneity. They broaden, liberalize, and assimilate a people, and the new grading is constantly upward. The extension of railroad construction ; the ex- actness of schedules ; the absolute conformity to orders, signals, and limitations ; the differentiation of work with such sharp distinctions; the adjust- ment of regulations with such mathematical ac- curacy; the development of specialists whose effi- ciency is dependent upon their coordination with others — the excellence of all being essential to the success of any — and the growing sense of inter- dependence are subtle forces which make for solidarity. The innumerable trains, passenger and freight, 178 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT flying back and forth in every direction like great shuttles, are weaving into the warp of this country a pattern, clumsy and material though it be, yet a pattern which suggests the high-priestly prayer of our Lord for his followers that they all may be one. It is an outward and visible sign of an in- ward and spiritual grace, for, grasping, assertive, selfish as are the railroads in the opinion of the most ultra — be that conception false or true — the steady pull of their influence is for organization, coordination, uniflcation, solidarity. 3. Another great temptation and danger con- fronting the American people is intemperance. The intense life of the typical American is ex- haustive of nervous energy. The sharp competi- tion, the highly oxygenized air, the hypernervous social conditions all tempt the individual to supple- ment his overstrained nerve resources and to re- lieve the inopportune weariness of his enervated nature by the use of stimulants, instead of seeking recuperation through rest. Rest is prosaic. Rest consumes so much time. The spur and the lash seem to suit the nervous tension of our age. The strenuous life makes its subtle appeal to appetite with disastrous results. Mark you, the appeal is not most forceful to the dullards and the indiffer- ent, but to the overwrought, to those of highly organized nervous temperament, who have been born to leadership, who face large opportunity, and THE INEVITABLE 179 whose normal position is in the forefront of the conflict. How shall it be corrected ? What forces can grapple with and destroy the deadly influence of intemperance ? Have you ever thought of the railroads as a great temperance force? The management of capital, seeking dividends through agencies so varied and delicately adjusted, knows that a clear brain, steady nerves, and un- clouded judgment are essential to safety and effi- ciency. As their money is involved, they will take no risks. 'No man who is known to be intemper- ate can be employed. A president of the Associa- tion of Railway Superintendents of Bridges and Buildings said: ^'Practically all of our members are opposed to the use of intoxicating liquors. We realize that men who use no intoxicants make better, steadier workmen than those who drink in- toxicants, even occasionally." In 1899 the American Railway Association adopted a rule prohibiting the use of intoxicants by employees while on duty, and declared, ^'The habitual use of intoxicants or the frequenting of places where they are sold is sufficient cause for dismissal." Over 1,300,000 of the employees ot the railroads in this country are under the obliga- tion of this rule. Some companies have the rule : "The use of intoxicants, visiting saloons, whether ofP or on duty, gambling or playing cards in or around stations or upon trains or cars, of in or 180 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT upon the property of this company, by employees is strictly prohibited. The violation of this rule will be sufficient cause for discipline or discharge from the service." Some of the railroads declare for absolute prohibition. As the number of railroad employees is increas- ing over seventy-five thousand per year, the num- ber of men required to abstain from intoxicants is a great and growing host. The Wine and Spirit Journal some time since contained a wail of de- spair because it said ninety per cent of the rail- road employees were prohibited from using their wares, and eighty per cent of the manufacturers and seventy per cent of the agriculturists were against it. Anything that is born of or is essential to a Christian civilization must work for the kingdom of God by the compulsion of its birth and the law of its continuance. 4. It is a matter of grave concern that in Amer- ica the Christian Sabbath is not more faithfully observed. There is great cause for serious inquiry and prayerful consideration, for courageous and organized effort, to correct the tendencies to irrev- erence and Sabbath desecration. The Sabbath is no medieval device nor Jewish invention: its ob- servance as a day of physical rest and spiritual refreshment was no afterthought of God. The Sabbath was made for man, and its observance is THE INEVITABLE 181 required by the essential and fundamental con- ditions of his nature. I would not have you think that the millennium has come, nor would I intimate that the railroads are standing for a puritanic or for an ancient Hebraic Sabbath; but as these skilled investors concentrate their thoughts upon the problem of the dependence of dividends upon the greatest effi- ciency of their agents, they are commencing to recognize that as steel has a fixed limitation to its texile strength, so in a given number of weeks a man will accomplish more and better work by resting one day in seven than he can by working continuously. We must study great forces and movements in the light of their tendencies, and the trend of the railroads is against Sabbath labor. Many of the great railroads are practically ad- justing their administration to this principle. N^ote the schedule of any important railroad, and you will find fewer trains start on the Sabbath than on other days of the week. This is not only because the travel in the most Christian communi- ties is greatly reduced, but also to further increase the efficiency of its agents. Were it not that Chris- tian people are thoughtless of their fellows, and disobey the divine command, ^^Remember the sab- bath day, to keep it holy," the railroads would have a strengthening of their spinal column, and further enforce ethical regulations. They 182 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT are weak brethren, controlled by financial expe- diency and not by moral convictions, and it is too great a temptation for them to fully resist when Christian people ask them, by proffered use, to desecrate the day which it is commanded shall be kept holy to the Lord. God created humanity to be blessed. His law reveals man's need. The divine adminstration guarantees man's opportunity. Man cannot find his largest opportunity nor greatest blessedness outside of the divine provision. If you desire to melt iron, you add heat to a given temperature ; if you wish to solidify water, you withdraw heat ; that is, in every case, you work in harmony with the laws of its nature. So, also, if it is the purpose to use man to the best advantage, and get from him the largest number of power units, it can be done only by working in harmony with the laws which make for the enlargement and blessedness of hu- manity; but these interpret and honor God. Therefore, man's best and God's glory are in per- fect alignment. While the railroads are a long call from the ideal, their economic discussions and administrative practice indicate a trend toward the observance of the Sabbath. 5. There may be wealth, there may be solidarity, there may be temperance, and, possibly, Sabbath observance; but, important as all these are as ac- cessories, they do not constitute salvation. Like THE INEVITABLE 1S3 removing the stumps of a past civilization with their deep-rooted prejudices and passions, or like breaking up the ground and preparing it for the seeding of truth, if the work should stop with that, it would not realize success. The need of the world is that it shall know God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. Are the railroads standing for anything which is positively aggressive for Christianity? As all forces and all movements which are permitted to exist in God's world make for God's kingdom, the logical duty of the railroads is to provide Chris- tian influences and instruction for their employees. If they will not permit overstrained nerves to use intoxicants, they must make provision for rest, the divine panacea for weariness and recuperation. If they will not permit their employees to gamble or frequent saloons, what alternative is there but to provide for them rest rooms, reading rooms, lectures, and profitable study classes? Christian culture is consequential to a com- mercial corporation seeking to increase the effi- ciency or dividend-earning power of its employees. Recognizing that life's necessities are not fully met by prohibition, but that they require direction and provision, the great railroads, with the pur- pose to increase the efficiency of their employees and so enlarge their dividends, are erecting Young Men's Christian Association buildings at their ter- 184 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT miiials and junctions. Already nearly $4,000,000 has been sjyent in railroad Christian Association buildings. Of course some of this was given out of Christian sympathy, but it was largely provided from the earnings of the railroads. There is ex- pended annually for this Railway Young Men's Christian Association work more than $1,000,000, largely taken out of the gross profits and charged to the regular expense account, to provide skilled, consecrated, and godly men to teach Christianity and develop among their operatives Christian char- acter. They already register over 76,000 mem- bers. Several thousands are enrolled in their educational classes, over 135,000 are studying in their Bible classes, and about 1,400 are reported as having joined the church last year as a direct result of this work. Steam works in harmony with the laws established by the Creator. Coal and combustion, metal and wood, levers and wheels — all forces and all materials are loyal to the will of Him who appointed their limitations. They cannot be organized so as to ignore or destroy their obligation to his service. So all things nat- ural to a Christian civilization work together to further Christianity. There are forces other than the railroads, many more constructive, more potent, more direct, work- ing for the development of Christian America as a chosen servant to aid in the establishment of the THE INEVITABLE 185 kingdom throughout the earth. But surely this Saul, who has grown to such heroic stature, like the son of Kish in the early time, has had a vision and received a commission. He went forth to seek for beasts of burden and direct them to the family service; but, contrary to his expectations, and to the amazement of his contemporaries, he is min- istering among the prophets. He sought to hide himself among the baggage, but a providence he could not resist called him to a regal opportunity. Service is the fundamental condition of his influ- ence, for ^'the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof." It may be suggested that the conditions which we have been considering are only a reflection of the Christian civilization of America. If this were granted, it would not materially change the force of the argument. The railroads have been and are under compulsion to further the purpose of Christianity, whether it is done by leading or following. While they may bear the imprint of Csesar, by the compulsion of an irrevocable law, they must render unto God the things which are God's. II. Let us look at the influence of railroads at the other extreme of society, namely, in a pagan and Mohammedan country, and see whether they are working there also as an evangelizing agency and making for the kingdom of God. Turn, if 186 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT you will, to Southern Asia, where the problem seemed so immense and hopeless because there were depths below depths which had never been sounded, and the compactness of organization in the interests of evil seemed irresistible. If I were to indicate, say five of the most thoroughly estab- lished and apparently immovable barriers to the spread of the gospel in the pagan and Moham- medan areas of Southern Asia, I should name (1) the confidence which the people have in the superiority of their gods; (2) the subtle, ubiqui- tous, and hitherto impregnable ramifications of the caste system; (3) the isolation and suspicion which keep the masses terrorized and impover- ished through the recurrence of famine and dis- ease; (4) their credulity and superstition, which are fostered by regularly organized propaganda, pilgrimages, and ceremonies; (5) their indiffer- ence to time values and limitations, and their con- sequent disregard for engagements, which under- mine all moral distinctions. 1. The first condition I have mentioned is the confidence of the people in the superiority of their gods. This begets loyalty, through fear to neg- lect their service. One of the objects most sacred and most devoutly worshiped by the Hindus is the Ganges Eiver. It is so sacred that it is called ^'Mother Gun-ga," because it is supposed to flow to heaven through Gung, the earth. In the English THE INEVITABLE 187 courts of justice the oath is administered to Brahmanical believers on a bottle of Ganges water. The reverence of the Hindu for the Ganges is not surprising when we consider the power and benefi- cence combined in that river. The Gangetic valley is one of the richest and largest valleys on the globe. The Ganges rises at two points in the Himalaya Mountains, 1,800 feet and 1,300 feet above tide. It is 1,960 miles long. For 1,200 miles, from Hurdwar to its mouth, it falls only 1,000 feet. It is frequently three miles wide, and 500 miles from the sea, and is thirty feet deep. It commences to rise slowly about the end of April or early in May, and continues until the latter part of July, when it has submerged the ad- jacent land, sometimes for the width of one hun- dred miles, and is thirty-two feet above its ordi- nary level. About the middle of August the water commences to subside, which it continues to do until April. It is computed to discharge into the sea about 500,000 cubic feet of water per second for four months, and about 100,000 cubic feet for the other eight months, and discolors the ocean for sixty miles from its mouth. It is destructive of everything in the sweep of its mighty flood cur- rent, but, like the l^ile, it is the perennial cause of phenomenal productiveness wherever the gentler influences of its overflowing and fertilizing waters bring irrigation. For centuries it has been feared 188 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT and worshiped as the embodiment of power and fertility. The large dividend-paying possibilities of carry- ing freight and passengers between certain points in India led to the formation of a company to build a railroad which, if constructed, must cross the Ganges at Cawnpur. The survey reported that it would require a bridge which, with its ap- proaches, would be one and three quarters miles long, with twenty-seven piers in the current of the river. These piers would have to go down eighty feet through the silt in the bed of the river to get a solid footing on the rock, be twenty-four feet in diameter, to resist the thrust of the accumulated waters when the river would rise in her might, and stand more than two score feet above the or- dinary level to be above the torrent's breast when in flood. All this was figured out with mathe- matical precision in the quiet of the study. The piers were built of brick to the water line, and capped with Agra red sandstone. The banks were faced with stone for three miles up and down the river, to prevent its cutting around and de- stroying the approaches. Five thousand workmen, including twenty castes, were occupied many months in completing the work. These wrought out the plans under the guidance of Christian en- gineers and artisans, who had come from Christian lands. During the progress of the work the priests THE INEVITABLE 18d regularly came to the river to bathe and worship their mighty goddess. They looked with pity upon the pretentious work and lavish expenditure in what they were confident would prove to be a futile attempt to bind her. Just as the bridge was approaching completion the river began to rise. The preceding winter the snows in the great watershed among the Himalayas had been heavier than for many years past. The rains were somewhat earlier, and in their down- pour more copious and persistent than usual. "Mother Gun-ga" rose majestically and came rush- ing along her channel with a great crested wave of tawny water drawn from her unmeasured re- sources, as though impatient to sweep away, like a wisp of straw, the foreigners' impertinence, which was meant to bind her hitherto undisputed power. Day after day her volume of water in- creased, rising higher and higher until she had submerged the records made for many years past. The river dashed its swirling torrent impetuously against the piers ; roaring and hissing, it climbed higher and higher, eddying about them with mad- dening swish. There they stood provokingly quiet, insultingly firm, holding above the rush of the water their parallel threads of steel. Confident that the Ganges's power was irresisti- ble, the old priests were expectant and the people gleeful as, day after day, they came to worship, 190 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT and saw her rising tide. But one morning, as the j)riests came eagerly to the water's edge, they sud- denly turned pale as death; their knees smote together as though they had been struck with palsy; their feet seemed anchored to the spot as though turned to lead; with difficulty they drew their breath ; and their whole attitude was that of absolute despair. Why this awful despondency? Because they saw that the river was receding and the bridge was still standing! Why this horror as of death ? When the author of their sacred books had been asked, ^'How long shall the Hindu religion hold its power among men V^ he had said, ^'Until Mother Gun-ga has been bound." They had seen her confined within a narrow channel, and bound with rods of iron by men who came from the land which sent the Jesus religion. They had watched her, in what they believed to be a life or death struggle, writhe and surge and swirl in her inability to break the bonds of her appointed channel, till, defeated, she lay limp and helpless, wasting away in the grip of her superior. The railroad, in building its bridge for merce- nary purposes, had unconsciously destroyed the confidence of the Hindus in the superiority of their great goddess, Gun-ga, and had set up a witness which proclaims and perpetuates the record of her defeat. Wherever the accessories of the Christian civilization have gone in pagan lands THE INEVITABLE 191 they have been effective iconoclasts. I doubt not Jesus noted v^ith satisfaction when it was recorded in the sacred books of the Hindus that the binding of the Ganges would indicate the doom of that false religion, for Christ has never left himself without witnesses in any age or in any land. 2. The caste system is the most subtle, ubiqui- tous, and irresistible of all organized conditions in India. In fact, it is the most thoroughly organized form of selfishness ever devised by subtlety and malevolence. There are four general castes and three thousand subdivisions of these, with distinc- tive names and regulations. Even the pariahs and outcasts have subcastes among themselves. 'No marriage, personal contact, change of business, or interchange of social amenities is permitted out- side the caste lines. The Hindus claim one's parental inheritance is lost by his failure to keep his caste regulations. Violation of caste require- ments excludes him from performing the rites for the dead, and debars his ancestors from the bliss of heaven. Caste paralyzes personality, destroys individualism, and has proved to be a most serious barrier to conversion. The maintenance of caste is practically the only essential requirement of Hinduism. So long as a person obeys his caste requirements, he is at liberty to entertain any opinion or engage in any form of worship. When the railroad trains commenced running in 192 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT India they offered inexpensive, rapid, and com- fortable transportation. Low-caste men would ride into the city, transact their business, and return the same or the next day. Their higher caste neighbors would drive along the hot and dusty roads in their bilegarries at the rate of four miles an hour, as their ancestors had done from time immemorial. The lower caste man would look out the car window with a complacent air, as he was saving time, expense, and weariness, and the higher caste man did not thoroughly enjoy his economic and personal advantage, as from his springless vehicle a few miles further along the dusty road he would see the low-caste man returning. Finally the exigencies of business compelled the high-caste men to covet the advantages offered by railroad travel. They called upon the officials and re- quested that special cars should be run, so that their caste would not be endangered. The polite officials said that they would be delighted to do so, and that if each caste would guarantee a certain number of fares, they should have special cars. They did not guarantee the number of fares, but after a while the higher caste men concluded that the demands of their business would justify their taking a small risk on caste. They slipped into the cars, seated themselves in the corner of a com- partment, held themselves close and trembled, lest some lower caste person should touch and pollute THE INEVITABLE 193 them, and traveled in fear to their journey's end. They had the thrill of a new experience ; and, not having died from it, it was easier to do it again and again, until one day, the car being crowded, they heard the startling, iconoclastic, "Sit close, please !" and a sudden start of the train shot one of its low-caste passengers from the jostling throng into the seat beside a high-caste man. As he landed the touch had wrought the pollution so long feared. The high-caste man could gain nothing by forfeiting his ticket at the next station and walking the rest of the way, and again he lived through the thrill of a new experience, as did many others, and in time the exceptional became the ordinary. So the railroad quietly, unintentionally, but in- exorably is jostling and reforming social condi- tions, and has proved to be an effective agent, working with Christianity but without Christian intent, doing what social reformers, pamphleteers, and legislators had failed to accomplish in under- mining the ancient, abnormal, and paralyzing caste system. 3. The isolation which characterized the various provinces and districts in Southern Asia begat suspicion and registered itself in famine and dis- ease. It was always so. The villain was originally but a villager who was not known, when every stranger was a supposed enemy. In the large area 194 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT and varied climatic conditions of India it is no unusual thing for one province to Lave abundant harvests while another more or less remote may be blighted with famine or scourged with the plague. We know nothing in this country of the severity of famine. In 1769-70 about one third of the people of the lower valley of the Ganges died from famine. In 1856-57 about one fourth of the peo- ple of the province of Orissa died. In 1873-74 England imported and distributed one million tons of rice, spending $32,000,000 to relieve the starv- ing. In 1876-78 she expended nearly $60,000,- 000, and the railroads greatly facilitated the dis- tribution of food supplies. In 1898 I saw that famine-stricken land. The sympathy of God's people in America had loaded the whaleback ship City of Everett with corn and beans, and sent the cargo to India. The railroads gave free transpor- tation to the grain we sent, and carried it here and there to every center of destitution, from which it was widely distributed, chiefly by the missionaries. It was a marvelous ministry. The grains of India corn are very small, about the size of our pop corn ; and when the famine-pinched people saw the large, generous grains of American corn, they said: ^This corn came from the Jesus land. How God must love that people ! See how big he makes their corn." Every grain was an evangel. THE INEVITABLE 106 By simply performing the commissions of civilization, the railroads, in the providence of God, are distributing to the uttermost ends of the earth the seeds of the kingdom. Famines, though still occasional and severe, are not to be compared with those of a century ago. The ease of inter- communication illustrates and enforces the art of sanitation and teaches how to meet and prevent disease, so that famine and pestilence are better controlled and less feared than in any previous age. 4. Another strong intrenchment of paganism is its superstitious reverence for shrines and cere- monies. This is fostered by thoroughly organized pilgrimages and regular propaganda which incite to their development and influence. The priests or other agents are sent out to preach the virtues of this or that shrine, and they have their pilgrim- ages so scheduled that they may not interfere with one another. Some person, moved by a sense of sin or fired by desires kindled through the propa- ganda, concludes to make a pilgrimage. It be- comes known in his village, and there is a sacrifice before he starts, or a feast or a procession to the edge of the village to see him off. He goes on his way, begging his food. When night comes on he stops wherever he may be, covers himself with his garment, and starts off the next day, traveling leisurely and thinking much about the god and his 196 GROWTH OP THE MISSIONARY CONCEP'T shrine. At the intersection of the highways he is joined by others from neighboring villages. They compare notes, tell the traditions they have heard or invented, and quicken each other's enthusiasm. Presently they begin to meet pilgrims returning, who magnify their own importance by reciting wonderful stories of what they have seen, what they have felt, and what they can do. Plenty of exercise, simple food, and living out- doors are never thought of as the special saints who wrought their health. Three, four, even ^ve hundred thousand or more frequently visited some of the shrines during their special festivals. At Hardwar, where the Ganges bursts through a gorge into a plain, there was an annual pilgrimage of two or three hundred thousand, and once in twelve years it would number one and sometimes over two millions. Some of the pilgrims proceeded by a series of weary prostrations, continuously meas- uring their length upon the road, while others walked with pebbles in their shoes, or afflicted themselves with cruel tortures. These pilgrim- ages would often occupy months, sometimes years. The thoughts, conversation, desires, and imagina- tions were all focused upon the god and his shrine. 'No wonder the zeal of the pilgrims became in- flamed. As they approached the shrine they could not restrain their enthusiasm, oftentimes rushing madly till overcome by complete exhaustion. No THE INEVITABLE 197 hardship daunted them. As many as ten thou- sand have died from the exposure of a single pil- grimage. Their offerings at the shrines would sometimes impoverish the pilgrims for a lifetime. They who had been inquirers when they were going were teachers when they were returning. They were received in their villages with special honors, and forever after had some special distinction. These pilgrimages were too lucrative a tempta- tion for the mercenary railroads to ignore. They built branch roads into the shrines, with ample terminal facilities to handle the vast throngs, mak- ing everything as safe and convenient as possible. Their excursion trains were frequent, with tickets to suit the very poor, having four classes and cheap rates. The railroads joined the propaganda, to in- crease the attendance. They made it too easy by far. A man took two or three days' provision, paid his price, or at most a few annas, got into a crowded car, was jostled by weary men, and dis- tracted by the swiftly changing scenery and nov- elty of his experience. He heard stories, many of them marvelous, and most of them immoral, about anything else but the shrine. Wearied, hungry, heated, tired, perhaps carsick, and out of temper, he came to the shrines in no mood to be responsive to their influences. He visited this one and that, without seeing anything which specially interested him, and returned unimpressed. He 198 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT had been gone so short a time that he had not been missed, but it was long enough to make him ever after an iconoclast. This is true to such an ex- tent that the attendance at some of the shrines has decreased forty per cent, sixty per cent, even ninety per cent, and some have been abandoned. Superstition is the child of ignorance and the parent of cruelty. The railroads are unconsciously disseminating knowledge, dispelling the thick darkness of superstition, and exorcising the spirit of cruelty. Thus they have been a potent influ- ence in destroying the power of the false gods over the masses of ignorant people. 5. Another point of resistance in paganism, and the last one I shall mention, is indifference to time and disregard for engagements, which undermine all their moral distinction. !No one knows whether their promise, when made, expresses a courtesy to his desire, is intended to deceive, or voices a pur- pose to do. To them to-morrow is as good as to- day, and two or three days hence, or next week, is still better. If they desire to go on a railroad train and come strolling along fifteen minutes late, they may sit on their heels or lie rolled in their wraps for twenty-three hours and forty-five min- utes, with perfect indifference, till the next train starts. But the steady movement of these trains, marking time like the sentinels of God, blowing their whistles at the crossings, stopping at the sta- THE INEVITABLE 199 tion for only a few minutes, then darting off again as scheduled, arresting the attention of the labor- ing classes, farmers, and bazaarmen as they speed through the land, and requiring punctuality of all their employees, whoever and wherever they may be, is making its impression, compelling them to regard the divisions of time and the importance of promptness. It is revolutionizing the whole social system, establishing standards, securing con- formity, reconstructing habits of life, and laying hold of theii moral character. The shrill, pene- trating, assertive whistle of the locomotive, star- tling the Hindus and Mohammedans in their social lethargy, is called by them "The American Devil" ; but it has proved to be "The voice of one crying in the wilderness'^ — in the wilderness of their spir- itual decrepitude — "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." So railroads, though commercial corporations organized for financial gain and administered to produce dividends for their stockholders, are un- consciously but steadily working for the kingdom. They develop and diffuse wealth and mitigate famine, plague, and isolation. They correct tend- encies to disintegrating individualism by conserv- ing solidarity, and destroy the abnormal solidar- ity of caste by disenthralling and individualizing personal responsibility. They prevent dissipation through insistence upon temperance and provi- 200 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT sion for rest, and stimulate activity, encourage reliability, and strengthen purposefulness. They foster intelligence, beget reverence for order, dis- seminate knowledge, correct superstition, and exorcise cruelty. They undermine belief in the false gods and teach faith in the true God. The Grecian language, with its marvelous flexi- bility and exquisite discriminations, was not the gospel; but it gave a fixed, exact, and determin- able matrix into which the teachings of our Lord and his apostles might be cast, preserved, and transmitted to all time. The widely extended and compactly organized Roman empire was not the kingdom of God, but it held the world free from armed strife while the Prince of Peace voiced in word and ministry his message from the Father. The roads reaching to every province, built and patrolled by Roman authority, were constructed and maintained to speed their legions when needed to suppress revolt or extend the hand of greed, but they facilitated the spread of the gospel, giving to the heralds of the kingdom of love easy access to the remote places of the earth. By divine permission the byways of the gospel become the highways of commerce, and, under divine compulsion, commercial enterprise and ac- tivity are included in the all things which work together for the furtherance of the kingdom The commissioned evangelist is not the only agency THE INEVITABLE 201 which has been at work. He is the officiating priest, essential, transforming, conserving; but in the providence of God there are other sons of Levi and still other servants in the house of Israel, hewers of wood and drawers of water, who are not of the true Israel, but who serve in the appointed order. This is God's universe ; he has never abdicated ; he reigns and must forever reign. Jesus made the supremo demonstration of his irrepressible love. "Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should con- fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." "Being the holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the holy, he has lifted with his pierced hand empires off their hinges, and has turned the stream of centuries out of its channel, and still governs the ages." At creation, whenever that was, he appointed to matter its characteristics and restrictions within which it has its being and must serve his purpose. He assigned to every force and energy its limita- tions and law of action, which they may not transcend or ignore. The universe is not an ag- gregation but an orgahism. Its secrets and its combinations are revealed to the obedient. The 202 GROWTH OF THE MISSIONARY CONCEPT ministries of all things are for the faithful, those who "are the called according to his purpose." It is more than a coincidence that science, the great industrial arts, the inventions and develop- ments which combine and utilize the great forces of nature, as well as the brotherhood of humanity and organized benevolence, had their genesis and have their consummate fruitage only where the gospel has quickened, inspired, and directed hu- manity. There can be but one outcome; that is inevitable. By the purpose of their birth and the condition of their continuance all things have worked to- gether in the past, are working together now, and must work together in the future for good, till the appointed end is accomplished, and Jesiis, whose right it is to reign, shall be enthroned and loyally loved in every heart. 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