TODAY'S SUPREME CHALLENGE || TO AMERICA JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE Library of The Theological Seminary PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY +0 <3 D FROM THE LIBRARY OF ROBERT ELLIOTT SPEER BY 2060 .L82 2925 LOVE A de EL One =o 20 To-day's supreme challenge to America ae ty +m ee ee ae ie a ie vee A : £4 hy : Py a j ii vine eita |, em Loy ¥ ‘7 wy ve | ee i > ¢ a eee TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO AMERICA Rev. JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE, p.p. TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO Al BY GICAL Stel Rev. JAMES FRANKLIN LOVE, pv. _ Author of “Missionary Messages,’ “The Unique Message and Universal Mission of Christianity,’ “The Mission of Our Nation,” etc. NEW ~ YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO AMERICA Bee pie PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CHAPTER I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY: THE TIMES IN WuIcH WE LIVE : ; Sicn ONE: THE HistortcAL BACKGROUND S1cN Two: THE DISTRESS OF THE WoRLD S1cN THREE: THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WorLpD SicnN Four: THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY S1Gn Five: Direct WorkK OF THE Hoty SPIRIT Sicn Six: THE NEw OpportunNITY IN EUROPE SicN SEVEN: THE SUDDEN RISE AND Popu- LARITY OF DEMOCRACY . Wuat THEN? ; 2 f . 2 “ TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO AMERICA TO-DAY’S SUPREME CHALLENGE TO AMERICA CHAPTER uf INTRODUCTORY: THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE The man who takes sober invoice of the times in which he lives is an exceptional individual. Few men wisely and faithfully appraise their own generation and circumstance. Memorials of the past and signs and prophecies of the fu- ture are the favorite symbols of many. The doctrines, promises and prophecies of the Scripture are often more esteemed than their commands. Things to come have a greater fascination than things to be done. The Scrip- tures, it is true, tell us where we came from and where we are going to, and the latter ravishes the soul of the righteous; but the Scriptures are the pragmatic religious literature of the world. For each in his day and genera- tion they prescribe plain duties to be performed as well as plain truths to be believed and glorious dreams to be cherished. The Scriptures condemn those who disobey them and quite as severely reproach those who do not dis- cern the signs of their times. The man who serves his own generation does it by the will of God. We do well, therefore, to heed .both what God says in his Book and what he signifies in the times in which we live. If we wish to go with Christ through these marvel- ous years, and wish at last to go to him flushed with the joy of a large achievement which shall enrich eternity for us, we must see what he is aiming at in our day. Through all history he is working in harmony with his 9 10 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA eternal purpose and program. He is always going the same way. The moral order of the world has its climaxes of opportunity and privilege for men and nations, but in it God is always aiming at the same ends. That he is at this time much concerned that American Christians shall discern the signs which indicate the way he is going and join him in a supreme service for this generation no one can doubt who reflects upon certain great, obtruding facts in current history. There is a luminous wake in the path of the Son of Man as he passes through this generation. His going is attended by a flare of circumstances which make his course unmistakable. He would lure us to follow him. A grati- fying reflection upon the circumstances of the hour is that they make it possible for us to go with him. He is not seen ascending heights which we have no means to ascend. He is going forth along the highways of service for which facilities have been provided us. It is indeed a service for which we have been both prepared and equipped. He is coaxing us to give to the world that which he has first given us; and in his advance-going among the nations he has prepared them to receive what we have to give as they were never prepared before. Never was there a time when we could by the full dis- charge of our duty confer such blessing on the world and so distinctly set forward the cause of Christ in the world as now. This is the climax of three centuries of provi- dential history for American Christianity and brings the American Christian public face to face with a mission to the world for which God has been nurturing it through these centuries. The way which we take at this time and the zeal with which we carry forward our Christian inter- national service will declare our worthiness or unworthi- ness of the favors of God marvelously bestowed upon us in the years which are gone. God by many providences, and now by the most lavish outpouring of temporal bless- ings ever bestowed upon a nation, has been creating here a Christianity and establishing and equipping here Chris- INTRODUCTORY 11 tian churches for the transport of Christianity to all lands. It is this mission of American Christianity to which the signs of the times point and to the fulfillment of which they would call us at this hour. Nothing that confronts or affects the churches of America at this time has more significance than this fact. The signs which unmistakably indicate this fact are numerous and exceedingly impressive. Never in the his- tory of Christianity were exhibited so many signals of the divine summons to foreign mission service peculiarly. Never before has Foreign Missions been made so specifi- cally an American duty as it is to-day. Universal circum- stance has lifted Foreign Missions to a new place of im- portance, vested it with supreme urgency, newly positioned America among the nations and conditioned it to meet the new necessity. Upon America, the only land where evangelical Christianity is held in full freedom and where in numbers and resources it is fully matched against its odds, is laid a weight of responsibility which no other na- tion has ever carried. For the churches of Christ in the United States the war ended an era; the armistice marked the beginning of an epoch. Up to the war God had helped these churches to build a home base; since the armistice he has been call- ing them to back a world missionary program. For Eu- rope the war marked the convulsive death of an era in which autocracy in state and church had frowned haught- ily upon evangelical Christianity; with the armistice and the decisions of Versailles there was born a new epoch of opportunity for real Christianity and for the American churches to make sacred alliance with and pledge help to those of “like precious faith’? who had come out of the great conflict with multiplied need and with intensified longing for Christ and brotherly sympathy and fellow- ship. By such tremendous facts affecting both America and Europe, and in no small measure the whole world, Foreign Missions has been thrown into a new category of duty for the American churches. It has been lifted above 12 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA all former comparisons with the home tasks. All old pari- ties between Foreign Missions and one of the many phases of the home work of Christianity have passed and doubtless passed forever. Providence and circumstance have now for more than six years held Foreign Missions with its new claims before the churches of North America. Since Armistice Day, 1918, Providence has raised many signals for the summons of the churches quickly and strongly to Christ’s leadership “into all the world.” The | world’s need of Christ is desperate and God’s call is ex- traordinary and imperious. For a Christian to miss the new meaning of Foreign Missions in the signs of his times means that he fails to understand the new epoch which was born in 1918, and to adjust his life to its new duties. He loses step with Christ in his march through the years and is certain to fall short in service to his own generation. For the North Ameri- can churches to miss this is to cheat Christ and them- selves out of victories and triumphs for the gospel which are now possible for the first time in the history of the world and obtainable by American churches for the first time in the history of American Christianity. Moreover, these victories now possible to the American churches are possible to them only. This lays a responsibility upon them which they have never carried before. To give our- selves at this time to other things and neglect Foreign Missions means to mistake secondary for primary duties, and doing so, to doom ourselves to walk bypaths alone instead of the highway of service and achievement with Christ. Have the leaders of God’s people in America the vision to discern the signs of the times and to point them out to the churches? To suffer the churches at this time of world distress, and in the face of the ringing calls of Providence, to substitute small tasks for great, secondary matters for primary duties, to remain at old posts when Christ leads a new charge, is, of all times, a tragedy. The fact which to-day should grip the conscience of every INTRODUCTORY 13 American Christian is, that God is making an extraordi- nary call to foreign mission service, and that we may by heeding his call break all foreign mission records of achievement. There is no precedent to present circum- stance in all the history of Christianity. There is for serious and unbiased men no mistaking that Foreign Missions has been made the big business and that God is by many voices which have no other meaning calling us to it. Foreign Missions is not a thing which can at this hour be given a second place. There are an urgency and an emergency in Foreign Missions at this time which do not pertain to anything to which Ameri- can Christians are called. In the past, and for a good long time, God seems to have been patient while Foreign Missions waited on other things. Perhaps he withheld his imperative call until this hour, and even while millions died without the gospel, in order that we might get ready and, at the strategic moment in the world’s history, be able to meet its crisis and accomplish his purpose in the rescue of the nations. The clock of time has now struck the supreme hour. Delay is no longer tolerable. God is now sounding forth his trumpet. Disobedience and hesitation now declare our disloyalty. Before this discussion proceeds further, let us say with as much emphasis as we can, that there is no denial or disparagement of other duties. Attention should be given to every department of our home work. We think of no single department of the many into which we have divided our Christian task at home that is unimportant, or which should be slighted. We are saying only that Foreign Missions, and not one nor all of these home de- partments, has by the exigencies of the past six years been lifted to a distinctly new, more significant and command- ing place than it has held heretofore; and that no one department of the home task must, in view of this tre- mendous fact, for a moment be compared in urgency or claim with the all-comprehending and extraordinary duty of Foreign Missions at this hour. 14 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA Moreover, so far as America is still unchristian, the conversion of the ungodly here must be the chief concern of our home work. If anything must stand in the way of giving every man abroad a chance to be saved, nothing but the evangelization of the unsaved at home should be allowed to do so. Salvation and the offer of salvation is plainly the primary, the incomparably chief thing as place and duty are fixed for Christian men by the New Testa- ment. Other things are important in their place, but their place is secondary, and always secondary to the supreme thing for which Christ died, and for which his churches exist,—the calling of sinners to repentance and the offer of salvation through the atoning cross of Christ. Other and secondary things will find their places, and will be cared for in due proportion when this task is made su- preme. But to curtail the work of evangelization at home and abroad in order to make sumptuous provision for sec- ondary things is to invite moral decay at home and mock at the predicament of a lost world. Dr. W. D. Nowlin brought forth tremendous applause from thousands of members of the Southern Baptist Convention at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1924, with these words: “The first and greatest mission of a New Testament church is the evangelization of the nations. The primacy of missions in our Lord’s plan is evident, and things of prime importance should be given first’ place. There are other tasks that are important, but their value consists in the fact that they are aids to our prime mission—evangelism. Edu- cation is important, but whenever a denomination begins to major on education and minor on missions, right then it begins to die.” There are duties at our doors. The home base is a tremendous factor in the warfare of faith and the con- version of the world. Indeed, God has by his past provi- dences quite as strongly emphasized the importance of the home base as by his present providences he now empha- sizes the supremacy of international Christian service. He INTRODUCTORY 15 has done this by giving American Christianity three hun- dred providential years for the building of the home base before he set Foreign Missions to the front as the para- mount duty. God has given the American churches time to get ready for this tremendous hour. CHAPTER II SIGN ONE: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND There have appeared marvelous providences in the course of American history. If we would discern the signs of the times clearly and know their deep significance, we must view them against the background of this history and the marvels of God’s attending care of evangelical Christianity in America up to the present hour and cir- cumstance, Why was the discovery of America by civilized nations delayed from the beginning of time until 1492? China had invented the mariner’s compass and was using it; and China was an old civilization with a crowded population long before the days of Columbus. Why did not Provi- dence open the doors of this continent to China? Had he done so this would now be a heathen land, and Providence would not lead a heathen people to North America which he had preserved from creation as a site for an experi- ment in democracy and evangelical Christianity. Why was Columbus prevented by remarkable incident from landing on the coast of North Carolina, or Virginia, when to all human probability he would do so? To have landed on our Atlantic coast would have doomed North America to be a Roman Catholic country. Providence used a flock of birds to lure his ships to the South, and still held this continent in reservation for others. Why did not Europe, wild with excitement and the spirit of adventure following the announcement that a new continent had been discovered, immediately turn a stream of immigration into this land? Why did a whole century lapse after Columbus before God lifted the gates of entrance to North America? What Longfellow calls 16 THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 “the living seed of a nation” was not yet matured for the planting of the proposed civilization here. That hun- dred and more years between Columbus and the Cavalier, the Puritan and the Pilgrim settlements, is one of the most marvelous providential centuries in all the annals of time. See what was taking place in Europe during that century ! Most marvelous is the relation of personages, periods and events in the Old World to the beginning of history in the New. As divine Providence began to get things ready for the Reformation in Europe, he began to point the way to America. Luther was born in 1483, Zwingli and Tyndale in 1484, and America was discovered in 1492, when Michelangelo, seventeen years of age, was taking up his chisel and brush and becoming conscious of his genius, and Raphael was a boy nine years old. John Calvin was born in 1509, seventeen years after America was discovered, and John Knox in 1505. America was found in such times as these, but Providence did not favor immediate settlement of North America. To have done so before these great spirits had revolutionized European thought would have been to make this a Romish country. The Roman Catholic type would have been established before the Reformations of Germany and Eng: land had produced their results, and there would have been no land to which the persecuted Protestant and evangeli- cal Christian could flee and establish the civil democracy and the revived Christianity which inspirited them. The people were not prepared for spiritual freedom, and the English tongue was not fully ready to become the vehicle of the Truth. In 1517 Luther nailed his theses to the church in Wittenberg and in 1521 he met his ac- cusers at Worms. In 1526 Tyndale’s Bible was circulated in England, and in 1534 Luther’s translation was ready for the reader. Those were mighty days “on ages telling.” In 1564 Shakespeare, who was to fix the form of and forever give dignity to the English language, was born, and, though he knew it not, was a chief agent of Provi- 18 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA dence for the extension of evangelical religion. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew was perpetrated in 1572, Cromwell was born in 1599, and Jamestown was settled and Protestantism began its career in America in 1607. The Dutch, bringing Calvin’s theology, settled New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 1609, and the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Thus was America preserved and prepared to serve as a refuge for those who had come into the light of the gospel, and for a field in which the principles of that gospel could be planted and guarded.* Thrilled by new and mighty thoughts, under impulses and emotions produced by the discovery of great truths of the universe and the greater discoveries of grace, men must have room for action. A continent would be needed for the demonstration which God was preparing to make. Evangelical religion must have unfettered opportunity to benefit by all these circumstances and to find a free and full expression under their inspiration. When the full- ness of time had come, “a new land arose out of the sea to serve as a bulwark and reserve for the age of reforma- tion.” God had reserved an asylum for his witnesses to the truth which was emerging from the rubbish of supersti- tion and error of Europe. When persecution was raging in Europe,—in the Netherlands, in Spain, in England,—then the ocean began to whiten with'the sails of pilgrim fleets, and providential winds bore them to our Atlantic shores. No decoys turned these refugees of hope out of their course as they had turned Columbus. Later both Spanish and French Catholicism tried to make America their possession, but failed because the God of nations was not their ally in such an enterprise. There was at one time in America a “New Spain,” a “New France,” and even a Russian America on our North 1 The above paragraph is adapted from Chapter I, “The Mission of Our Nation,” by J. F. Love, where the discussion of this providential history is more extended. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 19 Pacific coast, as well as a ““New England.”’ Why did “New France” and “‘New Spain” disappear and “‘New England” survive? Each was greatly larger than New England. There is but one answer. A divine Providence favored New England, and the evangelical Christianity which New England fostered. The Roman Catholic “New France” required that “anyone settling in New France must be a Catholic.” Says Bishop Galloway of the French to the North, “The defeat of Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham was a pivot on which turned the modern history of the world.’ And the historian W. I’. Lord calls that event “almost miraculous.” Wolfe paid a great price for that decision, but he made a great pur- chase. William Cullen Bryant says of the Spanish effort in the Southwest to dominate America, “Fortunately for the progress of the human race and the future history of North America all their efforts to gain a permanent foot- hold north of the Gulf of Mexico were in the main un- successful,” These controlling and directing providences are still further manifest in the remarkable incidents which at- tended the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the Oregon country, etc. The eye of Providence seems to have been constantly upon this land and nation, and the hand of Providence always outstretched in interposition at every crisis of the Republic. For the suggestion of what our land would be had Spanish or French Catholicism realized its ambitions to subjugate it to Rome, the condition of Mexico and of French Catholicism in Louisiana may furnish a hint. Roman Catholicism has succeeded in keeping ninety per cent of Rome’s dear children in Louisiana illiterate until this day, notwithstanding the belt of evangelical enlighten- ment which surrounds Rome’s preserve in the Mississippi Valley. The French and the Spanish are, as all men know, capable of a high degree of culture. It is Rome’s responsibility that such people are kept in ignorance. Rome prefers darkness rather than light. 20 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA God had kept this continent as a refuge for evangelical men and women whom Europe could not tolerate, and had in preparation for them endowed this continent with rich resources. George Washington said in his first inaugural address, “No people can be found to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States; every step by which they have advanced to the character of an inde- pendent nation seems to have been indicated by some token of providential agency.”’ Providence worked in accordance with the divine purpose through every step of this history to establish here a democracy inspired and supported by evangelical Christianity; but God was not concerned with America simply as a refuge for the perse- cuted disciples of evangelical faith who were scurried out of Europe. The evidence is quite as strong that all this providential care was with the intent that, nurtured here, democracy and evangelical Christianity should minister their benefits to all peoples, and to Europe in particular, when the times were ripe for this retaliation of Europe’s hate for evangelical Christianity and hurt to evangelical Christians. ‘The Jamestown Colony was chartered for one reason, that it “under the Providence of God might tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating the Christian religion.” God was throwing guards about his people while they built here a home base, broad and deep and strong. This was not because the Anglo-Saxons, who built the founda- tions of this nation, were in a peculiar sense the darlings of God’s heart, nor because God was chiefly concerned with democracy, a great home base and sumptuousness for the Christians of America. God’s chief concern was for a base in America strong enough to carry out his providential purpose in the greatest Christian campaign of the ages for the winning of the world to Christ when at last the opportune moment should come. He was con- cerned that once America by providential favor was strong -and capable, and the world in its need was ready and call- THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21 ing, American churches should answer that call which the churches of Christ nowhere else in the world are so well able to answer. The moment has now come, and Ameri- can Christianity with a strong home base faces its su- preme and sublime mission. We shall now show to men and angels how God’s favored people can meet a high hour of destiny with courage and loyalty, or we shall show them how vain and disappointing have been God’s peculiar blessings and dependence upon us. The home base of Christianity which does not support the work of Christ at a time like this is no base at all. If we have builded well, and God’s favors have not been bestowed in vain, we shall at this hour launch and main- tain such a foreign mission offensive as men and angels never witnessed. Surely we can say with the man of God of the olden time, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,” and with Ru- pert Brooke, “Now God be thanked Who matched us with this hour.” Every aspect of the home situation viewed impartially and seriously shows that American Christianity is ready for a great international Christian service, lacking only the mind to undertake it and the will to prosecute it. But if there is any lack in the home churches of that which qualifies them to meet home conditions, and to dis- charge their pressing obligation to the rest of the world, that lack is a spiritual one which Foreign Missions, more than any other activity, will supply. A large foreign mis- sion program will not hurt anything that needs to be done at home. Foreign Missions yields peculiar and rich divi- dends to individuals and churches who participate liberally in it. Dr. E. C. Routh says, “Foreign Missions is the only enterprise which will float all the enterprises and lift them above the water line of danger.” The appeal of Foreign Missions will more completely enlist for Chris- 22 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA tian service and more warmly bind to Christ and his pro- gram the men and women of our churches, and elicit more resources for all the work of the churches than any other appeal which we can make. Of course the foreign mission appeal should not be used to get money which is not distributed to Foreign Missions in proportion to the strength of the foreign mission appeal. In his speceh before the Missionary Conference in Washington, D. C., January, 1925, President Calvin Coolidge said: “The Christian churches and government have no greater responsibility than to make sure that the best, and not the worst, of which Christian society is capable shall be given to the other peoples. To accomplish this is the dominating purpose of your missionary movement. It is one of the most important, the most absolutely necessary, movements in the world to-day. We shall ourselves be the gainers, both spiritually and materially, by our efforts in behalf of those whom we shall thus help. The early Christians fairly burned with missionary zeal.” The peril is not that we shall get for Foreign Missions money which is needed at home; the peril is that the spirit of selfishness and numbness will hold fast numbers of church members in its death grip, and dwarf the whole budget of church benevolences. The great need is an appeal so large, so unselfish, so commanding, so worthy and compelling, that it will touch the fountains of Chris- tian generosity and release streams of benevolences which shall refresh every nook and corner of the home field and overflow in rivers of blessing to the uttermost parts of the earth. American Christians have all the money that is needed to meet all their financial obligations to the Kingdom of Christ. We have scarcely tapped the ma- terial and rightful resources of the Kingdom of God which the hands of church members in this land hold. American Christians, as no other Christians in the world, are the stewards both of God’s money and God’s gospel THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 23 which are now needed for God’s cause. The first consider- ation is to find a work and a motive big enough and strong enough to break up Christian selfishness and to release for God’s use and direction his part of that which, under his blessing, American Christian men have acquired. There is no other appeal so big, so strong, so true to the heart and commission of Christ, as the appeal for a lost world. When the churches of Christ take anything less than Foreign Missions for a leader for stimulating Chris- tian liberality, they defeat themselves and the cause which they have promoted to the place which God has assigned to Foreign Missions. Therefore, setting Foreign Missions in the supreme place to which Providence has lifted it in this hour does not belittle, and will not impoverish, any home enterprise. It is, rather, applying the highest wisdom to the relief of home enterprises and institutions, while it is discharging a bounden duty to a world in sore distress. To be sure, no institution or division of the home task ought in such an hour as this to be kept on parity with Foreign Missions. To do so is to deny Foreign Missions that preéminence which Scripture, time and circumstance give it. But there is not in this a suggestion that anything which we are doing at home for Christ should be abandoned or allowed to suffer. The call of Foreign Missions is a call to immediate action. Foreign Missions cannot wait longer. Never be- fore this hour was the destiny of the world so pivoted upon immediate duty and upon the duty of American Christianity in particular. We must act and act quickly and decisively if we would discharge our obligation. Foreign Missions is at this time a duty and responsibility which cannot be deferred. Indeed, we doubt that there is in the history of evangelical Christianity of America a more tragic delinquency than the failure of the American churches to set Foreign Missions to the front of all their efforts and enterprises immediately after the armistice and to maintain Foreign Missions on an incomparably 24 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA great scale during the past six years. For many Ameri- can churches there will certainly come out of these years ghosts of neglected duty to haunt them in the years which are ahead. We fear that some of these ghosts will peer from the nookeries and walk the aisles of some great tem- ples for whose building and elegant equipment Foreign Missions has had to wait while broken men and women, without refuge, have gone down to death in millions. Some of these ghosts, we fear, will chatter condemnation in some American halls and committee rooms where per- centages have been fixed and designations have been made for things which, in an hour so potential and portentous for Foreign Missions, could far better than Foreign Mis- sions have waited. The historians of Christianity are certain to record these years as years which shifted su- preme emphasis from home to international duty. For some certainly there can be no other truthful record than that of default before the divine summons, marvelous op- portunity and human importunity. Foreign Missions cannot, we say, wait. The call has been sounded, the issues of this warfare tremble in the balance, easy to be tipped in favor of Christianity but with unmistakable forces gathering to tip them the other way if the American churches prolong their hesitation. The bugles of war have sounded. War measures must now take precedence. These are not,usual times. Foreign Missions has become an extraordinary duty. This is a supreme moment for using the home base to support a world campaign. We must engage the enemy now. The necessity for volunteers and for equipment of the army, for transport of men and supplies, is upon us in this very moment. Test of vision among our leaders, of Kingdom loyalty and Christian world patriotism, is being made. If American Christianity does not quickly respond to the loud call of God to press the battle of the ages to the gates, our glory will depart with our opportunity. Dr. Cornelius H. Patton has uttered a real warning in these words which ministers of Christ may well repeat THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 25 with emphasis to their congregations, “Let the church beware of Christianity de luxe.” Several years ago when the writer was a member of the church of which Dr. George W. Truett is pastor, a church which has been made great through great leadership, ne- cessity had arisen for the enlargement of the house of worship to hold the increasing congregations. To provide this necessity a debt of $140,000 had been incurred. Some members of the church were consumed by anxiety for this debt, and felt that missions ought to wait under such circumstances; but the pastor had vision and cour- age, too. Standing before his people on a Sunday morn- ing and pouring out his heart in passionate appeal for a worthy contribution to missions by his church, he reached a climax of Christian fervor in words like these which I can never forget: “Let no man, woman or child in this congregation with- hold his best from Christ for missions to-day because there is a debt on this church, I would rather stand bareheaded under our scorching Texas sun, or suffer Texas northers to beat upon my head in leadership of a missionary church, than to preach to a church which is not missionary in the finest temple that you could rear above my head.” He led and his people followed. Christian men always follow such leadership. If the churches of Christ in America, turning their eyes away from the signs of the times, give themselves now to self-pampering and to providing for themselves luxuries and sumptuous circumstance while this marvelous foreign mission opportunity goes by, they will defeat the purposes of God for America and entail upon Christianity, world without end, a stigma which will be pointed out as a re- proach by nations whom we might to-day make our allies in this holy warfare. “Beware,” yes, indeed, beware, “of Christianity de luxe,” of a Christianity of show and pomp and glory while the world is panting for breath and dying 26 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA of starvation, and we have Bread of Life enough and to spare. Speaking of the emergency which confronts the Mis- sionary Society, the Watchman-Examiner makes this sensible statement : “The emergency exists not because we do not have the money but because the money has us. Slaves to the de- mands of the cost of high living, we have given up the higher life. Eager for creature comforts, we have shunned the call to heroic service, and fearful of the cost of the best, we have spent our labor for that which satisfieth not.” We need homes for our families, but we do not need palaces. We need food, but we can dispense with many luxuries. We need dress, but God calls us to forego a thousand extravagances. We need houses of worship, but we do not need cathedrals. The denomination which has surpassed all denominations in the erection of great tem- ples, the display of ornamentation, the exhibit of stained glass, and clamored for the front place on the public squares of the great cities, is to-day spiritually the deadest thing that bears the name Christian. Then let us keep ourselves under guard lest love for show and comfort run away with us, and we run away from our supreme duty and opportunity. CHAPTER III SIGN TWO: THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD The bugle call to war in 1917 was not more distinct and commanding than was the call to Foreign Missions which was made on Armistice Day 1918. The one call was to slaughter men; the other was to save them. The call to war was made in the name of democracy; the call to missions was made in the name of Christ and the lost. In the first instance we were called to help allies and de- feat enemies of democracy ; in the missionary call we were summoned to the service of every creature, allies and enemies, for this world and that which is to come. If we save men, we save both them and democracy. Our lads were willing to fight and die in the service for that to which they gave their splendid young lives. Are we as ready for sacrifice as they? Did not they, in the response which they made, and did not the country, in the resources which it so quickly assembled for a campaign of death, set the churches an example of telling sugges- tiveness? Think of the distress-call! We quote from Mr. Sher- wood Eddy: “Professor Bogart estimates 26,000,000 combatants and non-combatants as the total death toll of the war. This would mean a city of 16,585, like Ithaca, blotted out every day of the war. To this must be added 20,000,000 wounded 9,000,000 war orphans 5,000,000 war widows 10,000,000 refugees. “These appalling figures, however, do not include the in- direct losses from revolution, famine and pestilence, the 27 28 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA increased death rate and the total losses due to the war. Ac- cording to the Swedish Society for the Study of Social Con- sequences of the War, the total loss must be put down at 40,000,000 lives... . Take the single item of 10,000,000 ‘refugees.’ That means ten million human beings driven homeless, and often penniless, out of Armenia, Turkey, Syria, Belgium, France, Russia, East Prussia and the battle areas where armies marched and countermarched.” The war covered Europe with cemeteries of the dead, and left it with legions of maimed and halt and blind. But more, it robbed Europe of fortunes slowly accumu- lated through years of patient toil, and laid upon the backs of the bereaved and broken such burden of taxes as were never carried by men before. Prof. Bogart, as quoted by Mr. Sherwood Eddy, says, ‘The direct cost of war was 186 billion dollars and the direct and indirect cost, 337 billion dollars.” He cal- culates that we burned up $9,000,000 an hour, or $215,- 000,000 a day, during the war, or the equal of $20,000 an hour from the birth of Christ until the end of 1925! At the call of war this staggering sum of money was fur- nished. How insignificant our missionary offerings at the call of Christ and a lost world compared with these figures! Christian Missions is the antithesis and the only effec- tual antidote to war. The war left both our allies and our enemies in sore need of our Christian help, and the gospel is the one sure consolation for them. In many respects, every nation involved in the war suffered losses, demoralli- zation, and other consequences which it will take genera- tions to repair, let democracy do the best democracy can for the nations who have gained it as their reward. No audible voice from heaven could be more unmis- takable than the call of God to America in the circum- stances and conditions which have afflicted the world since the close of the war. That war left a world imploringly in need of Christ. Even the political and national aims and ambitions of the war are certain of frustration with- THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 29 out Christ’s influence and the saving essence of the gospel in the amalgam of peace plans for the world. Only the Prince of Peace can destroy envy, arrest strife and abolish war; and only the gospel contains his principles of peace. Dr. Robert E. Speer in ‘““The Gospel and the New World’’ says: “Old things are passed away everywhere. The old Eu- rope is gone, and a new Europe is come with new maps, new national and racial divisions, new economic problems and relationships and discontents, new political principles and fallacies, new ambitions and enmities and fears, new social ideals, new disabilities, new hopes, new despairs.” Again the same author says: “The new world needs him and that is all it does need. It needs his spirit of trust and brotherhood, his forgiveness and freedom, his principle of world organization, his power of re-creation, the fullness of the Gospel of redeeming love and life. “What we lack in our country,’ writes a thought- ful Japanese, ‘is Christianity in power and in resurrection.’ This is the whole world’s lack.” A fact which should be well lodged in the minds of Christian men is that God always calls his people to service in the groans and needs of men. It was “a man of Mace- donia” who uttered the call of God to Paul at Troas to come into Europe and “help us.’”’ Luke says, after reflect- ing upon the call of the man of Macedonia, “We en- deavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” In the man’s call God had called, and God’s call was to preach the gospel to those whose need had been voiced. If we would go with God to the service of men, we must have quick ears and responsive souls for the calls of men in their needs. God does not break the silence for any man except as he breaks it in the call of human need which gives us the opportunity for Christian service. Men and women in their darkness and distress, destitute of the 30 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA gospel, issue to the churches of Christ the Lord’s own call and emphasize his ancient command. The call of Europe for our invincible doughboys, our guns and flying machines: in 1917 was by no means so clear or convincing for Christian men as is the call of God for Christian compassion and service in this year 1925. It is to make plain this call that the signals of God are fly- ing. Nation after nation has, these six years, sent out to America the S.0.S. From the day the armistice was signed, God has been signaling to Christian America for a missionary advance not only in Europe but in all the world. The whole world has been affected and much im- periled by the war. Millions were ruined financially, and millions have seen the last earthly hope, personal and na- tional, fade until an absolute blank despair has fallen upon their spirits and their future. The cry of their need is the call of God. The world’s deepest woe is not produced by temporal, material, bodily need; the great pang is that which con- sumes the minds and souls of men. Some of us have, since the war, had men look at us through gaunt visages and out of hungry eyes, while they begged for Bibles and the gospel for their people. They have told us that, as acute as was the pang of their unfed stomachs, and as chilled as were their poorly clad bodies, the greatest need of their people was the pure Word of God and a hope which could sustain their drooping spirits. America has done much, if not her full duty, in gifts of food, clothing and money to stay the pangs of hunger and warm the emaciated bodies of men, women and children. We would not ig- nore this, and the nations to which we have shown pity will never forget it. The compassion which sent cargoes of food and clothing across the seas was itself a compas- sion begotten of the spirit of Christ in American citizen- ship, although all citizens who gave may not have recog- nized the genesis of their impulse to give. We have given material things; but, alas, many among us stand indicted before the signals of God to missionary THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 31 giving which have been raised these six years. We have made advance in foreign mission giving, but not in pro- portion to the extraordinary call and need and opportu- nity, and not by any means in proportion to our increases to home enterprises and home phases of our work. We have not done more than meagerly to begin the discharge of our spiritual obligation to the world in its great spiri- tual distress and need. It is a fact to make some Ameri- can Christians not to blush but to bleach. In all their sumptuous living, and frequently with large religious giv- ing, they have not seen, or, seeing, have not heeded the signals of God and the spiritual needs of the nations. Christian men have given millions to single institutions at home, which, say all you will for these institutions, are of minor importance and have small necessities compared with whole nations of men lost in sin and in spiritual de- spair as well as intellectual darkness, crying to us for the light of the gospel of Christ. But it is not our gifts to anything that condemn us in this hour and will condemn us in the last hour; it is our selfishness, our blindness, our wilfulness, the call of God and humanity to the contrary notwithstanding. Our home benevolences have not by any means been as large as they ought to be, but the chief shame and condemnation of millions of church members at home is that their concern for an imperiled world has been callous, and they have not heeded the voice and sum- mons of God. We gave our sons with pride and abandon until the war ended, and then many Americans seemed willing to leave the world to drift and to drive before the tides of fate and the winds of fury which were fanned by international jealousy, race hatred and ungodly diplomatic rivalries. We have in large measure withheld the best gift we had for Europe and the nations. If we rely upon guns and gases, flying machines and submarines to save this world, or any part of it, we ourselves shall live to rue our philos- ophy of civilization. If the war has one lesson more than another to teach us, it is that war does not end war and 32 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA does not make democracy safe for the world. To the contrary, war sows the seeds of war. And war has left not only such a heritage of misery and hopelessness for many as no living man has ever seen before, but it has left such boiling hates, such harassing suspicions, such bit- ter envies, as to cause alarm for the safety of the world. Not only are the enemies of our allies suspicious of them and of us, but ally now suspects ally, and the world is rapidly returning to its sly and baneful diplomacies which signify no good for the future. Statesmanship itself is infected with time serving, an example of that “‘self-ex- pression” which deplores human depravity and is itself a malady and a pestilence. Men with their ears to the ground in search of votes are not likely to hear the voice of God which calls in their generation. The war has left us a scarred and bruised world. The heroic sons of the nation, who in the dreadful carnage paid the price of their patriotism, impressed the horrors of war; but millions of the bereaved, the maimed, and other millions still who have had all their plans deranged, in their frenzy nurture a Christless purpose to “get even.” These things speak convincingly of the futility of war as a means of helping the world toward peace and brother- hood. The only remedy, we repeat, for the world in its pres- ent condition, the only corrective of conditions which cause war, the only force which can set up and maintain true democracy anywhere and adjust autonomous democ- racies one to another, is the spirit which is fostered by the gospel of Christ. If in this marvelous hour we refuse to hear God’s call to evangelize the world, we may expect present conditions to wax worse until the world is on fire again with the holocaust of war; and we may expect to go, as those religions are sure to go which through the cen- turies have studied and planned a sumptuousness for themselves while millions were living and dying without God and without hope in sight of their gorgeous and gilded temples. To the junk heap these religions must THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 33 go when the world learns a little better what religion is for and to discriminate a little more keenly between the pretense and the practice of the religion of Christ. Indif- ference to the sin, the ignorance, the poverty, the trouble of the people makes Christian profession a monstrous mis- nomer. Boasted institutions and fabulous endowments, elaborate and ornate temples, shall be for any evangelical denomination in America which fails to heed the call of God in this hour but symbols of vanity and monuments to its shame. What means it to boast of increasing num- bers in our home churches, great buildings, fine choirs, and even large activity, if the service for Christ in the lands which most need him is not correspondingly great? In Europe thousands have died of starvation in sight of cathedrals which are famed for their architectural gran- deur, and which were filled with silver and gold, with rich tapestries and embroideries, with gems and jewels, with useless changes of priestly wardrobes, miters, and other paraphernalia of fabulous market value, if sold to the rich. The rich Americans would: have competed one with an- other to buy these hoarded vanities for huge sums which would have enabled the so-called ‘‘churches,’ Greek and Roman Catholic, to feed starving men, women and chil- dren. But, no, ecclesiastical pomp and vanity and institu- tional Christianity must not be sacrificed to Christian ser- vice! Our luxuries and extravagances, some of them re- ligious, may easily betray us into a sin as black as that which will smirch these pretentious churches forever here- after. If the spiritual distress of the world does not mean enough to us to empty us of our vanity and cause us to forego some of these things in our home religion, grace has not completed its work in us. If spiritual needs which cannot wait may not have the preference, we are sure to be betrayed into the sin which has blackened the name of some great religious institutions. They have not only hoarded useless wealth when their human brothers were starving, but they have maintained a pomp and glory in 34 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA the lands of the world while fostering superstition, ig- norance and poverty. Evangelical Christianity has in the eyes of all observers been in marked contrast to all this. But there is need to-day of a warning voice in America, clarion and courageous, to call American Christianity away from self-pampering. We cannot, without guilt, make ourselves entirely comfortable in our own homes and in our houses of worship while the world is in ex- treme need of the rudiments of the gospel. How cool, how callous seems the indifference of many to the world’s plight compared with the spirit of Horace Pitkin facing martyrdom in a burning building in China, thus closing a life devoted to Foreign Missions His last message to his wife was “Train little Horace to be a mis- sionary.”’ What a contrast between that passion and much that we are seeing! Sooner or later our luxuries will corrode and our souls will suffer beyond repair if we continue our indifference to the needs and distress of the world. Says Dr. J. H. Franklin in “Christianity in a New World”: “Are we sufficient for such an hour? Are we ready to share with men everywhere the richest blessings we enjoy? For such a time nothing less than the Cross of Christ will suffice. If we accept it personally as the divine dynamic and lose ourselves under its spell, we shall give our prayers, our gold, our sons and daughters, ourselves, our all, to re- veal Christ everywhere, by oral proclamation and every needed form of service. Our conventional standards of dis- cipleship are inadequate. God is calling to us to join in the holiest of crusades of service to the very ends of the earth. The hour calls for larger vision, new standards of devotion, and greater plans. Most of all, it calls for a new acceptance of the divine dynamic, the Cross of Christ.” Says Dr. Speer: “Was there ever a day when, not for all men one by one, for the wants of their individual homes and hearts, but in one great mass of want, the world’s need of Christ was so THE DISTRESS OF THE WORLD 35 sharp and imperious as it is to-day? Who but Jesus Christ can ever bind this torn and discordant world together? We tried to do it with trade, and it could not be done. We tried to do it with diplomacy, but diplomacy failed. We have tried to do it with secular education, but secular education has been unequal to the task. There is only one way in which the world ever can be united in one: ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,’ said Jesus Christ, ‘will draw all men unto Me.’ In the one Head of all humanity, the one Shepherd of the whole flock of every race and every people and every tongue—only there can any hope of human unity ever be found. In a day when we are weary of strife and hatred and war, the need of the world for Christ protests against any abridgment of our will and purpose to share him now with all the life of men.” CHAPTER IV SIGN THREE: THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD The war not only took many things away from men; it destroyed their confidence in some of those things which have passed and in some things which remain. Autocracy has passed and in its old forms will perhaps never return. It was an outworn garment. It had be- come threadbare, eaten by ideas and ideals which had found in this modern world a climate congenial to their growth. Autocracy could not longer serve men and na- tions. The time had come for a changed social, economic and political order. Men will no longer risk their fortunes upon autocracy; but they will build as vainly upon a democracy if it does not rest upon a religious foundation and is not erected of the structural steel of personal man- hood tempered by the spirit of Christ and after the divine plans for human conduct and government. If personal- ity is a unit of value in society and nation building, it must be raised to its highest values and surest dependable- ness. Then is our Christian task made plain. There is one alchemy only which can turn the puddlepots of present molten humanity into the structural steel which will bear the weight and shield the treasures of modern civilization. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). “Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious stone, a sure foundation; he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet; and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place” (Isa. 28:16, © 17). be THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 37 Build on anything else and we build on shifting sand. This much millions of men have learned in the experiences. and exigencies of war and since the war. To say that the citizens of a Christian country have come to realize that Christ is a necessary foundation for business, so- ciety and nationality and that character touched by Christ is needed for the superstructure, is to state but half the truth. Many of the brightest minds of unbelieving heathen are affirming that heathenism is too unsubstan- tial a thing to bear the weight of modern civilization and support its institutions. Members of the Japanese Par- liament, distinguished editors, educators and captains of industry are declaring that the heathen nations and na- tions long dominated by semi-heathenism or pseudo- Christianity must lay new moral foundations for national security and international diplomacy and commerce. Recently the writer was invited to converse with a Japanese gentleman trained for big international business. We found him in one of our theological schools. He has had years of business experience and has gained a large outlook on life and international commerce. In the pur- suit of his work in America he had contact with Christian business associates who did not despise the foreign mis- sion opportunity which a Japanese citizen in their midst gave them. He was won to Christ, and here is the testi- mony which he gave the writer: “After I had found Christ and come into the possession of the Christian experience, I was transferred from those associations where I won Christ to another place and posi- tion of responsibility, I found welling up in me a great de- sire to unbosom myself to somebody who could understand my experience. My association was now largely with men of my own country who were strangers to my experience. The anxiety for communion with kindred spirits became in- tense. I heard much and saw much in my business associa- tion which distressed me, and to which my new experience could not be reconciled. I chanced to hear of this institution and I thought surely I ought to find in the company of men 38 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA who are gathered there those to whom I can unbosom my- self, and who will understand my experience. I have not been disappointed.” We asked him what use he purposed to make of his Christian life. He said: “My experience in business has led me to see that the fu- ture of Japan is conditioned upon her international com- merce. I cannot see that there is any assured prosperity for my beloved country without it. But my business experience has led me to the conviction that if the international business of Japan is to grow to those proportions which will insure the future of the nation, a new moral foundation must be found for Japanese commerce. The present moral ideals which control Japan and Japanese commerce will not hold the strain of the great business which Japan must do. In my Christian experience I am sure that I have found the moral foundation which Japan needs. I expect to train my- self here in this school and then go back to Japan to do a work of Christian evangelism among the business men of Japan. This I conceive to be the best use I can make of my Christian life, and it is the prompting of my Christian ex- perience.” This man has become disillusioned of business shrewd- ness and skill as guaranty of commercial success. Among the disillusionments of the past half-dozen years is disillusionment of many as regards some of the very old, very pretentious, and very showy forms of religion. The war gave the religions of the world a supreme chance to prove themselves the agencies of God in the service of humanity. How did they stand the ordeal? With what faithfulness and comparative faithfulness, devotion and efficiency did they meet their opportunity and discharge their obligations? Which religion above all others has been vindicated as a serving agency by the exigencies of these years? Everyone knows that the war and post-war days sifted the religions of the world as wheat is sifted. THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 39 Much chaff was discovered by onlookers—some of it hitherto covered by a vast amount of pretentiousness and lofty claims. There are millions of disillusioned ex- Catholics to-day, and these are, for the most part, from the most intelligent of those who were nurtured in that faith. Some of these, trained for the priesthood and within the mystic and confidential shrine of Rome, dis- covered the emptiness and sham of the institution as a claimant to the religion of Christ. The Greek Church in all its branches, though lacking in the opportunity which Romanism had to serve or benefit by the war, nevertheless found in the war and the re- sponsible days succeeding the war, a crucible which has tried it, too. Like Rome it had before the war been the friend of the rich and mighty, and while in profession of friendship for the poor it fostered poverty and illiteracy throughout every section of its undisputed domain. It has been found limp and undependable before a great crisis of the world and of great human need. It is inefficient and unadaptable to circumstances which lay stressful claims upon religion. It has lost prestige, and millions who once thought it to be the one true religious institution in the world have in the days through which civilization has been passing these ten years been disillusioned. How about Mohammedanism? War gave it, too, an opportunity and a testing. How has it come out of the ordeal? What demonstration has Mohammedanism given of its value and serviceableness in time of human and world necessity? A plain answer to that question is on the lips of everybody. More than ever the men of intel- lectual and moral enlightenment have come to look upon Mohammedanism as the religious monstrosity of this age. All men know of its barbarities. Accepted by the Turk and put into practice by him, he became the human butcher of the world. Mohammedanism is the one religion which has the slaughter of other religionists as a creed. Mob violence, wherever it exists elsewhere than in Moham- 40 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA medan countries, is contrary to law, but with the Mo- hammedan Turk it is according to the most sacred law, a prescribed observance of his religious book. Mohammedans, especially the Turks, sought to use the war to fortify themselves, and in doing so built a monu- ~ ment cemented in blood which will stand an everlasting accusation in its path to progress. Peoples and nations will now and forever know that they must, from the first approach, decline the hand of Islam if they would escape the bludgeon. Of all the religions in the world Moham- medanism is the bloodiest, the most pitiless. The blood of Armenian women and little children will, until eternity dawns, cry to God against Mohammedanism and the Turk. Self-respecting nations will draw their skirts about them when they meet the murderous Islamic Turk in the streets of international commerce and diplomacy. If a people and a religion can by any circumstances be dis- graced, then the Turk and Mohammedanism are dis- graced world without end. Those who show respect for this religious institution, and for the Turk so long as he professes and exalts it to the place of religion, cast moral reflection upon themselves. Decency cannot dally with anything so foul as Turkish Mohammedanism demon- strated itself to be during the war and following the war. The religious and moral views of Mohammed came to their legitimate fruit in the modern Turk and his behavior toward Armenian women and children. The world will have to lapse in moral attainments and moral sense, and sink to depths of degradation which imagination cannot fathom, before it can ever reconcile the behavior of the Turks with religion. The only escape from this disgrace is through renunciation of Mohammedanism because it was this, held as a religion and put into practice, that won infamy for the Turk. The Turkish people are prob- ably neither better nor worse than other people, except for the Mohammedan religion. We need not take the space for a characterization of any heathen religion in the world. Many of them have THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 41 ethical codes to regulate human society and personal con- duct which so far exceed Mohammedanism as to forbid comparison. Nevertheless, they are all simply negligible as religious and moral forces at a time of desperate reli- gious need throughout the world. Buddhism, Hinduism, and the rest are inane as religious ministrants to a dis- traught humanity. The only religion in all the world which gave devotion, unselfish abandon, practical, uncalculating and indiscrimi- nate service to the soldiers during the war and to the world’s distressed millions after the war, was evangelical Christianity. It cannot be claimed that evangelical Chris- tianity discharged its full duty. Many evangelical Chris- tians have fallen short of this and have themselves been tested and found wanting. Evangelical Christianity has fallen short particularly in religious ministration since the war, which should have been its chief concern through these years. In the humanities, the evangelical churches of North America have in the main made good and stood the sifting without loss of prestige. There has been made such a convincing exhibition as was never before seen of religious charity. This has placed evangelical Christian- ity, and evangelical Christianity of North America in particular, in a position of honor and advantage which no other religion and no other section of Christianity enjoys. The tragedy of our shortcomings in pure missionary support and advance during these post-war days must be realized in the light of stern facts. If the churches had done as much for pure missions as they did for relief in proportion to the importance of the two and their respec- tive claims upon the churches, we would have such credit to our Christianity as would secure for Christ in many lands such tributes of praise from the throats of millions as angels have not heard in all the Christian centuries. Millions, who in the upheavals and overturnings of war discovered the falsehood and failure of other forms of re- ligion, discovered at the same time evangelical Christian- ity in its practical humanitarianism. High hopes were 42 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA created among the disillusioned millions of Europe and other lands, that evangelical Christianity in North Amer- ica would as strongly and as expeditiously back its mis- sionary work and program in these lands as it had backed relief measures. The fog of religious illusion was blown away by the hurricane of war and winds of circumstance following the war. Men and women for the first time saw clearly the direction from which religious hope must come. Most of the hungry have been fed, or they are dead, though some are still with us, but there are millions of those dis- illusioned souls in many lands. Though bewildered at our missionary hesitation, they do still in their thirst for the Water of Life and hunger for the Bread of Life hold out their hands to us. With beseeching eyes they still look toward America for spiritual relief. Such an op- portunity evangelical Christianity has never faced. The great, immediate, urgent need of those who have lost faith in and respect for decadent and false religions is evangeli- cal Christianity as the only religious alternative. The props for religious faith which false religions supplied for millions have broken in the world cataclysm through which we have been passing. There is no help for these souls if evangelical Christianity does not supply it. If, however, evangelical Christianity is to meet this desperate need, it must go determinedly about its work without delay. These souls, broken, battered, disillusioned, dis- appointed, distressed, cannot in their exhaustion hold out and retain for us our opportunity if we hesitate. Moreover, something worse than the false faiths which have been abandoned will take the place of them shortly, if the alternative of evangelical Christianity is not pre- sented. In that case the last state of these souls will be worse than the first. There is no such urgent business be- fore the churches of Christ in America as this of hasten- ing to a disillusioned world with a gospel which can com- fort and sustain men. Nothing we have to do in America should at such a moment be allowed to stand in the way THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 43 of this ministry to a world without hope. By the disillu- sionments of men God is at this very hour signaling to American Christians to proceed without delay to the re- ligious rescue of the world. If we leave for a decade these millions to their despair, many of them will go down to death without Christ and without hope, we will have lost our missionary opportunity, and the ranks of infidel- ity, agnosticism and skepticism will have been greatly in- creased. Already there is an army of skeptics and agnos- tics abroad in the world and largely of a class which, if won to evangelical Christianity, would be our strongest allies in the nations in which they live. There is a larger multitude of agnostics in the world than was ever num- bered before. A few years ago a religious census was taken of the students in the Imperial University of Tokyo, Japan, which disclosed some surprising and significant facts. There were found in this great Japanese institution, the head of the educational system of the Empire, more Chris- tians than Shintoists and Buddhists combined. A fact of even greater missionary significance is this: there were in the school 1,500 atheists, but there were 3,000 agnostics, that is to say, men who had lost faith in both Buddhism and Shintoism, but did not know a substitute. They did not deny the reality of all religion as did those in the insti- tution who reported themselves as atheists, but they doubted religion because they had outgrown the religion with which they were acquainted and had not been in- troduced to something better. Their minds were in sus- pense on the religious question. All the great universities of Continental Europe and of South America present conditions almost as alarming as does the Imperial University at Tokyo. At the same time they present marvelous opportunities for evangelical Christianity. Every man who has, during the past five or six years, touched the more intellectual classes in any Latin country of the world, where Roman Catholicism has for centuries held sway, will testify to the large num- Ad TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA ber of men and women in high social, commercial and political life who avow when approached that they no longer believe in the priests and in the formula of “the Church.” Christ and the Cross, as these are interpreted and proclaimed by evangelical Christianity, are the only sure, efficacious substitute for the Crescent and the Cruci- fix. Together with disillusionment, and consequent upon it, there is a bewilderment among many. Giving up false re- ligions, not through disrespect or disregard for true re- ligion, men find something wanting and do not know where to find it. They are not irreligious. Their reli- gious renouncements are not due to indifference to reli- gion, but to the fact that they have advanced in moral mind beyond the standards of religion about them, The place which religion was intended to fill in the lives of men is empty and leaves a poignant sense of religious need. They are enemies of the false only. They wait, search, long for the true. Christianity entered Europe under the direct call of God at a time, as President Coolidge has said, when “‘the pagan systems were breaking down, when civilization was falling into decadence and unspeakable corruption.” It was at such a time that God called his first missionaries to Europe. Since the armistice semi-heathenism and a pseudo-Christianity have been breaking down, and God again calls from Europe in her desperate plight, not to Asia, but to America, “Come over and help us.” The Missionary Review of the World for February, 1925, says: “Multi-millionaires give of their accumulated wealth to establish universities, museums and libraries, and to provide funds for exploration and research. Meanwhile most of the churches and other organizations working for the spiritual as well as the material welfare of humanity at home and abroad are greatly hindered by lack of funds. “Almost all of the denominational mission boards, home and foreign, are struggling with deficits. For example, the THE DISILLUSIONMENTS OF THE WORLD 45 Methodist Episcopal Church (North) diminished the gifts to foreign missions forty-one per cent. last year ($2,197,- 510) as reported at the annual meeting of the Board held in Pittsburgh last November. As a result the Board has a debt of $3,100,000 (on which the interest alone cost $140,965 last year) and has been obliged to reduce its appropriations from twenty-five to fifty per cent. “The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, also faces a serious debt of $1,216,159 in their foreign mission work, due to an uncollected balance of $15,000,000 on Centenary pledges. Instead of an increased income for an enlarged program there has been a decrease of receipts amounting to about $250,000 a year. “This decrease in giving reported from many sources is in spite of the fact that in the meantime savings bank deposits in the United States have increased by over one billion dol- lars and the invested wealth of our country has increased by twelve billion dollars.” These things show that opportunities have been lost, but opportunities remain. Both should stir the evangelical churches of America to a sense of their duty. The American Christian who cannot in these circumstances hear the call of God for a foreign mission advance has ears to hear and hears not. CHAPTER?) SIGN FOUR: THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY This includes the call of the homeland, of course, for sin and lawlessness are alarming here as everywhere. Ministers of God ought in private and in convocations to be importuning God for a new spiritual induement and evangelistic anointing and endowment. They ought as never before to make lost souls their quest on Sunday and weekdays, in byway and highway, among the down and out and the up and out. Crime and the defiance of law, sin and unregeneracy, are found among all classes. There is need that the Ten Commandments, as well as the gospel, shall have the attention of our pulpits. The time has come for evangelical Christian leaders at home to take invoice of the tremendous forces which they are ordained to lead in Kingdom establishment and ex- pansion. The task and responsibilities which now face the churches make it supremely necessary that they shall utilize their products and assets. What avails it, if churches go on multiplying members whom they do not use in the service of Christ? The religion of Jesus was never intended to set up a personal benefit society simply. No man or church is truly rich in Christ who is not en- riching the world with the output of his life and with the gospel of Christ. The disciples of Christ did not sim- ply reap the benefits of the new faith, they sowed it. The churches of America have as perhaps their biggest task and largest possible service to the home- land, the utilization of their own products, the re- generated men and women who compose their member- ship. What a force God has given evangelical Chris- tianity in America! What glorious results in home evan- 46 THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 47 gelization are certain if the church membership is really led to its great task! Impassioned, organized and di- rected for the one great work for which individuals are saved and churches are organized,—evangelization,—sin- ners at home can be reached. By utilizing the available evangelical forces already at our command as unofficial and volunteer workers, we can take care of the home sit- uation while releasing to the foreign mission work the comparatively small number whom God is calling to foreign fields, and money to equip them for efficient ser- vice. Let us take account of the strength of evangelical Christianity in America, remembering that our task is to utilize this strength for the Kingdom of Christ. To assist the memory we use in the following invoice the even numbers which are, however, in every case, a close approximation to the exact figures so far as these are known. The following figures may suggest something of the strength of our home base: Evangelical Churches in the United States.. 225,000 SSrtIMeliat WLOTDET Sou: avn eae a are aha e Mk eulee 30,000,000 DRITRN LA MLO EE AS, 51M aks Since dace voc k leeier kt 195,000 Ua COO SGHOlATSY och clic s eee ak 18,000,000 Bivaneeical, PTOACKETS yi vuln c es ceg view «aie e 200,000 Sunday School Teachers and Officers ...... 1,500,000 The above invoice does not by any means include all the potentialities of our American Christianity and or- ganization, nor some of the most effective of these agen- cies now in use and to be used with increasing effective- ness in the maintenance, strengthening and use of the home base. The women’s societies and young people’s organizations hold almost measureless possibilities for the Christianization of America and the discharge of Amer- ica’s international mission. But taking even the above figures, what an army and organization does this invoice show to be available for a more complete Christianiza- tion of the homeland and to meet the extraordinary for- 48 TO-DAY’S CHALLENGE TO AMERICA eign mission call which God is sounding. These figures bear strong testimony to the goodness of God in his provi- dential care of our people and show that we are now in- deed ready for a great service in other lands. Take another class of organization and agencies. There are in the United States 689 colleges and universi- ties, 86 academies, and 187 theological seminaries and training schools under the control of the evangelical Christian denominations. Surely these should be de- pendable agencies not only for the faithful teaching of those things which lie at the heart of the evangelical mes- sage, and which are held by the denominations to which these schools look for support, but they should be the allies of the churches which brought them into existence in the work of Christ to which these churches are specifi- cally committed. There are more religious periodicals published by evan- gelical Christians in America than are published in all the rest of the world. These denominational agencies are in no small way sup- plemented by the elementary and high schools of the United States upon which was spent last year $1,800,- 000,000, and which are supervised and taught almost alto- gether by Christians. Even though Christianity may not be taught in these public schools, there is no law against living the life of Christ in and out of the schools and be- fore the eyes of the classes. What an army for Christ in this land should these many thousands of Christian public school teachers be! There are also 32,881 instructors in the public and private colleges, universities and profes- sional schools of this country, the majority of the total number being professors of Christianity. What an op- portunity is given these teachers for Christian Americani- zation in the 618,555 students who sit in their classes five days in the week through successive years, In 1921 Dr. E. P. Alldredge in his “Southern Baptist Handbook” published some striking figures. At that time there were in the United States 7,198 hospitals and THE UNIVERSAL OUTBREAK OF DEPRAVITY 49 1,761 allied institutions for the care of the sick and un- fortunate. The number has been increased since that time.