^t . o^ 
 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 ^*fi 
 
 '^ 
 
 Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund, 
 
 BV 2030 .C2 1904 
 A Call to advance 
 
A Call to Advance 
 
A Call to Advance 
 
 Addresses delivered before the 
 Eastern Missionary Conven- 
 tion of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, Philadelphia, 
 Pa., October 13-15, 1903 
 
 ^"' 
 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE 
 
The Philadelphia Convention Addresses are pub- 
 lished in a series of seven small volumes, of 
 which this is one. The volumes are entitled: 
 
 A CALL TO ADVANCE 
 
 MISSIONS AND WORLD MOVEMENTS 
 
 THE ASIATIC FIELDS 
 
 THE AFRICAN, EUROPEAN, AND 
 LATIN AMERICAN FIELDS 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY AND HOME FIELDS 
 
 YOUNG PEOPLE AND MISSIONS 
 
 THE MISSIONARY WORKSHOP 
 
 Copyright, 1904, by 
 Eaton & Mains 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Conversion p/^THE World. . 7 
 Bishop Cyrus D, Foss, D.D. 
 
 II. The New Era OF^issiONS 23 
 
 Bishop James M. Thoburn, D.D. 
 
 III. Go OR Send! . . . .^X^ 47 
 
 Rev. William F. McDowell, D.D. 
 
 IV. The Right of Jesu;?^o Reign. . . 63 
 
 Bishop Warren A. Candler, D.D. 
 
A Call to Advance. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF THE 
 WORLD. 
 
 By BISHOP CYRUS D. FOSS, D.D. 
 
 The magnificent manifesto of the just- 
 ascending Saviour sometimes brings to 
 thoughtful minds and consecrated hearts a 
 sense of discouragement, amounting almost 
 to despair. ''Go ye into all the world, and 
 preach the Gospel to every creature." To 
 what extent has that irrepealable marching 
 order been obeyed? Almost nineteen hun- 
 dred years have passed and yet not one 
 half the adult population of the globe has 
 ever opened a Bible or heard a Gospel ser- 
 mon, and the Church itself is not half 
 
 7 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance;. 
 
 awake. Probably a majority of the mem- 
 bers of the whole Church on earth care lit- 
 tle or nothing about the missionary move- 
 ment; as is shown by the fact that they 
 give nothing to it, unless it may be a chance 
 penny, and if absent from the collection 
 bring nothing afterward. Moreover it 
 takes an argument to show that any land 
 called "Christian" fairly deserves that name ; 
 and many of the vilest vices and crimes 
 abound under the shadows of church spires. 
 
 "The Morning Cometh." 
 
 But I will not suffer myself to march in 
 the motley and croaking ranks of pessimism 
 for the whole of a single minute. ''The 
 morning cometh." It is comforting to note 
 that good men in every age have groaned 
 under the oppressive evils of their times, 
 even while lured forward by splendid ideals. 
 Among the twelve apostles there was one 
 "devil." The Epistles of the New Testa- 
 
 8 
 
The; Conve:rsion of the World. 
 
 ment are very largely taken up with re- 
 bukes of the heresies and sins of the apos- 
 tolic Church. 
 
 John Wesley, at the age of sixty-three, 
 when Great Britain was looking with amaze- 
 ment on the glorious evangelistic successes 
 achieved by him and his helpers, wrote thus 
 of himself and his followers : "They ought 
 to be both burning and shining lights ; but 
 they neither burn nor shine. Three or four 
 of our preachers in Ireland are truly de- 
 voted men, so are a few of the preachers in 
 England. Si sic omnes. (O, that all were 
 such!) What would be able to stand be- 
 fore them ?" Concerning himself he wrote : 
 ''I am ashamed of my indolence and inac- 
 tivity. What have I been doing these thirty 
 years?" The trouble was that his ideal out- 
 ran him. 
 
 "The morning cometh." I know the pessi- 
 mist denies this. Well the raven — the first 
 bird mentioned in the Bible and the least 
 
 9 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance. 
 
 admirable — has human prototypes which 
 croak out for evermore : "Morning? There 
 is no morning. Night sits on the throne, 
 and eternal darkness is at hand. The world 
 has gone to the bad. Politics are corrupt. 
 The morals of the people go from worse to 
 worst. Religion is losing its hold." Well, 
 if that be true, there must be a dreadful 
 mistake somewhere, for I hear Solomon say, 
 "The path of the just is as a shining light, 
 which shineth more and more unto the per- 
 fect day." I hear David say, "Thy kingdom 
 is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion 
 endureth throughout all generations." I 
 hear Isaiah cry, "He shall not fail nor be 
 discouraged until he have set judgment in 
 the earth; and the isles shall wait for his 
 law." At length I hear the angels sing: 
 "I bring you tidings of great joy, which 
 shall be to all people. Glory to God in the 
 highest and on earth peace, good will to 
 men;" and I hear Jesus say, "Go ye into 
 
 lo 
 
The: Conve:rsion oi^ th^ World. 
 
 all the world, and preach the Gospel to every 
 creature." O, pessimist, you must excuse 
 me if I accept the word of Solomon, and 
 of David, and of Isaiah, and of the angels, 
 and of Jesus, rather than your word. "The 
 morning cometh!" 
 
 Christian Progre:ss in Genkrai.. 
 
 Consider the general progress of the 
 kingdom of Christ in the earth. I know 
 very well that some doctrinaires attempt to 
 show that civilization has made the changes 
 I am going to speak of, and rather than 
 argue with them, I just quote the words of 
 two men, certainly neither of them religious 
 bigots, and both of them great thinkers — 
 Mr. Froude and Mr. Carlyle. Mr. Froude 
 says, "All that we call modern civilization 
 in a sense which deserves the name, is the 
 visible expression of the transforming 
 power of the Gospel." Mr. Carlyle says, 
 
 "The Christian religion must ever be re- 
 
 II 
 
A Cali. to Advance. 
 
 garded as the crowning glory, or rather the 
 Hfe and soul, of our whole modern culture.'' 
 These are not religious bigots, but profound, 
 philosophic students of history. Let me, in 
 the light of such characterizations, give you 
 just a glance and hint at the numerical prog- 
 ress of the Christian religion. I speak now 
 of its adherents, not of communicants alone 
 of Christian Churches, but of those who be- 
 lieve in Christianity rather than some other 
 religion. The figures I give you are be- 
 lieved to be substantially accurate. At the 
 end of the first century there were five mil- 
 lion Christian believers; at the end of the 
 tenth, fifty millions; at the end of the fif- 
 teenth, one hundred millions ; at the end of 
 the eighteenth, two hundred millions ; at the 
 end of the nineteenth, five hundred millions ; 
 so that the number has more than doubled 
 within a century. Did you hear that state- 
 ment ? The number of people on 'this earth 
 who profess their belief in Christianity has 
 
 12 
 
The: CoNVi^RSiON oi'' the; World. 
 
 more than doubled within a century. Still 
 further, one third of the world's population 
 gOA^erns two thirds of its people; that is, it 
 is the Christian nations which are the brainy 
 nations, the wealthy nations, the ruling na- 
 tions, the progressive nations of the world 
 to-day. 
 
 But we have for our encouragement not 
 only a vast array of facts, as incontestable 
 as the law of gravitation or the granite foun- 
 dations of the globe; we have also an im- 
 mense treasury of ideas and forces. Of 
 these I can glance at only a few : enthusiasm 
 for the truth; the fullness of the dispensa- 
 tion of the Holy Spirit; the demonstrated 
 power of the Gospel to save men of all 
 races, climes, and grades of intellectual cul- 
 ture ; the recent very glowing and now mag- 
 nificent apprehension by the world at large 
 of the glory of the personality of Jesus 
 Christ, and the pre-eminence accorded him 
 in all theological belief and in all moral 
 
 13 
 
A Cali. to Advance. 
 
 ideals of men who have any faith about re- 
 ligion at all ; the multiplication of Bibles, 
 so that in a single year more have been set 
 going in the world than existed in the first 
 year of the last century; the rise and won- 
 derful progress of the Sunday school ; the 
 multiplication of religious literature; the 
 numerous Young Men's and Young 
 Women's Christian Associations, and of 
 young people's societies in almost all 
 branches of the Church, and the magnifi- 
 cent and growing recognition of the work 
 of women in the Church, and in philan- 
 thropy and in moral reform. These are 
 hints at the resources, in ideas and in dem- 
 onstrated truths, which are now the solid 
 foundations of the whole work and out- 
 march of the Christian Church. 
 
 Th^ Missionary Ce^ntury. 
 
 As to strictly missionary work and prog- 
 ress a few words must suffice. In secular 
 
 14 
 
The Conversion o^ the World. 
 
 history the last century is recorded as the 
 "Century of Science." In the profounder 
 sacred history, which is concerned with the 
 world's real progress toward its grandest 
 destiny, the nineteenth century must ever 
 stand as the great ''Century of Evangeliza- 
 tion," the century in which twenty times as 
 much was done for the spread of the Gospel 
 in heathen lands as in all the other centuries 
 put together. One hundred years ago in the 
 whole heathen world there were about one 
 hundred ordained ministers and not a single 
 native helper; now there are ten thousand 
 ordained ministers and seventy thousand na- 
 tive helpers. Then there were only a few 
 scores of native communicants; now more 
 than a million and a half. The old, ever- 
 new Bible has been found to answer all 
 needs in all lands. Converts are raised up 
 everywhere ready to stand the supreme test 
 of martyrdom. Missions have won the high 
 encomiums of generals and admirals and 
 
 15 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance;. 
 
 governors and philosophic tourists, whose 
 predecessors fifty years ago laughed them 
 to scorn. Even Darwin, after his famous 
 tour around the world, declared that, "The 
 lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's 
 wand." 
 
 Meanwhile the Church has been slowly 
 awakening from its long-continued and as- 
 tonishing slumber. Missionary societies 
 have been multiplied until every branch of 
 the Evangelical Church has organized its 
 forces in the sublime effort to evangelize 
 and convert the whole world at home and 
 abroad. In this lofty endeavor the Church 
 is coming more and more to a solemn real- 
 ization of the actual presence and measure- 
 less resources of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The: Embarrassment oip Success. 
 As Methodists vvc have in late years 
 found our splendid evangelistic successes 
 our greatest embarrassment. Converts were 
 
 i6 
 
The Conversion oi^ the World. 
 
 multiplied and scores of thousands more 
 were ready to come to baptism, but we had 
 to cry to them, ''Stand back," and two 
 years ago we were actually obliged to cut 
 our appropriations for missionary work eight 
 per cent. But a brighter day has dawned. 
 In our agony we called mightily upon God 
 and were moved to organize this Open Door 
 Emergency Commission. The next year 
 the collections were increased $112,000. 
 Last October in Cleveland for four days 
 many of us felt such a breath of Pentecost 
 as never before. In one evening contribu- 
 tions, to be distinctly over and above all reg- 
 ular offerings, were piled upon God's altar 
 to the extent of $302,000. And now, in 
 this Philadelphia Convention, we are come 
 to wait together for three days on the 
 Mount of Vision. God grant that this gath- 
 ering may prove to be under augmented in- 
 fluences of the same ever-blessed Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 2 17 
 
A Cai.Iv to Advanci^. 
 
 A ParabIvE 01? Powe:r. 
 Permit me a parable, for so my Lord 
 spoke. From creation's dawn till now the 
 greatest of forces has been challenging 
 man's attention. Its flashing, bellowing 
 cannonade in every storm has summoned 
 him to harness and to use its infinite ener- 
 gies. One hundred and forty-nine years 
 ago last June, after long study and numer- 
 ous experiments, Benjamin Franklin came 
 to think the lightning in the sky identical 
 with the electricity excited by rubbing a 
 plate of glass. He waited long for some tall 
 steeple to lift him near the clouds, to test 
 his theory ; but steeples came slowly in this 
 Quaker town, so he made a kite and got a 
 boy to help him fly it when the next thun- 
 derstorm appeared. He suspended a key 
 from the string near his hand, and secured 
 the insulation of his novel battery by a few 
 inches of silken cord. Presently the little 
 
 i8 
 
The; Conversion oi? THf; Wori.d. 
 
 filaments of the kite string stood out and 
 were agitated. His eyes almost leaped from 
 their sockets. He held his knuckle to the 
 key and got a spark and then charged a 
 Ley den jar ; and told the world that light- 
 ning and electricity were identical. 
 
 Slowly the great science developed for 
 more than a hundred years, and it is chiefly 
 within the last twenty years that the giant 
 of all forces has been harnessed and set to 
 work. Let us leap the chasm from Frank- 
 lin till now. 
 
 Two weeks ago I passed Niagara Falls. 
 The train stopped five minutes on the brink 
 of the descending flood, and I feasted my 
 soul once more with the subduing beauty 
 and majestic music of the King of Cata- 
 racts. Just beyond the boiling flood was the 
 immense electrical power house in which 
 35,000-horse power of the 10,000,000-horse 
 power of Niagara is harnessed for the 
 use of man. It lights the city of Buffalo, 
 
 19 
 
A Cai.1, to Advance:. 
 
 twenty miles away, runs its trolley cars and 
 factories, and reaches out tireless hands of 
 help to many other towns. Moreover its 
 by-products are of immense value. Some of 
 them are new to science, such as carborun- 
 dum; and others vastly cheapened, such as 
 aluminum, bleaching powder, and calcium 
 carbide, the basis of acetylene gas. 
 
 My Lord himself suddenly turned all this 
 into a parable for me. As I stood there 
 looking at that power house the descending 
 sun broke forth and touched the mist; and 
 lo, a glorious rainbow leaped halfway from 
 flood to zenith. It spoke to me and said, 
 ''God is here, and God is love." It told me 
 other things. It said all this power is but 
 a faint hint of the unimaginable and abso- 
 lutely infinite storehouses of power at the 
 disposal of the Church of God for the sal- 
 vation of the world. 
 
 The divine-human King of all worlds, 
 just before he disappeared from man's sight 
 
 20 
 
The: Conversion o? thi; Wori.d. 
 
 in this world that he might become omni- 
 present in it, gave forth the great command 
 to be everywhere obeyed, "Go ye into all the 
 world, and preach the Gospel to every crea- 
 ture." He flanked that command with his 
 almighty power and his perpetual presence. 
 Before it, "AH power is given unto me in 
 heaven and in earth;" and after it, "Lo, I 
 am with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." 
 
 Strong-winged Faith. 
 
 My faith takes wing, not alone here on, 
 this platform ; it has done so hundreds of 
 times in private pra}'er and in meditation on 
 the great things of the kingdom. My faith 
 takes wing and says, the resources are so 
 ample ; the wealth within the Christian 
 Church now is so vast, if only it were con- 
 secrated for the work God has for it to do ; 
 the real deep sentiments and beliefs and lives 
 of Christian people are now so mighty, if 
 they could come to the front and assert 
 
 21 
 
A CaIvI. to Advance;. 
 
 themselves always and not be overpowered 
 by the chill of sin and of unbelief; the re- 
 sources of intellectual culture through the 
 schools and colleges are so great ; the whole 
 ecclesiastical machinery for the world's sal- 
 vation is now so very abundant and magnifi- 
 cent, that if only these appliances could have 
 a new baptism of the Pentecost, the millen- 
 nium might come in a decade. 
 
 The infinite resources of the Almighty 
 God-man put at the disposal of the Church 
 for the evangelization and actual conversion 
 of the world — that is the keynote of this 
 Convention. 
 
 22 
 
11. 
 
 THE NEW ERA OF MISSIONS. 
 
 by bishop james m. thoburn, d.d. 
 
 Steps o^ Approach. 
 
 In almost all great movements among 
 mankind progress is marked by distinct 
 stages. The missionary enterprise proves 
 no exception. In the case of modern mis- 
 sions, which took their rise in certain parts 
 of Northern Europe and especially in Ger- 
 many, the first beginnings were very feeble 
 and small in extent. The same may be 
 noted in the case of Great Britain and of 
 America. Shortly after the middle of the 
 last century we reach what might be termed 
 a definite stage of advance. It was an era 
 of great events, so far as missions are con- 
 cerned. We have the appearance of Doctor 
 Livingstone in Central Africa. His voice 
 
 23 
 
A Cai^Iv to Advance:. 
 
 was literally the voice of one crying in the 
 v^ilderness, and we ought to be proud of 
 him as a missionary. His travels and his 
 writings have affected the political world 
 as well as the moral world. He was one 
 of the world's great men. After his appear- 
 ance, perhaps the next great event to be 
 noted was the abolition of American slav- 
 ery; then followed the liberation of Mex- 
 ico, and after that came Louis Napoleon, 
 and he was followed by the abolition of the 
 temporal power of the Pope, and then again 
 by the liberation of Italy. Meanwhile, in 
 the Eastern world, Japan had made her ap- 
 pearance among the nations of the world, 
 and China began to open her doors anew. 
 That momentous period seems to have been 
 planned in the interest of Christian mis- 
 sions. Everything worked for us, and there 
 was no weapon in the hands of the enemy 
 that they could use. that seemed to work 
 against us. Thus we entered upon the 
 
 24 
 
The; Nkw Missionary Era. 
 
 threshold of the twentieth century, and we 
 find that we are confronted by new circum- 
 stances, new practices, new responsibihties, 
 and a new state of affairs. 
 
 A Missionary Contrast. 
 
 I remember that between 1859 and 1864 
 I spent five very anxious years. They were 
 my first years in mission service, and when 
 I returned with my motherless children to 
 this country the people asked me the meas- 
 ure of success that I had had. I used to 
 feel a certain measure of sinking as I 
 thought of that field and knew that I had 
 done the best that I could for it, but it 
 seemed as though such a small amount of 
 work had been accomplished in five years, 
 for I had baptized in that time only five 
 persons. I am going back again next week, 
 and when I land in Bombay I shall have to 
 choose between a thousand different fields, 
 all of which will be reaching out for me to 
 
 25 
 
A Cai.1. To Advance:. 
 
 come, and wherever I go I shall find con- 
 verts waiting for baptism. 
 
 Just as I was leaving India last spring, to 
 come to the United States, I baptized eight 
 hundred and thirty-seven persons at one 
 meeting. That is somewhat different from 
 baptizing five persons in five years. If I 
 go back and would commence to baptize 
 twenty-five persons a day, and do that every 
 day for three hundred and sixty-five days, 
 I should not then exhaust the number of 
 candidates that are waiting to acknowledge 
 Christ Jesus as their Saviour by accepting 
 the rite of Christian baptism. That is the 
 situation to-day. If I did not belong in 
 India, and I were to go down into another 
 part of the world, I would find that God had 
 given his abundant blessing to other flour- 
 ishing missions. 
 
 I might go on and call attention to other 
 open doors, but I have mentioned one in- 
 stance merely to show that this is a remark- 
 
 26 
 
The: New Missionary Era. 
 
 able era, and that the present era calls for 
 some very special action on our part. When 
 we receive these converts we should prepare 
 them for church obligations, and some one 
 should be put with them so that they may 
 be adequately trained. They must be taught 
 to write ; they must be taught to read ; they 
 must receive the word; and their children 
 must be educated as the parents have been, 
 and they must be prepared for intellectual 
 and social as well as spiritual progress. We 
 are to build up the people here, there, and 
 yonder, and this is just the difference be- 
 tween the modern mission field and the old 
 
 field. 
 
 Breadth oi^ the Work. 
 
 It used to be that we gathered a few 
 people in a few villages, and we had a very 
 simple conception of what a native convert 
 could do for us. I know a great many peo- 
 ple unwisely seemed very much afraid of 
 making our native converts too intelligent. 
 
A Cali, to Advance:. 
 
 If we don't cultivate the intellect we soon 
 begin to find that the Christian growth of 
 the individual is in some strange way 
 dwarfed. We must give them culture. 
 What does that mean ? We have many lan- 
 guages. When I reached India the first 
 time Dr. Butler was taking me up to Luck- 
 now — we were traveling in the same con- 
 veyance — and he said to me one day, "You 
 should be very thankful that you will have 
 to learn only one language. Our Presby- 
 terian brethren over on the other side of 
 the Ganges have a wider field, where three 
 different languages are spoken. Think of 
 having to learn three languages — and of 
 such a big field as there is in all Hindustan ! 
 You will have to learn nothing else." I 
 was very thankful when I heard those 
 things, but I am presiding to-day over mis- 
 sions in which we are preaching the Gospel 
 in thirty-five different languages all the 
 time. In those far-off days of exceedingly 
 
 28 
 
The: Nisw Missionary Era. 
 
 small things how little we knew what God 
 had in store for us ! 
 
 We have given every one of these people 
 a literature. We have great publishing 
 houses — and we must have them — in order 
 to provide this literature for the thousands 
 of day schools that we have established, and 
 also for the higher academies, seminaries, 
 colleges, and theological schools. 
 
 The; First Great Reini^orcisment. 
 I am not as young as I was when I went 
 to India in 1859, ^^^^ 1 ^^ going to live 
 until I see the first installment of the great 
 reinforcement come. We want seventy-five 
 new men at once in Southern Asia, and they 
 need just as many in Eastern Asia — young 
 men — and they should have fifty in Africa, 
 and they should have fifty in Latin Amer- 
 ica, making a total of two hundred and 
 fifty. That would not be a wonderful re- 
 inforcement. It would be only the first 
 
A Cai,Iv to Advance. 
 
 installment that must be sent out to help 
 us. But some one would say, "You ought 
 to face this matter as a practical man. You 
 must know you cannot get a thousand men, 
 or even two hundred and fifty." It depends 
 a great deal upon how we approach these 
 young men. A little paragraph in the news- 
 papers is not going to create much excite- 
 ment or gain much attention ; but give me 
 the cash, and give me health and time, and 
 in twelve months I will find the two hun- 
 dred and fifty men, or else I will confess I 
 don't know what I am talking about in 
 regard to missionary matters. 
 
 We hear all over the land that very few 
 student volunteers have found their way 
 into the foreign field, and it seems to be 
 intimated that these volunteers have not 
 been sincere. When a man became a volun- 
 teer in the time of the recent war with 
 Spain his name was put down, a uniform 
 was put on him, and he did not go back 
 
 30 
 
The: Ne:w Missionary Era. 
 
 home again„ A young student writes down 
 his name as a volunteer ; he goes where he 
 pleases; and perhaps we call upon him 
 some time, and then we wonder that he 
 has lost his interest. If a volunteer in Eng- 
 land enters the English army, just as soon 
 as he becomes a volunteer and is sufficiently 
 tested physically they put a shilling in his 
 hand, and the man who takes the shilling 
 belongs to the king, and there is no going 
 back. I would advise our friends when 
 calling for volunteers to change the terms, 
 and let the young men and young women 
 understand that if they volunteer it means 
 business. 
 
 The Bi:ginning op Large: Giving. 
 Then again some one says, *'But the 
 money ; you will never get the money." 
 My friends, I think there is money enough. 
 There is a great deal of money in the world, 
 and I think the majority of those who are 
 
 31 
 
A Cai,i, to Advance:. 
 
 familiar with missionary affairs will agree 
 with me when I say that we have entered 
 upon a missionary revival, and I believe the 
 missionary revival will bring a great and 
 widespread spiritual revival, and it will em- 
 brace all great and good interests. We may 
 expect several results. One will be a re- 
 vival of liberality. Our people will give. 
 We have benevolent, earnest Christians, as 
 a rule, but on an average they give very 
 little to this great enterprise. One year 
 Ago it was announced that one of our mem- 
 bers had undertaken to give one hundred 
 thousand dollars to this missionary cause. 
 It made a profound impression in the 
 Church. It ought to have done so, for it 
 was the largest gift ever laid upon the mis- 
 sionary altar of Methodism in the Old 
 World or in the New. That gift set other 
 people to thinking as to whether there are 
 any others, either in England or in America, 
 who could lay down one hundred thousand 
 
 32 
 
The: Ne:w Missionary Era. 
 
 dollars just as easily as one thousand dol- 
 lars. We have not looked for those large 
 gifts ; we have not asked for them ; we have 
 not prayed for them ; we have not appealed 
 to the people for them as though we ex- 
 pected we would get them. We have not 
 moved forward to get the people to do 
 something of this kind, and we have not by 
 our position suggested to the people at large 
 that it should be done. We have suggested, 
 however, that this is the most hallowed of 
 all claims of Jesus Christ to-day, and it 
 rests upon all those who bear his name on 
 this earth. The Church is going to get 
 much larger gifts than the one mentioned, 
 but it is just the little extra help that comes 
 here, there, and yonder that in the long run 
 gives us the money. 
 
 Aggre:gate; the Litti^es. 
 God's plan is to make his people inclined 
 to give the money that will carry forward 
 3 23 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance. 
 
 the work. What would they give? I can 
 perhaps enHghten you on that. If we could 
 get our membership, inckiding the proba- 
 tioners, to give two pennies a week it would 
 make three millions of dollars a year, and 
 with that three million dollars a year for 
 the salvation of the nations what would not 
 be possible ? 
 
 But you say, "We can never collect the 
 pennies. The pennies are here, but we can- 
 not get them. How are Vv^e ever going to 
 get the money together?" 
 
 In the first place, you will never get the 
 money together unless you apply the rule 
 of business common sense to the work you 
 have in hand. I was in the General Con- 
 ference in 1876 at Baltimore, and when the 
 time came to elect missionary secretaries a 
 great many of the men seemed to be almost 
 in despair because we could not appoint a 
 man who had sufficient eloquence to fill the 
 post, and everybody talked about Dr. Dur- 
 
 34 
 
The Nl:w Missionary Era. 
 
 bin. It was said we would never have an- 
 other such a secretary as Dr. Durbin. I 
 was unknown in those days, and I sat 
 quietly in my seat, but I said to myself, 
 Those men don't know what they are talk- 
 ing about ; for they have the idea that a 
 missionary treasury is to be supplied by 
 means of eloquence. There is no relation 
 between the two things. An eloquent man 
 may have an audience, and he may force 
 them to give, but what has he done for the 
 Church ? What has he done for the multi- 
 tudes ? How far has his influence extended ? 
 Eloquence is very cheap, but you must look 
 a great deal deeper than that. That appeals 
 only to the crust, the superficial feeling of 
 the human heart. Our people are too much 
 afraid of the cost. The whole cost of col- 
 lecting our missionary money is very, very 
 trifling, but we may pay a great deal too 
 much for collecting. We have economical 
 ways of doing things, but we must look out 
 
 35 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance. 
 
 what we are doing. We may make the So- 
 ciety sustain a painful loss, a loss it cannot 
 bear, in order that we may appear before 
 the world as doing our work very cheaply. 
 
 Using Mondy to Get Money. 
 
 Out yonder in the Southwest, on the 
 plains of Arizona, there is a little section 
 of the desert plain on which there may be 
 found little specks of gold, tiny little par- 
 ticles ; and yet you can say that there are 
 three millions of dollars in those little 
 specks, mingled with sand, and any person 
 can get that amount of gold out of the sand. 
 You go to New York and go to some cap- 
 italist and tell him about it, and ask him if 
 he will not go into this little speculation and 
 advance the funds to separate the gold from 
 the sand, and gather it out and bring it to 
 New York or to Philadelphia. He asks you 
 what the cost will be, and you say to him 
 you will have to get very costly machinery, 
 
 36 
 
Thk Nkw Missionary Era. 
 
 and it will cost a good deal to get the gold 
 out from the desert place. You must take 
 your workmen there, and a good deal of 
 expense will be involved in this enterprise. 
 It will cost him fifty thousand dollars to 
 recover three million dollars' worth of gold. 
 The man of capital does not hesitate ; he 
 says, *'I was expecting to have to put 
 down one hundred thousand dollars to 
 see the business through." A hundred 
 thousand dollars expended in order to gain 
 three million dollars is nothing at all. And 
 just as your golden specks are among the 
 sands of the desert, so the pennies are in 
 the Methodist homes in these United States, 
 and your preachers can gather them; and 
 you have thousands of preachers in the land 
 to gather them. Your class leaders will not 
 gather them ; you cannot move them with 
 enough energy to do that work. You must 
 pay for this work. You must utilize your 
 men and your women and your children, 
 
 Z7 
 
A CaIvI. to Advance;. 
 
 and you must pay for it, and give tlie com- 
 pensation here and there to the young, and 
 if it costs you fifty thousand dollars to col- 
 lect the three million dollars you may thank 
 God it is no more. Take the three million 
 dollars because it is three million dollars 
 given to the Lord, and once started, and 
 you get your three million dollars, you may 
 be doing it every year, and with it v^e will 
 plant a hundred thousand schools in heathen 
 lands, and in less than twelve months we 
 will increase your converts in Southern Asia 
 at the rate of ten thousand a month. Out 
 of those converts we have we must let all 
 who are able to teach do so, and we must 
 let them read the word of God if they are 
 not able to do any more than that. 
 
 Two Indian Districts. 
 I must tell you of an interesting letter 
 that came from the presiding elder of the 
 Gujarat District, Bombay Conference. He 
 
 38 
 
Thi5 New Missionary Era. - 
 
 said that we have at the present time in 
 this field something hke sixteen or seven- 
 teen thousand Christians. Five years ago 
 we had less than five hundred. We have at 
 present five thousand applicants for bap- 
 tism. He went on to say that of this same 
 class of people we have a hundred thousand 
 just as accessible as the five thousand, and 
 then of a corresponding class, composed of 
 what we call an accessible people, we have 
 two millions, and there are ten millions of 
 all classes. Cross the mountains, and go 
 on until you come to the district called the 
 Punjab. The presiding elder from there 
 wrote to me that he had anywhere from ten 
 thousand to fifteen thousand applicants for 
 baptism ; and everywhere we are saying, 
 We cannot do more ; we cannot come. 
 
 A Christ-filIvEd Enthusiasm. 
 
 How about the money that is in your pos- 
 session? If we receive it we will inaugu- 
 
 39 
 
A CaIvIv to Advance. 
 
 rate the greatest movement that this Chris- 
 tian world has ever seen. People sometimes 
 intimate to me that I am an enthusiast, but 
 if I am it is not in every direction, and it 
 is only for the successful work of the king- 
 dom and for the establishment of the reign 
 of Jesus Christ in the world. I have the 
 thought in my inmost soul that whatever 
 measure of religious enthusiasm there is in 
 this poor heart of mine it was implanted 
 there by Him whose name I bear and whom 
 I serve. We must not forget that most se- 
 rious and important fact, that the Leader 
 of the great host of the Lord Almighty is 
 among us and with us all the time. I can 
 see his hand, his tender love coming down 
 upon all men ; I see his pierced hands and 
 feet, and I know he stands beside me Vv^hile 
 I am talking to you at this hour. I know 
 it as well as I know there is any conscious- 
 ness in this bosom of mine, and I knov/ that 
 
 I am giving you his message, a message 
 
 40 
 
Thd N£;w Missionary Era. 
 
 direct from him, when I tell you that in 
 the name of the great Methodist host in 
 these United States we must rise up and 
 address ourselves to this great task with a 
 spirit of confidence in him, and we must 
 feel as we have never felt before. 
 
 The: Gleam o^ Broad Fieilds. 
 
 There was a time when I was very much 
 afraid of going too fast, and that we would 
 extend our lines too far. Away back in the 
 year 1872, nearly thirty-two years ago, 
 when timidly I had commenced crossing 
 the Ganges and was preaching on the west- 
 ern shore, I went down to Allahabad, and I 
 saw the Presbyterian synod and all the 
 brethren. They were having a meeting 
 while I was there, and a note came over 
 from a European living at Allahabad. He 
 was bound for Lucknow. He had heard the 
 preaching and had been converted, and his 
 wife was greatly troubled, and he asked me 
 
 41 
 
A CaivI. to Advance. 
 
 if I would not come over and talk with his 
 wife. So I asked one of the Presbyterian 
 brethren to go with me, and we went over 
 and found the family, and they asked the 
 neighboring family to come in, and there 
 were three or four others. I talked to this 
 woman and I prayed with her, and Christ 
 appeared to her, and we came away thank- 
 ful. But the next day came and another 
 night, and the next-door neighbors were in 
 trouble, and they wished me to com.e again. 
 I took two friends and went over again, and 
 we had a church meeting together, and God 
 was with us, so we tarried there with the 
 friends until it was midnight. 
 
 Christian Empires. 
 I went to Cawnpore, where I was to 
 preach at six o'clock the next morning, and 
 when I lay down upon the hard board seat 
 of a third-class car and tried to sleep, and 
 thought I had performed my whole duty, I 
 
 42 
 
Thi' Ne;w Missionary Era. 
 
 found I could not sleep. I felt that some- 
 thing was going to happen that was to mark 
 a new era in my life. God had laid his 
 hands upon me, and I felt we must go in 
 India wherever God showed us a beckoning 
 hand. I lay there through a sleepless night, 
 and in the morning in the gray dawn I saw 
 the eastern sky. It was all aglow with the 
 golden light of the coming sun, and as I 
 looked round the horizon with all its beauty 
 I felt, The Lord endows you with the em- 
 pire ; only may you be permitted to tell the 
 story of the risen Son of God. And from 
 that day God has given me a commission to 
 go wherever he wishes, and he has prom- 
 ised to be present wherever he shows the 
 pathway of duty. I didn't know what it 
 meant. It led me through the work of the 
 year, it led me to Calcutta, it led me to Bur- 
 ma, it led me to Singapore, it led me to the 
 Philippine Islands, it led me around the 
 globe, and at last, thank God, I am here to 
 
 43 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance;. 
 
 tell you that God sends you this message. 
 You are to build Christian empires ; you are 
 to go out and subdue kingdoms ; and to take 
 the promise of God in its plain meaning. 
 We are to challenge Satan, and wherever 
 he rears his banners we are to go and pro- 
 claim God's will and to proclaim the power 
 of the risen Son of God. 
 
 I want to tell you how I was first called 
 to the missionary work. It was through a 
 publication of the Tract Society. I was only 
 seventeen years old, and I was teaching in 
 a little school in southeastern Ohio, when 
 there came along an agent of the Tract So- 
 ciety, and he came to the little church. I 
 went down there to hear him, and I gave 
 all the money I had to that collection. It 
 was a good deal more than the rest of the 
 congregation gave. But that is not all. I 
 bought a couple of books. One contained 
 sermons and addresses by Dr. Allen, one 
 of which was headed "Our Young Men." 
 
 44 
 
The; Ne:w Missionary Era. 
 
 As I read down a page Dr. Allen used lan- 
 guage like this : "The time is at hand when 
 our young men will be called upon to go 
 forth into the Eastern world and to lay the 
 foundations for Christian empires." And 
 he went on to name some of the young men 
 who had gone out in the days of Judson. 
 There was something about that Christian 
 empire idea that set fire to my imagination, 
 and when I came to it I thanked God for 
 it, but when I got into the work in India it 
 never occurred to me that I was laying the 
 foundations of Christian empires. But there 
 came a time — I think it was perhaps that 
 night when I spent those sleepless hours in 
 the midst of most wonderful joy — when the 
 Lord Jesus was teaching me and showing 
 me a vision. There came that night, I say, 
 a time when I took a new meaning out of 
 those words. 
 
 That is the work we are doing now. We 
 are laying tlie foundations of Christian em- 
 
 45 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance;. 
 
 pires. We have three hundred and fifty 
 million people v^^ith which to fill the empires 
 when they are constructed, and there is 
 work enough to do. In the name of Him 
 who sent me forth among those myriad 
 throngs I call upon you, as representatives 
 of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to rouse 
 yourselves, take up your duty, give us the 
 money, give us the men, and bid us go forth 
 to victory. 
 
 46 
 
III. 
 
 GO OR SEND! 
 
 By REV, WILLIAM F. McDOWELL, D.D. 
 
 These: are imperial words. They contain 
 imperial ideas. They suggest an imperial 
 enterprise. They are the words of an im- 
 perial Person. They will represent an 
 imperial truth at last. For a deed must first 
 be a dream. It must be first faith, then fact. 
 When a dream or a faith or a truth becomes 
 incarnate in a Christ then it will become a 
 fact in history. 
 
 David Livingstone used to end his letters, 
 his newspaper articles, his lectures and ad- 
 dresses with the words, "The end of the 
 exploration is the beginning of the enter- 
 prise." So, at the close of these days 
 together we may say, *'The end of the 
 Convention is the beginning of the con- 
 
A Cai,!, to Advance. 
 
 quest ; the end of the vision is the beginning 
 of the task, the end of the praying is the 
 beginning of the consecration, the end of 
 what we have done here is the beginning of 
 what we shall do in all the round world." 
 
 The W0R1.D Without Christ. 
 
 I shall ask you two or three questions 
 which lie at the bottom of the mighty theme 
 in the words '*Go or send." I like to say 
 go and send, and to say both words in the 
 colleges and out of them. First, then, have 
 you a keen, vital, moving sense of the con- 
 dition of the world without Christ? It is 
 not twenty-four hours since a member of 
 our Church sitting within this hall said pet- 
 ulantly, "They are making a great ado about 
 the heathen ; it seems to me that the heathen 
 are getting along fairly well." Do you think 
 that? Do you think that anyone is getting 
 along even fairly well without Christ? If 
 he stood here and asked you what you think 
 
 48 
 
Go OR Send! 
 
 of ■ the world without him, what answer 
 would you give? But he does stand here 
 asking just that question. Is he a conve- 
 nience to the world or a necessity to it? Is 
 there any other name, or is his the only 
 name under heaven ? This is the most dan- 
 gerous of all modern skepticisms, that the 
 world can be saved without Christ. 
 
 This sense of the world's condition apart 
 from Christ is not begotten in men's hearts 
 except by prayer for the world which knows 
 him not. You do not care much for them? 
 You do care much for him? Then go 
 home to-night and kneel down alone with 
 Christ in prayer to him for the world's mil- 
 lions; let them tramp in endless procession 
 through your room while you pray until the 
 morning comes, and you will never have an- 
 other contented hour until the world is in 
 Christ. For in the thought of Christ there 
 is neither foreign land nor foreign man. All 
 are one in him. 
 
 4 49 
 
A Cai.Iv to Advance:. 
 
 The; Cross the; Ce:nte:r o^ Christianity. 
 
 I have studied the religions of the v^orld 
 a little and talked v\^ith many men vv^ho have 
 been much abroad. My conclusion is that 
 men are not perishing anywhere for lack, 
 simply, of a new theological system, nor for 
 a new code of ethics. The heathen nations 
 have more theology than they can under- 
 stand and better ethical codes than they 
 can live up to. I would hardly go or send 
 across the street simply to send these to 
 the nations. But the cross is the center 
 of the Christian religion, and Christianity 
 is the only religion which has a cross 
 in it. I would go around the world, and 
 would tell my friends the students to go, 
 and tell you to send, to tell men every- 
 where that 
 
 •' There is a fountain filled with blood 
 Drawn from Immanuel's veins; 
 
 And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, 
 Lose all their guilty stains." 
 
 50 
 
Go OR Sknd! 
 
 What do you say to that? Will you do 
 that ? Have you a keen, vital, moving sense 
 of the world without Christ? I read the 
 other day in the Report of the Ecumenical 
 Conference held in New York in 1900 what 
 former President Benjamin Harrison said 
 of Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of 
 New York, now President of the United 
 States : ''Mr Roosevelt was an office holder 
 under my administration, and I had only 
 one trouble managing him. He wanted to 
 clear up all the business under the sun be- 
 tween sunrise and sunset." And we are at 
 such leisure in this business and God seems 
 to be in such haste to have it done. 
 
 Our Share: in World Citizenship. 
 
 I ask another question : Have you a keen, 
 vital, moving sense of your personal share 
 in making these imperial ideas imperial 
 truths ? 
 
 It is not a very comfortable time to be 
 51 
 
A CalIv to Advance. 
 
 alive; but it is worth while to live just now. 
 It belongs to us to be citizens of the world. 
 Wendell Phillips once said, "I love inex- 
 pressibly these streets of Boston over which 
 my mother led my baby feet, and if God 
 will give me time enough I will make these 
 streets too pure for the footsteps of a slave." 
 And it came to pass at last, though at great 
 cost. Now the cities of the world are before 
 our eyes and the citizens of the world are 
 our neighbors. Shall we make the streets 
 of all cities in all lands pure enough for the 
 footsteps of the King? Dean Stanley said 
 he asked an old man in the cemetery of City 
 Road Chapel in London by whom the cem- 
 etery had been consecrated. The old man 
 replied, "It is consecrated, sir, by the bones 
 of that good man John Wesley.'* But Mr. 
 Wesley did vastly more than that in his 
 long and useful life. He did far more than 
 consecrate a place where dead men might be 
 buried ; he consecrated streets where living 
 
 52 
 
Go OR Se;nd! 
 
 men lived. It is ours to leave our ease and 
 comfort while we make the streets of all 
 cities in all lands safe and clean for the foot- 
 steps of pure women and innocent children. 
 
 It May Mean Your Boy or Giru 
 
 Do you feel that way about it? If you do 
 it means that there must be a vast increase 
 in the consecration of persons and property 
 to this task. If you really mean to do it it 
 will take more people. You will have to 
 furnish them. It will take more money. 
 You will have to supply that. The latter 
 is rather easier than the former. It has 
 come to be taken for granted that homes of 
 a certain kind are not expected to furnish 
 missionaries or preachers any more. When 
 a few rich young men enlisted for the Span- 
 ish War the papers made a great fuss about 
 it. But why? Is liberty or the republic 
 less dear and precious to them than to the 
 poor ? So it awakens comment when out of 
 
 53 
 
A Cai.1, to Advance:. 
 
 a wealthy home one goes as a missionary. 
 But why ? Was not He rich and did not He 
 become poor for our sakes ? Could He have 
 saved himself without saving us? I do not 
 ask whether we can save the world without 
 these choice youths from choice families. 
 The question is whether they can be saved 
 without this offering of their lives to Christ. 
 You can hire a substitute ? You can pay the 
 salary of a poor bo}^ or girl who goes to the 
 mission field ? And you will ? That is well. 
 But that is no reason why your boy or girl 
 should not enter this royal service for Jesus. 
 Our ministry in his name is to all classes. 
 It must come from all classes, so that in him 
 there shall be no classes. Are you ready 
 for that? One day during the civil war a 
 Massachusetts regiment, not the first nor 
 the second, marched down Broadway. A 
 well-dressed New Yorker stepped up and 
 asked an officer, **How long can Massachu- 
 setts keep this up?" And the proud man, 
 
 54 
 
Go OR Send! 
 
 knowing his dear State, replied, "Just as 
 long as necessary, and if necessary Massa- 
 chusetts herself will go to the front." Can 
 we keep up this sending of our fairest and 
 best to the front as long as it is necessary? 
 Can we, even if it costs our own? And if 
 necessary, rather than see his kingdom 
 fail, will the Church herself go to the 
 front ? Will it ? Do we really feel that way 
 about it? 
 
 One day during the same civil war Father 
 Taylor of Boston inherited a small sum of 
 money and wanted to invest it in govern- 
 ment bonds, then on the market. A prudent 
 friend cautioned him to be careful, saying 
 that if the government failed the bonds 
 would be worthless. "Put it all in, put it all 
 in," the old man shouted. "If the govern- 
 ment fails I do not want to be worth any- 
 thing!" Do you feel that way about the 
 kingdom ? If the Kingdom of all kingdoms 
 fails, will any amount make anybody worth 
 
 55 
 
A Cai,!, to Advance;. 
 
 anything? And if it succeeds shall not the 
 children of the King have enough to make 
 them rich ? 
 
 The New Vision o^ Christ. 
 
 I ask again, Have you a keen, vital, mov- 
 ing sense of the living Christ, his plans and 
 power? He is not dead, but alive. He 
 means to have this business done. Do you ? 
 He means to girdle the earth with the mel- 
 ody of the angels' song. Do you ? I think 
 the best thing that has come to our age is 
 the new vision of Christ. And this new 
 vision has come. 
 
 The students of this day see Christ more 
 clearly than did the students of my day, a 
 quarter of a century ago. This is the pro- 
 foundest fact in the student world of to-day. 
 It was said a few years ago that there is no 
 chance any more for a great career; that 
 young men need not look for such openings 
 as came to the generation before ours. Then 
 
 56 
 
Go OR Se:nd! 
 
 suddenly there fell upon the students of the 
 republic cloven tongues like as of fire. 
 I saw them on the shores of Lake 
 Geneva and in scores of colleges. Then 
 old men began to dream dreams, not of the 
 past, but of the future. Young men and 
 women began to see visions of a world out 
 of Christ, and of a Christ with a world on 
 his heart. They began to talk about the 
 evangelization of the world in this genera- 
 tion and to offer their lives for it. It was 
 good for the Church to have that happen. 
 It was not good when year after year the 
 Missionary Society had to say to the volun- 
 teers that retrenchment and not advance 
 was the order of the Church. It will be 
 good if we never have to say that again to 
 our Methodist young people. 
 
 It has been worth while to speak to youth 
 in the last ten years. It will be worth more 
 in the next ten. At Cleveland and now at 
 Philadelphia you have been thinking of the 
 
 57 
 
A Cai.1, to Advance;. 
 
 unsaved millions. I, too, have been thinking 
 of them ; but I have been thinking also, be- 
 cause that is my business, what I shall say 
 to youth, to the students in the Church. 
 Shall I tell them, with your authority, that 
 the Church of God makes a supreme appeal 
 to the best young manhood and womanhood 
 of the Church to do the supreme thing for 
 Jesus Christ in our own time? Shall I tell 
 them, with your authority, that you will 
 match your lives against theirs? Shall I 
 tell them that you have seen the Master of 
 us all and have entered into his plans ? You 
 remember that Sir Philip Sidney when a 
 mere lad wrote to his brother, "li there are 
 any good wars, I shall attend them." O, 
 there will be some beautiful wars long be- 
 fore we are dead. They will be the wars 
 that bring peace to the nations. The Prince 
 of Peace leads the hosts. He means to win. 
 Shall we enter into his plans, looking unto 
 him? 
 
 58 
 
Go OR Send! 
 
 Christ's Rightful Lordship. 
 
 I ask one more question : Have you a 
 keen, vital, moving sense of the lordship of 
 the living Christ, and his right to reign? 
 
 Who is this that assumes sovereign right 
 over persons and property? Who is this 
 that says go and send in this imperial 
 fashion? The State? Then we may ques- 
 tion it. Only in rare emergencies has the 
 State such power over persons and property. 
 We live where we choose and the State has 
 only limited control over us. The Church? 
 But the Church is not so supreme that it can 
 take absolute direction of life and means. I 
 will debate with them in the face of such 
 lofty orders. They must convince me and 
 persuade me. Then I will go. 
 
 But the Christ? I cannot debate with 
 him, nor question him, nor reason why. In 
 face of his command, it is ours only to do or 
 die. He never blundered. One is our Mas- 
 
 59 
 
A Cai^l to Advance. 
 
 ter, even Christ. He is Lord by the authority 
 of the Spirit. When he asks for Hfe, Hfe he 
 must have. When he asks for gold, who are 
 we to withhold gold from him? 
 
 ' ' O Lord and Master of us all, 
 Whate'er our name or sign, 
 
 We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 
 We test our lives by thine !" 
 
 Obedience to Christ is the test. Conformity 
 to Christ is the pattern. God gave us in 
 Christ the example of one who came ; in 
 himself, the example of one who sent. 
 
 "If Jesus Christ is a man — 
 
 And only a man — I say 
 That of all mankind I cleave to him, 
 
 And to him will I cleave alway. 
 
 *' If Jesus Christ is a God — 
 
 And the only God — I swear 
 I will follow him through heaven and hell, 
 
 The earth, the sea, and the air ! " 
 
 He is the sovereign Lord. We cannot 
 
 debate with him whether he says go, or 
 
 send, or both. 
 
 60 
 
Go OR Se:nd! 
 
 Here, then, we stand at the close of this 
 Convention, to be judged at last by what 
 we have heard and said and what we have 
 done with it. We are not without the Spirit 
 of Christ, and we are not out of his presence. 
 We can close our eyes and see no one but 
 Jesus only. But looking farther we can see 
 stretching out behind and beyond the count- 
 less millions of whom we have heard. In 
 vision we can see them together. Shall we 
 bring them together? Here in his living 
 presence shall we clasp hands in solemn cov- 
 enant that when he tells us to go we will 
 go, and when he tells us to send, we will 
 send? That whatsoever he says to us now 
 and always, that we will do? Shall we in 
 Christ's name and presence make a solemn 
 covenant that we will obey him in this Con- 
 vention and in cities and towns when we 
 have gone out from here? That we will 
 obey him in our silver and gold, and obey 
 him with our sons and daughters? That 
 
 6i 
 
A Cai,Iv to Advance. 
 
 we will obey him with any sacrifice and at 
 
 any cost, remembering his own cross ? That 
 
 we will obey him in poverty and wealth, at 
 
 home and abroad, on land and sea until once 
 
 more the world shall cry that he has come? 
 
 That we shall obey him until we stand with 
 
 the great host from every land and cast our 
 
 crowns before him ? Shall we ? This is the 
 
 imperial word of the imperial Christ, ''Go 
 
 or send." "Whatsoever he saith unto you, 
 
 do it." 
 
 62 
 
IV. 
 
 THE RIGHT OF JESUS TO 
 REIGN. 
 
 By BISHOP WARREN A. CANDLER, D.D. 
 
 The: world has heard much of a divine 
 right by which some who are called kings 
 claim to reign. The phrase is not very 
 agreeable to our republican ears (or, if 
 you don't like that adjective, to our demo- 
 cratic ears), because it seems to imply that 
 one man may exercise authority over other 
 men, and that too under divine sanction, in 
 such a way as is wholly inconsistent with 
 our conceptions of human freedom and re- 
 pugnant to our notions of divine justice. 
 And yet, as nearly every fiction has some 
 truth back of it, this phrase points to a 
 
 63 
 
A Cai,!, to Advance. 
 
 great truth. It points backward to govern- 
 ments of the past which did rest upon divine 
 right. The first governments of the world 
 were both in form and in nature necessa- 
 rily patriarchal. They rested upon human 
 parenthood, and because parenthood is the 
 gift of God and children do not elect their 
 fathers, those governments rested on divine 
 right. As the family grew into the tribe, 
 and the tribe into the gens, the head of the 
 house continued to rule over the domestic 
 commonwealth and the political system con- 
 tinued patriarchal. As descendants multi- 
 plied the commonwealth extended, and the 
 relation of its patriarchal head with his 
 subjects was less intimate ; yet perhaps 
 there was no diminution of his authority, 
 but rather an increase in the reverence ac- 
 corded to him. In process of time, when 
 parts of the tribe wandered away from the 
 original home and occupied a new location, 
 one of the kinsmen presided over the mi- 
 
 64 
 
The: Right of Jksus to Re;ign. 
 
 gratory company ; but he ruled by virtue 
 of his seniority and kinship. His authority 
 was not that of a tyrant ruling by force, 
 but that of one who wields a scepter of 
 love and is obeyed by his people with the 
 loyalty of affection. He found his highest 
 good in blessing those related to him as 
 subject children, and his highest honor in 
 advancing the glory of his devoted 
 followers. 
 
 Like these early governments of the 
 world, the right of Christ to reign rests on 
 his patriarchal authority. His kingdom is 
 founded upon his power to create patri- 
 archy by the processes of regeneration and 
 renewal in the kingdom of God. His gov- 
 ernment is a kingdom in which the sub- 
 jects are born from the King, and yield to 
 him the submission of love. I have in my 
 library a book called The Republic of God; 
 I cannot conceive of a title more absolutely 
 misleading. There is no republic of God, 
 
 s 65 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance. 
 
 and never was. The subjects of this divine 
 government have no rights of legislation. 
 Its laws are decrees of the patriarchal King. 
 This form of government has been the 
 type of the divine order from the very- 
 beginning. 
 
 The government of God in Eden was 
 of this patriarchal sort. That government 
 was designed to reach its perfection in hu- 
 man sonship subject to divine fatherhood. 
 God's object in the creation of man was son- 
 ship. This is the chief end of man. The 
 answer commonly given in the Catechisms 
 to the question, "What is the chief end of 
 man?" is misleading to the average reader. 
 That answer is, "To glorify God and en- 
 joy him forever" — a very correct answer if 
 rightly understood, but a very false an- 
 swer as commonly interpreted. The idea 
 conveyed by it to most men is that God 
 is a great Monarch, high and lifted up upon 
 a throne of supreme majesty, and particu- 
 
 66 
 
The; Right of Jesus to Reign. 
 
 larly well pleased when men burn incense 
 before him. This is to deify vanity and to 
 enthrone ambition in the heavens. Our 
 God is not simply a great King but a 
 heavenly Father. When he made man, in 
 the outset, it was not the act of a supreme 
 Sovereign surfeited with the ancient praises 
 of angelic hosts, creating a new being 
 who should bring to him a novel form of 
 applause. It was rather a great Father 
 with paternal purpose, seeking children in 
 his own image and likeness. And when 
 Jesus Christ came in the flesh and walked 
 in our world he was not a prince, traveling 
 in the greatness of his strength in order to 
 recover the alienated revenue of a rebellious 
 province, but he was a loving Father pass- 
 ing through the haunts of his wayward 
 children, trying to get them back home. 
 The culmination of creation and redemption 
 is the production of sons as the subjects of 
 the divine kingdom. 
 
 67 
 
A Cai.Iv to Advance. 
 
 A Government oi^ Sons. 
 
 As the purpose of God was to create a 
 government of sons, the effort of Satan has 
 always been directed to the defeat of this 
 purpose. In the garden, at the very outset 
 of history, he undertook to defeat this high 
 end. He comes to the first pair, tempting 
 them through the very instinct and aspira- 
 tion of childhood. He could not approach 
 them otherwise, and so he says, *'If you 
 would be like God, do not follow the te- 
 dious processes of life ordered by the Al- 
 mighty, but eat of this forbidden fruit, and 
 by this short cut arrive at the thing you de- 
 sire." In the temptation of the Saviour in 
 the wilderness the entire assault of the devil 
 is delivered upon the Sonship of the Mes- 
 siah. He begins every temptation with the 
 words, "If thou be the Son of God" do this 
 or that. Distrust your Father's care and 
 feed yourself with bread made from stones ; 
 
 68 
 
The; Right or^ Je:sus to Reign. 
 
 presume upon your Father's care and cast 
 yourself down from the pinnacle of the 
 temple through the purple twilight, upborne 
 by angelic wings; or come to your inherit- 
 ance as a Son and to your dominion as the 
 first Prince of the skies by falling down and 
 worshiping me, stooping to conquer that you 
 may come to your highest state. Before the 
 assault of Satan the first Adam went down, 
 forfeiting his sonship ; but the second Adam, 
 who is the Lord from heaven, triumphantly' 
 overcame and maintained his Sonship, that 
 he might become the first-born of many 
 brethren in bringing many sons unto glory. 
 In maintaining his own Sonship and by 
 his resurrection, reaching the full height of 
 its authority and securing the quickening 
 powers of eternal life, Jesus obtained the 
 right to reign as a patriarchal king. His 
 right rests therefore on his ability to create 
 an unearthly type of life and to make a 
 Christian commonwealth of children sprung 
 
 69 
 
A Cai.1, to Advance). 
 
 from his life-giving power. The angel of 
 the annunciation in announcing to the Vir- 
 gin mother the birth of the coming Son 
 brings to her devout recollection the prom- 
 ise made to David, that of the fruit of his 
 loins God would raise up one to sit upon his 
 throne. When the forerunner of the Mes- 
 siah began preaching in the wilderness he 
 proclaimed an approaching King, saying, 
 ''Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand." Nor would he allow the people to 
 suppose that the coming kingdom would be 
 erected upon any basis of natural birth. 
 Wherefore he said, "Say not ye. We have 
 Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, 
 that God is able of these stones to raise up 
 children unto Abraham.." When imme- 
 diately following his ministry the Master 
 came, he did not disavow the proclamation 
 of his forerunner nor repudiate the program 
 of the kingdom as set out by him. The rec- 
 ord isj "He went throughout their cities and 
 
 70 
 
The: Right o^ Jksus to Reign. 
 
 villages preaching the Gospel of the king- 
 dom." When one of their rulers came for a 
 personal interview concerning the new king- 
 dom the Lord causes him to understand that 
 it is a patriarchy founded in heavenly birth, 
 declaring to Nicodemus, ''Except a man be 
 born from above he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God." In all the course of his ministry 
 he never ceases to claim his royalty, nor 
 does he ever disguise his purpose to erect a 
 patriarchal throne. In the hour of his ex- 
 tremity when he stands before Pilate, and is 
 demanded to say whether he claims royal 
 prerogatives or not, he frankly affirms, 
 "To this end was I born." When he de- 
 clares, *'My kingdom is not of this world," 
 it is not an ingenious phrase used to avoid 
 a disagreeable colHsion with a political 
 power, nor is it the renunciation of a real 
 royalty to be substituted by a phantom king- 
 ship. On the contrary, by the very words 
 used he laid claim to a more real kingdom 
 
 71 
 
A Cai.i, to Advance. 
 
 and a more pervasive authority than any 
 merely visible political structure. If Pilate 
 had truly understood the significance of 
 those words he would have perceived that 
 Jesus was not receding from any pretensions 
 he had made, but was rather asserting a 
 higher and more inflexible authority than 
 that implied by the accusation which the 
 Jews brought against him. Jesus went to 
 his crucifixion because he asserted his royal 
 authority and kingly rights ; and we dare 
 not imagine that he immolated himself for a 
 mere rhetorical figure. He meant to be a 
 real King; not one whose twopenny crown 
 is held upon his head by a fastening of 
 force, but one who truly rules as well as 
 reigns. Our little earthly monarchs cannot 
 keep their crowns on their heads, nor can 
 they always hold even their heads on. Such 
 was not the royalty of our Lord. He in- 
 tended to be a patriarchal ruler whose au- 
 thority should be absolute in this world and 
 
 72 
 
The: Right of Jesus to Re:ign. 
 
 in all worlds. And so from the outset to the 
 end of his public ministry he is ever moving 
 forward with this end in view. 
 
 Christ's Ci.aim to Rkgal Powe:r. 
 
 But while ever prosecuting this purpose, 
 not until after his resurrection does he make 
 distinct claim to his regal power. Therefore 
 he walked in destitution, poorer than the 
 foxes of the forest and the birds of the air, 
 often sleeping under the silent stars, and 
 finding his locks wet with the dews of the 
 night. But after his resurrection his tone is 
 entirely changed. He talks of nothing else 
 but his kingdom. It is the one absorbing 
 subject of his utterances during all the forty 
 days of his sojourn in the earth between the 
 resurrection and the ascension. His whole 
 discourse to the apostles and to all his fol- 
 lowers during that period was touching this 
 high matter. He opens to them the Scrip- 
 tures, showing them the things which Moses 
 
 73 
 
A Cai,Iv to Advance:. 
 
 and the psalms and the prophets said con- 
 cerning himself, declaring, "Thus it is writ- 
 ten, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, 
 and to rise again from the dead the third 
 day, that repentance and remission of sins 
 should be preached in his name to all na- 
 tions." He makes the tremendous claim, 
 "All power is given unto me in heaven and 
 in earth." And then with a far-reaching 
 "therefore," which rests on that great claim, 
 he says, "Go ye therefore into all the world, 
 and preach the Gospel to every creature, 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; 
 teaching them to observe all things whatso- 
 ever I have commanded you : and, lo, I am 
 with you alway, even unto the end of the 
 world." Previous to his resurrection we 
 find no such immense claim and no such far- 
 reaching commandment. 
 
 Following his divine commandment after 
 his ascension, the apostles rest his claims 
 
 74 
 
The: Right oi^ Jeisus to Reign. 
 
 upon the same foundation, and propagate 
 his Gospel with a view to his enthronement 
 as the King of all souls. They preach ''Jesus 
 and the resurrection." When on the day of 
 Pentecost St. Peter preached the opening 
 sermon of the new kingdom he founded his 
 argument upon a Messianic prophecy of 
 King David touching the royalty and the 
 resurrection of his ascended Lord. And, by 
 the way, St. Peter really believed in the 
 Messianic psalms and the inspiration of the 
 Old Testament Scriptures. So also did St. 
 Paul and the rest of the apostles. They may 
 have been wanting in critical ability, and 
 perhaps did not know what they were talk- 
 ing about, but it is absolutely certain that 
 they viewed the Old Testament from a 
 standpoint entirely different from that of the 
 gentlemen who are commonly called in our 
 day "higher critics." For my own part, 
 frankly acknowledging my shortcomings in 
 scholarship, and having to make up a work- 
 
 75 
 
A Cai,!. to Advance. 
 
 ing theory on this subject, I have deliber- 
 ately determined to risk agreeing with the 
 views of Peter and Paul, rather than take 
 the chances involved in accepting the theo- 
 ries of our modern critics. Peter and Paul 
 and the rest of the apostles have at least the 
 advantage over the critics that they agree 
 with each other, and held to the same theory 
 touching the Hebrew Scriptures throughout 
 the entire length of their lives. 
 
 The; Te:aching of the: Apostlks. 
 
 But as I was saying, in his sermon at Pen- 
 tecost St. Peter alludes to a psalm of David, 
 and says, "Therefore being a prophet, and 
 knowing that God had sworn with an oath 
 to him, that of the fruit of his loins, accord- 
 ing to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to 
 sit on his throne; he, seeing this before, 
 spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his 
 soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did 
 see corruption; . . . whereof we all are 
 
 76 
 
The; Right o]^ Jesus to Re;ign. 
 
 witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the 
 right hand of God, he hath received the 
 promise of the Father, and hath shed forth 
 that which ye now see and hear." To the 
 same purpose speaks St. Paul in his wonder- 
 ful discourse in the synagogue of Antioch 
 in Pisidia. He refers to Psa. ii. And, by 
 the way, he gives the number, saying he 
 was quoting from the second Psalm. I sup- 
 pose as he gives the number the Psalms 
 must already have been arranged in orderly 
 form in his day. He quotes from the second 
 Psalm the words, ''Thou art my Son ; this 
 day have I begotten thee," and declares that 
 the psalm was fulfilled not when the Babe of 
 Bethlehem rested in the Virgin mother's 
 arms, but when the crucified Son of man 
 was raised from the dead. He puts forth 
 the same idea in the first chapter of the 
 Epistle to the Romans, where he says of 
 Jesus that he was "declared to be the Son 
 of God with power, according to the spirit 
 
 17 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance). 
 
 of holiness, by the resurrection from the 
 dead." In harmony with the same thought 
 St. John calls the risen Saviour the "first be- 
 gotten from the dead." To the same pur- 
 pose St. Peter speaks in his epistles. In fact, 
 all the apostles constantly assume in writing 
 and speaking that the Sonship of the Son 
 of man reached its culmination through the 
 resurrection, and that then Jesus won his 
 right to wear a crown of universal authority 
 and acquired the power to make good his 
 claim. 
 
 The Force o^ the Apostolic Teaching. 
 
 A little reflection upon the Scriptures will 
 show the force of their teaching. Suppose 
 Jesus had not risen from the dead. Sup- 
 pose we were able to believe that he was 
 God manifest in the flesh, and were able to 
 follow the Apostles' Creed up to the point 
 where it declares he was dead and buried; 
 but that when we reached that point we 
 
 78 
 
The: Right oi^ Jksus to Rkign. 
 
 should deny the rest of the Creed and should 
 affirm that he did not rise. Suppose we 
 should still cling to the doctrine of his 
 divinity, but should insist that at his death 
 he returned by some invisible route to the 
 glory he had with the Father before the 
 foundation of the world, and left his human 
 body forever behind. What would be the 
 effect upon our faith? Would not such a 
 view destroy all our hope in the perfectibil- 
 ity of humanity? Would we not fall into 
 the error of the early Gnostics, who claimed 
 that matter would have contaminated his 
 spirit, and that therefore he possessed really 
 only a phantom humanity? And would we 
 not inevitably, but sorrowfully, infer that 
 our human nature is so corrupted and 
 maimed that even a God himself cannot as- 
 sume it and carry it into the heavens with 
 him? But when Jesus Christ comes back 
 from the dead our way, re-covering even the 
 physical form of his humanity, with the 
 
 79 
 
A Cai,i, to Advance. 
 
 print of the nails in its hands and the mark 
 of the spear in its side, and with that human 
 nature ascends and sits down on the right 
 hand of the Majesty on high, he proclaimed 
 to all men that there was nothing in human 
 nature so essentially base that it could not 
 come to the highest place in the universe and 
 sit down unabashed in the most august 
 Presence in that lofty estate. The resurrec- 
 tion perpetuated the incarnation, and I 
 would have you remember that no one has 
 seen Jesus since his ascension who did not 
 see him in the form of his glorified human- 
 ity. When St. Stephen saw him at the time 
 of his martyrdom he said, "I see Jesus 
 standing at the right hand of the Majesty 
 on high;" mark the name, ''Jesus." If he 
 had said, ''Christ," Saul of Tarsus, who was 
 standing by, would have said : "He is chang- 
 ing his mind, he is about to recant. He has 
 heretofore claimed that Jesus had risen and 
 was the Messiah. But now he affirms he 
 
 80 
 
The: Right o^ Jesus to Reign. 
 
 sees the Christ in the heavens, where we 
 know the Messiah has always been, and 
 from which he never descended in the per- 
 son of the impostor Jesus. Stephen is re- 
 canting. Let us give him time, and we shall 
 not need to execute him for his blasphemy." 
 But when St. Stephen says, "I see Jesus" — 
 the man Jesus — Saul perceives that he is 
 more firm in his faith than ever. The first 
 martyr sees the man Jesus, not sitting in 
 royal and inaccessible glory, indifferent to 
 what is transpiring there, but he sees the 
 sympathetic God-man, standing in an atti- 
 tude of eager interest, like a grief-stricken 
 parent bending over a suffering child. With 
 surpassing confidence he exclaims in the ex- 
 tremity of his agony, ''Lord Jesus, receive 
 my spirit." There could not be a more em- 
 phatic declaration of the supreme exaltation 
 of Jesus, coupled with the undiminished 
 humanity of a sympathizing Saviour. A 
 little while afterward Saul himself sees him, 
 6 8i 
 
A Cai,!, to Advance. 
 
 as he is traveling on the Damascus road. An 
 unearthly light falls about him, and an un- 
 earthly voice raises with him a personal is- 
 sue, saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest 
 thou me?" He is dazed and stunned, but 
 staggering to his feet he challenges that 
 lofty Person in the words, "Who art thou, 
 Lord?" The reply which he receives does 
 not come in terms of our Lord's majesty, but 
 in terms of his humiliation. The response 
 from heaven is, "I am Jesus, whom thou 
 persecutest." He is now convinced that 
 Jesus has indeed risen and entered into the 
 heavens ; that he is possessed of omnipotence 
 and omniscience, and that, nevertheless, in 
 the midst of his heavenly throne he identi- 
 fies himself with his suffering disciples on 
 the earth, and feels in his own person the 
 pains of their persecution as if it were his 
 own. This is enough for Saul. The revela- 
 tion of the risen Jesus revolutionizes his 
 life. In it he sees that divine power is 
 
 82 
 
The: Right o^ Jesus to Reign. 
 
 united in Jesus with ineffable tenderness, 
 and that it is put forth in inexpressible love 
 for the redemption of men. Henceforth all 
 the things which he has accounted valuable 
 are worthless, and the things which he has 
 reckoned worthless have acquired infinite 
 value. He feels that he must put himself 
 absolutely at the disposal of the risen Lord, 
 and cries out, ''What wilt thou have me to 
 do?" His heart is broken by the vision of 
 the human Jesus enthroned on high. So 
 also when St. John sees the Master on the 
 island of Patmos he sees him in his glorified 
 humanity. His ascended Lord declares to 
 him, "I am he that was dead, and am alive 
 again, and I am alive for evermore." In 
 this glorified humanity he observes his Lord 
 walking amid the golden candlesticks and 
 holding the seven stars in his right hand. 
 He sees him concerned, in other words, in 
 the superintendence of his Church on the 
 earth. This work absorbs all his infinite 
 
 83 
 
A Cai^Iv to Advance. 
 
 power. He is not concerned with the world's 
 literatures nor its business nor its commerce 
 nor its confederations. His one business is 
 the care of the Church, with reference to the 
 conquest of humanity by the saving power 
 of his heavenly grace. He is doing precise- 
 ly what he said that he would do before his 
 ascension, when he, feeling the pulsations of 
 all power in his hands, had commanded his 
 disciples to go into all the world and preach 
 his Gospel, and had promised to aid them 
 with the delivery of all his power upon the 
 work committed to their hands. Now in 
 his revelation to St. John he demonstrates 
 the fact that he is fulfilling his pledge. 
 
 The UpIvIi^ting Power o^ Christ's 
 Personality. 
 
 It is thus we find that every one who has 
 seen him since his ascension has seen him 
 with his human nature not lessened, but 
 glorified and raised to the highest power. 
 
 84 
 
The: Right of Jesus to Re:ign. 
 
 Wherefore he is able, seing he is the foun- 
 tain of an inexhaustible and deathless life, 
 to create a patriarchy on the earth. He is 
 able to lift humanity to the level of a new 
 and unearthly type of life. The citizens of 
 some ancient cities claimed for their urban 
 commonwealths the presidency of a deity, 
 with whom they had a corporate life. That 
 was a fiction, but in the risen Jesus that fic- 
 tion becomes a parable of a real and sublime 
 fact. He creates on earth a new common- 
 wealth of souls, deriving its life from cor- 
 porate connection with himself, and expe- 
 riencing a life of the same quality as his 
 own. He gives to his subjects in this new 
 patriarchy what may be called "resurrection 
 life." Therefore they are called the "chil- 
 dren of the resurrection." He is able by 
 virtue of his risen humanity to impart a life 
 to any man and to all men, which is justly 
 entitled to be called eternal life, not with ref- 
 erence to its duration alone, but more espe- 
 
 85 
 
A Cai.Iv to Advance. 
 
 daily with reference to its quality, which is 
 deriyed from the eternities. It is not a life 
 manufactured by the imposition of a set of 
 new principles, however lofty, but it is a life 
 engendered by a life-giving parenthood, 
 eternal in the heavens. So St. Paul taught 
 the Colossians. Some of them imagined 
 they were Christians by adopting a lot of 
 negative precepts, such as "touch not, taste 
 not, handle not." The apostle teaches them 
 that Christian life is not a mosaic made by 
 combining in artistic form certain bright bits 
 of ethital excellences, but that it is a mys- 
 tical life hid with Christ in God. "Where- 
 fore," he exhorts them, "if ye be risen with 
 Christ, seek those things which are above, 
 where Christ sitteth on the right hand of 
 God." Set your affections on things in 
 heaven, and not on things on the earth, for 
 ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ 
 in God. When he shall appear, we also 
 shall appear with him in glory. 
 
 86 
 
The; Right o^ Jesus to Re;ign. 
 
 The: Re;surre:ction Li^e: of Je:sus as a 
 Type:. 
 
 Consider also that the resurrection Hfe of 
 Jesus is of a deathless type. He raised the 
 little daughter of Jairus, but she died again. 
 He raised the son of the widow of Nain, and 
 restored him to his mother; but the poor 
 mother, perhaps, at a later day wept again 
 for the departed son, and found no wonder- 
 working stranger to restore him to her. He 
 raised the brother of the beloved sisters of 
 Bethany, but only to a transient life, and 
 later, it may be, the bereaved sisters cried 
 out again, "Lord, if thou hadst been here 
 our brother had not died." But when he 
 raised himself from the dead he rose to die 
 no more. He is henceforth out of the reach 
 of the powers of mortality, and he rose to 
 impart that sort of life to those who believe 
 in him and are united vitally with him. And 
 this is the kind of life from which the patri- 
 
 87 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance. 
 
 archy over which he reigns is made. It is 
 a heavenly citizenship. So taught St. Paul, 
 who knew the meaning of citizenship, and 
 felt a not unworthy pride in his own Roman 
 citizenship. When he was beaten and im- 
 prisoned at Philippi he stood upon his rights 
 as a Roman citizen, and when the agitated 
 magistrates Vv^ho had beaten him uncon- 
 demned undertook to send him out privately 
 he refused to go in any such manner, and 
 declared to them, "You have beaten me un- 
 condemned; being a Roman, you shall not 
 smuggle me out secretly, but come and fetch 
 me out." But later in life, writing to the 
 very Church born that night through his 
 agonies, he declares, "Our citizenship is in 
 heaven, whence also we look for the Lord of 
 glory, who shall fashion the bodies of our 
 humiliation according to his own transfig- 
 ured body." His citizenship is no longer at 
 Rome, but in the New Jerusalem. Roman 
 
 citizenship had been disappointing to him, 
 
 88 
 
The; Right oi? Jesus to Reign. 
 
 but this citizenship had brought him the 
 noblest privileges and the highest deliver- 
 ance. He had heavenly life, though he still 
 suffered in the earth. The spiritual life of 
 the upper kingdom is of the same substance 
 as that of the citizens of the kingdom who 
 still v^alk on the earth. 
 
 The Right oe Jesus to Universai. 
 Dominion. 
 
 In his pov^er to beget by the processes of 
 the new birth a citizenry of this sort lies the 
 right of Jesus to universal dominion. He 
 has a right to rule the nations because he can 
 give new life to the nations. By force men 
 can subject nations to their wills, but only 
 Jesus can regenerate nations. Alexander 
 conquered men ; so did Csesar, and so did 
 Bonaparte; but only Jesus, the risen Lord, 
 can convert men. Therefore he only has a 
 right to reign, for he only can create a 
 patriarchy. 
 
 89 
 
A Cai.1. to Advanci:. 
 
 This patriarchal rule Is not a tyranny; it 
 is the monarchy of love, the despotism of re» 
 deeming grace. It gives to men the life for 
 which they were intended ; the life designed 
 for them from the foundation of the world. 
 So St. Paul teaches in the first chapter of 
 the Ephesian epistle when he says, "We are 
 predestinated to the adoption of sons." He 
 has no reference to any predestination of 
 any personal election. I am not going to 
 get into a quarrel here with the devout fol- 
 lowers of John Calvin, but if John Calvin 
 had truly understood the Ephesian epistle 
 he would never have rested his hard doc- 
 trine of election on that great letter of the 
 apostle to the Gentiles. In it Paul is simply 
 talking of the fact that by the redemption 
 that is in Jesus Christ men come into the 
 original type of life which God has had in 
 view since the world began, and before. 
 They have come, he affirms, through Christ 
 to sonship, to the altitude of life designed 
 
 90 
 
The; Right of Jesus to Reign. 
 
 in creation, and to the high end for the ac- 
 complishment of which the divine purpose 
 has never wavered and never wearied. 
 
 A characteristic of this new Hfe is that 
 it is pre-eminently a life of liberty. The 
 Saviour said he came to preach deliverance 
 to the captives, and again he affirmed, "If 
 the Son shall make you free, you shall be 
 free indeed." The apostle exhorts the Gala- 
 tians, "Let us stand fast in the liberty where- 
 with Christ hath made us free." 
 
 Liberty a Dangerous Affair. 
 
 Now, liberty is a dangerous thing. The 
 w^ord is one easily perverted, and the thing 
 it names is easily abused. The French dei- 
 fied it and then destroyed it. But the liberty 
 with which Christ makes free is always 
 wholesome, purifying, and elevating, and it 
 is a blessing in which we are to stand fast. 
 St. Paul was jealous for it, as he might well 
 have been. When he wrote the Galatian 
 
 91 
 
A Cali. to Advance:. 
 
 Christians the exhortation to which refer- 
 ence has been made he was not sensitive 
 about the observance or nonobservance of a 
 Httle rituahstic ceremony, but he was reso- 
 lutely determined that the springs of liberty 
 and life in Christ Jesus the Lord should not 
 be dammed up or cut off by the intrusion 
 of any ritualistic superstition. He was not 
 worrying himself over any merely political 
 or bodily liberty, but he was profoundly con- 
 cerned for that soul freedom which cannot 
 be imprisoned by the thickest walls nor man- 
 acled by the heaviest chains. There is a 
 bondage which no political deliverance can 
 cure, and there is a freedom which no polit- 
 ical power can restrain. When Christ gives 
 us freedom it is no miserable simulacrum of 
 liberty, but a real and royal freedom beyond 
 the power of tyrants to subvert or oppress- 
 ors to touch. Paul could not be confined in 
 the camp of the pretorian guard nor incar- 
 cerated in the walls of the Caesarean prison. 
 
 92 
 
The Right oi^ Je:sus to Re;ign. 
 
 His citizenship was In heaven, and his free- 
 dom was beyond the reach of ecclesiastical 
 persecutors or civil oppressors. The Roman 
 emperor could banish John's body to Pat- 
 mos, but thereby he only exiled him from 
 Ephesus to heaven. This I call the freedom 
 of a son of God, indestructible and in- 
 vincible. 
 
 One: Homoge:ni;ous Brotherhood. 
 
 There is another thing that Jesus imparts 
 to the citizenry of his kingdom, and which 
 vindicates his right to reign. He is able to 
 bind them together in one brotherhood. 
 
 The first duty of government is to make 
 homogeneous its people, and it is in great 
 peril when it cannot accomplish this end. I 
 may say in passing that herein is one of the 
 greatest dangers now threatening our own 
 republic. We are getting far too many peo- 
 ple of divergent natures and variant pur- 
 poses into our citizenship, and the first thing 
 
 93 
 
• A Cai^i, to Advance. 
 
 we know these acids and alkalies will make 
 an explosion; or, to change the figure, we 
 are bringing together a great many cold cur- 
 rents and warm currents, which may gen- 
 erate a political tornado. There are blocks 
 of isolated citizens who have come to us 
 from other shores, and have never been fully 
 fused into the common body. There are 
 classes living in daily contact without daily 
 communion of spirit, and so we have gaping 
 chasms between excessive wealth and ex- 
 treme want. There is lack of oneness in the 
 people, which must be cured, or from which 
 the greatest strifes must arise. 
 
 But in the government of Jesus there is 
 homogeneity of life. Each and all in his 
 kingdom are the sons of God, and this su- 
 preme fact of sonship overshadows all minor 
 distinctions. Wherefore St. Paul, writing 
 to one of the churches, says : "We know no 
 man after the flesh. Yea, though we have 
 known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth 
 
 94 
 
The: Right o^ Jesus to Reign. 
 
 we know him so no more." We are not to 
 imagine for a moment that St. Paul pro- 
 posed to make nothing of his earthly kin- 
 ships. In the last chapter of his Epistle to 
 the. Romans we see him making very much 
 of those relations. Nor is he affirming that 
 the earthly life of Jesus counted for nothing. 
 But he is declaring that the exalted Saviour 
 and the type of life which he imparts to his 
 followers by his power as the risen Lord 
 overtop and eclipse all earthly distinctions. 
 It is in accordance with this great truth that 
 Jesus is able to bind together into one great 
 spiritual commonwealth men of all races and 
 all conditions, whether they be Jew or Gen- 
 tile, bond or free, wise or unwise. And St. 
 Paul presses this idea even further than the 
 boundary line of any mere earthly unity. 
 He writes to the Ephesians of a common- 
 wealth extended from the earth into the 
 heavens, and calls it the *'whole patria in 
 heaven and in earth." 
 
 95 
 
A Cai^Iv to Advance. 
 
 Fatherhood and Brotherhood. 
 Herein lies the true brotherhood of man 
 and the real Fatherhood of God. We hear 
 men talking of God's Fatherhood and hu- 
 man brotherhood as if those sublime things 
 sprang from the fact of creation alone. But 
 fatherhood and brotherhood are not thus 
 created. Common origin doesn't give broth- 
 erhood ; if it were so we should be brothers 
 to the trees and brothers to the lower ani- 
 mals, for God created them and us. But are 
 we akin to them? He made the wild ass 
 and the wild ass's colt, but will you acknowl- 
 edge fraternal relations with that family? 
 Fatherhood and brotherhood, I repeat, do 
 not rest on a common creation; they rest 
 in kinship. It is not primarily because we 
 are all descended from Adam that all men 
 are brothers, but rather that we are all re- 
 deemed in Christ. If we can find a man for 
 whom Christ did not die, we may exclude 
 
 96 
 
The; Right of Jesus to Reign. 
 
 him from our brotherly fellowship and 
 recognition; but, however humble or ignor- 
 ant or degraded one may be for whom 
 Christ died, he may be raised to sit with us 
 as a brother beloved in the heavenly places. 
 The biologist may trouble me a good deal 
 about the unity of the race, and bring to 
 me many perplexing problems, but Chris- 
 tianity solves all these perplexities in the 
 universal redemption which Christ Jesus 
 has provided for all mankind. 
 
 A gentleman down in my country is at- 
 tacking the doctrine of the unity of the race 
 on the ground of the great diversities of 
 form and feature among men, declaring that 
 like begets like, and that these variegated 
 races could not therefore have had a com- 
 mon origin. It has occurred to me, how- 
 ever, that if his principle is sound it will 
 give us trouble when applied even to persons 
 of the same race. Where did all the red- 
 headed people come from if like begets like, 
 7 97 
 
A Call to Advance:. 
 
 and Adam and Eve were black-haired? or 
 what becomes of the black-haired people if 
 our first parents were red-headed? I am 
 not going, at this distance even, to say that 
 Adam was a red-headed man ; but I will say 
 that when we have magnified all the diver- 
 sities, physical and other, which exist among 
 men, they count for nothing when the power 
 of Jesus to bind men together in one is 
 brought to bear. 
 
 Brothe:rhood o^ Mankind in Je:sus 
 Christ. 
 
 It is in Christ Jesus we must find the 
 brotherhood of mankind, and it must be by 
 the forces of his redeeming grace the ideal 
 of human brotherhood is realized. And I 
 may say in this connection that we must 
 make brothers of all the nations of the earth, 
 or they will presently be all enemies. The 
 nations are getting closer together every 
 day, and if they do not learn to love each 
 
 98 
 
The Right of Je;sus to Re;ign. 
 
 other with a celestial love, surpassing their 
 love of money, ihey will presently fall to de- 
 vouring each other with earthly ferocity, 
 and the weakest will go down before the 
 strongest, and civilization will perish by a 
 sort of international cannibalism. I repeat 
 it, the world is getting very close together, 
 by the processes of communication and 
 transportation. Take, for example, the bat- 
 tle of New Orleans in the War of 1 812. In 
 those days communication was so slow that 
 that battle was fought after the treaty of 
 peace had been signed and the war was 
 technically ended. "Old Hickory" and 
 General Packingham had not found out the 
 war was over. That was only ninety years 
 ago, yet when the battle of the allied Powers 
 was fought before the walls of Peking we 
 knew by dark each day the results of the 
 morning's fighting — and we knew this away 
 down in Georgia even. We knew the out- 
 come of the contest in China quicker than 
 
 99 
 
A Cai.1, to Advance. 
 
 we learned the result of the battle of Get- 
 tysburg, fought less than forty years ago. 
 You may remember when Queen Victoria 
 fell down the back stairs of Windsor Castle, 
 a few years ago, and sprained her ankle, we 
 knew it in America three hours before it 
 happened. Perhaps if the dispatch had been 
 sent on around the world it might have 
 reached the queen in time to have induced 
 her to go out the front way, and so have 
 avoided the accident. But, seriously, the 
 ends of the earth have come together, and 
 so the world has grown too small to admit 
 of standing room for two religions. Mr. 
 Jefferson suggested the idea, and Mr. Lin- 
 coln more fully elaborated it, that this coun- 
 try was too small to be partly a slaveholding 
 territory and partly a free territory. They 
 said it must be all slave or all free. Some 
 people doubted that, but I think they have 
 changed their minds now. And let me say 
 to you that, to all intents and purposes, 
 
 100 
 
The; Right of^ Je;sus to Rkign. 
 
 Peking is closer to Washington at this time 
 than was New Orleans fifty years ago. The 
 time has come when the earth must be all 
 pagan or all Christian. The world must be 
 bound together in one as the patriarchy of 
 Jesus Christ, or rolled together in a bundle 
 of infinite confusion and strife. Paganism, 
 with its diseases and degradations, will cor- 
 rupt mankind, or Christendom, with its 
 health-giving and life-saving Gospel, must 
 redeem mankind. 
 
 Perhaps we have all been feeling that 
 leprosy was a danger from which our coun- 
 try was entirely exempt, but the leprous 
 nations have come close to us, and so we 
 have leprosy in the United States. There is 
 a leper colony in Louisiana. I saw twenty- 
 two lepers in one hospital in Havana. I 
 ordained a leper to the ministry of our 
 Church in Mexico last winter, and he is 
 there now ministering to lives similarly 
 bHghted. The bubonic plague has arisen 
 
 lOI 
 
A Cai.1. to Advance:. 
 
 from its lair in heathendom, and stalks 
 through the Golden Gate at San Francisco. 
 All that keeps it out of all the cities of this 
 great nation is the power of a medical sci- 
 ence sprung from a Christian civilization, 
 which is able to restrain it on its approach. 
 And these physical ailments are visible par- 
 ables of moral contagions which issue from 
 heathendom far more fierce and fatal. I 
 repeat it, therefore, that the world must soon 
 be all pagan or all Christian. Hence it is 
 to the honor of Christ and to the blessing of 
 men that we speedily carry Christianity to 
 all the nations of the earth. 
 
 Out of all these statements and arguments 
 there are several general conclusions to 
 which I wish to call your attention. 
 
 Ke:e:ping the: Lord Out of His Rightfui, 
 Inhe:ritance:. 
 
 The first is this : Since Jesus Christ as- 
 serts and makes good his right to reign, 
 
 I02 
 
The: Right oi* Je:sus to Reign. 
 
 and yet is dependent upon his Church for 
 the conquest of the world, if we delay this 
 conquest we are keeping our Lord out of 
 his rightful inheritance. In the second 
 Psalm it is said, ''Thou art my Son ; this day 
 have I begotten thee," and it is immediately 
 added, "Ask of me, and I will give thee the 
 heathen for thine inheritance, and the utter- 
 most parts of the earth for thy possession." 
 Those words carried the inheritance of the 
 Son of God far beyond the limits set for it 
 by the opinions prevalent among the Jews. 
 Their teaching at best was that "Jacob was 
 his inheritance." But as the psalmist 
 catches a vision of the glory of the eternal 
 Son of God he perceives that his possessions 
 rightfully should be extended to the utter- 
 most parts of the earth. In the accomplish- 
 ment of the fulfillment of this promise the 
 honor of our Lord is at stake. He has a 
 right to his dominions, and we should be 
 impatient of any delay in putting upon him 
 
 103 
 
A CaIvIv to Advance:. 
 
 his crown. Indifference to this work is 
 treason, and needless delay in its accom- 
 plishment is infidelity. Let any opponent of 
 foreign missions, who yet claims to be a 
 Christian, understand once for all that by 
 his opposition to this high and holy cause 
 he is guilty of treason, and forfeits his 
 rights in the kingdom. I mince no words 
 about this matter. I have no right to deal 
 with it gently. My Lord rebukes it. It is 
 inhuman toward men and insurrectionary 
 toward God. 
 
 But some may ask of me, "Have I not a 
 right to my opinion ?" I answer, "Certainly, 
 but a right to an opinion is one thing, 
 and a right opinion is another and a very 
 different thing." But this matter is not 
 left for discussion ; there is no room for 
 argument about it ; it is settled by all the 
 teaching of Scripture, and all debate is 
 closed in the overwhelming fact of the res- 
 urrection of our Lord. When the Lord 
 
 104 
 
The; Right o^ Jdsus to Reign. 
 
 Almighty raised Jesus from the dead and 
 empowered him to vitaHze with heavenly 
 life the nations of the earth, and to unify 
 the race in one celestial commonwealth, he 
 gave him the right to reign, and nobody has 
 a right to detain his progress to this throne 
 of world-wide dominion. 
 
 Inhuman to Deny Beneficent 
 Ini^i^uences. 
 
 Moreover, it is inhuman to deny to the 
 nations the benevolent influences which 
 arise from the reign of Jesus. They are 
 entitled to the benefits of the best govern- 
 ment the world ever saw. 
 
 Some may imagine that one religion is 
 as good for the nations as another. So 
 some sentimentalists teach. But the thought 
 is absolutely foreign to the Scriptures, and 
 is in the teeth of the great facts of Christian 
 history. There is only one religion entitled 
 to a place in this world, as there is only one 
 
 105 
 
A CaivI, to Advanci:. 
 
 Potentate entitled to rwle over the spirits 
 of men. 
 
 Some years ago I was invited to the Con- 
 gress of Religions which was held in Chi- 
 cago. I was even invited to accept a vice 
 presidency of that Congress, as I suppose 
 nearly every other minister in the United 
 States whose post office could be found was 
 invited. When I received the steel-engraved 
 invitation which was sent me, in passing 
 from the post office to my home I stopped 
 to call on Bishop Haygood, and he asked 
 me what it was I had. I replied, ''It is an 
 invitation to be a vice president of the Con- 
 gress of Religions in Chicago ; didn't you 
 get one?" He said, "O yes, I got one; but 
 I am not going. Are you going?" I re- 
 plied with some emphasis, "No, I am not 
 going ; I can't get the right company. The 
 man whom I wish to go with me is dead." 
 He then asked me, "Whom do you want?" 
 And I replied, "I want the old prophet who 
 
 1 06 
 
The Right oi^ Jii;sus to Reign. 
 
 presided over a Congress of Religions on 
 Mount Carmel in the days of Ahab, espe- 
 cially if he would come and take his knife 
 along with him." Now by all this I mean 
 to say that I am not going on the invitation 
 of a lot of sentimentalists to sit down with 
 an assembly of Buddhists and Confucianists 
 and Mohammedans, and God knows what 
 else, to confer about how to save this world. 
 That question is not open for debate with 
 them. We have no compromise to offer 
 them, nor conference to enter into with 
 them. There is not standing room enough 
 in our world for two religions. Christian- 
 ity is engaged in a war of extermination ; 
 it will have no rival, and it will not consent 
 that the dominions of its Lord shall be par- 
 celed out among a lot of religious satrapies 
 and superstitious viceroys. 
 
 This may appear a harsh way of stating 
 the case, but let us look at it attentively. 
 Suppose one of your citizens should send 
 
 107 
 
A Call to Advance;. 
 
 his little boy on some errand to a neighbor's 
 house, and the little fellow, trying to make 
 his way back home, should become confused 
 and lost. Suppose a stranger, finding him in 
 his perplexity, should in the darkness mimic 
 the parent's voice and simulate his manner, 
 and thus entice the child away and sell him 
 into bondage. Would you treat that act 
 with any degree of toleration? Would it 
 not expose its perpetrator to indictment 
 and punishment as a felon? It is thus all 
 these false faiths have mimicked our Fa- 
 ther's voice and led millions of his children 
 into a bondage worse than death. It is our 
 business to make an ending of these kidnap- 
 ing religions and rescue our Father's 
 children. 
 
 We have read of how when Sir John 
 Franklin was lost in the arctic seas great 
 governments put at the disposal of Lady 
 Franklin ships and crews for the purpose 
 of finding him and restoring him to his 
 
 1 08 
 
Thl: Right oi* Jksus to Re:ign. 
 
 home ; but here are milhons in the midst 
 of a deep darkness worse than an arctic 
 winter whom we ought to rescue, and yet 
 it is supposed to be a most extraordinary 
 thing that a few milhons are spent annu- 
 ally on the rescuing expeditions sent out by 
 our Boards of Foreign Missions. The 
 French spent more money in bombarding 
 Tonquin than all the Christian Churches 
 of the world had ever spent for the redemp- 
 tion of China up to that hour. The brewers 
 of Chicago and Saint Louis have spent 
 more money since the Spanish-American 
 war in putting beer into Cuba than all the 
 Churches of America have ever spent in 
 establishing Christian sobriety there. When 
 Livingstone was supposed to be lost in Af- 
 rica (although he didn't feel very lost) vast 
 sums were spent to find him; but when all 
 Africa was lost, and had been for centuries, 
 some wise ones thought it fanatical extrav- 
 agance to make an effort to redeem the 
 
 109 
 
A CAi^iy TO Advance;. 
 
 kidnaped children of God in tHe Dark 
 Continent. 
 
 Thi: Resurreiction Power of Jesus is 
 .Back of the Missionary Enterprise.. 
 
 There is another thing I wish to say: 
 back of all this missionary enterprise Is the 
 resurrection power of Jesus, and therefore 
 it Is not going to fail. When St. Paul had 
 made his great argument for the resurrec- 
 tion in his Epistle to the Corinthians he 
 closed it by saying, "Therefore, my beloved 
 brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, al- 
 ways abounding in the w^ork of the Lord, 
 forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not 
 in vain in the Lord." What boundless 
 power is thus pledged to guarantee the per- 
 manence and persistence of spiritual forces 
 in our world! Back of these missionary 
 enterprises is the divine purpose of Father- 
 hood and Sonship which has pulsated 
 through all history. That purpose of God 
 
 no 
 
The; Right o^ Jiiisus to Reign. 
 
 is not going to be abandoned and it is 
 not going to fail. Dynasties may fall and 
 empires may perish, but this kingdom of 
 Christ has come to stay. This redeeming 
 work will endure. No power shall over- 
 come it. No decay shall overtake it until 
 salvation is wrought throughout the earth. 
 Some of you have been talking of ''build- 
 ing empires," and the phrase may have a 
 legitimate use ; but in the last analysis we 
 are not building empires, we are extending 
 the one universal kingdom of Jesus Christ. 
 We are not erecting temporary shelters to 
 protect the nations from fleeting showers, 
 but we are building an everlasting struc- 
 ture in which to inclose the nations in an 
 imperishable home, whose builder and 
 maker is God. 
 
 The: Final Civii^ization oi^ this Wori.d. 
 
 The final civilization of this world is no 
 
 earthly organization nor worldly form of 
 
 III 
 
A Cai,Iv to Advance:. 
 
 life, but an unearthly kingdom imposed 
 upon men from the highest heavens. 
 St. John in Patmos saw it, not as a govern- 
 ment arising in the earth from the suffrages 
 of men, but as the new Jerusalem descend- 
 ing out of the heavens by the power of God. 
 He saw reigning over it the King in his 
 beauty, clothed with an awful majesty, yet 
 tenderly stooping down to wipe away the 
 tears from the sorrow-stained cheeks of 
 his redeemed children. And when John 
 saw this vision of the descending glory, 
 with holy impatience he cried out, ''Even 
 so, come. Lord Jesus, and come quickly." 
 May we not join in this same fervent ac- 
 clamation as we look to that divine event, 
 to which from the beginning the whole 
 creation has moved? 
 
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