LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2060 .L8 1922 Love, J. F. 1859-1928. Missionary messages MISSIONARY MESSAGES Rev. JAMES F. LOVE, d.d. MISSIONARY MESSAGES ^#vr.T'«T« BY V APR 15 1924 A Rev. JAMES F. LOVE, d.d. CORRESPONDING SECRETARY^ FOREIGN MISSION BOARD, S.B.C, Author of "The Unique Message and Universal Mission of Christianity" "The Mission of Our Nation/' "The Union Movement," "Spiritual Farming," etc. NEW ^IP YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, IQ22, By George H, Doran Companf MISSIONARY MESSAGES. II PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA To KATHARINE STITH LOVE AND ELIZABETH SPEED LOVE BY THEIR DEVOTED Father PREFACE As indicated by the title, this book is, for the most part, composed of missionary messages which have been deHv- ered by the author on various occasions. They are issued in the present form for the single purpose that they were at first delivered orally, namely, to quicken interest in For- eign Missions. In the main they have to do with Foreign Missions as a common Christian enterprise, but at points they deal specifically with the Baptist foreign mission pro- gram. There was in the delivery and there is here no dis- position to evade the distinctive views and policies which characterize Southern Baptists and control their foreign mission work. An effort has been made to state the de- nominational viewpoint as inoffensively as frankly, and to use this to strengthen the foreign mission motive. No man ought to hold a religious opinion or alliance of which he is ashamed. Neither should one state his personal or denominational views in irreligious spirit or manner. Thoughtful men will agree that the only certain course to better understanding, mutual respect and concord among the Christian forces which are engaged In this commanding world enterprise of Foreign Missions is for each group to state with proper Christian decorum those views and prin- ciples which it holds and would have obtain in the conduct of the work and thus allow others to examine these on their merit. Respect of one Christian denomination for another will be promoted and that Christian unity, about which so much is said in foreign mission circles, will be the more cer- tainly realized by clear and frank confession rather than by sentimental slurring of the comparatively few points of dif- ference between the evangelical forces of Christendom. The agitation for Christian union gathers so distinctly about vii viii PREFACE Foreign Missions, and sentiment hostile to denominational- ism is so strong in foreign mission circles, that one can scarcely write or speak on certain phases of Foreign Mis- sions without coming upon matters at issue. While there is here no side-stepping of these issues, the author's desire and hope is that these messages shall be read in the light of the missionary purpose which produced them and controls their publication, and that the cause for which they plead shall be strengthened in the consciences of the home constituency and on the mission fields. James F. Love. Richmond, Va, CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Value of the Missionary Ideal . . 13 II The Home Base 25 III The Baptist Program for Europe . . 36 IV Baptist Missions in the New World Order 57 V Baptist Women in the Baptist World Pro- gram 72 VI Decisive Hour in Baptist Foreign Missions 86 VII The New World Conditions and Their Sig- nificance 93 VIII The Relation of the Missionary Message TO Missionary Success 108 IX The Religion of the Future . . . .117 X The Uplifted Ey2 . . . . . .132 MISSIONARY MESSAGES MISSIONARY MESSAGES CHAPTER I THE VALUE OF THE MISSIONARY IDEAL THE Christian calling is, in brief but comprehensive statement, the execution of the Great Commission. Our life-task is to perform the duties which that Commis- sion prescribes and to tie up the consciences of men with the authority which it claims. The Commission describes the sphere of Christian activity, designates Christian duty and presents ample opportunity for the exercise of the highest powers and the fulfillment of the largest legitimate ambition a Christian can have. It requisitions our time, our talent, our training, our wealth, and promises profitable investment for them all. The modern word which most completely embraces the duties set forth in the Commission is the word "missions." This word marks, as no other word does, the central thought and whole round of duties prescribed. Like every great idea, missions has great value for those who aspire to emi- nent lives and eminent usefulness. We will do well to fix for this word a large place in our lives. Growing perhaps out of the Roman Catholic use of the word '^missions" to distinguish ecclesiastical sub-stations in different countries, we commonly use the word as a plural noun. This use, I think, shunts our thinking from the essential nature of missions as an integral part of Chris- tianity itself. Mission stations are incidents in the mission- ary life of Christianity. Missions designates the genius, the controlling spirit of Christian discipleship, and belongs to the elemental Christian moralities. Missions is that to 13 14 MISSIONARY MESSAGES which the churches have been commissioned, the Christian calling and occupation. For this reason J prefer to use the word as a singular noun. I am here talking about the active translation and fulfillment of the Commission, the very- spirit and behavior of obedient discipleship. A man can no more be a disciple of Christ and not be missionary than he can be a Christian and not be truthful or honest. Missions is God's plan and Jesus' program for the sal- vation of the world. It characterizes the spirit and volun- tary act of the Saviour himself, explains the purpose for which the Holy Spirit was sent, and describes the scheme by which the Kingdom of God is promoted among men. It names the vocation of Christian men and women, the business of the churches for which the Spirit is given and the conditions on which the presence of Christ is prom- ised. Into this word and enterprise to which it is applied, flows like a crystal river the redemptive purpose of God for a lost world. He has conditioned the salvation of the world upon the obedience of his disciples to the Commission. Missions is vital to New Testament Christianity. I am aware that ignorant and stupid men sometimes use words of which they do not know the meaning, and we excuse them, but the fact is there is no rational ground on which a man can stand and claim to be a Christian and disclaim missionary obligation and duty. Men may be better than their parrot creeds, but Christ's word is, "He that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." No man ever got Christ for a personal Saviour on an anti-mission impor- tunity. He who says, "Lord, I want you for myself, but I will not share you with another," goes down to his house unjustified. The Lord does not start into our lives if He is forbidden to go through them to others. Again, "missions" is more than is indicated by any adjec- tive which we may use to designate mission work. "City missions," "state missions," "home missions," and even "for- eign missions," while indicating important aspects of our task, instance the failure of the adjective to do compre- hensive service. The noun is the important and significant THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 15 word in each case. Foreign mission work in China, for in- stance, will be ''missions" when the missionary volunteer gets to it, although it will not longer be "foreign missions" for him. Moreover, missions does not designate a certain class of Christian service as distinct and separate from all other Christian activities. Considered from the viewpoint of the primary and paramount task, we may think of missions as saving lost folks. Whoever leads a sinner to Christ is a missionary, whether it be done by one who goes under the Commission to Asia, or Africa, or a mother who in tender love and by beautiful life turns the feet of her own child into the way of salvation. Any one who saves a soul is a missionary. But the Commission does not limit missions to the saving of souls. Conversion of the sinner is the cataclysmic, but it is not the climacteric work in the missionary process. Set this work to the front and magnify it, for without it all else that we do comes to naught, but do not accept a definition of missions which casts a shadow on other parts of the task by which we translate, expound, and execute the Commission. One of the hopeful things attending this missionary era is that, like everything which has in it the vitalities of our Christianity, missions is, in practice, a grow- ing and expanding Christian service. With our growing fidelity to Christ in missionary operations we are expand- ing our definition of missions. Attempting to do what He commanded, we are learning to do what He did and all that He commanded. Jesus not only saved men. He healed, com- forted, instructed and encouraged men and women. All these things were a part of His mission. He saved the soul and then sought to make the body a fit dwelling place for it. He saved men and women, and then set them to making the world a suitable and congenial place for saved men and women. All this fell within the scope of his ministry and falls within ours. The salvation of a man, his soul, his life, his talents, his powers, his posses- sions, and the bringing of all these under the benedic- i6 MISSIONARY MESSAGES tion and proprietorship of Christ is contemplated in mis- sions. The grasp of the Commission thus comprehensively is one of the signs of growth accompanying the missionary movement. A conscience for social service and Christian stewardship is itself a product and expression of the growing missionary spirit. We have begotten a conscience for these things by the practice of obedience to Christ. As we have tried to make more Christians, we have been learning how to make better Christians. Committing ourselves to the task of saving men's souls, we are learning how to save their bodies and their substance from the service and dominion of Satan. Says Prof. Harnack, 'The gospel aims at found- ing a community among men as wide as human life itself and as deep as human need." Social work is not a gospel but a service and should be observed as a duty and subor- dinated to the eternal issue of saving the lost. There is, therefore, a mission to the saved as well as a mission of the saved. "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" is an ancient missionary admonition. "Con- firming the churches" was an important part of Paul's mis- sionary labors. We are not only to increase the number of believers, but the value and efficiency of those who have been converted and set them about their main business. To make Christians missionary is as necessary to the ful- fillment of the Commission as making converts. All of us, therefore, — teachers, preachers, Sunday School workers, all, — can participate in this world-wide enterprise, and be loyal missionaries. Having set these definitions before you, I shall now discuss the value of the missionary ideal. I will, then, first discuss the value of the missionary ideal to the ministry. 1. The missionary ideal will enrich the minister's senti- mental and enlarge his mental life. In the study of missions THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 17 he will find opening to him world conditions and a chal- lenge of world problems and world needs which broaden his thinking and deepen his feeling. The mind of a preacher with a missionary ideal expands in the effort to grasp a vast and manifold enterprise. His sympathies are enlarged as he discovers human need. He will find his powers stretching in response to the world call. Even mediocre men have, under the spell of this ideal, become world masters. Carey was a married man and still a shoemaker at his bench when this ideal began to charm and master him. The Missionary ideal found him when he was poor, ignorant, obscure. When he first talked of the missionary enterprise, he was rebuked, snubbed, and ridiculed where he was not ignored, but, after he had been transformed by it, he was "wined and dined" by lords and ladies. Under the spell of this ideal Mathew T. Yates, a Wake County North Carolina clodhopper, climbed over the walls of severe limitation and led the hearts of Southern Baptists captive across the Pacific Ocean, and in the midst of his labors and under the inspiration of this ideal, he actually grew two inches in physical stature after he was twenty-eight years of age. Foreign Missions has immortalized hundreds of men and women as it has vitalized the churches of Christ wherever and whenever they have practiced it. 2. The missionary ideal gives practical value to the min- ister's reading. Preachers learn to love study. How much of your reading helps you to fulfill the Commission ? Some- thing you must read. The minister will either read and grow, or he will stunt and go. The people will not long frequent a dry well. He who reads will either select his reading with discrimination and definite purpose, or he will dissipate mental energy and waste precious time. The wise minister will give large place in his reading to that which bears upon the main business of his calling. The missionary ideal will create an interest in missionary litera- ture. What inspiration there is in the lives of missionary heroes, their heroic deeds, sacrifices and achievements! These, illuminated in the best Christian biography, will i8 MISSIONARY MESSAGES provide illustrative material for sermons and addresses v^hich will, for very abundance, embarrass you, and such illustra- tions will bear practically upon your task. Incidents in the lives of missionaries and of their converts will thrill the preacher's soul and set his ministry on fire. There is much literature prepared for preachers that is fruitless and profit- less. I have a volume by an Andover professor, which con- tains scholarship that it would take three score and ten years to acquire, but which has not in it enough Qiristian truth or sermon suggestion to comp'ose or inspire a twenty minutes' prayer meeting talk. That book was written for preachers ! 3. The missionary ideal will, as well as anything, deter- mine the spirit and the virility of the preacher's ministry. It will keep him out of the deep ruts which homiletic habits have made, and out of which many times the preacher has climbed on dusty platitudes while the people have groaned. The world's complaint of dry orthodoxy has not been p'rovoked by orthodoxy, mind you, but by dry orthodoxy. The essential gospel of evangelical Christianity is the juiciest, the freshest, the most appetizing, and the most refreshing doctrine in the world. Theology is made fascinating by the missionary spirit in the preacher and its missionary appli- cation in the sermon. The preacher with the missionary ideal both recites and demonstrates that the gospel is the power of God. The missionary preacher deals in living truth and his vital message vitalizes. Missionary incident tingles with human interest. 4. The preacher with the missionary ideal will select themes which have missionary value, and will find modern duty in old texts. This will increase his power. Those who accept the responsibility of going into all the world under the Commission are likely to find themselves under neces- sity of carrying a gospel which will do the deed. The missionary ideal will do more to eliminate trivial themes from the pulpit than anything I know. A British war cor- respondent says that one effect of the war was that it has "spoilt the people for little themes and for dilettante preach- THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 19 ments." Face to face with spiritual need and desperate human situations, preachers would not discuss "the mod- em novel," nor "evolution," nor "Casey at the bat," but would be driven to the minister's essential message, Christ crucified, the hope and immediate help of the man who wants him. In like manner the man who gets a lost world on his heart — gets heathenism with its ignorance, superstition and depravity, the papal fields with ignorance and degradation — will find himself harking back to the gospel of the cross which alone can regenerate, transform and reinvigorate depleted moral manhood. Thousands of sinners at home have been saved by the preaching of a gospel which was inspired by the foreign mission ideal. 5. This ideal will put p'assion into your ministry. The world does not like cold hash served at eleven o'clock on Sunday. The minister who is not at white heat in his quest for souls will not lure them to the mercy seat. The preacher without passion is the preacher without power. But you will not give your life unsparingly to proclaim a half gospel nor to a small Christian enterprise. Only little men have redhot convictions about small subjects. It takes great matters to stir as it takes great matters to make great souls. Burning convictions of the truth and a great task, even the needs of the race, beget boiling enthusiasm. II The Value of the Missionary Ideal to a Church The missionary ideal has great value for a church. 1. In the first place it justifies the large expenditure which modern churches make for their comfort, convenience and work. We hear much about great '^plants" for our churches. Well, certainly a great plant is not needed if a church is not going into a big business for the Lord. Some churches have great plants which seem to have been dedi- cated to the God of Comfort, and some are just places provided to hold audiences for preachers to preach before. 20 MISSIONARY MESSAGES Shortly before Reginald Campbell left the City Temple for the fold of the Established Church, I saw a report of the foreign mission offering of that great church for a twelve months. It was $50 ! A certain Baptist church in America with a plant costing more than $500,000 gave in a whole twelve-months $250 to foreign missions, and enrolled one hundred in its Sunday School! A church does not need a great plant for such small business. The missionary ideal is what that church needs. 2. The missionary ideal sacredly cherished will increase the attendance upon the ministry of any man. I am much among the churches, and I have not found in all the rounds of my travel a missionary pastor and a missionary church which are mourning for congregations. Men are seeking opportunities to go into big business. There is fascination in it. The preachers and churches which draw the masses are missionary. Billy Sunday said that the non-church- going members belong to non-giving churches. 3. The missionary ideal will insure a spiritual church membership. Men and women dare not undertake so large a task as world conquest for Christ without much crying to God in prayer. Human inequality to the great task begets a craving for divine help. Companionship and power begot- ten by the magnitude of this task steeps the soul of pastor and people in spirituality and awakens it in others. When Andrew Fuller was broken-hearted over the dearth of con- versions in his church, he preached three successive Sundays on "The duty of giving the gospel to the heathen," and a great revival broke out and multitudes turned to the Saviour. Men and women cannot cultivate worldliness when they are bent upon bringing the world to Christ. Worldliness and waywardness will wither in the presence of sanctified devotion to this great ideal, selfishness and covetousness will be broken up and the idle will become religiously indus- trious. 4. The missionary ideal is a cure for many petty ills that afflict the churches and many ministers. Some time ago a company of ministers in conference were hearing first from THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 21 one, then another, of the difficulties they encountered in their work. A dolorous meeting it was in which ministerial confidences were exchanged concerning pesky deacons, tat- tling women, burdensome debts, the frivolity of the young, poor congregations, and the like. An old minister, who had worn his life out in missionary effort, arose finally, and in a trembling but thrilling voice said, "Brethren, raise a larger issue!" and sat down. Missions is that larger issue, and it will cure many ills which afflict the churches and discourage the preacher. 5. The missionary ideal is not only a vitalizing principle in a church but it insures scope and permanency for the preacher's work. We have had much talk about the reflex influence of foreign missions. Let me give you an example : The ministry of Dr. A. J. Gordon of Boston, and of T. DeWitt Talmadge of Brooklyn, just about paralleled each other, and covered approximately a quarter of a century. Dr. Talmadge with his extraordinary popular gifts set himself to the task of building up a congregation and min- istering to a local community. He would build up a people's church. He possessed almost incomparable gifts for such achievement. Devoting himself to his aim, he had little to do with the missionary enterprises of his denom- ination. Dr. Gordon, on the other hand, set for himself the task of building a church through which to give the gospel of Christ to the nations of the world. He was a great foreign mission spirit. The end of their respective periods of service came in the destruction by fire of Dr. Talmadge's great meetinghouse, and in the death of Dr. Gordon. The great congregation which Dr. Talmadge had built about himself, and through which he had devoted his powers almost exclusively to a local ministry, did not have vitality enough to build another place of worship for itself and the community. Dr. Talmadge spent the remainder of his ministry in a pulpit in Washington City supplanting the old pastor who had by enlisting his people In the For- eign Mission enterprise, built a great church. Dr. Gordon's church, with the pastor in his grave, maintained itself for 22 MISSIONARY MESSAGES •continued and great local service, while keeping up foreign mission contributions at the rate of $20,000 a year. These two pastorates illustrate a great truth and one which churches and ministers ought not to miss. The great churches of the South and their pastors illustrate the value of the mis- sionary ideal for both the church and the pastor. Count them over and the truth of this will be obvious. Ill The Value of the Missionary Ideal to the Denomination There are benefits which the denomination shares when the missionary ideal is cultivated, as there are penalties which it must inevitably suffer if it is neglected. 1. In the first place the missionary ideal will insure the principles of the denomination. There is no way to guarantee the propagation and preservation of denomina- tional principles except by planting them. So far as Bap- tists are concerned they have not hedged their principles about with ecclesiastical protection. These principles can- not be protected by defensive tactics. If we would save ourselves as a denomination, we must save others. If we would save our principles, we must sow them. The heart which the gospel regenerates is the only safe keeping place for the gospel. Those who know its power to save, believe it too precious to be lost. You cannot keep the truth pure apart from the missionary use of it. Personally, I have never believed that musty sermon illustration which recites how a grain of wheat had been found in an Egyp- tian tomb, where wrapped with a corpse it had lain for two thousand years, and unwrapped and planted, it sprouted and grew a harvest. That is both unnatural history and unethical illustration. There never was a grain of wheat which could be thus preserved. But suppose you could preserve a grain of wheat by sealing it up with a mummy, is that the best use you can make of wheat? A grain of wheat planted in good soil two thousand years ago and THE MISSIONARY IDEAL 23 its natural product planted through the successive seasons, would by this time give every man, woman, and child in the world a barrel of flour. That is better than preserving one grain of wheat. It is true of the gospel. It was given not to be hoarded but to be heralded. Truth is prolific when missionary use is made of it. "Good more communicated, more abundant grows, The giver not impoverished but enriched the more." 2. The missionary ideal gives to the denomination in- spirational history. It has been said that the negro race is handicapped by the fact that it has no great history, and that the Indians are handicapped in that they have no future to inspire them. Certainly Baptists have a history. Along the course of the centuries stand out great granite char- acters who are the inspiration of all who read. Who can tell how much the denomination has been enriched by such missionary characters as Carey, the Judsons, by Yates, Graves and others? But we are not living in the past. I heard an Oklahoman say that *'Oklahomans are not try- ing to live up to the prestige of their grandfathers, but that they are trying to make prestige for their grandchil- dren." It is our business to make inspiring and heroic characters for the future. By the cultivation of che mis- sionary ideal, the denomination will make heroes who shall inspire our people to-morrow. Theodore Parker, the critic and heretic that he was, said that if the missionary enter- prise had never done anything but make Judson, all that had been put into it would be justified. 3. Of course, there is no other way for us to increase our numbers than by the cultivation of the missionary ideal. It is by this means that the denomination is to become a real world power. We doom ourselves to provincialism and ultimate obscurity if we fail to extend our lines to the nations and make converts to our faith everywhere. We grow only as we go. But in multiplying our numbers, we shall multiply our wealth, our strength and our influence. 24 MISSIONARY MESSAGES Each year of missionary progress marks increased mo- mentum for the enterprise. There is a place in the world for a people of our faith. The world needs what the Baptists have to give. Whole nations are to-day struggling toward the light and seeking to grasp principles which Baptists have enunciated more clearly and held more consistently than any other people. The nations want and need these principles, and their want and need add urgency and create responsibility for Bap- tists in the execution of the Commission and the cultivation of the missionary ideal. The preacher, the church and the denomination will find a value in a missionary ideal which cannot be found else- where. Without this ideal and the benefits which it confers, the preacher dooms himself to mediocrity, the church to a famished and feeble life, and the denomination to an in- glorious future. CHAPTER II THE HOME BASE THE home base of foreign missions is constituted of the individual Christians, the churches, the Christian organizations, the material resources and the spiritual assets of our home Christianity which can be depended on for the projection of the missionary enterprise to the uttermost parts of the earth. The base is strong or weak in propor- tion to the dependability of these elements in the Chris- tianity of the home land for the purposes of this enterprise. The home task of the foreign mission agencies is to strengthen the home base by increasing the reliability of these elements. It is the necessary expenditure of effort and money upon this part of the foreign mission task that constitutes much the larger part of the expense of foreign mission administration. The actual expenses of the purely foreign mission administration is a comparatively small part of the foreign board's expenditure of money. The larger cost of administration is that which is necessary in order to create and keep up a reliable home base. Con- sidering the circumstances, this is money well spent, but, if giving to foreign missions were more voluntary, there could be a great saving in expense. If evangelical Chris- tianity's present resources were wholly and immediately available, we could probably, under present world conditions, and in the face of the opportunity now presented in the mission fields, in one generation, duplicate on the foreign field the total church membership of the home churches without increasing the cost of administration. We would thus have constituted a double base from which the ad- vancing lines of missionary conquest could converge on 25 26 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the diminishing heathenism and soon take our positions for the final siege. Christianity's holdings here ought to represent the strength of its foreign mission base. But, alas ! such is not the case. Many of our churches give nothing even of material support to this enterprise; many of the members of those churches which report contributions give nothing; and probably one-half of those members who give do not give half as much as they ought to give for a cause so commanding as foreign missions. The Home Base Com- mission of the Edinburgh Conference, after canvassing a mass of data, records this conclusion: "It is probably well within the truth to say that nine-tenths of the funds raised in the United States for foreign missions are con- tributed by one-tenth of the members of the Protestant bodies, the remaining nine-tenths of the members giving the other tenth. This statement is accepted as true by several of the leading denominations." The case is not now as bad as that among Baptists, but there are still many delinquent churches and church members. With such defects in the home base threatening the success of the whole enterprise, there is no higher order of mission- ary service or campaign strategy than this of more thor- oughly constituting this base. This work has its difficulties no less formidable than those which confront us on the for- eign field, and to overcome them, labor, money, courage, and patience will be required. Who among us has realized the vast areas of our American Christianity which are yet uncultivated and fruitless? Millions are to-day starving for the Bread of Life, while vast and productive sections of the home field yield not a loaf to stay their consuming hunger. Many strong churches and more capable indi- viduals stretch forth no hand of relief. Our churches represent potential missionary resources which are unde- veloped while missionary triumphs are shortened for the lack of adequate supplies. To render this fertile field fruitful of foreign mission resources there is demand for an order of work which is hard and expensive. It is of the THE HOME BASE 27 nature of digging the stumps and ditches and of long and faithful cultivation of the soil before the harvest can be realized. Many roots of prejudice must be cast out, some natures must be plowed deep, the mellowing, softening showers of grace must be invoked and the fertilizing meth- ods of New Testament teaching and missionary instruction must be used. What a task! And yet how abundantly worth while! It is as important to the foreign mission enterprise to make a reliable home base as it is to press the campaign itself. It would be a waste and cause hurtful reaction to put all the effort in the campaign abroad and neglect the matter of strengthening sentiment, enlisting support and assembling resources at home. Undeveloped and stingy church members more than the alleged extrava- gance of mission boards are the cause of unnecessary ad- ministrative expense. II We have in America a potential home base for evan- gelical Christianity. 1. We have a potential racial element in our Ameri- can home base. The Anglo-Saxon man is constitutionally aggressive, pioneering, adventurous. He experiments, in- vents, discovers, colonizes, civilizes, educates. He has set forward the frontiers of commerce, material comfort, moral reform and social order in a manner which distin- guishes and immortalizes him. Apply to the Anglo-Saxon nature the experience, the heightening of power, the vis- ion and the propulsion of evangelical Christian faith, and then arouse in him a normal missionary passion, and his spiritual ventures will know no bounds; he will have no rivals. The American is the freest, the boldest, the most daring type of the Anglo-Saxon. When evangelical faith is fully purified and missionary zeal is fully aroused among American Christians, they will constitute such a human base for the missionary enterprise as it has never had in any land or age. From American schools must come those 28 MISSIONARY MESSAGES who shall carry evangelical Christianity to the ends of the earth. 2. We have here the possibility of such a material base as evangelical Christianity has never had, and probably can not have in any other land from which this Christianity is projected. The per capita wealth and the per capita wage of the evangelical church-member in America is un- equaled by those of the devotee of any religion outside of America. If we could witness an increase of material resources for the missionary enterprise commensurate with the accumulation of American fortunes, we could finance the enterprise as easily as we build railroads, and on a scale of equal magnitude. We have marvelous possibilities for a great home base in the wealth of our land, and we are challenged by missionary opportunity and need to make our Christian men of wealth see that this enterprise has the first and the largest claim upon their benevolences. Foreign missions is the fundamental and productive Chris- tian enterprise. Millions put into libraries, museums, art galleries and the like for the advancement of civilization is like spraying the fruit compared with the horticultural work and care in producing it. Books and art and other aesthetic agencies are themselves the products of Christianity, and the man who would give his f ellowmen the benefits of these can do it in larger measure by giving them the gospel. The nations to whom we give the gospel will get and pro- duce their own arts. Many of the nations which present needy foreign missionary fields have glorious art, but it has left them in moral decay. Our larger gifts, therefore, should go to this primary and productive work. More and more churches and Christian leaders should seek to com- mand for this cause the unequaled wealth of American Christians. We have scarcely tapped the possible resources already in the hands of American Christians. 3. We have in our American church membership the material for a great numerical base. There are 25,000,- 000 church members in the United States, or one in four of the whole population including men, women, children and THE HOME BASE 29 babies. What an army to support and conduct our Qiris- tian campaign if only all were, as their profession implies, really under orders ! If the foreign mission enterprise has reached its present proportions with such fractional sup- port as it has received, what are the possibilities for it if these millions of church members with all they possess and command could be relied upon. Professor Thomas C. Johnson has said truly, "In ordering the constitution of the church God made a missionary society; every mem- ber of the church by virtue of his church membership is a member of this missionary society and stands pledged to do his utmost as such. The obligation therefore to fulfill this pledge is imperative and inclusive." The anti-mis- sionary or the o-missionary individual who defends church sovereignty is a heretic after the last commandment of our Lord. The only serious indictment that can be brought against orthodoxy as a force in missions is that its evan- gelistic products can not uniformly be relied upon as mis- sionary factors. To this incongruity the defenders of the faith must address themselves, and when it is removed, evangelical Christianity will vindicate itself in triumphant missionary achievement. This defect is the weak place in the home base at present and the chief cause of embar- rassment to the missionary enterprise. The statistical table in the associational minute is a good index to the soundness and sincerity of the faith of the churches. 4. America presents unique possibilities for a home base in its potential missionary message. The primary reason for going on a mission to the non-Christian nations is found in the message which was given us to carry to them, and this message is an indispensable equipment for missionary service. All the sending and all the going is for the purpose of carrying this message. The man or group of men who are without this message are without a mission. Responsibility for the missionary enterprise rests upon those who have a gospel to propagate. A profession of evan- gelical orthodoxy is an acknowledgment of the most bind- ing missionary obligation. It is in this fact that America 30 MISSIONARY MESSAGES should constitute the strongest base for evangelical foreign missions. Not only does a larger number of our people hold this faith by a voluntary choice, but evangelical Chris- tian faith has here fewer handicaps, and is freer from diluting elements than in any other land of the globe. There can not be found in any other land an equal number of men and women who believe with the same confidence that American Christians believe in the unique inspiration of the Scriptures, the miraculous birth, the deity and the vicarious atonement of Christ, the reality of the new birth and the continuity of moral law throughout the whole career of the soul in two worlds. This faith constitutes a potential missionary message, and creates peculiar mis- sionary obligation. This truth ought to be brought home to American Christians until all orthodoxy becomes a reliable part of the home base, and by such augmentation of re- sources, the campaign is strengthened to the uttermost outpost. 5. Evangelical Christianity has in America a strate- gical position for a home base. We hold here a continent of marvelous resources, which lies peacefully between the world's two great oceans, the turbulent nations, and be- tween the corroding Christianity of Europe and the virgin mission fields of the East. Our isolation is great enough to insure the national type and yet we hold a position favor- able to service for other nations. In security, serenity and high self -containment we look upon the world's tumult and need with collected wits and the bounties of nature and of grace at our disposal. From such a base we can dis- pense our gospel treasures if we have the heart to do it. Ill The fact that we have in America a potential base of such significance, and that circumstances conspire to render the foreign mission campaign so largely dependent upon this base, suggest that the strengthening of this base is a foreign mission work of high rank, ^^hatever is essential THE HOME BASE 31 to the enterprise is an important part of it. There is noth- ing connected with this world enterprise more important than the work of completing the task of converting some twenty-five million Christians in the evangelical churches of America into reliable foreign mission assets. What then are some of the things to be done and points to be guarded in order that we may render the home base adequate and reliable for an expanding and winning campaign? 1. The task demands, of course, a high order of con- structive Christian and missionary statesmanship. Sanity, tactfulness and courage are indispensable qualifications in those who are to enlist, train and lead these hosts in a mighty campaign which shall carry this holy war to victory. Mr. John R. Mott in his 'The Present World Situation" quotes the London Spectator to the effect that there is "one feature in the present aspect of the world which is most unusual, and that is the contrast between the magnitude of events occurring around us and the smallness, or rather, the second-rateness of the men supposed to guide them." Mr. Mott elaborates that statement and applies it to the missionary leadership which deals with the many problems on the foreign field. But the home base also has its prob- lems which make demands for statesmanship on the part of pastors and other leaders whose task it is to increase its efficiency. To shape the situation at home, there is need of men who love the cause above all personal whims and personal ambitions, men of unconquerable and genuine missionary passion, and who in singleness of eye for the cause will neither play to lower nor upper galleries. The need is for missionary statesmen versus the official com- mander, versus the politician, versus the demagogue. All these have afflicted the missionary cause at one time or another in one place or another. We cannot back an im- perialistic program such as is outlined in the Commission without resources of wisdom and consecrated diplomacy. American Baptists have had men who exemplified these elements of leadership. They still need such men. The magnitude of the task, the proportion to which our mis- 32 MISSIONARY MESSAGES sionary operations have grown, the number and personnel of the forces to be led, enlisting, training, developing, and leading these home forces; and the varied problems to be solved, including as they do financing the work, economy of administration, unity of the forces, the conservation of denominational integrity, questions of Christian comity, and many others, call for men with more than new eras in their purpose and empires in their brain. There must be a more comprehensive grasp of the home situation and a more minute appHcation of attention to the matters which affect the efficiency and reliability of the base. There are magnitudes in the problem of the home base; there are millions of individuals scattered over the continent to be incorporated into the supporting forces of the enterprise. It is not an easy mental feat to grasp a million units, but it is even more difficult when the figures stand for so many individual, independent Baptists of varying mind, holding membership in independent church groups more or less loosely related, distributed in two gen- eral conventions, some fifty state organizations and nearly fifteen hundred district associations. To put in operation plans which will after a while reach every one of these indi- vidual Baptists and each unit of organization, and build up out of them a home base in which every part shall be dependable and contribute relatively its maximum of strength to the whole, is a mission challenge to thoughtful men among us. Such a scheme of base building must be projected and worked as will insure a definite utilization of every unit in the home Christianity and organization for the specific sup- port of the foreign mission enterprise ; and the work which accomplishes this must proceed so orderly and intelligently that we may know what progress has been made, and what at any time remains to be done. Haphazard effort may get helpful results in particular instances, but can never build up a base strong at every point and affording a constant reliable support to the great enterprise; and the enterprise itself can not be projected with confidence and steady cour- THE HOME BASE 33 age so long as home support fluctuates and is uncertain. 2. This is axiomatical ; but what is the remedy which skill must apply? Are there any guiding principles for the construction of a reliable home base and the provision of steady supplies for the campaign? It should have oc- curred to us long ago that the Scriptures contain some specifications for base building, and for the relief of the chief embarrassment which has confused the enterprise. As a matter of fact the Commission which orders the cam- paign, and the inspired history of its early triumphs, con- tain specifications which cover our baffling difficulty. The Commission enjoins a message in the words, "Preach the gospel to every creature," and it prescribes a missionary duty for those who believe in the words, "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Doubtless these words include the duty of teaching con- verts a proper observance of the ordinances and the close guarding^ of the gospel message, but they include more than this. This Commission is first of all, and most of all, a missionary edict, and the words hint at the method. The teaching here is not intellectual, theoretic, cultural; it is practical. Preachers are commanded to instruct their con- verts in hozi' to do the thing which the Commission com- mands. They must, of course, apply the best mission mo- tives, but they must also apply the best mission methods. This task with the converts is not finished until these are engaged in "doing the truth" and in observing the best way of promoting it. A Scriptural method of church finance sustains an essential relation to this work of "teaching them to observe all things." Individual stewardship, systematic, regular, proportionate giving are observances which are vital to the execution of the Commission, and failure to teach the Scriptural observance here has probably cost the missionary cause as serious shortening of its victories as any dereliction of which Christian leaders are guilty. Care- lessness and indifiPerence to a matter so vital to the scheme of world evangelization is to be classed with irregularity concerning one of the ordinances or other observance speci- 34 MISSIONARY MESSAGES fied by the Scriptures. The efficiency of the home base demands that a thoroughly comprehensive plan shall be executed to place every church member on the list of regular, systematic, proportionte givers, and that this plan shall be worked so orderly that the results may at any time be checked up, and the remaining task distinctly located. This work is in progress and already gratifying results have been secured. It must be continued with increased vigor and orderliness. 3. To increase the efficiency of the home base the chan- nels of approach to the churches, even the feeblest and remotest, must be kept open for the general mission agencies. This is not only essential to the life of the agencies them- selves, but to the missionary life of the churches at home. These open channels afford opportunity for constant mis- sionary revitalization of the home base. The general mis- sion board is a purveyor of ideas and ideals ; it kindles mis- sionary passion, expands vision and creates a missionary at- mosphere ; it garners and imparts information, fosters large view and familiarizes the churches with a great program; it excites co-operative sympathy and stimulates a conscious- ness of denominational power. These things are possible through the literature of the Board, correspondence, personal visits of representatives, etc. By such means the general agencies are penetrating the masses who compose, or ought to compose, the home base, and imparting inspiration and a missionary mind and impulse to those who are providen- tially confined to isolated districts and have little oppor- tunity to touch or be touched by the great currents of mod- ern religious thought and life. While the boards draw from the people and bear their gifts to sections of need to which they are consigned, they ought also to be charged with the duty of giving back to the churches information and inspi- ration gathered through opportunity for larger outlook, in order that the lives of our people may be enriched and their missionary life fed. This form of work is essential to the efficiency of the home base, and it can not be done by any one of the more local agencies in the home organization THE HOME BASE 35 alone. The churches ought to be open to all denominational agencies. Those which have been given an opportunity to collect information and are inflamed with zeal for a given enterprise ought to be given the opportunity to tell what they know and feel. The mission board in its proper func- tion is not so much a getter of money as a begetter of mis- sionary inteUigence, purpose, and passion. 4. Given information about the great causes and proper motives for their support, we ought to trust the individual conscience to give discriminatingly. The ideal giver is a Christian who knows and feels the claim of the respective objects which have a right to appeal to his benevolence, and whose conscience acts automatically, that is, from the in- herent force of knowledge and love within him, and not under the mechanical manipulation of some one whose in- terest it is to boost a certain job. Until our people are informed concerning the respective claims of the great Chris- tian enterprises, they are liable to become the victims of the manipulator, sometimes self-appointed, and make dis- proportionate gifts to subordinate objects. The Spirit of Christ, who administers missions, should be so palpable in the home constituency that missions would become the normal Christian activity. A Christian ought to have as restless a passion for lost nations as a lost man has for the Saviour when the Spirit has convinced him of sin. The effort to produce such a Christian life at home is a necessary part of the work which has for its end the making of Christians abroad. When eight million Baptists in America are enlightened, enlisted, and their per- sonal powers and possessions are made the assets of the foreign mission enterprise, we shall have a home base which will support our advancing lines until we have carried the gospel of Christ into all lands and the signs of final victory appear. CHAPTER III THE BAPTIST PROGRAM FOR EUROPE * I 'A Word about the Origin of the London Conference IN the spring of 1919 the Foreign Mission Board carried up to the Southern Baptist Convention which met in Atlanta, Georgia, the following inquiry: "This convention should face with courage the ques- tion of its obligation to take some part in the religious re- construction of Europe. The need there is too great, and Southern Baptist obligation is too apparent for this body- to ignore them. According to the best psychology of the situation, there is thought to be opportunity in Europe for a genuine and radical transformation of the whole religious situation if evangelical Christianity will enter quickly doors of opportunity which the guns of war have jarred open. Shall your Foreign Mission Board set itself to the task of entering these doors and exercising a spiritual ministry to the torn and agitated hearts of men and women in France, Belgium, and elsewhere, as God's Spirit shall lead?" To the above inquiry the Convention made reply : "With respect to our 'obligation to take some part in the religious reconstruction of Europe,' that we do most heartily desire the Board to take steps as speedily as circumstances make possible to ascertain fully the situation and how we can best meet our duty in regard to it. Adopting the lan- * This address delivered before the South Carolina Baptist State Convention was published by order of that body, but because of the historic significance of the meeting to which it refers, it is thought proper to include it in these Messages and thus preserve it in more permanent form. 36 EUROPEAN PROGRAM 37 guage of their inquiry, we do 'instruct our Foreign Mission Board carefully to spy out the land and, when the engineer- ing corps have made their report, to go up and possess it.' To this end we authorize our Board to expend whatever funds are necessary to the full information needed for most wisely doing our part in Europe and the rest of Russia. We hope that by another year we shall already be in such of these countries as God's Spirit shall indicate, by the results of the proposed investigation, that He desires us to occupy." Following the Atlanta Convention and in the summer of 1919, Dr. Z, T. Cody and I were appointed by the For- eign Mission Board to make a Missionary and Reconstruc- tion Survey of Europe and the Near East. On this trip we were accompanied by Dr. Everett Gill, then a missionary of the Foreign Mission Board in Italy but temporarily in the homeland. Upon our arrival in London it was agreed with the Baptist leaders there that, upon finishing the tour and survey, the Commission would return to London and report conditions, observations and conclusions. We arrived in London on the return trip from the Continent and the Near East the last of January, 1920, and made our report. Among other things, the Commission suggested that it would not be practicable, in the face of conditions on the Continent, to hold a Baptist World Alliance in Prague during the summer of 1920, as had been announced, or even in 1921. General conditions in Europe were too disturbed and uncer- tain for this and facilities for handling large tourist parties were utterly inadequate. Our view of the matter was ac- cepted by the London brethren and we were requested to report these conclusions to the American members of the Baptist World Alliance Executive Committee on reaching America. This we did. We were certain, however, that need and opportunity in Europe could not wait a favorable hour for a meeting of the World Alliance. Consequently Dr. J. H. Franklin of the Foreign Mission Society of the Northern Baptist Con- 38 MISSIONARY MESSAGES ventlon, was invited to come to Richmond for a Conference. The invitation was accepted, the conference held, and before it adjourned a program for a European Conference was pre- pared. It was agreed that we would present it to the Boards at home, and I was requested to submit it to Baptist leaders in London. Both the Foreign Mission Society of the North- ern Baptist Convention and the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention approved this program heartily, as did the brethren in London. Upon joint request of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Con- vention and the Foreign Mission Society of the Northern Baptist Convention, Dr. J. H. Shakespeare invited repre- sentatives of the Baptist organizations of Europe and ar- ranged for the Conference in London, July 19-23, 1920. At the Atlanta Convention of which instruction had been asked concerning undertaking work in Europe, the Corre- sponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board oifered the following resolution: "Resolved, That a committee of five messengers to the Convention be appointed to prepare greetings of this Con- vention of Southern Baptists to the people of 'like precious faith with us* scattered abroad in all nations; "That the committee be composed of E. Y. Mullins, L. R. Scarborough, J. B. Gambrell, Z. T. Cody, and William Ellyson." In ofifering the above resolution it was explained that Southern Baptists, having declared non-alliance with those of contrary beliefs and policies, should seek a closer fellow- ship with those of their own household of faith, and that while greeting tliem in the Lord, we should put forth such definition of our faith as would help them to realize the common bonds of truth between us, and to help others who may not wear our name, but do believe the same things, to establish their identity with us. The above committee prepared an exceptionally satisfactory address and its trans- lation into many tongues and circulation in many lands provoked a wide and approving response, brought Southern EUROPEAN PROGRAM 39 Baptists to the attention of, the Baptists of the world, and helped to make the London Conference what it was by call- ing attention to the bond of a common faith held by those who were in attendance. I may pause here to say that while Dr. Cody was not present at the Conference, he influenced this meeting greatly by his part in the preparation of the Fraternal Address, his advice concerning the necessity for such a conference, and his support while in Europe of certain administrative prin- ciples which found recognition in the Conference. Dr. George W. Truett of Texas and the speaker were appointed by the Foreign Mission Board to represent it in this Conference, and early in July proceeded to London to meet our brethren from many lands. In all the triumphs of his great ministry Dr. Truett has not rendered the world or his denomination a greater service. No man could have been more fortunate than I in the associates given me for the responsible work which engaged Dr. Cody, Dr. Truett and myself on these representative visits to Europe. To my dying day I shall be grateful to these wise and devoted men for the service which they have rendered the great cause to which I have given my life, and in which the denomination must always find the highest expression of its unselfish Christian passion. Dr. Gill was of great service to Dr. Cody and me in making the survey. Dr. Truett and I were much strengthened by the counsel and support which Drs. Gambrell and Mullins gave us in and during the London Conference. II The Personnel of the Conference Even the briefest sketch of this the most significant Con- ference of Baptist people in modern times should make prominent mention of Dr. John Clifford, who with dignity and yet with consummate grace and courtesy presided over the meetings ; and of Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, who as Secre- 40 MISSIONARY MESSAGES tary of the Conference and by faithful work in advance made it possible, and by his resourcefulness and unfailing kindness to the representatives during the Conference, placed all under obligation to him; and Drs. J. H. Rushbrooke and Chas. A. Brooks, whose report of European conditions was the chief and reliable basis for action by the Conference. Seventy-two representative Baptists were present from various countries as follows: England: Dr. John Clifford, Dr. J, H. Shakespeare, Dr. W. T. Whitley, Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke, Rev. D. Witton Jenkins, Rev. E. H. Brown, Rev. C T. Byford, Dr. J. W. Ewing, Mr. J. Wallis Goddard, Dr. G. P. Gould, Miss Mar- garet Hardy, Rev. E. E. Hayward, Mrs. Russell James, Mr. R. Klickman, Rev. Gilbert Laws, Rev. James Mursell, Rev. A. M. Ritchie, Mrs. C. S. Rose, Rev. C. E. Wilson, Rev. John Wilson; Scotland: Mr. Adam Nimmo, Mr. W. T. Oldrieve, Rev. Thomas Stewart; Ireland: Rev. J. D. Gil- more, Rev. R. Hodgett ; Australia: Rev. T. E. Ruth ; Austria: Rev. August Wiegand; Belgium: Rev. O. Valet; Checho- slovakia: Rev. J. Tolar, Rev. F. Kolator; Denmark: Rev. Peter Olsen; Esthonia: Rev. Adam Podin, Mrs. Podin; Finland: Rev. Erik Jansson, Rev. I. S. Ostermann; France: Rev. R. Dubarry, Rev. Ph. Vincent, Rev. Hanmer Jenkins ; Germany: Prediger B. Weerts, Prediger F. W. Simoleit, Missions-direktor K. Mascher; Holland: Rev. J. W. Wee- hink; Hungary: Rev. A. Udvarnoki, Rev. Stephen Orosz, Mrs. Orosz; Italy: Rev. D. G Whittinghill, Rev. W. Kem- me Landels; Latvia: Pastor J. A. Frey; Norway: Rev. P. Stainsen, Rev. A. Ohrn; Poland: Rev. F. Brauer, Rev. K. W. Strzelec; Roumania: Rev. C. R. Igrisan, Rev. C. Ado- rian; Spain: Rev. G. T. Vickman; Sweden: Rev. C. E. Benander, Rev. J. Bystrom, Rev. N. J. Nordstrom; Can- ada: Dr. O. C. S. Wallace ; Northern Baptist Convention^ U. S. A.: Rev. C. A. Brooks, Mr. Mornay Williams, Dr. J. H. Franklin, Dr. Emory W. Hunt, Rev. O. Brouillette, Dr. Arthur Fowler; Southern Baptist Convention, U. S. A.: Dr. J. F. Love, Dr. George W. Truett, Dr. J. B. Gambrell, President E. Y. Mullins, D. D., Dr. H. C Wayman. Almost EUROPEAN PROGRAM 41 without exception these were seasoned men, some of them veterans. Dr. John Clifford, the dauntless champion of re- ligious liberty and disestablishment in England, and Dr. J. B. Gambrell, the religious Commoner of America, were there, both of them still full of mettle and champing the bit at the age of eighty-four and seventy-nine years, respectively. Men were there who bore in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus; men from Siberian exile, and from many im- prisonments for the gospel's sake. There was not a dainty man in the bunch, but many grizzled and inured soldiers of the cross were there to hold counsel of war, lay the lines of battle and return again to the trenches. Heroes were there from Jugo-Slavia, from Hungary, Roumania, Czecho- slovakia, Poland, Austria, Germany, Latvia, Esthonia, Lith- uania, and Ireland and Scotland, and Belgium and Denmark, etc. They were there from lonely and isolated posts where they had raised the flag of our faith in defiance of the powers of this world, but now flushed with high expecta- tion of reenforcement and radiant in the new joy of fellow- ship with the stronger groups of their brethren. I count it one of the highest privileges of my life to have sat through those memorable hours of conference, prayer, and praise with these men of many lands and many tongues, but of a common faith. If I am ever the same man again, I shall descend from the heights of rare experience and be disobedient to the vision which was vouchsafed unto me. One is embarrassingly conscious of severe limitations in any attempt to communicate the experience of these days of high privilege to those of his brethren who were not there. I feel as one who had been on a mount with God and had descended to the plains where the fog lies thick and chill. Ill The Conference Itself We must, however, attempt to give you at least a glint into the proceedings of this Conference. 42 MISSIONARY MESSAGES 1. Certain items in the Baptist Program for Europe were taken up and referred to Committees and deliberated upon, such as Education, Literature, Spheres of Activity by the respective boards, Relief and Reconstruction. We reviewed the awful and heart-breaking destitution which has engulfed multitudes of our brethren and sisters and their little ones who in great numbers cry in their hunger for fathers who can never hear their cry. Findings on these various items were adopted by the Conference and pre- sented by the representatives present to their respective boards and organizations. 2. In the discussion of some of the items of the program certain questions of administrative policy were brought under consideration. Two of these especially called forth frank and positive speech, though, I think, in a spirit of true brotherliness. The candor and courtesy which are essential to the behavior of Christian men characterized the Conference. The point was raised whether the Baptist World Alliance should be recognized as an administrative organization and the Baptist Program for Europe should head up in one place in Europe, or be referred to the For- eign Mission Agencies now operated and controlled by the respective Baptist groups and responsible to them. The other point discussed was whether we should recommend a cooperation throughout the whole of Europe or a coordi- nation of effort which equitably distributes Baptist influence over all the countries of Europe but leaves each Board free to promote work in accordance with its own policies. The representatives of the Foreign Mission Board entertained deep, and, we think, mature conviction that each Foreign Mission Agency should retain its own administrative prerog- atives and remain directly responsible to its own constituency and, in accordance with this, that the most effective co- operation is a coordination of our Baptist forces in such a way as to cover the whole territory and secure concert of action without merging function. These two points brought on earnest discussion which clarified the thinking of all of us on matters of missionary policy and administration. In the EUROPEAN PROGRAM 43 end the latter views prevailed. We rejoice in the confidence that Southern Baptists have the privilege of promoting a sound missionary policy in their work for Europe and yet have the most fraternal relations with all who were repre- sented in the Conference. 3. The spirit which prevailed was a remarkable feature of this epochal meeting. It was evident from the beginning, and grew more evident to the end of the Conference, that the men who had gathered were brought together in real bonds of brotherhood. Say all you will about fraternities and common Christian ties, there is between men of "like precious faith" a bond of union, a warm and tender affec- tion which does not exist between others. There was a consciousness among us all that we had found a true spir- itual kinship in the men and women of our faith who had come up to the London Conference from their distant homes. Under such circumstances there was no forced manifestation of affection, no restraint upon discussion, no stiff and artificial conventionalities, no guarding of proper- ties, but a spontaneous, natural and unhampered fellow- ship. In such a fellowship each feels that he is understood by the other and that all have common ends to serve. This excellent and delightful spirit of the London Conference found its natural expression in the unanimous vote which was given every report in its final form. This unanimity of action included not only the oflficial representatives of the Boards, but such visitors as Dr. Gambrell and Dr. Mullins who were invited to full participation in the Conference and to exercise their Baptist freedom without embarrass- ment to themselves or any one else. The spirit in which the decisions of the Conference were sought and the unanimity in which they were reached inclined those of us who were present to the firm belief that the Spirit of God validated the actions of this Conference. 44 MISSIONARY MESSAGES IV The Appeal of the Conference There is in this European Program an appeal which I feel strongly, and which I believe you will feel if certain facts about it are once fixed in your minds. Nothing to which I have ever turned my hands for my denomination has seemed to me so full of potential blessings for the world as this program which we have undertaken to put into eflfect. 1. There is, in the first place, repeated here the old ap- peal of Europe as a mission field. One of the most sig- nificant of all passages in the New Testament which bears upon the missionary program in its universal and ageless aspects, is that which is recorded in the 16th chapter of the Acts. The call of Macedonia and the response of the Apostle Paul to that call was the appeal of and response to Europe's needs and Europe's urgent and exceptional im- portance as a field for evangelistic effort. In that incident is a divine emphasis upon the importance of missionary strategy in the propagation of the gospel. Europe can not be ignored if we would evangelize the world. It is crucial to the universalization of the Gospel of Jesus and to peace and righteousness on earth. There is, too, significance in the fact that about the time Paul was crossing the ^gean and beginning the missionary conquest of Europe at Philippi, the soldiers of Claudius were landing in the neighborhood of the place where this London Conference was held. Claudius was a sort of forerunner of civilization and an unconscious agent in the hands of Providence making straight paths and opening up highways for the feet of those who were to bear the glad tidings of peace. Paul with his gospel, responding to the call of Macedonia, started in upon the conquest of Europe and was marching toward the seats of Empire and of civilization. In the physical needs and distress and the greater mis- sionary opportunities which Europe presents to-day there is an appeal as truly mandatory and which transcends the EUROPEAN PROGRAM 45 Macedonia call. Now again God is by circumstance sig- nifying the time for a new evangelistic campaign on the Continent of Europe and in Europe's need is again voicing the prayer, "Come over and help us/' It is a thrilling expe- rience to realize that the privilege is given us, even us, of repeating in our day, and on larger lines, the acts of the apostle. God crowns a hundred years of Baptist missionary service and achievement with the privilege of undertaking a sublimely important and potential piece of missionary service. 2. / name as a second appeal this: The London Confer- ence has given to the Baptists of the World a real Baptist World Alliance. That which we have heretofore called the "Baptist World Alliance" has been an occasional high peak of fellowship and of inspiration; this has been worth while, but the Alliance left us no tasks to perform and made no program. An alliance, even of those of com- mon faith, is ineffectual if it has not for its purpose some great work to be done. Soldiers must fight or they will fuss. If they are not directed to follow up the enemy, they will fall out among themselves. The idlers in our Christian ranks are the disturbers. Sooner or later discord breaks out among those who, however much they may have in common, have not a common work. It requires a great task to insure great fellowship. The hearts of men are fused in the passion of great and unselfish service. A chal- lenging task and hard work creates a feeling of comrade- ship. We have now a real Baptist World Alliance. What practical ends do the Baptists of the world hence- forth strive for? What have we entered into holy alliance to do? (a) To bear the burdens one of another. We take up in the compassions of Christ and as a sign of fellowship the burden of nakedness and starvation under which we find the hearts of great numbers of our brethren and sisters in Europe breaking. We have said to them that we will not feast while you starve ; we will not flaunt extravagance and exhibit our vanity while our sisters in Europe are 46 MISSIONARY MESSAGES clothed in tatters and shiver under the biting frost of win- ter ; we will not spoil our children through indulgence while yours cry for bread. We shall repeat the story of Second Corinthians and decline to be eased while others are bur- dened. We insist upon greater equality in circumstance. We will send bread for the hungry and clothing for those who are cold. But, more than this, we will warm the hearts of our brothers by the response which Christian love makes to their necessities. (b) We shall release to the ministry of Christ Baptist preachers in Europe whose hearts are panting for the work to which God has called them, but who through poverty are now bound down to drudgery of daily toil and are strug- gling desperately to give bread to their children while the work which they love is being neglected. We will place shoes on the feet of other missionaries who without such have gone barefooted carrying the good tidings to their broken-hearted and broken-spirited countrymen. The hearts of these true servants of Christ are hurt quite as much because of lost opportunities for advancing the cause of Jesus as from having their babies pinched by cold and hunger. We shall also further increase the number of those who herald the truth by furnishing facilities for the educa- tion of young women and young men whom God has called but who through these troublous years and for want of schools for their training have been compelled to defer their hopes. There are scores of such waiting for help to realize their vision. (c) But perhaps the most significant thing about this alliance is, we shall hereafter be able to speak with the voice of eight million Baptists to the governments of Europe in protest against the persecution of our people and of any people for their religious faith and in the interest of religious freedom for all men. Rev. J. H. Rushbrooke of London has been selected to represent the Baptists of the world with this important matter as a primary consideration. Perse- cuting priests and conniving officials in Jugo-Slavia and Roumania shall be compelled to hear the protests of eight EUROPEAN PROGRAM 47 million Baptists, and many of them will for the first time learn what real and thoroughgoing religious liberty is. They will find that there is a denomination in the world that asks no special favors for itself but does ask absolute religious liberty for everybody. They will learn that the Baptist people claim something more than toleration, but that they do not claim an ounce of peculiar privilege, a penny of the people's taxes for any phase of their religious work; that they exert no influence upon politicians and legislators in their own favor which is not exerted in favor of everybody else who is willing to accept common and impartial rights with others. (d) This Alliance will promote homogeneous faith and denominational life throughout the world. Channels of communication are being established. Inter-communication is going on. It has already become evident that the majority of the Baptist people on the Continent of Europe and throughout the world are tenaciously holding on to a faith and polity either closely alike or exactly identical to the faith and polity of Southern Baptists. It has been found that the individuals and groups which hold divergent views constitute a feeble minority compared with the vast numbers who hold and strongly defend a common faith. There has been opened up in the Foreign Mission Board rooms a Bur- eau of Communications through which literature and cor- respondence are sent forth and received, and this is helping the scattered members of the denomination to discover Bap- tist unity and to strengthen it. It may be expected that the Baptists will in the future present to the world a de- nominational life in which homogeneity and democracy find expression in a positive and constructive program and which gathers force and invincibility from these characteristics. (e) This actual Baptist World Alliance secures co- ordination of effort and makes possible concentrated action throughout the whole field of Baptist life and missionary activity in Europe. We shall be able by the harmonious ordering of our missionary forces to secure the witness to our faith in every country in Europe and at the same time 48 MISSIONARY MESSAGES effect a close impact of combined Baptist influence at any point where the program is imperiled or our people are in need of our protection or help. We have a program which recognizes autonomy in unity. 3. Another appeal of this Program is that it inaugurates for Europe a new reformation. This to me is a thrilling aspect of our new task. Europe presents to the world an ecclesiastical Christianity. Europe has never been evan- gelized. It has had a military conversion, an ecclesiastical conversion, a diplomatic conversion, an intellectual con- version; but it has never had an evangelical conversion. Paul opened up channels for evangelical Christianity in Europe along which for a while flowed the limpid waters of life, but shortly the movement got mixed with worldly motives and as a consequence the evangelical conversion of Europe was delayed and confounded with the rule of the Empire and secular civilization. Pure Christianity has never prevailed over large sections of Europe. The thor- ough conversion of semi-Christian Europe is to-day mis- sionary strategy of the highest order. The task of evangelizing Europe has in it some new and challenging elements. The channels along which once moved the tides of evangelical truth in the countries of Europe have themselves become clogged and the truth con- taminated. They were originally opened up through fields of heathenism. These channels must be reopened in fields of semi-Christianity. In many places the miasmas of super- stition have settled down upon these original channels and in other places the frost of rationalism has fallen from high intellectual peaks about European Universities and chilled the faith of many. Icicles hang from pulpits where tongues of fire are needed. To thaw and purify the poten- tial sources of Christianity in Europe is a missionary strategy which has to do with the essential Christian mes- sage and its messengers who are to carry it throughout the world. We must not, in setting ourselves to this task, for- get that false forms of Christianity are usually more irresistible than stark heathenism. And yet we believe that EUROPEAN PROGRAM 49 the present time lends more encouragement for the accom- plishment of this task than any years since Popery first set up its autocratic soul-tyranny in the city of Rome, or Greek Orthodoxy congealed at Constantinople. There are distinct tokens of advantage in pressing this Reformation at this time. In the first place Europe suffers a broken heart and in her sorrow her people have been made to feel a new sense of the need of religious reality. If at such a time we can show the compassions of Christ for those who suffer and yield the practical fruits of Christian benevolence, we will make willing hearers for our Christian message. Because of our benefactions our missionaries will find a new hospitality to the truth. In the second place, the old ecclesiastical systems have suffered through the ordeal of the War. Thoughts, motives, and ideals have mixed in this turmoil and have flowed into every nook and corner of Europe. Many thousands of men have gotten a taste of a larger world of things, of men and ideas, and will no longer be content with such circumscrip- tion as Romanism imposes upon its devotees. The old re- ligions of Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy have failed to meet the needs of men in this awful hour and can not adjust themselves to the changing order. It is true that some prophets, — and it is remarkable how many minor preachers became major prophets at the beginning of the v^ar, — it is true, I say, that some of these prophets foretold the transformation and new vitalization of these traditional faiths in consequence of the War. Indeed, when these prophets sought to foretell the future, they indulged ex- travagantly. They told us that those who. expected to ren- der service as preachers among the soldiers behind the lines must change their methods in dealing with young men and find a new message. All were doomed to failure who ven- tured to preach the old gospel to this army of young men in khaki ! Well, now as a matter of fact the only men who came back home from across the sea with heads drooped and no victories to their credit were these prophets and the 50 MISSIONARY MESSAGES preachers who accepted their prophecies and went into the camp with a new gospel. The men who went after our boys with the gospel with which these had been famiUar at home found them ready listeners the night before battle, and these men came back home to report many conversions and triumphant death scenes. Dr. George Truett found that the gospel of Jesus which tamed the cow-boys of the West subdued the hearts of soldiers in France. The prophecies concerning the ecclesiasticism of Europe were equally false. Dr. John Clifford, who knows things, says of these religions and the effect of the war upon them that they have not found salvation. He says, "They do not win confidence, or inspire reverence, or challenge conscience, or strengthen will, or uplift conduct." They are still immobile and im- potent. The war has not changed these traditional religions, but it has modified the thought and feeling of the people for them and for the institutions of Catholicism. Millions have lost faith in both Roman and Greek Catholicism. The ex- quisite embroideries, the silver and gold, diamonds and jewels, the flashing crowns, bejeweled crosses, and unused wealth in many forms which one sees in some of the cathedrals of Europe, would, at their market value, feed and save from starvation a million women and children. But these priests, bishops and cardinals hug and hoard these useless marks of their vanity while children cry for bread. But the people will not forget. The vast and gorgeous cathedrals of Europe are even now and on gala days, when bishops and cardinals are on show, more than half empty. Even among the priests there is a loss of con- fidence. I am reliably informed that eight thousand Italian priests and monks who during the War got a taste of per- sonal liberty and a new sense of their manhood have de- clined to put on the frock again. Catholicism is discredited in Europe while making des- perate effort to establish itself in the favor of this country. But even here there is a quiet brooding on the facts and a growing intelligence concerning methods of propaganda. EUROPEAN PROGRAM 51 All over the country there is increasing disgust at the way secular newspapers have, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus, framed up the McSweeney incident and used in America for proselyting purposes money which was given under government auspices for relief abroad. Some day politicians and editors of secular papers will learn that they do not command the intelHgence, the patriotism and the conscience of the American people when they take their cue from Rome and lend themselves to a propaganda which seeks to embroil this nation with England. Those who lend their ears and columns to the designing schemes of a small minority of the religious element in this nation and that minority subject to and inspired by a religious autocrat seated on his throne on the Tiber, will find a waning follow- ing. Fifty-five per centum of the American people are of English stock, and half the other forty-five per centum have no confidence in Romanism or patience with those who pander to it. It is the hour of all hours in the history of Europe for evangelical Christians to fare forth in the spirit of Christ to satisfy the needs and heal the broken hearts of men. If I were asked to tell what is the most encouraging word I have heard in going up and down Europe, it would be that which a Baptist preacher told us in the London Conference. He said that prevented as German Baptists are from the privilege of continuing their foreign mission work, they have put on a program of house to house evangelism in Germany, and that men and women are going from door to door "telling the story in its simplest form." Mind you, telling the story, telling it in its simplest form in Germany where rationalism and high intellectualism have hooted the gospel of Jesus and where human theories have obscured the Christ of the Gospels. In my judgment there is for the Christian minister and for Christendom a lesson of highest missionary value in that simple phrase, "telling the story in its simplest form." We will go on courageously and faithfully equipping our schools, but we must free ourselves from some of the mischief which some schools have already 52 MISSIONARY MESSAGES wrought and get back to telling the story in its simplest form if we would reach the masses, evangelize the world and stem the tide of a Christless intellectualism. 4. Another appeal of the European Program is that we hwve set ourselves to the task of making conquest of the white races of the world. Let us not forget that to the white man God gave the instinct and talent to disseminate His ideals among other people and that He did not, to the same degree, give this instinct and talent to the yellow, brown or black race. The white race only has the genius to in- troduce Christianity into all lands and among all people. This is not a ground for spiritual pride nor of contempt for any colored race. It is a solemn fact. It fixes exceptional responsibility. If the white races of Europe are saved, they will not save the colored races, but they can inaugurate Christianity among the colored races and the converts which they make will ultimately create a native constituency and evangelize these nations. Indeed the peoples of Europe and their ideas overflow the world. Dr. John Clifford calls the people of Europe *'the dispersion of these latter days." He says, "They go everywhere, they can not stay at home. Europe is too crowded. Take the gospel to Europeans and they will carry it everywhere." This is undoubtedly true. Euro- peans will bring Christianity instead of Roman intrigue to our own shores if we will evangelize Europe. We must deal with this fountain at its source. We must, to change the figure, plant the seed of gospel truth in the very heart of Europe, which is the seed-plot of great wars and great heresies and can be made the seed-plot of Christianity. Four-fifths of the white people of the world are in Europe. We have in our new foreign mission territory in Europe a white population which exceeds by one-fourth the total population of all races and classes in America and five times the white population of the South. It was to these white people that Paul was called to go in the voice from Macedonia. The call of Europe to-day in her hunger and religious condition is no less resonant with the voice of God EUROPEAN PROGRAM 53 for Southern Baptists than was the call of Macedonia for Paul. Hitherto this modern missionary era has been char- acterized by missions to the yellow races, the brown and the black races. Not for a moment do we contemplate doing less, but rather immeasurably more for Japan, China and Africa. In thus obeying God we have discharged some measure of the white man's great obligation. We shall not halt in this holy work, but Southern Baptists have entered into an alliance with their brethren that they will also, as an important part of this World Program, take account of the white races in Europe. Mr. Lothrop Stoddard has recently written an alarming book called "The Rising Tide of Color." He sees a new momentum in the ceaseless pressure of the colored races upon the white races of Europe. He views with something approaching consternation the fact that the Great War has weakened the resistance of the white races and made pen- etrable those outposts of defense which heretofore have resisted the tides of color ever pressing upon them. Mr. Stoddard has, we think, diagnosed the case correctly, but like all men who are alarmed, he has failed to name the effectual remedy for a danger like this. He sees safety in white alliance, in diplomacy, and a readiness for concerted militarism. He does not see that the religion of Jesus and that only will impart invincibleness to the white race and lift the colored races to the plain of peaceful participation in Christian civilization. If we can inject the truth and the spirit of Christ into European nations at this time when destiny is pivoted, we shall both save the white civilization of Europe and hasten, yea, insure the day of redemption for the brown races which menace white Europe. Southern Baptists are given a territory in the European Program which has peculiar strategic value. We are in the Balkans where Roman Catholicism and Greek Cathol- icism meet, where Christianity and Mohammedanism meet, and where the brown and white races meet. Roman Catholicism and Greek Catholicism have grappled. What- ever the mutual losses of these through antagonisms, we 54 MISSIONARY MESSAGES will endeavor to snatch up and turn to the gain of evan- gelical Christianity. And we will seek in the Balkans to flank Mohammedanism which more than Romanism or Greek Orthodoxy is the religion of conquest in our day. In the cock pit of the nations, whence have come strife and war, we shall seek to excite a passion for peace and brotherhood. 5. The strong appeal of this European Program is that it affords fellowship with heroic spirits of our faith. It has been my good fortune as a State Missionary to work in waste places at home, and as a State Mission Secretary to have fellowship and comradeship with missionaries in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and in the Mississippi delta ; and later as one of the secretaries of the Home Mission Board, to companion with missionaries to the cowboys and the Indians on the plains of the West. I know something of the thrill which those enjoy who seek to gather diamonds for the Saviour's crown in mosquito swamps and in the slums of the cities. Often has my admiration for these State and Home Missionaries been stirred to enthusiasm. But I tell the simple truth when I say that I have known no men in the homeland who have been willing to take such risks and endure such sacrifices, to go to such lengths in order to carry the torch of our faith into the dark places as those whom I have come to know and communicate with among the heroes of the Cross on certain fields of Europe. I have never witnessed such quenchless enthusiasm as have some of these men with whom Southern Baptists are given the privilege of fellowship. These rugged and daring heroes are in Spain, in Jugo-Slavia, in Hungary, in Roumania, in Russia and Siberia. Their lives are full of thrilling instances of adventure for Christ. It is good not only for them but it is good for us to enter into this fellow- ship. We shall be cured of some of our self-pampering, be weaned from self-indulgence and shamed out of our ex- travagance by the simple living, the sacrifices, the incom- parable fortitude of these men who count not their lives dear unto them in their passion for Christ and the lost multitudes. EUROPEAN PROGRAM 55 6. But the European Program has as its chief appeal this: That it rounds out the Baptist World Program. Get out your map of the world, and look up the countries in which the Foreign Mission Board is at work — Japan, China, Africa, Italy, Mexico, several South American Republics — and place in this scheme of outposts the new territory in Eu- rope, Spain, Jugo-Slavia, Hungary, Roumania, the Ukraine, and Southeast Russia, Northeast Russia and Siberia. Add to this Palestine and Syria. If you would get a still more adequate impression of the Baptist World Program, look up the countries in which Northern Baptists, Canadian Baptists, British, German, Swedish, and other Baptists are seeking to extend the frontiers of the Kingdom of God. At last our Baptist people are a religious world-power. Southern Baptists are a part of a great world-league through which we can secure concerted action throughout our scat- tered ranks and close and concentrated impact of influence can be registered where need and opportunity invite. We shall henceforth, as never before in our foreign mission effort, be fulfilling the Commission which prescribes mission service to all the world and to every creature. The Bible for our tactics, our Baptist brethren throughout the world for our compatriots, the map of the world our field of ac- tivity, we shall go from victory to victory until Christ shall reign and men everywhere shall be brothers in the bonds of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. 56 MISSIONARY MESSAGES New Territory. The following countries are included in the Foreign Mis- sion Board's new European and Asiatic mission field: Spain — Square miles 194,783 Population 19,000,000 Baptist church membership 700 Jugoslavia — Square miles 73,243 Population 10,013,317 Baptist church membership 600 Hungary — Square miles 53,011 Population 7,000,000 Baptist church membership 11,000 Roumania — Square miles 96,183 Population 13,946,207 Baptist church membership 17,000 Russian Ukraine and Territory East thereof — Square miles 779,703 Population 77,870,500 Baptist church membership — (impossible to ascertain at this time). Siberia — Square miles 6,294,119 Population 29,141,500 Baptist church membership 10,000 Syria and Palestine — Square miles 160,740 Population 3,133,500 Baptist church membership, about 100 Total New Territory of Southern Baptists, approximately — Square miles 7,600,859 Total population 16,075,000 CHAPTER IV BAPTIST MISSIONS IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER HOW can we impart the unchangeable gospel to the changing world and gain for the missionary enter- prise all the advantages that conditions offer? This is the big missionary problem now on the hands of the churches of Christ and their mission boards. The comparative suc- cess of the missionary enterprise and the welfare of the world to generations are conditioned upon the solution of this problem. Perhaps a brief review of some of the elements char- acteristic of the New World Order, elements indeed which make the new order, may help us to appraise whatever suggestions may be made for the solution of our problem. There is, all will admit, an extraordinariness about the present, whether one considers this to be an omen of good or one of ill. School children have seen changes take place in the world which octogenarians have not hitherto seen, and among these changes are some which are more sig- nificant than the remaking of national boundaries, maps and geographies. They affect the fundamental things in the social, political and intellectual life of men, and there is in them the sweep of internationalism, interracialism and universalism. The intellectual attitude, the moral ideals, the controlling motives and ultimate aims of men are af- fected. Christian missions must now certainly, and hence- forth probably, take account of this changed attitude and new human temper, and, I should say, must seek to take advantage of these because we believe that the changes which have formed the new world order make opportunity rather than difficulty for missions. This we believe to be true in particular of Baptist missions. The changes have for the 57 58 MISSIONARY MESSAGES most part been salutary. They have tended to produce a more cordial hospitality for the simplicities of religion as ex- pounded in the Baptist message. But of this we can judge better with some of the characteristics of the new world order before us. What then are some of the marks which provoke speakers and writers everywhere to designate the present as a new world order? 1. There has issued out of the past half dozen years a new realization of a community of human interests. Re- cent history constitutes a commentary upon such texts as "No man liveth unto himself," "Am I my brother's keeper?" and "Who is my neighbor?" No nation is safe in its in- difference to the welfare of any other nation. It has been found that aloofness is impossible to any, that anything which concerns one concerns all. The whole world is af- fected by the woes or the depravity of any single member of the family of nations. The War has given a new birth to the conviction of racial unity. It is, however, superficial observation which draws from these facts the conclusion that national distinctions have grown faint while racial unity has grown strong. The truth is that along with racial unity has emerged vigorous national consciousness and self-assertion in every nation and racial group the world over. There is a new glorying in nation- ality and the racial family group. There is not the least probability of a great merger, a blend of nations in which the original racial differentials will not be distinguishable. Indeed, it would be difficult to determine whether racial unity or national independence has received a greater im- petus from the War. Nevertheless, the fact stands out and cannot be mistaken, that an element of the new world order is a common recognition of a mutualness of interests from which no nation is exempt. 2. A recognition of race obligation is another mark of a NEW WORLD ORDER 59 new order. There is not only a realization that there is no escape from the consequences of wrong and ill anywhere, but a deep and idealistic concern for the unfortunate every- where. Men have gone beyond the self-interest which is concerned for the common weal and woe of nations. They have had their moral sensibilities aroused and a new altru- ism has bloomed on the tree of humanity. There never was such response and outpouring of compassion as has been seen in recent months. This has not been produced by an instinct for self-protection nor the fear of peril. The record-breaking philanthropies are not born of a fearful looking for of judgment, nor practiced as a means of appeas- ing Fate. They are rather expositions of Paul's words, "I am debtor." A sense of moral responsibility for men every- where has settled upon true and thoughtful men with a weight that was never experienced before. 3. Another mark of the new world order is a deeper persuasion of the immanence of God. Men called upon God while the battle raged, and somehow there settled in the minds of soldiers on the field, statesmen in senate cham- bers, men at their desks and in the shops that God was "not far from every one of us." Millions who hitherto were aliens and without God in the world have come to believe that He is encountered in the affairs of nations, and that we must give account to Him even in this world. Some men, like H. G. Wells, have their brains so enmeshed in a net of philosophic cobwebs of their own spinning that they can not very intelligently describe their new consciousness of God, but many to whom God was before the War but a name for an unreal or vastly distant being, have to-day a persuasion of His awful immanence. When the preacher talks of Jehovah to these men now his message is not heard as a Norse tale. There is almost terrible realization of God's impending judgments over men and nations who forget Him. They have seen a nation attempt to abrogate the moral code and believe that they have seen God's power and witnessed His judgments. To such henceforth 6o MISSIONARY MESSAGES "Earth is crammed with heaven, And every common bush aflame with God." This persuasion is expanding among men and nations. 4, Another element is a new realization of the superi- ority of evangelical Christianity among the religions of the world and the sects of Christendom. The nations found in the W)ar no other such reliable ally as the evangelical churches and the sufferers from war have no other such friends. It is under the preaching of the gospel and in the atmosphere of worship that we are to find the source and impulse of disinterested service for country and the world. We have witnessed in the momentous years of the War a demonstration of the value of evangelical Chris- tianity upon which historians will in the future certainly dwell. While the Pope was playing the diplomat, evangel- ical preachers and churches were making positive both their patriotism and their Christianity by floating Liberty Bonds, equipping Red Cross corps, and preaching Christ in the camps, trenches and hospitals. No nation has a dependable ally like unto an evangelical citizenship. The War has left no question as to the patriotism of such citizens. Roman Catholic Ireland and Roman Catholic Canada have by their behavior during the War brought a reproach upon Romanism which it will never remove by all the camouflage of which the papacy is pastmaster, nor by any plausible resolutions which truculent or hoodwinked congressmen may under the influence of Rome's agents get through National Assem- bly. No nation has a basis of patriotism or high idealism in a consistent Roman Catholic population. This com- panion fact to the dependableness of evangelical citizenship must be placed with the things which frame up a situation on which men are reaching conclusions and which impart distinguishing characteristics to the age. 5. Democracy, the ideal and goal of society, is another mark of the new order. Note that I say, the goal of so- ciety is democracy. Democracy is a thing hoped for. There have been disillusionments as well as experiments in de- mocracy during the eventful months which have elapsed NEW WORLD ORDER 6i since October, 1918. The world will never again abandon the ideal of democracy, but sensible men will not, in the light of events, over-idealize concerning it nor think it feasi- ble unduly to hasten its adoption as a form of political life for every nation. Democracy is not a present possibility for all nations and classes, nor is it a panacea for all the ills of any division or class of society. Men must be pre- pared for democracy and democracy must be reinforced wherever it is put in operation. The world of to- day gives striking instances of premature experiments in democracy. These facts must be admitted, but they do not demand the abandonment of the ideal, nor the lowering of the standard for a world democracy which shall free men and nations from autocracies and hierarchies in politics and religion. It is simply a statement of irrelevancies when we say that you can not have a pure religious democracy under a political autocracy, nor have a perfect political democracy with religious hierarchy. Collision in either case is inevitable at certain points. But men have found a political guiding star and they will follow it until diffi- culties in the way of democracy are removed and hope of it is fulfilled in state and in religion. 6. The loud insistence upon the rational, spiritual, and practical in religion is another characteristic of the times. The demand is made and sooner or later all religions will have to square to it. Every step in intellectual advance- ment, all attainment in spiritual psychology and the practical humanities adds force to this demand. Nothing in the name of religion will eventually be tolerated which is either irrational, unspiritual or does not "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." No hoary system or venerable sanction will save religion from the crucible. No ecclesiastical sys- tem will be able to preserve the lifeless and inefficacious forms which characterize certain religious bodies, however perfect and formable the system and ornate its rituals. Religious magic, which is divorced from intelligence and lacks power to produce spiritual results, will be dragged into light which it can not bear. Only that religion which 62 MISSIONARY MESSAGES is validated by transparent spiritual life and commensurate deeds of human service can survive the new day which is breaking everywhere. II These are some of the characteristics of the New World Order. What bearing have they upon missions, and Baptist missions in particular? Christianity now enters a new competition with all other religions, and evangelical Christianity has strengthened its rivalry with Romanism. The superstitions of heathenism and Romanism alike will suffer under the application of the new standards of judgment which the age has set up for religion. Men have experienced a consciousness of God and have become aware of reality in religion, the necessity for religion, and no substitute or superficiality will satisfy the leaders and expounders of thought henceforth. The souls of men have had such experiences during the past six years that only the great religious realities can meet their needs. Gradually but certainly this disposition of mind and heart will permeate the masses everywhere. It has been found, too, that nothing but a righteousness begotten of direct response to the immanent God can guarantee the moral foundation of the world and secure society from other and greater catastrophes. The strength of society and the nation is to be secured through religious vitalization, and evangelical Christianity must impart this. Therefore, to win in the field of missions, evangelical Christianity has only to possess itself of its native power, release itself from all devitalizing accretions of ecclesiastical systems and of mesmeric rites and discharge in full measure its missionary duty. Christianity was endowed at the begin- ning for service in such an hour as this. Kept in its primi- tive purity and freedom, it is equal to its new tasks. In making the plea for Christian unity, some writers and speakers have inveighed against transplanting to the mission fields the inheritances from historic controversies, local and NEW WORLD ORDER 63 national provincialisms. Good advice that, if only it is applied where it is needed ; but those who make promiscuous application of it do not show the courage of true seers and prophets. Let the reformer on these lines stand up before the guilty sects and say, "Thou art the denomination." Those denominations which have cherished inheritances from sectarian controversies or partisan ecclesiastical courts must disrobe themselves of these outworn and mildewed garments. The friends who are raising the call that provincialisms be discarded, are but repeating the demand which Bap- tists have made from time immemorial, only these speak- ers and writers have not had the courage to designate the guilty parties and frankly to give honor to whom honor is due. All the controversy Baptists have ever had with other Christians has been over this very matter of unscrip- tural inheritances from periods, localities, parties, historical creeds, customs, and ecclesiasticisms. Let the champion of union and the indigenous church give us credit for antici- pating them by ages and for a consistent history, and join us in protest against these, validating their sincerity by abandoning superfluous forms which have in the course of history and controversy attached to them. We desire to see on the mission fields a church unafllicted by accretions from any source; but that which mars a church in China mars it here. A Chinese characteristic attached to a church is quite as indefensible as a British characteristic, Italian characteristic, or American characteristic. To condemn inherited nationalisms in religion and deliberately to go about encouraging others to bequeath to their posterity those of their race or nation is anomalous. But this is a crucible age, and religion will be tried as by fire. The hearts of men ache for religious certainty and reality, and having learned what it is, they will have nothing else. The threefold test of rationality, spirituality and a practical ministry will reduce Christianity in many quarters to greater simplicity. There is no escaping consequences. iThe day will declare it. 64 MISSIONARY MESSAGES But what of Baptist missions in the new world order? It is obvious, I think, that not by so much as one count do these facts make any difficulty for Baptists. Some of them make new opportunities for Baptist missions. The field is an open one for Baptists if they are ready to break camp and enter upon a mighty world campaign. The cur- rents of human thought are favorable for the Baptist mes- sage. Their faith is the nearest religious counterpart of the demands which the new age is making upon religion. The things which the leaders of men to-day are insisting upon are in many great matters the very things upon which Baptists have always insisted. No one can more strongly or consistently plead for personal, intelligent choice in reli- gion, personal and vital experiences of God, spirituality in religion, and a pure democracy, than Baptists have pro- claimed throughout their history. If these are marks of the new age, then the Baptist message meets the require- ments. They have never known any other than self-govern- ing and self-propagating churches. Their appeal has not been to Bunyan or Spurgeon, to history or ecclesiastical court, but to Paul and Jesus, to the divine example and the divine Word. They have admitted the validity of nothing for which there could not be shown a "thus saith the Lord," and they have always been willing to be called before this court of final appeal, the inspired Word of God, for an examination of their faith. The new world order brings them their missionary opportunity. The demands which it makes upon religion do not prove embarrassing to intelligent and consistent Baptists. They have no creeds to revise, no autocracies to apologize for, no ecclesiastical system to reform, and no mere traditional sins or conventionalities laden their missionary bark. No man or set of men can champion a greater respect for human personality, abso- lute amenableness to the voice of God, provide a better guarantee for spiritual religion, or advocate a more thor- oughgoing democracy than Baptists are now preaching from more than 50,000 pulpits in America and have preached to their fellow men from the first days of the republic, not NEW WORLD ORDER 65 to mention their witness-bearing to the Truth in other lands. To these things they have given their martyrs while yet others were transplanting in America the seeds of old-world controversies against Baptist protest. It is now these latter, and not the Baptists, who need to abandon sectarianisms and make their churches indigenous in America after the true New Testament pattern before calling on others to do this on the mission fields. Ill But what have Baptists to do to meet the requirements of the times, to justify their contention and demonstrate on the field of missions that their faith is a necessity and a remedy for a world in need? How shall Baptists make use of this new opportunity and set up in the midst of the nations the kingdom of God? 1. They must proclaim their message, and they must do this without timidity and with evangeHstic passion. Their simple message contains the richest values of the gospel. These must be imparted to a distraught world with all haste and diligence. In all important elements their message is a counterpart of the needs and the demands which obtain in the new world order. Victory for mis- sions is in the missionary message conditioned only upon the faithfulness and passion with which it is preached and the divine presence which is guaranteed to such loyalty and devotion. Positive preaching and positive preaching only has victories to its credit in any land or age. Any slighting emphasis upon the elementary principles of the gospel, any hesitation to declare the full counsel, whether due to deference or to fear, any attempt to advance under the standard of an interrogation point, will cost Baptists the sublimest opportunity they have ever faced and the subllmest now given to any religious party. If after two thousand years we have no certain, positive missionary mes- sage, we are in a pitiful plight. But we have, thank God, for we have the original Commission without alterations, 66 MISSIONARY MESSAGES additions or accretions. The imperious mandate of the Book and of the times in which we live is, "Preach the Word." With this sword of the Spirit we shall win our victories. The missionary enterprise includes a multiform work. Christianity is as complex and comprehensive in one land as another. The life of God in the soul expresses itself in a varied human service. It will find channels of bless- ings for society in China as it has in America. There is nothing which conditions life that will not feel the influ- ence of the divine life begotten by the Word wherever that life takes root in any nation. Of this there can be no question. But the foreign missionary enterprise is dealing with primary things. It is set for the introduction of the leaven of the gospel into the society of China, India, Africa. To secure the connection of the Christian dynamic with humanity on the mission field is the first and main thing with which the missionary and missionary agency are charged. Whatever is indispensable to this initial work is a part of missionary operations. Those things which lie beyond these requirements, although they belong to a full and complete Christian society, have, to say the very least, secondary claim upon mission boards and missionaries. The gospel is itself a creative and habilitating force in society. A sufficient supply of pure gospel will transform any com- munity, improve sanitation, raise social standards and start up the necessary forms of social service, even though the preachers give themselves "continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Lord." The missionary on the ground will find his relation to social questions, but the motive of his going, like the terms of the Commission under which he goes, takes these things for granted. They are consequential and not primary. The missionary goes as an evangelist and not as a reformer, but his evangel is transforming, which is far better. Better houses, better clothes, better conditions of life generally spring up along the path which the missionary's feet have trod and along whose borders he has scattered the precious NEW WORLD ORDER (y-j seeds of the gospel. The man who makes it his vocation to call men into fellowship with God will create a clean and wholesome society whether he ever heard of a social club or read a book on sociology. To make these latter things the engaging concern in a missionary's life is to court disaster for the missionary enterprise. This simply is not the scheme which Jesus announced for the missionary enter- prise, and hence must fail. The transforming, fertilizing gospel is to be the chief concern of those who seek to save a lost world. We put it down with deliberation after having studied with some diligence missionary problems at home and abroad, that if there is cause for alarm anywhere and the success of the missionary enterprise is threatened from any quar- ter, it is from this, that a few schools from which mission- aries are turned out are reticent concerning the message which the mission boards are appointed to promulgate, and which missionaries are commissioned to proclaim. And next to this is the tutoring which substitutes social service "leadership" and big office administration at home and abroad for the simple evangelistic method of the New Tes- tament. The Baptist denomination cannot meet its mission- ary obligation and opportunity, nor perpetuate itself through men who have been inoculated with such ideals for mis- sionary service. Wisely, Baptists have always made ample room for independent thought and speech, both in and without the denomination. The day is now too near the noontide for any one to introduce dark inquisitional methods in dealing with either schools or men; but, if we have a mission, we have a message. I would say we have a mis- sion because we have a message. Uncertainty, doubt, equivocation, or reticence concerning the fundamental elements of that message and the distin- guishing principles of the denomination are marks of neither superior intellectual ability or independence, nor a sign of qualification for service in the new world order. This world order is challenging Baptists and daring them to prove that their message and their method are equal to a great oppor- 68 MISSIONARY MESSAGES tunity. We ought not to be cheated out of the complete demonstration that we are making. That any one in re- sponsible denominational position should from unwillingness or whatever cause be reticent about telling what he believes concerning the constituent elements in the Christian mission- ary message or articles of Baptist faith does not savor of candid dealing with his constituency nor comport with the contention for freedom of speech. The peril is too great for reticence concerning the missionary message to be popular- ized as a standard among us. The missionary is a pro- claimer. Candor of soul is a mark of his genuineness and worth. Those who deal with young missionaries should reflect that they are to be the bearers of messages of life and the representatives of the missionary conscience of the home constituency. It is men with a message and a con- science for it who will let loose among the nations of the earth revolutionizing, energizing forces and open springs of human ministry. The triumphant and joyful acclaim of one of the first missionaries of this gospel was, "In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." The gospel fecundates human souls. The essential elements of that gospel are too few and too unmistakably set forth in the New Testament for anybody to qualify for missionary service who does not know them, believe them, and in conscience avow them. 2. Baptists of the world must find each other and agree upon coordinated and concerted effort for the proclamation of their message. We are to deal with a new world order. The challenge and opportunity is universal in magnitude. No single group or organization of Baptists is equal to such a task. The full effort of all at their best and in concert of action will be required to take care of the opportunities which the world offers. Speaking now to Southern Baptists in particular, I would say that we can neither justify our independence of inter- denominational alliance, nor demonstrate the value of a denominational program if we do not set ourselves to a truly great missionary service and seek to coordinate the NEW WORLD ORDER 69 missionary effort of the respective groups of Baptists in all the world. We have by a firm, but for the most part broth- erly and dignified course gained much by declining to be entangled by any of the big, overlapping, extravagant and ineffective organizations. These organizations have crowded us into relief before the eyes of the world, and now the world is waiting to see what we will do and what we have to say which is of missionary value to the world. If indeed we have a message, and we covet opportunity for great service, nothing more fortunate could have befallen us than the present challenge, but nothing less than great service is becoming and nothing else will save us from the reproach of men. But again, if we are to render such a service, a Baptist entente cordiate is necessary. Doubtless, there will be found many difficulties and discouragements in working our terms and plans of cooperation, but courage and grace under the stress of great emergency and opportunity in mis- sionary service will find a way. Europe illustrates the necessity for this alliance. The great war has lifted to the eyes of the world and left on our hands a great mission field in Europe. Already important posts are manned by heroes of our faith, but these are inse- curely held by these small intrepid companies at different p'oints on the continent. These cannot hold the lines and advance them without our help, and we cannot do it ignor- ing them. A practical plan must be worked out by the administrative agencies of the denomination here and there by which the combined influence of the Baptists of America and the scattered groups of Baptists in Europe may be cen- tered at imperiled and important positions. There are thrill- ing possibilities in such an effort. The vision of the whole Baptist brotherhood in concerted action for the promulgation of our missionary message throughout this modern world haunts one day and night. Southern Baptists have no de- signs upon any group of their brethren anywhere except to reen force them in effectual witness to the truth with which the denomination is entrusted. Among the many needs of Europe, the need of the gospel yo MISSIONARY MESSAGES is the greatest. As great as is temporal want among the people of Europe, they need the gospel of Christ more than philanthropies. The War has not ended war because it has not slain jealousy, suspicion, envy, hate, and greed. The War was the result of an attempt at salvation by education. It proved futile and disastrous. Already the signs are evident that salvation by democracy is equally futile. What is the effective remedy ? What can go to the root of moral being and cure such faults as enmity, hate, greed, suspicion ? We have the answer, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life," "If the truth shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Christ Jesus only is made unto men and nations "wisdom and righteousness and sanctifica- tion and redemption." Great issues are pending in Europe and great opportunities are afforded Amxcrican Christianity. Our Baptist family-tree is rooted in Europe and we need to recognize our obligation to our brothers who are on the old estate. A recent book by C. H. Robinson tells the story of the conversion of Europe. In its remarkable condensation of a long period of European missionary history, it cites the fact that the conversion of continental peoples was super- ficial. The author says, "The war demonstrates the truth of the assertion that the conversion of Europe as a whole has been superficial, and that its reconversion is a task that has to be faced by the Christian church." In the collapse of old civilizations we have the failure of human experiments and the token that the world may now get a new start. If the right forces can be applied to the moral impulses and powers of men a beautiful and fruitful human- ity may grow out of the pulverized civilizations of Europe. We believe tremendously in the Christian potentialities of Germany if, instead of a semi-conversion, this wonderful people can be regenerated by the power of God. France, too, may yet furnish missionaries for the evangelical faith as many and as strong as she has furnished Romanism. American Baptists dare not stand aloof and look with indifference upon religious conditions in Europe. Our NEW WORLD ORDER ^l brethren there need to hear the shout of comradeship. Most European Baptists hold in great jealousy a sound evan- gelicalism. American Baptists can furnish much mate- rial aid and by their spirit of brotherliness and evangelistic spirit impassion their European brothers in the task of soul-winning. CHAPTER V BAPTIST WOMEN IN THE BAPTIST WORLD PROGRAM MEN may not always have been frank enough to say SO, but they have ahvays known their need of women in every good cause. As our conception of the sphere of Christian duty has expanded and conviction has deepened that Christian principles and standards should be applied to all the activities and relations of life, the sense of this need of woman's help has increased correspondingly. It remains true that her influence is still needed in the home and that she should there find her supreme opportunity to achieve her greatest triumphs. She can from this seat of empire extend the beneficence of her reign while contributing to the security of her throne. Woman must give first attention to the life and influences within the walls of her home, for if she neglects to do this, there is left no one to guard this citadel of civilization. But in our jealousy for the home we have become concerned for the atmosphere which surrounds it, and woman can help men make this atmosphere pure. She is needed to help fix the social life and standards which belt the home about. Operating from her home, made full and complete by her influence, she can effect results in community welfare. We have learned that moral standards cannot be maintained anywhere without her help. Beyond the pale of her positive Christian influence begin the arid or miasmic moral zones. Where she does not reenforce men in fixing and applying moral standards, these are low and both men and women suffer in consequence. It is evident to all discerning observers that women are both victims and agents of the immoralities and vices which afflict civilization. There is no blinking the fact that woman is both held down by low moral standards and that she help's to make low moral standards for others. This is a 72 BAPTIST WOMEN 73 fact so significant and consequential that discussion of it should not be avoided through timidity or false deference. If men or women fail in wisdom and courage in facing this fact, both will pay a heavy penalty. Men cannot rise in the moral scale without the help of women and no man will long be content to live on a low moral plane without the companionship of woman. He cannot rise without her, and without her example and influence lacks motive to try. Her influence is positively good or it is positively bad. She either lifts up or she pulls down. There is in civilization no moral problem which does not concern her both as an object and an agent. When we come to consider religious life and relations, the evidence of woman's influence and the indispensableness of her help are equally impressive. Her influence sweetens church fellowship. There is no complete church life without her. The devout women promote devotion. They incite worship, chasten the spirit of man, and inspire Christian activity. The larger the religious program, the more im- portant it is that women shall find their relation to it. We do not propose to discuss just what the New Testament teaches as to woman's personal and officml relations to pub- lic and organized Christianity. The book which expounds the New Testament on that relationship has not yet been written, though it is needed. Conditions and circumstances challenge the times to produce a man with sufficient courage and sufficiently void of prepossessions to interpret exactly the New Testament as to what is the difference, if any, be- tween the personal privileges, rights, and opportunities to which the New Testament admits women, and the limit which it fixes upon her official relation to organised Chris- tianity. We are, however, discussing the value and indis- pensableness of woman's help In religious life and work, about which there Is no dispute. The expanding work of the churches lays claims upon our women and makes their help increasingly necessary if this work is not to suffer. Turn your eyes to the mission fields. During recent months Baptists have broken new ground and begun a new 74 MISSIONARY MESSAGES chapter in the history of Foreign Missions. It is doubtful that there has ever been a more significant three years in the history of the Baptist people than that which has followed the close of the Great War. We have enlarged the bounds of our operations. We have made a missionary program which is worthy of a great people. The process of setting up this program is well advanced. It is, therefore, an opportune time to lay on the hearts of our sisters this greater task in which their help is needed, and in the promotion of which they must have an honorable and important part and bear great responsibility. My own thinking has undergone changes, and my heart has felt a burden which it never felt before, as I have studied woman's condition on some of the foreign mission fields, and have come better to understand her deep distress and needs, her capacity, and her intimate relation to all that we are trying to do on the behalf of the nations ; and I have learned to think of our women at home as the indispensable helpers in making Foreign Missions the effectual relief for what I have seen. With my growing acquaintance with mis- sion fields, mission work, and mission problems, nothing has impressed me more than the woman problem in Foreign Missions and Christian civilization. Turn then, will you, to the expanded and expanding mis- sion fields. Take a map of the world and look up the coun- tries in which our Foreign Mission Board is now at work. Make a careful study of the expanse and population of Japan, China, Africa, Mexico, the South American Repub- lics, Italy, and the nations of Europe, and our fields in the Near East. Study the strategy in missionary conquest of Europe which includes the Balkans and the distressed but potential country of Russia. If you would get a still more adequate impression of the Baptist World Program in which the Baptist people have taken their place, look up the coun- tries in which Northern Baptists, Canadian Baptists, British, German, Swedish, and other Baptist groups, are seeking to extend the borders of the Kingdom of God. At last our Baptist people are a world power. They have in their BAPTIST WOMEN 75 faith and devotion to Christ a worid league through which they can secure concerted action throughout their scattered ranks, and close and concentrated impact of influence wher- ever need and opportunity challenge them throughout the world. We shall henceforth as never before be fulfilling the Great Commission; we shall preach the gospel in all the world, and more truly than ever to "every creature." We must, however, understand that in a campaign so great we need the steady support of the women. We shall quail before our enemies and victories will be suspended if woman's in- fluence is not constant and strong in support of our advanc- ing lines ; and we shall fail to carry into the civilizations on the mission fields the healing of the gospel of Christ which men and women both need, if our women do not there illus- trate the graces of our Christianity and dispense as only women can, a ministry of compassion and gentleness. These vast mission fields present needs of women which the women at home dare not ignore, nor fail to qualify themselves to meet. We would point out some facts which seem to us call for the thoughtful consideration of our women, and suggest their place in the Baptist World Program. The Place of Women on the Field in This Program 1. Women are discriminated against on all mission fields. In no heathen, Mohammedan, or Catholic country in the world has woman risen above severe limitations upon her personality. She has not and quite probably will not escape the most cruel discrimination without the help of Chris- tianity. There is no exception to the rule in all the world, although the injustice varies here and there. It is in the lands of evangelical Christianity, and in these lands alone, that woman's personality is reverenced, her rights respected, her capacities recognized, and the opportunities for full self- 76 MISSIONARY MESSAGES expression and the most fruitful service to the race are accorded her. In other lands she is not admitted to equality, nor are her powers recognized to be equal with those of men. In many heathen lands her youth is bartered. Men buy as many wives as they can support, and young girls are at a premium in this most cruel of all slave markets. The wife must not companion with her husband on equality. She must see that her husband is fed, but keep in the background. In Mohammedan lands she is not allowed to enter the mosque. Her presence would defile the place of religious worship. In Africa she is the burden bearer. In China she is maimed with the beginning of childhood and hobbles through Hfe in torture. In countries which Rome dominates she is too frequently given dress and ornaments only to make her a more attractive plaything, and not because of peculiar veneration for her personality. Refined, cultured womanhood, dowered with the rights of her personality and the op'portunities for its development, are found in those lands only where evangelical Christianity has broken or prevented the dominance of heathenism and Catholicism. In all other lands she is maimed in mind and soul, and civilization suffers in consequence. 2. Women suffer disabilities in consequence of false re- ligion. They are victims of disease which superstition fosters. Their own bodies and the bodies of their children suffer because of retarded science and of quack doctors. In America we have one docto-r to every 2,000 of our population. In China there is one doctor to two millions of the population, and in some provinces one doctor to five millions. In many districts of China where men, women, and children suffer the physical consequences of heathen- ism and the low moral standards which it fosters, patients in desperate need of quick attention are as far from a doctor as San Francisco is from New York, if we take into account the time that it will take to get the patient to the doctor. The days of journey required to place a patient in a Christian hospital are in many cases consumed in wheel- barrow travel which adds to the desperateness of the case, BAPTIST WOMEN ^y and frequently costs the life of the patient en route. Heath- enism does not build hospitals, nor train skillful doctors, nor compound healing medicines, nor prepare nurses for the sick. Native doctors more often aggravate disease and increase the torture of the suffering than relieve it. Sev- enty million women in China are on their way through life with bound feet, and native doctors see in this nothing incongruous with their profession. Native priests offer no rebuke of parental cruelty which maims children for life. Women in heathen and papal lands are the victims of ignorance. In India one woman in a hundred can read. In China one in a thousand, and in some parts perhaps ten in a million. Even in Continental Europe, where Roman Catholicism and Greek Catholicism are strong and have had centuries in which to work out their ideals among some of the most capacious people of the globe, the education of women is in the background. There has been grown no conscience for the training of w^omen and no admission of a place for her in the potential forces of Christianity. The progeny of Romanism as well as heathenism is ignorance, superstition, and the severest limitation upon personality, and especially upon the personality of women. Perhaps American Christianity has no greater task than to revolu- tionize the thinking of men in Europe with regard to woman's education and her preparation for Christian service on the Continent. 3. Along with these facts take this other : The women and children are the first beneficiaries of missions on all fields. The missionary visitor, usually a woman, carries the first light of Christianity into the desolate homes of women and children. These unfortunate, neglected, and oppressed ones thus have their first acquaintance with a new tender- ness and personal consideration which fairly sets their aching hearts aquiver. They are recognized as somebody! They are treated as human creatures. They have in such visits and in the ministry which the missionary practices the first token of a religion that admits women to the full privileges and bestows on her the copious blessings of religion. The 78 MISSIONARY MESSAGES sick are carried by missionaries to hospitals and nursed with tender care and affectionate regard as if they had claim upon respect and love. New hopes are revived; a new light is kindled in the eye. As one by one they find the explanation of these tender ministries, they yield up their hearts joyfully to the Saviour, becoming the possessors of His love. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first converts, and the majority, are women and children. Say all that you can say for the work of the Young Men's Christian Association, you must confess it a defective organization in fulfilling the Commission which commands that the gospel shall be preached to every creature. The Y. M. C. A., avowedly without direct mission to women and children, overlooks the greatest sufferers and those who bear the consequences of greatest neglect and injustice. The churches of Christ, with their full-orbed missionary program to expound the Great Commission, are the only agencies that will ever correct the chief ills which heathenism and Romanism im>- pose upon the race. 4. Another fact : Women are the chief conservators of religion. This applies to papal and pagan faiths, and can be depended upon for evangelical Christianity. Says Dr. Groesbeck, "The strongholds of heathenism are in the heart of women. These strongholds cannot be stormed, but must be taken by milder means of love and service." That religion which neglects womanhood will itself be neglected finally. We shall never conquer Japan, nor China, nor Africa, nor Europe for Christ until this stronghold of woman's love and fidelity is taken, and we shall never take this without the help of our sisters and comrades in service. No one is so well fitted for effectual ministry to women and children as woman. 5. Women hold the strategic positions on the mission fields. They hold guard over the home and over the im- pressionable years of childhood. We shall never kindle altar fires in the dark lands without her help, and these fires will never be smothered if her religious enthusiasm fans BAPTIST WOMEN 79 them. Is the decline of family altars in the Qiristian homes of America expository of a new type of womanhood? If it is, that fact is the greatest rebuke to Christian women I know. Let us not make the mistake of supposing that the humble place which women in heathen lands hold is indicative of a feeble personality. I assure you on the observations of all who have made observation in China, that w^omen there are comparatively as potential as in America. The effort to suppress her personality has maimed but has not slain the innate force of womanhood which dwells in every Chi- nese woman. She is not a figurehead. She is a victim of a false social order, and has a false respect for social custom which makes her submissive to a degree to assumed mascu- line superiority and to conform too readily to social abuse. Under such conditions you will not understand her unless you look beneath custom. There you will find many signs of her irrepressible force of character. A story told me by a missionary in China will perhaps illustrate my meaning. A Chinese gentleman asked the missionary, "Do your men in America rule the women, or do the women rule the men?" The missionary replied, ''Well, the men think they rule the women, but as a matter of fact the women boss the men." The Chinese gentleman's face lighted up, and he said, "The same way in China!" Women suffer their feet to be boimd in China not be- cause they are too weak to resist the will of man, but for the same reason that women in America dress outlandishly : they are slaves to custom, and in that respect show their chief weakness. Carry the gospel of Jesus into the homes, into the domestic and social life of women, and you have touched the springs of civilization and taken a strategic stronghold for Christian missionary advance. Christian women, who themselves have been emancipated from social slavery, are to be God's messengers and woman's emanci- pators in China and in other lands. 6. Christian womanhood on the mission field becomes the most convincing and irrefutable polemic of our Christianity. 8o MISSIONARY MESSAGES Women in China, India, and Africa will repeat the story of womanhood in America, and by their redeemed personal- ities and the spiritual transfiguration of their very bodies become the greatest argument that Christianity has yet put forth. The transfigured life of women under the power of the gospel and the spirit of Christ has proved and will prove the incontrovertible, irresistible apologetic for Chris- tianity. Men have tinder this power illustrated the virtues of Christianity, but women adorn the moral virtues with the Christian graces, and those who see the transfiguration, know that something more than self-will or self-respect or self-interest has operated to account for it. In the days when Christianity was first penetrating the surrounding heathen darkness, an old heathen philosopher said, looking upon the Christian women, "What women you Christians have !" No man can look upon transformed and transfigured Christian womanhood and not wonder at the marvels of the grace of God. II The Part of Christian Women at Home in This World Program The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Con- vention has undertaken as a part of its task to reach and uplift millions of unfortunate women — women who possess the potentialities of womanhood and who are as capable as women in America of adorning the doctrines of God. The millions in China who hobble on deformed feet and broken bones about their daily task, the millions of girl widows in India, and the millions of burden-bearers in Africa, call to us in the very pathos of their suffering for a gospel of woman's liberation and glorification. Millions in Europe who have been the severest sufiferers from the War, and who, bereft of son and husband, and left as the only pro- viders for those who were too young to be drafted, hold out bony hands and look with hungry eyes to us while their BAPTIST WOMEN 8i little children famish for milk and cry for bread. Other millions in Mohammedan lands denied satisfaction for their natural religious cravings and allowed only the crumbs of even a false religious faith, make their silent appeal to the compassions of womanhood in America. Millions in South America and other Catholic lands are the victims of super- stition and the guile of priests who have no fineness of soul to appreciate a woman's nature. These present need and opportunity w^hich should at once break the Qiristian woman's heart and enlist her practical cooperation in mis- sionary service for womanhood. What can the American Christian woman do ? 1. Well, she can for one thing face the facts as they are. I admonish American women that they do not blink the facts, either as these facts represent the conditions of wom- anhood on the field, or conditions and duty at home. For instance, face this fact : You have comforts, know joys, and claim privileges to which your sisters are strangers. In every land where the Foreign Mission Board is preaching the gospel women are strangers to comforts which you enjoy daily. In their neglect and under cruel discrimina- tion, they go about their menial tasks with aching hearts and with unsatisfied aspirations to which long misfortune cannot quite reconcile them. Face then the fact of your superior circumstance and the duty to the unfortunate which your comforts and privileges impose. 2. Another fact is : The world cannot be safe and wom- anhood safeguarded anywhere if womanhood is neglected anywhere. More than this, America cannot remain Chris- tian if the rest of the world is left either pagan or papal. And more still, America will become heathen if heathen womanhood is neglected in the lands where the majority of women live. The women of America must share their privileges or lose them. The infection of unregenerated, degraded, and stunted womanhood of the great Continents of Asia and Europe will certainly reach America if the Christianity of America does not reach the women of these Continents. Indeed, an infection and contamination has 82 MISSIONARY MESSAGES already begun here. A day at Ellis Island with the deposit there of European women and children with the marks of physical, mental, and moral neglect upon them, would startle some of our refined and cautious ladies, as would a case of bubonic plague discovered in their back alley. The great World War has broken down many seawalls, and the tides will henceforth roll in upon us from every land. There is no quarantining America against the moral ideals and re- ligious ideas of other nations. Our safety must be found in the Christianization of America and in such Christiani- zation as shall enlist American Christianity in the religious sanitation of the world. Another hundred years* neglect of the womanhood of heathen and papal lands will threaten the liberties and welfare of women in all lands. 3. American women must qualify for this world service. They must resist pagan ideals which infest their own land, and some customs which outheathen heathenism. Lax mar- riages, marriage laws, cheap divorces, and those things which produce them, the cheap showhouse, and everything else which schools the young in vice and breaks down moral dis- crimination, lowers moral standards, and thus imperils soci- ety, must be dealt with effectually. And, with all the boast- ing of men, nobody can deal with these as eff"ectually as can women. There was never a greater challenge to Christian womanhood than that which is presented to educated Chris- tian women in America to-day. The educated and profes- sedly Christian women of America can, if they will, domi- nate the social life of this land, including social pleasures, public entertainments, feminine dress, and the rest. Have our women brains enough, force of character and courage enough, to put on a social program which is consistent with high moral principles and with Christian profession? Can they make social demands and create a social atmosphere in which cheap and initial immoralities shall wither like tender grass before frost or fire? They can do it if they will, and nobody else can do it. Women must do this in self-protection at home, and to qualify for service on behalf of their sisters abroad. BAPTIST WOMEN 83 4. Another thing: Women at home can while saving themselves and saving their daughters and their sons, reach out hands to their sisters in other lands and inspire a min- istry to womanhood in all in our churches. The women of the dark lands await woman's ministry. They know that women can understand them better than men who are made of coarser fiber, and to whom God did not give the keener sensibilities which attune women to great and re- sponsive service. My sisters, continents of sorrowing, suf- fering, dwarfed, and maimed womanhood are waiting for your Christian ministries, your love, your sympathy, and to welcome your best ideals. Responding to such a call, you can strengthen the missionary purpose in your church, and the missionary desire and ability of your husbands, your fathers, your sons. Says Mrs. Helen B. Montgomery, "The men are for the most part the earners; we are the spenders of Baptist incomes. We can double or we can halve the contributions which Baptist laymen will make." What a responsibility ! Remember that your extravagances, your unnecessary expenditures to gratify your vanity, are costing your sisters who sit under the doom of heathenism the very bread of life and those necessities of a woman's heart, love and tender care. It is yours not only to fix standards for your giving, but standards for your spending which will leave the men something to give, and who will be glad to give it under the inspiration of your example and the spell of your solicitude for your unfortunate sisters. Ill A Word of Cheer Concerning the Women Who Are in This Program 1. I cannot close without brief words of cheer and appreciation. The women at home are, in great numbers, increasing in beautiful devotion and in cooperation with us in the prosecution of our larger program. Women are praying. They are giving. They are volunteering. Thou- 84 MISSIONARY MESSAGES sands of them keep the morning watch and give systematic- ally of their savings, while unprecedented numbers of fresh college girls are offering their lives to be witnesses for Christ to the womanhood of other lands. Our volunteer list probably shows two girls and women for each young man who volunteers for missionary service. This is a tribute to the influence of mothers, female teachers, W. M. U. Mission Study Courses, and is an answer to prayers which go up daily to Him whose chief concern for things mundane is that the ripened fields shall be gathered before there is greater loss of the precious grain. Our women are coming into the missionary world program, and there is nothing which gives greater promise for the future than this fact. 2. Daylight is breaking on the mission fields. We are beginning to get some of the first fruits from our mission schools for girls. The great majority of these girls find Christ before they have finished school. The holy experi- ence sufifuses their faces with a new winsomeness. They come forth to advertise the gospel of Christ by that light which shines through their personalities, and which was never before seen by heathen eyes on land or sea. We are turning out teachers and workers and sisters and wives and mothers whose influence, like the fragrant flowers of the garden in springtime, is being wafted into the surrounding society. Our schools are growing in efficiency and gaining in patronage. A few of them are drawing girls from influ- ential families which both help in the support of the schools and strengthen their influence. Schools like the Eliza Yates Girls' School in Shanghai, Pooi to in Canton, the girls' school in Sao Paulo, and the new woman's department of the College at Rio de Janeiro, are commanding attention and winning patronage because of their products in culture and character. The Eliza Yates School has out of tuition fees saved $10,000 with which to erect a new and greatly needed building for the accommodation of its growing pat- ronage. Our women are being organized on the fields for eflfective Christian work, and through the schools, churches, and these women's organizations, leaders are being trained. BAPTIST WOMEN 85 The influence and power of Christianity are cumulative. It was my pleasure to have some advisory part in effecting a W. M. U. organization in Japan and China in 1919. The ideals of the W. M. U. have crossed the Pacific, and women have begun to repeat in the churches of the Far East that which they have wrought in the churches at home. Con- tinue, my sisters, your mission study work, keep up your training in missionary giving, draw others into your prayer circles, and your eyes shall shortly see the glory of the King breaking through the clouds of heathenism and shining in the faces of redeemed womanhood in all lands. Baptist women have an important place in the Baptist World Pro- gram. / / / CHAPTER VI A DECISIVE HOUR IN BAPTIST FOREIGN MISSIONS FOREIGN Missions holds a unique and commanding place in American and Baptist history, as indeed it does in the history of Christianity. Foreign Missions has been an organizing principle in the denomination : has called Baptists together in cooperative endeavor, been the inspira- tion of education, spirituality, Christian heroism, the spirit of sacrifice and devotion to Christ in gifts of money and of self. It has broadened the lives of individuals, expanded the denomination and enriched the churches with the pres- ence of Christ, in a manner for which they had no promise of being enriched had they not made the attempt to "go into all the world." By the prayer-life which the great undertaking has provoked among the women and others in the churches, the passion which the great theme has kindled in the pulpit, the liberality which it has inspired in the pew, it has vitalized formal piety and made heroes of young men and maidens who would have been devotees of fashion, the debauchees of pleasure, and the problem of pastors and deacons. The going out of young people from our churches, and the reports from the foreign fields of their trials and triumphs, have raised ideals, fostered intelligence, and stimu- lated purpose and activity in the members at home to which they would have been strangers had the influences of this work been wanting. We are a great denomination largely because of our rela- tion to and the benefits derived from this great enterprise. Consequently the history of the denomination shows the mark of this work. The most inspirational characters, the epochal events and luminous incidents in that history are related intimately to this Christ-ordained enterprise. How poor and how dull would be the history of Baptists without the thrilling and fascinating story of Foreign Missions! 66 A DECISIVE HOUR 87 The pulpit itself would be impoverished without the illustra- tive ni;aterial of Carey, his shoe bench and scholarship; of Judson, his baptism, the lives of his wives, his prisons and his death; of Yates, his deeds and dying words; of Clough's long life, many converts and great baptizing; and the word and works of a hundred others who in the interest of this enterprise went forth weeping, bearing precious seeds. What would American Baptists be as a denomination to-day if they had not entered into the duties and oppor- tunities of Foreign Missions and shared the benefits of this enterprise ? Let some one try to answer that question. It is one of the seeming fatalities that a work so glorious, a work which seeks in unselfishness to crown the Saviour King of kings, and which crowns the denomination in turn, should, above all else the denomination has attempted, have encountered through the years the opposition, the misrep- resentation and criticism which have characterized the be- havior of some toward this work. In the face of such, the friends and promoters of Foreign Missions have often had need to recall and cultivate the spirit of the Master when He said, "They know not what they do." But God*s blessing abides upon this work. Upon every step we take on our way "into all the world" his pleasure and blessing are manifest. His promise is fulfilled. He is with us. The Foreign Mission work of Southern Baptists has reached a definite stage. We are precisely at the point where periods meet. Decisive are our acts right now. Con- ditions obtain and issues confront us which give significance and character to what we do at this stage of our progress in Foreign Mission work, and make this the most momentous hour for Foreign Missions in fifty years, probably since the beginning of the modern era. Here are some elements in the present situation. 1. We are confronted by a new order of missionary operation. Leaders of the Union and Federation Movement in Foreign Missions have projected and well-nigh perfected a world-wide organization which is directed by some of the 88 MISSIONARY MESSAGES most astute minds to be found among the Christian forces. This movement is backed by the great missionar>^ periodicals and a growing library of books. It is supported by munifi- cent gifts and bequests, and takes advantage of the Chris- tian sentiment v^hich gathers about the Foreign Mission enterprise in particular. The leaders of this Movement, backed by such mighty forces and mighty influences, boldly and frankly avow policies which will, if made effective, put an end to the peculiar denominationalisms and effect radical changes in outstanding aspects of historical and present Christianity. No denomination will be allowed to preserve its identity and distinctiveness on foreign fields if this Movement is allowed to succeed. Baptists are called upon to subscribe to a platform which is explicitly sub- versive of their traditional beliefs and policies, as is shown by the following, adopted by a conference which the Move- ment conducted in Chile, and which is similar to the "find- ings" of such conferences held in other parts of South America, China, India and elsewhere: "With the passing of the years and the consequent growth of the churches of Chile, the conviction grows deeper and clearer to the workers present in this conference, that the aims of our Christian work in this country should be the creation of a united Chilean Evangelical Church undivided by the denominational distinctions which obtain in other parts of Christendom. As intermediate steps in achieving this end we approve all practicable measures of coopera- tion among the recognized Evangelical bodies. The follow- ing plan for cooperation is recommended : "1. Division or delimitation of territory to be readjusted from time to time. *'2. The use of the common name for evangelical churches, for example, The Evangelical Church in Chile.' A DECISIVE HOUR 89 "3. The use of a common hymn book and, as soon as possible, the use of a common version of the Bible. "4. The organization of a committee on cooperation and comity into which all recognized evangelical bodies at present at work in Chile shall be invited to have representa- tion. "5. An agreement for the transfer of members between all recognized bodies. "6. An understanding concerning the transfer of work- ers and the treatment of dismissed agents. "7. A general agreement for all to respect the discipline imposed by other evangelical churches. **8. A great nation-wide effort in evangelization. "9. That the present Bible seminary be enlarged so as to admit students from all recognized evangelical bodies. "10. To extend the scope of the present cooperative plan in the production of literature so as to admit all reg- ular bodies that may desire to participate in such work. "11. The founding of a union Christian hospital, or- phanage, and an institutional church as soon as it is pos- sible to do so. "12. An interdenominational Christian university for this part of Latin America to be located in Santiago." Baptists as well as others have been brought face to face with the issue of denominational extinction by this Move- ment. We have been invited to join the Movement in "the creation of a united Chilean Evangelical Church undivided by denominational distinctions which obtain in other parts of Christendom," and the above planks in the platform are the "intermediate steps in achieving this end." Such is the program of the Movement announced for the Continuation Committees backed by the Foreign Missions Conference of North America in every land. We have not seen a graver hour for denominational principles and evangelical Chris- tianity itself than that which has thus been announced. But Southern Baptists have met the issue frankly and 90 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the Foreign Mission Board and the Southern Baptist Con- vention have issued an uhimatum and the missionaries are cooperating heartily. There is no need, therefore, for any one to get nervous for the poHcies of Southern Baptist Foreign Mission work. These have been decided. We have chosen our course, but whether we run well or not is for Southern Baptists to decide by the manner in which they back their own program. The denominational program is inevitably doomed in the face of the forces which are operating the Union program unless Southern Baptists now concentrate their resources upon the support of their own Foreign Mission work. Personally, I am not afraid of the contest, if Southern Baptists will back the program which they have made. But let no one be deceived. The battle is not won. The contest will last many years on the foreign fields. It is there that effort hostile to the denominational program is being centered. 2. The present world conditions make this a critical hour and a transitional period in Baptist missionary history. If Southern Baptists can rise to the exigencies of the hour and take advantage of the course of Providence at this time, they will glide swiftly into a new era which will in the future of Baptist history be as distinctly recognized as that which in English Baptist history is waymarked by the year 1792, in American Baptist history by the year 1814, and in South- em Baptist history, 1845. No people can live up to and into a universal situation such as now exists, and ever after be the same. Baptists will start a new and glorious chapter of their resplendent Foreign Mission history now, or future historians will tell of their faithlessness and recre- ance, and the denomination will suffer the lack of that inspiration which is furnished when great men meet great hours of destiny in high courage, sublime faith and heroic deeds. If they are recreant at such an hour, they will consign their principles to defeat, and consent that others shall have- the advantage of an hour which is peculiarly their own. We cannot stand still now and see the glory of the Lord. This is a time when all the circumstances A DECISIVE HOUR 91 conspire to make steadfastness in the faith and abounding in the work essential and signal virtues of our people. Shall Baptists prove mediocre in Christian courage and Kingdom statesmanship, when the spirit of democracy is nurturing into life a republic in China, the biggest nation on earth; when our brothers in Russia and Roumania are claiming their birthright at the hazard of life itself; when the crucial battle between the Crescent and the Cross in Africa draws to its issue; when the day of the spiritual renaissance of our neighbor republics in South America is at hand, and when now society and Christianity must be re- established in Europe? If Baptists are not great in faith and deed, in dauntless courage and personal sacrifice now, they may as well get ready to accept inevitable obscurity for themselves and their principles, and to forfeit their claim to the rewards of faithfulness and good stewardship. This is a supreme moment in Baptist history, and only supreme effort will meet it worthily. Foreign Missions is the decisive Christian enterprise in the present world situa- tion. We have our opportunity and we have waiting lists of volunteers ready to man the outposts and lead the advance. Our God is by innumerable tokens signaling us to go for- ward. 3. Another element in our problem, which makes the hour a critical one, is the accumulated obligations of our work. By obligations I do not refer simply to the amount which has been fixed as a budget for the year, although this budget already in operation calls for more than South- ern Baptists gave last year for current support. We have not made the budget as large as the needs of the old fields, to say nothing of great and swift opportunities in new fields, simply because there has not been the response to the situation by the churches and the brotherhood at large to justify it. But this budget does not represent our obligations. We have from year to year deferred obligations incident to a growing work until necessity has become acute. Many of the necessities for which no appropriations have been made are no less binding upon Baptists than those for which 92 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the Board has actually made provision in the annual budgets. We need the four million dollars which has been named with which to meet these obligations for the present year, and in order that we may seriously consider advance and expansion. Perhaps the largest missionary opportunity ever offered to Baptists by a superintending Providence is that which is offered them to-day. It is altogether probable that in the new nation of Russia, where the Baptist form of the initial Qiristian ordinance, baptism, has through all the centuries been safeguarded, we can, by taking this New Testament form and filling it with New Testament signifi- cance, so commend our principles and faith to the men and women of this great nation as to gain offensive positions which will in turn give us new advantage in the conquest of all nations for Christ and New Testament Christianity. And yet the stern fact stares us in the face and will not down, that Southern Baptists must meet obligations which they have already incurred on fields already occupied before they can take full advantage of opportunities which Provi- dence is offering them on other fields. The task is not an impossible one, but it is a duty which cannot be evaded. All who would see Southern Baptists enter the promising and providential fields, should keep in mind the fact that we cannot in good moral behavior ignore obligations which we have already assumed, and that it does not promise well for new advances that we allow ourselyes to suffer defeat in positions already taken. But for men who are willing to match their duty and ambition with courage, deed and sacrifice, which always go with great achievement, there is ground for hope and opti- mism. Southern Baptists can if they will. No denomina- tion on earth is in so good a position as Southern Baptists are to undertake at this hour a great denominational Foreign Mission program. There is greater unity and coherence of faith among us than among any other people. In numbers we more completely dominate the home territory which we occupy than any denomination in America dominates the territory in which it exists. We are, too, growing rich while A DECISIVE HOUR 93 we grow in numbers. And our schools have placed at our disposal the men and the women who are ready and capable to lead. What more is needed ? Only these things : First, that we shall by prayer, consecration and dedication avail ourselves of spiritual fitness and force for the sacred task. Second, that those who are ambitious that Southern Bap- tists shall carry themselves with credit and register achieve- ment in the present situation, shall help them do it not by criticism, nor agitation of policies, nor advancement of the- ories, but leaving these matters to the great body of repre- sentative men who have been selected by the Convention to handle them, use their leadership and their influence in the effort to assemble the resources on which advance is dependent. The great need of the hour in the South to-day is friends for this cause who will help us get the money. The Foreign Mission Board is aware of conditions on the For- eign Mission field ; is ready on short notice to order great advance. It is only waiting for supplies. Those who really love Foreign Missions and covet for Southern Baptists a great future, have their opportunity for service in coopera- tive effort for increased contributions. Third, let the men and women, into whose laps by providential good fortune, increased wealth has been poured, say to the Board, *'We will supply the needs if you order the advance." Can there not be found among the noble men of our churches who by frugality, perseverance and integrity, have registered suc- cess in the face of difficulties, and who, with increasing wealth have retained their love for the Saviour and their passion of the Cross, many who will, at such an hour give generously, give as they never gave before, give as the cir- cumstances suggest and justify? It is the time of all times when men can with money make way for Christian triumph, hold this great enterprise steady to its task, and establish Christianity in the world. Shall not we, one and all, pray for vision and for the willing heart? CHAPTER VII THE NEW WORLD CONDITIONS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE THE Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptis't Convention is now at work in eighteen nations of the earth. These nations present a great variety of type. Each nation has, so to speak, its own personality. Of course, there are things common to all men whatever their color, nationality, residence or religion. They eat, drink, suffer, love, hate, hope and despair. But China differs from Japan, Japan from Siberia, the Far East from the Near East, Pales- tine from Egypt. There is a difference between the Euro- pean states and contrasts between the South American republics. There is, too, a difference between pagan and papal lands, evangelical and Roman Catholic countries, as Macaulay recognized when he wrote his history. But the War has served as a sort of common denominator for all the variety of nations and conditions and has yielded for our profitable study certain common moral aspects of all nations, which must be taken account of and dealt with promptly and with decision by those who would reconstruct and evangelize the world. I want us to search for some of these common aspects of the world which the War has produced and left on our hands which together constitute what is properly and significantly called "s. new world situa- tion.'' The particular elements which make up the universal con- ditions at this hour lay claims and responsibilities upon us and strongly commend the general missionary appeal to the Christian conscience. It is something new and tremendously impressive that these conditions prevail quite universally. They bear directly upon the missionary duty of the churches and compose an immediate missionary urgency. 94 NEW CONDITIONS 95 New Universal Aspects 1. There is throughout the world a new race conscious- ness. The race instinct has been accentuated and the race personaHty made more obvious and obtrusive. Japan is more Japanese, China is more Chinese, Italy is more Italian. In every nation men have become aware of themselves. There has been awakened a new impulse to self-realization. You will find this whether you go East or West. Travelers, missionaries and diplomats are encountering it and finding that they must reckon with it. The native citizen or indi- vidual cannot longer be patronized as formerly. There is not a tribe in Dark Africa which has not heard the echo of Woodrow Wilson's voice and assumed a new self-respect and betrayed a new dignity, and which does not demand a new opportunity for freedom and self-direction. It will become more and more difficult to keep even the most backward peoples in the status of subject races. 2. There is a world consciotisness. The self-center of nationalism is balanced by a new sense of internationalism. Men and nations everywhere have been quickened to a new intelligence and interest in the rest of the world. We have suddenly produced a younger generation of world-citizens. There has been begotten, too, a deep conviction that no nation can live to itself. The War has, so to speak, social- ized the race. All men have learned out of the experiences of the past half dozen years that there is no "Sunrise King- dom;" that a Hermit kingdom cannot be maintained. We must interest ourselves in the welfare of other nations, or be involved in their sins or misfortunes. The Cninese coolies from Shantung Province returned from France in 1918 and 1919 to tell their neighbors that China was not the "Central Kingdom." They had gone West ten thousand miles ! 3. There is a new race jealousy, suspicion, hate. The War stirred up mistrust and turned loose the vials of bit- terness. No sooner had the guns of war ceased to muffle 96 MISSIONARY MESSAGES our ears than we found that not only Germany and Austria hated England and France and Italy, but that these allies held scores against each other, and all were jealous, suspi- cious of and critical of America as well as of each other. Ally hates ally! The nations of Europe hailed President Wilson and gave him triumphal entry to their cities and named fashionable avenues for him, but he had scarcely reached Washington before they were casting mud on his gilded name at street corners. But suspicion, mistrust and hate exist not only between nation and nation but between class and class. There never was such lack of cordiality, friendship, and cooperation between employer and employee, seller and buyer. Men have lost faith in each other and do not respect each other's interests. 4. Another universal condition is lawlessness and immor- ality. Bombs and shootings, hold-ups and kidnapings, di- vorce and illegitimacy are out of proportion to former times. Gangsters and yeggmen have dimmed the glory of Jesse James. There is more lawlessness, ungodliness and inhu- manity reported for one of our American cities in a year than our fathers read about in a lifetime. Probably there never was such universal lack of conscience for other men's property, time, or life as to-day. "The world is getting worse," says some one. Yes, so it is, and better too ; and it will get both better and worse as the end draws nigh. The devil grows more desperate as the Lord is mlore victorious. Many of the worst things are signs of Satan's desperation. There are more offensive eruptions of depravity in modern and advanced civilization than in stark heathenism. The bad are getting worse and badness looks worse in the waxing day of the Son of Man. A shaft of light shot through the darkness makes the banks of darkness on either side seem to be denser, blacker and more impenetrable. The great World War has accustomed men to blood, and human life is not precious in the eyes of many. But, thank God, more souls are being saved, more hungry are being NEW CONDITIONS 97 fed, more children are being clothed than ever before. A great contest is on between the depravity of the race and the Christian spirit constrained by the Spirit of Christ. The light shineth in darkness and the darkness overcomes it not, 5. There is a new intellectual awakening. The human mind was never so alert as now. Knowledge is running to and fro and men are eager for learning. This has its dan- gers and its advantages. This alert mind is often skeptical, critical, iconoclastic. Traditional faith and custom suffer. Much is being destroyed that millions have held dear, and all things must pass the crucible of unsparing criticism. In the electrical excitement some small minds exhibit f reak- ishness, and intellectual absurdities assume an intellectual appraisement they do not merit. Small men parading under a scholarship which others have achieved, make much of *'the modem viewpoint," and cultivate a shallow supercilious- ness for much that has its foundation in solid crypt of truth and intellectuality. But serious men are in quest of the truth and there is a hospitality for it. There is a great open market for those who have what the world needs. If we take advantage of this attitude of mind, we can turn it to account for the furtherance of the gospel of Christ. Eyes that have been closed and ears that have been deaf are now open. Minds which have been locked in prejudice are to-day hospitable to the truth. The truth is new in most parts and new things are popular in this age. 6. There is a new consciousness of God in the world. Men to whom God was never before real or necessary are finding Him to be the one great indispensable reality. They have come to know that there is a Friend of right and righteousness, who is stronger than armaments, who is beyond the reach of artillery, and who gives invincibleness to a righteous cause. God so confounded the enemies of right and came so palpably near to those who needed His help during the war, — so near to statesmen as well as to the wounded and dying who from hospital wards called upon Him — that good men have been reassured of Him and 98 MISSIONARY MESSAGES bad men tremble at His nearness. Skeptics have become conscious that they are in the Almighty's presence. We have found that we cannot get along without Him, and when we cannot and are ready to acknowledge it, He is found to be near. We have felt all else which men thought real and reliable crumble under foot. God is real and the only unfailing refuge. 7. There is a new craving for the spiritual. Materialism has become a dry and empty thing which cannot longer satisfy the hungry soul. Men have found that a material- istic age or civilization grinds to powder the finer things that belong to the spirit '»f man. Material and mechanical views of Christianity are to-day as far below par as Euro- pean exchange. Ecclesiastical legerdemain is severely dis- counted. Mesmeric Christianity is passing, and passing first of all on the mission fields. Men who have hitherto tolerated formalisms and ecclesiasticisms, ritualisms and incantations, will not now be satisfied until their spiritual natures are honored and fed. The multitudes are not only inquiring for Christianity but for Christ, and will not be satisfied until they gain admittance to His immediate pres- ence and try Him for themselves. The soul of the world is restless and can find rest in Him only. The world's heart has been broken and only Christ can heal broken hearts. Since the War the world has gone fashion-mad and pleasure- mad, but already these things stale. Souls famish on the garish tawdries of the world and cry out for spiritual sus- tenance. 8. There is among the nations a new realization of need of moral motive and pozver. In some nations for a while men in high places thought they saw in modern Western civilization that which would mend their outworn systems. They have come to find that modern civilization only adds necessity to necessity and that somewhere an inward power, a new moral energy, a sustaining principle for personal and national character must be found. The leaders of modern progress and the seers of all nations are alarmed at the danger of national collapse under the weight of modem NEW CONDITIONS 99 progress unless the nations can be under-girded morally. Economic and political progress have put a strain upon na- tional foundations which these are not able to bear. A Japanese editor who said that **We have imported the ma- chinery of modern civilization but have neglected the moral oil to keep it running" spoke a parable which fits condi- tions in every nation that is being stirred by the new and larger life of the world. You cannot rear modern civiliza- tion upon a heathen foundation. 9. There is a ziror Id-wide awakening of and a new eval- uation of zvomen on every mission field. Evangelization has been delayed by the ignorance, the superstition, the bigotry, the fanaticism, and inaccessibleness of women. This fact has militated greatly against the advance of the Kingdom of God. Women on the mission fields as every- where are mighty factors, but their influence has been for the conservation of the old order. Men would let heathenism rot but for the women, and Roman Catholicism could not dominate a nation nor a community in all the world without the help which women give it. Men would by their indif- ference and mistrust of it let it die of neglect if the devotion of women were interrupted. There is no more signifi- cant fact on the mission fields than this : that women are outgrowing traditionalism and are becoming conscious of their rights, their privileges, their duties, their opportuni- ties. Here again there is both danger and advantage, oppor- tunity and difficulty, for Christianity. Oh, how loud is the call of God for wise leadership among our women ! A great danger on the mission fields is that, disillusioned and dis- gusted with ancient faiths, they will miss the gospel of Christ which alone can crown womanhood and make wom- anhood glorious. There is a challenge and a testing at home. Women in America, where their freedom has been won, will demon- strate whether they can be trusted with their own freedom. If they make a mess of their liberties here, and the new woman fails to heighten respect for women, what may we loo MISSIONARY MESSAGES anticipate for the womanhood of other lands among whom the constraints and restraints of the gospel have not been put in force? 10. There is failure everywhere of the old forms of faith. The mighty crisis of recent years has tried them and they have been found wanting. Shintoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Romanism, and the rest have failed to stand the test and have lost advantage in the religious competitorships of the world. The World War gave every religion a supreme chance and a testing challenge. I am not unaware of the seeming "revival" of Buddhism in Japan, of Mohammedanism in Africa, etc. This is not an expression of the genius of these faiths. It is not revival and initiation, but imitation — and imitation is a sign of weakness. Such imitation is always mechanical and lacks the life and energy which spring spontaneously out of the very heart and nature of Christianity. So far as heathenism is concerned, it has rightly been described as "a chaos of religion, faith, and morals." No- body expects heathenism pure and simple to survive the ages. The great religious systems and ecclesiasticisms are not so quickly but as certainly doomed. The immobility, inadaptability, irresponsiveness, indifference, and ineffective- ness of the great ecclesiastical systems in the presence of world needs and the world's challenge of recent years constitute a lesson in missions and a premise for a mission- ary forecast of the future. 11. The religious question is drawing to issue. The contending forces have come to closer quarters than ever and the battle is at the gate. Men everywhere realize that the issue is pending and that decision cannot be postponed indefinitely. The world in its sorrow and extremity has discovered its need of religion and is sure to sit in judgment on all candidates to learn which can serve it best. Enlight- enment is penetrating dark corners of the world and the rays of knowledge are being turned upon the defects and short- comings of religion as well as other things. A sharpened intelligence is penetrating the depths of religious supersti- NEW CONDITIONS loi tions. The public press is not yet ready to help turn on the light, but men are learning that ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, immorality, characterize every civilization, every one without an exception, which is dominated by either heathenism or Romanism, and where these have uninter- rupted opportunity to make demonstration, their consistent and prolific fruits are ignorance, hunger, neglected child- hood and oppressed or abused womanhood. This the world is learning. 12. We conclude this enumeration of new world condi- tions by repeating here what is said in another of these "messages," namely, that there is emerging out of universal conditions the sure outlines of a universal religious faith. This is a fact so significant that no summary of world conditions which invite missionary attention would be com- plete without it. Impelled by the intellectual, political, moral, and social ideas which have been quickened by the War, a religion which can serve the age and command the respect of intelligence and the moral confidence of the future is lifting into form and definition out of the confu- sion of the hour. This much of this religion is already discernible and definable in clear outline : It is to be rational, spiritual, democratic, practical. It will be a rational faith versus irrational superstition and irreligious rationalism; a spiritual religion versus crass spiritualism, gross mate- rialism, and papal sacramentarism ; a democratic brother- hood and organization versus hierarchical authority and ecclesiastical legislation and prelatical overlordship ; it will be practical Christianity versus pietism, ascetism, and such religious anomalies as an indolent orthodoxy and church affiliation as an entree to society. No religion or religious group can prosper in the world of moral, social, political, and religious ideas which is now forming, if it lacks the above cardinal virtues. The slogan of the spiritual democrats Df the future will be. No pope, cardinal or bishop to dictate ; no ecclesiastical assembly to legislate ; no priest to mediate. Do Baptists hold a faith which is the counterpart of these elements of the coming universal faith? If they do, then I02 MISSIONARY MESSAGES by such tokens we may know that the day of Baptist oppor- tunity IS breaking into dawn and noon around the world. Heathen superstition and ecclesiastical and priestly in- terpositions must pass into the limbo of religious archaisms. Since 1914 kings, emperors, czars, and kaisers have either been dethroned or stripped of their ancient powers. Wit- ness Germany, Russia, Austria, Bohemia, etc., etc. There has been a wholesale dethronement of these political auto- crats. In an hour when men are throwing off the yoke of human authority the obligation to create in them spiritual impulses is solemnly great. The hour is desperately peril- ous without Christ's steadying hand on a democratized world. Crowned and mitered ecclesiastics will go next, begin- ning or ending with the audacious "Vicegerent of Christ*' on the Tiber. The recent crowning of Pope Pius XI filled the world with disgust. His lordly assumption, his befrocked retinue, his servile satellites, each and all are anachronism in this day of democracy. Men know that such claims and such ecclesiastical pomposity do not repre- sent the lowly Jesus. The ecclesiastical hierarchs must go the way of political autocrats with advancing enlightenment and spiritual freedom. Their usurped and cherished thrones of authority are not safe in the world because democ- racy is not safe with them. But religion purged and refined the world will need and have. Religion is its main hope, its chief necessity. The Significance of These Things Now what is the significance of this survey of new world conditions? What is there in all this extraordinariness of the hour to command the attention of the Christian men who are behind the missionary enterprise? Let me give a brief answer to that question. 1. There is a new missionary urgency and imperativeness. Religion, the Christian religion, and the Christian religion in its best form and at its best only can deal with a world NEW CONDITIONS 103 situation such as this. All these elements of the new order, these common aspects of a world situation, are moral in their character, and as moral questions have their roots in the religious question. Have you set your heart on the Disarmament Conference? You are doomed to disap- pointment. In the first place, that Conference was not a (fz^armament Conference. That is a most significant fact. It proposed to reduce arms but not to abandon and outlaw the sword, the cannon, the torpedo. If two of your neigh- bors have a misunderstanding and are carrying two guns each, and they should, under the persuasion of mutual friends, agree to carry but one pistol, they might still have a fight with fatal results. That which establishes peace in this world must deal with the warring spirit of man and subdue hate and revenge. That is the task of the mission- ary rather than the diplomat. 2. This world situation makes up an American responsi- bility. During the War America assumed to speak for democracy, for small nations and weak ; to champion moral idealism in the realm of internationalism. Such preach- ment of lofty ethics as President Wilson indulged was never before undertaken by a nation's leader and spokesman since human hate slew the Prince of Peace. Henceforth America will be judged by her lofty standards. By our preaching we have increased our responsibilities. Nations are investigating nations and America perhaps more than any other is being investigated. This is a new fact and belongs to conditions which call for serious reflection. Men are learning our language and entering our educational in- stitutions to learn our philosophy of life. They are touring our country, studying our government, seeking to know us, the secret of our power, and to discover the foundations of our civilization. We have great responsibility. America has the most adequate supply of the gospel with which to meet the world's need and of money to transport it. Men and women here have been more completely and generally emancipated from priestcraft and tradition and hold the missionary message in greater purity than in any I04 MISSIONARY MESSAGES iland of the globe. Our nation has a weakh of 350 billions, while the British Empire, Italy, and France have a com- bined wealth of but 247 billions. Against our 350 billions is a war debt of 7%, while against the 247 billions, combined wealth of Britain, Italy and France, is a war debt which amounts to 45%. We have the gospel which the world needs and we are able to finance a world program with less sacrifice than any Christian people on earth. 3. This world situation presents a new Baptist oppor- tunity. What is there in the new demands which is not in the old Baptist faith? Some talk much nowadays about democracy in religion, about self-governing churches. It is evident that many of these orators and writers have stumbled upon what they take to be new phrases and new ideas, but which are commonplace among our people. The mind of the Christian world has simply found a new ad- justment to our contention. We have known no other sort of church than a self-governing one. And when Baptists say church they mean a church and not a denomination. As a part of the argument for the indigenous church on the foreign field, the denominations are being admonished not to carry historical and sectarian accretions to these fields. The Baptist contention has been always and everywhere that these should be abandoned. We have insisted that organized Christianity be stripped of inherited ecclesiasti- cisms, ritual forms, prelatical offices, in short, of all un- scriptural and anti-scriptural officers, forms, and formulas ; and that Christian men shall accept the Bible and be bound by what it teaches and by what it teaches only. Do this and what is left will be a truly indigenous Christianity, both for America and all other nations. Everything that ought to be eliminated from the Christianity which we preach ought to be eliminated from the Christianity we practice. The religion of the New Testament is for "all the world." The denomination which is patterned after the New Testament has no need of change to meet the needs of China or any other land. Let the advocates of the in- NEW CONDITIONS 105 digenous church point out a single particular in which Baptists have inherited an unscriptural or an anti-scriptural article of faith, office, form, ceremony, and by their very standard of orthodoxy Baptists are called upon to abandon it. But until some one does this, the call to leave inheri- tance behind when going to the mission field, does not apply to Baptists. Let those who preach the indigenous church for China practice it in America. The church which Amer- ica and China alike need is not an American or a Chinese church, but a Scriptural church. And the new world con- ditions are giving such churches their big opportunity. From the beginning Baptists squared their faith to this demand, declined to acknowledge the historical accretions, and much of their unpopularity has been due to their age- long beseeching of others to do so. What others would not do upon the appeal of Baptists, they will be forced to do upon the demand of the future. 4. The world situation is significant because it is transient. The opportunity will not wait. One has said that "heathenism is so ripe that it will spoil unless gathered quickly." Every man who knows the mission fields of the modem world knows that doors of opportunity have been jarred open by the World War. He also knows that these doors will not stand open for us if we are slow to enter them. If we are to buy up the great opportunities now on the market, we must act promptly. No power on earth can ever turn the nations back. The world will never again be the world it was. Men have been shaken out of their former selves and are faced forward. They move into a future which they will make with or without our help. They will carry with them their jealousies, suspicions, hates, and with these mold the future and mar it if we do not now reach them with a regenerating, renovating, transforming gospel. If we are to save the future, we must save the men of to-day. These men have already begun to make the future. Opportunity now so great and alluring will gradu- ally fade with every passing hour of our hesitation and neglect. io6 MISSIO'NARY MESSAGES How Does Such an Hour and Such Conditions Find Amer- ican Baptists? First of all, it finds them with great campaigns started for funds and for recruits with which to meet the extraor- dinary foreign mission situation. These campaigns were started under the inspiration and urgency of the new world conditions. Nothing had taken place in America so un- usual as to start campaigns so exceptional. It was God's call which rang through the new world conditions and awoke Southern Baptists in Atlanta in 1919, and it is this which more than anything else has kept their 75-Million Campaign alive and compelled response to its appeal. Events have shown that there was no exaggeration of the world con- ditions which would follow the War. Need is as great, op- portunity as promising and as urgent, and the danger of religious neglect in the work of rebuilding the world is as serious as we were warned it would be. And yet there is temptation to accept through familiarity a situation as a commonplace and to fall back into com- placent ease. That the world has reached its moral crisis, no one can doubt who familiarizes himself with the facts and is capable of intelligent appraisement of them. That God and religion only can meet this crisis and see society past this crucial hour of destiny does not admit of debate. To an alarming degree, the weal and woe of the world are in the hands of American Christians. We can at this pivotal hour decide whether it shall be weal or woe in many lands of the globe. The moral strain of new world conditions is at this hour too great for many nations unaided by the religious forces of America. Take Russia as an example. The moral foundations have given way. Whether the na- tion is to be rebuilt of wood, hay, or stubble depends largely upon the part which America takes in its reconstruction. Indifference to facts like these will condemn and disgrace American Christianity. Nothing could so strongly commend the campaigns which NEW CONDITIONS 107 Northern and Southern Baptists are at this time conducting as these new world conditions. The foreign mission agen- cies of the denomination are set peculiarly to meet these new conditions, even as the campaigns were inspired by them. How can any Christian man review the extraordi- nary world situation and not feel his heart well-nigh pulled out of him, all his selfishness burnt out, his very soul merged into the compassions of Christ for a distraught world for which we have healing consolation and redemption? How can he do it and fail, even at great sacrifice, to pay his pledge to and give his support to these campaigns? Some one has said that "A Christian is a man whom God has trusted with the souls of his fellowmen." If that is true, measure if you can your individual responsibility in an hour like this. The world's supreme peril confronts us with supreme obligation. CHAPTER VIII THE RELATION OF THE MISSIONARY MESSAGE TO MISSIONARY SUCCESS LOOSE and false views of Christian truth, which have become so common and so flagrant here at home, have reached the mission fields. Error is a great traveler. It uses many means of transportation and propagation. It is frequently a stowaway, and sometimes gets to the mission fields in the baggage of missionaries, tourists, and others who touch the lives of foreign peoples. Some mission boards have grown lax in the doctrinal requirements of can- didates. The number of foreign students in the American schools have greatly multiplied, and many of these return to their home-lands with their heads stuffed with "the phi- losophy of Christianity" rather than the gospel of Christ. The free-lance university professor has his chance with large numbers of these foreign students, who, in their im- maturity, are easy victims to the all too common university views of Christian truth. Some of the Christian colleges also have in them men who are impatient of any statement of positive Christian faith. Young men go to the field under such influence unprepared to meet the strong tides of skeptical thought which move about them in their new environment. The increasing flow of radical literature, in English and translation, carries its germs into all intellectual circles on all mission fields. The union movements have fostered indiscrimination for truth, taken the edge off personal conviction, and opened the doors of sentiment, through which pass the enemies of Christian truth on the arms of those who, to prove them- selves big brothers, have discarded distinctive faith. The apostle of the brotherhood of man fraternizes with the ene- mies of God and the gospel. loS THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 109 UNITARIANISM But perhaps the most insidious error now being carried to the mission fields of the world is that which Unitarians are propagating. They are devoting especial attention to Euro- pean fields at this time. They epitomize their gospel : *'The Brotherhood of Man, The Fatherhood of God, Salvation by Character." This faith has produced such spiritual drouth at home that Unitarianism- is dry in the stalk. It is almost barren of converts and preachers in this country, and has become dependent upon evangelical preachers to propagate its mes- sage. Unitarians do not send missionaries to the heathen, but work by proxy, that is to say, through evangelicals, to propagate their faith. Unitarian sermons which do not draw hearers nor make converts are being printed by the ton and furnished to young preachers at home and abroad. Evangelical France is seriously affected by this propaganda, and reports from Europe tell of incoming tides of literature in which Unitarian error is dressed up attractively. Certain immature and superficial minds are easily impressed by ancient heresies when these are presented in the guise of modem and liberal thought. This fact is known by some men who hold positions of influence and accounts for the show of originality and breadth which they make in using Unitarian slogans to weaken the claims of evangelical truth. The result is, therefore, that there is doctrinal unsound- ness on the mission fields. Many faithful missionaries who went out to give their lives to the propagation of the gospel have become alarmed in recent months bythe inroads which error is making, and have sounded the trumpet, calling to their aid their brothers and home boards to save the mission fields from inundation by error. If some of the hoards were not themselves too much under the influence of the radicals no MISSIONARY MESSAGES to heed the call, rebuke error in their workers and decline to send forth men who are without a positive message, the day could be saved much quicker on the foreign field than at home. Conditions there are not yet as bad as they are here. We arc gratified to reflect that the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention saw the dangers of the union movement, and defined its missionary policies in 1916, and, seeing that error ran in the wake of this movement, pre- pared, in 1919, a "Statement of Belief" for the examination of its candidates which has made it almost impossible for a man to receive appointment by this Board who has, by what- ever influence, been robbed of the faith of the Commission under which mission boards are supposed to operate. The So-Called ''Social Gospel" The false antithesis between doctrine and social service has contributed to the complexity of the situation on the foreign field as at home. The new champion of the ^'Social Gospel" thinks that a doctrinal ministry is the enemy of practical Christian living. Some men seem to be able to think only with one lobe of their brains at a time. What- ever they happen to be stressing is antithetic to something else. Truth with them is not only in contradiction to error, but to truth itself. They do not see the supplementary rela- tion between doing and doctrine, experimental Christianity and Christian truth, between sociology and theology. Be- cause one is true the other must be false. The genius for false antithesis is a mark of a little and yet a dangerous mind. But there is more the matter with the Social Gospeler than this. In the first place, he fancies that he is entitled to a place in the foremost ranks of the thinkers, because he is an advocate of something new. He berates the teach- ing of the old school, and, alleging that it did not produce social fruit, charges the discrediting omission to a doctrinal ministry. Now, as a matter of fact, social service is no THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS iii new thing among Christian men. There is, to be sure, a difference in the way it is done and it has, in the mouths of its modern advocates, assumed the dignity of an "ology" — sociology. Sociology sounds better to the modem ear than the words, "Do good to all men." Sociology is a science to be taught a class: doing good is a duty to be practiced by all Christians. Social science tells a few folks how to do some- thing for the neighborhood; the old custom was for each individual to do his duty by his neighbors. Old preachers did not know so much about sociology, but they did teach their hearers to visit the sick, the widows and the fatherless ; and no neighbor to the Christian man in the older communi- ties was allowed to go hungry or without a watcher by his or her bedside in time of sickness. The modern paid nurse knows better how to take the pulse than our grandmothers did, but she does not bear a more effective testimony to the Christian spirit and to unselfish and thoughtful Christian love. Under the social regime we have more organizations and reports, but I am not sure that we have more social workers. It is a false comparison to charge the lack of social service to the men and women of the old school who did not send representatives to discharge their social obliga- tions, nor themselves go about neighborly ministrations garbed to advertise their mission. It is a false comparison to represent theology and sociology as contradictory sciences. One is a doctrine ; the other is duty. The doctrine produces the practical service. Too much emphasis upon social service and too little upon evangelism is affecting doctrinal soundness on the mission field, and, in the end, will reduce the purest missionary results. It is not, therefore, a question of theology versus sociology but one of such relation of these and such proportionate emphasis as will secure the desired missionary results. The ''Social Gospel" is spoken of as though it were some- thing superior to the gospel of grace. Indeed, it is pre- sented by some as the only gospel. As a matter of fact, to state the case bluntly, there is no such thing as a social gospel. x\djectives before gospel do not magnify, but minify 112 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the gospel. The word gospel compasses contents which make full its meaning and without which it is incomplete. Eliminate these contents, and you have no gospel. There are, of course, social duties which are binding upon all men and upon Christians in particular, of which the best of us are derelict; but, we repeat, there is no such thing as the social gospel. To use the word thus shows one to be in error as to what the gospel is. The gospel is the most prolific source of social deeds, but social service belongs to the realm of Christian duty and not theology. The one is for Christian practice ; the other is for Christian preaching. There is no contradiction nor antagonism between them. The one is the fruit of the other. The gospel is the world's generator of social impulses, the fertile soil of which neigh- borly deed is the perennial fruit. To belittle evangelical doctrine in an effort to magnify social service convicts one of being a novice as a religious thinker and teacher. Orphan asylums and other humanitarian institutions and benevo- lences sprouted and have found their fertility in hearts which have been mellowed by the gospel of Christ. They are nurtured by the truth which declares that men redeemed by the self-renunciating Christ are by that redemption made debtors to all men. Some are ready to substitute the social program for the Commission. If China's millions of sick, hungry and un- fortunate are to have ministered to them the compassions of Christ, if we are to create in China a social conscience which will compel wealthy Chinese themselves to feed their hungry brothers, we must keep things in their place. We must apply to the dead social conscience of the Chinese people the life-giving Word of God. The preachers of the social gospel in China who neglect the evangelistic message will, if left alone for a season by other workers, eventually find themselves surrounded by dry bones. The Christian enter- prise will, even in the hands of radicals, move on for a period under its gathered momentum, but if it loses the vital elements of the impulse-giving gospel, it will presently slow down in social activity. Unitarian and atheistic thought THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 113 have no vitalizing or propulsive quality or power. The nations of the world to-day are, in their civilizations and social conditions, a contemporaneous and convincing witness to the power of the evangelical gospel and the impotency of everything else heathen, ecclesiastical and intellectual. The gospel of Christ in its evangelical interpretation is the one and only fecundating principle which has as yet been applied to the social and moral order of the world. Noth- ing else has the mysterious power to re-create character, revive the social conscience, and rebuild a collapsed race or civilization. Social deadness or deterioration is found wherever the evangelical gospel is not found. Missionary Success Now, what is the relation of our message to missionary success? If what we have said already commends itself to the reader as true, that relation should be evident. We may, however, discuss the point more directly. It is one of cause and effect. There can be no mission- ary success without the gospel. Success is partial where the gospel is impaired. There is to-day no peril to the missionary enterprise like the peril of an emasculated gospel. If the gospel of Jesus Christ is substituted, mutilated or corrupted the missionary enterprise is doomed to fail. If w^e can save the gospel, we can save the world. If the saving elements of the gospel are lost out of our missionary message, there is neither hope nor remedy for humanity sunken in the mires of its depravity. This is a question for the denominations, the mission boards and those who train young men and women for mis- sion service to face quickly and frankly and in the fear of God. Doctrinal unsoundness is already affecting the mis- sionary enterprise. Error has its missionaries. Propa- gandism is organized and endowed. The Christian message is unique, and its uniqueness is essential to the success of the missionary enterprise. Responsibility rests upon our mission boards and upon 114 MISSIONARY MESSAGES our colleges and seminaries, but finally, of course, upon the denominations which control or should control all of these agencies for the propagation of the gospel of Christ. Our colleges and seminaries stand at the crucial point in our battle line. They can more quickly than any other agency correct so much of the evil as exists among Baptists. Our teachers and schools have the first chance at young men, when in their thinking they are beginning to venture into untried fields of religious investigation and are most liable to get started in wrong directions morally and mentally. If the teachers are without a positive message, if they have no convictions concerning the truth, if they do not give convincing explanations, but leave young men to find their own way, often supplied with the implements of the enemy with which to guide their investigations, then doctrinal unsoundness will wax greater at home and abroad. After having some opportunities to study missions in the home lands and foreign lands, I give as my deliberate opinion that schools are either to be the greatest allies of the churches in giving the gospel of Christ to the world, or they are to prove at last to have been the most deadly enemies of this enterprise. I believe that those who discuss our schools should do it in fine self-restraint, and with a conscience not to weaken the influence of any man or school who or which is a helper to the truth. I suppose none of us who love the gospel of Christ and believe it to be the hope of the world would deny that there are a few teachers in our schools who are hesitant to state their views of Christian truth nor that some teach positive error. Such men ought to be dealt with by those who are responsible for the work which they are doing. The risk of neglect to do so is too great to be taken. If it is our business to propagate the gospel, we should not pay anybody to deny it. The writer is, however, glad that after many years of dealing with the products of our schools and missionary ap- pointees at home and abroad, he can say that these schools have contributed immeasurably more to the faithful procla- mation and propagation of the gospel of Christ than they THE MESSAGE AND SUCCESS 115 have to the dissemination of error. Speaking for the mis- sionary enterprise, with which I have been identified in all its organized departments for work at home and abroad, I must say that we owe a great debt to our schools and to the faithful men, who in the quiet seclusion of the class- room and under the necessity of economical living, have poured the resources of their lives — mind, body and spirit — into those who, passing from under their care, become the leaders of our people and the exponents of our faith. This fact should not be forgotten when we are discussing schools and teachers. The bane of religious teaching in our schools is more in the text-books used than in the teachers employed. A task which the denomination has not yet set itself to is that of preparing the text-books which guide students in the study of religious subjects. Here is a challenge to some of the men in our seminaries and colleges. We have men with equipment and talent equal to this task, and they have in the performance of it an opportunity to serve God, their denomination and their day and generation. We are con- ducting Christian schools, but too often use text-books which are produced by men who, so far as the gospel we hold is concerned, are thoroughly anti-Christian. It gives us satisfaction to say that as regards soundness of their missionary message, the missionaries of the Foreign Mission Board are the advocates of sound views of Christian truth, and the propagandists of a pure gospel, and w^e believe that, with possibly a few almost insignificant exceptions, the same can be said of the missionaries of all the Baptist societies. These men and women are the products of our schools, let it be remembered, and their fidelity to the truth reflects credit upon the schools which men of just judgment will take into account. These missionaries have stood the test amidst incursions of error on all fields. We thank God for them, their faithful witness to and their courageous defense of the truth, and their accompanying passion for lost men and women. We have soldiers of the cross who are suited for service in exactly such times as these which have ii6 MISSIONARY MESSAGES come upon us, and for carrying to successful issue the battle which is now raging. It is our solemn duty to reenforce these faithful ones by sending to their help others who hold, are held by, and who will hold forth the truth as it is in Christ and His Word. CHAPTER IX THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE * THE Great War raised many questions, some of them religious questions. It caused men to ask such ques- tions as these: "Has Christianity failed?'* "Have we a religion worth propagating ?" "Will Christianity survive the changes now in process?" I do not wonder that men with hearts, with souls, and human feelings cast about for satis- fying answers to such religious questions in the face of the universal tumult and the fears which made many hearts stand still. How could men read the daily reports of human suffering, the accounts of destruction of the flower of Euro- pean young manhood, and not be exercised to find a recon- ciliation of these things with a religion which has taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves? When the War claimed our own sons, the religious questions were brought closer home to us and many in America asked questions which they had never asked before. Some had their re- ligious faith shaken, while others were in doubt and knew not what to believe. Personally, as never before, I found myself falling back on one thought and one religious truth as a solace for my soul and the only prescription for quiet- ness of spirit. That truth is, God is God. Men may froth in their rage, but God Almighty is on a throne "high and lifted up," and no human hate or frenzy can take the reins of government out of His hands. There is quiet above the clouds and there is quiet under and in the clouds for those who reflect that God cannot be defeated. True religion will survive because God is God. His pur- poses take account of circumstances and will fulfill. He is *For more extended discussion of certain matters raised in this chapter, see the author's "Unique Message and Universal Mission of Christianity." 117 ii8 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the source and foundation of all true religion, and all true religion must survive. True religion will survive both because God is God and man is man. Religion is not style or fashion. Religion is as fundamental as nature itself. The familiar words of Sabatier, that **man is incurably religious," are true because religiousness is of man's nature, inborn and ingrained. "A man's religion is the chief thing about him," said Thomas Carlyle. Therefore until nature and human nature change religion will survive all change. It is not only the chief thing about a man; it is the chief thing in the life of any nation and of universal humanity. Not all nations have concerned themselves with art and literature, with science and philosophy, but every creature of every nation has instinct for religion. Human progress is conditioned upon the purity of religion among the respective human groups more than upon any- thing else. Religion is the creative, productive, reconstruct- ing thing in human life. Neither man nor society can real- ize the higher values of life without it. Religion will, more than anything else, explain the civilization of every nation in the world. It will explain not only Africa and China, but it will explain North America, Mexico, South America, and the nations of Europe. Huerta, Madero, Villa, neither one nor all of them explain Mexico. The religion which is administrated from the Vatican in Rome explains both the country and these leaders. The indictment upon which Roman Catholicism will at last be condemned before the bar of enlightened public opinion is that it has consistently, uniformly, and universally bred ignorance and poverty among the mass of its devotees. There is no escaping that judgment. Circumstantial evi- dence was never stronger. Take unbiased testimony con- cerning Mexico, or any or all the sunny isles or republics of the South. In every case it is incriminating. The land may be naturally rich and the people naturally bright, but it is the same with the masses of the people wherever Rome has had time and unprotested opportunity to make the dem- FUTURE RELIGION 119 onstration. Illiteracy, illegitimacy, rags and want are the prolific progeny of the papacy. The census tables give unimpeachable evidence. The outstanding aspects of nations are those which are most attributable to religion. There is no other force which bears so directly upon the sources of life as does religion. There is no indication that religion is perishing from the face of the earth. It is not a question of whether religion will survive, but of what is to be the outcome of religious competitorships. Religion is inseparable from human progress. Unless human progress must cease, religion must continue. 1. Men cannot realize even their intellectual aims without religion. Intellectual advancement is conditioned upon re- ligious knowledge and makes profounder knowledg*e of religion necessary. Religion is the proprietor of a certain class of facts which are necessary to a rounded scheme of knowledge. Material science and intellectual philosophy fall short of their own goals without the help of religion. The man who evades the religious question is no example of superior intellectuality. To the contrary, he gives evidence of mental imbecility. Says Goethe, ''The real and deepest things of the world's and man's history, to which all other subjects are subordinate, is the conflict between faith and unbelief." Tindal in his famous Belfast address said that "religion will assuredly be handled by the loftiest minds when you and I like streaks of modern cloud be melted into the infinite azure of the past." Lofty minds find the religious question a congenial one. The intellectual progress of the world is in the direction of religion when it moves on the plains of greatness and toward its goal. Men cannot pursue the intellectual sciences into the higher regions to which these sciences ascend without finding need for a knowledge of religion. No branch of the intellectual sciences is a cube. The edges of every science are serrated. I2Q MISSIONARY MESSAGES You cannot, for instance, finish your arithmetic without some knowledge of algebra, nor your algebra without some knowledge of geometry. Philosophy may be considered the advance grade in pure intellectual culture, but the fron- tiers of philosophy penetrate the borders of the religious question even as science touches the borders of philosophy. All great scientists and all great philosophers have been great meddlers with religious questions. Dr. John CHfford tells us about a gathering fifty years ago composed of the leading men of art, science, and literature of that day. A dinner was served, and after dinner Dean Stanley was elected to preside over the discussion, and he chose as a subject for deliberation, who shall dominate the world? Prof. Huxley with his passion for reality and his hatred of sham and humbug, arose and said, "The nation to domi- nate the future will be one that is faithful to facts." Ed- ward Miall replied, "It is true that the nation to dominate the future will be the one that is faithful to facts, but it must be faithful to all the facts and the fact of facts is God." God who is the explanation of all facts is the goal of intel- lectual progress as well as the boon of spiritual quest. 2. The race cannot realize its social and civil aims with- out religion. The social progress of the world requires a settlement of the religious question. Social conditions are determined by religion chiefly. The fundamental aspects of a nation's social life are those which religion more than anything else can and must regulate. The great religions produce their respective types of society. They are not only organizations but they are organizers, and they organize on a great scale. There is symbolism in the fact which Prof. Kidd has cited, that the church spires claim first atten- tion when from some eminence one gets his first view of a city, town, or village. Men can never come to a realization of a society based upon brotherhood until they learn the secret and the laws of society based on the nature of divine Fatherhood. Society will not reach its goal until men in their religious quest reach their goal. A Chinese student, graduate of one of our great American universities, with FUTURE RELIGION 121 much show of intellectual pride, told the writer that he had returned to his own country to teach his people that the hope for China was in "the Christian philosophy of the West." We were in China on missionary business, and as a part of our mission told him that Western philosophy was only the evanescent fragrance of the Christian religion in America; that Christian civilization created the University, and not the University the civilization. 3. The world has no chance to realize the best political ideals without religion. The beginning of a true democracy is a man*s discovery that he is a responsible being possessed not only of rights, but owing duties to society. A nation may have socialists and anarchists without a religion, or even by the help of a bad religion, but there is no democratic Utopia for any nation a controlling element of whose citi- zenship has not learned that the soul has a master and that master is God. Lift the restraints of autocracy from above any people before you have generated the constraints of the love of God in them, and you will have not democracy but social anarchy. The march of democracy is in the wake of the evangelical missionary and the progress of the Kingdom of God. This nation has been the inspiration of democracy throughout the world only because of what religion has done for us. The democratic ideal has flowered in evangelical atmosphere. 4. Men cannot realize real business success and security without religion. There is not a vocation or profession, a calling or business, which does not need religion to give it respectability and stability. Nearly fifteen years ago a Japanese implored his emperor to lift the embargo on the Christian religion, saying that the Western civilization is the leaf and blossom of Western religion, and that American religion is the root and foundation upon which our pros- perity rests. A few years ago a Japanese business man gave $100,000 as a fund out of which to teach Christian moralities to the coming young business men of Japan. About the same time a Japanese newspaper offered several prizes for the best poem written by Japanese. The three 122 MISSIONARY MESSAGES chief prizes were taken by Japanese Christians. Men must have the help of rehgion to attain the highest success, and the more they become aware of this, the stronger the prob- abihty that rehgion will survive all change. II But the signs of the times not only furnish convincing evidence that religion will survive, but they give strong evidence that sooner or later one religion for all men will be realized. 1. The increasing acquaintance of men with different religions and their respective fruits is a sign that one re- ligion will after a while be chosen as the best. Knowledge is running to and fro and up and down the earth. An inventory of the world's religions is being taken. A survey of religious conditions is in progress. Thoughtful men are collecting data upon which to make a fair appraisement of the world's religions. Theologians, missionaries, scientists, statesmen, tourists, are recording values and reporting their observations. The college students are studying the returns and weighing the evidence in favor of this and that religion. After a while an impartial jury will be found to bring in a verdict. 2. Certain agreements have already been reached. It is now conceded by the best minds that there is but one Su- preme Being, one central and absolute Unity ; that mankind constitutes a common brotherhood ; that men have common natures, religious needs, and common moral foes to right living; that they have a common destiny. Now given one God, a universal brotherhood of men, possessed of common natures, with common religious needs, with a common des- tiny, what is demanded? Manifestly a common religion. That is axiomatic. If there is but one God, it is certain that He cannot at last put His imprimatur upon but one religion and that religion the best of them all. One religion and one only can claim His seal and validation, and one FUTURE RELIGION 123 only can meet the common needs of a universal humanity. 3. The great religions are assuming a missionary offen- sive and declaring thereby that the issue between them must be settled. Mohammedanism is rivaling Christianity in its quest for converts. Buddhism in Japan and China has learned to imitate Christianity, is starting Sunday Schools and teaching children to sing. Those who have penetra- tion to discern the deep and steady undercurrents of human life and thought know that these currents set in one direc- tion. Present circumstance may disturb the surface, but divine purpose and decree hold them to their courses and toward their ultimate goal. All men who think truly think toward one another. One religion for all men is the focal point of all great thinking upon religious questions. Noth- ing gives such unity to groups within the human family as does a common religion. The ideal for human brother- hood and for peaceful relations among men was never so ascendant as now, and this is a sign of the times which betokens missionary achievement and one religion for all men. Ill But the present tendencies signify something more. They justify the forecast not only of one religion for the race, but they indicate certain distinct marks which must char- acterize the final religion. 1. The final religion will be rational. The human mind is expanding. It is gaining zest for fact and gradually breaking down the walls of ignorance, superstition and un- reality. The minutest atom of matter and infinitesimal life have become significant, and the truth about them is found to be worthy of a philosopher's profoundest and most pro- longed duty. The growing enlightenment reveals that heath- enism is in the jungles, Romanism is in the wilderness, and Christian Science is on the back trail. Men with brains will not be persuaded that there is virtue in a string of 124 MISSIONARY MESSAGES beads, or religion in kissing the marble toe of an image, or crossing the face with a little foul water. The intelli- gence of the world will eventually cast away holy water and priestly mesmerism, just as men have already bashfully taken the horseshoes from over the door and the rabbit's foot out of their pockets. The men of to-morrow will not join Christian Science in declaring the microscope and tele- scope are liars. The universal final religion will be rational. 2. The final religion will be spiritual. Psychology has accredited the religious experience. Scholars as well as theo- logians are calling for a religion which is spiritual and ex- perimental. Men have heads, but they have hearts and souls, and the demands of heart and soul are as imperious as the demands of intellectuality. Men have their spiritual hungers and thirsts which are as mandatory as a child's cry for bread or water. Neither materialism, philosophy nor priestly genuflections will satisfy the enlightened human soul nor satisfy the demands of an enlightened public. There is sure to be a growing demand for the very words of Christ which are "spirit and life." 3. The final religion will be democratic. The thrones of kings are crumbling and autocracies are becoming obso- lete. Since 1914 crowns have been snatched from the heads of czars and kaisers, kings and emperors, and monarchies have been turned into republics in the whirl of human revo- lutions. Wherever crowns are still worn their possessors are shorn of all real kingly authority. One may be certain that religion, which is a thing of the soul and finds junction with the seat of manhood, will not long tolerate in its realm that which has been discarded in politics. Individual souls everywhere are emerging from the reign of their masters. They are finding that he who has Christ for his Lord needs none other, and that Christ is too great for the soul to divide its tribute between Him and another. The march of the world toward democracy is sure to relegate many religious leaders. "Buddhism," says a dis- tinguished writer, "takes no attitude toward democracy." FUTURE RELIGION 125 So much the worse for Buddhism. So much the better for democracy! Romanism has taken an attitude, but that attitude is hostile to the soul of freedom and to direct per- sonal approach to God by every individual. There has been in these last days nothing quite so incongruous with the spirit of the times as the crowning of a religious monarch on the banks of the Tiber in the month of February, 1922. But the laws of progress are in process of eliminating such inheritances from the days of monarchical rule, and popes will shortly pass to the curio shelves of the museums and their present devotees will claim their inalienable rights and exercise their soul freedom in the democracy of the race. In the awakening of man's soul to the supreme privilege of personal communion with God, he will be done with human paternalism. 4. The religion of the future will be practical. It must bring forth fruits meet for repentance. It will prove that it is from God by saving and serving men. The badge of religious kinship will be the garment of service. The brief months which have succeeded the Great War have witnessed unprecedented progress in practical religion. This will for- ever discount those forms of religion which are irresponsive to the world's need. The best religion is mankind's best friend. That religion which lifts the fog of ignorance from a people, and lifts society to plains of moral purity, culture, comfort, personal value, thus helping men fulfill themselves, will at last be man's favorite. Rational, spiritual, democratic, practical — these are marks of the coming religion. These elements are emerging out of universal conditions and outline definition is already possible. Such a religion will help man fulfill himself in mind, in soul, and in all social relationships, and will convert his redeemed and heightened powers into helpful ministries for his brothers of every nation, class, and condition. The religion of the future promises to be altruistic beyond any- thing which men have ever known in all the long history of the world. 126 MISSIONARY MESSAGES IV What religion can stand the test of these conditions which the times are putting upon religion ? Not heathenism, for it is not rational ; not Mohammedanism, for it is not spiritual ; not Roman Catholicism, for it is not democratic. Not one or all of these, for alike they are not practical. They do not minister to public enlightenment, nor strengthen the case for those very things in modern civilization which are the source of human progress. These types of religion have not produced the conditions and tendencies of the present and cannot endure the ordeal which they will face when the real forces in modern civilization have a little further advanced their lines, and these lines have a little closer converged. All this is but saying that evangelical Christianity and this alone is equal to a crisis and a crucible for religion like that into which we are surely being borne, impelled by the irresistible forces of the modern world. Many religions will shortly be found to be obsolete. Many of the accretions which in the course of history have attached to religion will in the new day that is dawning fall from Christianity as the barnacles fall from the hull of the great ship when she comes from the great sea and moves into the fresh water of the river. Many things that have attached themselves to religion cannot possibly survive; but that which at the first was religious truth, religious experience, religious Ufe and force will be such in the end. A little more enlightenment, a little more spirituality, and a little more democracy in the world, and heathenism and the Roman hierarchy will capitulate to reason, the demands of soul freedom and experimental religion. What are the chances for the Baptist faith and the Baptist people in the face of these tokens? To my mind these conditions constitute nothing less than the call of a great opportunity for the Baptists of the world. If we stand forth FUTURE RELIGION 127 with our vital message and do not lose our distinctive note in the tumult incident to the adjustments of the hour, we shall shortly realize the dreams and see fulfilled the prayers and hopes of saints and sages who have wrought in expec- tation of such an hour. Mind you, I say stand forth with our principles. I do not say stand by them merely. We shall not enter into our inheritance by simply guarding our faith. It is true that missionary activity without a gospel message is wasted labor, but it is also true that there is no such thing as a vital orthodoxy without the missionary spirit and practice. We must hold the truth fast and we must hold it forth. To attempt to preach without a pure gospel is heterodoxy, but in idleness to boast of our faith is hypocrisy. If the Baptist people can be persuaded to make faithful use of their message, great victories are assured. The world's call for a religion which is reasonable, spir- itual, and democratic indicates that the Baptist day is at high noon. I can hear the very doors of Baptist oppor- tunity creaking on their hinges in the changing order — in Central Europe, in Russia, in China, and South America. What is the meaning of our consistent defense and of our appeal to private judgment and of individual responsibility? Of our insistence upon personal, intelligent obedience to the Word of God? Our age-long contention for the per- sonal rights of every believer, equality among church mem- bers, and for independent, self-governing churches? Have we not all the time been thus paying tribute to intelligence in religion, raising a demand for popular enlightenment, and declaring for a rational religion? Have we not always risked our cause upon an appeal to intelligent personal choice rather than to predilection? We have declared the authority of revealed truth rather than venerated tradition. Have not Baptists appealed to personal conviction and decision rather than to biased parental proxy, to conscience rather than to ecclesiastic authority? A popular demand for a rational, experimental, democratic religion does not take Baptists by surprise. :i28 MISSIONARY MESSAGES What has been the meaning of our contention for per- sonal regeneration before any one is admitted to the priv- ileges of Christian ordinance or church membership? The new recognition of the reahty of rehgious experience, and the demand for experimental spiritual religion is all in the direction of the doctrine of the new birth which with Bap- tists has been the primary condition of church privilege, and which alone admits to Christian fellowship. Those who still defend ceremonial membership will suffer serious handi- cap before the world's demand for experimental religion, but it is equally obvious that those who have consistently affirmed the reality and necessity of personal experience of God and consistently denied the religious value of mere form or ceremony, will not be called to revise their creeds in the future. How will the coming age of democracy affect our can- didacy ? Have we not fully tested democracy as a working policy in religious matters, and thereby set up a claim for recognition as its thorough-going champions? The friends of those forms of religion which require a vicegerent to leg- islate, or a priest to mediate, or an ecclesiastical court to adjudicate in religious matters had better get busy revising their creeds. Already some of the religious sects are em- barrassed, finding that their ecclesiastical paraphernalia is a handicap in winning the allegiance of the modem demo- crat. They told me in Italy that eight thousand priests and monks, who during the war saw the world through their own eyes and got a breath of personal freedom, de- clared upon their return to Italy that they would never again put on the gown. The Baptist people have been at some disadvantage in not having individual ecclesiastical dignitaries through whom they could voice their rights, but in the absence of such they have trained millions of indi- vidual men in the principles of democracy, and we are just coming into the day when the combined voice of mil- lions of democrats will swell to a chorus which will be heard around the world as no single voice can be heard; and the voice of this multitude will be in unison with the FUTURE RELIGION 129 soul of the race and the popular religious ideas of the future. The day for Baptist diligence, faithfulness, sacrifice, and great missionary activities is upon us. The circumstances all favor us. It is evident that the leadership of the world has in recent months fallen to this Western Hemisphere. It is here that the world's school of democracy is located, and the Baptist people are the best qualified teachers in this school. Is it not a good fortune that we have here our greatest numbers, our greatest wealth, and are able from this base to relate ourselves to Baptist opportunity in the new world order, and to have decisive influence in the contest of religions which is certain to issue in one religion for all men ? VI How can our Baptist people best take advantage of the hour? To that question I would make answer, first of all, that we can do this by enhancing the value rather than cheapening the value of our faith. If we are ashamed of it the world will not be proud of it. We must so preach and practice our faith as to popularize it. By our faith- fulness, our zeal, our sacrifice, by the gifts of our sons and daughters and our money to this holy crusade, we will fix our own valuation upon our faith, prove its worth to the world, and declare our interest in the question of the world's final religion. Circumstances incident to the Great War have lifted the religious question before the eyes of the world and set the whole world thinking about religion as men have not probably thought of it in a century. What we do with our religion and for our religion will be done under the eyes of the world, and men will get their impres- sion of its worth by what we seem to think it worth. Men with a Christian faith which meets the needs of times Hike these can by their fidelity gain an advantage for it in a day which formerly they could not have gained in a decade. If at such a time American Baptists, with the smile of 130 MISSIONARY MESSAGES God's favor upon them in their material prosperity, put a fifteen cent valuation on their religious faith, they will doom it and themselves. Political democracy was found so precious, or so objec- tionable a thing, so worthy to be fought over that the nations gave to the contest 9,998,771 young men who sleep the sleep of heroes on battlefront and in war cemeteries. Another 20,997,551 carry the marks of their heroism in their bodies as the proud tokens of their devotion to democracy. In material evaluation of the issue the world spent $337,946,- 179,657 to decide whether democracy or autocracy should rule the world. Baptists will by the size of their missionary collections, by the gifts or the withholding of their sons and daughters, and by the intrepid or hesitating advance of their missionary lines determine what the world shall think of their interest in the present religious issue. Baptist belief is in demand on the religious markets of the world to-day. There never was such a demand for the faith which we hold. If we let the hawkers of inferior articles of faith, the vendors of patent creeds, and the peddlers of heretical cults do the big business of the hour, we shall prove that we are not faithful stewards of the manifold mysteries of God, lose Heaven's favor, and see the tides of opportunity turn at their flood. If we would not lose advantage when the contest is at the issue, Foreign Missions must be lifted out of all parities with single departments of Christian service and small individual Christian enterprises, and receive the atten- tion and the support which is commensurate with its great magnitude and importance. Somehow Baptist leaders must provoke Baptist people to enlarge their thinking and their contributions. A World Program, a contest with the great religious forces of the world, an enterprise which has already projected its lines into eighteen nations of the earth, must command a larger thought and support than Foreign Mis- sions has ever had. Look at the amazing figures which represent men and money put into the European War. Wise men knew that democracy was imperiled, and that FUTURE RELIGION 131' its fate would be determined not in centuries but in months, and the resources of the nations which champion democracy- were requisitioned and thrown into the issue. It was by this supreme effort and sacrifice that the tide of battle was turned and that democracy was saved. There is a lesson in this for the Baptists of the world. Foreign Mis- sions must have a fairer proportion of our gifts. Our people must hear about it from the pulpits, in the Sunday School, and through the public press. The circumstances of the world are converging at the point where the religious question of the future is to be settled. It is the most probable thing that in a few years will be determined what rehgion will rule the future and what particular form of that religion. If Baptist people wish their principles to be regnant in the religion and civilization of the future, they must now give and sacrifice, pray and proclaim. The nations of the earth are feeling after democracy, and genuine reli- gious experience is the mother of real democracy. It is worthy of any man's gold, of any man's life, to see the Baptist people embrace their opportunity now after long centuries of prayer, of persecution, of misinterpretation, and misrepresentation. After long years of seed sowing and patient w^aiting, we have come to a supreme hour. May wisdom and grace be given us to contribute our part, and make our witness decisive in what is to be the religion of the future! CHAPTER X THE UPLIFTED EYE* I AM here to speak to young preachers. I bring you an admonition to cultivate the uplifted eye. I believe that this will have value for you as preachers of the Gospel of Christ, as leaders of men and conductors of the affairs of the Kingdom of Christ. First of All, the Uplifted Eye IV Ul Correct Temptations to Which Preachers Are Liable. The preacher is tempted to focus his attention and his ministry upon nearer and narrower interests. He needs a corrective for this temptation. 1. Like all men preachers are engaged by temporalities. Sometimes this temptation breaks into the harmony of their spiritual life and absorbs them in the midst of spir- itual needs and opportunities. Jesus found his disciples, his chosen preachers, concentrating on something to eat in the presence of spiritual need and opportunity, and sought to break the spell of temporalities, to which he himself was not a victim, by telling them that h^ had meat to eat of which they knew not and calling them to look upon the harvest fields which are ripe and great and plenteous. While they were thinking in terms of a morsel of meat and a loaf of bread, Jesus was thinking of precious granaries. It is a sad fatality in the preacher's life when either because of the failure of his church to provide for his temporal neces- sities, or through his own inordinate love for money, he lapses from his high calling to think too much about tem- * This address was made to the students of the Southern Bap- tist Theological Seminary and the colloquy which characterized it is retained. 132 THE UPLIFTED EYE 133 poralitles. I would lift up an ideal for any minister who feels himself falling a victim to overmuch concern about things for the body. There are probably young preachers in this hall who will do well to examine themselves, making a searching inquiry as to whether they have already begun to think about good salaries, fine parsonages, and pleasant circumstances. If in the pursuit of your duty God leads you into pleasant paths of Christian service, you are to be congratulated, but I warn you against the lure of worldly comforts and worldly gain. If you yield your life to this downward pull, you will never reach the heights of great freedom and power as ministers of Christ. The preacher of our day needs to be warned not only against the temptation of temporalities for himself, but against keying his ministry to overmuch concern for the temporalities of others. The true preacher often walks among the poor and nothing which concerns his fellowmen is a matter of indifference to him. It is his duty to see that his own life and the life of Christian men whom he can influence express themselves in terms of compassion for the unfortunate. There is, however, ground to fear that many ministers have gone beyond the legitimate concern for the temporalities of men and women among whom they live and concern themselves with social programs more than with the gospel of redemption. They have been cheated out of the larger vision by the proximate and material need. I have been much impressed in studying the Commission and the circumstances amidst which it was delivered. All about the Saviour were men and women who were under hard circumstances. Poverty, sickness, and injustice wxre evident on every hand. Yet choosing circumstances under which to deliver his final commission in which once for all he gathered up those things which belong to the preacher's vocation, he said not a word in his Great Commission about ministering to poverty, the rebuke of injustice, the reform of state, but confined himself to those things germane to propagation of the gospel of redemption. Does any one con- clude that Jesus was unconcerned about those who suffered 134 MISSIONARY MESSAGES from poverty or injustice? Such a conclusion would belie the life and ministry of Jesus. Jesus was not indifferent to anybody's misfortune. Nevertheless, amidst circumstances so impressive as to fix indelibly upon all his creative ideal for his ministers, he said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." He knew that that gospel had in it the power to transform and reform, and that temporal mal-adjustments would find their correction more quickly as a consequence of gospel preaching than by any other means which could be adopted. Preach the gospel, young man, and the world will pretty shortly make a social program without your help, and that social program will have in it the vitalities which the gospel begets. The first thing fixed by the Great Com- mission is a world missionary program — "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel"— and after that come baptism and the rest that is comparatively important. 2. Even the spiritual needs, the inimediateness of sin and sinners with their legitimate claims upon ministers, some- times, I fear, cheat preachers out of the larger vision which is necessary to a great ministry. Certainly no one is in reality called of God to preach the gospel who is indifferent to the sin and sinners of his community. He must in faith- fulness call the men and women of his community to re- pentance. He will, however, get inspiration, quickening, passion, and gain greatly in effectiveness for the work at his door if he cultivates the uplifted eye and scans the expansive and ripe harvest fields. There is evangelistic value for the preacher in a missionary outlook. The man who gets the world on his heart will not lack compassion for sinners whom he elbows on the streets of his town. But just as a mother may in her devotion to her own child forget her duty to her neighbor's child, so the preacher may suffer the legitimate and imperative claims of lost men about him, who for a lifetime have rejected the gospel of Christ, to distract attention from the millions in other lands who have never had the opportunity to accept Him. We will be better evangelists as we are more missionary. 3. The narrow views and sympathies of the preacher's THE UPLIFTED EYE 135 audience sometimes tempt him to shun missionary studies, missionary sermons, and missionary collections. It is a perilous temptation. By such a course the minister loses vision and his people never get it. Every preacher has in his congregation those v^ho say, "We have the heathen at home, and until we meet our home expenses, we have noth- ing to send abroad." There is little doubt that many deficits in pastors' salaries are due to derelictions in the pulpit. The uplifted eye, the world vision, is a remedy for this tempta- tion and a cure for such a situation. That church which sets itself resolutely to the task of giving the bread of life to the heathen will not allow its pastor to go hungry. 4. The insistence of the approximate interests of the local pastorate and the home departments of our denomina- tional enterprises shut off many preachers from the views which lie along the distant horizons of the Kingdom of God. An English author asks, "Have you a window open toward the sunset?" and moralizes on the value of such a window. Surely the minister of Christ should have a watchtower from which he can scan the harvest fields and get inspiration from the whole world of Christian endeavor. If the preacher is not careful, he will shorten his observation in his round of church relationships. His Sunday School, his prayer meeting, his deacons' meeting, his church building enterprise have legitimate claims upon him, but if he focuses attention on these local aspects of Kingdom service, he will soon lose zest for them, and they will be cheated out of the best service of which he is capable and that which the church in all its departments needs for the full develop- ment of Christian character. Even the denominational councils may prove a tempta- tion to the preacher who does not form the habit of training his eyes for the larger vision. In every council of which he is likely to be a member home enterprises, are certain to claim the largest attention. The home de- partments of our religious work, state missions, Christian education, home missions, and the like, have larger repre- sentation in all denominational conferences than does for- 136 MISSIONARY MESSAGES eign missions, although foreign missions includes all the departments of our religious activities that are included in the whole home program. Our programs for religious meet- ings assign to single departments of our home work as much time as they do to all the departments of the work in all the rest of the world. Foreign Missions is fortunate to secure an hour or two in any association or state conven- tion, to say nothing of board meetings in the states and associations. This may perhaps, to a degree, be necessary, but it constitutes a temptation and a peril for the minister. It is only by the exercise of his will and a diligent training of his eye on the great far-reaching aspects of the Christian task that he will avoid classifying foreign missions as equal only to a single department of home work and escape the peril of an altogether too narrow view of Kingdom service. He will keep up a fight within his soul or threaten his vision and lose inspiration which he should gather from the wide whitening fields. It is not argued that anything connected with the home work should be foreign to the minister, but that he should give due and proportionate attention to all that his denomination is doing. The writer wrote a book on Foreign Alissions while he was a Home Mission Secre- tary, and whether any one else has been benefited by that book, he is quite certain that out of the study which pro- duced it there was gathered inspiration for his task on the home field. Breadth and balance are necessary to highest ministerial usefulness, and in order to secure these, he must seek to see the whole round of Christian duty in true per- spective. 5. The mental habits of the preacher may easily become a barrier to the larger vision. You will be students when you have quit the study halls. You will continue to study, or you will begin to stunt, but the study habit can easily become a temptation and a snare. Those of you who have intellectual ambitions will be tempted to aspire to be scholars. Those of you who have oratorical gifts will study to be speakers and orators. Certainly the preacher needs, if he can command them, both scholarship and oratory, but let THE UPLIFTED EYE 137 me suggest that if you want to be leaders, you will include in your reading and in your studies a generous course in missionary literature. There is no literature which more tingles with life or throbs with the spirit of God than mis- sionary literature. Missionaries and missionary leaders have furnished preachers with literature which is a telescope through which to observe the harvest fields. Much of the literature that is put out for preachers is very full of schol- arship, but very empty of the gospel and of inspiration for Christian activity. I would not have you to be less studious, but would have you be wise students. Scholarship will have great value for you if it is the right sort and you know what to do with it. I had a letter some months ago from a friend. He is a college and seminary graduate, a man of fine char- acter, and he has been a student of a certain type. He wrote me a pathetic letter. He said the people of his con- gregation and community could not appreciate his scholar- ship, and he would like me to help him get a pastorate where the people wc^e more congenial with his intellectual life. Well, to tell you the truth, I did not appreciate his scholarship either, although I appreciate the man and would rejoice in the privilege of serving him if at the same time I could serve the cause of Christ. What is scholarship for? Is it not to broaden our knowledge of men as well as things, and to better help us adapt ourselves to the service of men ? That scholarship which breaks a man's sympathy with the most illiterate man in his community is a false scholarship. A good and constant supply of missionary literature will save the scholarly minister from this temptation and fatal blunder. God is in His world to-day and Kingdom events are in this very hour crowding each other in a most mar- velous way. Keep in touch with these, and you will be in touch with the men and the women of this generation to whom you preach and whom you should influence, and whose lives you may expand. You are called to be more than sermon makers. You are called to be Kingdom build- ers, and if you are to be wise master-builders, you must 138 MISSIONARY MESSAGES cultivate the uplifted eye, for the Kingdom has great ex- panses and broadens every hour. II The Uplifted Eye Has Positive Value for the Preacher. It will not only save him from temptations, but will furnish him incentives and bring blessings into his personal life and into his ministry. 1 . By the larger vision you will preserve harmony between yourselves and your Textbook. It is a sad day for a preacher when he gets out of harmony with the Bible. The Bible, as your beloved and distinguished teacher, Dr. Carver, has so convincingly shown, is a missionary book. It is a book with a far vision, a book of human expanses, a world atmosphere, an ageless purpose. It was made on purpose to make big men as well as good men. It deals with great matters. The Infinite God is its author. The whole world is compassed in its compassion and purpose. You cannot form the habit of exclusive local concentration and not pay the price of being out of harmony with your Textbook. If the preacher is to keep his life in harmony with the Book, he must take his cue from it and train his vision on the great matters with which it deals. The objective of this Revelation is a lost world. This Book is in quest of God's scattered humanity, and the preacher is to be in life and message the Book's interpreter. If he does this faith- fully, he must look on the fields which are white unto har- vest. 2. The preacher needs atmosphere in his ministry, and he will get this from the Bible and the stretching plains and highlands which these harvest fields present. If his min- istry is to be robust, healthful, stimulating, normal and contagious, he must find something which will save him from narrowing the scope of his pulpit utterances. The Bible when interpreted with due reference to the mission fields with their amplitudes of opportunity, need and vast con- THE UPLIFTED EYE 139 cerns, will prove a tonic for the man who is self-centered, morbid, introspective, brooding, or selfish. It is an outward- looking, upward-looking, and forward-looking book. It is- full of characters who were poor, despised, persecuted, and, as the world would say, unfortunate, but who were in the midst of their trials robust, uncomplaining, and opti- mistic, without self-consciousness, hopeful, joyful, trium- phant men and women. The men and women of this book are the most wholesome of all historical characters. They were missionary heroes. They had spiritual horizons, lofty and broad aims. The counterpart of these men and women are found on the mission fields to-day, — missionaries who have forsaken all to go forth at the call of the world to give their lives to gospel ministry and human service, and native Christians who have forsaken mothers and fathers and houses and lands and brothers and sisters for the Kingdom of Christ's sake, and yet who in their self-denyings are not conscious that they have paid a great price, so rich and full is their religious life. From these men and women the preacher will gain inspiration for his ministry, and from the fields of their activities he will gain atmosphere for his pulpit, in which to grow and develop a wholesome, healthful ministry. 3. The vision which is gathered by the uplifted eye will, while helping the preacher, help his people. It is pitiful to see a minister who cannot pull himself together and out of ruts and get away from the level of community topics, such as hard times, and certain popular amusements. Too much dwelling on these matters, however justifiable their condemnation may be, will soon tell on the size of a man's ministry and develop antagonisms which will aggra- vate him and disturb his church. The man with missionary horizons will be lured to greater heights, and by such allur- ing as will lift him and his people out of the ruts and away from the things which he cannot by much drubbing cure. There is more correction for the worldly habit in the world vision of Christian service than in all reprobations of this or that particular form of worldliness. I40 MISSIONARY MESSAGES The ministry which has in it the breadth of the harvest fields will lift men and women out of themselves. Some preachers overdo the job of comforting the saints. Their ministry does not carry a wholesome atmosphere. The con- solations of the gospel of Christ become maudlin sentimen- tality. It is a fact that many of your dear brethren, and some of your dear sisters, do not need to be made to feel comfortable. You are wasting your tender consolations upon them when you ought to be stirring up their nests. The thing which many of the discontented need is not so much your pity as a great view of Christ's work for the world and a worthy part in that work. The uplifted eye will bring to you and your people the breezes from the harvest fields and the everlasting hills, and will show them vistas of opportunity and privilege which will prove a cura- tive for many of their fancied ills. The preacher who qualifies himself for service by this larger vision will cure his people of peskiness and rid him- self of many vexations. The men and women who sit regularly under the ministry of a man with the missionary vision and passion will instinctively catch his spirit, or else they w^ill fall away like dead flies and cease to vex him. The man who is over much bothered by peskiness in his congregation is likely addicted to a petty ministry. It is better for the minister to be without alliances with men and women who cannot be persuaded to attempt great things for God. The missionary enterprise has, among the benefits which it has conferred upon modern Christianity, served to divide the sheep from the goats. The forward-looking men and women have disentangled themselves of the Hard- shells and anti-missionary element, and in the adventurous spirit of the New Testament marched forward into the harvest fields where the reapers are singing and the golden grain is being gathered. 4. The preacher with the uplifted eye gets inspiration for his ministry from another source. He finds himself identi- fied with a great enterprise and learns that there is room in this enterprise for the utmost output of his powers. As THE UPLIFTED EYE 141 he merges his ministry into it, he is conscious that his powers are waxing. In a field so vast he finds that there is a task congenial for every one, and this increases his power to enlist others for Christian service. He gets, too, the inspira- tion of great comradeship in service. His soul responds to the Christian heroism on the fields of his observation. He is enlarged, his purpose gains in strength, and his ministry shortly evidences a new power. He gathers incentive and purpose, acquires breadth of sympathy and knowledge, and speaks with more passion, more confidence, more authority, and more convincingly. 5. There is still another reason why young preachers should begin early to cultivate the uplifted eye. The preacher is an adventurer, an itinerant. I presume that it is ordained by heaven that he should be an itinerant, but, if not, it is ordained by the deacons that the average preacher shall be a man who pitches his moving tent. He has no abiding city. Young men, you had better carry your observations and familiarities beyond the community to larger fields and into larger interests, because the Lord or a church confer- ence may thrust you unexpectedly into these. The place that knows you now may shortly know you no more forever. You do not want to go into a strange land. Then familiarize yourself with what lies beyond your present parish. Then, too, the ministry which is lived under the inspiration of the larger vision awakens your dormant powers, calls out your resources, rewards the expenditure of your energies, also prepares you for eventualities. If under the spell of this vision the Lord thrusts you into other fields of labor, you will go into these with a sense' of equality for whatever comes, with a certain calm sense of masterfulness which will not desert you. If you are capable of a great ministry, this is the road to it, and a great ministry is to be chosen above great scholarship or skillful homiletics, or gorgeous rhetoric, or flaming oratory. It will do more to take care of you in the midst of new experiences than all of these combined. The minister has use for all of the above gifts and attainments, but they are the technique of his art which 142 MISSIONARY MESSAGES must be heightened and forgotten in the inspiration of a great vision, and thus made effective in the performance of a great task and the achievement of great triumphs. 6. The minister with this vision cannot be long dis- couraged. In moments when the battle seems to turn against him at that part of the line where he is stationed, he will take a new look at the whole battle front and his courage and hope will revive. He will take a new grip on his min- istry and new hope for the cause of Christ as he catches new inspiration from the heroisms of others. The man of vision can never despair of the ultimate outcome of his ministry and the ministry of his brothers. There is enough happen- ing any day on the mission fields to impart hope and cheer to your Blue Monday. 7. But the upward look will for some of you bring into view your life-task. It is this that concerns me par- ticularly in bringing these matters to the attention of the men and women of this Seminary and Training School. Young men, have you made the larger survey? Have you tried to appraise the claims of the world upon you ? Some of you have already named yourselves ^Volunteers." For this I give thanks. In some quiet hour you lifted up your eyes, you looked on the fields, you listened for the voice of God, and in the vision of that hour you heard the voice of Macedonia and gathered that God had called you. You answered with your life that call. May it not be that others of you here would have made a like decision if you had lifted up your eyes and looked on the fields white and great and plenteous? Will you not give the call of the foreign mission fields their due and a faithful consideration? Ill The Urgency of the Mission Fields at Present I want in these closing moments to ask you to think of these matters in the light of present world circumstances. There are peculiar reasons why ministers should heed the THE UPLIFTED EYE 143 admonition of the Saviour to his preacher disciples at Jacob's well in this hour which finds us face to face in this room. It is true as never before that the fields are white. There is much in present world conditions to urge you to lift up your eyes. 1. I would have you think of the harvests which are being gathered by other leaders. Through this Seminary other men have passed into the waiting harvest fields a little in advance of you. These are gathering sheaves unto life eternal. Think of the situation at home. No evangelical Christian denomination ever made in a single twelve months such record as Southern Baptists made last year. Can you realize it ? Two hundred and fifty thousand responsible individuals baptized by white Baptist preachers of the South last year on voluntary personal acknowledgment of Christ as Saviour ! A quarter of a million responsible church members added to our great numbers in a single twelve months! There is no duplicate record in the annals of Christendom. These converts were not made by the preachers, but preach- ers went forth into the harvest fields and these came to baptismal waters and to church membership on their own volitions. The fields were ripe. These 250,000 responsible individuals were not drafted. They were volunteers. They are not the result of infant coercion, but they are the trophies of the gospel of Christ proclaimed by those who love that gospel and love to tell it. In the Middle Ages there were military conquests in Europe which made men and women unwilling subjects of ecclesiastical hierarchies, but these men and women, boys and girls, throughout our Southland, of their own choice, turned away from their sins to the Saviour and chose to w^alk in paths of obedience to Him. This is but an indication of how ripe the harvest fields at home are. But uplift your eyes and look beyond the evangelistic work of your state, beyond the South, and beyond America. Scan the world fields, and you will get a vision which is no less thrilling and heartening. The truth is, in propor- tion to the number of leaders, there is greater gleaning on 144 MISSIONARY MESSAGES the mission fields which we call heathen and papal than on the home fields. Missionaries in China and South America are baptizing more converts per man than are the 12,000 preachers in the South, so ripe are the fields. Baptist preachers in Hungary, Roumania, and Russia, in tattered coats, in bare feet, gaunt and hungiy, are abroad in the harvest fields turning multitudes to Christ. The fields are ripe already to harvest, but out yonder the reapers are few. 2. The extremity of the w^orld without God and without the gospel will impress those who look on the fields. The moral foundations of society are shaken. The human expe- dients have failed. Men are at their wit's end. Humanity is engulfed in universal sorrow. The terrors of hell have got hold on many, and men are falling back on God or into despair. I cannot escape the recurring thought that men are about to come to themselves, and in sheer exhaustion call on God as their only hope and refuge. It is true that sin abounds, but by its abounding it may signify duty and opportunity. It is often illustrated that where sin abounds grace much more abounds. Sin often marks a stage of human desperation and makes ready for the day of repent- ance and a field for the harvesters. Sin is to-day, I divine, defeating itself. It has by going its length proved its futility and revealed the necessity of a remedy. Certainly when Satan is busy, the servants of the Lord should be quickened to new zeal, faithfulness and courage. 3. There are certain conditions in the world which seem to be favorable for the effectual insinuation of the gospel into the hearts of men. There is among men and nations a longing for friendship, for reliable and unfailing alliance. Insincerity and secret diplomacy have destroyed confidence. Instance Russia. Where will the people of Russia find refuge? Where will they find support for their fainting hearts and that which will revive their crushed spirits? I do not wonder at the tidings which are escaping through underground channels of souls among the masses in Russia seeking for God, and the quick and large response which ministers of hope are having to their testimony. THE UPLIFTED EYE 145 4. Then, too, we have reached a harvest period in the work which we have been doing. We have passed the experimental stage in missionary work. We have gone be- yond the initial steps. Hostility is fast disappearing on all the mission fields. We have reaped the firstfruits, and these are but an earnest. Our schools are now beginning to produce results. They have sent forth men and women with Christian experiences and nurtured in Christian ideals. Native churches have been established. The Word of God has been translated and a literature has been created. De- cisive victories have been won, and impregnable positions have been taken. Influential natives now reenforce the missionaries. A comradeship has been provided on the mission fields in the increasing number of volunteers and appointments. Heathen priests, people, and government officials now recognize the permanence and persistence of Christian missions. Opposition and indifference are giving way at home. The old methods which deceivers once used to hurt this great enterprise are obsolete and falsifiers of Foreign Mis- sions are discredited. The enterprise is well organized. It has the backing of rich men and strong churches, as well as the prayers of a multitude of women and the poor. The cause on the mission fields is led by some of the brightest, most cultured and capable men and women our schools have been able to turn out, and these are backed by an increasing solidarity in the home forces. Foreign Missions is well organized. The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the few insti- tutions in the city where it is located that does business running into millions annually. We have recently secured an office building which sets us in a permanent place among the enterprises of the city, the money for this building being given by two friends, the steadfast friends of Foreign Mis- sions and the supporters of this enterprise on the field as well as at home. The Foreign Mission Board has as good credit as any business concern in Richmond, and a credit which is far more extensive than the credit of any firm 146 MISSIONARY MESSAGES in our city. The Foreign Mission Board's Letter of Credit is as good around the world as a draft on a New York inter- national banking corporation. These are but the material aspects of a great spiritual enterprise, but they do indicate that Foreign Missions has passed the experimental stage, and that it is securely guaranteed by the purposes and re- sources of Southern Baptists. The young man or young woman who goes out to represent Southern Baptists on the foreign mission field has a financial and moral backing that does not follow any commercial traveler into the Far East or in search of South American trade. Conclusion I must conclude these remarks, but in this closing moment I wish to come to close quarters with you, my young friends. I did not come to speak before you but to speak to you. I have not cared to make a speech, but I have earnestly desired to have you help me make a great Christian enter- prise, and to make it vastly stronger and more fruitful. I am not concerned to win your applause. I would win you. I would speak to you individually. I have come to ask you to look upon the harvest fields ripe and plentiful, and if I could, to make these so alluring, to show you so convincingly their promise and their need, as to make you a missionary volunteer. I am emboldened to make this appeal because I do not think you will ever regret the decision if you make it here to-day. In Pekin some months ago I met a Miss Williams in the home of a veteran missionary. I found her the life of a circle of young people and a refreshing member of a circle which included older folks. She talked and laughed and sang and played, just as the bright young woman does in the drawing room at home. I inquired of her the reason for her presence in China, and she told me her story. She said that her father was a victim of the Boxers in the uprising, that when they had hacked his body to pieces and he was nigh unto death, he said to a friend who found him, "Take my boy to America and educate him to THE UPLIFTED EYE 147 be a missionary in China/' The boy was just a little fellow and his sister was small. They were sent to America. She had gone through the schools here, and she said, *T have felt that if that was my father's wish for my brother, it would certainly be his wish for me, and I am going back to my father's station to witness for Christ among those who slew him." I admonish you not to find any exception in this case nor contradiction in her merriment and her mis- sionary purpose. Wherever I have gone on mission fields in any land, I have found the missionaries wholesome, happy, purposeful, and glad of their decision to be mission- aries. THE END '"iiffipifi1iiiIi''MM.'S9if.^' Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01234 3630 Date Due 1 M ' JA29'53 j 1 1 1 i i ^ i i Hi I ! i