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 Missionary Work 
 
 By Bishop HENRY W. WARREN 
 
 The Missionary Society of the 
 Methodist Episcopal Church 
 Rindge Literature Department 
 150 Fifth Ave., New York City 
 

 
The Place of Prayer 
 in Missionary Work 
 
 WirTH the consideration of agencies, wheels, first 
 and fifth, of all sorts of machinery, comes con- 
 sideration of the power. Ponderous, mighty, is 
 the great mass of iron we call an engine, almost 
 unmovable by external agencies. But give it the 
 inner power and it takes a whole street over the 
 range of mountains, and all humanity up the 
 grades of civilization and progress. 
 
 When one looks at the heathen world, terrorized 
 by superstition, debauched by lust, debased by 
 poverty, and horribly deteriorated by the worship 
 of abominable gods, and then thinks of the per- 
 fect stature of manhood in Christ Jesus, and that 
 this stuff is to be made into the royal perfectness 
 of the children of God, every man asks, Who is 
 sufficient for these things? And the answer 
 inevitably is, no man. But hear the true answer: 
 “Not by might, not by an army, but by my 
 spirit, saith Jehovah of hosts.” The point I 
 wish to make is this: there is plenty of power 
 provided in God’s universe for the changing of 
 these sinners into saints, for the changing of 
 ignorant men into wise men, for the changing of 
 men dead in trespasses and sins, into saints, alive 
 unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 The Realm of Power in the World 
 
 Of course there must be a realm of power about 
 this world or it would not exist. There must be 
 
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a source of power somewhere, or there would be 
 none of these inferior powers. The powers that 
 we handle, that we are proud to master, that we 
 utilize for our advantage must have come out 
 of some other realm. The might of gravitation, 
 chemical affinity, cohesion, steam, dynamite, 
 lightning, not one of these is sufficient either for 
 its own origination or for its own continuance. 
 Think of the crazy thought of men to have sup- 
 posed that all earthly powers could have been 
 envolved from a single potency of gravitation in 
 the fiery star-dust of a cloud. Can we draw out 
 from this force, the only one claimed to be in 
 the universe, gravitation—can we draw out 
 higher power, and still leave the other untouched? 
 Can cohesion, chemical affinity, all possible mights 
 be drawn out of the lowest, and it still be as 
 mighty as ever? Never. We are domed over, 
 domed under, girt round and permeated through 
 with a spiritual power out of which all others” 
 must come. We wonder that gravitation, in its 
 might of swinging worlds, does not get weary and 
 exhausted. Why not? Hast thou not heard that 
 the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the 
 earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? Power out 
 of him lasts through the millenniums unwearied 
 and unweariable. 
 
 There have been mights which we are incapable 
 of measuring. This Bible is a record of things im- 
 possible to men: seas divided until a nation can 
 go through dry shod; fire out of the heaven of 
 such kind and fierceness as that it consumes com- 
 mon water as common water puts out ordinary 
 fire; all kinds of mights overmastering the lower 
 mights of earth. And these are as real as gravita- 
 tion, as actual as any power we know of. 
 
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HOW MUCH SHALL I GIVE THIS YEAR 
 TO MISSIONS? 
 
 A LITTLE ARGUMENT WITH MYSELF 
 
 (1) If I refuse to give anything, I practical- 
 ly cast a ballot in favor of the recall of every 
 missionary, both in the home and foreign fields. 
 
 (2) If I give less than heretofore, I favor 
 a reduction of the missionary forces propor- 
 tionate to my reduced contribution. 
 
 (3) If I give the same as formerly, I favor 
 holding the ground already won, but I oppose 
 a forward movement. My song is, “Hold the 
 Fort,” forgetting that the Lord never intended 
 that His army should take refuge in a fort. 
 All of His soldiers are under marching orders 
 always. They are commanded to “Go.” 
 
 (4) If I advance my offering beyond former 
 years, then I favor an advance movement in 
 the conquest of new territory for Christ. Shall 
 I not join this class? If I add one hundred 
 per eent to my former contributions, then I 
 favor doubling the missionary force at once. 
 If I add. fifty per cent, I say, Send out one half 
 as many more; and if I add twenty-five per 
 cent, I say to our Missionary Society, Send 
 out one fourth more than are now in the field. 
 What shall I do? I surely do not favor the 
 recall of our whole missionary force, or of 
 any part of it. Neither am I satisfied simply 
 to hold our own so long as the great majority 
 of the heathen world as yet have never heard 
 of Christ. I do believe in greatly inereasing 
 the present number of our missionaries, there- 
 fore I will increase my former offerings to mig 
 sionary work. 
 

 
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Knowledge of Power and its Existence 
 
 The fact that men do not know of this power 
 militates nothing against its actual existence. For 
 ages men walked the earth and never knew there 
 was a gravitation. Men drank the sparkling water, 
 saw it distilled as the gentle dew, saw it glorified 
 in the rainbow, and never knew that every drop of 
 it was full of the irrepressible power of steam. For 
 ages men walked the earth interpenetrated with > 
 the might of electricity, and it is only to-day that 
 it floods our homes with lights and hurls the cars 
 along the streets. The fact that we did not know 
 it for thousands of years is no argument against 
 its existence and power; and the fact that men do 
 not know there is a spiritual realm of might for 
 the mastery of every other realm, does not militate 
 against its real existence. So it is true that there 
 is a realm of power over, under, around, within, a 
 power for mind and heart, as really as there is 
 power of gravitation for matter. And men can 
 find their way into this realm and strengthened 
 out of God, stand in the midst of every hostile in- 
 fluence, and say to the mighty king, in answer to 
 his command to bow down, “ We are not careful to 
 answer thee, O king, in this matter, but be it 
 known unto thee that we will not bow down.” 
 And armies of men, commands of kings, the touch 
 of fire to the flesh, do not alter that will that is 
 strengthened out of the realm of power where the 
 Will is infinite and almighty. 
 
 Paul gives us a remarkable definition of the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ: “ It is power.” This defi- 
 nition grows more clear, more forceful, by every 
 realm of power into which we break and every 
 realm of mastery into which we come. The Gos- 
 
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pel of Jesus Christ is greater power. This being 
 true, how shall we find our way into that realm, a 
 realm as real, as subject to law, as ready to work 
 for man, as any realm that exists in the universe, 
 
 Things Impossible to Men 
 
 T said this book is a record of things impossible 
 to men. But they have been wrought. Clouds of 
 thunderous darkness and rumbling wrath brooded 
 ‘over Sodom; but the lightnings were leashed over 
 the pits of slime while Abram prayed. On the top 
 of Carmel Elijah knelt by the drenched sacrifice 
 and said: “ O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, 
 and of Israel, let it be known this day that Thou 
 art God in Israel, and that I am Thy servant, and 
 that I have done all these things at Thy word. 
 Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may 
 know that Thou, Lord and God, hast turned their 
 heart back again.” ‘Then fire fell that could com- 
 sume water as easily as ordinary water puts out 
 common fire. 
 
 Said Dr. Livingstone in Africa, “God had but 
 one Son, and He was a foreign missionary.” How 
 did that Son conduct His campaign? For Him- 
 self? All night in prayer; dwelling in a realm of 
 power surging about Him, thrilling His being. 
 How did He apply it? On the top of the Mount of 
 Transfiguration, He prayed, till glorified, trans- 
 figured, He shone in His original brightness. 
 When the crisis hour came, all night again in 
 prayer, falling on His face like Elijah on Carmel, 
 — ‘If possible, let this cup pass from me; never- 
 theless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” 
 
 He was about going away, leaving a few timid 
 scattered disciples to turn the world upside down 
 in the matter of morals and eternal hope. What 
 
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should be done for them? How could they be em- 
 powered? “ Pray, pray the Father for the fulfil- 
 ment of the promise of power.” They obeyed. 
 They gathered together in that upper room. After- 
 wards Peter addressed a great audience and gath- 
 ered three thousand trophies in a day. Was it 
 Peter’s eloquence, logic, argument? No. ‘The 
 power was found in that upper chamber before he 
 came to the ordinary audience. The same thing 
 we find all the way along. Luther storms heaven; 
 he is like Moses crying, “ Lord, this, or blot my 
 name out of Thy book.” Wesley, John Knox— 
 they show you in Edinburgh where his knees wore 
 the very floor away as he said, “ O God, give me 
 Scotland, or I die.” Livingstone, in the heart of 
 Africa, about to be translated, uses not his last 
 moments for preaching; he is in his tent on his 
 knees. He storms heaven with his prayer till he 
 cannot abide longer in the body, and he goes into 
 the very shekinah to plead for Africa. And Hart- 
 zell and Taylor went there largely in answer, not 
 to his might, nor to an army, but by the Spirit of 
 God employed by the dying missionary in Africa’s 
 great heart. 
 
 The great agency in our revivals, our missionary 
 work, is somebody’s prayer that will not let God 
 go until far in the morning, until the breaking of 
 the light, except God bless and give souls. 
 
 The Real Power of the Missionary Movement 
 
 This, then, being the real power of the mission- 
 ary movement, I bring this appeal. If I were to 
 ask for money to set India afire, to kindle a flame 
 in Africa, to give China all it wanted, you could 
 not answer me. But I can appeal on a basis where 
 every one can be a glorious helper in the mission- 
 
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ary cause. Every man can put his hand, not invo 
 the treasuries of earth, but into the treasuries of 
 heaven. Every lone woman in her garret or in her 
 basement, can find her way to God, and as a result 
 a great rushing wind of the mighty Spirit of Je- 
 hovah himself shall fill the world, not with might, 
 nor with an army, but with the Spirit of the living 
 God. 
 
 Shall we now vow ourselves to new earnestness 
 of prayer, pledge ourselves, daily,—morning, even- 
 ing, and night—to implore the court of Heaven 
 that the spirit of the living God may be poured out 
 and abide on all our missions far and wide. 
 
 O Lord, revive Thy work! Let the heathen be 
 given to Thy Son for an inheritance, and the utter- 
 most parts of the earth for a possession? _ 
 
 40 cents per 100 copies 
 
 Series of 1903