PAM = 4 
 MSS, Yinance + Slewardash Ls 
 
 Ohiristian Missions 
 and the 
 
 Highest USe ot 
 Wealth 
 
 President 
 Merrill Edwards Gates, LL.D. 
 Of Amherst 
 
Student Volunteer Sertes, No. 9. 
 
 iy 
 
 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 
 
 SHES HIGHEST* USE: OF 
 WEALTH 
 
 President Merrill Edwards Gates, LL.D. 
 
 OF AMHERST 
 
The substance of this paper was delivered as an 
 address at the annual meeting of the A. B.C. F. M., 
 at Pittsfield, Mass., October, 1891. ; 
 
CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 
 AND THE 
 
 HIGHEST USE OF WEALTH. 
 
 The incarnation of the living God as 
 the Redeemer of man has made it for- 
 ever necessary that the man who would 
 know God must see something of God 
 in his fellow-men. In all ages the men 
 whose hearts God has touched, whose 
 eyes God has opened that they may see 
 Him and make others see Him, have 
 been men mightily moved in soul and 
 heart toward their fellow-men. The 
 nearer we come to God’s view of human 
 life, the purer and deeper and mightier 
 will be our love of human souls and our 
 pity for wasted, sinful, and benighted 
 human lives. 
 
 LOVE OF GOD AND WORK FOR MEN. 
 
 There is a Divine revelation of the 
 very heart of God Himself in the de- 
 scription Christ gives us of the scenes of 
 
4 
 
 division at the judgment. Our Master 
 takes as His own not those who self- 
 ishly- cry, ‘‘Lord, Lord!’’ and boast 
 familiarity with God’s power and 
 achievements of their own in casting 
 out devils; but the men who have shown 
 ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus,’’ 
 and under the constraining power of 
 Christ’s love have served Him by serv- 
 ing ‘‘in His name” their fellow-men for 
 whom He died. It is by the faith that 
 is in Christ Jesus that we stand; but the 
 absolutely vital, the indissoluble connec- 
 tion of faith with love and with works of 
 love and helpfulness and mercy, is made 
 startlingly clear in this revelation by 
 Christ of the things which shall be made 
 manifest at that day. It is only by liv- 
 ing out a vital principle of life to its 
 issues that we can come to know it 
 thoroughly. True Christians are men 
 and women who are bent upon reducing 
 right theories of life to right living. 
 Life-power and moral truth are the 
 mightiest forces in the universe. In 
 Christian character these two forces are 
 combined. God is life and truth; god- 
 
~ 
 
 2) 
 
 likeness worked out in life is character; 
 into sound character has entered the 
 “omnipotence of a principle,” and the 
 almightiness of God Himself is pledged 
 to make character, which is vitalized 
 truth, the mightiest power within the 
 control of man. And since God is love, 
 and God in Christ is the supreme reve- 
 lation of that holy and infinitely attrac- 
 tive love which spared not His own Son 
 that He might be just and yet might 
 love us out of our sins into lives of 
 holiness, Christians can never learn 
 large lessons of God’s love in Christ 
 without sharing in Christ’s love for their 
 fellow-men. 
 
 THE TEST—OUR FEELING TOWARD MULTI- 
 TUDES OF UNSHEPHERDED MEN. 
 
 Always, then, for the individual Chris- 
 tian, and for any body of Christians who 
 are acting together, there is a supreme 
 test in the question, How deep a con- 
 cern do you feel for the welfare of the 
 great body of your fellow-men? What 
 are your feelings, what are your pur- 
 poses, what is your attitude of soul to- 
 
6 
 
 ward the benighted ones, our brothers 
 and sisters, who are ignorant, debased, 
 sin-burdened, and hopeless in the 
 world? 
 
 Sharp and clear is the contrast be- 
 tween the spirit of the Pharisees and 
 the spirit of Christ in this matter of 
 caring for crowds of the common peo- 
 ple. When their returning officers 
 said, ‘‘Never man spake as this man 
 speaks,” and when ‘‘the common people 
 heard Him _ gladly,” the Pharisees 
 waved aside the divine meaning of the 
 message with that contemptuous phrase, 
 the essence of selfish vanity and arro- 
 gant pride, ‘‘This people that knoweth 
 not the law is accursed.” But ‘the 
 mind that was in Christ Jesus,” the mind 
 that dwells in every true child of God in 
 richer fulness as the Holy Spirit shows 
 him the things of Christ, is revealed in 
 the words, ‘‘But when He saw the mul- 
 titude, He was moved with compassion 
 upon them, because they fainted and 
 were scattered abroad as sheep having 
 no shepherd.’’ In those words speaks 
 from the heart of God the loving voice 
 
7 
 
 of the Good Shepherd; and ‘‘His sheep 
 know His voice and follow Him.”’ 
 
 This mind that was in Christ, this 
 deep yearning love for lost men, has 
 always marked the true Church. It 
 began its growth among men with the 
 growth of the early Church at Jerusalem, 
 and it had to break its way through that 
 intense spirit of exclusiveness which, 
 with the Jewish Church, had been a cult 
 for centuries. For generations God 
 had walled in His chosen people, had 
 separated them from the rest of the 
 world, that their knowlege of Him and 
 their realization of His presence might 
 be intensified by exclusion. In the ful- 
 ness of time, when the Word was made 
 flesh, when the love of God was poured 
 into the life of men through the life and 
 the words of Christ, this spirit of love 
 for all mankind burst the cerements of 
 the old dispensation, and the Christian 
 Church began its wondrous growth on 
 earth. It came into life, it grew and 
 prospered, under the teaching and 
 guidance of the Third Person of the 
 Trinity, the ever-living Holy Spirit, 
 
8 
 
 whose office it is to take of the things of 
 Christ and show them to His followers, 
 who is with us here to-day guiding His 
 Church. Peter first felt the power of 
 this mission-spirit of love for all man- 
 kind. Then the heavenly vision came 
 to Paul, and flaming with the spirit “of 
 Christ’s love he went through all the 
 provinces, fiery-hearted with the spirit 
 of missions. With the growth of the 
 Church this spirit has increasingly pre- 
 vailed, the walls of separation between 
 nations have been broken down by it. 
 It is to the growing spirit of Christ, 
 not to the evolution of a perception of a 
 subtly selfish interest for the individual 
 to be attained by the promotion of the 
 welfare of the whole—it is to the spirit 
 of Christ and not to ‘‘enlightened self- 
 interest,’? that we owe the deepening 
 sense of the solidarity of the race which 
 binds men together the world around. 
 In the history of the Church it is the 
 men whose hearts have received this 
 spirit in the largest measure whose 
 names illumine the annals of the Church 
 and the pages of universal history. In 
 
9 
 
 their hearts was condensed so much ofthe 
 thrilling force of Christ’s love that heat 
 passed into fiery rays of light, and they 
 became beacons to men for all time. 
 From Paul,. longing to visit Spain, 
 yearning over the Romans, melted with 
 love for the Galatians, holding all Greece 
 and all Asia in his heart, down through 
 the glorious roll of saints and martyrs 
 and missionary heroes till we reach the 
 names of the missionaries whom we have 
 seen in the flesh, and whom we love, 
 hearts and lives on fire with the love 
 oflost and benighted men have been 
 the evidence of the spirit of life in the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 IN A LIVING CHURCH, ALWAYS A LOVE OF 
 
 MISSIONS. 
 
 There can be no living Church with- 
 out a glowing love for missions. Christ 
 has made this very clear to us. In the 
 glimpse He gives us of the judgment, in 
 His parting words as He ascended, ‘‘Go 
 ye and make disciples of all nations,” 
 and, ‘‘Lo, I am with you all the days, 
 even unto the end of the world,” we find 
 the very essence of His teaching, the 
 
Io 
 
 flowering of His spirit of service. To 
 seek and to save that which was lost,was 
 the mission. that brought our Divine 
 Redeemer from heaven to earth; and to 
 seek and to save the lost is the Divine 
 commission from the glorified Christ in 
 heaven to each believer who looks up to 
 a Divine Redeemer for direction in a 
 life of grateful service. 
 
 What has this to do with the question 
 of money and its use? Let us ask our- 
 selves this question thoughtfully. 
 
 MEN AND MEANS. 
 
 As members of the Church of Christ 
 set to do Christ’s work in the world, 
 assembled here in the interest of one of 
 the most important agencies in that 
 work of evangelizing the world, which 
 is pre-eminently the one work given by 
 Christ, to His people to do in His name, 
 we are brought face to face with the 
 question of ¢he means to carry out this 
 important work. Here, as in every other 
 important undertaking which is to in- 
 fluence many lives, men and means are 
 the essential requirements. Men never 
 
II 
 
 were offered to a praying Church in such 
 numbers as stand confronting us to-day, 
 saying, ‘‘We are ready, send us.” 
 Under the influence of the spirit of God, 
 the immeasurable importance of bearing 
 the glad tidings to the dark places of the 
 earth has dawned upon young men and 
 women in our land with avividness and a 
 power never before seen or knownin the 
 history of the Church. Do you who 
 are past middle age remember the ‘‘mis- 
 sionary concerts” of your youth, when 
 prayers were regularly offered that God 
 would ‘‘break down the walls” that shut 
 Christians out of China and Japan? That 
 prayer has been answered. The 
 Emperor of China has issued a royal 
 edict calling upon the governors of his 
 provinces to protect the missionaries 
 against misrepresentation and violence, 
 and declaring that the object of Chris- 
 tian teaching is tomake men better. We 
 have been witnesses of this marvellous 
 change. We haveseen Japan rise sud- 
 denly to highest standards in civili- 
 zation and in government—a nation born 
 inaday. Japanese Christians are set- 
 
12 
 
 ting the Christian world an example of 
 unity and loving fellowship in work. 
 The testimony of all observers is that 
 never was a great nation in a more re- 
 ceptive mood for Christian truth than 
 is Japan to-day. In India there is a 
 special call for laborers. Another gen- 
 eration of educated men, broken loose 
 from the old faith, will soon be anarchic 
 in morals unless Christianity shall sup- 
 ply the basis of morality in life. We need 
 not raise any questions of a future hell; 
 there will be hell let loose upon the 
 earth unless Christian truth gets hold 
 upon India, unless the love of Christ 
 cherished in the heart shall more than 
 make good the loss of restraints of the 
 old order. In unharvested fields the 
 grain, ripe and ready, falls to the earth 
 in rich, decaying masses, ungarnered. 
 Unless these years that are now upon us 
 be used, the opportunity is forever lost. 
 It is now or never, for India! 
 
 “TIME-VALUE’’? AND ‘“‘PLACE-VALUE.”’ 
 
 Political economists talk of a ‘‘time- 
 value,” which belongs to a commodity 
 
13 
 that is ready precisely when it is wanted, 
 like seed corn in spring, and of a ‘‘place- 
 value,’”’ which is the result of the pres- 
 ence of an instrument or a commodity 
 at the precise place where it is needed, 
 and at precisely the time when it is 
 needed. The time-utility of mission- 
 ary effort just now is immense. Who 
 can estimate the place-utility of Chris- 
 tian effort now in Japan and in India? 
 Of Africa I hardly dare to speak. 
 Africa, no longer the totally ‘‘Dark Con- 
 tinent,” first pierced through by the 
 rays of love and light where Livingstone 
 carried his well-read Bible that rayed 
 out life for him and made his path a trail 
 of love and light until that night when 
 he knelt alone beside his cot under the 
 great tree in the wilderness and, 
 kneeling, met his God; Africa, now 
 slowly rising to a place in the world’s 
 history, but still as booty to be struggled 
 for in a contest of diplomacy, if not of 
 arms—to save and uplift Africa, what 
 need of Christian giving, what a call for 
 help from Christian America, who owes 
 the heaviest debt to that continent 
 
14 
 which is mother of the race, long fet- 
 tered and beaten with many stripes, 
 whose unrequited toil made ‘‘cotton 
 king”’! 
 
 We see these open doors. We hear 
 these calls from perishing men. We see 
 the ‘‘time-value” and the ‘‘place-value” 
 of efforts now put forth for Christ. Loyal 
 subjects of Christ our King, we see 
 clearly the importance of these strategic 
 points to be seized now for the advance- 
 ment of His kingdom among men. The 
 eld walls about the isolated nations, 
 which our fathers and mothers prayed to 
 have thrown down, lie flat before us. 
 The opportunity is ample. The need 
 is pressing, _The demand from the field 
 is imperative. The loss of life, the loss 
 of souls, is deadly. 
 
 WHAT HINDERS THE WORK? 
 
 In those monthly concerts, when the 
 walls about China and Japan had fallen, 
 the petitions began to take on this 
 stereotyped form: ‘‘Lord, raise up men 
 and women who shall be willing to go 
 into these opening fields.” The sacri- 
 
15 
 fice involved in foreign mission work has 
 always been immense, but the fruit of it 
 has been abundant and rich. Partings 
 with kindred and friends, departures 
 into strange lands—these have always 
 been essential to the propagation of the 
 truth since the time when God said to 
 Abraham, the father of the faithful, 
 “Get thee out of thy country and from 
 thy kindred, and come into the land 
 which I will show thee.” By such self- 
 sacrificing obedience to God’s com- 
 mands have new nations learned of that 
 brotherhood of man which has no mean- 
 ing, no power, save as all nations learn 
 that they have a common Father, even 
 God. Much of what is called the ‘‘spirit 
 of the nineteenth century,’’—this awak- 
 ening of the world to the conviction that 
 all men are of one blood, and that prop- 
 erty in man is impossible—is the mani- 
 fest result of mission work done by 
 strangers who, for Christ’s sake and at 
 God’s call, have sojourned in strange 
 lands among despised peoples preaching 
 peace and brotherhood through Christ. 
 But the cost of leaving home and friends 
 
16 
 
 and native land, the sacrifice involved in 
 expatriating one’s self and one’s chil- 
 dren, has always been so serious a mat- 
 ter to contemplate that those who love 
 their own ease have always wondered 
 when the call of God has been potent 
 enough to carry His consecrated ser- 
 vants as missionaries to foreign fields. 
 The supply of men and women willing 
 to go has never been equal to the need 
 of the field, seldom to the means at the 
 disposal of the missionary boards. It 
 has been taken for granted by the 
 Church for the last two generations, first, 
 that the walls that shut in mighty na- 
 tions could not be broken down short of 
 centuries to come; and then, that labor- 
 ers willing to go could not be found in 
 sufficient numbers. 
 
 FACE TO FACEK WITH ANSWERED PRAYERS. 
 
 But what is ¢/me to our God when He 
 wills to send His kingdom forward by a 
 mighty unfolding into the growing sea- 
 son, into the flowering time! A thou- 
 sand years areas a day with Him. He 
 laid the walls level. He opened the 
 
17 
 way. His will and wisdom brought in 
 theageof steam. Railroads and steam- 
 ship lines girdle His giobe to make 
 ready a highway for His messengers, 
 ‘speaking peace to the nations.” He 
 sets a Stephenson and a Fulton,a Morse 
 and a Bell and an Edison at His tasks 
 when they knowit not. Corporations 
 of selfish men do His work, as heed- 
 less of the plan of God as are the stones 
 which are framed into the mighty arch 
 of the cathedral, or the liquid elements 
 that are seized upon by the growing 
 plant and drawn up into a place in the 
 beauty of its unfolded blossom by a 
 power utterly beyond their ken! Mis- 
 sion fields are open. The world is the 
 . field. All fences are down. A Chris- 
 tian Church, the Church of America, 
 stands to-day face to face with its an- 
 swered prayers. It is as if a throng of 
 men and women had been standing in 
 the ante-room of the King’s chamber, 
 half drearily telling each other in mo- 
 notonous voices what they wished to 
 ask for if the King would only give them 
 audience, Suddenly the King steps in 
 
18 
 
 among them and declares, ‘‘I know your 
 wishes; you have them now!’’ And 
 with stammering voices and uncertain 
 gestures the would-be petitioners stand 
 abashed in the presence of a royal Giver, 
 whose readiness to give exceeds their 
 readiness to receive! 
 THE STUDENT VOLUNTEERS FOR MISSIONS. 
 
 For a generation the Church has been 
 praying for men and women who were 
 ready togo, The Holy Spirit has tried 
 the hearts and searched the spirits of 
 young men and women at our higher in- 
 stitutions of learning. No one who has 
 been among them, asI have been, and has 
 seen this searching work of the Lord, 
 can fail to recognize it as God’s doing, 
 and as altogether wonderful and like His 
 mighty power and the gracious con- 
 straining force of His own love, that to- 
 day over six thousand young Christians 
 of America are volunteers for Christian 
 mission work. 
 
 The years when students look out 
 upon life from the mountain heights of 
 youth are favorable toa clear vision of 
 comparative values. While the wish is 
 
, 19 
 
 eager to make one’s life count for the 
 utmost possible in the service of God 
 by serving one’s fellow-men, those 
 whose eyes God touches that they may 
 truly see, discern the truth that no other 
 work compares in potent possibility for 
 good with this light-bearing in dark 
 places. Our ‘‘young men see visions;” 
 and this is the fulfilment of God’s glori- 
 ous promise of rich blessing for any na- 
 tion. They see that the Holy Spirit 
 deseribes the highest object of a lib- 
 eral education, when He speaks of one 
 who ‘‘has the tongue of the learned to 
 speak a word in season to him that is 
 weary.” And the Spirit of God has so 
 moved upon the young people in the 
 Church of God in this land, that as a 
 class of Christians they say to-day to 
 the Church of God, ‘‘We are ready to 
 go; we are eager to try within this next 
 generation to fulfil the glorious com- 
 mand of Christ and ‘make disciples of 
 all nations.’ ” 
 THE ALMIGHTY BANKER CALLS IN HIS LOANS. 
 
 Since the work is Christ’s work in- 
 trusted to ys, since the would-be 
 
20 
 
 workers are ready and call upon our 
 mission boards to send them; since the 
 great, the rapidly growing wealth of this 
 Christian nation is in the hands of Chris- 
 tian men and women of mature years; my 
 brothers, what answer can we give for 
 ourselves before the judgment throne of 
 God, if this glorious work of preaching 
 the Gospel of light to dying men is 
 checked and dwarfed, and fails of its 
 glorious possibility, because we who 
 are God’s stewards hold fast to God’s 
 money for our own selfish uses? There 
 is a time when the Almighty Banker of 
 the Universe callsin His loans! There 
 is a time whenthe Master, about to 
 return from far countries, Himseif makes 
 rigid yet loving inquiry of every steward 
 concerning the talents, be they one or 
 ten, intrusted to his use. Are we so 
 using the money God has given us as 
 to give to Him ‘‘His own with interest”? 
 
 But, some one will say, this is an un- 
 natural view which you present. Chris- 
 tians are to use their money as do other 
 men, subject to the laws of political 
 economy and in accordance with the 
 
21 
 
 general spirit of the time in which they 
 dwell and with the standards that pre- 
 vail in the grades of society where 
 their lot is cast. Let us look at the 
 question for a moment. 
 
 HIS PROPERTY IS A MAN’S “‘OBJECTIFIED 
 
 WILY.”’ 
 
 A man’s property has been said to be 
 his‘‘objectified will.’’ Mere things, which 
 apart from .man are impersonal and 
 utterly outside of moral and jural con- 
 siderations, enter into the domain of 
 rights, of justice, of morality, through 
 their relation to the will of their owner. 
 The object into which you have intro- 
 duced your will, which you have willed 
 and worked to make your own, has be- 
 come inasense a part of you. There 
 is a true sense in which the man who 
 touches your property touches you. 
 Property that is truly owned and used 
 becomes in a sense a part of the owner 
 and user. His intelligence permeates 
 it, his will directs itsuse. Since wealth 
 is often labor stored up in portable form, 
 it has init a man’s life. It partakes of 
 his personality. A man’s wealth, 
 
22 
 
 through his acting in it , becomes a per- 
 sonal force in social life which may be 
 used for the noblest ends or prostituted 
 to the basest uses. 
 
 No man can escape the fullest re- 
 sponsibility for the use he makes of his 
 wealth, which is potential power of ser- 
 vice. Every man holds all his powers in 
 trust; for the use he makes or fails to 
 make of each power, he must answer at 
 the judgment-seat of God. Our divine 
 Teacher has warned us that in wealth 
 there is a subtle and dangerous ten- 
 dency which leads it to seek to escape 
 this law of service. Wealth, which should 
 be a useful servant, seeks to become a 
 tyrannical master. Christ in His warn- 
 ings to His followers personifies but 
 one power in the universe as likely to 
 become a dangerous rival for that throne 
 in man’s heart and life which belongs 
 to God Himself. The subtle power 
 against which He thus warns us is 
 Mammon, the love of money. Between 
 the mad pursuit of gain and the service 
 of the living God, He warns us that 
 everyman must choose. ‘‘Ye cannot 
 
23 
 serve God and Mammon.” The pro- 
 perty that you have must be as fully 
 and entirely subject to the law of the 
 service of God in serving your fellow- 
 men, aS must your powers of heart and 
 will and hand and head. 
 THE CONVERTED HEART INVOLVES THE CON- 
 VERTED POCKET-BOOK. 
 
 Talk of men as converted, as Chris- 
 tian men, who consciously and deliber- 
 ately allow their property to be used for 
 debasing and ruining their fellow-men! 
 Imagine that a man’s heart and will can 
 be converted to the service of God, and 
 his property remainin the service of the 
 devil! ‘Tis an utter impossibility! 
 
 The conversion that does not reach a 
 man’s use of his property is no true 
 conversion. ‘There is no truly Christian 
 man who keeps an unconverted pocket- 
 book or bank account. God’s universal 
 law of unselfish service is as supreme in 
 the domain of material possessions—in 
 the realm of that wealth which extends 
 a man’s power ‘‘to bring things to pass”’ 
 —as it is in any other department of 
 man’s possible efforts. The unvarying 
 
24 
 law of God, which attaches an obliga- 
 tion to every opportunity and places a 
 duty over against every right, makes no 
 exception of wealth with its vast powers 
 of service. God has so ordered the 
 social life of our race that no man can 
 make the most of his powers of mind 
 and heart and will until he employs 
 those powers in the service of his fellow- 
 men. This is an accepted law in the 
 realm of mind and spirit. It is no less 
 binding upon the power which material 
 wealth places at a man’s disposal. No 
 man has the slightest right to say of 
 his wealth, “(It is mine, I may use it 
 selfishly if I will.” No man has ar- 
 rived at a true conception of the re- 
 sponsibility that attaches to the posses- 
 sion of property, until his relations 
 through it to his fellow-men fill a larger 
 place in his views of life than does his 
 ability by his wealth to serve his own 
 selfish ends. No man is free to make 
 an option as to whether he and his pro- 
 perty shall come under God’s law of 
 service. He and his property are under 
 that law, of necessity, as he is of neces- 
 
25 
 
 sity a member of society and of the 
 State, without his leave having been 
 asked. In the use of his property, as of 
 all his other powers, he owes steady 
 allegiance to that law of service, by 
 virtue of the solidarity of God’s universe 
 of law; and though in managing his 
 property he may disregard this obliga- 
 tion, he can never escape it. 
 
 Now, wealth must be used for service 
 according to its own laws. Wealth is 
 productive only as it is used as capital 
 —that is, as wealth employed in the 
 production of new wealth, of new values. 
 Since wealth is “the usufruct of skill, 
 intelligence, and morality,’ it places its 
 owner under obligation steadily so to 
 use it as to reproduce morality, intelli- 
 gence and skill. 
 
 RESTRICTED SERVICE, TO GAIN WEALTH. 
 
 My brothers, Christian men who have 
 put much of your life into money-win- 
 ning, aS you remember how much of 
 time and effort have been withheld by 
 you from more definite Christian work 
 that you might concentrate yourself upon 
 
26 
 
 money winning, is there not an especial 
 call upon you that you redeem (“buy 
 back’) the time that was withheld from 
 God’s work by you while you were mak- 
 ing money? 
 
 Take the case of a man who has won 
 his wealth by years of concentrated 
 effort. Often it is true that he has 
 gained it by a constant withdrawal of 
 his time and his strength from other oc- 
 cupations in which a generous, public- 
 spirited man would like to engage. ‘‘Fol- 
 low this line of ‘study with me,’’ said a 
 friend in his early manhood. ‘No, 
 business demands all my time,” was the 
 answer. ‘Take hold and help us in this 
 effort at political reform in our city,’’ 
 said his public-spirited neighbor. ‘‘1 
 haven’t the time, business claims me.” 
 ‘Will you undertake part of the work 
 of special visiting to be done by our 
 church people this winter?” ‘Really, 
 you must find some one else, my dear 
 pastor, I am so pressed by business.” 
 It was by such restrictions of effort, 
 by such exclusions of everything that 
 did not tend directly to the winning 
 
27 
 of money, that he made his way to 
 wealth. 
 
 But clearly, God meant that man to 
 cultivate his mind, to be a useful citizen 
 and a Christian worker. In some way, 
 then, the time and strength withdrawn 
 from other duties and from public ser- 
 vice should be given back to serving 
 the public, to the enriching of the life 
 of others. 
 
 LET THE LIFE INVOLVED IN WEALTH-WINNING 
 BE EVOLVED IN THE RIGHT USE 
 OF WEALTH. 
 
 The time owed to distinctively Chris- 
 tian effort, to work for the good of his 
 fellow-men, may be in part made good, 
 if the wealth into which his efforts and 
 time were coined is used nobly and 
 wisely. And while no giving for Chris- 
 tian work can take the place of personal 
 interest in Christian activity, yet many 
 men could do infinitely more by free and 
 consecrated gifts of large sums of money 
 than they now do by formal expres- 
 sions of their sense of unworthiness and 
 lack of effort in the past, unaccom- 
 
28 
 
 panied even now by any large use of 
 their wealth for Christ’s cause. 
 
 ‘‘Redeem the time” that was with- 
 held from God’s service by you while 
 you were making money. Redeem it, 
 buy it back, by using your money con 
 scientiously and generously for God’s 
 work, 
 
 If you have inherited wealth, let the 
 time and labor that were :mvolved in the 
 rolling up and the transmission of a 
 fortune, be evolved again in days and 
 years of active philanthropic and Chris- 
 tian work, done by the Christian workers 
 
 whom your money supports in mission 
 fields. 
 
 “PECUNIA ALTER SANGUIS.”’ 
 
 For every one of us, a part of his life- 
 effort is stored up in money—in his pos- 
 sessions. It is the clear perception of 
 this fact that gives significance to the old 
 phrase, ‘‘pecunia alter sanguis.’’ In the 
 money your life acquires is stored up 
 the life-blood of your effort; not because 
 gold is as precious as one’s life, but be- 
 cause the power acquired by past effort, 
 
29 
 stored up in money, enables you to set 
 the efforts ot others in motion to carry 
 out your purpose and your will. How 
 shall this life-blood of your past effort 
 be kept pure and noble? How will you 
 use it? 
 
 Wealth is concentrated power of ser- 
 vice.» Whether our wealth be great or 
 small, it is still concentrated power of 
 service. Is the wealth that is in the 
 hands of Christians also consecrated 
 power of service? Upon this blood of 
 your past life, which has in it a life-giv- 
 ing power if used for noble ends, has 
 there fallen the touch of consecration? 
 
 Is it not an awful danger of our times, 
 the greatest peril that threatens profess- 
 edly Christian people, that though we 
 are Christians, we so persistently ignore 
 all true ends in the use of our money? 
 Is it not too much our habit of thought 
 to regard only those as people of wealth 
 who have much more money than have 
 we? When we read upon page after 
 page of the New Testament, the most 
 searching warnings as to the use of 
 wealth, is it not our habit to pass them 
 
30 
 on to the very wealthy, whose fortunes 
 far exceed the means at our disposal? 
 MAMMON MAY BE WORSHIPED BY THE POOR AS 
 TRULY AS BY THE RICH. 
 
 Yet the essential nature of wealth does 
 not lie in its quantity, in the amount of 
 money at a man’s disposal. The god 
 Mammon may be worshiped with a 
 man’s whole heart, though his business 
 transactions be petty and his savings 
 small. Some rich men give to good 
 causes small contributions, with a hypo- 
 critical allusion to ‘‘the widow’s mite;” 
 but our Lord bestowed His regal bless- 
 ing upon the widow’s mite zot because 
 it was small, but Jdecause she gave her 
 whole living to the Lord. And in the 
 countless warnings addressed by Him 
 who is the Truth to His followers, cau- 
 tioning them as to the deceitfulness of 
 riches, as to the difficulties that those 
 who trust in riches will find in entering 
 the Kingdom of Heaven, the word used 
 is one that does not lay stress upon 
 great wealth—is one that may be used 
 of very small possessions. Theessential 
 meaning of the word is usable values 
 
31 
 embodied in matertal things. |The warn- 
 ing is against trusting in material things 
 for our happiness, our security, our 
 power. Rather are we to trust in the 
 living God, to use for the glory of God 
 all the powers we have of body, soul 
 and mind, every means by which we 
 may bring things to pass in our life here. 
 The warning is against the comfortable 
 sense of safety that comes from ‘‘having 
 means behind you,” large or small. 
 Whatever possession is capable of 
 standing between a man’s soul, anda 
 vital living dependence upon God day 
 by day, is to be suspected, dreaded, and 
 used with fear and trembling as in the 
 sight of a jealous God who has per- 
 sonified this love of possessions as His 
 ' great rival in the hearts of men. 
 
 “DECEITFULNESS.”’ 
 
 The peculiarity of riches, great or 
 small, lies in their deceitfulness. They 
 that trust in possessions cannot enter 
 into the kingdom, even in their concep- 
 tion of what that kingdom is, and of 
 what are its powers. And the awful 
 
32 
 danger in dealing with riches is, that the 
 material advantages they secure are so 
 obvious, so universally recognized, that 
 most men never get beyond these 
 advantages in thought, desire, or fear. 
 How lightly and apologetically we 
 Christians are accustomed to deal with 
 the awful emphasis which our Master 
 has laid upon the perpetual, essential 
 danger that lies in the use of wealth! 
 Our Lord has spoken of this danger 
 again and again, in words that stand 
 out luminous with such lurid light as 
 burns in his warnings against the un- 
 pardonable sin. Yet too often we hear 
 these warnings tossed aside with a half 
 smile, even by preachers of the Gospel 
 who are accustomed to preach to the 
 rich, as though they would say, ‘Of 
 course, Christ said this, but what He 
 meant was so essentially different from 
 this that it need not for a moment make 
 you gentlemen with large bank accounts 
 uncomfortable, especially if you respond 
 kindly to the special appeal I make this 
 morning, and drop into the box a con- 
 tribution a little larger than usual.’’ Let 
 
a3 
 
 us, who believe in the living Word of 
 the living God, take time to read to- 
 gether a few of the many utterances in 
 God’s Word which bear directly upon 
 this point. Who can doubt that the 
 iteration and reiteration of these warn- 
 ings is, for us and for all Christians, 
 profoundly significant? 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE WORD OF GOD. 
 
 ‘‘The rich man is wise in his own con- 
 ceit” (Prov. 28:11). ‘‘Thou fool! this 
 night thy soul shall be required of thee. 
 So is he that layeth up treasure for him- 
 self and is not rich toward God’’ (Luke 
 12:20). ‘The deceitfulnes of riches 
 chokes the word’’ (Matt. 13: 22). 
 “But they that will (to) be rich fall 
 into a temptation and a_ snare, and 
 into many foolish and hurtful lusts, 
 which drown men in destruction and 
 perdition’’ (1 Tim. 6:9). ‘‘For the love 
 of money is a root of all kinds of evil: 
 which some reaching after, have been 
 led astray from the faith, and have 
 pierced themselves through with 
 many sorrows’’ (1 Tim. 6:10). ‘‘Let 
 
34 
 
 not the rich man glory in his riches.” 
 ‘Verily I say unto you, that a rich man 
 shall hardly” (the Greek is [duskolos] 
 dvoxdhws, meaning literally that his diet 
 and his digestion are such as to put his 
 life entirely out of harmony with the 
 heavenly life; it ‘‘goes against his 
 _ stomach;’’ before he can enter in, he 
 must be fed upon other food!)—‘‘shall 
 hardly enter into the kingdom of heav- 
 en” (Matt. 19:23). ‘How hardly shall 
 they that have riches’’ (the Greek is 
 [chremata] ypjuata, not necessarily great 
 riches, but possessions enough to trust in) 
 “enter into the kingdom of God’ 
 (Luke 18:24). ‘‘Charge them that are 
 rich in this world that they be not high- 
 minded, nor trust in the uncertainty of 
 riches, but in the living God; that they 
 do good, that they be rich in good 
 works, ready to distribute, willing to 
 communicate —that they may lay hold on 
 eternal life” (1 Tim. 6:17,18). *‘Go to, 
 now, ye rich, weep and howl for your 
 miseries that are coming upon you. 
 Your riches are corrupted; your gold and 
 your silver are rusted, and their rust 
 
35 
 
 shall be for a testimony against you” 
 (James 5:1-3). It is the rust, not the 
 gold, that is the witness against them. 
 Their means are not used for Christ, and 
 the selfish rust on them ‘shall eat your 
 flesh as it were fire.” <‘‘There is a 
 grievous evil which I have seen under 
 the sun—namely, riches kept by the 
 owners thereof to their hurt; and those 
 riches perish by evil adventure” (Eccl. 
 VER OE 
 
 Can there be any question that these 
 clear declarations of God cut sharply 
 across the tacit assumptions of many of 
 the Christian congregations of our times? 
 
 CHRIST TEACHES CHRISTIANS TO USK WEALTH, 
 BUT NOT TO ‘“‘TRUST’’ IT. 
 
 Yet this subtly dangerous power of 
 wealth is entrusted to Christians. The 
 parables and teachings of our Lord, 
 time after time, hold up the property 
 relation as the basis of a lesson in 
 Christian living. The great majority of 
 His parables deal with this relation in 
 one form or another. Nothing can be 
 clearer than that He holds every Chris- 
 
36 
 
 tian responsible for the right use of all 
 his possessions, however small, however 
 large, they may be. For the right use 
 of the ten talents and the two talents, 
 there is the same commendation, the 
 same relative reward; while the awful 
 stress of contrast is laid upon him who 
 had du¢ one talent because he declined 
 to use that one for his master. There is 
 no one of us here present, then, who 
 can feel that the warnings and respon- 
 sibilities that attend the possession of 
 wealth for a Christian do not concern 
 himself. For the right use of all his 
 powers of service, God holds each one 
 of us responsible; and certainly the in- 
 come that each one of us receives, the 
 property that each one of us possesses, 
 has in it latent power of service for the 
 promotion of the Master’s kingdom. 
 
 Now the divine law of political 
 economy applies to this whole matter. 
 Dangerous as is the use of wealth, God 
 calls upon Christians to useall they have 
 of it, be it little or much, in His service 
 and for His glory. We sing in moments 
 of devotion, 
 
37 
 
 “All that I have I owe to Thee, 
 I hold it for the Giver.’’ 
 
 The proportion which each man of us is 
 free to spend upon his own personaj 
 gratification, upon the personal pleas- 
 ures of his family, upon the embellish- 
 ments of his home, we cannot determine 
 for each other; but every one of us is 
 bound conscientiously to determine it 
 before God, and under the searching 
 vision of the Spirit of all Truth, whom 
 no detail and no selfish motive can 
 escape. The Holy Spirit in the heart 
 of Christians can and does make ‘‘sump- 
 tuary laws” for us. 
 TO HELP MEN TO HELP THEMSELVES. 
 
 When we become convinced that there 
 is in our hands as stewards money to be 
 used for our absent Lord—for our Lord 
 in bodily presence withdrawn, in spirit 
 dwelling in us—then how gloriously 
 does the scope of this mission work open 
 out before us as we look at the money 
 in ourhands! Wealth must be used for 
 unselfish ends, or it cannot be used as 
 the Lord wills. To help others, we 
 must help them to help themselves 
 The greatest work which Christian 
 
38 
 
 wealth can do in the world is to bring 
 men one by one under the sway of that 
 one Supreme Personality,the Lord Jesus 
 Christ! 
 
 HELP THEM TO CHRIST. 
 
 The only hope for men is in a close 
 personal relation with a _ personal 
 Saviour. Not in masses will men be 
 lifted out of vice and sin. Society will 
 be purified, institutions will be made 
 better and kept better, only as men are 
 drawn one by one to Him ‘Who has 
 been lifted up.” The great social dis. 
 content of our time, whose hoarse warn- 
 ing voice comes to our ear from every 
 continent on the globe, finds its cause in 
 the lack of a true center for each man’s 
 life in Christ. The pitiable, blind yearn- 
 ings of socialism must touch the hearts 
 of true Christians, because they are the 
 gropings of men after that true brother- 
 hood which men find only when they 
 see the Fatherhood of God. Christ is 
 the ‘Desire of the Nations,” though 
 they know Him not. The truest, wisest 
 use of wealth is in promoting efforts to 
 bring the Gospel of Christ home to the 
 
39 
 
 hearts of the people, and to bring the 
 people home to Christ. ‘‘They that 
 trust in their wealth and boast them- 
 selves in the multitude of their riches, 
 none of them can by any means redeem 
 his brother, or give to God a ransom for 
 him.’’ But the power of the Holy Spirit 
 can transmute these money gifts, which 
 we here and now before God pledge 
 -ourselves to make for the promotion of 
 His kingdom, into Christian influences 
 which will win souls for Christ. Oh, 
 what a glorious thought, that dead and 
 wasted years, which have been coined 
 into money, if that money be laid at the 
 feet of Christ, may be made to live over 
 again, His spirit touching the dead 
 past and quickening it into living ser- 
 vice, as this money shall send to the 
 dark places of the earth souls fired with 
 the wish to preach Christ! 
 
 ‘Defer not charities till death,’’ says 
 Bacon, ‘‘for certainly, if a man weigh it 
 rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal 
 of another man’s than of his own.’’ Be 
 your wealth great or small, use it for 
 Christ while you can yourself direct its 
 
40 
 
 use, while you can yourself see and 
 enjoy the mighty moral and spiritual 
 values which are produced from the 
 right use of wealth. Where is the man 
 or the woman of large wealth who will 
 set the world a Christian example of 
 that free, cheerful, joyous giving which 
 God loves—‘‘God loveth a cheerful giv- 
 er’—by taking a whole mission station 
 to support from his abundant means, as 
 a rich man keeps a yacht “for his own 
 pleasure’? Who will thus prayerfully 
 “redeem” large sections of his great 
 wealth, of his coined time, by prayer- 
 fully using it for these noble ends? 
 
 We look for the speedy appearing of 
 such great benefactions, as the responsi- 
 bility of wealth comes to be more clearly 
 felt. Meanwhile, let us see to it that by 
 loving and free giving until we feed tt in 
 the sweet deprivations that we are willing 
 to meet for Christ’s sake,we each one ofus 
 show to the world something of that spirit 
 that brings a blessing from the Lord, 
 Who still “sits over against the treasury.” 
 
Stadent \/ ofanteer Series... 
 
 1. History of the Student Volunteer Movement 
 for Foreign Missions. John R. Mott. 
 Price, ten cents. 
 
 2. Shall | Go? Thoughts for girls. Miss 
 Grace E. Wilder. Price, five cents. 
 
 8. Prayer and Missions. Robert E. Speer. 
 Price, five cents. 
 
 4, The Volunteer Band. Robert E. Speer. 
 Price, five cents. 
 
 5. The Self-Perpetuation of the Volunteer Band. 
 J. Campbell White. Price, five cents. 
 
 6. Ten Lessons on the Bible and Missions. 
 J. Campbell White. Price, five cents. 
 
 The Volunteer Band Meeting, Not yet issued. 
 
 8. The Bibie and Missions. Robert P. Wilder. 
 Price, five cents. 
 
 9. Christian Missions and the Highest Use of 
 Wealth, President Merrill E. Gates,LL.D., 
 of Amherst. Price, five cents. 
 
 In quantities, No. ris sold at 80 cents per 
 dozen, or $6.00 per hundred; numbers 2 to 9, 
 40 cents per dozen, or $3.00 per hundred. Sam- 
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 so far as issued, may be had at 30 cents per set. 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions 
 80 INSTITUTE PLACE, CHICAGO, ILL.