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 W. A. 24. 
 
 WAR AND MISSIONS 
 
 An Address by 
 
 TheVery Rev. H.G. Robbins, D.D. 
 
 THE WOMAN’S AUXILIARY 
 281 Fourth Avenue, New York 
 
WAR AND MISSIONS^:^ 
 
 By'the Very Reverend Howard C. Robbins, 
 D.D., Dean of the Cathedral of Saint 
 John the Divine, New York City 
 
 HESE are trying times for people who 
 
 are interested in missions. There are all 
 
 i the old difficulties and discouragements 
 to face, and in addition there are a number of 
 new ones occasioned by the War. But that is 
 only one side of it. On the other side, the 
 War has given new incentives to missionary 
 effort. It has opened to us new missionary 
 opportunities, and inspired new missionary 
 hopes. Taking for granted your interest in 
 missions, I wish to say a few words about these 
 new conditions: first about the new difficulties, 
 and then about the new incentives and hopes. 
 
 One difficulty is competition. The War has 
 brought home to us innumerable needs and 
 claims. War relief has been organized upon 
 the most colossal scale that the world has ever 
 heard of. It had to be, to meet the over¬ 
 whelming needs. Everywhere one goes one 
 sees people knitting sweaters, or preparing sur¬ 
 gical dressings, or getting up bazaars and fairs 
 to obtain funds for relief work. It is right 
 that this should be so. It would be dreadful 
 if it were not so and if all these tragical claims 
 upon our compassion and our helpfulness were 
 not given the right of way. But in giving 
 
 *An address to the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Church of 
 ithe Incarnation, New York, St. Andrew’s Day, 1917. 
 
war relief the right of way, other forms of 
 philanthropic effort are being subordinated, 
 and some of them are even being endangered. 
 One hears everywhere the question what is to 
 become of this or that beneficent work, now 
 that its former supporters are so engrossed in 
 new tasks. 
 
 For people who believe in missions, as you 
 and I believe in missions, the answer is very 
 simple. Missions are a part, and an indis¬ 
 pensable part, of our war work. They are as 
 much a part of it as surgical dressings, or mu¬ 
 nition manufacturer. For ideas, as well as 
 armies, are contending in this gigantic conflict. 
 Essentially and fundamentally, this zvar is a 
 conflict of ideas. What are its objects, as we 
 Americans have defined them in our thoughts 
 and purposes ? Liberty. But the object of all 
 missionary endeavor is to bring to men the 
 liberty which is in Christ Jesus and his Gos¬ 
 pel—Democracy. But the Bible is the text¬ 
 book of democracy. Every great political 
 movement looking toward the emancipation of 
 the common people and their establishment in 
 self-government has had its origin in the 
 Christian Scriptures, either directly, as in 
 England and America, or indirectly, as in 
 France, through recognition of the principles 
 which found their first expression there. 
 
 So with our other war aims: law, justice, 
 respect for the weak, and the vindication of 
 public right. Why, they are the political ex¬ 
 pression of missionary enterprise! There is 
 no law, no justice, no respect for the weak, and 
 no vindication of public right which is not ulti¬ 
 mately founded on belief in the God who is 
 
the Judge of all the earth, and who demands 
 these things of men and nations. The aims 
 with which we have entered the War are pre¬ 
 cisely the aims which Christianity, and Chris¬ 
 tianity alone, can make secure for us and for 
 others. To neglect missionary efforts at a 
 time like this would be to throw aside the 
 sword of the spirit in what, in its last an¬ 
 alysis, is essentially a spiritual conflict. It 
 would be to resort to the crude and brutal re¬ 
 liance upon force alone which has led to the 
 moral bankruptcy of the despotic Power which 
 we oppose. 
 
 The next difficulty is a good deal like the 
 first. The War exacts time from us for re¬ 
 lief work. It exacts money in the foim of 
 taxation. We are just beginning to learn the 
 meaning of taxation. By the middle of next 
 March we shall know a good deal more about 
 it than we do now. We do not grudge the 
 money that is being required of us. If ever 
 a government had a prior lien on all the re¬ 
 sources of its citizens our Government has that 
 right now. We shall give all that is required, 
 and we shall give it not only without com¬ 
 plaining, but with profound satisfaction that 
 we are able in this way to forward the cause 
 to which we have solemnly dedicated the whole 
 force and resourcefulness of our national ex¬ 
 istence. Still, it is not possible to pay such 
 taxes without finding the margin available for 
 gifts correspondingly diminished. What is 
 going to happen, for example, to the appor¬ 
 tionment for General Missions? That is a 
 question which I have heard raised a dozen 
 times within the last ten days. 
 
There are two answers. The first and ob¬ 
 vious one is sacrifice. Most of those who give 
 largely to missions live in a very comfortable 
 way, sometimes even in a luxurious way. The 
 place to cut down first is in that scale of liv¬ 
 ing, not in the support given to the brave 
 men and women who represent us on the far- 
 flung battle lines of Christ. They have made 
 their sacrifices for the Gospel. It is time now 
 that we should be making ours. I cannot 
 believe that while this country is raising and 
 spending money in billions it is going to be 
 impossible to raise this year as in former years 
 the pitifully small proportion of our wealth 
 which has hitherto been devoted to Christian 
 missions. In England, where taxes are high¬ 
 er than they are here, and where the cost of 
 living is higher than it is here,- I understand 
 that gifts for missions have not only not fallen 
 ofif, but actually increased. When I read 
 that item of news in a missionary review I felt 
 that I had just had news of a great British 
 victory. It was a victory of the finest and 
 highest sort, far reaching in its results. But, 
 like all other victories which amount to any¬ 
 thing in this war, it was won by sacrifice. 
 
 There is also another supplementary answer, 
 and that is intensive cultivation of the home 
 field. In our missionary giving in the past 
 we have not sufficiently taken into account the 
 value of the small gifts which come from 
 numerous givers who give in a systematic way. 
 Now this is-a field which is capable of greatly 
 increased fruitfulness, but which needs to be 
 worked up. Experience has shown that it 
 
can best be worked up by the every member 
 canvass and by the introduction of the duplex 
 envelope system. For many parishes this in¬ 
 volves a radical innovation, but the present 
 emergency demands and justifies the innova¬ 
 tion. If the larger gifts are going to be some¬ 
 what reduced, the difference ought to be made 
 up, and more than made up, by a great in¬ 
 crease in the number of. small but regular 
 weekly gifts. The parishes, as well as their 
 offerings, will be greatly strengthened by it in 
 the end. 
 
 I come now to the greatest difficulty, the 
 greatest embarrassment and discouragement of 
 all. That is the War itself. Here is Chris¬ 
 tian Europe, and Christian America, engaged 
 in fratricidal strife. Here is war in its stark 
 horror being waged between nations all of 
 which have received the Gospel, all of which 
 have nominally accepted it, and all of which 
 have been taught to regard themselves as 
 brothers in the one family of God, brothers, 
 to establish whom in brotherhood Christ Jesus 
 gave His life. Here, too, are war’s fierce 
 hatreds and intolerances. They are not 
 peculiar to any people. Thanks, not to our 
 superior merit, but to our geographical isola¬ 
 tion, we are freer from these things than the 
 other belligerents can be, yet even here in 
 America we witness many lapses from that 
 spirit of Christian chivalry which was en¬ 
 joined upon us by our President. “See how 
 these Christians love one another,” was a true 
 saying once. If it were repeated now, it 
 could be said only in most bitter mockery. 
 How can we send missionaries to spread 
 
abroad the Gospel when we, who have enjoyed 
 it for centuries, have made so little use of it, 
 and have been governed so little by its pre¬ 
 cepts that all Christendom is today a winepress 
 trodden by the wrath of God? 
 
 The answer to that question is penitence. 
 It is the deep note justly sounded by our 
 War Commission which called upon us to 
 enter in a penitential spirit the new Church 
 Year. We are not called to our churches to 
 meditate upon Germany’s ferocity, or Austria’s 
 duplicity, or Turkish cruelty, or Bulgarian ra¬ 
 pacity. We are called upon to come in peni¬ 
 tence to confess our own sins, and to pray to 
 God for . forgiveness for public and for per¬ 
 sonal transgressions of His laws. If we do 
 that in any deeply sincere way we shall learn 
 the attitude which becomes us as carriers of 
 the Gospel. We cannot go in any loftiness, 
 in any consciousness of superiority, in any 
 Pharisaical pride. What have we to be proud 
 of? We must go humbly to those who have 
 not yet known Christ, and ask them to look, 
 not upon us, but upon Him. We go to preach, 
 not ourselves, but Christ crucified. All the 
 sins of Christendom have been committed in 
 spite of what He has said to us. Disobedience 
 of Him has had exactly the consequences 
 which He foretold. He told us that to hear 
 His words, and assent to them and then not 
 ' do them, is perdition. We have built our 
 western civilization upon the sands of worldly 
 interests and ambitions, and the rain has de¬ 
 scended, and the floods have risen, and the 
 winds have blown, and it has fallen, and great 
 has been its fall. 
 
This brings us to the new hopes and new 
 incentives. When penitence is real, and when 
 it is thoroughgoing, it softens and opens the 
 heart to the divine grace. God can use the 
 penitents for the bringing in of His kingdom. 
 He can use them because they let Him use 
 them; they do not oppose to His will and pur¬ 
 pose the obstacles of their self-sufficiency and 
 pride. It is a new world which will confront 
 us after the war. It will be open as never 
 before to new influences. Men and women 
 will no longer be hide-bound by old traditions. 
 They will be willing to try things which they 
 have never really tried before, but only talked 
 of trying. Young men will be coming back 
 from the War, steeled to a determination from 
 which all things will be possible if the Church 
 of Christ makes itself ready for them, ready 
 to use them, ready to use for Christ their stern 
 young realism, with its scorn of compromise, 
 of temporizing measures, and of all conven¬ 
 tional and artificial things. 
 
 Then will come, I think, the greatest oppor¬ 
 tunity for Christian missions that the Church 
 has known since the Day of Pentecost. We 
 ought to be making ready for it. We ought 
 to be making large preparation for it. When 
 our soldiers come home to us let it be to a 
 Church which has found itself at last, which 
 is pulsing with generous life, which is glowing 
 with the spirit of the earliest missionary ages, 
 the belief that this world belongs to the 
 Blessed One who died for it, and that by the 
 faithfulness of His disciples it shall be won 
 and given back to Him. 
 
 Copies of this leaflet may be obtained from The Woman's 
 Auxiliary, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York, by asking for 
 W. A. 24. 
 
 1 Ed. 1-18. lOM. Sch. PI.