NISC, 
 
 What Business has a 
 
 Business Man with 
 
 Foreign Missions? 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. S. M. ZWEMER 
 Fidei 
 
 Board of Foreign Missions, R. C. A. 
 25 E. 22d St.. New York 
 
 
 
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 What Business has a Business Man 
 
 With Foreign Missions. 
 Rev. S. M. Zwemer, D.D. 
 
 HE word business comes from the Anglo-Saxon, 
 byzig which means active, diligent ; and the fact 
 that the term man-of-business means what it does 
 
 and only that, speaks volumes regarding the character 
 of our age. Other professions may have leisure, brook 
 delays, or be sedentary in character. The man of busi- 
 ness is always on the go. The commercial world has no 
 place for the careless, dull, indolent, listless talker or 
 idler. Push and Pull are written on every door. Com. 
 petition is keen, enterprise lively, advertisement startling 
 and ambition world-wide. Now the one great and only 
 business of the Church is missions, and from the nature 
 of modern business and the character of Foreign Mis- 
 sions, two things are very evident. ‘To impress them on 
 you is strictly business and will not take five minutes of 
 your time. 
 
 I, YOUR BUSINESS IS CONNECTED WITH FOREIGN MIs- 
 SIONS AND YOU ARE INDEBTED TO THEM. This is true 
 whether you are a Christian or not, and whether you 
 believe in converting the heathen or consider the enter- 
 prise Quixotic and hopeless. Whatever branch of finance 
 or trade you are engaged in, I challenge you to read up 
 its history and you will find yourself face to face with 
 Foreign Missions. There are no banks or drafts in 
 heathendom. There is no partnership in Mohammedan 
 lands, for no one trusts his neighbor. The history of 
 architecture, drainage and transportation all land you in 
 the story of medieval missions, Modern commerce is 
 
 1681 
 
4 
 
 the fruit of Christianity no less than modern civilization. 
 The fact that London and New York, and not Pekin or 
 Constantinople, are the financial pillars of the world, is. 
 due to Columba and Augustin. Peschel, the great 
 geographer, said: ‘‘Geography, commerce and the 
 spread of the Christian religion have singularly enough 
 a common history.’ Missions not only promote but 
 create commerce. Ipecac and quinine and india-rubber 
 were discovered by missionaries; the first steamships on 
 African lakes were built for missions; ploughs were first 
 sold in Turkey by American missionaries; Yankee 
 clocks have followed Yankee school-teachers from China 
 to Peru. Commercial facts like these are so numerous 
 and novel that I commend to you their perusal in books 
 like Warneck’s ‘‘ Modern Missions and Culture,” or the 
 Ely Volume on ‘‘ Missions and Science.” 
 
 You owe adebt to Foreign Missions as a business 
 man. The heathen have a claim on you at least six 
 daysa week. Some of the indispensables of your lunch 
 and the comforts of your home are the result of heathen 
 labor. And no modern business man denies that he 
 owes a duty to hisemployees. Many of your costly im- 
 ports are brought to the wharves by heathen slave-labor. 
 Who gathered and dried the tea in India, Ceylon and 
 China? Who toiled at the loomsin Persia and Afghan- 
 istan to fill your tapestry department? Did the negroes 
 who carried your ivory to the coast ever hear of your 
 Saviour? You say a// business men are not interested 
 in billiard-balls or piano-keys. Granted. But look at 
 your desk. Whence came the tools of your profession? 
 Your bottle of mucilage and your box of stamps owes 
 a debt to the Arabs of Hadramaut. Youreraser and the 
 handle of your fountain-pen came from South America, 
 the neglected continent. The graphite of your pencil 
 from dark Siberia, and your finest grade of ink from 
 China. If you are in the drug or grocer trade look down 
 
5 
 
 the list of oils, balsams, gums and barks and see what 
 you owe to heathen lands. In the business world no 
 man liveth to himself. A famine at the antipodes 
 changes stock in Wall Street. The occupation of the 
 New Hebrides by missionaries lowered quotations on 
 arrow-root. Livingstone’s last journey opened half a 
 million markets for piece-goods. The value of exports 
 and imports of Hawaii for a single year are twelve times 
 as much as the total sum spent from the beginning until 
 the end by foreign missionaries in evangelizing and 
 civilizing its people. War destroys markets and has 
 closed more open doors than opened closed ones. But 
 the missionary is the pioneer of commerce and the 
 herald of civilization. If you want a wider market send 
 out more missionaries. The man who reads a primer 
 wants a shirt and his wife a broom. Uganda will soon 
 import American carpet-sweepers. It ought not to take 
 a business man long to see that missions pay, even in 
 the lowest sense of the word. 
 
 Now while you profit by this world-market you can 
 not hide from yourself the fact that much of this wealth 
 costs the lives of men for whom Christ died, and that 
 they have died practically in your service, never having 
 heard the Blessed Name. Here lies a great responsi- 
 bility for business men, and they should show to the 
 world that they have astake in the greatest business 
 enterprise and the most stupendous Trust of the twentieth 
 century—Foreign Missions. 
 
 It, FOREIGN MISSIONS NEEDS YOU, BECAUSE YOU ARE 
 A BUSINESS MAN. When the world was half asleep and 
 wholly drowsy, in the Middle Ages, monks were mission- 
 aries Nowitis daybreak everywhere and monks are 
 out-of-date. We want business men for the business. 
 There are certain words of David, oft quoted, about 
 the King’s business requiring haste. They were alie to 
 begin with, and, as appliedto Christ’s Kingdom are only 
 
6 
 
 partly true and wholly inadequate. The King’s business 
 requires a great many things more imperatively, than 
 haste. His work requires the very qualities in its 
 servant, which you possess, if you are a successful busi- 
 ness man. Capital, caution, confidence, attention, appli- 
 cation, accuracy, method, punctuality, dispatch—these 
 are the elements for efficient conduct of business of any 
 sort. They are the very elements that have built up and 
 would to-day rejuvenate the business at the old stand of 
 Foreign Missions. 
 
 This business of Foreign Missions is sorely in meee 
 of less criticism and more capital. You can supply it. 
 It is acknowledged on the Best Authority to be the most 
 paying investment inthe world. Zen thousand per cent. 
 (or an hundred fold) is guaranteed; and has been paid 
 to investors again and again. The enterprise of carry- 
 ing the gospel to every creature is older, has more 
 branch-offices, and covers a wider territory than the 
 Standard Oil Company and furnishes better light and 
 warmth to humanity. Why are business men afraid to 
 sink capitalin this Divine Trust? But it is more than 
 mere capital that the business needs. orezgn Missions 
 necd you, yourself. A business enterprise needs business 
 men to direct it, to extend it, and to carry it on. Some 
 of the most successful missions were inaugurated by 
 laymen or business men. There is to-day a wider and 
 louder call for consecrated business men in the Foreign 
 Mission field than there ever was before. The whole 
 - problem of zxdustrial-misstons, which lies back of that 
 other problem of obtaining a self-supporting native 
 church, will have to be solved by men of business. The 
 cause of Foreign Missions needs the help of business 
 men in its administration ; business men who will give 
 their time and talent to this important work and make it 
 their business to do the Lord’s work in a business-like 
 way. 
 
7 
 
 When the Master walked outside of Capernaun one 
 day His eye fell on a business man named Matthew, sit- 
 ting in the midst of account-books and vouchers, at the 
 receipt of custom. And He said unto him, follow Me 
 And this business man left all rose up and followed Him. 
 
 ** Beloved, let us love so well, 
 Our work shall still be better for our love 
 And still our love be sweeter for our work.” 
 
 Christ Himself had no higher word by which to 
 designate His mission on earth and His passion for a lost 
 world than the word that joins you to Him asa fellow- 
 craftsman at the sametask. ‘‘ Wist ye not that I must be 
 about My Father's BUSINESS?” You are a business man 
 and I want to ask you a straightforward question : Who 
 is your Father? And what is His Business? 
 
 BAHREIN, 1901. 
 
The Man of Business 
 
 in account with 
 
 Foreign Missions 
 
 
 
 DR. CR. 
 “The Year 
 of my 
 redeemed” | ‘‘How much owest 
 Isa. 63: 4. thou?” Luke | 16 5 
 *“Qwe no man 
 anything *’ Rom. | 13 | 8 
 **| am Debtor both: 
 
 to the Greeks 
 and to the bar- 
 
 barians.” Rom. | ¢ | 14 
 ** Their debtors 
 they are.” Rom. | 5 | 29 
 “| will pay my 
 vows now.” Pe. | 16 ig 
 
 
 
 We are unprofi- | 
 table servants, we | 
 have done that 
 which was our 
 duty to do.” 
 
 Luke | 17 | 10 || Luke| 17 | 10 |