'B No.. ->-y xrrrrTrrTi is it wef 1 * While ? Aim EDITED BY EDWIN M. HARTMAN PRINCIPAL OF FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL ACADEMY LANCASTER, PA. Board of Foreign Missions Reformed Church in the United States FIFTEENTH AND RACE STREETS PHILADELPHIA ! E£ 1912 / “Just where you stand in the conflict. There is your place! Just where you think you are useless. Hide not your face: God placed you there for a purpose, Whate’er it may be; Know He has chosen you for it. Work loyally,” Is It Worth While? Edited by Principal Edwin M. Hartman. I N Uganda, Africa, the missions of the English Church have probably the largest congregation worshipping under one roof in the world. About twenty-five years ago there was not a Christian convert in Korea. Now there are more than 200,000, and the number is increasing at the rate of about 30 per cent, each year. About one year ago the first Christian Church in Seoul, Korea, numbering 3,000 members, gave up 1200 members to form a new congregation. The parent congregation has again gained as many new members as it gave off a year ago. About a generation ago edict boards were posted throughout Japan forbidding the teach¬ ing or .acceptance of Christianity. Now there are about a quarter of a million adherents of Christianity in Japan, twelve members of Par¬ liament are Christians, and the Emperor gave a contribution of $5,000 to the work of the Y. M. C. A. with the army in the Russian- Japanese war. It took 100 years to make the first million Christian converts; twelve years for the sec¬ ond million, and at the present rate (about 3,000 per week) the third million will be won in about six years. Six years ago it took forty days to go by 4 IS IT WORTH WHILE ? ox-cart from Pekin to Hankow. Now the journey can be made in a day and a half in a train de luxe. The railroads built in China in the last five years would reach almost twice from New York to San Francisco. Recent political, social and religious changes are as great as the material development. President Lowry, of Pekin University, says that China is at present undergoing “one of the most sweeping and radical revolutions ever effected in any great nation in the history of the world.” It takes less time to-day to go from Phila¬ delphia to China than it did two generations ago to go from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. “The nineteenth century made the world a neighborhood, the twentieth must make it a brotherhood.” “The great modern educational movement in China began about four years ago. During this time more schools have been opened in China than in all other nations of the earth combined.” Mr. William E. Curtis, the well-known correspondent, writes: “During the next twenty-five years China will be the scene of the greatest commercial, industrial, mineral and every other form of activity in the uni¬ verse.” Pandita Ramabai, of India, says: “The; maj'ority of the higher classes are getting Western secular education, which is under¬ mining their faith in their ancestral religion. IS IT WORTH WHILE? 5 They are not getting anything better to take the place of the old religion in their hearts, and are, therefore, without God, without hope, without Christ, going down socially and mor¬ ally, and becoming very irreligious.” In view of the great material and political changes, the social and religious ferment, and the present plastic conditions in the non- Christian world, it is the sober conviction of some of the best informed and most earnest Christian men that the next ten years may be made a period of spiritual evolution in the heathen world, and through it also, in the Christian world, that will make the decade one of the greatest epochs in the history of the Christian Church. If, however, the Christian Church does not meet the situation properly, the decade may prove one of spiritual calamity which it may take centuries to undo. "‘And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.” John, 10:16. “A defective Christian stewardship stands more in the way of Christ’s advance than all the obstacles of the heathen world.” “I will bless thee, and be thou a blessing.” Gen., 12:2. Charles James Wills, while working in the slums of New York, asked a little boy, “Is your father a Christian?” The boy re¬ plied, “Yes, Mr. Wills, but he does not work at it much.” “The conversion of the world 6 IS IT WORTH WHILE? waits for the conversion of the laity from pas¬ sive to active membership in Christ.” The 750 members of the church at Bolenge, India, support seventy-six native evangelists. Twelve years ago the people who are now members at Bol.enge were wild, un¬ couth savages. The Christian converts in heathen lands gave $5,249,405 in 1910 for the support and extension of Christianity. This was an average of $2.36 for each communicant mem¬ ber. During the past seven years over 1,000 congregations of the Southern Presbyterian Church have been visited in the work of in¬ troducing an every member canvass and per¬ sonal subscription for foreign missions. As a result of this experience, Frank A. Brown, one of the executive secretaries, writes: “Ex¬ cepting when the subscription method has been introduced, not more than one out of every four of the women of the church, and not more than one out of every eight men of our church have ever given anything to foreign missions. By ‘anything’ is meant any amount greater than 5 or 10 cents a year given at the annual collection. The per¬ centage of givers in churches when the can¬ vass has been held has varied from 25 per cent, to 80 per cent, of the entire membership.” From 1904 to 1908 this denomination increased in membership 12 per cent.; in contribution to foreign missions, 112 per cent.; in contri- IS IT WORTH WHILE? 7 butions to home missions, 241 per cent. When the United States Government called for ten legation students for China there were 250 applicants. When the Govern¬ ment called for 500 teachers for the Philip¬ pines there were 15,000 applicants. When Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, the late president of Union Theological Seminary, came back from his first trip around the world, delivering lectures to non-Christian audiences in mission fields, he said to the students of the Seminary: “Young men, speaking from what I now know of the opportunities of serv¬ ice, if I were now a young theological student choosing a life work, I should become a for¬ eign missionary.” “Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” Acts, 1:8. We learn early in life about the height of the mountains and the extent of the deserts in Asia and Africa, but many of us die with¬ out learning or caring about the depth of the misery and extent of the waste in the lives of our fellowmen in those countries. “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” Luke, 2:10. Many thousands of men and millions of money are employed to reclaim desert lands— to make them blossom and be fruitful. This work is well worth while. But how much more worth while it should be to make spirit- 8 IS IT WORTH WHILE? ually parched and desert lives to blossom and rejoice and be fruitful in Christian service. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John, 10:10. How cheaply life is held by some non- Christian nations is illustrated by the follow¬ ing statement of Mr. Roosevelt (Lit. Digest, Dec. 3, 1910), in speaking of the atrocities of the Mahdists, a sect of Mohammedans, in the Sudan: “Theirs was a cruelty of which we in our lives can form no realization. * * * All children were killed except as the gov¬ ernment took possession. I would come upon the traces of communities where every living being had been killed. The figures will show this, that out of about ten millions of people nearly seven, millions were killed during the years of the Mahdi uprising—that is what missionary effort saved Uganda from. I do wish that the well-meaning people who laugh or decry missionary work could realize what missionary work has done right there in middle Africa.” More people die in India of fevers in a year than live in New York City, and these fevers are largely the result of unsanitary conditions. “To know the need should prompt the deed .”—Mary Lyon. Lloyd-George, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, in speaking of the competition in armaments between the various countries of IS IT WORTH WHILE ? 9 the world, said : “The countries of the world are spending annually $2,250,000,000 upon this machinery of destruction;’ “Christian nations are spending only about 1 per cent, of this amount on foreign missions, yet missions are doing far more to promote peace and brother¬ hood than bayonets and battleships can ever do.” Samuel L. Capen, LL.D., in a recent ad¬ dress said, “I have heard the public statements of an official of the Reformed Church of America, of the Presbyterian Church South, and two officials of the Episcopal Church, to the effect that in their judgment the Lay¬ men’s Missionary Movement was the greatest religious movement since the Reformation of the sixteenth century.” The Laymen’s Missionary Movement was inaugurated in the city of Toronto in 1907. The missionary contributions of the Protes¬ tant churches of Toronto were $175,000 for that year; $363,700 for the next year, and $410,773 for last year. The average contri¬ butions per capita were: Presbyterian, $5.20; Methodist, $5.50; Anglican, $4.25; Congrega¬ tional, $4.02; Baptist, $7.75, and the Mission¬ ary Tabernacle, with 80 members, $24.69 per member. The amount set for next year is $500,000. Rev. D. M. Stearns, pastor of the Church of the Atonement, Germantown, Pa., says, “Our main business, both at church and Bible classes, -is Bible study and missions. Our 10 IS IT WORTH WHILE ? motto is• ‘To know Him and to make Him known.’ The contribution of this congre¬ gation for missions in 1909 was $8,426, an average of about $50 per member. *For four¬ teen years the congregation has averaged about $6,800 per year for missions.” “The Christian ideal of life is the highest ideal. If the Christian ideal is worthy to be followed in America, it is worthy to be pre¬ sented in every land .”—William Jennings Bryan. Wallace, the English scientist, in writing about the Celebes Islands, says: “The mission¬ aries have much to be proud of in this country. Forty years ago the country was a wilderness, the people naked savages, furnishing their rude homes with human heads. Now it is a garden.” “No more effective testimony to the social benefits of Christian missions could be given than the contrast between two villages—the one heathen and the other Christian. In the heathen village the garbage is in the street, the houses are in a more or less tumble-down condition, the roofs are awry and full of leaks, the children run naked, the women are in rags, dirt is omnipresent, vice is written on most of the countenances, hopelessness over¬ casts the faces of the many, and absurd cus¬ tom with its counterpart of superstition is everywhere rife. In the Christian village the house may be no larger, but it will be clean; the toil may be no more remunerative, but IS IT WORTH WHILE ? 11 it will be more persistent; the children will be clothed and the women neat in the native gar¬ ments. The village street no longer reeks with filth, and an angle of uprightness has seized upon things; faces take on a new light and hope is in every countenance. Worship has been turned from the insanities of mutilation and ascetic denial to the sweet reasonableness of praise and prayer and the help of fellow- man.” Sir W. Mackworth Young, after his re¬ turn to Great Britain from the Lieutenant- Governorship of the Punjab, said: “As a busi¬ ness man speaking to business men, I am pre¬ pared to say that the work which has been done by missionary agency in India exceeds in importance all that has been done, and much has been done, by the British Govern¬ ment in India since its commencement.” The Foreign Department of the Young Men’s Christian Association held a remark¬ able conference on the 20th of last October in the East Room of the White House. More than 200 representative citizens from all parts of the continent were present. Mr. John R. Mott, who conducted the conference, an¬ nounced that it was the purpose of the For¬ eign Department to send out fifty-three sec¬ retaries during the next three years and to erect forty-nine buildings at a cost of $1,015,- 000. The required amount was substantially pledged and the success of the proposed work assured. 12 IS IT WORTH WHILE? “Know and you will feel; know, and you will pray; know, and you will help. \ou will be ashamed of the sluggishness of the isolation, of the selfishness which has made you think only of your own people and your father’s house .”—Dean Vaughan. Much of the above information has been gleaned from “Men and Missions,” a monthly paper which should be read by every one who is interested in missions, and especially by such as are not interested in missions. It is published by the Laymen’s Missionary Move* ment, 1 Madison Avenue, New York. Sub¬ scription, fifty cents per year.