Mission STUDY ITS VALUE 6> POWER A Study Full of Interest ISSION STUDY 18 gloriously interesting because it deals with great living issues. It is no wild declaration of an unbalanced enthusiast to say that missions is really the world’s great living issue. The pioneer preacher has saved and steadied each successive American frontier. It was a Home missionary who drove the golden spike which completed the first trans-conlinenlal railroad in America. “That event,” says Dr. George Elliott, “opened more acres and fed more mouths than any event since the discovery of the steam engine.” Missions is a burning issue because of the number of people involved. The gospel messenger is deter¬ mining the fate of nations. The admission of new states, or a distant war, or a national revolution affect directly only small portions of the earth; but the campaign of the missionary is of vital interest to every person on the planet. Mission study is interesting because it deals with great countries, fascinating peoples, inspiring move¬ ments. It is alive with the throbbing life of today. Then, too, this subject is full of interest because of the way the missionary has influenced international policies. To quote Alexander McArthur, M. P.: “I believe the advancement of civilization, the extension of commerce, the increase of knowledge in art, science and literature, the promotion of civil and religious liberty, the development of countries, rich in un¬ discovered mineral and vegetable wealth, are all intimately identified with and to a much larger extent than most people are aware of, dependent upon the work of tfic missionary, and 1 hold that the missionary has done more to civilize and to benefit the world than any and all other agencies combined.” How can any eager, wide¬ awake young person afford to be ignorant concerning these issues ? How it makes the blood leap to know that every Christian may have a part in this campaign I kTUDY is the only method which will permanently arouse the S r^ Church to its missionary duty and opportunity. The Church will never be aroused until it is informed, but the process of education is subject is large. This makes thorough study impera¬ tive. To become intelligent on any great subject takes time. Those who have passed through high school and college have spent from two to four years in the mastery of algebra and the time has been well spent. To acquire even a fair knowledge of Latin requires lessons three to five times a week for four or five years. Is Christ’s program for fifteen hundred millions of human beings on all the continents any less important, or will the mastery of the details of the campaign be a lighter thing than the mastery of Algebra or Latin > Many have spent ten or twenty or forty years over the Bible but have not completely mastered it. We need not less but more Bible study. If all Bible students had studied the plans of the God of the Bible for the conquest of His world, as they have studied His Word, they would be missionary statesmen every one of them. What is needed today is a new study of the Word with a map of the world beside it until Christ’s men catch step with His present day plans. When we know what our Lord is doing in His world, our hearts will blaze with a new intensity. But to be intelligent and intense is not enough. This is to be a permanent campaign, and permanence can come only as there are continuous, repeated and ever-enlarging impressions. This is impossible without study. The occasional missionary sermon, a little information from magazines, a monthly Sunday School Missionary Program, usually not observed, a monthly meeting in a Missionary Society, a fragment now and then in the Epworth League—all these are good, but inadequate to arouse, inform and enlist the Church. Shows Amazing Missionary Conditions kTUDY alone will make clear the present missionary situation at home and abroad. This is an era of colossal enterprises. A single building is being erected in New York worth fifty miles Vy of ordinary dwellings; irrigation schemes are reclaiming whole em¬ pires of dreary desert, and a railroad is being built for many miles out into the sea. In the midst of such a time the supreme need of the Church is that it shall lead all other thinkers and doers in the largeness of its thinking and achievements. If the Church of Jesus Christ is not only to keep pace with the age, but to capture and dominate it for Him, she must have a magnificent program calling for millions of money and armies of workers, and vision and passion large enough and deep enough to carry out the plans made. How can one be alert to the needs of Home missions who does not know about the problems in the City and the foreignized East, the problem of the South, the magnitude of the unoccupied territory west of the Mississippi; who does not ponder over the significance of the fact that this year hundreds of thousands of missionaries have gone out to the remotest bounds of Europe and Asia in the tides of immigrants returning to their homes because of the financial depression ? Let us brace ourselves now for the mightiest tide of peoples ever yet seen moving across all the seas when this tide ebbs once more bringing new millions who have felt the lure of America I In foreign lands the conditions are equally amazing. In our Methodist mission in India in the last four years the increase was greater than in the first thirty years seven times over 1 God has already swung three-fourths of the Mohammedans in the world under the control of Christian governments. Let us study all this until there lives with US day and night the summons to arise and finish the task assigned us by our Lord. kHE motives for missions will be made clear by mission study and T r^ it will save them from death. The biggest human motive for missions is a passionate love for our Lord and an equally passionate C 5 y loyalty to his leadership and obedience to his commands. No ap¬ peal of missionaries* no vision of awful and indescribable need* no goadings of conscience will hold us steadily to the titanic task. Only love can do that* and love grows by companionship* intimacy* self-surrender. To sit down with Jesus* to study His plans* to linger long with Him in seeking to understand our place in His Kingdom will quicken love. Then we will discover other motives deep and powerful. The world is in need—there is no question about that. But the Church* too* needs the missionary enterprise to keep it alive. “ It is not a question of whether the heathen will be saved if we do not go to them* but as to whether we can be saved if we do not go.’* The great task is a necessity if the martyr spirit and the militant temper are to possess the Church. The leaders at home need to advance the Kingdom with all possible haste if they are to grow large and splendid and Christlike in their own lives. Study* too* will save our motives from paralysis and death. With constant repetition any appeal loses its grip and urgency. As Bishop McDowell says: ‘'Next to the tragedy of sin* is the tragedy of the early loss of motive out of men’s lives.” Our missionary motives need guarding. They can be saved only as we live in the light of our highest opportunity. They will die unless fed on the fire of new facts* and unless kept ablaze by hours of vigil alone with God in prayer for His world. Where can we learn these things except by pondering long over the story of Christian conquest ? How will our motives bum like a beacon unless they be fired and fed with new fuel ? Brings Adequate Financial Support N adequate financial response for missions can be secured only on the basis of an adequate campaign of missionary education. An Epworth League began a comprehensive campaign of mission¬ ary education. The first year the financial returns were $600, and several lives had been dedicated to missionary work. A young man was invited to become the pastor of a church, and promised $ 1,800 salary. He announced to the congregation that they had been so good to him that he would say nothing about missions. The second year they could pay him only $1,500, the third year they decreased it to $1,200 and he left. The next pastor was promised $1,200 but said: “I will be faithful to all the great interests of the Kingdom.’* At the end of the first year he reported a fine offering for missions, and had his salary raised to $1,500. At the end of four years his salary was $2,000, and they were then giving $6,000 a year to missions. It is a question of men I And a question of giving the people the facts! It is not a question of our marching orders, or whether we have sufficient resources of men and money, or of indescribable needs, but it is a question of obedience when we know the facts and listen to the summons of our Master! This study of missions will create conviction 1 Men will see that we need a large reinforcement to push the war to a successful conclusion. Plans will begin to assume adequate pro¬ portions. The penny collection and annual offering will pass and men will make missionary budgets running up into eight or nine figures. If our young people will now begin to systematically study the campaign, will adopt a plan of systematic and proportionate giving, and will continue to study and grow and plan and pray and give, the Kmgdom will come apace. Go or send! Your money and your life! Widens the Horizon kHE study of the missionary enterprise widens the horizon. No man can catch up with his horizon who keeps pace with the march of the King. Provincialism has no place in the life Ov of a modem, alert disciple of Christ His horizon is hounded only by the love of His Lord. Says a great modem preacher: “We must not condemn our young people to provincialism in this day of catholicity.** Mission study pushes back one’s horizon until it reaches the outermost rim and takes in the last lonely man on the planet. Study of other races will help us to realize their worth. There are men with large capacity everywhere waiting for the message of the Gospel to lift them into true greatness. Listen to that Chinese Viceroy who was approached by an Englishman concerning the intro¬ duction of opium into Chma. The Englishman said; “You will make a lot of money out of it.** The reply of the heathen made the Christian look small. “ I will never consent to do anything for money which will debauch my people.** Then, too, the study of missions inevitably leads to the study of every department of life and activity. It has wide implications. Missionaries are powerful factors in world progress. They have greatly increased the sum of the world’s knowledge. The Princeton Review says: “ Missionaries have rendered more service to geography than all the geographi¬ cal societies in the world.** In the opinion of a famous statesman, “Missionaries deserve a vote of thanks from the commercial world.** The story of the missionary touches history, sociology, philosophy, ethnology, comparative religions, international law, government, commerce, diplomacy, journalism, medicine, geography, literature and—all the rest. To ignore the fascinatmg story of modem missions b to be out of touch with thb age and its most thrilling achievements. Produces Missionary Leaders JSSION STUDY leads to conclusive thinking regardmg life work. God’s doors are so made that they swing both ways—inward, with blessing, then outward for service. A graduate of Yale, with a beautiful wife and large opportunities in an eastern city, saw the strategic opportunity of service in a great western state and went with the promise of an opportunity and $300 a year I He is a spiritual Prince out there now. A medical student was told that only half the graduates of that year could find a satisfactory place to practice. The student then thought about a place in China where there were three millions of people with no physician and put his life in there. He was not content to be a candle in America when he could be the blaze of ten thousand electric lights in China! Many whose hearts are stirred will not be called to be ministers or missionaries. Some will get a new vision of the omnipotence of prayer and set apart their lives for intercession. Others who have a genius for money-making will pour thousands of dollars into the service, or, if denied great wealth will give out of their sacrifice, like one poor farmer’s wife whose annual gift of thirty dollars brought three thousand to Christ in India in three years. Quickened interest will inspire still others to conduct a campaign of education in their churches by distributing mission¬ ary literature, by promoting missicnary instruction in the Sunday school and by organizing mission study classes. Every soldier has a duty. “ God alone can save the world, but God cannot save the world alone.” ” The vision of opportunity is commission.” CORRESPOND with the Young People’s Missionary Department, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City, for information concerning mission study.