The World-Interest in the Evangelization of France ADDRESS of JOHN R. MOTT, LL.D. At the Thirty-First Annual Meeting of the American McAll Association at Buffalo, N. Y., April 28, 1914 It is a distinguished honor, of which I am keenly sensible, to be permitted to meet with so many, many people who feel a responsiveness to duty, a consuming desire to be found where Christ would have them, doing his will and not their own will; and it adds immensely to one’s pleasure to be permitted to' as¬ sociate one’s self in even the smallest way with a great body of Christians who honor our common Lord, especially in con¬ nection with a cause like the one which has assembled us this evening. I come to speak of it, not as one who is in any way officially related to the enterprise, but, simply as a witness and as a world traveler who has been in a position to observe the results of the unique work being accomplished by the McAll Mission. I am free to say at the outset tonight, having studied organizations in possibly as many as forty-five different nations, that I know of no society more Christlike in conception, more wise in method and plan, more economical in administration, more apostolic in spirit and more refreshing and vitalizing in the impression it makes upon one as one comes near its opera¬ tions. The need of such a work must have impressed even the most casual observer in the French Republic, whether his journeys have kept him largely in the great cities or whether they have taken him out into the interior, in the rural districts, among the countless villages. - We have Protestantism in France, and it is a type of Protestantism of which we are not ashamed and for which 2 we shall never apologize. The splendid principles of the Reformation, which brought into being this wonderful line of people, are principles for which you and I will continue to stand while life lasts. They have made possible the generating of a Christian host and a Christian witness which have enriched many of the nations of our so-called Protestant Christendom, as well as other parts of the wide world. But that Protestant body, speaking of it at the best, numbers over 600,000 adherents —we will not speak of them all as communicants. And, like Protestantism in other countries, it has its different sections. There is what we might call a very vital and believing section. There is one that we might call more formal and without real power. At best therefore we cannot look to that body of Christians to permeate with the principles and spirit of Jesus a vast population of forty millions, not to speak of the colonies of France. In that Republic likewise we find the Roman Cath¬ olic Church, and in my judgment we find the Roman Catholic Church in one of its best forms, and exhibiting some of the very best phases of its life and work. Speaking of that Church as one would, likewise, of other great Christian communions, one must admit that there is much going forward, in its name which does not remind one of the principles and character and spirit of Christ, and yet I would not be misunderstood. I have many personal friends among the members of the Church of Rome in the French Republic as well as in other lands. I would not speak words that would seem to be uncharitable. In fact, I am one of those who entertain the hope that just as one time the Christians called into being by that movement initiated by Christ and the apostles found themselves in a great unity, so the day is coming when we will be brought back into a realiz¬ ing sense of our oneness. Being one in our belief in the deity of Jesus Christ our Lord, being one in our desire to become like Him; and I find as I have mingled with the Roman Catholics that there are many who would say that as fer¬ vently as any of us in this room,—being one in the determina¬ tion that some day the inhabited earth shall be coextensive with the reign of Christ,—we are one whether sometimes we feel we are or not, or whether we believe we are, or not. And the day is coming when the things that make possible a real unity 3 and a realizing sense of that unity will triumph just as surely as Christ prayed that we all might be one. A few months ago when I was in Southern India I was entertained by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Madras Presi¬ dency, and -on coming out of one of the sessions of a confer¬ ence in Madras which I was conducting in the name of the Continuation Committee of the Edinburgh Conference on be¬ half of all the missionary societies of Protestant Christianity, the Governor asked me, “Have you investigated the experience of the Roman Catholic Church regarding this problem you have been discussing this morning ?”—that was the problem of how to get more of the strongest Indian young men to devote themselves to Christian service. I said, “Your Excellency, I have not studied it here in India. When I was working on the problem of the future leadership for America and the British Isles I did study it, I did have conversations with prominent ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome.” “Well,” he said, “you made a mistake if you overlook them here in India,” and he insisted on sending for the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Southern India. He introduced me to him, and then shut us in a room together. We discussed this question with great interest, and I did learn things that were very useful. After we had finished the conversation on that subject I was led to drift into the subject matter of the drawing together of Christians, and I found that he was very much interested. I asked him what we must do to bring about a genuine unity some day of all Christians, and quick as a flash he gave these three points, showing that he had thought much upon the subject. He said, “In the first place, we must pray for it; in the second place, gentleness and courtesy”—there is a great deal involved in those two words—“and, in the third place,” he said, “we must see more of one another; that is, we who call ourselves Christians.” Why should we be surprised at answers like that coming from that source? You will find, as you put your lives alongside of people who would die for the deity of our Lord, that there are many other things in which they believe as strongly as we do. Therefore, I say, we will speak no word of disparagement concerning a great com¬ munion at the center of which is this cornerstone principle of 4 the lordship of Jesus Christ. Making all allowance that we may for the sins, the superstitions, the abominations and the ignorance, all of these things, the fact still remains that there is a witness against agnosticism, against infidelity, against im¬ morality, against intemperance, against the influences that sap society and nations at the very base. I understand that the McAll Mission is not a propaganda to cut into the life of any church that bears the name of Christ, but that it is a propaganda to gather into His fold those who do not acknowledge the name of Christ. And it is well for us to remember that at the maximum there are in France tonight not more than ten millions of people who would call themselves adherents of the Church of Rome, and, I have said, only possibly a little more than 600,000 who would call themselves adherents of the Protestant Church. What about the other thirty millions? That is the field before the McAll *• 1 r • - . ^ j> Mission. They are not out there trying to pick flaws with any¬ body that bears the Christian name, but they are there to seek to draw into vital relation to the living Christ these millions who know not so much as that there is a Christ. Believe me, as a traveler who has studied nearly every mission field at first hand, there are not millions, but tens of millions of people in France today who are as much without Christ as the tens of millions whom I mingled with in India, in the heart of Africa, in the inland provinces of China or the Turkish Em¬ pire. They know not that there is a Christ, or that there was a Christ. Is not here enough to call into being a specialized agency representative of our common Protestant Christianity, to introduce these peoples to the life that is life indeed? It is not surprising in a land of such great dearth, of these great open spaces of need, that, in my repeated journeys which have taken me to that country almost once every year for twenty- five years, I have found a breakdown of character, a moral collapse, the same as one finds in any part of the world where old restraints have been thrown off or where people are, as the Germans would say, confessions los, that is, cut loose from all religion and all adequately restraining efforts. It is not strange that I have found moral collapse, and it is not surpris¬ ing that the most discerning and patriotic of the public men in 5 France today, regardless of their religious views, are heavily burdened with solicitude because of this breakdown of char¬ acter of men in every relationship. My journeys in France have thrown me very intimately with what we might call the educated classes, the students, the professors, the professional men, the men in government service, and' the men of the better classes socially, and it has meant much to me as I have mingled with these discerning people who are pondering the meaning of facts to find them so gravely concerned at this present moment with this indescribable need and with the in¬ ability of present missions and present means to meet this need. Happily, I am glad to say at once, there are wonderful signs of encouragement, due in large part to the work of this Mission, not so much by what it has done directly, although that alone has been sufficient to justify, in my judgment, every claim which has ever been made about it with which I am familiar. I think that with the McAll Mission, as with any other work in which Christ truly abides, the indirect results sometimes surprise us even more than the direct results. Little did that Mission expect when it felt its way out and found itself that the by-products of its work would sometimes bulk more largely than its direct results. When I see, for example, what the McAll Mission has done to release vitality inside of the Protestant Christian communion, as I myself well know, I see one of its large by-products. When I notice the object lesson it has presented, the present-day evidences of the reality, the vitality and the conquering power of pure Christianity in that great vantage ground the French Republic, as we shall see later tonight, I see another one of the great by-products of that work released by the life, the endless life, of Christ through this Mis¬ sion ; and when I have found in my work among the students that one of the factors which had done much to help give a sense of reality to the meaning of Christianity, and found my hands greatly strengthened in a quarter where I had not ex¬ pected such strength to come from, I discovered another one of these by-products in the wondrous influence of any work done in humility and in spirituality in the name of Christ, even in obscure places, as most of its crowning work has been done. 6 I have been impressed not only by the need of this work, but by the tremendous strategy of it all. We sometimes hear statements made about France that are so out of accord with what we see as we travel over the world that we wonder that these statements have been possible when we consider their sources. One of the leading statesmen of England, a name that I will not quote tonight, has within half a generation made remarks with reference to France that are so contradictory to the marvelous outreach of the influence of that nation in the world today that one believes it is wise that we dwell a moment on this point of the strategy of anything done in France. I was telling some of the business men today in an entirely dif¬ ferent connection, that the place to bring power to bear is where power can be most widely and most advantageously distributed. I had in mind an entirely different part of the world when I made that statement, but with aptness I might make that statement here tonight concerning France itself. My work has taken me repeatedly to the other Latin countries of Europe, such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Latin sec¬ tion of Belgium and of Switzerland, and I have been amazed to find that thoughtful people as well as the masses are in¬ fluenced more profoundly by what takes place in and through France than by what takes place in and through any other country in the world. I am speaking of something that is true today, not simply of some other day in the past. When I was in South America and in other parts of Latin America, especially in the more advanced of the Latin republics of this hemisphere, such as Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, it was surprising to me—I do not wonder at it so much now, but I did then, that all of those universities in the Latin American world and their educated classes looked back to the University of Paris as the Mecca in the university world. I found very few professors in Latin America, all the way from Mexico to Argentina, who have not taken, as we would say in English, a degree in one of the French universities or who have not carried forward some of their studies under the influence of France, and I found that among the visitors who travel in the Latin American republics none received such a welcome as the French. Right now on the Atlantic ocean a man is traveling 7 whom I have sent there, Emmanuel Sautter, of France.* They are going to hold an important Christian association conven¬ tion in Montevideo, to begin in a few weeks, and they wanted me to pick out “somewhere in the world,” they said, “a man that will be the most helpful to us in outlining our program down here in this great convention where we are to have rep¬ resentatives of all of the principal South American republics. And I did not need to think long. I did not pick out a man in the United States, I did not pick out a man in Germany or the British Isles, but I went over to France and took one of the very best of these French Protestant families. I chose a man in touch with the modern age, a man with the French mentality. With the abundant access that he will have when he goes to South America he will do more than any ten of us Anglo-Saxons could possibly do. Speaking of these Latin countries of Europe and the west¬ ern hemisphere reminds me that I have struck off, as it were, a generalization that connotes the Roman Catholic world. In anything that you and I wish to do to release truth or influences which we believe we possess that would be useful to that other great family of Christians, I know of no better way to release it than by way of the French Republic. It is not always by frontal attacks, but, in these days, more frequently on the flank that we make our most effective influence felt. When I was going through that interesting part of the world, two years ago, the Balkan States, such countries as Bulgaria, Servia and Greece—and I ought also to add Roumania, which I did not visit at that time, but it should be included, of course, in the group—I was very much interested to find, contrary to what I had been told by some people who ought to have known, that the key to the unlocking of the Balkan universities is held securely, even in these days, in the hands of the French; and I found that what helped me most there was not to talk of the Anglo-Saxon’s precedents, not to tell of the wonder works of God in England and America and Scotland and Australia, still less to talk about what was being done in the * Mr. Emmanuel Sautter is the son of Mr. Louis Sautter, a life¬ long friend of Dr. McAll, and for twenty-five years the Honorary President of the McAll Mission. name of Christ in Germany. It was of some value to remind them of the present-day evidences of Christianity in lands like Japan and British India, but what was the touchstone every¬ where was to speak of the little beginnings and the vital pro¬ cesses in France and French-speaking Switzerland, and, to a limited extent, in Italy. So I have been arranging within a few months to send two of the leaders of the Protestant forces in France to visit all of these Balkan States. One of them has just finished the trip and we shall soon have his report. I refer to Professor Allier. I read a book when I was down there in the Near East called ‘‘The Danger Zone of Europe.” It is a misnomer, because the book deals not only with southeastern Europe, but with the Asiatic Levant, and even Egypt; but, be the title what it may, it is a very suggestive book, and the fact remains that in the belt that reaches from Russia down across the Bal¬ kans, Austria and Turkey into North Africa, is one of the great danger zones. I might say with accuracy there is a danger zone in almost every part of the world today where the races are brought against one another, with their conflict¬ ing sets of ideals and civilizations. We are experiencing it sadly right here in North America in these present days of un¬ fortunate misunderstanding. Misunderstanding is the word. If we understood one another on both sides of the Rio Grande the last thing we would be doing would be filling the columns of our papers in these countries as we are today. It is misun¬ derstanding from beginning to end. We are different mentali¬ ties, we are looking through different glasses, we have different heredities. Well, that certainly is a great danger zone down there in southeastern Europe, and I thought to myself, “Thank God that we have back in France the native, vital Christianity to make it in a true sense not only a field, but, now, a force to be wielded on behalf of other parts of the world, to the infinite enrichment of Protestant France, let it be said, as well as Roman Catholic France. Speaking of the missionary influence of France reminds me that I should speak of both Protestants and Catholics. I know of no Protestant church in Europe or America which in proportion to its membership and its wealth is conducting a 9 more splendid piece of foreign missionary work than the Protestant church in France. It is simply wonderful and almost unbelievable. I should say a good word also for the Church of Rome, because I remember that one-third of the Roman Catholic missionaries of the world come from France, and that the largest financial backing of the missionary orders of the Church of Rome comes from the French Republic. There is missionary spirit there. Whenever it is released it surges over the world. Not only the Balkan States are opened readily by a key in the hands of the French, but even parts of the Levant. The other day when I was down there I called at Smyrna, one of the largest Greek communities in the world. On landing I went up to call on the Metropolitan of the great church there, the Greek Church. I went in and introduced myself. He said, “You don’t need to introduce yourself to me. Right here we have two of your addresses that we have just been translating into Greek to circulate among the Greek reading classes here in Smyrna.” I said, “How did you get hold of those ?” He said, “Two of our priests were in Europe studying French and they happened to hear some addresses you were giving to the students, and they sent them back here in French and we are now translating them into Greek.” I found up and down the Levant that French influence, notwithstanding the wonderful activity of Germany in the last fifteen years—and it has been something surprising—is still the dominant influence in the Asiatic Levant. A word should be said about Russia in this connection. We omit Russia too much in these days, and although our meeting tonight is in the interest of France, it is directly in point to speak of the greatest ally of France, the Russian Em¬ pire. When I first went to Russia, about fifteen years ago, I found it impossible to get at the educated classes to bring to them the message of vital Christianity. The only address I was permitted to give in Russia that year was in the British and American chapel. They told me the spies would be there, and I remember what an anxious three days I had. At last I chose a subject that I thought would be entirely safe, the subject of “secret prayer.” If I had taken any subject that 10 s ugg es t e d association or organization or movement or com¬ bination or international cooperation or vital energy being released, there would have been alarm. Such meetings as I had among the students, I had between midnight and four o’clock in the morning, in secret. If I had to do it over again I would not run those risks, not so much for myself as what I incurred for these Russian students who pressed in upon me. In contrast to that, let me remind you that when I was in Russia a few years ago the largest theaters and public buildings would not hold the multitudes of Russian students, agnostics and Jews—very few who call themselves Christians. They look upon the Church as an instrument of oppression. They hate the Church. They fight the Church. It has torn apart too many of their families, it has sent too many of their rela¬ tives to the mines of Siberia and to the Transcaucasus. There¬ fore, superficially, they count out all Christianity because of some things that are done in the name of organized Christianity. But they came to hear me as a representative of the young men and the young women of the universities of other nations; and although I could not speak a word of Russian and they could not speak a word of English, generally speaking, they would throng me on every occasion. They would not only listen to me speak for three hours on end, giving three lectures, one after the other, until I had exhausted two interpreters, but they would press upon me outside of the lectures. Though they were very poor students they would pay extra fare to get on the street car to travel with me. They would come to my hotel at all times of the day and night; not only when I said I would be glad to receive individuals and delegations, but at the most unlikely hours they would come. They seemed to think that if they could get near me, coming as I did in the name of the students of the other nations, they might find reality and something that would bring them relief. You know, they are desperate. Though they are without religion, they are the most religious students I have ever met, not excepting those in India-—by which I mean, they are responsive to reality. They are ready to pay prices that put us in a country like this abso¬ lutely to shame. What will not a Russian student pay, or any Russian, to find the truth, that the truth may set him free! [ I More of them commit suicide each year in Russia than in all other nations of the world put together. I am speaking of the students. It is logic. From the point of view of their pessi¬ mistic philosophy death is a mere detail to them if it stands in the way of their finding what they are after. So, I say, my heart was deeply stirred by this wondrous responsiveness. You will be interested to know, therefore, that seeds were scat¬ tered here and there that have already germinated. Many Bible classes have been formed, and these have been evolved into Christian societies or associations of the men students and the women students; and at Princeton last May, at the confer¬ ence of the World’s Student Christian Federation, the latest movement to be received into the World’s Federation was the Christian Student Movement of Russia, being developed inside the Russian orthodox Church largely, but with a platform suffi¬ ciently broad to include all Christians who acknowledge the deity of our Lord. Now, my experiences in Russia have shown me that France holds a position of influence absolutely unique among the great masses of that people. And it is a great people. One time when I went over there President Roosevelt gave me a letter to read to the young men of Russia. There was a sen¬ tence in it that I could not accept, but I do accept it now. He said, “No land more than Russia holds the fate of the coming years.” I see his meaning now. Located as it is in the belt of power, where we find lands like China and Japan, Germany, France and England, Canada and the United States, blending the strongest strains of Asia and Europe, having the three mightiest religions, Christianity, Judaism (there are as many Jews there as in all the rest of the world), Mohammedanism (contrary to the popular impression, about twenty million Mos¬ lems), with capacities for vicariousness and courage second to none among all the peoples in the world, it is a land of the coming age. How wise we are, therefore, my friends, to do by way of France what we will not be permitted to do in any large way by frontal attack on Russia. Anything which God will let us do for Russia on the flank we are wise to do. Moreover, when I think of the strategy of work for France, I think of something besides Europe. I think of Africa. I am going in a few months on what 1 regard as the most diffi¬ cult and responsible mission on which I have ever been sent, to conduct missionary conferences in the Mohammedan world, beginning with Algiers. I go there by design, as the key. French Africa connotes Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli. Remember that the Moslem advance is pressing down like a gigantic glacier toward the heart of Africa, from French Africa as well as from other parts of Northern Moslem Africa. There is a gigantic continent, one tied into the very life of our American continent by centuries of tragedy, and we are still paying our price and will continue to pay it; we are treading the wine press still. Interested in Africa! Certainly, we are interested in Africa. Responsible for Africa! Certainly. And we cannot discharge it all the way by our southern States. We will con¬ tinue to do what we may there. To reach French Africa, the most difficult part of Africa, and to shiver the Moslem power at its base, is true strategy. We can do it best by way of France. I said to Dr. Roegner, a man of saintly life, called to his reward—some of you may have heard him when he was here two years ago—I said to him, “Obviously, the Anglo- Saxon world must do some of its best work for the African continent by way of the French Protestants, that is what we do inside of France.” He saw that, and it was at my encour¬ agement that he came over here to widen the clientele of that wonderful missionary expansive movement. We ought to think of Asia as well as Africa. The two largest unoccupied areas on earth tonight are, one, in the heart of Africa, with about twenty millions of people, among whom there is not one Protestant missionary, and French Indo-China and the peoples immediately adjacent; another area in which there are nearly, if not quite, twenty millions more with vir¬ tually no Protestant missionary movement among them. There is the meaning of the two flanks. Is it not significant that the two greatest unoccupied masses of people can best be approached by our strengthening the hands of Christianity in France? It is a matter much overlooked by us Anglo-Saxons, who have been priding ourselves so long that we hold the key to almost every situation. Thus, I say, there is a strategy, and it is a world-wide strategy. We cannot stop with Europe and Asia and Africa and Latin America. I remind you that in Paris alone are about 8000 foreign students. I mean students from outside of France. True it is, it is the Mecca of most of the ambitious French students, but it is likewise a Mecca of students from every quarter of the world. Those foreign 8000 students represent thirty different nations at least. We, as Americans, have a big stake over there. Think of the num¬ bers of young men and women there, studying not only in the universities, but studying art, music and other subjects. Hap¬ pily we have come to recognize our responsibility to our own, but I have sometimes thought we could not do a better thing for our own than to make more expansive our sacrifice on behalf of the French themselves, our hosts, that we might do something that would raise ideals, stimulate zeal, increase the stream of vitality. It would come back to us many fold. The McAll Mission is designed to have a large part in the capturing of this strategic nation and people and relating its energies to the continents of the world. You ask me why? Because it is so broad in its platform and in its sympathies. It appeals to all genuine Christians, no matter what our name. It has a platform on which we can all stand with conscientious¬ ness and with conviction. Moreover, it is a movement that utilizes the forces at hand. I remarked in my opening sen¬ tences that I know of no project more economical. The reason is that it lays hold of forces right there in France. It draws its recruits, its messengers, its interpreters, its mediators, its guides and teachers, its apostles, from the French Protestant population. It does not have the large expense of sending out many foreign missionaries. Then, another thing that has al¬ ways impressed me about the McAll Mission is its extreme sim¬ plicity. It is not spending vast sums of ‘money, as we are obliged to spend, and as we wisely spend, in China and India and Japan, in great hospitals and Christian universities and printing establishments. From the very nature of its limita¬ tions it has been driven to adopt some methods that are ex¬ tremely simple. The masses shrinking from the churches as they do, the McAll Mission has found it can best reach them without great expensive churches. It does not need to repro¬ duce colleges or medical establishments. Therefore its means are very simple. It gets the maximum of output with the minimum of expenditure. Another good thing about that Mis¬ sion, it employs what I call the vital processes. What are these vital processes ? Well, of course, the most vital process that any man ever employs is that of relating individuals, one by one, to the fountainhead of vitality, the one who said, not only, “I am the way and the truth,” but, “I am the vitality.” There is no work so highly multiplied as the work of taking a life that is suffering atrophy, that is shriveling and dying,—what is death but separation from life?—and relating that life to the fountain of vitality. The McAll Mission is busy day and night—I use that expression literally, day and night—in bring¬ ing people in touch with this life-giving stream. A second vital method it employs is that of preaching. There is a quaint word in the Bible that it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save. It is the method, say what we may in some countries, with the French mentality. There is no method more appealing than good preaching; and, con¬ trary to the popular impression, they will gather in multitudes, they will throng these temporary chapels, they will gather in the open air in great crowds, to hear the living Evangel. One of the most inspiring demonstrations I have ever seen of the present-day power of preaching, I have seen in connection with this Mission in my journeys in France. I think in some ways the most vital method next to the first one I named is the way they have of bringing these people, the men and the women, and as fast as possible little children, into touch with the Bible, the literature that releases the vital entity. DeQuincey has divided all literature into the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. These are pre¬ eminently the writings of power. They vibrate with the energies of the other world. A Jewess student was speaking to me one day and made a striking remark about the words of Christ. She said, “They make me want to obey them.” That is, they not only persuade the mind but they release im¬ pulses that stimulate the will. It reminds me of what a man said to me one day, “Behind the sermon on the mount I heard the voice of the living God. Henceforth I could not con¬ scientiously do wrong.” It calls to memory also the remark 15 of another man whom I met in the Near East, who said, “The historical portions of the Gospels interest me, but those other parts of the Book of John make my conscience tremble.” When I was in one of the Latin republics I asked the question, “What is the principal obstacle to the spread of Christianity ?” I was answered, “The Ten Commandments.” What he meant was that if we would run on the lines of least resistance it would advance by leaps and bounds, but that here was a new energy that awakened conscience, strengthened the will, set itself against the tide, up stream. So wherever I have found this McAll Mission working I have found people gathering about these pages, and, my friends, in those places I have found the beauty that is in the world. It has reminded me of some of those gushing fountains that occasionally in my travels I have seen in the deserts—everything like spring about it. “Every¬ thing shall prosper whither this river goeth.” I close by answering this question: What is most needed in this McAll Mission ? One thing we must do is to widen the plans. I have only one criticism with reference to the McAll Mission, and that I mentioned at the dinner table tonight to the most able, brilliant and helpful executive leader, Dr. Berry. I said, “The one fault I have to find is that this work is pro¬ jected on too small a plan;” I said, “If you can do as much good as is now being done with this present expenditure for a mil¬ lion people directly and indirectly, why not widen out the plan and touch several millions?” I do not see any good reason why not. I think it is the call of Almighty God, and I say that weighing my words, that we should widen our plans. And the second thing that is needed is to keep in mind the strategy. I have said enough on that tonight. However, I want to say one word more about it. When we were having the Volunteer Convention in Nashville, Tenn., a few years ago, one night we received a cable message from Japan in this language: “Japan is leading the Orient, but whither?” I want to transfer that tonight to France and say, “France is leading Latin Europe, Latin America, the Balkan States, the Levant, French Moslem Africa, Indo-China, and, in a very real sense, Russia—but whither ?” Remember what I have said about flank movements as contrasted with frontal attacks ? And the other thing needed i6 Pv. is a larger measure of sacrifice. After all the Christian religion is a movement of the spirit of Christ, and the spirit of Christ has ever been best characterized by people who have sounded the depths as the spirit of self-sacrifice. Make the Gospel difficult and you make it triumphant. Jesus Christ never hid his scars to win a disciple. “The pleasures of the earth evap¬ orate in air. It is our pains that increase the spiritual momen¬ tum of the world.” The life of sacrifice that Christ lived reached farther than from Gethsemane to the cross. It was literally a life of laying down Himself, of spending Himself. He taught the principle that I have found revolutionizing the world: “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth by itself alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” Therefore let us associate ourselves tonight in some fresh measure with Christ in that expansive sacrifice without which France and the rest of the world will not be conquered. American Me All Association, 1710 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.