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 Christian Stewardship. 
 
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Student Volunteer Series , No. //. 
 
 THE 
 
 OPPORTUNITY 0F ™ E HOUR 
 
 OR 
 
 Christian Stewardship 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE SHERWOOD EDDY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign 
 
 Missions 
 
 1899 
 
The Opportunity of the Hour 
 
 or 
 
 CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP 
 
 i. THE TEACHING OF THE WORD OF 
 GOD REGARDING STEWARDSHIP 
 
 i. The Teaching of the Old Testament: 
 
 Stewardship recognized in the Tithe. 
 
 “In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth.” The whole world 
 was His by creation and He never trans¬ 
 ferred it to man. What have we that is 
 ours? Money? “The silver is mine, and 
 the gold is mine, saith the Lord.” Lands? 
 “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; 
 for the land is mine , for ye are strangers 
 and sojourners with me.” Possessions? 
 “Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is 
 mine." But did not we earn the wealth? 
 “It is He that giveth the power to get 
 wealth.” But my life? “All souls are 
 mine ”—Yea “the world is mine and the 
 fulness thereof.” 
 
4 
 
 From the beginning men have recog¬ 
 nized their obligations to God. The first 
 recorded act of Cain and Abel was to 
 bring an offering unto the Lord of the 
 grain from God’s field and the firstlings of 
 His flock. Abraham “gave a tenth of all.” 
 Because Jacob recognized God as the 
 giver of all his possessions, he said, “I 
 will surely give the tenth unto Thee.” 
 God incorporated this already recognized 
 principle in His law. The first tenth of 
 all their increase was for Him. It was not 
 to be given as a gift —“The tithe is the 
 Lord’s.” If anything was kept back it 
 had not only to be made up, but ‘ ‘a fifth 
 part added thereto.” The years of past 
 neglect were to be redeemed at compound 
 interest! 
 
 Upon the offering of the tithe blessings 
 and prosperity were distinctly promised 
 and strikingly fulfilled in Israel’s history. 
 When the tithes were withheld, religion 
 waned and poverty and captivity fell like a 
 blight. Through a thousand, years of a 
 nation’s history the painful lesson was 
 taught that God gives wealth and He must 
 be first honored in its expenditure. Yet in 
 
5 
 
 the added light of the New Testament the 
 Church has largely lost the consciousness 
 of her stewardship. She has fallen below 
 even the Jewish low-water mark of a single 
 tithe. 
 
 The rugged words of Deuteronomy need 
 to be boldly re-echoed in our own day: 
 “Beware lest when thou hast built goodly 
 houses; and when thy silver and thy gold 
 is multiplied, then thine heart be lifted up 
 and thou forget the Lord thy God, and 
 say in thine heart, My power and the 
 might of mine hand hath gotten me this 
 wealth. But thou shalt remember the 
 Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee 
 power to get wealth.” (Deut. 8 : 11-20.) 
 
 Are we in sentiment or in fact God’s 
 stewards? If you had a clerk or manager 
 or steward to whom you entrusted your 
 estate during your absence, with plain and 
 repeated directions that, though he was to 
 get his living out of it, he was not to lay 
 up money for himself, but was to use it for 
 your children and for advancing your work: 
 if you found upon return that he had 
 neglected your interests and your children, 
 and had transferred to his own bank 
 
6 
 
 account what he had not spent upon him¬ 
 self and his own family—what would you 
 call this? You would call it robbery. 
 What does God call it? “Ye rob me, even 
 this whole nation. Bring ye the whole 
 tithe into the storehouse, * * * and prove 
 me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I 
 will not open you the windows of heaven, 
 and pour you out a blessing, that there 
 shall not be room enough to receive it.” 
 (Mai. 3:9-10.) 
 
 If we have not an overflowing blessing 
 in our lives the reason may not be very 
 far to seek. In the light of Christ’s teach¬ 
 ing however, the “whole tithe” for us 
 may be more than the tenth. Jacob had 
 no church to support, and the Jews no 
 world to evangelize. 
 
 11. The Teaching of Jesus Christ: 
 
 The whole Stewardship wholly used for God. 
 
 The Sermon on the Mount: — For¬ 
 bidding selfish accumulation. (Matt. 
 6: 19-34.) “Lay not up for yourselves 
 treasures upon the earth.” “But seek ye 
 first His Kingdom, and His righteousness; 
 and all these things shall be added unto 
 
7 
 
 you.” Let us thoughtfully ponder each 
 priceless word, for the teaching of Christ 
 reveals the very mind of God regarding our 
 stewardship. Jesus here teaches that the 
 accumulation of wealth for ourselves is both 
 dangerous and unnecessary; dangerous, 
 because it tends to become our master and 
 divorce us from God; unnecessary, because 
 our own need does not require it. 
 
 The Foolish Rich Man: —The folly 
 of selfish accumulation. (Luke 12:13-40.) 
 “I will pull down my barns and build 
 greater. ’ ’ 
 
 “Sell that ye have, and give alms.” 
 
 The rich man’s only recorded sin is that 
 of making a fortune for himself, instead of 
 using his wealth for God. But in living 
 for himself he had lost his soul. He had 
 said he would increase and keep. Christ 
 bids us decrease and give. We are not of 
 this world, and our wealth must be con¬ 
 verted into a letter of credit on the next. 
 We are to transfer our wealth to heaven by 
 giving it to the needy on earth. 
 
 The Unrighteous Steward: —The 
 eternal significance of our stewardship. 
 (Luke 16:1-14.) “I say unto you,Make to 
 
8 
 
 yourselves friends by means of the mammon 
 of unrighteousness; that,when it shall fail, 
 they may receive you into the eternal 
 tabernacles. * * * If therefore ye have not 
 been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, 
 who ’will commit to your trust the true 
 riches? And if ye have not been faithful 
 in that which is another's, who will give 
 you that which is your own?” 
 
 On finding the stewardship is to be taken 
 from him the unrighteous steward makes 
 the most of his position while it remains, 
 to help him when it shall have been taken 
 away. He is not commended for doing 
 “well" for his master, but because he had 
 done “ wisely for himself.” Christ uses 
 him as an example in only one respect. 
 He seems to say “Be at least wise enough 
 to use your stewardship for your own 
 eternal interests, to gain you heaven and 
 not to lose it. Even men of the world are 
 not so blind for they use their money for 
 their own best advantage.” 
 
 The Rich Man and Lazarus :—The 
 terrible consequences of a selfish steward¬ 
 ship. (Luke 16:19-31.) While the para¬ 
 ble of the Foolish Rich Man showed the 
 
9 
 
 steward’s relation to God, this parable 
 shows his relation to his fellowman. The 
 rich man’s only apparent sin was that he 
 had “fared sumptuously” without regard 
 to the poor brother at his gate. This neg¬ 
 lected stewardship seals his destiny. 
 
 Information and communication have 
 today placed the heathen at our very gate 
 in all their poverty and corruption of sin; 
 starving for want of the crumbs of the 
 bread of life that fall from our table. We 
 may disclaim that we are our brother’s 
 keeper, but to deny his brotherhood denies 
 God’s fatherhood. To disown our stew¬ 
 ardship is to disinherit ourselves of the 
 eternal riches. While the world lasts the 
 rich are bound to the needy by fetters of 
 obligation that cannot be broken till the 
 word of God pronounces the “great gulf 
 fixed.” 
 
 The Rich Young Ruler: —All must 
 be surrendered to God. (Luke 18:18-25.) 
 When Christ makes the real test of the 
 young man’s devotion to God in asking 
 him to sell all that he has, he hangs his 
 head and counts the cost. On the one 
 side, multitudes blessed, treasure for him- 
 
IO 
 
 self in heaven, personal fellowship with 
 Jesus on earth: on the other side, his 
 money and himself. He turns away, for 
 his heart is in his possessions, not in God. 
 And Christ says to the multitude, “It is 
 easier for a camel to enter in through a 
 needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter 
 into the Kingdom of God!” And why? 
 Unless our possessions are used solely for 
 Him, their very retention and accumulation 
 in the face of the world’s need, shows our 
 heart to be in them. Christ plainly reveals 
 the only condition upon which He will 
 save rich or poor—the surrender of all 
 to Him. “Whosoever he be of you that 
 renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot 
 be my disciple.” 
 
 Summary of Christ’s Teaching:— 
 Space has permitted only brief reference 
 to a few typical passages. Yet even in 
 these Christ has shown the relation of our 
 stewardship to this life and the next, to 
 God and our fellowman, and to our own 
 destiny. All are summed up in the idea 
 of the Kingdom, in advancing which 
 money finds its highest service and its 
 truest end. 
 
Christ never once suggests the tithe for 
 us. It has gone with the Law. He dis¬ 
 closes the great underlying principle which 
 the tithe partially revealed —The whole 
 stewardship wholly used for God. 
 
 He leaves it for us to determine by the 
 guidance of the Spirit how the principle 
 shall be applied to our own circumstances. 
 While it precludes accumulation for self, it 
 does not forbid the legitimate increase of 
 capital required in a prosperous business, 
 provided it be in the full assurance that it 
 is God’s will, and that its income shall be 
 devoted to the interests of God’s King¬ 
 dom. The danger is only, that in its 
 increase it shall become our master, and 
 that we shall quiet our consciences by 
 promise of larger future giving, because 
 we are really unwilling to give what we 
 should now. If unwilling to give now, we 
 shall be far more so when we are richer, 
 for “only constant giving keeps the soul 
 from shrinkage.’’ 
 
 Is God permitted to do His will in our 
 stewardship? Can we claim that we have 
 surrendered ourselves to Him, if we with¬ 
 hold our possessions, which, as the means 
 
12 
 
 of self-gratification, represent the very 
 essence of self? “Not every one that 
 saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into 
 the Kingdom of heaven; but he thatdoeth 
 the will of my Father which is in heaven.’’ 
 
 hi. The Teaching of the Apostles: 
 
 Showing how the Stewardship is to be administered. 
 
 In applying the principles of Christ to 
 the churches Paul settles upon a method of 
 giving which he had successfully inaugu¬ 
 rated through Galatia, enjoins upon the 
 church at Corinth, and, through his epistle, 
 to the Christians of all time. “As I gave 
 order to the churches of Galatia, so also 
 do ye. Upon the first day of the week let 
 each one of you lay by him in store, as he 
 may prosper, that no collections be made 
 when I come.” (i Cor. 16:i, 2.) Divested 
 of the local conditions we find here two 
 underlying principles applicable to all 
 times—those of systematic and propor¬ 
 tionate giving. 
 
 1. Systematic Giving is giving ac¬ 
 cording to a method instead of from im¬ 
 pulse, constantly instead of occasionally. 
 Our circumstances will determine whether 
 
13 
 
 we shall actually lay aside the money upon 
 the first day of the week, or month, or 
 quarter, or whether we shall open an 
 account in our books. In any event to 
 have an account or fund separated for 
 God’s use and administered as a trust 
 We may pause to notice two reasons why 
 it is the best way of giving. 
 
 It yields larger returns. Drawing 
 steadily from an entire income will yield 
 more than emptying an unprepared pocket- 
 book. If your book keeper made entries 
 in your books when he ‘ ‘felt like it, ” or if he 
 put money in your cash drawer only when 
 “specially appealed to,” your treasury 
 would get very low. So does God’s 
 treasury. If your cook made no provision 
 for your meals and only served them when 
 she “happened to think of it,” you would 
 soon starve. That is what the people do 
 who depend upon careless givers for the 
 bread of life. 
 
 It sanctifies the whole round of life . 
 Giving systematically we escape the strain 
 of having to decide each time between 
 desire and duty. We ate not hardened by 
 repeated refusals. We decide alone with 
 
H 
 
 God and then place the money as He leads 
 us. A man is now doing business for 
 God. He is working that he “may have 
 whereof to give.” A new motive has 
 come into his life. Giving becomes a pas¬ 
 sion. His interests are widened from the 
 petty sphere of his own business to the 
 mighty concerns of the Kingdom of God. 
 Giving becomes worship. He will follow 
 it with prayer. He now “gives himself 
 with his alms” and his sympathy reaches 
 out into all the world. 
 
 Thank God there are such men. We 
 know of one man in the East whose work 
 is stimulated by the thought that his toil 
 sustains eight missionaries. A firm in the 
 West has increased its business four hun¬ 
 dred per cent, since it began tithing its 
 profits, apart from the personal giving of 
 its members. A dozen missionaries are 
 supported from a third of the profits of 
 still another firm whose business has tripled 
 in the midst of hard times. “Honor the 
 Loj'd with thy substance, and with the first 
 fruits of all thine increase; so shall thy 
 barns be filled with plenty.” 
 
 2. Proportionate Giving is giving 
 
15 
 
 a definite proportion of one’s income 
 instead of a chance or undefined sum. It 
 is giving according to the measure of one’s 
 ability, rather than at the dictate of his in¬ 
 clination. “Every man shall give as he is 
 able, according to the blessing of the Lord 
 thy God.” The proportion should be 
 determined thoughtfully and prayerfully 
 alone with God, asking, not what propor¬ 
 tion shall we give to God, but what pro¬ 
 portion would He have us keep for our 
 own needs. 
 
 Like the Pharisees of our Lord’s time 
 we may have even looked complacently on 
 having fulfilled the letter by giving a tenth, 
 yet have forgotten to “show mercy” with 
 the other nine-tenths, to thousands in des¬ 
 perate need. For whose is this nine- 
 tenths? By paying God a tenth do we earn 
 the right to do what we please with the rest? 
 
 But where will all this end, and where are 
 we to draw the line for ourselves? Paul 
 does not leave us in the dark. He gives 
 us a principle, which is the supreme test of 
 our stewardship,by which we can determine 
 what proportion to give, and how to spend 
 every penny. 
 
i6 
 
 3. The Final Test of our Stew¬ 
 ardship:— “Whether therefore ye eat, or 
 drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the 
 glory of God , * * * even as I also, * * * 
 not seeking mine own profit, but the profit 
 of the many that they may he saved. ’ ’ J osiah 
 Strong well applies this principle to our own 
 day in the matter of expenditure. “All the 
 money which will yield a larger return of 
 usefulness in the world, of greater good to 
 the Kingdom, by being spent on ourselves 
 or family than by being applied otherwise, 
 is used for the glory of God, and is better 
 spent than it would have been if given to 
 missions. And whatever money is spent 
 on self that would have yielded larger re¬ 
 turns of usefulness if applied otherwise is 
 misapplied; and if it has been done intel¬ 
 ligently it is a case of embezzlement!” 
 “What is needed is not merely an increased 
 giving, but a radically different conception 
 of our relations to our possessions.” The 
 spirit of our giving has become one of 
 compromise instead of sacrifice. 
 
 We are to “do all to the glory of God.” 
 Every ten cent piece represents ten units 
 of opportunity and responsibility. It will 
 
17 
 
 buy a cigar, or preach the gospel for a 
 whole day through native lips. A dollar 
 will furnish an evening’s amusement or it 
 will keep a boy in a mission day-school for 
 twelve months. Thirty dollars will send a 
 native pastor through villages that have 
 never heard the gospel, for a whole year. 
 With such possibilities in money how can 
 we waste even a penny? 
 
 Testing our stewardship on the principle 
 of doing all to God’s glory let us make a 
 trial balance while we are still in possession 
 here on earth. Suppose we take time to 
 make an estimate of the items of our ex¬ 
 penditure on paper, and note the annual 
 cost of our necessities and of our luxuries. 
 Let us add the amount we spent in advanc¬ 
 ing the Kingdom of God, and see what 
 per cent, it is of our income. When we 
 have finished the list let us honestly ask 
 ourselves if we have spent all with the 
 thought of glorifying Him, and if we could 
 hand over the account to our Master with¬ 
 out shame, confident of His “Well done, 
 good and faithful servant.” 
 
 Perhaps some things on our list look 
 doubtful. We seem to have a right to 
 
i8 
 
 them yet they make us feel a little uncom¬ 
 fortable. Have we not a right of self¬ 
 development? Surely God intended that 
 we should beautify our lives with “what¬ 
 soever things are lovely.” Doubtless if all 
 gave as they should for the Kingdom, each 
 would have enough left for the amenities of 
 life, but when most fail to do their share 
 those who would glorify God and meet 
 their increased responsibility, under these 
 strained conditions, must forego what 
 would otherwise be their right. 
 
 The Bible does not forbid the enjoyment • 
 of God’s gifts, but it shows us a yet more 
 excellent way. The right of possession is 
 transcended by the privilege of sacrifice. 
 Our right gives way to God’s glory. 
 Christ had a right to enjoy heaven but He 
 left it to bring others there. The very 
 apostle who says we may enjoy God’s gifts, 
 speaks of himself as poor, in hunger and 
 thirst, in cold and nakedness, suffering 
 hardship “that they also might obtain the 
 salvation which is in Christ Jesus.’’ “He 
 that loveth his life loseth it; and he that 
 hateth his life in this world shall keep it 
 unto life eternal.” 
 
19 
 
 “The power of money is something 
 awful.” It is the stored up energy of 
 human toil and can be converted again into 
 action in the work of many men. It can 
 stretch out its arms of power around the 
 world, and send light to the most remote 
 and destitute. If now this vast potency 
 for good be kept for self, when it might 
 have been the means of bringing salvation 
 to thousands, we can know the very words 
 we shall hear before the throne of God, 
 “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of 
 these least, ye did it not unto me.” (Matt. 
 
 25:45-) 
 
 To have lived in such an infinite oppor¬ 
 tunity for doing good and to have trifled 
 with the trust makes God’s words terrible 
 against riches wrongly used: “Their rust” 
 (that is the evidence of the coin’s disuse in 
 God’s service) “shall be for a testimony 
 against you and shall eat your flesh as fire. ’ ’ 
 
 ‘ ‘Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and 
 taken your pleasure; ye have nourished 
 your hearts in a day of slaughter .” 
 
 After tracing from the first verse of 
 Genesis to the last page of Malachi the 
 truth that all belongs to God; after Christ’s 
 
20 
 
 repeated commands that all should be used 
 for Him; after the clear teaching of the 
 apostles that we should “do all to the 
 glory of God,” our risen Lord yet speaks 
 again from heaven itself, as though in final 
 pleading with Hispeople. (Rev.3:17:22.) 
 “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have 
 gotten riches, and have need of nothing; 
 and knowest not that thou art the wretched 
 one and miserable and poor and blind and 
 naked: * * * be zealous therefore,and repent. 
 Behold , I stand at the door and knock: if 
 any man hear my voice and open the door, 
 I will come in to him, and will sup with 
 him, and he with me. * * * He that hath 
 an ear, let him hear." 
 
 11. THE CHURCH’S USE AND ABUSE OF 
 THE STEWARDSHIP 
 
 1. The Abuse of the Stewardship. 
 
 The church as a whole, including all 
 denominations in this country, gives less 
 for the cause of the evangelization of the 
 rest of the world, than is expended in 
 idolatrous worship at a single heathen 
 
21 
 
 shrine in India—that of the Goddess of 
 Cruelty. Meanwhile, Christians “lay up” 
 annually nearly one hundred times the 
 amount they give to foreign missions, above 
 all their comforts and luxuries. 
 
 Contrasted with expenditures for other 
 things we find that the women of the 
 country spend far more for artificial flowers 
 or for kid gloves than does the church for 
 missions; while Christian women, if they 
 spend but half as much as women of the 
 world for jewelry, yet spend ten times as 
 much for that article as they do for the con¬ 
 version of the heathen. Many times as 
 much money was puffed away in tobacco 
 smoke by the men of the country last year, 
 as the Christians of the United States have 
 given in a century to evangelize the rest 
 of the world. The church and the w r orld 
 alike spend money for what they truly 
 care. In a year when eighteen thousand 
 dollars is spent for the racing of a crew, a 
 hundred and fifty thousand in connection 
 with a single football game, seventy thous¬ 
 and for a banquet, and six hundred thous¬ 
 and dollars for a wedding, our Mission 
 Boards are left groaning under heavy debt, 
 
22 
 
 while the private wealth of Christians 
 steadily increases. 
 
 When we come to examine our giving 
 by churches we find over a thousand, in 
 each of the twelve leading denominations, 
 that give nothing for foreign missions. We 
 are reminded of one church whose printed 
 programs cost more than they gave to this 
 great cause; of another which spent twenty 
 times as much for its choir as for missions; 
 and of still another church, doing compara¬ 
 tively little for missions, whose soprano 
 cost enough to have supported two mis¬ 
 sionaries and a hundred native preachers 
 on the foreign field. Such instances might 
 be multiplied by the hundred, but they are 
 too familiar to need further illustration. 
 
 When we consider our giving as indi¬ 
 viduals we find that for the conversion of 
 every one in this country we spend the all 
 too small amount of about a dollar and a 
 half per capita, yet for the world’s unevan¬ 
 gelized we spend only one half of a cent 
 per capita, or one-three-hundredth part. 
 The average gift of each church member 
 to foreign missions is about forty cents a 
 year, or one-ninth of a cent a day. Is 
 
23 
 
 this the price we place, not merely on the 
 salvation of a soul, but upon the redemp¬ 
 tion of the world ? 
 
 ii. The Excuse for Such Stewardship. 
 
 Consistent with such measure of giving 
 we are defending our action by the asser¬ 
 tion of various objections as excuse for our 
 shortcoming. Let us look a few of the 
 more common of these squarely in the 
 face. 
 
 ‘ ‘ We do not believe in Foreign Mis¬ 
 sions.” But do we believe in Jesus Christ? 
 When He was in the flesh He said, “I was 
 not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house 
 of Israel,” but after He had once died for 
 the world, the only command He ever gave 
 to all disciples was that they should give 
 His gospel to the whole world. “Let 
 those who denominate the world’s conver¬ 
 sion a wild scheme remember who devised 
 it. Let those who look upon missionaries 
 as enthusiasts reflect whose command has 
 made them such. Let those who believe 
 the nations can never be evangelized con¬ 
 sider whose power and veracity their 
 incredulity sets at defiance.” Phillips 
 
24 
 
 Brooks well said, “The foreign missionary 
 idea is the necessary completion of the 
 Christian life. It is the apex to which all 
 lines of the pyramid lead up. The Chris¬ 
 tian life without it is an imperfect, mangled 
 thing.’’ 
 
 Suppose the gospel had gone Eastward 
 instead of Westward and we were in the 
 condition of our savage ancestors and real¬ 
 ized our need, would we say we did not 
 believe in foreign missions? If Christ com¬ 
 manded the evangelization of the world we 
 may be reasonably sure of two things. It 
 is necessary for them and it is possible 
 for us. 
 
 “There is Work enough at Home .” 
 There is indeed. There always has been; 
 there always will be. But as Robert Speer 
 says, “Work enough for what? Work 
 enough to make us feel ashamed we have 
 not done more? Yes. But work enough 
 to make us neglect our Lord’s last com¬ 
 mand, when there are men enough, and 
 money enough, to give the Gospel to the 
 whole world? Never!” There may be 
 work enough at home, “but there will be 
 more work at home, if we don’t begin in 
 
25 
 
 real earnest to fulfill our Lord’s com¬ 
 mand.” 
 
 If God’s purpose is first to preach the 
 gospel to every creature before waiting till 
 any one country is entirely converted, we 
 shall positively hinder the work in our own 
 land if we refuse to work on God’s plan, 
 and allow our forces to congest in attrac¬ 
 tive and favored districts. Some who have 
 been preached to over and over again will 
 never accept Christ. If there are heathen 
 in our own land, they are heathen by 
 choice, and not, as in many lands, heathen 
 by necessity. 
 
 We shall save America, through saving 
 the world. If we demand that America 
 be saved first , we may place ourselves 
 under God’s category of those who shall 
 be last. We do not plead for the foreign 
 field in opposition to the home field. No 
 part of the kingdom is advanced at the 
 expense of another. The field is one. But 
 it is because the field is one, that we plead 
 for the neglected portion of that field, with 
 its even larger opportunity, yet far smaller 
 supply of workers. Should we be spend¬ 
 ing more for the work in our own city than 
 
26 
 
 for all the rest of the world? “These ye 
 ought to have done, and not to have left 
 the other undone.” 
 
 “ We are already doing good with our 
 money” “Even if we spend it upon our¬ 
 selves we are aiding all employed in mak¬ 
 ing what we buy.” Providentially we can¬ 
 not wholly neglect others even if we would. 
 But supposing that we are compelled to 
 benefit ten men by employing their services 
 in ministering to our pleasure , is this cause 
 for self-complacency, if the same money, 
 placed in the channels of the Kingdom, 
 could have given employment to a hundred 
 men to minister to the welfare of humanity? 
 To quote the rugged words of John Rus- 
 kin: “Do not cheat yourself into thinking 
 that all the finery you can wear is so much 
 put into the hungry mouths of those be¬ 
 neath you; it is not so. * * * As long as there 
 is cold and nakedness in the land around 
 you, so long there can be no question at 
 all but that splendor of dress is a crime.” 
 
 The Right Use of the Stewardship. 
 
 Such excuses for the abuse of the steward¬ 
 ship are happily not universal. There are 
 
27 
 
 examples all about us to show the glorious 
 possibilities of a right use of stewardship. 
 Wherever the Bible doctrine has been faith¬ 
 fully preached and the whole world looked 
 upon as the pastor’s parish, the results have 
 been in striking contrast to the foregoing 
 facts. A Bible class composed largely of 
 servant girls taught by a pastor’s wife, gave 
 fifteen hundred dollars in a year for foreign 
 missions; Mr. Stearns’ church and Bible 
 classes gave nineteen thousand dollars last 
 year for the same cause; while Dr. A. J. 
 Gordon’s church of moderate means, after 
 much prayer, quietly gave twenty thousand 
 dollars in a year for foreign missions. 
 There were servants in his congregation 
 who gave fifty dollars, and shop girls who 
 gave a hundred. 
 
 In the matter of individual giving per¬ 
 haps the most striking instances of sacrifice 
 are those that come to us from the newly 
 converted heathen, giving in their deep 
 poverty. We read of some giving all their 
 savings, others parting with their garments, 
 giving part of their food and even selling 
 their beds to sleep on mud floors, that the 
 cause of Christ, dearer than their own 
 
28 
 
 lives, may be advanced at any cost. When 
 the crops of the natives in Burmah were 
 destroyed, one of them brought the mis¬ 
 sionaries the sum of five dollars saved by a 
 small congregation, for spreading the gos¬ 
 pel among their heathen brethren in the 
 North. When the missionary remonstrated 
 the native said, “We can eat rats, but they 
 cannot do without the gospel.” 
 
 In a mission station in China a man 
 appeared recently bending under the burden 
 of a large sack. A wrinkled hand stretched 
 from the mouth of the sack holding out to 
 the missionary a small string of cash. The 
 man’s aged mother had so coveted this joy 
 of bringing her collection to the mission 
 with her own hands, that he had brought 
 her in a sack —the only vehicle he could * 
 afford. The happy face of the old woman 
 was touching to behold when it was learned 
 that her offering was cheerfully given from 
 poverty so severe that she was compelled 
 to mix earth with her scanty food, that it 
 might seem to go farther in satisfying the 
 cravings of hunger. 
 
 But we have not to go beyond our own 
 country for examples of noble sacrifice. 
 
29 
 
 In an Eastern city a young man and his 
 wife support their missionary in the foreign 
 field out of a salary of eleven hundred 
 dollars. They were gladly ready, if neces¬ 
 sary, to move to a poorer part of town, in 
 order that they might not fail to have this 
 privilege of having their own substitute 
 abroad. A school teacher from her salary 
 of a thousand dollars sustains her substitute 
 in China with five hundred dollars. 
 
 Working all day long in an office of a 
 large city, there is a stenographer who is 
 surely one of the King’s stewards. Some 
 years ago she began to save her small 
 earnings and quietly to send them out to 
 the foreign field, until today, through 
 God’s blessing on her gifts, more than a 
 thousand souls in India can look up into 
 the face of a Heavenly Father and rejoice 
 in eternal life that will never end. 
 
 A widow in Dr. Gordon’s church in 
 Boston living in one room of a tenement 
 house, gave eight hundred dollars in the 
 foreign mission collection. When the 
 Doctor called and asked her how she could 
 give so much, she said, “Here I am com¬ 
 fortable and have enough, living upon two 
 
30 
 
 hundred dollars a year. But I do not 
 know how I could go to meet my Lord, if 
 I lived upon the eight hundred dollars and 
 only gave Him the two hundred.” 
 
 In the shameful neglect of the great 
 majority of Christians, and in the noble 
 sacrifice of the few, have we not in both 
 alike an incentive to a nobler stewardship? 
 
 in. THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE HOUR 
 FOR CHRISTIAN STEWARDSHIP. 
 
 Do we read the signs of our own times? 
 After slow millenniums of training of a 
 single people, after nineteen centuries of 
 preparation of His Church, God has at 
 last thrown the world wide open before 
 Christians of today. Within the lifetime 
 of men of middle age God has opened the 
 long closed doors of access to nearly a 
 thousand millions of our fellowmen! 
 
 And God never opens a door until we 
 are prepared to enter it. The world is now 
 a neighborhood and every man a titan in 
 his possibility of accomplishment. At the 
 very hour when the world is opened we 
 find every means placed within the hands 
 of the Church for its evangelization. 
 
3i 
 
 Magnificent Missionary organizations are 
 ready to send. Thousands of consecrated 
 young men and women, preparing in our 
 Universities, are being raised up by the 
 wonderful providence of God, ready to go. 
 The Church now holds the power to equip 
 the organizations, to send the laborers, to 
 evangelize the world. The supreme need 
 of the day seems to be a consecrated stew¬ 
 ardship empowered by prayer. 
 
 Bishop Thoburn writes: “At the present 
 hour the demand is for money to sustain 
 the work. I am receiving offers of service 
 nearly every week, but there is neither 
 money to send men abroad, nor to sustain 
 them when there. It now seems as if our 
 possibilities were limited only by our 
 financial resources, but at this critical time, 
 this time of all times, we are confronted by 
 an actual reduction in our Missionary 
 appropriations, and are compelled to talk 
 of retreat in the very hour of victory. 
 The withholding of money at such a time 
 is more than unwise,—it is hardly less than 
 criminal.” Horace Bushnell said: “There 
 is needed one more revival among Chris¬ 
 tians, a revival of Christian giving. When 
 
32 
 
 that revival comes, the Kingdom of God 
 will come in a day.” 
 
 Surely we have not realized our re¬ 
 sponsibility as stewards, nor our part in the 
 evangelization of the world. Missionaries 
 alone can never convert the world. They 
 are but the hands and feet of the enter¬ 
 prise; Christ is the head, and the Church 
 the heart of the work. If those at home 
 are cold and dead, not pulsing out the 
 warm life-blood of sympathy and prayer 
 and sacrifice, the hands will be palsied and 
 the knees feeble. Only when the watchers 
 on the mountain top sustained Moses’ 
 hands in prayer, was the army victorious at 
 the front. A single Achan with his hidden 
 gold brought defeat to the conquering host. 
 It was only the annual cost of a modern 
 missionary under his tent, but it was 
 enough to keep God’s blessing from multi¬ 
 tudes. There are enough hindered prayers 
 and laborers withheld in the money which 
 Christians have laid up for themselves to 
 give the gospel to the whole world many 
 times over. 
 
 We are all members of Christ, mutually 
 dependent. The hand cannot say to the 
 
33 
 
 heart, “I have no need of thee.” Each 
 has a work that no other can do, and each 
 is equally responsible to the full measure 
 of his ability. Without you the work will 
 not be complete. There are those in other 
 lands whom your prayer and your money 
 could reach who will go through life with¬ 
 out the knowledge of Christ if you are 
 unfaithful. How we must be blinded by 
 covetousness if we are unwilling to offer 
 our money against the priceless lives of 
 those who die in our stead on the mission- 
 field of battle! In our last war men who 
 could not go sent a substitute. Should 
 not the teaching of God’s word, the incen¬ 
 tives both in the present use and abuse of 
 stewardship, and the boundless opportunity 
 that is ours rouse us to one mighty and 
 unceasing effort for the world’s redemption? 
 
 Will you not consecrate your whole stew - 
 ardship to His service? 
 
 Will you ask Him to show you just how 
 He would have you administer your stew¬ 
 ardship? 
 
 Will you today lay hold of the mighty 
 power of prayer for the awakening of His 
 Church and the coming of the Kingdomt 
 
Student Volunteer Pamphlets* 
 
 Prayer and nissions. Robert F. Speer. Five cents a 
 copy. 
 
 The Bible and Foreign Missions. Robert P. Wilder. 
 Also issued by the British Student Volunteer Mis¬ 
 sionary Union. Five cents a copy. 
 
 The Volunteer Band. D. Willard Uyon. Five cents a 
 copy. 
 
 The Volunteer Declaration. D. Willard Uyon. Five 
 cents a copy. 
 
 The Supreme Decision of the Christian Student. George 
 Sherwood Fddy. Five cents a copy. 
 
 The Opportunity of the Hour; or, Christian Steward= 
 ship. George Sherwood Fddy. Five cents a copy. 
 
 Shall I Go? Thoughts for Girls. Grace F. Wilder. 
 
 Five cents a copy. 
 
 The Self=Perpetuation of the Volunteer Band. J. Camp¬ 
 bell White. Five cents a copy. 
 
 Christian nissions and the Highest Use of Wealth. Dr. 
 
 M. F. Gates Five cents a copy. 
 
 Any of the above may be ordered in quantity at forty 
 cents per dozen. 
 
 nissions in the Light of the New Testament. Harlan 
 
 P. Beach. Fifteen cents per copy. 
 
 “If God Permit.” A tract for detained Volunteers. 
 Ten cents per dozen. 
 
 The Secret Prayer Life. John R. Mott. Five cents each 
 Bible Study for Personal Growth. Mott. Five cts. each. 
 The Horning Watch. John R. Mott. Five cents. 
 
 Send orders to 
 
 General Secretary, 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 
 3 West Twenty-ninth Street* New York. 
 
Mission Study Text Books. 
 
 Dawn on the Hills of T’ang; or, nissions in China. 
 
 Harlan P. Beach. A valuable hand-book, containing 
 the latest missionary map of China. Paper, thirty- 
 five cents ; cloth, fifty cents. 
 
 Africa Waiting. Douglas M. Thornton. No better 
 hand-book on Missions in the Dark Continent; ex¬ 
 cellent map. Paper, twenty-five cents. 
 
 The Cross in the Land of the Trident. Harlan P. 
 Beach. A brief, pointed and accurate account of 
 India and its Missions. Paper, twenty-five cents; 
 cloth, forty cents. 
 
 nissions in the Light of the New Testament. Har¬ 
 lan P. Beach. Containing outline studies of mis¬ 
 sions as described in the Gospels and Epistles. Fif¬ 
 teen cents per copy. Excellent. 
 
 Missions and Apostles of Mediaeval Europe. Rev. 
 G. F. Maclear, D.D. A study of the mission fields of 
 the Middle Ages and their development. Paper, 
 twenty-five cents; cloth, forty cents. 
 
 Strategic Points in the World’s Conquest. John R. 
 Mott. Giving an account of the world tour of Mr. 
 Mott, together with information about the religious 
 life and Christian work among students of the lands 
 visited. Cloth, eighty-five cents. 
 
 Knights of the Labarum. Harlan P. Beach. A study 
 of the lives of four typical missionaries from differ¬ 
 ent mission fields. Paper, twenty-five cents. 
 
 The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches. 
 
 J. L,. Nevius, D.D. A statement by one of China’s 
 leading missionaries of methods very successfully 
 employed in China, Korea and elsewhere. Paper^ 
 fifteen cents ; cloth, twenty-five cents. 
 
 Send orders to 
 
 General Secretary, 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions* 
 3 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York* 
 
Valuable Publications* 
 
 The Student Missionary Appeal. Report Third Inter¬ 
 national Convention (Cleveland, 1898) of the Student 
 Volunteer Movement. 565 pages. Cloth, $1.50, post¬ 
 paid. Fifth thousand. 
 
 The Student Missionary Enterprise. A verbatim re¬ 
 port of the general meetings and section confer¬ 
 ences of the Second International Convention of the 
 Student Volunteer Movement, Detroit, 1894. 8vo., 
 
 373 pp. Price, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The World’s Student Christian Federation. A 28- 
 
 page pamphlet containing a description of the Fed¬ 
 eration, an account of the Federation Conference at 
 Williamstown in 1897, and the report of the progress 
 of the Federation during the first two years of its 
 history. Fifty cents per dozen. 
 
 The Students of the World United. A 28-page pam¬ 
 phlet, giving an outline statement of the Federa¬ 
 tion, an account of the World’s Student Conference 
 at Fisenach in 1898, and the report of the progress 
 of the Federation during the third year of its his¬ 
 tory. Fifty cents per dozen. 
 
 Outline of the World’s Student Christian Federation. 
 
 A four-page leaflet giving the general facts about the 
 Federation. Ten cents per dozen. 
 
 Report of the Federation Conference at Eisenach. This 
 pamphlet includes the detailed reports of all the 
 student movements in the Federation for the aca¬ 
 demic year 1897-98, and also contains in full the vari¬ 
 ous papers and addresses of the conference held at 
 Kisenach in July, 1898. Twenty-five cents each. 
 
 Send orders to 
 
 General Secretary, 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 
 3 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York. 
 
Valuable Publications* 
 
 The Evangelization of China. Addresses delivered at 
 five Conferences of Christian Workers in China. 
 Paper, fifty cents. 
 
 A Spiritual Awakening Among India’s Students. Ad¬ 
 dresses delivered at the Student Conferences in 
 India. Price, fifty cents each. 
 
 A Concise History of Missions. Edwin M. Bliss, 
 D.D. An up-to-date summary of the missionary so¬ 
 cieties of the world, their history, fields and the 
 methods employed. Cloth, seventy-five cents. 
 
 Missionary Fact Record Book. An indexed memoran¬ 
 dum book, bound in leather, Seventy-five cents. 
 
 Send orders to 
 
 General Secretary, 
 
 Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 
 3 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York, 
 
 The Intercollegian, 
 
 The official organ of the Student Department of 
 Young Men’s Christian Associations, and of the Student 
 Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. 
 
 Published monthly during the academic year (October 
 to June). 
 
 Subscription price, fifty cents per year, in advance; 
 twenty cents additional to foreign countries. 
 
 Address, 
 
 The Intercollegian, 
 
 3 West Twenty-ninth Street, 
 
 New York,