YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE DIVINE URGE TO
MISSIONARY SERVICE
Dwight Goddard

The Divine Urge
to
Missionary Service

IfAVE you ever read Mr. Goddard's translation
and interveaving of the Four Gospels? Write
to Fleming H. Revell Co., 58 Fifth Ave., New
York. Ask for: "The Good News of A Spiritual
Realm" by Dwight Goddard. Price One Dollar.

Extra copitf of this addieta kdI freely. Addrew
DWIGHT GODDARD , ANN ARBOR. MICH.

THE DIVINE URGE TO
MISSIONARY SERVICE
Dwight Goddard

A

LECTURE delivered before the Students
of Chicago Theological Seminary
and the Student Volunteers of the Uni
versity of Chicago and the students of the
Hartford Seminary Foundation.

DECEMBER 1917
ANN ARBOR. MICHIGAN.

\
Printed by
THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY PRESS
Chicago

THE DIVINE URGE TO MIS
SIONARY SERVICE
INTRODUCTION
F T IS a commonplace to say that the present
day missionary motive is different from the
missionary motive of former days, but wherein
it differs, whether it be more ethical or more
emotional, stronger or wiser, is little discerned,
or even much thought about.
The purpose of this address is to recall the
change which has taken place in the statement
of the missionary motive in the past hundred
years and to show the relation of that motive

THE DIVINE URGE

to the changing philosophical thought of the
times. Secondly, to present and to analyze
several different statements of the missionary
aim and motive as made by well known leaders
of missionary enterprises. Third, to offer a
statement of what the writer believes to be a
true definition of Christianity, and then to
offer a statement of missionary motives in har
mony with it. A CENTURY AGO.
When the young collegians gathered under
the haystack at Williamstown, a hundred years
ago, to devote themselves to the evangelization
of the great heathen world, the motive which
urged them forward was a deep concern for
the lost condition of the heathen. The annual
sermons preached before the American Board
in those early days were very generally char-

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 7

acterized by the same burden, the awful retri
bution that lay before the non-elect and the
impenitent. In those days they were living in
an intellectual atmosphere of pure thought,
untouched by many of the philosophical canons
that are today so generally believed, — scien
tific rationalism, evolution, and ethical ideal
ism. They held their religious faith in logical
and judicial terms: a sovereign God, an aton
ing Saviour, sinful men, retribution, and the
phenomena of repentance, forgiveness and
justification. Some followed Calvin in placing
emphasis on the Sovereignty of God and hence
saw salvation only for the elect, while others
emphasized free grace and therefore worked
for repentance, but all alike stressed the nega
tive side, the awful retribution of ' the unbe
lieving. The missionary aim was, universally, to
carry the knowledge of salvation to perishing

THE DIVINE URGE

souls, to save as many as possible from eternal
damnation. The missionary motive was one of
mingled pity and obedience: pity for the lost
condition of the heathen and obedience to the
command of a sovereign God.
SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM.
In the last one hundred years profound
changes have taken place in philosophical
thought due to the new light which scientific
research has thrown on all things. One after
another, commanding systems of thought have
passed into the discard. Just now Scientific
Rationalism, Pragmatism and Ethical Ideal
ism are on the defense and a new system of
Vitalism is fast assuming leadership.
When* the writer was at the Polytechnic
thirty years ago, a kind of agnosticism, which
practically amounted to atheism, characterized

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 9
the thought of nearly all the great scientists.
Today this is not so. The sufficiency of evo
lution to explain all phenomena with no need
of an intelligent or moral first cause, was then
confidently asserted. This assertion of scien
tific rationalism was carried to excess in Ger
man universities and is there still maintained
long after it has lost its force in England and
the United States. By it Germany "has fed
her mind but starved her soul." There is no
missionary motive in Scientific Rationalism.
The present war is the logical outcome of a
national faith that is based on survival by
physical superiority. PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM.
In the United States there grew up a school
of thought called Pragmatic, because the solid
good sense of the Anglo-Saxon mind saw that

10 THE DIVINE URGE 
any system of thought if true must "work,"
but, unfortunately, this school of thought more
and more took on a decidedly materialistic
trend and in religion confined itself to a study
of religious psychology, and in its turn has had
to give way before an increasing reliance upon
an idealistic interpretation of life and thought.
At the same time the best religious thought
in Germany was trying to find some tenable
defence for religion as opposed to scientific ra
tionalism. The best defence was found in the
teaching of Ritschl, a philosophy of intellec
tual and ethical idealism. Roughly speaking,
Ritschlian thought admitted the general deduc
tions of science: monism, evolution and the
inadequacy of pure ideas unsupported by
laboratory methods, but asserted the necessity
of an intelligent first cause and a moral pur
pose back of all phenomena. This school of
thought, therefore, while positing God, limited

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 11
all that could be truly asserted of Him to that
which could be seen in Jesus. They saw in
evolution a tendency towards the ideal, but in
order to avoid as far as possible, a clash with
science they carefully avoided metaphysical
and transcendental elements of thought and
limited religion to religious psychology, and to,
its application for spiritual culture and for the
betterment of social conditions. At the pres
ent day most of the influential professors in
our theological schools and many of our lead
ing preachers having been trained in German
universities have come back to us more or less
influenced by Ritschlian idealism.
To them the Kingdom of God is an ideal
social order, toward which humanity is slowly
tending; to them Christianity has largely
ceased to be an individualistic responsibility,
to become a social message of hope and better
ment. This school of thought is inclined to

12 THE DIVINE URGE 
blur over any distinction between the natural
and spiritual, holding firmly to the necessity
of confining all thought to the reality we know
in nature. When confronted with spiritual
phenomena they prefer to think of them in
terms of the higher and more complex but
natural activities of the human mind, rather
than to consider them as the interaction of
transcendental forces working for a higher
type of life.
They stress heavily the inspirational value
of spiritual ideals, but avoid, often to the point
of denial, any assertion of the reality of an in
dependent life of the spirit. To them, as ex
pressed by Dean Bosworth at an Annual
Meeting of the American Board, the interpre
tation of the Gospel varies from age to age,
and is largely conditioned by its own time.
For our own day he asserts, "the Gospel is seen
as a highly spiritualized economics."

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 13
Idealists deny with Ritschl that Mysticism
is an essential part of Christianity. On the
contrary they look on it as essentially alien,
something that must be combatted^as wrong
and weakening. President King, of Oberlin,
in an address on the essentials of citizenship
that are to survive the present world war, said,
"In religion all emotional mysticism is to be
left behind."
These two schools of modern thought, prag
matism and idealism, which so largely dom
inate the more intellectual theological opinion
of our day, find themselves side by side in this
common denial of an independent realm of the
spirit. Necessarily their statement of the mis
sionary motive will be, and is, conditioned bf
their intellectual idealism. It emphasizes the
idealism of justice, kindness and righteous
ness; its aim is the inculcation of these ideals,
the relief of suffering, the improvement of

/

14 THE DIVINE URGE

social conditions, and the efficiency of educa
tional and social service.
SPIRITUAL BELIEF.
But if the more highly educated leaders are
cherishing pragmatic and idealistic explana
tions of the universe, the great rank and file of
our Christian membership are not, and there
are multitudes outside the Church who are
clinging tenaciously to a faith in the reality of
a spiritual realm, and of a way of salvation
through faith, by which the soul may transcend
the natural life and advance into a higher life
process of the spirit. Does anyone doubt for
a moment that if the Christian pulpit of our
generation had stood firmly for the independ
ent reality of a spiritual realm, and for a
transcendental interpretation of the Good
News that Jesus brought, that such multitudes

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 15

of believers would have left the Church to turn
to Christian Science, Theosophy and New
Thought? The same hunger of heart in the great bulk
of our Church membership for spiritual veri
ties explains the great waves of response to
the evangelistic appeal of Sunday and other
revival leaders, and the Northfield and Kes
wick constituency, all of whom are out and out
champions of a higher spiritual life for the
soul. To them the Gospel Message of Jesus
is one, not of cultural value, of social impor
tance, but one that concerns the life and death
of an immortal soul.
But this spiritual interpretation of the uni
verse is not confined to the uneducated multi
tudes. The very best of our present day
philosophers and scientists believe in this life
of the spirit, which is to be known, not by the
erude processes of the intellect and the labo-

16 THE DIVINE URGE

ratory exclusively, but is to be experienced
directly by spiritual immediacy. The names of
Rudolph Eucken and Lord Kelvin give dig
nity to such a belief, and, besides, there are
scores of other thinkers of the first rank who
by their writings and their addresses have
already accomplished for our day a revival of
mysticism. To these champions of a spiritual interpre
tation of existence and its problems, Chris
tianity is in no true sense confined to spiritual
culture, and volitional direction and inspira
tion towards the most efficient life on the nat
ural plane. They see with Max Miiller that
the essence of religion lies, "not in doctrines or
cults, but in immediate inward experience
. . . in the direct apprehension of the In
finite. It is the longing of the heart for some
thing that transcends the finite self."
Longfellow with true poetic insight voices

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 17

instinctive faith when he introduces Hiawa
tha by saying:
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
. Who believe, that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings,
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened.
The presence and activity of a sense of the
Divine is increasingly appreciated as of the
very essence of religion, and such a belief is
strengthened by the increasing faith of our
best modern scholarship in the reality of a
primal cosmic urge that has from the begin
ning and is still moving toward some far off
divine event in man.

18 THE DIVINE URGE

This clearing sense of the Divine, this re
ligious instinct, this spiritual consciousness,
with all its riches of inner fellowship with the
Perfect, is more and more seen to be of the
essence of Chrstianity and it is endorsed by
the highest scholarship of our day.
The definition of religion which Dr. Hardy
offers in his book on the Religious Instinct, is
based on a mystical contact of the soul with
this transcendental Spirit and the soul's crav
ing for and movement toward its higher power,
for safety and fellowship.
Ritschl said: "We can only know deity as
we see it expressed in Jesus." But the true
Christian believes that the mystic's intuitive
sense of reality furnishes clear,' indepehdeiit,
and reliable knowledge of God and of our re
lation to Him.
1 Dr. Tuckwell says: "The true mystic ex
perience is always characterized by d senseof

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 19

great intellectual illumination, or by what is
usually termed intuition. . : . It is a
union of the strands of thought and feeling
in a higher inclusive immediacy. ... In
this experience whose essential character is just
this unity of comprehension, consciousness at
tains its completest, its most direct, and its final
apprehension of what Reality is and means.
. . . Even William James tells us that in
mystic states depths of truth are reached which
are unplumbed by the discursive intellect."
As Dr. Bell wrote in The Atlantic Monthly:
"The thing about Jesus which attracted peo
ple was not especially the newness, or the
beauty, of his moral science. It was rather
that men and women felt a power flowing from
Him which they deemed to be the power of
God Himself." "The sacramental system is
not a means for teaching an ethical system or
morality. It is rather a means of attaining

20 THE DIVINE URGE 
mystical contact with Jesus — 'That they might
have life and have it more abundantly.' "
The missionary message of these believers
is therefore one of faith in the Good News of
a Spiritual Life — in its reality, in its all-
sufficiency, in its urgency, and in its infinite
promise. Thus we see that the ethical idealism which
is being so much taught, and the social message
of Jesus, which is being so much stressed in
our day, which is the natural missionary mes
sages of pragmatic and idealistic philosophies,
are in sharp contrast with the spiritual and
mystical faith for which the larger part of the
Christian communion consciously or uncon
sciously yearns.
But we are so tolerant and liberal-minded
these days, that we are inclined to belittle and
gloss over this divergence of belief, and to dis
miss it lightly as only a difference in view-

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 21
point which in action eventuates in about the
same result. It reminds me of a careful con
versation once held with a typical Chinese
literary man, in which I tried to explain to
him our faith in God. After I had finished,
he said complacently: "Yes, our religions
are about the same; you believe in God, we
believe in Heaven." So we accept the really
fine things that are said by idealists and ex
claim, "Yes, our religious faith is much the
same. You believe in a God of Imminence;
we believe in a God of Transcendance." And
then we ignore, if we happen to notice it at
all, that the fundamentals upon which we are
building are radically different, and contra
dictory if carried very far in logical develop
ment. DIFFERENT STATEMENTS OF MOTIVE.
Now to bring this difference in fundamen
tals clearly before us, let us examine a number

22 THE DIVINE URGE
of different statements of the missionary aim
and motive, that have been written lately.
Dean Bosworth of Oberlin College writes:
"I should state it (the missionary motive) this
way: The desire to do his utmost under the
personal leadership of the immortal spirit of
Jesus Christ, toward securing a world civiliza
tion in which every man shall be doing, and
expect forever more to continue doing, an en
larging day's work in conscious fellowship with
the unseen God as his Father, and with other
men as his brothers."
The noticeable things about this statement
are the emphasis which falls on "a world civ
ilization" and the entire absence of the old
time concern for the moral condition and retri
bution of "his brothers." One feels ashe reads
it that it does not affirm the reality of the Liv
ing Christ and of our God. One is tempted to
ask why insert, "of the immortal spirit" before

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 23
Jesus, and "unseen" before God? Would it
not have a more loyal ring to it, to say simply
—"under the personal leadership of Jesus
Christ," and "in conscious fellowship with
God"? You may think this is a small distinction to
make, but that is the very point I am trying jto
make, that these small and seemingly unim
portant distinctions are really indications of
divergence that if carried very far are disas
trous. Herein lies potentially all the differ
ence between a conventional college carried on
"in the spirit of Jesus," and one carried on by
the burning evangelistic zeal of a Finney.
Here is a statement of one who prefers to
remain anonymous : "The work of a modern
missionary is simply to hold aloft the person
ality of Jesus Christ— "The Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the World' — until that
vision shaH burn itself into their consciousness

24 THE DIVINE URGE

and create new ideals of righteousness, purity,
truth, justice and tenderness." This writer
believes in preaching rather than in institu
tional work as to method, but is rather more
idealistic and cultural than evangelistic in his
aim. Rev. J. D. Fleming, Organizing Director of
Missionary Service in Union Theological Sem
inary, writes as follows: "The fundamental
motives of Christian Missions are found in the
character of God uniquely embodying forth-
going pursuant grace; in the incomparable
worth to every human being of the person of
Jesus Christ; and in the vision of a world in
need. The aim of Christian Missions is the
Christianizing of the whole social order, pre
eminently through individuals as transformed
through Jesus Christ and organized into self
governing, self propagating churches." In
this the practical aim of "Christianizing the

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 25
whole social order," stands out prominently,
but is expressed in decidedly theological and
ecclesiastical terms.
In sharp contrast to the foregoing, stands
a statement by Rev. C. Inwood as printed by
the Los Angeles Bible House for present day
distribution. It is more in accord with the
thought of a hundred years ago and sounds
strange to present day ears, but will serve to
show how far we have moved in the last
century. "The sobbing of a thousand million of poor
heathen sounds in my ear, and moves my heart;
and I try to measure, as God helps me, some
thing of their darkness, something of their
blank misery, something of their despair. Oh,
think of these needs! I say again, they are
ocean-depths; and, beloved, in my Master's
name, I want you to look at them, until they
appall you, until you cannot sleep, until you
cannot criticise."

26 THE DIVINE URGE

Secretary Lemuel Call Barnes of the Bap
tist Missionary Union writes as follows: "The
present-day missionary motive is to establish
the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in individual
characters and in all the relationships of life."
This reply is fairly typical of the idea as it lies
in the minds of a majority of Christian mis
sionaries, who cherish a conscious experience of
the divine life, but who, unconsciously per
haps, are placing the emphasis on evolutionary
and practical steps for the betterment of social
conditions, rather than on a response to motives
of pity for the lost condition of sinners, or on
motives of simple faith in the reality of an
independent spiritual life, and in obedience to
God's command, Go! Preach! whether it
squares up with evolution and practical effi
ciency or not. This is, however, a good defi
nition of the missionary aim. It certainly is
congenial to one's Angl- Saxon temperament.

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 27
Rev. H. W. Pope, superintendent of the
Moody Bible Institute, writes: "I cannot
think of any better description than what is
contained in the Master's own words, John
17 : 3, 'And this is life eternal, that they might
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent.' The missionary
aim is to make known to them what eternal life
is and how to obtain it, or, in other words, to
show them how they may let Christ into their
hearts to take possession of their life and to
reproduce His character in them- Education,
information and even inspiration may be im
parted to the heathen by many systems of
thought, but transformation can only be
wrought by the Holy Ghost in a twice born
soul." The interesting and valuable feature
of this statement is the emphasis on the positive
side of redemption, the new life, instead of

28 THE DIVINE URGE
the past emphasis on the awful loss of the
impenitent. The China Inland Mission sends us an ex
cellent article by Henry W. Frost, its Director.
He says: "The love of Christ — that is,
Christ's love for us — constraineth us. . . .
This motive really includes three motives.
. . . This then is the prime motive which
God sets before Christians, individually and
collectively, namely, that he who has a right to
command has done so, and that the command,
because of the Person, calls for unhesitating,
uncompromising and continuous obedience,
• . . the second motive which God sets be
fore Christians, namely, to enter into Christ's
compassion for the lost souls and lives of men,
and thus to be moved, as He was moved, and to
be constrained as He was constrained. . . .
The final and consummating motive which
God sets before Christians, namely, to go forth

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 29

everywhere, preaching the good tidings to
every creature, in order that the Church may
be -made complete and that the King and the
Kingdom may come."
I re-read the Jubilee History of the China"
Inland Mission to see if I could find a quotable
passage in the words of that greatest of mod
ern missionaries, J. Hudson Taylor. I did
not find what I wanted, but I quote two pas
sages which indirectly show very clearly the
motives that controlled his own missionary life.
"Well do I remember," he writes after many
years, "how in the gladness of my heart I
poured out my soul before God, and again
and again confessed my grateful love to Him
who had done everything for me — who had
saved me when I had given up all hope and
even desire for salvation. I besought Him to
give me some work to do for Him, as an outlet
for love and gratitude; some self denying serv-

30 THE DIVINE URGE 
ice no matter what it might be, however trying
and trivial; something with which He would
be pleased and that I might do for Him who
had done so much for me." Quoting again
from his memorable sermon before the Gen
eral Missionary Conference held in Shanghai,
1890, that resulted in a united plea and prayer
for 1,000 new missionaries for China, he said:
"If as an organized conference we were to set
ourselves to obey the command of our Lord
to the full, we would have such an outpouring
of the spirit, such a Pentecost as the world has
not seen since the Spirit was poured out in
Jerusalem. God gives His Spirit not to those
who long for Him, nor to those who pray for
Him, nor to those who desire to be filled al
ways, but He does give His Holy Spirit to
them who obey Him. And if, as an act of
obedience, we were to determine that every dis
trict, every town, every village, every hamlet

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 31

in this land of China should hear the Gospel,
and that speedily ; and if we were to set about
doing it, I believe that the Spirit would come
down with such mighty power that we should
find loaves and fishes multiplying on every
hand — we do not know whence or how."
In these selections, as from all Hudson Tay
lor's myriad appeals and activities, we feel
radiating the three motives of grateful love,
abounding faith, and humble obedience; and
are not they after all the basal motives of all
true missionary devotion and service? Grate
ful love to a Saviour, abounding faith in a
Gospel, humble obedience to a divine Lord
and Master.
If one is moved by these motives, will he not
most surely discern the Master's commission;
wiH he not find himself best oriented to his
task; will he not be most conscious of an ade
quate power for the work in hand?

32 THE DIVINE URGE

IDEALS VS. REALITY.
The antithesis between the idealistic motives
and the spiritual is not at first apparent. Both
alike are facing the same great fact, the pitia
ble state of heathen nations, the superstitions,
suffering and Godlessness of the non-Chris
tian peoples. Both are moved to help, and at
first both go about it in much the same way, by
the spoken word, the distribution of literature,
the conduct of schools, hospitals and institu
tions of various kinds. But gradually the
methods diverge, the idealists press and mag
nify the instrumentality of the institutions and
of methods that show efficiency and social re
sults, while the more spiritual exalt the preach
ing, making of converts, personal contact and
loving help, and restrain the undue growth of
the merely institutional.

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 33
Unconsciously at first, but none the less
surely, the idealist has branched off from the
way and the method of the Master, and just
as surely as he continues to move in that direc
tion he is moving away from the source of all
missionary devotion and zeal and power, and
is leaving behind all hope of spiritual results.
He is working for civilization, and, while it is
true that Christianity civihzes, civilization
never christianizes. Sooner or later he loses
the inspiration of the true missionary motive
and relapses into mere philanthropic profes
sionalism. Professor Peabody in his book, "Jesus
Christ and the Social Order," writes: "A
Christian Mission in foreign parts lavishes its
efforts in the attempt to bring heathen to
Christ, and it counts, with great self-reproach,
A few gains from all its devotion; but mean
while, while fulfilling alL its technical obliga-

34 THE DIVINE URGE

tions, it comes to pass that the spiritual climate
of the neighborhood of these devoted souls by
degrees experiences a subtile change — cruelty
disappears, domestic life grows purer, toler
ance and truthfulness begin to supplant the
heathen traits of bigotry and deceit. What
is this gentler air that is breathed wherever a
wisely administered mission has done its pa
tient work? It is the proof that the Mission
is accomplishing that which it was set to do.
This, and not the number of converts it can
count, is the test of its missionary fidelity, gen
uineness and power. Many a man can teach
Christian doctrine to heathen listeners, but
only a life which has been hid with Christ in
God can communicate to heathen lives the
spiritual energy which proceeds through Christ
from God. A church for instance proceeds
to enforce its forms and tests, its theology and
philosophy, as its central duty, and as if inci-

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 35

dentally and by the way leavens the commu
nity about it with the spirit of benevolence,
sympathy, patience and hope. What a curious
experience it might be for such a church some
day to wake and discover that these incidental
achievements were what most commended it to
its Master!"
This is a beautiful statement of the general
effect of Christian missions. But is Professor
Peabody right in his closing surmise? Is not
the preliminary spiritual work, that makes for
the redemption of character, the really essen
tial part and the social betterment, which Pro
fessor Peabody very evidently values the more
highly, merely the natural accompaniment?
Would he think that the spiritual part, the
preaching and the conversion could be omitted
and the full energy of the missionary be em
ployed in educational and humanitarian work
to better advantage? Would the result be the

36 THE DIVINE URGE

same? Would the spiritual climate undergo
the same beneficent change, or would we get
civilization without religion, as in Japan and
Prussian Germany? Is not then the preaching
and the personal, distinctively spiritual work
necessary, and should not they be the most
valued and the most carefully conserved? The
change in externals might wisely be looked
upon as a by-product, as an almost automatic
accompaniment of the true preaching of the
Gospel. Do not misunderstand me. I do not con
demn the humanitarian work of education,
medical service, and social improvements in
themselves, but I do deprecate making them
the main aim of the missionary propaganda
They ought rather to be restricted, and only
undertaken as the progress of the evangelistic
work indicates the need. They ought to be
undertaken with some reluctance as taking

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 37
time and money from the more fundamental
and valuable spiritual work, and carefully kept
from assuming a place of exclusive importance,
lest institutionalism supplant the individual
voice and hand clasp of the evangelist.
Let me illustrate this danger. Once there
was a good missionary physician and his wife
who labored patiently and successfully in a
small and inconvenient hospital, but into whose
every room and cranny they were able to radi
ate love and sympathy. Not a patient came
but who went away influenced by the words
and love of these truly Christian missionaries.
But in the course of time, the physician and
his energetic wife began to dream dreams of a
larger and finer hospital. The dreams came
true and they found themselves in possession
of a big institution, wards, operating pavilion,
kitchens, residences, and all that goes to make
up a modern well equipped institution.

38 THE DIVINE URGE

Did the value of their Christian service in
crease in proportion? Not at all. With it
came the necessity of employing one or two
other doctors, nurses, and a corps of servants
with all the accompanying worries of financial
support, irritating questions of division of em
ployment, rank, and discipline; necessity for
stricter rules, impossibility of coming into per
sonal contact with many of the patients, and a
feeling through the neighborhood that it was
an institution and not a person. Then also it
proved to be deterrent to any native medical
work starting up owing to the impossibility of
competing successfully.
President Moore in his wonderfully keen
address before the Annual Meeting of the
American Board a year ago threw the whole
strength of his argument on this very point.
He said: "The issues of human life, whether
of men or nations, are not in their outward

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 39

circumstances, their condition, their measures,
their theories, but they are in the souls of men.
The moral issues of life are the important
thing. In reality there is no safety in outward
conditions, but only in character. Men and
nations need to be armed not with weapons in
their hands, but with morality in their hearts.
There is no security for human happiness
either in law or in lawlessness, but only in char
acter. Men cannot escape from God, and that
is what men and nations are unconsciously try
ing to do, if they rest their reliance on mate
rial conditions."
If this be true, the main objective of all
Christian Missions should be the redemption
of human lives and character. All preaching,
book selling, education, healing, industrial and
humanitarian effort, should be looked upon as
means to that end. All that is done should be
done from the simple, sincere motive of intel-

40 THE DIVINE URGE

ligenfc, loving and trustful obedience to the
Master who said: "I am the way, the truth,
and the life; no man cometh unto the Father
but by me." The simple and obvious method
of laboring in entire accord with this motive
is by throwing the stress of our efforts on
preaching, witnessing, and by personal contact.
THE TEACHING OF JESUS.
To establish this point, may I state as briefly
as possible an outline of the teachings of Jesus
as they appeal to me ?
First, Jesus was most concerned about what
he called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom
of Heaven. He seemed never to tire in his
efforts to make his hearers understand what
he meant by it; he began most of his parables
by saying: "The Kingdom of Heaven is lik
ened unto"; he explained that "the Kingdom

TQ MISSIONARY SERVICE 41

was not to come by observation," that is, by
sense perception, because it was "within you,"
was to be sensed by one's inner conscious
ness. "My Kingdom is not of this world," He
said. Putting all these teachings of Jesus to
gether we see plainly and clearly that Jesus
meant by the Kingdom what we now know as
the Spiritual Realm, or, if that suggests space
and boundaries, it is what we might know as
the Spiritual Life. He did not mean by it the
church, or even an ideal state of society; he
simply meant that there was another order of
reality than the spatial, material, external
world of nature, namely, the inner, immaterial,
timeless — but universal — flow of Spiritual
Vitality and Life.
Jesus taught his disciples that this Kingdom
of the Spirit had its basic laws; the laws of
goodness, faith, hope, truth and life, and that
these were all summed up in the all-inclusive

42 THE DIVINE URGE
spiritual law of love. He taught that this
Kingdom of the Spirit was present here and
now as a kind of over-world, or inner-world
of Love ; that it was not static or external, but
vital and living, Perfect Life and Perfect
Experience ; and that its laws of love and faith
and goodness when appealed to were also
dominant in the natural realm here and now.
Jesus taught that God was Sovereign of this
all-enveloping and interpenetrating universe
of love ; that God by his very nature was Love,
and that the essential elements of his love-
nature were creativeness and a desire for a
human response to his love. And so Jesus
taught his disciples to think of God and to
approach him in grateful love, as their Heav
enly Father.
Jesus taught that human beings stood as it
were beside the flow of this Kingdom of the
Spirit. That, while they were born children of

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 43

the flesh, under certain conditions they could
be reborn as children of the Spirit. This new
spiritual correspondence was not to come as a
continuation of the natural life after death,
but was a present quickening and entrance into
a higher life process, here and now. As Paul
said: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised
up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he
that raised up Christ from the dead shall give
life also to your mortal bodies through his
Spirit which dwelleth in you."
Jesus taught that this new life of the Spirit
could come only by the individual soul enter
ing into the most loving relations with the Di
vine. To be born again, and this time of the
Spirit, the soul must make unselfish response
to the urge of Redemptive Love; she must
have faith and trust in her Lord; there must
be such purifying of the depths of the subcon
scious nature, there must be such a reversal of

44 THE DIVINE URGE

the lif e currents from inward to outward, that
the soul could react to the fecundating power
of the Divine Love Vitality. "To as many as
received Him, to them He gave power to be
come Sons of God, even to them that believed
on His name; which are born not of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of God."
Secondly, Jesus considered himself to be in
a special sense the incarnation of God's loving
thought toward the children of men, a self-ex
pression of the Divine so vital and so unique
that he could rightly claim to be the Son of
God. He believed that his special mission was
to reveal to all humanity this higher realm or
Life of the Spirit and the way of entrance into
it through love and faith in Himself. His mis
sion was not only to teach men about this realm
of love, but how to live in the light and the
power and the joy of it. He showed the power
of it by the miracles he did. He carried his

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 45
devotion to these spiritual principles even to
his own death at the hands of his enemies, to
show that there need be no limit to one's faith
in Love, and by his resurrection he proved that
Love triumphs even over the death of the body.
In the light and the power of this atoning
Love Jesus became more than a teacher, more
than an inspiring example. He became a point
of contact with the infinite and eternal energy
of the redemptive purpose of God, and it was
in the consciousness that He was this pointof
contact between human faith and this divine
energy of Redeeming Love, that Jesus said:
"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,"
that Jesus uttered the imperial command: "Go
ye into all the world and make disciples of all
nations." Under this statement of the mission and the
teachings of Jesus, the Christian life is seen to
be: (1) an awakening to a consciousness of a

46 THE DIVINE URGE' 
transcendental world of the Spirit and of
spiritual relationships that transcend the nor
mal world of sense. (2) It is an awareness
of the possession of contacts with spiritual
springs of energy welling up within the soul.
(3) It is a spiritual life process, which is to
lift the human soul into a higher realm of fel
lowship with God, where the human spirit can
develop and unfold in a new realm of reality.
(4) It has to do with phenomena in advanced
biology. (5) It is a responsive current of un
folding human love surging to meet the primal
current of God's cosmic and redemptive Love.
A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
The essential element of this summary of
Jesus' life and teachings is this: that God is
Love, Love Absolute! Now the essential ele
ments of Love are its unifying, harmonizing,
all-inclusiveness, its infinite desire and capacity

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 47
for self-expression and an equally strong de
sire for a response from its creation. This
"forthgoing, pursuant Grace" operating in the
boundless realm of the Spirit and in the limited
area of time^ and space that we call Nature, is
the profound cosmic law of the philosopher's
thought: it is the formative energy of crea
tion's onward movement in an infinite process
of becoming, by the inner urge of his Re
demptive Love; its goal is the complementary
gathering together of the loving response of
the infinitely many into the all-inclusive, har
monizing heart of the great One, into an in
creasing and mutual experience of Perfect
Love. This vital urge of Love finds its highest ex
pression in a heightened sense of and capacity
to respond to Divine Love. The law of Life
has been urging the soul on to this experience
from the beginning, in an aeon long history of

48 THE DIVINE URGE 
evolution. "An experience," says Dr. Tuck-
well, "that is characterized by a great sense of
illumination^ a union of strands of thought and
feeling into a higher synthesis of emotion in
which consciousness attains its highest sense of
unity and fellowship with the Infinite."
"This profound elan," says Dr. Tuckwell,
looking infinitely beyond the interests of tran
sient individuals and species, has been and still
is, as M. Bergson says, moving to some far off
results in man; . . . and so it is in this
profound, this mysterious elan that the real
secret of life's evolution lies."
This evolutionary progress has brought man
to a point of mutation, where now, as an ani
mal, he comes under the influence of a new
environment, the Spiritual Realm. Hitherto
the natural laws of self-defense and self as
sertion, of desire to gratify the natural appe
tites and passions were exclusive almost in

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 49
their action. Now he is conscious of a new
orientation, a new apprizement of self and not
self, a sensitiveness to a new set of influences,
moral obligations, spiritual aspirations, a de
sire for the good, the true and the beautiful, in
fluences that now are seen to conflict with the
old outward tugging of the senses. At this
point of mutation, man finds himself where two
courses he open before him. Man can either
continue to yield to the natural, physical urge,
or he can respond to this new immaterial urge
of the Spirit; he can not do both; one or the
other must dominate.
If he yields to the desires of his physical
nature he becomes over-developed — a biolog
ical freak. His desires for self assertion and
indulgence will lead him into pride, arrogance
and wickedness; he will become a Kaiser, a
superman, and must in the end be sloughed off
as an impediment to the onward unfolding of

50 THE DIVINE URGE 
the redemptive process; his very points of
physical and mental excellence and superiority
proving to be inhibitions to continued growth
and progress in the direction of the Perfect,
which is spiritual.
On the other hand if man responds to the
dawning urge of love and faith at this crucial
point of his unfolding development, he enters
upon a new and seemingly endless avenue of
approach to responding fellowship with the
Divine Perfectness — "He is a new creature in
Christ Jesus." As though in a relay race of
the ages, redeemed man has received the mes
sage from the past and in fresh, untested vigor
essays the new untrodden path that leads him
on toward God. "This one thing I do, for
getting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward to the things which are be
fore, I press on toward the goal unto the prize
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 51
Under the constraint of this new sense of
relationship to the whole, the redeemed soul
finds herself unified with this Source of all
Love, she too must yield to a desire to herself,
give creative expression to the Divine Perfect
ness in a life of joy and loving service. This
will not be a desire to help God make the world
perfect, but it will be a desire to please God by
being as nearly perfect oneself as one can be,
and to give expression of this better life in
loving service for others. And how can she
better give expression to this outgoing desire
than in telling others of this Redemptive Love
of the Heavenly Father?
THE MISSIONARY AIM.
The aim will be clearly toward a spiritual
goal. It would not be directly concerned with
worldly, material success, or with politics or
with economics, or with statistics of tangible

52 THE DIVINE URGE 
results. And most of all it could not be con
cerned with war — an appeal to force. The
missionary enterprise today is the one true ex
pression of the teachings of Jesus, the carrying
to those at enmity, consciously or uncon
sciously, with God, the better way of love, the
reconciliation of discord, not its increase. A
glaring instance of this antithesis was seen in
our Austrian Mission at the opening of the
Great War — when one of our Austrian mis
sionary pastors over a Serbian church was re
called to his compulsory military service and
sent to a war of extermination against the very
people he had been trying as a missionary to
win by love. No ! the aim of Christianity can
not be concerned with war in whatever disguise
it may come, but it would be vitally concerned
with one's living a life of love, proclaiming to
all people the Good News of a Spiritual
Realm, and a persuasion of all to a life of

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 53
grateful love as the natural way of entrance
into it.
The aim would be to tell others, of a
Saviour's redeeming Love, that they may
thereby be brought into touch with this crea
tive urge of the Divine Love, and thereby be in
line for the Divine grace to do its blessed crea
tive work in their lives, that will, as a matter
of course, better their social environment and
lead them into that inner harmony whose joy
will be an increasing fellowship with Love.
What is it then to be a Christian missionary?
Is it to go out to educate men? Is it to add
spiritual culture to the furniture of their minds?
Is it to show men and women how to live more
efficiently, more economically, or more com
fortably? Not at all! It is first of all to make
Love the controlling motive of one's life, to
try hour by hour to unfold into the blossom
ing beauty of a child of God; to respond to

54 THE DIVINE URGE 
love's urge to self-expression, to be all that
Love expects of one ; then it is to serve, not
in a fussy plan of helping God to set things
right in the world, but in a deep controlling
purpose to be one with Him in carrying re
demptive Love wherever human hunger and
need exist.
It is to awaken interest in discouraged and
ignorant hearts and minds to the riches of
God's love and forgiving grace; it is to tell
them of a new type of life, with all its wonders
of inner beauty, and loving fellowship, and
illumination, and growth and heart's ease. It
is to give personal witness to its reality, its
sufficiency, and its joy. It is to persuade men
to make the quest for its perfect experience
their great adventure in faith. First of all,
each must ask of himself the question: Do I
truly believe in such a distinctive life of the
spirit? Have I myself entered into its life and

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 55
experience? Can I honestly tell others that it
is worth all it will cost to obtain it?
And then secondly. Do we have clear ideas
as to how to advise others so that they may
guide their lives into its perfect experience?
Do we feel sure of the way ourselves? Do we
know by experience that we cannot gain it by
intellectual enlightenment alone, that it will
mean a radical moral renewal, that as Jesus
said, one must be born again, not of the flesh,
or the mind, but of the spirit?
Do we know by experience that to gain an
effectual entrance there must needs be times
of solitude and silent, prayerful desire; and
other ^ times of active energetic resistance to
the habitual tug of worldly appetites and crav
ings; of humble, trustful, patient waiting for
the fruits of the spirit? Can we tell others
what they must expect of the fluctuation of
mind as one tries to break away from the old

56 THE DIVINE URGE 
and enter into the new, of the alternate waves
of discouragement and faith, of weakness and
strength? Have we ourselves learned by heart
the stages of the mystic assent to God? De
sire and awakening; discipline and illumina
tion; humility and the unitive life; patience
and fruitful service?
MISSIONARY MOTIVES.
The motives that will lead men to become
missionaries of this kind of a Christian faith
will be first of all, a general response to the
cosmic urge toward something better, an ad
venture in faith. The same call came to
Abram in far off Ur of the Chaldees, a desire
to go, he knew not where, toward a promised
land. It is the common love of adventure, the
love of the heroic, and the romantic, inherent in
the make up of every healthy youth and
maiden, a response to the good, the true, and

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 57
the beautiful, that urges one onward and out
ward and upward toward the ideal. This call
of the ideal draws one from the common and
the conventional to leave all, to venture all for
Jesus' dear sake, that in his service of love one
might prove devotion and gratitude; to leave
home and kindred, to follow Him "who for
the joy that was set before Him endured the
cross." This call to adventure is no trivial,
accidental impulse, it is the natural function
ing of the soul in conscious contact with this
profound cosmic urge in which all creation is
bathed; it is the to-be-expected reaction, the
natural unfolding of the Perfection that is al
ready implicit within and of which this loving
response is the next unfolding petal.
Again there is the motive of responsive,
grateful love, "To do what you want me to do,
dear Lord. To be what you want me to be."
The soul has been benefited beyond measure

58 THE DIVINE URGE 
by the unselfish life and death of her Re
deemer; she is conscious of the throbbing of a
new spiritual life; she has participated in the
dear fellowship with Him who was willing for
her sake to lay down his life. She has entered
into a new sense of relation to the Whole. Her
chief interests are no longer with self but with
all. Such grateful responsive love always
thrills with a compelling desire to share with
the Beloved in the labor and the purposes for
which He gave the full measure of His own
undying love; and in the strength of this
motive the soul can travel through the wilder
ness for many, many days.
There is the motive of humble obedience.
Gratitude for all that has been done for one's
eternal welfare prompts one to obey. If the
redeemed soul hears the explicit command, Gol
then her impulse is to obey, and to obey simply
and without question. So long as this motive

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 59
is operative there is little temptation to turn
aside at the alluring call of man-made plans
for war and substitutes for social betterment.
There is the motive of faith: of faith in
Jesus, of faith in Jesus' way. Having herself
had experience of the joy of divine forgive
ness, of new life and increase of strength, of
visions of hope and promise, of sweet fellow
ship with the Saviour, and happy zest for serv
ice, knowing this from personal experience,
there is place only for high hearted courage.
The world has not yet begun to realize the
creative power of human faith. The New
Thought cult has brought shame on the Chris
tian Church for lack of practical faith. Jesus
said, "If ye had faith even as a grain of mus
tard seed you could move mountains," and
Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ."
Faith is not merely mental behef that a thing
is possible, or credible; faith is an actual crea-

60 THE DIVINE URGE

tive power that brings to objective reality the
visions that are born of love. When human
need is seen, the true Christian knows that it
can be transmuted into "the peace that passes
all understanding." This abounding faith of
the Christian is a motive that shall yet over
come the world.
Then there is the motive of pity, to which
one who has known the poverty of this world
and the abounding riches of the higher life is
peculiarly sensitive. Love is always kind,- and
is full of sympathy. One recognizes that most
of the pain and sorrow of life is caused by the
loneliness of people and could be removed or
avoided if they could be brought into touch
with Jesus. The true missionary sees as did
Jesus on the barren hills of Galilee, a people
hungry, homeless and scattered, and his heart
yearns to tell them of a Shepherd's love, that
can lead them to pastures green with eternal

TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 61
verdure, and refreshed with the abundance of
the water of life.
Whenever these missionary motives shall
appeal to souls made sensitive by the divine
impulse of redemptive love and who are cher
ishing in the deep levels of the sub-conscious
nature a love for the great Whole, they shall
hear angelic voices saying: "Thou hast found
favor of the most High; thou shalt go before
the face of the Lord to make ready his way;
to give knowledge of salvation into his people
in the remission of their sins, because of the
tender mercy of our God."
To such a soul yielding herself in spiritual
devotion to the reaction of these missionary
motives of grateful love, abounding faith,
humble obedience there comes a reassuring and
ennobling recognition of the soul's essential
oneness with the Universal, the Infinite, the
Perfect, with God himself. Whether they

62 THE DIVINE URGE
recognize it or not the devout missionary is of
the chosen ones, the elect from among the na
tions. For it is only as the human soul re
sponds to this cosmic urge of Redemptive Love
that the individual soul and the race partici
pate in the sublime and deepening harmony of
creation's increasing response to the cosmic
and eternally redemptive purpose of our God.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in
Him should not perish, but should have ever
lasting life." "Go, ye, therefore, into all the
world and make disciples of all nations; and
lp! I am with you alway."

:M