Quiet Talks with World Winners

The Present Opportunity

The Present Opportunity

Somebody's Knocking at the Door.

There's a soft, tender passion in the heart of God. Its flame burns steadily. It never flags nor dims. It's a passion for His child-man. And that very passion itself draws man to Himself with a drawing power that is irresistible. They can't resist being drawn, even though they may refuse to yield to it.

There is an answering passion in man's heart for God. It is often a sort of dumb longing, not clearly defined nor well understood. It is a mute yearning of his heart for God, though often he doesn't think of it that way. But it is there; for these two, man and God, belong together. They were together until sin drove its ugly wedge in between. They are a part of each other. Neither one is complete nor happy without the other.

The heart of God can be satisfied only as man comes back home to Him. And man's heart never rests until it finds rest in comradeship with God. These two are always drawing toward each other. God is always drawing man by the great master-passion of His heart. And man is always responding to that tender, strong pull in the underneath, mute yearning of his heart.

By and by the thing that keeps them apart will be gotten rid of. Sin will be shipped overboard, to fall by its own dead weight to the bottom of the sea. Then there will be glad reunion of God and man, their hearts in full glad accord again. To-night we want to talk together a bit about this answering passion of man's heart for God.

The heathen world is knocking to-day at the door of the Christian Church. It has found out who has the fullest and truest information about God. And it is knocking loudly and earnestly at that door. And it keeps on knocking, though the door seems to be barely open yet; and a good many—most?—inside don't seem to have heard the knocking.

The most remarkable thing about the present time from the Church point of view is that the heathen peoples are asking for what the Master has told us to give them. The centre of Church attraction and of Christian action to-day is on the swing toward heathen lands.

When the Church began again, a hundred years ago, to enter the great heathen world, it had to use pick and axe, jimmy and chisel. It seemed like using burglar's tools. Certainly it was working in the dark, with only the burglar's dark-lantern to show the way. But now the heathen door is wide open. Instead of our knocking at their door, the heathen world is knocking at our door.

Our billion brothers stand in the night-time of their darkness blindly feeling for our door, and knocking, now timidly, now earnestly and loudly, ay, imperiously, for the light that we have. It has been a cold night for them, and a long night, too. But the darkest hour of it is already throbbing with the flood of coming light. They have found the door and are using it. The whole foreign non-Christian world is knocking with incessant, insistent clamor at our church door.

They're Standing in the Dark.

I do not mean that actually every country in the world is open to the Gospel. For there are a few countries with comparatively scanty populations that are not open; except, indeed, on the edges, to the man prying earnestly around for a way to get in.

I don't mean that every man in these open countries is actually asking us to send him some word of Jesus. For vast numbers of them have never heard either about us or about Him. They don't know there is a Jesus to ask about; or, judging by others, they would be asking.

Neither do I mean that these multitudes who are asking are, in every case, asking for the Gospel itself. For many times that is not so. They ask for that which appeals to them strongly as something that they want. They want our Western science and learning. They want to get from us the secret of harnessing nature up to their wagon to pull their heavy loads.

In many cases, without doubt, they don't want our Christianity at all. They regard it simply as something that goes along inseparably with the thing they do want. They are willing to put up with some of it for a while, if only they can get the thing they are after. Their eyes have been caught by the bright light of our Christian civilization. They don't understand how it came to us. They haven't wakened up enough, most of them, to think into that.

They want the light we have, as we might want something that we could order a shipment of. They haven't learned enough yet to want to get the light-generating plant installed in their midst. The great fact that all our civilization has come to us through the partial presence of the Light of the world hasn't dawned upon their minds yet.

But, however selfish motives and a crude understanding or misunderstanding may enter in, the great strange unprecedented fact still remains true that the world of heathenism is knocking at the door of Christendom as never before in the world's history.

And then, too, everywhere some of them are asking plainly and piteously for the real thing. Great numbers in all the foreign-mission lands are asking that Christian teachers be sent to them with Bibles and other books to teach them the way back home to God. Wherever they find out that there is a knowledge of God to be gotten, from there comes the insistent knocking that it be brought to them.

I remember Bishop Bashford, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, stationed in China, telling of one of his thrilling experiences out there. He had gone inland quite a bit into China on one of his tours. One day he was preaching the story of Jesus to a crowd of Chinese gathered in the open air. As his interpreter turned his words into Chinese the crowds listened with great respect and keenest interest.

As he finished he asked them if they had ever heard the Gospel before. No; none of them had. He was turning up absolutely fresh soil. And they pressed in about him, earnestly asking that men be sent to tell them. And this experience of Bishop Bashford's is being repeated, over and over again, throughout the foreign-mission world.

Who's There?

But there is yet more than this. Everywhere among these peoples, as one comes into close enough touch to find their hearts, there can be found underneath the inarticulate, inexpressible yearning for something they haven't. And they don't know enough to know what it is they long for. But they are conscious of the constant, weary, yearning tug within. The great heart of the non-Christian world to-day is asking dumbly, but earnestly, as only the heart can ask, for the light we have. Its knocking at our front door is growing louder in its insistent earnestness.

Since Commodore Perry steamed into the harbor of Yokohama, fifty years ago, with open Bible and American flag, and knocked at the front door of the Orient, the whole situation has completely changed. Then we knocked for admission to these shut-in lands. Now they are knocking at our door, for the knowledge and light that we have in Christian lands because we have Jesus.

May I call your attention to some of the louder of these knockings?

For years students in great numbers, thousands, have been coming from these heathen nations to our country to get our Western learning. Throughout the colleges and lower schools of the land, both East and West, in the greater universities, and in the more modest small church colleges they can be found.

I remember a sight that never failed to thrill me in my visitations among the colleges of our Central West. Almost always I saw one or more of these young men, from Japan, and less frequently from China and India and other countries, and sometimes young women, too; studying in these institutions. Quite frequently they came from the better families of their people; often from old wealthy families of position and influence. So that by blood ties and position they will be the future men of influence and leaders of their people. And it is a notable fact that many of them are to-day the leaders in Japan. Literally thousands of them have come, these thousands of miles around the world, to knock at our doors, and ask for what we have and they haven't.

Even more striking is the recent visitation to us of official commissions from the non-Christian lands. One after another, these national governmental deputations have come to us. They have been composed of the strongest men in these lands, men in leading official position. They have come by government appointment, and at government expense, to learn the secret of our marvellous Western progress.

And in addition to these official deputations others have come, men of like prominence and influence, coming on their own account, to witness our civilization and learn its secrets.

The Coming Great Leaders.

One of the most remarkable incidents of this most remarkable movement has been the great migration of young Chinese men to study in the colleges of Japan. Within a very short space of time, as though by a concerted movement, fifteen thousand Chinese young men have flocked to Tokyo. The inevitable sifting process has sent many back, but fully ten thousand remain, engaged in earnest, hard study.

Will you mark very keenly why they went to Japan? Because to them Japan, in its new life, stood for the new light and life of the West. Their little, but mighty, aggressive neighbor on their eastern shore had brought to their very door the new civilization of the Christian West.

Here was an unusual opportunity. Where hundreds had come clear around the earth to us, thousands have seized this opportunity close at hand. They come from every province of China; even that farthest away, on the border of Tibet, sending hundreds.

The travel involved thousands of miles. And if their slow means of travel be taken into account, it meant what would be to us practically hundreds of thousands of miles. Hundreds of them have been sent by the provincial and local governments. Others have come through private funds made up for the purpose. And wealthy men have sent their sons. They have gone to Japan only because Japan has opened her doors so widely to our Christian civilization. It is not to their conqueror, Japan, they have come, but to the civilization which Japan has imported from Christian lands.

Was there ever such a knocking at the door of the Christian Church as this? Ten thousand picked men, of the best and keenest young manhood of China, representing all parts of the empire, and in large part representing the government, settling down to years of close study of our Christian civilization as found in Japan—a tremendous fact for the Church to-day! Things are crowding in on us. It is the non-Christian world knocking at our back door. It was too far around to the front. So they have commenced their knocking at the nearest and handiest door they could find.

Then there are direct requests coming constantly to the missionaries, from the peoples in all these lands, earnestly asking and even pleading that men be sent to teach them of God and of Christ. Whole villages have been found in the fastnesses of Africa's wilds spending days together, and all day long, on their knees in prayer; most of ten mute prayer with upturned faces—their very bent bodies their prayer—that news of the white man's God might be sent to them.

In Korea and other lands it is no uncommon thing for men and women to travel hundreds of miles by their slow transportation, or even to come a-foot, to attend gatherings where the story of Jesus is being preached.

And then, too, there is the indirect knocking in the imitation of our Western ways, and throwing away of their own. Imitation is the highest form of compliment that can be paid. It tells of admiration, and of a desire to be as those imitated. The adapting of Western learning by these conservative Oriental peoples, the establishment of thousands of colleges and schools on the model of Christian countries is so radical a thing as to be nothing short of startling. The abandoning of bad customs, as well as of their old systems of education, is as startling. Where there were antagonisms there is now the friendliest imitation.

If to this we add the remarkable immigration to our shores, of a million a year, it intensifies enormously the opportunity of service brought to us by foreign peoples. Yet please notice that this latter is not Asia nor Africa coming to us, but Europe.

However crying their need may be, these are, nominally, not heathen peoples, but chiefly from Christianized Europe. The Asiatics would have come in great numbers, but that door was promptly shut and carefully locked by official hands.

As you swing your eye over these seething masses of the heathen world, and listen to their voices, let me ask you, with the earnest softness of tone that belongs to the heart, could there be a louder knocking at the door of the Christian Church?

What Do They Want?

There can be no doubt about the knocking. But—but what is it they are after? Well, in plainest talk, they are after the thing that has made Christian nations great, great to the point of world-leadership and world-supremacy.

Do you remember the famous reply, often quoted, given to a foreign visitor at the English court? He had asked the secret of the greatness of England, which impressed him so forcibly. And her gracious majesty, of blessed memory, Queen Victoria, placed her hand upon a Bible, and replied in the memorable words, "This is the secret of England's greatness."

Just how much that wise woman had in mind I am sure I do not know. I feel very sure she did not refer to the church system of England. But to something far more and deeper than that, of which the church system is only one expression. Where the Bible has gone, and where it has so largely dominated the life of the people, as in England, there has been both a moral regeneration and, mark it keenly, a new mental life. Its touch has awakened the mental powers. There has been aroused and released into activity that spirit of energy which has become the most marked characteristic of the Western world.

These two, the mental life and the remarkable energy, lie at the basis of all our wonderful modern science. And this, in turn, lies at the basis of all our phenomenal development. It is this that makes the West different from the East. The leading nations are Christian nations. The germ of vigorous life is in the Gospel of Christ.

This is the thing the heathen world is knocking so earnestly at our door for to-day. I do not say that they think of it in that way. They are just coming, groping out of the darkness, with eyes blinking and blinded by the brightness of our light. They stretch eager, reaching fingers out toward the light, without knowing much about it. The glare of it has caught them.

And if they are caught, moth-like, and hurt by its flame—if they copy our vile vices, which are no part of our Christianity, but the remnants of our own original savagery cropping out in spite of Christianity—if so, is it surprising? Their eyes are bothered by the sudden change from black darkness to brilliant light.

But there's a deeper asking. Underneath all, the thing they are really asking for, all unconsciously most of them, is that which lies at the root of all our Western progress. They ask unknowingly for the Gospel of Christ, the heart of this precious old Bible. When they get that they will find that it brings the new awakening of mental life and the new aggressive energy that has made us Christian nations what we are.

Returning Our Call.

Will you please remember that their knocking at our door is a direct result of our knocking at their door? They are very polite, these far-away kinsfolk of ours. They are simply returning our call.

The missionary, from Great Britain, and America, and Europe, has been the West's pathfinder in these foreign-mission lands. He has blazed a way into these thick woods, and beaten down narrow foot-paths through them. It's been hard, heroic work. The pathfinder has often gotten his hands and face badly torn by the thick brambly thorn bushes as he pushed resolutely on.

Then diplomacy entered and broadened the roads. And commerce quickly came and beat them down into good hard shape for easy travel. And in turn the missionaries have freely used the broader, better roads.

And now these roads are being trodden by other feet, and in an opposite direction. Along the pathways made by the Church, and made better by diplomacy and commerce, these peoples are coming, coming a-running, to ask us to give them what we have. We received it from Another. He bade us give it as freely as we received it.

Here they come eagerly knocking at our doors, front door, and back door, and wherever there is a door. Do you hear them?

Ah! The great question to-day is not a question for the heathen world, but for the Christian Church—shall we respond to the opportunity they are flinging in our faces? To-day there are more hands in heathen lands stretched out for the Gospel of Jesus than there are Christian hands stretched out with the Gospel. More hearts in those far-away lands are dumbly praying for the light than there are of us praying that they may receive the light—far more.

The greatest question for the Church to-day is—shall we enter the open door? And this is a key-question, too. Its answer includes a full satisfactory answer to all the other questions we are discussing. All questions of finance, of uncertain wabbling pulpit voices, of careless and indifferent or empty pews, and of city evangelization will quickly find an answer as the Church fully and faithfully answers this. Here is the work that, if done, and well done, will bring a new circulation of blood into the whole life of the Church.

Have you noticed the sharp contrast that there is gradually growing up between the way people at home and these foreign peoples are receiving the Gospel? Out there there is an openness to the truth, an eager willingness to believe it simply, and to act upon it, that suggests the way they did in the Book of Acts. In our home-lands of America and Great Britain and Germany there seems to be either indifference, or an atmosphere of quibble and criticism. With questions and doubts naturalistic explanations are sought that do away with much of the simple force of God's truth.

A like difference is showing itself between the results there and here. Here they are scantier, and gotten with great difficulty; there much larger, and with greater ease. There the door is wide-open, and people crowding in; here there is a feeling that the door is closing, surely and not slowly people turn away elsewhere. There has come to be an unusual proportion of pickles and salads and other relishes served with every spreading of the Gospel meal here. There, just plain unbuttered bread is eagerly and thankfully sought for. They are hungry. And their hunger is a wide-open door to us. We need the exercise of foreign travel, and a great deal of it, to bring back our zest.

"Inasmuch."

May I speak very softly of another side of this knocking at our door? Who is it that is knocking? Aye, Who?

Do you remember Jesus' words in Matthew, chapter twenty-five? He is speaking of the settling-up time that is to come at the close of things. And He does something there that is startling. He identifies Himself with the hungry and cold and poor. That is, He puts Himself in their place. They are reckoned as though they were He. He says that when they asked for some food and warm clothes it was really Himself asking for food and warmth! We have been really dealing with Him when we have met these needy ones. The one test question He makes for all is this—What did you do for these hungry people? Because what you did, or didn't do for them, was done or refused to Me. Jesus comes in the guise of the needy. Who is it knocking at our door so loudly to-day?

I suppose if you could think of Jesus actually coming to-day to New York, the human Jesus I mean, coming as a man just as He came to Jerusalem, but known to us as He is now—I suppose there is hardly a door that would not open to Him. He might not be any better understood in New York than He was in Jerusalem, but the doors of the wealthy would quickly open to Him. I mean the Christian wealthy, the Church wealthy; other doors, too, no doubt, but these surely. He would have a great welcome.

And I suppose, too, that if in some wealthy home on Fifth Avenue or Madison Avenue He were to ask His host to give some large sum, a million dollars or ten millions, for sending the Gospel to China or Japan His request would likely be granted. It seems to me rather probable that it would. Well, how can it be put plainly enough that He does come to our doors, rich, and less rich, and poor. He's at the front door now, knocking and asking our help.

In these heathen peoples of His, Jesus comes to us. And we have been giving Him—shall I say it very softly for sheer shame?—we have given, not all, but most of us, what is practically the loose change in our trousers' pocket; not actually, of course; sometimes even that. We have spent more on everything else. We have made up boxes of cast-off clothes and old shoes for—Jesus! This has been a large part of our answer. Is it any wonder the hot blood sends the color climbing into our cheeks at the thought, and that we instinctively seek for some explanation that will soften the hard rub of the truth!

I found a bit of a poem in a magazine some time ago that caught fire as I read it. It was written, I judge, in a personal sense; but it came to me at once with a wider meaning; and it persists in so coming at every reading of it.

In this poem there is some one knocking at a door for admission, and a voice without calls,

But the voice persists—

And still the pleading,

That same voice still comes with a strangely gentle persistence—

The Pressing Emergency

The Pressing Emergency

The October Panic.

A man walked up the steps of a well-known bank in lower New York one morning, about a half-hour before opening-time, and stood before the shut door. In a few minutes another came, and stood waiting beside him. Others came, one by one, until soon a small group stood in line, waiting for the door to open.

A messenger boy, coming down the street, quickly took in the unusual sight. He wasn't old enough to have been through any of New York's notable panics, and he had never witnessed a run on a bank; but quick as a flash, or as a Wall-Street messenger boy, he knew as though by instinct that a run was on at that bank. Instantly he started running down the street to tell others.

No prairie wild-fire ever spread so quickly as the news ran over 'phone wires of the beginning of that run. As though by some sort of invisible ether-waves, the news seemed to spread through the financial district. Every bank president seemed to know at once. Then it spread throughout the city, and the greater city.

So began what has been called the October panic of last year, which quickly spread through the land, and then throughout the world until every country bank here, and every capital city abroad, felt the sharp tightening of the money-bag strings.

It was a strange panic. You couldn't just tell what was responsible for it. The very variety of explanations, editorial and other, told of the lack of a common understanding of what caused it. There had been no famine or drought. The crops, the chief financial barometer of the country's condition, had been remarkably abundant. There had been no overproduction or glutting of the industrial world. Indeed, great numbers of concerns had been embarrassed by orders that they couldn't fill fast enough. The cause seemed to be wholly in people's minds. A spirit of distrust of some of the great money leaders and of their methods was abroad. That feeling of fear sent a few men, by an unplanned concert of action, to a certain bank before ten o'clock one morning.

The unusual sight of a few men standing in line waiting for the opening of that bank door was like a lighted match to a barn full of dry hay. At the first inkling of a suggestion of a financial panic money began to disappear. Nothing is so cowardly in its cautiousness as money. Scholarship comes next to it. The savings of years have the tightest grip on most human hands. As though by magic, money began hunting dark holes in stockings and cellars and safety-deposit boxes. And the hard grip of the panic was quickly felt everywhere. It was a fear panic. A terrible danger was at hand.

At once the regular habit of life was disturbed for great numbers of men. The Secretary of the Treasury quit his Washington desk and spent several days in New York so as to be able to give the help of the Government's funds and enormous prestige where they would count for most, and to give promptly. Bank officials and other financial leaders cut social engagements and everything else that could be cut, and devoted themselves to meeting the sudden emergency. They ate scantily, both to save time and for lack of appetite, and to help keep their heads clear for quick decisive thinking and action. The tension was intense. Men sat up all night conferring on best measures.

A group of the leading money men met in the private quarters of one of their numbers, about whose rugged personality and leadership they instinctively rallied. More than one night the gray dawning light of the morning found them, with white, drawn faces, still in conference. The emergency gripped them. An emergency always does. The habits of life are upset, helter-skelter, in the effort to avert the threatening danger. That was an emergency in the money world. Grave danger threatened. Everything else was forgotten, and every bit of available resource strained to turn the danger aside. It was turned aside. That was a splendid achievement. And even though men have been feeling the effects for this whole year, what they have felt is as nothing compared with what might have come.

Danger and Victory Eying each other.

An emergency means a great danger threatening, perhaps the very life. But it means, too, that if the danger can be gripped and overcome there will be great victory. Two possibilities come up close and stare each other angrily in the face; the possibility of great disaster impending, and of great victory over it within grasp, if there be a reaching hand to grasp it. The deciding thing is the human element, the strong, quick hand stretched out. If strength can be concentrated, the situation gripped, then great victory is assured. But it takes the utmost concentration of strength, with rare wisdom and quick steady action, to turn the tide toward flood. If this is not done, either because of lack of leadership or of enough strength or enough interest, disaster comes.

Just such emergencies come to us constantly. A severe illness lays its hand upon a loved one in the home. The crisis comes. Death and life stand in the sick-room eying each other. Either one may be victor. No one can tell surely which it will be. And every effort is strained, the habit of life broken, other matters forgotten and neglected, that death may be staved off, and life wooed to stay. And when the crisis passes safely the joy over the new lease of life makes one forget all the cost of strain and effort.

Who of us cannot recall some time back there, when some emergency came in personal business matters, and personal and home expenses and plans were cut down to the lowest notch, to the bleeding-point, that the emergency might be safely met.

Teachers and parents know that moral emergencies come at intervals in a child's life, until young manhood and womanhood are reached. One of the greatest tasks in child-training is to note the emergency, and meet it successfully. And what keenness and patience and subtlety it does take only he knows who has been through the experience.

Spirit Contests.

Emergencies come in spiritual matters, too. They are the hardest kind to meet. It is hardest to make people see them and grip them. In the life of many a church a spiritual emergency has come, but has not been met. The church goes on holding services, raising money and paying it out, going through all the proper forms, but with the life itself quite gone out of it. The thing is being kept in motion by a humanly manipulated electric current; there is no free life-movement.

Evangelistic leaders say that such emergencies come in their campaigning. There has to be a struggle of spirit forces. And the victory that comes, comes only as a result of close hand-to-hand conflict of soul by the leaders.

We all know that such crises come in our personal experience. And those who know about changing things by prayer do not need to be told of the emergency that comes at times; nor of how it requires a tightening of all the buckles, a new reviewing of the promises on which prayer rests, a new steadying of one's faith, a quietly persistent hanging on, an intenser insistence of spirit in prayer and more arrow-praying in the daily round of work—sending out the softly breathed heart-pleadings while busy with common duties, until the assurance comes that the danger is past and the victory secure.

It is remarkable to what an extent the great events of history have been emergency events. With the greatest reverence, it can be said that history's central event, the dying of Jesus, was an emergency action. Even though we understand clearly that it was known and counselled from before the foundation of the world, that He was to shed His precious blood for our salvation, His dying can never be fully understood save as a great emergency measure, the great emergency measure, because of the crisis made by sin.

Now that is the sort of thing—an emergency—that is now on in this great task of world-wide evangelization which Jesus has committed to our hands. Some of you may be strongly inclined to lift your eyebrows and ask—Is there really any such emergency? I know that people don't like those words "crisis" and "emergency." It is much more comfortable to think that things are going on very smoothly and well. Even though all is not just as we might choose to have it, yet we like to think that it will turn out well. There is a sort of optimism that is very popular. Things will all come out right somehow, we like to think. But the fact is that things don't turn out right of themselves. They have to be turned by somebody who gives heart and life to the turning.

It can be said with sane, sober sense that without doubt there is an emergency, and a great one, in this foreign-mission enterprise. It is, of course, true that in a sense there is a continual emergency here. There are thousands of these foreign brothers of ours slipping the tether of life daily. The light might easily have been taken to them, and have changed their choices. But then it hasn't been, and the dark shadow of the possibility of their separating themselves forever from God, through wrong choice persisted in, hangs down over each one of them. There can be no darker shadow except the actual knowledge that they have so separated themselves from life in Him.

A Crisis of Neglect and Success.

But quite distinct from that, and in addition to it, it is quite safe to say that there is an emergency now on in the heathen world such as it has never known before. Such is the mature judgment of our missionary leaders.

And we do well to remind ourselves that we have some remarkable men among these leaders. There are men on the foreign fields and at the missionary helm at home of most remarkable ability and genius. There are to-day men of statesmanlike grasp and power, who could easily have taken front rank in public life, in diplomacy, and professional life, men fully able to fill the Presidential chair and do it masterfully, who are giving their life-blood to this great missionary task.

The sober judgment of these men, taken from every angle of vision, is that the present is a time of unparalleled emergency. It exists peculiarly in Asia, the greatest of all foreign-mission lands. It has been caused by a number of things that now come together with such force as to make a crisis, the crisis of missions, the gravest that has yet come, and that, it is probably safe to say, will ever come. For the future will be largely settled, one way or the other, within a few years.

At the basis of all is the great need, of course. That looms big and gaunt and spectral in any survey of the matter.

Then the neglect by the Church for many generations has greatly intensified the present situation. The Master's plan plainly is that every generation of the Church shall give the Gospel to its generation; that is, to all the people living in the world at that time. Every generation of men must have the Gospel afresh. No land is beyond the need of a fresh gospelizing. If Christian America were to lose its churches and the Gospel, it would surely revert to the heathen type from which we sprung.

But many generations went by with practically nothing of this sort being done. These generations of inactivity have piled up on the present generation. The undone work of the past adds greatly to the task of the present. The present situation is abnormal because of what hasn't been done.

Then the success of the present has played a big part. Modern missionary activity has had a big share in making this emergency. A century of missions is reaching a tremendous climax. The splendid aggressiveness of church leaders and missionaries is now an embarrassment to a Church, or any one in the Church, who doesn't want to keep up the pace. It is an emergency of success, the logical result of what has been accomplished. So much has been done, and been done so well by a comparatively few, that now more must be done by the rest of us.

It's because the heathen world is awake that there is an emergency. Their awakeness is the thing that crowds in on us. And we waked them up. We must now do more and better, because we have done so well. We have indeed waked them up, but—to what? A business man would stamp it as rank foolishness to fail to take advantage of the splendid opening that we have made in the foreign-mission world.

A Westernized Heathenism.

Now, let us look just a bit at this present pressing emergency. There are grave perils threatening, and a great victory possible.

Well, first of all there is real danger of a new aggressive heathenism; a new, energetic, but distinctly un-Christian civilization, in the heathen world. Many thoughtful men who are keenly watching the world movement believe that without doubt there is to be a new leadership of the human race in the Orient. It may be a heathen leadership. That danger is a distinct possibility. The new world-leadership may have all the enormous energy and mental keenness of Christian peoples, but without the Christian spirit.

That means practically a new heathenism, no longer asleep but wide-awake; no longer being manipulated by the Western nations, but maybe manipulating and managing them. An aroused, organized, energized heathen world, with all the science and inventiveness and restless aggressiveness of the western nations and, mark you—and all the spirit of the old, Godless, Christless heathenism dominating its new life—that is the danger.

The heathen world is awake at last after a sleep of centuries. It is sitting up, rubbing its eyes, and taking notice. It is entering upon a new life. That's as clear as a sunbeam on a cloudless morning. What that life shall be depends entirely on the Church waking up. That means, to be more practical, that it depends on you and me waking up, just now, and doing what we easily can. It may be a new Christian life, shot through and through with the blessed principles and spirit of Jesus. It may be a new life of energized, Westernized heathenism! They may get merely our energy and mental awakeness without the Christian spirit that gave these to us.

These two opposite things are standing by the bedside eying each other. Which will get the patient? Who knows? If the Church fail—!

This is a real peril seriously threatening. It is probably far more grave and far more likely than the best-informed and keenest observer is aware of.

A Powerless Christianity.

Then there is a second danger climbing in fast on the heels of this, that is already being plainly felt. These peoples may turn away from a Christianity that seems powerless to them. As they come to know better the simple principles of our faith they may see that we are not true to it. Our Master bade us go everywhere and tell all men of Him, and tell them most and best by the way we live. But we haven't done it. The Church of the past nineteen centuries, taken as a whole, hasn't done it. The Church to-day, taken as a whole, isn't doing it.

How many times have the missionaries been obliged to listen to the question, which is a reproach rather than a question, "Why didn't you come before? My father lived and died in distress, seeking for this light you bring us now. Why didn't your father come and tell my father?" If they find that our faith hasn't gripped us enough to master our lives they will naturally doubt if, after all, there is any more real practical power in it than in their own heathen beliefs.

It seems better in theory, but it seems to lose its ideals in the stiff test of practice. They would be wrong in thinking that, of course. But what conclusion more natural to the crowd that never thinks deep. When all the difficulties and hardships come in the way of their acceptance of Christ, and the easiest way is not to, how easy to throw the whole thing aside.

The story is told of a Chinaman in this country who applied for a position as house-servant in a family which belonged to a fashionable church. He was asked:

"Do you drink whiskey?"

"No, I Clistian man."

"Do you play cards?"

"No, I Clistian man."

He was engaged, and proved to be a capable servant. By and by the lady gave a bridge-party, with wine accompaniments. The Chinaman did his part acceptably, but the next morning he appeared before his mistress.

"I want quit," he said.

"Why? What is the matter?"

"I Clistian man. I told you so before; no heathen; no workee for 'Melican heathen."

These heathen brothers of ours are not fools. They are a keen lot. They judge our religion by us who profess it, as we do with them and theirs. There may come a wide-spread practical disbelief, or lack of belief, that there is any practical power in Christ to change a man's life, and really control his actions. And it will be a perfectly logical conclusion from what they find in us Christian nations as a whole.

Death or Deep Water.

And then there are some mighty bad dangers on the other side—our side. If it be true that every generation needs the Gospel, it is just as true that every generation of Christians needs to give the Gospel. It is the very life of a Christian to give himself out in earnest service for others. The man who is failing there has started on the down grade in his Christian life. If we lose the spirit of "go" we have lost the very Christian spirit itself. A disobedient church will become a dead church. It will die of heart failure.

It was John's Man with eyes of searching flame, and tongue of keen-edged sword, and feet that had been through the fire, who said to a Christian church, "I will move thy candlestick out of its place except thou change thy ways."12 The candlestick isn't the light. It holds the light. The Church's great mission is to be the world's light-holder.

But unsnuffed candles and cobwebby window-panes seem to have been in evidence sometimes. The Christian Church in some lands has plainly lost its privilege of service, and lost its life, too. The old organizations are kept up, but all life has gone. There's a grave danger threatening the American Church and the British Church just at this present time.

Long years ago, in the days before steam navigation, an ocean vessel came from a long sea voyage, up St. George's Channel, headed for Liverpool. When the pilot was taken on board, he cried abruptly to the captain, "What do you mean? You've let her drift off toward the Welsh coast, toward the shallows. Muster the crew." The crew was quickly mustered, and the pilot told the danger in a few short words, and then said sharply, "Boys, it's death or deep water, hoist the mains'l!" And only by dint of hardest work was the ship saved.

If I could get the ear of the Church to-day, I would, as a great kindness to it, cry out with all the earnestness of soul I could command, "It's death or deep water; deep water in this holy service of world-winning, or death from foundering."

Saved by Saving.

And then there's a yet graver peril threatening. It's quite the common thing to appeal to selfish motives. It is striking that the great strides that prohibition has made of recent years, have been due to a sort of legislation and to business regulation that appeal to selfish motives. The economic motive, and the disagreeable and injurious likelihood of a saloon being close to one's own home, have had greater influence than higher moral motives. And we are glad of any motive that will put the damnable traffic down and out.

Well, I'm going to come down a step here, and remind you of a yet graver peril that threatens. There is serious danger of a heathenized Christianity dominating our boasted Christian civilization and Christian lands. And in time that would be a serious menace to our pocket-books.

That is to say, there may be the energy and keen mental life without the mellowing and sweetening influence of the Christian spirit. The restless aggressiveness may come without the poise; the ceaseless activity without the deeper steadying quality; the keenness without the softening touch of the true life. In other words, if we don't Christianize heathendom, they will exert an influence on us that will practically amount to their heathenizing Christendom.

Already such influences are seeping in at more than one crack. Mohammedanism has an active propaganda in Great Britain. Heathen wedges are slipping their thin edges in, in our land. More and more it will extend, in time influencing our whole moral fabric, and affecting our whole national life.

During some recent researches among the ruins of Pompeii the explorers turned up a find that told its own story. It was the body of a crippled boy. He was lame in his foot. And around the body there was a woman's arm, a finely shaped, beautiful, bejewelled arm. The mute find told its simple story. The great stream of fire suddenly coming from the volcano, the crowd fleeing for life, the little cripple unable to get along fast enough, the woman's heart touched, her arm thrown about the boy to aid his escape; then the overtaking fire-flood, and both lost. The arm that was stretched out to save another was preserved, and only that. All the rest of the brave rescuer's body had gone. The saving part was saved. Only that mercifully outstretched to save another was itself saved.

The Church or the man that selfishly saveth his life shall lose it. He that forgetteth about his own life in eagerly saving others shall find that he has saved his own life, and that it has grown into a new fulness and richness of life.

These are some of the dark ugly faces peering into ours. But there's another face among them. It is a very bright face, with eyes all aglow, and features all shining with light. It is the face of victory over every danger and difficulty that threatens. Many believe that the emergency will be met. The victory will surely be achieved. But the fact to mark keenly, just now, is that it will be achieved only by a vigorous, masterful gripping of the present pressing emergency.

Ah! God, may Thy Church—we men who make Thy Church, who are Thy Church—may we see the emergency, and be gripped by it; for Jesus' sake; aye, for men's sake; for the Church's sake; for our own sake; in Jesus' great name.