Title: The Call of the World; or, Every Man's Supreme Opportunity
Author: William E. Doughty
Release date: July 23, 2010 [eBook #33237]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Larry B. Harrison and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
The four questions which the author has most frequently heard in discussing world problems with men are the following:
What progress is the missionary enterprise making?
How much remains to be done?
What is America's share of world responsibility?
How can men relate themselves in a practical way to the spread of Christianity throughout the world?
It is to give a brief answer to these four fundamental questions that the following pages have been prepared for use in Missionary Discussion Groups, Men's Bible Classes, Brotherhoods, Missionary Committees, and groups of Sunday School Officers and Teachers. It is also confidently expected that many men who cannot meet to discuss these problems in any of the groups mentioned will read and study the book in private. In preparing the manuscript the author has had in mind a large number of men who are now or should become public advocates of missions. The book presents information which they may use in addresses.
Many of the facts given have been taken from the Report of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, The World Atlas of Christian Missions, The Statesman's Year Book, 1912, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, by John R. Mott, and The Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia, by S. M. Zwemer.
The author is indebted to his friend, the Rev. W. R. Dobyns, D.D., of St. Joseph, Missouri, for the design on the cover.
It is the hope of the writer that the reading and discussion of the topics outlined in these pages will inspire many men to undertake to master the world plans of Christ and lead them to enthrone at the center of life the missionary purpose—the one purpose around which a man may build all the facts of his life and to which he may cling and let everything else go when he is hard pressed.
New York, September, 1912.
In a discussion concerning the elements of an effective speech, Dr. C. H. Patton, of the American Board, gave the following outline:
An effective speech must be made up of
These suggestions apply not only to speeches but to any case which is to make an effective appeal to men. What subject is there which so perfectly illustrates the principles stated by Dr. Patton as the missionary theme? Nowhere else in all the realm of thinking and action are there such big, human, related facts as in the enterprise which has for its goal the world-wide propagation and naturalization of Christianity.
Christian business men are constantly asking certain pertinent questions about any business undertaking. Is it honest? Is it safe? Will it pay? Is it big enough to be worth while? Will it succeed? Will it last?
Men have a right to ask such questions about business. They have an equal right to make the same thorough and searching investigation of the proposition to evangelize the world. Confident of the power of the cause to capture and hold men when once it has had a chance at them, believing that this is the greatest case that has ever challenged the manhood of the world, some of the evidences of the widening sovereignty of Christ in the world are marshaled here. The Scriptures unmistakably indicate that God has pledged universal dominion to his Son. The facts which follow are concrete illustrations of the truth of the missionary principles of the Bible. The gathering momentum of the Kingdom makes an irresistible appeal.
For convenience the facts may be grouped under three general heads:
An Accessible World.—1. Improved means of intercommunication. That we live in a contracting world is strikingly illustrated by the fact that when Robert Morrison went to China it took him seventy-eight days to reach New York from England, and four months to go from New York to China. Hunter Corbett, of China, who was six months on his way the first time he took the trip, made the journey a few months ago in twenty-one days. It is now possible to go from Peking to London in twelve and one-half days over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. A recent journey around the world was made in less than thirty-six days. When Jules Verne published Around the World in Eighty Days, the journey described was laughed at as an impossible feat. To-day it is possible to circle the globe in less than one half the time of which Jules Verne wrote in his book. It took the old Greeks forty days to go the length of the Mediterranean Sea in their swiftest triremes. The greatest stretch of open water in the world is 10,000 miles in the Pacific Ocean. There are vessels afloat to-day that can traverse the 10,000 miles in one half the time that it took the old Greeks to go the length of the Mediterranean Sea.
2. The nations of the earth are accessible because of changed sentiment.
There are to-day no lands in the world which are closed entirely to modern influence and only a few which do not at least tolerate the Christian missionary with his advanced ideas of civilization and progress. It is difficult to estimate the amazing changes in sentiment in lands where missionaries have been at work even for a generation, as in Korea, or for a century or more, as in India or China.
It is unthinkable that there should ever be another Chinese wall shutting out all world contact. Edicts in force as late as 1870 ordering the death of Christians in Japan are now exhibited only as relics of a buried past. The twentieth century is making hermit nations impossible.
3. A mental attitude has been created in the non-Christian world which nothing but Christ can satisfy. This may be only an indefinite restlessness and dissatisfaction with existing conditions in many cases, but it is apparently true that the principles of the Christian gospel have created an altogether new mental attitude in the world. It is stated by one of the great missionary authorities in India that there are millions of people in that land who are intellectually converted to the gospel who have not yet yielded personal allegiance to Christ. This mental attitude is an enormous asset to the Kingdom.
A Plastic World.—The nations of our day are plastic to a degree never before witnessed. Heat, pressure, and decay, are some of the forces which make physical substances plastic. There are intellectual and moral and spiritual forces which produce a like effect on men and nations. As great heat applied to metal fuses it, so the ideas and forces of the twentieth century have fused the non-Christian world. Pressure, such as foreign aggression, world commerce, and modern science have helped to bring about the present plastic state in vast sections of the world. Added to these two and accompanying them are the forces of disintegration and decay in the old religions, old forms of government, and the customs and habits of centuries. In itself this present remarkable state of the non-Christian world has no moral quality. The significant thing is that, while nations are in a plastic state, they offer special opportunity to put the stamp of Christianity on them before they harden again, and to determine the direction their civilization shall take by building into them the principles of Christian civilization and the Christian faith.
A Changing World.—One of the most impressive evidences that the leaven of Christian civilization is at work in the non-Christian world is the fact that there are wide-spread changes taking place. God has been shaping and preparing the nations in the interests of a world-wide gospel. The extent and character of these changes make the present the most momentous hour in the history of the non-Christian world.
The extent of the changes may best be illustrated by comparing the present awakening with other great historic movements of the last two thousand years. In naming the epoch-making movements of the Christian Era the following could not be omitted: The Renaissance, The Mohammedan Conquest, The Crusades, The Reformation, The American Revolution, The French Revolution, The Wesleyan Revival, and The Rise of Popular Governments. On examination it is discovered that each of these movements was confined to a comparatively limited geographical area, one or two of the countries of Europe, or certain racial sections such as the Anglo-Saxon, or the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, or, as in the case of the American Revolution, England and America. While these movements were all of far-reaching significance they affected directly only a few countries. But to-day all Asia is awake, Africa is stirring with life as never before, and the South American lands are in the midst of a period of commercial activity and of progress unparalleled. Instead of a limited area millions of square miles are in the midst of far-reaching changes.
The great awakenings of the last twenty centuries influenced directly only a few millions of people in contrast with the awakening of to-day which affects THREE FOURTHS OF THE HUMAN RACE. From the standpoint of the vast populations involved as well as of the immense territory affected the world has never seen an awakening of such magnitude as that which is taking place in our time.
In character also the present movement is eclipsing all former awakenings in history. One of the most satisfactory ways of measuring the power of any movement is to analyze it in relation to the fundamental institutions of society. Reducing civilization to its simplest terms society is built around five great institutions. In one column the institutions are named, in the other the human relations which each represents.
While the illustration must not be carried too far, yet in a striking way it is true that the great awakenings of the last two thousand years have been characterized by only one or two central and controlling principles. The Renaissance was an intellectual awakening, thus changing the educational life of Europe. The Reformation was religious and profoundly influenced the Church. The Rise of Popular Governments was political and began a new era for the state. So on through the list. By way of contrast, we are to-day in the midst of an awakening which radically affects all these fundamental institutions of society. In China, for example, a movement is in progress which is not simply affecting the state, or the social life, or the religious character of the people, but is transforming all five of the fundamental institutions of life. As Dr. J. E. Williams, of Nanking University, puts it: "If we could conceive of the Renaissance of learning after the dark ages, the interest in literature that came with the study of Latin and Greek, and the awakening of thought that followed upon the discovery of new worlds—material and intellectual—and then add to this the new forces of the Reformation, the reconstruction of men's moral and religious ideas and ideals and the recovery of the right of the individual conscience, and if to these we could conceive as added the French Revolution—the break-up of all that men had regarded as final in social and political organization; and if to these again could be added the movement of modern science, which began with Lord Bacon's Novum Organum—and the application of the inductive method in the discovery of the forces and laws of nature; and, if further we could conceive of these great forces as operating, not at different times, in different countries, through a period of several centuries, but as combined and concentrated in a brief decade or two in one country upon a great people, we should have a more adequate conception of the magnitude and significance of the present Revolution in China."
A significant fact is that most of the revolutionary forces and agencies which have brought about the awakening have come from Christian lands. The most powerful single force at work has been the missionary. He has carried with him the finest ideals of Western civilization, and has been able in an unusual way to bring the latest ideas in all realms of life to bear upon the non-Christian world. A condition exists which Professor Ross, in The Changing Chinese, a book which it will pay every man to read, finely describes in the following words:
"The crucifixion was two hundred and eighty years old before Christianity won toleration in the Roman Empire. It was one hundred and twenty-eight years after Luther's defiance before the permanence of the Protestant Reformation was assured. After the discovery of the New World one hundred and fifteen years elapsed before the first English colony was planted here. No one who saw the beginning of these great, slow, historic movements could grasp their full import or witness their culmination. But nowadays world processes are telescoped and history is made at aviation speed."
All this makes it clear that we have come to an hour of crisis in the relations between Christendom and the non-Christian world. What is a crisis but a point of time in the history of the human race when great issues are at stake, when there is an unprecedented break-up of civilizations, when Christian nations must make great decisions about their relations with the non-Christian world. We find everywhere conditions that are passing and that will not return. It is the time of all times for men who love Christ to make him known to the ends of the earth. The situation is summarized in "the Message of the Edinburgh Conference," in the following language: "The next ten years will, in all probability, constitute a turning-point in human history, and may be of more critical importance in determining the spiritual evolution of mankind than many centuries of ordinary experience. If those years are wasted, havoc may be wrought that centuries will not be able to repair. On the other hand, if they are rightly used, they may be among the most glorious in Christian history."
The Increase of Populations in Christian Countries.—At the beginning of the nineteenth century the entire population of the United States and Canada was only about 5 millions; to-day it is 100 millions. In the same period of time the populations of Europe have increased from 170 to 450 millions. During this same hundred years the population in some parts of the non-Christian world has declined, in others remained stationary, or the growth has been very slow. While the birth rate is much greater in many non-Christian lands, the cheapness of human life, the lack of sanitary and other conditions for safeguarding life greatly increase the death rate. The population of the world at the end of the eighteenth century was estimated to be approximately 1,000 millions. During the nineteenth century the numbers increased by about 600 millions. Europe and North America together increased in population by nearly 400 millions during that century. These figures for the world are only estimates but are given by the most reliable students of such matters. While exact figures for the non-Christian world cannot be given, the significant fact is that there has been a marvelous expansion of Christian nations within the last one hundred years, far outstripping the expansion of other parts of the world. The nations which know most of Christ and his gospel have increased in numbers as well as in power out of all proportion to the rest of mankind.
The Spread of the English Language.—We quote from a leaflet entitled "The Seven Wonders of the Modern Missionary World," by Dr. A. W. Halsey.
"The spread of the English language is one of the wonders of the age. The English language is spoken at the present time by nearly 200,000,000 people; each year sees large additions to the group of English-speaking peoples. In the Philippines more people to-day speak the English language than spoke the Spanish language after three hundred years of Spanish rule.
"In all higher education in India, English is compulsory; in the secondary schools in India, English is taught. In China, the government has made English a part of the regular curriculum. In Japan, the students are eager to learn English. It is the avenue through which the missionary frequently is able to reach the educated classes. In Syria, one of the boys in the classroom wrote on the blackboard, 'God is love' in his own language, thirty boys followed, each writing the text in his own language; yet these boys sooner or later will all speak the English language. A speaker at the Edinburgh Conference declared that some missionaries read the Lord's command as though it were written 'Go and teach all nations the English language.' Macaulay says that whoever knows the English language has 'ready access to the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and stored in the course of ninety generations.' The English language is the language of liberty, of law, of morals, of high ideals. The English Bible, which has molded Anglo-Saxon civilization, is making no small impress on world civilization.
"The Greek language became the vehicle in which the gospel story was borne to the educated world of the first century. The English language seems destined in the providence of God to be the bearer of the gospel to the races of the twentieth century."
The following table indicates the remarkable growth during the nineteenth century of the English language as compared with other tongues. The estimates are given by Mulhall and John Bartholomew of Edinburgh and appear in the 1912 World Almanac.
| 1801 | 1901 | |
| French | 31,450,000 | 52,100,000 |
| German | 30,320,000 | 84,200,000 |
| Italian | 15,070,000 | 34,000,000 |
| Spanish | 26,190,000 | 46,500,000 |
| Portuguese | 7,480,000 | 15,000,000 |
| Russian | 30,770,000 | 85,000,000 |
| English | 20,520,000 | 130,300,000 |
In the light of these figures the total given by Dr. Halsey quoted above is perhaps too high. It will be seen, however, that the number speaking German has multiplied nearly threefold and the number of those speaking English six and a half times in the century under review. Since an overwhelming majority of missionaries speak either English or German or both, the significance of the spread of these languages is apparent.
The Geographical Control of the World.—One of the most inspiring evidences of the widening sovereignty of Christ is that he has passed over the control of the territory of the world to the Christian nations. According to Gulick's Growth of the Kingdom of God, in 1600 only 7 per cent. of the territory of the world was controlled by Christian nations, but to-day 82 per cent., so that the growth of Christian control has passed in three hundred years from 7 per cent. to 82 per cent., while the control of non-Christian nations has decreased from 93 per cent. to 18 per cent.
The increasing control of the world by Christian nations is due in no small measure to the fact that they are masters of most of the great waterways and highways of the world. The Suez and Panama Canals and the Khaibar Pass in India are striking illustrations.
In 1800, four hundred millions of people were governed by Catholic and Protestant Christian powers; in 1912 at least one thousand millions, or two and a half times as many as were thus governed in 1800. In 1500, there were no Protestant political powers in the world. To-day, England, Germany, and the United States rule over about six hundred millions of the population of the world. These three Protestant powers alone now have dominion over more millions of people than are ruled over by all the non-Christian nations of the world added together.
The Mohammedan world furnishes a startling illustration of this shifting control of the world. A few generations ago Mohammedan political and religious control were coextensive. To-day over three fourths of the Mohammedans of the world live in lands which they do not rule politically. The passing of Mohammedan political dominion from Africa is of profound significance for that continent. France has extended and consolidated her African possessions by taking Algeria and establishing a protectorate over Morocco, which is one of the greatest strongholds of orthodox Mohammedanism. Italy has now taken full control of Tripoli. Only a few of the forty or more millions of Mohammedans in Africa are under Moslem political rule. Italy has already begun the construction of 400 miles of railway in Tripoli. In Algiers and down through the Sahara toward the Sudan the steel lines are being laid by France. God is evidently preparing his people for a great advance among Mohammedans. The great question now is whether his Church will be equal to the emergency.
The Number and Growing Efficiency of Missionary Societies.—More than two hundred years ago Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and his colaborer Plütschau were ordained missionaries to India in the city of Copenhagen; and two years later, in 1707, at Tranquebar, the first Protestant Church of the non-Christian world was established in South India among the Tamil people. Later the great Schwartz and others carried on the work resulting in the founding of the missionary work of the present day in India.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were two important missionary organizations in Great Britain. On the continent the Lutherans and Moravians were struggling heroically in the carrying on of their missionary operations. There were scarcely more than a dozen missionary societies altogether in the whole world, either well established or just beginning. It was a very small and feeble list of organizations compared with that of the present day. The Edinburgh Missionary Conference reported that there were 994 missionary organizations in Christendom in 1910. These have nearly all come into existence within the century.
Among the indications of increased efficiency the following may be named:
1. Unity and Coöperation. It has been well said that "The three dominant notes of our time are unity, reality, and universality." That there is a growing spirit of unity in the home Church is illustrated by the way the mission boards are coöperating in the work of the interdenominational missionary movements, by the growing number of interdenominational training-schools for missionary candidates, and by organizations like the Home Missions Council and the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards in which there is interchange of ideas and plans and methods among the leaders of the home and foreign missionary activities.
Nowhere have Christian unity and practical coöperation made greater progress than in the foreign missions of American Churches. In several lands there are now conspicuous illustrations of the practical working of this spirit in the organization of union colleges, theological seminaries and training schools and in united campaigns of many different kinds.
In Korea a union hymnal was issued some time ago and the first edition of 24,000 copies was sold within the first few weeks. In this same land, in dividing the territory between the different missions, the Methodists and Presbyterians exchanged several thousand converts, and now, Korean Christians moving from a territory occupied by one mission into that occupied by another automatically transfer their membership to the other denomination.
2. The Science of Missions. Modern Missionary leaders are doing much to create an interest in and to develop the science of missions. The Edinburgh Conference took a great advance step when it appointed the Continuation Committee. This committee represents Christendom in making a scientific, continuous and united study of missions. The International Review of Missions, a quarterly magazine, is the Committee's organ for reporting investigations to the Christian world. The committee has appointed a number of commissions which are at work on the various problems of missions. Their reports from time to time are awaited with great interest.
3. The Principles of Strategy. There never has been a time in the history of the missionary enterprise when the principles of strategy in the promotion of missions were so well understood and applied as to-day.
The Edinburgh Missionary Conference called special attention to these strategic principles and pointed out how they apply to the evangelization of the world. The application of these principles is another evidence of the fact that the leaders of the Church are facing in a thoroughgoing way, not a fragment of the plans of Christ, but his total program for the world. Some of these principles are quoted here:
(1) "Accessibility, openness, and willingness to attend to the gospel message. During the past ten years the people of pagan Africa have been peculiarly ready to listen to the presentation of the facts and arguments of the Christian religion.
(2) "The responsiveness of the field. Korea and Manchuria are examples of nations in which the people of every community show readiness to yield to the claims of Christ when presented to them.
(3) "The presence or concentration of large numbers of people. Obviously, the Chengtu plain of the westernmost province of China, with its population of 1,700 to the square mile, or the densely populated valleys of the Ganges and lower Nile, should receive attention commensurate with the massing of the people.
(4) "Previous neglect. With a gospel intended for all mankind the policy of the Church should be influenced by the existence of any totally unoccupied field, like extensive tracts of the Sudan.
(5) "Conditions of gross ignorance, social degradation, and spiritual need. Christ came in a special sense to seek and to save that which was lost, and the history of the Christian Church has abundantly shown how the blessing of God has attended efforts to reach the most unfortunate and depressed classes and peoples, such as the Pacific Islanders, the outcasts of India, the lepers, and the aboriginal tribes of the East Indies.
(6) "As has already been made plain, the Church, while recognizing the importance of advancing along lines of largest immediate promise, should, under divine guidance, direct special attention to the most difficult fields of the non-Christian world. In the light of this principle, Moslem lands present an irresistible appeal to the Church.
(7) "The prospective power and usefulness of a nation as a factor in the establishment of Christ's kingdom in the world, and the probable weight of its example as an influence over other nations. Japan is especially fitted to become, in intellectual and moral matters no less than in material civilization, the leader of the Orient. This attaches transcendent importance to its attitude toward Christianity.
(8) "The principle of urgency should as a rule have the right of way; that is, if there is to-day an opportunity to reach a people or section which in all probability will soon be gone, the Church should enter the door at once; for example, if there is danger that the field may be preoccupied by other religions or by influences adverse to Christianity. Equatorial Africa in a most striking degree is just now such a battle-ground. It is plain to every observer that unless Christianity extends its ministry to tribes throughout this part of Africa the ground will in a short time be occupied by Mohammedanism."
Increase in the Number of Missionaries.—Not only does the expanding spirit of conquest express itself in organizations to extend Christianity, but also in the increasing number of lives that are dedicated to the service.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the missionary force was a mere handful. There was not one representative of the churches of North America anywhere in the non-Christian world. The Buddhist world and the Brahmin world were closed, and the millions of the Mohammedan world were practically untouched. The vast regions of South America and Africa were almost unknown. To-day there is an army of 24,000 missionaries, counting wives, or about 17,000 missionary families and single missionaries scattered over all the continents, and in almost every country of the world.
In North America the evidence of the growth of conviction regarding foreign missions is seen in the following record of the Student Volunteer Movement. In the report made by that Movement every four years the following facts appear:
| 1898–1902 | 780 |
| 1902–1906 | 1,000 |
| 1906–1910 | 1,286 |
In the year 1911 the total reached was 410, indicating the fact that the goal of two thousand sailed volunteers for the quadrennium is not an impossible number to expect to see go out before the next convention in 1914.
Money Devoted to Missions.—One hundred years ago the total contributions to the foreign missionary enterprise from all the Christians of the world amounted to about $100,000 annually. To-day the regular annual income is over $30,000,000, or three hundred times as much per year as one hundred years ago. Great buildings are being erected at a cost of millions of additional capital to house colleges and hospitals and printing-presses and all other institutions necessary for the propaganda. In 1911 these special contributions from North America amounted to at least five millions of dollars. In all this vast enterprise the cost of administration at the home base averages only about 8 per cent. of the total of the regular receipts. The cost of all other big business is much higher than this. There are perhaps some cases where the efficiency of the mission Boards would be increased if more money was spent on the cultivation of the home constituency.
Translation of the Scriptures.—The Bible is the missionary's book, and translated into the language of the people is an indispensable aid to his work. The Bible Societies on both sides of the Atlantic have done and are doing a magnificent and enduring work the benefits of which all the churches are reaping. In 1800 the Scriptures were translated into 66 languages; to-day the Scriptures in part or in whole are available in more than 500 languages and dialects. One of the most striking intellectual achievements of the world has been made by the missionaries in the translation of the Scriptures, to say nothing of their tremendous contribution to science and all the branches of knowledge by the reduction of languages to writing, by the translation of text-books, and by the publication of many other books in the vernaculars. When it is remembered that the Edinburgh Conference declared that there are 843 languages and dialects in Africa alone and that only about 100 of them have been reduced to writing, a glimpse is given of the magnitude of the intellectual task remaining before the battle is won. The difficulties have been very great. Milne, a colaborer of Morrison, has this to say regarding the learning of the Chinese language:
"To learn Chinese is work for men with bodies of brass, lungs of steel, heads of oak, hands of spring steel, eyes of eagles, hearts of apostles, memories of angels, and lives of Methuselah!"
Progress by Centuries.—The following table used by Gulick in The Growth of the Kingdom of God, indicates the onward sweep of Christianity throughout the last two thousand years. Of this table Gulick says: "The table does not give the number of professed Christians or church-members, but only the number of those who may be fairly said to have accepted the Christian standards of moral life whether attempting and professing to live up to them or not. The word 'Christianity' is used in its broadest, loosest sense."
The first column includes the period to the end of the century named. The second column gives the number of millions of Christians of all faiths:
| 2nd century | 2 millions |
| 10th century | 50 millions |
| 15th century | 100 millions |
| 18th century | 200 millions |
| 19th century | 500 millions |
A glance at these figures reveals the following inspiring facts.
The number of Christians reported at the end of ten centuries was doubled in the next five centuries. The total was doubled again in the next three hundred years. At the end of the nineteenth century the number was two and a half times as great as at the end of the previous eighteen centuries.
Recent Victories.—While the survey of the progress of the kingdom by centuries just given is inspiring, recent years have witnessed an unprecedented response to the Christian appeal.
Looking at America first we discover that one hundred years ago there were 364,872 communicant members of the Protestant churches out of a population of 5,305,925, or one in fourteen. To-day one in four of the population is identified with the Protestant church. These are not nominal Christians, as in the paragraph above, but actual Protestant church-members. These figures make it clear that the forces of aggressive Christianity in America have realized a tremendous return on their investment. If we include Catholic and all other religious bodies the total communicant members reach 36 millions in round numbers, or about two fifths of the total population.
One hundred years ago only one in ten of the college students in America was a communicant member of the Church; to-day practically every other college student is a member of some church. It is certainly encouraging that fifty per cent. of that small fraction of our population which will furnish an enormous percentage of the leaders are church-members to-day, or five times as large a proportion as a hundred years ago.
The situation in the non-Christian world to-day is summed up, on the basis of the statistics in the chart below, as follows: It took about ninety years to gain the first million converts (1793–1885). The second million were added in twenty-three years (1885–1908). They are now being added at the rate of a million in ten years.