At Home and Abroad
A good testimony is borne by M. Pierre Loti in his recent book, “Jerusalem.” After watching the worshipers at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre he broke out with the exclamation: “Oh, to believe, oh, to pray' when the end -is near, as these do. For Christ, whatever men may think and whatever men may do, is the Unique. He is the One that cannot be explained. And at this moment, however strange it may appear coming from me, I would say to my friends who have followed me thus far, ‘Seek ye Him; try to find Him— for outside of Him there is nothing.’ ” D uring the Boxer troubles in China, as two boys, aged thirteen and fourteen, re spectively, were making their escape from the city, they were seized and questioned. “We are of the Jesus Church,”- was their reply, and as they were about to be bound for a return to the city, and subsequent death, they said, “ You need not bind us. W e will not try to get away. Every step we take to your altar is one step nearer heaven.” In a short time their blood be came “the seed of the martyrs.” Who can doubt that “ at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow?” T he L yceum C lub idea seems to be spreading in influential quarters. The Na tional Bible Institute, which, among other activities, conducts the McAuley Cremorne mission, last week moved into its new home in West Thirty-fifth street, near Seventh avenue. The building has been entirely remodeled, and will house the Cremorne mission on the ground floor, the institute occupying the yipper stories. A new de parture is the “ Girls’ Institute Club” for Bible study, which is working to “ get the next girl.” The mission will conduct an outdoor gospel campaign in the “tender loin.” A t the end of Methodism’s first forty years in India, in 1896, there were 69,800 converts. Within the last two years that denomination has added more to its com munity than it had gathered during its first forty years! Arguing from facts actually
A converted Ainu lad recently went to his aboriginal countrymen on the northern island of Japan and spenty twenty-one days tramping from village to village, teaching Christian truth through a magic lantern. To meet his expenses he drew $12.50 out of his postoffice savings-bank account. On his re turn he remarked that he had nothing left over and had lacked no good thing. D e K oningsbode gives some instances of native similes, gleaned from a recent con ference in the Boer Mission in Nyassaland. One convert testified : “ I wished to go in by the narrow gate but was like a pig with a yoke on its neck that struck against thé sides of the door, and prevented its entering. That yoke was my sin! But Christ has taken it off.” Another speaker described the churchgoers who are not Christians as being like the loose donkeys which run alongside of wagons on the trek but do not help in the pulling ! A M ohammedan merchant once asked a Christain student in the Bareilly Theolog ical Seminary, India, to watch his shop while he went to noonday prayers. When he returned the student asked him how it was that he had trusted him with his money and goods. The merchant replied, “ I have learned from experience that Christians are more honest than my countrymen.” In stances like this might be multiplied, where Christian virtues are like the leaven work ing in the midst of Christless religions. And what a note of progress they sound ! T he aged P rofessor W undt , the famous psychologist of Leipzig University, gives a weighty opinion, saying: “ The incomparable value of the Decalogue consists in the fact that, in its impressive brevity, it constitutes the most venerable witness we possess to the imperishability of moral principles. To attempt to improve upon it would be a crime against the spirit of history, to seek to imitate it with a Deca logue of modern conception, a foólish enter prise, indeed. The religious teacher may interpret it for our time as Duther for his, but as to the document itself—hands off!”
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs