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THE KING’ S BUSINESS
An instructive comparison between the “two greatest wars” has just been published in “Men and Missions” by Mr. J. Campbell White. The summary o f this is as fol lows: “20,000,000 soldiers in physical peril, fifty times 20,000,000 o f people in spiritual bondage and death; 1,000.000 men killed in. the first six months, 2,000,000 people die every month in heathen lands; cost to kill one man about $3,500, cost to give the gospel to the world about $2.00 per person; cost o f European war over $40,000,000 daily, expended in world war about $35,- 000,000 for a whole year; fighting strength o f armies over 20,000,000, total missionary force 12,000 men and 12,000 women.” This is a missionary argument condensed but in striking form. The parallels speak for themselves and put things in a way not to be misunderstood. And no one should hes itate for a tqoment between the two. Phys ical war lets hell loose upon the earth, but spiritual war gives a little o f heaven now, and will bring in the heavenly kingdom by and by. In these days o f stress and strain, may we make a right choice, and so live and work with God. Tayabas, a province 200 miles by five miles, in the Phillipines, is the field o f Mr. and Mrs? Magill o f the Presbyterian church, U. S. A. They reached Lucina, their head quarters, with great difficulty and discom fort. The resident priest had done all he could to slander them to the people, who for all that, received them responsively. After the departure o f a missionary prede cessor the friar gathered up and burned all the Bibles he had distributed. Yet the Edinburgh Conference does not think there is call for missions in Roman Catholic countries! The first Protestant church ever erected in North America for the use o f lepers is in the Lousiana leper settlement on the shore o f the Mississippi River, seventeen miles south o f Baton Rouge. The chapel is opened daily and once a week the lepers themselves will conduct a service o f song and prayer.
I N Lynn, Massachusetts, Mormon mis sionaries asked for license to preach on the streets. The town council held a pub lic hearing on the application. The Mor mon preachers were asked: “ Do you believe in polygamy ?” One answered? “ How can we believe in a thing that’s dead?” The other said: “W e do not believe in the prac tice o f polygamy.” But the mayor o f Lynn is a Methodist, and he had heard enough about the clan of Joseph Smith to be “ wise to them.” He shrewdly pierced the mask by inquiring: “Do you consider polygamy ^morally wrong?” And both confessed they didn’t. Thus exposed, each o f them began to magnify polygamy’s advantages as a social system. Evangelist Sunday’s sermons only in the rarest instances represent an effort to work out a proposition. On the other hand, an enormous percentage o f sermons preached in regular pastorates are precisely o f that character. And herein consists a difference that, deserves more attention. Sunday preaches not to get at a sub ject but to get at men. No service he could possibly do his brother ministers in the church would in value equal what he would do for them if by any means he induced them to make the same shift in their targets. The essay sermon ought to be totally abolished. The plea sermon ought to take its place. And it always ought to grapple with life as men live it. Hearers’ comments on Mr. Sunday’s style o f preaching almost always allude to the concreteness o f everything he says—nothing theoretic, nothing abstract—illustrations, arguments, exhortations, appeals, challenges, all ringing with reality, all bespeaking a man who knows men and their experiences first-hand. Every pastor should cultivate that same reality. Nothing else will do more to give his preaching point to pierce first the atten tion and then the consciences o f men.— The Continent.
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