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T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
March 1930
agnosticism, and even making many of them the prey of that wicked system of atheistic radicalism. T he C lamor F or a B road P rogram Again, there are those who insist that what is needed today is a message of greater breadth than that of sim ple evangelism, something that will include in its scope the political, civic, industrial and economic life of the people. We are told that we must shift the emphasis in these days from the individual to the community, that social service and the diffusion of a broad Christian spirit are far more to the point than the preaching of some particular dogma, however good that may be. And so the term “ social gospel” has been coined, and is much in vogue as a fancied advance and encouragement upon the Gospel in its older conception. We would register our emphatic protest against the presumption of prefixing “ social” or any other delimiting adjective to the word “ gospel,” with the idea of thereby improving upon the old Scriptural term. There is only one Gospel, and that is the Gospel of the saving grace and power of Christ. We fully recognize the social, industrial, political and other implications of the Gospel. And as for the term “ applied Christianity,” so impressively put forward in certain quarters, as if it denoted, some special brand of Christianity, we should like to know what Christianity is at all if it is not applied. Any Christianity which does not make itself vitally felt in all the relationships of daily life, is spurious and not the real article. But, having said this, let us go on to say, even at the risk of being regarded old-fashioned and out-of-date, that the most potent means, indeed the only means of any permanent value which we know anything about, of fertilizing these various areas— the social, industrial, political and all the rest— of our corporate life, lifting them to a higher and purer level, and of making human relationships, whether in the home, the factory, the neighborhood or the nation, what they ought to be, is the winning of individuals to a new life in Christ the Saviour. H ave M issions an I nspired M odel ? In these days of “advanced” but shallow thinking, men need to be reminded that God, who originated the mission ary enterprise, did not leave us to our own devices in carrying it forward, but has given us, in the New Testa ment record of apostolic missions, an inspired model for our guidance, which constitutes a permanent and authori tative handbook of missionary principles and practice. Have we any reason to believe, for example, that the social and political conditions and problems of the first century were at root different from those o f the twentieth century? We think not. Then how did those first-cen tury missionaries proceed to deal with them? For it is impressive to observe the high compliment which their enemies unwittingly paid them by referring to them as “ these men who have turned the world upside down.” How, then, did they do it? Not by any process of educat ing the heathen; not by sharing with them a higher cul ture, or stressing a new ethic, not by any propaganda of improved interracial relations—unless the record of the Acts is entirely misleading. It was simply by preaching the Gospel of salvation in season and out of season, without any apology, and thereby winning men to faith in Christ and allegiance to Him. Before such Spirit-impelled evan gelistic preaching, not only were multitudes of men and women saved, and living and self-propagating churches planted, but idolatry crumbled, slavery became doomed, polygamy and other social evils were weakened, the whole
ignorance, superstition and idolatry, the same corruption, cruelty and inhumanity, the same selfishness,-suffering and despair as we had met with in the old Orient of years ago. With all the changes that have come, human nature has remained the same. The root difficulty with every individual and every nation is sin, and the only cure for sin is a new creation through faith in Christ the living Saviour. T he P lace of E vangelism The conviction, then, that burned itself deeper than ever into our soul during this visit to a changed and changing Eastern world, was that of the imperative need of restoring evangelism to its rightful place at the center of all missionary effort. It is common knowledge that during recent years direct evangelism has, by many missionary agencies, been pushed more and more into the background in favor of a more popular program of higher education, social service and industrialism, until these latter have come to absorb very largely the time and strength of the missionary body. And there has been a disposition to regard the mission aries who have continued to make evangelism their chief concern as painfully old-fashioned, and their, work— well, of rather negligible value, to say the least. But the spiritually discerning eye can hardly fail to see, in what has lately transpired in China, a clear and strong vindica tion of the evangelistic policy and method. Suddenly, under the stress of the anti-foreign agitation, the mis sionaries were compelled to evacuate and the personal activities in the field came to a standstill. Huge mission plants, consisting largely of highly equipped and costly institutions of learning, were either destroyed or badly damaged. Many of the surviving ones remain closed to this day, while others have passed into the hands of Chi nese, who are neither able nor disposed to carry them on along the line of their original purpose. All this repre sents an enormous waste of missionary money and energy. And had the same events taken place in Japan, or in India, the results would have been no different. T he C riterion of M issionary S uccess As we viewed the situation in an extended tour, we were strongly convinced that the truest criterion of a mis sionary’s success is the degree in which his efforts have been thè means of planting the seed of living truth in human hearts, with the result that individuals have been truly regenerated, and united together into indigenous churches that will propagate their faith, win others to Christ, and exert a vital and growing spiritual and moral influence in the community and nation. Such results will abide and increase long after the missionary has passed off the scene. We would not be misunderstood to be disparaging educational work. We value it highly in its true place and proportion. But we are bound to feel that in the missionary program of late years it has been greatly over stressed, and developed so disproportionately to the work of evangelism and the building up of an indigenous church that it has become a ponderous superstructure resting upon an altogether inadequate foundation. Forced to these abnormal proportions, education ceases to fulfill its proper function of aiding evangelism and strengthen ing the life of the Church, and becomes a liability rather than an asset. When, added to this, materialistic and rationalistic tendencies are allowed to creep into education —and this has been the case to a serious degree in some fields—then the results are not merely negative, but positively disastrous by exposing youth to the snare of
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