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September 1929
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
T ho se C u s tom a ry S in s B y C hristopher G. H azard , D.D. Catskill, N . V.
H IS NAM E” (Acts 15:14-17) ? That the Lord Jesus died “not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children o f God that were scat tered abroad”? Not for “this nation” only but also for those “other sheep” that He “must bring.” Viewed proportionately, does the expenditure of en ergy and money in Gospel activity at home show that -we have realized that “the Field is the World,” that some where, scattered among the millions of China, India, Africa, America and all the other lands are those whom God in His foreknowledge has given to Christ and of whom He has said “A ll that the Father hath given Me shall come to Me” : “Them also, I must bring”? If So, how is it that such words as these can still be written:— “Of Japan there are more people unevangelized within her enlarged borders today than there were when Chris tian Missions began their work” (Dr. Axling). Mr. Sturt of Mongolia has recently been preaching to tribes who have never been visited since Gilmour was there thirty years ago. Tibet, and vast regions in Central Asia are unoccupied. “It is a commonly accepted fallacy that the geographical task of Missions has been practically ac complished . . . at least in countries like China or India, but there are 333 counties in China with 166,500 towns and villages and a population of 38,508,305 without a single evangelistic center or a single Christian. Of India it is true to say that if we took up all the missionaries and planted them down well outside the region of all estab lished work, we could begin the whole missionary- task over again and leave enough territory still unoccupied to repeat the process yet again. In Indo-China the need is represented by one Protestant to 43,471 of the population. In Arabia there are not 20 Christians in a population of over four millions and a half. In Colombia one church member to 10,883 of the population and in Ecuador but one to 16,950. 6,000,000 square miles of South America is almost entirely untouched.” With these facts before us can we be said to “love His appearing” if we are not carrying out His command to “lift up your eyes and look on the fields”? To “look attentively,” “contemplate ” “consider,” “study.” On the “fields,” not little local spots, but great open spaces, coun tries, lands, coasts, regions, for so is the word otherwise translated. Then to “pray” the Lord of the Harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest, and the word “pray” here means “to be in want,” “to want,” “to beseech.” To pray as the poor distracted father did when he said “Master, I beseech Thee, look upon my son, for he is my only child” (Luke 9:38) ; and if we do so pray, and He says to us “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” what shall be our answer ? What does His “Go ye” mean to us? Why is the coming of the Lord delayed ? Are we wrong in saying that He is waiting for the completion of His Church? “To take out o f them a people for His Name . . . . AFTER TH IS I W ILL RE TU RN . . (Acts 15:14-17) ; “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him OF WHOM TH E Y H A V E N O T HEARD? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:13-14). HOW? If we are not concerned as to how, and by whom, can we be loving His appearing? God stir us all up to show that we DO love His appearing by emulating the great Apostle and coming to the help of our Lord to gather His saints together unto Himself. “A fte r this I will return.”
T HEY say that humanity can get used to anything. A certain writer of note has testified that when he crossed the ocean as a steerage passenger in order to get a new experience, he found that after a short time he be came naturalized to the coarse fare, the coarser company, and the coarsest customs of his situation. The finer tastes, selected associations, and dainty habits of his previous life left him like a discarded garment, and he discovered how easy it is to drop from the refinements of society to a low plane of rude living. He was comfortable when he ought to have been miserable. It certainly is remarkably easy to abandon charac teristics that have been laboriously acquired and find sat isfaction in the absence of things that have seemed essen tial. It requires effort to go up hill, but none to go down. We naturally gravitate downward, and in all respects, both material and moral, there is a tendency to fall which takes advantage of the slightest carelessness. Not only is this personally true, but in social life the same rule holds. Questionable changes in the standards of private and pub lic life are condemned today, adopted tomorrow, and mat ters of course the day after. What was shocking last year may be the fashionable thing this year. We can forget in a short time the difficult and valuable education of past years and submit to much lower grades of living without regret. The traveler in the Orient finds it easy to regard the Ten Commandments as applying only to America. The elegant gentleman adopts the dress and language of the backwoodsman after arriving in the backwoods. To resume his old customs after his return from a long so journ in a different sphere is a matter that requires con siderable application. For various reasons we are trying a steerage passage and visiting an alien country at present. In the last ten years more changes have affected our standards of be havior than can be enumerated. In both church and state, revolutions, revisions and substitutions have taken place with regard to once-recognized and established proprieties, until they have become in many cases as obsolete as the dress that appears on the fashion plate of fifty years ago. Is T h is P rogress or R etrogression ? As these are merely surface changes they are no more morally significant than the differences in styles of dress above referred to, but as they indicate differences of prin ciple they affect character. It is character that is in ques tion. The churchman and the moralist must ask of change its reason. Is it only a new fashion in the path of prog ress, or is it retrogression in the nature of degeneration? Familarity with evil may mean contempt for good. Pub lic opinion may decline to the endorsement of what it should rebuke. The experience of the world that has cost it so much may be afraid to counsel with its wisdom the immaturity of a generation that seems bent on trying very costly social experiments over again. Custom may be mak ing cowards of us all as it elbows out of the way the tried and eternal religious and ethical verities of the past. Why are people so largely deserting the religious cus toms of their fathers? Why do we hear so much about the bettering of the world in things of science and luxury, but so little about the transgression of God’s laws and the wrath of God that must follow sin? There is no mercy in law, in nature or in morals ; mercy is obtainable
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