THE KING’ S BUSINESS 197 social influence o f distributing their friends among the committees, and then when the committees are formed there is nothing to commit to them. “ This is a nation which loves to go through the motions of public meeting, whether there is anything particularly important to consider or not. It is an interesting thing to me how the American is born knowing how to conduct a public meeting. I remember that when I was a lad I belonged to an organiza tion which at that time seemed to me very important, which was known as the Lightfoot Baseball Club. Our clubroom was. a corner, an unoccupied corner, of the loft of my father’s barn—the part that the hay had not encroached upon —and I distinctly remember how we used to conduct orderly meetings of the club in that comer o f the loft. I had never seen a'public meeting, and I do not believe any of the other lads with whom I was associated had ever seen a pub lic meeting, but we somehow knew how to conduct one. We knew how to make motions and second them; we knew that a motion could not have more than two amendments offered at the same time, and we knew, the order in which the amendments had to be put, the second amendment before the first. How .we knew it I don’t know. We were born that way, I .suppose. But nothing very important happened at those meetings, and I have been present at some church organization meetings at which nothing more important happened than hap pened with the Lightfoot Baseball Club. And I remember distinctly that my delight and interest were in the meetings, not in what they were fo r ; just the sense of belonging to an organization and doing something with the organiza tion, it didn’t very much matter what. Some churches are organized that way. They are exceedingly active about nothing.” The great need of the church today is not more organization, but less organization and more power. There are times, of course, when organizations are absolutely necessary, but we have altogether too many of them today, and while new ones may bemeeded for some lines of work, it is the part of wisdom to hesitate long before organizing any new society in our churches. O f course, we do not know exactly what Mr. Strayer had in mind by “ what is popularly, spoken of as soul winning,” but certainly Jesus spent His whole life in what is properly known as soul winning, and in what is known as soul winning in aggressive evangelistic circles today. On two occasions the Lord Himself defined the purpose of His coming into this world. One of these defi nitions we find in Luke 19:10: “ For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” That certainly is what is properly known as soul win ning, and what is commonly known as soul winning in evangelistic circles today —the seeking out and saving of definite lost men, women and- children; the bringing of- definite lost men and women and children to a definite acceptance of a definite'Saviour. Our Lord’s other definition of His purpose of coming into this world is found in John 10:10: “ I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” Certainly this is soul winning as properly known and as commonly spoken of in evangelistic circles—the ,bringing of definite men, women and children unto a definite obtaining of life by a definite accept- In an article on “ Evangelism—A Bigger Word Than Suspected,” in The Continent, December 30, 1915, Paul Was Jesus a Soul Winner? Moore Strayer makes the following astoriishing state ment: “ The truth is that Jesus spent almost no time in what is popularly spoken of as ‘soul winning.’ ”
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