CHAPTER IV FOREIGN MISSIONS OR WORLD-WIDE EVANGELISM BY ROBERT E. SPEER, SECRETARY BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, U. S. A., NEW YORK CITY
Argument in behalf of foreign missions is generally either needless or useless. It is needless with believers; with unbe liever's it is useless. And yet not wholly so; for often be lievers and unbelievers alike have taken their opinions at second hand, and an honest first hand study of the facts and principles of the missionary enterprise leads the one group to believe with deeper conviction and a firmer hope, and shakes the scepticism and opposition of the others who have known neither the aims nor the motives which inspire the movement. Because foreign missions is a religious movement, how ever, the fundamental argument for it is of necessity a re ligious argument, and will be conclusive only in proportion as the religious convictions on which it rests are accepted. It rests first of all upon God. If men believe in God they must believe in foreign missions. I t is in the very being and char acter of God that the deepest ground of the missionary en terprise is to be found. We cannot think of God except in terms which necessitate the missionary idea. He is one. There cannot, therefore, be such different tribal or racial gods as are avowed in the ethnic religions of the East, and assumed in the ethnic politics of the West. Whatever God exists for America exists for all the world, and none other exists. And that cannot be true of God in America which is not true of Him also in India. Men are not free to 64
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