Foreign Missions or World Wide Evangelism 69 shining and burning light, to be set up on every hill, which should blaze the broader and the brighter in the breeze, and go on so spreading over the surrounding territory as that noth ing of this world should ever be able to extinguish or to con ceal it.” The sound doctrine of the Church was safeguarded by the wholesome hygienic reflex action of service and work and conquest. And its light and life convinced men, because men saw them conquering souls. The Church was estab lished to spread Christianity, and to conserve it in the only way in which living things can ever be conserved, by living action. When in any age or in any land the Church has for gotten this, she has paid for her disobedience. So long as there are any unreached men in the world or any unreached life, the business of the Church is her missionary duty. The fourth deep ground of missionary duty is the need of humanity. The world needs Christ today as much and as truly as it needed Him nineteen centuries ago. If Judaism and the Roman Empire needed what Christ brought then, Hin duism and Asia need it now. If they do not need Him now, no more was He needed then. If they can get along without Him just as well, the whole world can dispense with Him. If there is no missionary duty, the ground falls from under the ne cessity, and therefore from under the reality of the incarna tion. But that world into which He came did need Christ. Men were dead without Him. I t was He who gave them life, who cleansed their defilement, who taught them purity and service and equality and faith and gave them hope and fel lowship. He alone can do this now. The non-Christian world needs now what Christ and Christ alone can do for it. It needs the physical wholeness, the fitting of life to its conditions, which, as a matter of fact, men get just in pro portion as they get Christ. We do not need to go for proof of such needs to any overcolored, distorted accounts of those who see only the good of Christendom and only the evil of heathenism—heathenism is a good word, and it describes -
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker