Foreign Missions or World Wide Evangelism 73 as if our country is already a dead .thing,” says one of the characters in Uchimura’s dialogue on “The Future of Japan. “Yes,” is the reply, “immoral nation is already dead. With all its shows of stability, a nation without a high ideal is a dead corpse. Japan under the Satsuma Choshu Government is a dead nation.” “You speak very determinedly.” “Yes,” re plies Uchimura, “I have to; I cannot bear to see my nation die.” And there are many who do not wish to see their nations die in Asia, who turn to Christ. “All over India,” wrote Dr. Cuthbert Hall to the missionaries there when he left India, with India’s need upon his heart and its poison in his blood, “all over India are men unprepared to identify them selves with any Christian denomination, to whom the popular forms of the ancient faith have become inadequate, if not dis tasteful, and for whom the name of Jesus Christ and the distinctive truths connected with that name for the redemption of individuals and the reconstruction of the social order, are taking on new attractiveness and value.” The fact that the world is awaking to its need, whether it understands Christ or not, adds a pathos to its mute appeal to those who have in custody the Gospel of God in His Son. For it is only that Gospel that can meet the world’s need. Commerce and government, philanthropy and education, deal with it superficially, and in the hands of shallow or evil men only accentuate it. A force is needed which will cut down to the roots, which deals with life in the name and by the power of God, which marches straight upon the soul and reconstructs character, which saves men one by one. Here we are flat upon the issue, and not to evade or confuse it, I will put it unmistakably. I t is our duty to carry Christianity to the world because the world needs to be saved, and Christ alone can save it. The world needs to be saved from want and disease and injustice and inequality and impurity and lust and hope lessness and fear, because individual men need to be saved from sin and death, and only Christ can save them. His is -
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