Foreign Missions or World Wide Evangelism 75 need. Man cannot save himself or make anything out of him self. He needs what God and God alone can do for him. If that is true of Europe and America it is true of all the rest of the world. Jesus Christ is the one Saviour of men and each man in the world needing that Saviour has a right to look to those who know of Him to tell of Him to all mankind. Even as a purely religious movement, however, there are some who object to foreign missions on the ground that there are other religions in the world which are true for their fol lowers and which meet their needs as truly as Christianity meets ours. They say that a fair comparison of Christianity with other religions destroys the claim of Christianity and makes foreign missions unnecessary. Is this true? What are the conclusions which such a comparison presents? 1. In the first place it is a significant fact that Christianity is the only religion which is trying to make good its claim to universalism. None of the non-Christian religions is making any real effort to do so. Mohammedanism is spreading in Africa and India, but it makes no effort of any significance to convert America or Europe or Japan. The bounds of Confucianism are contracting. Shintoism has withdrawn irom the lists as a religion, and claims now only the place of a court ceremonial and a burial rite. Zoroastrianism, one of the worthiest of the ancient religions, has almost vanished in the land of its origin, and numbers comparatively few adherents in India. Hinduism is geographically limited, save as a philosophy, by its principle of caste, and Buddhism is rejected in Japan by the very men who might succeed in propagating it elsewhere. But Chris tianity is moving out over all the earth with steadily increasing power, with ever multiplying agencies, with ever enlarged de votion, and with open and undiscourageable purpose to prepare for Christ’s kingship over the world. And not less significant than the fact of Christianity’s missionary purpose, is the method of it. With no trust in secular support, in spite of all slanders which charge otherwise, with purely moral agencies -
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