84 The Fundamentals As absolute, it must displace all that is partial or false. It must conquer the world. The people who have it must he a missionary people. This is the solemn duty with which we are charged by our personal experience of the treasure that is in Christ, and this is the solemn duty with which any true comparison of Christianity with the world religions confronts us. Alike from the look within and from the look without we arise with a clear understanding of the missionary character of the re ligion that bears the name of Christ. The attitude of that re ligion is “not one of compromise, but one of conflict and of conquest. It proposes to displace the other religions. The claim of Jeremiah is the claim of Christianity: ‘The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, they shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ The survival of the Creator, joyfully foreseen, is the ground of its confi dence and its endeavor. Christianity thus undertakes a long and laborious campaign, in which it must experience various fortunes and learn patience from trials and delays; but the true state of the case must not be forgotten, namely, that Christianity sets out for victory. The intention to conquer is characteristic of the Gospel. This was the aim of its youth when it went forth among the religions that then surrounded it, and with this aim it must enter any field in which old re ligions are encumbering the religious nature of man. It can not conquer except in love, hut in love it intends to conquer. It means to fill the world.” It must do so in order that the nations may have their Desire and the world its Light.
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