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+Project Gutenberg's Quiet Talks with World Winners, by S. D. Gordon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Quiet Talks with World Winners
+
+Author: S. D. Gordon
+
+Release Date: July 1, 2004 [EBook #12799]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUIET TALKS WITH WORLD WINNERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+Quiet Talks with World Winners
+
+By
+
+S. D. Gordon
+
+Author of "Quiet Talks on Power," "Quiet Talks About Jesus," "Quiet Talks
+on Personal Problems," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+I. World-winning
+
+  1. The Master Passion
+  2. The Master's Plan
+  3. The Need
+  4. The Present Opportunity
+  5. The Pressing Emergency
+  6. The Past Failure
+  7. The Coming Victory
+
+
+II. Winning Forces
+
+  1. The Church
+  2. Each One of Us
+  3. Jesus
+  4. The Holy Spirit
+  5. Prayer
+  6. Money
+  7. Sacrifice
+
+
+
+
+The Master Passion
+
+
+
+  The Earliest Calvary Picture.
+  The Love Passion.
+  Mother-love.
+  The Genesis Picture.
+  God Giving Himself.
+  God's Fellow.
+  The Genesis Water-mark.
+  A Human Picture of God.
+  On a Wooing Errand.
+  Jesus' World-passion.
+
+
+
+
+The Master Passion
+
+
+
+<u>The Earliest Calvary Picture.</u>
+
+
+There's a great passion burning in the heart of God. It is tenderly warm
+and tenaciously strong. Its fires never burn low, nor lose their fine
+glow. That passion is to win man back home again. The whole world of man
+is included in its warm, eager reach.
+
+The old home hearth-fire of God is lonely since man went away. The family
+circle is broken. God will not rest until that old home circle is complete
+again, and every voice joining in the home songs.
+
+It is an <i>overmastering</i> passion, the overmastering passion of God's
+heart. It has guided and controlled all His thoughts and plans for man
+from the first. The purpose of winning man, and the whole race, back again
+is the dominant gripping passion of God's heart to-day. Everything is made
+to bend to this one end.
+
+When Eden's tragedy came so early, to darken the pages of this old Book,
+and, far worse, to darken the pages of human life, there is a great
+glimpse of this passion of God's heart in the guarding of those Eden
+gates. The presence of the angels with their sword of flame told plainly
+of a day when man would be coming back again to the old Eden home of God.
+The place must be carefully guarded for him.
+
+This is a <i>love</i> passion, a passion of love. And love itself is the master
+passion both of the human heart and of God's heart. Nothing can grip and
+fill and sway the heart either of man or God like that.
+
+We would all easily agree that the greatest picture of God's marvellous,
+overmastering passion of love is seen in the cross. All men as they have
+come to know that story have stood with heads bowed and bared before the
+love revealed there. They have not understood it. They have quarrelled
+about its meaning. But they have acknowledged its love and power as beyond
+that of any other story or picture.
+
+However men may differ as to why Jesus died, and how His dying affects us,
+they all agree that the scene of the cross is the greatest revelation of
+love ever known or ever shown. All theories of the atonement seem to be
+lost sight of in one thought of grateful acknowledgment of a stupendous
+love, as men are drawn together by the magnetism of the hill-top of
+Calvary.
+
+But there is a wondrously clear foreshadowing of that tremendous cross
+scene in the earliest page of this old Book. Nowhere is love, God's
+passion of love, made to stand out more distinctly and vividly than in the
+first chapter of Genesis. The after-scene of the cross uses intenser
+coloring; the blacks are inkier in their blackness; the reds deeper and
+redder; the contrasts sharper to the startling-point; yet there is nothing
+in the cross chapters of the Gospels not included fully in this first leaf
+of revelation. But it has taken the light of the cross to open our eyes to
+see how much is plainly there. Let us look at it a bit.
+
+
+
+<u>The Love Passion.</u>
+
+
+What is this greatest of passions called love? There is no word harder to
+get a satisfactory definition of. Because, whatever you say about it,
+there comes quickly to your mind some one who loves you, or you think of
+the passion that burns in your own heart for some one. And, as you think
+of that, no words that anybody may use seem at all strong enough, or
+tender enough, to tell what love is, as you know it in your own inner
+heart.
+
+Yet I think this much can be said--love is the tender, strong outgoing of
+your whole being to another. It is a passion burning like a fire within
+you, a soft-burning but intense fire within you, for some other one. Every
+mention of that name stirs the flame into new burning. Every passing or
+lingering thought of him or her is like fresh air making the flames leap
+up more eagerly. And each personal contact is a clearing out of all the
+ashes, and a turning on of all the draughts, to feed new oxygen for
+stronger, fresher burning.
+
+There are many other things that seem like love. Kindliness and
+friendliness, and even intenser emotions, use love's name for themselves.
+But though these have likenesses to love, they are not love. They have
+caught something of its warm glow. A bit of the high coloring of its
+flames plays on them. But they are not the real thing, only distant
+kinsfolk. The severe tests of life quickly reveal their lack.
+
+Love itself is really an aristocrat. It allows very, very few into its
+inner circle, often only one. The real thing of love is never selfish. Now
+we know very well that in the thick of life the fine gold of love gets
+mixed up with the baser metals. It is very often overlaid, and shot
+through with much that is mean and low. Rank selfishness, both the coarse
+kind and the refined, cultured sort, seeks a hiding-place under its cloak.
+But the stuff mixed in it is not love, but a defiling of it. That is a bit
+of the slander it suffers for a time, from the presence in life of sin.
+
+Weeds with their poison, and snakes and spiders with their deadly venom,
+draw life from the sun. That is a bit of the bad transmuting the good,
+pure sun into its own sort. The sun itself never produces poison or any
+hurtful thing.
+
+Love itself is never mean, nor bad, nor selfish. The man who truly loves
+the woman whom he would have for his own lifelong, closest companion is
+not selfish. He does not want her chiefly for his own sake, but for her
+sake, that so he may guard and care for her, and her life be fully grown
+in the sunlight of the love it must have. And, if you think that is
+idealizing it out of all practical reach, please remember that true love
+will steadily refuse the union that would not be best for the loved one.
+
+What is the finest and highest love that we know? There are many different
+sorts and degrees of love revealed in man's relation with his fellow:
+conjugal, the love between husband and wife; paternal, the love of a
+father for his child; maternal, the mother's love for her child; filial,
+the love of children for father and mother; fraternal, or brotherly,
+meaning really the love of children of the same parents for each other,
+both brothers and sisters--the same word is used for love between friends
+where there is no tie of blood; and patriotic, or love for one's country.
+And under that last word may be loosely grouped the love that one may have
+for any special object, to which he may devote his life, outside of
+personal relationships, such as music or any profession or occupation.
+
+This is putting them in their logical order. Though in our experience we
+know the father-and mother-love for ourselves first; and then in turn the
+others, so far as they come to us, until we complete the circle and reach
+the climax of father-and mother-love in ourselves going out to another.
+
+
+
+<u>Mother-love.</u>
+
+
+Now of these sorts and degrees which is the highest and finest? Well, your
+answer to that question will depend entirely on your own experience; as
+every answer and every thought we have of everything does. All children
+have mothers, or have had, but thousands of children don't know a mother's
+love.
+
+I was speaking one time in New York City about the conception, of which
+the Bible is so full, that God is a mother. And the English evangelist
+Gypsy Smith, who lost his mother when very young, but who had an unusually
+devoted father, said with charming simplicity that he could not just see
+how God could be called a mother, but he knew He was a father. And then he
+went on to speak very winsomely of God as a father.
+
+Many times love is not born in the heart at all, until there comes into
+the life some one clear outside of one's own kin. Many a woman never knows
+love until it is awakened in her heart by him who henceforth is to be a
+part of herself.
+
+But the common answer, that most people everywhere give to that question,
+is that <i>a mother's love</i> is the greatest human love we know. And if you
+press them to tell why they think so, this stands out oftenest and
+strongest--that it is because she gives so much of herself. She gives her
+very life. If need be, she sacrifices everything in life, and then
+sacrifices life itself, going out into the darkness of death that her
+child may come into fulness and sweetness of life. This is the mother
+spirit, giving one's very self to bring life to another.
+
+The mother gives her very life-blood that the new life may come. And, if
+need be, will gladly give her life <i>out</i> to the death that the new life
+may come into life. And yet more, she gives her life out daily and yearly,
+throughout its length, that so the full strength and fragrance of life may
+come in her child's life.
+
+Yet, when all this has been said, I am strongly inclined to think that the
+mother's love, though the greatest that can be found in any one heart, is
+not the perfect, fully grown love. The human unit is not a man nor a
+woman, but a man <i>and</i> a woman. Perfect love requires more than one or two
+for its matured growth into full life. It cannot exist in its full
+strength and fragrant sweets except where three are joined together to
+draw out its full depth and meaning.
+
+There must be two whose hearts are fully joined in love, each finding
+answering and ever-satisfying love in the other; and so each love growing
+to full ripeness in the warm sunshine of the other love. And then there
+needs to be a third one, who comes as a result of that mutual love, and
+who constantly draws out the love of the other two.
+
+For love in itself is creative. It yearns to bring into being another upon
+whom it may freely lavish itself. That other one must be of its own sort,
+upon its own level. Nothing less ever satisfies. And so the love poured
+out draws out to itself an answering love fully as full as its own. And
+then, having yearned, it does more. It creates. It must create. It must
+bring forth life; and life like its own in all its powers and privileges.
+This is the very life of love in its full expression.
+
+Yet to say all this is simply to spell out fully, in all its letters and
+syllables, the great, the greatest of passions, mother-love, which we
+agreed a moment ago was the highest. For mother-love is not restricted to
+woman, though among us humans it often finds its brightest expressions in
+her. It knows no restriction of sex. It is simply love at its fullest and
+highest and freest and tenderest; free to do as it will, and to do it as
+fully as it will. Love left to itself, free to do as its heart dictates,
+will give its very self, its life, that life may come to another. This is
+the great passion called love, the greatest of all passions.
+
+
+
+<u>The Genesis Picture.</u>
+
+
+Now, maybe you think we have swung pretty far away from that first chapter
+of the Genesis revelation. No; you are mistaken there. We have been
+walking, with rapid stride, by the shortest road, straight into its inner
+heart. Let us look a bit at the picture of God sketched for us in this
+earliest page of revelation.
+
+There are two creations here, first of the earth, man's home; and then of
+man himself who was to live in the home. Here at once in the beginning is
+mother-love. Before the new life comes the mother is absorbed in getting
+the home ready; the best and softest and homiest home that her mother-love
+can think of, and her fingers fix. The same mother instinct in the birds
+spends itself in getting the nest ready, and then patiently broods until
+the new occupants come to take possession.
+
+The Bible never calls God a mother, though the mother language, as here,
+is used of Him many times. It takes more of the human to tell the divine.
+You must take many words, and several of our human relationships, and put
+them together, in the finest meaning of each, to get near the full meaning
+of what God is. Up on the higher level, with God, the word "father" really
+includes all that both father and mother mean to us.
+
+The word "father" is even used once of God in what we think of as the
+strict mother sense. In speaking of God's early care of the Hebrews Paul
+says, "as a <i>nursing-father</i> bore he them in the wilderness."[1] That word
+"nursing-father" is peculiar in coupling the distinctive function of the
+mother in caring for the babe with the word father.
+
+The word "father" applied to God includes not only our meaning of father
+in all its strength as we know it at its best; but all of the meaning of
+the word "mother," in all its sweet fragrance, as we have had it breathed
+into our own very life.
+
+We have come commonly to think of the word mother as a tenderer word than
+father. Though I have met many, both men and women, who unconsciously
+revealed that their experience has made father the tenderer, and the
+tenderest word to them. Father stands commonly for the stronger, more
+rugged qualities; and mother for the finer, gentler, sweeter, maybe
+softer qualities, in the strong meaning of that word soft.
+
+
+
+<u>God Giving Himself.</u>
+
+
+Here in this Genesis story the creation of the whole sun-system to give
+life to the earth, and of the earth itself, was the outward beginning of
+this greatest passion of love in the heart of God. And if you would know
+more of that love in this early stage of it, just look a bit at the home
+itself. It has been pretty badly mussed, soiled and hurt by sin's foul
+touch. Yet even so it is a wonder of a world in its beauty and
+fruitfulness. What must it have been before the slime and tangle of sin
+got in! But that's a whole story by itself. We must not stop there just
+now.
+
+When the home was ready God set Himself to bringing the new life He was
+planning. And He did it, even as father and mother of our human kind and
+of every other kind do:--He gave some of Himself. He breathed into man His
+own life-breath. He came Himself, and with the warmth and vitality of His
+life brought a new life. The new life was a bit of Himself.
+
+That phrase, "breathed into his nostrils," brings to us the conception of
+the closest personal, physical contact; two together in most intimate
+contact, and life passing from one to the other. The picture of Elijah
+stretching his warm body upon that of the widow's son until the
+life-breath came again comes instinctively to mind. And its companion
+scene comes with it, of Elisha lying prone upon the child, mouth to
+mouth, eye to eye, hand to hand, until the breath again softly reentered
+that little, precious body.
+
+And if all this seems too plain and homely a way to talk about the great
+God, let us remember it is the way of this blessed old Book. It is the
+only way we shall come to know the marvellous intimacy and tenderness of
+God's love, and of God's touch upon ourselves.
+
+How shall we talk best about God so as to get clear, sensible ideas about
+Him? Why not follow the rule of the old Bible? Can we do better? It
+constantly speaks of Him in the language that we use of men. The scholars,
+with their fondness for big words, say the Bible is anthropomorphic. That
+simply means that it uses man's words, and man's ideas of things in
+telling about God. It makes use of the common words and ideas, that man
+understands fully, to tell about the God, whom he doesn't know. Could
+there be a more sensible way? Indeed, how else could man understand?
+
+Some dear, godly people have sometimes been afraid of the use of simple,
+homely language in talking about God. To speak of Him in the common
+language of every-day life, the common talk of home and kitchen, and shop
+and street and trade, seems to them lacking in due reverence. Do they
+forget that this is the language of the common people? And of our good old
+Anglo-Saxon Bible? Has anybody ever yet used as blunt homely, talk as this
+old Book uses? And has any other book stuck into people's memories and
+hearts with such burr-like hold as it has?
+
+That breathing by God into man's nostrils of the breath of life suggests
+the intensest concentration of strength and thought and heart. The whole
+heart of God went out to man in that breath that brought life.
+
+
+
+<u>God's Fellow.</u>
+
+
+The whole thought of God's heart was to have a man <i>like Himself</i>. Over
+and over again, with all the peculiar emphasis of repetition, it is said
+that the man was to be in the very image, or likeness, of God. God gave
+Himself that the man might be a bit of Himself. Here is the love-passion,
+the mother-passion, the father-mother-passion, in its highest mood, and at
+its own finest work.
+
+The man was to be the very best, that so he might have fellowship of the
+most intimate sort with God. Of course, only those who are alike can have
+fellowship. Only in that particular thing which any two have in common can
+they have fellowship together. Let me use a common word in its old, fine,
+first meaning: man was made to be <i>God's fellow</i>, His most intimate
+associate and companion.
+
+As you read this early story in Genesis of God's passion of love, you
+know, if you stop to think into it, that if ever the need for it came, He
+will climb any Calvary hill, however steep, and receive the jagging nails
+of any cross, however cutting, for the sake of His darling child--man.
+
+This love-passion never faileth. There is no emergency that can arise
+that is too great for love's resources. Any danger, however great, every
+need, no matter how distressing, is already provided for by love. The
+emergency may sorely test and tax love to its last limit, but it can never
+outdo it, nor outstrip it in the race. No matter how great the danger,
+love is a bit greater. No matter how strong the enemy threatening, love is
+always yet stronger. However deep down into the very vitals of life the
+poison-sting may sink its fangs, love goes yet deeper, neutralizing the
+deadly influence with its own fresh life-blood.
+
+Have you ever looked into a single drop of water and seen the sun? the
+whole of that brilliant ball of fire there in one tiny drop of water?
+Well, there's one word on this first leaf of the Book which contains the
+clear reflection, sharply outlined, of the whole creation story; ah! yes,
+more than that, of the whole Gospel story.
+
+Come here and look; you can see in its clear surface the form of a man
+climbing a little, steep hill, and being hung, thorn-crowned, upon a cross
+of pain and shame. It is in chapter one, verse two, the word "brooding."
+The old version and the Revision, both English and American, have the word
+"moved." The Revisions add "brooding" in the margin. And that is the root
+meaning of the word underneath our English--"brooding," or, rendered more
+fully, "was brooding tremulous with love."
+
+
+
+
+<u>The Genesis Water-mark.</u>
+
+
+That English word "brooding," as well as the old word underneath, is a
+mother word. The brooding hen sits so faithfully, day after day, upon the
+eggs, bringing the new lives by the vital warmth of her own body. The
+mother-bird nestles softly down upon the nest in the crotch of the tree,
+patiently, expectantly brooding, by the strength of her own life giving
+life to the coming young. She who, in the holiest, greatest function
+entrusted to her, comes nearest to God in creative power and love--the
+mother of our human kind, broods for long months over her coming child,
+giving her very life, until the crisis of birth comes; and then broods
+still, for months and years longer, that the new life may come into
+fulness of life. That is the great word used here.
+
+Now, will you please notice very keenly the connection in which it occurs.
+It was because the earth was "waste and void, and darkness upon the face
+of the deep," that the Spirit of God was brooding. It is only fair to say
+that our scholarly friends who think in Hebrew are divided as to the
+meaning here. Some think that these words, "waste and void," simply
+indicate a stage, or step, in the processes of creation.
+
+But others of them are just as positive in saying that the words point
+plainly to a disaster of some sort that took place. In their view the
+whole story of creation is in the ten opening words of the chapter. Then
+follows a bad break of some sort; then the brooding of God in verse two;
+and the rest of the chapter is taken up in what is practically a reshaping
+up again of the whole affair. Some of this second group of Hebrew scholars
+have made this translation,--"the earth became a waste," or "a wreck," or
+"a ruin," or "without inhabitant."
+
+If we may so read it now, it gives a world of additional meaning to this
+word "brooding." Here was love not merely giving life, but giving itself
+to overcome a disaster. The brooding was to mend a break. Love creates. It
+also redeems. It stoops down with great patience, and washes the dirt and
+filth thoroughly off, in the best cleansing liquid to be found, and brings
+the cleansed, redeemed man back again.
+
+Love does indeed create. It gave man the power to choose freely, without
+any restriction, whatever he would choose to choose. Redeeming love does
+more. It woos him to choose the right, and only the right. It gets down by
+his side after his eyesight has become twisted, and his will badly kinked
+by wrong choosing, and patiently, persistently works to draw him up to the
+level of choosing right. Love makes us like God in the power of choice.
+But there's a greater task ahead. It makes us yet more like Him in the
+desire to choose only the right, and in the power to choose it, too. All
+this is in that marvellous world of a word--"brooding."
+
+The whole story of the sacrifice of Calvary is included in this wondrous
+first leaf of revelation. If we had lost the Gospels, and didn't know
+their story, nor the history of man, we yet could know from this Genesis
+page that, if ever the need arose, God would lavishly give out His very
+life, at any cost of suffering and pain, that His man might be saved.
+John, three, sixteen is in the first chapter of Genesis. Calvary is in the
+creation. God gave His breath to man in creation, and His blood for man on
+Calvary. He gave His blood because He had given His breath. Each was His
+very life.
+
+You know the way publishers have of putting an imprint in a book by means
+of what is called a water-mark. By the skilful use of water in
+manufacturing the paper, a name or trade imprint is made a part of the
+very paper of which the book is made.
+
+Have you ever noticed God's water-mark on the paper of this first leaf of
+His Book? Hold your Bible up as we talk; separate this first leaf and hold
+it up to the light and try to see through it. The best light to use is
+that which came from Calvary. Can you see the water-mark plainly imprinted
+there? Look closely and carefully, for it is there. In clear-cut outline,
+every bit of it showing sharply out, is a cross. And if you look still
+more closely you will find this water-mark different from those in common
+use, in this--<i>there is a distinct blood-red tinge to it</i>.
+
+
+
+<u>A Human Picture of God.</u>
+
+
+Illustrations of God from our common life are never full, and must not be
+taken too critically, but they are sometimes wonderfully vivid and very
+helpful. Anything that makes God seem real and near helps.
+
+A few years ago I heard a simple story of real life from the lips of a New
+England clergyman. It was told of a brother clergyman of the same
+denomination, and stationed in the same city with the man who told me.
+
+This clergyman had a son, about fourteen years of age, who, of course, was
+going to school. One day the boy's teacher called at the house and asked
+for the father. When they met he said:
+
+"Is your son sick?"
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"He was not at school to-day."
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Nor yesterday."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Nor the day before."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"And I supposed he was sick."
+
+"No, he's not sick."
+
+"Well, I thought I should tell you."
+
+And the father thanked him, and the teacher left. The father sat thinking
+about his son, and those three days. By and by he heard a click at the
+gate, and he knew the boy was coming in. So he went to the door to meet
+him at once. And the boy knew as he looked up that the father knew about
+those three days.
+
+And the father said, "Come into the library, Phil."
+
+And Phil went and the door was shut.
+
+Then the father said very quietly, "Phil, your teacher was here a little
+while ago. He tells me you were not at school to-day, nor yesterday, nor
+the day before. And we thought you were. You let us think you were. And
+you don't know how bad I feel about this. I have always said I could trust
+my boy Phil. I always have trusted you. And here you have been a living
+lie for three whole days. I can't tell you how bad I feel about it."
+
+Well, it was hard on the boy to be talked to in that gentle way. If his
+father had spoken to him roughly, or had taken him out to the wood-shed,
+in the rear of the dwelling, it wouldn't have been nearly so hard.
+
+Then the father said, "We'll get down and pray." And the thing was getting
+harder for Phil all the time. He didn't want to pray just then. Most
+people don't about that time.
+
+And they got down on their knees, side by side. And the father poured out
+his heart in prayer. And the boy listened. Somehow he saw himself in the
+looking-glass of his knee-joints as he hadn't before. It is queer about
+that mirror of the knee-joints, the things you see in it. Most people
+don't like to use it much. And they got up from their knees. The father's
+eyes were wet. And Phil's eyes were not dry.
+
+Then the father said, "My boy, there's a law of life, that where there is
+sin there is suffering. You can't get those two things apart. Wherever
+there is suffering there has been sin, somewhere, by somebody. And
+wherever there is sin there will be suffering, for some one, somewhere;
+and likely most for those closest to you."
+
+"Now," he said, "my boy, you have done wrong. So we'll do this. You go
+up-stairs to the attic. I'll make a little bed for you there in the
+corner. We'll bring your meals up to you at the usual times. And you stay
+up in the attic three days and three nights, as long as you've been a
+living lie." And the boy didn't say a word. They climbed the attic steps.
+The father kissed his boy, and left him alone.
+
+Supper-time came, and the father and mother sat down to eat. But they
+couldn't eat for thinking of their son. The longer they chewed on the food
+the bigger and drier it got in their mouths. And swallowing was clear out
+of the question. And the mother said, "Why don't you eat?" And he said
+softly, "Why don't <i>you</i> eat?" And, with a catch in her throat, she said,
+"I can't, for thinking of Phil." And he said, "That's what's bothering
+me."
+
+And they rose from the supper-table, and went into the sitting-room. He
+took up the evening paper, and she began sewing. His eyesight was not very
+good. He wore glasses, and to-night they seemed to blur up. He couldn't
+see the print distinctly. It must have been the glasses, of course. So he
+took them off, and wiped them with great care, and then found the paper
+was upside-down. And she tried to sew. But the thread broke, and she
+couldn't seem to get the thread into the needle again. How we all reveal
+ourselves in just such details!
+
+By and by the clock struck ten, their usual hour of retiring. But they
+made no move to go. And the mother said quietly, "Aren't you going to
+bed?" And he said, "I'm not sleepy, I think I'll sit up a while longer;
+you go." "No, I guess I'll wait a while too." And the clock struck eleven;
+then the hands clicked around close to twelve. And they arose, and went to
+bed; but not to sleep. Each one pretended to be asleep. And each knew the
+other was not asleep.
+
+After a bit she said--woman is always the keener--"Why don't you sleep?"
+And he said softly, "How did you know I wasn't sleeping? Why don't you
+sleep?" And she said, with that same queer catch in her voice, "I can't,
+for thinking of Phil." He said, "That's the bother with me." And the clock
+struck one; and then two; still no sleep. At last the father said,
+"Mother, I can't stand this. <i>I'm going up-stairs with Phil.</i>"
+
+And he took his pillow, and went softly out of the room; climbed the attic
+steps softly, and pressed the latch softly so as not to wake the boy if he
+were asleep, and tiptoed across to the corner by the window. There the boy
+lay, wide-awake, with something glistening in his eyes, and what looked
+like stains on his cheeks. And the father got down between the sheets, and
+they got their arms around each other's necks, for they had always been
+the best of friends, and their tears got mixed up on each other's
+cheeks--you couldn't have told which were the father's and which the
+son's. Then they slept together until the morning light broke.
+
+When sleep-time came the second night the father said, "Good-night,
+mother. I'm going up with Phil again." And the second night he shared his
+boy's punishment in the attic. And the third night when sleep-time came
+again, again he said, "Mother, good-night. I'm going up with the boy." And
+the third night he shared his son's punishment with him.
+
+That boy, now a man grown, in the thews of his strength, my acquaintance
+told me, is telling the story of Jesus with tongue of flame and life of
+flame out in the heart of China.
+
+Do you know, I think that is the best picture of God I have ever run
+across in any gallery of life? It is not a perfect picture. No human
+picture of God is perfect, except of course the Jesus human picture. The
+boy's punishment was arbitrarily chosen by the father, unlike God's
+dealings with our sin. But it is the tenderest and most real of any that
+has come to me.
+
+God couldn't take away sin. It's here. Very plainly it is here. And He
+couldn't take away suffering, out of kindness to us. For suffering is
+sin's index-finger pointing out danger. It is sin's voice calling loudly,
+"Look out! there's something wrong." So He came down in the person of His
+Son, Jesus, and lay down alongside of man for three days and nights, in
+the place where sin drove man.
+
+That's God! And that suggests graphically the great passion of His heart.
+Sin was not ignored. Its lines stood sharply out. The boy in the garret
+had two things burned into his memory, never to be erased: the wrong of
+his own sin, and the strength of his father's love.
+
+Jesus is God coming down into our midst and giving His own very life, and
+then, more, giving it out in death, that He might make us hate sin, and
+might woo and win the whole world, away from sin, back to the intimacies
+of the old family circle again.
+
+
+
+<u>On a Wooing Errand.</u>
+
+
+Jesus was a mirror held up to the Father's face for man to look in. So we
+may know what the Father is like. When you look at Jesus and listen to Him
+you are looking into the Father's heart and listening to its warm
+throbbing. And no one can look there without being caught by the great
+passion burning there, and feeling its intense soft-burning glow, and
+carrying some of it for ever after in his own heart.
+
+Jesus was on <i>a wooing errand</i> to the earth. The whole spirit of His
+dealings with men was that of a great lover, wooing them to the Father. He
+was insistently eager to let men know what His Father was like. He seemed
+jealous of His Father's reputation among men. It had been slandered badly.
+Men misunderstood the Father. He would leave no stone unturned to let men
+know how good and loving and winsome God is. For then they would eagerly
+run back home again to Him. This was His method of approach to the world
+He came to win.
+
+Jesus is the greatest wooer the old world has ever known, and will be the
+greatest winner of what He is after, too. Run thoughtfully through these
+Gospels, and stand by Jesus' side in each one of these simple, tremendous
+incidents of His contact with the common people. Then listen anew to His
+teaching talks, so homely and so gripping. And the impression becomes
+irresistible that the one thought that gripped at every turn, never
+forgotten, was to woo man back to the Father's allegiance.
+
+
+
+<u>Jesus' World-passion.</u>
+
+
+Have you not marked <i>the world-wide swing</i> of Jesus' thought and plan? It
+is stupendous in its freshness and bold daring. The bigness of His idea of
+the thing to be done is immense. To use a favorite phrase of to-day, He
+had <i>a world-consciousness</i>. It is hard for us to realize what a startling
+thing His world-consciousness was. We are so familiar with the Gospels
+that we lose much of their force through mere rote of familiarity.
+
+It takes a determined effort, and the fresh touch of the Holy Spirit, too,
+to have them come with all the freshness of a new book. And then we have
+gotten sort of used in our day, and in our part of the world especially,
+to talking about world-wide enterprises.
+
+We don't realize what a stupendous thing a world-consciousness was in
+Jesus' day. He certainly did not get it from His own generation; not from
+the Jews. It stands out in keen contrast to their ideas. They lived within
+very narrow alleyways. They supposed they were the favorites of God; and
+everybody else--<i>dogs,</i> and <i>damned</i> dogs, too; not in the profane usage,
+but actually.
+
+But Jesus thought of a <i>world</i>, and yearned for a world. The words "world"
+and "earth" are constantly on His lips. He said He came "into the world;"
+not to Palestine; that was only the door He used for entrance. It was from
+Him that John learned, what he wrote down, that He was to "lighten <i>every
+man</i> that cometh into <i>the world</i>."
+
+To the Jewish senator of the inner national circle He said plainly in that
+great sentence that contains the gist of the whole Bible--John, three,
+sixteen--that it was <i>a world</i> he was after. <i>A saved world</i> was the one
+purpose of His errand to the earth. He had come to "<i>save the world</i>,"[2]
+and would stop at nothing short of giving His very self "for the life of
+<i>the world</i>."
+
+He tells His own inner circle that "the field" is a <i>world</i>. And that it
+is to be won by the means He Himself was using; namely, men, human beings,
+"sons of the kingdom"[3] were to be sown as seed all over its vast extent.
+
+You remember, that last week, the request of the Greeks for an
+interview?[4] The outside non-Jewish world came to Him in the visit and
+earnest request of those Greeks. And His whole being became greatly
+agitated. It was as when one, at last, after years of labor without any
+seeming success, gets a first faint glimpse of the results he longs so
+earnestly for. Here was a touch, a glimpse of the very thing on which His
+heart was so set. The great outside world was coming to Him.
+
+The realization of its tremendous meaning, the sure promise it held of the
+day when <i>all the world would be coming</i> seems to set Him all a-tremble
+with intensest emotion. The delight of the possible realizing of His
+life-dream, His earth errand, and yet the terrific conviction that only by
+travelling the red road of the cross could that world be won, made a
+fierce conflict within. It was the world-vision that agitated Him.
+
+And it was that same world-vision that held Him steady. He would not
+scatter. By concentrating all in one act He would generate and set off a
+dynamic power on Calvary that would shake and then shape a world. The
+knowledge that all men would be irresistibly drawn by the loadstone of the
+cross steadied His steps.
+
+A few days later, as He sat resting a bit, on the side of the Hill of
+Olivet, the disciples earnestly ask for some idea of His plan. And He
+explains that the Gospel was to be "preached to the <i>whole inhabited
+earth</i>."[5] That conception was never out of His mind. How could it be!
+
+But the great purpose and passion of His life stands out most sharply in
+the words of that last imperial command. He shows the whole of His heart
+in that stirring "Go ye into <i>all the world</i> and make disciples of <i>all
+the nations</i>"; "preach the gospel to <i>the whole creation</i>." The passion of
+Jesus' heart was to win the world. And that passion has grown intenser in
+waiting. To-day more than ever the one passion of yonder enthroned Man is
+to win His world. Everything else bends to that with Him. Nothing less
+will satisfy His heart.
+
+Now, the God-touched man is always swayed by the same purpose and passion
+as sway God. The passion of every God-touched man, fresh from direct
+contact with Him, is to win the whole world up to God. Everything will be
+held under the strong thumb of this, and made to fit and bend and blend
+into it.
+
+
+
+
+The Master's Plan
+
+
+
+  Will the World Be Won?
+  Some Bad Drifts.
+  Great Incidental Blessings.
+  The World Really Lost.
+  God's Method of Saving.
+  The Programme of World-winnng.
+  Early Moorings.
+  Service Unites.
+  The World-winning Climb.
+
+
+
+
+The Plan
+
+
+
+<u>Will the World Be Won?</u>
+
+
+The great passion of God's heart is a love-passion. Love never fails. It
+waits and, if need be, waits long; but it never fails to get what it is
+waiting for. Love sacrifices; though it never uses that word. It doesn't
+know it <i>is</i> sacrificing, it is so absorbed in its gripping purpose. There
+may be keen-cutting pain, but it is clean forgotten in the passion that
+burns within. God means to win His world of men back home to Himself.
+
+But some earnest friend is thinking of an objection to all this talk about
+a world being won. You are taken all anew with the great picture of God's
+passion of love in the opening page of this old Book. But all the time we
+have been talking together you have been having a cross-cutting train of
+thought underneath. It has been saying, "Isn't this going a bit too far?
+will the whole world be won?"
+
+Let us talk over that a bit. We have been used all our lives to hearing
+about <i>soul-winning</i>. We have been urged, more or less, to do it. A
+favorite motto in some Christian workers' convention has been, "Win one."
+But this idea of winning the world has not been preached. At first it
+doesn't seem exactly orthodox.
+
+The old-time preaching, of which not so much is heard now, except in
+restricted quarters, is that the whole world is lost; and that we are to
+save people out of it. We used to be told that the world is bad, and only
+bad; bad beyond redemption, and doomed. In his earlier years Mr. Moody
+used to say often with his great earnestness that this was a doomed world,
+and that the great business of life was to save men out of it.
+
+But of late years there has been a distinct swing away from this sort of
+preaching and talking. Everything we humans do seems to go by the clock
+movement, the pendulum swing: first one side, then the other. Now we hear
+a very different sort of preaching. This is really a good world. There is
+some wickedness in it, to be sure. Indeed, there is quite a great deal of
+it. But in the main it is not a bad world, we're told.
+
+The old-time preaching was chiefly concerned with getting ready for
+heaven. Now it is concerned, for most part, with living pure, true lives
+right here on the earth. And that change is surely a good one. But it is
+also the common thing to be told that the world is not nearly so bad as we
+have been led to believe.
+
+
+
+<u>Some Bad Drifts.</u>
+
+
+It is striking that with that has come a change of talk about sin, the
+thing that was supposed to be responsible for making the world so bad. Sin
+is not such a damnable thing now, apparently. It is largely
+constitutional weakness, or prenatal predilection, or the idiosyncrasy of
+individuality. (Big words are in favor here. They always make such talk
+seem wise and plausible.) Heaven has slipped largely out of view;
+and--hell, too, even more. Churchmen in the flush of phenomenal material
+prosperity, with full stomachs and luxurious homes and pews, are well
+content with things as they are in this present world, and don't propose
+to move.
+
+And with that it is easy to believe what we are freely told, that there is
+really no need of giving our Christian religion to the heathen world.
+Those peoples have religions of their own that are remarkably good. At
+least they are satisfactory to them. Why disturb them? They are doing very
+well. This talk about their being lost, and needing a Savior, is reckoned
+out of date. The old common statements about so many thousands dying
+daily, and going out into a lost eternity, are not liked. They are called
+lurid. And, indeed, they are not used nearly so much now as once.
+
+This swing away has had a great influence upon the mass of church-members,
+and upon their whole thought of the foreign-mission enterprise. There is a
+vaguely expressed, but distinctly felt idea both in the Church and outside
+of it, for the two seem to overlap as never before--that the sending of
+missionaries is really not to save peoples from being lost. That sort of
+talk is almost vulgar now.
+
+Mission work is really a sort of good-natured neighborliness. It is
+benevolent humanitarianism in which we may all help, more or less (usually
+less), regardless of our beliefs or lack of beliefs, our church-membership
+or attendance. We should show these heathen our improved methods of
+living. We have worked out better plans of housekeeping and schooling, of
+teaching and doctoring, and farming and all the rest of it. And now we
+want to help these poor deficient peoples across the seas.
+
+We think we are a superior people in ourselves, as well as in our type of
+civilization, decidedly so. And having taken good care of ourselves, and
+laid up a good snug sum, we can easily afford to help these backward
+far-away neighbors a bit. It is really the thing to do.
+
+Such seems to be the general drift of much of the present-day talk about
+foreign missions. The Church, and its members individually, have grown so
+rich that we have forgotten that we were ever poor. The table is so loaded
+with dainties that we are quite willing to be generous with the crumbs,
+even cake crumbs.
+
+
+
+<u>Great Incidental Blessings.</u>
+
+
+Now, without doubt the sending of the missionaries has vastly improved
+conditions of human life in the foreign-mission lands. The missionaries
+have been the forerunners of great improvements. They have been the
+pioneers blazing out the paths along which both trade and diplomacy have
+gone with the newer and better civilization of the West. Civilization has
+developed marvellously in the western half of the world. And the
+missionaries have been its advance agents into the stagnant East, and the
+savage wilds of the southern hemisphere.
+
+Full, accurate knowledge of nature's resources and laws, and adaptation of
+that knowledge to practical uses, have been among the most marked
+conditions of the western world during the past century. And, as a result,
+education, medical and hygienic and sanitary science, development of the
+earth's soil, and resources above and below the soil, have gone forward by
+immense strides. So far as is known, our progress in such matters exceeds
+all previous achievements in the history of the race.
+
+And some of all this has been seeping into the heathen world. It hasn't
+gotten in far yet; only into the top soil, and about the edges, so far.
+The progress in this regard has seemed both rapid and slow. When the great
+mass of these peoples have not yet gotten even a whiff of the purer,
+better civilization air of the western nations the progress seems slow.
+But when we remember the incalculably tremendous inertia, and the
+strangely stagnant spirit of heathen lands, it seems rapid.
+
+The effort to get the heathen world simply to clean up; to open the
+windows and let in some fresh air, and use plain soap and water to scrub
+off the actual dirt makes one think of the typical small boy's dislike of
+being washed up. It has been a hard job. Yet a great beginning has been
+made. The boy seems to be beginning to find out that his face <i>is</i> dirty,
+and <i>feels</i> dirty. And that is an enormous gain.
+
+
+
+<u>The World Really Lost.</u>
+
+
+Yet while this is good, and only good, it isn't the thing we are driving
+at in missions. While it would fully warrant all the expenditures of
+money, and vastly more than has yet been given, it should be said in
+clearest, most ringing tones that all this is <i>merely incidental</i>. It is
+blessed. It is sure to come. It is remarkable that it always has come
+where the Gospel of Jesus is preached.
+
+Yet this is not the thing aimed at in missions. The one driving purpose is
+to carry to men <i>a Saviour from sin</i>. And to take Him so earnestly and
+winsomely that men yonder shall be wooed and won to the real God, whom
+they have lost knowledge of.
+
+It cannot be said too plainly that the world <i>is</i> lost. It has strayed so
+far away from the Father's house that it has lost all its bearings, and
+can't find its way back without help. The old preaching that this is a
+lost world, is true.
+
+But we need to remember the different uses of that word "world." In the
+old-time conception it was used in a loose way as meaning the spirit that
+actuates men in the world. The scheme of selfishness and wickedness and
+sinfulness which has overcast all life is commonly spoken of in the Bible
+as the world spirit. In that sense the world is bad, and only bad. Men
+are to be saved out of it, as Moody said.
+
+But, in the other commoner use of it, that word "world" simply means the
+whole race of men. And we must remind ourselves vigorously of the plain
+truth that this is a lost world. That is to say, men have gotten away from
+God. They completely misunderstand Him. Then they do more, and worse, they
+misrepresent and slander Him. The result is complete lack of trust in Him.
+They have lost their moorings, and have drifted out to deep sea with no
+compass on board. Thick fogs have risen and shut out sun and stars and
+every guiding thing. They are hopelessly and helplessly lost, and need
+some one to bring the compass so as to get back to shore, back home to
+God.
+
+But this world of men is to be won. Jesus said He came to save a world.
+And He will not fail nor rest content until He has done it, and this has
+become a saved world. He said that He gave His life for the life of the
+world. And the world will yet know the fulness of that life of His
+throbbing in its own heart.
+
+This does not mean that all men will be saved. There seems to be clear
+evidence in the Book that some will insist on preferring their own way to
+God's. And I am sure I do not know anything except what the Book teaches.
+It is the only reliable source of information I have been able to find so
+far. It must be the standard, because it is the standard.
+
+There will be a group of stubborn irreconcilables holding out against all
+of God's tender pleading. John's Patmos vision of glory, with its
+marvellous beauty and sweep, has yet a lake of fire and a group of men
+insisting upon going their own way. If a man choose that way, he may. He
+is still in the likeness of God in choosing to leave out God. He remains a
+sovereign in his own will even in the hell of his own choosing.
+
+
+
+<u>God's Method of Saving.</u>
+
+
+<i>The method of saving</i> is by <i>winning</i>. The Father would not be content
+with anything else. Such a thing as might be represented by throwing a
+blanket over the head of a horse in a burning stable, and so getting it
+out by coaxing, and forcing, and hiding the danger, is not to be thought
+of here. Sin is never smoothed over by God, nor its results, their badness
+and their certainty.
+
+He would have us see the sin as ugly and damning as it actually is, and
+see Him as pure and holy and winsome as He is; and then to reject the sin
+and choose Himself. The method of much modern charity, the long-range
+charity that helps by organization, without the personal relation and warm
+touch, is unknown to God. He touches every man directly with His own warm
+heart, and appeals to Him at closest quarters.
+
+Man's highest power is his power of choosing. It is in that He is most
+like God. God's plan is to clear away the clouds, sweep down the cobwebs
+that bother our eyes so, and let us get such a look at Himself that we
+will be caught with the sight of His great face, and choose to come, and
+to come a-running back to Himself. The world will be saved by its own
+choosing to be. It will be saved by being won. Men will choose to leave
+sin and accept God's Saviour Jesus Christ.
+
+It is a great method. It is the only method God could use. The creative
+love-passion of His heart was that we should choose Himself in preference
+to all else, and choose life with Him up on His level as the only life.
+
+And the method of winning is by getting each man's consent. The old cry of
+soul-winning is the true cry. It tells the method of work for us to
+follow. Each man is to be won by his own free glad consent. There is to be
+no wholesaling except by retailing. In business the wholesale comes after
+the retail. It is the child and servant of the retail.
+
+Here the method is to be one by one; and the results, a great multitude
+beyond the power of any arithmetic to count. Soul-winning is the method,
+and world-winning is the object and the final result.
+
+
+
+<u>The Programme of World-winning.</u>
+
+
+There is <i>a programme of world-winning</i> repeatedly outlined in this old
+Book of God. That programme has not always been clearly understood.
+Indeed, it may be said that for the most part it has been misunderstood,
+and still is by many. And, as a result, many churchmen have lost their
+bearings, and strayed far from the Master's plan for their own lives and
+service. It helps greatly to get the programme clear in mind, so we can
+steer a straight course, and not get confused nor lost.
+
+The first item of that programme is world-wide evangelization. That is the
+great service and privilege committed to the Church, and to every
+Christian, for this present time. Every other service is second to this.
+This does not mean world-wide conversion. That comes later. It does mean a
+full, winsome telling of the story of Jesus' Gospel, to all nations and to
+all men.
+
+It means the doing of it by all sorts of helpful, sensible means; the
+hospital and medical dispensary, the school and college, the printed page,
+and the practical helping of men in every way that they can be helped.
+Above all, it means the warm, sympathetic, brotherly touch. Not simply by
+preaching; that surely, but in addition to that the practical preaching of
+the Gospel by all of these means..
+
+When that has been accomplished the Kingdom will come. The King will come,
+and with Him the Kingdom. There will be radical changes in all the moral
+conditions of the earth. It will be a time of greatly increased
+evangelization, and of conversions of people in immense numbers. It will
+seem as if all were giving glad allegiance to Jesus the King. The world
+will then seem to be indeed a won world.
+
+But there will be many who have simply been swung into line outwardly by
+the general movement among the mass of peoples, just as it always is. And
+our King wants whole-hearted love and service.
+
+And so, at the end of the kingdom period, there will come another crisis.
+It is spoken of by John in his Revelation vision[6] as a loosing of Satan,
+and a renewal of his activity among men. That used to puzzle me a good
+bit. I wondered why, when that foul fiend had once been securely fastened
+up, he should be loosed again. But I'm satisfied that the reason is that
+at the end of the Kingdom time there is to be full opportunity for those
+who are not at heart loyal to Jesus, and who simply bow to Him because the
+crowd is doing so, to be perfectly free to do and go as they choose.
+
+Jesus wants a <i>heart</i> allegiance, and only that. The great thing is that
+every man shall freely choose as he really prefers. This it is that both
+makes and reveals character. And so there will be a final crisis. All who
+at heart prefer to do so may swing away from Jesus.
+
+That crisis ends with the final and overwhelming defeat of Satan and all
+the forces of evil. He goes to his own place, the place he has chosen and
+made for himself; and all who prefer to leave God out will go by the moral
+gravitation of their own choice to that place with him.
+
+Then follows the full vision of a won world, which John pictures in such
+glowing colors in these last two chapters of Revelation, as a city come
+down from God out of heaven.
+
+
+
+<u>Early Moorings.</u>
+
+
+There are two leading passages that speak of this programme. You remember
+that during the last week of His life Jesus told His disciples of the fall
+of Jerusalem. They came earnestly asking for fuller information regarding
+the future events. They asked when the present period of time would come
+to an end. And in answering He said--and the answer became a pivotal
+passage around which much else swings--that the Gospel of the Kingdom
+would be preached in the whole inhabited earth for a testimony unto all
+nations. And then the end of the present age or period of time would
+come[7].
+
+The first council of the Christian Church was held as a result of the
+remarkable success attending the beginning of world-wide evangelization.
+It was held in Jerusalem to consider the serious question of what to do
+with the great multitude of foreign or Gentile converts.
+
+The Church had been practically a Jewish church. But Paul had commenced
+his remarkable series of world-wide preaching-tours. Great numbers of the
+outside peoples had accepted Christ, and been organized into Christian
+churches. Some of the Jewish Church in Jerusalem thought that all of these
+should become Jewish in their observance of the old Mosaic requirements.
+Both Paul and Peter, the two great church leaders, object to this.
+
+It is at the close of the conference that James, who was presiding,
+outlines in his decision the programme of world-winning of which we are
+talking together[8]. He quotes from the prophecy of Joel. He says there
+are to be three steps or stages in working out God's plan.
+
+First of all is the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus to all the nations,
+in which work Paul had been so earnestly engaged, and the remarkable
+success of which it was that had given rise to the whole discussion. When
+this has been completed the kingdom is to be established with the nation
+of Israel in the central place, the tabernacle of David set up, as he
+quotes it. The purpose of this is that all the rest of the peoples on the
+earth, all the nations, "may <i>seek</i> after the Lord."
+
+The purpose of the Kingdom is the same, in the main, as is now the purpose
+of the Church. It is to push forward on broader lines, and more vigorously
+than ever, the work of bringing all men back to the Father's house.
+
+There are many other passages that might be referred to, but these will
+answer our purpose just now. There is to be a won world, and the old Book
+outlines plainly just how and when it will be won.
+
+
+
+<u>Service Unites.</u>
+
+
+Now, I know that all ministers and Christian teachers are not agreed about
+this. There has been a controversy in the Church, both long and sometimes
+bitter, unfortunately, about the Lord's return and the setting up of the
+Kingdom. And I have no desire to take any part in that, but instead, a
+strong desire to keep out of it. There is too much pressing emergency
+among men for helpful service to spend any time or strength in
+controversy.
+
+In a word it may be put this way. There are those who believe that Jesus'
+coming is a thing to be expected as likely to occur at any time, or within
+our lifetime, within any generation. His coming is to be the beginning of
+the Kingdom period, when all peoples will be loyal to Him.
+
+The others believe that the preaching of the Gospel will bring the whole
+world into allegiance, and that will be the Kingdom, and then Jesus will
+return. Both agree fully that the thing to be desired, and that will come,
+is the world-wide acknowledgment of Jesus as Saviour and King.
+
+It may be added, however, that of later years there is a third great group
+in the Church, which is really the largest of the three. These people
+practically ignore the teaching about an actual return of Jesus to the
+earth. They believe that He has already come, and is continually coming in
+the higher ideals, the better standards, and nobler spirit that pervade
+society.
+
+If it be true that the present preaching of the Gospel is to result in
+winning the whole world at once, without waiting for this programme of
+which I have spoken, then there is in that a very strong argument for
+world-wide evangelization. For only so can the desired result be secured.
+And so we can heartily join hands together in service regardless of what
+we believe on this question. I make a rule not to ask a man on which side
+of the question he stands, but to work with him hand in hand so far as I
+can in spreading the glad good news of Jesus everywhere.
+
+The difference of view regarding the Lord's return need not affect the
+practical working together of all earnest men. We are perfectly agreed
+that the great thing is to have the story of Jesus' dying and rising again
+told out earnestly and lovingly to all men. And we can go at that with
+greatest heartiness, side by side.
+
+The great concern now is to make Jesus fully known. That is the plan for
+the present time. It is a simple plan. Men who have been won are to be the
+winners. Nobody else can be. The warm enthusiasm of grateful love must
+burn in the heart and drive all the life. There must be simple, but
+thorough organization.
+
+The campaign should be mapped out as thoroughly as a Presidential campaign
+is organized here in our country. The purpose of a Presidential campaign
+is really stupendous in its object and sweep. It is to influence quickly,
+up to the point of decisive action, the individual opinion of millions of
+men, spread over millions of square miles, and that, too, in the face of a
+vigorous opposing campaign to influence them the other way. The whole vast
+district of country is mapped out and organized on broad lines and into
+the smallest details.
+
+Strong brainy men give themselves wholly to the task, and spend hundreds
+of thousands of dollars within a few months. And then, four years later,
+they proceed as enthusiastically as before to go over the whole ground
+again. We need as thorough organizing, as aggressive enthusiasm, and as
+intelligent planning for this great task which our Master has put into our
+hands.
+
+And we have a driving motive power greater than any campaign-manager ever
+had or has--<i>a Jesus</i> who sets fire to one's whole being, with a passion
+of love that burns up every other flame. We need a Church as thoroughly
+organized, and every man in it with a burning heart for this great
+service.
+
+
+
+<u>The World-winning Climb.</u>
+
+
+An old school-master, talking to his class one morning, many years ago,
+told a story of an early experience he had had in Europe. He was one of a
+party travelling in Switzerland. They had gotten as far as Chamounix, and
+were planning to climb Mont Blanc. That peak, you know, is the highest of
+the Alps, and is called the monarch of European mountains. While it is now
+ascended every day in season, the climb is a very difficult task.
+
+It requires strength and courage and much special preparation; and is
+still attended with such danger that the authorities of Chamounix have
+laid down rigid regulations for those who attempt it. One's outfit must be
+reduced to the very lowest limit. And, of course, nothing else can be done
+while climbing. It absorbs all one's strength and thought.
+
+There were two parties in the little square of the town, making their
+preparations with the guides. One young Englishman disregarded all the
+directions of the guides. He loaded himself with things which he
+positively declared were absolutely essential to his plans.
+
+He had a small case of wine and some delicacies for his appetite. He had a
+camera with which he proposed to take views of himself and his party at
+different stages of the climb. He had a batch of note-books in which he
+intended recording his impressions as he proceeded, which were afterward
+to be printed for the information, and, he hoped, admiration of the world.
+A picturesque cap and a gayly colored blanket were part of his outfit.
+
+The old toughened guides, experienced by many a severe tug and storm in
+the difficulties ahead, protested earnestly. But it made no impression on
+the ambitious youth. At last they whispered together, and allowed him to
+have his own way. And the party started.
+
+Six hours later the second party followed. At the little inn where they
+spent the first night they found the wine and food delicacies. The guides
+laughed. "The Englishman has found that he cannot humor his stomach if he
+would climb Mont Blanc," one of them said grimly. A little farther up they
+found the note-book and camera; still higher up, the gay robe and fancy
+cap had been abandoned. And at last they found the young fellow at the
+summit in leather jacket, exhausted and panting for breath.
+
+He had encountered heavy storms, and reached the top of the famous
+mountain only at the risk of his life. But he reached it. He had the real
+stuff in him, after all. Yet everything not absolutely essential had to be
+sacrificed. And his ideas of the meaning of that word "essential"
+underwent radical changes as he labored up the steep.
+
+Then the old teacher telling the story suddenly leaned over his desk and,
+looking earnestly at the class, said, "When I was young I planned out my
+life just as he planned out his climb. Food and clothing, and full records
+of my experiences for the world's information, figured in big. But at
+forty I cared only for such clothes as kept me warm, and at fifty only for
+such food as kept me strong. And so steep was the climb up to the top I
+had set my heart upon that at sixty I cared little for the opinions of
+people, if only I might reach the top. And when I do reach it I shall not
+care whether the world has a record of it or not. That record is in safety
+above."
+
+We laugh at the ambitious young Englishman. But will you kindly let me
+say, plainly, without meaning to be critical in an unkind sense, that
+<i>most of us do just as he did</i>. And will you listen softly, while I say
+this--many of us, when we find we can't reach the top with our loads, let
+the top go, and pitch our tents in the plain, and settle down with our
+small plans and accessories. The plain seems to be quite full of tents.
+
+The plan of the Swiss guides is <i>the plan</i> for the life-climb. It is <i>the</i>
+plan, and the only one for us to follow in the world-winning climb. That
+was Jesus' plan. He left behind and threw away everything that hindered,
+and at the last threw away life itself, that so the world might find life.
+We must follow Him.
+
+
+
+
+The Urgent Need
+
+
+
+  Three Great Groups.
+  The Needle Of The Compass Of Need.
+  A Quick Run Round The World.
+  West By Way Of The East.
+  Christian Lands.
+  The Greatest Need.
+  Groping In The Dark.
+  Living Messages Of Jesus.
+  The Great Unknown Lack.
+
+
+
+
+The Need
+
+
+
+<u>Three Great Groups.</u>
+
+
+The human heart is tender. It answers quickly to the cry of need. It is
+oftentimes hard to find. In Christian lands it is covered up with
+selfishness. And in heathen lands the selfishness seems so thickly crusted
+that it is hard to awaken even common humanitarian feeling.
+
+But that heart once dug out, and touched, never fails to respond to the
+cry of need. We know how the cry of physical distress, of some great
+disaster, or of hunger will be listened to, and how quickly all men
+respond to that. When the terrible earthquake laid San Francisco in
+burning ruins the whole nation stopped, and gave a great heart-throb; and
+then commenced at once sending relief. Corporations that are rated
+soulless and men that are spoken of as money-mad, knocking each other
+pitilessly aside in their greed for gold and power, all alike sent quick
+and generous help of every substantial sort.
+
+Beside expressing their sympathy in kindest and keenest word, they gave
+millions of dollars. Yet this might seem to be a family affair, as indeed
+it was. But the great famines in India and in other foreign lands farthest
+removed from us, have awakened a like response in our hearts. Great sums
+have been given in money and supplies to feed the hunger of far-away
+peoples, and help them sow their fields and get a fresh start.
+
+There is a need far deeper and greater than that of physical suffering.
+And there is a heart far more tender than the best human heart. That need
+is to know God, whom to know is to enter into fulness of life, both
+physical and mental; and into that life of the spirit that is higher and
+sweeter than either of these lower down. And that tender heart is the
+human heart touched by the warm heart of God.
+
+Many of us Christian people who are gathered here to-night have had
+unusual blessing in having our hearts touched into real life by the touch
+of God. And there's much more of the same sort waiting our fuller touch
+with Him. And now we want to see to-night something of the needs of God's
+great world-family, which is our own family because it is God's. Then we
+shall respond to it as freely and quickly and intelligently, as He Himself
+did and does.
+
+I am going to ask you to come with me for a brief journey around the
+world. We want to get something of a clear, even though rapid view, of the
+whole of this world of ours. For the whole world is a mission field.
+Missionaries are sent everywhere, including our own home-land, and
+including all of our cities.
+
+Our cities are as really mission fields as are the heathen lands. There
+is a difference, but it is only one of degree. The Christian standards
+present in our American life, and absent from these foreign-mission lands,
+make an enormous difference. But, apart from that great fact, the need of
+mission service is as really in New York as it is in Shanghai.
+
+If we are to pray for the whole world, and to help in other ways to win
+it, we ought to try to get something of a clear idea of it, to help us in
+our thinking and praying and planning.
+
+It will help toward that if we remember at the outset that the world from
+the religious point of view, divides up easily into three great groups.
+First there are the great non-Christian, or heathen, lands and nations.
+This includes those called Mohammedan; for, while that religion is based
+upon a partial Christian truth, it is so utterly corrupt in teaching and
+morally foul in practice that it is distinctly classed with the heathen
+religions.
+
+Then there are the lands and nations under the control of those two great
+mediaeval historic forms of Christianity, the Roman and Greek Churches, in
+which the vital principles of the Christian life seem to have been almost
+wholly lost in a network of forms and organization. The essential truths
+are there. But they are hidden away and covered up. There are untold
+numbers of true Christians there, but they live in a strangely clouded
+twilight.
+
+The third great group is of lands and peoples under the sway of the
+Protestant churches.
+
+
+
+<u>The Needle of the Compass of Need.</u>
+
+
+Let us look a little at these peoples. Where shall we start in? The old
+rule of the Master's command, and of the early Church's practice, was to
+begin "at Jerusalem," and keep moving until the outmost limit of the world
+was reached. I suppose that practically, in service, beginning at
+Jerusalem means beginning just where you are, and then reaching out to
+those nearest, and then less near, until you have touched the farthest.
+
+But the old Jerusalem rule will make a good geographical rule for us
+English-speaking people, with an ocean between us, in getting a fresh look
+at this old world that the Master asks us to carry in our hearts and on
+our hands. So we'll begin there.
+
+The needle of a magnetic compass always points north. The needle of the
+compass of progress has always pointed west; at least always since the
+Medo-Persian was the world-power. But it is striking that the compass of
+the world's <i>need</i> always points its needle toward the east. And so,
+starting at Jerusalem, we may well turn our faces east as we take our
+swing around the world to learn its need.
+
+It may be a relief to you to know at once that there will not be any
+statistics in this series of talks. We want instead just now to get broad
+and general, but distinct, impressions. Statistics are burdensome to most
+people. They are a good deal of a bugbear to the common crowd of us
+every-day folks. They are absolutely essential. They are of immense, that
+is, immeasurable, value. You need to have them at hand where you can
+easily turn for exact information, as you need it, to refresh your memory.
+And an increasing amount of it will stick in your memory and guide your
+thinking and praying.
+
+There are easily available, in these days of such remarkable missionary
+activity, an abundance of fresh statistics, in attractive form. We are
+greatly indebted to the Student Volunteer Movement and the Young People's
+Missionary Movement and the Church Societies for the great service they
+have done in this matter of full fresh information.
+
+But the thing of first importance is to get an intelligent thought of the
+<i>whole world</i>. And then to add steadily to our stock of particular
+information, as study and prayer and service call for it. It is possible
+to get a simple grasp of the whole world. And it helps immensely to do it.
+
+It helps at once to this end to remember that two-thirds of all the
+peoples of the earth are in the distinctly heathen, or non-Christian,
+lands. This in itself is a tremendous fact, telling at once of the world's
+need. At the beginning of the twentieth hundred-years since Jesus gave His
+command to preach His Gospel to all men, two-thirds of them are still in
+ignorance of Him and under the same moral sway as when He went away.
+
+I might add that there are a billion people in these two-thirds. But that
+figure is so big as only to stagger the mind in an attempt to take it in.
+The important thing is to see that it doesn't by its sheer bigness,
+stagger our faith or our courage or our praying habit. We want to be like
+the old Hebrew who "staggered not" at God's promise to do for him a
+naturally impossible thing. Yet it is well to repeat that word "billion,"
+for it brings up sharply and gigantically the staggering need of the world
+for Christ.
+
+One-third is in lands commonly called Christian. Though we must use that
+word "Christian" in the broadest and most charitable sense in making that
+statement.
+
+
+
+<u>A Quick Run Round the World.</u>
+
+
+Beginning at Jerusalem, then, means for us just now beginning with the
+Turkish Empire. And with that, in this rapid run through, we may for
+convenience group Arabia and Persia and Afghanistan. This is the section
+where Mohammedanism, that corrupt mixture of heathenism with a small
+tincture of Christian truth, has its home, and whence it has gone out on
+its work throughout the world.
+
+Great populations here have practically no knowledge at all of the Gospel,
+for missionary work is extremely scant. The land of the Saviour, with its
+eastern neighbors, has no Saviour, so far as knowing about Him is
+concerned, though it needs His saving very sorely.
+
+Next to it, on the east, lies the great land of India, with the smaller
+countries that naturally group with it. And here are gathered fully <i>a
+fifth</i> of the people of the earth. These are really in large part our
+blood-brothers. Their fathers away back were brothers to our fathers. And
+so missionary work here ought to be reckoned largely as a family affair.
+British rule has had an immense humanizing influence here. Missionary
+activity has been carried on aggressively for years, and great and blessed
+progress has been made.
+
+Yet it is merely a preparation for the work now so sorely needed. These
+years of faithful seed-sowing have made the soil dead ripe for a harvest
+in our day. A strange religiousness utterly lacking both in religion and
+in morality, abominably repugnant in its gross immorality, honey-combs the
+life of these people. The cry of need here is deep and pathetic.
+
+Pushing on still to the east, the great land of China with its
+dependencies, looms up in all its huge giant size. Roughly speaking,
+almost <i>a third</i> of the world's people are grouped here. There are
+practically almost as many in what is reckoned Chinese territory as in all
+Christian lands. Here is found the oldest and best civilization of the
+non-Christian sort. The old common religion of Confucius is practically
+not a religion at all, but a code of maxims and rules, and utterly lacking
+in moral uplift or power.
+
+The peculiarly impressive thing about China, as indeed about nearly all
+of the heathen world, <i>is the spirit of stagnation</i>. There is a deadness,
+or sort of stupor, over everything. It is as if a blight had spread over
+the land, checking all progress. Habits, customs, and institutions remain
+apparently as they were a thousand years ago. This stands out in sharp
+contrast with the spirit of growth that marks Christian lands.
+
+It seems strange to us because the spirit of growth is the atmosphere of
+our western world, breathed in from infancy. The one word that seems
+peculiarly to describe China is that word "stagnant." The people
+themselves are remarkable both for their mental power and their habits of
+industry. The Chinese may well be called the Anglo-Saxons of the Orient,
+in latent power and mental character.
+
+In our modesty we think the Anglo-Saxon, the English-speaking, the
+greatest of living peoples. Certainly the leadership of the world is in
+Anglo-Saxon hands, and has been for centuries. And the marvellous,
+unprecedented progress of the world has been under that leadership.
+
+Well, when these Chinese wake up we are very likely to find the race
+getting a new leadership, and the history of the world a new chapter
+added. What sort of leadership it will be morally, and what sort of a
+chapter, will depend on how much statesmanship there is in our praying and
+giving and missionary service. But the need is enormously intensified by
+the unawakened power of these Chinese.
+
+
+
+<u>West by Way of the East.</u>
+
+
+Still moving east, we come to the newly awakened and very attractive
+island-nation of Japan, which, because of its geographical and territorial
+situation, has been called the Great Britain of the Orient. Japan stands
+at present as the exception to the common stagnation of the heathen world.
+It has made a record nothing less than phenomenal as a student of Western
+life. It has absorbed, and imitated, and adapted to its own use, the
+Western knowledge and spirit with a wonderful power and intelligence.
+
+Japan is both bright and ambitious to an almost abnormal degree, and as
+tricky in its dealings, and morally unclean in its life, as it is bright
+and ambitious. They have been called the Frenchmen of the Orient, and that
+characterization fits remarkably in many respects. Great progress has been
+made in giving the Gospel to Japan, but the present moral need is
+immensely intensified by the very aggressiveness of the Japanese spirit.
+
+With Japan, the island-kingdom, it is easy to group the whole island-world
+lying to the east and south, though these are utterly different peoples.
+This includes the great number of islands scattered throughout the Pacific
+Ocean. The conditions are largely those of savagery except where affected
+by Christian civilization through the missionary enterprise. The Gospel
+has done some wonderful feats of transformation here. And there is plenty
+of room for more. Australia, the "island continent," is a British colony,
+and of course now reckoned among Christian lands; as is also the large
+island of New Zealand, also a British colony, which has been a leader in
+some of the most advanced steps of modern civilization.
+
+Crossing the Pacific to the east brings up the South American Continent;
+and Central America, the connecting stretch of land with our own
+continent; and Mexico, which is commonly grouped with foreign-mission
+lands. South America has been spoken of both as the "neglected continent"
+and as the "continent of opportunity." The common characteristic
+religiously of all this vast section from Mexico to the "Land of Fire," at
+the southernmost toe of South America, is that it is under the sway of the
+Roman Catholic Church. Some parts of it have been spoken of as "baptized
+heathenism." A vast network of church forms and organization, practically
+lifeless, holds these peoples in an iron grasp. The need of the Gospel of
+Jesus is fully as great as in civilized China or savage Africa.
+
+One more long easterly stride, across the Atlantic, brings black Africa,
+and completes this rapid run around the globe, so far as distinctly
+heathen lands are concerned. Africa is peculiarly the savage continent,
+though it has the oldest civilization in its northeast corner, and the
+newest British civilization rapidly developing on its southern edge. It is
+the "dark continent," both in the color of its inhabitants and in its sad
+destitution and degradation. About <i>a tenth</i> of the world's population is
+here; with as many missionaries as in civilized India, but unable to reach
+the people as effectually as there because of the lack of national
+organization and the absence of great highways of travel.
+
+Africa is essentially a great mass of separate tribes, larger and smaller,
+most of them in deepest savagery, with sorest need not only of salvation,
+but of civilization. The sore need of its very savagery has seemed to make
+it a magnet to missionary enterprise. And yet all that has been done, and
+is being done, seems almost swallowed up in the depth of its degradation
+and savagery.
+
+I have taken you with me in this very rapid run that we might try to get a
+simple practical grasp of the heathen world. And if you and I might often
+take just such a run, with map or globe and Bible at hand, and our knees
+bent, it would greatly help us in getting close to the world our Lord died
+for; and which He means to win; and to win through you and me; and which
+He <i>will</i> win.
+
+
+
+<u>Christian Lands.</u>
+
+
+But I must talk with you a bit about our Christian lands, Europe and
+America, with huge Russia sitting astride both Europe and Asia, with a
+foot dangling on each side of the globe. For these, too, are mission
+lands. <i>Foreign</i>-mission lands, would you call them? Well, that depends
+entirely on what spot you happen to call home. They are all mission
+fields. The whole world is a mission field to God. <i>Foreign</i>-mission
+field? or <i>home</i>-mission? Which? It makes no practical matter which term
+you choose to use.
+
+It will be well to remember just what that common phrase, "Christian
+lands," really means. It may help us in our praying. And it may help us,
+too, to keep humble as we think about heathen lands. It means, of course,
+the lands where Christian standards are commonly recognized as the proper
+standards of morals and of life.
+
+It does <i>not</i> mean that the people are all Christian. Only a minority so
+class themselves; the great majority do not. Neither does it mean that
+that minority called Christian is <i>controlled</i> in daily life and in
+business by the principles of Jesus. For by pretty general consent they
+are not so controlled. It is not too much to say that there is more of
+that same spirit of selfishness that marks the heathen world, dominating
+the personal lives of people in Christian lands, than there is of the
+unselfish Christ spirit. That may sound unkind and too critical to you. It
+is not said in a critical spirit, but simply in the desire to get the
+facts as they are. I am fully persuaded that the more you think about it
+the more you will come to see that this is simply the truth.
+
+Nor yet does that term, "Christian lands," mean that these lands are as
+distinctly Christian through and through as heathen lands are distinctly
+heathen, or non-Christian, through and through. As a matter of fact,
+Christian lands are not dominated as thoroughly by the Christian spirit
+as heathen lands are by the heathen spirit. We really don't deserve our
+distinctive phrase as much as they deserve theirs.
+
+It does mean chiefly this, that here in these lands the Christian Church
+has its stronghold; that Christian standards are commonly recognized,
+though in practice they are so commonly disregarded. It means that the
+enormous incidental blessings, in material and mental life, that always
+follow the preaching of the Gospel are here enjoyed most fully. And it
+means, too, that much of the humanizing, softening, and energizing power
+of the Gospel of Christ has seeped and soaked into our common civilization
+and affected all our life.
+
+This is true; yet the mass of persons living in this atmosphere, and
+enjoying its great advantages, are wholly selfish in the main drive of
+their lives, and so in being selfish are un-Christian. While Christian
+ideals dominate so much of our life, the term "Christian lands" really
+describes our <i>privileges</i> more than it does our <i>practices</i>.
+
+
+
+<u>The Greatest Need.</u>
+
+
+A word now about these great Christian lands of Europe and America. The
+Catholic countries of Europe have been regarded as mission fields by the
+Protestant churches, and missionary operations have been conducted in them
+for many years. Russia has likewise been commonly regarded as missionary
+territory, and a very difficult one at that. In portions of Great Britain,
+in our own Western States and frontiers, in the Southern mountain States,
+and in other sections, and among special classes, missionary work has been
+regularly carried on.
+
+And the cities, those great, strange, throbbing hearts of human life, are
+all peculiarly mission fields. It is remarkable how the modern city
+reproduces world conditions morally. The city is a sort of miniature of
+the world. All the varying moral conditions of the heathen world, atheism,
+savagery almost, crude heathenish superstition, degradation of woman,
+neglect of children, and untempered lust, may be found in New York and
+Chicago, in London and Paris, in Vienna and Berlin, and in varying degree
+in all cities of Christian lands. The grosser parts are hidden away, more
+or less.
+
+These conditions are softened in intensity by the commonly recognized
+moral standards of life. But they are there. The man immersed in mission
+service in any of these cities is apt to think that there can be no
+greater nor sorer need than this that pushes itself insistently upon him
+at every turn.
+
+The slum ends and sides of our Christian cities and huge heathendom,
+jostle elbows in the likeness of their moral conditions. The need is
+everywhere, crying earnestly, wretchedly out to us. There is good mission
+ground anywhere you please to strike in.
+
+But--<i>but</i>, by far the greatest need, with that word "greatest"
+intensified beyond all power of description, is in the heathen lands. The
+vastness of the numbers there, the utter ignorance, the smallness of their
+chance of getting any of the knowledge and uplift of the Gospel, all go to
+spell out that word "greatest." The awful cumulative power of sin,
+unchecked by the common moral standards of life, with the terrific
+momentum of centuries; the common temptations known to us, but with a
+fierceness and subtlety wholly unknown to us in Christian lands--and yet
+how terrifically fierce and cunningly subtle some of us know them to
+be!--these all make every letter in that word "greatest" stand out in
+biggest capitals, and in blackest, inkiest ink.
+
+
+
+<u>Groping in the Dark.</u>
+
+
+That is a bare suggestion of the need of the world <i>in bulk</i>. But we want
+to get a much closer look than that. These are <i>men</i> that we are talking
+about; our <i>brothers</i>, not merely hard, unfeeling, statistical totals of
+millions. Each man of them contains the whole pitiable picture of the sore
+need of the world vividly portrayed in himself.
+
+The very heathen religions themselves are the crying out, in the night, of
+men's hearts, after something they haven't, and yet need so much. Strange
+things these heathen superstitions and monstrous practices and beliefs
+called religions! It has been rather the thing of late to speak somewhat
+respectfully of them, and rather apologetically. They have even been
+praised, so strangely do things get mixed up in this world of ours. It
+has been supposed that God was revealing Himself in these religions; and
+that in them men were reaching up to God, and <i>could</i> reach up to Him
+through them.
+
+They really are the twilight remnants of the clear direct light of God
+that once lightened all men; <i>but</i> so mixed through, and covered up with
+error and superstition and unnatural devilish lust, that they are wholly
+inadequate to lead any man back home to God. In almost all of them there
+is indeed some distinct kernel of truth. But that kernel has been
+invariably shut up in a shell and bur that are hard beyond any power of
+cracking, to get at the kernel of truth for practical help, even if the
+people knew enough to try.
+
+They tell pathetically of the groping of man's heart after God. But the
+groping is in the pitch dark, and amid a mass of foul, filthy cobwebs that
+blind the eyes with their dust, and grime all the life. I have no doubt
+that untold numbers of true hearts in heathen lands are feeling after God,
+and in some dim way coming into touch with Him. He is not far from any one
+of them; but they find Him chiefly in spite of these religions, rather
+than through any help found in them.
+
+The story is told of a Chinese tailor who had struggled hopelessly for
+light, and had finally found it in finding Jesus. He put his idea of the
+heathen religions that he knew, and had tried, in this simple vivid way:
+
+"A man had fallen into a deep, dark pit, and lay in its miry bottom,
+groaning and utterly unable to move. He heard a man walking by close
+enough to see his plight. But with stately tread he walked on without
+volunteering to help. That is Mohammedanism.
+
+"Confucius walking by approached the edge of the pit, and said, 'Poor
+fellow! I am sorry for you. Why were you such a fool as to get in there?
+Let me give you a piece of advice: If ever you get out, don't get in
+again.' 'I can't get out,' said the man. That is Confucianism.
+
+"A Buddhist priest next came by and said: 'Poor fellow! I am very much
+pained to see you there. I think if you could scramble up two-thirds of
+the way, or even half, I could reach you and lift you up the rest.' But
+the man in the pit was entirely helpless and unable to rise. That is
+Buddhism.
+
+"Next the Saviour came by, and, hearing his cries, went to the very brink
+of the pit, stretched down and laid hold of the poor man, brought him up,
+and said, 'Go, sin no more.' This is Christianity."
+
+The awful moral or immoral conditions prevalent throughout the heathen
+world are the most graphic comment on the influence of these religions. It
+can be said thoughtfully that, instead of ever helping up to God and the
+light, they drag down to the devil and to black darkness. There is not
+only an utter lack of any moral uplift in them, but a deadly downward
+pull. The very things called religions point out piteously the terrible
+need of these peoples.
+
+
+
+<u>Living Messages of Jesus.</u>
+
+
+Now, what is it that these people need, and that we can give to them? May
+I first remind you what they don't need? Well, let it be said as plainly
+as it can be that they don't need the transferring to heathen soil of our
+Western church systems, nor our schemes of organizations. It is not our
+Western creeds and theology that they stand in need of.
+
+Of course, there need to be both churches and organizations. Only so will
+the work be done, and what is gotten held together. But these are in
+themselves temporary. They are immensely important and indispensable, but
+not the chief thing. The great need is of <i>the story of Jesus</i>. That is,
+plain teaching about sin--the hardest task of all for the missionary,
+whether in Asia or America--and the damnable results locked up in sin.
+Then the winsome telling, the tirelessly patient and persistently gentle
+telling of the story of love, God's love as revealed in Jesus. The telling
+them that Jesus will put a new moral power inside a man that will make him
+over new.
+
+But they need even more than this, aye, far more. They need <i>men</i>--human
+beings like themselves, living among them in closest touch--whose clean,
+strong, sweet lives spell out the Jesus-story as no human lips can ever
+tell it.
+
+To live side by side with men who like themselves are tempted sorely, but
+who show plainly in their lives a power that downs the temptation--this is
+their great need. The good seed, after all, is not the message of truth
+merely, but the "sons of the kingdom,"[9] men living the message of Jesus,
+and more, the power of Jesus, daily.
+
+A kindergarten teacher opened a mission among the slum children of a very
+poor section of Chicago. She began her work by gathering a number of
+dirty, unkempt children of the street into the neat mission room. Then,
+instead of preaching or praying or something of the conventional sort at
+the first, she brought in and set on a table a large beautiful calla lily,
+bewitching in its simple white beauty.
+
+The effect of the flower on one child, a little girl, was striking. No
+sooner had she looked at it than she looked down at her own dirty hands
+and clothes, with a flush creeping into her face. Then she quickly went
+out into the street. In a little while she was back again, but with her
+face washed, her hair combed, her dress tidied up, and a bit of colored
+ribbon added. She walked straight up to the lily again, and looked long,
+with deep wondering admiration in her eyes, at the beautiful white flower.
+
+The flower's purity was a mirror in which she saw her own dirtiness. It
+was a magnet drawing her gently but strongly up to its own higher level.
+It was an inspiration moving her irresistibly to respond to its own upward
+pull.
+
+A simple, pure, human life is the greatest moral magnet. Jesus Himself
+down here was just such a magnet. Such a life is impossible for us without
+Jesus. It tells His power as no tongue can. It spells out loudly a
+standard of life and, far more, a power that can lift the life up to the
+standard. It doesn't simply tell what we should be. That may only
+tantalize and tease. But it tells what we actually can be.
+
+Jesus is more than a message. He is a living power in a man's life. This
+is the great need of men's hearts,--the message of Jesus' purity and of
+Jesus' power <i>embodied in live men</i>, living side by side, in the thick of
+things, with their brothers of the great world.
+
+
+
+<u>The Great Unknown Lack.</u>
+
+
+The greatness of men's need stands out most pathetically in this, that men
+don't know their need. They have gotten so used to the night that they
+don't care for the sunlight. They have been hungry so long that the sense
+of hunger and the call of appetite have wholly gone.
+
+There is a simple, striking story told of two famous Scandinavians, Ole
+Bull, the great violinist, and John Ericsson, the great inventor, who
+taught the world to use the screw in steam navigation. The one was a
+Norwegian, the other a Swede. They had been friends in early life, but
+drifted apart and did not meet again until each had become famous. The old
+friendship was renewed on one of Ole Bull's tours to this country.
+
+As Bull was leaving his friend, after a delightful visit, he gave him a
+cordial invitation to attend his concert that evening. But the
+matter-of-fact, prosaic Ericsson declined, pleading pressure of work, and
+saying that he had no time to waste on music.
+
+Bull renewed his invitation, time and again, finally saying, "If you won't
+come, I'll bring my violin down here to your shop, and play." "If you do,"
+replied the famous engineer laughingly, "I'll smash the thing to pieces."
+The violinist, knowing the marvellous, almost supernatural, power of his
+instrument to touch and awaken the human heart into new life, felt curious
+to know what effect it would have on this scientific man steeped in his
+prosaic physics. So he planned a bit of diplomacy.
+
+Taking the violin with him, he called upon Ericsson at his workshop one
+day. He removed the strings and screws and apron, and called Ericsson's
+attention to certain defects, asking about the scientific and acoustic
+principles involved, and discussing the differing effect of the different
+grain of certain woods. From this he went on to a discussion of sound
+waves. Finally, to illustrate his meaning and his questions, he replaced
+the parts, and, bringing the bow softly down upon the tense strings, drew
+out a few marvellously sweet, rich tones.
+
+At once the workmen in the shop dropped their tools, and listened with
+wide-eyed wonder. Ole Bull played on and on, with his simple great skill,
+making the workshop a place of worship. When finally he paused, Ericsson
+lifted his bowed head, and showed eyes that were wet. Then he said softly,
+with the touch of reverent awe in his voice, "Play on! Don't stop. Play
+on. <i>I never knew before what it was that was lacking in my life.</i>"
+
+That is what men everywhere say when they come to know Jesus. They fight
+against knowing Him because of their ignorance of Him. At home, prejudice
+against theology of this sort and that; against some preaching, or church
+service, or some Christian people they have unpleasant memories of
+perhaps, bar the way. Abroad, prejudice against their treatment at the
+hands of Christian nations, or against anything new, shuts the door with a
+slam and a sharp push of the bolt.
+
+It takes great diplomacy, love's diplomacy, the combination of serpent and
+dove, subtlety and harmlessness, to get an entrance. But when the door is
+pried open, or coaxed open enough for some sound or sight of Jesus to get
+in, they passionately cry out, "This is what I need. This Jesus is the
+lacking thing in my life!"
+
+
+
+
+The Present Opportunity
+
+
+
+  Somebody's Knocking at the Door.
+  They're Standing in the Dark.
+  Who's There?
+  The Coming Leaders.
+  What They're After.
+  Returning Our Call.
+  "Inasmuch."
+
+
+
+
+The Present Opportunity
+
+
+
+<u>Somebody's Knocking at the Door.</u>
+
+
+There's a soft, tender passion in the heart of God. Its flame burns
+steadily. It never flags nor dims. It's a passion for His child-man. And
+that very passion itself draws man to Himself with a drawing power that is
+irresistible. They can't resist being drawn, even though they may refuse
+to yield to it.
+
+There is an answering passion in man's heart for God. It is often a sort
+of dumb longing, not clearly defined nor well understood. It is a mute
+yearning of his heart for God, though often he doesn't think of it that
+way. But it is there; for these two, man and God, belong together. They
+were together until sin drove its ugly wedge in between. They are a part
+of each other. Neither one is complete nor happy without the other.
+
+The heart of God can be satisfied only as man comes back home to Him. And
+man's heart never rests until it finds rest in comradeship with God. These
+two are always drawing toward each other. God is always drawing man by the
+great master-passion of His heart. And man is always responding to that
+tender, strong pull in the underneath, mute yearning of his heart.
+
+By and by the thing that keeps them apart will be gotten rid of. Sin will
+be shipped overboard, to fall by its own dead weight to the bottom of the
+sea. Then there will be glad reunion of God and man, their hearts in full
+glad accord again. To-night we want to talk together a bit about this
+answering passion of man's heart for God.
+
+The heathen world is knocking to-day at the door of the Christian Church.
+It has found out who has the fullest and truest information about God. And
+it is knocking loudly and earnestly at that door. And it keeps on
+knocking, though the door seems to be barely open yet; and a good
+many--most?--inside don't seem to have heard the knocking.
+
+The most remarkable thing about the present time from the Church point of
+view is that the heathen peoples are asking for what the Master has told
+us to give them. The centre of Church attraction and of Christian action
+to-day is on the swing toward heathen lands.
+
+When the Church began again, a hundred years ago, to enter the great
+heathen world, it had to use pick and axe, jimmy and chisel. It seemed
+like using burglar's tools. Certainly it was working in the dark, with
+only the burglar's dark-lantern to show the way. But now the heathen door
+is wide open. Instead of our knocking at their door, the heathen world is
+knocking at our door.
+
+Our billion brothers stand in the night-time of their darkness blindly
+feeling for our door, and knocking, now timidly, now earnestly and loudly,
+ay, imperiously, for the light that we have. It has been a cold night for
+them, and a long night, too. But the darkest hour of it is already
+throbbing with the flood of coming light. They have found the door and are
+using it. The whole foreign non-Christian world is knocking with
+incessant, insistent clamor at our church door.
+
+
+
+<u>They're Standing in the Dark.</u>
+
+
+I do not mean that actually every country in the world is open to the
+Gospel. For there are a few countries with comparatively scanty
+populations that are not open; except, indeed, on the edges, to the man
+prying earnestly around for a way to get in.
+
+I don't mean that every man in these open countries is actually asking us
+to send him some word of Jesus. For vast numbers of them have never heard
+either about us or about Him. They don't know there is a Jesus to ask
+about; or, judging by others, they would be asking.
+
+Neither do I mean that these multitudes who are asking are, in every case,
+asking for the Gospel itself. For many times that is not so. They ask for
+that which appeals to them strongly as something that they want. They want
+our Western science and learning. They want to get from us the secret of
+harnessing nature up to their wagon to pull their heavy loads.
+
+In many cases, without doubt, they don't want our Christianity at all.
+They regard it simply as something that goes along inseparably with the
+thing they do want. They are willing to put up with some of it for a
+while, if only they can get the thing they are after. Their eyes have been
+caught by the bright light of our Christian civilization. They don't
+understand how it came to us. They haven't wakened up enough, most of
+them, to think into that.
+
+They want the light we have, as we might want something that we could
+order a shipment of. They haven't learned enough yet to want to get the
+light-generating plant installed in their midst. The great fact that all
+our civilization has come to us through the partial presence of the Light
+of the world hasn't dawned upon their minds yet.
+
+But, however selfish motives and a crude understanding or misunderstanding
+may enter in, the great strange unprecedented fact still remains true that
+the world of heathenism is knocking at the door of Christendom as never
+before in the world's history.
+
+And then, too, everywhere some of them are asking plainly and piteously
+for the real thing. Great numbers in all the foreign-mission lands are
+asking that Christian teachers be sent to them with Bibles and other books
+to teach them the way back home to God. Wherever they find out that there
+is a knowledge of God to be gotten, from there comes the insistent
+knocking that it be brought to them.
+
+I remember Bishop Bashford, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, stationed
+in China, telling of one of his thrilling experiences out there. He had
+gone inland quite a bit into China on one of his tours. One day he was
+preaching the story of Jesus to a crowd of Chinese gathered in the open
+air. As his interpreter turned his words into Chinese the crowds listened
+with great respect and keenest interest.
+
+As he finished he asked them if they had ever heard the Gospel before. No;
+none of them had. He was turning up absolutely fresh soil. And they
+pressed in about him, earnestly asking that men be sent to tell them. And
+this experience of Bishop Bashford's is being repeated, over and over
+again, throughout the foreign-mission world.
+
+
+
+<u>Who's There?</u>
+
+
+But there is yet more than this. Everywhere among these peoples, as one
+comes into close enough touch to find their hearts, there can be found
+underneath the inarticulate, inexpressible yearning for something they
+haven't. And they don't know enough to know what it is they long for. But
+they are conscious of the constant, weary, yearning tug within. The great
+heart of the non-Christian world to-day is asking dumbly, but earnestly,
+as only the heart can ask, for the light we have. Its knocking at our
+front door is growing louder in its insistent earnestness.
+
+Since Commodore Perry steamed into the harbor of Yokohama, fifty years
+ago, with open Bible and American flag, and knocked at the front door of
+the Orient, the whole situation has completely changed. Then we knocked
+for admission to these shut-in lands. Now they are knocking at our door,
+for the knowledge and light that we have in Christian lands because we
+have Jesus.
+
+May I call your attention to some of the louder of these knockings?
+
+For years students in great numbers, thousands, have been coming from
+these heathen nations to our country to get our Western learning.
+Throughout the colleges and lower schools of the land, both East and West,
+in the greater universities, and in the more modest small church colleges
+they can be found.
+
+I remember a sight that never failed to thrill me in my visitations among
+the colleges of our Central West. Almost always I saw one or more of these
+young men, from Japan, and less frequently from China and India and other
+countries, and sometimes young women, too; studying in these institutions.
+Quite frequently they came from the better families of their people; often
+from old wealthy families of position and influence. So that by blood ties
+and position they will be the future men of influence and leaders of their
+people. And it is a notable fact that many of them are to-day the leaders
+in Japan. Literally thousands of them have come, these thousands of miles
+around the world, to knock at our doors, and ask for what we have and they
+haven't.
+
+Even more striking is the recent visitation to us of official commissions
+from the non-Christian lands. One after another, these national
+governmental deputations have come to us. They have been composed of the
+strongest men in these lands, men in leading official position. They have
+come by government appointment, and at government expense, to learn the
+secret of our marvellous Western progress.
+
+And in addition to these official deputations others have come, men of
+like prominence and influence, coming on their own account, to witness our
+civilization and learn its secrets.
+
+
+
+<u>The Coming Great Leaders.</u>
+
+
+One of the most remarkable incidents of this most remarkable movement has
+been the great migration of young Chinese men to study in the colleges of
+Japan. Within a very short space of time, as though by a concerted
+movement, fifteen thousand Chinese young men have flocked to Tokyo. The
+inevitable sifting process has sent many back, but fully ten thousand
+remain, engaged in earnest, hard study.
+
+Will you mark very keenly why they went to <i>Japan</i>? Because to them Japan,
+in its new life, stood for the new light and life of the West. Their
+little, but mighty, aggressive neighbor on their eastern shore had brought
+to their very door the new civilization of the Christian West.
+
+Here was an unusual opportunity. Where hundreds had come clear around the
+earth to us, thousands have seized this opportunity close at hand. They
+come from every province of China; even that farthest away, on the border
+of Tibet, sending hundreds.
+
+The travel involved thousands of miles. And if their slow means of travel
+be taken into account, it meant what would be to us practically hundreds
+of thousands of miles. Hundreds of them have been sent by the provincial
+and local governments. Others have come through private funds made up for
+the purpose. And wealthy men have sent their sons. They have gone to Japan
+only because Japan has opened her doors so widely to our Christian
+civilization. It is not to their conqueror, Japan, they have come, but to
+the civilization which Japan has imported from Christian lands.
+
+Was there ever such a knocking at the door of the Christian Church as
+this? Ten thousand picked men, of the best and keenest young manhood of
+China, representing all parts of the empire, and in large part
+representing the government, settling down to years of close study of our
+Christian civilization as found in Japan--a tremendous fact for the Church
+to-day! Things are crowding in on us. It is the non-Christian world
+knocking at our back door. It was too far around to the front. So they
+have commenced their knocking at the nearest and handiest door they could
+find.
+
+Then there are direct requests coming constantly to the missionaries, from
+the peoples in all these lands, earnestly asking and even pleading that
+men be sent to teach them of God and of Christ. Whole villages have been
+found in the fastnesses of Africa's wilds spending days together, and all
+day long, on their knees in prayer; most of ten mute prayer with upturned
+faces--their very bent bodies their prayer--that news of the white man's
+God might be sent to them.
+
+In Korea and other lands it is no uncommon thing for men and women to
+travel hundreds of miles by their slow transportation, or even to come
+a-foot, to attend gatherings where the story of Jesus is being preached.
+
+And then, too, there is the indirect knocking in the imitation of our
+Western ways, and throwing away of their own. Imitation is the highest
+form of compliment that can be paid. It tells of admiration, and of a
+desire to be as those imitated. The adapting of Western learning by these
+conservative Oriental peoples, the establishment of thousands of colleges
+and schools on the model of Christian countries is so radical a thing as
+to be nothing short of startling. The abandoning of bad customs, as well
+as of their old systems of education, is as startling. Where there were
+antagonisms there is now the friendliest imitation.
+
+If to this we add the remarkable immigration to our shores, of a million a
+year, it intensifies enormously the opportunity of service brought to us
+by foreign peoples. Yet please notice that this latter is not Asia nor
+Africa coming to us, but Europe.
+
+However crying their need may be, these are, nominally, not heathen
+peoples, but chiefly from Christianized Europe. The Asiatics would have
+come in great numbers, but that door was promptly shut and carefully
+locked by official hands.
+
+As you swing your eye over these seething masses of the heathen world, and
+listen to their voices, let me ask you, with the earnest softness of tone
+that belongs to the heart, could there be a louder knocking at the door of
+the Christian Church?
+
+
+
+<u>What Do They Want?</u>
+
+
+There can be no doubt about the knocking. But--<i>but</i> what is it they are
+after? Well, in plainest talk, they are after the thing that has made
+Christian nations great, great to the point of world-leadership and
+world-supremacy.
+
+Do you remember the famous reply, often quoted, given to a foreign visitor
+at the English court? He had asked the secret of the greatness of England,
+which impressed him so forcibly. And her gracious majesty, of blessed
+memory, Queen Victoria, placed her hand upon a Bible, and replied in the
+memorable words, "<i>This</i> is the secret of England's greatness."
+
+Just how much that wise woman had in mind I am sure I do not know. I feel
+very sure she did not refer to the church system of England. But to
+something far more and deeper than that, of which the church system is
+only one expression. Where the Bible has gone, and where it has so
+largely dominated the life of the people, as in England, there has been
+both a moral regeneration <i>and</i>, mark it keenly, a <i>new mental life</i>. Its
+touch has awakened the mental powers. There has been aroused and released
+into activity that <i>spirit of energy</i> which has become the most marked
+characteristic of the Western world.
+
+These two, the mental life and the remarkable energy, lie at the basis of
+all our wonderful modern science. And this, in turn, lies at the basis of
+all our phenomenal development. It is this that makes the West different
+from the East. The leading nations are Christian nations. The germ of
+vigorous life is in the Gospel of Christ.
+
+This is the thing the heathen world is knocking so earnestly at our door
+for to-day. I do not say that they think of it in that way. They are just
+coming, groping out of the darkness, with eyes blinking and blinded by the
+brightness of our light. They stretch eager, reaching fingers out toward
+the light, without knowing much about it. The glare of it has caught them.
+
+And if they are caught, moth-like, and hurt by its flame--if they copy our
+vile vices, which are no part of our Christianity, but the remnants of our
+own original savagery cropping out in spite of Christianity--if so, is it
+surprising? Their eyes are bothered by the sudden change from black
+darkness to brilliant light.
+
+But there's a deeper asking. Underneath all, the thing they are really
+asking for, all unconsciously most of them, is that which lies at the
+root of all our Western progress. They ask unknowingly for the Gospel of
+Christ, the heart of this precious old Bible. When they get that they will
+find that it brings the new awakening of mental life and the new
+aggressive energy that has made us Christian nations what we are.
+
+
+
+<u>Returning Our Call.</u>
+
+
+Will you please remember that their knocking at our door is a direct
+result of our knocking at their door? They are very polite, these far-away
+kinsfolk of ours. They are simply returning our call.
+
+The missionary, from Great Britain, and America, and Europe, has been the
+West's pathfinder in these foreign-mission lands. He has blazed a way into
+these thick woods, and beaten down narrow foot-paths through them. It's
+been hard, heroic work. The pathfinder has often gotten his hands and face
+badly torn by the thick brambly thorn bushes as he pushed resolutely on.
+
+Then diplomacy entered and broadened the roads. And commerce quickly came
+and beat them down into good hard shape for easy travel. And in turn the
+missionaries have freely used the broader, better roads.
+
+And now these roads are being trodden by other feet, and in an opposite
+direction. Along the pathways made by the Church, and made better by
+diplomacy and commerce, these peoples are coming, coming a-running, to ask
+us to give them what we have. We received it from Another. He bade us
+give it as freely as we received it.
+
+Here they come eagerly knocking at our doors, front door, and back door,
+and wherever there is a door. Do you hear them?
+
+Ah! The great question to-day is not a question for the heathen world, but
+for the Christian Church--shall we respond to the opportunity they are
+flinging in our faces? To-day there are more hands in heathen lands
+stretched out <i>for</i> the Gospel of Jesus than there are Christian hands
+stretched out <i>with</i> the Gospel. More hearts in those far-away lands are
+dumbly praying for the light than there are of us praying that they may
+receive the light--far more.
+
+The greatest question for the Church to-day is--shall we enter the open
+door? And this is a key-question, too. Its answer includes a full
+satisfactory answer to all the other questions we are discussing. All
+questions of finance, of uncertain wabbling pulpit voices, of careless and
+indifferent or empty pews, and of city evangelization will quickly find an
+answer as the Church fully and faithfully answers this. Here is the work
+that, if done, and well done, will bring a new circulation of blood into
+the whole life of the Church.
+
+Have you noticed the sharp contrast that there is gradually growing up
+between the way people at home and these foreign peoples are receiving the
+Gospel? Out there there is an openness to the truth, an eager willingness
+to believe it simply, and to act upon it, that suggests the way they did
+in the Book of Acts. In our home-lands of America and Great Britain and
+Germany there seems to be either indifference, or an atmosphere of quibble
+and criticism. With questions and doubts naturalistic explanations are
+sought that do away with much of the simple force of God's truth.
+
+A like difference is showing itself between the results there and here.
+Here they are scantier, and gotten with great difficulty; there much
+larger, and with greater ease. There the door is wide-open, and people
+crowding in; here there is a feeling that the door is closing, surely and
+not slowly people turn away elsewhere. There has come to be an unusual
+proportion of pickles and salads and other relishes served with every
+spreading of the Gospel meal here. There, just plain unbuttered bread is
+eagerly and thankfully sought for. They are hungry. And their hunger is a
+wide-open door to us. We need the exercise of foreign travel, and a great
+deal of it, to bring back our zest.
+
+
+
+<u>"Inasmuch."</u>
+
+
+May I speak very softly of another side of this knocking at our door?
+<i>Who</i> is it that is knocking? Aye, <i>Who</i>?
+
+Do you remember Jesus' words in Matthew, chapter twenty-five? He is
+speaking of the settling-up time that is to come at the close of things.
+And He does something there that is startling. He <i>identifies Himself</i>
+with the hungry and cold and poor. That is, He puts Himself in their
+place. They are reckoned as though they were He. He says that when they
+asked for some food and warm clothes <i>it was really Himself asking for
+food and warmth!</i> We have been really dealing with Him when we have met
+these needy ones. The one test question He makes for all is this--What did
+you do for these hungry people? Because what you did, or didn't do for
+them, was done or refused to <i>Me</i>. Jesus comes in the guise of the needy.
+Who is it knocking at our door so loudly to-day?
+
+I suppose if you could think of Jesus actually coming to-day to New York,
+the human Jesus I mean, coming as a man just as He came to Jerusalem, but
+known to us as He is now--I suppose there is hardly a door that would not
+open to Him. He might not be any better understood in New York than He was
+in Jerusalem, but the doors of the wealthy would quickly open to Him. I
+mean the Christian wealthy, the Church wealthy; other doors, too, no
+doubt, but these surely. He would have a great welcome.
+
+And I suppose, too, that if in some wealthy home on Fifth Avenue or
+Madison Avenue He were to ask His host to give some large sum, a million
+dollars or ten millions, for sending the Gospel to China or Japan His
+request would likely be granted. It seems to me rather probable that it
+would. Well, how can it be put plainly enough that He does come to our
+doors, rich, and less rich, and poor. He's at the front door now, knocking
+and asking our help.
+
+In these heathen peoples of His, <i>Jesus</i> comes to us. And we have been
+giving Him--shall I say it very softly for sheer shame?--we have given,
+not all, but most of us, what is practically the loose change in our
+trousers' pocket; not actually, of course; sometimes even that. We have
+spent more on everything else. We have made up boxes of cast-off clothes
+and old shoes for--<i>Jesus!</i> This has been a large part of our answer. Is
+it any wonder the hot blood sends the color climbing into our cheeks at
+the thought, and that we instinctively seek for some explanation that will
+soften the hard rub of the truth!
+
+I found a bit of a poem in a magazine some time ago that caught fire as I
+read it. It was written, I judge, in a personal sense; but it came to me
+at once with a wider meaning; and it persists in so coming at every
+reading of it.
+
+In this poem there is some one knocking at a door for admission, and a
+voice without calls,
+
+    "'Friend, open to <i>Me</i>.' Who is this that calls?
+    Nay, I am deaf as are my walls;
+    Cease crying, for I will not hear
+    Thy cry of hope or fear.
+    What art thou indeed
+    That I should heed
+    Thy lamentable need?
+    Hungry, should feed,
+    Or stranger, lodge thee here?
+
+But the voice persists--
+
+    "'Friend, My feet bleed.
+    Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.'
+    'I will not open; trouble me no more.
+    Go on thy way footsore,
+    I will not arise and open unto thee.
+
+And still the pleading,
+
+    "'Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see
+    Who stands to plead with thee.
+    Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou
+    One day entreat My face
+    And cry for grace,
+    And I be deaf as thou art now;
+    Open to Me'
+
+    "Then I cried out upon him: Cease,
+    Leave me in peace;
+    Fear not that I should crave
+    Aught thou may'st have.
+    Leave me in peace, yea, trouble me no more,
+    Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.
+    What! shall I not be let
+    Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?
+
+    "But all night long that voice spake urgently--
+    'Open to Me.'
+    Still harping in mine ears--
+    'Rise, let Me in.'
+    Pleading with tears--
+    'Open to Me, that I may come to thee.'
+    While the dew dropp'd, while the dark hours were cold--
+    'My feet bleed, see My Face,
+    See My hands bleed that bring thee grace,
+    My heart doth bleed for thee--
+    Open to Me.'
+
+    "So, till the break of day;
+    Then died away
+    That voice, in silence as of sorrow;
+    Then footsteps echoing like a sigh
+    Pass'd me by;
+    Lingering footsteps, slow to pass.
+    On the morrow
+    I saw upon the grass
+    Each footprint mark'd in blood, and <i>on my door</i>
+    <i>The mark of blood forevermore</i>."[10]
+
+That same voice still comes with a strangely gentle persistence--
+
+    "Inasmuch as ye did it
+    Unto one of these my brethren, even these least,
+    Ye did it unto Me.
+
+    "Inasmuch as ye did it <i>not</i>
+    Unto one of these least,
+    Ye did it <i>not</i> unto Me."[11]
+
+
+
+
+The Pressing Emergency
+
+
+
+  The October Panic.
+  Danger and Victory Eying Each Other.
+  Spirit Contests.
+  A Crisis of Neglect and Success.
+  A Westernized Heathenism.[A]
+  A Powerless Christianity.
+  Death or Deep Water.
+  Saved by Saving.
+
+
+
+
+The Pressing Emergency
+
+
+
+<u>The October Panic.</u>
+
+
+A man walked up the steps of a well-known bank in lower New York one
+morning, about a half-hour before opening-time, and stood before the shut
+door. In a few minutes another came, and stood waiting beside him. Others
+came, one by one, until soon a small group stood in line, waiting for the
+door to open.
+
+A messenger boy, coming down the street, quickly took in the unusual
+sight. He wasn't old enough to have been through any of New York's notable
+panics, and he had never witnessed a run on a bank; but quick as a flash,
+or as a Wall-Street messenger boy, he knew as though by instinct that a
+run was on at that bank. Instantly he started running down the street to
+tell others.
+
+No prairie wild-fire ever spread so quickly as the news ran over 'phone
+wires of the beginning of that run. As though by some sort of invisible
+ether-waves, the news seemed to spread through the financial district.
+Every bank president seemed to know at once. Then it spread throughout the
+city, and the greater city.
+
+So began what has been called the October panic of last year, which
+quickly spread through the land, and then throughout the world until every
+country bank here, and every capital city abroad, felt the sharp
+tightening of the money-bag strings.
+
+It was a strange panic. You couldn't just tell what was responsible for
+it. The very variety of explanations, editorial and other, told of the
+lack of a common understanding of what caused it. There had been no famine
+or drought. The crops, the chief financial barometer of the country's
+condition, had been remarkably abundant. There had been no overproduction
+or glutting of the industrial world. Indeed, great numbers of concerns had
+been embarrassed by orders that they couldn't fill fast enough. The cause
+seemed to be wholly in people's <i>minds</i>. A spirit of distrust of some of
+the great money leaders and of their methods was abroad. That feeling of
+fear sent a few men, by an unplanned concert of action, to a certain bank
+before ten o'clock one morning.
+
+The unusual sight of a few men standing in line waiting for the opening of
+that bank door was like a lighted match to a barn full of dry hay. At the
+first inkling of a suggestion of a financial panic money began to
+disappear. Nothing is so cowardly in its cautiousness as money.
+Scholarship comes next to it. The savings of years have the tightest grip
+on most human hands. As though by magic, money began hunting dark holes in
+stockings and cellars and safety-deposit boxes. And the hard grip of the
+panic was quickly felt everywhere. It was a fear panic. A terrible danger
+was at hand.
+
+At once the regular habit of life was disturbed for great numbers of men.
+The Secretary of the Treasury quit his Washington desk and spent several
+days in New York so as to be able to give the help of the Government's
+funds and enormous prestige where they would count for most, and to give
+promptly. Bank officials and other financial leaders cut social
+engagements and everything else that could be cut, and devoted themselves
+to meeting the sudden emergency. They ate scantily, both to save time and
+for lack of appetite, and to help keep their heads clear for quick
+decisive thinking and action. The tension was intense. Men sat up all
+night conferring on best measures.
+
+A group of the leading money men met in the private quarters of one of
+their numbers, about whose rugged personality and leadership they
+instinctively rallied. More than one night the gray dawning light of the
+morning found them, with white, drawn faces, still in conference. The
+emergency gripped them. An emergency always does. The habits of life are
+upset, helter-skelter, in the effort to avert the threatening danger. That
+was an emergency in the money world. Grave danger threatened. Everything
+else was forgotten, and every bit of available resource strained to turn
+the danger aside. It <i>was</i> turned aside. That was a splendid achievement.
+And even though men have been feeling the effects for this whole year,
+what they have felt is as nothing compared with what might have come.
+
+
+
+<u>Danger and Victory Eying each other.</u>
+
+
+An emergency means a great danger threatening, perhaps the very life. But
+it means, too, that if the danger can be gripped and overcome there will
+be great victory. Two possibilities come up close and stare each other
+angrily in the face; the possibility of great disaster impending, and of
+great victory over it within grasp, if there be a reaching hand to grasp
+it. The deciding thing is the human element, the strong, quick hand
+stretched out. If strength can be concentrated, the situation gripped,
+then great victory is assured. But it takes the utmost concentration of
+strength, with rare wisdom and quick steady action, to turn the tide
+toward flood. If this is not done, either because of lack of leadership or
+of enough strength or enough interest, disaster comes.
+
+Just such emergencies come to us constantly. A severe illness lays its
+hand upon a loved one in the home. The crisis comes. Death and life stand
+in the sick-room eying each other. Either one may be victor. No one can
+tell surely which it will be. And every effort is strained, the habit of
+life broken, other matters forgotten and neglected, that death may be
+staved off, and life wooed to stay. And when the crisis passes safely the
+joy over the new lease of life makes one forget all the cost of strain and
+effort.
+
+Who of us cannot recall some time back there, when some emergency came in
+personal business matters, and personal and home expenses and plans were
+cut down to the lowest notch, to the bleeding-point, that the emergency
+might be safely met.
+
+Teachers and parents know that moral emergencies come at intervals in a
+child's life, until young manhood and womanhood are reached. One of the
+greatest tasks in child-training is to note the emergency, and meet it
+successfully. And what keenness and patience and subtlety it does take
+only he knows who has been through the experience.
+
+
+
+<u>Spirit Contests.</u>
+
+
+Emergencies come in spiritual matters, too. They are the hardest kind to
+meet. It is hardest to make people see them and grip them. In the life of
+many a church a spiritual emergency has come, but has not been met. The
+church goes on holding services, raising money and paying it out, going
+through all the proper forms, but with the life itself quite gone out of
+it. The thing is being kept in motion by a humanly manipulated electric
+current; there is no free life-movement.
+
+Evangelistic leaders say that such emergencies come in their campaigning.
+There has to be a struggle of spirit forces. And the victory that comes,
+comes only as a result of close hand-to-hand conflict of soul by the
+leaders.
+
+We all know that such crises come in our personal experience. And those
+who know about changing things by prayer do not need to be told of the
+emergency that comes at times; nor of how it requires a tightening of all
+the buckles, a new reviewing of the promises on which prayer rests, a new
+steadying of one's faith, a quietly persistent hanging on, an intenser
+insistence of spirit in prayer and more arrow-praying in the daily round
+of work--sending out the softly breathed heart-pleadings while busy with
+common duties, until the assurance comes that the danger is past and the
+victory secure.
+
+It is remarkable to what an extent the great events of history have been
+emergency events. With the greatest reverence, it can be said that
+history's central event, the dying of Jesus, was an emergency action. Even
+though we understand clearly that it was known and counselled from before
+the foundation of the world, that He was to shed His precious blood for
+our salvation, His dying can never be fully understood save as a great
+emergency measure, <i>the</i> great emergency measure, because of the crisis
+made by sin.
+
+Now that is the sort of thing--an emergency--that is now on in this great
+task of world-wide evangelization which Jesus has committed to our hands.
+Some of you may be strongly inclined to lift your eyebrows and ask--Is
+there really any such emergency? I know that people don't like those words
+"crisis" and "emergency." It is much more comfortable to think that things
+are going on very smoothly and well. Even though all is not just as we
+might choose to have it, yet we like to think that it will turn out well.
+There is a sort of optimism that is very popular. Things will all come out
+right somehow, we like to think. But the fact is that things don't turn
+out right of themselves. They have to be turned by somebody who gives
+heart and life to the turning.
+
+It can be said with sane, sober sense that without doubt there is an
+emergency, and a great one, in this foreign-mission enterprise. It is, of
+course, true that in a sense there is <i>a continual emergency</i> here. There
+are thousands of these foreign brothers of ours slipping the tether of
+life daily. The light might easily have been taken to them, and have
+changed their choices. But then it hasn't been, and the dark shadow of the
+possibility of their separating themselves forever from God, through wrong
+choice persisted in, hangs down over each one of them. There can be no
+darker shadow except the actual knowledge that they have so separated
+themselves from life in Him.
+
+
+
+<u>A Crisis of Neglect and Success.</u>
+
+
+But quite distinct from that, and in addition to it, it is quite safe to
+say that there is <i>an emergency now on</i> in the heathen world such as it
+has never known before. Such is the mature judgment of our missionary
+leaders.
+
+And we do well to remind ourselves that we have some remarkable men among
+these leaders. There are men on the foreign fields and at the missionary
+helm at home of most remarkable ability and genius. There are to-day men
+of statesmanlike grasp and power, who could easily have taken front rank
+in public life, in diplomacy, and professional life, men fully able to
+fill the Presidential chair and do it masterfully, who are giving their
+life-blood to this great missionary task.
+
+The sober judgment of these men, taken from every angle of vision, is that
+the present is a time of unparalleled emergency. It exists peculiarly in
+Asia, the greatest of all foreign-mission lands. It has been caused by a
+number of things that now come together with such force as to make a
+crisis, <i>the</i> crisis of missions, the gravest that has yet come, and that,
+it is probably safe to say, will ever come. For the future will be largely
+settled, one way or the other, within a few years.
+
+At the basis of all is <i>the great need</i>, of course. That looms big and
+gaunt and spectral in any survey of the matter.
+
+Then <i>the neglect</i> by the Church for many generations has greatly
+intensified the present situation. The Master's plan plainly is that every
+generation of the Church shall give the Gospel to its generation; that is,
+to all the people living in the world at that time. Every generation of
+men must have the Gospel afresh. No land is beyond the need of a fresh
+gospelizing. If Christian America were to lose its churches and the
+Gospel, it would surely revert to the heathen type from which we sprung.
+
+But many generations went by with practically nothing of this sort being
+done. These generations of inactivity have piled up on the present
+generation. The undone work of the past adds greatly to the task of the
+present. The present situation is abnormal because of what hasn't been
+done.
+
+Then <i>the success of the present</i> has played a big part. Modern missionary
+activity has had a big share in making this emergency. A century of
+missions is reaching a tremendous climax. The splendid aggressiveness of
+church leaders and missionaries is now an embarrassment to a Church, or
+any one in the Church, who doesn't want to keep up the pace. It is an
+emergency of success, the logical result of what has been accomplished. So
+much has been done, and been done so well by a comparatively few, that now
+more must be done by the rest of us.
+
+It's because the heathen world is awake that there is an emergency. Their
+awakeness is the thing that crowds in on us. And we waked them up. We must
+now do more and better, because we have done so well. We have indeed waked
+them up, but--to what? A business man would stamp it as rank foolishness
+to fail to take advantage of the splendid opening that we have made in the
+foreign-mission world.
+
+
+
+<u>A Westernized Heathenism.</u>
+
+
+Now, let us look just a bit at this present pressing emergency. There are
+grave perils threatening, and a great victory possible.
+
+Well, first of all there is real danger of <i>a new aggressive heathenism;</i>
+a new, energetic, but distinctly un-Christian civilization, in the heathen
+world. Many thoughtful men who are keenly watching the world movement
+believe that without doubt there is to be a new leadership of the human
+race in the Orient. It <i>may</i> be a heathen leadership. That danger is a
+distinct possibility. The new world-leadership may have all the enormous
+energy and mental keenness of Christian peoples, but without the Christian
+spirit.
+
+That means practically a new heathenism, no longer asleep but wide-awake;
+no longer being manipulated by the Western nations, but maybe manipulating
+and managing them. An aroused, organized, energized heathen world, with
+all the science and inventiveness and restless aggressiveness of the
+western nations and, mark you--<i>and</i> all the spirit of the old, Godless,
+Christless heathenism dominating its new life--that is the danger.
+
+The heathen world is awake at last after a sleep of centuries. It is
+sitting up, rubbing its eyes, and taking notice. It is entering upon a new
+life. That's as clear as a sunbeam on a cloudless morning. What that life
+shall be depends entirely on the Church waking up. That means, to be more
+practical, that it depends on you and me waking up, just now, and doing
+what we easily can. It <i>may</i> be a new <i>Christian</i> life, shot through and
+through with the blessed principles and spirit of Jesus. It <i>may</i> be a new
+life of energized, Westernized heathenism! They may get merely our energy
+and mental awakeness without the Christian spirit that gave these to us.
+
+These two opposite things are standing by the bedside eying each other.
+Which will get the patient? Who knows? If the Church fail--!
+
+This is a real peril seriously threatening. It is probably far more grave
+and far more likely than the best-informed and keenest observer is aware
+of.
+
+
+
+<u>A Powerless Christianity.</u>
+
+
+Then there is a second danger climbing in fast on the heels of this, that
+is already being plainly felt. <i>These peoples may turn away from a
+Christianity that seems powerless to them.</i> As they come to know better
+the simple principles of our faith they may see that we are not true to
+it. Our Master bade us go everywhere and tell all men of Him, and tell
+them most and best by the way we live. But we haven't done it. The Church
+of the past nineteen centuries, taken as a whole, hasn't done it. The
+Church to-day, taken as a whole, isn't doing it.
+
+How many times have the missionaries been obliged to listen to the
+question, which is a reproach rather than a question, "Why didn't you come
+before? My father lived and died in distress, seeking for this light you
+bring us now. <i>Why didn't your father come and tell my father?"</i> If they
+find that our faith hasn't gripped <i>us</i> enough to master our lives they
+will naturally doubt if, after all, there is any more real practical
+power in it than in their own heathen beliefs.
+
+It <i>seems</i> better in theory, but it seems to lose its ideals in the stiff
+test of practice. They would be wrong in thinking that, of course. But
+what conclusion more natural to the crowd that never thinks deep. When all
+the difficulties and hardships come in the way of their acceptance of
+Christ, and the easiest way is not to, how easy to throw the whole thing
+aside.
+
+The story is told of a Chinaman in this country who applied for a position
+as house-servant in a family which belonged to a fashionable church. He
+was asked:
+
+"Do you drink whiskey?"
+
+"No, I Clistian man."
+
+"Do you play cards?"
+
+"No, I Clistian man."
+
+He was engaged, and proved to be a capable servant. By and by the lady
+gave a bridge-party, with wine accompaniments. The Chinaman did his part
+acceptably, but the next morning he appeared before his mistress.
+
+"I want quit," he said.
+
+"Why? What is the matter?"
+
+"I Clistian man. I told you so before; no heathen; no workee for 'Melican
+heathen."
+
+These heathen brothers of ours are not fools. They are a keen lot. They
+judge our religion by us who profess it, as we do with them and theirs.
+There may come a wide-spread practical disbelief, or lack of belief, that
+there is any practical power in Christ to change a man's life, and really
+control his actions. And it will be a perfectly logical conclusion from
+what they find in us Christian nations as a whole.
+
+
+
+<u>Death or Deep Water.</u>
+
+
+And then there are some mighty bad dangers on the other side--<i>our</i> side.
+If it be true that every generation <i>needs</i> the Gospel, it is just as true
+that every generation of Christians <i>needs to give</i> the Gospel. It is the
+very life of a Christian to give himself out in earnest service for
+others. The man who is failing there has started on the down grade in his
+Christian life. If we lose the spirit of "go" we have lost the very
+Christian spirit itself. A disobedient church will become a dead church.
+It will die of heart failure.
+
+It was John's Man with eyes of searching flame, and tongue of keen-edged
+sword, and feet that had been through the fire, who said to a Christian
+church, "I will move thy candlestick out of its place except thou change
+thy ways."[12] The candlestick isn't the light. It holds the light. The
+Church's great mission is to be the world's light-holder.
+
+But unsnuffed candles and cobwebby window-panes seem to have been in
+evidence sometimes. The Christian Church in some lands has plainly lost
+its privilege of service, and lost its life, too. The old organizations
+are kept up, but all life has gone. There's a grave danger threatening
+the American Church and the British Church just at this present time.
+
+Long years ago, in the days before steam navigation, an ocean vessel came
+from a long sea voyage, up St. George's Channel, headed for Liverpool.
+When the pilot was taken on board, he cried abruptly to the captain, "What
+do you mean? You've let her drift off toward the Welsh coast, toward the
+shallows. Muster the crew." The crew was quickly mustered, and the pilot
+told the danger in a few short words, and then said sharply, "Boys, it's
+death or deep water, hoist the mains'l!" And only by dint of hardest work
+was the ship saved.
+
+If I could get the ear of the Church to-day, I would, as a great kindness
+to it, cry out with all the earnestness of soul I could command, "<i>It's
+death or deep water;</i> deep water in this holy service of world-winning, or
+death from foundering."
+
+
+
+<u>Saved by Saving.</u>
+
+
+And then there's a yet graver peril threatening. It's quite the common
+thing to appeal to selfish motives. It is striking that the great strides
+that prohibition has made of recent years, have been due to a sort of
+legislation and to business regulation that appeal to selfish motives. The
+economic motive, and the disagreeable and injurious likelihood of a saloon
+being close to one's own home, have had greater influence than higher
+moral motives. And we are glad of any motive that will put the damnable
+traffic down and out.
+
+Well, I'm going to come down a step here, and remind you of a yet graver
+peril that threatens. There is serious danger of <i>a heathenized
+Christianity</i> dominating our boasted Christian civilization and Christian
+lands. And in time that would be a serious menace to our pocket-books.
+
+That is to say, there may be the energy and keen mental life without the
+mellowing and sweetening influence of the Christian spirit. The restless
+aggressiveness may come without the poise; the ceaseless activity without
+the deeper steadying quality; the keenness without the softening touch of
+the true life. In other words, if we don't Christianize heathendom, they
+will exert an influence on us that will practically amount to their
+heathenizing Christendom.
+
+Already such influences are seeping in at more than one crack.
+Mohammedanism has an active propaganda in Great Britain. Heathen wedges
+are slipping their thin edges in, in our land. More and more it will
+extend, in time influencing our whole moral fabric, and affecting our
+whole national life.
+
+During some recent researches among the ruins of Pompeii the explorers
+turned up a find that told its own story. It was the body of a crippled
+boy. He was lame in his foot. And around the body there was a woman's arm,
+a finely shaped, beautiful, bejewelled arm. The mute find told its simple
+story. The great stream of fire suddenly coming from the volcano, the
+crowd fleeing for life, the little cripple unable to get along fast
+enough, the woman's heart touched, her arm thrown about the boy to aid
+his escape; then the overtaking fire-flood, and both lost. The arm that
+was stretched out to save another was preserved, and only that. All the
+rest of the brave rescuer's body had gone. The saving part was saved. Only
+that mercifully outstretched to save another was itself saved.
+
+The Church or the man that selfishly saveth his life shall lose it. He
+that forgetteth about his own life in eagerly saving others shall find
+that he has saved his own life, and that it has grown into a new fulness
+and richness of life.
+
+These are some of the dark ugly faces peering into ours. But there's
+another face among them. It is a very bright face, with eyes all aglow,
+and features all shining with light. It is the face of victory over every
+danger and difficulty that threatens. Many believe that the emergency will
+be met. The victory will surely be achieved. But the fact to mark keenly,
+just now, is that it will be achieved only by a vigorous, masterful
+gripping of the present pressing emergency.
+
+Ah! God, may Thy Church--we men who make Thy Church, who <i>are</i> Thy
+Church--may we see the emergency, and be gripped by it; for Jesus' sake;
+aye, for men's sake; for the Church's sake; for our own sake; in Jesus'
+great name.
+
+
+
+
+The Past Failure
+
+
+
+  Some of God's Failures.
+  Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.
+  God's Sovereignty.
+  The Church Mission.
+  "Christ also Waits."
+  "Somebody Forgets."
+
+
+
+
+The Past Failure
+
+
+
+<u>Some of God's Failures.</u>
+
+
+God fails, sometimes. That is to say, the plan He has made and set His
+heart upon fails.
+
+Eden was God's plan for man. A weedless, thornless, world-garden of great
+beauty and fruitfulness; a man and woman living together in sweet purity
+and strong self-mastery; their children growing up in such an atmosphere,
+trained for the highest and best; the earth with all its wondrous forces
+developed and mastered by man; full comradeship and partnership between
+man and all the living creation, beast and bird; and in the midst of all
+God Himself walking and working in closest touch with man in all his
+enterprises--that was God's Eden plan for man. But it failed.
+
+The Israel plan was a failure, too. The main purpose of Israel being made
+God's peculiar people has failed up to the present hour. That plan
+originally was a simple shepherd people, living on the soil close to
+nature. They were to be, not a democracy ruled by the direct vote of the
+people in all things; nor a republic ruled by the vote of selected
+representatives; nor yet a kingdom ruled over by the will of an autocrat;
+but something quite distinct from all of these, what men have been pleased
+to call a theocracy.
+
+That is to say, God Himself was to be their ruler in a very real,
+practical sense, directing and working with them in the working out of all
+their national life. They were to combine all the best in each of these
+forms of government, with a something added, not in any of them as men
+know them.
+
+They were to be wholly unlike the other nations, utterly unambitious
+politically, neither exciting war upon themselves by others nor ever
+making war upon others. Their great mission was to be a teacher-nation to
+all the earth, teaching the great spiritual truths; and, better yet,
+embodying these truths in their personal and national life.
+
+But the plan failed. The glitter of the other nations turned them aside
+from God's plan. They set up a kingdom, "like all the nations," very much
+like them.
+
+Then God worked with them where they would work with Him. He planned a
+great kingdom to overspread the earth in its rule and blessed influence,
+but not by the aggression of war and oppression. Their later literature is
+all a-flood with the glory light of the coming king and kingdom. Yet when
+the King came they rejected Him and then killed Him. They failed at the
+very point that was to have been their great achievement. God's plan
+failed. The Hebrew people from the point of view of the direct object of
+their creation as a nation have been a failure up to the present hour.
+
+God's choice for their first king, Saul, was a failure, too. No man ever
+began life, nor king his rule, with better preparation and prospects. And
+no career ever ended in such dismal failure. God's plan for the man had
+failed.
+
+Jesus' plan for Judas failed. The sharpest contrasts of possible good and
+actual bad came together in his career in the most startling way. He
+failed at the very point where he should have been strongest--his personal
+loyalty to his Chief.
+
+There can be no doubt that Jesus picked him out for one of His inner
+circle because of his strong attractive traits. He had in him the making
+of a John, the intimate, the writer of the great fourth Gospel. He might
+have been a Peter, rugged in his bold leadership of the early Church.
+
+But, though coached and companioned with, loved and wooed, up to the very
+hour of the cowardly contemptible betrayal, he failed to respond even to
+such influence as a Jesus could exert. Jesus planned Judas the apostle. He
+became Judas the apostate, the traitor. He was to be a leader and teacher
+of the Gospel. He became a miserable reproach and by-word of execration to
+all men. Jesus' plan failed.
+
+
+
+<u>Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.</u>
+
+
+Will you please mark very keenly that the failure always comes because of
+man's unwillingness to work with God? It always takes two for God's
+plan--Himself and a man. All His working is through human partnership. In
+all His working among men He needs to work <i>with</i> men.
+
+Some good earnest people don't like, and won't like, that blunt statement
+that God fails sometimes. It seems to them to cast a reproach upon God.
+They may likely think it lacking in due reverence. But if these kind
+friends will sink the shaft of their thinking just a little deeper down
+into the mine of truth, they will find that the reproach is somewhere
+else.
+
+There <i>is</i> reproach. Every failure that could have been prevented by
+honest work and earnest faithfulness spells reproach. And there is
+reproach here. But it isn't upon God; it is upon man. God's plan depends
+upon man. It is always man's failure to do his simple part faithfully that
+causes God's plan to fail.
+
+There is a false reverence that fears to speak plainly of God. It seeks by
+holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully
+thought-out phrase, to bolster up God's side. True love has two marked
+traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should
+be known; and it is always reverential. It can't be otherwise. The
+bluntest words on the lips combine with the deepest reverence of spirit.
+God doesn't need to be defended. The plain truth need never be apologized
+for.
+
+It's a false reverence that holds back some of the truth, lest stating it
+may seem to reflect on God's character. Such false reverence is a
+distinct hindrance. It holds back from us some of the truth, and the
+strong emphasis that the truth needs to arouse our attention and get into
+our some-time thick heads. We men need the stirring up of plain truth,
+told in plainest speech. The Church has suffered for lack of plain telling
+of the truth. The deepest, tenderest reverence insists upon plain talk,
+and reveals itself in such talk.
+
+It is irreverent to hold back some of God's truth. For so men get wrong
+impressions of God. It is unfair as well as irreverent. Theology has
+sometimes been greatly taken up with adjusting its statements so as to
+defend God's character. But the plainest, fullest telling of truth is the
+greatest revealer of His great wisdom and purity and unfailing love.
+
+
+
+<u>God's Sovereignty.</u>
+
+
+There has been a good bit of teaching about "God's sovereignty". Behind
+that mysterious, indefinite phrase has crept much that badly needs the
+clear, searching sunlight of day. God's sovereignty is commonly thought of
+as a sort of dead-weight force by which He compels things to come His way.
+If a man stand in the way of God's plan so much the worse for the man. It
+is thought of as a sort of mighty army, marching down the road, in close
+ranks, with fixed bayonets. If you happen to be on that road better look
+out very sharply, or you may get crushed under foot.
+
+I do not mean that the theologians put it in that blunt fashion, nor that
+I have ever heard any preacher phrase it in that way. I mean that as I
+have talked with the plain common people, and listened to them, this is
+the distinct impression that comes continually of what it means to them.
+Then, too, the phrase has often been used, it is to be feared, as a
+religious cloak to cover up the shortcomings and shirkings of those who
+aren't fitting into God's plan.
+
+God is a sovereign. The truth of His sovereignty is one of the most
+gracious of all the truths in this blessed old Book of God. It means that
+the great gracious purpose and plan of God will finally be victorious. It
+means that in our personal lives He, with great patience and skill and
+power, works <i>through</i> the tangled network of circumstances and
+difficulties to answer our prayers, and to bring out the best results for
+us.
+
+It means further that, with a diplomacy and patience only divine, He works
+<i>with</i> and <i>through</i> the intricate meshes of men's wills and contrary
+purposes to bring out good now--not good out of bad, that is impossible;
+but good in spite of the bad--and that finally all opposition will be
+overcome, or will have spent itself out in utter weakness, and so His
+purposes of love will be fully victorious.
+
+But the practical thing to burn in deep just now is this, that we can
+hinder God's plan. His plans <i>have</i> been hindered, and delayed, and made
+to fail, because we wouldn't work with Him.
+
+And God <i>lets</i> His plan fail. It is a bit of His greatness. He will let a
+plan fail before He will be untrue to man's utter freedom of action. He
+will let a man wreck his career, that so through the wreckage the man may
+see his own failure, and gladly turn to God. Many a hill is climbed only
+through a swamp road.
+
+God cares more for a man than for a plan. The plan is only for the sake of
+the man. You say, of course. But, you know, many men think more of
+carrying through the plan on which they have set themselves, regardless of
+how it may hurt or crush some man in the way. God's plan is for man, and
+so it is allowed to fail, for the man's sake.
+
+Yet, because the plan is always made for man's sake, it will be carried
+through, because by and by man will see it to be best Many a man's
+character has been made only through the wrecking of his career. If God
+had had His way He would have saved both life and soul, both the earthly
+career and the heavenly character.
+
+Let us stop thoughtfully, and remember that God has carefully thought out
+a plan for every man, for each one of us. It is a plan for the <i>life</i>,
+these human years; not simply for getting us to what we may have thought
+of as a psalm-singing heaven, when we're worn out down here.
+
+It is the best plan. For God is ambitious for us; more ambitious for you
+and me than we are for ourselves, though few of us really believe that.
+But He will carry out His plan--aye, He <i>can</i> carry it out only with our
+hearty consent. He must work <i>through</i> our wills. He honors us in that
+With greatest reverence be it said that God waits reverently, hat in hand,
+outside the door of a man's will, until the man inside turns the knob and
+throws open the door for Him to come in and carry out His plan. We can
+make God fail by not working with Him. The greatest of all achievements of
+action is to find and fit into God's plan.
+
+
+
+<u>The Church Mission.</u>
+
+
+Now, God had and has a plan for His Church. That plan is simply this: The
+Church was to be His messenger to the nations of the earth. There are
+other matters of vast importance committed to the Church, without doubt:
+the service of worship and the training and developing of the life of its
+members. But these, be it said very thoughtfully, are distinctly secondary
+to the service of taking the Gospel to all men.
+
+These two, the chief and the secondary, are interwoven, each contributing
+to and dependent upon the other. But there is always a main purpose. And
+that here, without question, is the carrying of the message of Jesus fully
+to all the earth. In each generation the chief plan, to which all else was
+meant to be contributory, was that all men should hear fully and winsomely
+the great thrilling story of Jesus.
+
+Shall I say that that plan has failed? It hurts too much even to repeat
+such words. I will not <i>say</i> the Church has failed. But I will ask you to
+note God's plan for the Church, and then in your inner heart to make your
+own honest answer.
+
+And in making it remember the practical point is this--the Church is <i>you.
+I</i> am the Church. Its mission is mine. If I say it has failed I am talking
+about myself. I can keep it from failing so far as part of it is
+concerned, the part that I am. My concern is not to be asking abstractly,
+theoretically, about the Church, but about so much of it as I am.
+
+In annual church reports, and triennial and quadrennial, much space is
+given to telling of the <i>wealth</i> of the Church. Of course, I suppose its
+wealth is meant to be an index of all its work. It may seem a bit odd to
+use the world's index-finger to point out our faithfulness to our Master's
+will. It is used, of course, to impress the world in the way the world can
+most quickly and easily understand.
+
+But the Church was not meant by the Master to be a rich institution in
+money and property; though it has grown immensely so. The Master's thought
+was that its power and faithfulness should be revealed entirely in the
+extent to which all men of all nations know about Himself and have been
+won to Him.
+
+If we think only a little bit into the past history of the Church, and
+then into present world conditions, we know the answer to that hurting
+question about the Church being a failure.
+
+I know that many of you are thinking of the triumphs of the Church; of her
+imperishable and incalculable influence upon the life of the world. And I
+will join you heartily in that, some other time. Just now we are not
+talking of that, but of just one particular fact of its history. One truth
+at a time makes sharper outlines and brings the whole circle of truth out
+more plainly. I love to sing,
+
+    "I love Thy Kingdom, Lord,
+    The house of Thine abode;
+    The Church our blest Redeemer saved
+    With His own precious blood."
+
+We shudder to attempt to think into what these centuries would have been
+without the influence of the Church.
+
+But at present we are talking about something else. Let me ask you,
+softly, if God's plan for the Church was that it was to be His messenger
+to all men, as you think back through nineteen centuries and then think
+out into the moral world conditions to-day, would you say the plan had
+succeeded? Or had--?
+
+
+
+<u>"Christ also Waits."</u>
+
+
+There's a bit of light here on that vexed question of the Lord's second
+coming, about which good, earnest people differ so radically. The Master
+said, you remember, that we were to be watching for His return. But many
+ask, how can we be watching when it's been two thousand years since He
+told us to watch, and the event seems as far off as ever?
+
+I remember one day in a Bible class the lesson was in the twelfth of
+Luke, about watching for the Lord's return. Some of the class seemed to
+think that it means that we should be in a constant attitude of
+expectancy, looking for His return. But one man, an earnest, godly old
+minister said, "How can you be looking expectantly for a <i>thousand
+years?"</i>
+
+But will you mark keenly that the teaching of Jesus Himself was that His
+return depended on His followers' doing a certain thing?[13] When all men
+had been told fully of Jesus, then He was to return and carry out a
+further part of His plan. Clearly if the part we were to play has not been
+done, it delays His part. The telling of all men about Jesus seems to bear
+a very close connection with what will occur when Jesus returns.
+
+Some of our good friends have been much taken up with figuring out when
+the Lord would come back. Some of them seem to have great skill in making
+calendars. They even go so far as to fix exact dates. They seem to forget
+that word of the Master, "In such an hour as ye think <i>not</i> the Son of Man
+cometh." If you think He will come at a certain given time, then you can
+know one thing certainly, that He won't come then.
+
+The only calendar we men have is a calendar of <i>dates</i>, fitted to the
+movements of the sun and moon. God has a calendar, too, but it is a
+calendar of <i>events</i>, not of dates. The completion of His plans doesn't
+depend on so many revolutions of the earth about the sun, but on the
+faithful revolution of His followers in their movement around the earth
+telling men of Jesus.
+
+It looks very much as though the Master's coming has been delayed, and His
+plans delayed, because we have not done the preparatory part assigned us.
+
+    "The restless millions wait the light,
+    Whose coming maketh all things new.
+    <i>Christ also waits;</i> but men are slow and late.
+    Have we done what we could? Have I? Have you ?"
+
+
+<u>"Somebody Forgets."</u>
+
+A little fellow, of a very poor family, in the slum section of one of our
+large cities, was induced to attend a mission Sunday-school. By and by, as
+a result of the teacher's faithful work, he became a Christian. He seemed
+quite bright and settled in his new Christian faith and life.
+
+Some one, surely in a thoughtless mood, tried to test or shake his simple
+faith in God by a question. He was asked, "If God loves you, why doesn't
+He take better care of you? Why doesn't He tell some one to send you warm
+shoes and some coal and better food?"
+
+The little fellow thought a moment, and then with big tears starting in
+his eyes, said, "I guess He does tell somebody, <i>but somebody forgets</i>."
+
+Without knowing it, the boy touched the sore point in the Church's
+history. I wonder if it is the sore point with you or me.
+
+
+
+
+The Coming Victory
+
+
+
+  Failure Swallowed By Victory.
+  The Revised Missionary Motto.
+  Ahead, But Behind.
+  In A Swift Current.
+  Power Of Leadership.
+  A Minority Movement.
+  A Great World-chorus.
+  The Oratorio Of Victory.
+
+
+
+
+The Coming Victory
+
+
+
+<u>Failure Swallowed by Victory.</u>
+
+
+But God's failures are only for a while. They are real. There is the
+tragic element in them. There is the deep, sad tinge of disappointment
+running throughout this old Book of God. Yet the failures are only for a
+time. Sometimes it seems a very long time, especially if you are living
+through some of it. But the time reaches eagerly to an end. Victory comes.
+And God's victory will be so great as to make us completely forget the
+failures that marred the road.
+
+The Eden plan was more than a plan. It was a prophecy of the final
+outcome. The Book of God begins with failure, but it ends with a glowing
+picture of great victory, painted with rose colors. Every feature of
+beauty and of good in Eden has grown greatly in John's Revelation climax.
+The garden of Genesis becomes a garden-city. All the simplicity and purity
+of garden life, and all the development and power represented by city
+life, are brought together. There is now a <i>river</i> of <i>life</i>, and the
+<i>tree</i> of life has grown into a grove.
+
+And God isn't through with that nation of Israel yet. The Jew can't be
+lost. In every nation under heaven he can be found to-day, a walking
+reminder of God's plan. Every Jew, in whatever ghetto he may be found, is
+an unconscious prophecy of a coming fulfilment of God's purpose. The
+strange racial immortality of the Jew is a puzzle from every standpoint,
+except God's. He can't be killed off; though men have never ceased trying
+to kill him off. The Jew looms up bigger to-day than for many generations.
+
+The present strange restless Jewish longing for national existence again,
+that will not down, spells out the coming victory of God's plan after
+centuries of failure. And even though the present tide may run out toward
+ebb, it will be to gather force for a new and fuller flood. When God's
+plan works out the world will have a wholly new idea of national life, and
+of a world-power without army or navy or any show of force, touching all
+men, and touching them only to bless.
+
+And though King Saul failed, there was already the ruddy David, out among
+the sheep, waiting the anointing oil, and carrying about in his person his
+nation's greatest king.
+
+Jesus' Judas failed to realize the promise of his earlier days. He struck
+the record note for baseness. But Paul was being prepared by blood
+inheritance and scholarly training. Under the touch of the Master's own
+hand he became the Church's greatest leader in its life-mission. If Judas
+struck the lowest note, Paul rang the changes on the highest note of
+personal loyalty to Jesus and to His world-wide passion and purpose.
+
+And the Church has waked up. I said, you remember, last evening, that if
+you look over the whole history of the Church since its birthday on
+Pentecost, you are pained by the sore fact that the chief mission
+entrusted to it has been for the most part forgotten. There has been more
+forgetting of it, and neglecting it, than fulfilling it.
+
+Yet always, be it keenly noted, in every generation of these centuries
+there have been those whose vision of Olivet never dimmed. There have
+always been those who have tried faithfully to carry out the Church's
+great mission. The darkest days have never been without some of the
+brightest light, made all the brighter by the surrounding night.
+
+
+
+<u>The Revised Missionary Motto.</u>
+
+
+But there's a new chapter of the Church's life being written as we talk
+together. Its writing began in the closing twilight of the eighteenth
+century. That chapter isn't finished yet. Some of its best pages are now
+being written, with more and better clearly coming.
+
+Its first lines were written by a very common pen. Carey's English
+cobbler-shop became a sounding-board whose insistent, ringing messages
+began to waken the Church. The Church is waking up, and shaking itself,
+and tightening on its clothes, for the greatest work yet to be done in
+fulfilling the life-mission entrusted to it.
+
+A hundred years ago the fire of God found fresh kindling stuff in the
+hearts and brains of a few young college fellows in an old New England
+village. The sore need of the world crowded in upon them by night and by
+day. But they were few, and young, and unknown. And the task was
+stupendous. The rain-storm of a Sabbath afternoon drove them to the
+shelter of a hay-stack. And the storm of the world's need drove them to
+the shelter of prayer, and then to the shelter of a great purpose. With
+simple faith in God, and strong devotion to the great neglected task, they
+spoke out to the Church the thrilling words, "We can do it if we will".
+
+And on that same spot a hundred years later the Church gathered. Those
+intense words had been heard. The Church had waked up. Men of long service
+in far-away lands stood with those of the home circle. They talked of the
+past, but far more of the present and future. They revised the century-old
+motto. No group of scholars in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey
+ever did finer revision work. They said, "We can do it, <i>and</i> we will". No
+greater tribute to the memory of the faithful little hay-stack group was
+ever made than in that changed motto.
+
+The young collegians' bold cry had sounded out throughout the Church. And
+the Church heard and roused up. The modern missionary movement of the
+Church is the most marked development of the past century of church
+history. It can be said that the Church of our day in its missionary
+activity far exceeds the early Church. That is to say, in certain
+particulars we have exceeded.
+
+It is common to refer to the missionary zeal of the first centuries.
+Fresh from the Master's touch, the early Church was chiefly a missionary
+church. One great purpose gripped it, and that was to take the news of
+Jesus everywhere. And they went everywhere. We know most about Paul's
+journeys in the Grecian and Roman worlds. But there is good evidence that
+there is another "Acts of Apostles" beside the one bound up in this Bible.
+Out to the farthest reaches of the earth they seemed to have gone in those
+early days, preaching and winning men and establishing church societies.
+
+The <i>bulk</i> of the modern movement is without doubt greatly in excess of
+the early movement. The number of men out in various fields, the amount of
+money being given annually by the Church in America and Great Britain and
+the Continental countries is so much greater as to leave comparison
+practically out.
+
+In the thoroughness of organization, the elements of permanency, the great
+variety of means used such as hospitals, schools, literature, and
+industrial helps, the present probably exceeds by far the early movement.
+The statesmanlike study by church leaders of the whole world-field, the
+steadiness of movement year after year, in spite of difficulties and
+discouragements, the careful systematic effort to inform and arouse the
+home church--these are marked features of the present foreign-mission
+campaign. They are such as to awaken the deepest admiration of any
+thoughtful onlooker. In all of this the modern Church is making a wholly
+new record.
+
+
+
+<u>Ahead, But Behind.</u>
+
+
+Yet, while all this is true, it can be said just as truly that the Church,
+<i>as a whole,</i> is so far behind the primitive Church as, again, practically
+to leave comparison out of the question. <i>They</i> were so far ahead in the
+<i>mass</i> of their movement that we are scarcely in the lists at all. Then
+the <i>whole</i> Church was an active missionary society. <i>Every one</i> went and
+preached. The nearest approach to it in modern times probably is the
+movement of the native Church of Korea. This foreign people seems to have
+caught the early spirit. Our heathen brothers are taking their place as
+pace-setters for the Church.
+
+By contrast with that, the modern activity has been by a minority, really
+a small minority, though a steadily growing one. The leaders have
+struggled heroically against enormous odds in the backward pull of the
+majority.
+
+<i>Then</i> they went <i>everywhere</i>. That is, they went everywhere that they
+could, so far as open doors, or doors that could be pried open, let them.
+We have gone actually farther, and to more places probably, but we haven't
+begun to go everywhere that we could.
+
+Our ability to go, and the urgent requests for us to come, would carry us
+to thousands of places not yet touched. If we began to do things as the
+early Church people did, it would stand out as one of the greatest
+movements in the history of the race. If a small minority of us have made
+such enormous strides what could the whole of us do if we would!
+
+
+
+<u>In a Swift Current.</u>
+
+
+The <i>momentum</i> of the present missionary movement has been startling. It
+suggests that we are on the eve of an advance undreamed of by the most
+enthusiastic. The last twenty-odd years have seen progress clear
+outstripping that of the previous hundred, though all built upon the
+foundations so well laid by the earlier leaders of the century.
+
+In answer to the earnest persistent prayer of a few, the Spirit of God
+found new stuff ready for His kindling fires among the colleges. The story
+of the prayer of a few that preceded the forming of the Student Volunteer
+Movement is thrilling. That great movement was literally conceived and
+brought forth in the travail of prayer. Its wide-spread influence upon the
+colleges, and then upon the churches; its early campaigning, its
+remarkable leaders, its great conventions, the steadiness of its growing
+influence through more than twenty years, and the distinct mark it has
+made upon the whole mission propaganda abroad, make up one of the most
+thrilling chapters of church history, ancient or modern. To-day its
+influence encircles the earth. Its volunteers are found everywhere.
+
+Its reflex influence upon that other movement, the Young Men's Christian
+Association, has been no small part of its work. The two have been
+interwoven from the beginning, each contributing immeasurably to the
+other. The practical power of the Young Men's Christian Association on
+foreign soil is recognized by the Church, and by foreign governments, as
+of a value clear beyond calculation or statement.
+
+It has come to be one of the great expressions of the unifying spirit of
+the Church on foreign-mission soil. Our churches at home may go their
+separate ways, largely. But the pressure of the sore need of the foreign
+world has been welding the churches there together remarkably. The
+Christian Associations, both of young men and young women, belonging to
+all the Church and representing all, have held a strategic position in
+action, and been of inestimable service to the Church in its missionary
+propaganda.
+
+The Young People's Missionary Movement, whose long, warm fingers are
+reaching throughout the whole Church, and the newer Laymen's Missionary
+Movement with its aggressive campaigning, are both remarkable expressions
+of the new uprising.
+
+The women of the Church were forehanded in their earnest working and
+praying. They were up at dawn of day. Their influence is mighty, clear
+beyond any words to express. And now at last the men are waking up, and
+the new life is showing itself anew within organic church lines. Men's
+missionary conventions, with great attendances, are swinging into line,
+and revealing the awakeness of the Church.
+
+
+
+<u>Power of Leadership.</u>
+
+
+The enormous power of personal influence and of devoted leadership has
+been most marked. In the throng of strong men that lead in all this
+activity there are two men that by common consent stand out big in the
+group. Young men they are, both of them, not yet in the full prime of
+their powers. One has a genius for organization probably never surpassed,
+if equalled, by military general, or Jesuit chief, or modern captain of
+industry. The other has mental grasp, keenness of thought, and power of
+persuasive speech not surpassed by any, if equalled. Both are marked by a
+singularly deep, tender spirituality, a rare gift of leadership, a poise
+of judgment, and a devotion to the Church's great mission as true and
+steady as the polar star.
+
+Around these two young men has grouped up in no small measure this later
+missionary activity. And it is probably quite within the mark to say that
+no stronger, abler men can be found in any of the great activities of life
+to-day in either of these two great English-speaking peoples. It is surely
+significant that the modern missionary movement rallies around such
+giants.
+
+It is worthy of special note, too, that the body of men to whom is
+entrusted the administration of this vast network of foreign service, the
+foreign-board members and secretaries of the Church, have developed such
+remarkable power and skill. No body of men has problems more intricate and
+exacting and difficult. And no body of men in any sphere of activity has
+shown greater diplomacy and astuteness, hard sound sense, and untiring
+devotion.
+
+Some good friends are sometimes disposed to be critical of methods and
+management. They think the affair could be conducted better in some
+details which they think important. Well, it would be surprising if it
+were not so. The same criticisms are made of every governmental and great
+industrial enterprise. Everything human seems to make progress by
+correcting and improving. But the thing for you and me to keep a
+critically keen eye upon is this: that no such detail be allowed to affect
+by so much as a hair's weight the steadfast ardor of our support.
+
+No strong man in the thick of the great driving purpose of his life is
+turned aside or stopped by the biting or buzzing of a few insects. If even
+they can't be brushed aside, let them buzz and bite, but don't let the
+great passion of a life be affected by them. Indeed, they will be clean
+forgot, even while they are remembered, by the man who has been caught and
+swept by the fire of his Master's passion for a world.
+
+
+
+<u>A Minority Movement.</u>
+
+
+Yet, be it keenly marked, these great strides have been made by a
+minority, who have followed the strong leaders. The whole Church is not
+yet awake. Many protest strenuously against being waked up. The
+alarm-clocks bother them. Sometimes one is inclined to think that the
+foreign boards are peculiarly placed between a refrigerator and a furnace.
+
+Missionaries come back home fresh from the front fairly aflame with the
+fervor of their enthusiasm. Their convictions of what could be done, and
+should be done, are apt to be spoken out with great positiveness. They
+seem to some to suggest in an uncomfortable way the thought of a glowing
+furnace. And many in the home churches seem able to listen with such
+indifference as to suggest to these returned men and women the chilling
+air of an ice-box. In between the two sits the Church board engaging in
+the difficult task of trying to equalize the temperature. But that's
+merely a detail in passing.
+
+The great fact to mark is that never has the missionary movement bulked so
+large. And never have such broad statesmanlike plans, such aggressiveness
+of spirit, coupled with deep devotion, marked the Church in its great
+life-mission.
+
+One morning at a popular summer resort on the Long Island Sound coast
+thousands of bathers were enjoying the surf-bathing. The life-saving crew
+were stationed for duty, on the lookout for any accident. A gentleman
+standing by one of the crew asked him how he could tell if help were
+needed. There were thousands of bathers, and a perfect babel of noises.
+The weather-beaten man, bronzed and toughened and trained to keenness in
+his work by years of service, said, "I can always hear a cry of distress,
+no matter how great the noise and confusion. There never yet has been a
+cry of need I haven't heard."
+
+For a long time the confusion of noises bothered the Church ears. But now
+the cry of distress from over the wide seas is being heard again
+distinctly, and is being responded to splendidly. The very earnestness of
+response and effort is a forerunner of sure victory.
+
+
+
+<u>A Great World-chorus.</u>
+
+
+I recall vividly a scene in Albert Hall in London nearly fifteen years
+ago. A remarkable gathering from all parts of the world had come together
+to celebrate the jubilee of the Young Men's Christian Association. About
+two thousand men had come from the ends of the earth. It was a
+world-gathering. There were sturdy Englishmen, cosmopolitan Americans,
+canny Scots, quick-witted Irishmen, sweet-voiced, fervid-spirited
+Welshmen, and courtly, suave Frenchmen.
+
+Fair-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavians mingled with olive-skinned,
+black-eyed sons of Italy. The steady-going Hollander and the intense
+German mingled their deep gutturals with the songs of praise and the
+discussions. A few turbaned heads, inscrutably quiet almond-eyes, and
+others of energetic step and speech brought to mind the Great Orient,
+India and China and Japan. Men won up out of the savagery of Africa sat
+with Islanders from the Pacific.
+
+They came from many communions and represented many creeds, and spoke as
+many tongues as the Jerusalem crowds on the day of Pentecost. But they
+were drawn together not by their attractive diversity, but because of
+their oneness. The drawing-power of Jesus was the magnet that drew them.
+It was the music of His Name that made all their tongues and languages
+blend and chord in sweet harmony.
+
+This night I speak of they had gathered in the great oval-shaped Albert
+Hall opposite Hyde Park. With the Londoners, probably, fully ten thousand
+persons were present. And I think I shall never forget the vast volume of
+sound, as, led by a chorus of Scandinavian students, they all united in
+singing, "All hail the power of Jesus' Name."
+
+They didn't sing it to our American tune of "Coronation," but to the old
+English "Miles Lane." That tune, you remember, repeats over four times the
+words, "Crown Him," in the last line, gradually increasing in volume, and
+the fourth time touched with a bit of quieting awe.
+
+I can close my eyes now, and see that great world-gathering and hear again
+the sweet rhythmic thunder of their singing:
+
+    "And crown Him,
+    <i>Crown Him</i>,
+    CROWN HIM,
+    <i>Crown Him</i>, Lord of all."
+
+No one can tell to another the thrill and thrall of such a sight and
+sound. It was all unconsciously a bit of prophecy acted out, faint but
+distinct, of the great day of victory that is coming.
+
+
+
+<u>The Oratorio of Victory.</u>
+
+
+Have you ever noticed the Oratorio of Revelation? Lovers of music should
+study the book of the Revelation of Saint John, for its mighty choruses.
+It is striking just now to notice the double key-note of that closing
+climactic book of this old Bible. It is this: Satan chained, and Christ
+crowned. But note for a moment the oratorio sounding its music through
+these pages.
+
+It opens with a <i>solo</i> in the first chapter.[14] John begins writing with
+steady pen until he seems to get a glimpse of Jesus. Then his pen drops
+the story, and he begins singing:
+
+    "Unto Him that loveth us,
+    And loosed us from our sin by His own blood;
+    And hath made us a kingdom,
+    Priests unto His God and Father;
+    To Him the glory and the dominion
+    Forever and ever."
+
+In chapter four[15] comes a <i>quartette</i>. The four living creatures round
+about the throne take up the refrain of John's solo. And, as they sing,
+their song is caught up by a <i>sextuple quartette</i>, twenty-four
+white-robed, crowned men before the throne.[16]
+
+In chapter five the <i>Angel Chorus</i> swings in.[17] They are grouped round
+about the quartette, and the twenty-four elders. John begins to count
+them. Then his figures give out. His knowledge of mathematics is too
+limited. There were ten thousand times ten thousand, and unnumbered
+thousands of thousands. As far as his eye could reach, to left and right,
+before and behind, was one vast sea of angel faces.
+
+And John listened enraptured and awed, as their wondrous volume of rhythm
+rang and thundered out. Sweet sopranos and mellow contraltos; ringing
+tenors and deep basses; first one, then the other, back and forth
+responding to each other, then all together; marvellous music it must have
+been.
+
+Then the refrain of their song is caught up by the <i>Creation Chorus</i>.[1]
+Every living creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, as
+though unable to resist the contagious sweep, catch up the music and add
+their own to it. We don't commonly associate music with the animal
+creation, nor with nature. It has been said that all the sounds of nature
+are keyed in the minor, as though some suffering had affected them. We
+talk of the sighing of the wind, the moaning of the sea-waves, and the
+mourning of the doves. Though the singing-birds must be excepted. They
+seem to have caught and kept some of the upper strains.
+
+But evidently something has occurred to strike a new key-note. For now
+they take up the refrain of the joyous song of the others, and increase
+the mighty song by their own.
+
+In chapter seven the music has ceased or softened down and is taken up
+afresh by the <i>Martyr Chorus</i>.[18] Again John's figures give out. He
+declares that nobody could count the multitudes that make up this chorus.
+It is a polyglot chorus. They sing in many different languages, but all
+blend into full rhythm. It's a scarred chorus, too. These have been
+through great tribulation. Their scars tell the mute story of the
+fierceness of the fight, and the steadiness of their faith.
+
+Through their singing runs a distinct strain of the minor. Its strangely
+sweet cadence, learned in many an hour of pain, runs as an under-chording
+through the song of triumph that now fills their hearts and mouths. And as
+they sing, the angel chorus and the quartette drop to their knees, and
+swell the wondrous refrain.
+
+In chapter fourteen comes the music of the <i>Chorus of Pure Ones</i>.[19] They
+are gathered close about the person of Jesus. They sing to the
+accompaniment of a great company of harpers. They sing with a peculiar
+clearness in their tones. Theirs is a new song. Purity always makes a
+music of its own, unapproachable for sweetness and clearness.
+
+The <i>Victors' Chorus</i> rings out its song in chapter fifteen.[20] These
+have been in the thickest of the fighting. The smoke of the battle has
+tanned their faces. They have struggled with the enemy at close range, hip
+and thigh, nip and tuck, close parry and hard thrust. And they have come
+off victors. The ring of triumph resounds in their voices, as to the sound
+of their own harps, harps of God, they add their tribute of song to all
+the others.
+
+And at the last comes the great <i>Hallelujah Chorus</i>, in chapter
+nineteen.[21] In response to the precentor's call, they all join their
+voices in one vast melody. The Quartette, the Sextuples, the Angels, the
+Creation, the Martyrs, the Pure-Ones, the Victors--all sing their song
+together.
+
+John tries to tell what it was like. His mind went quickly back to earlier
+days in his home city, Jerusalem, when thousands of pilgrims crowded the
+temple areas and narrow streets, and spread out over the hills. The
+unceasing sound of their voices in speech and in their pilgrim songs of
+praise comes back to him. He says it was like that.
+
+But that isn't satisfactory. It is so much more. He thinks of how the
+ocean-waves keep pounding, with cannon-roar, on the rocky beach of his
+Patmos prison isle. So he said it was like that. But still more is needed
+to give an idea of the vast volume of sound. And he remembers how
+sometimes the thunders crashed and boomed and roared above him as he lay
+in his solitude on that lonely bit of sea-girt land. It was like that. It
+was like all of these together.
+
+And what is it they are singing? Well, there's a variety in the wording of
+their song, as well as in their voices. But through all runs a refrain
+that brings back to me the great London chorus. It is this--
+
+    "And crown Him!
+    <i>Crown Him!!</i>
+    CROWN HIM!!!
+    Yes, <i>Crown Him</i>
+    Lord of all."
+
+It is the rehearsal of the great Oratorio of Victory that we are all to
+join in singing.
+
+
+
+
+The Church
+
+
+
+  Forces that Win.
+  The Divine Law of Leadership.
+  God's Messenger.
+  Reaching Out for a World.
+  "Keep Step."
+  "Find My World, And Win It Back."
+
+
+
+
+The Church
+
+
+
+<u>Forces That Win.</u>
+
+
+God's world is full of winning forces. The great ball of fire around which
+our earth revolves is the greatest winning force in the life of the earth.
+It is constantly winning the earth to itself with a power unseen but
+tremendous, beyond anybody's power to calculate. The swing of the earth
+away from the sun is being continually overcome. By an immense drawing
+power it steadily holds the earth where it can pour down its wealth of
+warmth and light and life into it.
+
+It woos the moisture up from river and lake and sea, until its gravity
+partner in the centre of the earth woos it back again in refreshing rain
+and sheltering snow. It wins out of the earth's warm heart bounteous
+harvests of grains and fruits, the wealth of forests which affects the
+earth's life so radically, the flowers with their beauty and fragrance,
+and the soft carpeting of green to ease the journey for our feet. All the
+life and beauty of the earth is due to the winning power of the sun.
+
+God Himself is the greatest winning force in all our world. Everywhere men
+feel the upward drawing toward Him. They may protest against church
+organizations and creeds, against teachings and long-settled practices and
+habits of thought, as they do so much, but there is always everywhere a
+longing in the human heart for God. It is the answer to the longing of His
+heart for us.
+
+And man is a great winning force. Everywhere men are attracted to each
+other. There is a winning power within each of us that draws certain
+others irresistibly to us. And there are winning forces in life that each
+one of us is powerfully affected by. The old home of earlier days has a
+marvellous power of attraction for most men. The old fireside, the
+familiar rooms, the subtle aroma that seems inseparable from the very
+bricks and boards--who has not felt the tremendous drawing power of these?
+
+What a strange power of attraction a man's mother-tongue has for him. How
+the heart will give a quick leap, in a foreign land, when, amid a
+confusing jargon of strange sounds, all unexpectedly some one speaks the
+dear old familiar words. The person speaking may not be specially
+congenial or attractive to us, but that sound his tongue gives draws us to
+him.
+
+
+
+<u>The Divine Law of Leadership.</u>
+
+
+Now I want to talk with you a bit about the forces at hand for winning our
+old world back to our Father's heart and home. God means us to use all the
+attractive powers we have in this great world-wooing and world-winning
+task. The world is to be <i>won</i> back, not driven. Men drive men, when they
+can. But God woos and wins. Man's coming back must be by his own glad,
+sweet consent. God won't have it any other way.
+
+There are certain strangely winsome forces at our command for winning man.
+They are mighty in their drawing power. But there are counter-currents
+that divert and hinder their influence. We need to be familiar with these
+winning forces, and with the counter-currents, too.
+
+There are seven great forces at our command for this blessed service of
+soul-winning and world-winning. They are not peculiar to foreign-mission
+service, for the foreign service itself is not essentially different from
+other service, except in the greatness of its need. They are the forces
+for use in all our winning work.
+
+Two of these are distinctly human forces. The first is an organization,
+the Church. And then that of which the Church is made up, men and women; I
+mean the power of personality, developed and consecrated personality.
+
+There are two divine forces that work through the human--Jesus and the
+Holy Spirit. I have put these second in order, because they work through
+the human. The leadership is in human hands. The initiative of all action
+is with us. Of course, if you go a bit deeper in, the initiative is with
+God who moves upon our hearts to make us act. But on the distinctly human
+level the beginning of service rests in human hands, and these two
+mighty, almighty, divine forces work through us.
+
+The divine law of leadership and of cooperation in leadership has not
+always been clearly understood. And there has been bad delay often because
+of the lack of understanding. Our Lord Jesus in the days of His humanity
+surrendered Himself to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in His great
+mission to men. The Spirit worked through Jesus. After Jesus' Ascension
+the order was reversed. The Spirit yielded Himself to the control of the
+glorified Son of God. Jesus worked through the Spirit. It was Jesus who
+sent down the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost for the special mission
+begun that day.
+
+And now, with the greatest awe coming into our hearts at the thought, be
+it said that these two work through our human leadership. The leadership
+in service among men is human leadership. The wondrous Spirit of God works
+through our leadership to reveal Jesus to men in all His winsomeness and
+power.
+
+There can be no power at all in our human action and leadership except as
+the Spirit leads and controls us, and is allowed to. And, on the other
+side, we must not forget, though it has sometimes been forgotten, that
+God's working waits upon human action and leadership. Memory quickly
+brings up the fact, so often repeated in the history of the Church, that
+when men have failed to respond to God's call His work has fallen behind.
+Whenever a new chapter of earnest service has been begun it has always
+been through a new leadership. Some man has listened to God, and let Him
+have the free use of himself in reaching out to other men.
+
+God needs men. He needs you and me. We are the wire for the transmission
+of His current of power. The wire is useless without the current. And the
+current must have the wire along which to travel to its place of service.
+The divine power is through human action and human leadership. The power
+is all divine. And the means through which it works is all human. Jesus
+and the Holy Spirit work through the Church and through each one of us who
+is willing.
+
+Then there are three spirit forces, or influences, of mighty power in
+human hands; namely, prayer, and money, and sacrifice.
+
+
+
+<u>God's Messenger.</u>
+
+
+To-night we want to talk about the first of the two human forces--the
+Church.
+
+We ought to remind ourselves of just what that word "Church" means in this
+connection. It has many meanings. There are at least two that we should
+note here in thinking of it as a great winning force. In its broadest
+meaning, the word is commonly used for the whole group of church
+organizations taken together, the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox,
+the Protestant, and the few primitive societies that still retain their
+old original organization. In the deeper, less used meaning, it stands
+for the body of those men and women everywhere who are trusting Jesus
+Christ, and are allied with Him in the purpose of their hearts.
+
+These two meanings, of course, should be the same. All who trust Jesus
+should be in the church organizations. And all who are in the
+organizations should be there because of their relation to Jesus. Whatever
+the facts regarding that may be, the mission of each is the same. And it
+is with that mission that we are concerned just now.
+
+Jesus planned that His Church should be a great man-winning and
+world-winning organization. <i>The</i> mission of the Church is to take Jesus
+to all men. It is God's messenger of His truth to all. In that it is the
+direct lineal descendant and heir of the Hebrew nation.
+
+That nation was chosen to be a messenger or missionary nation. That was
+the one purpose of its special creation as a nation. It was not to be as
+the other nations, in the characteristics that commonly mark strong
+nations. It was to be a <i>teacher</i>-nation, receiving its message of truth
+direct from God, embodying that message in its own life, personally and
+nationally, and giving it out clearly and fully and winsomely to all the
+nations of the earth. And, in spite of its failures and breaks, that
+mission was accomplished to a remarkable extent.
+
+The Church is its heir. It was born in the Jewish nation. It became the
+heir to its world-wide messenger mission. The great commission given by
+Jesus as He was leaving is the Church's commission for its great
+life-work. It was spoken to the group of Jewish men who were the nucleus
+of that body called the Church, that came into being on the day of
+Pentecost. That ringing, "Go ye into all the world and preach my gospel to
+the whole creation," is the Master's command to the Church which He
+brought into being. That is the Church's marching order by which its life
+is to be controlled and its faithfulness judged.
+
+The scene of the Church's birth gives a vivid picture of its
+world-mission. It was born in a world-gathering. It was a world-church in
+its make-up at its birth. Men from all parts of the world became united in
+one body by the Spirit's touch that great Church birthday. Its birth-gift,
+the power of speaking many tongues, reveals at once the wide sweep of its
+service.
+
+It was the Master's plan that His Church should speak all the languages of
+the earth then and now and always, as well as the language of heaven, the
+language of love. So every man would learn of Jesus in his native speech.
+The language of the cradle and of love-making and of the fireside, the
+language that most quickly kindles the fires in a man's heart, that was
+the language to be used in carrying Jesus to every man. That was Jesus'
+plan. The Church was rarely equipped with winning power for a
+world-service on its birthday in the gift of tongues.
+
+Of course, this is not the only mission of the Church. That is to say,
+there are other purposes necessarily included in this. Taking the Gospel
+of Jesus to all men means more than merely taking it and telling it. The
+teaching and training and developing of those won to Jesus is an
+inseparable part of the Church mission. The great service of worship has
+always been recognized as a vital part of the Church life. Sometimes
+indeed these have been thought of, and still are thought of, as its only
+mission. But they grow distinctly out of the chief mission and are
+distinctly contributory and secondary to it. Indeed, they come into being
+only through the faithful doing of the chief task. Men were won. Then they
+met for worship and for training.
+
+
+
+<u>Reaching Out For a World.</u>
+
+
+The Church of those first years thoroughly understood what its great
+mission was to be. The first chapters of the Book of Acts vividly describe
+the ideal Church as planned by the Master, and as understood by those who
+felt His own personal touch upon themselves. Everybody went. They went to
+everybody. They went everywhere. There is pretty clear evidence that they
+actually went everywhere that men could go. They held their lives, and
+even their property, subject to the one great gripping purpose.
+
+The greatest leader of the first century of the Church, Paul, who
+contributed most to its literature and exerted the greatest influence
+upon its life, was above all else a missionary leader. He went practically
+everywhere. He didn't go hastily, but by carefully thought-out plans. He
+won men to Christ, organized them into church societies, taught them, and
+sent them out to win others.
+
+He worked in and out of the world's great city centres of his time.
+Ephesus, the Asiatic centre, Corinth, the centre of Greek influence, and,
+Rome, the centre of the world's governing power, were the scenes of his
+longest and most thorough campaigns. His choice of the centres was a
+master's strategic choice. For these centres sent their influence out to
+the ends of the earth. Paul's body might be in Ephesus or Corinth or Rome,
+but his thought and heart were on the world these cities reached by
+constant streams of influence.
+
+And to these churches which he had won out of the raw stuff of heathenism
+he taught the same world-wide message. They became filled with this same
+world-wide spirit. The Thessalonian and Corinth Churches made their
+winning power felt throughout Greece and wherever Greek culture had gone,
+that is to say, everywhere.[22] The Church in Rome sent out the message of
+Jesus from its golden centre of all Roman roads, out to the farthest
+reaches of those far-reaching roads.[23]
+
+It is striking, though not surprising, that the days of the Church's
+missionary activity have been the days of its greatest purity and vigor.
+When the vision of the Master's face on Olivet, and the ringing sound of
+His "Go ye" have been lost, the Church has written pages that would gladly
+be blotted out.
+
+The Church <i>has</i> been a winning force beyond any power of calculation or
+words of description. All that has been done has been done through its
+activity and leadership. It is to-day a tremendous winning force, reaching
+its warm hands out to the very ends of the earth, and drawing men to
+Jesus. With our earnest prayer it will exert a yet mightier influence in
+taking Jesus to all men and in winning men everywhere to Jesus.
+
+
+
+<u>"Keep Step."</u>
+
+
+The Church is organized Christendom. It stands for the power of
+organization in God's service. All the vast power of the men and women
+whose hearts have been renewed by the Holy Spirit can be brought to bear
+at a given point with tremendous force through the Church. That was and is
+the Master's plan.
+
+Organization is rhythmic action, a crowd of men working by agreement as
+one man. Never was the world so impressed with the almost magical power of
+organization as to-day. Never has organization been brought up to so high
+a pitch of efficiency. The unparalleled progress of the world in our day
+is due to the marvellous skill that has been developed in organized
+action.
+
+Now, this almost omnipotent power of organization was meant to be used in
+winning the world back home. That is the meaning of the birth of the
+Church on that great Pentecost day. It is remarkable that the most
+perfectly matured bit of organization, in this day of matured and
+perfected organizations, is a church. For by common consent of thoughtful
+students the most finely adjusted and thoroughly matured bit of human
+machinery is the Roman Catholic Church.
+
+If such a masterpiece of organization were controlled by the Spirit that
+controls in these early chapters of Acts, what tremendous and thorough and
+rapid work would be done in world-winning! And that is the goal toward
+which we should be driving. The evangelization of the whole world is <i>an
+easy task</i> for the whole Church. It would be a stupendous, if not an
+impossible task for the few. It has been a gigantic task for the leaders,
+who by dint of great planning and persuasion and earnest pleading have
+done as much as has been done. But if the whole Church or half of it were
+to go at it as earnestly as men go at other things, it would be an easy
+task.
+
+I remember one October morning walking across an old smoke-begrimed bridge
+that spans the Ohio at Cincinnati. My eye was caught by a dingy sign in
+large plain letters nailed up in a prominent place. It simply, said,
+"Processions in crossing this bridge must break step." That was all. But
+it was imperative. It was a law. The processions <i>must</i> break step. The
+same men might cross the bridge, in as large numbers, at the same time,
+but they must not keep step.
+
+The authorities knew perfectly well that for a body of men to march <i>in
+step</i>, every left foot set down at once, the impact of every right foot
+striking at the same moment, would so--I do not say, <i>add</i> to the force
+exerted--would so <i>multiply</i> the force exerted upon the bridge as to
+endanger its safety. The power of concerted action is immense beyond any
+power of conception. Every bit of power at command can so be brought to
+bear at one point with a force beyond any words to express.
+
+Our Master reverses for us the old bridge sign. Out from Pentecost rings
+this word: "Let my followers all form in line, close ranks, and move out
+to a world conquest, and--<i>keep step</i>." That command of His will make a
+winning force so great as to shorten up the world's present calendars, and
+shorten up the world's pain, and lengthen out the new life that will come
+to untold numbers through Jesus.
+
+
+
+<u>"Find My World and Win it Back."</u>
+
+
+Nearly forty years ago David Livingstone, one of the Church's great
+world-winning pioneers, was lost in the depths of equatorial Africa. That
+is to say, he had advanced so far ahead of everybody else that the rest of
+us lost track of him, and so we called him lost. Perhaps we got the use of
+the word twisted, and we were the lost ones because we hadn't kept up. He
+had gone where the Church was told to go, but the rest of us had lingered
+behind, and so the main column became detached from its leader. Everybody
+was talking about the lost leader.
+
+James Gordon Bennett, the owner of the <i>New York Herald,</i> sent a telegram
+to one of its correspondents, Henry M. Stanley. Bennett was in Paris, and
+Stanley at Gibraltar. The telegram summoned Stanley to come to Paris at
+once. Stanley went, reached Paris at midnight, knocked at the great
+newspaper-man's door, and asked what was wanted. "Find Livingstone," was
+the short, blunt reply. "How much money do you place at my disposal?"
+asked Stanley. "Fifty thousand dollars, or a larger sum. Never mind about
+the money; find Livingstone."
+
+Stanley went. It took two years' time to get ready. It required a
+specially planned campaign and thorough preparation. The planning was
+done, and the world was thrilled when the bold missionary leader was
+found.
+
+Our Master has sent a message to His Church. It is written down in a Book,
+and is being repeated by wireless messages constantly. He says, "Find my
+world, and bring it back; never mind about the expense of money and lives.
+<i>Find my world and win it back.</i>" And the Church has the winning power to
+do it.
+
+
+
+
+Each One of Us
+
+
+
+  Our Drawing Power.
+  Sowing Ourselves in Life's Soil.
+  Our Need of a World to Win.
+  Living Broad Lives in Narrow Alleys.
+  Giving God Free Use of Ourselves.
+  Growing Bigger for Service's Sake.
+  My Mission-field.
+  Our Spirit-touch.
+
+
+
+
+Each One of Us
+
+
+
+<u>Our Drawing Power.</u>
+
+
+The greatest human winning force is a man swayed in every bit of his being
+by the Spirit of Jesus. Man himself is the most attractive thing on God's
+earth. He has the greatest drawing power.
+
+He is attractive to God. He drew out of the creative power of God this
+world of beauty and splendor. He drew Jesus down from the throne of God to
+the earth, to poverty and hard labor, to the limitations of human life, to
+misunderstandings and suffering and pain and death. These were gladly
+yielded to because it was all for man. How the crowds used to draw Jesus!
+He would give His strength out to them without stint, until those closest
+to Him, not understanding, sought to interfere for the sake of his
+strength.
+
+One man was a sufficient magnet to draw him away from His rest, and to
+draw out of Him the best of love and strength He had. Nicodemus' earnest
+presence wooed out of His busy life a whole evening, and drew out the
+matchless words that the world has been feeding upon ever since. The woman
+of little half-breed Sychar, though an outcast, drew from Him the touch of
+power that transformed her life and her village.
+
+Man is attractive to his fellows. There is no power so attractive to a
+man as another man. The phenomenal growth of modern cities is one of the
+evidences of this. Everywhere men acknowledge the attractiveness that
+their fellows have for them. Every friendship, every leadership, every
+family circle, and gathering of men for whatever purpose tells of the
+winning power that man has for his fellows. It is modified by all sorts of
+surrounding conditions, and exists in many different degrees. The great
+leader and the great orator have it in unusual measure. Every man has some
+of it. Each man is a magnetic north pole. Every man of his spirit-current
+is drawn toward him with a steady pull.
+
+Man can win man. That fact at once brings out strikingly his winning
+power. For the hardest thing in all this world to win is a man. Of all
+luggage man is the hardest to move. He won't move unless he will move.
+Only as the string is tied inside to his will can he be persuaded to move.
+The heart may help open the door into the will. Most often that is the way
+to get in. Sometimes intelligence, the reasoning powers, open the way in,
+but rarely; often these two, the heart and the reason, combined. But even
+then they go tandem, with the heart in the lead; only man can get that
+door open, and tie the tether to the other man's will, and draw him out,
+whither he will. He can do it. And only he can. Man yields to the drawing
+power of his fellow.
+
+With the deepest reverence be it said that when God would redeem a world
+He sent a Man. Aye, He came as a man. And, while Jesus was so much more
+than man, we must always insistently remind ourselves that He was truly
+and fully a man. He was as really human in every bit of His make-up and
+life as though only human. Because of man's power to win his fellow, Jesus
+came to the man-level, as a Man, that so He might win men.
+
+
+
+<u>Sowing Ourselves in Life's Soil.</u>
+
+
+Man is winsome, wherever found, just as he is. He may be shackled and
+slimed over with sin, as he plainly is. He may have lost much of his
+winsomeness, as probably he has, through deeply rooted prejudice and
+superstitions, and endless limitations of surroundings and education, but
+he still remains a powerful magnet to his fellow.
+
+But he is most winning in his winningness as he returns to the original as
+God planned him. His native winning power comes out fully only as sin is
+taken out of him, washed out, and burned out; the desire for it removed,
+and the hurt of sin upon his bodily and mental powers overcome. Jesus is
+the sort of human that God planned. And only as He is allowed to come into
+a man's life, and treat the sin trouble at the core, and rule from within,
+can man come to his own in his rare winsomeness.
+
+Only <i>won</i> men can win men, of course. Only the man who has felt the power
+of Jesus can tell some one else of that marvellous power. Nobody else
+wants to. Nobody else can. For nobody else knows that power. But that man
+must. There is something inside that compels him to. The man who realizes
+most keenly that he has been saved will be the most intent on getting
+others saved, too. The passion for Jesus becomes a passion for telling
+others about Jesus.
+
+Jerry McCauley must spend out his life in Water Street because he had been
+gripped by the Man who spent out His life for him. The passion is
+irresistible. Splendid young Hugh Beaver must win the Pennsylvania
+students to Jesus because Jesus had become the magnet of his own life.
+Livingstone must plunge into the depths of the African wilds, and Duff
+into India's heat, and Hudson Taylor into China's inner provinces because
+of the Jesus-passion that gripped them.
+
+Now the thing to mark very keenly is this: that God's chief reliance in
+His passionate outreach for His world is <i>men</i>. He is counting on you and
+me. The power that actually wins men is the power of God. Only He can so
+play upon human wills and hearts as to induce them gladly to open to Him.
+That is true. But it is as true that only <i>through</i> the winsome power of
+men can He use His winning power fully.
+
+I am not going to take up just now why this is so, though that is full of
+helpful suggestion. But simply to have you mark that straight through this
+old Book, and through church history, and in actual experience this has
+been His way of reaching men. God's pathway to one human heart is through
+another human heart.
+
+When men have failed Him God's plan has failed. His sovereignty doesn't
+mean that His plan doesn't fail. It means here that with endless patience
+He clings to the failed plan until He can get the man through whom it can
+be carried out. But meanwhile there has been serious delay and sad
+suffering for man.
+
+There is a most striking sentence spoken by Jesus in explaining the
+parable of the tares, in Matthew, Chapter thirteen. He said, "The good
+seed are the sons of the kingdom." We think of the truth, the Gospel
+message, as the good seed that we are to sow, and so it is. But there's a
+far better seed. It is men, saved men. We are to sow our saved selves, our
+lives, in the soil of men's lives. Our presence among men was meant to be
+God's greatest sowing of the seed of life. Upon that seed He sends the dew
+and rain and sunlight of His Spirit. And through that sort of sowing He
+wins His greatest harvests.
+
+
+
+<u>Our Need of a World to Win.</u>
+
+
+Now I want to turn aside here a bit, and say this: we men need a world to
+win. The world needs winning. There's no doubt of that. And just as really
+we men need a world to win. We need the impetus and stimulus, the grip and
+the swing of having a world to win. The Master's command fits with great
+exactness into the need of our lives.
+
+Every man needs a great purpose to grip his life. So he is anchored and
+held steady against the world's tidal movements. If he isn't tied to some
+great gripping purpose the wash of the sea will send him adrift, or the
+fierce undertow will suck him under. And many are adrift. And many are in
+the deadly suction of the undertow.
+
+Jesus' command provides the great purpose that every man needs to hold him
+steady and to bring out, and bring out best, all the splendid powers with
+which we are endowed. When we are not gripped by the great purpose planned
+for us we swing off into smaller, meaner purposes.
+
+I mean, of course, those of us who are awake. Many people are habitual
+somnambulists. All their walking and moving about is done in a state of
+sleep. Some men never wake up. They go through the motions of life so far
+as they must. The mechanism of habit keeps certain motions going, but the
+real man within is asleep or dozing, with occasional spells of being
+sleepily awake.
+
+But men who are awake, and doing something, find a vent for their energy
+on some lower level. The God-given energy will move out and stir itself to
+action. But, having somehow missed the real purpose planned for them, they
+allow the lower purposes to grip them. They organize great affairs, or
+less great, industrial, intellectual, political, fraternal, social, and
+spend their energy on these. It is the response they make to the call of
+their natures for some great gripping purpose. But it looks very much like
+another case of meeting a request for bread with cold hard stones.
+
+These things in themselves are right, of course; so far as they are
+right. They belong in the scheme of life. They should be given full place
+in one's life. But that place is always a distinctly secondary place. They
+belong in as number two.
+
+A Christian business man gives most of the day and year to his business,
+and gives of the best of his thought and strength to it. But if he have
+gotten his bearings straight, his business is not in first place. It is
+made to serve something higher. It earns the gold with which to finance
+the great purpose of Jesus' life, and of his own life, namely, the purpose
+of winning men, and of winning a whole world of them. How it would sweeten
+business and fraternal and social contacts and friendships, if the salt of
+this great purpose seasoned them!
+
+
+
+<u>Living Broad Lives in Narrow Alleys.</u>
+
+
+We need the <i>bigness</i> of this great purpose. So many lives are dwarfed by
+their very littlenesses. We are bothered with being short-sighted. The
+eyeglasses of the Master's purpose for us would wondrously widen out our
+scope of vision. And through the new eyes would come broader, farther,
+clearer views, and changed action. The littleness of our ideas would be
+amusing if it were not so distressing.
+
+I recall one day riding on a Fort-Wayne train through Indiana. I chanced
+to overhear a bit of conversation. Two men, chance acquaintances, were
+talking. One of them had his home in Elkhart. The other asked him where
+Elkhart is. By the side of the Elkhart man there sat a little sweet-faced
+boy. Instantly, as the question was asked, he looked up with surprised
+eyes, and said, "Don't you know where Elkhart is? Why, Elkhart is down
+where I live."
+
+The amusing childish words seemed to have a familiar sound. I seem to have
+run across a few people whose idea of God's world is about on the level of
+the small boy's. The world is where they live. The rest is a hazy, vague
+something, or--nothing. It exists for them, if it exists at all in their
+thoughts.
+
+    "Living for self, for self alone, for self and none beside;
+    Just as if Jesus had never lived, as if Jesus had never died."
+
+It would be pitiable and pathetic enough if only these people themselves
+were concerned in their poor, stunted, narrow-alley living. But it is more
+than that; it is tragic, because of the multitude of brothers, here and
+abroad, sorely needing the help that was meant to go out to them through
+us.
+
+Then most men live narrow lives so far as the daily round is concerned.
+The home, or shop, or store, or office is their daily horizon, with
+practically the same round of duties day after day, year in and year out.
+The very narrowness of the round tends to make narrow people. They get
+into as much of a rut in their thinking as their daily action is apt to
+become. Their work runs in fixed grooves that are apt to become fixed
+ruts. And this makes ruts in their thinking. Their souls seem to grow
+small by the very smallness and sameness of the daily tread. That is the
+life of the great crowd of men all over the world.
+
+It's an immense relief to see something big Big things always attract. Is
+it partly because our daily round is so narrow and small? Jesus plans a
+bigness that shall refresh us constantly. We have hearts big enough to
+hold a world, and brains able to plan for a planet, even while our feet
+tread the same old shut-in path.
+
+A young man may be going a commonplace, treadmill sort of grind, in a
+small corner of some great manufacturing concern, and be at the same time
+carrying on a bigger enterprise than the president of his concern. For he
+may be planning and praying for a world, and actually lifting it up in the
+arms of his strong purpose toward the level of God.
+
+The shipping clerk may be hammering in barrel-heads all day long, but each
+blow may help emphasize the prayer of his heart for China, or India, or
+his Sunday-school class.
+
+    "Forenoon, afternoon, and night,
+    Forenoon, afternoon, and night,
+    Forenoon, afternoon, and what? no more?
+    The empty song repeats itself. Yea, that is life.
+    Make this forenoon sublime, this afternoon a psalm,
+    This night a prayer, and time is conquered, and thy
+    crown is won."
+
+The Master's gracious plan is that we shall have the refreshment of doing
+big things. We are made for big things. They help us grow into the big
+size that belongs to us. World-winning is a great boon to the crowd
+compelled by the habit of life to tread a narrow path.
+
+
+
+<u>Giving God Free Use of Ourselves.</u>
+
+
+Now the great question every earnest man asks himself is, How can I be of
+most use to God and my fellows? I want to suggest three things that have
+helped me in answering that question. It may be that they will help you,
+too, in getting your answer to it.
+
+First of all is this: that we let God have the free use of us. Whatever I
+am, whatever gifts and opportunities I have--these I will turn over to
+God, that He may have the fullest and freest use of them. God asks from
+each of us <i>a consecrated personality</i>. And "consecrated" simply means
+that I give God the use of myself, and that He makes use of what I have
+given to Him. That's the double meaning of the word in the Bible.
+
+My personality, that is, what I am in myself, is the chief thing I have in
+life. It is through this personality, which men recognize as I, that the
+Spirit of God works in His reaching out for others. My personality is the
+make-up of all that I am. My presence is that subtle something that
+combines all that I am. It clings to me wherever I go. Men know it by my
+name. Out through it goes the power of the man within.
+
+The body, the glance of the eye, the quality and intonation of the voice,
+the way the body is carried, and the something more than these that
+unites them into one--these go to make up the presence, the outer shell of
+the personality. All the power within makes itself felt through this. A
+man's mere presence is an immeasurable influence.
+
+There is a subtle, intangible, but very real spirit influence breathing
+out of every man's presence. It is proportioned entirely to the strength
+of the man living within. With some it is very attractive. Sometimes it is
+positively repulsive. It is the expression of the man within. The presence
+becomes the mould of the spirit within, large or small, noble or mean,
+coarse or fine, as he makes it. The strength of a man's will or its
+weakness; the purity of his heart or its lack of purity; the ideals of his
+life, high or low; the keenness or slowness of his thinking--all these
+express themselves in his presence.
+
+We know the difference between a man of strong presence and one whose
+presence is weak; though very few of us are skilled in reading, except in
+a very small way, the character it reveals; through our presence each of
+us is constantly influencing those with whom we come in contact. Now this
+is the chief thing we have for our winning work. This is the thing that
+Jesus uses. It is this that the Spirit of God takes possession of, if He
+may, and that He uses in His outreach to others. We win most and best
+through what we are.
+
+Now, of course, I do not mean that we are to be thinking of it that way
+all the time. The thinking that you have a winsome presence would itself
+rob you of the most winsome part of it. Winsomeness of presence is
+greatest and sweetest when we are wholly unconscious that there is such a
+thing about us. As we are absorbed in Jesus, and in our fellows, the
+winsomeness that is native to us shines out most attractively. It has been
+covered up and hidden away a good bit by sin. Some men seem to have none.
+Some have a great deal, in spite of their ignoring of God.
+
+But as He is allowed to play upon us, as we seek to let His Spirit rule
+our conduct and control our powers, the original God-image comes out. This
+is a return to natural conditions as planned by God. What has been lost
+through sin is restored and grown bigger and richer by the Spirit's
+presence. I can give God the full use of this precious gift of
+personality.
+
+
+
+<u>Growing Bigger for Service's Sake.</u>
+
+
+There's a second thing to do. This consecrated personality can be made <i>a
+developed personality</i>. We don't start into life full size. We have to
+grow. The greatest task of life, as well as one of the sweetest, is in
+growing fine in grain, and big in size, and skilled in action. The highest
+achievement of life and the rarest to find is self-mastery, that is, all
+that one is in himself grown big and fine-grained, skilfully used and held
+steadily to its true use. All other achievements are through this one.
+
+The stronger I can make my body the more I can give God to use. The more
+thoroughly I can understand the great, simple laws of my body, and the
+more I can get into the habit of obeying them, the more can God use me in
+His plans. Such common things as eating and drinking, breathing and
+exercising, sleeping and resting and dress, may not be called common any
+more, if through thoughtfulness here you and I can be of greater use to
+our Master and our fellows.
+
+The keener and clearer and stronger we can make our thinking, by dint of
+self-discipline, the greater power have we with other men. The purer the
+heart, the loftier the practical ideals that control the personal habits,
+the greater is the winning power at command.
+
+We may not be conscious of the difference. We will not be thinking of
+that. But the increased power of attraction is there, and is breathing out
+of one's presence, and is distinctly felt by others. And, more, it is
+making a distinct mark upon others, more than they know. We must set
+ourselves to growing bigger and better for service's sake.
+
+
+
+<u>My Mission-field.</u>
+
+
+The third thing is <i>a world-wide vision</i>. That is to say, our thinking and
+planning and praying and giving shall be on a world scale. There is
+nothing remarkable about this. The strangely remarkable thing is that
+there is so little of it. Man was made on the world size. It is natural
+to us to grasp the world in our thinking and action. This other thing of
+living on a smaller scale is the cramping effect of sin. We were, made
+big. We are big. We need a big world. We enjoy bigness. We get this from
+God. We are truest to ourselves as we live on the world plan. The world
+was given us originally to subdue, and now to win.
+
+This does not mean to neglect anything or anybody nearby. It's a bit of
+the cramping of sin that anybody thinks so. The man who spreads a map of
+the world beside his open Bible in the morning or evening prayer-hour is
+likely to have a warm hand for the fellow next him. We are made that way,
+to grasp the globe, <i>and</i> each thing close at hand that needs our care.
+That's a bit of the image of God in us. As we allow Him sway, the original
+power is restored to us.
+
+One result of this will be that many of us will go in person to some
+far-away part of the great world-field. That's a serious thing to do,
+requiring some special qualification of body and of training. For the task
+out there is a great one. There are trying conditions to be met. The very
+best is called for.
+
+If a man may go in person to the foreign field he is greatly favored. Let
+nothing hold him back. It is a privilege to serve anywhere. But the
+highest privilege of service is out there. Many cannot go; and many may
+not go. Some are plainly bidden to stay. The home administration of the
+missionary enterprise requires strong men at home.
+
+A second result will be that wherever we are, will be a mission-field to
+us. We are, where we are, <i>to give</i>, not to get. Whether in far-off China
+or maybe in some disillusioned commonplace home town, we will be winning
+men to Jesus all the time <i>by direct touch</i>. The mastering thought will be
+to let the wondrous Spirit reach out through us, freely and fully,
+unhindered by anything in us, and so touch every one whom we touch.
+
+In any circle, business or social, our hearts will be saying, "I am among
+you as he that serveth." Consciously, by direct word, by indirect touch,
+with love's rare diplomacy we will win men. Unconsciously, by our
+presence, we will as really be winning them.
+
+No one has an imagination vivid enough, or words graphic enough, to tell
+the power of that direct human touch. All life is athrill with its magic.
+Even when it becomes less direct, a bit removed from the personal, its
+power is indescribably great.
+
+John Eliot's work among the Massachusetts Indians kindled David Brainerd.
+Brainerd's flame touched Jonathan Edwards. Edwards' pamphlet on
+"Extraordinary Prayer for a Revival of Religion and the Advancement of
+Christ's Kingdom on Earth" suggested to William Carey the plan of an
+organized society. Fire spreads. Where the touch of God comes the fire of
+God goes out through that human touch.
+
+
+
+<u>Our Spirit-touch.</u>
+
+
+A third result will be this: we will be reaching out and winning men in
+all the rest of the world by <i>our spirit-touch</i>. You may be in some
+African fastness or in the midst of China's age-old civilization or just
+here at home, but you can be exerting a tremendous spirit-power that can
+be felt out to the ends of the earth.
+
+It will all be in the Name of Jesus. It will be in the power of the Holy
+Spirit. Only in that Name and through the Spirit can such winning
+influence be exerted at all. So a man can have spirit-touch with the man
+by his side. And just as truly he can have spirit-touch with men at the
+farthest reach of the earth.
+
+There is a spirit influence going out from each of us in addition to that
+which goes through the direct personal touch. It is not a conscious
+influence. That is, we are not concsious that it is being exerted. It goes
+out from us as we pray. It goes out of us as our thought is centered on
+those far-away parts and peoples. Its strength will depend on the strength
+of one's personality.
+
+We are familiar with the fact that a man of strong personality has a
+greater influence upon his fellows whom he touches directly than a weaker
+man has. It is just the same with regard to one's spirit-touch. The
+stronger and keener and purer I may become, the more I know of the
+self-mastery which comes through Jesus-mastery, the greater force can I
+exert as a winner of men, both by direct touch and by spirit-touch.
+
+Will you kindly come up nearer in spirit, as we close our talk together,
+and let me ask softly: Have we given the free use of ourselves to the
+Master? Are we growing ourselves into bigger-sized, finer-grained,
+better-controlled men and women daily? For the Master is depending on us.
+He is counting much on having the use of us. He can reach out to the very
+ends of the earth <i>through each one of us</i>. May we not fail Jesus!
+
+
+
+
+Jesus
+
+
+
+  Jesus Draws Men.
+  Jesus Draws Out the Best.
+  Many Doors, but One Purpose.
+  Make It a Story.
+  How Peter Told Paul.
+  "A More Excellent Way."
+
+
+
+
+Jesus
+
+
+
+<u>Jesus Draws Men.</u>
+
+
+The great heart-magnet is God. No one is so winsomely attractive as He.
+His winning power is beyond any other. Man is winsome. But it is because
+God made him winsome, and re-makes him yet more winsome. He gave him a bit
+of His own self. That's the secret of all our human winsomeness.
+
+Now Jesus is God to us. We know God only as we know Jesus. Jesus is the
+heart of God beating in time and tune with human hearts. Nobody is so
+winsome as Jesus. All the native winsomeness of man and all the divine
+winsomeness of God combine and blend in Him. He has always drawn men to
+Himself. And He still does, and always will.
+
+He drew men of all classes when He was down here. The reverent
+star-students of far-away Babylon were drawn to His birth by a compelling
+they could not resist. He drew the thoughtful, scholarly men of His own
+nation, such as Nicodemus of the inner, highest circle. And He drew
+military officials of high rank and wealth in the service of imperial
+Rome. By the same power the half-breed, despised Samaritans and the
+earnest seekers after truth from cultured Greece were drawn to Him.
+
+The plain farmer people of Galilee, and the hardy fisherfolk, and
+hard-handed laboring-men came as eagerly to him. He drew the pure, fine
+grained, gentle Mary of Bethany, with her unusual keenness of spirit
+insight; and drew as well the unnamed outcast woman, steeped in sin, who
+was forgiven much, and who loved much, and so gave much.
+
+Practical hard-headed men of sharp bargains and shrewd trading, like
+Matthew, felt His pull upon their hearts equally with men of pure heart
+and lofty ideals like Nathanael. By special effort, for a special purpose
+He drew high-bred, high-strung, scholarly, intense Paul, out of his mad
+enmity into a lifelong devotion.
+
+The crowds came until His daily routine and ministering help were
+repeatedly and seriously interrupted. And strong men sought Him alone to
+lay bare the longings and questionings of their hearts. His Roman judge
+felt the strange winsomeness of His presence and speech, though lacking in
+the courage to follow his convictions regarding Him. And the Roman officer
+in charge of His execution was forced to admit the power of His presence.
+
+All the world gathered about His cross. Representatives from all parts, in
+large numbers, were at the Jerusalem feast; and on that morning, by common
+consent, they were drawn out to the place where He hung.
+
+He even drew the arch-tempter. He came with his subtlest temptations, and
+bitterest enmity, and most malignant cunning. Could there be greater
+evidence, by contrast, of the drawing power of His purity and goodness and
+steadfast devotion to His mission?
+
+
+
+<u>Jesus Draws Out the Best.</u>
+
+
+And Jesus had the power to draw out of men the best there was in them.
+Possibilities, traits, and powers that neither they nor their friends
+supposed they had came out into strong life under the spell of His touch.
+There seemed to be something in Him that drew the same sort of thing out
+of them.
+
+Out of Simon, the hot-headed, impulsive fisherman, He drew the steady man
+of rock. Out of fiery John, the son of thunder, He drew the man of tender,
+strong love. And out of quiet, retiring Andrew He drew a man with a
+reputation for bringing others to Jesus.
+
+He drew out of the Sychar outcast a sense of her sin, and then a winner of
+souls; and out of that other woman of open sin, a longing for purity that
+paved the way to all else that came. Under His compelling touch there came
+out of the blind-born man a willingness to sacrifice all for such a
+Master; and out of James, the other son of thunder, a courage to endure
+suffering that men had not known he had.
+
+That was when He was down here, a man. And ever since that fleecy cloud
+received Him out of sight He has been drawing men of all the world. And
+time would as utterly fail me, as it did the writer of the Hebrews, if I
+tried to tell of the men He has drawn. Men of every rank, high and low, in
+every nation, savage and civilized, in every generation of all these
+centuries have felt the thrill of His power. And they have followed Him at
+the cost of all that men hold most dear.
+
+And He is just the same to-day. He is as available now in all His drawing
+power wherever men meet, in city slum and savage wild, in college hall and
+business street, among the philosophical and cultured, and among the
+ignorant and untrained. If we will take Him to them, and let Him out
+through our lips and lives, He will draw men up the heights. He can draw
+against any power of downward suction, and He will. He promised to draw
+men, if lifted up. And He has never failed to do it.
+
+Now, it is this drawing Jesus that men need and want. There is an enormous
+advantage in taking Jesus to men, because there is a something inside men
+everywhere that responds to Jesus. That something may be choked and
+covered up, crowded down and fought against, as it is. But it is there.
+When you take Jesus to a man you may know that you are taking a supply to
+a demand. You are bringing a man the answer to his heart's questions. It
+is as the coming together of two parts that belong together, but have been
+held apart by some hindrance.
+
+That hindrance is stubborn. It has to be fought. It can be overcome.
+That's the chief task. Then the part in man that answers to Jesus eagerly
+fits into its place in Him. That coming together is always blessed, beyond
+words. Everywhere men of all sorts and ranks and degrees of savagery and
+culture eagerly respond to Him. And they declare that they find in Him the
+full answer to their deepest longings.
+
+
+
+<u>Many Doors, but One Purpose.</u>
+
+
+It is this marvellous magnet, Jesus, that we are to take to men; not
+theology, nor education, nor medical skill, nor hospitals, nor industrial
+helps, except incidentally. These are the tin cup which one is glad to use
+to give the thirsty traveller water from the spring.
+
+You will understand at once that I have no thought of criticizing theology
+or of discrediting it, if I could. It has its place. But that place is not
+out in the thick of the crowd, but back in the quiet hall of study. There
+must be thorough study and systematic putting together of the truth. There
+needs to be patient plodding and mental drilling.
+
+You have no need to be told of the immeasurable value of the splendid
+foundation building of Christian scholars. But this is school work, in the
+main. It is to make us better workmen. So a man gets his bearings and
+poise. But the people down in the dust and drive of the crowd don't want
+theology. They want Jesus. It is striking that everywhere men want to hear
+about Jesus.
+
+Educational work has played an indispensably great part in the scheme of
+missions. But the purpose of it, of course, is to make an open door for
+the entrance of Jesus into men's lives. It is invaluable in itself alone,
+regardless of any other purpose. But the teacher of any sort of learning
+in the mission school, who is chiefly absorbed in the teaching itself
+instead of using it as a means to something higher, is missing the whole
+purpose of his work.
+
+And what words can be used strong enough in speaking of the blessed work
+of medical men in foreign-mission lands? These skilled, patient, faithful
+men and women in hospital and dispensary and private service are doing a
+work of incalculable value. It should be done even if the bodily results
+were all. But the underlying purpose through it all is to lead men to know
+Jesus. And no one has such a short, quick road into a man's heart as he
+who can relieve his body.
+
+These things are doorways into men's lives; and great doorways, too. They
+are well worth all the money and lives expended if they went no farther
+than body and mind and better conditions. But the main purpose in them is
+to find a way into men's hearts, and take in Jesus; that so men may get
+the greater as well as the less.
+
+
+
+<u>Make it a Story.</u>
+
+
+Now, how shall we best tell men of Jesus? Well, the modern newspaperman's
+rule in his work is this: "Make it a story." This is his leading rule in
+all his writing work. Whatever the occasion may be, whether a meeting of
+scholars or an accident on the street, it is to be put into story-form.
+That is the ideal toward which he works. All the descriptions, and
+quotations, and information, and philosophizings are to be woven into this
+web. They know that a story is the easiest thing to read and to listen to,
+and also the hardest to tell well.
+
+That should be our rule here: <i>Make it a story about Jesus.</i> When it comes
+to talking the Gospel to a group of people, large or small, in New York or
+Shanghai, make it a story. Wherever you may begin the story, see that its
+purpose is to lead up to Jesus. You may use twenty-five minutes in getting
+your story out, and then put the Jesus touch in the last five minutes. But
+as they go away that last five has given its flavor to the whole
+half-hour's talk. Or, you may begin with Him, and so run through. But the
+rule should be: Make it a simple, natural, attractive story, such as
+people will want to listen to, because it interests them.
+
+That means a lot of hard work in preparation. The simpler and easier and
+more natural it seems to the crowd the more it will have cost you in
+study. You will have to study so carefully that they won't guess you have
+studied at all. You must absorb this Bible story, bit by bit, through and
+through, until it becomes a bit of yourself.
+
+You must use books that help make this Book clearer and plainer. That is
+really the mission of biblical books, to make <i>the</i> Book plainer. If they
+send you to the Bible they have fulfilled their mission. If you stay in
+them, they have failed.
+
+The Bible is an Oriental book in its way of putting things. Its story is
+built upon the habits of those Eastern peoples. While it is full of simple
+teaching easily understood, one needs to understand those habits to get
+the real meat of the meaning. This means a habit of hard work for him who
+would be a winner of men. He should have an ambition to know the Bible
+story thoroughly, and to get it from the Bible itself.
+
+But, whatever your particular message may be at any time, let it lead up
+by a straight road to Jesus. Follow the rule of the Book itself here. The
+Old Testament all points to Jesus. It can be understood only as He is
+understood. And the New is aflame with His presence. Tell the story of
+Jesus to men. They never tire of that. Tell it accurately. Tell it simply.
+Tell it with endless variety. Put it in simple every-day words, so they
+think about the story and not about you or your words.
+
+Tell Jesus' life; His characteristics; how He mingled among men, and
+talked with them. Take up the Gospel incidents, and give them their
+natural flavoring and coloring in present-day speech. Tell of the Nazareth
+life, in home and carpenter shop and village. Go through those wondrous
+three and a half years, bit by bit.
+
+Go into the temptation wilderness, out on the blue waters of Galilee, and
+into Gethsemane's olive-grove. Climb that bit of a rise of ground called
+Calvary. Wherever you are in that story, make sure that the coloring of
+Calvary gets distinctly in, by word or phrase or climax or somehow.
+
+Now, of course, there will be some theology in your telling. You will make
+comments and explanations. And preachers call that theology. That is
+unavoidable. That is the place for such teaching, as it naturally grows
+out of the story. But the story should be the main thing. Men should be
+sent away thinking about a Man, Jesus; not about a theory of doctrine.
+
+
+
+<u>How Peter Told Paul.</u>
+
+
+I remember very distinctly one time Mr. Moody was speaking at the Ohio
+Sunday-school Convention in Cleveland. He was saying that teachers should
+open up the Bible and make it attractive. Then he told the story of how,
+in '84, in London he was talking with a lawyer friend who had just come
+down from Edinburgh. He had been hearing Andrew Bonar preach up there, and
+was greatly taken with his way of preaching.
+
+Mr. Moody told the story something like this:
+
+"Bonar was preaching in Galatians, where it says that Paul went to
+Jerusalem to see Peter, and he said that he could imagine Peter saying to
+Paul, 'Would you like to take a walk?' and Paul said he would, so they
+went down through the streets of Jerusalem, over the brook Kidron, arm in
+arm, and Peter stopped and said, 'Look, Paul, this is the very spot where
+He wrestled and where He suffered, and sweat great drops of blood. There
+is the very spot where John and James fell asleep, right there. And right
+here is the very spot where I fell asleep. I don't think I should have
+denied Him if I hadn't gone to sleep, but I was overcome. I remember the
+last thing I heard Him say before I fell asleep was, "Father, let this cup
+pass from me if it is Thy will." And when I awoke an angel stood right
+there where you are standing, talking to Him, and I saw great drops of
+blood come from His pores and trickle down His cheeks. It wasn't long
+before Judas came to betray Him. And I heard Him say to Judas, so kindly,
+"Betrayest thou the Master with a kiss?" And then they bound Him and led
+Him away. And that night when He was on trial I denied Him.'
+
+"He pictured the whole scene. And the next day Peter turned again to Paul
+and said, 'Wouldn't you like to take another walk to-day?' and Paul said
+he would. That day they went to Calvary. And when they got on the hill
+Peter said, 'Here, Paul, this is the very spot where He died for you and
+me. See that hole right there? That is where His cross stood. The
+believing thief hung there, and the unbelieving thief there on the other
+side. Mary Magdalene and Mary, His mother, stood there, and I stood away
+on the out-skirts of the crowd.
+
+"'The night before, when I denied Him, He looked at me so lovingly that it
+broke my heart, and I couldn't bear to get near enough to see Him. That
+was the darkest hour of my life. I was in hopes that God would intercede
+and take Him from the cross. I kept listening, and I thought I would hear
+His voice.' And he pictured the whole scene, how they drove the spear into
+His side, and put the crown of thorns on His brow, and all that took
+place.
+
+"And the next day Peter turned to Paul again and asked him if he wouldn't
+take another walk. And Paul said he would. Again they passed down the
+streets of Jerusalem, over the brook Kidron, over Mount Olivet, up to
+Bethphage, and over to the slope near Bethany. All at once Peter stopped
+and said: 'Here, Paul, this is the last place where I ever saw Him. I
+never heard Him speak so sweetly as He did that day.
+
+"'It was right here He delivered His last message to us, and all at once I
+noticed that His feet didn't touch the ground. He arose and went up. All
+at once there came a cloud and received Him out of sight. I stood right
+here gazing up into the heavens, in hopes I might see Him again and hear
+Him speak. And two men dressed in white dropped down by our sides and
+stood there and said: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into heaven?
+This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall come in like
+manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven."'"
+
+Then Mr. Moody said, "My friends, I want to ask you this question: Do you
+believe that picture is overdrawn? Do you believe Peter had Paul as his
+guest and didn't take him to Gethsemane, didn't take him to Calvary and
+Mount Olivet? I myself spent eight days in Jerusalem, and every morning I
+wanted to steal down into the garden where my Lord sweat great drops of
+blood. Every day I climbed Mount Olivet and looked up into the blue sky
+where He went to His Father.
+
+"I have no doubt Peter took Paul out on those three walks. If there had
+been a man that could have taken me to the very spot where the Master
+sweat those great drops of blood, do you think I would not have asked him
+to take me there? Now, you ministers, don't you believe the people want
+preaching like that? They do. They want to hear about the Lord."
+
+I remember that I was sitting in that convention where I could easily see
+the faces of the people. It was a sight not to be forgotten. I remember
+that sea of eager upturned faces as distinctly as I remember Mr. Moody's
+talk. The people sat so still, as though in a spell, with eyes big and
+shining with something wet, and occasionally a slight twitching of emotion
+and a handkerchief called into service.
+
+Mr. Moody talked in that natural way of his, so quiet and yet so intense
+in its quietness. That's what people want--Jesus brought to them, simply
+and naturally. And Moody knew it. It took years of hard self-discipline
+for him to be able to talk as he did. Such talking takes study and hard
+work. But it's all worth while if we can make Jesus plain to men in all
+His wondrous winsomeness.
+
+
+
+<u>"A More Excellent Way."</u>
+
+
+Then there's another way of telling the story of Jesus to men. It's a yet
+better way. <i>Tell it with your life.</i> That was Jesus' own plan. He lived
+what He taught. He proposed coming down into each one of us and living His
+life over again in us. He does just that now. Then as men meet us they are
+meeting Him, too, in us. The things that marked Him will be noticed in us.
+
+The intense hatred of sin, the purity, the gentleness and patience, the
+warm sympathy, the constant self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice, the
+eagerness to win men, the tireless going wherever men could be
+helped--these may be in us as they were in Him, and will be, as we let Him
+live in us. And men will recognize the Jesus-story being lived in their
+midst. Jesus wants to reach out through us to men. And He will; He will;
+more than we ever know or will know. This is the best telling of the
+story.
+
+I am told that in the Palace of Justice in Rome there is a remarkable
+chamber where visitors are sometimes taken. The remarkable thing about it
+is the decorations. The ceiling and walls and even the floors are covered
+with strangely painted frescoes. That is, they seem strange as one enters.
+They seem grotesque. They do not harmonize. They are out of touch with
+each other, and make a bewildering maze of confusion. But there is one
+spot in the chamber, just one spot upon the floor, where, if you stand,
+everything falls into place. The artist's conception stands out perfect in
+perspective and color and beauty.
+
+To the great crowd of men in this old world life seems a good bit like
+that Roman chamber. Things seem out of harmony--sin, pain, confusion,
+unsatisfied longings, unconquered weaknesses, broken plans, and
+disappointed ambitions. But there is one spot, a central point, just one,
+where all that concerns you will come into harmony, and bring heart-rest.
+
+That one spot is where you take your stand side by side with Jesus. His
+presence clears everything up. He sweetens the life, and straightens the
+path, and leads you steadily on toward the dawning of the day. And that's
+as true for China and the Pacific islanders as for Britisher or American.
+Men need Jesus. He satisfies them. He is the great magnet. He draws men as
+no other can. He places Himself at our disposal to be taken to men. They
+can't resist Him. Let us take Him.
+
+O Jesus Master, thou hast drawn me till I want to be Thy slave forever.
+Help me take Thee to all other men that they may feel Thy wondrous drawing
+power, and satisfying power, too.
+
+
+
+
+The Holy Spirit
+
+
+
+  The Last Talk Together.
+  The Partnership of Service.
+  The Power that Never Fails.
+  The Trinity of Service.
+  Living on the Top Floor.
+  Partial Weavings of the Strands.
+  Unbroken Connection Above.
+
+
+
+
+The Holy Spirit
+
+
+
+<u>The Last Talk Together.</u>
+
+
+A little group of men were climbing the winding path that led up Olivet's
+slope. The Master was in the midst, and the others before and behind,
+where they could hear His voice. For they were talking together as they
+walked along. That is to say, He was talking, and they were listening,
+with an occasional question. They went on until they were over against
+where little Bethany nestles in among the blue hills. There they stood a
+little while, still talking together earnestly.
+
+It was their last talk together. And there were two things the Master was
+saying. Those two things came with all the tender emphasis of a last
+message. They were to go on an errand to the world; a lifelong errand, and
+to the whole world. That was being burned in. But they weren't to start on
+the errand until the Holy Spirit had come upon them. The errand and the
+Spirit's presence were coupled together. That was to be their errand. And
+He was to be their life-power as they went on the errand.
+
+They were to go. The Spirit was to come. He would come before they went.
+They must not go until He had come. Then they were to go in His presence
+and power. They would be able to go because of Him. Their going would be
+worth while, because wherever they went He would be at work in them and
+through them. The real work would be done by Him. But it would be done
+through them. His presence was essential to their work being done. Their
+presence was essential to His doing His work. He would work as they went,
+and where they went.
+
+That was the new blessed partnership of world-wide service planned by the
+Master as He went away. They would tell of Jesus. The Spirit would open
+doors, guide their tongues, guard their persons, and make the message of
+Jesus as a flame of fire in men's hearts.
+
+Just before this, Jesus had talked a great deal with His disciples about
+the Holy Spirit. They didn't yet know how much this that He was saying,
+would come to mean to them. But they remembered after the Master was gone,
+and then they understood. When they got down into the thick of the world's
+crowds they understood the great significance of what He had said.
+
+That last talk[24] they had together in the upper room and along the
+Jerusalem streets, on the betrayal night, was full of teaching about the
+Holy Spirit. And the next time after that that they met, in the upper
+room,[25] on the evening of the resurrection day, He breathed strongly
+upon them, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." And the very last word
+on the Olivet slope was, "Wait; wait until the Holy Spirit comes." He
+burned in deep that their dependence must be entirely upon the Spirit.
+
+
+
+<u>The Partnership of Service.</u>
+
+
+Jesus Himself is an illustration of what He told them about this. He was
+on a missionary errand. He had been sent by His Father, even as later
+these men and we have been sent. With awe ever growing, one remembers that
+the divine Jesus in the days of His humanity gave Himself over to the
+control of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was the dominant factor in His life
+and in all His activities. All His teachings and movements were at the
+suggestion and direction and control of the Spirit. The power in speech
+and action, in healing, in raising the dead, and in the wondrous mastery
+of Himself was the Holy Spirit's power working upon and through Jesus.
+
+Then it was that as He was going away He said, "As the Father hath sent
+me, even so I send you." And with that He coupled the significant
+breathing upon them, with the word, "Take ye the Holy Spirit." We are to
+be as He, both in our utter dependence upon the Spirit and in our
+assurance of His power in us.
+
+Ever since then that has been the effective partnership for world-service:
+men and the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit and men. If you are thinking of
+the human side you say, "<i>Men</i> and the Holy Spirit." If you are speaking
+of the divine side, you say, "<i>The Holy Spirit</i> and men." The two belong
+together. Where men have failed to go the Spirit has been hampered in
+speaking to men. He has spoken, but the story of salvation through Jesus
+has not been known. The Spirit's mouth-piece for the telling of that story
+was lacking. That seriously hindered Him in His work.
+
+Where men have gone without the Spirit, that is without yielding
+themselves habitually to His control, they have been sorely hampered. It
+is like having the kindling wood set in order for a fire, but the fire not
+started. There is no heat, nor any of fire's results. The kindling must
+have the flame, and the flame must have the coals. The two are partners in
+service.
+
+This partnership belongs peculiarly in the world-wide service of winning
+men. If anybody needs the Spirit's presence, he does who attempts to win a
+man to Jesus anywhere. But if any man-winner needs that presence more than
+another, he does who goes into the peculiar atmosphere of a non-Christian
+people. And, on the other hand, if anybody can be sure of the Spirit's
+presence and power always with him, and working through him, he can who
+has gone out on the world-errand.
+
+That man is in the direct line of obedience to Jesus' command. The Spirit
+Himself is sent by Jesus, and comes to us in direct obedience to Jesus'
+desire. These two, the man and the Spirit, are as one in the purpose that
+controls them. That man may depend on the gracious, irresistible Spirit's
+power at every turn. He is a thrice West man, if he have learned to
+depend upon His unseen Partner.
+
+
+
+<u>The Power That Never Fails.</u>
+
+
+You and I have to remind ourselves constantly that our chief dependence is
+not upon organization, nor method, nor personal talent, nor personal
+training, but upon the Holy Spirit working <i>through</i> these. The better
+organized the human machinery, the better the methods used, the more there
+is of personal gift, and the more thoroughly one's powers have been
+drilled, the more there is at the Spirit's disposal for Him to use. The
+practical bother is to remember this; to get it rubbed in until it is like
+an instinct in us, that the power is all from Him, through us. Not without
+Him, and not without us; the two together; but always His the far greater
+part--indeed, the real part.
+
+The Holy Spirit has a double work to do: with us who go; and upon those to
+whom we go. Within us He has to work out the character of Jesus. He opens
+the Word, making its meaning stand clearly out. He wakens the mind up to
+do its best work. He guides in our decisions, suggesting and directing and
+controlling our thoughts, and in our actions, in our dealings with men. In
+things that are little in themselves, but on which so much hinges, He
+guides.
+
+It constantly occurs that we are not at all conscious of His control at
+the time. But afterward we can see how He has been deftly, softly
+guiding, with His rare light touch upon us. When, in the thick of work,
+we may be pressed hard, and a bit wearied, and in doubt, He sends the
+quiet, quick suggestion into our thoughts that leads out of the tight
+corner and into the achievement of the thing desired. He works through us,
+and through what we do, giving power that otherwise would not be there.
+While you are talking in conversation or in public address, He is working
+through what you are saying.
+
+And He works upon those to whom we go. He opens doors; the doors of
+circumstances that we find locked and double-padlocked against us. He
+opens the yet tighter-shut, harder-to-open human doors. He inclines men
+favorably toward us personally, and to our message. Under His touch the
+message becomes as a tongue of flame, kindling, disturbing, softening,
+burning down, and moulding over into new shape the inner man to whom the
+message comes.
+
+Sometimes quarrymen find a very hard kind of rock in the stone quarries.
+They pick little grooves for the iron wedges, and then with great
+sledge-hammers drive these wedges into the hard rock. But sometimes this
+fails to split the rock. The iron wedges and big sledges have no effect at
+all on the stubborn stone. Then they go at it in another way. The iron
+wedges are removed from the narrow grooves. Then little wooden ones, of a
+very hard fibre are selected. These sharp-edged, well-made wooden wedges
+are first soaked in water. Then they are put in the grooves tightly while
+wet, and water is kept in the grooves. The sledges are not used. They
+would smash the wooden wedges.
+
+The water and wedges are left to do their work. The damp wood swells. The
+particles must have more room as they swell. The granite heart of rock
+can't stand against this new pressure. It takes longer than with iron
+wedges and sledge, but after a while the rock yields and lies split
+wide-open. The water works on the wood, and that in turn on the stone. The
+iron wedges sometimes fail, but the wood and water never fail.
+
+It seems to be a part of our make-up to make plans, and to count on the
+plans. And planning does much. We don't want to plan less, necessarily,
+but to learn to depend more <i>in</i> our planning on the soft, noiseless, but
+resistless power of the Holy Spirit.
+
+    "The day is long, and the day is hard;
+    We are tired of the march and of keeping guard;
+    Tired of the sense of a fight to be won,
+    Of days to live through, and of work to be done;
+    Tired of ourselves and of being alone:
+    Yet all the while, did we only see,
+    <i>We walk in the Lord's own company.</i>
+    We fight, but 'tis He who nerves our arm;
+    He turns the arrows that else might harm,
+    And out of the storm He brings a calm;
+    And the work that we count so hard to do,
+    He makes it easy, for He works, too:
+    And the days that seem long to live are His--
+    bit of His bright eternities--and close to our need
+       His helping is."[26]
+
+
+
+<u>The Trinity of Service.</u>
+
+
+Now, we want to mark keenly that <i>full</i> power depends upon three things.
+There is a trinity of service, a human-divine trinity. The full results
+can come only through its working. The ideal winner of men needs to
+believe thoroughly in this trinity.
+
+First of all is <i>the message</i>. There needs to be a clear understanding of
+the Gospel. That is the winner's message. That is the direct thing he uses
+in approaching and laying siege to some man's heart. It is a simple
+message, but very often it is grasped only partly by those who tell it.
+
+That message needs to be understood clearly and fully by the man who would
+have the greatest power in winning men. From its first plain teaching
+about sin, on to the terrible results that sin left to itself works out;
+through the blessed teaching of love as shown most in the sacrifice for
+sin which Jesus made on the cross; the need of a clean cutting with sin,
+and clear-out surrender to Jesus as Saviour and Master; the work of the
+Holy Spirit in one's heart; and then the climax of service out among
+men--this simple message needs to be grasped fully and clearly. This is
+the first great essential hi the trinity of service.
+
+There is a second thing, yet more important, that must go with this first.
+And that is <i>a man who embodies the message</i> in himself. It isn't enough
+to know the story of the Gospel, nor to tell it. It must be <i>lived</i>. That
+is the best telling of it. The man must be a living illustration of the
+truth he is telling. He may be conscious of not illustrating it as he
+should. The earnest man is never aware that he is as good an illustration
+of it as he is. He may think himself a poor illustration. He is quite apt
+to. But he is yet more apt not to be thinking of that side as he attempts
+to win men. He will be all taken up with Jesus, and with getting men to
+know Him.
+
+The man is more than the message, even when he is less than the message.
+When his life fails to live out the truth he is speaking, still even then
+he is more. For the life is more than the lips. And, while he is talking,
+his life is discounting his words and taking away some of the power that
+belongs with them. I do not mean that those he is talking to are making
+the comparison, necessarily. They may not know about his life, whether it
+embodies the message or not.
+
+I mean that the life that is true breathes a force and power into the man
+himself and so into his words. <i>Or</i> it doesn't. The message takes on the
+quality of the man. One man's talking catches fire; another's doesn't. The
+listeners know that it is so, though they don't usually know why. All the
+while you and I are trying to win others, in Sunday-school class or
+meeting, in Gospel service or church preaching, in personal conversation
+or letter-writing, there's a subtle something that goes out of us, as an
+atmosphere, that affects the power of the message we're giving out.
+
+And that something is actually greater in its power than the truth we are
+speaking. It may be a touch of flame making the truth burn within him who
+is listening. It may be a deadly, dampening chill checking the fire that
+is naturally in the truth. The man is always more than the message.
+
+
+
+<u>Living on the Top Floor.</u>
+
+
+Then there is a third thing. It is yet more than the message or the man,
+or than both message and man together. It is this: <i>the Holy Spirit
+controlling the man who embodies the message</i>. I mean by controlling him
+that he has surrendered himself to the Spirit's control. And, further than
+that, that he cultivates the Spirit's presence.
+
+There needs to be a habitual cultivation of the Spirit's presence and
+friendship, even as we cultivate our human friendships. There needs to be
+time spent alone, habitually, with the Book of God. I do not mean just now
+merely studying the Bible to get better acquainted with its contents.
+Something more than that--thoughtful meditation on its truths; the quiet,
+steady holding of one's self open to the searching and stimulating and
+enlightening influence of this rare Book. The Spirit speaks through these
+pages. Yet it is to be feared that many a careful student of its pages
+does not get deeper in than the print. He doesn't know and meet the Person
+who speaks in the print and through it.
+
+Then, beyond the quiet time with the Book, there is the holding of one's
+whole life open to the Spirit's suggestion and subject to His direction.
+He guides through our thinking. <i>And</i> sometimes He guides us when our
+thinking, for some reason, has not gotten up high enough for Him to guide
+through it. Samuel thought that David's oldest brother was God's chosen
+one. But into his rarely sensitized inner ear the Spirit said "No." His
+thinking wasn't keen enough to be the channel through which he could be
+guided. But he had learned to hold his thinking subject to a higher power.
+
+One time Paul thought it would be good to go over east into the province
+of Bithynia, and even tried to make a start that way. But the Spirit made
+plain His plan that they were to go in just the opposite direction, to the
+west. Had Paul's thinking been more open to the Spirit's touch at that
+point, he wouldn't have made the false start. But he was wise clear beyond
+the great crowd of us. For at once he dropped his own thought-out plans,
+and did as he was bid.
+
+The keener our mental processes are, the better informed we are, the
+better poised our judgment--the better can the Spirit reveal His plans to
+us through this natural channel, if it is open to Him. But there is one
+thing higher up than our thinking powers. And that is the
+spirit-perception. The mental isn't at the top. It's a step up to the
+spirit floor, the highest of all.
+
+Some men of splendid ability and training and consecration are constantly
+hampered because they insist on living on the mental floor. All their
+decisions are made there, <i>not</i> subject to change from above. And the Holy
+Spirit, who is the Commander-in-chief of all the forces in this campaign,
+is unable to use them as He would.
+
+They haven't got the sensitized inner ear of the quiet time that would
+lead them up into higher, broader service. They go faithfully plodding
+along on the lower level. The Spirit can use them, of course. He does; but
+never to the full The Spirit of God controlling the man who embodies the
+message--this brings fulness of power in winsome service; and only this
+can. It is not by keenness of thinking, nor fulness of learning, nor
+shrewd, well-balanced judgment, but by the Spirit of God working through
+these, and sometimes working higher up than they have reached.
+
+
+
+<u>Partial Weavings of the Strands.</u>
+
+
+Now it will help us, I am sure, and make the truth stand out more clearly,
+to recall a good many variations that belong in here. Running back over
+these things brings up certain facts.
+
+The truth has power of blessing in itself, regardless of who is speaking
+it. A bad man may preach the Gospel, and the truth itself will be felt in
+spite of the man. There is a life in truth itself, quite apart from the
+medium of its transmission. This explains why men who have turned out to
+be bad men have had good results attending their ministry. But it was the
+truth making itself felt in spite of the handicap it suffered at the
+hands of the man talking.
+
+And men whose understanding of the truth is very one-sided and meagre have
+been greatly used and blessed in their work. It is striking how a man who
+has been rescued from a life of open sin, and who goes into Christian
+service with tremendous earnestness, will have great power. His emphasis
+of truth may be one-sided. It is quite apt to be. He tells what he has
+experienced. The man himself is a living illustration of the truth spoken.
+All the truth that can get out through him has the tremendous push forward
+of his life. But the extent of his service is limited.
+
+And there are men who have a clear, well-rounded grasp of the blessed
+message of Jesus, and who give it out clearly and fully. But they are
+hampered by their mental swaddling-clothes, in which they have been
+wrapped up in school-days. They never get up out of them into the freedom
+of strong action through the Spirit's control.
+
+Then, too, without doubt God's Spirit works alone, without using anybody.
+He speaks through nature's beauty and power. He speaks in the inner heart
+of every man. He is speaking directly to men all the time everywhere. But
+the message is a partial one. The direct revelation of God, in nature and
+in conscience, is a limited revelation. The full revelation of God was
+made in Jesus. And so it is in this Book that tells of Jesus.
+
+The Spirit of God can speak most fully where that Book is known. He can
+work most fully and powerfully through the man who lives the Book. Every
+printing of this Bible, or any part of it, is giving the spirit freer
+entrance into men's hearts. Every one of us who produces a new translation
+of it in the language of his life gives the Spirit a wide-open door where
+otherwise the opening had been narrow.
+
+Now, whatever combination of these there may be, some of the blessed power
+of God will be seen and felt. The truth unembodied or even hampered; men
+who embody the truth they know, but whose knowledge is small; men of much
+knowledge, but small practice; men of full knowledge, but who have not
+learned to let the Spirit sway them fully; the Spirit Himself speaking
+where Jesus is not known, and without any man's help--through each of
+these, power of life will go out to men.
+
+But the fulness of power that runs like a mighty stream goes only as the
+three things come into one. The <i>message</i>, full and clear, the <i>man</i> who
+lives it, the <i>Holy Spirit possessing and controlling the man</i> who lives
+the message--this is the trinity of service through which alone the
+flood-tide flows.
+
+
+
+<u>Unbroken Connection Above.</u>
+
+
+That blessed flood-tide of power may be much more common than it is. There
+needs to be daily quiet time, alone with the Master, with the door shut,
+the Book open, the knee bent, the will bent too, to a clear right angle,
+the mind quiet and open, the inner spirit unhurried; broad, thoughtful
+reading; keen, clear, quiet meditation; the rigorous squaring of the life
+up to the standard of the Book; the cultivation of the Spirit's presence
+and friendship; and these habits steadily followed until they become
+second nature.
+
+Then will be fulfilled the promise, "Out of His inner being <i>shall flow
+rivers of water of life</i>."[27] And men have always been drawn irresistibly
+to the rivers. And yet, while there will be fulness of power, there will
+not be full knowledge of how full the power is. That is reserved for "the
+Morning."
+
+For hundreds of years men have used a contrivance called a diving-bell for
+working under water. Practically it enables a man to live out of his
+native element. For a man to live in water for any length of time is
+impossible. Expert divers do so for a few minutes at a time, but must rise
+constantly to get a fresh supply of air. But their work is dangerous, and
+very trying on the body. By means of the diving-bell a man may live and
+work for hours under the water; that is to say, in an element that of
+itself, unchecked, would quickly take his life.
+
+The diving-bell is a sort of huge inverted cup, let down into the water by
+its own weight, opening downward, so that the man in the bell faces the
+water directly with nothing between himself and it. Death by drowning is
+always within arm's length, yet he remains safe. The simple principle on
+which the thing is constructed is that water and air can't occupy the same
+space at the same time. The bell, being full of air, holds the water out.
+
+But there needs to be a continual supply of fresh air sent down by means
+of a tube connected with the upper air. Death by drowning and death by
+suffocation, both threaten constantly, and each is held off, one by the
+air, and the other by the continual supply of fresh air. The man's ability
+to work and his very life depend upon the uninterrupted connection with
+the fresh air above.
+
+The Christian man in this world is living out of his native breathing
+element. He needs to have his own atmosphere with him, or else he will
+die. And he needs to have a fresh supply continually from above, or his
+life will be at very low ebb.
+
+Missionaries in foreign-mission lands speak much of the peculiar,
+deadening, moral atmosphere there. There is a strange sense of depression
+in it. They always plan to have their children brought home at an early
+age that they may be brought up through the tender, impressionable years
+in a land where Christian standards of life are recognized.
+
+There is no language strong enough to put this truth, that we <i>must</i>, each
+of us, whether here or there, carry our own atmosphere with us, and have
+continual uninterrupted connection with the upper air. And that "<i>must</i>"
+cannot be too strongly underscored.
+
+Blessed Holy Spirit, breath of God, and breath of my life, help me to let
+Thee have full sweep within me, that so my life may be kept sweet and
+full; and so Jesus can get freely and fully out of me to the great hungry
+crowd.
+
+
+
+
+Prayer
+
+
+
+  The Greatest Doing Is Praying.
+  At the Other End.
+  A Weekly Journey Round the World.
+  Prayer a Habit.
+  A Praying Bent Of Mind.
+  The Man Is The Prayer.
+  Unseen Changes Going On.
+
+
+
+
+Prayer
+
+
+
+<u>The Greatest Doing Is Praying.</u>
+
+
+The greatest of all things we can <i>do</i> is to <i>pray</i>.
+
+Jesus lived a life of prayer. All that He did and said grew out of His
+prayer. There is no way of knowing exactly how far it was so. But the more
+I study His life the stronger grows the impression that His teaching and
+activity, which form the greater part of these Gospel pages, were actually
+less than His praying. He seems to have put prayer first. All the rest was
+an outgrowth of it. He was on a world-winning errand. And this was what He
+thought of prayer. <i>The emphasis of Jesus' personal habit was laid upon
+prayer.</i>
+
+The Holy Spirit is a prayer-spirit. He is the Master-Intercessor. He
+breathes into us the spirit of prayer, and makes it glow into a passion.
+He teaches us how to pray. It is a lifelong teaching. You who are teachers
+know that patience and skill are more in a good teacher than the knowledge
+taught. With greatest skill, and loving, tactful patience the Spirit
+teaches us to pray.
+
+And then He does more: He uses each of us as His praying-room, praying in
+us with yearnings beyond utterance the prayer to which we have not yet
+reached up, but which needs to be prayed down on the earth. All the power
+needed in this great winning work is in the Holy Spirit and comes from
+Him. <i>And the chief thing He emphasizes is prayer.</i>
+
+The greatest thing each one of us can do is to pray. If we can go
+personally to some distant land, still we have gone to only one place. But
+our field is the world. It is impossible for us to reach our whole field
+personally. But it can be reached, and reached effectually, by prayer. The
+place where you and I are sent, whether at home or abroad, is simply our
+<i>base of action</i>. It is our field for <i>personal</i> touch. And that means
+very much. But it is more than that. It is only a small part of our field
+of activity. It is most significant as our <i>base of action,</i> from which we
+send out our secret messengers of prayer to all parts of the field.
+
+And then, in the particular town or city or country district to which we
+have been sent, or in which we are being kept, the prayer properly comes
+before the personal activity. And it runs along side by side with the
+activity, and follows along after. We give the personal touch which must
+be given, and which may be so marvellous in power, but there's something
+even there greater than the great personal touch; and that is the power of
+prayer.
+
+It is through the prayer that the personal presence means most. That
+personal presence may become a positive hindrance. It may be a drag upon
+the work. It often is just that for lack of prayer. For the real sweetness
+and efficiency of personal service out among men is in secret prayer.
+
+And if we give <i>money</i>, it needs even more the prayer to go with it. Money
+seems almost almighty. As a winning force, of course, it must be reckoned
+far less than personal service. For it is less. It gets its almost
+omnipotence from human hands. If the personal touch depends for its subtle
+power on prayer, how much more does money! Money given to missions,
+unaccompanied by prayer, can no doubt be made to do great good. But it is
+a very pauper in its poverty alongside the bit of money that is charged
+with the spirit-current of prayer.
+
+
+
+<u>At the Other End.</u>
+
+
+One day I ran across a party of about twenty Pittsburg men on their way to
+a men's Christian convention in Cincinnati. There were a few ministers in
+the party, but it was made up chiefly of business men, typical, keen,
+alert American business men. We got together and talked about things of
+common interest.
+
+And this question was asked: <i>Does prayer do things?</i> Then the question
+was spread out some. I go into my room at night to retire. I read a bit
+from the Book, and kneel to pray. I pray for a man in Pittsburg or in
+Hang-chow, China. Does anything take place in Pittsburg or in Hang-chow
+that wouldn't have taken place if I hadn't prayed? Of course, the praying
+does <i>me</i> good. The very bending of knee and head before God, the good
+wishes in my heart going out to some one else--these influence me. I rise
+better for both.
+
+But is that all? Does anything happen <i>at the other end?</i> Does my prayer
+do anything in Hang-chow? If I write a business letter to Hang-chow,
+enclosing a foreign draft, the letter does something. A vast amount of
+business is carried on that way. Would the prayer as really do something
+as the letter and the draft?
+
+There was a good bit of talk back and forth, and questions asked. It was
+interesting to find these men were ready to admit that they really
+believed that something would occur at the other end. They belonged to a
+church noted for its sound teaching, and came from the orthodox church
+city of Pittsburg. The matter-of-fact power of prayer to do business "at
+the other end" seemed to appeal to these business men. Apparently they had
+not been looking at prayer that way. But they readily admitted that it
+must be so. Then the next question asked itself: How much of this foreign
+business are we doing? And so the little crowd talked along while the
+train pounded the rails at the rate of forty-odd miles an hour.
+
+Prayer does do things. Something happens at the other end that wouldn't
+happen if the prayer were not made. The banker can touch London and Paris
+and Shanghai and Calcutta and Tokyo, without moving from the desk where he
+is dictating letters, with his correspondence spread out before him. The
+praying man can as really touch these cities as he kneels in his room,
+with map and Book spread out before him.
+
+Things are changed out there that need changing. That banker does
+business, too, in his home city and out in the home-land. But many times,
+with many a house, the bulk of foreign business is in excess of that done
+at home. Now we want to do a large business abroad in soul-winning and in
+world-winning, as well as at home.
+
+
+
+<u>A Weekly Journey round the World.</u>
+
+
+I use that word "business" in this connection thoughtfully and reverently.
+I know there is a sacredness, a hallowedness about prayer that never or
+rarely enters into business matters. We keep the two things apart in our
+thoughts; reckoning the one a common thing, and the other a holy thing.
+And I would increase, if I could, that sense of reverence in prayer. But
+there is a great advantage in using the familiar language of business in
+thinking of the results of our praying.
+
+Prayer is doing business for God. It gives a practicality, a
+something-you-can-touch-and-feel feeling to think in that way. Shall we
+not make plans at once to increase our foreign correspondence?
+
+You can have a simple schedule or memorandum to guide your praying. I do
+not mean a slavish hard-and-fast system, or set of rules, set down to be
+followed, with a feeling that you have been untrue if you forget. Nothing
+of that sort at all. But merely a simple something to glance at each day,
+and so serve as a reminder to guide your thoughts.
+
+A little memorandum can be made running through the days of the week. It
+can be so planned as to run around the world during the week. The little
+schedule which I use is divided into the days of the week, Sunday to
+Saturday. There is a daily page containing notes, catch-words, about
+personal affairs, and home, and friends, and church, and appointments, and
+such items. Then each day of the week has a page, and on it is marked
+home-land items and foreign items.
+
+In marking out the weekly world journey I had to begin somewhere. The
+Master told the disciples to begin at Jerusalem and work out. So I
+followed that rule, and Sunday is marked Turkey and the lands grouped with
+it, Arabia and Persia. The memorandum moves east, following the
+compass-line of greatest need. Monday is India day, including Ceylon and
+the lands and islands lying adjacent. Tuesday is China day; Wednesday,
+Japan, the island kingdom; and the island world of the Pacific.
+
+This brings me across the Pacific, and so Thursday is marked South
+America, including Central America and Mexico. The easterly line takes me
+across the Atlantic again to Africa on Friday. Saturday takes an upward
+turn to the papal lands of Europe, and to Russia, completing the
+world-journey for that week. The matters for prayer here in the home-land
+are noted through the days of the week in the same way. Each page has
+certain home and certain foreign items.
+
+A little prayer-book of that sort grows under constant use. Your reading
+of missionary news leads to the making of fresh notes. Names of persons
+are added, and dates of coming conferences, and so on, and verses of
+Scripture that stand out in the daily reading. So the book becomes to you
+a very precious little batch of leaves, lying inside the precious Book of
+God.
+
+It should be accompanied by a map of the world. For a good while I used
+the one which was inserted in one of Dr. A. T. Pierson's mission books.
+That copy has long since been replaced by others, larger, giving more
+information. It is an immense help to glance at the map daily, and look at
+the part marked for the day. The lands get fixed in mind in that way
+without special effort. Gradually they stand out more and more clearly,
+and come to be very real to you.
+
+That map may become dear to you, for it suggests the field that you are
+influencing. It is your prayer sailing-chart. It becomes fragrant with
+memories. Experiences you have had alone with God over His Word, and over
+this map of His World, come back to refresh and sweeten.
+
+
+
+<u>Prayer a Habit.</u>
+
+
+There's a little sentence of Paul's that used to puzzle and bother me,
+"Pray without ceasing." But it has become a great help to me. It puzzled
+me because I didn't see any practical way of doing it. It didn't seem to
+mean the repetition of prayers, with little mechanical helps, such as some
+use. It surely doesn't mean staying on your knees a long time. But, as I
+tried to pray my way into its meaning, it came to mean four distinct
+things to me. And I would not be surprised to find more yet coming out of
+it.
+
+First of all, it means that prayer should be <i>a habit</i>. There should be a
+fixed time every day, or times, for going off alone to pray. Into that
+time the Book is taken. Quiet time is spent in reading it. For this is
+listening to God. And that comes first in praying; listening first, then
+speaking. The reading may be rapid and broad, or slower and more
+meditative. Whichever it may be, there should be a cultivation of <i>the
+habit of meditation</i>.
+
+I do not mean a sleepy trying to imitate what we suppose some holy men do.
+But a keen thinking into the meaning of the words, and into their
+practical use in one's own life. Then the praying itself. The being still
+before God, and the definite prayer for particular things, and persons,
+and places. That habit can be fixed until it becomes second nature. It can
+be cultivated until it becomes the sweet spot of the day to you.
+
+
+
+<u>A Praying Bent of Mind.</u>
+
+
+Then while the daily habit continues prayer may become an attitude, <i>a
+bent of mind</i>. Whatever comes up suggests prayer to you. The bent of your
+mind is to pray as things come up in the daily round. You can't stop your
+work, but you <i>think</i> prayers. Your heart prays while your hands are busy.
+
+I shall never forget the school in which I learned to pray this way. A
+case of protracted illness in my home required my personal attention
+constantly for a time. It seemed as if no assistance I could get meant
+quite as much as what I could do personally. The life in peril was so
+precious that all else dropped out of sight. My habits of life were
+completely broken up. I was up night and day. The early morning hour of
+reading and prayer was broken into, with everything else of a regular
+sort.
+
+But as I went about my round of service I found myself praying constantly.
+I was much wearied, and things sometimes seemed desperate. I realized how
+everything depended on God's touch. And without any planning a habit of
+continual praying formed itself. I could be engaged in conversation,
+thinking intently into something needing great care, and yet there was an
+undercurrent of prayer constantly. I shall never cease to be grateful for
+that trying experience, because in it this new habit of a praying bent of
+mind formed itself.
+
+Do you not know how as you go about your ordinary round there is a
+constant undercurrent of thought? You may be talking, or reading, or
+writing, or doing something more mechanical, and yet this underneath train
+of thought is running along apparently of its own accord, regardless of
+you. It is broken at times, or you lose consciousness of it, as your work
+requires closer attention. When you swing into the habitual things that
+you have done over and over again until they almost do themselves, it
+reasserts itself.
+
+I remember years ago, in a banking-house where I served for a time, I had
+long additions to make. Sometimes the rows of figures to be added up were
+a foot in length. And I got so used to adding that often I was surprised
+to find that my thoughts had been far away, completely taken up with
+something else, while I had been adding the figures. And fearing that I
+had been slighting my work, I would go back carefully all over the
+figures, only to find the footings correct. The adding habit had become
+fixed, and left the undercurrent of my thought free.
+
+That current is apt to reveal the heart's purpose or set of mind. Whatever
+you are most set upon, whatever your favorite fads or hobbies or
+inclinations or moods are, they are apt to appear in that involuntary
+train of thinking. Now this can be cultivated. It can be cultivated
+chiefly by the cultivation of the controlling purpose of your life, and
+then by trying to give directions to the undercurrent, and holding it to
+that direction. If Jesus has gripped your heart the purpose of the life
+will be for Him. And if you have come to realize the tremendous power of
+prayer, this undercurrent of thought can be made a prayer-current.
+
+I do not mean by any forced or artificial holding of one's self to such a
+current by dint of main force, and then mentally whipping yourself if you
+have forgotten. The power of all action lies in its being perfectly free
+and natural. You can cultivate the Jesus-passion, and the life-purpose,
+and the prayer-habit, and all of this will be a training of that
+undercurrent of thought toward prayer.
+
+The shipping clerk, as he heads up his barrels and boxes, can be sending
+out and up his current of prayer. At intervals he is thinking closely
+about something connected with his work. Then his thoughts free
+themselves. As he hammers in the nails, his thought says, "This is China
+day." Each ringing blow of the hammer rings out "This is China day:--Thy
+blessing, Master, to-day upon the missionaries in Hang-chow;--upon Mr.
+Blank out there;--victory in Jesus' name to-day;--the physician
+missionaries, the nurses;--Thy power upon them;--help the native workers."
+
+The picture of his little prayer memorandum comes up before his mind's
+eye. The map of China stands out more or less distinctly, according to how
+long he may have been practising looking at it in his prayer-hour. His
+mind runs of itself from one point to another. And so, all the while, his
+undercurrent of praying goes on. It is broken into by newer or more
+exacting duties; then free again, and swinging more or less to the thing
+his heart is set upon. It becomes a perfectly free, natural thing with
+him. This is part of the meaning of "Pray without ceasing."
+
+
+
+<u>The Man is the Prayer.</u>
+
+
+Then prayer is <i>a life</i>. The life is what you are in yourself. It is not
+the mere span of years you live through. Your thoughts and loves, your
+heart's ambitions and gripping purposes, the things you will to do, and to
+be--that is your life. That exerts an enormous influence upon the circle
+in which you live, and upon the world.
+
+If underneath all else that driving purpose, that warm, intense
+love-power, that yearning desire, is Godward, and manward, and world-ward,
+that becomes a prayer, a continual prayer. You are not thinking of it that
+way. But that is your life, and that life is a prayer. Its influence
+against the evil one and for God is enormous.
+
+That is a prayer unceasing, as long and as strong as your life itself.
+Satan fears it. It hinders him and thwarts him every day. The fragrant
+incense from the censer of your life rises up before the throne of God
+continually, and affects the events on the earth.[28]
+
+And then prayer is <i>a person</i>. That is to say, you yourself may be a
+prayer, a walking prayer offered up in Jesus' name. Your presence will
+affect the evil one, and change events, and help God in His plans. You may
+be so allied with Jesus in the simple gripping purpose of your heart that
+you yourself, where you are, by your mere presence, will be recognized by
+evil spirits, and by the Master Himself as a mighty power for God.
+
+Your presence disturbs the evil one's plan. It has an influence upon those
+you meet. It is helping God. The whole effect of your presence is
+precisely the same as a prayer. You are a prayer yourself, though
+unconsciously. The whole trend of your life says, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy
+will be done on earth as in heaven."
+
+A few years ago President Roosevelt's daughter was a member of the Taft
+party that visited parts of the Orient. She did not go as the President's
+daughter, of course. There could be no official significance attached to
+her presence. We Americans can understand better than some others that she
+went simply as a young woman eager to see Japan and China, not as the
+President's daughter.
+
+But everywhere she went in the Orient she was treated not merely as a
+member of the party, but as the daughter of the President of the United
+States. Presents were made to her, receptions tendered, and deference
+shown, because of her personal relation to her father. To the Orientals
+her presence stood for the head of our Government. They treated her in
+relation to him.
+
+Even so it is with us Christians. The evil one doesn't think of you and
+me for ourselves simply. He thinks of us in relation to the Jesus, who is
+his Victor. We stand to him down here for Jesus. He fears us as he fears
+Jesus. That is, he can be made to fear us, by our being true to our Lord.
+
+The final purpose of prayer is to defeat Satan and to bring about God's
+will. And we do just that in our persons, by our presence; or we may.
+Prayer is a person. You are a prayer. The man himself becomes a tremendous
+prayer, off-setting evil influences, changing men and events, and helping
+God in His plans.
+
+These last two, the life and the person, may be called unconscious prayer.
+The influence is constantly going out, though we are not aware of it. But
+it is great encouragement to recall that this prayer-power is going out of
+us constantly. And these two are not limited to the place where we are.
+They act as a momentum to every wish we breathe, and every spoken prayer
+we utter, sending these with renewed force out to the place involved.
+Spirit influence does not know anything about the limitations of distance.
+
+
+
+<u>Unseen Changes Going On.</u>
+
+
+All this praying makes a difference at the other end, the place toward
+which it is directed. Things in Tokyo are made different. The copy of a
+Gospel that some native in India is reading becomes a plainer book to him
+because of this praying. Your prayer is a spirit-force travelling
+instantly through the distance between you and the place you are praying
+for. And things occur that otherwise would not.
+
+Opposition lessens. Difficulties give way. The road some man is travelling
+clears and brightens. The truth on the printed page stands out in bigger
+letters. The health renews. The sickness or weakness gives way to a new
+health and strength. The judgment steers a straight course. The purpose
+holds its anchor steady. The man rides the rough seas of temptation
+safely.
+
+Things are happening. And they are happening because some scarcely noticed
+young fellow hammering a barrel-head and marking the shipping directions,
+and some typewriter chopping her machine, are praying in the quiet time,
+and are praying softly in the undercurrent of their scarcely thought-out
+thoughts.
+
+    "Oh, if our ears were opened
+      To hear as angels do
+    The Intercession-chorus
+      Arising full and true,
+    We should hear it soft up-welling
+      In morning's pearly light;
+    Through evening's shadows swelling
+      In grandly gathering might;
+    The sultry silence filling
+      Of noontide's thunderous blow,
+    And the solemn starlight thrilling
+      With ever-deepening flow.
+
+    "We should hear it through the rushing
+      Of the city's restless roar,
+    And trace its gentle gushing
+      O'er ocean's crystal floor;
+    We should hear it far up-floating
+      Beneath the Orient moon,
+    And catch the golden noting
+      From the busy Western noon;
+    And pine-robed heights would echo
+      As the mystic chant up-floats,
+    And the sunny plain resounds again
+      With the myriad mingling notes.
+
+    "There are hands too often weary
+      With the business of the day,
+    With God-entrusted duties,
+      Who are <i>toiling while they pray</i>.
+    They bear the golden vials,
+      And the golden harps of praise,
+    Through all the daily trials,
+      Through all the dusty ways.
+    <i>These hands, so tired, so faithful,
+      With odors sweet are filled,</i>
+    And in the ministry of prayer
+      Are wonderfully skilled.
+
+    "There are noble Christian workers,
+      The men of faith and power,
+    The overcoming wrestlers
+      Of many a midnight hour;
+    Prevailing princes with their God,
+      Who will not be denied,
+    Who bring down showers of blessing
+      To swell the rising tide.
+    The Prince of Darkness quaileth
+      At their triumphant way,
+    <i>Their fervent prayer availeth</i>
+      <i>To sap his subtle sway.</i>
+
+    "And evermore the Father
+      Sends radiantly down
+    All-marvellous responses,
+      His ministers to crown;
+    The incense cloud returning
+      As golden blessing-showers,
+    We in each drop discerning
+      Some feeble prayer of ours,
+    Transmuted into wealth unpriced,
+      By Him who giveth thus
+    The glory all to Jesus Christ,
+      The gladness all to us!"[29]
+
+
+
+
+Money
+
+
+
+  Limitations.
+  The Best Partnership.
+  Jesus' Teaching.
+  Be Your Own Executor.
+  Missing the Master's Meaning.
+  Money Talks.
+  Debts.
+  Rusty Money.
+  Are We True to Our Friend's Trust?
+
+
+
+
+Money
+
+
+
+<u>Limitations.</u>
+
+
+Money seems almost almighty in its power to do things, and make changes.
+It can make a desert blossom as a rose. It can even defy death. Medical
+skill holds the life here that otherwise would have been snuffed out.
+Great buildings go up. Colleges begin their life with apparatus and books,
+skilled instructors, and eager students. Mammoth enterprises spring into
+being. Hospitals and churches rise up with skilled attendants and talented
+preachers.
+
+We have come, in our day, and perhaps peculiarly in our country, to think
+that there is no limit to the power of money. Our ideas of its value are
+really greatly exaggerated. That first sentence I used would be revised by
+many to read, "Money is almighty." The cautious words "seems" and "almost"
+would be promptly cut out.
+
+Yet money has great limitations. It will help greatly to remember what
+they are. And many of us need the brain-clearing of that help. Of itself
+money is utterly useless, so much dead-weight stuff lying useless and
+helpless. It must have human hands to make it valuable. It gets its value
+from our conception of its value and from our use of it. It must have a
+human partner to be of any service at all.
+
+In bad hands it becomes devilish in its badness. And I needn't put an
+"almost" in that sentence. It may be as a very demon, or as the arch-devil
+himself, as really as it may seem to be divine in its creative and
+changing power.
+
+Then it is valuable only in this world, on the earth. At the line of death
+its value wholly ceases. Over that line it takes its place as a pauper. It
+is represented as being used for cobble stones in the streets of the new
+Jerusalem. Yet it would need to go through some hardening process to make
+it of any account at all as paving material.
+
+We ought to remind ourselves of something else, too, that the crowd
+constantly forgets, and that we are tempted to forget when touched by the
+contagion of the crowd. And that is, that money is always less in its
+power than a strong, sweet, pure life. Maybe you think that comparison
+can't properly be made. You say that things so unlike can't be compared.
+But, whether consciously or intentionally or otherwise, that comparison is
+being made constantly in practical life, and most times to the advantage
+of money. Commonly the crowd reckons money more than character.
+
+We do well to remind ourselves that its influence for good is always
+distinctly less than that of a life. To live a life pure and strong and
+wholesome in its ideals out among men is more than to be able to give
+money in any amount. To keep one's life up to such ideals in the heartless
+drive and competition of modern life means more than to extract large
+quantities of gold out of the mine of barter and trade, and to give some
+of it away.
+
+And money is less than personal service. Great deference is paid to checks
+and subscriptions. The man who can draw a large check for some good
+object, and who may by dint of much dexterous handling be induced to write
+his name under some large figure, is treated with awe. But there's another
+man who stands higher up in the scale, and to whom hats should go farther
+off and more quickly. That is the strong man who gives personal service.
+There may be a blessed partnership between the man of money and the man of
+service. There often is. But he is an unfortunate man, to be pitied, who
+lets anything else crowd out of his life the privilege of giving some of
+his self out in personal service for others. These are some of gold's
+limitations.
+
+
+
+<u>The Best Partnership.</u>
+
+
+Give money good partners, and there is no end to what it can do. Let
+prayer and sacrifice and money form a life-partnership, and that first
+sentence can be revised, and greatly strengthened by the revision: Money
+<i>is</i> almost almighty. It gets all the good qualities of its partners as
+long as it stays in the partnership, on good working terms.
+
+It isn't the head of the firm, however. Prayer belongs in that place. It
+must direct. It is the prayer's touch with God that hallows the gold and
+gives to it some of God's omnipotence. Money is the working partner, best
+when hard at work, and famous for the amount of work it can do in obeying
+orders from the head of the house.
+
+It gives a strange sense of awe to realize that the bit of money you hold
+in your hand can be used to <i>change a life,</i> aye, more, to change many
+lives. That money is yours to control. It came to you in exchange for your
+labor or your skill. It is yours, for the sweat of your brow or your brain
+is upon it. And now it can be sent out, and the result will be a life
+utterly changed, purified, and redeemed.
+
+Through your partnership the money produces something greater than itself.
+And that changed life becomes the centre of a new power, changing other
+lives out to the far rim of an ever-widening circle. It may have cost you
+much. Some of your very life has gone out in the work that brought into
+your hands that bit of gold. It is red with your blood. And now, if you
+choose, it can be sent out and made to bring new life in to some one else.
+Life has gone from you in getting it, and life will come to another in
+your giving it out, under the blessed Master's transmuting touch.
+
+
+
+<u>Jesus' Teaching.</u>
+
+
+Jesus' teaching about money is startling. I mean that it stands in such
+utter contrast to the commonly accepted standards out in the world, and
+inside in the Church, that the contrast startles one sharply.
+
+There are four passages in which His money teachings group, largely.
+There's the "Lay-not-up-for-yourselves-treasure-upon-the-earth" bit in the
+sermon on the Mount;[30] with the still stronger phrase in the Luke
+parallel, "Sell that ye have, and give."[31] There is the incident of the
+earnest young man who was rich;[32] the parable of the wealthy farmer in
+Luke, twelfth chapter;[33] and the whole sixteenth chapter of Luke, with
+that great ninth verse, whose full meaning has been so little grasped. The
+truth taught in each of these is practically the same thing.
+
+The Master is evidently talking about what a man has over and above his
+personal and family needs. It's a law of life, from Eden on, that a man
+should work to supply his daily needs and the needs of those dependent
+upon him. Just how much that word "needs" means each man settles for
+himself. It means different things at different times to the same man.
+
+It is surprising how little it can be made to mean when the pinch comes,
+and yet a man have all actual necessities supplied. The man who would have
+his life count for most for the Master, and the Master's plan, thinks over
+that word prayerfully and sensibly with full regard to personal strength,
+and loved ones, and the future. Whatever it may be made to mean, this
+teaching is plainly about what is left over after the needs are met.
+
+Now, about that left-over amount the Master gives three easily understood
+rules, or bits of advice, or commands. First: <i>Don't treasure it up for
+the sake of having it.</i> If you do it is in danger, and you are in danger.
+It may be stolen. Every vault, and safe, and safety-deposit company, and
+lock, and key backs up that statement. Or it may be lost through rust or
+moths, the two things that threaten all inactivity. The stuff that isn't
+in use wears away. The wear of use can't compare with the wear of disuse
+or neglect.
+
+Then <i>you</i> are in danger of your heart being affected. It will be wherever
+your treasure is. It may get locked up, and so dried up for lack of air or
+poisoned by bad air. The blood must have fresh air. The heart must have
+touch with men to keep its vigor. It may get all dried up with <i>things</i>,
+instead of keeping vigorous by touch with needy men. That's the twofold
+danger. That's the first thing Jesus says: Don't store it up, down here,
+in the ordinary way.
+
+The second thing is this: <i>Store your surplus up.</i> Be careful of it. Keep
+strict tally. Let the books be well kept and balanced. Let no
+thoughtlessness nor carelessness nor thriftlessness get in. Store it up.
+But be careful where you store it. Keep it carefully guarded against the
+action of thieves and moths, and against the inaction of decaying,
+destroying rust. That is the second thing. Store it up carefully.
+
+
+
+<u>Be Your Own Executor.</u>
+
+
+The third thing is this: <i>Store it up by means of exchange.</i> Keep it safe
+by giving it away. The whole value of money is in exchange. It must be
+kept moving. But, <i>but</i>--and the whole heart of the teaching is here--be
+very wary about your exchanges. Invest your money in <i>men</i>, wherever the
+need may be. All that you invest wisely in men is stored up against any
+violence or craftiness of thieves and any corroding of rust.
+
+All that is not out in active use directly among men, for men, in Jesus'
+name, is in danger of being stolen, or of decaying, or of injuring you, or
+of being left behind, utterly worthless to you when you are through down
+here. Be your own executor.
+
+Some years ago one of the religious papers of New York City told of the
+death of a maiden lady named Elizabeth Pellit. Her home was in the
+hall-room of a tenement-house, and at her death all her earthly
+possessions could be put into one common trunk. No executor or
+administrator was needed. Living in narrow circumstances, her friends
+thought she had denied herself all luxuries and even many comforts. But in
+the forty years of her Christian life she had been able to give over
+thirty thousand dollars to missionary work. She had supplied the money to
+send out and sustain one missionary in Salvador, and also for another who
+was to go out soon. She seemed to have grasped the meaning of the Master's
+teaching.
+
+Good common sense comes in for free play here, both in adjusting one's
+personal and family schedule and in giving. Giving may be done foolishly,
+or not wisely. There is no place where there is more room for good sense
+in avoiding both the extreme of unwise giving and the other extreme of
+handicapping one's gifts.
+
+It is a question of personal judgment how far to give money out directly
+and how far to invest some of it and use the income wholly in gifts. You
+may think that in some directions you can invest it better, and direct the
+income better than some organization. That is an important detail. But the
+chief thing is that the money itself is dedicated wholly for use out among
+needy men.
+
+Now you will please mark keenly that in all this I am not talking about
+what I think about money. I am simply putting into plain talk Jesus' own
+teaching about it, in these four great passages.
+
+
+
+<u>Missing the Master's Meaning.</u>
+
+
+Christian men, generally, seem to have missed the meaning of Jesus' words.
+I think it due largely to the lack of teaching in the Church that
+world-evangelizing is a <i>first</i> obligation.
+
+Recently a fire destroyed the home of a man of large wealth who lives some
+distance east of San Francisco. It was a beautiful palace, full of art
+treasures. The value of house and furnishings and the art collection was
+reckoned at about two million dollars. He is a Christian man, prominently
+identified with active Christian work, and reckoned a liberal giver. He
+has visited foreign-mission lands, and made special gifts to missions.
+
+But his gifts to missions seem like a copper cent or a silver quarter
+given to a beggar in contrast with the two million dollars tied up for
+himself in the house that burned. Two millions stored up in a home, while
+many millions of men have lived and died in ignorance of the light and
+peace that comes with Jesus! Yet this man calls Jesus his Master, and
+sincerely, I have no doubt. And his Master said the one great thing was to
+tell all men of His love and death.
+
+By no extension of the meaning of that word "need" could he be said to
+need a two-million-dollar home for himself and family. And there are other
+millions under the same man's control. It looks very much as if this good
+man had missed the meaning of Jesus' words. The criticism, however, must
+be first upon the Church and its leaders, with whose general trend of
+teaching this man is in accord. According to the Master's teaching, most
+of the money in his house, and stored up in other ways of the sort for
+himself, is being lost. Far more serious, the opportunity of investment in
+men is being lost. That money will be all loss to him when he reaches the
+line of departure over into the next sphere of life.
+
+It is very difficult to use such an illustration from life. There is
+danger that the words will sound critical in a bad or unkind sense. I
+earnestly pray to be kept from that. You will know that I am talking to
+myself first of all; and speaking of this only to help. The bother is that
+this man is not an exception. Rather he represents the habit and standard
+of his generation.
+
+I recall another Christian man as I speak, of large wealth, by inheritance
+and by dint of business keenness. His face showed plainly his fine
+Christian character. He gave liberally in many directions, sometimes very
+large sums. But he lived in a home whose value ran close to a half-million
+of dollars. When he died, full of years and honors, he left many millions
+to a son who does not inherit his father's generous hand with his wealth.
+Of course, the son didn't <i>need</i> the vast wealth.
+
+And I wondered, silently, within my heart, how things looked to that man,
+as he slipped out of life up into the Master's presence, and looked down
+on the earth through the eyes of the One whose teaching we have been
+talking about. He could see China and India and Africa then as plainly as
+America.
+
+How did the lost opportunity of laying up his treasure in the lives of men
+look to him then, I wondered. He was a good man. I saw him smile once, and
+his face seemed to shine as an angel's. I think probably no faithful
+friend had ever talked to him of the plain meaning of Jesus' words, and of
+world-winning being a <i>first</i> obligation. He hadn't been taught it from
+the pulpit. And he hadn't thought into it himself.
+
+
+
+<u>Money Talks.</u>
+
+
+Many are losing a great opportunity of silently preaching Jesus to their
+fellows by their habit of giving. Two men were discussing the evidences of
+the Christian religion. The one was a Christian; the other not, and
+inclined to be sceptical. Arguments were freely exchanged. At last the
+sceptic, who was a blunt, out-spoken man, said frankly, to his friend and
+neighbor: "I think we might as well drop this matter. For I don't believe
+a word you say. And, more than that, I am quite satisfied in my own mind
+that you do not really believe it yourself. For to my certain knowledge
+you have not given, the last twenty years, as much for the spread of
+Christianity, such as the building of churches and foreign and domestic
+missions, as your last Durham cow cost. Why, sir, if I believed what you
+say you believe I'd make the church my rule for giving, my farm the
+exception."
+
+That Christian man's life was contradicting every word he uttered to his
+neighbor. Money talks. His was talking very loudly to his sceptical
+neighbor. His neighbor was unusually frank in saying out what thousands
+are thinking. He had lost a great opportunity of winning his friend.
+
+
+
+<u>Debts.</u>
+
+
+In a simple little sentence Paul reveals how thoroughly he had grasped
+Jesus' meaning. He said, "<i>I am debtor</i> both to Greeks and
+barbarians"--to all men.[34] Now that word, "debtor," commonly means two
+things: that you have received something of value from some one, and that
+therefore you owe him for what he gave to you.
+
+But Paul hadn't gotten anything special from the men of whom he is
+speaking. His birth and training and whatever else he had were Jewish. And
+the Jews were a minority in the world. He was not under the debtor
+obligation of having gotten something from the men he is speaking of.
+
+In his use of that word, "debtor" means <i>three</i> things: first, something
+received from God, and that something everything; then something owing to
+God; and then that something <i>payable to man</i>. He counted himself in debt
+to all men on Jesus' account. And so are we. How much owest <i>thou</i> to thy
+Lord? That's how much you are to pay to men on your Lord's account.
+
+We are not even our own, much less our goods. We were bought up when we
+were bankrupt A great price was paid for us, even the life-blood of Jesus.
+And our Owner bids us pay <i>up</i> by paying <i>out</i>. We are badly and blessedly
+in debt; badly, for we can never square the account; blessedly, because we
+can be constantly paying on account, out to men in Jesus' name.
+
+    "Over against the Treasury this day
+      The Master silent sits; whilst, unaware
+      Of that Celestial Presence still and fair,
+    The people pass or pause upon their way.
+
+    And some go laden with His treasures sweet,
+      And dressed in costly robes of His device
+      To cover hearts of stone and souls of ice,
+    Which bear no token to the Master's feet.
+
+    And some pass, gaily singing, to and fro,
+      And cast a careless gift before His face,
+      Amongst the treasures of the holy place,
+    But kneel to crave no blessing ere they go.
+
+    And some are travel-worn, their eyes are dim,
+      They touch His shining vesture as they pass,
+      But see not--even darkly through a glass--
+    How sweet might be their trembling gifts to Him.
+
+    And still the hours roll on; serene and fair
+      The Master keeps his watch, but who can tell
+      The thoughts that in His tender spirit swell,
+    As one by one we pass him unaware?
+
+    For this is He who, on one awful day,
+      Cast down for us a price so vast and dread,
+      That He was left for our sakes bare and dead,
+    Having given Himself our mighty debt to pay!
+
+    Oh, shall unworthy gifts once more be thrown
+      Into His treasury--by whose death we live?
+      Or shall we now embrace His cross, and give
+    Ourselves, and all we have, to him alone?"
+
+Is not that the meaning of Paul's "Owe no man anything, save to love one
+another."[35] We owe a debt of love to all men on Jesus' account. We can
+be paying on it continually, and yet never get a receipt in full that
+discharges the debt. But then we get other things in full--peace, and joy,
+and a life overflowing in fulness.
+
+With an honorable business man <i>a debt is a first obligation</i>. His
+personal expenditures and his home schedule are shaped by his debt. The
+extras that he would feel quite free in allowing himself and his home are
+not allowed until the debt is cleared. The debt controls his spendings
+until it is paid off in full. That's reckoned a matter of honor.
+
+
+
+<u>Rusty Money.</u>
+
+
+James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, had caught the Lord's very language
+as well as His thought. He says, "Your gold and silver are rusted, and
+their rust shall be for a testimony against you."[36] It would seem as
+though there were quite a bit of rusty money entered in Christian names
+and controlled by Christian people. It is lying in vaults, and lands, and
+savings-societies, and old stockings, gathering rust.
+
+It is in sore need. It needs friction, the friction of use. Without that
+its real, rare value will be completely lost. It is furnishing food for
+moths when it was meant to be furnishing food for men, bread of wheat and
+bread of life. There'll be many a striking scene when some men come up
+into the Master's presence with loaded purses, "caught with the goods,"
+while millions of their brothers are living such pitiable lives because of
+their ignorance of Jesus.
+
+But there are men who do understand. And their number is increasing. There
+are those who understand <i>the Master's basis</i> for conducting their
+business matters. That basis is shrewd, faithful management of the
+business itself as good stewards of God; full, proper provision for home
+and loved ones--simple, but ample and intelligent; and then all the rest
+out in active service for men in Jesus' name. If that basis were more
+largely understood and accepted, what wondrous changes would come; changes
+out in the world, and changes in the home, and changes in the home church.
+
+Many men are supporting their own representatives in the foreign field.
+Many a church now sustains its own missionary or missionaries. The ideal
+toward which the Church might well aim is that <i>every family</i> should have
+its own missionary. The real unit of life is the family. The children
+would then grow up with the world-vision dearly and deeply marked. There
+are thousands of families in circumstances that are reckoned moderate that
+could support a missionary by planning. But the relationship should be
+carefully kept one of warm sympathy and prayer, as well as one of money.
+The reflex blessing upon the home would be immeasurable in its sweetness
+and extent.
+
+
+
+<u>Are We True To Our Friend's Trust?</u>
+
+
+Jesus admits us into the inner circle of friendship. He gives us the one
+rarest token of friendship, that is, a task to do for our Friend's sake.
+He asks us to go out to all men, and tell them about His love and
+sacrifice for them. And He asks that everything we have be held and used
+for this sacred friendship trust. Are we being true to our Friend's
+trust? Is there more stored away for ourselves than is being sent out on
+His errand? Is there any discoloration on our gold? Anything that looks
+like rust, a dull-red color--ah, it looks strangely like the color--the
+stain--of blood.
+
+Is Judas so lonely, after all? He coupled a token of friendship with a
+betrayal of his Friend's trust. In his heart he meant far less than the
+act actually involved. Is he so much alone?
+
+    "The latest years shall tremble hearing this
+      And burn for human shame unto the end,
+      That one of us betrayed the tryst his Friend
+    Would keep with God. A sign that none might miss
+
+    He named--the pledge of love. The soul's abyss,
+      Christ saw, the heart of night, the <i>purse</i>, the end;
+      Knew all, a Man, and knowing stui could bend
+    With soul unpoisoned to receive the kiss.
+
+    Before the multitude have I kist Thee
+      Fresh come from my blood-barter--thou but come
+    From intercession for all souls--and me.
+        And, mocking Love Divine, amazed and dumb,
+    I learn Love's deathlessness, and trembling press
+    The lips that kiss away my faithlessness."[37]
+
+
+
+
+Sacrifice
+
+
+
+  One Hank Over For the Candle.
+  Sin's Healing Shadow.
+  The Underground Way into Life.
+  A Rare Harvest.
+  The Fellowship of Scars.
+  "Won't You Save Me?"
+
+
+
+
+Sacrifice
+
+
+
+<u>One Hank Over For the Candle.</u>
+
+
+The light of a common candle in the window of a little cottage near the
+coast shone far out over the sea. It was up north of Scotland, in one of
+the Orkney Islands. Near the window sat a frail, gray-haired woman with
+cheery, thoughtful face. She was busy working at her spinning-wheel, and
+watching the candle, turning now and again to trim it. All night long she
+sat at the spinning-wheel and watching the candle. Fishermen out on the
+water, heading for home, knew that light could be counted on, and came
+safely in, past all the dangers of their coast.
+
+For more than fifty years that woman tended her little lighthouse. When
+she was a young girl there had been a wild storm, and her father, out in
+his fisherman's boat, lost his life. There were no shore-lights. His boat
+had struck a huge, dangerous rock called Lonely Rock, and been wrecked.
+The father's body was found in the morning washed up on the shore. She
+watched by her father's body, as was the habit of her people, until it was
+laid away. Then she laid down on her bed and slept the day through. When
+night came she rose, lit a candle, put it in the window, drew up her
+spinning-wheel, and began her night vigil for the unknown out at sea.
+
+All night long, and all her life long, her vigil of love and light
+continued. From youth to old age, through winter and summer, storm and
+calm, fog and clear, that humble lighthouse beacon failed not. Each night
+she spun so many hanks of yarn for her daily bread, and <i>one hank over for
+the candle</i>. She turned night into day, reversing the whole habit of her
+life, and holding every other thing subject to her self-imposed task of
+love. And through the years many a fisherman out at sea, and many an
+anxious woman watching by hearth and crib, sent up heart-felt thanks to
+God for that little, steady light. And many a life was saved, of which no
+record could be kept.
+
+That tells the whole story of sacrifice. A need, nobody to meet it; the
+need passing into an emergency; and that into the tragedy of an unmet
+emergency; a heart sore torn to bleeding by the tragedy thrust bitterly
+home; then sacrifice, lifelong, that others might be saved where her loved
+one was lost, and still others spared what she herself suffered. And that
+story has been repeated with endless variations, and is being repeated, in
+every land, on every mission-field, home and foreign, and in almost every
+home of all the world.
+
+
+
+<u>Sin's Healing Shadow.</u>
+
+
+Sacrifice has come to be a law of life. Wherever there is sin there will
+be a <i>call for sacrifice</i>. For sin makes need, and need intensifies into
+emergency. And need and emergency mean sacrifice thrust upon some one in
+peril. And they call for sacrifice, volunteered by some one, who would
+save the man in peril. And wherever there are true men and women, as well
+as need, there will <i>be</i> sacrifice.
+
+And sin is everywhere. Even nature is full of evidence of a bad break in
+all of its processes. The finger-marks of decay and death are below and
+above and all around in all its domain. That is sin's unmistakable
+ear-mark. Man's mental powers, and his loss of a full knowledge of his
+powers, tell the same story. And so there is need. Everywhere you turn
+need's pathetic face, drawn and white, looks piteously into yours,
+pleading mutely for help.
+
+And so there is sacrifice. Sacrifice is sin's healing shadow. It follows
+sin at every turn, binding up its wounds, pouring in the oil and wine of
+its own life, and taking the hurt victims into its own warm heart. Nothing
+worth while has ever been done without sacrifice. Every good thing done
+cost somebody his life. The life was given out with a wrench under some
+sharp tug. Or it was given in the slower, more painful, more taxing way of
+being lingeringly given out through years of steadfast doing or enduring.
+
+Every man who has done something worth while for others has spilled some
+of his life-blood into it. His work and name may have become known. Or he
+may belong to the larger number of blessed faithfuls whose names are
+unknown here, but treasured faithfully above. Either way, the tinging red
+of his life is upon the thing he did. The nations that are freest cost
+most in the making, in the lives of men. Every church, and every mission
+station, has had to use red mortar as its walls went up.
+
+Every bit of advance ground gained for liberty and truth has been stained
+with the life-blood of the advance-guard. You can depend upon it that
+whatever you are to do that will really help must have a bit of your own
+self, your very life in it. Immortality of action comes only by the
+infusion of human blood.
+
+Sacrifice attends us faithfully from the cradle to the body's last
+resting-place. The giving of one's self for others begins with the
+beginning of life, and never ends till life ends. Each of us comes into
+life through the sacrifice of the mother who bore us. That love-service of
+hers would not have been a sacrifice, but only a joy, had sin's cramping,
+restricting atmosphere not been breathed into all life. Now, with much
+pain, and great danger, and sometimes at the cost of life, it becomes a
+sacrifice. Yet it is a sacrifice of great sweet joy to her.
+
+And that same spirit of sacrifice attends our baby years, and childhood
+experiences, and school-days, and times of sickness, and our matured
+years. The more faithfully those who make up your life-circle yield to the
+law of sacrifice, and give of themselves out to you, the finer and
+stronger you grow to be, and the sweeter life becomes to you. And every
+selfish shirking and shrinking back by some one impoverishes your life by
+so much.
+
+A hush of awe comes over one's spirit as we recall that even for the Son
+of God there was no exception to this law, as He took His place down among
+human conditions. It was by His own blood that He saved men, and saves
+men. It was the spilling out of His own life that brings such blessed
+newness of life to us. His was a <i>living</i> sacrifice through all the years,
+and then greatest when that life, so long being given, was given clean
+out.
+
+That sacrifice of His stands unapproached, and can never be approached by
+any other. His relation to sin was different from that of all other men.
+He made a sacrifice for men in a sense that no other can. Yet, while that
+is true, it is equally true that every man who follows Him will drink of
+His cup of sacrifice.
+
+But it's a cup of joy now, for His drinking drained out all the bitter
+dregs. He asks us into the inner fellowship of His suffering. The work He
+began isn't yet done. He asks our help. We may fill up the measure of His
+sacrifice yet needed, in healing men's wounds and in throttling sin's
+power.
+
+
+
+<u>The Underground Way Into Life.</u>
+
+
+The request of the Greek pilgrims, that last tragic week, drew out of
+Jesus wondrous words about the law of sacrifice[38]. Their request made
+the necessity for His coming sacrifice stand out more sharply to His
+view--with edgy sharpness. The realness of that sacrifice of His stands
+out very vividly in the intensity of His feelings, of which we get only
+glimpses.
+
+Listen to Him talking: 'if the grain of wheat doesn't suffer death, it
+lives; but it lives alone. But through death it may live in the midst of a
+harvest of golden grains. The man who turns away from the appeal of need
+will live a lonely life, both here and in the longer life. (Is there
+anything more pathetic and pitiable than selfish loneliness!) He who feels
+the sharp tug of need, and can't resist the appeal that calls for his
+life-blood, rises up through that red pathway into a blessed fellowship
+with the lives that owe their life to his.'
+
+He goes on: 'he that clingeth with strong self-love to his life will find
+it slipping, slipping insistently out of his fingers, leaving a dry husk
+of a shell in his tenacious clutch. But he who in the stress of the
+world's emergency of need, and in the thick of the subtlest temptations to
+put the self-life first, treats that life as a hated enemy, to be opposed
+and fought, as he gives himself freely out to heal the world's hurt, <i>he</i>
+will find all the sweets and fragrance of life coming to him. Their
+unspeakable refreshment will ever increase, and never leave.'
+
+Then follow the words that go so deep: 'if any man <i>would serve Me,</i> let
+him come along, putting his feet into my prints. Let him come through a
+long Nazareth life of common toil in home and shop, then along the crowded
+path of glad service for others, responding to every call of need. Let him
+come down into the shadowed olive-grove beyond Kidron's waters, up the bit
+of a hill outside a city wall, and deep down into the earth-soil of men's
+needs.
+
+'And where I am there I will surely have that faithful follower of Mine up
+close by my side. He shall find himself rising up out of the common
+earth-life into a new life of strangely strong drawing power. And, while
+he will be all wrapped up in love's service, My Father will give special
+touches of His own hand upon his person, and upon his service.'
+
+In one of his exquisitely quiet talks, Henry Drummond used to tell the
+story of a famous statue in the Fine Arts Gallery of Paris. It was the
+work of a great genius, who, like many a genius, was very poor, and lived
+in a garret which served as both studio and sleeping-room.
+
+One midnight, when the statue was just finished, a sudden frost fell upon
+Paris. The sculptor lay awake in his fireless garret, and thought of the
+still moist clay, thought how the moisture in the pores would freeze, and
+the dream of his life would be destroyed in a night. So the old man rose
+from his cot, and wrapped his bed-clothes reverently about the statue, and
+lay down to his sleep.
+
+In the morning the neighbors found[B] him lying dead. His life had gone
+out into his work. It was saved. He was gone. But he still lived in it,
+and still lives in it. He saved not his life, and he found a new life in
+the world of his art. He that saveth his life shall surely lose it. He
+that gladly giveth his life up for the Master's sake, and for men's sake,
+will find a wholly new life coming to him.
+
+
+
+<u>A Rare Harvest.</u>
+
+
+There is a strange winsomeness about sacrifice, peculiar to itself, and
+peculiarly strong in its drawing power. Everywhere men acknowledge the
+peculiar fascination for them of the man who is not only wholly unselfish,
+but who utterly forgets himself in doing for others. The feeling is very
+common that the man in public life is chiefly concerned with what he can
+get out of it for himself. And when, now and then, the conviction seizes
+the crowd that some public man is not of that sort at all, but is devoting
+himself unselfishly and unsparingly to their interest, their admiration
+and love for him amounts to a worship and enthusiasm that knows no stint.
+
+There's a something in unselfish sacrifice in their behalf that draws the
+crowd peculiarly and tremendously. Jesus said that if He were lifted up He
+would draw men. And He has. He was lifted up as none other, and He has
+been drawing men ever since as none other ever has or can. Quite apart
+from other truths involved, that sacrifice of His had in itself the
+tremendous drawing power of all unselfish action.
+
+And sacrifice brews a subtle fragrance of its own that clings to the
+person as the soft sweet odor of wild roses. No one is ever conscious that
+there is any such fragrance going out to others. He knows the inner sweets
+that none know but they who give sacrifice brewing room within themselves.
+Such folks don't stop to think about themselves, except to be thinking of
+helping and not hindering.
+
+The very winsomeness of the sacrifice spirit has led men to the seeking of
+sacrifice. It seems strange to us that earnest men in other generations
+have sought by self-inflicted suffering to attain to the power that goes
+with sacrifice. And even yet some morbid people may be found following in
+their steps.
+
+Don't they know that out in common daily life the knife of sacrifice is
+held across the path constantly, sharp edge out, barring the way? And no
+one can go faithfully his common round, with flag at masthead, and needs
+crowding in at front and rear and sides, without meeting its cutting edge.
+That edge cutting in as you push on frees out the fine fragrance. Whenever
+you meet a man or woman with that fine winsomeness of spirit that can't be
+analyzed, but only felt, you may know that there's been some of this sort
+of sharp cutting within.
+
+Blood is a rare fertilizer. They tell me that the bit of ground over in
+Belgium called Waterloo bears each spring a crop of rare blue
+forget-me-nots. That bit of ground had very unusual gardening. Ploughed
+up by cannon-and gun-shot, sown deep with men's lives, "worked" never so
+thoroughly by toiling, struggling feet, moistened with the gentle rain of
+dying tears, and soaked with red life, it now yields its yearly harvest of
+beauty. All life's a Waterloo and can be made to yield a rich growth of
+fragrant flowers.
+
+
+
+<u>The Fellowship of Scars.</u>
+
+
+And there's yet more of this winsomeness. There's a spirit power that goes
+out of sacrifice. It reaches far beyond the limited personal circle, out
+to the ends of the earth. It can't be analyzed, nor defined, nor
+described, but it can be felt. We don't know much about the law of spirit
+currents. But we know the spirit currents themselves, for every one is
+affected by them and every one is sending them out of himself.
+
+You pick up a book, and suddenly find there's a something in it that takes
+hold of you irresistibly. A flame seems to burn in it, and then in you.
+Invisible fingers seem to reach out of the page and play freely up and
+down the key-board of your heart. Why is it? I don't know much about it.
+It's an elusive thing. But I can tell you my conviction, that grows
+stronger daily.
+
+There's a life back of that book; there is sacrifice in that life of the
+keen, cutting sort; and Jesus is in that life, too, giving it His personal
+flavor. The life back of the book has come into the book. It's that life
+you are feeling as you read. Spirit power knows nothing about distance.
+The man who yields to sacrifice has a world-field, and is touching his
+field in a sense far greater than he ever knows.
+
+And there is still more. The Master knows our sacrifices. He keenly notes
+the spirit that would give all, even as He did. He can breathe most of His
+own spirit into such a life. For it is most open to Him. He can do most
+through that spirit, for it comes nearest to His own. His own winsomeness
+breathes out of that life constantly.
+
+There's a simple little tale that comes dressed in very homely garb. The
+story has in it a bit of that that makes the heart burn. It has all the
+marks of real life. It runs thus:
+
+    "In one poor room, that was all their home,
+      A mother lay on her bed,
+    Her seven children around her;
+      And, calling the eldest, she said:
+
+    'I'm going to leave you, Mary;
+      You're nearly fourteen, you know;
+    And now you must be a good girl, dear,
+      And make me easy to go.
+
+    'You can't depend much on father;
+      But just be patient, my child,
+    And keep the children out of his way
+      Whenever he comes home wild.
+
+    'And keep the house as well as you can;
+      And, little daughter, think
+    He didn't use to be so;
+      Remember, it's all the drink.'
+
+    The weeping daughter promised
+      Always to do her best;
+    And, closing her eyes over weary life,
+      The mother entered her rest.
+
+    And Mary kept her promise
+      As faithfully as she might.
+    She cooked, and washed, and mended,
+      And kept things tidy and bright.
+
+    And when the father came home drunk,
+      The children were sent to bed,
+    And Mary waited alone, and took
+      The beatings in their stead.
+
+    And the little chubby fingers lost
+      Their childish softness and grace,
+    And toughened and chapped and calloused,
+      And the rosy, childish face.
+
+    Grew thin and haggard and anxious,
+      Careworn, tired, and old,
+    As on those slender shoulders
+      The burdens of life were rolled.
+
+    So, when the heated season
+      Burned pitiless overhead,
+    And up from the filth of the noisome street
+      The fatal fever spread,
+
+    And work and want and drunken blows
+      Had weakened the tender frame,
+    Into the squalid room once more
+      The restful shadow came.
+
+    And Mary sent for the playmate
+      Who lived just over the way,
+    And said, 'The charity Doctor,
+      Has been here, Katie, to-day.
+
+    'He says I'll never be better--
+      The fever has been so bad;
+    And if it wasn't for one thing,
+      I'm sure I'd just be glad.
+
+    'It isn't about the children;
+      I've kept my promise good,
+    And mother will know I stayed with them
+      As long as ever I could.
+
+    'But you know how it has been, Katie;
+      I've had so much to do,
+    I couldn't mind the children
+      And go to the preaching, too.
+
+    'And I've been so tired-like at night,
+      I couldn't think to pray,
+    And now, when I see the Lord Jesus,
+      What ever am I to say?'
+
+    And Katie, the little comforter,
+      Her help to the problem brought;
+    And into her heart, made wise by love,
+      The Spirit sent this thought:
+
+    'I wouldn't say a word, dear,
+      For sure He understands;
+    I wouldn't say ever a word at all;
+      But, Mary, <i>just show Him your hands!'"</i>
+
+Jesus knows every scar of sacrifice you bear, and loves it. For it tells
+Him your love. He knows the meaning of scars, because of His own. The
+marks of sacrifice cement our fellowship with Him. The nearer we come to
+fellowship with Him in the daily touch and spirit the more freely can He
+reach out His own great winsomeness through us, out to His dear world.
+
+
+
+<u>"Won't You Save Me?"</u>
+
+
+To outsiders, who don't know about the thing, that word "sacrifice" has an
+ugly sound. It drives them away. But to the insiders, who have come in by
+the Jesus-door, there is a joyousness of the bubbling-out, singing sort,
+that makes the word "sacrifice," and the thing itself, clean forgot even
+while remembered. It is remembered as a distinct real thing, but it is
+pushed away from the centre of your consciousness by this song that
+insists on singing its music into the ears of your heart.
+
+I said a while ago in these talks that it would be <i>an easy thing</i> for the
+whole Church, or even half of the Church, to take Jesus fully out to all
+the world. But may I tell you now plainly that it won't be an easy thing?
+Somebody will have to sacrifice if the thing's to be done. And that
+somebody will be you, if you go along where the Master calls. If you
+<i>count</i> on the Church doing it, or on anybody else doing it, you may be
+sure of one thing: some part of what needs doing won't be done.
+
+But if you and I will reckon that this thing belongs to us, as if there
+were nobody else to do it, and <i>push on;</i>--well, there'll be sacrifice of
+the real sort and, too, there'll be all of sacrifice's peculiar
+winsomeness going out to draw men. And there will be men changed where you
+live, and out where you will never go personally.
+
+And there will be a great joy in your heart, but with the greater joy
+breaking out in the Morning, when the King comes to His own.
+
+    "I hear the sob of the parted,
+    The wail of the broken-hearted,
+    The sigh for the loved departed,
+      In the surging roar of the town.
+
+    And it's, oh, for the joy of the Morning!
+    The light and song of the Morning!
+    There'll be joy in the Christmas Morning
+      When the King comes to His own!
+
+    "Now let our hearts be true, brothers,
+    To suffer and to do, brothers;
+    There'll be a song for you, brothers,
+      When the battle's fought and won.
+    It won't seem long in the Morning,
+    In the light and song of the Morning
+    There'll be joy in the Christmas Morning
+      When the King comes to His own!
+
+    "Arise, and be of good cheer, brothers;
+    The day will soon be here, brothers;
+    The victory is near, brothers;
+      And the sound of the glad 'Well done!'
+    There'll be no sad heart in the Morning
+    No tear will start in the Morning;
+    There'll be joy in the Christmas Morning
+      When the King comes to His own!
+
+    "We're in for the winning side, brothers,
+    Bound to the Lord who died, brothers,
+    We shall see Him glorified, brothers,
+      And the Lamb shall wear the crown.
+    What of the cold world's scorning?
+    There'll be joy enough in the Morning
+    There'll be joy in the Christmas Morning,
+      When the King comes to His own!"
+
+Years ago a steamer out on Lake Erie caught fire, and headed at once for
+the nearest land. All was wild confusion, as men and women struggled for
+means of escape. In the crowd was a returning California gold-miner. He
+fastened the belt containing his gold securely about his waist and was
+preparing to try to swim ashore. Just then a little sweet-faced girl in
+the crowd touched his hand, and looked up beseechingly into his face, and
+said, "Won't you please save me? I have no papa here to save me. Won't
+you, please?"
+
+What would he do? He gave the belt of gold, that meant such a hard
+struggle, one swift glance. But that soft child-touch on his hand, and
+that face and voice strangely affected him. He couldn't save both;--which?
+The quick-as-flash thoughts came all in a heap. Then he dropped the gold,
+and took the child, made the plunge, and by and by reached land, utterly
+exhausted, and lay unconscious. As his eyes opened the child he had saved
+was standing over him with the tears of gratitude flooding her eyes. And a
+human life never seemed quite so precious. He had lost his gold, and his
+years of toil, but he had saved a life, and in saving it had found a new
+life springing up within himself.
+
+As we close our talk together will you listen very softly. Listen: out of
+the distance comes a murmur of voices, like a low, long heart-cry. It
+comes from near-by, where you live. It comes most from far-away lands. Its
+words are pathetically distinct: "<i>Will you save me?</i> I have no one to
+save me. Won't <i>you</i>?" And we can do it. But the gold and the life must
+go. <i>Shall</i> we do it, hand in hand with Jesus, the only Saviour? Shall we
+<i>not</i> do it?
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes
+
+
+
+[1] Acts 13:18, American Revision.
+
+[2] John 3:17.
+
+[3] Matthew 13:38.
+
+[4] John 12:20-33.
+
+[5] Matthew 24:14.
+
+[6] Revelation 20:7-8.
+
+[7] Matthew 24:14.
+
+[8] Acts 15:13-18.
+
+[9] Matthew 13:38.
+
+[10] Christina Rossetti, in <i>The Outlook</i>, slightly altered.
+
+[11] Matthew 25 40, 45.
+
+[12] Revelation 2:5
+
+[13] Matthew 24 14.
+
+[14] Revelation 1:5, 6.
+
+[15] Revelation 4:8.
+
+[16] Revelation 4:9-11.
+
+[17] Revelation 5:11-12.
+
+[18] Revelation 7:9-12.
+
+[19] Revelation 14:1-5
+
+[20] Revelation 15:2-4
+
+[21] Revelation 19:1-8.
+
+[22] Thessalonians 1:8. II Corinthians 1:1 l.c.
+
+[23] Romans 1:8.
+
+[24] John, chapters 14-16.
+
+[25] John 20:19-23.
+
+[26] Susan Coolidge.
+
+[27] John 7:38.
+
+[28] Revelation 8:3-5.
+
+[29] Frances Ridley Havergal.
+
+[30] Matthew 6:19-21
+
+[31] Luke 12:33,34
+
+[32] Matthew 19:16-29. Mark 10:17-31. Luke 18:18-30
+
+[33] Luke 12:13-21.
+
+[34] Romans 1:14
+
+[35] Romans 13:8
+
+[36] James 5:2, 3
+
+[37] Arthur Peirce Vaughn
+
+[38] John 12:24-26.
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+[A] The original chapter contents listing erroneously transposed "A Crisis
+of Neglect and Success" and "A Westernized Heathenism".
+
+[B] Original text read "fond" for "found".
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Quiet Talks with World Winners, by S. D. Gordon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUIET TALKS WITH WORLD WINNERS ***
+
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+
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+
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