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>