Day of Good 
Tidings 





V^STUDIA IN / 



THE LIBRARY 

of 
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY 

Toronto 



WRITE FOR CATALOGUE 



Jhe price of this publication 

is.. It is one of a series 

prepared for use in Sunday Schools 
and Young People s Societies. 

Missionary literature, maps, 
pictures, lantern slides and ac 
cessories, suitable for children, 
boys and girls, teen-age groups, 
young people and adults, are kept 
in stock by the Young People s 
Forward Movement. 

F. C. Stephenson, Secretary, 

299 Queen St. West, Toronto , Ont, 



A DAY OF GOOD TIDINGS 



BY 

C. B. Keenleyside, B.A., B.D. 



Author of " On the Banks of the Besor," " What is Your Life?" " Enoch 
Walked with God," etc. 



With Introduction by the Reverend A. CARMAN, D.D., General 
Superintendent of the Methodist Church of Canada. 



PRICE 35 CENTS. 



TORONTO 

METHODIST Y. P. FORWARD MOVEMENT FOR MISSIONS 

F. C. Stephenson, Secretary 

1906 



Entered according to Act of the Parliament, of Canada, in the year one 
thousand nine hundred and six, by C. B. KKKNLKYSIDK, at the 
Department of Agriculture. 



INTRODUCTION 



THE author of this book has evidently thought, and 
prayed, and studied, and worked on the Missionary 
Problem till its nature and essence have burned into 
his soul as a consuming passion, and flamed out in 
his words a revealing, enkindling fire. I am glad he 
draws much inspiration from the Old Testament. 
His latest book, " A Day of Good Tidings," is both 
intense and comprehensive. It will quicken the faith 
of earnest disciples, and wake up slumbering Chris 
tians as with a great shaking, if they be only honest 
readers. The covenanted and all-essential depend 
ence of genuine missionary zeal upon the consecrated 
and spirit-filled heart and life must, when duly con 
sidered, arouse individual Christians to renewed and 
vastly increased activities, and lead the Church itself 
to humility, simplicity, purity, stronger faith and 
mightier achievement. I trust multitudes will read 
and study the book. 

A. CARMAN. 
TORONTO, ist January, 1906. 



CONTENTS 



I. THE FOUR LEPERS AT THE GATE - - 7 

II. WHAT ANSWER WILL You GIVE? - - 11 

III. GOING UP TO BE JUDGED- - - 29 

IV. THE CALL - - 35 
V. THE MISSIONARY PROBLEM - - 43 

VI. How TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM 65 

VII. IF WE TARRY 105 

VIII. GOD S LAST CHALLENGE - - - - 112 



A Day of Good Tidings 



2 Kings 7. 9. 



CHAPTER I. 
The Four Lepers at the Gate. 

" Thou say st, Take up thy cross, 

O man, and follow me ; 
The night is black, the feet are slack, 
Yet we would follow thee. 

" Within our heart of hearts 
In nearest nearness be ; 
Set up thy throne within thine own ; 
Go, Lord ; we follow thee." 

Francis Turner Palgravc. 

ISRAEL fell upon evil times. Benhadad, the 
King of Syria, gathered his host and laid siege 
to Samaria. So rigid was the siege and so 
severe the famine that an ass s head was a 
luxury, and the women of Israel, to satisfy the 
pangs of hunger, killed and ate their little ones. 
7 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

This was the condition within the walls of 
the city, while in the tents of Syria, beyond the 
gates, there was abundance. 

" Now there were four leprous men at the 
entrance of the gate; and they said one to 
another, Why sit we here until we die? If we 
say, We will enter into the city, then the famine 
is in the city, and we shall die there ; and if we 
sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, 
and let us fall unto the hosts of the Syrians; 
and if they save us alive, we shall live; and if 
they kill us, we shall but die. And they rose 
up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the 
Syrians; and when they were come to the 
outermost part of the camp, behold there was 
no man there. For the Lord had made the 
hosts of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, 
and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great 
host; and they said one to another, Lo, the 
King of Israel hath hired against us the kings 
of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, 
to come upon us. Wherefore they arose and 
fled into the twilight, and left their tents, and 
their horses, and their asses, even the camp as 
it was, and fled for their lives. 

" And when the lepers came to the outermost 
part of the camp, they went into one tent and 



The Four Lepers at the Gate. 

did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and 
gold, and raiment, and went and hid it, and 
they came back and entered into another tent 
and carried thence also, and went and hid it. 

" Then they said one to another, We do not 
well ; this day is a day of good tidings, and we 
hold our peace; if we tarry till the morning 
light, punishment will overtake us ; now there 
fore come, let us go and tell the king s house 
hold. 

" And they went to the city and told it." 

The lepers, through no merit or labor of 
their own, came suddenly into possession of 
the great wealth of the Syrians, and we of 
Anglo-Saxondom, through no merit or labor 
of ours, have come into possession of an 
unspeakable gift, the " unsearchable riches of 
Christ." 

Alongside the camp, with its abundance, was 
the starving city. Alongside Anglo-Saxon 
dom, with its wealth, at its very doors, lie the 
Christless millions. We have the bread, they 
have the hunger. But the bread, which is the 
Bread of Life, is for them as well as for us. 

The lepers saw at a glance their duty, and 
they did it. That day was to the famishing 
people within the gates indeed a day of good 
9 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

tidings, but just as eternity is longer than time, 
and heaven is higher than hell, so are the Good 
Tidings with which we are charged of in 
finitely greater moment to the famine-stricken 
millions who sit in darkness and in the shadow 
of death. 

How these lepers would have been loathed 
all down the years had they been content to 
eat, drink, and gather to themselves the Syrian 
treasures, while the people of the city starved ! 

" To lie by the river of Life, and see it run to waste ; 

To eat of the tree of Life, while the nations go unfed ; 
To taste the full salvation, the only one to taste ; 

To live while the rest are lost oh, better far be 
dead ! " 



10 



CHAPTER II. 
What Answer Will You Give ? 

" Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost : teaching them to observe 
all things whatsoever I have commanded you : and lo, I 
am with you alway, even to the end of the world." 
Matt. 28. 19, 20. (Christ s last message to the Church.} 

How can we meet the men of our generation 
at the judgment throne of God, and how can 
we explain to them why we did not take or 
send them the Gospel ? 

And how can we meet Jesus, and how can 
we explain to Him why we did not go or send 
when He so plainly bade us? 

Perhaps to the first part of this question we 
have a ready answer. We did not take the 
Gospel to the regions beyond because we did 
not have a " call." This reply may satisfy our 
fellows or it may not, but we will see later on 
how it will satisfy the Master, 
ii 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

If we plead with our fellows that we were 
not called to go to them, they, of course, will 
have to accept our word, for manifestly they 
cannot disprove it. But it will naturally turn 
them back to Christ to know why He did not 
call us to go, and that question will bring you 
and me, my brother, face to face with Jesus. 

But now as to why we did not send them the 
Gospel. 

1. We cannot say the doors were shut. Our 
forefathers can honestly make this plea, but we 
cannot. In answer to prayer God has swung 
wide the doors, and we of the twentieth cen 
tury stand face to face with the greatest respon 
sibility ever borne by the sons of men. The 
\vhole world is open, and the nations challeng 
ing us to send them anything we have that is 
better than theirs. Incomparably, yea infin 
itely, the best thing we have is the Gospel. We 
are sending by the shipload our guns and our 
explosives, our liquors and our bad habits, and 
then we Christians send the Gospel at a cost of 
about fifty cents a head per year. 

2. We cannot plead ignorance, for this is an 
age of intelligence. Missionary books and mis 
sionary knowledge is widespread. Half a cen 
tury ago this knowledge was scant. There 

12 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

were few books and fewer returned mission 
aries. But we, in this year of grace, know the 
needs and have heard the call. There lie the 
fields, there stands the ripened harvest. With 
us is the power, to us has come the command 
to thrust in the sickle. What then wait we for ? 
3. We cannot say that we did not think it 
worth while. All that we have that makes life 
bright and the future anything but lowering 
comes to us from the Good Tidings. The 
greatest day in the history of our blood was 
not that day of happy memory, June I9th, 
A.D. 1215, when the barons at Runnymede 
forced King John to sign the Great Charter; 
neither was it that day when the joy-bells rang 
and the bonfires blazed from Land s End to 
John O Groat s. telling out the tale that the 
pride of Spain had gone to its doom; nor yet 
was it that day in June, A.D. 1815, whose set 
ting sun heard the Iron Duke s command, " Let 
the whole line advance !" and saw scattered, like 
dust before the hurricane, the flower of the 
great Napoleon s troops; nor was it that day 
in which was signed that historic document 
which laid the foundation of the greatest 
republic in the records of man, a document 
which begins thus : " When in the course of 
13 



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" From cruel and degraded pagans, blind worshippers of Odin and 

6> opposite page. 





WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 




EGERTON RYERSON. 



JOHN WESLEY. 



Thor, the gospel of Jesus Christ has raised the Anglo-Saxons into 
world leadership." See page 16. 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

human events." No! Important as these days 
were, they fade into utter insignificance along 
side of that other day less known in history 
when a little monk, with soul aglow with 
holy fire, landed on British soil with the eternal 
Good Tidings. Britain s day dawned when 
Augustine a foreign missionary arrived on 
her shores. 

Out of that day has sprung all that is great 
and strong and bright and glorious in the 
Anglo-Saxon race. From cruel and degraded 
pagans, blind worshippers of Odin and Thor, 
the gospel of Jesus Christ has raised the 
Anglo-Saxons into world leadership. Had 
Christianity gone east instead of west, then 
the so-called heathen races would to-day be the 
civilized and Christian ones, and we would be 
the superstitious and degraded idol worship 
pers. 

We of all men have reason to know the 
priceless worth of the Good Tidings. But have 
we not received in gold and paid in copper? 
Our ships have come to harbor freighted with 
diamonds, and gone out loaded with cobble 
stones. 

Yes, and besides this, from a purely financial 
standpoint, missions are the best paying invest- 
16 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

ment in the world. They have opened many a 
rich field to commerce which would otherwise 
have been permanently and hermetically sealed. 

Lord Lawrence, when Viceroy of India, 
said: " Whatever benefit the English people 
have conferred upon India, the missionaries 
have accomplished more than all other influ 
ences whatever." In this sentiment Sir W. 
Mackworth Young, late Lieutenant-Governor 
of Punjab, and Lord Curzon, the late Gov 
ernor-General of India, concur. 

What was it that transformed Aniewa, and 
is rapidly transforming Tanna, Erromanga, 
and the other islands of the New Hebrides? 
What changed Fiji from Satan s fortress to 
the happy, God-fearing islands of to-day? 
What was it changed the face of Uganda? 
What abolished slavery from the land and 
opened it up to commerce? How came the 
marvellous change in Korea and in Manchuria, 
and what say you of the Telugu? 

What did it all ? The Good Tidings, simply 
that. 

Is it worth while ? If all the money spent to 
carry the Gospel to the regions beyond, if all 
the lives lost in the mission field, if all the pain 
and suffering, all the separation and loneliness, 

2 17 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

all the heart-aches and sadness of all the mis 
sionaries of all the ages since Christ had 
resulted in the salvation of but one human soul 
even that would be well worth it all. 

" Behold the midnight glory, 
Worlds on worlds, amazing pomp ! 
Redouble this amaze ! ten thousand add, 
Add twice ten thousand more 
Then weigh the soul. One soul 
Outweighs them all." 

4. What shall we say, then? Shall we say 
that we did our best, and that we had not the 
money to do more? 

Let us see what we do. 

Four large Protestant bodies in Canada, with 
a total membership of 587,000, gave last year 
to foreign missions $300,000, or about 52 cents 
per head per member. That is an average of 
i cent per week. 

Now, pray bear these figures in mind for a 
moment, and then consider the following facts. 

Canada s liquor bill per year is upwards of 
$40,000,000 direct and $100,000,000 indirect, 
and her cigar and tobacco bill over $20,000,- 
ooo, or a total for liquor and tobacco of more 
than $160,000,000 per year. This means fully 
18 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

$30 a head men, women and children for 
the entire population, while our expenditure 
for Protestant foreign missions is not over 52 
cents a head for the church members, or less 
than 8 cents a head for the entire population, 
men, women and children. 

That is thirty dollars for ruin, shame and 
filth; eight cents for the Good Tidings. 

But someone may fairly object that the 
$160,000,000 spent for liquor and cigars, and 
their resulting evils, do not come from the 
church members, and so the comparison is 
unfair. It is not the same people who give up 
$30 a year per head for liquor and only 8 cents 
for Jesus. Very well, let it be granted that the 
non-church members are the ones who pay the 
$160,000,000 would God it were so and see 
the light in which it places us. In order to 
make the comparison as favorable as possible, 
let us assume that the two great camps of 
church and non-church goers are about of 
equal force. 

NOTE. That there may be no confusion when these figures 
are subsequently used, let it be made clear : the contributions 
from the church members in Canada average 52 cents per head 
per year ; from the entire population of Canada, men, women and 
children, the average is 8 cents ; from the church-goers, men, 
women and children, 16 cents per year ; from the Christians the 
world over the average is about 40 cents per year. 

19 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

Then one-half the men of Canada who do 
not acknowledge the leadership of Christ pay 
$160,000,000 a year for liquor and tobacco, or 
$60 a head, men, women and children, for their 
half of the people, while we, the other half, 
pay to spread the Good Tidings to the regions 
beyond, the sum of 16 cents per head, men, 
women and children, for our half of the nation. 
As sixty dollars is to sixteen cents, so is their 
expenditure to ours. 

They sacrifice to their idols, liquor and 
tobacco, $60 a head, or $160,000,000 a year, 
while we lay upon the altar of the Living God 
for foreign missions 16 cents a head, or about 
one-third of a million dollars all told. Canada s 
liquor and tobacco bill for one day would pay 
her foreign mission givings for an entire year, 
and what she pays out for these evils in a year 
would furnish her foreign missionary money 
for nearly four centuries. 

Again, our annual bill for chewing gum is 
over $1,500,000, or four times what we give to 
foreign missions. 

An annual circus trails its slimy way through 
Canada, leaving disease and tainted morals in 
its train. The city of London is, in circus lan 
guage, a " one-day stand," and poor indeed is 

20 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

the circus which cannot, after paying for food, 
fodder and fixings, go off with $10,000 in its 
coffers. Ten thousand dollars for one day s 
indecency more than all the Christians of the 
city give to foreign missions in three years. 

The people of Canada consumed last year 
75 pounds of sugar a head at a cost of at least 
$3.50 each, and gave less than 8 cents a head to 
foreign missions. A saving of 10 per cent, on 
the sugar we use would multiply four-fold our 
foreign missionary money and save large 
doctor s bills. Think of it! We spend forty 
times as much on sugar as we do to spread the 
story of Jesus. 

The people of Canada paid last year for life, 
fire, and marine insurance, $37,500,000, or 
over $7 a head, nearly one hundred times what 
we paid for foreign missions. As $7 is to 8 
cents, so is the tax we pay to insure our goods 
and our lives as compared to our free-will 
offering to send salvation to the world for 
which Christ died. 

The people of Canada paid last year $100,- 
219,000 to the Canadian railways to carry 
their earthly treasures and themselves from 
place to place. That is an average of $20 a 
head, men, women and children, for all in 

21 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

Canada, while we, the children of the King, the 
heirs of God, the stewards of His manifold 
grace, paid 8 cents a head to carry the Gospel 
to a dying world. 

Dr. Duff once told an Edinburgh audience 
that if the ladies of that city would give him 
the cost of only that portion of their silk dresses 
which swept the streets as they walked, he 
would support all his mission schools in India. 
All the foreign missionary money raised in 
Canada could be provided in exchange for 
these same disease and microbe trailers which 
sweep our streets, and health and morals and 
the Kingdom of God advanced thereby. 

Let the Christians of Canada coin their sil 
ver spoons and turn their sash curtains into 
gold, and the proceeds would provide the 
foreign missionary money for years to come, 
and no one suffer. 

The fact is that we live better than the kings 
of England did in the days gone by ; we wear 
better clothing, eat better food, live in better 
houses, and spend more on luxury, display and 
folly. 

It is plain, then, that the paltry sum we give, 
unlike the widow s mite, is not given out of our 

22 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

want, nor is it like the great gifts cast into the 
treasury by the rich in Christ s day, for it has 
no element of greatness about it, although 
given out of overflowing abundance. It is but 
a mite given from abounding superfluity. 

A mere fragment of the vast sums spent by 
the Christians of Canada in personal and 
domestic vanities, which serve no good pur 
pose and tend but to overburden life, would 
double our present missionary staff in the field 
and be a present and an eternal blessing to 
the givers. For these same foolish and use 
less vanities inartistic over-ornamentation of 
house and person have so laden the women 
of our generation with burdens hard to bear, 
that to many of them life is a pendulum which 
swings between drudgery and vain display, 
leaving neither time nor desire for mental 
development, and too often leading to neglect 
of God-given duties towards home and chil 
dren. Let us beware lest these things become 
the tomb in which we bury our Lord s talent. 

Nothing so tends to destroy the manliness, 
comfort, individuality, and happiness of life as 
the slavish doing of things because, forsooth, 
others with wealth and leisure and ennui have 
done them. And worse than all else, these 
23 



M Day of Good Tidings. 

burdensome vanities deny to the Christless 
multitudes the eternal Good Tidings. 

When you and I have told our tale of days, 
and lie down to sleep under the flowers and 
the evergreens in God s-acre, whither the busy 
tribes have gone ; when our lives lie all behind 
us, when every chance is passed, every door is 
shut, even the door to the tomb, ah ! what then 
will these things profit us? What then will it 
be to us that we had this luxury or that, this 
comfort or that; what will all the world be to 
us, so long as we have won Christ, so long as 
we know Him and the power of His resur 
rection ? 

Doing our best ? Oh, no. We have been only 
playing with the problem. As well hope to 
melt the Arctic ice-floes with a penny taper. 

We sing: 

" All hail the power of Jesus name, 

Let angels prostrate fall, 
Bring forth the royal diadem 
And crown Him Lord of All." 

Beautiful sentiment, rapturous vision, 
entrancing hope, Jesus Lord of All ! Prophecy 
proclaims it. God avouches it. Faith claims it. 

But do we make Him Lord of All ? 

24 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

Can it be that He is Lord of our pocket- 
books and of our personal expenditure and of 
our lives, when all the foregoing and following 
statements are correct? 

The people of Canada have $600,000,000 
put away on deposit in the banks and savings 
societies of the country. Not to mention all 
other forms of wealth, they have this sum in 
loose change, always at call. It is safe to say 
that the bulk of this vast sum is owned by 
Protestant church members. Ordinary bank 
interest on this $600,000,000 would amount to 
$18,000,000 a year, which is forty-five times 
more than all the Protestants of Canada give 
to spread abroad the Gospel. In other words, 
one year s bank interest on our hoardings 
would supply our foreign mission money for 
nearly half a century. That is, we do not give 
the one-forty-fifth part of the bank interest 
on our hoarded savings to that object which 
Jesus deemed worthy of His great sacrifice. 

The people of Canada sheared from God s 
sheep last year $2,000,000 in wool ; they drew 
from His waters $22,000,000 in fish; they 
gathered from His fowls $10,000,000 in eggs; 
they dug from His mountains $71,000,000 in 
minerals; they reaped from His fields and 
25 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

orchards, thanks to His dewdrops, rain and 
sunbeams, $350,000,000 in crops. And they 
gave back for the spread of the gospel less than 
half a million dollars. 

The people of Canada added last year fifty 
millions to their hoarded wealth in the savings 
banks. That is $10 a head. And they gave 8 
cents a head to foreign missions. And yet 
Jesus said : " Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures on earth, but lay up for yourselves 
treasures in heaven." This is how we do it 
$10 on earth, 8 cents in heaven. 

Doing all we can? There are scores of indi 
vidual churches in Canada, Methodist, Presby 
terian, and Anglican, any one of which could 
annually pay the entire sum given by all the 
Christians of Canada to foreign missions, and 
not a single member lack one comfort or 
luxury thereby. 

Canada is wealthy enough to undertake, 
alone and unaided, the evangelization of the 
entire world. The Christians of this country, 
depending upon God, regardless of all others, 
could in this generation tell every Christless 
soul on earth the message of the Good Tidings. 

The writer made this assertion at a mission 
ary gathering in a Canadian city some months 
26 



What Answer Will You Give ? 

ago, and there were those who looked incredu 
lous. And yet it is true. In the city referred to 
is a small church of eighty members, and not a 
single member of that church occupies a posi 
tion in finance higher than that of a mechanic. 
Yet that church supports its pastor, paying 
him a married man s salary, and at the same 
time has a foreign missionary in China, giving 
over $800 a year, all told, to foreign missions, 
or an average of $10 a head per member. 

If all the church members of Canada gave at 
this rate per head, our foreign missionary 
money would be upwards of $7,000,000 per 
year, instead of a beggarly $400,000. But on 
the other hand, if all the church members in 
Canada gave the same proportion of their 
revenue as do the members of this little church, 
then, indeed, would the Dayspring arise; for 
the amount so given would treble the world s 
offerings and provide enough funds to send 
the Gospel to every creature the world over in 
our generation. 

Evade it we may. Nevertheless, upon the 
men of Canada is the burden nay, the glory 
of evangelizing the world in this generation. 

" We can do it, we will." 
27 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

" When our ever-living Saviour passed away from earthly 

eyes, 
Sounded forth this great commandment from the eager, 

opening skies : 
* Go ye, go ye, teach all nations, boldly teach them and 

baptize. 

" So they went, those men anointed with a power from 

on high 
So they went, to sneers and hunger, to the mob s 

vindictive cry ; 
Went to suffer wracking tortures and triumphantly 

to die. 

" All their life was but one purpose, that the life of Christ 

should be 
Spread abroad among earth s millions, as the waters 

fill the sea. 
So the heroes died, and dying left their task for you 

and me. 

" Children of the saints and martyrs, with all peace and 

plenty blest, 
What obedience are we giving to the Saviour s last 

behest ? 

What desire, what self-denial, thought and prayer and 
eager zest?" 



28 



CHAPTER III. 
Going Up to be Judged. 

"For we must all appear before the judgment seat 
of Christ." 2 Cor. 5. 10. 

SUPPOSE you passed over the river together, 
and on your way from the dark waters to 
God s white throne you should fall in with a 
band from the regions beyond, also going up 
to be judged. One of them says to you : 

" Brother, whence art thou?" 

You tell him, with pardonable pride, " From 
Canada Christian Canada." 

" Christian Canada ! Why, what does 
Christian mean?" 

You reply : " We call it Christian Canada 
because we follow Christ, who gave up the 
glory of Heaven and died to save us from our 
sins." 

At that they all draw near and say as one 
man : " Christ, who died to save us from our 
29 



Jt: Day of Good Tidings. 

sins! Why, we never heard of Him; tell us 
all about it." 

And so you tell of the Christ who died, who 
rose, who ascended, who sits at God s right 
hand, and who is to be our Judge, and who 
said, Go ye." 

When you finish, they say with bated breath : 
" How long have you known about Christ?" 

" Why, I always knew about Christ. My 
mother told me of Him when I was a little 
child at her knee, and taught me to pray, 
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. 

" And you say Jesus told you to go and tell 
everybody about Him. Then I suppose you 
went to other places?" 

" Well, no, to tell you the truth, I stayed at 
home." 

" Then no doubt you were sickly and could 
not come?" 

" Oh, no, I was always strong; but, you see, 
I was busy with other things, and besides, you 
know, I did not feel a call." 

" Then of course you sent someone else, who 
did feel a call?" 

" Well, no, I did not." 

" Ah, then, you were very poor and could 
not?" 

30 




12 and ij. 



.>? Day of Good Tidings. 

" No, I was not very poor ; at least, I could 
have supported a native teacher I suppose, or 
perhaps a foreigner." 

" Not poor, and did not send to tell us about 
Jesus ?" they all exclaim with amazement. 

" Well, you see, I always gave my share to 
missions." 

"And what would a fair share be?" asks 
one of a mathematical turn of mind. 

" Forty cents a head per year is more than 
the average given by the Protestant church 
members of the world," you reluctantly con 
fess. 

And so you journey on for a while in silence, 
each one turning over in his mind the problems 
raised, until one of a very inquisitive turn asks : 

What do you spend on liquor in your 
country?" 

" Eight dollars a head, men, women and 
children, direct expenditure, and over twenty 
dollars a head more indirect loss, per year." 

"And how much on cigars and tobacco?" 
he persists. 

" Four dollars per head, men, women and 
children." 

"And on tea?" 

32 



Going Up to be Judged. 

" About a dollar a head, or six million 
dollars yearly." 

" And on chewing gum?" 

" Four times what we spend for missions." 

" And on sugar?" 

" Nearly four dollars a head." 

"And on neckties?" 

" Many times more than on missions." 

" And on millinery?" 

" Oh." 

" And did Jesus command all these things 
too?" 

" No; but, you see, they were our customs." 

" Were they needful?" 

" Well, we could have done without most of 
them, and greatly reduced the expenditure on 
all." 

" Why, then, did you not do it, and send us 
the Gospel?" they all exclaim vehemently. 

" Well, you don t understand the condi 
tions." And as you try to frame a reason why 
you failed to go or send, you arrive with your 
escort at the throne of Him who said : " Go ye 
into all the world and preach the Gospel." 

Give to Him your answer. He will require 
it of you. 

3 33 



Jt: Day of Good Tidings. 

" There comes a time in the future near, 

When this life has passed away, 
When these needy ones will stand with me 

In the light of the Judgment Day. 
When the angel reads from the Book of Life 

My deeds for that great review, 
If the Lord should speak and accuse me there, 

I wonder what I should do ? 

" The Son of man, with His angels fair, 
Shall sit on the great white throne ; 
And out of the millions gathered there 

He will know and claim His own. 
If He says to me those words I ve read 

In that Book so old and true, 

Inasmuch as ye did it not to these, 

I wonder what I should do." 

And now we stand before the throne upon 
which is seated One like unto a lamb that was 
slain. 

We have said to the men of our generation, 
as we journeyed to the bar of God, that we 
were not called. Now they throw the question 
back to Jesus and ask Him why He did not call 
us to go, and this brings you and me, my 
brother, face to face with the Master and with 
our records incomparably the most solemn 
moment in all eternity. 



34 



CHAPTER IV. 
The Call. 

"I should not like it, were you fitted to be a mission 
ary, that you should drivel down into a king." 

C. H. Spurgeon to his son. 

" There s a call from the dark to-night 

(May it haunt your lighted room) 
From His other sheep, on the broken steep, 
At the edge of eternal doom." 

No call. Why, my brother, your salvation 
is a call. You were saved to serve. 

No call. The expecting, unsatisfied Christ 
is a call of pathos and sweetness. 

No call. The billion Christless ones are a 
call a call from a thousand million throats. 
Do you not hear them? The open door, the 
divine opportunity, is a call. 

The man whose call startled the sleeping 
Apostle from Tarsus, was not only the Mace 
donian who then was but the Macedonian 
who might be, who ought to be, and who 
35 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

surely should be under God s transforming 
touch. 

And so the call from the dark to-night is 
not so much from the men who are, but from 
the men who ought to be from the men who 
are to be when Jesus meets them and gives to 
them the life more abundant. 

Let us look at this matter of a call a little 
closer. Before we can say to the Master that 
we were not called to go with the Good Tidings 
we must answer these questions to ourselves, 
as we would be willing to answer them in the 
white light of God s great judgment throne. 

i. Are we listening for a calif We have all 
known absent-minded people to whom we may 
speak and our words fall as though upon deaf 
ears. Absorbed in their own thoughts or wan 
dering fancies they do not hear. Their eyes 
tell the tale that they do not comprehend. 

Just so our souls tend to become absent- 
minded. Absorbed in our own plans, or castle 
building, the voice of the Master awakens no 
response in our souls, or we catch but broken 
fragments of His message, and so lose its 
divine import. Are we listening, or are we 
absent-minded, bent upon our own plans or 
fancies ? 

36 



The Call. 

Are we in the attitude of the writer of the 
eighty-fifth Psalm, who says (verse 8), "I 
will hear what God the Lord will speak " ? 

" I heard Him call, 
< Come, follow, that was all, 
My gold grew dim ; 
My soul went after Him ; 
I rose and followed, that was all ; 
Who would not follow if they heard His call ? " 

2. Are we willing to be called? In a general 
way we should all like to be great missionary 
heroes, but the reason we are not is that we 
are not willing to pay the price. If the Master 
through His Holy Spirit bore in upon your 
soul just now the certainty that He was calling 
to China are you willing to go ? 

God will coerce no man. He never owned a 
slave nor bribed a man. The world is full of 
men who have refused God s call. Some of 
them started and turned back, and many 
refused point blank to go when called. The 
writer knows two old men who were both 
called but refused, and now as they sit in the 
shadows of their fourscore years, while not 
unmindful of God s many mercies, their hearts 
are burdened with the thought that they 
refused when called. Are you willing? 
37 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

3. Are we within calling distance? God 
rarely speaks to men in the tornado or the 
thunder, but in the quiet of their own souls. If 
you are waiting for some great outward token 
of God s call, wait no longer, but draw close 
to Jesus, closer still, and still closer. Ask Him 
to be your all in all. Make David Livingstone s 
great dedicatory prayer yours, " My Jesus, my 
King, my Life, my All, I again dedicate my 
entire being to Thee," and then ask the Master 
to show you His plan for your life. Tell Him 
you want to stay at home or go abroad, be rich 
or poor, strong or weak, busy or idle, as best 
you can glorify Him. Make the dedication 
complete. 

This is the way it runs. First, dedication 
or surrender complete and unconditional, then 
the fulness of the Spirit, and then the revelation 
of God s will, and then, oh, the rapture of it! 
service and ministration fellowship in His 
sufferings and then, and then, the crown of 
glory and Heaven. 

My brother, my sister, get within calling dis 
tance. Love always speaks in low and gentle 
tones Jesus whispers His call. Do you not 
hear Him? 

38 




" Ruin, shame and filth vs. the Good Tidings." See page 18. 



Jl: Day of Good Tidings. 

It may be these words are your call. Ask 
Him. 

4. Have we a call to stay at home? Jesus 
will take infinite pains to make His willing 
followers know His plans, though we be never 
so dull of understanding. Our very dulness 
adds incentive to the Master s patience. His 
honor is at stake, for He said, " He that wills 
to do my will shall know." His love demands 
it. 

Now, assuming that you are willing to offer 
Livingstone s prayer, then propose to yourself 
these questions : " Have I a call to stay home ? 
Am I needed more in the homeland than I am 
in foreign lands ? Am I physically unfit to go ? 
Am I disqualified or barred by obstacles that 
cannot be surmounted? Can I glorify Christ 
more by staying than going?" 

If not, then why not assume that it was to 
you Christ said, " Go ye." If not called to stay 
home you are most assuredly called to go. The 
burden of proof is on you. Did you ever ask 
the Master to tell you where He wanted you 
to work? Did you ever ask Him for orders? 
Did you ever say: "Dear Master, Thy com 
mand was, Go ye/ Do you mean me?" Or 
40 



The Call. 

have you just taken it for granted that you 
were to stay at home? 

Besides, the command still stands, " Go ye/ 

Well, why don t you go ? 

Settle with God whether your reason for not 
going is strong enough to override a positive 
command. If you really wish to know God s 
will towards you in the matter of foreign mis 
sions, submit to this test. Obey Christ s com 
mand (Luke 10. 2), which runs thus: "The 
harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are 
few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the har 
vest, that He send forth laborers unto His har 
vest." Drop for the time being your own 
thoughts as to whether you have a call or not, 
and pray and oh, pray as though your soul 
depended on it that the Lord of the harvest 
will send forth laborers. Go on praying, 
remembering always that the eternal life of 
multitudes may depend upon your prayers. Do 
not let a day pass without prolonged and 
earnest beseeching of the Almighty to send 
forth laborers. 

Meanwhile, keep listening, keep within call 
ing distance, keep willing, and if you do not 
hear the Master s next command (Luke 10. 3), 
" Go your ways, behold I send you forth," you 
41 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

may fairly conclude that you have not been 
called to this special work. 

But whether called to stay or go, never give 
up the prayer to the Lord of the harvest, that 
He will send forth laborers. 

And if called to go, then go not with droop 
ing head and reluctant feet, but with the joy- 
fulness of the King s ambassador charged with 
a royal message of eternal Good Tidings. 

" The Son Of God goes forth to war, 

A kingly crown to gain, 
His blood-red banner streams afar : 
Who follows in His train ? 

" Who best can drink His cup of woe, 

Triumphant over pain, 
Who patient bears His cross below, 
He follows in His train." 

" If we suffer, we shall also reign with 
Him." (2 Tim. 2. 12.) 

" Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; 
but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake 
and the gospel s, the same shall save it." (Luke 

17- 330 



42 



CHAPTER V. 

The Missionary Problem. 

IT is well to look facts in the face. It was 
our Master who said that a man should not 
begin to build until he had counted the cost, 
and that a king should not go forth to war until 
he should " first sit down and take counsel," 
whether with ten thousand he is able to meet 
him that cometh against him with twenty thou 
sand. It is well, then, to know just how great 
the task is that we are bidden to accomplish 
and alongside of our task to place, by way of 
comparison, our resources. 



J} Billion Perishing 

" I know of a land that is sunk in shame, 

Of hearts that faint and tire ; 
And I know of a name, a name, a name, 
Can set this land on fire." 

First, then, there are in round numbers, one 
billion yet to evangelize that is, given the 

43 



Ji Day of Good Tidings. 

same choice of accepting eternal life in Jesus 
that you have had whoever you are, saved or 
lost whose eyes now rest upon these words. 
A thousand million have not heard of Jesus 
Christ and His eternal Good Tidings. 

This is appalling, but true, and sixty genera 
tions have gone out on the unreturning tide of 
time since Jesus ordered the whole line to 
advance. This means that many billions have 
gone to Christless graves. What a waste of 
human life ! What a blot on the escutcheon of 
the church He died to save ! 

A billion is too large a number to be compre 
hended in the bulk, so we shall break it up a 
bit. 

A generation passes every thirty- three years. 
That means the Christless multitude die at the 
rate of 30,000,000 a year ; 80,000 a day, 3,000 
an hour, 50 a minute, almost i a second each 
tick of your watch is the drum-beat above a 
Christless grave. Every breath you draw 
marks the last breath of at least three who 
never heard of Christ. 

But let us see if we can gain some idea of 

the size of a billion. The largest hall in 

Ontario is the Massey Memorial, seating, say, 

5,000 people. Now, if the billion Christless 

44 



The Missionary Problem. 

ones were lined up at its door thirteen abreast, 
allowing only standing room between the 
ranks, the great line would circle the globe. If 
they were admitted to the hall 5,000 at a time, 
night and day, and kept for an hour listening 
for the first and last time to the Gospel, nearly 
twenty-three years would elapse before the end 
of that great procession would enter the hall ; 
and by that time a new generation would be up 
to man s estate and awaiting its turn to hear 
the Good Tidings. Or if simultaneous meet 
ings were held of 5,000 each, then 200,000 
gatherings would be needed that all might 
hear. Or if the Christless ones were divided 
in parishes of 5,000 each, then 200,000 men 
would be needed that each parish might have a 
man. 

And now let us look closer at this billion. 

There are over a million lepers in China, 
Japan and India. Think of that as you settle 
back on your cushions or sink to rest upon your 
feathers to-night. A million are outcasts, 
spurned by their friends, shunned and mal 
treated by passers-by, ill-clad, half-starved, 
unprotected, with none of the comforts and 
few of the necessaries of life; scorched by the 
heat, chilled by the cold, with no hope in this 
45 



A Day of Good Tidings. 

life and no knowledge of the life to come. 
Their days are spent in pain, weariness and 
hunger, and their nights in misery. So they 
live and so they die. And yet no class of suf 
ferers in Christ s day were surer of the 
Master s love and help, and can we fancy that 
Jesus has changed because He has ascended to 
the Father? No, no, " this same Jesus " would 
have us tell them that there is a balm in Gilead 
and a physician there, a cure for the leprous 
soul, and a land where the foul and leprous 
body sown in corruption shall be raised in 
incorruption, " for this corruptible must put on 
incorruption and this mortal must put on 
immortality, and death be swallowed up in 
victory." 

And what are we doing about it? Next to 
nothing. Only 7,000 out of nearly 1,500,000 
are in any way touched by the missionaries. 
That is one out of every 214. 

The children of India number 117,000,000, 
and are a host great enough to girdle the globe 
in single file. Only one out of every 500 has 
ever been inside of a Sunday School. If the 
same ratio obtained in Canada the 500,000 
Methodist and Presbyterian Sunday School 
children would shrink to 1,000. 
46 



The Missionary Problem. 

Jesus said, " Suffer the little children to come 
unto me, and forbid them not, for to such 
belong the Kingdom of Heaven." How can 
they come unless they are told about Christ and 
invited to come? And how can they be told 
and invited unless messengers go with the mes 
sage? And if we do not send a messenger, do 
you not see that we are really forbidding them 
to come, and Christ said, " Forbid them not." 
Jesus also said, " Feed my lambs." They are 
His lambs and He loves them. Why do we not 
feed them? 

The women and girls of India alone number 
145,000,000, and to most of them this world is 
a hell. Child marriages are the rule, when 
little tots of eight and nine are wedded to men 
sixty and seventy years of age. Nearly 100,000 
little girls under ten are widows, and widow 
hood is a curse from which there is no escape 
but death. It is held to be the result of some 
ghastly deed done in a prior life, and as a pun 
ishment she is widowed by inexorable fate. 
She wears rough clothes, eats coarse and scanty 
food, is shunned by her friends and cursed by 
her husband s relatives. 

Then there is great dumb Africa the back 
yard of creation with its 150,000,000 immor- 
47 



Ji: Day of Good Tidings. 

tal souls, still the dark continent, filled with 
vice, degradation and horrors, waiting for the 
Gospel, and yet not waiting for nothing waits 
in this world but marching with steady tread 
to Christless graves. Now Jesus wants every 
one of these poor creatures told at once of Him 
and of His love, and yet there are more in 
Africa to-day who have not heard the Good 
Tidings than there were when Livingstone 
made his great journey from Capetown to 
Loanda, and from Loanda to Quilimane. 

Then there is the vast neglected continent of 
South America, with its 40,000,000 unevan- 
gelized, adding its quota to the problem. 

There is Japan with its nearly fifty millions, 
startling the world with its progress in the arts 
of war and its marvellous power to adapt itself 
to new conditions, emerging in a day from 
obscurity to the front rank amongst the great 
world nations. There it is not a dream but a 
reality and it must be won for Jesus ; for the 
old religions are losing their hold, and the new 
must be given now or the nation will drift into 
atheism. 

China, too, calls with three hundred million 
voices, " Come over and save us. Save us 
from our misery and our hopelessness. Life 
48 




/p and 20. 



J$ Day of Good Tidings. 

is dark and cheerless death and the future 
the very blackness of despair." 

What more shall we say? Time would 
fail to tell of Tibet and of Siam, of Korea and 
Manchuria, of Turkey and the Islands of the 
Sea, waiting in their weariness and their sor 
row, while we linger, loath to give up our 
luxuries and folly. 



II. 



The Church Sleeping. 

" What, could ye not watch with me one hour ? "- 
Jesus in the garden. 

Staggering as the figures are, they do not 
make up the most difficult part of the problem. 
Incomparably the hardest element in the ques 
tion is the deadly apathy of the Christian 
Church. 

We swing at ease in our spiritual hammocks 
in our luxuriant Gospel gardens, listening to 
rapturous music. The sweet tones of the 
charmer tell us what good people we are and 
what wonderful things we do for the heathen. 
So we swing and so we batten. The rich fruits 
of the garden, bought with the blood of Jesus 
50 



The Missionary Problem. 

the Christ, we deem our own. Outside of the 
garden are a billion souls, perishing for that on 
which we feast. Now and then a cry more 
heartrending than the rest strikes our ears, 
and, stirring impatiently, we say, " My, my, 
how many calls there are, and how they do 
drain us!" and we toss across the wall a core 
or two of the fruit we cannot use, " giving of 
our superfluity," and then, self-satisfied, fall 
back upon our pillows and drop asleep. And 
so for twenty centuries have the Christians 
been doing, and so for twenty centuries have 
the millions outside the garden been perishing. 
How long, O Lord, how long ! 

The apathy spreads to all classes even the 
pulpit shares it. Said a prominent clergyman 
to the writer not long ago : "Are the Christian 
churches not carrying all the burden they ought 
to carry, without giving more to missions?" 
Many times since the thought has come that 
surely one church at least carries all the burden 
it ought to carry. 

After speaking on missions to a well-to-do 
congregation a short time ago a man in rich 
apparel said to the writer by way of apology 
for the small attendance : " Well, you see, there 
are so many calls, that if people know there is 



Jl: Day of Good Tidings. 

to be a special appeal, they stay away rather 
than face the music. 

Face the music ! 

This is the music they face. This is the tune 
to which they march : 

" Instead of what the martyrs bore through many a 

conflict dread ; 
Instead of bitter fightings, homeless wandering, cruel 

fear, 

Ah, the shame, we modern Christians give just forty 
cents a year. 

" Forty cents a year to open all the eyes of all the blind ; 
Forty cents a year to gather all the lost whom Christ 

would find : 
Forty cents a year to carry hope and joy to all mankind. 

" Worthy followers of the Prophets, we who held our 

gold so dear ; 
True descendants of the martyrs, Christ held far and 

coin held near, 
Bold co-workers with the Almighty with our forty cents 

a year. 

" See the few, our saints, our heroes, battling bravely, 

hand to hand 
Where the myriad-headed horrors of the pit possess 

the land, 
Striving one against a million to obey the Lord s 

command. 

52 



The Missionary Problem. 

" Mighty is the host infernal, richly stored its ranging 

tents, 
Strong its age-encrusted armor, and its fortresses 

immense, 
And to meet this regnant evil we are sending forty 

cents. 

" Christians, have you heard the story how the basest 

man of men 
Flung his foul, accursed silver in abhorrence back 

again ? 
Thirty pieces was the purchase of the world s Redeemer 

then. 

" Now it s forty cents in coppers, for the Saviour has 

grown cheap ; 
Now to sell our Lord and Master we need only stay 

asleep ; 

Now the accursed Judas money is the money that we 
keep." 

AmosR. Wells. 

This deadly apathy, which has its outcome in 
an offering of forty cents a year per member, 
spreads to all parts of Christendom, with the 
possible exception of the Moravian Church,, 
which has a foreign missionary in the field for 
every fifty-eight communicants in the home 
church, and more than two members gathered 
out of heathendom for every member in the 
home churches. 

53 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

Now, the commands of the Master are no 
more binding on the Moravians than they are 
on the Canadians, or the Americans, or the 
English, and yet we do not average more than 
one foreign missionary for every 2,500 com 
municants, as compared with their one for 
every fifty-eight communicants. If the leading 
churches of Canada were as much in earnest 
about the matter as the Moravians are, the 
Methodists would have 4,310 foreign mission 
aries, the Presbyterians w r ould have 4,100, and 
the Episcopalians would have 1,724, or a total 
of over 10,000, as against a paltry 200 now in 
the field that is, a fifty-fold increase. 

Then, unless the Moravians are overdoing it 
and far exceeding God s commands, it follows 
as surely as the demonstrations of Euclid that 
we are negligent and apathetic to an appalling 
degree. If they are only doing their duty, and 
if we to equal them would have to do fifty 
times more than we are now doing, then it is 
clear that we are only doing the one-fiftieth 
part of our duty. 

We may well ask ourselves how we can face 
our Master and our fellows in the Great Day 
that is coming. 

Great Britain in 1902 gave less than two 
54 



The Missionary Problem. 

million pounds to foreign missions, and the 
same year spent ten times that sum on the gor 
geous trappings of the King s coronation. 
Ten times more to crown one man an earthly 
king than to save a billion perishing souls into 
kingship with Jesus. The sadness of it ! And 
this is Christian England. 

Now, why did the people of England spend 
many times more on the King s coronation than 
they spent on spreading the Good Tidings to 
the regions beyond? Manifestly because they 
were more interested. There is never a short 
age of money for that in which the people are 
interested. 

Some years ago King Theodore of Abyssinia 
laid hands on Mr. Stein, a messenger of the 
Cross, and a British subject, and imprisoned 
him in a fortress amongst the Abyssinian hills. 
The British Government heard of it and 
demanded his release. It was refused, and soon 
10,000 men wearing the Queen s uniform 
were on the march. They pounded to ruins 
Magdala, the king s capital, and carried away 
the missionary at a cost of $45,000,000. For 
this all men admire the British. But here is 
another picture. A billion souls are in prison ; 
their captor is vastly more cruel than King 
55 



Ji: Day of Good Tidings. 

Theodore was, and their state horrible beyond 
words, and a nation with $45,000,000 to spend 
freeing one man, can only spare one cent to 
save each of the Christless billion, or less than 
$10,000,000 a year. Why did the British spend 
so much to save Mr. Stein? Clearly because 
they were interested in him, and their national 
honor was at stake. There was no apathy or 
indifference to overcome. 

All the Protestant Christians of all the world 
gave last year 1904 for foreign mission 
work, $18,509,013, w T hile Canada consumed 
on cigars and tobacco in the same time over 
$20,000,000, or $1,500,000 more than all the 
Christians of all the world gave to spread the 
Gospel to foreign lands. And still we hear the 
cry of a " burdened church," and leading 
clergymen wonder if it would be fair to expect 
the church to do more than it is now doing. 

It is not alone in our gifts that this apathy 
shows itself. From every quarter the call 
comes for men; it is the demand of the 
hour; fields are ripe, will soon be over-ripe; 
insistent and imperative is the cry, " Come over 
and help us." The leading missionary societies 
are asking for hundreds of volunteers, with as 
yet but poor response. 

56 



The Missionary Problem. 

Now, the Master s command was, " Pray ye 
the Lord of the harvest, that He will thrust 
forth laborers into His harvest." It would be 
of interest to know how many minutes a day 
the Christian church members spend in obey 
ing. 

Reader, how long do you spend each morn 
ing and evening pleading for the spread of the 
Gospel and the sending forth of laborers? 

Every sun that sets, crimson with shame at 
the sights it beholds, bears in each darting ray 
a call for help. Every sun that rises, glowing 
with hope and enthusiasm, speaks of fields 
white and nodding to the harvest, awaiting 
the reaper s sickle. Then pray ye, pray ye, pray 
ye the Lord of the harvest, that He thrust forth 
laborers. 

Not only in our material gifts and in our 
prayers do we withhold, but many a bright 
young life is turned aside from the service of 
the King by the opposition of Christian 
parents. 

In Japan, when the news spreads that a man 
has lost a son at the front, his friends con 
gratulate him. But the writer has known one 
Christian mother to commiserate with another, 
because, forsooth, her daughter had gone down 
57 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

to the front under the banner of the Christ, to 
carry the Good Tidings to those who sit in 
darkness and in the shadow of death. 

" If I have eaten my morsel alone 

The patriarch spoke in scorn ; 
What would he think of the Church were he shown 

Heathendom huge, forlorn, 
Godless, Christless, with soul unfed, 

While the Church s ailment is fulness of bread, 
Eating her morsel alone ? 

" I am debtor alike to the Jew and the Greek," 

The mighty Apostle cried, 
Traversing continents, souls to seek, 

For the love of the Crucified. 
Centuries, centuries since have sped ; 
Millions are famishing ; we have bread ; 
But we eat our morsel alone. 

Ever of them who have largest dower 

Shall heaven require the more ; 
Ours is affluence, knowledge, power, 

Ocean from shore to shore ; 
And East and West in our ears have said, 
" Give us, give us your living Bread ;" 

Yet we eat our morsel alone. 

" Freely as ye have received, so give," 

He bade, who hath given us all ; 
How shall the soul in us longer live, 

Deaf to their starving call, 
For whom the Blood of the Lord was shed, 
And His Body broken to give them Bread, 
If we eat our morsel alone ? 

-Job 31. 77, 

58 



The Missionary Problem. 



III. 
Jesus Expecting. 

" The restless millions wait 

The light whose dawning maketh all things new ; 
Christ also waits ; but men are slow and late ; 
Have we done what we could ? 
Have I ? Have you ? " 

Dreadful as are the tales and unspeakably 
horrible as the condition must be under which 
the heathen live, especially the little ones and 
the women, these things after all are not the 
true incentive to the Christian missionary. 
They appeal to the heart of the natural man, 
the infidel, the agnostic, and the worldling, as 
well as to the Christian. 

The true incentive is found in Isaiah 53. 10- 
12, where the Spirit through the prophet says: 
" When thou shalt make His soul an offering 
for sin ... He shall see of the travail of 
His soul and be satisfied." And again, in 
Hebrews 10. 12, 13, the record is: " He, when 
He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, 
sat clown on the right hand of God ; henceforth 
expecting, until His enemies be made the foot 
stool of His feet." 

59 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

How to satisfy the expecting Christ is the 
third great element in the problem. He expects 
to be satisfied. He expects to see of the travail 
of His soul. He expects you and me to be like 
minded. He expects that we, who are the 
stewards of the manifold grace of God, shall 
be true. He expects us to obey His command 
to go into all the world and preach. He 
expects to have the nations for His inheritance 
and the uttermost parts of the earth for His 
possession. There he sits, the world s immor 
tal Saviour, at God s right hand, expecting. 
And it is ours to satisfy the expecting Christ. 



IV. 



The Nations Misrepresenting. 

" More gospel and less rum." Vgalla. 

One other thing which enters the problem is 
the fact that Christ has been so sadly misrepre 
sented by Christian nations in politics and 
commerce. 

This is well summed up by the Hindu Vive- 

kananda, who says : You come to us with 

your religion of yesterday to us who were 

taught thousands of years ago by our Rishis 

60 



; preacf)the6o$- 
; pelto^every crea 




See page 20, last paragraph, and page 23. 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

precepts as noble as your Christ s ; you trample 
on us and treat us as the dust beneath your 
feet; you destroy life in our animals; you 
degrade our people with drink ; you scorn our 
religion, in many points like your own; and 
then you wonder why Christianity makes such 
slow progress in India. I tell you it is because 
you are not like your Christ. Do you think 
if you came to our doors like Him, meek and 
lowly, with a message of love, living and 
working and suffering for others as He did, 
we should turn a deaf ear ? Oh, no, we should 
receive Him and listen to Him." 

This is the trouble. Christian nations have 
not taken Christ ; they have taken opium, rum, 
gunpowder, war, disease, vanity and deviltry, 
and the missionaries find these the hardest 
things to explain to the non-Christian people. 

By the treaty of Pekin, signed in the fall of 
1860, at the close of the brutal three years 
war, England forced the opium traffic upon 
China, and by the same treaty provided for the 
toleration of the work of Christian missions. 
Is it any wonder, then, that a country which 
sees millions of its brightest sons and 
daughters going yearly to opium suicides 
62 



The Missionary Problem. 

graves, has for years cried out vehemently: 
" Take away your opium and your Jesus." 

On this subject Tong Kwoh Onn, a Chris 
tian Chinaman, says : " The upper and official 
classes in China have so far been almost 
entirely unaffected by the preaching of Chris 
tianity, and the reason is not far to seek." 

The Chinese official sees that while the Eng 
lish missionary offers his Bible and its moral 
teachings, the English merchant still more 
eagerly offers his opium to demoralize and 
destroy the Chinese race. He most reasonably 
enquires of the missionary, " If Christianity is 
the religion in your country, how can your 
king and your people be guilty of the .awful 
crime of forcing the opium traffic upon us? 
So long as England continues this iniquitous 
trade, so long will the Chinese population look 
askance at Christianity." 

Referring to the general attitude of the 
Christian nations towards China, a Chinese 
official of wide experience and keen observa 
tion lately wrote : " It is we who do not accept 
the Gospel of peace, yet practice it; it is you 
who accept it, yet trample it under foot. Irony 
of ironies! it is the nations of Christendom 
who have come to us to teach us by sword and 
63 



Ji Day of Good Tidings. 

fire that right in this world is powerless unless 
it be supported by might." 

To-day, in the year of grace 1905, there are 
brutalities on the Congo in Africa, with the 
consent of the Christian King of Belgium, 
rivalling the most horrible tales of the Dark 
Ages. And what the rifle, the cap-gun and the 
whip cannot do by way of extermination, is 
being rapidly done by the Christian s rum in 
darkest Africa. The following letter was 
written to the Archbishop of Canterbury by a 
native of the Congo : " Great and good chief 
of the tribe of Christ, greeting : The humblest 
of your servants kisses the hem of your gar 
ment and begs you to send his fellow-servants 
more Gospel and less rum. In the bonds of 
Christ. Vgalla." 

Here, then, is the problem : 

1. A billion perishing. 

2. The Church sleeping. 

3. Jesus expecting. 

4. The nations misrepresenting. 



64 



CHAPTER VI. 

How to Solve the Problem. 
Personal Consecration. 

" Find your place in the world and then burn to the 
socket." Principal Hastings to his graduating class. 

" Up, it is Jehovah s rally ! 
God s own arm hath need of thine." 

Bishop Cox. 

THE campaign will yet be won, and Jesus 
crowned as King from the rivers to the ends 
of the earth. But victory lingers. The King 
tarries. The eastern skies are not yet aglow 
with the dawn. Nay, midnight is upon us. 
Heavy are the burdens and dim grow the eyes 
of the watchers. 

And why ? As the Lord liveth, before whom 
we stand, ours is the blame. We have for 
saken the commandments of Jehovah. 

The orders are : " Seek ye first His king 
dom." And we disobey. We seek our own 
kingdom first. If we have any strength, or 
5 65 



u# Day of Good Tidings, 

time, or loose change left, and it is quite con 
venient, that goes to His Kingdom. And this 
is God s truth. 

It ought not so to be. Every soul redeemed 
by His blood, saved by His sacrifice, enrolled 
in His army by the second birth, ought to be 
out-and-out, body, soul and baggage, in the 
campaign for the coming of the Kingdom. 

The idle and self-seeking camp-followers do 
more damage to the army than the enemy s 
quick-firing or long-range guns. Only the sol 
dier who holds himself ready to go down to 
the firing line, garrison the forts, work in the 
trenches, or guard the supplies, as the leader 
may command, is of value to the flag. All 
others bring ruin to the army and shame to its 
banners. 

And in the army of Jehovah the conditions 
in no wise differ. Every soldier ought to be 
willing to go or stay, to be or to do, as He 
commands. 

When that time comes then you may lift up 
your eyes to the East, for lo, the skies will be- 
lurid with the coming dawn. 

Thus, and thus alone, can the world be evan 
gelized in our generation. Let every Christian, 
yes, or every second Christian, hearken to 
66 



How to Solve the Problem, 

God s command given through His servant 
Paul (Phil. 2. 5) : " Have this mind in you 
that was also in Christ Jesus, who existing in 
the form of God, counted the being on an 
equality with God not a thing to be grasped, 
but emptied Himself." 

Let us do this. It is Jehovah s will, for we 
were fore-ordained to be conformed to the 
image of His Son. Let us do it, and oh, what 
a tale this new century will tell of victory for 
the Cross. 

The first and greatest of Christ s mission 
aries, who had much of the mind of the Mas 
ter, said (Phil. 3. 7) : " What things were gain 
to me, those have I counted loss for Christ. 
Yea, I count all things to be loss for the excel 
lency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my 
Lord, for whom I suffer the loss of all things, 
and do count them but refuse that I may gain 
Christ." 

Before God, my brother, you and I bear as 
great a responsibility to spread the Gospel as 
did St. Paul. He was responsible to the limit 
of his powers, and so are we. If we but had 
the spirit and zeal of that immortal man, the 
record of shame and unfaithfulness now being 
written by the Christian Church would end in 
67 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

one grand burst of victory and one eternal 
hallelujah. 

Jesus said (Luke 14. 33) : " Whosoever he 
be of you that renounced! not all that he hath, 
he cannot be my disciple." 

" Whosoever," of a certainty, includes you 
and me. 

We cannot too strongly emphasize this. For 
our failure during 1,900 years may be traced 
to the fact that the individual Christian has 
not felt his personal responsibility, to be out- 
and-out in the campaign. Too many of us, it 
is to be feared, are like one or the other of two 
children well known to the writer. 

There is a little maiden barely five to 
whom the writer was talking about missions. 
He told her how Jesus commanded His fol 
lowers, just before He went to heaven, to go 
all over the world and tell all the men and 
women everywhere, and the little boys and 
girls, about Him, and about the heaven He 
was preparing so that they might love Him and 
go with Him to heaven. " And do you 
know," said he, " they haven t done it, and 
to-day there are millions of little boys and girls 
who have never heard of Jesus." 

And then to interest her still more he said : 
68 



How to Solve the Problem. 

" And we are trying to get a number of good 
men and women to go and tell these little boys 
and girls and their fathers and mothers about 
Jesus, so that when you and your little brother 
and sister and father and mother get to 
heaven, all these little boys and girls and their 
fathers and mothers will be there too. Won t 
that be splendid?" 

And she raised herself on her elbow, with 
her eyes fairly dancing with joy at the pros 
pect, and said : " Oh, yes. But father, why 
don t you send them all a ticket through the 
post?" 

How like that is to the plan we adopt. We 
do not send them a ticket through the post, but 
we Christians, who have received eternal life 
at the pierced hand of Jesus, we give barely the 
price of one concert ticket each to save a billion 
heathen. And the strange part of it is we are 
content so to do; nay, we are rather proud of 
our givings, and seem actually to think that 
we are generous. 

There is a little boy who came into the pos 
session of a few coppers not long ago, and at 
once set off with a business-like air down the 
street. To his mother s question as to where 
he was going, he replied : 
69 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

11 To the grocery store for candy." 

" But, George/ said his mother, " hadn t you 
better save the money for the missionaries?" 

Now, he had been well taught, and therefore 
sympathized with the missionaries, and did not 
want them to suffer, but he was only a boy, and 
he did want that candy, and wanted it badly. 

He was puzzled. His face showed that. But 
a bright idea struck him, and he looked up with 
a winsome smile, and said : 

" Oh, that will be all right, mother ; I ll fix 
it so they won t suffer. I ll tell Mr. Van 
Luven, the grocery man, to give the money to 
the missionaries." 

And so we wish the heathen well, and would 
like to see them saved, and we are in favor of 
foreign missions and want more missionaries 
sent out, and all that sort of thing, and yet we 
do so want the sugar-sticks that are so dear to 
maturer years. 

"What did it cost?" asked one Christian 
lady of another not long ago, after admiring a 
handsome new gown. 

" Seventy-five dollars, and do you know, I 
thought it real cheap," was the answer. 
. And that set the writer figuring, and this is 
the way the figures ran: $75 would keep a 
70 



How to Solve the Problem. 

foreign missionary in China for two months. 
In two months he could speak to 30,000 souls, 
and if only one out of every 15,000 who heard 
the truth accepted Jesus, then two souls would 
be saved to Christ-likeness. 

These two would in turn become centres of 
spiritual influence. Streams of living waters 
would flow, first in rivulets, then in ever-grow 
ing currents, sweeping on and on forever, 
gaining power and usefulness as they flow 
until absorbed in the great ocean of eternity. 
No man could forecast the outcome. 

The gown, therefore, really cost $75, plus 
immortal souls, plus rivers of living waters, 
and God s richest blessing. 

What a price to pay! And that, too, for a 
gown to add to a wardrobe already full of 
gowns for vain display. Every time we spend 
a needless dollar we are to that extent denying 
somebody the Gospel, and hence eternal life in 
Christ. We sacrifice to our vanity their 
eternity. 

When talking this way the writer has met 
with this objection, that the spending of money 
for expensive ornaments, clothing, etc., helps 
trade and gives employment, and therefore is 
a right and proper thing. 
71 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

So far, so good. 

One cannot, however, go far in this world 
without learning that the path of life to the 
child of God is not the choosing of the good 
and the rejection of the bad. It is rather the 
picking of the best from the good. In fact, the 
good is often the enemy of the best. Granting 
that helping trade and giving employment is 
in itself a proper thing, nevertheless here is a 
test to apply : " Which is more important, that 
we should help trade or send the Gospel to the 
perishing?" As the soul is greater than the 
body, as eternity is longer than time, as heaven 
is higher than hell, so the needs of the perish 
ing millions overtop all other needs the round 
world over. We ought to choose the best, even 
if in so doing we must reject the good. 

Besides this, surely a divine command 
ought to have the right of way, as against a 
matter of human expediency, and so long as 
Christ has not cancelled or recalled His orders 
to "go into all the world and preach the 
Gospel," then no man-made expediency should 
be allowed to turn us aside from obeying. 

He said, " Go and preach." He did not say, 
" Go and help trade." 

So far we have been assuming that there 
72 



How to Solve the Problem. 

was some foundation in fact for the claim 
that extravagant living does more to fur 
nish employment than giving to missions, but 
let us look a little closer. It is safe to say that 
not over twenty cents out of every dollar paid 
by the consumer for any article grown or pro 
duced in this or any other country goes toward 
furnishing employment. That is to say, labor 
gets not over one-fifth of the retail price of the 
goods sold. 

Now, if you so desire, you can put your mis 
sionary money where the full, round hundred 
cents in every dollar will give employment, and 
such employment as will bring joy to God and 
the angels, and to your own soul through the 
ages of eternity. 

Let us see a concrete example. Here are 
five families who spend each $100 a year on 
the vanities of life. Five hundred good dollars 
are spent thus, and the spenders say: "Oh, 
well, we have the money and we help to give 
employment." Of this $500 labor gets about 
20 per cent., or $100, and a large part of the 
balance goes to swell the bank accounts of 
wealthy merchants and manufacturers, and to 
help ruin their children. Now the $500 would 
keep a missionary for a full year in China, and 
73 



*# Day of Good Tidings, 

every cent of it would give employment. Both 
heaven and earth would be the richer. 

A young man known to the writer sent $30 
last year to keep a native teacher in India. 
Every cent of the $30 gave employment. Had 
he spent it, as first intended, on clothing, only 
about $6 would have gone to labor. 

And still the one great test is : " Do I need 
it as badly as my brother in India, China or 
Africa needs the Gospel?" Yes, and the King s 
business requires haste, for 

"The work that centuries might have done, 
Must crowd the hour of setting sun." 

Ah, my brother, this is your day of visita 
tion. This is your opportunity. Not since the 
days of Peter and John have young men and 
women faced such a glorious call. No other 
generation since Christ has stood under such 
priceless burdens, or had opening before it such 
vistas of wondrous glory. 

You have only one life. Make the most of 
it. Make it tell for the Kingdom. 



74 



How to Solve the Problem. 

I. 
Prayer. 

" China has no sorrow that Christ s message cannot 
cure ; India has no problem it cannot solve ; Japan no 
question that it cannot answer ; Africa no darkness that 
it cannot expel." Judson Smith. 

" Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He 
send forth laborers into His harvest." Matt. 9. 38. R. V. 

This life of perfect consecration and surren 
der of the individual to the will of the Master 
must be rooted in, and have its blossoms and 
fruitage, too, in the place of hidden prayer. 

Prayer is, has been, and is to be, our greatest 
weapon against the kingdom of darkness. The 
most urgent need of the day is a renaissance of 
prayer. Given that, and all things follow. A 
praying church is a believing, a humble, a 
fighting, a triumphant church. Prayer has 
paved the way for every victory won by church 
or human soul since God made man in His 
image. Prayer links the human to the divine, 
the church militant to the church triumphant. 
By it we lose our weakness in God s strength, 
our folly in His wisdom, our vileness in His 
purity, our defeats in His victory. He says, 
75 



Ji: Day of Good Tidings. 

ki If ye ask ... I will do." (John 14. 
HO 

Prior to Christ s command, " Go ye," came 
His command, " Pray ye." In Luke 10. 2 He 
says : " Pray ye therefore the Lord of the 
harvest, that He send forth laborers into His 
harvest." 

And then in the next verse we read, " Go 
your ways, behold I send you forth." 

There would be more going and more giving 
if there was more praying. 

Are men needed ? Pray for them. This was 
Christ s command, and whoever obeyed Him 
and failed? Ask Hudson Taylor how it was 
that in 1887 the C. I. M. sent out a hundred 
men to reinforce the two hundred then in the 
field, and he will quietly point out to an eight- 
day prayer-meeting held the year before by the 
men in the field, during which they asked the 
Lord of the harvest to send forth a hundred 
workers during the year. They closed the 
meeting with a prayer service, thanking the 
Lord for answering, and before the year was 
out six hundred had applied, and the desired 
one hundred were chosen and sent. 

Is money needed? Pray for it. It is the 
safe ground to take that the Almighty will, in 
76 




See pages 25 and 26. 



J? Day of Good Tidings. 

calling and equipping laborers, also provide the 
means to send and maintain them. To refer 
again to the C. I. M. and its expansion in 1887, 
the increase of 50 per cent, at that time in the 
force meant a necessary increase in expenditure 
from $100,000 to $150,000, and Hudson 
Taylor asked the Lord for $50,000 in large 
sums. Within the year the entire sum came 
to hand in eleven gifts ranging from $2,500 to 
$12,000. God is faithful. And He has His 
cupboards in strange and unexpected places. 
Let us do more looking up and less looking 
around, for God does answer prayer. You can 
get everything you ask for, while abiding in 
Christ, and the closer you abide the more you 
will ask for missions. " Call upon me and I 
will answer thee, and show thce great things 
and difficult, that thou knowest not." " Look 
not around thee, for I am thy God." 

Now, men and money and Bibles are essen 
tial, but they are not the sum of all that is 
essential. The Spirit of God alone " convicts 
the world of sin and of righteousness and of 
judgment." Power is needed, power is abso 
lutely indispensable, if men are to be saved. 
The men at the front feel this, and while their 
unceasing cry is for men, none the less their 
78 



How to Solve the Problem. 

great heart hunger is for the prayers of the 
home church. In neglecting this we lessen the 
power of the men in the field. And we weaken 
our own spiritual life immeasurably. Cases by 
the score might be cited of remarkable outpour 
ings of divine influence traceable to this won 
derful God-given power, which we neglect at 
our peril. The greatest Telugu revival, during 
which 10,000 were baptized in less than a year, 
had its origin in the secret prayer of a few who 
took no rest and gave God no rest in their inter 
cession. The conversion of Pastor Hsi, one of 
China s Christians whose life told mightily of 
Christ, is traceable to the prayers of David 
Hill. The revival in Doshisha, the leading 
Christian college in Japan, began the very 
night in 1883 when the students of some 
twenty colleges in America were praying that 
the threatened wave of rationalism and scepti 
cism might be rolled back and it was rolled 
back and many souls were saved. The great 
upheaval in Wales to-day is traced to the 
prayers of God s children. 

Down in Glengarry, sometime in the fifties, 

special evangelistic services were held in the 

Baptist church. The meetings were a failure, 

they said, for only one old man was converted. 

79 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

There were, to be sure, three little girls who 
also professed conversion, but they were not 
taken seriously into account. But the God who 
changes not had a different way of reckoning, 
and so these three girls, Annie Sinclair, Christy 
Campbell and Christy Anderson, aged from 
ten to twelve, under the leadership of the Holy 
Spirit, began a mid-day prayer-meeting in the 
woods back of the school-house. 

From the first it was a meeting of power. 
Other children were attracted. Boys and girls 
were converted, the first convert being a lad of 
ten, now a professor in McMaster University. 
It grew in numbers and in power. The minis 
ter in charge of the church became interested. 
From the woods the meeting was taken to the 
parsonage, and then to the church. And now 
that building was overflowing with anxious 
seekers. Christians and enquirers drove for 
many miles to the gatherings, and there was a 
mighty turning to God. The influence swept 
north to the Congregational church, and ser 
vices were begun there, and farther north still 
to the Presbyterian church, where the Rev. Mr. 
Gordon, " Ralph Connor s " father, was 
preaching, and he, too, opened his church for 

special services. 

80 



How to Solve the Problem, 

And for nearly two years this wonderful 
manifestation of the presence of God con 
tinued, until hundreds were converted and the 
entire face of the county was changed. Out 
of it have come foreign missionaries, clergy 
men, college professors, Sunday school 
teachers and superintendents, and earnest 
church workers in all ranks of life. The earth 
has been girdled. Rivers of living waters are 
flowing. Heaven is richer, earth is happier, 
and Jesus is glorified. And it all came about, 
humanly speaking, in answer to the prayers 
of those three little girls in their mid-day 
meeting. 

Prayer is the most universal power possessed 
by man. To have power in prayer one does 
not need either eloquence or learning. No 
gifts or graces of mind or person are in any 
way essential. Faith is the key. " When ye 
pray, believe." Remember the promise and 
Him who promised. 

No other work that we can do from this 
moment to the judgment throne, equals prayer 
in power and helpfulness to God and to the 
sons of men. The great of the earth to-day are 
they who pray. Many a humble soul is reach 
ing out beyond the seas, and making strong 
6 81 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

and fresh the souls of the lonely pickets away 
off on God s frontiers. Yes, and they are lay 
ing up for themselves treasures in heaven, and 
adding stars to that crown of righteousness 
which one day shall be theirs. In this way, 
too, souls are won at home. In a certain \vell- 
known church some months had passed with 
out a conversion taking place. In that church 
is a praying woman, stone blind. To hear 
her pray is a benediction. When she prays the 
heavens draw near. One Sunday evening, bur 
dened with the thought of the long months 
without fruit, she remained home at the time 
of the evening service. And for the hour and 
a half of that meeting she was alone with the 
Master pleading for a blessing on the service 
then in progress. She asked for the Holy 
Spirit s power to accompany the Word, and to 
bring conviction. Before the lights were 
turned out in the church that night, a man and 
his wife and their tw r o sons had accepted Christ 
as their Lord and Master, and they are to-day 
faithful workers in the vineyard. 

If you cannot go, or speak, or write, you can 
pray. Then in God s name do it. God does 
answer prayer. 



82 



How to Solve the Problem. 

II. 
Going. 

" Go YE into all the world." Jesus Christ. 

And this entire personal consecration to the 
advancement of the Kingdom nourished by a 
life of prayer may result in our going to the 
front. 

Of course the message must have a messen 
ger. No other privilege on earth is so glorious, 
no other destiny so exalted, no other honor so 
high. The life of the man or woman marked 
by God for foreign missions should be one long 
hallelujah. Songs of praise and thanksgiving 
should mark every step from the call to the 
judgment throne, and then on and on and on, 
forever and forever. 

u He hath sounded forth His trumpet that shall never 

call retreat ; 

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judg 
ment seat ; 

O be swift, my soul, to answer Him ; be jubilant, my 
feet. 

Our God is marching on. 

" In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the 
sea, 

83 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and 

me ; 
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men 

free, 

While God is marching on." 

Of course, we want to make the most of life. 
All do. None is worthy the name of a man 
who does not. How, then, is it to be done? 
Until we can find a better way, let us ponder 
deeply our Master s way : " He that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 10. 39.) 

What kind of a life do you think he would 
find who lost it for Jesus sake ? 

Ask Brainard, who turned aside from a 
prosperous church on Long Island to give his 
life to work amongst scattered bands of 
Indians on the Western plains, and who wrote : 
" I cared not where or how I lived, or what 
hardships I went through, so that I could but 
gain souls for Christ." 

Ask Baron Van Welz, who renounced his 
title to become a missionary a living witness 
to a living Saviour. 

Ask Williams, amongst the savages of the 
South Seas, evangelizing 300.000 of the lowest 
heathen, and then thrilling the people of Eng 
land to their inmost souls. 
84 



How to Solve the Problem. 

Ask Robert Moffatt, who gave his life to 
evangelize the degraded natives of Bechuana- 
land, South Africa; ask him, after his fifty 
years of toil, as he electrifies the people of the 
homeland with pen and tongue. Ask him if 
the life he found in Jesus repaid him for the 
horrors and sufferings, the squalor and the 
filth. His answer is a clarion call to the young 
men of Scotland to follow in his steps. For, 
said he, " What is there on earth worth living 
for except Christ and His Kingdom?" 

Ask Judson what he gained by giving up 
his rich pastorate in Boston to meet imprison 
ment and fetters, fever, starvation and death in 
India, to found a church with many thousand 
converts ? 

Ask Duff, who was twice shipwrecked going 
to India, and was finally cast like sea-weed 
upon her shores. 

Ask Zinzendorf, who wrote : " I would 
rather be despised and hated for the sake of 
Jesus Christ, than be loved for my own sake. 
I have but one passion, and it is He, He." 

Ask William Carey, forty years a mission 
ary to India, who wrote : " I never yet repented 
of any sacrifice which I have made for the 
Gospel, but find that consolation, which comes 
85 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

from God alone. ... I have God. . . 
God s cause will triumph. To be devoted, like 
a sacrifice, to holy uses, is the great business of 
a Christian. I am not my own, nor would I 
choose for myself. Let God employ me where 
He thinks fit." 

Ask Living-stone, torn by lions, racked by 
fever, worn, w r eary, but immortal ask him as 
he kneels in his hut that last night on earth, 
while he prays his soul back into the hands of 
his Maker. 

Ask these men, and like one of old they will 
reply, each man for himself, " For me to live 
is Christ," or they will say to you, in those 
words of David Brainerd s : " I declare, now 
that I am dying, I would not have spent my 
life otherwise for the whole world." 

And by the way, did you ever hear of a man 
who lived only to get things, who could say, as 
he looked back over his years and forward to 
eternity and the Judgment, " I would not have 
spent my life otherwise for the whole world "? 



86 



How to Solve the Problem. 

III. 
Giving. 

" He that supplieth seed to the sower and bread for 
food, shall supply and multiply your seed for sowing, and 
increase the fruit of your righteousness." 

Paul to the Corinthians. 

This entire personal consecration to the cam 
paign may result in our going to the front, and 
it may not, but it certainly will result in our 
giving. 

Jesus said (Acts 20. 35), " It is more blessed 
to give than to receive." This being so, it natur 
ally follows that God would not deny any of 
His children the greater blessing, so that no 
matter how poor one may be, a blessing greater 
than that of receiving is at hand as recompense 
even for the smallest gifts. If it be only the 
widow s quarter-cent, it is sure of the Master s 
blessing if given in the spirit of the widow. 

Should you, whose eyes now read these 
words, wish to know God s will about your 
missionary offering and who can be a Chris 
tian who does not so wish try this plan : Pray 
day and night earnestly, unceasingly, that 
the Lord pf the harvest will send forth 
laborers ; pray for the missionaries and for 
2? 



Ji Day of Good Tidings. 

the heathen. Do not say prayers, but pray. 
And when the time comes to contribute you 
will wish you had the vaults of a chartered 
bank at your disposal. 

We speak of giving, but as a matter of fact 
it is not giving. Christian giving and Chris 
tian liberality are false terms. 

How can a man be liberal with that which 
is not his, and how can he give to Christ that 
which is already Christ s? Admit it or deny 
it as we may, the silver and the gold are the 
Lord s, and we are but His stewards. " What 
soever is under the whole heaven is mine." 

Rev. H. T. Crossley, the well-known Cana 
dian evangelist, sets aside three-fourths of his 
income each year for the Kingdom of God, 
because he has been taught by the Spirit that 
he is not an owner but a steward ; and as one 
who knows that his Lord will return some day 
to reckon with His stewards, he desires above 
all things to be found faithful at his Lord s 
coming. 

Of old it was said, "The tenth is the 
Lord s," but later we read, " Ye are not your 
own." Then, if we are not our own, nothing 
is ours. The time is coming when God will 
have an army of faithful stewards who will 



How to Solve the Problem. 

hold themselves and their possessions at His 
disposal, while they camp upon the Besor for 
the glory of the Lord. 

The time is coming nay, thank God, it is 
here when young men and women who have 
caught the vision and whose souls are lit by 
God s Holy Spirit, and who cannot go to the 
front, will place themselves as much in God s 
hands for the spread of the Good Tidings as 
they would be if they were out on the firing 
line. They will, perforce, stay home and give 
time and talent to accumulate the baggage for 
the use of the army at the front. And how 
God will bless them ! 

The time is coming when scores of business 
houses will have missionaries on their pay roll 
as a regular part of their expenditure. 

The time is coming when churches will as 
soon think of doing without pastors, and 
Sunday schools without superintendents, and 
classes without teachers, as they would think 
of doing without their own foreign mission 
aries. And how God will bless and honor such 
churches, schools and classes! 

The time is coming, as sure as God is true, 
when the knowledge of the glory of God will 



J} Day of Good Tidings. 

cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and 
the whole earth will shine with His glory. 

Rev. Dr. Gouchcr, of Baltimore a camper 
on the Besor says : u I have detailed know 
ledge of a field where the investment of some 
thing over $100,000, working through a score 
of years, has resulted in the conversion and 
edification of over 50,000 natives. They are a 
mighty reconstructive agency, and their influ 
ence is deepening and widening with geometri 
cal progression. This is only a sample of what 
might be realized if the Lord s money w r ere 
put to exchangers as He requires." 

Some of you men with $100,000, would you 
not like to have 50,000 diamonds in your 
crown, and each diamond producing other 
diamonds for the glory of Jesus? 

The great and good Gordon, of Boston, in 
his last pastoral letter, said: " I warn you that 
it will go hard with you when your Lord comes 
to reckon with you, if He finds your wealth 
invested in superfluous luxuries or hoarded up 
in needless accumulations instead of being 
sacredly devoted to giving the Gospel to the 
lost." 

A few years ago the writer stood with bared 
head near a handsome marble statue in a public 
90 



m 



I? 7 MS 



TO EQUAL THE MORAVBAKS THE 
LEADING CHURCHES OF (LANAD/-X MOST 

iMtREASETHEia PR>ESt!KT 200 A5 
METHODIST, ^310 MISSIONARIES 



9 M 



WANTS b 




5^ pag 



J$ Day of Good Tidings. 

square. On the marble were the words, " The 
Statue of Margaret of New Orleans." Her 
story reads like a romance from the land of 
Don Quixote. Left an orphan in early youth 
by the yellow fever, the scourge of the south 
land, and some years later a childless widow, 
poor, uneducated, hardly able to write her 
name, surely there was little she could do for 
her generation. 

Being an orphan, her heart was tender 
towards the waifs, and so she gave her life for 
the little fatherless and motherless children of 
her city. She toiled early and late, with the 
one passion to help the homeless. When a new 
and handsome orphanage was built, Margaret 
and one of the sisters freed it from debt. She 
then opened a dairy and a bakery of her own, 
and gave the entire proceeds to the cause. 
Everybody knew her, and many patronized her 
milk and bread waggons. After a while the 
Master needed her elsewhere, and she went to 
be forever with the Lord. 

In appearance she was plain, and in dress 
simple to severity. But beneath the visible 
homespun were the glorious robes of the King 
Immortal; and veiled, though not hidden, by 
the homely features of the physical, were the 
92 



How to Solve the Problem. 

fadeless beauties of the Lord our God. New 
Orleans erected this striking monument as a 
tribute to her sweet, strong, and unselfish life, 
but a monument more enduring than brass or 
marble she herself had erected in the lives of 
those made better by her life a monument 
which will endure while eternal ages roll. 

Giving is the highest ideal of life. The 
triumph of life in the tree or vine is the giving 
of fruit. The getting of air, sunshine and 
water are but means to an end, and that end is 
giving. If the tree did nothing but get, it 
would be a freak of nature, an unsatisfied cum- 
berer of the ground, fit only to be cut down and 
cast into the fire. What is true in nature is 
true in human life. 

Not long ago an aged stranger from beyond 
the international boundary called upon the 
writer. He was clad in a quaint, old-fashioned 
garb, but something about the air of the man 
betokened a son of the King. Said he, after a 
few words of introduction : " I have been at 
Ziklag, but now I am on the Banks of the 
Besor, and I want to leave you some money 
for the Avar." With that he drew from his 
pocket a roll of bills, and said, as he handed it 
over : " I am a poor man a failure working 
93 



^ Day of Good Tidings. 

for day wages, but I m the happiest man in all 
the world." 

As the stranger, crowned with the snows of 
nearly eighty winters, sat and talked, with the 
radiance of the throne fairly glowing in his 
face, the writer, turning in his chair, caught a 
glimpse of the busy street below. It was 
thronged with anxious men hastening to be 
rich. Just then there drove by an old man who 
had attained his dream, and was rich in things 
of earthly sort. But his wealth was not all 
clean, so the burden of remorse, with the 
tyranny of avarice, and the pains of a linger 
ing illness, had filled his years with gloom. 
There he sat, hugging his money and his 
misery, hat over his brow, head bent forward, 
with a weary, haggard, haunted look yet the 
possessor of great wealth. One could almost 
hear him, as he passed, whisper to himself 
those last words of another millionaire, " I 
suppose I am the most miserable man on 
earth." 

Turning again in his chair the writer looked 

back into the eyes of the man who had been at 

Ziklag, and had tasted all that Ziklag means of 

earthly failure. And as he did so, Browning s 

94 



How to Solve the Problem. 

Easter prayer was in his heart, " Lord, I choose 
here." 

There you have in a living picture the pro 
duct of the two ways of life, " giving " and 
" getting." The " giver " could say, " Though 
poor I am the happiest man in the world," and 
the " getter " could draw his cheque for hun 
dreds of thousands, but his wretchedness is a 
byword in the land. Surely the Master used 
no idle figure when He said : " Whosoever 
would save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever 
shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel s 
shall save it." 



IV. 



The Power of the Holy Spirit. 

"To you is the promise and to your children.* Peter. 

" If the Holy Ghost can only have men and women 
who are willing to be used, there is nothing that cannot 
be accomplished." A.J. Gordon. 

Furthermore, this life of complete self-aban 
donment to Christ s glory must be lived in 
utter dependence on the Holy Ghost for power 
and guidance. Without this our best laid plans 
are vain, and our most lavish expenditure use- 
95 



^ Day of Good Tidings. 

less. It was Pentecost that made the Apostolic 
Church the greatest missionary force since 
Christ. 

History records no other age like theirs. 
These men, mostly unlettered, swept through 
their generation with a power never known 
before nor since. They traversed land and sea, 
with neither purse nor scrip, mission boards 
nor stipends. Following Jesus was with them 
a passion. To see Him going on before, they 
would go rejoicing through fire and water, 
face earth and hell, dare stripes and imprison 
ment, shipwreck and torture, all the while 
glorying that they were counted worthy to 
suffer shame for His sake. No wonder they 
had the power, for the Power had them. 

The price they paid for Pentecost was high 
for anything less than Pentecost, but for Pen 
tecost no price is high. 

If the Christless millions are to be reached 
in our day, the twentieth century church must 
be baptized with the fire of Pentecost. The 
great world need is a world Pentecost. The 
forerunner said of Jesus, " He shall baptize 
you in the Holy Ghost and in fire." 

Then, why are we moderns not on fire and 
filled with the Holy Ghost and with power? 
96 



How to Solve the Problem. 

The church of the Living God is impotent, 
while the cynical world looks on with scorn. 
And well it may, for have we not said that we 
are possessed by an All-Powerful, All-Wise, 
All-Loving God? And yet the great dumb 
heathen world marches with unfaltering tread 
graveward without Christ. Why are these 
things so, when there is at our disposal a power 
as great as that which Christ had in His earthly 
life, yea, as great as that which He now pos 
sesses at God s right hand in glory, the power 
of the Almighty through the Holy Ghost, who 
glory to God has come? 

The blame is surely ours. 

Pentecost will come to the church when the 
church comes to Pentecost. When it meets the 
conditions and pays the price, it will be pos 
sessed by the power. God changes not, the 
Holy Ghost is in the world, Jesus Christ is the 
same yesterday, to-day and forever. The race 
never needed a Spirit-filled church so much as 
now, and the Word stands true : " To you is 
the promise, and to your children, and to all 
that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our 
God shall call unto Him." 

To-day, as of old, weakness is the royal road 
to power ; self-surrender is the Gethsemane to 
7 97 



A Day of Good Tidings. 

self-realization; abandonment to the Spirit is 
the secret of Christ-likeness. 

Then let us to our knees, in deep humility 
and complete surrender, every son of God, and 
pray, pray, pray until the fulness come. 

" Ye shall receive, power, the Holy Ghost 
coming upon you." 

" Oh, for a passionate passion for souls ! 
Oh, for a pity that yearns ! 
Oh, for the love that loves unto death ! 
Oh, for the fire that burns ! 

" Oh, for the power that prevails, 
That pours itself out fo*r the lost ! 
Victorious power, in the Conqueror s name, 
The Lord of Pentecost." 

V. 
Faith. 

" Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me 
the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works 
than these shall he do" Jesus Christ. 

"The people that know their God, shall be strong 
and do." Daniel 11. 32. 

And again this life of personal surrender, 
having its foundation in prayer, and controlled 
by the Holy Ghost, will, as surely as the flowers 
98 



How to Solve the Problem. 

follow the spring, have its outcome in faith and 
action. 

No great work was ever done by God for 
the race except through men of faith. Men 
who have dared to step out on the promises 
have ever been the men who were mighty in 
God s hands. That man is invincible who bases 
every action upon " Thus saith the Lord." 
Such a man was George Miiller, who, being 
asked if he did not have giant faith when he 
began his work, replied, " No, but I had a giant 
God." " Looking unto the promises of God, 
he wavered not through unbelief." 

One lovely summer morning in 1865, alone 
on the sands at Brighton, a returned mission 
ary, broken in health, burdened almost to dis 
traction with the thought of the perishing mil 
lions in China, did a very simple thing- 
simple, but divine and thus he recorded it on 
the margin of his Bible : " Prayed for twenty- 
four willing, skilful laborers at Brighton, June 
25, 1865." 

Of course, he got them, and thus began the 
China Inland Mission, which, beginning there 
in that quiet, unostentatious manner, has grown 
to be the second largest missionary society in 
the world, with its eight hundred and odd 
99 



J Day of Good Tidings. 

laborers in the field, and asking God for more 
a society which, in its well-nigh forty years 
of life, has never asked for a dollar from 
a human soul. It rings no door-bells but 
Heaven s. It contracts no debts and pledges 
no salaries. And the good Lord who owns the 
silver and the gold has never allowed the army 
of consecrated men and women under its ban 
ner to want. It is essentially a mission of faith. 

An official of the Church Missionary 
Society, the largest in the world, recently had 
this to say at a missionary convention : " In 
the year 1887 the Church Missionary Society, 
under special circumstances, came to this reso 
lution, in the teeth of the Finance Board, to 
refuse no candidate on financial grounds who 
appeared to be God-called. This momentous 
decision was not based on excitement or gush, 
but on the plain, simple, business principle that 
if God calls a man, He will allow him to go, 
and will find the money. We have a right, 
then, if, as far as man can judge, this man or 
this woman is called of God to go, we have a 
right to say, " O Lord, we look to Thee to 
enable us to send this man or this woman." 

" Now, if anyone had said to us on that 
memorable day, when we were all on our knees 

100 



How to Solve the Problem. 

in prayer on this subject, You will treble your 
forces in thirteen years, the answer would 
have been, Impossible. And if anybody 
had gone on and said, Well, but you will/ 
then the answer would have been, * There will 
be no money to send them; it is impossible. 
But the impossible thing has been done, the 
staff has been trebled, and the money has been 
found. God sent it." 

First, imagine it written in letters of fire 
across this hall, " With men this is impossible." 

That is true. 

Secondly, " With God all things are pos 
sible." 

Isn t that true? 

What is the third ? " All things are possible 
to him that believeth." 

This same society has recently issued a call 
for 500 more men for foreign mission work 
and an increase of $500,000 annually to its 
income. 

A striking example of what happens when 
Jesus is taken at His word may be seen in the 
history of the First Presbyterian Church, 
Wichita, Kansas. About eleven years ago the 
state and city were in the stress of stringent 
times, so that the soundest and oldest houses 
101 



M Day of Good Tidings. 

were tottering. The church was practically 
bankrupt. In spite of this, or it may be because 
of this, the pastor, Rev. C. E. Bradt, on his 
knees before God, came to the solemn convic 
tion that their salvation as a church depended 
upon obeying Jesus and going with Him to the 
uttermost parts of the earth with the Gospel. 
He thought they must share the handful of 
meal in the jar, and the few drops of oil in the 
cruse, with those who had neither meal nor oil, 
if they would keep the jar and cruse from 
failing. 

And so he made to the people the most 
astonishing proposal, that this, the bankrupt 
church should undertake the support of a 
foreign missionary. And what is more aston 
ishing still, the church agreed. 

For the first time in ten years they closed 
that year with all expenses met and a large and 
heretofore growing floating debt paid in full. 

Then they added yet another missionary to 
their pay roll, and closed the second year with 
all expenses met, a cash balance on hand, and 
a burdensome mortgage of $18,000 liquidated. 

Since then they have added two more 
foreign missionaries to their list, and about 
thirty native pastors, and have laid upon God s 
1 02 



How to Solve the Problem. 

altar an equal amount for home missionary 
work. 

In the meantime, what of the church itself? 
Jesus has stood true to His promise, and while 
the church has gone to the uttermost parts of 
the earth, He has been with them at home, and 
from a membership of 400 they have increased 
to 1,300. Many souls have been born into the 
Kingdom, and the church is a powerful centre 
of spiritual life at home and abroad. 

Christ in His lifetime could do no mighty 
works without faith, and He changes not. So 
to-day, in the early dawn of the new century, 
He is calling, calling with such pathos for men 
of faith to arise, who will go with Him to the 
ends of the earth carrying the Good Tidings, 
or stay in the home lands, as He may choose, 
and supply to those who go the needed funds. 
He wants men and women to walk with Him 
in the same old sweet, daily fellowship as of 
yore; men and women whose lives He can 
control, whose souls He can purify and fill with 
His radiance, upon the throne of whose hearts 
He can reign with undisputed sway.; men and 
women whom He can endue with power, 
because He dominates them, body, spirit, soul 
and baggage. He is looking for such, calling 
103 



Ji: Day of Good Tidings, 

for such, expecting them with every sun that 
rises. Who will answer, saying, " For time 
and for eternity, body, soul and baggage, 
Jesus, I am thine " ? 

The only hope of victory lies in the recogni 
tion by the individual Christian of his personal 
responsibility, leading him to a complete conse 
cration of himself and his possessions to the 
advancement of the Kingdom, living a life 
based upon prayer, led by the Holy Ghost, 
resulting in faith and action, going if called, 
staying if needs must, but always, everywhere, 
at home or abroad, rich or poor, sick or well, 
prominent or obscure, always, everywhere, 
doing all things for the glory of God. 



104 



CHAPTER VI I. 



// We Tarry. 



1 If we tarry 



punishment will overtake us." 



THE four lepers at the gates of Samaria 
looked at one another in the twilight, and said : 
" We do not well ; this is a day of Good 
Tidings, and we hold our peace; if we tarry 
till the morning light, punishment will over 
take us." 

Napoleon s famous dictum, " The army that 
remains in its entrenchments is beaten," is 
equally true of the hosts of the Lord. 

God s army was called into being, its sol 
diers enlisted, its officers commissioned, its 
banners unfurled for one and only one great 
object, namely, the carrying of the Good Tid 
ings to every creature. The equipment is com 
plete, the plan of campaign is perfect, and vic 
tory rides on the wings of the morning. No 
defensive armor has been provided all is 
offensive ; no retreat calls have been taught its 
105 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

buglers the one note is forward. No provi 
sion has been made for camp, for barracks, or 
for winter-quarters. God s army never fails 
in a forward march, and never wins behind 
trenches or barricades. If, like Hannibal s 
army after Cannse, it goes into winter-quarters, 
then so surely do ease, luxury and idleness, 
with internal dissensions, sap it of conquering 
power. The King is no longer with the hosts, 
and disasters, following disasters, bring shame 
and sorrow in their train. 

The church without the missionary spirit is 
lacking in the Christian spirit. The whole 
mind, spirit and life of Christ w r as missionary. 
He was essentially the first foreign missionary, 
and He bids us follow. His great promise, 
" Behold I, even I, am with you," followed 
close upon the command, "Go ye and disciple 
all nations," and it was conditioned upon 
obedience to the command. The church that 
insults its Leader by refusing to obey the com 
mand has no right to look for the Leader s 
presence, and without His presence, the 
church, be it ever so wealthy, learned, or fash 
ionable, withers and dies. This is the change 
less record of history. 

Even the churches founded by the mighty 
1 06 




" and it cost God s richest blessing on 
the buyer." See pages 70 and 77. 



A Day of Good Tidings, 

apostles dwindled and died when they became 
self-centred. Africa is called the dark contin 
ent, and yet the time was when the greatest 
Christian churches were there, and the most 
brilliant of the church fathers lived, taught and 
preached within her borders. Africa was the 
home of Augustine, Cyprian, Tertullian, 
Clement, and others who are immortal in the 
?.nnals of Christianity. They were great beacon 
lights whose light still shines, although their 
churches are blotted out. 

They are not, because they sat idly by self 
ishly battening upon their blessings, and did 
nothing to spread the Gospel. Then they fell 
upon theological squabbles. They had all grades 
of Biblical critics. They argued such questions 
as " How many souls can stand on the point of 
a needle?" while they allowed their fellows to 
stand in the way of death and hell. No wonder 
the Lord removed their candlestick out of its 
place, and they are to-day nothing but 
memories. 

The land of Moab is a dreary example of 
this same inexorable law. Once full of the 
light and blessing of the Gospel, it is to-day the 
haunt of the buzzard and the home of the 
Bedouin. Their neighbors, the Saracens, whom 
1 08 



// We Tarry. 

they neglected, swept down upon the land, and 
blotted out their civilization and their self- 
centred Christianity. Too selfish to spread the 
Gospel, they were unable to cope with their 
opponents, whose love they had failed to win, 
and to whom they had denied the Good 
Tidings. 

From the days of the Fathers to this day, 
every period of spiritual decadence in the 
Church has been marked by partial, if not total 
neglect of Christ s command to preach the 
Gospel to every creature. Consider for a 
moment the days of, and before, the Wesleys. 
Of that period Bishop Butler says, " England 
had practically renounced Jesus Christ." The 
gross, brutal, godless England of the eighteenth 
century had abandoned utterly the effort to 
preach the Gospel to the regions beyond. 

Carey was thought a dangerous, almost blas 
phemous, fanatic when he urged the claims of 
foreign missions. Said the Baptist Assembly 
in reply to his appeal, " Young man, when God 
wishes to convert the heathen, He will do it 
without you." 

And in 1793, the Board of the East India 
Company said : " Sending out missionaries into 
our Eastern possessions is the maddest, most 
109 



A Day of Good Tidings. 

extravagant, most indefensible project which 
has ever been suggested by a moon-struck 
fanatic." 

When a proposal to evangelize the heathen 
was brought before the Assembly of the Scot 
tish Church, in 1796, it was met by a resolution 
that " To spread abroad the knowledge of the 
Gospel amongst barbarous and heathen nations 
seems to be highly preposterous, in so far as 
philosophy and learning must in the nature of 
things take the precedence, and that while 
there remains at home a single individual with 
out the means of religious knowledge, to propa 
gate it abroad would be improper and absurd." 

Need we wonder, then, when we read of a 
land upon which the very blackness of the 
nether regions had settled, with a drunken, 
sporting, licentious clergy, and a brutal and 
blasphemous people. 

God s rivers of living waters cannot be 
dammed up for purely local purposes by indi 
vidual, church, or nation, without turning the 
life-giving streams into stagnant pools. That 
church which is deaf to the cry of the 
unreached millions will spiritually wither and 
die, as sure as the severed branch from the 
living vine, while the church which is true to 

1 10 



// We Tarry. 

the greatest work man ever undertook is 
always and everywhere a growing, spiritual, 
Christ-filled church. 

What is true of the church is true of the 
human soul. Let any saved man sit down to 
bask in the light of the Gospel, and to feast 
upon its blessings, shutting up his sympathies 
to his own four walls, or even to his own 
church, denomination, or country, and that 
man will there and then begin to warp and 
wither. 

He cannot thus become Christ-like. And 
growth in Christ-likeness is the mark of the 
healthy Christian, for we were " fore-ordained 
to be conformed to the image of God s Son." 

" If we tarry, . . . punishment will 
overtake us." 



in 



CHAPTER VIII. 

God s Last Challenge. 

WHENEVER God would richly bless a man 
or a people, He, in His wisdom, makes the 
blessing contingent upon some great test or 
challenge. 

Long centuries ago, in Ur of the Chaldees, 
He appeared to Abram, the idol worshipper, 
and called him to come out from his people and 
become a wanderer over the face of the earth. 
By way of recompense, his descendants were 
to outnumber the stars of heaven, and surpass 
in multitude the sands upon the shores of the 
eternal seas. And in them all nations were to 
be blessed. Abraham stood the test, and 
received the blessing. But Abraham had no 
Christ to glorify, and no world to evangelize. 

When God would transform Abraham s 
grandson, the wily Jacob, into Israel, a Prince- 
with-God, He called him to leave Haran, the 

112 



God s Last Challenge. 

home of Laban, his father-in-law, where he 
had grown rich, and return to the barren, rocky 
uplands of Bethel, where many years before 
the angel ladder appeared to the fleeing lad. 
And there, by the brook Jabbok, in the way as 
he returned, the angel of the Lord met him, 
and before the sun rose upon that memorable 
scene, the angel blessed Jacob and called him 
Israel, Prince-with-God. But Jacob had no 
Good Tidings of great joy to proclaim to a 
joyless, sin-stained, cheated and wandering 
world. 

Later in the cycle of the ages, when the 
children of Israel had grown into a vast mul 
titude, the Lord led them by a series of won 
derful events up to the borders of the land of 
promise, and there, at Kadesh-Barnea, by the 
lips of the sturdy Caleb, who wholly followed 
the Lord, He said to them, " Go up at once and 
possess the land." But, and because, the tall 
sons of Anak were in the land, and the cities 
were great and fortified to the skies, they 
refused God s challenge, and murmured 
against Him, saying that their wives and little 
ones would be a prey. 

Then came Jehovah s solemn words : " To 
morrow turn ye and get ye into the wilderness. 



Jl Day of Good Tidings. 

. . . But your little ones that ye said 
should be a prey, these will I bring in, and they 
shall know the land which ye have rejected." 

And they took their journey, as God had 
said. 

Forty years of wandering in the great and 
terrible wilderness was a sad and dreary con 
trast to the rich things God had prepared for 
them. 

There could have been no failure had God s 
people gone forward from Kadesh-Barnea. 
God would have given them the land. What 
are tall men and massive walls to El Shaddai 
the God who is Almighty? Caleb was right. 
Time proved it. But they would not believe 
Him, and so history records the weary wilder 
ness wanderings and the deaths in the desert. 
But even the mighty Moses had no commission 
to preach Christ to a dying world. 

Centuries go by, and again God leads the 
children of Israel by a series of mighty events 
up to the borders of another land, fairer still 
and longer promised, where they are to receive 
the Good Tidings which are to bless all nations. 
He, in His infinite love, sent Jesus, His Son, 
into the world to be the world s Saviour, and 
there upon the summit of the Mount of Trans- 
114 



God s Last Challenge. 

figuration three startled men hear God s voice 
from the heavens, saying, " This is my beloved 
son, hear ye Him." 

What answer does the nation give to this, 
God s most wondrous challenge? 

Gethsemane and grim Golgotha ! 

We have no record of an audible voice say 
ing, " Turn ye and get ye into the wilderness," 
but the fiat went forth, and there have followed 
twenty centuries of such homeless wanderings 
through the great and terrible wilderness of the 
world as no other race endured since Eden. 

The mind can but dimly picture the wonders 
God would have wrought had the Hebrews 
accepted Jesus Christ wonders in the race 
and wonders in the world. They would have 
been the welcomed bringers of the Good Tid 
ings, blessing the nations and ushering in the 
millennium. 

But it was not to be. The race would not 
allow God to do the wonders. They declined 
His challenge, they rejected His Christ, and 
lo, two thousand years of wanderings. 

Once again God is challenging. It is to us 
He speaks. He has led the men of our day by 
a series of unprecedented wonders to the 
borders of our great inheritance. 



Jt Day of Good Tidings. 

We need not strain our eyes to read the 
challenge. It is writ large in history and in 
Scripture. 

Dull, indeed, are the ears and gross with the 
things of time and sense, if God s voice fails 
to pierce them. He speaks to us through a 
thousand million throats. 

This is how the challenge runs : " All power 
hath been given to me in heaven and on earth. 
G.o ye, therefore, and make disciples of all 
nations. . . . And lo, I, even I, am with 
you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

These words are spoken to us in Canada in 
the year 1905, because for the first time in 
twenty centuries every door is open, and all 
nations are waiting, some of them calling for 
the Good Tidings. 

Perhaps God has opened the doors, because 
He sees that for the first time in all these cen 
turies His church is ready to respond to His 
call. And so the prepared fields await a pre 
pared church. 

However that may be, there are the facts. 
The doors are open. Jesus orders an advance. 
The order is to us. The heathen are waiting 
and Jesus expecting. 

116 



God s Last^Challenge. 

And so it comes about in God s great calen 
dar of events that we, the men Q the richest, 
most luxuriant, the happiest, and most God- 
favored age since Eden, are to-day facing a 
challenge from God, the outcome of which will 
be the most sublime triumph, or the direst 
tragedy ever recorded in the annals of man. 



117 



List of Booklets 

By C. B. Keenlcyside, B.A., B.D. 



On the Banks of the Besor 

43rd thousand 
Paper covers, 40 pages, 10 cents net, postpaid. 

The Ram s Horn> Chicago" One of the best missionary 
statements we have ever seen." 

The Upper and the Nether Springs 

Second edition. 
Paper covers, 40 pages, 10 cents net, postpaid. 

The Unseen 

Second edition. 16 pages, Envelope Series, 
5 cents net, postpaid. 

What is Your Life? 

Paper covers, 30 pages, 10 cents net, postpaid. 

Enoch Walked with God 

Paper covers, 58 pages, 10 cents net, postpaid. 

The Folly of It and The Blood Tax 

Temperance leaflets. 



Any of these booklets may be had from 
F. C. STEPHENSON, Secretary Y. P. F. M. for Missions, 

WESLEY BUILDINGS, TORONTO 
Or from WILLIAM BRIGGS, TORONTO. 



CANADA 



The Methodist Church and Missions in 
Canada and Newfoundland 

TEXT BOOK No. 4 

By Rev. A. Sutherland, D.D. Pafer, 35 cents; cloth, 50 cents. 

The Story of China in Canada 

By Rev. J. C. Speer, D.D. 15 cents. 

Our French Work 

By Rev. E. B. Ryckman, D.D. 5 cents. 

Problems of French Evangelization 

10 cents. 

Indian Education in the North- West 

By Rev. T. Ferrier. 5 cents. 

David Sallosalton 

Fy Rev. Thos. Crosby. 10 cents. 

The British Columbia Indian and His Future 

By Rev. R. Whittington, D.D. 5 cents. 

Missions in New Ontario 

By Rev. James Allen, M.A. 10 cents, 

Missions in Nova Scotia 

By Judge Chesley. 10 cents. 

North- West Missions. By Rev. J. Woodsworth, D.D. 

5 cents. 

How Hethodism Came to British Columbia 

By Rev. D. Robson, D.D. 10 cents. 

Indian Missions in British Columbia 

By Rev. G. M. Tate. 5 cents. 



THE MISSIONARY BULLETIN contains letters from all our 
Missionary Superintendents and Missionaries among the Indians 
and foreigners and French. Published quarterly. 6oc. per year. 



Any of the above literature may be had from 
F. C. STEPHENSON, Secretary Y. P. F. M. for Mission;- 

WESLEY BUILDINGS, TORONTO 
Or from WILLIAM BRIGGS, TORONTO 



JAPAN and CHINA 



The Heart of Sz-Chuan Text - Book No. 2 

The Story of our China Mission. Paper, 350. ; cloth, 500. 

The Heart of Japan Text- Book No. 3. 

A Study of our Japan Mission. Paper, 350. ; cloth, SQC. 

Helps and Hints for the Study of The 
Heart of Japan 

5 cents. 

Beh and Yang 

Stories of our Hospital Work in West China. 
By Dr. Ewan. 5 cents. 

The Story of a Pot of Rice (Japan) 

5 cents. 

War-Time in Japan (Leaflets) 

5 cents. 

flaps and Pictures of our Work in China 

10 cents. 



THE MISSIONARY BULLETIN, issued quarterly, contains 
letters from all our Missionaries in Japan and China. 60 cents 
per year. 



Any of the above literature may be had from 

F. C. STEPHENSOX, Secretary Y. P. F. M. for Missions 
WESLEY BUILDINGS, TORONTO 

Or from WILLIAM BRIGGS, TORONTO