now would need to be increased to $50,000,000 a year; and I believe that can be done, in view of the fact that in the last eight years alone the entire offerings to this purpose have been doubled. When the Student Volunteer Convention met at Nashville eight years ago, North America was giving $8,000,000 a year to foreign missions. This last year she gave $16,400,000, or more than twice as much. With the great awakening now spreading among the laymen of the country, I believe we can double that sum again in the next eight years easier than it has been doubled in the last eight; and I want you to believe that it is entirely possible for the 24,000,000 of Church members in the United States and Canada to give $50,000,000 a year to spread Christianity throughout the world. After all, that is only two dollars apiece. That is an average of less than a week's street-car fare. I know that a good many people are not interested, and, as Mr. MacFarland says, half of them are not giving anything. That is well within the truth, for only about a third of them are giving anything. But eliminate fifty per cent. of the Church members in this country, and I declare to you that the other fifty per cent. of us could very easily finance this whole enterprise. Ten cents a week from ten millions of us would be $50,000,000 a year. No missionary leader on this Continent is asking for any more than that; and that is only one fifth of what we are now spending at this moment on religious work in our own country. Is it not reasonable for us to give at least one fifth as much to the spreading of the Gospel through the whole non-Christian world as we spend on our own religious privileges here in America? What we need is system adopted everywhere, and pushed by men and women and young people, trying to educate the whole Church membership and enlist the whole Church membership as systematic givers week by week. System, not spasm, is God's method; and never until we introduce system into Church finance can we stand behind this great army of missionaries and increase it as it ought to be increased. But, my friends, I believe with all my heart that it is possible for the Church of our day to send out and support a force of workers adequate to carry the Gospel to the last person on the face of the earth, and do it within the lifetime of many of us who sit here this afternoon. For twenty years I have had as the motto of my own life the motto of the Student Volunteer Movement, "The evangelization of the world in this generation." Ten of those years have been spent in India face to face with the problem. The other ten years have been spent in this country doing what I could to enlist the Churches in sending out and supporting an army of missionaries. With those twenty years of experience behind me, I believe it is possible, and probable, in the present temper of the Church, and with the marvelous providential movements in human history, that before another forty years roll by we shall have planted the Church of God as a permanent institution in every community on the face of the earth, and given all mankind a chance to know our Christ. Then all tears will be wiped away, and the city of God will come down out of heaven upon earth, and all things will be made anew. So far as I am concerned in this enterprise, I should like to concentrate my purpose for the rest of my life, and have you concentrate yours with me, if you will, in the spirit of a great missionary who has gone, who said: "If God will show me anything that I can do for the redemption of the world that I have not yet undertaken, by His grace I will undertake it now, for I cannot, I dare not, go up to judgment until I have done the utmost God enables me to do to diffuse His glory throughout the whole wide world." AFRICA The Destiny of a Continent Industrial Storm-Centers in Africa Points to Emphasize in Carrying the Gospel to Primitive Peoples in the Light of Experience in the Indies Evangelistic Harvestings in Africa The Continent of Opportunity |