of our service has been worth. If it is true in anything, it is espe cially true of divine things, that what costs little is worth little. It is a serious and a difficult problem very frequently, to know how far we should look to and accept the protection of our Governments, or their vindication, in case of riot and difficulty. I have seen both plans tried. I have never seen the plan in the long run successful, of demanding help and vindication from man. Wherever I have traced the result, in the long run there has been more harm done than good, and I have never seen the willingness to suffer and leave God to vindicate His own cause, His own people and their rights, where the result has not been very beneficial, if there has been rest and faith in Him; and praise God, I have known a number of such instances in the mission field. I have known of riots that have never been reported, never been published in any papers anywhere, have not been known by many, even of those who are connected with the same mission, and wherever the course has been taken of just leaving God to vindicate, and leaving God to restrain, and leaving God to help, the issue has been marvelously successful, and it has led to great joy and great helpfulness. This is a power which God has given us, which sometimes we may leave out of account.

One other power is the gospel itself. The gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. Now, there are different ways of preaching the gospel. There is the plan of preaching the gospel and looking forward to the gradual enlightenment of the people, to their being saved as it were by a process of gradual instruction and preaching. And there is an

other method of preaching the gospel; believing it to be the power of God unto salvation; preaching it in the expectation that He who first brought light out of darkness can and will at once and instantaneously take the darkest heathen heart and create light within. That is the method that is successful. It has been my privilege to know many Christians-I am speaking within bounds when I say a hundred-who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour the first time they ever heard of Him. The gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation.

There are many other powers which time forbids our referring to, but God has not left us without power for our enterprise; there is the power of sympathy, of love, the power of adaptability, and, most of all, the wonderful power of prayer, which might well be the subject for a whole paper. Is not the power of prayer very much the gauge of our power to do God's work successfully, anywhere and under any circumstances? This power, this marvelous power, would bear much more attention than we have ever given it. We may well thank God that He has not left us a difficult service without providing us abundant power, adequate power and resources for its discharge for all time, even to the end of the world. Amen.

The Obligation of this Generation

MR. EUGENE STOCK, Editorial Secretary Church Missionary Society, London, Eng.*

There are six questions which might be put and answered, and which I should love to put and answer, on this great question of the Evangelization of the World. The questions are these: What

is it? Why is it? By whom is it to be done? How shall it be done? Where shall it be done? When shall it be done?

When we have answered those questions we have the subject pretty well before us. What is the evangelization of the world? Mr. Speer has already told us. Why should it be done? two reasons. One is quite enough: Because Christ said so. But there is another reason which is worth remembering: Because common-sense tells us so, for if it be a fact that a Divine person came to bless mankind, all mankind have a right to hear of it. The best Mohammedan, the most virtuous Buddhist, the man who is the best credit to his heathen religion, put him on the platform, and, tell me, hasn't he a right to be told of Christ? Who is to tell him but you and I? That is missions.

By whom is it to be done? Of that I will speak directly.

How shall it be done? That is what we have been discussing all the week; by the various methods which have been under consideration.

Where shall it be done? That needs no answer. It has to be done in the worst climates. When you give your sons and your daughters to the mission societies, don't say: "Yes, they may go, but not to Africa." Let them go where the Lord sends them. That is the only safe place. And when shall they go? Mr. Mott will speak about that.

By whom is the work to be done? Have you ever noticed this, that although the angels would rejoice to do it, the Lord does not permit that. It is very striking indeed, when you read the book of evangelization-that is, the Acts of the Apostles-to find angelic interposition in but eight cases, but in not one of those does an angel preach the gospel. You remember the case of Cornelius, his prayers and alms ascend to the Lord, and the Lord sent him an angel, but the angel could not tell him of Christ. The angel simply told him to sail along the coast to Joppa and go to a certain house, and there he would find a man named Simon, a mere fisherman, and he would tell him what he ought to know and what he ought to do. Why is that? The key to it is in the Lord's Word, which He spoke last of all upon earth, " Ye shall be ministers unto me "—not heralds, but ministers of that which you know for yourselves. And it is the man who knows Christ as his own Saviour. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your own Saviour, your own King? Then you are the witness that God wants. Yes. And it is when one can go to the heathen of the world and say, The Lord has saved me from the guilt of sin by dying for me, the Lord is saving me day by day by the Holy Spirit from the

*Carnegie Hall, April 28.

power and pollution of sin, and the Lord is going to save me with His full salvation when He comes again-that is the man who can speak, and can go on his own account and speak out of his heart; that is the man for a missionary. Can you do that? If you can, I say the Lord is speaking to you to-night, you young man, you young woman of New York. I am not speaking to the missionaries now. I am speaking to a great many delegates. Ought not you delegates to go yourselves? Those who are not delegates, the public, men and women, the Lord is asking you to-night, but not individually as far as I know, as I shall mention in a moment. I want to mention some of the things I have seen. I am speaking of various Christian women who have gone out. I think of a cultivated young woman who is vice-principal of a ladies' college, with every kind of distinction and honor before her, putting it all aside to go and teach the girls of Japan. I think of the simple young lady, not medically trained, just with a little knowledge picked up in a dispensary, going to Persia, just because she was sent she was ready to go where the Lord sent her-and, in the simplest way, going backwards and forwards among the women, in Ispahan, Persia, and its suburbs, until the British Ambassador in Persia writes to the Prime Minister of England and says: "The Shah of Persia and his Government don't object to all the missionaries, but if you could quietly persuade the Church Missionary Society to withdraw that young lady, they would be less afraid of what might happen." And I think of a sister of a British Member of Parliament going out at the age of fifty-five. Why did she go? Because the Lord sent her. She could not learn the language; she was too old, and she found she could not do it. She learned the hymns by rote, without understanding them, that she might sing them at the bedside of patients in the mission hospital. But she did something else; she cared for the houses and homes of the younger missionaries, that they might have no domestic duties to attend to, so that they might go out and teach. She wrote to me: "I can not learn the language, but I am cleaning the pots and pans for Christ." There are diversities of government, but the same Lord is working

in all.

Now, are you going? I am not going to ask you are you going to give dollars. That is not the point to-night. I never feel quite warranted in going to a brother or a sister and saying individually, "My brother, my sister, you must go to India, or to Africa, or Japan, or China," because I don't know. What I do say is thisand I pray the Lord to say it to many hearts to-night-You must, by a deliberate act of surrender, say to your Divine Master who sacrificed Himself for you, "Lord, here am I, send me if Thou wilt; " and if it is an entire surrender, and if you are so accustomed to listen to that voice of Jesus that you know it when it is spokennot to the physical ear, but by the inner life, or by circumstances, or by the Word of God, or whatever it may be, you will hear it; and then if He says "I don't want you to go, I want you to stay at home and mind your sick aunt," then I say in minding your sick aunt you are doing as much as Livingstone did in Central Africa.

But you must be sure it is the Lord's direction. tion, and then you are right.

Get His instruc

I wonder whether you ever noticed this fact about those wonderful words in the sixth chapter of Isaiah. Did God call Isaiah that day? I do not see that He did. Isaiah was in a vision, and he heard a proclamation going through heaven and earth: Whom, whom, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? The voice did not say who was to go. The voice did not say whom the Lord wanted to send. The voice did not say what the message was that was to be sent. The Lord simply said, "I want someone to go somewhere and to say something." Isaiah was a volunteer; he was not addressed personally, but he answered the world-wide proclamation and said: Here am I, send me." And it was to go to his own people after all, and it was to give a message-oh, such an awful message, not the gospel message that you and I have, but a message of judgment. Come forward, therefore, as volunteers. Don't wait for some supernatural voice. Come and say, "Lord, here am I, send me where and to whomsoever Thou wilt.' That is the way to get the Lord's approval.

There is the answer, I think, to the question: By whom is the work to be done? By consecrated souls who offer spontaneously to the Lord, and who are ready to go or to stay, to live or to die, as the Lord pleases. Oh, are you ready for that? Then, perhaps, someone will say, " But if they all go forward the societies can not send them." Others say, "You know the evangelization of the world in this generation is impossible." A great many things are impossible which manage to get done.

In the year 1887 the Church Missionary Society, under special circumstances, came to the resolution, in the teeth of its Finance Board, to refuse no candidate who appeared to be God-called, on financial grounds. On this ground, not excitement, not gush-I believe I may truly say that-but on the plain, simple business principle that if God calls a man, the Lord will allow him to go, and the Lord will find the money; and 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 in prayer upon this subject-we didn't know what we were doing, it was no credit to us at all-but if anyone had said to us, You will treble your force in thirteen years," the answer would have been," Impossible." 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.

And,

Let me remind you of this: I do not care what Christian enterprise it is, I do not care what Christian work it is, if it be a work such as saying a word in season to your brother, in your bank, in your office, in your store-it is not an easy thing to do, is it? If it be to say a kindly word for Jesus to that young girl whom you

know, who is going to be ruined, and you want to rescue her from danger-it is not an easy thing, is it? Some would say, “ I can not.” Now, whether it be a little thing like that, or whether it be the great work of all the boards and societies in America going in for a policy of faith in the Lord, I want you to write upon any of these enterprises three mottoes: First-imagine it written in letters of fire across this hall-" With men it is impossible." That is true. Secondly" With God all things are possible." Isn't that true? What is the third?" All things are possible to him that believeth." MR. JOHN R. MOTT, General Secretary, World's Student Christian Federation, New York.*

We do not

We do not

There is a large and increasing number of Christians who believe not only that it is the duty of the Church to evangelize the world in this generation, but also that it is possible to accomplish the task. What is meant by the evangelization of the world in this generation? It means to give every person an adequate opportunity to know Jesus Christ as personal Saviour and Lord. We do not mean the conversion of the world in this generation. imply a hasty or superficial preaching of the gospel. use the expression as a prophecy. It calls attention to what may and ought to be done, not necessarily to what is actually going to occur. We do not minimize the importance of any method of missionary work which has been and is being used by the Spirit of God. We rather add emphasis to all the regular forms of missionary work, such as educational, medical, literary, and evangelistic. As Dr. Dennis says: "The evangelistic method must not be regarded as monopolizing the evangelistic aim, which should itself pervade all the other methods." The evangelization of the world in this generation should not be regarded as an end in itself. The Church will not have fulfilled her task when the gospel has been preached to all men. Such evangelization must be followed by baptism of the converts, by their organization into churches, by building them up in knowledge, faith, and character, and by training them for service. The great objective should be always kept in mind, namely, the planting and developing in all non-Christian lands of self-supporting, self-directing, and self-propagating churches.

It is the obligation of the Church to evangelize the world in this generation. It is our duty because all men need Christ. The Scriptures clearly teach that if men are to be saved they must be saved through Christ. The burning question then is, Shall hundreds of millions of men now living, who need Christ, and who are capable of receiving help from Him, pass away without having even the opportunity to know Him? To have a knowledge of Christ is to incur a responsibility to every man who has not. We are trustees of the gospel, and in no sense sole proprietors. What a crime against mankind to keep a knowledge of the mission of Christ from two-thirds of the human race! It is our duty to evangelize the world in this generation, because of the missionary command of Christ. It seems impossible to explain the final commission of

* Carnegie Hall, April 28.