There are challenges of many kinds. The vast ocean challenges the mariner; the mysterious stretches of the upper air challenge the aeronaut. Human need challenges the inventor. The North Pole challenges the intrepid explorer. But the greatest challenge is the challenge of Christ to the Christian. And the greatest challenge of Christ to the Christian is the challenge of world-wide conquest to Christian men.

      I. The challenge of the King is imperative.

      There are some things in a Christian man's life and work that are matters of

S. J. COREY.

choice and inclination. He can wear either a frock or a sack coat. He can part his hair on the side or in the middle. He may use a steam plow or cultivate with a mule and a double shovel. He may ride on a street car or choose to walk. He may dictate his correspondence or scrawl his own hand. But, men, there is no choice concerning our Master's last words. The great commission is not a suggestion, but a command. Christ did not say, "I would suggest that, if it happens to be convenient for you to do so, you spread the Word abroad." Christ did not even make a request, although the last request of a friend is a sacred thing. He did not say, "I desire you to go." Instead, in that last hour, with the burden of a lost world on his shoulders, he flung unflinchingly at them an imperative command. It was a plain, straightforward, comprehensive, unequivocal, peremptory, categorical, imperative "Go!" Oh, the audacity of that command! What a reach of years faced him--what a stubborn battle--how few to do the task!

      If there are any men to whom this should appeal, they are our men. We stand for loyalty to Christ. The challenge of the King's imperative should never go begging with the Brotherhood represented here to-night.

      The question of world-wide missions is the question of Christ. Christian men may question the method, but not the enterprise. To gainsay his program is to gainsay him. Christ said that he was the Son of God. To deny that is damnable heresy. He also said, with just as frequent emphasis, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." To deny that is as inexcusable and damnable heresy as the other.

      We are under orders. Christ's program is one of conquest. Men, he has said it--he has expressed his ultimatum. His bold call should make the very blood leap in our veins and challenge us to do his sacred bidding.

      II. The challenge of the world's need.

      The Christian whose sense of debt goes no further than his community has not advanced much beyond the incubator stage. We are all debtors to all the world. Men, the unsaved world has a grip on us because it needs him, and we have him. The law of even the [96] world is the law of compensation and a square deal. Any man who discovers good must share it with his fellows. The man who invented the sewing-machine would have been a knave had he padlocked it from men. If industrial need challenges a man's unselfishness, now spiritual need cries to us with trumpet voice. I read of three Michigan bums the other day. They sat on the grass playing cards while a boy struggled and choked and drowned in the canal at their very feet. Do you wonder that a posse was formed to hunt these inhuman monsters down like wild beasts? Men, every time my watch ticks to-night two human souls, strangled by a cruel idolatry and in the awful cramps of sin, go down and drown in the black waters of paganism! Is our sin any less than that of the wayside bums, if we lift not a finger to help?

      And it is not enough that they do not ask for Christ. The ignorant never ask. The man of Macedonia did not ask Paul to come to Europe. It was Christ who asked. The Macedonian did not want Paul, and persecuted him when he came. Our wild pagan ancestors fifteen hundred years ago did not want Columba, or Patrick, or Boniface; but God only knows where we would be had they not braved the dangers of sea and land to come to our wild great-grandfathers!

      Oh, how disease and misery call! The untended ulcers and the sightless eyes to which light could be brought! The pain-racked limbs pierced with hot needles to let the demons out; the fevered bodies; the rotting, but living, carcasses of brothers who have no help--how they call to us for aid, for a square deal before heaven! This all were challenge enough--but the spiritual need cries out a thousand-fold more. What are blind eyes when the soul is blind? What a flesh ulcer when the spirit is cancered? The challenge that should make our faces all aflash and aflame with the light of battle is the challenge of a lost world's need.

      III. The challenge of heroic endeavor.

      The evangelization of the world is a great, big job. Its accomplishment staggers the imagination. It is an undertaking of sublime heroism. Think of it, men! There are a billion people who are worshiping gods of their own making--a billion people in the utter darkness of paganism and despair! And they are to be won to Christianity, for Christ said to do it, and we have no alternative. The languages of all lands must be learned. Acquaintance must be had with the customs of all peoples. Great agencies must be built up in every land. Agencies of evangelism, agencies of education, industrial agencies. The call is for a mighty, sweeping campaign, that will touch the need of every soul from every angle. Millions of dollars must be collected and disbursed. A great, noble army of men and women must be enlisted, equipped and sent to the distant stretches of our Lord's battle-line. Men, what a task! What a chance! How the grandeur of this enterprise ought to fire our hearts and surge through our lives with its power. How it ought to drive us to our knees before God!

      See that daredevil aeroplanist take his life in his hands as he careens and circles through the conquered air! See the winner of the Marathon race as he staggers across the line--all in--every ounce of him spent for the victory! See Peary as he takes up the third hole in his belt, and, lean and flat as a board, takes death in his teeth and strives to win the Pole! Let me call your attention to Ray Eldred and A. F. Hensey as they cut their way through the jungles of equatorial Africa, preaching the gospel to those savage cannibals. See them wade the swamps to their waists! Watch them spend a whole day crossing a swamp and a river to reach a tribe which has not heard of Christ; their frail, dugout canoes sinking with them four times while they do it. Then watch them as they preach the gospel to those naked savages for the first time, and then, entrusting their lives in the hands of God, roll up in their wet blankets, thankful for the privilege of enduring for Christ's sake.

      Let me remind you of Dr. Dye going back for three long years among his dark-skinned people without his family; his noble wife, more heroic yet than he, who, on account of a frail body, stays bravely here and toils night and day with her pen for her beloved people; of [97] Dr. Zenas Loftis, a young, fun-loving, healthy school lad, after four months of perilous travel across all China, saying, "I am so glad I did not stop on the coast, but came up here where the people are so much more the bond-servants of sin." Christian men, I call that heroism. In the name of God let us stop soft-soaping young men into the ministry. Let us pause in our argument that large returns in personal joy, or even in souls won to Christ, come to the ministry, and let us challenge men to preach. Let us speak of lonely fields and sin-steeped cities; of stubborn idolatry and pagan walls to be razed. Let us recall Paul's heroic words: "A great and effectual door is open to me, and there are many adversaries."

      And I am not so sure that these of whom I have spoken are the most heroic of the missionaries. I take off my hat to the quiet, unobserved workers, who in the idolatrous monotony of India and China, with all the dead weight of an enervating heathenism about them, toil patiently, faithfully on, sowing the seed and patiently watering it with their lonely tears as they await the reluctant harvest.

      And we call this great, heroic work our work, and we glory in it. And we call these noble, heroic missionaries our missionaries, and are proud of them. Have we any right to claim the work as ours, or call the missionaries our own, unless we put the same earnestness into the support of the work that they put into its prosecution? The hardest kind of heroism is the heroism of self-denial, and that is just the kind that our Lord demands in this tremendous enterprise.

      IV. The challenge of a masculine task.

      The twelve apostles were men. Christ gave the great commission to eleven men. The Holy Spirit in initial power fell upon men. The first deacons to serve the multitudes were men. The missionaries set apart and sent forth by the church at Antioch were men. The greatest indictment resting against Christian men to-day is the fact that they have left the largest, hardest and most heroic task in the world largely to the women. Men, it is a shame! Jesus Christ was a man. Jesus Christ gave to us a manly gospel. He never said to men: "Go in out of the storm." He always said: "Come out into the storm."

      Brothers, the reports that our women are making this very day in this Convention are, I believe, as wonderful as the world has ever heard! And this very thing should bring a blush of shame to our faces. Are we men to tag on behind? Are we to follow in the dim and misty distance while our women and children lead the way? God forbid!

      V. The challenge of soul-breadth.

      No movement ever succeeded without a big job on hand. Secretary Macfarlane knew this in the beginning and on the threshold of his office sounded a clear, stern battle-call. His ideals for this Brotherhood are high and noble. The Young Men's Christian Association succeeds when it makes its chief end the difficult task of winning men to Jesus Christ. It fails when it forgets its end in its means and is content to simply sharpen men's wits with night classes, strengthen their biceps with dumb-bells and cleanse their bodies with needle baths.

      Christian Endeavor wins when it struggles with jail services, street meetings, vital charities and world evangelization. It loses when it is content with testimonies, sociables and consecration meetings.

      As a Brotherhood of Christian men we need a master passion. Something to save us from the commonplace and the selfish. Something marked with the stain of our Master's offered blood. Something that calls for red corpuscles and heroic endeavor.

      VI. The challenge of attainment.

      The watchword of the Brotherhood of Christian men is, "A Man's Work in a Man's Way." What is a man's way of successfully doing a big job? The digging of the Panama Canal is a man's job. It is the biggest single physical task ever undertaken by men. How was this task initiated and how will its prosecution be continued? Well, the first thing was to determine whether the canal would be worth while or not; the second step was to measure the work already done and count the cost of completion; the third step was the [98] arousing of favorable public sentiment; the fourth step was the authorization of the task by Congressional enactment; the fifth step was the securing of the right of way; the sixth step was the levying of the appropriation for the cost; and the last step is that in which our country is now engaged--making the dirt fly. That is the way men do big things in these days. Men, we are not digging a little ditch to connect one sea with another, on which the commerce of two continents may float. We are linking a lost race to God. We are digging a system of spiritual canals through the stubborn hardpan of heathenism that shall penetrate every remote land, ramify every pagan field, and carry the healing water of life to the last famishing, unsaved soul. What a call! What a challenge!

      We need no legal enactment--both God and our Saviour have authorized the world's evangelization. To question whether the undertaking is worth while or not is to question Christ and contradict our own salvation. The right of way has been secured and the last remote nation is open to the gospel.

      World-wide conquest is a practicable and possible task. President Taft said: "I used to rest content in a smug provincialism until I went to these foreign fields; now I know that their only hope is in Christianity." William Jennings Bryan said: "I have always been proud of my country, but I am ten times more proud now since I have seen the white line of churches, schools, orphanages and hospitals with which American Christianity has belted the globe." John Wanamaker, on his return from his trip to the mission fields, said: "The sad part to me is that I did not visit the fields earlier, that I might have given more and devoted a longer period to this greatest and most fruitful work in the world." And then he wrote out his check for $100,000.

      The gift this year of $10,000 from R. A. Long, the president of this Brotherhood, indicates how the work of Foreign Missions appeals to business men. G. H. Waters, of Pomona, Cal., who gave $5,000 for a new station in Africa this year, besides supporting his own missionary, was in the office the other day. He said: "This foreign missionary enterprise is about the most tangible and practicable Christian work I ever supported. Wife and I are not so young as we used to be, but we want to live long and work hard and make lots of money to put into this."

      One hundred years ago our world, for the most part, was a vast, mysterious and unexplored globe. Its distances were unmeasured and the peoples unknown. To-day the last land has been surveyed and its most remote tribe brought to light. Transoceanic liners traverse its seas; cable lines link up its continents; highways of commerce penetrate its jungles.

      One hundred years ago the Bible was an unheard-of book to seven-eighths of the population of the globe. To-day it has been translated into 466 languages, and is accessible to seven-eighths the population of the globe, as far as the translation is concerned.

      One hundred years ago Foreign Missions were an experiment. To-day we have a scientific basis for our work and a century of experience to back it up.

      One hundred years ago there were barely one hundred lonely, poorly equipped foreign missionaries in all the world. To-day there are nineteen thousand. And they have gathered about them and in turn have trained eighty thousand native evangelists and teachers, who preach the gospel of Christ every day to their people in their own dialect.

      One hundred years ago there were practically no native Christians in heathen lands. To-day there is a native church of over two million. The medical missionaries are treating a million patients each year. There are a million pupils in the schools in heathen lands.

      Christian men, if we are to take our share of the world's conquest, we must, within the next ten years, increase our yearly offering by $1,000,000 a year and raise the average gift to $1.25 per member. Who says we can not do that? Who dares say we can not? I am almost ashamed to-night to mention that meager standard to men like you. The Presbyterian men, in convention assembled last year, voted unanimously to increase their contributions for Foreign Missions to $5 a member. The United Presbyterians have undertaken [99] to increase theirs to $8 per member. They are already giving an average of more than $1 each for this great cause. The Protestant men of Canada, gathered in a great missionary convention in Toronto last year, started a campaign to raise the gifts of all Protestant Christians in Canada to $3.50 per member.

      In this great Brotherhood we have the men and the machinery. Let us face squarely this mighty issue. Let us tackle honestly this big job. Let us make our great Bible classes, our social clubs and our splendid banquets, stepladders on which to climb to this lofty aim. Let us infuse our great, rich Brotherhood with a campaign of sensible, manly missionary education, until our men are compelled to face the challenge of facts; and while we are doing this, brothers, let, us "make the dirt fly."

      When Chicago wished to free her vast population of the vile contamination and health menace of the sluggish sewage-choked Chicago River, what did she do? Did she fill that awful, putrid channel up? No. She made the dirt fly. Her engineers dug the channel deeper and wider. They connected her headwaters with the headwaters of the Illinois and turned her current the other way. Then it was that old Lake Michigan, with her unending resources of clear, crystal water, elbowed her way into the mouth of that stream and pushed its putrid tide out into the Illinois and on and on into the Gulf of Mexico. They made the dirt fly and the Chicago River was purged and purified.

      Christian men, let us make the dirt fly. Let us cut deep and wide in our lives the channels of world-wide benevolence. Let us go deep down and send out a worthy stream of money and men into God's far fields. Then, and only then, will God unlock the tides of his unmeasured grace and flood our lives and our churches with his purifying and satisfying waters of life.

      Men! Have we heard God's challenge, and as a Brotherhood of Christian men will we accept it?

[CCR 96-100]