Our plea is Christ's plea; the significance of which is found in God's word. In the very beginning of our movement we adopted as our motto: "Where the Bible speaks, we will speak, and where the Bible is silent, we will be silent." The very heart and life of the plea is missions. Everything else is incidental. It is an invitation from the Father to his prodigal children to "come home." It is the waybill telling us the route. The first principles are not faith, repentance, confession and baptism; but "Go preach the gospel to every creature."

      There are those among us who have unfortunately never discovered the first part of this commission; they have permitted it to be drowned in the depths of water baptism. They know every damp verse in the Bible, and imagine themselves sanctified and glorified when in a "'spute" with a pedobaptist. There is only one way to close their mouths and that is to ask them for a dime for missions, and they will disperse immediately. Has it ever occurred to you that ten times as much is said in this Book on missions as is said on baptism? We hear much about the pious non-immersed, and we wonder if they shall be saved? We had better be a thousand times more concerned about these non-pious immersed. The question is not, Can the heathen be saved without the gospel? but, Can I be saved if [150] I fail to give the gospel to the heathen? The Bible is not only a book that is filled with missionary texts, but it is a book full of missionary activities.

      Christ was in the broadest and the deepest sense of the word a missionary. The first recorded sentence that fell from his lips is fraught with this spirit, when he says: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" He had compassion on the multitude, and his exhortation is: "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he send forth laborers into his harvest." So great was his work when on earth that he sent forth the twelve with seventy others to evangelize the Jews. The composition of his parables is held together by missionary threads. Read the parables of the sower, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost boy! The epistles are nothing more nor less than letters from a missionary to churches begotten by the missionary spirit. After the resurrection of our Lord he gives the Great Commission: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

      The moment I became a disciple of his I became obliged to co-operate with him in the salvation of the world. A Christian is a miniature Christ--a human Saviour. Christ's mission was to give to us an introduction to the Father; the mission of the church is to give to the world an introduction to the Son.

      When on earth he said: "Ye are the light of the world." The mission of light is to shine--to dispel darkness. What would you think of a man who would try to box in all of the sunshine? It can not be done. The moment he has boxed it in he has boxed it out. You had just as well talk about a man boxing in all of the sunlight as to talk about a church, an anti-missionary or o-missionary church, being a church of Christ. He said: "Ye are the salt of the earth." It is the business of salt to save; but it must came into contact with the thing needing salvation before it can save. God ordained that men should be saved through preaching, and he further ordained that men should preach. The plea that we give to the world is: "Faith comes by hearing the word of the Lord." To hear, there must be a preacher, and to preach he must be sent. It is the business of the church to send. The church is not only human, but divine. It is the child of the Holy Spirit. Every disciple that is evangelical must be evangelistic. In the early church we are told that the disciples went about preaching the Word.

      Missions is the exercise of the saints. It is to be the final test of discipleship.

W. H. BOOK.

We are very much frightened over Higher Criticism, and well we may be; think of wasting time discussing the two Isaiahs when millions have not heard of the first one! And yet, some of these who are so frightened, are going to be lost because of their lower living. At that day it will be: "I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and ye gave to me drink."

      The church of Christ not only contains the missionary message--it is the missionary itself. The moment it ceases to be, it forfeits its divine charter and becomes extinct. Its members can not pray the prayer given by the great Teacher, "Thy kingdom come," without committing themselves to the whole missionary enterprise. The man who can pay, and won't pay, has not the right to pray, "Thy kingdom come."

      Down in Old Virginia, in the boom days, an old farm was laid off into lots, a few houses were built and all indications pointed to a young city. Some fellow started a newspaper and called it "The Goshen Blade." The city did not materialize; but from the car window you can see the sign on an old, dilapidated building out in the field, "The Goshen Blade." It is an everlasting falsehood. It advertises what is not there. Think of the churches claiming to be churches of Christ in this world which are nothing but a form with a name!

      We are sometimes met with the following reasons for not doing missionary work: "We have heathen at home." If [151] so, they are heathen in spite of the gospel. They have been evangelized. We are not commanded to Christianize the world, but to evangelize it. The business of a witness is to testify, not to convince.

      When the Lord fed the multitude he commanded them to be placed in rows, fifty in a row, and he gave the food unto his apostles, commanding them to feed the people. Suppose Peter had started down one row and had found a man with a poor appetite, who refused to eat, and then Peter had gone back to the first one and come on down the row again to the sick man, offering him food, repeating this a number of times, leaving the large number who were begging for bread unprovided for; what do you think the Master would have said to Peter?

      "But," you say, "charity begins at home." All of this I deny. Paul says charity seeks not her own. It begins away from home; and when it gets home and stops, it is selfishness.

      Of all religious peoples, we are the least excusable for not spreading the seed of the kingdom. We reason that the Spirit operates through the Word, and further, that man is saved through the instrumentality of man. Man must preach this Word to man. If this is not done, man is lost, and we become guilty of his blood. We are peculiarly fitted to do this work. Located in America under the protection of the old flag; with a universal language; a membership whose veins course with the blood of Japheth, and with an open Bible, free from all human creeds and opinions of men, and with Jesus Christ our leader, we can not fail.

      After all, beloved, the missionary question is a preacher question. A missionary church must have a missionary preacher. One who preaches missions, preaches it often and preaches it strong. Preaches it like he meant it. One who preaches it by his acts of self-denial. He must have the courage to tell the close-fisted, niggardly, covetous, narrow-hearted members who belong to the Get, Gouge and Squeeze Company they must let go or be damned. Why is it some churches are afraid of the contribution plates? Why are they not as important as the communion plates? The member who is afraid of the contribution plate has no right to handle the communion plate.

      One time I was holding a meeting in a religious graveyard, trying to revive some of the dry bones, when two of the petrified officers went down the aisles with two poles. On each one hung a bag into which pennies were supposed to fall if they had a chance. Those officers went like they were ashamed, in rather an apologetic manner. After they had returned I said: "Go again; take your time and let the congregation sing:

      You can no more give for me than you can believe, pray and partake of the Lord's Supper for me. On one occasion I was called to baptize an old man who was sick. I suggested to his wife that she had better obey the gospel too. She replied that "if Matt. gets baptized it will do for both of us." You smile at that; but how many husbands give for their wives?

      Dear brethren, let us stand by the missionaries and the missionary organizations. When we help these men and women we are helping in a grand and a noble work. We propose to carry the gospel, not only into every land, but to every creature. We have undertaken to explore every neighborhood, and to unfurl to the breeze the bloodstained banner from every hilltop, and to lift aloft the accents of redeeming love from every valley.

      Yes; we propose by going round with this gospel message from land to land and from sea to sea, and by persisting in this God-ordained work from generation to generation, to redeem our wretched world from ignorance, superstition and sin and all of the evils that darken their train, and to win it back to God who loved it and gave himself for it. We have resolved to be a self-denying, self-sacrificing band, never to give up the battle till all the ranks of darkness are driven from the field; not till every throne of human despotism is overturned and every temple reared to paganism and antichrist is utterly [152] subverted, the foundations upturned and the soil upon which they stood has been followed by the gospel plow and sown with the seed of the kingdom. When every fetter and chain and dungeon, every rack and stake and infernal machine of a grinding and unrelenting Papacy and priesthood is broken to pieces and that man of sin is destroyed by the presence of our coming Lord. We are determined, by God's help, to be discouraged by no difficulty, disheartened by no accumulation of defeat or disaster, until we have gained our purpose. No, we shall not retreat from our mission of love until the name of Jesus shall be as familiar as an household word in every land and tribe of earth; not until the wandering Scythian and the wild Arab shall have it in their tents and rejoice; not until the jubilant song of salvation shall go up like a shout from the whole earth into a sky that bends down to kiss and embrace a renovated and once more redeemed and rejoicing world.

[CCR 150-153]