We are living in a world era. The time of the tribes and the nations is nearing its end and the universal age is upon us. The Orient has lived its hoary life about out, and the Occident sits upon the throne of the morrow.

      Prince Ito asked forty years ago for Christian science and art, but thought Japanese religion quite good enough for his people. In these last years he has paid Christianity the tribute of saying that without it the young manhood of Japan would have sunken into gross immorality.

      Chang Chi Tung, who wrote "China's Only Hope," told his countrymen that they must either put vital moral power into their religion, or that Christianity would take the nation. His was the heart of an aged Confucian patriot crying out in despair, but his despair was prophetic, for Christianity is to-day taking China. China is the widest open door that offers opportunity to the living church to-day. The centenary has just been celebrated, and there are nearly two hundred thousand actual members of the church, with eight hundred thousand adherents.

      It took five hundred years to make Britain Christian; Germany waited seven hundred years for the complete conquest of the apostolic faith; and

ALVA W. TAYLOR.

these were small peoples. Shall we wonder if all vast and populous China is not converted in a century?

      Japan is on transition ground. She has won her great war and is turning soberly to develop her new economic life. She is studying herself as never before and listing her securities. She finds great industrial prowess, resources that will need close cultivation and the application of genius, a patriotism that is unconquerable so long as her cause is just, and a religion that has served its time. Missions are reviving there, and Japan will see a Pentecost some day. Already it is claimed that a million young men take the New Testament as their moral code. To-day is the day of the open door into these [159] deeps of Japanese life. There is a sweetening of the springs that will cleanse the stream in the course of time.

      Korea is to-day the richest of all the rich fields of Christian conquest. Six years ago in northern Korea there were but one hundred Christians; the country was ruled by freebooters and anarchy reigned. To-day there is a church for every three square miles of territory, each one erected by the hands of native Christians, and fifty thousand confess the name of Christ. A quarter of a century ago there was not a native convert in all Korea, and the task looked hopeless to all eyes but those of missionary faith. There gathers at Pyen-yang a prayer-meeting of fifteen hundred; the chapels of Korea are crowded; they support nearly all their own evangelists and call for teachers. The churches have grown 61 per cent., and the schools 72 per cent., in a single twelve months' time.

      Africa only challenges Korea to-day in its apostolic successes. We all know the story of Bolenge. It will yet rival Uganda. But a generation ago Stanley found Livingstone in the heart of the continent and begged him to return to civilization, only to be refused. His eyes were dimmed with fever and toil, but they were alight with the vision he had seen of a redeemed Africa. He had threaded her jungles and scouted her plains and he knew her suffering, but in the deeps of his soul there was a serene and abiding faith that a deliverance was coming. Stanley said he left London the greatest infidel in England, but that there in the wilds of the Dark Continent Livingstone converted him without a word. He sent his famous challenge to Christendom for missionaries to Uganda, and to-day the work of Mackay is glorified by a nation made anew, and the splendid young English statesman, Winston Churchill, who has recently toured that land, says a greater per cent. of the people there attend church regularly than in any place on earth. In that region four hundred thousand have heard the Christian evangel. Their response ought to point our feet to the wide-open doors of Africa.

      All Islam is in a ferment. Turkey, Persia, Morocco, and even little Tunis, are turning from the old to the new. The Sheik-ul-Islam bids all good Moslems call the Christian brother. India has seen great revivals in regions far removed from one another within the past two years. Sir Edwin Arnold said you had as well try to sweeten the waters of the sea with cologne as to make India Christian; and even fervent and faithful Henry Martyn thought that the conversion of a Hindoo would be as great a miracle as the raising of the dead; but half a million Christians in India to-day answer the doubts, and the vastness of the leavening power of the evangel in these hundred years is best told by men like Chunder Sen, Mozoomdar and Lieutenant-Governor Frazer, all good imperialists, who yet testify that the missionaries have done more for India than has even the power of the British Government. The remotest regions of the world are open to-day, and from every corner of the earth the call of the cross comes unto us. We have the gospel of power, and but need the faith to enter in and take the world for our Lord and for his Christ. "The harvest is ripe, but the sickles are few."

[CCR 159-160]