No wise commander-in-chief of great armies and navies, engaged in a desperate struggle to subjugate the enemies of his prince and greatly enlarge the borders of his kingdom, fails to frequently take note of results, to compare and contrast the victories and defeats of army with navy, torpedo boat with dreadnought, cavalry with artillery. Thus he is able to conduct his campaign wisely and victoriously. Then he knows which division has been brought to the highest efficiency and can be hurled with deadliest effect against the strongholds of the foe. By contrast and comparison he learns the weaknesses and defects or uselessness of other divisions, and can so strengthen and develop the weak or discontinue the useless as to make his forces invincible.

      It is certainly not too early for us, if we are as wise as the generals of this world, to stop for a little time at the close of this first century and sum up results. It is time to set the victories and defeats of different lines of endeavor over against each other. Not that one division of the work may be built up at the cost of others, not that the great achievements of the one may be so magnified as to make despicable the less successful work of another, but that weaknesses and defects may be discovered and so remedied or [183] eradicated that all will be brought to the highest efficiency, and so move on that every defeat of the past will be swallowed up in ultimate and glorious victory.

      Every phase of our work is here represented. And each claims for itself the privilege to tell from this platform the story of its achievements upon the battlefield of our God, and submit proof of its right to join in the hosannas of rejoicing.

      To me has fallen the difficult task of recounting in some measure the record

J. W. YOHO.

of the contribution of the State society to the victories of this first century.

      I come not as a partisan of the State society to magnify and emphasize its place and work to the hurt and harm of other organizations. I would speak as clearly and fully as I can in this brief time, of its achievements and its failures, of what it did, and what it might have done and why it did not.

      Difficult as it may be to assemble all the glory deeds of other organizations, and so present them in a brief time as to make a worthy showing of their work, doubly hard is it in this case, for I speak not for one organization, but for more than two-score.

      During the year 1907-8 our State societies raised and expended about $200,000, organized 172 new congregations, baptized nearly 15,000 persons and had more than 12,000 other accessions to the church. Up to the close of the missionary year, 1908, the five societies of Missouri, Kentucky, Texas, Indiana and Iowa had raised and expended $3,171,370, had organized 1,948 congregations and 2,700 Bible schools, and had baptized more than 160,000 people. During the last thirteen years the Illinois society has raised $113,112, organized 80 congregations and a like number of Bible schools, and added 10,725 persons to the church by primary obedience. Two-thirds of all the congregations in Ohio have been organized or aided by the State Society. Every strong church in New York is a child or a ward of that organization.

      Had the State society contributed nothing more than that represented by these few soul-stirring facts from the history of some half-dozen societies, there would be full and sufficient reason for every man whose arm has been bared in the work of the State society, to claim a place in this convocation of the people of God and a right to join in every prayer of thanksgiving, song of praise and shout of victory.

      But, above and beyond all this, the State society has made a contribution to our movement that can never be told in terms of mere figures and bare statistics. The value of a regiment to an army is not to be determined solely by the number of the enemy it kills, prisoners it captures or forts it reduces. Its chief work may be in so supporting other regiments as to make possible their victories.

      This, I take it, has been the chief value of the State society, its best contribution to our work. That contribution can not be determined by the amount of money raised and expended, the number of congregations organized and maintained, the people brought to Christ and built up in him. These are vital and valuable. I rejoice in such evidences of a contribution that is worth while. But the real contribution of the State society is that, in the very nature of things, it has been vital and basic and fundamental to all our other organizations of apparently wider outlook and broader purpose. Before the Educational Society, before the Benevolent Association, before Church Extension, before the C. W. B. M., back of the F. C. M. S., back even of the A. C. M. S., and, in a sense, fundamental to them all, were a few live State societies. Not fully organized and manned as at present, but, like the pioneer blazing the path through the trackless woods and making possible the seemingly greater work of those who come after him, so these State societies led the way and blazed the trail through the trackless wilderness of congregational independence and the stupidity of [184] individual effort to the Canaan of missionary co-operation and the wisdom of unity in service.

      The State society planted the seed from which sprang our giant tree of co-operative and organized service, bearing its varied fruits of philanthropy, benevolences, church extension, education, evangelization and salvation to the waiting and needy peoples of the world for the glory of the King Eternal.

      Not only was the State society vital to the beginning of all co-operative service, but it has been, still is and ever will be fundamental to the largest growth and development of that service. The State society, properly organized and efficiently manned, so comes in contact with the congregations as to foster fellowship and unity, impart knowledge, quicken the missionary spirit and stimulate generosity as no other organization can. As it furnished the seed from which sprang our missionary tree, so it now waters and fertilizes and digs about its roots and makes it to bud and bring forth fruit not only for the State, but for the world.

      We grant to other organizations of national and world-wide scope, credit for much help in various ways in forwarding the immediate work of the State society. And we claim from them some credit for basic and essential aid on our part in their work. So interwoven have been all our labors that the F C. M. S. is helping to save men in your State and mine, and the Christians in far-off India and China owe their salvation through Christ in part to the work of the State society. No line of demarcation presents itself. No man can say that this or that in its entirety is strictly and wholly the work of any one organization. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that the contribution of the State society has been vital and essential to marry of our best achievements, and that its work will be as fundamental in the second century of our history as in the first.

      Readily do I grant that the State society has not been ideal. Its work has not always been of the highest standard. But it has not offended above all others. Let the organization that is without sin cast the first stone.

      But the State society must not be content to be as good as others. Only the best is fit for our King.

      Reasons there must be for our failures and defeats. These we should find and remedy. What have they been? I asked the men whom I have named to point them out.

      Most of them gave a number of reasons, but all can be summed up in a very few. A reason given by nearly all was lack of co-operation on the part of the churches and the failure of Christian business men to take an interest.

      The charge is serious and true. But in behalf of the State society I reply that the fault is not hers. It is as much the business of every other congregation and individual to be interested in State Missions as it is that of those now interested. And no church worthy of the name, no disciple fit for the kingdom, ever demands that any organization use the energy it ought to apply to the salvation of men to the work of interesting the indifferent. It is a wasteful use of our Lord's forces and treasure. Shame, everlasting shame, on the Christian business man, who is so busy gathering gold that he can never show his face in a State convention or at a State board meeting, but must needs commit the great and vital interests of his Master's kingdom into the hands of a few preachers whom he believes never had any business sense and never will have. God help him! he needs to look after his business interests here, for he has none in God's eternal kingdom.

      Another reason: The State society has too often failed to get the strongest men of the State for leaders. The importance of its work, its opportunities for service, the responsibilities of its obligations, have not been appreciated. The average minister feels that he is stepping down instead of up when he leaves a moderately good pulpit to become secretary. Little men have been called to this great work because they could be gotten cheap.

      We need to learn that no pulpit of any State is bigger or more important, and that no pulpit of most States is so big and so important as the secretaryship of the State society. We shall continue to do inadequate work until big [185] men, with big hearts and minds cast in statesmanship molds, are ready to accept this, work at any cost, and the rest of us are ready in the same spirit pay them a living wage for their service.

      The little men are not to blame. God made most of us little, and by no power of his own can the pigmy become a giant. No, no! the cause of failure couches at the door of the big man who so lacks his Master's spirit of service that he is unwilling to accept this position with its obligations and responsibilities, or, lacking Christ's spirit of humility, he feels it beneath his dignity, unworthy of his honor, to become a mere secretary.

      The calling of inefficient men makes failure inevitable; failure demands a change, and a change of officers brings new methods. Each year a new policy is in vogue and new plans are tried out. Continual change of plan means continual failure. We must learn that it is the line-upon-line and precept-upon-precept policy that wins.

      Chief, however, among all our causes of defeat is lack of vision. We have failed to see and fall in with the program of Jesus. To many of us there has been granted no vision of the State society's relation to the salvation of the world. We have not seen and realized its place in our Captain's plan of conquest.

      For many there is but one missionary organization--the State society--and it is of the State, by the State and for the State; there is nothing beyond its borders. All work, all effort, all results, are hemmed in by State boundary lines. The society is interested solely with a few hundred thousand, or, at most, a very few millions, of men.

      But this is an age of big things. We are thinking in terms of skyscrapers 800 feet high and flying machines 800 feet long and a North Pole with two United States flags nailed to it, floating in the torrid winds of a hot debate. It takes something big to stir us. We are not concerned about a mere million, be money or men. Only tens and hundreds of millions appeal to us and move us to action.

      And thus the man who thinks the State society is concerned only with the salvation of a million or two, lacks for his work the power and impact of the soul-stirring thought of unsaved hundreds of millions. And, lacking that thought, his purse is never agitated below the surface. What he needs is to cast these few of his own State into the flux and flow of the world's unsaved multitudes and learn that we are to save our neighbors in order to more easily and effectually save the hosts on India's plains and in Africa's jungles.

      There are those who can not be satisfied with working out such a small proposition as the evangelization of one State. They long for the thrill and impact that comes with the vision of heathenism and paganism's enslaved and degraded hundreds of millions. They have ears only for the moan of India, sad India, and eyes alone for the open sore of Africa. They want to save the heathen because they are innumerable, and not because they are dear. And thus they are led to ignore every claim of the State society in order to minister to those afar. And so it happens that not a few men and congregations give fairly liberally to preach the gospel to the multitudes in Timbuctoo, and scarcely a pittance to preach it to the men of Timbuctoo in their own State.

      They need a vision of the State society laying broad and deep the foundations, and making large and bounteous the base of supplies, that they who fight in our stead on "the far-flung battle-line" may have efficient and ample support.

      Enlarge your vision, O ye State workers! Know that yours is the greatest missionary society under heaven, that none is more vital and fundamental to the enlargement of our Prince's domains, that none is so all-inclusive in its plans and purposes, that it alone of all societies takes anxious thought for every man, even from the man in the next house to the man out at the world's end. All these it would bring as trophies to the Master's feet; all these it would bring as golden sheaves to his garner and see them saved to life eternal.

      "He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together." [186]

[CCR 183-186]