A careful analysis of Paul's heavenly vision on the Damascus road will reveal at least three elements. It was a vision of Christ, a vision of opportunity and a vision of duty. A vision of Christ, not merely as a great man, but as his divine Lord, his sacrificial Saviour, his triumphant King. A vision of opportunity, unlimited and splendid, which comes through the possession of a vital truth coupled with matchless power to proclaim it, and a vision of duty which grows out of the vision of Christ and the open doors of service. Thus, having his vision, he became the world's great missionary.

      So to-day, as we have gathered here to rejoice over a century of fruitful history and to look into the larger future, we have our vision. It, too, is a vision of Christ, of opportunity and duty. As we lift up our eyes and behold the vast and varied fields, we are confronted with the greatest missionary opportunity that has come to any people since the days of the apostles. [206]

      A view of the mighty West reveals the greatest mission field on earth. "Westward the star of empire takes its way." The tide of population is rapidly rolling toward the setting sun. The development of the giant West is stupendous. All the public lands are now being thrown open. The wave of population will soon reach the Pacific. What a wonderful field? In Montana the increase of population for the last two years is three times as rapid as before and the State is changing rapidly from ranges to farms. One who had been a missionary in Africa, but who is now on a board directing work in Montana, says he found no greater needs on the Dark Continent than in Montana. Out of more than two thousand school districts, four-fifths of them have never been reached at all by any kind of religious influences. In the mountains of Idaho are hundreds of young people of eighteen years who have never heard a sermon. In a certain district of western Washington there are 937 towns and villages without any religious privileges whatever. One-half of the children in the western part of that State have never been enrolled in a Sunday-school. In southwestern Oregon is a county in which live more than twenty-five hundred people who are absolutely without church privileges. It will only be a few years until the larger portion of our population will be in the West. Thousands of men with all kinds of business, knowing that investments to-day mean large returns to-morrow, are moving into this growing country. When every other institution and business concern sees its golden opportunity there, why should not the church of Jesus Christ move with like alacrity?

      Not only a growing West, but a growing South. The tide Southward has begun to set in. The matchless development of the South is rapidly attracting capital, business enterprise and population. The church that is to figure largely in the Southwest must begin now. The spirit of the land is free and democratic, and they demand a religion of the same character. There is no religious body that can make such advance in that country for the amount invested as the Disciples of Christ. Shall we go in and possess the land, or wait until the day of opportunity is past? The letter-head of a notorious gambling resort has the motto, "We Never Sleep." Shall we be equally alert for the kingdom of God?

      Here also is nine-tenths of the negro population in America. Outside of Africa, no country has so large a negro

A. HUNTER.

population as the United States. The negro problem is one of the gravest with which we have to deal, and must be worked out by those who believe in the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus. The negro is here to stay, and he is here in growing numbers. What he needs is moral and religious development, the sympathetic help that can be rendered by those who believe in Jesus.

      It is not only a growing field, but a cosmopolitan field as well. The foreign problem in our midst is appalling. Within the past five years the total number of immigrants has been larger than the combined populations of the New England States, and within the last ten years greater than the entire population of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

      Seven out of every ten of our present immigrants settle in our great cities. They constitute about 90 per cent. of the slum element of our city life. How are they being Americanized? The vote-buyer, the saloon-keeper, the bribe-taker is giving them their chief lessons on what America is and what America stands for.

      Many of these people break away from the Old World ideals. Some sweep to frightful extremes. Among the Bohemians the reaction against Catholicism has been towards atheism. Atheistic societies have been formed, newspapers are printed to spread broadcast atheistic doctrines, and there are three hundred so-called Sunday-schools where children are taught that there is no God and that religion is a snare and a delusion. Mr. Nan Mashak, a Bohemian, [207] says there is one influence which can, in a measure, counteract this atheistic tendency, and that is the Protestant faith, and what presentation of the Protestant faith can do this so effectually as the plain and reasonable teachings of the Disciples of Christ?

      These peoples in our midst are a great missionary opportunity. What we need is not higher walls to keep the foreigners out, but more consecrated and devoted Christians to work with them and teach them the highest ideals of American and Christian liberty.

      Our missionary vision must include the rapid growth of our cities. The city has been called "the scab on the body of humanity," "the plague spot of nature." Here extremes meet. "The rich and poor meet together," "Dives and Lazarus are brought face to face." The rapid growth of the city is the most important social fact before us. At the dawn of the nineteenth century only one-twenty-fifth of our total population belonged to the city, while "the twentieth-century city" contains at least one-third. Here is centered also the more dangerous elements of European countries which drift to our shores. More than 70 per cent. of it is found in the cities. About 90 per cent. of the people in Chicago are foreign by birth or parentage. One city missionary visiting from house to house in a single week offered the gospel to fifteen nationalities.

      The cities are the centers of crime. Wickedness is multiplied by increasing the facilities and opportunities for crime. Philadelphia and Pittsburg are exceptionally good cities, but "in Philadelphia there is seven and one-half times as much crime to a given population, and in Pittsburg and Allegheny City nearly nine times as much, as in the average rural county of Pennsylvania."

      The only remedy for the perils which confront the city is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only power that can save a soul is the only power that can save a city. Two men were walking in the slums of a great city. The skeptic said to the Christian: "Here at least you must admit that the religion of Jesus Christ has failed." "By no means," replied the other, "it has never been tried." We sometimes say the people have drifted away from the church, and this is too often true, but is it not equally true that the church has drifted away from the people? Or why is it that so many churches drift away from downtown where the people abound? Too many churches are seeking to save themselves rather than to save the souls. In New York City, in a certain section, nearly two hundred thousand have moved in while seventeen Protestant churches have moved out.

      What in Christ's judgment was the climax of his greatest works? When John asked for proofs of his Messiahship his reply was, "Go tell John the sick are healed, the blind receive their sight, the dead are raised," but the climax of all is, "The poor have the gospel preached unto them." This last, the climax, is the only one of his greatest works that remains unchanged. Shall not the church prove her divinity to the world by preaching the gospel to the poor?

      I believe that an aggressive campaign for Home Missions before the eyes of men, is the greatest cure for the world's skepticism. Men of the world are too apt to believe foreign mission work to be the result of sentiment. Why, they ask, spend money and men on people abroad, while millions of negroes and foreigners and the slums at our very doors are forgotten? Let the church accept the challenge, and, while not doing less for the foreign field, nevertheless take hold of the work at home on such an immense scale as to forever cure the world's skepticism.

      But we must respond to this vision quite as well for the world's sake as for our own. There must be no selfishness in our outlook. The program of Christ involves the evangelization of the whole world.

      The basis of Foreign Missions is not found in foreign soil, although self-support in Foreign Missions is beginning to be tentatively considered. But for some time to come its chief basis must be found in America among the churches planted and yet to be planted by Home Missions. If this source of supply were cut off for a single year, the mission stations in China, India, Africa, and the islands, would wither [208] like branches severed from the tree, or wheat whose roots are cut.

      During the past year we have sent more than a half-million missionaries to Europe. That is doing business on a large scale. They have paid their own expenses and draw no salary. They are not accused of preaching for money. They are not preachers of doctrine, but preachers of life. Their faith has its roots in what has been wrought in their own experience. What kind of missionaries are these people? That is the supreme question. It is not a question whether we shall be a missionary people or not. It is purely a question as to the kind of missionary people we shall be. We are compelled to be a missionary people; our prosperity, our inviting resources, our practical way of doing things, have determined that. American ideas are going the world around, the impress of our life will be upon every nation, we are destined to shape the future thought and life of the world. Shall these ideas and influences be Christian or commercial? Shall they bear the message of the Golden Rule, of the rule of gold? That will depend entirely upon the way the church of Christ shall shape our American life.

      With this vision before us, we are impressed that Home Missions is our immediate duty. The decisive blows of conquest must be struck at once. To delay is to postpone the victory and to invite defeat. For reasons of exigency, the critical bulk of the work must be done now. The people whose conversion presents the most urgent necessity of all the world to-day are the Occidental. The people who dwell beneath the stars and stripes must take the lead in the final conflict of Christianity for the conquest of the world. We are thus a chosen people. Now is the critical time. This is the strategic field. We can not afford to wait and the world can not afford to wait. We dare not drift, we dare not hesitate.

      Thus we stand before the open doors. The hour for action has come. The Lord commands, heaven is expecting, the fields are waiting, and God, through every open door, is beseeching us to open our hearts, our hands and our purses that we may worthily go in and possess the land.

[CCR 206-209]