of the world. The door is wide open for such evangelization everywhere. In any part of Japan to-day churches, tents, or halls will be packed to hear such preaching. In China no accessory inducements are needed. The throngs will come to hear the gospel alone. And what foreign missions reveal as to the world's need of Christ and its readiness to hear about him is true at home. Let men offer Christ directly to their fellow men and see if it is not. But whether or not it is so here it is so abroad and every missionary society could now double the volume of its direct evangelistic work if it had the resources and still fall far short of improving its opportunity.

4. The new duty of the nations toward Latin America. The opening of the Panama Canal, the Panama Missionary Congress, the development of affairs in Mexico, the conditions in Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Santo Domingo, and the whole body of our relations with Latin America demand that we conceive our duties toward our Latin-American neighbors in the highest spiritual terms. It will be fatal to pitch our intercourse with Latin America on the level of mere commercialism, and the Monroe Doctrine is no adequate statement of our political relationship. Latin America has a right to share in the best of our moral and religious inheritance.

5. Foreign missions represent an unflinching faith in the sole adequacy of Jesus Christ to meet all the needs of men. That is the supreme aspect of foreign missions which we need to present. It is the gospel.

WHAT ASPECTS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS SHOULD BE EMPHASIZED BY PASTORS AT THE PRESENT TIME?

BY CANON S. GOULD, M.D.

Sec'y of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada.

1. THE effectiveness of the presentation depends largely upon the adequacy of the setting. A world-wide subject such as the missionary commission of the Christian church requires a world-wide setting. "The next ten years," declared the Edin

burgh Conference in 1910, "will in all probability constitute a turning point in human history." The men who drafted and sent out that message stood midway between two of the most wonderful decades in history. To appreciate its full significance we must bear in mind the chief events of the decade then past, and endeavor to grasp the potentialities of the one then rising above the horizon. The South-African War; the Russo-Japanese War; the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty and the establishment of the Chinese Republic; the so-called "bloodless revolution" in Turkey with the pitiful abortion of all its hopes and promise; the league of the Balkan nations and their victorious onslaught upon Turkey; the quarrel of the victors among themselves and the second Balkan war; the deadly seed left by the latter out of which sprang the immediate ostensible causes of the present struggle. He who would present the cause of foreign missions efficiently must lay hold upon the bearings of these events. Otherwise he cannot adequately commend the cause to others, or appreciate himself the significance of the other half of the sentence noted above, "and may be of more critical importance in determining the spiritual evolution of the race than many centuries of ordinary experience."

2. The fundamental truth that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men" requires continuous assertion and insistence. The wounds of war present a curious analogy to those of surgery. Some leave behind pockets of malignant germs which prevent healing, and result in obstinate conditions of infection the only cure for which is reopening and radical measures. Others, and they are many, are clean-cut, as it were aseptic, and heal immediately by "first intention." An example of the former is seen in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and of the latter in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. It is of the utmost importance that the wounds caused by the awful surgery of the present war should heal by "first intention."

3. The supporter of foreign missions must insist that the purpose of God, who "will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," is the one certain and abiding element in history.

4. "Nationality," said Mazzini, "is sacred to me because I see in it the instrument of labor for the good and progress of all men." The war has reemphasized this mysterious yet powerful principle. The redemption and sanctification of the spirit of nationality is one of the great missions of the Christian faith.

5. Social and economic changes brought about by the war must not be allowed, by a sort of backwash of the old conditions, to work injury to non-Christian or undeveloped races. The Japan Times, in its issue of July 23, 1916, discusses the restrictive measures adopted against alcohol by certain of the countries at war, and then makes this comment: "The prohibition countries of the West, while restricting the liquor traffic within their boundaries will by no means try to prevent its growth outwardly. . . . . Suppose Asia becomes a dumpingground for western wines and spirits. Suppose ours is turned into a land flowing with sake and all that benumbs moral fibers-a land of bacchanalian gaiety and unbridled sensuality. That will bring us foreign travellers of a class, possibly in very great numbers, who will be free with their money. Such a prospect we should imagine with the greatest horror. The proud Empire of Japan will then have gone on the road to decay and ruin. As the tide of sobriety and industry rises abroad we must be prepared for moral ebb in these parts." The interdependence of humanity is a foreign missionary message of the first importance. "AM I my brother's keeper?"

6. The implementing value of foreign missions. By the war, capacities in danger of inundation by prosperity have been rescued; moral fibers attacked by the rot of indulgence have been retempered; splendid qualities of sacrifice and service have been aroused and exhibited on an unparalleled scale. All these gains, and others, must be sustained and perfected by some great implementing factor, whose root has no connection with human frailty or passion.

even God with a

7. "Behold your God will come recompense." Is there any pathway visible, across the loss and ruin of the war, for the coming of the God of recompense? The recompenses of God take on the form of added responsibilities.

The penetration of the non-Christian world into the realities of the war and their perception of the real issues at stake is one of its most impressive and unexpected features. The nation or people which looks only for increased privileges as the result of the war, fails to recognize the day of its visitation and will be unknown of the God of recompense. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. . . . The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God . . . . . and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

II.

SURVEY OF THE MISSIONARY WORLD

MOSLEM LANDS

THE COLLAPSE OF ISLAM

THE great outstanding fact in the missionary situation to-day is the collapse of Islam as a world power. This is an event of prime historical importance which no intelligent Christian can afford to overlook. Mohammedanism is not only the principal obstacle to the spread of Christianity, but also Christianity's leading rival for the possession of the world. Do the people of our churches realize that right under our eyes Mohammedanism has received a mortal blow as a world system? We have asked James L. Barton, D.D., Foreign Secretary of the American Board, well qualified for the task, to state briefly the effect of the war upon Islam. To this we append as a typical incident, a description of the success of missionary work among Moslems in Java, and as the typical personality, the story of Dr. Shepard of Aintab.

EFFECT OF THE WAR UPON THE
SOLIDARITY OF ISLAM

BY THE REV. JAMES L. BARTON, D.D.

THE general war has broken up the solidarity of Islam, shattered its boasted unity, and destroyed its hope of final physical triumph over Christianity and the other great religions.

From the beginning Mohammedanism has been the open rival and foe of Christianity. Only the religion of Jesus Christ has stood across its path and only Christians have made an attempt to convert the followers of Mohammed. All other religions have looked with indifference upon Islam, while Christianity, through the Bible translated into the languages read by Mohammedans, and in many other ways, has attempted to lead them to Christ. This they have violently resented throughout the twelve centuries of contact and conflict.

It was Christianity that carried out the crusades against the Mohammedans of the Holy Land and it was the armies of Christian rulers which turned back the Moslem hosts when they set out to invade France in the eighth century and Europe through Vienna in the seventeenth century.

There are some 230,000,000 Mohammedans in the world, dwelling in many countries, as in Macedonia, Turkey, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Persia, Russia, Afghanistan, Bokhara, India, China, and the East Indies, and in wide areas in the Sudan and middle Africa. There are more followers of Mohammed on earth than there are followers of any other religion except Christianity. One seventh of the world's population is Mohammedan.

Because of their solidarity, pride of religion, deep-seated prejudices, dream of victory over all other religions and the expectation of final triumph in the establishment of a Moslem theocracy over all the earth, it has been almost impossible to command a hearing for the preacher of Christ among them. They have looked upon Christianity as inferior to their own triumphant