VI

THE WAR AND THE NATION'S LARGER CALL TO WORLD EVANGELISM

When the war began we saw in the nations immediately involved, and in some smaller measure in our own land, an illustration of the fact that in time of emergency or strain man instinctively contracts and conserves his resources, while God releases and enlarges his. That is a fact of no little significance in its bearing upon our thought with regard both to the being and to the character of God. And now that we ourselves also have been drawn into this great struggle, we are seeing among ourselves the illustration of this same fact in a far more vivid way.

Questions have been at once raised on every side as to whether some of our activities must not be abridged, whether, in the interest of achieving the great task that is now clearly paramount, other things must not be sacrificed. Very naturally these questions will arise most insistently with regard to those interests that seem most remote-our activities and relationships among distant peoples. Are

we to acquiesce in the idea that these must be held now in abeyance for a while, that the immediate purposes of the nation will require every energy and resource, and that the Christian church, for the time being at least, must postpone her work of larger world evangelization?

The attitude which the churches will take on this question will be largely determined by the attitude which we take, and which other gatherings of men like ours also will be taking, across our land, within the next few weeks. If our position is weak and faltering, if our own conviction is not clear and solidly grounded, we shall see within the next few months the collapse of some of our most important Christian activities, and shall have in subsequent years slowly to recover ground that in these days, in our negligence and carelessness, we had surrendered.

Are we prepared this morning deliberately to commit ourselves to the position taken in the Message of the Council to the churches read a few moments ago, that there must be no curtailment whatever of the activities or ministries of the Christian church? What I have to say is in support of the position, not only that there should be no such curtailment, but that we are to hear and to respond to what the topic assigned to me describes as the larger call of the war and the nation to the church in its task of world evangelization.

We have no need to be affrighted in such a situation as this. It is such an easy thing to lose the right perspective, to be intimidated by what is contemporary, not to see things in their large proportions, and not to draw, as we ought clearly to draw in this hour, the true lessons of the past. Great national crises have not been deemed sufficient in the past to justify the extinction of the church's missionary activities. The great missionary organizations of Europe grew up in times of national strain, greater and more critical even than those we face to-day. The first American missionaries went out at the beginning of the War of 1812. When the Civil War broke upon our nation, when, if ever, it could be said of a people that every energy and resource was enlisted in a great life and death struggle, even then the heart of the nation in the Christian church was not stifled nor blunted in its consciousness of missionary obligation. There are some here who will recall the facts of which our friend, Dr. Houston, was speaking in a noble address in 1888, when he referred to the origin of the missionary work in his own church in the Southern states: "When in that day," said he, "she found herself girt about as with a wall of fire, when no missionary had it in his power to go forth from her bosom to the regions beyond, the first General Assembly put on record the solemn declaration that, as this church now unfurled her banner to the

world, she desired deliberately and distinctly to inscribe on it, in immediate connection with the headship of her Lord, his last command, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,' regarding this as the great end of her organization, and obedience to it as the indispensable condition of her Lord's promised presence.' And the spirit that found expression in that first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church was the spirit that was reigning in all the churches of the nation, North and South, during the days of the Civil War.

I made a study not long ago of the reports of one of the foreign mission boards for the four years of the Civil War, to find out whether our fathers had felt that they were justified in those days of crisis in curtailing the church's work of world evangelization. Not so. This deliverance of one church would be found, I think, characteristic of all: "New missions are needed. Shall they be established? Is it inquired, where are the means? We answer, they are in the hands of the Christians, who are God's stewards. Let a proper demand be made. Let this Assembly call on the churches, and that call will be answered. The response will come in the spirit of that consecration in which all God's people have laid themselves and their all upon his altar." It would be found in the case of many of our denominational missionary agencies