CHRISTIANITY ESSENTIALLY A MISSIONARY RELIGION

RT.-REV. T. U. DUDLEY, BISHOP OF KENTUCKY

I had a man tell me once, a man who had been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, a man who called himself a Christian man, that he didn't believe in foreign missions. I have been thinking, as I sat here to-night and looked into your faces, that I would that he were here with me. I want to tell you, first of all, what I answered that man, and how he looked at me, dazed and astonished and almost angry at my reply. I said: "You don't believe in foreign missions?" "No, I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ was organized to be the mightiest teacher of good morality; that the Church of Christ was organized to be the most effectual promoter of charitable enterprise, to be an instrumentality for gathering the alms of the charitable and distributing them to the needs of the miserable. I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ is the mightiest police force that any government can support. But I believe that that is all of it. I believe that all this talk about carrying the gospel unto people who have it not, i3 quixotic, that the men who talk it are delirious dreamers." This was the way he talked to me. I said: "My friend, you don't believe in Jesus Christ." That startled him. "The man who doesn't believe in carrying the gospel of Jesus Christ unto all men everywhere does not believe in Jesus Christ. No interest in missions means no interest for that particular thing for which Jesus was content to be born and to live and to die. No interest in missions means no interest in that particular warfare that must be waged, fought out to the very end, before the King can come back again to reign over His people. Yes, no interest in missions means no interest in the Lord Himself." That was my answer. Was I justified in making such a reply? Or did he go away rightly esteeming and declaring that I was a fanatic, a fool, that I was forgetting the good and the possible purposes for which the religion of Jesus Christ was designed and was accomplishing here in our own country, and was spending my strength in seeking people to give themselves and their means in vain endeavor to carry this religion to those who need it not, who can not receive it, who are benefited and blessed more by their own existing systems of religion? Was I justified?

Now, let us look a little while at the very beginning of this religion in the world and see if we can understand what was the concep

tion of it which was held by the Founder of it and by the immediate receivers of it, to whom He gave His charge that they should go into the world. Suppose that Jesus Christ had never given that charge, had never spoken as He did to those eleven men who stood there around about Him on that hillside whence He made ready to go to His Father. Suppose that Peter and James and John had never heard any commandment, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Could they help going, if they believed what they said they believed? Could they help going, if it was a real thing that had gotten hold of them, as they declared? I can remember, as you can, that, but a little while after the proclamation of this great evangel had begun, one day two of these men went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, according to their custom-because they were still Hebrews. And you remember how they found a man sitting at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, who begged of them as they came. And the answer came back, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto thee. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth rise up and walk." And you remember that, when the people were gathered together there the concourse came because of the wonder that had been wrought-and the captain of the temple, with his guard, came and laid hands on these men and put them into the common prison, and the next day they were brought before the great council, and they charged them that they should not dare any more to speak in that name, the answer came back, which is the expression not only of the essential principle of the Church of Jesus Christ, it is the expression as well of the essential principle of the spiritual life in Christ-"We cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard.” Commandment needed? No, we cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard.

The man who has seen anything, who has heard anything, must perforce, yes, by the very indwelling power of that which he has seen and heard, must perforce go after somebody else. Isn't it so? Hasn't it been so from the beginning? Ah, true, if the religion of Jesus Christ is only one of the religions of the world; if the religion of Jesus Christ is only one of the systems of religious philosophy that master minds have formulated; if to be a Christian is only to consent to that traditional interpretation of the universe and of our life and of our hope which our forefathers have received; if that is all, then I will get through with it just as cheaply as I can. Yes, rightly so, if that is all then naturally I don't want anybody to take part in it except those who hold like opinions with those that I hold. If the Church of Jesus Christ is only an instrumentality to help the miserable, to provide for the material wants of those who are poor and

hungry and naked and sick and in prison, to provide entertainment for one day in seven-that one day in seven which men have found out for themselves must be separated, that one day in seven when the straps must be unbuckled and the burden taken off the beast's back lest it shall be broken-the French people, you know, tried to change the calculation and make one day in ten to suffice, but found that God was wiser than they. But if that is all of it, if the Church is nothing more than that, let us get through with it just as cheaply as we can. But if what I say I believe, I really believe, that the religion of Jesus Christ is the religion, not a religion; that there is none other name given under heaven whereby a man can be saved-saved here in this world and therefore saved in any and every world that there shall be hereafter that there is none other name given under heaven whereby I can be delivered from the power of my evil nature and be enabled to break the power of these evil surroundings about me; that there is none other name given under heaven whereby there shall arise within me a new manhood in the likeness of Him, the Perfect Man; if I believe that-oh, if I am like that poor man in the Scriptures, and have been sitting at the Beautiful Gate of the temple of our humanity asking alms of all that pass by, asking help of this teacher and that, "Tell me how can I find life worth living? How can I bear the burdens placed upon me?" and none gave me an answer, and I was in poverty and wretchedness until a man came and said, "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth arise and walk," and now in the power of that life I am able to rise and walk and leap, I am able to look my Father in the face and never be afraid, look my brothers in the face and not be ashamed, how can I help going to tell some man that he shall come and receive like benediction from heaven? If I have been blind like the poor man in the Scripture, unable to see my way, groping helpless and hopeless, and a man named Jesus has come and touched my eyes and now I can see, yes, see the good hope that there is for humanity, see the open door and the Father's house and the welcome of the prodigal, and the feasting, and the joy of the universe because the sinners are redeemed, how can I help going, that I may bring those that are blind as I was, that He may touch their eyes? Is it not so, my brother men? Say not these apostles well, what is the essential principle of the Christian life as of the Christian Church, "We cannot but speak the things we have seen and heard"?

And yet I have got nothing to speak? I have got nothing to tell? I have never even gone and found even a little child wandering here in the streets of the city where I live to make him know that God is his Father. There is no record there in the angel's book that

I have ever tried to bring anybody back home with me. Well, then, have I heard anything? Have I ever heard the sweet voice, to which my brother made reference in the beginning, saying unto me, "Son, thy sins are forgiven thee; rise up and walk"? Was I otherwise than deluded when I thought I heard the voice of pardon and of blessing? Oh, yes, we ask for a test; we want to be sure that we are in very deed joined to Jesus Christ. Here are a great multitude of our countrymen who are hurrying away on the one hand to some supposed self-constituted vicar of God in the world. Here is another crowd looking for some mysterious, incomprehensible witness of the Spirit. Do I really want to know whether I am one with Jesus Christ; whether my sins are forgiven? See, He said to a man lying in the midst there before Him, to a disappointed man, I suppose, to a man who had come expecting the healing of his body, He said to him, "Son, thy sins are forgiven thee." But was that all I heard him. say? No. I dare affirm it with reverence. He never said those "Rise up and walk."

words alone to anybody. What was he to do? A conferred capacity to keep His commandments is the pledge and the guaranty of the pardon. The gift of power is the proof of deliverance from penalty. That thou mayest know that thy sins are forgiven thee, what? "Rise up and walk." That is the command, because in rising and beginning to walk that other principle can come into play, then thou canst not but speak the things thou hast seen and heard. Here is the principle of missions. Mark you, it is not something superimposed, not something artificial or accidental, that may or may not be. I repeat, and dare affirm it without the fear of possible denial, that Christian missions are the fundamental and essential and bottom principle of the life of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the life of the individual man in Jesus Christ. Ah, yes, in that old time Andrew went to find his brother to come see a man who must be the Christ. Philip bursts on the solitude of Nathaniel in his garden in Galilee, with the exultant shout, “Have done with thy doubts and fears. We have found Him; it is Jesus of Nazareth." A woman of Samaria leaves her waterpot at the well and goes to tell her countrymen, "Come and see a man who must be the Christ. He has told me all the dark, unhappy history of my life, and now He has spoken to me that He might give me the water of life." Hasn't that been so ever since? Was that only an ephemeral interest born of novelty? Hasn't it been true that this same Spirit hath caused, hath made the extension of the Christian Church, and thus has made human history and human civilization what it has been? Isn't it true that the principle of foreign mis

sions has been the principle that has determined the course of the development of mankind and made human history what it is?

Time would fail me, but I want to speak for two or three minutes about the fact that the men always, the men who have been the leaders in Christian missions, have been the class of men that you belong to; yes, I was going to be bold to say, the class of men that I belong to. I, too, am a student. I feel I have a right to look into your face and say I am student. The days are not so long past that I can forget the little company in our college room, when we tried to cheer one another and by united prayer and study to help forward the consecration of our lives. Yes, the class that you and I belong to have been men always and everywhere, who, by their intelligent devotion, by their learning, as by their zeal, have been the champions of the missionary cause. There is not time for me to run down the long roll or even to call the names of the list of the heroes. First of all, the man who stands first, who? The greatest man that ever God suffered to live on this earth, I believe. His name was Saul, until they changed it to Paul. He was what? He was a student. He was sitting at the feet of a man named Gamaliel, a teacher at Jerusalem. He was zealous for his country; he was a patriot, and therefore was an enthusiast for the law that was the glory of his country. He thought to himself he ought to do everything against this Jesus. He treated with scorn and contempt the claims of His religion. But His religion was making headway against the faith. of his country, and this man Paul was seeking to destroy that. He was convinced, he was converted. What does that word mean? Sometimes in our wrangling and battling we have overloaded words with such an embroidery of ingenious device that we cannot understand them. What does "converted" mean? It simply means "turned round." He had been walking away from God, and he turned around and began to walk toward Him, and they led him to Ananias in his blindness and Ananias laid his hands upon him and he received his sight. He was a student, and he was the beginning of foreign missions.

Oh, well, but some one says, that is so far back. Tell us something that we can see and hear nowadays. Has the Spirit stopped? Look here around me! As I stand here now I am thinking how not many years ago there came flashing across the cable beneath the sea the intelligence that away down in the South Sea Islands a ship was lying in the offing, close to one of the islands, with a little crew aboard of her. The owner and master had gone to the island the day before. Suddenly the crew see a boat drifting out toward them. In it there lies a dead and senseless mass covered with an