William E. Doughty

“ O America, America, stretching between the two great seas, in whose heart flows the rich blood of many nations, into whose mountain safes God has put riches of fabulous amount, in whose plains the Almighty has planted the magic genius that blossoms into harvests with which to feed the hungry multitudes of earth, nursed by Puritan and Pilgrim, defended by patriot and missionary, guided by the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, sanctified by a faith as pure as looks up to heaven from any land, O America, let thy Master make thee a savior of the nations ”

“ If the riches of America are to be a resource and not an incubus, a highway and not a terminus, American men, to whom God has given the ability to get great wealth, must be brought face to face with the challenge of the needy world in order to save them from the disaster of selfishness and sin. God is not grieved when his men get rich, but he is grieved when riches are not invested for the enrichment of the world. ”

“ World Conquest Is the Biggest Business Proposition Before the Church.—The enterprise has in it all the elements that go to make big business so fascinating to strong men. Here is an opportunity not only of displaying the business talents which men have, but to display them in an enterprise which brings the most satisfactory returns to men in the way of the enrichment of their own lives. The keenest sagacity of business men is sorely needed in all the councils of the Church to-day, and in no place is the need more urgent than in the service of world-wide missions. ”

“ The coast-line of the United States is very extensive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is surely significant that God has given America control of so much coast-line on both oceans and so many harbors for commerce and as distributing centers for the gospel. The most significant thing about our past is that we grew out of the best life of Europe and inherit the intellectual and moral fiber of the Anglo-Saxon. One of the most significant facts about our future is that with three thousand miles of coast-line we face toward the Orient where the coming world conflicts are to be waged. ”

“ The supreme question of missions is how to multiply the number of Christians who, with truthful lives and with clear unshaken faith in the character and ability of God, will, individually or collectively, or coöperatively as a church, wield the force of intercessory prayer for the conversion and transformation of men, for the inauguration and energizing of spiritual movements, and for the breaking down of all that exalts itself against Christ and his purposes. ”

“ Japan was quick to see that this was one of the secrets of the power of Western nations. Nowhere is there a more marvelous example of an entire nation going to school than in recent years in Japan, where probably a larger percentage of children of school age are actually in school to-day than in any other country in the world. It is generally acknowledged that America has set the pace for the world in her system of common schools. Education, not ignorance, is everywhere the mother of devotion. ”

“ The sovereign summons to men is the summons to prayer. It is a call to use the great unused human resource of power. It is a call to every man to walk with the tread of a giant "an open but unfrequented path to immortality." ”

“ It wrenches men loose from their limitations and projects personality into distant lands. It is the lever of God to pry continents and dead civilizations up into newness of life. It is the power which helps to lift history out of its bed and puts it down into new channels where it belongs. ”

“ A speaker at the Edinburgh Conference declared that some missionaries read the Lord's command as though it were written 'Go and teach all nations the English language.' Macaulay says that whoever knows the English language has 'ready access to the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and stored in the course of ninety generations.' The English language is the language of liberty, of law, of morals, of high ideals. The English Bible, which has molded Anglo-Saxon civilization, is making no small impress on world civilization. ”

“ If the missionary principle is not unalterably entrenched in the citadel of your life will you not resolve before you put this book down that henceforth all life shall be built around the one purpose which is most worth while;—to let life run out to the end rich and deep and full in the plans of God for the world? ”

“ When it is remembered that there are such multitudes of people who have never had a chance to adopt a living creed adequate to the facts of life; that there are still [Pg 61] whole nations which are the habitations of nameless cruelty; millions for whom as yet Christ died in vain; vast regions where there are a starless sky, a bottomless need, a life full of fear and a future without hope—this certainly presents a task which may well test to the utmost the vitality and devotion of Christendom. One look at the immensity of the problem drives us back upon the measureless resources of God. ”

“ This involves not simply a prayer for ourselves in a few hurried sentences at night, when too tired to remember what has been prayed for when the words are said, not a few fragments of time given to this most important occupation, but prayer, central in life, having a clear space in which to live and breathe and yet not confined to times and seasons but mingling with the whole of life. Sadly it must be confessed that intercession is not yet the passion of our lives.
Prayer gives quiet confidence that things really happen when men pray. It is as vital as muscular force, as real as electricity. ”

“ Prayer is the only element which can quicken information into inspiration, transmute interest into passion, crystallize emotion into consecration, and coin enthusiasm into dollars and lives. Resolved, that we seek by every means to convince every man that, whatever may be his contribution of money or service, he has not exercised his highest influence, performed his whole duty, nor enjoyed his highest privilege until he has made definite, believing prayer for missions a part of his daily life. ”

“ As we remember Jesus Christ, and recall the kind of tasks he has given his men to do, the kind of men he expects us to be, as we lift up our eyes and look into the upturned faces of the thousand millions of people who know not God and remember that we are the men who must bridge the racial gulf and capture the world for Christ, we may well be moved by a solemn sense of our responsibility. ”

“ Let us in the beginning frankly face the fact that there is no call which involves more of unwithholding consecration than the life of intercession. There is no service which demands so much of a man, which digs down so deep into his life, which floods with such a searching light all the methods and principles by which men govern their lives. ”

“ Why not apply the same methods and skill and intense application to the work of the kingdom of Jesus Christ? There is no business in the world comparable with it from the standpoint of immensity—there are hundreds of millions of people involved, and not a foot of soil where a man lives is excluded from the plan of Jesus Christ. There is no enterprise which promises [Pg 88] such inspiring and enduring returns from the investment. Its complexity and baffling difficulties are a challenge to the passion for mastery that is central in every real man. ”

“ The carrying of the gospel to all the world is every man's opportunity. There is no monopoly of a chance to serve in this war. This is the one opportunity which makes it possible for every life to influence the whole world. What then are the moral and spiritual demands which a world like ours makes upon men?
The answer to this fundamental question takes us back to the principles stated by our Lord. How did he expect men to relate themselves to this, his world task? ”

“ The crowded record of achievement in all the home and foreign mission fields of the Church is full of incidents of the truth of the principle just stated. Since it is the judgment of the missionary leaders of to-day that there never has been such an hour of crisis and opportunity in the world, then there never was a time when there was such need that men should covenant with God to wield the force of intercession. The victory which is achieved at the front of the battle will be commensurate with the volume of intercession in Christian lands. ”

“ While exact figures for the non-Christian world cannot be given, the significant fact is that there has been a marvelous expansion of Christian nations within the last one hundred years, far outstripping the expansion of other parts of the world. The nations which know most of Christ and his gospel have increased in numbers as well as in power out of all proportion to the rest of mankind. ”

“ There are to-day no lands in the world which are closed entirely to modern influence and only a few which do not at least tolerate the Christian missionary with his advanced ideas of civilization and progress. It is difficult to estimate the amazing changes in sentiment in lands where missionaries have been at work even for a generation, as in Korea, or for a century or more, as in India or China. ”

“ Counting the population of the world as seventeen hundred millions, if all the millions of Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, North America, etc., were in the one State of Texas,—not a man, woman or child anywhere else in the world,—there would be only ten to the acre! ”

“ There is but little in ordinary business to furnish spiritual stimulus. A church service one day in seven is not sufficient to cause the springs of spiritual power in a man's life to burst forth into activity. Here is a cause which brings the keenest intellectual and spiritual delight. The study of missions will give men a greatly enriched Bible because they will discover that it is the great missionary Book. This fact and the consequent intellectual and spiritual stimulus justify any amount of time spent in studying the program of Christ. ”

“ The first long step toward a solution of the missionary problem is this willingness to face the total issues involved without reserve and without fear.
The following pages present a condensed and swift survey of the unfinished task of the Church of Christ. The size of the task is sketched in its bold outlines. In this chapter is heard the cry that is flung out across the world to every Christian man. It is a cry of neglect and need, of urgency and crisis, the united voice of multitudes [Pg 34] among whom the forces of the new age are battling for mastery. ”

“ There are a thousand demands upon the time and strength of the modern man. They are bewildering and often conflicting. The Christian man is not less busy than the man of the world, and insistent calls are ringing in his ears every hour. The Church is increasingly needing his strength and leadership. The state calls, the city makes large drafts on his strength. What shall he do? What causes are most worth while? How shall he spend his energy and his money? What is the most alluring task? Let him choose the highest and the greatest way to spend his life. ”

“ If we could conceive of the Renaissance of learning after the dark ages, the interest in literature that came with the study of Latin and Greek, and the awakening of thought that followed upon the discovery of new worlds—material and intellectual—and then add to this the new forces of the Reformation, the reconstruction of men's moral and religious ideas and ideals and the recovery of the right of the individual conscience, and if to these we could conceive as added the French Revolution—the break-up of all that men had regarded as final in social and political organization ”

“ It should be sacrificial, bearing in mind that no fraction set aside can exhaust our responsibility or express the depth of true love for God.
Biblical and extra-Biblical history point to the setting aside of the tenth of the income as a minimum, and indicate a divine sanction of the practise and the amount. The tenth and Beyond is the Bible rule! The Old Testament emphasis is on the Tithe, the New Testament emphasis is on The Beyond. The Old Testament asks a tenth, the New Testament demands less but expects more. The one tenth tests our obedience, the nine tenths tests our consecration. ”