transform the man, no matter what may have been his antecedents, and however discouraging his surroundings. Then what a penetrating and transforming power there is in the quiet working of its spiritual leaven! what an intense touch, what a varied influence, what an allround enforcement of right principles and straight living! It is only as social activities are rallied around recognized principles, and inspired with Christian impulses, that the light breaks, and the life comes, and society becomes a new creature in which "old things have passed away." Dr. James Stewart, in his beautiful volume upon "Lovedale," that ideal missionary institution in South Africa, says in his chapter upon "The One Hope of Africa": "I never yet met an African who wanted to be troubled with the Gospel till it began to trouble him. But when it does trouble him effectually, marvellous is the change it makes. It would delight the heart of the most thoroughgoing evolutionist of the school to which the now distinguished author of 'Social Evolution' belongs, to see how the preferences and 'interests of the individual' become subordinate to 'those of the social organism,' and how the antagonism between 'the inner and the outer life, the natural man and the spiritual man,' is reconciled when the new religion lays hold of the slightly evolved primitive man. It all lies in this, that Christianity awoke the sleeping spiritual man. Or if the evolutionist, as necessary to his argument, will not concede that the spiritual man was sleeping, the new religion took him by the hand and led him out of a land of thick darkness, gloom, and horror,-filled with malevolent shades and dreaded spectral powers,—and brought him into the clear, sweet light of a simple belief in a God of goodness and love, such as Christianity reveals. It cannot be otherwise, since that religion comes from Him in whom is no darkness at all." 1

Christianity is morality, but it is far more than codified moral principles. It is religious consciousness, but it is much more than an inward emotional experience. It is truth, but it is something finer and better than a perfect norm of doctrine. It is truth lived, truth vitalized in character, truth assimilated and reproduced in Christian manhood and womanhood. In the lawless it can inspire the love of order and respect for authority. Nations of cannibals, as in the South Sea Islands, have been made so orderly and law-abiding that no armed force is needed to maintain the public peace.

There is a hopeful and permanent outlook to this transforming power of Christianity in the fact that it is the universal custom of missions to develop the missionary spirit in native churches, to establish 1 Stewart, "Lovedale, South Africa," p. 43

It carries with it the law of missionary service.

institutions and implant moulding agencies which become growing factors in social development. From every field which missions have entered, far and near, among receptive races as well as among those which were unresponsive and unimpressible, come the same tidings of the living energies of the Church of Christ, and its adaptation, due to the indwelling Spirit of God, to introduce a new era of social progress and nourish by its mysterious spiritual power the impulses and aspirations of a better life. Transplant the Church of Christ to any strange and hitherto alien society, and it carries with it that great law of missionary propagation which its Master has imposed; and what is the spirit of missions embodied in that great command of Christ other than the biblical or divine formula for individual and social reform? It will make the Church of Christ in all heathen lands the herald of a new age. With Christian missions come Christian literature and organizations for its dissemination, of which those noble agencies, "The Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge among the Chinese " and "The Christian Literature Society for India," are conspicuous examples. Then, again, there are the vivifying and stalwart energies of Christian education, in themselves an immense increment to the vital forces of peoples who have hitherto lived in ignorance. The mission school is the maker of a new generation in mission lands, and a generation once educated demands a like privilege for its children.

Here are moral forces to conjure with in social development. They are the makers of character. They fit men to rule themselves and to rule each other, and no social conditions can be permanently bettered unless there is character, individual and social, back of them. Christianity is our only hope where these transcendent spiritual forces are to be planted anew in the deeper life of society.

VI

Christianity gives a new import and stimulus to benevolent and philanthropic effort. We might say rather that it advocates a new policy of kindliness, for heathenism, ancient and Christianity a stimulus modern, has practically no programme of philanthropy and humanitarian ministry. That this is true of ancient pagan cults is the testimony of history, emphasized by the highest scholarship. We do not mean that either in ancient or modern times separate acts of beneficence and

to philanthropy.

charity were not to be found, or that there were no tender hearts, no humane sympathies, among individual members of society. Instances which reveal kindly instincts and generous deeds on the part of largehearted men and women may be found, as Uhlhorn has indicated. What we understand, however, by benevolence, philanthropy, and humanitarian charity, as a religious principle in contradistinction to an individual impulse, as a code of duty in social relations, as a system to be advocated, sustained, and continuously practised, was not, or is not now, a feature of ethnic religions. If the semblance of an argument to the contrary can be based upon the theoretical content and philosophical spirit of their sacred books, it cannot be argued with any success from the evidence of practical living, or demonstrated by the actual outcome of the social history of heathen society. Regulated and systematic berevolence is historically a child of Christianity.

Illustrations from the

field.

We could present not a few instances and illustrations from modern missionary history revealing the growing impulses of Christian philanthropy in the lives of converts and in the organized work of mission churches. Examples like the Okayama Orphanage of Mr. Ishii, in Japan, are visible signs of that philanthropic culture which the religion of Christ, in spite of many hindrances, quickens as beautifully in the Christian hearts of the present generation as in those of any other age. The postal telegraph and the railway were hardly established in Japan before a "Postal Telegraph Mission" and a "Mission to Railway Men" were organized-the former reaching with a gift of the Scriptures and a personal message each postmaster in the realm, and the latter visiting through its agents every railway station in the empire, providing it with a copy of the New Testament, and seeing personally its employees. There are already movements on behalf of prisoners both before and after their exit from the jail. And so the great outlying field of social life, with its toilers, its outcasts, its distressed victims of crime and calamity, is entered by the Christianity of mission fields-somewhat slowly, it may be, but in the end as earnestly and as loyally as elsewhere; and the same sweet story of largehearted charity which has characterized its earlier history will mark the development of the Christian spirit in the environment of modern heathenism.

Another and a very important phase of this philanthropic ministry is its programme for the elevation and improvement of society, as well as for the relief of its distresses. Christianity stands for the making as well as the mending of mankind. It believes in the discipline of im

provement as well as in remedial offices in behalf of the unfortunate. It is working towards a new heaven and a new earth," and not merely one which is patched up and made over on the principle of doing the best you can with a hopeless case.

Missions entitled to a place among civilizing agencies.

I do not see, therefore, how any candid student of the social and economic progress of the world can fail to be impressed with the value of missions as a reforming, civilizing, and philanthropic agency. Where can we find an instrument so capable, so efficient, so direct and resistless in its workings upon the inner life and the outward form of society? Are we to wait forever upon evolution, when the secret and power of involution has been committed to our trust? In this sphere of service missions have been quietly working to an extent which has secured scant attention in comparison with their more spiritual achievements. Their social influence has developed slowly and is not conspicuous as yet in its visible outcome; but the task is immense and difficult, and it is not strange that results should mature gradually and somewhat obscurely. If, however, it is true, as we may surely believe, that Christian missions carry with them to non-Christian lands a sovereign and effective method of deliverance from sin, while at the same time they implant in the life of society new capacities, new desires, new motives, new appreciations, perfected ethics, vitalized moral forces, and fresh altruistic impulses, then Christianity is indeed the hope, as its Master is the Light, of the world. It is, at least in its spiritual sphere of influence and impulse, a divine remedy for social evils and a divine programme of social progress. Its ideals and its resources for realizing them form the noblest spiritual gifts of God to human society. We do not mean, of course, that the religion of Christ indicates precisely the practical method of dealing with social problems either at home or abroad, but that it creates the atmosphere which makes the approach to their solution easy and possible; it lays down principles which are a mighty solvent of difficulties; it puts into the heart the paramount desire for an honorable and fair adjustment of mutual rights; it gives an infallible standard of justice and morality which points to the conditions of a true and permanent civilization. No problem can be finally solved, no evils can be effectually banished, unless approached in a spirit essentially Christian. No system of sociology as a whole can be finally adopted and made serviceable to society, unless it is pervaded by Christian ideals and controlled by Christian principles.