ment of power.

vinced us that they are not gifted with the necessary moral force and spiritual vitality to carry society to higher levels and make its individual members each a new creature, in touch with the Christianity's endow- eternal Source of power, and moulded by saving ideals. We will endeavor now to complete our survey of the situation by a careful study of the special adaptation of Christianity to effect a permanent and saving transformation of society when once it has been introduced. Nothing, surely, has ever wrought in human history which was better able to accomplish radical and fundamental changes in the tendencies of society, and create an environment so directly conducive to the lasting well-being of humanity. Its great distinguishing characteristic, aside from the transcendent wisdom of its teachings, is its power of moral renovation and its motive energy. The trouble with other instrumentalities is that after they have done their best and produced their ultimate result in human character, they leave man still morally incapable and give him no permanent impulse in the right direction. However much they may inform the mind, polish the manners, and restrain the external acts, however great may be the patriotic enthusiasm and the religious fervor which are produced, yet the basis of incorruptible moral principle is lacking, the illuminating guidance of truth is missed, and the inspiring touch of spiritual life is absent.

The relation of Christianity to the world's progress is an aspect of the philosophy of history which has been thrown far too much in the background in the thinking of our present generation. Christian philosophers—at least some of them—have not asserted it as boldly and as unreservedly as they were justified in doing, while the evolutionary philosophy which has so overshadowed and permeated the intellectual drift of our times has magnified to an unwarranted degree the scope of naturalistic forces in social evolution. The function of Christianity,

1 "Evidently the Master, at whose feet reformers must sit, did not organize as to its form a new society, for it remained in His hands entirely unchanged. He did not interfere with its ineradicable tendencies to home, government, industry, and religion. Had He intended to promote a revolution in social science He did not manifest the purpose by overturning, checking, or to any degree interfering with, the fourfold naturalistic products. . . . While, however, He recognized society in its naturalness as a product, and in its wholeness as a human necessity, He saw the impossibility of reconstruction, repair, and progress through human and naturalistic agencies, and provided for its necessities as no philosopher or reformer had conceived or understood. He must be credited with holding such a view of the race as would allow the introduction of a new spirit, new principles, and new purposes, and

(including the Old Testament as part of its history) as an influence in the transformation of human life, its range and power as a factor in the whole complex movement of the world towards its goal, is one of the most fascinating and noble phases of social science, and will be recognized as such more and more as the sublime mission of Christianity in society becomes further apparent.

The scope and importance of the subject demand that we scrutinize more in detail the essential features of that social ministry which reveal the unique adaptation of the Christian religion to promote the welfare of mankind.

I

Christianity alone provides an adequate method of deliverance from sin and its penalty. This may seem to bear more directly upon individual than upon social experience. This is true;

solved the difficulties

of sin.

but sin is a social curse as well as an individual Christianity alone has offense, and only sin-freed souls can constitute a perfected society. A society of saved individuals is potentially a saved society. In fact, even a modicum of illuminated, regenerated, forgiven, God-inspired, and God-possessed individual souls forms a moral leaven which will eventually penetrate and save the whole; and, moreover, there is no possibility of social renewal and transformation except through the personal work of divine grace in the individual heart. Let us cling unhesitatingly and unreservedly to this vital dictum of our Gospel, “Ye must be born again." The new birth is the central fact in the spiritual environment of the Christian. involves that illumination of spirit and that act of faith which are in themselves the signs of a majestic change in the whole attitude and outlook of the soul, and which secure to it all the benefits of the Redeemer's atoning work. Christ Himself thus becomes the sin-bearer. He removes the crushing burden of conscious guilt. If that be not lifted, the true religious life of humanity is paralyzed and society is morally helpless. Every ethnic religion has stumbled just here. Its of forces non-naturalistic and non-human. As man cannot regenerate himself, so society cannot regenerate itself. The one as well as the other must be born from above. . . . Yet the change proposed by the Master was not a change in constitutional form, but of essence, of spirit, of principles, of laws, of methods of life, and of relation to divine ideas and agencies. Going deeper into the problem than all others, He distinguished between naturalistic forms and idealistic principles, preferring to state the latter, while the forms might be left to care for themselves.". The Methodist Review, May, 1891, p. 454.

Conscious guilt among non-Christian races.

doctrine of sin and the measures it proposes for deliverance have been the sign of its failure. On the other hand, this is the distinctive excellence of Christianity. There is a common basis of ethics in the reason and conscience of humanity, but Christianity reveals the only way of deliverance from sin. We may have the most elaborate system of ethics,-Confucianism glorified, Buddhism transfigured with a flawless code of conduct,—but, like the perfect law of Judaism, all this will only reveal more clearly the incapacity of man to exemplify ethical perfection. We need not insist upon the fact that sin reigns in non-Christian hearts. There is a feeling in some quarters that pagan society is comparatively innocent in God's sight, because its members cannot be held responsible to the same extent as others who enjoy the full light and knowledge of the Gospel. Let heathen society be judged by its own standard of knowledge and conscious responsibility, and there can be no shadow of doubt that sin, both in the sense of personal sinfulness and of overt transgression, is one of the most vivid and pervading facts of consciousness among all non-Christian races. To be sure, the natural result of the prevalent legalism is to develop spiritual pride and a complacent consciousness of merit, but this only indicates that the heathen have a mistaken confidence in the effectiveness of their own self-imposed methods of gaining the favor of their gods and of securing deliverance from the wrath and judgment which they are conscious their sins deserve. The various methods of propitiation, and the apprehension of judgment and punishment in the prevalent religious experience of non-Christian peoples, indicate plainly enough the consciousness of guilt. The inner experience of Christian converts testifies to their previous consciousness of sin and condemnation, and reveals their grateful appreciation of the assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation. In all the ethnic faiths there is a sufficient recognition of the misery and condemnation which sin involves, but the burden of sin finds expression rather in the fear of vengeance and in the dread of calamity, woe, and suffering, than in a sense of guilt, impurity, and transgression of a holy law. The result is that the deliverance expected and implored, either as the reward of merit or the fruit of sacrifice, by the disciples of non-Christian cults is from the calamities, miseries, misfortunes, and fierce judgments of deity, both in this life and the life to come, while Christianity alone teaches the sweet secret of repentance and puts into the heart the humble plea for forgiveness and reconciliation through the merits of Christ. It brings thus an immediate peace to the conscience-stricken heart, insures a

present forgiveness, and opens a new path of hope, bright and fragrant with the presence of a reconciled Lord. Here is the old, the vital, the precious, the matchless preeminence of the Gospel as a deliverance from sin illustrated in contrast with all the abortive methods of heathenism. It brings, through faith in an atoning Mediator, a full, free, and immediate assurance of salvation from sin and its condemnation, while all other systems involve the hopeless task of earning this coveted benefit by long, wearisome, uncertain, and virtually worthless methods of sacrifice and legal obedience.

Hindu methods of expiation.

The practices in vogue, for example, in connection with popular Hinduism to obtain merit and to secure the pardon of iniquity are in many instances so puerile and degrading as to be repugnant to the common sense of humanity. The giving of alms to lazy mendicants, notorious for vices, the participation in pilgrimages which are too often characterized by license without ordinary restraints, the torture of the body, the pronouncing in endless iteration of the names of the gods, the elaborate sacrificial ritual, the paying of due reverence to the Brahman, the swallowing of penitential pills of disgusting character, are among some of the expedients adopted by Hindu devotees. The spiritual counsel embodied in many of the 'Sacred Books of the East" is such as no Christian reader can peruse without sadness and loathing. It is said in the "Padma Purana," "He who carries in his body a drop of water in which a Brahman's toe has been washed gets all his sins immediately destroyed." And, again, in the "Mahabharata" is found the following strange announcement: "He who contemplates the Ganges while walking, sitting, sleeping, thinking of other things, awake, eating, breathing, and conversing, is delivered from all sins." Such trifling as this with the mighty power of sin is all in vain. Such shallow expedients for lifting the burden of guilt and providing any satisfactory basis of reconciliation with the deity are futile and hopeless. On the other hand, the Gospel of perfect and final reconciliation, if accepted with full recognition of its import, stills at once and forever the reproaches of a guilty conscience, and imparts to the soul the peace and courage of assured forgiveness. With this marvelous experience comes a new self-consciousness, which humbles at the same time that it uplifts the soul. A higher value is thus given to life, a fresh hope to existence; a strange passion for good is aroused where formerly a love for evil prevailed. The man is, in fact, a new creature, and has within his transformed individual character the promise and potency of a nobler social ideal.

The Gospel has lost none of its potency.

The old Gospel is as potent and as true to its transforming record in mission fields to-day as it was in the apostolic age. The classic story of Paul's conversion on the way to Damascus can be paralleled in the history of mission conversions on many fields. A Chinese native preacher was proclaiming the Gospel of immediate, perfect, and eternal salvation to a group of countrymen. A notorious character, the chief of the gamblers of that district and the terror of the neighborhood, was passing by. He was a bold, desperate, and hardened leader in all iniquity. paused and listened, and that wondrous message reached his heart. "If Jesus can do this for me," he said, "then He shall." He then and there accepted Him, and went to his home to close his haunt of crime, and broke at once and forever with his past life and former associations. This incident, told at the Shanghai Conference of 1877, is but a typical illustration of the unimpaired power of the Gospel, if sincerely and unreservedly accepted, to secure an instant and complete change in the relation of the soul to God and His holy law.1

It brings not only pardon, but imparts power.

He

The experience of pardon and reconciliation is not all that the Gospel brings in its remedial mission to sinful man. It gives him also an endowment of power to resist sin and live in righteousness. Nowhere else can the soul obtain the high impulse and the moral stamina which it needs to engage successfully in its conflict with temptation and surrounding evil. "There is no good Indian but a dead one" is the complacent verdict of those who have aroused the hostility and treachery which lurk in his natural heart. "There is no good Indian but a regenerate one" is the more kindly testimony of the missionary. Lieutenant W. H. Wassell, in Harper's Magazine for November, 1894, gives abundant testimony to confirm the truth of this happier verdict concerning the once barbarous and bloody Sioux. A few facts here, and only a few, can be quoted, gathered at random from fresh missionary testimony in widely separated fields, as revealing the power of Christianity at the present hour to transform the moral character not only of individuals, but of whole communities.

In November, 1894, on the east coast of Formosa, a sailing vessel was slowly drifting landward in a dangerous sea. On the shore, face to face with the doomed vessel, were a mission chapel and a village of Christian converts, the fruit of the missionary toils of Dr. G. L. MacKay, of the Canadian Presbyterian Church. The native pastor, Mr. A-Hoa,

1 "Records of Shanghai Conference, 1877," p. 103.