woman or child in these dark lands for whom Christ does not have compassion. There is not one that He does not desire to see justified and sanctified and glorified. If we are His disciples we will feel precisely as He feels. Mrs. Bishop says that the false faiths degrade woman with a degradation that is infinite. They dwarf the intellect and develop the worst passions of the soul-jealousy, envy, murderous hate, intrigue. She was asked two hundred times for some drug that would poison the favourite wife or that would disfigure her son. In China there is a saying, "We may trust deadly poisons, a swollen river, a hurricane, beasts of prey, a thief, a savage, a murderer; but a woman, never." A missionary secretary and some friends were travelling in Persia. In the evening some of the women of the place went into the inn. The women asked the strangers about their homes and their families. Then the strangers asked them about their lives. They said, "Sahibs, our life is hell." That statement was absolutely true. There is not a woman in all the world whose life has been degraded and darkened by paganism or Mohammedanism for whom Christ is not concerned. desire for her is that she should have every comfort and every honour shown to women in Christian lands. He wishes her life to be bright and full of blessedness. If we are worthy to bear His name we will be concerned about so many hundred millions of women who are regarded as on a level with brute beasts, who are considered as a necessary evil, whose sole excuse for existence is that they may propagate the species and minister to the needs of the male sex. His Scattered all over the world there are earnest souls seeking for God and truth and eternal life. They go on long and weary pilgrimages; they gash themselves with knives; they submit to the most cruel tortures; they sleep on beds of spikes; they starve themselves. They hope in this way to earn pardon and peace. A Hindu said, "I am thirsty-I am thirsting for Tell me, tell me, have you seen Him? Can you show God. Him to me? I want to know Him." He offered to worship the missionary if he would lead him to God. An aged man said to a missionary, "I have been waiting for forty years to hear what I heard to-day. I felt sure that there was nothing in Buddhism that could save me, but I felt that the great God must have some method by which a poor sinner might find salvation." A Chinese said that from a child his heart was hungry for peace. He went on long journeys on foot to temples of renown, hoping that by seeing the idols he would feel his sins forgiven. He would dust them and clean them and burn much incense before them. But he returned home as dissatisfied as ever. An Indian princess started on a seven years' journey to the four cardinal points of the country, to the four great shrines of the gods. She endured everything; she bathed in all sacred waters; she undertook fasts and penances and privations; she bowed at all shrines, worshipped before all the idols, spent money with lavish and princely munificence. After a season of rest she started on a second tour. She vowed she would sit in the burning sun all day with hot fires raging about her. When the cool season came she vowed she would spend every night in a pond with the water up to her chin. On this tour she heard of salvation through Christ for the first time, and gladly accepted it, and spent the rest of her life in making it known to others. There is not an honest seeker after God and salvation in the whole world for whom Christ has not compassion. He wishes His disciples to help Him give this knowledge to all such. If we would be loyal to Him we will do this. Three-fourths of mankind live in a perpetual atmosphere of fear. They are afraid to live and afraid to die. Their gods are hostile and are constantly plotting to do them mischief. They have not heard of a God who is a Father and whose highest name is love. When those nearest to them are taken away they have no consolation and good hope through grace. "Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress trees! And Love can never lose its own." Christ would have every human soul know where comfort and consolation can be found. He would have all men know that death is the gateway to the life that is life indeed. He would have all men know that He has abolished death, and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Every true disciple of Jesus the Christ will wish the same. would brighten the great mystery of the grave. He If we are Christians we will pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into His harvest. Dr. Broadus says that this is the one specific thing that our Lord instructed His disciples to pray for; and that it is the one petition that is seldom heard in public or private worship. The church has forgotten this command of her Founder. We pray for almost everything else; we seldom pray or hear others pray for labourers for the harvest field. Not long ago a man and wife conferred with us about an appointment. They were young people of ability and culture and consecration. They were well qualified for the work to be done. But there was one obstacle in the way of their going. The woman said that before she entered college her father extorted a promise from her that she would not become a missionary after her college course was finished. He did not bind her not to marry a debauchee or a man out of the church or a French Count or an English Marquis or a Russian Grand Duke or an Italian Princelet; there was only one point about which he was greatly concerned, that was, that she should not serve Christ as a missionary. She knew nothing of missions at that time and not knowing anything did not care anything, and readily gave her promise. In college she came in touch with the Volunteer Movement. She wanted to go out as a missionary, but her promise to her father stood in the way and he held her to it. So while their hearts were in this cause they could not go. We are not to think that her father is a bad man. He is not a bad man; he is a good man. He is and has been for many years a preacher of the gospel. But he had overlooked this command of his Lord. Had he been offering that petition all his life, he would have thanked and praised God when his child felt called to serve as a missionary. When another woman and her husband volunteered for China her father was asked if he did not protest against her going. He said that he had been preaching and praying for missions for forty years; he had been urging gifted and educated young people to give their lives to propagate the gospel in the regions beyond; how could he consistently oppose when one of his own household offered herself for the service? So far from protesting he felt that an honour had been done him and his family such as could not have been done by all the kings and nobles in the world. John G. Paton said that when he volunteered for the New Hebrides, he was besieged with the strongest opposition on all sides. His teacher in divinity, the minister of the church under which he was serving as a city missionary, repeatedly urged him to remain at home. He insisted that he was leaving a certainty for an uncertainty. He was leaving a work in which God had made him greatly useful for a work in which he might fail to be useful, and only throw his life away among cannibals. Among all his friends there were only two who encouraged him to go out. He spoke to his parents about the matter. They told him that when he was born they laid him upon the altar to be consecrated, if God saw fit, as a missionary of the cross, and that it had been their constant prayer that he might be prepared, qualified, and led to this very decision, and that God might accept their offering, long spare him, and give him many souls from among the heathen for his hire. Dr. Chamberlain says that his mother was the instrument of sending eleven of her sons and daughters and nephews and nieces into the foreign field. When he had, with his father and mother's blessing, consecrated himself to this work and was leaving for India, he learned for the first time, that his mother as her first act after the birth of her eldest son, had placed him before the Lord and vowed that he should, so far as her consecration and influence could go, be a foreign missionary. If all parents did so there would be workers enough for every field. Unfortunately this is not the case. greatest obstacle of the British Student Volunteer Movement is that parents are unwilling that their children should become foreign missionaries. Those who go out have to go in spite of the protests and tears of their parents. That is true in America also. Young men of special promise are urged by their families and friends to enter some profession or some business that promises larger financial returns than the ministry. Not only is prayer not offered for more labourers; the prayers that are offered look in the opposite direction. The This helps to account for the lack of young men for the pulpit. This wail is coming up from all the churches and from all parts of the country. One Eastern Theological school that formerly had a hundred students now has only four. Our own churches are in urgent need of a thousand men to carry on the work that has been inaugurated. Other men are needed to undertake new work. The truth is, that the churches have overlooked or forgotten our Lord's injunction. They are lamenting the lack of men, but are not acting in the only way that promises an adequate supply. They do not feel the urgency of the case. They do not recognize the need of haste and constraint. They are not asking God to thrust men out under the pressure of a great conviction. If a strong church wants a good man for its pulpit it does not hesitate to rob another church. This is done without regard to the |