IV The finest and rarest field of adventure on the earth is open only to those who will go the limit on adventures with Jesus. The missionary field is the most romantic realm on earth in our day. Take that great teeming Republic of China, with its more than four hundred millions of human beings. Do you remember how Morrison poured out his soul for a lifetime and saved only his interpreter, only one sheaf for a lifetime of toil and ministry? But others have entered into his labours and are reaping where he sowed. One of the most thrilling things in the literature of recent years is an address by a cultivated, scholarly Chinese gentleman, a Christian gentleman of China, about winning China for Christ. Let me read to you a single burning and illuminating paragraph. Remember this is not an Englishman nor an American speaking, but a Chinaman, Dr. Cheng Ching Yi, and this is what he says: "The whole of Christian propaganda is the greatest adventure in the world. Are we bold enough to face the difficult situation? Under such circumstances are we daring enough to capture the unparalleled opportunity of taking China for Christ? Are we brave enough to tackle the (humanly speaking) impossibility, relying on the assurance that there is nothing impossible to God? Are we determined to act in accordance with the times, and do our utmost to win China for the Lord? Remember, friends, my heart is burning within me as I speak. The thought of a failure on our part to rise to the occasion for a forward, immediate, nation-wide spiritual movement makes me shudder. Look wherever you like; such a definite step must be taken. Look at the compassionate Lord on high; look at the opposing forces below; look at the need of our fellow men around us; look at the personal obligation within us; and there seems to be no way out of it. We are in it, all of us, and no backing out is possible. Let us rise up to the call, and in the beauty of the Lord of Hosts attempt the impossible thing-seeing in the near future Christ for China, and China for Christ." Could there be anything more heartening than that, when the greatest danger of the future of humanity is the threat of an alignment of the great colored races of the world against the white races for the domination of mankind? If we shall only be wise enough to keep our castoff liquor traffic out of China and India and Africa, and give the missionaries and the native Christians like Dr. Cheng Ching Yi, a chance to pursue their holy adventure with Jesus, the world will be safe not only for democracy, but for humanity. V And, finally, we must not lose sight of the cheering fact that those who go forth to glorious adventures with Jesus experience the noblest joys of life. It is not the hardship that the adventurer thinks of and dwells on, it is the conquest and the glory of achievement. Listen to the song of the Panama Canal builders: "Got any rivers they say are uncrossable? Got any mountains you can't tunnel through? Doing the thing that no one can do." Think of Stanley's joy when he found Livingstone in the heart of Africa, when it was indeed the "dark continent"! Think of Greeley's joy when, after a lifetime of effort, he stood at the north pole-or of Shackelton's on the south. What did cold or hunger count for to those men? Less than nothing. Think of the joy of a man like Dr. Gorgas, who could seize a malignant bacillus in his giant-like grasp and free a nation of yellow fever. But the highest of all joys comes to those who go forth with utter unselfishness of spirit to share with Jesus Christ in the adventures of divine love wherever he shall lead. An English writer, wandering in a Sussex churchyard, found on a gravestone these valiant and glorious words: "They strove with their faces to the morning sun, and up to their God." May it be in words as valiant and joyous as those that our friends shall find appropriate description of our own life adventures! IV THE HAPPY FORTUNE OF THE GOODWILL MEN "Peace on earth to men of good will."-Luke 2:14 (a rendering by some modern scholars). T HE Standard Version of the Bible generally accepted renders the fourteenth verse of the second chapter of Luke, giving the song of the angels to the shepherds on the night of the birth of Jesus: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." Some modern scholars of high standing assure us that this oft-quoted song may be well translated without straining the text: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of good-will." This version of the song awakens a new and exceedingly interesting train of thought which seems to me well worth our careful study. Certain it is that peace, in its deepest sense, can never come to any one who has not the spirit of goodwill, and peace has been coming to the men of goodwill in all parts of the world wherever Christ has been accepted and obeyed as the personal Saviour of men. "Peace on earth," in the sense of stopping all wars among men, seems as far away now as when the angels sang to the shepherds. We have just passed through the most destructive war humanity has ever known, and at this moment twenty-two wars of a smaller scope are raging in the world, any one of which would have been a serious war in those simpler days of the coming of Jesus. But, in this new sense, the angelic promise has been fulfilled in multitudes of instances, and is being gloriously fulfilled in every land on earth in some souls to-day. The words of Scripture will always be true that those who "live by the sword will perish by the sword"; but it will also be true, in the highest and truest sense, that the "good-will men" will enjoy the divinely promised peace of the angel's song. Some people go through the world sowing the seeds of strife, even when they have no conscious purpose of doing so. Their very natures make peace impossible where they are. A few years ago there was a mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever cases in New York City. For some time the health authorities were unable to trace them to the source of infection. Finally they ran them down to a woman employed as a cook, who was carrying around typhoid germs, to which she herself was immune, but which played havoc with other people. There are many people who carry the germs of cynicism and hate in the very spirit of their minds and hearts, and wherever they go the infection from their evil souls destroys peace. But the man of goodwill will find his own kind wherever his footsteps. may wander. Edwin Markham puts it in graphic setting: Once where a prophet in a palm shade lay, |