The Washington times., 1913-09-27

Only three missionary topics remain
for this year-the present topic; Civ
ing" the topic for october Is. Going.
and the topic for December q. t"Our
Church at Work for the World" With
each recurring missionary topic. it has
seemed that that particular topic was
the most important Of the entire mis-
sionary series during the year. But
certainly the most vital Of the entire
series was our last Sundays topic.
Prayer A very important factor in
the missionary. propaganda. however. 10
Giving. which We are to discuss this
week. For many weary years II had
been the Thought OF the church and Of
It's members that the spread of-the Cos
pei In foreign lands and. at home was
the work Of the missionaries. abroad. and
In the home. field. But this erroneous
notion has been exploded. and men to-
day realize. az they never have before.
that the responsibility Of the spread Of
Cmtsts Gospel upon the earth rests
not only upon the missionary. but also
upon the man who stays at home.
One -Tenth, and Then Some!
But although the church was awak-
ened to Its responsibilities In hnan-
cial wayEfor the furtherance of christ.s
Gospel on the earth. still the ma aximhm
Of missionary attainment will not be
reached until the churches and the
church members realize their oppor-
tunity in giving regularly one-tenth.
and more. of their incomes to the Lord.
The old Mosaic law required that one
tenth be returned to the Lord as His
rfxht. and then after that one-tenth
had been given the donor could really
begin to give to the Lords work II
the church members of today were all
to give one-tenth of their net incomes
TO the work of the Lord. there would
be no financial problems in the church.
The missionary work could 60 on unin-
terrupted and Christ's Gospel could be
spread to the uttermost parts Of the
laymen's missionary slogan has ex-
pressed it. II is not pleasant to
contemplate what the. Lord must
think about the penurious giving
of some Of our Christian friends.
We believe they have simply not yet
awakened to a sense of the JOY Of CIV
Ing. Giving should not be considered
their duty. but poor return for all
that Christ has done for them and q
great joy and privilege.
Incyeased Gifts.
But we would not present in this
article only the great need for sys-
tematic and conscientious giving of our
Christian friends for the ,.furtherance
Of the missionary propaganda. We
would show also a picture Of that
which has been accomplished. Of the
great results achieved in the. missionary
fields in the past few years. At the
beginning Of the nineteenth century.
there was but mere handful of mis-
sionaries in the field. Nowhere In the
non-Chlrstian world was there a single
representative of the churches of
North America. Practically closed were
the millions in the Buddhist and Brah-
man worlds, and the thousands upon
thousands of Mohammedans were prac-
tically unreached. South America and
Africa had not received the Great Mes
sage to any extent. All honor to those
brave pioneers who blazed the trail for
the missionary work that was to follow.
But TODAY what Is the number OF mis-
sIonaries? Almost staggering Is the re-
port of progress made in the missionary
field by the splendid force Of :. 800 mis-
sionaries, including wives. or about 1850
single missionaries and missionary fami-
lies scattered throughout the continent:
in practically every nook and corner OF
the entire world. Special mention
should be made in this connection OF