Evening star., 1915-01-17
people would do it If they could see


any fun in it?
What is fun? Is 1t out of keeping with
duty, especially the duty of studying
about missions?
Fun is personal interest in the doing
of what you are doing: doing 1t with
a deep and steady seriousness. having
a personal stake in it. using your own
will the method and the materials
of the work. and getting results,
against odds, that seem to you real
achievement. There is neither giddi-
ness nor frivolity in real fun.
So foot ball game is fun, though
you are bruised and battered. while
saving the family wood Is duty. even
with sharp saw and decent logs. Some
day a farmers boy will invent an i'm
provement on the Tom Sawyer method
of making game out of the wood pile.
1t takes no more strength than foot
ball. and can be played with less ap-
paratus and fewer players. But it must
be a game. 1t must have fun in it.
And all woodpile records will be
smashed.
There arises seeming necessity. at
times, to take medicine, though the
doctors are no longer quite sure about
it. But no medicine is either SO much
fun good for the taker as a square
meal if the stomach can digest the
food. And more lives are saved by
cooks than by apothecaries.
Mission study has been like wood
pile and a medicine chest long enough:
it is time to make it like a game and a
good dinner.
So far from preventing it's being re-
ligious and thoroughly Christian, this
will give mission study all the more
essence of faith. 1t will make it truly
worshipful
DR. Fred H. Sheets for years has been
quoting some verses Is,s which .r he say a.. first
cisely the thought that makes mission
study not merely easy, but also some
thing to be done in daring and eager
way:
There's breathless hush in the close tonight,
Ten to make and the match TO vim;
An hour to play. and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake Of ribboned coat,
But his captains hand on his shoulder smote-
PLAY up, play up, and play the game
The sands Of the desert are sodden red.
Red with the wreck Of the square that broke;
The satline's jammed and the coloners dead
The on ss its
And England's far. and honor a name.
When the voice Of q schoolboy rallies the ranks
PLAY up. play up, and play the game
THIS T. the b word d,as that H. srsd b
Every one Of her sons must hear,
And none that hears 1t dsres forget e.
This they all with q willing mind
And falling fling to the host behind
play up, play up, and play the game.''
What is the source of the realest
eagerness about missions and their
study? One only; the person and per-
sonality of Him who made missions be-
lieva Bile. His own mission was to win
the world to deeper interest In itself,
by showing that God cared more for the
world than for His own glory He is
not only our Lord: He Is the most in
teresting person in history
He had imagination sufficient to see
what the sending Of these missionaries
would mean. He saw Paul setting out
from Antioch. and Augustine from Rome.
quette from Quebec. and Carey from
London, and Livingstone from Glasgow,
and Butler from Boston, and this years
hundred Epworthians from all over the
states. and the great missionaries OF the
twenty-first century from Victoria Falls
and Seoul and Lhassa and Cape Nome
all working as foot ball players work,
putting their will into subsection to the
captains, earring not bit for buffet
ings II only they might advance the ball.
age-long. world-circling game, full OF
holy ambition and selfiess zeal. with loss
in 1t. and heartache, and desperate lead
ing OF forlorn hopes; and with such vic.
tories as .Mackay and Thoburn and
Patton and Morrison have made possible.
is to stand somewhere not far from that
wondrous Presence who one day on
Syrian hillside saw the drama all
through the long ages to Its sure COM
plet ion.
And. while they are going about their
study in the spirit of the greatest ad-
venture in the world. some of their
members will see all at once, like the
sudden sunrise Of the tropics. the light
they Will follow that gieam all their
lives long