The Minnesota fiery cross. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1924-19??, 1924-03-14

in America by making sure through
all the agencies of the church NOV
ing upon our national life that we
bear ourselves as a Christian nation
before the world. ] do not say that
the nation must be Christian because
the church demands it of it. The ma
ito unjust be Christian because the
nation lies under the la wof God and
is an institution of Go das surely as
the church is. This nation of ours
is under Christian sanctions and
Christian obligations that the church
did not lay upon her, but which are
there because she herself is an in
stitute of God. How much are we
doing by every true Christian action
ment day will disclose. We have an
illustration of this now in the out
going of the whole heart of Japan to-
ward US. America may scrap her
battleships," wrote DR.. Reischauer
from Toxic, 'for she will not need
them in the matter of her relation
ships to japan" What has happened?
In the last few months $4,000. 900
given in sympathy and good will
through the Red Cross, less than one
third of the cost of a battleship, has
made, unless new wrongs arise, a
feet superfuous so far as any need
of the Japanese is concerned. We
need more and more to Christianize
our own life and example that every
impact by which we affect directly
the other nations of the world should
be Christian, that every man who goes
out to represent this nation in any
political capacity in any non-Chris-
tian nation should go in the con-
seriousness that he goes from Chris
tian nation and Christian people to
behave as a Christian man. Even
those who go to carry on trade with
the other nations of the world should
go as men whose lives are made
clean blythe Christian ideal, and who
will carry on their trade in Christian
fairness and equity and justice.
But beyond these things, God is
calling us today with a palmer and
before, directly to preach the Lord
Jesus Christ to the whole generation
of which we are part. Never was
the door so wide open for that
preaching. Miss Hodge was speaking
this afternoon of one field, / think it
must have been Colomia, with an area
greater than that Of Germany,
France and Belgium, and with a
smaller missionary force than you
could find in any Presbytery in the
Synod of Ohio, and five or six million
of friendly folk, willing to welcome
any friendly help. / have travelled
up and down the Magdalena and seen
the hundreds of places where no one,
Protestant or Catholic, is witnessing
to the Gospel. And l was thinking
of astill wider area than this, un-
reached and waiting. rode last
winter, year ago, as far as from
Cleveland to New York, in an old
wagon across the plains Of Northeast
Persia. We went from village to
village, and from cit yto city, and in
that long stretch Of between 600 and
700 miles, there was not a single rep
resentative of Christ making His Cos
pei known to those people for whom,
with us, He lived and died. We
walked to and fro in the streets Of
the sacred city of Meshed, and saw
the folks gathered from all over west
ern central Asia, all that western
slope of the roof of the world. pass
ing through the streets of that old
sacred Persian city and you could
draw a radius, not of 600 miles, it
would have to be 1000 miles north,
and 200 miles eastward, and all the
long journey southwark to the waters
of the Persian gulf, and you would
have an area half the size of the
United States, and not one single
Missionary in all that great area ex-
cept the little band of our people in
the city of Meshed was thinking
of those great needs opening before
us in our fields in the province Of
Shantung, where in the area of a
single station there are populations
four or five times larger than the
population of Cleveland to be reached
by little handfuls of missionaries.
And ] thought fthe 100000. 900 Of
China dependent upon these, for ev-
cry vital impulse that is TO cleanse
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