Part 8 (1/2)

May I call your attention to some of the louder of these knockings?

For years students in great numbers, thousands, have been coming from these heathen nations to our country to get our Western learning.

Throughout the colleges and lower schools of the land, both East and West, in the greater universities, and in the more modest small church colleges they can be found.

I remember a sight that never failed to thrill me in my visitations among the colleges of our Central West. Almost always I saw one or more of these young men, from j.a.pan, and less frequently from China and India and other countries, and sometimes young women, too; studying in these inst.i.tutions.

Quite frequently they came from the better families of their people; often from old wealthy families of position and influence. So that by blood ties and position they will be the future men of influence and leaders of their people. And it is a notable fact that many of them are to-day the leaders in j.a.pan. Literally thousands of them have come, these thousands of miles around the world, to knock at our doors, and ask for what we have and they haven't.

Even more striking is the recent visitation to us of official commissions from the non-Christian lands. One after another, these national governmental deputations have come to us. They have been composed of the strongest men in these lands, men in leading official position. They have come by government appointment, and at government expense, to learn the secret of our marvellous Western progress.

And in addition to these official deputations others have come, men of like prominence and influence, coming on their own account, to witness our civilization and learn its secrets.

The Coming Great Leaders.

One of the most remarkable incidents of this most remarkable movement has been the great migration of young Chinese men to study in the colleges of j.a.pan. Within a very short s.p.a.ce of time, as though by a concerted movement, fifteen thousand Chinese young men have flocked to Tokyo. The inevitable sifting process has sent many back, but fully ten thousand remain, engaged in earnest, hard study.

Will you mark very keenly why they went to j.a.pan? Because to them j.a.pan, in its new life, stood for the new light and life of the West. Their little, but mighty, aggressive neighbor on their eastern sh.o.r.e had brought to their very door the new civilization of the Christian West.

Here was an unusual opportunity. Where hundreds had come clear around the earth to us, thousands have seized this opportunity close at hand. They come from every province of China; even that farthest away, on the border of Tibet, sending hundreds.

The travel involved thousands of miles. And if their slow means of travel be taken into account, it meant what would be to us practically hundreds of thousands of miles. Hundreds of them have been sent by the provincial and local governments. Others have come through private funds made up for the purpose. And wealthy men have sent their sons. They have gone to j.a.pan only because j.a.pan has opened her doors so widely to our Christian civilization. It is not to their conqueror, j.a.pan, they have come, but to the civilization which j.a.pan has imported from Christian lands.

Was there ever such a knocking at the door of the Christian Church as this? Ten thousand picked men, of the best and keenest young manhood of China, representing all parts of the empire, and in large part representing the government, settling down to years of close study of our Christian civilization as found in j.a.pan--a tremendous fact for the Church to-day! Things are crowding in on us. It is the non-Christian world knocking at our back door. It was too far around to the front. So they have commenced their knocking at the nearest and handiest door they could find.

Then there are direct requests coming constantly to the missionaries, from the peoples in all these lands, earnestly asking and even pleading that men be sent to teach them of G.o.d and of Christ. Whole villages have been found in the fastnesses of Africa's wilds spending days together, and all day long, on their knees in prayer; most of ten mute prayer with upturned faces--their very bent bodies their prayer--that news of the white man's G.o.d might be sent to them.

In Korea and other lands it is no uncommon thing for men and women to travel hundreds of miles by their slow transportation, or even to come a-foot, to attend gatherings where the story of Jesus is being preached.

And then, too, there is the indirect knocking in the imitation of our Western ways, and throwing away of their own. Imitation is the highest form of compliment that can be paid. It tells of admiration, and of a desire to be as those imitated. The adapting of Western learning by these conservative Oriental peoples, the establishment of thousands of colleges and schools on the model of Christian countries is so radical a thing as to be nothing short of startling. The abandoning of bad customs, as well as of their old systems of education, is as startling. Where there were antagonisms there is now the friendliest imitation.

If to this we add the remarkable immigration to our sh.o.r.es, of a million a year, it intensifies enormously the opportunity of service brought to us by foreign peoples. Yet please notice that this latter is not Asia nor Africa coming to us, but Europe.

However crying their need may be, these are, nominally, not heathen peoples, but chiefly from Christianized Europe. The Asiatics would have come in great numbers, but that door was promptly shut and carefully locked by official hands.

As you swing your eye over these seething ma.s.ses of the heathen world, and listen to their voices, let me ask you, with the earnest softness of tone that belongs to the heart, could there be a louder knocking at the door of the Christian Church?

What Do They Want?

There can be no doubt about the knocking. But--but what is it they are after? Well, in plainest talk, they are after the thing that has made Christian nations great, great to the point of world-leaders.h.i.+p and world-supremacy.

Do you remember the famous reply, often quoted, given to a foreign visitor at the English court? He had asked the secret of the greatness of England, which impressed him so forcibly. And her gracious majesty, of blessed memory, Queen Victoria, placed her hand upon a Bible, and replied in the memorable words, ”This is the secret of England's greatness.”

Just how much that wise woman had in mind I am sure I do not know. I feel very sure she did not refer to the church system of England. But to something far more and deeper than that, of which the church system is only one expression. Where the Bible has gone, and where it has so largely dominated the life of the people, as in England, there has been both a moral regeneration and, mark it keenly, a new mental life. Its touch has awakened the mental powers. There has been aroused and released into activity that spirit of energy which has become the most marked characteristic of the Western world.

These two, the mental life and the remarkable energy, lie at the basis of all our wonderful modern science. And this, in turn, lies at the basis of all our phenomenal development. It is this that makes the West different from the East. The leading nations are Christian nations. The germ of vigorous life is in the Gospel of Christ.