Discarded!
I think the best advertisement I ever saw was one I came across once on a Boston street. It was the show window of a typewriter company. We'll call it the Ritefast machine, because that isn't its name.
The show window, which is large and deep, was occupied by a great heap of old typewriters, all jumbled in together. Some were bottom up, some on their sides, they had been tumbled in at all angles. It looked like a pile of shipwrecked typewriters thrown up on the beach from the stormy sea of commerce; and that is precisely what it was intended to represent.
A large placard informed the gaping public that every typewriter in the window had been lately discarded in favor of the Ritefast. There were all makes of typewriters, and every operator would be sure to find his favorite machine in the lot,—every operator, that is, except the fortunate ones that owned Ritefasts.
Sarcastic signs rose here and there, fastened to the machines: "Shipwrecked!" "Help! Help!" "On my last legs!" "Pity the Blind!" (The Rite-fast does visible writing.) No pains were spared to convey the impression graphically that the Ritefast alone was the proper machine, and that all the rest were back numbers.
As I walked away I couldn't help wishing I could prepare a similar show window for Christianity. With what a deplorable mess of discarded religions, theories, philosophies, dogmas, superstitions, follies, and barbarities could such a window be filled! What a pile of nonsense men are discarding, daily and hourly, for the pure and sound doctrines of Jesus Christ! And they do not go back again. Men are turning from Roman and Greek Catholicism, from Mohammedanism, from Buddhism, from Hinduism, from Confucianism, from the dark superstitions of Africa and the Islands, from witchcraft, fetichism, voodooism,—they are discarding these all over the world, and by the thousand, yea, by the million, are accepting the mighty, the loving Savior.
Ah, what a show window that would be, and how overwhelmingly convincing would be its evidence!
Come to think of it, just such a show window exists—many show windows of the sort.
Do you want to look into one of them? Then read any comprehensive history of missions.
Watch Your Feet.
Physiologists say that the first part of the body to go to sleep is the feet and legs. That is why it is so necessary to keep the feet warm if one would sleep well. That is why, if you would go to sleep, you must keep your feet still and not "thrash" around uneasily.
But I am more interested in an evident application of the fact to the domain of religious work. Here also the feet are the first to go to sleep. Here also if your feet fall asleep the rest of you is likely soon to follow your feet into the land of Nod.
The feet of your soul—you know well what they are. They are your outreaching missionary activities. They are your kindly ministries to those that need you. They are your gifts. They are your prayers for others. They are your interest in the ends of the earth. They are your hopes for the Kingdom of God. They are whatever in you is unselfish and philanthropic and self sacrificing.
Your head may be wide-awake. You may have the clearest views of theology and church government and ethics. And your hands may be wide-awake. You may be prominent in all the social gatherings of your community. But if the feet of your soul have gone to sleep, you will soon be tucked into the dormitory of the church, and only the very liveliest kind of revival will wake you up.
"How You Say That?"
My little girl went to the Chinese laundry for a bundle. She found Sam Lung bending over a long list of English words, each followed by a Chinese hieroglyphic.
"How you say that?" he asked, pointing to "neighbor." "You say ne-e-ebl?"
My little girl looked at it. "No, nābur," she said.
"Oh, nābl, nābl."
"No, nābur," said my little girl "Yes, yes, me say him. Nābl! Nābl! How that?"
"That's almost it. Nābur."
"Nābl! Nābl! Tankee, tankee much!" and Sam Lung was radiant.
He was trying to learn English in that way, and a slow and hard way it is, begging a word from every customer; but Sam Lung is ambitious, and industrious. He puts to shame many an American.
These aliens are eager to learn our language. We can teach it to them out of the New Testament, and we are dull indeed if in the process we cannot also teach them something of the language of heaven.
The Nation's Greatest Work.
What is the greatest thing the United States has done during recent years? Not the digging of the Panama Canal, magnificent as that work was. Not the establishment of the parcel post and of postal savings-banks, important as those undertakings are. Not the progress of education in the Philippines, great as that progress has been.
No; measured in permanent and beneficent results, nothing that our Government has recently accomplished equals the work of the nation's reclamation department. It was established in 1902, and already it has added to the fertile regions of the country no less than three million acres that formerly were desert.
Think of the happy families that will be supported upon these three million acres! Think of the hungry that will be fed by their rich products!
And all this is only a beginning, for we have one hundred million acres that may thus be reclaimed, an area fifty times as great as the tillable area of Massachusetts.
This is noble work. It not only points a way for the most profitable Government enterprises, but it should serve as a stimulant to similar spiritual undertakings.
For what are missions and what is the church but the reclamation department of society? Millions upon millions of lives all over the world, capable of bearing rich fruit for time and eternity, yet going to waste and worse than waste, breeding-places of miasma and of all disease!
Is there, can there be, a nobler and more profitable work than to reclaim these lives? The recovery of farm lands is good for time, but the recovery of souls is good for the endless years.