The Call of the World Part 7

1. The United States faces the two great oceans. So does Canada, but with that exception there is no other commanding nation that has a great coast-line on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. With many miles of coast-line on the east, America looks out toward the history-making nations of the past. Westward she faces that sea upon which look out the eyes of one half of the human race where life is all athrob with the new awakening.

The six great naval powers of the world in the order of their strength are Great Britain, Germany, the United States, France, j.a.pan, and Russia. The coast-line of the United States is very extensive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is surely significant that G.o.d has given America control of so much coast-line on both oceans and so many harbors for commerce and as distributing centers for the gospel. The most significant thing about our past is that we grew out of the best life of Europe and inherit the intellectual and moral fiber of the Anglo-Saxon. One of the most significant facts about our future is that with three thousand miles of coast-line we face toward the Orient where the coming world conflicts are to be waged.

2. The United States is the nearest commanding power to the undeveloped parts of the world. The great undeveloped regions are the Canadian Northwest, Alaska, Siberia, Australia, South America, Africa.

All these face on the Pacific Ocean except Africa, and in the aggregate America is nearer to them all than any other great Protestant Christian power. The Panama Ca.n.a.l will make the nearness all the more significant since its completion will bring Shanghai much nearer New York by boat than it is now.

3. The United States has many great harbors. Not one of the nations of Europe has more than two or three great harbors, several of them have none. Russia is too far north. Germany is at a disadvantage because she has no direct access to the Atlantic. Great Britain commands that ocean. The United States has several harbors on the east coast, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south, while on the west coast there are two of the most important harbors in the Western Hemisphere opening into the Pacific Ocean--San Francis...o...b..y, where come and go the navies of the world, and Puget Sound, the Mediterranean of America, with its 1,500 miles of coast-line.

4. Navigable rivers. The _Encyclopedia Britannica_ says that the Mississippi River with its branches affords 35,000 miles of navigable waterway. All Europe has 17,000 miles, or less than one half the length of the great central waterway of the United States. It is no wonder that Napoleon said, "The nation which controls the Mississippi Valley will be the most powerful nation on earth." There are only two navigable rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean in the Western Hemisphere, the Yukon River, navigable for thirteen hundred miles, and the Columbia, opening into a great inland empire. Almost the entire navigable extent of both is within the territory of the United States, although they drain great sections of Canada.

5. Isolation from other commanding powers. The favorable location of the United States for internal development is equaled by no other nation in the world, because of the fact that it is separated by many thousands of miles of sea from the other world powers of our time.

Great Britain, Germany, France, and Russia must continually guard their frontiers and are never for a moment free from the tremendous pressure of mighty and aggressive peoples. Our nation has been favored with the one great block of territory in the North Temperate Zone, capable of vast development and with almost infinite variety of soil and climate, remote from other powers. Otherwise it might have been necessary for America to devote her strength to defense rather than the development of her vast resources.

AMERICA HAS QUALITIES OF CHARACTER NEEDED FOR A WORLD TASK

As Emerson has well said, "The true test of civilization is not the census, not the size of its cities, nor the crops, but in the kind of men the country turns out." Leroy Beaulieu has this to say about Americans:

"The history of nations like the history of individuals proves beyond peradventure that no economic strength, no material prosperity, is lasting unless it be sustained by real moral worth.

"Moral worth, which includes the recognition of duties as well as of rights, self-respect and respect for one's fellows, has contributed fully as much as the magnificent resources of their country to the brilliant success of the American people.

"Of the qualities that have cooperated to elevate them so rapidly to such a commanding position, the most impressive is a great, a tireless energy."

1. Our debt to the pioneers. The early history of American life has many wholesome chapters for modern men to read. The religious basis of the state was a much more evident and vital fact in the life of the founders of the Republic than of many modern leaders. Quotations from the early charters make it clear that there was a wonderful religious significance in their nation building. "This thing is of G.o.d," said the London Trading Company to the Pilgrim Fathers. "In the name of G.o.d, Amen," are the opening words of the Mayflower compact, and that doc.u.ment ends with these words, "For the glory of G.o.d and the advancement of the Christian faith." The early settlers of North and South Carolina declared themselves to be actuated by laudable zeal for the propagation of the gospel. America owes much to the character and vigor of the German and Scandinavian elements in her population as well as to those of English parentage. No land has had a higher grade of founders than has the United States.

Leroy Beaulieu says, in _The United States in the Twentieth Century_: "The Americans have been the product of a selection and of a double selection. Only the boldest, the most enterprising of men have the courage to traverse the sea for the purpose of carving out a new life in an unknown and distant land. Then, having arrived, only the most energetic, the wisest, and the most gifted in the spirit of organization succeed in a struggle which is more severe, more merciless to the feeble, in new countries than in old ones. Thus America, so to speak, has secured the cream of Old World society. That is why the human standard is higher there than in other countries."

2. Mechanical genius. In the world-wide propagation of the gospel the ability to master the forces of nature and so make modern progress possible has a place in the fitness of character displayed by American life. A large number of the modern labor-saving inventions have come from America as shown by the fact that in one of the great International Expositions five gold medals were offered for the greatest labor-saving inventions. When the awards were made, it was discovered that all of them were bestowed for inventions in the United States.

3. The public school. It is generally acknowledged that whatever may be the faults and imperfections of our intellectual life, the American public school has demonstrated to the world on a larger scale than ever before the possibility of the education of the ma.s.ses. j.a.pan was quick to see that this was one of the secrets of the power of Western nations. Nowhere is there a more marvelous example of an entire nation going to school than in recent years in j.a.pan, where probably a larger percentage of children of school age are actually in school to-day than in any other country in the world. It is generally acknowledged that America has set the pace for the world in her system of common schools. Education, not ignorance, is everywhere the mother of devotion.

4. The character of the home missionary. The United States and Canada have produced a great race of home missionaries, such as Robertson, who helped to dot the land with Presbyterian churches, and whose name is a household word in Canada, or John Eliot, who wrote the first book published in America, of whom the poet Southey says, "No greater man has ever been produced by any nation;" David Brainard, whose life of prayer has been an inspiration to many thousands of students of missionary history; or Sheldon Jackson, with his eye ever on the horizon, but with practical zeal, not only preaching the gospel throughout the vast regions of the West but introducing the reindeer into Alaska, thus making a great economic contribution to the blessing of mankind. These men are typical of those intrepid heroes, who on the prairies of western Canada, in the mining sections of the United States, or in the heart of great cities, are the founders of empires as well as the builders of churches; as Dr. C. L. Thompson has well said, "The march of our civilization is to the music of our religion."

When the historian correctly interprets the story of national progress in the nineteenth century, he will first of all take account of the home missionary. No one has helped more than he to make the nation great and strong. As J. Wesley Johnston puts it, "The home missionary was a founder of schools, a builder of churches, a maker of states, a signer of treaties, an unfurler of flags, and always and everywhere a genuine American."

5. The home of great world movements. It must not be forgotten that out of American faith and courage and vision were born the most conspicuous missionary movements of modern times. The Moravians and Lutherans in Germany and William Carey and others in Great Britain blazed the way for the modern missionary uprising. In America the movement for world evangelization was greatly quickened and expanded by companies of students at Williams College and Andover Seminary. The purpose of these young men to carry the gospel abroad when North America was not represented by missionaries anywhere in the non-Christian world, was at the same time a mighty challenge to faith and a rebuke to the narrow vision of American Christianity one hundred years ago. Since that day practically all the conspicuous interdenominational missionary movements have begun their career in America. What student of missionary history can forget that the Student Volunteer Movement was born in a conference called by Dwight L. Moody! This Movement caused America to dream of a union of college men throughout the world for the world-wide propagation of the gospel.

The fruition of that vision is The World's Student Christian Federation, binding together the students of many lands and thousands of inst.i.tutions of higher learning. Let it not be forgotten that G.o.d planted here the conviction that missionary education is central in the life of the Church and that ten years ago at Silver Bay on Lake George, began what was then known as the Young People's Missionary Movement but which has recently been renamed the Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada. This Movement has spread to other lands. In North America alone in the ten years, more than one million copies of text-books and large numbers of other publications have been circulated by this Movement.

The latest of these evidences of the missionary life of North America is the Laymen's Missionary Movement, which is now organized in fourteen of the princ.i.p.al denominations of North America, with affiliated movements in three others, and in six other lands, with the first steps taken toward the forming of three additional national organizations. Never, until the Laymen's Missionary Movement flung out the challenge have Canada and the United States so powerfully felt the call to proceed seriously to undertake to evangelize their share of the world.

AMERICA HAS RESOURCES SUFFICIENT FOR THE TASK OF A CHRISTIAN WORLD POWER

There is abundance of intellectual, moral and spiritual power available. Here are great vigorous churches with many millions of members. Without any thought of minimizing all these moral and spiritual resources, let us think of the problem first from the standpoint of the "sinews of war."

1. Size. Bigness is not always to be mistaken for greatness, yet size gives a great advantage to a powerful people. There are vast regions of the earth that will probably never be inhabited by a dense population because they are too far north. This fact puts a limit on the future population of the Russian Empire that is not true of the United States. Brazil has a territory nearly equal to the United States, but it is in the tropics, and it may be generations before the vast regions in Brazil are opened up to civilized life. China is the one formidable rival of the United States because of her size and enormous resources. It will, however, take a long time to develop her powers. The character of the territory of the United States, capable as it is of almost infinite variety of agricultural productions, in a most favorable location in the North Temperate Zone, with so little waste territory, may lay claim to favorable possibilities, equaled perhaps by no single political unit in the world except China. In short, it is not only size that counts but a combination of great extent with other favoring forces. If we add together the eighteen provinces of China proper, j.a.pan, European Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Great Britain, they equal only about the same geographical area as the United States exclusive of Alaska and our island possessions. In the countries named the census shows a population of more than 700,000,000 people. A few ill.u.s.trations may be illuminating at this point.

There are only three States west of the Mississippi as small as all New England.

California is three fourths as large as France. There are forty millions of people in France, only a little more than two and a third millions in California.

Arizona is about the same size as Italy, and New Mexico is only slightly smaller than Great Britain.

Oregon has only 672,765 population now, but if it were as densely populated as New Jersey there would be thirty-two millions of people in Oregon.

If the United States, including Alaska and the island possessions, were as densely populated as the island of Java, we would have in this country one and one-half times the present population of the entire globe, and yet the United States would not then be more densely populated than Belgium.

Taking the State of Texas as an ill.u.s.tration, if France were an island and Texas a sea, and the island were in the midst of the sea, the people on the island would be out of sight of land in every direction. Counting the population of the world as seventeen hundred millions, if all the millions of Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, North America, etc., were in the one State of Texas,--not a man, woman or child anywhere else in the world,--there would be only ten to the acre!

Sections of America are not capable of sustaining a large population, it is true, but on this topic we quote a third time from _The United States in the Twentieth Century_:

"If the dry lands of the West account for one third of the 3,000,000 and more square miles of the United States, at least four fifths of Australia and the same proportion of South Africa are far more barren than this arid zone; three fourths of Canada is unfertile, or rendered so by cold; one half of Argentina consists of steppes or semi-desert country; and, finally, fully two thirds of the enormous Russian Empire is uncultivable, either by lack of heat or by lack of rain.

"More than this, in respect to mineral wealth, in respect to water power, and in respect to agricultural possibilities, all of the countries just mentioned are far less endowed than is the United States."

G.o.d has made America a giant in size that America may do a giant's share in the world-wide propagation of the Gospel.

2. Mineral resources. The United States furnishes the world to-day with 63 per cent. of its petroleum. Copper is indispensable in this electric age, and 57 per cent. of the world's supply comes from the United States. In the production of coal, America leads the world, and according to the _Statesman's Year Book_ all Europe has only one fourth as much coal as the United States. The gold output of the United States is many times that of any other country, except the Transvaal in Africa.

3. Railroads. Railroads are an indication of wealth and progress and power. Canada has more railroad mileage than all the continent of Africa. Almost 38 per cent. of the total mileage is in the United States; or, putting it in another way, the United States could duplicate all the railroad mileage of Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia and then have enough left to build a single track line three and three-fourths times around the globe! The United States has six and one-half times as many miles of railroad as any other country in the world There are no railroads where Christ has not gone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WEALTH OF THE UNITED STATES 1850-1910]

4. Wealth. According to the latest summary prepared by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor, the wealth of the United States equals 42 per cent. of the total wealth of all Europe.

In 1910 the deposits in savings banks exceeded the amount for 1900 by sixteen hundred and eighty millions of dollars. The depositors increased more than three millions in the same period of time. The latest figures show that the people of the United States as a whole are now saving an average of about nine million dollars a day. The statistics of wealth as represented by manufactured products show that our nearest compet.i.tor is Germany, but that the United States furnishes millions of dollars more of manufactured products annually than any other country. The trade of the United States with foreign lands and its own island possessions, according to reports of the fiscal year ending June 30, 1912, set a high-water mark of $4,000,000,000.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the growing wealth of a single city, a statement is in circulation that in 1885, according to the city records, there were only twenty-eight millionaires in New York City; now there are more than two thousand.

5. Agricultural products. Two of the staple agricultural products are corn and wheat. The United States had two and four fifths times as many acres of corn in 1910 as all the rest of the world. According to figures given out by the Bureau of the Census the cotton crop of the United States in 1909 was five eighths of the total grown in the world. Russia alone of all the countries in the world grew a few more bushels of wheat last year than the United States.

The value of the farm products of the United States in 1909, according to the report of the Department of Agriculture, was $8,760,000,000.

The farm products have considerably more than doubled in ten years, equaling in value eighteen times the world's output of gold. In commenting on these figures, a writer in the _Literary Digest_ gives the following concrete ill.u.s.tration of what they mean: If the money were all in twenty-dollar gold pieces, it would make a pile 720 miles high, and if the gold pieces were laid on the earth touching one another, the value of the farm products of that one year would make a line of twenty-dollar gold pieces reaching across Alaska, Canada, the United States and Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama, and there would then be enough of these coins left to make a line of gold from New York to San Francisco, and some pieces would fall off into the Pacific Ocean before they were all used! Even this fabulous amount of wealth produced on the farms was increased by one hundred and sixty-eight millions of dollars in 1910.

These few facts, startling as they are, are only the beginning of an exhibit of the prodigality of power centering here. The moral and spiritual meaning of these resources const.i.tutes a challenge to our best civilization.

G.o.d needs tremendous financial resources for the work of winning the world. Vast resources are needed for the educational, evangelistic, philanthropic, and industrial work of missions. There seems to be no place on earth where in our time there are such available resources for this task as here in this land.

One of the supreme tests of our civilization is the use we are making of this G.o.d-given treasure, for cash and consecration should increase in proportionate ratio. How to be rich and religious at the same time is one of the burning issues in our land to-day. The release of a legitimate portion of this wealth for the blessings of mankind and the refreshing of the thirsty earth is evidently a part of the purpose of G.o.d. If the riches of America are to be a resource and not an incubus, a highway and not a terminus, American men, to whom G.o.d has given the ability to get great wealth, must be brought face to face with the challenge of the needy world in order to save them from the disaster of selfishness and sin. G.o.d is not grieved when his men get rich, but he is grieved when riches are not invested for the enrichment of the world. It seems inconceivable that America could throw away this supreme opportunity for service. "Napoleonic energies require an international program."

AMERICA CAN RETAIN HER PLACE OF LEADERSHIP IN THE KINGDOM OF G.o.d ONLY BY DEVELOPING VISION AND CONSECRATION ADEQUATE TO HER TASK

It will be well for American Christianity if it learns the eloquent lessons which are written on many pages of the world's history, telling of the setting aside of nations and men who have had a great opportunity but have failed to carry out the divinely appointed commission.

All the facts given above emphasize the imperative necessity for greatly enlarged home missionary effort. The world battle cannot be won unless the attack upon sin and the defense of the bulwarks of righteousness at home are aggressive and victorious. The home battle and the world battle are one.

_What then is America's share of the world task?_ How much will be required of money and men if America does her duty to the non-Christian world?