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of God, and we are not in a mood for Biblereading. Or the bells are ringing for service, and we are not in a church-going temper. Or the table of the Lord is spread, and we are bidden, and we are of a mind to turn away. Or the voice of God is heard summoning us to work in the vineyard, to do this or that good deed for him, and we have no good heart for the good deed. We lack the disposition; shall we then forego the duty?

The answer that is given by the voice of spiritual experience is unhesitating and direct. Never mind the disposition. There is no disposition that is spiritually fatal except that of complete self-satisfaction. Do the best you can. If you cannot do the whole of your duty, do a part. If you cannot do it as you would like, do it as you can. Never forget that "the best is often the enemy of the good; " that the devil makes use of our ideals to discourage us. If you can do no more than to set yourself resolutely at God's service, and to say words and phrases, say the words and phrases. Presently you will find them changing into real petitions. If we do our duty, God will make the good deed grow into the right disposition.

FOREIGN MISSIONS.

"The field is the world." - ST. MATT. xiii. 38.

WHOEVER would learn the boundaries within which missionary work ought to be done may well begin his studies in religious geography with this descriptive sentence. Hang up a map of both the hemispheres, with all the continents and all the islands and all the oceans upon it, with polar ice at the top and polar ice at the bottom, and the equator across the middle of it; that is the map of missions.

Jesus stands in the midst of that little contracted, out-of-the-way, provincial Palestine, with an obscure company of fishermen and peasants about him, and looks out into the immeasurable reaches of time and space, and says, "The field is the world."

Remember that the locality was Judea, and that the listeners were Hebrews. The place and the people stood for sectarianism and narrowness. Remember that the time was centuries ago, in a day when the idea of a universal religion had never even been dreamed of. The

profoundest philosopher, the most radical reformer, the most far-seeing and prophetic statesman, had not conceived of the desirability, or the possibility, or even the merest visionary outline, of a religion for the race. A hundred and fifty years later the sceptic Celsus ridiculed the notion of a universal religion as a colossal folly.

We are so wonted to the wide idea, it so pervades the Christian air we breathe, that it is not easy for us to understand how the words. sounded to the little congregation that heard them first. "The field is the world." "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." "Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." We have hardly learned the meaning of that message yet. We are forever limiting the field, and asking, Who is my neighbor? and trying to put narrow duties in the place of broad ones, and questioning the value and the use of foreign missions. But in the days in which he lived, sectarianism was accounted essential to sanctity.

No man was considered orthodox unless he was narrow-minded. Jesus of Nazareth stood by himself, the only man of his time who looked over the tops of the dividing fences into all the world. It is an evidence of the uniqueness and singularity of his character more convincing than a score of miracles.

Even to-day, with all the widening-out of thought, with all the brilliant generalization of the philosophers, with all the bands of steel that girdle the planet and bring the continents together, with all the marvels of steam and printing and electricity which make men masters of space and conquerors of time, so that we are all citizens of one city, having Central Asia and Central Africa for suburbs, still we are behind the thought of Jesus Christ. We are not yet as wide-minded as he was. We are still content within the limits of a provincial and parochial Christianity. We still need sermons upon foreign missions.

One of the disadvantages of foreign missions is that they are such a long way off. Not many of us have visited Africa or China, or ever expect to. We find it difficult to realize the conditions of life and work in those distant regions. The imagination, always an essential

element in enthusiasm, finds little to build upon. What our missionaries are doing in those remote countries, what their hardships are, what kind of stumbling-blocks they have to change into stepping-stones, and how they are succeeding in that difficult endeavor, we do but vaguely know.

This is not the fault of the missionaries. They do their best to keep us posted. They are forever writing letters, and their correspondence is printed every month in full in our missionary magazines. But we do not read the letters. The whole matter is out of sight and out of mind. These good men are doing our work. They represent us. They are in our place, out there on the border, trying where such effort is imperatively needed to make this world a Christian place to live in, and succeeding wonderfully well, for the most part. But we are not interested. It is said that in some churches the announcement that upon the following Sunday a missionary from some remote outpost of the church will be the speaker will considerably diminish the size of the congregation. We have no special love for missionaries.

One of the reasons why we do not read foreign missionary correspondence with more

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