life, but to carry one's life in one's hand is what other soldiers, besides those of the Cross, do habitually.” John Coleridge Patteson, the famous English oarsman, who was murdered by South Sea Islanders, thus winning the name “Martyr of Melanesia,” spoke as follows of the kind of person needed for world service: "Earnest, bright, cheerful fellows, without that notion of 'making sacrifices' so perpetually occurring to their minds, would be invaluable. You know the kind of men, who have got rid of the conventional notion that more self-denial is needed for a missionary than for a sailor or soldier, who are sent anywhere and leave home and country for years, and think nothing of it because they go on duty." It is possible to draw stimulus out of the very difficulties of the work and to think of hardships as things not to be endured but to be ignored. Much depends on the attitude we bring to our task and the devotion with which we pursue it. The soldiers at the front did not talk of sacrifice. "Bad luck, old fellow, you have been hard hit," said a companion in arms to an unshaved peasant picked up by an ambulance in France, both arms gone. "No, I gave my life to France. She has taken only my arms." Wealthy, cultured women, who never did a day's work in their lives, were seen in the canteens scrubbing floors and serving tables. "Sacrifice?" they exclaimed. "We are happier than we have ever been before." Can one doubt that the loving life is vastly more satisfying than the selfish life can ever be? In spite of difficulties, hardships, and trials, the life spent for others is even here and now infinitely more rich and significant than a selfish life can possibly be. The Christian knows that selfishness is an inevitable limitation of life, and love just, as inevitably is its enlargement. Then, too, are we going even to name the hardships of the peaceful spread of the democracy of God in the presence of those who have given their lives for its spread through war? Ten score Christians from the West were martyred during the first century of Protestant missions in China, but that is as nothing compared with the toll of consecrated lives taken by a single day's fighting in France. We were told about a mother, with three sons killed in battle, who with radiant face gave her fourth to face wounds and death at country's call. Why, then, should a Christian mother flinch from allowing her child to make a peaceful journey overseas to undertake constructive work of exceptional scope and power for the highest of world enterprises? If it was not waste for the flower of our colleges to die for democracy, is it waste for the best to live for the extension of that which alone can make democracy safe? In the presence of the millions who have lived the stern and simple life in order that Red Cross and Liberty Loans may be supported, we blush to mention the paltry sum of one dollar and twenty-two cents which is, at present, the average church member's contribution to the Kingdom overseas. We have been living at a time when men saw that it is quality of life, not quantity, that really matters; when death was but an incident in the great fact of eternal life; when the very indifference to human flesh made men assured that there was something vastly more. Men at the front had it out with death; they counted the cost; and were living from high principle and sense of sacred duty. By all means, let us be ready to pay the cost of being a Christian, but let us not be over conscious of the cost. What the noblest souls crave is not recognition of their sacrifice, but that the cause for which they suffered shall be upheld and carried forward. Just this is the cry voiced by Colonel John McCrae: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow Take up our quarrel with the foe! TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." If some person should READINESS TO PAY THE COS say to you that this in the mouth of a modem curar menti is pure cant, how would you meet his criticism 2. What does the modern Christan lose and what due III' gain by professing Christianity? 3. What did Christ teach that his disciples shout lost an should gain? 4. Do the last two questions indicate that Christianity is a its core selfish? How could you show that it is not 5. Give some example of where appea. II brought a great response. 6. Give several illustrations of progress that has come without sacrifice, (b) with sacrifice. 7. What did it cost Israel as a nation to become read 1 international service? Egg? In the wilderness? Ask kingdom? In captivity? After the Restoration. 8. In what ways have we as a nation paid the cost of preparation for international service? 177 comes literally to those world Christians who, as missionaries or as pioneers in commerce, feel led to serve God in other lands. They, too, know what it is to set one's face toward a distant and unfamiliar land. But in another way this call comes to each of us, not necessarily to change our abode or our outward mode of life, but to enlarge our horizon, to live in interest and imagination in other lands than our own. It was no easy matter for Abraham to set out from the old, familiar, luxuriant life of nature and of man on that rich alluvial land between the Tigris and Euphrates. May we on our part not hesitate, when we hear God's call, to enter through knowledge and sympathy into lands that are not our own. We note, furthermore, that "he went out, not knowing whither he went." These are the circumstances under which God's call often comes to us. We have an unmistakable feeling that God is leading us away from our present manner of life or our present plans. The direction we are to take is plain, but what that direction is to lead to is by no means plain. It took faith for Abraham and it still takes faith for any man to launch out from old moorings when the next port is unknown., Faith rises to the highest when without sight we obey-when we follow truth and righteousness without fear as to the Spirit's leading. The significant factor in such situations is the confidence that there is Someone who is going along as guide. "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, The night is dark, and I am far from home; Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see But the most striking clause in these verses is the following: "Abraham, when he was called, obeyed." Back of this simple sentence are some world Christi as in tou call; it ge. ndamentals that should characterize every present day. It is plain that Abraham he was living so that he could hear And normal thing for God to speak; e spoken re was unhesitating e days is that each need i |