Marks of a world Christian

Front matter

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PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY

BV 4501 .F57 1919 Fleming, Daniel Johnson,

Foreword

Internationalism has always been implicit in Christianity.. During three great eras of Christian expansion this internationalism became consciously explicit in the Church's outreach to non-Christian lands. An analysis of the missionaryconsciousness back of these great movements ought to yield certain fundamental elements that should characterize every Christian. We turn to what, historically^ has been Christianity's highest expression in order to see more clearly the mind which each Christian should bring to bear upon the world.

Throughout this little book it has been assumed that, ideally, there is no difference between the Christian and the world Christian. Being a Christian is not a matter of the here or the there of an act or an attitude, but refers to a certain characteristic response which is independent of geography.

It is hoped that these studies will help both individuals and churches in self-examination. The analysis found in these successive chapters does not attempt to be exhaustive, but certain outstanding elements have been chosen for consideration. One or another of these nine "marks" will probably need emphasized development, in order that the spirit which we bring to the world's great problems may be both Christian and international.

D. J, F.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword vii

I. Consciousness of the Larger Self i

CHAPTER I Consciousness of the Larger Self

Indissolubly knit together are myself, other folks, and God. This triangular relationship is characterized by a very real solidarity. To this living, vital, interpenetrating organism is given the name, the larger self. Now a consciousness of this interrelatedness and interdependence of life is one essential for a great new constructive era. Let us first consider this truth in the form of an ancient analogy.

DAILY READINGS First Week, First Day: The Family of God

He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said.

For we are also his offspring. — Acts 17:26-28.

In these verses is made one of the great generalizations with reference to mankind. However, long before this declaration of the essential unity of the human race in one great family or household, we find that occasional prophetic minds were thinking in terms of humanity. It is worth while to read right through the thirty-two verses of names and peoples found in the tenth chapter of Genesis in order to come from this to the first verse of the next chapter. The religious value of that long list of names is in the realization that all races of the earth belong to the same great family and are really kinsmen. There is one family of God — not many.

Have we ever seriously considered the obligation arising from this great truth? It involves an international community of interests and responsibilities, an international fellowship in gain and loss, in honor and dishonor. When men say with

I

Meredith Townsend that "something radical, something unalterable and indestructible, divides the Asiatic from the European, . . . they are fenced off from each other by an invisible, impalpable, but impassable wall as rigid and inflexible as that which divides the master from his dog,"^ they are forming the background in thought for racial war. It is the denial of the implications of mankind's unity in one family that makes nationalism dangerous. On the other hand, the thorough-going acceptance of those implications would crowd out selfish suspicion and aggression,^ while dignifying and ennobling national individuality and attainment. Success in the acceptance of the truth may be tested by the mutual attitudes between peoples.

It is a growing realization of this truth that is causing a gradual disuse of the word "foreign" in connection with missions. With one blood, one human family, there can be no sharp line between obligation to community, to nation, and to the world. It is that larger outreach, however, which we have known as foreign missions, that preeminently makes its great heroic venture on the fundamental soundness of the postulate of today's teaching. Foreign missionaries act on the conviction that the solidarity of the human race in God's family is true ; they thereby become the most powerful agents for creating the realization of that truth.

The intelligent assimilation of the truth as to the essential unity of the human race on the part of any individual or group, is a real attainment. When can it be said of us, as of Jesus: "He is not ashamed to call them brethren"? (Heb. 2: ii). Or when will we join with him in saying: "Behold my mother and my brethren ! Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. . . . My Father, and your Father"? (Matt. 12:49, 50; John 20: 17).

First Week, Second Day : Still Struggling for Monotheism

Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, ... I am Jehovah, and there is none else; besides me there is no God. I will gird thee, though thou hast not known me; that they may know from the rising of the sun, and

1 "Asia and Europe," pp. 50 and 150.

CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-3]

from the west, that there is none besides me: I am Jehovah, and there is none else. — Isa. 45 : i, 5, 6.

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling . . . one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. — Eph. 4:4, 6.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him. — Rom. 10: 12.

We shall never attain the democracy of God until we have a common, vital, monotheistic faith at the spiritual basis of our lives. There was a time when tribal gods were commonly worshiped. This was true amongst all neighboring peoples in Isaiah's time. Even Yahweh, himself, had been honored as the exclusively national God of Israel. With magnificent insight, however, the prophets declared Yahweh to be the controller of the whole world. Isaiah believed that even the foreigner, Cyrus, could be considered an anointed servant of Jehovah. Amos must have astounded the people of his day by declaring that God does not love the Israelites more than the Negroes (Amos 9:7). And a beautiful Syriac rendering of Isaiah 9:7 says that "Great is his kingdom and of his dominion is there no frontier." Hebrew prophecy was the interpretation of history in terms of God's purpose, and increasingly was it perceived that this purpose was utilizing other nations along with Israel.

Signs are not wanting, however, that even in modern times many have been worshiping tribal gods. The aspirations and petitions of many a prayer during the War revealed an unconscious survival of belief in one's deity as limited to one's area. Are we willing to believe that some non-Christian monarch or people may be chosen agents in the hand of our God? Do we really acknowledge to ourselves that the Alaskan and the Burman, the Korean and the African are just as dear to God as we? Let us with warmth of conviction exclaim: "God's in the Occident — God's in the Orient."

First Week, Third Day: The Essential Condition for the Larger Unity

There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus. — Gal. 3:28.

Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all. — Col. 3:11.

In yesterday's reading we saw the fundamental basis for the larger self ; in today's, Paul shows us the essential condition for its attainment. Distinctions of race, of social position, even of sex, become relatively unimportant in Christ — that is, in our becoming Christian. When God's Spirit dwells in us, a life is possible that is superior to these differences. They are not non-existent, but they seem superficial compared with that sense of deeper unity which comes from realities disclosed in Christ.

That any two human beings are coequally children of their Father is a vastly more significant truth than that one is a Jew and the other a Greek. Once catch a vision of man's common relationship to the one source, God, and we see that the realm in which we share is vastly larger than the realm in which we differ. In all the mystery of our origin, in all the vastness of our resources, in all the hope for life ahead, we are conjoined with every other human being. What in comparison is the differing social status of master or slave? If woman must be born again in the form of man in order to be saved, as is held in popular Hinduism, if she is a distinctly lower order of being as in Africa, then of course the distinction of male and female is enormously and farreachingly significant. But if through Christ we see the reality of the spiritual oneness of man and woman, and contemplate their common privilege of living the eternal life in time under the care and by the power of God, this common dignity overshadows and ennobles every other thing.

Sometimes a catastrophe brings about this consciousness of simple humanity. When Robinson Crusoe first saw the man Friday, the fact that they were fellow-humans was more dominating than color or creed. When the earth's crust shakes and terror drives people from their homes, the members of the heterogeneous company huddled in a place of refuge are more conscious of their common human frailty before this mighty force than they are of old distinctions that loomed so large in days of safety when they forgot their God.

But what the earthquake can do for a night, Christ can make an abiding attitude. Fellowship with him gives a spiritual perspective that is vital for all time. The world must catch

CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-4]

from him the overwhehningly greater significance of what unites rather than of what separates mankind. Those individuals and those nations who really try to follow him will find amongst themselves an identity of interest and of aim that will command attention, to the exclusion or correction of the things which now divide.

Here, then, is a practical test for every Christian. Amid race prejudice and national rivalry, does the deeper unity stand out for us? Do we feel closer to a Chinese or an African who is trying to be a Christian than we do to a fellow-countryman who is making no such effort? Can we ever have a league of nations without a deep sense of our underlying unity?

Paul does not underestimate the magnitude of this change in point of view. To him it is a moral change that can be likened only to a new life, the putting on of a new man. Paul never would have tolerated two classes, Christian and world Christian. Becoming a Christian meant to him something deep and thoroughgoing. In these two epistles he testifies to a wonderful change in attitude. I ask myself two questions : Has there ever been such a change in my mental attitude? If so, would I consider it, as Paul did, so great an evidence of God's working in me that I would write it to my friends as "good news"?

First Week, Fourth Day : The Interrelation of Peoples

But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. — Eph. 4:15, 16.

That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member sufTereth, all the members suffer with it; or one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. — I Cor. 12:25, 26.

For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to himself. — Rom. 14:7.

That apart from us they should not be made perfect. — Heb. 11:40.

Most of these verses were spoken primarily with reference to the Church as an organization. Today they seem equally applicable to the whole world. For not only the physical but the mental seismographs in every land are sensitive to the smallest shock at any place. A pistol shot in a small Bohemian town could set four-fifths of the world at war. True, also, are these verses if applied even to things no more profound than the cross-section of the day of a modern man. "When he rises, a sponge is placed in his hand by a Pacific Islander, a cake of soap by a Frenchman, a rough towel by a Turk. His merino underwear he takes from the hand of a Spaniard, his linen from a Belfast manufacturer, his outer garments from a Birmingham weaver, his scarf from a French silk grower, his shoes from a Brazilian grazier. At breakfast his cup of coffee is poured by natives of Java and Arabia ; his rolls are passed by a Kansas farmer, his beefsteak by a Texan ranchman, his orange by a Florida Negro."' And so on through the day — a million men and women and children have been working for him; and in return he should add his mite to the common stock upon which others draw.

It is not enough, however, merely to recognize these interrelations. We nmst also see what lies back of these contributions to our lives. Our coal, our clothes, our ornaments — these things are a part of our system, are a part of us. Many of these things are the fruit of slum conditions and represent, not something apart, but the reverse of what seems like the splendid fabric of our lives. In the graphic figure of H. G. Wells, "The wide rich tapestry of your lives comes through on the other side, stitch for stitch, in stunted bodies, in children's deaths." And what is true in the social and industrial world holds true in the international. In fact, Norman Angell's "The Great Illusion" holds as its thesis that no people can possibly benefit itself by conquering, impoverishing, or even forcibly annexing another people. The other nation also is part of the larger self, and we suffer with the other member.

But even if there were no unsocial conditions of production of which to think, would we be relieved of responsibility? Can we take from Rome, from Greece, from Arabia, from Egypt, the very words and numbers that we hourly use and

CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-5]

feel no sense of obligation in return? Shall we accept from Japan and China the ripe fruitage of their rare arts and feel that the whole debt has been discharged when a mere money recompense has been made? Something more than the removal of downright selfishness is needed on the part of the individual and the group if class and racial troubles are to cease. There could still remain that preoccupation with one's more narrow range of interests that obliterates all sense of solidarit3^ What we need is a consciousness alive to the significance of a membership one with the other. We should not need another war to burn into us the awful results of attempting to live unto ourselves alone.

Let us, on the other hand, not fail to draw inspiration for resourceful constructive work from a vivid realization of our interrelationships. For every social reformer, every religious worker, may know that each victory that he wins will benefit not merely those whose interests he immediately seeks to serve, but also his awakening fellow-members the world around. So real and intricate are our interrelations that the removal of unchristian principles from the social institutions of any land makes the progress of every other land just so much more possible. If we long that God's will should be done anywhere, it is wise and reasonable to keep in mind the whole, to work and pray that "thy will be done on earth."

First Week, Fifth Day: God's Kindergarten for Eternity

For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit; so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. ...

Wherefore also I was hindered these many times from coming to you: but now, having no more any place in these regions, and having these many years a longing to come unto you, whensoever I go unto Spain. — Rom. 15: 18, 19, 22-24a.

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the Spirit of J*^sus suffered them not; and passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There was a man of Macedonia standing, beseeching him, and saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And when he had seen the vision, straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel unto them. — Acts i6:6-io.

Every night as we look up at Orion or the Pleiades God is encouraging us to live more magnificent, inclusive lives. Put yourself out in the universe and look back upon the tiny, half-cooled orb we call the earth. Here is where God has set us for a few days to train us for eternity. A few continents, a few peoples, myriads of stars to draw us on — such is our kindergarten.

Notice how Paul had learned this lesson. The book of Acts deals with great sweeps of geography. Along the great Roman roads, through the great centers of government, Paul not only thought but went. Troas was Paul's door to Europe — Rome and Spain lay on ahead. It was because Paul could think in the world terms of his time that the first great expansion of the Kingdom was made possible. Into the range of his thinking and sympathy had come his whole world. Who does not feel that Paul had already graduated into an ampler school?

Francis Xavier was another who had learned to grasp a world. He was sent forth by Loyola with the charge, "Go set the world on fire," and in ten crowded years he gave his message in India, Malacca, Ceylon, Cochin, Japan. When, finally, his life burnt out at the gate of China, he was planning to preach Christ through that empire, and to evangelize Europe by way of Siberia. "Eternity only, Francis, is sufficient for such a heart as yours," wrote his master, Loyola, "the kingdom of glory alone is worthy of it."

The question for us is whether we, with the immensely increased resources at our command, have left the primary grade with reference to this little ball on which we live. Have we Paul's grasp of facts? Can we, like him, think in continents? Many of us have but begun to learn this first lesson for world citizenship — mere expansiveness of sympathy. America has a greater challenge than any other nation to leave the provincial and to develop the international mind. If the president of the National City Bank can declare that

CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [1-6]

the banker of the future must be an international thinker, how much more must the Church rear up Christians who can think in world terms. In the New York subway an advertisement of chewing gum has actually been pictured against a background of the globe; and surely the Christian, because of his being such, should be able to think as far around the world as South Dakota wheat is carried. A world-encircling purpose and vision is needed right through our church membership. Can you think beyond the bounds of your own community, or state, or nation? Are you accustoming yourself to think in world terms?

One must make the start and live with it daily, for one does not pass from parochial to world thought over night. John Wesley had it when he spoke of the world as his parish. William Lloyd had it when he said, "My country is the world ; my countrymen the inhabitants of it." The shoemaker, William Carey, had overcome provincialism when, in reading the life of David Brainerd, he could not but ask, "If God can do such things for the Indians of America, why not for the pagans of India?" Alexander Mackay became what he was to Uganda because a father knew how to trace the journeys of Livingstone on a map before the boy and because a mother's heart had thrilled to tales of missionary heroism. Today a band of twenty-five thousand American, British, and continental missionaries are working at a world problem. Modern missions have caught the vision of the world and are at work for mankind. Have you caught it? Are you growing more able day by day to pray "Thy kingdom come" with new content not only in the quality but in the expansiveness of that conception? The modern mind and heart and conscience must not have frontiers.

First Week, Sixth Day : Self-Identification with the Larger Group

And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and said, O, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. — Exodus 32:31, 32.

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. — Rom. 9: 1-5.

In these burning words Moses and Paul reveal the completeness of their identification with the larger group about them. Is anything like such attainment possible for us? Did that young lieutenant have it when a shell fell, about to explode, amongst the little group for which he was responsible, and he impulsively threw himself upon it?

Some attain this identification through patriotism. "What do I want with money if my country fails? If Russia loses, I lose ; if Russia wins, I win." So spoke General Tatisheff, an out-and-out Christian patriot, in answer to his friends who thought him foolish to sell all his property that the proceeds might be used by the Government.

Some approach it through gratitude, as did a patient in South China. Having recovered from a severe sickness in the mission hospital, he showed how far his old exclusiveness had been changed by presenting to his ward a handsome tablet, bearing characters which signified, "China with outsiders one large family."

Through devoted response to Africa's deepest need, Francois Coillard came still closer to self-identification with the larger group when, in 1898, on his third journey to that land, he said, "I am departing for the third time to Africa — poor Africa ! Ah, if one could only give oneself to her until the last hour of one's life!"

On the other hand, how easy it is to miss the attainment of the larger self, even where failure is least expected. The missionary, having responded to a world call, may find himself so engrossed with the detailed routine of an Indian district that all interest in the progress of the Kingdom in other lands is crowded out. He may find himself with less knowledge of world-wide missions than when he was at home. A president of a foreign missionary society can actually be so enthusiastic over the foreign aspects of the work that she is vexed when the prayer-book for home missions is bound up v/ith that for foreign missions ; or chafes when the Negro,

CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-7]

or the Mormon, or the immigrant question comes up for discussion. It is possible to realize the far-off, and yet quite ignore the near-by self. Whenever we identify "Christendom" with the Western nations only, or confine "heathendom" to the Orient we have failed.

Perhaps nowhere more than in prayer do we see the meagerness of the self we have attained. "Bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more," is the classic embodiment of the microscopic self. On the other hand, we find a beautiful example of an expanding self in the simple Panjabi Christian, Gulu, Once a desperate character amongst the outcastes, he is now known as one of God's great intercessors. One day Gulu came to his American friend and said : "Sahib, teach me some geography." "Why, Gulu, what do you want with geography at your age?" "Sahib, I wish to study geography so that I may know more about which to pray." Shall not we examine our prayer life — that for which we care enough to intercede — as one index of our growth ?

First Week, Seventh Day: A Prayer for Human Solidarity

As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. — John 17:18-23.

We often read these words with no larger application in mind than the abolition of lamented denominational differences. The union of such Christian sects as have come within our range is as far as our longing goes with this prayer of Christ's. Many of us do not include in conscious thought in connection with these verses such great com-

II munions as the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the Syrian Church in India.

But can any interpretation of these words be complete that confines its thought to European man, or Anglo-Saxon man, or even to white man? When between the Western and the Eastern, barriers fall down, and each sees that he cannot be the man he ought to be without the other ; when "for their sakes" we sanctify ourselves, and include in the word, "their," other peoples as well as other individuals ; when reciprocity, mutuality, and true oneness mark interracial relationships, will not this go far toward answering Christ's prayer for evidence, in order "that the world may believe that thou didst send me"?

In no place do we have the social character of personality more vividly brought out than here. Our social environment is one that includes not only our closer circle but the whole world of peoples and God himself. Anything that makes for isolation, makes for poverty of personality.

How is this potential solidarity of all peoples and of mankind with God to be made actual ? When "the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them." It is love as inspired by Christ that binds together.

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK I

If a child is asked to tell us where his "self" is, he will probably point to his body. In fact, in answer to the question as to what constitutes the self many of us might naively reply that it is that of which a photograph can be taken. We say, "That is I," pointing toward the picture or to our reflection in the mirror. But n,o man can be wholly found between his hat and his boots. And yet some of us keep on thinking of the self as in some way enclosed within one's skin. If we have not stopped to reflect, this conception of an epidermal self may never be displaced.

Every new interest, Iwzvever, is an addition to one's self. Each nezv activity, each new enterprise that calls forth our cooperation constitutes an expansion of the self. If Red Cross work really moves me, it actually becomes a factor in my self. If my impulses find satisfaction in helping Baillie save the Yangtze valley by reforesting Pearl Mountain, then this interest, by very virtue of this fact, becomes a part of my ego.