Van Dyke, Henry, The Spirit of America. Fleming H. Revell Co., 158 Fifth Avenue, New York. $0.50.
Reinsch, World Politics. Macmillan Company, 64 Fifth Avenue, New York. $1.25.
Stead, W. T., The Americanization of the World. Horace Markley. New York, $1.00.
CHAPTER IV
A MAN'S RESPONSE TO THE WORLD APPEAL
The efficiency expert is a familiar figure in modern big business. His function is the checking up and scaling up of commercial enterprises. His one study is business organization, methods, management and output. His life is built around such problems as these: Are the capital and force at work in this business bringing adequate returns? What combinations are possible so as to reduce expenses without reducing returns? Is there waste? Is there duplication of effort? Is the product satisfactory as to quality and quantity? Is there anything the matter with the organization? Has the business too many officials or too few? Are there unimproved opportunities? Is the advertising all that could be desired? In short, his function is to study business with a view to securing a maximum of efficiency with the expenditure of a minimum of time, force and capital.
Why not apply the same methods and skill and intense application to the work of the kingdom of Jesus Christ? There is no business in the world comparable with it from the standpoint of immensity—there are hundreds of millions of people involved, and not a foot of soil where a man lives is excluded from the plan of Jesus Christ. There is no enterprise which promises such inspiring and enduring returns from the investment. Its complexity and baffling difficulties are a challenge to the passion for mastery that is central in every real man. Christian men might well ponder deeply and then take as a guiding principle in life that sentence of the late Mr. J. H. Converse of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, "When Christian business men devote the same skill and energy to Christian work which they now give to their private business concerns the proposition to evangelize the world in this generation will be no longer a dream."
It may be well to approach the study of this final topic in the spirit of the favorite sayings of two famous modern generals. One of the principles of a great German tactician was, "First ponder, then dare." The motto of another well-known general was, "Know your geography and fight your men." It is of the utmost importance that there be developed in the Church of Christ such a militant temper as shall make it capable of carrying out the plans of Christ to naturalize Christianity in every land. It is an urgent necessity that Christ's soldiers ponder world conditions in order that they may release their lives for the carrying of the gospel to the world. Men must know the geography of the kingdom of God if they are to apply the principles of strategy to the carrying out of the last command of Christ.
Some of the outstanding facts related to the evangelization of the world have passed in review in the preceding chapters. The time for action has come. What is needed now is not more rhetoric but more reality of conviction; not more facts, but deeper purpose. The crucial question in this whole discussion is how every man may relate himself in a practical way to the winning of the world to Christ. The carrying of the gospel to all the world is every man's opportunity. There is no monopoly of a chance to serve in this war. This is the one opportunity which makes it possible for every life to influence the whole world. What then are the moral and spiritual demands which a world like ours makes upon men?