he best Christian feeling towards the heathen
world today is far more true, righteous, sympathetic, Christlike, than the
feelings of those who were interested in missions an hundred years ago.
But the single motive which, standing alone, led to the missionary
enterprise has come to be so surrounded by other thoughts and motives as
to lose its relative importance, and be less available than it then was as
a controlling influence. This is one of the great and significant causes
of the crisis in missions."

It is not necessarily true that the paramount motive of a century ago is
no longer believed; but that other motives have grown and reached a
commanding influence as a power in the Christian consciousness of today. A
Christian missionary has indeed changed his views, for instance,
concerning the origin and character of Hinduism. Through modern
enlightenment and the study of comparative religion no man can go out as a
missionary, even as I was expected to go less than a quarter of a century
ago, with a general belief that that great religion is entirely of the
devil and is in itself evil and only evil continually. The missionary of
today must discriminate, must study appreciation and consider historic
facts. He must know that ethnic, and all non-Christian religions, have had
their uses, and that some still have their uses in the world. They are the
expression of the deepest religious instincts of the human soul. And they
have, especially such a faith as Hinduism, not a few elements of truth
which a missionary should know no less than he should understand the great
evils which enter as a part of them.

The greatest missionary motive of today lies in the last commission of our
Lord which emanates from the heart, and reveals the essence of our
religion. His command to his disciples to go and disciple the nations
stands now as the Supreme Christian Command; and its significance is
appreciated and emphasized today as never before. And so long as a Church
gives increasing emphasis to this, His greatest commission, it must
necessarily be in the path of duty, of privilege, of blessing and of
power. Above all other missionary motives this must remain supreme.

And there must go hand in hand with this loyalty to Christ, a deepening
loyalty to Christianity and a growing appreciation of its uniqueness in
the world. Christianity is not one religion among many; it stands alone as
the soul-satisfying and soul-saving faith. The scattere