of a magnetic compass always points north. The needle of the
compass of progress has always pointed west; at least always since the
Medo-Persian was the world-power. But it is striking that the compass of
the world's <i>need</i> always points its needle toward the east. And so,
starting at Jerusalem, we may well turn our faces east as we take our
swing around the world to learn its need.

It may be a relief to you to know at once that there will not be any
statistics in this series of talks. We want instead just now to get broad
and general, but distinct, impressions. Statistics are burdensome to most
people. They are a good deal of a bugbear to the common crowd of us
every-day folks. They are absolutely essential. They are of immense, that
is, immeasurable, value. You need to have them at hand where you can
easily turn for exact information, as you need it, to refresh your memory.
And an increasing amount of it will stick in your memory and guide your
thinking and praying.

There are easily available, in these days of such remarkable missionary
activity, an abundance of fresh statistics, in attractive form. We are
greatly indebted to the Student Volunteer Movement and the Young People's
Missionary Movement and the Church Societies for the great service they
have done in this matter of full fresh information.

But the thing of first importance is to get an intelligent thought of the
<i>whole world</i>. And then to add steadily to our stock of particular
information, as study and prayer and service call for it. It is possible
to get a simple grasp of the whole world. And it helps immensely to do it.

It helps at once to this end to remember that two-thirds of all the
peoples of the earth are in the distinctly heathen, or non-Christian,
lands. This in itself is a tremendous fact, telling at once of the world's
need. At the beginning of the twentieth hundred-years since Jesus gave His
command to preach His Gospel to all men, two-thirds of them are still in
ignorance of Him and under the same moral sway as when He went away.

I might add that there are a billion people in these two-thirds. But that
figure is so big as only to stagger the mind in an attempt to take it in.
The important thing is to see that it doesn't by its sheer bigness,
stagger our faith or our courage or our praying habit. We want to be like
the old Hebrew who "staggered not" at God's promise to do for him a
naturally impossible thing. Yet it is well t