gdom of social righteousness in the earth. Consider,
then, the fascinating story of the way the missionaries, whatever may
have been the motives with which they started, have become social
reformers. If the missionaries were to take the Gospel to the people,
they had to get to the people. So they became the explorers of the
world. It was the missionaries who opened up Asia and Africa. Was
there ever a more stirring story of adventure than is given us in the
life of David Livingstone? Then when the missionaries had reached the
people to give them the Gospel, they had to give them the Bible. So
they became the philologists and translators of the world. They built
the lexicons and grammars. They translated the Bible into more than a
hundred languages on the continent of Africa alone. Carey and his
followers did the same for over a score of languages in India. The
Bible to-day is available in over six hundred living languages.
Everywhere this prodigious literary labour has been breaking down the
barriers of speech and thought between the peoples. If ever we do get
a decent internationalism, how much of it will rest back upon this
pioneer spade work of the missionaries, digging through the barricades
of language that separate the minds of men! When, then, the
missionaries had books to give the people, the people had to learn to
read. So the missionaries became educators, and wherever you find the
church you find the school. But what is the use of educating people
who do not understand how to be sanitary, who live in filth and disease
and die needlessly, and how can you take away old superstitions and not
put new science in their places, or deprive the people of witch doctors
without offering them substitutes? So the missionaries became
physicians, and one of the most beneficent enterprises that history
records is medical missions. What is the use, however, of helping
people to get well when their economic condition is such, their
standards of life so low, that they continue to fall sick again in
spite of you? So the missionaries are becoming industrial reformers,
agriculturalists, chemists, physicists, engineers, rebuilding wherever
they can the economic life and comfort of their people. The missionary
cause itself has been compelled, whether it would or not, to grow
socially-minded. As Dan Crawford says about the work in Africa: "Here,
then, is Africa's challenge to its Missionaries. Will they allow a
wh