athy of Jesus Christ, to respond
to that cause. Those disciples of that early day might just as well have
said, "Master, we can not feed all these ten thousand. We will pick out
those around us, the nearest at hand. We won't touch that set of lepers
just over there from Capernaum; we won't have anything to do with that
other set of outcasts and vagabonds drifted in here, some of them from
Samaria; we will have nothing whatever to do with these wretches from
Chorazin--gamblers and abandoned people of every sort."

What do you think would have been his response to that sort of argument?
I think if Peter had given him any such plea as that it would have cut
him off hopelessly from any apostleship. There would have been a new
band of apostles that would have been instituted then and there that
were willing to take the Master's command, take Him as responsible for
the authority and for the result. They knew better; they knew Him
better; and though they had their little scant loaves that would not
give a quarter of a crumb apiece to the great multitude, they said:
"That is not our responsibility; ours is to obey. It is His to furnish
when the resources fail." Brethren, that is my theory of missions.

Do you remember the little anecdote about Francis Xavier, that before he
went abroad as a missionary to China, while he was sleeping with his
room-mate one night, he startled him by rising in his sleep and throwing
out his arms with great urgency, as he said, "Yet more, oh, my God, yet
more!" His comrade wakened him and asked him what he meant. "Why," said
he, "I was having a vision of things in the East. I was seeing
missionaries tortured; some of them were being burned, some of them were
having their flesh torn from their bodies, and in many ways they seemed
to be suffering in their testimony for Christ's sake. And as I looked,
the tears came to my eyes, and a voice said to me, 'That is what it will
cost you if you go on this missionary tour. Are you willing to take the
cost?' And I said, 'Oh, Lord Jesus; yet more, yet more, if I may win
these perishing souls.'"

Brethren, it is the call of the hour. These people may become, in my
judgment, pre-eminently the missionary people. They have been called the
Yankees of the Orient. They are scattered every whither, in every
quarter of the world. I think it ought to shame us to have less
enthusiasm for these for whom Christ died than they of the Romish church
in the palmiest days of