el. For there are a few countries with comparatively scanty
populations that are not open; except, indeed, on the edges, to the man
prying earnestly around for a way to get in.

I don't mean that every man in these open countries is actually asking us
to send him some word of Jesus. For vast numbers of them have never heard
either about us or about Him. They don't know there is a Jesus to ask
about; or, judging by others, they would be asking.

Neither do I mean that these multitudes who are asking are, in every case,
asking for the Gospel itself. For many times that is not so. They ask for
that which appeals to them strongly as something that they want. They want
our Western science and learning. They want to get from us the secret of
harnessing nature up to their wagon to pull their heavy loads.

In many cases, without doubt, they don't want our Christianity at all.
They regard it simply as something that goes along inseparably with the
thing they do want. They are willing to put up with some of it for a
while, if only they can get the thing they are after. Their eyes have been
caught by the bright light of our Christian civilization. They don't
understand how it came to us. They haven't wakened up enough, most of
them, to think into that.

They want the light we have, as we might want something that we could
order a shipment of. They haven't learned enough yet to want to get the
light-generating plant installed in their midst. The great fact that all
our civilization has come to us through the partial presence of the Light
of the world hasn't dawned upon their minds yet.

But, however selfish motives and a crude understanding or misunderstanding
may enter in, the great strange unprecedented fact still remains true that
the world of heathenism is knocking at the door of Christendom as never
before in the world's history.

And then, too, everywhere some of them are asking plainly and piteously
for the real thing. Great numbers in all the foreign-mission lands are
asking that Christian teachers be sent to them with Bibles and other books
to teach them the way back home to God. Wherever they find out that there
is a knowledge of God to be gotten, from there comes the insistent
knocking that it be brought to them.

I remember Bishop Bashford, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, stationed
in China, telling of one of his thrilling experiences out there. He had
gone inland quite a bit into China on one of his tours. One