representing all parts of the empire, and in large part
representing the government, settling down to years of close study of our
Christian civilization as found in Japan--a tremendous fact for the Church
to-day! Things are crowding in on us. It is the non-Christian world
knocking at our back door. It was too far around to the front. So they
have commenced their knocking at the nearest and handiest door they could
find.

Then there are direct requests coming constantly to the missionaries, from
the peoples in all these lands, earnestly asking and even pleading that
men be sent to teach them of God and of Christ. Whole villages have been
found in the fastnesses of Africa's wilds spending days together, and all
day long, on their knees in prayer; most of ten mute prayer with upturned
faces--their very bent bodies their prayer--that news of the white man's
God might be sent to them.

In Korea and other lands it is no uncommon thing for men and women to
travel hundreds of miles by their slow transportation, or even to come
a-foot, to attend gatherings where the story of Jesus is being preached.

And then, too, there is the indirect knocking in the imitation of our
Western ways, and throwing away of their own. Imitation is the highest
form of compliment that can be paid. It tells of admiration, and of a
desire to be as those imitated. The adapting of Western learning by these
conservative Oriental peoples, the establishment of thousands of colleges
and schools on the model of Christian countries is so radical a thing as
to be nothing short of startling. The abandoning of bad customs, as well
as of their old systems of education, is as startling. Where there were
antagonisms there is now the friendliest imitation.

If to this we add the remarkable immigration to our shores, of a million a
year, it intensifies enormously the opportunity of service brought to us
by foreign peoples. Yet please notice that this latter is not Asia nor
Africa coming to us, but Europe.

However crying their need may be, these are, nominally, not heathen
peoples, but chiefly from Christianized Europe. The Asiatics would have
come in great numbers, but that door was promptly shut and carefully
locked by official hands.

As you swing your eye over these seething masses of the heathen world, and
listen to their voices, let me ask you, with the earnest softness of tone
that belongs to the heart, could there be a louder knocking at the door of
the