o repeat that word "billion,"
for it brings up sharply and gigantically the staggering need of the world
for Christ.

One-third is in lands commonly called Christian. Though we must use that
word "Christian" in the broadest and most charitable sense in making that
statement.

<u>A Quick Run Round the World.</u>

Beginning at Jerusalem, then, means for us just now beginning with the
Turkish Empire. And with that, in this rapid run through, we may for
convenience group Arabia and Persia and Afghanistan. This is the section
where Mohammedanism, that corrupt mixture of heathenism with a small
tincture of Christian truth, has its home, and whence it has gone out on
its work throughout the world.

Great populations here have practically no knowledge at all of the Gospel,
for missionary work is extremely scant. The land of the Saviour, with its
eastern neighbors, has no Saviour, so far as knowing about Him is
concerned, though it needs His saving very sorely.

Next to it, on the east, lies the great land of India, with the smaller
countries that naturally group with it. And here are gathered fully <i>a
fifth</i> of the people of the earth. These are really in large part our
blood-brothers. Their fathers away back were brothers to our fathers. And
so missionary work here ought to be reckoned largely as a family affair.
British rule has had an immense humanizing influence here. Missionary
activity has been carried on aggressively for years, and great and blessed
progress has been made.

Yet it is merely a preparation for the work now so sorely needed. These
years of faithful seed-sowing have made the soil dead ripe for a harvest
in our day. A strange religiousness utterly lacking both in religion and
in morality, abominably repugnant in its gross immorality, honey-combs the
life of these people. The cry of need here is deep and pathetic.

Pushing on still to the east, the great land of China with its
dependencies, looms up in all its huge giant size. Roughly speaking,
almost <i>a third</i> of the world's people are grouped here. There are
practically almost as many in what is reckoned Chinese territory as in all
Christian lands. Here is found the oldest and best civilization of the
non-Christian sort. The old common religion of Confucius is practically
not a religion at all, but a code of maxims and rules, and utterly lacking
in moral uplift or power.

The peculiarly impressive thing about China, as indeed about n