THE WORLD'S CONVERSION OR EVANGELIZATION?
THERE are ministers and authors who present only the bright side of this subject. I have heard anniversary sermons upon "religious progress" and "the signs of the times" that were so flattering and one-sided as to deceive the very elect. They present the lights and not the shadows. Of course the impression is false and the performance more ingenious than ingenuous. Such works as Dr. Dorchester's "Religious Progress," Dr. Newman's "Christianity Triumphant," and Seaman's "Progress of Nations," are wholly misleading and unreliable. They paint in high lights and no shadows. They make this opaque globe to blaze like the sun. There is no perspective, no true picture of this world as it really is. Others, called pessimists, present the somber side, the night side and not the bright side. Gustave Doré is their ideal artist, draping the world in mourning, and turning midday to midnight. I am not an optimist, looking only upon the bright side, nor a pessimist, looking only upon the dark side of the "signs of the times." I am a watchman on the walls of Zion, and when the inquiry comes, "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?" my reply is, "The morning cometh and also the night." The inquiry is made in the night, the answer is also returned in the night. Not what of the day, but "what of the night." We now call your attention to the shadows as well as the lights in the picture. 1. You may have noticed that we have carefully refrained from saying the morning of the world's conversion is at hand, but the morning of the world's evangelization is at hand. The conversion of the world seems as far off as it did 1,800 years ago. It is estimated that eighteen times the present populations of the globe have gone into eternity since Christ ascended from Olivet. Twenty-five billion two hundred million souls, and only a portion of them ever heard the gospel, and a still smaller number obeyed its summons. What an appalling fact is this! What blackness of darkness in that historic record! Again, there are more unconverted people in the world to-day than there were 1,800 years ago. To-day there are 1,000,000,000 people who are pagans and Mohammedans, and that is more than the population in the world 1,800 years ago. There are more unconverted people in the United States now than there were eighty years ago. Dr. Strong, in his little book "Our Country," says that "while the church throughout the whole country is gaining in numbers, yet it does not keep pace with the increase of the population. In 1,800 there were less than 5,000,000 outside the evangelical churches. Now there are 48,000,000. On large classes all over the land the church is losing its hold, while in our great cities rapidly advancing populations are leaving the church behind." A dark sign of the times is this! Almost ten times as many people outside the evangelical churches as there were eighty years ago.741 Modern missions is about a hundred years old. During the century the number of heathen converts in all the world is less than three millions, but another dark sign of the times is there are 200,000,000 more heathen in the world to-day than a hundred years ago. At that rate eternity itself could not furnish the requisite ages for the conversion of the world. Why do I present these facts and more like them?—Because they are facts. My subject, remember, is, "The Signs of the Times—Their Lights and Shades." 2. Optimists are fond of boasting that there are 400,000,000 nominal Christians in the world and only 1,000,000,000 heathen. Let us look at these statements. There were, according to Behm and Wagner, in 1880, 835,000,000 pagans. Our missionaries have in a hundred years won perhaps two or three millions to Christ, leaving 832,000,000 pagans. There were in 1880, according to the same authority, 175,000,000 Mohammedans. Very few of these have ever left the crescent for the cross. Indeed, they are to-day spreading their faith with fire and sword through Africa, exterminating natives and missionaries. At Cairo there is a Mohammedan university having three hundred professors and 10,000 students, and it sends out 1,000 Mohammedan missionaries every year to propagate the faith of the prophet. In 1880 there were 8,000,000 Jews in the world. A few hundred of these have accepted Christ as the true Messiah. Mohammedans, Jews, and pagans amount to 1,018,000,000. Deducting 3,000,000 and we had in 1880, 1,015,000,000 of these classes in the darkness of idolatry and sin. But what of the 400,000,000 nominal Christians in the world? Eighty-five million of these belong to the Greek church, and not one in five hundred, others say one thousand, know anything whatever of experimental godliness. They are persecuting to death Jews and Christians, and their own religion is a system of idolatry and formalism and superstition, and yet they are called nominal Christians. The Roman Catholics number 195,000,000, and they have put to death 50,000,000 Anabaptists and other heretics, as they stigmatize them. They actually boast that they would kindle the fires of martyrdom anew to-day were they not restrained by the bulwarks of constitutional law. While there have been many devout Christians among the Catholics, and undoubtedly are to-day, yet those who have come out from them declare that not one in a thousand have any saving knowledge of Christ in their hearts. We are sending missionaries to the Russian Empire to convert the Greek Catholics, and we are sending missionaries to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, and all the papal States of the world, to convert the Roman Catholics to Christ. And yet they are called nominal Christians, which is perhaps true—Christians in name but not in reality. Then we are told there are 135,000,000 Protestant Christians. Let us examine that statement. By Protestant Christians is meant all the inhabitants of Europe and America who are neither Greek nor Roman Catholics. Here is the balance of the 400,000,000 nominal Christians. All the unconverted people in Europe and America are the nominal Christians. All who are not pagans, Jews, or Mohammedans are classed among nominal Christians. All the Nihilists of Russia, all the Socialists of France, all the Anarchists of Europe, are classed among nominal Christians. All the materialists of England, all the agnostics of America, all the saloon keepers of the United States, even Mr. Ingersoll himself, is classed by these optimistic preachers and authors among nominal Christians. But what about the 135,000,000 Protestant Christians?—All the 400,000,000 nominal Christians who are not Catholics are called Protestant Christians. In other words, all who are not Catholic nominal Christians are Protestant nominal Christians, amounting, it is said, to 135,000,000. Let us sift this statement. Bishop Randolph Foster, one of the oldest bishops in America, himself an optimist, declares in the New York Independent that there are only 30,000,000 Protestant church members in the world, and how many of them are converted the Lord alone knows. Thus out of the world's population in 1880—of 1,433,000,000—there were only 30,000,000 in the evangelical churches of Christendom, leaving 1,400,000,000 souls outside the evangelical churches of the world. What a dark sign of the times is this, and yet it is boastfully stated from the pulpit and press that the 400,000,000 nominal Christians speak volumes for the progress of Christianity. Nominal Christianity contains all the attitudinarians, and latitudinarians, and platitudinarians, and ringed, streaked, and speckled, who reject Christ and blaspheme the name of the most high God. Joseph Cook says if Christianity makes the same progress for the next 80 years as it has in the past 80 years, it will conquer the world, whereas an English authority says it will take 176 years for Christianity to overtake the natural increase of population. I have . . . heard Baptist ministers say that in the year 2,000 all will be Baptists. Then farewell to you, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Catholics. Away with all such boasting! You never hear missionaries in the foreign field boasting of the rapid progress of Christianity among the heathen. They look upon that great wall of darkness and it seems almost insurmountable. They tell us of the appalling destitution, the unspeakable degradation, of the millions on millions that everywhere surround them. Dr. Frost's Convention Sermon (Baptist).