A SECTION OF THE CONVENTION HALL, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, WITH STUDENT VOLUNTEERS FOR MISSIONS IN SESSION
Student Volunteers in General Convention
By C. A. Shull
Five Thousand College Men and Women Assemble—"Evangelization of the World in This Generation" the Watchword—Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, but What of His Coming?
By C. A. SHULL
C. A. SHULL attended the Student Volunteer convention as a delegate from our college at Berrien Springs, Michigan, and was asked to report the meeting for us. The regular readers of this paper have well in mind the prophecy which says this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness, and then the end will come. This Student Volunteer movement can not be said to be fulfilling that prophecy, still it is mightily directing attention to it.
Editor.
THE seventh international convention of Student Volunteers was held in Kansas City, Missouri, December 31 to January 4, with over five thousand delegates in attendance, and prominent missionary leaders from all parts of the world present. The great convention hall, seating upwards of seven thousand people, was filled to overflowing with the delegates and friends, and fully a thousand were turned away daily, unable to secure seats.
SPEAKERS AT THE CONVENTION
Among the prominent speakers were Dr. Robert E. Speer, author of numerous books on missions and other subjects; Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer, for fifteen years a missionary to the Arabs, and a well-known authority on the Mohammedan world; George Sherwood Eddy, the “millionaire missionary,” a traveler and lecturer of note; Dr. John R. Mott, founder and president of the movement, who has been styled the greatest missionary leader in the world to-day. Dr. Mott recently declined the position of United States minister to China in order to continue his work of world evangelization. William J. Bryan was a prominent speaker of the convention. Dr. Harlan P. Beach, professor of missions at Yale, was also present; and Dean Shailer Mathews, of the University of Chicago, president of the Federation of Churches in the United States. Many other speakers and writers of international repute were in attendance.
GROWTH OF THE ORGANIZATION
Twenty-eight years ago, Dr. John R. Mott conceived the idea of forming an association among the students of higher schools of learning in the United States and Canada, for the purpose of studying missions and mission work, in order to furnish recruits for these distant lands. From a small beginning, this movement has grown until at the present convention 5,031 delegates were seated, coming from 755 different schools. Practically every state in the Union was represented, with a large number from Canada. Some two hundred delegates were Chinese and Japanese students, who are in attendance in the universities of this country.
Mr. Mott reported in part as follows:
"Since its inception twenty-eight years ago, 5,882 Volunteers have gone to foreign fields from our ranks. These are supported from various sources, and are sent under the direction of different mission boards; but their training for service, and in many cases their enlistment in this line of work, is the direct result of the inspiration received in the Volunteer organization. During the last quadrennium, 1,446 Volunteers have sailed for foreign fields, under the auspices of over seventy missionary societies.
INCREASE IN FOUR YEARS
"Within the last four years, there has been an increase in the number of young men and young women in mission study classes in the colleges from 29,300 to 40,400. This addition of 11,000, or of nearly forty per cent, represents one of the greatest advances ever made. During the last year, the colleges and seminaries secured $220,804 for missionary objects, of which about one half was contributed by the students themselves, and the rest was secured by them from the professors and immediate friends.
INFLUENCE ON STUDENT LIFE
"The student missionary uprising has been a mighty help in the direction of counteracting the perils of our modern college life. At a time when growing luxury, self-indulgence, and the tendency to softness are manifesting themselves in our colleges, it is well that we have a movement which makes such an appeal to the heroic, which summons men to such a stern and rugged self-discipline, and which assigns to them such stupendous tasks.
"The Student Missionary Volunteer Union of Great Britain and Ireland has from the beginning been a mighty factor in the missionary life of the British universities and of the British Empire. Over 18,000 of its members have sailed, the number in study circles ranging between 1,600 and 2,000. The student missionary movement in Germany, in the face of very great difficulties, has continued to carry forward its helpful activities. It has thus far enrolled about 110 Volunteers, of whom over sixty have already sailed, nine going out during the past year. It has about 400 students in mission study circles.
"Within the last four years, the Volunteer movement has been organized in the Swiss universities. It has enrolled over thirty Volunteers, a few of whom have already sailed. In Holland a Student Missionary Volunteer movement has been established, which includes not only those who plan to go to the mission fields, but others who are especially interested in missionary questions. The universities of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have for years been centers of missionary interest. The more notable event of the past year was the student missionary conference at Goteborg, Sweden, attended by nearly 200 students from different Scandinavian countries.
"In the French universities, there has recently been developed a promising force known as the Volunteers of Christ. In Hungary and also in Austria there are the beginnings of missionary movements. The students are interesting themselves chiefly in the Mohammedan problem in the near East.
"The Student Volunteer movement of Australasia is one of the most promising in the world. Although its student field is not extensive, it has up to the present time enrolled between 300 and 400 Volunteers, of whom 106 have already sailed. It is doing more than any other country of the world to promote the missionary spirit in the churches of the country. Its activity is a splendid illustration of how a comparatively small company of earnest students can impress the spirit and policy of the church throughout an entire nation.
"The Volunteer movement in South Africa has also accomplished a work in some respects quite as remarkable as the one in Australasia and New Zealand. It has enrolled over 300 Volunteers, of whom 100 have already gone to the mission field. One of the most remarkable developments among the students of foreign lands during the last four years has been the organization in China of the Chinese Student Volunteer movement for the ministry. This movement has been raised up in answer to prayer, to help solve the greatest problem of the church in China, that of securing a sufficient number of well-qualified native students for the Christian ministry.
THE GREATEST FIELD
"The most critical battle-field, from the point of view of the Volunteer movement, is not the Moslem world, not the educated classes of Japan, not the literati of China, not the citadels of Hinduism,54not the areas of neglect in Latin America, but our own American and Canadian universities and colleges. If the churches of North America are to wage triumphant warfare in these distant, difficult fields which call to-day so loudly for our help, the missionary feeling and spirit must first dominate our own seats of learning. If we are to go forth to attempt world conquest, we must have no untaken forts in our rear."
