The response of those invited shows the nature of the invitation.  It indicates that the church has been putting a great deal of emphasis on the attractions which it has to offer.  We can hardly imagine such replies to be made by those who were invited to listen to the preaching of Jesus or his apostles.  They did not suppose that it was a question of entertainment that they were considering.  They knew that it was a summons to service and sacrifice.  That, beyond all doubt, was the nature of the appeal of the church in those earliest centuries, when it was marching over Asia and Europe, conquering and to conquer.  It was not baiting men with soft cushions and pictured windows, with coddlings and comfits; it was calling them to hardship and warfare, to ignominy and ostracism; the words of the Master to which it gave emphasis were not mere metaphors:  “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

The call of the cross has never failed.  The power of God and the wisdom of God are in it.  And it is time for the church to take up this heroic note and sound it forth with new power.  This is the new evangelism for which the world is waiting.  It is not a call to be “carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease;” it is not an invitation to the sentimental soul to “sit and sing herself away to everlasting bliss;” it is the clarion of battle; it is the challenge to an enterprise which means struggle and suffering and self-denial.

The redemption of society is the objective of the new evangelism.  How vast an undertaking this is was indicated in the last chapter.  Let us look at it a little more in detail.  How much does it signify, here and now, in the United States of America?

It means, first, the reconciliation of races.  One thing that must be done is to take this chaotic mass of dissimilar, discordant, suspicious, antipathetic racial elements and blend them into unity and brotherhood.  The first Christians had a task of this nature on their hands; they had to bring together in one fellowship Jews and Gentiles.  But that was a pastime compared with the herculean labor intrusted to us,—­the bringing together of whites and blacks, of Caucasians and Mongolians, of scores of groups divided by the barriers of language, of religion, of custom, and fusing them into one nationality.  No task of the same dimensions was ever undertaken by any people; but this is ours, and we must perform it.  It is the task of the nation; but the church of Jesus Christ is charged with the business of furnishing the sentiments and ideas by which alone it may be accomplished.