This is the heroic note of the new evangelism.  The work of making a better world of this is a tremendous work, but it can be done.  It can be done, because it is commanded.  If there is a God in heaven, what ought to be done can be done.  To doubt that is to deny him.  And there is one way of doing it, and that is Christ’s way.  For all this manifold, herculean labor on which we have been looking, there is no wisdom comparable with his.  He said that he came to save the world, and he is going to save it.  He has waited long, but he knows how to wait.  The day of his triumph is drawing near.  This world is going to be redeemed.  This social order, so full of strife and confusion, of cruelty and oppression, of misery and sorrow, is going to be transformed, and the love of Christ shed abroad in the hearts of men will transform it.  We are not going to wait another thousand years for our millennium; we are going to have it here and now.  This is the gospel of the new evangelism which it has taken the church a long time to learn, but which she is now getting ready to proclaim with demonstration of the spirit and with power.

We must not hide from ourselves the fact that some great changes will need to take place in her own life before she can give effect to this great evangel.  She must heal her divisions, and fling away her encumbering traditions, and greatly deepen her faith in her Lord and Leader.  Above all, she must simplify her own life.  She cannot bear witness, as she must, against the deadly influences of our modern materialism, until she utterly clears herself of all complicity with it.  This means, in many quarters, a radical change in her administration.

When the church has thus envisaged her task, and comprehended its magnitude, and when, with her heart on fire with the greatness and glory of it, she has laid aside every weight and the sins that so easily beset her, and has girded herself with the truth as it is in Jesus, and has set the silver trumpet to her lips, she will have a gospel to proclaim, to which the world will listen.

It will tell the world, as it has always told the world, of forgiveness and hope, of comfort and peace, of the help and guidance that comes to the troubled soul in believing in Jesus.  It will speak, as it has always spoken, of the rest that remaineth, and of the great joys and companionships of the eternal future.  But it will have something more than this to tell.

The kingdoms of this world—­this will be its message—­are becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.  It is not an event to be awaited, but to be realized, here and now.  Nothing is needed but that men should believe the word of Jesus Christ and live by it.  We do believe it, and we mean to show our faith by our works.  We believe that by simply living together as Jesus has taught us to live, we can make this world so much better than it now is, that men shall think heaven has come down to earth.  We believe that the race question and the labor question and the trust question and the liquor question and the graft question and all the other questions will find a speedy solution when men have learned to walk in the way of Jesus.  And we call you to come and walk with us in that way.