Full, accurate knowledge of nature’s resources and laws, and adaptation of that knowledge to practical uses, have been among the most marked conditions of the western world during the past century.  And, as a result, education, medical and hygienic and sanitary science, development of the earth’s soil, and resources above and below the soil, have gone forward by immense strides.  So far as is known, our progress in such matters exceeds all previous achievements in the history of the race.

And some of all this has been seeping into the heathen world.  It hasn’t gotten in far yet; only into the top soil, and about the edges, so far.  The progress in this regard has seemed both rapid and slow.  When the great mass of these peoples have not yet gotten even a whiff of the purer, better civilization air of the western nations the progress seems slow.  But when we remember the incalculably tremendous inertia, and the strangely stagnant spirit of heathen lands, it seems rapid.

The effort to get the heathen world simply to clean up; to open the windows and let in some fresh air, and use plain soap and water to scrub off the actual dirt makes one think of the typical small boy’s dislike of being washed up.  It has been a hard job.  Yet a great beginning has been made.  The boy seems to be beginning to find out that his face is dirty, and feels dirty.  And that is an enormous gain.

The World Really Lost.

Yet while this is good, and only good, it isn’t the thing we are driving at in missions.  While it would fully warrant all the expenditures of money, and vastly more than has yet been given, it should be said in clearest, most ringing tones that all this is merely incidental.  It is blessed.  It is sure to come.  It is remarkable that it always has come where the Gospel of Jesus is preached.

Yet this is not the thing aimed at in missions.  The one driving purpose is to carry to men a Saviour from sin.  And to take Him so earnestly and winsomely that men yonder shall be wooed and won to the real God, whom they have lost knowledge of.

It cannot be said too plainly that the world is lost.  It has strayed so far away from the Father’s house that it has lost all its bearings, and can’t find its way back without help.  The old preaching that this is a lost world, is true.

But we need to remember the different uses of that word “world.”  In the old-time conception it was used in a loose way as meaning the spirit that actuates men in the world.  The scheme of selfishness and wickedness and sinfulness which has overcast all life is commonly spoken of in the Bible as the world spirit.  In that sense the world is bad, and only bad.  Men are to be saved out of it, as Moody said.