Around these two young men has grouped up in no small measure this later missionary activity.  And it is probably quite within the mark to say that no stronger, abler men can be found in any of the great activities of life to-day in either of these two great English-speaking peoples.  It is surely significant that the modern missionary movement rallies around such giants.

It is worthy of special note, too, that the body of men to whom is entrusted the administration of this vast network of foreign service, the foreign-board members and secretaries of the Church, have developed such remarkable power and skill.  No body of men has problems more intricate and exacting and difficult.  And no body of men in any sphere of activity has shown greater diplomacy and astuteness, hard sound sense, and untiring devotion.

Some good friends are sometimes disposed to be critical of methods and management.  They think the affair could be conducted better in some details which they think important.  Well, it would be surprising if it were not so.  The same criticisms are made of every governmental and great industrial enterprise.  Everything human seems to make progress by correcting and improving.  But the thing for you and me to keep a critically keen eye upon is this:  that no such detail be allowed to affect by so much as a hair’s weight the steadfast ardor of our support.

No strong man in the thick of the great driving purpose of his life is turned aside or stopped by the biting or buzzing of a few insects.  If even they can’t be brushed aside, let them buzz and bite, but don’t let the great passion of a life be affected by them.  Indeed, they will be clean forgot, even while they are remembered, by the man who has been caught and swept by the fire of his Master’s passion for a world.

A Minority Movement.

Yet, be it keenly marked, these great strides have been made by a minority, who have followed the strong leaders.  The whole Church is not yet awake.  Many protest strenuously against being waked up.  The alarm-clocks bother them.  Sometimes one is inclined to think that the foreign boards are peculiarly placed between a refrigerator and a furnace.

Missionaries come back home fresh from the front fairly aflame with the fervor of their enthusiasm.  Their convictions of what could be done, and should be done, are apt to be spoken out with great positiveness.  They seem to some to suggest in an uncomfortable way the thought of a glowing furnace.  And many in the home churches seem able to listen with such indifference as to suggest to these returned men and women the chilling air of an ice-box.  In between the two sits the Church board engaging in the difficult task of trying to equalize the temperature.  But that’s merely a detail in passing.

The great fact to mark is that never has the missionary movement bulked so large.  And never have such broad statesmanlike plans, such aggressiveness of spirit, coupled with deep devotion, marked the Church in its great life-mission.