392 RELIGIOUS WORK 



spective of outward conditions, and it alone affords practical hope 

 of character recentred in God, to be ultimately transfigured into 

 the likeness of the glorified Christ. 



There is, then, a divine right of missions; and, of course, if so, 

 a human right also. 



In an address given by ex-Secretary Foster, repeated widely on 

 his return from a round-the-world tour a few years since, he 

 substantially said that if he were asked by what right Christian 

 America had gone out into the various lands of Asia to disturb and 

 reconstruct institutions and systems in those lands known as 

 heathen, his reply would be: " The right to communicate to others 

 benefits too good to keep; ' and the answer cannot be gainsaid. 

 In the argument we would make for the legitimacy of foreign 

 missions as the profoundest agency in the ongoing civilization of 

 the world, we are not pleading for a mere partisan crusade of one 

 religious system against another; but rather we are seeking for 

 the basis on which we may impart to all men potencies of so 

 renewing and constructive a sort, that if rightly used, they would 

 bring blessing, and blessing only to the world. Our contention 

 in this paper has been that Christianity has in it elements of such 

 transcendent value as are adapted to every one on earth; and, if 

 so, the conclusion is irresistible that by the same intelligence and 

 will that brought them into being, they are intended for every one 

 on earth. He who discerns this adaptation must himself share in 

 executing the intention, or himself must suffer inestimable loss. 



