3. Finally, the question naturally arises, Has Christianity, then, been a failure?—God forbid! Have modern missions proved a failure?—By no means! Canon Taylor, of England, announces to the world that missions are a failure. Is the sun in the heavens a failure because it has not dispelled the darkness that covers one-half of the globe? Light has been chasing the darkness around the globe for 6,000 years. Is light a failure because it has not driven the earth's dark shadow into infinite space? The word failure is a comparative term. What was the gospel intended to do? To convert all men? Then it is a sad failure, for all men have not been converted; they are not, and will not be, converted. Jesus Christ plainly foretold this fact. He said that tares and wheat will grow together until the harvest; . . . that wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it; . . . nowhere in the Bible has God said, "This gospel of the kingdom must be preached in all the world for the conversion of all men, and then shall the good come;" but, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness, and then shall the end come."
The purpose of this dispensation is not the conversion of the whole world, but the evangelization of the whole world, the taking out of the whole a people for God. From the word of Christ to his first disciples, "I have chosen you out of the world," to the triumph song of the saved, heard by the seer of Patmos, "Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation," the bride of Christ is always the ecclesia, the called out. As Dr. Gordon, of Boston, has well said: "Nowhere is universal redemption predicted as the result of preaching the gospel in this dispensation. . . .
"Sacramentarianism would take the world into the church by instituting a baptized paganism, instead of taking the church out of the world by preaching spiritual regeneration, and behold the result in a half-heathenized Christendom. Latitudinarianism would make the church co-extensive with the world by756preaching the gospel of universal salvation, men by nature the sons of God, and thus, by crowding the Lord's house with the children of the wicked one, turn it into the 'synagogue of Satan.'
"Though it be in mystery, and sorrow, and tears, we had best work on, therefore, by the divine schedule, preaching the gospel among all for a witness, that we may gather out for Christ a chosen and sanctified people. The beams of sunlight both elect and irradiate, taking out here and there from muddy pool or acrid dead sea, a fine crystalline drop, and lifting it heavenward, but also lighting and warming all the atmosphere by their radiance. So Christ preached among the Gentiles, elects from them a holy flock, a regenerate church, and besides this he changes the moral climate of the world, so that such noxious growths as cannibalism, slavery, polygamy, and infanticide disappear. These two results inevitably attend the proclamation of the gospel—regeneration, saving some out of the world, and civilization, putting something of Christianity into the world; but by neither process, as now going on, is the millennium destined to be ushered in." . . . We are nowhere commanded to Christianize the world, but to evangelize the world. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature [evangelize]. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
The church has spent ages in trying to Christianize a small part of the world instead of trying to evangelize the whole world. The morning of the world's evangelization is at hand, but the world's conversion is apparently no nearer to-day than it was 1,800 years ago. As Anthony Grant sententiously said in the Bampton Lectures of 1843: "The gospel is not to be in all places at all times, nor in all places at any one time, but in some places at all times, and in all places at some time. Missions are therefore not a failure, since they are doing just what God intended them to do, proclaiming the gospel as a witness among all nations, and then shall the end come." We often hear the psalm quoted, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession," as if this promise referred to the conversion of the world by the church, whereas it refers to the time of our Lord's second coming, when he shall sit as King upon his holy hill Zion, when he shall break the kings of the earth with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. We are often told that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea," as if it referred to the church, whereas it refers to the time when Christ shall come in the glory of his Father, to set up his visible kingdom on this earth.
We are often told that the stone cut out of the mountain without hands shall yet fill the whole earth, as if it referred to the church, whereas Daniel says: "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever."—