But I must talk with you a bit about our Christian lands, Europe and
America, with huge Russia sitting astride both Europe and Asia, with a
foot dangling on each side of the globe. For these, too, are mission
lands. Foreign-mission lands, would you call them? Well, that depends
entirely on what spot you happen to call home. They are all mission
fields. The whole world is a mission field to God. Foreign-mission
field? or home-mission? Which? It makes no practical matter which term
you choose to use.

It will be well to remember just what that common phrase, "Christian
lands," really means. It may help us in our praying. And it may help us,
too, to keep humble as we think about heathen lands. It means, of course,
the lands where Christian standards are commonly recognized as the proper
standards of morals and of life.

It does not mean that the people are all Christian. Only a minority so
class themselves; the great majority do not. Neither does it mean that
that minority called Christian is controlled in daily life and in
business by the principles of Jesus. For by pretty general consent they
are not so controlled. It is not too much to say that there is more of
that same spirit of selfishness that marks the heathen world, dominating
the personal lives of people in Christian lands, than there is of the
unselfish Christ spirit. That may sound unkind and too critical to you. It
is not said in a critical spirit, but simply in the desire to get the
facts as they are. I am fully persuaded that the more you think about it
the more you will come to see that this is simply the truth.

Nor yet does that term, "Christian lands," mean that these lands are as