Now, in getting the purchase for another argument for the same unhappy people, I propose that you go for a few moments with me to a more sacred place still than either the Chinese quarter or the battle-fields of the war. I mean that upper room where, eighteen centuries ago, occurred that last, long interview between Christ and his disciples, before the crucifixion. Let us reverently step in there and stand behind that little circle of the eleven. Let us catch the spirit and the suggestions of that tender and holy scene. The Divine One is speaking his last words to those men who are soon to go forth and undertake the conversion of the world. What is his most weighty thought? It is that which was expressed in his closing prayer: “As thou hast sent me into the world even so have I sent them into the world;” that is, the mission of Christian men in the world was to be the same as His own. It was to be a mission of vicarious suffering and service for all the world. Men were dying in their sins in all countries. The nations were sitting in the shadow of death. Generations were tramping on, each in the track of the others, to hopeless doom. They did not know God’s redeeming love. It is this spectacle of humanity rushing on to a hopeless eternity, that puts that solemn and intense tone into the Saviour’s voice as He talks and prays. They were to be men like Christ. They were to go into all the world, bearing the love of God. This is what the world needs. This world of faith in force, and faith in diplomacy, and faith in partisan politics; this world of faith in intellectual skill; this world of brain power, elaborating expedients; this world of self-seeking refinement; these nations that are under the shadow of death are all sending up through the gloom of their moral miseries the inarticulate cry to God for just this Christlike mission of loving men, to the world. This, then, is the warrant; this is the groundwork of my plea for China. It is not that the Chinese are very worthy, or that our nation ought to be very consistent with its fundamental principles, but it is that 400,000,000 souls need a Saviour from sin, and we, whose mission is identical with Christ’s, have something to do in the case. This applies, of course, to all nations as well as the Chinese, but I plead for a special application of the principle to China on two grounds: I. Because of the vastness and need of China and the peculiar relation it now sustains to ourselves. What have we done for her people? We have shut our door in their face. We have said no poor laboring man of China shall feed his children on our shore for ten years to come. Three hundred and thirty thousand of them will have gone into eternity before these ten black years shall have expired! Do we not hear the echo of that tender voice from that upper room, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye have done it unto me”?