Going to Jerusalem

There is a game which children play at parties: twelve brats line up eleven chairs and march past them as minstrels play a tune; the object is to sit quickly. In the last few weeks many members of the International Missionary Council, in all corners of the world, picked up their satchels and started going to Jerusalem. Their object was to meet in this ancient town and begin a fortnight's discussion of the problems of enlarging Christianity.

To each member who picked up his satchel there had been despatched, before the conference began, a little folder which informed him of certain practical details. The 200 members--including the delegate from the South Pacific Islands and the 35 delegates from the U. S. and Canada-- learned, for example:

That the regular sessions of the council would be held upon the Mount of Olives, and that they would be attended only by those officially appointed to do so.

That members will pay out approximately seven gold dollars daily, for four meals, for lodging on the Mount of Olives, near the Brook Kedron, and for all necessary gratuities etc., etc.

That every member should bring with him a warm overcoat, a steamer rug, an umbrella or preferably a raincoat, and rubbers; that while the days may be warm the nights will be chilly in Jerusalem, and that there are no heating facilities in the special dormitories.

That telegrams to members of the council should be addressed: Watchman, Jerusalem (name of member), (and then the message). . . .

That the Chairman of the International Missionary Council was John R. Mott, who made the Y. M. C. A.

This enlarged meeting of the International Missionary Council is the successor of the Continuation Committee of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910. The number of delegates who will attend it is far smaller, but, while the Edinburgh Conference was almost entirely peopled by Americans and Europeans, the Jerusalem Conference includes natives from India, Siam, Ceylon, Japan and other remote districts. The U. S. delegates include famed Dr. Robert Russa Moton, head of Tuskegee Institute, who will talk about Negroes.

Jerusalem has always been the town of miracles, a place where the beating of invisible wings can still be heard, sometimes, in the warm air. It is the town, also, from which the apostles departed upon their dazzling, dangerous journeys. No more suitable point of focus could have been discovered for those who are engaged in spreading God's word. This fact especially is satisfying to Chairman Mott, a man whose energetic character resembles some laboratory apparatus of light and sensitive leaves, trembling with the great force an exterior electricity has communicated to them. On the night of the first gathering, in the German Sanatorium on the Mount of Olives, Dr. Mott looked about him with joy that burned in his eyes like fire. The game of going to Jerusalem was over now, and there was great work to be done. What this work was, he proceeded briefly to explain:

First, the Council will attempt to discover and to state the spiritual values of non-Christian systems of religion; it will review Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islamism from a sympathetic point of view. Then it will try to reach a more profound understanding of interdependence between the younger Churches, especially in Asia, and the older Churches. Another topic to be considered is the impact of industrialism upon Asia and Africa. These are questions which have often been discussed before, though perhaps never by a group so well equipped to arrive at satisfactory answers. This is a council of commanders, a council primarily of action, to determine the important strategies and maneuvers which will, in the next few years, be used to advance the standards of Christianity into far places and across far seas.