Transcription downloaded from https://yetanothersermon.host/_/trinitybcnh/sermons/16801/bill-borden-and-the-student-volunteer-movement/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] I love lying every day, every night. I lie. All right, team. Let's gather, if you will. Stunning news from Cairo, Egypt, hollered the paper boys in the streets of Chicago, holding aloft the headline, Sudden Death Overtakes William Borden.

[0:33] The sorrows of such a loss to the missionary cause, read those who took up the copy, will oppress the entire Christian world. He was a mere 25 when so overtaken, yet his life had already been one of great impact.

[0:52] When the news of his fate was cabled home, a wave of sorrow went round the world. Oh, should have showed you the headline.

[1:06] No young man of his age, declared the Princeton Seminary Bulletin, has ever given more to the service of God and humanity.

[1:20] At his own alma mater, Yale, Henry B. Wright, a revered Christian on the faculty, remarked in reference to Borden's college days, no undergraduate since I've been connected with Yale has done so much for Christ in four short years than he did.

[1:42] Few had been the days granted him, and his course seemed to have been cut off in the first dawning of its full bloom. Yet, as his stunned classmate of Yale would attest, in his short life, he did more through God than most do in a full lifetime, and had left a trail of changed lives behind him.

[2:08] William Whiting Borden was born in Chicago, November 1st, 1887. His was the blessing of growing up in a godly home with family prayer and Bible reading a staple.

[2:27] His father's ample wealth provided all the amenities and opportunities that could be desired. A more enduring wealth came, it seems, chiefly from his mother, who early in Bill's life sowed the spiritual seeds, which would later bring so great a harvest.

[2:48] Her own spiritual life had been stirred up in a series of meetings in Chicago of the Salvation Army, conducted by Mrs. Bollington Booth herself. And little William, ever at her side, as the word went out, went out in full conviction into the Holy Spirit, no doubt in that Salvation Army context.

[3:13] Their permanent church home became the Moody Church, where the gospel was faithfully heralded with great power, in the happy heritage of its namesake, D.L. Moody.

[3:24] Here the seeds of new life were watered and ripened, and it was from the Moody Church pulpit, that as a child of seven, Bill heard an appeal to dedicate his entire life to the service of the Savior.

[3:41] At the invitation, William quietly rose in his little blue sailor suit and went forward. From that day, daily prayer went up as mother and son knelt together that the will of God might be wrought out in his life.

[4:02] It was in that consecrated Chicago home that habits were formed, Bible study and prayer, which would abide a lifetime. Once, when William was six years old, his mother had him, with the rest of the children, write on a piece of paper what they would most like to be when they grew up.

[4:25] William wrote, in Less Than Perfect Orthography, I want to be an honest man when I grow up, and true, and loving, and kind, and faithful man.

[4:39] Well, to his last day, by the grace of God, the man could have looked into the eyes of the child without shame.

[4:52] We see in the Borden home and family a cheering example of how consecration there, in the first formative stages of childhood, can set the course of a young life all the way to its end.

[5:10] William's spiritual nurture at home was simple, faithful, and sincere, and its impact upon the boy was abiding. This was much the secret of his strong character and selfless career.

[5:30] Upon this foundation at home was added fine schooling. University school, then the manual training school, Bill loved to work with his hands. And finally, the celebrated Hill School.

[5:44] The glory of the Hill School, which Borden attended, or entered at 14, was not its library or its athletic fields, but its headmaster. As the inscription on the marble stone which marks the resting place in the chapel reads, John Miggs, strong, impetuous, tender, servant of Christ, master of boys, maker of men.

[6:12] Here, young Borden caught from Miggs the governing principle of the reverent and radiant use of the body. That the strength of manhood given to the master is built on purity.

[6:26] Borden would never waver in this conviction and never falter in its exercise. He would ever be a vessel fit and sanctified for the master's use.

[6:38] What that use would be would soon impress itself upon him. For after graduating from the Hill School and before going up to Yale, Bill took off the year and traveled around the world.

[6:50] He had a traveling companion, Walter Edmond, a Princeton Seminary grad who would himself go on to become a missionary in Korea. Started in Maine and then they traveled across the states.

[7:03] Across then the Pacific to Japan then on to China, India and Egypt circumnavigating the whole globe. They loved to they loved to climb mountains together.

[7:14] There they are I think in the Alps or something. Yeah, got a little got a little rope kind of tied around each of their waist. One hopes that that would be effective in the eventuality that was needed.

[7:29] The most striking thing Bill saw on this world tour was not pagodas or palaces, the mountains or marketplaces though he did love mountain climbing.

[7:41] It was rather the utter and urgent need of the world for the gospel. And eight weeks into his travels Borden wrote home that he wished someday to become a missionary.

[7:56] By that time he had reached Japan and seen the lost condition of the heathen as they were then called and also had a chance to see the missionaries at work. Later when asked by an incredulous friend why he wished to throw his life away among the heathen Bill replied you have never seen heathenism.

[8:16] Upon a student volunteer questionnaire a little questionnaire that you would fill out when you were volunteering to be a student volunteer.

[8:29] He filled it out in 1908 to the question when and under what influence he had purposed to become a foreign missionary he had answered when I had been in Japan a short time and met a few real missionaries and seen actual conditions.

[8:46] This was in October 1904. To one of these missionaries in Japan the young traveler would give half his total traveling allowance. Neither could his determination have been due to some romanticized impression of the missionary life for shortly after reaching China he was laid low with typhoid fever and so spent his first Christmas away from home fighting for his life in a hospital in Hong Kong.

[9:14] Certainly in his decision his eyes were open to the dangers. Surprisingly he does not count among the dangers driving a car in Paris for oddly it was there that he chose to take driving lessons.

[9:30] The claim that he became quite proficient is well that was the claim just how proficient he became one wonders for at least on one occasion he had to pay a fine for running over a motorcyclist.

[9:43] So it happens easily in Paris it's almost happened to me several times. while crossing the channel Borden arrived in London and the timing was providential for R.A. Torrey there he is R.A. Torrey a famous evangelist and pastor of the day was holding a series of meetings and Borden attended these addresses and they were used of God to renew his consecration as he wrote in his diary on that day July 2nd I was much helped and surrendered all to Jesus at the invitation.

[10:22] Borden was now a young man of 17 and in this newly made surrender Borden entered Yale the fall of 1905 in a no bad thing to show up there with consecrated life.

[10:40] In the fly leaf of his pocket New Testament he had written out Psalm 119 11 Thy word have I hidden my heart that I might not sin against thee.

[10:52] Banners and placards were numerous and various in the Yale rooms as they are today. Borden had one up in his room it read Wherewithal shall a young man keep his way pure by keeping it according to thy word.

[11:10] As one yearly observed Borden soon stamped himself as a leader in the Christian activities of the college. In spite of his age he was far more mature in faith than many considerably older.

[11:25] Well though determined to hide the word in his heart Borden was equally determined not to hide it from his classmates. And so first semester of his freshman year when as one fellow student wrote everywhere about him were the hustle and uncertainty of freshman beginnings.

[11:45] Borden sought out and gathered up a few Christian classmates for a daily prayer meeting. Charlie Campbell oh no I don't have a picture of him Charlie Campbell the first to join him later recalled these meetings were held in Bill's room just before we went to breakfast.

[12:06] The time was spent in a brief reading of scripture and then predominantly in prayer. Our object was to pray for the religious work of the class in college and also for those of our friends who we were seeking to bring to Christ.

[12:23] Determined in his purpose to be a missionary he didn't want to wait till he got to foreign soil to announce the good news and to reclaim the wayward. No good to imagine yourself preaching in some exotic far eastern bazaar if you were unwilling to press the savior on the New Haven Green or in the college quad so thought Borden.

[12:48] He is a missionary first last and all the time said one fellow student of Bill. Another recalled an instance freshman year when Bill heard of a student drifting into open and flagrant sin.

[13:07] Bill set about reaching him with Christ's message of salvation writes his fellow student. He discovered the dark and distant haunt where this wayward son of Eli was scurulously in the company of a woman of ill repute that he had engaged.

[13:25] Well Bill managed to get hold of this prodigal and somehow drag him back to New Haven by what were described as strong armed methods.

[13:37] What precisely these were is not indicated. Suffice it to say that it didn't hurt that Bill was one of the toughest on the wrestling mat that Yale's gym could boast of.

[13:49] And so many of the fallen or the falling were forcibly retrieved. As a professor of his recalled, it was impossible you would say to yourself that anything could go wrong in his neighborhood if he could prevent it.

[14:08] He seemed like a fixed beacon light in the moving waters, recalled another, by which the fellows could safely steer their course.

[14:19] And he was so uncompromising with anything that he considered wrong. And he was so determined to carry out every plan that he thought was right.

[14:31] Bill's very presence, wherever he was on campus, became, it seems, an influence for purity. As another classmate relates, the shady story, the jest, which had a little bit of sacrilege in it, the remark, in a slighting way, about the Bible or holy things, all these were intolerable when Bill Borden was present or in hearing.

[14:58] His fellows knew that it would not be tolerated by him and they abstained from that sort of thing when he was with them. He helped us all to think more purely and to live more purely because we knew him.

[15:12] Now one might think that such aggressive evangelism and such uncompromising loyalty to holiness might grate upon and alienate many a fellow student who did not share his convictions.

[15:25] And yes, this was true in some cases. And yet it seems Borden was remarkably respected by his peers, even those who saw life differently.

[15:38] As his roommate of two years, Malcolm Villis, recalled, many times I heard Bill criticized by men in our class as being too religious and narrow-minded.

[15:49] But when I asked if they didn't like and admire him, they invariably said, oh yes, of course we do. And not one, but what was or would have been proud to call him friend.

[16:04] And so proceeded his evangelistic efforts. But by year's end, Borden wanted something a little more systematic for fear that some might fall through the cracks.

[16:16] Beginning sophomore year, Bill inaugurated a new strategy. Writing to his mother, he explained, Charlie, Jeff, and I got together today and divided up the class.

[16:28] There would have been about 300 men in his class during that time at Yale. The plan is for each of us to have a quarter of the class. I'm not quite sure how the fractions worked out when he just mentioned three, but nonetheless, okay, maybe that wasn't his strong suit.

[16:44] The plan is for each of us to have one quarter of the class as his parish and to know every individual man. It'll take time, but I believe it will pay off.

[16:58] Naturally, there were some Yalies who were tougher prospects than others, the dancers, the dicers, the womanizers, and whiskey drinkers. One of Bill's companions involved in the divvying up of that class later described the occasion.

[17:15] The names were gone over one by one, and the question asked, who will take this person or that? And when it came to one who was a hard proposition, there would be an ominous pause.

[17:27] Nobody wanted the responsibility. Then Bill's voice would be heard. Ah, put him down to me. Bill hunts up the worst skunk in college and goes after him, marveled another fellow in his class, Joe Twitchell.

[17:42] It was in a chasing down skunks that Bill became aware of another mission. See, New Haven, as a seaport midway between New York and Boston, seemed to gather up every sordid sort of riffraff and vagrant, tramp and hobo, and to accommodate the burgeoning vice, saloons, gambling halls and brothels sprang up in abundance.

[18:08] Not one rescue mission existed to bring relief and gospel to the melange of human wreckage. Borden felt something needed to be done.

[18:19] So he gathered up his mates to pray, rented a room in a dive on the strip, and began to hold evangelistic meetings to bring the hope of gospel to drunken derelict.

[18:34] There it is. Yale Hope Mission. It started as a single room, but under Borden's energy and influence, quickly grew.

[18:47] Soon Bill, remember he was extremely wealthy, unostentatiously so, but extremely wealthy, quietly bought the whole building for a halfway house.

[19:00] On cold nights, as many as 150 men were present for meals and lodging, and the challenge and comfort of the gospel at Hotel Martin, as it came to be called in the streets, after Daddy Martin, who was a one-time drunk, notorious drunk, whose life had been dramatically changed there at the Mission.

[19:22] And like Daddy Martin, many a shattered life was reclaimed for Christ in that place. One of Bill's early reclamations, they called him, later reminisced, and I hasten to note that the private grammar is his, not mine.

[19:39] This is a quote. This is found in the letter that he had written, Not till the books of heaven are opened will you know what Bill Borden done by opening Yale Hope Mission.

[19:53] He'd hasten through his address and get down to work with us men. As soon as the invitation was given to come forward, he would be off his platform and right down among the men.

[20:05] He had a habit of putting his hand on a man's shoulder, and they'd almost always break down when he spoke to them. I never knowed a feller just like Bill. I like to get hold of one of his pictures.

[20:19] Seems to me, if ever I saw one, I'd most likely try to steal it. Obviously, the man had not totally renounced his previous lifestyle, but he could talk to anyone.

[20:31] Didn't matter who they was. And he'd get down with his arms around the poor burly bum and hug him up. Never knowed his like in this world.

[20:45] I know he must have done for hundreds just what he done for me. once a distinguishing visiting British theologian was asked, of all that you have seen in America, what has impressed you most?

[21:04] Well, expecting to hear something about Niagara Falls or the Manhattan skyline. The inquirer was surprised to receive the answer. the sight of William Borden on his knees in the Yale Hope Mission of New Haven with his arm around a bum.

[21:24] This ministry remained close to Bill's heart. Not only did he invest $20,000 into the Yale Hope Mission during his college years, even afterward, when at seminary at Princeton, he would make the trip up to New Haven by train nearly every month to conduct the address.

[21:50] Apparently, they had no bums available at Princeton, so you have to come up to New Haven to get that sort of thing. I don't know, maybe. And it's our loss.

[22:01] And the impact of this outreach also was exercised upon the Yale students involved. Indeed, the whole Yale community.

[22:12] For it demonstrated dramatically that the gospel was indeed the power of God unto salvation to them that believe. Writes Yale Professor Henry B.

[22:26] Wright, it is my firm conviction that Yale Hope Mission has done more to convince all classes of men at Yale of the power and practicability of Christianity to regenerate individuals and communities than any other force in the university.

[22:48] Its influence for good among the students has been utterly inestimable. This was really true.

[22:59] And if you read that time, there were waves of German higher criticism coming in, lots of things that were really eroding the confidence in the gospel. And the students were really kind of unanchored as to answers at that time.

[23:17] So going down and seeing the gospel so powerful to change lives was an anchoring reality for them when there was a period of time when they just didn't have questions to some of these tough answers to some of these tough questions.

[23:33] students. During spring term of his freshman year, the student volunteer movement held a quadrennial conference in Nashville and Borden attended as one of the Yale delegates to a hall packed with students, close to 5,000 students.

[23:52] For one week, the needs of the world were passionately presented. This is Samuel Zweimer, the famous, renowned missionary to the Muslim world at the time.

[24:10] And Bill was particularly riveted by an appeal which Samuel Zweimer voiced for the Muslim world. He spoke of 15 million Muslims in China where as yet not one single missionary was set apart to reach them.

[24:31] Of course it will cost life, concluded Zweimer. It is not an expedition of ease nor a picnic excursion to which we are called. It is going to cost many a life.

[24:44] Leadership in this movement has always been leadership in suffering. Well, Borden returned to Yale committed in his heart to that great enterprise, to build where none had yet laid a foundation among the Muslims of China.

[25:04] Borden returned to Yale with a fixed purpose. Possessed of this purpose, he became the nucleus of the young missionary band.

[25:15] And judging from the number of books and pamphlet orders which came from his pen, he took personal responsibility to keep Dwight Library missions alcove stocked with literature.

[25:30] Bill also became chairman of the Connecticut Valley Student Missions Conference, arranging for speakers and recruiting students. And while still a student, he conceived and carried out an initiative to elicit from all American mission boards their needs and openings and undertook to get the intel to a massive list of prospective student volunteers according to their denominations.

[25:59] Great organizer also. Great organizer. He himself had not signed the pledge. When we talk about the student volunteer missionary pledge, it was simply a pledge that said, it is my purpose if God permit to become a foreign missionary.

[26:15] And this was a pledge that the students would sign. And Borden committed to missions, had not yet signed the pledge in respect to his father's wish that he not do so before he was 21 years old.

[26:29] And he respected his father's wish on that. Well, it didn't take him long after that, however. Here's his... Here is...

[26:42] Here's his... There's his student volunteer pledge. It's... We have... By the way, we have all of the Borden... All the Borden documents in the Day Missions Library collection here at Yale.

[26:57] So I've gone through all these papers. So this is actually just a little photograph of the actual things. So all of these things that I'm showing are actually photographs. And all of the letters and all of the personal accounts that I'm reading you are actually from letters and things that have been written by his fellow students.

[27:12] So this is all coming from documents, all of this stuff. That you can see yourself if you go up there in the special collections. Well, there's his...

[27:24] There was his little student volunteer flyer that he had to fill out. In a letter of November 18th, 1908, not many days after his 21st birthday on November 1st, he writes to Mr. Turner.

[27:39] He was the secretary of the student volunteer movement. I enclose my volunteer card. There... We have that too. We have his little volunteer card that's still up there in the archives.

[27:51] There was a joy and serenity for Borden in relation to this call that very many remarked upon. I shall never forget a remark which Borden made in an address in the first church during his junior year, writes a fellow student.

[28:11] Ah. I recalled the sound of his voice and I heard him now as he said, many men seem to think it hard to give themselves to Christ for foreign missionary work.

[28:25] But it never seemed hard to me. It seemed to be the most easiest and most natural thing in the world. or as another put it of Bill, others taught us the duty of consecration.

[28:42] Borden taught us the blessedness of it. As graduation approached and incidentally all his extracurricular gospel activity didn't keep him from his books, he graduated with high honors and as president of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

[29:00] Well, Borden offered himself as a candidate for the China Inland Mission and was eager to get to the field as soon as possible. Wise counsel, however, encouraged him to secure more theological training.

[29:15] The wisdom he heeded and enrolled in Princeton Seminary and there began Arabic, the language of the Quran, convinced it would serve him well among the educated Muslims in China.

[29:32] Borden's three years at Princeton proved very profitable. The faculty there was outstanding, including such instructors as B.B. Warfield, who took so solid a stand for the inspiration and authority of the scriptures.

[29:50] Alas, in Borden's day, the effects of higher criticism were eroding the confidence of many in the Bible and tragically even on the mission field. Many there were who had given up the belief as childish and hopelessly outdated.

[30:10] Borden was particularly horrified and grieved to discover that the effect of such scientific criticism originating from Western Christian scholars was undercutting missionary efforts around the world.

[30:25] He refers to an editor of a Hindu periodical who had expressed thanks to a prominent member of the critical school for, having done away with the belief inculcated by missionaries that the Bible was the book of books and having brought it down to the level of an excellent volume of great antiquity without any special claim to inspiration.

[30:47] Similarly, Borden pointed to Muslim scholars who quoted from the Encyclopedia Biblica and thus declared that, quote, leading Christian writers had now proved correct the statements of Muslims that the Bible was hopelessly corrupt and unreliable and calling on Christian missionaries to give up these discredited books and accept the Koran.

[31:13] Borden took on the cause of asserting the indispensability of missionaries holding unswervingly to the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible.

[31:26] In his will, he would direct his large fortune to be distributed among various missions agencies but specifically stipulated, quote, that each of the said bequests be used for missionaries who are sound in the faith, believing in the fundamentals as the doctrine of the divine inspiration and authority of the scriptures, the doctrine of the Trinity, including the deity of Jesus Christ, and in the doctrine of the atonement through the substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[31:59] So Bill was very, very precise in these indispensable requirements for missionaries that would have any of his bequest. As a trustee of the Moody Bible Institute, he ensured that it would remain on a solid biblical foundation, drawing up himself a confession of faith which would guide trustees in ensuring all instruction was true to the faith once delivered to the saints.

[32:30] At Yale, Borden battled near single-handedly yet successfully to keep the doctrinal basis of the YMCA, Young Men's Christian Association, which was under much assault at that time, but he was able to commit their doctrinal basis, their commitment, committed to the deity of Christ, which was coming under subtle and sustained attack.

[32:55] much of that, you had to have a certain discernment because at the times, much of the language that was used in liberalizing things, they would use a lot of the religious language, but they wouldn't really mean the same thing.

[33:10] There was one professor at Yale who was under suspicion of denying the deity of Christ, and his response was, deny the deity of Christ. I deny the deity of no man, least of all of Christ.

[33:26] Wait a minute. So, Borden completed his seminary in May 1912, graduating again with high honors.

[33:42] Oh, here's a completing seminary, Borden returned to Chicago for ordination and commissioning at Moody Church, there it is, which transpired to the local headlines, Millionaire Leaves Luxury to Preach, and Heathen Tribes Rob Chicago Society.

[34:12] So, many were the high society connections with the Borden family that Moody Church, on that night of his ordination service, was, according to the Chicago Examiner, September 21, 1912, expected to assume the appearance of a social soiree there in the church.

[34:34] To incredulous reporters, Borden explained that in his estimate, the rewards of missionary effort were incalculably greater than any high society life had to offer.

[34:49] His example also had great impact upon the student world. For three months before he sailed, he toured campuses of the East Coast, kindling a vision for the world.

[35:04] In regard to Borden's visit to UVA, one YMCA wrote, Mr. Borden has come and gone. His visit was an inspiring one.

[35:17] His deep spiritual life and his absolute dedication to the missionary cause has made a lasting impression upon all of our leaders. And great was the harvest of volunteers, but he was eager to turn to the harvest, to be reaped in faraway almonds.

[35:41] I've got the fever in my bones, he writes November 1912. And I'm anxious to be off to Egypt. In a month, he was on his way.

[35:55] The plan was to stop in Cairo, Egypt, to study Islam and to perfect his Arabic. Then to head to Khansu province in China, nestled there between Mongolia and Tibet.

[36:08] Borden hit the ground running when he arrived. As Samuel Vamer, his missionary mentor, writes, I never saw a man come to Egypt with eyes more open to see the kingdom of God.

[36:22] Other men come to see dead pharaohs, to study history, or to join the great company of tourists all over the land, never once lifting their eyes to see the fields white unto harvest.

[36:36] Borden had not been in Cairo two weeks before he organized the students of the theological seminary to attempt a house-to-house canvas with Christian literature for the entire city with its 800,000 people.

[36:51] I've seen one photograph that he got a little bicycle and he could carry like three, he had all these little packs and bags hanging with all these tracks and he would ride through and he could get 3,000 tracks onto his little bicycle with his contraption that he was able to design.

[37:08] Well, it was a grand beginning but alas, it was for Borden nearly the end. Little did he imagine that this would be among his final earthly labors for his lord.

[37:24] Borden would never reach the Muslims in China. While still in Cairo mastering Arabic and to that end he moved in with a Syrian family and stayed with them, Borden there contracted spirocerebral meningitis.

[37:41] For three weeks he battled the dread disease but on April 9th, 1913 he passed on through the night into the light of his presence whom he had longed faithfully to serve.

[38:01] His mother and his sister on board a ship to reach him arrived just hours too late, just hours, in time only to be present at a small missionary gathering at a graveside.

[38:15] Here's a picture of that graveside. We've actually had a group from Yale contribute some money to fix the thing up and it was neglected and it's fixed up a little bit more now.

[38:28] So they were present there at this small gathering at the graveside. Samuel Zvamer was among those present.

[38:44] Fittingly read from Bukum's Progress of the death of Valiant for Truth. See if I can get through this. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and strength to him that can get it.

[39:08] My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who will now be my rewarder. And so he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

[39:31] A finished course but an unfinished task? No. Far, I wonder who will take it up.

[39:43] Far away in Kashmir, news of Borden's death reached a young missionary. One of his old friends and fellow students at Yale and he entered these words in his journal.

[39:56] I have absolutely no feeling of a life cut short. A life abandoned to Christ cannot be cut short.

[40:07] Cut short means not complete, interrupted, and we know that our master does no halfway jobs. We must pray now that those to whom God wants this to appeal may listen.

[40:25] That was Sherwood Betty. Borden's home going seemed to all a strange providence, to some a tragic waste.

[40:37] These, of course, were the words uttered over the woman when she poured the precious ointment over the master's feet.

[40:49] What a waste. But the master said, she has done a beautiful thing. Was Borden's life a tragedy?

[41:04] As a young man, when his sense of God's call had crystallized, Bill had written two words in the back of his Bible. No reserves.

[41:16] Later, turning down a high-paying job that was offered to him upon his graduation from Yale, he added two more words. No retreats.

[41:30] Shortly before his death, he had added two more final words. No regrets. No regrets.

[41:42] So my challenge to us this morning is for us to discover the same. For us to give our lives whole heartedly to Christ and his mission, whatever that is for us, with no reserves and no retreats, and then for us all to discover, and each to discover, that we will have no regrets.

[42:11] No regrets. Well, let me end there, having promised to leave some time for questions or comments. questions. Oh, I should say, one quick comment.

[42:28] So when I was doing this research, I found this postcard. Well, I found this letter from Samuels Weimer saying that he was writing a biography of Borden, and I looked everywhere for this for years and years and years, and just wasn't to be found.

[42:49] But I knew it existed. I had seen a little mimeograph of Samuels Weimer, of an outline of the different chapters, and then I had found a postcard written by a Yale professor who had apparently seen the manuscript to edit it and said, this is fantastic, here are a couple of editorial things, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

[43:10] Couldn't find it at Princeton, couldn't find it here, couldn't find it, you know, talked to all kinds of artists everywhere. Couldn't find it. Even had people, had friends go over to Egypt and check there.

[43:22] Well, last year, we found it. We found the manuscript. It ended up getting buried in the Presbyterian Mission Society archives in Philadelphia.

[43:36] They had the original thing. It had never been printed. So we've just got the manuscript, and I think we're going to bring it out. It's Samuel Zveimer's biography of Bill Borden.

[43:47] So we have the manuscript now, so stay tuned. We'll see. So that's kind of exciting. I know it took years to find this thing. John, would you spell Samuel Zveimer's last name? Yes, Z-W-E-M-E-R.

[44:00] Zveimer. Sorry, Samuel Zveimer. Yeah. When Borden was at Princeton, was there any time that he overlapped with J. Grish Mention, or was it not an overlapped time between them?

[44:11] No, he would have. That would have been Mention's time. Yeah. Hold on. 20s. Mention might have, you know, he doesn't mention Mention. I'm trying to remember when Mention first arrived there.

[44:25] He might have been there by then, but that might have been the time that he was in Germany. Mention spent some time in Germany studying, so I need to check the chronology. So there should have overlapped, but I don't remember him mentioning Mention, so maybe Mention was in Germany studying then.

[44:41] Yeah, yeah. Sure. Where exactly is Mention? So it's in Cairo, Egypt. It's the Foreigner Cemetery. The what? There's a cemetery for foreigners there in Cairo, and it's, yeah, it's there, and you just inquire of the little caretaker, and they'll, but if you're going over there, let us know, and we'll put you in touch with some people.

[45:05] I was there last year. Oh, you were there last year, okay. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's worth seeing. Yeah, yeah. So there's probably the best biography on him, Zemers is a fun one, it's good, but the classic is by Mrs.

[45:33] Howard Taylor, descendant of Hudson Taylor, and it's just called Borden of Yale, 1909. Oh, you know, there's one other picture I should show you. This will be familiar to some.

[45:46] So at Dwight Hall, if ever you get a chance to go into Dwight Hall on the Yale campus, there, right when you go in, there's what's called the Borden Fountain. So it's been beautiful, beautifully restored, but underneath it has, you can't quite see it here, but it's it says, whoever thirsts, let him come and drink freely.

[46:13] So this is a little gospel Borden fountain. When they renovated the building, they polished it all up on the outside and removed the water.

[46:25] I'm sure that's not symbolic of anything at all. I'm glad that they renovated it. We're very thankful. Yeah. For missionaries today, it sounds like there were missionaries before this time that denied the inerrancy of scripture.

[46:43] Yeah. There was a big push to have missionaries in the field that were supported that had the doctrines of the faith. Yeah. Yeah. nowadays, is there when IMB or whomever or whatever organization is going to support a missionary to China or elsewhere, how much betting is there for their doctrinal beliefs and their beliefs about the Bible?

[47:08] Is that something that is left to a judgment call by the organization, or is that an imperative that every missionary that is sent out in these fundamental doctrines?

[47:23] Yes. Do we have missionaries out there today that are denying the inerrancy of scripture and denying the trinity? No. Not only does one need to sign the doctrinal basis, which you can read, we probably even have some on file here, not only do they need to sign it, but you need to continue to sign it.

[47:45] So I, as one of the missionaries, not with the IMB, but with other missions groups and supporting churches, so as a missionary myself of some of these supporting churches, I need to not only read through all of these statements, and they're even, I need to indicate, and I do it every single year, every single year I need to say, no, I've re-read it again thoroughly, and if I have any exception or scruple to anything, I need to write extensively about what that is, and then they need to continue to judge every year whether that's adequate or compromising.

[48:27] Has that been a practice for? That's been a practice for quite some time, yeah, and especially when people discover that that has not been the case.

[48:40] It was easy to assume that for a while, but then when you can't assume that anymore, they want to check. Yeah, yeah. It's been contentious because there have been some who are frustrated at how tight it is, but, but, yeah, the Baptists are doing a good job keeping that tight.

[48:59] They're good at some things. Yeah, yeah. Yes? Liz, talk a little bit about how that early missionary movement progressed.

[49:13] Yes. Because I believe, you know, my parents were born in 08. Uh-huh. And then in 34, they went, but I know it was a big movement of some sort.

[49:28] Yes. So the student volunteer movement, I should give a, if ever I get a chance, maybe I'll give another talk about that, the student volunteer movement, the genesis and the development of the student volunteer movement.

[49:43] But, yes, remarkable. It, it actually went back, this, this, the student volunteer movement pledge was originally based on what was called the Princeton Pledge.

[49:55] There was a missionary from China who had come back in retirement, Royal Wilder, and he had in his rooms a little group of Princeton students in the 1880s would, would meet and they had as their little group what they called the Princeton Pledge, which read simply, it is my purpose if God permit to become a foreign missionary.

[50:19] And they began to start this. Well, then D.L. Moody was having a college conference up in Mount Hermon to bring a bunch of college students in and Robert Wilder took the Princeton Pledge up there and had a real vision for missions in his day and asked if he could make a presentation to the, the, the complete student body there and was able to find 10 among the students who were either born abroad, were foreigners themselves, or, or, or, or, so had some sort of connection to, to, to foreign lands.

[50:57] And each, there were 10 and each made a presentation of three minutes to the desperate spiritual needs of some foreign land and then ended their tongue in, in their language, their, their other foreign language with God is love.

[51:12] And that, and that called, it's called the meeting of 10 nations. And apparently this had very riveting effects and many of the students came forward to sign and by the end of the, that conference, Moody's conference up at Mount Hermon, there were actually 99 that, that, that, that had been signed and just before they left as they were praying there, one more entered in and got down his knees and signed the pledge so they were called the Mount Hermon 100.

[51:39] And that was the start of the student volunteer movement of, of, of the missionaries that went out and that it began to, to, to grow remarkably. And you have some of the more famous people involved.

[51:53] There was a John R. Mott from Cornell who signed the missionary pledge. He was about to go, but they realized, oh my goodness, this guy is one of the most organized people that we've ever encountered in, ever.

[52:04] So they urged him to stay and organize the thing rather than go himself. And he did that marvelously well. So literally thousands, Elizabeth, thousands went to the foreign fields.

[52:18] And you would say what, what changed, it began to peter out. See, after the First World War, with all the carnage that there was, people were so struck by the material woes of this world that they began, there began to be a shift to social action.

[52:42] That it's, we must desperately get people food. And soul work, what they called soul work, started to take a secondary place.

[52:54] And that ended up being functionally the death of the student volunteer report. The numbers began to really peter out after the First World War into the 20s. So, yeah. And Mount St.

[53:06] Herman is Connecticut? So it's in Massachusetts. Okay. And that's where Moody, Dale Moody, had his student conference.

[53:17] And there in Mount Herman. You can still go up there and there's a little pillar and there are memorials that you can see that's wonderful. I should bring in some pictures sometime.

[53:29] Long story and a great one. Yeah, Mike? Did Urbana, you know, that, that Yeah, yeah. That arise later on of this kind of same kind of... Same, yes.

[53:39] Same sort of spirit. Yes. And Urbana really took up the torch. Now Urbana connected particularly with the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which was a slightly different thing.

[53:52] That had its origin in England. Slightly different story, but same sort of spirit. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just noticing the time, team. I think we better...

[54:02] Hey, thanks so much. This has been fun. Hopefully we'll get a chance to do some other history, church history together sometime. Next week, I believe... Oh, the topic?

[54:13] I think it's the arts. The gospel and the arts, I think, is what we're going to continue with. Emily, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[54:23]  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.