This city mission work and press work at Constantinople is not one to be neglected, nor to be abandoned after our fathers have planted the seed in prayer and watered it with the sweat of their care-worn brows, nor to be allowed to languish in the hope that the people of the soil will miraculously spring into power and save the Western Church the pain of long nurture of its Asiatic children. The city must be occupied in full force as a missionary centre with hearty cooperation between all denominations of Christians there living out their conception of the Master's life of love.
When the traveller visits the mosque of St. Sophia the turbaned guide will lead him to a certain point in one of the galleries, and will silently point to the centre of the half dome of the apse. As the eve becomes accustomed to the details of the modern arabesque painted on a ground of gold, the visitor will discover underneath the arabesque of the Muslims, and forming a richer and more brilliant portion of the shining groundwork, the outlines of a figure of heroic size, with flowing robes, with arms outstretched, and with a halo crowning the head. The figure is a mosaic worked into the substance of the wall as a leading feature in the ancient decoration of the church. The Mohammedan conquerors instead of destroying the figure merely hid it from the eyes of their own people by overlaying it with gold. But it is not hidden from eyes that know how to trace the slightly different tint of its gracious outlines private ephesus tours.
The figure of Jesus Christ
That figure which could not be hid by the gold leaf which veils it, is the figure of Jesus Christ. For a thousand years it has stood with outstretched arms as if giving a benediction to every congregation which has worshipped God according to its lights in the ancient temple. And when the Mohammedan guide silently points the Christian visitor to this figure, all unknowingly he points to a fact too often forgotten. From the first the Lord Jesus Christ has had an interest of good will in the welfare of all the people of this city.
He still waits for His Church to establish His invisible kingdom in this centre of commanding influence. No weariness, nor impatience, nor actual pain of sacrifice can justify us in permitting work which He waits to have performed languish in this place to which all nations of Western Asia come to be taught. Let the Church press on this work, adopting for its motto and rule, the words of Constantine the Great, when he believed that he was laying the foundations of the capital of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ: "We will not stop until he stops who goes before us."
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