9

'RESIGN, RESIGN'

Buchman returned home from the Far East in April 1919. Instead of playing down what had happened there, he wrote to Mott that the Christian effort in Asia was doomed to failure unless there was 'a radical reversal of direction from diffusion over the many to a deep penetration of the few'.1 Of his own role, he wrote, 'If the policy of the Foreign Department... is to be first and last the Propagation of Life then you may be sure I am ready to pay the price that we have all got to pay if such a policy is to be followed. On any other basis I cannot honestly give my time and strength to the Association.'2 He also wrote to Sherwood Day from Allentown, where he had gone to give his mother some sorely-needed help, 'I am perfectly willing that there should be a break with Hartford. That wouldn't be any particular wrench.'3

Nevertheless, after a good deal of soul-searching, he accepted Hartford's renewed offer. The arrangement was a generous one: it gave Buchman freedom to travel for nine months in the year, and only required him to give a series of lectures on the 'how' of personal evangelism at times agreed with President Mackenzie and Dean Jacobus.

Buchman considered that the purpose of a seminary was thoroughly to convert its students and then to send them out as skilled 'fishers of men'. If it did not serve those ends, theological scholarship became irrelevant. One of Buchman's students, Edward Perry, later described what it was like to study under him: 'His lectures were totally unlike any others in that sedate institution. Mostly they consisted of stories of people whose lives had been changed by God's power working through him. It was fascinating, up-to-date, real...His picture of a real ministry was not a matter of eloquent sermons and well-organized parish activities, but of meeting people's deepest needs one by one...

'He did not feel that his job was just to teach us about his subject, in this case the changing of people, as in other classes. He also felt responsible to see that we ourselves changed, for he recognized that no amount of technique or knowledge could make us effective "fishers of men" unless we found for ourselves the victory in Christ that must be our message for others.'

84