ADDRESSES DELIVBRED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL OF THE General Assembly Of THE Presbyterian Church, MAY 24TH, 1888 rSLISHED BY MaCJCALIvA & COIMPANY, '*237-0 Dock: Street, Tf PHILADELPHIA. tihvaxy of Che Cheolo^icd ^emmarjo PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY Dr. John DeWitt BX 8951 .A33 1888 "^ Roberts, William Henry, 1844 -1920, Addresses delivered at the celebration of the resV '"'■'■'-' '["- JUL 10 1919 jsmi m} ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENNIAL OF THE General Assembly Presbyterian Church, ]V[AY 24TH, 1888. PUBLISHED BY M:ACCALLA & COJvlPAlSIY, 237-9 Docl< Street, PHILADELPHIA. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by MacCalla & Company, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. P/!£SS OF M^acCalla & Company philadelphia. . INTRODUCTORY ^I^HE Presbyterian system of faitli and government came to the American continent witli the earliest settlers of English, Scotch and French origin. Presbyterian churches existed in the colonies in the early part of the seventeenth century, but the first Presbytery was not organized until 1706. The General Synod, having under its care four Presbyteries, was erected in 1716, and the complete organization of the Church was secured in 1788, by the establishment of a General Assembly and the adoption by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia of the Constitution. The Assembly of 1888 is, tlierefore, the One Hundredth General Assembly of the Pres- byterian Church in the United States of America, The Assembly of 1885 appointed a Permanent Committee of Arrangements to make suitable preparation for the celebra- tion of the Centennial Meeting, and the committee was continued by the Assemblies of 1886 and 1887. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, being the Presbyterian Church located within what are called the Southern States, upon invitation cordially united with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, in preparation for the joint celebr-a tion of this auspicious anniversary. The committees of the two Assemblies met in joint session in Baltimore, Md., in December, 1885, and the arrangements effected by them were reported to and approved by the respective Assemblies. The following is the programme of the Centennial celebration. Morning Progrramme. TEN O'CLOCK. I.— IN THE ACADEMY OP MUSIC. PRESIDING OFFICER. Rev. J. J. Bullock, D.D., The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. 1. History of Presbyterianism (see page 3) Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D., Brooklyn, New York. 2. The Work of Presbyterianism for the Future (see page 18) T. Dwight Witherspoon, D.D., LL.D., Louisville, Kentucky. II.— IN HORTICULTURAL HALL. PRESIDING OFFICER. Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D., The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A . 1. Calvinism and Religious Liberty (see page 151) Hon. William C. P. Breckinridge, M.C., Lexington, Kentucky. 2. Presbyterianism and Biblical Scholarship (see page 185) Howard Crosby, D.D., LL D., New York City. Afternoon Programme. THREE O'CLOCK. I.— IN THE ACADEMY OP MUSIC. PRESIDING OFFICER. Justice William Strong, LL.D., U. S. Supreme Court, Wash- ington, D. C. 1. The Adaptation of Presbyterianism to the Masses.. . .(see page 172) Hon. John Randolph Tucker, Lexington, Virginia. 2. Presbyterianism and Education (see page 31) Simon J. McPherson, D.D., Chicago, Illinois. 3. Calvinism and Human Progress (see page 47) Hon. James S. Cothran, M.C, Abbeville, South Carolina. 4. Presbyterianism and Republican Government (see page 55) Hon. Samuel J. R. McMillan, Alternate, St. Paul, Minnesota. II.— IN HORTICULTURAL HALL. PRESIDING OFFICER. Hon. John L. Marye, Fredericksburg, Virginia. 1. City Evangelization— Its 'Necessity (see page 71) John Hall, D.D., LL.D., New York City. 2. City Evangelization — Its Methods (see page 77) Moses D. Hoge, D.D., Richmond, Virginia. 3. Preaching to the Masses (see page 88) Samuel J. Niccolls, D.D., LL.D., St. Louis, Missouri. 4. Lay Effort among the Masses (see page 160) Hon. Bennett H. Young, Louisville, Kentucky. Evening Programme. EIGHT O'CLOCK. I.— IN THE ACADEMY OP MUSIC. PRESIDING OFFICER. Hon. Alfred Moore Scales, Governor of North Carolina. 1. Home Missions (see page 96) George P. Hays, D.D., LL.D., Cincinnati, Ohio. 2. Foreign Missions (see page 105) Matthew Hale Houston, D.D., Baltimore, Maryland. 3. Historic Presbyterian Characters (see page 115) Charles L. Thompson, D.D., Kansas Cily, Missouri. 4. Closing Address (see page 206) Jerry Witherspoon, D.D., Nashville, Tennessee. II.— IN HORTICULTURAL HALL. PRESIDING OFFICER. Hon. James A. Beaver, Governor of Pennsylvania. 1. Home Missions (see page 125) Walter W. Moore, D.D., Union Theo. Sem., Hampden Sidney, Virginia. 2. Foreign Missions (see page 138) Charles S. Pomeroy, D.D., Cleveland, Ohio. 3. The Children of the Covenant (see page 192) Givens B. Strickler, D.D., Atlanta, Georgia. 4. Memories and Duties (see page 197) William P. Breed, D.D., Philadelphia. A Revised Edition of these Addresses will be issued within a few days. Permanent Committee of Arrangements FOR THE looth General Assembly Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. (Appointed by the General Assembly in 1885, and continued in 1886 and xSSy.) MINISTERS. Joseph T. Smith, D.D., LL.D., Chairman^ William PI. Eoberts, D.D., Stcretary, . William E. Moore, D.D,, David C. Marquis, D.D., Elijah E. Craven, D.D., George P. Hays, D.D., LL.D., Henry J. Yan Dyke, D.D., Henry A. Nelson, D.D,, William P. Breed, D.D., T. Ralston Smith, D.D., . George C. Noyes, D.D., . George C. Heckman, D.D., RULING ELDERS Justice William Strong, LL,D,, Hon, Samuel M. Breckinridge, LL.D., Wilham B. Negley, George Junkin, William E. Dodge, Samuel C. Perkins, . Hon, George H. Shields, Warner Van Norden, Ralph E, Prime, Wilham Howard Neff, William McAlpin, , Baltimore Md. Cincinnati, Ohio Columbus, Ohio . Chicago, Illinois Philadelphia, Pa. . Cincinnati, Ohio Brooklyn, New York . Philadelphia, Pa. Philadelphia, Pa. Buffalo, New York Evanston, Illinois . Cincinnati, Ohio Washington, D.C- . St, Louis, Missouri , Pittsburgh, Pa. . Philadelphia, Pa. New York, N. Y. . Philadelphia, Pa. St. Louis, Missouri . New York, N. Y. New York, N. Y. . Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati, Ohio Committee of Arrangements OF THE Presbyterian Church in the United States FOR THE Centennial Celebration of the General Assembly, (Appointed in 1887.) MEMBERS. Eev. James Power Smitli, Chairman^ Fredericksburg, Virginia Eev. Moses D. Hoge, D.D., . . . Eichmond, Virginia Eev. Eobert E. Howison, . . . Eicliinond, Virginia Hon. Charles F. Collier, . . . Petersburg, Virginia Eobert T. Brooke, Esq., . . . Eichmond, Virginia Eev. Charles E. Hemphill, D.D., . Louisville, Kentucky Eev. A. Nelson Hollifield, D.D., . St. Louis, Missouri HISTORICAL ADDRESS. By Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. THAT great clock of Time, which measures the march of man and the progress of Christ's kingdom, has struck the completion of another century in the history of Pres- byterianism. This was not, bj any means, its first century. There had been seventeen centuries before this — stretching back to the time when the Apostle Paul rocked its cradle, bearing this inscription, — " Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery^'' Paul and his fellow-apostles gave it its two distinctive features — the parity of the ministry and the office of the Eldership. There was the ovum of a General Assembly in that convocation of Apostles and Elders at Jeru- salem, which sent out its deliverances to the Gentile brethren of Antioch and Syria. Five centuries later, Presbyterianism spake in the majestic voice of Augustine, who formulated and defended our chief doctrines of Grace. Later on, appear those two massive pillars in the Presbyterian structure, John Calvin" and John Knox, the "Jachin" and "Boaz" whose joint names signify "He will establish it in strength." In Switzer- land and in Scotland Presbyterianism was the symbol and the synonym of Freedom. If it had not been for Scottish Cove- nanters, the tyrannic Charles the I might never have come to the scaffold; the heroic William III might never have come to the throne, Presbyterianism gave to Christendom the Westminster Confession, that unrivaled symbol of faith which emphasizes the sovereignty of Jehovah in the heavens, and the kingship of Jesus Christ in His Church, Its pulpits have echoed to the eloquence of Chalmers, the prince of ministers, and of Alexander Duff, the prince of missionaries. Of its polity the great President Edwards testified that "the Presbyterian way has ever appeared to me the most agreeable to the Word of God and to the reason and the nature of things." It has shed its instructive and influential side-lights upon all sister denominations ; and to-day the greatest of living preachers — Mr. Spurgeon — is constrained to govern the greatest of Chris- tian congregations by a numerous Board of Elders. And so, my dear brethren, has hard-headed, long-winded, stout-hearted Presbyterianism marched down through the centuries into these times " with cunning in its ten fingers and strength in its right arm." Into the details of our ecclesiastical history during the per- iod of our country's colonization, I have no time to enter now. There is a mist of uncertainty still hanging over the infancy of Presbyterianism in the American colonies. The Protes- tants from Holland, who settled New York, held many of the distinguishing features of our form of Church polity. There was also a Puritan type of Presbyterianism which planted a few churches on Long Island and in East Jersey, between 1641 and 1670. Eev. Matthew Hill (the correspondent of Richard Baxter) and Rev. Richard Denton were pioneers in these mis- sionary churches. The Rev. William Traill, from the Irish Presbytery of Laggan, a friend of Francis Makemie, preached on the eastern shores of the Chesapeake Bay as early as 1683 ; but we have no definite record of any churches organized by him. Through the mist that overhangs that border-land, we can dimly discern two or three feeble churches sprouting into existence about the year of grace, 1684, on the banks of the Pocomoke river, in Eastern Maryland. One of the two first- born churches is at Snow Hill and the other at Eehoboth — a prophetic name which signifies "room," and those early pioneers might well say " now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." Through the fog we also discern the historic figure of the missionary-pastor Fran- cis Makemie. He was born near Rathmelton, County Donegal, on the storm-swept north-western coast of Ireland ; he has Scottish blood in his veins ; was educated in a Scottish university on the Clyde, and his effectual calling was as a missionary of Jesus Christ to the wilds of America. A heroic figure is this stalwart Scotch-Irish Makemie, not afraid of wild beasts nor of the tyrannical bigots who imprisoned him in New York " as a strolling preacher " twenty years afterwards. He goes over to Britain to beat up volunteer missionaries for the colonies, and returns in time to take part in organizing the first Presbytery about the close of the year 1705. It bore the name of " Philadelphia ; " and was probably organized in this goodly city. The seven ministers who composed it were Francis Makemie, George Macnish, John Hampton, Samuel Davis, John Wilson, Jedediah Andrews and Nathanael Taylor. Ten years later the first Synod was organized, consisting of three Presbyteries, with twenty-three ministers and about thirty churches. In 1729 the Synod solemnly declare their agreement with the Westminster Confession and Catechism as " being in all the essential articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine." That doctrinal basis, thus established, has stood like adamant for one hundred and sixty years; and it will continue to stand until it upholds many a millennial church in the times of the latter-day glory. That a vigorous controversy should have arisen in the Synod was just what might have been expected. They would not have been strong-willed and warm-blooded Scotch- Irishmen if they had not come into collisions. And, as is frequently the case when Presbyterians quarrel, both sides were right 1 The "Old Side " were right in their intense loyalty to our sym- bols of faith, and in their demand for an educated ministry wherever it was possible. The "New Side" — which embraced the majority in number, and the preponderance in aggressive zeal — were right in maintaining that the great revivals under Whitefield and Tennent were from heaven and not from men. The one side were obstinately conservative ; the other side were obstinately progressive ; but neither side could long do without the other. Signals of reunion were exchanged ; and after a rehearsal of the same negotiations and the same ceremonies which were to be repeated one hundred years afterwards, the separated Synods became one. The reunited Synod contained ninety- four ministers — three-fourths of whom had worn the " New Side" badge. The man whose portly commanding figure filled the Moder- ator's chair on that 29th of May, 1758, was the man whose tongue of flame had done most to cleave the denomination asunder ; but his heart of flame had helped to melt and mould it again together. Gilbert Tennent was the most powerful member of the most powerful family in the Presbyterian Church of that era. His terrific and soul-searching style of preaching shook Boston as with a cyclone; it gave him the leadership of the revivals which then swept over the land. His Irish father, the celebrated WilHam Tennent, brought him over from Ireland in his childhood, and took him to that rustic spot on the banks of the Neshaminy creek which has become classic in the history of our Church. There our Elisha planted our first school of the prophets. There Wil- liam Tennent and his four sons — all to be faithful ministers of Christ — piled those rude logs which were to be as historic as the rails split by the rustic Abraham Lincoln in Illinois. Verily Tennent "builded better than he knew." That log- college, twenty feet square and chinked with mud, contained in its rude husk the seeds of Princeton College, and Theologi- cal Seminary, and all the great training-schools of our Faith on the continent. To-day let us uncover our heads reverently 6 in honor of the Tennents ; there is no nobler name in the early annals of American Presbyterianism. Another man was in that Eeunion Synod whose eloquence reached the high -water mark of pulpit oratory in that cen- tury. Samuel Davies, with Welsh iron in his blood, and the sweetness of Christ Jesus in his soul, stirred the heart of Vir- ginia for the gospel of salvation as Patrick Henry stirred it afterwards for civil independence. Let us take honest pride in the fact that the first American preacher who conquered the admiration of the mother country was the Presbyterian Davies — a farmer's son and a pupil of the Fagg's Manor training-school. What he might have become if his life had reached its full ripeness we can only conjecture ; but at the early age of thirty-seven he was laid beside his great prede- cessor Edwards in the hallowed mould of Princeton Cemetery. One other figure in that first century of our Church looms so large that we cannot overlook him if we would. When Davies visited Scotland in 1 754 he encountered a keen, satirical pamphlet aimed at the " Moderates," and ascribed to a certain young " Mr. Weatherspoon." The " canny " young man was a lineal descendant of John Knox, with his great ancestor's holy abhorrence of both priestcraft and tyranny. It was a sagacious act in Princeton College to choose him for its Presi- dent; it "blazed the road" for another illustrious Scotch President in our day, whose white head is honored with loving reverence throughout the Republic. Witherspoon's two visits to Philadelphia made him immortal. The first one was to the Synod in 1775, when he aroused them to issue that pastoral letter for independence, which had in it the ring of a trumpet. His second visit was to a seat in the Continental Congress in July, 1776. He got there just in time to tell Congress that " the country was not only ripe for freedom, but would soon be rotten for the want of it." He got there in time to write the only name of a Presbyterian parson under the name of Hancock on the Declaration of Independence. Before he in- scribed it, he uttered the manly words, " Although these gray hairs must descend soon into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they should descend thither by the hand of the public executioner than desert, at this crisis, the sacred cause of my country." The name of John Witherspoon is one of the brightest jewels in our coronal ; it is the only name of a minister of Jesus Christ that is graven on the pedestal of a civic statue on the American soil. • During the protracted Revolutionary struggle our Church made little progress. The hand that wielded the sword was busier than the hand that wielded the trowel. Presbyterians, almost to a man, were rebels. Many of our ministers went into the patriot- army as chaplains ; some of them run their convictions into bullet-moulds and fired at the foe with Cal- vinistic precision. Some, like the heroic Caldwell, sealed their devotion with their blood. The end of the war saw church edifices desecrated or desolated, congregations scattered, the ministry impoverished, the National Synod so shattered that only fifteen ministers and four elders answered to the roll-call ! The machinery of the Church of Christ was in a condition well nigh as chaotic as the civil machinery of the State. But out of this chaos there slowly emerged a twofold organic con- struction. Two sets of builders were busied at the same time, and completed their work at about the same time. It is a striking fact that the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America had a simultaneous birth. On the 17th of September, 1787, the framers of our Federal Constitution completed that instrument which the greatest of living men — Mr. Gladstone — has pro- nounced to be '' the most wonderful work ever struck oS' at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Its adoption was consummated in 1788. The first steps toward the formation of the Constitution of the American Presbyterian Church were taken by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia in May, 1785. The commit- tee then appointed made a report the next year. Another committee was appointed, which met in the autumn of 1786 and digested a draft which was sent down to the Presbyteries for examination. The Presbyteries returned their opinions and suggestions during the year following; and on the 16th of May, 1788, the Synod adopted and ratified the " Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America." Let us render our hearty thanks to Almighty God for the wis- dom vouchsafed to our fathers in constructing these twain Constitutions which were born together in this beautiful city, and which have dwelt together as the " tutamen et decus " of our civil and ecclesiastical organisms. With the adoption of the Presbyterian Constitution came the organization of the first General Assembly — in May, 1788. It embraced four Synods, seventeen Presbyteries, 180 ministers and 419 congregations. During the next year the Assembly held its first annual meeting in this city — which has always been the peculiar home of Presbyterianism. There are gray- headed Philadelphians who still remember the plain brick edifice which stood at the corner of Arch and Third streets; its pulpit was on one side of the audience-room, after the old Scotch fashion. The church which worshiped there had been founded by "Whitfield ; its earliest minister was Gilbert Ten- nent ; and you will pardon a bit of personal pride when I say 8 tliat a venerated kinsman, of my own name, was the pastor of that church for many years. In that simple austere edifice the first Assembly held its sessions. It might have been accommo- dated in a modern Pullman car ; for it contained only thirty- four commissioners (twenty-three ministers and eleven ruling elders). Traveling in those times was slow and costly. The swiftest stage- wagons occupied two whole days in the transit from New York to Philadelphia. Good Moses Hoge — after- wards the President of " Hampden Sydney " — must have spent a round week in his horseback journey from the Presbytery of Lexington, in the heart of Virginia. Of the proceedings of that first Assembly we have but brief records. Dr. John Witherspoon, in broad Scotch vernacular, delivered the opening discourse from the words, " I (Paul) have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." A psalm or two, in the musical version of Dr. Isaac Watts, were sung; and Dr. John Kodgers, adorned withhislarge white wig, ascended the Moderator's chair. Eodgers was a native of Bos- ton, first awakened under Whitfield, received his Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh on the recom- mendation of Benjamin Franklin, and was the patriarch of Presbyterianism in the city of New York. Dr. George Duf- field, of Philadelphia, the ancestor of a noble line of ministers, was chosen Stated Clerk. One of the earliest acts of the As- sembly was the adoption of a congratulatory address to Presi- dent Washington, whom they honor for " his amiable example of piety towards God, benevolence towards men, and his pure and virtuous patriotism." The reply of Pater Patriee was a model of modesty and dignity. The sessions of that General Assembly occupied only five days. Their time was spent in consolidating their new national organization — in adopting measures to print and circulate faithful impressions of the Holy Scriptures, in delicate diplo- macy towards some Presbyterians who had a strong Congrega- tionalist leaning, in organizing Church extension and Home Mission work, and in welding together the new brotherhood of seventeen Presbyteries in the double tie of love for each other and of loyalty to their exalted Lord. And so our morning- stars sang together ; and if they could have foreseen the splen- did future that awaited them those sons of God would have shouted for joy! American Presbyterianism may well be proud of its parent- age. " Show me the blood and I will show you the man." There was some admixture of the Huguenot in our ecclesias- tical ancestry — small but precious. In the veins of many of our founders flowed some of the best blood of Scotland — the blood of the Covenanters and Cameronians, the blood of the 9 heroes who fought beside Douglass and Cargill in the Upper Clydesdale, and of the saints who were fed on the heavenly- manna of Eenwick and of Kutherford, From the Principality of Wales came the ancestors of Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies and other men of renown. The North of Ireland con- tributed the stalwarts who peopled the mountains of Pennsyl- vania and the valleys of Virginia — men of pluck and muscle who hewed down the trees which built their frontier churches, men who coveted no fine linen for their tables so that they had enough of corn bread and potatoes, and yet imbued with such a noble thirst for learning that they became the founders of many of our foremost schools and colleges, Puritan Non-con- formity gave to us some of our ablest leaders, such as Dickin- son, Green and Rodgers. The physique of those pioneers was as staunch as their theology. Many of them preached their half-century sermons to the same flock ; some of them, at four score, could mount their horses for a ten- miles ride to their preaching-stations, or a thirty-miles ride to the Presbytery. Their discourses abounded in strong Bible doctrine, preached " without defalcation or discount." Ofttimes the solid Calvin- istic metal was heated to an anthracite glow and melted the most rugged of their auditors. The libraries of those early apostles of Presbyterianism were to be weighed rather than counted; they contained a few volumes of savory meat, like Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry, Calvin and Turretine. A mighty Concordance, rebound by his own hands with sole- leather, is one of the relics of one of those Revolutionary par- sons. As theological seminaries of the present style were not yet born, a large number of those early ministers were educated privately in the parsonages of older men who were skilled in divinity. Others were trained in the school at Fagg's Manor or in Tennent's Log-college ; but the largest number brought with them their diplomas from the divinity-schools of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1746 the College of New Jersey was chartered. Its in- fancy was spent in Elizabethtown, and ten years later it was removed to Princeton, whose name it has made classic around the globe. This greatest of our colleges owes its origin to the heart and brain of the greatest of our early Presbyterians, Jonathan Dickinson^ who was born in Massachusetts exactly two hundred years ago. It was fitting that a man who was almost the peer of Jonathan Edwards in intellect should have been the first in the line of Princeton's College-Presidents ; and, although he held the office but one year, he left upon the insti- tution the impress of his power and his piety. Sixty-six years afterwards, in that same favored town, the first of our theo- logical seminaries was planted. And on the 12th of August, 10 1812, that sunny-souled patriarch -who combined the wisdom of a seer with the simpHcity of a child, Dr. Archibald Alexander^ was inducted into its chair of theology. Since that time col- leges have multiplied, and Presbyterian schools of divinity have been established at Auburn, Allegheny, Columbia, Prince Edward, New York, Cincinnati, Danville, Chicago, Oxford, Dubuque, Newark, Charlotte and San Francisco. But on those foundation-stones laid by Dickinson and by Alexander have arisen those two magnificent strongholds of Christian culture and orthodox faith, on whose sacred walls the smile of God gleams like the light of the morning. " Stand fast. Crag Ellachie ! " Oh, Princeton, Princeton ! in the name of thy ten thousand grateful sons, " if we forget thee, may our right hands forget their cunning and may our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths! " As we review the history of the Presbyterian Church during the century just closed, certain prominent head-lands stand out so conspicuously as to challenge our attention. One of those was the "Great Revival" which began in 1800, and which swept like a prodigious gale over all the regions west of the Alleghanies, and extending southward into the Carolinas and Georgia. Nothing quite like it was ever witnessed before, or has ever been witnessed since, upon this continent. The pecuUar characteristics of this spiritual awakening were — the introduction of camp-meetings, which were immense in num- bers and intense in excitement; and, secondly, the prevalence of extraordinary bodily exercises, under which hundreds of men and women were prostrated to the ground in convulsions of agony or of ecstatic joy. The narrative of those scenes reads now almost like one of the weird visions of the Apocalypse. The same spiritual whirlwind which filled the air with seeming chafF, winnowed also a vast amount of pre- cious wheat, which seeded the valley of the Mississippi, and saved the new West from the floods of prevailing infidelity. It saved the West for Jesus Christ. The supply of preachers was inadequate for the emergency, especially in Kentucky, where the revival reached its acme of power. A large number of rough and ready lay-exhorters offered their services. Some of them were licensed, in oppo- sition to the wishes and authority of a "Synodical Commis- sion." Had Presbyterianism been as sagacious as Methodism in such matters, it might have harnessed the fiery enthusiasm of those frontiers-men into its chariot. Grant that those John Baptists in linsey-woolsey and leathern girdles were lacking in diplomas, and rather low in their Calvinism, and wild in some of their methods ; yet Presbyterianism needed just such a corps of skirmishers and sharp-shooters for its frontier cam- 11 paign. A little more patient diplomacy of wisdom and love might have averted the Cumberland Schism of 1810. If a blunder is to be measured by the magnitude of its results, then the blunder which severed from us a Church which now contains 119 Presbyteries, 2540 congregations and 148,000 members, was simply colossal. They need us as much as we need them. And in the good time coming, when all our divi- sions are healed, that "Army of the Cumberland" will be welcomed back into the mighty host which bears the old blue banner across the continent. In addition to the influence of the Great Eevival, a power- ful impetus was given to the Presbyterian Church by the adoption of the " Plan of Union " in 1802. Ten years before this, Dr. Ashbel Green had proposed a plan of intercourse with the Congregationalist Association of New England by correspondence and interchange of delegates. The " Plan of Union" originated at Schenectady in the warm hearts of Dr. John Blair Smith, of Virginia (then acting as President of Union College), and of young Eliphalet Nott, who was soon to be his celebrated successor. Under the beneficent influence of this " Plan," Presbyterians and Congregationalists joined hands in planting those new churches which soon made the wilder- ness of Western New York and Ohio to blossom as the rose. In spite of its serious defects this arrangement was productive of rich blessings through a whole generation — until it went to pieces in the controversial gale which sundered the Presby- terian Church in 1837. Brethren! Our C^nion-days with each other and with our neighbors have always been our best days, but over the days of unhappy controversies and of schisms, we would love to walk backward, and cast the charitable mantle of oblivion. It would be pleasant, if the limits of our time allowed, to sketch the splendid progress which Presbyterianism made during the first third of this nineteenth century. During those golden years her roots were spread out to the waters, and the dews of heaven lay upon her widening branches. In 1802 the General Assembly appointed a committee to direct Home Missionary work, which was enlarged into a Board of Mis- sions in 1816. The Temperance Reform, which had been pioneered by the scientific Dr. Rush and the eloquent Dr. Lyman Beecher, was heartily endorsed by the Assembly of 1812. Our pulpits were enjoined to preach against both the drinking usages and the dram shops. About that time strong protests were made by the Assembly against the traffic in negro slaves, and against neglecting the education of slaves. The fashionable practice of duelling was branded as murder. During those thirty-five years of progress, societies for the 12 education of ministers were organized ; the " American Board of Foreign Missions" was born, with nearly all our churches as its auxiliaries. Our leading theological seminaries were founded. Wide-spread revivals followed the fervid labors of such ministers as Gallaher and Ross, Baker and James Hall, Finney and Nettleton. It would be profitable also to halt and study some of the representative men of that era, the men who "had under- standing of the times, and knew what Israel ought to do." Among those type-men was that Baxter-like spirit, James Patterson, who could conduct forty religious meetings in a week among the poor of Philadelphia, and whose ministry here was a perpetual Pentecost. His Southern counterpart in zeal was James Hall, a Scotch-Irish pupil of Witherspoon, a Herculean Boanerges in stature, whose thrilling eloquence and itinerant labors through the Carolinas renewed the memories of Whitefield. Another majestic giant in. physique and pulpit power, was Edward Dorr Griffin, whose voice had the compass of an orchestra, and whose great discourse on " God exalted and man humbled by the Gospel" touched the high-water mark of sacred oratory. Before us rise the serene faces of Archibald Alexander and James Richards, the two wonderfully wise masters in Israel, whose voices have yet a thousand echoes in the ministers whom they trained. Beside them stand the saintly Kevins, the logical Skinner, the lovable John Holt Rice, the brilliant Larned, the busy-handed Cor- nelius, the impetuous Breckenridge, and the calm, Gcholarly Albert Barnes. To the closing years of that era belongs that fearless son of thunder, Charles G.Finney, the weight of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. During that progressive era there was a grand development of the lay-element in the elder- ship, in the councils and in the practical work of the churches. A noble army of consecrated laymen arose which found its consummate type of beauty in such characters as Harlan Page and William E. Dodge. That prosperous third of a century carried the Presbyterian Church to the dimensions of 21 Synods, 116 Presbyteries, 2500 congregations and 233,000 communicants. But at the close of this halcyon period of prosperity, por- tentous clouds began to loom above the horizon. The ecclesiastical barometer betokened "foul weather." The ominous words " Old School" and " New School" began to be heard; and the ghosts of 1745, "clad in complete steel," began to "revisit the glimpses of the moon." The conflict was partly theological, and partly ecclesiastical. In theology it was High Calvinism versus Low Calvinism ; both schools pro- fessing their loyalty to the Westminster standards. In ecclesi- 13 astics it was Denominational Boards versus Voluntary Societies with Congregationalist partnerships. For five long years the Euroclydon of controversy raged. For five years every ses- sion of the General Assembly was a storm-centre. During those five years the sun on the Presbyterian dial went back- ward, and the membership of the Church decreased by thirteen thousand members! At length disruption became inevitable; and the overstrained chain-cable snapped, hurling far and wide its shattered links which scarred many a venerable white head, and drew blood from many a wounded heart! In May, 1838, two General Assemblies, very evenly balanced as to nami)ers, confronted each other in this city. Both bore the same name, both acted under the same Constitution and Confession of Faith. It has been often affirmed that beneath all the controversy about theology and Church polity, the secret cause of the disruption was negro slavery. But the suf- ficient answer to this assertion is that the cleavage did not follow any geographical line. Some of the most vehement Old School men were the Scotch-Irish Anti- Slavery men of Western Pennsylvania. Some of the most ardent partisans of the New School branch were slave-holders in Virginia, South Carolina and Alabama. In the successive Old School Assem- blies the hot coal was handled very gingerly. In the New School Assemblies the topic was freely discussed ; and at the termination of a protracted debate, in 1846, the uniquely elo- quent Moderator, Dr.SamuelH.Cox, exclaimed, "Well, we have capped Vesuvius once more !" But in 1857 the cap blew off, and the Southern churches withdrew, and organized under the name of the " IJnited Synod of the Presbyterian Church." The Old School Assembly held together for four years longer. But their turn came in 1861, when the historic cannon-shot of Fort Sumpter, after piercing the Federal Union, ricocheted into the Old School organization and cleft it asun- der. Within twenty-four years a single national Presbyterian body had been divided into four bodies ; two of them in the North, and two of them in the South ! The deep bleeding wound created by the civil war has been most mercifully and beneficently healed. And the breach made by that conflict in the ranks of Presbyterianism will yet, in God's good time, he healed also, just as surely as an All- wise God reigns in heaven, and the spirit of brotherly love lives and throbs in the great Presbyterian heart. It is said that a fifty-pound iron weight, if flung into the foaming verge of Niagara, will not sink. It is swept on by the gigantic cur- rent as if it were a pine-shaving. Even so in the bright com- ing time, when all the present soluble difficulties shall have been ivisehj and riahteoushj solveJ, it will be found that the 14 most stolid obstacles to reunion will be swept away in that mighty torrent of love that pours down from the throne of Him who loved us all and gave Himself for us. But let us revert from prophecy to history. After the dis- ruption in 1838, the "New" and "Old" School wings of the Presbyterian Church pursued their respective ways — not in a spirit of mutual hostility, but of generous rivalry. For with the organic separation controversy ceased. Like two Christian neighbors closely related by blood, and dwelling in different houses, they exchanged calls, and whenever they met, they inquired kindly after each other's welfare. The separation lasted just one- third of a century, until, in the nature of things, it could not last any longer. As disruption had been inevitable, so reunion became still more inevitable. Each side had con- quered the other. The Old School, who were the especial representatives of Orthodoxy and Order, had established the wisdom of Ecclesiastical Boards and of conducting the affairs of the Church without incongruous alliances. The New School, who were the especial representatives of Liberty and Progress, had vindicated the right of fraternal toleration within the bounds of loyalty* to the common . standards of Faith and Church government. Each side needed the other. Why not consolidate with the same Westminster bed-rock under their feet, and the same blue banner over their heads ? The first official movement towards reunion was made at St. Louis, in May, 1866. The two Assemblies were meeting there simultaneously, and both appointed influential com- mittees to confer in regard to the practicability of reunion and to suggest measures for its accomplishment. Dr. Beatty was the chairman of the " Old School " committee ; Dr. William Adams was the chairman of the "New." In 1868 the Joint Committee presented their plan of consolidation to the two Assemblies, and it was the subject of an overture sent down to the Presbyteries. In May, 1869, the two Assemblies convened in New York, joined in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and, with only nine dissenting voices out of 560 enrolled mem- bers, voted their hearty approval of the Joint Committee's Plan of Eeunion ! At the adjourned sessions of the Assem- blies in the city of Pittsburgh, on the morning of November 12, 1869, the noble deed was nobly consummated. Amid shouts of joy and embraces of love, the two wings of the Pres- byterian host marched together into the same temple of the living God, and became ONE. That was the unparalleled love-feast in our history. The song of praise was in our hearts and we sang ; the tears of joy were in our hearts and we wept. The voices of the eloquent William Adams and of the sagacious George 15 W. Musgrave — who had been the heaven-guided leaders of Reunion — blended together in that magnificent doxology which made the rafters roar ! Nor did the holy ecstasies of the hour evaporate in empty breath ; for it was decreed on the spot to raise five millions of dollars for the treasury of the Lord, as a special thank-offering for the consummation of our glorious nuptials. It actually amounted to $7,888,0001 Pittsburgh witnessed the imposing ceremony of wedlock. But it was fitting that in this "City of Brotherly Love," where the first Assembly of 1789 had convened, the great reunited Assembly of 1870 should hold its sessions. Under the soft vernal skies that General Assembly came together, six hun- dred and forty strong, and representing fifty-one Synods, 259 Presbyteries, 4526 churches and 446,560 communicant mem- bers. The session of this memorable Assembly continued until the 4th of June. During that time the Synods were recon- structed, the Boards were consolidated, and the respective ma- chineries of the former dualities were harmoniously blended into one. That beneficent reunion was unmistakably guided of God. It has been cemented by brotherly affection. It se- cured much worth having ; it sacrificed nothing worth Tceejnng. It was the blessed foretoken of that coming day when all the churches that bear the Presbyterian name shall compose a single glorious solidarity, on whose walls may be inscribed the grand old Scotch version of the 125th Psalm : " Who sticketh to God in stable trust, As Ziou's mount, he stands full just, Which moveth no whit, nor yet doth reel, But standeth forever as stiff as steel ! " As we look back over the century now closing, we discover much to excite devout thanksgiving. When the first General Assembly was organized in 1788 there were only 419 churches and not more than 20,000 members. Home Missions were in their feeble infancy. The Foreign Mission enterprise was not ^'^et born. According to last year's statistics we now number 6486 churches and about 700,000 communicants. Our Board of Home Missions has 1465 missionaries upon a field that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian settlements in far- away Alaska. Our Board of Foreign Missions maintains a force of 1543 men and women, embracing ministers, teachers, physicians and Bible-readers. Presbyterianism leads the van in China and feeds the brilliant electric-burner that flames over the Orient from the coast of Syria. A prodigious impetus has been given to missionary enterprise both at home and abroad by the enlistment of woman's busy hands and loving heart. While the Presbyterian Church has never ordained women to her public ministry of the Word, yet she has not been un- mindful of the holy activities of womanhood in the New 16 Testament Cliurches, from the hour when Mary Magdalene was the first commissioned bearer of the good tidings of her Lord's resurrection to His disciples. So effective are our Women's Boards that they now furnish one-third of all the moneys contributed to the foreign field. Within the last hundred years the Presbyterian Church has had a remarkable increase. In 1788 (as we have seen) there were only seventeen Presbyteries, 177 ministers, 419 churches and not over 20,000 communicants. To-day, if we combine the columns of both wings, Northern and Southern, there are 270 Presbyteries, 6770 ministers, 8672 churches, and 851,000 communicants. These figures may well provoke our grati- tude, not unmingled with humiliation. By the blessing of God our growth has been very great; it would have been vastly greater if it had not been retarded by several adverse causes. The first of these has been the lamentably inadequate supply of ministers to organize and to "man" churches among the rapidly increasing new settlements. A second was an equally inadequate supply of funds to rear churches and to pro- mote Domestic Missions. Only within the last dozen years has our Church begun to learn and to practice the grand prin- ciple of systematic beneficence. Weslyan Methodism owed much of its rapid growth to John Wesley's favorite watch- word, "Justification, sanctification and a penny a day!" If Presbyterianism increases her drafts on Christ's promises, she must increase her drafts on her own cheque books. A third cause that has retarded our growth has been the painfully frequent controversies and divisions. An enormous amount of force that ought to have been spent in enlargement has been wasted in needless internal conflicts. Brethren! Over the morning dawn which ushers in a new century let us bend, like a Polar arch, this glorious motto, Union IN Christ for a World WITHOUT Christ! Alongside of sister denominations let us continue to labor on in true fraternity; but let us waste no time in idle flirtations with any self-styled " historic Episcopate." The men in yonder General Assembly who serve Paul's Lord and who preach Paul's doctrines are so far forth Paul's legitimate successors. A retrospect of the century just gone with its account to heaven furnishes abundant cause for devout thanksgiving. We may well be thankful that the Presbyterian Church has so largely escaped the prevailing malaria of doubt and of dis- satisfaction with the ancient faith delivered to the saints. From the old bed-rock we have taken no " new departures." It was the honest boast of the greatest of our theologians, Dr. Charles Hodge, that Presbyterianism has made no new discov- eries in Bible theology. Her telescopes sweep no fields beyond the limits of Divine Eevelation. This sound conservatism 17 never has been — it never must be stolid stagnation. The wise man's eyes are in the front of his head ; he is ever discerning new lines of progress on old lines of truth. Within the last hundred years our beloved Church has carved her influence in broad and beneficent characters on the history of the Eepublic. Her iron has entered into the nation's blood. During the arduous struggle for independence, the name Presbyterian almost included the name of Patriot. Her stifiiy vertebrated theology has imparted backbone to the popular conscience. Presbyterianism has always stood for the sovereignty of Jehovah, the authority of conscience and the majesty of law. Her hterature has enriched all libraries ; her scholarship has linked the names of Edward Eobinson, Schaft', AddisoQ Alexander and many others with the sacred scholarship of Europe. Her money contributions towards the circulation of the Holy Scriptures and kindred objects of Christian charity have exceeded those of any other denomina- tion. Her pulpits have exalted the sin- atoning Lamb of God ; her Sabbath-schools have taught millions of infant voices to lisp His blessed Name ; her pastors have fed nine successive generations with the bread of life, and led three millions of converts to the Master's table. Her record is on high in the multitudes of precious souls whom her teachings have guided to glory. Thank God ! the past of American Presbyterianism is secure. As to the future, we may adopt the quaint words of Martin Luther, when he said, " We tell our Lord God plainly that if He will have His Church He must look after it Him- self. We cannot sustain it ; and if we could, we should be the proudest asses under heaven." Fathers and brethren ! Let us rejoice that we have witnessed this happy commemoration. As we listen to the stroke of that bell which sounds the exit of a century in our annals, let us answer it back with a heartfelt " Hallelujah H The spirits of the mighty dead, whose achievements we have re- hearsed, seem to hover around us, and to join iu our songs of thanksgiving. For amidst the entrancing splendors of Para- dise, they cannot have lost the memories of the Church to which they consecrated their earthly lives — or have lost their interest in its welfare. Nor shall we be forgetful of our spiritual lineage if, by the grace of God, we reach that "gen- eral assembly of the first-born " upon the glassy sea of crystal and of gold. Heaven destroys no identity, breaks no ties, dissolves no kinships. While we shall adore that ineffable and all-glorious Name that is above every name, we shall not forget or disown that other dear old name by which we are called to-day ; and as we meet and greet each other in that assembly, we shall not be ashamed to say, " / was^ and I am, a Pbesbyterian 1" THE WORK OF PRESBYTERIANISM FOR THE FUTURE. By Rev. T. D. Witherspoon, D.D., LL.D Louisville, Ky. IT is reiatea that when, in the fifteenth century, Spain had completed the recovery of her soil from the dominion of the Moors, when her victorious legions had redeemed province after province, until the last was disenthralled and the national standards waved in triumph over the citadel of Gibraltar, the government ordered a commemorative coin to be struck, bearing an anaglyph of the Pillars of Hercules, with the encircling motto, Ne Plus Ultra, to indicate that the goal of national ambition had been reached and that no further conquests remained commensurate with those already achieved. But when, a decade or two later, the great prince of discover- ers returned from his far-western voyage, bringing tidings of the new realms that lay trackless under the setting sun, the nation awakened to a new impulse, ordered the word Ne to be stricken from the die and only Plus Ultra to remain, that with its animating cry of " Further! further I" it might stir the ambition of Spanish youth to wider discoveries and grander achievements in the unknown fields that lay beyond. As we listened to the eloquent words of the speaker who has just taken his seat; as we caught the glow of his fervor and enthusiasm; as, under his skillful marshaling, all the glo- rious past of Presbyterianism moved in living array before us, and we became eye witnesses of the battles it has fought, the enemies it has encountered, the triumphs it has achieved and the territory it lias won, who could resist the impression that the splendid achievements of Presbyterianism in the past can find no parallels in the future, that its present exalted position and commanding influence leave little for the future but to conserve that which is already won; that — our Gibraltars all taken — nothing remains but to inscribe upon our banners N'e Plus Ultra, and concede that the glory of Presbyterianism lies in the historic memories of the past. If such be the unwilling effect of the eloquence of our brother, then my regret, in which I know you cannot fail to 18 19 sliare, becomes more profound, that the venerable Nestor of our Southern Presbyterian Church, who was chosen to preside over its first General Assembly, and who, perhaps more than any other living man, has shared its confidence and given shape to its councils, cannot be with us to-day to render the service to which he was called by the voice of the General Assembly. A prince of explorers in the realms of thought, it would only be necessary that he should bring you the fruits of a single excursion into those unknown seas which make the future of Presbyterianism, to assure you that along the course of the century to come lie new and unexplored realms, with possibilities as grand as any that have given inspiration to the deeds of valor of which we have heard to-day. Even under the unskilled guidance which an alternate, in the absence of his principal, offers you to-day, I am not without hope that this Centennial Day may appear, not so much a time of wor- ship in which to lift our hallelujahs to Heaven for that which is past, as a day of review in which to gird our loins and tighten the grip upon our swords for that which is to come. We rise to the true measure of this august occasion, only as these Centennial exercises are to us Pillars of Hercules, not with barred gates, and Ne Plus Ultra over them — the Ultima Thule^ where denominational enterprise may furl its sails and lie at rest — but Pillars of Hercules, with gates wide open, and over them that new motto, which, with uplifted voice, cries "Further! further!" as it points to new realms of conquest and new work for God in the century to come. Certainly no thoughtful observer can contemplate the pres- ent state of religious opinion, and especially the more recent phases of theological inquiry, without having the conviction forced upon him that in the near future issues are to emerge and conflicts are to be waged Avhich will demand of the Church of God, in its purest forms, just such service as that which has made Presbyterianism illustrious in the centuries gone. As a result, in large measure, of the positivism and rationalism that, more than a century ago, began to creep into the philo- sophical and theological schools of Europe, setting in motion influences which are now just beginning to work out their baleful results, the age is becoming intensely rationalistic. It is irreverent of antiquity, impatient of dogma, intolerant of authority, incredulous of the supernatural, ready to call in question every article of religious faith, and throw doubt, if possible, on every item of historic fact in the Word of God. The essence of what is called " modern thought " is intoler- ance of the supernatural in rehgion. Under various forms, some of them bold and decided, others vague and ill- defined, of Positivism Agnosticism, Materialism and Pantheism, it is 20 organizing its forces and preparing for a multiform, but con- certed and persistent assault upon every point of Christianity that involves the idea of a supernatural revelation and of a personal interposition for redemptive purposes into the domain of natural law. The first great work of Presbyterianism for the future, tben — making this general survey of the field — is to do in the coming issue that which she has always been foremost to do in the past ; as the thunder of rati onalistic artillery is heard in the distance, to sound the note of alarm to other de- nominations, step with steady and stately advance into the midst of the fray, bear the old banner of the Covenant where the fight rages hottest, and be, as she has ever been, the stal- wart centre upon which the other denominations may align themselves as the great sacramental host moves forward to victory. But whilst it is true that the assault is aimed at the whole line of Christian defenses, it must be remembered that in every issue where there are extended lines of battle there are certain strategic points that hold in themselves the key to tbe whole field. Against these the forces of the assailants are massed. These the defenders must at all hazards maintain. It may be well for us to look to-day at some of these re- doubts which the Church of God must hold, and for the hold- ing of which, if we may judge of the future by the past, Christendom must look largely to Presbyterianism. 1. The first of these citadels of the faith is the finality of Scripture as a revelation from God, its sufficiency to meet all the conditions of intellectual progress in the world and of spiritual development in the Church to the end of time. Now, you will say at once that this is no new issue. And so, in- deed, it is not. It is the old battle of the Eeformation in the sixteenth century for the absolute sufficiency and sole author- ity of Scripture as a rule of faith and practice. But, in point of fact, there is no issue that the Church of God is called to meet to-day that she has not successfully met in the days gone by. There is not an enemy that confronts her on the field whom she has not unhorsed and unarmed in many a conflict as the centuries have rolled away. The same battles, how- ever, are fought under new conditions, and on the part of the enemy with weapons of later and more approved design. So it is in reference to this question of the finality of Scripture. In the days of the Reformation the issue was joined upon the elevation of traditions of fathers, bulls of popes and decrees of councils to an authority coordinate with that of the writ- ten Word of God. The position assumed by our fathers, and steadfastly maintained in the face of sword and fagot, was, as 21 it is happily expressed in our Westminster standards, that " the Supreme Judge by which all controversies of religion are to be decided and all decrees of councils, opinions of an- cient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture." In those former days the Church of God was asked to rest, one foot upon the solid rock of God's inspired Word, and the other upon the shifting sand of uncertain traditions and fal- lible human decrees. Now it is proposed to exalt to this po- sition of coordinate authority with the Word of God the still more vague and illusory element of what is termed the enlightened Christian consciousness of the age. The claim of the Bible to be the sole authoritative rule of faith is impugned upon the ground that the law of evolution, which is at work in the natural world around us, is also operative in the sphere of religion; that under this law a process of development has been going forward, by reason of which the Church of the nineteenth century has outgrown the doctrinal standards and tests of orthodoxy of Scriptural times. Statements of doc- trine and measures of orthodoxy fixed by Christ and His Apostles were all right in the age in which they lived, and with the measure of the stature to which the Church had then attained. But Christianity has outgrown them. They belonged to the childhood of Christian experience. Eeligion is an evolution and theology a growth. Inspiration is a con- stant factor in the life of the Church. " Prophets are ever arising, like Bushnell and Beecher, with great thoughts born in their souls." The demand, therefore, of the age is for a progressive standard of orthodoxy, for stated revisions of creeds and symbols, not to conform them more closely to the teaching of Scripture with the new light which the Holy Spirit has thrown upon its interpretation, but to adjust them to the newly evolved conceptions and more highly spiritual- ized institutions of the hour. The old theology, which was projected simply from the point of view of Scriptrue teaching, is to be supplanted by the new, expressive of the refined sen- sibilities and the enlightened Christian judgment of the pres- ent age. As straws indicate the direction of the wind, so the recent agitations of the question of probation after death show that the issue is upon us. Every doctrine that involves a supernatural element is to be brought to the same intuitional tests, and tried by the same rationalistic standards. The doc- trine of the Trinity, the doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice, the doctrine of Spiritual Eegeneration, the doctrine of Future Punishment — all these are to be reckoned amongst the child- isb things which the Church in its fully developed manhood 22 is to put away. Like the caudal appendage of Darwin's primeval man, they are to be evolved and evolved until there is nothing of them left. Now, as against this moonlight theology, which rests its claim upon a supposed inspiration in Christian consciousness higher than that of Apostles and Evangelists who " wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," the Church of God must make firm and uncompromising stand. As in Reformation times, against the authority of Synods and Councils, so now against the authority of popular sentiment and rationalistic criticism — for that is the measure of it — we must steadfastly maintain that " the Supreme Judge by which all controversies in religion are to be decided, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other than the Holy Spirit, speaking in the Scripture." As in the stormy days of the past, so in the omi- nous days ahead, the watchword of the Church must be, " The Bible and the Bible alone, the religion of Protestants." What is true of the Scriptures as a rule of faith is equally true as a norm of practice — as a rule for the regulation of daily life. Under the same rationalistic tendencies to which we have adverted there has grown up a school of casuists amongst us, claiming that under evolutionary processes in the moral sphere we are upon a higher plane of ethical conception than the inspired founders of the Christian Church. Things which Apostles not only allowed but practiced and commended are sinful now. Things which were by them positively for- bidden as shameful are in our advanced stage of ethical devel- opment proper and right. Thus, with characteristic inven- tiveness the age is adding to the catalogue of sins which are transgressions of the law, sins which are transgressions of the spirit of the age, and in some of the churches of the land we already have tests of religious character and terms of Church communion which would exclude our Lord Himself if He were upon the earth. It avails nothing to say that, up to this point, the invasions of Christian liberty are slight, and the restraints imposed salutary and wholesome. There is the abandonment of the great principle of Chistian liberty, and the admission of a power of moral invention in the Church which has only to be carried out to its logical issues to bring us again under the bondage of rabbinical and medieval times. Presbyterianism has always been in the past the great bul- wark of the right of private judgment and of liberty of Chris- tian conscience. In imperishable words she has written upon her standards, " God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the commandments of men which are in any- thing contrary to His Word or beside it in mattt;rs of faith and worship," Presbyterianism has ever been characterized 23 by the revereuce with which it lias bowed to the authority of Scripture, and the zeal with which it has defended the abso- lute supremacy of its claims. It has been in this regard pre- eminently a witness-bearing Church. Its testimony has been written in symbols, uttered in Councils, thundered from pul- pits, chanted amidst the flames of persecution, and sealed with martyrs' blood. The time is coming again when the world must look to Presbyterianism to vindicate the supremacy and sovereignty of the Word of God, its supernatural and plenary inspiration, the infallibility and unerrancy of its every line. It is in view of this coming conflict that the Church which I have the honor to represent has in the revision of its Book of Discipline narrowed the definition of an offense, declaring that nothing "ought to be considered by any court as an offense, or admitted as a matter of accusation, which cannot be proved to be such from Scripture as interpreted in the standards of the Church." As Presbyterians, learning wisdom by the past, we must stand for the rights of Scripture even in the minutest things. To the undying honor of one of the grand old war- riors of King David's time it is narrated that during a Philis- tine invasion he stood all daylong in the midst of a little field of lentiles and defended it single-handed against the whole Philistine host. It was not much in itself — only a little patch of herbs — but it was a part of the sacred soil, and he would not allow the foot of the uncircumcised to pollute it. I be- lieve the first great work of Presbyterianism in the future to be to defend every foot of the sacred soil of Scripture, and yield not an inch of it to that destructive criticism which would despoil it of all its wealth and disenchant it of all its glory. 2. The second of these redoubts of the Church of God which it must be the work of Presbyterianism in the future to man, is that system of doctrine which is popularly but in- accurately denominated Calvinism. No ingenuous student of history, let his religious convictions and theological tenets be what they may, can conceal from himself the fact that all that is most illustrious in the history of the Church in the past, associates itself more or less immediately with Calvinists and Calvinism. Call the roll of the great thinkers and writers of the Church before the Reformation. Take the list alpha- beticallv, beginning with Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, Basil, Bernard and Bede; go throuo;h the whole catalogue, and, with rarest exception, they are Calvinists. Call the roll of the Reformers — Luther, Farel, Calvin, Zwingle, Beza, Huss, Jerome of Prague, Knox, Cranmer, etc. — all Calvinists. Call the roll of confessors and martyrs in Scotland, Belgium, Hol- land, France, Switzerland, Germany — a great host that we 24 cannot name or number — and without exception Calvinists. Even in non-Calvinistic England, the names that shed undy- ing lustre upon her testimony for the truth, are those of Cal- vinists — Wiklif, Tyndall, Ridley, Latimer, Rogers, etc. — all Calvinists. Call the roll of those heroic sects, that through the darkness of the Middle Ages were witness-bearers for the true faith — Waldenses, Albigenses, Paulicians, Culdees, Bo- hemian brethren — all Calvinists. Call the roll on the other hand of the great heretics who have disturbed the peace of the Church and hindered its progress — Pelagius, Arius, So- cinus, etc. — none of them were Calvinists. See what Calvin- ism has done for the liberties and rights of man. It was the Calvinists of France who saved the liberties of the nation from the craft of Catherine de Medici, and from the tyranny of the House of Guise. Those unconquerable heroes of the Nether- lands, who, in resistance of the tyranny of Spain, poured out their blood until it ran in streams along their streets, and who, rather than submit to the occupancy of their soil by Philip , broke down the dykes, and let in upon their fairest fields the engulfing sea, were Calvinists. When England was under the iron heel of Wentworth and Laud; when Ireland was in chains ; when Scotland was in peril, and when all hope of liberty was almost gone — it was the Calvinists of Scotland who came to the rescue, who not only retrieved their own liberties, but broke the fetters of Britain, drove the tyrants from the throne, and roused a spirit of liberty in the hearts of the English people that, as another has said, " trampled down the haughty Cavaliers like puppets, and made the name of Eng- land terrible by land and sea." And when we come to Scot- land herself, whose children since the days of Columbia have imbibed Calvinism with their mothers' milk, it is impossible to deny that her Calvinistic Presbyterianisra has made her what she is; that as Dr. Moore, in his "Power and Claims of a Calvinistic Literature," has said: "From the earliest strug- gle with Popery to the last great contest for Christ's Crown and Covenant, the Calvinism of Scotland has always stood, like her own Ben Lomond, a grand unchanging witness for the majesty of God, transmuting the very storms that have raged around her unwrinkled brow into fountains of gushing purity from her heart." Nor would it be possible to find a more suggestive illustra- tion of the power and preciousness of Calvinism than by fol- lowing out a little in detail the analogy thus suggested by Dr. Moore, and likening Calvinism to one of those great moun- tain chains with which God has girdled the earth. _ Rugged in outline, its "Five Points" standing apart like disconnected peaks, yet all embraced in a single logical chain ; here and 25 there yawning chasms and sombre defiles, uninviting in de- tail, but as a whole unutterably sublime, uplitting us heaven- ward in thought and aspiration ; with lofty heights above the fogs and mists of earth, bathed in the unclouded sunlight of God, with spiritual atmosphere like crisp mountain air, breath- ing invigoration and health ; whilst its seamless sides, that open themselves to no plough of man, are the great water- sheds of God's grace, " transmuting," as Dr. Moore says, " the storms into fountains," and impregnating the falling waters with their own exhaustless treasures to replenish the wasted fertilities of soil in the valleys below. It is for the perpetuation of this great system of Calvinism as the doctrine of the Church that I plead as the second work of Presbyterianism in the future. It is by a great law of natural afl&nity that Calvinism and Presbyterianism have in popular parlance become synonymous terms. "Whilst there are other denominations whose creeds are as thoroughly Cal- vinistic as ours, Presbyterians seem always to have had the courage of their convictions. In periods when Calvinism has been distasteful and unpopular they have not failed to avow it, and so all the opprobrium with which it is invested in the minds of its enemies has been visited upon them. That it should ever be unpopular seems marvelous when we reflect upon what we have already seen of its history. That it should be unpopular in this country seems strangest of all ; for Ame- rica owes everything to Calvinism. Those stern Puritans who laid the foundations of liberty and law in New England were Calvinists. Those sturdy Hollanders, whose robust virtues are as deeply engraven on the history of New York, as their hard names are on its topography, were Calvinists. Those clear-thinking, home-keeping, liberty-loving Scotch-Irish who made the valleys of Pennsylvania and Virginia blossom like the garden of the Lord, were Calvinists. Those ruddy-faced, broad-headed, sinewy Scotch, that found new highlands in the rugged hills and fertile slopes of North Carolina, and forever associated the name of Mecklenburg with American Indepen- dence, were Calvinists. Those knightly Huguenots who have left the impress of their virtues and their chivalry upon South Carolina and her daughters in the sisterhood of States, were Calvinists. And what shall I say more ? for the time would fail me to tell of all of the Gedeons and Baraks and Samsons of this Calvinistic host. No wonder that impartial historians, even though of diver- gent creeds, have felt constrained to say, as Eanke, " We may consider Calvin as the founder of the free States of North America," or, as Bancroft, " He that will not honor the mem- ory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the 26 origin of American liberty." No wonder that Mr. Froude, wlio in some of bis earber writings vents bis spleen upon Cal- vinism, should upon maturer acquaintance with its working in history, write that " it has been able to inspire the bravest efforts ever made by man to break the yoke of unjust author- ity ;" that "when all else has failed; when patriotism has covered its face, and human courage has broken down ; when intellect has yielded with a smile or a sigh, content to philoso- phize in the closet, and abroad worship with the vulgar; when emotion, and sentiment, and tender, imaginative piety have become the handmaids of superstition, and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there was any difference be- tween truth and lies, the slavish form of belief, called Calvin- ism, has borne an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint, than to bend before violence, or melt under enervating temp- tation." Fathers and brethren, it is not needful to look far into the future to see that the time is coming when there will be im- peratively demanded for the safety of all our institutions, civil and religious, this unswerving allegiance to truth, this " inflexi- ble front to illusion and mendacity," which, according to Mr. Froude, nothing but Calvinism has ever been able to maintain. When we look at the vast tide of immigration sweeping in upon us, bringing every phase of Christian, Pagan and infidel belief; when we look at the gigantic strides of Romanism on the one hand and rationalism on the other ; when we look at the various seedbeds of Socialism, Communism, Anarchism, Nihilism in our great cities ; when we look at the tendency in these directions towards the disintegration of society and the destruction of law, and then look, on the other hand, at the growth of those gigantic monetary corporations and commer- cial trusts which seem likely to place all power in the hands of the moneyed few, and open the door to unlimited patronage and corruption, who does not see the imperative demand for just such men as Froude declares to be the oSspring of Cal- vinism, men " whose life was as upright as their intellect was commanding, and their public aims untainted with selfishness ;" men "unalterably just where duty ren[uired them to be stern, but with the tenderness of woman in their hearts;" men who " were splintered and torn, but no power could bend or melt them," men who " abhorred, as no body of men ever more ab- horred, all conscious mendacity, all impurity, all moral wrong of every kind, so far as they could recognize it." And yet we are confronted by the fact to-day that at the end of this century of organized Presbyterianism, Calvinism has not the hold upon the hearts of the people that it had at the 27 beginning. The Congregational Cburch which was then thor oughly Calvinistic has in large measure lapsed from that tlieo- centric system of belief which was the glory of its Puritan ancestry. The Protestant Episcopal Church, which has Cal- vinism deeply imbedded in its Thirty-nine Articles, is leavened through and through with Arminianism. The Churches whose creeds are Calvinistic hesitate in many instances to pro- claim the doctrines from their pulpits in their full Scriptural scope and significance. Even within the bosom of the Pres- byterian Church itself — the very citadel of Calvinism — a re- actionary movement seems to be setting in. In some quarters it appears in propositions to remove certain terms or to tone down certain expressions in our standards ; in others to remove whole paragraphs ; whilst from a high source comes the most radical proposition of all, to reconstruct our standards from beginning to end, freeing them from the scholastic terminology of the seventeenth century, and " retranslating them into the growing language of a growing civilization." As opposed to all this, I believe that if the Presbyterian Church would achieve for the century to come the greatest possible blessing, it must be her mission to stand up for these standards, pure and simple, to resist every effort to alter a line or erase a word, and, as Calvinism and Presbyterianism are popularly treated as synonymous terms, and all the oppro- brium that in the popular mind rests upon Calvinism is visited upon us, count it our glory to be identified with a system which God has crowned with peculiar marks of favor in the past, and see that, as far as Presbyterianism is concerned, the banners of Calvinism shall be handed down to the next century with not a star the less and not a stain upon their folds. 3. In this rapid forecast of the future I must pass to a third element in the work of Presbyterianism — to present to the world in our ecclesiastical polity, as it adjusts itself to new social conditions and adapts itself to the future growth of this rapidly developing country, the true ideal of the visible Church of God, its unity, its catholicity, its spirituality, its happy combination of flexibility and strength. If Presbyte- rianism is true to its principles and true to its God, there is every reason why it should, within the course of another cen- tury, take firmer hold upon the American people and become more largely predominant in this country than at the present time. With the clearer light throA\Ti upon the polity of the Apostolic Church by recent historical investigation, the Scrip- turalness of Presbyterianism is rendered more than ever ap- parent. The representative character of its government, its fundamental postulates of power delegated of God to the peo- ple, inherent in them and exercised by them tlirough their own chosen representatives, with the checks an'' balances of a 28 written constitution, a dual order of representation and a sys- tem of appellate courts, bring it into thorough sympathy with a people whose civil goveroment is representative and repub- lican ; a people, in fact, whose civil government is confessedly only the carrying over into the civil sphere of those princi- ples of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, which Presbyterianism has for centuries illustrated. Standing, as it does, midway between prelacy on the one hand, with its assumption of autocratic power, and independency on the other, with its inherent weakness in the administration of law, and its fiery despotism of irresponsible majorities; pre- senting the true basis of unity, a real unity and not a mere uniformity, an organic unity, in which " the power of the whole is in every part, and the power of the whole over the power of every part," it commends itself to all as a system in which the largest measure of liberty is combined with the most orderly administration of law. Its expansiveness, too, adapts it to the necessities of a newly opening, rapidly devel- oping country like this. The Presbyterian householder, who removes with his family into one of our far- Western prairies, does not leave the Church behind him ; he carries the Church in his house. When other households remove into the same neighborhood, there emerges the congregation, and, as congre- gations multiply, there comes by the natural law of organic growth the Presbytery, the Synod and the General Assembly. When, with the rapid enlargement of territory and increase of population, a single General Assembly shall be unable to meet the wants of the whole field, it will be in strict accordance with the organic law of the Church to provide for another and higher order of appellate court, and if the whole world should in a single day become Presbyterian, the genius of the system would provide a fifth, or oecumenical court; and so, without the slightest jar to its machinery, Presbyterianism could receive into its organic unity every body of believers in the world. This catholicity of Presbyterianism gives it great advan- tage in its competitive race with other forms of Church gov- ernment. Then, too, its theory of the nature and effect of or- dination and of the nature and design of the sacraments, to- gether with the broad and just distinction which it draws between the validity of an ordinance and its regularity, be- tween Scripturalness in essence and Scripturalness in mode of administration — these open the way for it to exhibit, without sacrifice of principle, the broadest Christian charity and the most real Christian brotherhood towards all branches of the Evangelical Church. It recognizes the validity of Episcopal ordination, notwithstanding its manifest irregularity. It 29 recognizes the validity of baptism by immersion, although the mode is un-Scriptural ; and thus, in the spirit of the prin- ciple which says, " in essentials, unity ; in non-essentials, lib- erty; in all things charity," its pulpits are open to all who preach the Gospel of Christ, and its communion-table to all who own allegiance to the Master of the Feast. And this leads to a consideration of that which must be an important work of Presbyterianism for the future, namely, to present to Christendom the only practicable solution of the great prob- lem of Christian union, which of late has awakened so much interest in the public mind. Only two plans have thus far been submitted. One that all the denominations shall come together, leaving each congregation to regulate its own creed and polity and internal affairs in its own way, which would simply be to adopt Congregationalism, and leave the Cliurch without any real unity at all — to give up the substance for the shadow. The other, so generously and courteously pro- posed by our brethren of the Protestant Episcopal Church, has the equally fatal defect of requiring a vitiation of the or- dination of all who have not been Episcopally ordained. But in Presbyterianism the validity of ordination and the validity of baptism in other communions would be protected. None of the acts of these Churches would be invalidated by the acceptance of the Presbyterian polity. And if the Church of God shall ever come together in visible organic union before the second coming of our Lord, it must, as far as we can see, be upon the safe, conservative and Scriptural polity of Pres- byterianism. 4. This forecast of the work of Presbyterianism for the future would be fatally defective if I did not allude to that which after all is the great mission of the Church in the world, the evangelization of the masses both in our own and foreign lands. Now that the Spirit of God seems to have breathed a new spirit ot evangelism into the Churches; now that the demands of Home Missions and Foreign Missions seem to lay a burden of souls upon the heart of the Church as never before since the days of the Apostles, let the Presby- terian Church arise in her might, let her realize that with her Christocentric theology and her Scriptural polity she is fitted, as no other Church is, to win the world for Christ. Let her remember that the Church which in the first century of the Christian era carried the Gospel in the face of fire and sword to the whole Grecian and Roman world, numbering its Church organizations by thousands and its converts by millions, was Presbyterian. With the same system of doctrine and the same ecclesiastical polity, the same glorious Gospel, the same indwelling spirit and the same ever-present Lord, there is no 30 reason why the Presbyterian Church in this land should not by the year 1988 have achieved results equally glorious. To the attainment of this end no new machinery is needed, no amended creed, no altered polity, no novel devices, no sen- sational methods, no gewgaws of rhetorical or ritualistic art. What we need is simply and solely the baptism of the Holy Ghost — such a baptism as was received by the Apostolic Church in Pentecostal times. Let me say further, that to the accomplishment of these re- sults the organic union of the two bodies that join in these solemnities to-day is not necessary. It may be the will of the Great Head of the Church that this union, of which some are so sanguine, shall be speedily accomplished. If this can be done intelligently, cordially and consistently with principle, surely there is no heart in all evangelical Christendom that will not rejoice. But it may be the will of our Divine Lord that these two Churches, while by conscientious convictions held organically apart, shall illustrate the true unity of the spirit by keeping side by side in closest bonds of sympathy and fraternal cooperation. It sometimes occurs in the natural world that an earthquake shock rends a great mountain chain asunder. When the rent is first made the whole aspect is for- bidding. The two faces stand like implacable foes frowning at one another. But as time advances the blessed agencies of the Great Peace-maker in nature are at work. The rough faces are chiseled down to smoothness, the sharp corners are rounded away. In every little seam and niche along the faces of the cliff the wild flower spreads its petals and the fern droops its graceful frond. The woodbine and the cle- matis fall in festoons over the edge above, and the verdure creeps along the sides from the valley below. The stream that went fretting and roaring through the gorge has worn its channel smooth and goes dimpling and purliug now, overhung with forest drapery and margined with flowers. The sun- beams that fall on one side reflect their warm tints lovingly upon the other. The songs of the birds and the perfumes of the flowers are wafted across. Men walk through and look up and know not which face most to admire, and feel that each would be incomplete without the other. Brethren, in this rending asunder of our great Presbyterian Church in this country we have reached the period of the sunlight, the music of the birds and the springing of the flowers. Organic union may or may not come. That which is better is here ; "for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land," PRESBYTERIANISM AND EDUCATION. By Rev. Simon J McPherson, D.D. Chicago, III. THE Dictionaire de Pedagogie reminds us that " Histori- cally, the school has been in all countries the daughter of the Church," The relation is no doubt owing to the fact that a nation's religion embodies its highest ideals and de- termines the deepest opinions of its people. The first schools are associated with the temples, and the earliest teachers belong to the hieratic class. For example, the Celestial Em- pire is as truly Confucian in her education, and in the civil service for which it prepares her citizens, as in her system of ancestral worship. The education of the Hindoos inculcates their mysticism in philosophy and their caste in life as a part of their native Brahmanism. The priests of ancient Egypt controlled education as absolutely as government, architecture and the rites of worship. The education of Athens was aesthetic, and that of Eome practical, military and legal, like their respective religions. Among the Israelites, education was domestic, and at the same time theocratic. The one great text-book of Mohammedanism is the Koran. We need not be surprised, therefore, that by the advent of Christianity the germs of a radically new education were planted in the bosom of humanity. Jesus Christ undermined the prejudices and limitations of Paganism by revealing truth in its final forms, and by presenting in his own person an ab- solute example of the perfect humanity to which this truth must lead. He disclosed the beauty of holiness which his new law of love develops as the ideal of education. By his atone- ment for sin and his mastery of death he unfolded the measure- less possibilities of every member of our race. He revolu- tionized the relations, not only of manhood, but also of woman- hood, and even of infancy, by making known the gracious fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of mankind. By his gift of the quickening Spirit, he aroused new thoughts, new hopes, new motives and endeavors in all his disciples ; and by his personal training, both of the Twelve and of the multitude, he concreted new and authoritative methods of 32 instruction. Yet just because this Christian education, as a stranger in the fallen world, encountered tremendous obstacles, it leavened general society very slowly. For three hundred years Christians were a proscribed and persecuted class. But while they were often compelled to patronize Pagan schools, they taught their children the Scriptures with tender solici- tude at their humble homes and in their secluded places of worship, they set up catechetical schools to prepare the candi- dates for baptism, and eventually they organized the theological seminary at Alexandria, which was the birth-place of scientific Christian learning. Their influence widened with accelerating rapidity until the hordes of our own northern ancestors pro- fessed the new faith, and the Empire eventually established Christianity as the State religion. During the Middle Ages, slow but real progress was made in education. Monastic schools were introduced to train the ruling classes, and to preserve and transmit the relics of an- cient literatures. The cathed^-al and parochial schools followed with their metaphysical and catechetical forms of discipline. Charlemagne, the hero of a millennium, made nobly intelligent efforts to improve education and to include in it what he called "instruction in the sciences;" but his permanent success in overcoming mediteval inertness was very incomplete. With the " Burgher Schools," secular education dawned faintly and fitfully at the commercial centres. " The Brethren of the Common Life " pioneered the chief of several tentative en- deavors to instruct the poor. Meanwhile, female education remained practically unknown. As Rosenkranz shows, educa- tion in the Greek Church became prevailingly monkish, andin the Roman Church, prevailingly sacerdotal and chivalric. The cloister and the castle were more and more the representative institutions, as the monk and the knight were the representa- tive men. In general, the contaminating politico-religious compromises introduced by Constantine, the imperfect assimi- lation of alien forms of learning received from Greeks and Saracens, the remnants of Paganism, the benumbing external consolidation of the papacy, and the heterogeneous conglomera- tion of races in society, Avhile quickening thought in a few directions, kept Christian education essentially inchoate and even corrupt. The pitiable condition of the masses through- out the period is suggested by the maxim, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion." Lacking our means of intercommunica- tion, lacking the printing press, lacking our emancipating con- ceptions of human nature in its own right and accepting the current theory of tbe divine right of civil and ecclesiastical rulers, the people themselves could not be educated. Finally, as the gray of morning began to break in upon the 33 long night, a timid but genuine scientific spirit emerged among the larger minds. From the twelfth century onward, almost independently of the Church and State, chiefly through what Prof. Painter calls the " Free associations of learned men and aspiring youths," the great universities, beginning with Bologna and Salerno, rose and multiplied. At first shackled by scholasticism, appended to monasteries and used principally as the educators of priests and nobles, they were gradually set free by the wonderful providence of God. The invention of gunpowder struck a death-blow at the physical foundations of feudalism. Copernicus exploded the absurdities of the Ptole- maic system of cosmogony. The discovery of the new world widened enormously the horizon of tlie old world's vision. The printing press brought the treasures of master minds within the reach of all readers. The downfall of Constanti- nople dispersed Greek scholars over the West. Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch heralded the Renaissance. The eccle- siastical despotism at Rome lost its prestige. The minds of men were widely disinthralled ; and the humanists, headed by such leaders as Erasmus and Agricola, found common hearts open to a freer education. The Revival of Learning was begun. At this critical juncture supervened the epoch-making Reformation. Luther is a synonym of a world-wide revolu- tion in education. More radical than the humanists, he struck the key-note of men's emancipation in his doctrine of justifi- cation by faith, and anchored their new-found freedom to the Gibraltar of divinely revealed truth. Bringing them face to face with God, without the mediation of any intruding priest- hood, he rediscovered the right of private judgment and the fact of personal responsibility. Here he found the principle of individualism, which is the palladium of human liberty and the incentive and safeguard of sound education. By making each one accountable for his own salvation, he rendered it necessary for every child to learn how to read at least the Bible; and by the humane emphasis which he put upon the present life, he fostered secular education. His coadjutor, Melancthon, came to be known as the " Preceptor Germanise." Speaking for both, Luther wrote to the Councillors of German cities: "Even if there were no soul, and we had not the least need of schools and the languages for the sake of the Scrip- tures and of God, this one reason would suffice to cause the establishment of schools everywhere, both for boys and girls, namely, that the world needs accomplished men, and women also, for maintaining its outward temporal prosperity." Here we have the popular education of later times in embryo. It was from the great vantage ground of the Reformation 34 that moderu Calvinism began its work for education. Being himself among the best scholars of his day in language, sci- ence, law, philosophy and theology, John Calvin fully appre- ciated the importance of this work and aided greatly in its promotion. He was a natural teacher of men. In Geneva he not only enjoined the domestic instruction of children, and systematized theological courses for ministers, but his ecclesi- astical pohty of 1541 provided for all, teachers of the ancient languages and the natural sciences as well as Christian doc- trines. "With gratifying consistency, he held to the view of education whicti makes God, with His holy will, uniform law, and mighty works, the central sun for every system of human thought and action, and which keeps in mind the symmetrical development of man's whole nature as a unit. Now, Calvinism, as a type of worship and of character, a scheme of doctrine, and a mode of Church government and administration, is tantamount to Presbyterianism. Without attempting to exclude other Calvinistic Churches, like those of the Puritans, for example, we may, perhaps, best discrimi- nate the peculiar educational qualities of Presbyterianism by taking an historical survey of these three leading and repre- sentative aspects of Calvinism. First, we should glance at its characteristic forms of wor- ship, and at the constitutional pattern of character which it naturally develops. Its forms of worship are usually simple and non-ritualistic. We should of course make a mistake if we supposed that it excludes all liturgies. The Eeformed Churches of Geneva and other Swiss cantons, of France, Ger- many, Holland, Scotland and Ireland, and even of Hungary and Bohemia, like the Church of the Waldenses, have all been virtually Presbyterian. Some of them, like the French Prot- estant, and the German, and the Dutch, Reformed Churches, have always retained certain set forms which they have justi- fied by precedents antedating the rise of Prelatical institutions. Calvin and Knox prepared simple rituals respectively for Geneva and Scotland, and both were consulted about the Eng- lish Book of Commoa. Prayer, objecting only to what Calvin called its " tolerable fooleries." In its famous " Directory for the Public Worship of God," the Westminster Assembly, as a compromise, recommended a few liturgical forms, which, how- ever, were not to be imposed upon the churches, but were to supply " help and furniture " for such ministers as might need them. While there have been extreme positions assumed by local bodies, which were incited to iconoclasm by seeing super- stitious practices, Presbyterians have never put liturgy under a general and permanent ban. They have usually placed it among indifferent matters of liberty and expediency, to be • 35 determined by the individual cliurclies. But in view of the dangers of formalistic aud spectacular services, the common Presbyterian custom has been to follow an order which is plain and reasonable, and perhaps occasionally austere. Often de- fective in beautiful ceremonies which appeal to the aesthetic instincts, sometimes deficient also in the enthusiasm which warms the feelings, Presbyterianism has steadily made its specific impression upon the mind rather than the tastes or the emotions, appealing to ideas and convictions more directly than to the sentiments or the external senses. Accordingly, Mr. Froude has said, "When emotion and sentiment and tender imaginative piety have become the handmaids of super- stitions, and have dreamt themselves into forgetfulness that there is any difference between lies and the truth, the slavish form of belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and men- dacity, and preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation." In particular, Presbyterianism has always exalted the ser- mon as a leading part of worship and thus emphasized the teaching function of the minister to the extinction of the priestly. Instruction and edification — education in the truth — has distinguished its pulpits from the beginning. Times of intellectual and moral quickening have uniformly been marked by great preaching. The apostolic period, the periods of the Crusades, of the Eeformation, and of the famous revivals, present the sermon as a characteristic form of literature and feature of public life. The high themes of the Christian pulpit, in the hands of trained and earnest men, have supplied a measureless educational force. Wherever the preacher has been " wise, he still taught the people knowledge." For example. Lord Mansfield, Lord Clarendon, Archbishop Tillot- son and John Locke alike proposed, "for the attainment of right reasoning, the constant reading of Chilliugworth." Lord Chatham ascribed the secret of his eloquent style largely to the inflaences of Dr. Barrow's sermons. Dugald Stewart de- clared that Robert Hall combined "the beauties of Johnson, Addison and Burke, without their imperfections." Prof. Park reminds us that Jeremy Taylor influenced the style of several leading British essayists, among them Charles Lamb ; that Herbert stamped his literary qualities upon quaint old Isaac Walton, and that Whitefield's " power was felt by Hume, Bolingbroke, Foote, Chesterfield, Garrick, Rittenhouse, Frank- lin, Erskine and Edwards," as well as "by the miners and colliers and fishermen of England, and the paupers, slaves and Indiana of America." Everybody knows the educational 36 • stimulus given by sucii ancient preachers as Augustine, Cliry- sostom and Ambrose, and by such modern preachers as Ed- wards, Whitefield, Chalmers and Spurgeon. Popular ignor- ance scatters like mist before the sun in the presence of able, convincing and persuasive sermons. In view of this uniform importance which Presbyterianism has attached to the didactic vocation of the pulpit, it naturally produces a peculiar type of experience and character in its worshipers. If they come short in artistic sensibility, if they are reserved in the expression of passionate fervor, they are, as a class, highly developed in the substantial elements of intellect, judgment and conscience. They are trained to think, to reason, to weigh and Co decide for themselves. They know the value of facts, they learn to draw inferences from facts and to array principles and laws scientifically by analyzing these inferences. They can generally give a reason for the hope that is in them. For example, the Scotch Presbyterian, who, like the crow, goes everywhere, is no doubt logical and cautious, and, in extreme cases, even canny. The Dutch Pres- byterian, in Holland, New Amsterdam or Cape Colony, is logi- cal and sturdy, and he may be sometimes in danger of seeming phlegmatic. Both these pure types of Presbyterian education are intelligent, if not brilliant. Both follow common sense and appoint themselves detectives of humbug, and both are remarkably free from visionary whims, caprices and vagaries. They are safely progressive, because they are stoutly conserva- tive. Like the sea, they kiss the feet of the mountains of ascertained truth, and yet are pure and powerful because they never stand still. Presbyterianism also insists that not so much culture or efBciency as character, which insures the one and presupposes the other, is the final aim of a complete edu- cation. It teaches that to be thoroughly educated a man must not only know the truth, but must use it, as the West- minster Confession states, "in order to goodness." He must distinctly recognize the rights, not merely of humanity and nature, but especially of God and eternity. He must have enjoyed the harmonious unfolding and disciplining of all his powers in their due order and proportion by bringing his passions to the heel of " a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience." Every well -instructed Presbyterian says to himself what John Adams wrote to his -son: "Your con- science is the minister plenipotentiary of God Almighty in your breast. See to it that this minister never negotiates in vain. Attend to him in opposition to all the counts in the world." The Calvinistic variety of character thus puts for- ward the ideal of duty, as inspired by love and obedience to the Divine Sovereign. M. Taine declares that the Calvinist 37 " is troubled not only about what he must believe, but what he ought to do ; he craves an answer to his doubts, but especi- ally a rule for his conduct ; he is tormented by the notion of his ignorance, but also by the horror of his vices ; he seeks God, but duty also. In his eyes the two are but one." Your Presbyterian accordingly aims at a kind of education which will make him right as well as devout, practical, as well as be- lieving, courageous as well as aspiring. Stern meu these Cal- vinists may be, but when there is hard work to be done for the world in education, in social reform, in government, or in war, Milton, Knox, Coligny and William the Silent show that they do not flee to the rear. M. Reuan says of Calvin him- self that he "succeeded in an age and in a country which called for a reaction toward Christianity, simply because he was the most Christian man in his generation." But the educational influence of Presbyterianism is largely, perhaps chiefly, determined by its creed. Let us notice the disciplinary value of one or two of its leading doctrines. One doctrine, which it has shared with other evangelical Churches, but upon which it has always put great emphasis, is that the Bible is the sole and supreme standard of faith and practice, and that it is addressed to the reason of every man. By thus making individual conscience the first arbiter of reve- lation, it brings into the foreground the crucial educational power of personal responsibility. Stipulating that God is no respector of persons and that every man shall bear his own burden and stand or fall to his own Master, it has concentrated an immense body of virtual pedagogics in the study of the Scriptures. Protestants have now translated God's Word into the vernacular of nearly two hundred and fifty different peo- ples. Just conceive of the educational power of the German or the English versions alone ! Recall, too, the investigations in history, archeology, ethnology, chronology, criticism, phil- osophy and other sciences, which have sprung directly out of our conception of the Bible. Then estimate the immediate ed- ucational influence over myriads of men, women and children, resulting from the familv and personal reading of this various book. Countless multitudes hear stated expositions of it from the sacred desk ; almost twenty millions of youths arc learn- ing it every week in Sunday-school. Destroy all the Bibles in existence, and you could reproduce a copy by quoting from any one of half a dozen national literatures, or from the mem- ories of those who are unlearned, but by this sign, not ignor- ant. The Bible, however it may be excluded from our public schools, is still the text-book of Christendom ; and in effecting this blessed consummation, Presbyterianism has had a proud part. 38 A more distinctive doctrine of Presbyterian Churches is the predestinating sovereignty of our God, Without attempting, at this time, to appraise its theological value, we must recog- nize its mighty educating power, in a variety of ways. First of all, it tends to concentrate the mind upon God Himself, who, as Daniel Webster said, is the greatest thought that can occupy a human soul. The remarkable energy and grasp of " the Institutes of the Christian Religion " is mainly due to Calvin's overpowering sense of the Invisible. While we can- not by searching find the Almighty to perfection, we can draw out all our capabilities in the search after Him who is a Spirit, who is Light, who is Love, who is Life. It will be the inex- haustible delight of eternity to study Him, For while he is not far from every one of us, yet He is infinite. He dis- courages the alphabetic essays of no beginner, nor does he dis- appoint the genius of the most heroic achiever. His light dawns upon us like that of the rising sun, which seems to rise from behind the nearest hill, but which is presently found to be many incomprehensible millions of miles away. Dante sings : " O how far removed, Predestination ! is thy foot from such As see not the First Cause entire. " . , , , Yet esteem " Such scantiness of knowledge our delight: For all our good is, in that primal good. Concentrate; and God's will and ours are one." Again, nothing short of belief in God's predestinating ma- jesty will suppress the native egotism and lawlessness which make our education so difficult. Self-knowledge becomes practicable for us only as we behold our own littleness pro- jected against the luminous back-ground of God's infinitude. Child-like humility is alike the first effect of true acquaint- ance with Him and the first condition of any large knowledge. Then, too, paradoxical as the statement may appear, I do not see how we can have any'intelligent belief in man's free will unless we have precedent faith in God's elective decrees. Presbyterians, who as a class have held to the freedopi of the human will, agree with Emerson in saying: "When the Mas- ter of the universe has points to carry in His Government He impresses His will in the structure of minds." The effort to accept that higher Will must certainly vacate the disposition to deny God's foreordinating plan. I do not say that he who would reconcile divine decrees and human choices will have an easy task. But then, no easy task has a 39 high educational value. It is the unignored hard problems that develop mind. Those who have " Eeasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will and Fate, Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute ; And found no end, in wondering mazes lost," are at least put on their mettle as students. They learn by their discipline to reverence mystery, and they develop larger hopes by looking for the future's explanations. Moreover, the doctrine of predestination is one great secret of liberty as between man and man. " Men over men He made not Lord : such title to Himself Keserving, human left from human free." Mr. Bancroft, who is a Unitarian, says that this doctrine " lifted the individual above pope and prelate, and priest and presbyter, above Catholic church and national church, and general synod, above indulgencies, remissions, and absolu- tions from fellow- mortals, and brought tim into immediate dependence upon God, whose eternal, irreversible decree is made by Himself alone, not arbitrarily, but according to His own highest wisdom and justice," Such a rescue withdrew education as the prerogative of a feudal class or an ecclesiasti- cal organism and conferred it as a franchise upon the indi- vidual. But this doctrine has another " education value." Predesti- nation, while it must ever be distinguished from fatalism, is, to a large degree, the theological analogue of the scientific theory of determinism. It is a correlative of the unity and unif®rmity and universality of natural law. With a different nomencla- ture, with a different idea of the truth of supernaturalism, modern scientific men, of the first rank, generally hold Calvin's view of nature. Mr. Froude cites as examples John Stuart Mill and Mr. Buckle ; with equal appositeness he might have named Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. Lecky, Prof. Huxley, and many more. Sadly as these may diverge on the question of God's rational Avill and free personality, extremely as their necessitarian metaphysics may conflict with the true doctrine of His providence and grace, they have a similar impression of the co-ordinated facts of observation. Thus, Calvin antici- pated all that is true in one of the most conspicuous results of modern scientific education. And no wonder ! For, as a skep- tical English historian says, the Calvinist "falls back upon the experienced reality of facts, * * * * fj^cts w^iich no casuistry can explain away. And if we believe at all that the 40 world is governed by a conscious and intelligent Being, we must believe also, however we may reconcile it witli our own ideas, that these anomalies have not arisen by accident, but have been ordered of purpose and design." But aside from all particular doctrines, just observe the edu- cational power of the dogmatizing and systematizing tenden- cies of Presbyterianism, Calvin's mind, like Paul's, was con- structive, and disposed to make a system. Luther broke down sacerdotalism, but, as Guizot intimates, " to Calvin was left the more difficult task of reconstruction and permanent organiza- tion." The Presbyterian symbols, such as the Scotch or the Helvetic Confessions, the canons of the Synod of Dort, and the Westminster Confession of Faith, are at least triumphs of logic and therefore friendly to education. Our day indulges in a good deal of criticism upon dogmas and theological sys- tems. But we should remember that a dogma is just the accu- rate definition of a belief, and that a theological confession is a sustained effort to reduce creed-statements to a symmetrical and scientific form. Analysis, definition and generalization, which are so highly characteristic of Presbyterianism, are dis- tinctive of knowledo-e, in proportion as it becomes science, and are therefore essentials of education. An uneducated man can hardly understand the Presbyterian system ; and if more men were thoroughly educated, there would be current in popular literature fewer caricatures of it. But the doctrines of Calvinism have not only exerted an educational influence, and demanded scientific knowledge in those who would formulate or even apprehend them, they have also been uniformly associated with the actual establishment of higher institutions of learning. Whether you call it effect, as I dp, or only concomitant, it is at least a fact that these in- stitutions have followed Calvinism everywhere. No other Church has insisted more steadily than the Presbyterian upon a highly educated ministry, in Geneva, Holland, Scotland, and America. This has often been made a ground of cavil against our Church. But it is gratifying to note that the objectors have been coming back to our position. For example, the Cumberland Presbyterians split off from us in 1810, princi- pally because they demurred to a classical education as a necessary qualification for the ministry. But in 1886, they had two theological seminaries with nineteen professors and three hundred and twenty-seven students, and besides a fifth one just organizing, at least four general universities with an aagregate of seven hundred and fifty-one students. The earlier Methodist Episcopal churches also criticised our stand- ard of ministerial education. In 1830, when their general opo-anization in this country was already forty-four years old. 41 they had no theological seminary and only two small col- leges, neither of which became permanent. Bat now, iiaviug adopted Calvinistic principles in education, they are every- where the patrons of learning ; and with the largest Protestant Church membership, they have likewise more schools and more students than any other denomination. The Bishops' address to the General Conference of the pres- ent month advises " that only men of scholarly minds, who are able to cope with the arguments of scofiers, should be placed in the pulpits." Meanwhile, the Calvinistic churches have maintained their custom of fostering education, for both ministers and laymen. All the theological schools and all the educational aid societies in America have come into existence within the century which we commemorate to-day. The first theological school, in con- nection with an American college, was added to " Liberty Hall," where Archibald Alexander graduated, in January, 179-i, by the Synod of Virginia. The oldest separate theo- logical seminaries — Andover, organized in 1707 ; New Bruns- wick, in 1810; and Princeton, in 1812 — were all Calvinistic; and two of them, of course, are Presbyterian. What is the present attitude of our theological education? In 1886 the Commissioner of Education reported that this country had 142 theological schools, Catholic and Protestant, with 6370 students. Of these, fifty-seven schools, or 40 per cent, and 3099 students, or nearly 49 per cent, are Calvinistic; and that, too, exclusive of Episcopalians and Lutherans, who are both Augustinian in some of their formularies. Moreover, twenty-five schools, nearly 18 per cent, and 1200 students, nearly 19 per cent, are in distinctly Presbyterian institutions. Observe the ratio. Dr. Dorchester, himself a Methodist, in his new volume, called " Christianity in the United States," shows that less than 2^ per cent of the populatioa are members, and estimates that only about 8|- per cent are adherents, of Presbyterian churches. That is, while only 8|- per cent of the people affiliate with Presbyterian churches, nearly 19 per cent of all the theological students are in Presbyterian semi- naries. Moreover, the relatively broad and generous quality of this education will become evident if it is contrasted with the autocratic training mapjied our for the Jesuits by their great founder, Loyola, who was contemporary with Calvin. The primary object of Jesuit training is to beget the unreason- ing obedience of a stick or a dead body to a human superior. It enslaves the intellect and will ; it stifles individualism in conscience and life. But Protestant ministers are taught 42 above all things to know the Bible, to obey God, and not to be in bondage to any man. Presbyterianism has given equal prominence to colleges and universities for laymen. It has never favored divorce be- tween religious and secular education, because it holds that education, instead of being fractional, must take cognizance of the entire man. Its primary object and endeavor, no doubt, has been to prepare him for eternity, but always by preparing him as well for the responsibilities of the present world. It has adopted secular instruction as an integral part of education. For example, Knox's First Book of Discipline, in 1560, planned for a college " in every notable town " and for "replenishing" the three universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, was, as Harrison shows, in " Oure Tounis Colledge," the eagerly desired child of the Scottish Eeforma- tion. Amidst the horrors and sacrifices of war, the Nether- land Presbyterians founded at least four great universities ; as, for example, in 1586, during a brief lall in the tempest of battle, that of Franeker, whe^e the tuition was made almost gratuitous, and in 1636, that of Utrecht, which soon attracted students from all over the world and sent not a few of her graduates to the New World. Previous to the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1660), as Lorimer's History shows, the Protestant Church of France " could boast of not less than five universities," and of a " college or grammar school in each of the thirteen provinces." Is it strange that our three oldest colleges. Harvard, Yale and Princeton, were founded by Cal- vinists? The records of all our early ecclesiastical bodies teem with allusions to these desires and endeavors after learning. Whoever will read the " Records of the Presbyterian Church " in America, covering the period from 1706 to 1788, may find evidence of nearly fifty formal actions referring to education at the Log College, Yale, Princeton and elsewhere. But how stands the register for the century now closing? It is a significant fact that nothing has more distinguished the past five years in the Presbyterian Church, North, than the phenomenal development of " The Board of Aid for Colleges and Academies." But take one group of general statistics to show the present condition of things. The Commissioner of Education reports for 1886 that the whole country has 346 colleges and universities, with 31,565 students in the col- legiate courses. Of these, according to the most careful estimate that I can make, 109 institutions, or over 31 per cent, and nearly 19,000 students, or 60 per cent, may fairly be regarded as under Calvinistic auspices. When we limit the view to purely Presbyterian institutions, the result 43 is equally encouraging. Just forty-six, or 13 per cent of the 346 colleges and universities, and 7266 students, or 23 per cent of all, are under Presbyterian control. That is, 8| per cent of the population govern 13 per cent, of the colleges, and directly educate 23 per cent of the college students. Of course, this reckoning leaves out of the account institu- tions under State control and many undenominational col- leges that are largely supported and patronized by Presby- terians. A third element of Calvinism, bearing especially upon the question of popular education, is found in its polity or method of ecclesiastical government and administration. It can co- exist with every form of civil order except despotism. It tolerates constitutional monarchy, as in Scotland. In our own country it has largely developed, through our sister Congrega- tional and Baptist Churches, into ecclesiastical democracy. But its natural choice, as originally in Geneva, is Presbyteri- anism, or an ecclesiastical republic. At all events, it is, as Abraham Lincoln said of our country, government of the people, for the people and by the people. This is a feature of Calvinism which intelligent outsiders are constantly attest- ing. For example, Buckle says : " The more society tends to equality, the more likely it is that its theological doctrines will be Calvinistic." De Tocqueville called Calvinism " a democratic and republican religion." Leek 7 says: "The Scotch Kirk was by its constitution essentially republican." Green, the historian of the English people, said : " The system of Presbyterianism * * * bound Scotland together by its administrative organization, * * * while it called the people at large by the power it con- ferred upon the lay elders in each congregation to a voice, and, as it proved, a decisive voice in the administration of affairs, * * * Ko Church constitution has proved in practice so democratic as that of Scotland." Castelar, the eloquent tribune of Spain, declares: "The Anglo Saxon de- mocracy is the product of a severe theology learned by the few Christian fugitives in the gloomy cities of Holland and of Switzerland." Ranke writes that "John Calvin was virtually the founder of America." Rufus Clioate attributed to Geneva "the republican constitution framed in the cabin of the May- flower^ * * * the battle of Bunker Hill, the independence of America." No wonder that King James should think "a Scot's Presbytery agrees Avith monarchy as well as God and the devil." In view of these disinterested testimonies it is pleasant to remember that the Synod of this Centennial City was the first religious body in the country to declare in favor of separation from Great Britain, and that Wither- 44 spoon was the only clerical signer of the Declaration of In- dependence. Calvinism in its polity, therefore, stands for two cognate principles. One is the distinctive ISTew England idea of per- sonal liberty, the secret of progress. But the first impulse of a personal liberty which has not degenerated into license is self-culture. For liberty is just a chance to develoj) one's in- dividuality. The other principle is voluntary organization, the balance-wheel of constitutional conservatism, which origi- nally pre-empted our Middle States. Combining these two principles in the exercise of free self-government, Presbyteri- anism, since the days of Calvin, Orange and Knox, has in- sisted upon individual liberty, and has in that interest dis- tinguished between Church and State, claiming that each should retain its own autonomy. It has believed, too, in a written constitution, acknowledged, as Dr. Charles Hodge said, "The power and rights of the people," governed by elected representatives equal in rank, and held that the Church is " one, in the sense that a smaller part is subject to a larger and a larger to the whole" — popular government by repre- sentative majorities. In short, as I have said, it is republican in polity — the Republic of God. But we all know that the first necessity of a successful re- public is general intelligence. Presbyterianism has thus been compelled by the genius of its organization, even by the in- stinct of selt-preservatiou, to promote the education of all of its people. Mr. Bancroft is quoted assaying that John Calvin is the father of the American Common School System. It seems to me rather that he is its grandfather, its progenitor, through John Knox and John of Nassau. History, I think, traces the route by which that glorious system came tT) us from Geneva, mainly by way of Scotland and Holland. We know what a mighty impulse Calvin, following Luther, gave to general education by opening the Bible to every individual and by founding schools. But our present concern is not so much to discover who started such impulses, which were felt by all Protestants, as to learn who first crystallized the im- pulses into a comprehensive and practical system. The honor belongs to Scotland and Knox. Previous to his day many even of the Scottish nobles were unable to write their own names. But in 1560 the First Book of Discipline directed the Presbyterians to "take care of children and youths " and " to instruct them in the first rudiments," including Calvin's Catechism, by establishing a school and appointing a school-master in every ijarish. Henceforward the ministers and Church Courts never ceased to foster primary education. In 1567 the Parliament formally granted to the Church the 45 superintendence of this truly national enterprise. By 1613 these elementary schools were planted in two-thirds of the parishes. Sessions were in the habit of defraying the ex- penses of the poor out of the parish funds, and efforts were made to compel school attendance. In certain sections of the country special taxes were imposed to support school-masters. Summarily, Kiddle and Schem's "Cyclopedia of Education" says that Scotland is entitled "to the credit of having first established schools for primary instruction to be supported at the public expense." That claim may perhaps be disputed by Holland. It is at least certain that years before the rise of the Dutch Eepublic, education was quite general among the thrifty Yankees of the low countries. "It was their boast," says Dr. Fisher, " that, common laborers, even the fishermen who dwelt in the huts of Friesland, could read and write, and discuss the interpretation of Scripture." During the twelve years' truce, in the weary war with feudal Spain, the Synod of Dordrecht passed the decree in favor of education, which established church schools all over Holland. The eldest brother of William of Nassau voiced the common sentiment in these memorable words : " You must urge upon the States-General that they establish free schools ; " and Motley wrote in 1869: "The Ncav Eng- land Pilgrims, during their re.-idence in the glorious country of Holland, found already established the system of free schools, which John of Nassau had recommended." Now consider that the reformers of England, many of whom had been educated in Geneva, sustained intimate relations with Calvin and with Knox, that they were close observers of what Scotland had been doing for education in the years imme- diately preceding the migration to New England, and that the Pilgrim fathers actually witnessed the Dutch schools in opera- tion, and you can readily make out the genealogy of the American common school system. The impulse which prompted it was Protestant; the precedent which fashioned it was Presbyterian. At a single leap the colonists joined the educational vanguard with Scotland and Holland, and acquired such popular schools as old England could not match for two centuries. Nay, as there was educational progress from Luther to Calvin, and again from Calvin to Knox, so there was further progress from Scotland and Holland to New Eng- land. While isolated free schools existed six or eight years earlier, as at Dorchester and Salem, Bancroft says, " In 1647 it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children to read and write ; and where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred 46 families, they shall set up a grammar school, the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university." That is really the beginning of the public free schools of Massachusetts and America. Contrast this ■with the contrary course taken by the prelatic population of the Old Dominion. " I thank God," said Sir William Berk- ley, in 1661, "there are no free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years ; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them." But while prelatic Virginia was conserving the darkness, Presbyterian Virginia, as, for exam- ple, the Presbytery of Hanover, was obeying God's first fiat by cherishing a learned ministry and by teaching the people. North and South in those old heroic days, the Presbyterians were united in fostering education and liberty, faith and order. The Huguenots, the Dutch and the Scotch in the Carolinas, in Georgia, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, as well as in Penn- sylvania, New Jersey and New York, like the Calvinists of New England, "all brought the Church, the Bible and the schools with them." American Calvinism never "Dreads the skeptic's puny hands, While near her school the church spire stands, Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, While near her church spire stands a school." God grant in these centennial days, that as the Old Lights and the New Lights clasped hands to establish their ecclesias- tical solidarity, and to help Princeton College reveal the light of the world, and as the Old School and the New School forgot their dead issues in the holier love and clearer intelhgencethat an intervening generation had taught them, so the new South and the new North, standing together beneath the historic bell of liberty with glowing memories of that wonderful legacy which the Protestant centuries have bestowed upon them in common, may arrange their small differences, remember their essential identity in creed, and, in a manly, mutual, Christian, Presbyterian and organic way, reunite to teach God's truth and grace to adjacent multitudes that linger in ignorance and sin. CALVINISM AND HUMAN PROGRESS. By Hon. James S. Cothran, M.C. Abbeville, S. C. IT IS impossible to tell how far Calvinism has affectea what we call material progress. I propose to take a higher view of the subject than this ; and consider it as ai5ecting the social and religious condition, touching mankind at every point, like the atmosphere that surrounds us, and inspiring and sustaining religious and civil life. Perhaps Watt and Stephenson and Fulton and Morse and many others would have been great inventors if John Calvin had never lived. It is safe, however, to assert that where law and order reign, where justice sits in the seat of authority, where virtue and intelligence prevail, where the vicious and foolish are restrained, where tlie organic laws, which we neither made nor can alter, are understood and obeyed, where the Christian magistrate, in the fear of God, uses power for the common good; art and science and invention have their fullest development. Let me repeat; the fear of God, the reign of law, justice in authority, the rule of virtue and intelligence, the restraint of folly and vice, obedience to organic laws, the exercise of power for the common good — these are the essence, and are the pith and marrow of Calvinism. In this condition of things it matters little what the form of civil government may be, whether autocratic, aristocratic or republican, its contented subjects demand no constitutional changes, and indeed are that happy people whose God is the Lord. Eeverse this condition by subverting the law, corrupt its administration, make profligacy and wrong paramount to vir- tue and right, give to folly sovereignty over wisdom, and because of the reign of the wicked the people will mourn. History, both sacred and profane, furnishes abundant evi- dence in all ages and in every country, of the recurrence of this deplorable state of affairs. It existed in Egypt, the birth- place of civilization, for centuries, perhaps, before the exodus of the Israelites. It marked the course and the conduct of that peculiar people, so often the subjects of Jehovah's reproof 48 and punishment. That unto these a aivine revelation was made we do both believe and know, for the lively oracles are with us even unto this day. What revelation, if any, was made to the Egyptians we know not ; they did believe in a life beyond the grave, and in a judgment-bar at which Osiris should preside, and reward them in a future state, according to the deeds done in the body. Without entering the domain of unprofitable speculation, we know that, in all ages, it hath pleased God to preserve for His own glory, a remnant, varying in numbers, but always the same in faith. From the time of the seven thousand who refused to bow the knee to Baal, and who were Calvinists all, lacking only the name, amid the perils and persecutions of the Eeformation, through the bloody revolution of 1688, even down to our own colonial struggle, this remnant — it might offend some in this promiscuous audience to call them the elect, but call them by whatsoever name you will — have rebelled against unlawful authority; have denounced wicked- ness in high places, whether of Church or State; have reproved the world of sin; and have maintained in its integrity the faith delivered to the saints, with fortitude which never flagged, with courage which stopped not to calculate cost or consequences, and with a zeal which welcomed and has so often worn the martyr's crown. Faith, Hope and Love, are the trinity of the Christian vir- tues — their complement in the citizen, is courage, fortitude and patience, and the greatest of these is patience. Combine in the individual these qualities, which do so readily unite, for the virtues, as do the vices, grow in clusters, and the truest and highest type of Calvinism is produced. The time and the opportunity for their exercise are ever recurring; again and again have they preserved to the Church pure and undefiled religion, and as often have they secured for the State the blessings of religious liberty. Who will venture to say in the presence of a spirit of agnos- ticism, of theosophy, of Buddhism, and of other forms of infi- delity and practical unbelief, with looseness of doctrine, and appalling unconcern for all sacred things, with the insidious and seductive oppositions of science, falsely so-called, that the time shall never come, nor be even far distant, when another great and decisive struggle shall be waged between the armies of anti-Christ and the hosts of Calvinism? It is the unfin- ished, the inevitable, ever-existing and irrepressible conflict, which has been waged from the very beginning with varying fortunes. At times the champions of the truth and of the right have sought, as did the strong man of old, their pleasures 49 among the Philistines, even as some of the present day, profess- ing Christians and beheversinthe doctrines of Calvinism, have hidden in their tents, as did Achan, some wedge of gold. It may be in the shape of that gold itself, the love of which is the root of all evil; it may be in ambitious and self-seeking pro- jects; or in some compromise with the world for its honors, its emoluments and its sensual enjoyments. Well might I pause here, and call upon the Centurions, the captains of our host, to send in the morning reports, show- ing the condition, the number and efficiency of their com- mands. What of your commissariat ? Is it full of the bread of life? What of your ammunition chests, your swords, your helmets, your bucklers? Your own feet, and the feet of your soldiers, are they shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace? What is the state of drill and discipline, how many efficient can you report for duty, how many are weary and faint and sick, how many on furlough have gone down into Philistia to seek their pleasures there, how many, false to your standards, have deserted from your ranks and gone over to the enemy? Shall I beg pardon of the Centurions for asking these pertinent questions; or apologize to a Calvinist for using this metaphor — the Christian warfare — of which the great apostle to the gentiles and good old John Bunyan were so fond ? I trow not. Then go with me to one skilled in the art of human war — unhappily there are many such — and he will tell you that every army owes its victories more to its skillful and efficient captains than to its field officers. Our ministers are cap- tains all, and equal in rank, as were the twelve who fol- lowed Jesus of Nazareth in his earthly ministry, acknowl- edging no superior officer except Him, the great Captain of our salvation. Tlie powers that be are ordained of God, but not neces- sarily in continuance, for when they read upon the coin the image and superscription, and were told to render unto Ctesar the things that be Ciesar's, they were at the same time com- manded to render unto God the things that be God's. I cannot pursue farther this part of my subject, nor longer await the morning reports of the Centurions. For more than two centuries after the death of Calvin the whole Protestant Church was contented to accept, and did accept, as the true doctrine, that which we maintain to-day as Calvinism, The first attack upon it was made by atheists and infidels; these, their works and their readers have all perished together. Then followed what were known as liberal thinkers, assailing Calvinism as dishonoring the wisdom, the 60 justice and even tlie very mercy of God. Denying the doc- trine of total depravity, of original sin, and j ustiiication by faith alone, they held to the precept, " Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," ignoring the conclusion, " for it is God who worketh in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure." Thatitis monstrous to believe that man, without special grace, which he cannot merit, or by his own •works attain, is doomed to everlasting punishment. Unable to keep the Commandments, yet failing in one of these is guilty of all. Lost forever by a predestined decree pronounced against him before he was born, and so deprived of hope to live out his days upon the earth in utter despair. I frankly acknowledge my inability to meet these objec- tions so readily suggested by the carnal mind, which is itself enmity against God. When asked to reconcile the obvious teachings of free agency and election, I can only say, my brother, "it doth .not yet appear." Believest thou the prophets ! Believest thou the inspired Word of God ! I know that thou believest. Then read the 8th chapter of Komans and be no longer faithless, but believing. To that disciple whom Jesus loved it may have been revealed on the Isle of Patmos; or to that other, born, as it were, out of due time, when caught up into the rapture of the third heaven. If the one had been able to write the books which the world itself could not con- tain, or the other had been permitted to speak the words which it was not lawful for a man to utter, this and much else might have been made plain to us, but it hath been in infinite wisdom adjudged otherwise. "Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children." Herein lies the fault of the scientist, who in his pride of knowledge would explore and find out these forbidden mysteries, making knowledge the founda- tion of belief and believing nothing that he does not under- stand or know. Where then is the room for his faith — that faith without which no man shall see God, and which " is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?" It is in our human nature to estimate the same degree of prudence in those we love, as cowardice in our enemies; fru- gality in the one is parsimony in the other ; bravery becomes rashness, zeal becomes fanaticism, and adherence to doctrine is denounced as bigotry. Admit this premise, which will hardly be denied, and I am prepared to admit the charge that Calvinism is narrow, illibe- ral and intolerant. Narrow, because its followers seek to enter in at the straight and narrow gate. Illiberal, for it makes no compromise with error. Intolerant of sin, but not of sinners, 61 for all have sinned and come short of His glory. Would that every other sect felt more of intolerance for that which is evil and false and wicked. In the language of one who surely is not a bigot nor a fanatic, permit me to ask you, "How it came to pass that, if Calvinism is indeed the hard and unreasonable creed which modern enlightenment declares it to be, it has possessed such singular attractions in past times for some of the greatest men that ever lived ? And how, being, as we are told, fatal to mo- rality, because it denies free will, the first symptom of its ope- ration wherever it establishes itself, was to obliterate the dis- tinction between sins and crimes, and to make tlie moral law the rule for States as well as persons? I shall ask you again, why, if it is a creed of intellectual servitude, it was able to inspire and sustain the bravest eftbrts ever made by man to break the yoke of unjust authority — when all else has failed — when patriotism has covered its face and human courage has broken down, when intellect has yielded, as Gibbon says, with a smile or a sigh, content to philosophize in the closet and abroad worship with the vulgar ; when emotion and senti- ment and tender imaginative piety have become the hand- maids of superstition, and have dreamt themselves into forget- fulness that there is any difference between lies and truth, the slavish form of belief, called Calvinism, in one or the other of its many forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to pow- der like flint, than to bend before violence or melt under ener- vating temptation? In such emergencies, and there have been many, need I ask where stood Calvin, Luther, William the Silent, Knox, Mel- ville, the Regent Murra}'-, Coligni, Cromwell, Milton, Bunyan? Well might I adopt the language of the great Apostle, in that grand portrayal of the faithful, and exclaim, "And what shall I more say ?" for time would fail me to tell of the long list of worthies and martyrs who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Accept this as a tribute to their final perseverance. I can but touch upon the doctrine of special Providence, another distinguishing feature of Calvinism. To us it seems to consist with law, order, supreme authority and Divine Gov- ernment. The Scriptures of the Old Testament, as of the New, abundantly attest its truth. Permit me to present a single illustration — many as striking might be given — to the thoughtful student of history. There are few facts, perhaps, which stand out in bolder relief than 52 that of the preparation of a language to convey to mankind the teachings of Him who spake as never man spake. The splendid civilization of the Greeks had risen to its zenith and had waned before the martial ardor and prowess in arms of their great rivals and conquerors, the Romans. The empire which the King of Macedon had founded, and which his ambitious son had extended, had passed through the various stages of its rise, its decline and its fall. For its per- petuation, vain were the councils, the deliberations and the plans of Alexander and his chieftains. No human efforts could establish a sole successor to that illustrious Prince. All of these but tended to the accomplishment of that which had been ordained by an invisible and superior power, by the sovereign Master of kingdoms and of kings, and which had been foretold 300 years before by His prophet, Daniel, " His kingdom shall be broken ; and divided toward the four winds of heaven, and not to his posterity." But when the ruder and more martial Eoman had wrested from the grasp of his rival the reins of empire, he found in the ruins of its greatness an invaluable treasure — as imperish- able as time itself — a language, cultivated and polished to be the very vehicle of thought, and fitted for conveying to man- kind the most important of all truths — a language exceeding in its perfection and exactness of expression, any that was then known or even now — which had embalmed for the Greeks, as it has for us, almost all that remains of the country which gave it birth — whose heroes by virtue of its magic power bore for them, as they do for us, all the air and mien and manner of living men. Through this perfected medium, subject to no mutation or change, have we received our knowl- edge of the author and founder of the creed which we profess, and most of that creed itself. How gladly would I linger upon these mountain tops, wit- nessing, with you, the transfiguration of the glory, the mercies and the providence of God. How gladly would I share and enjoy Avith you here a com- mon heritage, as we recount the splendid achievements of our Calvinistic ancestry, and cry with Peter, " Master, let us build tabernacles here, and here let us abide." But unto us, as to Peter and James and John, the Master says, " No, here is no heat, no dust, no labor or sorrow, no conflict, no duty to be done." And as they did go down with Him into the valley of humiliation and human contention, so too must we go. As we descend, however, let us pause for a little while upon a lesser height, and there witness another of the splendid triumphs of Calvin- ism. It is the scene of the Revolution of 1776, made famous by the noble deeds, and enriched by the nobler blood of the 63 descendants of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, of the Hugue- nots of Carolina, of tliC followers of Penn and of Roger "Wil- liams, and more than all by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians scattered over all the colonies. Divers people, driven by a common persecution from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Holland, drawn to a common place of refuge by the love of civil and religious liberty, their country's ensign, finds in their diversity of origin, community of purpose and unity of faith, its highest application and significance. Their forefathers won for William the battle of Boynewater, where the liberties of the world trembled . in the scales, and which Macauly declares " was the most successful and the most splendid in the history of any couutry ; " and to which the historian Hume ascribes, "the whole freedom of the British constitutiou." With universal accord the well-earned title, " the Father of his Country," has been ascribed to the illustrious Washington, not so much for leading to final victory the intrepid patriots whom he commanded, for there were brave men before Agamemnon — not so much for wisdom in counsel, for wise men have lived in all ages — bat more on account of his mod- eration, his self abnegation, and voluntary surrender of impe- rial power. To the Presbyterians of the Revolution belongs the same honor, in exactly equal measure. They fought for the sever- ance of Church and State — for the supreme right of conscience unfettered by the decrees of king or Parliament, and when victory was achieved, and they had won by their constancy and valor the unquestioned right to establish a government, they solemnly placed upon the records of their Synods the self- denying resolve, refusing to appropriate to the Church that power in the State, which their honesty, their consistency and their conscientious convictions forbade. I have thus endeavored briefly and imperfectly to outline the grand doctrine of Calvinism, not from its beginning, for that is shrouded in impenetrable clouds — coexistent and co- ♦ incident with the Word itself, which too was in the beginninsr, which was with God, and which was God. If I have succeeded in making it appear as a sufficient cause for human progress my purpose is accomplished. All matter tends towards the centre of the earth by the law of gravita- tion. We recognize the eflt'ect and ascribe it to the proper cause. The sun, the centre of our system, is fixed as the source of light and heat. It is needless in the one case to describe the manner of the matter's fall or in the other to part the ravs and tell of their wondrous effect : — and even so let it be of Calvinism. 54 The limit of time assigned to me lias been almost reaclied. Indulge me but a few moments. It has befallen this generation to pass through the throes of fratricidal strife, and our Zion has been disrupted. It cannot be denied that its bloody issue was, in large part, determined by the stern and violent patriotism of the Presby- terians of the prevailing section. It was a terrible struggle, waged upon each side with equal sincerity in the justice of their cause. I have no apology to make for the part I took in it — no controversy now with any of the victors by whose prowess, superior to or even equal with my own, we were vau- qiiished. A cause, whether just or unjust, which inspired a whole people for four years to endure without murmuring, the privations and hardships of war — to bare their breasts to the rain of shot and shell, with conspicuous courage, upon a hundred battlefields — may fail to excite the admiration or even the approval of mankind, but it will challenge and receive their charity and respect. Growing out of that struggle is the fact of a divided Church, and the question of organic union confronts us. The solution of this question depends upon our own worthiness. If as Christians we indeed have Faith, Hope and Love, and as citizens courage, fortitude and patience, that Providence which has ever watched over us, and which from the beginning has so often led His people by a way which they knew not, will not forsake us in this emergency. But if on account of our unworthiness it hath been decreed not unto us — not unto us, shall be the glory of its accomplish- ment : if by reason of our sins and blood guiltiness the privi- lege of building the splendid temple of union be denied to us, still let us hope and pray, that those who are to come after us, our children and our children's children, purified by a more perfect love, and freed from the prejudices and the passions, which do so easily beset us, shall not only behold, as has been permitted to us from some Pisgah's height, but may they go in and possess to its utmost boundaries, that land of promise — a grand, puissant, militant, united Church, from which, by reason of our sins, we have been so justly excluded. PRESBYTERIANISM AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. By Hon. Samuel J. McMillan, Si. Paul, Minn. THE time for a change had come, the revival of letters had extended knowledge and quickened the intellectual life of the people ; the nations were restive under the domination of the Church which had so long ruled them, and the hearts of the people sighed for deliverance from the spir- itual and intellectual thralldom under which they had so long been held. God's time had come, the Reformation was accom- plished in which the infallibility of the Church was over- thrown and the right of private judgment was established, the Bible accepted as the only infallible rule of faith and prac- tice, and j ustification by faith in Jesus Christ the way of sal- vation. The principles involved in the Reformation were both reli- gious and ecclesiastical; they affected both the faith of the Church and its government. Upon the fundamental principles of the former Protestant Europe was united; as to the latter the character and extent of the changes and modifications varied in the different nations engaged in the Reformation, some embracing Episcopacy, others Presbyterianism, others the Consistorial and still others Congregationalism or Inde- pendency. Presbyterianism is so designated because it is a Church gov- ernment by presbyters. As a system of Church government, however, it embracas much more than the mere autonomy of the Church. As a formulated and distinct system of ecclesias- tical government it is a result of the Reformation, adopted ])ar- tially by Zwingle in the Church at Zurich, but first fully matured and developed in theory by Calvin in the free city of Geneva. It involves the following principles: "First. The Church of Christ is under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and we are to look to the promise of the Saviour for the preservation of her truth and purity. 56 " Second. The "Word of God is tlie only infallible rule of faith and practice. " Third. The permanent officers of a Church are presbyters and deacons. " Fourth. To deacons are committed the care of the funds and of the poor. " Fifth. To presbyters belong government and instruction. "Sixth. Presbyters are divided into, first, pastors and teachers, whose chief work is to preach the Gospel and per- form pastoral labor and administer the ordinances; second, lay elders, whose business it is, in conjunction with the pastors, to attend to discipline and order. " Seventh. The election of all those officers belong to the Church itself. The pastors ordain only those whom the people choose for the purpose, the function of the Church in this behalf being to decide who in the judgment of Charity are called of God to office, no one being qualified without sach call both of God and the people. "Eighth. To secure harmony of faith and practice the churches meet in Synods or Councils by their pastors and elders, the latter being the representatives of the people. "Ninth. The Church in all spiritual matters is entirely inde- pendent of the State and responsible to Christ alone." This system of ecclesiastical government was avowedly a return to the simplicity of the primitive Church ; it was the reformation and reconstruction of the Church upon the prin- ciples of God's Word in harmony with and designed to advance and carry forward Christ's kingdom in its purified and re- newed life and power. It rejects the doctrine that the Church is infallible, and declares that the Word of God is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. It denies that the hierarchy, united in Council or otherwise, separates God from the believer ; it declares the presence of God in His Church to guide her and preserve her truth and purity ; it thus brings believers individually into personal communion with their Heavenly Father to guide, enlighten, sanctify and bless them. It involves the right of private judgment, the liberty of con- science and personal responsibility. " It is a form of government strong enough to resist the ten- dency to anarchy on one side and priestly domination on the other." It invests the Church under Christ with original jurisdiction. The power goes up from the Church to her officers, and not from a consecrated and necessarily indepen- dent priesthood to the people. It gives to the Church power to determine who shall enter into fellowship Avith her; to de- cide upon articles of faith according to God's Word, and to establish the laws according to which she shall be governed. 57 It provides for the regular exercise of this power by the institution of a strictly representative government, and de- volves the election of all ecclesiastical ofl&cers upon the pri- vate members of the Church. It provides lor all the great objects to attain which officers are necessary. It designates tho>e who shall preach the Gos- pel, and instruct the Church and administer the ordinances, and sets apart to their work those whom the Church has ap- pointed. It designates those who shall administer discipline and care for the purity, order and peace of the House of God. It specifies those who shall act as stewards of the congrega- tion, almoners of their bounty, charged with the support of the ministry and of the poor. It involves the essential parity of the clergy in opposition to a divinely constituted prelacy or hierarchy, and holds that " all ministers are equally bishops and presbyters, on an equal- ity in respect to government." " It constitutes the Church independent of the State in all ecclesiastical and spiritual things." It denies all power of the State " to determine who shall be entitled to church fellow- ship, who shall fill church offices, what shall be the faith of the Church, or who shall decide upon her confessions ; or to interfere in any manner or to any extent in her spiritual aft'airs." Truly, " the announcement of these principles was an era in the Church and in the world." It was the announce- ment of the inherent right of every man to private judg- ment and liberty of conscience, and it was the declaration of the freedom of the Church from ecclesiastical tyranny and secular interference. It was meet that these immortal truths should come from the liberty-loving land of Switzerland, whose moun- tains pierce the vapors and clouds of earth, and bathe their crowns in the glorious sunlight of Heaven; and from the free city of Geneva. " These ideas," says Ranke, " are the same on which the French, Scotch and American Churches were afterwards founded, and, indeed, on which the existence and development of North America may be said to rest. Their historical importance is beyond all calculation." (" Hist, of Reformation.") The glorious truths of the Reformation, pro- claimed and embraced in Germany, had extended to Switzer- land, penetrated France and were soon carried to England and Scotland; and, wherever they were heard, were received by multitudes of the people with joy and gladness. Immedi- ately the adherents of the reformed faith were visited with relentless persecution hv torture, imprisonment and death. Tyndale of England, Knox and Melville of Scotland, and thousands of persons, including many learned and pious minis- ters, who had abandoned and given up the errors and supersti- 58 tions of the Roman Cliurch and embraced tho principles of tlie Reformation, fled from their homes and country to escape the persecutor's vengeance, or suft'ered banishment for conscience's sake. Many of them found refuge in Geneva and were cor- dially welcomed by their brethren of the same faith, enjoyed the counsels and heard the words of wisdom of the great Geneva doctor, participated in the simple worship and wit- nessed the republican torm of Church government in opera- tion there. When God opened the way for them to return to their country and their homes, they gave themselves, with increased zeal and renewed devotion, to the cause of the Reformation. In France, the reformed laith was gladly received by the peo- ple, and the Huguenot Church, under the Presbyterian system, amid persecution and trial from the tyrannical throne and hierarchy of the government, made rapid progress, until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes opened the floodgates of wrath, and the inhuman cruelty and Satanic malignity of the persecutors spread slaughter and death throughout tbe Church and scattered the fleeing remnant of the devoted followers of Christ through other lands. The return of Knox to Scotland was a great accession to the cause of the Reformers, and under his bold, faithful and intrepid leadership, succeeded by tbe learned and ro less cou- rageous Melville, Presbyteriani^m was accepted by tbe peo])le and established as the faith of the nation, in opposition to the power and eflbrts of the Scottish throne. In England, the first departure by the crown from the old religion was by Henry VIII, who, in his quarrel with the Pope, constituted an English Church, differing from the Ro- man Catholic Church on the point of supremacy, and on that point alone, investing in the king all the power of tbe Pope, and during his reign the dependents on the crown assented to his blasphemous assumption. Tbe reformed faith, however, extended among the people, and the claim of the crown to ecclesiastical supremacy, as made by Henry, was modified under Edward and Elizabeth. The British Reformation early divided itself into two antagonistic parties — the ecclesi- astical, or conservative party, and the popular, or progressive party. The one would keep as near to Rome as possible ; the other sought close conformity with the Reformed Churches of the Continent and a complete reformation." These were known as Puritans, and embraced the Presbyterians and all Non-conformists. Soon after the accession of James I to the throne the per- secutions in England and Scotland drove many Puritans and 59 Presbyterians to Ireland, and the Irish Church was organized under a confession, of its own. The opening of the seventeenth century and the accession of James I to the throne marks the commencement of an era in the history of Great Britain and Ireland, which continued until nearly the close of the century, involving the integrity of h er constitution and the civil and religious liberty of her people. Increased knowledge and quickened thought had awakened a republican sentiment both in Parliament and among the people, yet the king in his claims of authority and power for the throne exceeded all that had ever been made by any of his predecessors. It was claimed by the king and his adherents both in Church and State that the " Supreme Being regarded hereditary mon- archy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favor; that the rale of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution anterior to the Christian and even to the Mosaic dispensation ; that no human power, not even that of the Legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive the legitimate prince of his rights; that his authority was necessarily always des- potic; that the laws by which, in England and in other coun- tries, the prerogative was limited were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume, and that any treaty into which a king might enter with his people was merely a declaration of his present intention, and not a contract of which the perform- ance could be demanded." (Macaulaj'-, " Hist.," Vol. i, p. 55.) And for the Church of England, of which the king was the head, it was claimed that "the episcopal office was essential to the welfare of a Christian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances of religion. To that office belonged certain high and sacred privileges, which no human power could give or take away. A Church might as well be without the doctrine of a Trinity or the doctrine of the Incarnation as without the apostolical orders, and the Church of Pome, which in the midst of all her corruptions had returned the apostolical orders, was nearer to primitive purity than those re- formed societies which had rashly set up in opposition to the divine model a system invented by men." (/^., pp. 59, 60.) The issue was made up. Absolutism in the throne or con- stitutional government, with executive control by the Par- liament and the civil and religious liberty of the people. The mighty conflict, which was to continue to the end of the dynasty of the house of Stuart, was not only vital to the 60 Britisli government, but its consequences and results were to extend beyond the seas and bless the Western world. James, too weak and cowardly to enforce his claims, left to his sucoessor, Charles I, the work of continuing the conflict. Charles I succeeded to the throne. The new king, with the aid of the cruel and imperious Wentworth, and the proud, inhuman and relentless Laud, entered upon the conflict and undertook to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent ; to put the State and the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown ; to deprive the courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordi- nary questions of civil right between man and man, and to punish with merciless rigor all who murmured at the acts of the government or who applied, even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for relief against those acts. (Macaulay, " Hist.," p. 68.) The work of oppression and tyranny went rapidly forward. The Star Chamber and the High Commission, the former a political and the latter a religious inquisition, with their usurped power, " guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of the Parliament, dis- played a rapacit}'-, a violence, a malignant energy which had been unknown to any former age," and the Council of York, under Wentworth, created by a pure act of usurpation, had made the great charter a dead letter to the north of the Trent. (76., p. 79, 80). The judges of the common law were scandal- ously obsequious to the king, and the tribunals of justice afforded no protection to the subjects against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. {Ih.j The people began to be discouraged and depressed, and to look to America as a place of refuge from the tyranny under which they suffered. Some Puritans departed from their native land and found a home on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. The cause of liberty was growing desperate if not hope- less. At this crisis the king and his archbishop, Laud, in the wanton exercise of tyrannical power, determined the last of a long series of oppressions by the crown, to impose the liturgy of the Church of England upon the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The imposition of the liturgy was resisted by the Scottish people. The king persisting in his determination, negotiations ensued, the result of which was that a General Assembly, composed of ministers and lay commissioners elected by the Presbyteries, convened at Glasgow and was duly consti- tuted. Episcopacy, the High Commission, tiie Articles of Perth, the canons and tlie liturgy were abolished and declared unlawful, and the whole fa])ric which James and Charles in a long course of years had been rearing with so much care and 61 policy fell at once to the ground. Thus " The old Presbyter- ian principle, which," says Hume, "had been zealously adopted at the Reformation, that the Church in all spiritual matters is entirely independent of the State and responsible to Christ alone, was vindicated against the tyranny of the commissioners by the Presbyterians of Scotland in their highest representa- tive assembly. And in defense of their right of religious lib- erty, held sacred and dearer than their lives by the Presbyter- ians of Scotland, they went forth to the battle-field to resist the armed forces of the king and carried their triumphant banner across the Tweed and the Tyne. The tyrant shrank before the enthusiastic hosts of liberty, and fearing further to exercise his tyrannical and unconstitational power to replenish his exhausted treasury to carry on the war, convoked the British Parliament to dissolve it again because not subservient to the royal will. But the advancing hosts of freedom struck terror to the soul of Charles, and the representatives of the people were again convoked. F(^ more than eleven years no Parliament had been convoked, and during all that time the people had been suffering under the tyranny and oppression of the king in his lawless and unconstitutional administration of the government. The long Parliament, "which," says Macaulay, "in spite of many errors and disasters is justly enti- tled to the reverence and gratitude of all who in any part of the world enjoy the blessings of constitutional government," met in NovemlDer, IBiO. The Star Chamber, the High Com- mission and the Council of York were abolished, and men who after suffering cruel mutilations had been confined in remote dnngeoDs regained their liberty. Sessions of Parliament at intervals not greater than three years each were guaranteed and many constitutional safeguards of the people were restored. On the 6th of December, 1648, the Presbyterian members of the House of Commons were expelled to the num- ber of 140. The Commonwealth having succeeded the Par- liamentary government was overthrown, and the Presbyter- ians preferring a constitutional government to a military despotism the re^^toration was accomplished. No sooner was Charles II enthroned than the contest for absolutism com- menced, in which the perfidious king was abetted by a no less faithless hierarchy and truculent Parliament. The con- flict was renewed by James II with even greater virulence. Under all the tyranny, oppression and cruel persecutions, which the Presbyterians in England, Ireland and Scotland suffered during all these reigns, they were true to their faith in God and their devotion to the cause of religious liberty. Drumclog, Both well Bridge and Derry are their declarations that " resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." The final 62 conflict between absolutism and constitutional government came, and the Presbyterians were the efficient force in the army which overthrew the tyrant James II, placed William and Mary on the throne, and secured to the nation a constitu- tional government, which panoplies the citizen with law and protects the people against the throne, and made it possible that Great Britain should be what she is to-day. But God had yet greater things toaccomphsh for His Church and for mankind. This western world was to be the place of triumph for civil and religious liberty. The primary object of the early colonists was not civil do- minion, but religious libert}^ They fled from persecution in their own lands that here they might worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. The persecutions which drove the Pilgrims and the Puritans from their native land to the inhospitable shores of this western wilderness did not cease with their departure, but continued in different forms and with different degrees ©f intensity during the period of our colonial existence. The emigration of Presbyterians which commenced in the early part of the seventeenth century was increased after the revolution of 1688, and was still further augmented after the opening of the eighteenth century. It embraced Puritans, Covenanters, Huguenots, Scotch, Scotch-Irish and German ref- ugees from the Palatinate. The first step toward the organi- zation of the Presbyterian Church was taken by the institu- tion of the Presbytery at Freehold, N. J., in 1705, or 1706, and the Church rapidly increased in numbers and influence, and extended its field of operations so that its churches out- side of New England were planted in the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Vir- ginia and both the Carolinas. The colonies of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, at the middle of the eighteenth century, were overwhelmingly Presbyterian. (Briggs, p. 316.) And in 1775 the Presbyterians and Congregationalists com- bined had the ecclesiastical control of the American colo- nies; upon their joint action the destinies of America de- pended. {/&., 3-13.) The revolution of 1688 had secured for the people of Eng- land their constitutional rights, but the people of the American colonies were not permitted to share its beneficent results. The rights of Englishmen were denied to the colonists, and the abuses and usurpation of power which were subsequently arrayed in the Declaration of Indei)endence were inflicted upon the Americans. The same questions of absolutism of the throne, the divine right of kings, unlimited submission of the suljjects, and other and greater fundamental principles of 63 government and civil and religious liberty were here to be dis- cussed, fought out and established. The history of Presbyterianism is a record of the propagation and defense of civil and religious liberty. Its birth})lace was a rep'aolic. Its vital principle is the investiture of power in the people, and self-government by constitutional representa- tion. In the very dawn of its existence in Scotland, its heroic leader, John Knox, proclaimed the "creed of republics in its first hard form," in his memorable reply to Queen Mary, " If princes exceed their bound, madam, no doubt they may be re- sisted even by power," When the faithless tyrant Charles II attempted by the power of the sword to impose upon the Scottish Church a ser- vice which their consciences repelled, after every effort at per- suasion failed, they went forth to battle under their banner for Christ's Grown and Covenant^'' and triumphed in the cause of God and liberty. And when the final issue came, in which the right of the British people was involved, the Presbyte- rians of Scotland and Ireland rallied in the cause of liberty and secured for the nation a constitutional government. With such a history, and with such a providential training, it is not strange that Presbyterians were in the vanguard of the colony in the cause of civil and religious liberty. The Church of England was the established Church in New York, Maryland, Virginia and both the Carolinas, and the di&senters were made to feel its power. The Church of England in the colonies was not strong in numbers, wealth or influence. "But the people of America knew that a vast power was behind this handful of ministers and people which might be used in America as it had been used in England, Ire- land and Scotland to constrain the consciences of the people to religious conformity." " The non-Episcopal denominations, therefore, in this country, had abundant cause for alarm. From South Carolina to New Hampshire they saw the power and influence of the govern- ment exerted to give ascendency to the English Church. This object was constantly, though cautiously, pursued * * *. Here, as in the contest about taxation, it was not the pressure of the particular act of injury or indignity that produced the dissatisfaction, but the power that was claimed. The assump- tion was the same in both cases, viz., that America was part of the nation of England; that the power of the king and Parliament was here, what it was there, hence on the one hand the inference that the British Parliament could here levy what taxes they pleased, and on the other, that the king's su- premacy in ecclesiastical matters extended to the colonies." In the colonies in which the Anglican Church had been 64 establislied tlie non-Episcopal Churches were placed under seri- ous disabilities and restraints, invidious and odious discrimina- tions were made against them, and hardens of taxation imposed upon them, for the exclusive benefit of the Established Church. The Presbyterians had been especially annoyed in their ear- lier days when struggling for existence as a religious denomi- nation, both in New York and Virginia, by the intolerance of the Church of England. They associated the State as the immediate power behind the persecution, though the latter, as it was well known, was frequently urged to this course of ac- tion by the clergy of tlie establishment. For many years, says a chronicler of the times, in New York, Maryland, Vir- ginia and South Carolina, the growth of the Presbyterian Church was checked by persecution and intolerance." (" The Presbytery of Hanover," p. 9.) In New York the struggle between Presbyterians on the one hand and the Established Church and Tory Governor on the other hand was intense, and the persecuting arm of the civil power was invoked. In 1706 Francis Makemie and John Hampton, Presbyterian ministers, en route to Boston, were invited by the Puritans in New York to preach to them, but were prohibited by the Governor, Cornbury, from doing so. Thereupon Makemie preached in a private house on Pearl street, January 20th. On the same day Hampton preached at Newton, L. I. On the following Tuesday both were ar- rested on a warrant from Governor Cornbury on the ground that they had preached without his permission. They were detained till March 1st, when they were brought before the Supreme Court upon a writ of habeas corpus. The charge against Hampton was not pressed, but Makemie was released on bail to appear for trial June 3d. Makemie returned to New York and upon his trial was acquitted on the ground that he had complied with the Toleration Act and had acted within his rights as a Puritan minister. He produced his license to preach under the Toleration Act in Barbadoes, and this was recognized as valid throughout the Queen's dominions, but, notwithstanding his acquittal, Makemie was compelled to pay the costs of the prosecution as well as the defense, amounting to the large sum of £88, 7s. 6d. (" Am. Presbyterianism," Briggs, p. 152.) The tyranny, oppression and injustice exercised by the civil power in behalf of the Established Church in the colony where a religious establishment existed, and the entire history of the Church in connection with the State, convinced the Presbyterians of America that the union of the Cliurch and State as a political question was wrong, and they were early 65 enlisted in favor of entire freedom of worship. " During the quarter of a century immediately preceding the revolution a discussion of the whole subject of religious rights, important for its effects upon the public mind, as well as for the ability displayed in its prosecution, was conducted through the public press by the leading men of the Presbyterian Church in New York. Three of these men were eminent lawyers, a fourth was the young pastor of the Wall Street Church, Alexander Cummings, whose spirited appeals and cogent arguments con- tributed not a little to the force and weight of the pamphlet and newspaper publications of the day. But the names of his parishioners, Wm. Smith, Wm. Livingston, John Morin Scott, are better known in connection with this debate. The battle for religious liberty was well fought at a time when the great struggle for civil freedom was beginning by the Presbyterian lawyers of New York, and not only for their own rehgious communion, but equally for other Christian Churches." (" Am. Pres.," Briggs, quoting from C. W. Baird, " Civil Status of the Presbyterians in the Province of New York.") In Virginia, where alone there was an arduous struggle in the Legislature, says Bancroft, the Presbytery of Hanover demanded the disestablishment of the Anglican Church and the civil equality of every denomination. It was supported by the voices of Baptists and Quakers and all the sects that had sprang from the people, and after a contest of eight weeks the measure was carried by the activity of Jefferson in an Assem- bly of which the majority were Protestant Episcopalians. Nor was this demand by Presbyterians for equality confined to Virginia, where they were in a minority. It was from Witherspoon, of New Jersey, that Madison imbibed the lesson of perfect freedom in matters of conscience. When the Con- stitution of that State was framed by a convention composed chiefly of Presbyterians they established perfect liberty of conscience, without the blemish of a test. (Bancroft's " Hist. U. S.," 5th vol, p. 123.) The American colonies did not rashly enter into the war of American independence. Separation from Great Britain was not originally desired. Colonial assemblies in the autumn of 1775 disavowed the desire for independence. The Congress of delegates that met on the 5th of September, 1774, at Car- penter's Uall, Philadelphia, it distinctly appears, sought to obtain a redress of grievances and not the establishment of a separate government. Its language is, " You have been told that we are impatient of government and desire inde})endence. These are calumnies. Permit us to be free as yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to beour greatest glory and our greatest happiness." And the Declaration itself is a 66 confident appeal to God and tlie world for the justice of the cause of iudependence. The Presbyterians throughout the colonies were the strongest and most constant friends of inde- pendence. The Scotch-Irish on the frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina, in the Presbyteries of Hanover and Orange, were the first to advance to a declaration of independence from the mother country. The struggles against the government of Virginia for their religious rites had prepared them for this issue. They met in council at Abingdon, January 20, 1775, and prepared an address to the delegates of Virginia, in which they said, "We explored our uncultivated wilderness, border- ing on many nations of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any but the savages, but even to these remote regions the hand of power hath pursued us to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, Nature and the rights of humanity have vested us. We are willing to con- tribute all in our power if applied to constitutionally, but can- not think of submitting our liberty or property to a venal British Parliament or a corrupt ministry. We are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender any of our ines- timable privileges to any power upon earth but at the expense of our lives. These are our real though unpolished sentiments of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die." (" Am. Pres.," Briggs, p. 347.) The resolutions known as the Mecklenburg declaration were adopted by the Scotch -Irish Presbyterians of North Caro- lina, in convention at Charlotte, May 20, 1775. " This high- spirited people had carefully watched the progress of the con- troversy between the colonies and Great Britain, and when in May, 1775, they received news of the address that had been presented to the king by Parliament, declaring the American colonies to be in actual rebellion, they concluded that the time for action had arrived, and accordingly proceeded to re- nounce their allegiance to the crown. The convention was addressed by Rev. Hezekiah James Balch, a Presbyterian clergyman, and others. Among other resolutions, the follow- ing was adopted : ^^ Besolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people. Are and of right ought to be a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of oar God and the general government of the Congress. To the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual coojieration, our lives^ our fortunes and our most sacred honor^ ('' Scottish and Irish Seeds in American Soil," Craighead, p. 328.) The Synod of New York and Philadelphia met in Phila- delphia on the 20th of May, 1775. " The bloody conflict had 67 taken place at Lexington but a few weeks before, and created great excitement throughout the land. The General Con- gress was also in session at Philadelphia, consulting concern- inc the crisis which had been precipitated upon the colonies. At this important period the Synod gave expression to its deep sympathy for the cause of freedom and its religious con- viction respecting the rights of the people in a pastoral letter issued to the Presbyterians within its bounds. The letter ex- horts Presbyterians, to whom it is addressed, not to suifer op- pression, or injury itself, to provoke them to anything disre- spectful to the king, but to let it appear that they only desire the preservation and security of those rights which belong to them as freemen and Britons, and that reconciliation on those terms is their most ardent desire. It then proceeds to say: " Secondly, be careful to maintain the union which at present subsists through all the colonies. Nothing can be more mani- fest than that the success of every measure depends on its being inviolably preserved, and, therefore, we hope you will leave nothing undone which can promote that end. In par- ticular, as the Continental Congress, noAV sitting at Philadel- phia, consists of delegates chosen in the most free and unbiased manner by the body of the people, let them not only be treated with respect and encouraged in their difficult service, not only let your prayers be offered up to God for His direction in their proceedings, but adhere firmly to their resolutions, and let it be seen that they are able to bring out the whole strength of this vast country to carry them into execution. We would also advise, for the same purpose, that a spirit of candor, charity and mutual esteem be preserved and promoted towards those of different religious denominations. Persons of probity and principle of every profession should be united together as servants of the same Master, and the experience of our happy concord hitherto in a state of liberty should en- gage all to unite in the support of the common interest, for there is no example in history in which civil liberty was de- stroyed and the rights of conscience preserved entire." (" Am. Pres." Briggs, p. 350.) In New Jersey the Presbyterians and Reformed in a body decided upon a struggle for liberty. The Presbyterians of Pennsylvania, Maryland and throughout the colonies were unanimously in favor of the rights and liberty of the people. Doctor John Witherspoon was the only clergyman in the Continental Congress of 1776. lie was a lineal descendant of John Knox, and, like the celebrated Scotch reformer, was fitted to be a great leader among men. Eminent as a scholar, a theologian and a statesman, imbued with an undying love of civil and religious liberty, he devoted all his energies to 68 the support of the rights of the colonies. In the crisis of the cause of independence, when the Declaration was to be made or to be withheld, when the fate of colonial liberty hung in the balance, depending upon the action about to be taken bj the Congress, his eloquent voice was thus raised for the Declara- tion: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is uuAvorthy of the name of freeman. For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on the issue of this contest, and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country. ("Am. Pres.," Briggs, p. 851.) _ The Declaration was made and the war of independence ensued. Presbyterians throughout the country warmly espoused the cause of independence during the entire period of the con- flict. In the councils and in the field, with the voice, the pen, the sword, they gave their sympathy and support to the patriot cause. Ministers, elders and people entered the Eevolutionary army and offered their lives in the sacred cause. Referring to the war in South Carolina, Rev. Dr. Smith writes : " The battles of the Cowpens, of King's Mountain, and also the severe skirmish known as Huck's defeat, are celebrated as giving a turning to the contests of the Revolution. General Morgan, who commanded at the Cowpens, and Greneral Pickens, who made all the arrangements for the battle, were both Presby- terian elders, and nearly all under their command were Pres- byterians. In the battle of King's Mountain, Colonels Camp- bell, Williams, Cleveland, Shelby and Sevier, as also Colonel Hamilton and Major James, were all Presbyterian elders, and the body of their troops were collected from Presbyterian set- tlements. At Huck's defeat Colonel Bratten and Major Dick- son were both Presbyterian elders. Major Samuel Morrow, who was with Colonel Sumpter in four engagements, and in many other battles, was for fifty years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. (" Scotch and Irish Seeds in Am. Soil," Craighead, 342.) A similar record might be made of the other colonies and the other battle-fields of the Revolution. The Synod of New York and Philadelphia issued their pas- toral letter in which they say, " We cannot help congratu- 69 lating you on the general and almost universal attachment of the Presbyterian body to the cause of liberty and the rights of mankind. " This has been visible in their conduct, and has been con- fessed by the complaints and resentments of the common enemy. Such a circumstance ought not only to afford us sat- isfaction on the review as bringing credit to the body in gen- eral, but to increase our gratitude to God for the happy issue of the war. Had it been unsuccessful we must have drunk deeply of the cup of suffering. Our burnt and wasted churches and our plundered dwellings in such places as fell under the power of our adversaries are but an earnest of what we must have suffered had they finally prevailed. The Synod, there- fore, request you to render thanks to Almighty God for all His mercies, spiritual and temporal, and in a particular man- ner for establishing the independence of the United States of America." The venerable Dr. Witherspoon was a member of the Legis- lature of New Jersey when the Federal Constitution was sub- mitted to that body for ratification, and was a member of the committee to which the matter was referred and reported in favor of the ratification of the Constitution, whereupon it was ratified by that State. (Elliot's " Debate." ) "Governments in general have been the result of force, fraud or accident. After a period of 6000 years have elapsed since the creation, the United States exhibit to the world the first instance, as far as we can learn, of a nation unattacked by external force, unconvulsed by domestic insurrection, assem- bling voluntarily, deliberating fully, and deciding calmly con- cerning that system of government under which they would wish that they and their posteritv should live." (Elliot's "Debates," Yol. ii, p. 422— Wilson Deb. Penn. Con.) The confederation of States failed to accomplish the purposes desired by the people. The Constitution was adopted to secure a more perfect form of government. The American Presbyterian Church had grown up and developed under the observation of our fathers into a system of representative government, republican in its nature, capable of indefinite expansion, culminating in the General Assembh', the national organization. Based as it is on the fundamental principle of the power of the people, it is quite reasonable to suppose that the framers of the Constitution were impressed with the com- pact, comprehensive and liberal system of its government, and convinced of its adaptability to the nation about to be formed ; especially may this have been so in view of the fact that Presbyterians had been the devoted friends of liberty and independence through the long and arduous struggle for 70 liberty, and were influential and participating in the forma- tion of the government itself. This seems to have been the opinion of many who have considered the subject. "The framers of the Constitution of the United States," says Chief Justice Tilghman, "were greatly indebted to the standards of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland in modeling that admir- able instrument." Hon. "W. C. Preston, of South Carolina, also says, " Certainly it was a remarkable and singular coinci- dence that the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church should bear such a close and striking resemblance to the political Constitution of our country. This may be regarded as an earnest of our beloved national union. The two may be sup- posed to be formed after the same model." One thing we may confidently assert, that for that feature of the Constitution which secures the separation of the Church from the State we are indebted mainly to the Presbyterians of America; they were the principal element in establishing this great bulwark of liberty. Such is Presbyterianism. Republican in her Constitution, she has stood in the world nearly four centuries, a beacoa of civil and religious liberty. In every conflict with tyranny her sons have been in the front rank of those contending for constitutional government, and in our own land Presbyterian- ism and Presbyterians were among the most forceful elements which under a benignant Providence established our own beloved institutions. CITY EVANGELIZATION. Bv Rev. John Hall, D.D., LL.D., New York City, IN Prov. xi, 11, there is a suggestive passage: "By the bless- ing of the upright the city is exalted; but it is overthrown by the mouth of the Avicked." A city's welfare is closely connected with its moral conditions. " Godliness exalteth " a city. There is a passage identical in spirit with this in the twenty-ninth chapter and second verse. " When the right- eous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." American life fur- nishes illustrations of this statement too public to require specification. Fate is sometimes represented as blind; but the Lord is all- seeing. Her blessing gives prosperity to the individual. It works in the form of wisdom, saving him from mistakes of judgment ; in the form of strength, fitting him for work ; in the form of defense, warding off evil, and in providence, bringing to him useful friends. The same blessing exalts a family. It makes each faithful in the allotted place ; it binds together by afiection and trained conscience ; it wards off the influences that divide, degrade and destroy. But the city is the collection in near neighborhood of indi- viduals and families. In Bible times population was not as a rule scattered over the safe farmhouses of the country as it happily is with us. The desire for security and other consid- erations brought the people together, and very closely to- gether, for walls had, as a rule, to enclose and protect them. Mutual knowledge, therefore, was inevitable. Influence was felt. In a great modern city isolation can be readily secured. It was not so in the average Eastern city, often, like some of our own precocious and sanguine "cities," containing only a few thousands, or even a few hundreds of people. The up- right would be recognized, their influence would be felt, their neighbors would be helped upward by their example and their positive force. On the other hand, the words, the vicious stories, the lies of the wicked, pull down its people, reduce every element of strength and eventually overthrow it. The 71 72 blessing is driven awaj. The curse which follows sin and makes misery comes in its room. The principle involved in all this comes out in the second text, and is of easy illustration in our free land, where the people choose their rulers. Give righteous city authorities, and the people rejoice. On the other hand, let there be un- principled, dishonest, corrupt men bearing rule and the people, even though their own apathy or venality accounts for the fact, will be humiliated, discouraged and depressed. It fol- lows, therefore, that the promotion of uprightness, or, as the second verse puts it, the elevation of the righteous, is to be sought if citizens are to be happy and prosperous, while, on the other hand, the utterances and sway of the bad will in- evitably lead to sorrow and decay. But the way to get the good forces into their place and to banish the evil is to teach men the truth of God and to bring them to the reverent and filial fear of their Maker. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, in which God is revealed and by which men are drawn to Him, with its divine and appropriate ordi- nances and machinery, is the way to purity of heart, of speech^ of life and of administration. Hence the question of the evangelization of our cities is one of the most important and practical that can be raised. What are the hindrances ? Deepest of all, of course, is the natural irreligion. Men and women do not by their nature seek after God and Godly things. On the contrary, when religious instincts have be- come paralyzed from defective training and positive evil in influence, association and habit, the men and women seek to be away from the means of grace. If they really craved for them they could find them. " Where there is a will there is a way." Hence there is developed a condition of things which it is pertinent to this subject to emphasize. Well- brought-up religious people, who from ignorance of the local- ity, poverty or any other cause, find themselves in a bad neighborhood, make the necessary efforts to get away from it. Go down into certain regions of New York and inquire and you will find that nearly every Presbyterian family has gone away, and from laudable motives. " We cannot bear, and we do not wish our children to breathe this atmosphere." There is, unfortunately, a large class, home born and imported, to whom a region of this kind is attractive. It is what they want. There are the proprietors of low theatres, gambling dens and houses such as the Bible describes as the way to hell, and there are yet greater numbers who live by them. They do not want to be settled among churches and church-going people. They wish for these places as really as the fish does for water, as the bear does for the woods, and it is not fair nor true to the truth of things to lay blame on American churches for the existence of such places. It is easy to de- signate a district with so many thousands without a church. You could designate equally large districts without a first- class business house for dry goods or groceries. But for all that the people do not go without food and clothing. There is a sense in which the law of demand and supply works, and must work in a country like ours, with a free church sustained by the worshipers. Nor would it necessarily mend the matter to put an endo wed church among them. Go to London, and you will find parish churches so deserted from various causes that again and again the eftbrt has been made to remove the endowments to places where there would be worshipers. It is not that there are no people. It is that there are not church-going people, that there are people who choose the place for its very godlessness. It is not meant that no effort should be made for these people. They should be dealt with as other heathen are dealt with. It is meant to vindicate the churches from indiscriminating blame that is now and then laid on them. Among other hindrances in our cities may be mentioned the confusion of tongues. Our great cities are a little Babel- like. There are some Germans in a given district, not enough to get a church of their own, but not at home in an English church. So it is with Italians, Bohemians and others who settle among us. Nearly approaching this is diversity of denominations. People find nothing exactly like the worship to which they were accustomed ; they do nothing but wait in a vague way till something opens up, and meantime church feeling and re- ligious feeling die out, and by the time there does come the opportunity they have little interest in it. The advocates of special agencies, and especially of great mission buildings, sometimes overlook the above tacts. Dr. Chalmers, for example, is sometimes quoted in forgetfulness of the fact that he was dealing with people thoroughly of one blood, language and religious sentiment and traditions. All are agreed that the Church should aim at the enlarge- ment of its working force. That working force consists in recognized official teachers and rulers and in bodies of people organized and bearing witness to the truth and regularly edi- fied through the Word, sacraments and prayer. This latter element differentiates church extension from for- mal revival work by evangelists, in which the element of the sacraments and the church life which they imply are wanting in the nature of the case. Evangelists turn over " converts " for these ends to existing churches. 74 It is agreed on all hands that cities ought to be evangelized. They are very important, but the country is not to be over- looked. It suDplies the cities with their best elements, if the testimony is credible. There are places even in good old New England where the country is going behind in church life. There are two forms in which the effort at evangelization is usually pushed. The first is " missions," by which we mean a continuous supply of preaching without congregational life and organization. In some instances there are persons admit- ted to membership, and the Lord's Supper is administered, but the members are included in the mother Church and under the oversight of her ofl&cers. The other plan into which the missionary form of effort often runs is colonization. By this word we mean, of course, the detachment of a number of members and the setting up, mainly through these, of an organized congregation with its own officers managing its affairs. Which of the two is the better? A categorical answer cannot be given. The deter- mining element is in the conditions of the people, in a special degree in their character. In many quarters there are no church members to be collected by a particular effort, there is no material for church officers, there are no members to make intelligent selection, yet there are crowds of unin- structed people. Mission work must be attempted and must go on for a longer or shorter time according to circumstances. As soon as the elements of organic life are developed then organization is proper. When this stage is in view there is commonly, through the prevalent ideas of American people, a difficulty to be faced, namely, the word "mission," which rightly or wrongly is linked with ideas of dependence and of eleemosynary agencies. The word should ordinarily be dropped. We are to take stumbling-blocks out of the way of the undiscriminating. In great cities a difficulty has to be met in the cost of build- ings. It comes in two forms, one of which is outside control, namely, the cost of land. In a good business part of the city, or in a good residential district, the cost of land on which to build is high. The second is in some degree under control, namely, the cost of the edifice. People are slow to learn the fact that in the nature of the case, and especially if we are to cultivate independence and self-respect and minimize the elee- mosynary element, the Church-homes should be substantially on the plane of the homes of the worshipers — a little above them, indeed, so as to lift up, but still on their plane. On the other hand, where a district contains a section of a strong congregation, is growing in congenial population, and the worshipers have a fair hope of self-respecting, self-gov. 75 erning life, colonization is natural, fitting, on the lines of com- mon sense, and, most important of all. on the lines of the Old and New Testaments. All proper aid should, of course, go from the mother Church to the outgoing child " setting up house." The larger the city, as we have seen, the harder it commonly is to meet the necessary expenses. Turning to the mission plan, there are certain inevitable drawbacks, which it is the plain duty of all to minimize to the utmost. Among the methods of attempting this, the follow- ing may be noticed : (a) Let the mission minister be treated by the , mother Church's pastor on true. Scriptural, Presbyterian lines, as in every way his equal. Let him be a member of Presbytery. (b) Let him be ordained and installed, so as to administer ordinances and have a full standing as a minister among his people. (c) Let the idea and hope of ultimate organic life be kept before the people, and let the habit of self-supporting, devo- tional giving be developed to the utmost. There will be some retarding forces. The janitor, the organ-blower, or even the organist, may be counted among these. They are afraid that their monthly checks cannot be counted upon as confidently from the struggling child as from the mother Church. In the way of colonization, again, there are difficulties that have not been stated. Some of them are more or less re- movable. The first, and worst, is defective Presbyterian attachment. Too many claim credit for catholicity which, in their case, is only in fact the child of ignorance or indifference. "Churches," they say, " are very much all alike : the point is to be in one, not which that one is." Sane men do not commonly say, " Wives are pretty much alike : the thing is to have one, not of what kind she is." Under the influence of this feeling, or non-feeling, Presbyterians, who might be the nucleus of new organizations, think of possible calls for money, the cost of building and sustaining; they pose in godless non-attach- ment to any Church, or they inspect now and then the exist- ing organizations, waiting to see if their brethren will erect a handsome edifice and then invite their kind patronage. We speak of the peculiarities of uninstructed human nature. Give us intelligent and attached Presbyterians, who remember the traditions of their fathers and know the teachings of their Bibles, and you give us bodies of people who will face and conquer difficulties for the sake of an agency commended to their consciences and to be a blessing to them and their chil- dren. Before such scattered exiles the mountains become plains. 76 To the second difficulty reference has been made in another connection. It is defective views of the fitness of things. The plant of the new congregation, it is thought, must not be in- ferior to that of the fine, long-existing and established churches. Just so there are elements in society of weakness and folly. There are men who never enjoy the real blessings of a home, because they did not see their way to setting it up on the same scale of cost, display and elegance to which their parents climbed, perhaps through years of toil and enterprise. What a pity that such sluggish and mistaken Christians do not study the Ne\Y Testament ! The infant churches of Ephesus, Phil- ippi, and other such places, to which we look up sentimentally, did not wait for a quartette, organ and attendant stafl" in a handsome sacred edifice. They met in the synagogues when they could ; when they could not, in the houses of the people, unless, indeed, there was a splendid, enterprising leader who could hire a school-house. The third difficulty is in the tendency to make religion the handmaid of society. This is one of the curses of the com- munity. "Quit the old church," people say, " and we give up those lovely people that we are accustomed to meet, and we go in with people we don't know — very good people, no doubt, and we shall like them in Heaven, but we don't know them now — in fact, they are not of our set." All men are free and equal in the terms of our national constitution, but for practi- cal Christian life we have modified this view to the hurt of the community and the dishonor of Christ. We have to teach and learn God's plan : "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." In view of all these facts we have to conclude that where the conditions favor it, colonization is desirable ; that our Church in young and growing cities should keep pace with the people ; that, as recent examination in London shows, denomi- national work is on the whole in advance of undenominational in its acceptability to the people; and that where through folly, sin, and, in part, ecclesiastical neglect, in times past there are crowds of practical heathen in our cities — there missionary effort must be attempted in whatever form will best reach the ear and heart of those who have to be brought and taught, to appreciate " the Word, sacraments and prayer." CITY EVANGELIZATION: ITS METHODS. By Rev. Moses D. Hoge, D.D., Richmond, Va. THE most pathetic saying ever uttered with regard to any city was this : ' ' He beheld the city and wept over it." What Christ saw in Jerusalem and what moved Him to tears was what we see in the great cities of the world in our day — ignorance, destitution, disease, forgetfulness of God, rejec- tion of proffered salvation, the sad spectacle of human want and human woe in all their sad variety. Christ saw and wept. His tears were the meltings of His own heart of pity, and love beyond degree. But it was no sentimental grief like that which depicts in moving strains a sorrow which it does not seek to assuage. It profits little to unfold a tale, whose horror shocks the emotional nature, after the fashion of the dramatic muse, depicting tragic scenes without proposing any relief of the misery so graphically portrayed. The sympathy of Christ was a helpful, healing, burden-bearing, sorrow- sooth- ing sympathy. With that wonderful condensation of great truths, characteristic of the Scriptures, the sacred writers give us an epitome of the life of Christ, brief and infinitely sug- gestive, when it is said, " He went about doing good," not merely blessing those who came to Him for relief, but seeking all who needed succor, so that in all Judea, Samaria and Gali- lee there was no region untrodden by the feet which were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross. In the davs of our Lord the shores of the Sea of Galilee were crowded with cities, and when the needy, sin and sorrow- stricken flocked to Him in ever -increasing numbers, He said to His disciples, "I have compassion on the multitude," a compassion pure as the pellucid waters of the sea and deep as its bed, and the practi- cal form which His pity took is announced to us in the state- ment, "He healed them all," whether the- blind led by the hands of those who had vision, or the paralytic borne on the 78 • shoulders of the strong, or sick babes lying, like withered flowers, on the bosoms of their mothers, " He healed them all." The world never saw such magnanimity of forgiving love as He displayed when He commanded His disciples to preach the Gospel to all nations, with the one proviso that they were to begin with the city that had rejected and crucified Him. From that day to ours, cities have been at once the chief fields for religious aggressive work, and the chief fountains of out- going evangelistic influence. A great military leader, whose name is a synonym for piety as it is for valor, was one day conversing with a member of his staff who had been a theological student, on the tactics of tho Apostle Paul in seizing upon great cities and making them strongholds for Christ, and in the phraseology most familiar to him, curtly said, "I wish you to investigate the subject and report to me." In due time the report was presented, and the young oflicer proceeded to explain how Antioch and other great cities early became the chief centres of Christian influ- ence, when the General iaterrupted him and said, " "Why do you say chief centres? Headquarters is a better name." From the headquarters of an army issue the orders which control the campaign, and it is well to discover where the strongest spiritual foes of the Church entrench themselves, that they may be captured and converted into allies of the sacramental army, commissioned to bring back this revolted world to alle- giance to its rightful Lord. Good Pastor George Fisch, in the second General Council of the Presbyterian Alliance, held in this city, told us that the conquest of Paris for the Gospel meant virtually the conquest of France. The capital of gaiety, pleasure, fashion, fine arts, science and political influence controlled the provinces, and so when Germany invaded France Von Moltke saw that Paris was the key to the whole territory, and he determined to cap- ture it at any cost. It was impregnable, but no matter, the impossible happened, and after an investment of twenty weeks it surrendered and the war was at an end. In our own coun- try theoretically this Union is a republic of sovereign States, practically it is becoming a nation of sovereign cities. When we win these we secure the resources by which the whole con- tinent may be won. It was the ajiostolic method of subju- gating every land where the Gospel gained its victories. Its first triumphs, as we have seen, were in Jerusalem, in Antioch — Antioch renamed Theopolis, the City of God, the home of Chrysostora, the golden-mouthed, and the place where the honored name of Christian first originated. It entered Ephesus, the magnificent city which once crowned the heiofhts of Mounts Prion and 7a Coressus, and where gay gardens once bloomed on the banks of the Cayster, and there a church was gathered, to which Paul addressed one of the most delightful of his Epistles. It flew to Thessalonica, that ancient Liverpool of the Levant, from which sounded out the Word of God through Macedonia and Achaia, the city of Theodosus and of Ambrose, and whose honorable title was " The Orthodox City." It captured Cor- inth, it called at Athens long enough to deliver to the Athe- nians a nobler oration than Demosthenes ever spoke from the bema. It came at last to Rome, and left its con- verts in Nero's household. The unconquerable will, the self-forgetting love, the sublime confidence in God, the hope of victory shining with clearest radiance where the darkness was deepest, the dauntless courage, which grew more invincible as danger thickened — these were the elements of the splendid successes of the Apostolic Age, and we must have the ancient faith if we would have the ancient conquests. There are no hopeless classes save those whom the Church pronounces hopeless. The difl&culty in evangelizing the great cities of the world lies ,in the difficulty of overcom- ing the apathy and heedlessness of the churches within them, a heedlessness which, in view of the perils which confront us, looks like recklessness, and reminds us of the old story of the vine dresser on the slopes of Vesuvius, or the careless life of the Paris saloii on the eve of the revolution of '92. So long as the efforts of the most fervid friends of the des- titute and degraded masses are chilled and benumbed by the indifference of the wealthy, refined and educated classes, com- paratively little will be accomplished. Our most urgent need at the present is a general awakening among our most influen- tial church members of a spirit akin to the fervor of the Crusades, without its fanaticism — the propulsion of public opinion kindled into sympathy with our aims and eager for cooperation. When this is gained, our plans for city evangelization be- come efficient. The incoming tides are resistless with the whole Atlantic behind them moving steadily toward the shore. Public sentiment, arrested, aroused and flowing in the right direction, will remove many of the hindrances which now im- pede and even antagonize the proposed work. Tliese reform- atory influences must come from without, some of them in the form of better laws against Sabbath desecration, more stringent laws against the liquor traffic, which bears its most deadly fruits among the very classes we are trying to save; wiser sanitary laws, and especially the substitution of decent dwellings for the huge and hideous tenements in which civili- 80 zation itself is impossible; and possibly amended immigration and naturalization laws for protection against those who come to this country without even rudimentary ideas either of the value or the meaning of constitutional government, and who confound republican liberty with immunity to criminals making immediate war upon domestic, social and public order, in a word, upon the institutions which lie at the foundation of all that we hold dear as citizens and Christians. In making these references I do not forget or underrate the fact that the Gospel is the world's true reformer. But these reforms are the results of that Gospel, and but for its in- fluence would have no existence. The Gospel is, indeed, the true reformer, but it does not follow that it can have no allies. Sunlight, pure air, uncontaminated water, wholesome food, abstinence from intoxicating drinks, protection against zymotic diseases, the suppression of licentious literature, of gambling- houses, of Sunday theatrical entertainments and of brothels, the efforts of scientific and philanthropic associations for the removal of the evils which brutalize the masses and make them a standing menace to civiHzation — all these, as Christian men, we may welcome, not as substitutes for the Gospel, but as mighty aids to those who preach it. Living in a world where the ear is pained with every day's report of the miseries which afflict humanity, and where in whatever direction we turn our eyes we see the diversified forms of suffering, for one, while I regard the Church as the noblest of all organizations, I am not jealous of the associations, orders and fraternities which have for their aim the extirpation of the wrongs which at once degrade and exasperate the populace, and I bless God for every agency consecrated to the uplifting, enlightenment and . advancement of the neglected, sorrow-laden millions of man- kind. But far beyond and above all this, am I thankful for that Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, and this brings me to the consideration of the more direct means of city evangelization by the preaching of that Gospel. It is admitted that our resources in numbers, talent, wealth, learning and piety are sufficient for the accom- plishment of the great undertaking if we could combine and direct them so intelligently that, without friction, or getting in each otlier's way, or bestowing too much labor on one part of the field while Another part is neglected, we could prosecute the work in a systematic and thorough manner until the whole is cultivated. Perhaps the most complete of all the plans sug- gested is that recommended by the General Christian Confer- ence, held in "Washington in December last. That plan con- templated the formation of local Evangelical Alliances in all 81 the cities, large and small, throughout the entire country. This is the plan of denominational cooperation. It proposes to district the whole territory to be occupied, the entire popu- lation of non-church-goers, as it was said, to constitute the "field," and each church the "force" to work it by the agency of supervisors or directors, and visitors making a systematic canvass, house by house, room by room, and presenting monthly reports of the discoveries made and of the work accomplished. Time alone can determine whether such deaominational cooperation will become the permanent policy of the Church in laboring for city evangelization. It proposes to hold all distinctive doctrinal views in the background, and, in preach- ing to the masses, to make the cross alone prominent. If this method does not receive the full approval of some who have strong convictions as to the manner in which the scheme of salvation should be unfolded, and who maintain that even those who propose to make Christ their only theme may hold such views of the atonement itself as to preach another Grospel. They therefore prefer the mode of separate church enterprise, discouraging all proselytism, never intruding on ground already occupied, and cherishing the kindest relations with other communions. Those who adopt the denominational plan of city evangeli- zation may gain much information by the study of the methods of those who have worked most successfully along that line. Take, for example, the labors of Dr. Chalmers, who, through his powerful influence, succeeded in building more church edi- fices in a few years than had been erected during the previous century in connection with the Establishment; or the case of the Free Church of Scotland, where 470 of the 600 churches needed were erected in a single year ;* or of the Established Church of England, in the city of London, during the last ten years; or of the Congregational Church, of Tolmer's Square; or of the Baptist Church, on Burdett Road, in the East End, in the neighborhood of which the discoveries were made de- tailed in " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," which so startled England and the world a few years ago ; or of the Mission of the Regent Square Presbyterian Church, with its admirably -conducted Aldenham Institute. But, whatever may be the different plans of city evangeli- zation, the essential thing is to make every one of them effi- cient by the untiring personal activity of the largest number that can be enlisted in the work. The most admirable or- ganization possible will not work itself. Our danger lies in * Dr. Taylor, of Xewark, N. J., in Presb. Alliance, 18S0. 82 standing by, indolently admiring the perfection of our ma- cMnery. If we, as Presbyterians, have not made the progress expected of us in evangelizing the masses, it has not been because of any defect in the theory or constitution of our Church, but in the men whose business it was to demonstrate the efficiency of our organization by making it the greatest power for good in the world. In the destitute districts of our cities I venture to suggest that we should combine two plans of operation — the establishment of a few large churches and the multiplication of small centres of evangelistic effort. There is a strange power in the sympathy and zeal engen- dered by the aggregation of numbers in a noble enterprise. The Church of Eugland has taken advantage of this prin- ciple in the use of its great cathedrals for popular services. This is notably true of St. Paul's Cathedral and of Westmins- ter Abbey. Once these stately edifices were the shrines of exclusive, aristocratic churchism, now they are thronged by the multitude, made up of all sorts and conditions of men, attracted by the most eloquent and learned divines of the English Establishment. If the best known, most honored min- isters of our great city churches would each select the most destitute locality known to him, inhabited by the most igno- rant and degraded of the population, and in the largest build- ing which could be secured for the purpose would commence an afternoon or a night service, results the most cheering would crown these labors of love. The inhabitants of these neglected localities would be conciliated by the spectacle of men constrained only by love for their souls engaged in these self-denying toils; and far more important than that, men who have proved their power by the capacity they have shown in the management of the great charges committed to them are the men best qualified to minister to those who differ from the heathen only in speaking the English lan- guage and in adopting the vices of civilization. And when under their ministrations souls are awakened and the cry, " What must I do to be saved? " is heard, then the experi- ence, the prudence and the sympathy of such pastors will find the noblest field of exercise. I know the objections that can be urged to such a course. I know how city pastors are already overburdened, how they are pressed beyond measure by exacting duties regularly re- curring and distracted by unexpected demands on their time ; but, brethren, we do not know how much work we can accomplish under the fresh incitement of new and promising avenues for usefulness opening immediately before us and beckoning on to successes surpassing any we have hitherto known. 83 If I, an humble minister in a small city, without presump- tion, might refer to mj own experience in mission work, I would say that for three years I have preached three times every Sabbath, the third service being held in what is called the Old Market Hall, the largest in Richmond, and situated in a densely populated neighborhood, singularly overlooked and in sore need of what the Gospel alone can supply. There I have a congregation limited only by the size of the building. It is an eager, expectant throng, the very sight of which is at once subduing and animating. If I am fatigued by the second service in my church in the afternoon, I am refreshed and in- vigorated by the third, held in the hall at night. At first my congregations were disorderly, many of them never having attended a religious service in their lives, but now they are as decorous as any of yours are on a Sacramen- tal Sabbath. We have connected with this mission a medi- cal infirmary, free of charge; a Bible class, a Sabbath -school, prayer meetings in private houses, a society, composed of the young ladies of my church, rendering help in every way in their power to girls hving in the vicinity of the hall, and every Thursday night a meeting for inquirers seeking the way of life; and the last one I attended was the most encouraging of all since I commenced my work in that part of the city. I number these three years among the most delightful of my life, and I can never be too grateful for the privilege of gathering such a multitude around me, so willing to be in- structed, and rewarding my interest in them by the most un- mistakable evidences of affection. In providing places for the gathering of the people in such localities, it will often be found that a public hall or large apartment in some building devoted to secular purposes, is more attractive than a church edifice. Mortifying though it be, it is a fact that many of those whom we wish to reach, regard churches as the retreats of a spiritual aristocracy. Ecclesiastical architecture has no charm in their eyes. The freedom of a hall into which they can enter unembarrassed, as open to them as a public square, where they can feel at ease in their working clothes — the only ones they have, it may be — and where there is no reminder of social inequalities, is some- thing they appreciate most decidedly, and forms a strong in- ducement to attend the religious services to which they have been invited. This must not be forgotten by those who seek to gather in the classes that have no pleasant associations with the House of God. That will come afterwards, if they can be inter ested in the first services, which they have been persuaded to attend. There is one department of worship which may be made 84 especially attractive to tlie multitude gathered at our mission stations. All of us have felt what Augustine experienced in listening to the commingled voices of the great congregation hfted up in praise, though we might not be able to express it as he has done. " How freely," says he, " was I made to weep by those hymns and spiritual songs, how transported by the voice of the congregation sweetly singing. The melody of their voices filled my ear, and divine truth was poured into my heart. Then burned the flame of devotion in my soul and gushing tears flowed from my eyes, as well they might." Such music goes down into the memory as dew sinks into the heart of a rose, giving refreshment and gaining sweetness. The hymns which never wear out, are those which are rich in evangelical truth, expressed in the language of true poetry, and yet for the masses hymns made up chiefly of chorus are often the most effective. There may be little connection between the hymn and the chorus, so far as the thought is concerned. It does not matter. The chorus may contain but a single truth. It is all the better for that. That one idea is worked into, sung into the mind and heart by repetition, and thus the chorus is more effective than the hymn. Take this for example : " There is life for a look at the Crucified One, There is life at this moment for thee." Or this : " O, depth of mercy ! can it be That gate was left ajar for me ?" All through the week such a refrain runs through the mem- ory; to the man on the scaffold of the house he is building, to the driver of the tram-car, to the woman bending over her needle, the words return : " O, depth of mercy ! can it be That gate was left ajar for me ? " Hymns of worship are to be preferred to didactic hymns, and yet one expression concerning the worth of the soul or the preciousness of the Saviour may awaken conviction or th e hope of pardon and lead that soul to Christ. A solo is out of place in congregational worship, and yet in this very city I saw hundreds in tears as Mr, Sankey sang one years ago in the Wanamaker building. Then, how with what care the preacher to such an audience must select his themes. How natural must be his manner, how patient, earnest, tender, must be his spirit, and if he hopes 85 to secure attention at all, liow simple must be his style, how full of illustrations drawn from common life, that his sermons may be intelligible from end to end. A minister once rose to address one of the most ignorant audiences ever gathered. His first sentence was this: "As in physics so in ethics like causes produce like effects!" Of course his hearers did not know even in what language he was speaking. How different would have been the introduction had Whitefield been the preacher, or Archibald Alexander, or Spurgeon, or any of God's chosen sons anointed to preach the Gospel to the poor aud to move the multitude as the trees of the wood shaken by mighty winds. The evangelization of our cities — the conquest of the whole country for Christ — in such a work and for such a consumma- tion our two Assemblies join hands and hearts to-day. Our two Assemblies : " They are not one, and j'et not two, But look alike, as sisters do." They have one Father, one glad mission, one great hope. Together they may join in Milton's adoring invocation : " Come out of Thy royal chambers, Prince of all the kings of the earth. Put on the visible robes of Thy majesty ; take up that unlimited sceptre which Thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed to Thee ; for now the voice of Thy bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed." PREACHING TO THE MASSES. By Rev. Samuel J. Niccolls, D.D., Sf. Louis, Mo. THEEE are two facts whicli give special importance to the consideration of this theme. The first is, that preach- ing is the chief instrumentality chosen by Christ for the extension of His -kingdom. The great commission given to the Church, under circumstances of peculiar solemnity by her Eedeemer and Lord, reads, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." God has established the min- istry of the Word, and it has pleased Him, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. So far as the edifica- tion of believers and the extension of the Church are con- cerned, it outranks in importance the holy sacraments. Paul evidently so rated it, for he says, in writing to the Corinthi- ans, " I thank God that I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gains ; for Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel." "Whenever the Church begins to attribute greater importance to the administration of the sacraments, or to ritual of any kind, than it does to the preaching of the Gospel, it is manifestly departing from the apostolic rule. The Gospel may, indeed, be helpfully presented to the eye. Asso- ciation quickens memory, and rites and ceremonies are sugges- tive ; but they are all inferior in power to the voice of the living, redeemed soul. Speech is the chief human agency chosen by God for the proclamation of His grace. Kobes and ritual, lights and crucifixes, processions and the laying on of hands, water, bread and wine are more than useless if they make the Church forget or underrate the great command, Qo •preach. 2. The second fact giving importance to my theme is, that the masses, the great multitudes, not only in heathen coun- tries, but also in our own land, are not directly under the in- fluence of Gospel preaching. We, as believers, have a right to be optimistic in our faith, not only because of the sure promises of our Lord with reference to the success of the Gos- pel, but also in view of what has already been accomplished. But it would be an act of folly to persuade ourselves that the 87 buildings in which the Gospel is statedly preached, hold, or are frequented by the masses of the people. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the non-church-goers are still largely in the majority. Reliable statistics show that in the country one- half of the population does not attend church, and in the lar- ger towns and cities the disproportion is even greater. We well know that the church-goers are in the minority, and also that the great body of those who compose what are called the working- classes, are absent from the house of God ; and this class is much the larger one in any community. Here, then, are two facts : Preaching is the great and di- vinely-appointed instrumentality for the evangelization of the world, and around us are the masses who will not come to hear it. The church bells ring, the doors are opened, the in- vitation has been sent abroad through the daily press ; but, for every one that enters the church door, two pass by. What is to be done ? The shortest reply is, " Go preach." Per- haps it is the best. Certainly, it is the divine and imperative command. But still the question reverts, " How is it to be done ?" This is the great practical question for lis as a Church and as ministers of the Word. Perhaps we tail because we are the slaves of system. We have been brought up to do our work in certain channels and insist on keeping within them. In the beautiful lakes of the Adirondacks there are two methods of fishing. One is called " buoy fishing." The plan is to select what is called a good location and anchor there a float, or buoy. Then choice bait is thrown out around the buoy, the object being to attract the fish and get them in the habit of coming to that locality to feed. Once, or perhaps twice, a day, at a stated time, the fisher comes in his boat, casts down his line and hook and waits for a bite. Sometimes, after patient waiting, he catches a few fish, and sometimes none. But each day through the season, morning and evening, he comes there, expecting the fish to come also. The other method is to take rod and line and bait and go out to find the fish in the pools or spring-holes, or feeding grounds, where they are wont to congregate, and then, with caution and skill, the fisher- man makes his cast and with excitement and joy gathers in his spoil, if so be he is successful in finding it. The first of these is the method which we, as fishers of men, have generally adopted. We select a good location and " bait it well ;" that is to say, we make it as attractive as possible, so as to induce men to come there. Then we do our preaching, and by pa- tience and watchfulness manage to secure some for Christ. In this method we expect men to find us. The other plan would lead us to go out and find men. It would send us into their homes and pla-ces of business in order to fish for souls. It 88 would set us to preacliing in the streets, in halls and theatres — in short, wherever Ave could find men. The genius of one method cries, "Come to church and hear the Gospel ;" the genius of the other says, " Go out and preach the Gospel to every creature and compel them to come in." "Which is the better method? An Adirondack fisherman would say, "We catch heavier weight and larger fish at the buoy, but more fish by going where they naturally congregate. We use both meth- ods." But souls do not count by weight or size. The soul of a "tramp" is just as precious in God's sight as the soul of a millionaire. The divine purpose in the preaching of the cross is not to secure what society calls its best, but to bring to every creature, high and low, rich and poor, the offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ. It is to tell the poor, the lost, the men whom the world despises, how great they may become through our Lord Jesus Christ. But, unhappily, we do not always " fish " in accordance with this principle. We, as fishers of men, like to catch " big fish." There is more joy in the ordinary church over one millionaire converted than over ninety-and-nine persons who are of no special account in the world. One thing is certain, there must be a higher ap- preciation of the value of the individuals who compose the masses before there can be the highest degree of success in preaching to them. I do not wish to be understood as de- crying or undervaluing the present method of preaching in buildings set apart for religious uses. I can imagine no greater calamity to a community than the closing of these places for public and stated worship. A deserted, unoccupied church building has something indescribably pathetic about it. It seems to stand like a weeping Jeremiah, uttering day and night its lamentations over the unbelief, indifference and carnality of the people who live around it. The material building is itself a preacher to the masses, whether men will hear or forbear to hear its constant though silent testimony. Instead of fewer church buildings we should have more, until they stand in every quarter, the visible monuments of the claims of God -upon the worship of men, and offering to all free instruction in the Gospel of Christ. But have we not, as teachers and preachers of the Gospel, confined our efforts too exclusively to one method? May we not in some cases have vexed our souls too long over a little company of self-indulgent saints whose real, though not openly avowed desire, was to build up a religious society of a certain social rank, instead of seeking men who were as ignorant of the Gospel as the Athenians to whom Paul preached on Mars' Hill. The anxiety of church officers as to what would be- come of their little local church if it should be closed occa- 89 sionally on Sunday evening, has hindered the pastor from en- gaging in missionary labors that might have resulted largely in the conversion of souls, through the preaching of the Word to those, who as yet will not come to the sanctuary, but who can be gathered together in other places. But whatever be the reasons, it is certain that our present method has resulted in securing the attendance of a class, instead of the masses, in our Protestant Churches. We find there a large number of what is known as the well-to-do class, but a correspondingly small portion of the humble and laboring class, and these con- stitute the masses of the people. This condition of affairs has been used by some as furnishing the evidence that the Church is lacking in power and aggressiveness, and as demonstrating that Protestants cannot be successful with the common people. Others triumphantly point to it, as a proof that Christianity itself is in its decay, and that it must be supplanted by a new rational religion. But neither of these inferences is true. Deplorable as the present condition is, it is not strictly correct to speak of it as the estrangement of the masses from the Church. Estrangement implies a previous relation of har- mony and friendship. There is undoubtedly among non- church-goers a large number of persons who have forsaken the ordinances of God's house. But those who wait regularly upon the ministrations of the Word, have never been in the majority. In certain localities the contrary may be true, but it is not so with reference to the country at large. This rela- tion of the masses to the Church is no new one, nor is it to be taken as an evidence that nothing has been done to reach them. The fact is, whether associated directly with the Church or not, they have been in certain directions most powerfully af- fected by the Gospel, and never more so than to-day. They are not as the masses of men in countries where it is not preached. That Gospel has uplifted them and set them to thinking. They are in possession of some of its great and quickening truths. They see, it may be as the half cured blind man, who saw men as trees walking, but still they see, " Upon them that sat in darkness a light has sinned." The divine leaven which Jesus brought and placed upon men is working. The Gospel ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man are affecting the world's labor as well as its wealth. The masses are no longer inert or slavishly submissive. They show a genius for organization, and organi- zation is the first manifestation of life. These are the days, not for the few, but for the people. Their hour has come. But all this makes the duty of preaching to the masses more urgent and important. Half truths in possession of the mul- titudes, awakening and exciting them, will make them all the 90 more dangerous and destructive in their movements. They produce fanaticism, strife, alienation and unrest. Those who see their fellows as " trees walking " are sure to act unwisely and disorderly. It is well for us to reflect that many of the so-called perils that threaten not only our civilization, but the Church, come from the aroused and half-Christianized masses. The Gospel has brought them political freedom. It has made them conscious of their rights and power. We have awakened the sleeping giant, and what shall we do ? Teach him, or let him in his fury and blindness destroy us ? In the political world we have committed ourselves to universal suffrage, and it is too late to retrace our steps. We must go through with what we have undertaken, or perish. So alsoinspiritual mat- ters; by means of education, which we have demanded for all, we have cut the fetters of ignorance which held the masses in bondage to ecclesiastical despotism. In the name of Christ we have let in the light, and the world is astir as never before. What noise and tumult! What ferment and unrest! It is too late to undo our work ; we must go on. But there is no use in standing pani c-stricken at the result. We have a power at hand which can bring order out of confusion. The remedy for what the Gospel has done is just this, more Gospel. The critical character of the hour demands that it should be preached with renewed earnestness and faithfulness in all its fullness. If this is done, in some way we shall yet reach the millennium ; if not, our darkest days are before us. The work then is urgent, but how shall it be done? What is the true ideal of preaching to the masses? Our ideals shape our conduct and striving, and perhaps we are trammeled or misled by some false ones. Is not the common conception of this work that which has its realization in some popular preacher who gathers round him an immense audience in his huge tabernacle ? Spurgeon, Talmage and Moody preach to the masses, and we must try to do as they do, or the ideal will not be realized. The minister who crowds his church is preaching to the masses, but the one who has the pews only half full does not! That is to say, the man who preaches to three hundred souls has just reason to condemn himself as a class preacher, but when his audience reaches a thousand, he can pat himself on the head and say, " Now I am preaching to the masses." If God had made all ministers Whitfields and Spurgeons, and intended that they should be exactly like them in the exercise of their gifts, it would be well to keep this ideal in mind. But somehow the Luthers, the Whitfields and Spurgeons are not very plentiful. One or two in a cen- tury are all that appear. And it does seem as if the world's greatest need was not a few illustrious preachers attracting 91 crowds by the splendor of their gifts, but rather a multitude of common ones doing their work, according to their several ability, in all faithfulness and earnestness. All honor to the gifted men who preach the Gospel of the grace of God to the thousands who gather to hear them. I would not be under- stood as in any way depreciating the greatness of their work. But there is danger of limiting our ideals of preaching to the masses to this method. Have we not a more complete pat- tern in one, Paul, who preached in Ephesus with no small degree of success to the masses. He whites concerning his method of labor, "Ye know after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, and have taught you publicly and from house to house." The minister who rates the import- ance of preaching the Gospel simply by the size of his audience is using a false standard of valuation. Vast audiences may minister to a preacher's vanity, and numbers lead us to dis- credit the no less important work that is done in an humble and unobtrusive way. The pastor who faithfully and pa- tiently instructs a comparatively small church, so that its members abound in good works, may be doing more efficient work in preaching to the masses than the popular preacher whose ministrations attract the crowd, Paul wrote concern- ing the little church of the Thessalonians, " From you sounded out the Word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God ward is spread abroad ; so that we need not to speak anything." That was effective preaching to the masses, and it seems to me it is the kind we specially need in these days, for they are to be reached, not so much directly through the ministry as through the whole Church. The notion widely prevalent is that we need popular preachers and monster meetings to move the masses. Yet men are not converted as masses, but as individuals, and God does not mean to give all the glory of establishing His kingdom to a few individuals more gifted than their brethren. We like heroes and leaders and great men ; they have their uses. But if this is not a world for the average man, a great many of us have no reason to remain in it or to continue our work. Instead of trying to multiply the audience for one preacher, we had better try to multiply the preachers. Set more men to work to reach the masses with the Gospel. Many little nets will catch more fish than one or two great ones. The recorded ministry of Jesus and his apostles gives us full instruc- tion on this point. They had the masses to reach, and we know how they did it. When the opportunity presented itself, Jesus preached to the multitude and the common people heard him gladly ! But some of his most successful preach- ing, and far-reaching in its results, was done to an audience of 92 one, Andrew did good work for the masses when he found Peter and told him about Jesus. The Holj Spirit records how PhiHp stirred the city of Samaria by his preaching. But side by side with that account he records at greater length how Philip preached Jesus to one man, the Ethiopian eunuch. Let us remember that the Gospel comes as a personal message. It is addressed not to great masses, but to " every creature." It individualizes men, and that method which most clearly recognizes this fact will be the one best adapted to preaching the Gospel to the masses. Until the minister knows how to appeal to one man in behalf of the Gospel he will not know how to preach to the crowd. Indeed, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as preaching His Gospel to the masses. It must mean masses or collections of individuals, or the "work is vain. 1. In considering the various means by which this preach- ing is to be accomplished, we must place, first and foremost, the ordained ministry. This is of God's appointment. His adaptation of means to an end, and it must not be set aside or supplanted by other instrumentalities. The power of conse- crated men, specially called and trained to preach the Gospel, is abundantly illustrated in the past. Christ used it, and the triumphs of the Church proclaim its efficiency. We need for this grand ministry, not weaklings, but men of power; not ignorant men, but men of brain and culture, and at the same time, men of true genuine manhood in thorough sympathy with their fellows. Above all, we must have preachers who know the Gospel thoroughly, through their own experience; who believe in it because it has saved them, and who for this reason can preach it with the accent of conviction. A culti- vated and intelligent ministry is the one that the Church needs to-day for the best and most efficient prosecution of its evan- gelism. There is such a thing as the ministry for the times, and it must respect the demands of the hour, not in the base sense of catering to the pleasures of men, and conforming to the craze of the day, but in the noble sense of speaking through the advancing thought and growing culture of men, to their deepest needs. The average of intelligence among the people is higher now than it was a century ago. Our system of common schools and the omnipresent press have educated the masses to think for themselves. No parrot-like utterances of traditionalism, or decrees of Church authority, or frothy exhortations will meet their needs. In one view the ministry must be the same through all ages. It has the same changeless Gospel to preach, the same deep and changeless needs of lost and guilty men to keep in view, the same results to effect, and the same instrumentalities by which to accom- 93 plish them. The minister of to-daj must preach as Paul and Chrysostom and Augustine and Luther and Knox and Wes- ley did. And yet not the same. He must preach in view of the present condition of the masses, and the changes which free inquiry and enlarged knowledge have brought. Certain it is, that in view of the ever-rising standard of culture among the people, our American Church has far more reason to be anxious about the increase of educated and properly trained men for the ministry, than for the relaxation of her standard of edu- cation in order to ordain men of inferior culture. True, there is an urgent demand for more men, but the efficient remedy is not in hastily sending out unskilled, half-educated laborers, but in united prayer on the part of the Church to the Lord of the harvest for more laborers, and in consecrating to the work of the ministry, the best talent in the Church. Mr. Gladstone has well said, " That no Church can stand whose priests and ministers do not possess the highest respect of the people." And it seems to me that American Presbyterianism, having steadily and at no small sacrifice, maintained its position in demanding an educated ministry, and made ample jDrovision for securing it, is now at the opening of a new century in its history, specially prepared to take an advanced position in the work of evangelism. But it needs, as the word of command for its advance, the baptism of the Spirit by which all it has of culture and wealth shall be consecrated to this great work. 2. We need also to enlarge the recognized and official work- ing force of the Church. More men and women must be engaged in this work of preaching to the masses in various ways, if they are to be efficiently reached during the present generation. One who has carefully studied this question, says, " The greatest of our troubles is, that there is far too lit- tle whole-hearted, thorough-going, thoughtful endeavor put forth for the salvation of the poorer classes." We must have a more complete and systematic organization of the working power of the Church, if we would meet the demands of the hour. The truth is that, in this respect, we are using the methods of a century ago. The pastor, with, perhaps, a sal- aried assistant, and such voluntary services as he can com- mand, constitute the organized aggressive force with which the conquest of the masses is to be attempted. At the best, only a small minority of the Church is at work in this direc- tion. In addition to what is being done by voluntary agen- cies, we need Bible readers, teachers, visitors, and missionaries, who shall be officially employed and recognized by the Church. There ought to be a more discriminating recognition of the diversity of gifts which the Holy Spirit has bestowed 94 upon the Church, so that all might have their appropriate exercise and proper growth. 3. We must aim to get into closer sympathy with the poor and the working classes. As a Church we stand too remote from them. The natural tendency of culture and wealth is to isolation and exclusiveness, and a Church abounding in them will be sure to drift away from the masses, unless it is mightily filled with the Spirit of Christ. Eight or wrong, the belief is widely prevalent that the Church as now organ- ized is more in sympathy with the rich than with the poor. We certainly cannot afford to have this impression prevail, for it is not only a most serious hindrance to our work, but it is dishonoring to us as the followers of Christ. The impres- sion made by His ministry was that He was the special friend and benefactor of the poor. " The common people heard Him gladly." It is only by a spirit of love, sympathy, self- sacrifice and self-denial kindred to His that we can ever reach the people. Perhaps some of the preaching needed in these days in order to influence the masses in the end would be that directed against the spirit of pride, worldliness and exclusive- ness which can be found in not a few churches. At any rate, in solving this great problem, it becomes us who belong to the Church to have our own hands clean and to see that nothing remains in our midst which would justify the alienation of the masses. 4. Finally, besides all well- chosen instrumentalities, and vastly more important than they, we need for this work a re- vival of faith. By this I mean such an increase in the faith of the Church as will bring to it a clear, positive and all- mastering conviction of the supreme importance and the saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A profounder faith must lie at the foundation of increased activity and aggressiveness. We need to feel that we can and ought to reach the masses with the Gospel. We ought to do it for Christ's sake, we must do it for their safety and our own. We read concerning the early disciples that when scattered abroad by persecution " they went everywhere preaching the Word." With a like spirit pervading the Church the prob- lem of reaching the masses would soon be solved. All this implies the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, His working mightily on the Church. It is a most significant fact, full of instruction for the present hour, that all the great movements by which the Gospel has been effectively preached to the masses have originated in fresh effusions of the Holy Spirit. More, then, than anything else do we need this ministry of the Divine Spirit in increasing power. Without it, ministers, teachers, school-books and tracts are all useless. We do well 95 to use books and tracts, to employ teachers and missionaries and to send forth faithful ministers, but above all we must be able to say, with the Church repeating its testimony through the ages, "I believe in the Holy Spirit." We can never see a subject like this in its true light, unless we see it as it appears to Jesus Christ. Listen, then, to these words, so simple, and yet so clear and comprehensive in their instruction : " And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scat- tered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that He will send, forth laborers into His harvest." These golden words contain the solution of the problem, "How are we to reach the masses with the Gospel ?" HOME MISSIONS. By Rev. Geo. P. Hays, D.D., LL.D. Cincinnati, Ohio. THE home mission field of the American Presbyterian Church is a chosen sphere of providential prepara- tion for prophetic purpose. Its shores are washed by the two great commercial oceans. Its land is bisected by the Mississippi Valley and trisected by the Allegheny and the Eocky mountains. With a diversity of eleva- tion from the sea level to three thousand feet above timber line, and with a climatic range from the tropical to the high latitudes of Northern Maine, Montaifa and Alaska; it fur- nishes fit surroundings for every plant that is good for food, or shade or beauty — for every animal that is useful for pleasure or for labor, and for every taste and want of man. Its inter- locked web of railroad and of telegraph makes each inhabi- tant the next-door neighbor of every other. The people of this land understand one language, enjoy one system of laws, are protected by one government, love one flag, centre their hopes in a common future and believe in a common Chris- tianity. Insignificant minorities may here and there dissent from either of these, but in view of their diverse origins this is a wonderfully homogeneous people. Without going into minute details let us endeavor to grasp the leading groups of its 60,000,000 of inhabitants. If we can correctly comprehend the character and tendencies of the present 60,000,000, we can without much uncertainty deter- mine what will be the character of the hundreds of millions which will be its population in the near future. As to races, about 2,000,000 are native Indians or Mexicans; 8,000,000 are colored people of the South; 10,000,000 are foreigners not yet Americanized, and the other 40,000,000, though many are foreign born or born of foreign parents, are English-thinking Americans. As to the ages of these 60,000,000, one- third are children under fifteen years of age, and two-thirds or 40.000,000 are adults. If we turn now from race and age to the religious character- istics of these people, recent statistics will show that 12,000,000 97 are professing Christians of the various evangelical denomina- tions. We may count about 4,000,000 more of their total 7,000,000 as the earnest adults of the Eomish Church, making a total of about 16,000,000 or more than one-third of the adult population of 40,000,000 in this country in direct, avoAs^ed and intentional union with some branch of the Chris- tian Church. I do not call the Romanism of this country identical with the Romanism of lands where the Pope has un- disputed sway. I should by no means rate them along with Protestants, but in this land of free Bibles, free schools, unlimited travel, complicated business relations and abundant newspapers, no Romanist can so escape the knowledge of the distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism as to evade the responsibility of his own position. But even omitting the Romanists from the account, if the Protestant-profess- ing Christians of this land were equally distributed among the whole population, each Christian would only have four per- sons (and two of them children) for whose information as to the Gospel he would be responsible. By the best available statistics (those of Dr. Dorchester) there is now a Protestant minister for every 692 of our popu- lation, and a church for every 518 of that same population. It is thus perfectly obvious that unity and energy, blessed by the spirit of God, is amply adequate to hold and mould this nation for God and His Bible. This hopeful prospect is greatly brightened by the recollec- tion of the rapidity with which through the last one hundred years Christianity has been gaining control in this land. "When, one hundred years ago, the General Synod dissolved itself and left the General Assembly the Supreme Court of our Church, the best information would only give 1500 ministers then to more than 60,000 Protestant ministers now, and 2000 churches then to 120,000 Protestant churches now. In 1880 the com- municants were only one in every fourteen of the inhabitants. By 1886 there was more than one communicant to every five inhabitants. From 1850 to 1886 the population increased 152 per cent ; while the communicants have increased 243 per cent. It has come now to this, that there are about as many minis- ters in this country as there are "saloon-keepers and bar- tenders;" the census of 1880 reporting 64,698 "clergymen," and 68,461 " saloon-keepers and bar-tenders." The record of our Church in this growth is a noble one. One hundred years ago the General Synod represented but a small number of ministers, churches and church members. The revolutionary war was not so exclusively political or financial as it is often represented. Along with the sentiment that resisted " taxation without representation," there was also 98 a sentiment that Presbyterian freedom in this land was in grievous danger from the intolerance of prelacy. The church- men were generally Tories ; the Presbyterians and the Congre- gationalists were mostly patriots. Dr. John "Witherspoon in the Continental Congress and his signature to the Declaration of Independence was a just symbol of the attitude of the denomination w^hich appointed him to preach the opening ser- mon of its first General Assembly. The nation tried the "independent" method of government by the articles of con- federation. Those articles made the general government a national council, with liberty to advise anything and power to enforce nothing. The new Constitution of Madison, JeiJer- son and Hamilton, which was adopted by the States in that memorable year, 1788, was simply the representative repub- licanism of Presbyterian Church government applied to the nation. Presbyterians of that day little comprehended how rapid their growth would be when the call of the battle-field would give place to the call of the mission-field, and, relieved of the distractions of a disorganized and inefficient govern- ment, they should be allowed to take up their Church work in quiet and in peace, under the stable rule of delegated authority. In these figures I now give I count in, not only the numbers of the bodies here assembled to-day, but the numbers of that earnest and evangelical body, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. That Church maintains its Presbyterian form of gov- ernment and recognizes itself as an offshoot of that denomina- tion which organized the General Assembly in 1788. Here is one century's work. The 177 ministers and 431 churches and 18,000 communicants of 1788, have grown to 8333 ministers, 11,212 churches and 1,007,311 communicants now. It is often said that Calvinistic theology destroys all efficient motives to good works. The Home Mission history of our Church in this land is an extremely practical reply. What- ever religion will convert the pocketbooks of its church mem- bers has given the very best proof of the thoroughness of its regenerating work. The two bodies represented here had last year 847,165 members, and gave, from 1881 to 1887, $4;865,330 for home missions. There are other bodies, with two- and- a- half times as many members, and none gave within a million dollars as much for Home Missions in the same time. So when measured by this test of religious charity and aggressive evangehsm, orthodox religion stands in sharp con- trast both with scientific skepticism and the so-called " liberal Christianity." Prof. Yeomans, the ablest scientific skeptic of this land of his day, was keenly alive to this proof of the power of Bible religion. He said, " While there are $54,000,000 invested in churches in Kew York City, if there is a scientific society in New York that owns a roof or a shelter I do not know of it. Religious people everywhere are pouring out their money in behalf of all manner of religious enterprises in quantities that are without precedent, and that we take it as very solid proof in this money-grabbing age of the reality of their faith and the intensity of their enthusiasm." So Uni- tarians and Universalists and those odds and ends of ministers and churches, that claim the curious name of "liberals" in religion, set themselves forward as having a monopoly of " advanced religious thought." The peculiar character of their advancement is singularly illustrated in their movement as to number of churches as compared with the number of evangelical churches from 1850 to 1886. In 1850 the evan- gelical churches numbered about 40,000 congregations, and those of these so-called liberal Christians numbered about 1300. In 1886 the evangelical churches had increased to over 120,000 congregations and the liberal congregations were twenty-six less than they were in 1850. Their adoption of the name "liberal" Christians is a curious illustration of how a people can select, as the descriptive adjective in their name, the one conspicuous adjective that gathers in itself the bit- terest irony in the light of their conduct. If " liberal Chris- tianity " has an organization for either Home or Foreign Mis- sions, its officers are unknown to the public; but evangelical Christianity has during the current century contributed quite $100,000,000 for Home Missions alone, not to say anything of $75,000,000 more contributed to Foreign Missions. The patrons of liberal Christianity and advanced thought, to save their money in the way of establishing educational institutions, began the century by stealing Harvard University, and are closing the century by stealing Andover Seminary. The Presbyterian denominations here represented have always been in the very forefront in Home Mission effort. Eecord of earnestness is found in the earliest minutes that are extant of the first Presbytery, for in 1707 it is enjoined that "every minister of the Presbytery supply neighboring desolate places." The subject was before the First General Assembly, for it called on the Synods to recommend suitable missionaries, and the next Assembly, in 1790, appointed Nathan Ker and Joshua Hart as missionaries to labor for three months for $100 each. So it went on growing till 1802, when a "stand- ing committee" was appointed. It has now reached magnifi- cent proportions, in work for Home ^fissions, Freedmen, Evangelistic work, Sabbath-school and Publication, Church Erection, etc. Last year, to the various organizations engaged in one or other' form of Home Missionary work, our 845,167 100 members gave $1,052,944 in money, or an amount equal to $1.24^ per member, and tbis too wben tbe amount given per member bj evangelical Christians to Home Missions is an average of only thirty-tbree cents per member. But it will be said tbat the explanation of all this is found in the failure of the Presbyterian Church in its Home Mission work to preach the Gospel to the ignorant and the poor. Such a statement, however, entirely overlooks the real difiiculty the Presbyterian Church meets in preaching to the ignorant and the poor. The real difficulty is that the ignorant do not stay ignorant under such preaching, and the poor when converted and educated will not stay poor. Calvinism is a coherent sys- tem of logical doctrine and is developed by rational and con- sistent study of the word of God as God's word. Every sermon is an education. All its thought tends to vigorous intellectual development. The study of the Shorter Catechism is a first- class mental gymnastic. Suck preaching, such books and such newspapers, together with the persistent study of God's word in the Sabbath -school and in the home will thor- oughly cure the ignorance of those that are under such influ- ences. So in the cities and in the country the Gospel is preached throughout the poorer districts by Presbyterian missionaries, Sunday-school workers and godly men and women. If now the converts of these regions would stay poor, we would get credit for what we are doing. But the theology which re- quires of converts that they should persevere in religious con- duct, whether man sees them or not, and solely from the motive of heartfelt love to a Redeemer, makes young men and women worth more in the commercial market on account of their integrity. It makes them energetic, economical and thrifty. As a result in every large city and, to no small ex- tent, also in the rural districts, there is a steady stream flowdng from these sections where the Gospel is preached to the poor, to those districts where those have settled who have accumu- lated property. What is needed is simply that those who owe wealth and intelligence to Presbyteria:?. inspiration and cul- ture should not forget the " rock whence they were hewn, nor the hole of the pit whence tk:;/ were digged," but in their prosperity stand by with their bounty the churches and mis- sions where they first were found by the Saviour. If from this survey of the past any should inquire as to the forces to be relied on for the future, j^cist victories are an ar)iple ansiver. Now the tide is all in our favor. One hundred years ago French sympathy in the revolution made atheism popular, and this century opened with a sharp struggle l^etween skepti- cism and formalism on the one side and Home Mission revivals 101 on the other. The future probably has not for American Christianity another conflict under such disadvantages. In this connection it is important not to overlook two collateral forces which have substantially come into being within the last century, and are sure to play a conspicuous part in the next. Both will be either allies or enemies of the Church, and will be affected by the Church and powerfully influence the work of the Church. The first of these is the American free school. Puritans and Presbyterians one hundred years ago planted the school beside the Church ; and out of this determination of their people to educate their children grew that unique thing, the American Public School System. Of course, it is not now all that it should be. Justifying its taxation of the childless rich on the plea that it proposes to make the children of this gen- eration good citizens in the next, it yet with ludicrous incon- sistency for want of compulsory attendance leaves the children of the dangerous classes to grow up without education. And to keep up the consistency of its inconsistency, while admitting that mere secular knowledge without morality only makes criminals more skillful, the American free school sets itself up as worthy of support by taxation, because it teaches morality while excluding from its text-books that only standard oi American morals, the Christian Bible. That Bible ought to be put back into these schools. But, without being blind to these defects, it must not be forgotten that the 250,000 teachers of this land are as a mass people whose oral instructions and whose lives enforce genuine Christian morals. They may not formally teach the Bible, but we ought to be profoundly thankful that to so large an extent they live it and assume its truth. Neither in the large cities nor in the most secluded backwoods district is it possible for teachers of known corrupt life and character to maintain their position. The licentious, the profane and the vulgar are by public opinion absolutely excluded from this work of training the children. As a result the Church is relieved from the expense of a large part of this educational work, and in its religious labors starts far in ad- vance of what it otherwise could do. These 250,000 American school-teachers are efficient allies in the maintenance of virtue and the establishment of the truth, and ought to have our incessant prayers. In 1800 there were not more than 200 secular newspapers in this country, and not a single religious newspaper till sixteen years later. At present this is the land of great dailies, multi- tudinous weeklies, diversified monthly magazines and ponder- ous quarterlies. Undoubtedly the secular press of this country is very far from what it ought to be. By its Sunday editions 102 and its superabundance of sensational, blood-curdling accounts of crime it is responsible for a great deal of vice. On the other hand, however, it must not be forgotten that, though newspapers may differ as to the actual character of public men and institutions, they do not seriously differ in their standard of morality. Lying, fraud, dishonesty, profanity, licentious- ness and all such evils are almost universally denounced and exposed. Not a few of these papers may indirectly undermine public morals, but probably none of them will avow such a purpose. Thousands of them, especially of the weekly papers, are edited by men of the purest character and the deepest religious principle. We cannot easily overrate their value as conservators of public morals and antagonists of covert crime. They efficiently promote every genuine public charity and philanthropic movement, and even their criticisms of ministers and denominations, though oftentimes unjust and severe, are not specially unhealthy. He does well who uses his influence for the purification of this press and uses the press as an organ for the promulgation of philanthropy and religion. If the press was prayed for as much as it is denounced, it would prob- ably be improved. With this century along side of this secular press have grown up the religious weeklies of this country. It is capable of demonstration by figures, that the religious press is growing in its circulation more rapidly in proportion than is the secu- lar. That growing circulation is proof of the increasing relig- ious character of our people and of the tremendous power Christianity wields through that same religious press. He has a large congregation who as a preacher is heard by two thou- sand people per week. That is an utterly insignificant news- paper which is not read by twice that number. When, there- fore, we are considering our resources for that century on which we this day enter, let us enroll on the very forefront of our efficient agencies the religious papers published in the interests of the denominations here represented. In all that has been thus far said, no word has been uttered that was intended to disparage the importance of our sister evangelical denominations in the Christianizing of this Amer- ican Home Mission field. These sister denominations are our allies, our friends and loyal soldiers under the common Cap- tain of our salvation . We greet them well to-day. We rej oice in their success and call them to rejoice in ours. United Protestantism is doing a workingman's day's work every day in these United States. " Each hour for ten hours of every day a new congregation is gathered and a new pastor ascends a new pulpit to speak for God and humanity, for temperance and for law, and above all and beyond all to call sinners to 103 repent and believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls." In view, therefore, of what we are doing, the question as to what is wanted for the future has but one answer. The future calls for simply the intensifyitvj of the aggressiveness of the past. We want no new Gospel and no merely sensational machinery as a substitute for " the old story of the cross" and the divinely appointed messengers and means of grace. These have shown ample flexibility in adapting themselves to every new device of Satan and every new form of work. The terri- tory of this land is covered with Presbyteries made up of ministers and churches thoroughly alive to the needs of the age and with keen eyes to see and seize each point of strategic importance. The men whom God by the voice of Ilis Church has called to organize and push this Home Mission work in our denominations are of the Bismarck style of ability in adminis- tration, and of the Von Moltke type of generalship in the field, and thoroughly loyal to their heavenly King. We occasionally hear charges of needless competition in small fields as between the denominations here met together, but remem- bering that we are all human the extreme rarity of these charges is proof positive that they are mainly groundless. The whole ministry and membership of both Churches are on the eager watch against any needless waste of funds. If there was anything in the charge the clamor would be persistent. When a whole forest is thronged with hunters aod only at very rare intervals a chance-shot is heard and then no wild meat is bagged, you may be sure that game is scarce in those woods. Men who have hard work to raise money are sure not to waste it on needless territory. Brethren, v»'e are able to fur- nish the cities, towns and sparse districts in this land abun- dantly with the preaching of the Gospel, and so long as no large population is neglected let us not be mean toward small towns. To do that work completely but three things are needed, the Holy Ghost, the living men and the means to send them. The only place where there is danger of lack of zeal is in the matter of pocketbook and bank account j)icty. The providential indications are most assuring that this too is coming. Wealth is rapidly learning that city missionaries are a better protection than policemen, and that the converted are neither anarchists nor communists. If for no other reason, self-preservation is compelling mission work in cities and in rural districts. On every side the rising tide of benevolence proves that pentecostal liberality was only the prophecy of its culmination in this passing dispensation of the Uoly Sj^irit. I believe that the present spirit of the Church within and the present providence of God without justifies the confidence that 104 the benevolence of the past in this land shall be outshone in the triumphs of the future, and that the Church of God will really take and possess this land. The men and women for the work as missionaries and teachers have always been on hand in larger supply than the fecretaries were able to send. In the name of the young men and womenofour Presbyterian Church, I protest against every insinuation that the missionary spirit of self-sacrifice and that crusade spirit of chivalry which covets opportunities to bear hardship for the Master are wanting among them. You have but to let them know that means for a living support are provided and you can go through the col- leges and female seminaries of our Church, and the summons of your slogan will bring after you in trooping crowds the brightest, the best and the strongest of our sons and daughters anxious for this work for the glory of God. The one supreme need of the Church is, however, that promised gift of God's Holy Ghost. To give that is in His plan and promise. In geologic ages He built this continent. In time's fullness He filled it with His Church. He will not let His purpose fail for lack of " power from on high " on that Church in this work. And more — His purpose for this land ends not in this land. He made the American Church what it is for that large work it can do, and has to do in obedience to Him, in the conversion of the other lands of the earth from the darkness of heathenism to the noonday of the Gospel. Eight gladly, therefore, do I resign this platform to my brother, who will lay before you that plea in the name of God for the nations of the earth. FOREIGN MISSIONS. By Rev. Matthew Hale Houston, D.D., Baltimore, Md. THE honored brother who has so kindly presented my name before you has in fitting terms introduced to us the great work of Foreign Missions as the culmination of the work at home. It is indeed the glory of the home Church that the grace of God received in any part of her borders speedily flows out with blessing to the very ends of the earth. Men see, as they never saw before, that the riches of gladness and peace, placed in their hands by their glorious King, the as- cended Redeemer, constitute them by His command debtors to those who are the poorest of the poor on the earth — those who have never heard His name, and from north and south, from east and west, are seen the feet of those who hasten for- ward bearing the priceless treasure that the debt may be dis- charged. As the gift of God's grace at home carries with it grace to distant lands, so every awakening to life and hope in those regions where only the shadow of death has reigned sends hither ward a blessing to us. The thrill of a new spirit- ual creation on the Congo, in Tokio, in Madagascar, in Fiji, is passed round the globe, as an electric flash, for the increase of our faith and joy. The scenes that we have witnessed to-day spring from the influence thus borne back to ue from the foreign work. In the fields beyond the sea the divisions of the great Presby- terian army first saw clearly that their work for Christ is one. Confronting the broad entrenchments of heathendom the videttes thrown out from these sacramental hosts first learned to march shoulder to shoulder — the laborers began to work hand to hand. We turn our eyes to Japan. We see there missionaries of the Northern Presbyterian Church, mission- aries of the Southern Presbyterian Church, missionaries of the two Reformed Churches of this country, and missionaries of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland sitting to- gether in the same Presbyteries and coming together in the 105 106 same General Assembly, all coalescing witli seven thousand Japanese Presbyterians to form the United Church of Christ in Japan. As our noble congregation, brethren, view the de- lightful affihation, as they say in their hearts, " Behold how good and how pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity," they can scarcely resist the gentle invitation to come and cast in their lot with our men, thus putting into one com- pact organization more than one-half of all the Protestant Christians of Japan. When this has been done, when the walls of spiritual truth now rising in that bright laud have been thus buttressed and cemented, what chance will there be over there for fine-spun and noxious theories of a probation after death ? Going further east, we see all the Presbyterians in China arranging to imite under one General Assembly, so that there shall be in that vast empire but one Presbyterian Church. Then, from where we now stand, turning south- ward we see the same unification taking place in Brazil, and the General Assembly which met in St. Louis last year passed a resolution approving of its missionaries in that field, com- bining with the missionaries under the care of the General Assembly then in session in Omaha to form with the native Christians one Brazilian Presbyterian Church. It is these lights flashing back to us from far-off shores which have re- vealed distinctly the truth that our work is one. Whether there shall be in this land of ours two Assemblies, or whether there shall be a single Assembly, we need only fix our gaze on the broad enterprise among all kindreds and tongues and tribes, and we see that in heart, in hope, in endeavor there is among us a true, an indissoluble union. Would we strengthen, would we knit closer these bonds of union? Then, as we clasp hands here to-night in token of the unity of the Spirits, let the full outpouring of every desire, let the high purpose of every soul be — the whole world for Christ. To each of the two Churches whose representatives are gath- ered here, it has been given as a crown and chief glory to take a full part in this work. As we learn that before the august Assembly holding its sessions in this city report is made, that the gifts cast into the treasury of this cause during the past year amount to more than $900,000 — exceeding those of any other Church or society in this land for the same work — our hearts rejoice ; and as we see the missionaries under the care of this Assembly in many lauds — in China, Japan, Corea, Siam, Laos, India, Persia, Syria, Africa, South America, Mexico, Papal Europe, and among the Indian tribes of our own land — 504 men and women, joined with 1014 native preachers and teachers, making known the unsearchable riches of Christ in many tongues, we bless God for the abundant 107 grace thus bestowed. Well may this Assembly say, in a sense higher than was ever dreamed of by the Trojan hero, " Quse regio in terris nostri non "plena lahorisJ^ In the Church South, from the day on which she first took up her independent task, Foreign Missions have been recog- nized as the imperial cause. When in that day she found her- self girt about as with a wall of fire, when no missionary had it in his power to go forth from her bosom to the regions be- yond, the first General Assembly put on record the solemn declaration that, as this Church now unfurled her banner to the world, she desired distinctly and deliberately to inscribe on it, " In immediate connection with the Headship of her Lord, His last command, ' Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,' regarding this as the great end of her organization, and obedience to it as the indispensable condition of her Lord's promised presence." And when the way was opened she sent forth her sons and daughters, who have gone to China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, the United States of Colombia, Italy, Greece, European Turkey, as well as to the tribes in our own Indian territory. She has now sixty-six missionaries in the field, who are associated with native helpers. The receipts of her treasury for this cause have, during the last two years, advanced more than twenty per cent, amount- ing now to $88,000. The declaration made by the First As- 'sembly has remained the controlling sentiment of the Church. We love our own land. Our heart's desire and prayer to God for our own people is that they might be saved. Yet, we be- lieve that we can only have power to save our own people when Christ abides in us ; and if Christ be in us, we must have it as our chief endeavor that all men be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth. In carrying on this work it is of the first importance that we guard and conserve its simplicity, wherein lies its power. Every adjunct which is embarrassing because it is unessen- tial must be cut away. The civilization — the social forms and usages — of lands that are called Christian, can form no part of the Gospel which is to be propagated. On the contrary, it is now coming to be clearly recognized that the attempt to shape converts from heathendom on the model of our Western life — what has been termed the " Europeanizatiou of the Asiatic " — has been a serious drawback, an obstacle to success. The man who wins in the mission field is not the English- man who goes there " carrying all England on his back ;" not the American who holds up the type of life seen in the United States as a model for all men. He obtains the prize who becomes an Asiatic that he may gain the Asiatics; who becomes an African that he may gain the Africans; who 108 « makes himself all things to all men that he may bj all means save some ; who, when Christ is formed in the heathen, the hope of glory, allows that life of Christ freely to develop according to the environment in which it is placed. And just so recognition must be made of the fact that it is no part of this work to extend our modern educational systems. In the whole New Testament record of missionary methods and achievements, there is not a word about schools as a mission- ary agency. The greatest of all missionaries declared, that Christ had sent him to preach the Gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect ; and he determined to know nothing among the heathen save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We might plant our colleges in all the cities of every idolatrous land ; we might gather into them thousands and tens of thousands of heathen youth ; we might teach mathematics, astronomy, geography, political economy — all that modern educational culture demands — and when we had done all, what would have been accomplished? There are hundreds of men in India to-day who know all these things, and yet join in the bloody sacrifices of Kali, and worship the sacred cow. There are thousands of men in that land and in other lands who have all this learning, and yet drift helpless on the dark sea of rationalism and infidelity. Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ? The missionary of to-day must go forth, just as Paul went forth, knowing surely that no man can even approach the gates of true knowledge until he has learned of Jesus Christ and Him crucified ; that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis- dom ; that the grand and simple work committed to him, as the messenger of the kingdom, is to testify, as far as lieth in him, to every human being, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; that to this object everything must be subordinated, everything made subservient ; and that if mission schools be opened, their express design, plainly declared, must be to teach all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. Such is the good seed which the Master has put in the bands of all His laborers, and when it is sown broadcast in the world, there will be a reaping even to a hundredfold. The remark has sometimes been made, rather jestingly, that there can be no missionary addr««s without an illusion to "fields white to the harvest." I am free to confess the opinion that there are no words of the Bible which, in this connection, have been more frequently misused. Friends of the mission work sometimes speak of China, Japan, India, Africa, as fields white to the harvest. If they looked out on some of the broad forest lands of the State of Pennsylvania, with only a 109 patcli of cultivation here and there, surely they would not say of that wide expanse of territory, that it is white to the har- vest. The undergrowth must first be cleared out, the timber felled, the ground broken ^nth the plough, the seed cast in, and then, when the early and the later rains have fallen, and the sun has turned the waving stretches of green into golden wealth — then, and not till then, will the fields be white to the har- vest. In the great mission lands of the world we have as yet only patches of cultivation, and we are clearing out the under- growth ; that is all. What were the fields which our Lord Jesus pronounced al- ready white to the harvest ? They were the streets and lanes of Samaria. And how were they white to the harvest ? One of the inhabitants of those streets is held up to us as a type and example. She was a sinful woman ; but there were two great truths that she had learned — one Avas, that her father, Jacob, had in that mountain worshiped Jehovah, the true God ; the other was, that there is a Messias, which is called Christ, who could teach her and her people all things. With these two great truths in her mind, she was led to offer up a prayer — a poor, beclouded prayer, yet sincere — for the Holy ' Spirit, the living water ; and at once the Blessed Spirit came into her heart, convicted her of sin, and brought her to trust in the Christ. In the same hour many of the Samaritans of that city, like her, believed in Him, and the harvest was gath- ered in. Would you have Japan, China, Burmah, India, Africa white to the harvest ? Send forth great bands of laborers into those lands ; let the truth of the one living God, and of Jesus Christ, who tasted death for every man, be proclaimed every- where publicly and from house to house ; as soon as all the people have heard, you need no longer say. There are yet four months and then come the harvest ; you may lift up your eyes and look on the fields ; from many a heart will prayer go up for the Holy Spirit ; and under the might of His power there will be reaped and brought into the garner sheaves upon sheaves, making the shoulders of all laborers to bend under the weight of the burden ; the feast of ingathering, with all its joys, will be ours, and the earth vnll resound with the song of the harvest home. Of these coming glories a pledge and foretaste has already been given us. We look back to-night to the time when the Presbyterian Church in this land had no separate agency for the administration of her Foreign Mission work ; when her officers and members formed part of the constituency of the American Board ; when all her contributions to this cause, hke the contributions of other churches in that day, amounted to but a few thousands of dollars. It was the time when 110 Foreign Missions were on their trial ; when many looked upon the enterprise as visionary, and others doubted its success. The Captain of the Lord's host then dealt with us as a skillful commander deals with an undisciplined, mistrustful body of troops. He does not lead out the raw and timorous recruits to a general engagement. He must first build up their morale. So, he attacks the enemy's outposts. He captures some outly- ing detachment. He carries an entrenched village ; and when, by these minor successes, confidence has been infused into all His ranks, then it is He leads out the army to the high places of the field, and the battle rages from end to end of the line. So the Lord Jesus dealt with us in the day when we were constituents of the American Board. He did not suffer us to enter the broad provinces of China. He held sealed the gates of Japan, He put barriers in the way of any work in In- dia, But He led us to a smaller field. Just south of the watery track by which swift steamers now bear the messengers of salvation from our own shores to the teeming millions of Asia, He chose a group of islands, and on them He showed His people that the weapons of their warfare were not wielded in vain. The work in the Sandwich Islands began in 1820. The missionaries sent out by the American Board found ready access to the people. They translated the Bible. They taught thousands of the natives to read. They preached the Gospel from valley to valley. And yet, thirteen years after the work began, not more than half of the people had been reached by the Gospel (though the whole population of the islands was only one hundred and thirty thousand), and the number of converts was less than one thousand. But, in 1833, the Ameri- can Board set itself deliberately to the solution of the ques- tion. How may the Gospel be preached at once to all the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands? A letter of inquiry was sent out to their missionaries, stating the problem and in- viting a reply. The missionaries returned a full answer, explaining how their forces were distributed, and calling for a reinforcement of forty-one workers, that the Gospel might be preached at once to every man, woman and child on the islands. The Board without delay sent out a reinforcement of thirty-two workers — the largest missionary force that had ever been dis- patched from this land — and then the Gospel was preached, not only from valley to valley, but from shore to shore. To quote the language of Dr. Kufus Anderson, when " the primary truths of the Gospel had been generally diffused," there came the out- pouring of the Holy Spirit. Then the voice of supplication and of weeping was heard in those island groves. Then the Ill houses of the missionaries were besieged all day long, and sometimes even to the midnight hour, by inquirers — men and women, saying, "Sirs, what must we do to be saved?" Then one missionary, in a single year, baptized five thousand of the people ; and as the result of the great awakening, one-fourth of the adult population of the islands was added to the Church, The converted islanders became themselves foreign mission- aries, and pressed forward with the light of life into darkened regions beyond ; and soon the American Board pronounced the Sandwich Islands no longer mission ground. Here, then, was the narrow arena on which the great Commander showed us how fields are won. Send in your strong reinforcements , preach the Gospel for a witness to all the people ; and then the end comes. Having shown this. He has led us fortb to the broad places of the Avorld ; He has set us in array against the serried forces of heathendom in every land ; and He bids us now, with all our resources, with all our men, advance to the final conquest. In every great campaign there are opportunities which must be seized without delay ; they are strategic points on the side of the enemy which should be occupied at once ; and for this, concentration is dertianded. So the American Board thought when it determined to throw all its available forces into the Sandwich Islands. The time had come wben an ex- ample was needed in the Foreign Mission service. The ques- tion was raised at that time, Why does the American Board send so large a reinforcement to so small a field ? The answer returned was, that in that field, to quote again the language of Dr. Rufus Anderson, was " an entire people in one compact group of islands, under one government, all easily accessible, and singularly prepared for the Gospel. In no other nation* could the Board so well make the experiment of the possibility of an early completion of its work." The result showed that the Board had been guided by wisdom from above. And now, fathers and brethren, to us has been given an opportunity, which is an exact counterpart of that seized by the American Board, only far grander and more splendid in promise. Beyond the Sandwich Islands, in the land first touched by the voyager to Asia, there lies an island empire, the Sunrise Kingdom. Did we study language to describe the present state of Japan and its people, we could find none more fitting than that used by Dr. Anderson, in describing the Sand- wich Islands years ago. "We see there " an entire people, in one compact group of islands, under one government, all easily accessible and singularly prepared for the Gospel." These are the isles which now wait for God's law, and it is no rhetorical figure ; it is a plain statement of fact to say that 112 they expect us of the United States to bring the law to them. They remember that it was our people who first swung open the gates of their land to the world. It was a representative of our people who first took up his residence among them with a completed treaty in his hands. It was our people who built the first railway for them and set up the first telegraph line. Two-fiftlis of all their exports are bought by us. From our newspapers they get the world's news, except the scanty bits telegraphed through India or Siberia. It was our school system which they adopted as their model. It was our mis- sionaries who began work among them ten years ahead of those from any other land. The type of Christianity in Japan, as far as it takes on any foreign features, is decidedly ours ; and so it is plain that if there is any great mission field of the world which the Lord of the harvest has especially entrusted to American laborers, it is Japan. Since it is the Presbyte- rians and our old allies of the American Board who have gathered the majority of all the Protestant Christians in that land, to us has been given the foremost place in this work. Now, then, may we best signalize the centennial which we this day celebrate ? What token of gratitude and love may we most fittingly lay at the feet of ©ur glorious King ? I do not undervalue other offerings which have been named. I would not depreciate other enterprises which have been pro- posed. But, I do say this : if by self-sacrifice, by liberality, by noble endeavor, we would win for our royal Master at this time a trophy worthy of the age in which we live, there is but one way for it : we must gain Japan. Let us rally our churches, as one man, for the effort ; let us summon our old comrades of the American Board to pour in their supplies of ,money and men ; yea, let us invoke the aid of all in the United States who love the Lord Jesus Christ. In every great city of Japan and in every hamlet, on the mountain side and in the deep valley, let the Gospel be preached at once to every man, woman and child ; then will the spirit of light and love descend, and a nation will be born in a day. The triumph which we believe draws near in Japan is but a presage of the result which we are assured will be seen over the whole earth. " This Gospel of the kingdom," says the King himself, "shall be preached in all the world, for a wit- ness unto all nations ; and then shall the end come." His word is pledged to it. This Foreign Mission work shall be accomplished. The glad tidings of the Saviour shall be preached to every creature. The victorious end shall come. But with us it is left to determine whether that end shall be hastened or whether it shall be deferred. Shall we preach the Gospel at once in all the world unto all nations ? Or shall 113 we by our faithlessness and lethargy hold back the Gospel and delay the consummate hour? " The end," says the Master. The end of what? The end of this earthly conflict, with all its dust and toil and blood ; the end of the sorrow and crying, the end of pain, the end of death. For then the Master will come the second time without sin unto salvation. He will make all things new. With His own light and power and beauty He will fill all things. Fathers and brethren, it mat- ters not here whether we be Pre-millenarians or Post-millen- arians, here we are all at one. For every friend of our Lord and Saviour there is but one blessed hope ; it is His glorious appearing and the resurrection of the dead. We cast our eyes out over this earth on which we dwell, we see it turned by the curse of sin into one vast cemetery. Among the mul- titudes who sleep in the dust there are those dear to you who have fallen asleep in Jesus. Those bodies sown in weakness, sown in corruption, sown in dishonor, must lie in the grave till the Gospel has been preached unto all nations — till the end shall come. Here at this hour unlock the chambers of your memory, call up the vanished faces, and you have the high argument of the Foreign Mission work. For myself, standing to-night on this spot, I am enchained with visions of the past. A little more than fifty years ago from the historic church in this city in which one of the venerable Assembhes now before me last week convened, there went forth a young bride, who made her new and gladsome home in the State of Virginia. Ten years passed, and a mournful procession, in which was a little group of weeping children following the silent form of the mother, who clasped in her arms an infant daughter, hushed like herself in death, came from the State of Virginia back to this city. Almost within a stone's throw of where I now stand the tones of the pastor of the First Church fell on my childish ears as he invoked for us the consolations of God, and then those beloved forms were borne forth and laid to rest on the beautiful slope of Laurel Hill. And now after so many years I find myself brought back here by the hand of God to plead the cause of the dead, of all the sainted dead of us gath- ered here in this centennial year, of the sainted dead of all the centuries past. Those bodies which lie in weakness, in corruption, in dishonor, await the day on which they shall come forth arrayed in incorruptiou, in glory, in power, and amid the splendors of the new heavens and the new earth, they and we shall stand in the presence of our Lord and there shall be fullness of joy. And there shall be no more death, no more sorrow nor crying, no more pain. Oh, what heart must not long for that day ! What voice must not pray that it may come quickly ! There is but one thing needed to usher it in. This Gospel of the kingdom must be preached in all the world for a wit- ness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. Here in the hundreds of millions spread before us who have not heard the name of Christ we see our great task ; there in the end we see our reward. Then, by the love we bear to the dead who rest, by the pity we have for the living who wait, by the loyalty we cherish to our King, who died for the world, let every man and every women now rise to the work. Oh, speed the message of salvation across every ocean, carry it onward to every tribe. Press forward ; tell the glad tidings to the next man and the next and the next; Let the wave of life and blessing sweep swiftly over the face of the whole earth, and then the triumphant end is ours. HISTORIC PRESBYTERIAN CHAR- ACTERS. By Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D., Kansas City, 3/o. WALKING along the shores of Profile lake in the White mountains, the eye instinctively turns toward the great granite mass that, scarred and rugged, towers above the Western shore, A few more steps and what was an irregular-scarped cHff', the monument of prehistoric storms begins to give the rude semblance of a human face. A turn in the path, and the outline of "The Old Man of the Moun- tain" is full upon your vision, every feature cut clear against the sunset. The road of the centuries brings character into view. We do not need to describe a great man. We need only to get away from him. History sublimates character. The ages give perspective iu which all littleness disappears and only true greatness remains. And what is history at last but the biography of greatness ? " It is all to be explained from individual experience." From this crest of the century let us look back upon the faces illumined by our position. Let us look along the cliffs of great events and see the men, who to their own age were an offense — to following ages, a mystery — but to us appear clear cut and beautiful, the incarnation of great ideas, and the exponents of historic epochs. We will travel to-night, not to Bee the Alps, the Pyrenees, or the Grampians, but the souls that look out from their stormy heights. An hour's walk through the Gallery of Battles, in Yersailles, carries you through the romantic and thrilling ages of French history. A half hour among Presbyterian characters will imply thre© centuries of Presbyterian history, say rather of world-history ; for in this period this world has sprung to its most splendid career. Remembering that the centuries of time are to be explained by the hours of human life, let us find in men the origin and significance of our history. Presbyterianism stands for a defi- nite whole of life and doctrine. We rejoice in its sunlight. 116 We have dwelt on the religious and civil liberty it fosters, on the systematic truth it holds, and the vital relations it sustains to all that is best in human progress. But these general ideas have men back of them. Shall there be a deliverance from Egypt ? Then Moses must come. A protest against idolatry ? Let Elijah spring like an apparition from the wilderness. An expectation of the Messiah'? Let John the Baptist utter its voice. So, back of these last centuries, when humanity has taken a new direction, I am sure some men are standing whose vital force is with us yet. American Presbyterianism has a far and profound origin. Our sun had elsewhere its rising. That "lane of beams athwart the sea," that lit the Mayflower's path through the wintry ocean, traced back to Europe, reveals sunrise in many lands. Not alone does it gladden the dull Holland marshes; it plays on the Alpine range, shimmers over the Black Forest and transfigures the mists of Scotland. It is an accepted philosophic fact that the combination of diverse elements in nature and life is the condition of the best and strongest forms. That combination has made the Anglo- Saxon the dominant race of modern history; it promises to make the American Republic the most vital part of Anglo- Saxon life. So our Presbyterianism is the last resultant of many forces. As the life of a nation has its prophet in the ideas and principles at the heart of it, so the past of our Church may somewhat forecast its future. To what conquests are the ideas which fashioned its childhood adapted to carry its manhood? What truths in their harmony and potency stand sponsors for its destiny? In the lives of men, in the iron of their blood, we will find the answ^er. Studying the philosophy of our times and casting about for the shaping ideas of modern thinking, I perceive that chief among them all is the personal authority of God. It stands between a vapid spiritism on the one hand and a cold material- ism on the other. It is the nerve of our best thinking, the force within all true heroisms, the conservator of our phil- osophy, the strength of our theology, and the tonic generally of modern civilization. Specially were the early centuries of our history times in which God's rule among men was cut sharp and deep into the popular consciousness. To that more than to any other one idea may be traced the robust and sinewy character of colonial life and the solemn earnestness of colonial struggles for independence. That truth, more than any other in the subsequent times of skeptical challenge of the throne of God, has been the tense and sufficient cable to hold both Church and State loyal to our historic antecedents and to enable us to keep our faith sternly with our fathers and our God. Perhaps the historic position of Israel is to be 117 repeated with us, to maintain as they did against despotisms on the one hand and eflete civilizations on the other divine personahty and human accountabihty. When now we trace this nerve, that made us sensi- tive in our successes and courageous in our trials, back to its genesis through the perspective of three centuries, against the background of the snowy Alps there stands the colossal figure of John Calvin, the man who incarnates at once for the Church and the State the humbling, stimu- lating, and sustaining doctrine of the sovereignty of God. The great reformer was first a great student. The tiny gleam of a candle in an attic room often attracted the attention of people in the neighborhood of the College of La Marche. It burned on far toward the morning. Did ever one little candle send such beams? It went not out till the Reformation morn- ing broke full on France. It will always be the supreme honor of Martin Luther that he laid the foundations of the Reforma- tion. Many hands wrought upon the rising walls. But John Calvin sprung its arch from land to land, lifted its dome, the cynosure of awakening Europe, and gathered under it in com- pact organization the letters, laws and liberties of Switzerland, Holland, France, and Great Britain. At twenty-six, the profoundest scholar of his age, he wrote his " Institutes," in a Latin as pure as that of Livy or Tacitus. They be- came at once the fountain of a new theology in France, a text-book at Geneva and Heidelberg, and the stand- ard at Oxford and Cambridge. For twenty-eight years only were his labors on earth continued, carried on in feeble and failing health ; but he gave to the world scores of exegetical and doctrinal volumes, which remain as the monuments of an incomparable scholarship and an amazing industry. Their first influence was felt in France; but from the beau- tiful hill above the " arrowy Rhone," the light went abroad among the nations. Geneva at once became the mother of Reformation and Liberty. For he who, once expelled from her gates, was afterward recalled to save the city, recast there the theological and largely the political thinking of the world. Great, not only in scholarship, he was the master organizer of Reformation times. The spirit which Luther evoked was a spirit of agitation through Christendom. All the elements, civil and religious, were in ferment. There was needed a catholic genius great enough to adjust, on divine principles, the relations of Church and State, to maintain liberty without license, authority without despotism, and a religion, true at once to the sovereignty of God and the brotherhood of man. Calvin reformed Geneva on principles which have made that citv the "seed-plot of democracy " for two continents. The 118 man, sometimes called narrow, built so broadly that Ban- croft says of him, " More truly benevolent to tlie human race than Solon, more self-denying than Lycurgus, the genius of Calvin infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva and made it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty." It is not, then, saying too much to affirm that the principles of this Eeformer l3uilt the dykes that kept the waves of oppression from Holland and the bul- warks that flung backward the persecuting fmy of the Guises in France ; that they were the inspiration of Cromwell at MarstoD Moor, of Bruce at Bannockburn, and of Americans at Valley Forge and Bunker Hill. It is not the partial pride of a Presbyterian, but the impartial judgment of our national historian, which says, " He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin, knows but little of the origin of American liberty." Our history emphasizes this statement, for Calvinism was the doctrine that prevailed among the Hu- guenots of South Carolina, the early settlers of Pennsylvania, the Dutch on Manhattan Island, and the Pilgrims around Mas- sachusetts Bay. Equally is the influence of Calvin felt in the educational history of the country. We point, with commendable pride, to the public schools that dot every commonwealth and secure universal education, and to the colleges that, from ocean to ocean, plead for scholarship as the most eminent sign of national distinction. Calvin was the author of our system of free schools, opening them first in his own city, and his mark on higher education is manifest in the fact that most of the great colleges of our country have a distinctly Calvinistic origin. But it is as a theologian that Calvin will live to the end of time. His system, starting from his conception of God and branching out into the entire domain of religious thought, at once gave order and force to the newly awakened thoiight of his own age, and has remained the nerve of every phase of reformative theology to the present time. The despised Vau- dois lived again in France when she accepted the Protestant- ism of Geneva. English bishops put Calvinism into thirty- nine articles. Scotland put it into her " Solemn League and Covenant," and Northern Ireland, to which we are indebted for much of our most vigorous Presbyterianism, and most de- cided Americanism, had her blood enriched by the doctrines of Geneva filtered through the heart of Scotland. Thus through various lands the theology of Calvin came to the United States. We would expect then to find the sover- eignty of God stamped on our national beginnings. Though often denied, the records of it are abundant and explicit. We read it not only in the prayers on the Mmjjlower and the 119 religion of tlie Jamestown colonists, bat emphatically in pub- lic documents and addresses in early colonial history. John Adams, when the fate of the Declaration of Independence hung in the balance of debate, declared " It is the will of Heaven that Britain and America should be sundered forever," Jef- ferson wrote the Declaration with no book at hand, but with the example of Swiss and Netherlands full in mind, he traced American destiny direct to " the laws of nature and nature's God," and the pledge of " life, fortune and sacred honor," is made sacred by " firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." More distinctly still, the Constitutions of the thirteen States make the idea of God the corner-stone, the Constitution of this noble commonwealth, as if taught from Geneva itself, declaring essential a " belief in God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked." Thus the polity of Calvin, which combined authority with popular rights, finds noblest expres- sion in the form and history of our government. If ever the time shall come when the idea of God shall be dim in our popular thought, when the tonic of it shall disappear from our theology and the reason for it seem to fade from our phi- losophy, we will only need to uncover colonial history to see it shine again in its brightness, as it shone in the theology of the reformer — Mt. Blanc among the snowy Alps. In deference to the will of Calvin, there is at Geneva no monument to his memory. It is well. Even that noble ele- vation were too provincial. To American Presbyterians, sur- rounded by a heritage throned amid oceans, liberty's last best hope among men, it may profoundly be said — " Si monumen- turn quasris, cir cum spice. ^'' If the idea of God held a central place in our national be- ginnings, its correlate of a refined, self-reliant, and heroic man- hood was equally pronounced. Indeed, they are the hemis- pheres of being. When Calvin organized the Peformation, he put the true conception of God at work among the forces of human nature. The result was a manly spirit, fitted to cope with the physical, civil and religious problems of a new nation. That heroism came out in the first settlements from New England to Florida, in the first debates in Congress and Synods, and in the battles of the Revolution to the surrender of Cornwallis. Tracing now its historic roots, we find them most conspicuously in the Huguenots of France, among whom the theology of Calvin had its earliest incarnation. And the man who stands for the loftiest spirit of the Huguenots is the Admiral Coligny. His heroism is the European type of every modern struggle for civil and rpligious liberty. The core of his character was a deep religiousness. He was 120 in this tlie Cromwell of tlie Frencli people. The will of God was his pole-star. While yet a Eomanist, a prisoner in a Flemish castle, the true light just beginning to break on the soldier's mind, he found his only solace in deference to the will of God. And when near the end, wounded by an assassin, he calmed the turbulence of his friends with the same sublime submission — " The will of the Lord be done." Eeserved and cautious, it required the consecrated enthusiasm of his noble wife to rouse him to arms. Ho hesitated not from cowardice, but from conscience ; not from timidity, but tenderness. Shrinking from the sorrows which would come npon her, he offered her eight days to consider whether he should plunge to the rescue of Protestantism. With Spartan spirit she cried, " The eight days are past already." This parted the last strand that held him to Rome. Distinctly renouncing every human ambition, exclaiming, " In the name of Jehovah we will set up our banners," he advanced to the conflict, not, in- deed, with the dash of a Conde, but with the resolute earnest- ness of a man who could " reach a hand through time " to measure far results. Through the alternations of battle he held his army to the loftiest convictions. After his first vic- tory he drew his soldiers into line to sign a solemn " League and Covenant." In his army, as with the English Puritans, the voice of prayer and the singing of psalms blended with the roar of battle. In intellectual qualities more like Grant than any other captain, strict in discipline, reticent, stubbornly courageous, clinging to the main issue, not elated by victory nor depressed by defeat, terrific in assault, and still more mas- terly in retreat ; in his moral qualities more unselfish than Cromwell, as true as Washington, as devout as Adolphus, he held his way through open assault and secret plot, sleepless, tireless, undaunted, the very ideal of Christian heroism. And when the night of his martyrdom came — came because his heart was too confiding to believe in the colossal perfidy of Catherine de Medici — it found him asleep as if in the arms of God. The cry of the assassin, bursting his chamber door, only composed him to prayer. His serenity did notleavehim then. The majesty that had marked his life sublimated his death. Its spirit passed on into the lives of the Huguenots everywhere. When Louis, that small great man who was "little in war, little in government, little in everything but the art of simulating greatness," revoked the Edict of Nantes, a half million of the best sons of France were driven from their native land to sow the seeds of valor along the Rhine, the Maas, the Thames, and the Hudson. Their mark is to-day on all our greatness. Their heroism lived again in the Rovolu- tion. The hall in Boston first consecrated to liberty was the 121 gift of a Huguenot. Our easternmost college bears their name. In Florida and South. Carolina the exiles from Languedoc, men of whom it has been said that they had the virtues of English Puritans without their bigotry, found a refuge from oppression and a temple for worship. Thus, long before the chivalric devotion of LaFayette, we were bound to the land of arts, romance, and heroisms by the immigrants who, from the Penobscot lo the Santee, avowed the simple faith they had received from Geneva and translated into martial valor on the fields of St. Denis and Orleans. Our Statue of Liberty in the New York harbor shines East and West. There is in it a ray of French Protestantism which. East and West, has kept loyal faith with the kingship of God and the rights of man. Another phase of Calvinism has come to us through Scot- land and Ireland. If Calvin represented the sovereignty of God and Coligny the dignity of man, it was reserved for Scot- land to wage war with princes for tbe Kingship of Christ and the Lordship of Truth. John Knox was the ruling spirit of the storm. Called from the people, it was his destiny to con- front kings and queens, not in smooth phrases of the court, but in the stern severity of the truth. He had a various fitting for his work. Now a student, then a priest, then a Eeformer, called at St. Andrews as suddenly as Saul at Mizpeh, afterward a prisoner, enduring the horrors of the French galley service, and last of all a student once more, and at the feet of John Calvin. So he rose to his stature and his work. Since the days of Israel, when a prophet now prayed on Carmel, and now dared Jezebel at Jezreel, histor^y presents no figure bolder than that of Knox, now praying in his gar- den, " Oh, God ! give me Scotland or I diel" and now con- fronting the queen at Holyrood Castle. A man not so catho- lic as Luther, nor so scholarly as Calvin, yet in the quality of his courage and the singleness of his devotion without a superior in the reformative ranks. An exile from his country, his calling haunted him. One starry morning, rowing a French galley in sight of the white towers of St. Andrews, with the outlook of a prophet he exclaimed: "It is the steeple of the place where God first opened my mouth in public to His glory, and I am persuaded I shall not depart this life till my tongue glorify His Godly name in the same |)lace." His life was one long protest — stormy battle with popes and princes. He was held to his purpose with a courage so sublime as to constrain the Earl of Morton to say at his grave: "There lies one who never feared the face of man." Of him Carlylesays: "He is the one Scotchman to whom above all others his country and the world owe a debt." And Fronde as justly says: "No grander figure can be found in the entire history of the Reforma- 122 tion in tliis island." That figure gets ever larger as it recedes. What William the Silent was in the Netherlands, that was Knox in Scotland — a bulwark which flung back o|)pression as the rock flings back the sea. And what bearing on American Presbyterianism have the struggles of John Knox ? Much every way. The first Eng- lish-speaking General Assembly, numbering only six ministers and thirty-four laymen, met under Knox in 1560. To-day more than twelve thousand ministers and churches look back to that small Assembly as the historic mother of us all. That Assembly had a lineal successor in the First Assembly in Ireland in 1642, and both of those in our own Assembly, whose centennial anniversary we keep to-day. Among our first immigrants were many Scotch-Irish. The First Assem- bly was composed largely of their children. Its first con- vener was a lineal descendant of John Knox. There is no stamp on our Presbyterianism to-day so decided as that which Scotland gave, nor is there any land where Knox's guiding principle of the absolute independence of Church from every form of State control has found so fine an illustration as here. There is no time to-night to even sketch the other beams that from across the sea contribute to the brightness of this day. But justice may claim one moment to speak the name of William of Orange, to recognize the important relations of the Dutch Church to our own, to honor the heroism and orthodoxy of those teachers of the Pilgrim Fathers; one moment to speak of the marvelous force of the Protestant- ism of the Palatinate that lives in many of our Presbyterian names and has impressed so profoundly alike our scholarship and our theology. Thus the prism of three centuries resolves our daylight. From violet to blue, it deepens from the flow- ers of France to the Alpine skies, yellow and orange bands stretch from Heidelberg to Holland, green on the Green Isle, and royal red in the land that owned no king but Christ. The men thus sketched had worthy successors among us. The spirit of freedom, which the old world brought to the new, has inspired our Presbyterian history. It was a Presby- terian graduate of Princeton, Ephraim Brevard, who wrote the Mecklenburg Declaration, a pen-stroke that, in 1775, sepa- rated one county in North Carolina from the British crown. And when the Declaration was under discussion in this city, it was John Witherspoon who, when Congress for a moment wavered between the slavery and liberty of the nation, lifted his voice till the old hall rang again. " For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more ; that property is staked, that reputation is pledged on the issue of this contest." His name is on that roll of honor, the signers of the Declara- 123 tion. To tliat distinction his monument in Fairmount Park can add how little ; but it may attest to future times the fact that the father of our Church committed American Presbyte- rianism to the defense of American liberties. Our Church, though conservative, did not lack in the evan- gelizing spirit. The fire first kindled bj Whitfield was scat- tered from New England to the Carolinas by Presbyterian ministers, among whom the names of the Tennants ever de- serve grateful mention. Intense in their convictions, extreme sometimes in their judgments, they had hearts like old pro- phets, and zeal like apostles for the extension of the kingdom of Christ. Neither the spiritual nor the intellectual side of our Presby- terianism can be said to be unworthy of the reformation type so long as the names of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge are remembered among men. To speak these names is to recall to our memory a saintlinesslike Melancthon's and a defense of the faith like Calvin's. In the forensic arena, the high debates of the "Westminster Assembly had a ringing echo in our own Assemblies, when were heard the voices of Thorn- well and Robert J. Breckenridge. We have likewise been true to that expansive genius of original Presbyterianism which sent Huguenot missionaries to Brazil and Florida. For we have helped to organize modern missions, whose daring conception is "The World for Christ." Many men share this honor; but chief among them may be called the name of a layman, who surrendered brilliant political prospects that he might organize our Church for mis- sions. That name is Walter Lowrie, who gave to this great cause his personal ambition, his life-long services, and his eldest son a martyr to China. When thus I analyze the elements of our greatness, this tree of Presbyterian life that shadows a continent and has fruit for the world, I perceive much history has lifted and shaped it. The soil of Switzerland is in its roots, the blood of Holland is in its veins, the free breath of Scotland is in its leaves. Our history may well embolden an outlook toward the fu- ture. That outlook is broadened when we read the past in the light of the present. We accord peculiar honor to the fatherlands and their heroes, when we claim a progressive Church and declare that our inheritance had such vitality that we have improved on the original type. Our doctrines are broader, our spirit more catholic, our missionary conception more daring — more Christlike. We bear the lineaments of our origin, and are proud of them, but the type is American and good for a march around the world. Our spectrum holds the best metal of the old saints, and the living light of to-day. 124 A feeble ray, that liglit crept on Long Island and the shores of the Chesapeake. To-day a hundred colleges flash it forth, and eight thousand ministers carry it on. It has crossed the continent and the Pacific, and its arrows of sunrise pierce the Himalayas. Mr. Ruskin tells of the possible changes of a handful of earth picked up from the streets of a manufacturing town. In it are clay, sand, soot, and water. Give it time enough, and the clay becomes a sapphire, reflecting rays as blue as hea- ven. The sand becomes an opal, the soot a diamond, and the drop of water a blazing star of snow. So wonderful is the chemistry of nature with its law of co-operation. Handfuls of dust, blown about Alpine and Scottish hills, dust of the martyrs of our faith, the ages are thine, and the economy of God! His chemistry never fails. The ashes of Wickliffe, which the Avon to the Severn took, the Severn to the sea ; of Hamilton blown over Scotland ; of Calvin in their nameless grave, wrought upon in the laboratory of ages are the founda- tions, opal, sapphire, diamond, of that vast temple covering earth and sea, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall be praise. HOME MISSIONS. By W. W. Moore, D.D., Hampden- Sidney, Fa. THE pioneers of tlie Home Mission work in America were those expatriated Presb3^terians from Ulster who, two centuries ago, landed on the banks of the Delaware. Their successive migrations Southward laid the base line of all our subsequent work in the Southern States, They built a chain of churches from the Potomac river to the Savannah, through the heart of Virginia and the Carolinas, which have ever since constituted the Presbyterian stronghold. It is important to bear in mind that from the beginning this sturdy element was the back-bone of the Kevolution. These were the men who settled the historic county of Meck- lenburg in North Carolina, and to whom Mr. Bancroft referred when he said that "The first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great Britain came, not from the Puritans of New England, not from the Dutch of New York, not from the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch- Irish Presbyterians of North Carolina." Fourteen months after that memorable action, when, in this city, the Colonial Congress was hesitating to pass the Declaration of National Independence, it was the eloquence of an illustrious Presby- terian that swept the waverers to a decision — John Wither- spoon, the only minister of any denomination who signed that immortal document. Later still, in one of the darkest hours of the Kevolution, the great Washington himself said that, should all his plans be crushed, he would plant his standard on the Blue Kidge, and, rallying round him the Scotch-Irish, make a final and successful stand for freedom on the Virginia fron- tier. To this sterling strain belongs the unique distinction of being the only race in America that never produced a Tory. In fine, as Dr. DeWitt has well said, while the Quakers were non-combatants and stood aloof from the conflict ; while the Episcopalians as a rule were against the colonies and in favor of the Crown; while the Methodists followed the mother Church and imitated John Wesley himself in their denuncia- tions of the revolting Americans, the Congregational ministers 126 of New England, and the Presbyterian ministers from Long Island to Georgia, gave to the cause of the colonies all that they could give of the sanction of religion. The Presbyterian ministers upheld it in the pulpit, in the press, and on the field, some of them becoming both chaplains and commanders. Historical Conspectus of Home Missions. These familiar facts are by no means irrelevant to the his- tory of Home Missions. They gave Presbyterianism her coigne of vantage for evangelizing America. That Church which had been the chief champion of civil. and religious free- dom, and whose form of government was the mould of the llepublic, held a unique place in the afi'ections of the people. Her loyalty to the cause of Independence made it peculiarly appropriate that she should give the Gospel to the new nation and conquer this continent for Christ. The great men who composed that first Assembly saw and seized the opportunity. With but few exceptions they were themselves home mission- aries, and the subject which excited their deepest interest was the work of carrying the Gospel to the outlying districts of the Synods. If the Presbyterian Church has forfeited her empire in America, the reason is that the supreme importance of this subject and its vital relation to every other branch of our work have not been so fully recognized by later Assemblies as by those farsighted patriots of 1789. They knew their work and did it. How wisely they organized and how zealously they labored may be seen in part by the results which can be tabulated to-day, notwithstanding all the sterile controversies and baneful dissensions of their successors. There were 16 Presbyteries then, there are 389 now; 177 ministers then, 8333 now; 419 churches then, 11,212 now; 15,000 members then, 9.-*2,305 now. The population of the country then was 3,000,000, now it is 60,000,000. The increase of population in the century, therefore, has been twentyfold, that of our communicants more than sixtvfold. The collection for Home Missions in 1789 amounted to $400, in 1887 nearly $900,000. Daring the century over 1,500,000 souls have been added to the Church on confession of faith. These cold figures alone tell a stirring story of Home Missions. The brevity to which I am constrained forbids any detailed description of this marvelous growth. But the scantiest resume of our subject would be incomplete without some reference to that constellation of missionaries raised up in the great revival at Hampden-Sidney in 1788, each of whom itin- erated vast regions of country on a salary of $200 a year; to the men of Eedstone, who planted to such purpose that 127 there are now over thirty Synods in the transmontane West, where a century ago there was but one Presbytery of four ministers ; to Thomas Cleland, who preached the first Presby- terian sermon in Indiana in 1805 ; to David Kice, the morn- ing star of Presbyterianism in Kentucky ; to Samuel Doak, who carried the first hbrary across tlie Alleghenies on horse- back to endow his log college in Tennessee. And what shall I more say ? For the time woald fail me to tell of Templeton, and of Hall, and of Cunningham, and of Henderson; of Black- burn also, and Porter, and of many others who through faith preached the Gospel from the Chesapeake Bay to the Missis- sippi river, and whose names are imperishably associated with the early evangelization of the South and West. Suffice it to say that since the beginning of the century the Presbyterian Church has contributed to this cause over $10,000,000 and sent into the field more than 50,000 missionaries. Work Among the Negroes. But, with this hurried glance at our earher missionary op- erations in the South and these brief statistics of our work in establishing and extending the Eedeemer's kingdom through- out the country, I must pass on to speak of our work for the blacks and of our mighty task since the emancipation of the slave unfettered the South and opened the way for the unpar- alleled expansion of the last twenty-three years. That Dutch skipper who in 1620 landed the first cargo of African slaves on the shore of Virginia, meant evil against those helpless savages, but God meant it unto good, to preserve much people alive, as at this day. Sold by the States in which their labor was not profitable and bought by the States in which it was apparently profitable, they were inevitably massed in the South, and thus our special work in the department of Home Missions was cut out for us and laid to our hands. The manner in which that work was accomplished will reflect eternal honor on the Christian people of the South. Never in the history of the world, with perhaps a single exception, has a nation been lifted from a plane so low to a plane so high in the same length of time. Compare for a moment the native African with the American slave of 1863. In that very year Sir Samuel Baker wrote in his journal the following estimate : " Human nature viewed in its crude state, as pictured among African savages, is quite on a level with that of the brute, and not to be com- pared with the noble character of the dog. There is neither gratitude, pity, love, nor self-denial, no idea of duty, no reli- gion ; but covetousness, ingratitude, selfishness, and cruelty." And in 1872 he adds : " Thie treachery of the negro is beyond 128 belief. He lias not a moral, human instinct, and is below tbe brute. How is it possible to improve such abject animals?" Such, were the degraded savages who were brought to our shores over two centuries ago, and for whose salvation the Christian men and women of the South have labored all these years. And with what result? lu 1865, of the four million slaves in the Southern States, belonging to the same brutal race described by Baker, " all had been brought under the in- fluence of Christianity, and half a million were members of the Church of Christ." The highest authority on this sub- ject in the world has said that " the astonishing progress made among the colored people since their freedom was made possi- ble by what had been accomplished for them before their freedom." But the loss of $3,000,000,000 invested in slavery, and of four successive crops, the devastation of the country, and the struggle against starvation, made it impossible for the Southern people to do for the negroes after the war what they had done before. At this juncture, however,the Christian people of the North took up the work and carried it on with such vigor that since the emancipation over half a million more have been added to the various denominations. I would not imply that the South has neglected this work since the war. Years ago our General Assembly organized the work among the ne- groes as a distinct department coordinate with Sustentation, Evangelistic Work, and Ministerial Relief, and in 1876 the institute for the training of colored ministers was established at Tuscaloosa, Alabama. This was the first step in this direc- tion taken by any Southern denomination. In the meantime, as we have seen, the Northern Church also had been pushing the work, and now reports 15,880 communicants, six higher institutions of learning, enrolling 1800 students, and 103 pa- rochial schools, with a total attendance of nearly 10,000 pupils. Both South and North have done nobly. But, after all, the proportion of professed Christians among them to-day is but little larger than it was in 1865, and the number of those who honor that profession is notoriously small. The race is rapidly multiplying. There are now, prob- ably, 8,000,000 of them. One-fourth of this number are im- proving. Three-fourths are little better than heathen, and in some parts of the South they have been steadily retrograding since the war. Illiteracy is on the increase among them, the last decade showing an increase of 300,000 ignorant blacks. Of their 2,000,000 children of a school age, 1,103,000 are out of school, because there are no schools for them. These are startling facts. Here are these millions of semi-barbarians, ignorant, immoral, superstitious. They are here to stay ; for, 129 while there is little doubt that the ultimate purpose of God in bringing them to America was the evangelization of Africa, it is equally plain that the great body of them will remain in this country as a base of operations for that sublime mission. Hence, self-interest and patriotism, as well as love for souls and the honor of our Redeemer, conspire to emphasize our duty to these heathen at our doors. And, as Judge Tourgee has said, " It is the grandest mission ever yet laid on the heart and brain of a Christian nation." Where, even in the foreign field, can we find a work of more importance or more prom- ise? There are here no difficulties of language, no barriers of ancestral idolatry, no necessity for long and laborious years of sowing without reaping. All this preparatory work has been done ; these people are no longer savages ; many of them are being educated ; and thousands of them are thirsting for truth. Their rapidly developing race-pride and desire for reli- gious independence only enhance tlie value of our opportunity. If we are seeking that investment of our work and money, which offers the minimum of risk and the maximum of profit, here it is. One of the most earnest and intelligent negroes in Virginia says that, "If the colored people of this Southland are ever to be elevated intellectually, morally and spiritually, the Presbyterian Church must have a distinguished part in bringing it about." He is right. The type of piety most needed among these impressionable people, whose religious ser- vices too often consist of senseless harangues and Avild excite- ment, is that sober and intelligent type developed by the Pres- byterian Church. What shall be our record for the coming century ? What shall be our influence upon the future of the American freedman, and upon the destiny of the Dark Continent ? , Growth of the Southern Church Since the War. Church extension among the whites was, of course, arrested by the civil war. Then came the horrible saturnalia of Re- construction. The fortune of the South had consisted chiefly of slaves and land. The war obliterated one part of this prop- erty and depreciated the other to a degree, which, in many cases, made it a burden rather than a support. Under such conditions, impoverished and crippled, the Southern Church began her career as a separate organization ; and yet, as we contrast her strength to-day with her strength then, we have abundant reason to thank God and take courage. Her growth has been wonderful. When organized in 1861 the General Assembly included 47 Presbyteries, 700 ministers, 1000 churches and 75,000 communicants, about 10,000 of whom were 130 negroes. It includes now 69 Presbyteries, 1173 ministers, 2236 churches and 150,398 communicants. The number of both churches and comranmcants has more than doubled. And this is but the beginning of our growth, merely the big drops before the shower, as I shall now endeavor to show. The Outlook in the South. In 1776 the primacy of Virginia among the colonies was undisputed. In 1860 she had been reduced to the fifth place among the States, two of her superiors in wealth and popula- tion having been carved out of her own north-west territory. Do you ask the explanation ? It was the curse of African slavery. The largest crop of cotton ever produced under that system was less than 5,000,000 bales (1859-'60). In 1882-'83, only sixteen years after a desolating war. the magnificent total of 7,000,000 bales demonstrated the superior efficiency and fruit- fulness of hired labor. The meaning of these facts is this: The slave was not so much shackled by the South as the South was shackled by the slave. And when she sought po- litical independence by secession God gave her instead indus- trial independence, not through victory, but through defeat, and for proof we point to her phenomenal progress since 1865. " The new South " is a reality, notwithstanding the attempt of an able, but reactionary, minority to expel the phrase and deny the fact. But the new South, while by no means a rep- lica of the old, is yet the creation of the same forces, and demonstrates to the world what that great people is capable of when relieved of the paralyzing incubus of slavery. It is chiefly the enterprise of her own citizens which has lifted the South out of the ashes to which the war consigned her. Her prosperity has every promise of permanence. The pyramid is no longer on its apex, but on its base, for while cotton is still king — in an important sense — we have learned that the $100,000,000 annually received from that crop will make us truly prosperous only when the supplies which produce it are home raised, and when our own vast natural advantages for spinning and weaving our staples are utilized. So that just as the political power, which was wielded by an oligarchy be- fore the war, is now diffused among the people, so the wealth which was then congested into one plethoric channel is now widely distributed by means of diversified crops and home manufactures. Not less marked and full of promise are many of the changes in the people themselves. The severe priva- tions endured for a few years after the war developed a fru- gality unknown before, and the laissez /aire of the typical ante-bellum Southerner has been transmuted into the activity 131 and push which were once thought peculiar to the people of the North. Of course we still have among us croakers who remember that the Virginia sunsets before the war were much finer than they are now, who deplore the loss of "individuality" on the part of the South and see only evil in the cosmopolitan cast of our civilization, who publish periodical Jeremiads over the influx of "Northern ideas," and can demonstrate to their own entire satisfaction that the South is growing poorer every day. But the battery of facts is gradually thinning the ranks of even these pessimists. When they speak of mortgaged farms in Georgia, it can at least be answered that the mortgages on the farms of ten of the "prosperous" Western States aggregate $3,422,000,000, Ohio leading the Hst with an aggregate of $701,000,000. The statistics show that of the fourteen South- ern States there are only four in which the capital invested in new enterprises in 1887 is not double the amount invested in 1886. What do these facts mean? Why, in connection with the balmy climate and boundless resources of the South they mean unexampled wealth, population, and influence. And to us they mean that here we should make our largest investments of labor and money for domestic missions. We are told by Humboldt that one of the soldiers of Cortez sowed the first wheat in America. He had but three grains, which had been found in their supply of rice. But those three grains he planted in the right place, and in 1880 our wheat crop was 460,000,000 bushels. Such were the dividends on that judi- cious investment. Montesquieu declares that " Climate is the most powerful of all empires, and gives guaranty alone of future develop- ment." In Dakota last winter 113 persons perished in one blizzard, some of them within a hundred yards of their homes. Is it not certain that the intolerable climate of the North-west will eventually tarn the tide of immigration to the soft and salu- brious South'? In 1882 that immigration reached the enor- mous total of 800,000 souls. Thirteen States in the Union have less population than that, and seven of the thirteen are in, the South. A Philadelphia orator has recently said that, " The land for the homes of our future growth is not in the West, nor in the East, nor in the North ; it is in the South, where there are more unimproved and improvable acres than the present total improved land in all the States of the Union excepting Illinois," This testimony is true. Yet very few even of well-informed people are aware of the vast extent of our territory. How many of you are taken by surprise when I announce that there are eight States in the South larger than Pennsylvania, and yet not one of them has half the population 132 of Pennsylvania ! One of those eight States has an area of 274,000 square miles, that is to say, it is larger than all New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Penn- sylvania, Ohio and Indiana combined. Texas is not only the grazing ground of a continent, but has " a rich and diversified soil, producing wheat as in California, corn as in Illinois, and cotton as in Egypt." These data, taken in connection with her genial climate and uniform temperature, explain the fact that in fifty years her population has increased fiftyfold. In 1838 it was about 50,000. It is now over 2,000,000, though " not one-fifth of the area of Texas is yet occupied or utilized." Again, the three principal lumbering States in the Union are Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The timber area of the South is four times as great as theirs, affording lumber of ■equal quality and more numerous varieties. Arkansas alone has 30,000 square miles of forests, an area equal to two-thirds of Pennsylvania. The same State has 12,000 square miles of coalfields and between 3000 and 4000 miles of navigable streams — more than any other State in the Union. When I add that her fine fruits carry off the premium in competition with California, you will be prepared for the statement that her population has doubled in the last decade. Such facts are the logical foreground of our calculations for the future. But why should I attempt here a description of all the crowned States of the South ? In agriculture, in mining, in manufacturing and in lumbering, if not in stock- raising, the South is destined to excel every other part of our country. And why should she not compete with the North even in commerce, when the teeming products of both West and South shall eventually seek the ocean by the shortest line of land transportation? A glance at the map with this thought in mind will suggest a great future for our seaboard cities. In short, your veteran statesman. Judge Kelley, was right when, in his recent book on the South, he said: "She is the coming El Dorado of American adventure." It is a notorious fact that the railroads built up the West. In 1840 Illinois land glutted the market at $1.25 an acre. In 1880, when she had a mile of railroad to every seven square miles of territory, her lands averaged from $30 to $50 an acre. Now, when the fertile South is gridironed in that way, who can estimate her wealth ? And the time is not far off. In 1880 the United States built more miles of railway than all the world beside. Many of these lines are reaching South- ward, and farmers, tradesmen, capitalists and mechanics are beginning to move, as if by instinct, to the future seat of em- pire. For instance, a vast tide of immigration is pouring into Northern Alabama and the contiguous territory, outstripping 133 the means of grace and appealing to the evangelistic agencies of the Church. That tide will continue to flow without an ebb for many years. Mining and manufacturing towns are springing up in every direction, and the day is not distant when the iron crown of Pennsylvania shall adorn the brow of Alabama. The gentleman .who is at this moment speaking in the adjoining hall, and who is recognized as an authority on the subject of Home Missions, says that a field promising larger and more immediate results is open in Northern Ala- bama than is to be found in any part of the West with which he is familiar. But even in the older States there are vast populations absolutel}'' unreached by us. In 1884 there were said to be 42 counties in Virginia without Presbyterian preaching, in North Carolina 8-i and in Kentucky 50. These, remember, are our strongest Synods. Then what must be the destitutions elsewhere ? A recent report to the General As- sembly states that "inmost of the Presbyteries the unoccu- pied territory far exceeds what has been occupied." What shall be our response to these calls of God's provi- dence? Shall we allow the newspapers to say of us at the end of another century as the New York Times says now, that the Presbyterians " have constantly missed their opportunity, while the Methodists, Baptists and others have been quick to see it ? " Or shall we justify its prediction that this centen- nial will mark a new departure in the practical activity of the Presbyterian Church ? The Needs of the Work. Permit me, in conclusion, to present briefly a few of the more pressing needs of this great work : 1. It needs more men. The gravest problem confronting the Presbyterian Church to-day is the problem of ministeral demand and supply. The most alarming fact in our histor3''is that even in the most prosperous periods of the past we have been unable to give our people a sufficient number of educa- ted ministers. The difficulty is chronic and increasing. In 1881 the Southern Church had six less ministers and licentiates than in 1880 ; in 1882 there was a further decrease of twelve ; and in 1883 a still further decline of six, showing a total loss of twenty-four ministers in three years — the aggregate for 1883 being the same as that of 1877. In these six years there was a gain of two hundred and ten churches and about fifteen thousand communicants without the gain of a single minister. In 1872 we had two hundred and five candidates for the ministry, in 1882 only one hundred and sixty. And in that year the pastoral letter of the Assembly made this startling 134 announcement : " The decrease of ministers, if not remedied, must paralyze the Church. Her work must cease for lack of instrumentality to carrjit on." If it is objected that we have taken our figures from a time of exceptional decline, we reply that the present ratio of increase is nearly four additional churches for every additional preacher. In the last thirteen years we have gained only one hundred and seventeen minis- ters — an average increase of only nine a year, or less than one per cent per annum. At this rate it will take more than a hundred years for the number to double itself. After citing these disheartening facts, the most influential paper in the Southern Church said last year that "three alternatives were open : either the Presbyterian Church must train more minis- ters — or, other denominations must do the work of evangeli- zation which God has entrusted to us — or, the land will relapse into practical heathenism." The same danger threatens the North ; in a recent year the net increase of ministers in the Northern Church was only eleven. What are the causes of this fatal deficiency ? Can any one consider the facts I have stated without reaching the conclu- sion that hundreds of our young men are called to the ministry who do not respond ? Unfortunately, a superstitious and un- scriptural view of the nature of this divine call, having the support of great names, has been largely adopted and taught in our branch of the Church, so that many of our young men do not know what a call to the ministry is. This is undoubt- edly one reason for the deplorable scarcity of candidates among us. But is it the only reason? Have we not enforced too rigidly the requirements of our standards for ministerial education? And shall we ever overtake our vast work so long as we continue to debar from the ministry multitudes of sound and earnest men, simply because they have not received a full education ? To what purpose have we studied the his- tory of the Old and New Sides, if we are to continue this suicidal policy ? Shall we not rather renounce it, and, while retaining, and even elevating our standard of scholarship, as the times undoubtedly demand, yet also utilize more freely these neglected forces — these men of piety and power, whose only deficiency is a lack of scholastic training ? Henceforth let our motto be — More men for Macedonia, as well as stronger men for Greece. 2. It needs more money. Our increasing destitutions and our lagging revenues foreshadow a shameful failure. Mr. Gladstone is not wrong in saying that "Ameiica is the wealth- iest of the nations." Much of this wealth is held by members of the Presbyterian Church, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge that their gifts to the Lord are larger than those of any other 135 denomination, save one. The average annual contribution in the Southern Church is about $10.00 per member. In the Northern Church about $16.00. It must not be forgotten, however, that more than two-thirds of all these funds go to the support of our own home churches, and a very small pro- portion to Domestic and Foreign Missions. Our largest Synod, Virginia, contributes for Home Missions, outside of her own territory, only two-and-a-half cents per member, and Ken- tucky, our banner Synod, gives for evangelization, beyond her own bounds, but ten cents per member. If it be true that, where a man's treasure is there will his heart be also, then, arguing conversely, the hearts of our peo- ple are not in this work. Why not? Will any man dare to assert that it is simply because they are unfaithful stewards? I do not believe it. I am persuaded that the 'chief reason for this delinquency is the failure of the pastors to inform the people of these vast destitutions and to impress upon them the paramount importance of the evangelistic work. The contri- batious of the Southern Church to Home Missions last year varied in different Presbyteries from one-and-a-half cent up to seventy-seven cents per member ; and, in tb.e same Presbytery, of two churches, not differing much as to ability, one coatri- buted five times as much as the other. Obviously this is not so much the fault of the people as of the pastors. And this shameful inadequacy of means must continue so long as we fail to recognize that, for Home Missions as for Foreisrn, facts constitute the strongest appeal, and that facts draw funds just in proportion as they are presented. 3. It needs more effective cooperation. Not for the purpose of obtruding my views upon this Assembly, but merely to prevent misapprehension, permit me to say that in my humble judgment Organic Union is at present impracticable. But that is no reason why we should fail to establish a cordial and fruitful cooperation between the Home Mission agencies of the two Assemblies. We have been preparing some humiliating chapters of Church history since the war by our wasteful and irritating competition in the border States. The attempts to sustain two Presbyterian Churches in commvini ties where only one was needed have been a fruitful cause of our failure to secure enough men and money for the frontier. The people have long been asking when these ruinous rivalries shall cease. Hundreds of ministers are now asking the same question. Can we not dismiss the animosities of the past without sacrificing its principles of truth or its examples of valor? Can we not rise from a provincial to a continental view of the crisis that is upon us ? At a time of great danger to the nascent union of the colonies, Patrick Henry uttered these noble words: \ 136 "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Bnglanders are no more. I am not a Vir- ginian, but an American." My brethren, has the time not come when each of us should say, " I am not a Northern man or a Southern man, I am a Presbyterian?" At a time of extreme bitterness and jealousy between the East and the West, Daniel AVebster proved his patriotism by saying of the Louisville Canal Bill: "I look to the magnitude of the object, and not to its locality. I ask not whether it be east or west of the mountains. There are no Alleghenies in my politics." Has the time not come when we too should rise to a policy which is not sectional in its scope but national, and roll away our reproach by declaring to the world that there is no longer a war line in our work? The time has come. And not even the courtiers of'Counte were guilty of greater folly than those who imagine that this tide of fraternity which is rising in obedience to heavenly forces can be stayed by the command of any mortal, even though he be a king. And as for the rest, let us I'emember that on a critical occasion in the seven- teenth century, while the Scotch Presbyterians were quarrel- ing, within sight of the foe, over points of Church discipline, the Battle of Bothwell Bridge was lost. Let us remember, too, that in the seventh century, while the eastern Churches were "wrangling over Monothelite subtleties" the scimitar of Islam was subjugating their territory. Such is our history. Such our opportunity. Such our needs. Oh, for the faith and foresight of the fathers! In Philadelphia's great park stands a colossal statue of one of those founders of organized missions. His name and the names of his contemporaries are luminous in our history, and we are here to-day to honor their memory and celebrate their wisdom. But no marble, however noble; no history, however faithful ; no eulogy, however eloquent, can adequately honor their glorious work. Deeds alone can worthily commemorate deeds like theirs. In their day a great Frenchman said ot our country: "It is the hope of the human race." They accepted the responsibility involved in that belief, and labored wisely and earnestly for the evangelization of the country in the out- set of her career. In our own day a great Englishman has said: " America holds the future." Tliat remark ought to thrill the people of God like the blast of a bugle, for it is the measure of an unequaled opportunity and an awful responsi- bility. Sir Walter Scott tells us tliat in the early days of Scotland, whenever Clan Alpine was going forth to battle, a flaming cross dipped in blood was sent in the hands of a run- ner to every home in the clan, and at that signal all the war- riors mustered to the appointed rendezvous, ready to fight for 137 their country's weal. And whoso disregarded that battle signal and failed to repair to the gathering of Clan Alpine was branded as a coward and cursed as a traitor. To-day the Church of God sends her signal to all her members — the cross bathed in the Redeemer's blood — and by this token she sum- mons us all to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. We are the last reserve of the world for God's work. America will determine the destiny of the race. What shall be said of those who,, professing allegi- ance to Christ and holding membership in His Church, living in such a country at such a time, yet disregard this solemn signal and neglect this supreme opportunity ? Are they not traitors to the most sacred cause in the universe ? May God avert from us the curse of Meroz. Let us obey this summons. Let us rally to this standard. Let us secure this country. And thus let us win the world for God. \ FOREIGN MISSIONS. By Rev. Chas. S. Pomeroy, D.D., Cleveland, Ohio. FATHERS and bretliren — ladies and gentlemen : One century ago, my topic to-night would have sounded like some crying voice in the wilderness, lonesome, un- recognized. Through all this broad land, Foreign Missions were unknown. The Presbyterian Church was bom, but For- eign Missions were not born with it. In vigor of patriotic independence. Christian life was pulsing on the fringe of east- ern shore that formed our country then. Across the water had come faint notes of missionary preparation. Tiie colo- nists of this land, from Columbus to the Pilgrim Fathers, claimed evangelizing purposes. Some tried to fulfill them. But generally the bushel of indifference hid the light of God. No wonder the times were dark as night in the history of Pro- testant Christianity. Culture, philosophy, science, the spirit of the times were all against it. Aggression had departed from its purposes. Among the highest circles of human influence, it seemed hardly important enough to be despised. Humble efforts of those few earnest souls whoremembered their Lord's commission and pitied the perishing, were laughed to scorn, as the people served Christ over the dead girl at Capernaum. The very churches now foremost in missions denounced them. Many were not only non-missionary, but anti-missionary. Asleep under the opened heavens, while the ascending Saviour with the clouds underfoot sent down His last command, not a promise — " I will come to teach the world My grace," but a challenge — " Go ye disciple the nations." Yet, facing the ob- stacles before it, faith was not strong enough to launch out upon the promises. Conscience was not utterly at ease. Duty, that never came to boiling point, was simmering in the Church's heart. Lord Bacon could tell the people in his day, bow merchants had made paths to the ends of the world for ])earls and spices, but not a mast had been set up to sail for the pearls of the 139 Kingdom of Heaven. It was a little better a century beyond. Centrifugal power was lacking. Meanwhile the world was large. Its magnificent distances were appalling. We had no " thunderless lightnings smiting under seas," to bring men nearer in thought. No rapid tran- sit, no propellers churning brine, to narrow the globe in space. Every gate seemed bolted. Yet whenever absolute determi- nation approached and fearless faith, doors always stood ajar enough to let the hero in. The Church of Rome, in the heart of many a heathen land, showed what might have been done. In mercy of our God, there came resuscitation of moribund faith in missions. Tides of prayer and grace rolled in, sinking deep, spreading far. Till just before this century came on, not only England, but the Protestant world w'as rubbing its awakened eyes. Then began warm hands in increasing numbers to hold the ropes, while William Carey, and those who followed him, went down into the death pits of heathendom. His two great mottoes are ringing in the Church to-day, "Expect great things from God," " Attempt great things for God." Kindled flames of holy zeal spread and caught in every di- rection like a prairie fire. Tiie heavenly wind was west- ward. Across the ocean leaped the tongues of flame, till this land was here and there ablaze. Our own Church took lire at last and fully joined the invading forces before the first third of the century had rolled by. We had rediscovered one of the lost arts of Christian fidelity. This has become a shrunken world since then. Two-thirds of all mission fields lie within fifty days of us. Every ]Hish at the barriers became resistless by tlie Almighty's hand behind it. Neither opium wars, nor British guns, nor grasping East India companies can claim the glory, though God used even foul greed of commerce, and base pride of power to help His peaceful arables on. But Af- frica, Siam, Japan, Korea, stand open as widely without a grain of gunpowder. Before our surprise could grasp the fact, the seventh circuit of this vast Jericho was made, and the walls were flat. All lands are open. Now for the grace to go in and possess the earth for Christ. "Lo, I am with you," is the warrant of our triumph. Who cares to count the odds? One promise of our God is worth all the statistics of a century. IIow stands the Presbyterian Church in this tardy rally of Christendom? Brief traverse of what we have attempted already, will fit us better to decide in sight of God, and of the Christian world, what should be expected from our equipment and our opportunity. As early as 1796-7 the New York and Northern ]\[issionary Societies, mostly Presbyterian, were organized for work among 140 Indians, The Assembly itself, in 1800, made appointments of missionaries for similar duty. As matter of liistory, not one of the tribes then reached to any extent by the Gospel took hostile part against us in the war of 1812. After some brief cooperation of our Assembly with sister churches, our distinctive organized Presbyterian Foreign Missions took root late in 1831, when the Synod of Pittsburgh, then the most active Synod of our Church in mission effort, formed the West- ern Foreign Mission Society. For sixty years, until 1870, a large body of Presbyterians alwaj^s preferred to act through the enterprising and prosperous American Board, Another portion of the Church desired their missions under distinct ecclesiastical appointment and responsibility. This was now effected for the first time. After several attempts, the Pittsburgh Society was transferred to the Forty- eighth General Assembly in 1837, and our Board of Foreign Mis- sions was launched in faith and hope. With a treasury for 1883 of $61:32, we began with the Indians, our nearest hea- then; not so sure that anything else was open. The Church had not learned that the entering wedge-point anywhere among the nations would find God's hand hammer- ing on the broad end, to turn a crevice into a rent, then into doors flung wide. So we took the Gospel to our aborigines, already forced back from their old hunting grounds, beginning to learn the j^erfidy of a so-called Christian government, whose most solemn pledges began to be made to the Indians 101 years ago, and sadly we know it, were never kept. We started with a small tribe in that part of the wilderness now blossomed out into the State of Kansas. Sooner or later nearly 400 missionaries were commissioned to sixteen tribes, the sum of $600,000 expended, and as much more entrusted to us by the Government for educational work, in its amended, enlightened, economical policy of educating and Christianiz- ing the Indians into citizenship, instead of robbing and then fighting them. Ten per cent of our missionary force is among them now, and likely long to be, seeking to reach the sixty tribes yet Pagan. The work will doubtless be gradually surrendered to the Home Board, as in the Indian Territory lately, so fast as Chris- tian teaching in English can be effectively pursued. Confes- sedly no method for Indian elevation has been comparable to the labors of evangelical missions. The red man's capacity for becoming citizen and Christian has received its demonstration. Scores of elders, whose names sound still as savage as their fathers', stand enrolled in our Church courts. Evangelized In- dians have never been otherwise than true to the pale-faced races that contain their revered missionaries. Always friendly, 141 never treaclierous, protecting their teachers from cruelty of sav- age vengeance. Teach them English, yes; but let not Govern- mental meddling doom the older ones to die without tidings of grace, because they are rusty in the language of the land. Then, full as early in the start, but with longer delay in reaching their posts, Pinuey and Lowrie were pushing toward the sun-rising, the pioneers of all our enterprises in the Orient — the one to land on the forehead of the Dark Continent at Liberia, the other to disbark at the point of India's great cor- nucopia and spend a year and a-half from PhiLadelphia, climbing through dense populations toward the top, broad East and West, as from New York to Omaha, till he drew rein at Lodiana. From that centre, God has given us our share of the conflicts and the victories. What a hive of humau life ! Crowd all our 60,000,000 four times over into our terri- tory east of the Mississippi and jon have only the density of India. Tlie battle has been long with Satan's masterpiece of caste, with the subtleness and mental acuteness of Brahminism, with Mohammedanism, grown hotter and more truculent by cross- ing the equator ; with imported European infidelities to de- ceive the changing peoples. Not for nothing has Victoria become an Asiatic empress. Child marriages and persecuted widowhood will go the way of suttees and crushings of Jug- gernaut, and so one horrid current of distress be stayed. But, except for pressure of Christian influence, British bayonets w^ould continue to uphold idolatrj'- in places where men now sharpen their knives on the feet of the stone idols which they used to worship. This juncture finds us with four flourishing central missions, each now a Presbytery, in the north, and our Mahratta south- west field at Kolhapur. We have an increase of fourteen per cent in covenant members within the year to swell the half- million of Christian communicants. With fifty other foreign societies joined in the colossal effort Christianity has perhaps one mi.ssionary to every 400,000 souls. Yet the world has no match for the rapid spread of Christian influence in India for twenty years by gone. Every decade marks a doubled growth. At even present rates living men will yet see with eyes of flesh twice as many Christians in India as in all the United States to-day. The glacier is moving, honeycombed at every step. Its lower edges have melted away already into the rising flood of Christian thought. In Africa our early mission ventures were cautious and perilous. Deadly fevers threatened the workers, decimated their ranks. In 1849, searching from Liberia for healthier 142 stations, the Island of Corisco was occupied, and tlie mainland reached from there. In 1870 Gaboon Mission was added bj transference from the American Board. Our work pressed up the rivers inland, reaching the natives with blessed power. Last year 160 Ogove men and women intelligently came out for Christ. But France in her colonial policy decreed tiiatno other language than her own should reach those people, so playing into Jesuit hands. Our progress is checked — the field surrendered for the time — hopeful that French Protestant societies may be led to adopt the work as it drops from our reluctant grasp. But surely iu that vast interior of continental darkness will be an opening yet, to brighten it for Christ. Where saintly Livingstone expired on his knees, working to loose the accursed slave-trade's grip from the throat of Africa; where intrepid Stanley has proved a John Baptist of missions, his work like a thunderbolt that cleaves miasmatic air, when no one not a streak of lightning like himself could have suf- ficed for the task ; where the commerce of fifteen great nations will be pushing into the rich basin of the Congo Free State, whose liberty they have guaranteed; here we shall yet meet our obligation in helping to save those fifty millions darker in soul than skin. Press our government meanwhile to recede from branding us before the world as the only nation of the league refusing to exclude from that brightening land the deadly curse of rum. It was our privilege to plant the cross in Si am first in 1840, and to monopolize since then the evangelization of that race. With hostility and persecution met at first, it took twelve years to make a convert. But they have been coming ever since. The "Light of Asia" in those people for centuries proved nothing more than utter darkness. Now from Bangkok to the Northern Laos villages persecution has changed to notable popular favor. A humane and liberal monarch basset marked approval upon our missionaries. He aids with sub- stantial tokens of regard the medical and educational branches of their work, though he knows that the Gospel saturates them both. With such immense undivided responsibility as ours, the possession of that land, its emancipation from slavery and vicious superstitions and the vigorous training of a native min- istry from among our 800 Siamese church members, might well encourage generous reinforcement to the score of overworked missionary laborers. Buddhism is dragging its anchors and being swept down stream. Only one- fourth the Buddhist priests are in Bangkok that there were thirty years ago. Mighty harvests are waiting the sowers and reapers on that fertile field. When our Board sent out its first missionaries to the great 143 Mongolian races in 1838, approach was not possible, for five years, nearer than Singapore, to the walled empire Avho-^e four hundred millions, sealed hermetically against God's truth, were only just opened with some freedom to the light of life eternal. Nobly for forty years our missionaries have done their part in South and North China, with voice and pen and press, with school and hospital, in famine and plenty, in wars and insurrec- tions, in home and street and chapel, in fatiguing but most effective itineracies, with ninety-eight men and women for our force. We are occupying cities large as Chicago with workers counted on one hand's fingers, and for mere outstations, cities of a quarter million souls. Yet the undermining has begun. Hundreds of pagodas are falling into irresistible decay. De- serted temples are beginning to be leased for our chapels. Never has one convert been condemned for crime. Canton Christian College is open. The great Hainan Island is occu- pied, our last accession. The wonderful Inland Mission is teaching us and others what can be done at once by new-comers preaching Christ from foreign lips, when native Christian interpreters can be had. The history of the Gospel in Japan sounds like the romance of a dream. While our pilgrim fathers were landing on these shores, Japanese were driving out intriguing papacy. Feet crimsoned in Christian blood were trampling on the cross with threats that the Christian or the Christian's God who came to their soil again should lose his head. The gates then slammed shut for centuries, to beoj)ened peacefully ouly thirty- five years ago by an American Christian Commodore, who sang "Old Hundred" in face of all their bolts on the Lord's day. A floating Bible captured the nobleman who picked it up at sea and started conversion from within. In 1859 our missionaries came to share with others the approaching con- quest. Unparalleled changes towards the life and thought of Christian lands astonish the world. The f^imiliar cone of Fusiyama is there as usual. All else is different. People are eager for the Gospel. Thousands fill the theatres to hear it. Congregations not sated by seven sermons in a single day. An intensely missionary style of Christianity is forming, with a speed too that seems to refute the truth, that the kingdom of Heaven cometh not with observation. The very men who even five years ago sounded public alarm, lest Japan should be transformed into a Christian nation, now advocate adopting the ^ew faith as a political measure, to save the empire from lagging behind the world, lest her "sunrise glory," as they put it, " should turn to the fading glory of the sunset." So with varying speed, but always with advance, the Lord's work pushes on. No land where our missions arc planted 144 has become absolutely Christian yet, like Fiji or New Zealand or Madagascar. In strange Korea we have a splendid foot- hold. The First Presbyterian Church is on its leet with its first score of members, and the government is mildly content to let the laws against us slumber, waiting their sure repeal. Three great empires represent the waning strength of hea- thendom to-day. China with its 400 millions, India with its 250 millions, the Turkish Empire representing Mahommedan- ism with 50 miUions. The last has the proselyting religion of the three. There from the centres of Syria and Persia, both transferred to us by the American Board in 1870, influences for the Gospel are percolating through all the world of Islam. Persia's one station has grown to five, with schools, schol- ars and communicants doubled within ten years. The col- lege at Oroomiah, over-crowded with students, shines in the same bright galaxy of institutions with Robert, Beirut, Can- ton and the rest. The Syrian busy mission press is throwing ofi' thirty-three million pages a year, half of them Scripture, to spread from Damascus to Calcutta, understood by a Mussel- man of any nation, since he keeps his Arabic fresh, by read- ing his Koran. This is only second in performance to our press at Shang- hai, the largest of our eight, that flings oft" forty-five mil- lion Cliinese pages annually and stands the most extensive printing establishment in the missionary world. Truly typo- graphic art has proved full substitute for the lost gift of tongues. The Syrian mission came to us well grown, with veteran la- borers from the American Board, and a grand record for the pioneers like Pliny Fisk, Eli Smith, Jonas King and others. Fortunate for the Church and the world, that by God's grace, such men as bear the burdens of that important field, could be ready to take their mantles when they fell. Then crossing to our own hemisphere again, we assume our increasing share in bringing the light of a pure Gospel among the dense ignorance and blinded superstitions of corrupted Christianity in Romish lands, where the errors taught and allowed, practically neutralize the truth that remains. In Brazil, full of Jesuit intrigue, where 83 per cent can neither read nor write ; in Mexico, until recently given up for three centuries to unchallenged Papal dominion; in Colombia, with its United States upon our basis; in Chili, with its stable rule, vast wealth and wretched morals, and in Guatemala, with its authorities welcoming our scanty mission forces and swing- ing oft' from Rome; in these fields of our efibrt, God's provi- dence is vindicating the wisdom of entering such nations where the governments themselves are breaking with the spiritual 145 tyrannies that have enslaved them, and holding in tight rein the priestly greed and abuses that had well nigh eaten out tlieir national life. In no part of the world is Rome so cribbed and cabined as in Popish Mexico. The hierarchy's acquisitiveness has been sternly checked. Not a j)riestly gar- ment or display is allowed upon the streets. Persecution at times has swept our mission forces in those lands. Priestly hands have built street bonfires of our Bibles. Many converts with their teachers have sealed their faith in blood. But the governments are fair and protective. Their effort is to administer justice upon evil-doers, and the work of gracious Protestant illumination goes grandly on. While many another neighboring State waits to have its spiritual darkness pierced, when the American churches can rise to take in the needs of those who share with them this hemis- phere. In most Spanish-American States, the past is dead. New furrows are ploughing through the fallow fields of na- tional life. The question presses mightily, whether the pure seed of Christ's kingdom, or the unfriendly tares of a godless, infidel culture shall be the sowing and the harvest. This al- ternative faces the Papal States of Europe too, where we are lending some aid in the great struggle through the hands of our brethren of the Waldensian Church and other allied bod- ies in the Presbyterian Council. So in many a land of Pagan- ism to-day, it is a tussle of Christian faith with infidelity, a race neck and neck, which shall have the heathen, as their sinking crafts go to pieces under them. Finally our Foreign Board followed up its oriental missions, by consistent, effective efforts to evangelize the floating Chinese and Japanese that strike our shores. When the Pagans slip through the meshes of our net abroad, we try to catch them for Christ in the nearer waters of a Christian civilization. Now, as for the ordained missionaries who have borne Christ's banner in our uniform, honor belongs as the peers of any in Protestant Christendom. The world is owing its debt to them as explorers, as investigators in science ; authorities in ethnology ; linguists, mastering the world's tongues to make them speak for God, conquering each vernacular till they can often teach the native philologists the refinements of their idioms and literature. As translators and publishers, as edi* tors and diplomatists, men of their class have been steadily winning the respect of Christendom with the mere fringe of their endeavor; while the main bulk and texture of their er- rand, the only thing that could have sent them on such life- work, was not to civilize uncouth bodies, but to save lost souls. And as for character, it could be affirmed of multitudes, what Theodore Parker said of Adoniram Judson, that his char- 146 acter was wortTi more to the world as an example of exalted living than all the money ever expended in Foreign Missions. Keen-eyed rulers, watching their career, have been ready to confess with governors in India, " They have been the salt of the country, the true saviours of the empire." It never was good for man to be alone. No whit less noble or necessary have been the missionaries' wives, and the unmar- ried women of the missions, to give their examples with their teaching of what womanhood may be when emancipated and ennobled by the Gospel. " Woman's work for woman," yet for man as well. How they have drawn in, as by a whirl- wind of steady enthusiasm, their sisters at home to organize and pray and give, to administer and exhort as was never dreamed of earlier in the Presbyterian Church. A marvel of this latter day. To gather two and a half millions of dollars into the foreign treasury in fifteen years bygone, helping their sisters in the dark ; learning to look at Jesus through the eyes of converted heathen women, and realize the uplift of His grace. It was a Christian woman's needle that pierced the Indian zenanas, and women that followed are beginning to puncture and riddle the desolate seclusion of benighted womanhood the world over. Girls' education in our schools abroad is revolu- tionizing heathendom. But who shall estimate the power of Christian motherhood in rearing a missionary generation, since the interest of this work began to gather around our hallowed hearth-stones? Boys and girls, yet within their teens, are growing up in hosts to take the places of their elders soon, trained to systematic giving in the Sabbath-school; better equipped with the intelligence and zealous generosity of mis- sions, than any generation that ever lived ; more likely to be welcomed volunteers in this great conquering crusade, when the Church musters courage and cash to send them. Our medical missionaries, one-third of them women, have been the invaluable videttes and guerillas of our force in every mission land. They enter where no other workers would be allowed to come. Trained and competent, they never need wait to learn the language. Ready to begin their blessed work at once and reach the body on their way to the 80ul. Fever or fracture is identical in Ningpo and in New York. Human suffering speaks a universal vernacular. Their success in winning confidence is tenfold what it otherwise could be. In their hospitals and dispensaries where 50,000 patients are treated every year, they are finding rare inlets to the lives they want to heal eternally. All honor then to the Board that stands between this work and tlie churches, the wise, faithful counsellor, the strong 147 right arm of both. It numbers fifteen ministers and elders, instead of eighty as at first, a far more compact and business- like body. Its executive officers have pften shown that devoteduess to a sacred cause like this is no monofX)ly of ministers. I can surely not ofi'end in this presence, if, repre- senting many kindred spirits, I place in the high niche it fills in Presbyterian memory, crowned with the laurels of an apostolic consecration, the honored name of Walter Lowrie. Two sons he gave to lay down lives for Christ and China, while another lives and works with fifty-six years of honor- able service against his name in the peerage of Presbyterian missions. Rejoicing faith looks through such eyes to-day, and sees what in one man's lifetime has been wrought ot God. Bounden tribute could hardly meet fair payment, either, with- out praise for the closing thirty-seven years' treasurership of William Rankin, Our Church's part of the general advance is a leap from nothing to thirty-four missions in sixteen countries, with 500 missionaries of both sexes, and 300 native preachers speaking over thirty languages. Our Board holds property in institu- tions and buildings by the hundreds in many lands. 23,000 communicants in 312 churches, with 25,000 pupils in schools and serninaries, represent the hundreds of thousands already evangelized and under Gospel teaching through our denomi- nation. The beginning of the end is coming, when as now, the native preachers are outnumbering the missionaries. The branches- of the Banyan tree arc taking root. Reproduction is the end of a Church as of a plant. Pastors are rising from the native churches, not trained away from home, tQ be spoiled by rear- ing barriers of social gradation between their people and . themselves. Not much longer will it hold true, that the greater the spiritual success of a mission, the heavier it bur- dens the society that upholds it. Lands there are, where the work would go on, if all missionaries were recalled to-morrow. Yet we want to give them not mere unripe rudiments of faith, but the perfected fruit as we have plucked it. Self-support on all the fields is hopefully advanced. In the Pacific are island groups that have long swung off from all ai^ and are doing their own Foreign Mission work. Two-thirds of the American Board's churches of Ceylon and India receive nothing from its treasury. Only two bodies among our Baptist brethren are doing any more to swell its Foreign Mis- sion treasury than its own mission church of Burmah, This is our ideal ; we shall seek it with a will. Among our missions, godly generosities are alive here and there that fairly shame the home churches. When India has become 148 evangelized like Pennsylvania ; when the Christian nation of Japan is sending its missions across the Yellow Sea ; when Home Missions, indeed, shall be the only work on every shore, all that is foreign shall be the ministries of fellowship between a United States of Christian nations ; then, indeed, the coming of our Lord is nigh. It may be upon mission-fields, too, that the problem of Christian unity shall find solution. A union spirit is on the air. No Church will give it warmer sympathy than ours. Always our influence was unifying, pledged as we are, by antecedents and belief, to broad catholic affilia- tions. We, the earliest to act a year ago, arranging even to dissolve our Presbyteries for merging on the field with union bodies in harmony with reformed polity and doctrine. Yet, still our missionaries can come to Assembly at the Church's expense, and lose no claim for themselves and their families upon the Belief Fund. Why perpetuate our differences, while the converted natives know of none ? This is a wise and Christ-like move. We will make Presbyterian Christians when we can, but Christians anyhow. Eeady are we to carry it further, too. On petals of a fiower, on surface of a leaf, stand drops of dew, rounded, poised, severed. They are alike, but their individual cohesion exceeds that of each for the other. But the wind rises, there comes a rush of breeze that shakes the branch, unites the drops, pours their watery jewels to earth in a refreshing stream. It may be that i-t only needs deeper inspiration breathed from Heaven, a grander rush of the all-moving Spirit, to shake the Churches and make kindred Christians coalesce in blessed union. God haste it in His own glorious time ! So I gather up in hasty sketching merest outlines of what one branch of the great Presbyterian family has been doing. Onh^ a mutilated fragment ; a torso at best. But, as the Hermes of Praxitiles shows in the smallest features its match- less author's hand, so the divine artist testifies the genius of His gracious providence in any picture of the foreign field to- day. The merest circuit of the battlements makes evident how God has blessed the special arm of service entrusted to our beloved Church in Christ's army of occupation. As yet the balance in our favor is too partial, too selfish; one minis- ter to every seven hundred here, one to every seven hundred thousand there. Still, we have only one, not the largest nor the least of seventy regiments that fight this blessed warfare. Sweepthe field in thought and you see from Greenland's ice, in every zone, down through the tropics to the Antarctic circle, the long line of Christian conquest circling the globe, pressing in at every point upon the surrendering nations, with our 149 Master's name the common rallying cry, and hosannas of the rescued the cheering music of our march. Is it success or failure ? Why, proportionate to men and means, it shows fourfold results alDove those at home. The most striking triumphs of the cross are won on mission fields. Enough to see what God has done, to be confident of what He will do. The eye of the soul needs to enlarge its pupil to take in such floods of light as facts are pouring. No statistics can represent the size of actual facts. Who can foresee what Pente- costs of converting power are coming, what swift adjustments and changes of popular faith ? When God's undermining process is complete, how instantaneous may be the crash of tumbling idolatries and a clearing of the ruins for the harvests of Emmanuel? God moves the swiftest. Let us quicken pace to keep up with Ilim. He opens gateways faster than Chri-s- tians their purses or their hearts. How loom up our obligations in the retrospect ! Blessed beyond compare, our country could buy up any nation of the globe, with several of the smaller ones thrown in. We stand the richest Church of this richest land. And though we raise more money now for missions than any other Church without State support, Avhat has the efibrt been among our people ? Too largely a thing of shreds and patches, a fragmentary effort. The care of a select few in every church who have it on their hearts, considered a luxury of self-denying souls, and not a very breath of life. The Church needs Foreis^n Missions full as much as the world needs them, lest it becomes a frozen pool instead of a flowing spring. Oh, for a rally that would fling all our 700,000 into the work, holding the home-shore end and the deep-sea end of the one great Gospel net I Our land for Christ and Christ for the world as well ! Brothers, how the object looms before our consciences! Is it reflex influence? Is it merely to take our part with other Christian bodies, not to be distanced or thought listless? Or is it because swift-passing generations are dying in their sins, and we, for their sake and Christ's, must plunge in to rescue them ? We are not un- -nerved or distracted in counsel by doubts whether the heathen without Christ are actually lost at all ; whether their igno- rance is not a sort of bliss tliat makes it folly to attempt their wisdom. We profoundly believe that noio is the accepted time, the only time, for them, for us. On this rare day of thankful joy, the Presbyterian Church can bind her brow with no fairer chaplet of renown than her record in Foreign Mis- sions. Yet, " Not unto us, but to Thy name give glory." Will future centennials smile at the earlier record, while this great Church was playing at missions, thinking it did its duty to its Lord by less than a dollar a year from each member 150 to equip its armies of occupation ? That was tlie best we did, till this centennial broke the record. Nine hundred and ninety-nine Christians strained to send only one proxy to a dying world. Shall we not see a more adventurous faith launching its gifts in volumes on this cause ? We must put dollars where we put dimes in our siege guns before we batter down the walls of superstition and bring in the kingdom that we love. Hold the high-water mark and flood the globe. Hundreds of consecrated young men and women wait your call. From start to finish, make it a work of faith, lest all our fine schemes be like an empty suit of armor, with no hero's heart behind the breastplate. Our glowing hopes are vision- ary follies, without the power and wisdom of our God. Since the Gospel is that, we can trust it to cleanse these ingrained pollutions. We may stand by these sepulchres and see them opened. But we await the resistless word, "Come forth." Lay hold by prayer on promise ; on cyclonic energy that's calm and sure as tLie gravitation of the skies. Fight through our battle- days in loyal service to our King, and meet at last in glad congratulations those victors in the grand army of the redeemed, who rally again around their risen Lord in the end- less jubilee of Paradise, when the centennials of eternity have become plentiful as sands upon the ocean shore. CALVINISM AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. By Hon. Wm. C. P. Breckinridge, M.C, Lexington, Ky. A/TR. moderator and fathers and brethren, and you who ^^ have come from every part of America to this his- toric city to unite in a centennial that is devoted to the glory of God and to the good of man, I thank you more than I can tell for the tribute to the memory of him whom I loved as I never loved another man and whose name was identified with your predecessors as they went in and out be- fore the great Assemblies of the Church to which he gave his heart and his life. There is in every man a consciousness, a recognition, that we live under an ever-present law ; that we live in a universe of law ; that we are formed without our option in a predes- tined family circle ; that by an antecedent power our lot at the very cradle was cast without our option under given and foreordained circumstances ; that each one of us found our peculiar place in a peculiar family, located in a certain community, and that he grew up by circumstances over which he had no control ; that as he grew and developed and learned somewhat of the wider world around him, he became more and more conscious of the dominating and irresistible power of this ever-present law ; that the natural world was subject to it, the stars held in their orbits, the tiniest wild flower de- veloped in its solitary beauty, all that adorned, all that was p^^verful in nature was obedient thereto. Those silent and invisible forces which were more and more dominated by our will, became, as we more and more under- stood them, servants to this law, and not masters of the conse- quences which they entailed. And as our researches came upon higher levels, we found that animate nature was likewise subject thereto, and to this universal rule man was no excep- tion. Now, in accordance with this law, as we looked into history, we thought we could trace that it, too, as it gave, in the development of man, the progress of civilization, the out- 151 152 growtli of institutions, the overturning of empires, the substi- tution therefor of nobler governments ; that there ran equal demonstration of the omnipresent and omnipotent law. Be- fore there was any visible universe to be obedient to this law, before there was any race to develop under it, there was a perfect plan thereof in the divine intellect, approved by the divine will, of all that has been and all that is to be. All the multifarious possibilities foreseen, all the incalculable contin- gencies provided for, and, as I understand it, that is the gist of Calvinism. That which we and our fathers have seen, which we and our children are to see, was not produced by some blind chance ; was not the outgrowth of some incidental or accidental power ; not the shifty arrangement at any particular moment of some uncertain and vacillating power ; not the unconsequential se- quence of events ; but prior thereto all was as well known, all as perfectly provided for, all as absolutely seen, as it has oc- curred in the development of the centuries that have passed, and as it is to develop in the centuries that are to come ; and that it was seen and provided for by a Triune God who was Father of all, an unconditioned Sovereign, Law-maker, with absolute power. Creator, with unconditioned energy, and this is Calvinism, As you subdivide this tremendous thought, to apply it to the manifold conditions of human nature and human history, it has to be formulated into creeds and dogmas. As you take the prism, and hold it to the pure white ray of light that you may subdivide that ray into the colors of the rainbow, so we take the prism of human intellect and of human nature to subdivide this unit, that its diverse colors may illuminate and radiate every part and condition of the human heart and soul. It is the answer of the human soul created in the likeness of its divine Father, answering its Creator, " Thou art Sovereign, and Thee only we adore." This is that Cal- vinism which I have come somewhat to talk about to-day. Now, when we once obtain that thought in our intellect ; when we once rise above the mere struggles of mankind, and see that all these struggles take their predestined place to accomplish their foreordained purposes, that each in his place is born to his work, to accomplish in his day his part of this divine plan, there instantly follows the conclusion that there is no other slavery than servitude to God. All ranks fade into insignilicance before the mighty sovereignty of God ; all distinctions become trivial and temporary before the ineffable majesty of the eternal Jehovah ; all traditions, all trammels, all shackles that have been used to bind human intellect are melted before the justice of the great thought, that man is 153 responsible alone at the bar of God for what he does in this world, where God has put hinfi to work out his salvation. This is true freedom ; this is real liberty ; but when the human intellect takes one step further ; when to the pro- found and precious truth that this man was born in the image of God, and therefore born free ; that whatever we may mean by the sentence, "Born in the image of God" and after His likeness, it is a real and profound truth, that it is no flower of rhetoric and no sentimentality, but the most real of all physi- cal truths, that man in some sense, some real sense, is the son of God, wearing in his heart and bearing in his soul and feel- ing, in his innermost nature, the lineaments of his divine Father ; when to that great thought is added that other truth, that the Triune God found men in a state of irretrievable ruin and misery ; that the prospective picture for this son of God, created in His likeness, was eternal damnation, and that the aspirations of that soul for a new and better life, like dead sea apples, were to turn to ashes on his lips ; then there came for him deliverance, and he accepted that Creator as his Father and his God — that man, free intellectually, becomes indeed free in soul. And that is the highest fruit of Calvin- istic thought. It is that this human soul owed its whole hope of salvation and its entire promise of eternal life to the fore- ordained purposes of God, growing out of that love which so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son that man's soul might thus be born anew. Call it " predestination " or " election," he who feels that in those remote and eternal councils his name was written by that Hand that was to be pierced in the fullness of time, that from that Side was to flow the blood and water which his soul, not some ideal soul, lost in the promiscuous thousands of humanity, not some unknown unit counting for nauglit in the millions of mankind, but for his soul selected out of those millions, for his life elected out of those countless thousands, those hands were to be pierced and that heart was to be broken, he becomes in a sense, which no language can describe, the servant of God, the freeman of ^all else in the world. Now, when this truth is no longer the dry formula of the crisis, when it is no longer the dogma of the schools, when it is no longer the technical theology of the class-room, but when it becomes the living motive power in the human heart, when it becomes a part of his own will, inwrought into his purpose, who can doubt that there has been put into the hu- man problem, or into those forces which are to decide the de- velopment of all the problems of the progress of mankind, a force of irresistible power? We must recollect that this does not change a man into another man. He is the same 154 individual into whose heart this power is put that he was be- fore. It does not make anew nianout of him, in the sense of making a different man. It is the implanting of new life and new forces, the change of motives. He is the same man, in the same circumstances, surrounded by the same duties, with the same obligations upon him, but with a different motive power and purpose. But who can deny that one obtaining some faint conception of this new truth, when it has once taken hold of the human heart and the human soul, that there has been added to the forces which control mankind a force of incalculable power and a force that necessarily . must work in but one direction. Who can conceive a nation of slaves composed of freemen? Who can realize as possible a government that has tyrannized over a people each of whom is at heart free ? I am not now talking of the affairs of government, but of the spirit and pur- pose and eftect. Forms of government, anyhow, are bat temples in which the spirit that is worshiping at the altar marks its true relation to mankind and its true purpose. But Avho can conceive of a nation of servants each of whom feels that he is called of God to be a freeman ? In proportion as its citizens thus feel, Avill that nation be free, and in proportion as this mighty thought rules the individual citizen, so will the institutions of that nation be imbued with that spirit, and it will exhibit its power. Not at once, for all changes in human government are gradual. All have a certain form of slow de- velopment. Sometimes it seems to be rapid because we do not know of the data of the historic problem. We are so captivated by the splendid power of some great man whom God gives to the generation, for the time and for the crisis, that we overlook the antecedent events which made him possible, and made his work possible. It is true that great men do make and do decide great crises, but it is only so in a limited sense. If Luther, Calvin and Melancthon had never lived, still the human intellect would have emancipated itself from the effects of the Middle Ages. If Columbus had never discovered this country, some other Columbus in the fullness of time would have found this Western Continent, which God guarded through the ignorance of mankind until he came to play his part in the great drama of human freedom. Great men are great gifts of God. We are deceived by the glamour of their power ; our hearts are exalted, and we ascribe to them an im- portance they do not deserve, for it is by the powei' of the di- vine leadership, through tlie operation of this interior, internal cause, that influences the development of the human heart and the human intellect. All progress is that way, leading to a 155 recognition more and more of the divine sublimity and less and less of human distinction. Mr. Moderator, I had intended to say, in another connec- tion, that he was a shallow thinker who did not recognize that the glory of political institutions is that all men should be, in practice as in thought, free and equal. And I found that profound belief in my heart of the higher proof that man, more and more, is recognizing that there is no other distinction worth knowing in human nature, save acknowl- edging the sovereignty of God ; and as this truth grows day by day in all human strongholds, it does two things : it makes each man recognize in himself the folly of pretending to be superior to the men around him, and it makes each man tender in recognizing the equality of human beings before the God that both of them worship. As this great truth, and the consequences growing out of it, were obscured through long centuries of domination by Church and by State, it seemed to have been forgotten, and God revenged His truth upon man by allowing that degradation which follows from the practical forgetfulness of Him and His power; and three centuries and more ago that great revolu- tion, which we call the Eeformation, was simply a new recog- nition by certain persons of this great truth, and the devotion of their lives to its utterance and to its practical enforce- ment. There never was a time when every knee bowed to Baal. There never has been a day when God was without a witness. D"p and down through the world there have always been souls whose daily walk was w4th God. It would be the most intense argument for infidelit}'- if it could once be proven that for one single moment there was no ladder that came from the gate of heaven to some human soul, up and down which no angel of the Lord passed ; that there Avas one moment when there was no electric current of ineffable love that connected the human soul with its divine Creator. And when Luther nailed his defiance, and when Calvin wrote his Institutes, there were human hearts scattered up and down Europe that felt that there had come to them not a new life, but the utterance of what those hearts had always felt, and the expression of the love by which they had always been governed. So the seed fell upon good soil, and when this leaven was put into the seething cauldron of that particular century, it necessarily created additional fermentation. It caused anew that confusion of intellect and of purpose which precedes the settlement of questions. It caused that discontent, that excit- ing condition, which is the first step to reformation or revolu- tion. It increased that restlessness with what was, which is 156 the beginning of tlie ascertainment of what is best to be. Everywhere institutions were overturned. It was another period when the current turned the world upside down, which is the divine process of making the wrong subordinate to the right ; for the very necessity of better growth is that the mere- tricious that is on top shall be turned upside down by the valuable, which had gotten to the bottom. That occurred, and it has continued to occur. I will not, before this audience, in the time limited to me, undertake to give an historical corroboration of the truth I have attempted to put as the a priori reason for that which is established. Assume that God is sovereign. Grant that this thought has gone into the heart of man. Assume that these men were elected to be his servants. Grant that they have accepted that election. See them as factors in the battle of life. Watch them as they enter into it ; and who doubts upon which side they will array themselves ? You may not see any banners, with their flaunting inscriptions. You need not look at the enemies they are going to attack. You know that the men of that army, with hearts aflame, with intellects emancipated with that thought, will fight but one way, and that will be for the glory of God and the freedom of men. But after the battle is over and the victory incomplete is won, for the victories in this warfare have not yet been com- pleted ; when we camp as our fathers camped, but a little bit further into the territory that our enemies held when we began the march in the morning, all we want is to see who has fallen in that heroic fight, who has deserted amid those terrific dan- gers, who has weakened from its constant temptations, so that we may close up the ranks for to-morrow's fight, that we may estimate the strength that is necessary for the next day's bat- tle, and take our consultations for what is best to do to renew that fight. And this has been what human historians have been doing for the last three hundred years. They have been recounting, day after day, what the armies of freedom have won during the hours of the day. The pages are confused, they are stained with blood, for our progress from those three centuries can be marked backward by scaffold and stake, by the heads lifted up as traitor heads at the doors of palaces and churches and cathedrals and temples ; but alongside of those blood- stained monuments, which mark the track of our progress, can also be found freer churches, freer institutions, schools of learning, cathedrals, in which God, the Spirit, is worshiped. General Assemblies, called in the name of His Son, and light and progress everywhere, until to-day the warfare is over that carries with it physical pain and physical danger. 157 I know that sometimes it seems as if the progress were backward, as he who stands upon the bank of some river thinks its current goes upward, and his heart may feel sad that it is reversing the order he had hoped to have seen in his day. Shallows or falls, or an arid plain that runs down to the bank of what seems to be a useless river, may be to him a landscape that has naught in it but pain and disappoint- ment ; but if he will turn his steps away from that river until he ascends some promontory from which he may see its mean- derings, always running toward the sea, sometimes obstructed by a mountain of prejudice, which had to be washed awa_y by the blood of martyrs and the tears of the broken-hearted, but washed away as if by the power of the divine hand ; some- times turning aside apparently uselessly, until he sees that be- yond its broad lagoon some magnificent city, in which human beings live and are happy, has grown upon its bank; some- times dammed up by human greed until its waters burst over the dam and carry with them industrial progress and indus- trial hope, that had been against God, but is now instinct with the spirit of the divine Master and made to make melodious music in His praise as it becomes the steward of His charities and His missions, but always going to the sea. And so the river of human history has had the same great direction. It has always been toward human freedom — hu- man freedom of the soul, human freedom of the will, human freedom of the intellect, until to-day we stand in an attitude utterly unlike that in which Calvin stood when he wrote his " Institutes " and when he paid homage to the Church at Geneva. I hear it said that Calvinism is dying out. " We do not hold," it is said, " to the harsh and rugged old Calvinism of those hard days. ' Our preachers do not preach as Calvin preached. They do not talk as Luther talked." They are bringing down, I hear it constantly said, this doctrine of ours, this hard doctrine of ours, this cruel doctrine of ours, to a more ejalightened day, to a softer civilization, and to a less prejudiced Calvinism than our fathers preached. I apprehend it is utterly untrue, and that he looks at but the surface who says so. We do not arm ourselves cap-a-pie as our fathers did. We do not go, as John Knox did, before the queen to defend Scottish liberty. We do not have to die in the ranks of a physical army to preserve the germs of liberty. We are not called to the stake, and therefore the blare of the trumpet and the sound of the drum and the armor of the soldier we have laid aside. Other enemies meet our leaders. Other weapons are to be used for our defense. God's sovereignty was the stone out of the mountain that had 158 to be used to destroy tlie class distinction wliich had grown up in the centuries that were then behind them. The individu- ality of every man, as the direct son of God, elect in the coun- cils of eternity, and therefore not to be touched by mere man power, without law, had to be good in those olden days. Scottish, Genevan and HoUandish liberty had to be won by heroic endeavor and ceaseless courage. The life to be laid down was the physical life, The hollows across which haman progress had to go were hollows that were to be filled with blood; and Calvinists were soldiers of the cross with a new destiny, and had to wage a new physical war. Commissioned by the Captain of Salvation, they carried into the contest of that day the spirit of a certain physical warfare. To-day the sovereignty of our God is called in question in other ways. Science denies that this universe of His, that stretches out before our eyes, our intelligences and imagina- tions, does conform to the teachings of His book. In the halls of learning, in the school-house, in the college, the enemies of our God no longer deny the equality of men, but they give a certain apotheosis to human nature, and thereby bring man above his divine Master. No longer do we war with the im- plements of physical warfare, but we 'are to meet the world, the flesh and the devil in fight with these intellectual imple- ments that are to win the fight for us. And in every Presbyterian seminary, thanks be to God, and in every Presbyterian pulpit, blessed be His divine name, the weapon with which we fight the warfare of to-day, is that God is the sovereign Creator of the universe around us, the Revealer of the Bible we believe, and the Father of the Saviour who died to save mankind. It is the same old Calvinism of the past. It is that same heaven that Stephen saw when he was the first martyr ; that Paul, who stood consenting to his murder, saw in his long war- fare to make the gentile world Christian, and that our fathers in all ages have seen. It is the same blessed truth that lies at the foundation of this precious centennial to-day. Lines of geography may divide us ; the traditions of the Bible, divid- ing duty and allegiance, may put their veils temporarily be- tween us ; questions of diverse races, complex conditions and of delicate problems may make us hesitate about the form of organic union ; but under all of these there is the same love, in substance, of the same sovereign God who in the eternity of the past gave His Son, who died for the elect of the world. This is the Calvinism of the present. It will be modified, as we go into the future, in the mere form of utterance or formulation of its creed ; but in its essential substance it will never more be modified, until that Jerusalem coming down 159 out of the skies shall come and dwell among men ; when all who have gone before, when John Calvin will shake hands with the Moderator of your Assembly ; when Melancthon will lie upon the breast of some one of these venerable fathers around me, and when the crowns that are put upon the heads of the elect will be thrown at the feet of the Lamb of God, recognizing that He only is worthy of worship and adoration. I thank you for your kind approval of the truths I have uttered. God put them into my heart and into your hearts. LAY EFFORT AMONG THE MASSES. By Hon. Bennett H. Young, Louisville, Ky. NEITHER national laws nor national songs are a better index of national character than its maxims. Mankind needs and appreciates formulas of truth concentrated in a few words or sentences, easily remembered and yet strong and complete enough to comprehend life's work, and on which the principles and convictions of the soul may be laid. The Westminster Assembly of Divices, gathered to formu- late a system of faith and doctrine, with persecutions and revolutions behind the Church, and with struggles and con- flicts before, well understood the necessity for this character of truth. Summoned with the primal object of demonstrating the concurrence of the doctrines of the English Church with that held by the other reformed Churches of that day, moved and controlled by the Spirit of the living God, it lifted itself higher than its source and ignored the narrow lines limiting its being. It considered not alone the English Church, or the Scotch Church, or a conformity, or a subserviency to any pre- conceived notions or creeds ; it went straight to the Word of God, and supplicating for divine guidance, elaborated for man- kind a doctrinal basis which, after two and a half centuries, under the severest strains of religious and political change, still stands as a defense of the orthodox truth ; its banner is borne by a large proportion of the really active Christian ele- ment of the world ; it has been and is^a bulwark of civil and religious liberty, and originates a type of Christian people always the subjects of the deepest and strongest convictions, intelligent and earnest in their faith, ready to defend their doc- trines with fortitude, zeal, and, if needs be, to sanctify them with their blood. With a sublime conception of man's destiny, with a full per- ception of the dignity and grandeur of human life in its rela- tions to the Creator, conscious of the courage and faith requisite to defend the truth in the days of persecution and 160 161 trial, with the belief that man should not " live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God," they laid down as the basis of all human life and human conduct, as the first and greatest of all human thoughts, those ennobling and inspiring words, " Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." There were no pre- liminaries nor exceptions; ambition, life, hope, duty, all centred here. Broad enough for all time, wide enough for all eternity ; a platform upon which to stand either on earth or in heaven. This is the cardinal Presbyterian maxim by which the Church is willing to be judged. As these simple, lofty, elevating words seize upon the mind and control the conduct, the best results are necessarily obtained ; there is no trifling with names, godfathers or god- mothers; dates of birth, parental origin, these are ignored and the mind of the learner with a single sentence is inducted into the highest duties and gravest responsibilities connected with life. The steadfastness of Presbyterians in doctrine, their firmness in convictions, their liberality and their intelligence in all moral and Christian aftairs, the width and comprehen- siveness of their ideas, and their apprehension of the import- ance and the source of life, are due in large measure to the prominence of this mighty truth, taught and consecrated by the lips of maternal love; its heavenly force thus augmented and exalted by earthly association and tenderness; and as with unconscious intelligence we repeated those words so fraught with divine strength, we obtained a charter for guid- ance and from them caught the true conception of man's duty, hope and destiny. These twelve words mean more, and have accomplished more for the good of mankind than any other similar number of words ever coined by human brain, spoken by human tongue, or penned by human hand. The Reformation introduced a new feature into religious life, A century did not clear away the shadows which fol- lowed the darkness of the ages preceding the coming of the light. The intellect and the thought, and the activities of the Church, had been completely dominated by priestly rule. From the individual standpoint. Christian effort and work were directed to the personal salvation and acceptance of the be- liever. The chief object of the professed Christian was to please and satisfy the Church as represented by the priest, and the elevating influences of Christianity rose no higher than obedience to the man and the rules of the Church. The love of God was thus narrowed to the extremest limits and the impulse of Christian life was restrained to the personality of the subject. As this feeling was nursed and developed for hundreds of years, all private effort and conception of personal 162 responsibility for the spread of divine truth were completely obliterated and man knew and accepted no other principle in his Christian state than the mere hope or desire of provid- ing for his own immunity from the consequences of indi- vidual sin, and thus religion was shorn of its charms and dwaried into a hideous caricature. The idea of direct account- ability for the dissemination of God's truth was absolutely blotted out from Christian consciousness. Men bore to each other no comforting assurances of communion with God. They interchanged no messages of love from a heavenly Father. The expression of Christian experience was unknown, and the joy, peace and hope of the children of God found no utterance between man and man. All these blessed and consecrated privileges of a walk with God were supplanted by a slavish fear. Intolerance had destroyed the higher aspirations of spiritual life, and ignorance, with its blinding surroundings, had shut out the heart from the helpful associations with the Holy Spirit. Man heard only the voice of God in the appalling thunders of the Church's curse, and repose and quiet were found in anguish of penance, in the deception of papal indul- gence, or the hopelessness of unbelief. But religious life was at last to be awakened from the slum- bers, inactivity, and barrenness of this dreadful period. A free Bible, a free conscience, and a free judgment were to find their proper sphere, and with these came the opportunit}^ and the necessity lor most earnest phases of personal Christian effort and labor. Here and there, a ray of light had shone and then died away. From Wickliffe, "the Morning Star," a bright beam had arisen, which for a short season lit up a contracted horizon with bril- liance and power. He plead for the Word of God to place in every man's hand and understood Avith that light which light- eth every man, the truth could never die. The lay readers, with the message which had come down from Heaven scat- tered throughout the land, carried the glad tidings that God was near, that they could approach to His throne without out- side help, and that by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through faith and not through man, the forgiveness of sins by Christ was obtained. This set the heart and tongue afire, the divine message was before them, the translated Bible was free, and each could see for themselves what God required of the sinner. With triumphant peace and happiness which comes from com- munion with God, and with the inspiring message of salvation in God's own Words, was told in every place and every home the wondrously simple story of redemption through the Son of Man, They learned the new truth with tremendous glad- ness, it carried on its face the remedy for sin, and met the wants 163 of the stricken soul. Man again saw God face to face, there was no shadoAv intervening. The gentle, peaceful message gave rest to the burdened heart. This first Reformation, founded so largely on lay effort, was to die. The time for full deliverance had not come, but the feeble spark had ignited a flame further East, and Huss took up the Gospel refrain, contended for the faith, preached an open Bible with its precious truths, and gave up his life in defense of his Master's work. These two reformers individ- ualized the work of promulgating the Gospel. Theirs had been the only practical work of the kind for centuries. It was now apparent that personal work in the Christian economy was impossible under the existing theological con- ditions, and these lights, bursting from long spiritual oppres- sion and flaming high, though only for a momentary period, and then sinking back into darkness, yet left behind a spark of hope, and while, for the instant, intensifying the darkness, yet men had seen the ray, walked in the light, and realized that it was good. Three-quarters of another century rolled away. Human souls counted the years long, but " He, in whose sight a day is as a thousand years," watched the Church and His enslaved peo- ple. He would not forget his promise " to be with you to the end of the world." In man, in the Church, hope was fled. Light must come from its Creator, who had said in the ages be- fore, " Let there be light and there was light." Spiritual relief was only possible from above. In the humble home of the German miner, hidden away in the recesses of the forest, at the despised fireside, the infant voice of Martin Luther breaks the spell of darkness and de- spair. Providence was watching the chosen instrument who should introduce the dawn of a reorganized spiritual life ; was preparing the man who should expound a word and doctrine which should change the destinies of governments and races, under whose labors the old should pass away and the new be brought in ; from the depths of whose soul a new light would spring ; who would catch from the Holy Spirit the living way; who would learn from the divine pages the same old story that : Life was by faith and " not by works," and that sinners were justified in what they believed and not by what they did. God sent flashing into the soul of Martin Luther these heavenly words, " The just shall live by his faith." This was no new doctrine. Two thousand years before, the prophet of God stood and watched what he should be commanded to speak, and he was told this same thing, and to " write and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it." (Hab. ii, 4.) The mysteries, forms and shams were now torn 164 away and forever destroyed. Tlie time had come wlien men uuderstood tliey need not look to a middle man ; that they re- quired no priest, no pope to declare God's will ; that God had done that for himself, and that access to Him was open to every soul. That this glorious truth had long been hidden and obscured, only brought out its beauty, sublimity and com- fort the more powerfully. Man rejoiced in his escape from thralldom, salvation was now understood as a question between each person and God: no iatervention or interference was to be tolerated or allowed. Men, then, each thought for himself; the press multiplied the sacred Word ; every one could hear and receive the divine message, and not this alone, but could tell it to others. Re- joicing himself in the light, he was commanded to declare to every creature the will of God, and that will was, " That ye believe upon Him whom He hath sent." Millions wondered how the human soul and mind could so long be darkened with such brightness streaming from the Word of God. With difficulty they realized how near they had stood to the light, and yet how intense the darkness in which they had walked. With joy unspeakable, they drank from the pure fountain ; thankfully, they took up the glad song. They now comprehended their privilege and duty to proclaim God's message to every creature, and caught the glo- rious inspiration of those words, transmitted to earth by a glo- rified Saviour, sixty years after his ascension, "And him that heareth, let him say come." The opportunity of every being to speak for Christ was thus again established. The layman was restored to his true relation to the Gospel. The fire now kindled could never be quenched, the hour of redemption was at hand, the seal was bro- ken, the message was open. It was not now required to buy ab-' solution ; salvation was free — free through Christ. The dust of centuries, with a few words, as read by the guidance of the Spirit, was brushed away, the revelation was again revealed, and it was as beauteous, as glorious and as refulgent as when, fifteen hundred years before, the Pentecostal blessing had been poured out, and the Holy Spirit, with its vitalizing presence, had come to dwell in the heart of every true believer. The true Christian elements for the spread of the Gospel were at hand. The hearts of the people had experienced the glowing touch of the Spirit; their souls were afire with love to God and love to man, and, as the world is always readier to hear than the Church is to speak, it was only necessary to send them forth. It appeared as if the scenes of the earlier days of the Church were to be restored when the Master allowed 165 the hand of the persecutor to prevail, as men and women were driven forth to every part of the known world, and, wherever the followers of Jesus came, they told what they had seen, heard and felt, and the Word grew mightily, and thus the Head of the Church inaugurated the greatest lay eflbrt Chris- tianity has ever known, and in every part of the earth was the power of Christian zeal and Christian testimony under- stood and rendered so efiective that, in less than forty years after His death, the Gospel had gone into every land. It will be thus seen that successful lay effort is only possi- ble under the energizing and aggressive ideas of the Protestant Churches ; that a free Bible goes with a free Gospel ; that much of the true efl&cacy of Christian life is dependent upon the part of Church labor assigned to the private members in the work of the Church. The spread of Christianity in its in- fancy would have been impossible under any system which did not recognize and use the layman as an essential factor in the dissemination of truth and in fostering and maintaining the spiritual forces of the Churches, Religious ideas change more slowly than either political or social ones, and the lapse of nearly three centuries has not en- tirely removed the feeling that the minister is in some way different in spiritual life from the layman, and consequently there is, among many people, a feeling of both reserve and re- luctance in approaching him with the less important spiritual difficulties and experiences. The warm sympathy, the kindly counsel, the friendly encouragement, the gentle admonition, come with peculiar power and effect from one who holds no teaching office in the Church. Not long since, it was my privilege to observe a remarkable illustration of the influence of layman upon layman in the discharge of religious duty. In the extreme southern portion of Florida, in a town with- out a church building or regular Gospel ministration, a Pres- byterian divine on the Sabbath had an appointment for ser- vice. A few strangers from the hotel attended preaching. Some of those earnest in Church work at home, took an active part in the singing, and, at the close of the sermon, the minis- ter asked some one present, all unknown to him by name, but whom he said were apparently Chi-istians, to lead in prayer. One of the party being in spirit on the Lord's day, uttered an earnest and in some respects a very touching petition. No mention was made of any unusual impression at the time, but, on the day following, the stranger, since known to be one of the largest manufacturers in America, approached the gentle- man who had offered the prayer, then together on the steamer 166 far out on the Gulf of Mexico, and said to liim, " I heard you pray yesterday ; you are evidently a man of culture and ability. My wife is a Christian woman ; she has long earnestly desired my salvation. I have heretofore doubted the reality of religion. Your prayer greatly affected me ; there must be a great and real power in religion else it would not have made you talk and feel as you did. The whole matter has touched me deeply. I have put my faith in Christ, He has given peace and comfort to my soul. I am going home to live a Christian life, and my dear wife will be the happiest woman in the world to-morrow when I tell her what a change has come over me. Stranger, I do not know your name, but we will in my home always love and bless you for the prayer you made yesterday." The layman approaches his fellow-man from a common plane. There are no barriers that need to be broken down, there are no prejudices to be removed; social caste vanishes with the presence, the influence of Christian love. The Sa- viour was never required to tell the suffering and distressed that he cared for them. They knew that more readily by what He did than they could have done by any of His words, and they came confidently and earnestly to have their sorrows soothed and their ills removed. As soul looks into soul, as the love of Christ is reflected from heart to heart, the sweetness of its power is demonstrated and the world draws from the acts of His followers, noble conceptions of the Saviour's mission and purpose. Society is prone to regard the ministerial profession with a sense of awe. Their distinctive dress, peculiarity of style, method of thought and dignity of purpose, combined with the singularity of religious emotion, as well as the Church's his- tory, cultivate this sentiment. It is neither unreasonable nor improper. The general estimation of the piety and consecra- tion of the clergy adds greatly to their usefulness and success, but in some respects it renders the masses more reserved and hesitant in approaching them for comfort and advice, and thus opens wide the way for the work of the layman. Excellence of every man in his profession is expected and required by public sentiment, and that those whose minds and whose lives are absorbed in the service of God should attain greater per- fection and enjoy fuller benefits of divine blessings, is not only right but it is just. God forbid that I should in any way, by magnifying the office and duty of laymen, depreciate or de- tract from the work and mission of the ministry. Human his- tory offers for man's consideration no nobler object lesson than the devotion and self-denial of clergymen. Ignoring all else but the call of God, surrendering all financial calculations and considerations for self and family, entering upon a calling 167 wherein there are no perquisites, where support must come from the voluntary contributions of others, toiling and strug- gling for a reward which in large measure must be found be- yond this life, and which here consists almost altogether in con- sciousness of helpfulness and happiness to others; walking by faith and not by sight, and looking to an unseen power for sup- port and maintenance ; despising all earthly accumulations of fortune, and with no reasonable or indeed possible hope for anything but a bare subsistence in this world ; carrying on their souls the tremendous responsibilities of men's salvation ; stand- ing as a negotiator between God and man ; this unselfish, self- denying, God-serving profession stands forth as one of the most exalted tributes to human glory and greatness this world can produce. Palsied be the tongue that should speak, and withered the hand that should write aught against men who hold this exalted, honorable and illustrious relation to man- kind. The true minister stands, par excellence^ the best of the earth, " He was humble, kind, forgiving, meek, Easy to be entreated, gracious, mild. And with all patience and affection taught, Rebuked, persuaded, solaced, couiisel'd, warn'd. In fervent style and manner. All Saw in his face contentment, in his life The path to glory and perpetual joy. A skillful workman he In God's great moral vineyard. What to prune. With cautious hand he knew M'hat to uproot : What were weeds and what celestial plants Which had unfading vigor in them knew, Nor knew alone but watched tiiem night and day. And reared and nourished them 'till fit to be Transplanted to the Paradise above." But great as the mission of the ministry, wide as their field of usefulness, it need not and cannot impinge upon the work of the layman. There are no restraints between man and man in religion. The Gospel, as constituted by God, in this place makes us all " one in Christ." The heart of his fellow-man answers promptly to sympathy, gives pressure for pressure to his hand, and responsive words meet the call to listen to the divine message. The constitution of society, the rules of human action, the law of the emotions, place the layman in the most favorable of all conditions and positions to do God's work. It is only necessary to go forth, hearts are ready to receive the message ; suffering abides on every hand, poverty's touch is everywhere felt, sorrow stalks about every life, the fallen lie in each path ; the harvest is plenteous, only the laborers are few. 168 Nor must it be forgotten, in this connection, that the Scrip- tures and the world place such strong reliance upon testimony. One of the noblest missions of Christian men and women on earth is, by a godly and consistent life, to testify to the influ- ence and power of the grace of God in the heart. The great Apostle said, " Ye are our epistle written in our hearts and known and read of all men," and the completest and grandest testimony of earth to religion, outside of martyrdom, is a human life controlled, directed and fashioned by the precepts of Jesus Christ. It is scanned oftener, read more attentively, and produces a profounder impression than any other theo- logical treatise. It is more eloquent than human tongue, more beautiful than any rhetoric and more impressive than any painting. Preaching is not confined to the churches ; these and their ordinances are the foundation stone upon which the Gospel fabric rests, but real, sincere, earnest, devoted Chris- tian lives teach millions who will listen to these lessons will- ingly and yet turn their steps and hearts away from the other messages of God, and the most effective and exhaustive presen- tation of Christ and Him crucified among His professed fol- lowers is consistency in His commands, and the exemplifica- tion of His teaching in daily conduct. The limited space assigned speakers in this place forbids any extended discussion of the best plans for inciting and increasing lay efibrt. In this day and generation it is practically impos- sible under the Presbyterian system to secure a ministry strong enough numerically to carry on the Church's work as required by the exigencies of the times, or at all commensurate with its responsibility for the work of the Lord among the American people. The truest and best incentive to the fulfillment of the mission of the laymen is a heart aglow with the love of Christ. All successful Church work is impossible without this. To carry on the work of Christ, men must love Christ and love Him as He required, " With all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke x, 27), and to keep this sense of obligation before professed Christians and to impress its im- portance upon their hearts is the surest and most effective means for the spread of Gospel truth. In the past the Presbyterian layman has not met all the requirements of his exalted opportunities. The best trained in a knowledge of the Scriptures, nurtured upon the splen- didly told truths of the Shorter Catechism, with its teachings burned into his soul by the holy association of maternal so- licitude and tenderness, and raised under a system which re- quires intelligence in the Scriptures, and the core of which is the diffusion of Biblical and intellectual knowledge, blessed 169 with the home teaching and influences which have given the denomination a power and control which outruns numbers, the work of the Church at large has not been equal to the reasonable and natural demands of its circumstances, and it is commonly urged that the Presbyterian Church is more re- spectable than active. Lay effort is possible and will be profitable to the Church in so many directions that here it will be unnecessary to point out the enormous opportunities for utilizing this tremendous army of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a superb host of Christian soldiers the Presbyterian or- ganizations of America can send forth on the conquering mis- sions of the Son of Man ! An army of more than four mil- lions of defenders could be gathered from these Presbyterian tribes. Men and women who have enlisted for the Messiah, who name His name and owe their allegiance to His cause. They need only to feel the influence of the Holy Spirit, to have the fire burn in their hearts, to make all things possible in the salvation of. the race. If only the hand of persecution should fall, if God should let their enemies prevail and they be driven forth as His people of olden time and scattered throughout the world, if all these be once drawn close to the Head of the Church and compelled by chastisements to ex- ercise the highest and profoundest types of faith, with these millions declaring His love, teaching His truths and saying, " Come," the world would be converted ere the close of the present century. The Gospel of Christ is peculiarly a missionary Gospel. Its laws and requirements are the same for every clime and every race. There are neither qualifications or distinctions in meth- ods or application. The call now is the same as "in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, " If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink." (John viii, 37.) Or when nearer the shadows of the cross He said: " I am the way, the truth and the life." (John xiv, 6.) The soul that seeks rest from sin, whether in the snowy abodes of the Himalayas, whether amid the sands of the desert, from the fastnesses made sacred by the blood of the Waldensians, or among the tenantless plains of Patagonia, be it savage or savant, finds one, and only one way, simple, clear, complete, free. This simplifies the work and duty of Christian men. There can be no mistake in means. There is no diversity of plans. There's one word, and that word is Christ, and every tongue can tell and every heart can receive this blessed truth. History contains no account of any human being who could not understand and receive the Gospel. The world is full of those who are unwilling, but among its innu- merable millions there never was one who was unable to 170 comprehend the way of salvation through the risen Lord. This wonderful truth intensifies and magnifies the obligation of every creature to obey the command : " Go work to-day in my vineyard." (Matt, xxi, 28.) The ministry must be the chief instruments to arouse and encourage the laymen to the proper discharge of these duties. Engrossed with business cares, this enormous power lies dor- mant until quickened by the Spirit of God and directed by its true spiritual leaders. Every possible talent is at hand, hundreds of avenues open, and under God's help the work can be done. The future of the evangelistic missionary work of Presbyterianism is largely with the members of the con- gregations. The cause of Christ requires means, the suffer- ings of the race demand hospitals, the intelligence of the people calls for colleges and universities, and the high stand- ard of Christian teaching and the prevalence of human dis- tress claims homes for the aged and poor. Presbyterians of the past have led the very vanguards of charity and liberality. May the fature find them as forceful and earnest. The last decade has forever silenced the oft-repeated cal- umny, that Presbyterianism is not suited to the masses of mankind, and cannot, therefore, be an active, aggressive Chris- tian factor. A thousand facts repel the unworthy charge, and the immediate past of Presbyterian development in this country has demonstrated that our faith can grow wherever sin abounds, and men and women need the help and grace of a Saviour. With a future before America which thrills every patriotic heart with emotions of delight, with a land whose laws are the admiration of mankind, producing annually one-third of the increase in wealth of the known v/orld, conquering a con- tinent and peopling it in a century with the most intelligent and aggressive race of modern times and creating the greatest government of the world in one-tenth the space it requires other nations to build a first-class city, with the most tremen- dous national possibilities, well may we ask ourselves what is to be its future relations to the religion of Jesus Christ ? We answer that America, the home of religious freedom, the asylum of those who have in any land felt the touch of civil or ecclesiastical tyranny, shall be the land of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the Presbyterian Church, with its mil- lions of laymen, intelligent, liberal, consecrated to the service of the Saviour, will lead the hosts of the King of kings, and in His name carry on the struggle until our country shall be as renowned for its Christianity as it is illustrious for its pro- gress and liberty. Without laymen and lay efibrt, this great 171 victory cannot be won. With them, consecrated to God's work, it is as sure as His throne. " Ai'ouse thee, Soul ! It is no liuman call ; God's Church is leagur'd, man the wall ; Haste where the red cross banners wave ou high, Signal of honored death or victory I" If the great body of believers be true and faithful to Christ, " He shall come down like showers Upon tlie fruitful earth, And Love and Joy, like flowers, Spring in his path to birth. Before liim, on tlie mountains, Shall Peace the herald go. And righteousness in fountains, From hill to valley flow.'' THE ADAPTATION OF PRESBYTE- RIANISM TO THE AlASSES. By Hon. J. Randolph Tucker, Lexington, V.i. RELIGION" is the bond which unites man to God. It is, though it be silent, the most potent influence in form- ing his moral character ; and therefore in its moral effects upon the masses of men in their social and political re- lations. The deeper his insight into its true nature, and the stronger its grasp upon his mind and soul, the more complete will be the force of religion upon the man and the mass, in raising both to the high plane of a true, pure and strong man- hood. As atheism is the negative of all religion, so the Being of God is the primal fact in every system of religion ; and faith in God is the conservatism of all the religious forces operating on human nature. Without a God there can be no religion ; and without faith in God, religion is without forceful influence on man. It is obvious that this influence of religion on man will be proportioned to his faith, and the force of his faith will be in proportion to the majesty of the God, revealed to his con- sciousness as the object of his Avorship. In fact, man tends to assimilate himself to the God to whom he acknowledges sub- jection ; and thus the character of the man in the individual and in the mass may be measurably estimated by his subjec- tive conception of the Deity he adores. Man will practice the vices his Deity sanctions or condones, but will strive to purify and perfect himself as his God is pure and perfect. These considerations explain the marvelous influence of the religion of Christ, inclusive of that of Moses and the prophets, upon human civilization. Paganism pulled Deity down to the low plane of a debased moral code — Christianity lifts humanity up to the God-man as the perfect example of a noble and spotless manhood. 172 173 The Decalogue of Moses and the other sacred writings were the heritage of the world, to which Christ's life and teachings were added to complete the revelatioa of the one living and true God for the worship of men. Christ left to His apostles, under the promised inspiration of the Comforter, the duty of formulating for the nations the dogmatic statements of Chris- tian doctrine. In these, there is no conflict, but entire accord with His own teachings — and only a more systematic presenta- tion of them for adaptation to human apprehension. Among those who fulfilled this great task for the Christian religion, the Apostle Paul was pre-eminent. His wonderful natural gifts, his extensive experience as a pupil of Gamaliel in all Jewish writings, and his liberal attainments in the lite- rature of other nations, were combined, with the inspiration he received more abundantly than all others in his secluded life in Arabia before beginning his apostolic work, to fit him to be the chief apostle to the gentile world as well as to his own nation. Paul's mental courage was sublime. The God of his fathers, revealed to him in the Jewish books from Moses to Malachi, during fifteen -centuries, spoke to him through the teachings of the Crucified One in clear and distinct utterance. He knew he had seen and heard Him on the road to Damascus. Besides, he had received fuller revelations, which filled his soul with unutterable realities as to the attributes of the Divine Being. That which may be known of the invisible God from the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, was all more than confirmed by the personal revelations to himself. Eeason and personal consciousness, therefore, confronted him with this postulate, as the basis of all religious thought — the awful and majestic sovereignty of the infinite and eternal and unchangeable God. Paul's mental courage did not shrink from treading with humble but firm step upon the brink of the profound abyss of God's everlasting purposes, into which he looked with rever- ential devotion, only to learn they could not be fathomed by human reason. His reason told liim it was rational to believe what was revealed as a fact, though he could not find it out unto perfection. The finite must take on faith, what the reason cannot discern of the thoughts and decrees of the infi- nite. This is, indeed, the highest achievement of right reason. All the problems involved in the divine sovereignty and its consistency with man's freedom and man's responsibility he pondered with analytic insight, only to conclude they were insoluble, because inscrutable by human reason. The prem- ises in the divine syllogism were hidden to human view, but 174 the divine conclusion as an indisputable fact he accepted be- cause reason and revelation established it. The Pauline postulate of all Christian theology was this profound mystery of the unlinnited and unconditioned sover- eignty of the one only living and true God, the original, the only and the uncaused cause of all created things. The how and the why of this great fact were beyond human reason and were denied to human inquisition. No human plummet can sound its depths, no human thought can reach its heights, no human imagination can explore its boundless expanse, no human science can analyze its primordial principles or measure the infinite economy by the laws of a finite philosophy. To the question, Why are these things hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes? the answer comes in the gentle tones of the divine Teacher, " Even so, Father ; for so it seemed good in Thy sight." If audacious skepticism de- mands explanation, the questioner is met by a sterner de- mand : " Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?" And when the bold objector challenges God's jus- tice, Paul replies with a counter-question, which silences the cavils of the disputant: " Nay, but oh, man, who art thou that repliest against God ? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus? " But it must not be supposed that this Pauline postulate is merely dogmatic. It is the natural choice between two alter- natives of a dilemma. Reason requires belief in a God of un- conditioned sovereignty or iu' none at all. The dilemma is, such a God or blank atheism. But reason and revelation concur in declaring there is a God, and if so, on what can He be conditioned, or by what limited ? Clearly upon and by nothing pre-existent to, or co- existent with Him. For, if on something pre-existent, then He was never God ; if on something co-existent, then He was only co-deity with others. Nor can he be conditioned on or limited by any created thing; for if so, the Creator would be subject to his creature. Reason and revelation shut us up to this unavoidable di- lemma the no-God, that revolting negation, that vacuum ab- horred by nature and by man — or, a God majestic in His own uncaused and all-causing sovereignty — without condition or limit to His power, His knowledge, or His will. Reason which repels atheism with horror, and revelation which condemns it as blasphemy and folly, compel faith in God as a "Spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wis- dom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth! " But if the believer be pressed with the inquiry. How can these things be ? he may rationally answer — that he sees in the illimitable 175 spaces about and around him, in the eternities behind and be- fore him, in the heavens above and in the earth beneath him, facts which he beheves, but whose mysteries he cannot explain. Belief goes beyond the limits of mere comprehension. Imagina- tion tires and faints in its attempts to explore, and reason fal- ters in its efforts to explain, and shall faith which believes in the mysteries of creation, when it cannot understand them, refuse to believe in the grander mysteries of the Creator, be- cause it cannot find Him out unto perfection ? This will sufl&ce to show that the Pauline postulate rested on right reason, and enabled the great apostle to discern clearly the field within which reason may work and its well-defined boundaries, beyond which it is irrational to work. To over- step these limits involves the folly of reaching after the unat- tainable, and the audacity of blasphemy and treason to the divine Sovereign. It is therefore the highest function of reason to determine the limits of its own power, and to leave to the humility of faith what it finds beyond its reach. The relations of our race to this Supreme Being, according to the creed of the apostle, spring from the responsibility to the divine law of man, as free to do his duty under the econ- omy of redemption. Disabled and weak of purpose because of a depravity which by heredity has alienated him from God, the proffer of grace to enable him to perform God's will through faith in His Son, places man in an attitude of entire dependence on divine power to achieve his destiny with suc- cess. He is called on to work despite his disability, because God works in him to will and to do of His good pleasure. The assurance of adoption as a child of God is offered to man, with the further assurance that by divine aid he can live a life of faith, and be kept from falling, and become an heir of eternal life, won for him by the vicarious death and righteous- ness of the Redeemer. The exultant declaration of Paul rings in the ears of the timid and despondent soul, " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Who shall condemn him? Who or what can separate him from the love of the eternal God in Christ? " He is not only safe, but will continue so unto the end, because God has purposed to perfect in Him the good work He has begun. Casting away all self-reliance, the man rests in perfect peace, stayed on the arm which upholds the universe. And the impulse which moves the human heart to do its part in this work is the constraining force of eternal love, stretched out to the man by the hand of a Redeemer dying to save him. For it is worthy of the faith and accept- ance of all men, says the chief of apostles, that He died to save the chief of sinners. 176 The Pauline appeal for a holy life is based not on the fear of God, but on the love of Christ. Lost and helpless the believer finds in Him that power which, prompted by infi- nite love, rescues him from inherited debasement and fits him for eternal glory. This creed upheld this wonderful apostle through a life of trial until he reached the fate of martyrdom. Divine grace took him from the ranks of the persecutors of the Christians, and made his life an example of religious heroism ; and this faith and creed, as they supported him, are equally adapted to the masses of mankind. This Pauline type of Christianity presents to us a sum of tremendous verities, which, though involving seeming incon- sistencies, have been cherished by the Church in all its history. The Trinity, divine sovereignty, the Incarnation, the exist- ence of sin and suffering, election by divine purpose to salva- tion through man's faith, which is itself the gift of God, work- ing by love and purifying the heart — the grace which begins, continues and perfects the character of the faithful — the hu- man disability which can only get effectual power by divine gift, and without it must fail — the profound mystery of the relation between infinite purpose, finite will, and the responsibil- ity of the creature to the Creator — these, as already indicated, puzzle and perplex the mind and heart, but are trutlis accepted as absolute verities by the faith which filled the soul of Paul, and which he preached in his day, and which have been preached to the masses of mankind jprom the beginning of the Christian era. This Pauline creed seemed to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness, and to the skepticism of a later era an intellectual paradox. It sees the invisible, hears the unutterable, reaches after and clings to the intangible. It removes mountains it cannot scale, and bridges chasms it can- not overleap. It apprehends what it cannot comprehend, per- ceives what it could not conceive, receives as rational what reason could not discover or evolve, and staggers to accept, and believes what is almost incredible. It trusts that justice will justify the unjust, put the sinner's penalty on the head of the sinless, impute infinite perfection to the unholy, inflict guilt's curse on innocence, and give eternal life to man because of the death of the God-man. Its helplessness hangs on omnipotence to enable human disability to glorify God, and human deprav- ity to enjoy Him forever. It hopes that God will regenerate the degenerate, make citizens of aliens, and children by adop- tion of strangers, and turn the hate of enemies to loving loyalty through the constraining love of the crucified Christ, aud that thus, by divine agency, the man may be redeemed, regen- 177 erated, sanctified and exalted, and his life become a living sacrifice of his corrupted nature to the glory of his Creator and King ! Paradox this may well seem to unbelief! but to them who believe, it is a faith which is the power of God, and the wis- dom of God I When faith staggers its outcry is, " Lord 1 I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!" and when it revives, with the reverential devotion of the finite to the infinite, it utters that humble but noble ascription of praise, " Oh ! the depth, of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God I How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past find- ing out!" This is the soul's haven of rest from the stormy ocean of doubt and despair — this the alternative of the soul's dilemma, from that human logic, which would else inexorably seize, drag and chain it in the dark, dank and dismal den of atheism, over whose awful portals is written, " Who enters here, leaves hope, behind ! " But this Pauline paradox of the mind results in a moral paradox. As I have said, faith in God is a conservation of all rehgious forces ; and these constrain the man to supreme eflbrt to assimilate himself to the God he adores. It is obvious, this Pauline creed begets in the man an awful sense of his individual and single relation to his Creator, Re- deemer, King and Judge ; of his solemn responsibility for life, for its use, and its best results ; of the supreme duty and chief end of his life to make his manhood reflect the divine perfec- tions, and thus manifest the glory of God in the subordination to this supreme object of all human relations, and of all hu- man authority. Such an influence induces in the man certain leading and permanent qualities of character. Humiliation in self-con- sciousness of weakness, dependence and sin, with entire confi- dence in the strength and love of God his Father. Submission to God's authority, and resistance of all human authority con- trary thereto. Reverence deep and habitual for the perfections of Him, whose he is by the triple titles of Creator, Providence and Redemption. And contentment in whatsoever state he is, because sincerely conscious that God gives him more good than he merits — be- cause he knows that all is ordered by God, and must be for the best; that his life is but a pilgrimage to his not-distant home, and that his light afliictions, which are but for a mo- ment, work out for him a far more exceeding and an eternal weight of glory. Thus he combines genuine humility with a true dignity and self-respect. Timid of his own power, he is assured of divine 178 aid, and believes lie will persevere to the end. He is strongest in God, when weakest in self, and in sincere self- depreciation, is boastful of the divine power in and through his very infir- mities, " I can do all things through Christ, which strengthen- eth me." As the Scotch woman said, " My hope is not in the hold I have on Christ, but the hold He has on me !" The be- liever is cautious to avoid error, yet bold when clear as to the right. He knows he must fail in self-reliance, but cannot fail if he relies on God. Firm in his convictions, he has sympathy for those who are in error. Courageous in logic based on the bedrock of revealed truth, he scorns all dishonest evasion and tortuous subterfuge. He may be hard, but not harsh ; is meek, but unbending ; stern, but not cruel ; inflexible, yet charita- ble. He is fearless of man, because only fearing God, and dreads no human king when, against his usurpation, he defends the divine prerogative. His loyalty to the divine King may lead him to so-called treason to an earthly monarch, and has made him ever the friend of liberty against tyranny, acknowl- edging Christ as the only Head of His Church and Lord of the human conscience, he resists all human authority in either as treason to God and death to the soul. With meek, but un- flinching courage, the Christian has, for nineteen centuries, answered in apostolic words, the insolent usurpers of divine prerogative, " Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye!" He has burned in the fires of martyrdom, rather than yield loyalty to man by disloyalty to God. In the face of all persecution, in the midst of misfortunes and dangers, in the presence of death, he is calm and in- trepid, for he is safe under the shadow of the Almighty. If called to battle for his convictions, as a soldier he stands like a stone wall, charges like a thunderbolt and dies a Christian hero ! " For he knows that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose, and if God gave His own Son to redeem them, how will He not with Him also freely give them all things ? " He may adopt the noble paraphrase by Wadsworth of this lan- guage of the apostle: " One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists, one only — an assured belief That the procession of our fate, however Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good ! " Wherever this system has taken hold it has created in 179 the masses a cliaracter unique and powerful. It makes a hardy, firm and intrepid people, honest in principle and rigid in morals, simple in habits and sincere in manners, deter- mined friends to right and uncompromising foes to wrong, in- flexible in duty, brave in danger, and meeting misfortune, disaster and death with unshaken fortitude and Christian resignation. This Pauline exposition of Christ's doctrines did not perish with its author, but survives to the present day in his in- spired Epistles. During the Christian era it has been the sub- ject of fruitful disputation, but found an early advocate and expounder in the celebrated Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries. Amid all the 'traditions and human interpretations which marked the history of the papacy, there were secluded spots where the Pauline faith maintained its hold upon the Christian mind. The Waldenses in the Alps, the College at lona, in the mountains of Scotland, and more especially in England, where Wyclifte in the fourteenth century and Tyndale in the six- teenth century, by the translation of the Word of God, and by their teachings preserved and sowed the seeds of the evan- gelical Christianity of the great apostle. The opening of the sixteenth century found the British island ripe for the Refor- mation. Paul gave the keynote to that wonderful movement in his formula that "the just must live by faith," and when Luther burned the Papal Bull, in 1521, the fire caught the inflammable material collected by the Reformers of Great Britain. But "the Reformers," says Mr. Froude, "required a posi- tion more sharply defined and a sterner leader than Luther, and that leader they found in John Calvin. * * Nor was there Reformer in Europe so resolute to excise, tear out and destroy what was distinctly seen to be false — so resolute to establish what was true in its place and make truth to the last fibre of it the rule of practical life. * * The Calvinists abhorred, as no body of men ever abhorred, all conscious men- dacity, all impurity, all moral wrong of every kind, so far as they could recognize it. AVhatever exists at this moment in England and Scotland of conscientious fear of doing evil, is the remnant of the convictions branded by the Calvinists into the people's hearts. * * Calvinism was the spirit which rises in revolt against untruth ; the spirit which, as I have shown you, has appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish. * * They have been called intolerant ; but there is no reason to suppose that the Calvinists at the beginning 180 would have thought of meddling with the Church, if they had themselves been let alone." John Calvin held and taught the Pauline faith, of which I have spoken. He ^ras the uninspired successor of the inspired apostle. God's sovereignty, unconditioned and unlimited, was the postulate of the apostle and of his folloAver at Genoa. " This is," says a late writer, " the common teaching of the greatest God-inspired souls from the days of Moses down ; the faith of Goethe and Carlyle, as well as of Calvin and John Knox." John Knox, of Scotland, was the friend and contemporary of Calvin. The Pauline faith filled the hearts of Huguenots in France, and of Puritans and Covenanters in England and Scotland. A century passed, and the struggle in Great Britain came to its great issue, when the British lords and commons, without royal assent, summoned the Assembly of Divines to West- minster, July 1, 16i3, which closed, its memorable session in 1649. In these six years they reformed the Articles of the English Church, and published the Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. That the Shorter Catechism is Calvinistic is true, but it is Calvinistic and true because it is Pauline. Our Catechism follows Paul, clings to his creed and emphasizes his doctrine. Other Churches do not, because, in fact, Paul is too Calvinistic. " The older I grow," said Thomas Carlyle, " and I now stand on the brink of eternity, the more comes back to me the first sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes — " What is the chief end of man ?" " To glorify God and enjoy Him for- ever !" This is the fundamental truth — man charged with a mission to glorify God, and aAvfully responsible for its fulfillment, but with a glorious destiny — to enjoy Him forever. This it is that makes man a trustee of his talents for God — this makes his title to be a freeman — and this makes him resolute and in- trepid in the assertion and defense of civil and religious liberty. This Catechism of the Presbyterian Church is the Pauline statement of the doctrines of Christ. If it be, why should we doubt its adaptation to mankind ? That men are adapted to it I may not affirm, but that it may be adapted to them by divine influence is beyond doubt. " The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned." One word as to the government and worship of our Church. 181 When Paul sent for the presbyters of the Churcli at Ephe- sus, he told them to take heed to the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them bishops. The Presbyterial system of government involves an avoid- ance of papal or prelatical supremacy by the doctrine of the absolute parity of the presbyters who preach, and of all pres- byters in the rule of the Church. The government of the Church is not by the fixed and separate caste of the clergy, but by them in conjunction with those who, in interest, are in accord with the people — elected by, but not responsible to them, or representatives of their opinions. The Church gov- ernment is judicial, not legislative. The Presbytery, and like bodies, are courts of judicature — not law-makers. No head but Christ. No constitution or law, but the supreme law of God revealed in His Scriptures. The courts administer that law in cases, and expound it in their testimonies. This system avoids the tendency to pride and domination, in the prelatical system on the one hand, and the self-suffi- ciency of clerical independence on the other. The Council of Presbyters, in parity, excludes all ideas of superiors and inferiors, and checks, modifies and restrains the propensity which, the personal idiosyncrasy of the independent clergy induces of departure from the well-defined creed and doc- trine of the whole Church. The absolute Headship of Christ in His Church, witbout human vicar or mortal representative, is the canon of the Scotch Covenanter and of the English Puritan. It was the royal denial of this in England and Scotland which infused religious enthusiasm into the English revolution and which, united with the assertion of civil liberty, made the John Hampdens of the seventeenth century. It was this religious fervor for the divine and against the human king in the Church which made them what Mr. Hallam describes so strongly: "The Presbyterian clergy of Scotland, individually and collectively, displayed the intrepid, haughty and intract- able spirit of the English Puritans." In regard to Avorship — the Presbyterian Church, in the su- preme importance it attaches to doctrine ; in its earnest regard to substance in truth in preference to mere forms ; in the view it takes of the majesty of God and the subordination of man ; in its estimate of prayer as the most simply expressed self- consciousness of entire dependence upon the divine power and submission to the divine will, working by divine love and wisdom, to the achievement of the divine purpose for the good of those who love God ; and in the exclusion of all forms of human pride and pompous ceremonial by human instruments — has always adhered to a simple, unostentatious and solemn 182 worship, as best fitted to manife&t the proper spirit of man in his approach to the presence, and in his appeal to the mercy of the God and Father of all His faithful children. For many reasons I hold that the Presbyterian system of doctrine, government and worship is admirably adapted to the masses of men. Time permits me only to state some of these in condensed form, without any attempt at exposition. First — Truth, revealed of God for the salvation of men, in its purity and simplicity, however hard to be understood — as Peter said of some of Paul's teachings — must be fitted to be believed and accepted by them. It is declared to be a faith- ful saying and of all men to be received. Second — Paul expressly declares in his day, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighjy, not many noble, are called, but that God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. The converts to Paul's preaching were among the masses of the people. Third — In Scotland, England and America, from the days of Wycliffe until now, the common people have embraced the doctrine and order of the Presbyterian Church with more zeal and tenacity than other classes. The simple solidity of its creed, the absence of ceremonial in its worship, and its government, which discards all caste and admits the people into the administration of its ecclesiastical affairs, have found in their hearts a willing assent and a cordial support. Its majestic doctrines, hard to be understood, have grasped the most powerful intellects, and have as strongly taken hold of the minds and natures of the simple and intelligent masses of mankind. And it may here be properly noted, that while our Church may not embrace within its fold, by direct influence, all the masses of men, yet the truths of which it is the living repre- sentative, by indirect influence permeates other denominations of the universal Church. Its membership is not the measure of its influence and adaptation. Every Protestant Church will attest the adaptation of its creed to members in their folds, not called by one name. The rain-fall reaches the lower masses of earth, in part by direct contact, in part by percolation through intermediate strata. The mountain streams are made reservoirs, which may, through other channels than their own, irrigate and fer- tilize the dry and barren plains below, and make them fresh and fruitful. Our Church feeds her healthful children on the strong meat of Gospel truth, from which others extract the pieces of vital principle for those who are weak in the faith and not to be received to doubtful disputations. She teaches 183 the teachers from whom, if not from her directly, the masses learn the grand doctrines of her Confession and her Catechism. The Pauline system has found in its ranks the largest minds of all eras, and in the inimitable picture of the "Cotter's Sat- urday Night," we see the calm and serene family devotion of the humble poor man among the Presbyterians of old Scot- land — a scene, the likeness of which all of us have witnessed, in the homes of our Church in America. It comes to the heart of the greatest and the humblest ; it expands to fill the one and contracts to enter the other. It presses with equal step into the palace of the king, and the hovel of the poor. Fourth — One other view is important. It is the best edu- cator of the masses. It teaches the proper uses of human reason, and the limits to its powers. It teaches humility before God, and self-respect and dignity among men, content- ment with our lot, in submission to the divine order,*obedi- ence to rightful authority as the ordination of God, and resist- ance to tyranny over the soul, as obedience to God. It- anchors faith to a written Word, and subjects all power in State and Church to the fixed and unchangeable will of the supreme constitutional authority. It fills the mind with grand ideas, and excludes all mean and low thoughts ; it demands reflection in order to grasp its wonderful truths, and thus strengthens minds of large and small original capacity, and elevates the soul to infinite anticipations by hope based on the divine promise, which faith embraces and to which it clings. Fifth — But it does more. It makes free institutions possi- ble, as they are essential to man's duty to God ; possible — be- cause it is only as man is self governed by a supreme law in his heart, that the need of external government, to main- tain the order of society, approaches its minimum, for strong governments are required to keep in order men who have no self-control — and the restraints of human liberty may safely be lessened — when, and only when, man learns to gov- ern himself by religious principle. Hence, where Christianity has prevailed, liberty becomes more possible. And where it has prevailed in its purest forms, liberty has reached it greatest ascendancy. And liberty is essential to the self-development with which God has entrusted the man. He must be free to fulfill his Master's mission from all restraints which impair his power to peri'orm it. Therefore if we are right in saying that we hold the truth in its purest form, its adaptation to the masses of men is evi- dent from its making free institutions possible, wliich we deem essential to the progres.s, elevation and highest development of 184 man, Aud as our system builds up mind and heart to be in- telligent to comprelienci, and to be brave to assert liberty, it not only makes it possible, but certain to follow where our Church system prevails. History confirms what reason would have led us to anticipate in this regard. These lines of sugges- tion must sufiice. Without pride, but in humble and grateful recognition of the goodness of God, the Presbyterian Church may hope it has done in part what it could. It has struggled for the in- tegrity of the inspired Word of God and for the unadulter- ated truth it teaches. It stands to-day in the hands of God to do battle for the truth of Christ as He taught it and as Paul expounded it into a doctrinal system. It battles not only with doubting Deism, which rejects Christianity and shrinks from atheism, and does not see in its blindness that it embraces the defects it attributes to the one and sanctions the absurdity it sees in the other. Nor does it battle only with the skepticism of the agnostic, the eunuch of theological debate, the know-nothing Pilate, or the care-nothing Galho of religi- ous controversy, but it battles with the one great and real Lucifer of error, who denies all, because as his reason can prove nothing he is justified in the negation of all religion. It battles for the Jehovah against the no-God, for Christianity against atheism in all its shapes, as the only faith which can give hope to man, as the only divine force which can and will adapt itself to the masses of mankind, to save, sanctify and glorify a fallen, helpless and degenerate race. In this warfare our Church has under God won victories. Let it persevere unto the end by filling the minds of the masses with the ma- jesty of divine truth as taught by its standards and formu- lated from the Word of God. In catholic charity to all other Churches let us uphold the truth as the Bible reveals it and follow Paul as he followed Christ. PRESBYTERIANISM AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP. By Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., N'eiv York City. NOTHING is more emphasized in the Westminster Con- fession than the inspiration and authority of the Bible. " Holy Scripture " is " the Word of God writ- ten " and is " given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life" (Ch. i, Sec. 2). "The Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired of God, and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical" (Ch. i, Sec. 8). *' The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scrip- ture itself" (Ch. i. Sec. 9). " The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sen- tence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture " (Ch. i, Sec. 10). The Larger Catechism is equally explicit. The third ques- tion is, " "What is the Word of God?" and the answer is, "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience." In accordance with this fundamental position, the Presby- terian Church has always considered the careful and minute study of the Bible as the safeguard of true religion, and has made that study a chief aim in its provisions. Not content with pressing the circulation of the Scriptures among all, it has insisted on an educated ministry, who should be familiar with the Scriptures in the original tongues, and so derive their pulpit-teachings from the very fountain-head of reve- lation. Our Church has always shrunk from proclaiming a loose Gospel more or less unconnected with the holy Word, and has feared that even the honest efforts of ignorant men might readily lead to dangerous heresies in belief and practice, it 185 186 being so easy to mingle human notions and human expedients with the divine commands. It is this wliolesome conserva- tism which has ever induced our Church to lay stress upon the school of the prophets, so that wherever it carried the Gospel it began at once to found a seminary for the profound study of the "Word by candidates for the holy ministry. If we consider the action of the Synod in 1729, adopting the subscription to the Westminster Confession as a requisite for the ministr}^, to be the beginning of a thoroughly organized Presbyterian Church in this country, we find that just at that period the Tennent School at Neshaminy, the " Log College," was indoctrinating candidates in the Word, and Nassau Hall followed close upon this epoch. This institution at Princeton was conspicuously a Church seminary, although the theolog- ical seminary by that name did not emerge from this early foundation till more than seventy j^ears later. Even when such serious differences and separations occurred in our Church as the Old and New Side separation of 1745-58, each party was strenuous in sustaining the careful training of the ministry in the Word, and the Synodical School of the accom- plished Francis Alison was a monument of the zeal of the Old Side in this regard, while Princeton was an equal token of the energy of the New Side. This same instructive fact is noticeable in the more modern differences and separations that have occurred in our Church. All parties have been alike faithful in insisting upon an educated ministry and on making the study of God's Word as the basis of all intellectual pre- paration for the work. It is this careful conservatism with regard to the Bible that has preserved the Church from the contaminations of human philosophy on one side and of human impulsive excitements on the other. We have felt that no road was safe that was not clearly revealed in the Word of God, and whenever departures from this path of Bible truth have occurred in our ministry, the Church has been prompt to cut off the offending member and has cheer- fully borne the popular reproach of narrowness and bigotry in consequence. The modern assaults upon the Word of God, Avhich began in Germany, have been repelled by no branch of Christ's Church so persistently and so successfully as by the Presbyterian. The speedy action of his General Assembly in Scotland, when Rob- ertson Smith endeavored to bring his learned infidelity into the Presbyterian Church, showed how readily the Church spues out the poison that Satan would so slyly administer. Our Church knows well that when the Holy Word is tampered with, and inspiration reduced to a defective ecstasy with in- definite human elements, the foundations of Christianity are 187 "undermined, and poor needy man sent to his protean pliiloso- phy for shelter. This is but the first and most important step back to paganism. If prophets mixed their own thoughts with God's, if apostles used false arguments, and if Christ Him- self had a superstitious regard for the Scriptures from ignor- ance, then we cannot tell why Plato is not as good a teacher as Paul, and why Schleiermacher's wisdom is not to be pre- ferred to Christ's ignorance. This is the road down to the abyss of infidelity, opened by Germany, and carefully worked by the conceited learning that counts German approbation as the seal of nobility. The Presbyterian Church will have none of this. It stands by the side of its divine Redeemer, and declares that every "jot and tittle " of the Scriptures is truth, and pronounces a woe upon him who would add unto or take away from the words of the Sacred Book. It declares the handling of the Book as a fable in the name of " Higher Criticism," to be trimmed and altered according to the pattern shown in the inner conscious- ness, is itself a sacrilege, and it insists that the Holy Book has a position, a character and a history, that makes reverence the very first requisite in him who would approach and search it. It teaches that the maxim, used by the daring innovators, that we must treat the Bible as we treat any other book, is a false maxim to begin with, as denying the a priori claims to rever- ence and obedience which it possesses, and that the belittling of the supernatural, which accompanies the use of this maxim, is the very essence of a proud unbelief. Such is the position of the Presbyterian Church with re- gard to the Bible, the charter of our spiritual life and liber- ties. Our General Assemblies have given deliverances often, and always in the same key, on this vital question, and have plainly shown that the Church considers this doctrine of the inerrancy of the Scriptures as the very basis of all its doc- trines, without which none could stand. As a natural consequence of such a position with regard to the written Word of God, our Church has produced Biblical scholars of thorough research and lasting fame. The very reverence with which they have explored the Scriptures has given them an insight which the irreverent spirit could never possess. They have been led into the recesses of truth, where unsanctificd learning was left standing at the portal, and they have brought out the spiritual thought for the cheer and com- fort of the heart by consistent confidence in the verbal inspi- ration of the Bible, that verbal inspiration which a distin- guished seminary professor lately declared to be a dogma that had been destroyed. If, however, that learned professor means that the Church does not believe in the mechanical 188 theory of inspiration, all will agree with him ; but if he means that the Church does not believe in the divine superintendence of every word of the Old and New Testaments, so that the sacred writings are preserved from all error, then he is grossly mistaken, and he will find that the Presbyterian Church has nev(!r faltered in its firm belief in the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. There is no middle ground between this complete and verbal inspiration and a doubtful Scripture, a nose of wax. We need hardly state that no theory of verbal inspiration ever ignored the errors of translation and tran- scription, the theory having regard only to the original words of the holy men of God, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. This devotion to the "Word as God's and not man's has made the Biblical scholarship of the Presbyterian Church conspicu- ous for its thoroughness. The mind has been quickened by the thought that it was a divine mine that was being explored and that heavenly gems were to be the reward of research. The ranks of Presbyterian scholars, versed in the Greek and He- brew and intimately acquainted with Oriental archaeology, have been full, and their contributions to Biblical literature have been remarkable both in quantity and quality. At the very head of these is Calvin himself, whose commenta- ries on the Scriptures continue to this day, notwithstanding the side lights thrown on the Scriptures from modern explorations in Eastern lands, to be a refreshing source of exposition and explanation, marked by profound insight, comprehensive judgment and spiritual sympathies. Scotland has followed Geneva, and a galaxy of names of lasting fame for Biblical learning adorn her ecclesiastical history. If a few of these bright names have become tarnished with Continental rational- ism, they are the marked exceptions, against whom the learning of the Scotch Churches has triumphantly protested. Milligan, Roberts, Bruce, Murphy, Stuart, Watts, Gloag, and a host of others, are men who, with their learning, have a ballast of common sense, and are not to be overset by the dexterous legerdemain of J. E\ E'. JE. D. HG. Q. and R., and the " presto- change" which divides books, chapters and verses into a thousand fragments, to be put together again in most marvel- ous combinations, with dates and authors supplied ad libitum from the inner consciousness. Such a wholesale slaughter of history and tradition does not suit the sober minds of Scot- land. The learned Presbyterian divines of that Bible-loving land are not prepared to rewrite the Holy Book, nor are they arrogant enough to speak and act as if they had been present when the words of that book were first written down. In our own country we have gloried as Presbyterians in the 189 Biblical learning of such worthies as John Ewing, Archibald and Addison Alexander, Charles Hodge and Archibald Alex- ander Hodge, Eli Smith, Edward Robinson, Albert Barnes, John Lillie, George Bush and Taylor Lewis, and we have still with us the conspicuous names of C. R. Gregory, B, B. Warfield, S. Ives Curtiss, M. B. Riddle, W. J. Beecher, W. G. T. Shedd, Phihp Schaif, C. A. Briggs, Francis Brown, S. H. Kellogg, Isaac H. Hall, II. C. Trumbull and W. II. Green. While one or two of these have been captivated by the i(jnis fatuus of destructive criticism, in the others we have had some of the most trenchant rebukes of this learned inebriety and the most conclusive demonstrations of the integrity of the Holy Scriptures. The high attainment in Biblical scholar- ship which has always marked our Church has certainly as one of its causes the happy position of Presbyterianism between ecclesiasticism and independency. Ecclesiasticism, as seen in the prelatical churches, naturally lays great stress on the mass of ecclesiastical law that has issued from councils and other Church authorities, and the more this is magnified the more is the direct application to Holy Scripture diminished. The Ftudy of the clergy is principally in the direction of ordinances and decretals, and through these the Word is obscured as often as it is exemplified. On the other hand, independency has a direct tendency to tempt the mind to wild adventures, in which the Word is set aside for philosophy, and the study now is of science and the endeavor to evolve Christianity out of human reasoning rather than the Bible. Between these two extremes stands our Presbyterianism with sufficient ecclesiastical order to maintain consistency and wholesome thrift, and with enough independence to make the appeal to the Scriptures constant and conclusive. The re- sultant from these two movements is the universal study of the Bible by the ministers of the Presbyterian Church, so that as a whole the Presbyterian clergy are Biblical scholars to a degree, and are able to argue directly from the Scriptures for the faith that is in them. No earthly general commands a Presbyterian minister to go hither, or thither and so gives him simply the position of a servant to obey an order, and yet he is under the oversight of his brethren in the Presby- tery, who can check any aberration from the line of truth. This position is the most favorable for the examination of his own foundations and for the responsible definition of his own duties, and shuts him up to the divine law and testimony as his counselor and guide. We would not for a moment deny the splendid Biblical scholarship of many who have belonged to prelatical and independent systems. They have overcome the influences around them. Their individualism has asserted 190 itself on one side and their conservatism on the other in spite of the system to which they belonged. Certain it is, how- ever, that the stronger the prelatical system is the more is the mind of the clergy mnzzled, and the looser the independ- ency is the more wild are the vagaries of its ministers. Be- tween these extremes lies the thorough searching of the Scriptures, and hence the prevailing Biblical scholarship of the Presbyterian Church. Where the Scriptures are honored as the sole rule of faith and practice, and neither ecclesiastical authority nor philoso- phy is allowed to rival them, there will necessarily be a more devout and reverent approach to the Holy Word, and the Biblical scholarship of the Presbyterian Church is noted for this worshipful posture before God's oracle. It cannot handle lightly the sacred page. It cannot toss it into a crucible, or mix it with acids, or dissect it with knives, as a heterogeneous compound to be analyzed. It has a priori a holy character, and its examination must be with the eye of faith and not with the rude hand of skepticism. A godly Biblical scholarship regards the claims which the Word has on the believer from our Lord's own testimony and treatment, and from the Church's faithful reception of it for the ages, and hence is not ready to make an apparent discrepancy or difficulty a signal for a revolt. It has seen how alleged discrepancies, magnified by learned skeptics in former times, have been proved to be perfect har- monies, and, while the skeptics seem to have learned nothing from their repeated blunders, godly scholars have been en- couraged to hold fast to the holy volume in perfect faith that every difficulty will be made clear, when our ignorance be- comes enlightened. It is under the name of the higher criti- cism that the assaults on the integrity and authority of the Word have been made. Higher criticism ought to be very modest. Jt is a criticism from very vague data. It is a criti- cism not of the text, but of the mind and purpose, time and circumstances, methods and authority of the sacred writers. In such a criticism the subjective is ever tempted to take the lead and the imaginative to create the facts. Invention and ingenuity take the place of sound judgment by reason of our ignorance of the factors that produced the result. In such a field, theorists spring up like mushrooms, and instead of mod- estly proposing a theory, they dogmatize with contemptuous sneers at all conservative scholars as ignoramuses. The higher criticism, which, at the very best, is but surmising (sometimes, doubtless, with convincing probability), is conducted as if it were an exact science, and the dicta of its apostles to be accepted as the plainest truth of the multiplication table. The Presbyterian Church has a representative scholarship 191 •wbicli rejects this error, and declares the Bible to rest on a foundation that cannot be shaken by insidious suggestions and learned guesses. Presbyterian scholarship cannot read the sol- emn declarations in Exodus that God gave Moses the law com- prised in that book and in Leviticus at Sinai — declarations repeated over and over again — and then say that this law (called the priest-code in the cant of the skeptics) was not given by God to Moses, but was a compilation of a later date. Presbyterian scholarship cannot read the Book of Deuter- onomy, wherein Moses speaks all the way through in the trans-Jordanic region, and then say that Moses had nothing to do with that book. Presbyterian scholarship cannot proclaim the Bible a fraud and that its solemn statements are lies, that the whole Jewish Church was deceived and that our Lord and His apostles were equally duped, all of which must be the case, if we are to accept the teachings of the higher criticism as it prevails to-day in Germany, and as it is echoed by the Teuto- latric disciples in England and America. Presbyterian scholarship reasonably and devoutly stands by the Lord Himself and takes His evidence as final, not counting the Saviour of the world either a dupe or a deceiver, and from this holy position is abundantly able to meet and divert all the plausible darts of the adversary. It uses its reason and its learning not to magnify apparent discrepancies, but to trace out superb harmonies, and, by the very history of criticism in the past, establishes this to be the only true way for scholarship to act. It has had enough of these harmonies revealed already in the teeth of skeptical objections to warrant it, as the only reasonable thing, to expect the ignominious over- throw of every skeptical stronghold. This Biblical scholarship of the Presbyterian Church de- mands as a first requisite in Bible study (as we have seen) the reverential spirit toward the Book of God. It cannot, it will not, permit a jaunty air in the treatment of the sacred page. It flings from it such methods as vulgar and profane. Its position by the side of the Lord gives it this holy disgust witli the flippant action of so many of the so-called higher critics. And we may be assured that this devout attitude, which is not the worship of the Book, but the worship of the divine Author of the Book, will ever mark the Church that we love and which God has so wonderfully blessed. THE CHILDREN OF THE COVENENT. By Rev. Givens B. Strickler, D.D., Atlanta, Ga. THE Presbyterian Church has always given special atten- tion to the spiritual interests of the children under its care. Presbyterians wherever found in the world have, as a rule, been characterized by as intelligent and profound concern for the religioas welfare of the youth as any religious denomination. We claim that the Waldenses, who, it is com- monly believed, were driven to their mountain fastnesses dur- ing the persecutions of the second and third centuries, and who, in that dark age of the world's history and Church's apos- tasy, preserved in great purity the faith of Jesus Christ to the Protestant world, were Presbyterians, We claim that all the Churches which sprang out of the Reformation are Presbyte- rian, the Church in Germany, the Church in Holland, the Church in Switzerland, the Church in France, the Church in Scothmd, and so much of the Church in England as was truly reformed. We claim that we can prove that these Churches held doctrines and a polity substantially that whicli is held by the two great denominations represented here to-night. By numerous citations we could show that those Churches regarded as one of their chief functions the fostering of reli- gion, not only in the Church, but in the family and in the school. Those catechisms put in the hands of our Presbyte- rian boys and girls, master-pieces of catechetical skill, those inimitable summaries of religious truth that present the most luminous of all the great doctrines of God's Word, and the guard against almost every error that has ever assailed the truth, and have attracted the admiration and compelled the praise of all intelligent people in all parts of the world ; those catechisms have, for more than two hundred years, been in the hands of Presbyterian children, and they have been studied and learned, and one result is that, when the children grow up to be men and women, they become as orthodox, as sturdy and as useful defenders and propagators of the faith once de- livered to the saints as the world has ever known. This fact in 192 193 the history of our Church, so general and persistent, is trace- able to causes that have powerfully determined the convic- tions of our people and their activities in reference to this sub- ject. I shall call your attention briefly to some of these causes. One is found in that view which the Church has ever taken of the relation, that it is the will of the Great Head of the Church, that the Church and the children should sustain to each other. We can trace every church in existence back through the centuries to its organization. In the covenant that was made with Abraham, he was received and his chil- dren were received with him, and they had as distinct a place as he himself held. We find also that in that covenant God promised not only to give to Abraham the land of Canaan and a numerous posterity, but that he would be the father of many nations, and that he would be his God, not in the sense of creator, or preserver, or redeemer, but in the sense which that promise covenanted, that is, that he should be the God of the Church to be organized in his household, the God of his chil- dren in that Church, and also in all the churches that should afterwards come into relationship with that Church into which he and his household were brought. And he gave, further, a perpetual sign of the existence of that covenant and a per- petual seal accrediting the promises in that covenant, the sacred rite of circumcision. Thus the Church was organized and continued down to the beginning of the new dispensation, and children continued to be in it. When the new dispensation began we have no evi- dence that a new covenant was made, or that a new organiza- tion was formed. On the contrary, in the first sermon that was preached on the Day of Pentecost, Peter announced to the people that the promise was unto them and unto their chil- dren. We find that the Apostle Paul afterwards entered into argument to prove that the covenant was still in force, and from that fact undertakes to demonstrate the call of the gen- tiles, declaring that if they would respond to the call, they would thus become children of Abraham, and heirs of the promises made to him. There is a great cluster of facts that show that this covenant was still in force. I can mention only one or two. One is in the fact that God had made great promises to Abraham. He had promised to make him a father of many nations, but when the new dispensation began this was not fulfilled, and consequently the covenant was still in force, and the Church, to which the covenant was given, in existence. But God in that covenant made promises to the Church that the gentiles should come into it as doves to their windows, sons should be brought in, kings should be nursing fathers and queens nursing mothers. 194 That promise was not fulfilled when the new dispensation began, and the Church was consequently still in existence. Where is there evidence that when the new dispensation began the children were put out of the Church, or denied the privileges and blessings of the Church ? We are sometimes called on to quote a passage of Scripture to show that the children were put into the Church of the new dispensation. Such a passage is not necessary, because the children were already in the Church. It would be a much more pertinent question to ask for a single sentence from divine authority that teaches us that, while under this new dispensation, God has greatly enhanced our privileges and blessings as parents, he has at the same time not only not enhanced the privileges and blessings of our children, but has taken away every privi- lege and blessing that up to that moment they were enjoying. It is incredible that such radical change should take place, and not a line written about it in God's AVord. If the Jews at the beginning of the new dispensation had been informed that their children were not any longer to be in the Church would they not have asked some questions about it ? The Jews would naturally have raised objections to such teaching, but no such objection appears. The lack of controversy on the subject showed that the children remained in the Church as they had always been. Another reason for our care of our children is found in the fact that the Scriptures distinctly teach that full provision is made for their salvation while they are still children. If I could impress this single truth on your minds at this time my efforts would not be in vain. One passage in God's Word teaches this truth. You remember that the people brought their children to the Saviour that He might bless them, and that He said to the disciples who objected to their approach, "Suffer little children to come unto Me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God." He then took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them. They were so small He took them from the arms of their par- ents. In one of the accounts the reading is that He greatly blessed them. He did not only place His hand on them and pronounce a blessing, or just expressed a wish that they might be blessed, but He actually blessed them. Nor was it a mere prayer for a blessing, although that would have availed, for " Him the Father heareth always." This action cannot be explained except by saying that He there bestowed on those children the saving influences of the Holy Spirit. This incident teaches us that while our children are too young to go to Christ we may go for them, our faith may be accepted for them. If we exercise in Him a like faith in 195 "behalf of our children we will inevitably obtain from Him the blessings those parents obtained for their children. Another reason why we believe in special interest in the children and why parents should be characterized by fidelity in this respect is found in the great advantages parents have enjoyed for securing those blessings and the training of them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Parents stand at the fountain head and have opportunity to give shape and character and direction to the earliest thoughts and activities. Just as soon as children begin to exercise intelligence, truth should.be put into their minds; just as soon as they begin to fasten on hopes, He, who is chiefest of ten thousand and alto- gether lovely, should be recommended to them ; just as soon as they begin to make judgments, they ought to be enlisted on the side of truth and right and God ; just as soon as they begin to exercise fear, the doom and the woes of the friendless un- penitent should be presented. Watchful care should be taken to keep them in these channels until they are fixed and con- firmed in moral and religious habits. The earliest impres- sions are the deepest and most lasting. If we were to go into one of our great museums we might see on stone slabs the imprint of raindrops, which geologists tell us fell on them long before man had an existence ; footprints of birds that walked over them while time was still young. The explana- tion is that those slabs were then in a formative state — merely soft sediment, on which light objects could make the impres- sions which we now see. Afterwards those slabs hardened into solid rock, and so the impressions became as lasting as the rock itself. So with the human spirit. In childhood the soul is in a plastic condition with great susceptibility of im- pression from any source, good or bad. As the years pass on under the influences that are brought to bear on the soul, the impressions are indurated and become as enduring as the im- mortal spirit. If those impressions are for evil, it will re- quire the Almighty power of the grace of God to efface them, and if good, it will require the same grace to preserve them. Parents have therefore in youth the opportunity of making lasting impressions that no other agency can produce in behalf of right, and duty, and God. Another reason for our in- terest in the youth is our belief that the Scriptures teach the duty of consecrating our children to God in a covenant well ordered and sure. As we consecrate our time, and possessions, and ourselves to God, so should we consecrate our children. God never asks for the consecration of anything that Ue will not accept. As God accepts parents He accepts their children, and as He accepts the parents as their God and Saviour^ so Ue 196 accepts their cliildren as their God and Saviour. He is obliged to do so, unless we assume that God requires a consecration and then refuses to receive it. The seal of the covenant guar- antees that the consecrated shall be accepted, as the rainbow that stretched across the heavens guaranteed that the world should not again be destroyed by water. So the sprinkling of the water of baptism assures parents that their consecration of their children shall by no means be of no avail. By means like these the Presbyterian Church in every age of the world has shown its interest in its youth, and the result has been that Presbyterian children growing to manhood and womanhood have, as a rule, been characterized by clearer, stronger, and more settled views of truth than the children of any other people in the history of the world, and have been as useful, as earnest and as persevering propagators of the truth of God's Word as the world bas ever seen. MEMORIES AND DUTIES. By Rev. William P. Breed, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa. BELOVED Brethren and Fellow- Presbyterians: — Our delightful memorial festival is fast nearing its close. A few hours more and we shall have crossed the threshold of another centennial stadium. It need not be said that the occasion has been one of singular, not to say of unique interest, and it will be our own fault if it prove not also the vehicle of a fresh supply of spiritual health and strength, of an intensified Christian and Presbyterian enthusiasm. This day of solemn, thrilling memories, of fraternal reunion, eye looking into eye, palm touching palm in brotherly greet- ing, is more than a mere isolated fact ; more than an evanes- cent " dance " of mental and spiritual " minstrelsy." The long distant past is in it ; the far distant future is in it. It is a chamber of echoes from ages long agone, a many-voiced prophecy of ages yet to come. In human life and experience there is no such thing as isola- tion. Every event clasps hands with every other event. The whole infinitely varied and complicated story of man thus far is only a many-tongucd echo of the one dire event that rent earth and heaven asunder, and sent man on his checkered, woeful way at enmity with his God ! Air, ear, life everywhere resound with these echoes; the echo of the Deluge roar ; the echo of the great World Powers as they rose and fell ; the old Assyrian echo, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, the Roman, and the multitudinous echoes of modern thought and action. In the religious life of to-day the voice of Paul is heard, the tread of Augustine, the shout of Luther, Truth's battle clang in a hundred fields in Germany, France and the Neth- erlands; in England, Scotland and Ireland; the echoes of the guns of Seymour, Howard and Drake, as just three hundred years ago they splintered the sides and masts and tore the sails of the Invincible Armada, " deciding," says Froude, " the greatest problem ever submitted to the arbitrament of force, 198 determining the fate of the Eeformation in Germany and com- pleting the conversion of the English nation." In this centen- nial celebration we are compassed about with a great cloud of witnesses; Luther is here, Calvin is here, the Colignys are here, and William the Silent and John Knox and the Mel- villes, and many more in the long catalogue of worthies of whom the world was not worthy 1 In the nearer past we stand face to face with our First Gen- eral Assembly. Let us walk down Arch street to Third, pass the chain drawn across the street to secure the worshipers within against disturbance by the noise without. We enter the Third street door, and lo ! that venerable Assembly sits before us, listening to one of the foremost preachers and theo- logians of the day. Looking to our right over the high-backed pews, we see the lofty pulpit beneath the sounding board. One pew in front of the pulpit is surmounted with a canopy, supported by carved columns and set apart for the use of the President of the Republic and the Governor of the Common- wealth. In the pulpit stands the preacher, a grave man, sixty- six years of age, a man of genius, a ripe scholar, a clear thinker, a powerful reasoner, and in doctrine as Calvinistic as Calvin himself This great man is no snanger in Philadelphia. His voice has been heard in thrilling accents in this city in days gone by. Two squares south of where he now stands is another brick edifice, within whose walls a few years before sat the sages of that " Declaration" which in its ultimate consequences transmuted the loosely joined colonies into a compact Re- public. In that great Assembly there was just one clergyman, John Witherspoon, who now stands before us. The fate of the Declaration was trembling in the balance. Witherspoon rose to his feet and said in solemn, earnest tones, " There is a tide in the affairs of men. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning by every pen in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is unworthy of the name of freeman." This eloquent outburst of patriotic fervor, there is every reason to believe, bore with telling effect upon the fate of the Declaration, which was passed two days after, settling at once the momentous question of the nation's independence. Onward thence the tide of thought bears us, through years of dearth and discouragement, through periods of Pentecostal revival, through storm and calm, struggles between men of massive intellect, of glowing eloquence, of acute dialectic skill, 199 of profound acquaintance witli recorded thought, men of life- blood earnestness, of flaming zeal for the truth, struggles in which we see the forms and hear the voices of the Tennents, of Eodgers, of Samuel Stanhope Smith, of John Blair Smith, of Duffield, Ashbel Green, the Alexanders, the Hodges, Samuel Miller, the Breckenridges, William Adams, Musgrave, Junkin, Barnes, Boardman, Hitchcock and many, many more, illus- trating and confirming the testimony of Dr. Curry, of the Methodist Church, " We concede to the Calvinistic churches the honor of having all along directed the best thinking of the country ;" and the testimony of James Russell Lowell on Cal- vinism, "Its doctrines have produced some of the strongest and noblest characters the world has ever seen, the very fibre and substance of which commonwealths are made." From Reminiscences we turn to confronting Duties. First, to the duties that await us as a Christian Church. The obvious Diity of Aggression : The doors of all the world stand open before us, and in our ears the old command, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature^'' Political barriers to the pro- gress of the Gospel are very few and very far between. Time was when a potent Director of the East India Company declared that he had rather see fifty devils in India than fifty missionaries. The same ship that bore Ziegenbalg from Copenhagen to Tranquebar, carried also secret instructions to the Governor to lay every obstacle in the missionary's way, and surround him with all practicable impediments. But in our day such things are things of the past. And now almost every human being is our next-door neigh- bor. Under the guidaace of God, the splendid triumphs of the intellect of man have laid the whole heathen world on the door-step of the Christian Church. And the Duty of Defense: The old enemy has lost none of his cunning, none of his malice, none of his energy. The Devil is come down unto you, having great wrath because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. For long now the current of thought has set strongly in for the cold, cheerless shores of Unbelief. The grim divinities of Doubt and Denial, exhumed for the thousandth time, are set again upon their pedestals, and the whole world is bidden to fall down and do them homage. " We seem to be slowly com- ing round through the sublime by-ways of intellectual superi- ority and sentimental faith, to the old, mean era of caviling and criticism, the age that finds humbug in every thing, the puny, debased, narrow age of unbelief." And the duty con- fronts us, in the midst of all this, the enemy coming in like a 200 flood to rally in company witli our fellow- Christians of other names, and with renewed ardor round the Christian Gonfalon, and plant it on every hill- top, on every tower, on every hu- man home! Duties await us also as Americaii Christians : Ancient history furnishing examples of two classes of nations; those which, being destitute of the true religion, have assailed it in other nations, and those which, having had it in possession, have become apostate. The doom of the former is written by the pen of Moses: "I will bless them that bless thee, and I will curse him that curseth thee." And the Prophet, Ezekiel, 25 : 12-13, records an instance of the outcarrying of the threat upon the oSender, " Thus saith the Lord God, because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended, therefore, saith the Lord God, I will also stretch out my hand upon Edom, and I will cut off man and beast from it, and I will make it desolate from Teman, and they of Dedan shall fall by the sword." Under the same doom Nineveh, the foe of Israel, and Babylon, the foe of Judah, were ground to powder! But it fares still worse with apostate nations. "When the unclean spirit once expelled returns again, the last state is worse thau the first. " So," said Jesus, " shall it be with this generation," and so was it with that generation ; for under the whole heaven hath not been done as hath been done upon Jerusalem. But our country must take rank, if with either of these classes, with the apostate. Our Government has never been the assailant of religion. The smoke of no martyr fire has ever risen between the eye and the white and crimson, the stars and stripes of the national banner. On the contrary, our nation has been, from the first, a Christian nation. The first sound the wolves and Indians heard from the lips of the white man on our New England shores were the sounds of prayer and praise to the Triune Jehovah. From the beginning until now, the name of Jesus has been invoked in our National Con- gress, and in our great political conventions. Appeal has gone up to the Christian's God on the field of battle before the conflict, and in thanksgiving after the victory. Our legisla- tion, in so far as it has borne upon religion, has been Christian in its character. High authority has repeatedly declared that Christianity is a part of the common law of the land. The Sabbath is distinctly recognized, and year by year a day of devout thankgiving to God has been proclaimed by the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Under the shadow of the national flag, Gospel institutions have sprung up like willows by the 201 water courses. Church edifices dot the land from limit to limit. Christian missionaries from our shores have played the hero and the martyr in many a heathen land. The ISabbath sun, as he moves in majesty from the Atlantic to the Pacific over this great sisterhood of commonwealths, fixes his golden eye upon more than twelve million communicants in evangel- ical churches, and sees an equal nnmber of children grouped around more than twelve hundred thousand Sabbath-school teachers. Bible societies, tract societies, colporteur agencies and other societies, Christian and beneficent, supported by an annual voluntary outlay for all religious purpo.^es, of nearly one hundred million dollars make up together a world of hal- lowed activities that set the seal of Christianity broad and deep upon the very life of the republic, and make it impossi- ble thenceforth for it to be other than permanently Christian or basely apostate. The only alternative left is either with hands at once ungrateful and impious to tear up the deep- rooted cross and cast it into the sea and thereby hang a mill- stone to the neck of the nation, or to go forward, ploughing and planting, harrowing and weeding, until at the name of Jesus the whole aggregate Republic shall bow the head and bend the knee in heartfelt devotion ! "While Alexander" was thundering at the gates of Tyre, the terrified inhabitants, suspecting that Apollo, their god, was about to forsake them, assembled in the public square, and with chains fastened his statue to the pedestal. The folly of the heathen may teach us wisdom. We must secure the per- manent dwelling of Immanuel in the midst of us, or as a nation we are lost I We must bind Him to our national life, not with chains of iron, but with the cords ol love, with the bands of a man for evermore ! A Duty great and grave lies before us as Protestant Christians. When God by the hand of Columbus drew aside the cur- tain, and disclosed this continent to the modern eye, nothing was more improbable than that these territories, now paved with this mosaic of republics, should become the heritage of a Protestant people, Henry VII was on the throne of England with seventeen years of life and rule yet before him. A full quarter of a century must elapse ere the trump of Luther should wake the dead. In the mind of Columbus, the one ruling idea was to add another province to the empire of the Papacy. And during three-fourths of his voyage he kept the prow of the Santa Maria pointed straight toward the heart of this land. Martin Alonzo Pinzon, commander of the Pinta, advised and urged Columbus to change his course and head for the south-west; Columbus declined the advice. Pinzon 202 remonstrated, Columbus persisted. Pinzon exclaimed: "It seems to me an inspiration; my heart dictates to me that we ouo-ht to steer in a different direction." In vain. At last God sent a flock of birds athwart the bows of the little fleet, and the birds won! The course of the vessels was changed, and in this discovery a little island took the place of the great continent! The celebrated Alexander von Ilumboldt writesinthe "Cos- mos," " We must here pause to consider the wonderful concate- nation of trivial circumstances which undeniably exercised an influence on the course of the world's destiny. Washington Irving has justly observed that if Columbus had resisted the counsel of Pinzon, and continued to steer westward, he would have entered the Gulf Stream and been borne to Florida and thence probably to Cape Hatteras and Virginia ; a circumstance of incalculable importance, since it might have been the means of giving to the United States a Catholic Spanish population instead of the Protestant English one, by which the regions were subsequently colonized." And what that means, read in the condition past and present of those portions of North and South America actually occupied by that and a kindred papal power! "Never," continues Humboldt, "has the flight of birds been attended with more important results ! It may even be said that it decided the first colonization in the new Conti- nent and the original distribution of the Eoman and Germanic races of men." Nevertheless, Eome through her faithful vassal, Spain, pushed northward, took possession of the coast of Florida and for a time the Florida of her claims reached from Cape Sable to Newfoundland ! From the latitude of Charleston, S. C, the line ran westward to the Mississippi and be3^ond, taking in all that we now call Louisiana. On the Pacific coast all was hers, from the Isthmus of Panama to Prince Williams Sound. Through France, Rome held Canada and the greater part of the Mississippi Valley. But in the year 1759 Rome met her Waterloo on the Hights of Abraham, and all that sweep of territory passed into the hands of Protestantism. In due time the claims of Spain East and West vanished into thin air, and Protestantism, in the persons of the Pilgrims of New England, the Dutch of New York, the Swedes of Delaware, the Eng- lish of Virginia and the Huguenots farther South held the land. Thus, as by visible act of God, this whole magnificent domain was wrenched from the hands of Rome and given over forever to the children of the Reformation! And before us now as Protestant Christians lies the plain, imperative, vital duty, while with all our hearts conceding to our Roman Catholic neighbors all their rights and privileges, 203 civil and religious, as citizens, jet to see to it that the Vatican octopus, with its Bible-burnings, its cruel intolerance, its hatred of our public schools, its declarations in Encyclical and Syllabus " that the Pope and priests ought to have dominion in temporal affairs," that the principle that " the Church has not power to avail itself of force," and the principle that "the Roman religion shall not be held as the only religion of the State to the exclusion of all others are most mischievous and pernicious errors," to see to it, we say, that this hierarchy shall never acquire and hold dominion in this Eepublic ! Therefore we must insist that the public school shall nestle in every nook; that in it the Word of God with its pure and unique morality shall be read day by day ; copies of this holy Word must be multiplied and placed in every hand, and there must be a sparing of no pains, no labor, no expense, for the conversion of the children of the papacy to the light, liberty and purity of the Gospel ! Duties await us also as Presbyterian Christians. As voiced by Dr. Charles Hodge, the Presbyterian system denies that all Church power vests in the clergy ; denies that the apostolic office is perpetual and denies that each indi- vidual Church is independent. It affirms that the people have a right to a substantive part in the government of the Church ; that presbyters who minister in word and doctrine are the highest permanent officers in the Church, and that the visible Church is, or should be, one in the sense that a smaller part is subject to a larger, and a larger to the whole. The core of this system is the eldership ; the whole eldership the organ for the exercise of the power of the Church; a portion specially ordained to discharge the duties of pulpit and pastorate ; as rulers all elders on a footing of perfect equality ; preachers and pastors all standing upon the same high level of dignity and authority, and the whole Church compacted into unity by a system of courts — lower, higher, highest. Of this sys- tem, Henderson, member of the Westminster Assembly, said, " Here is superiority without tyranny, parity without confusion, subjection without slavery." Of this system the Eoman Catholic Archbishop Hughes said, " It acts on the principle of a radiating centre, and is without equal or rival among the other denominations of the country." Our sister evangelical denominations we bid a hearty God- speed. There is room for all and Avork for all. But who will chide us for entertaining the conviction that a peculiar duty awaits a Church like ours in a land like ours; a Church between whose form of government and that of the nation analogies so many and so striking exist, both embracing in felicitous counterpoise the right and privilege of free thought 204 and private judgment on the one hand, witli the predom.- • nance of an ultimate and venerable authority on the other ; a Church historically and notoriously not one whit more repub- lican in the form of its government than it is in its spirit and tendencies ; a Church that has, therefore, always been an ob- ject of peculiar and cordial hatred to despots secular and spiritual; a Church ever the champion of education ; a Church embracing in such proportions talent, learning, character, Christian zeal and piety; before such a Church, we say, there lies a peculiar duty, and well will it be for her and for the world if her members prove themselves true children of Issachar, that have understanding of the times to know Avhat Israel ought to do. Before this Church lies the duty of demonstrating a superior efficiency in spreading the Gospel among men, in subduing sinners, in maturing all the rich fruit of the spirit, " love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Amen! In conclusion: Out of these fervors of fraternal greeting it is with a half tim.id heart we send our thoughts onward over the expanse of a coming hundred years of cradles, tossing activities and of graves toward the two hundredth meeting of this General Assembly. Out of the noise and bustle and swirl of sixty million panting lives, with their sweet chorus of manifold charities, the footfall of beavitiful feet upon the mountains bringing good tidings and publishing peace, bring- ing good tidings of good and publishing salvation, and ming- ling with these the hoarse, harsh cries ot atheist and an- archist, the clash of conflict with sin and vice, with the im- perious and cruel saloon, the stench of Mormouism, and withal the still hunt of the Jesuitic Papacy — it is, we say, with shrinking heart and half timid eye that out of the midst of all this we look forward into and through the noise and bustle and swirl of the oncoming century, with its rush of progress, its masterful subjection and varied applications of the forces of nature to the uses of man, that will be to those of the present as the oak to the acorn, as the Ganges emptying its gathered flood into the sea, to the Ganges at its infant spring-head, its stupendous political changes, its currents and cross-currents of thought, feeling and action, its harmonious blendings of cooperating agencies and its fierce collisions of contending forces. To this one hundredth General Assembly the members have threaded their way through a throng of sixty millions of people, and it startles us to think that to that two hundredth General Assembly the members will have to crush their way through the seething masses of more than four hundred and 205 fifty millions of people. The two Assemblies blended on this centennial day represent two great Presbyterian bodies. Why need we doubt that the Two Hundredth Assembly will repre- sent the combined Presby terianism of the liepublic ? If one Congress can stand and act for sixty million citizens, why may not one General Assembly stand and act for sixty million Presbyterians? Let us be thankful, brethren, that the character and fate of that stupendous future that now confronts our thoughts lies in other bands than ours; that our responsibilities will have been met and our duties will have been discharged, when into the custody of that future we shall have passed this present, not only unbetrayed, undamaged, uncrippled, but nerved up to a higher and holier tension, fervid, with a warmer zeal, purposes more rigorously girded, momentum harder to be resisted, and all baptized with tears of gratitude, enveloped in clouds of prayer and sanctified by a consecration higher and more en- tire. Amen and Amen ! CLOSING ADDRESS By Rev. Jerry Witherspoon, D.D., Nashville, Tenn. THE commemorative, or monumental spirit, has of late pos- sessed our American people. As a sort of contagion, it spreads. It prevails in the circles of literary, political, military and artistic life. The influence, entirely wholesome, as we believe, invades the Church and prompts to a commemora- tive recognition of achievement that is thought worthy of it. Within the latter half of this century, stones have been piled, marble chipped and bronze moulded to embody popular applause of civic virtue, warlike genius and pure patriotism. It is no waste of time or money to perpetuate, by suitable memorials of stone or brass, the influence of lives that were good and great. Without inspiration from the past, it is barely possible for nations or men to touch, in character or achieve- ment, the level they might otherwise reach. What is comes largely from what was. Tiie spirit of yesterday lives and moves in to-day. The tree that gives the birds a f^helter in its boughs, or the animal a place of repose in its shade, is the out- come of a tiny plant that slumbered in the seed. When we have reckoned j ustly our debt to the past, we are prepared to serve our generation best and pay to the future what we owe. The services of many patriotic citizens of our land in the past few decades have been commemorated, A monument to our first President and the leader of the colonial struggle has risen to catch the sun's earliest ray and reflect his parting glow. Above the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, at Springfield, has been placed a popular testimonial to his gifts and services as one of those illustrious men who preceded and succeeded him in the presidential chair. From the eastern porch of the Ten- nessee Capitol, the visitor sees an equestrian statue of the Sage of the Hermitage and the hero of New Orleans — Andrew Jackson. People from all sections of our land view admir- ingly that massive tribute to a man who had Presbyterian faith in his heart and Presbyterian blood in his veins — a. man of steel, " self-poised," as one who has gracefully said, " like the magnificent bronze charger on which the sculptor has placed him, to ride through the future ages!" Memorials to civil, literary and military success spring around us. Let them stand. To the m.emory of men like Thomas and Lee, 207 Garfield and Stonewall Jackson, commemorative honor has been paid. The contagious spirit of momimentali^m, coining a word for the occasion, is suffering no decline. I would erect no quar- antine against its spread. Its prevalence should be ■v\'elcomed, elevating as it is to national life and stimulating to American plastic art. To know how the stone and bronze fever rages, you have only to note the anniversary celebrations reported in the pub- lic prints ; listen to the harangue of the centennial orator, who is truly abroad in the land ; estimate the cost of shafts and statues being ordered from jubilant sculptors and stonemasons over the land; see how public building, park, college campus and battle-field, are filling up with costly memorials to success in letters, politics or war, and consider the sums of money now appropriated by legislatures like that of New York and other States, to honor the valor of fallen sons. It is estimated that four hundred thousand dollars are available, by legislative enactment, for purposes like this. Brethren and friends, the proceedings of this day, provided for under the action of the Omaha and St. Louis Assemblies, remind us that dignified, conservative Presbyterianism has yielded to the tendency of the times and has become the vic- tim of the memorial contagion. We propose rearing no pillar like that raised to honor Washington. We have no four hundred thousand dollars to lay out in shafts for the graves of men like Francis McKemie, Matthew Hill, William Tennant, Jedediah Andrews, Nathan- iel Taylor, Samuel Davis and Alexander Craighead. Passing the first centennial mile-stone on the march of organized American Presbyterianism, we shall not imitate Israel by rearing an altar of stones to show our debt to a glorious past that pours its inspiration into the soul of every true Presbyte- rian to-day, and by its fragrance of divine goodness to our American Church for a hundred years, invites us to a grateful consecration at this hour. While it is true that in this historic city, the cradle of constitutional liberty and the birthplace of organized Presbyterianism, we shall lay no stone, nor conse- crate a bit of bronze to the sacred uses of commemoration, yet that these exercises are preeminently proper for a Church with a history like ours and that they will, under God's bless- ing, leave their impress for good, there is no ground for doubt. If we turn our steps homeward, with our blood quickened by the memories of the past; our hearts humbled before God by the thought of His goodness and our unfaithfulness ; our fraternal sympathies intensified; our e3^es opened to the possibilities of growth and activity before our Church in this laud and in the 208 outlying fields of foreign missionary effort and with the con- viction increased, that the doctrines of our standards are as worthy of credence and industrious promulgation to-day, as when Andrews preached them in the " Barbadoes Warehouse," James Anderson advocated them on the banks of the Hudson, Josias Makie heralded them beside the Elizabeth river, or Charles Cummings proclaimed them where the Watauga and Holston join their currents with the curving Tennessee, this meeting of our Presbyterian clans in 1888 will have met the purpose of its projection a year ago, and left a blessing on our Church whose fruit shall be gathered in the years to come. From the doings of this centennial day, if God but add His blessing, good results must needs follow. The retrospect prompted by the celebration will, 1, Aivaken and sustain a sense of dependence upon the God of our fathers. At Kadesh- barnea, Moses, the man of God, exhorted the tribes to review of their course from Horeb to where they stood with the goodly land before them. The divine presence had attended them along the way. But for His care they would not have survived the march, and without His intervention the land could not be possessed, God sent these wandering people bread from the heavens, water from the rock and preserved the shoes and garments they wore while pillars of cloud and fire bespoke His presence and pointed them the way to Canaan. Against the enemies waiting to dispute their possession of the land they would be as incapable of contending without His help as they were dependent on His bounty in the wilder- ness. The whole situation, with its retrospect and prospect, was enough to teach humility and throw them upon God in an implicit trust. Under the date of 1723, George Gillespie, of the Synod of Philadelphia, writes to a brother in Scotland thus : " It would appear that our glorious Christ hath great designs in America ; though I am afraid not to be effectuated in my day," Saj^s he, "There are not above thirty ministers and probationer preachers in our Synod," In 1788, when the Synod resolved to organize the General Assembly, the sixteen Presbyteries that were to form that Assembly over which John Rodgers was called to preside and to which John Witherspoon preached the opening sermon, consisted of 177 ministers, 111 probationers and 419 churches. A year later the churches had increased to 432, with a membership of 18,000, contribu- ting to mission causes eight hundred and fifty-two dollars. When we compare the present with the past we feel that God has helped us and given enlargement to our Zion; that the pioneers struggled on against discouragement, like Caldwell, of Elizabethtown, New Jersey; McWhorter, of Knox's brigade ; Adam Boyd, Daniel McCalla and George Duffield ; that the 209 handful of corn on the tops of the mountain grew on, until to- day the 18,000 have come to be almost a mil Hon, we must give the praise to our Coven ant- Keeping God. Extend jour view eightj-two years back of 1788 and you see a still more in- considerable beginning of things. We are more than ever convinced that the God whose presence with Israel was sym- bolized in the guiding pillar of cloud, whose blessing on Gideon made 300 with their pitchers rout Midian on the field and who helped Elijah to a splendid victory on Carmel, has piloted American Presbyterianism through the perils of a century and has rendered all its efforts towards aggression and defense successful. Eighty- two years back of the first Assembly we see a Presbytery with seven ministers: Andrews, Taylor, Wilson, Davis and McKemie, with two Scotch missionaries lately arrived. This was the handful of corn, the fruit of which is shaking to-day. This is the bush that has grown into the tree under whose boughs we rest to-day, after a hun- dred and eighty years of growth. It was fitting, in view of the hardships attending the founding of our Church in the New World, and the difficulties to be met in its extension, that the text /or the opening sermon at the first Assembly should have been II Cor. 3 : 7, teaching that man is insuffi- cient^ but God is all-sufl&cient. " So that neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth : but God that giveth the increaseJ^ 2. The observance of this day should move our Church, North and South, to embrace as well as measure her opportuni- ties in this land and others. Our ears must indeed be heavy if out of that past we honor to-day there is not heard a voice to quicken our steps in the march of progress. Ours is called the "Seeculum Evangelicum" — the age of evangelism. The Church should assume more and more the attitude of aggres- sion. We have been on the defensive long enough. Propa- gation of the truth, rather than further sharpening of its definitions, is the demand of the hour. We have been deter- mining the King's Crown rights ; let us go and win them as He bids us. We have been whetting the sword and judging of its temper, let us go and use it. Missionary triumph is the wonder of our age — " We are living, we are dwelling, In a grand and awful time, In an age on ages telling, To be living is sublime." The talk of forming a language for the whole world to use may be a random prophecy of a day when the race evange- lized shall employ the language of Heaven. The Presby- terian Church in the United States ! The very name should inspire zeal. The Tarshish seamen asked Jonah, " Whence 210 comest thou ; what is thy country ? " To us this same question comes. Others have told us to-day what a door is opea to us and how our responsibihties bear proportion to our opportu- nities in all their amplitude. In America is to be solved the problem of the world's civilization. What imagination can compass, what tongue portray the future of this land ? " A glorious land , With broad arms stretched from shore to shore, The proud Pacific chafes her strand, She hears the loud Atlantic's roar ; And nurtured in her ample breast, How many a goodl}' prospect lies, In nature's wildest grandeur drest, Enameled with her loveliest dyes." To-day the centre of population is moving westward, and the child is born that will hear the hum of two hundred millions of people in our country. Shall these coming mul- titudes be Christianized? The answer depends in part upon the Church whose centennial has been celebrated to-day. God has put the land before us ; let us go over and possess it. 3. Ere I close let me say, the celebration will have in part failed if it does not deepen our love for our Church. Our Church lays claim to catholicity of spirit, but this need not interfere with devotion to her doctrines, institutions and tra- ditions. The organization of the first American Presbj^tery was effected in a spirit of tolerance. To form it came the Scotch-Irishman, the Scotchman, the Irishman and the Puri- tan missionary from New England, while London Presby- terians supplied the funds for their support. We may well love our Church for her broad fraternity toward all who re- flect the image of Christ. " Presbyterianism," says one, "is truest to catholicity in that it insists upon those things that are truly catholic and declines to mingle with those things that are not catholic." Our Church may be loved for the honor she puts on the Word of God, demanding that every doctrine and rite shall find its authority in the "Book, "the only infallible rule of faith and practice." We may love her for her thrilling history, for her martyrdoms to principle, for her army of confessors, for her strenuous maintenance of the principle that none but God can bind the conscience, for her friendliness to liberty, for the part she has borne in the pro- motion of civil and religious reform, and for her adherence to that form of belief which, to use the words of Froude, " has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation." Then, with dependence on God, with enlarged apj)reciation of opportunity and intensified love for our Zion, may we enter the second century of organized life as a Church. 211 THE Pre5byteria9 /Tlir^isters' pupd OK 1759 Rev. WM. P. BREED, D. D, President In Aid of Presbyterian Ministers ONLY And their Families. Instituted by the Presbyteries and Synods of 1756-8. Chartered en their apphcation January nth, 1759. Put in operation as appointed by the Synod's Committee of June 14th, 1759, ^^^ afterwards commended by Synods and Assembly, "down to the discussion ending in the separations of 1837." " A desirable, and in some respects essential, as well as self-support- ing. Ministerial Aid." Has never yet failed to meet any one of its liabilities at their maturity. Business done by mail. Propositions of Insurance forwarded when date of birth is sent, and correspondence solicited on any desirable contract plan in use. Assets, January ist, 1888, $332,285 66 Reserve for Policy-holders, . . . $216,380 00 Premium Payment Deposits, . . 12,079 43 228,459 43 Surplus, $103,826 23 $M5 OF ASSETS FOR EACH $100 OF LIABILITY. DIRECTORS. Mr. Robert Patterson, Mr. Frank Olcott Allen, Mr. Samuel Field, Mr. James T. Young, Rev. W. P. Breed, D.D., Mr. James F. Magee. OFFICERS. Rev, W. p. BREED, D.D., President. Rev. N, L. UPHAM, Corresponding Secretary. Mr. ROBERT P. FIELD, Actuary and Treasurer. OFFICES, 140 South Fourth Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 212 W. A. MacCalla. H. McAllister. Geo. S. Pickell. P. O. Box 1153 /Mo^. 237-9 J)oc^ ghr^eet, V/e do all \(\n<^<^ oF ppiohin^ Fop tt^e Gliupeli op gakkahl^ %c\ioo\, a^ v/e!I a^ Fop cVep^ (ga^i oc^ OP ppoFe?^ioo Syste/natie Qiuli)^-; We have everything used in connection with the "Envelope System." Will send a complete set of samples and instructions for its introduction and maintenance for 2 cts. in stamps. C^oHeotiop (^ards->i Brick Cards, Stone Cards, Roof Cards, Car- pet Cards, Cushion Cards, etc. An easy vk'ay of collecting funds for all Church pur- poses. A complete set of samples sent for 5 cts. in stamps. On receipt of a 2c. stamp we will send a specimen copy of our Church or Parish Newspaper, handsomely printed and illus- trated; also a description of various plans of issuing them. U/e also pablisl?-:^^ Easter, Anniversary, Children's Day, and Christmas Programs and Music. 213 Tn buying BOOKS* USE — - THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK, gOOKS NOT IN STOCK WILL BE SUPPLIED. 1334 CHESTNUT ST., PHILA. H. J.&G. R. CRUMP, Colonnade Hotel, Philadelphia. Devon Inn, Devon, Penna., now open. Beach House, Sea Girt, N. J., now open. AT THESE HOTELS EVERY CARE IS TAKEN TO INSURE THE COMFORT OF PATRONS. A. 6. ELLier Zi G0., papei< - y^aqufactui'ei'^, AND DEALERS IN ALL GRADES OF PAPER. Nos. 30, 32 AND 34 S. Sixth St., PHILADELPHIA. 214 ENVELOPES FOR Church Collections. SEND STAMP FOR SAMPLES AND PRICES. MacCalla & Company, 237-9 DOCK STREET, PHILADELPHIA. ^Illllli1ii?im.l.'',??.'?3'cal Sem, Innil, Libraries 1 1012 01217 6105 Date Due ' f) iDeoppopahesl 1882 ♦ The Union Trust Co. 717 and 719 Chestnut Street, Phila. .'. Ql7arter perpetual .*. Acts as Assignee, Receiver, Guardian, Executor and Administrator ; takes charge of property, collects income and executes trusts of every description known to the law. Receives on dep»osit for safe-keeping. Jewelry, Plate, Stocks, Bonds, and other valuables. RECEIVES MONEY ON DEPOSIT AND ALLOWS INTEREST, Rents small safes in burglar-proof vaults. Sells Railroad and other Corporation Bonds; also. Western Farm Morteages bearing 6 and 7 per cent interest. Wills receipted for and kept safely without charge. President— J. SIMPSON AFRICA. Vice-President— JOHN G. READING. Treas. and Sec'y— MAHLON S. STOKES. Trust OfScer— WM. HENRY PRICE. directors: J. Simpson Africa, John G. Readinc;, Alfred S. Gillett, Chas. p. Tukner, M D., JOSEI'H I. KeEFE, John T. Monroe, William J. Nead, D. Haves Aonbw, M.D., Thomas R. Patton, Robert Patterson, Jacob Navlor, Theodor C. Engbl, Harry W. Moore, George W Reily, M.D., Harrisburg, W. W. H. Davis, Doylestown, Edmund S. Doty, Mifflintown, Henry S. Eckert, Reading, Robert E. Monaghan, West Chester. William S. Price, Thomas G. Hood, Edward L. Perkins, Joseph Wric.ht, William H, Lucas, William Watson, d^^ba