7 13. o3 '^jii^ PRINCETON, N. J. *^ Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund. BV 2766 .P6 A5 1902 Presbyt< 9rian Church in the U S,A. General Assembl y. Centennial of home missions 1802 CENTENNIAL 1902 OF HOME MISSIONS IN CONNECTION WITH THE ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NEW YORK CITY, MAY 16-20, 1902 PHILADELPHIA PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 1902 Copyright, 1902, by the Trustees of The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- School Work Published November, jqos PEEFACE A HUNDRED years of organized home missions have been of so much account to the denomination, to the kingdom of Christ, and to this Republic, that the emphasis placed upon them at the meeting of the Gen- eral Assembly in May, in New York city, is abun- dantly justified. The occasion was regarded as of so much importance that the General Assembly waived the routine of its business for a day and a half to devote that time to a worthy celebration of the great event. That the history of Presby terianism in this country has had such bearing upon our national progress as to justify some form of national recognition was expressed in the fact that the President of the United States honored the occasion with his presence. The programme of the great meetings is herewith pre- sented to the Christian public. The impression which the great gatherings made upon those who were present can never Avholly fade away. Only a small fraction, however, of the Presbyterians who were rejoicing in the 6 PREFACE occasion could hear the living voices of the speakers selected for the centennial exercises. That the vast multitudes of Presbyterians and other Christian people who could not be present may liave an opportunity to share in the historic and memorable occasion, this vol- ume is now sent forth. The enthusiasm of great audi- ences is, of course, lacking in this presentation. But the historic facts which are here given, the sympathetic greetings of other boards and of other denominations, the tidings from home mission fields, extending from Porto Rico to Alaska, and the inspiring words of the chief magistrate of the nation pleading for national righteousness will not fail to evoke among Presbyterians an honorable pride in our Church and larger hopes for our future ; while to all to whom these messages shall come, of whatever denomination, there will be borne the value of Christian missions and Christian institu- tions as an integral part in the upbuilding of our great Republic. Charles L. Thompson. CONTENTS PAGE "TO THE ALLEGHENIES" 13 Rev. Henry C. McCook, D.D.,Sc.D. "FROM THE ALLEGHENIES TO THE ROCKIES" . . 53 Rev. Samuel J. Niccolls, D.D., LL.D. "FROM THE ROCKIES TO THE PACIFIC" 81 Rev. Edgar P. Hill, D.D. "THE PAST YEAR" 109 Rev. Richard S. Holmes, D.D. ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS 126 Rev. John Dixon, D.D. THE SELF-SUPPORTING SYNODS 146 Rev. Eben B. Cobb, D.D. HOME MISSIONS IN TEXAS 159 Rev. Henry S. Little, D.D. THE YUKON VALLEY 161 Rev. M. Egbert Koonce, Ph.D. NORTHERN ALASKA'S NEED 163 Rev. S. Hall Young, D.D. THE MORMON PROBLEM 166 Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D. GREETINGS— FROM THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MIS- SIONS 171 Rev, John D. Wells, D.D. FROM THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 180 Rev. George D. Baker, D.D. FROM THE BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH- SCHOOL WORK 185 Hon. Robert N. Willson. FROM THE BOARD OF MINISTERIAL RELIEF ... 192 Hon. Robert H. Smith. FROM THE BOARD OF CHURCH ERECTION 196 Rev. David Magie, D.D. 7 8 CONTENTS PAGE FROM THE BOARD FOR FREEDMEN 199 Rev. Henby T. McClelland, D.D. FRO^I THE BOARD OF AID FOR COLLEGKS .... 204 Rev. Herrick Johnson D.D., LL.D. FROM THE AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSION SOCIETY 211 Rev. AV. C. P. Rhoades, D.D. FROM TPIE CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY 21(5 Rev. J. B. Clark, D.D. FROM THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE METH- ODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 223 Bishop E. G. Andrews, D.D. FROM THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE U. S. A 228 Rev. D. H. Greer, D.D. FROM THE BOARD OF DOMESTIC MISSIONS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA 232 Rev. James I. Vance, D.D. FROM THE ALLIANCE OF REFORMED CHURCHES . 238 Rev. William H. Roberts, D.D., LL.D. RESPONSE BY THE MODERATOR 243 Rev. Henry van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. "THE NEW CENTURY "—ADDRESS BY THE CHAIR- MAN 251 Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D. ADDRESS 257 Theodore Roosevelt, President of the LTnited States. ADDRESS AT THE OVERFLOAV MEETING 264 Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States. RESPONSE BY THE MODERATOR 267 Rev. Henry van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. A VISION OF THE FUTURE 271 Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D. ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY EXTEACT FEOM THE MiNUTES, MaY 16, 1902. The Committee on the Centennial Celebration of Home Mis- i'ivjns, through its Chairman, John E. Parsons, Esq., presented a programme of the celebration, which was accepted, aj^proved and is as follows : FfiiDAY, May 16. All-Day Session — Annual Meeting of the Woman's Board, Central Presbyterian Church. 4.30 p. M. : Reception to the Assembly in the Presbyterian Building, 156 Fifth Avenue. Saturday, May 17. 8.00 p.m.: Lecture: "Two Centuries of Presbyterianism," by the Eev. William C. Covert, of Saginaw, Mich., Fifth Avenue Church. Sunday, May 18. Home Mission sermons in the pulpits of Greater New York. 3.00 P. M. : Popular Home Missionary meeting. Fifth Avenue Church. Monday, May 19. The Fast Century. 2.30 P. M. : Fifth Avenue Church, Rev. Wilson Phraner, D.D., presiding. 1. Invocation. Rev. George F. McAfee, D.D., New York, N. Y. 2. Hymn. 3. Address—" To the Alleghenies," Rev. Henry C. McCook, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa. 4. Hymn. 9 10 ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 5. Address — " From tlie Alleghenies to the Rockies," Rev. Samuel J. NiccoUs, D.D., LL.D., St. Louis, Mo. 6. Music. 7. Address — " From the Rockies to the Pacific," Rev. Edgar P. Hill, D.D., Portland, Oregon. 8. Doxology. 9. Benediction, Rev. Lyman Whitney Allen, D.D., Newark, N.J. 7.30 p. M. : Conference of Home Missionaries, Central Church. Tuesday, May 20. The Past Year. 10.00 A. M. : Fifth Avenue Church. 1. Report of the Standing Committee on Home Missions. 2. Address, Rev. Richard S. Holmes, D.D., Pittsburg, Pa. 3. Address, Rev. John Dixon, D.D., New York, N. Y. 4. Music. 5. Address, Bev. Eben B. Cobb, D.D., Elizabeth, N. J. 6. Brief Addresses by Missionaries. 7. Hymn. 8. Benediction, Rev. Wilton Merle Smith, D.D., New York, N. Y. Fellowship Meeting. 2.30 P. M. : Fifth Avenue Church. The Moderator of the Gen- eral Assembly presiding. 1. Prayer, Rev. L. Mason Clarke, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. 2. Music. 3. Addresses by Rev. John D. Wells, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y., representing the Board of Foreign Missions ; Rev. David Magie, D.D., Peterson, N. J., representing the Board of Church Erection ; Rev. George D. Baker, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa., representing the Board of Education ; Hon. Robert N. Willson, Philadelphia, Pa., representing the Board of Publication and S. S. Work ; R. H. Smith, Esq., Baltimore, Md., representing the Board of Ministerial Relief; Rev. Henry T. McClel- ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 11 land, D.D., Pittsburg, Pa., representing the Board for Freed men ; Rev. Herrick Johnson, D.D., LL.D., Chi- cago, 111., representing the Board of Aid for Colleges. 4. Hymn, 5. Addresses by Eev. W. C. P. Rhoades, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y., Chairman of Executive Board, the American Baptist Home Mission Society; Rev. J.B. Clark, D.D., New York, N. Y., Senior Secretary, the Congregational Home Missionary Society ; Bishop E. G. Andrews, D.D., New York, N. Y., Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church ; Rt. Rev. Dr. William Croswell Doane, Albany, N. Y., and Rev. David H. Greer, D.D., of St. Thomas' Church, N. Y., Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U. S. A, ; Rev. James I. Vance, D.D., Newark, N. J., Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America ; Rev. William Henry Roberts, D.D., LL.D., American Secretary Alliance of Re- formed Churches. 6. Music. 7. Prayer and Benediction, Rev. Thomas A. Nelson, D.D. Tuesday, May 20. The New Century. 8.00 p. M. : Carnegie Hall, Rev. D. Stuart Dodge, D.D., Presi- dent of the Board of Home Missions, presiding. 1. Hymn—" Ye Servants of God." 2. Scripture Reading, Rev. Howard Agnew Johnston, D.D 3. Prayer, Rev. Duncan J. McMillan, D.D. 4. Address, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States. 5. Hymn — "God Guard Columbia," written by Rev. Henry C, McCook, D.D. 6. Address, by the Moderator of the Assembly. 7. Hymn—" All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." 8. Address, Rev. Charles L. Thompson, D.D. 12 ACTION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 9. Hymn—" My Country, 'Tis of Thee." 10. Benediction, Rev. Henry S. Little, D.D, Tuesday Evening. 8.00 p. M. : Central Presbyterian Church, Eev. George L Spining, D.D., presiding. 1. Devotional Exercises, Rev. John Dixon, D.D. 2. Addresses by the INIoderator of the General Assembly ; Rev. S. Hall Young, D.D., of Alaska; Rev. Milton E. Caldwell, D.D., of Porto Rico; Hev. Charles F. Richardson, of Montana ; Rev. S. E. Wishard, D.D., of Utah. 3. Benediction, Rev. Calvin A. Duncan, D.D., Knoxville, Tenn. Wednesday, May 21. 2.00 p. M. : Woman's Board Conference of Workers, Central Church. Friday, May 23. 8.00 p. M. : Fifth Avenue Church, Rev. J. Ross Stevenson, D.D., presiding. Young People's Meeting in the interest of Home and Foreign Missions. Addresses by Rev. Graham Lee, of Korea ; Rev. M. Egbert Koonce, Ph.D., of Alaska, and Mr. John Willis Baer. Extract from the Minutes, May 23, 1902. Your Committee has also considered the question of the record in enduring form of the proceedings in connection with the celebration of the Centennial of Home Missions, and we recommend that the Board of Publication and Sabbath-school Work be directed to print and issue in permanent form the proceedings of May 19 and 20, 1902, as they may be furnished by the Secretary of the Board of Home Missions. Adopted. The above extracts are true copies of the Minutes in each case. Wm. Henry Roberts, Stated Clerk. Monday Afternoon, May 19th, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, N. Y. "THE PAST CENTURY" " TO THE ALLEGHENIES " THE ATLANTIC STATES: THE MOTHERLAND OF HOME MISSIONS BY THE BEV. HENRY C. I^IcCOOK, D. D., Sc. D., Philadelphia, Penna. THE ATLANTIC STATES: THE MOTHER- LAND OF HOME MISSIONS HENRY CHRISTOPHER McCOOK, D. D., Sc. D. Italian art is the product of two chief factors. One is the Italian himself; the other is the act of nature that set the marble of Carrara within his volcanic hills. So, in the centennial results that your Home Mission Board presents, two chief natural factors were concerned : one was the Home Evangelist; the other the human types whose grain and quality gave the material out of which the missionary in the field and the missioner in Assembly, presbytery, committee, and Board, could carve a character, a Church, and a commonwealth. We are thinking to-day of the home missionary and his heaven-inspired art. We must remember also the Carrara marble ; aye, and the volcanic forces that pro- duced it. We are to consider, first, I The Human Material on which Our Home Missionaries Wrought When the seventeenth century dawned, Europe was still in the throes of the Reformation, that great conflict for soul-liberty and for the sovereignty of God's word. 15 16 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Out of the hurly-burly there emerged a form which, to one part of Europe, seemed as captivating as the bride of the Canticles ; but to the other, dreadful as the woman of Tlie Revelation — a destroyer and to be destroyed. That form was Presbytery. The Huguenots of France, the Reformed of Switzerland, of the Palatinate, of Hesse, of Brandenbnrg, of Holland, and of Scotland, had seated her in their cathedrals, and enthroned her in their chairs of state. The English Puritans wooed her lustily, and would have won but for the hostility of Elizabeth, who, toward that fair form, was a veritable virago rather than the " Good Queen Bess." Meanwhile, throughout all the century, ISTorth Amer- ica lay dim and mysterious in the far-away western ocean. Would this virgin world become a field wherein to transplant and propagate presbytery ? It was not until the second decade of the seventeenth century that English Independents made their mem- orable settlement at Plymouth. That was like the coming of migratory birds in springtime. Yesterday there was a pair ; to-day there is another. Next week the groves shall be vocal with their songs. In 1607 there was a Jamestown; in 1614 a New Amsterdam; in 1620 a Plymouth; in 1630 a Dorchester; in 1638 a New Sweden. Thenceforth the gates of the new hemi- sphere were entered all along the coast, and the century closed (1682) upon "William Penn's "Holy Experiment." So came the eighteenth century, most memorable and fateful in the development of our country and of our Church. The opening of the seventeenth century had CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 17 witnessed the planting of Scotch Presbyterians in Ulster upon the forfeitcfl estates of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel. The " undertakers " of these new plantations were fortified by refugees from the Stuart persecutions. The intolerance of the English Church and government fastened upon Irish Presbyterians and Roman Catholics alike the yoke of Anglican bishops. These gentlemen are harmless and delightful personages now, with their shovel hats and knee breeches, their high scholarship and higher churchmanship, and highest views — and narrow as high, as imaginary lines must always be — of a sole apostolic succession for their ministry. But they were hard and serious facts in those not very distant days, and down to the period of the American and French Revolutions. Atrocious penal laws harried the native Irish Roman Catholics. Irritating and oppressive re- strictions and requirements oppressed the Presbyterians. They were excluded from office ; forbidden to be married by their own pastors ; denied commissions in the army and other positions, except under odious test oaths; insulted and ill-treated in many ways. Meanwhile yonder, in the New World, there called to this persecuted folk the sweet voice of freedom to worship God in their own way, the promise of personal independence, and the ownership of fair lands. Our fathers followed the voice ! America was their land of promise. British ships groaned with the loads of emi- grants who crowded across seas. Those Ulster Presbyterians became the hardy settlers 18 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS of our southern and central frontier, and the brave op- posers of Indian encroachment ; for they were an adven- turous and warlike folk, though well fashioned for the substantial arts of peace. They rushed en masse into the Continental Army, to win once and forever religious and civil freedom from a people and a system that had given them good ground for suspicion and resentment. The century closed upon their full success. The colo- nies were free, and constituted a nation of freemen. Their beloved presbytery had developed its supreme court, the General Assembly, which neither king nor prelate could henceforth molest. Into and under that General Assembly came the New England Puritans, especially of Connecticut and northern New York, and formed, with the Ulstermen, the chief constituency and the controlling element. Thus dawned the nine- teenth century, and that era and act whose centenary we commemorate. It was a sifted people that God set upon those virgin shores : a people tried in the furnace of affliction and persecution for conscience's sake. By the very fire that tried them and the pressure of their oppression they were given that fine grain that made them fitting material for the artist hand of the Angel of Providence. This was the raw material, the historic background upon which our picture of American missions must be drawn. But the raw material was at once exposed to violent tests. Novel social forces played upon it and molded it into new forms, finer or grosser, fair or gro- tesque, noble or depraved. What were some of these CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 19 forces? The shock of hereditary opinions and customs, often hard set and stubbornly held, as the confluent streams of life from many diverse nations met and inter- mingled ; the struggle to adjust new conditions to Old World ideas and habits which still clung to them like half- cast shells upon molting spiders ; the hunger and struggle for land and for a living ; the restless spirit of change that drove families west and still farther westward ; the untoward effect of watching against and combat with a lurking savage foe, which developed traits of cunning, fierceness, and cruelty, as well as of courage and adroit- ness ; the pressure and exigencies, both contractile and expansive spirituality, of founding new communities — all these were factors for good or evil that wrought and had wrought upon the American people a century ago. Conditions created character ; character reacted upon conditions ; and there lay the whole complex and hetero- geneous mass, to be kneaded into homogeneous society, and molded and fixed into the image of Christ and his Church. The new American States of a hundred years ago might be compared to a solution of precious metal in the chemist's retort, ready for the reagent that should separate the gold from the dross. That precipitant was the religion of Jesus Christ, and the work of the home missionary was to cast it into the solution. II Difficulties Overcome by the Home Missionary If we would fairly grasp the degree of honor due the home missionary fathers and founders of the Church, 20 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS we must reckon up some of the difficulties which they overcame in achieving success. There was — 1. THE DETERIORATING EFFECT OF THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE The people were scattered far apart along our wide frontier, with vast reaches of virgin forest and prairie lying beyond them. Between the several columns of migration, which were being thrust in wedge-like masses into the wilderness, lay also the forest primeval. The sparse settlements were gathered round small hamlets, most of whose houses were rude log cabins painfully erected by the solitary pioneers, or built by the common toil of the community at cabin-raisings, which were usually occasions for a frolic. At morning the house and its furniture lay latent within the forest trees. At nightfall it was a human habitation, with table, bunk, benches and stools, and rustic brackets for rifles, and pegs for the settler's scant stock of clothes. It is not far from the truth to say that a century ago a moiety of the people of our Union dwelt in such primitive huts as these. Their modes of living were as primitive as their houses. Clothing was made of home-grown wool and flax, spun and woven and sewed by the women. Money was rarely seen. Traffic was a system of barter. The farmers exchanged their products for the few articles that the trader had to sell in his frontier department store, and he in turn sent his barter, as he had received his goods, by pack-horse trains or wagons to distant CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 21 centers of trade ; or, if convenient to rivers, the flat boat and the ark floated his accumulations to the mouth of the Mississippi. There is a social evolution of retardation and of degradation as well as the reverse. It was a startling change from the life of New England, or the life of Ulster, or Scotland, or Holland, or Germany, or France, into which the emigrants to the borders of America were suddenly thrust. Many of them were so firmly grounded in the principles in which they had been bred that they kept them untarnished amid the most un- friendly environment. The first voice of the missionary found them willing and eager to drop into the old paths of duty and devotion. With the multitude it was otherwise. The struggle for existence levied upon every faculty and force of mind and body. Alienation from established influ- ences and from the ordinances of religion left the spirit- ual nature unnourished. It grew flabby, decadent ; it was atrophied at last. Habits, left without the braces and guards of a settled life, swung away sharply tangent to the early use and wont of religious and moral restraint. The deterioration of the frontier settlers was a subject of frequent anxiety to the presbyteries, synods, and assemblies of early days. They mourned the widely spread infidelity ; the indifference to and neglect of religion ; the drunkenness, dueling, gambling, profanity, fighting, and lust that kept in a ferment of moral filthi- ness and social disorder the long line of frontier reaching from the Carolinas to the Ohio. A type of character 22 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS described by its possessors as " half-borsc, half-alligator, rip-roaring, fire-eating, whip my weight in wildcats" dominated many sections. That type has persisted. Our later missionaries knew something of it, and still know, although our generation is seeing the passing of the old-time frontier. But the rapidity with which modern civilization sweeps over modern border settlements gives such aberrant forms of society a far more evanescent life than in those earlier times. True, the day was to come — indeed, the day had already dawned upon that Assembly — when a power mightier than all bands of iniquity should sweep along that border like the " rushing mighty wind " of Pentecost, and revolutionize the character of the people. But ere the great revival of 1800 and until its divine work of reconstruction had been wrought, the absorbing struggle for existence, the greed for land, the unlicensed freedom of the frontier, the unchecked carnival of depravity fostered by demoralized soldiers, and the out- casts and criminals of Europe and the East who had fled for refuge to western solitudes, reared an appalling barrier against the holy toils of the missionary. 2. OPEEATING UPON SHIFTING COMMUNITIES Moreover, it must be remembered that the old-time evangelists were operating not upon settled, but upon shifting, communities. Their gospel armory must be trained to shoot upon the wing. A comparison of the first census in 1790 with that of 1800 will show that a large part of our population was in a state of flux. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 23 "When tlic first General Assonibly mot in 1789 the whole region from western Pennsylvania to the Mis- sissippi, and from the Kentucky border northward to the Great Lakes, was practically uninhabited by white men. The census of 1790 gave that vast territory, now the heart of the nation, a population of 4280 — a twentieth-century village. Ere the nineteenth century dawned, the westward drift of population had begun. New England over- flowed into New York, and again pushing on, with the restless impulse of destiny by which nature accom- plishes the occupancy of the earth and the distribution of species, the migratory wave spread itself into northern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. There it paused and overspread the Valley of the Allegheny and the " Western Reserve," until, like a mountain lake under a spring freshet, it poured over its bounds and swept on westward. Lower down, the stream of emigrants overflowed cen- tral Pennsylvania, swelled over the Alleghenies, and was distributed northward and southward along the Ohio, and in the central valleys of the Buckeye State. Ohio was then the frontier, that " greater East " which is now the middle West. There, on that early day, one could feel the pulse-beat of the Eastern States, the heart of the new Republic, sending forth its best blood to vitalize and nourish the nation's extremities. Farther south the tide moved from the Atlantic States westward and southwestward. The seaboard was monopolized by the great planters, and the landless 24 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS settlers were forced inward. The West had already begun to gain at the expense of the East. The po})ula- tion of Kentucky, tlie fifteenth State (received in 1791), was greater than that of Delaware, or Rhode Island, or Georgia, or Maryland, or New Hampshire, or New Jersey, and yet numbered only 221,000. The record of a decade's growth in Oklahoma was almost paralleled by that of Kentucky a hundred years ago. The population of Tennessee, the latest born of the States (received 1796), exceeded both Delaware and Rhode Island. In the Ohio territory, which before Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in 1794, was almost a wilderness inhabited only by Indians, there were 45,363 settlers. Indiana Territory had 6000, the Mississippi Territory, 9000, and the cry was, " still they come! " To follow this flitting multitude into the wilderness, over forest trails and mountain paths and wild lakes and unbridged rivers, to search out and tend the scat- tered and wandering flock of God, was a task that might have taxed the strongest and best organized forces. It must have seemed most formidable to the few and loosely organized churches of the Atlantic slope a hundred years ago. It added to the difliculty that in many cases ere the molding hand of the missionary had well begun the work of shaping or restoring pious character, the restless subjects, stirred by rumor or dream of some new Eldorado, moved on still farther west. Yet, still onward moved in their trail the un- daunted missionary ; for the Empire whose westward course he pursued was the Eternal Kingdom of Christ ! CENTENNIAll OF HOME MISSIONS 2-5 3. THE WEAK AND SCATTEEED BATTLE LINE Again, consider the base of supplies from which were drawn the men and the means for evangelizing these ever shifting, yet rapidly swelling, new settlements. You must eliminate from your minds the impression of present conditions, and put your thought, if possible, within the setting of a century ago. In all New York, in the two synods covering that State, there were 66 ministers, of whom 44 were settled as pastors or stated supplier. There were about 90 churches, of which 36 were organizations without pastoral or other charge. On a map of the United States put 90 dots of blue along New York's southeastern counties, clustered more closely upon Manhattan and Long Islands. Thence let them straggle up the Hudson, thinning out into the central and northern valleys, and diminishing into a point in the then wilderness of the Genesee. You will have here an objective illustration of what a scant show- ing our Church made even in one of its strongholds in 1802. On the remainder of your map put 460 blue dots, more than half of which should be but the faintest specks, in token of the nebulous character of the vacant churches they represent. Let them range along the Atlantic Seaboard, from New England to the Carolinas, with four broken lines of color straggling westward and northwestward into the wilderness. You will have an object lesson of the weakness of this great Communion a hundred years ago ; nay, of the three great Churches popularly known as the Northern, the Southern, and 26 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS the Cumberland Presbyterian, which were then all included within one fold. With the exception of a few points scattered along the Ohio River and within the valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee, and a few penetrating the interior of the Ohio territory, your dots of blue would all be within the thirteen original States. This would indicate the actual aggressive force that lay behind the missionary outposts pushed into the frontier. It was indeed a " far-flung battle line," and thin and broken, almost separate from its base, and set in the face of obstacles that would have daunted men of ordinary courage and faith. To-day, if you would make an outline map of that Synod of New York whose representatives sat in the Assembly of 1802, you must divide the Empire State into 30 presbyteries, with 902 blue dots for her churches instead of 90 ; with 184,000 communicant members instead of 4000; 181,000 Sunday-school children, and over half a million worshiping adherents, officered by 6000 elders and deacons, and honorable women not a few (4195 elders and 1472 deacons), and a ministerial force of pastors, evangelists, and licentiates of 1357. The converts last year (1901) were 8330; twice the total membership of the entire State a hun- dred years ago. Back of this splendid array of members and leader- ship you must count a total money contribution of three and three-quarter millions, of which nearly one and one- quarter millions were for the propagation of the gospel and for reported Christian benevolence, besides a vast CENTENNIAL OF HOME ^HSSIONS 27 unreported sum given by members of our churches to the general charities which they largely supjwrt. Turning from the single State of New York to the United States, and omitting from the count our Southern and Cumberland sisters, your 550 blue dots whicli represented the churches of a century ago would be multiplied fourteenfold (7779). A ministerial force of 8000 pastors and evangelists (and 917 candidates) leads the worship, and the Christian work of over a million (1,025,388) communicants, and yet more (1,056,110) Sunday-school scholars, representing a host of worshipers and adherents estimated at five millions. If you allow on this latest map a place for all reported religious contributions, the sum-total would be nearly ($16,834,376) seventeen millions ! of which three and a quarter millions ($3,176,593) were for purely mission- ary objects. Of this you may set aside $2,268,854 for various home missionary purposes, of which $1,252,159 is for home missions as now differentiated from the earlier conceptions, and $907,739 for foreign missions. Add about one-third to these figures for the Southern and Cumberland Churches. Surely the fathers of 1802 were building wisely ; and although we can hardly believe that the most sanguine among them could have pictured the reality as it exists to-day, we cannot doubt that the eye of faith and hope penetrated the future, and saw in vision " the handful of corn," scattered by them along the wilderness paths, waving "like the forest of Lebanon." Will the next century show a proportionate increase — duly and fully and progressively 28 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS proportionate to the ministers, Church officers, commu- nicants, -weahh, and o])portunities of to-day? Will we of this generation and this Assembly as faithfully meet our responsibility and do our duty as did our fathers of 1802? 4. THE DEPRESSING NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT In weighing the actions of our Church fathers we should not forget the national danger and disgrace which must have overshadowed their SDirits and checked their energies. It was a depressing period in our national history. Recall your knowledge of the first decade of the American Republic. As the eight- eenth century closed, the country's condition was pitiable. The people were impoverished by the long, fierce revolutionary struggle, whose heroes, the " ragged Continentals," were, if possible, more ragged in peace than in war. Their hard-earned paper money was valueless, and the proverb, still prevalent, fifty years ago, " not worth a Continental," indicated the condition of the discredited currency. The States, unused to a national harness, were galled and fretted under it ; and the old colonial jealousies and bickerings were revived, threatening disruption ere the seams of the Union had been well closed. There was an English faction that clung to aristocratic ideas and affiliation. There was a strong and growing French faction, in sympathy with the radical wing of the French Revolution, organized into mimic Jacobin clubs called " Democratic societies," which subsequently formed a popular basis for the old Republican party. A western frontier, as Avide as the CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 29 continent, was threatened at every point by Indian savages. The ISIississippi River, the southwestern and the sole practicable outlet of the frontier, so far from flowing " unvexed to the sea," was held at its mouth by a then imperious and supercilious Spain. When, subse- quently, the Louisiana Territory was yielded to France, Spain's West Indian officials bombarded our southeastern coast with ceaseless insults. From Maine to the Caro- linas stretched a vast seacoast whose nakedness was guarded by what, judged by modern standards, was a bare yacht club of sailing vessels called a navy. France, vexed that she could not make " a nose of dough " of her former American ally, bullied and browbeat the Government into an unofficial war. England insulted our flag and impressed our sailors on every sea, until in sheer desperation we were driven at last into the war of 1812, a humiliating chapter in our history, bright- ened only by the superb valor and skill of our little navy, and the victory of Jackson at New Orleans. Even the Algerine pirates of the Mediterranean levied blackmail upon our commerce with contemptuous indif- ference. Without money ; without credit ; without honor and standing among the nations ; derided, insulted, snubbed, threatened, robbed, we had nothing but land — " oceans of land " — and indomitable pluck and exuberant faith in our manifest destiny. It is not strange that under such conditions Alexander Hamilton, possessed by the theory that the Union could not be regarded as stable until it had suppressed some domestic revolution or 30 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS united in some successful foreign war, should have seized upon the so-called " Western Insurrection " in the Pennsylvania frontiers as an occasion for a spectacu- lar demonstration to the world of the power of the new government. All this must be remembered if you would justly com- pare your own era and acts with the times and deeds of our Church fathers. All this must be considered if you would weigh in a just balance the characters and achievements of the heroes of that evangelistic army of occupation and conquest of the American frontier. Ill The High Quality of Pioneer Mission Workers These were some of the difficulties ; tliere were some favoring conditions. The progress of home missions was favored by the quality of the men who led its host both in the office and on the field. We put them in the same category, for in merit and efficiency and in title to honor just history may not separate the one class of workers from the other. They were a product of conditions of which great minds seem to be a fruitage. Vast wars, and high commotions, and extended com- umnal fermentations and national revolutions react strongly upon those mysterious psychical and physio- logical conditions that control quality in the manhood of a succeeding generation. The American llevolutiou was followed by an intellectual and spiritual palen- genesis of the nation. The evening twilight of the CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3nSSI0NS 31 eighteenth century saw the birth of Irving, Cooper, Halleck, Prescott, Bryant, and Bancroft. The dawning decades of the nineteenth century welcomed Willis, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Hawthorne, and Poe. These leaders in the literary field marked time for the common ranks of American manhood and womanhood. They were types of their times and generation. As in letters and in other spheres, so was it in the Church. It was an era of high mental quickening. Nerves were tense, tingling with the new vigor of the awakened age and surcharged with life. Men of high and fine qualities were to the fore. Young men were double-winged vnth vital force and old men renewed their youth. The Church felt this surge of the great sea of humanity and rose and rode upon its crest. The men who consecrated themselves to the duty of evangelizing America were not inferior in natural gifts to those who shone in letters and politics. Man for man, talent for talent, they were the equals of their fel- lows ; and if their greatness has not been acknowledged it is because of that obliquity of vision which is apt to set secular above spiritual history, and which has left the knowledge of our Church's worthiest men and worthiest actions to be buried underneath the debris of the past, almost beyond the hope of historic resurrec- tion. Against such injustice the voice of your Presby- terian Historical Society has cried for half a century, for to-day marks its Jubilee Year. The Church and the cause owe an incalculable debt to the fine ability, the splendid optimism, the quenchless 32 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS courage, the liigb consecration, the pure evangelical zeal, and the superior leadership of the early presbyters, min- isters and elders alike, of the original thirteen States. Necessarily it fell to them both to plan and to push the campaign for continental evangelization and to supply the men for the service. Then they had agents for the work of the highest and finest caliber. Call the roll of the home missionary heroes and their no less heroic wives, who broke ground for Christian faith and evangelization on the frontiers of the original Colonies and the middle West. They are all children of the East ; nurtured in and sent forth from the Motlierland of Home Missions — the States of the Atlantic slope. This work their successors in the ever-expanding West received by good heredity, and in their hands the standard was not allowed to droop or falter ; but the initiative, the creative purpose, the forma- tive plans and their execution must be credited to the Atlantic States. President Roosevelt, in his Winni7ig of the West, has given this graphic pen picture of one of these heroic knights of the Evangel : " His name was Samuel Doak. He came from New Jersey, and had been educated at Princeton. Possessed of the vigorous energy that marks the true pioneer spirit, he determined to cast his lot with the frontier folk. He walked through Maryland and Virginia, driving before him an old ' flea-bitten gray ' horse, loaded with a sackful of books, crossed the Alleghenies, and came down along blazed trails to the Holston settlements. The hardy people among whom CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 33 he took up his abode were able to appreciate his learning and religion as much as they admired his adventurous, indomitable temper; and the stern, hard, God-fearing man became a most powerful influence for good through- out the whole formative period of the Southwest." He founded the first church in that cradle spot of Tennessee, a log house built near Jonesboro in 1777 and christened " Salem Church." More than that, he built the first log high school, which developed into Washington College, Tennessee, the first educational institution in the Southwest. No wonder our virile President's heart warmed toward such a strenuous char- acter as Missionary Doak. Aye, they were men, those early home missionaries, full men, tested by the most exacting mensuration ! Mr. Roosevelt's description is t}^ical. It fits hundreds of home missionaries of our pioneer days, and of every decade in the hundred years succeeding. The history of home missions finely illus- trates the truth of George Whitefield's epigrammatic argument to John Witherspoon when urging him to accept the call to America : " Every goivnsman in the Colonies is worth a legion !" The trained gownsmen, the educated ministers of our " Church in the \Yilder- ness," were a veritable " Tenth Legion " in Christian valor, devotion, and success. That century-old type is persistent. Professor Brum- baugh, late Commissioner of Education in Porto Rico, in an address given a week ago in your speaker's church in Philadelphia, paid a well-deserved tribute to the character of one of our missionaries in the field 3 34 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS that lies farthest toward the sunrise of all our home missions. " I cannot quite forgive the Presbyterians/' said Pro- fessor Brumbaugh, " for removing from Porto Rico such a man as Dr. Green. I have heard him preach to thousands of peons, who crowded round him and hung with breathless interest upon his words. I have seen a whole neighborhood transformed by his apostolic labors. Their shack houses that reeked with filth, where goats and hogs herded with men, women, and children, were changed as by magic into clean, white-washed human homes, brightened and sweetened by flowers, and sanc- tified by a new-born piety, and dedicated to a higher and purer family life." That was a fine testimony from a worthy man to a noble pioneer missionary of our eastern insular frontier. Those men of 1802 and their faithful wives were old fashioned in their views and utterances of Bible truths. Yet they lived and wrought their duty after a fashion that never grows old, for they maintained and illustrated the eternally new facts of Christian love and zeal for the highest good of the world. They clung to the old con- fessional words " goodness " and " mercy " and " com- passion " in presenting the divine love. But never did men and women more thoroughly than they interpret, in their lives of single-hearted devotion to Christian service, the fundamental law of Christ that requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves. If to spend their days in toil and their niglits in watching ; to endure hardship and perils in the wilderness, in the forest, in CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 35 the cabin, in the face of savage Indians and hostile or unsympathetic countrymen ; if to be often in hunger, and always in poverty ; to burn with fever, and shiver with ague, and ache with rheumatism ; if to separate themselves from the delights of civilization and the haunts of learning ; to labor much and to earn little ; to give forth their whole energy, skill, care, and culture, to elevate, bless, and save their fellows, and at last to die in penury and leave their widows and orphans a legacy to Providence, — if all that be to know and feel and teach and live the truth that " God is love," and that man's highest duty is to love God wholly and to love one's neighbor as himself, then. Moderator and brethren, those old-fashioned, doctrinal-preaching, Catechism-teaching evangelizers of the American wilderness are not un- worthy examples for the men and Avomen of this gen- eration. Still they are teachers of that charity, " the greatest thing in the world," at whose feet we, even in this age, whose glory is its great charities and whose banner cry is love, may humbly sit, and whose heads we may crown with the blessing of Abu-ben-i\dam. Their life-long career was a mission of loving helpful- ness in saving, civilizing, and uplifting their fellow-men. We do not like, perhaps, their ways of putting Bible truth, and their lack of elasticity in certain methods and forms. We are not in sympathy with the old country manners and seventeenth century methods which clung to some of them. But look at their lives of holy and unselfish and loving devotion, often even unto death, to the sublime duty of planting the seeds of Christian faith. 36 CENTENNIAL OF HOME IHSSIONS holiness, and love in that wilderness land. It is enough ! Said Chillingworth, " The Bible is the meaning of the Bible." So, of those noble heroes of gospel charity, we declare that their doctrine is the meaning of their doc- trine ; their history is the meaning of their history. And do you ask what that meaning is? Behold the order, the law, the prosperity, the virtue, the happiness of those States and communities Avherein they toiled. It is the " monument, more enduring than brass," of those home missionary men and women who loved God supremely and loved their neighbors as themselves. IV Early Missionary Spirit of the Church The work of missions was not new in the Presby- terian Church even a century ago. In his sermon yes- terday Moderator van Dyke called this year the "one hundredth anniversary of the marriage of the Church to home missions." We will not deny the banns, nor challenge the figure of speech ; but we must claim, at least, that the parties were engaged, and as "good as married," more than a hundred years before the wedding. From the beginning ours was a missionary Church. The fathers and founders had a good grip of the situation, for they all were home evangelists, from Denton and Makemie down. In the original " Presbytery," in the mother " General Synod," in the two synods into which it was divided, and in the reunion " Synod of New York and Philadelphia," the matter of missions, including CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 37 Indian evangelization, was the chief concern at every meeting. The first General Assembly of 1789 enjoined its fonr synods — Pliiladelj^hia, New York and New Jersey, Virginia, and the Carolinas — to j)rovide and recom- mend each two missionaries, and to take np collections to support them in the field. Young ministers and licentiates, as well as settled pastors, were frequently sent forth on Avhat Dr. Aslibel Green called " their ex- cursions of benevolence," into the adjoining regions and distant parts. These tours of duty long continued to be the prevailing custom. The act of 1802 was a step forward in organization ^ not in spirit. It created a Standing Committee of Missions, with substantially the powers and duties of the present Board of Home Missions. Like the "Board of Missions," into which it was constituted in 1816, it really embraced the work of evangelizing both the whites and the heathen Indians as w^ell as tlie negro slaves and freedmen. Not until thirty-five years there- after was a distinctively Foreign Mission Board organ- ized. But in the early stages of the Assembly's work missions to the heathen were limited to the Indian tribes of North America. It is to be noted that the title given the new organization was not the Standing Committee of Home Missions, but " the Standing Com- mittee of Missions." Within the powers invested in that committee lay in germ all the boards of the Presbyterian Church, as now constituted, which deal with the work of evangelization. 38 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS home missions occupied the foremost place. One of tlie first acts of the Standiiii:; Committee was to continue the work of evangelizing the colored people. One of its most successful missionaries was a minister of color, the Rev. John Chavis ; and of the white race was Dr. John H. Rice, who, in the spirit of the early apostles, and of recent missionaries to Africa, devoted himself to his colored brethren in the slave States. Therein also was included the work of the Board of Publication ; for the newly appointed committee stimulated and directed the distribution of religious literature. It con- sidered also the work of ministerial education. It was, in fact, the one great evangelizing agency of the Church, out of Avhich, by gradual and necessary development, all its separate boards have been evolved. This cen- tenary, commemorative of the formation of that Stand- ing Committee, is therefore an event that concerns the entire Church and all its now distinct evangelizing organs and agents. The formal origin of that act of 1802 issued from a recommendation made by a body whose existence and functions are rarely thought of and but little known, although it carries the corporate life of our Church. There was laid before the Assembly " a communication from the Trustees of the General Assembly " proposing the formation of "a standing committee for financial purposes," and suggesting several arrangements for securing and managing the missionary funds. This led to a motion that the Assembly commit the general man- agement of missionary business to a standing committee. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 39 The motion was referred to a eommittee consisting of Dr. Aslibel Green, Kev. Azel Backus, Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, ministers ; and ruling elders, the Hon. Eben- ezer Hazard and Colonel John Bayard. It is worthy of notice that Mr. Backus, who was one of the two dele- gates from the General Association of Connecticut, was appointed to such an important place, and thus helped to shape the action which is commemorated to-day. The presence of a Congregational minister on this com- mittee was in accord with that spirit which more than two hundred years ago (1690) united the Presbyterians and the independents of England in evangelistic work, and led to the Saybrook platform of New England in 1708. Y Personnel of the Commissioners The General Assembly of 1802 met in the First Church of Philadelphia, the old sanctuary on INIarket Street, built in 1704, rebuilt in 1793, and occupied for 116 years. It was not as large as many of our modern presbyteries, having only 48 commissioners — 33 minis- ters and 15 elders — not a twelfth part of the Assembly of to-day. These men came from only seven States : Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Dela- ware, Virginia, and South Carolina. A striking con- trast this with its successor of 1902, which embraces commissioners from nearly every State and Territory of the Republic, from the District of Columbia, and from many foreign couutries representing our world-wide work 40 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS of lieathcn cvanoelization. But iu the character of its members and the influeuce of some of its acts it was a notable body. Its roll contained the names of nine men who had been elected or were " elected " to be moder- ators of the General Assembly. These men were John Rodgers (1789), Nathaniel Irwin (1801), Azcl Roe (1802), Philip Milledoler (1808), James Richards (1808), Eliphalet Nott (1811), James Inglis (1814), Ashbel Green (1824), and Francis Herron (1827). Among its elder commissioners were such honored men as Colonel John Bayard, Postmaster-general Ebenezer Hazard, Isaac Snowden, and Senator Jonathan Elmer. 1. THE ASSEMBLY'S MISSIONARY LEADER— DR. GREEN The commissioner entitled to the first honor in the Missionary Centennial is Ashbel Green. If any man deserves the title of father of organized home missions in the Presbyterian Church it is he. He was then (1802) forty years old, in the middle prime of his man- hood ; and his ability and zeal iu the cause marked him as the fitting chairman of the committee to put into shape the proposed action to systematize the Church's missionary work. Dr. Green had a commanding bodily l)resence, a florid complexion, regular features, promi- nent aquiline nose. But the great feature of his face was his eye — full, dark, brilliant, imperative, gleaming, underneath shaggy eyebrows. He was a gentleman of the old school, the school in which Washington, his friend, had been cultured. Almost to the end of his life he retained the clerical wig and queue common to CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 41 the f]:;cntlemen of liis ])cri()(l, and as lio moved tlirmigli the streets of Phihidelphia his dignified bearing, liis antique and stately manners impressed with reverence those whom he met. He filled with distinguished merit every position to which he was called. As a writer and one of the pioneer editors of the Church he wielded a ready and forcible pen, and won a wide influence. In the Church courts he was a faithful presbyter and a wise leader. As president for over ten years of Prince- ton College he contributed largely to the permanent success of that institution, and earned as an educator the frood deo-ree that he attained in other fields. As a patriot, as a scholar, as a preacher, as an educator, as a writer and editor, as an ecclesiastic, and as the father of organized missions, he was preeminent among the men of his period, and takes rank as one of the great men of the Presbyterian Church. He was identified with its work from the beginning, and in every relation proved himself a devoted son and servant during his long career. Of the Standing Committee of Missions, which the Assembly of 1802 adopted upon his report, he was made the first chairman, and so continued for ten and a half years, until he left Philadelphia for Princeton. As the committee had neither secretary nor executive committee, the laboring oar was in his hands. When in 1822 he returned to Philadelphia from Princeton he found the Board of Missions, which had been created in 1816, greatly reduced in its funds and its activity almost paralyzed. He wrote an overture to the Assem- 42 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS bly which stirred the body mightily, and led to the reorganization of the Board in 182G, with the distinct specification of powers to appoint an executive com- mittee and a corresponding secretary, and to prosecut(; missions, both domestic and foreign, and to pay mis- sionaries with no other restriction than making an annual report to the General Assembly. Of this re- organized Board Dr. Green was elected president and was made chairman of the Executive Committee. For many years the meetings of the committee were held in his study. It was due in a large measure to his zeal, unfailing interest, and wisdom that the Board was nurtured into a new life, and started upon its career of noble Christian philanthropy. When the foreign mis- sionary cause was diiferentiated from home missions, and entered upon its career of world-wide evangeliza- tion. Dr. Green showed almost equal zeal in shaping its w^ork. He wrote the overture to the Assembly of 1803, on the education of pious youth, which was the germ of the Board of Ministerial Education, and which led to the establishment of the first theological seminary of the Church, located at Princeton. The plan of govern- ing the seminary was the product of his pen. He was the first President of its Board of Directors, and re- tained that position to the end of his life. In the General Assembly of 1825 he moved the resolution which led to the establishment of the \Yestern Theologi- cal Seminary at Allegheny. He was a member of all the boards or corporations of the Church during his day, including the Trustees of the General Assembly. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 43 2. OTHER PROMINENT COMMISSIONERS The members of the Assembly of 1802, both ministers and elders, were worthy followers of their distinguished leader. The retiring Moderator was the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, of Neshaminy. His text was Luke xiv : 23, '* Compel them to come in " ; and — shall we say uncon- sciously, or was it of purpose ? — gave the keynote of the profound missionary spirit of the Assembly and a prophecy of its chief act. Mr. Irwin was one of the few untitled moderators, but he was none the less well worthy of the high office. He was an able and eloquent preacher. In the revolutionary struggle he was a firm and aggressive patriot. He was a self-trained physician, having studied medicine that, in the great dearth of pro- fessional medical service which marked that era, he might care for the bodily ailments of his flock.^ He was a man of strong scientific tendencies, and was one of the earliest friends and patrons of John Fitch, the in- ventor. He was fond of music, and played the violin ; and there is a tradition, apparently well founded, that he did not scruple to exercise his gifts at harvest-time, that his workmen might enjoy a moonlight dance upon the manse green. He was buried on the spot where the old pulpit of Neshaminy had stood, and there he sleeps among the fathers of that venerable sanctuary. The Rev. Dr. Azel Roe was chosen the Moderator of the Assembly of 1802. He was a graduate and subse- ^ A box containing the scales and weights with which Mr. Irwin weighed out medicines is in the possession of the Presbyterian His- torical Society in Philadelphia. 44 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS qucntly a trustee of Princeton Colleijo. He -vvas one of the revolutionary heroes among tlic fatliers and founders of our Church, having served as a chaplain in the War for Independence. On one occasion, when the ranks of his regiment had been broken before an assault of the enemy, he is said to have rushed into the breach and gallantly led the faltering soldiers back to their duty on the firing line. He was a man of graceful and dignified manners, with a fine head and handsome face.^ Most eminent among the commissioners was Dr. John Rodgers, of New York. An able preaclier, an influ- ential leader, a leading patriot, the gallant chaplain of Heath's Colonial Brigade, the trusted friend and coun- selor of Washington, he was well worthy to be the first elected Moderator of the General Assembly. He was seventy-five years old in 1802, a venerable and imposing figure, with his buzz wig and well polished silver- buckle shoes and knee breeches, and was an object of universal interest and reverent attention. James Richards, the Moderator of 1805, was the first President of Auburn Theological Seminary. Philip Milledoler, the Moderator of 1808, represented in his own person a sort of Catholic Protestantism and Pan-Presbyterianism. He was converted in a Metho- dist meeting, graduated at an Episcopalian college, ordained a German Reformed minister, called and in- ^ The excellent likeness of Dr. Roe, which is the frontispiece of the paper in the Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, here- after referred to, was engraved from a jiortrait in the possession of his descendants, tlie Misses Munro, of New York city. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 45 stalled a Presbyterian pastor in Pliiladelpliia and New York, and after being a pastor of the Collegiate Dutch Church, in New York, and President of Rutgers Col- lege, died in 1852. Eliphalet Nott was the Moderator of 1811, a finished orator, and the eminent President of Union College. James Inglis, of Baltimore, was the Moderator of 1814 ; and Francis Herron, the young Pittsburg pastor, was the Moderator of 1827. Among the ministers of note were Professor Kollock, William Sloan, and John Ewing Latta, subsequently a permanent clerk ; Nathan Grier, of Brandywine Manor ; and Chaplain Robert Cooper, of Middle Spring, the pastor of a Scotch-Irish congregation in the Cumber- land Valley, whose record for patriotic service in three wars — the French and Indian, the Revolutionary, and the War of 1812 — is probably unequaled in any period of our history, by any other congregation. From the frontiers came John Watson, the first Presi- dent of Jefferson College, and Matthew Brown, the first President of Washington College, and for twenty-three years the President of Jefferson. From the same sec- tion were " the silver-tongued Marquis " and Samuel Tait, the pack-horse boy and farmer of Ligonier, who, like Cincinnatus, was called at the plow to his ministry. There were others almost equally worthy of mention, but these were among the leaders, and they were types of the ministerial members of that remarkable Assembly.^ ^ An extended notice of the members and principal acts of the Assembly of 1802, prepared by Dr. McCook, is printed in the June 46 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 3. EULIXG ELDER COMMISSIONEES The elder commissioners were of equal honor and ability. The presence of citizens distinj^uished in the various walks of life is no rarity in the highest court of the Presbyterian Church. The ^A' hite House, the gubernatorial chair, the Supreme Court of the United States, senators and representatives in Congress, judges, soldiers, lawyers, physicians, philantliropists, merchant princes, and captains of industry, have all and often been represented there. But in that century-ago Assem- bly, in proportion to the number of elders present, there was an unusually large number of eminent non-min- isterial presbyters. The mother Presbytery of Philadelphia sent three commissioners who would have been men of mark in any assembly. The Hon. Ebenezer Hazard had served as Postmaster-general of the United States, having succeeded Mr. Bache in that position in 1789. He was one of America's pioneer historians, and was one of the seven original members of the new " Standing Commit- tee of Missions." The Hon. Jonathan Elmer was a man of versatile talents. As a physician, a revolution- ary soldier and surgeon, a State legislator, a lawyer, a jurist, and as a Representative in Congress, and a Senator of the United States from New Jersey, lie proved his greatness and worth. Elder Isaac Snowdcn was the faithful treasurer of the Trustees of the General number (1902) of the Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, Witberspoon Building, Pbiladelpbia. Those who wish further his- torical information would do well to consult that paper. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 47 Assembly, and as such his hand probably gave the first impulse to the movement which, on the recommendation of the trustees, resulted in the appointment of the Standing Committee of Missions. Perhaps a Philadelphia pres- byter ought to apologize for the prominence given his adopted city in this rapid sketch. But the historian is not responsible therefor, but the facts ! However " slow " the modern Philadelphia may be held to be in the squib of the newspaper paragrapher and the thread- bare jest of the humorist, the hands that uncover the records wherein are written the deeds of those who wrought at the making of our nation and of our Church, will find first and foremost in every field the sons and citizens of Philadelphia ! The Presbytery of New Brunswick sent Colonel John Bayard, perhaps the most distinguished of the ruling elder commissioners. Born in Maryland, he came in early life to Philadelphia, where the chief incidents in his noble career were achieved. From the beginning of the agitation for national independence he Avas an ardent patriot. In the Provincial Congress, in the Convention of the Province, in the Council of Safety, as the associate of Franklin, Rittenhouse, Wayne, Robert ^Morris, Poberdeau, Joseph Read, and John Cadwallader, he was active and useful. As Colonel of the Second Infantry Battalion of the Philadelphia Asso- ciators he saw service in the battles of the Brandywine, Germantown, and Princeton, and in the last-named engagement was personally complimented l)y General Washington for his gallantry. A large part of his 48 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS considerable fortune was spent in Lis country's service, and he well deserved the commendation of the historian Bancroft, as " a patriot of singular purity of character and disinterestedness, personally brave, earnest, and devout." ^ For thirty years he was a trustee of Princeton College. He was one of the most frequent and faithful representatives of his Presbytery in the General Assembly. From the "far West," then the frontier of Pennsylva- nia, the Presbytery of Ohio sent a Scotch-Irish Revolu- tionary veteran, who bore a name which Americans will never cease to honor — William McKinley. This com- missioner was apparently a brother of the great-grand- father of President McKinley, the gallant soldier, the pure citizen, the wise statesman, the devout Christian, whose untimely death was mourned by a weeping world. Although this great man was a faithful com- municant of the Methodist Episcopal Church, his paternal ancestors were members of our own com- munion. By a happy coincidence one of his name and blood is an honored commissioner in this Assembly of 1902, as one was a hundred years ago. These were some of the men who a century ago framed the policy of imperial missionary extension which has spread our great Church, with all its beneficent acts and institutions, from the Atlantic Slope to the Pacific Coast. Having sublime trust in God and in the future, ^ See the Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, June, 1902, and a paper by General James Grant Wilson in the New York Geneological and Biographical Record, 1885. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 49 they threw down the gauntlet to the seennngly impos- sible, and challenged the religious chaos of a continent, and claimed it for God. One cannot think of the simple faith and fervent zeal for the salvation of men which led our fathers calmly to face immensities of distance and of difficulty, and set their weakness and poverty to the task of occupying this continent for Christ and his Church, without a swelling of heart in lawful pride and gratitude for the gift of such men. Since the time when the Lord's apostles sallied forth, a mere squad, Avithout money or rank or social power, to evangelize a hostile world, there have been few acts of sublimer faith or loftier Christian heroism. To the man who has not learned the lesson which history everywhere teaches — that it is unAvise to despise the day of small things — it would seem trivial, perhaps absurd, at least pitiful, the manner in which the Assembly of 1802 pondered the petty details of their few missionaries' service, and the small gifts for the work. But it may well be questioned whether, in that truer judgment which heaven gives, and which takes into view the conditions and relations of men, we of to-day are not the palterers. Think of their poverty and our abundance ; of their sacrifices and sufferings and our self-indulgence and comforts ; of the perils faced by them and of our com- parative safety in service ; of their painful toils in pene- trating the wilderness and the ease of modern travel ; of the scantiness of their numbers, and of the mighty hosts with their experience, piety, wisdom, wealth, and enthusiasm that stand back of our home missionaries 4 50 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS iu this twentieth ccutury. In the comparative view, does not the splendid re[)ort that your Board and its secretary bring you this year pale before the simple tale of the labors, the gifts, and the successes of a hundred years ago? It is an electric light of many volts that wc hold up in this Home Missionary Centenary, but it shines in the midst of a nation of eighty millions, the wealthiest in the world. It was a tallow-dip candle that the flithers bore aloft, but it shone in the Cerberian darkness of a wilderness land. Let God be the Judge ; but let us take a sharp account of our own stock to-day while considering the fathers' work — " lest we forget." Hard as was their lot, inadequate as seems their earthly reward, we do not pity them. No ; we praise them, we envy them ! Their heaven-assigned duty they did heartily and wtU. Doubtless they were tempted, as we too have been, to halt in work, to turn therefrom disheartened, to think it too hard a task, a heavy and a thankless burden. Yet God granted them the prayer — as God will grant to us — which he who sits in your Moderator's chair has lately voiced in song : — " Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, — ' This is my work ; my blessing, not my doom ! Of all who live, I am the one by whom This work can best be done iu the right way.' " ^ Pardon your speaker if he tunes his rugged harp to 1 Henry van Dyke, " The Three Best Things." — Tli,e Outlook, May 3, 1902. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 51 siiio; ii tlioiiglit of comment ou our Poct-Modcrator's verse : — There saug the Calvinist ; and in his lays He voiced the mighty purpose of those days When men went forth as chosen of the Lord To seed a continent with Jesus' word, And win a chosen people to his ways. 'Twas meant not thus, mayhap ; but, as the rill Breaks from its spring-head in the granite hill, And sings its song of sweetness as it goes, And brightens all the course o'er which it flows, Fulfilling still the Master's sovereign will. Yet so it is ; the men whose hands shall guide An erring race back to the Saviour's side, Have felt the seizure of the heavenly Hand To tread the path that God in them has planned. And do the task that none may do beside. The dipper by the wayside well hangs free ; The mountain holds the spring by God's decree ; Kind were the hands that hung the dipper there. Thank God for all ! But, stop, and full and fair Write high their names who, for God's charity, Have opened up the fount for all — and thee I FROM THE ALLEGHENIES TO THE ROCKIES " THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI BY THE REV. SAMUEL J. NICCOLLS, D.D., LL.D. St. Louis, Mo. THE PLANTING OF THE CHURCH IN THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI BY SAMUEL J. NICCOLLS, D. D., LL. D. 3fr. Chairman, Fathers, and Brethi'en : — The subject assigned me on this occasion is one requiring volumes to present it adequately, rather than a brief address. It has, first of all, a territorial and physical magnitude that is impressive. The Mississippi Valley embraces that vast area which lies between the Alleghenies on the east, the Rocky Mountains on the west, the Great Lakes on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Within these boundaries lies the\ largest and most important valley in the world ; that of i the Nile, the Euphrates, or of the Rhine, famous in his- 1 tory, sinks into insignificance in comparison with it. There is none other equal to it in extent, richness of soil, and variety of products ministering to the wants of civilized man. It contains a larger area than all Europe, and its natural resources are practically un- limited. It has already become the world's farm, its greatest wheat field, corn field, and cotton field. Out of its inexhaustible mines comes the larger portion of the gold, silver, iron, copper, zinc, and lead that supplies the demands of the world's commerce and manufactures. 55 56 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS The great cities of the seaboard are nourished out of its material fullness, and the marts of the world look to it for their sup})lies. It is physically the heart of the continent, and animated as it now is with human life, its mighty throbs measure the march of our material progress, and they are felt throughout the world. The familiar name for this vast region is the West, and so dominating is this title that we speak of the northern portion as the Northwest, and the great south land is called the Southwest. No thoughtful reader of history, no observer of human affairs, can fail to see in this great valley a stage prepared for new and won- derful manifestations of God's purpose concerning men. There are material as well as spiritual factors in the development of the kingdom of God. Our biblical faith teaches us that God's eternal purpose in Christ Jesus holds all things and all events in its embrace, and rules them in harmony with itself. When he drew the lines of the Valley of the Mississippi, traced the channels of its rivers, wrought through long ages for the enrichment of its soil, stored the treasures of gold, silver, iron, and lead in its hills and mountains, planted its forests, and spread abroad its prairies, it was with reference to his kingdom. No one who has studied the history of the settlement of North America can have failed to notice the striking order of events by which it came to be the inheritance of the children of the Reformation ; and so, a land of liberty and gospel institutions instead of a Spanish colony poisoned and bliglited by Roman ecclesi- asticism. CENTENNIAL OF HOME HUSSIONS 57 Not less significant were the events which led to the final and permanent settlement of the \yest. In 1682, less than sixty years after the foundation of New York, La Salle, in the name of the French king, took possession of the region from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, extending eastward as far as the head of the Ohio and westward to an undefined extent. For nearly one hundred years the lilies of France floated in undisputed sovereignty over this vast territory. The entrances to it were jealously guarded. There were four of them. One was through the great chain of the Northern I^akes and by the head waters of the Missis- sippi. The French and the Jesuits held the key to it. The second was through the well-worn Indian trail along the southern shore of Lake Erie and leading to the region now known as Ohio, but the war-like Iro- quois were its custodians and forbade the advance of the emigrant. The third was down the Ohio River, but the French and the Jesuits were at Fort Duquesne. The fourth was through the mouth of the Mississippi River, where the same watchful guards kept out all who were not in sympathy with France and Roman ecclesi- asticism. But while France held the territory she did not occupy it. Her representatives kept watch over it until the chosen people should enter in and take pos- session. A monarchy that could devise and execute the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, and kill or drive into exile thousands of its best subjects for worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences, was not the one destined to rule the New World. 58 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Most significant is the way by which the West was entered by the English-speaking and Protestant people. It was througli the heart of the AHeghenies into the region of Kentucky and Tennessee ; and the men who dared to go that perilous way were the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. President Roosevelt, in his history of the Winning of the West, writes thus : " The backwoodsmen were Americans by birth and parentage and of a mixed race, but the dominant strain in their blood was that of the Presbyterian Irish, the Scotch-Irish, as they were often called. Full credit has been awarded the Roundhead and the Cavalier for their leadership in our history, but it is doubtful if we have wholly realized the importance of the part played by that stern and virile people, the Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of Calvin and Knox. They formed the kernel of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were the pioneers of our people in the march westward, the vanguard of the army of fighting settlers who with axe and rifle won their way from the AUeghenies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. The West was won by those who have been rightly called the Roundheads of the South, the same men who before any others declared for American independence. The creed of the backwoodsmen, so far as they had any, was Presbyterian." All this meant much for the work of home missions and the future of our country. In 1802, when the Home Mission Committee was organized, Kentucky had half as many people as Massachusetts ; and Tennessee had CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 59 already been admitted into tlic Union as a State. At tlie opening of the nineteenth century there began a movement which has had in its far-reaching results a greater effect upon the destiny of the world than all the wars of Continental Europe for the past three hundred years. It was the migration to the West. Prior to that time the region north of the Ohio River was almost uninhabited by white people ; and west of the Father of AYaters stretched a vast country as un- defined as the fabulous realms of Prester John. Through various ao-encies the door to this region was thrown 0})en. In 1803 the French flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes lifted in its stead on the western banks of the Mississippi. At once a great movement of the people Avestward began. Its advance was like a flood of inundating waters, carrying with it things good and bad. It grew and gathered, not only from the eastern States, but also from the lands beyond the ocean. There came Irishmen, Scotchmen, Englishmen, French, Swedes, Norwegians, Hungarians, Germans, Italians, Holland- ers, Russians, a mighty and mixed multitude in a cease- less and ever-enlarging procession, to build their homes in the fertile West. It was a movement as big with destiny to this land of ours as was that of the Goths and Vandals to Italy and the old Roman Empire. It was at the beginning of this movement that our Board of Home Missions was organized. True, prior to 1802, heroic and self-denying missionaries like IMcMillan and Beatty had gone to the frontiers to look after " the lost sheep in the wilderness." Presbyteries 60 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS and synods had carefully and prayerfully considered the needs of the new settlements, but now, as moved by some proj)hetic instinct, the Avhole Church, through the General Assembly, pledged itself to this work ; and, God be praised, from that day until now there has been no backward step or faltering in the work then under- taken. The organization then made has grown from strength to strength, and in variety of functions, so that now it manifests itself not only in home missions, but in the work for the Freedmen, Sabbath schools, the Board of Publication, the Board of Church Erection, the Board of Aid for Schools and Colleges, and the Woman's Board of Home Missions. That such a work was demanded by the West is so evident that no one will question its necessity, but not all, even at this late date, realize its supreme importance, and how much it has had to do with the best development of our country and the evangelization of the world. Much has been said concerning the perils that threat- ened our country during the dark days of the Civil War. We honor the men who in the hour of their country's peril hazarded their lives in its defense ; and we build monuments to those who died on the battle- field. But no less deserving of honor are those mis- sionaries of our own branch of the Church, and of others, also, who went forth in the name of Christ and under his banner to meet the perils that threatened our country and our civilization during the settlement of the West. The early settlers were a brave, hardy, CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 61 and courageous people. Too mucli cannot be said in praise of certain traits of their character ; the wild free- dom -which they enjoyed and the primitive conditions of life in which they lived tended to make them sturdy, independent, and self-reliant. But that same freedom also led to lawlessness. The same evil results appeared which ever manifest themselves in sinful human nature when man is left unrestrained to do that which seems good in his own eyes. The restraints of society under the influence of Christianity w^ere not felt by them. The visible Church with its ordinances and testimony for God was not there to speak to the conscience. As a consequence many of the frontier settlements were characterized by lawlessness, vice, and crime. Wicked- ness became bold and boastful and infidelity spread with startling rapidity. In the isolated settlements, under the dominion of ignorance, vice, and irreligion, the people were fast sinking into barbarism. This was true not only of the rural settlements, but also of the towns. Trace back the history of the great cities of the West, the equal to-day of any on our Continent in intelligence and morality, and you will come to a chaotic period when lawdessness and vice in every form abounded, Avhen violence was prevalent, w^hen manners w-ere coarse, and speech indecent and profane. Good men were filled with dismay by what they saw ; some yielded to the evil contagion ; some were vexed in their souls, but, like Lot in Sodom, remained quiet ; and some, girding themselves for the conflict, said, " A change must be made or society will perish." 02 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS The danger was real and widespread. The incoming of a certain class of emigrants from abroad only added to it. So great was the peril that earnest patriots and Ciiristians of seventy-five years ago were filled with consternation over the conditions. And what was it that saved the civilization of the West ? AVhat arrested the downward tendency and made the progress of that region the wonder of the world ? Doubtless certain physical agencies wrought together to this end. Steam- boats, railroads, and the tclegra])h conquered time and space and nullified the baneful eifects of isolation. They helped to make the West feel the power of a conmnon life, and brought it into direct sympathy Avith the civili- zation of the East. But more powerful than anything else w^as the work of the Church through its various fmissionary agencies. The true winning of the West was accomplished by the missionaries of the cross of Christ. Will any one dare say that the Valley of the Mississippi would be what it is to-day, in all that gives it true greatness, honor, and power, without the gospel of Christ ? The condition of the unevangel- ized portions of our country gives the lie to such an assertion. It is too late in the day to question the power of the gospel to civilize men, to restrain vice, to purify public morals, to promote intelligence, to give peace and order in society, and to reproduce in man the lost image of God. With the eloquent Webster we can say, " Where have the waters of civilization sprung up save in the steps of the Christian ministry ?" The men who went forth to plant the Church in the CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3IJSSI0NS 63 Valley of the Mississippi are worthy of reniembranee on an occasion like this. They were men, for the most part, of superior qualifications for their work. It is true that there has been a great variety of missionary labor- ers in the West. Some were zealous but uucducatetl, and often kindled the fires of religious fanaticism ; some had only a rudimentary knowledge of the gospel, but were animated by a love for Christ and the souls of men that served to make them successful evangelists. But it can be said of the missionaries of the Presbyterian Church that, joined with their love for Christ, ■\\as a thorough mental training and equipment ^vhich fitted them for special and important service in the upbuilding of the West. In the early part of the last century they, more than any others, were the Christian instructors of the people. They were graduates of the best eastern colleges, and had received careful instruction in theology. The policy of the Presbyterian Church in requiring an educated ministry has an ample justification in the work done by her home missionaries in the West. Take a single case as an illustration : In the early part of the last century there was a graduate of Yale College under Timothy Dwight who studied theology at Princeton. His first charge was an important one in the State of New York, and from it he was invited to the old Allen Street Church in the city of New York, then in the meridian of its power. His ministrations were most acceptable, and gracious revivals attended his preaching, but his thoughts were ever turning toward the great field in the West. He heard the cry of its 64 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS destitution as did Paul the v^oice of the man of Mace- donia. One day Dr. Peters, Secretary of Home Mis- sions, came to him with a call that was backed by the wants of thousands of miners and merchants who were living on the shores of the Upper Mississippi, without a church or a school. He promptly responded, " I go, sir," rejoicing like the great apostle to find an opportu- nity where he could build on no other man's foundation. With a promptness and boldness that ever characterized his actions he immediately set forth on his journey to his distant field of labor. The little surplus that remained, after purchasing a slender outfit for himself and family, he gave to the American Tract Society as a parting gift. Twenty-seven days after leaving New York he landed in Galena, and the next day being the Sabbath, he gathered a congregation in a large dining room and there began the first preaching of the gospel of Christ in northern Illinois. His field of labor was a typical western one of that date. Galena had a miscellaneous population gathered from Europe and the eastern States. Some few may have been professors of religion in their old homes, but they were " blighted and famished Chris- tians." The vast majority were utterly irreligious. "Sabbath-breaking, profanity, and gambling had ob- tained an alarming and sickening prevalence." There was no church of any denomination, Protestant or Catholic, within two hundred miles. The great North- west was still occupied by Indians ; the war-trail of Black Hawk had not disappeared from northern Illi- nois ; the settlement at Chicago had not yet commenced ; CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 65 another great missionary, Jeremiah Porter, had not as yet come to the garrison at Fort Dearborn. He was alone in the wide field. He wrote, " Here is opened a great and eifectnal door to preach the gospel." But there were many adversaries. A less resolute man would have left the field, but his fiiith never fid- tered. Coming one day to a bluflp that commanded a wide view of the Upper Mississippi he alighted from his horse, and, uncovering his head, lifted his hand to heaven and said, '' I take possession of this land for Christ." The act of La Salle in raisino; the French flao- in 1682 and taking possession of the valley in the name of the French king was not so significant. This bold pioneer of the cross, burning with the spirit of conquest, had a royal mandate from his King for his act. Nor was it an idle or enthusiastic boast on the part of the missionary. He remained to hold the ground, and with unfaltering faith and enduring patience he faced the difficulties before him. It took three years of toil before he could organize a church of six members, and of the original six only two were from Galena ; the others resided outside, from five to forty miles distant. He went abroad to every settlement and village Avithin a radius of one hundred miles preaching the word. But these years of toilsome plowing and sowing were fol- lowed by a bounteous harvest. Revival succeeded re- vival, during which two hundred and fifty-six persons were added to Christ in his church. He did not despise the day of small things, but counted himself honored in being permitted to lay the foundations of a Christian 5 66 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS civilization. To him the school was the ally of the Church, and education the handmaid to religion. In faith and prayer he laid the foundations of three colleges and two ladies' seminaries, which exist to-day, monu- ments to his foresight, his wisdom, and his enlightened public spirit. Associated with him in his labors and trials was his accomplished wife, a typical western missionary's wife, educated, refined, gentle, patient, heroic. Their three children died in infancy, but in their broad and practical charity they made their house an orphans' home. They reared and educated tAvelve orphan children, all of whom became useful and hon- ored members of society. In addition, they helped to educate nine young men for the ministry, and this was done on a salary of $600 a year. They studied economy that they might be the helpers of otliers. A pioneer home missionary bending all his energies to develop his own field, he was also the friend of foreign missions, and aided his people in contributing to that cause. In his old age, iu his seventy-fourth year, he was an active and efficient superintendent of home missions in the Northwest, still abundant in labors. He did not stop to rest until his Lord called him to his eternal home and reward November 8th, 1868. Such is the mere outline of the life and labors of a western missionary, Aratus Kent. He has left for him- self a monument more enduring than brass or marble. He still lives in the widespread community upon which he left the impress of his self-sacrificing life. But his name is only one of scores and hundreds equally CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 67 wortliy of remembrance and honor that coukl be men- tioned. Ohio can tell of James Hoge and David Badger, and their apostolic zeal ; Kentucky, of David Rice and Cleland ; Tennessee, of Doak, the educator, and of Blackburn and Nelson Mdio, as burning and shining lights, went through state after state, and from settle- ment to settlement, kindling the fire of spiritual revival until it swept like a mighty conflagration over the land. Indiana can tell of Father Dickey ; and Missouri, of Giddings, Cochran, and Finley ; Kansas, of the great home missionary leader, Timothy Hill, the father of Avestern synods, who has left an enduring monument for himself in the presbyteries and churches of three States. But time fails me to repeat the names of those old worthies ; they shine as stars of the first magnitude in the s])iritual heavens. But clustering around them are others less conspicuous in service, but equally faithful in Avork and testimony, for whom earth had nothing great enough to reward them. To them belongs the high honor of having laid the foundations upon which others built. They were the brave leaders who carried the banners of the gospel to the frontiers, took possession of the land, and held it for liberty, for Christian civili- zation, and for Christ. We do not properly estimate the difficulties of their task and the sublime heroism Avith AA'hich it AA'as accomplished, if avc think only or chiefly of the physical priA'ations or of the dnngers which they faced in the Avilderness. It is true that they 68 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS lived on most meager salaries, and suffered the hard- ships of early western life, but so did othc^rs. It is true that they were in perils in the wilderness, and heard the war-cries of savage foes, but so did others. We cannot claim pre-eminence for them on account of these things, save as they endured them, not for per- sonal gain, but for Christ's sake, and that they might save their fellow-men. They went forth not to conquer the wilderness, but to fight the battles of faith, to face the demons of darkness, ignorance, superstition, vice, unbelief, and irreligion, more terrible and harder to overcome than the wild beasts or hostile savages of the primeval forests. It is difficult for us, enjoying as we do the benefits of a Christian civilization, to realize the conditions of society that confronted them, and how hard it was to keep from despair in view of the obsta- cles before them. That they won at all is due to the power and grace of God, but none the less is honor due his faithful servants who believed in the power of his gospel to overcome all evil and to save men. In their preaching they used the terms of the old theology because these terms expressed their convictions. They were not to them worn-out or exaggerated phrases. They saw sin, man's ruin, his need, and the greatness and sovereignty of grace with such clearness and full- ness of vision that the old terms alone could express what they saw. It is to be feared that in many cases defective and not clearer vision is the reason for the modern demand for new terms ; and that what is really wanted is not the old faith in new phrases, but a new CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 69 one in its own appro})riato speech. Certain it is that these old conquering missionaries were not anxious to make the gospel acceptable to the people by preaching it in terms agreeable to the natural man. They came to godless men with a message from God, calling them to repentance and faith. They preached the utter ruin of human nature through sin ; they set forth in plainest terms the immutable law of God, and summoned their hearers to its bar to hear the dreadful condemnation that rested upon them. They made the thunder of the violated law to resound in their con- sciences until they cried out in anguish of soul : then they pointed them to the cross, the only refuge and hid- ing place for the guilty, a sweet and gracious manifesta- tion of divine love. Say what we will about it in theseN days when a rose-scented and cultured liberalism would ' persuade us that sin is only a temporary defect and hell but an ugly dream, this was the preaching that, under God,] saved and regenerated society in the West. These mis- sionaries were, first of all, preachers of the word, am- bassadors for Christ beseeching men to be reconciled to God, but they were also men of enlarged public spirit, concerned for the establishment of a Christian civiliza- tion. The doctrines which they preached were those which ever tend most powerfully to the establishment of pure morality, justice, and liberty among men. Their Presbyterianism represented the very spirit of free insti- tutions and of stable self-government ; and especially were they concerned for the sacred cause of education on the basis of Christianity. They planted the school 70 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS alongside the church. It is putlictic to read of their tireless and self-sacrificing struggles to secure academies and colleges for the higher education of the people. With a statesmanlike foresight for the future they laid in prayer and faith the foundations of institutions that have become leading educational centers in the AVest. There is not a college in the Mississippi Valley over fifty years old that does not owe its origin, either directly or indirectly, to the labors of the missionaries. But how can we adequately measure the results of their labors during the last one hundred years? We can point to communities that once were scenes of violence and crime, where vice flaunted itself with un- blushing effrontery, now fair and peaceful, adorned by the homes of God-fearing, intelligent, and law-abiding people, and confidently say, " that but for the labors of the home missionaries, who brought to them the purifying and exalting message of the gospel, they would have remained in their degradation." We can name schools and colleges and seminaries by the scores and hundreds whose early annals record the nanjes of our missionaries as among their founders. Of the four thousand churches of our order in the Mississipjii Valley, we can say that 90 per cent of them were organized by our missionaries or supported in their infancy by the funds of the Board. We can say that through this early planting we have now a harvest of nearly 500,000 communicants, almost one-half of the present membership of the whole Church, in the Valley of the Mississippi. The churches represented by them CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 71 contributed last year $352,000 to the Board of Homo Missions and |209,000 to Foreign Missions. l^ut this does not tell all. There are some results tliat can be tabulated in figures, measured by dollars, or by pounds or lineal measure ; but not so M'ith s])iritual forces and results. Even for that most spiritual of all material forces, electricity, a new terminology had to be invented, and we measure it by ohms and amperes. But the terms have not yet been invented that will measure the power of the spirit of missions in its results upon society and the souls of men. We can see enough that is permanent, tangible, visible, and useful to justify the work of home missions, and to lead us to honor the men and women who were engaged in it. To serve society in any way that advances its mate- rial interests is praiseworthy, but to serve it in such a way as to promote its moral and spiritual advancement is to render the highest possible service, and to confer enduring honor npon him who does it. There are many methods by which this can be done ; but none are more directly engaged in it than those who as mis- sionaries bear the tidings of God's love to sinful men. Their work extends not only to the individuals whom they meet personally, but it reaches on through the coming generations and breaks through the boundaries of time and space. All honor to them ! Our country holds in grateful remembrance the men who in the hour of her peril went to the front, hazard- ing their lives for what they believed to be humanity's great cause ; she builds monuments in memory of those 72 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS who fell in the great conflict, and places upon the pen- sion roll the enfeebled survivors of the Grand Army. Not less worthy of remembrance are those who went to the frontiers to engage in a struggle that was fraught with life or death to our country. They were as patri- otic as they were Christian. For the most part they lived in obscurity and died in poverty. The country builds no monuments to their memory, nor do they need any beyond those that now stand to their honor. The countless churches, whose spires point to the heavens, from the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains ; the schools and colleges that shine throughout the land like stars in the sky of night; the redeemed communities that rejoice in the blessings of the gospel — these are their monuments, these the symbols of their reward. Their names are on the pension rolls of the great King who ever crowns his faithful soldiers, and who never fails to reward, in the abundance of his grace, the low- liest service done in his name. The history of home missions in the West readily divides itself into three periods. The first is from the beginning of the last century to the year 1838. That was a time of experiment, of organization, and of rapid growth. The various independent home missionary societies were brought together into one, with a national scope and with increased power. The growth of the Church in the West was rapid. Churches were multi- plied in every direction, and the spirit of religious zeal was strong and active. It was a time of great oppor- tunity for our Church ; the empire of the West was CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 73 within our grasp ; alas, that wc failed in the supreme hour. The second period is from 1838 to 1870. It was a time of divisions, with its strifes and losses. "Old School " and " New School," " Northern " and " South- ern," are names that belong to that period. Home mis- sion work was arrested by ecclesiastical strife, and the strength of the Church was spent in building up rival organizations in the same community. While we halted to impress upon our people the supreme importance of certain distinctions in theology, other denominations outran us. There are some very salutary lessons to be learned from this sad period of alienation and division, lessons of warning as well as instruction. The third period began with the reunion of 1870. The reunited Church addressed itself at once with in- creased vigor to the evangelization of the West. Another great opportunity had come. The close of the Civil War, establishing our national unity, saw the com- mencement of a new emigration to the West, and of a marvelous development of its resources. There were two great and providential leaders in the Board of Home Missions at that time, Henry Kendall and Cyrus Dick- son : one, cool, resolute, and statesmanlike in his plans of action ; the other, warm hearted, full of fiery zeal and impassioned devotion to the cause. One was the com- plement of the other in the sphere of leadership. One was the Grant, tlie other the Sherman, of the great cam- paign in the West. One was like Moses, sagacious, determined, and slow of speech ; the other, as Aaron, 74 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS eloquent of tono;ne. Wlmt was done under their leader- sliip is so inauitest in its greatness and power tliat there is no need to dwell upon it. They sowed liberally, and the abundant harvest whieh the Chureh is now reaping justifies what they did. The period whieh they inaugu- rated has not yet closed. The work planned on so broad a scale by them has fallen into other and, we believe, most capable hands for its administration. But it remains for the Church to realize more fully and clearly the magnitude of the unfinished work. Never was there a time when there were more urgent reasons that it should be carried on aggressively, courageously, and with abounding liberality than now. It is true that the old conditions have changed. The frontiers, of which so much has been said, are gone, but the need for evangelization has not disappeared. On account of the rapid increase of population it is greater than ever. The vast field of the West has been inclosed, and the work lies at our door. Our cities and towns, growing with amazing rapidity, are as truly mission fields as were the old-time frontiers, and there are un- evangelized regions with a popidation tenfold greater than those that enlisted the labors and prayers of the Church fifty years ago. It would be easy, did time permit, to mention scores and hundreds of localities where there are open doors to preach the gospel, but which have not been entered because missionaries could not be sent. I could readily speak of the vast tide of foreign emigration pouring into this country, enough at the present rate to make a city the size of New York in CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 75 a jxn-iod of five years, and the larger ]iortion of this emigration finds its way to the West. But let us turn from this and consider some of the reasons that should lead us to a profouuder interest in the work of home evangelization. In this great com- niercial metropolis of our country, where men of enter- prise are on the alert to do all that will promote the interest of commerce and trade, home missions ought to have special consideration on the ground of material advantages resulting from it, even if there were none other. It can readily be demonstrated that the gospel of Jesus Christ in its practical outworking in society encourages thrift and industry, and creates the highest order of civilization. Every great business house in this city can give the diiference between the commercial rating of an evangelized and an unevangelized com- munity. Also it would be easy to bring forAvard the reasons that should lead every American citizen, mIio cares for the welfare of his country, to take a profound interest in this work. Political economy never found a better rule for securing the public welfare than that one given by the inspired law-giver of Israel, which is the ancient charter of home missions : " Set your heart unto all the words which I testify among you this day, ... all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you ; because it is your life : and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land." It re- quires no pro])hetic inspiration to affirm without a doubt that the life and glory of our nation depend entirely upon the continuance and spread of the gospel 76 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS among our people. That gospel gave us our civiliza- tion and our free institutions, and it" the day should ever corae when it is no longer regarded by us, on that day our doom will be sealed : however brilliant the first pages of our history, the last will be the saddest in the annals of time, for they will not only register the judg- ments of God upon a peo})le who knew not the day of their visitation, but they will also record the final over- throw of the best hopes of men. But there are higher and more urgent reasons for the prosecution of the work of home missions. The first is the absolute need for it. That gospel, in which you and I believe and on which we base our hopes of eternal life, comes to us with the assertion of a most solemn fact. It is that all men, cultured or uncultured, are under the power of sin, and unless saved by divine grace are certain to be lost eternally in the misery and shame of sin. From this condition there is no escape except by the way of God's providing, which is through Jesus Christ. The wretched and hopeless condition of men without the gospel is revealed in part by what can be seen in our own land. There are dark places, hideous sores on the public body, localities where vice reigns, and where as a consequence human nature is stripped of all its fairness. But it is to be feared that this sad fact of man's utter ruin is not clearly realized by mul- titudes who call themselves Christians. There is a widely prevalent skepticism concerning tlie condition of men without faith in Christ, which paralyzes missionary effort and leads many to justify their indifference con- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 77 ccrning the religious instruction of otliers. It was this urgent need that called the Son of God from heaven to earth. " The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost." It was the conviction that men were })erishing in sin, and that there was no other deliverer for them than through Christ, that led the apostles forth on their glorious errand, and gave such earnestness and power to their preaching. And this same conviction must take hold of our hearts, fathers and brethren, if we Avould have a profound and heartfelt interest in the evang-elization of our land and of the world. It is in view of this need that the great and last command of our Lord is given to us to go forth and preach his gospel. A second reason that should enlist our larger coopera- tion is the greatness and glory of the work itself. It is not anything common or unimportant that it calls us to do. It has indeed lower and temporal aims ; it pro- poses to reform society, to help the poor, to educate the ignorant, to refine manners and customs, to secure just laws and establish liberty and justice — in short, to help man in his earthly lot. But it aims at vastly more ; all this is only incidental. It seeks above all to carry on and complete Christ's Avork ; it calls men to glory, honor, and immortality in the presence of God. The great aim of mission work everywhere is to bring men into the fellowship of the Son of God. It is to make those who have been ruined by sin heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. Was there ever a more glorious mission assigned to mortals ? There are causes 78 CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3nSSI0NS that have enlisted the efforts and kindled the enthusiasm of men to the highest degree. For national independ- ence, for human rights, for the cause of liberty, men have made costly sacrifices, borne hardships, and freely shed their blood. But what are all these things when Aveighed against the cause in which the Son of God labored and died, the cause in which the missionary labors ? To build a church in a destitute neighborhood, to establish a Sunday school among the ignorant and neglected, to send a missionary to preach the gospel in some new settlement, may seem in the judgment of the men of the world a small matter devoid of honor. But when it is seen in connection with the great end Christ had before him, the lifting up of men into his eternal greatness, how unspeakably important and glorious it is ! Another reason that should lead us to engage with renewed ardor in the evangelization of our land is the certainty of success. I do not mean to say that this assurance should be a chief motive. We ought to engage in it irrespective of success or failure because our Lord has commanded us. But the assurance of success has much to do with stimulating activity. The Holy Spirit does not hesitate to use it, as it is written : " Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord." No one can labor enthusiastically in a failing cause. But the seal of success is upon this enterprise, its triumph is guaranteed by the sure promises of the Lord. The history of the past hundred years should encourage us. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 79 To doubt or to hesitate now, with the results before us, would be like doubting the power of God to renew the face of the earth when springtime has come and the seeds are sprouting, the grass robing the fields, and the fragrance of the blossoms is in the air. Whether mis- sion work will be a success or not is no longer an open question ; the one question of supreme importance to you and me is, AVhat part shall we have in the final triumph when it comes ? Is not this a time for us to reconsecrate ourselves to the great work which our fathers undertook, the evangelization of our land, and through it the evangelization of the world ? It is often said in the interests of a world-wdde preaching of the gospel that " the light which shines furthest abroad is the one that shines brightest at home." But the con- verse of the proposition is equally true ; the one that shines brightest at home will be the one that sends its beams furthest abroad. This land must be illuminated before it can shine in Christ's name for the world. To falter now in our work would be to proclaim ourselves faithless to our great trust; it would be to invite defeat and disaster. Again, in the providence of God, a great opportunity is before us, and never were we so endowed for service as now. Whatever excuses we might plead for failure to evangelize our land completely, it can never be urged in these days that we had not the finan- cial ability to do it. The facilities for work were never so excellent as now. Science aids the Church, and modern inventions, by breaking down the barriers of time and space, have brought us all close together. The 80 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS want and the supply, the need and the help, are close at hand. The hour for action has come. Blow the trumpet, servants of God, and sound the advance ! Let us lift up our war-worn banners. The faith that inspired our fathers a hundred years ago, and which made them courageous in days of poverty and weakness, let that faith be ours also, only made stronger by the abundant assurances which God has given us to confirm it. In- spired by it, let us go forth, joining with our brethren of every name, to bring this fair land of ours into sub- jection to Jesus Christ. " FROM THE ROCKIES TO THE PACIFIC " HOME MISSIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST BY THE EEV. EDGAR P. HILL, D.D. Portland, Oregon HOME MISSIONS ON THE PACIFIC COAST BY THE EEV. EDGAR P. HILL, D. D. 3Ir. 3Ioderator, Fathers, and Brethren: — My text is in the second chapter of the history of the city of St. Louis. It reads as follows : "In 1832 four Nez Perces Indians from Oregon came to this city in search of the white man's Book." ' The scene in the ^ These Indians were not Flat Heads, as is popularly supposed. The following letter from Miss McBeth of Lapwai, Idaho, explains the situation : " Some time after Lewis and Clark left here the Nez Perces iieard, from several sources, about God, and very soon the sun pole was set uji near Walla Walla. They recalled the upward ges- tures of Lewis and Clark, saying, ' Now we know what they meant, the sun is God.' Years passed on and in their gi-oping they added more ceremonies to their worship, but still their hearts were not satisfied and their annual councils were closed with these words: ' If we could only find the path of Lewis and Clark they would tell us the truth about God and that Book the white man has from heaven.' At last they decided to go, and two from the Kamiah community were chosen, the same place where Lewis and Clark on their return from the coast had camped for more than a month waiting for the snow to melt off the mountains so they could pass on home. The relatives of these two Kamiah men are still in the valley there. A third one was from a Salmon River band of Nez Perces. I have had these statements from perfectly reliable Christian Indians, who well remember the going out of these men. Their road led them through the Flat Head country, and there they were joined by a half-and- half Flat Head and Nez Perce. These are the four who reached St. Louis. Not a Nez Perce old or young who has not heard this story of their fathers going to find the truth or light." 83 84 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS frontier aiulionce room, when those red skins stood before General Clark, is Avorthy a panel of honor at the national Cai)itol. That was one of the great moments in our national life. It announeed the beginning of a new epoch in territorial expansion. It brought face to face a disappearing race and its white conqueror. But most thrilling, most pathetic of all, was its religious signifi- cance. The dusky strangers had picked their way through trackless forests, over inhospitable plains, past hostile tribes, to beg of the white man a copy of that mysterious Book, Avritten by the finger of the Great Spirit. Centuries before an apostle had heard the cry from afar, " Come over and help us," but these modern Macedonians, instead of asking some one to come to them, had themselves gone in search of the blessing. At the risk of their lives they had made a perilous jour- ney of three thousand miles to learn of the white man's God and the white man's heaven. Dr. Niccolls did not live in St. Louis in those days. Therefore the visitors were taken to the dance houses. They saw the altars where the Great Spirit was wor- shiped with candles. They were entertained at sumptu- ous feasts. Then they turned toward the West -with heavy hearts. " You make my feet heavy with burdens of gifts," their spokesman said, "and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them, but the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor blind people in the big council that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 85 will (lie ill tlarkncss and they will go on the long path to the other hunting-grounds." The story of this incident was circulated through the East, and stirred the Church with profound emotion. Heroic souls became eager to undertake the dangerous mission. In four years two missionaries with their wives were on their way to the West with the white man's Book. What Oriental tale has half the charm and romance that gather about the beginnings of missions on the Pacific coast? Fifty years ago the far west was a place of enchantment. The streams of California seemed bedded with gold. Men became rich in a day, while at the North, on the Columbia, picturesque John McLoughlin was holding his court at old Fort Van- couver, like a baron of the Middle Ages. A peculiar interest attaches to the mission work of those days by reason of the daring of the men, the romantic setting of the drama, and the momentous results which have already come and are sure to follow. First, let us notice the work of our missionaries in the Pacific Northwest. The early settlement of Oregon and Washington was in decided contrast to the move- ment which resulted in the building up of California. The Argonauts went out in search of gold. The Oregon pioneers went out to find land. The gold excitement attracted to California many adventurers and despera- does who became a terror to the law-abiding element. The men who settled the North crossed the plains with their families and established quiet villages. The Califor- 86 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS iiian was apt to be a man of loose morals, who had little regard for things religious, wliose plan was to make his stake and return to the East. The tyj^ical Oregonian was a man of a different stamp. He carried with him some books, some seed wheat, drove a few head of stock, and went out to find a permanent home. Modern California began as a mining camp. The Oregon and Washington of to-day have grown from the peaceful agricultural settlements of a half century ago. There is one name that stands out before all the rest in the history of those early days. We love to tell of our hero. We regard him as one of the great men of the nation. His courage, his far-seeing wisdom, his consecration to the cause of his Master, furnish material for a national epic. You of Massachusetts delight to tell of Samuel Adams, the patriot. You of Ohio tell of your Garfield, the statesman. You of Illinois tell of your Lincoln, the martyr. We, from the West, come to you with the name of one who was as patriotic as Adams, as statesmanlike as Garfield, and who, like Lincoln, wears the crown of martyrdom, Marcus Whit- man, the Presbyterian elder and home missionary. Dr. Whitman, witli his young bride, and Rev. H. H. Spalding, also recently married and accompanied by iiis wife, crossed the plains in 1836, and established a mis- sion on the upper Columbia, near the present city of Walla Walla. General John C. Fremont is popularly known as the " Path-finder." We think of the daring soldier threading his way past warlike Indians and over CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 87 unknown alkali deserts to the Pacific Ocean, tlius pre- paring the way for those who were to follow. But it is well to renienihcr that six years before Fre- mont had discovered the famous South Pass in the liockies two Presbyterian home missionaries and their young wives had gone ahead to prepare the way for the Path-finder. When AVhitman and his party had passed the spot which marks the dividing line between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Slope they stopped and dis- mounted. Spreading their blankets, they lifted the American flag, read a chapter from God's word, and took possession of the land in the name of Christ and the Church. Barrows, the historian, well says that along with the historic scenes of Balboa at Panama and the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, there should be a place for the picture of these home missionaries kneeling around the open Book, with the American flag floating overhead. You all are familiar, no doubt, with the story of Whitman's ride to Washington in the winter of 1842-43. You have noticed also, perhaps, the attempts to dis- parage the services of Whitman by those who insist that the Northwest Pacific might have been saved to the United States even if that winter's ride had not been taken. And now it will be in order for some one to attempt to rob Columbus of his glory by insisting that America would have been discovered even if he had never lived ; and Washington of his, by declaring that the colonies 88 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS might have become free without his help; and Lincohi of his, by trying to prove that emancipation miglit have come in some otlicr way. These facts, however, remain : that Marcus Whitman, with a single companion, did make that fearful journey through the snow to tell the President that the British were planning to seize the territory. He did plead earnestly with President Tyler and Secretary AVebster to hold the land. He did guide a great wagon train across the prairies, and thus insure the territory for the Stars and Stripes. Therefore Ave have the right to place in one column the little salary paid to Marcus Whitman, missionary to the Cayuse Indians, and in the other the almost fabulous wealth of Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, and to say to the skeptic, " Here, reckon up for yourself the indebted- ness of this nation to the cause of home missions." The first Presbyterian church on the Pacific Coast was organized in 1846 by the Rev. Lewis Thompson at Clatsop Plains, Oregon, near the spot where Lewis and Clarke had spent a winter forty years before, between their memorable expeditions across the continent. The Presbytery of Oregon was organized i n 1 8 5 L The Synod of the Pacific, including the present States of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana, was organized in 1853 in San Francisco. It was some 1250 miles long by 700 miles wide, and had an area as large as all New England and New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, with enough over to make a State the size of South Carolina. In 1876 the Synod of the Pacific was divided into the Synod of CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3nSST0NS 89 California and the Synod of the Columbia. In 1890 the Synod of the Columbia was divided into the Synod of Oregon and the Synod of Washington. For over a half century the home missionaries of the Pacific Northwest have been plunging into the for- ests, picking their way along the trails of the miners, burying themselves for months at a time in isolated places far from the main lines of travel. They have sacrificed without a murmur. They have won the re- spect of the rough backwoodsmen who hate shams. They have not feared to declare the whole counsel of God to men who did not want to believe that the gospel was true. I wish you might know some of our home missionary soldiers — your home missionary soldiers — whose heroisms are rarely heralded abroad and who have no martial music to inspire them to battle. Let me introduce you to some of them. Here comes one swinging up the street on his pony ; his long ulster is covered with mud ; he has on rubber boots that come to his hips. His white necktie has got around under his ear. His face beams with such joy as danced in the eyes of the seventy when they returned to the Master. The hand that grasps yours is not dainty and white, like that of the flishionable preacher who spends his forenoons over his books and his afternoons over the teacups. It is rough and brown and strong. He has ridden thirty-five miles, through the mud, since seven o'clock this morning. Yesterday he went to a little church off in the foothills, built the fire, rang the bell, conducted the service, superintended the Sunday school, 90 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS led the singing for the Christian Endeavor Society, and preached in the evening. Here is another, who has just returned from a trip through the " cow " counties. Last Tuesday you might have seen him on a stage with his felt hat drawn down over his eyes trying to catch a few winks of sleep between jolts as he drew near the end of a journey of 180 miles from the railroad. On Wednes- day he went with a local missionary from store to store to raise money for the coming year. In the evening he told the old story of Calvary to a rough crowd that filled the little church to the doors. Thursday he moved on fifty miles, and preached to men who had not heard a sermon in twenty years. Last year he traveled by stage and horseback and boat a distance of 27,000 miles, and was with his family 37 days out of the 365. Here is another. He knows every trout stream within twenty-five miles of his station, can kill a deer every shot at fifty yards, and preach six nights in a week without getting tired. An anarchist in his town, hear- ing that President IMcKinley had been assassinated, said, " I'm glad of it ; he ought to hav^e been killed long ago." When this home missionary heard what his townsman had said, he went to the anarchist's store, looked the man straight in the eye, and said, " My friend, I understand you said this morning that you were glad our President had been shot. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I want to tell you that if I ever hear of you saying such a thing agam I'll give you the worst thrashing you ever had." The anarchist looked the preacher over a moment, as if noting the broad CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 91 slioulders and the meaning of the steady gray eyes ; then he apologized, and said he would never say such a thing again. That is the way our home missionaries some- times preach the gospel of patriotism. Have you any idea of the monotony amidst which some of those men live and move and have their being ? It is one thing to delight over the sparkling pages of the Sky Pilot. It is a second thing to visit a lumber camp for a day, or spend a few hours in a rollicking mining town. It is a third thing to listen to blasphemy three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, to give one's heart and head and hand to the work with full devotion for twelve months and apparently make no more impres- sion on the godliness of a town than if a cowboy had taken a shot at the moon ; to face the same rocky canyons and the same desolate hills month after month and year after year. Let me tell you a little incident to illustrate the dreary lives of some of the people who live in the West. A friend of mine was traveling in eastern Oregon some months ago, when he found it necessary to stop for the night at a little ranch house off on one of the ranges. He found the rancher's wife and daughter busy with their tasks. While the stranger sat before the kitchen stove the mother and daughter, without leaving their work for a moment, told with glowing faces of a great joy that was soon to be theirs. For fourteen long years the mother had slaved on the ranch. During all that time she had never so much as visited a town, while the little girl had never seen even a store in 92 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS all her life. Every morning the rancher sprang on his pony and was off with his men. He often fonnd it necessary to go to the railroad for snpjilies. He had his conipanionships and his digressions. He was a good man and loved his family, but he was thoughtless and allowed the wife and daughter to toil on like galley- slaves chained to their oars. But at last they were to visit the town seventy miles away. The rancher had promised them that in the fall they should go with him to market his stock. How excited they were as they told the stranger about it all ! How many things they were going to see and buy ! What a good rest they were going to have ! Their hands fairly flew as the vision floated before them and lured them on. Then, while the smiles of anticipation were still on their foces, the rancher came in. He was a great rough, broad-shouldered man. He had ridden far in search of some missing stock, which he had not found. He was disappointed and cross. After greeting the visitor he flung himself into a chair and began the conversation with two blundering sentences which seemed to snap the strings of two poor hearts : " You women can't go to town this fall ; you'll have to put it off another year." The little girl's eyes instantly sought the mother's face in dumb bewilderment, and the two stood for a moment as if paralvzed by the disappointment. The daughter whis- pered, " Mamma, can't we go ?" The mother motioned to the child to keep still, and the two turned to stagger along toward the old tasks. I suppose they never will know what a city really is until they behold that city CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 93 which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. It is to such people that our home missionaries min- ister. It is in such surroundings that they live. It is such crushing monotony that some of them must endure. \¥ill you be surprised if I tell you that at a spring meet- ing of presbytery one of them has been overheard saying to another, " I wish it was my turn to go to the Assem- bly. I haven't seen my parents for twelve years. And my wife wants to visit her old mother just once more before she dies." God bless the home missionaries of the land, those patient, courageous, devoted soldiers of the cross. The nation has no braver defenders and the Church in all its ministry no manlier, more faithful men. California is a big State geographically and almost every other way. Victor Hugo reminds us that the land of Job breeds monsters. There the cat becomes a tiger, the lizard a crocodile, the pig a rhinoceros, the snake a boa constrictor, the nettle a cactus, and the wind a simoon. But Hugo had never seen California. Think of going out with a hook and line and catching a bass weighing three hundred pounds. Think of standing at the foot of a granite cliff, and looking straight up to its top, three thousand feet above you. Think of driving through a grove of trees that rear their heads three hundred feet in the sky, and that were growing when Jesus stood on the shore of Galilee. It has been aptly remarked that California has its eye chronically focussed for large dimensions, and that its first conscious throb was in a paroxysm of wild speculation. 94 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS No sooner did the news reach the East that gold had been discovered at Sutter's Mill, on the Sacramento, tlian multitudes began to turn their faces toward the AVest. Lawyers closed their offices, farmers left their plows, merchants disposed of their goods and took ship for the long voyage. But along with the eager Argo- nauts, lustful for gold, went men of equal daring, but of more consecrated spirit, whose ambition was the saving of souls. The three W.'s, as they are affection- ately called, had much to do with the beginning of our work in California. Gold was discovered in Feb- ruary, 1848. In December of that same year Rev. Sylvester Woodbridge Avas on his way to the Golden Gate, and in April, 1849, at Benicia, organized the first Protestant church in California. Rev. Albert AVilliams followed the first " W." in two months, and in the fol- lowing May organized the First Presbyterian Church of San Francisco, with six members. The third " W.," Rev. James Woods, left New York in May, 1849, and reached his destination after a voyage of three months. That the experiences of Mr. Woods on the ocean were not altogether to his taste we may infer from the ingen- uous remark with which he begins his delightful book of reminiscences : " The sweetest music I ever heard of earthly note or ever expect to hear, until the melody of golden harps shall break upon the enraptured spirit, was the rattling of the iron cable singing the march of the anchor to the bottom of the sea, to grapple with the rocks and hold us to safe mooring in the harbor of San Francisco." To Mr. Woods belono^s the honor of build- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 95 ing tlie first Presbyterian church in the State, at Stock- ton, in 1850. One is bewildered as he confronts the wealth of material which early Presbyterianism in California affords. Our home missionaries were as untiring as the gold seekers. They sought out the most remote camps with the eagerness of prospectors. They seized strat- egic points with the foresight and skill of a statesman. The scholarly Dr. Scott, fresh from a church of com- manding influence in New Orleans, brought to the work his splendid gifts of organization and administration. He was a leading spirit in laying the foundation of our Theological Seminary now located at San Anselmo. We may get some idea of the stuff of which those men were made by recalling the reply of young Brier, who when asked by the Board Secretary where he wanted to go, replied, " Give me the hardest field you have." He was sent to California. The experiences of the missionaries were often exciting, if not always altogether pleasant. One preacher, on being shown to his room at the hotel, noticed a hole in one of the windowpanes at the head of the bed. " How did that get there ? " asked the preacher. " Oh," replied the landlord, lan- guidly, " a man was shot in that bed yesterday." It was a common thing to hear the remark, " We are having a very quiet time. No one has been killed for a week. It is time we had a free fight and some funerals." It took men of grace and grit to move calmly through such scenes, and, looking into the faces of men who thought no more of shooting down a man 96 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS than a dog, to toll tlicni that they Avere on the swift road to hell. The synodical missionary for so many years (Thomas Fraser) swept his eye over his vast field, which, as some one has put it, extended from San Diego to the North Pole, and directed his troops like a trained gen- eral. Going down into the chaparral and sage brush and jrravel of southern California he found a little settlement composed largely of Spaniards, where some Presbyterian work had been begun and abandoned. Writing back to the Board he said, " There are places which the Pres- byterian Church must take and hold, regardless of expense, as England holds Gibraltar." Back came the word indicating a commingling of skepticism in the field with confidence in the man. " If you begin that work it must be on your own faith, not on ours." The -work was reorganized. In a few years new people began to pour in. A $50,000 church was built. Colo- nies were sent out to form other organizations. To-day there are upon the floor of this Assembly representatives from that settlement in the chaparral bushes which Dr. Fraser visited in 1874. They are here representing 3500 Presbyterian church members, to invite the Gen- eral Assembly to meet next year in their beautiful city of Los Angeles to partake of such hospitality as only Californians know how to give. And what shall I say more ? The time would fail me to tell of the abundant labors of Willey and Doug- las, and Bell and Burrow^s, and Harmon and Walsworth and Alexander, who organized churches, planted schools, endured hardships. All these have " obtained a good CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 97 report," and most of them have entered into their reward. You who have never been in the Pacific Northwest think of Alaska as a frozen waste, which has been brought to the world's attention temporarily by the discovery of gold, and which in a few years will be given over again to the seal hunters and the Esquimaux. You who have sailed along the beautiful fiords of the northlaud in an excursion steamer think of it as a land of magnificent scenery, of great rivers of ice, by the side of which the glaciers of Switzerland would seem hardly large enough to supply an ordinary ice chest, and which after a few years will become a play ground for tourists. I pick up the latest folder, sent out by one of the transcontinental railroads, which are always sup- posed to speak the truth, and read that " fiirmers should not think of going to Alaska, since no agricultural prod- ucts of any kind can be successfully raised in that country." A special Government agent recently sent out by the Department of Agriculture brings us a very different report. He saw in gardens, in Sitka, as fine potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, and radishes, as can be found anywhere on this continent. He met a man who had turned out forty-five head of horses in the fall of 1899, and the next spring had rounded up forty- three of them alive and well. He discovered that in one stretch of 400 miles along the Yukon there were two million acres of good pasture and farm land. At one of the mission stations he asked that the cattle, which, by the Avay, the Indians call " McKiuley 7 98 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS moose," be turned into the pasture that he might photo- graph them, when to his astonishment he found that the cattle were soon totally out of sight in the tall grass which reached above their backs. He reported to the Government that Alaska can furnish homesteads of 320 acres each to 200,000 families. AVhile in addition to all tliis, it is the judgment of the most conservative men there that the gold supply, instead of being almost exhausted, as yet has hardly been touched. Long before the discovery of gold on the Yukon turned the attention of the world toward Alaska, the Presbyterian Church was establishing missions, training the natives, and building up its splendid industrial plant in Sitka. For many years Dr. Lindsley, of the First Presbyterian Church of Portland, bore ujjon his heart the needs of the Alaskan Indians. In 1869, when William H. Seward was returning from the north, the eager pastor met the secretary in Victoria and talked with him con- cerning the people of the newly acquired territory. He organized the first American church there. He secured the money and materials for the first church building that was erected in Alaska, and up to the day of his death was keenly interested in all that pertained to the natives of the north. To him rightly belongs the title *' The Father of Alaskan Missions." Kev. Dr. S. Hall Young, who has returned to his former field of labor, began work at Fort Wrangel in 1878. It was there that the First Presbyterian Church in Alaska was organized in the following year. Dr. Sheldon Jackson is recognized throughout our Church as Alaska's mis- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 1)9 sionary bishop. He has been with the work practically from the beginning. To his indomitable energy and clear vision is largely due our success in that fascinating field. The President of the United States brought honor to himself when he called to the highest office in that vast empire a man who went forth as a humble home missionary of the Presbyterian Church, Governor John G. Brady. The remark is sometimes made that the best Indian is a dead Indian. Let me tell you a little story. In one of the Alaskan towns composed of Christian Indians the government is in the hands of twenty council men suggested by the missionary and elected by the natives. On a certain occasion the mission- ary called the Indians together, nominated one of their number, and asked them to vote. Every Indian was given a button. When the ballot box was passed every one in turn was to put his hand in the box. If he ratified the nomination he was to retain the button, but if not the button was to be dropped. Accordingly, the box was" passed, and to his surprise the missionary found that some one had dropped his button. Think- ing there might have been a mistake the missionary ordered another election, and again one button was found in the box. The missionary was perplexed. He determined to find out why anyone should oppose his nominee. Therefore he requested that the man who put in the button should come to his house the next afternoon and explain. At the appointed time an Indian appeared and said, " I am the man." "What 100 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS objection have you to ray nominee?" asked the mission- ary. " Well, not long ago that man and I went to Bella Bella to trade. The storekeeper gave him a dollar too much in change. When he saw it he whis- pered to me and said, ' Shall I keep it ? ' I said, ' No, that would be stealing,' and he gave it back. I think that a man who would even stop to ask such a question is not fit to be a councilman." My friends of New York and Philadelphia and Chi- cago and St. Louis, are all your aldermen so exceedingly conscientious that they would hesitate about keeping a dollar which was not theirs, and would they give it back to its rightful owner ? Sometimes returning tourists, after spending their time peeking into dance houses and investigating the quarters of the ranch Indians, insist that missions in Alaska are a failure. Let me tell you another story. A few years ago, while on an excursion to Alaska, I overheard the passengers criticising the work of the missionaries until my cheeks flushed with indig- nation. On the Sabbath I was invited to conduct ser- vices on shipboard and determined to give the people an object lesson. A young Indian from New Metlakahtla, to whom I had been introduced, had come on board. I consulted with him and arranged a plan into which he entered with the greatest eagerness. When the hour came for worship the dining saloon was crowded with worshipers. I conducted the services up to the time for the sermon. Then I said, " When you return to the States you will want to tell the people something about Alaskan missions. This morning we have with us a CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 101 full-blood Indian, whose ancestors were such people as you have seen in the ranches. I have asked liim to tell us something about the work of the missionaries among his people." The young man arose. His very appear- ance commanded instant attention. He had a large head. His hair was as black as a raven's wing. He was a college graduate and an accomplished musician. He had taken a course in law and had just finished the middle year in the Theological Seminary. In choice English he spoke for over half an hour, telling of the marvelous changes that had come to his people, who, instead of being the savages that William Duncan had found there forty years before, had their canneries, their stores, their printing presses, their schools, and their churches. As he closed his address he said with flashing eye, " And now I want you to know that all this has come about not through the Government, for the Government was here before, and not through the traders, for they have brought us only their vices ; but through the simple preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ." The people listened with breathless interest, and when the service was over one who had been the loudest in denunciation of the missionaries came forward and said : " I have been converted." I have the pleas- ure of introducing to you to-day that young Indian, with whose name many of you are now familiar, the Rev. Edward Marsden, now laboring among his people at Saxman, Alaska. It makes one's blood tingle to the finger tips to know of the noble men and women who have gone to the far 102 CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3nSSI0NS northland with the bhie banner of Presbytcrianism just beneath the flag of the cross. Away up within tlie Arctic Circle went young Dr. Marsh witii his bride, where the monarch whose throne is of ice and in whose dark audience chamber flashes the Aurora, built about them great ramparts of snow and for nine long months shut them in. Gambeland his wife, on the way to their lonely station on St. Lawrence Island, found graves in the depths of an Arctic sea. At Juneau and Wrangle and Skaguay and Nome and the rest, our home mission- aries are at work endeavoring to lay deep and strong the foundations of a great empire. How can we sit with folded arms or offer perfunctory prayers when new lands are being discovered, great sacrifices are being made in the name of Jesus, and vast possibilities await the put- ting forth of our hands ? Even a hasty review of the home mission enterprise on the Pacific Coast produces some profound impres- sions. The returns are quick, abundant, and substantial. In religious work it is much as it is in soil culture. One year a traveler through the Yakima Valley in Wash- ington or the chaparral country of Lower California might see only vast desolate stretches, where even a vul- ture could hardly exist. Five years afterwards the same traveler passing through the same country might find himself in such a garden spot as his eyes never looked upon. The simple turning of a little stream from its channel is able to work such wonders as we used to think could be read about only in fairy books. Consider some of the lightning transformations which have taken place. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 103 Less than fifty years ago a home missionary stood under a h've oak across the bay from San Francisco and de- livered the first sermon ever preached in the little vil- lage that was springing up there. To-day the city of Oakland is a city of churches and the First Presbyterian Church is a tower of strength. Fifty-three years ago to-morrow a home missionary organized the First Pres- byterian Church of San Francisco with six members. Only a few years passed by, when a member of that congregation gave $300,000 to equip our Theological Seminary at San Anselmo. Forty years ago the Board of Home Missions decided to invest some money in a little town on the Willamette River in Oregon. It put in $400 the first year, $300 the second year, and $200 in each of the two following years. And this was the result, financially stated : In the five years, from 1889 to 1894 inclusive, that one church in which the Board of Home Missions invested a total of $1100, gave back to the cause of home missions, in round numbers, the sum of $45,000. It raised for the other agencies of the church, including congregational expenses, the sum of $250,000, and gave another quarter of a million to equip one of the finest academies to be found between the oceans. Even a California real estate boomer has no such investments to offer. I feel that it would be unpardonable, even in the most cursory review, to omit mention of the fact that into the membership of the church which the Board of Home Missions started away off there in Oregon forty years ago, there came two men of large and con- 104 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS secrated wealth, whose names deserve to be knoAvn and held in honor by Presbyterians everywhere. AYilliam S. Ladd and Henry W. Corbett for over a quarter of a century gave with princely generosity to all the agencies of our denomination. And it is generally understood that there is scarcely a Presbyterian church building in the States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, in which those royal men did not invest at least a hundred dol- lars each. Well, if the churches on the Pacific Coast are thus rolling in wealth, how comes it that we make our pitiful appeals in the East for help and urge Sunday school scholars to save up their pennies to send the gospel to the destitute places on the Pacific Coast ? Let me tell you. I have simply been trying to give you some idea of the possible yield if only the soil \vere brought under cultivation. We have a rich, vast terri- tory, but it is sparsely settled as yet, and the men of wealth in onr churches are very few. Out of the States of California, Oregon, and Washington might be carved forty New Jerseys with enough over for three States the size of Massachusetts. In your Synod of New Jersey you have over 75,000 Presbyterians and over 300 churches, most of them strong and well equipped ; while we, covering a territory forty times as large, have only a little over half as many members, and our really strong churches could be counted on the fingers of your two hands. Oregon, whicli covers a territory as large as the States of New York and Pennsylvania combined, has only five Presbyterian churches that have a mem- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 105 bership of even 200. We have single connties as large as the entire State of Delaware with only one Presby- terian missionary within its bounds. How stupendous the task ! How vast the possibilities ! With what eagerness the Church should spring to the work ! The eyes of multitudes in the East are now being turned to our western sea. The Puget Sound country is attracting hosts of bright, brainy, busy youths from the older States. Lumbermen are coming from Michi- gan and Wisconsin, where the forests have almost dis- appeared, and are buying up the rich timber lands of Oregon. California is now recognized as the world's fruit garden. And all three States are only at the threshold of their greatness. You got a hint during the war with Spain of the place we are to occupy some day in the national life. The ship that led the fleet right over the sunken mines at Manila and to its splendid victory bore a name of magic, for we of the coast had named it after one of our cities, the Olympia. At San- tiago the one battleship that called forth the world's unanimous admiration and wonder by means of its mar- velous 13,000-mile voyage and its inspiring dash, we had constructed on the western coast and christened the Oregon. The Pacific Coast has suddenly assumed a new significance. As by the turn of a kaleidoscope the geography of the world has been shaken into a new combination. All the world forces are seen g-athered about the western sea, as if preparing for humanity's final contest. The commercial powers of the world are there. The engine-makers of America are contesting 106 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS witli the engine-makers of England. Flour-makers from Minnesota are in Japan contesting with flour- makers from Russia. Great siiip freighters are now on the stocks in the American yards which are intended to help win for America the world's commercial su- premacy. The political powers of the earth are gathered about the western sea, as if preparing for the final con- flict. China is there with such possibilities of evil as make us afraid to think ; with such possibilities of good as to bewilder our hopes. Japan is there, alert and aggressive. England is there with mighty fleets and vast interests. Germany and France and the Nether- lands all are there, eager and expectant. Russia, resist- less and mysterious, has at last made its way overland to the scene of greatest interest ; while in a day the United States has made its way over sea and confronts the rest. There they seem to pause for a moment awaiting a signal. Who has the audacity to prophesy days and ways? Who is so faithless as to question the result? The religions of the world are gathered about the western sea getting in readiness for the culminating battle. The followers of Confucius are there by the million. Buddha's monks long ago carried the message of their master to the lands that fringe the Pacific. The followers of the Arabian prophet, numbering twenty millions in southern China alone, are pushing their campaign with fanatical enthusiasm. While the soldiers of the cross, moving westward from their Asiatic home, have now almost encompassed the globe, and with the resistless strength of wealth and intelligence and spirit- CENTEN^TAL OF HOME MISSIONS 107 ual power at their comiiumd, have sent ahead their scouts for the battle of Armageddon. Twenty-five years from now the conflict will be at its height, and in fifty years the victory may be won. Then let tlie Church at once mass its strength there on the Pacific. What general ever acquired triumphs by sending camp- followers and the disabled to the front. Send your strongest into the mountains and to the North where men dig for gold, and into the forests where the future cities are to be. Strengthen the school of the prophets at the Golden Gate. Give us strong Christian colleges that shall command the great empire for Christ. Then eager hands will carry the banner of the cross on and on toward the farther west until it halts at last on Calvary, whence it started so long ago. In the village of Chamouni, nestled trustfully in a Swiss villa, is a beautiful bronze monument erected to the memory of Saussure, the Swiss geologist. Balmat, the guide, stands at one side looking into Saussure's foce, with his outstretched finger pointing to some object in the distance. The geologist with wide-open eyes is looking in the direction indicated by the guide. In- stinctively the traveler turns and looks upward, when behold ! there stands the monarch of the Alps as calm as if made for eternity and as beautiful as if fresh from the hand of God. I would that some such piece of bronze were given a place in this throbbing commercial center of the world's life. I would place upon its ped- estal the prophetic words of Thomas H. Benton, who, turning toward the Rockies, said, " There lies the East. 108 CENTENNIAL OF JIOME MISSIONS There lies India." I would that the outstretched un- tiring finger might remind your financiers that yonder are their opportunities ; might be to your statesmen an unfailing inspiration, and that it might arouse the hosts of Christ for their consummate triumph. Tuesday Morning, May 20th "THE PAST YEAR" ADDRESS BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HOME MISSIONS KEV. EICHAKD S. HOLMES, D. D. Pittsburgh, Penna. ADDRESS OF THE REV. RICHARD S. HOLMES, D. D. Chairman of the Standing Committee on Home Missions. I HAVE a great cause to represent at a great epoch in its history. I say this because this is a great epoch in the history of the American Union. The United States have become a great domain ; their Government is a great government ; their executive head is the most powerful sovereign that rules a nation, albeit he has no throne, and is sovereign only as all law-abiding citi- zens are sovereign ; sovereign over self for the interests of the Republic. He will be among us to-night, a plain man of the people, called President, a title by which also hundreds of his fellow-citizens are called, lending the influence of the position to which Providence has brought him, in recognition of the worth of the work which is carried on by the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of Amer- ica. In his person this great domain will to-night be represented on the platform of our General Assembly. I emphasize this fact of domain because, extending beyond our own territorial limits, with foothold and in- fluence in the islands of the eastern and western oceans, it lays on the Church of the living God a burden of 111 112 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS responsibility for the character of that influence which is not measurable by any standards which the Morld possesses. As a part of the Church of God we must share in that responsibility, and the agency by \vhich we shall carry our part of the burden, if we carry it at all, is our Board of Home Missions. In considering this question of domain I cannot ex- clude the thought of tlie history which we and our fathers have wrought as an addition to the history of the world. Of history and domain I believe we have at first thought no adequate conception. A glance at the efforts which have been made to write our history may help us a little. Mr. Bancroft undertook to tell the story of the beginnings of the nation, and after fill- ing so many volumes that the busy men of to-day have no time to read them and hardly to glance through them, he died, leaving his work unfinished. Mr. McMaster essayed to write for this generation the story of our life since the Revolutionary War, and after giving eighteen years of his life to its elucidation and issuing seven great volumes, has only reached the year 1830. Add now to this a brief consideration of our geographi- cal area. It extends from the farthest northern point of Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Porto Rico to the Golden Gate. Do you comprehend the immensity of that territory ? I do not believe we are awake to a sense of our evangelistic cares. They are coextensive with our great domain, and the vastness of their detail for practical treatment is illustrated by the efforts to write our history. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 113 Three Americans once dining on a Fourth of July in Paris, filled with a sense of our geographical greatness, and perhaps also otherwise filled, offered a toast to our country. The chairman spoke first, and said : " Here's to the United States, bounded ou the north by the British possessions, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean." Before it could be drunk another cried, " Hold on, Mr. Chairman, let me give that toast : Here's to the United States, bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the south by the South Pole, on the east by the rising, and on the west by the setting sun." And then the third man said : " Now let me try : Here's to the United States, bounded on the north by the Aurora Borealis, on the south by the Procession of the Equinoxes, on the east by Primeval Chaos, and on the west by the Day of Judgment." Well, those Americans were true to their proclivities ; they were good boasters, and a Yankee who is not a boaster denies his birthright. But there was a vein of truth under all that, through which is flowing a tide of responsibilities mighty and inescapable, and they who are charged with the work of evangelization do in some sense realize it. From Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico is from the Aurora to the Equinox, and over all that stretch of earth we are to spread the story of the gospel of Jesus in such a way that it shall command the attention and reach the hearts of those multitudes which enter yearly into our valleys and prairies from European lands where 114 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS poverty and oppression, and ignorance and degradation have reduced the souls of men to a condition little above the state which characterizes " primeval chaos," and for whose answer at the " day of judgment " we are to be held responsible in some measure. The vastness of our domain and the responsibilities that it brings to our own Church makes it right to say that this is a great epoch in the history of a great cause. It is a great epoch because it is the beginning of a new century of work for home missions, and almost in point of time co-equal with the opening of the century which will be the greatest the world has ever known. We are celebrating with eclat the centennial of home missions. It is a time of hand-shaking, and of speech- making, and of rejoicing, and of manifesting the Amer- ican spirit, even in connection with our assembling for purposes which are only religious. The history of the one hundred years has been told. Will you pardon me if I mention, once more, Henry Kendall ? It can be in no way derogatory to any man to say that he was the prince of organizers in an era of organizing and organi- zations. I need ask no pardon when I speak the name of Cyrus Dickson. There was a great man, my fellow Presbyterians. Some of you even yet remember his marvelous eloquence. As orator for the religious inter- ests of the Church of his love he was not surpassed in power to sway assemblies in the whole past century, and I prophesy that the coming century will not produce his superior, even though, if by reason of superior ad- vantages, it does produce his peer. It is no reflection CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 115 upon the secretaries of to-day, thinking of the century past, to say, " Otlier men have labored and ye have entered into their labors." One hundred years is a small time measured against the two thousand years of Christian history ; but gauged by what those hundred years have accomplished in the work of world evangelization, they are the longest hun- dred years of time. Yea, longer than any thousand years that have preceded them, and the prophecy that they make of what the coming hundred years will be makes it right to say that this centennial marks a great epoch in the history of home missions in the United States. It is a great epoch because at this very hour the scope of home mission work is changing. The problem before the Church in our country has never ere this been what it is at this moment. I think we will do well to consider this matter with more than ordinary attention. Home mission work at the outset of the last century was one thing, and, while that still remains an interest that may not be forgotten, another phase of home mission work has forced itself up into the sight of the Church, and must not be left either unseen or unnoticed. The cause of the changing scope of our home mission work is the rapid increase in numbers of an unevangelized foreign population that represents forces hostile and repugnant to the genius of American civilization. That increase of a peculiar immigrant population sets before the Church, even while we are gathered here, a work whose magnitude is appalling. 116 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS That work the Church must do; and our Church must do her part of it by her Boards of Home Missions and of Publication and Sabbath-scliool Work, or, leaving it undone, be in danger of submersion bj the inflowing wave of ignorance, godlcssness, and anarchism. When the century opened we carried the gospel to no Ameri- can heathen, for we had none save our own American Indians, and for too much of the century the love and life of Elliott the apostle has been forgotten, and the doctrine born of war — " The only good Indian is a dead Indian " — has ruled in the hearts of the masses of men. But to-day our country is being filled with heathen from the Old World. One hundred years ago New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia were moving into the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi and along the shore-lines of the great lakes. The missionary organizations of a century ago had but one object — to send missionaries in the wake of migrating families that they might not get beyond the hearing of the gospel, and to provide money to help the frontiersman to build himself a little church in the wilderness. The Church followed the pioneer. The pioneer carried the axe and the mis- sionary carried the Bible, and out of the work of these two has come our magnificent Christian civilization. The pioneer laid low the forest, and cleared the acres, and planted the crops, but left a place for the rude church edifice where the word of God might be preached when the missionary should come. And he always came. With great fidelity the Board of Home Missions, then CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 117 only a feeble organization, made sure that he should go. The axe cleared the forests of the West, and the Plonie Board made the voice of the missionary heard after only a little while in every clearing. That was home mis- sion work seventy-five years ago. But that work is broadening. We still are doing as the pioneer missionary did, but not to the exclusion of other, and even more im- portant, work. The American pioneer is in the West yet, but he is not the man from the young East of a century ago, but his descendant born among the moun- tains and the forests. To such the Church is still send- ing the gospel, and from such are still going out into deeper wilds those whom the Church must follow. Yet so much has been done in the work of reclaiming our territory for civilization, so magnificent are the cities which have sprung up all over that empire which Marcus Whitman saved to the Republic, that it can almost be said " the wild and woolly West " has ceased to be. A Theological Seminary on the Pacific Coast, and that one beyond the Mississippi at Omaha, will be sending ministers back into our eastern churches within a quarter of a century, and colleges that will produce scholars the equal of the best we could make here in the first half of the century will mold the character of our whole vast western area. It is still necessary, and for a time will be, to send our money over the Rocky Mountains at the rate of one hundred thousand dollars annually. But this will not be for long. The strong support of the present will soon develop all up and 118 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS clown our Paeifio Coast from Portland to Los Angeles self-supporting churches that will become the sponsors for home mission work in tiieir own bounds. For already we are beginning to see that the wave of civili- zation has really Howed over the continent from ocean to ocean, and that the reflow has begun. The contri- bution by the First Church of Portland, Oregon, of more than one hundred thousand dollars to the work of home missions proves that the reflow has begun. Soon we as a Church must turn our attention to the exceptional populations in the very centers where we in all the years of the century have been strongest, and where we have fondly thought the work of evangeliza- tion was done. The demand for home missionaries is from our own firesides now ; for missionaries who can speak the gospel in foreign tongues. In every great industrial center, in every place where wealth and power have set great manufacturing enterprises on foot, there is to-day a teeming population — Italian, Belgian, Croa- tian, Slovak, Himgarian, Lithuanian, Bohemian, Russian — that can be numbered by hundreds of thousands, that must be taught the instincts of the American citizen, that must be evangelized and civilized, and made to understand that American liberty is not grounded in personal caprice, or desire, or love of license, but in the self-denial, and sacrifice, and surrender of each to the other for the good of all, which are the foundations of our institutions and the direct outgrowths of our Chris- tianity. The work of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America is no longer a little work CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 119 that means the spending of a few thousands of dollars annually on the extension of our Church into our west- ern domain in order to keep i)ace with the march of migration from the East. That work means to-day tlie spending of hundreds of thousands, yea, of millions, if need be, as the result of the open door that we have set before the nations of the earth. We might as well wake up to the fact that God has given this nation mighty wealth to be used for the evangelization of men, and not for spending alone in the things that go to beautify our homes and satisfy our own desires. If there is one eternal truth it is this : this world's money is God's. He made its acquisition and possession possible. To gather it is lawful : he gave us the power to do that very thing ; to hoard it is niggardliness and unlikeness to God : he dispenses eternally with unsparing hand ; to squander it is ^vickedness ; to use it for good, as one walks over God's highway, is to achieve moral grandeur. We might as well wake up to the fact that our Home Board is soon to need for its work in a single year not one million dollars only, but two or three millions, if it does the work which God is setting before us by the progress of emigration. I wish it were possible to make a missionary trust whose capital stock should be the tithe of the income of every Christian man and woman in America ; whose business should be the evangeliza- tion of our unevangelized masses ; whose dividends should be manifest in rescued slums and purified corpo- rate purpose, and the cessation of vice and drunkenness and crime. I believe I am safe in saying that President 120 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Roosevelt and liis Attorney General would never insti- tute suit in United States courts to dissolve that trust. The work is on us. God has transplanted the poor, the oppressed, the debased, the ignorant, from the govern- ments beyond the sea, and set them in our cities, along our river valleys, in our mountains, and upon our prairies. We have given them the advantage of liberty, and they are among us without a knowledge of its first principles and without a thought of a spiritual reli- gion. With hate in their hearts for authority, as they have known the meaning of authority in the Old World, and with eyes that blaze in a wild desire for equalization in property and power with the rich and prosperous, by whose side they are placed by our institutions as free- men in a free state, they are a menace to those very institutions by which they are accorded their not yet understood privileges. The work of the Church of Christ in our laud to-day is for the perpetuity of the American Union, and one of the factors in the preserva- tion of our national liberties is the influence which will be wielded in the coming century by the home mis- sionary preacher and teacher. The perpetuity of the American Republic, — let us not forget it, — the Church established and strong in the domain east of the Missis- sippi, and the Church to be established and to be strong in the domain west of the great river, has but one inter- est to-day : it is the Republic. For the Republic is threatened by evils to which the Church must not be oblivious. Will you have the in- ventory of them ? Commercialism is an evil. It does CENTENNIAL OF HOME IIISSIONS 121 not belong to the great cities alone, but is found wher- ever men congregate and tlie click of the telegraph is heard. What does comnicrcialisni mean ? It means the opening of the morning paper first by thousands on thousands of men and women and young people out of every walk of life to the columns where stock quotations are found. It means greed. Can I define it ? No : but I can illustrate it. Commercialism is a dollar on edge rolling away as fast as it can go, and a hundred men and women after it in a wild, jostling chase. That is an evil. Socialism is an evil because it is championed by a propagandism utterly out of tune with the key note of our history, and the inharmony of the voice of that propagandism is as discordant on the prairies west of the Mississippi as it is in the cities east of the Alle- ghenies. Anarchism is an evil which grows directly out of the unbridled passions of men who are not subject to the gospel of Jesus, and unbridled passion is dangerous everywhere, whether in a mining camp in Arizona or in a hall in New Jersey. These evils grow out of the condition that has resulted from our material develop- ment since the Civil War. With that development beyond anything the world ever saw made in so short a time by one people, and so rapid that we are drunk with a sense of our power ; with fortunes made in a day by youths and servants in the wild whirl of the stock exchanges of the country ; with social standards set up in certain great urban centers that measure a man by his bank account, and not by his mental or moral 122 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS equipment ; with the money-getting fever burning in the veins of all classes of society and causing schemes wilder than the wildest dreams of the financial experi- menteers of the French Revolution ; with trusts and com- binations capitalized at sums that are incomprehensible to the ordinary mind ; with secularization so controlling the public school systems of our nation that the super- intendent of the schools of the city of Chicago, at a memorial service held for the late President on that solemn Thursday when he was buried, was compelled to omit one faintest allusion to the foundation of the char- acter of William McKinley as in the w^ord of God, and did not dare to repeat those last utterances which have endeared his memory more than all else he ever spoke ; with the political systems of our cities rotten to the core, and thieves openly claiming an income from their nefariousness of from $4000 to $25,000 annually because of the purchased protection of the police ; with public morality steadily declining ; it is high time for the Church to awake to a sense of the burden that is upon her, and to the fact that our whole territory is mission- ary territory, and our whole people are in need of the gospel. These are the considerations that make me say the scope of home mission work is changing, and the fact makes this a great epoch in home mission history. I said the Church has but one interest to-day. I repeat that : that one interest is the Republic. The American people must be a Christian people if they are to remain as the leaders of the liberties of the world. But let me prevent anyone thinking there is a pessimist's CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 123 heart under that sentiment. I do not despair of the Republic, because I do not despair of God. While God lives to raise up missionaries to live and love and die as our home missionaries have lived and loved and died in the century gone by, we need not despair of the Republic. Think of the amazing, the unparalleled devo- tion of the men who have borne the old blue banner to the Rockies and beyond. " There are ministers educated as well as the best of us who are living almost as if buried in primeval forests, sixty, seventy, one hundred miles from the railroads, and who work year in and year out for less money than would satisfy a Pennsylva- nia miner." A home missionary from Idaho said to me in my study a week ago, " You think out here that Ralph Connor's Black Rock and Sl'y Pilot are only stories spun from a man's brain. They are not. They are pictures of what has been going on for a half century over our whole far western domain. Many a man has died as the Sky Pilot died, beloved and bewailed with a great lamentation." You heard Dr. E. P. Hill tell yesterday with great power of the work done beyond the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Hill's predecessor of long ago, the pioneer of that home mission church, rode eighty miles twice a month to preach to the handful of people that was known then and is yet as the First Presbyterian Church of Portland, Oregon. Ah ! but that work paid. It is a handful of people no longer, but the splendid church that has given in its history $100,000 to home missions, and has given one of its pastors for Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions 124 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS and another to lead yonr thought in the closing hour of the great celebration yesterday. You sat for the first day of this Assembly under the direction of the Moderator of the last General Assembly, Dr. Minton, of the Presbytery of San Francisco. Go with me in thought to a little room in California. In it we shall find gathered the whole Presbytery of San Francisco, three members, solemnly transacting business on one side of the stove, and one of the members is rocking the baby's cradle with his foot while he ar- ranges presbyterial documents with his hands, and over on the other side of the stove his wife is cooking the dinner. That was the organization which in time was to give to the General Assembly sitting in the old- est Presbyterian city of the United States in the last year of the first century of home missions its first Mod- erator for the twentieth century. Think of a man selling his farm and moving one hun- dred and twenty-five miles to make a new home, that thus he might give to his family the religious privilege of a home mission church. While such men live religion will not die in the United States. No ; I do not despair of the Republic. It will not die while such work by such a church shall go on. And it will go on. There is no stopping it. You may give your money in large sums : it will go on. Yon may give your money in paltry driblets of sums : it will go on. With money or without it, it will go on. There was a time nineteen hundred years ago when this work of saving a country began. The work begun in Galilee by the Naznrene CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 125 was in poverty but in power. " Silver and gold have I none " has been the cry of many a successor of Peter. But the work has gone right on. If it shall still have to go on in poverty be sure it will still go on in power. There is no stopping it : God is behind it, and that behind which God is goes on. ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF HOME MISSIONS BY THE REV. JOHN DIXON, D. D., New York, N. Y. (Assistant Secretary of the Board of Home Missions) It has fallen to my lot to bring to this General Assembly the hearty greetings of the officers and mem- bers of the Board of Home Missions. We are grateful to our divine Master for his favor to us and to the work committed to us during the year that is gone and during all the years of the past. We seek anew the sympathy and fervent prayers of the Church, that in the administration of the supreme trust committed to the Board of Home Missions there may be fidelity, wisdom, an unwavering faith, and a brightening hope. This is the centennial year of the organized work of missions in our own land. Yesterday we had the rare ])rivilege of listening to three addresses which set forth in eloquent and stirring tones the progress of home missions from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Pacific Coast. It is a glorious history which should forever dissipate any feeling of doubt or of discouragement. It gives us greatest cheer and brightest hope for the days that are 126 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 127 to come. The God of our fathers is our God, and will be the God of our children to the remotest generation. We have just listened to the report of the Assembly's committee on Home Missions, and the stirring address of the chairman. A new note of encouragement has been struck, and gratitude deepens while faith grows stronger. To-night, under the welcome encouragement of the presence and greetings of the President of the United States, we shall study afresh the way by which God has made us a great nation, and take a look into the future, so that we may gird ourselves anew for the sublime work of evangelizing America. America is to take up the " white man's burden " and do the largest part of the work in evangelizing and civilizing the whole world. SHADOWS UPON THE YEAR During the past year shadows deep and dark have fallen upon our pathway, and our hearts are sad over the taking away of trusted and beloved leaders from our council and cooperation. The death of Dr. Purves, who was elected a member of the Board shortly after he became pastor of this church, was the first great loss of the year. His predecessor. Dr. John Hall, was for twenty-seven years a member of the Board and for eighteen years its president. It was his custom to attend every meeting of the Assembly and to preside at the annual meeting in the interests of home missions. We shall not soon forget his splendid presence and his supreme address on those occasions. We thus feel that in this strong and influential congregation the cause of 128 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS home missions has special sympathy and support. The coming of Dr. Purves strengthened this. When it was proposed to celebrate the centennial of home missions we naturally turned to this church. We are here met by his invitation and that of the session, but he himself has gone, gone from service to reward, from earth to heaven. We rejoice that in the present pastor the cause of home missions has such an earnest friend and strong supporter, and we are confident that the good work which has been carried on here for many a year will be maintained and increased in the days to come. But the afflicting hand of our God was laid upon us again most heavily when he recently removed from us Mrs. Frederick H. Pierson, the secretary of the Woman's Board. She was a woman of deepest conse- cration and of great natural and spiritual gifts. Her loss is well nigh irreparable. She was a leader of great wisdom, exhaustless energy, clear vision, and broad sympathy. The work which is done by the officers of the Board before an audience and in the sight of the Church is important, but much more difficult and of greater importance is that which is done round the conference table in the office of the secretary. There plans are laid, problems solved, difficulties overcome, of which the Church knows only the result, but cannot know the time, thought, prayer, and ability necessary to secure that result. At these conferences Mrs. Pier- son was wise, sympathetic, far-seeing to a marked degree, and every day makes us realize with increasing emphasis how great is our loss. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 129 The treasurer reports that he has received during the past year for the current work of home missions the sum of $803,662.9G. If to this sum be added the amount received by the synods administering their own home mission work, which sum so far as reported to us amounts to $136,632.90, we have a total of $940,295.86. The treasurer is able to report that all the obligations of the Board of Home JNIissions have been met, and that there remains in his hands a balance of $4586.82. This is the fourth successive year that he has been able to report no debt. Not since the reunion in 1870 has the Home Board been enabled to come to the Assembly with such a record. It speaks volumes for the skill and ability of our treasurer whose praise I am glad to speak. Of the total sum of $803,662.96 received during the year, $339,526.38 was obtained by the Woman's Board. This shows an increase of receipts upon that of last year which amounts to $57,778; of this sum %A':),12bA2 is to be credited to the Woman's Board and $8,032.87 as the advance made by the Home Board. ANALYSIS OF THE EECEIPTS A still further analysis of the receipts of the Home Board starts some very interesting questions. We find that the congregational offerings have increased onlv $1966. In this advance, though small, we rejoice, for our main source of dependence, after all, must be from the congregational offerings. The societies of the Church, including the Sabbath schools and the Youno- 9 130 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Peoples' Societies, show a loss, as compared witli that of last year, of $1385. This loss is wholly in the receipts from the Sunday schools. Taking then the offerings from the churches and all of the organizations within the Church, we find that the advance for the past year is $581. This statement is made with a view to arrest the attention of the churches to a serious fact. Why is it that our churches grow in membership and in wealth and do not make corresponding progress in their gifts to missions ? The pastors may not plead that the societies within the Church are making marked progress in their gifts so that a less rapid progress should justly be ex- pected from the Church oiferings. The suggestive fact is that we are making progress so slowly that it is im- perative either that new plans should be devised by pastors or, Avhat is better, that there shall be a baptism upon both minister and people. We have had more than usual difficulty in deciding upon the appropriations to the presbyteries for the com- ing year. The amount just voted by the Board is $378,360, which is $22,043 more than was appro- priated last year, and yet is $46,160 less than the presbyteries asked for after they had cut and scaled all that they dared to do or thought possible. But are we warranted in making an advance of $22,000 ? Not if we are to judge solely by the contributions of last year. We put faith in larger hope. We arc not unmindful of the promise given by the Board to the Church four years ago, that the trust committed to us would be so admin- istered as that no large debt would be incurred. AVe CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 131 intent] to be faithful to our pledge ; yet we cannot help but feel that when the mind and conscience and heart of tlie Church are confronted with the figures I have just given, there will be a greater consecration of gifts. The responsibility is a mutual one ; it does not rest wholly upon the Board. The pastors and elders must do their whole duty in instructing the people and per- suading them to a full discharge of their duty. Thia centennial year which recalls the glorious things which God has wrought for our Church and country will surely awaken gratitude, supply courage, and bring a new and greater devotion. NO DISAPPOINTMENT SEEN Our faith and hope will not be disappointed. We are confident that although we have taken this step in ad- vance the Church will respond, and next year, even as during these last years, the treasurer will report all obli- gations met and a balance in the treasury. With regard to the synods carrying on their own home mission work, it is not mine to speak other than to say that the Board follows them with the deepest interest and cordial ap- proval ; would that there were more of them. During the past year INIichigan has undertaken self-support. It will be no holiday task, but she has entered upon it after such carefulness of plan as well as heartiness of devo- tion that she is bound to succeed. The synod makes the treasurer of the Board its treasurer, who makes sepa- rate deposit of the money committed to him. That is done without expense to the synod. It is the purpose 132 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS of the churches in Michigan to keep up their contribu- tions to the general work of the Church, and while the Board may not expect as large sums as it has received in the past, it is especially gratified that the tie which binds the synod to the work of the whole Church is to be close and binding. Nebraska has devised a plan of cooperation with the Board which is not yet fully matured, but which prom- ises excellent results. We are much pleased to report to the Assembly that thirty churches ask for less this year than they received last year. This is by no means the only or even the main test of progress, but it is a good sign. This ad- vance has been brought about in many instances by the diligent endeavors of the home mission committees and the pastors, and in too many instances at the per- sonal expense of the pastor. While we are compelled to admire such devotion on the part of insufficiently paid missionaries, yet we do not commend and cannot encourage it for the simple reason that the Church as a whole and the local church should do their full share of providing the necessary funds and leaving pastors to contribute only their proper proportion. A year ago we thought we were hitching our wagon to a star of the first magnitude when we suggested that in this cen- tennial year we hoped we might be fortunate enough to report 100 churches to this Assembly as having reached self-support. If we had had a few more days in which to receive reports I doubt not the full 100 would have been reached. We are glad to say that 89 have bidden CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 133 us an affect lonate but not tearfnl farewell, have (|iiit " hoarding " and started housekeeping, so as not only to care for their own but also to provide help for the church that has need. But more than progress in finan- cial strength, and even better than attaining to self-sup- port, is the spiritual record of the year. God has been pleased to pour out his spirit upon scores and hundreds of missionary cliurches and many souls have been con- verted to God and have confessed Christ. This is the goal of all our labors, for which the minister of Jesus Christ can well afford to be poor and lonely, suffer hard- ship, and even endure persecution. BLESSINGS IN POKTO EICO So far as my personal observation goes, the field which has been most wonderfully blessed in the winning of souls to Christ is in Porto Rico. There during the last few months many persons have been received on confes- sion of faith. May I describe a communion season there in which I was greatly privileged to take a part ? The session, consisting of the pastor and three elders, were holding meetings to examine applicants for admission to the Lord's table. I was present at most of these meet- ings. Though not understanding a word of the language spoken, I was deeply interested in each case. Some Avere rejected. I was eager to inquire the reason. In most cases it was because they did not clearly under- stand the doctrine of justification by faith or Luther's doctrine of the standing or falling church. Another dif- ficulty was that they would pray to the Virgin Mary. 134 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Such were asked to wait until they were better in- structed. On the evening of the Lord's day, in a hirge room which had been used as a warehouse, the people met for the observance of the Lord's supper. The clerk of the session called the roll of membership, and each person answered " presente," and came and took his or her place before the pulpit. This was done until the space was filled and then the elements were passed. In that circle of communicants I noticed not only the well dressed, but men and women barefooted, men with no other pfarment but shirt and trousers. Awe and rever- ence marked every face, and joy lighted up every coun- tenance. I was deeply impressed as an elder of more than seventy years of age, small of stature and spare of form, with a fiice of marked intelligence and deep spirit- uality, received the bread and wine from the minister and gave them to the people. I never saw greater cliarm of manner or humility of bearing, with a dignity that was most noble. TRULY A HEAVENLY SCENE I was touched almost to tears by the spirituality and heavenliness of the whole scene. Row after row of communicants came forward, answering to their names, until 115 or more had partaken of the Lord's supper. The room was full of spectators, the street was lined with eager listeners, and the inmates of the houses oppo- site were watching the scene with deepest interest. When all was over, I turned to the minister and said to him : " Tell me about your old elder, for I have CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 135 fallen desperately in love with him. Plow did he come to Christ?" Tlie minister said that he belonged to one of the prominent families in that community. His mother had been a devoted Catholic, and on her dying bed turned to her son and said to him : " I am about to die, and I have one last and great favor to ask of you." "What is it, my mother?" said this good man. She told him, " I want you to take my crucifix, which I value so highly, and burn a candle before it and pray for the repose of my soul." He gladly promised and faithfully kept his vow until his eyes were opened to see that Jesus Christ was the only and all-sufficient Saviour. Having accepted Christ as his divine Saviour and Master, he brought this crucifix, which was so pre- cious to him by reason of its being the property of his dead mother, and said to the minister : " I cannot longer do what I have promised my mother to do. I see it is all wrong. But I cannot destroy this crucifix for my dear mother's sake. I have brought it to you that you may destroy it and that I may simply do the will of Jesus." There could have been no severer test, for per- secution would have been a small matter to such a man compared with the necessity of refusing longer to obey the dying request of the mother whom he loved devotedly. TRIBUTE TO THE EVANGELISTIC COMMITTEE In this connection it is a pleasing duty to pay hearty tribute to the work of the Evangelistic Committee of the Assembly, of which Mr. John H. Converse is chair- man. The work of the Committee and of the Board 136 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS not only Hos along parallel lines, bnt in many places and })artieiilars it overlaps. With the limited resonrces both of men and money at our command, the Board has been engaged in this work from the beginning. We have been painfully aware both of the supreme impor- tance of the evangelistic services and of the utter inade- quacy of the means at our disposal to overtake it. We heartily rejoice in the good work which has been done by the Assembly's Committee and bid them " God- speed." From every part of the field come encouraging reports of the good Avork done luider the auspices of the committees of presbyteries charged with this duty. There are, so to speak, three great departments of such work. First, among the mission churches where a week's evangelistic services, under the leadership of reliable and trained ministers, would ordinarily be of inestimable blessing to such churches. It would increase membership, develop resources, and speed progress along every line. Second, such work needs to be done among the strong churches, either singly or in groups, and especially do such churches in the large cities need to be brought into direct contact with the work of saving souls. Third, there is the vast multitude of the un- churched, who only in rare instances can be prevailed upon to cross the threshold of a church. The gospel must be taken to these vast multitudes in the tent or in the hall, and the summer season is especially fitted for just such services. We shall rejoice to cooperate with the Assembly's committee in this work of far-reaching importance in every way in our power. CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3nSSI0NS 137 FAITHFUL WORK OF THE MISSIONARIES In speaking of the work in general, we must be per- mitted to refer to the annual report, where, setting forth as best we can what has been done, it is only too mani- fest what a brief and imperfect tale has been told. But the Church will not fail to honor nor forget to pray for the home missionary. Every missionary is worthy of special honor as the elect from among the elect, called of God and the Church to go to the front where dangers are greatest, burdens are heaviest, and difficulties hard- est to overcome. But the home missionary is worthy of preeminent honor. There is nothing of romance about his work, no farewell meetings, no cheer of recognition. He is the poorest paid of all the ministers who stand upon our Assembly's roll, not because his abilities or needs are less than that of any other minister or missionary, but for quite other reasons. One of these is an inheritance which has come down to us through two centuries. In those early days which antedate the work of foreign missions by 130 years, the Church in her poverty could not offer even a living salary. Yet noble men responded to the earnest appeals to " Go, spread the Gospel of Christ in the dark regions of the world, in the province of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the territories of Maryland and Vir- ginia." They took the beggarly allowance granted them, and went forth cheerfully to found such churches as the First Presbyterian Churches of New York and Chicago. The habit of making inadequate support has been formed by the Church. But the Church might be 1,38 CE2^TENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS fured of this Avere it not for the missionaries themselves. Their self-denial and sacrifices arc wonders of grace. It appears every year in some of them insisting upon reducing their own meager salaries so that some call for new work might be heeded. Tlie work grows faster than the provision for it, but it grows at the cost of the home missionary more than it does by the gifts of the prosperous. Poverty is thus the everyday experience of the home missionary, and this is a hard world to be in with little or no money. There is even a heavier trial than that of poverty ; it is the burden of loneliness. How very lonely many of them are, as not only weeks but months come and go without their having the cheer of good fellowship. At the meeting of one of our western presbyteries the home missionary had to travel from his home to the place where the presbytery met a distance of 1044 miles, and going and returning to attend synod this same brother had to travel 978 miles, and another missionary had 994 miles to cover in going and returning. AVhy do home missionaries having a small salary go on such long and expensive journeys? The reason is a twofold one. In their loneliness and homesickness they want to look into the face and hear the voice of a fellow-minister. They are deeply in- terested in knowing at first hand the conditions and prospects of the Lord's work. Some of them are heroic. When I think of Marsh and S])riggs at Point Barrow within the Arctic Circle, of Mr. and Mrs. Kirk in their lonely abode at Eagle City on the Yukon, and of Koonce, as he travels with his dogs a thousand miles CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 139 to carry the gospel to the miner, 1 think of men who are making unspeakable sacrifices for Jesus Christ and tlieir fellow-men. They are wx)rthy of affectionate regard and of highest admiration. VAST TERRITORY AND IMPERATIVE NEED I shall not attempt a narrative of the great, though for the most part quiet and uneventful, work which has been done by missionaries in churches and mission stations and preaching places in the middle and further AYest. Nor shall I speak of the increasingly important work on the Pacific Coast, stretching from Puget Sound in the north to southern California. The vastness of this territory and the imperative need of this field, with its far-reaching influence on the Orient, it is impossible to overestimate. Of the work in Alaska time would fail me to speak. Here is an empire out of whose territory the Commis- sioner of Agriculture says that four States can be carved. Its population is growing wdth marked rapidity, while it is practically an unknown country to the mass of our people. The story of Cuba and Porto Rico is a thrilling tale, revealing at once the dire need of these islands and the great responsiveness of the people to the ajipeal of the missionary. Nor would the story be complete without the record of our work among the exceptional popula- tions as they are called. There is no more interesting work for the Master than that being done among the Indians. Grace has Avrought wonderfully, and some of the noblest of Christian characters are to be found 140 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS anionic the red men. We have l)e_ctions called Presbyteries. In each of these presbyteries there is a committee having charge of this work, the chairman of this committee being a member of the State committee, and the committee itself being so constituted as fairly to represent all parts of its field and all interests in- volved. This presbytcrial committee, minutely ac- quainted with its portion of the State, reports to pres- bytery ; presbytery, through the chairman of its com- mittee, reports to synod's committee ; synod's com- mittee reports to synod ; and by the synod, thus in possession of all the facts, the work is administered. A certain amount of money is asked from each presby- tery ; a certain amount is allotted to each presbytery, — the presbyteries being allowed to raise and expend the money assigned to them in their own way, — and thus, for fifteen years, the work has been administered with- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 155 out friction and witliout debt, and with ever increas- ing efficiency and favor. And wliat is true of New Jersey is true of all the other synods, though of their particular form of organization I cannot now speak for lack of time. In organization, we are told, there is strength. And the work in these self-supporting synods is strong, and has achieved such a conspicuous success because it is superbly organized. Then the success of this work is due — (6) To Economical aiid Wise Administration. — No field is aided until most careful investigation has been made as to its needs. The amount given is, in each instance, the smallest amount which can wisely be appropriated to that field. When a field is aided it is, at the same time, instructed to expect an annual reduc- tion in the amount appropriated to it, so that, as soon as possible, it may come to self-support. Wherever prac- ticable, fields are grouped. All members of committees and the treasurer of the fund work without salary, busy pastors and ecpially busy laymen devoting themselves to this work out of love to Christ and the Church. In a few of the synods paid superintendents are employed with most gratifying results. But everywhere and always the endeavor is made to do the work with the least possible expense consistent with efficiency. And as a result New Jersey — and I speak of it simply because it is most familiar to me — has, since it began, raised and expended for work within its own bounds more than a quarter of a million of dollars at an expense for traveling, printing, postage, etc., of only 156 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS about tliroo tliousand dollars. AVliile, diiriiio; the same })eriod, it has given to the Home I)<«u'd a niillioii dollai's more. Work well done and at little cost always com- mands respect. And the work in tiiese self-su])porting synods is commanding the enthusiastic approval of all who are familiar with it because it is so economically and wisely administered. Then, once more, the success of this work is due — (c) To Recognized Need. — Why, fathers and brethren, do you realize that nearly all of the large cities of our country, with all their pressing and perplexing prob- lems, are located within the bounds of these self-sup- porting synods — New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, and Chicago? Do you realize that just across the Hudson, in the northeastern corner of New Jersey, and not much more than a dozen miles back from the river, are more than a million people, among them some of the worst of the foreign element found in our land, from whom, a short time since, one went forth to assassinate the King of Italy, and among whom, last summer, a meeting was held to commemorate the anni- versary of that assassination, which meeting contributed not a little, we believe, to the inflaming of C^zolgosz for his awful deed? Do you realize that the Synod of Pennsylvania, which includes also the State of West Virginia, has, within its bounds, a mission field in its needs and opportunities second to none in our land ? Do you realize — , but I forbear. Fathers and brethren : AVhen, going back into the CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 157 country to the rural church in wliich many of our best citizens were brought up and from which much of their moral greatness was derived, I find these churches depleted in membership, shorn of their financial strength, and having a desperate struggle even to live, I say, " these rural churches must be kept up that they may continue to be as springs in the mountains to purify and strengthen the life of our city churches." Or when, going out from our great cities, I see, along the line of every railroad, suburban towns rapidly spring- ing into existence where a little help now will insure self-support in the very near future, I say, " these churches must be helped." Or when, standing toward tlie close of the day, as I have often done, by the gate of some newly erected manufacturing establishment, I watch the mechanics pour out on their way to their rude and not altogether comfortable homes, I say, " the spiritual destitution of these men of toil must be met, even though it may be a long time before any work among them can attain to self-support." Or when I think of the teeming multitudes in New York and Chicago, for example, " without God and without hope in the world," I say, " whatever else is neglected, these must not be." And yet these are but a few of the items which make up the need which the self-supporting synods of our Church are striving to meet. And because the need of the work w^hich they are trying to do is increasingly being recognized, therefore is its im- portance and value being increasingly appreciated. This then, in briefest outline, is the work of the self- 158 CENTENMAL OF HOME MISSIONS supporting synods of our beloved Church. What is it? Only a branch of home mission activity, the sustenta- tion idea of the reunion made practical and put into successful operation, an earnest attempt to qualify our home churches to press forward with greater vigor and efficiency into the regions beyond. MISSIONARIES' ADDRESSES HOME MISSIONS IN TEXAS BY THE EEV. HENEY S. LITTLE, D. D. Denison, Texas Texas Home Missions are conspicuous for three re- sults : There are 64 counties in Texas that are entirely prohibition. Of the remaining 251 counties 102 are partially prohibition, and in 37 of these it prevails in more than half the territory. This is measurably the result of home missionary effort. In two of these counties it was almost wholly clue to a canvass by home missionaries, and elsewhere home missionary influence was eminent. Home missions in small places, places that come to self-support slowly, should be noticed. These are poor because they feed the larger churches. In one section of Texas several small places have sent numbers to the neighboring cities. They were just the men to bring the small churches to self-support. Had they remained where they were, the churches so long on the Board would have reached independence. These churches ought to be helped. They are essential factors in the work as a whole. The best material of the larger churches would be otherwise lacking. 159 160 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS One of tlie commissioners at this Assembly is pastor of one of the finest cliurclies in Texas. It was organ- ized a few years ago with eighteen members. Last year it built a house of worship costing ^10,000, and it has built and paid for a school costing $25,000. Home missions carry the gospel where it would otherwise not go. There are many, many places that cannot support the gospel themselves which represent the most valuable people. El Paso, in Texas, has a larger addition to its membership than any other church, and yet there were years when that church could not stand alone. Not to have held it then w^ould have lost it. It takes but a few years of El Paso growth and giving to compensate the Board for all that has been done for her. Mr. Bloys, of Fort Davis, is the most successful home missionary that I know. He often rides 40 miles to a service, a funeral, or a wedding. On fifth Sundays he rides 70 miles to an appointment. His parish is 500 miles long and 165 miles broad. It may be years before his church can come to self-support, but the Grand Jury sat in his cattle-men's country for three successive years without finding a single case of any description. Men say that this is largely due to a camp- meeting that he holds once a year. Men hear him, may join his church, and then move away. He is home missions pure and simple. Men are scattered far and near. They ought to have the gospel. THE YUKON VALLEY BY THE REV. M. EGBERT KOONCE, Ph.D., Rampart, Alaska I HAVE come too far to waste any words this morning in trying to lay before you the beauties of the country which I represent. I want to get right down to the gist of the matter. We were entertained yesterday by an account of the march of the Presbyterian Church across the continent. We have two presbyteries in Alaska — an extent of territory equal to twenty of youi- western States and a dozen, perhaps, of your best synods. Into that little country three years ago the Home Board, at the direc- tion of the Church, sent three missionary preachers to preach the gospel to a population which was scattered from one end of it to the other. We went in there full of faith, believing that it could be done, and we have covered that country to the best of our ability. Three or four stations have been established. Of the three all are vacant now save just one. I expect to go back in a few weeks, and then there will be two, if the Church does not send more men. What are you 11 KU 162 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS going to do, brethren, for that country? It is not a place where pohir bears roam round and where shadows of animals are frozen to the ground. It is a beautiful country. You can gather flowers there more beautiful than any I have ever looked upon here ; and in certain seasons the climate is unequalled in any other part of our country, and you will find mosquitoes in more varie- ties than you ever dreamed of. It is a land of great promise, both for mining and agricultural purposes, and we expect, in time, to see two or three agricultural States carved out. This is the opportunity of the Church. Fifty years ago it was tliouo-ht foolish to send missionaries west of the Mississippi River. You have heard to-day some- thing of the results that have been accomplished. There is now no frontier. The only frontier left is Alaska. There is to be a population in the next fifty years — and I know whereof I speak — that will surprise the people even as the population west of the Mississippi surprised you during the last fifty. What are you going to do? Are you going to be satisfied with three men? Or are you going to send more men to take the land for Christ? Is it too much to ask you to send us another man ? Dr. Young is going to ask the Cliurch to send a man fi)r a place for which the funds have already been provided. NORTHERN ALASKA'S NEED BY THE KEV. S. HALL YOUNG, D. D. General Missionary to Alaska. I AM not after money, I am after you. I am after some men for Alaska — here and now ; and that is the kind of men we want (pointing to Dr. Koonce). A walk of 1200 miles across mountains and rivers with the thermometer 62 degrees below zero is a very little thing for Dr. Koonce. He does not mind it. It gives him an appetite. I asked for a man last year at the General Assembly. Mr. John H. Converse, of Philadelphia, put into the hands of the Board the support of a man for Teller. We have not found that man yet. Many times we thought we had found him, and only last year a young man, admirably adapted for that work as it seemed to us and recommended by many, found, on consulting with his mother, that he could not go. Teller is a new mining camp on Behring Sea, in the midst of a mining region, and has six camps near it. When we failed to get that man last summer we put that church in charge of a good Presbyterian elder 163 164 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS from Iowa and he is holding the fort. Will you go ? AVill you go ? You may be afraid of the hardships. Well, Dr. Jackson, Dr. Koonce, and I have travelled somewhat extensively over Alaska the last few years, and speaking for them as well as for myself, I have to say we have yet to find the hardships. They don't exist for us. A man must go within a few weeks if he would be in time before the rivers close. Last Sunday, at the First Presbyterian Church, after my address, three ladies came with $300 to put into that work for a man in the interior, in the land where Dr. Koonce and Mr. Kirk are laboring. A classmate of our Moderator and of Dr. Duffield, and one of the brightest men of that very bright class of 1877 at Princeton, an old college friend of mine, oifered himself iox the work. The only thing that makes me hesitate in nominating him with all my heart for the position is that I love him too well. I hesitate about killing him, and yet it is a glorious thing to die in Alaska, and it might be the life of him and the health of him as it has been to some others. This morning our honored Moderator, Henry van Dyke, put into my hands this check for $500, as he said, " as a token of love, to be used in the work of Alaska." We will get the money if you will give the men. Will you do it ? My brethren, comfortably sit- uated in your pleasant pastorates, will you not hear the call? If you arc adaptable men and able to build your own church with your own hand ; able to live the life of the miner ; able to '' mush " over the territory, and, as some one has said, do everything that the miners CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 165 do except drink whiskey and play poker, and do all the necessary things better than the miner does, and preach the gospel free from the lust of gold, you are the men we want. I ask this Assembly to give lis two or three men so that I can come in the name of our Board of Home Missions and ask for the rest of the money — and get it, too. THE MORMON PROBLEM BY THE EEV. SHELDON JACKSON, D.D. Washington, D. C. In this day of congratulation and celebration it is a good time for the Church to look forward and gird up her loins for a twentieth century eifort to capture the United States. There are three great religious systems that have set themselves to accomplish this — the Mor- mon system, the Papal system, and the Protestant sys- tem. If the Protestant system prevails, our free insti- tutions will be perpetuated ; if the Papal system pre- vails, we will have liberty, but under Tammany influ- ences and with a Tammany flavor at Washington ; if the Mormon system prevails, the "president, prophet, and revelator " of the church of the Latter Day Saints will be in the White House at Washington ; Congress will be disbanded, and the twelve apostles of the Mor- mon Church will dictate the laws and govern the land. I know that you are surprised that I class the ]\Ior- mon system as an influential factor in our country 166 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 167 with the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, but to-day the Mormons gather more converts in the United States than either the Roman Catholics or the Presbyterians. The Presbyterian Church sends 22 ministers to the Mormons while the Mormon Church sends 2000 missionaries through the United States. They have churches and congregations in every State and Territory of this Union to-day except Alaska. They have divided up the States into districts, placed a missionary bishop in charge of each district, and are carrying forward with their missionaries a systematic house-to-house canvass for converts. And, as already intimated, they are succeeding, and if left alone may yet overthrow the liberties of this country. I know that you think this a wild statement, but go back seventy- five years in western New York and see that tramp out- fit in camp by a brook. The dilapidated country wagon with its tattered canvas-covered top, the broken-down team grazing near by, the poorly-clad women of the party going to a neighboring farm house for milk and food, testify to the poverty and low-down condition of the family. Looking upon that scene, had some one remarked to you, " See that tramp family. In seventy-five years they will have a following of nearly half a million American citizens. In seventy-five years they will con- trol a sovereign State of the Union and hold the balance of political power in several other States. In seventy- five years they will control the election of Senators and Representatives to the National Congress from their 168 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS own State and be consnlted with regard to others ; " you wonld have said, "Impossible; it can't be done!" It is an actual fact to-day. Dr. Holmes, in his inspiring address this morning, tells us that the great danger of the American Republic is commercialism. The Mormon Church to-day con- trols " the commercialism." There is not a syndicate in New York or New Jersey that is willing to antagonize the Mormon Church. Ask Mrs. Darwin R. James, and she will tell you that thousands upon thousands of the best citizens of the land have petitioned Congress for an amendment prohibiting polygamy. But what does that amount to ? There is not a Congressman in Washington who would interfere. They don't care to offend the Mormon Church. There is not a Congressman, either Repub- lican or Democratic, courageous enough to take the leadership in pushing that amendment. It can't be done. It can't, unless the Church of Christ wakes up. Dr. Holmes tells us that the second great danger is for- eign population. The Mormons are getting a strong hold among the foreigners. They are everywhere. They are taking not only foreigners, but Americans. They are going into Presbyterian and other churches and taking out the communicants. There is not a year that passes in which people born and brought up and baptized and received at the communion table of the Presbyterian and other churches are not giving up the faith of their fathers and going into the Mormon Church. Thousands of American citizens are joining the Mormon Church. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 169 And that church confidently looks forward to the day when they shall be in full control of the United States, for they believe that they have had a revelation from God that they are to take possession of this land ; they believe that they have been promised by their God that the president of the Mormon Church shall be the President of the United States, and that this country, from ocean to ocean and from Alaska to the Gulf, shall be given to the saints of God in the Mormon Church. Is there no hope ; no relief? Yes ! God has placed relief in our hands. Send the gospel and Christian schools into Utah and you can disintegrate Mormonism. Let the Church wake up and supply the Board of Home Missions with the necessary funds for increasing mission work in Utah many fold. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only solvent that will disintegrate the Mormon system and save this land to the American people. The gospel is the only solvent that will save your homes in their purity to your children and to your children's children. Tuesday Afternoon, May 20, 1902 FELLOWSHIP MEETING GREETINGS FROM SISTER BOARDS FROM BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS BY THE REV. JOHN D. WELLS, D. D. Brooklyn, N. Y. (Paper presented by the Eev. David Gregg, D. D., in Dr. Wells' absence.) Mr. 3Ioderator, Fathers, and Brethren : — Ten minutes only are allowed me for an important and pleasant service. As freedom of speech with an inviting theme is a dangerous commodity, I therefore shield you and myself with these bits of paper. If I were performing a marriage ceremony here and now, I am very sure that the parties most nearly con- cerned would not be pleased if I made the ceremony an address to this large audience. I am equally sure that the Board of Home Missions with its officers, to whom the Board of Foreign Missions and its officers have charged me to speak a few words on this centennial occasion, will expect me to address them and not all within the sound of my voice, though all, I trust, may be able to hear. The two Boards are very near neighbors. In our meetings from month to month we occupy parts of the same building belonging to the Church we serve. There 173 174 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS the secretaries and treasurers and good women cooper- ating with the Boards have their permanent and com- modious quarters. We have many interests in common. We serve the same divine Master. We are under the same great commission left us by our risen Lord. It is our call to service till he come. We are responsible to the Church that appoints us^ and to this Church we report yearly. Therefore may I not say, in the name of the Lord, " The Board of Foreign Missions and its officers affectionately greet the Board of Home Missions and its officers on this their hundredth anniversary?" Younger as an organized body than you, we share with you your joy of one hundred years ; and we join the churches of Christendom in extending to you our hearty greeting. We are glad that as you begin your sec- ond century of service you carry no debt. We congrat- ulate you, brethren, because you have lived so long, and, by the grace of God, have lived so well. For though the personnel of the Board has changed, the organized body has retained its life, its name, its character, and its high calling. We have in mind and heart the names of men who have wrought well and now rest from their labors. The Board of Foreign Missions in its shorter life has had a like experience. You and we feel the influence of those who have gone before, who have served our Boards as officers and as missionaries and as martyrs ; for some have sealed their testimony with their blood. May we all be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises ! We congratulate you because through the successive CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 175 decades of the century the Church you serve, -with the Christian Church at large, has been growing to her present proportions, and that you have helped her growth. We hope she is coming to a deeper and more sacred consciousness of responsibility for the evangeliza- tion of the peoples of the home land and of all lands. I say " peoples " because representatives have come hither from almost every land under heaven. Among those for whom you care you can more than match the Pentecostal enumeration, beginning with the " Parthians and Medes " and ending with the " Cretes and Ara- bians " — sixteen in all. You go beyond the teens. Under the one commission you and the representatives of sister denominations are bound to reach the ever- increasing but ever-dying multitudes as soon as possible. In his Imago Christi, Dr. Stalker has these soul- stirring words : " All who take part in this work ought to build with his (Christ's) holy ardor. He thought it worth while to die for the sake of redeeming the souls of men ; what sacrifice are we prepared to make in contributing to the same end ? He gave his life : will we give up our ease, our effort, our money ? It was because he believed each single soul was more precious than a world that he died to save the souls of men. Are they precious in our eyes ? Does their fate haunt us ? Does their sin grieve us ? Would their salvation fill us with aught of the joy that thrills the angels in heaven when one sinner is converted ? " We congratulate you because you have had and now 176 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS have the privilege of mirturing the lives of so many churches in the older and the newer States and Territo- ries of this great Republic. But for your living agents and sacred agencies, whole States and Territories would have no Presbyterian churches, schools, academies, or colleges. In this great work you have cooperated with other Boards of the Church, and in some instances you have established the gospel among people for whom no others have cared. We congratulate you because, as fully as possible with the means at your command, you have kept pace with the phenomenal extension of our national territory and the growth of the nation itself. You have made it comparatively safe for people of enterprise to seek homes for themselves in advance of the sure protection of civil government ; and at last you have the joy, with all loyal American citizens, of seeing our nation a power and a benediction among the great nations of the world, and the richest of them all. To this result you have ministered, unwittingly perhaps, while seeking one still higher, according to the mind of God. We congratulate you because you are doing a blessed work among the remnants of the Indian tribes of our land, having accepted this work largely from the For- eign Board, and hastening the day, we may hope, when they all will prize full citizenship, the possession and cultivation of farms in severalty, and w^hat is still more important, the sharing with all Christian people in " the durable riches of righteousness " and " the kingdom of the heavens." CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 177 We congratulate you because of the character and gracious efficiency of your missionaries. I may not mention names. I barely refer to some communities in out-of-the-way places, especially in mountain regions difficult of access, where human deterioration had reached its lowest depths, but where now transforma- tions of character and destiny are the glory of the land and the joy of heaven. If we could even glance at your work in Alaska, Porto Rico, and Cuba — Cuba, whose name this very day, under American leadership, is for the first time written in the annals of history as a nation and a republic and a free people — we might possibly make our congratulations more emphatic, if we cannot make them more sincere. You are to be strongly congratulated, as we of the Board of Foreign Missions and the whole Church are, because of the wise and earnest and gracious coopera- tion of our Christian women in the practical, admin- istrative, and editorial Avork of missions. What should or could we now do without them ? How did the Church and her Boards accomplish their parts of evan- gelistic work among the peoples of the Avorld before they were organized for efficient service ? Not less than in our homes and separate churches, they are a lovely necessity in all mission work at home and abroad. As I am called to speak for the Board of Foreign Missions, all of whose members and officers I know, it is my regret that I do not know all the members of the Board of Home Missions, though I have the pleasure of knowing its officers. May I not say at least, from in- 178 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS formation and partial knowledge, that you are the Avorthy successors of those who have gone before? You liave entered into their labors. You have come to the king- dom for such a day as this. We are glad to be under the same roof with you. We cannot forget that with you we have our Lord's promise in its broadest and most specific terms : " Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you : and ye shall be wit- nesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judca, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." It was an apostolic promise at first, but it is a promise now for the churches of all times and all lands. A word about the future. In some respects it will be as the past. The personnel of the Boards and of their officers will change. But why regret this ? The Lord of life wdio loves us will order the changes. He will so order them that the work will go on until he come. These changes will hasten his appearing. Brethren, the work will grow upon your hands. We hope that this centennial celebration may help it financially ; and if financially, then also in its scope and power. We hopefully look forward to the winning of more souls, the multiplying of Christian institutions, the exalting of our nation by righteousness, and the bringing of more glory to the God of our salvation. The report of this centennial observance will be car- ried by members of the Assembly to the presbyteries of the Church. It will reach all pastors and stated suj)- plies and churches without pastors. May we not hope that more of our ministers will sound the tidings of your CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 179 age, your vigor, and your work for Christ and souls and country from their pulpits? Your periodicals and leaf- lets will publish the good news. You stand on the threshold of the new century with glad hearts, eager to finish the work given you to do. Never forget that this is the Pentecostal era. Seek and expect and receive the divine benediction. May you and we, with all the members of mission- ary boards and societies, and all Christian people, " be filled with the Spirit" for eflficient service, and so hasten the coming of the Lord and the kingdom of glory ! Amen ! FROM THE BOARD OF EDUCATION BY THE EEV. GEO. D. BAKEE, D. D. Philadelphia, Pa. Fathers and Brethren : — " Misery/' so runs the proverb, " loves company," But misery is not the only thing that loves company. Joy loves company. When the woman found the piece of silver which she had lost she called her friends and neighbors together to rejoice with her. That is what the Home Board has done to-day, — called her neighbors and her friends to rejoice with her, and they are here to do it with all their hearts ; and I take it that there is no one of theiti nearer, and, I trust, dearer to the Board of Home Missions than the Board of Education. The Board of Home Missions early felt its need of the Board of Education, and a friend in need is always a friend indeed. The Board of Home Missions wanted men ; they found it hard to get them ; and they said, " We must have an educating board to furnish us men." They could have got men of a certain stamp, but they could not get the men they wanted and the men that they imperatively required. For anyone who 180 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 181 knows anything about the home mission work knows that it is of no use to send to the front those who are not in every sense of the word men, — men of God and thoroughly furnished to do the work of God. This is tiie function and the glory of the Board of Education to give to the Church well furnished, thoroughly edu- cated men. These are the only men to send to the front. The well organized and rich and quietly going churches of the East can sometimes carry a dull man, carry him for some time ; those churches out there on the frontier can't and won't. They must have strong men and they must have men who are thoroughly educated to meet the peculiar conditions under which, in the providence of God, they are placed. Brethren, this is a good op- portunity for me to say that there are certain persons Avho know very little, who are exceedingly ignorant of the facts in the case (God pity their ignorance !), who have some way or other got it into their heads that the furnishing of help, of pecuniary help, to a man while he is preparing for the ministry takes out his manhood ; that he cannot go into the ministry quite the man he would be if he had stubbornly refused to take one cent of the church's money. I have often wished that if it w^ere right the names might be published, — the names of those ministers in the Presbyterian Church who have received aid, and the names of those who have not. I will not say whether I received aid or not, but I would rather be in the list of those who have. Some of these men I have seen and known personally. It was my privilege for ten years to be chairman of the Synod's 182 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Committee of Home Missions in Michigan. I used to go among these men. I used to go into their homes. I used to see them at their work, and I had then awakened in me an admiration for them, a respect for them, and an estimate of them, which I have carried all through my life, and which has always made me feel that they are the men whom the Church ought to honor above all others. We are here to-day to congratulate the Board of Home Missions. Well, its history for one hundred years is the best congratulation. That tells the story. AVhat a glorious record it is ! It has entered into the life of the nation. It has molded the people. We are so different from what we would have been had it not been for what home missions have done for us. We recognize the perils which confront us at the present time. Dear Dr. Cyrus Dixon (how well I remember his sayings on the platform of the General Assembly) said in his own inimitable way, " The nations of the earth have lifted up their feet and are come hither." How true it was ; and they are lifting them up still. Oh, this ceaseless tramp, tramp, tramp, as the peoples of all the world come up upon our shores ! Can we stand it ? Can we endure the strain ? Can we assimilate them ? These are the questions that often worry us, trouble us, bring us to our knees before God. Yes, brethren, given another hundred years of home missions like the hundred years that are gone, and all will be well. That is the hope, — as has been said more than once here this afternoon, — that is the hope of the nation. Well may the President CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 183 of these United States, the heud and representative of the nation, come here to-night, perhaps at much incon- venience, to speak his word in praise and recognition of home missions. He, and men hke him, discerning men, men wise to know the times, realize that this is the hope of the nation, and that it is the only hope of the nation. Oh, if rich Christians, all rich Christians, realized it to the full ! Brethren, you know that in these days money is being poured out like water for secular education, for the endowment of non-religious universities and colleges, and the establishment of non-religious libraries. There is a peril facing us, not the peril of ignorance, but the peril of Godless education. The institutions and the men and women who, with all their education, spell God with a small g. The salvation of the country is not in education, it is in Christian education, in the very education that this Board of Home Missions is givino- the country to-day, and has been giving the country for one hundred years, in the pulpit and in the school. Oh, that there might be a revival of giving in the direction of supporting missions, home missions ! Foreign mis- sions will take care of themselves if home missions are supported to the extent and in the way they ought to be. God bless the Board of Home Missions. The Board of Education is glad to give you men, glad to give you the best men we have. We wish we had more to give you. We wish you had the money to take more. God bless the Board of Home Missions. God bless the Secre- taries, those of to-day. Ah, what secretaries the Board lias had in all its history ! Henry Kendall ! What a 184 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS giant ! What a general ! He made an epoch in the Church of God in home missions. Let us thank God for these men, let us thank him for those men upon the Board of Directors who give their time and their brains without a cent of compensation in the service of God and the Church and the country. God bless the mis- sionaries and their wives. He only knows how much their wives have to do with their success under the con- ditions in which they are placed. And God be thanked for the Church which stands behind the Board of Home Missions and gives it the sinews of war, — money. And last, but not least, let us thank him to-day for the prayer of faith in the nation's God, which is ever going up from our churches and our homes. FROiNI THE BOARD OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK BY THE HON. EGBERT N. WILLSON Philadelphia, Pa. 3Ir. Iloderator : — The Board of Publication and Sabbath-school Work, which I have the honor of representing on this memo- rable occasion, sends its most cordial greetings to its older sister in the work of evangelization — the Board of Home Missions. The hundred years which have passed since our Church organized this agency have been full of won- drous events. The map of the world has been changed again and again. Inventions have added to the com- forts of life, have made transportation and commerce easy, have changed days into minutes by the power of steam and electricity, and have put within the reach of Christian effort populations which were once so remote or iuaccessible as hardly to be within any plans of work. Meanwhile our own country has passed from a state of youth and a comparatively untried experiment of government to a state of immense prosperity, of enormous dimensions, and of a confidence in its own 185 186 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS strength whicli challenges dispute. The Christian Cluirch, the Presbyterian Church, has not during this centur)- of material progress been indifferent to the op- portunities which Providence has opened. Though it cannot, alas ! be truthfully said that the duties resting upon Christian j)eople to provide the gospel and suit- able religious privileges for the population which has during all these years been pushing its way through the forests, over the prairies, and across rivers and moun- tains toward the setting sun, have been fulfilled, yet much, very much, has been done to that end. The home missionary has j)ressed hard upon the rear of the advancing host of the eager, earnest, but ofttimes reck- less and godless pioneers, who have sought gold, or har- vests, or homes in the West, until further advance has been halted by the waters of the broad l^acific. The story of what such missionaries have done ; of what privations they have suffered ; of what Christian courage and faith they have exhibited ; of A\hat they have contributed toward the morality, manliness, patriotism, and religious life of vast sections of our country now densely populated — that story has, per- haps, never been adequately told. The frontier lifi^ has had peculiar features and perils which those of us who have spent our years in the East have never fully com- prehended. What these would have brought of calamity and evil, had not the home missionary been at hand to recall early home training and associations and to speak the gospel message to the pioneers on the outj)osts of civilization, it would be difficult to describe. God only CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 187 knows. Ha])pily, there are abuiulant testimonials all over the territory which was once home mission ground, in prosperous churches, orderly communities, and warm Christian hearts and earnest lives, that the gospel was faithfully preached by the pioneer missionary, and that his influence was a potent factor in the development of the best thought and life. In all this work the Home Mission Committees and Board of our Presby- terian Church have been conspicuous for their wisdom, energy, perseverance, and success. For their abundant labors, so signally blessed by the great Head of the Church, and for the consecrated lives and great useful- ness of the many thousands of missionaries who have modestly, and frequently in destitution, for Christ's sake, spent their years in trying to reach and save their frontier brothers, it is eminently fitting that the great Presbyterian Church should this day, through its repre- sentatives, express its profound gratitude to almighty God for the guidance and success which he has given to this work. In this thanksgiving the Board which I represent can with peculiar appropriateness take part, for our work, in reaching homes and organizing Sunday schools, frequently precedes that of the home missionary. During the past fourteen years over 600 Presbyterian Churches have grown out of these Sunday schools and been taken in a very large proportion under the care of the Home Mission Board. We take pleasure in testif\-- ing not only to the fraternal relations which have always existed between these two agencies of our Church, but 188 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS also to the high degree of fidelity and -wisdom with which the affairs of home missions have been conducted. So much for the past. AVhat shall be said of the present and future of the home mission work ? It seems to me that no proper conclusion can be reached upon that point without a full recognition of the part which Providence seems to have assigned to our nation in the great drama of history. There is a natural disposition, no doubt, out of mere sentiment, to exalt one's estimate of his own country and of its relative importance. Stripping ourselves, however, of any such emotion, is it not just to say, with cool and good reason, that the United States of America not only occupies an altogether unique position in the family of nations, but that it pos- sesses characteristics and powers which must give to it strong influence in determining the policies and move- ments which yet lie sleeping in the womb of the future ? If I mistake not, many, perhaps most, of the present difficult problems of the world, — social, moral, and relig- ious, — are to be worked to a solution in our midst. Here are the greatest industries. Here is the granary of the world, hardly yet encroached upon sufficiently to be felt. Here is a domain waiting for a population large enough to be called scattering. Here are natural and artificial means of travel and transportation which tie together two oceans in close contact. Here there are the spirit and faculty of discovery and invention, which readily meet a material want with an appropriate remedy. Here is accumulating, also, either for weal or woe — who knows? — that vast aggregation of wealth, which CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 189 may soon bring, if it has not already brought, the center of financial strength from the Old AYorld to the New. But still another fact exists, which differentiates this nation from every other on the face of the globe. Amer- ica — preeminently, the United States of America — is the gathering place of the peoples of the world. In no other land than ours will the future see what history has never exhibited to a like degree, viz., a composite race, assimilated from a mixture of Anglo-Saxon, Celt, Scan- dinavian, Russian, and many other sources. The time will come, not many generations hence, unless all present signs shall fail, when it will not be possible to speak of our people as Anglo-Saxons. We — or, rather, they who shall then live — will be of a mixed race, into which will have entered characteristics derived from various con- stituent elements. What will the race be ? What will it be good for? Will it work in the line of God's plan for the redemption of the world, or will it be sordid, irreverent, and impious ? I believe that the new race, compacted out of the ele- ments now in process of fusion, will be virile, earnest, and aggressive. But if its powers are to be used for good and progress, the energy of the gospel and the sweet influence of Christ's love and life must infuse the mass, and leaven it into a healthful and fruitful life. Into this heterogeneous mass of various racial ele- ments now existing and rapidly accumulating in our land, largely in its newer and outlying portions, the home missionary should go with the message of love and salvation, and the example of a Christian life and I'JO CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS upriglit comluct. Unsanctified, not controlled by Chris- tian princii)los, the strange, unregulated people of for- eign lands, many of whom have learned by lessons of oppression and wrong to hate governments and to di'spisc laws, \vill prove to be a menace to religion and civil order. Every patriot owes it to his country, if he has no higher motive, and every Christian owes it to his God and Saviour, to do what he can by sustaining mis- sionary work in our own land, to save it from infidelity, anarchy, and vice. The future can be saved — I believe it will be saved — from the wreck and ruin which will come from a failure to send the gospel to our own people and to those who come here for refuge and for homes. No cause should appeal to us, Christians and Presby- terians, more strongly than the home mission work. All the ao-encics of our Church should work tofjethcr like the fingers of a man's hand. But let us not fail to re- member that the capacity for work in any direction will, in the long run, depend upon the vigor and vitality of the home work and the home church. There is yet much to be done in this fair, broad land of ours for its elevation and Christianization. The strange people of the mountains in some of the older States appeal for help in the plaintive tones which come from those who feel that they have lost a treasure Avhich once belonged to their ancestors. The remnants of the Indian aborigines, with their imperfectly recognized claim upon the American people ; ' the Alaskans, rude and degraded, who yet manifest an CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 11)1 appetite for better things and a real capaeily for educa- tion and improved conditions ; the foreign born at the mines or on the farms ; the native born, who yet dwell in undeveloped parts of our country, where neither numbers nor possessions have furnished opportunities of religious instruction and worship ; tliat peculiar peo- })lc to be found in large parts of our western territory, wiio mingle a sort of Oriental mysticism, passion, and ignorance with a remarkable energy and ambition for j)ower — all these form a basis for an appeal to American Christians, and especially to those of our own Church, to double our eflPorts, to rally around the banner which Christ has set for us and enriched with the color of his own blood, and to pledge ourselves to an earnest, per- sistent, prayerful effort to make the new century of home mission work so rich, full, and successful that, before the cycle sliall have run its course, our country shall stand forth among the nations of the world, not only Christian in name, but Christian in fact, influence, and life. God grant that our own beloved Church may be a broad channel through which the divine blessing may flow upon our country and the world ! FEOM TPIE BOARD OF MINISTERIAL RELIEF BY THE HON. ROBERT H. SMITH Baltimore, Md. Mr. Moderator : I think I have caught the spirit of this gathering. I rather incline to think that the short speaker is the popular speaker to-day. I am after popularity. I think, although many of you have bald heads and more of you have gray heads, you are only children grown up. A few years ago I was addressing some children one evening in Baltimore, and it grew quite late before I was called upon to speak, about tlie time the children are usually going to bed. I knew I had a problem before me to keep those children awake, and there was a clock on the wall, as there is facing me now (and I am going to watch it, too), and I said to those children, " I am going to stop at five minutes of nine. If I do not stop at that time you give me some kind of a signal, you call out Amen." I began to speak. I got quite interested. I spoke for a little while and then I thought I would look at the clock. I was safe ; my time was not yet up. All right. Then I started off again and I forgot myself, and presently a little girl piped out over in the corner, " Amen !" And 192 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 193 I stoi^ped. I say you are very much like that little girl ; you want short speakers this afternoon. INIr. Moderator, I am commissioned to bring to the Board of Home ]\Iissions to-day the congratulations of the Board of Ministerial Relief. This is a family gather- ing. We have invited in a few of our neighbors, as has been said, our Episcopal neighbor and our Baptist neigh- bor, and so on. But it is rather a family gathering. The moderator said he thought that brotherhood was the spirit of Christianity to-day. I think it is sisterhood. We speak of the Board of Home Missions — " she," and the Board of so and so — " she." They seem to be all daughters in this family of the Presbyterian Clun-c]i. We have come in this afternoon to brine: our conffratu- lations to the oldest sister, the oldest sister in the family — a hundred years old. I do not see the birthday cake round here to-day. They usually have a cake, you know, on a birthday, with so many candles on it. I do not see the cake with the hundred candles. Perhaps they are saving it up for Carnegie Hall to-night, or per- haps this lady is a little modest and does not want to keep her age so prominent as to burn a hundred candles here this afternoon. But let me say to you, Mr. ]\Ioderator, in all candor and sincerity, that the Board of Ministerial Relief brings very hearty congratu- lations to the Board of Home Missions, her oldest sister. I think it is unfortunate that it should have fallen to me to have to bring these greetings. I think it rather should have been that gentleman sitting down in the pew there, Dr. Agnew, who knows so much more about ministerial 13 194 CENTENNIAL OE HOME MISSIONS relief and home missions than I do ; but he is a very modest man, and, while we urged him to come, he de- clined. I think it would have been well if you had had Dr. Samuel T. Lowrie, venerable and dignified and faithful to the cause of ministerial relief. He could have brought these greetings to-day. Bnt it has fallen upon me. I do not know why, unless my head is gray and my body is young. Now all these men whom I have mentioned — Dr. Agnew, Dr. Lowrie, Dr. Knox, Mr. Bartlett, the presi- dent, and other gentlemen — would have been glad to- day to have been here and to have joined in the cele- bration of this hundredth anniversary of the Board of Home Missions. But do you know, when I come to think of it, it is not so much their congratulations that I ought to bring you to-day, heartily as they do con- gratulate you, heartily as they enter into sympathy with the work of the Board of Home Missions, — the Board of Ministerial Relief has a constituency that I believe will send you more hearty congratulations even than the members of this Board. You have already been told that the Board of Ministerial Relief has had upon its rolls this last year over nine hundred names. The most interesting fact, I think, in connection with that report and with those figures is this : 140 men who received help from that Board have passed their seventieth birth- day, and they have spent an average of forty-four years in the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. Stop a moment and think about those 140 men. The fact is, that a majority of those men have labored under the CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 195 Home Board. The fact is, that a majority of those men — no, I will say all of those men — are rejoicing to-day in what has been accomplished through this Board. But a majority of them rejoice in the fact that they have their part, and not a small part either, in accomplish- ing what has been done by the Board of Home Mis- sions in this line. Tliose men have done their work, but they have not forgotten the work they did, nor have they forgotten the Board under which they worked. They rejoice that she has been able to accomplish what she has done, and they send their hearty congratulations and pray, as I know they do, every one of them, and pray that the hundred years to come shall see greater things accomplished by this Board than the hundred years that are past. But there is a larger company than that. There are some 200 men, many of whom, a majority of whom, have worked under the Board of Home Missions, who are laid aside, with broken health, with shattered nerves, who are unable to prosecute their work further, and they are laid aside. They are receiv- ing help from the Board of Ministerial Relief. They send their congratulations. Do you imagine that there is one of those men who would not be glad if to-day he could be laboring as he has done before, many of them under the Board of Home Missions, to-day ? You have certified, brethren, you have certified, in your presbyterial capacities, to the worthiness of every one of those men, and if they are worthy, and I am sure they are, they would most gladly be at their posts to-day carrying on this work. They send you their congratulations. FROM THE BOARD OF CHURCH ERECTION BY THE KEY. DAVID MAGIE, D. D. Paterson, N. J. To the Board of Home Ilissions : Dear Brethren : — It was a matter of deep regret to me personally, and to the Board of Church Erection, which laid upon me the pleasant duty of representing them, on the occasion of the celebration by the General Assembly of your completion of a century of work, that owing to a mis- understanding of the time, our Board was not repre- sented in the offering to your Board the congratulations of all the boards of our Church. And this has been to our Board a matter of even greater regret, Ijecause with no other board is our work more intimately and har- moniously connected. In offering to you on such an occasion our congratu- lations we can speak from an intimate knowledge of your officials and your work. It has been your work to break up the soil, and sow the seed, and gather the harvest ; it has been our work to prepare the buildings where your harvests could be garnered and where your 196 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 197 laborers could be sheltered. With sucli a special oppor- tunity to judge of the greatuess and value of your work, we offer our most sincere congratulations. And it is with great pleasure we present to the Church, Avhich we both serve with one spirit, the harmony of purpose and mutual respect and confidence which exist between our two Boards. We shall endeavor in the future, as in the past, to do all in our power to establish the work you are doing, and to extend and build up our Church in this land. One hundred years of pioneer work for God and our country call for grateful remembrance. The wise and devoted men who planned and carried on this remark- able work deserve to be remembered. And those faithful, devoted men who, in hardship and danger, struggled and labored and suffered and died, deserve honorable remembrance ; and as truly the wives, who in loneliness and want, sustained their courage and never faltered in service. If the past calls for remembrance and gratitude, the future calls for new consecration. The experience of the past, the full confidence of the Church, the memory of the noble men who have guided your affairs, and the assurance that your work is in the hands of men as wise and faithful as those who have preceded them, may well give you courage and stir you to new efforts. The frontier no longer advances into an unoccupied territory, but it is found in our cities. The task before us is ever growing greater and will require new efforts and larger expenditures. To our Church and to our God we must 198 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS look for the means to do a larger work. The earnest prayer of the Board of Church Erection is that your future work may be more glorious and successful than the past. I remain with very great respect, on behalf of this board, David Magie, Board of Church Erection Rooms. President. FROM THE BOARD FOR FREEDMEN BY THE REV. HENRY T. McCLELLAND, D. D. Pittsburg, Pa. Mr. Moderator: — The Board of Home Missions, aged one hundred years, domiciled in the city of New York, receives by these presents from the Board of Missions for Freed- men, aged thirty-seven years, domiciled in the city of Pittsburg, congratulations, greetings of love, and God- speed. Of all the noble board connection we are your nearest of kin. We, to speak in the happy vein of the people we represent, to whom we belong, we are your own little pickaninny, your " Alabama coon." We come from the same soil. I understand that sporadic- ally, at least, the Board of Home Missions sprang up in the alma terra of sooty Pittsburg. We have been nourished by the same soil. And since you have moved to New York we know it to be a fact that you have often written home for money, and, as far as we know, you have never been refused. We have followed you with intense interest in all your noble and worthy work. True, we have sometimes thought in your career that you were growing so ponderous and 199 200 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS great that wc could not follow you. You reminded us very much of a little incident published in the Harpers' Drawer some years ago. There was the great old " Aunty," broad and ponderous and full of dignity, glorious in her bandanna, filling up all the roadway in her majesty, and some fifty feet behind her came a poor little shrivelled pickaninny, bow-legged, spindle- shanked, with a great basket of clothes on his head, and he piped out and said, " Where you gwine, granny ? Where you gwine ? " " Ise gwine where Ise gwine, that's where Ise gwine. Aint goin' to tell you where Ise gwine. Ise gwine where Ise gwine, that's where Ise gwine." We have sometimes thought that was the way it was going with you, because we thought there was more grass in your grandfather's meadow than in all the alkali plains of the West, and we thought that per- haps there is more true home missionary country to the square inch in the sunny Southland than there is where they drive dog sleds for a thousand miles without seeing the face of man. That's all right. We believe in home missions, and we pray you God speed. They do not neglect us. We get plenty of money at home, and, in common with all the good board family, we have the same great Church to appeal to, the same General Assembly to come up and recom- mend us year after year for ample gifts for all our work. We ought not to be jealous, for there is far more pabulum in our sources of supply than we ever can get, both of us tog(jther, and there is a great deal more than CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 201 Avo could ever assimilate, even if we did obtain it. So \vc thank God and take courage because you are going on. AVe are only thirty-seven years old and you are a hundred, and it always makes the younger members of the family feel happy to see the vigor of the older mem- bers, their longevity. But if you are so vigorous at the age of one hundred, what may we not hope to be ? We are thankful here that the vista which your progress and success have afforded us does not, by any means, shorten your own. There is a tie that we wish to mention here. There is another, — "she" is a "sister." Long ago, in the Holy Land, from the fat uplands of Galilee, on the blue marge of that glorious lake where Jesus walked and talked, there were certain women who ministered of their sub- stance to the King and Head, the greatest of all home missionaries ; and there are, in this land and in our beloved Church, certain other women, a glorious and mighty company, who are perpetuating in prayers and gifts rich and full, and increasing this glorious service. They bear your name and ours together. This is an alliance material for the progress of our common work. It is an alliance spiritual, which promises glorious results in the years to come. You are indeed flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, soul of our soul. Our common interests make us wondrous kind to one another. The specific differences in our work also afford a means of calling out our affection, one for the other. We of the Freedmen's Board are not blind to the side that you see in your vision of consecration 202 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS fur the Master. "We also see outstretched hands that outvie in number and in strange shapes the hands in Vedder's ilhistration of the Kubaiyat of Omar Khay- yam, and we hear voices that, to the uninitiated, out- jargon a thousand times the cries that were heard on Pentecost. We hear these multitudinous voices from many native-born in our own land and from strange peoples gathering here freely from many lands. We on our own part hear with devout insight and sym- pathy every day and hour one great minor strain that, coming from the Southland, overwhelms us with pathetic insistence and with a divine call. I say that the peculiarities of our work, — yours continental, ours provincial ; yours diversified and extensive, ours con- centrated and intense, — only makes our love for one another and our prayers more earnest and sincere. We thank God for your history, that under the imperial Christ you have had generals greater than ever gathered about the great Napoleon ; that you have had soldiers out on the firing line and about the heart of the im])erial Christ braver than the soldiers of any "Old Guard" that ever fought the world's battles. We thank God that the star of your destiny has had a hundred years' dawn. We pray that that star may rise tlirough all the years to come, and shine through all the lands, so that as your prayer is and ours with you, this land of ours shall become a basis of cosmopolitan supply, and all the world through us may hear of Christ in the sim- plicity of the gospel and in the power of the Holy Spirit. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 203 We bring you onr greetings. God bless you, in- crease your facilities, multiply your agencies, and God bless us that avc may stand in our lot till the end of the days, and that our crowns together may be cast at the feet of him who loves the white man wherever he is born and from whatever clime he comes, and M'ho loves the black man with his heart of hearts. FROM THE BOARD OF AID FOR COLLEGES BY THE REV. HERRICK JOHNSON, D. D., LL. D. Chicago, III. Mr. Moderator and Brethren : — The last of the boards and the youngest, the Ben- jamin of the family, brings to the oldest brother hearty greeting and the most joyful congratulations. The youngest brother, the Board of College Aid, is only eighteen years old and still in his teens, while a cen- tury's record has been made by, and a century's honors are on the head of, our oldest brother, Home Missions. This is called a " Fellowship Meeting." It is well named, for there is not only a wideness, but a oneness of interest represented here to-day. All our Church Boards are unified in the great commission : " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation." These boards are the missionary scheme embodied in or- ganization for the purpose of going into all the world and preacliing the gospel to the whole creation, and though only three of them are named mission boards, they all are missionary in spirit and organized for the express purpose of giving the gospel to the whole creation, and without this there would be no justification for their existence. Home missions was organized one hundred years ago, 204 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 205 and the first in the field. For the gospel must begin to be preached at Jerusalem. What followed next? Ministerial education. Presbyterians believe in cul- ture, in discipline, in scholarship. They believe that as error is championed by the ripest scholarship, truth must be alike championed or leave the field. Whatever foundations may be laid, and whatever imposing super- structure may be reared, if in the building work you do not hear the constant click of the intellectual trowel, and the constant ring of the intellectual hammer, some- thing is the matter with the building work. So we want men of education. What followed that ? Foreign missions. For the Church of God in this land could not keep between these two seas and obey Christ. Publication the same year. Why ? Because the ob- ligation to preach the gospel by the living voice carried with it the obligation to preach it by metallic type, and through the publication boards we are scattering the gospel as the leaves of the morning. Church erection next, because the mission church must have a house in which to worship. Ministerial relief followed, because after a fight of years, enduring great hardship as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, these scarred and war-worn veterans needed to be cared for in their old age, seeing that during all the years of their activity and service they have scarcely had a salary to keep them from want. So these eight boards arch the ministerial life from the cradle to the grave. 206 CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3IISSI0NS The Board of College Aid builds the college, the Christian college, that is fitted to rear the Christian missionary. The Board of Education helps that man through the college. Tlie Boards of Home Missions and Foreign Missions and Freedmen locate that man and give him a field. The Board of Publication arms and equips him for service. The Board of Church Erection gives him a house of worship, and the Board of Minis- terial Relief tenderly and lovingly cares for him in his old age. This is the unity of the boards. They are our missionary scheme, you see, embodied in organization. Mission boards all of them. Each has its own work. The eye cannot say to the ear, " I have no need of thee." The hand cannot say to the foot, " I have no need of thee." Home missions cannot say to Education, " I have no need of thee." Foreign missions cannot say to the Board of College Aid, " I have no need of thee." The hand cannot do the foot's work. The ear cannot do the eye's work. Put a leg where the arm is. Lodge it in the socket at the shoulder, and what kind of effi- ciency would you have ? Brethren of all the boards, keep to your own fields. Do your own work. Let us each in his own place meet his responsibility. Then again, their proportion. If any man or board bulges large witliout proper consideration of the inter- ests that are represented in the other boards, he is get- ting this system out of proportion. He has lost balance, and therefore so far injured the work. He is swelling unduly in one direction to the exclusion of this har- monious and beautiful proportion which lies in the com- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 207 prehension of the whole situation. If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were an ear, where Avere the smelling? Just think of that for a moment. Suppose home missions should absorb the situation, where would the foreign field be? A\"here would education be ? Where would the men be that are to take the places in the home field and in the foreign field ? If the whole body were an eye, just conceive what kind of a body it would be — a great, enormous goggle eye walking about on two legs. Sup- pose the whole body were an ear, and what kind of a thing would we have? An expanding, and ever ex- panding ear ! You know what animal we see that is all ear. Samson could not have done half as much with a living ass as he did with the jawbone of a dead one. Their mutual dependence. These eight boards are mutually dependent upon one another. How can the home missions or the foreign missions get along without men ? How can they have the right men except they be educated ? How can they be rightly educated except in a Christian college? And so we go, you see, from boai'd to board, and place to place, and reason to rea- son, and we find them all interlocked, and interlaced, and marshaled together, unified, representing a single interest. I remember a saying by Phelps that expresses this relationship very beautifully with respect to two of these boards. He said in a very impressive way : " If I were a missionary in Canton, I would pray every morning for home missions in America for the sake of Canton." And I remember reading in Rogers' Essays, 208 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS away back in my seminary days, an essay on " Reason and Faith/' in which was another beautiful illustration of this same interdependence and mutual intimate rela- tionship. He represented reason and faith as twin- born, but each, alas, suffering a sad privation. While reason had an eye of piercing intelligence, his ear was closed to sound ; and while faith had an ear of exquisite delicacy, upon her sightless eyeballs as she lifted tlieni toward heaven the sunbeams played in vain. And so the two, hand in hand, went through the world, the eye of reason by day the guide of faith, and the ear of faith by night the guide of reason. So these benevolent agen- cies of our beloved Church go hand in hand, each meet- ing a need not met by the others, and all mutually helpful and dependent. What is the conclusion from all this? First, brethren, no pet cause in a pulpit or in a church. An offering for every cause. All the boards one cause. They constitute the arch, as I have said once before, in our scheme of Christian benevolence. The Board of Col- lege Aid puts the first stone in the arch ; the Board of Education, the second ; the Boards of Foreign and Home Missions and Freedmen, three great stones on beyond. The Board of Publication, the next. The Board of Ministerial Relief, the last. And there we have the completed arch from the cradle to the grave of the ministerial life. God bless the church that thus seeks to honor him in this great stewardship, and com- bines all her forces in the effort to take this world for Christ. FROM HOME MISSION SOCIETIES OTHER DENOMINATIONS 14 THE AMERICAN BAPTIST HOME MISSION SOCIETY BY THE REV. W. C. P. EHOADES, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. (Chairman of Executive Board.) Mr. Moderator, Fathers, and Brethren : — The American Baptist Home Mission Society to the Home Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church sends hearty Christian greetings, congratulations, and best wishes. As a society we cannot report, as you do this year, a complete century of splendid service; we have just com- pleted our seventieth year. But as your work rejoices and stimulates us, so may our work comfort and encour- age you. In seventy years we have issued more than 26,000 commissions to missionaries and teachers, who have reported the organization of more than 10,000 Sunday schools and the organization of 5610 churches. They have baptized, on confession of their faith, more than 170,000 believers. Since the establishment of our " Gift Fund " (20 years ago) we have aided in the erec- tion of more than 1600 church edifices — total cost $3,500,000— with accommodations for 400,000 wor- shipers. We are helping to maintain more than 30 211 212 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS schools (for negroes and Indians mainly) Avith a yearly enrollment of 6000 pupils, more than 400 of whom are students for the ministry. We are preaching the gospel, in their own tongues, to 22 different nation- alities or peoples. Our field is North America and our motto is, " North America for Christ !" We join hands with you to-day as Christians — saved by Christ, servants of Christ — fellow-workers with Christ in the most blessed work in the world. We join hands with you as patriots ; for surely these societies present patriotism in its most perfect form. If they are rightly counted lovers of their country who, in times of its peril, go forth with sword or gun to battle for months or years (it may be to death) against their country's foes, how much more those who spend a lifetime in fighting against ignorance and ungodliness, the greatest enemies of every country and every home ! If they are rightly counted worthy of their country's lasting honor who, in time of danger, lay their fortunes at her feet that armies may be equipped for her pro- tection, what shall be said of those who have estab- lished recruiting stations for righteousness (which ex- alteth nations) in all the land ; who have built church forts as centers of strength and power in all her bor- ders, and have garrisoned these with faithful veterans enlisted for life ! The work of these home mission societies is unsurpassed in the largeness and purity of its patriotism, and they deserve well of their country. We join hands with you as lovers and servants of CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 213 liunianity itself. The tide of inuiiigration is again at its flood, and \vc teach and preach (in our own huid) in the languages of all the great nations of the earth. The great problems of these moving tides of humanity are ours in common with all good citizens ; but they do not overwhelm us with despair, for w^e are confident we have their solution. We are not of those who are with- out hope. AYe do not class these millions with the few lawless ones. The great mass of those who have sought homes here have been humble, hard-working, conscien- tious. God-fearing men and w^omen. In politics, in finances, in education, in religion, our country's debt is incalculably great to the nations "whose sons have sw^armed to our shores. The problem for us, as Chris- tian workers, is not how to shut out, but rather how to build in and build up. To those who are permitted to come here let there be given a welcome, warm, thought- ful, helpful ; let a brotherly interest be manifested in their settlement and welfare ; let free schools be pro- vided for them and an open Bible be given to them — all these, together with the atmosphere of the kindest, freest, best country the sun shines on — and assimilation will take care of itself. We unite with you in prayer for the perfecting of the kingdom of Christ in our own beloved land : that Chris- tians may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. No generation of Christians ever had larger opportunities ; no generation of Christians ever had greater resources ; no generation of Christians ever had more solemn responsibilities. Our field is the most 214 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS fascinating of all, fascinating in its greatness and in the intensity of its life. Onr field is the most important of all ; it fills the eye of the world to-day as no other country does ; it appeals to the imagination and hope of the world as does no other country ; it promises more to-day than does any other country. The meeting of the nations here in a new nation, rich in the experi- ences of the past, yet untrammeled to a great extent by the burdens of the past, unlimited in wealth and power, free to grow, puts us on our mettle and challenges us to do our utmost. Surely no field promises larger and quicker harvests. We unite with you in prayer for laborers, and that the children of the kingdom may be wise and liberal according to the opportunity. New conditions will present themselves in our work and we must be ready to meet them. Heretofore from scattered cabins, from gathering hamlets, from growing villages and towns, and embry- onic cities the call has been heard for one hundred years, and the response has been quick and generous. In our day a louder, more imperative call is coming from our great cities. In response, an expense of lov- ing service and of money, unknown heretofore, large beyond the dreams of the past, will be required in these coming years for our great cities. This city in which you meet has more people than the combined popula- tion of fourteen great States and Territories. Who is sufficient for these things ? We are — thank God ! — we are through Christ Jesus our Lord. Greetings, congratulations, and good wishes, I bring CENTENNIAL OF HOME 3ITSSI0XS 215 you from a sister society. We join hands with you as Christians, as patriots, as lovers and servants of humanity. A¥e unite with you in prayer and effort for the perfecting of the kingdom of God in our beloved country. CONGREGATIONAL HOME MISSION SOCIETY BY THE EEV. J. B. CLAEK, D.D., New Yoke, N. Y. (Senior Secretary.) 3Ir. Mode7'ator and Brethren : — I HAVE, first of all, a brief message committed to me by the society which I represent. I would be glad to have had some one read it besides myself, but Dr. Thompson says, " Read it yourself," and I always obey Dr. Thompson. " The Congregational Home Missionary Society ex- tends to the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyte- rian Church its most cordial greetings and congratulations at this centennial anniversary. We heartily rejoice in the splendid growth of that beneficent work in which you have for a hundred years, with steadily increasing efficiency, sought the evangeli- zation of our entire country. We note with profound gratitude to almighty God the statesmanlike sagacity and unwavering devotion of your officers and leaders, the ever-increasing generosity of your churches as they have seen the strategic necessity 216 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 217 of your work, and the unflinching heroism of your army of missionuries who have planted the banner of Christ in multitudes of places in our national domain. We rejoice that we too have had a share with you in til is service of Christian patriotism. While we celebrated our diamond jubilee last year, marking seventy-five years of our existence in our pres- ent form, several of our State societies, which are now important factors in our present work, were organized more than one hundred years ago, and their missionaries were in the far west of that time. Side by side with you we have toiled during the century you now cele- brate, and our missionaries have during that time ren- dered over 60,000 years of service, organized 6650 churches in every part of our republic ; and our cluirches have supported the work by their offerings of nearly |21, 000,000. With our congratulations to you go our prayers to the great Head of the Church, that he will make your second century even more illustrious than the first in signal usefulness. And may we continue to work together in the same loving fellowship as now, not rivals but co-laborers, seeking the same great end, the salvation of men, and a Christian America that shall exemplify in all its social and civic life the ideals of Jesus Christ. Joseph B. Clark, Washington Choate, Secretaries." 218 CENTENyiAL OF HOME MISSIONS Mr. j\[oderator and Brethren : — I am hapi)y to be the bearer of such a message as this, and to assure you that it is something more than a mere form of words. You and we came from the same stock, the good okl Puritan stock. Some of you tarried in the Church, hoping to redeem it, and some of us came out without any such hope at all. But we were both fighting the same battle, and with almost the same wea- pons. And that battle has made us one family and one fold, with just a little difference, perhaps, in our methods of housekeeping, that is all. I doubt, brethren, if any man, whatever his theological acumen, going into one of your churches or into one of ours any Lord's day, could tell the difference between them, either in doctrine or in worship, unless he were exceptionally unfortunate in his choice. A little difference in the emphasis here and there, that is about all he would discover. We cannot forget either, brethren, that in the closing days of the eighteenth century there was something almost like or- ganic union came to pass between us, when delegates from your General Assembly were received by our New Eng- land Association, and delegates from Massachusetts and Connecticut Associations were welcomed by your Gen- eral Assembly as members, and when they discussed the same questions on the same floor and had an equal vote also in settling them. I scarcely know how we escaped organic vniion at that time, we came so very near it. Nor can we forget that in the early years of the nine- teenth century, when our hearts were so burdened about those new settlements of the West, your missionaries and CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 219 ours went out with clasped luuids bearing commissions from the same old Amcjrican Home Missionary Society, supported by the same treasury, and that treasury filled by your gifts and by ours combined. That lasted thirty- five years, that union. It would be lasting to-day but for the hope which has been well assured and sustained that by division we could accomplish yet larger con- quests for the common Lord. But that was the history of our home missionary work for thirty-five years. Nor least of all can we, brother Congregationalists, forget that famous " plan of union," that historic plan of union, that bound our churches on the frontier together for more than fifty years. Never was a fairer compact than that. Never were contracting parties more liberal, more honest, more sincere, more just in their intentions than they, and if the result has been somewhat less fortunate for us than for you, we have only to remember that it was not you who proposed it, but we. It came from Connecticut to you, and not from you to us. Brethren, we do not regret the plan of union. Do not for a moment think it. The more you look at it the more it shines as the most splendid object lesson of Christian comity which the last century witnessed, from end to end. We do not regret either the vantage which came to you from it, — not in the least, — when we see that by just so much more the Puritan faith and the Puritan spirit, which are above all denominational advantage, have been disseminated throughout the land. And if we are somewhat poorer by the arrangement, — poorer, we are told, by several hundred churches, — well, we comfort 220 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS ourselves with the thouglit that it is an honorable poverty which, like that of the apostle, has made many rich. Brethren, what shall we say now of the present and the future ? One word only : Let brotherly love con- tinue. Thank God we must not, we need not say. Let there be brotherly love, or, Let brotherly love be re- stored ; but, Let brotherly love continue, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, yes, world without end. Brethren, there is a great deal more Christian comity in our missionary work than some critics would have us believe, especially that critic who gets his judgment from a car window flying through a town at the rate of sixty miles an hour. He sees so many steeples, — he counts everything that looks like a spire, — like a man I heard of, who even counted the ambitious dome of a hennery for a spire. Everything counts for a spire in the eyes of that man, and he rushes into print with a harrowing tale of the awful wickedness and the awful multiplicity of churches, and the awful waste of men and money on the frontier. Well, brethren, whatever truth there may be in it, it does not hold between Pres- byterians and Congregationalists, because we have our practical way of settling all those difficulties. We have our compact, and it is a working compact. It works. About the only question we have to consider, the most delicate and difficult one — about some church that is sup- posed to be dead, when other people think it isn't. But I have this to say with regard to that, brethren : If you CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 221 ever discover a dead Congregational church on mis- sionary ground, we will join with you in holding a mutual inquest over the remains. And you cannot do us a greater favor if that church is holding the ground in any other way than as a corpse should, you cannot do us a greater favor than by planting a live Presbyterian Church right over its grave. And we will do the same for you. For Congregationalists, whatever their al- leged heresies, brethren, do not believe in the continued probation of a church after death. Then let brotherly love continue. That is about all the message I have. We were told by one of our pulpit orators the other day that never since the church began on earth have denominational lines been more distinctly drawn than to-day. That may be true. But it is only half true. Never since the day of Pentecost has there been so much real union between denominations as there is to-day. Never such mutual charity between them ; never such respect for things in which we differ, and never, never, I am sure, such loving accord in all evangelistic and missionary work. I say then, let brotherly love con- tinue. Your beloved and honored and noble secretary came to Boston last season and gave us a most cordial right hand of your fellowship. It was lovely. I wish you all could have heard him. You know how it must have been for you know him. Now it is my great pleasure to stand here to-day and to respond to that loving greeting, and to offer to you the right hand of our fellowship. In the name of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, in the name of the Congregational 222 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS churches that stand behind it, I give you a loving God- speed for the new century. Let there be only one con- tention between us, which shall redeem the larger por- tion of this fair land to King Emanuel ; and I pray God, brethren, that when Ave shout together the harvest home, your share in the glorious result will be both abundant and rewarding. MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH BY BISHOP E. G. ANDREWS, D. D. New York, N. Y. 3Ir. Moderator : — I ALSO am commissioned to bring greetings, congratu- lations, and God-speed, and this from the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. And now, Mr. Moderator, what more shall I say ? Have not the topics which have thus been enumerated been thor- oughly exhausted ? Yet words of affection may be often repeated without weariness. Let me then give you the greetings of this sister church and its missionary society as brethren to you beloved in the household of faith ; as coworkers with you in the kingdom and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ ; as heirs with you of the great salvation. Blessed be God for his infinite compassions to us. I congratulate you upon the century of your history, the opportune moment of your organization, the decades that have followed of faithful work under most skillful leadership, the large increase of churches under your care, the multitudes who, saved and led to Christ by your ministrations, have already crossed the flood, 223 224 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS and tlie still larger number, perhaps, that remain, work- ing in the churches which you have founded ; upon the colleges and schools which you have established, u])on the broad liberalities which you have inculcated, and upon the patriotic service which you, in common with a multitude of your fellow-men, have been able to render. I bid you God-speed ; for, brethren, the work that lies before us in the coming century is incomparably greater, I think, and even more difficult than that which has already been accomplished. We have had a marvelous grow'th of population ; but what shall be the population of this fair land when the year 2000 shall have been rung? I think, at a very moderate calculation, it must be at least four hundred millions of people, covering all the plains, crowding all the cities, accumulating forces for good or for evil beyond our power of estimate. And these are the generations that we are to meet. They are to be composite in character. How admirably one of our brethren this afternoon set that forth, together with the hopefulness of the condi- tions thus arising ! But then, further, these great social and economic questions that are vexing us to the core in these days, these solicitudes that press upon so many humane and Christian and patriotic hearts, of the relation of class to class, of labor to capital, and beyond that, then that new spirit of independence in thought, of inquiry, of unwillingness to receive from the fathers aught of their affirmed knowledge ; that spirit leading to such wide- spread doubt and criticism, in so many cases touching CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 225 the very fundamentals of our faith, — these are the things that it seems make the future that lies before us one of very great anxiety to every thoughtful man ; and he who understands aught of this problem thus to be solved must turn to this society, with other kindred societies, and from the profound depths of his heart wish it God-speed. May your agencies be abundantly multiplied. May your treasury be overflowing. May your leadership be more skillful than any that you have known even in your palmiest days, and so may you contribute to that great work which the Lord of the vineyard has laid upon us all. I have rejoiced in these days at what I have been privileged to see and hear of your work. I was present during a greater part of yesterday afternoon and heard the presentations then made so wisely and so eloquently touching your work, as you crossed the Alleghenies, and prospected through the Mississippi Valley, and climbed the Rockies, and poured yourself upon the Pacific Slope. I thanked God for it. But I thank God that you did not stand alone in that work. I may rehearse for a moment the work of our own church possibly without offending you. We did not begin our formal and organized work so early as did yourselves. Indeed, we did not begin our church life so early. It was in the year 1766 that Mr. Wesley's first two missionaries landed at Gloucester City, opposite Phila- delphia, and began their ministration, so that we have only a church life of about half the length of your own life in this country, perhaps not half the length of that 15 226 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS life; I tliink not. And we were poor as well as feeble, too ; but from the beginning I think the missionary spirit was in us unorganized, as I am glad to learn from your various documents and statements it was in your Presbyterian Church. And Mr. Asbury, our first great leader in America, before there was any mission- ary society organized, began to collect in the eastern regions funds with which he crossed toward the AUe- ghenies, and crossed the Alleghenies, supplying, out of the scanty resources thus gathered, the needs of the laboring men who had borne themselves, carried them- selves, sometimes with their families, into that western world. Sixty times did Mr. Asbury cross the Alle- ghenies before the year 1816 (when his course termi- nated), mostly on horseback, carrying the gospel into those regions to his brethren gone before him, so that they as well as yourselves occupied that region, and the Tennessee and Kentucky region, and then the Ohio region ; and so we went on doing this work, which at length, with the work done by your society, and by other brethren of other churches, has turned that broad and glorious Mississippi Valley into one of the great treasuries of the Lord's people and of the Lord's Church. The upshot of it is this, that to-day we have only one missionary society in our church, covering both our for- eign and our home work. But the appropriations made for that home work by this society, added to the appropriations realized, the moneys realized by the Women's Home Missionary Board of our church, amount to somewhat over $800,000 each year. We CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 227 have a vast constituency. We wish they were better than they are. We wish they were more liberal than they are. But still we are gaining and growing in this matter, and we hope for a long time, a very long time, to be united with you in the great work of turning this land into Emanuel's land. Pardon me, sir, for taking so much of your time. I rejoice, brethren, in your successes, and pray God's blessing upon you in all your work. DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN MISSIONARY SO- CIETY OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCO- PAL CHURCH IN THE U. S. A. BY THE EEV. D. H. GREER, D.D. New Yoek, N. Y. Mr. 3Ioderator and Christian Brethren : — It is a great pleasure to be able to stand upon this platform, although for a moment I had some little diffi- culty in getting here. One of your courteous ushers, not recognizing my Presbyterian affinities, questioned for a moment my right to appear before you. But here I am, and here I am glad to be, and I esteem it a great privilege and honor to have been selected to convey to you the hearty good wishes and congratulations, upon this your one hundredth anniversary, of the Domestic and Foreign INIissionary Society of the Protestant Epis- copal Church. Your home missionary society is older than ours. We have not yet reached and celebrated our centennial. And yet, notwithstanding this difference in our ages and our comparative youth, we are trying in our missionary enterprise and aggressiveness to keep up 228 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 229 and to catch up witli you, and pcrliap.s, — T do not know, — have already done so. Not, however, in the spirit of ecck'siastical rivahy, but in that other and ncjbler spirit of Christian fellowship and charitable competition which provokes unto love and unto good works. There are, to be sure, some differences between us, but I have heard rumors to the effect that there are some differences among yourselves. Some of you are low church Pres- byterians ; some others are high church ; some others broad church, and that there are others again, like my honored friend and your distinguished moderator, who, in the beautiful catholicity and comprehensiveness of his Christian character, has acquired that Christian art, tliat fine Christian art, of learning how to unite and to adorn them all. Intimations may have come to you that differences of the same or of similar character exist among ourselves in the Episcopal Church ; and yet we can all somehow manage to live and work together, and perhaps to do, not in spite of our differences, if they are not too radical and vital, but because of our differences, better and more effectual Christian work, reaching out thereby and touching many different lines, many different persons, and many different types of temperament, and character, and thought; establishing here and there different points of view, not one of which alone, but all of which together, shall constitute the circle points, the ever-widening circle points, surrounding Jesus Christ, the life of that great, strong Son of God which no human term can compass and define. Thus will Christendom become like a great prism, reflecting Jesus Christ in 230 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS beautiful color lights, aud bringing out more completely the fullness of him who filleth all in all. Yet while differences exist, unity must exist too. And where and how is that unity to be found? Gentle- men, in my judgment, not through our General Con- ventions, or your General Assemblies, but in the mis- sionary field where the representatives of our various missionary societies, — the pioneer w^ork on the frontier line, like soldiers of different regiments or of different army divisions, yet with the same battle flag and under the same banner, — are confronting the same hostile forces, and by their common aim and effort shall react upon Christendom at large, and give its true unity to it. Not only shall we contribute thus to the unity of the Church, but to the unity of the State, giving to it that permanent support which it can only have in the everlasting prin- ciples of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is your conviction, my brethren, and that is our conviction, and what we are both trying to do is to give to the State that permanent support. We are trying this year to raise $1,000,000 for our steady general missionary work, in addition to specific and special contributions for the foreign and domestic fields. If you sliall try to reach twice that sum, or three times or ten times, God bless you in your effort and give it abundant success. For the field is big and broad, and there is room enough for all. Only let us remember that it is our common task to introduce the spirit of Jesus Christ into our American life, to put his spirit into the wheels of our industrial developments, and to stamp his image on the CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 231 coins of our physical and plutocratic enlargements, and, brethren, touched and anointed with that Pentecostal spirit which gave birth to the Christian Church, that is what we shall do. The traveler who visits the city of Rome to-day finds among the ruins of that once famed metropolis a column of marble erected by the Roman Senate and people to the memory of the Emperor Trajan, with the words placed there two thousand years ago, and the bas reliefs setting forth in due course his achievements, and there stands on the top of that shaft, not the statue of the emperor, but of the great champion and apostle of Jesus Christ, as if all the figures were intended to lead up to Jesus Christ. And what M^e are trying to do in our missionary efforts is to make Jesus Christ as a practical force come into our American civilization, with the loco- motive, and the railroad, and the mine, and the shop, and the factory, and the telegraph, and the printing press, and to crown him Lord of all. BOARD OF DOMESTIC MISSIONS OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA BY THE REV. JAMES 1. VANCE, D. D. Newark, N. J. Jfr. 3Ioderator, Fathers, and Brethren : — From a Church whose numbers are small, but whose sympathies are large, and whose annals are honorable, and whose spirit is catholic, and whose faith is suffi- ciently sound, I come into this fellowship meeting rep- resenting 112,000 American Dutchmen, many of whom, like myself, are of plain Scotch or, plainer, Scotch-Irish birth, but all of whom are loyal to the cross and to the flag. Representing such a constituency, I bring the warmest fraternal greetings to all those who are con- cerned with making and keeping America a Christian nation. I bring the hearty congratulations of my church to the Home Missionary Board of the Presbyterian Churcli in the United States of America for the peerless contribution it has made to this supreme enterprise. The Reformed Church in America, or, as it is more affectionately known, the Dutch Reformed Church, is, with a single exception, the oldest Protestant organiza- tion in America, and was the first such church to set 2:^2 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 233 foot on American soil. The question is sometimes asked why, with such a starter, we have not gotten more ter- ritory under our feet. A Dutchman has never required much territory for his feet. HoUand is a little land, a little, little laud of sturdy dykes and busy towns, and industrious honest people, but Holland has fought the battles of the world for civil and religious liberty. The Reformed Church in America has done more for other churches than it has for itself, and that is the reason why our numbers are not as large as our sympathies. We believe in helping out our sister churches in distress. The distinguished moderator of this assembly is not a member of our immediate communion, to be sure, but " van Dyke " is a most savory Dutch name, and a few centuries ago we gave you your present moderator. On this occasion also we are giving a principal speaker for the Home Mission Centennial Anniversary, and we are very glad to lend — yes, we are very glad to lend — our Presbyterian friends that valiant and strenuous son of the Reformetl Church, Theodore Roosevelt, for we are quite sure that he will have the meeting w^ell in hand. I think you will agree with me that it is not very often a church manifests the spirit of ecclesiastical comity by lending a sister denomination in distress a President of the United States in order that her cup of joy may be full. But that is only an incident with us in our lavish and generous treatment of our larger but less for- tunate and more solicitous sisters. We do not give the nation a President very often; but when we do, we give a good one. We make up in quality what we lack in 234 CENTENNIAL OF HOME ilTSSIONS quantity. Wc give a four-square American citizen wlioin all the nation respects — North, South, East, West — a President who was a man before ever he was a President, and who is a vigorous, positive Christian man all the time he is President. It is sometimes intimated that the Dutch Reformed Church has more pride of ancestry than hope of posterity, but that is only one of the mistakes of the higher critics. We have the ancestry, to be sure, and we are very proud of our pres- ent pedigree, but our face is toward the morning, and, in comparison with our numbers, the Reformed Church is conducting a missionary work at home and abroad which is unexcelled, and whose praise is in all the churches. So I believe that we have a right to a place on this platform. From a church whose heart beats loyal to the cause of home missions, I come to place one sprig of orange in the Presbyterian bouquet. Or, if you please, to weave one thread of old gold in the blue ban- ner we all love so well. If there be one cause in wliose radiant presence the shadows of denominational differ- ence should lift and vanish, it is that cause which speaks from this pulpit to-day, and Avhose lustrous and inspiring goal is America for Christ. Plere the things which divide us are lost sight of, and the things which unite us are foremost. The things which unite us are not the propagation of a dogma or the glorification of a saint. The sectarian is a religious provincial. He makes the mistake of imagining that one is a better or worse Christian according to his brand, and that the CENTENMAL OF HOME MISSION'S 235 cause of Christ locates itself chiefly in his own denomi- national degrees of latitude and longitude. But the cause of home missions bursts such narrow boundaries, and has for its goal the Christianization of America. Its effort is to plant the cross, and all for which the cross stands, in the remotest mountain fastnesses ; to plant the light of the gospel in the darkest slums ; to send small companies of militant Christians to man the outposts, to preach the gospel of the Son of God so lov- ingly, so convincingly, so thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of this United States that America shall become a delightsome land to her own and a bless- ing to all mankind. The destiny of the race is in our keeping as never before.' It is no bit of Yankee bluster which says, " As goes America, so goes the world." How shall man regard his fellow ? How' and when is war to be waged? How are weaker peoples to be treated ? How is commerce to be conducted ? AVhat of labor as well as what of trade ? How are gigantic wrongs to be righted ? America's attitude on all these questions is of supreme importance, and the American citizen to-day is vested not only with municipal and State and national, but with racial suffrage. The move- ment is a world campaign. It is something for the human race that America be Christian. If America is to be great, she must be Christian. And if she would be Christian abroad, she must not be pagan at home. And whoever lifts America closer to the heart of Christ is, with the same gracious heft, lifting China and India and Africa and the islands of the sea nearer to God. 236 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS He is pressing the crusade of a world emancipation. If there be one man more than any other to-day whose heart should be fired with a mighty enthusiasm, it is he who flies the banner of the cross and the Stars and Stripes from the same flagstaif, and whose battle cry is, " America for Christ." Some months ago, off the coast of Malaga, a German training-ship went down with the loss of over 100 lives. The people on the land could see the wreck, but they could do nothing to relieve its distress. They saw Avaves of mountainous height sweep over the deck. Some of the cadets were swept overboard. Many climbed into the rigging. The people from the land saw those Ger- man lads in the rigging wave their caps, and then, above the shriek of the storm, they heard cheer after cheer come from the German cadets on the sinking ship. Those boys were drowning, but with their dying breath they were cheering the Kaiser and the Fatherland. It seems to me it is some such mighty enthusiasm as that which should stir the heart of the Church as we confront this cause of home missions. To be the citizen of such a country as this, to live in such a time as this, to stand in the morning hour of this matchless century, in the center of its marvelous triumphs, in the thick of its splendid opportunities, with America for a pulpit and the world for an audience, and to speak the message and to share in doing the work which is to make and keep America a Christian nation, and God's servant to all peoples, is to confront a chance besides which that of Adam dwarfs and that of INIoses pales. It is enough to CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 237 stir the pulses in the veins of death, and tongue the dumb with eloquence. Mr. Moderator, the church which I have the honor to represent thanks God that America has had, and still has, a Presbyterian Church, and that the Presbyterian Church has been and still is a home missionary church, whose courageous consecrated sons and devoted daughters have not hesitated to go to the hottest mark of the fir- ing line on the far frontier, flying the flag, and living and preaching the cross, that America may be Christ's. ALLIANCE OF REFORMED CHURCHES BY THE EEV. WM. H. EGBERTS, D. D., LL. D. Philadelphia, Pa. (American Secretary.) Officers of the Home Board, Fathers, and Brethren: — It was expected that Dr. AVilliam Caven, of the Pres- byterian Church in Canada, the President of the Alli- ance of Reformed Churches throughout the world hold- ing the Presbyterian system, would offer to the Presby- terian Board of Home Missions of this church the congratulations of the Alliance upon this auspicious occasion. Dr. Caven, however, is unavoidably absent, and the pleasant duty falls to my lot to speak a few words in connection with the work of home missions as it is viewed, not simply by one denomination, but by all the denominations throughout the world who hold the Calvinistic theology and the Presbyterian government. Let me emphasize, as I perform this duty, the fact that as a denomination this church of ours belongs to a great Christian communion ; tliat there is but one other com- munion bearing the name of Christian which is as wide- spread and takes in as many families of the human 238 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 239 race. There are geographically but two ecumenical or universal Christian Churches, the Roman Catholic and the Reformed or Presbyterian. The Reformed and Presbyterian Churches are found in every land, worship God in all civilized tongues, and stand amid all nations to emphasize the brotherhood of man, the fatherhood of God, and the hopes which center in the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. As I speak on the subject of home mis- sions, it is proper that I should emphasize yet another fact, that these Reformed Churches, found in all civilized countries, have, throughout their history, emphasized in a peculiar manner the word of God as the supreme rule of faith and conduct, and the teaching and the preaching of that word, under the blessing of the Spirit of God, as the one great instrument for the conversion of souls and for the advancement of the welfare of mankind. We are not sacramentarian churches, but are the churches of the gospel, seeking in every way possible to render obedience to the command of Christ, to preach his gos- pel to all nations. It is eminently proper, therefore, that on this occasion the " Alliance of the Reformed Ciiurches throughout the world " should tender to the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, to which that Church has entrusted the missionary teaching and preaching of the gospel in this great land, congratulations upon the Board's one hundredth anniversary. There has been much reference here made to the work of this Home Mission Board, and the opportunity given for the work of that Board in this country. With the 240 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS eloquent utterances of the last speaker wc all can most heartily concur, and unite with him in prayer to God, for yet further blessing upon the interests of the Church in connection with home missions, as they have relation to the future of America. It is well for the Board of Home Missions to be guided in all its work by the fact that in this land, above every other land, God is making possible strict and literal obedience to the command of Christ, "Go preach my gospel to all nations." The nations are being gathered, by the providence of God, in this city of New York, in the city of Chicago, in the other great centers of population, and also throughout the rural districts. Where is the city in the United States in which you will not find men of well nigh every color, every race, and every speech ? The peoples who separated in the long past at the tower of Babel are assembling once more within these lands west of the Atlantic. God has opened to the Board of Home Mis- sions of this church, and of every American Protestant church, a vast field for abounding labor. The Alliance of the Reformed Churches has an Ameri- can section, and that section holds stated semi-annual meetings. There was a special report upon the work of home missions made at the meeting held in Pittsburg on the 16th and 17th days of April, in the present year. That report showed that the work of home missions was being carried on by every one of the churches connected with the Alliance: The Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church South, the United Presbyterian Church, the Synod and the General Synod of the Re- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 241 formed Presbyterian Church, the Associate Synod of the South, the Reformed (German) Church in the United States (the church with which President Roosevelt wor- ships), the Reformed (Dutch) Church in America, the Welsh Presbyterian Church, and last, but not least, the Presbyterian Church in Canada. These ten churches, representing together 1,150,000 communicants and 4,000,000 adherents, stand with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., and its 1,000,000 communicants and 3,500,000 adherents, for Christ and a pure gospel on this continent. One remark made by a representative of the Cana- dian Church at Pittsburg will bear repeating. There is in it that which should occasion sorrow to every true American heart. The Canadian Church has an immense home mission work, as this Church has, and the testimony of the Canadian clergyman, speaking for his church, was this, that the element most difficult in Canada, in particular in the northwest provinces, to influence for religion, and the element most indifferent to religion, was the element that had come into Canada from the United States. We have in this nation, to our sorrow, an immense number of perscms, in particular, men, who are not connected w'ith any church of Jesus Christ, Protestant or Roman Catholic, and w^hose atti- tude toward religion is one of absolute indifference. Some years back the Home Mission Board published a pamphlet, wdiich they gave me the privilege of writing, the gist of which was this, that two out of every three of the adult males in this land were not connected with 16 242 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS any Christian church. And this sad state of affairs was most evident west of the Missouri. Is there need for home missions ? Yes ! abounding need ! and these sister churches come here to-day and tender througli me, as the American Secretary of the AUiancc, to the Board of Home Missions of the greatest of the Presbyterian Churches of the world, this above all other messages : Brethren, a great field is open to you, a field which is increasingly great in the providence of God. America is but another name for ^' gospel opportunity." See to it that in the century now opening, and through each year of that century, your Plome ISIission Board, as in all the past, shall be at the front, shall lead onward the hosts of God, until at last this land shall be made, from ocean to ocean, and from North to South, in truth Emanuel's land. EESPONSE BY THE MODERATOR THE EEV. HENRY VAN DYKE, D. D., LL.D. Princeton, N. J. Fathers and Brethren : — It falls to my lot to reply to the addresses which have been made this afternoon and which have rendered this Fellowship Meeting most memorable. I wish that I could borrow from some of those who have spoken here their eloquence that I might make my reply more fit- ting. One quality it shall have, the quality of brevity. I can say, with an old friend of mine in Brooklyn, I have done a great many things that were foolish, and some things that were wrong, but I never did anything long. It was a great pleasure to all of ns as members of the Presbyterian Church to listen to these felicitations which have been offered to our Board of Home Missions. We have been glad to receive the greetings of the other boards of the Church. It is a pleasant thing to know that all the boards of our great Church, like all the birds in a good nest, dwell together in peace and con- cord ; and for the same reason that the birds dwell together, because if they didn't they would fall out. 243 244 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Now to stay in, is to do just the one thing tliat a Pres- byterian is always resolved to do, and all our boards mean to stay in, and all to work together in harmony and fellowship, and we recognize more and more, the more we tliink about the work of our Church, that all these boards are bound together, and that the work of one board depends upon the success of the work of the other boards, and that they all cooperate, and that the Church is in a healthy condition when the same love and care and generosity is exercised toward all the boards. Now, having thanked the other boards for their cor- dial and friendly greetings to the Board of Home INIis- sions of the Presbyterian Church, it becomes my pleasant privilege to thank the representatives of other churches, who have come to us and who have spoken to us on behalf of our sister churches. I have to thank Dr. Phoades, the representative of the Baptist Home Missionary Society, and tell him that we Presbyterians hope and wish and pray and believe that the army of the Lord is always going to work together with the navy. I have to thank Dr. Clark, who represents the Congregational Home INIissionary Society, the society of a Church which has always been in closest toucli witli our own Church, so that sometimes it is difficult to dis- tinguish which is which in certain portions of the country. The Congregational Church and the Presby- terian Church have carried on a great excliange associa- tion, and many men who are now preaching in Presby- terian pulpits began their work in Congregational CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 245 pulpits. I myself had the pleasure of being ordained by the presbytery of Brooklyn to take eharge of the United Congregational Church in Newport, llhode Island, and I found some very good Presbyterians there, without whose help we could not have run the church. It did me a great deal of good to spend four years there, and I learned a great many things among those Rhode Island Congregationalists which helped me to work here among New York Presbyterians. And we give our assurance of continued aifection and Christian love to the Congregational Church. We have had with us Bishop Andrews, who has represented worthily, as he has done for so many years, the great Methodist Episcopal Church. We owe a great deal to that Church. It has helped us much. One of the latest gifts that that Church has given us was given no longer ago than last Sunday, when Ira D. Sankey, a good Methodist, joined Dr. Gregg's church and became a good Presbyterian. My opinion is that a good Methodist will always make a good Presbyterian, and a good Presbyterian will always make a good Meth- odist, and that each will help the other in the work of the Lord. We are glad to have had with us the Rev. Dr. Greer of St. Bartholomew's Church. He came to take the place of Bishop Doane. We were glad to welcome him, not only as a representative of the bishop, but because, in our belief, a presbyter is as good as a bishop any day. We welcome him also for his works' sake, for I want to tell you men here who may be strangers in New York 246 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS that there is no man in this great city to-day who is doing a stronger, more earnest, more faithful, more suc- cessful work for Jesus Christ on evangelistic lines, with a hand stretched out to everyone who needs it, than Dr. Greer in St. Bartholomew's parish. We welcome also, — and I extend this welcome witli a spirit of family feeling, — we welcome Dr. Vance, from the Reformed Church. \ie are glad that the Reformed Church has got a man who was trained, for some years, in the First Presbyterian Church of Nashville, Tennes- see. And although the Church whicli he represents has dropped the " Dutch " out of its name, I am glad it has not dropped the Dutch out of its nature. It is ready to fight and pray, and it believes in working all the time. Those are Dutch characteristics. We welcome also and greet our friend who is known to all of us, our own stated clerk, who speaks to us in his capacity as Secretary of the Alliance of the Reformed Chnrches. We are glad to hear him strike that strong and deep and true evangelical note of the Reformation. AVe are glad to have him remind ns that our Presbyte- rian Church does not stand alone, but is a member of a great sisterhood which reaches around the world, which has historic links, and which bears in its heart the treas- ure of the reformed fliith in its purity and simplicity, and always will bear that treasure there to the end of time. But I do not wish to close this meeting without say- ing a single word in regard to the relation of home missions to the larger work of world evangelization. CENTKNMAL OF HOME MISSIONS 247 You instructed your stated clerk and your moderator to send a message to Cuba. This message has been scut : " To T. Estrada Pahna, " President of the Republic of Cuba, " Havana, Cuba : " The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America sends congratulations, and prays for God's blessing upon the new republic." We are glad to have a share and a prayer in the launching of that new republic upon the great waters of history, and we pray that God may preserve her liberty, may establish her national character in right- eousness and integrity, and may guide her safely on a long voyage of prosperity and freedom and peace. "Home missions" does not mean home missions for home alone. It means missions that begin at home and continue for all the world. AVe want America for Christ because we want America to help win the world for Christ ; and as he has given to this country a posi- tion of vantage, so he has given to her the great duty of sending out his gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth. We as freemen, we as Americans, we as Presbyterians, realize that it is our first duty to stand up for Christ, the eternal and only king, and to make his name known to every creature under God's blue heaven. Tuesday Evening, May 20th CARNEGIE HALL "THE NEW CENTUKY" ADDRESS BY THE CHAIRMAN THE EEV. D. STUART DODGE, D. D. New York, N. Y. (President of the Board of Home Missions.) Every true American is grateful that his country- was founded by men who feared God ; and during all the years since God-fearing men and women have been the chief strength and glory of the nation. The Pres- byterian Church can fairly claim, on this centennial occasion, that it has furnished its full quota of these patriots who loved their God and loved their country. Religion and patriotism cannot be divorced. From its earliest days the Presbyterian Church has been a missionary church. Its first action was to send out missionaries to the destitute settlements and to the Indians, and from that day to the present these faithful men, with their loyalty to God and country, with their profound reverence for the Bible and their passion for education, have kept pace with the mighty march of emigration across the broad continent to the shores of the Pacific and far up to the frozen regions of the North ; and when the heroic pages of American history are 251 252 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS written they will be illumined with the brilliant names and deeds of humble home missionaries. It is not in my province to tell this story. It has already been eloquently narrated in the three historical addresses of yesterday afternoon, and its great truths were enforced and applied by the earnest appeals of this morning. The facts will be grandly summarized to-night by one who knows them well. In opening our centennial celebration this evening, I have but one thought to present, and it is the thought which has been weighing upon your hearts and which has been the very atmospliere of the Assembly thus far. While deeply thankful for the signal blessings of the past, we all feel that the new century should be inaugu- rated by a distinct advance on the part of our Church along every line 'of effort ; that now and here we are to make the high resolve that all the resources and influ- ences of this great organization shall anew, and in a far larger measure, be consecrated to the service of God ; that we devoutly propose a comprehensive and positive forward movement, wisely planned ; and then to be car- ried out persistently, conscientiously, and courageously. The time is marvelously ripe for it. Eighty-five millions of souls are under our flag. Every day sees a thousand immigrants land on our shores. Some stay to fill up our already overcrowded cities ; others press on to the wide basin of the Mississippi and to the great Northwest, where, before long, the seat of empire will be lodged. Soon there will be no more territories or any frontiers, but the foes of society and of nations will CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 253 abound none the less, — ignorance, irreligion, infidelity, intemperance, immorality, anarchy, Mormonism, and the over-mastering greed of material things. What agency can bring healing to these diseases and weld together these heterogeneous masses? Not human philosophy ; not social science ; not the power of gov- ernment. There is but one solvent, only one unfailing source, the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the message our missionaries bear. They do not go out on any sectarian propaganda. They are not to plant a Presbyterian Church in small places where already four or more exist. They hasten on to regions destitute of religious privileges. The day for denominational rivalry has largely passed. There is a growing comity among ecclesiastical bodies of different names, a happy federation or cooperation of forces, which shall henceforth forbid all interference with each other's work. There is a manifest harmony in our own Church almost unparalleled ; and now, thank God, we have the prospect of a creed which plain people can understand and accept. All the sessions of the Assembly have been full of interest, but none more impressive and inspiring than the meetings connected with the report of the Evan- gelistic Committee. The duty of this committee is to cooperate with pastors, churches, and presbyteries in promoting direct religious activity and fresh spiritual life. It has at its head a business man, whose name is known in all the churches, and its plans and operations 254 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS arc directed with businesslike wisdom and thorough- ness. Already this year we are told that 10,000 more united with our churches than in the year previous. Nor must we forget that our home mission efforts are vigorously and enthusiastically aided by the Auxiliary Woman's Board, and that this board exhibits a gift for organization and executive work not surpassed by any agency in our church. But it is asserted that all this requires funds, large funds. No one denies it. If vast sums are needed in gigantic financial, indus- trial, and commercial schemes, combinations that com- mand millions promptly spring up. Why should not the Church of God have its great combinations ? AVhy should not sums be collected on a scale commensurate, in some degree at least, with the vastness and eternal value of the interests at stake ? The time has come for a new and distinctly wider conception of our work and a larger and more spontaneous liberality in prosecuting it. We have had only a meager and partial view of our duty and privilege. You have stood upon the top of a high mountain. Clouds and mists have prevented you from seeing more than the foothills and something of the plains beyond ; but the clouds have rolled away, the mist has lifted, and your wondering eyes begin to take in the immense sweep of the landscape, mountains and valleys and plains stretching aw^ay on every side to the remotest horizon. We stand upon the lofty heights of this centennial celebration. The clouds and mists of our ignorance and CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 255 selfishness, our feeble endeavors and limited results, have rolled away, and we are beginning to look out upon the boundless extent, the beauty, and the grandeur of our opportunities and obligations. We begin to see the richness of our heritage and the measureless possibilities of the land God has called us to possess. It is the time for large plans and large performance. The nations of the earth expect it. Some are in darkness, yet know that we have the light, and are wondering why we do not bring it to them. Friendly lands across the sea look with jealousy or consternation at the SAvift accumulation of stupendous forces in this country. What would be their feeling if tlioy could be told we purpose to hold these vast re- sources simply in trust for humanity ? A keen-eyed and perhaps sneering world about us is waiting to see what the Church will do with the wealth it possesses and the commission it holds ; and none know better than unbelievers what Christians ought to do. Our sister denominations are asking themselves whether " the great Presbyterian Church " is ready to do its large share and carry its full burden in the com- mon work of winning this land for Christ. The unevangelized masses among us of every section and race and tongue are, consciously or unconsciously, waiting to see if we are true to our professions. And doubtless a great cloud of witnesses are looking down from the heavenly heights upon this chosen arena and watching, with unspeakable eagerness, how this con- 256 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS flict is being waged, — while, beyond and above, is tlic searching and yearning gaze of the King himself, to whom belono: all the kingdoms of the earth. Brethren, Christian men and women, this is a divine call ! What shall be our answer ? It is one of the notable blessings granted to this country that we have had a succession of chief magis- trates who have been profoundly interested in these national and religious questions, but no one of them has been more interested or more familiar with the broad territory of our operations than our honored guest who now holds this high office. His name is a household word in every corner of the land, and wherever it is known this also is known, that it is his supreme desire that righteousness, — the righteousness which exalts a nation, — should prevail in this land, in the government and among the people, in every section and with all classes, both at home and abroad. ADDKESS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT Pkesident of the United States AT CARNEGIE HALL Mr. Chairman, my Friends, and Neighbors: — I CALL you this, for if this meeting means anything it means a communion of the embodied spirit of friendship and neighborliness working through tlie Church for gene- rations. I am glad to greet you to-night. I belong to a closely allied Church, the Dutch Reformed, and I want to tell you a curious incident that was related to me to- night by one of the two gentlemen, who on your behalf, met me and brought me here. Mr. Robert C. Ogden mentioned that 260 or 270 years ago the first church of my denomination to be erected here in this city was put up by a contract with one of his ancestors who dwelt in Connecticut. You see that even in those days we Dutchmen had to get the Yankees to do some things for us. This is in a sense symbolical of how much the Church has counted in the life of our people, that the descendants of those who worshiped and of those who were under contract to put the church up in which the worshiping should be done should be here to-night meeting together. I have another bond with you. There are not so 17 257 258 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS many Dutch Reformed churclics in this country — not as many, I often think, as should be in this city — and during a considerable portion of my life I have had to go to a Presbyterian church because there was no Dutch Reformed church to go to. In my early years I went to the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, of which the Rev. Dr. Adams was then ]>astor, and those here who remember him will agree with me in saying that he was one of the few men concerning whom it is not inappropriate to use the adjective with Avhich I shall describe him, for he was in very truth a saintly man. I remember, especially, now that I have children of my own to care for, the view expressed by Dr. Adams that we should be careful to see to it that tilings which are perfectly simple to us are made clear to the children. Dr. Adams had a grandson, whom he found to be ex- ceedingly afraid of going into the church alone. Noth- ing could induce the boy to enter the great building by himself. One day the doctor took him down into the auditorium and up the empty, echoing aisle. The little follow looked al)out a while, and then asked : — "Grandpa, where is the zeal?" "The what?" queried the grandfather. " The zeal. Why, don't you know that the ' zeal of thine house hath eaten me up ?' " The little fellow had heard that verse and he had got it so twisted up that he had decided he would rather not go into the house of the Lord unprotected. It is a pleasure on behalf of the people of the United States to bid you welcome on this hundredth anniversary CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 259 of the beginning of organized home missionary work by the Presbyterian Church. In one sense, of course, all fervent and earnest church work is a part of home missionary work. Every earnest and zealous believer, every man or woman who is a doer of the work and not a hearer only, is a lifelong missionary in his or her field of labor, a missionary by precept, and by what is a thousandfold more than precept, by practice. Every such believer exerts influence on those within reach, somewhat by word, and infinitely more through the ceaseless, yet well-nigh unfelt pressure, all the stronger when its exercise is unconscious of example, of broad, loving, charitable, neighborly kindness. But to-night we celebrate a hundred years of mission- ary work done not incidently but with set purpose ; a hundred years of earnest effort to spread abroad the gospel, to lay deep the moral foundation upon which true national greatness must rest. The century that has closed has seen the conquest of this continent by our people. To conquer a continent is rough work. All really great work is rough in the doing, though it may seem smooth enough to those who look back upon it, or to contemporaries who look at it only from afar. The roughness is an unavoidable part of the doing of the deed. We need display but scant patience with those who, sitting at ease in their own homes, delight to exercise a querulous and censorious spirit of judgment upon their brethren who, whatever their shortcomings, are doing strong men's work as they bring the light of civilization into the world's dark places. 260 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS The criticism of those who live softly, remote from tlic strife, is of little value ; but it Avould be difficult to overestimate the value of the missionary work of those Avho go out to share the hardship, and while sharing it, not to talk about but to wage war against the myriad forms of brutality. It is such missionary work, it is because of the spirit that underlies the missionary work, that the pioneers are prevented from sinking perilously near the level of the savagery against which they contend. AVithout it the conquest of this continent would have had little but an animal side. Without it the pioneers' fierce and rude virtues and somber faults Avould have been left unlit by the flame of pure and loving aspiration. Without it the life of this country would have been a life of inconceivably hard and barren materialism. Be- cause of it deep beneath and through the national char- acter there runs that poAver of firm adlierence to a lofty ideal upon which the safety of the nation will ultimately depend. Honor, thrice honor, to those who for three generations, during the period of this people's great ex- pansion, have seen that the force of the living truth expanded as the nation expanded. They bore the burden and heat of the day, they toiled obscurely and died unknown, that we might c(^me into a glorious heritage. Let us prove the sincerity of our homage to their faith and their works by the way in which we manfully carry toward completion what under them was so well begun. And now, my friends, coming up here, I made up my CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 201 mind that I would speak to you as illustratiuc; tlio spirit of cliaractcr and doconcy, and of the spirit of national righteousness, of something that has taken place on this day and of something else that has happened within the last ten days, — of the action of this nation to-day, on this Tuesday, the 20th day of IVIay, 1902, which has cul- minated in starting a free republic on its course in the world. That has represented four years' work. Tliere were blunderings and shortcomings in that work, of course, and there were many of little faith who could sec only the blunderings and shortcomings, but it represents work triumphantly done. And I think that the citizens of this republic have a right to feel proud that we have kept our pledges to the letter, and that we have estab- lished a new international precedent. I do not remember — and I have thought a good deal about it — a single case in modern times where, as the result of such a war, the victorious nation has contented itself with setting a new nation free, and fitted it as well as it could be fitted for the difficult path of self-govern- ment. And, mind you, that anarchy and ruin would have lain before the island if we had contented ourselves with the victories of war and had turned this island loose to run for itself. For three years the hard work of peace has supple- mented the work of war. I sometimes hear the army attacked, and I've even heard missionaries attacked. But it is well for us, when we have a great work to do, 262 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS in cither peace or war, that "we have tlie army and navy as instruments for it. For three years the representatives of the army have done their best to build up a school system, to establish sanitary measures, to preserve order, and to lay the way open for the starting of industries — to do everything in their power so that the new government might start out witli the chances in its favor. Now, as a nation, we bid it God-speed, and we intend to see to it that it shall have all the aid that we can give it. And I trust and believe that our people will, through the national Legislature, see to it very shortly that they have the advantage of entering into peculiarly close relations M'ith us in our economic life. That is the deed which was consummated to-day. Now for the other. Ten days ago an appalling calamity befell another portion of the West Indian Islands, territory belonging to two different nations ; islands not under our flag, but their need was great, and this people saw the need and met it as speedily as possible. Congress at once appro- priated large sums of money. They were augmented by private gifts. And, gentlemen, I found as usual the army and navy the instruments through which the work to be done could be done. The minute I wanted men who could drop the work they w^ere engaged upon, assured that neither pestilence nor volcano would make them swerve from their duty, men of incorruptible integrity, I turned to the army and navy, and we sent them to the stricken island. I'm sure you all feel proud CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 263 that ships bearing the American flag should be among the first — I think the very first — to take relief to those overtaken by so api)alling a disaster. It is a fine thing to have at the opening of this cen- tury such omens of righteous acting, of international brotherhood ; omens of the future where a sense of duty to the neighborhood will extend beyond national lines, as the actions which culminated in the starting to-day of the free republic of Cuba on the paths of indepen- dence, and in being first to reach out a helping hand to those overwhelmed by disaster without regard to the flag to which they paid allegiance. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S ADDRESS AT THE OVERFLOW MEETING IN THE CENTRAL PRESBYTE- RIAN CHURCH I AM glad to have a chance to say a word to you this evening, and I know you will jxirdon me if it is only a word, for I did not anticipate speaking at another meet- ing. Of course, the very first duty any nation has got to perform is to keep in order the atfairs of its own household, to do what is best for its own life. And, as has been so well and thoughtfully said by you, Dr. van Dyke, in your speech this evening, the vital thing is the spiritual, not the material. Even Napoleon said that in war the moral was as to the material as ten to one, and it is just exactly so in civil life. I do not mean to under- value the material. We have got to have thrift and business interests and all that spring from them as a foundation, upon which to build, yet a nation would seem to be but a pretty poor building if there was noth- ing 1)ut the basement. It is an admirable thing to have great material riches if we do not overestimate the position that the material well-being should occupy in nature. It is a great thing to have wealtli if wo have an idea of the relative value of wealth with reference to the spirit. This sounds like 201 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 265 j)rcaeliin^, but it is only an expression of a political truism if you look at it in tlK3 right way. We have spread during the j)ast century over the whole continent. Do you realize that before the begin- ning of that century any one who went west of the INIississippi Avent into a foreign land ? But as we have expanded naturally, so it has been our good fortune that those who should go hand in hand with it were those laboring for the expansion of the Christian Church and all that goes with it. And I don't think that we realize the way in which the most vital need of that movement was met by those men who went out as pastors in the little struggling communities where the people w^re laying the founda- tions of what were to be the great States of the Mis- sissippi Valley which WTre to spread on to the Pacific Coast. The men who went out in that way gave our people the spiritual lift that was vital to them ; that has made us in the end a great nation instead of a nation of well-to-do people. We want well-to-do people, but if they were the only kind we had we would come far short of what we have a right to demand of ourselves. There is a tremendous work looming up before the churches of this natiou which the churches must do. Our nation has been progressing. In some ways this progress has been for the right, but in others for what we have far less cause to be jiroud of. The tremendous sweep of our industrial development has brought us face to face with problems which have concerned for years the people of the Old World. This progress has 266 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS increased the effective power of forces for good as well as forces for evil. The forces for evil in our great cities, as those cities grow, become more and more men- acing to those communities. If our country is to grow, those forces must be met by forces equally strong for good. More and more in the future our churches have got to realize that we have a right to expect them to take a lead in shaping these forces for good. I am not going to verge on the domain of theology or dogma, and I don't think in this day there will be any dissent from the proposition that in this work-a-day world we must generally judge men by their fruits, that we cannot accept a long succession of thistle cro])s as indicating fig trees. And we have a right to expect the Church to set a high standard of public service through- out the whole land. The Church must find expression tlirough the life work of its members, not only on Sun- days, but on week days ; not only within these church walls, but at home and in business. I don't know of any ]ilirase that is less attractive than " Business is busi- ness," when it is used to mean what verges on rascality. We have a right to expect that you will show your faith by your works, and that the people who have the advantage of church and home life must remember that as much has been given them, much will bo expected of them. We have a right to expect of you that you will not merely speak for righteousness, but that you will do righteousness in your own homes and in the world at large. RESPONSE BY THE MODERATOR THE EEV. HENRY VANDYKE, D. D., LL.D. Princeton, N. J. When the long applause following the President's address in Carnegie Hall had died away, a hymn was sung, written by Dr. H, C. McCook, of Philadelphia — a noble poem set to fitting music. Then Dr. van Dyke arose to respond for the General Assembly, beginning with the apt words : — It is not every man who has the privilege of address- ing two presidents in tlie same speech. To you, the President of the United States, I am charged to convey the respectful, loyal, and aifectionate salutations of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. We are glad you are here. You have a knack of being in the right place at the right time. We are glad our views in regard to the great events of this day coincide with yours. The General Assembly has already sent this telegram, which I hope you will approve and sanction : " To T. Estrada Palma, " President of the Republic of Cuba, " Havana, Cuba : "The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America sends congratulations, and prays for God's blessing upon the new republic." 267 268 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS We are grateful, sir, for tlic peace and liberty enjoyed by our Church under the Governnu'ut of wiiich you are the chief executive. We have no exceptional favors to ask of that Government. If we had, it is not likely tiiat we should get them ; for we do not believe that favoritism is to have a place in your administration. We interpret your presence here not in any denomina- tional or sectarian sense, but simply as an expression of your vital sympathy with the great work of home missions, — as a token of your cordial interest in the Presbyterian regiment of that army of the Lord which is trying to make and keep this a Christian land. To you, the President of the Board of Home Mis- sions, I offer sincere congratulations on the hundredth anniversary of that great work in which you are such an earnest, wise, and successful leader. Some outline of the history of that work \\\\\ be presented to us to- night. It is for me to state, in few and sim])le words, why the cause of home missions is especially dear to all true Presbyterians. There are three reasons which have peculiar force : — 1. The Presbyterian Church as it now exists is largely the creation of home missionary work. In the rapid growth of our country the places which, fifty years ago, were on the frontier, and into which mission- aries were sent to plant the seed of true religion, have now become populous and powerful centers of Presby- terianism. The strength of our Clnu'ch now resides in regions which, two generations ago, were, to a large extent, fields of missionary effort. Perhaps nine-tenths, CENTENNIAL OF HOME NKSIONS 269 certainly three-fourths, of our present working Presby- terian force is virtually the product of home mission effort in the nineteenth century. Gratitude alone would bind us to love the cause which has done such great things for our Church. But wisdom also urges us to make the experience of the past our guide for the future, and to cultivate with diligence the new fields for evan- gelization in our land, in order that they in turn may become our sources of strength in the development of the United States in the twentieth century. 2. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America has a deep love for home missions because it has a peculiar relation to the great republic. It made greater sacrifices, in all probability, than any other church for the cause of liberty in the American Revo- lution. Its form of government has a close resemblance to that of our nation. A hundred and thirty years ago a Tory wrote of it : " The Presbyterians must not be allowed to grow too great ; they are all of republican principles." The American principle of religious liberty is most dear to the heart of our Church. We feel also that Presbyterian ism has an especial contribution to make to the religious life of our country. A carefully educated ministry ; a preaching of the truths of C'hris- tianity on the supreme authority of the word of God ; an orderly, reasonable, systematic presentation of the great fundamental doctrines of the reformed faith ; a plan of church organization which combines the free- dom of popular rule with the compactness and unity of an interwoven system of representative assemblies, — 270 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS these are elements Avliicli we feel are needed in tlie healthy growth of Christianity in our country. And in order to suj)ply these elements the Presbyterian Church must continue and enlarge the work of home missions. 3. But the chief reason wliy we love tliis great work is because we feel and acknowledge the supreme debt which every citizeu owes to his country, — the obligation to do the best that he can for her highest welfare, — that welfare which is not physical, but spiritual. Nothing will so surely promote the true happiness and the last- ing glory of our country as the spread of the religion of Jesus Christ among the homes and in the hearts of the people. For this end we must labor in harmony with all other cliurches of Christ, having no rivalry with them, but a glorious emulation in doing good. The work of credal revision upon which this General Assembly of 1902 has put its approval has a distinctly home missionary emphasis and bearing. It is evangelical and evangelistic. It sounds the note of advance along the old lines of Cliristian service to God and country. The Presbyterian Church has a " system of doctrine " in its mind, and a gospel of love for all men in its heart. Our hope is that the poet's prayer may be fulfilled in her history, "Thai mind and heart, according well, May make one music as before, — But vaster." So may her faithful labors help to make our land a part of the only kingdom whose royal rights we acknowledge, — the kino^dom of our God and of his Christ. A VISION OF THE FUTURE BY THE REV. CHAELES L. THOMPSON, D. D., New York, N. Y. (Secretary of the Board of Home Missions.) This is the 20tli of May. To-day we furled our flag on Morro Castle and cheered the Cuban colors. Thus have we made good the promise of our martyred Presi- dent. We have kept our faith, and, like the apostle, the crown for which we look is a crown of righteous- ness, which must come by means of righteousness. Thus home missions and Americanism are one. For two days we have dealt with the past. Now let us face about. Let us get a vision of the future. We are on the eve of a great revival. It will be a revival of home missions. It must be — if we would save west- ern and eastern communities from the lust of mammon, and the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. It must be — if we would measure up to our new national ol^li- gations. It must be — if we would honor our position among the nations — if we would be the salt in the human lump, the sunrise of a world's gloom. We have expanded not in area only, though we are within 100 miles of semi-girdling the globe; not in wealth only, though we are the richest of nations ; not 271 272 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS in prestige merely, tliough the sheaves of the nations bow to our sheaf of commerce — but we have now a world-frontage for the blessing or the cursing of man- kind. Our expansion was not caused by the shock of guns. That was the occasion only. The cause is what Kidd called the intensity of national life. Evolutionary forces have been working through the centuries. From many fields of diffused action they have come to con- centrated action on these shores. The mixture of allied races among us, Spencer says, will produce a more powerful type of man than has ex- isted hitherto. That type is showing the signs of this new power. We are at the whirling center of Anglo- Saxon life. Astronomy tells us that vapor in action flung off worlds. American life has come to its intensity, where it must fling off new worlds. Expansion is not an election. It is not a mechanism. It is the necessity of intense life. The dreams of centuries condensed here become new possessions and new duties. What now is the situation ? As to geography — we are midway of the world. No nation ever so fronted nations as do we. As to population — we are the last result of time, the composite, slow-evolving highest type of man. As to principles — our ideals of civil and re- ligious freedom are those which sages and prophets longed to see and died without the siglit. As to capacity — we first of people may be a world power. A hun- dred years ago the Anglo-Saxons numbered 20,000,000. To-day, 130,000,000— controlling directly 522,000,000. And the vital center of that race is on our shores. CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 273 What now is the Christian duty of people situated as we are? Professor Phelps has said: ''Spiritual strategy demands that the evangelization of this country should be kept ahead of every other movement for the conver- sion of the world." Let us abate nothing of the need of education, philanthropy, statesmanship — nothing of the claims of other nations whom we ought to bless. But what is the demand of strategy ? Hold your base. Sherman could march to the sea and back again be- cause he was marching through vacuity. But Grant sat down and smoked and waited for months in front of Vicksburg. It had been folly to march around in an advance to the Gulf. The military manual says, " Hold your ground." The first missionary word ever flung into this world was, " Begin at Jerusalem, then take the rest of Judea. Then advance on Samaria." Consider, now, the home mission duty of the hour. We are on the verge of a new century. Let us take a bold look outward — not the look of Moses to a land of rest ; rather of some daring Cortez on some Darien peak, looking over the sea of movements and conflicts as wide as humanity. OUE CITIES And first of all, behold the Jerusalem of our polyglot, congested, and seething cities. Am I verging on a tru- ism ? Wake up, then, ye dwellers in towns, to a truism that is startling ! Here in New York we have been having a danger zone on Fourth Avenue. There was the rush of an ungoverned train that crushed out lives. There was a crash of dynamite that shattered great 18 274 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS fabrics. There was a sinking block of houses and flee- ing households — all in quick succession. We think of danger zones in the slums. We send a missionary down there to swing a red lantern. But do we ever think of other danger zones on Murray Hill ? Trains of social destruction, that plunge on regardless of sig- nals ; explosions that can shake our proudest houses ; homes that are sinking to subways where the mining has been silent and unknown. Perhaps the tunnel starts at the Battery, where it receives the European explosives ; but it may undermine to the proudest avenue. Let me show you a red light. Consider our second city. There are 6000 saloons in Chicago, employing 31,600 persons. There are 17 the- aters open on Sunday evening, in which, on a recent Sunday night, there were 17,160 men between 15 and 45 years of age. In a single ward there are 312 houses of impurity, with 1708 inmates. Fifty thousand men are engaged in demoralizing places. Behold the red lantern — and it waves on your doorsteps. THE SOUTH Again, look at the Southern mountains. Read Mr. Roosevelt's "Winning of the West," and discover that the first men to tackle the wilderness beyond the moun- tains were not Yankees from Boston, nor Dutchmen from New York. They were men of tlie South — the Carolinas and Virginia ; and the President says, "Of course, they were Presbyterians." Of course. Presby- terians have ever been pathfinders. John Calvin found CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 275 the path to a Christian republic. John Knox found the path to the destruction of prehicy among the Grampians. St. Patrick, that blessed old Irish Presbyterian, found the path of freedom on Irish moors. So, as a matter of course, wlien an empire was to be staked out beyond the Alleghenies, and we inquire for American pathfinders, in the Southwest we do not think so much of Daniel Boone as of Gideon Blackburn ; across the Mississippi, not so much of John C. Fremont as of Daniel Baker; in the far Northwest, less of Lewis and Clark than of "Whitman and Spaulding ; and in California, less of the " 49ers " than of the missionaries who camped on their trail. Not only pathfinders — they were pathmakers. Of course, then, when the soldiers of the Revolution became pioneers, it was the Scotch-Irish of the Carolinas and Virginia who headed the march. Down through the valleys of the French Broad went Sevier and Camp- bell, and others who had fought at King's Mountain and flung the British back when the Tory population of Carolina failed to respond. And now the children of those men call for help. They are lost among the mountains, and by little fault of theirs. Rather by Adam's fault. Everywhere and always people left to themselves are in danger of degen- eracy. Even a Scotchman will degenerate when he is abandoned. It is the duty of our Church to reclaim those people. Do you say there are other calls more urgent ? — that it matters little to the Republic whether a million or two mountaineers ever get on their feet again ; that the 276 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS work is not strategic? Let me remind you that they have held strategic positions twice already. Once in the closing days of the Revolution. Again, in the Civil AVar, when, in proportion, more of tall Tennesseeans stood up beside the flag than of any other State. They may hold tiie key again. But strategy or no — there are two things bigger than strategy. One is the obli- gation to care for our own. The other is to accept the mind of Christ, and up on the mountains wild and bare to seek the sheep that are lost. It were not difficult to conjure up a vision of a new South in the twentieth century, in Avhich Southern Highlanders would spring forward to the leadership they held a century ago. The imperative of patriot- ism to-day is to rebuild the South. And millions of money will not do it. It calls for human bodies and souls. It calls for an advance of Christian education and Christian sympathy. THE WEST With the advance through the mountains we associate the opening of the West. On the flag of the ordinance of 1787 are these three words: "Liberty, Education, Religion." To these ideas the old Northwest was dedi- cated. Its development is the miracle of the first half of the century. From it the opening of the West came on as naturally as the morn slips into the noontide, until now already the Mississippi Valley is the center of our empire. It is the most American part of the country. It has been built up out of the ideals which the men of CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 277 New Englaiul and the Middle and Southern States car- ried over the nioimtaius. And wiiile men of the P]ast have yielded somewhat to European influences, the men of the West have kept their ideals and institutions true to the visions of Colonial days. It is our American heritage. And it is our mightiest. No other valley on earth drains such resources as are drained by the Mississippi. The center of population is near that river. The center of political influence seems to have crossed it — when a single State on its western bank furnishes two Cabinet officers, the leadership of the House, and one of the most potent voices in the Sen- ate. And as you look over that vast expanse, blos- soming in the light of our best civilization, and ask, " How came it ?" I reply, the " Liberty, Education, and Religion" emblazoned on the ordinance of 1787 have flung their light across the prairies. Is anything more needed there? Not intelligence. They have some of the best schools in the country. The public school system is unsurpassed, and colleges and great universities are in every State. But only moral principle that shall control men in public and pri- vate life can hold that central land true to the aims of its great founders. And these have not yet wholly triumphed. Aside from the dangers of great cities there are fringes of darkness that portend possible storms. For example : four great Territories are knocking at the doors of Congress. Whence the hesitation ? Chiefly this — unassimilated elements of population ; some of it is Indian, some is Mexican, some is Mormon. Congress 278 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS hesitates. It docs well to hesitate, and only the gospel of Christ can change the conditions that canse the hesi- tation. The Government once admitted a Mormon Ter- ritory. It has had trouble ever since. It is by no means sure the trouble is at an end. For a generation our Church and the others have been trying to change moral conditions. They have been working on some- thing harder than the granite of the Rockies. And now that which was only granite and resisted, takes on aggression, and advances. A few months ago we issued a statement declaring the doctrines and practices of Mormonism subversive of Christianity and its ambitions hostile to our Government. Faint-hearted politicians and subsidized editors made light of the arraignment. But the facts go on with their terrific indictment. And now the womanhood of the country is on its knees before Congress, asking for one effective barrier. Again Congress hesitates, and again the facts go on with their indictment declaring that a half-dozen States and Terri- tories are in the Mormon grip, while 1400 missionaries, with more than Jesuit zeal, are jjreaching the gospel of impurity in the older States. But those mountain valleys are going to be redeemed. The schoolhouses dot them and the mission stations ai'e manned — and another generation is growing up. ]\Ioun- tains in all ages are made for liberty. And the liberty which so often has crowned their summits from Hermon and the Alps and the Grampians will not fail in that grandest and richest mountain region on earth. In vision I see another day. It waits on the transforma- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 279 tion of the new century. Major Powell says there arc 100,000,000 acres waiting irrigation. That means a million hundred-acre farms. And the unfailing rivers of the mountains wait with their floods of blessing:. It is only for the hand of man encouraged by the Govern- ment to direct the channels which shall transform deserts into the gardens of the Lord. When that time comes there will be an empire of the Rockies too free and too holy for any fanaticism to control. THE PACIFIC But a vision of the new Rockies by no means ex- hausts our Canaan. All the undeveloped part of the world (Africa excepted) is around the Pacific Ocean. Europe will go on in a circular way reliving its old life on gradually rising levels. This East will refine and solidify and settle down. But the moving pictures of the world will be on the western coast. Hence the emi- nence of our Pacific States. It is they which front the hoary paganism of China and the tyrannical absolutism of Russia. At last the struggle for commercial suprem- acy will be, not across the Atlantic, but the Pacific. And that coast, so set in the center of future things, is Christian only in name. Thank God for the signal lights of promise flung out by brave men and women ! How sturdily they hold that picket line ! The Church does not begin to measure her obligation to that region. For its own sake and so for ours, for the sake of our new islands, strung like emerald beads to mark the line where sunrise and sunset meet ; for the sake of foreign 280 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS missions, which at that line becomes one with home missions — this triple plea emphasizes our present impera- tive duty. ALASKA We have not yet reached the end of our outlook. Alaska presents a dream for the twentieth century. Do you say that is more pictorial than strategic ? Are you sure ? Sure that never on the broken piers of the Aleutian bridge Anglo-Saxon and Slav will meet to contest for the supremacy of the world and deter- mine whether absolutism or liberty shall be man's final heritage ? And if not strategic in that sense they may be in another. The special agent of the Agricultural Depart- ment of the Government has just reported that Alaska will sustain a population of three millions. An empire as large as the three Pacific States may reach from Sax- man to Point Barrow. In a few weeks five stations for wireless telegraphy will be installed there, and across those islands and headlands the tingling air will carry tlie pulsations of commerce and government. Is it not time to install more stations for Christian telegraphy — that across islands and headlands from Saxman to Point Barrow the air may tingle with the messages from heaven ? Is it then in vain that our heroes on the Yukon keep their lonely vigils ? One of them is here to-night. For three dreadful winters he has been ring- ing a church bell at Rampart. Only a few miners have heard. But this Republic should hear. It is the first CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 281 faint call to the advancing pioneer lines to take that land in the fear of God. But even if there be no advancing column, are our brave men wasting their lives when they give them- selves for a handful of miners ? Not if the parable of the lost sheep holds — not if the ministry of the Mas- ter holds ! And shall we measure up to the spirit of the Master if we neglect even those 30,000 Indians stranded on shores that have become ours and cor- rupted by our civilization? THE ANTILLES Another picture I would throw on the screen of your imagination. Consider the physical formation of the continent and the lesson it suggests. Alone of conti- nents, our mountain ranges run north and south. North America and South America are bound together by a granite chain forged in the elemental fires, by Avhich nature suggests a unity at once of structure and of des- tiny. This Western Continent is one. So far its unity has not been apparent. The southern half, as rich as the northern, has been held back for centuries. Nearly a half score of petty republics are staggering blindly toward ideals which their national origins make them impotent to realize ; while among them Britain, France, and Holland hold doubtful possessions, with Germany wildly striving for a foothold. And it has not been ours to interfere. But suddenly the Almighty took a hand in the conflict. The crash of our guns, shotted to deliver Cuba from intolerable oppression, did more than 282 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS that for wliicli they were sighted. They broke open gates of darkness on whose hinges was the rust of cen- turies. Suddenly the isles of the Caribbean beckoned for our help. And far beyond them, lands under the Southern Cross emerged as an opportunity for our prin- ciples and institutions. Shall we not enter the open fields, not indeed with political intent, but with those moral forces which have lifted the upper half of the continent and are capable of lifting the lower half to equal glory — and thus at last assert what nature said in the throes of geologic ages : North and South America are one ? And if any shall say, " Religions go by parallels, and the form of Christianity which freighted the Spanish ships of the sixteenth century is as good for southern America as for southern Europe," I have only to reply : " By their fruits ye shall know them." There is only one reason why South American republics can- not thrive : A republic without an open Bible never has thriven. Look at the beautiful islands at our southern door — islands where every prospect pleases, where nature has been lavish to the last degree, and where the fruit of the soil has been ignorance, superstition, and immorality. From such conditions no good republic ever rises. Nor can Ave, even in our strength, afford to tie such weights to our feet. For however we may make an imaginary Panama Canal the boundary between us and South America, there is no such boundary be- tween us and the islands. They are ours, and we must be theirs. And if any shall say, " They are unimportant ; re- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 283 serve your missionary enterprise for more worthy occa- sions/' let me call up a picture of to-morrow. It is the middle of this century. I see the commerce of the world in converging lines approach the Caribbean Sea. I see it in stately procession from northern and southern Europe, from North and South America, move into the great canal that binds two oceans — for the Pacific has risen in the might of her millions and beckoned the white fleets of the world. And as those lines converge toward the Caribbean, the Antilles on every side throw out the green flags of their summits in welcome to their beautiful harbors. I see along the shores of those islands, from St. Thomas to Cuba, prosperous cities enriched bv the interchang-es of nations and blooming in the liglit of the world's last civilization. And then I know the Antilles are strategic. They are the chal- lenging ports of a world-wide commerce and the meet- ing place of the nations of the earth. And then will we know, if we do not now, that they are the stepping stones for our going to republics beyond, which for their peace and prosperity wait the education and the gospel which are the corner stones of our greatness. THE INDIANS For an instant, turn to one more picture. It has nothing to do with national greatness, but much with the national honor ; nothing to do with Christian strategy, but much with Christian character. A quar- ter of a million of red men are nothing in the way of our march — were little when they were numerous and 284 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS wo wore u few. The push of civihziition in tlie eml is ahiiigiity. So the Stockbridges wore pushed out of Massachusetts, the Iroquois out of New York, the Clierokees out of Tennessee, tlie Sioux out of Minnesota, — remnants of many tribes imprisoned in the Indian Territory, or hunted through tlie canyons of the moun- tains till they disappeared. And a nation's history is its judgment. We must settle the account with eternal justice as we may be able. But it is for the Christian Church to walk in the steps of Jesus Christ. Those steps will lead us to the tents and tepees of our savages. And our going has been blessed. Regard it in the light of our mission to the Sioux, wdio contributed last year for home missions $1940 — over $1,50 per member — far more than the average of our whole Church, Re- gard it in the light of Henry Kendall College, in the territory, whence have gone Indian Christians and Indian patriots whose heroism in Cuba evoked the praises of our Colonel of the Rough Riders. Regard it in the light of the Indian ministers among the Nez Perces, the mission of some of whom has been like that of an Elliott or a Brainerd. Regard it in the light of our suffering Pimas, where Christian Indians, a thousand strong, are bearing the burdens of poverty even unto hunger with heroic fortitude and Christian patience. Of the future in this connection there is not much to prophesy. Only this — it will be a dark day for the Christian Church when she can regard without emotion the fading away of those owners of our soil whose his- tory strotohos into a mythical past ; when she can con- CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 285 sitler their future as anything less than a plea of bound- less pathos, to do the best she can to seek and to save. Is it too late to give them a home on earth ? Are the nomadic instincts of a hundred generations too strong to be overcome by any allurements of citizenship here ? At least, by the grace of God, we may kindle on their dull faces a hope of heaven, of citizenship in a country of which they never have been skeptical and toward which their dulled minds doggedly point. OUR DUTY Behold thus the missionary duty of the twentieth century. That the world power is rapidly shifting to this continent is now commonly conceded. A Briton like Mr. Stead can speak of the United States of the World and not be disowned in England. A dream of the federation of all English-speaking peoples of the world, with their capitol at Washington, is by no means a crazy vagary. The late Frank Stockton met an Englishman last summer who frankly regretted the folly of George III. " Why," he said, " he cost us America." Stockton replied, " Have you thought what he cost us ? He cost us Britain." It may come yet, that in bonds of federation Britain will belong to America. But Avhether that or not — the Anglo-Saxon power is shifting hither. What does that portend for the world ? That depends, at last, on what Christianity can do for us. The beginning of the last century was marked by an awakening of righteousness. Revivals sprang up simul- taneously from New England to Tennessee. It was like 28G CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS another Reformation. Infidelity was sliaken to pieces. Irrelijrion hid in a corner. It was meet it should be so. The nation had a mighty march ahead, and only as girded with the loftiest moral principles could she enter in to possess the land. Now we are at the beginning of another century, and we need another revival to fit us for the longer and grander march that is ahead. It must be a revival of spiritual religion, else the lower levels will hold us and be our destruction. Mr. Glad- stone, contemplating our dawning greatness, asked, " How is the majestic figure who is to become the largest and most powerful on the stage of the world's history to make use of his power?" And he added : " We must ascend from the groimd floor of material industry to the higher regions in which nobler purposes are to be wrought out." We are in danger of the " gronnd floor," in danger of failing of that " ascending spiral which leads from matter up to God." Consider how powerless is the Church on the verge of her great mission. In the year before this one, over 2000 of our churches reported no additions. Of the 5000 which received accessions almost one-half received five, or less. Shall I contrast this array of powerless- ness with the rewards of service in Alaska, where one missionary baptized 52 Indians ; or in Porto Rico, where one missionary led 100 souls to the Master? Must our mission fields in their ])overty and isolation teach ns the secret of power? To your tents, O Israel ! The century calls for God's men. Has there been some revival of missionary spirit ? Thank God there has, CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS 287 but how meager to employ our equipment, liow poor in the })resencc of possibilities. We need a spirit of evan- gelism that, like a flying squadron, shall hasten from port to port with its message of life. Why should another century be laid under tribute before America, by her own regeneration, is prepared for the saving of the world? Some one has said that the martial spirit in a man or a nation is measured by its ability to watch opportunity, to seize opportunity, to crowd opportunity. We claim to have the martial spirit. It is in the blood of men whose fathers fought on all the religious battlefields of Europe. Let us show it then, for never was such a campaign as that for which the drums are beating now. We have some martial spirit. We have watched the opportunity. Like Samp- son's fleet before Santiago, watching the smoke of ships within tlie harbor, waiting for a chance, we have watched the smoke of the immigration fleets and longed for a chance to conquer them for Christ. It may even be said, we have seized opportunity. As the Brooklyn, the Oregon, and the Texas opened on the flying ships of Spain, so we have sprung to our chance to lower across a continent the flags of ignorance, superstition, and sin. But we have not crowded oppor- tunity. See our fleet close in on the beached ships of Spain, nor cease its converging fire until tlie last flag is down ! A nation's everlasting gratitude to the admiral just laid to his honored rest ! Ah ! could we thus crowd opportunity; could the martial spirit of the heroes of earthly battles thoroughly possess the soldiers of 288 CENTENNIAL OF HOME MISSIONS Christ, how swift and strong would tlie cohimns move across prairies and mountains, across islands and conti- nents, till not one flag should fly that was not loyal to the name and the kingdom of Jesus Christ. / Princeton Theological Seminar> Libraries 1 1012 01233 7988 Date Due ■il :/^ 3 -^1 ?;• n 19 '40 .4 8 V' f r il r » ^ ; •flPT™*"*' T* ^