WM ANNUAL SERMON BEFORE THE American Board of Commissioners FOR Foreign Missions DELIVERED AT OBERLIN, OHIO, OCTOBER 14, 1902 REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D.D. Pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn '^mm: 1*3.0 i '^^' •S: .^>^ ^^ t\^t ®I??nIo9rrer/ ^ PRINCETON, N.J. ^/^. 'V/, 'V. * BV 2075 .H5 1902 Hillis, Newell Dwight, 1858- 1929. The self-propagating power ,f fVir-icri-i.-^-nT THE SELF-PROPAGATING POWER OF CHRISTIANITY ANNUAL SERMON BEFORE THE American Board of Commissioners FOR Foreign Missions DELIVERED AT OBERLIN, OHIO, OCTOBER 14, 1902 REV. NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS, D.D. Pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD 14 BEACON STREET, BOSTON ^ 1902 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE LEAVEN, WHICH A WOMAN TOOK AND HID IN THREE MEASURES OF U^W." — MattkeW XUt : JJ. "BUT HE COULD NOT BE HID." — Mark vH : 24. Christianity is a self-propagating system. It journeys forward, carrying with it full power to reproduce itself. In the past it has made its own way, without regard to indi- vidual protest or the persecutions organized by states. It fulfills the story of the magic tree, that ripens fruit for the multitudes of today, and ripens also the seeds for future generations ; each seed also, having wings on which it rides forth, to search out the richest soil ; so that the futility of opposition to Christianity is self-evident. What if a man hates the summer .'' How can he oppose it, and drive the July back } Can he go up against the south wind with sword and spears ? Of what avail are flights of arrows against the sunbeams that silently and secretly gnaw at the snowdrifts .-• And Christianity journeys forward across the centuries and the continents like an advancing summer, against which weapons are powerless. The principle that explains Chris- tianity's self-propagating power, is the law of the conserva- tion of energy. We burn up the coal, but in doing so we change its forms, and do not destroy its atoms. And much less is it possible to destroy eternal truth. For that reason, there are no lost arts, no forgotten tools, no heroes who are dead, no true word, no kindly deed, no beneficent institution that has ever perished out of so- ciety. How can a good thing die .-' In his struggle against the snow and frost, man discovers fire. By what possible 4 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. method will the winter allow man to forget the path to the forest ? Once the herdsman has discovered Jacob's well, how can the flocks and keepers forget the path that leads to the fountain ? Borne down by his burden, man learned how to make the horse lend his loin and limbs, how to make the river carry his grain. His tired back makes it impos- sible for the laborer to forget these friends who have lifted his load. Fulfilling a life full of toil, full of strife, full of defeat and love, and grief, and death, how can man, once he has found the truth regarding the Fatherhood of God, the meaning of his loving providence, or caught a glimpse of the immortal hope, ever lose the splendid vision. When the birds of paradise go into the desert, and forget the way back to the oasis ; when the babe in its weariness forgets its mother's breast ; when the pilgrim forgets the path to his own home, then, and never until then, will it be possible for any good thing or true Christian word to be forgotten, overthrown, or destroyed. Christianity is leaven, and leaven, like the infinite God, works, and neither slumbers nor sleeps. Christianity is light, and the light does not simply warm the seed, but lifts it. Enemies talk about overthrowing Christianity. They can put a bushel over a candle ; but whose arm is long enough or strong enough to extinguish the sun .-' Councils and assemblies talk about protecting the truth, but in their ignorance they forget that the truth protects them. Once the light of the world has arisen, it nevermore can be hid. With sublime audacity Christ foretells the conflict, the gradual gains, and final victory of his truth. " Every knee shall bow," adds his servant, Paul ; his truth will make its own way. No enemy can hinder its forward movement ; friends can help it, only as the husbandman helps the sum- mer by opening the furrow and sowing the seed. And now The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. 5 that these centuries have passed, it is fair to ask whether its gains and influence have been such as to justify Christ's forecast of final supremacy. History is a stern judge ; from her decision there is no appeal ; and we gladly turn toward that tribunal. On the day He was ensepulchred, the last spark of hope was apparently extinguished. Forty days later there were eleven men and three women whose doubt and fear had turned to faith. In forty days more, this company was three thousand. In one year it was fifty thousand. In one century, it was two millions. When three centuries had passed by, all the continents were ban- nered. The tombs that were closed in the fourth century are now being uncovered, excavators are finding churches, parchments, manuscripts, epitaphs and names. These tombs are on the banks of the Euphrates, in Arabia to the south, in Ethiopia, near the head waters of the Nile, in the villages about Carthage, to the west, in the deserted hillsides of southern France and western Spain, But not simply the multitudes that Christianity con- quered, the character of the men also whose superb intel- lects it mastered, bear witness to Christianity's power in making its own way. One of the first to capitulate, was Saul, the acutest mind of his time indeed, but also of the greatest intellects of all time. Then came Polycarp, lo-. natius, and Tertullian, — renowned as martyrs indeed, but known also for their wide learning, and their literary achieve- ments. In the Third Century, Christ won over the two greatest thinkers of that era, Justin Martyr and Origen. It conquered the greatest mind of the Fourth Century, Athanasius, the philosopher and teacher of Alexandria, even as it subdued that Chrysostom who became its voice and became renowned as "the golden-mouthed John." Then Augustin, the one outstanding man of the Fifth Century, fell into line, and the movement became a contagion. One 6 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. missionary sailed to the West, dropped anchor at the mouth of a little river in Ireland, and soon Christianity conquered the Celts, and it has never lost its hold on Belfast, Edin- burg, and Aberdeen. Then came Augustine to Canterbury, in 590, with Christianity's victory over the five million Saxons, that are now thirty millions at home and one hun- dred millions abroad. In the next century the Germans and the Scandinavians yielded, and they, with their neigh- bors, are now one hundred and fifty millions. And if it be said that Christianity has lost its grip on the Latin nations, we answer that the Christian spirit there is, in the words of Christ, asleep, but not dead. Even more signal the re- forms that Christianity wrought. It began by rescuing unwelcome and orphan children ; then, under the lead of Telemachus, the monk, in one dramatic stroke, stopped the gladiatorial games. Its law of love soon ameliorated the con- dition of the lame, the halt and the blind, through innumer- able plans of relief. In the Eleventh Century, Bernard and Peter the Hermit inaugurated their Crusades ; and, return- ing from the Holy Sepulchre, they sowed all Western Europe with the seed of Eastern civilization. Then came the great outburst. " Let us have buildings worthy of His worship," said the architects and the guild of masons, and soon Europe was covered with the cathedrals, all bearing the shape of Christ's cross. "Let us have music worthy of His praise," said Stradivarius, and the monks organized the skilled work- men of every city into companies to make violins, and cellos and base viols, and organs, and wind instruments, while musicians wrote Te Deums, worthy of His praise. " Let us paint the pictures of His Divine career," said the artist, and when Cimabue unveiled his canvas, representing the infant Christ and His Mother, and the crucified Saviour, the people of Florence closed their shops, and forming a pro- cession, with banners they marched to the church, to unveil the new art. The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. 7 Then the movement took on a new form. " Let the people have liberty and the laws ; " the city was Florence, and the speaker was the monk of San Marco. " Let the people have direct access to God;" the land is Germany, and the speaker is Luther. " Let the people control their own church life ; " the land is Switzerland, and the speaker is Calvin. " Let the people read the Bible for themselves, and own their own books ; " the land is Holland, and the speaker is Erasmus, "Let each man present his own prayer to God ; " the city is Paris, and the speaker is Coligny. " There is only one King who rules by divine right, a sovereign citizen, to whom the monarch is re- sponsible ; " the land is England, and the speaker is Crom- well. " Let us have a new country, where we may lay the foundations free from the debris of past centuries ; " the land is Massachusetts, and the speakers were our Pilgrim Fathers. And now has come the new era, when the old walls around China and the old cruelties in the islands of the sea, have fallen, and the world is becoming one world, and the nations are becoming one people, and the strong tribes are helping the weak ones to make their government safe, their laws just, their liberties secure. All this is history. All these are facts that cannot be denied, that cannot be mini- mized ; that can only be confessed ; verily, the leaven has worked ; verily, the light could not be hid. Events prove that Christianity has a self-propagating power. Having reviewed the facts of history, it remains for us to ask, what is the meaning of Christianity's power to propagate itself and make its own way through the centu- ries and across the continents .-* Difficult indeed the ques- tion what the world owes to Christianity and its missionaries ! There is nothing so difficult as to estimate the influence of a man, whether that man be good or whether he be bad. Difficult is it to measure the amount of light, and difficult 8 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. to weigh the elements in the atmosphere! But a thousand- fold more difficult to measure personal influence. We trace the movement of the spring as it journeys down the valley, widens into a river, and at length carries upon its bosom fleets of war and fleets of peace, and we know the length of that Nile or Amazon, its breadth and depth up to the point where it mingles with the infinite sea. But by what tests shall we measure a man, as he through his example, teach- ings, and weight of character, moves forward amidst his generation } In trying to estimate the influence of a man or a system, there is one principle to be kept in mind. For example; Wendell Phillips once traced all invention to Bacon. If, then. Lord Bacon were living today, he could say to Watt : " This engine is mine ; I taught you how to study the effect of steam ; " and to McCormick, " This reaper is mine, I taught you how to study the con- version of power;" and to Fulton, "This ship is mine, I taught you how to study the winds and waves ; " and to Edison, "This light is mine, I taught you how to study the lightning ; " and from this viewpoint Bacon becomes the indirect author of all modern inventions, by virtue of his inductive principle. Now doubtless, in strict justice, we can claim for a great man what he achieves indirectly as well as what he brings about through direct influence. But we need not take advantage of this principle ; let us rather use the test of exclusion, a test that is simple but perhaps severe. Thus in estimating the influence of Arnold of Rugby, we can ex- clude his school, his son Matthew, his favorite pupils Dean Stanley and Thomas Hughes and Arthur Hugh Clough, and when we see what is left, we understand how great was the influence of Thomas Arnold. And not otherwise can we apply the principle of exclusion to the influence of Chris- tianity on a nation. Augustine landed in England in 590 The Self -propagating Power of Christianity, 9 and conquered the Saxon folk through his statement of the love of God revealed in Christ, and by the immortal hope. Then when centuries have passed by, Matthew Arnold tells us that the springs of English literature were in Caedmon and Bede and King Alfred's version of the Bible, and Bun- yan's " Pilgrim's Progress." But all these were men who dedicated their lives to the study of Christ's words, and to giving his principles a legal and poetic form. Take the Christian element out of Casdmon's pages and Bede's chap- ters and King Alfred's translation of the Scriptures, and out of Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," and you would have taken the sheaves out of the wheatfield and the fruit from all the orchards, and the light out of the sunbeams, and the sun itself out of the sky. But when you destroy the springs of English literature, the literature itself has been annihi- lated. Then exclude from the laws of England what its codes owe to Christianity, and what can we better say of the influence of the Christian Scriptures upon the body of English common law than to recall Thomas Hooker's words, "That law whose seat is the bosom of God and whose voice is the melody of the world," and who closes his sublime treatise with a tribute to Him who superseded the "Thou shalt nots " of Moses with his great positives, " Thou shalt love, thou shalt hope, thou shalt trust." If now we exclude from the rise of English liberty all Christian elements, what would be left, save the old des- potism and tyranny .-' In the recent celebration of the coro- nation of England's king, a great jurist passed in review the architects of English liberty. In calling the roll of her heroes, he mentioned King Alfred, with his Scriptures ; John Wickliffe, the great translator; the Christian barons at Runnymede, extorting the Magna Charta from a tyrant ; and then came to the great Puritan epoch that he said was lo The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. the golden age of English liberty, and the names that he called were the names of John Eliot, John Hampden, John Pym, Oliver Cromwell, and the great Puritan preachers. But what shall we say of John Hampden, with his eloquence and scholarship, save that this patriot and hero was first of all a patrician Christian gentleman, Christ's man, and there- fore serving the cause. And what shall we say of John Pym, the old man eloquent, save that he loved his fellows because he loved his God ? What shall we say of Oliver Cromwell, save that like Dante and Milton and Bernard and St. Francis of Assissi, he was a God-intoxicated man, a man of one book, the Bible, a man who lived the life of prayer and was often in the desert or fields alone with God ? Not less striking the influence of Christianity on Eng- lish poetry. It has been said that all German literature began with Martin Luther's translations of the Gospels, and a like statement would hold of English literature. Take away Christianity from the sixteenth century, and you lose Spencer's "Faery Queen." In the next century, if you ex- clude Christianity, you lose England's sublimest epic, Mil- ton's " Paradise Lost," not to mention his great " Plea for the Liberty of the Printing Press." You would lose also the nine greatest dramas of Shakespeare, the tragedies that have as their mother principle a great Christian truth. At the end of the eighteenth century you would lose the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and the " Cotter's Saturday Night " of Burns. In the nineteenth century you would lose its sublimest poem, the "In Memoriam " of Tennyson, and the greatest works of Browning. And of Christianity's influence on their art, we must remember that the men of the pre-Raphaelite school, William Holman Hunt and Ros- setti and George Frederic Watts, dedicated their unrivaled genius to interpreting the Christ, who, in Hunt's greatest painting, stands knocking at the door. And what shall we The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. ii say of the essayists, save that Ruskin ends his career by saying, " Do you ask me what is the sum of all my teach- ing ? It is this: 'Whatsoever Christ saith unto you, do it !' " And what is the essence of Carlyle's statement save this : " The melody that set forth from Bethlehem and has come down through the centuries ravishing the heart of the generations, is the one world melody that is destined to sub- due all discords into the sweetness of Christ's will." And of the history of her eloquence, take away those orators and statesmen and jurists who were Christian, from the days of Milton and Hampden to the days of Bright and Cobden and Gladstone, and it would be like taking the Christian themes from the walls of the Sistine chapel to leave only picture frames and empty spaces. For what is England but the truths of Jesus Christ converted into social, legal and political institutions .-' One way of measuring the sun is to estimate its di- mensions and its heat power, and to study the sunbeam. Another way is to study the sheaf that is produced by the single beam, the harvests and the vineyards and orchards that cover the land. And we understand Christianity best by studying its influence upon man's individual happiness and the welfare of the state. The rise and reign of the common people witness to the worth of Christianity. His- tory is a stern judge indeed, and when she speaks, her testimony is conclusive. And this simple test of exclusion tells us how much the Christian missionary has done for this nation that stands in the very front of the nations of the earth. THE EXPLANATION OF CHRISTIANITY'S SELF-PROPAGATING POWER. How shall we explain Christianity's power to propa- gate itself.? The answer to this question is not difficult nor far to seek. It makes states strong, it develops insti- 12 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. tutions for society without, by transforming the individual within. Its genius is the genius of individual worth. It shows us a great man, from whose heart a great movement starts forward, as a great river sets forth on its journey from the mountain side. The students of history have never estimated at its 'full value the importance of Christ's words, " Ye must be born again." The prodigal may begin again after his self-wreckage ; the publican, grown gray and hardened in sin, may return to the days when the heart was young ; the man who has shipwrecked his happi- ness may begin anew. When men come to understand that sentiment fully, with blinding tears of joy they will exclaim, "We may, we may be born again!" That single word swings open for us the door of infinite possibilities in the life that now is, as well as the door into heaven. It means that the soul may receive the divine invasion. The seed of wheat is very small, but in order to the gol- den sheaf we do not need to have a large seed. Let the brown berry of the wheat be never so small, the sheaf will come, because the sun is large above, and the soil is rich beneath, and the great earth lending its richness to the roots, and the great sun in the sky lending its light and warmth, passing through the sheaf will create the seed and the bread for the nations. We cannot paint in colors too rich the possibility of a soul above which hangs the light of the world, and about which, like an atmosphere, lies the loving providence of God, and beneath which lies God's infinite truth, like soil. It is this that explains the appearance of great men. They began with germinal faculties, but they were born again through the incoming of the tides of the divine spirit, com- ing at morning and coming at noon and coming at night, until the soul took on the dimensions of one whom John called "the sons of God." The old idea was of course to The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. 13 make the state great by multiplying tools and machines on the outside. Now we know that the way to make the tool and the machine is to first of all make the mind invent- ive on the inside. One way to decorate a tree is to tie waxen apples on the boughs, and soon each branch will be clothed with loveliness. Another way to make an apple tree beautiful is to feed the roots and let in the sunshine, and when the sap begins to flow it will secrete its own sugar, ripen its own fruit, and fill the fruit with sweet, crisp and dripping juices. And this fruit does not simply decorate the boughs, but it also nourishes the people with true food. The way to enrich the state without is to feed the soul within. Would you have libraries .-* Waken and inspire reason, and the youth will write his own books. Would you have galleries filled with pictures .'' Waken and inspire the taste, and the youth will become an artist, whose brush will be as full of color as the summer itself. Would you have laws pure and high.-' Waken the love of justice, and the youth will bring about all needed reforms. Would you have the state moral and religious .-• Waken the man's conscience by sending the vision of God unto this young Jacob, that he may see the angels of God ascending and descending, and so be changed from Jacob, the crafty, to Israel, the prince among men. Would you have a hard, cruel man become gentle and humane .-• Send to this Saul some heavenly vision as he moves along the way to Da- mascus, and the enemy will become a friend, and the friend an apostle and martyr. And would you have Christianity journey like the advancing light the great world round .-^ Once the youth has experienced the love of God, he will ask no service from others, but his heart will rather over- flow with service to his fellows. Little need, therefore, of alarm for the future of Chris- tianity ! In these days there are many prophets of ill tidings 14 The Self-propagating Power of Christiatiity. abroad. These pessimists are afraid the church attendance is less striking ; that the people are less interested in the study of the Bible. Gone are our great preachers ! Gone the great statesmen and heroes ! Gone the great poets like Tennyson and Browning and Longfellow and Lowell, and these have left no successors ! But once every thirty years all the disciples, the whole Christian church is blotted out. Once every generation death annihilates the great leaders and teachers and patriots and heroes. The frost with its sharp sickle will soon cut down every shock of corn, strip away every leaf from the trees, leave every vineyard bare and sear ; but the frost cannot lift his icy fingers to obliter- ate the sun ; the sun can return to create new shocks of corn, to reclothe the orchards and make each vineyard again to be deep-fruited with its clusters, until the land waves with harvests from Maine to Oregon. Sometimes councils say, " We have to take care of the truth," and assemblies say, " We must guard the truth com- mitted to our charge." But it is the truth that takes care of them. No, nothing can injure Christianity ; no hand can take off its chariot wheels and interrupt its onward progress. No weapon formed against His truth and church can prevail against Him. Christianity is leaven that works, works day and night, neither slumbering nor sleeping. Christianity is light. It lifts as well as shines, it regener- ates and saves. F'or the dying leaders it can raise up new and greater apostles, and propagating itself, at last shall come an era when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord ! CHRISTIANITY NOT LOSING ITS SELF-PROPAGATING POWER. But if Christianity has influenced social life and indi- vidual character in the past, does it still possess this power to sweeten life and regenerate the nations.'' Can it still fix TJie Self-Propagating Power of Chris tia?iity. 15 the attention of the greatest intellects ? Can it fascinate their thought and finally conquer their reason and will ? Is it still advancing from continent to continent, winning over the greatest minds and changing its enemies to friends ? The answer is again in history, in the biography of the missionary, if you will, and in the story of the century that has just closed. Unique the method by which Christ has always conquered a heathen nation ! His truth has always raised up one unique leader, whose sweetness and light have regenerated one community, and then the influence of that man and community has suddenly moved like a contagion over the entire nation. For that reason it has never been necessary to send out many missionaries, and never, save perhaps in one instance only, have missionaries been needed in a nation longer than three generations in succession. The reason of this is self-evident : Suppose you wish to arouse the people in regard to the peril of the slave market and the woes of black men in the cotton field, must you have a thousand books like " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and a thousand authors with genius equal to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe } Is the problem not how to secure one author and one book .'' If that one book is strong enough to master the mind and heart of your neighbor, it will mas- ter your neighbors from ocean to ocean, from lake to gulf. When, then, God wishes to share in a new forward move- ment for society. He has raised up one Moses, and following him the people have left the wilderness and come into the promised land of righteousness, — one Paul, and following him, a Roman empire becomes Christian, — one Augustine, and immediately all men become lovers of that " City of God," — and one Luther, and all Germany straightway is transformed. Once this single man is produced, the move- ment becomes a contagion and propagates itself. We are told that when the French army landed on the 1 6 The Self-propagati7ig Power of Christianity. southern shore of England in the olden times, the alarm was waved from hilltop to hilltop by signal fires that leaped from the south of England to the northern shore of Scotland in a single night. Not otherwise is it in the realms moral and spiritual. Once a great Christian leader has been raised up, his example is a light, and the torch is passed from hand to hand until the dark continent soon becomes ablaze with the new glory. But has Christianity been able to rear such heroes .-" You say that India repre- sents the Gibraltar of paganism. Her people are Aryan, philosophic, scholarly, analytic, spinning arguments as fine and delicate as the threads in the spider's web. And you say that with their caste system and their three great re- ligions, the obstacles to Christianity have been well-nigh insuperable. But what a company of heroes has Chris- tianity raised up in India ! Think of Carey, with his be- ginning as a shoemaker, his hungry mind, his thirst for wisdom and knowledge, his unyielding and all-conquering energy, developing indigo fields and factories, organizing a series of great printing presses, making dictionaries and grammars, elected to the chair of Sanscrit in Oxford, found- ing countless schools ! Think of Duff, the unrivaled orator, and of his vast influence over India ! Think of the heroes of the Sepoy rebellion, of the great colleges today in these Christian and state schools with more than three million children and youth who will one day become the teachers of the 350,000,000 ! Think of the 4,500 young men related to the university of Calcutta ! Only the other day an Indian gentleman is reported to have said that the caste system had shown more signs of weakening and breaking, like a dam that was giving away before the incoming flood, than during all past centuries. It was India's Governor-general, too, that once said that the missionaries had conquered from the unwilling hands of her political rulers and the East India TJie Self -propagating Power of Christianity, 17 Company, some twenty great laws that had done away with the murder of children, the burning of widows, the horrors of the Juggernaut system, the annihilation of manners and customs, that were degrading the entire race. It was an- other governor-general that said that not the East India Company, not England's army, and not her political rule or her commerce, had given the world a new India, but that the Christian missionaries had wrought more powerfully toward this end than any and all other forces combined. Or turn toward Burma. Was there ever a greater hero, a more accurate scholar, a finer example of the Christ pa- triot and hero than Adoniram Judson. whose memory today in that land is a kind of moral lighthouse that sheds its beams over all the beams and forests .'' And China has had Morrison, who, in sixteen years, achieved that almost im- possible task of creating the Chinese dictionary, with its five folio volumes, each one containing more than 4,500 words ; a task so great that one has said that the man must have had muscles of brass, heart of steel, brain of woven steel, the memory of an angel, and the life of Methuselah, to have accomplished the task. In the South Sea Islands, we have Paton, the story of whose perils from the flight of poisoned arrows, of his dangers by sea and dangers from the war-clubs of savages, and dangers from sharks, and dangers from cannibals, makes up one of the most thrilling stories in all the history of heroism. It has been said that nothing charms man like stories of elephants, but the story of the heroism of James Chalmers, whose biography has just been published, and who so recently was martyred by the savages of the South Seas, is a story that has a fascination beyond all the tales of the achievements of great orators. Nor can we ever forget that it was Robert Louis Stevenson who be- gan with a violent prejudice against the Christian mission- ary ; but who afterwards, in his Valaima letters, tells us 1 8 The Self-propagating Power of Christianity. that Chalmers was one of the bravest, sweetest, strongest^ noblest and most rugged men whom he had ever met, whose single influence changed him from an opponent to a sup- porter of the Christian movement. In Africa, we need not wonder that the dark continent is rapidly becoming the continent of life and progress. It was my fortune some years ago, to hear the debate in the House of Commons on the proposed Uganda railway, and at that time I listened to the speech of Sir Henry Stanley, on the resources of that marvelous country. But you can find his tribute in Mr. Stanley's other works. This man be- gan as a newspaper reporter. He found Livingstone in the heart of Africa. Little wonder that Livingstone's charac- ter and work overcame and transformed the reporter. Liv- insfstone had crossed Africa from east to west six times, and had gone from the Cape of Good Hope to the tropics and back four times. He was burned forty-two times in that furnace named the African fever. He was wounded twice by the poisoned arrows of savages. Countless times his life was threatened by the war-clubs and knives of cannibals. When Stanley urged him to return to the coast, and told him of the great triumphal procession that was awaiting him, the old missionary shook his head, and borne by his faithful servants on a litter, started back to find the head waters of the Nile. Then one night he slipped from his couch and wrote in his journal these words, " All I can say in my loneliness is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one — American, English, or Turk — who will come to heal this open sore of the world ! " The next morning when Susi stood at the door of the tent and received no response, he at length entered and found that the great hero was dead. Then began, not the march of the ten thousand, but the march of these black heroes. What an epic that story would make! Xenophon's The Self-propagati7ig Power of Christianity. 19 ten thousand marched away from enemies ; these two men marched away from friends. Xenophon's host marched to- ward home ; these marched away from home. Xenophon's host was not far from the great inland sea, and the thou- sands cheered one another. These were but a handful, and they took up the march at a point as far from the coast as Omaha is from New York, and going through the wilder- ness, swimming over the rivers, fording the streams, they bore the body of Livingstone to the coast and brought it to England, and saw the great surgeon, the editor of the Lancet^ examine the arm for the false joint and the thread of silver wire. And then, when all the great men of Eng- land had marched in solemn procession to her Abbey, there to bury the body of Livingstone, these two black men re- turned to the heart of Africa to take up their master's work. Did you ask whether or not Africa has a master spirit whose example and teachings will flame forth the light of Christ over all the dark continent } He changed these savages to heroes, and today there is not a river's mouth on the shore of the continent that once was dark but there stands a com- pany of Christian physicians and teachers and merchants and husbandmen ; a little column, that is marching straight away from the sea toward the heart of that great land. What railways are now being projected, what towns and cities founded, what villages, what schools, what hospitals, what dispensaries, what institutions where the trades are taught ! Africa has made greater progress in civilization during the past five years than in the past twenty-five years. Already it is becoming the seat of great civilizations. And if every foreign missionary were today withdrawn, the leaven that is there would in no long time leaven the whole lump, and bring in the new era for that great continent. 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