MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH TWENTY-FIVE LESSONS FOR THE DAILY VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL PREPARED FOR USE IN THE INTERMEDIATE DEPARTMENT PAUL PATTON FARIS PHILADELPHIA BOARD OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE U. S. A. 1923 3 . )7- ^ LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ) PRINCETON, N. J. BR 1704 . F22 Faris, Paul Patton Modern builders of the church -V> Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/modernbuildersofOOfari MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH TWENTY-FIVE LESSONS FOR THE DAILY VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL PREPARED FOR USE IN THE INTERMEDIATE DEPARTMENT BY v/ PAUL PATTON FARIS PHILADELPHIA BOARD OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE U. S. A. 1923 Copyright, 1923, by BOARD OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE U. S. A. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Lesson Page I. A Tinker Who Preached from Prison . 5 II. A Minister Who Stirred All England . 12 III. An Early Evangelist to Two Continents . 20 IV. The Pathfinder of Religious Freedom . 28 V. The First Apostle to the Red Men . 35 VI. America’s Pioneer Presbyterian . 41 VII. A Pastor Who Roused New England . 47 VIII. A President of Yale Who Started a Revival . 54 IX. An Itinerant Bishop of America . 61 X. From Law Office to Christian Pulpit . 68 XI. An American Chrysostom . 75 XII. Am Evangelist to All the World . 82 XIII. The Founder of Our Sunday Schools . 92 XIV. The Friend of Scotland’s Children . 99 XV. A General of the Cross . 107 XVI. A Friend to the World's Young Men . 115 XVII. From Cobbler’s Bench to India’s Strand . 124 XVIII. The Father of Chinese Missions . 132 XIX. America’s First Foreign Missionary . 139 XX. A Pioneer of African Civilization . 147 XXL Uganda’s Missionary Mechanic . 155 XXII. A Missionary Without a Country . 164 XXIII. A Christian Hero of the South Seas . 173 XXIV. A Christian Martyr Among the Indians . 182 XXV. The Earliest Apostle to the Alaskans . 192 3 ^■1 . LESSON I A TINKER WHO PREACHED FROM PRISON Read: Acts 16: 16-34. Memory Verse: “I have chosen the way of faithfulness: Thine ordinances have I set before me.” — Ps. 119:30. WHEN BOYS PLAYED AT THE KING'S COMMAND On a Sunday afternoon, about the year 1648, a group of boys were playing ball on the village green in Bed¬ ford, England. Near them were other boys, and also many men, shooting with bows and arrows, playing leapfrog, dancing around an old-fashioned Maypole, and playing other games. Few of them were afraid of being reproved for playing on Sunday, for it was the king himself who had ordered them to play. Charles I foolishly thought that if the people did not play games on Sunday, they might get so tired of the day that they would want to go back to the Catholic Church. This was in the days when England had only recently left the Catholic Church, and become one of the lands of the Protestant Reformation. Most of these men and boys were undisturbed over the fact that they were playing games on Sunday, but not all. One of them, a boy named John Bunyan, be¬ lieved not only that it was wrong to play ball on Sun¬ day, but also that it was wrong to play ball on any day. 5 6 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH He had heard so, very often, even from his playmates, who had been brought up by the overstrict Puritans of his time. That very morning, moreover, he had shivered in church service when the minister spoke of the awfulness of the sin of Sunday afternoon sports. Yet he had gone out and joined in the playing. Suddenly, as he played, John heard a strange voice. As he was about to bat the ball, he thought he heard some one say : “Will you leave your sins, and go to heaven? Or will you have your sins, and go to hell ?” Startled, the boy looked up, and as he looked he thought that he saw Christ in the sky, looking down on him. In an instant the vision was gone. John’s con¬ science hurt him painfully, but he refused to stop play¬ ing ball. “It’s too late for me to be good now,” he said moodily to himself. “So I may as well have a good time while I am alive.” Yet the boy’s conscience refused to leave him alone. Day after day, even when he was with the other boys, cursing and telling lies and swearing that these tales were true, he thought of his vision of Christ One day John was standing by a shop window, swearing as usual, when a woman put her head out of the window, and sharply scolded him. “You will spoil all the boys in the whole town !” she said. That was too much for John. In silence he hung his head, for he had nothing to say to the rebuke. But he stopped swearing at once. “It was a great wonder to me,’’ he said years later. “Whereas, before, I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before and another A TINKER WHO PREACHED FROM PRISON 7 behind, to make my words have authority, now I could without it speak better and with more pleasantness than ever I could before.’’ TINKER AND MINISTER From that day John Bunyan was a better boy. He was the son of a tinker, a mender of pots and kettles, and he himself soon began to follow this lowly and despised trade. In his own town, and in near-by vil¬ lages, he made broken pots whole, and he always did the task well. While he sat at work over his tinker's fire, he often thought of his past evil-doing, and longed for a peaceful heart. Then he began reading the Bible. A day came when, while traveling in the country at his trade, he thought of the one Bible verse that seemed to be just what he needed. This was it: He hath “made peace through the blood of his cross.” John Bunyan acted on these words, and accepted Christ; and gradu¬ ally peace came into his heart. When the young tinker had become a man, he united with the Baptist Church, and later he became a minister. He could not preach in fine churches, for most of these belonged to the Church of England, which had tried to forbid any preaching except its own. Yet Bunyan, in spite of much opposition and danger, did preach the gospel. He preached wherever he could — in the woods, in barns, on village greens, and in some small chapels. Great success came to the humble minister; the people listened to him eagerly, for he spoke both simply and eloquently. Then trouble began to arise. He was 8 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH slandered by persons who were envious of his fame, or who disliked what he said, for, while his preaching was very simple, it was very plain and rather stern. Bunyan was called a witch, a Jesuit, and even a highway robber, all of which charges of course were quite untrue. Yet the minister kept on preaching. WHEN MEN PREACHED AGAINST THE KING'S COMMAND After a time still greater troubles faced the fearless minister. The Government of England, which had been favorable to Puritans, Baptists, and other dis¬ senting Christians, came under the control of King Charles II, and under him it forbade any religious meetings except those of the Church of England, or the Episcopal Church. It would not even permit a minister of a dissenting organization such as the Baptist Church to live within five miles of a city. All of the dissenters' chapels and churches were closed. This was a time when it would have been easy to feel that it was wise and safe not to have church services at all for a while. But many ministers and many churches, including the Baptists at Bedford, were unwilling to find safety in any such way; and John Bunyan was unwilling to stop preaching at any earthly king’s command. The Bedford Baptists went into the woods for their meetings, and Bunyan went with them. In the woods he preached the gospel to them. Spies were there, also, however. After Bunyan’ s first preaching service in the woods, these spies hurried off to the officers of the law, to tell them that Bunyan A TINKER WHO PREACHED FROM PRISON 9 had broken the king’s commandment. A friend of Bun- yan’s hearing the news, told the minister of his danger, and urged him to flee. But Bunyan refused; to run away would discourage the congregation, he said. He stayed, and before the day was over, the constables came to the house where he was living, and put him under arrest. The next day the judge, before whom the brave minister was taken, offered to release him on bail if he would promise not to preach until his trial. But Bunyan would make no such promise. So he was put in the Bedford jail. IN PRISON AND OUT Bunyan’ s imprisonment was very long. More than twelve years passed before he finally was released. Yet at almost any time he could have gone free, as he very well knew, if only he had been willing to consent to stop preaching. After six years he was, indeed, let out of jail, but because he began preaching at once, he was again lodged in prison. Six years later the same thing happened; back to jail the persistent preacher went. It was not much longer, however, before the govern¬ ment was changed again, and all the dissenting minis¬ ters, in consequence, were allowed to preach wherever and whenever they chose. And so, at last, John Bun¬ yan went free. The very next day Bunyan became pastor of the Bedford Baptist Church, and the remainder of his life was devoted to preaching, to opening new churches, 10 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH and to writing books. The fame of Bunyan went all over England and Europe and even distant America. He became famous for two reasons. First, he was noted for his power as a preacher. At one service in London, on a cold winter morning, twelve hundred persons were present at seven o’clock to hear him, and in the city of Southwark the church sometimes was so crowded that Bunyan had to be lifted to the pulpit over the heads of the congregation. Yet he was even better known as a writer, for John Bunyan was the author of that famous book, ‘‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.” A BOOK THAT PREACHED THE GOSPEL It was in Bedford jail that Bunyan wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The story’s beginning sounds like it : “As I walked through the wilderness of this world,” the allegory opens, “I lighted on a certain place where there was a den [the Bedford jail], and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and, behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place with his face from his own house, a hook in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.” This is the beginning of a story about how a man named Christian made his journey through life to heaven. It is a story so interesting, so clear, and so powerful, that it has helped millions of people since Bunyan’ si day to live a better Christian life. “The Pil¬ grim’s Progress” has been the most widely read book ever printed in English, except the Bible. Even now A TINKER WHO PREACHED FROM PRISON 11 the missionaries in heathen lands are glad to have John Bunyan’s great story translated into the languages of the people among whom they work, and the book is found extremely helpful there. No doubt, the judges who kept Bunyan in prison twelve years thought that they were keeping him from preaching the gospel, yet the book he wrote there gave him the opportunity of preaching through it as effec¬ tively as ever he could have preached outside of prison. He was in jail, but he preached from jail by writing “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” A PRESERVER OF THE REFORMATION Bunyan lived at a time when the Reformation of Luther, Calvin, and Knox was so new that in England there was still danger that the people would either re¬ turn to the Roman Catholic Church or else lose their Christianity altogether. But the preaching and writing of Bunyan did a very great deal to prevent both these disasters. The common people of England, with John Bunyan’s help, learned to follow Christ, and in time the Reformation became firmly established in every land where the English language was spoken. This ex¬ plains why John Bunyan is widely known as one of the leading “preservers of the Reformation.” Suggestion: On a world map trace the history of the Chris¬ tian Church — first in Asia, then in Africa and Europe. We are now in England, and soon will go to America, and later across the Pacific Ocean. Read extracts from “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” 12 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Books Suggested Froude, “John Bunyan.” Thaine, “History of English Literature”: Biography of Bunyan. Brown, “Bunyan: His Life, Times, and Work.” Venables, “Great Writers Series”: Biography of Bunyan. LESSON II A MINISTER WHO STIRRED ALL ENGLAND Read: II Tim. 1:3-8. Memory Verse: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” — John 6: 37. WHEN ENGLAND WAS LAWLESS AND GODLESS When John Bunyan died, England was in a distress¬ ing state. Except among the followers of such dissenting preachers as Bunyan, there was little real religion in the land, and little respect for the law. In London and Birmingham mobs often burned houses, threw open the jails, and robbed and killed almost as they pleased. The way to make gin was discovered in 1684, just before Bunyan died, and this liquor was so cheap and so intoxicating, that drunkenness soon was seen every¬ where. In the country the people were becoming poorer and poorer, and wilder and wilder. They had practi¬ cally no religious training of any kind. Long after¬ wards, a religious worker, in one large district, found only one Bible, and this was being used only to prop up a flowerpot. A MINISTER WHO STIRRED ALL ENGLAND 13 These wretched conditions seem to have been the result of war, of disputes between the Church of Eng¬ land with dissenting leaders like Bunyan, and of a real lack of religion among many of the clergy of the Church of England. It was a time when rich people were so selfish and so fond of pleasure that the needs of other persons were quite forgotten. So the poor be¬ came poorer, the ignorant became more ignorant, and lawbreakers became more lawless and brutal. A BOY WHO MADE ENGLAND BETTER But there were better times ahead for England. Not all of the people were bad. In the middle classes a fine love of religion was to be seen. This was evident in such movements as the Puritanism that afterwards did so much for America, and that even then was keeping the fear of God alive through the preaching of earnest men like Bunyan. From among people of this godly sort there was born in 1703, fifteen years after Bun¬ yan’ s death, a boy whose life was to turn England up¬ side down. This boy, John Wesley, became the greatest helper that his country had had for many a long year, a man whom all the world has honored from his day until our own. Somewhat like Timothy, to whom Paul wrote in two books of the New Testament, John Wesley was fortu¬ nate in having excellent parents and grandparents. His father and his grandfather had been ministers, and his father died, while yet a young man, as a result of im¬ prisonment for his faith. Wesley’s grandmother was a 14 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Puritan, and his mother, Susannah Wesley, was one of the best mothers that a boy ever had. Though she had eighteen children besides John, she trained each of them carefully in reading, in courtesy, and in knowl¬ edge of the Bible. Once a week she had an hour’s talk with each child about God and religion ; every Thursday evening came the hour for John, an hour that did much to prepare him for his future career When John Wesley went to school, he remembered his religious training, and prayed and read the Bible regularly. He needed religious help, indeed, for at school his life was very hard. At Charterhouse School in London, the older boys were rough and domineering. John tasted no meat there for years ; the big boys always ate his share. Later, in college at Oxford, he found almost no religion, yet he did what he felt was right, and God took care of him. When he was graduated, he determined to become a minister, and so at the age of twenty-two he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England. For several years Wesley was a lecturer in one of the Oxford colleges, and curate, or assistant minister, with his father at Epworth, his birthplace. Then he returned to Oxford as a lecturer in Lincoln College. Here a new and important experience came to him. A group of young men, members of the Church of England, had formed one of the religious societies that were rather common at that time in England. John and his younger brother Charles joined this society, and John soon be¬ came its leader. A MINISTER WHO STIRRED ALL ENGLAND 15 A NICKNAME AND THE REASON FOR IT This society at Oxford early received a nickname. It was usually called the Holy Club, but the Oxford students and lecturers who did not like it, called the young men “Methodists.” They made fun of the strict methods that Wesley and his friends used in learning how to live a godly life. These were some of the methods : The young men met regularly in John Wes¬ ley’s room, at first two or three times a week, then every night. They studied Latin, Greek, and the Bible. They helped one another by discussing what they read. They rose at five o’clock every morning, and prayed three times a day. Once a week they went to a jail to call on men imprisoned for debt. They also visited sick persons. They gathered together children, and taught them the Church catechism. All their money, except just enough to buy food and clothing which they really needed, they gave to purchase food and medicines for the poor. Indeed, all that they possibly could spare, in money and time, went to other people. One would not suppose that other people could dis¬ like such methods as these, and make fun of them ; yet these young “Methodists” were constantly ridiculed and even persecuted. The fact is, their cleanness and un¬ selfishness reproached the consciences of the irreligious students and lecturers; and in those evil times men did not like to have their consciences aroused. When John Wesley was about thirty-two years old, he came over to Georgia to be minister to the new colonists there, and to preach to the Indians. He did 16 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH a great deal of good, but after two years he returned to England. As soon as he reached London, he met a certain Moravian gentleman, who was on his way to America as a missionary, and the Moravian gave Wes¬ ley a great deal of help, just the help he needed. At this time Wesley felt that he was not a real Christian, although he was a minister. He felt that he needed to get sloser to God. The Moravian reminded him that God receives everyone who comes to him in faith. “Only believe in Christ," said the missionary. Wesley at once knew that he had heard the one message that his heart required just then. Like Luther and Calvin, the great Reformers, Wesley, the great Metho¬ dist, learned that salvation and power come simply from faith in the love and mercy of God in Christ. From about that time John Wesley became a power¬ ful preacher of the gospel. He preached wherever he had the opportunity — in inns, on horseback, to people whom he met by the roadside, in chapels, in homes, and in churches. Everywhere he urged people to have faith in Christ. A NICKNAME THAT BECAME AN HONOR After a time Wesley, who once more was the leader of the old Holy Club, now meeting in London, deter¬ mined to organize a larger society. He was not ashamed of the nickname that had been given him and his friends at Oxford, so his new society was frankly known as a society of Methodists. It was only an organization of the Church of England, yet in time, after Wesley's A MINISTER WHO STIRRED ALL ENGLAND 17 death, it became a Church in itself, the great Methodist Church that now is found in every part of the world. The first society of Methodists was divided into bands of five to ten members each, which met separately twice a week, all the bands meeting together every Wednes¬ day night. As a result of these gatherings and of their Bible-reading and prayer, the Methodists gained deep happiness in their lives, and did much good among the people around them. By this time the clergy of the Church of England were becoming much disturbed over the success of Wes¬ ley and his friends. This kind of preaching and teaching was so new to them that they considered it wrong. One by one, they began to refuse to permit the Methodist ministers to preach in their pulpits; in a short time practically every church in London was closed to the . Methodists, and few churches in other parts of England were open to them. A PREACHER IN ALL OUTDOORS So Wesley commenced preaching out of doors, as one of his friends had been doing for some time. He went to Bristol, and there on a hill outside the city he preached one day to three thousand persons, who heard him with eagerness. Day after day he preached wherever he could find an audience, until within a month he had addressed a total of forty thousand persons. Wesley had found his life work. From now on he preached to multitudes of men and women in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Inside of six months, he had 18 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH organized six new Methodist societies, with hundreds of members, practically all from the lower classes, who sadly needed his help. Gambling, profanity, drunk¬ enness, lawlessness, and even ignorance diminished. Churches were built and schools were established, sup¬ ported by the poor people, and by gifts from Wesley’s richer friends. Some of these new converts to Christ themselves became preachers; in a few years scores of lay preachers were at work, helping the common people to understand the power of the religion of Christ. For fifty years Wesley himself continued to preach in every part of the British Isles. He crossed the Irish Sea fifty times, traveled on land 250,000 miles (as far as ten times around the globe), and visited re¬ mote fishing villages and distant mining towns. Most of his traveling was done on horseback. Once his horse fell, bruising him, yet the next day he was able to preach to six thousand people. In the fifty years he preached more than forty thousand times, an average of fifteen sermons a week, to millions of persons. Great dangers faced Wesley and his preachers throughout all their lives. Though most of the poorer people were friendly when unmolested, many an uprising was stirred up by the upper classes. In the last ten years of Wesley's life he and his preachers were mobbed almost every month. In one town a mob drove cows into the congregation while preaching was going on. In other places rough men disturbed the services by blowing horns, ringing bells, sending the town criers to bawl in front of the preacher, or hiring fiddlers and A MINISTER WHO STIRRED ALL ENGLAND 19 ballad singers to drown out the preachers’ voices. More than once, attempts were made to kill Wesley and his helpers. AN ENGLAND THAT WAS CHANGED Yet the work went on, went on with remarkable power and success. When Wesley died in 1791, at the age of 87, 100,000 persons in the British Isles were Methodists, and now the Methodists throughout the world are numbered by many millions. Beside this, the labors of Wesley and his followers produced a notable change in the Church of England ; new ideas crept in because of Wesley’s activities, and the Church grew kinder, more unselfish, and truer to Christ. In fact, the preaching of Wesley had the effect of arousing all England to a higher and better life. John Wesley was one of the great men in a century of many great men. His life was pure, generous, and fearless, but his chief glory lies in the fact that “he taught thousands of his fellow men to know what the religion of Jesus Christ really means.” Suggestion: Read some of the stories of Wesley’s fearless¬ ness, as in Winchester’s book named below. Books Suggested Winchester, “The Life of John Wesley.” Green, R., “John Wesley, the Methodist.” Green, J. R., “The World’s Great Events” (Vol. V): Biog¬ raphy of Wesley. See also “Encyclopoedia Britannica” and the new Schaff- Herzog “Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge” — for Wesle3r and many men of the later lessons. 20 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH LESSON III AN EARLY EVANGELIST TO TWO CONTINENTS Read: Matt. 3: 1-12. Memory Verse: “Our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased.” — Ps. 115:3. A JEERING CROWD AND AN INDIGNANT BOY One Sunday morning in the year 1734, a young man of nineteen stood near the entrance of St. Mary’s Church at Oxford, England. His eyes were turned toward the town, over the heads of most of the student body of Oxford University, who were massed in front of the church, leaving a narrow lane open in their midst. A stir of excitement was evident as a new group of students, all soberly clad, appeared down the street. “Here they come,” cried voices in the crowd. “Give them a welcome.” The young man by the church door watched intently, and with rising indignation. He saw the thirty new¬ comers advance into the lane prepared for them. Then he witnessed what made him tingle with shame for his college mates. He saw the newcomers pushed and jostled, heard jeers, hoots, and howls of ridicule, and caught the deriding shouts of some of the mob : “Here he is— the ‘Father of the Holy Club.’ ” “Here’s the leader of the ‘Methodists.’ ” But he thrilled with admiration as he saw the young EARLY EVANGELIST TO TWO CONTINENTS 21 man indicated by this scornful shout pay no heed what¬ ever to the jeers, but with his companions proceed calmly through the crowd into the church. They were going to Communion, and to Communion they would go in spite of the ridicule of all Oxford. It was a sight that the young man who looked on was to witness many a Sunday morning thereafter, a sight that never left him unmoved and that finally led him to join this same band of derided fellow students. These brave men were the members of Oxford’s club of earnest seekers after a holy life; their fearless leader was John Wesley; and the young man who admired them was some day to be one of the most famous of them all — George Whitefield, an evangelist to two continents. A LIQUOR SELLER WHO BECAME A MINISTER Whitefield had only recently come to Oxford. He was the youngest child of a widow, who for years had been keeper of the Bell Inn at Gloucester, George’s birthplace, and in this inn George had worked for some time behind the bar, drawing beer and ale for his mother’s customers. He had not been a very religious boy in those days. Indeed, with some of his wild com¬ panions he had run more than once into one of the Gloucester churches on a Sunday morning, and in the midst of the service had shouted in derision, “Old Cole, Old Cole!" at the faithful minister in the pulpit. Once he had gone to Bristol, and there had felt a longing to be a really good boy and a noble man; but on his return to Gloucester, his former companions had 22 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH quickly drawn him back into his old habits. When he was eighteen the opportunity had come to go to Oxford, where he could pay his expenses by being a servant to other students, and he had gone with eagerness, for he longed for an education. At Oxford he had heard almost at once of the derided “Holy Club,” and be¬ fore long he had formed a habit of standing near the church every Sunday, to witness that weekly scene of shame and bravery. That experience always called forth his deep respect for the persecuted young men, and in time it produced a longing to join them. They had a courage and a desire for better things that he himself wished to have. Not many months passed before Whitefield’ s interest in the Methodists came to their knowledge, and John Wesley invited him to join them. Wesley lent him a book, “The Life of God in the Soul of Man,” that led Whitefield to give his heart completely to Christ. Then the newer student gladly united his fortunes with those of his admired friends of the Holy Club; he, too, became a Methodist. FROM PERSECUTION TO POPULARITY On Whitefield, too, now descended the ridicule and persecution that had been given to his friends. Other students threw handfuls of dust at him as he passed; the men for whom he worked declined to pay him ; friend after friend deserted him. The master, or presi¬ dent, of the college threatened to expel him if he ever visited the poor again, as he must do as a loyal member EARLY EVANGELIST TO TWO CONTINENTS 23 of the club. Yet the next poor person Whitefield heard of he called on at once. He was not expelled, but the op¬ position of teachers and students persisted ; nevertheless, Whitefield courageously continued doing what he con¬ sidered his duty. He called on the poor, visited pris¬ oners in the jails, urged people to accept Christ, and be¬ gan preaching to small groups of persons whenever he had an opportunity; he was a young man who would not be terrified. When Whitefield was only twenty-one years old, he was ordained a deacon in the Church of England, and the next Sunday he preached his first formal sermon. Two different ministers invited him to preach in their churches during their long absences. One of these churches was in London. In each place the younger minister preached with such power that immense con¬ gregations came to hear him. At the same time he visited the sick, the poor, the imprisoned, and soldiers in their barracks, bringing them relief from their troubles of body, mind, and heart. Almost at once great fame came to Whitefield. When it was heard in Bristol that the young minister was on his way to that city, huge crowds went out of the town to meet him. When he preached in Bristol, the congre¬ gations “filled the pews, choked the aisles, swarmed into every nook and corner, hung upon the rails of the organ loft, climbed upon the leads of the church ; as many people had to turn away disappointed as had gained admission.” It was a remarkable greeting for a young man to receive. 24 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH OVER THE SEAS TO AMERICA At the height of his early fame, Whitefield followed the example of John and Charles Wesley, and went to Georgia. He stayed there much longer than had the W esleys, however, who were back in England before he sailed; and he went to America, not once, but seven times. In Georgia he was sent to the village of Fred¬ erica as pastor to a congregation of only forty persons. Yet Whitefield ministered to these few as helpfully as he had ministered to the thousands who had greeted him in England. The people of Frederica heard him eagerly; practically every person in town attended his services. Such was the beginning of his remarkably useful life in America. Whitefield went back to London after a year, in order to get a grant of land in Georgia for an orphans’ home. He received the land, with money to build the home, and the orphanage became a great blessing in America for many years. But the most interesting part of his long stay in England had to do with his preaching. Whitefield found that during his absence conditions had changed greatly. Ministers of the Church of England objected to the preaching of Whitefield and of the Wes¬ leys ; they seemed to be afraid of the Methodists’ power over the common people. So most of them refused to let the young ministers preach in their churches. Find¬ ing this state of affairs in London, Whitefield went to Bristol, where the people had welcomed him so gladly the year before; but even here he found no church open to him. EARLY EVANGELIST TO TWO CONTINENTS 25 PREACHING OUT OF DOORS Accordingly, Whitefield went where the people were. In the coal-mining town of Kingswood, not far away, he preached on a Saturday afternoon to two hundred miners. A day or two later he addressed two thou¬ sand of them, and in two days more four thousand. Before long he was preaching out of doors to crowds of from fifteen to twenty thousand. Because of this astonishing experience Whitefield realized then, as never before, that the common people of England were hungry to hear the gospel. After a short while, a gentleman of Bristol offered Whitefield the free use of his bowling green as a preach¬ ing place. Here from the time of Whitefield’ s first ser¬ mon immense crowds gathered. Next, the preacher went to his old home at Gloucester. Here he preached, also, and here “Old Cole,” the minister at whom as a boy he had jeered, welcomed him heartily as a fellow minister of God. Everywhere in that section of country Whitefield preached, by the roadsides, in town halls, and in the fields. In three months’ time he had es¬ tablished a custom of preaching to the common people that has not died out in England to this day. When the preacher returned to London, his fame preceded him. If he could not preach in London’s churches, he would preach in London’s streets. This he did, preaching to more than twenty thousand persons the first Sunday. One of his London outdoor congre¬ gations numbered more than thirty thousand people, in¬ cluding some on horseback and others in coaches and 26 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH carriages. The clergy of the Church of England were astounded and alarmed at the success of Whitefield, but the people heard him gladly. A FRIEND OF ALL AMERICANS From these scenes of the triumph of gospel preach¬ ing, Whitefield returned to America, where similar ex¬ periences met him. Up and down the colonies he traveled, from Georgia to Massachusetts and back, preaching God’s Word to willing listeners. Sometimes there was opposition, because it was a new thing to find people by the thousands longing to hear the gospel, but gradually most of the objections disappeared. For God’s blessing was on Whitefield’s labors. Benjamin Franklin became one of Whitefield’s most loyal sup¬ porters, and even staid old Puritans like Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts acknowledged his power and his consecration to God. In New York the churches in which Whitefield preached were crowded night after night. Of his work in Pennsylvania, Franklin’s paper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, printed this news item : “On Thursday last, the Rev. Mr. Whitefield left this city and was accom¬ panied to Chester by about 150 horse, and preached there to about 7,000 people. On Friday he preached twice at Willing’s Town to about 5,000; on Saturday, at New Castle, to about 2,500 ; and the same evening at Christiana Bridge, to about 3,000; on Sunday at White Clay Creek, he preached twice, resting about half an hour between services, to about 8,000, of whom about EARLY EVANGELIST TO TWO CONTINENTS 27 3,000, it is computed, came on horseback. It rained most of the time, and yet they stood in the open air.” Marvelous accounts such as this were related of Whitefield’ s work in most of the America of that day, as well as in England, Scotland, and Wales. Thousands of persons were converted by his lifetime of preaching. Most of his converts, especially in England, united with the Church of England, but he established the work that later became the influential Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, placed the Presbyterian Church of Virginia on a firm basis, aided the churches in New England and New York, and put new life into the Con¬ gregational, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches of America and Great Britain. From his time to our own, the Church of England has been broader, kinder, and more powerful, largely because of the work of George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. WHEN AMERICA MOURNED One day in September, 1770, Whitefield preached two hours in the open fields at Portsmouth, though he was ill, and must have known that he had not long to live. It was, indeed, his last public appearance; in less than two davs he was dead, worn out with his labors for his Master. When news of his death was carried abroad, the bells in the city were tolled, and the warships in the harbor of Portsmouth fired a salute, and hung their flags at half-mast. Funeral sermons were preached in his honor in all the principal cities of America, and the whole nation, together with much of Europe, mourned. 28 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Suggestion: Point out London, Bristol, Philadelphia, centers of Whitfield’s work; and Boston, the scene of the next lesson. Books Suggested Gladstone, “George Whitefield, M.A., Field-Preacher.” Newell, “Life of Rev. George Whitefield.” Ryle, “Christian Leaders of the Last Century.” LESSON IV THE PATHFINDER OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM Read: Rom. 14: 7-13. Memory Verse: “Stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” — I Cor. 16: 13. A MAN UNABLE TO BE AFRAID Rhode Island, the very smallest of all the states in the American Union, has one of the most stirring stories of American history. It is the story of a man who did not know how to be afraid. Roger Williams was ab¬ solutely fearless. He boldly faced judges, governors, the king, the Indians, and many a breaker of the law. Roger Williams founded his colony as the first place in all the world where every man could worship God with complete freedom. America and the entire world as well have been freer and nobler as a result of his policy. Roger Williams of Rhode Island makes us think of John Bunyan, for he loved God ; he reminds us of Wes¬ ley and Whitefield, for he preached even when he was persecuted; and he makes us remember also the bold PATHFINDER OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 29 American leaders who came later, Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. What he believed, he believed with all his heart; and for this belief he fought and suffered and conquered. A YOUNG MAN WITH MANY FRIENDS It is strange that we do not know when or where Roger Williams was born. Probably he was born in Wales, about the year 1604. We do know, however, that he went to school in London, and later attended the University of Cambridge. Then he formed one of the strong friendships that helped to make his life re¬ markable for his friends as well as for his enemies. He became the friend of Sir Edward Coke, a noted au¬ thority on law, with whose name all lawyers every¬ where are familiar. Through the kindness of this fa¬ mous man Williams became his pupil and began to study law. After a time, however, other friendships seem to have turned Roger Williams from law study. One of these friendships was that with the blind poet, John Milton, whose powerful writings were telling the world of the Christian faith of English Protestants who opposed the Church of England. The great Oliver Cromwell, military leader of English Puritans, was another firm friend of Roger Williams. Of course, a man with the bold spirit of Roger Wil¬ liams could not hold friendship with such men as these without soon desiring to live a courageous and purpose¬ ful life. So it was not long before his thoughts turned 30 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH from the study of the law toward the study for the ministry. Only a little while later he turned from a persecuted religious life in England to what he felt was the free religious life of the new America. In 1631, Roger Williams landed at Boston, in the New World. A FREE LAND THAT WAS NOT FREE A great surprise met Roger Williams when he reached the new land. Though he was only a young man, he found that already he loved religious freedom more than most of the colonists of Massachusetts loved it. He believed, as we all believe now, that anyone has a right to live in America, whether he is a Puritan or a Presbyterian or a Quaker or a Jew. But the Puritans of Massachusetts and New Haven welcomed no one who did not believe in God in the same way as they be¬ lieved in him. A person who brought a Quaker into the New Haven colony, for example, was fined fifty pounds. More- over, Quakers who persisted in trying to live there were branded on the arm with the letter H, as heretics, and even had their tongues pierced with a red-hot iron. Such persecution was wrong, Roger Williams as¬ serted, and he asserted it almost as soon as he landed at Boston. He asserted it so often and so forcefully that soon all the Boston leaders, from Governor Endi- cott down, were deeply incensed against him. When the church at Salem wanted him to be its pastor, there was so loud an outcry at Boston that the governor pre¬ vented his accepting the office. Instead, for two years PATHFINDER OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 31 Roger Williams was associate pastor at Plymouth. Here he worked bravely and helpfully, part of the time laboring for the Christianizing of the Indians living near by. PERSECUTED FOR WHAT HE BELIEVED Yet not even at Plymouth was he let alone. The government at Boston, with other opponents, made the life of the young minister so unpleasant that he de¬ termined to go to Salem after all. Perhaps he felt that if he were to be persecuted for his beliefs, he might as well be working for the church that wanted him. But this was the very church from which the governor was trying to exclude him. To Salem he went, therefore, and there he continued for about two vears more, preaching and teaching, and disputing constantly with the government. Some of the government's objections to Roger Wil¬ liams would seem very foolish nowadays ; but one of these was very clear, and more important. The courageous minister told the people plainly that the courts had no right to punish men for breaking the first four of the Ten Commandments. If a person broke one of these, he said, that person was guilty before God, and the Church perhaps, but not before the courts. What Roger Williams meant, of course, was that no government has a right to interfere in Church affairs ; and in this we know that he was quite correct. But Massachusetts did not agree with him, and the govern¬ ment and the courts sternly objected. Every time the 32 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH General Court met, it reproved the young minister, or summoned him to appear before it, or commanded him to cease making his statements. EXILE, PRIVATION, AND A NEW HOME Matters came to a crisis in 1635, only four years after Williams had come to the new world. On ad¬ vice of other ministers of the colony, a decree of banish¬ ment was issued against bold Roger Williams. The decree began with these words : “Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders at Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions against the authority of the magistrates ... it is there¬ fore ordered,” et cetera. He was to leave the colony within six weeks. So Roger Williams went into exile for his faith. He fled into the wilderness, and experienced a terrible “fourteen weeks, in which he knew not what bed and board did mean," though some of the time he was be¬ friended by the Indians. After his situation had become almost desperate, he and four or five faithful companions reached the Seekonk (Blackstone) River and sailed on it until they landed at a rock that nowadays is held in high honor on this account. A little later he journeyed farther, and reached a spring of clear, fresh water. As i an evidence of his steadfast faith, he called his new home Providence — which is the city of Providence, Rhode Island, of to-day. Here Williams bought land from the Indians, and established the colony that afterwards became the State PATHFINDER OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 33 of Rhode Island. After a few years he received a charter from the English king, but soon after his arri¬ val at Providence he and twelve friends drew up a covenant by which the colony was to be governed. This covenant contained four very impressive words. “We whose names are here underwritten,” says the compact, “promise to obey the will of the majority, but only in civil things.” PERFECT FREEDOM AT LAST Those four words, “only in civil things,” made Rhode Island different from all other colonies and states established before that time in the history of the world. Roger Williams and his freedom-loving friends were willing to obey one another when they made civil laws for the colony, but they absolutely refused to promise obedience in religious matters. Each man was to be completely free in religion. Church and State, as we say now, were to be absolutely separate. They have remained separate in Rhode Island from Roger Williams’ time on, and now are separate in each of the forty-eight states of this land. This first free colony early became a place of refuge for persecuted and oppressed persons from the other colonies. A famous woman, Anne Hutchinson, banished by Massachusetts, found a refuge in Rhode Island. Several noted men, whose beliefs were not satisfactory to the Massachusetts authorities, followed her, and numerous men whose ideas of government were considered wild and unsafe soon came, also. All 34 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH of these were welcomed ; they were required to obey the civil law, but in religious affairs they were left com¬ pletely free to serve God just as they thought right. A COLONY FOUNDED ON FREEDOM Roger Williams’ Rhode Island became one of the foremost colonies of America in its love of liberty. It was the first to pass laws against slavery, and the first to declare independence from Great Britain ; this was in May, 1776, about two months before the national Declaration of Independence was adopted. In all its history since, Rhode Island has been known as a state that has loved freedom for itself and its peo¬ ple, and that has preserved freedom for other states and other peoples. Much of the credit for this attitude is due to the brave life of the Roger Williams of three hundred years ago who was a champion of freedom for the hearts of all men. Suggestion: Refer to such similarities between Roger Williams’ life and that of William Penn as the persecution in England, the purchase of land from the Indians, and the establishment of a colony granting freedom of worship. Books Suggested Straus, “Roger Williams, the Pioneer of Religious Liberty.” Carpenter, Elton, Sparks, Biographies of Roger Williams. Faunce, “Pioneers of Religious Liberty in America,” Chapter on Williams. THE FIRST APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN 35 LESSON V THE FIRST APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN Read: Psalm 91. Memory Verse: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, Nor for the arrow that flieth by day.” — Ps. 91: 5. A NOTABLE BOOK OF LONG AGO In the year 1663 a book was printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was greeted with delight by the Puritans, and which has been held in high honor by Americans ever since. Of this book one of the Puritan leaders spoke with enthusiasm. “Behold, ye Ameri¬ cans,” said he, “the greatest honor that ever ye were partakers of — the Bible printed here at our Cambridge, And it is the only Bible that ever was printed in all America from the foundation of the world!” But to us the remarkable fact about this Bible is not so much that it was the first edition of the Scrip¬ tures printed in this country as the fact that it is written in the language of a tribe of Indians now ex¬ tinct, a language that is no longer spoken or read. Nor was it the only book printed in that language. It was preceded by an Indian catechism, and by the New Testa¬ ment in the tongue of the red men ; and it was followed three years later by an Indian grammar. Each of these books of historic importance was pre¬ pared by John Eliot who, for nearly sixty years, was minister of the church of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and 36 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH the first “apostle of the Indians.” His Indian books, it is true, cannot be read now. The Indians for whom he wrote are gone, but the name of John Eliot lives on. John Eliot is honored to-day as a man of deep learn¬ ing, as one of the first missionaries of modern times to a heathen people, as this country's first well-known worker among the Indians, and as the forerunner of America’s hosts of home missionaries — men who, for hundreds of years, have combined religious zeal with most exalted patriotism. FROM PERSECUTION TO FREEDOM In England, where John Eliot was born in 1604, he had been willing to labor as minister, but he was a Puritan and lived in the days of the tyrannical Arch¬ bishop Laud, under whom no one could preach in safety other doctrines than those of the Church of England. Eliot, therefore, followed the example of many other persecuted Puritans, and in 1631, the same year in which Roger Williams reached Boston, found in Massachusetts a land where a Puritan could serve God according to the dictates of his own conscience. For the new colony there was governed absolutely by the Puritans, as we learned in our study of Roger Williams. First of all the important deeds of John Eliot in the new world was his preparation of “The Bay Psalm Book,” in association with two other religious leaders, and the hymn book was published in 1640, the first book of any sort printed on this side of the ocean. THE FIRST APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN 37 As minister of the Roxbury church, Eliot early came into contact with the Indians of the colony. Soon he felt a consuming desire to preach to them. For two years he spent much of his time in studying their language. Then, regardless of dangers from the arrows and tomahawks of the savages, he gave the best part of his later life to the evangelization of the red man, and so became famous as a missionary to the Indians. “god IS WITH ME - 1 SHALL GO ON” It was in 1646 that the apostle to the Indians preached his first sermon to the Indians. He delivered this Christian message to an Indian assembly at Nonan- tum, now Newton. Almost from the beginning of his labors he met with opposition, both from the sachems or chiefs and from the powwows or medicine men. Often his life was in great danger. Yet he continued preaching fearlessly to the Indians. “God is with me," he told the hostile savages. “I fear not all the sachems in the country ! I shall go on in my work ; touch me if you dare !” Great was the Indians’ fear of their powwows. These medicine men were believed to have a close connection with invisible forces, and to possess magic powers of curing disease. Some of the men to whom Eliot preached, asked him a question one day that showed their dependence on the medicine men. “If we once begin praying to God," they said, “we must give up our powwows ; and then when we are sick or wounded, who will heal us?” 38 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH OPPRESSED BY THE SACHEMS Eliot encouraged the Indians both to leave their pow¬ wows and also to oppose the power of their chiefs, which was unlimited. These sachems had the right by tribal law to take for themselves whatever possessions of the Indians they fancied. When the missionary urged the red men to plant their fields and raise corn, they ob¬ jected. ‘‘What is the use of our laboring all summer," they asked, “just to raise corn for the sachem to seize for his own use?” Gradually, however, they realized that God makes no man to be a slave, and that they had rights of their own. Then they began to speak for themselves ; and then, un¬ fortunately, the sachems joined the powwows in violent opposition to the Indians’ white friend. Some of the red men who trusted Eliot were banished by their chiefs, and some were even put to death. Nevertheless, the number of Christians or “praying Indians” slowly increased. Eliot was tireless in his work for them. Year after year he traveled into the wilderness to carry his messages of Christian good will. Often he suffered great privation, as on one famous trip into the wilds. On this journey he encountered bad weather con¬ tinuously, and of course, he had no protection from the rain. From one Tuesday to the following Saturday he was never dry. At night he pulled off his boots, wrung the water out of his stockings, put them on again, and went to sleep, if he could. The rivers were over their banks, swollen by the heavy rains, and in fording these THE FIRST APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN 39 he was drenched again and again. Yet this trip ended as many another hardship ends; when at last he reached home, he was in perfect health, and, besides, he had the consciousness of a hard duty faithfully done. A SACHEM WHO SURRENDERED One of the most bitter opponents of Eliot was Wan- nalancet, sachem at Wamesit. Yet even he at last sur¬ rendered to the fearless preacher of Christ, and this is the way he announced his conversion. Rising before the assembly to which the missionary had been preach¬ ing, in stately Indian fashion he announced: “All my life have I been used to pass up and down in an old canoe. Yet now you wish me to leave my old canoe, and embark in a new one. Hitherto I have been un¬ willing, but now I surrender myself to your advice. I enter into a new canoe, and do promise hereafter to pray to God.” Wannalancet proved to be a faithful and consistent worshiper of God. Many of his people, offended at his stand, left him, but he remained true to the religion of his white friend and of the “praying Indians.” MARTYRS FOR THE WHITE MAN^ SAKE To the Puritans, and to their friends in England who helped pay the costs of Eliot’s work, a reward came in the cruel days of King Philip’s war between the Indians and the English. At this time the number of “praying Indians’’ was about thirty-six hundred, and the fear- 40 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH less and unselfish life of Eliot had won the respect and esteem of very many more. When their fellow Indians made war on the colonists, therefore, most of the Indians in that part of New England came to the aid of the English. Instead of having around them a blood¬ thirsty nation of foes, who might have exterminated the colonists, the English found themselves surrounded by red men who were friends — friends because of the work of John Eliot, the Christian missionary. Bitter was the cost to the Indians, however, of their faithfulness to the white men. In that terrible war they suffered so severely and such numbers of them were killed that the nation never recovered. Before long they were quite extinct. As history shows plainly, they gave their lives for the protection of the white man. FAITHFUL TO THE END After the war, Eliot was in feeble health the greater part of the time. Ele could no longer go among those of his Indian friends who were yet alive, nor could he even preach to the white men. So he did what he could. He sent out into the neighborhood, and persuaded many families to send their Negro slaves to his home once a week that he might talk to them. His last years were spent in this simple service for Christ — teaching the black man, as he had taught the red man, of the peace¬ ful and uplifting ways of Jesus, the Master of all men who believe in him. Suggestion: The white man’s friendship to the Indian has been rewarded often by freedom from Indian troubles; com- AMERICA'S PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN 41 pare the experience of Penn. Tell of the beginning of Negro slavery in this country, and speak of the missionary work of to-day among the colored people. Book Suggested Sparks, “John Eliot.” LESSON VI AMERICA’S PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN Read: Acts 5: 17-29. Memory Verse: “In God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid.”— Ps. 56: 11. IN AMERICA, YET IN JAIL FOR PREACHING In old New York, in the year 1707, a strange incident occurred. Two itinerant ministers had been caught in the very act of preaching, had been arrested for this “crime,” and were brought before the governor, a man who was a member of the Church of England. “How dare you preach in my colony without my license?” the haughty governor demanded. Calmly the spokesman of the two accused men replied that they had licenses to preach in Virginia and Mary¬ land, and that the new religious toleration law in England made such licenses good in all the English colonies, including New York. But the governor would not be appeased by any such argument. “The Act of Toleration applies only to England, not to the American plantations,” he insisted, “so your certificates are good only in Virginia and 42 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Maryland. As for my colony, you shall not spread your pernicious doctrines here !” Nevertheless, so courageously and so convincingly did the two ministers plead their cause, that at length the governor offered to give them their liberty on one condition. They could go free, he said, if they would pledge themselves to do no more preaching in his colony. The brave response of the persecuted ministers was like a famous reply made by two early apostles, “If your lordship requires it,” said their spokesman, “we will give security for our behavior, but to give bond to preach no more in your excellency’s government, when invited by any people to do so, we neither can nor dare do.” To a man with the intolerant spirit of the governor, only one course was left; he sent the ministers to jail. For a number of weeks they lay in prison, martyrs to the cause of religious freedom in America for which Roger Williams himself had suffered. When finally the leader of the two was brought to trial, he presented his case so clearly that under the law the jury could do nothing but acquit him, which it proceeded to do; yet it required him to pay the costs of the case, amounting to eighty-three pounds. A MARTYR, AND A MAN OF ACHIEVEMENTS A year after his unjust imprisonment this brave man died. Undoubtedly the privations of his prison life hastened his death, for when he died he was only fifty AMERICA’S PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN 43 years old. Yet what a life of accomplishment he had lived ! For more than a quarter of a century this man, Francis Makemie, the pioneer of American Presby¬ terianism, had lived a life of toil for himself and of inspiration for others. Makemie was not the first Presbyterian minister in the land, but he was the one who established its first strong churches, and who gave it such power that in time it developed into the magnificent Presbyterianism that now stretches from New England to Florida and from western Canada to Mexico, and that is blessing the nations of the whole world with its foreign mis¬ sionary enterprises. When Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian foreign mis¬ sionary from Ireland to America, came to the colonies, Presbyterians on this side of the Atlantic were few and scattered. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had come to Massachusetts in 1628, and with which John Eliot, the “apostle of the Indians,” was connected, was largely Presbyterian, but most of it in time became merged with the Congregational Church. Other Pres¬ byterians came later from England, Ireland, France, and Holland, most of them settling in New York, Penn¬ sylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. By 1680 there were large numbers of Presbyterians in America, but they had no ministers. They could have family worship without ministers, of course, and they could hold religious services in schoolhouses, but they had no one to baptize their babies or celebrate the Lord’s Supper in regular form. Some of them, 44 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH therefore, sent to the Presbyterian Church of Ireland for help. The Presbytery of Laggan, in Ireland, then commissioned Francis Makemie as a minister to the needy Presbyterians of the American colonies. This was in 1682. Makemie was educated at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, having been led to Christ as a boy of four¬ teen by an earnest school-teacher. On this side of the ocean he worked for a short time in the Barbados, an island of the British West Indies; then he came to our own colonies. In 1684 he organized his first church, at Snowhill, Maryland, and this became the center from which he worked for twenty-six years. He lived at Accomac, Maryland, but traveled far and wide, visiting the people and establishing churches. AN ITINERANT APOSTLE TO AMERICANS The self-sacrificing life of Makemie was devoted to giving the gospel to as many communities as he could reach. Resolutely and self-sacrificingly, he journeyed from place to place; for six years he had no one place that he could call his home, so seldom did he linger long at any one point. Always he was pushing on, to help the needy people somewhere else. Much of Makemie’s time was spent on horseback, and during most of his nights he slept in rough log cabins, or out of doors beneath the stars. Amid perils of savages, perils of storm and swollen rivers, perils of the wilderness, and perils of persecution, he traveled from New York to the Carolinas, gathering the people AMERICA’S PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN 45 for preaching wherever opportunity offered. Cheered by the welcome of the eager colonists, Makemie was un¬ daunted and persevering, whatever hopeful circum¬ stance or unexpected hardship might meet him. In order to avoid interference from governors and magistrates, Makemie erected a building for Rehoboth church on his own land. He wrote a catechism, which was attacked by an opponent, but Makemie wrote so spirited a defense of his book that this was praised by the same Puritan leader in Massachusetts who about this time called on the colonists (whom he called “Ye Americans") to honor John Eliot’s translation of the Bible into the Indian tongue. “come over and help us" Constantly Makemie was sending earnest appeals to England and Ireland for help. He felt that the needs of the colonists were too many and too great for any one man to meet. “Sundry places," he wrote at one time, “are crying to us for ministers." Liberal gifts came from England, his churches grew strong, new churches were organized, but of ministers to serve them there were practically none except himself. At length Makemie determined to carry his appeal to England in person. His journey across the water was more successful than his letters had been, for when he returned he was accompanied by money to support more workers, and also by two more ministers. These were Rev. George McNish, a Scotchman, and Rev. John Hampton, an Irishman. These two men joined heartily 46 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH in his labors. It was John Hampton who shared Ma- kemie's later imprisonment in New York. The Presbyterian churches soon grew so rapidly in number and in strength that after a time a permanent organization was made that bound these close together. This was a presbytery, which was formed at Phila¬ delphia in 1706, and which chose Makemie as its moderator. WHAT GOD HAS WROUGHT IN AMERICA Ten years later there were four presbyteries. In 1717 these presbyteries formed a synod. After seventy years, in 1789, America's Presbyterians had become so numerous that a General Assembly was organized. Like the first presbytery, the synod and the General Assembly held their first meetings in Philadelphia. When Makemie closed his life there were only about 1,500 Presbyterians in America, but when the first General Assembly met, the number had increased to 18,000. A century later the number connected with the General Assembly organized in 1789 had become 775,- 000, and now it is almost two million. The one pres¬ bytery of Makemie’s time has become more than three hundred presbyteries. Besides this General Assembly, which is that of “The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America,” this country has assemblies or synods of ten ocher Pres¬ byterian denominations. In all these, with the larger Church of which we have been speaking, there is now a total membership in this country of more than three A PASTOR WHO ROUSED NEW ENGLAND 47 million Presbyterians, besides a host of Presbyterian converts from heathen religions and from Catholicism in foreign lands. All this mighty force of Christians is a direct result of the unselfish and perilous labors of Francis Makemie, • the pioneer among American Presbyterian ministers. Suggestion: Review the settlement of the colonies, particu¬ larly as regards religion; Massachusetts and Connecticut were settled by Puritans persecuted in England; Maryland, by persecuted English Catholics; Pennsylvania, largely by persecuted English Quakers; Rhode Island, by religious leaders and their followers persecuted in Massachusetts; Geor¬ gia, by English debtors and persecuted Protestants from Austria; and New York, by emigrants from Holland whose Church was of the Presbyterian type. Books Suggested Miller, “Heroes of the Church.” Thompson, “Presbvterians.” LESSON VII A PASTOR WHO ROUSED NEW ENGLAND Read: Neh. 8: 1-10. Memory Verse: “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”— Isa. 30: 15. A SINGULAR BOY AND A NOTABLE MAN In 1703, the same year that saw the birth of John Wesley, there was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, a remarkable boy who became a remarkable man, per¬ haps the most notable man that America ever has 48 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH known. Not all of his astonishing deeds as a boy are of the kind that boys of to-day ought to do, if they could, yet they are both interesting and inspiring; and not all of his great achievements as a man are either possible or desirable to men of to-day, yet they have helped decidedly to make America the mighty nation. of freedom-loving and God-fearing people that it is to-day. This mighty man of God was Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards came from an old’ Puritan family, and was the son and grandson of ministers. When only a small boy he joined his sisters, with some young men outside the family, in studying under his learned father. At the age of six he began to study Latin and other dif¬ ficult subjects; and already he had learned to act on a good suggestion of his father, a suggestion that he write out his thoughts on paper so that he could test them and remember them better. By this and other means he became a deep and ac¬ curate thinker while yet a very small boy. When he was ten, one of his friends told him that he did not believe we could live after we died, either in heaven or in hell ; for this was at a time when people thought more about hell than they do now. Jonathan believed otherwise, and he argued so carefully and so powerfully that he convinced that boy that people’s souls do live forever. That was a hard thing to do, but this remarkable boy did it. When Jonathan was twelve, he wrote an excellent and interesting essay on the habits of the wood spider, and before he was thirteen he had advanced so fast that A PASTOR WHO ROUSED NEW ENGLAND 49 he went to college. His college was Yale, which at this time did its work in three different towns — New Haven, Wethersfield, and Saybrook. Young Edwards studied at New Haven. The president lived in one of the other towns, and, because the president was away, the teaching at New Haven was done mostly by tutors. Under these conditions it was hard to learn much, but Edwards loved knowledge so intensely that he worked with all his might and mind. He studied every subject down to the bottom, and mathematics, science, and astronomy he mastered through and through. In fact, he studied so well that when he was graduated, before he was seventeen, he received the highest honor in his class. Indeed, he was the only member of the class who received any honor whatever. WHEN BOYS BUILT A “DEN” AS A CHURCH All this time Jonathan was not only deeply studious; he was also deeply religious. When about eight years old, he was greatly impressed by his father’s preaching, and at once he began showing his interest in Christian things. He prayed five times every day, talked to his boy friends about religion, and persuaded some of them to build a “den," or hut, in a retired spot, and in this the boys held many religious meetings. After a few months, however, his early religious interest gradually wore away. But while he was in college, when he was about fif¬ teen, Jonathan had a long talk with his father about 50 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH religion, and from this time he was a real Christian. “I used to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder¬ storm rising," he said afterwards, “but now ... it re¬ joiced me. I felt God, at the first appearance of the thunderstorm, and used to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God’s thunder.” As soon as young Edwards left college, he deter¬ mined to become a minister, and before he was nineteen he was licensed to preach. For a time he preached to a new Presbyterian church in New York City. About this time he formed some resolutions for his life, and wrote these down. There were seventy of these interest¬ ing life purposes. Here are four of them : “Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God. “Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can. “To live with all my might, while I do live. “Always to do what I shall wish I had done when I see others do it.” “to live with all my might” Very well indeed did Jonathan Edwards hold to these resolutions throughout his later life. For the next few years, while studying theology, preaching, and teaching at Yale, he worked with all his strength. His health always was poor, yet ordinarily he studied thirteen hours a day. He took daily exercise as a sacred duty, A PASTOR WHO ROUSED NEW ENGLAND 51 and ate as little food as possible. He made himself do much horseback riding; yet always he took pen and ink and paper with him. If a good thought came to him while he was riding, he got off his horse, and wrote the thought down, copying it out carefully when he reached home. At the age of twenty-four, Edwards became the as¬ sociate of his grandfather in the pastorate of the church at Northampton, Massachusetts, and he remained in this church twenty-three years, until long after his grandfather had died. Here Edwards preached power¬ ful and helpful sermons, and he saw the church slowly grow. Yet this was a time of general carelessness about the religious life, both in America and in Eng¬ land, and there was much evil in Massachusetts. America’s first great revival One year Edwards preached some sermons on the power of God, and on Luther’s favorite subject, salva¬ tion by faith. Almost at once a mighty revival of re¬ ligion broke out in his church and town. Within the next six months, practically every person in Northamp¬ ton over fourteen years of age was a Christian. But the greatest revival that America ever had known came five years later, in 1740. Edwards was preaching the power of God with all his might, and the same great subject was being preached in other colonies by such ministers as Rev. Gilbert Tennent, Rev. William Ten- nent, and the famous George Whitefield. Everywhere God’s power was shown in the leading of men and 52 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH women, boys and girls, to Christ. Whitefield in his travels went to Massachusetts, to see Jonathan Edwards, of whose remarkable life and preaching he had heard, and from Edwards’ pulpit he preached five sermons. This year an immense number of new Christians once more was added to Edwards’ church. That God honored the revivals of Edwards’ time is shown by the impressive results of the work of White- field, of the Tennents, and of Edwards himself. Prob¬ ably 25,000 persons joined the churches of New England in those years, though New England’s population was only about 250,000. In less than twenty years more than 150 new Congregational churches were organized, and the number and membership of Baptist and Pres¬ byterian churches were largely increased. MISSIONARY TO INDIANS AND COLLEGE PRESIDENT Like John Eliot, Jonathan Edwards became a mis¬ sionary to the Indians. Ten years after the second re¬ vival in his church he removed to Stockbridge, Massa¬ chusetts, to be pastor there, and also to preach to the neighboring Indians. He continued to be successful in his preaching to the white people, but the Indians were so badly corrupted by the liquor that evil white men sold them that it seemed impossible to convert many of them to “the white man’s religion.” After seven years of this work, Edwards’ fame as a preacher and thinker was so great that he was elected president of Princeton, the Presbyterian college in New Jersey. A brilliant future seemed to be opening before A PASTOR WHO ROUSED NEW ENGLAND 53 him as a college president, but Edwards had been in¬ augurated only five weeks when he died. He and two of his daughters, one of them the wife of Rev. Aaron Burr, who preceded Edwards as president, had been inoculated with smallpox, for this was before the days of vaccination, and smallpox was a much dreaded dis¬ ease. As a result of this severe treatment, Jonathan Edwards and Mrs. Burr died, within a few days of each other. One of Mrs. Burr’s two children was. the Aaron Burr who later became Vice President of the United States. A LIFE “to THE GLORY OF GOD” Jonathan Edwards died when he was only fifty-five years old, yet in his short life he had become famed in America and Europe as an eloquent preacher, deep thinker, sincere teacher, and forceful writer. His printed sermons and lectures had great power for good during scores of years after lie was gone, and even to¬ day men and women look back on him as one of the greatest builders of the Church of Christ that the world has known since the Reformation. Suggestion: Trace the ancestry and the posterity of Edwards, a mighty line of men and women, the fruit of Chris¬ tian education and Christian consecration. Edwards’ father was a clergyman, his grandfather a merchant, and his great¬ grandfather a clergyman in England. Of his descendants of seven generations (up to about 1905), ten were college presi¬ dents, two presidents of law schools, two presidents of theo¬ logical seminaries, three presidents of railroads, one a bank president, two prominent scientists, one a prominent author (Winston Churchill), one a Vice President of the United 54 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH States, and one the wife of a President of the United States (Theodore Roosevelt). See the leading article in Munsey’s Magazine, June, 1906. Books Suggested Sparks, “Jonathan Edwards.” Allen, Biography of Jonathan Edwards. Walker, “Ten New England Leaders”: Biography of Edwards. LESSON VIII A PRESIDENT OF YALE WHO STARTED A REVIVAL Read: Acts 17: 1-12. Memory Verse: “Being ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason conce.rning the hope that is in you.” — I Peter 3: 15. A BOY WHO WOULD BE GREAT Probably the world never has known another so strange a combination of astonishing boyhoods as those of Jonathan Edwards and of his grandson, Timothy Dwight. Astounding as were the exploits of Edwards as a boy, these were even surpassed by those of his noted grandson, and the work of Dwight as a man was only less helpful to America and to Christianity than that of his famous grandfather. Timothy Dwight’s early years form a story that is hard to believe, in spite of its having been accurately reported. Born in 1752, at Northampton, Massachu¬ setts, where his grandfather and great-great-grand- father had been pastors, Timothy began to study books PRESIDENT OF YALE WHO STARTED REVIVAL 55 almost as soon as he could talk. At one lesson he learned the alphabet, and before he was four years old he could read the Bible easily. Soon afterwards, while listening to the conversation of certain noted Americans of his time who came to call on his father, and while listening also to his father’s comments on these men, Timothy formed a life pur¬ pose. This purpose was to be “equal to those whose talents and character he had heard extolled.” From this time to his dying day Timothy Dwight held with unflinching will to that high ambition, a tireless pur¬ pose to become worthy of fame. STUDYING LATIN BY STEALTH When Timothy started to school, at the age of six, his father told him that he was too young to study Latin, but the boy was so eager to learn that while his schoolmates were at play, he took their Latin books from their desks, and studied these. Long before he was eight, he had learned Lily’s Latin Grammar thoroughly. When his father found him out, he was permitted to go on, and before he was nine he could read Latin and Greek almost as well as English. For about three years the boy was out of school. His mother, who thought it better for him just then to study history and geography than to toil over Greek and Latin, taught him at home, so while he was nine, ten, and eleven he reveled in numerous books of geography, travel, and ancient and modern history. Then he went on with his Latin and Greek. 56 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Like his grandfather, Timothy entered Yale College at the age of thirteen. But unlike Jonathan Edwards, he knew so much Greek and Latin that he did not need to study much during his first two years in college. In¬ stead, therefore, he used to do a great deal of card-play¬ ing, and to sit up late at night, attending parties and midnight suppers. At the end of his sophomore year he saw how foolish he had been, became an earnest Chris¬ tian, and settled down to hard work. During his junior and senior years at college, and for a time later as a tutor in Yale, Timothy Dwight studied as perhaps no college man ever studied before or since. In those days it was a custom for Yale students to attend chapel exercises at 5.30 every morning, but this was not early enough for Dwight to begin the day ! He would be up early enough to read one hundred lines of Homer in Greek before the chapel service opened. At this time, we are told by those who knew him, he studied fourteen hours a day. TOO AMBITIOUS TO BE CAREFUL Even then the young man was not satisfied. He wanted to get still more studying done. So he did something that hurt all his later life. He determined to save the time that he had been giving to physical exercise. To do this safely, as he thought, he decided to stop eating so much, so that he would need no ex¬ ercise. Accordingly, he ate less and less, until at length he found that he could make a meal on eighteen bites of food. How foolish this was, he was soon to learn. In PRESIDENT OF YALE WHO STARTED REVIVAL 57 a few months he looked like a skeleton, his health broke down, and he had to leave Yale and go home. At home Dwight’s physician gave him a much needed scolding. The young man took his doctor’s scolding and his advice, and in time, with good food, much rest, and a great deal of outdoor exercise, he recovered much of his health. From that time on he seems to have been sensible, and even while working intensely hard, he took enough proper food and sufficient wholesome exercise. Yet all his life he was subject to terrible headaches, and his eyes were so weak that never again could he use them for more than fifteen minutes during an entire day ; he was almost blind. A DETERMINATION THAT OVERCAME A HANDICAP An ordinary man would have found this handicap sufficient reason for living a life of comparative ease thereafter, but Timothy Dwight was not an ordinary man. He employed other persons to read to him, he thought intensely, and he cultivated his memory until he seemed to forget nothing that ever he heard. He hired men to write his notes, sermons, lectures, and books, and, because this was before the time of short¬ hand, he thought so carefully that he could keep two and even three amanuenses busy taking his dictation at one time. By this careful and ceaseless labor, Dwight became not only well informed, but one of the very best in¬ formed men of his century in politics, industry, educa¬ tion, and religion. The tales that are told of his in- 58 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH formation on almost any subject are enough to make us all ashamed of our own slowness to learn, and of the ease with which we forget. During his life of sixty-five years, Dwight was at different times tutor at Yale, chaplain in the army during the Revolution, member of the Massachusetts legislature, pastor of the Congregational church at Greenfield, Connecticut, and president of Yale. One of the most impressive stories told of him is in connection with his first years as Yale’s president. WHEN CHRISTIANITY WAS ASSAILED Just then religious interest in America, and at Yale, was low. When France came to the aid of the Ameri¬ can colonies in the Revolution, she brought with her much of the infidelity that was seen during her own Revolution. Deism, atheism, and other forms of belief or disbelief opposed to Christianity, rapidly swept over our young nation. As a consequence, even some of our ablest men, for a time, began to feel that Christianity was not true at all ; they, too, commenced believing that the Christian religion was merely a superstition, to be accepted only by ignorant people who knew no better. At Yale most of the college students were of this class of men. When Dwight went there as president in 1795, he found the young men calling themselves, not by their own names, but by the names of noted atheists. This was to show their admiration for these unbelievers in Christianity. Tom Jones, for instance, called him- PRESIDENT OF YALE WHO STARTED REVIVAL 59 self Tom Paine, John Smith was known as Voltaire, and others bore other anti-Christian names. Some of these young men, who were sure that they knew all about Christianity that was worth knowing — and they thought that this was very little — one day as a joke suggested that the subject for their next senior class debate be this : “Are the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments the Word of God?” WISE YOUNG MEN WHO LEARNED THEIR IGNORANCE To their astonishment, President Dwight accepted the subject, and told the wise seniors that all of them who cared to do so might take the negative side, and do their best to overthrow the authority of the Bible. After due preparation the debate was held, with most of the class upholding the negative. The president listened attentively to all that they had to say, and then began calmly to discuss their arguments. Kindly, clearly, and distinctly, he pointed out mistake after mistake that they had made, and in a short time he had shown the dumbfounded young men that they really knew practically nothing about this important subject. Then came the climax. President Dwight, drawing on his immense fund of information and on his deep love of God, proceeded to prove to his students that the Bible certainly is the Word of God; that what it says is true; and that there is salvation offered to men only in the Jesus of the Scriptures, It was a proof that could not be contradicted. One by one, as their president talked, the young men 60 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH became convinced that what he said was true. They had come into the room anti-Christian, they left it Christian. The story was carried to other students, into the town, and into surrounding country, and as a result many a long year passed before anyone again dared to say that Christianity was not a religion worthy of the belief and the service of men and women of the highest intellectual power. “the power of god unto salvation” A revival broke out; not one revival, indeed, but many. Yale became one of the most godly colleges in all the land. From 1800 to *1837 seventeen distinct revivals of religion visited the institution. During that first movement of this kind, the number of pro¬ fessing Christians in the college increased from twelve to nearly ninety, including practically every student. Forty-five of the young men determined at once to enter the Christian ministry. The entire institution was filled with the power of Christianity. That religious upheaval, known as “the great revival of 1800” spread to other states, and led to numberless conversions, to widespread home missionary work, to the founding of countless Sunday schools, to the or¬ ganization of Bible societies and tract societies, and to the system of outdoor religious gatherings called camp meetings that have led tens of thousands of persons closer to the Christ of the Old and New Testaments, and to the Christ of Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight, AN ITINERANT BISHOP OF AMERICA 61 Suggestion: Tell some of the stories of Dwight’s early days, found in Sparks’s biography. Books Suggested Tyler, “Three Men of Letters.” Sprague, “Annals of the American Lutheran Pulpit.” LESSON IX AN ITINERANT BISHOP OF AMERICA Read: Acts 2: 37-42. Memory Verse: “Preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season.” — II Tim. 4:2. A FAMOUS MAN AND HIS FASCINATING DIARY Few persons nowadays keep diaries very faithfully, but there was a time when it was the custom to do so. In those days men and women were very likely to keep a “journal” of their lives, sometimes, perhaps, with the thought that after they were gone, the world might eagerly read what they had written. One such journal that has come down to us is well worth looking into, for it was written by a man famous in his own time and even more famous since. This man, Francis Asbury, lived a long life of thrilling adventure, repeated peril, and vast accomplishment. Before we look into this fascinating life story, let us learn something about the man who wrote it. He was born in 1745, in Staffordshire, England, went to school to a teacher who beat him so cruelly that the boy re¬ fused to go back to him ; and later became apprenticed 62 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH to the saddler’s trade, which he followed for seven years. When he was only a small boy, Asbury began to think about God, and by the time he was fifteen, he was an earnest Christian. Even before he was fifteen, he had heard of some Methodists in a near-by town, and had asked his mother about them. She, though not a Methodist, praised these followers of the Wesleys so highly that Asbury went over to see some of them. In the neighboring town he was deeply impressed by the interesting sermons of the Methodist preachers, and by the hearty singing of their people, for he himself always liked to sing. A PREACHER AT SIXTEEN With this beginning, it is not surprising that the boy Asbury became a local preacher for the Methodists at the age of sixteen. When he was twenty-two he be¬ came an itinerant, or traveling, preacher. When he was twenty-six he felt so strongly the need of Methodist preachers in the American colonies that in that year he persuaded John Wesley to send him to this country. Asbury sailed in 1771 from Bristol (the city famous for the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield), whose Methodist people found him so poor that for his jour¬ ney they gave him a suit of clothes and ten pounds in money. Even so, he and his companion, Richard Wright, fared poorly on the ship, for they had not known enough about sea voyages to take beds with them, as was customary in those days, and so the two AN ITINERANT BISHOP OF AMERICA 63 young men were compelled to get what comfort they could with two blankets and only hard boards for beds. On the ship, in spite of seasickness, Asbury preached to all who would listen, and so he continued to do as long as he lived. In America he went everywhere preaching the gospel. From the beginning to the end of his long career, he was subject to repeated attacks of illness, yet these seemed never to lessen his deter¬ mination to “preach the word ... in season, out of season.” In America, Asbury became what the great Wesley was in Britain, the head of the nation’s Methodism. Wesley soon made him the first American Methodist bishop and under his superintendence the Methodist societies grew into a mighty Methodist Church. SICK, COLD, WET, YET WORKING Now read some of the interesting entries in Asbury' s “Journal,” beginning soon after his arrival in this country, and observe how tirelessly he labored, and how under God’s blessing his work grew : “April 16. I rode through a heavy rain to Phila¬ delphia, and preached the next morning.” “April 30. I preached to a great number of people under the jail wall” [Chester]. On May 25 Asbury went to Burlington, where he preached in the evening, “though very sick, and next day while still very ill visited a prisoner sentenced to death.” “June 1. Preached this morning at 5 o’clock.” 64 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH “June 23. Though very weak, weary, wet and low, while it rained very hard I preached.” “Oct. 19 [Trenton]. A drunken sailor had locked up the courthouse, so I was obliged to preach in a schoolhouse.” Some time before this, Asbury reports he went to Winchester, New York, to preach in the courthouse there, but the bad behavior of the drunken “keeper” caused much confusion. In the afternoon, being given warning that the courthouse was closed to him, he preached in an upper room at the tavern. “Nov. 1 [Chester]. I intended to preach in the courthouse, but it would not contain half the people, so I stood at the door, and the people without.” “Nov. 19. A poor unhappy man abused me much on the road ; he cursed, swore and threw stones at me. But I found it my duty to talk to him and show him his danger.” WHEN PEOPLE WERE EAGER TO GO TO CHURCH “Dec. 6. The house had no windows or doors, the weather was very cold. . . . Putting a handkerchief over my head, I preached; and after an hour’s intermission (the people waiting all the time in the cold), I preached again.” How eager to hear the gospel those early Americans must have been ! “Dec. 7. My travels have been perhaps as much as 300 miles in about six weeks.” “Feb. 21. I rode six or seven miles to preach . . . but never felt colder weather. . . . However, after preaching to a few people, I returned.” “Only a few AN ITINERANT BISHOP OF AMERICA 65 people,'1 yet he was willing to journey in the bitter cold, in order to minister to the few ! “March 24. I went about twenty miles, through wet weather and bad roads. The night was very dark.11 “July 14 [1774]. I have now been sick ten months, and many days closely confined; yet I have preached about 300 times; and rode near 2,000 miles in that time; though very frequently in a high fever." Of all his life a similar story could be recorded. No doubt much of Asbury1 s illness was due to exposure from repeated sleeping in the woods without sufficient coverings. Yet he seems never to have thought of abandoning his work because of its danger. A MAN OF FAITH, AND A MAN OF WORKS “April 28 [1777]. I rode fifty miles in going and coming to preach that sermon, but hope it was not al¬ together labor lost." Asbury was a man of constant faith and persevering prayer. One of his fellow ministers said to him : “He prayed the best, and prayed the most, of any man I ever knew." “Jan. 13 [1793]. I have now had the opportunity of speaking in Washington [a very new city at that time] ; most of the people attended to hear ‘this man that rambles through the United States.1 " “Dec. 20 [1794, when Asbury was nearly 50 years old]. It snowed as powerfully [to-day] as it rained yesterday. However, we set out for Salem about 9 o’clock, and forded two creeks, but the third we swam. 66 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH “bishop to all America” So he journeyed, year after year, from Maine to Georgia, to Kentucky, to Ohio, and back to New York, swinging annually around his immense circle. Once on the prairies of Ohio, Asbury met a man who, after the free custom of the frontier, asked genially, “Where are you from, stranger?” The bishop’s response was half humorous but wholly true. “From Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Balti¬ more, or almost any .place you please,’’ he replied. Tireless zeal and unflagging energy marked the forty-five years of Bishop Asbury’ s labors in America. He visited Massachusetts twenty-three times after he was forty-five years old, New York State fifty-six times, New Jersey sixty-two times, Pennsylvania seventy-eight times, Virginia eighty-four times, and the Carolinas, Georgia, and the western states and terri¬ tories many times each. This “bishop that could not get tired” traveled altogether in this country 270,000 miles, every four years going almost far enough to circle the earth, preached an average of a sermon a day, and ordained more than four thousand ministers. Rapid growth of the Methodist Church in America was a natural result of the persevering acti\r ity and con¬ secration of Bishop Asbury. His journal under a July date in 1807 records that after thirty-six years there were 144,000 Methodists in this country, though Eng¬ land itself after seventy-seven years of work, mostly under John Wesley, had only 150,000; and this was in spite of the fact that America had only 5,000,000 in- AN ITINERANT BISHOP OF AMERICA 67 habitants, while Great Britain had six times as many. And when Asbury died, nine years later, the number of Methodist Church members in the United States was not 150,000 but 214,000. Mightily had God blessed the labors of his faithful servant. FAITHFUL TO THE END A fitting close did Bishop Asbury give to his illus¬ trious life. On Sunday, March 24, 1816, he preached for nearly an hour at Richmond, Virginia, though he was suffering from an advanced stage of tuberculosis. All week after that Sunday, until Friday, he traveled; but on Saturday overpowering weakness forced him to keep to his bed. Next day, at the usual hour for morn¬ ing service, he called the household to come into his room for family prayers. A few hours later he passed peacefully from his earthly labors to the activities of heaven. Suggestion: Many a story worth retelling is in Asbury 's “Journal.” Books Suggested Tipple (Editor), “The Heart of Asbury’s Journal.” (In¬ sufficient of itself.) Janes, “The Character and Career of Francis Asbury.” Briggs, “Bishop Asbury.” 68 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH LESSON X FROM LAV/ OFFICE TO CHRISTIAN PULPIT Read: I Kings 18:20-39. Memory Verse: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; be¬ hold, now is the day of salvation.” — II Cor. 6: 2. A MEETING THAT NO ONE HAD CALLED One evening, early in the nineteenth century, one of the most unusual meetings in the memory of the people of Adams, New York, was held in the Presbyterian church of the town. No one had called the meeting, and it had no leader, yet the church was crowded. Everyone knew why they all had come together, how¬ ever. It was because an astounding thing had hap¬ pened in Adams that day. Charles Finney had been converted. This was the startling news that had brought this unannounced assembly into the church. Everybody in Adams knew Charles Finney. He was a promising young lawyer, a clever sportsman skilled in use of the rifle and in sailing a boat on the lake, and a favorite with the town's young people, but a scornful opponent of Christianity. He sang in the church choir, indeed, and was even its leader, but always his influence was against the church, and he was persistent in his ridicule of persons foolish enough to believe in such things as faith and salvation and prayer. So strong had his influence become, in fact, that even his pastor’s faith in the power of prayer was becoming weakened. “There is no use in praying for FROM LAW OFFICE TO CHRISTIAN PULPIT 69 the conversion of Finney,” the minister had asserted. “And my choir members never will become Christians so long as that man is living in this, town.” And now it was said that this unbelieving young lawyer had become a Christian ! Not only that, but he had actually been trying to get other persons to accept Christ. That very day this scorner of Christianity had gone to several of his best friends, and urged them to turn to Christ for salvation; moreover, it was reported that two or three actually had accepted his advice, and at once had come to the Saviour. He who before had persecuted Christ now was preaching the faith — this was the astonishing word that had spread like wild¬ fire through the town, and that had attracted this leaderless throng to the church. HOW A PERSECUTOR BECAME A BELIEVER After the congregation had sat there in silence for a time, waiting for what might come, at length the young- lawyer himself arose in his place. Quietly and humbly, but quite frankly, he told the meeting just what had happened to him. When he had finished, everyone present knew the whole story. And this is what they knew : Finney as a boy had lived in the frontier region of northern New York, and had heard little gospel preach¬ ing until he was almost a grown man. Never had he read the Bible until after he began to study law. Then the many references in his law books to the laws of Moses aroused his interest, and he bought a copy of 70 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH the Scriptures. Almost at once he recognized the Bible as the Word of God, and soon he realized that he needed the salvation which he had been ridiculing. Yet the young man was unwilling to give himself unreservedly to God. Instead, he tried to keep out of the way of the minister and of other Church people, for of course, seeing them would remind him of the duty that he did not want to perform. Still, he could not keep away from his own thoughts. On the day before the momentous meeting, in the morning, Finney was walking along the street when suddenly he thought that he saw Christ himself before him, inviting him to become a Christian. Finney stopped dead still, stood motionless a few moments, and then yielded. He determined to accept Christ that day, “or die in the attempt,” as he expressed it. All that morning he spent in the woods, fighting against his will. Once, as he fought, it occurred to him that what was keeping him from Christ was fear that the woods were full of people ready to ridicule him, as he himself had ridiculed other persons who were trying to follow Christ. So at once he shouted, at the top of his voice : “I will not leave this place though all the men on earth and all the devils in hell, should surround me!” Then he began to pray, and soon he rose from his knees a Christian, and not only a Christian but also a man determined to give up the practice of law and be¬ come a minister of the gospel. Immediately he began to prepare to preach. He closed up his law work at once, FROM LAW OFFICE TO CHRISTIAN PULPIT 71 f and went out on the streets to lead his friends to Christ This was the story that the leaderless meeting had assembled to hear, and it heard the recital with intense interest. When it was finished the pastor arose, and in genuine repentance confessed that his faith had been rebuked ; after all, he had not known the mighty power of God to save. LIKE THE TIMES OF WHITEFIELD Quietly the meeting adjourned, but it was followed by a prayer meeting the next night, and the night fol¬ lowing, and every night for many weeks. The church and town were deeply stirred. Finney went to all the young people whom he had prejudiced against Christ, and shortly all but one were converted. The former lawyer later went to his country home, and there led his father and mother to Christ. Soon, from his home and from the town of Adams as centers, a widely ex¬ tended revival spread over the entire county. From that time on, for nearly fifty years, Charles G. Finney gave himself to the work of preaching the gospel, and from his preaching there developed the greatest revival of religion that America had known since the time of Timothy Dwight and George Whitefield. Even before he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Finney was a preacher of the duty of im¬ mediate surrender to Christ. While yet a young Chris¬ tian, he became a home missionary at Evans Mills, a 72 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH rough frontier town of lawless people, and nearly all of them were converted in a few weeks. A town not far away called Sodom was almost as evil a place as the Sodom of Bible history, and its one deeply religious man had been nicknamed Lot. Here Finney preached a sermon against the sins of the people that was so powerful and so true that it first angered his hearers and then sobered them; in a few minutes the prayers for forgiveness among the congregation were so loud that the evangelist’s voice could not be heard. Putting “Lot” in charge of the meeting, Finney went to keep another engagement, but he left behind him a power at work that quickly produced a complete and permanent change in the community. Throughout all that part of New York State similar experiences were met. Town after town was moved from circumference to center. For months at a time no social parties were held, the young people spending their evenings in prayer for the unconverted ; and countless conversions were traced directly back to such prayers. A JOURNEY THAT NEVER WAS FINISHED After two or three years of such work near home, Finney had to go into Central New York to attend a synod meeting. He seems never to have reached the synod’s gathering, however. On the way he preached one sermon that aroused an interest so great that he stayed long in that neighborhood, preaching the mes¬ sage that God gave him. Before he left central FROM LAW OFFICE TO CHRISTIAN PULPIT 73 New York, three thousand persons had been led to Christ. After this the list of places in which the evangelist held successful meetings reads like a roll of the im¬ portant cities of the land. He led revival movements in Auburn, Troy, Philadelphia, New York, Rochester, Boston, and numerous other 'cities. At Philadelphia one sermon excited an attention so profound that it was preached on seven successive nights in seven Phila¬ delphia churches; he remained in the city more than a year, with no falling off in the religious interest. A year and a quarter were spent in New York City, where many leading business and professional men ac¬ cepted Christ under Finney’s preaching. At Rochester the turning to God was so general that the city ever since has been noted for its high moral tone, strong churches, earnest ministers, and frequent revivals. Even after Finney had taken up other ministerial work, he continued his remarkable evangelistic labors as he had opportunity. In 1849, and again in 1858, he went to Great Britain, where the gathering of immense congregations reminded the people forcibly of similar scenes during the careers of Wesley and Whitefield a century before. Finney did not give up his evangelistic work until 1867, when he was seventy-five years old. PREACHER, PROFESSOR, PRESIDENT Charles G. Finney is famous not only as a preacher but also as a teacher and as a college president. In 1835, Mr. Finney, then a Congregational minister, was 74 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH called to be professor of theology in a school in Ohio that later became Oberlin College, of which he was president from 1852 until 1866. Oberlin, Ohio, was settled by New England Con- gregationalists, whose earnest Christian lives and de¬ votion to God have made the city known far and wide as an influence for righteousness. Oberlin College, during all the time Finney was connected with it, and since, was an institution of high educational attain¬ ments, of strong Christian spirit, and of persevering opposition to such evils as slavery and the liquor traffic. Its fame early went into all the world. Four years after Finney went to Oberlin, David Livingstone, the famous Scotch missionary explorer, sent his younger brother from Europe to the Ohio college for an education, and there the brother was graduated in 1845. During Finney’s forty years at Oberlin, twenty thou¬ sand young people went to college there, and came under his powerful influence. As they later emigrated into all parts of the West, many of these young people carried the Christian power of President Finney into Iowa, Minnesota, and other states, while these regions were still territories of the nation and still a savage wilderness. “now is the acceptable time” Yet, in the history of the Christian Church, Charles G. Finney is more easily remembered, not for his real power as an educator, but for his acknowledged su¬ premacy in his time as a preacher of the power of God AN AMERICAN CHRYSOSTOM 75 to save to the uttermost, and of the duty of every un¬ saved person to turn to God at once. Such preaching by Finney was responded to during his lifetime by per¬ haps fifty thousand persons, old and young, who be¬ came Christians. Suggestion: After hearing of Bunyan, Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, Dwight, and Finney, it will be surprising if some of your boys and girls are not thinking seriously about accepting Christ for themselves. Can you help them? Books Suggested Wright, “Charles Grandison Finney.” Hills, Biography of Charles Finney. “Autobiography of Rev. Charles G. Finney.” LESSON XI AN AMERICAN CHRYSOSTOM Read: Jonah, ch. 3. Memory Verse: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto Je¬ hovah, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” — Isa. 55: 7. WHEN THE WAR THREATENED PHILADELPHIA It was in the critical period of the war between the states. Lee’s army was pushing its way from the south. It had reached the neighborhood of Harris¬ burg, the capital of Pennsylvania, and was clearly be¬ coming a menace to the populous and wealthy city of Philadelphia. Yet, to all appearances, Philadelphia was 76 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH making- absolutely no preparations for defending itself against invasion. The mayor and the city fathers seemed quite heedless of the city’s danger. In this time of peril there was one man in Phila¬ delphia who saw the city's danger, and had the patriot¬ ism and courage to take a fearless step to protect the people. The man was not a great statesman or a veteran soldier, but only a young minister, the rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. This young man, who was only four years out of school, did a seemingly curious thing. To defend the city against the invader, he called to¬ gether, not a body of citizens able to bear arms, but a body of ministers like himself. “We cannot carry rifles, of course/ ' he acknowledged, “but we can shoulder shovels, and dig trenches. We can help throw up earthworks against the army of Lee." One day, therefore, Philadelphia witnessed a novel sight. It saw a company of more than one hundred ministers marching through the streets to the mayor's office, bearing shovels and spades, and headed by the young Episcopal rector, Rev. Phillips Brooks, and the aged Presbyterian clergyman, Rev. Albert Barnes. Their boldness and devotion to their city and country served its purpose. Shamed to a consciousness of the city's peril, the mayor and the other local officials quickly took steps to save Philadelphia from the foe. Fortunately, Lee was turned back before ever reaching- Philadelphia, yet no one could have been sure of that AN AMERICAN CHRYSOSTOM 77 in advance. At any rate, Phillips Brooks had been instrumental in awakening the city to its danger. A PREACHER OF SAFETY FOR ALL During all his life Phillips Brooks was doing that one thing — awakening the people of the land to the danger of their souls, and showing them how to secure protection. As a preacher of salvation through Christ, he was one of the most eloquent and powerful public speakers that America ever has known. He was not a famous evangelist, like Whitefield and Finney ; he was a faithful pastor and far-famed pulpit speaker, week after week, and vear after year — an American Chrysostom. j Nothing so remarkable has been told of the boyhood of this famous preacher as has been told of the early years of Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dw ight ; when he was a boy, he had much the sort of life that any other American boy might have had. He was born in 1835, the year in which Finney went first to Oberlin, Ohio. At this time Phillips Brooks’s parents were members of a Unitarian church in Boston ; four years later they became Episcopalians, and Phillips Brooks was an Episcopalian throughout his life. The members of his family attended church service twice every Sunday, but spent part of each Sunday at home learning hymns, which they recited at family prayers in the evening. By the time Phillips was sixteen years old he knew two hundred hymns by heart, and these stayed with him and helped him as long as he lived. 78 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH When he was sixteen Phillips went to Harvard Col¬ lege, where the noted scientist Agassiz and the famous poet Longfellow were among his teachers. After grad¬ uation he became an instructor in the Boston Latin School, but he did not succeed there, so he resigned after one term. He did not succeed because he was un¬ able to maintain, discipline among the older and more unruly boys ; Phillips Brooks was not the sort of man who enjoys scolding and punishing, nor one who does it easily; words of good cheer and good will for every person were more natural to him through all his days. After he had been graduated from the theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia, Brooks took charge of the small Church of the Advent in Philadelphia, but in two years’ time he was called to be rector of the important Holy Trinity Church. In each of these churches he was listened to with keen attention, and soon he began to attract the interest of persons far and near as an unusually appealing preacher of the gospel. The people back in his home city of Boston heard of his success, and called him, after eight years more, to the pastorate of Boston’s famous Trinity Church. After doing a remarkable work there, in 1891 he became bishop of all Massachusetts. THEY “ HEARD HIM GLADLY” Some of the stories told of Phillips Brooks’s power as a preacher are intensely interesting. When he was only twenty-four years old, one of his professors at Alexandria, after having known him less than three AN AMERICAN CHRYSOSTOM 79 years, said of him, “That young man is fitted for any position the Church has to give him.” Brooks served the Church and the entire nation ex¬ cellently in 1865 when, following the death of the war President, he preached an eloquent funeral sermon on Abraham Lincoln. “I charge his murder where it belongs!” said Brooks in that famous sermon. “I charge it on slavery. I bid you to remember where the charge belongs, to write it on the doorposts of your mourning houses, to teach it to your wondering children, and to give it to the history of these times — that all time to come may hate and dread the sin that killed our noblest President.” America never has for¬ gotten that lesson ; it was the sin of slavery that caused our war between the states, and that eventually caused the death of our first martyr President. In Boston the fame of Brooks was still greater than it had been in Philadelphia. Within a year after he went “back home” to Boston, his church there was crowded to its doors every Sunday. No religious event in all Boston’s history had created such excite¬ ment as the preaching of Phillips Brooks. People in such large numbers came from all parts of the land to hear him that the regular attendants at the church often were unable to obtain admittance. One very hot day in the summer a stranger from another city went to the service a full half hour before time for it to begin — only to find the church already filled; and this ex¬ perience was repeated in the case of many other persons. Other cities heard of the eloquence of the Boston 80 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH minister, and invited him to visit them and preach for them. Numerous invitations of this kind were ac¬ cepted, over all America, to the great delight and profit of his hearers everywhere in the land. One winter Brooks preached every noon in Trinity Church, New York City, and every day his services were thronged by the most successful business men of the nation, men who had their offices in the noted Wall Street financial district of the city. Soon after Brooks went to Boston, a great Scotsman one Sunday wrote to his wife in Great Britain as fol- lows : “I have just heard the most remarkable sermon I have ever heard in my life, from one Phillips Brooks. I was electrified. I could have got up and shouted.' ’ One year the noted minister went to England, and there he preached time after time to similarly electri¬ fied audiences. He was summoned to Windsor Palace, the home of Queen Victoria, and there he preached to the ruler of the British world. Among his countless friends were many noted Englishmen, including the poets Tennyson and Browning. IN MOURNING FOR A FRIEND Brooks died at the early age of fifty-eight, leaving a land in consternation of grief. Boston closed many of its offices and stores, in order to attend the funeral. Many men and women of all denominations mourned the loss of a great man and a good friend. Of the multitudes that flocked to Trinity Church for the serv¬ ice, only a small proportion could get in ; a second funeral AN AMERICAN CHRYSOSTOM 81 service was held outdoors in Copley Square, and this was attended by about fifteen thousand people. In more ways than one, the public grief at this time re¬ minded people of the mourning over the death of Lincoln, whose life and work Brooks himself had praised with ringing eloquence. Phillips Brooks was remarkable both as a preacher and as a man. He was a man of humble and unselfish life, and of deep sympathy with men and women and little children. Once, after he had preached a sermon to comfort people who were in sorrow and trouble, one of his friends expressed surprise that the minister could speak so helpfully, though he himself never had ex¬ perienced the troubles to which he referred. Brooks laughed gently, as he responded, “But don’t you sup¬ pose a man can put himself in other people’s places?” This is what Brooks was able to do; and because he could do it, and did do it, he preached with unusual helpfulness to men and women who needed to know of the sympathy of other people, and of the sympathy of Christ. “i HAVE ONLY ONE SERMON” Always it was of Christ that Brooks liked best to speak. Once in England he was asked what sermon he would preach on the following Sunday, whereupon he answered, “I have only one sermon.” He had many sermons, indeed, but all of these centered around the greatest subject that any man can preach — salvation in Christ for everyone who will receive it. 82 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH This gifted preacher published many books, and wrote many poems, including the Christmas hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem/’ He was a helpful force at Harvard College in his later life. Yet his fame rests less on all these achievements than on his simple preaching of what people believe everywhere and always are eager to hear — how to live happy and useful lives as followers of Jesus, the Son of God. Suggestion: Refer to the brilliant career of the great Chrys¬ ostom, see encyclopedia, or Schaff’s “History of the Christian Church,” Vol. Ill, or Lord’s “Beacon Lights of History.” Books Suggested Allen, “Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks.” Howe, “Phillips Brooks.” Faris, “Winning Their Way.” (Especially for stories of Brooks’s boyhood.) Brooks, A., “Phillips Brooks.” LESSON XII AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD Read: Acts 4: 1-13. Memory Verse: “They took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” — Acts 4: 13. THE END OF A NOTABLE CENTURY Here is a strange fact : In 1867 Charles G. Finney, because of old age, stopped holding revival services, and in 1867 another American began holding revival services, a man whose fame as an evangelist became almost greater than even that of Finney. His name is AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD 83 Dwight L. Moody. God raised up Moody to carry on the work that Finney was laying down. And here is another curious fact : A man named Dwight L. Moody continued his evangelistic labors to the very end of the nineteenth century, a century that began with the great revivals of 1800 led by a man named Dwight, and that had revivals all the way until its close. Have you noticed that the men whom we have been reading about so far have been ministers, all of them? Yet here is one who was only a layman. Moody be¬ came the most famous Christian layman of his time in his work for Christ. Let us look back at his child¬ hood and young manhood, and see the many interest¬ ing ways in which God prepared him for his great work. TWO RULES WORTH OBEYING Dwight L. Moody was 'the son of a laboring man, who died when Dwight was four years old, leaving the family penniless. So the boy received very little schooling, and he had to go to work when very young. But poor as they were, the children were well brought up by their fine mother. She led them to obey two ex¬ cellent rules : First, never to speak faultfinding words about their neighbors, even when these neighbors were living in comfort, while they themselves were almost starving. Second, always to keep their promises, how¬ ever hard these might be to keep. One winter, when Dwight was only ten years old, he agreed with a neighbor to work for room and board, while he was going to school. The neighbor gave him 84 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH such very poor board that at length Dwight went home. He told his mother that for nineteen successive meals he had been given nothing to eat except corn-meal mush and milk. But his mother reminded the boy of his promise to work for this man and when she learned that his food, while monotonous, was quite enough for his needs, she persuaded him to return to the neighbor and fulfill his unpleasant contract. When Dwight was about seventeen years old, after much hard work near home, he went to Boston. There his uncle offered him a job in his shoe store, on several conditions. One of these was that the young man would attend his uncle’s church and Sunday school. Dwight accepted these conditions, and from this time forward he was always deeply interested in Church and Sunday-school work. One day, some months later, Dwight’s Sunday-school teacher called on him at the store, and urged him to become a Christian. Moved by the man’s interest in him, and by a realization that he really needed Christ in his life, the young man accepted Christ immediately. At once a tremendous change came over him ; he be¬ came intensely devoted to the service of his divine Master, and he labored for him with increasing con¬ secration from that day forward. SUCCESSFUL IN SELLING AND IN SERVING Dwight Moody was a good clerk in his uncle’s store. His consecration to Christ made him a still better sales¬ man. People now found that they always could take AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD 85 his word for the quality of the goods he sold, so they preferred to deal with him rather than with the other clerks. He prospered in a business way, first as a clerk, then as a traveling salesman for his uncle, and later as a salesman for a shoe house in Chicago, a city to which he moved in the year 1856. Chicago is where the young man’s hardest and most successful religious work began. When Dwight united with the Plymouth Congregational Church there, he reserved a full pew in the church, determining to bring in outsiders to fill it. He went to boarding houses, to street corners, and even into saloons, inviting young men to go to church with him and help fill that empty pew. His earnestness and enthusiasm were so suc¬ cessful that almost at once the pew was filled from end to end. Then he reserved another pew and another ; before long he was filling four pews every Sunday morning with young men who a few weeks before had been utter strangers to him. INTO THE STREETS AND BYWAYS This work kept Moody busy Sunday mornings, but because he had nothing useful to do in the afternoon, he thought that he would teach a class in a mission Sun¬ day school near his boarding house. But Sunday schools seem not to have been very popular in that neighbor¬ hood; the school had sixteen teachers ready, but only twelve scholars ! Moody was calmly told that he could have a class the next Sunday on one condition — that he bring his own scholars. 86 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH It was a strange invitation, but not too strange for Moody. The next Sunday he went out on the streets, and when time came for Sunday school he marched to the mission school, leading eighteen boys whom he had collected. These he later turned over to the other teachers, while he himself gave his time to gathering more boys. Week after week he kept at his outdoor service for Christ and the Sunday school, until finally the building was crowded. Even this success was not enough for the ambitious Moody. After a year or more he and some friends rented a hall over a public market, and this they soon filled with boys and girls brought in from the streets and the neighboring homes. Once he led into the Sunday school the members of a real boys “gang,” whose names sound very unlike those of the boys who are in most of our Sunday schools to-day. These are their names : Red Eye, Smikes, Madden the Butcher, Rag-Breeches Cadet, Jackey Candles, Old Man, Giberick, Billy Blucannon, Darby the Cobbler, Butcher Lilray, Greenhorn, Indian, and Black Stove Pipe. This Sunday school grew very rapidly, until it had 1,500 scholars and was the largest Sunday school in the country. After a time it developed into a church that is still alive and active to-dav, and that is known over all the world as the Moody Church, of Chicago. A BUSINESS MAN WHO GAVE UP A FORTUNE All this time the young man Moody was busy during the week with his business, in which he was doing very 87 AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD ♦ t well; already he had accumulated $7,000. He had determined to gain a fortune of $100,000, which in these days would be equal to perhaps a million dollars. But, successful though he was, Moody never got the fortune. For in time he had an experience that made him glad to give up his business, and devote all his energies to religious work. This is how the experience came about: One Sunday Moody called on a man who was the teacher of a Sunday-school class composed of gay and frivolous young women. The teacher was so ill that that very day he realized that he must go back to his home in the east to die. Yet he felt desperately sad be¬ cause not one of* the young women was a Christian, and he dreaded leaving them while they still were away from Christ. Touched with sympathy for the man, Moody urged the teacher to go with him at once, and call on the young women one by one. They wen-t, with the result that the pleading of Mt>ody. himself, in the presence of their sick teacher, led several of the young women to accept Christ, and in ten days they all had become Christians. The teacher went home to die, but to die with joy. Following this first experience of leading so many persons to Christ, Moody devoted himself completely to Christian work. For several years he gave all his time to Young Men’s Christian Association work, to Sunday-school work, and to work among the soldiers of the Civil War between the states. 88 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FINNEY In 1867 came an eventful journey to England. Moody went there in order to visit two well-known Christian men of England. While in that land he heard some one use words that became a wonderful inspira¬ tion to him. The words were these : “The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in and by the man who is fully and wholly conse¬ crated to him.” Immediately Moody said to himself, “I intend to try my utmost to be that man!" That he did try exceed¬ ingly well, all of us must confess who remember his life thereafter. » Moody at once began to hold prayer meetings and evangelistic meetings, which from the first were greatly blessed by God. From England he came home, and here he continued his Young Men’s Christian Associa¬ tion work and Sunday-school labors. Through them all God was preparing him for the tremendous suc¬ cesses of his later years. Six years after his first visit to England he went again, this time to hold remarkable revival services in all of England and Scotland. In Glasgow, thirty thou¬ sand persons heard him preach at one outdoor meeting; in Edinburgh, twenty thousand attended one service; at Aberdeen, he spoke to the same number of persons on one day. During eight days, 100,000 persons heard him in Birmingham, a city in which John Wesley one hundred years or so before had been cruelly mistreated by a mob. AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD 89 Similar fame and success greeted the American evan¬ gelist in London, where seventeen thousand persons attended his first meeting, with thousands unable to press their way into the building. In this British capital Moody held two hundred and eighty-five meet¬ ings, which were attended by two and a half million people. In London, and in all the other cities where Moody spoke of Christ to the people, hundreds and thousands of persons were converted. Moody came back to the United States as the most famous evangelist the world had heard of since^Finney's time. Everywhere in the country from east to west, and north to south, for twenty-five years, he conducted evangelistic campaigns, speaking to millions, leading tens of thousands of Christians closer to Christ, and persuading countless thousands to accept salvation in Christ for the first time. MEETINGS FOR ALL THE WORLD Perhaps the most notable of all Moody's campaigns was conducted at Chicago in 1893, in connection with the great World's Fair held to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of Colunbus’ discovery of America. All denominations united with the famous evangelist in holding meetings in eight or ten or a dozen different parts of the city every Sunday, and in many places every week night. Attendants on the fair from all over the world flocked to these gatherings in Chicago. Once Moody rented a circus tent that had seats for ten thousand 90 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH people, though the circus manager let Moody know that he did not expect to see three thousand attend. In fact, eighteen* thousand men, women, and children came, and the tent was filled with a seated and standing multitude. During that summer and autumn, Moody held meet¬ ings for all sorts of people, and all were remarkably well attended. He had meetings, for men* only, for women only, for children only; for soldiers; in jails, in the open air, in private homes; meetings for Germans, Poles, Bohemians, French, Jews, and Arabs; he con¬ ducted all-day meetings and all-night meetings. Minis¬ ters from every quarter of the globe were there to assist him — men from Britain; Russia, from Silesia, France, Germany, from Australia and the islands of the sea. On several Sundays the evangelist directed as many as one hundred and twenty-five different meetings, in each of which the people were told of the love of God and urged to come to Christ for salvation. And hosts of them came. THE JOY OF COMPLETE CONSECRATION For years before his death, Moody knew that he had heart trouble, and that if he continued at his hard work for Christ, in time this surely would kill him. Yet he kept on. And he ended his life as he had expected to end it. In 1899 he was conducting meetings in the crowded Convention Hall at Kansas City, when sud¬ denly his heart gave way, the meetings were handed over to an assistant, and Moody himself went back to AN EVANGELIST TO ALL THE WORLD 91 his eastern home to die — just as the Sunday-school teacher had gone years before. There, at his birth¬ place, Northheld, Massachusetts, during Christmas week of 1899, Dwight L. Moody gave up his life. Like that old-time Sunday-school teacher, he died happy in the knowledge that through him God had led to himself the people whom God had committed to his charge — not merely a few young women, indeed, but thousands of young women, with thousands of children, and many thousands of grown men and women. Why did God give such mighty success to the life of D. L. Moody? Maybe there are many reasons, but surely this is one of them : This man of God did his ut¬ most to show the world what God can do through a person who is fully and wholly consecrated to him. Suggestion: Lesson X led up to thoughts of acceptance of Christ; this lesson leads naturally to serious thoughts of complete consecration. It is not too early for Intermediate- age boys and girls to feel at least the first stirrings of deep life purpose. This account of Moody’s life is necessarily incomplete; his son’s biography includes helpful incidents of the evangelist’s Northfield work, for example. Books Suggested Moody, W. R., “The Life of Dwight L. Moody.” Ogilvie, “The Life and Sermons of D. L. Moody.” Williams, Biography of D. L. Moody. 92 MODERN BUILDERS OE THE CHURCH LESSON XIII THE FOUNDER OF OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS Read: Deut. 6: 4-9. Memory Verse: “Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.” — Luke 11:28. WHEN SUNDAY SCHOOLS WERE UNKNOWN Nowadays there are so many Sunday schools that it is hard for us to realize that once there were none. The first modern Sunday school was opened about the time of our Revolutionary ‘War. It is very curious that there were not Sunday schools through all the history of the Christian Church, for certainly the apostles used to teach the Bible much as it is taught in Sunday schools now, and we know that there were Christian Sunday schools in Egypt and Armenia about fifteen hundred years ago. But when the Dark Ages came, and when the Church lost much of its power and purity, it lost its Sunday schools, also. Of course, when the Church regained its strength, it was sure to find the need of Sunday schools, yet centuries passed, even after the days of Luther and Calvin, before it really saw the necessity clearly, and ’ proceeded to meet it. Meanwhile, the people of Europe and America were in a sad state because they had no such general knowledge of the Bible as the Sunday school provides. When John Wesley was alive, he found the people of England in a wretched condition, “A total ignorance THE FOUNDER OF OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS 93 of God is almost universal among us,” he said. People “high and low — cobblers, tinkers, hackney coachmen, men and maid servants, soldiers, sailors, tradesmen of all ranks, lawyers, physicians, gentlemen, lords — are as ignorant of the Creator of the world as Mohamme¬ dans or pagans.” In those days few boys and girls except the children of rich people could read and write ; a workman’s fifteen- year-old son or daughter who could read was almost as rare then as a fifteen-year-old boy or girl who cannot read is now. “The children are terrible bad,” people used to say one hundred and fifty years ago. In the towns and cities of England, we are told, the boys, and even the girls, fought and lied and stole, and were dirty and unkempt. People's property was unsafe because of the thieving of organized gangs of wild and ignorant boys, who made the streets at night hideous with their shouts and curses. Half-starved, living in huts and hovels, and neglected, these poor children were scorned by people of wealth and culture, and most well-clothed persons would not let the town’s children come within reach of them. It was a sad time for children. What they needed was to be cared for, and not scorned, to be educated, and especially to be taught how to live a clean, orderly, and happy life. The day came, indeed, when they re¬ ceived just this sort of help, and the man who was most responsible for getting help for them is known to us as Robert Raikes, the founder of our Sunday schools. 94 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH A MONUMENT, AND THE MAN IT HONORS If you were to walk on the embankment along the River Thames, in London, England, you would see at a certain spot a monument that bears the name of Robert Raikes. This was erected in memory and in honor of the man who gave us our Sunday schools, a man who loved boys and girls, and who, because he loved them, gave them the mighty institution that we know as the Sunday school. This friend of the children of the eighteenth century was a printer and newspaper man who lived in the city of Gloucester, England. About the time of the be¬ ginning of our French and Indian War, he became the publisher of the city’s paper, The Gloucester Journal. But Raikes was not only a newspaper man; he was also a friend of men and women who were in jail. He used to visit these poor people, and in his paper he printed appeals to other people to help them. Raikes used to do a good deal of thinking about the persons who had been sent to prison because they had broken the law. No doubt he soon began to think in this way : Why did these people break the law ? Some of them broke it, surely, because they were bad, but most of them because they were just ignorant; they knew no better. When they are dead, who will fill the jails then? The ignorant boys and girls of Gloucester, of course, who by that time will have become ignorant men and women. But is there not some way to teach the boys and girls of the city a better way of living? Can we not have schools for them, in which they can THE FOUNDER OF OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS 95 learn to read and write, and in which they can learn from the Bible how to live a useful and happy life? In some such way as this, Robert Raikes came to a decision to open a school on Sundays, in which children who had to work on week days could study. So he persuaded a Mrs. Meredith to become superintendent of a school for street children, which he opened in Soot Alley, one of the worst districts of the city. This school did not live very long, but after a time he opened a school that survived. A PIONEER SCHOOL, AND HOW IT TAUGHT The first of all modern Sunday schools that became permanent was opened by Raikes near his own home in the year 1 780. This was in a place called the Grey Friars, opposite the church of St. Mary le Crypt. Very dif¬ ferent from our Sunday schools was this Grey Friars school. In the first place, all its teachers were paid for their work, just as day-school teachers are paid to-day. Then, these teachers taught the boys and girls not only about the Bible and the Church catechism, but also how to read. Suppose we see just how this first school spent its hours. In the first Sunday school the work began at ten o'clock Sunday morning, and continued until twelve. Then the children went home to dinner, returning at one. In the afternoon they studied a lesson after which they were led to a church service. Raikes himself often marched through Gloucester streets with his children, taking them to the church, and later from the church 96 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH back to the school. While they studied the catechism, from about four until half-past five, Raikes used some¬ times to teach them himself, and even to punish the worst boys. At five-thirty he or the superintendent dis¬ missed the children, warning them to go straight home, to go quietly, and by no means to stop on the way home to play. It is really remarkable how quickly the boys and girls responded to the affection and the care that Robert Raikes and his helpers gave them. The change in their lives was so marked, and their interest in the school so * great, that Raikes speedily realized that he had really found exactly what the children needed, and what the Church needed : it was the Sunday school. According¬ ly, the founder of the Sunday school wrote an article for his paper about the success of the Gloucester school, in order that people in other parts of England might learn of it. A VICTORY FOR THE CHILDREN Almost at once, practically all the Christian people of England became enthusiastic for this fine new move¬ ment. John Wesley said that the Sunday school was one of the best institutions seen in Europe for centuries, and the rapid growth of the Methodist societies and churches was largely due to his organization of Sunday schools wherever he could. Perhaps the world never has seen so remarkable a growth as that of the Sunday school during the next few years. Within four years after Raikes told in his paper of the Gloucester Sunday school, nearly two THE FOUNDER OF OUR SUNDAY SCHOOLS 97 hundred and fifty thousand English children were at¬ tending Sunday school. One of Wesley’s schools alone had an average attendance of eighteen hundred. Everyone seemed to want to help. The king and queen publicly approved the Sunday schools. Lords and ladies, rich men and wealthy women, asked per¬ mission to teach in the schools without payment, for by this time most of the teaching was done free of charge. Nearly every week a new Sunday school sprang up somewhere, and soon there were dozens a week. By this time the movement had reached America. Bishop Asbury in 1786 established a Sunday school in Virginia; five years later a school was opened in Boston, and in 1793 a famous Negro woman, Katy Ferguson, founded a Sunday school in New York City. Other schools sprang up here and there, though more slowly than in crowded England. Just as in England, the new Sunday-school movement produced a great change in America. It helped boys and girls to live better lives, raised the country’s standard of morals, in¬ creased the people’s respect for children, and enabled the children themselves to realize that the Church is not only for grown people ; it is for boys and girls quite as much as for men and women. Another notable fruit of Robert Raikes’s Sunday schools is the growth of day schools throughout the world. After a time the Sunday school could stop teaching reading and give all its attention to teaching the Bible, for day schools grew up everywhere. In 98 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH fact, Robert Raikes is not only the founder of our Sun¬ day schools, but also the indirect founder of our kin¬ dergartens, grade schools, high schools, academies, and colleges. Our Sunday schools to-day are a vast improvement over the first efforts of Raikes; they teach not only boys and girls, but also men and women of all ages, and they teach them all to know the Bible through and through, and to live helpfully and happily as the Christ of the Bible would have them live. Yet all the countless thousands of Sunday ‘schools of our own time are an outgrowth of the work in Gloucester, England, of Robert Raikes, the newspaper man who loved children, and who did his best to help them. Suggestion: Here and elsewhere show how one new de¬ velopment of the Church’s history depends on another; Wesle}r, Moody, and Chalmers (Lesson XIV), needed Robert Raikes’s work for their success. We never know what great things God will do some day as a result of our own faithfulness to him.. Books Suggested Trumbull, “The Sunday School: Its Origin, Mission, Methods, and Auxiliaries.” Lloyd and Gregory, Biographies of Raikes. THE FRIEND OF SCOTLAND’S CHILDREN 99 LESSON XIV THE FRIEND OF SCOTLAND’S CHILDREN Read: II Kings 4: 1-7. Memory Verse: “Jehovah is good to all; And his tender mercies are over all his works.’’ — Ps. 145:9. LED TO CHRIST THROUGH AN ENCYCLOPEDIA If you ever have read many articles in an encyclo¬ pedia, you may feel that this sort of reference book is not always extremely interesting. It has so many im¬ portant facts to tell in a brief space that it has to leave out many of the more thrilling features of life that we like to read. Yet even in connection with such a weighty volume as an encyclopedia, we often run across some decidedly interesting facts. Here, for example is one : About one hundred years ago a certain Scotchman, who was not very much of a Christian at that time, was told to write an article for an encyclopedia that was about to be published. Curiously enough, the sub¬ ject assigned to him was “Christianity.” When this man set to work on his article, he became so deeply in¬ terested in his subject that gradually his admiration for Christ and for Christianity greatly increased. The result was that by the time his encyclopedia article was complete, his conversion to Christ was complete, also, and he thus became fitted to be one of the outstanding leaders of the Christian Church in his time. 100 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH This noted Scotchman was Dr. Thomas Chalmers, whom we shall remember as “The Friend of Scotland’s Children.” Dr. Chalmers was an eloquent preacher, like Whitefield and Phillips Brooks, but he was more than this : he was also a remarkably successful pastor. And as a pastor, he did some magnificent things for the boys and girls of Scotland. Many of these deeds he was able to perform because Robert Raikes, whose Sunday-school movement formed a central feature of Dr. Chalmers notable work, had lived before him. A MERRY BOY WHO WENT TO COLLEGE Tom Chalmers, a member of a family of fourteen children, was born in 1780 (just about when Raikes was opening his first Sunday school at East An- struther, in Scotland). His father was a rich merchant, shipowner, town councilor, and elder in the Presby¬ terian Church. When Tom went to school he was known as one of the strongest, merriest, most gener¬ ous-hearted, and also most idle boys in the whole school. While he was in school, Tom decided on what he would be when he became a man. As he looked around him, he observed that in his town the man whom every¬ one most looked up to was not Tom’s own rich father, nor a city judge or magistrate, nor a physician, but the minister of the church. So Tom decided that when he was a man he would be a minister. Tom Chalmers was only eleven years old when he went off to college with his thirteen-year-old brother, William. In this college, which was St. Andrews THE FRIEND OF SCOTLAND’S CHILDREN 101 University, he evidently took high-school or even grammar-school studies for a while. At any rate, he led a rather careless life for two years or so. Much of his time he gave to golf and football. But when he became thirteen, he settled down to hard work, and kept at it the remainder of his life. From the year Chalmers left college until he was twenty-two years old, he spent his time in tutoring the children of a wealthy man who lived not far from his home, in studying theology, and in teaching mathe¬ matics to a few pupils. He was a very bright young man, and he gave so much promise that he was licensed to preach when he was only nineteen, though the cus¬ tom was to license only men of twenty-one or over. A fine life of usefulness began for Chalmers when he was twenty-two. At that age he became both pastor of the church at Kilmany, and also teacher of mathematics in his own university, nine miles away. Persons who do not like mathematics may be surprised to learn that, at St. Andrew, Chalmers made the subject so interesting, and interesting in so novel a way, that his classrooms were thronged ; he had all the private pupils he could care for, and the staid old professors of the university were astounded and even dismayed at his success. Early in his pastoral work, Chalmers became greatly devoted to Christ and his work. Two factors had helped to produce this result : First, he had read a book by a famous American minister of whom we know, Jonathan Edwards, a book that gave him intense joy in God as his all-powerful Lord. Second, he wrote the 102 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH encyclopedia article on Christianity that led him close to Christ. In consequence, during his ten years as minister at Kilmany, he was a helpful pastor and elo¬ quent preacher. BREAKING INTO CHURCH TO HEAR THE GOSPEL Yet it was not until Chalmers became pastor of the Tron Church in the city of Glasgow that the people of Scotland generally learned of his power as a preacher. Almost from his first Sunday in the Glasgow church, his preaching services were greeted by multitudes of eager hearers. All the seats were taken, and even the standing room was exhausted. Sometimes the huge crowds outside burst open the locked doors when he was preaching, and surged into the packed church. Two years later, when Chalmers preached a few sermons in London, the enthusiasm of the people was boundless. Four hours before his first service was to begin, the church was filled to overflowing, and the congregation sat as if bound by a spell, while for an hour and a half the eloquent Glasgow minister preached, to them the Word of God. At another London service a number of exalted lords and ladies had to climb into the church over a plank leading into a window, and even Chalmers himself had great trouble to get in, so immense was the throng in and outside the building. About this time Chalmers published a volume of his sermons. It happened that a popular novel appeared almost the same week. To the astonishment of all England and Scotland, as many copies of Chalmers' THE FRIEND OF SCOTLAND’S CHILDREN 103 sermons were sold as were sold of the novel. Twenty a/ thousand volumes were paid for the first year. AT WORK FOR BOYS AND GIRLS All this time, however, Chalmers was thinking less of the eagerness of the rich and comfortable people to hear him preach than of the poorer people who never came to hear him preach — and who never went to any church. He thought of the weavers and factory workers and other working people, and of their families, and especially of their children. Chalmers knew that the number of boys and girls in his city who could neither read nor write, and who never had any religious instruction whatever, was un¬ counted. Tirelessly he called at the homes of these children, and because he could not get their parents to come to his church — which they considered only a rich people’s church — he held Christian meetings for them in cottages and tenements. Week after week and year after year, these meetings went on, and hundreds of boys and girls, and their fathers and mothers, were shown God’s love for them. Even this success nevertheless, was not enough for the friend of Scotland’s children. Chalmers had heard of the helpful Sunday schools of Robert Raikes, and he determined to open one of these for his own boys and girls. He sent an officer of his church into one neigh¬ borhood, and with his help visited all the families there and gathered their children into a Sunday school. During the week his church officer made “pastoral 104 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH calls’* on the families of these girls and boys, doing all he could to help them in their minds and souls and bodies. Soon another Sunday school of this kind was opened by Chalmers, and then another. Then schools grew up on every hand, until the minister had under his direction almost fifty Sunday schools in his large parish. Still Chalmers was not satisfied. He appealed to the leading men of the city, and they helped him to build a new church in the largest and poorest part of the town. This new church, St. John’s, quickly became the center of a surprisingly effective Christian work. The minister divided his parish into twenty-five districts, each with five hundred to one thousand people, and in each dis¬ trict he placed an elder and a deacon, and in each he organized a Sunday school. The elder was to help the people’s spiritual lives, and the deacon to relieve their bodily needs. The hungry were fed, the poorly clad were comfortably clothed, the ignorant taught, and all of them were instructed in the truths of the Bible, and of Christ and the Christian life. Because the people did not like to attend a church filled with rich people, Dr. Chalmers held a special service every Sunday just for them. He told the better dressed people that they would be welcome Sunday morning and afternoon, but that they must stay away at night; at night the church was mostly for his poorer people, he said, just as his Sunday schools were mostly for his poorer people’s children. It is not surprising that when Dr. Chalmers later felt THE FRIEND OF SCOTLAND’S CHILDREN 105 called to leave Glasgow to become a professor in his university, at a smaller salary than he was getting in St. John’s Church, his poorer people, and his richer people, too, were overwhelmed with grief. At his farewell service the crowd that streamed into the church, and that filled the streets and pressed against the doors, was so huge that soldiers had to he called to guard the property from destruction by the affectionate throng. The entire city seemed to have come out to say good-by to the minister who was loved by rich and poor, grown people and countless children alike. STILL THE FRIEND OF THE CHILDREN But Chalmers did not forget the children of Scot¬ land. He was professor at St. Andrews and later at the University of Edinburgh, and always great men were appealing to him for help in solving the great problems of the country, and always immense crowds pressed toward him whenever he gave an address. Yet through it all he thought of Scotland’s poor and of Scotland’s children. After a time Chalmers found an opportunity again to help his people. He became chairman of the Presby¬ terian Church’s new Committee on Church Extension, and as chairman he raised large sums of money — a total of about a million and a half dollars — and in seven years he built new churches in Scotland to the re¬ markable number of 220. And of course each of these was prepared to house a Sunday school for Scotland’s children. 106 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Some time after this, Dr. Chalmers became the head of a new Presbyterian denomination, the Free Church of Scotland. One of his first deeds as head of this church was to do in Edinburgh what he had done in Glasgow. He entered a district of poor people and of neglected children, established a Sunday school and church, and in four years he saw the entire district transformed. From ignorance it changed to knowl¬ edge, from poverty to comfort, and from godlessness to godliness. What God had done in Glasgow, through Thomas Chalmers, he did in Edinburgh, too; for al¬ ways God glorifies the work of anyone who loves the Lord and loves his people, also. Suggestion: Let the children try their hand at gathering from encyclopedias information on the life of William Booth (Lesson XV). Draw out responses to such suggestions as these: name three noted preachers of whom we have studied; two noted revivalists; two noted travelers in Christian work; two noted friends of children. Book Suggested Oliphant, “Thomas Chalmers.” A GENERAL OF THE CROSS 107 LESSON XV A GENERAL OF THE CROSS Read: Mark 6: 30-44. Memory Verse: “The poor have good tidings preached to them.” — Matt. 11:5. A BOY WHO GAVE BACK A GIFT Here are two stories of a boy of fifteen or sixteen years of age who became a man that all the world has delighted to honor. The incidents happened about eighty years ago in England. William had recently become a Christian, but he was a very unhappy Christian. In the corner of a room be¬ neath a Methodist church he sat one night at eleven o’clock, trying to make up his mind to do the one thing that he felt was necessary if he would be true to Christ. He had been unfair, he knew. He had taken ad¬ vantage of some of his boy friends. He had persuaded them to let him transact a small business affair for them, and he had done this business so well that they were all pleased, and out of gratitude had presented him with a silver pencil case. Yet in shame William acknowledged to himself that he had cheated his friends ; he had made a big profit for himself out of the affair. That pencil case must be given back, the boy knew, and he must own his treachery. After a long and bitter fight, he surrendered. He rushed out of the church, found the leader of the other boys, confessed 108 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH his meanness, and handed back the present that he had not deserved. Then William went home, to a calm sleep, and to a happy life as a servant of Christ. From that time he made it the business of his life to be active in the service of both God and man. The second incident refers to events that took place a few months later. William fell seriously ill, and he was still close to death when he received a visit from a boy friend. This boy, also a Christian, appealed to William to get well quickly, so that the two could hold Christian meetings together in the slums of the city. As soon as he was able to be out, William joined his friend at a meeting at night in the slums, and he con¬ tinued to help him night after night. The boys used to take a chair into the street, and one of them, stepping up on it, would announce a hymn, which the two sang, with the help occasionally of three or four other persons attracted to the scene. Then William talked to the peo¬ ple who had gathered around, and invited them to go with the boys to a meeting they were to hold im¬ mediately in some near-by home. A HARD BUT HAPPY LIFE It was a laborious and tireless life that the two boys lived in those days. They worked for a living all day until seven o'clock, then visited one or two sick persons among the poor. By eight o’clock or so, they opened the street meeting, which was followed by the cottage A GENERAL OF THE CROSS 109 meeting. This often resulted in the conversion of some hearers. After the cottage meeting the boys called on one or two more sick people before they went to bed. But by seven o'clock next morning they were again at work. Even William's lunch hour was a busy time. He was allowed only forty minutes but he used the time well. From work he rushed to lunch, and from lunch back to work, all the time reading either the Bible or a book on revivals, written by the famous American revivalist, Charles G. Finney. It is very clear that this boy, William Booth, was doing his level best to live up to his determination of months before — to be active in work for both God and man. And always he worked for people who were poor — poorly clothed, poorly fed, poorly educated, and poorly cared for in every way. a “hallelujah band” A year after he began his meetings for the poor, William Booth was licensed as a Methodist lay preacher. He tried to model his preaching after three men in particular; these were Wesley, Whitefield, and Finney. For years he held meetings in the country, in London, and in other cities. Once he was in a town in Wales, working for poor men who had been sent to jail for their crimes, and who there or later had been converted by Booth’s help. Some of these men Booth organized into a band of gospel witnesses which became known as a “hallelujah band.” Night after night these 110 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH “hallelujah” men used to rise in Booth’s meetings and tell of the love that Christ had shown to them. Much of Booth's work had unusual features like this “hallelujah band.” For one thing, his meetings were held in unusual places. He used a tent for a while. Then he utilized a dance hall, a frail shed that had been a storehouse for old rags, some old theaters, even a few decayed and discarded church buildings, and, after a while, a saloon that had been burned almost to the ground. But the poor people for whom Booth labored did not seem to care how old and dilapidated his meeting places were. They attended in large numbers, and, especially when he spoke out of doors, hundreds heard him gladly. AT WORK FOR LONDON’S POOR By this time Booth had left the Methodist Church and was an independent preacher. Like Dr. Chalmers, of Scotland, he found that the poor of his city were unwilling to attend the stately and comfortable churches of well-to-do congregations, but were ready enough to respond to Christian meetings held in theaters and other buildings not known as churches. Greater suc¬ cess than ever greeted Booth when he began holding meetings in a hall that he rented in Whitechapel Road, the People’s Market Hall. That was a curious part of the city. A popular center in it was a broad strip of unpaved ground known as the Mile-End Waste, a sort of fairground. On Satur¬ day nights and Sundays, the Mile-End Waste was the scene of much cheap fun and noisy amusement. Old- A GENERAL OF THE CROSS 111 fashioned merry-go-rounds, Punch and Judy shows, stalls for selling bad songs and books, speakers’ plat¬ forms from which men attacked the government of both God and man — these were features of the holiday life on the Mile-End Waste. All around, also, there were saloons of a low type, with loud, coarse laughter and vile language coming out through the often-opened doors into the confusion of sounds outside. Among the persons inside, drink¬ ing poor ale and beer, there were many women, accom¬ panied by babies and by their children too small to be left at home. Here was a scene of intense activity on the part of Booth, his wife, and his other assistants. Every noon he conducted meetings in front of his People’s Market Hall, and on Sunday nights five or six or even ten groups of his speakers led street meetings in different parts of this gaudily gay region. Following these meet¬ ings the groups of speakers marched to the hall in the People’s Market, which often was filled with a crowd of a thousand or twelve hundred persons, and which witnessed many a sight of deep attention to Booth’s preaching, and of conversion to the Saviour of whom Booth spoke. As the busy years passed by, the number of Booth’s converts increased so rapidly that he began sending groups of them to other parts of the city, and to other cities; and in many of these places he was able to es¬ tablish permanent centers of Christian work, each with its growing number of Christian converts. 112 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH AN ARMY TO FIGHT FOR CHRIST There came a time when Booth looked about him for a good name for his converts and workers, a name that would be unusual and yet descriptive of the hard fight that he and his new Christian friends were waging in behalf of God and God's neglected people among the poor. He remembered the “hallelujah band” of years before, and he accepted this nickname as one of the many names used in his organization. His centers of work, which now numbered eighty, he called corps; his workers and converts he called Christian soldiers and officers, and at last he called his entire organization the Salvation Army. This was the term, he felt, that best expressed the desire of his heart — to have men and women fighting through all their lives for Christ, their spiritual King. From that day to this, the Salvation Army has been famous in Europe, America, and in all the world. It reached the poor, brought them to Christ, and then sent them out to bring other persons to Christ. Faster and faster it grew. In two years the number of corps, or centers, had increased from 80 to 162. Six years later the United States alone had 238 such corps. In time other organizations than the Salvation Army, but somewhat like it, sprang up in various countries, and these also have prospered; they also have brought the gospel to the poor, and brought the poor to the gospel. Yet all the time the Salvation Army organized by Wil¬ liam Booth, its general, has continued to grow and to be glorified by God, A GENERAL OF THE CROSS 113 WHEN PERSECUTION WAS IN VAIN Sometimes nowadays a few people foolishly ridicule the Salvation Army; yet ridicule does not stop its work or its growth. In those early years on Whitechapel Road the Army faced not only ridicule but also open opposition and even persecution, but the courage and consecration of the Army’s general, officers, and soldiers kept up the fight, and continued to win victory on victory. When the bands of soldiers marched from Mile-End Waste to the Salvation Army hall, they often were pelted with dirt, stones, and garbage. Sticks and clubs were used on them. On numerous occasions the police, instead of protecting them, gruffly bade them “move on.” They did move on, but it was because the ringing command of General Booth was in their ears. “Go straight on!” was the constant rallying cry of the general to his persecuted followers. At one time many a city organized an “Opposition Army,” or a “Skeleton Army,” to oppose the Salvation Army, and these organizations became violent in their attacks on the brave soldiers of the cross. In one city fifteen hundred police were called out one day to pro¬ tect the Christian soldiers from what threatened to be their death. During one year 669 Army officers and soldiers including 251 women and 23 children, were brutally assaulted, simply because they insisted on their right to march through the streets singing hymns and playing tambourines and drums. Opposition and persecution, we know, have seldom 114 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH harmed a good cause. Persecution in the days of the early Christian Church only increased the fame and strength of the Church, and so it did with the Salvation Army. The number of convert soldiers multiplied rapidly. So in time the opposition died away, died because it accomplished nothing and because the Army by its successful work had won its right to live. MEETING THE NEED OF THE NEEDY Story after story of thrilling power could be told of General Booth’s work, of his converts and of his suc¬ cesses. But perhaps the most interesting of all would be a complete account of the astounding number of activities the Salvation Army was performing when the famous General Booth died in 1912, most of which are still carried on. Here is a list of only the more noteworthy of these labors of the Army for the neglected people of the world : Free and cheap breakfasts for children, mid¬ night soup and bread for the homeless, cheap food stores, old clothes for families of the slums, hotels for poor men, rescue work for drunkards, offices for find¬ ing work for the unemployed, night shelters for men and women without homes, relief for discharged pris¬ oners, first aid and nursing in the slums, hospitals for the poor, injured, weak, and wounded, hospitals for lepers of the Orient, and meetings on the streets, in halls, in homes, and everywhere, to lead the poor to Christ. Much magnificent work is being done in these days A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN 115 by countless churches and organizations for the help of the poor, but the way to do it and the need of doing it were first adequately pointed out by William Booth, friend of the poor and neglected, and “a general of the cross.” Suggestion: Read a biography of Booth, and then tell some of the stories of the early days of his labors. Books Suggested Railton, “Authoritative Life of General Booth.” Coates, “The Prophet of the Poor: The Life Story of General Booth.” LESSON XVI A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN Read: I John 2: 14-17. Memory Verse: “He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” — T John 2:17. AN ACCIDENT THAT CHANGED A LIFE One day a farmer’s boy in Somerset County, Eng¬ land, met with an accident. George Williams at the age of fifteen was spending his days in doing work about his father’s prosperous English farm, and he seemed destined to grow up on the farm, and to end his days there. But the accident changed this course of events. One day, as a storm was approaching, George, lead¬ ing a loaded horse-drawn hay wagon along a lane to the farmyard, was hurrying to get the hay safely home before the rain fell. In a moment of carelessness he 116 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH led the horses into a rut, and in an instant wagon, hay, horses, and boy were piled in a confused, kicking heap in the deep ditch by the roadside. Fortunately, no damage was done, except to incur the wrath of George’s father and older brothers. These men held a family council, and passed a judgment of exile on the careless boy. Not fit to be a farmer, they decreed, George must be taken to the nearest city, and there apprenticed to a trade. The next day George Williams began his career as an apprentice to a dry-goods merchant in the city of Bridgewater. Moreover, he did very well in the busi¬ ness. Although he seemed to have failed as a farmer, seldom did anyone have occasion to find fault with his ability as a merchant. After four years as an ap¬ prentice, he became a clerk in the London drapery house of Hitchcock and Rogers, at a salary of forty pounds, about two hundred dollars a year. This was about the year 1840. At first, young Williams worked behind the counter. In time, however, he was promoted, and he became buyer, floorwalker, partner, son-in-law of the senior member of the firm, and finally, on the death of his wife’s father, head of the house of Hitchcock, Williams, and Company. Under this new name the firm became one of the famous establishments of London, and one of the richest and most important of its kind in the world. George Williams is one of history’s finest ex¬ amples of a clean, cultured Christian, and successful business man. A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN 117 RULES THAT MADE A MAN The secret of the success of this notable merchant may be found in a set of life rules that were discovered in the private drawer of his desk, after his death in 1905. Five of his resolutions were as follows : “That I determine to get an alarum [alarm clock], and when it goes off, that I am out of bed before it has finished.” “That I have certain days and times for certain things, and strive to be regular and punctual.” “That I read and meditate upon a portion of God’s Word every morning, and spend some time in prayer.” “That I strive to live more in the spirit of prayer.” “That I do not parley, but resist at once the various temptations which befall me.” From these rules we see clearly that George Wil¬ liams was a man who was devoted to duty, hard work, regular habits, clean purposes, daily Bible-reading, and prayer — a business and Christian “workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” Any person who lives such a life is certain to find it successful and satisfying. In George Williams’ room hung a framed card bear¬ ing the words, “God First.” “First” is where he always tried to place God. He put him first in his thoughts, in his prayers, in his work, business, and ex¬ penditures. In those early years, when his salary was only two hundred dollars annually, he actually gave away one hundred and twenty dollars and all his life he was exceedingly generous in his gifts both to men whom he thought needed help and to the work of God. When 118 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH it was hard to spare money, he gave it liberally to all kinds of religious work, and in his lifetime he gave away altogether an immense sum. Yet so richly did God prosper him that he died a rich man. GIVING “his MONEY AND HIS LIFE” We should naturally suppose that a man so generous with his money would be generous also with his time. This was certainly true of George Williams. From the time when he first went to London he was an earnest, hard-working laborer for God’s cause. Most of his labors were for the young men of London, of England, and of the world, for this successful business man later became the founder of the Young Men’s Christian Association, the world’s most influential and powerful friend to boys and young men. One day, not long after George Williams went to London, he was walking in the city when he saw a dust-covered, friendless, and poverty-stricken young man standing under Highgate archway. Williams stopped and spoke to the stranger, learning that the young man had just arrived in the city and was look¬ ing for work, but had no accpiaintances there and no idea how he could find employment. At once George Williams led the stranger to a busi¬ ness friend of his, and stayed with him until he saw the newcomer given a position that provided him with money for food and clothing. That young stranger never forgot this kindness, though he never saw George Williams again. A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN 119 This is the sort of thing that Williams of the Young Men’s Christian Association was used to doing. He tried to give assistance to every young man who needed his help. At first the help he gave young men was not so much for the body, but as it was for the soul ; and this is how the Young Men's Christian Association really began. Very soon after he commenced work for Hitch¬ cock and Rogers, George Williams persuaded one of his fellow clerks to join him in holding a prayer meeting in their room. Soon other clerks joined them, and it was not long before twenty-seven young men were attending the meetings. FOR THE YOUNG MEN OF LONDON Each of these prayer meetings seems to have had two purposes. The first purpose was to study the Bible and the second was to lead other young men to Christ. George Williams felt that the one hundred and forty clerks employed in the store needed this help. Their hours were very long — from seven o’clock in the morn¬ ing to nine or even ten o’clock at night — and they were so tired after work that many of them spent their short leisure hours before bedtime in the saloons, drinking and gambling. One after another the clerks for whom Williams and his friends prayed were brought to Christ, some in one way, some in another. Once the young Christians were praying for a clerk who made much fun of the praying young men, and who responded to none of their 120 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH efforts to speak to him of Christ. So Williams and his associates, learning that this clerk, Edward Rogers, was very fond of oysters, invited him to an oyster supper. Rogers accepted, and had so pleasant an eve¬ ning that later, in return for their hospitality, he con¬ sented to attend one of their prayer meetings. Ele went once, and he went again. Before long he sur¬ rendered to their pleadings and became a Christian. This man, Ed ward Rogers, was one of the twelve young men who afterwards organized the mighty Young Men’s Christian Association. All this time the activities of George Williams and his friends were working a complete change in the busi¬ ness house of their employers. It was said in later years that “when he joined Messrs. Hitchcock and Rogers, it was almost impossible for a young man in the house to be a Christian, and that three years after¬ wards it was impossible to be anything else!” It all began simply, in those prayer meetings. Of these George Williams once modestly wrote : “We met, and our numbers grew, and the rooms were soon crammed. In answer to prayer, the Spirit of God was present, and we had conversion after conversion.” Williams set the converts to work to lead their friends to Christ, and later they all were formed into an active Christian “Young Men’s Society.” THE BIRTH OF A MIGHTY MOVEMENT On a Sunday evening George Williams was walking across Blackfriars Bridge in company with a clerk A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN 121 whom he had brought to Christ, when suddenly he turned to the friend, and asked, “Teddy, are you pre¬ pared to make a sacrifice for Christ?” “If called on to do so, I hope I can,” was the reply. Then Williams outlined a plan in which he needed his friend’s help. He wanted to extend the work of the Young Men’s Society to include some of the 150,000 clerks in the other stores of London. The friend consented to help, with the result that about a month later these two met with ten others in Williams’ own bedroom and formed the Drapers’ Evan¬ gelical Association, which afterwards changed its name to the Young Men’s Christian Association. This or¬ ganizing meeting was in June, 1844, less than three years after Williams had entered London, and when he was only twenty-three years old. Yet more than half of these founders of the Young Men’s Christian As¬ sociation had been led to Christ as a result of his own powerful efforts. First, the Young Men’s Christian Association met in a cheaply rented room in St. John’s Coffee House, then in a large room in Radley’s Hotel, five years later, in a large headquarters building in Gresham Street, and in time, in the magnificent Exeter Hall. Nowadays, Young Men’s Christian Association buildings that cost even hundreds of thousands of dollars each are found in many cities throughout the world. Even in those early days the Young Men’s Christian Association had its library, reading rooms, and class¬ rooms — those centers for young men that now h^ve 122 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH developed into reading and game rooms, gymnasiums, shower baths, plunges, study rooms, dormitories, and all the other features of Young Men’s Christian As¬ sociation work with which all of us are familiar. Yet the main interest of the first Young Men’s Christian Association, as it is of the Young Men’s Christian Association of to-day, was not the helping of young men's bodies and minds, but the helping of their souls. All these attractions for physical comfort and pleasure are worth while, but George Williams and the Young Men’s Christian Association workers of all times have realized that these are less important than the Associa¬ tion’s efforts to lead young men to know Christ, and to love and serve him. Since the time when it was begun, the Young Men’s Christian Association has won a noteworthy success in making the organization not only a Young Men’s Association, but also a Young Men’s Christian Associa¬ tion. It has brought thousands of boys and young men to Christ, enabled them to see the nobility and the man¬ liness of Christ, and aided them in a helpful and happy service of Christ and their fellow men. HONORED BY MEN AND GOD Honors piled upon honors greeted George Williams before the end of his notable career. Kings, queens, princes, and presidents rejoiced to sound his praises. When he visited the United States in 1876, his journey through the states was like a triumph of a victorious Caesar of ancient Rome ; everywhere he was hailed as A FRIEND TO THE WORLD’S YOUNG MEN 123 a benefactor of the men of the world. Oueen Victoria in 1894 made him a knight, for his “distinguished serv¬ ice to humanity,” and from that day on he was known to all the world as Sir George Williams. Yet none of these honors of men, neither his knight¬ hood nor his riches, nor yet the praises of men, was equal to the peace in his own soul with which Sir George Williams died. This was due to the realization that he had been enabled to put “God First” in all his life, and that the God whom he had put first had honored his work as a friend to the world' s young men. He had put God foremost in his life, and God put him foremost among the men of earth who live for the good of humanity. Suggestion: Try to have a sympathetic World War veteran tell of what he experienced of the war work of the American Young Men’s Christian Association. Thirteen thousand Association secretaries worked among the American soldiers at home, and the same number among American soldiers abroad. Nearly $155,000,000 was spent, in war work by the American Association. Invite a Young Men’s Christian Asso¬ ciation secretary to tell of the boys’ work of the local Association. Book Suggested Williams, J. E. H., “Sir George Williams: The Father of the Red Triangle.” 124 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH LESSON XVII FROM COBBLER’S BENCH TO INDIA’S STRAND Read: Matt., ch. 28. Memory Verse: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations.” — Matt. 28: 19. A BOY WITH A WILL TO WIN In an English village, about the time of the begin¬ ning of our French and Indian War, there lived a boy whose hobby was collecting birds, birds’ eggs, and in¬ sects. Many an adventure he had in obtaining the specimens that were caged for a time in his room, dis¬ played on its shelves, or fastened to its walls. More than once, indeed, he had risked his life in climbing perilous heights for the birds and eggs that he prized. One day he spied a birds' nest in a particularly re¬ mote part of a tree that was hard to climb, yet he de¬ termined to get the nest. Up the tree he climbed, higher and higher’ only to fail after all. Worse than that, he fell from the tree and picked himself up shaken and bruised. But he did not give up. As soon as he was able to go out of the house again, back he went to that very tree, climbed it, and this time obtained the coveted nest. He was a boy who objected to giving in to any obstacle. Forty years later there lived in India a man who was superintendent of a printing plant. In this office a translation of the Bible into one of the native languages was being printed, a translation that this man had made COBBLER’S BENCH TO INDIA’S STRAND 125 with much toil and perseverance. One night a fire broke out, and the printing office, press, type, and even the precious translation, were destroyed. Fifty thou¬ sand dollars’ worth of property was burned; the fruit of years of labor seemed utterly gone. But this man refused to be dismayed. He called in some workmen and with them set to work in the ruins, from which he recovered some melted metal. From this he fashioned new type, and in two months the printers were once more at their work. Meanwhile, he had appealed for money to buy more material, and in two months all that he needed was given. He began to translate the Bible over again, and because it was easier the second time, in seven months the work was done. Within about a year the great disaster, which at first had seemed fatal, had been completely conquered. The man, like the boy in the English village, objected to giving in to any difficulty or obstacle in his way. It is no wonder, for the man was the boy grown up. He is known to history as William Carey, the father of modern missions. A SHOEMAKER WHO STUDIED GREEK All his life long Carey faced immense difficulties, and all his life he kept conquering them. He was the son of a poorly paid schoolmaster, and he had to go to work at fourteen years of age, with only a little school¬ ing; yet he got himself an education, and became one of the famous learned men of his time. After boyhood he was a shoemaker, or cobbler, always poor and under the 126 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH necessity of working hard and long; yet even while he worked he continued studying and learning. One day Carey, then a very young man, saw a com¬ mentary on the New Testament that contained many Greek words. What these were he could not imagine, for he knew no Greek. Laboriously he copied some of the queer-looking words, and walked nine miles and back in order to ask a learned man what they meant. From that time on he studied Greek and other languages, even while he was at his cobbler’s bench. He kept Greek and Latin books on his bench, and while he cobbled he studied. With all his difficulties, Carey became in time one of the noted naturalists of his day, and also one of its most famous authorities on the languages of the world, especially those of the people of Asia. Yet in the Christian Church his fame rests not so much on these remarkable attainments, as on his work as a foreign missionary. WHEN FOREIGN MISSIONS WERE UNKNOWN To be a missionary took all the determination and will power that Carey possessed. He lived in a day when foreign missions were practically unknown. Christians seemed to have forgotten that Christ’s last command to his disciples was, “Make disciples of all the nations. ” Indeed, the subject seems never to have been mentioned in those days. But Carey mentioned it. After a while he became a Baptist minister at tbe same time when he was a cobbler COBBLER’S BENCH TO INDIA’S STRAND 127 (his salary at first was only ten pounds, about forty- nine dollars, a year), and as a minister he saw in his Bible the command of Jesus. He came in a short time to believe that the Christian Church ought to send missionaries to the heathen people of the world. He made a large map of the world, using big pieces of paper that he pasted together and hung on the wall of his cobbler’s shop. On the part of the map representing each heathen land, he wrote all the information that he could gather, from other persons and from his reading, concerning the religion and customs of the country. Always he was thinking of the subject of foreign missions. Time after time Carey mentioned the matter to other ministers, but he was laughed at or even scolded for his pains. Once he asked a meeting of Baptist ministers to answer the question whether it is not the duty of all ministers of the gospel to “make disciples of all the nations,” but they refused to answer it. Yet all the time Carey’s talk about the subject was having its effect. One year he preached a stirring sermon on the duty of missions at a meeting of the ministers of his district and they were visibly impressed. In this sermon he used these two ringing challenges : “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.’’ THE FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY At once the ministers voted to take steps to send missionaries to foreign lands. Soon a new organiza- 128 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH tion was formed, the Baptist Missionary Society. The motto of the society became the two famous clauses of Carey’s famous sermon. At once Carey offered him¬ self as a missionary, and he and another man were directed to prepare to sail for India. At last the cob¬ bler preacher had overcome the greatest obstacle in the way of modern missions. Even now, however, his difficulties were not over. India was under the control of the East India Company, which was violently opposed to Carey’s project. He and his friend went aboard one of the company’s ships that was about to sail to India and paid their fare, but at the last moment they were set ashore and the ship left without them; Carey did not even get all his pas¬ sage money refunded. Within a few days, however, a ship sailing under the Danish flag was about to leave for India, and the two missionaries, having solicited missionary gifts to pay their more expensive passage on this boat, were ac¬ cepted as passengers. They sailed at last, on June 13, 1793, the first modern Protestant missionaries to heathen lands. “disciples of all the nations” Arrived in India after a tedious five months' voyage, the missionaries at once faced opposition from the government, together with poverty, illness, and other troubles, yet courageously they began work. Carey studied the languages of India, founded schools, traveled in the country preaching the gospel to the people, trans- COBBLER’S BENCH TO INDIA’S STRAND 129 lated the Bible, and set up a printing press, much of the time supporting his family by working in an indigo factory and by killing wild game with his gun. After about six years of patient work that seemed to have no results, Carey and his assistants were joined by four more Baptist missionaries. Then the work was redoubled. Two by two the workers went about the streets and into the bazaars and heathen temples, singing Christian hymns that Carey had written, and inviting the people to come to their homes to talk about Christianity. On the day after Christmas, seven years after Carey reached India, he baptized his first Christian convert. This man, Krishnu, boldly broke the rules of caste, the religious and social laws of his people, by eating a meal with the missionaries in order to prove his complete giving up of his heathen religion. As soon as news of this meal reached his fellow countrymen, Krishnu was seized by an enraged mob, and haled before a magis¬ trate. But the man in justice released the courageous Christian. Other conversions followed rapidly. Before long several hundred persons were being baptized every year, and later thousands. Of the new Christians in a heathen land, an overwhelming proportion remained true to their Saviour in spite of persecution, privation, and peril. A MAN OF MIGHTY LABORS Most impressive of all Carey’s achievements was his work in translation of the Bible. Within twenty-five 130 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH years he and his helpers gave the Bible, or parts of the Bible, to peoples who spoke forty different languages and dialects. The names of these tongues may seem strange to us. These are some of them : Sanskrit, Ben¬ gali, Hindustani, Mahratti, Oriya, Kurnata, Telugu, Burman, Assamese, Tibetan, and Malay. Yet the obstacles to making these translations were so great that only a man of Carey’s resistless determina¬ tion could have conquered them. He had no books to help him; grammars and dictionaries were unknown, and had to be made by himself; and printing was un¬ heard of by the natives of India. Yet Carey succeeded, and received the gratitude of the people of Asia, who later read his translations, and of all the Christian world. The labors of William Carey in India seem beyond belief because of their intensity and variety. The great surprise regarding them all is the fact that Carey was naturally indolent and realized his indolence. He worked incessantly, nevertheless, and he accomplished an imposing array of successes. Carey established a botanical garden, and published a standard work on the plant life of India. He founded an agricultural society, and started a magnificent mu¬ seum of natural history. He founded a college, and translated a Sanskrit poem, which was published in three volumes. He opposed the cruel custom of killing babies, and saw it abolished; he appealed against the murderous custom of burning widows to death after their husbands died, and he lived to see the practice COBBLER’S BENCH TO INDIA’S STRAND 131 forbidden. Best of all, lie preached the gospel to the people of India, and beheld them turning to his Master by the thousands. ALONG THE HIGHWAY OF SUCCESS All this was done by a boy who had the will to win, by a cobbler who had the determination to learn, by a minister who had the courage to plead for missions, and by a missionary who, though naturally fond of ease, had a Christian consecration to labor as few men have labored, for the cause of Christ and his Church. It is a long road from a cobbler’s bench to “India’s coral strands,” but William Carey traveled that road with determination and with abounding success. Suggestion: Sing “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.” In this lesson, and in Lessons XVIII to XXII, show the class such simple curios of the land mentioned as you can almost certainly obtain in your own community. Describe some old- India customs, such as suttee, infanticide, the Juggernaut, and the caste. To “break caste” in India is still often equivalent to exiling oneself from friends and relatives, from the respect of one’s countrymen, and from one’s livelihood. Books Suggested Walsh, “Modern Heroes of the Mission Field,” page 31-62. Myers, Culross, and Smith, G., Biographies of Carey. 132 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH LESSON XVIII THE FATHER OF CHINESE MISSIONS Read: Ps. 107: 1-13 Memory Verse: “As far as the east is from the west, So far hath he removed our transgres¬ sions from us.” — Ps. 103: 12. A HARD TASK, AND WHY IT WAS DONE In the quiet of a certain room of the British Museum a man sat reading. Looking up from his book, he hap¬ pened to see near him a young man studying a volume written in letters the like of which the older man never before had seen. “In what language are you studying, may I ask?” he inquired, approaching the busy student. “Chinese/1 was the quiet reply. “And do you understand it, then?” “I am trying to do so,” responded the student, “but it is curiously difficult.” “Why, then, are you toiling so hard on it?” came the question. A strange reply was made by the young man. “I do not know,” he said. “All I know is that I feel that I must do so. If this difficult language can be learned by a European who puts all his zeal and perseverance into the task, then I mean to learn it.” The young man was laboring over the hardest lan¬ guage in all the world ; he did not know whether it was possible to learn it; and he did not know why he was doing this extremely difficult task. But God knew. THE FATHER OF CHINESE MISSIONS 133 It was God who had led him to the decision to study Chinese, and who had given him the perseverance to stick to the task. For God had great things for this young man to do. The young student was Robert Morrison, who within about two years was to be the first Protestant missionary to the Chinese. In China he was to be a mighty power as a translator of the Bible. For this reason God was leading him in a way that the young man did not then understand. LED BY GOD All his life Robert Morrison was led by God. Even while as a boy he was working for his father at the trade of making lasts for shoes, he was learning how to be a hard worker. When his uncle sent him to school for a little while, God helped him to learn fast, and to cultivate his memory to a remarkable degree. When he was twenty-one years old, he gave himself to God, and almost at once God led him to decide to be a foreign missionary, though this was only about ten years after the first foreign missionary, Carey, had sailed for India. In those days Morrison did not know to what foreign country he would go. For a time he thought that he ought to work in Africa, yet he seemed to care little just where he should go. What he did pray for earnestly was that God would send him where the dif¬ ficulties were the greatest. While he prayed, he waited and worked. A new missionary society had been established in England three years after the formation of Carey’s 134 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH Baptist Missionary Society, and to this organization, the London Missionary Society, Morrison offered him¬ self. The organization accepted him, and sent him to its academy at Gosport, England, there to prepare for foreign missionary service ; but it could not tell him to what foreign field he ought to go. In time, however, the London Missionary Society determined to send Morrison to China, and it so in¬ formed him. Only then did the young man understand why he had felt impelled to try to study the Chinese lan¬ guage. Now that he knew, he doubled his efforts. For two years he studied not only Chinese, but also medi¬ cine, mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences, in order to minister to the people of China’s ancient and highly developed civilization. WHAT GOD COULD DO FOR CHINA On his way to China, Morrison stopped at New York City. There a shipowner, with whom he was making arrangements for sailing, rather sneeringly inquired, “Mr. Morrison, do you really expect to make any im¬ pression at all on the idolatry of the Chinese empire?” “No, sir," replied Morrison, with dignity. “But I expect that God will do so." Well it was for the young missionary that he de¬ pended not on his own efforts, but on God's, for when he reached Canton, China, in 1807, he found himself confronted by tremendous difficulties. The people and the government were bitterly opposed to foreigners and to Christianity, and they did all they could to THE FATHER OF CHINESE MISSIONS 135 hinder his work. He needed Chinese teachers and other helpers, but these were hard to obtain for they served him at the risk of their lives. For a time all of Morrison’s work had to be done in secret. Fie lived in a cellar under the street, with a dim earthenware lamp and a huge English book propped up before him, the latter to keep the prying- eyes of Chinese enemies from seeing his work of trans¬ lating the Bible. Those prying eyes were everywhere. They peered into his work, into his food, into his manner of dress, and they did their best to pry into his very thoughts. Yet Morrison was thinking less of the suspicious opposition of the people just then than of their later frank friendliness, to which he looked forward with faith and confidence. These people of Canton might antagonize him for a while, he realized, but he looked beyond the present, and beyond them all. A LAND THAT TEEMED WITH NEEDY SOULS Morrison saw not only the men who thrust them¬ selves uninvited into his cellar home, those who in a ceaseless stream passed along the dirty, dark, and nar¬ row street over his head, and those that lived in the thousands of house boats that plied up and down the river near by. Fie thought also of the people in the villages farther up the river, in the cities, in the moun¬ tains, and on the rich plains of inner China, and in the towns and cities to the north, extending in an ap¬ parently endless chain to Peking itself, the capital of this 136 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH teeming mass of yellow-skinned, slant-eyed people. Morrison saw their need of God, and he knew that God would bless him in his labors for them. There were years during which this missionary in a strange land adopted all the customs of the people among whom he lived. He cut off his hair, and wore a queue; he let his finger nails grow long and pointed; he ate strange native foods, and ate them with chop¬ sticks; he walked about the crowded city clad in Chinese robes and awkward, shuffling Chinese shoes of cloth. Even after he had given up his Chinese dress because it seemed both inconvenient and needless, he lived con¬ stantly with two Chinese men servants, talked Chinese with them, prayed in Chinese with them, and spoke his own private prayers to God in their own singsong language. By these means, coupled with untiring labors and a constant dependence on God, Morrison grew in knowl¬ edge of the people’s speech, and slowly he grew also in favor with the people themselves. After seven years in China, he had the happiness of baptizing his first convert, a man named Tsae Ako; and as the years passed God added other converts. One of these, Leang Afa, became the first Chinese preacher of the gospel. A BOOK FOR A HALF BILLION PEOPLE Ceaselessly the missionary worked on his translation of the Scriptures, and it was in this work that he won his greatest triumph. With difficulties like those of Carey in India, Morrison within seven years had put the New THE FATHER OF CHINESE MISSIONS 137 Testament into Chinese, and within five years more he had published the whole Bible in the native tongue. This was a remarkable success, for it meant that Morrison has given the Bible to more people than has any other translator. The written Chinese language is read with ease not only in China but also in Korea, in Japan, and in Formosa, by people who number quite five hundred million. So when Morrison's Chinese Bible was in print, the Scriptures had been made ready, for the first time, for one third of all the people on the face of the globe. Giving the Bible to the Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese was the remarkable achievement of Morrison for the benefit of the people of the lands that he in¬ fluenced, but it was not the end of his labors. Much of his life in China was spent in preparing for the mis¬ sionaries who were sure to come after him. For their help he wrote, with intense toil, an immense dictionary of the Chinese language, a book that contained forty thousand queer-looking Chinese characters, with their meanings, and that was so huge that it cost nearly one hundred thousand dollars to print it. Every missionary who ever has served Christ in China has depended for his success upon the work of Morrison in preparing both this dictionary and his translation of the Bible. And these missionaries have been exceedingly numerous. First they were only one or two; then they were a half dozen; then a hundred, a thousand, and many thousands. They have gone to China from Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, 138 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH and even from Korea, which now is a land that has a mighty host of earnest Christians. None of these mis¬ sionaries in China could have worked with any power at all if it had not been that Robert Morrison, the father of Chinese missions, had gone there before them. CHINESE CHRISTIANS BY THE MILLION We all know that the missionaries to China have worked with success — success that is a marvelous proof of the power of God to bring even the strange people of China to the Saviour of all men. By 1914 that first Christian convert of the year 1814 had be¬ come nearly half a million Protestant Christians, be¬ sides a million or more enrolled Catholic converts. In these days the number is growing by the tens of thousands almost every year. Chinese Christians are influential in the business and in the government of the Chinese republic, and in many a city and country home and church they are living a conquering life of love for God and of zeal for the souls of men. Robert Morrison’s life was hard but not long; he was only fifty-two years old when he died, worn out by his tireless labors for Christ and his Church. Yet he labored cheerfully. “It is my duty," he often said. He toiled with a constant sense of dependence on God ; “look up! look up!" was another expression often on his lips. He looked up to God in faith, and God looked down to him in blessing and in gifts of strength for all of Morrison's labors as the triumphant father of Chinese missions. AMERICA’S FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY 139 Suggestions: Use a map of the world with Lessons XVIII to XXIII. To-day point out India, the field of Carey, and then show that Morrison’s work combined with his to cover practically all the far east of the mainland of Asia. Show also the great extent of China and the region in which the written Chinese language is read — all of China and all of Japan’s dominions, including Korea, Formosa, and the Loochoo Islands. Books Suggested Morrison, Mrs. E., and Townsend, Biographies of Morrison. See also Walsh (Lesson XVII), pages 95-118. LESSON XIX AMERICA’S FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY Read: Isa. 43: 1-9. Memory Verse: “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah.’' — Isa. 43: 10. CAPTURED BY A FRENCH MAN OF WAR Great excitement broke out one day in the year 1811 aboard the English sailing vessel, Packet, en route jppm Boston to an English port. A French rnanrpfrjWr had been sighted, and as France was, at YOfb Epg- land, capture by the French vessel $ecwdrFt*eii|ichj jpTisohf i j j u ?/ _ ug/Wet this) proved /tOi i l>£iihiS' >fu tnne- >■ JEhfl nW3>%v$?$ej[ , -I U Invincible : dtf apoleo% seized ithp ripngfelfc i sjjjp ; ..a£ t ta prize of wir^i and; confined-in itAown. (lack [and- noisonte 140 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH hold most of its captives, including young Judson. After some days, through the intercession of the ship’s doctor, he was rescued from that brutal confinement, and given an upper cabin berth. The doctor’s attention had been drawn to Judson by seeing the young Ameri¬ can translating his Hebrew Bible into Latin. Arrived in a French port, Judson attracted the interest of an American there, while the captives were being marched to prison, by shouting aloud his Ameri¬ can citizenship in English for the benefit of any American who might be within hearing. His new friend soon afterwards visited him in his prison dungeon, and contrived to effect his escape. For weeks Judson lay in hiding in France, before he made his way to England, performed his errand, and at last xeturned in safety to his native land. ON AN ERRAND FOR THE CHURCH Adventures similar to this, some even more thrilling, occurred often in the eventful career of Adoniram Jud¬ son, who was later to be America’s first foreign mis¬ sionary. His errand in England was to try to persuade the London Missionary Society, which had sent Robert Morrison to China, to aid the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches of this country in sending Jud¬ son and three of his friends as missionaries to Asia. As it turned out, however, Judson’ s voyage to Eng¬ land was unnecessary, for the new interest in foreign missions in the United States grew so rapidly that the help of the English society was not required. AMERICA’S FIRST FOREIGN MISSIONARY 141 The year before Juclson went to England, he and five of his friends, all students in Andover Theological Seminary, had requested the Congregational Church to send them out to the foreign field, with the result that the Congregationalists, together with some Presby¬ terians, organized the first American foreign mis¬ sionary society. This organization, formed in 1810, was the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which sent out numerous Presbyterian mis¬ sionaries, along with representatives of the Congrega¬ tional churches themselves, until the organization, in 1837, of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. The first missionaries of the “American Board” were Judson and three of his friends, who in 1811 were appointed to serve in some land in Asia; just what country of Asia was not decided until later. THE BEGINNINGS OF A THRILLING LIFE Numerous interesting things are told us of the early life of Judson. He could read when he was three years old. By the time he was ten, he was singularly skilled in solving hard problems in mathematics. When he was graduated from college, he led his class. After leaving college he taught school, became an actor, and toured the country in search of excitement. Only the unexpected news that his chum, an unconverted man like himself, had died the night before in the room next his own in a country hotel, checked Judson in his wildness and brought him to Christ. From that time onward he was an earnest, zealous Christian. 142 MODERN BUILDERS OF THE CHURCH After his preparation for the ministry in Andover Seminary, Judson made his memorable voyage to Eng¬ land, and the same year he sailed with his wife for India. Here he was a fellow laborer with the famous William Carey, for by this time Judson, too, had become a Baptist. During nearly all his thirty-seven years in Asia, Judson was a representative of the Baptist Mis¬ sionary Union, another American, missionary society organized about this time. ,u iuo in Just where Judson. and hisvvife \here to do their work was not determined [until after-: 'they had arrived in India. They might haive . labored, in India itself had not the val^ay&Hliiostile r East' India; Company ordered them tO'^leat e^tllie ffcouhtry^brSbrithey decided to go to the lie igh boiun g ; 1 and of Brw ltn a« m < T o i B ur m a they went, but they had many! adventures' before They! reached their destination. 3JU ozijjmht a ao somT/[y iioaa yh £9 a rit .m $ j- nm-Mi , ?watoMul‘ eye? eT. the! East India Coni- ipdhiyy the f iiefwn missionaries) got/ themselves smuggled aboard W vessel sailing, from Calcutta. bThfey were dis- cov^red.and'jfohdedio ieay.erthe ship. (l (j)nqe more they 'got onboard, and/ this, time the I vessel > s'aijed with them. Arrived) at Madras, .they learned that Their coming had been Ireported/ab once; ito The icjompany'-s .representative •'there, Ar they> were compelled toJeave immediately in idrdercTo! es