est.

position, we believe it is God's order that the last should rise highAs the increasing force of favorable circumstances mounts each succeeding generation of men upon the shoulders of the preceding one, so are nations elevated by each other. Untrodden heights of power and influence are beckoning the American nation onward, and with long and rapid strides she is ascending them. And with the highest national position comes the weightiest national responsibilities. Hence the importance that the American nation should be Christian, thoroughly Christian. Her own dangerous destiny and controlling influence upon the world at large demand it.

Her political importance is seen and acknowledged, not only by politicians in the New, but in the Old World. In this respect the children of the world seem wiser in their generation than the children of light. The language of one of our statesmen upon a recent occasion is full of significant truth. He says: "We, the people of the United States, have a predestined fate before us, plain to be seen, according to my thought, as if inscribed on the adamantine leaves of time with a pencil of fire. Nay; it is as a providential mission, assigned to us by the visible, outstretched finger of God. . . . It is the foundation in America of republican empires: to outcount in numbers, and outvie in strength, the parent states of Europe. I say that it is the work appointed of God for us to do, and with the blessing of God upon us, that work we will do." This is assigning to America a transcendent political importance. The eye of the statesman traces its outline and reads its history in the future.

Where is the seer on the watch-hills of Christianity, and what is his report? Is there not a religious future as magnificent and important for America as her political? Is the finger of God's providence visible only to the statesman ? Has he no providential designs to be wrought out on this great continent for the universal spread of Christianity? Surely he has. And the Church should apprehend them, and gird herself for their instrumental accomplishment. The American Churches have at the present hour work enough at home to employ all their energies, and the future opens before them upon a scale of grandeur and usefulness unlimited. Here is their work. The remark of the Rev. J. Angel James to an American divine, showed that he fully appreciated the circumstances of the American Churches. He said that "America ought to be exempt from missionary effort," meaning foreign missionary effort; and exempt in view of her duties at home. A man sitting at the base of one of the great Egyptian pyramids would not be able

to form so correct a conception and receive so distinct an idea of its outline and vast proportions as if he viewed it from a distance. So with great moral enterprises; too close a contact is unfavorable for a correct appreciation of their greatness and importance. A striking illustration is furnished, we think, by the American Churches, in their estimate of the missionary work. They should be at a distance to perceive the importance of their work at home. God grant that they may ascend the mount of vision!

Undoubtedly the great duty of the Church of God is to evangelize the world. The only question in discussion is, the best method of reaching this result. Her first and only commission of duty from her Divine founder was a missionary one. It was, "Go," beginning at Jerusalem, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." The work was missionary work, all missionary work; and as much so in Palestine as in Macedonia, in Jerusalem as in Athens or Corinth. And the work of evangelizing the world is as much missionary now in America and England, as in Africa or India. The work is the same everywhere; the Church of Christ is at home everywhere. The demands and the locality, for individual or Church labor, must be determined by circumstanWe doubt whether evils have not arisen from the technical and restricted application of the phrase "Missionary Work" to distant fields. It gives the Church imperfect views of duty and responsibility. These views should be as universal as the world, and particular as each individual. It has a tendency to lead to the neglect of work at hand, which could be carefully superintended and effectually accomplished, for work in the distance, beyond our immediate control, imperfectly known by us, and consequently inefficiently conducted. It has caused advocates of the conversion of the world to rely upon doubtful representations, drawn from the Devil-bush of Africa and the banks of the Ganges, to excite the Church to duty, while valleys of dry bones, exceedingly dry, lie unexplored and unnoticed near our doors.

ces.

And further: Some of the zealous advocates of missions, in this restricted sense, affirm, with all the freshness and force of a newly discovered truth, that the spirit of missions is the life of the Church, and that this life is measured, and bounded, and proportioned by her missionary operations. Indeed, these operations are sometimes presented as if they were the sources of her spiritual life and power. This, we think, is too strong a representation. It is certainly true that the missionary spirit is essentially connected with the life of the Church. It is elemental. It had its birth with Christianity. It is an epitome of Christianity. It has always been found in active

connection with it, and truly measuring its vital force. But this is not a discovery in connection with modern missions, and should not be so represented. It is old Christianity, and has more weight of authority, legitimately occupying the seat of the ancient. The missionary spirit is not the life of the Church, nor missionary operations the source of that life. Directly the opposite is true. The life of the Church must be the source of this spirit, and of these activities, if they are at all Christian. Missionary activities may exist independent of true Christian life, both in individuals and churches. We have an example in the Romish Church; and Protestantism might become what Romanism is-a great organization of propagandism. We must not give, even to the great missionary interest, an undue importance. The life of the true Church is infused by the Holy Ghost; it is a baptism of power from on high. Her missionary life and order of work are both found in the fulfillment of the Saviour's promise: "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." Acts i, 8. We certainly think that such representations and teachings are defective and deleterious, and the sooner they are abandoned the better for the Church and the world. There is a species of enchantment about it that savors more of policy than piety. In a true sense the entire work of the Church is missionary work. And, as with an individual, so with a Church, the first duty is that nearest at hand. And by performing each duty at the proper time and place, we pursue the only certain method of accomplishing our whole duty efficiently. To be in haste to do some great thing or distant thing, to the neglect of a small thing, or thing near at hand, will certainly result in an imperfect discharge of duty. Churches are in as great danger from this error as persons are, and the principle is applicable to the great Church work contemplated.

It is very certain that a thorough performance of our home work is for us the most efficient system for the conversion of the world. It is the philosophical plan of operations to work from the center to the extremities. At the center is the seat of life, and this must be cherished, or labor will cease. Neither this view nor its application is new with the writer of these articles. Rev. L. P. Hickok, D.D., in a sermon before the American Home Missionary Society, makes this emphatic declaration: "On the saving of the American Church and people depends the salvation of the whole world." The English Wesleyans, so justly celebrated for their labors in the foreign mission field, have recently turned their attention to home with

a hearty appreciation of its importance, worthy of imitation. Rev. Mr. Waddy, in his address before the Wesleyan Missionary Society at its last anniversary, remarked that "Home missions have the first claim upon the society." He said: "To impoverish these for the sake of foreign missions would be to eat up your seed-corn. Exertions for missions have had a wonderful effect in enlarging the scale of all home efforts. On the other hand it is only by the spread of home institutions that the permanent basis of foreign enterprise is widened. Whenever we hear of either individuals or societies, who give liberally to foreign and sparingly to home claims, we look upon them as probably very good, but ill-taught and eccentric. The plea that any part of our population is as badly off as the heathen, is untrue. But the certainty that all Christian labor expended upon them will permanently bear fruit of men and money for missionary work, stamps all advances toward the conversion of England with a world-wide value." This is much for an English Wesleyan to say, and to say, too, on the great occasion of their missionary anniversary. Their foreign missions have been their pride, and an all-absorbing interest. Their English home was neglected, and the effect of this neglect has been manifesting itself in the loss of their hold upon the poorer classes of society, in the regeneration of whom the chief glory and strength of any Church are to be found. They have happily discovered their error, and set about repairing it in good earnest. May we be timely cautioned; never commit, and never have cause to repair such an error. The above quotation, so true of the importance of England's conversion, is doubly true when applied to America. And it recognizes also the principle of converting the world through the effectual cultivation of the home field.

Bishop Simpson, in his address before the English Wesleyan Conference, as a delegate from the Methodist Episcopal Church, said: "Your system has displayed itself in missionary operations beyond ours. We have done something, but not so much as you have done. I hope, however, we shall follow you with more equal steps by and by. At present there is this difference in our circumstances: your land is filled with population; your cities are built; your ground is circumscribed; and all you can do is by the extension of your work abroad. It is not so with us. Since my own short day, for it was my lot to be born in a Western frontier, where the Indian tribes were roaming but a few miles distant, I have seen the frontier of our country extend between fifteen hundred and two thousand miles westward. This being the case, we were obliged to follow the population. Methodist ministers have gone after the FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-18

settler, and where the latter built his cabin the former would tie his horse to a tree, and taking his Bible and Hymn Book out of his saddle-bags, would preach Christ crucified. Hosts of the Irish Romanist population have been poured upon our shores, with hundreds and thousands of Germans; and now unless we have missionary operations among them they will overwhelm us. We do not need to go out to the world, for the world is coming to us to be evangelized." And the out-going into the world from this home operation is beautifully set forth by the bishop in the same address: "I desire here, also, to explain what may seem to you to be an intrusion, that while we are forming a conference in Germany, it is not from rivalry, or because we would trench upon your labors, but because God sent the Germans among us. You had no field for them. Among us they were converted. . . . The converted Germans sent letters to their friends at home, and you may imagine the effect! The old man and woman would be gathered around the family hearth, and as the letter from their son in America was read, the old man would sit listening, and the mother would sit with tears in her eyes to hear from her son: that he was well, and had got a home, and a family springing up; that he had been to a Methodist Church, and had heard a Gospel sermon, and that it had pleased God to awaken him, and to forgive him his sins through faith in Jesus Christ. This would prove an unexpected sermon to them, this news of the conversion of their dear boy, and all the minister's preaching for years would not make such an impression as that short letter; it was a living witness among them of the power of God to salvation. The police could not stop those letters; they might stop ministers, examine goods, imprison men; but these letters, like snow-flakes floating in the air on a winter's day, would drop upon all. These letters had crossed the Atlantic, and had begun to evangelize that land, whose inhabitants now called to American Methodists, as the company in New York called to John Wesley, 'Send us men.' Come over and help us.'" Again: "The Scandinavians came over to us. . . We did not wish to go to Norway; we had no thought of it; but one of our converts went home full of love and fire, and without being sent by the missionary society, he told the story of the cross as soon as he landed; the people wept, some were converted, and the cry came, Send a missionary!' and now we have three there,* and they have raised up native helpers, and God has opened a door for a work, though to a limited degree." By the same home operation we have been led to Denmark and Sweden. Of these missions, established among the for

Increased since.