faw ion of “PHI\SsE. rork © I, T* Present Missionary 2 2 Appeal to the Church By ROBERT E. SPEER Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions —e ee el S : L| BR AR Yel ae ! of Foreign MissToas of the Presbyterian Church Address Before the General Assembly on Foreign Mission Day, by Robert E. Speer, Secretary of the Board of Foreiga Missions. THE PRESENT MISSIONARY APPEAL TO THE CHURCH It could be wished that the senior Secretary of the Board, who will complete this summer his seventy-fifth year of life, who has been for nearly a generation in the service of the Board, and whom none but those who bave been inti- mately associated with him can appreciate at a tithe of his real value to the Church, were here to-day to present the report of the Board to the Assembly. Dr. Hilinwood could do it as no one else can, and the privilege should have been his of laying before the Assembly the record of the most prosperous year in the histery of the Board. It has been the most prosperous year financially. For the second time the receipts of the Board have crossed the line of one million dollars. In 1893 they were $1,014,000. This year, including the contributions and pledges toward the pay- ment of the mortgage indebtedness on the Pres- byterian Building, they have exceeded $1,300,000. Omitting the Building account, but including re- ceipts upon the field and the income from in- vestments applicable to the support of the regu- lar work, the receipts have been in round num- bers $1,069,000, $111,000 of which was given by the Church for Indian Famine Relief, the care of orphan children, the China Re-establishment and ; ) 3 Martyrs’ Memorial Funds, educational work ia the Philippines, and an advance movement in Africa. Leaving out of account even these spe- cial funds, the receipts for regular work were $958,000, as compared with $942,690 ten years ago, and $885,749 five years ago, this latter amount not including the $92,000 given that year through the Reunion Memorial Fund for the ex- tinction of past indebtedness. If we separate from these contributions the gift of the churches directly through their chureh offerings, we may still rejoice at the unprece- dented prosperity of the year, which brought in $357,710 from the churches directly, as compared with $846,779 ten years ago, and $347,562 in the prosperous year of 1893. It would not be fair, however, to suppress certain stern facts which are concealed in these general statements. The average contribution per church member during the year past, in- eluding in the calculation all the receipts of the Board for the regular work, has been less than 96 cents, as compared with $1.17 ten years ago, and $1 in 1881. The average contribution per church member, furthermore, on the basis of the church offerings alone, was-~less than 35 cents, the smallest average contribution per ehureh member in any of the decade years looking back from this Assembly since 1861. And yet again, while we have given thus three-fifths of a cent a week per church member in our church offer- ings, and two cents a week, including legacies and all contributions of whatsoever sort, for the evangelization of the 150,000,000 of people for ~ - Whom our Church is responsible, we have speit twelve times ag much annually upon our con- gregational expenses, not including our gifts to the home benevolent Boards. These are facts, however, rather for the conscience of the Church than for the criticism of the Board, and it would be ungracious in this hour to refer to them, if it were not uujust to repress them. It is pleasanter to call attention to the fact thai, whatever the gifts of the Church viewed in the light of the Church’s ability, they have in- creased sufliciently in actual amount during the last three years to enable the Board to increase the appropriations for the native work for the en- suing fiscal year by 8 per cent over the appro- priatious of last year, which in turn represented a 6 per cent advance over the appropriations of the year before; while these in their turn repre- sented a 4 per cent increase over the preceding year. But not alone has the past year been the most prosperous year financially. It has been the most fruitful year in the history of the Board in Spiritual resuits. We report this year the largest number of converts ever connected with the Foreign Missions of our Church, a number equiv- alent to the church membership of the large Synod of lowa or of Indiana, to the combined membership of the Synods of Baltimore and California, or of Missouri and Mississippi. Or—I know not how otherwise to represent the splen- did advancement of the work than by such a comparison as this—we have now connected with our Foreign Mission churches a’ member- 6 ship as large as the entire Presbyterian popula- tion of the States and Territories of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North and South Da- kota, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, In- dian Territory, Okiahoma, Texas aud Tennessee, At the beginning of this new century the mem- bership of our toreign Mission churches is equal to that of the entire Presbyterian Church in the United States in the year 1800. It is even more encouraging to note the per- centage of increase during the last ten years. The two Synods which lead all the Synods of the Church in the proportion of their growth dur- ing the decade are the foreign Mission Syuods - of India and China; the former baviog increased 196 per cent and the latter 147 per cent, the only other Synod which has increased by more than i100 per cent being the Synod of New Mex- ico. Tbe rate of iuerease of the Synod of India during the last decade has been two and one-half times that of the Synods of Washington and Oregon, seven times that of Penusylvania, vine and oue-balf times that of New York, and twenty times the rate of increase in the Synod of Ken- tucky. If it is said ihat these Foreign Mission Synods are new, and that the basis of calculation ig small, I pass by the sharp rejoinder that it is possibie to make, and ask you to think of the obstacles against which this success has been achieved, Innumerabie intiuences work with the Christian minister in this land; the whisper of the mother’s voice to the heart of her child; the memory of the touch of the mother’s band brought back after the long passage of years; the 6 . eountless suggestions of Christ’s truth that stir- round us on eyery hand; the subtle constraints of Christian institutions; these are a few of a multitude of influences supporting the appeal of the preacher and creating dispositions favorable to Christian faith. There is nothing of this in the mission field. Hvery influence sets in antag- onism to Christianity. We wrest our triumphs from heathenism one by one, against the 1n- herited incubus of centuries of superstitions, against the certainty of social ostracism and po- litical hostility, against the difficulties of mak- ing the truth known to people whose languages eontain no words for its expression and whose hearts have almost lost the capacity of response, against the assurance of persecution and often . the threat of death. The men who are doing the work of which these 42.000 converts in our mis- sion churches are the fruit have never iost faith in miracle, because they have seen it daily be- fore their eyes. And the splendid spiritual results of the work stand out in yet more vivid magnitude, if you look back, as we may fitly do this morning, over the whole history of our Woreign Mis- sion enterprise. We have added to our churches during these years a number equal to the Presbyterian population of the Synods of Ne- braska, Kansas, Baltimore and Minnesota, or of Illinois and Missouri; or twice the Presby- terian population of the great State of Iowa; while we have sent out during these years at least 2,079 missionaries, and have given to the work nearly $27,500,000. Hi Yut f ask you to come back from all this, #6 the thought of the souls who have been won this last year. We report, I believe, the largest num- ber of additions to our churches ever made in one year. Think for a moment of the BEtah District in the Furrukhabad Mission, with a population greater than that of the State of Connecticut, equal to the combined population of Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Idaho and Utah, or four times the population of the city of Detroit. We have one missionary among these 820,000 people. Yet by God’s blessing this one man baptized last year more converts than were received in ten of the great Synods of our Church. Or think of the young Mission in Korea, I re member when Dr. Underwood was here seven years ago. Speaking of the results already ob- tained, he declared with a blazing enthusiasm which I almost felt was extreme, that we were standing on the threshold of one of the greatest. missionary successes in the history of our church. The event has more than justified his faith. Mr. Swallen, who is here in this Assembly from Korea, said night before last that when he went to Korea, eight years ago, there were only 100 Protestant Christians in the entire country; that now there are at least 8,000, with multi- tudes more favorably disposed to the truth and waiting only for further instruction. The huge Mission church built in Pyeng Yang, which is designed to seat ultimately at least 1,800 people, is already packed to the doors and overflowing; and one of our missionaries wrote of going en & snowy winter night to the prayer meeting in the g | @harch, expecting to find but a few there, and . finding assembled a great congregation of 1,000. In the Korea Mission alone, during the past year, _ there have been more baptisms than in the Synod _ of California or the Synod of Baltimore. And I ask you, my friends, to stop for a mo- | ment to think of what the Gospel means to each of these who this past year have come as little children to their Father’s arms. “Old man,” said one of the missionaries to an outcast in Southern India, seeking admission to the church, “do you want to be baptized, and take the Lord’s Supper?’ “Like gold,’ said the old man. And like gold, yea, more precious even than fine gold, . has been the treasure brought to more than _ four thousand hearts and homes during the year that has closed. In a land like this multitudes of men who have never accepted the grace of God in Christ yet rejoice in the enjoyment of / all those accessory blessings which flow in a tide of good from the Christian Church wherever it goes. These poor souls abroad have never | tasted of these blessings. The Gospel has been to them the unfolding of a new life. It has brought them its gifts subsidiary and direct. It . has struck off from them the shackles of their _ superstitions. It has unsealed a thousand founts of which they never dreamed, from which the streams now flow. It has touched the life of little children with a sense of love. It has taught the hard heart to be kind with the ten- derness of Christ. If he is dear to your heart this morning, if you count his face fair and his love the one thing in life, then you know of the Phe 9 Misdness which this hour is fliing these thoi: sands of hearts, and of the gratitude with which they turn to-day to those through whom there came to them the tidings of the Heavenly Father's love. And not alone in these ways has this been a plessed year, but it needs to be said further that there never has been a year when our Missions have contributed as they have this past year to the sweep and onset of those divine forces that are lodged of God in the enterprise of Missions. It is this aspect of the missionary movement that has fixed the attention of the whole world dur- ing this year. Men begin to perceive its un-— conquerable and unresting power. And Missions have not shrunk from such scrutiny. Nor haye they paused to wait for its issue. They have gone steadily forward, and never more in all their history than during the year that has passed, sunk deep in human life throughout the world the transforming forces of the life of God. They have shown us during the year as never before the power that resides in great ideas to upheave and remould the most stagnant and lethargic peoples. They have driven us one step nearer to a radical transformation of all our theories of ethnic psychology. They have shown, as they have taught “those great and sweeping thoughts that overspread all others, and conduct the world at last to freedom,” that the forces that resist Missions fight against the great tides of God. They have compelled the nations of the West to recognize the universality and binding obligation of the missionary principle, and to de- 10 fend their political aggressions, which one hun- dred years ago they would have made without eoncern for the concealment of selfish purpose, by the protestation of missionary motive. And in specific ways we have seen during the past year the missionary enterprise at work in these broad redemptions. We have watched it with bread in its hands feeding the hungry in India, and with pity in its heart opening the doors of the brothel prisons of Japan and setting their captive inmates free. And never in all the his- tory of Missions has that great Book which smites injustice and uplifts the weak wherever it goes been poured over the world in such a flood. Our own presses have sent out during the year more than 100,000,000 pages of the Bible and of books that make it intelligible to men. Nor has there ever been a year when the world Was as open to receive it. The situation in Japan has been but an illustration of the situation everywhere. Eighteen years ago the Agent of the American Bible Society went, in the harbor of Uraga, to one of the Japanese men-of-war lying at anchor there, and in response to his re- quest was denied permission either to go on board himself, or to send on board a single leaf of the Christian Scriptures. Last year the Bible Society sold more Scriptures in Japan than in any previous year, and two of the largest battle ships in the Japanese navy were under com- mand of Christian officers, one of whom was an Admiral, while the late Admiral Serata, trusted and respected by all, was President of the Young Men’e Christian Association in Tokyo, an elder ; ul in one of our Presbyterian churches, and a zeal- ous worker for Christ until the day of his death. Set immovably firm in the divine will, the forces of Missions have moved this past year, as they will move until the end is won, resistlessly on to the great goals of God. And in one other great regard the year has been a year of notable movement. The last General Assembly declared its conviction that it was not the object of the missionary movement to perpetuate on the foreign field the denomina- tional distinctions of Christendom, and encour- aged the Missions of our own Church to dimin- ish the significance of differentials, and to seize every opportunity for larger unity. Perhaps we scarcely expected our answer 80 sharp and soon. Hardly had the echoes of the last As- sembly died away before a Conference of all the Protestant missionaries of Japan assembled. in Tokyo, adopted the following resolution and appointed a promoting committee to propose — practical measures. “This Conference of Missionaries assembled in the city of Tokyo proclaims its belief that all those who are one with Christ by faith are one body; and it calls upon all who love the Lord Jesus and His Church in sincerity and truth to pray and labor for the full realization of such corporate oneness as the Master himself prayed for on the night in which He was be- trayed.” The Presbyteries of Mexico are represented before this Assembly with a request for an- therity to establish in Mexico an independent 13 anion Synod, our own churches uniting with the fruits of the work of our brethren of the Southern Presbyterian Church, and perhaps also of the Cumberland and the Associate Presby- terian Churches. And the last meeting of the Presbyterian Alliance in India voted at once to prepare for an organic union of the fourteen Presbyterian bodies in India into a national Presbyterian Church, which will begin its life with five Synods, twenty-five Presbyteries, and fifty thousand church members. We are caught, we may be sure, in the swing of a divine pur- pose in this matter. “I hold,’ declared Principal Rainy, the embodiment of the union of the United and Free Churches of Scotland, speaking at a joint meeting of the Congregational and Baptist Unions in London, last month, “TI hold the grand unity of the Church of Christ in Christ and by its relation to Him. At the same time I do very strongly hold that people who needlessly keep outwardly separate from one another, and unfold competing banners before the world, are seriously misrepresenting the Ohurch of Christ to the world.” Our unity of purpose abroad seems likely to give us that unity of heart at home in which our Lord may find the promise of the fulfilment of His prayer. And how solemnly God has been teaching us this past year that whether we will be one in service or not, we shall at least be one in suffer- ing. In common with all of the Churches of Christ we have been called to mourn above our dead. Let me repeat again the roll of those whe have passed out from us inte the glories 18 of the City whose Builder and Maker is God:— Dr. John C. Lowrie, who passed away in the ninety-second year of his age, after sixty-seven years of connection with the Board of Foreign Missions as missionary and secretary, who saw the Church membership grow from 233,000 to more than 1,007,000, and its offerings to the Board of Foreign Missions from $1,777 to more than one million dollars. If I live to be as old as Dr. Lowrie, and the same proportion of in- crease is preserved, I shall see the Presbyterian Church contributing to the evangelization of the world the annual sum of six hundred millions of dollars. And now, after serving his own and two more generations by the will of God, he has gone on, as it was his desire, in the quaint language of his own day, “to obtain the perfect image of God, to know more of the existence of God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to see without a glass the exceeding love displayed on the Cross, to observe the stations, orders and employments of angels, to know how saints are employed in relation to this and to other worlds, to see how God overrules sin, and why it is through great tribulation that He brings His children to glory, in a word, to see God in all His attributes and His angels and saints in all their glory.” Dr. Divie Bethune McCartee, who went out to China in 1843, the last survivor save Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn of the little company that laid the foundations of the Missions of our Church in Eastern Asia, before the days even of the Arrow War, and who, whether as missionary, diplomatist or teacher, healing the sick, laying 16 dt: r the foundations of education in Japan, or aiding the governments of China and Japan in the early years of their political relations with the West, sought always first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Edson A. Lowe, true knight of God, who died after eight years of service, in the most sagacious and devoted attempt yet made to evangelize the great city of Santiago. Dr. Mary Brown, who like her Master, “went about doing good.” Mrs. J. P. Graham, of the Western India Mission, losing her life in a sad accident. Mr. and Mrs, Gifford, of Korea, dying within a few weeks of one another, Mr. Gifford absent in the country itinerating at the time, and carried, as his black lovers carried the heartless body of Dr. Livingstone from Ilala down to the coast and on to its last resting place in the Abbey, by the native Christians who bore him from village to village, each village furnishing its own devoted carriers. Sweet and pleasant were they in their lives and in their death they were not divided. And Dr. Maltbie Davenport Babcock, a disciple whom Jesus loved, for one year a member of the Board. os e golden evening brightens in the west, on, soon to faithful warriors comes the rest, Sweet is the calm of Paradise, the blest, Alleluia |!” Yet how small seems our sorrow when we think of all the unrelieved shadows that have tested elsewhere! These have but gone on to See the King in His beauty, and their last days have been filled with ministries of love; And they have not wanted any good thing. How 15 terrible, as over against the sympatky and tie service which they receive, stands the gloom of the famine sufferers of India! Think of that vast area of 225,000 square miles affected by it, 62,000,000 of people feeling its pangs; hundreds of thousands dying from starvation alone, and hundreds of thousands more from the diseases which weakened bodies were not able to with- stand, You who have stood helpless before hu- man suffering and looked down upon the agony which it would have been easier to bear than to behold, can appreciate in some faint measure the weary anguish of the men and wonien in the Western India Mission. Now it was great crowds of five or six thousand persons clamoring for re- lief at the doors of the missionary’s house. Now it was an old man lying down by the road to die. “What was the trouble with this old man?’ asked the missionary when the end had come. “Nothing, Sahib,” said a friend; “he was only weary.” Now it was a poor mother, bearing — the body of ber dead babe under her scanty rags, because she had no place to lay it away. Now It was the piteous ery of little children, with limbs too fragile almost to bear their wasted bodies to the missionary’s home. I hardly know which to pity more—those who have thus suf- fered for a little while and then been released by the calm touch of death, or those who have had to look on all this suffering, and live in the midst of it, sharing the capacity for pity of Him who had compassion upon the multitudes. And yet out of all this suffering and death a great and glorious harvest has arisen. Super- 16 stitious peopie have laid aside their fears as they have watched the missionary minister to the needy and wash the foul sores of the diseased. “These are not the works of one that has a devil,” they have said. And already in two of the churches of the Western India Mission there have been more baptisms than there were con- verts heretofore connected with all the churches of the Mission as the result of the work of more than forty years. At Kodoli, two communion services were necessary to enable the mission- aries to welcome to the church the hundreds who clamored to come in. “So glad a day,” wrote Miss Brown, “never came into my years before. They came in groups of twelve and fifteen, and took the solemn life-long vows. It was impos- sible to keep back the tears as we listened to the strong voices of the men with all the conviction of their souls, promising to keep the Sabbath, give up their idols, and worship the one ‘Upper God.’’’ The service began in the afternoon, and the sun went down, and the moon arose, and still group after group filed through, and in reverent silence confessed their Saviour. And the shining stars looked down upon the largest assembly of native Christians ever gathered in the bounds of the Western India Mission field. It will always be so! first the torn soil, and the seed buried in the gloom, then the up-springing grain and the abounding harvest. It is only because of this unwavering confi- dence in my heart that I can speak as I must of the past year’s history of our Missions in China. It has been a year, speaking in the ly ianguage that men ase, of irretrievable loss. Before the Boxer uprising occurred we had twenty-two established stations in China. At the height of the troubles the missionaries were compelled to flee from all but six of these, and when the storm burst three of our stations were wiped out. The buildings at Wei Hien were looted and burned. The missionaries escaped into the night and hid in the fields while the glare of their burning homes lit the sky and the savage cry rang in their ears, ‘““The devils are escaping, kill; the devils are escaping, kill!’ In Peking and Paotingfu every building was burned or torn down, the foundation stones were dug up, and the wells filled level with the ground. But the loss of property was a trivial thing. There went out from us in the flames of Mr. Simcox’s burning dwelling at Paotingfu a little company in comparison with whose loss the destruction of every dollar’s worth of mis- sion property throughout the Chinese empire | would have been an insigniticant thing. How they fell that day you know, praying as their Master prayed, for those who killed them, and who knew not what it was they did. These were the first martyrs of our Church, save the strange deaths of Mr. Janvier and Mr. Loewen- thal, since the massacre of the little company from Fatehgarh on the parade ground of Cawn- pore, on the early morning of June 13, 1857. Now to that martyr roll we must add the names of these:—Dr. George Yardley Taylor, the Rev. Frank E. Simeox and Mrs. Simcox, and Dr. Cort- Jandt Van Rensselaer Hodge and Mrs. Hodge, 18 and the three little children of Mr. and Mrs. Simcox. I can understand it all except the death of these little children. Calvary we comprehend; but whatif Christ had been slain as a little child in Herod’s massacre! I cannot forget these little children; the two of Mr. Campbell shot at Cawnpore, one in its father’s arms, and the other laying its tired little head on the shoulder of an Englishman who died with them, and these three little ones at Paotingfu; and I have no heart ‘but to be still about it all, as there rises up that scene which the Chinese reported as the last thing they saw—Mr. Simecox holding his little boys by either hand, and walking up and down behind the flames, “These through fiery trials trod, And from great affliction came; Now before the throne of God Sealed with His Almighty name, Clad in raiment pure ard white, Victor palms within their hands, Thro’ their dear Kedeemer’s might, More than conquerors they stand.” What has been our finite loss has been their infinite gain. And yet the gain has not been wholly theirs. We, too, have gained what good Thomas Fuller called ‘“‘the rich inheritance of their memory.” We have gained the example of their fidelity and of the faithfulness unto death of the mul- titudes of native Christians who have gone home by flame and sword and suffering, rather than prove recreant to Christ. There was Dr. Lewis’ cook, Kichin, who was summoned toe recant, and of] who thought upon his wife and three helpless children without a bread winner, and who then thought upon Christ, and was calm, and bowed his head to the executioner without fear. There was the Rey. Ting Li Mai, pastor of the church at Laichowfu, who was thrown into the foul jail, and beaten two hundred blows with the bamboo on the naked thighs until the flesh lay like jelly upon the bones. There was the old reacher in Shantung, who was offered the al- ternative of worshipping idols or death, and who abode steadfast as a rock, whose ears were first cut off, and then his head, while his body was offered in sacrifice. There was an old woman, summoned before the magistrate and bidden to recant, who, when she refused, was beaten upon her lips, but whose crushed and mangled lips still murmured confession of Christ. There were the two little children in the village near Paotingfu, who looked up fearlessly at the over- — hanging edge of the Boxer’s sword, and refused to deny that they were the little children of the Christian’s God. We have gained from all these lives irrefutable evidence that the work which we have done has been the work of God; and we have been shown afresh that “there is power, power, wonder working power, in the precious blood of the Lamb.” We have gained beside this a challenge to like fidelity and a summons to new love, and a motive that can never die nor de- eay. Over the soil that martyrs’ blood has hal- lowed, Jesus Christ shall reign. But, my friends, it would be disingenuous to coneea! the fact that there are otker thingsr that 20 we have gained. There has come down upon the missionary enterprise an avalanche of unsparing criticism, some of it venomous and malignant; some of it merely ungenerous and ignorant. I should be tempted to pass it by if I did not know that there were some here whose confidence in missions had been shaken by it. We are told that the missionary did wrong before the troubles, and that he has done wrong since. He is charged with having been responsible for the uprising, with being an ill-educated man, taking no pains to inform himself as to the prejudices and con- ceptions of the people, recklessly trampling upon their superstitions and their innocent fancies, in- terfering with their courts and corrupting their administration of justice, bearing himself as a boor and preaching sectarianism. JY answer that criticism by a question and an assertion—Who? I know better! And surely it is a matter of tes- timony. Let witnesses be heard, and witnesses who know; not witnesses of rotten life of which the very presence of the missionary is uncom- promising condemnation; not witnesses at third hand whose knowledge of missions is mediated to them over wine cups or in steamer saloons. The Governor of Shantung is competent to testify. “You, Reverend Sirs,” he says in a letter to our missionaries encouraging their return to their stations, “have been preaching in China many years,and, without exception, have exhorted men concerning righteousness. Your Church customs are strict and correct. In establishing your cus- toms you have been careful to see that Chinese law has heen observed. How then ean tt be said b that there is disloyalty?’ And I hold here in my hand an open letter to the British public, written from Hong Kong by the brother-in-law of His Excellency, Minister Wu. Surely he is competent to testify. “You have been told,” he says, “both officially and privately, that the whole affair was directly or {indirectly occa- sioned by foreign missionaries and their con- verts. This is absolutely false. Your mission- aries, if left to themselves, will make many more friends than enemies in China. I wish to disabuse your mind of some of the ridiculous charges made against your missionaries. They have been charged with having committed acts of indiscretion inasmuch as they frequent- ly preached against the ancient beliefs of the Chinese; as, for instance, ancestral worship. And by such indiscreet acts they have been stir- ring up the wrath of the Celestials against them. I beg leave to tell you that this is not a fact. The missionaries have been charged with the indiscretion of making no separation of the sexes — in their places of worship. This is a frivolous charge. The Chinese, both men and women, often mix together in worshipping at some of their temples. It is alleged that they have from time to time interfered in the litigations, and with the dispensation of justice. I cannot re- call of having heard that in a single case this charge has been substantiated and brought home to the offenders.” And then speaking in regard of the critics of missions in Christian lands, this Chinese voice declares:—“It is easy, of course, to make criticisms, eapscially when tke accuses Fa Wises te find scile excise for his hatred of the accused; but the public want absolute and tang- ible proof before they will give their credence and judgment.” But the critics allege not alone that the mis- sionary was the vexatious and irritating cause of the troubles, but also that he has been violent and bloodthirsty in his demands for their sup- pression aud for vengeance; that he has violated the eighth commandment and been foremost in looting the property of the pecple whom he was sent to save. Well, once again, Who? “Dr. Ament,” it is replied. Well, I have no brief to defend Dr. Ament, but I do not believe there is a just man in this Assembly who, placed in Dr. Ament’s situation, with widows and fatherless children dependent upon him, whose protectors and possessions had been taken from them by evil, wicked men, would not have done substan- tially what Dr. Ament did. But he and those to whom he is responsible are competent to defend him. I am speaking in behalf of our own mis- sionaries. Who? I challenge you to present or support a single charge of this character against our missionaries. If in the stress of absolute poverty at the close of the siege they took food and clothes they stand ready, or we stand ready for them, to make proper compensation to the owners. We are told that we ought not to separate our missionaries from others; that they are all involved in one common difficulty. I re- ply that the only way to clear up this difficulty is to analyze it and demand proofs. What have our missionaries done? If it is said that the 28 matter will blow over it we drop it, that criti- cism will be silenced, I answer that to silence no criticism and to conciliate no antagonism will we traduce or allow to: be traduced the mis- sionaries of our Church, And after all, what an astonishing somersault the enemies of missions have made in this mat- ter. A few years ago the missionary was a harmless, impotent and foolish enthusiast, who was accomplishing nothing. Now we are told that he was pestilentially effective, and that he succeeded in upbeaving and overturning 400,000,000 of people. A few years ago we were told that he was ignorant of the practices of the people to whom he went, and refused to adapt himself to them. Now he falls in line with the views of the people and pursues their accepted principles in the reimbursement of outraged and ruined native Christians, and he is criticised for abandoning the moral standard of Christendom. Blow hot, blow cold, you cannot please the devil. And in very truth he is the father of a vast deal of this vicious and ignorant criticism of mis- sions. They coustitute too open an affront to him and the spirit which he begets. “As for out- siders,’’ says Captain Mahan, in a personal letter from which I venture to quote, “while I would not undervalue their enmity, it is to be expected. He that is not for Christ will be against him— a pitiful condition, but inevitable. Calling the master of the house Beelzebub much more will he call those of the household. Nothing more demonstrates the agency of a personal devil than 2% the attitude of the non-Christiai: toward mis- sions.” We have gained as another outcome of the year the astounding proposition that missions are an outlawed and illegitimate enterprise, and that the missionary has no legal rights. An American who goes to Asia is an American still, unless, perchance, he should happen to be a Christian. The American harlot may set up her brothel, as she has done, In Shanghai and Han- kow, and the Stars and Stripes may wave over her pollution. The American saloon keeper may take refnge under its folds and sell his wares in every open port in China. But the missionary, although the treaties speak specifically of him, and the Chinese have accorded him many rights, Is on this new theory a man without a country. The enterprise with which he is connected is an enterprise of expatriation, and he himself Is an alien, a political pariah. His fathers, and he himself, may have fought for the land that disowns him and for the flag which is denied him. He himself may still be paying taxes for the support of the government, and may be allowed to vote when he returns to his own land. But simply because he is a Christian, a conscientious Christian, a @hristian who believes that Chris- tianity 1s too good to be misappropriated by any one land to its own uses, he is to be denational- ized. If he will abandon his Christianity and take a Chinese mistress and go into the liquor business he can claim the full protection of an American citizen. No more infamous doctrine 25 was ever preached. It makes every drop of one’s blood hot with indignation. Men are to be free to pour the vices of Christendom over the world. Christendom will recognize them as its legiti- mate representatives. But the men who strive to stem this foul tide, who try to give the world those eternal principles from which Christian civilization, human purity and national right- eousness proceed, are to be sent out without passports, but with the proclamation, “These men may be treated as you please. We disown them. Kill them. Burn their houses. Outrage their wives. Torture their children. What do weeare? They have no rights.” My friends, there are two questions involved in this matter. One is, What are our rights? And I assert that an American does not forfeit his rights by being a Christian; that a mission- ary is entitled to all that the treaties guarantee him, and that he is entitled to demand that his government shall procure for him in its treaties no less privileges than it obtains for his fellow citizens. “I ama Roman citizen,” said Paul, the Christian. It is puerile to contend that Paul’s assertion of his political rights within the bounds of his government does not justify our assertion of our political rights under our government wherever in this broad world we may go. The other question is, What shall we do with our right? And I answer, Whatever is best for the cause of Christ. He surrendered His right to be on an equality with God. And whenever for the sake of Christ and His cause it is best for 36 us to decline political protection and to accept death, to waive indemnity and to submit to loss, we must do so in the spirit of Christ. Oniy, we will do it in the spirit in which Christ laid down His life. These are our rights; we have power to lay them down, and we have power to take them again. a Alas! what is far worse than all elise, we have gained as a consequence of the sad experiences of this last year a spirit of faint heartedness in the Church. ‘Those dear faces that have faded away in the fiames at Paotingfu glide back into our memories. And we think of what it costs. Let no one speak bitterly of those who feel that the cost is too great. And yet, my friends, there has been no waste; there can be no waste of life in the service of Christ. As the mother of one of those who died at Paotire!n writes of her daughter:—‘‘The bitterest pa’: of our trial was the faithless reproaches of fellow Christians be- cause of what they called the waste of such valuable lives. My soul was literally torn wiih anguish by such words. ‘They seemed to re- flect such dishonor on our Lord, and my con- stant prayer is that he may vindicate Himself to His servants, so that no one can doubt that all has been according to His wise purpose.” This is what life is given to men for. ‘This was what Christ did with His life. He laid it down. “Long, long centuries ago, One walked the earth His life a seeming failure; Dying, He gave the world a gift That will outlast the centuries.” a7 “Wacept a grain of wheat faii into the ground and die,” He said, “it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” We were not given our lives to keep them, but to lose them. Instead of finding in the terrible cost of China’s redemption ground for now turning back, wiil you not remember that a dearer life than any of these even was spent for us nineteen hun- dred years ago? Oh, my friends, this spirit of timidity will not be the spirit of our Church. These who die would have died in vain, then. I think they would needs rise up out of their graves to plead with us to take up and not turn from the work that they laid down. They would be the first to offer their lives again if they were here. It was one of the little com- pany who passed through the tortures of last suimmer’s siege in Peking who made the first contribution to the Martyrs’ Memorial Fund, de- signed to replace those who have passed on. You cannot think of those graves ouiside the walis of Paotingfu and propose to turn back. It seems to me that I can hear their voices this - morning protesting against this wrong. Even in the bitter hour of death, no such thought crossed their hearts. ‘Tell his mother,’ was one of Mr. Pitkin’s last messages, “to teach our little boy about China, and when he is twenty- five years old, to let him come back as a niis- sionary.” Every letter that has come to us from the Missions in China since these troubles broke has been a letter of confidence and of hope; ap- 28 - peal after appeal cailing for men, men, men. “We have a field of fifteen millions of people,” says one of the last letters from the Missions in Shantung. ‘They will be accessible now as never before. Can you not send us men?” That is the voice, I will not say of the world, but of God, from every field of our Church. What will you say in reply to it? The Missions are like greyhounds straining at the leash. Why will you not let them go? ‘They are like dammed waters chafing to be free. Why will you not let them flow? We stand on the threshold of a new century. Backward is no word for this time. Forward is the only word for this day. Why will you not speak it? They ask you to do it from Korea, which we can evangelize if we will in the next twenty years. They ask you to do it from Mexico. Hear the call of the two men who are our only missionaries among the half million people of Guerrero, aud who de- clare that the only need is workers to gather in the multitudes. They ask you to do it from Persia, and I do not see how you can resist their appeal, the appeai from the little companies of men and women there and in Syria, whom we have set down before Mohammedanism. Kor twelve hundred years now the prophet has in- sulted the King. For twelve hundred years Islam has trampled upon the Cross of Christ, ‘and put Him to an open shame. And tow at last her political power is crumbling away. Heresy after heresy has shaken the foundations. The touch of life has released the frozen clutch of the dead man’s hand, and the hour of otf 6p ~ portunity has come. Can you not hear its sum- mons? Not a call for men ouly or for moiuey, nor for these at all primarily; but for a Dew birth of spiritual purpose, the will of a nobler obedience. Neither resolutions nor tears will be sufficient answer to this appeal. It calls for 4 living habit of devotion and a passion for re- demption as intense as Ciirisi’s. And 1 do not know how God cap find a way to reach our hearts if we cannot understand the visible meanings of the day in which we live, and the visions that rise before our eyes. I see that poor Chilian abused for his apostasy, ac- cepting reproach with patience, and replying to those who reviled him for having changed his faith:—“Yes, it is true, I cannot deny that. But that is not the point. The point is that at last I have found a faith that has changed me.” Let that poor man stand as representative of the fifty millions of people to the south of us, laid - at our very door, awaiting a faith with power to change. I see a mosque in a far off town iu northeast Persia, on the Mohammedan Sabbath, with a missionary sitting at the Moliah’s invita- tion in the Moliah’s place and preaching to the multitude of men, of temperance and righteous- ness and the judgment to come, and of the God of love and life over all! And I see the crowded Mission chapel in Teheran, at the time of the ser- vice in memory of Queen Victoria’s death, with the Shab’s personal body-guard sent for the first time away from his presence, and accompanied by the Prime Minister, the late Shah’s brother, 80 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of War and scores of Mohammedan princes and nobles listening to Christian men singing “Rock of Ages,” and to the words of Christ, “I am the resurrection and the life.” ULet that mosque and chapel with the throngs that filled them stand as representative to-day of 180,000,000 of Moham- medans, by whom Christ has been annulled, and among whom Christ shall surely be enthroned. I see those two little famine children of whom you may read in the Report of the Board, stand- ing in awe-struck wonder by their dead in a little booth near Panhala, and saying, in answer to the missionary’s kindly question, “Father is sleeping, and mother is sleeping, and they wil! not wake for us out of their sleep.” Wet them, and the voices of the hundreds of children gath-— ered by the missionaries in the famine districts, represent to your hearts this morning the more | than 200,000,000 of little children in the world who by our lethargy and neglect have never felt the tender tonch or heard the loving speech of Mary’s little Child, who is saying to us to-day, as He said to other disciples of His long ago, “Suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And then there rises up before my eyes again a compound beyond the north gate at Paotingfu, and I see a father walking to and fro behind the flames, holding a little lad by either hand. And lo, another seems to be walking with them, and his form is that of the Son of Man, and all these other visions of the needy and the forgotten and the lost fade Inte Him whe gave his life fer a world of men; and I hear Him saying, “I am the Son of God. I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day, for the night is coming. I go forth upon my way. Who will come after me?’ O friends, let us arise and go after Him. Let us answer His cry with one voice. Cannot some one speak the word that will lead the whole Church to rise up in her strength and say to Him, “Here am I, Lord. Send me!”