MODERN MISSIONS 
 
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 WALNUT- ST, BAPTIST CHURCH 
 
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 l.OUISVILLE, KY. : 
 
 EAPTIST BOOK CONCERN, 
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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 MODERN MISSIONS, 
 
 HELD WITH 
 
 WALNUT ST. BAPTIST CHURCH 
 
 LOUiSV/ILLE, KY. 
 
 :2-4, 189:2. 
 
 LOUISVILLE, KY. : 
 BAPTIST BOOK CONCERN, 
 
% 
 
CENTENNIAL GELtBRATION OF MODERN 
 
 MISSIONS. 
 
 FIRST DAY—Sunday, October 2. 
 
 The Centennial Committee of the Southern Baptist Con¬ 
 vention consists of the following brethren: 
 
 T. T. Eaton, D.D.,LL.D., Chairman. 
 
 H. H. Harris, LL.D. 
 
 F. M. Ellis, D.D. 
 
 I. T. Tichenor, D.D. 
 
 T. H. Pritchard, D.D. 
 
 The Committee, with many brethren from all parts of the 
 country, were present. 
 
 The venerable Robert Ryland, D.D., was called to the 
 chair. 
 
 Dr. W. H. Williams, of St. Louis, invoked the divine bene¬ 
 diction. 
 
 After singing, prayer was offered by Rev. B. D. Gray, D.D., 
 of Mississippi. 
 
 Pastor T. T. Eaton made the following address of welcome: 
 
 Brethren and Fathers: —To me has been assigned the pleasant 
 duty of bidding you welcome. We are gathered to celebrate the centen¬ 
 nial anniversary of the beginning of modern missions. Just one hun¬ 
 dred years ago to-day was organized in Kettering, England, the first 
 society of modern times for giving the gospel to the heathen. Presently 
 the people from all the world will be assembling in Chicago for the pur¬ 
 pose of commemorating the adding of a new continent to the map of the 
 world, and that is well. But what is the discovery of a continent com¬ 
 pared to the beginning of modern missions? Columbus discovered 
 America, but Carey discovered the world. In behalf of the Baptists of 
 Kentucky, in behalf of the denomination and the community in Louis¬ 
 ville, and in behalf of this grand old church with whom you meet, I bid 
 you welcome. It is well that you have come; well for you in the blessing 
 you will receive in your labors of love among us; well for us in the in, 
 struction and inspiration we will derive from your coming and from the 
 glad messages you bring, and well for the cause of B[im who loved us and 
 gave himself for us, and whose right it is to reign. 
 
4 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 Prof. H. Harris, LL.D., spoke on 
 
 Results of a Century of Missions. 
 
 The last hundred years have seen greater and more varied progress 
 than any other like period in the history of mankind* A map of the 
 world as now printed on great power presses is not only immensely 
 superior in finish and accuracy, but it also presents a different world 
 from that of its prototype, laboriously drawn with goose-quill pen on 
 pieces of paper pasted together, and hung upon the walls of the cobbler’s 
 shop at Moulton in 1792. Since that time our own country has more 
 than doubled its domain and increased its population about fifteen fold. 
 England has vastly extended her sway and changed her home govern¬ 
 ment from a personal to a constitutional sovereignty. Germany and 
 Italy have effected unification with great advances in individual free¬ 
 dom. Prance, Mexico, Central and South America have turned from 
 monarchial to democratic forms of government. Insurrections, rebel¬ 
 lions, and revolutions—called one or other according to the number 
 and success of parties engaged—have torn down the Bastiles of ancient 
 custom and used their stones to pave the pathway of populaj* progress. 
 Great wars have introduced such improvements in the art of wholesale 
 destruction as to make personal bravery of no avail and armed conflict a 
 terror. 
 
 More notable still has been the advance in the arts of peace. New 
 processes of mining and of metalurgy have unlocked rich stores laid up 
 in the heart of the earth. Machines without number have been devised 
 for cultivating the soil, for manufacturing and transporting its products, 
 and for utilizing in man’s service the strength of inferior animals and 
 the forces that lurk in coal, in water, even in the lightings. The whole 
 system of steamboats, railways and electrical appliances belong to the 
 nineteenth century. Carey had a prosperous voyage from London to 
 Calcutta. It occupied five months lacking one day. News of his arrival 
 did not reach home for about a year. To-day one can make the trip in 
 .two weeks and cable the news instantly. 
 
 Greatest of all has been the progress in commercial and social life. 
 A hundred years ago more than half the human family were entirely 
 -cut off from the more enlightened parts of earth, or connected only 
 through a few trading posts controlled by avaricious corporations. The 
 opium wars with China, the Sepoy troubles in India, like conflicts else¬ 
 where, explorations in Central Africa, and commercial treaties more or 
 less extorted, have now united the whole world into one body politic, 
 with overland wires and submarine cables for its nerves, and a system 
 of banks and post offices for the arteries and veins of its vital circulation. 
 The few books and fewer periodicals of 1792 has developed into the 
 mighty flood of literature that has fertilized, sometimes disastrously 
 overflowed, the richest of our intellectual lands. All the arts and 
 .sciences have moved with rapid stride. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 5 
 
 We do not forget that change is not always improvement, that move¬ 
 ment may be backward, and yet it remains indisputably true that the 
 closing century, far beyond any of its predecessors, has been progressive. 
 Has Christian activity kept pace with the march of humanity? Has the 
 faith delivered once for all more than eighteen hundred years ago, 
 proved suitable to its new environment? Amid the triumphs of science, 
 has grace also reigned? In the general growth of knowledge, has 
 the knowledge of Jesus increased? In an intensely practical age, has the 
 law of love been more clearly exemplified? Have Christian people dur¬ 
 ing the century been merely borne along on a tidal wave of natural 
 evolution, or have their faith and their zeal been potent agencies in 
 starting and swelling the tide of progress? These questions will find 
 answer in considering the results of the modern missionary movement. 
 
 In the complex organization of human society, results are either direct 
 or indirect—the former, such as flow primarily and chiefly from the 
 assigned cause, being only modified and helped by co-operating influ¬ 
 ences; the latter, such as flow mainly from other forces, but these evoked, 
 stimulated or materially assisted by the given cause. The indirect 
 results of a great moral influence are naturally more in number than the 
 direct, but hard to trace out and establish clearly. They must in the 
 present discussion be passed over with very brief notice. 
 
 One other prefatory remark. The term missions suggests a very wide 
 theme, which for convenience has been divided into City, State, Home 
 and Foreign Missions, with diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, 
 diversities of ministrations, but the same Lord, diversities of workings, 
 but the same God. Time would fail to discuss them all. I have chosen 
 that one with which I am more particularly connected and which in 
 some sort embraces the rest. The world is more than our country, our 
 State, our community. A wave started in some deep bay moves out to 
 the ocean, and its height is less and less as the shores recede. But a 
 tidal wave raised by sun and moon on the broad bosom of the world¬ 
 embracing sea runs up into the bay and rises higher and higher to its 
 head. If the constraining love of Christ shall raise within us an interest 
 in the salvation of mankind in general, we cannot fail to be more and 
 more interested in those people who are nearer to us. 
 
 INDIRECT RESULTS. 
 
 1. Among the indirect results of modern missions one of the earliest 
 and most obvious is the science of Comparative Philology. Dr. Carey 
 was pre-eminent as a linguist and for thirty years was Professor of Sans¬ 
 crit and Bengali. Ability to master foreign tongues has always been 
 counted one of the qualifications for mission work. It is not too much 
 to assert that the influence thus set in motion has completely revolution¬ 
 ized all philological study and extended to all other lines of investiga¬ 
 tion the benefits of the Comparative method. It has given a stimulus to 
 all forms of intellectual activity, and is felt in every school from the 
 
6 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 primary grades to the great universities. The literary world would be 
 poor indeed if stripped of all it owes indirectly to missionaries. 
 
 2. Along with this has gone the contribution to our stores of knowl¬ 
 edge in geography and natural history, for missionaries have necessarily 
 been explorers, botanists, naturalists, anthropologists. To take one in¬ 
 stance out of many not a few of us can remember when maps of equatorial 
 Africa were a blank, and the ancient question about the sources of the 
 Nile was still a mystery. Livingstone changed all that. 
 
 3. A third result of missions, indirect and incidental, may be seen in 
 the extension of arts and habits of civilized society. Traders seek 
 money, missionaries are fishers of men. Eighty years ago the Fiji 
 Islanders were naked cannibals, they are now clothed and in their right 
 mind, a Christian community. The progress of Japan, one of the mar¬ 
 vels of the century, is unquestionably due more to the Christian religion 
 than to any other one cause. These are but samples of a work silently 
 and surely going on in every mission-field. 
 
 4. A fourth result to which missionaries have largely contributed, is 
 seen in the gradual abatement of mutual jealousy and the steady growth 
 of more kindly feeling between men of different races and nations, which 
 has made it possible for diplomacy to negotiate mutually advantageous 
 treaties instead of cruel conquest and fierce oppression of the weaker by 
 the stronger. A notable dllustration may be seen in our own western 
 country in comparing those Indians who have been held in check only 
 by rifles, with those others who have been sought out by faithful preach¬ 
 ers of the gospel. 
 
 Much more might be said of the indirect results of modern missions, 
 but we must hasten to consider some of the 
 
 DIRECT RESULTS. 
 
 These may be grouped under four leading statements. 
 
 1. The reflex influence of Missions. 
 
 This is seen in the enlargement of heart and mind among Christians 
 at home. Our fathers of a hundred years ago had to meet not only the 
 sneering ridicule of unbelievers, and violent opposition from the worldly- 
 wise, but, far harder to bear, indifference on the part of really pious 
 people and outspoken skepticism about the possibility of barbarians ac¬ 
 cepting Christ. So it was also in apostolic days. The church at Jeru¬ 
 salem, though baptized in the Holy Spirit, verily thought the new faith 
 must be kept within the old bounds of national seclusion, and actually 
 contended with Peter because he had gone with the Word of Life to men 
 uncircumcised. They had heard the phrases “all the world,” and “all 
 nations,” and “unto the uttermost parts of the earth,” but they had not 
 reached the idea of a universal religion suited to the real wants of all 
 men everywhere. 
 
 The “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” 
 formed in 1701 was designed in the words of its charter “for the relig- 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 7 
 
 ious instruction of the queen’s subjects beyond the seas; for the mainten¬ 
 ance of clergymen in the plantations, colonies and factories of Great 
 Britain; and for the propagation of the gospel in those parts.” Similarly 
 limited in scope were the Danish missions of the 18th century, and in 
 fact all others of that time. How else could it be with men who believed 
 in a Union of church and State? 
 
 We are at length beginning to grasp a higher and truer conception of 
 the Christ, and to realize somewhat that the gospel is for man, not as an 
 Israelite, not as an Anglo-Saxon, not as a civilized and enlightened 
 being, but simply and solely as a sinner; that in this there is no differ¬ 
 ence, the same Lord of all being rich unto all that call upon him; and 
 so we can in some sort appreciate that the field is the world, and the 
 whole world, and can sing with the understanding the Coronation hymn. 
 This great idea expands the mind, thrills the heart into sympathy with 
 the mind that was in Christ Jesus. A growing tree sends out its roots 
 and gathers material from the soil, but before this can become a part of 
 the organism, it must be drawn up through trunk and branch and twig, 
 and in the laboratory of the waving leaf be fitted by air and sunlight to 
 descend again by the inner bark and add every year another ring of woody 
 fibre. So churches planted in Christian lands are constantly gathering 
 in material through many feeders, but before it is fit to be incorporated 
 into the body, it needs to be drawn up into an atmosphere of world em¬ 
 bracing love and wrought upon by the beams of the Sun of righteotisness. 
 Mission work is to the churches at home what leaves are to the trees. 
 In France and Italy the mulberries are often stripped of their foliage to 
 feed silk-worms—as a result the trees are dwarfed and gnarled and short 
 lived. So will it be with a church that does not develop and cultivate a 
 missionary spirit. The maples and hickories of our forests are now put¬ 
 ting on their autumn colors, for their life is waning into the sleep of 
 winter, but the church is more fitly represented by an olive tree, ever¬ 
 green. 
 
 2. Converts from Heathenism. 
 
 Another obvious result of missions is seen in the conversion of at least 
 a million souls out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. The 
 latest tabulated reports put the communicants of evangelical churches 
 in heathen lands at about 800,000. Nearly if not quite 200,000 more have 
 either paid the debt of nature or yielded up their lives in martyrdom for 
 the truth. Add the uncounted thousands who, like Joseph of Arimathea, 
 are secret disciples. A friend who spent some weeks this summer with 
 the Baptist pastor in Dresden, tells me that in that one city are scores 
 of young people dependent upon their daily labor, who wish to be bap¬ 
 tized but are hindered because it would mean immediate discharge by 
 their Catholic employers and being cast out by even their parents. How 
 much more does this fear operate in ancestral-worshipping China or 
 caste-bound India! The number of adherents, counting young children 
 
8 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 of church members and others who have renounced idolatry and are 
 seeking the true light, is put at three millions—a very low estimate. 
 Five millions, in my judgment, would be more nearly correct. These 
 figures, though large when compared with the fewness of laborers, sink 
 into insignificance in contrast with the mass yet remaining without God 
 and without hope in the world, the 850 millions of absolute pagans, who 
 have not so much as heard of a Savior, and the 500 millions of semi¬ 
 pagans, Roman and Greek Catholics and Mohammedans who ‘Teach as 
 their doctrines the precepts of men,” “hold down the truth in unright¬ 
 eousness” and veil the doctrines of grace under a thick cloud of soul- 
 destroying superstitions. How little comparatively has been done. 
 Years ago the entrance to New York harbor from the Sound was ob¬ 
 structed by a great mass of rock around which the tides swirled in 
 treacherous currents and dashec^ many a bark to destruction. The Fed¬ 
 eral Government undertook to remove it. For months and years the 
 work went on, thousands, millions of money were expended. The rock 
 remained substantially unchanged, the currents ran on treacherous as 
 ever, all the apparent result was a few car-loads of pulverized granite, 
 hoisted little by little from a shaft. But tunnels had been driven hither 
 and yon, chambers hewn out, packed with dynamite and giant powder 
 and connected by wires with an office on shore, and when at length the 
 set time arrived a child’s finger touching a button sent an electric spark, 
 and hell-gate rock burst into a thousand fragments. Missionaries in 
 India, in China, in Africa, in Persia, in Italy, have been pushing along 
 the narrow lines of personal influence, gathering a few converts, but 
 planting seeds which have in them a possibility of infinite expansion, 
 and so preparing for God’s set time when the spark of his quickening 
 Spirit shall “cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all 
 nations.” The greatest of all moral forces works in and through the 
 Word of the Lord. This leads us to consider 
 
 3. The Increased Circulation of the Scriptures. 
 
 Dr. Carey made Bible translation his chief business. Before sailing 
 for India he met a young printer and said to him: “We shall want you in 
 a few years to print the Bible; you must come after us.” Thus Wm. 
 Ward was called to found the great Printing House at Serampore which 
 even in Carey’s lifetime had issued over 200,000 copies of Scripture in 
 forty different dialects. In like manner all other evangelical mission¬ 
 aries have labored to give the people the Word of God in their own ver¬ 
 nacular. In not a few instances they have been obliged first to reduce 
 the spoken tongues to a written form and introduce the art of reading. 
 
 The British and Foreign Bible Society, organized in 1804, was one of 
 the first fruits of missions. A call had come from Wales for a supply of 
 Bibles. At a meeting held to see what could be done our brother, the 
 Rev. Joseph Hughes, urged a plan comprehensive enough to embrace 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 9 
 
 within its scope the entire world. This one Society has printed of 
 Bibles, Testaments, and separate portions of Scripture, 130 million copies 
 in nearly 200 different languages and dialects, and has its agents to pro¬ 
 mote their circulation all over the world. In the train of this greao 
 Society have followed about seventy others, large and small, whose 
 aggregate output has been over 100 million copies. Of the work of pri¬ 
 vate publishers we have no statistics. 
 
 Dr. Gust of the B. and P. Society has given years to the preparation of 
 a list of versions up to 1890, with much information linguistic, geograph¬ 
 ical and bibliographical, (see Encyclopedia of Missions, pp. 547-17). It 
 is dangerous I know for one man to manipulate facts and figures com¬ 
 piled by another, but an examination of his results, with much care, 
 seems to show that there were a hundred years ago including the orig¬ 
 inal tongues thirty-three versions of the Bible. But half a dozen of 
 these, Arminian, Syriac, Slavonic, Gothic, Latin and Greek, were read 
 only by a few scholars, or intoned in liturgies by priests who rarely 
 comprehended what they repeated. As many more were carefully kept 
 out of reach of the common people. There were really less than twenty 
 versions of the Bible in actual use. Up to 1890, besides numerous revis¬ 
 ions, there had been added in a hundred years 59 distinct translations of 
 the whole Bible into as many different tongues. Of the New Testament 
 alone or conjoined with parts of the Old, e.g., the Pentateuch or the 
 Psalms, there were in 1792 a few versions made by Ziegenbalg, Elliott 
 and other eighteenth century missionaries, at present more than eighty 
 versions are printed and circulated. Of additional translations, yet 
 incomplete, there had been printed in 1890 portions ranging from a sin¬ 
 gle gospel up to three-fourths of the New Testament with half the Old, 
 no less than 157. The aggregate of all these, Bibles, Testaments and 
 Portions, is 330 as against less than 50 a hundred^years ago. And what 
 is more to the purpose over 300 of them are in actual circulation, being, 
 like the decree of Ahasuerus, sent to every province and “to every peo¬ 
 ple after their language.” Thibet, the high table land of Central Asia, 
 is one of the few countries that still closes its gates against all foreigners 
 and is’ specially jealous of religious innovation. But a company of 
 Moravians have been sitting for years at the barred gates, have learned 
 the language and translated into it the New Testament, the Pentateuch, 
 the Psalms and Isaiah. When the army of Victor Emmanuel entered 
 Rome, September 20, 1870, close upon the heels of the marching soldiers 
 came a colporter with his pushcart laden with Italian Bibles. A treaty 
 made this year with England opens Thibet to commerce. It. will not be 
 long before the United Brethren can follow the tramp of an army carry¬ 
 ing a Thibetan Bible issued from the presses of the B. and P. B. Society. 
 
 4. Preparatory Work. 
 
 A fourth result of this century of missions, and the last to be consid¬ 
 ered, is the preparation, for future work in the organization of Christen- 
 
10 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 dom, the accumulation of experience, and the establishment of good-will 
 everywhere. 
 
 According to the best available statistics there are now at work of 
 general organization for Foreign Missions 31 in the United States, 4 in 
 Canada, 29 in Great Britain, 28 in Continental Europe and 2 in the 
 Pacific Isles—total 94. Of Woman’s Societies, acting independently, 
 there are 2 in the United States (the Woman’s Union Interdenomina¬ 
 tional, with rooms in New York, and that of the Friends, in Center Val¬ 
 ley, Ill.), 1 in Canada, 5 in England, 1 in Scotland—total 9. Of Woman’s 
 Societies co-operating with other organizations, there are 30 in the 
 • United States, 9 in Canada, and 13 in Great Britain. Aggregate of sep-^ 
 arate organizations 103, auxiliary 52. Add ‘about a hundred smaller 
 Societies, organized for a narrow area or for special work, as e.g., in the 
 older missionary fields to evangelize what is to them the home land. 
 The seventy-odd Bible Societies have been already mentioned. The 
 Home Mission, Sunday-school and Tract Societies, the Y. M. C. Associ¬ 
 ations, and in fact all organizations for Christian work, do something, 
 directly or indirectly, to illumine the nations that “sit in darkness and 
 in the shadow of death.” The regular foreign mission Societies raise 
 and expend every year increasing amounts. The latest figures foot up 
 about eleven million dollars, used to support, in round numbers, 8,000 
 missionaries and 35,000 native helpers. 
 
 Different plans of work have been tried. The ardent love and buoy¬ 
 ant zeal of enthusiastic young workers impels them to strike out, time 
 and again, new methods, new lines of policy, or more frequently to try 
 over again what in other hands have failed. Questions about methods 
 have to be discussed again and again. Experience gradually proves all 
 things and holds fast to that which is good. The Holy Spirit sent forth 
 Barnabas and Saul, but seems to have left them in many matters to the 
 guidance of sanctified eommon sense and accumulated experience. It 
 would be folly to imagine that we have yet reached or indeed ever shall 
 reach, perfection in our theories, much less in our practice, but it is a 
 compliment to the Careys and Judsons to say that by the help of their 
 experience and all that has been since added, we are to-day in better 
 position than ever before to solve the problems of missionary life. 
 
 The labors of a hundred years have wrought almost as great a change 
 in public sentiment abroad as at home. It was perfectly natural for 
 people ignorant of Christianity and of the unselfish love which it in¬ 
 spires, to regard the early missionaries as either political spies or mer¬ 
 cenary prospectors. What else that heathenism knew, could induce 
 them to endure such hardships? But long years of unswerving truth 
 and kindliness, and particularly in times of pestilence, or floods, or 
 famine, have slowly established their real character and instead of being 
 hated or feared, they are beginning to be respected, and loved, even by 
 those who will not heed their message. Heathen governments with few 
 exceptions are friendly to real Christian work and will more and more 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 11 
 
 find out that it makes better citizens. The past century has been largely 
 .a time of planting and watering and tilling in preparation for future 
 harvests. Some foretastes have been given of what we may expect in 
 fuller measure. The first Karen convert was won in 1828, the baptized 
 believers among that people now number 27,000. The Telugu mission 
 yielded little visible fruit for more than thirty years, but then came the 
 Pentecostal season. 
 
 This preparatory work in several of the phases mentioned, is strikingly 
 illustrated by the crowning glory of this century of missions. Woman’s 
 Work for Woman, begun in England about sixty, in this country about 
 thirty years ago. In a most important sense there is no distinction of 
 sex in religion, “there can be neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor 
 free, no male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus.” But in the 
 church as established on earth there is a difference, for it still remains 
 true as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that “it is shameful for a woman 
 to speak in church.” Still more difference is there in the society, the 
 manners and customs of the world. In heathen and Mohammedan coun¬ 
 tries a daughter, instead of bring the light and joy of the house, is valued 
 solely for what she will fetch in the market, and a wife, instead of being 
 the trusted counsellor at her husband’s side, is a slave to be trampled 
 beneath his feet. In Catholic lands, both Greek and Roman, the condi¬ 
 tion of the weaker vessel is better, yet still far below her proper station 
 as prescribed in the Word of God and practiced among evangelical 
 Christians. Woman therefore owes for this life far more than man to 
 the gospel, and being more benefitted she naturally loves more. Then 
 again she only can enter the zenana, the harem, the heathen home, and 
 carry there the word of life and liberty the sweet story of the Man of 
 Sorrows. So it is that as missionaries who have access to the women 
 and children, our devoted sisters are doing the best and truest founda¬ 
 tion work, while the circles and bands at home are stirring up the slug- 
 ish churches, and by their constant gathering of many little rills of 
 prayer and praise and liberality are pouring a perennial stream into the 
 Lord’s treasury. Unfortunately there have sometimes been misconcep¬ 
 tions and misstatements of their plans and purposes, leading to jars and 
 friction and separate work. It is matter of hearty congratulation that 
 the Woman’s Missionary Union, with headquarters in Baltimore, pro¬ 
 claims itself “auxiliary to the S. B. C.” and very carefully heeds the 
 apostolic injunction against usurping authority. God speed their labors! 
 
 .To sum up in conclusion, the century of mission work has brought 
 near the ends of the earth, has roused many Christians to some little 
 appreciation of their responsibilty, has gained converts enough to prove 
 the universal adaptation of the gospel, has widely disseminated the 
 Word of God, has laid foundations, gained experience and effected 
 organization for better work hereafter. Prom the mountain of Galilee 
 still rings out in louder tones the great command “Make disciples of all 
 the nations,” and from the bright cloud of Jehovah’s manifest presence 
 
12 
 
 CENTENNIAL. CELEBRATION 
 
 comes as of old the trumpet call “Go forward.” If we and our children 
 shall prove at all worthy of the trust committed to us, watchful of our 
 opportunities, obedient to our Lord, the next century, nay, rather the 
 next generation, will witness results an hundred fold greater and more 
 glorious. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead 
 of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord 
 for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” 
 
 The Rev. P. M. Ellis, D.D., then delivered a sermon, of 
 » which the following is a synopsis he kindly prepared for 
 publication: 
 
 THE MORAL BASIS OF MISSIONS. 
 
 I. Jno. iii;14-17. 
 
 When the foundations of the Strasburg Cathedral were rising the 
 architect was suddenly cut off. It was a sore calamity. Who could 
 translate into that proposed structure the conception of the master 
 builder? 
 
 It was suggested that this responsibility might be referred to his 
 daughter who had been associated with her father from the first, and 
 that was done. 
 
 As one stands before that venerable pile to-day he is impressed with 
 architectural misconceptions that doubtless mar the completeness of the 
 original designs of that Cathedral. 
 
 Jesus had scarcely finished the foundations of His 'Kingdom when he 
 was put to death on the cross. The completion of his work was referred 
 to the Holy Spirit as the interpreter of his plans and purposes to His 
 church. As we look at the churches to-day, as in sects and sections they 
 are toiling upon His Kingdom, we must account for the defective work 
 done, by concluding that the designs of the divine architect are but im¬ 
 perfectly understood by these builders. 
 
 THE MISSIONARY IDEA. 
 
 Which is our Lord’s conception is not only not understood but often 
 misunderstood. Is it Christ’s plan to convert the world, by means of the 
 church, or has he sent forth His church to gather out from among the 
 nations a people for himself ? Whichever of these views we take will 
 largely determine, for us, our methods and aims in our work for and in 
 missions. 
 
 Our methods, if approved of God, must be adjusted to the divine pur¬ 
 pose in missions. 
 
 The impulse to missionary endeavor must be begotten in us by the 
 love of God, not our love for Him, but His love in us. This love which 
 John makes the assurance of eternal life, and is as Paul tells us the con¬ 
 straining power of the new life. It is the love of God, that sent forth 
 
OP MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 13 
 
 his son to die for sinners—in us that sends us forth to serve, and if need 
 be to lay down our lives for the brethren. In this love is to be found 
 the evidence of our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 To refuse to serve men in a ministry of such self-denial is to repudiate 
 the love of God. This love that impels us to such self-denial for others 
 moreover distinguishes us as children of God from the children of the 
 devil. Hence in this love, awakened and impelled by the love of God in 
 us, is to be found the mainspring of missions. 
 
 The witness of a redeemed church to this redeeming love of Christ for 
 man, approved by the Holy Spirit is the work of the New Testament 
 church. 
 
 If this be true then in such a work there can be no proxies, because a 
 personal conviction of duty and an individual sense of responsibility are 
 inseparable in such a service. 
 
 It makes each individual believer in Christ a witness to this love and 
 also a herald of it to others, as it did .Andrew to Peter, Philip to Na¬ 
 thaniel and the woman sf Samaria to her neighbors. 
 
 The fact is this sense of our love of God, and our love to God makes 
 priesthood as universal as experimental salvation is personal. A regen¬ 
 erated church is therefore, through this elective love of God, a “spiritual 
 house,” a “holy priesthood; to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to 
 God through Christ.” Aye, a royal priesthood * * * that ye may 
 
 show forth the excellencies of Him who hath called you out of darkness 
 into his marvelous light,” and, hence, the duty of witnessing to the gos¬ 
 pel of this grace of God is not only the right but the personal duty and 
 privilege of Christian discipleship. 
 
 Again, the work to which the divine love sends us forth, is not so 
 much a work/or God as it is a work with God. We are not servants, but 
 children who serve in love. Under this divine impulse we become co¬ 
 workers with God, co-partakers with Christ, and co-witnesses with the 
 Holy Spirit, i.e., we are co-laborers with the triune God. It is this 
 which dignifies our service as witnesses and missionaries, and secures 
 for our efforts the divine approval and blessing. 
 
 In the nature of the case, therefore, the work of missions, which is the 
 witnessing of a saved church—of saved members—must rest upon a 
 moral basis. 
 
 Where shall we look for this moral basis, and what is to especially 
 distinguish it? To this question I reply— 
 
 I. We are to seek for the moral basis of missions in the benevolent 
 nature of God. 
 
 John defines God as love —“God is love.” Hence “God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on 
 him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 
 
 In this limitless love yearning over a perishing race, manifesting its 
 inexpressible tenderness by the gift of the only begotten Son, as the open 
 
34 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 door to everlasting life to all who would enter in by Him. God laid the 
 basis for all work with Him—or for Him. Without such a basic motive 
 and divine impulse, which transforms duty into an exalted privilege, our 
 work, if not impossible, would be the veriest slavery. 
 
 The work of missions therefore rests upon a moral basis broad as the 
 incarnation. 
 
 II. The moral basis of missions is to be sought for in the active minis¬ 
 try of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 His work and his Father’s were one and the same work. He came “to 
 seek and to save that which was lost,” and in doing this to “glorify His 
 Father.” The church of Christ must never lose sight in her missionary 
 work that out of Christ, men are lost. She must fully recognize, as did 
 Christ, that men are lost. As we lose sight of this, as we substitute 
 other means, or other names, than that of Christ, as satisfactory condi¬ 
 tions and terms of salvation, we depart from the line marked out for us 
 by him who hath brought life and immortality to light through the 
 gospel. 
 
 Because man is lost —hopelessly lost—unless God interferes on his be¬ 
 half, the incarnation was a necessity. This plain fact of the gospel—the 
 peril of man out of Christ must not be lessened, awful as it is—for the 
 incarnation and death of Jesus Christ give to this dreadful truth an 
 emphasis that must not be trifled with. 
 
 While Christ is the only name under heaven, given among men 
 whereby we must be saved, the hope of salvation in any other name or 
 by any other means is a delusion. “He came that we‘might have life.” 
 
 Love descends and seeks to lift up. Jesus was in heaven before he 
 came to earth. He came down to us that he might bring us—lift us up 
 to God. Jesus the message of the infinite love of God to the world, com¬ 
 ing down to us, and becoming Obedient unto death, even the death of the 
 cross. What an appeal to a church possessed with this same love! to a 
 church that loves men, because God loves men and because she loves 
 God. 
 
 What a basis we have in all this for Christian service, and for the joy 
 that glorifies that service that seeks the lost that they may be brought 
 back to their home and to their Father! It was this awful thought that 
 men, out of Christ, are lost, and hence must be brought to Christ, if 
 saved, that roused the great Judson from his skepticism—when a youth— 
 and no doubt gave its force to the reasons that made him the missionary 
 he became. It was this peril of the lost, for whose rescue the only be¬ 
 gotten Son of God came to earth, that roused Carey and led Paul to con¬ 
 secrate themselves to the missionary work of the church. God’s love for 
 a lost world, illustrated and enforced as it is in the earthly ministry of 
 our Lord, is the Christian motive for missions! How much we need a 
 revival, to-day, of this divine passion for the perishing, deepened by the 
 ministry of the Holy Spirit! 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 15 
 
 How much the churches of this age need to study Jesus’ methods of 
 dealing with the lost. Compare his methods with ours; His spirit with 
 ours. The love in which He sought the lost was a magnet that drew the 
 people to Him—is ours? Alas! Let us not be deceived. The way in 
 which we seek men has a most important effect upon our success in sav¬ 
 ing them. 
 
 ^ But, great as this motive for seeking to save the lost, furnished in the 
 peril to which they are exposed, may be, and it must not be lightly con¬ 
 sidered. Still it is not the Supreme Motive for missionary endeavor. 
 Our sympathy for a perishing race is but a feeble, flickering sentiment 
 compared to the glory of God, in the redemption of the lost. In all 
 Jesus’ active ministry the end sought by him was the glory of God. 
 “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify Thee.” Thus Christ 
 prayed for; for this he lived and toiled, died and rose again. 
 
 Christ, who is the life of his church, is also the motive of his church. 
 Nothing must supplant him. Love for him, faith in him, energized by 
 the Holy Spirit, are the forces of all success in the endeavors of his fol¬ 
 lowers. The Spirit of Christ is therefore 
 
 THE SPIRIT OP MISSIONS. 
 
 To our Lord’s ministry on earth we must look for the illustration of 
 that passion for souls that should characterize the lives of those who 
 would imitate Him. This passion for souls for the glory of God, is what 
 the church needs most of all to-day. This passion will deepen and 
 intensify our consecration and possess us with the proper realization of 
 our personal stewardship as nothing else can. This passion must have 
 its roots in spiritual life, and our spiritual life must measure our spirit¬ 
 ual power. If after all the disciples had heard and seen of Jesus in their 
 three years of daily, intimate intercourse, it was necessary that' they 
 should wait for a spiritual equipment to fit them for missionary work, 
 how much more do we need such a preparation for this work! 
 
 Christ’s words are surely appropriate to us—“Tarry until ye be 
 endowed with power.” Do we tarry thus? On such waiting depends the 
 tongue of fire, and the heart of flame. Enthusiasm is no substitute for 
 the divine endowment. We must advance on our knees, if our going is 
 clothed in the power of the Holy Spirit. It was this passion for souls 
 kindled by the Holy Spirit that dictated the epitaph of Cox, in Africa, 
 “Let a hundred missionaries die before Africa is given up.” It was this 
 passion for God’s glory in the salvation of souls that laid Carey’s life as 
 a living sacrifice upon the altar of Foreign Missions. 
 
 This passion for God’s glory in the salvation of the lost, will find ex¬ 
 pression in a personal effort to seek and save souls in proportion to the 
 intensity of this desire. 
 
 This work of Christ’s—“to seek and to save the lost,”—is your work 
 and mine. “For his sake,” this spheres all motives of Christian effort, 
 after all. 
 
16 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 On one occasion, when Andrew Fuller was seeking the means to aid 
 Carey and his companions in the foreign field, his solicitation was an¬ 
 swered by an acquaintance: “Well, Andrew, seeing it is you I will give 
 you five pounds.” Puller replied, “If it is for my sake that you give I will 
 not accept your gift.” His friend saw his mistake, and quickly replied, 
 “Well, seeing it is for Christ's sake I will give you twenty-five pounds.” 
 
 Christ must be our motive and pattern in missions as in all our service 
 for him. 
 
 III. The moral basis for missions is to be sought for in our Lord’s 
 commission to his disciples. 
 
 “All power (authority) is given unto me in heaven and in earth, go ye 
 therefore, and teach all nations, * * * lo, I am with you alway, even 
 unto the end of the world.” 
 
 These were the words of him who had only forty days before come 
 forth from the grave, whence he had been borne from a cross of suffer¬ 
 ing and shame. His death and resurrection had given him them astery 
 of heaven and of earth, and upon this supreme authority he rested his 
 commission to his redeemed church. 
 
 And who were this church? Unknown men, called from the fishing 
 boats of Galilee, and the custom house of Capernaum. Some of whom 
 had denied him. All of whom had forsaken him at his death, and 
 doubted the truth of his resurrection. To men such as these he commit¬ 
 ted the work of a world’s evangelization! To them he embodied his 
 marching orders in his last commission. In that commission the revel¬ 
 ation and person of himself was made the foundation and center of Chris¬ 
 tian teaching—the spirit of obedience is made the spirit of his disciples. 
 Christ’s church is made the witness and minister of his gospel; that com¬ 
 mission recognizes the omnipotence of Christ as the reason why his fol¬ 
 lowers should evangelize and baptize, and it also makes Christ’s omni¬ 
 presence (Lo, I am with you, etc.) the hope of his people in the work to 
 which He sends them. So that Christ’s commission spheres not only 
 the logic but also the motive of missions. If, therefore, the divine pur¬ 
 pose of the church be missionary, then the church must be such in fact 
 or it must be out of harmony with the divine purpose. Every word of 
 the commission, as we have seen, pulsates with the energy of a divine 
 sovereignty; in it he opened up the divine purpose and issues of our 
 Lord’s death. Upon the omnipotence of Christ (“All authority is given 
 unto me,”) he places the ^^therefore" of his commission, and the duty of 
 his church (“go ye therefore and make disciples”). 
 
 Hence, because missions are the purpose of Christ, missions are the 
 business of the church. Shall we set over against this magnificent aim 
 of the Christ, the inadequacy of the church’s means, which after all is 
 the confessed exponent of the incompleteness of her consecration? Do 
 we not know that what the church gives of her means and of her mem¬ 
 bers for missions is no measure of her ability to give, but rather the 
 confession of her unwillingness to give? He who could out of a lad’s 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 17 
 
 lunch, of five biscuits and two herring, spread a banquet for more than 
 five thousand in the wilderness, can and does multiply our offerings, but 
 not because our offering is “five loaves and two little fishes,” but because 
 it is our all. 
 
 People speak glibly and smilingly of “giving the widow’s mite” (it was 
 “iwo mites”). They should remember, however, that Jesus honored the 
 widow’s gift not because it was a “/ari/mip,” but because it was “all the 
 living she'had.” She gave as our Lord himself gave. So that few peo¬ 
 ple who so promptly quote the widow’s example ever complied with it. 
 When they give “all their living,” then they will have as little to say 
 about it as did that widow. Until then they should be ashamed to shield 
 their covetousness behind so glaring a misrepresentation, as that which 
 they made of the act so warmly approved by the Master. 
 
 Our reason for going forth is Jesus’ omnipotence, or hope in thus 
 going is his omnipresence. Could we ask for more? Here then, in the 
 Commission’s mighty motives for missions may be found the moral basis 
 of missions. 
 
 Remember, the secret of the church’s power, in missions, is not of men 
 or of money, but it is the enthroned Christ! The living, waiting, ex¬ 
 pecting Christ is his church’s inspiration and power. Christ in his me¬ 
 diatorial throne is the power behind the church and- hence behind the 
 missionary, and His presence with us now, as co-worker with us, guar¬ 
 antees to us his coming as the King with whom we shall also reign. 
 For “if we endure we shall also reign with Him.” 
 
 Not one provision of that divine commission has, ever been repealed, 
 and it will not be until Christ comes in his glory. 
 
 In that marching order of an aggressive, missionary church, lie, en¬ 
 folded, revivals, reformations, and revolutions, as do the miracles of life 
 in the laws of nature and of God. That commission of Christ makes the 
 life of each disciple an interpreter to the world of the meaning and pur¬ 
 pose of the cross. Hence, in the meaning of the cross, and of the com¬ 
 mission, only a converted church can be a missionary church. Propaga¬ 
 ting a dead orthodoxy, a lifeless creed, or ecclesiastical forms, is not the 
 evangelization enforced by the commission and by the cross. That is 
 the carrying of the water and bread of life to the ends of earth. 
 
 The commission which embodied the active ministry of Christ while 
 on earth, was illustrated again in the missionary life and ministry of 
 Paul, “the Apostle of the Gentiles.” In Paul’s missionary work the Holy 
 Spirit interpreted to the churches of all times the meaning and intent 
 of Christ’s commission; for Paul’s life incarnated in itself the spirit of 
 that message of Jesus to the ages. 
 
 If the need in missionary work to-day is not less money or fewer men— 
 and we do need more of both—what shall be said of the need there is 
 that the church of Christ should have a truer, broader, fuller conception 
 of the moral basis—of the divine idea of missions? What is more needed 
 
18 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 in our missionary efforts than that our churches should be guided by 
 that faith that will lead us to plan our work first and foremost from the 
 divine, rather than from the financial side of missions. This is not 
 mysticism. Faith in God precedes our faith in men. The Holy Spirit 
 is before the ‘‘Almighty dollar” in God’s work. 
 
 This is not saying that the work of missions has not a money basis— 
 it has; but before that it has a moral basis. Money must have a moral 
 as well as a commercial value in a Christian’s hand. We need to be 
 careful that the evangelizing worth of a dollar is not determined, in our 
 plans, by the commercial value of that dollar. All the gold on earth, 
 multiplied by all the currency that is based upon it, could not convert 
 the meanest bushman of South Africa, without the supplemental influ¬ 
 ence of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 If we expect God to work with us we must see to it that we, first of 
 all, are working with Him. 
 
 When Constantine was laying out Constantinople, and some one re¬ 
 buked him for the extravagance of his plans his reply was, “I am follow¬ 
 ing Him who is leading me.” So also when Napoleon was slashing at 
 the map before him outlining his Austrian campaign and his uncle 
 criticised his daring ambition, Napoleon, flinging open his window and 
 pointing to the noonday sky, replied, “Sire, do you see that star?” “No,” 
 said the uncle. “Well,” said Napoleon, “I do, and I shall follow it, for 
 that is the star of my destiny.” So, with our eyes upon the cross, let us 
 obey our Lord’s commission and by so doing demonstrate our right to 
 call ourselves His disciples. 
 
 We must recognize this Mastership of Jesus, over us, before we can 
 accept his commission in any such sense as it should be accepted. It was 
 this acknowledged mastership of the Christ that made the Apostolic 
 church invincible. This must inspire and nerve the modern church if it 
 rises to the realization of the magnificent possibilities of the work of 
 modern missions. 
 
 We have for a long time been troubled about how many of our churches 
 can give to missions. Is that the question before us? No, no, the vital 
 question is, how can they hope to live if they do not give to missions? not 
 grudgingly, but as freely as they have received. 
 
 Our State Boards which are laboring so earnestly to bring weak 
 churches up to a self-support must not stop at that, for this is only a 
 means to an end. The church of Christ must be a self-propagating, as 
 well as a self-supporting church. Christlieb was right when he said 
 that missions demand of the church a three-fold conversion. (1.) The 
 conversion of the heart in order to right affections. (2.) The conversion 
 of the head in order to right conceptions. (3.) The conversion of the 
 purse in order to make ample provisions. We all know that it is death 
 to try to live on one’s breath. This is the policy of a self-contained 
 church or a selj^sh Christian. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 19 
 
 The commission therefore places every disciple of Jesus under an obli- 
 g-ation to evang-elize, as solemn as if they held in their hand the pardon 
 of a condemned prisoner and were commanded to bear it to him before 
 his sentence is executed. 
 
 In the darkness of that hour, that precedes the day’s dawn, a tourist 
 stood upon Riffleburg, that rises far above the Valley of Zermat, waiting- 
 for 'the coming- of the morning- upon the Alps. At length above the 
 thick night that filled the valley like an ocean of blackness, above the 
 sentinel peaks that stood cloaked with shadow, and silent in their soli¬ 
 tude, the coming day flung out the grey banners of her advance. Soon 
 the peaks, putting off the garments of the night, began to assume the royal 
 robes of day. And as the gates of the East opened, these peaks, catch¬ 
 ing upon their icey sides, as upon mirrors, the light of the breaking 
 morning, began to be transfigured into towers of gorgeous splendor, as 
 they rose among the clouds, which were changing from leaden heaps 
 into piles of crimson and gold that grouped themselves about those 
 mountain towers, as if they were the descending thrones of the four and 
 twenty elders, while 
 
 “Jocund day stood tip-toe 
 On the misty mountain tops.” 
 
 The descending light fell upon the gathered darkness of the valley as 
 it rolled down, and along the floor of the valley shattered into light like 
 the rising dust beneath the chariot’s wheels. The morning had come 
 and the night was gone. 
 
 So we stand here, this centennial morning, upon the glorious heights 
 of this first century of modern missions! watching and waiting for that 
 blessed hope, the appearing of our God and Savior Jesus Christ; and, 
 from this centennial mountain top, we cry, watchman, what of the 
 night? And the answer co^es back to us in the thick darkness of 
 heathen ignorance and superstition and in the chilly shadows of vice 
 that hang its night around us. Again we cry, watchman, what of the 
 night? And in the dawn that hangs its splendors about the cross and 
 the future, we hear the answer, “the morning cometh.” We wait, 
 and again, with uplifted hope, we cry, watchman, what of the night? 
 And we are thrilled as we hear the answer, “the day cometh.” Yes, as 
 once across the wave lashed Tiber the Christ came to his disciples, 
 treading the surging billows, so, across the centuries He comes again. 
 He who with his coming shall bring the blessed day promised by the 
 prophets—the day for which his redeemed church has been toiling, 
 praying, waiting, and hoping. 
 
 Even so, come Lord Jesus, come quickly. Amen, 
 
20 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 At 3 P.M., Sunday, there was a mass meeting addressed by 
 Rev. R. H. Harris, D.D., of Columbus, Ga., on 
 
 Are the Heathen “Lost Without the Gospel?” 
 
 Text: “Re that hath the Son, hath life; hut he that hath not the Son of 
 God, hath not life.’’’' —I. Jno. 5:12. 
 
 If words have any meaning, the question would seem to be answered, 
 as soon as asked. Indeed, it is strange that, with the open Bible before 
 us, there should be any such question. But, that there is such a ques¬ 
 tion, in the minds of many excellent people, cannot be denied. Perhaps 
 not a very great many entertain a decided conviction, in the negative: but 
 a comparatively large number of persons are honestly in doubt —and, with 
 most of them, so far as effects their practical conduct, doubt is tantamount 
 to conviction. 
 
 Of people whose views are not affirmative, there are two general 
 classes: 1st. Those who in the goodness of their hearts, would fain hope 
 that, in some mysterious way, unrevealed to us, the benighted multitudes 
 of earth may be saved, notwithstanding their ignorance of the Bible plan 
 of salvation; 2d. Those who, in their meanness and stinginess of heart, 
 are glad to favor any doctrine that will excuse them from the conscious 
 duty of contributing money to the Lord’s work. Kind-heartedness, on 
 the one hand, and covetousness on the other, are the tptally dissimilar 
 influences which produce precisely the same result upon moral char¬ 
 acters, otherwise entirely unlike. 
 
 Some who are prejudiced in the negative, and others whose minds are 
 merely doubtful, are unwilling to hear this question discussed, apparently 
 lest their convictions may be disturbed or their doubts removed; while 
 others, still, already know more upon tlfis, or almost any other sub¬ 
 ject, than any one under heaven can tell them.—Prov. xxvi:12,16. So, 
 among them, they either absent themselves, altogether, on occasions 
 when this topic is to be discoursed upon, or else they attend with self- 
 blinded eyes and stopped-up ears, determined not to be moved. 
 
 But the spectre “will not down at bidding” and a real issue confronts us 
 that must be met, in a spirit of honest inquiry after the truth. This done, 
 we may confidently leave the result to God, regardless of indifference or 
 opposition, in any quarter. 
 
 If the negative be true, and the heathen are not lost without the gos¬ 
 pel, then, the greatest calamity that we could inflict upon them would 
 be to send them the news of salvation in Christ. We are so unfortunate 
 as to have heard of Jesus! and, while some of us will be saved in Him, 
 most of us are destined to be lost, because we have heard. Now, in loving 
 pity toward our benighted fellow-men, let us conceal this fatal news from 
 them. And, to be consistent, let us do more. We love our children, and 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 21 
 
 we are deeply concerned about the generations yet unborn. Let us burn 
 up all the Bibles, raze the church buildings to the ground or convert 
 them into dance halls and theatres, extirpate the preachers, bind our¬ 
 selves by inviolable oaths to eternal silence upon the most dangerous 
 subject, and die with the fatal secret locked up in our bosoms—that our 
 little children and the generations yet to come may enjoy equal blessings 
 with heathen murderers and cannibals, and all be saved I 
 
 Any other course than this must be illogical and cruel, if the advocates 
 of the negative doctrine are right in their position. Almost as cruel as 
 God has been, in subjecting His pure and innocent Son to an ignominious 
 life and a horrible death, to insure the fiery torments of an eternal hell, 
 to most of the miserable wretches who are so supremely unfortunate as 
 to hear of Him! 
 
 But private opinions upon this subject are entirely immaterial, unless 
 sustained by reason based upon the Word of God. The real and great 
 question is: What saith the Lord? The Bible should be our only guide. 
 Its teachings must be accepted and its commandments obeyed, whether 
 we understand God’s motives and purposes, or not. 
 
 In this view, let us consider the last commandment of Christ: “Go ye, 
 therefore, and teach all nations,” Matt. xxviii:19; “Go ye into all the 
 world and preach the gospel to every creature,” Mark xvi:15. Why 
 “therefore”? Jesus had said: “All power is given to me in heaven and 
 in earth,” Matt. xxviii:18—I have breathed my spirit into you—I have 
 finished my work in my fiesh, and I am going home—but I have com¬ 
 mitted the full accomplishment of that work to you, pledging my Divine 
 power to sustain you—now, “therefore,” do it. Why “go”? Because 
 His work was for the benefit of the world—“God so loved the world,” 
 Jno. iii:16, and movement, outward, from the initial centre, was neces¬ 
 sary, to “teach” “the world” of mankind “the way” of life that had been 
 opened up for those who should walk in it. “Go, ye,” all ye, who have my 
 spirit and my pledged power, for ye are qualified, “and teach all na¬ 
 tions”—not merely those which are contiguous to Judea, but “into all 
 the world,” as is more explicitly stated by Mark. “Ye shall be witnesses 
 unto me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto 
 the uttermost part of the earth,” Acts i:8. Mark also individualizes this 
 teaching. The messengers of Jesus are not merely to plant the banner 
 of the cross on every nation’s shore and “proclaim the gospel of the king¬ 
 dom,” in every national capital in “all the world,” but they are to carry 
 their message to each individual —as expressed in the language, “every 
 creature.” 
 
 What is the “gospel?” Good news. The term is compounded of two 
 Anglo-Saxon words—“god,” good, and “spell,” story or tidings. Hence, 
 the Scripture expression, “glad tidings of great joy.” What is the best 
 news to a drowning man? That a rescuer is at hand. What is the glad¬ 
 dest tidings to the dying patient? Of a physician who can and will heal. 
 
22 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBEATION 
 
 Of what, is the “good news,” that the messengers of Jesus are to carry 
 to “every creature”? Of salvation. Why do I say so? “The gospel of 
 Christ is the power of God unto salvation,’’' Rom. i:16. 
 
 This “good news” is of salvation to whom? To the lost. “The Son of 
 Man is come to save that which was lost,” Matt. xviii:ll. “The Son of 
 Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Luke xix:10. “To 
 seek,” means to hunt for. Effort is necessary, both on the part of Jesus, 
 Himself, and on the part of His messengers. Those who “have His 
 spirit” must “go” forth “into all the nations of the world,” “seeking,” in 
 that spirit, for the individuals, whom God hath “predestinated to be 
 conformed to the image of His Son,” Rom. viii:29. 
 
 Who are lost? All men. “Death passed upon all men, for that all have 
 sinned,” Rom. v:12; “the wages of sin is death,” Rom. vi:23; “we (Chris¬ 
 tians), were by nature the children of wrath, even as others,” (the unre¬ 
 generate, or heathens,) Eph. ii:3. The God of “foreknowledge and for- 
 ordination,” the God of “predestination,” has declared that all men, 
 naturally, “are under the curse,” Gal. iii:10—that “by the offense of'one, 
 judgment hath come upon all men, to condemnation,” Rom. v.T8—and 
 that His people, saved from among the lost, are “elect, through sancti¬ 
 fication of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus 
 Christ,” 1 Pet. i:2. 
 
 Now, who are the heathen? There are only three classes of animated 
 creatures known to us: 1, Angels: 2, Men: 3, Beasts. Under the term, 
 beasts, I include, for this occasion, all cretures, from the highest brute, 
 to the lowest form of animal life. Are the heathen angels? None will 
 assert it. Are they beasts? Blood analysis will settle the questian. The 
 red corpuscles in human blood, every scientific physician knows, are dif¬ 
 ferent from thifee in the blood of any other animal. The blood disks in 
 all animals of the canine family are similar, and so, with the felines, or 
 members of the cat family, and so, also, with all other genera, of the 
 lower orders; but none of these Resemble corresponding disks in human 
 blood—and the corpuscles are found to be precisely alike, in all the races 
 of mankind. God “hath made of one blood, all nations of men, for to 
 dwell on all the face of the earth,” Acts xvii:26. Not that all are white 
 men—or all black men—or all brown or red men—but that all are men — 
 homo, human. “All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of 
 flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes and another of 
 birds,” 1 Cor. xv:39. Cannibalism was proved upon certain dead mem¬ 
 bers of the Greeley expedition, by the presence, in their stomachs, of 
 the striped tissue, which is peculiar to human muscle. The flesh and 
 blood of the heathens are found to be of identically the same kind, as ours. 
 The heathen, therefore, are men. 
 
 If men, the heathen are lost, in common with other men, “for there is no 
 respect of persons, with God,” Rom. ii:ll, and, therefore, Christ “came 
 to seek and to save them," since “there is no difference,” Rom. iii:22. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 2S 
 
 * The question now occurs, will any men be saved? In the light of Scrip¬ 
 ture, I answer, yes. Who? Let the Scriptures answer: “He that be- 
 lieveth and is baptized shall be saved,” Mark xvi:16; “Whosoever shall 
 call upon the name of'the Lord, shall be saved,” Rom. x:13 —and every 
 intelligent person knows that the word “Lord,” whenever applied to 
 the Deity, in the Scriptures, either means Christ, directly, or includes 
 the idea of Christ, with God—; “For God gave his only begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life,” Jno. iii:16. 
 
 Another question now presents itself: Is there any means of salvation, 
 outside of Christ, intimated in the Bible? The Scriptures, themselves, 
 are emphatic, in the negative: “Neither is there salvation in any other, 
 for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby 
 we must be saved,” Acts iv.T2—the language is most positive, “mttsi”; 
 and “he that believeth not shall be damned,” Mark xvi:16. 
 
 If there were any other means, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was unnec¬ 
 essary: “For if righteousness come by the law (works), then Christ is 
 dead in vain,” Gal. ii:21. “For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and 
 that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any 
 man should boast,” Eph. ii:8,9. Salvation is of God, through the gift of 
 grace, by faith in Christ, also His gift, and all this, men may “despise,” 
 to their own damnation. Rom. ii. 4-6. On the other hand, if any, 
 heathens or others, can be saved by “honestly doing the best they 
 know,” they will “have whereof to boast,” and will have a right to march 
 up to heaven’s gates, flying the banner of “good works” and demand 
 admittance! 
 
 Then, consider what a reflection such a doctrine casts upon God’s 
 business capacity! I speak of Him, most reverently. I^ declares that 
 He has exhausted heaven’s treasury, plucked the pricmess jewel from 
 His own heart, and with “the Brightness of His own glory,” purchased 
 human salvation; and yet millions of men are saved by their own efforts 
 to “do the best they can, with the lights before them,” and buy their sal¬ 
 vation at a price infinitely cheaper than God has paid! The Omniscient God 
 has actually been out-traded, by some of His ignorant, finite creatures 
 and has spent His All, for what might have been, by Him, and by others 
 is, bought at an infinitely lower price! Such is the horrible absurdity 
 into which such a doctrine leads. 
 
 “But,” asks one, “do not the Scriptures declare that ‘the heathen are 
 a law unto themselves’ and that ‘they shall be beaten with few’stripes’ ”? 
 Let us see. “That servant which knew his lord’s will and prepared not 
 himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many 
 stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, 
 shall be beaten with few stripes,” Luke xii:47,48. There appears, here, 
 to be “no difference,” so far as the fact of punishment is concerned, 
 Neither is saved from punishment. “For there is no respect of persons, 
 
24 
 
 CENTEi^NlAL CELEBRATION 
 
 with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish* 
 without law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by 
 the law,” * * * “in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men^ 
 by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel,” Rom. ii:ll,12,16. Here, again, 
 it is manifest that “there is no difference.” Those who have not the 
 law “peris/i,” whether the “stripes” be “many”or “few,” and “the secrets 
 of (all) men are judged (alike) by Jesus Christ, according to the gospel.” 
 The heathen, then, who are “without the gospel,” are not justified by 
 that fact. If, as in the suppositional case, parenthetically introduced by 
 the apostle, “the Gentiles—or heathen—who have not the law, (should) 
 do, by nature, the things contained in the law, they (would be) a law 
 unto themselves, showing the work of the law written in their hearts’’ 
 and being “accused or excused by one another,” accordingly. Or, as 
 more accurately interpreted: “Whenever the heathen do * * * they 
 are a law unto themselves, * * * inasmuch as they show, etc. ” The 
 idea being, according to one of our foremost scholars, that “the heathen, 
 in every discrimination between right and wrong, show consciousness of 
 moral law and are, therefore, justly condemned for not keeping the law 
 they have.” 
 
 But the hypothetical case alluded to is impossible, in view of this 
 emphatic language, by the same inspired apostle who wrote the other 
 words: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not 
 subject to the law of God. neither indeed can be,” Rom. viii:7. Where, 
 in all history, is the record of a single man, who, “by nature did the 
 things contained in the law? ” I defy the ivorld to produce one example. The 
 purest heathen I ever heard of—Socrates—died a suicide—a deliberate 
 self-murderer! 
 
 I think the passages quoted in this connection do teach the doctrine of 
 ’‘‘‘degrees of pumshment,” but there can be no question that they also 
 emphasize the doctrine that all who cannot pass the test of judgment by 
 the gospel of Christ will be certainly and impartially punished. 
 
 The former doctrine just alluded to, is not a doctrine of grades. I 
 think the Scriptures indicate degrees of happiness in heaven, as well as 
 degrees of misery, in hell, the difference in experience of the one or the 
 other depending rather on capacity than position. A homely figure may 
 illustrate this point. A row of vessels, of different sizes, are placed 
 upon a shelf—one holding ten gallons, one five, one two and so on, down, 
 through quarts, pints and gills, to one that can hold only a thimbleful. 
 When filled, they are all/itZZ, the thimble vessel as full as the ten gallon 
 vessel—every one as full as it can be and all standing on the same level— 
 or grade—and yet the largest vessel contains many times more than the 
 smallest. The difference is one of capacity, altogether. That old saint 
 who has “spent and been spent,” in the service of God—for the dear 
 Lord’s sake—has buried all her loved ones and now, widowed and alone, 
 is dying in poverty, upon a pallet of straw—starved to death for the want 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 25 
 
 of both food add friendship, and yet who has been devoted and faithful 
 in all things, will possess a larger capacity for happiness, in heaven, 
 than many an orderly Christian who has been merely ‘‘correct in his 
 walk” and has suffered little or none, for Jesus’ sake. Just so, capacities 
 will differ, in the nether world, and, thus, there may be a difference in 
 the number oi “stripes”; but there can be “no difference” in the character 
 of the penalty, nor in the 'period of its duration—if the Scriptures are 
 true. 
 
 The Bible teaches salvation by “repentance and faith.” “In those 
 days, came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and 
 saying. Repent, ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” Matt. iii:l,2. 
 “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand—repent, ye, 
 and believe the gospel,” Mark i:15. “Now, God commandeth all men, 
 everywhere, to repent,” Acts xvii:30. “Except ye repent, ye shall all 
 perish,” Luke xiii:3. “John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach 
 baptism of repentance, for the remission of sins,” Mark i:4. “Testify¬ 
 ing, both to the Jews and also to the Greeks^ repentance toward God and 
 faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” Acts xx:21. (Now, every well- 
 informed person knows that the terms, “Gentiles.” “Greeks,” etc., as 
 used by New Testament writers, in contradistinction to “the Jews,” 
 mean the heathen. For example, “The gospel of Christ is the power of 
 God, unto salvation, to every one that believeth—to the Jew, first, and 
 also, to the Greek,” Rom. i:16.) Then, to continue: “Repent and be bap¬ 
 tized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of 
 sins,” Acts ii:38. (And many different nationalities of former heathens 
 had just before this, heard and heeded the same exhortation, from all 
 the apostles.) “Repent, ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins 
 may be blotted out,” Acts iii:19. “Thus it behooved thatjirepentance and 
 remission of sins should be preached in His name, among all nations, be¬ 
 ginning at Jerusalem,” Luke xxiv:47. 
 
 Now, it cannot justly he denied that the same “gospel of repentance and 
 faith” was ordained to be proclaimed to all people alike—“beginning at 
 Jerusalem,” obviously because it was necessary to commence, somewhere, 
 and God, in His absolute sovereignty, had seen fit to “elect” the Jews as 
 the first recipients of His divine message of salvation. 
 
 Now, “the gospel of ignorance, as Dr. Gibson calls it, is thus combated 
 and disposed of by the Scriptures. “For therein is the righteousness of 
 God revealed, from faith to faith; as it is written. The just shall live by 
 faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, against all un¬ 
 godliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unright¬ 
 eousness; because that which may be known of God is manifest in them— 
 for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, 
 from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the 
 things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they 
 are without excuse. Because that, when they knew God, they glorified 
 
26 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 Him not * * * and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into 
 an image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed 
 beasts and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up to un¬ 
 cleanness and, even as they did not like to retain God in their knowl¬ 
 edge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind,” Rom. i:17-28. “For we 
 have, before, proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin. 
 
 * * * There is none that seeketh after God * * * There is no fear 
 of God before their eyes. * * * Now we know that what things soever 
 the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth 
 may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. There¬ 
 fore, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight. 
 
 * * * 'pjjQ rig-bteousness of God is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all 
 and upon all that believe— for there is no difference —for all have sinned and 
 come short of the glory of God,” Rom. iii:9-23. “For, with the heart, 
 man believeth, unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is 
 made unto salvation; * * * for there is no difference between the 
 Jew and the Greek. * * * So, then, faith cometh by hearing and 
 hearing by the Word of God,” Rom. x: 10-17. ‘Tf any man sin, we have 
 an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous; and He is the 
 propitiation for our sins—and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the 
 whole world,''’ 1 Jno. ii:l,2. “Jesus answered. Verily, verily, I say unto 
 thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
 
 * * * That which is born of the flesh, is flesh, and that which is born 
 of the Spirit, is spirit. Marvel not, that I said unto thee. Ye must be 
 born again,” Jno. iii:3-7. “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, 
 is born of God,” 1 Jno. v:l. “He that hath the Son, hath life; and he 
 that hath not the Son of God, hath oiot life,” 1 Jno. v.T2. “Beeause He 
 hath appointed^a day, in the which; He will judge the world, in right¬ 
 eousness, by that man whom He hath ordained; whereof. He hath given 
 assurance unto all men, in that Ho hath raised Him from the dead,” 
 Acts xvii:31. 
 
 How can any man stand before this tidal wave of Scripture, declaring 
 with all the emphasis of Divine inspiration, the essentiality to salvation, of 
 repentance and faith in Christ, and the necessity of a “?^e^o birth,''' and still 
 maintain that the heathen are saved by virtue of ignorance f 
 
 Some of us have been challenged to prove the affirmative of the propo¬ 
 sition before us, by the Bible. I have given you the Scriptures, by 
 which Paul declares that it is proved. Now no man can safely gainsay 
 the teaching of God’s Word. There is no dearth of proof-texts. The 
 question, with me, has been and still is. How little, out of the abundance, 
 to content myself with. I find no pleasure in contemplating the woeful 
 condition of the benighted heathen; but I must accept the declarations 
 of God, howsoever saddening to my soul. 
 
 And then, heartsick and sorrowful, in the midst of the gloom, I turn 
 and scan the heavens, for a ray of light. Nor do I look in vain. “Arise! 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 27 
 
 shine! for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon 
 thee. The Gentiles shall come to thy light and kings to the brightness 
 of thy rising. Thy sons shall come from far and thy daughters shall be 
 nursed at thy side,” Isa. 60:1,3,4. Into the “gross darkness,” light is 
 streaming, from the glorious personality of the promised Messiah. A 
 Savior who, although a Jew, felt the blood of Gentiles coursing through 
 His veins and in His Moabite ancestress, Ruth, was literally akin to the 
 heathen world. 
 
 In Him, an adequate redemption is provided and the mortgage of Satan 
 may be lifted. An arrangement is perfected for our rescue “out of the 
 snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him, at his will,” 2 Tim. 
 ii:26, and although all men in common with the Apostle Paul, are “car¬ 
 nal (and by nature) sold under sin,” Rom. vii:14, we anticipate freedom, 
 in the assurance of Him who spoke in the prophecy: “The Spirit of the 
 Lord God is upon me, because che Lord hath anointed me to preach good 
 tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, 
 to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound,” Isa. lxi:l. 
 
 But are we concerned in this matter, any farther than in our own 
 emancipation? If it is true that “we are workers together with God,” 
 2 Cor. vi:l, we are. The heathen are lost. There is no way “unto the 
 Father, but by (Christ),” Jno. xiv:6. “Without faith (in Christ), it is 
 impossible to please (God),” Heb. xi:6. “How shall they (the unregen¬ 
 erate of the world) call on Him, in whom they have not believed? and 
 
 how shall they believe in Him, of whom they have not heard? and how 
 
 « 
 
 shall they hear, without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except 
 they be sent? * * * So, then, faith cometh by hearing and hearing 
 by the Word of God,” Rom. x:14-17. This is God’s plan of redemption. 
 If we have the Truth, it is our duty “to make known the mystery of the 
 gospel,’’ Eph..vi:19; for, “according to the commandment of the ever¬ 
 lasting God (this mystery, Rom. xvi:25, must be) made known to all na¬ 
 tions, for the obedience of faith,'' Rom. xvi:26. The parable of “The Good 
 Samaritan,” Luke x:27-37, shows us who is our neighbor and our duty to 
 him. According to that, “I am debtor, both to the Greeks and to the 
 Barbarians—both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me 
 is, I” (should be) “ready to preach the gospel to (those) that are in 
 (heathen) Rome, also,” Rom. i:14,15. If I cannot “po,” I must ^^send." 
 This is the Spirit of Christ, and “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
 he is none of His," Rom. viii:9. God says to His people, “Ye are not your 
 own—for ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God, in your 
 body and in your spirit, which are God’s,” 1 Cor. vi:19,20. “Whereunto, 
 He called you, by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ,” 2 Thess, ii:14. The question of our fidelity is raised in 
 this issue. “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you,” 
 Jno. xv:14. “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” Jno. xiv:15. “If 
 
28 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 a man love me, he will keep my words,” Jno. xiv:23. What is His part¬ 
 ing commandment? “Go, ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing 
 them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” 
 Matt. xxviii:19. As this is the test of our friendship, so it is the condition, 
 upon which is based the assurance of His continual presence with us: “And, 
 lo! I am with you, alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” Matt. 
 xxviii:20. “Go, bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the 
 ends of the earth. Let all the nations be gathered. * * * And they 
 shall bring all your brethren, for an offering unto the Lord, out of all 
 nations,'' Isa. xliii:6-9. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
 preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations,” Matt. xxiv:14. 
 “Thou art my Son * * * and I shall give thee the heathen for thine 
 inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth, for thy possession,” 
 Ps. ii:7,8; “The kingdoms of this world (shall) become the kingdoms of 
 our Lord and of His Christ,” Rev. xi:15; “For, after that, in the wisdom 
 of God, the world, by (its) wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the 
 foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe," 1 Cor. i:21. But “how 
 , shall (the heathen) hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, 
 except they be sent?” Rom. x:14,15. 
 
 We have been listening to mingled promises and warnings, but now 
 the warnings deepen: “Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my 
 Father which is in heaven,” Matt. vii:21. “For whosoever shall do the 
 will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister,” 
 Matt. xii:50. “Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not (my will) 
 unto one of the least (most obscure) of these (the needy), ye did it not 
 unto me,” Matt. xxv:45. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it 
 not, to him, it is sin,” .James iv:17. “If the watchman see the sword 
 come, and blow not the trumpet and the people be not warned, if the 
 sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in 
 his iniquity—but his blood will be required at the watchman’s hand. 
 When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die! if 
 thou dost not speak, to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man 
 shall die in his iniquity—but his blood will I require at thine hand," 
 Ezek. xxxiii:6,8. 
 
 The heathen, like all other men, by nature, are -according to the 
 Scriptures. 2'he gospel offers the only means of salvation provided for any 
 man —according to the Scriptures. We have received “the unspeakable 
 gift,” 2 Cor. ix:15, and we can refuse to offer its provisions to our be¬ 
 nighted neighbor, only at our own pm7—according to the Scriptures. 
 What should we do? “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in 
 all the world.” If we will not carry it, or send it, we shall be removed out 
 of the way and others will accept the mission. The avalanche is coming 
 and if we oppose it, or merely stand still, in the way, we shall be swept from 
 the face of the earth I The Lord ’'will work and who shall hinder it?” 
 Isa. xliii:13. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 29 
 
 But the doctrine has been promulgated, that “the commission expired 
 with the last one of the eleven disciples who witnessed the Lord’s 
 ascension! ” That is the last dodge of impotent heterodoxy! If that be true, 
 why did “the eleven” immediately elect Matthias to the vacancy left by 
 Judas? and that, too, under the express command of^Jesus that there 
 “must one be ordained to be a witness with (them) of His resurrection,” 
 Acts i:22. With the same propriety, could it be claimed that the 
 “Lord’s Supper” was to be celebrated only by “the eleven”—“till He 
 come,” 1 Cor. xi:26. If that doctrine be true, why did Paul go out as a 
 * missionary to the heathen, twenty years later? Why, too, did Barnabas 
 and Silas and others engage in similar undertakings? Above all, why 
 did Jesus promise to be with those to whom the commission was given, 
 “alway, even unto the end of the world? ” Were “the eleven” to live in 
 the world until the end of it? If so, where are they yiow? The expression, 
 literally translated, reads, “through all the days,” etc. Where are “the 
 eleven,” in these days? Are they still “going everywhere, preaching the 
 Word” and perpetuating the Supper, “in remembrance of (Him)?” I 
 denounce the heresy and I am gravely suspicious of its teachers. 
 
 In support of the assumption that the commission expired with “the 
 eleven,” it is urged that “signs were to follow” their preaching (Mark 
 xvi:l7,18), and as such “signs” do not follow the converts of present day 
 missionaries, that, therefore, they are not Divinely authorized to under¬ 
 take such work. . As well might it be claimed that all those who have 
 been “preaching the Word,” from the day of Timothy down to the pres¬ 
 ent time, have proceeded without the Divine warrant, because, forsooth, 
 the miraoifes which attended the ministry of Jesus, whose call (Acts 
 xiii;2), they profess to obey, do not accompany their ministry. Miracles 
 were deemed necessary to attest the Divinity of Christ, Jno. iv:48, and 
 miracles appear also to have been deemed necessary, for a time after the 
 Savior’s death, to prove to gainsayers that His Divine power was not 
 extinguished in the sepulchre, Acts ii:43; vi:8. That is all. The Lord 
 thus rebukes those who demand supernatural manifestations, where God 
 does not see proper to give them, of His own accord: “An evil and adul¬ 
 terous generation seeketh after a sign and there shall no sign be given,” 
 Matt. xii:39. The power of His presence was promised to His ministers, 
 “through all the days”— not the proof of that power, in miracles. 
 
 Some endeavor to drag the question of infant salvation into this issue; 
 but it is no more involved herein than is the question of church disci¬ 
 pline, or of Lord’s Day observance. Sufficient reason for believing that 
 infants are saved is to be found in the Scriptures— the children of heathens, 
 as well as others —but we are discussing the question, as it affects persons 
 of maturer years. And this is, doubtless, well understood by those cav- 
 ilers who spring the other question, solely to complicate the case. 
 
 Now, upon the real issue, let us hear the testimony of Dr. Graves, whose 
 residence of over thirty years among the heathen renders valuable his 
 
30 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 evidence, upon the question under discussion. “What,” he asks, “is the 
 condition of the heathen? Where will you find the men ‘who do the 
 best they know how’? Heathen sages deny that there are any such men. 
 The heathen admit that their sins far outweigh their morality. If men 
 are saved on account of their morality, the whole gospel system is a mis¬ 
 take and we are saved by works, and not by grace. While God has 
 ‘included all under sin,’ He has also provided a remedy for all. Yet its 
 application is made dependent upon human agency. The Bible clearly 
 teaches that the salvation of all men depends on their ‘hearing’ and ‘be¬ 
 lieving’ the gospel. How great the responsibility, resting upon us! ' 
 What is the doom of the heathen? Lost! lost! without the gospel. 
 What will be our doom, if we withhold it from them”? 
 
 Not that anything “can separate from the love of God in Christ,” 
 Rom. viii:39. God’s “elect” cannot be “plucked out of His hand.” Jno. 
 x;28,29. But the question is. Are those who close their eyes against the plain 
 teachings of the Bible, or who willfully disobey those teachings, when under¬ 
 stood, of the elect, at all? It is high time to cease palavering. We have 
 heard quite enough about “our good brethren who do not agree with us 
 upon the subject of missions.” God’s peoj)la may ignorantly fall short of 
 duty, in many particulars, but “the true Israel of God” will not persist in 
 willful disobedience. 
 
 In opposition to foreign missions, it has been falsely said that it costs 
 ten dollars to convey ten cents to the heathen, and a great complaint has 
 been made against “so much machinery,” in our missionary enterprises. 
 Our boards correspond to directorates in railroads, banks and other 
 legitimate enterprises, our secretaries correspond to their ^fecretaries, 
 cashiers, etc., and no large business, of any kind, can be successfully 
 conducted, without such officials. Our officials are Christian gentlemen. 
 How dare any man charge them with dishonesty, or a misappropriation 
 of funds. The expense of the “machinery” is comparatively small and the 
 difference (in our favor) in value between domestic currency and foreign 
 exchange is sometimes sufficient to pay all expenses and still leave a premium 
 to be added to the original contribution. I noticed this difference in money 
 values, particularly, on two different visits to Mexico, six or seven years 
 apart. On one of those visits, I found that a United States dollar was 
 worth one dollar twelve a half cents in Mexican money, of purer silver. 
 At that time, you might have rolled your missionary dollar toward 
 Mexico and after paying all commissions, it would have entered the coun¬ 
 try of the Montezumas, worth seven or eight or, possibly, nine cents 
 more than it was when it left your hand I And to-day, as I am reliably in¬ 
 formed, the premium is from thirty-five to thirty-nine per cent.! And a 
 similar state of things is said to be true, with referenco to some other 
 foreign countries. “What hath God wrought,” to rebuke gainsayers and 
 cavilers I 
 
 Even if the false allegation referred to were true, it would furnish no 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 31 
 
 proof that the heathen are not lost, without the gospel, but would only- 
 show that their evangelization is more difficult, to us, than we have found 
 it really to be. And, further, even if it should cost one-half the money 
 contributed—or three-fourths, or nine-tenths —to make the remainder 
 available, in sustaining missionaries and providing the heathen with the 
 printed gospel, it would he money well spent. Statistics show that souls 
 are thus saved— AND who can estimate the value of a human 
 SOUL? 
 
 Rev. John Newcomb, missionary for twelve years among 
 the Telugns, gave some interesting facts concerning his field. 
 During the past year, three thousand converts have been 
 baptized. The Christians come, for the most part, from the 
 lowest caste, who are dirty and down-trodden. But Chris¬ 
 tianity leads to cleanliness and honesty. Bro. Newcomb has 
 been informed that so far during the great famine on the 
 Cumbum field, not one of the eight thousand converts has 
 gone back to heathenism. Out of the depth of their poverty 
 they made a present of fifty rupees to Bro. Newcomb on his 
 departure for America. 
 
32 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 I 
 
 SECOND DAY. 
 
 Monday Morning, October 3. 
 
 At 9:30 o’clock devotional exercises were held, The sing¬ 
 ing was under the leadership of Capt. John H. Weller, who 
 selected the old* hymns and sang them with spirit. Prayer 
 was made by Brethren J. S. Coleman, J. Wm. Jones, John 
 R. Sampey, W. H. Williams and Robert Ryland. 
 
 Rev. W. H. Williams, D.D., of the Central Baptist, being 
 called out by Dr. Ryland, made a speech of encouragement. 
 He reminded us that modern missions in England began in a 
 cobbler’s shop, and in America beside a hay-stack. We ought 
 to draw encouragement from the promises of God and from 
 the privilege of prayer. 
 
 Dr. Tichenor,' Secretary of the Home Board, spoke on 
 
 THE NEEDS OF THE HOME MISSION BO|^RD. 
 
 At the last session of the Southern Baptist Convention, the State 
 Board of Louisiana memorialized it with reference to the great destitu¬ 
 tion in that State. The facts contained in that memorial were not over¬ 
 stated, the picture was not overdrawn and the conclusion reached was 
 that in the State of Louisiana, with only about one million of people, two 
 hundred and fifty thousand of its inhabitants were living and dying with¬ 
 out the gospel. The request they made of the Convention was that the 
 Home Mission Board should, if possible, appropriate to the State of 
 Louisiana, during the coming year, not less than Ten Thousand Dollars. 
 This would have been a small sum compared to its needs. Ten Thousand 
 Dollars to supply the spiritual destitution of two hundred and fifty thou¬ 
 sand souls—Ten Dollars for each two hundred and fifty—One Dollar for 
 each twenty-five—four cents apiece to meet their spiritual necessities. 
 Surely, the most economical among our brethren would not deem this an 
 extravagant supply. 
 
 * 
 
 No opportunity was given in the Convention to compare the needs of 
 Louisiana with those of any other part of our territory. Had there 
 Jpeen, it would have been easy to show that Louisiana was not the most 
 destitute of the fields of the Home Mission Board. There is a large 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 33 
 
 scope of country equally as needy, and some parts of it whose spiritual 
 necessities far exceed those of that State. I do not hesitate to say that 
 the destitution of Arkansas, though not confined to one particular part 
 of the State as it is in Louisiana, but scattered throughout its entire do¬ 
 main, is fully equal to that of Louisiana. 
 
 Then the German population in Missouri, located along the valley of 
 the great Missouri river, stretching from St. Louis to Kansas City, 
 nearly eight hundred thousand in number, among whom no Baptist or¬ 
 ganization is at work except the Home Mission Board of the Southern 
 Baptist Convention, presents to us a destitution far greater than that of 
 Louisiana. In the equitable distribution of the funds committed to it by 
 the churches, the Home Mission Board has been able to furnish to this 
 field only about $4,000 per annum. $4,000 for eight hundred thousand 
 people—$4.00 for every eight hundred—four cents for every eight—one- 
 half a cent a piece is all the Board has been able to give to relieve the 
 spiritual wants of these people. 
 
 Then look at the Indian Territory, at Oklahoma, at the Pan Handle 
 of Texas, at the territory bordering on the Rio Grande, and you have a 
 field of destitution a thousand miles long and five hundred miles wide, 
 whose spiritual needs are surely equal if not greater than those of 
 Louisiana. 
 
 Florida, from Jacksonville to Pensacola, and from St. Augustine to 
 Key West, is almost one unbroken field for missionary effort. 
 
 Cuba, with an area equal to the State of Alabama, and with a popula¬ 
 tion fully as great, is occupied by us only in and near its great capital 
 city, Havarfft. The whole island is open to us, and several of its princi¬ 
 pal cities are crying to us for help. Cein Puegos, Santa Clara, Cardenas, 
 Puerto Principe and other points have appealed to us to come over and 
 help them. The meager resources of the Board have scarcely enabled 
 it to sustain the mission work already organized in that island. We are 
 spending about $6,000 per annum to sustain the missionaries among the 
 millions that look to us for help. That was a remarkable providence 
 which seems to have thrown the entire work of spreading the gospel in 
 this island upon the Southern Baptist Convention. Missions had been 
 planted in Havana, and possibly at other points, by other denominations. 
 The Episcopalians have tried to evangelize Cuba, but their efforts have 
 proved unsuccessful, and they have abandoned the field. The Presby¬ 
 terians followed their example with a like result. The Methodists have 
 accomplished nothing. After the planting and the successful beginning 
 of our Baptiit missions, the other denominations were encouraged to 
 renew their efforts, but so far the results have not been encouraging. 
 God seems to have commited to our Baptist people the evangelization of 
 this island. The marvelous providences by which He has opened to us 
 these doors of usefulness, and furnished us men from among the native 
 population to carry forward this great workj njust strike every mind as 
 
34 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 the most remarkable indication of His will that we, to say the least of it, 
 shall lead all others in the overthrow of that ecclesiastical despotism 
 which for centuries has held in its chains of galling bondage the souls 
 and bodies of men and women living upon that beautiful island. 
 
 That other remarkable providence by which God centuries ago brought 
 into the midst of this fair land of ours and associated with our people, 
 the African race in the development of our material interest, and made 
 many of them domestics at our firesides—that bound these two races to¬ 
 gether in bounds of mutual sympathy so strong that it required the over¬ 
 throw of revolution, and the thunderbolts of war to tear them asunder, 
 points out our duty to them so clearly that even the blind must see it. 
 The history of the wqrld presents no picture of two unequal races dwell¬ 
 ing together as master and slave in such relations of kindliness and 
 strong attachment, the one to the other. To those of us who were reared 
 in those times when the institution of slavery existed, there’s many a 
 picture evoked by memory from our childhood days, bright and gorgeous 
 in its hues, and yet the dark faces of this alien race are found in every 
 scene. 
 
 They watched over our cradle slumbers, they taught us the first steps 
 of childhood, they hushed our wayward cries, and with their own 
 peculiar melodies they sung us to our rosy rest on their dusky bosoms. 
 They watched with delighted eyes our growing manhood, they rejoiced 
 at our marriage festivities. They sat during the long dreary night at 
 the bedside of our stricken ones, unwearied in their watching, they 
 robed the precious clay for its long, dreamless sleep, and with hearts 
 touched with the tenderest emotions and deepest sorrow th^ followed it 
 to the spot where it rests until the resurrection morn. When the bloody 
 strife came, and our homes were stripped to furnish solders for the 
 tented field, the mistress who with the children were left to conduct the 
 affairs of the great plantation, found safety and plenty as the result of 
 the industry of slaves and the black man’s fidelity to his owner. 
 
 Much had been done for him physically, intellectually, morally and 
 spiritually during the days of his bondage. He had been eldvated from 
 a savage of the lowest type up to the dignity of a man. His physical 
 proportions had expanded under the generous treatment of his owner, 
 and his intelligence and morality had increased by contact with a 
 higher race. He had been welcomed to the same sanctuary, to the same 
 religious services, to the same baptism and the same communion table 
 which conveyed their holy lessons to the master as well as the slave. 
 
 But since he has become a freeman and is invested with all the rights 
 and privileges of an American citizen, since after the days of his tutelage 
 at our fireside, he goes out into the larger field of duty to prepare him¬ 
 self for the higher walks and greater responsibitities of life, new oppor¬ 
 tunities of helpfulness to' him open themselves to us. 
 
 With reference to this race we may truly say that its history is but 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 35 
 
 beg’un. That providence which brought so many thousands of them to 
 our shores, and which under the civilizing influence of their owners 
 have developed them up to their present position of manhood, is but a 
 prophecy of what God intends to do with them in the great scheme of 
 the world’s redemption. How He designs to employ them in the accom¬ 
 plishment of His great purpose, is one of the inscrutable mysteries which 
 no human wisdom can discern. Whether they are to remain forever in 
 this land living, side by side, with the white people that inhabit it, or 
 whether at some future day they are to be transplanted to the land of 
 their forefathers, it is not in our power to determine. Whether the 
 seven millions of them shall send out missionaries and teachers who shall 
 instruct the dark tribes of Africa and win them to the Master, or 
 whether this whole host shall under his guiding hand cross the ocean to 
 conquer Africa for our King, we cannot foresee. But we are sure He 
 will make these people of such strange history no unimportant factor in 
 the liberation of the world from its bondage of sin. Since their freedom, 
 such have been our own necessities, and such the calls of our own people 
 for spiritual aid, that we have been able to do but little for them. But 
 the time has come when we must address ourselves with greater earnest¬ 
 ness and diligence to the task that lies before us. These seven millions 
 of people ought not, and if we do our duty to them will not, be left to 
 their own unaided efforts to make higher attainments, and to be fitted for 
 the mission that God has in store for them. AVe must stretch forth to 
 them a helping hand, and by the multiplied means which God has placed 
 in our power improve alike their physical, mental, moral and spiritual 
 condition. ♦ 
 
 There is another wide field which may justly claim our attention. 
 Draw a line from the northwestern corner of Alabama southeast to Co¬ 
 lumbus, Ga., then northeast to Washington City, then northwest to 
 Wheeling, then southwest to the point of beginning, and this line 
 will enclose an area of country notable for the variety and vastness 
 of resources. It would include the great body of the Appalachian 
 coal field. Throughout it would extend from one end to the other 
 the great fields of iron ore of the continent. Along its center runs 
 from • Pennsylvania to Alabama that great lime-stone valley known 
 in its northern part as the Valley of Virginia. This area contains every 
 metal and mineral known to human science. It holds a sufficient 
 supply of hard woods for the western hemisphere. Its water power 
 is capable of turning ten times the machinery of the world. On its 
 northwestern side lie the great grain fields of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 
 and the blue grass region of Kentucky and Tennessee. South and 
 east of it is the great cotton belt of the continent. Its seaports are Bal¬ 
 timore, Norfolk, Wilmington, Charleston and Savannah. An area com¬ 
 prising such vast and varied resources is found nowhere else. It is the^ 
 gem which the hand of Ornnipotence has laid upon the bosom of the con¬ 
 tinent. 
 
36 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 This vast reg-ion is filled with our Baptist people—their churches are 
 found in almost every valley—perhaps two hundred and fifty thousand 
 of our denomination live within it. But in many parts of it their 
 churches are small, inactive, undeveloped, with little opportunity for in¬ 
 tellectual culture —their membership having no high ideals of Christian 
 life, and no teachers fitted to stimulate them to Christian duty. More 
 than three-fourths of all the professing Christians within these limits 
 belong to our denomination. 
 
 A change is coming over the face of this country. Capital is being at¬ 
 tracted by its magnificent promises. Railroads are penetrating it in 
 every direction. Many of its towns and cities are already growing 
 rapidly. New centers of manufacturing and commercial interest will be 
 established, and the day is not distant when there will be such develop¬ 
 ment of its wealth as will astonish the world. To retain the hold we 
 have upon this population requires immediate and active exertion upon 
 our part. The influences that are giving new life to this vast country, 
 bring along with them opinions and religious thoughts that antagonize 
 our own, and unless our Baptist churches are so strenghtened by higher 
 intellectual and spiritual development as to meet these influences, they 
 must go down before them, and this richest part of our heritage be lost 
 to us as a denomination, possibly forever. 
 
 What they need, in many places, is better houses of worship, better 
 schools for the training of their children, preachers of broader views, 
 men of wider outlook and better understanding of the needs of their 
 people. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent among its population 
 will in days to come yield ample renumeration even for so large an ex¬ 
 penditure. This mine abounding in jewels and precious gems we will 
 surely lose if we much longer continue our neglect of its riches and its 
 future value to our country. 
 
 Some of our brethren who dwell in realms etherial, and who hardly 
 ever descend from their lofty heights so as to come in contact with 
 things that are of the earth earthy, have kindly criticized our Board for 
 such frequent references to our material developments and the coming 
 prosperity of our country. They have never seemed to learn that 
 material development is the basis of their civilization. Even our 
 churches, the most spiritual and active of all, we have, grow up amidst 
 these industries that fashion these materials for the uses of man. 
 
 Just as the lily rooting itself in mud and slime develops the life which 
 it enfolds into leaves of emerald beauty, and flowers more glorious than 
 the vestments of Solomon, so our churches planted in the midst of the 
 most active development of material interests, bloom with the beauty 
 and are laden with the fruitage that we find nowhere else. We need no 
 better illustration of this than can be found in your own State of Ken- 
 i tucky. All the active churches that support the great enterprise of the 
 denomination, arc to be found in your lovely bluegrass country, and in 
 
* 
 
 <$ 
 
 OF MODERN MISSIONS. 37 
 
 other parts of your State of equal fertility, while the churches of your 
 mountain region, where no such development is found, remain for the 
 most part in ignorance and inactivity far* below the demands of Chris¬ 
 tian duty. 
 
 But what the Home Mission Board needs for its work to-day is but a 
 fragment of what it will need in the years that are so rapidly coming 
 upon us. The history of this country of ours teems with marvelous 
 facts, and none among them are more striking than the rapid increase of 
 our population, and the more rapid increase of our wealth. 
 
 Little more than two centuries have passed since the first European 
 colony established itself upon the shores of the Atlantic. In that time 
 this country has not only equaled in the riches of its development the 
 power and glory of our mother country, but has exceeded in riches and 
 power the Roman Empire, the mightiest that ever existed upon this 
 foot-stool of God. American enterprise in these two hundred and fifty 
 years has, in the grandeuc of its developments, eclipsed all that Rome 
 did in the seven hundred and fifty years of her dominance over the 
 nations. 
 
 The present census shows that the population of the United States is 
 little short of sixty-five millions. Within the last decade fifteen millions 
 have been added to the number of its inhabitants. Statisticians tell us 
 that during the next decade the average increase will not be less than 
 two millions per annum, or twenty millions during ten years. The year 
 1900 will find the soil of America sustaining not less than eighty-five 
 millions souls. 
 
 Our increase of wealth has been even more marvelous than our in¬ 
 crease of population. In 1880, the wealth of the United States had be¬ 
 come equal to that of Great Britain, about $44,000,000,000, measuring the 
 value of the property owned by each of these two countries. The census 
 of 1890 shows that during the last decade the increase of the wealth of 
 the United States has been $20,000,000,000, more than forty per cent^ 
 upon the amount which had been accumulated from the settlement of the 
 country to the year 1880. 
 
 A nation with such illimitable resources, and such augmentation of its 
 powers, both in numbers and its industrial resources, becomes the most 
 striking figure among the peoples of the globe. Its influence upon the 
 destiny of the world is simply incalculable. 
 
 If the present ratio of the increase of the population shall continue, in 
 thirty years, from 1890, there will be found within our territory one hun¬ 
 dred and twenty-five millions of people. These people are to be cared 
 for—their religious wants must be supplied. The twenty millions com¬ 
 ing within the next decade will demand the multiplication of our 
 churches, the increase of the number of our houses of worship and the 
 enlargement of the facilities that look to the supply of our spiritual 
 needs. The one hundred and twenty-five millions that in less than the 
 
38 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 life time of a single generation will come to crowd our shores, will re¬ 
 quire for their spiritual enlightenment and religious training, an in¬ 
 creased activity and a liberality such as our people have never known. 
 With this increase of population comes the greater increase of those 
 appliances which multiply the products of human labor, and augment 
 the wealth of our land. 
 
 Let us dwell for a moment upon these striking facts. It is evident to 
 any one who thinks, that the average worker of to-day is capable of 
 accomplishing far more than the average worker of thirty years ago. 
 Such have been the marvelous inventions of the age, and so rapidly have 
 labor-saving machines been multiplied, that it is short of the truth to 
 say that the worker of to-day can do twice as much work as the same 
 man could have accomplished thirty years ago. If the same ratio of in¬ 
 crease of these appliances shall continue for the next thirty years, what 
 a startling fact stares us in the face. 
 
 With our population doubled so as to equal one hundred and twenty- 
 five millions, and our machinery so increased as to double the product of 
 human industry, we will have a nation capable of producing four times 
 the present product of our country. The amount of surplus thousands 
 created, over and above the wants of our people, must produce the 
 grandest commerce the world ever saw. Discarding all that we now 
 send abroad, if the consumption per capita of our people should remain 
 the same, we will then have a surplus arising from the industries of the 
 land equal to twice our present production. If the consumption per capita 
 should be increased fifty per cent., there will then remain an amount 
 which must be sent abroad, or perish on our hands, equal to the whole of 
 the present products of the industries of our country. 
 
 Imagine, if we can, how many and how great must be the leviathans 
 of the type needed to transfer across the ocean to other lands so vast an 
 amount. Compared with them, all the fleets that ever swept the seas 
 from the day that Tyre from her island home sent her ships through 
 Gibraltar into the wide Atlantic, down to the present hour, will be in¬ 
 significant. 
 
 The question will arise in thoughtful minds, where will such a vast 
 commerce find a market? Not in Western Europe, for their civilization 
 and their products are alike our own. As two merchants, or two far¬ 
 mers, or two blacksmiths trade little with each other, so two nations of 
 similar civilization create little commerce. It is among the nations 
 whose products are unlike our own that this market must be found. 
 Some of these products will go to supply the wants of the two hundred 
 millions of Africa, some of them will go to the islands of the sea, some 
 to Mexico, some to South America. But after all, the great bulk of our 
 exports must find a market among the five hundred millions of people 
 who trade down to the Pacific on the other side. Such will be the need 
 of increasing in their land the consumption of the products of our own, 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 39 
 
 that their rivers must be opened, and their highways must be lengthened 
 until access can be had to the habitation of the man who lives furthest 
 from us on*the face of this great globe. This commerce, bounded by no 
 zone, and restrained by no obstacle, surmounting every natural difficulty 
 and overriding every political restriction will encompass the globe. 
 
 This commerce will bear with it the moral impress of our people. It 
 will be charged with the vices of our corrupt civilization, or it will be 
 perrneated by the influence of the gospel of Christ. According as it 
 shall be, either the one or the other, will it prove either a savor of life 
 unto life, or of death unto death to the nations. The outlook is over¬ 
 whelming. Thirty years and these things shall be—thirty years, and 
 the destiny of the world will be in the hands of the American people— 
 thirty years, and our commerce will be the vehicle which conveys light, 
 life and salvation to the nations or on the hands of those who absorbed 
 in greed and gain, will prove the vampires of the world that satiating 
 their desires with blood of our humanity. We stand appalled before 
 such a picture—we tremble at the responsibility which these years will 
 bring to our country and our children. We cover,our faces to hide from 
 us, if we may, the dreadful responsibility that falls upon us. Thirty years, 
 and these things shall be. The men who are to be the actors in this last 
 great drama of the world, are the children who now sleep in their cra¬ 
 dles, and the boys that gather at our firesides. The moulding influences 
 that for the next ten years shall go out from our churches, our Sunday- 
 schools and our homes will decide the question whether this great giant 
 of our country, whose shadow looms through the mist of coming years 
 shall prove an angel of light, scattering peace and'joy to the ends of the 
 world as the harbinger of our coming King, or whether he shall prove a 
 demon whose accursed thirst for gold shall bind the nations in bonds, 
 such as never before fettered our humanity, and gorge himself with the 
 blood of the slain and the spoils of the captives. 
 
 Such a view of the coming future appeals to every heart with un¬ 
 wonted power. Let our churches awake—let every child of God bestir 
 himself to so mould the Christian character of our people that this last 
 grand empire of the globe shall be the messenger that bears to the na¬ 
 tions the tidings of redemption, and the herald that shall announce “the 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 
 
 Dr. J. W. Warder, Secretary of Missions in Kentucky, 
 spo'Ae, saying that he hoped that the stirring address of Dr. 
 Tichenor would increase our contributions. 
 
40 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBEATION 
 
 W. Pope Yeaman, S. T. D. of Missouri, discussed 
 
 AMERICA AS A FACTOR IN MISSION WOFJK. 
 
 (An ex tempore address, reproduced by request of the Committee.) 
 
 Mr. Chairman: 
 
 It has been a question with me how to compress the discussion of this 
 vast field of thought within the limits authoritatively prescribed. But my 
 distinguished friend, Dr. Tichenor, has relieved me of this perplexity 
 by coming over on the ground surveyed and bounded to me, and work¬ 
 ing it with his silver-coated and gold-mounted plow. I shall, therefore, 
 confine myself to such corners as could not be reached by his powerful 
 traction engine. 
 
 America as a Factor in Mission Work! What are we to understand 
 by America? Do we mean the Western half of the globe? If so, we 
 may stand appalled by the immensity of the field. A vast bi-continent 
 territory; a multitudinous population of diversity of tongues and uncon¬ 
 genial social institutions. So we mean the North American Continent? 
 Then we may well cry: Who is sufficient for these things? We look to 
 the Canadas, and behold! A mixed population with every shade of be¬ 
 lief and unbelief. Do we turn our eyes to the Republic of Mexico? 
 There we see crystalized ignorance and traditional religious corruption. 
 Shall we journey to our own Alaska to encounter avarice, savagery, and 
 brutish humanity? What a field these outlying wastes for sacrificing 
 missionary enterprise. But are we to limit our observations to the 
 States and Territories, of this great North American Republic? This 
 seem quite a limitation, yet how limitless the field! What opportuni¬ 
 ties; what obstacles! What prosperity; what hindrances! What fear¬ 
 ful obligations, what indifference! 
 
 But shall we of these United States call ourselves America? Are 
 we Americans more than the Canadians ? Have not the de¬ 
 scendants of the Aztecs and the surviving posterity of the Aborigi¬ 
 nal Indian better title to the designation American than have we, 
 the offspring of staid Puritans and chivalric cavalier? The United 
 States—a social, political, and religious'phenomenon. Our growth a 
 surprise, our institutions a marvel, and our prowess the dread of older 
 civilizations. 
 
 Contemporaneous with America’s celebration of the four hundredth 
 year of Columbus’ discovery, is the honoring of the Centennial of Or¬ 
 ganized Modern Christian Missions. Are not these incidents and coin¬ 
 cidents in the history of progress suggestive of the orderings of Divine 
 Providence in things pertaining to the Kingdom of Christ? Can we in¬ 
 telligently contemplate the Gospel apart from the history of progress? 
 The sublime pathos of the Gospel is its proposition to uplift humanity 
 from its self-imposed degradation through human instrumentality. The 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 41 
 
 Gospel contemplates nothing short of the redemption and reclamation 
 of the earth to the glory of God, and this through the agency of the 
 Church of -Christ. 
 
 The field of missionary operations is the world, God is the power, 
 Christ the inspiration, and man the worker. This enterprise startled 
 angels and transformed the hearts of men. God loves the world without 
 regard to races or nationalities. In man’s relation to law, and in the meth¬ 
 ods of redemption from its course, “there is no difference—there is neither 
 Jew nor Greek,” Barbarian or Sythian, bond or free. Nevertheless, if 
 we trace the designs of God in the handwriting of Providence we find 
 the Jew first, then the Gentile. So we find also the geographical dis¬ 
 tribution, first the East and then the West. Westward is the course of 
 empire. Good Bishop Berkely prophecied further than he knew. The 
 forces of progress are ever Westward. In a single century we see the 
 movement of power from the East to the West of our empire Republic. 
 
 The settlement of the North American Continent by Christian people 
 may be fairly interpreted a providential arrangement for the more sure 
 and rapid enlightenment of the nations of the earth. The imperfect 
 civilizations of the Old World had become so faff corrupted and so far 
 removed from the simplicity of the Gospel that a new people, new in¬ 
 stitutions, fresh inspirations—a “New World” was needed for the pur¬ 
 pose of holding the truth, and giving it in its purity to the benighted 
 regions of the “Old World.” 
 
 It is a truth of man’s nature that superiority must dominate inferior¬ 
 ity. In the relations of human life the weak are dependent upon the 
 strong. It is furthermore true that, for the superior races of man, po¬ 
 litical freedom is necessary to the largest civil progress and highest 
 Christian attainment. There can be no true development of a race 
 innately progressive where there is not freedom of thought and con¬ 
 science—the mind must not be held insubordinate subjection to civil or 
 ecclesiastical autocracy or monarchy. Religious liberty, guaranteed by 
 civil institutions, is necessary to that freedom of conscience upon which 
 depends Christian development. Religious freedom — a benediction 
 from Baptists to America—makes it the world’s greatest Christian land. 
 American institutions educate the American heart to the largest hu¬ 
 manity. Out of this, under the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, comes 
 the largest spirit of Missions. 
 
 The blessings which Providence has so munificently bestowed upon 
 America in making of it the land and home of the free; in lavishing 
 upon her people phenomenal wealth, as the product of seemingly inex¬ 
 haustible natural resources, and in defending her against foreign foes, 
 give unto her wonderful opportunities and power for blessing mankind. 
 
 These blessings to a people come not without corresponding obliga¬ 
 tions and responsibilities. The measure of our obligation is the degree 
 of our blessings from the hands of the God to whom we are responsible. 
 
42 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 May we not begin to estimate the magnitude of America as a factor 
 in Mission work. Here we are—forty-four free Republics held in Union 
 by common consent of a free and enlightened citizenship. It is con¬ 
 ceded by staticians of other civilizations that we are the most prosper¬ 
 ous and the wealthiest people on earth. Here are unnumbered churches, 
 Christian colleges, tens of thousands of ministers of the Gospel, and 
 millions of Christian communicants. What does all this mean? Why 
 this wonderful growth into greatness in so ^ort a while? What are we 
 here for? Let me ask you, fellow-Christians, is our mission no more 
 than personal aggrandizement and national boasting? Why our fertile 
 soils, our diversified product, our abounding mines of precious metals. 
 Are these things ours, or are they God’s? Are we fee simple owners, or 
 tenants and stewards? 
 
 Does not the condition and history of American people bring us into 
 peculiar relation to other peoples? Have we not God-committed mes¬ 
 sages for those less favored than we? That Frenchman’s gift standing 
 in New York harbor, symbolizing our own America as Liberty enlight¬ 
 ening the world, is politically significant. But, may we not learn an¬ 
 other lesson from that Radiant statue. Beams there not a light upon far- 
 off peoples from the thousands of movements decking our fair land in 
 honor of and subservient to the Light of the World? Ah! friends and 
 brethren, believe it! Believe it! America’s relation to the peoples of 
 the earth make of her the most important factor in the missionary work 
 of the world! 
 
 WHAT, THEN, IS OUR DUTY? 
 
 First—Strengthen the things that remain: bring all our forces into 
 harmony with the spirit and purpose of Christ’s Kingdom. Is the reli¬ 
 gion of Jesus Christ merely a plan—a scheme for individual salvation 
 for the individual’s sake? If the Gospel purpose be limited, as we have 
 heard here, and that limited purpose backed by Infinite energy, then 
 we may be assured, do as we may, that purpose shall be accomplished. 
 Is your missionary conviction and zeal only an evidence of your conver¬ 
 sion? Well, I have nothing to do with divine decrees. I have not been 
 admitted to the secret councils of the Trinity. One thing I believe— 
 man is self-ruined. Yet another-thing I believe—Christ Jesus came into 
 the world to seek and to save the lost. I know He said, in touching 
 words of prayer to the Father, “As Thou didst send me into the world, 
 even so have I also sent them into the world.” Here is the mission of 
 the church to seek and to save the lost. Holding forth the word life 
 is the high calling and solemn trust of the people of God. Ye are the 
 light of the world, the salt of the earth. I cannot see the Church of 
 Christ in any other light than that which is beaming from the Cross. 
 Missions and Christianity are to my mind synonomous terms. Conver¬ 
 sion in Christ is to bring you and me, my brother, into sympathy with 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 43 
 
 Christ’s purpose and work to save the world. We ought not—we cannot 
 live to ourselves. If life is shut in to individualism then it is a blunder, 
 and living is a stupendous humbug. To free man from the narrowness 
 of selfness, Christ died. He died that they which live should not hence¬ 
 forth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose 
 again. Is the Church an institution in cold separateness from the 
 world, or is it not rather an inspiration in sympathizing touch with lost 
 humanity? The Church ought to uplift itself from institutionalism into 
 the inspiring atmosphere of that love that outstretches bleeding hands 
 to embrace a world. The time has come for the Church to understand 
 and appreciate its place in the redemptive economy of the Gospel, and 
 zealously conserve its spritual forces. If the Church be not the incarna¬ 
 tion of the Spirit of Christ, then it is no more than a human organiza¬ 
 tion. If it be the body of Christ then its mission is identical with His 
 mission. It cannot afford to fritter away its strength in vain philoso¬ 
 phies, or uncertain speculation, or hollow ceremonies. It must not de¬ 
 bilitate itself by a mechanical use of forms—responsive and concert 
 readings prescribed by and furnished at “headquarters.” Such intru¬ 
 sions upon the simplicity of spiritual worship are ominous. Let us be 
 careful to watch tendencies. They are more influential in Church as 
 well as in State than open and violent revolutions. We need not so 
 much dread “Higher Criticism” or “Advanced (?) Thought,” or “Scien- 
 rific Methods,” as the tendency to formalism and the craze for multitu- 
 dinous organizations outside of the Church. What we need is a simple, 
 robust faith that courts conflict with the powers of darkness and proj^o- 
 ses assault upon the frowning ramparts of sin and Satan. 
 
 Brethren, the Word is the sword of the Spirit. Let us preach the 
 Word—it is spirit and life. If our churches would be missionary in the 
 truest and best sense they must hold fast the form of sacred words and 
 earnestly contend for the faith delivered once for all to the Saints. The 
 business of the Church is the conversion of the world. It has no busi¬ 
 ness with any other business. But this mission implies and compre¬ 
 hends more than striving for numbers. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, the law of our life is found in social envi¬ 
 ronment, and there is no way to fulfill the law but to lovingly serve our 
 fellow mortals, and this is exactly what the Church is for. If any one 
 of you were cast off alone upon a lonely island of the seas, you could 
 worship God; you could adore Him; you could commune with him; but 
 you could not serve Him. There would be no field. The relation we 
 sustain to others is the ground and explanation of moral obligation. We 
 cannot negatively answer the question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 
 
 We must go a step further and learn the relation of the material to 
 the spiritual—the temporal to the eternal. There seems too much of a 
 disposition to draw a line of separation between the sacred and the secu¬ 
 lar. For the purposes of human speech it is sometimes convenient to 
 

 I 
 
 * 
 
 44 CENTENNIAL CELEBBATION 
 
 make a distinction when there is not a difference, but in point of truth 
 there is no difterenc between religion and business. We are taught: 
 Whatsoever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all things in the name 
 of Christ. They who tell us, with a knowing shrug of the shoulder, 
 and a wise blink of the eye, that “business is business and religion is re¬ 
 ligion,” have more of business than of religion. Our employments 
 ought to be a factor of our religion. 
 
 Not until we shall have learned that God’s reign is a universal unity, 
 and that the same law operates through the diverse ramification of all 
 things, can we know that life, with its capabilities and opportunities, is 
 subservient to the honor of the maker and owner of all things. The 
 world of matter is as much a part of God’s domain as the world of spirit; 
 and he has not divorced the one from the other. He lays tribute upon the 
 carnal for the honor and triumph of the spiritual. Man’s dominion over ‘ 
 the works of God in the earth is to the end that man shall act as a serv¬ 
 ant in honoring the Creator in the use of material environment. Then, 
 whether we dig or build, sow or reap, buy or sell, all must be done in 
 the line of seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. 
 
 There is a mighty material agency which, in this connection, I must 
 not fail to mention—I mean the printing press. Christianity was wise 
 to lay holy hands on this almost marvelous invention. There is not 
 so potent an engine in its factors of progress as the press. We live in 
 the printing-reading age. Christian progress would be next to impossi¬ 
 ble without this wonderful auxiliary. Mission work would be a com¬ 
 parative failure were it not for printing. The time was when oratory 
 educated thought and directed the movements of men. Now it is the 
 press. This engine has come to stay. If it were well to banish it, it 
 could not be done. If the Church fail to make most of the press it fails 
 to do its utmost for the spread of divine truth. It is true that the press 
 • is to an extent used against Christianity, but this is only another reason 
 why the Church of Christ should use all diligence in commanding this 
 miracle of science and art in the intei*ests of truth. 
 
 It is true, and must ever be true, that the preached Word is the prime 
 instrumentality for enlisting the hearts of men in the service of Christ. 
 But, for the enlargement of Christian intelligence, and the invigoration 
 of the spirit of progress, the press is indispensable. 
 
 Second—Cultivate the waste land of your own field. How shall we do 
 our duty to the regions beyond if we do not bring our own strength up 
 to maximum possibilities? He who tills the soil has not much to sell to 
 the exporter unless he utilizes every available resource. Are we giv¬ 
 ing our attention to home field. Foreign Missions are deservedly pop¬ 
 ular. But may not a misguided enthusiasm for Foreign Missions serve 
 to defeat the end at which we aim by overlooking the duty of developing 
 home resources? Let us not give less to the foreign field, but more to 
 the home field. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 45 
 
 Have we need of enthusiasm and enlarged interest in Home Missions? 
 Have we destitution? Let us see? The population of our States and 
 Territories is, in round numbers, sixty-five millions. We are a religious 
 people, but are we a Christian people. There is much religion in the 
 world. Mohammedans have it. Buddhists have it. Confucians have it. 
 What we want is not nominal Christianity, but Christianity. What of 
 our vast population? Have we more than seven million communicants 
 in Evangelical Churches? Suppose we put the number at ten million, 
 then we have less than one-sixth of our population who can be reckoned 
 Christian. What of the five-sixths and more? Suppose we narrow the 
 estimate down to our own denominational standard of truth. Have we 
 all told more than three million communicants in this country of Chris¬ 
 tian name? This puts nineteen-twentieths of our population in the 
 dark. With legitimate limitations, we may say that this is a heathen 
 land. If we extend the term America over Mexico and Cuba the dark¬ 
 ness intensifies. 
 
 But what further of our population? Here we have a large element of 
 foreign birth and children of foreign-born parents. Almost every language 
 on earth is spoken in the United States. Every phase of social life, every 
 aspect of crime and every shade of belief and unbelief is represented by this 
 population. Speaking from the promptings of the American spirit, and at 
 the suggestion of American institutions, these people are Americans. But 
 how shall eight million Germans, who are, because of their devotion to 
 the Fatherland, more German than American? How shall we mold into 
 homogenity our heterogeneous mass of Germans, Irish, French, Norwe¬ 
 gian, Portuguese, Italian, Negro, and Indian, and what not, if it be not 
 by the unifying power of the Gospel. Shall not we expect and hope for 
 the answer to our Savior’s prayer that there “may be one.” What a 
 work? How grand the proposition! How difficult the undertaking! 
 But is not the grandeur measured by the difficulty? Is it not a fact ^ 
 that, notwithstanding our national prosperity and glory, and our more 
 than a century of age, that we are yet, as a people, in the formative 
 stage of our being? What shall be our crystalized character? Are we 
 not to have a distinguishing characteristic? Shall it be wealth, or power, 
 or prowess, or learning, or sumptuous luxury and effeminateness? Or 
 shall it be Godliness? It is righteousness that exalteth a nation. This 
 is not namby-pamby ism; this is not sickly sentimentalism; this is not 
 goody-goodism; it is philosophy—it is common sense. If the Lord be 
 God, then His will must be the only true philosophy of life. Say not 
 that the Word of God has nothing to do with social conditions, nor 
 
 social conditions with the Word of God. God’s will is a law from 
 
 ♦ 
 
 Heaven for life on earth. 
 
 The conversion and Christian development of our foreign population 
 will become the mightiest force for the Christianization of the nations 
 represented there. Excellent Foreign Mission work will be to convert 
 
46 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 our own foreigners. In proportion to the increase of America’s foreign 
 population, will be the influence of America upon the conditions of life 
 in other lands. What shall that infltience be? It remains for American 
 Christians to answer the question. The progress of Christianity in this 
 country clearly indicates that Baptists are a leading factor in morally 
 revolutionizing the world. You see your calling, brethren. 
 
 In the work of home evangelization we are to intelligently recognize 
 the suggestions of social conditions and govern ourselves by the irre¬ 
 vocable laws of God as written in the nature of things. The history of 
 the Indian for ages proves that his place and mission in the world is not 
 that of the Anglo-Saxon. Shall we ask of God: Why? Nay, verily! 
 iThis is none of our business. Yet, the Indian has mind—he has a soul; 
 and the best Indian is not the dead Indian. I shall not endeavor to 
 paint a picture of the white man’s cruelty to the red man. The colors 
 would be so dark that there could be no light upon the shadings. This 
 much we all know, that as Christians we are debtors to all men, and the 
 Indian is man, and in him can be developed many qualities of moral 
 good. Who so indebted to the Indian as the white man? Shall we 
 continue to drive the Indian from the earth? No! No! Rather let us 
 help him to inherit the earth, and all the blessings of the eternal life. 
 Let us, with the Word of Life wipe the Indian’s blood from our skirts 
 and offer unto him newness of life. He is God’s mind-creature. 
 
 We have among us seven million Negroes. What of this fact? It is 
 a dark fact; can we throw light upon it? Here they are invested with 
 civil rights—a political anomaly. Unfortunately they are here to stay 
 with a race superior in numbers and natural gifts. The superior race 
 must always dominate the inferior. This can’t be helped! If there are 
 any “fixed laws” this is one of them. We* all know it, whether we admit 
 it or not. Yet there is no “race problem” for statesmen or religionists 
 ^ to solve. The negro is a citizen. It is his duty to he a good citizen. It 
 is the duty of the white man to help him become just as good a citizen 
 as it is possible for him to be. The negro is instinctively religious—his 
 religion is impulsive and physically demonstrative. He needs the 
 Christian religion to enlighten him as to the significance of life and its 
 relations and duties. To help him to be a good citizen and an informed 
 Christian it is the duty of the white man—this and nothing more, cer¬ 
 tainly nothing less. We owe him nothing that we do not owe others. 
 He is not the “nation’s ward,” he is by law a part of the nation—if we 
 have any nation. All we have to do with the supposed “problem” is to 
 let it alone, and see that the negro is taught to behave himself rightly, 
 and make him do so when necessary, just a^ we white folks. 
 
 There is no occasion for any political or sectional prejudices about the 
 negro All restrictions by secular or religious assemblies about 
 “Southern Outrages” are hut the expressions of sectional dislike under 
 the guise of Christian humanity. Southern society has the right to 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 47 
 
 protect defenseless purity by such means as the circumstances of the 
 case seem to demand. And this right is as sacred in Alabama as it is in 
 Nebraska or Indiana. Lynch law is, as a rule, wrong. Judge Lynch’s 
 court should be of rare resort, and it is. Society creates all courts, and 
 society must be the judge of jurisdiction in special cases where just 
 popular indignation demands summary and exemplary retribution to un¬ 
 endurable social outrages. Any noble people will protect their wives 
 and daughters against white or black demons. Let us seek to give all 
 classes and races that Christian education and Christian thought and 
 Christian spirit that shall leave Judge Lynch without an occupation and 
 retire him from his rugged bench. The Southern white Christian is 
 giving the negro the gospel, only give it more freely and lovingly. This 
 we must do. We must do it sincerely, prayerfully and thoughtfully, and 
 leave all questions of social conditions to settle themselves in harmony 
 with the laws of nature physiologically written. The negro, like any 
 other citizen, must fight the battle of life according to the suggestions 
 and requirements of environment. If he can bring himself to the front, 
 let him come, but don’t try to tear down nature’s walls to get him there. 
 
 We have great occasion to thank God for the generous efforts made by 
 Baptists and others for the Christian education of the negro and the negro 
 ministry. Let the work go on! Let it go forward mightily, but away 
 with that maudlin sentiment that jDrates of social equality. No intelli¬ 
 gent white man or woman wants or believes in it. Those who preach 
 it don’t nor won’t practice it. The informed negro don’t demand it or 
 expect it. There is no harm in the color line so that it be drawn at its 
 right place and proper time. It will be drawn. No sentiment, no statute 
 can prevent it. 
 
 Where shall we expend our energies in Home Mission work? Every¬ 
 where. But especially in our cities. I am a countryman. The plow 
 and the harrow, the mower and the rake make my bread, but I try to^ 
 give some attention to the nature and demands of mission fields. I am 
 not indifferent to the wants of our rural districts. My tastes ahd my 
 sympathies are with the ruralist. But I realize the fact that must rec- 
 ogi^nize, that, the progress of our country has greatly changed the fields 
 and methods of missionary work. There are destitute fields in the rural 
 districts, but the number and extent of such fields are small compared 
 with even the recent part. Our country churches have greatly multi¬ 
 plied and increased in efficiency. Yet there are some localities in each 
 of the States where the people are without church privileges and where 
 the living ministry is much needed to win souls to Christ, and minister 
 comfort and consolation and growth to the scattered and neglected saints. 
 But it is not as once it was, when our fathers preached in private resi¬ 
 dences, log school houses and barns beneath the shading boughs of forest 
 monarchs. The missionary is no longer the “lone horseman” with saddle 
 pockets, carrying the Word of God in one side and a twist of “legal 
 
48 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 tender” in the other, with perhaps a change of linen. Now the iron 
 horse and the palace car carry the missionary within convenient distance 
 of almost every settlement. The white country church with its adjacent 
 village of the dead is now the beauty of our wide extended land. The 
 remaining uncultivated fields are receiving a fair ratio of attention at 
 the hands of our boards. 
 
 The centers of population—towns and cities are of increasing interest 
 to the sociologist, the publicist and the enterprising Christian. The 
 tendency of our population is to these centers. They are now the seats 
 of enterprise, the depositories of wealth, the homes of fashion, and the 
 hotbeds of iniquity. Bless God, they are also the abodes of much of the 
 force and beauty and enterprise of Christianity. The magnificence of 
 some of our metropolitan churches is beautifully exemplary. It remains 
 true, however, that our church sittings in cities is not ec^ual to what 
 ought to be the church-going habit. Why is this so? It is simply be¬ 
 cause the extent of religion does not demand more extensive church 
 facilities. The demand ought to be increased. This can be done only 
 by missionary effort. 
 
 The influence of centers of population upon the thought, sentiment, 
 tastes, and customs of the rural districts is so great that it demands the 
 careful thought on the part of all Christian workers. The increased 
 methods of rapid transit, the quick communication of news, and the gen¬ 
 eral circulation of the metropolitan daily newspaper are bring¬ 
 ing the country more and more under the domination of the town. Our 
 swains and lasses catch the contagion of city dudes and belles, and learn 
 to attitudinize and pose by looking at advertisement wood cuts and 
 fashion plates. This in itself may be innocent and harmless, but it 
 proves and illustrates the potency of city influence. Why we country 
 folk, we horny-handed sons of toil, boast of our political mastery, and 
 then when the primaries are all over we sulk because we find ourselves 
 the dupes and tools of hoodlums and fixers. 
 
 Now" it is true that much that is good every way goes forth from the 
 city to impress and improve the country—yet there goes with it all much 
 devilment. The jjrize fight, the horse race, the lottery, the gambling 
 spirit, the halls of dancing, and the houses of sinful pleasure. We need 
 strong men in our cities, men of humane hearts and divine inspiration, 
 to dam up the dark streams of damnation. 
 
 It’s a pity, and more is the pity that it’s a pity, ^that many, very many 
 of the best and most hopeful of our young men of the country are yearly 
 flocking to our cities, caused by the hope of fortune and desire for clean, 
 easy living. City Christians should use all diligence to protect, promote, 
 and save the sons of the soil. 
 
 When we view the state of religion in our own America, in the ratio 
 of its converts to the whole population, the nature and progress of our 
 social institutions, the relation that our country, as the home of a world- 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 conquering civilization, sustains to other countries, we are, or ought to 
 be, at once convinced that American Home Missions is the key-stone in 
 the arch of the world’s evangelization. 
 
 Third—All that I have endeavored to set forth in this hasty and cur¬ 
 sory discussion serves to emphacize and magnify the importance of 
 America as a factor in Foreign Mission work. When we send the Gos¬ 
 pel in the dark places at home we are paving the way to send it more 
 into ‘‘darkest Afrdca,” superstitious China, oppressed India, ignorant 
 Italy, cursed Cuba, and degraded Mexico. Yet, shall we wait for our 
 fullest fruition to home work before we hearken the cry, “Come over 
 and help us.” Nay, we have not done so, nor should we. Shall one 
 wait until his own enterprises have filled the measure of his expecta¬ 
 tions before'%e feeds the hungry poor? Never! That were sinful. 
 
 America’s Christians have a sublime mission with sublirner prospects. 
 It is now our privilege and opportunity to fling back glorious light into 
 the benighted East, whence came the light that enlightened us. Oar 
 civil institutions, our popular government, our zealous care of individual 
 rights, under the fostering care and guidance of Divine truth, are the 
 thorns in the crowns of emperors, the dynamite beneath the thrones of 
 tyracits, and the hope of the oppressed and the downtrodden of less 
 favored lands. 
 
 Pair America! Proud America!! Free America!!! May Christian 
 truth and the spirit of the Christ—the simplicity of the Gospel, and 
 practical Godliness be the palladium of the blood-bought and God-given 
 liberty, the inspiration to thy life, the assurance of thy perpetuity, and 
 thy benedictions to far-off peoples. 
 
 Prof. H. H. Harris emphasized the thought that the race 
 problem would solve itself if let alone. 
 
 Rev. W. C. Grace, of Tennessee, said that in the mountain 
 region of the Southern Baptist Convention there are more 
 Baptists to the square mile than in any other section. 
 
 Hr. Ellis called attention to the fact that Christianity is not 
 dependent upon the favor of governments, because it spread 
 more rapidly than at any other time under the tyranny of 
 Rome during the first two centuries. Let us not count too 
 much on social institutions. What is the actual influence of 
 free America on Africa? She is damning it with rum. En¬ 
 gland with her opium and America with her rum join hands 
 at the altaj* of mammon. 
 
 A word as to formalism. There are two conceptions of 
 worship; one of expre^^ion, the other of impression. Gothic 
 
 / 
 
50 
 
 CENTENNIAL. CELEBRATION 
 
 piles, decorations, clouds of incense are designed to impress 
 and overawe the worshiper. The whole conception of Bap¬ 
 tist worship gathers about the pulpit and not the altar. Our 
 people are known by their adherence to the Book, not by the 
 cut of a coat. 
 
 Rev. J. M. Weaver explained his views of the aim and 
 nature of missionary work. 
 
 Dr. Ryland dismissed the audience. 
 
 MONDAY AFTERNOON. 
 
 Rev. B. D. Gray, of Mississippi, spoke upon ^ 
 
 METHODS IN MISSIONS. 
 
 What suits one field will not suit another. Paul tried different meth¬ 
 ods, according to his surroundings. 
 
 Method will be largely determined by the aim in view. With Protes¬ 
 tants who believe in a general study of the Scriptures, the translation 
 and circulation of the Bible is emphasized. The methods of the China 
 Inland Mission, who believe in preaching the Gospel as a witness to the 
 nations, must be different from those of a mission that aims at the 
 founding and indoctrinating of churches. 
 
 Well, what ought to be the aim? I take it that Christ’s Commission 
 gives it cleanly. It is broad enough* in its scope and plain enough in its 
 substance. 
 
 The mission of the twelve is set aside, on the ground that the later 
 and more comprehensive excludes the early and more limited commis¬ 
 sion. Going without support is expressly abrogated by Christ. His 
 disciples were to take money and means of defense. But even in the 
 earlier commission it is said that the laborer is worthy of his hire. 
 Paul maintains the doctrine of his right to a support from the churdhes, 
 while for the sake of expediency he did not demand it. Men are now 
 converting a matter of policy into a matter of principle. 
 
 What is the aim of missions? It is both itinerant and permanent. 
 The Commission has in it nothing short of permanent, self-supporting, 
 self-propagating churches. The missionary journeys of Paul show his 
 solicitude to maintain and strengthen the churches which had been 
 brought together through his labors. 
 
 What is the best method for attaining the grand aim before us? Our 
 methods certainly ought to be pliable. There ought to be *as much dif¬ 
 ference in methods abroad as at home, as much as between the methods 
 of Walnut-street church and those of a country church in the mountains. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 51 
 
 We are to evangelize the World. How? By preaching; but even 
 this is a means and not an end. We must have more preachers on the 
 field. A certain Moravian church has a missionary for every twenty- 
 two members. 
 
 Along with preaching there must be education. In some cases educa¬ 
 tion must go before missionary activity; in others it ought to follow. 
 Of course there is danger of going to an extreme. 
 
 We need more money for this work. Twenty-five thousand Moravians 
 give more than Southern Baptists to this cause. 
 
 [Dr. Gray reviewed briefly three pamphlets by former missionaries of 
 our Board, and showed how in each pamphlet the principle for which it 
 contended was violated.] 
 
 Dr. Bro||dus doesn’t get discouraged about differences of opinion 
 among Baptists. Where there are five Baptists there are usually five 
 opinions. 
 
 We have romantic ideas as to missionaries, and set them on a high 
 pedestal. But, after all, they are just men. They may be unfit for mis¬ 
 sion work, or may lose their health. In every great commercial enter¬ 
 prise there are failures, and so it must be in missionary operations. 
 
 MONDAY NIGHT. 
 
 Prayer was offered by W. H. Felix, D. D., of Lexington, 
 Kentucky. 
 
 Dr. J. B. Hawthorne, of A,tlanta, Ga., spoke on 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 Man is a commemorative being. He remembers; he cherishes the 
 recollection of events in his history, and that of his family, and nation, 
 and race, which were unusually significant, instructive, or pleasing. 
 
 When Joshua, Israel’s great military leader, had completed his work 
 of conquering the idolatrous tribes of Canaan, and of putting the Lord’s 
 people into possession of that land of promise, knowing that he must 
 soon die, he summoned the Israelites before him and delivered to them 
 his valedictory message. He reviewed their history, and showed how 
 God had guided and blessed them and fulfilled the promise he had 
 made centuries before to their fathers. He warned them of the sin and 
 peril of idolatry, and exhorted them to continue in the worship of the 
 Lord God, who had delivered them from bondage and brought them 
 into that land of plenty and beauty. 
 
 With one voice they responded, declaring that they would serve the 
 Lord, and Him. only. Then Joshua took a great stone and set it up un- 
 
52 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBKATION 
 
 der an oak, which stood near the sanctuary, and said, “Behold, this stone 
 shall be a witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the Lord 
 which He spake unto us ; It shall, therefore, be a witness unto you lest 
 ye deny your God.” That was a memorial stone. It was set there to re¬ 
 mind them of a great event in their history—the recording of a solemn 
 idedge to cleave to the true and living God. 
 
 Years before that, when they crossed the Jordan, they erected at the 
 place of their crossing a heap of stones to commemorate the great mira¬ 
 cle of the dividing of the waters. 
 
 Memorial pillars, memorial altars, memorial temj)les, memorial 
 feasts, and memorial days, make a very conspicuous feature of the his¬ 
 tory of the human race. 
 
 How sublime and sacred are some of these institutions! The Sabbath 
 day pointed back to the completion of God’s creative work, *he Lord’s 
 Supper to the atoning death of the world’s Redeemer, and Baptism to 
 His burial and triumphant resurrection. 
 
 In the institution of these imperishable ordinances, the Lord God sig¬ 
 nifies his approval of that universal instinct among men, to commemo¬ 
 rate great deeds, great events, and great epochs. 
 
 The utility of memorial observances and institutions in generating, 
 strengthening, and preserving virtuous and noble sentiments and aspi¬ 
 rations, cannot be doubted. 
 
 At the capitol of our Republic stands the tallest monument ever reared 
 by human hands to human greatness, Cui hono? It stands there to re¬ 
 mind us of those illustrious deeds and virtues which made our Washing¬ 
 ton “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country¬ 
 men.” It stands there overlooking gvery other monument, to tell us 
 that there is one name in American history above every other name, 
 one example of unselfish devotion to country above every other exam¬ 
 ple, one star in our nation’s galaxy which shines with a purer, serener, 
 and steadier radiance than any other star. Let us commiserate the stu¬ 
 pidity which fails to recognize and appreciate the wisdom of our people 
 in rearing that monument. 
 
 On the 4th day of July, 1776, the old Liberty Bell rang out to the 
 world the glorious tidings that the American Colonies, through their 
 chosen representatives, had adopted the Declaration of Independence, 
 thereby severing their connection forever with the despotic government 
 of the mother country. 
 
 Who will deny that the annual celebration of that birthday of Ameri¬ 
 can freedom, has done much to keep alive the spirit of liberty and pa¬ 
 triotism in the breasts of ,the American people? . 
 
 I am sure that I shall be guilty of no extravagance of speech when I 
 say, that the great Baptist brotherhood of this and of other continents, 
 in celebrating the Centennial of Modern Missions, commemorate an 
 event of incomparably greater magnitude than the birth of a nation. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 53 
 
 The beginning- of Modern Missions was the beginning of a type of a 
 moral chivalry, in comparison with which the heroism displayed on 
 earth’s bloody battlefields is unworthy of mention. The beginning of 
 Modern Missions was the beginning of a sacred enterprise that has done 
 more for the betterment of the world’s condition than all the discoveries 
 of science, the wisdom of statecraft, or the triumphs of war. 
 
 I trust that I give expression to no unworthy sentiment when I say, 
 that my joy to-day rises into ecstasy over the honor which is mine, in 
 having membership in that denomination of Christians to which be¬ 
 longs the great glory of beginning Modern Missions. 
 
 If it be lawful and commendable in Lutherans to remind the world of 
 what God wrought through the faith and courage of Martin Luther; if 
 Presbyter^ns may be excused for pointing uS to the priceless products 
 of the masterful mind of John Calvin; and if Methodists are justly 
 proud of the zeal and sanctity and wisdom of John Wesley, I am sure 
 that Baptists need not be ashamed of William Carey, that dauntless 
 Christian hero,that prodigy of intellect, energy, and grace, who conceived 
 and planned and put into successful operation, the incomparable enter¬ 
 prise of Modern Missions. It is unquestionably and elemental principal 
 in the economy of grace, to choose things that are w*)ak and lowly for 
 the accomplishment of the loftiest purposes. 
 
 The instruments which God chooses for the sublimest and most diffi¬ 
 cult undertakings, are often found in seemingly unfavorable places, and 
 have but little value in the eyes of the world. 
 
 John the Baptist was a denizen of the desert, that wild, rugged, wil¬ 
 derness country lying immediately West of the Jordan. 
 
 When he began to preach, in the minds of the pharisees—the religious 
 aristocracy—the great high-church party of Judea—he was only “a 
 reed shaken by the wind”—a little feeble fluttering thing in the air, 
 that would soon exhaust itself and disappear. Obscure in his origin, a 
 dweller in the desert, untaught by the doctors of the la.w, what claims 
 had he as a public teacher of men? Such was the instrument which in¬ 
 finite wisdom chose to awake a long slumbering nation, and make ready 
 a people for the Lord. And so grandly did he accomplish his mission 
 that Christ has put him on the loftiest pinnacle of human greatness. 
 
 ' For a movement of no less magnitude, and certainly not less difficult and 
 perilous, God chose William Carey, “the consecrated cobbler.” Carey 
 began to preach at the age of eighteen, and while he was an apprentice 
 in a shoemaker’s shop. He asked no one to give him an education. He 
 determined that, with God’s help, he would educate himself. He entered 
 no college. He made a college of his cobbler’s bench. There, “with 
 borrowed grammars and lexicons, and second-hand books bought at the 
 cost of bread,” he mastered Latin and Greek and Hebrew. There he 
 studied natural science, and metaphysics, and enriched his mind with 
 the treasures of the best classic literature. 
 
54 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 When the hoy, Corregio, stood before the canvas on which Raphael 
 had painted one of his immortal pictures, exclaiming, “I, too, am a 
 painter!” he was not more conscious of the possibilities of his life than 
 Carey was as he toiled in the lowly vocation of a village cobbler, that 
 God had laid his ordaining hand upon him, and set him apart for some 
 great scheme that would illumine and enrich the world. 
 
 If the inspiration which Corregio caught from Raphael’s picture, car¬ 
 ried him through all his tedious initial studies, blended his colors, 
 guided his pencil, and shown upon his canvas until he became the peer 
 of Raphael, we need not wonder that under an infinitely deeper, mightier 
 and diviner inspiration, William Carey mastered all the difficulties that 
 environed bis young life, developed his mind, filled it with the richest 
 treasures of learning, and thoroughly equipped himself for t|^e magnifi¬ 
 cent work to which he was called, and for the splendid triumphs which 
 rewarded his labors of love. 
 
 While he preached the unsearchable riches of Christ fervently and 
 faithfully to the people of his own neighborhood and country from the 
 day of his conversion, his Christian sympathies went out towards the 
 benighted and neglected “regions beyond.” He believed that Christ 
 “died not for our *jins only, but for the sins of the whole world.” Every 
 nation was brought nigh to him by the blood of Jesus, and every lan¬ 
 guage to him was but the medium through which he longed to tell the 
 story of redeemed love. He did not believe that the marching orders 
 which the Captain of salvation had given to His soldiers had even been 
 revoked or suspended. Filled with the inspiration of a deep conviction, 
 and luminous with the white heat of a great and holy purpose, he dili¬ 
 gently prepared himself to smite with paralysis and death,- if possible, 
 the opposition of ministers and churches to any immediate effort at 
 evangelizing the pagan nations. 
 
 When he had reached his thirty-first year, having honestly and pray¬ 
 erfully investigated the great subject, absolutely confident of the cor¬ 
 rectness of his position, he went before the Nottingham Association, to 
 which he had been sent as a messenger by his church, and began the 
 contest by propounding as a subject for discussion the following ques¬ 
 tion; “Is not the command given to the Apostles to teach all nations 
 binding on all ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accom¬ 
 panying promise is to be with them always, even unto the end of the 
 world?” Nothing more is needed to prove that Carey had absolutely no 
 support, or sympathy, in the beginning of his movement than the quick 
 and caustic rebuke which was administered to him by his own spiritual 
 father, the learned, the good, the great Dr. Ryland, who, with an air of 
 impatience and indignation, replied, “You are a miserable enthusiast 
 for asking such a question.” 
 
 Think of such an expression as coming from the lips of a learned 
 leader of English Baptists, no longer than a hundred years ago. The 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 55 
 
 veriest Hardshell in the mountains of East Tennessee, would not g’o fur¬ 
 ther than that. No reader of ecclesiastical history can doubt that 
 our ‘‘Hardshell” brethren have one valid reason for calling- themselves 
 “Primitive” Baptists. They certainly had “a local habitation and a 
 name” as far back as a century ago. Baptists at that period, like all 
 other denominations of Christians, were not only doing nothing to give 
 the Gospel to the heathen world, but were -stubbornly opposed to any 
 effort in that direction. 
 
 But God be thanked, that through the mighty power of his transform¬ 
 ing grace, the Hardshells became soft, and the very people who had so 
 sternly opposed the sending of the Gospel to the perishing pagans, be¬ 
 came the pioneers, the victorious leaders, in the battles of the Cross on 
 pagan soil. 
 
 The rebuke which Carey received did not baffle him, nor move him a 
 hair’s breadth from the line of his holy purpose. Modestly, meekly, but 
 with a determination “fixed as fate,” he unfurled his missionary banner, 
 and in a voice whose ring betokened a heavenly inspiration, called upon 
 all true lovers of Jesus to rally for the great conflict. 
 
 Soon after the adjournment of the Association he wrote that famous 
 “Inquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conver¬ 
 sion of the heathen.” That paper was like a new revelation from the 
 skies. Every line was luminous, and from first to last it seemed to be 
 stamped with the signet of Heaven’s approval. Its effect upon some of 
 his brethren was as signal as their, first conversion. It was another 
 spiritual quickening and resurrection. They saw the truth as they had 
 never seen it before. They heard a call to duty that was like the blast 
 from the archangel’s trumpet. 
 
 They were the subjects of that divine uplifting which carries the be¬ 
 liever beyond that realm of fear and doubt, and fits him for a hero’s work 
 * and a martyr’s death. That paper was the kindling of a flame, which 
 grew into a mighty conflagration. It was the beginning of an illumina¬ 
 tion which was destined to fill the world with its glory. 
 
 At the next meeting of the Nottingham Association Carey entered 
 the pulpit to preach upon his favorite theme. His countenance was 
 radiant. The people knew that he had been with God from the glory 
 that lingered on his brow. His text was from the propecy of Isaiah, 
 that man of the misty past, to whom it was given to see and foretell the 
 work and triumphs of Carey and his co-laborers. “Enlarge the place of 
 thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; 
 spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt 
 break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit 
 the Gentiles, and m*ake the desolate cities to be inhabited.” 
 
 Prom this vision of the prophet the young preacher drew two lessons, 
 which he discussed with a fervor and eloquence that carried conviction 
 to every mind : 
 
56 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 1. Expect great things from God. 
 
 2. Attempt great things for God. 
 
 Such a sermon as he delivered there and then would make an epoch 
 in the life of any people, of any nation, of any continent. In all the cen¬ 
 turies that have passed since then men have heard nothing comparable 
 to it in convincing and transforming power. In every word of it there 
 was the accent of a conviction born of God. It was the opening of an¬ 
 other trumpet stop on the grand organ of spiritual passion. It was a 
 miracle of sacred eloquence, for in it were the birth-throes of modern 
 missions. 
 
 Am I not warranted in saying that such preaching is a lost art? That 
 art, that power, will not reappear until unbelief and cowardice and self 
 are dead in the hearts of God’s ministers, and they are consumed as 
 Carey was with zeal for a lost world. 
 
 The feeling generated by that sermon crystalized very soon into “A 
 society among Baptists for the propagation of the Gospel among the 
 heathens.” That society was formed in the hospitable home of a Christian 
 woman. ‘‘Woman, last at the cross and first at the sepulchre,” is at the 
 beginning, the middle, and the end of every great movement for the 
 world's uplifting. A German poet said: 
 
 “Eve:*y hair of he • head draws like a bell-rope.” 
 
 Bet, if my eyes do not deceive me; and the missionary secretaries and 
 the religions newspapers are not imposing upon my credulity, ball-ropes 
 are but cobwebs in comparison with the cable with which the Baptist 
 women of the South are drawing this Centennial car. 
 
 That ‘‘Society among the Baptists for the propagation of the Gospel 
 among the heathens” was the real “beginning of modern missions.” It 
 was the first missionary body of modern times to give expression to the* 
 true Gospel conception of Christian obligation and effort. That first 
 meeting of the little parent society did not adjourn until every member 
 of it had made a contribution in money to the cause to which he had 
 pledged his faith and fealty. The aggregate of the contribution was 
 “thirteen pounds, two shillings, and six pence.” The contributors were 
 very poor, but rich in faith and zeal for God. 
 
 Constrained by the example of that little band of Baptists, and by 
 the burning appeals of their eloquent and heroic leader, other denomi¬ 
 nations fell into line with the movement, and soon the London Mission¬ 
 ary Society, the Scottish Missionary Society, and the Church Missionary 
 Society were formed. 
 
 If William Carey had done nothing more than conceive and inaugu¬ 
 rate that movement, he would deserve a large and lofty place in the es¬ 
 teem and affection of the Christian world. But to him belongs not only 
 the distinction of originating the scheme, but the imperishable glory of 
 
6f modern missions. 
 
 57 
 
 leadership in the execution of it. His battle cry was not “Go!” but 
 “Follow!” Coveting the experiences, the trials, and the triumphs of an 
 exemplar in the difficult and daring undertaking, he said to the little 
 band at home, “You hold the rope, and I will go down into the pit.” 
 
 Carey landed in Calcutta, November 11, 1793. Still possessed of that 
 spirit of independence and self-denial which had characterized his youth 
 and young manhood, he refused support from any source. 
 
 During the first six months of his life in that city, where pagan iniqui¬ 
 ties were matched only by the remorseless avarice of British traders, he 
 went through a struggle of poverty and suffering that would have dis¬ 
 heartened and crushed any one but a moral athlete. 
 
 He at last succeeded in finding employment by which he could make a 
 support for himself and family. For five years he was in the service of 
 a manufacturer of indigo. During that period he perfected his knowl¬ 
 edge of the Bengalee language, wrote a grammar of the same vernacu¬ 
 lar, learned Sanscrit, mastered the botany of the country, founded a 
 church, and preached the Gospel throughout a district containing two 
 hundred villages. All this he did at his own cost. 
 
 These results he accomplished in spite of the mean and despotic oppo¬ 
 sition of the East India Company. Of all the monopolies that have 
 wronged and robbed men, and made merchandise of human bodies and 
 human souls, that East India Company was the most infamous, and the 
 most deserving of the reprobation of God and man. 
 
 Seeing no prospect for the protection or perpetuity of his work in Cal¬ 
 cutta, Carey left it and went ten miles away to Serampore, a Danish set¬ 
 tlement, and’ began a work under the protection of a more humble and 
 liberal people. There he was soon joined by Marshmaii and Ward, 
 names that will be forever historic, because of their association with 
 Carey in untiring and heroic sacrifice for the evangelization of India. 
 These three men not only supported themselves and their families, but 
 from first to last contributed to the cause of missions in India not less 
 than $450,000. 
 
 In that heathen country Carey spent forty-one years in unremitting 
 toil, never once visiting his native land. 
 
 With the assistance of his faithful co-laborers he made and published 
 the first complete or partial translations of the Bible into forty languages 
 and dialects of India, China, Central Asia, and neighboring lands, at a 
 cost of $500,000. 
 
 He established printing houses, paper mills, primary schools, schools 
 for the education of native girls and women, colleges to train native min¬ 
 isters and to evangelize educated Hindoos, and medical missions. He 
 established thirty mission stations, translated the whole Bible into San¬ 
 scrit, and opened the way for Judson’s great work in Burmah, which re¬ 
 sulted in the organization of American Baptists for foreign missionary 
 work. 
 
58 
 
 CENTENNIAL celebration 
 
 Ninety-nine years have rolled their suns away since William Carey 
 planted the flag of the Gospel on the shore of India. Beneath that sa¬ 
 cred ensign of redemption not less than five hundred thousand native 
 converts stand to-day, bravely and patiently continuing the struggle so 
 wisely begun by the man whose only ambition and purpose was to lead 
 lost men out of the darkness of error and sin into the light and liberty 
 of the sons of God. 
 
 We celebrate to-day the beginning of modern missions. By modern mis¬ 
 sions we mean missions among the heathen. I have confined my remarks 
 mainly to the work of William Carey, because the verdict of Christendom 
 and the verdict of history will ever be, that to him, under God, belongs the 
 glory of laying the foundations of the great and sacred enterprise of 
 modern missions. 
 
 Many useful lessons may be learned from the history which I have but 
 briefly outlined: 
 
 1. Here we see something of the sublime possibilities of a single hu¬ 
 man life absolutely consecrated to God. “The lives of such men all re¬ 
 mind us, we may make our lives sublime.” 
 
 2. Here we see how seemingly insuperable difficulties may be conquered 
 by facing them with a martyr’s faith and courage. 
 
 3. Here we see God’s fidelity in fulfilling his promises to men who un¬ 
 reservedly put themselves in His hands, and dare to obey Him in the 
 presence of any danger. 
 
 4. Here we can see how God can and does use the weak and despised 
 things of this world to confound and vanquish the mighty. 
 
 5. Here we can see how God’s work, begun in simple faith and un¬ 
 feigned love, will rise from feebleness and seeming insignificance into 
 magnificent strength and beauty. 
 
 6. But the thought with which I am specially impressed has reference 
 to the condition of the country. 
 
 Just before his untimely and tragic death, Abraham Lincoln uttered 
 these words, which have passed into history: “As the result of the war, 
 corporations have been enthroned. An era of corruption in high places 
 will follow. The money power of the country will reign until all the 
 wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.” 
 
 If there is in the condition of our country that which looks like a fulfill¬ 
 ing of this prophecy it behooves every patriot do awake to the danger 
 which threatens us. 
 
 In an American book, published only a month ago, the author says, 
 “We have reached a critical period in our nation’s history. The dire¬ 
 ful prophecies made by our enemies seem about to be fulfilled.” 
 
 Now, I do not know that these things are true; but if they are 
 true, we are not without a remedy. It is within the power of the 
 churches of the living God to eradicate the evils which threaten this 
 republic with destruction. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 5d 
 
 Let the men and women who call themselves Christians be Christians 
 indeed; let them be missionaries in /ieartand life, and not merely in name; 
 let their intellectual gifts be given to the study of God’s Gospel, and to 
 its dissemination both at home and abroad; let them in faith and love 
 consecrate their money to the cause for which they have promised to 
 live, and, if need be, to die; let them, like Carey, give to God more than 
 they keep for themselves; in other words, let them seek first, not their 
 own aggrandisement, but the advancement of God’s Kingdom, and there 
 will come into this land of ours a power before which neither despotism 
 nor lawlessness can live; a power that will draw the rich and the poor 
 together in mutual respect and sympathy; a power that will render sa¬ 
 cred and inviolate the rights of all classes, and preserve to us, our chil¬ 
 dren, and our children’s children, the legacy of freedom and equality 
 purchased by the blood of our fathers. 
 
 f 
 
 
 
60 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 THIRD DAY. 
 
 Tuesday Morning, October 4. 
 
 After devotional exercises Rev. J. W. Weddell, of the 
 Chicago Standard, emphasized the point that giving greatly 
 benefits the giver. 
 
 Prof.‘H. H. Harris spoke on the Centennial Fund. The 
 Centennial should not be used as an occasion of boasting, but 
 of gratitude to Odd for what he has done through our fathers. 
 It has been turned into an occasion of raising money; giving 
 of mone^ measures the amount of our consecration. The 
 Southern Baptist host is a host, an undeveloped mine of mis¬ 
 sionary possibilities. We have been doubling our contribu¬ 
 tions every ten years. 
 
 We have undertaken to send one missionary for every year 
 of this century. The churches are adopting individual mis¬ 
 sionaries. I preach each Sunday in many languages. Some, 
 people give where they can see the results. Why not give 
 where you can never see results until you reach the other 
 shore? 
 
 THE PERMANENT FUND. 
 
 This permanent fund is not an endowment fund, the inter¬ 
 est of which is to be used for mission work. One brother 
 gave us some railroad bonds with the request that we hold 
 the bonds artd use the interest only; we would be glad to 
 have some more. The permanent fund is for permanent 
 work, such as printing of Bibles, and building chapels. Bro. 
 Z. C. Taylor, of Bahai, Brazil, wants to build ten or twelve 
 chapels. For this he will need only about fifteen hundred or 
 two thousand dollars. He will give one hundred dollars and 
 thereby stimulate the natives to give four or five hundred- 
 dollars more. We must build American houses in Africa, 
 sending the timber from New York. Dr. Graves is spending 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 61 
 
 his last years in translating the Bible into the literary tongue 
 of China. The Foreign Board should publish this. We want 
 to lift our people by showing them what they can do The 
 million dollars will be nothing in comparison with the salva¬ 
 tion of souls in our midst as a resultant of renewed con¬ 
 secration. 
 
 Bro. W. D. Povrell followed. I have left my work in Mex¬ 
 ico in connection with this work. Brethren, our efforts in 
 this line are not commensurate with our efforts in other lines. 
 A little over one hundred years ago there were two print!ug 
 presses only in America. Now there are thousands. 
 
 When I went to Mexico I had to ride ponies. Now the rail¬ 
 roads run all through the country. What boundless resources 
 have we! We Southern Baptists pity our English Baptists 
 because of their insignificance. They have already raised 
 $400,000 for missions. 
 
 We need houses in Mexico. Bro. McCormack recently 
 dedicated his house of worship, and he is now reaching more 
 people than ever before. Bro. Goldsmith is now paying fifty 
 dollars rent per mouth. Two and one-half thousand would 
 build him all the houses needed. We are willing to help our¬ 
 selves and have organized a Foreign Mission Board. 
 
 Dr. I. T. Tichenor spoke of the great need of the Perma¬ 
 nent Chapel Fund in the Home Mission work. 
 
 Prof. O. T. Mason, LL.D., read a paper on 
 
 THE RELATION OF COMMERCE TO MISSIONS. 
 
 APOSTOLIC CONCEPTION OP “ALL THE WORLD.” 
 
 4 
 
 When the Savior of men delivered to his disciples the last injunction 
 to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, pi’oin- 
 ising them that the Holy Ghost should come upon them, he said, “Ye 
 shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in 
 Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.” 
 
 It was entirely impracticable in that day to obey Him, so far as the 
 last paragraph is concerned, but it is absolutely practicable now. There 
 is not a man in this world, nor a woman, nor a child, that has not been 
 many times in touch with the processes and products of our Christian 
 civilization, not one that could not be reached with that message of 
 Divine love. 
 
62 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 You can imagine the childishness and the vagueness, in the minds of 
 the disciples, of that term “all the world.” They did not know that 
 the earth is round. They supposed that it was practically bounded by 
 an ocean whose shores were not much further away than the longest 
 journeys made by Jews in coming to the passover. The straits of Bab el 
 Mandeb on the south, the straits of Gibraltar on the west, the Black 
 Sea on the north, and the borders of India on the'east were the extremi¬ 
 ties of “all the world.” They did not know there was a great Mongo¬ 
 lian race, nor much of true Africa. Northern Europe was a blank on 
 their maps. And as for Malayans, or Australians, or Davidians, or Poly¬ 
 nesians, or Americans, there was not the faintest suspicion of their ex¬ 
 istence. 
 
 EARLIEST WORLD COMMERCE. 
 
 “The earliest highway of commerce was from India through the Per¬ 
 sian Gulf, up the Euphrates to the Mediterranean; and carpets and 
 precious stones were then, as now, carried over this route. Explorations 
 and surveys have been recently made along this ‘our future highway to 
 India.’ Caravans brought spices from Arabia and rich stuffs from Baby¬ 
 lon and Nineveh to the shores of the Red Sea. Solomon made a navy of 
 ships -and Hiram sent in the navy his ‘Servants, shipmen that had knowl¬ 
 edge of the sea, and they brought gold from Ophir, great plenty of almug 
 trees and precious stones.’ 
 
 “Tyre and Sidon founded colonies on the shores of the Mediterranean, 
 enslaving the Spaniards, compelling them to work the mines of gold and 
 silver already opened in Spain. Their ships sailed through the Medi¬ 
 terranean by the Pillars of Hercules, into the Atlantic Ocean, turning 
 northward to England for tin and copper, and on into the Baltic for fur 
 and amber; venturing also southward along the western coast of Africa. 
 The Carthaginians inherited the trade of Tyre and Sidon, and, in addi¬ 
 tion, opened highways to Egypt and into the interior of Africa, barter¬ 
 ing their wares in Egypt for corn and grain, and in Africa for ivory, 
 gems and slaves. They planted colonies in Africa and Sicily, and for a 
 time were successful rivals of Greece and Rome. The rule of the ocean 
 transferred from Asia to Africa remained there for a short time, for the 
 day of Europe came with the rise of Greece and Rome. The Greeks 
 founded colonies in Asia Minor, Sicily and Italy. • Under Pyrrhus their 
 armies were defeated by the Romans and their colonies captured. De¬ 
 prived of these, her power rapidly declined and she became a Roman 
 province.” Hubbard, Nat. Geog. Magazine, Washington, 1892, p. 1-3. 
 
 This vast Roman empire was in the act of solidifying the activities of 
 the commercial nations, on the day when our Savior sent his disciples to 
 preach his gospel to “all the world.” The methods of conveyance were 
 being prepared while the message was being delivered. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 63 
 
 TRAVELING RESOURCES OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 This ever-widening-circle of injunction, “From Jerusalem to Judea, 
 from Judea to Samaria, from Samaria to all the world,” did not involve 
 in their imaginations any extraordinary effort in the last progress of 
 this journeying. 
 
 Supposing these disciples had been divinely inspired with geographic 
 knowledge, with additional instruction concerning the nationalities, the 
 races and the languages of the earth, it would have done them no good. 
 There were insurmountable difficulties in their way—vast deserts, high 
 mountains, rivers, seas, oceans, climates, perils by land, perils on the 
 deep, that stood as a menace even to the extension of traffic at that time 
 and continued thus for fifteen hundred years. 
 
 They had poor means of getting to those they had heard of. They 
 could walk ten miles a day carrying their own luggage. Camels and 
 asses and horses would bear them a little further, if not too heavily 
 laden and provided the drivers were well paid. Some of the journeys 
 they could make in open boats propelled by oars or by lateen sails, and, 
 in these, twenty or thirty miles a day wou||^ be a prosperous journey. 
 The Roman roads afforded highways for lumbering vehicles that would 
 not undertake over twenty miles a day, but the post conveyances would 
 accomplish twice that distance. They could also send messages and dis¬ 
 patches by couriers, as was the Apostles’ custom for short distances. 
 
 PAUL THE COLUMBUS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 If we are to believe all the legends that come down to us, the twelve 
 apostles actually outstripped this gradually world-embracing commerce 
 and preached the Gospel, even in America, during the first century. 
 But the Apostle Paul was the Columbus of the early Christian Church, 
 who, going aside from the routes pursued by his apostolic predecessors, 
 turned his face Westward‘and traversed Europe as far as Rome, follow¬ 
 ing by land and by sea the currents of trade. Thrice he suffered ship¬ 
 wreck, a night and a day he had been in the deep. In journeyings often, 
 in perils in water, in perils of robbers, in perils by the heathen, in 
 perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness. 
 
 EARLY STANDARD TIME. 
 
 The progress of commerce is marked by the improvements of time¬ 
 keeping apparatus; but in the apostolic days there were no clocks, nor 
 compasses. Nights were divided into watches and days into hours. 
 After that, it was the twinkling of an eye, the flashing of a weaver’s 
 shuttle, or an indefinite allusion to something very brief. The unit of 
 the timekeeper was the hour. In these days the unit is no longer the 
 minute even, but it is the second, and many of the finer observations re¬ 
 quire th§ accurate recording of a hundred thousandth of a second. If 
 
64 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 we, in our mission work of to-day, keep to those old tardy standards, 
 don’t be astonished if we be found often late on the road. Old ways of 
 working had their day. ‘‘They had their day and ceased to be.” 
 
 THE FIRST MESSAGES. 
 
 Finally, the apostles had little to carry except the message on their 
 lips. The lives of Christ were not written until thirty years after the 
 ascension and the last book of the New^estament until more than sixty 
 y^ars. When these precious documents were gotten together, more 
 than a hundred years had revolved since the Great Commission. The 
 Old Testament in their hands, and the words of the Lord in their 
 mouths, that was the ammunition of the Christian warrior—that was 
 the Gospel they were bearing to every creature, using the tardy methods 
 of their day to reach the ends of the world. 
 
 MEANING OF “ALL THE WORLD” NOW. 
 
 I have said there is no human being that medium industry and trade 
 has not reached. After ha#idling many thousands of the tools and the 
 industrial products of savage peoples in the remotest parts of the world, 
 after examining the museums of the old world and the new, you will be 
 astonished to see how iron and other metals have completely taken the 
 place of stone. The whale ships have taught the Arctic people all to 
 use steel knives and even guns, and everything that comes from that 
 quarter is rivited or bladed or hafted with iron or steel. There is no 
 tribe of aborigines anywhere in America that have not seen the white 
 man—no man to whom the church could not send a Bible if she wished. 
 
 Every river in Northern Asia has borne on its current Russian trade 
 on which have breathed disciples of Christ. Into Central Asia, the 
 country of the Grand Lama, said to he locked against the European, a 
 stream of trade and travel has penetrated and has been flowing from 
 the days of Marco Polo. Southern Asia is now the battleground of 
 European nationalities, on which they are contending for the commerce. 
 English and French and German and Portuguese and American goods 
 are sold in every village in Africa—among the true negroes of the Sou¬ 
 dan, among the great Bantre Stock south of that, and even among the 
 Hottentots and Bushmen of the Cape. And every bale of these goods 
 has been handled over and over again by Christian men and women. 
 
 The Malayan peoples, the Papuans and other Oceanic negroes, the 
 Australians and the brown Polynesians, for one hundred years at least, 
 have bartered the rich productions of their islands for the manufactures 
 of Christian lands. There is no desert, no mountain fastness, no island 
 in the sea too far away, too rugged, too desolate to deter the intrusion 
 of trade. Men coat the inside of rum barrels to stop leakage, the pene¬ 
 trating power of gunpowder will carry a rifle projectile through twenty 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 65 
 
 inches of steel. But these two instruments for destroying the bodies 
 and the souls of men, gunpowder and rum, have penetrated to the re¬ 
 motest corners of the earth and taught man the shortest road to death 
 and moral ruin. 
 
 The beads with which the American aborigines have adorned them¬ 
 selves for three hundred years or more were made in Venice, under the 
 shadow of St. Marks, with its boasted relics of St. Theodore and of the 
 author of the Second Gospel. The brass wire and cotton stuffs of the 
 African trade were made in Marohester and Birmingham and Leeds and 
 Sheffield. While the cotton fibre itself was chiefly reared in the South¬ 
 ern States of our Union. It would not be unsafe to say that if you 
 were to follow the cotton threads spun from the Southern staple of the 
 United States they would lead you to every home, every family, every 
 individual of our race. It may be that God has purposely laid this on 
 you. These wonderfully delicate fibres, raised by your own hands, at 
 your own doorsides, follow them for one moment. They would lead you 
 first to all of our own seaports and manufacturing towns, then to Liver¬ 
 pool and Manchester and Leeds, or to the factory cities of the Continent 
 of Europe. Then they take up their wandering journeys. Keep your 
 hold on them, your prayers at least may follow them now to the Polar 
 Regions, where the unfortunate Greely lay at the point of death shielded 
 only by a cotton tent; now with Nordenskjold and his brave comrades of the 
 Vega with sails of Southern cotton along the northern shores of Europe 
 and Asia to Behring Sea; now, this very dao with the intrepid Rockhill, in 
 the heart of Asia, making his way to the capital of the Grand Lama; 
 now with the energetic and avaricious peddlers and traders among the 
 aborigines of both continents. In all your wanderings with these won¬ 
 derful little threads of your own rearing, you would leave no land or 
 water unexplored. If you were to take the wings of the morning, which I 
 understand to mean the earliest sunbeams, and travel with the sun the 
 live long day, seeing all he sees, your eyes would never once be away 
 from the products of the fields where most of you have spent your whole 
 lives. If the Southern Baptist Convention would put the Bible wherever 
 Southern Cotton had gone, the world would be evangelized. 
 
 PROGRESS OP A GREAT IDEA. 
 
 How slowly and yet how grandly has this word “all” unfolded itself 
 upon the comprehensions of men. Moses thought of it as the panorama 
 of creation was rolled past his mental eye. All peoples, high and low in 
 culture, have had their cosmogonies and gathered into an organic sys¬ 
 tem all worlds and all things as they comprehended them. David sought 
 to grasp it when he considered the Heavens to be the work of God’s 
 fingers. John beheld the glorified Savior as the one by whom all things 
 were made and without whom was not anything made that was made. 
 These were happy inspirations. In all the ages our race, after culti- 
 
66 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 vating- acquaintance with the discrete phenomena around them, has 
 been all the while co-ordinating them, making them organic, reading 
 life into them. 
 
 Man has learned by degrees to comprehend all things as parts of a 
 single mechanism. Sir Isaac Newton and Kepler conceived all objects 
 and all worlds to be held by universal gravitation. And in our century, 
 von Baer and Humboldt held that the world, in all its forces and ma¬ 
 terials, is an integrated cosmos. Anyone who is the least familiar with 
 the progress of philosophy will recall Tkat since the dawn of written 
 history the thoughts of men were tending to this unification. Shortly 
 after this first effort at comprehensive unity Mayer, Rumford and Joule 
 invented the methods of demonstrating the oneness of physical forces, 
 the conservation of energy. Wollaston, Kirchoff and Bunsen devised 
 the delicate apparatus to prove the chemical identity of all worlds. 
 Lamarck, Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Darwin taught the consanguinity of 
 all living beings. Helmholtz and Meyer co-ordinated nervous excita¬ 
 tion with mental activity. Comte and Spencer asserted the unity of all 
 sensible phenomena. Newton, Leibnitz and Hamilton projected their 
 minds beyond phenomena dnd invented mathematics of four or more di¬ 
 mensions, conceiving of worlds and systems that under the present order 
 of nature can have no objective reality. Over all this, into many souls 
 have come notions of infinite space and time and causation and person¬ 
 ality. The idea of limitation to thought or achievement no longer enters 
 the imagination. The depth of the sea, the distances of the stars, the 
 concealment of the earth’s treasures, the minuteness of the springs of 
 life and s^nse, the multiplicity and complicity of phenomena are only so 
 many incitements to a wider, deeper, loftier comprehension of that Holy 
 Spirit who was in all ages to accompany the church, and who was to be 
 the perpetual reservoir of power in all lands and ages. 
 
 GREAT IDEAS SLOWLY ADOPTED BY THE PEOPLE. 
 
 After the exalted minds had come little by little to comprehend these 
 meanings of the word “all,” how slow the people were in coming up 
 with them. First the universities, then the colleges, then the schools, 
 then people of common intelligence; but behind them, always, was a 
 vast herd that comprehended nothing. 
 
 It almost broke the Savior’s heart when he was on earth that his 
 Apostles were so slow of heart to believe. 
 
 The same is true now of those of Christ’s disciples who read his in¬ 
 junction to evangelize the whole world. The Catholic missions in the 
 sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were characterized 
 with praiseworthy zeal, but their motive was propagandism. One hun¬ 
 dred years ago Carey caught a glimpse of their import, and then they 
 seized a few other noble Protestant minds. Seventy-five years ago they 
 were felt in our own country by a UtUe band of enlightened souls. You 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 67 
 
 who are before me feel their momentous import now. A small percent¬ 
 age of your people are awaking to their significance. But in all our 
 churches the vast throng are still living in the folk-lore period of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Think of this for one moment, in passing. The success of commerce 
 is owing to the fact that so many are eagerly engaged in it, from the 
 merchant prince down to the street fakir. Matthew Arnold says, 
 “Human progress consists in.t|j^ continued increase in the number of 
 those who, ceasing to live the ahimal life alone and to feel the pleasures 
 of sense only, cdme to participate in the intellectual life also and to find 
 enjoyment in the things of mind. 
 
 The awakening of commerce was the awakening of great masses of 
 peoples to participate in its activities. The thing to pray for in the 
 church is a like great moving of all Christ’s followers and an uplifting 
 of the masses to participate in the spiritual life and find enjoyment in 
 the things of the soul. 
 
 DRIFTING ABOUT IN THE EDDIES. 
 
 As an illustration of the conservative conduct of the church as a 
 whole, the following incident will suffice: 
 
 On the 22d of June the steamer Trave ran into the schooner Taylor 
 five hundred miles east of New York City and broke her in two. The 
 stern drifted northward and the bow southward, the former landing on 
 August 3d near Portland, Maine; the latter, when last seen, was just off 
 Cape Henlopen, Delaware. Neither portion has at any time gotten into 
 the Gulf Stream, but both have been driven by the wind and tossed, the 
 stern probably following the cold southerly current between our coast 
 and Gulf Stream, making its way toward the point where Columbus 
 landed. I mention this incident in order to throw the following account 
 into bolder relief. 
 
 THE GREAT OCEANIC STREAM, 
 
 In the year 1890, the hydrographer of the United States Navy caused 
 to be thrown into the Atlantic Ocean over one hundred bottles in which 
 letters were enclosed, asking the finder to write the date and place of 
 finding on the same sheet and enclose the paper to the Navy Department 
 in Washington. A great many of these bottles were cast overboard op¬ 
 posite the coast of Spain and of West Africa, and every one of them 
 landed in the little Antilles, and some of them on Watlings Island or 
 Guanahani or San Salvador. They were carried to the place of Colum¬ 
 bus’ landing by a stream flowing in the ocean since the Tertiary Age. 
 
 It was the same stream that insensibly wafted the little fleet of Colum¬ 
 bus to the New World. Long before his day Phoenecians and Romans 
 and Spaniards had ventured beyond the Pillars of Hercules, had skirted 
 the coast of the Dark Contineht, to the Maderia, the Canaries, the Cape 
 
68 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 Verde Islands; they had often looked with anxious eyes to the west and 
 wondered what lay beyond. The stream whispered unto every one of 
 them, “Come into my current, come into my current, and I will show 
 you a new continent,” but they heeded it not. When the Venetian trav¬ 
 eler and his successors had brought back overland fresh news of Cipango 
 and India, then it was Columbus sailed away for gold on this very stream 
 and knew it not. 
 
 When men first looked out upon thi^sea bounded by no shore and 
 upon vast land steppes and deserts to which there seemed to be no limit, 
 they stood affrighted. Each improvement in the art of navigation, each 
 invention of better conveyance and transportation gave them confidence 
 and turned their stuperstition into boldness first and then into hope. 
 One hundred years ago the Protestant world stood paralized in the 
 presence of the mission cause. To-day, with some boldness they venture 
 forth upon this inviting sea, to-morrow they will speed their ships and 
 caravans to occupy the earth. 
 
 So, from the Ascension morning began to blow over the “all the 
 world” the breath of the Comforter. The currents have been flowing, 
 flowing, flowing ’round the world and returning into themselves. The 
 whole earth is filled with His glory, though men knew it not. Lured 
 by Columbus’ love of gold, men have followed the streams of Providence 
 to the sources of all material wealth and to the humblest consumer of in¬ 
 dustrial products. There is also a world-encircling river whose stream 
 will make glad the city of our God. Oh, friends, launch now upon that 
 blessed stream. How long already have men hugged the shores. Turn 
 now on this very quadro-centennial of Columbus’ act of faith and trust 
 the Spirit’s guidance. 
 
 MAGNITUDE OP THE WORLD'S COMMERCE. 
 
 Let us look for one moment at the magnitude of the world’s commer¬ 
 cial activity. The bountiful storehouse of God yields its diversified 
 productions in the three kingdoms of nature—mineral, vegetal, animal, 
 —to supply the wants of our race. The exploitation of these resources 
 is the primary industry of men. The amount of coal and metallic pro¬ 
 duct each year is counted by billions of tons. The secret places of the 
 earth yield their treasure, the lands their harvests of food, fibres, and 
 woods, the seas their products by thousands of millions of tons. 
 
 The muscular power of man and of beasts, the motive power of water 
 and wind and steam and electricity used up in the manufacture of this 
 product are gauged by billions of horse-power. The value added by 
 these mechanical transformations exceed many times the cost of the raw 
 material, and all the time that this ransacking of the earth is going on 
 and these factory wheels are spinning round, the stream of traffic is 
 bearing it all along on the world’s highways. Not satisfied with 
 these, men have devised artificial highways. They would flood the 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 69 
 
 Caspian Sea, the Dead Sea, the Sahara Desert. They have opened the 
 Suez Canal, and are projecting a railroad from the Mediterranean to 
 Bombay. The Russians have already daily communication between St. 
 Petersburg and the Pacific Ocean. On our own continent, the Canadian 
 Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Central Pacific, the Southern Pacific, 
 three canals across the Isthmus projected, and a railroad to extend the 
 whole length of the continent. North and South, supply the missing 
 links in our globe-encircling network. The transportation of all this 
 material to these routes on human backs and friendly beasts and wagons 
 and sledges begin the journey and then the trains and ships take up the 
 ceaseless round involving billions of dollars more. The exchange of 
 things means the exchange of money, but all the coin in the world 
 would not transact the business of the world one hour in a year. Hence, 
 letters of credit and international comit and drafts and checks circulate 
 everywhere to the amount of trillions of dollars. Mails, newspapers, 
 advertising, expositions, telegraphs, telephones, commercial agents, 
 tariffs, revenues, monopolies, bankruptcies, financial stress—these are 
 the things that occupy every day the nervous energies of men and dis¬ 
 turb their dreams at night. 
 
 On this stream of commerce ar5 also borne the ideas, the arts, the 
 social life, the culture of mankind. Through it the world is becoming 
 one. Hundreds of little tribes and tongues shrinking away in the eddies 
 of history will soon be lost forever. The business of the world is one. 
 The language of the world is practically one. The science of the world 
 is one. (The Japanese name all their minerals and plants and animals 
 with the Greek binomial nomenclature.) Governments are borrowing 
 and interchanging methods. One system of clocks are now running the 
 world over. The Christian era is the world’s calendar. The metric or 
 decimal system will soon prevail universally. The nations are moving 
 toward universal peace, all because these uniformities are in accordance 
 with the best interests of trade. Those nations that are not so moving 
 will not survive long, while those that are will form a constantly grow¬ 
 ing family of nations. 
 
 Following the routes of this universal trade, it took Dr. Mabie, Secre¬ 
 tary of the American Baptist Missionary Union, only eight months to 
 make a journey of visitation around the world in the year 1891. Carey was 
 five months in getting to India, and Judson seven months in reaching 
 Rangoon. A letter from Boston will reach Dr. Clough in thirty days, 
 and there is no difficulty in sending telegrams to him as to other mis¬ 
 sionaries in Asia. The salaries are supplied through the regular bills 
 of exchange and it is easier to pay many of them than it is to settle a 
 debt by mail from this city, in Louisville, to some towns in Kentucky not 
 far away. 
 
70 
 
 Centennial Celebration 
 
 THE NEWSPAPER. 
 
 In out of the way places men and women indulge in silly neighborhood 
 gossip; but the reading public indulge in “world gossip.” 
 
 “The great metropolitan newspapers addressing an audience of mil¬ 
 lions each morning, sending out expeditions into the remotest corners of 
 the world, exploring unknown seas and climbing hitherto inaccessible 
 mountains, dictating to presidents and bullying statesmen, foretelling 
 news so accurately as almost to compel the vindication of its predictions; 
 delving into the inmost heart of man and woman to pluck therefrom a 
 secret dearer than life itself; invading and desecrating the sanctity of 
 the fireside and violating all that the family and the individual hold 
 dear, to detect crime and insure its punishment; to pursue malefaction 
 beyond the reach of the law; to annihilate space and make all the differ¬ 
 ence of time in the world as nothing—the great marvel of the intellec¬ 
 tual and material powers of man at the period of their highest develop¬ 
 ment.” J. A. Cockerill, Cosmopolitan, N. Y., October, 1892, 695. 
 
 ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN. 
 
 This commerce, of which we have been speaking, is so wisely admin¬ 
 istered, so full of expedients. It does not send to any people the things 
 they do not need and even caters to their idiosyncrasies, becoming all 
 things to all men. I am told by eminent explorers of the Congo that so 
 fastidious are the negroes in regard to their tastes that even a slight 
 difference in the shade of heads has consigned the venturer to a total 
 loss of his goods. The great success of missions, likewise, in some places 
 and among some peoples, and the great failure in others surely cannot 
 be the fault of the divine Comforter, nor yet of the missionary as regards 
 his zeal or motives. The cause lies in the fact that we have not gone to 
 school to the children of this world, that we have not studied ethnology 
 in all its branches and have sought to clothe every message everywhere 
 in the same garb. 
 
 COMMERCE AN ORGANIZED ACTIVITY. 
 
 Another feature of commercial success, demanding our closest study, 
 is its wise system of centres of force and activity. The organization of 
 the commercial forces of the world about definite centres is not a matter 
 of chance, but an example of the universal law of the mutual alliance of 
 spiritual and natural forces. If on a terrestrial globe you were to put 
 one point of a pair of dividers upon the city of London and with the 
 other point were to mark off a hemisphere, you would include therein 
 nearly all the land surface of the earth of any value, save Australia. In 
 other words, London is the centre of the land surface of the earth, of the 
 commercial, manufacturing, monetary world. Upon a good map, show¬ 
 ing all the trunk lines of railroads or the main steamship routes, or the 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 submarine cables or the postal system, or the monetary exchanges, one 
 is reminded of the ganglionic centres of the nervous system. 
 
 As an example of a systematic effort to put all the individuals of the 
 earth who are engaged in the same work in touch, by the speediest and 
 most efficient apparatus. Professor Henry’s interpretation of the Smith- 
 son bequest is instructive. The will reads, “I give to the United States 
 the residue of my estate to found in the city of Washington an establish¬ 
 ment to be called the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffu¬ 
 sion of knowledge among men.” Henry at once conceived the idea of 
 organizing all institutions, all libraries, all museums, all societies, all 
 lonely workers into a solid brotherhood with means of easy and unex- 
 pensive intercommunication. And this is done. Any student of science 
 is in possession of the means of speaking to his brother on the other side 
 of the earth without a penny of cost. There are many who do not know 
 of this blessed agency, many who do not avail themselves of it. But 
 that is because they are not in that wondrous stream whose currents 
 move around the world. All this interchange of thought and of the 
 material results of labor is helped by the consciousness of every man en¬ 
 gaged that he is a part of it and every coterie of learned men becomes 
 a new centre of propagation. 
 
 Par be it from me to criticise the methods of the fathers. If the next 
 century witnesses so much progress in organic integration and growth 
 as the last has witnessed in differentiation and diffusion the Protestant 
 churches will have causes of joy. But why wait one moment. Our mis¬ 
 sionaries do not know one another’s work. The church does not know 
 the missionaries. Connections have never been established in some 
 places, in others they have been broken down. The circulation of blood 
 from heart to members, from members back to heart, is not free and 
 vitalizing. Our next step, it seems to me, should be in the direction of 
 more lively fellowship. 
 
 THE ETHICAL CODES OP COMMERCE. 
 
 The questionable morality of much of the world’s trade has sorely put 
 back the progress of religion in the world. The millennium has not yet 
 dawned on the commerce of nations and much of it does not make for 
 righteousness, but it is getting nearer and nearer to the golden rule. 
 Piracy has been swept from the seas. Christian nations are breaking up 
 the slave trade in Africa. Highway robbery and wanton destruction of 
 wealth are remanded to the frontier and society is outraged by their per¬ 
 petration. There are great evils remaining still, but good honest people 
 and religious people countenance them and are supported by them im¬ 
 mediately or remotely, and so long as that exists their day of judgment 
 is far off. The devoted missionary often finds his ground pre-empted 
 by the offscourings of his own race. 
 
 The thorough Christianization of the world’s commerce must be a 
 
72 
 
 CliNTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 work of time. If the whole business world were to submit itself this 
 moment to the sole g-uidance of this universal Spirit of holiness, the sys¬ 
 tem of world’s traffic which even now turns private vices’into public 
 benefits would be paralyzed. Nearly two hundred years ago Maunde- 
 ville wrote: 
 
 “T’ enjoy the World’s Conveniences, 
 
 Be famed in “War, yet live in Ease 
 Without great vices, is a vain 
 Eutopia seated in the Brain. 
 
 Pra\id, Luxury and Pride must live, 
 
 Whilst we the Benefits receive.” 
 
 [The Fable of the Bees, London, 1724, Tonson, p. 23.] 
 
 In its present complex moral state the world’s business is likened unto 
 a man which sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his 
 enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But 
 when the blade was sprung up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the 
 tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him: 
 Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it 
 tares? He said unto them. An enemy hath done this. The servants said 
 unto him. Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, 
 Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with 
 them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of 
 harvest I will say unto the reapers, Gather together ye first the tares, 
 and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my 
 barn. 
 
 HOW COMMERCE MAY BE SANCTIFIED. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 But commerce must be refined by religion the more religion avails it¬ 
 self of commerce to save the race. If men put holiness into the weight, 
 the measure, the time, the quality of their contribution to business, that 
 holiness will remain there as an ingredient. It is the leaven that the 
 women placed in three measures of meal. If a certain brand of goods 
 goes out always of standard quality and measure, that firm succeeds, 
 while poor quality and light weight firms die. By a law of nature, the 
 survival of the fittest, righteousness will endure in the long run and be¬ 
 come a growing instinct of trade. 
 
 More than that, this Holy Spirit will see to it that every act tending 
 to universal good will get into this great current of world-reformation. 
 Somehow, the widow’s mite fell into this cosmic river and goes on for all 
 time speaking the praises of self-denying charity. There are thousands 
 of our cults and oddities in our creeds for which the Holy Spirit does not 
 care a snap. They drift in the eddies along the shore and are stranded; 
 but He is pledged that no good word shall be spoken and no good deed 
 be done in vain—the greater its motive, the farther it will go by its own 
 momentum. 
 
Of modern missions. 
 
 73 
 
 The future progress of commerce in holiness will obey the law of each 
 man’s progress in the same direction. His good deeds bless others and 
 he is blessed in turn. With these enlarged resources of grace he be¬ 
 comes a greater blessing to his kind and he himself is still more blessed. 
 And so the reciprocal work goes on. The act of refining and being re¬ 
 fined is mutual. Herein will lie the great benefit of utilizing all the 
 church’s talent, of enlisting the whole church in'missions. As active 
 business men become engaged in evangelizing the world, the work will 
 progress with accelerated velocity. These consecrated merchants, 
 bankers, manufacturers, shippers will know where the main currents of 
 the world’s activities are flowing. They will tell you where to send your 
 missionaries to catch, to intercept the great world-caravans of influential 
 people. They themselves sailing on the currents of world-encompassing 
 activities will lend their daily sanctification to enforce the teachings of 
 the men whom they send to preach Christ’s gospel to every creature. 
 
 Upon the tomb of the Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, is this 
 inscription: “Next to the Christian religion I know of nothing to be 
 compared with the influence of a free, social and commercial intercourse, 
 in softening asperities, removing prejudices, extending knowledge and 
 promoting human happiness.” The truth of this declaration is confined 
 in every treaty, in every international conference and exposition, in the 
 public opinion of all nations. The doors opened by commerce for the 
 spread of religion are innumerable and religious obligations incalculable. 
 
 THE BETTERING OF COMMERCE BETTERS THE OPPOR- 
 TUNITIES OP SPREADING RELIGION. 
 
 * 
 
 All these opportunites are available, even in the carrying on of a com¬ 
 merce not wholly sanctified in its appliances, its methods and the prod¬ 
 ucts of its activities. But how much better for the sender and the con¬ 
 signee if the creative and sanctifying Spirit of God had breathed upon 
 its operations in the woods, the fields, the mines, the waters; in the mills 
 and shops: in the wagons and cars and ships; in the banking houses and 
 markets and expositions; in the minds and correspondence of its agents. 
 The railroad tracks and the ocean highways would be the way of life; the 
 charts and time tables and bills of lading would be the truth, and the 
 Holy Spirit would be its animating principle. The world would be re¬ 
 deemed. 
 
 The reaction of the church already upon commerce along che mission¬ 
 ary line is shown in the fact that the translation of the Bible and cate¬ 
 chisms and religious books into many hundreds of languages have first 
 made the world acquainted with those languages. You were well in¬ 
 structed on this topic by Professor Harris. The presence of the Catholic 
 missionaries long ago among the American aborigines taught them the 
 value of their goods and saved them from destruction. The same is true 
 
74 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 of later missions. No men have done more to open up Africa to the 
 world-commerce thau Livingstone and the other distinguished mission¬ 
 aries in the same area. It was the missionaries that saved our civilized 
 tribes in Indian Territory from annihilation. 
 
 ACTION AND REACTION. 
 
 The bringing of the mass of Christians individually into this world- 
 encompassing stream of consecration will react upon the ethics of com¬ 
 merce—retail, wholesale, interstate and international. The raising of 
 the average moral tone of commerce in relation to the Savior’s teaching 
 will increase the sanctifying and propagandist power of commerce. As 
 early man became more civilized, his dog and his horse became more 
 gentle; as they became more gentle, men became less brutal. These 
 great beasts of burden, called ships and railroad trains, may be civilized 
 and Christianized and these will Christianize and civilize in their turn, 
 just as they have been demoralized and have demoralized in turn. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND ITS RESOURCES. 
 
 The progress of the church in availing itself of the avenues and con¬ 
 veniences of trade has not been uniform. The first messengers were not 
 backward in this regard. During the thousand years of darkness, from 
 the fourth until the thirteenth century, both trade and church were 
 sluggish. The revival of commerce at the centres of Venice and Genoa 
 was stimulated first by the crusades and these kindled the zeal for traffic, 
 and this created the renaissance of Europe. But the Moorish successes 
 held back this glory for a while until Prince Henry the Navigator and 
 Ferdinand and Isabella had restored the cross to its supremacy in the 
 west. In the next fifty years Columbus discovered the New World, John 
 Cabot the continent of North America, and Vasco deGarna sailed around 
 the Cape of Good Hope to India, to set allowing the old stream westward 
 from that land. The lust for gold and zeal for souls went hand in hand 
 in all these enterprises down to the end of the eighteenth century. Com¬ 
 merce moved on by its slow processes and religion was only propagan- 
 dism. Both were in the streams but knew them not. The resources of 
 spiritual grace were almost as hidden as the mines of coal, and the dis¬ 
 covery of the steam engine and the commencement of Protestant mis¬ 
 sions were both in the future. Carey was the contemporary of the men 
 who conceived the locomotive and the steamboat, and I have been won¬ 
 dering whether the new spirit of missions would fill men’s hearts with 
 love as this new age of steam is filling their minds with plans for gain. 
 At any rate, the world is now explored. The world is a network of 
 commercial activities. Following its teachings and using its resources, 
 there should henceforth be no foreign missions and domestic missions, 
 but world-missions, world-embracing missions, all-the-world-and-every- 
 creature missions, as thou saidst Blessed Lord, at first. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 
 THE CLIMAX. 
 
 Like Ezekiel, when the Spirit, of whom we have been speaking, lifted 
 him above the earth as it goes spinning around in space, we even now 
 hear the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touch one an¬ 
 other, so crowded are they in the great docks, and the noise of the 
 wheels over against them and a noise of a mighty rushing. 
 
 Ply swifter, ye white wings of commerce, and carry these messages of 
 love over every sea. Spin faster, ye wheels of iron along your tracks of 
 steel, over every land—the noise of a great rushing as of a mighty wind 
 attend you. Every sail speed forward, whither the spirit leads, and 
 turn not as ye go. And ye flying wheels, animated by the Holy One, 
 when He goes, go ye; when He stands still, stand ye; when He is exalted 
 above the tricks and fashions of this world’s business, be ye lifted up 
 over against Him. Ply like lightning with the message. Ply, fly so 
 swiftly, ye trains of a sanctified commerce, that nave and spokes and tire 
 be undistinguishable in your flight, and eyes of Beryl sparkle in your 
 rims. Anticipate the sun, ye telegraphic massages, passing on the 
 watchword from wall to wall of the globe-possessing Zion. And as the 
 hum of a great city is made up of innumerable sounds that rise and die, 
 let there never be a moment when the sound of our Lord’s praises shall 
 not fill the earth. 
 
 AFTERNOON SESSION. 
 
 The discussion of the “Missionary Outlook” was opened 
 by Bro. Carter Helm Jones. The outlook depends on him 
 who looks. One hundred years ago it was described as the 
 “dream of a dreamer who had dreamed that he had been 
 dreaming.” Judson said that the outlook was as bright as 
 the promises of God. 
 
 How does it look now? There are three factors: God, our¬ 
 selves, the heathen. God loved them when they were in 
 crime. He loved the islands when their inhabitants were 
 eating each other. He gives his marching orders, “Go ye.” 
 The world is now open to missions. A treaty of England 
 with mountain-girded Thibet will open her soon. “Behold, 
 I have set before thee an open door.” Let us look at our¬ 
 selves as still another factor. We are three millions. The 
 wealth that puts to shame the fabled wealth of Aladdin’s 
 lamp is ours. On last Sunday the jewels on the bosom of 
 
<0 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 Baptists would have sent hundreds ot shijjloads of mission¬ 
 aries to the benighted. 
 
 There are six thousand young men in our colleges who 
 have expressed their willingness to go, if they should have 
 an opportunity. It used to be thought that only second-class 
 men went to foreign fields. Among this six thousand who 
 have offered themselves are men of power and godliness. 
 The outlook of missions depends on us. God loves them and 
 says, “Go ye”—the doors are open. What will we do? We 
 have a trinity of calls—God calls. We have a Macedonian 
 call. We have a voice from behind. Therefore, in view of 
 Carey, in view of Judson, let us press forward. 
 
 Bro. H. C. Roberts followed with remarks on the power of 
 prayer to give us money for the great missionary work. He 
 suggested that the pastors ask the people to pray for missions, 
 and as we pray let us open our own pocketbooks. 
 
 Bro. M. D. Jeffries followed with interesting remarks about 
 personal piety. We don’t give because our hearts are full of 
 the world. We have the cash for colts, but not for the 
 spread of the Gospel. 
 
 Dr. P. S. Henson, of Chicago, had promised to speak on 
 Tuesday night, but was providentially hindered from being 
 present. He sent, however, his address on 
 
 HEROES. 
 
 There are heroes and heroes. There are mock heroes that pompously 
 display their tawdry trappings like the jackdaw in the fable, presently 
 to be plucked of their pretentious plumage, and to be exposed in their 
 native nakedness to the scorn of men and angels. Such was the meteoric 
 Boulanger, who not long ago blew out his brains—what little he had— 
 on the grave of his mistress. The triumph of the wicked is short, and 
 the memory of the wicked shall rot. 
 
 And there are martial heroes, some of wliom are noble enough, as 
 Gordon and Havelock and Grant and Howard and Lee and Jackson, 
 while many accounted such have been only remorseless butchers, wad¬ 
 ing through blood and making a pavement of corpses for their march to 
 glory. 
 
 And there are civil heroes—for peace hath its victories no less than 
 war. Cicero was no less a hero than Caesar, Lincoln than Grant, Colum- 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 i i 
 
 bus that discov^ered a new world than Wellington that saved the old world 
 from the ambitious grasp of the unprincipled Corsican. 
 
 And heroes without number—all to fortune and to fame unknown— 
 village Hampdens, mute inglorious Miltons, who bravely did their duty 
 in inconspicuous spheres, and lived and died, “unknown, unhonored, 
 and unsung.” 
 
 Railroad engineers, with hand on the throttle, rushing to certain 
 death, but mindful to the last of the precious freight of life committed 
 to their charge, and sacrificing their own lives to save the lives of oth¬ 
 ers. Firemen that, through smoke and flame and amid toppling walls, 
 spring to the rescue of imperiled human beings. Patient and pale-faced 
 wives and mothers that, with deathless love in their hearts, and with 
 no eyes on them but the angels’ and God’s, toil on in the treadmill till 
 they drop exhausted. Aye, and husbands and fathers that, with help¬ 
 less families clinging to them, struggle on like brave swimmers in mad 
 waters. 
 
 God bless the heroes everywhere! And he does and will. 
 
 Grim, grand, rugged old Carlyle has written nobly of Heroes and 
 Hero Worship. Right clearly has he shown how the spirit of hero 
 worship is inherent in us all. and that this ineradicable spirit shapes 
 our characters and molds our destinies. We do well to set before us 
 “The Ideal Hero,” and the things that must distinguis'h him. 
 
 1. And first of all there must be breadth of view. The near-sighted, 
 narrow-minded, hide-bound, selfish man has not enough in him to make 
 a hero of. 
 
 To breadth of view great learning is not always a prime necessity. A 
 man may be a bookworm and be worth little more than an angleworm. 
 Many a mighty scholar have we known who was simply buried in books. 
 —“plunged to the hilt in musty tomes and rusted in.” Nor does travel 
 always contribute to it, as the supreme selfishness of many a “globe¬ 
 trotter” that we have occasionally encountered, in our travels, conclu¬ 
 sively attests. 
 
 He only has breadth of view who has largeness of heart. He may be 
 an humble carpenter, or a “consecrated cobbler,” but he must love God 
 and sympathize with man, must keep step with time, and take in 
 eternity. 
 
 2. And there must be height of motive. 
 
 There may be fearlessness to the point of foolhardiness, as in the case 
 of him who lately walked a tight-rope across Niagara’s awful gorge, but 
 nobody, unless an idiot, would ever think of calling him a hero. Men 
 have crossed the Atlantic in a yawl boat just to show that they could do 
 it, but have hardly won the admiration accorded to Columbus. 
 
 There have been far more brilliant strategists than Washington, but 
 many of their names are infamous, while his is immortal. It is the altar 
 that sanctifies the gift, and the motive that glorifies the act. 
 
78 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 It is this that lifts to nobility what else would be servility, and makes 
 foolhardiness sublimest heroism. When Sam Patch jumps to his death 
 all sensible men say: There goes a fool! But when a brave swimmer 
 leaps into a roaring flood to rescue a drowning child, as all dripping he 
 lays his precious burden on the shore, Heaven and earth shout: Bravo! 
 
 When duty calls and love girds for action, then character rises to the 
 height of the heroes. 
 
 3. Bravery of encounter is another element thUt is absolutely essential 
 to the real hero. 
 
 There is beauty in duty, however smoothly the course of duty runs, 
 but the quality of which we have been speaking means toil and tears, 
 strife and struggle, battle and blood. It braves fire or flood, wild beasts 
 or the wilder fury of a mob. It dares to stand for God and truth against 
 a world in arms. 
 
 It means Arnold Winkelried gathering up a sheaf of spear-points into 
 his own bosom, and so making way for liberty. It means Curtius leap¬ 
 ing, with his armor on, into the yawning gulf and closing the gulf by the 
 sacrifice of Rome’s most precious thing—a loyal heart. 
 
 It means Horatius at the bridge, Leonidas at the pass, and Martin 
 Luther at the Diet of Worms. 
 
 4. But the crowning glory of the real hero is calm, invincible persist¬ 
 ency of purpose. Almost anybody can make a dash. A whirlwind 
 sweep of cavalry is not the thing that tries most sorely the metal of a 
 soldier, but the tramp, tramp, tramp, for days and nights, beneath weep¬ 
 ing skies, over miry roads, hungry and cold and footsore and homesick, 
 the wearisome work in the trenches, the waiting under fire for the long 
 delayed order to charge upon the enemy. 
 
 The dauntless courage that holds right on though sinews crack, and 
 nerves quiver, and wounds bleed, and darkness deepens, and victory seems 
 far away; that cuts down the bridge behind, and burns the ships, and 
 faces the foe, determined to do, and dare, and, if need be, die, but never 
 fall back. This is heroism of sublimest sort. 
 
 This shines resplendent in God’s Holy Word, which is nothing other 
 than a bundle of biographies, where truth is set before us, not so much 
 in philanthropic sentiments, and pious precepts as in saintly lives, radiant 
 with di vinest beauty, and going forth to highest duty. Truth incarnate 
 —this is what the world wants and the Bible gives. And while it found 
 splendid expression in many Old Testament saints, who, through faith, 
 subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
 stopped the mouths of liars, quenched the violence of fire, 
 escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made 
 strong, waxed “valiant in light and put to flight the armies of the 
 aliens,” yet none of these, nor all of them together are, for a moment to 
 be compared to Him in whom humanity finds its culmination and its 
 crown- the Son of Man—the Son of God—the one ideal, and yet most 
 real hero—Jesus of Nazareth—the “Captain of Salvation.” 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 79 
 
 All otl;iers are worthless paste—He is the priceless Kooh-i-nor. All 
 others are Lilliputians—He is the one colossal hero of all the ages. 
 
 If breadth of view be wanted, what breadths of view distinguished him! 
 
 By birth He came of Jewish stock, and whatever may have been true 
 of the grand old patriarch and prophets, the Jew had come in Christ’s 
 time to be the very synonym of narrowness and bigotry. He cordially 
 hated his neighbors and kinsmen, the Samaritans, while he despised the 
 Gentiles as nothing othe^ than dogs. And yet this Jewish carpenter 
 of Nazareth was broader than Galilee, broader than Judea and Samaria, 
 broader than all the Orient, broader than Orient and Occident, broader 
 than any race—all races—anytime—all time. His view swept immensi¬ 
 ty and eternity and all the world’s foremost thinkers have never come 
 up to it, and never will while the ages roll. 
 
 And what height of motive! High as the heavens it mounted. Yea, 
 what depth—far down to the gates of hell stooped his love. Like Atlas 
 he carried the world—only not upon his shoulders but his heart. “He 
 loved us and gave himself for us,” and “greater love hath no man than 
 this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” 
 
 “He came not to be ministered unto but to minister,” and can there be 
 a nobler inspiration than love to man? Aye, verily, there can be, and 
 we make bold to proclaim it, in this age, which is nothing if not human¬ 
 itarian. Love to man is beautiful indeed, but it is not the matter of su- 
 premest moment. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 strength.” This is the first and great commandment. Christ loved our 
 race and died to redeem it, but his motive had a higher mark: “Lo, I 
 come; in the volume of the Book it is written of me; I delight to do thy 
 will, O God.” 
 
 Not only was there the impulse of the mightiest motive, but the mani¬ 
 festation of the sublimest courage. And there was solemn need, for 
 never went hero forth to such terrible encounter. Hercules had his 
 mighty labors~but no labors like these. Other souls had had their 
 sorrows, but of a truth He could say, “There is no sorrow like my sor¬ 
 row.” He had to face the malice of men, and the hate of hell alone. 
 And not only so, but he had to endure the wrath of God. It pleased the 
 Lord to bruise Him. He put Him to grief. He laid upon Him the ini¬ 
 quity of us all. One drop from the vials of the wrath would burn a sin¬ 
 ner to a cinder. All the contents of these were emptied on the head of 
 Christ. One sin would sink a world to hell—so frightful would be its 
 weight. But all the sins of all the race were laid upon the Lamb of 
 God. Never did Heaven look upon such anguish as He endured in the 
 garden and on the Cross. 
 
 Most heroes are hurried on in blindness to their tragic fate, if tragic 
 fate await them. Even the immortal six hundred who made that splen¬ 
 did charge at Balaklava knew not for a certainty that every man of them 
 
80 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 was riding to his death. But Christ knew. With clearest consciousness 
 he realized the dreadful tragedy to which He went, and yet he went 
 confronting all, comprehending all; clear as a clarion rang out the voice 
 of the dauntless hero, Lo, I come. 
 
 Not only so, but in Him as never in any other was there patient per¬ 
 sistence to the hitter end. “He came unto His own and His own received 
 Him not.” Never was there such lavishment of love, such expenditure 
 of power with such miserably poor apparent results. Hated, hounded, 
 betrayed, forsaken—His whole pathway darkened by the shadow of the 
 Cross, He moved right on with unstaying step and unfaltering purpose. 
 He set His face steadfastlj'-to go up to Jerusalem, notwithstanding He 
 knew all the anguish that awaited Him there. Long time before it had 
 been said of Him: “He shall not fail nor be discouraged,” and he did not 
 fail, nor was he discouraged. Pale, patient, wounded, bleeding, thorn 
 crowned, ALONE, he pressed forward past Gethsemane, past 
 Golgotha, past the gates of death and hell until, over all triumphant. He 
 swept past at last the gates of glory, and now sits at the right hand of 
 the Most High, from henceforth expecting all His enemies be made His 
 footstool. And they will be, for “I saw Heaven opened, and behold a 
 white horse and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and 
 in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as aflame 
 of fire, and on his head were many crowns, and he had a name Written 
 which no man knew but he himself, and he was clothed in a vesture dip¬ 
 ped in blood, and his name is called ‘The Word of God,’ and the armies 
 which are in Heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine 
 linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that 
 with it he should smite the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod 
 of iron; and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of 
 Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name 
 written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” 
 
 And this is the Hero of Heroes, triumphant at last, and triumphant 
 forever. 
 
 And they only that followed Him, whether on earth or in Heaven, are 
 worthy of the name of heroes. 
 
 There are many that bear the Christian name that can scarcely be 
 reckoned Christian Knights. Thirty thousand names were on Gideon’s ‘ 
 muster roll, but only three hundred of them made themselves immortal. 
 One star differeth from another star in glory—so is it in the Church 
 Militant, and so will it be in the Church Triumphant. 
 
 What constellated glory shines in the eleventh of Hebrews! How 
 Noah shines in the midst of Antedeluvian darkness! And how grandly 
 heroic are the proportions of the patriarch of Uz, and of Moses, the Man 
 of God, and Caleb and Joshua! Time would fail me to speak of the mag¬ 
 nificent men that loom colossal amid the shadows of the Old Testament 
 dispensation. But, perhaps, next to Jesus Christ the man who towers to 
 
Of modern missions. 
 
 81 
 
 the loftiest stature and kindles the intensest enthusiasm in every pious 
 heart is the man who, as the great Apostle of the Gentiles, went forth 
 the very embodiment of the Great Commission, a tireless herald of the 
 truth and a fearless soldier of the Cross. 
 
 Every known element found in him its noblest expression. If breadth 
 of view be wanted his has never been surpassed. Three civilizations 
 centered in him. He had the culture of the Greek, the imperial quality 
 of the Roman, and the religious fervor of the Jew, when the Jew was 
 brought to his best by the impartation of the grace of God by Jesus 
 Christ. No pent up Utica contracted his powers. A Christian cosmo¬ 
 politan he showed himself, if ever there was one. Other men have had 
 particular nationalities laid especially upon their hearts, but Paul, like 
 his Master, bore up the whole round world on his. 
 
 And if motive ever glorified a hero then this great foreign missionary 
 was entitled to the foremost plan. No salary lured him—with his own 
 hands he ministered to his necessities. “I seek not yours but you” was 
 the emphatic declaration of his lips and it was proved by the matchless 
 demonstration of his life. Never was there deeper, tenderer love to 
 man—never profounder, truer love to God. 
 
 “Whether we be beside ourselves it is to God, whether we be sober it 
 is for your cause”—such was the spirit that impelled and sustained him. 
 
 And never did braver heart than his beat in human bosom. Prom the 
 first he understood that it was no dress parade to which he was sum¬ 
 moned. The Lord had showed him how great things he must suffer for 
 his name’s sake. But he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, nor 
 was he ever daunted by the perils that perpetually beset his path. Im¬ 
 prisoned, whipt, stoned, left for dead, shipwrecked, baffled, deserted, 
 misrepresented, hunted to the very gates of death by the hounds of 
 hell—knowing that in every city “bonds and afflictions” awaited him— 
 and yet in the midst of all he could calmly exclaim,: “None of these 
 things move me, neither count I my own life dear unto myself so that I 
 might finish my course with joy, and the ministry whieh I have secured 
 of the Lord Jesus.” 
 
 No sadder spirit of splendid valor distinguished this heroic mission¬ 
 ary leader, but patient persistence through all the long and weary years 
 * of that wonderful life of unselfish devotion to God and man, so that at 
 the close of it he could sincerely say: “I have fought a good fight, I have* 
 finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up 
 for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, 
 shall give me in that day.” 
 
 “Lives of great men all remind us 
 . We can make our own sublime.” 
 
 And no nobler inspiration can come to us from the contemplation of 
 characters aglow with holy enthusiasm and devoted to the highest ser- 
 
82 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 vice that ever enlisted mortal man. There are such heroes even now, as 
 there were in the olden time. Many a time we recognize them only 
 when laid out for burial, and discover too late that we had been enter¬ 
 taining angels unawares. Many of them will he uncovered when the 
 secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, and we shall find that some, not 
 much accounted of in their day and generation, were really making the 
 bravest of fights, and displaying a splendid heroism which shall be glo¬ 
 riously “rewarded in the resurrection of the just.” But after all one 
 cannot fail to feel that the grandest of heroes and heroines are those who 
 hearing the hour of the Great Commission, and hearing the wail of a 
 perishing world, tear themselves loose from all the tender ties that bind 
 them to their homes and friends, and animated by a quenchless love, and 
 armed with an invincible purpose, say, “Lo, I come! I delight to do thy 
 will, O God!” 
 
 Let me not be understood, as disparaging, for a moment, any other 
 form of service. Any act of duty is a thing of beauty, but it is not all 
 duty that rises to the height of the heroes. 
 
 Such heroism is sometimes demanded in our daily duties’ here, for 
 often the battle rolls to our gates, and rages in our streets, and we have 
 urgent need to gird ourselves, and quit ourselves like men. But when 
 one leaves every long loved scene of life, and plunges into deepest dark¬ 
 ness, resolved to do, to dare, to die, if need be, that those who are per¬ 
 ishing for lack of knowledge may hear the glorious gospel’s sound—this 
 is something that quickens the heart throb in every generous bosom and 
 wakens the applause of earth and heaven. 
 
 And when, as in the expression of Carey and Marshman and "Ward, 
 and Judson and multitudes more this self-sacrificing service is protracted 
 for weary, toilsome years, and every word of truth and deed of love 
 seems as water spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered up again— 
 when sickness wastes the frame, and trials oppress the heart—when the 
 heathen mock and turn away, and friends lose heart and withdraw sup¬ 
 port—when nothing seems to come of love’s labor but disappointment 
 and disaster—to hold on in spite of all that, and feel at such a time, as 
 Judson felt, at such a time, that “The prospect is as bright as the prom¬ 
 ises of God”—this is heroism, the sublimest that mortal ever displayed 
 in the sight of heaven. 
 
 Oh, brethren, we have fallen upon easy going, pleasure loving times, 
 even for the Church of Christ, when we seek to make religion winsome 
 by eliminating from it all the severer elements that used to make it 
 grandly heroic. 
 
 Our favorite strain is the one which declares that religion never was 
 designed to make our pleasures less, while we hear less than aforetimes 
 of tears and blood. If the church has lost something of its fibre; if Chris¬ 
 tianity has lost something of its attractiveness for manly souls the rea¬ 
 son, possibly, is not far to seek. Let us have less of picnic presentation, 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 83 
 
 and more of call to battle. Let us give all men to understand that the 
 Church’s mission is nothing other than the conquest of the world, and 
 that what it wants is not self-indulgent professors of religion, but mar¬ 
 tial heroes, who in faith and love will catch up the standard of the cross 
 and bear it in triumph to the ends of the earth. 
 
 In the absence of Dr. Henson Tuesday night, whose speech 
 was afterward furnished as above, Dr. Ellis spoke on “Giv¬ 
 ing. ” The only way to resist covetousness in the heart is by 
 liberal giving. People should give till they love to give. 
 Love does not stop to measure its giving. Witness the 
 woman who gave the spikenard to Christ and the widow 
 who gave her two mites, which constituted “all her living.” 
 Love sacrifices itself in giving, and delights thus to sacri¬ 
 fice itself. This great Centennial movement calls for the 
 most devoted giving. The eyes of all the land are on Louis¬ 
 ville Baptists, and much depends on what they do. He 
 made a powerful appeal for men and women of wealth to 
 give at least two per cent, of their property to this cause. 
 He called on the young men and on those who were wage 
 earners to consecrate a tenth of a year’s income to this Cen¬ 
 tennial, and he urged young ladies and others living in com¬ 
 fort, but without income of their own, to make sacrifices. 
 “God loves the cheerful giver.” Let us all go on record this 
 year as “God’s cheerful givers.” 
 
 Dr. R. Ryland said, from the chair: “I will this year give 
 five times my usual offering.” 
 
 • 
 
 Several brief speeches followed. Dr. Weddell, of Chicago, 
 urged that the luxury of giving begins when we give more 
 than ten per cent, of our income. If we love God shall we 
 not delight to give to what He loves? 
 
 Dr. J. Wm. Jones said, this Centennial is no accident; it is 
 the voice of God. 
 
 Prof. O. T. Mason spoke of the cotton of the South as go¬ 
 ing all over the world. If Sonthern Baptists would send 
 
84 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 Bible truth wherever their cotton goes, ere long the world 
 would be evangelized. 
 
 Dr. J. B. Hawthorne thought the work of raising this Cen¬ 
 tennial fund was not a difficult one for Southern Baptists if 
 only they could be made to feel their obligation and to ap¬ 
 preciate their opportunity. 
 
 Dr. F. H. Kerfoot wanted some plan set on foot to raise 
 this fund. He thought it well to form bands who would give 
 each f$25.00, $50.00, $100.00, or more. He would be glad to 
 belong to such bands and to induce others to join. 
 
 The Kev. F. D. Hale, though all his salary had been alloted, 
 would gladly give $100.00 to this Centennial fund. His 
 church was seeking to get one cent a day for the year from 
 each member. One little girl has already $22.00. 
 
 The Chairman of the Committee (T. T. Eaton) then an¬ 
 nounced that Dr. Powell’s services had been secured to take 
 the field for the Centennial. While he would in every way 
 practicable stimulate an enlargement of the regular work 
 arid the sending,out of new missionaries, he would give his 
 special attention to securing the fund of $250,000 for perma¬ 
 nent work. This, being a special fund, must necessarily be 
 raised by a special effort, but it is * understood that what is 
 given to this fund is to be in addition to what is contributed 
 for the carrying on and for the enlargement of the regular 
 work. 
 
 Dr. R. Ryland spoke a few appropriate words in closing 
 the meeting, and dismissed the assembly with a benediction. 
 
OF MODERN MISSIONS. 
 
 85 
 
 INTERESTING FIGURES 
 
 PRESENTED BY PROF. O. T. MASON AT THE MIS¬ 
 SIONARY CENTENNIAL MEETINGS. 
 
 ITEMS OP THE WORLD'S 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 P5 
 
 
 Amount. 
 
 
 Population of the world. 
 
 Population of the United States. 
 
 English speaking people. 
 
 Emigrants from Europe since Waterloo. 
 
 Persons supported in commerce. 
 
 Persons engaged in commerce. 
 
 Exports and imports of the United States 
 
 Wealth of commercial nations. 
 
 Wealth of United States. 
 
 Money, amount in the world. 
 
 Annual incomes of the world. 
 
 Revenues of the world. 
 
 World’s commerce. 
 
 Am’t stocks quoted in London markets. 
 
 Banking power of the world . 
 
 English budget estimates. 
 
 Capital and deposits in banks. 
 
 Gross receipts, U. S. Government. 
 
 Expenditures, U. S. Government. 
 
 Public debt United States. 
 
 State, county, municipal school debt U.S. 
 
 Amount of coin and bullion, U. S. 
 
 Clearing house transactions, U. S. 
 
 Clearing house transactions,world. 
 
 Steam power in the world. 
 
 Pood consumption. 
 
 World’s cotton. 
 
 United States cotton. 
 
 Coal consumed in the world. 
 
 Alcoholic drinks in the world. 
 
 1882 
 
 1890 
 1888 
 
 1888 
 
 1888 
 
 1891 
 1888 
 1888 
 
 1890 
 1888 
 1889 
 1889 
 1889 
 1888 
 
 1891 
 1880 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 1891 
 1888 
 1888 
 1888 
 1888 
 1888 
 1889 
 1888 
 
 Containing alcohol. 
 
 Liquor consumed in U. S. 
 
 World’s mining*.. 
 
 Domestic animals (mammals). 
 Shipping of the world (steam) 
 Shipping of the world (sail) .. 
 
 Tonnage by shipping. 
 
 Light houses. . . 
 
 1891 
 
 1880 
 
 1888 
 
 1888 
 
 1888 
 
 1887 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 $ 
 
 * ' $ 
 
 $ 
 
 ■$ 
 
 $ 
 
 horse 
 
 tons 
 
 pounds 
 
 pounds 
 
 tons 
 
 gals. 
 
 gals. 
 
 gals. 
 
 tons 
 
 tons 
 
 tons 
 
 tons 
 
 1,434,000,000 
 
 62,622,250 
 
 111,000,000 
 
 27,000,000 
 
 350,128,000 
 
 141,790,000 
 
 1,728,789,860 
 
 294,686,000,000 
 
 62,796,400,000 
 
 1,167,372,000,000 
 
 4,356,018,000,000 
 
 4,764,155,000,000 
 
 16,378,350,000,000 
 
 2,400,750,000,000 
 
 1,550,545,000,000 
 
 425,000,000 
 
 12,515,000,000 
 
 765,821,305 
 
 731,126,376 
 
 610,529,120 
 
 1,135,351,871 
 
 1,497,440,707 
 
 56,803,253,957 
 
 100,000,000,000 
 
 50,150,000 
 
 175,840,000,000 
 
 4,783,000,000 
 
 3,420,000,000 
 
 485,000,000 
 
 5,733,000,000 
 
 605,000,000 
 
 117,767,101 
 
 2,500,000,000 
 
 1,000,000,000 
 
 36,160,000 
 
 12,642,000 
 
 139,000,000 
 
 6,208 
 
86 
 
 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 
 
 INTERESTING FIGURES.—Continued. 
 
 ITEMS OF THE WORLD’S 
 
 COMMERCE. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Metric 
 
 Unit. 
 
 Amount. 
 
 Cost of docks and harbors in use now... 
 
 
 
 49,572,000,000 
 
 Mileage of canals and rivers. 
 
 
 
 196,366 
 
 Mileage of railroads in the world. 
 
 1891 
 
 
 437.262 
 
 Mileage of railroads in the world. 
 
 1888 
 
 miles 
 
 354,310 
 
 Passengers by rail. 
 
 1888 
 
 
 2,362,000,000 
 
 Goods % rail.... 
 
 1888 
 
 tons 
 
 1,424,000,000 
 
 Cose of the world’s railroads... 
 
 
 
 27,619,600,000 
 
 Receipts of railroads, world. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 1,097,847,000 
 
 Letters sent through mails . 
 
 1888 
 
 
 8,569,000,000 
 
 Papers sent through mails. 
 
 1888 
 
 
 8,759,000,000 
 
 Postal revenues. 
 
 1888 
 
 $ 
 
 287,226,000 
 
 Monthly issue of newspapers, etc. 
 
 1890 
 
 
 813,000,000 
 
 Telegrams sent in the world. 
 
 1890 
 
 
 162,023,736 
 
 Telegraphs of the world (lines). 
 
 1890 
 
 miles 
 
 780,433 
 
 Total capital in electricity, U. S. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 600,000,000 
 
 Total capital in telegraphs, U. S. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 120,000,000 
 
 Total capital in telephones, U. S. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 80,000,000 
 
 Total capital in lighting, U. S. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 300,000,000 
 
 Total capital in supplies, U. S. 
 
 1890 
 
 $ 
 
 100,000,000 
 
 Telegraph messages, U. S. 
 
 1891 
 
 
 59,143,343 
 
 Telephone connections. 
 
 1891 
 
 
 450,000,000 
 
 Spent by American tourists in Europe.. 
 
 1889 
 
 $ 
 
 100,000,000 
 
%. IJ 
 
 ■ ^ 
 
 '^S 
 


 ■'■.4 
 
 
 i