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 THE REFLEX POWER 
 OF MISSIONS. 
 
 AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE 
 
 GENERAL SYNOD oj the REFORMED CHURCH 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY GENERAL JOHN E. ROLLER, 
 
 HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA. 
 
 WE ON BSD A Y EVENING, MAY 17, 1905, 
 
 AT ALLENTOWN, PA. 
 
 
THE REFLEX POWER 
 
 OF MISSIONS. 
 
 ^-V ADDRESS BEFORE THE 
 
 GENERA/. SYNOD of the REFORMED CHURCH 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 BY GENERAL JOHN E. ROLLER. 
 
 HARRISONBURG, VIRGINIA. 
 
 WEDNESDAY EVENING. MAY 17. 1905. 
 AT ALLENTOWN. PA. 
 
 
 HENKEL & COMPANY, 
 PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS, 
 NEW MARKET, VA. 
 
THE REFLEX POWER OF MISSIONS. 
 
 Would to God that some one more worthy than I 
 had been chosen to make this address tonight — but it 
 is your call — your command — and I have simply an- 
 swered — “ Here am I.” If any one should feel ag- 
 grieved at any sentiment of mine, I ask that it be re- 
 membered that I speak from the standpoint — not of a 
 city like this, full of people of the Reformed Church ; 
 but of one, who knows of many, many preaching points 
 in the great South, once occupied by the church, but 
 long since lost to it ; of one who can tell of members 
 who remained loyal to our church for nearly half a cen- 
 tur}’, without having heard the voice of one of its min- 
 isters, and who were buried at last, — still loyal and 
 faithful — at the hands of others than their own faith ; 
 of one, who lives in territory where synods of our church, 
 not classes merely, should be in existence today, and in 
 which its members feel their lack of sympathy and fel- 
 lowship, when they come to stand in the presence of the 
 great congregations of other sections. It may be pos- 
 sible too that like St. Paul, I ought to say that “ I speak 
 as a fool.” 
 
 Too long! oh, far too long, had the Reformed Church 
 of the United States, — a giant in its opportunities and 
 possibilities — slept upon its privileges and duties — too 
 long lain inert — seemingly bound, in the feeble meshes 
 of the formalists, who had gathered about and presumed 
 to control it ; — too long had a part of this Catholic Church 
 rested upon a mediaeval belief, in a supreme efficacy of 
 its ordinances and sacraments ; — too long had it been 
 governed by the few, — the men of extreme views, who 
 forgetful of the right of the vast multitudes, of Protestant 
 Christianity, to enlist under its banners, upon the broad- 
 
— 4 — 
 
 est creed of Christendom, had driven out its pietists, and 
 those of evangelistic sympathies — refused to recognize 
 the potential influence of the versicles of its Tersteegens, 
 and of the glowing utterances of its Untereycks, — its 
 Meanders — with their “ deep sense of the soul’s need of 
 redexnption and of an abiding in Christ as the Savior from 
 sin ’ ’ — too long turned eoldly away from the men who 
 would have led those who desired, towards the methods 
 that have moved the earth, and made other organizations 
 the wonder of the times, — too long refused to give its 
 laity any practical voice, either in the government of its 
 affairs, or in the conserving of its apologetics — too long 
 failed to weld that laity, either by fundamental law of 
 organization, or by discipline, into a brotherhood, to 
 each other, and to all, in church, and in life — too long, 
 oh ! too long, failed to enlist its sympath)' in the service 
 of the Church, and to avail, of the strength and 
 zeal, the fire and force, the enthusiasm, yet conserva- 
 tism, that always belong to a body of working humanity ! 
 
 During all that period, too, the daysof our Church, 
 like those of the people of Israel on their pilgrimage to- 
 wards the land of promise, seemed to be “ passed away, ’ ’ 
 “not in His favor,” but “in God’s wrath.” The 
 fathers, as they looked back from time to time, must 
 have gazed, with weary hearts, upon a record of com- 
 parative failure. Dike the Israelitish host on the plains 
 of Moab, though the skies above them were gemmed 
 with beauty, though the land for which they were 
 striving was near by, though the Jordan rippled almost 
 at their feet on its way to the sea, it was hidden from 
 them by the darkness of the night, and the murmur of 
 voices that comes to us across all of the generations since, 
 from their tents on that historic ground, reechoes but 
 too faithfully, the sighs of wearied hopes, blasted in ful- 
 fillment, and tells us but too truly of the doubts which 
 a limited vision gave them of the future, and its tones 
 
— 5 — 
 
 break upon our ears as that of a sad and stately dirge. 
 Oh ! is it not probable that the most faithful of their 
 leaders — the incomparable Moses — the greatest of the 
 leaders and law-givers of earth — must himself have felt 
 a premonition of soul, which told him of his own death 
 before the host of God’s elect should cross the river, and 
 of his own lonely grave on Nebo’s mountain. 
 
 No wonder, then, that his prayer, in the ninetieth 
 psalm, was one of sadness, revealing, oh, so faithfully, 
 the disappointments he must have felt, and the doubts 
 and weariness of his followers. 
 
 So, too, must our fathers have felt as they saw pro- 
 phetically, that future, in which this country should 
 contain a population — one-tenth of which, or eight mil- 
 lions at least, should carry in its veins the blood of 
 Reformed stock — while the Church should be able to 
 claim the adherence of but one-eightieth or one million. 
 Doubtless they felt that the momentous inquiry would 
 some day be made, “by whom, and when, and how, 
 were the great opportunities, which must at one time, 
 at least, have been before our Church, in this great new 
 land of the West, lost to us?’’ 
 
 The camp fires of Moab have gone out long since. 
 No trace even of their ashes can be found amidst the 
 dust of ages — no record of the names of the great lead- 
 ers of the Jewish people of that day, — save those of 
 Moses and Joshua, — has survived the mutations and de- 
 cay of time. The forces that then moved about them 
 have long since gone from earth, but on the hill-tops 
 of human history the glow of their fires still lingers — it 
 illumines the skies even yet, and across the centuries 
 from the echoless and deathless shore, comes the whis- 
 pered lament : “ Thou earnest them away as with a 
 
 flood ; they are as asleep. They are like the grass which 
 groweth up. .In the morning it flourisheth and groweth 
 up, in the evening it is cut down and withereth. For 
 
— 6 — 
 
 we are consumed by Thine anger and by Thy wrath 
 are we troubled. All our days are passed away in Thy 
 wrath. We spend our years as a tale that is told.” 
 
 But even as there comes to the ears of our imagi- 
 nation the voices of this — one of the most sorrowful of 
 all human experiences — and the words of the saddest 
 prayer that ever came from human hearts, there comes 
 also the assurance of the sweetest of hopes : ‘ ‘ Let Thy 
 work appear unto Thy servants and Thy glory unto 
 their children. '''' “The eternal God is our refuge and 
 underneath are the everlasting arms.” 
 
 So that beyond the imaginings of men, far into the 
 great cycles of years, in which Deity is working out 
 His infinitely wise and inscrutable plans, must we look 
 for the realization of our most ardent wishes. Far into 
 the future, pregnant with the hopes of a more full and 
 glorious day, believed in and hoped for, must w^e look 
 for the success that we should have had to-day — the 
 “glory” shall appear unto our children. Oh ! do we 
 not see it prophetically, in the unity of the whole of 
 Protestant Christianity upon the basis of the sweetest 
 and most ecumenical of all creeds — the creed of this 
 Church. 
 
 So, also, tonight, far beyond the faces that beam 
 upon us here, illuminated by the blaze of civilization, 
 and lighted by the hope of the Christian religion, must 
 we look, and catch some faint vision of the great myriads 
 of white, and black, and yellow faces, stretching even 
 to the farthest corner of heathen lands, — “the na- 
 tions of the heathen world in their need.” Oh! if it 
 be true that the most pathetic need of all, is the lack of 
 the sense of need, how deep, indeed, are the needs of 
 this vast multitude ! 
 
 Whether, indeed, any honor should be given to 
 any one or more of all the leaders who have preceded ns 
 in our Church, and who have long since gone up higher. 
 
— 7 — 
 
 or whether it was the result of some Pentecostal season , 
 when ‘ ‘ tongues of fire ’ ’ rested upon more than one 
 head in the “assembly of the saints,” certain it is, that 
 from the day, — when your speaker was but a child, — 
 this Church sent its first missionary — a Schneider, to 
 Broosa — to the present, with its representatives, in far 
 China and Japan, it began to feel a deeper thrill in every 
 beating pulse — an interest more profound in the sacred 
 work of missions. The little rivulet, dropping outward 
 from the mountains to the sea, at first stealing covertly 
 along grassy meads, and through shady nooks, has 
 gathered force with its progress until today it is one of 
 the noblest of the streams of missionary activity. With 
 all the other churches of militant Protestantism, we too 
 have our missionaries and the institutions that belong 
 with them. 
 
 It is not assuming too much, for us, to believe that 
 it was the thought, that our own church was so deeply 
 indebted to the power and spirit of missions, that si- 
 lently yet irresistibly forced us to begin our part in the 
 sw^eet and gracious duties of the work, the most heroic 
 and lovable, perhaps, of any service of these latter days. 
 Our Church had not forgotten — and could not forget — 
 the little Swiss missionary of the Dutch church — our 
 own Schlatter — whose zeal was so intense as to permit 
 him to halt for rest, after his long voyage across the 
 deep, for but two days, before he began his work of ex- 
 ploration and service. It seems not inappropriate — oh ! 
 if he were only some other person! — that one of 
 your speakers should have come from the vicinity of 
 Schlatter’s southernmost point, when the subject of the 
 evening, is that of missions. Wherever that beloved 
 missionary held a public service, or even invited God’s 
 blessing upon the frugal meals of colonial days, the 
 lamp of this Church of ours is still burning — a church 
 not divided by the rivers of the Potomac and Ohio into 
 
— 8 — 
 
 two sectional bodies, but embracing in its membership 
 the men of the South and their people, as well as those 
 of the great North. 
 
 Oh ! it could not be that our branch of the great 
 Reformed Church of earth should not respond — with 
 grateful zeal and joy — to the recollection, of the loving 
 and tender offices of the Dutch Church, through its 
 great missionary organization, that of the Classis of 
 Amsterdam — in its behalf. Were the Palatines or their 
 descendants ever ungrateful ? Have they not kept 
 through all these years, their promise to England’s no- 
 blest and most gracious sovereign — Queen Anne — that 
 they would remember her in their prayers, and perpet- 
 uate her name among their children ! Have not the 
 swords of the “forgotten Huguenots,’’ those who had 
 found a refuge in Germany, but for the most part had 
 lost their own language and almost their identity, in 
 their intermarriage and commingling with the Teutonic 
 race, waived over many a decisive field, until at the 
 time of the crowning of Emperor William the First at 
 the palace of Versailles, after the Franco-Prussian war, 
 those of more than eighty of the general staff, flashed 
 in air? Have not these forefathers of ours, repaid 
 every kindness shown them, with the most unaffected 
 and untiring loyalty and faithful service ? It is one of 
 the few instances — of the converse of which there are 
 many — of the truth that it is sometimes as blessed to 
 receive, as to give. 
 
 Beyond every possibility of doubt — in this or some 
 other way — the work was begun under the faithful 
 and earnest fostering of the faithful souls of the 
 Church — the little grain of mustard seed has be- 
 come a great tree in whose branches the birds may 
 rest. Today we recall our own sentinels on the out- 
 post — our own missionaries holding the lamp of our 
 Church on high in north Japan — our own colleges of 
 
— 9 — 
 
 learning, manned by onr own leaders, sent by ourselves, 
 from this beloved land of ours — with their Japanese as- 
 sociates, whom we have trained for the work — lying on 
 the great outlet northward for the armies of that land 
 of the white blossom — and the women of our own 
 Church, bearing a loving and gracious part, in caring for 
 the wounded and sick and sore of the Japanese anny, 
 near by, and under the shelter of our own institutions. 
 Can any one doubt that these will, in God’s own time, 
 bear no feeble or ignoble part, in lifting the people of 
 that strange land, from the teachings of the Samurai, 
 that self-destruction rather than surrender is an element 
 of national patriotism — to the more sublime teaching 
 of the Christian religion, that “ self-effacement in serv- 
 ice for others” is a far more sweet and ennobling senti- 
 ment, one that is destined, in the plans of Deity for the 
 elevation of mankind, to rule the whole earth. 
 
 The light of these efforts of our Church, in that 
 land of the East, could not from its very nature, remain 
 a mere local and transitory' flame. 
 
 “ Like the blaze old Lemnos caught on high, 
 
 From its holy promontory, it may not stay. 
 
 But away and away it bounds. 
 
 Into ever freshening night.” 
 
 China — with its teeming millions made its call upon 
 our leaders — in the life of service — this loving, gracious, 
 joy-bearing and joy-giving work for others — and two of 
 these responded. Did I say two ? May I reverently say, 
 three ? Two of these are with us at this meeting 
 — our faithful and well-beloved brother Hoy, and 
 his sweet and gentle wife. But can the Church forget 
 — as I know it does not — their noblest gift to the cause 
 of missions — the greatest that could be made by mortal 
 man — the gift of their little son — little David — the boy 
 missionary to the far East. Doubtless the tears of many 
 of you fell fast as you read the story of little David’s life. 
 
— 10 — 
 
 healthful and comforting to all about him — of his inter- 
 est in the great and noble men, who are doing God’s work 
 in that great land — of the influence of the refined and en- 
 nobling spirit of a frank, trustful, tender-hearted, noble 
 boy — the product of American life and institutions — as 
 a model to the abased and revolting creatures — the 
 product of the teachings and methods of heathenism — 
 of the standard of excellence of his precious young life 
 toward which young heathen humanity must be taught 
 to aspire; and then, of that sad day when at death’s 
 call, the vision of a more glorious morning opened upon 
 his eyes than ever came to him on earth, and his last 
 words were, not “Good-bye” or “Good-night,” but 
 the far more comforting and assuring words, that told 
 of heaven, and of the glories of the home of God’s elect, 
 that greeted him almost as he spoke them — the same 
 words which your own children speak as they come into 
 the first feast in their father’s house — “Good morning.” 
 Oh ! ye men and women of the Church, as I think of 
 little David buried in that quaint, old city of Hangkow 
 on the great river of China, which, rising in Great Tibet, 
 in the mountains covering a region so elevated as to be 
 known as the “ roof of the world,” flows by the great 
 city embowered in the plains at their feet, his little grave 
 covered each year to the depth of half an hundred feet, 
 by the annual swell of the river, and of the great floods 
 that come from the lands above, — as the earth and water 
 there seem to me to rest so heavily, and with such tre- 
 mendous force and weight, upon his lonely grave, — I feel 
 that I must challenge you, for the gift of your sons and 
 of your daughters, and if that be not indeed practicable, 
 for your paltry gifts of money, to sustain in this work 
 these noble friends of ours, who have served us so well. 
 
 Ought not the children of the Church to be called 
 upon to build a memorial to our own little David, with 
 which, in his memory, we may help to strike down the 
 
— n — 
 
 ('Toliah of heathenism in China, and should we not make 
 it, not only a memorial to him, but to onr own sons and 
 daughters who have long since, perhaps gone before ns, 
 and with him await onr coming, around the great white 
 throne ? 
 
 Oh ! is there not inspiration, too, in the fact that 
 Dr. Kelley and his wife, the missionaries who have come, 
 from the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the foster 
 sister, in doctrine and practices of onr own, and from 
 the Sonth, too, — that land which God’s own snn has 
 kissed into such a wealth of beauty and fertility, that 
 all its people love it, and many there have been who 
 died, as they believed for it, to this Church of ours, na- 
 tional in its existence and membership, and with them, 
 have brought a call to us, to care for him and his mis- 
 sion, as its importance to China, and to us as a Church, 
 demands ? Ye men of the North and West, if you would 
 make the blood of your brethren of the South tingle in 
 their veins, give these brethren of ours from the South 
 the most valued and the most precious of your offerings. 
 
 The great heart of all the people, of the great re- 
 gion of the Cumberland IMountains of the South, and of 
 their form of the Presbyterian faith wherever found, 
 whether in mountain fastnesses, “ on the heights where 
 lie repose,” on the broad savannas of the South, or on 
 the long sweep of the great prairies of the southwest, 
 from which these missionaries of oirrs have come, will 
 beat with a sweet and holy joy, as they hear that we are 
 giving an ungrudging and loyal support to these rep- 
 resentatives of theirs ; and our own Church, from its 
 scattered adherents in Georgia, and the South, through 
 the Carolinas and the Virginias, to the crowded congre- 
 gations of the North, will feel the revivifying influence 
 and the mighty resultant that ever comes from good deeds. 
 
 What an inspiring gift it is, too, that which comes 
 to us from the British Government, wrung from the Chi- 
 
— J2 — 
 
 nese authorities as indemnity for the great losses and 
 sacrifices which the subjects of Great Britain had en- 
 dured at the hands of a rebellious people, at the time of 
 the great uprising in China of recent years, indemnity 
 for the sorrows, and even for the blood, of persons of 
 whom we know nothing, though we are the recipients 
 of the benefits of their sufferings, and through which 
 our church is to reap the reward to which others are per- 
 haps more entitled? 
 
 Is there no inspiration in the fact, not only that the 
 President of the United States worships in what was 
 once a little mission of our church in the city of Wash- 
 ington, that the Emperor of the German empire honors 
 our church by an invitation to our representative, the 
 President of this Synod, to attend the dedication of the 
 great Protestant Cathedral of Berlin, but that the Gov- 
 ernment of Great Britain, that power “ whose morning 
 drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company with 
 the hours, encircles the earth daily with the continuous 
 strain of its martial music,” has intrusted to our mis- 
 sionaries the administration of this great fund ? 
 
 It may have been long since forgotten by the vast 
 majority of the people of that great empire, but it has 
 not escaped the attention of Him in whose hands are 
 the destinies of men and of nations and of whom it is 
 written ‘‘ I will repay, saith the Lord,” that Protestant 
 England is more indebted to Zurich, and to Zwingli and 
 Bullinger and Leo Juda, and the other leaders of our 
 Reformed Church, and the people under them, than to 
 any other men or people of all the earth, not only for 
 its Thirty-nine Articles which Archbishop Grindal, de- 
 clared to our Peter Martyr, had been adopted by the 
 English Church ” without the paring of a nail’s differ- 
 ence,” but even for the initial letters of the books of its 
 first Protestant bible, which our own printer Froschouer, 
 he who printed the first Protestant bible of all the world. 
 
— 13 — 
 
 in German in 1530, loaned to Miles Coverdale for the 
 printing of the first English bible of 1535, and for every 
 other possible kindness and hospitality, and assistance, 
 of every sort, material, and educational, that was needed 
 or could be given to the refugees of the English Church, 
 in the days of Mary. So unusual, and so remarkable, 
 was this service and so gratefully was it appreciated, 
 that Bishop Jewell, after his return to England from ex- 
 ile, wrote most feelingly “O Zurich! Zurich! How 
 much oftener do I think of thee, than I ever thought of 
 England, w'hen I was at Zurich,” and John Parkhurst 
 ended one of his letters from a full heart, with the glow- 
 ing words, ” City of Zurich, farewell. Woe betide those 
 who wish thee not all prosperity. City of Zurich, fare- 
 well.” 
 
 In the wide sweep of prophetic vision do we not see, 
 too, coming with the march of time, the day when the 
 remnant of the negro race in America, of whom the 
 thoughtful already begin to speak as ‘ ‘ the doomed race, ’ ’ 
 shall be charged with the great and responsible work of 
 caring for and carr\ung to triumph the evangelization of 
 Africa, and will not our Church bear its part in that 
 work, both here and on the Dark Continent ? It seemed 
 to your speaker, when a few years ago, some congrega- 
 tions of the colored race in the Carolinas, applied to the 
 authorities of our Church, to be taken under its care, 
 that God was opening the door to the very great honor, 
 that ought to be sought and accepted by us, of bearing 
 a part in the work of missions in Africa ; and many, no 
 doubt, like him felt sad indeed, that an unfavorable re- 
 sponse had to be given them, and was rejoiced to see 
 that our brethren of the Reformed Church in America 
 had gladly met the call of ” our brother in black,” and 
 that one branch, at least, of the Reformed Church was 
 to share in the happiness and honor of the sacrifices that 
 must be made in their behalf. 
 
— J4 
 
 But to come at last and with some preparation, in 
 these prefatory remarks, and with some power and force, 
 to the topic of this occasion, we ask ourselves the point- 
 ed question. Have we ourselves gotten, and are we yet 
 to get, nothing out of all this effort of consecrated men 
 and women, and the work carried on by them, with such 
 fervent and unflagging zeal ? Is there any reflex power 
 in missions ? ^ 
 
 Oh ! has there been no increase in onr ranks of 
 those, who may well be called “ God’s own nobility?” 
 Not of those, who are seeking to become ” a people of 
 holiness,” “ of sanctification, and of freedom from sin,” 
 but of those who accept the words of Christ himself : 
 that “if ye do not wash each other’s feet, ye are none 
 of mine,” who accept as did the disciples of Jesus, after 
 they came to know that “ His kingdom was not of this 
 earth,” the saying that “ he who would be greatest 
 among you, let him be the least, and he that would be 
 chief, let him be the servant of all;” as the potential 
 teaching of the Christian religion, its life and fire, that 
 withont which, it can never be preached successfully to 
 men ; and with it the thought, that brings us most 
 nearly in touch with the Infinite that ‘ ‘ all that we get 
 out of life that is worth having, is what we do for others, ’ ’ 
 those who like the disciples, from Calvary forward to 
 the end of life, were willing to endure tribulation and 
 persecution, and even death itself, for the glory of His 
 name. What influence of dogma, or form of worship, 
 what indeed, except the power and force of the spirit of 
 missions, that can endue our people with such desires 
 as these, and what but these desires among God’s few, 
 that can leaven the whole mass. 
 
 The list of the saved, at the last great day, will be 
 as far beyond all human expectation, as God’s promises 
 are wider than the feeble and narrow minds of men will 
 admit, but far beyond the great multitude, will be the 
 
— 15 — 
 
 “highest born,” “the nobility of heaven,’’ those who 
 have turned many to righteousness. Oh! what ecstasy 
 of joy will it be for some of us, if only we can be among 
 the very least in all that bright throng, but for these, 
 what au infinity of triumph in the words, “Inasmuch as 
 ye have done it to one of the least of these, ye have 
 done it unto Me.’’ 
 
 Oh ! do not our seminaries of theology know, that 
 the minister, or teacher, who is not turned out from their 
 precincts, with his vessel filled to the brim, with a pas- 
 sion for missionary' work, is unworthy to be a preacher 
 to men; for if he “speak with the tongue of men and 
 angels, and have not charity, he is as sounding brass, 
 or a clanging cymbal.’’ Oh ! if their lips be not touch- 
 ed with this living coal, if they cannot see the fields of 
 earth, white for God’s harvest, as well as send him out 
 as a master electrician, as a theologian, to fail, for in 
 either case he knows nothing of the wires, laden and 
 quivering with the messages of humanity. Without 
 such a flame burning at his heart, how can he be ex- 
 pected to warm the hearts of the people, whom he may 
 serve, arouse them from apathy,- overcome their preju- 
 dices, impart to them knowledge, of the needs and claims 
 of missionary work, and secure from them the co-opera- 
 tion without which every work of the church must fail. 
 
 Oh 1 do they not see, too, that the missionary' work 
 of the world has demonstrated the truth, that it is no 
 mere cult, that is to contend successfully with the other 
 religions of the earth, — not the bible of the higher criti- 
 cism, but the bible taught us at our mother’s knees, the 
 old simple faith, in a Redeemer, almighty and willing to 
 save, and of a life of as close and immediate fellowship 
 with Him, as the gross limitations of the human heart 
 will permit. 
 
 Do we not also know, that in the unity of mission- 
 ary work which has come to modern theology, we are 
 
— J6 — 
 
 far nearer to church unity, the hope and prayer of all 
 true followers of Christ, than ever before? Our repre- 
 sentatives in the foreign field, are not pressing upon the 
 heathen committed to their charge, the peculiar beliefs, 
 if any indeed we have, of our Church, but the essential 
 doctrines of Christian faith. Nor are they assailing the 
 missionaries of our sister churches, and the work that 
 is being done by them, upon any of the various differ- 
 ences between our church and theirs in doctrine or 
 methods, for they find their work, appalling as it must 
 appear to them, in its vast proportions, in battling with 
 the creed of the Mahomedan, the Buddhist, and the 
 Brahman. To the fatalism of the one, they must oppose 
 the Christian’s view of the sweetness and comfort of a 
 belief in God’s own decrees ; to the self-discipline of the 
 other, they must add the still nobler creed, the immola- 
 tion of self in the service for others, as the vital fire of 
 Christianity itself. It is fervently to be hoped that the 
 young people’s leagues and the other societies of the 
 Protestant Churches of to-day, all of whom, with but 
 few exceptions, contravene in effect, at least to some 
 extent, the fervent desire of Christ, may not prove an 
 obstacle in the march which the Church of God is mak- 
 ing, without much appreciable progress, but neverthe- 
 less without delay, towards that unity which was the 
 prayer of our Savior himself. 
 
 This missionary work of ours has educated the 
 women of our church, and most of its intelligent men, 
 to the fact that woman, too, can take a prominent and 
 most important part in the work of evangelizing the 
 world, not only in the field abroad, but in the perplex- 
 ing problem, of its adequate sustentation, by the efforts 
 of the people of the church at home. 
 
 The voice of this church has authoritatively spoken 
 through its highest authority, that of this General Syn- 
 od itself, in favor of giving the women of our church 
 
— 17 — 
 
 their due share of this noble work ; and the subordinate 
 body, that refuses to obey the behest of the supreme 
 adjudicatory of the church, and refuses to permit the 
 women of our church to do the work for which they 
 are so well fitted, and which they so anxiously desire 
 to do, defies the “powers” that “be of God.” 
 
 The wider and more important our missionary 
 work becomes, the more thoroughly will it educate our 
 children^ into the great truth, that the nations of the 
 whole earth are like themselves, of the family of God, 
 with the right to know Him and be known and loved 
 of Him. Oh! that our young people could come to 
 know familiarly the faces of our missionaries, the ap- 
 pearance of oiir institutions, founded and built for the 
 propagation of the gospel, and the conversion of the 
 heathen ; the faces and features of some of the native 
 teachers, whom w’e have trained, that there may be 
 given them such an interest in the work of missions, as 
 to cause them find the places of our work upon the 
 globes, that are to be found in their studies or school- 
 rooms ; that they may even learn to know, when the 
 day begins and when the sun sets, in those “far away 
 lands,” so that, taught thereby and breathing, as it 
 were, into their very souls a love for the cause, they 
 may more intelligently and willingly work for the gifts, 
 which, like the widow’s mite, are precious indeed in 
 God’s sight, and which will open their hearts to grander 
 things as life with its opportunities comes on. Ye fa- 
 thers and mothers, try the suggestion with your own 
 children, in your own homes, and see what blessings it 
 will bring. 
 
 Then, with our church ; nay, the whole of Protestant 
 Christianity brought back to a simplicity of doctrine 
 and form of worship ; and through a knowledge of, and 
 belief in a personal Savior, to close communion and fel- 
 lowship with each other, neither dogma, nor ritual will 
 
— J8 - 
 
 be supreme; but a virile “common law’’ of religion ac- 
 cepted by all, and then like a mighty army will move 
 the church of God. 
 
 Then it will be, that this old church shall feel still 
 more, and to its farthest finger-tips, the thrill of the 
 impulse of the blood of heroic life, in every vein, and 
 nerve, and fiber, arousing its heart to the most tender, 
 loving, earnest, faithful and everlasting desire “to do 
 and to suffer,’’ and developing in its brain, the noblest 
 conceptions not only of its duty, but of the manner in 
 which it is to perform its part, in the great battle for 
 the possession of the earth, that is before the followers 
 of Christ today. 
 
 It is such a spirit as this, indeed, that will fill your 
 pews with devout worshipers, give us a consecrated life 
 in our homes, elevate the standard of our institutions 
 for the training of our leaders, enlist the sympathy of 
 the laity of our church, cause them to take a larger and 
 more effective participation in the work and govern- 
 ment of the church, and in the conduct of its affairs, 
 and to stand together, as “brethren’’ in fact, as well as 
 in name, create such a spirit of affection for, and pride 
 in the ministry, of the church, in the hearts of our peo- 
 ple, as will make the fathers and mothers of the church 
 desire and pray, that their sons might become ministers 
 like them, and fill the depleted ranks, with a host of 
 noble and unselfish spirits, whose only thought shall 
 be, “woe is me if I preach not the gospel,’’ and so full 
 of passionate love, for the missionary work of the church, 
 as to prompt them to keep in their minds and hearts, 
 and preach from their pulpits, the inspiring words of 
 that grand missionary hymn of the American Church ; 
 
 “Up lift the banner, let it float, 
 
 Skyward and seaward, high and wide. 
 
 The sun shall light its shining folds. 
 
 The Cross, on which, the Saviour died. 
 
 Up lift the banner, let it float 
 Skyward and seaward, high and wide. 
 
 Our glory only in the Cross, 
 
 Our only hope the Crucified.”