JfoluMi ]?. Gonoheiif COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. All Rights Reserved. Westcott A Thomson, Stereotype rt and Klectroty}ters , Phi Lada. John F. Gonchor Number OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. The theology of the Presbyterian Church is reasonably well settled. Occasionally some egotis- tic malcontent proposes to reconstruct the moral universe after original designs furnished by him- self, but our substantial people readily detect his “ new truth ” as simply an old error. Such soon go or are sent to their own place, and the Church has rest. So also the practical policy of the Church is well settled. The discussions that now arise are not as to principles, but as to the most effective methods of their application. Out of all the numerous good ways the inquiry is for the best way of bringing the world to Christ. In these circumstances you will justify one who has had his work assigned in the field, and not in the study, in asking you to join in a discussion of the business side of our present church -work. The theme is 3 4 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. SOME HISTORICAL LESSONS FROM ANGLO- SAXON MISSIONS. The texts are two : Isa. li. 1 : “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye arc digged Rom. i. 14 : “I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.” The apostle Paul is commonly looked upon as the typical foreign missionary. As a fact, Paul never set his feet upou foreign soil. That Roman empire of which he was a free-born citizen iu his day encircled the Mediterranean, reaching from the Rhine and the Danube to the African desert, and from the Solway Firth to the Euphrates. In reality, as burdened with the care of all (Ik* churches, Paul was the original secretary of the home board. The Epistle to the Philippians was an extended receipt for a liberal donation, and the eighth and ninth chapters of Second Corinthians, as written in the autumn of A. D. 57, were an appeal for a good November collection. If, there- fore, there was anv substantial foundation for that shadowy tradition that Christianity was introduced OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 5 into Britain by the apostle Paul himself, he was still in the home field. But whether by returned captives, traveling merchantmen, Roman soldiers or by genuine missionaries, the Keltic tribes ot‘ Britain undoubtedly were evangelized while they were yet subjects of Rome. If any Keltic blood, therefore, runs in your veins, descended from the original Britons, the Scots of Ireland or the Piets of Scotland, you ai'e indebted to home-mission effort for your religion. As, however, Britain was the last country Rome captured, so it was the first she flung away when her infirmities and her foes attacked her together. In the early part of the fifth century her legions took their departure, aud left all doors open. The Piets came down from the North, and the Saxons came over from the East. When Vortigern called for the Saxous to deliver him from the Piets, he and his tribes only crept from under the paw of the bear into the jaws of the lion. As the Anglo- Saxon races did on this continent with the American Indians, so the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes did in Britain. They began at the sea and wiped the land clean. Roman and Keltic cities, civiliza- tion and Christianity, perished with the people, and 6 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. barbarism, savagery and Druidism took their place. These Anglo-Saxons were our ancestry. Forget- ting this in our self-conceit, we complacently shut our pockets and ask if home aud foreign missions amount to anything. England and America are the answer. Our common ancestry, whether Kelts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norsemen or Danes, were heathenish Druids as to their religion. Except for Christian missions, this Assembly would be gath- ered for the adoration of Woden in hope of enter- ing Valhalla. Druidism. What, now, is Druidism ? The materials are scant for attaining certainty, but on the two things which fix the character of a religion, its sacrifices and its heaven, we have enough to measure its moral level. It was a worship of nature. Each day had its several god. When Christianity entered it was with instructions to change as little as possible, and so the days of the week still bear their Druid names. Our Sabbath was their Sun- day. The next day was their Moon-dav. The next day they worshiped Twi, their god of war. Then came their worship of Woden, their principal OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 7 deity. Thor was their god of thunder, and gives name to Thursday. Friga was Woden’s wife and their god of fruitfulness, to which Friday refers. Saeter was their water-deity, with whose worship the week closes. Even our annual celebration of Christ’s resurrection is named Easter after their god Eostere. So long as these names are used we cannot deny our heathen origin. How, now, were these deities of the wood and water propitiated? All authorities on Druidism concur in saving that “sacrifices formed a chief part of the Keltic religion. Human sacrifices were frequent, being regarded as the most effectual and acceptable way of appeasing the gods. In behalf of the state also the Druids offered human sacrifices. Great figures in human form, made of wickerwork, were filled with human beings and then set on fire. The sacrifices of criminals were esteemed especially grateful to the deity. When they were lacking innocent persons were offered up. The custom also prevailed of sacrificing all prisoners of war, accompanying the dreadful offering with loud songs and wild music, and out of the flowing blood and quivering members to divine the future.” Sinding in his work on the Scandinavian races asserts that 8 OUR PIT AND OUR ROOK. the worshipers of Woden were at times cannibals. The Sagas say that if the gods expressed their anger with the people by scarcity or ill-success in war, the most acceptable offering was the king. That this was not done in anger at the king is shown bv the fact that they did not interfere with the succes- sion in the son of the sacrificed king. We catch one more glimpse of the utter degradation of our ancestors in this Druidical religion as history describes its three classes of prophetesses, one of which revealed the future only to such men as had defiled them. The worship of ancient Baal and Moloch and the appeasing of modern Juggernauts and African fetiches were not more inhuman than this. These last religions offered up either the unconscious children or the fanatical devotees, but this religion thought to secure the favor of its deities by burnt-offerings of adult human beings, such as prisoners of war, arrested criminals and innocent neighbors. Prof. Thos. Smith, Duff Missionary Lecturer in Edinburgh, justly says: “ The Britons, before the gospel was brought to them, were not at all in advance of the Central- African tribes of our own day.” OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 9 Dkujd Heaven. As we have said, however, there is another meas- ure of the character of a religion. As its deities and their worship are the highest conceptions and aspirations which it develops, so the heaven to which it looks forward is its ideal of perfect society. Herein is the self-confessed condemnation of false religions. The perfect future of the American Indian is simply the happy hunting-ground. The Buddhist perfection is unconsciousness in Nirvana. In Mohammedanism the hope of eternity is an unlimited harem. What, now, was the Druids’ heaven? It was simply the outcome of their theory of virtue. As their manliest man was the resistless warrior, so their heaven, Valhalla, was a place of perpetual combat, with its shoutings and wounds and triumphs. At sunset every wound was healed and they were ready for a night of revelry. And such a night ! In an awful hall, which had five hundred and forty gates through which eight hundred men could enter abreast, they sat down to a grim and hideous banquet. There they feasted on a great boar, Sahrimner, whose flesh never diminished however much they ate. These savory morsels they cut off with their dag- 10 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. gers, and when they had satisfied themselves they washed all down with deep draughts of mead. The cups from which they drank were the skulls of their enemies. This last is by some denied, but no better translation is given of an admittedly obscure passage. This was the heaven of the saved. The lost were the cowards. “ They were doomed to dwell in the dark regions of Niflheim, where Hela the terrible reigned. There gaunt Famine stalked like a shadow beneath the vaulted dome, and Anguish writhed upon her hard bed, while dark Delay kept watch against the sombre doors which she never opened.” These were their eternities, into which there is no evidence that woman could ever enter. The waiters at that night of revelry in Valhalla were indeed the Valkaries, or fairies, but they were not glorified women. They were but the Shieldmaidens, who amidst the battle picked out the brave for death, and after death conducted them to Valhalla. In Valhalla these Shieldmaidens acted as waiters, and regaled the warriors with stories of fighting and with unlimited liquor. For their women there seems to have been no hope of a hereafter. There is not one element of a degrading religion wanting OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 11 in the sad picture. If, now, the missionary spirit of the Bible saveil our race, it can save any race on the face of the earth. To me nearly all through the literature of our women’s work for women there runs a cei'tain self-sacrificing sentimentalism of romance, as if only other races consigned their women to annihilation, and that the point of the thanksgiving of the praise-meeting was exclusively for the race to which our lot was assigned. That fancy let us dismiss. Our ancestral mothers went down to a tomb as blank and dark as that of the Hindoo widow or the Moslem concubine. All that mother, wife, sister, daughter are to us in the line of religious faith as men, and all the world of hope hereafter that these words open to you as women, is ours by virtue of the success of the foreign mis- sions to our ancestors. Precisely what the Bible has to do for the women of other races it had to do for the women of our own race; and there is not a reason why that Christ whose redemption made the women of America and of England out of the daughters of the Druids of Britain, Ireland and Scotland will not make as refined and cultured women out of the daughters of Corea and Mad- agascar. Shall not the converted Chinese women 12 OUR riT AND OUR ROCK. be zealous missionaries? Being saved, shall they not seek to save? But that argument comes with exactly the same force to us and ours. If, then, any shall ask what missions have amounted to any- thing, we are bound to x'eply : “ It made out of the brutal Druids, who worshiped Woden with human sacrifices, the English-speaking nations of to-day.” Whatever else mission-work has done or failed to do, it made us. It does not lie in our lips to sneer. England’s Conversion. As the materials are scant to show what domestic Druidism was, so they are scant to show us how long it took Christianity to regenerate heathen Britain. It is certain that Christianity was intro- duced into Britain as early as the third century, for Helena, Constantine’s mother, was a Christian, and Christian bishops were present at the Synods of Arles, 31 1 ; Sardica, 347 ; and Rimini, 359. Out of this early Christianity came that Keltic religion from which, in the fifth and the sixth century, came the Culdees, Colomba, St. Patrick and the rest. But the proof amounts to demonstration that it only achieved a very limited success when we re- member that not a single ruin, remnant or mark of OUR PIT AM) OUR ROCK. 13 its presence has been discovered in England after the most careful research. When the Romans withdrew and the heathen Saxons came, Chris- tianity utterly perished where they conquered. What Christians were there were either killed or driven west into Wales. The whole region became pagan. This occurred in no other Roman province captured by the Northern hordes. Jt could not have happened in Britain if, during its more than two centuries of work, Christianity had become the general religion of the nation. Some ruins of churches, some mementos of some kind, would have been left if it had generally prevailed. It is all a fancy that these Keltic Druids were a people predisposed to Christianity either by their race- peculiarities or their religious institutions. The Romans withdrew about 410 to 425, and the first main advent of the Anglo-Saxons was about 449 to 450. From that time till the arrival of Augustine, in 597 or 598, England was heathen territory. Much discussion has arisen over Gregory’s motive in sending Augustine, but the charge of unchristian selfishness and ambition falls in the presence of these two facts: Gregory had set his heart on going on that mission himself before 14 OUR FIT AND OUR ROCK. he became pope, and sent Augustine only when he could not go himself. The well-known tradition of his bad puns on seeing the Angle slaves from Deira shows this same thing. In the next place, England was then on the verge of the known world, with little intimation of its subsequent im- portance. Kemble, the very first authority on Anglo-Saxon matters, seems to me to make out an unanswerable argument in favor of the reasonable genuineness of the missionary spirit of both Gregory and Augustine, and justly calls Gregory’s sending and Augustine’s going “a deed as heroic as when Scipio marched to Zama and left the terrible Carthaginians thundering at the gates of the city.” Gregory’s account of Augustine’s success is recorded with the usual flourish of trumpets. Several things made rapid apparent progress practicable. Augus- tine and his monks were directed to assent to any- thing, provided the people would submit to Rome. Druidism was simply for the present baptized. The Keltic Christians, localise they would not submit to Rome, w'ere slaughtered. Moreover, the Saxons were not numerous and were found in divided tribes. The missionaries made special effort toward the conversion of the petty kings, and one of them, OUR ITT AM) OUR ROCK. 15 Ethelbert, the king of Kent, had married Bertha, a Christian Frankish princess. She had stipulated that she should have her own religion. Besides all this, Gregory sent forty other monks, or ministers, with Augustine. Whatever commerce England then had with the Continent was almost wholly with the Christian half of it in the south. Every- thing was thus most favorable for rapid progress. Yet, although Augustine was clothed with ample powers, it was not till seventy-five years thereafter, under Theodore of Tarsus, that the English Church was fairly organized. It was certainly not for a hundred years still later that there is anv sufficient evidence that the people generally had become Christians. One author asserts that Alfred’s zeal for the translation and introduction of the Bible was to promote the eradication of heathenism. Even so late as the thirteenth century the Chroni- cle of Lanercost says that Frea was worshiped by lascivious rites. Tree-worship and well-worship w r ere so common in the time of Canute as to require legal prohibition. In the year 1055, Saegaweard leaves on record his fear of that unwarlike death which by Druid superstition would prevent his entrance into Valhalla. When, in 859, Ethelbald 16 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. married his stepmother Judith, his father Ethel- wulf’s young widow, lie defended it on the ground of their ancestral religion. It is of course impos- sible to fix an exact date. Druidism did not die suddenly, and Christianity did not suddenly take its place. It was a transition in which the propor- tion of each was constantly changing. In the presence of these proofs of the slowness with which the truth worked its way among them, how shall we complain of want of success because one century has not converted the world ? There is no adequate reason to believe that when Augustine reached England there were more than two hundred and fifty thousand Anglo-Saxons accessible to him and his monks. In the day of William the Con- queror (1066) there were less than one million and a quarter in that much larger territory over which he ruled. The emigrant-ships in which the Anglo- Saxons came were mere keels, and not numerous. It was impossible for them to have carried passen- gers by the thousand. F rom the departure of the Romans till Augustine’s time was a period of con- stant wars. The size of their armies shows that the population could not have been large. The slaugh- ter in the hand-to-hand fighting of olden warfare OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 17 was much larger in proportion than it has been with modern firearms. England is now only about the size of Georgia, and of that the Anglo-Saxons ruled only about two-thirds. Of this much was wood- and marsh-land. The Saxons were opposed to cities, and had none of any size for centuries. If, now, we estimate them when Augustine and his forty monks arrived at a quarter of a million, at that rate missions in China should have begun with fifty- seven thousand missionaries to its three hundred and fifty millions, instead of thirty at the opening of the five cities in 1843. That date is but forty- two years ago, yet in that less than half a century the missionaries have risen to four hundred and fifty with about twenty-five thousand communicants. Fifteen out of the eighteen provinces of the empire are reached by the missionaries. Give, now, such progress in China for two hundred years more, and who shall limit the results? Ireland’s Conversion. But I think I hear some Irishman say, “ Ireland at least was not specially indebted to foreign mis- sions for her early faith.” No man who knows his country’s history would say so. The Keltic Chris- 2 18 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. tians of Britain were pushed back by the Anglo- Saxon Druids till many of them crossed over to Ireland. No general conversion of Ireland, how- ever, took place till the days of St. Patrick. Who, now, was St. Patrick? Not one bit of what we would now call a Roman Catholic, but a genuine Protestant and Presbyterian from the region of Dumbarton, Scotland. For our purpose the dis- cussion whether St. Patrick did or did not come from the Continent is unimportant. In any event, he was a foreign missionary in Ireland. I accept the generally received account of his being kid- napped by pirates as a boy of fifteen and sold into slavery in Ireland. In due course of time he ran away, and, being converted, in the spirit of the true Scotch missionary he went right back to Ireland to preach the simple Bible truth to his captors. Well may Ireland and the Irish cherish the memory of their Scotch missionary, by whose burning words that gospel was prevailingly preached which alone can drive the Old Serpent out of that green island. With the doctrine, skill and zeal of a Paul, for forty-five years this Scotchman toiled and traveled and preached to those who had enslaved him. OUR ri'T ANI) OUR ROCK. 19 Scotland’s Conversion. Surely, then, says our Scotch membership, we are indebted to no foreigners for the orthodoxy of our Presbyterianism. Here, again, is a notable mis- take. As has been said, the Keltic Christians, driven back and north by the Anglo-Saxons, car- ried with them that form of doctrine and govern- ment which they had received from the early Fa- thers while Britain was yet a Roman province. If apostolic succession amounted to anything, Presby- terians could establish the very best claim thereto, through Colomba and the Culdees. I say the very best claim, because, -in addition to that chronological continuity which it can show alike with the Rom- ish Church, it could also show what Romanism can- not show — identity of doctrine and worship all the way down the ages. The Culdee Scotch Church was never deformed by celibacy and adultery, ab- solution and indulgence, trausubstantiation, image- worship and Mariolatry. As it was never deformed, it was never reformed. The Culdees were, indeed, almost lost sight of for a time, except as they are alluded to in history as heretics ; but when the continental Reformation came they revived. It was not a reformation in Scotland. It was onlv 20 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. a reappearance. John Knox was only Colomba resurrected. Who, now, was Colomba, the founder of the es- tablishment at Iona and the great monumental man in that heroic missionary Church of the Culdees? As if to compel every English-speaking people to confess their obligation to the Christians of other lands, Colomba was, in the providence of God, an Irishman. Born in Donegal about 521, he crossed over to Iona about 560, and went to those in dark- ness in the north of Scotland. So did he and his successors inspire their members with missionary zeal that it was for a time doubtful whether the Romish missions would get control of the islands or Culdee missions get control of the Continent. The outcome was that Romanism nominally held England till the time of Henry VIII., and essen- tial Presbyterianism has always held Scotland. Comparative Progress. In the general wav, therefore, the Christian re- ligion entered the British Islands about the end of the second century, and about the eighth century became the generally accepted religion of the peo- ple. This was six hundred years of labor under OUR riT AND OUR ROCK. 21 reasonably favorable conditions. Modern missions are not yet two centuries old. Give them four centuries more of such success as they have achieved in their first centuries, and where will heathenism then be? But even leaving out of account all that was done iu Britain before the Anglo-Saxon con- quest, and fix the time at two hundred years, and in the same way fix modern missions as in reality beginning with this century, and it will show that modern nations are much more tractable than our own ancestors. In 1800 there were but seventy missionaries from all Christian lands for the whole heathen world. To-day there are full five thou- sand missionaries, of which one-half are ordained ministers and the other half are laymen, wives of missionaries and single women missionaries. To these five thousand missionaries are to be added about thirty thousand native ministers, helpers, evangelists, colporteurs and Bible-readers. We have now at least five hundred thousand native church-members, and over twelve thousand schools with four hundred thousand scholars. In Europe and America there are above one hundred and fif- ty missionary societies, and the circulation of the Bible has grown in this century from fifty transla- 22 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. tions and five million copies at the opening of the century to three hundred translations and a circu- lation of one hundred and fifty million copies. But this spread of the work abroad has been accom- panied — or rather has grown out of — an equally remarkable and blessed growth of missionary zeal, aggressiveness and benevolence in the Church at home. Even fifty years ago missions were sup- posed to be of doubtful propriety. Who doubts it to-day '? All these societies are supported well, and women’s societies are found in every denomination and pushing their work in almost every congrega- tion. In 1800 the contributions to foreign missions were estimated at about §250,000 per annum. To- day they reach the magnificent sum of §7,500,000, or five times as much as is raised by the Roman Catholic Church all over the world for the support of its great mission Propaganda. Does anv one suppose the benevolence of the Church has reached its limit? Let Thomas Kane, that Chicago “ Lay- man,” go on spreading his tracts, and the Committee on Systematic Benevolence publishing volumes like its work now in preparation on Proportional Giving , and we have no more seen the final outcome of charity than we have seen the maximum of revival OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 23 power. Give us two hundred years of this enthu- siastic work by the Church, and this glorious bless- ing on the work by the Holy Ghost, and what will the face of the earth be in A. D. 2000? While the imagination labors to conceive of the transfor- mation, faith exults at the prospect. The world- field is indeed white for the harvest, but the air is resonant with the sound of the grinding sickles and the earth is shaking beneath the tread of the marching reapers. Modern Mission-work. But this line of argument is not merely applicable to the old days of Augustine, Colomba, St. Patrick and the wide field of universal missions. It will set us to thinking if we look in another direction and right at home. When the West and South stand up before the great churches of the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic seaboard to petition for missionaries and the institutions of Christianity, they are met with a skeptical inquisitiveness, as much as to say, Is there any just ground for the hope of the salvation of freedmen or the civil- ization of miners, cowboys and border settlers? Others ask why these braggart Western people do 24 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. not build their own churches, support their own ministers and endow their own colleges. If a look into the pit whence our Anglo-Saxon ancestry was digged is instructive, it will prove not less instruc- tive to look unto that rock whence these Eastern churches and institutions were hewn. Change the names and dates, and the letters sent by the early settlers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland to their kindred in England, Scot- land and Ireland, asking for ministers and help to build churches, will answer for the letters sent from Texas, Colorado and Oregon to the Home Board to-day. “In 1641, Mr. Bennett of Virginia visited Boston with letters to New England min- isters bewailing their sad condition for want of the glorious gospel, and entreating that they might thence be supplied.” Makemie crossed the ocean and applied for aid to the Presbyterian Congrega- tional Union of London for more laborers “ for the extensive and inviting field that was before him.” That application was not in vain, for a respectable body of Dissenters “ sent out two evan- gelists to labor for two veal’s, engaging to support them and to send out others.” Makemie returned from that trip in 1705. Exactly what happens OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 25 now happened then. While first-class men are needed in these new countries, they were sometimes supplied with very bad ones, who did more harm than good. “We want a great many good minis- ters here in America,” wrote Talbot of the Episco- palian Church back to England, “ but we had better have none at all thau such scandalous beasts as some make themselves.” He then added what is exactly true of your new country now : “ Those we have to deal with are a sharp and inquisitive people, and we must have something reliable if we hope to pre- vail with them.” Some Western Presbyteries have indeed a very strange mixture of ministers from various places, and often with very peculiar and diverse antecedents ; but there is not one of them that in this regard will surpass the first Presbytery organized in America. It consisted of seven min- isters. Makemie was a Scotch-Irishman ; Hamp- ton was an Irishman ; Macnish was a Scotchman (and these last were supported by Dissenters in London) ; Andrews was a Massachusetts man ; Wilson was a Scotchman from Connecticut and believed to be an emissary of the “ New England doctors ;” Taylor is of uncertain origin, and was pastor of a congregation of Independents ; Davis 26 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. rarely attended Presbytery. Yet out of that Pres- bytery the East grew to what it is now. In 1716 that Presbytery, though only numbering twenty- three, was divided to make a Synod, just as is now done in the West. In 1718 this Synod sent a formal appeal to the mother-country, saying : “ There are still many vacancies which either cry to us for help or give good grounds to hope that if they could be provided with an able and faithful ministry the happy effects of it would soon appear.” Our churches in New York City are as grand givers as are to be found anywhere. But they should re- member that when in 1716 a church was organized and a preacher secured, they did just as we do. They held services in the City Hall for the first three years. When, in 1719, they built a church on Wall street, for want of a Board of Church Erection they begged money from Scotland, and for want of a Board of Home Missions they ob- tained help to support their minister from the Glasgow collection. That collection was taken up by the direction of the Scotch Assembly. In their address that Assembly says what is still true : “ The servants of the Lord, who labor in these unculti- vated parts of his vineyard, have great and enor- OUR PIT A SI) OUR ROCK. 27 mous difficulties, arising partly from the unhappy disposition of too many who resort to such places, and partly from the poor circumstances of their respective congregations.” Under date of June 1, 1764, “The Corporation of the City of Philadel- phia for the Relief of Poor and Distressed Presby- terian Ministers, and of their Widows and Children,” voted a letter of thanks to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the charitable donation of one thousand two hundred and eighty pounds four shillings eleven pence sterling. To-day Phil- adelphia, as the head-quarters of the Board of Min- isterial Relief, may follow Scotland’s example. Church Erection. The following figures have been obtained at no small labor, that this argument may be enforced. Since the establishment of a board for helping to build churches, aid has been given to churches in Ohio and east of Ohio, averaging $407 to 1090 churches, or a total of $445,914. Shall a region thus helped begrudge help to regions struggling now as they have been heretofore? Without any form of words, such people are under the most solemn moral obligation to do to others as they have been 28 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. done by. But this has been given upon a special contract, that these churches so helped shall make a yearly contribution for the help of others. It is one of the incomprehensible mysteries of moral obliquity that some of these churches East and West assume that they may argue, and even decide in the negative, the question of a collection. For them to omit that collection is to be guilty of cove- nant-breaking. And from that sin no minister, elder or member of such a church is relieved who does not send a protest of innocence in the shape of a contribution. College Aid. The College Aid Board, by an investigation, is made positively certain that Emporia, Parsons and Longmont are as straight and honest efforts as any people ever made to establish colleges for Kansas, Iowa and Colorado. That board sends the repre- sentatives of these colleges, and others just as good, to ask help of their Eastern friends. These incred- ulous friends, thus applied to, are apt to sneer at the mode of determining the locution, by inquiring if Western colleges are damaged goods to be auc- tioned off by Synods to the highest bidder for the OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 29 location. Such people forget history. In 1746, Rev. Jonathan Dickinson of Elizabethtown, N. J., procured a charter for his academy, calling it a college. That embryonic institution went into operation while he was both president of the col- lege and pastor of the church, in true Western style. When he died, the next year, and it seemed desirable to put the college under the care of Rev. Aaron Burr of Newark, it was found easier to move the college than to move the preacher. The whole thing, therefore, was moved to Newark. Here again, in true Western style, Burr was both pastor and president. He was appointed president, inaugurated and graduated a class all the same day. These public exercises were held in the courthouse. In 1752 the trustees, having unsuccessfully offered the institution to New Brunswick, Elizabethtown and Newark, offered it to Princeton for “two hun- dred acres of woodland, ten acres of cleared land and one thousand pounds proclamation money.” How towns do blunder ! Newark, New Bruns- wick and Elizabethtown are understood to be some- where in the vicinity of New York. But who does not know where Princeton is? No town ever got so much for so little. But that §6000 was as 30 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. insufficient for the wants of the institution as a Western town-gift is now. Synod took it up and ordered collections for it in all the churches. In furtherance of the same policy, Rev. Gilbert Ten- nent and Rev. Samuel Davies were sent to Eng- land. Then, as now, colleges picked the very best. Davies was Virginia’s favorite preacher. Amidst the utmost perplexities and discouragements they worked for a year through England, Scotland and Ireland ; and that canvass, though amounting to only £5000 ($25,000), “ placed the College of New Jersey upon a sure basis, and cheered the hearts of all friendly to the interests of ministerial education and the Presbyterian Church.” In May, 1754, the Assembly at Edinburgh appointed a collection for Princeton, and in their address uttered words which are true everywhere: “The erecting of such a college is of the utmost importance to the inter- ests of learning and religion in that infant coun- try, and what the deplorable circumstances of the churches do greatly require.” The crv of “ Too many colleges,” “ Let us concentrate on a few,” was heard then just as it is heard now for the purpose of discouraging every new enterprise. The Scotch Assembly therefore said further: “As the difficulty, OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 31 and in some cases the impossibility, of sending the youths some hundreds of miles to the colleges of New England is evident, so from the College of New Jersey alone can we expect a remedy of these inconveniences and a sufficient supply of accom- plished ministers.” If the policy of opposing new institutions in new sections had been adopted in that day, there would have been no Princeton, and the East would have been without Presbyterianism, as the West will be if it is left without colleges. Did the people of that day think Princeton was enough for the whole land? By 1774, Hampden- Siduev had been started in East Virginia, and Au- gusta Academy, afterward called Liberty Hall, since called Washington College, and now Wash- ington and Lee University, was opened in the mountains. These institutions were needed then, but not one whit more than Macalister and Pierre, Dakota, and Salt Lake Institute are now. Resulting Obligations. Are there, then, no responsibilities on those who were helped in those days of their weakness by the providence of God through distant people? In 1846, Ireland was starving through the blight of 32 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. her crops ; America had plenty, and by the ship- load she sent her good wishes in bread for the hungry. Suppose now that America should be blasted and Ireland blessed, would there be no duty growing thence? All through Ireland, as we journeyed to Belfast last summer (1884), they said they were teaching that story to their children and waiting and watching to repay that debt of sweet charity. In 1874, Kansas was plagued with the locusts, and Ohio was not stinted in sympathy. In 1884 the Alleghany Mountain snows and the rains of the Pennsylvania hills poured themselves into the narrow banks of the Ohio River. Flooded villages and wrecked cities were the swift result. It was now Kansas’ time, and the iron horses snorted on her Western borders as they started East, gathering car-loads at every station; but they gave out, overloaded, long before they reached the Missouri River. Their decoration was unique, but very suggestive. On every car was some device expressive of the very best phase of Christian humanity. This is a sample of these devices : an immense grasshopper, harnessed to an enormous ear of corn, looking at a fingerboard pointing to Cincinnati. Shall now floods and corn bring out OUR riT AND OUR ROCK. 33 a charity and reciprocity outstripping religion and education ? God’s Mode of Reciprocation. It rarely comes to pass that gratitude can repay favors to the giver. God’s way is to demand that what we receive shall he transmitted to others need- ing similar kindness. The patient watching of a mother over her children is not often to be repaid to her in a second childhood of old age. But into our homes our children come to be watched over as our parents watched over us. Our fathers built the schools where we were taught, and it is ours to see that none shall go untaught of our successors. In 2 Tim. 2 : 2 three generations of teachers are brought to view in the apostle’s standing order of trans- mitted Christian education : “ The things which thou hast seen and heard of me, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” Obedience to that order by Gregory, Augustine and their forty monks was the salvation of our ancestry and ourselves. Obedience to that by the Christians of the mother-country was the salvation of this country when order was to be brought out of chaos and civilization to be builded 3 34 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. in the presence of barbarism. Undoubtedly, the revivals which marked the opening of this century were the immediate forces which saved this country from the contagion of French infidelity; but those revivals largely started in the schools and colleges, and in the hearts of ministers and elders, who, bur- dened with anxiety for the Church of God, toiled and gave to raise up a consecrated as well as an educated ministry. Wherever we turn God speaks to us by these voices of the mighty dead, and if we fail to hear we shall prove ourselves to be degen- erate sons of noble sires, as well as disobedient lead- ers of the militant host of God’s elect. The West Defined. It may be said — and its truth is at once admitted — that thus far we have been only going on the level of a sanctified human gratitude. But this is precisely that to which the evangelical prophet is appealing, and whatever is good enough for the Bible is always good enough for the Presbyterian Church. Let us, however, add to this that other principle to which Paul appeals in the other text and elsewhere. To him all the world was one great brotherhood, unto whom he was under a divine ob- OUR PIT AXB OUR ROCK. 35 ligation to preach the gospel. So binding did he esteem it that he calls it not a benevolence, but a debt. So Christ said, ‘‘Freelv ye have received, freely give.” After that the eighth commandment covers the case, and we are under no less obligation to pay back borrowed money than we are to dis- pense this gospel to the inhabitants of heathendom and home-land. Obedience is simple integritv and neglect is dishonesty. What, now, is your definition of the West? Whatever description others may give, this is the true definition : The West is the active member of that copartnership entered into, by which those who stay at home shall furnish the ground capital, and those who go shall furnish the work and take the risks in utilizing the landed estate of this nation. Western railroads are mainly owned East of the Alleghanies. Xearly half of the land cultivated in t ic West is either owned outright in the East or cov- ered over with Eastern mortgages. Colorado mines are rich, but the most of the good ones are owned East and worked by agents. The cattle business is good, but the stock is largely owned East. A careful and painstaking estimate calculates that one-fifth of the tax value of the farm-lands of Kansas is East- 36 OUR RIT AND OUR ROCK. era capital loaned on mortgage. In addition to this there are $400,000,000 invested in her railroads. The big wheat-farms of Dakota are owned East. If, now, the West asks the East to help to build churches and colleges, it is not begging. I utterly repudiate that word. It is but asking justice. It is but asking the silent partner to contribute his share to promote the welfare of the enterprise. Will it be asked, How could the West get on with- out this capital ? I ask, How could the East get on with it? The East is so overrun with capital now that money brings but a small net return. Call back all that is in the West, and England's three per cent, will be a high return. The West is no more benefited than the East. The Eastern capitalists do not invest West as a benevolent en- terprise. Western railroads are not run as charities by Eastern stockholders and bondholders. Eastern money is loaned to Western farmers on an iron-clad mortgage. Wheat and corn may go up or down, skies may drown the land by floods or burn it with drought, but the seven per ceut. net must come East in quarterly payments. If, now, a tenth of the increase is God’s, then a tenth of that seven ]>er cent, net which the East gets from the West ought OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 37 to go back to the cause of God and humanity in the West. This is simple equity. Less than that is robbery. National Self-Inter est. But now turn your eyes to the nation’s capital, and you are confronted with another most import- ant consideration. It adds self-interest to this claim of justice which has been piled on top of the former plea of gratitude. The West has votes. When the President is elected they count. Their Senators equal yours. Their Representatives are increasing faster in proportion than those of the East. If that West grows corrupt, the East cannot remain untouched. The nation will break the Sabbath with its mails till the West unites with the East to demaud again this day of rest. The saloons will continue in the basement of the Capitol beneath the houses of Congress, in defiance of their authority, till both East and West demand that the statue of the nation’s liberty shall not rest upon that charnel-house of the nation’s children — the law-breaking American saloon. When December brings around the time for the collection for the freedmen, not a few ministers and more elders 38 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. shrug their shoulders, and in practice say, What business lias our Church with these black people ? But with our help or against our protest they were made voters. If they are neglected, despised and downtrodden as freedmen, you and I shall not escape unscathed. No more terrible words were ever uttered by uninspired lips than those Lincoln uttered in the face of this nation amidst the gloom that surrounded his second inauguration : “ If God wills that this war shall continue till all the wealth piled by the bondsmen’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still must it be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” If that suggestion of the divine mean- ing of that war is accepted, then we must say that in his true and righteous judgment God distributed the strokes of his chastising-rod with wonderful impartiality. The debt of the North, the losses of the South and the dead and maimed of both sides tell the story of their conjoint sin. There are 7,000,000 freedmen. That means 1,000,000 votes. Let them remain an ignorant multitude — not slaves OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 39 of men, but slaves of ignorance, vice, liquor and political tricksters — and every home in this nation shall share the plague of the evil consequences. Selfishness may neglect the rude crowd or seek to make favor by applauding its demand, but in the end that unfaithfulness in a dangerous duty costs sorely. In a heedless way some of their pa- pers and much of the public echoed the imperious words of the Pittsburgh mob in 1877, but for that mob’s destruction of property Allegheny County paid about $2,850,000. In the spring of last year the Cincinnati rabble seized the leadership of the public protest against the corrupt administration of the criminal law by those the criminals had elected. Now, those who left part of the officials unencour- aged to face the howling rioters at the courthouse, and those who from their houses heaped epithets and pistol shots on the Fourteenth Regiment as they marched through the streets at midnight, are paying their taxes to rebuild the burned public buildings. Home Missions. You say, What are home missions to me? They are this to this nation : Yon have consigned to that 40 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. board the whole of that Mexican population in that territory stolen from Mexico, and their men are voters. To that board you have consigned the Mormons, and, so far as they could do it, they have made in Utah both men and women voters. With a theology invented by the devil and a system of morals invented by lust — with a treasury replen- ished by forced tithes and a population overflowing everywhere from polygamy and foreign proselytism — this organized cancer of adultery is diseasing the land with its filthy saturation of the ignorant stratum of society. To fight against that foaming flood of sensuality, sorrow and sin, led on bv an unscrupulous and energetic hierarchy, you have set our board with its teachers and preachers. In point of numbers Marathon was not a more unequal combat. Is, then, the issue of the struggle a mat- ter of indifference to you as citizens and Christians? To our honor be it said that through this board we as a denomination are doing about twice as much as any other denomination, if not as much as all the rest together. This foolish nation, which is afraid of the leprosy of Chinese immigration on the Pacific coast, opens wide its Atlantic door to this leprosy of Mormon proselytes. While Con- OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 41 grosses solemnly debate, and Presidents blatantly threaten, and the Mormons go on proselytizing and spreading, it is not strange that disgusted voters grow discouraged and ashamed in the struggle. But, whoever gives up the fight, the Presbyterian Church is bound to hold on in her persevering, steadfast way. The uatiou is lost, and we with it, if we do not. Besides all this, what are our mission churches and our missionaries? They are the workers where morality is weak and vice strong, where society is just taking shape and evil has the field. In the cities they are the ministers and churches often located where it is sure that as soon as their people get much money they will move away from them. Go into one of these city mission-churches and ask after their members still resident in the same city. You will often find among them wealthy Christian families in up-town churches who owe everything they are in this world and all their hopes for the next to the religion which they first enjoyed in that humble church at which they now sneer. It makes the blood tingle in our finger-tips to hear such people complain of such a church “that it is always on the board,” and “ under that pastor it 42 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. will never become self-supporting.” That was the hole out of which they were digged. Let no man slander his mother. If those converted in it had stood by it, the board would have been done with it long ago. The rich churches will die out if we abandon these missions. Money seldom stays in the same family in this country more than three generations. • As soon as a poor family is converted aud joins the Presbyterian Church, they cease squan- dering their money on vice. They become thrifty and industrious, and start on that road up to wealth on which they meet coming downward the godless, spendthrift children of past generations. City mis- sions for city churches are not a mere matter of benevolence ; they are means of self-preservation as well. Christ Disguised. But, fathers and brethren, we may not omit an- other consideration of much higher moment than these of gratitude and self-interest which have been passing before us. The apostle’s phrase, “ I am a debtor,” includes these; but a debt calls for two persons. The creditor must have done something for the debtor or he could not be his debtor. There OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 43 can no more be a debtor without a creditor than there can be a child without a parent. So the prophet speaks in the passive voice when lie says “ are hewn ” and “ are digged.” But the cut stone tells of a stonemason, and the treasure dug up in- volves some one who did that digging. The form of the first part of the verse shows that the prophet was here speaking in the name of that quarryman among stony hearts and that gold-miner among these human mountains. The prophet and the apostle both gloried in that Messiah by whom they had been redeemed. To them he was the workman who had lifted them out of the mirv clay and the sculptor who was chiseling them into his own beautiful image. This runs through the whole of revelation. Augustine was but Christ going to the Anglo-Saxons, as our missionaries are, but this same Christ speaking to the nations. Each one of you claims this representative character when to the perishing you repeat in his name his words, “ He that believeth shall be saved.” You have a right to speak by authority, and within your commission from him as his agent you have a right to bind him by contract with the sinner. But if this be true, the converse is also true. If 44 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. Jesus Christ has identified himself with us as to the world, so that “ he that receiveth us receiveth him, and he that rejecteth us rejecteth him,” so also, as to us, he has identified himself with these perishing souls the wide world over. What we do to them we do to him. Are you startled by my saying that the negro is Christ, and the Mexican is Christ, and the Chinaman is Christ? You seem to think that Christ can only come to you in the brightness of his deity. So the Jews blundered iu the days of his incarnation. We hold them inex- cusable, because he had iu his prophecies told them exactly in what likeness he would come. But he has just as plainly told us in what disguise he will come to us. If we had been left to look out for him in the likeness of a God, and he had then come in the garb of degradation, we might have been excusable. Instead of this, he has said he would come to us hungry and thirsty and naked and sick and in prison. There we are to look for him. He has said that in the person of his own he would come to receive the fruits of that rich vineyard which he would let out to us. Here, then, is a paradox in the kingdom of God : Christ is on both sides of us; he is behind us in the ancestry and OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 45 charity and missions by which we have been made Christians. He is before ns in the neglected at home and the perishing abroad whom lie has sent ' ns to evangelize. We may not, indeed, send missionaries to Augustine and Colomba and St. Patrick, and money to those who gave American Presbyterianism a start ; but sending money and missionaries to those who to-day need them is send- ing them to the Christ who blessed us in Augustine. Unbelief still asks, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Yet, as out of that unlikely vil- lage of Nazareth the Christ actually did come, so out of these to us unlikely races and nations most notable representatives of Christ have come, are coming and shall come. The African is a byword, yet that other Augustine, bishop of Hippo (who, following Paul, was a Calvinist before Calvin), was an African of Numidia. It is but recently that the Sandwich Islanders were like their brethren of the Southern Pacific seas. To-day they are thor- oughly Christian. Bunyan was once only a pro- fane tinker, and yet in his dreams he painted for the whole Church the pilgrimage to the Celestial City. 46 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. Behoi.d Cheist ! The difficulty, however, is not in our intellectual belief that what is done for his sake is recognized by Christ as done to himself. The real difficulty is in making ourselves so continuously conscious of it as to see the Christ in those with whom we are dealing. We need to see in their filthy hands the pierced hands of Jesus — in their ignorance Jesus bewildered in the darkness. As we read of the hospitality of Martha and Mary, we covet their opportunity. As we think of his betrayal and arrest, we could wish that we had been there to smite like Peter. All that, however, is mere empty sentimentalism. Look around you. For you there is Christ in every impenitent soul, rich or poor, with whom you come in contact. Yonder is Christ in every heathen nation. You do, indeed, see in their darkness the hole of the pit whence you were taken, but do you not remember how quickly Christ could transfigure himself? So now, on the instant, he is for you in that same gloom, calling with other voices for your help. Look, then, again, and listen, and you shall see his face and hear his voice in every one whose case calls for the gospel. Lift up your eyes again and bend your ears in sharp OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. 47 attention, and you shall detect that same divine face, and that same holy voice calling you to him in heathen lands. It is an old hvmn, and we often sing it ; and when we sing it 1 hope we shall sing it with this revision of the version : “ Shall we, whose souls Christ lighted With wisdom from on high — Shall we to Christ’s benighted The lamp of life deny ?” Not one whit more actually does this Assembly represent the Presbyterian Church than do those multitudes in heathendom represent Christ to us. In their name, then, and his, I call on this Assembly, representing the Presbyterian Church, six hundred thousand strong, to rally to his work and rescue. By our own past Druid heathenism — by our own present Christian civilization — -for the sake of them of whom He spake, and for His sake who said, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me,” I cedi for a neiv consecration unto Christ in his cause and kingdom. Of that self-con- secration Christ has given us both the example and the measure. Come with me to another assembly rep- resenting the whole Church of God in New- Testa- ment times. The first Christian Sabbath is closing. 48 OUR PIT AND OUR ROCK. Ills followers, bewildered by the day's rumors of an empty tomb, a frightened watch and a risen Master, are in their hiding-place for fear of the Jews. Lo ! into that presence comes that very Christ who watches us to-day. Fathers and brethren, mark and MEASURE HIS WORDS AND ACTS : “ PEACE BE UNTO you.” The Church shall never see darker DAYS THAN THE THREE LAST GONE. “As MY Father hath sent me” — what a measure OF CONSECRATION ! — “ As MY FATHER HATH SENT ME, EVEN SO SEND I YOU.” HoW, AT THAT LAST WORD, EVERY HEART MUST SINK IN CONSCIOUS- NESS OF INCAPACITY ! BUT WATCH HIM NOW. He over whom, at his Jordan baptism, the HEAVENS OPENED, AND ON WHOM THE HOLY Ghost came without measure, now breathes ON them and us, and speaks these words of power : “ Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” O MASTER! SO SEND BY THY RE- SISTLESS POWER THIS BELOVED PRES- BYTERIAN CHURCH! 0 MASTER! SO BREATHE THY HOLY GHOST ON THIS CHURCH THAT EVERY SINGLE SOUL SHALL FEEL THAT “ ITS MISSION IN THIS WORLD IS MISSIONS.”