I^'*7 J 
 
 Sa r o* 5 
 
 
THE MINISTRANT CHURCH. 
 
 A 
 
 SERMON 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS 
 FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS, 
 
 AT THEIR 
 
 MEETING IN SALEM, MASS. 
 
 OCTOBER 3, 1871, 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. TRUMAN M. POST, D. D. 
 
 OF ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 131 CONGRESS STREET. 
 
 1871 . 
 
American $oari> of Commissioners for foreign: fissions. 
 
 Salem, Ms., October 3 , 1871 . 
 
 Resolved, That the thanks of the Board be presented to the Rev. Dr. Truman M. 
 Post, for his sermon preached Tuesday evening, and that he be requested to furnish 
 a copy for publication. 
 
 Attest, 
 
 J. O. MEANS, Recording Secretary. 
 
SERMON. 
 
 Brethren and Fathers : — 
 
 As I rise to address you this evening, I feel oppressed by the 
 genius of the place. A scene presses on me from what now 
 seems the far past. On this spot, if not within these walls, 
 nearly sixty years ago, was the ordination of the first mission- 
 aries of the American Board. Here, on February 6th, 1812, in 
 the presence of a vast and profoundly sympathizing assembly, 
 Hall, Newell, Judson, Nott and Rice, were solemnly set apart 
 to the work of Foreign Missions. The actors, and most of the 
 spectators, have long since passed to other worlds. But they 
 seem to me gathering again to this place, this hour, to inaugu- 
 rate your assembling. Hovering over and around us, seem to 
 my eye faces that are not of clay. May the words I shall utter 
 before you to-night, approve themselves to those on whose ears 
 are falling the voices of eternity. 
 
 I have selected, as presenting timely theme for the occasion, 
 the words of our Master and Model, found in 
 
 MATTHEW xx. 28. 
 
 THE SON OF MAN CAME NOT TO BE MINISTERED UNTO, BUT TO MINISTER, AND 
 TO GIVE HIS LIFE A RANSOM FOR MANY. 
 
 In this and the preceding verses, Christ’s example is set forth as 
 the rule for his disciples. " Whosoever will be great among you 
 let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among 
 you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of Man came not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a 
 
4 
 
 ransom for many.” The proper import of the word " minister,” 
 is servant, and to minister is to extend service through kindly 
 offices, beneficent instruction and bestowment, — labors, suffer- 
 ings, sacrifices. Our Lord has also taught us that "the disciple 
 is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.” " Who- 
 soever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
 cross and follow me.” " Whosoever will save his life shall lose 
 it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, 
 the same shall find it.” " He that forsaketh not all that he hath, 
 he cannot be my disciple : ” and he subjoined, as his valediction 
 when he left the world, " It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive.” 
 
 The law of greatness in the kingdom of heaven is ministra- 
 tion, set forth in God himself as its prime archetype, who min- 
 isters the universe to the universe; in his Son, who ministered 
 himself for the ransom of many ; in the all-quickening Spirit, 
 who ministers life to moral being ; in the angelic orders who are 
 ever ministrant spirits ; and in the church, whose office it is, to 
 the end of time, to minister the lifted-up Christ to the world, by 
 like vicarious suffering and sacrifice. Such ministry is God’s 
 charm of persuasion, and such the church’s law of victory amid 
 the lost nations. 
 
 We are assembled here, brethren, in this year of grace, 1871, 
 in missionary convocation, to commune together, for the time, 
 on the <xreat problem of the conversion of the world — the con- 
 summation assured by prophets, apostles, and the Son of God, 
 and commanded as the object of prayer, to the church, through 
 the ages. Toward it the centuries past have wrought under 
 divine rule, slowly it may seem to us, but surely ; and out on 
 the deeps, though far off still it seems, yet manifestly in nearer 
 distance, we may descry the brightness of the burning wheels 
 of the coming of the Lord. 
 
 If we look at the present situation as compared with the past, 
 we discover vast progress, vast preparation, and vast expectation. 
 Vast the progress since the resurrection morning. The faith of 
 the crucified Nazarene embraces the civilized world. Christianity 
 is incorporate with the life and thought of humanity. It is 
 armed with art, literature, science, wealth and empire. It is the 
 
religion of the mightiest nations. It possesses the domain of 
 history. It is clearly the mightiest power on earth, at this pres- 
 ent, and bearing within itself the destinies of the future. 
 
 In regard to missionary enterprise, compared with past times 
 the field is clear ; the world is open and explored. Mundane 
 agencies, political and social, empires and systems — with their 
 changes, wars, migrations, conquests, colonizations — have been 
 working their preparation. Commerce, adventure, travel and 
 ambition have been pioneering the way. Science, art, letters, 
 culture, and the forces of civilization have been wrought into 
 auxiliaries. The enfranchisement of nations, the liberation of 
 minds, the spread of general ideas, and the advancement toward 
 a world-unity in the realm of thought, are elaborating a capacity 
 for a universal spiritual reign. 
 
 Within the sphere of the church, also, vast preparations have 
 been in progress. Missionary consciousness and enterprise have 
 been aroused and enlightened ; missionary agencies instituted, 
 organized and systematized, and applied extensively to the strong- 
 holds of heathen religion and empire. Christian truth has been 
 widely diffused ; the sword of the Spirit — the Word of God — 
 unsheathed and presented ready to the hand of the church, in 
 that the Holy Scriptures have been translated into nearly all the 
 languages of the known world ; some of which have been reduced 
 to writing expressly to receive the sacred gift. Copies of them, 
 or of thoughts born of them, have been scattered like leaves of 
 the Tree of Life on the wings of all the winds of heaven. The 
 steam press, the steam ship, and the telegraph, have been made 
 ready to minister the new-creative truth to the nations. 
 
 Signs, meanwhile, that this truth has lost none of its primi- 
 tive power, but is as mighty now as at the resurrection of Christ, 
 thickening in the missionary field and showing that the Pente- 
 costal power still waits with Him that has the residue of the 
 Spirit, — these, blending with these preparatory agencies, seem 
 marshaling on the universal triumph of the kingdom of God. 
 
 Now in this hour of vast preparation and expectancy, what 
 waits, what wants within the sphere of the church, to secure the 
 mighty prize so clearly in view ? Has the church risen to the 
 height of the occasion — to the plane of her great mission ? Does 
 
6 
 
 she realize, does she adequately conceive, even, her true minis- 
 trant mission and position — the true nature and office of the 
 Christian life on earth ? Our Lord’s definition and assignment 
 by his own example, enforced by his precept as a model for all 
 disciples — are they not construed extensively, as extreme and 
 exceptional? Do we not, by extenuation and abatement, fritter 
 away language the most explicit and categorical ? Are not our 
 senses so dulled by custom, or so dazed by worldly illusion, 
 that "seeing we do not perceive, and hearing we do not under- 
 stand” that Christ in very deed meant what he said, and meant 
 it for us and now, when he presented his own example in coming 
 into the world — not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
 to give his life a ransom for many — as a paradigm for all who 
 would be his disciples? 
 
 Requirements the most explicit and unequivocal, of entire 
 consecration, absolute devotion, complete self-sacrifice; of for- 
 saking all that one hath ; of living not to ourselves but to the 
 Lord who hath bought us ; of unreserved. , universal ministra- 
 tion of self to the great cause , — are not such requirements sub- 
 dued by construction into figurative , intensitive, exaggerated 
 utterances, — into something not entire , not absolute , not uni- 
 versal , — something partial, occasional, exceptional? But surely 
 He who was the very Truth, would not, in a matter of such 
 awful concernment, palter with us in a double sense, would not 
 deal in phrase or figure, overdrawing the reality, or leave the 
 law of Christian life confused by overstatement, or subject to the 
 limitations of individual convenience or caprice. And never, we 
 believe, till the church gives full and vigorous interpretation to 
 her Master’s commission and requirements, and recognizes her 
 true calling, to be in this world as was her Lord — " not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister,” — to minister her labors, her 
 prayers, her wealth, her children, her best, her all for the glory 
 of the Lord and the life of the world, — never till she becomes 
 profoundly conscious that a life thus ministering is the gladdest, 
 noblest, grandest beneath the sun, will she reach " the height of 
 her great argument” for the conversion of the world. 
 
 But are not our churches full, this hour, of those who seem to 
 regard church-life as jiassive rather than active, exacting rather 
 
7 
 
 than imparting — who are in the church, not to minister but to 
 be ministered unto — to find enjoyment and repose — to be waited 
 on, cultivated, caressed and insured for Heaven — not to be 
 servants of all, but to be served of all? To them, it wonld 
 appear, the earthly church is as though already within the walls 
 of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 But evermore the church militant is the church ministrant — 
 ministrant of her very self for the life of the world. She wars 
 by ministration. She saves life by losing it for Christ. She 
 gains all things by giving up all things. She contends with the 
 ministries of truth and love. She subdues the world by devoting 
 herself for it ; by ministering her pleasures and convenience, her 
 comforts, her toil, her gold, her sons and her daughters ; what- 
 ever she has most precious, yea, life itself, for human redemption. 
 She overcomes by self-sacrifice for the wretched, the ignorant, 
 the hateful, the sinful. Like her Lord, she is victor through 
 vicarious suffering. She conquers by dying. By crucifixion 
 sbe casts down the prince of darkness. By entering the grave 
 she breaks the gates of hell. Above her onward march, over the 
 ensign of the Son of God, bearing on his own cross the sins of a 
 world, gleams evermore the blazon, "In hoc vince.” 
 
 This self-ministration to the cause is essential to the triumph 
 of Christianity ; because, 1st. It is essential to its very exis- 
 tence. It is of its original vital essence, the very element and 
 condition of its being, even as shining is the condition of 
 light. 
 
 In the 2d place, it is to the world the proof-impress of the 
 original archetype — its divine attestation. 
 
 3d. It is God’s pei'suas ion — his continued argument, of the 
 Christ lifted up, with a fallen race ; yet a race not so fallen as 
 to fail to recognize this proof of celestial original, or to be 
 insensible to this manifestation of the beauty of God. The 
 world in its moral ruin, still feels the divine charm of self-sac- 
 rificing love. 
 
 " He that will be greatest of all shall be servant of all,” is 
 written even in this world’s code of honor. The ministration of 
 self for others it recognizes as the royal mark on grand and 
 beautiful souls. It feels it to be the God-like, — the very love- 
 
8 
 
 liest, kingliest thing among the sons of men. Wherever it 
 meets or thinks it meets it, in hero, patriot, philanthropist or 
 martyr, it does it reverence. It honors, celebrates and worships 
 it, as something from heaven. It becomes the orator’s theme, 
 the inspiration of th q poet, the ideal of the artist. To it the 
 nations institute festivals, build monuments, temples, and West- 
 minsters. Spirits signalized by it walk the earth in light. They 
 break in upon its night with the gladness of sunbeams. Sweeter 
 than music are their names to the forlorn and wretched. Like 
 angel-faces, their thought wanders through the hospital and 
 asylum, or hovers over the eyes of the desolate and dying. The 
 less the suspicion of selfish alloy, the farthest the apparent 
 removal from ambition of eclat, the more men love and worship ; 
 so that the humblest, obscurest and most hidden life in which 
 this self-ministry moves, becomes, to our world’s night, as those 
 star-fields whose lights, dimmest to earth, shine in holiest height, 
 and nearest to God’s throne. Such is its charm, even to our 
 fallen world. 
 
 Its primal archetype is set forth in the evcr-and-all-minister- 
 ing God, whose name and essence is love, whose glory is the 
 effluence of love, who is greatest of all as He ministers to all. 
 Its imprint is on the elder and mightier sons of light, whose 
 glory and bliss it is that they are all ministering spirits. It is 
 incarnated in " God manifest in the flesh,” vindicating the divine 
 son-ship of him, who, " though rich, for our sakes became poor,” 
 and who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to 
 be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took 
 upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto 
 death, even the death of the cross.” 
 
 This spirit, incorporate with the idea and being of the church, 
 and breathing through it as its organ of perpetual utterance, is 
 God’s eloquence with men, — his signature on his church ; recog- 
 nized as such by the world, whose conversion waits its full man- 
 ifestation. 
 
 That this ministrant spirit must make proof of itself in 
 missions , I need not argue. The church ministrant must, by 
 its very definition and original constitution and commission, be 
 the church missionary, — a church that goes forth from home 
 
0 
 
 and country, to seek and save the alien and the lost. Originating 
 in a mission from heaven to a ruined world, it must, of its very 
 nature, go forth from realms illuminated to peoples that sit in 
 darkness and the shadow of death. Everywhere, indeed, it 
 must be animated by the missionary spirit — the spirit of self- 
 devotion for the salvation of men. The life of every true 
 Christian is a mission ; cannot, must not be aught else ; no more 
 on the hanks of the Hudson or Mississippi than on those of the 
 Ganges, the Hoangho, or the Niger. 
 
 But evidently it is essential to the full development of the 
 nature of the church, and especially, its full proof of itself 
 before the world, that it go forth on the foreign mission. Bene- 
 factions to our country may be regarded as benefactions to our- 
 selves, and patriotism may be construed as an expanded self- 
 love. But the foreign mission eminently impresses the world as 
 of that " charity which seeketh not her own ; ” which gives proof 
 of its God-likeness in that it is without color of selfishness, and 
 is universal. Not only the Roman theatre, but the whole race of 
 man rises up to do homage to the Terentian assertion of a 
 catholic humanity, — " I am a man, and nothing human is foreign 
 to me.” 
 
 Moreover, a true home-evangelization requires it. As an 
 expression and a culture of Christly love, and of sympathy with 
 the life-spirit of Christianity, the mission abroad is vital to the 
 church at home. To limit Christianity geographically, violates 
 its nature. It is ubiquitous in its reach, or it is nothing. To 
 partialize the universal, introduces a fatal solecism into its 
 nature. It is, moreover, clear disloyalty to the original divine 
 commission, and as such must be fatal to its life-power. Indeed, 
 in breaking up the spiritual torpor and narrowness wont to 
 gather upon churches that are content to shut up their Christian 
 sympathies within their own borders, the reflex benefits of for- 
 eign missions can hardly be over-estimated. In truth, such are 
 the ultimate relations, now, between different parts of the world, 
 that it could be readily shown that missions are richly remu- 
 nerative in the light of a true, moral, we might even add, 
 political economy, to home interests. 
 
 But the foreign mission is especially valuable in the profound 
 
 B 
 
10 
 
 and striking impression it makes on the world generally, of a 
 ministrant Christianity, — of an entire and absolute ministration of 
 self for the salvation of men. 
 
 I speak now of impression on the ivorlcl. Every Christian 
 life, at home or abroad, is in truth such a ministration. Its con- 
 secration is entire or nothing. " Whosoever forsaketh not all 
 that he hath, cannot be my disciple,” is the law as much in Chris- 
 tian America as in India or Central Africa. And in general, I 
 believe, such a life involves as much sacrifice and brings as much 
 happiness in one field as in another. It is the great first step 
 which costs, in either. And it is more what we are, than where, 
 that fixes the happiness as well as nobleness of life. These are 
 determined more by loyalty to our professed self-consecration, its 
 entirety and absoluteness, than any or all exterior circumstances 
 whatsoever. 
 
 Nevertheless the foreign mission presents such self-devotion in 
 a form which especially strikes the sense of the world. The 
 denial of instinctive sentiments, common to all men and appreci- 
 able by all men ; the sundering of ties universally felt as among 
 the strongest on earth — those of home, kindred, country ; the 
 voluntary surrender of the sweets of civilization and culture, for 
 perpetual exile amid dark-souled, barbarous, or semi-barbarous 
 and pagan peoples ; such a sacrifice, — visible, summary, abso- 
 lute, irrevocable, — especially impresses the world with the sense 
 of a faith and love above its plane of being, and having origin in 
 higher realms. It also touches the mind of the church at large 
 with a true consciousness of her calling. 
 
 In corrupt and apostate ages, such examples of consecration 
 have been exponential of the divine life immanent in the church. 
 They appear like pulses of the consciousness of a higher world 
 breaking in upon a torpid and stagnant worldly church-life. 
 
 That the enthusiastic and imaginative sentiments have often 
 had to do with the origin and enterprise of foreign missions, as 
 also with their impression on the popular mind, cannot be denied. 
 But who shall deny that these sentiments, though requiring to be 
 carefully guarded from a mere spirit of romance, still have their 
 legitimate and beneficent sphere in the economy of a world of 
 faith, and that it is well to have occasions to call them forth in a 
 
11 
 
 cause where, after all, the real forever transcends our utmost 
 ideal, and imagination falls below our soberest logic? The 
 examples called forth thereby are channels for the illapsc of 
 modes of thought and feeling from a loftier and truer realm into 
 our common life ; similar in effect to those of martyrdoms in the 
 ancient church. 
 
 It were easy to show that not only the primal impression, but 
 also the continued conscious connection of the home with the 
 foreign field, and the constant presentation of claims for a purely 
 Christian ministration of men, money, personal labor and sacrifice, 
 must be stimulant and purifying, and tending to keep the church 
 in healthful sympathy with its original idea. 
 
 But argumentative detail is unnecessary. The foreign mission 
 is clearly incorporate with the essential nature and orginal com- 
 mission of the church, and is indissolubly connected with its 
 purity and power. It originated in a foreign mission — if indeed 
 anything is foreign to the blessed heaven — a mission from heaven 
 to a lost world ; and the foreign mission must ever be to it a 
 vital ministrant function. 
 
 The argument from the life-principles of the church is con- 
 firmed by history, and God’s methods of providence. Histori- 
 cally, the life-eras of the church have synchronized with the minis- 
 trant and missionary spirit, both as cause and effect. Through 
 the darkest periods of Christianity, its life is traced through that 
 spirit, sympathizing with it in its vigor or decay. Where this 
 spirit has failed, Christianity itself has seemed to die. Where it 
 has lived, even in crude and crass form, there, notwithstanding 
 errors and offences in doctrine and government, Christianity has 
 lived on, under all and in spite of all ; each marked renewal of 
 Christian life or reform in the church, being marked by a revival 
 of this spirit. 
 
 To this spirit, moreover, developing itself in missions, Chris- 
 tianity owes what extension it has achieved. Various mundane 
 agencies God has used, as preparatory and auxiliary. But each 
 new, genuine evangelization of nations has been through express 
 and formal missions. When these have ceased, the frontiers 
 of Christendom have ceased to widen, — often have shrunk. 
 
 God has, moreover, by his providence, enforced the ministrant 
 
12 
 
 action of the church, expressly enjoined in the Great Commission. 
 Whenever she has seemed settling down in mere self-maintenance 
 or self-culture, and in contentment with past victories and 
 acquired domain, the Providence that ever watches over her has 
 permitted her repose to be perturbed. Persecution and convul- 
 sion, invasions or immigrations have aroused and proved her, 
 broken up stagnation, brought her to ministrant confession, 
 scattered her members, and compelled their testimony among 
 new peoples. So he broke up the early coagulation of the 
 church about Jerusalem, by the persecutions connected with the 
 martyrdoms of Stephen, James the greater, and James the less, 
 and finally by the destruction of the city itself; compelling the 
 disciples to go abroad, everywhere proclaiming the kingdom of 
 God. To the same intent wrought the persecutions of pagan 
 Rome. So of the church, nominally mistress of the empire. Its 
 stagnancy, tending to rapid corruption, was broken up by the 
 invasion and migration of nations, which enforced the ministra- 
 tion of Christian life and truth to the heathen, by captivities, 
 dispersions, enslavements ; or led to formal missions to the Goths 
 and Germanic tribes, whereby the edge of the barbaric sword was 
 broken, so that, in the overthrow of the Roman world, it did not 
 rage utterly against the church and Christian institutions. So the 
 overflow of ancient Christendom by the barbarians, compelled the 
 ministration of Christianity to new nations, by contact under 
 pressure, and constrained the church to be missionary in order to 
 self-preservation. 
 
 But political changes were not factors of evangelization, or 
 real conversion. These were wrought only by the ministrant 
 and missionary agency to which they furnished opportunity, 
 occasions, or necessity. The same was the fact under the sword 
 of the Merovingians and Carlovingians, and of the new Ger- 
 manic empire. It was the mission that followed the sword, 
 ministrant of truth and love, and of personal labor, sacrifice 
 and suffering, that converted a nominal and enforced into actual 
 Christianization. It is to missionaries mainly from the Irish 
 and Anglican church — the Winifreds and Willcbrods, the 
 Columbans and St. Galls, and their successors, the Ansgars, 
 Ottos, Adelberts and their coadjutors — it is to the devotion and 
 
13 
 
 self-sacrifice of those engaged in personal missions, and for the 
 love of Christ and of souls penetrating forests, crossing wintry 
 rivers, braving frost and storm, the miasma of marsh and the 
 terrors of savage nature and more savage men — it is to these 
 individual missionaries more than to armies or edicts of force, 
 that nations, now the mightiest in Europe, owe their Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 The same was the law of Christian life and spread under the 
 era of spiritual despotism. It was not the church imperial, 
 throned and sceptred on the seven hills, arrayed in purple and 
 scarlet, arrogating universal lordship, fulminating interdicts and 
 instituting inquisitions, claiming to coerce the faith and submis- 
 sion of the world, and to be ministered to of all nations, — it was 
 not this, but the church ministrant in the wilderness, — the church 
 of the cottage, the hut, the hamlet, the cave and catacomb, 
 amid the poor, the suffering, the humble, the wretched, in seclu- 
 sion and often concealment, that bore the true succession of the 
 kingdom of God on earth, and kept alive the true confession of 
 Christ among men. The genuine succession runs through the 
 church-ministrant, not the church imperial. God’s seal of 
 genuine apostolicity is on it. The transmission was through the 
 living, not the dead. There is no mortmain in the kingdom of 
 God, — no succession in dead hands. 
 
 Missions also betokened the revival of apostolic Christianity 
 through the subsequent ages. Thus out of the Lutheran reform, 
 — after the struggle for existence had ceased to tax all its ener- 
 gies, — and subsequently, out of the Whitfieldian and Wesleyan 
 revival of the eighteenth century, was evolved, largely, the spirit 
 and enterprise of modern missions. 
 
 These missions, though yet mainly in their pioneer and pre- 
 paratory stages, have accomplished enough to demonstrate the 
 proposition, that through the express and formal mission , — 
 not by commerce or conquest, or the contact of civilizations, — 
 the evangelization of heathen nations is to be effected and the 
 domain of genuine Christendom to be extended. Already vast 
 results, not in preparation only, but in actual achievement; not 
 in the realm of ideas alone, but in change of institutions ; not 
 in impression on popular thought merely, but in the spiritual 
 
14 
 
 conversion of multitudes, attest the continued potency of genuine 
 ministrant Christianity, and the presence of the new creative 
 Spirit. "The handful of corn on the top of the mountains,” — 
 "the fruit thereof ” has already shaken "like Lebanon.” And 
 slow as the process has seemed to us, it has been rapid beyond 
 the precedent of former ages. In historic comparison, the 
 prophetic declaration seems truly verified, that nations are born 
 in a day. 
 
 Again, the church ministrant is not only the great diffuser of 
 the Christian faith, but is also the proper conservator and elabo- 
 ralor of that faith , i. e., of a pure theology. Such a theology 
 is not so much wrought out in the schools as in life, — is less the 
 product of speculative dialectics, than of practical uses and exi- 
 gencies. The truth and value of dogmas are gauged fitly by 
 their relation to the great problem to be accomplished — the con- 
 version of the world. 
 
 Arms and armor are best elaborated and tested in actual war- 
 fare. Use discovers and perfects instruments. The science of a 
 power is wrought out from its practical application, as that of 
 steam by millions of brains and hands in innumerable operative 
 fields. So keeping men in constant presence and practical use 
 of great natural forces, imparts a perpetual consciousness of their 
 reality and potency ; teaches their proper correlation and co- 
 ordination ; and gives a quick faculty in their harmonious appli- 
 cation. So a true theology is best appreciated, gauged and 
 adjusted, as well as most profoundly believed, in practical con- 
 verse with the great problem of human salvation. It is likeliest 
 to be found in minds in intensest sympathy with the original life- 
 spirit and aim of the mission of Christ, as the solar system is best 
 comprehended from a stand-point on its central orb. 
 
 Not by synods or sorbonnes, so much as by practical minis- 
 tries, has the faith of the church been conserved and developed. 
 Men thrown amid the actual dynamics of nature are little likely 
 to doubt the law of gravitation. Those engaged in callings 
 requiring practical converse with astronomical phenomena, will 
 feel little need of resort to assemblies of savans to re-enact, from 
 time to time, with formal solemnity, the dogma of the Coperni- 
 can system. 
 
Movement, moreover, and endeavor along the line of the 
 church’s original mission, will tend to purify both faith and life, 
 and to give it power of conservative regimen. The vessel that, 
 without power of guidance, is wrecked on the dead surges, can 
 feel her helm only when she feels the propelling wind or steam. 
 Waters that ferment when stagnant, and breed all corrupt and 
 venomous things, become livers of life as they flow. Such 
 is the law of life in the church. It waits on ministrant 
 movement. 
 
 Missions, again, are the great unitive forces of the church, 
 the great means of truly realizing the prayer of our Lord for the 
 oneness of his disciples. What we vainly reach after by con- 
 templation of differences, and attempts to harmonize or annihi- 
 late them, is naturally achieved by supreme ministry to a com- 
 mon end ; as the life-struggle of nations silences, for the time, 
 the strifes of political parties, one common, supreme enterprise 
 unites by subordinating and correlating all minor individual 
 interests and tenets. As the waters of the Mississippi valley, 
 from the Alleghany to the Rocky Mountains, widely asunder and 
 with currents most diverse, defy all the engineers and Hibernians 
 of the earth to unite them, but brought under one great law, move 
 from all their springs to swell one mighty stream, and laterals 
 that threatened to stay or deflect, augment and accelerate the 
 march of the waters to the sea. Forces that, working within, 
 convulse, directed to one objective aim, minister strength. In a 
 great conflagration, the most impracticable material is converted 
 into fuel. 
 
 Thus missions are exponents and factors of ecclesiastic life, 
 purity and progress, and the effort for the conversion of the 
 world is coronal to all ministries for the prosperity of the 
 church. 
 
 But why go abroad ? Why not wait the objects of missions 
 brought, as they are being brought, in a migration of nations, to 
 our own shores? Because both history and reason show that 
 Carthage must be conquered in Africa. Streams are purified 
 most readily at the fountain. Immigrant masses are most readily 
 rendered innocuous and beneficent by missions directed toward 
 the countries which are the centres and foci of false faiths, from 
 
16 
 
 which they largety come. Missions in both directions, domestic 
 and foreign, are requisite and mutually supplemental. Indeed, 
 such is the oneness of humanity now developed, that the only 
 way to permanently save one nation, evidently is to save all ; to 
 leave no exterior circle of barbarism or falsehood to breed infec- 
 tion or attack ; no outside Gog and Magog, to bring war anew 
 on the camp of the saints. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, the coming of the Lord waits the true 
 ministration of the church. The world waits this coronal proof. 
 And the hour of coronal proof we believe will be the hour of 
 coronal triumph. Rationalism, now the subtlest and deadliest of 
 antagonists to the gospel, which relies not on out-arguing, but 
 on out-living and out-growing Christianity, will be confuted and 
 confounded by the actual proof of its immortality of life and 
 vigor ; must despair as it sees the ministrant Christ still mani- 
 festly living in the ministrant church, and leading her on, con- 
 quering and to conquer. 
 
 The cause, therefore, now summons the church to the utmost 
 development and energizing of all her ministrant agencies. The 
 call is to all the blood-bought in every place and every sphere, 
 not for detached and selected regiments or troops of the line 
 alone, but for a "land-wehr” and " land-sturm.” The minis- 
 trant activity must quicken through each class and order, and 
 with entire consecration of all elements of power, material or 
 ideal, spiritual or temporal. The brain and heart, the gold and 
 silver, the personal energies and influence of each ; all business, 
 all callings, all are to be held as ministrant means to the Great 
 Cause. On the very bells of the horses is to be written, " Holi- 
 ness to the Lord.” 
 
 In summing up our argument, among the principles evolved 
 from our theme and from the history of the church, we note the 
 following, — 1st, The conversion of the tcorld is to be wrought 
 through the church ministrant , directhj lifting up the cruci- 
 fied Christ before the nations ; — lifting him up by self-minis- 
 trations that are constant representations of his vicarious sacrifice, 
 and that constantly evidence in the church the presence of him 
 who gave his life a ransom for many. This is the essential, vital, 
 capital agency for the conversion of the world. Other influences, 
 
17 
 
 as those of commerce, intercourse, political institutions, educa- 
 tional culture, contact of civilizations, or extensions of empire, 
 may pioneer, prepare, or co-operate. But they are not to be 
 waited for or relied on, and are utterly inadequate without direct 
 evangelizing effort. Without such effort, indeed, weaker nations 
 are not saved, but perish by contact with superior civilizations. 
 For the conversion of nations we must look to the direct minis- 
 tration of the gospel, — now and ever, and to all men, " the wis- 
 dom of God and the power of God unto salvation.” Culture and 
 civilization may be auxiliaries, and are to be expected as results 
 of evangelization, but arc not to be insisted on or waited for as 
 pre-requisite antecedents. 
 
 2d. The most vital of all our ministries to missionary 
 churches is that of the ministrant spirit itself. This alone 
 can develope and stimulate their life-power. For this our min- 
 istrations must consult. Continual material support may dwarf 
 and paralyze its beneficiaries, and prevent natural growth and 
 development. But self-ministry secured, secures not only self- 
 sustentation but self-diffusion. The Christianity thus planted 
 will be Christ-like. It will be vital and self-propagating. It 
 will develope itself in native growth and the production of native 
 preachers and pastors, and native missions. 
 
 3d. In order to the development of this self-ministry in 
 missionary churches, they must, as speedily as practicable , be 
 wrought to self-government , and be left to develope and order 
 themselves according to the law of Christian liberty. Free- 
 dom is the element of ministration. It is requisite to the full 
 culture and application of ministrant energies. Without it 
 there is no permanent vitality, no development of self-sustain- 
 ing or of life-diffusing power. There is peril of perpetual 
 nonage and impotency — that you may have in the end only a 
 home bureau with foreign outposts — an East India house and a 
 factory. 
 
 4th. This ecclesiastical independency, or self-regimen in the 
 missions, is to be protected from individualism or selfish 
 isolation, from anarchism, faction, schism, and perversions 
 of faith, by the Christ-like ministrant spirit developed in it. 
 This spirit must become a reliance for the communion of the 
 c 
 
18 
 
 churches, which is only a communion of mutual ministries, 
 helps, counsels and sympathies; and also, as the best safeguard 
 for Christian brotherhood and equality against a spirit of ambi- 
 tion or domination ; even as this same spirit is expressly enjoined 
 by our Lord as antidote to emulations, rivalries and usurpations 
 of lordship among his disciples. It will also be, as we have 
 shown, the most effective assurance of substantive purity of the 
 faith — a living and a practical one. 
 
 Thus this principle, inwrought, tends to secure in the mission 
 churches life and order, unity and freedom ; the speculative, 
 regulated and conserved by the practical ; that blending of indi- 
 vidual spontaneity with organic solidarity, which constitutes the 
 acme of social power, such as was largely represented in the 
 primitive ecclesiastical type, by which Christianity was propa- 
 gated through the ancient Roman world, and which will ever 
 be found possessed of equal fitness and power ; giving now, 
 as it did then, the freest play to the great organic agencies of 
 truth, liberty and love, and the influences of the ever-present 
 Spirit. 
 
 5th. Missions must be sustained abroad by such means as 
 shall most widely diffuse the ministrant spirit among the 
 churches at home. This needs to be cultivated, as much for 
 their own life as for that of the missions they sustain ; and that 
 not only among particular sections, classes, or individuals, but 
 universally. 
 
 6th. Missionary ministrations, as a normal and perpetual, 
 not exceptional or spasmodic agency of the church, must be ren- 
 dered in patience of hope and of faith in the divine jiromise 
 and the divine Spirit , and in reliance for success, not on 
 eclat, or pageant, or force, or artifice, but on the patient 
 ministry of truth and love, of suffering and sacrifice. With 
 our Lord as leader, we are to walk by faith in this highway, 
 knowing it will at last emerge in light. 
 
 7th. It is now evident that the conversion of the world waits 
 upon the re-baptism of the church into its original life-spirit. 
 She must come up more to the scriptural ideal, the Christly 
 model, — must hear and obey the voice of the Master, — before 
 her prayer, going up through the ages, shall be answered. She 
 
19 
 
 must manifest Christ " lifted up ” by ministering her all, her 
 very self, for the redemption of the world ; must feel that this is 
 her work in this world, her business, the business of each and 
 every member, everywhere and at all times. 
 
 8th. It is evident that the church is to be wrought to this 
 ideal chiefly through missions themselves. The culture is in 
 the process ; the preparation in the endeavor. By shining she 
 grows light. If the church, in large portions of it, is far removed 
 from that model, it will be by quickening the parts most living 
 that those most dead will be delivered from torpor, and the whole 
 body from mortification. To fit ourselves for the work of the 
 world’s conversion, we must in earnest address ourselves to it; 
 and not in masses and societies alone. Primitive evangelization 
 was chiefly through the mission of the individual, solitary, or 
 with few associates. We must see to it that in our superior 
 system we lose not the original spirit, and the sense of individual 
 responsibility in every class and sphere. 
 
 9th. Especially, one part of the church, embracing more than 
 half its members, peculiarly endowed with ministrant instinct and 
 faculty, and whose influence on our entire civilization, though 
 subtle, delicate and silent, is as potent as that of the imponder- 
 ables — light, heat and electricity — in the material world, must be 
 more drawn into conscious sympathy and co-operation with this 
 great movement. The feminine element, so prominent in the 
 primitive evangelic mission, though much lost sight of in 
 subsequent ages, — when the ministrant church disappears more 
 from history and becomes largely merged in the imperial and 
 despotic, — must be more fully utilized. 
 
 It is auspicious for the times that woman is being extensively 
 aroused anew to a consciousness of privilege, power and respon- 
 sibility in this interest. Her peculiar spheres and avenues of 
 influence ; her privileged admission to the homes and the domestic 
 life of peoples ; her exclusive access to half the population ; and 
 the fact that civilization and evangelization never go by halves ; 
 these things are becoming more recognized in the missionary 
 economy. 
 
 The gospel, indeed, puts especial honor on woman. It uti- 
 lizes and sceptres her peculiar gifts. In its system, her function 
 
20 
 
 is most potent if not regent. The virtues and graces which 
 seem most germane to her nature, her gentleness, delicacy and 
 sympathy, that apply themselves with loving intuition and felicity 
 of tact, and in patient and quiet sacrifice to ministries for others, 
 are in especial power and honor in the kingdom of Christ. In 
 truth, in accordance with that perfect completeness wjiich attaches 
 to him as a universal Saviour, there is much we feel as feminine — 
 not effeminate — in the character of Christ himself ; foreshadow- 
 ing the potency and beauty of that element in the church he 
 founded. The church now needs to call this element, embracing 
 so large a portion of its members, into more active missionary 
 sympathy and co-operation, at home and abroad. 
 
 Gladly and hopefully we now welcome woman to the successor- 
 ship of the Marys, Marthas, Salomes and others, who ministered 
 to our Lord in his walk on earth, and were ' last at the cross 
 and earliest at the grave,’ and to that of the Syntiches, and Pris- 
 cillas, and Euodiases, and those women who labored with Paul 
 and the Philippian church, in the work of the gospel. The forces 
 of motherhood, wifehood, sisterhood, daughterhood, and those 
 quicker sympathies and affections, — those subtle and delicate, yet 
 most potent influences which are the prerogative of woman, — 
 these belong with especial propriety to the church, and are to be 
 enlisted for its triumph at home and in foreign lands. 
 
 In the great social stir of the times — when woman is repu- 
 diating the old idea of a mere inert and frivolous, or of a pageant 
 or drudge life, and is aspiring to spheres wider, loftier and 
 nobler, whatever we may think of issues contested in other 
 directions, there opens to her here, beyond caption, cavil or 
 controversy, a field for which she has especial endowments of 
 heaven, than which none grander, more beautiful, or more 
 beneficent, is found among the daughters or sons of men ; a 
 future to which a ministrant church, and ministering angels, and 
 the ministering Christ welcome her. 
 
 Indeed the cause invites and requires all, learned or unlearned, 
 weak or strong, "young men and maidens, old men and chil- 
 dren ; ” all faculties, gifts, graces, temperaments, vocations, 
 spheres. It is constituted of all, demands all, utilizes all ele- 
 ments of influence or power. Each Christian, as he or she 
 
21 
 
 hopes for pardon, divine heirship, kingship and eternal glory 
 through the blood of the Son of God, is bound thereby to min- 
 ister all of life and being to it. The conflict between light and 
 darkness, love and hate, in which every Christian has enlisted, 
 has no truce, no remission, no lull, no neutral place or party, 
 knows no stationary border, till the kingdoms of this world are 
 become the kingdoms of our Lord. In this conflict, moreover, 
 where militancy is ministry ; the weapons, truth and love ; 
 strategy, self-sacrifice ; success, the giving up of all ; and happi- 
 ness, self-oblivion ; where also the gentlest things are the might- 
 iest, the humblest are the loftiest, the most delicate the strongest, 
 and childlike love and trust transcends all the wisdom of all the 
 schools ; yea, where " out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” 
 more than all the sabaoth of the heavens, is God’s praise to be 
 perfected ; and where, by " the weak things of the world God 
 casts down the things that are mighty, and by the things which 
 are not, brings to naught the things which are,” — in such a con- 
 flict, every element — the subtlest and obscurest — is in requisi- 
 tion and has its value, read only in the notation of God. Each 
 member of the elect host, in whatever sphere or home, is a power, 
 and is enlisted, not for his own salvation only, but for the salva- 
 tion of a world. For this we all are to live, to labor and pray, 
 and to give and endure, as long as we walk beneath the sun ; not 
 at home, never at rest, never at peace, till behind us are the 
 doors of the City of Light. Meantime, the sweetest, kingliest, 
 divinest thing we — the mightiest or meanest alike — can do, is to 
 minister our entire being to it. So all shall walk at last with 
 those who, in elder times, "obtained a good report through faith ; ” 
 so stand with those who stand on the sea of glass and have gotten 
 the victory, by "not loving their lives unto the death.” 
 
 “ Where white-robed saints, the star-thrones singing under, 
 
 Their state all meekly wear ; 
 
 Whose ceaseless praise goes up from hearts that wonder 
 That ever they came there.” 
 
 So all shall at last wear the glory of Him " who, being in the 
 form of God, took on him the form of a servant,” and came from 
 
22 
 
 the highest throne of the highest heaven, " not to be ministered 
 unto but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” 
 Whom God, therefore, "hath highly exalted, and given a name 
 which is above every name.” So shall we surely, even in this 
 life, be children of him whose name and nature, and whose efflu- 
 ent and ineffable glory is Love. 
 
 Beloved friends, wheresoever and in whatsoever sphere may be 
 to us God’s allotment of labor, let us work on in patience of 
 love and faith, devoting our life’s force to building the temple of 
 the Lord. We know not how or what we build. But the Great 
 Architect is above, and millions infinite of ministries, under his 
 plan, are wrought into its scheme. In darkness and deeps 
 though it be ; in difficulties, discouragements, and seeming dis- 
 asters ; or in mingled light and shadow, success and failure, 
 defeat and victory, and celestial glories glimpsing athwart a field 
 of toil, sorrows and graves, — however it may be, it is ours ever, 
 in childlike trust, to build on. Through all, the mighty struc- 
 ture shall surely rise — is rising. " The mountain of the Lord’s 
 house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and 
 exalted above the hills,” and our eyes shall surely, at last, behold 
 it. 
 
 It is typed by nature herself, in her fiigh places in the mate- 
 rial world, where often, to one emerging from a mazy, tangled 
 and difficult climb, upon some lofty mountain, a glory of the 
 earth and sky suddenly breaks upon him, like a new Jerusalem 
 let down from heaven. Thus, recently, as after a toilsome 
 clamber through forest-glooms, and wilds formless and desolate, 
 and up arduous steeps, I emerged upon one of the loftiest peaks 
 of the Adirondacks, there was suddenly revealed a scene such as 
 our eyes may rarely behold this side the Golden City, and which 
 seemed to type the Coronal Temple itself. 
 
 I seemed standing as in the presence of one of God’s great 
 ministers. The "Gothic Mountains,” fitly so named, rising 
 immediately before me, with awful mural steeps, castellated with 
 cliffy turret and battlement, and their white escarpments, or 
 sharp cut, salient angles, wrought by the elements into wondrous 
 tracery, and mysterious symbol, carved or emblazoned, with 
 
semblance of cross and sacred emblem, or of column, oriel, 
 pointed arch or half-swung portal, seemed as the facade of some 
 vast cathedral, surmounted with sweep on sweep of ridge and 
 peak above and beyond, that appeared as frieze and architrave of 
 its mighty entablature ; while farther on, and higher, crowning 
 the stupendous pile, and girt round with lesser heights that 
 stretched as satellites, pinnacles and cupolas, to the horizon’s 
 utmost verge, upsprang the central dome, the mighty Tahawas 
 itself, and under a sky "so cloudless, deep, and purely beautiful, 
 that God alone was to be seen in heaven.” 
 
 As I emerged on this view, I saw before me, emblazoned, 
 " the mountain of the Lord’s house established in the top of the 
 mountains.” Over what an agony and ruin of nature upheaved, 
 in what gloomy and formless deeps founded, was that glorious 
 pile ! From what dismal disorder of marsh and fen, and cliff 
 and flood, and forest it rose ! From what confusions of nooks 
 and, vales hidden in beauty* and crystal cascade and rivulet, and 
 flowers of wondrous sweetness, strangely blent with poisonous 
 growths and wilds deform, rocks, caves, bogs, dens and shades 
 of death ! Yet from all this at last uprose — what a visible hal- 
 lelujah of the mountains and the sky ! A liturgy statuesque in 
 eternal granite ! 
 
 Even so God builds the mountain of his house against the 
 latter day. Out of glooms and deeps, cycles of disaster and 
 agony, wildernesses of toil, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and 
 pain, strangely mingling with visions of celestial sweetness and 
 beauty, and touched often with gleams of light and joy from 
 higher worlds, upsprings, at last, the coronal glory ! That glory 
 all the faithful at last shall surely see ; see as wrought out of 
 God, in part from their own true work. And when goes up 
 the coronation hymn, all shall share in it. Not as in earthly 
 triumphs, where the true victors often sleep lone and afar, 
 beyond the festal blaze, — not so when moves the last great 
 triumph up heaven’s Capitoline, and the mighty anthem climbs 
 the crystalline to the Central Throne, all the faithful, wherever 
 they have gone to their rest, — in China or India, in Afric sands 
 or the deeps of ocean, or in Christian Europe or America, under 
 the shadows of the old church-yard, — all shall bear a part in the 
 
24 
 
 universal refrain — " Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth.” 
 
 " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his 
 own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and 
 his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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