5eY w> 
 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS. 
 
 DUTY- OF 
 
 Kaitli ai)d Ki|largeri|ei|t 
 
 IN THIS WORK. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED DECEMBER 7, 1ST:}, IN THE JOHN STREET 
 CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, LOWELL, MASS. 
 
 By EDEN B. FOSTER, D. D., 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 V V 
 
 LOWELL, MASS.: 
 
 STOKE, 1 1 USE & CO., BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS. No. 21 CENTRA!. STREET. 
 
 1 S74. 
 

 
 
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 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/foreignmissionsdOOfost 
 
FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 DUTY OF 
 
 Faitli ai(d Ki|Uiri>en\ei|t 
 
 IN THIS WORK. 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED DECEMBER 7, 187:5, IN' THE JOHN' STREET 
 CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, LOWELL, MASS. 
 
 By EDEN B. FOSTER, I). D., 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 LOWELL, MASS.: 
 
 STONE, I1USE & CO., BOOK AND JOB PRINTERS, No. 21 CENTRAL STREET 
 
 18 7 1. 
 
REQUEST 
 
 Rev. Eden B. Foster, D.D., Pastor John Street Congregational 
 Ciiurch, Lowell, Mass.: 
 
 Dear Sir, — Believing that your recent sermon upon Missions 
 is too valuable a document, both to the cause of Missions and the general 
 public, to have its influence confined to your own congregation, the under- 
 signed would respectfully solicit a copy for publication. 
 
 Jefferson Bancroft, 
 Geo. Stevens, 
 
 Wm. H. Anderson, 
 John J. Pray, 
 
 .J. C. Wing, 
 
 David T. Kimball, 
 John S. Colby, 
 Wm. A. Read, 
 
 S. G. Bailey, 
 Charles H. Conant, 
 < I. Hood, 
 
 Clias. W. Brown, 
 William F. Eno, 
 Geo. II. Ames, 
 
 A. L. Brooks, 
 Josiah Gates, 
 
 R. Rogers, 
 
 Jas. A. Harvey, 
 
 D. McNair, 
 
 J. J. Judkins, 
 
 N. C. Sanborn, 
 
 John Tripp, 
 
 G. T. Williams, 
 Edwin Sanborn, 
 Aaron Blanchard, 
 
 A. Davis, 
 
 David Chase, 
 
 Abner Kittredge, 
 
 P. F. Litchfield, 
 Samuel Kidder, 
 
 Wm. H. Carter, 
 
 C. II. Abbott, 
 
 Clias. H. Richardson, 
 Sami. G. Davis, 
 
 J. Kittredge, 
 
 Chan i ling Whitaker, 
 P. I). Edmunds, 
 
 Robt. Read, 
 
 S. Wood, 
 
 Samuel Denny, 
 
 George Choate, 
 James M. Howe, 
 Wm. Morey, 
 
 J. W. Pratt, 
 
 Wm. Brown, 
 
 Robt. L. Read, 
 
 B. C. Benner, 
 
 J. L. Sargent, 
 
 J. C. Bachelder, 
 Charles Hubbard, 
 L. T. Worthley, 
 W. H. Choate, 
 
 El. B. Adams, 
 
 L. R. S. F.dmands, 
 
 C. C. Barnes, 
 
 Wm. P. Eno, 
 
 1. B. Wliittemore, 
 Daniel Holt, 
 
 James Gibson, 
 George M. Elliott. 
 
SEE M O X. 
 
 Text. — Isaiah lxii: 1, 2. “For Zion’s sake I will not hold, my peace; and for 
 Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest till the righteousness thereof go forth as 
 brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burnetii. And the 
 Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory.” 
 
 We have no cause for discouragement in the missionary 
 work. We are very apt to estimate the energy of truth 
 and the power of God by human methods, and therefore to 
 doubt. We attempt to measure the might of Jehovah by 
 the finite boundaries of human agencies and mortal thought. 
 We think that God cannot see through the darkness because 
 our sight fails. We think tli it God cannot conquer difficulties 
 because our strength is inadequate. We fear that the enmity 
 and the ingenuity and t he numbers of God’s foes will baffle 
 the divine plans, forgetting that the gospel, though defence- 
 less and alone, has often triumphed against all the resources 
 of earth and fell. The power of God is not to be reduced 
 within the formulas of our arithmetic, or expressed by any 
 known or unknown quantities of our mathematics. It is 
 competent for our science to weigh the earth and measure 
 the stars. We can compute the exact and reciprocal 
 influence between one planet and another. We can calcu- 
 late the power of the waterfall which drives our machinery. 
 We can estimate the force of the moon’s attraction when 
 she lifts the heaving tides. We can measure the subtle 
 energy of gravitation, and divide it off into pounds and 
 
4 
 
 ounces avoirdupois. We can circumscribe t lie expansive 
 force of steam within bolts and bars and make it labor for 
 our behoof. We can chain the still more latent,' expansive, 
 explosive agency of electricity, and make the lightning walk 
 in appointed courses, and go at our bidding, and come at our 
 call. We can yoke the wind to our ships, and sailing into 
 the face of the storm, make even adverse gales convey us 
 to our destined harbor. We can compute, regulate, 
 control the elements of earth and of air. But we cannot 
 measure the moral power of God. Here our methods of 
 calculation are inappropriate ; reason is incompetent, and 
 figures fail. Our only true method of judging of this 
 power is, by the declarations of God himself, and by the 
 lights of history. The promises of the Divine Revelation 
 are explicit, and we have some criteria for estimating the 
 resistless might of God’s truth and the conquering energy 
 of His Spirit, when we remember what revolutions in society 
 and what transformations- of character have been wrought 
 bv these instrumentalities. I propose in this discourse to 
 consider some reasons for an increase of faith and for an 
 enlargement of work in the foreign missionary cause. 
 
 I. EVIDENCES FOR FAITH. 
 
 1. As an evidence for faith we may look at the universal 
 law, that the natural and the supernatural are to work 
 together and in harmony, in order to produce important 
 spiritual results. All church operations, and missionary 
 labors especially, have a wide domain of action and sacrifice, 
 where you must walk by faith. You put vour money into 
 the bank of trust. You put your fatigues, vour self-denials 
 and your prayers into the bank of faith. You expect that 
 God, bv the power of truth and by the power of the Holy 
 Ghost, will bring in results beyond the natural agency of 
 
human moans. You uso means, and God requires you to 
 use them prudently, and with eareful study of the relations 
 of cause and efiect. You are not to overlook nor to under- 
 value tin' probable and natural consequences of your action. 
 You have so much cash invested. You have so many men 
 and women working in the missionary field. You have so 
 manv printing presses and so many schools. ^ oil have a cer- 
 tain amount of scholarship, and mental power, and executive 
 ability in your missionaries. You have a home board, with 
 its corporate members, sagacious and wise; with its secre- 
 taries, unwearied in labor; with its prudential committee 
 and other officers, deeply interested in their work, and 
 working with an intelligent and manly efficiency. You have 
 a united body of churches standing behind the board, 
 pledged by every honorable guarantee to their help. You 
 know where ships and railroads and telegraph wires and ten 
 thousand other inventions will help you. You know where 
 the powerful governments of the world will back you. 
 You know where books, and laws, and civilization, and the 
 silent force of genius will come in as your auxiliaries. All 
 these are instrumentalities which in large degree you can 
 measure. They lie within the reach of your arm, within 
 the control of your will. Use them. Use them patiently, 
 courageously, wisely, and to the end. Hut there is a power 
 above and beyond, which you cannot measure. There is a 
 field for faith, higher and wider than the field for human 
 discernment, higher and wider than the field of natural laws. 
 There is an omnipotence of God involved in this missionary 
 work. There is a forgiveness of sins, there is a transforma- 
 tion of moral character, there is a breaking of the chains of 
 depravity, and this is the work of God. There is a mighty 
 and mysterious action and influence moving upon human 
 wills, above the energy of argument, or pathos, or poetry, 
 or eloquence. There are strong and crashing blows upon 
 
6 
 
 the fortifications of custom, idolatry, infidelity ; it is the 
 interposition of a supernatural force. Whole nations are to 
 be lifted up out of sensuality and bondage. Whole empires 
 are to be revolutionized out of the tyranny of passion, out 
 of the gulf of degradation, out of the chains which satan 
 has woven and welded around them for thousands of years. 
 It is a divine accomplishment. Betake thee, 0 Christian, 
 to prayer. Invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit. Be not con- 
 fident in your own right arm. Be not elated with vain 
 reliances and self-hopes. Be assured, God will help you if 
 you believe. If your desires are kindled and are on fire 
 with the love of Christ, if your waking hours and your 
 sleeping dreams are thrilled with yearnings and with 
 plannings for the millennial glory, God will give you the 
 souls of the heathen. 
 
 There are some laws here, in this pure and blessed work 
 of philanthropy, which do not work in manufactures, and 
 chemistry, and optics. They do not conflict with them, still 
 they are above the laws of light, and of heat, and of the 
 atmosphere. They are imponderable and invisible forces. 
 They cannot be brought into the Massachusetts or Boott 
 Corporation, and made to work within the circumference of 
 a wheel and under a belt of leather. They cannot be mani- 
 pulated and weighed, as you will dissolve a rock in the 
 crucible, or weigh a pound of sugar in the store. Their 
 action is spiritual. Their tests are in tin' souls of men. 
 Their results run through centuries and through nations; 
 they are in the deep aflections of the heart ; they are in the 
 overthrow of hoary superstitions ; they are in the songs of 
 the glorified. We think we have some evidences of the 
 grandeur of this spiritual work, quite as conclusive as tin; 
 setting up of a prayer- gauge in the hospital. We have the 
 proof in the wonders <f the apostolic age; in the Reforma- 
 tion of the fifteenth century ; in the lifting up of England out 
 
I 
 
 of Druid superstitions; in the triumph of Puritanism and 
 Freedom in America ; in Whitefieldian and Edwardian 
 revivals ; in the rapid and conquering advance of Christian 
 thought over the wide globe. We have these evidences, 
 clear as the light of day, in the specific work of Missions. 
 There are fifty-six missionary societies, drawn from all the 
 evangelical denominations of Christendom. They employ 
 twenty thousand ordained missionaries. They have eighty 
 thousand native helpers — not simply church members, but 
 those whose piety is of a marked type, who are educated 
 thoroughly' for evangelical work, and are dedicated wholly 
 to that work. These fifty-six societies are expending five 
 millions of dollars yearly tor the diffusion of God’s truth. 
 Every nation of the world is accessible to them, — every 
 tribe of men is influenced by them. 
 
 We have these evidences for faith in the constant help 
 and strength which science renders to religion and to the 
 cause of missions. Let the student devote his days and 
 nights to the careful observations of nature and the deep 
 meditations of truth. Let Hugh Miller, the stone-mason, 
 explore among the rocks until the yvhole science of the old 
 red sandstone and of God’s workmanship in building the 
 yvorld dawns upon his mind. No Development theory, no law 
 of Evolution and Natural Selection, no conjectures as to 
 Vestiges of Creation, no arrogant assumptions of Positivism, 
 no system of Fatalism, woven out of winds, and snows, and 
 barren sands, and mountains, and prairies, and running 
 streams, shall ey T er break the chain of evidence, which the 
 cromarty mason has forged, to shoyv the personal will of God. 
 Let Janies Watt yvateh the boiling yvater and the bubbling 
 steam, experimenting with that marvellous engine — the tea- 
 kettle — until laws of condensation and expansion are clear 
 before him, and a neyv force has been brought into the world 
 to yvork for commerce and for manufactures and for the arts of 
 
8 
 
 men, and with a still more stupendous power and a still more 
 undeniable success, to work for Missions and for Christ. It 
 is not simply in the factory, where force is needed to spin, 
 and weave, and polish, and forge ; it is not simply in carrying 
 vast freightages of agricultural products and commercial 
 exchanges, that this pliable and giant energy is used ; but 
 it carries the missionary to his distant post, it conveys to 
 barbarism the instruments of civilization, it cheapens and 
 facilitates methods of education, it brings the heathen into 
 association with truth, refinement and moral puiity, it 
 diffuses knowledge, freedom and salvation over the earth. 
 Co on, in your deep investigations, 0 student of science. 
 Go on, in your careful analysis of cause and effect, of phe- 
 nomena and law, thou keen experimenter in chemistry and 
 geology, and in the nature of heat and light. Go on, with 
 thy telescopic views of sun and planets, with thy parallaxes 
 and thy triangles, 0 thou explorer among the stars. Go on, 
 thou deep and patient reader of the soul, immersed in meta- 
 physical discoveries, bringing history, and biography, and 
 political changes to unveil the laws of mind, marshalling in 
 their order the inner powers of reason and of will. Go on, 
 thou enthusiast in art, with thy saw and plane, with thy 
 chisel and mallet, with thy pencil and brush, with thy 
 harmony of sweet sounds — all this i,s for intellectual 
 discipline and social refinement, but far more for Christ, the 
 Leader of sciences and the Saviour of men — far more, far 
 more, for the recovery of apostate nations and the 
 redemption of' heathen souls; far more, far move for the joy 
 of death-beds and the final jubilee of Heaven. Natural 
 philosophy may invent the mariner’s compass, but it 
 shall guide the path of the missionary to the end of 
 the earth. Natural philosophy may bless the Yankee 
 with ploughs, and reapers, and sewing machines; but it 
 shall bless tin; wild Indian also, the rude Hottentot, the 
 

 tawny Arab, the ferocious Kaffrc with the implements of 
 industry and the arts of peace. The child of labor, in his 
 unpretentious handicraft, may toil over rushes and rags and 
 ropes and straw. You may think him low in his occupation, 
 narrow in his thought; but that industry shall be changed 
 into books, shall be enlarged into libraries, shall feed the 
 knowledge of the world, shall awaken and illuminate the 
 dormant faculties of ten thousand thousand pagan souls. 
 Thus Christ sits at the helm and guides the world — its 
 physical forces, as well as its spiritual; its sciences, as well 
 as its prayers. All laws of matter, occult energies that are 
 hiding out of sight, strange discoveries and grand activities 
 of human genius are obedient to His will. lie is bringing 
 in reforms. Light is streaming from a thousand fountains. 
 Peace and purity are dwelling among a thousand tribes. 
 Songs of thanksgiving are heard from millions of tongues. 
 Fetters of despotism, and fetters of inward depravity, are 
 breaking on a thousand shores. We may cherish gladness 
 and exercise faith, for Christ, the Divine physician, is walking 
 abroad, and with his supernatural touch is removing the 
 leprosy of sin and the paralysis of death. The world is the 
 hospital. Every mission station is a ward. Unnumbered 
 souls are the patients, for whom we pray. The emancipa- 
 tion of earth from spiritual darkness and the praises of 
 Heaven shall be the evidence that God hears prayer. 
 
 2. As an evidence for faith, we may notice some points 
 in our own early history. The colonization of this country 
 was a missionary work, and in it God has manifested the 
 interpositions of his power. God planted here a beautiful 
 vine, lie cast out the heathen that he might plant it. He 
 gave it the region of temperate airs, of various scenery, of 
 fertile soil, of abundant fruits. He gave it mines of gold 
 for exchanges, and stratified coal for fuel, and mountains for 
 sublimity, and rivers for manufactures, and hills for the 
 
10 
 
 development of health, and prairies for a larger industry, 
 and ocean coasts for commerce, lie caused it to take dee}) 
 root, and to send out its branches from the lakes to the gulf, 
 and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He saved us from the 
 plots of Romanism through Spanish dev ices on the South, 
 and French aggression on the North, lie saved us from the 
 domination of monarchy, under English rule, and made us 
 a Republic, lie saved us from the anarchy of broken 
 provinces, in the early history of our constitution, and in 
 the latter history of the rebellion. He has made our history 
 one of liberty and of law conjoined, in such proportions as 
 a thoughtful and self-controlled people might desire. He 
 has given to our people the inventive mind, the persevering 
 will, the adventurous spirit, which enable them to use their 
 advantages ; to strike out new methods of enterprise ; to 
 subdue the wilderness ; to subjugate the rivers and the 
 winds and heat and electricity ; to tunnel the mountains ; 
 to disembowel the hills and bring the precious metals out of 
 their depths ; to weave a network of travel and thought 
 over the land and through the air; to explore the frigid 
 zone for fisheries and the tropic zone for spices ; to bring 
 out the riches of all arable fields ; to send out our colonies, 
 like the tents of the Arabs, in every direction, with this 
 great difference, — that our migratory tents are not transient, 
 but are soon changed into permanent and beautiful dwellings, 
 into prosperous and gorgeous cities. 
 
 God has given us blessings greater than these. Our 
 material advancement is marvellous, but is less than our 
 intellectual and spiritual. God sifted three kingdoms that 
 He might plant here the choicest wheat. The best 
 representatives of English non-conformity, of Huguenot 
 consecration, of Lutheran courage found here their home. 
 Puritanism (a word never to be spoken except with reverence 
 and admiring love) exalted our institutions. The Bible was 
 
1 1 
 
 the rock on which our foundations were laid. The right of 
 private judgment; independent thinking; plain living; 
 diligent toil ; the subjugation of sensuality; faith in a cru- 
 cified Redeemer ; sympathy with human life; reverence for 
 man’s high powers; hope of progress; hope of Heaven — 
 these have been our characteristics. We have maintained a 
 system of free education and the power of a free press. 
 Youth have had their high aspirations for knowledge 
 gratified ; thought has had its largest expansion ; enterprise, 
 industry, self-denial, their surest reward. We have had 
 churches, and pulpits, and Sabbath schools, and prayer 
 meetings, and organizations for benevolence, by which the 
 religious mind was awakened, by which the unbelieving mind 
 was converted. We have kept holy the Sabbath day, thus 
 casting off, once in seven days, the dust of earthliness, and 
 pluming our wings for a spiritual flight through all the week. 
 We have had the power of the Holy Ghost, giving efficacy 
 to Christian doctrine ; making the word of God like a ham- 
 mer and a sword ; making the mercy of Christ like a healing 
 balm on deadly wounds ; leading sinners away from darkness 
 to light by a succession of gentle conversions, or by a sudden 
 and powerful revival, causing them to flock as doves to the 
 windows of Christ’s ark, there to find peace from the terrible 
 storm which rages in a rebel world. God hath done great things 
 for us, whereof we are glad. In this course of events there 
 is nothing fortuitous. It is the far-reaching design of an 
 infinite Wisdom and of a beneficent Providence. It is 
 giving to us the privilege of leading the van in Christ’s 
 battle against sin and unbelief. We may stand in the front 
 of the future progress. We may lift our brow to Heaven, 
 and behold the first unbounded splendors of the millennial 
 day, and receive the first grand out growings of the spiritual 
 shower. All this is the result of faith. 
 
12 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to trace the lineage of Puritan 
 faith and of sturdy American independence. In England it 
 was a mixture of Norman enterprise and Saxon will. The 
 Normans were more adventurous and more credulous ; the 
 Saxons more home-bred and more believing. The larger 
 religious devotion, the higher sense of individual responsi- 
 bility, were not wholly a product of English thought and 
 English faith. Even back of Luther, John Iluss and Jerome 
 of Prague had died for Christ. Luther himself and his 
 coadjutors had brought in a mighty reformation. Poland 
 and Bohemia had not been without profound religious inquiry 
 and high religious achievement. The Dutch Republic had 
 fought against the tyranny of Philip II. and of the 
 Inquisition. There had been Lollards of Germany, and 
 Huguenots of France, and Waldenses of the Piedmont 
 Valley, and Covenanters of Scotland, who had calmly borne 
 persecution, and unfalteringly followed their Lord through 
 dangers and through deaths. It was left for the Pilgrim 
 Fathers to give the highest seal and attestation of their 
 devotion, forsaking dearest privileges, encountering sternest 
 terrors, building a new empire in the dreary wilderness, 
 laying its foundations in feebleness yet in faith, carrying up 
 its pillars in toil and tears and prayer. We draw our life 
 from men, who waked learning out of its lpidnight slumbers; 
 who asserted the rights of the individual conscience; who 
 struck a blow upon civil and hierarchical tyrannies, which 
 broke those terrible links and emancipated a world. 
 
 The spirit of Luther came into England. It was in 
 John Knox. It was in the martyrs of Smithfield. Our 
 English literature was early imbued with it. Milton was 
 thoroughly pervaded with this religious leaven, giving depth 
 and sublimity and refinement to his poetry. In civil life 
 Hampden and Vane and Pyne and Eliot and Cromwell, and 
 
other reformers, who brought in William, and with him a 
 constitutional government, were all imbued with the Puritan 
 faith. Our fathers, contemporary with some of these, draw- 
 ing their education and their blood from others of these — 
 themselves able to found colleges and to administer them ; 
 to found states and to legislate for them; to found systems 
 and with scientific evidence to defend them — were permitted 
 here to plant our representative institutions, the model of 
 all republics, here to start legal, social and religious reforms 
 which are the glory of the earth. 
 
 Let us not doubt that God is carrying on his own cause 
 by his own methods. Let us not doubt that God will give 
 compensation for losses and defeats, will guide his children 
 into courses of wise and efficient labor, and will give the 
 victory to truth. God’s ways are sometimes hidden, and his 
 paths are in the sea, but in the end we see the on-rolling of 
 his victorious chariot, as well in the darkness and storm as 
 in the sunshine. A brother of this church was lately nar- 
 rating his experience in the Christian Commission during 
 the war. At a thronged meeting of colored people, he heard 
 an illiterate negro, in the energy of his faith and the ardor 
 of his love, pouring out his prayer, — “0 Lord, come down 
 and help us ! 0 Lord, come down and help us ! 0 
 
 Lord, come down through the roof, and I will pay for the 
 shingles.” Now, there was a good deal of method in that 
 delirium, and a good deal of sense in that peculiar imagina- 
 tion. God’s ancient method of coming among men, when 
 the sins of the nations were life, before the plan of mercy 
 was fully unfolded, was often by breaking the roof- — it was by 
 lightning and thunder and whirlwind and earthquake. Thus 
 He came to Pharaoh and his host, to Korah and his com- 
 pany, to Sennacherib and his army, to the proud city of 
 Jerusalem, when the measure of its iniquities was full. In 
 modern years he comes more often in the still, small voice 
 
14 
 
 of the Holy Ghost, in the gentle influences of truth and love, 
 in the faithful counsels of the father and the tearful prayers 
 of the mother, in the winning beauty of a holy life, in the 
 sympathizing labors of a godly church, in the presence of 
 Christian institutions and Christian education, a power that 
 is diffused all abroad like the unseen air. God’s movements 
 are usually gentle and silent, as the zephyr that moves the 
 leaves of spring, not terrible as the tornado that sweeps over 
 and casts down the forest. Yet, even now, sometimes God 
 comes in judgment ; he breaks the roof, but he pays for the 
 shingles. Desolating fires have swept over Portland and 
 over Boston and over Chicago, but additional beauty of 
 architecture and splendor of furnishings and richness of 
 comforts came after the conflagration. Cholera has prevailed 
 in St. Louis and Cincinnati and Philadelphia, but there 
 have followed more careful regard to rules of hygiene, more 
 obedience to laws of virtue, more spiritual culture, more 
 self-control, — the shingles were paid for. God came down 
 through the roof most emphatically in the civil war. The 
 roof was broken. Wailings were heard in every habitation, 
 but the shingles have been paid for. Liberty has had new 
 birth. Justice has been vindicated. Souls, as well as bodies, 
 have been emancipated. The nation has taken an onward 
 step towards the higher education and the purer faith. 
 
 Can you doubt that God has the superintendence of the 
 world’s affairs? Can you doubt that God reigns in the 
 counsels of men, and in the uprising and downfall of 
 kingdoms? What do you understand by histories, which 
 are now coming to their consummation, and to the clear 
 unfolding of a divine plan? In the time of Luther, there 
 were two little provinces of Germany, the electorates of 
 Brandenburg and of Saxony. They were both feeble in 
 power. Probably thirty kingdoms and governments of 
 Europe surpassed them in extent of population and wealth 
 
and influence. Certainly France, Spain and Austria were 
 immeasurably superior, and would have laughed to scorn 
 those prophets who should have foretold their own inferiority 
 to those despised rulers. Yet those little provinces were 
 pervaded by Luther’s doctrine. Those two electors, almost 
 alone of all princes, gave their hearts to Christ, and their 
 sympathy, their counsels, their military aid to Luther, 
 suffering under the fierceness of persecution. And now 
 what do we see? In direct descent from these two electors 
 of Brandenburg and Saxony, we behold two royal houses, 
 sitting on the two most powerful thrones of the world — 
 England and Prussia. What has the infidel to say to this? 
 Does not God hold the kingdoms and the republics of the 
 earth in his hand ? Does He not overturn and overturn and 
 overturn, till He shall come whose right it is to reign ? If 
 we defy His authority and rush into unbelief, lie is sure to 
 come and break the roof. If we repent and return, receiving 
 ( hrist, aspiring to a purer life and a larger benevolence, he 
 will pay for the shingles. If we go forward with the work 
 of missions, with a sincere and a scriptural faith, He will 
 give us success. 
 
 3. As an evidence for our faith we may consider the 
 strength and the resources of the church adapted to forward 
 this great enterprise. Estimate the missionary strength by 
 the numbers of God’s people. There are more than three 
 hundred thousand Congregationalist church members in the 
 land. Reckoning the high-minded and generous-hearted 
 worshippers in our congregations, who are ready to aid this 
 broad and noble philanthropy, there are five hundred thou- 
 sand. probably six hundred thousand helpers, upon whose 
 counsels and donations you may liberally draw. If you 
 were to reckon the Baptists, twice our number ; the Presby- 
 terians, twice our number ; the Methodists, three times our 
 number ; the Episcopalians, the Dutch Reformed, the Free 
 
1C 
 
 Will Baptists, each of them equalling our numbers ; you 
 would reach an aggregate of ten or eleven times the power 
 which I have described. It would be represented by six 
 millions of individuals, who are interested in the cause of 
 Christ, and ready to give for the salvation of the heathen. 
 
 Estimate the power of the church by the integrity of 
 its agencies. The American Board of Commissioners for 
 Foreign Missions has disbursed during its organization 
 probably twenty-five millions of dollars ; and those funds, 
 employed to purchase a thousand different supplies, trans- 
 mitted to foreign lands, through various and changing 
 instrumentalities, subject to all the accidents of flood and 
 field, to all the shocks and panics of commercial revolutions, 
 under ordinary care, would have been largely diminished by 
 fraud, or by ignorance, or by feebleness, or by heedless 
 trust. Yet every dollar has been accounted for. There has 
 never been the charge or the suspicion of weak or foolish 
 appropriations. There has been no embezzlement, or defal- 
 cation; there has been no robbery, or loss; there has been 
 no lack of business discernment and broad commercial 
 knowledge. Such integrity of officers and employes in 
 every land ; such confidence felt by all moneyed corpora- 
 tions; such regular and certain transmission of funds 
 through ever-changing channels, handling millions, through 
 sixty years, without the loss of one hundred dollars, is 
 unprecedented. Even Robert Morris and Alexander Ham- 
 ilton and Jay Cooke and the Rothschilds of England might 
 learn something of financial sagacity and of stainless honor 
 from these men. 
 
 We may estimate the power of the church by the extent 
 and the success of worldly enterprises, which God, in II is 
 providence, makes tributary to the church. It is simply 
 amazing, and well-nigh overwhelming, to mark the progress 
 of business and industry and wealth in our land. In the 
 
IT 
 
 tin •ee departments of commerce, manufactures and agricul- 
 ture, we are making strides of advancement which are the 
 astonishment of the world. We are subjugating new terri- 
 tories more rapidly than in the early colonization. We are 
 bringing in all inventions and all forms of machinery to aid 
 us. Powers of earth and air, powers of (ire and water, 
 powers of sunlight and of electricity, powers of metals and 
 powers of ether, more refined than the air, — all are working 
 for us. Our schemes of railroading, of telegraph communi- 
 cation, of marine conveyance, are simply continental, and 
 you might say, measured only by the circumference of the 
 globe and by the bounds of the open sea. Follow the course 
 of a multitude of travellers, who pass over to Europe, and 
 who scatter money, often beyond the power of English 
 noblemen to equal them. Mark the readiness of Ames and 
 Jay Cooke to build Pacific railroads; mark the skill of 
 Astor and Stewart in the handling of real estate; mark the 
 energy of Vanderbilt and Drew in controlling distant pas- 
 senger routes ; mark the ambition of Barnum and the New 
 York Herald in exploring Africa and even the upper regions 
 of the air ; mark still more the universal vigor of action, 
 energy of thought, largeness of plan, industrial force, and 
 you will begin to think that there is no vast undertaking to 
 which our people are not equal And, what is of more con- 
 sequence, you will begin to think — and the more profound 
 your studies, the more clear will be your convictions — that 
 God is using all these stupendous forces of human intellect, 
 in the changes of the hour and in the vicissitudes of the 
 centuries, for the evangelizing ol heathen nations and for 
 the salvation of immortal souls. In view of this progress of 
 material accumulation and comfort, I have only to request 
 you to consider the elegance of your ceiled houses, the 
 expense of your halls, your factories, your warehouses, 
 your depots, your stores ; to reflect upon your own ward- 
 
 3 
 
18 
 
 robe, your pictures, your furniture, your equipage, your 
 employment of all that is beautiful in art, and harmonious 
 in music, and then to ask yourselves, how large a proportion 
 of my means may I spend for personal delight, when the 
 heathen are perishing for the bread of life? 
 
 Estimate the resources of the church and the evidences 
 for faith by the successes which God has given to the cause. 
 Missions have been in constant progress for sixty years. 
 Judson, Newell, Hall, Nott and Rice were ordained in Salem, 
 February, 1812. Only five hundred dollars were then in 
 the Treasury of the American Bcaid. Twelve hundred more 
 had been pledged for the support of foreign laborers. Eight 
 thousand were absolutely demanded to fit out those five 
 missionaries and cairy them to their field. It was raised, 
 but with a severe struggle, and with remarkable examples 
 of liberality from Newburyport, Bradford, Andover, Salem 
 and Beverly, where the missionaries were more particularly 
 known. How instructive the progress! In 1872, five hun- 
 dred and twenty-five thousand seven hundred and thirty-five 
 dollars were given to the American Board — given by the 
 multiplied donations of the poor, as well as by the generous 
 offerings of the i ich ; given, not so much out of sympathy 
 with persons, as cut of a high philanthropy, a loyalty to 
 truth, a consecration to Christ, a passion for souls. Once or 
 twice there have I eon revulsions and commercial shocks, 
 which have demanded retrenchment in missionary expendi- 
 tures. In 1837 five thousand dollars were withheld fu m the 
 Ceylon Mission. Five thousand children were turned out of 
 schools into the darkness and the horrors of heathenism. 
 The leading seminary for the instruction of youth lost its 
 president. Only one of the old missionaries, Levi Spaulding, 
 the lion-hearted and scholarly veteran (just now deceased), 
 was at that time left; and for a while the entire Ceylon 
 Mission, with its presses, and schools, and revivals; its 
 
10 
 
 growing churches and native preachers ; its christianized 
 public sentiment ; its anxious minds awakened out of sen- 
 sualism and turned with eager inrpiiry towards the cross of 
 Christ; all seemed going to wreck. It was a sight, to the 
 Prudential Committee and the Board, to all missionaries and 
 all Christians, most appalling. It was an experiment, not 
 likely to be repeated, unless the church were willing to 
 acknowledge defeat ; to retire before the victorious onset of 
 Satan ; to withdraw from all philanthropies and to give up 
 the salvation of the world as a lost cause. The missionary 
 work is necessarily aggressive and progressive. A higher 
 style of piety in the Christian world makes it progressive. 
 Revivals and prayers and sermons and individual fidelity 
 make it progressive. Ten thousand dollars sufficed when 
 Hall and N ewell and Judson went forth. Six hundred 
 thousand dollars are asked for to-day, six hundred thousand 
 dollars are more easily raised than ten thousand dollars then. 
 It is the liberality of the heart and the fervency of faith 
 that measure the ability. It is not possible, when the 
 American Board have made one of these great conquests, 
 to give it up. Retrenchment, in their great operations, can 
 only be attained by forsaking countries, by breaking up 
 entire missions, by abandoning whole nations and millions 
 of souls to the devices and the plots of Satan. Would 
 you estimate that disaster? Think of Judson, Boardman, 
 Abbott, forsaking Burmah. Think of Morrison, Milne, 
 Abeel, Bridgman, yielding China to the adversary. Think 
 of the Sandwich Islands or the Micronesian Islands, going 
 back to the pollution and the darkness of their former 
 history. Whenever such retrenchment has seemed to be 
 necessary, the churches at home have rallied ; the spirit of 
 tender benevolence has been kindled and strengthened ; 
 various expenditures, not absolutely indispensable, have 
 been cut off, and sacrifices have been endured by the people 
 
20 
 
 of God ; prayer has been otfered ; toil has been renewed ; 
 the spirit of God has been poured out upon the congrega- 
 tions ; business has revived ; generous and godly affections 
 have filled the heart ; and means have been supplied to set 
 in motion again the wheels of God’s conquering chariot. 
 
 The present condition of the missions of the Board is 
 truly commanding. More than one thousand two hundred 
 laborers are in the field, reckoning missionaries and their 
 wives, physicians, printers, seminary professors, female 
 helpers, lay teachers, native preachers, colporteurs. More 
 than fifty presses are running, in fifty different languages, 
 throwing oft' their six millions of pages yearly, which, like 
 birds of golden plumage and of celestial song, are flying 
 forth on all the winds of Heaven. There are fifteen semi- 
 naries of higher instruction; twenty boarding schools; five 
 hundred free schools ; and nineteen thousand children taught 
 in them yearly. Nine missionaries during the last year have 
 died, among them Rev. Dr. Spaulding of Ceylon, the noble, 
 persistent, undaunted pioneer ; a laborer of fifty-four years 
 in that terrible climate and under that most exhausting 
 responsibility ; the wit, whose native humor and pleasantries 
 in college overflowed with spontaneous gushes; the scholar, 
 whose power of philosophic thought and classic attainment, 
 was hardly surpassed by any graduate of Dartmouth ; the 
 Christian, whose eminent consecration has been illustrated 
 by labors and sufferings and prayers, every year, I might sav 
 every day, down to his deep, old age. Ten missionaries have 
 returned home for a season, disabled by ill health. Forty- 
 seven missionary workers have gone forth to those descit 
 fields, there to enlist for Christ against His terrible foes. 
 A new mission has been established in Western Mexico, or 
 rather transferred from the Foreign Christian Union ; and 
 there, under the able guidance of Miss Rankin, thirteen 
 laborers are at work. The Austrian Mission has had its 
 
21 
 
 force augmented by liev. Mr. Bissell, taken from the 
 pastorate at Winchester, and by other scholars of skilled 
 and disciplined power. Five more ministers of high quali- 
 fications are now urgently need in Austria; two more in 
 Spain; two more in Mexico; one in Italy; the fields are 
 wide and white to the harvest ; the doors are open, and the 
 call of invitation is loud. In Central and Western Turkey 
 signs are discouraging and the inissionaiy force is reduced. 
 The churches there have had great prosperity, but they need 
 sifting. Six men of practical experience and thorough 
 culture, to superintend each of them the work of forty 
 evangelists, and to give theological instruction in as many 
 seminaries, are imperatively called for there. The cause is 
 going forward in China and Japan, and in Japan especially, 
 important events and startling changes are making rapid 
 progress. In Southern India, God is doing a mighty work. 
 At a conference of all missionary societies and denomina- 
 tions, at Allahabad, in December, 1872. it was found that 
 in ten years the increase of native Christians had been 
 eightv-five thousand four hundred and thirty — sixty-one 
 per cent, of all conversions from the beginning ; the increase 
 of native, ordained ministers, one hundred and twenty-nine; 
 the increase of church members, twenty-seven thousand eight 
 hundred and thirty-seven ; and missionary contributions in 
 those churches had been augmented more than tenfold. 
 The Micronesian Missions are going forward under God’s 
 smiles. The native Christians of Ponepe are most earnest 
 in self-denial, and in carrying the news of salvation to other 
 islands. Seventy inquirers were awakened by the week ot 
 prayer, most of them finding Christ. No field offers greater 
 apparent returns in souls won and truths diffused. Number 
 of converts reported by the Board during the year, eight 
 hundred. Number of young men in training for the 
 
22 
 
 ministry, three hundred and sixty. Number of young 
 women brought under the highest culture in boarding 
 schools, six hundred. Number of church members under 
 the care of the Board, nine thousand four hundred and 
 thirty-five. Number of missionary laborers sustained by 
 the Board, one thousand two hundred and sixty-six. 
 
 New Dr. Treat, Secretary of the Board, asks for twenty- 
 seven new, ordained missionaries to relieve those who are 
 totteiing and fainting under their burden, and to keep the 
 missions even in their present working order; and in this 
 call he does not ask for one for China, where the field is 
 immense ; nor one for Japan, whose claims are extraordinary ; 
 nor one for European Turkey, in t lie full tide of success; 
 nor one for the Dakotas, where the gospel is the only 
 absolute shield that can be interposed over the head of 
 helpless settlers, to protect them from Indian vindictive- 
 ness. The men to occupy these mission stations are not to 
 be found ; our colleges and theological seminaiies need to 
 be baptized with the lloly Ghost. The Prudential Com- 
 mittee ask for five hundred thousand dollars for the coming 
 year. The last financial year ended with a balance unex- 
 pended of sixteen thousand dollars. This year ends with a 
 balance of debt of twenty-six thousand dollars, making a 
 loss of forty-two thousand two hundred and eighty-nine 
 dollars. Are the churches and congregations of our land, 
 living in the midst of privileges for which prophets and 
 apostles would have lifted up loud songs of praise, prepared 
 to hear the Macedonian cry? Will they rededicate them- 
 selves? Will they consecrate their children? Will they 
 write Holiness on the bells of their horses, and on the doors 
 of their offices and shops? Will they renew their wrestling 
 cries to God, and in the communion of saints, invite and 
 stimulate other souls to pray, until the Holy Ghost, with 
 
subduing power, shall descend upon missionary stations and 
 upon heathen tribes ? Such will be the result it* the churches 
 exercise apostolic faith. 
 
 II. I NOTICE SOME REASONS FOR AN ENLARGEMENT OF WORK IN 
 THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY CAUSE. 
 
 1. The field is wide. It is the world, with its empires 
 mighty in power; with its sciences, proud in their triumph ; 
 with its boundless enterprise, invention, labor, art. The 
 world was made by God, it has been redeemed by Christ ; 
 its marvellous energies of progress and accomplishment have 
 been guided by I i is hand; it shall yet be redeemed by 1 1 is 
 grace. We form very inadequate views of the extent of 
 this field. We go up to the top of Wachusett, or of the 
 White Mountains, or of the Alps, and think we have seen 
 a large section of the world. We have seen only a point. 
 Our eye-sight is too narrow, our telescopes are too short, we 
 cannot measure this world. We read the history of one 
 little island like Great Britain ; we grope into the antiquities 
 of a single nation like the Chinese ; we attempt to master 
 one department of knowledge like the mathematics; we 
 find business cut out for us for a life-time. And yet the 
 whole world is God’s providence and Christ’s inheritance. 
 The whole world is the field for the plans and the expecta- 
 tions of the church, and for the victories of the gospel. 
 
 The gospel is fitted to win those victoiies. There is no 
 other religion of the world which is adapted to the masses 
 of men, in all places of residence, and under all circum- 
 stances and conditions of life. Mohammedanism lives by 
 the sword, and perishes in the midst of peaceful industry 
 and intellectual pursuits. Hindooism nourishes only under 
 a sultry, tropical sun, and in the vast, marshy grounds, 
 breathing miasmas and breeding pestilence, which charac- 
 
24 
 
 terize such rivers as the Ganges. The religion of the 
 nomadic Arab, of the unhoused Indian, of the degraded 
 African, of the semi-civilized Asiatic, grows out of their 
 surroundings of scenery, custom, life, and can have no roots 
 transplanted elsewhere. The superstitions of the pagan, 
 the erring philosophies of the modern times, find no support 
 in the universal human heart, or the general human experi- 
 ence. All is incongruous, outre, unintelligible, false, when 
 you come to appeal to the common sense of mankind. The 
 Gospel alone has the elements of perpetuity and universality. 
 It lives on from age to age. It extends outward and onward, 
 from family to family, and people to people. Everywhere 
 it carries light, salvation, joy. Everywhere it awakens the 
 slumbering faculties and benumbed sensibilities of men, 
 feeds them with knowledge and with strength, starts them 
 on the career of improvement, cleanses them from sin, pre- 
 pares them for God’s service. Everywhere the gospel proves 
 its correspondence with human wants, and its fitness to 
 supply them, an adaptation as clear and decisive, as that of 
 light to the eye, or air to t lie lungs, or food to the healthy 
 body. God has ordained that the Gospel shall conquer its 
 foes, and its field is the world. 
 
 2. We should seek the enlargement of missions because 
 of the dee]) degradation of the heathen. Prof. Seelye, who 
 has recently visited heathen lands, says that “ nothing but 
 the sight of the eyes and the hearing of the ears can give 
 any idea of it.” Dishonesty and treachery aie woven 
 through the whole heathen life, commercial, social, political, 
 and if you wish to characterize, in the shortest terms, hea- 
 then business relations and heathen morals, impurity and 
 untruthfulness are the words that must be used. The 
 courtesies and amenities of Christian life are unknown. 
 There are no social gatherings, no neighborhood meetings, 
 no family parties. No system of truth is studied or com- 
 
mended, no practice of life is cherished which implies the 
 exercise of generous, self-forgetful fidelity. The condition 
 of the family and the relation of the sexes are absolutely 
 appalling, and the neglect of feeble offspring, of the aged 
 and the sick, is more than brutal ; it indicates a fiendish 
 heartlessness, and the lack of all love and all honor. The 
 description of Paul, in the first chapter of Romans, is still 
 applicable to the heathen without abatement of one jot or 
 tittle of its emphasis. This only corresponds with all other 
 descriptions of travellers and of missionaries. 
 
 This degradation of heathen character should touch the 
 deep pity of our hearts. It should open all the resources of 
 our activity and benevolence. It. should enlist the impor- 
 tunity of our earnest and persevering prayers. It should 
 deepen our conviction of the truth of Gospel doctrine, for 
 surely the evil bias of the heart, and the natural alienation 
 of the soul from God are here undeniable, and nothing but 
 divine power, working through the cross of Christ and the 
 regeneration of the Holy Ghost, can transform that mass of 
 heathenism into the beauty of the Christian life, can check 
 those rushing tides of false opinion, which bear them down, 
 to a deeper sensuality and a darker woe. I have sometimes 
 thought, when gazing upon these fearful pictures of heathen- 
 ism, that it would be a relief to believe in Darwinism. For 
 if man is descended from stardust, or jelly fish, or the various 
 tribes of apes, there was a place, in the working out of this 
 law of evolution, where man had no soul, and no accounta- 
 bility to a moral law. His sensuality was simply bestiality, 
 and was not a crime. II is cruelty was the instinctive 
 ferocity of the hyena or the tiger, he satisfied his hunger 
 for food, he slacked his thirst for blood, and then he passed 
 away into annihilation and everlasting forgetfulness. Mul- 
 titudes of the heathen, judging by superficial signs, might 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 seem to be labelled all over the soul, and all over the 
 physical frame, and all over the life, beast , beast, beast. 
 
 But no, they are, like us, children of Adam and Eve, 
 born of one blood, destined to one eternity, saved by one 
 Redeemer. On their degenerate souls are written the 
 words, “ Conscience,” “ Immortality,” “ Retribution,” 
 “ The Immutable Right,” “ Duty to God,” “ Fear of Sin,” 
 “ Need of Salvation” — these are instinctive convictions 
 of their intelligent nature. They are to be saved, not by 
 Darwinism, but by Christian doctrine ; not by thrusting 
 them down, with dogs and cats and baboons, into animalism 
 and oblivion, but by lifting them up with Gabriel and 
 Michael and Uriel, into a glory surpassing the meridian sun, 
 even into the light of God. They are to be delivered from 
 woe, not by giving their passions full swing till gross vices 
 destroy them, but by removing the passion and the crime ; 
 by exalting their soul, through the redemption of Christ, 
 into the likeness of God ; by purging away the dross, and 
 the tin, and the clay, and the iron, until the refined gold, of 
 a perfect intellectual beauty and a perfect moral glory, shall 
 shine in them, as it shines in Payson or Evarts, in Chalmers, 
 or Wilberforce, or Washington. Dr. Seelye declared, with 
 great eloquence and impressiveness of argument, that 
 “ commerce had no power to redeem these fallen nations ; 
 that railroads had no such power; that the introduction of 
 civilized arts and industries had no such power; that the 
 in-rushing tide of emigration and travel, led by ambition, 
 by adventure, and by the lust of gain, had no such 
 power; that the knowledge of the secular sciences and 
 the education of the secular schools had no such power ; 
 and that if heathen society is ever to be reformed, it 
 will be renovated by the power of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ.” 
 
3. We should seek the enlargement of missions because 
 of the eminent qualifications and eminent successes attained 
 by our own foreign missionaries. The missionary needs the 
 calmest and the most sovereign self-control. His integrity 
 must be unimpeachable, and his will firm as adamant, for no 
 person moving in t lie pure, refined circles of Christian lands 
 can imagine his temptations. The very air is the air of 
 pollution. All grossness that appeals to sense, all provoca- 
 tions that enkindle passion, all delusions that darken the 
 mind and corrupt the imagination, are around him. He is 
 poisoned and contaminated by deadly influences, unless 
 mind and heart are purified by the inward renewal, unless 
 soul and life are shielded by the power of a Christ-like love. 
 He must attain to sovereign self-control, for the tendencies 
 around him are perpetually towards feebleness, and sloth- 
 fulness, and sensuality, and stupidity. He must be manly 
 and true, where he sees only effeminacy and treachery. He 
 must be thoughtful, far-seeing and bold, where all is 
 impulsive, short-sighted and pusillanimous, lie must rise 
 above forms to the loving communion of the soul with God, 
 where posturings, and ceremonies, and brazen assertions, 
 and outside shows are the whole of religion. He must 
 labor with ceaseless and tireless diligence, where nature by 
 spontaneous products supplies his wants, and where the inert 
 and lazy propensities of human nature for long centuries 
 have had full play. He must live for eternity, keeping that 
 high standard ever before him, where political and social 
 maxims, and public law, and popular opinions make the 
 pleasures of the hour, and the rules of a time-serving policy 
 the only guide. Judge ye, what the decision of mind and 
 the elevation of aim must be, to keep the character high up 
 in a spiritual atmosphere, at the very gates of heaven, 
 through thirty, forty, fifty years of such associations. 
 
28 
 
 These missionaries need, not only the purity and the 
 spirituality of the saint, but high talent, large scholarship, 
 the quickest observation, the soundest judgment, unerring 
 common sense. They are watched by eager and hostile 
 eyes, and the first false step will throw them out of the 
 confidence of a nation. They are moulding literatures and 
 sciences and governments. They are translating the Bible 
 into more than a hundred new tongues. They are giving to 
 nations, long silent and dumb, the power of a new language. 
 If Cadmus, who gave letters to Greece ; if Guttenberg, who 
 gave the art of printing to Germany ; if Guess, the Cherokee, 
 who invented an alphabet for that tribe, have been eulogized, 
 and almost canonized for their discoveries ; what shall be 
 said of missionaries who are repeating this miracle, in many 
 languages, for many nations, for all the future centuries, by 
 the invention of alphabets, grammars, dictionaries, spelling 
 books, reading books, translations, incipient literatures, 
 which are to put millions of minds on the course of intel- 
 lectual discipline ; which are to open our reservoirs of 
 thought, our treasures of genius, our deep mines of history, 
 to the blind heathen ; most of all which are to give the 
 infinite riches of Christ's salvation to those untaught souls? 
 
 Of course those missionaries need to be, and most of 
 them are, quick, and keen, and deep, aiul wide in intellect. 
 It is not a feeble soul nor an ignorant soul that can make a 
 good grammar, or dictionary, or shape a language into Hums 
 of beauty, or give to the Bible its native energy, pathos and 
 spiritual light, when translated into another tongtie. It is 
 not a feeble or sluggish soul that can meet the Muftis of 
 Turkey, or the Moollahs of Persia, or the Mandarins of 
 China, or the Brahmins of India, or the chief priests of the 
 Jews, and answer their subtleties out of the law, and out of 
 the history, and out of the deep soul. These missionaries 
 
20 
 
 must understand government and jurisprudence, society and 
 administration, for they are in the midst of revolutions, and 
 by their testimony and counsels they are laying the forming 
 hand upon institutions. They need to have a soul above 
 fear, as well as an intellect above sophistry, and a life above 
 reproach. Their feet are on the edge of the grave. They 
 walk amid pestilences and persecutions and deaths. Many 
 of them die, through labor, exposure and anxiety, in their 
 youth. They take their life in their hands; they leave 
 home, comforts and friends; they meet appalling perils and 
 ditliculties ; they expect to die prematurely. Their courage, 
 their faith, their consecration are of the apostolic type, not 
 begotten of the speculations of a latitudinarian and utili- 
 tarian age, but begotten of deep humility before the cross, 
 of much study of the Bible, of a singular experience of 
 Christ’s love, and a singular baptism of the Holy Ghost. 
 Such have been our missionaries. 1 have looked over the 
 circle of my personal knowledge to see who were mission- 
 aries, and 1 find that they were the most scholarly, and the 
 most gentlemanly, and the most saintly. I look back to mv 
 own college class, and asking for the most beautiful face, for 
 the most fascinating manners, for the most quick and retentive 
 memory, for the most broad and valuable information, for the 
 most heavenly spirit, no member of the class, in these varied 
 gifts, would rank above one, who went to Western Africa, and 
 there in the Gaboon Mission, within three years, laid down 
 his precious life a sacrifice to the Great Cause. His name 
 was Benjamin Griswold. I would like to describe Henry 
 Martyn and Reginald Heber, cut off in their first years of 
 labor in India, resigning the most brilliant opportunities of 
 literary fame, of ecclesiastical preferment, of refined and 
 gifted society, of English culture and English privilege and 
 English hope, a standard the highest of the world, that they 
 might toil for a little time, in weariness and painfulness, and 
 
30 
 
 then die. I would like to describe John Elliot, David 
 Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, who were missionaries among 
 the Indians, the first as brave a soul and as self-sacrificing 
 as any that came over in the Mayflower, or that had a part 
 in colonizing the rugged wilderness ; the second marked for 
 a spirituality of mind, and a love to souls, not exceeded 
 since the days of Paul and John; the third as pure a life, 
 as acute, athletic and searching an intellect as America has 
 ever produced. I would like to draw the picture of Ann 
 Ilaseltine, Sarah Boardman and Emily Chubbuck, the three 
 wives of Adonirain Judson, the first unsurpassed for an 
 executive, working talent ; the second for the tenderness of 
 her domestic love and her Christian sympathy ; the third for 
 the finish of her literary culture and the breadth of her poetic 
 genius. Our literature has been enriched by the lives, and 
 heaven has been enriched by the labors, of such missionaries 
 as Harriet Newell, Fidelia Fiske, Sarah Lanman Smith, Mary 
 Hawes Van Lewcep, Henrietta Hamlin. 
 
 I cannot here refrain from the opinion that female mis- 
 sionaries of the last sixty years have set us an example of 
 consecration, and of fortitude, and of usefulness, which are 
 among the distinguishing features of the age. I hardly 
 know of any form of self-sacrificing heroism, like that of 
 Christian ladies of culture and refinement, of winning man- 
 ners, and high accomplishments, and eminent gifts, who go 
 forth to live and die among the heathen. Here at home, they 
 have been taught in the High School or the Woman’s College. 
 Here the}^ can hold intelligent conversation with statesmen 
 and lawgivers, with professors of science and learned authors, 
 wielding themselves the . pen of the ready writer, speaking 
 themselves in the parlor, in the school, in the prayer meeting, 
 in the lecture room, with an eloquence impressive and rare. 
 It is theirs to adorn the highest walks of society. It is theirs 
 to teach the children of the most cultured, accomplished, 
 
31 
 
 gifted families. It is theirs to enjoy all line arts, and all 
 useful arts, and intellectual and religious privileges, and to 
 be looked up to, by young and old, with delicate, deferential, 
 I had almost said reverential regard. They go to heathen 
 lands, as missionaries, and there is an instant, amazing, ter- 
 rible contrast. There woman is degraded and despised. 
 There they are in daily association with the vile and the 
 repulsive. There eye and ear and every sense are offended. 
 Virtue, religion, conjugal love, filial reverence, social honor, 
 business integrity, every principle of nobleness is wounded. 
 There they teach feeble, squalid, stupid, faithless children, as 
 far from the beautiful development of the children of 
 Christian families, as the midnight is from the golden 
 morning. The tlospel will ultimately refine those savages, 
 but long and painful will be the process before the result is 
 reached. There woman has no literature but her Bible ; no 
 friends but the members of one or two missionary families ; 
 no bright and beautiful circle, brilliant with all the 
 accessories of art, to shine in ; no renown from her own 
 eloquent tongue or eloquent pen ; no stimulant to urge her 
 on but the love of Christ and the love cf souls; no reward 
 but the consciousness of duty fulfilled, and the distant, 
 anticipatory music of the heavenly harp. The romance is 
 all taken out of her life. For her no brilliant display in 
 public ; no association with the illustrious ; no novelty of 
 discovery ; no magic enjoyment of unaccustomed scenes ; 
 no meed of literature; no echo of fame. Iler principles 
 must be very high, her love of souls very deep, her faith 
 heaven-inspired, her courage true as steel, to keep her from 
 despondency, and fear, and home-sickness. I have read ot 
 Caroline Fry in the prisons of England ; of Florence 
 Nightingale in the Crimean hospitals; of Mother Bicker- 
 dyke at the West, caring for her wounded and fever-stricken 
 soldier-boys : of Clara Barton among the suffering of the 
 
32 
 
 Potomac army ; but I can see no sacrifice nor pain in this 
 like the total self-abnegation of the female missionary. If 
 there are young women like Harriet Newell or an Ann 
 Ilaseltine Judson, now going forth to heathen lands, I bid 
 them God speed ; I offer for them my earnest prayer ; I 
 follow them with my wondering admiration. I bless God 
 that the race of heroines, and of martyrs, and of holy 
 pioneers to stand in danger’s front, and in death’s pathway, 
 is not ended. 
 
 Let the missionary in heathen lands, and let the church 
 sustaining missionary enterprise, steady their mind on the 
 example of Christ, and on the doctrine of atonement. The 
 purchase of your life was by the sacrifice of a nobler life 
 than yours. By sacrifice and suffering and toil show that 
 you appreciate what Christ has done for you, and that you 
 are willing to drink some little part of the cup of which 
 He drank so deeply. The attraction, which draws the 
 missionary, is not that he goes forth to lands of antiquity ; 
 lands, made sacred by the footsteps and by the deeds of our 
 Lord ; lands, where intellect and genius brightly shone 
 thousands of years ago ; lands, renowned for literature and 
 for art ; lands, where the great battles of the world have 
 been fought and the great events of history have transpired ; 
 lands, which are explored by travellers and by scholars, that 
 they may familiarize themselves with the customs of the 
 olden times, and that they may bring to light the deep 
 marvels of nature and of life. The sympathy which is 
 demanded is for lost souls; not for the eloquence of Greece; 
 not for the Italian art; not for the military glory of the old 
 Roman empire ; not for the memorials of dead kingdoms ; 
 not for the relics of greatness in Egypt, or Assyria, or 
 Palestine; not for the mountain-grandeur or the tropical 
 luxuriance of India or Asia or the isles of the sea. It is a 
 sympathy which springs from religious love and religious 
 
principle. It is not a diseased sensibility, that weeps and 
 sighs at the sight of pain, and thus exhausts itself, saying 
 to the hungry, lie ye fed, and to the naked, lie ye clothed, 
 and to the perishing, He ye saved, while it makes no sacrifices 
 and engages in no labors for the lost. It is a tender love to 
 man, sorrowing with those who are in distress, rejoicing with 
 those who rejoice, willing to spend and be spent for the 
 rescue of the indigent, the miserable and the fallen. It is 
 a profound reverence for truth, and a deep conviction that 
 nothing can save men from sin and from death, but the 
 doctrines of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is a 
 consecration of the soul to Christ, who has died for us, and 
 a feeble expression of that gratitude which we would render 
 back to Him. It is a love which does not confer with flesh 
 and blood ; with the rules of expediency, and the calcula- 
 tions of profit, and the ambitions of a worldly mind. It 
 gives time, and strength, and property, and affection, and 
 prayer, and all, to Christ. It has led to the endurance of 
 the martyr. It has been found a prolific fountain of the 
 nobler virtues, manliness, bravery, self-denial, promptitude, 
 perseverance. It is a fealty to Christ that endures unto the 
 death. 
 
 4. We are to seek for the enlargement of the missionary 
 work, because of the help rendered by missions to the 
 advancement of intellect and the discoveries of science. 
 The Gospel is everywhere the herald and the forerunner of 
 intellectual progress. We set a high value on travels and 
 voyages. They are the never-tiring romance of the young 
 mind. They are a never-exhausted recreation and reservoir 
 of facts for the mature mind. Bayard Taylor, Richard H. 
 Dana, Jr., Coffin. Kane, Lewis and Clark, Stephens, Stanley, 
 Seward, Hillard, Bartol, Emerson, Prime, not to mention 
 other names, have written narratives of their journeyings, 
 which will give to them a permanent place in our history, 
 
34 
 
 and which go far to constitute one of the most attractive 
 departments of our literature. Now, the missionary, by the 
 necessity of the case, lias a more exact arid thorough inform- 
 ation of these places than any traveller or explorer. He 
 spends a life-time, where they spend a few weeks or months. 
 He describes from personal observation, where they describe 
 from hearsay, or from guide-books, or from the extravagant 
 statements of mercenary witnesses. He has access to 
 families, and long acquaintance with individuals; he looks 
 deeply into the condition of society, and the rules of 
 government, and the motives of men, where most travellers 
 must judge and write from rapid, uncertain, superficial 
 testimony. It is not his business to write travels, and a 
 vast amount of information, communicated by him, is in 
 letters, commercial statistics, scientific essays, where he gets 
 no credit. I think volumes of travels might be compiled 
 from the Missionary Herald, giving the geography, geology, 
 botany, climate, soil, productions of different countries ; going 
 deeply into the study of antiquities ; going thoughtfully and 
 wisely into the traditions of the past, and the customs of 
 society, and the course of law, and the divergent specula- 
 tions of the heathen mind ; possessing a singular power to 
 hold the attention and to instruct the understanding. In 
 my first ministry, at Henniker, N. II./ I had one church 
 member, a man in the prime of his years, a gentleman 
 moving widely in circles of society out of the town ; a 
 Christian whose piety was consistent and beautiful ; a most 
 generous donor to benevolent objects, who read chiefly two 
 books, the Bible and the Missionary Herald, lie read every 
 word of the Missionary Herald, from the first issue to the 
 last, so long as he had strength to read. I did not then 
 understand fully the charm of that missionary reading to 
 his mind. It was like the study of the Acts of the 
 Apostles ; it was like the reading of Fox’s Book of Martyrs ; 
 
it was like the story of the Waldenses and the Covenanters 
 and the Puritans, where peril and doubt and fear threw their 
 glamour over the scene ; where mystery, and sorrow, and 
 great exploits, and the dauntless mind mingled their colors 
 all together. All this took the deepest hold of a Christian 
 sympathy and a believing spirit. All this I understood. 
 But I see now that the Missionary Herald has a literary 
 fascination, in its opening up of new countries ; in its de- 
 scriptions of the sublime and beautiful; in its narratives of 
 various races and of extraordinary individuals; in its phil- 
 osophies of divergent customs, and clashing opinions, and 
 political revolutions ; such as I did not then appreciate. No 
 one can fail to see that the missionaries, from their special 
 advantages of knowledge, and from their patient and 
 thorough scholarship, have laid open new countries, have 
 mapped them out with exactness, have explored their curi- 
 osities and wonders, have investigated the character of their 
 inhabitants, and the course of God’s providence, and the 
 history of events, and the philosophy of causes, so as to 
 repay any lover of thought, whether deep or shallow, for the 
 earnest reading of those volumes. 
 
 In the department of philology and of Biblical transla- 
 tion, the works of missionaries go tar beyond all other 
 achievements of scholarship. Not even German professors, 
 with their indefatigable diligence and their marvellous 
 classical attainments, can equal missionaries in their know- 
 ledge of antiquities and languages ; in the subtle analysis 
 of ancient, oriental and semi-civilized thought. Dr. Jonas 
 King, in Greece, did not find his match in all that empire of 
 ancient renown and intellectual gifts. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, 
 in Robert College, Constantinople, can tell the most learned 
 Mohammedan more than he ever knew before of the Koran, 
 and of sciences, and of metaphysics, and of law. Dr. 
 Adoniram Judson, in Burmah, after years of labor, prepared 
 
3G 
 
 a lexicon of the English and Bminese, and gave the Bible to 
 those waiting millions. I)rs. Gnlick and Doane, out of the 
 jargon of confused babble in the Micronesian Islands, have 
 constituted four distinct languages, and given to them 
 dictionaries and Bibles and the commencement of thrilling 
 histories in each. Bev. Dr. Morrison, of China, after the 
 severest study of fifteen years, completed a Chinese and 
 English dictionary, in six quarto volumes, the expense of 
 preparation, translation, copying and publishing being sixty 
 thousand dollars. Dr. Marshman, of China, translated the 
 entire woiks of Confucius, a literary enterprise of vast ex- 
 tent ; and as bringing the Chinaman into sympathy with the 
 English mind, and preparing him to listen candidly to Bible 
 truth and English thought, a work of immeasurable value. 
 Dr. Carey, of Serampore, India, prepared and published 
 grammars of eight languages, and in that printing estab- 
 lishment, wholly under the charge of mission laboieis, the 
 Bible was in the process of translation and publication, at 
 one time, in twenty -three languages. 
 
 A very large amount of scientific knowledge has been 
 acquired silently by missionaries, and the proofs of it are 
 found not so much in books (for their missionary duties are 
 an absolute prohibition of this kind of authorship) as in the 
 cabinets of our colleges, in the museums of our cities, in 
 the articles of antiquity gathered in many houses. These 
 are bloodless spoils won from heathen temples, fiom moun- 
 tain caverns, from the excavations of buried cities, from the 
 hoary receptacles of ancient curiosities. They aie relics of 
 sea and land, relics of battle and of quiet industry, lelics of 
 unknown communities and of dead arts, relics of the lion id 
 rites of pagan superstition and the horrid tyrranies of 
 merciless governments. All these constitute a science, 
 which is unequivocal in its teachings of God, and which 
 warns us, with a thousand lingers of admonition, away from 
 
the devices of the natural heart. Hundreds of places of 
 interest in the ancient world, whose locality had been fixed 
 only bv conjecture, have been laid down with accuracy and 
 certainty in modern maps, only through the exploration and 
 intelligence of missionaries. The Morning Star, a missionary 
 ship, has made explorations widely and carefully in the 
 Pacific Ocean, bringing out important tacts, before unknown 
 to the civilized and the commercial world. They have laid 
 down islands before undiscovered ; they have made a chart 
 of shoals and harbors; they have marked the safe paths of 
 the sea ; they have prepared the ignorant and ferocious 
 natives tit receive the messengers of commerce. A remark- 
 able book, published three years since in London, entitled 
 “ The Seaman’s Guide to the North Pacific,’’ with an account 
 of winds, and weather, and channels, and harbors, and com- 
 mercial exchanges, says, “ The missionaries of Micronesia 
 and the commanders of the Morning Star have performed 
 more explorations, and published the same to the world, 
 than has been done by the British navy since the days of 
 Vancouver, and by the American navy since the days of 
 Wilkes. Ships of the navy give all shoals and dangerous 
 places a wide berth, unless they run upon them in the night, 
 or are specially instructed to examine them ; the Morning 
 Star has diligently sought them out and put mariners upon 
 their guard. The seventeenth volume of Smithsonian 
 Contributions to Knowledge has this testimony: “There is 
 no class of men upon the earth, considered as scholars or 
 as gentlemen, who have earned for themselves a more dis- 
 tinguished reputation than the missionaries. Their labois 
 and self-denial, their endurance in their high aim of philan- 
 thropy and their great abilities are worthy of admiration. 
 Their contributions to history, to ethnology, to philology, to 
 geography, to religion and literature form a lasting monu- 
 ment to their fame. 11. II. Houghton, Esq., late consul at 
 
38 
 
 the Sandwich Islands, says, “ We doubt if a purer body of 
 men than these missionaries ever combined together in the 
 same undertaking, and in our opinion they have solved a 
 problem politically, which will influence for centuries to 
 come, Japan, China, and the whole East Indies.” It is diffi- 
 cult for us, brethren, to understand how much more definitely 
 and thoroughly we know the countries of the Old World, — 
 the varieties of climate, the fabrics of industry, the products 
 of the soil, the character of the inhabitants, the institutions 
 of government, the wonders of their history — than we knew 
 before the missionaries opened the inexhaustible mine. 
 Columbus was a great adventurer and discoverer, but the 
 missionary enterprise has brought to view many new worlds 
 which he never saw ; has lifted out of barbarism and 
 wretchedness many which he discovered, but could not 
 civilize. To missions we owe the fact that ships can sail 
 securely in those boundless seas, and that travellers can pass 
 from land to land in those uncivilized realms. To missions 
 we owe the fact that we can bring into one systematized, 
 harmonious view the past with the present, and see the 
 relations of imperfect laws with false religions; of the cor- 
 ruption of morals with heathen rites ; of the desolation of 
 iniquity with the absence of the Gospel. To missions we 
 owe the fact that in many a cavern of darkness the light of 
 God shineth ; and in many a habitation of cruelty the peace 
 of the primitive innocence has returned ; and in many a 
 nation, once sunk in sensual sloth and almost bestial 
 imbecility, intellectual expansion, and moral elevation, and 
 liberty, and accomplishment, and hope have entered in. Had 
 it not been for missions, there would have been no open door 
 for Burlingame in China; nor for Armstrong and Phillips in 
 the Sandwich Islands; nor for Andrews in Japan ; nor for 
 Brunot and Howard and Tobey and Dodge among the 
 Indians, to introduce their new forms of secular education 
 
39 
 
 and their new forms of political administration. Where 
 these reformations will end you can no more tell than you 
 could tell where Columbus was going when he started from 
 Spain ; or what the Puritans were going to do, when they 
 landed on the 20th of December, 1020, on t lie frozen and 
 wilderness shore. From small beginnings come the world’s 
 great overturnings. 
 
 5. We should seek for the enlargement of foreign 
 missions because of the vast and complicate system of 
 instrumentalities, which God has put into our hands for 
 human salvation. In most of the agencies, which attract 
 attention for their intellect, skill and power, we discover, 
 not only an immediate use, but an ultimate end. The art 
 of printing brought in a great increase of knowledge among 
 the civilized nations; it also prepared the way for the spread 
 of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The mighty quick- 
 ening of mind and of enterprise in the fifteenth century, 
 which led to the discovery of a new world, to the navigation 
 of all seas, to the unprecedented expansion of commerce 
 and of trade, to the settlement of new countries, to the 
 building up of republican empires, has poured its streams 
 of spiritual blessing into all lands. England’s drum-beat is 
 heard over the world, and England’s voice of entreaty to 
 perishing men to be saved is heard wherever her drum-beat 
 sends its morning rally. Our own immense traffic, by the 
 slow-going packet or by the swift steamer, taking the bee- 
 line track of the railroad or the circuitous paths of the 
 wagon, visits all islands and explores all corners of the habit- 
 able world, but everywhere it carries the message of Jesus. 
 The Gospel gives to these strong governments their power ; 
 it is but meet that these strong governments should render 
 back their tribute of protection to the Gospel. Thus it 
 happens that there can be no development of mechanical 
 
40 
 
 forces and manufacturing progress ; no great city built up, 
 with its ten thousand springs of action ; no wise government 
 consolidated into a perfect nationality ; no school or college, 
 which educates the young for a noble discipline ; no dis- 
 covery, which brings in new comforts to a million of homes ; 
 no sewing machine, that does the work of a hundred fingers ; 
 no power-loom, that dismisses the weary laborer to an early 
 rest ; no reaper or mowing machine, that saves the products 
 of the earth from a storm ; that does not, at the same time, 
 indirectly forward the great Gospel aim of salvation. And 
 doubtless it will appear, in the last Great Bay, when God 
 puts all things in their true relation and proportion, that 
 mechanical inventions and triumphs of science and utility 
 of arts were designed, not so much for material comforts, as 
 for the soul’s everlasting life. 
 
 God will bring all the kingdoms, and dominions, and 
 ingenuities to aid Ilis cause. We have not yet come to the 
 full development of Christian energy and consecration. We 
 need a more godly and instructed ministry. We need a 
 more active and holy church. We need piety and faithful 
 counsels in the family. We need wise and holy devotion, 
 to the spiritual welfare of pupils, on the part of teachers. 
 We need an out-pouring of the Spirit of God upon editors 
 of newspapers, and authors of books, and lecturers on the 
 platform. We need a sanctified literature. We need a 
 higher legislation, placed on moral grounds; a religious 
 jurisprudence, searching after God’s principles of law. I 
 believe the progress of the Gospel is conquering its forces 
 and bringing in these improvements. 1 believe that Rev- 
 elation is higher than Science, and will yet make it an 
 obedient and universal ally. 1 believe that God is stronger 
 than all combinations of wickedness, and that lie will yet 
 subdue them. His instrumentalities aie complicate and 
 
41 
 
 vast, and Ilis promises are yea and amen. Hath He 
 spoken, and will lie not do it? Hath He promised, and 
 will He not bring it to pass ? 
 
 “ What are you accomplishing in Africa?” said a sceptic 
 lately to a returned missionary. “ We are burying ignorance 
 and degradation,” was the reply. Burying ignorance and 
 degradation ! As the farmer buries the weeds, and the briars, 
 and the tangled brush, that infest his pathway across his 
 fields, and then in some future and blessed year, shall that 
 unprofitable field, thistle-grown, filled with noxious plants, 
 the secret lair of reptiles, hideous in its deformity, smile as 
 a garden and blossom as the rose. For more than a thou- 
 sand years did the island provinces of England and Scotland 
 lie fallow, in their spiritual desolation. But the light of the 
 Gospel shone upon them, and for the last three hundred years 
 they have made a progress unsurpassed in the history of' the 
 world, marvellous in the eyes of men. Christ’s religion 
 brings in civilization and sciences and the beautiful refine- 
 ments ; a free, constitutional government ; the development 
 of the individual ; the exercise of untrammelled rights. It 
 subdues the pride of the natural reason and the sensual 
 passions of our nature. It awakens the love of study. It leads 
 the intellect, now docile and humble and eagerly inquisitive, 
 to those topics of study and classes of evidence, which 
 secure an absolute and abiding progress. Stolid indif- 
 ference, dark prejudice, base indulgence, the cruelties of 
 intolerance and the corruptions of infidelity — it chases them 
 all away, as the sunlight chases the mist from the moun- 
 tain’s brow. The truths which the Gospel reveals are 
 practical and valuable. They come home to the wants of 
 business, to the friendships of the family, to the exigencies 
 of temptation and of the daily life. There is no sorrow 
 which the Gospel does not heal. There is no selfishness 
 which the Gospel does not banish. There is no indolence 
 
 
42 
 
 which the Gospel does not rouse out of its sleep. There is 
 no corruption which the Gospel does not purify. 
 
 But its greatest victories are in the inner soul, over 
 affections and aspirations, which the natural mind cherishes 
 and delights in ; over plans of the life and choices of the 
 will, which the thoughtless world regard as right. It con- 
 victs of sin. It points to a future Judgment. It shows 
 the need of a divine righteousness and atonement. It mor- 
 tifies self-conceit. It crucifies self-will. It leads to profound 
 repentance. It awakens Gospel faith. It secures the pardon 
 of sin and the regeneration of the heart. It prepares for 
 the organization and work of a holy church. It brings men 
 into endearing communion with Christ. It arouses a high 
 tone of spirituality, implants a disinterested benevolence, 
 produces a self-sacrifice and a Christian heroism and a 
 persistent toil for the salvation of men, unknown before, 
 impossible elsewhere. 
 
 And now, all that is necessary for enlargement and for 
 large success in the missionary work is, that the churches 
 should fulfil their whole duty of holiness, labor and prayer. 
 A sense of dependence upon God is the first great step to 
 victory. It is in vain for us to plan for success in any 
 department of labor without trust in the Lord. Prayer will 
 help our studies in science. Prayer will quicken our insight 
 into business. Prayer will fortify us when the soul is 
 depressed and the hands grow weary. Prayer will make 
 our friendships more dear and our recreations more 
 delightful. But when seeking for the salvation of the 
 heathen, then, first of all and most of all, you need to pray. 
 For there are difficulties in the way of t his work, which do 
 not impede your studies, nor your friendships, nor your 
 pleasures, nor your business. The blindness of the dark 
 mind is to be enlightened ; the hardness of the sinful heart 
 is to be subdued ; the perversity of the will is to be over- 
 
come. To secure these results you need a supernatural 
 power. You need a love inspired by fellowship with Christ. 
 You need the persistency and courage of an overcoming 
 faith. You need the outstretched arm of God to lift moun- 
 tains and fling them into the sea. And all this comes only 
 by importunate, believing prayer. Let us spread abroad 
 the truth of Christ. Let us offer up ceaseless supplications 
 for the triumphs of the Gospel. “For Zion’s sake I will 
 not hold my peace ; and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest 
 till the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the 
 salvation thereof as a lamp that burnetii. And the Gentiles 
 shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory.”