God's purpose in planting the American church [microform]. A sermon, before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, at the meeting in Boston, Mass., October 2, 1860

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God's Purpose in Planting the American Church.

SERMON,

BEFORE THE

AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

FOR

FOREIGN MISSIONS,

AT THE

MEETING IN BOSTON, MASS

OCTOBER 2, 1860.

BY SAMUEL W. FISHER, D. D.

i

President of Hamilton College.

BOSTON:

PRESS OF T. R. MARVIN & SON, 42 CONGRESS ST.

1860.

AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS.

BOSTON, Ms., OCTOBER, 1860.

Resolved, That the thanks of the Board be presented to the Rev. Dr.
FISHER for his Sermon, preached on Tuesday evening, and that he be
requested to furnish a copy for publication.

Attest,

SAMUEL M. WORCESTER, Rec. Secretary.

I.

PiAlio Library

1250543

S E E M N.

ISAIAH XLV. 1-6. XLIII. 21.

THUS saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have
holden, to subdue nations before him ; and I will loose the loins of kings, to
open before him the two-leaved gates ; and the gates shall not be shut ; I will
go before thee, and make the crooked places straight : I will break in pieces
the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron : And I will give thee the
treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest
know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by
thy name : I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the
Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me : I girded thee, though
thou hast not known me : That they may know from the rising of the sun, and
from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none
else.

This people have I formed for myself ; they shall shew forth my praise.

IT is an obvious fact that, for the enlargement
of his church, God often selects special instruments.
In setting into motion a whole system of agencies,
this is almost uniformly the case. We recognize
the fact all along the history of the church. We
see men raised up with peculiar gifts, and clothed
with peculiar powers, to eifect certain great works.
The text gives us a remarkable illustration of this
method of divine procedure. Cyrus was a heathen ;
but there was that in his character, training and
circumstances, that pre-eminently fitted him for
the special work he was to perform as the restorer
of the church. His magnanimity, his love of

justice, his respect for religion according to his
light, the fact that he belonged to neither of the
races that had done most to crush out the . life of
God's chosen people, but was himself their con-
queror, qualified him for the work to which God
had anointed him.

In the bosom of the church itself there are two
still more remarkable examples of this law ; the
two men who bore the largest part in the inaugu-
ration and establishment of the chief dispensations.
Moses and Paul were not indifferent characters ;
nor were their training and position like that of
the multitude. They stand out boldly in history
as men of peculiar natural gifts and attainments.
Their early discipline exalted their intrinsic power ;
while their relation to the people among whom
their work was to be performed, and to the science
of the age in which they lived, imparted special
qualifications for their great mission. It was not
merely the fact that divine grace had consecrated
them, that made them all they were. Back of
their conversion, the providence of God, never,
like man, neglectful of the minor things of life,
had chosen, guided, disciplined and trained them
in respect to those qualifications which belonged
to them rather as men than as prophets and apos-
tles. There is here a completeness, a symmetry
of character and position wonderfully character-
istic of the divine agency. Nor in all this do we
see anything derogatory to the divine Word, or the
divine Spirit. These are indeed vital to the pro-
gress of the church. It is their prerogative to
give strength to weakness, courage to timidity, and,

with the worm that man treads upon, to thresh
down the mountains of human pride and power.
Beside these, all things else are as weakness. But
if, when exalting these, we practically affirm the
uselessness of all things else, we shall betray an
ignorance of the method of Providence in the
conversion of men only less great than that shown
by its opposite error. It is not that the human is
thus exalted above the divine, but simply that the
divine uses that kind, and measure of humanity
which are best fitted to accomplish its purposes.
It is nothing more than that common law which
in all things else God has established ; the law of
means adapted to ends, from which in the natural
world we ascend to the idea of his wisdom ; the
law which makes a sharp sword cut better than
one that is dull ; which makes a wedge split the
gnarled oak, when a blunt surface would only
bruise it ; which hollows the bones of a bird and
gives its wings their force and working, in order
easily to rise on the elastic air ; which makes a
word spoken in one manner, better fitted to move
the soul than the same word spoken in a different
manner ; it is this law exalted into the supernatural
which God uses in his nobler work of leading
his church onward to conquest. Just as he chose
the passionate, magnanimous, courageous Luther
to tear down the vast structure of Homish super-
stition ; just as he chose the acute, constructive
Calvin to make and build up, out of the chaos of
scholastic theology, the glorious temple of Chris-
tian science ; just as he chose the impassioned
Whitfield to breathe new life into a dying church,

6

just so he works all through the world and the
church, subsidizing the natural gifts and powers
of his own creation, to bring forth the elevation of
the race into the light of his glorious gospel.
This is the first lesson I derive from the passages
before us.

The second is but an expansion of the first. It
is just as certain that the great Sovereign chooses
particular nations to effect certain parts of his
work in the final triumph of the gospel, as that he
choses certain individuals for some special opera-
tion. " This people have I FORMED for myself ; they
shall show forth my praise" We place the em-
phasis here on the fact that he has formed this peo-
ple for himself. He may not select as his agent
this or that nation indifferently. His sovereignty
reaches back of the immediate work. It chooses
according to the character of the nation ; it reaches
to the antecedent training and the natural char-
acteristics which combine to prepare the nation
most fully for the work ; nay, this sovereignty in
its far-reaching wisdom has been busy all along the
history of the people in so ordering the moulding
influences under which character and position are
attained, that when the time comes for them to
enter into his special work, they will be found all
ripe for his purpose.

This nation, to whom the passage before us
refers, is a marked illustration of this thought.
The Jew was designed to be the conservator of the
word of God. He was chosen for this purpose.
The object was not propagation, but conservation.
The race, by nature and education, had just those

qualities which fitted it for this work. Its wonder-
ful tenacity of impression, its power to hold what
once had fairly been forced into it by divine
energy, like the rock hardened around the crystal,
belongs to its nature, reveals itself after Providence
had shattered the nation, in that granite character
which, under the fire of eighteen centuries, remains
unchanged. It was its mission to hold, not to give ;
to stand, not to advance ; and it was not until a
mind of large Grecian culture was chosen to bear
the truth to the Gentiles not until the men of
another race and another style of thought had
received it, that the gospel went forth to win its
grandest triumphs.

At every step of the progress of Christianity
since, illustrations multiply of the truth contained
in our text, that God forms nations to his work,
and chooses them because of their fitness to ac-
complish certain parts of that work. I need not
dwell upon the Greek, with his high mental culture
and his glorious language fit instrument through
which the Divine Word breathed his life-giving
truth ; upon the Roman, sceptred in power over the
whole realm of civilization, and undesignedly con-
structing the great highway for the church of Jesus;
upon the German, with his innate freedom of spirit,
nourishing the thoughtful souls whose lofty utter-
ances awoke, whose wondrous power disenthralled
a sleeping and captive church.

Passing by these and other illustrations of the
truth before us, rich though they be in thoughts
full of instruction, I deem no apology necessary
for engaging in the inquiry, as to what work in

8

the cause of evangelization God has been forming
this nation to accomplish. This unusual occasion
this gathering of representative Christians from
all parts of our country, to celebrate the close of
our first half-century of special missionary activity,
is amply sufficient to justify me in turning from the
general discussion of the theme before us, to a
special application of it to our own time and nation.
We stand this day on an eminence from which it
needs no prophet to discern the rapidly converg-
ing lines of God's providence, or indicate the point
of light towards which they hasten. Twenty-five
years ago, this would have been difficult; fifty
years ago, it would have been impossible. Trains
of influence that once demanded centuries for their
development, unfold and open in the life of a single
generation. All over our brief history, impressed
on every page of it, God has revealed a great pur-
pose to be accomplished by this nation. The ob-
ject for which he has been forming us is no longer
hidden in the darkness of the future ; it stands
forth more clearly than did his great purpose in
respect to Israel, when Solomon dedicated his tem-
ple, and for nearly a thousand years that purpose
had been ripening.

In speaking to you on this subject, it will not be
in my power to do even partial justice to it, without
including some things that belong to the great
nation out of which have flowed the main currents
of our national life. Other nations have con-
tributed some of the finest influences that have
moulded us ; our position has modified our char-
acter ; but the vitality, the commanding energy

9

that has given birth to such great results, is directly
traceable to the Anglo-Saxon. That wonderful
race moves forward step by step with us in this
work of evangelizing the world. The half cen-
tury which has done so much in developing our
missionary activity, has produced results scarcely
less remarkable in the nation that planted us here.
The nation which has brought forth Whitfield, and
Wesley, and Wilberforce, and Newton, and Gary,
and Morrison, and Williams, and hundreds like
them, has done vastly more for us than all the
world besides. We glory in this filial relationship,
not because it allies to earthly greatness, but to
the piety which, clothed in the radiant panoply of
a consecrated learning, has entered, with uncon-
querable zeal, into the work of preaching the
gospel to every creature.

To this point, therefore, let us direct our atten-
tion ; let us trace out some of those things which
indicate that God has formed us as a nation to exert
a special and vast influence in the evangelization of
other nations.

I. If you look at the natural constitution of this
race, you will see in it an admirable fitness for this
work. The character of a nation's influence is in
part grounded in its natural constitution. The
Anglo-Saxon inheriting, in common with the North-
ern races, strong intellectual powers, conjoins with
these a hardy, persistent, energetic nature. The
child of the temperate zone, the very extremes of
temperature to which it is exposed impart vigor,
elasticity, restless energy to its temperament. It

2

stands midway between the phlegmatic and the
passionate between the races so cold as rarely
ever to be roused to great attainments, and the hot
blood which, like the torrents raised by the sum-
mer shower, is stirred by slight causes, and then as
quickly sinks into lethargy. It has the constitu-
tion which bears up under the severest toils of
body and mind; it conjoins with this an energy
springing from the fullness of natural vigor, that
delights in action and perpetually impels to pro^
gress. The clear, practical understanding, laying
its plans far in the future, the courage that danger
cannot daunt, the fortitude that counts suffering a
triumph, the persistent energy which works on in
the eye of despair, find their most splendid and
numerous illustrations in the history of this race.
These are the native qualities which fit it for con-
quest ; these prepare it not only to conquer, but to
possess, not only to acquire, but to hold ; these
enable it to make one advance the stepping-stone
for another, to wring out of the barrenness of na-
ture rich tribute, to coin the gold of a triumphant
civilization out of the granite, and through path-
less snows, or the bloody welcome of savage foes,
win freedom, plenty and peace.

This race thus constituted, while it takes from
others only what is in harmony with its nature,
gives vastly more than it receives. The multitudes,
that from other races unite with it, are quickly
subdued by its all-controlling energy ; their preju-
dices, their habits, their language vanish; the
forms of their religion change ; a spirit, silent, all-
embracing, like the warm breath of spring upon

11 V

the snows of winter, dissolves their stubborn nation-
alities and mingles them as homogeneous elements
in its own rich life.

A race like this is formed of God to be a vast
power for good in this world. He combined in it
the finest qualities of half a dozen nations, that it
might impress itself upon others ; that its laws, its
knowledge, its spiritual life might become quicken-
ing forces among the dead millions. Not for itself,
not for any merely temporal object has he created
it; but to diffuse the truth, to be a plastic power
among the nations, in the hand of Jesus, in hasten-
ing his final triumph.

II. Let us look now at the peculiar training
which God has given to this race a training all
in harmony with this great object. With the same
original qualities, education especially an educa-
tion working in the same direction for centuries
makes a vast difference. In one direction it may
restrain, repress, modify, almost annihilate the pri-
mary tendencies of a nation ; but when it falls in
with those tendencies, its effect is to enlarge and
stimulate them. Now just as the education of
Cyrus and Moses and Paul gave them a special
preparation for their missions towards and in the
church just as the peculiar and protracted disci-
pline of the Hebrew fitted him to be the conservator
of the truth until Messiah should come just so the
divine Providence has given scope and stimulus to
the original endowments of the Anglo-Saxon and
American, fitting him for the offensive work of
missions among the nations.

12

His home was on that little Isle of a few .thou-
sand square miles, scarce surpassing in extent one
of our larger States. He was girt about by no im-
passable mountains, by no overcrowded populations.
The sea the open, the boundless, the free mingled
the music of its surges with the harvest-song of its
reapers, and the anthems of his Sabbath worship.
Each creek, each bay nourished the adventurous
spirit of his sons. The boy who rode his skiff over
the ripples of its quiet waters, in imagination was
the captain of the merchantman, the admiral of the
fleet. And so, from the necessities of the case, and
the inward energy of his soul, the sea became his
home, the sailor his representative. Gradually
commerce grew into ever enlarging proportions.
His ships traversed all oceans, visited all shores ;
round and through the world they carried the spirit
and the power of the little Isle. They became the
carriers for all nations, gathering peaceful tribute
from all peoples, spreading their victorious enter-
prise over climes inhospitable with eternal ice or
sweltering in the hot luxuriance of the tropics.

From this adventurous spirit three results fol-
lowed; each great in itself, and all combining to
develop this power of positive impression. The
first was reflexive ; this people, who could thus
take, must also give. Hence sprang up the artisan ;
manufactories rose on all sides ; villages of yester-
day swelled into vast cities, crowded with earnest
workers. The Island became a work-shop for the
world ; a work-shop not of dumb-driven cattle,
but of high intelligence, of bold, far-reaching,
practical science. The Anglo-Saxon must not re-

13

ceive tribute as a lazy lord, but as an intelligent,
high-minded worker, to return it a hundred fold.
And so the enterprise of commerce, and the enter-
prise of domestic industry, mutually stimulated each
other ; and both, under the conduct of consummate
tact and prudence, influenced not a little by the
quickening spirit of a revived Christianity, gave
birth to powers and influence unexampled in the
known past.

Associated with this was a second grand result.
Undesigned on his part, seeking at first only a
field whereon his peaceful energies could develop
themselves, this Anglo-Saxon .seats himself upon
what was once the richest throne of the past.

India, to which he went as a tradesman, becomes
his vassal. The sceptre of Aurungzebe passed into
his hands. This sceptre, though again and again
dipped in blood ; this throne, though often shaken
by the volcanic throes of religious fanaticism, is
his to-day. God sent him there and keeps him
there for 'a glorious purpose. As Cyrus dreamed
not that he was conquering Babylon for the deliv-
erance of Israel, so this nation imagined not that

s *-

India was given to it yet to be set as a crown jewel
in the casket of Jesus. Through this process of
blended commerce and conquest the energies have
been developed which fit it to impress its" spirit and
its laws,, and in the end, a pure Christianity upon
the dead millions of the East.

But in addition to these there is a third result of
this education of the Anglo-Saxon which bears more
directly upon us in this our half-century gathering
a result which, more than all the others, has

14

reacted on the race, fitting it to be God's chosen
instrument for the evangelization of the world.
This spirit peopled this continent. We were horn
not of the inward pressure of an over-crowded
population which forced Greece to colonize ; not of
the lust of empire which led Rome to plant colo-
nies to secure her conquests ; not of the lust of
gold which led the Spaniard to enthrone himself
in Central America. We had a unique, a noble
origin; The spirit of enterprise was interpenetrated
by the spirit of vital Christianity ; it was guided by
the practical wisdom, which sought here to create
the home of a free, God-fearing people. This spot
on which to-night we gather ; these waters where
pilgrim barks floated; these hills and intervales
which heard their calm, confident supplications
amidst terror and death, and their anthems of
thanksgiving in the hour of deliverance, are the
mute witnesses of that living faith and stern resolve
and high emprise which gave us birth.

No sooner is the Anglo-Saxon here, than the
original conditions under which he has been in
training are either changed or enlarged. The land
has a broader margin of ocean, the lochs expand
into inland seas, the rivulets swell to rivers, the
little island home has become a continent. The
education ef the race for its work advances in this
wide, free land, with increasing power, but sub-
stantially in the same direction. It is not in mere
art that embellishes life ; it is not in the finer
works that concentrate the powers while they limit
their range, that the American is to win his most
remarkable triumphs. He is not to follow in the

15

old, effete methods of thought and life. His is a
nobler destiny ; and for him there must be another
style of education. He is not to paint miniatures,
and sculpture men in marble and brass ; he is to
form men, to give laws to nations and interpene-
trate the souls of millions with the truth as it is
in Jesus. To fit him for this work, his individu-
ality must be developed ; the forces that give
power and influence must be quickened within
him ; he must possess self-reliance and sturdy inde-
pendence. The spirit that made him forget the
glad hearths of England, must ripen under these
ever-changing skies. His work is not to conquer
millions for a despot, but to unfold the energies of
his race along the line of individual achievement
in the peaceful pursuits of a thoroughly Christian
civilization. And so the ocean, the forest, the
lake, the prairie, welcome him to their stern toils.
A virgin continent lies before him, to be subdued
and made the home of Anglo-Saxon institutions
institutions so modified and reorganized as to be
truly American. In this great work no sluggard,
no slave can triumph. On this field all the higher,
stronger qualities of the race will be tasked. This
ocean must be ploughed with swift ships ; these
rivers must bear the burden of a new world's pro-
ductions ; these forests must let in the sun ; these
prairies must echo to the rattle of the swift reaper
and the glad shout of the harvest-home; these
plains and valleys must shake beneath the wheels
of his iron chariots, and over them thought shall
fly on the wing of the lightning ; these rocky ram-
parts, that frown him back from the unknown

16

Pacific, must be scaled. Onward in the march of
peaceful conquest he must press, until the handful
of corn planted on the shores of the Atlantic, shall
ascend all mountain-tops ; and every where, from
ocean to ocean, and from the ice-mountains of
Hudson's Bay to the warm waters of the Gulf, its
fruit shall shake like Lebanon.

Now in this process of national culture, you see
the development of just those qualities which,
when consecrated by the spirit of the gospel, are
to constitute the finest missionary race in the
world. They are positive qualities ; they consti-
tute the energy that impresses the power that
subdues and moulds other minds by a law as
certain as that which bids the flowers open, and
verdure crown the hills beneath the kiss of the
sunshine and the rain. This hardy frame ; this
restless energy ; this indomitable perseverance ;
this practical tact ; this productive invention, not
spending itself on minute forms of embellishment,
but exerting its genius along the line of those
practical combinations which multiply the power
of the hand a thousand-fold, and change, as if by
magic, the aspect of a country in a single year ;
this stalwart growth of individual power which
makes man the sovereign of nature ; these con-
stitute a race which, informed by religion, is pre-
pared, yea necessitated, to lead the van of Imman-
uel's army for the conquest of the world.

III. Intimately connected with, and constituting
part of the method in which God is forming this
people for the aggressive work of missions, are

17

that individual freedom and the settlement of gov-
ernmental difficulties and constitutional principles
which have given such a peculiar form to our
civilization. One fact, not always recognized, but
yet of vast significance, meets us whenever we
attempt to understand the original forces that have
made us what we are. The " Common Law " is
our inheritance. It grew up out of the necessities
of individuals and small communities. It was the
child of those common rights which naturally
belong to freemen associated in civil society. No
man, therefore, can tell when or where it was born.
History recognizes its existence, never its origin.
The sense of justice, the dignity and personality of
the individual, the practical understanding of those
relations of life which society creates, the barriers
reared against the concentration of power in single
hands to the injury of the many, the facilities for
the determination of the right, these reveal them-
selves as its vital characteristics. This is not the
place to run a comparison between the Civil and
the Common Law to show how one has assisted
to consolidate the great monarchies, while the other
has wrought to limit and fetter irresponsible power.
It is sufficient here to remark, that the principles
of the latter, harmonizing with a revived Chris-
tianity, have wrought with great power both in
this and in the land from which we sprung. They
wrested Magna Charta from King John; they
fought with the encroachments of absolute power,
reign after reign, until their ascendency was fully
established through the great Revolution. Trans-
planted to this new world, this British oak has

18

sent its roots into our rich alluvial, has lifted its
branches broader and freer into the heavens. Here
its limbs have shot forth in peculiar vigor and
beauty. Individual freedom ; representation caus-
ing the power to ascend from the masses and return
again to wait their decision ; written, limited con-
stitutions, with all the checks upon hasty legisla-
tion and central consolidation which can be created
by a systematic division of the powers of govern-
ment, these are the consummate flower and glory
of our civilization.

Now you are to mark this thing in this con-
nection. These great results have been reached
through protracted struggles. They are not the
sudden achievement of a race, all at once casting
off the disabilities and burdens of absolute power.
They are the outgrowth of centuries. The blood
of martyrs ; the tears and prayers of confessors ;
revolutions now peaceful, now sanguinary, now
moving forward under the impulse of deep relig-
ious conviction, then struggling into life as the
result of the native love of freedom ; reforms, ex-
periments, crises and eras of vast significance,
succeeding each other for nearly two centuries,
have consecrated, watered and developed these
principles. It is the long process through which a
race has been unfolding the noblest energies of
humanity. The stern, the strong, the earnest
elements of manhood have been most fully nour-
ished. The characteristics that prepare men to
impress others, the stimulant, commanding, effective
energies, the clear conception of right, the sense of
individual worth, loyalty to law rather than persons,

19

the power and the purpose to choose each his own
field of action, the right to do and attain in any
direction whatever talent, and industry, and honesty
can effect ; forces, ideas habits such as these, have
been the product of this peculiar education of the
Anglo-American. It is not the refinement of
courts, the artificial manners of subjects in presence
of superiors, that makes men. The high concep-
tion of individual right and duty ; the habit of
yielding obedience to conscience rather than arbi-
trary power ; the felt assurance of liberty to develop
the energies of the soul in all directions, these give
birth to a race mighty for good ; these won the rev-
olution that ripened its fruit in 1688; these plant-
ed our continent ; these wrought out our liberties ;
these, under the guiding spirit of the gospel and the
sovereignty of King Jesus, form a people prepared
to traverse all oceans, ascend all mountains, pene-
trate all forests, face all dangers in the work of
impressing this gospel upon the world. And it is
in view of just such qualities as these, we see the
design of God to make us a missionary race, just as
clearly as we see that design in the education of
Cyrus, or Luther, as the deliverers of his people
and the builders of the broken walls of Zion.

There is one advance we have made ujpon the
Common Law as it exists in most parts of the
Father Land, which has a peculiar significance in
reference to our future as a missionary race. I
refer to the abolition of the law of primogeniture.
In a nation like that of Israel, constituted to con-
serve things, as they were until Messiah should
come, this law was in place. But when God would

20

prepare a race to give, to advance, to impress its
ideas upon the world, to go forth on the peaceful con-
quests of the Cross, then it must fall. One of the
effects of the pentecostal spirit was the selling of
their property and the consecration of it to Christ.
It is not for such a people to build palaces, to found
great families, to perpetuate the distinctions of
birth, to gather vast estates in few hands, around
whose possessors the multitude must revolve for
generations as dependents and satellites. This
race, that is to put the lever of the gospel under the
old world, must stand not upon the dead past, but
upon the living present. High moral worth, asso-
ciated with individual energy and independence,
must be its title to this distinction. It must have
a life of its own, and create its own possessions. It
must be renewed every generation by the subsidence
of the effete into their original nothingness, and
the rise of new, fresh, vigorous manhood into all
places of responsibility and power. If this Anglo-
American, chosen of God for a higher purpose, in
the petty pride of successful accumulation, builds
him a palace, he shall do it knowing that no long
succession of his sons shall inhabit it.

I know we have been reproached for the facility
with which our children leave the old homestead
to seek new abodes. But this is God's ordinance
for this nation one of the means by which he
trains us to leave father and mother, for the advance
of higher interests. I deny not the value and the
preciousness of the associations of home. We run
back to those early memories which wreath them-
selves around the place where our childhood was

21

nurtured, with ever fresh delight. The venerable
forms that watched our opening youth, the dear
associates that lent so bright a glory to life's young
dream, the dwelling consecrated in every part by
scenes of joy, the trees we climbed, the grounds
that echoed to the joyful shout and quick tread of
our playmates, these never rise before us, gilded
with brilliant hues by our warm imagination, with-
out awakening a thrill of joy. But when it is a
question whether we shall preserve the material
part around which these associations cluster, at the
cost of sterility and dependence, or whether we shall
pass from it to create new homes, to develop man-
hood and womanhood in new fields of action, then,
we say, let the dead past bury its dead ; then we
rejoice in the necessity which compels us to go forth
and lay the foundations of a new home; we bless
God that this Anglo-American is forced to live as a
stranger and a pilgrim, since this is the very pro-
cess by which our sons and daughters can be best
trained to count the world their field of labor, and
the spot where, in obedience to the call of Jesus,
they may pitch their tent for a few years, their
home in time. What matters it to the men and
women of such a people, when their hearts feel
the quickening power of Christ's spirit, whether
their bones lie beneath the deep shade of our west-
ern forests, on the sad shores of Africa, or on those
Pacific isles where the swelling ocean ever sings
their requiem ? What matter is it to us whether,
like Harriet Newell, and Smith, and Scudder, and
hundreds of others, these bodies sleep their last
sleep on a foreign shore, or whether they be borne,

22

by kindred hands, to their resting place in Auburn,
and Greenwood, and Spring Grove ? God educates
us to leave the paternal roof for distant homes ;
and it needs but the living spirit of Him who said,
' Go preach my gospel to every creature,' to make
this peculiar training effective in raising a great
army of missionaries of the Cross.

IV. Let us advance now to another thought.
The providence which has thus been training us,
has given us large material possessions, and the
power to develop and use them. In the material
elements of national wealth, coal, iron, the pre-
cious metals, and a soil of great variety and rich-
ness, no country surpasses this. In productive
power and inventive genius, this nation, by the
confession of the ablest foreign writers, has no
superior. With such a country, and such a power
to develop its resources, what is to hinder us from
ascending to a position where we shall command
the markets of the world, and give laws to com-
merce, and possess resources sufficient to sustain
more missionaries than we now have population 1
This, it is true, is regarded by unpractical, dreamy,
and romantic minds, as a low view a view which,
on these high occasions of spiritual enjoyment,
should be kept in the background. Then, too, we
are taunted by foreigners of a certain class, and
the taunt has been thoughtlessly re-echoed among
ourselves, with our devotion to material interests.
But let us be just to ourselves ; let us remember
that there is a bright as well as a dark side to this
subject ; let us not forget, that man is material as

23

well as spiritual. Body and soul are here "married
together ; and no nation can ever rise to the high-
est influence, or be prepared to do the largest mis-
sionary work, when the interests of both are not
fully cared for. Our education begins in the ma-
terial, and ascends to the immaterial. But, ascend
as we may, in this world we never rise wholly
above the material. Influences mighty for good
spring out of it. "What a prodigious force of indi-
vidual development along the various paths of
enterprise is there in the prospect of gaining a
competence, of giving .to the family an education
fitting it for high position in society 1 What a
power is it to restrain from prodigal expenditures
in frivolous pleasure, to hold men back from vice,
even when it cannot win them to virtue 1 What
is it but this that stirs the heart of this great city,
and wakens every morning the hum of its busy
population, and pours along its crowded thorough-
fares these on-rushing tides of human energy 1 ?
What but this rouses the latent activities of our
people to develop the resources of this continent ;
to build, cultivate, mine and navigate, vexing
the land and the ocean with all the instruments of
a world-wide production 1 And this is just as it
should be. This very material activity, quickened
and guided by moral principle, is absolutely essen-
tial to the development of a strong and manly
character. We are past the day when courage and
force could only grow on the field of battle ; whose
choicest instruments of manly culture were the
war-horse, the sword, the battle-axe ; when society
was divided horizontally into two classes, the serfs

24

who toiled as cattle, and the soldier who spent his
life in alternate war and revelry. We are all sol-
diers, and our field of battle is the world. The
path of true nobility opens to all. The boy who,
flung forth like a waif on this restless sea, by hon-
est industry, wins a position, where respect and
influence attend him, he is our noble ; the artisan,
whose invention multiplies the power of the hand
over material forces ; the youth who, rising from
small beginnings, ascends the heights of a profes-
sion, originates large enterprises for humanity, and
sustains institutions full of blessing to humanity,
these are our kings. And in the production of
such men on a great scale, this attention to material
interests, is a power of vast influence.

All this has a direct, logical connection with
our work as a people, who are to propagate the
gospel aggressively through the world. It has
to do with it, because this process of self-de-
velopment along the line of material interests is
necessary to unfold the attributes which give us
power to impress ourselves upon men. It has
to do with it, because the product of this devotion
to material interests is capital diffused through
the masses ; and capital is one of the means
God uses to convert the world. Is it of no con-
sequence, when we send forth our forces to fight
for us, that other forces vastly greater, are here
intensely busy in creating the means to supply
the instruments and material of successful war-
fare ? What has made the credit of this Board
a power in every land 1 Why, when the greatest
commercial houses have been prostrated, and

25

bankruptcy has unsettled confidence, and men
have not known whom to trust, has the paper
of a missionary society, without a cent of invested
capital, been as good as gold the world over"?
Why, when debt has accumulated upon us through
the diminished resources of our friends, have
these secretaries, this committee, never doubted
for a moment that the time would come, as this
night we bless our God it has come, when every
cent of that indebtedness would be canceled, and
from a still higher vantage ground, they would
address themselves to the work of saving a lost
world 1 You answer, ' Faith in its supporters,' a
conviction that this cause had wrought itself so
deeply into the hearts of God's people in this land,
that in due time they would come to their help.
All this is true. But I am not mistaken in affirm-
ing that another idea is necessary to complete
the answer this faith had its foundation in the
ultimate ability as well as the will of those who
sustained it ; in the fact that behind it there stood
a great multitude determined to create that which
should fill its coffers ; a multitude of Christian
men and women, strong in their individual respon-
sibility, strong in their habits of productive labor,
strong in their ability to rise above these temporary
depressions in consequence of that energy which
they share with their countrymen, and able\ thus
to secure those material interests out of which
should flow the gold and the silver to sustain the
missionary and support his schools, and give him
Bibles and tracts, and compass him round with
the felt power of a productive Christian sympathy.

26

V. It is admitted that if this devotion to material
interest stood alone, it would soon exhaust itself ;
producing wealth and consequent luxury, .it would
conduct us speedily to a corrupt and effete civil-
ization. But this is not the case ; it is largely
animated and guided by a high literary, as well
as religious culture. Education diffused through
the masses has become an essential characteristic
of this race. On the revival of letters, none of
the cognate races embraced this idea more heartily.
The establishment of the universities was the
first movement, because the first necessity was
that of teachers, preachers, and statesmen. But
as the right of private judgment consequent on the
Reformation, took root among the people, the logi-
cal result must in time follow ; the people must be
prepared to exercise their rights by a fitting educa-
tion. When the race colonized this new world,
their first step was to establish the college as the
truest source of general intelligence. From this
went forth men of true learning, under whose
plastic influence there sprang into almost full-
grown proportions, our noble system of common
schools. It is not necessary for me to discuss at
large a subject so well understood. It is enough
to say that this idea of the practical enlightenment
of the people has taken fast hold of the heart
of this race ; that every where it has given birth
to institutions of learning covering the whole field
of science in all its departments ; that the teacher
follows hard upon the footsteps of the pioneer, and
while the axe still resounds through our grand
old forests, the foundations of the school, the

27

academy and the college are laid in the virgin soil
in anticipation of the future millions. I need not
say how the original idea of a truly Christian
education, lapsing in part through the influence
of infidelity and foreign immigration, is gaining
its true position, and the Word of God is coming
more and more to take its appropriate place as the
highest science which man can attain. Nor need
I dwell upon the practical character of this educa-
tion ; how while it ascends to the mastery of science
in its noblest and profoundest aspects, its great aim
is to develop that tact and wisdom which in the
conduct of life enable its possessor to avail himself
of all known resources to wield the powers of na-
ture to promote the ends of life, and so lifts him
above the necessities of time and place which limit
and oppress the ignorant.

I wish rather to concentrate your attention upon
the preparation which all this gives for the work
of missions. The race possessed of such resources
has reached a vantage ground of power. Science
of this kind, especially when conjoined with vast
material resources, constitutes the true sovereignty
of the world. Wherever this people go, they hold
in their hands the destinies of men; they are
bound b/an original fitness to impress themselves
upon others ; the same constitution of things which
makes man the lord of the world, makes the^ edu-
cated man the lord of the ignorant and rude. Mind
enlightened by true wisdom is designed of God to
be the plastic power which is to mould mind unen-
lightened. This is the secret of the progress and
success of the Anglo-Saxon and American ; this the

28

source of that influence which makes the world
bring him tribute ; this it is which, wherever he
plants himself, makes him the superior, and the
conqueror ; this gives him empire not so much
the empire of civil law as that higher empire of
influence which the half-civilized and barbarous
nations cannot resist. And so, wherever the mis-
sionaries of this race go, they show themselves to
belong to a race fitted to send forth a moulding
influence. At once they rear the standard of edu-
cation as well as religion. Everywhere they are
recognized as men of large abilities, of refined
manners, of thorough science. They address them-
selves to the work of renovating nations as men
trained in the bosom of a superior intelligence.
They are prepared to meet the philosophies of the
pagan, and the sophistries of the corrupt Chris-
tian. Men like Martyn and Duff, who, on the
banks of the Ganges, can argue with the awak-
ened and acute young Brahmin; like Smith and
Thomson, who, on the land where patriarchs and
prophets once tabernacled, can pour the light of
Christian science on the passionate hearts of the
wild Arab ; like Goodell and Hamlin, who, on the
shores of the Bosphorus, can lift the vision of a
pure Christianity before the eyes of corrupt Greeks
and Armenians, and initiate there a reformation as
pure, as powerful as that which centuries ago
snatched the choicest jewels from the proud tiara of
the man of sin. Give me, says the natural philoso-
pher, a place to stand upon, and a lever long
enough, and I will move the world. Give me
rather, may we say, men like these, backed and sus-

29

tained by the prayers, the influence and the con-
tributions of a Christian race like this, and with
the divine blessing, the world will not only be
moved it will be regenerated.

Nor are we to pass lightly by, in this connection,
the language which this race employs for the ex-
pression of its intelligence. Of all living tongues,
where is there another so copious, versatile, sin-
ewy ; another that, like the race it represents, is so
composite and cosmopolitan, absorbing into itself
the energy and the life of all dead and living
tongues'? Think of the wealth of science and
literature it possesses ; think of the affluence of
Christian thought it has treasured up ! I know
that like a strong, deep river, it has its foul eddies,
here and there its stagnant side pools, full of all
abominable creatures ; but its body, its main cur-
rent, is clear and strong as the river of life. I
have read somewhat in other languages ; but where
in any of them is there to be found so rich,
so varied, so wonderful a missionary literature as
crowds the literature of this race. Within half a
century, its sons have created libraries libraries
filled with the records of their missionary labors,
with lives of the good and the great at home and
abroad; with travels and descriptions of manners,
and opinions, and scenes of every nation and land
under the whole heaven volumes instinct^ with
the power of God, full of the triumphs of that
Cross before which of yore the Roman eagle folded
its proud wings, and the barbarous Goth laid down
the savage weapons of his irresistible power. A
race nurtured in such a language, breathing and

30

creating such a literature, is one out of which men
are prepared to go forth panoplied in celestial
armor, informed with a divine life for the conquest
of the world.

VI. Let us pass to another thought. The char-
acter and position of the Protestantism we possess
constitutes our most vital, substantive efficiency. At
the very beginning there was a marked distinction
between the races from which we sprung and
others. Christianity was always foreign to the
peculiar life of the lioman and Grecian. Just so
far as they received it, their characteristic national
spirit was destroyed. The Greek sought to subject
it to taste and sentiment, the special form of his
culture; The Roman subjected it to law, and made
this an authority superior to conscience. And
hence it must either wholly destroy these national
peculiarities, or be modified to harmonize with
them. The disastrous result of this conformity
of Christianity to their spirit is broadly revealed
in history, and constitutes at this day the most
formidable opponent to the progress of the
pure, simple gospel. But in the Anglo-Saxon and
cognate German races, it had a different recep-
tion. Their spirit was less artificial. They had
no priestly caste, no splendid sacrificial rites.
They deemed it inconsistent with the nature of
celestial beings to be confined within walls or
images. They had retained the earlier Revelation
in vastly greater purity. And so when Christian-
ity entered, it found few of those corruptions to
oppose its progress. It entered the heart, it har-

31

monized with the original spirit, it took full posses-
sion of the mind of this people. Its enunciations, its
fundamental principles, found in their simple code,
both of religion and law, little to resist save that
depravity which belongs to all men. And as in
the Anglo-Saxon the development of the principles
of the Common' Law advanced, Christianity went
hand and hand with it. Every step towards the
establishment of individual freedom was conse-
crated by the higher principles of religion. When
the Reformation came, asserting the right of pri-
vate judgment, exalting the Bible and conscience
above the authority of kings and emperors, the
Anglo-Saxon, long trained in the line of civil free-
dom, at once grasped them and fought for them
with wonderful energy. Henceforth the two were
indissolubly united. JSTo y matter what was the spe-
cific object to be attained, whether political or
religious, underneath the great struggle, deep in
the heart of the Briton, these twin powers were
the ever-present, animating forces.

The transfer of the contest to this land was only
an advance in the same direction. It was Protest-
antism, in part accepting and adopting, in part orig-
inating as its own, the highest form of both civil
and religious freedom. It was the fundamental
principle of Protestantism revealing itself in all
departments of the life of the Anglo-American.
Into science as well as law it infused itself. Instead
of basing science on facts, and religion on mere
authority, instead of enshrining religion in a casket,
like imitation jewels too sacred for the profane
touch of the material or metaphysical investigator,

32

it threw it open to the world; it challenged scrutiny;
it held men to a thorough test of its divine origin ;
it said to the bold spirit of inquiry, Search into
these things, pry into all their concealments, detect
if you can one worthless stone; go up into the
heavens, go down into the earth, penetrate the
nature of man, ransack history, and bring forth if
you can one indisputable fact, that can stand as a
true witness against the divine original of our
religion. Now what has been the result of this
long contest I It has settled for all time the right
of private judgment. " I am ready," says Luther
to the Pope, " to give up to all men, and in all
things ; but as for the word of truth, I neither can
nor will let that go." This principle the Anglo-
Saxon and American has exalted into a living, con-
quering spirit. It ramifies all through his political,
social, literary life. It moulds his childhood, it
influences his manhood, it gives a peculiar charac-
ter to his genius, a tone to his manners, a nobility
to his actions. Look abroad over the world !
Where, outside of this race, is this principle thus
recognized'? Where is there another nation, in
which it is not crippled or crushed by some outward
force, secular or ecclesiastical ? The Protestants of
Europe have a mighty conflict yet before them.
They cannot propagate the truth abroad over the
world, until they have mastered the evil influences
that settle down upon their own lands. But we
have fought and won this battle. We are the
advance guard of Protestantism. Our missionaries
go forth educated in law, in science, in religion,
recognizing God alone in them all ; free from the

33

disabilities which encumber others. Behind them is
a nation in sympathy with their efforts ; a nation full
of life, of motion, of influence ; a nation which, from
its lofty vantage ground, is bound to give its light,
its sacred principles to the millions in darkness.

Nay, more than this is true. Some of those
peculiarities of religious life, which have been our
chief reproach, contribute not a little to our power
as a missionary race. The diversities of belief, the
breaking up of the outward form of the church into
various denominations, against which Erastianism
and the Papacy protest so vehemently, are securities
for the perpetuity of the truth, and sources of vast
efforts towards the conversion of men. Growing
out of the purest and simplest principles of our
Protestantism, they are so many independent con-
servators of the truth and safeguards against the
overmastering power of any one great error. The
Episcopalian holds in highest esteem the idea of
the church and its rites as the chief power in life,
supreme over all other forces. It is a noble prin-
ciple. Let him hold it and guard it, even though
I cannot accept all the inferences and minor opin-
ions which he associates with it. The Independent
magnifies the opposite principle, the individual as
the source of authority. Let him hold and guard
it well ; for it is one of the fundamental elements
of our Christianity. The Presbyterian exalts Con-
stitutional, representative freedom, and a clear,
well-defined, strong symbol of faith. Let him stand
fast by that standard which Calvin planted on the
shores of Lake Leman, for when it falls a tower of
strength crumbles to the ground. The Methodist

34

insists upon the predominance of an emotional
nature in all the actings of a living religion. Let
him work on that line ; for when religion becomes
a mere affair of church rites and creeds and gov-
ernment, then its vitality has fled. The Baptist,
sweeping away the ancient dispensation, guards
with special care the ordinances of the new. Let
them all work together ; work on their own line
of power. The unity of the church is in its spirit,
not in its form. Its' power is in the pure life of its
members ; not in any absolute oneness of view of
all minor aspects of Christianity. These diversities
are all on the surface ; they reach not the funda-
mental points of faith. The evils they generate are
temporary ; the good they effect is vast and abiding.
In their practical working they largely counteract
the tendency to a one-sided religion. They appeal
to the different principles that move society ; they
rouse, they animate men to work for Christ. They
give to our Protestantism, what has been the boast
of the Papacy, a place where men of every variety
of temperament and education can labor in harmony
with themselves ; they enlist all kinds of good and
natural influences ; they suit the broad aspect of
society ; they push themselves into new fields.
What is lost from the concentration of a vast
organism, is more than gained by the augmented
power of individuals. At first the struggle was to
live. Then as these branches of the church multi-
plied, they entered upon aggressive movements for
the conquest of the world. Each one became, what
God meant it should be, a missionary society, rais-
ing up, commissioning its members to preach the

35

gospel in all the world. The intensity of denomi-
national action, the harmony which characterizes
bodies uniting according to the genius of their own
system, the innate power of an awakened Christian-
ity, stimulated by the examples of others, all com-
bined to promote their efficiency in spreading the
gospel. Out on the broad field, in contact with the
superstitions and depravity of the world, the rigid-
ity of their ecclesiastical systems relaxed, while the
grand fundamentals of faith rose into clear view.
Who cannot see in this marshaling of sects, this on-
ward march of these different branches of the church
of Jesus, a new source of hope for the world I Who
believes that any one of them called to the throne,
intrusted with their combined power, would guard
the great truths of religion as well, or advocate them
with as deep and effective an energy as the whole
moving on the line of their separate denominational
preference 1

Look over history, and you will find that two of
the most effective obstacles to the onward progress
of the church, have been the centralization of power
in a few hands, and the wild, irregular action of indi-
viduals. The first, in its efforts to maintain itself,
becomes intolerant; it seeks to enforce a rigid
uniformity on all points, whether vital or trivial,
and in the effort, it crushes out the vitality of free,
spontaneous action ; it puts the intellect in chains ;
it subjects the soul to its own artificial and self-
created forms, and reduces it to a machine. The
second, struggling for freedom, spends its strength
in efforts to resist ; it exalts the minor into funda-
mental beliefs ; it lives in opposition rather than in

36

true progress, and wastes the energies that, conse-
crated to the work of saving souls, would have
brightened the firmament with constellations of
glory, in winning transient victories, or suffering
useless defeats. But when the church is marshaled
in divisions, both these tendencies meet with forces
that modify and control their excess. If a few
ecclesiastics rise up and say, " We are the only
church ; put your necks under our iron yoke ; " if
these men, in virtue 'of this enormous assumption,
claim supremacy over the conscience of the people,
the free thought, and free speech, and free action
generated by these diverse organizations, rise up
and demand the proof. And if the evidence is not
sufficient, the ridiculous assumption, destitute of
reason and power, serves only to confirm the peo-
ple in opposition. Meanwhile the mutual action
and reaction of these great denominations on each
other, compel an appeal, not to an assumed power,
but to the practical reason and conscience of the
church, enlightened by the "Word. And thus the lay
element, the body of the church, rises to influence
and practical control. On the other hand, as these
denominations have taken their form largely from
the constitutional and natural differences that exist
in humanity itself, they furnish a refuge and field of
action for men of all varieties of temperament and
prejudice. He who is not at home in one, if he have
the true spirit of Christ in him, cannot well fail to
find in some others the atmosphere of thought and
feeling he loves. The process of development goes
on in harmony with the varied characteristics of
man. All trees do not grow as well in the same

37

soil and climate. In one position they shoot up
tall and strong ; in another they pine and die. A
cedar will live on the top of a rock, where an oak
would fail to find nourishment. Some men need
rigid forms to help them on in the Christian life;
some are chafed and soured, unless they can give
full play to their emotional nature. And thus God
hath so permitted his church to be organized in this
land, that there may be the fullest unfolding of the
powers of the Anglo-American, with various and
strongly marked diversities of character. And this,
too, in this stage of the history of the church, with
reference to the grand work which this race is to
effect in- the conversion of the world.

VII. But not to detain you much longer, let me
say a word on two other features of that training,
by which God has signally set us apart for the work
of missions. Whoever shall write the history of
the American church, will be obliged to notice the
remarkable character given to it by revivals of religion.
These have not been, as in many other churches,
an occasional incident ; they have entered into its
life ; they have given character to its development ;
they have marked its progress. Since the days of
the Apostles, the Christian church, in any one of
its branches, has never witnessed displays of God's
converting power so \vonderful, numerous and ex-
tensive, as this church has enjoyed during the last
sixty years. More than one hundred years ago,
when a barren orthodoxy was preparing the nation
for the reign of infidelity, the quickening spirit of
a wide-spread awakening infused new life into the

38

church. When the French war and the terrible
scenes of the Revolution, had prepared the soil for
the skepticism of the Encyclopaedists, and when as
a consequence, four-fifths of the intelligent youth of
the nation had ceased to have faith in the Word of
God, then began a new era of revivals ; then the
despairing church shook off her fetters, and went
forth fair as the moon, clear as the sun and terrible
as an army with banners. When, thirty-five years
ago, began that turbid stream of immigration which
threatened to submerge the institutions of religion
and drown our verdant Zion in a sea of corruption
as deadly as that w r hich rolls over the cities of the
plain, then was the arm of the Lord revealed for
our deliverance. And so, at every period of great-
est danger, the sudden, mighty demonstrations of
the Divine Spirit have given to the church new
life, and lifted her up to a loftier vantage ground of
power.

Now it is not necessary I should trace out the
connection of this remarkable training with that
spirit of missions, which, almost cotemporaneous
with its second era, began to animate the church.
The first effect, indeed, of a genuine revival, is not
seen in the production of the foreign missionary
spirit. There is a great internal work of self-
development a work of nurture and education in
respect to young converts, which absorbs the minds
and occupies the hands of the pastors and older
members of the church. But when these young
converts have become stable, and strong, then the
same elements of life and power, amid which they
were bom into the kingdom, show themselves in

39

the energy with which they seek to make the Cross
victorious all over the world. Then, the maturing
Christian learns to consecrate his possessions more
and more to this distant work. Youth, burning
with a desire to preach Christ, enter college, and
youth already there catch this heavenly spirit, and
meet in secret places, beside haystacks, in earnest
prayer for divine guidance. Thus the means and
the men for God's great work of evangelization are
at hand. Thus did Mills, and Judson, and Fisk,
and Newell, receive the divine inspiration. Thus
the church has found the spirit and the power to
enter into this grandest of all enterprises. Nay,
more than this. These men, born amidst revivals,
partaking of the life and energy which they create,
go forth expecting to impress the world : they expect
to see similar revivals wherever, on a heathen or a
nominally Christian shore, they uprear the standard
of the Cross. The church, and the men she sends
forth, share in these strong, positive, impressive
characteristics which a revival always creates. They
expect literally to see nations born in a day ; the
faith which struggled into life amidst the conver-
sion of half a parish, the consecration which stood
up for Christ, surrounded by scores and hundreds
of rejoicing young converts, can see no reason why
the same power of God, using the same truth, can not
and will not convert hundreds of heathen in a day.
And so, when they preach Christ in the islands of
the sea, or on the plains and valleys of Asia Minor,
they expect to see, and God has given it to them to
see, his arm made bare for the conversion of thou-
sands of souls.

40

And thus, by all this discipline of revivals, and
this peculiar process of development, and this crea-
tion of such positive characteristics, has God clearly
shown that we are not to dwell at home ; that
great as is this field of labor, mighty the obstacles
here to be overcome, yet he has given us an over-
plus of Christian energy, that must seek its object
in the conversion of the world. Every revival of
religion, every great era of revivals, is the coming
of the Lord to victory ; the prelude of that grand
chorus, when all nations shall join in the Chris-
tian's ' Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth.'

VIII. One thought still remains, to sdve com-

O 3 O

pleteness to our discussion. For full half a cen-
tury, God has been organizing the American
church for the work of foreign missions, and train-
ing it, in actual service, for this great object.
Early in our history, the apostolic Eliot, and a
century after, the no less devoted Brainerd, illus-
trated and kept alive the smouldering fire. But
the time had not come for the inauguration of this
spirit as the all-animating life of the church. The
home work overtasked all her energies. She built
her houses, and cleared the forests, and reared her
sanctuaries with the rifle at her side. Then came
the great contest. She had to win peace and free-
dom along the path of trial, and in garments rolled
in blood. When freedom came, civil institutions
were to be settled ; the foundations for the highest
civilization of unborn millions must be laid; the
temple of liberty, well ordered and symmetrical,

41

must be reared upon them. Lexington, and Bunker
Hill, and Saratoga, and Trenton, and Yorktown,
and Philadelphia, were steps essential to the pro-
gress of the church, as well as the nation, to that
high position, from which her peaceful energies
could be exerted for influence over the world.
At length we are a nation ; for thirty years the
bold experiment of self-government has been tried ;
in the career of public and private prosperity,
we have advanced with vast strides. For more
than half a score of years, the spirit of a pure
revival has been deepening the piety and working
out the foul formal leaven of the church. And now
the hour has come ; the trains of influence from
various sources converge to a point; this Society,
to be henceforth the living representative of the
idea of the world's conversion, to be henceforth
a grand agent in giving power and efficiency to
that idea in the heart of the church, is born. It
is born amid prayers and struggles of faith in the
heart of the young, the enthusiastic, the strong.
It was too bold and startling an idea to be origi-
nated in the cool caution of age. It came forth
into life like all the great ideas which have revolu-
tionized society, and moved the world rapidly for-
ward in its career of improvement ; just as the
apostolic church received its mightiest impulse
toward the conquest of the nations from the youth-
ful Paul ; just as the Reformation of the seven-
teenth century sprang to life in the student heart
and brain of Luther ; just as the great awakening
of the last century, and the creation of one of the
largest organizations of the church, issued forth

42

from the halls of Oxford, where the young Wes-
ley s and Whitfield felt the inspiration of a new
life.

The conversion of the world was in itself no new
idea. It was as old as the grand predictions of the
prophets ; it flamed forth on the apostolic banner ;
it had stirred the heart of the church, in every age
since Jesus ascended, to achieve her noblest victo-
ries ; it floated up to heaven on the wings of sacred
song ; it gave strength to martyrs and confessors
when the sword of persecution was unsheathed;
it was echoed in basilicas and cathedrals ; it was
whispered in cells and closets whenever from the
lips of God's people went forth the prayer, " Thy
kingdom come." But in its relation to us as a
nation set to bear a great part in making it a
reality, it was new, bold, almost presumptuous.
As yet the church was in the gristle of youth, its
limited resources seemingly tasked to the uttermost
in planting the institutions of religion where the
advancing population opened her frontiers to the
sun ; as yet the nation had hardly won a name,
much less influence among the sovereignties of the
world ; as yet these sovereignties held fast the
doors of entrance to their benighted populations, as
sternly as the eternal ice closed up the north-west
passage : at such an hour, in such circumstances,
the church heard the clarion voice summoning her
to gird herself for the conversion of the world. It
rang round the mountains that encircle Williams -
town Hoosick and Holyoke answered back to
each other the heights of Andover prolonged the
strain Boston and Salem and Litchfield listened

43

till the inspiration of this great thought filled their
minds: then other clarions rang; from valley to
valley, and mountain top to mountain top, along
the quiet intervale of the Connecticut, where the
spires of New Haven sentinel her grand pld Uni-
versity, and the surges of the Atlantic lift their
everlasting anthem on the shores of Massachu-
setts, the battle-cry swelled loud, and clear, as of
yore it rose when the cannon on yon hill-top pro-
claimed the coming conflict to an expectant nation.
Yea ! "beyond the limits of New England, along
the highlands and palisades of the Hudson, above
the roar of the young Metropolis, lingering around
the classic shades of Princeton, startling the quiet
of the city of Brotherly Love, it went forth on its
glad mission.

I do not affirm that this great thought came
forth from any single mind ; in the preparation
of the church for tbis, it had been growing into life
in hundreds of souls that longed for the coming
of Messiah in his glory. But I do affirm that
it was given to a few young minds, deeply pene-
trated with the fervor and the enthusiasm of the
great Apostle, to make it living reality to lead
on in the great work, and to consecrate themselves
to it, and so compel, the church to sustain them.
I am not about to rear their memorial. It is
here ; it is all over this land ; it is on every sliore
impressed by the footprints of American mission-
aries. More durable than brass ; loftier than yon
monument of stone that marks the first great
battle of the Eevolution ; covered all over with
letters of living light, growing brighter and brighter

44

with age, it needs no historian's pen, no chisel of
Old Mortality to illustrate its glory, or deepen and
freshen its inscriptions, before the eyes- of the
church can take in its supernal grandeur. Mani-
fest it is that the work they did, issuing in the
organization of this Board, was one of the most
efficient forces designed and chosen by God to
educate this nation to be the standard-bearer of
the gospel all over -the world. When Mills, con-
secrated in infancy by a mother's vow to the
conversion of the heathen, and Hall and Judson,
and Newell and Fisk and Nott, stood up and said
to the people of God, send us into the deepest
darkness of earth to bear from you to the benighted
millions the salvation of Jesus, it was as if the
spirit of the apostles and the early martyrs and
confessors in the sublime heroism of their faith
had become incarnate ; nay, it was as if the Spirit
of our ascended Lord plead with us through those
youthful lips and moved before us in those youthful
forms. Dead, thrice dead, plucked up by the roots
and withered, must have been the church that
could have witnessed unmoved this living resur-
rection of the faith and love and hope and mar-
tyr spirit of the apostolic age. This nation has
had its heroic age ; its nobles, who laid property,
honor and life on the altar of liberty ; its martyrs,
fallen ere the shout of victory echoed over a
continent disenthralled. Every where around me
I see their footprints. It was their example, their
shed blood, that, thrilling through a nation's heart,
roused and animated and encouraged millions to
press on till the great object was won. This

45

church has its heroic age; its martyrs; its nobles
who gave to God their young life. It was their
Christian heroism in an infinitely holier cause, that
roused and animated the desponding hosts of Israel
to enter into the work of giving the liberty of
Jesus to a world enslaved by sin. That old Salem
Tabernacle, in the year of our Lord 1812, on the
6th of February, witnessed a scene of solemn
grandeur unsurpassed in the history of the Amer-
ican church a scene that while this church lives
can never be repeated a scene that has lived in
perennial freshness, growing grander in the light
of its infinite issues, before the eyes of two gen-
erations. For there, amidst the tears of trembling
hearts, did the divine Spirit give to the church
the first unmistakable token of its true mission ;
that scene was the dawning of the coming day
a day whose sun, ascending to its meridian, shall
soon illumine all nations with its glory.

Then, as they went forth, lo! a new power to
educate the church and urge it onward in its work
sprang into being. Eager eyes watched their foot-
steps ; ears sensitive to the slightest whisper waited
for tidings of victory or defeat. Some stood up,
and worked on, amidst the deep darkness ; some,
broken and bowed, returned ; some went to sleep,
ere their work was fairly begun. But whether
standing, or broken, or asleep, they gave to t]beir
native land and the church of their fathers the first
pages of a new, a wonderful Christian literature.
The descriptions of the countries they visited, the
lifelike narratives of heathenism or a corrupt Chris-
tianity, the story of their trials and their success,

46

came back to us from these our sons and daughters.
Published in books, sent forth through the pages
of the Panoplist and Missionary Herald, circulated
in newspapers, read in families and church meet-
ings, they found thousands of eager auditors, they
spoke to a vast multitude of the hosts of Israel.

It seemed a dark providence that so early cut
down him, confessedly the foremost of this noble
band of apostolic youth, ere he could enter fully
upon his mission. But from the ocean grave of
Samuel J. Mills a voice went forth that thrilled
through thousands, and his Memorial roused scores
of young men to buckle on his armor and tread in
his footsteps. Sadness rested upon the church
when the sun of Harriet Newell went down long
before it had reached its meridian ; but who can
estimate the power of her short and simple biog-
raphy in educating the church, and inspiring a
desire for the missionary work in the hearts of her
own sexl And thus, as this new-born literature
entered into the influences that are moulding the
church of Jesus ; as it grew in variety and interest ;
as it came home closer to the hearts of Christians,
it became part of their daily food, a living, stimu-
lating force in the bosom of our Zion, under which
youth grew up informed on these great topics, and
we all became insensibly linked to the cause of the
world's conversion.

Nor are we to pass lightly by those missionary
lyrics which genius, consecrated to Jesus and
inspired by these same influences, has created.
Who of us that, in our childhood, learnt to sing
that noble lyric beginning,

47

Wake ! Isles of the South, your redemption is near,
No longer repose on the borders of gloom ;

The strength of his Chosen in love will appear,
And light shall arise on the verge of the tomb ;

a lyric sung by hundreds, as the second band of
missionaries (for the Sandwich Islands) embarked
from Long wharf, now nearly forty years ago who
of us can ever forget the interest that it awakened,

*_^ t

or who can tell how many hearts it bound to this
work with cords never to be broken 1 What hymn
book is now complete without a large collection of
these sacred songs'? How many youth are there
in the American church that do not know by heart
Heber's Missionary Hymn I In what congregation
can you not sing it without a book sing it with
the spirit and the understanding, as in swelling
volume, the old and the young delight to give it
utterance 1 Who can soberly sit down and measure
the farce of this newly created literature in giving
a peculiar character to the thoughts, the experi-
ences, the prayers, of the American church 1

Rapidly I pass over other elements of this mis-
sionary culture, which it is not fit wholly to pass
by. The appeals of our missionaries, as they have
returned from year to year, bronzed or broken by
the heat and toil of conflict, have gone clown into
the heart of the people of God. As they have
spoken to great congregations, as they have told
their simple' story in our Sabbath schools, pastors
and people have been roused to new activity in this
cause. What an influence in the training of the
church ; what seed scattered on a mellow soil, yet
to fully ripen in a glorious harvest, has gone forth

48

from Abeel and Scudder, Poor and Smith, and
Goodell and Thomson, and their associates, as
they returned to us, after their years of patient
labor !

What a power, too, has this Board been in the
character of its members, its officers, and its annual
gatherings, to inspire confidence, quicken zeal, and
spread the name of missions through the land.
To say nothing of Griffin, and D wight, and
Beecher, and Woods, and Spring, and Worcester,
what a power of light in their lives, what a legacy
of vital influence in their death, were Evarts, and
Cornelius, and Wisner, and Armstrong 1 ? When
men like these lead on the hosts of Israel, the
cause they advocate, grander and mightier though
it be than all mere instruments, stands forth com-
mended by all that is most pure and noble in our
humanity.

What a wonderful reflex influence has success
exerted in exalting the standard of feeling ! The
missionaries went forth to the Sandwich Islands,
taking their lives in their hands, expecting to
wrestle with idolatry in its stronghold, and it may
be fall in death before the men who had imbrued
their hands in the blood of that great discoverer,
Captain Cook ; when lo ! as they approach the
shore, the idols are fallen, and the simple people
welcome their coming. The news of that providen-
tial interposition, thrilling through the churches,
gave a new interest to the work. And so, as barrier
after barrier has been broken down, as govern-
mental opposition has given way, as revival after
revival has baptized the missions, as new and un-

49

expected fields, white for the reaper's sickle, have
been opened, the church has seemed to see our
king Messiah marching before her, and leading her
chosen sons to victory ; as of old he baffled the
powers of earth, when he planted Israel in Canaan,
and reared the Cross above the proud banner of
the Roman. Nay, most wonderful has it been, that
the times of deepest darkness through which this
Board has passed at home, have been signalized by
its most rapid and steady advance abroad ; and thus
God has spoken to our timid and desponding
hearts, nerving them to new efforts and sacrifices
for the cause he loved.

At the first, this Board stood alone, and led the
way in the work for preaching Christ to the
heathen. But soon, under its influence, other
organizations sprang into being. When one of
our young standard-bearers changed his views on
the subject of baptism, it seemed an event as dis-
astrous as it was unexpected ; but God meant to
take a coal from the sacrifice that burned on our
altar, to kindle the fire of sacrifice in the heart of
a great and an advancing division of his sons and
daughters. And as under this culture, the spirit
spread, division after division of the church
wheeled into line ; those who had united with us
at first, as they gained strength, began to move
independently as new orbs of light, and \riew
powers to educate the nation still more perfectly
for its work. These organizations, numbering
somewhat less than a score, represent a vast amount
of talent, and wealth, and piety. This Board, far
from cherishing a narrow-minded jealousy, has ever

7

50

rejoiced in their prosperity, and wished them God-
speed in their noble work. Like this city, sitting
on her hills, surrounded by these growing and
beautiful towns and villages, and bound to them by
a thousand cords of interest and social life, this
Board sits to-day a Queen girt about by these her
handmaids, in full sympathy with all their plans
for the world's conversion, counting them Christ's
teachers and her colleagues in training the whole
church for its grandest work.

But I must arrest this discussion ere it reaches
completeness. I may not dwell upon the minor
influences which are at work all through the
churches in creating this missionary spirit ; how
the great societies for printing Bibles and tracts,
and educating youth, and preaching the gospel to
our seamen, enforce their appeal by this grandest
argument, the conversion of the world ; how the
monthly concert, Sabbath school missionary organ-
izations, and the necessities laid upon pastors to
speak on this great theme, are all working together
in one direction the wheels within the great wheel
of God's providence, which is moving the church
forward to the point where she shall begin to
realize the mission which God has given her as a
power aggressive upon the thrones of darkness. I
know that a vast work has yet to be done before
she enters fully into the idea of this discourse.
But when I go back to the day when this Board
was organized, when I enter that old Tabernacle
church at Salem, where, after the toil and baffled
hopes of a two years' probation, our first mission-

51

aries were set apart ; and then to-night look over
this assembly, look out over this land, look beyond
to those great works which have been accomplished
in the world, I see, as clearlv as when the sun

tf

shines at midday, a thousand unmistakable signals
of God's purpose in planting this nation on this
continent ; his purpose to bless us in making us
the dispensers of his Word to the dead millions of
our race.

Not in vain has he carried us through a disci-
pline so peculiar, given us an enterprise so restless
and aspiring, a dominion so substantial and far-
reaching, elements of material and intellectual rich-
ness so vast, and lifted from us the civil burdens that
oppress other nations ; not in vain has the church
come out of the wilderness, leaning on the arm of
her Beloved, and flinging from her the crutches of
state establishments, gone forth to peaceful con-
quest in the sole might of the Lord of hosts ; not
in vain has this people net-worked the world with
those lines of commerce, along which her influence
may flash in a day over ten thousand points ; not
in vain do the nations open their brazen gates to
her citizens, and recognize alike the resistless force
of her arms and the superiority of her mental cul-
ture ; oh ! not in vain, through storm and sun-
shine, through martyr-fires and confessors' tears,
has the church clung to the divine Word as her
primal and all-sufficient light. For this God has
baptized her with revivals ; for this he has inaugu-
rated this spirit of missions, and opened the world
to her influence; for this he has sent her eagle
flying victorious from sea to sea ; for this he gathers

52

on this continent millions from other lands, to be
absorbed, Americanized, converted by us, and made
an element of vast power in the future ; for 'this did
the martyred Lyman, and Munson, and Pohlman
die; for this did he plant this city of the Puritans,
and make it a light-house, whose rays streaming far
beyond Massachusetts Bay, should penetrate the
darkness of the eastern world ; for this our fathers
fought their bloody 'battles ; for this our statesmen
have fashioned our civil constitutions ; for this our
merchants have built up so vast a commerce ; for
this our artisans and inventors have starred the
land with our ten thousand workshops ; for this
our colleges and schools were built ; for this, ere
the light of the next half-century Jubilee shall
dawn upon us, this nation will count her hundred
millions, and ten thousand of her sons and daugh-
ters laboring for Christ in foreign lands.

I take my stand at that not distant day a day
which some in this house, in a green old age, shall
live to see ; I behold the preparations of centuries re-
vealing their ultimate purpose and rushing on to the
grand conclusion ; nations into whose languages
your missionaries have translated this living truth,
cast away their idols and receive it to their hearts ;
the Koran is a relict of the past, while mosque and
minaret are consecrated to the Great Prophet ; the
Shasters are powerless, while the ancient temples of
Buddha and Vishnu, purged from their foul and
bloody incarnations, resound with the praise of the
incarnate Son of God ; the Tartar throne, in the
kingdom of the children of the sun, is known only
to history, while their crowded cities welcome the

53

children of Him whose light shall lighten the world ;
Ethiopia ascends from the mephitic darkness of
ages, and with her passionate heart steadied, and
her feeble intellect enlarged by Christian culture,
sends heavenward the song of a rapturous thanks-
giving ; the nations that have drunk the blood of
Christ's martyrs, passing through their baptism of
blood, wounded and bruised hasten to the feet of
Him whose sceptre is full of mercy, and whose
touch alone can heal ; the man of sin broken, des-
pairing of conquest, prays only for existence ; cling-
ing to the skirts of this vast army of Gentiles, the
sons of Abraham, the dreadful imprecation of their
fathers, "His blood be upon us," expiated, read
with purged vision the glowing predictions of their
prophets of Jesus the Son of God ; while over ten
thousand towns and cities floats the peaceful ban-
ner of the Anglo-Saxon and American church.

Is this a vision too bright, too wonderful, too
glorious for your faith to discern through the short
interval of fifty years 1 Spirits of the departed ! ye
who saw this Board organized with much travail,
and many tears, while the darkness rested so thickly
upon the world, that you could scarcely discern the
Star of Bethlehem slowly rising amidst its gloom ;
I summon you from your thrones and your crowns ;
I call upon you to look on us, to answer us this
night ; tell me, ye saints in glory, is this scei^e the
angels love to behold within this temple, is this
great work of missions already begun, these pre-
parations for COD quest so vast and ripe, these
thousands of converts in foreign lands, this Bible
translated into one hundred and forty languages,

54

these schools and seminaries to train young converts
for the ministry where, when ye lived, the idols
reigned supreme, this education and marshaling of
our American and British Zion for the evangeliza-
tion of the world ; answer me, is this to you less
wonderful, less glorious than is the. scene I have
just unfolded to our vision 1 ? I see them come!
Mills, with his youthful brow all radiant ; Judson,
with his gray locks crowned with glory ; and Hall
and Newell and Fisk, ye come but oh ! ye stay
not to answer ; back to the throne upon the sea of
glass ye fly ; your hearts, too full for utterance in
mortal ears, break forth in praise to Him who sits
upon that throne. " Now is come the kingdom of
our Lord ; the earth shall be filled with the knowl-
edge of the glory of the Lord. And the ransomed
of the Lord shall return and come to Zion, with
songs and everlasting joy upon their heads ; they
shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sigh-
ing shall flee away. Their sun shall no more go
down, nor their moon withdraw itself, for the Lord
shall be their everlasting light, and the days of
their mourning shall be ended."

\

Friends of the Lord Jesus, friends of the dying
heathen, missionaries of Christ returned for a sea-
son from your glad toils, fathers and mothers whose
sons and daughters are far away preaching the
gospel to the benighted or whose dust lies min-
gled with the dust of nations not yet saved, minis-
ters of Jesus gathered from all parts of this land,
young men and maidens with hearts beating with
new-born love for the Savior, aged saints whose

55

eyes have seen the sun which shone on this land
before it had sent one missionary to the foreign
field, I bid you welcome ; with you I hail the morn-
ing, and rejoice that God permits us to see this day,
to live amidst these vast preparations for the
coming of his Son to glory. Let us with one heart
circle his throne with anthems of praise. ' Now
unto the King immortal, invisible, the only wise
God, and to Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, be honor, and power, and
glory, for ever and ever.' AMEN.

1 4. so

SWIFT HALL UBKAR

I

THE UNIVERSITY Ol- CHIC