Forty years in Arabian deserts changed Israelitish clans into a nation; the mobs were mobilized into an army which overwhelmed Canaan.

      For four decades, 1809 to 1849, our movement had no missionary organization. Unfortunately, this wilderness experience of forty years did not make an army of the Reformers. Theirs was the individualistic method. It was the

W. J. WRIGHT.

duelist engaged in mortal combat. There was no army. Each individual fought in his own way. A man was pressed by that awful imperative, "Go, preach," and he went!

      After forty years of the guerrilla warfare, the fathers saw that the conquest of America and the lands beyond was an impossibility unless the mobs or bands were hammered into an army.

      The fathers called a convention, which resulted in the organization of the American Christian Missionary Society. It is my task to consider what this organization has done to vindicate its existence. What is its contribution to our movement?

      1. The society proved to be a pathfinder for the movement. It became necessary to show how far human accessories to the working of the church were advisable or permissible if the faith, worship and service were to be kept pure. How could we restore the church of the first century, and yet make use of agencies and methods not described in the New Testament?

      Conservative and literalist called the society an innovation and an abomination. The fathers decided that to restore in toto the apostolic church was neither wise nor Christian. They saw clearly that they wanted to restore--not its whims, caprices or eccentricities; not its community of goods or its gift of tongue or healing; not its abuse of the Lord's Supper; not its sins set forth by St. Paul in frightful catalogue. They wanted its faith, but cared nothing for its opinions; they wanted its two significant ordinances, immersion and the Supper, but cared nothing for "baptism for the dead," nothing for the "holy kiss," the washing of feet or the anointing with oil. They wanted its Christly ideals, but prayed to be delivered from its folly. How find the essential Christ and be free? This was the task.

      And the American Society was the pathfinder! Out of the war waged came this principle of the movement. In Christ we are free to do everything which helps the individual or which builds up the body without abridging the liberty which other individuals enjoy in him. Without application of this principle, the movement must at length have been lost in the desert sand of sects. The organization of the American Christian Missionary Society saved the movement!

      The pioneer society solved the problem of voluntary co-operation of individuals and congregations without becoming judge or court, and without the development of either a hierarchy or an ecclesiasticism. It showed the multitude how to work with the freedom of the individual.

      The society has also been the great educator in our movement. For sixty years the evangelists, pastors and missionaries of the society have been at [180] work. What countless communities they invaded! What darkness they dispelled; what intellectual and spiritual uplift they brought to thousands of communities! What saner and better views of Christ arid his gospel they disseminated! New people to hear the plea of the Disciples, first heard it from the missionaries of the Home Society.

      What a character-builder, too, must be a society which reports additions by hundreds of thousands! Here is a community of depraved men and degraded women who have long shut God out of their lives. Into this moral cesspool comes a worker of our society, and the vile creatures hear and heed the cleansing truth. The whole community turns from its idols to serve the living God.

      But the cessation of evil is only a good negative. True, it rescues men from being destroyers and from evil living, and even if it should go no further, has done well. Yet to cease doing evil is but the beginning of the whole task. Our missionaries have taught a mighty army to do well, and those taught ones have become the positive, constructive force in each community. Toughs and terrors in countless communities have been transformed into messengers of light; drunkards have been reclaimed; outcasts lost to all good--dead to self, society and God--have been found, rescued, made alive again--have been clothed and put into their right mind. They are the useful and responsible characters of their communities; they lead the moral forces and head the forward, upward movements; they hold and develop the territory taken for the kingdom of God.

      You may recall a popular poem of ten years ago:

      The warm, throbbing, brotherly note of the poem made every hearer take it to his heart. How truly like the Master to live among men and to help them over the hard places!

      Such a friend is the American Society. Was one straitened or did one suffer? The society was straitened and suffered too. It is that described by Bryant:

is it the wind and the wave falling upon Galveston? Scarce have all the billows gone over the proud city, till the society extends first aid! Does the earth tremble and heave, and do the labored monuments of man's genius melt like sand houses on the seashore? Do starvation and pestilence stalk forth after the destruction of the proud city of the Golden Gate? From our headquarters in Cincinnati at once goes up the cry, "Help, men of Israel!" And help cometh to San Francisco.

      This, then, is our first society--pathfinder, pioneer, teacher, helper, warrior--for she fought and won the battle for co-operative work by the Disciples of Christ. From her loins, in her conventions, sprang all our other noble, philanthropic organizations which act on behalf of the brotherhood in dispensing the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.

      It is not too much to say that 50 per cent. of all the real churches of our brotherhood were started and fostered by the Home Society, and that two-thirds of all our churches have been encouraged and helped at times by this organization.

      The history of our movement for sixty years is largely the history of this society. Consider what our brotherhood would be without these churches literally made by the Home Society. These churches, having been planted and watered by missionary enterprise, themselves in turn plant and water others. The conclusion is irresistible. The churches established, taught and [181] maintained by the American Society are, in the main, those exhibiting the real missionary spirit among us to-day. And how strikingly near the number of churches established by the mother society--3,600--is the number contributing annually to the organized work of our brotherhood.

      But our greatest contribution to the movement is necessarily good and great men. God's constant effort in the world is to bring manhood into its whole estate, and in this task we are his volunteer colaborers. We find and restore the lost; we take the wastrel and outcast and remake him so that God affirms of the new creation that he is "very good."

      Another contribution is the great things our missionaries have suffered for Jesus' sake. It is the missionaries chiefly who keep alive the heroic spirit of the church, and who fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Let one story of missionary heroism suffice. A small band of brethren in a city of forty thousand persons applied for aid in the sum of $300 per annum. They agreed to raise $50 per month for the preacher, and our contribution would make $75. The minister's fathers for four generations were German Lutheran preachers. He was a man of thorough education and culture, and, as a Lutheran preacher, might easily have commanded double the salary offered. We sent our $25 per month, but, as is often the case, the church failed to keep its sacred obligation to him, and became far in arrears with his living. He would not go in debt. The barest necessities of life appeared on the table. The family moved into one room in the humble cottage and kept a scant fire in an open grate. There came a bitter winter day, when one scuttle held all their coal, and when their diet was reduced to bread and water. On the bed in the one warm room lay the white-faced wife, and at her side wailed the new-born babe. A telegram was handed in. It read, "Mother died last night. Will be buried to-morrow. Come to the funeral." How go on a considerable journey? He had not even streetcar fare. And his wife and babe--who would care for them? Who provide more than bread and secure more fuel? He knelt and prayed the prayer of faith, and God opened the windows of heaven to pour out blessing upon his hero. The doorbell rang, and the postman handed in a letter. It was from the American Society. We had heard of his distress, and had advanced three months' appropriation. That brought more coal and proper food and care for the silent, suffering, dependent ones; that paid his way to mother's funeral, and brought him back with new heart for his task, in which he acquitted himself as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

      Another contribution is our growing sense of solidarity. That we are in any large sense a brotherhood, is due in great measure to the American Society. To hold the same opinions, to be of the same craft or profession, to share beliefs, or even hold common religious faith, does not constitute a brotherhood. When these men of the same craft bind themselves together, when they unite to fight jointly the battle which is impossible for the individual, they become a union or brotherhood.

      In seeking to restore the primitive church, our fathers decided on the autonomy and independence of the local congregation. There could be no pope, no "Historic Episcopate," no General Assembly, presbytery or conference to legislate or act with authority for the churches.

      Now, if the independence of these churches was not to become absolute indifference, a vital bond of union must be found. The organization of the American Society supplied the needed bond. It brought together those with the common faith and the common purpose. It made enterprise a common rather than as individual one. It fused their hearts in Christian love and work. The Missionary Society made us a brotherhood.

      And we have given length of days to the movement. Let a movement exist for self, and its days are numbered. It is inconceivable that our movement should have endured had it not been for the altruistic, philanthropic impulse and enthusiasm brought to it by the organized missionary propaganda. Who would be willing, on any condition, to exchange position and prospects with [182] the "Ironside," Anti-Missionary Baptists, or our own non-progressive brethren? They were indeed to become a "disappearing brotherhood"! And from just that fate were we saved by the establishment of the American Society.

      It heightened all the religious experience and deepened all the human sympathies of our people, once they became missionary propagandists; and when they proclaimed through their first society that they held in trust the gospel for the whole race of man, every human possibility was open to them, be cause that fully identified the movement with God's eternal purpose manifested in Christ Jesus.

      Finally, the society has contributed courageous, progressive leadership to the movement. Hearts of oak had the men who launched this ship. Full well they knew that some, like John Mark, lacked the courage to proceed; full well they foresaw inevitable and irrepressible conflict. But they were not the kind to "wait till Cæsar's wife should meet with better dreams."

      The fathers would make the venture because conditions demanded it and made it right. Undismayed by noise or argumentum ad hominem, unterrified by threats, unmoved by vituperation, false accusation and abuse, they followed a progressive program; and while others filled the air with noise and dust, they rescued the fallen, the forlorn and lost, and by their works gained for the movement the right to live and do and grow.

      Let the grand old organization, whose contributions to our movement are most numerous and of greatest import, continue as pathfinder and pioneer in new fields; let her educate laggards as to what is best for the movement and for the kingdom of God; let her bear burdens for others, and so fulfill the law of Christ; let her add new and stronger bonds to our sense of brotherhood, and make us like the federal union, "one and indivisible."

      Let the society count the cost, and, when assured that a proposed course is right, pursue it in the strength of God! Let her reveal the courage of the fathers, and then the leadership that is justly hers will again be accorded to her by all whose hearts are right. Then shall she be first, not only in time and in good works, but also in the hearts of the brethren.

[CCR 180-183]