Great Britain is the mother of nations. Two of her finest daughters are the United States of America and Australia--one on either side of the beautiful Pacific Ocean, the western shore of the one and the eastern shore of the other being laved by its blue waters.

      We who live in Australia love the "Union Jack of Old England;" we love also that flag, star-embellished, indicative of the Australian Commonwealth; we love also the Stars and Stripes of your great republic. And we love all these because the British, the American and the Australian people are really one. We are bound together by the ties of a common origin; we speak the same language; we stand for the same high degree of civilization; we are characterized with the same desire for world-wide justice; we have before us the same great ideals. "We are not divided; all one body we." May our unity become more and more apparent! May we ever join hands to promote righteousness, and maintain the peace of the world; and surely a union of the English-speaking people could insist upon and maintain world-wide peace.

      Will you permit me, on this auspicious occasion, to tell you a little of your sister across the Pacific, and of the great Restoration plea in that land?

      I. AUSTRALIA. The continent of the Southern Seas, which I have the honor to represent to-day, has a coast line of ten thousand miles, and three hundred square miles of area to every mile of coast line. It is thirty-three times as large as Great Britain, eleven times as large as Germany, four-fifths of the size of the whole of Europe, more than two-thirds of the size of the United States of America. The largest island in all the world, but an island-continent is Australia--a country of no insignificant [366] dimensions. At present there is a population of only 4,296,000, but one does not need prophetic foresight in order to see the time when that population will be multiplied by five and by ten, and still the cry being raised for more.

      Australia has some of the finest agricultural lands in all the world. Mineral wealth is there in rich profusion; mining output grew from £8,611,000 in 1871 to £24,193,000 in 1905. Australia has 15,741 miles of railways, and another thousand in course of construction; she has 48,073 miles of telegraph lines; the value of her imports last year was £99,000,000, and of her exports, £121,000,000.

      Sydney is the oldest city in this land; it was founded in 1788. Nearly forty years later Melbourne started its prosperous career. Both of these cities have over one-half million population--Sydney leading by about thirty thousand. In Sydney there are 193 miles of electric street-car lines. One can ride as far as two miles on these for one penny (two cents). Last year these cars kept 5,047 men in constant employ, carried 172,000,000 passengers, earned £1,012,000, and 42,000,000 units of electricity were generated to run them.

      II. THE RESTORATION PLEA IN AUSTRALIA. The commencement of the cause we love in the great Southland is due to the efforts of faithful, sturdy brethren from the British Islands, who on going there at once set up the Lord's table, unfurled the standard of truth, and often amid discouragements carried on the work, laboring for a number of years without the aid of supported preachers. But while we owe the beginning of the work to the old brethren of Great Britain, we owe much in the matter of fostering care and aggressive evangelism to brethren from America. From your land have come to us such men as Earl, Surber, Gore, Geeslin, Carr, Haley, Maston, Houchins and Morro, all of whom did splendid work. Older brethren are never tired of telling of the crowds that flocked to hear Bro. Earl in St. George's Hall, Melbourne, and of the great stir his visit to Adelaide created; nor of the extension of the work to Melbourne suburbs and to the capital of Tasmania through O. A. Carr; nor of the silvery and moving oratory of J. J. Haley. And we younger Disciples know personally of the great blessing to the cause that the work of the Christlike Gore, the heroic Maston, and the educationally inspiring Morro has been.

      From the British churches we have inherited a sturdy loyalty to the New Testament order of things; from the American brethren an intense yearning for the unity of God's people, coupled with a spirit of earnest evangelism.

      As the child of both, the cause in Australia would stretch out its hands to both Great Britain and America, and say, "Let us be one in our efforts to restore New Testament Christianity, in order to Christian unity, in order to the evangelization of the whole earth."

      Exclusive of the 3,800 in the dominion of New Zealand, there are now 19,000 Disciples in Australia, who support some ninety preachers. The number of the Disciples has doubled in the last fifteen years. In Adelaide, where the cause goes back to the later forties, there are ten churches and three missions with 3,400 members; in Sydney, where the work began in 1851, there are fourteen churches with 2,837 members; in Melbourne, where a start was made in 1853, there are thirty-five churches and 4,900 members.

      Hitherto we have largely depended upon your institutions of learning to train our young men for the great work of gospel proclamation, and many after a course of study in your land have come back and have done splendid work; for all that you have done for us in this matter we thank you. Others came to these shores for an education, with the result that you have retained them and we have lost their services. I need not mention the attraction. Perhaps the service that these men are rendering to the cause in America will partly repay you for all you have done for Australia, but we are anxious that the repayments shall now cease, and so in Melbourne we have established an Australasian College of the Bible, in which there are at present over thirty young men studying to fit themselves for the work of preachers. This is an institution that has had a splendid start, is worthy of the great cause with [367] which we are identified, and in the future will become great.

      Through the efforts of the beloved and lamented A. B. Maston, we have a publishing-house, from which is issued our one church paper--the Australian Christian. This house sends out, I believe, more tracts and at a cheaper rate than any other similar institution in connection with the brotherhood. It is viewed, not as a private business concern, but as the property of the churches.

      We are doing a fairly extensive foreign missionary work. The New Zealand churches are doing splendidly in the region of Bulawayo, South Africa, where three white missionaries are supported. The Australian churches support as living links, through the Foreign Christian Missionary Society of America, Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Davey in Japan, Rosa L. Tonkin in China, and Mary Thompson in India. But, in addition to supporting these, we have established two stations--one at Beramati, in the Bombay Presidency, in India, where three white missionaries are at work and to which place two or three others will shortly be sent; the other on Pentecost Island, in the New Hebrides, where we have two white missionaries and about twelve native helpers, and where some three hundred souls have been baptized into Christ during the past year. This work is done, not through a society, as with you, but by a committee appointed annually by representatives of all the churches in conference assembled. From this imperfect statement of our missionary operations in "the regions beyond" you will see that your brethren beneath the Southern Cross are not idle and indifferent, but are pushing the work and helping to hasten the time when all shall know our King. And our missionary offerings and the missionary spirit are growing every year, and will now, I think, not suffer in comparison with that found in our American churches.

      And now, brethren, what more shall I say? Through me, to-day, nineteen thousand of those of "like precious faith" beyond the sea cordially greet you; tell you of their interest in and prayer for the great work you are doing; bid you "go forward" to do greater and more heroic things than you have yet done; wish you God's richest blessing and abundant success in all your efforts for him.

[CCR 366-368]