The Christ-age was an age of great plans and purposes. The peasant of Nazareth not only foretold a day when every knee should bow and every tongue confess that he was King of a new kingdom, but also led his disciples to work and to pray for the coming of that kingdom. Such plans made by one who, while on earth, owned not a spot whereon to lay his head, who died with but a handful of followers among a despised people, were not the wild dreams of a fanatic, but the purpose of one of more than mortal power. Our age is an age of vindication for the man of Galilee, an age of victory for the kingdom he proclaimed. In none other have the plans of Christ seen such fulfillment--his purposes such realization. While all the earth has not yet bowed in allegiance, an army invincible is marching on to victory.

      The nineteenth century opened with two hundred million soldiers of the cross, and closed with a force five hundred million strong. This is the century in which Voltaire, the Goliath of unbelief, had predicted the blotting out of the Christian name and faith. The taking

MRS. A. M. HAGGARD.

of the world for Christ is no longer a far-away dream. The record of the past one hundred years points to a time not far distant for the fulfillment of the prayer and prophecy of our Lord. If the millennial victory should demand two more centuries, the last one hundred years is the first polished gem in the triple crown of the ages. "Within this century there has been more real progress," says a distinguished statesman, "than in the ten hundred years before." In the brief span of one [415] century what changes have been wrought in this old world of ours. Its distances have been measured, its vast regions explored, even to the spot above which our pole-star stands. The earth has been bound together by highways on sea and land, and men are able to travel to its ends with the swiftness of the winds; thoughts dart across continents with lightning speed, and the people of God are given free access to every land and clime.

      With this marvelous century for our field of operation, what have we as a people done? In scanning the mountain-peaks of nineteenth-century achievements it may seem to some that we are lost in the shadows. To others, born in the days when we were a feeble folk, numbering one hundred thousand or less, our one and one-fourth million looms large. But what are we before the non-Christian world, which outnumbers us one thousand to one? What place as a people have we among the millions of the Christian world which we had planned to unite, and which still has hundreds of times our following? Are we not lost in mountain shadows? From whence came we, and whither do we go? What have we done?

      We have outgrown our religious neighbors who were old when we were born. This is significant because growth is one of the measures of progress and achievement. "It is in comparison with other religious bodies," says a student of our church history, "that the growth of the Disciples argues success or its opposite." From 1850 to the present, five of the strongest leaders of American denominational Protestantism increased less than fivefold (4.832). In the same time we lacked but a hair's breadth (9.92) of a tenfold increase! We now number almost thirteen hundred thousand (1,295,423). It took our Methodist brethren of all kinds just one hundred and twenty years to do what we have done in one hundred. If growth in numbers, and ratios of increase, are approximate measures of achievement, we are unsurpassed.

      "That a movement should secure a footing wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue is spoken, establish great educational enterprises, great publishing interests, and gather in our country alone in one century over one million and a quarter of communicants, is a phenomenon without a parallel in history." The glory of this triumph is doubled when you consider that our Methodist brethren at the same stage of development were rent into nine sects, while we came through the war of the sixties whole, in spite of the Mason and Dixon line.

      In 1776 our Congregationalist brethren led the van of American Protestantism. In 1800 they gave place to the Baptists, and in 1850 the Methodists took the lead. Just now we are running a race for this leadership that we may use it in the interests of Christ's kingdom. Already we have passed some competitors. Those in the forefront hear the pounding of our shoes and will soon feel the hot breath of a gallant runner. Ours is a winning pace. If the Methodist people of the United States in the last sixty years leaped from our present numbers to almost seven million (6,838,779), what are our possibilities in the near future with much more than double their rate of increase? When we and the millions of Baptists are once more united, what can stand against this tide of Christian union?

      While making our own splendid growth, we did much to make possible the increase of American Protestantism. The opening of the century found skepticism powerfully entrenched in American life and thought. Shiploads of its literature were landed upon our shores. Few believers were found in our leading colleges. Thomas Paine died in 1809, and Robert Ingersoll, who expected to see more opera-houses built than churches, died in 1900. This skepticism is now practically dead. Its champions have no successors. On this field of battle none did more than the Disciples of Christ to win the day. When Robert Owen came like a boasting giant, stalking through the land, our religious neighbors were in dismay. Their man-made creeds and antiquated theologies counted toward defeat instead of victory. Realizing our advantage, they sent for our champions to beat back the tide of unbelief. They came saying, "You have but one book [416] to defend; we need your help." No fair-minded student of the times will deny us the foremost place among those who won this splendid victory for American Christianity. In the pulpit and the press we distinguished ourselves. On the rostrum we reigned supreme. Alexander Campbell met Robert Owen; John Sweeney met Mr. Manford; O. A. Burgess smote the enemy hip and thigh; Judge Black measured swords with Colonel Ingersoll and exposed his sophistries; Mr. Jamieson found more than his match in our own D. R. Dungan. The books of God alone will show the debt of Protestantism to these splendid defenders of the faith.

      Vitally linked with our growth was the evangelism rediscovered by Walter Scott in 1827, and first thoroughly tested in 1828. A profound student of our movement says we are "incurably evangelistic," and adds, "In accounting for the success of the Disciples of Christ, first consideration should be given to their evangelistic temper. In this they have been distinguished from all other religious peoples. Not that others have lacked it, but that they have not possessed it in the measure or form in which the Disciples had it. . . . They have put evangelism in the forefront of all their activities. The evangelistic conscience has grown deep-seated during the century." Our evangelism was radically different from that which was mightily stirring our country one hundred years ago. At point after point they show their lack of kinship, and difference in origin. Ours was born of the New Testament and is directly traceable to the day of Pentecost. It is rooted in Acts 2:38. Our evangelism, while open to certain abuses, is not only one of our greatest achievements, but also one of the greatest in modern church history.

      This evangelism has been far-reaching in its effects upon nineteenth-century Christianity.

      We are entrenched in the heart of the United States. Four-fifths of our strength lies in the Mississippi Valley--lies within the boundaries of six States, between the Missouri River and Pittsburg. Our movement is American; all other types of Protestantism came originally from beyond the seas. This is very significant in the light of that well-worn maxim, "As goes America, so goes the world."

      Loyalty to the Word has made it imperative for us to heed the marching orders of our Captain. To-day our mission stations, schools and hospitals found in "the uttermost parts of the earth" are the expression of our obedience to the last message of our King. We are spending more than twenty times as much annually upon the

DELOSS SMITH.

foreign fields as the whole Christian world spent one hundred years ago; and we have ten times as many mission workers. Our converts on these fields now number forty-five hundred every year. At the present rate of increase for Protestant missions we should have on foreign fields about three million converts in the next hundred years.

      From our worthy leader we learned to defy difficulties. In 1875, at the unveiling of the Florentine marble bust of Alexander Campbell, Judge Black said, "Standing behind a steam-engine, even a weak man may make some progress in removing mountains, but he who rends and scatters them abroad with his naked hands belongs undoubtedly to the breed of Titans."

      Our poverty as a people has not only retarded rapid missionary development, but has affected our educational problem. The Disciples of Christ are educational, both because of their Presbyterian origin, and because the Bible and education are inseparably linked together. Our educational plants are valued at $3,500,000, and have about $2,000,000 endowment.

      Our plans and purposes for the future demand colleges and universities of the very highest rank. Leadership can not be divorced from scholarship. No law is better established than this.

      Our position upon Christian union is probably a greater achievement than [417] all of the present fruits indicate. The prayer of our Lord is a prophetic warning that the world will remain in unbelief until the gospel is presented by a united Christianity. Although some pious and belated souls stoutly deny its divided state, Christianity is not only wastefully, but disastrously, divided. We can go further in our indictment, and say that these divisions are criminal, because through them many stumble and lose the way of life. This sin and crime of a divided Christianity will sooner or later bring world-wide evangelism to a standstill and confront it with work it can not do.

      In our plea, the Bible and Christian union are inseparable. Their linking is necessary, organic and vital. In thus joining them together our fathers were guided by marvelous insight, or by perfect faith, or by both insight and faith. In any case they could do nothing better, were the task before them for the first time this very hour. While archæology has taught us a hundred things about the Bible our leaders did not know, it is still our mothers' Bible--it is the Bible of the great Reformation.

      To produce the oneness for which Jesus prayed, power is needed as well as authority. The chief power upon which God depends is life-power. It is that life-power which will sometime fill the world, as have God's kingdoms of animal and vegetable life. Through the vital power of his new life-kingdom, God will grow human nature out of its imperfection into the divine likeness. As he perfects roses and lilies in one life-kingdom, he will perfect human nature in another. Imperfect human nature, in the exercise of its right of private judgment, has created different schools of interpretation. But when all Christians are one, as the Father and Son are one, these differences will be impossible.

      Our founders coined the motto, "Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent." In spite of its abuses, no greater phrase was ever uttered by man. It expresses the foundation upon which we rest; let it be the star in the east for the wise men of to-morrow. Nothing else can lead the world to the Christ in his crowning glory.

      As seed of the most potent life-force known to God, the Bible insures true liberty against blind conservatism. When Luther threw off the authority of the Dark Ages for the authority of the Bible, life and liberty triumphed. When our fathers threw off the authority of human creeds and took their stand upon that of the Bible, and the Bible alone, true freedom won a great victory.

      In progress and achievement we should not hesitate to be measured by the greatness of our great men. We present the names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell; of Barton Warren Stone, Walter Scott and Isaac Errett. We add the name of James A. Garfield, and that of Jeremiah Black, who was a tower of strength in the Presidential Cabinet just before the immortal Lincoln took the helm of state. We include Governor Bishop, of Ohio, and Governor Drake, of Iowa, with many business and professional men, besides our missionaries, like Royal Dye and Garst and Wharton.

      We do not claim that the great, big, busy world has written these names in her hall of fame, but we do claim that some of them are great and good enough to be thus written. Oftentimes it is true that the greater the leader, the longer he must wait for his recognition by the world. In confident expectation we await the verdict of time, believing it will do for Alexander Campbell what it did for Shakespeare in the realm of literature--make him the pole-star of his century.

      Over and over we have recounted our achievements. We have retraced the steps in the progress of our Restoration movement. Honor without stint has been paid to those who so bravely gave both heart and life that we might have liberty in Christ Jesus. Reformation is never joyous, but grievous. Its pathway is rugged and wet with tears. Heartache and sacrifice, weariness and disappointment, mark its course. In this fellowship of suffering and triumph let us not be forgetful of the pioneer mothers of our movement. So quietly did they love and serve that history has no large place for them. Certain are we that on God's roll of sainted womanhood are written in letters of gold the names of these [418] handmaidens of the Lord. Deep was the devotion of Alexander Campbell for his mother. These words written to his wife, Salina, measure the worth of many others. He said: "You are my fellow-soldier, my true yokefellow, my partner in all my labors in the cause of religion and humanity, and, therefore, as you share in my toils and self-denials, I pray that you may equally partake in the eternal rewards and enjoyments."

      It was not till 1874 that God in his providence pointed out a larger work to the daughters of these pioneer women. With hearts of gratitude to him who redeemed womankind, not with silver and gold, but with precious blood, timid women were led forth into a wonderful field of service. You know the story of our Christian Woman's Board of Missions, and how God has led us on till the ends of the earth are feeling the power of our united and consecrated effort. Not least upon the glorious record of nineteenth-century achievement is the work wrought by woman for the furthering of Christ's kingdom. Of all the forces and factors few have been more potent for good in home and church than the missionary spirit among our Christian women. The hundreds and thousands of dollars poured yearly into our treasury, carrying the gospel to both home and foreign lands, is but a part of the blessed influence of our work. The soul enlargement, the fellowship in service, the spiritual and educational growth, can not be measured. With hearts of gratitude have we come to this Centennial gathering, praising God that we have been counted worthy to have rich fellowship in one of the greatest movements of this or any age. While all the church unite in songs of prayer and praise, our glad hosannahs complete the chorus. My sisters, had we come dumb and empty-handed to this Jerusalem feast, the very rocks would cry unto our God. But we come rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us.

[CCR 415-419]