It is He--the Captain of our salvation--who hath won for us these victories. It is He who hath slain the giants of evil in our ranks; who hath stopped the lions' mouths; who hath inspired us to go forward without fear. It is He, not the historic Christ of Galilee, who slept in a borrowed tomb, but the larger Christ of the centuries, who stands in our midst with the glory-light upon his radiant brow, pointing to the larger years before us which beckon us on. If the new century now beginning is to write new and grander chapters in our history than those already recorded, we must apprehend more fully the passion of the Christ and the place of the church in its fulfillment. Our God expects that the hundred years ahead "shall be as much more abundant in effort, intelligent in zeal and glorious in achievement," as the century which began with the "Declaration and Address" surpassed that which went before it. The past is swallowed up in eternity. We have waited for the vision; behold, He goeth before us!

      Never was the presence of the Christ more manifest among the nations; never were his mighty steppings more felt throughout the earth. The Government upheavals in Russia, China and [444] Turkey, the marked moral and commercial reforms in America, the great revivals sweeping both Eastern and Western hemispheres, are indications that Christ is leading his armies in the great forward movement, and that leaven of his teachings is at work in all lands.

      We who believe that to us, as a people, was accorded the honor of inaugurating the movement of Christian union among the peoples of God, may lift up glad hearts of hope and expectation, for the fulfillment of our Master's prayer draweth nigh--nigher, perhaps, than we dream. "There is a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry-trees" and every rustle of the leaves whispers unity.

      The World's Endeavor Convention at Agra, India, next month, and the preparations for the World Missionary Conference to be held next June in Edinburgh, Scotland, are but indications of the increasing momentum of this movement.

      And we, the favored people of God, standing in the glorious liberty wherewith Christ hath freed us, needing no creed revision, no wordy explanation of doctrines formulated by men, what indications are seen in us, that we have sounded the dominant note of this great onward movement?

      The outlook is full of promise. Never have we so proved our right to exist as the chosen people of God, as in these last days when we have given the King's business our urgent attention and bent ourselves to our God-given tasks. This great assembly, and the record of the offerings poured into our missionary treasuries, are eloquent tributes to our interest in world-wide evangelization.

      What a noble array of leaders has risen up at the call of the King to lead the church to further conquest, "of devout men a great number, and of honorable women not a few"! Greybiel, Boyd, Ewing; the Whartons, Meigs, Garsts, Dyes, Sheltons; our princely young martyr, Dr. Loftis, the latest to fall, and scores of other illustrious names which are written in the book of God's remembrance and in redeemed hearts forever. How the ringing echo of these heroic lives thrills us like the calling of a mighty wind! No weak-kneed Christian, these, who have poured out their life-blood in labor and travail that the kingdom of God may come. It calls for the sternest stuff of which mortals are made to make a life decision involving toil, hardship, constant sacrifice. These are our stalwarts, our spiritual Calebs and Joshuas who have gone forth to capture the strongholds, the outposts, equipped only with faith in God and

MRS. L. KELLY.

less than a handful of men. Let us thank God for a "type" of gianthood to which all be believers may both aspire and attain." Let us pause to voice our gratitude for the inspiration of the lives of our glorified ones, whose names are written in the "Westminster Abbey" of our memories; whose example of holiness, heroism, humility has saved us from our lesser selves to a holy fellowship of service; whose hands still beckon us up the steeps of duty, till love shall crown our efforts on the shining tablelands of God.

      While the outlook is fill of hope, our eyes must not be blinded to the conditions which threaten our strength and peace. There is danger that zeal for numbers shall outrank our wisdom in the patient instruction that leads to transformed lives.

      If the fathers of the church were great preachers and debaters, the mothers of the church were great pray-ers, and the fragrance of the morning and evening incense was kept in their lives by unseen censers, while the life of the church was kept in vital touch with its unseen Head. Shall we be true to the larger plea of the advancing Christ who waits to convert his church into a dynamo of life-saving power? Shall we be true to the larger position God is forcing us to take by virtue of the [445] vantage-ground gained through our proclaimed principles in the past? Shall we go forward, achieving the larger victories which our present strength prophesies shall be ours? How can it be otherwise?

      Then, to your knees, O Israel! Let the fathers and mothers be true to their priestly function in every family. Let the altar fires be rekindled in every home. Let the word of our God be restored to its primitive place and power in our hearts and lives. There are many paths "which wind and wind," but only one which "shineth more and more unto the perfect day." Many are running to and fro and knowledge is increased, but wisdom ever waits to hear the voice of God. False Christs are crying, "Lo, here!" "Lo, there!" but there remaineth but One who has dispelled earth's midnight with heaven's glory, and caused life to spring from the bosom of death.

      He waits to enter the throne-room of our lives, as we have accorded him the supremacy in our profession of faith.

      Can it be truly said of us that we are God's experiment before the world in Christian union? Then let us hasten to fill in and cover over every unsightly rent in our household of faith with the wonderful love of God, and learn to sing again with fresh vigor and meaning this old favorite of our fathers:

      The machinery of our movement has become so splendidly equipped it may be said we have reached the very flower of perfection in church organization. It now remains for us to grow so large in our intelligent sympathy that the whole harmonious plan shall be seen by us in the working of every part, that no partisan spirit shall be tolerated. Our royal family of missionaries laboring under whatever board, in whatever field, should be accorded equal honor and recognition in our loving thought and prayer. They are our "live wires" connecting the church with the divine batteries of heaven, and saving us from the paralysis of selfishness.

      It shall be the church of to-day shorn of its weakness, divested of its angularities, stripped of its ease and sinful display of wealth--all schism, all bitterness swallowed up in the one consuming passion of spreading the redeeming, uplifting gospel of the Son of God.

      It shall be a church filled with a positive, resistless purity of life, which not only escapes pollution itself, but wrestles with "whatever defileth or worketh abomination or maketh a lie." A purity "so assertive and contagious that impurity and corruption can not co-exist along with it."

      Do you charge me with painting too idealistic a picture to be realized in our present-day conditions? I would bring before you the church in Africa, which is so nearly the pattern of its great prototype founded on Pentecost that we stand in amazement before its triumphs. We marvel that such grace of character can be carved from the flinty rock of heathenism in ten brief years. With every member a total abstainer from tobacco and liquor; tithing the minimum standard of all giving; with every tenth man in Bolenge and every fifth man in Manyeka a missionary, these noble Christians stand as an open rebuke to the cheap type of Christianity filling our Laodicean churches in America. They are "black, but comely." Oh, ye sons and daughters of Jerusalem, and except we repent quickly, they will sweep into the kingdom of heaven before us. Behold, God hath chosen the weak things of the world, and things that were despised, to prove the might of his transforming power in lives wholly surrendered to his will, that "no flesh shall glory in his presence."

      These triumphs of grace from all our mission fields are the seal of God's approval upon us as we enter in earnest upon our heaven-sent mission of world-wide conquest.

      Shall we fulfill our destiny as the [446] crowning effort of God for the unification of the church? as the chosen heralds of God for the proclamation of his mighty gospel throughout the earth? Then let this Centennial celebration mark the birth-hour of a new spiritual era in the life of the church! May the Lord Christ lay his cooling hands upon us that our fevered pulses may grow quiet; that the scales of pride, narrowness, bigotry may fall from our eyes and we may see him, our incomparable Leader, and our place in the fair design of his glorious plan, as he calls out his church from among the churches and from all peoples and kindreds, tribes and tongues, that he may present unto himself a glorious bride, having no spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing, but shall be holy and without blemish.

      Let the bride hasten to array herself in her robes of fine linen, pure and bright, for the bridegroom waits!

[CCR 444-447]