I am charged by the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church to bring to you the greetings and the godspeed of that fellowship. And I am sure I am delighted to speak to such an audience, because I see you are alive. I have a way of judging of a live congregation, and I knew you were alive as soon as I entered the hall at the other end and heard you singing.

      Now, I am glad to bring you the greetings of the United Presbyterian Church, because the church thought it was the becoming thing on this [487] auspicious anniversary of yours for the churches of Christ that are working for the same thing to bring you their greetings. And then, they thought it especially appropriate that the United Presbyterian Church should do so, because we are related. We are blood relations. For you must remember that your Thomas Campbell, who originated your movement, was born in the fellowship from which the United Presbyterian Church sprang. Away back in the old country, in Ireland, he was a Seceder, and so were we then. And he came to this country after he had been trained in the Seceder Church, and over yonder in Washington County ministered to congregations of the Associate Church, and we were Associate. And so I say I feel like bringing our congratulations to you. From what I have known of some of your men, especially working with them on behalf of civic righteousness, I thought they had some of the features of our church. Now, I do not know whether that is complimentary or not. There are some things you can

J. T. McGRORY.

not do, however, and some features you can not change. It is in your bone and in your veins, and you can not get away from it. And, anyway, there are some of the features I am sure that no man would want to have eliminated from his faith. The rugged courage and devotion and righteousness of those old Scotch-Irish ancestors of yours and ours--none of us are ashamed of those things. Those men, men who, like Paul, periled their lives, those who went to the rack and the gibbet and the thumbscrew and to death for the faith they had on behalf of righteousness, those men who bathed all the heather and enriched all the soil of both Scotland and Ireland by the most precious patriotic blood that ever ran hot in patriot hearts or leaped living from patriot veins to defend a cause--you do not want to change the features such as you bear of those fathers. So I congratulate you to-night that we and you have the same ancestry.

      Now, maybe the reason we do not look so much alike, as we might, is because you have grown so much bigger than we, and features grow a little larger under those circumstances. Well, you have grown. There is not any question about that; marvelous development in a hundred years from a little handful of men to a million, from a little corner of a country town to the very ends of the earth.

      We want to talk about the things in which we are like each other, not the things in which we differ. And we are like each other in so many respects that I am glad to talk to you about it. First of all, we are like each other in this, that we believe in Christian unity and Christian union when in the providence of God that can come. Now, the United Presbyterian Church is not only a believer in it, but it is a splendid illustration of Christian union and Christian unity. You know we are not a very big body; we are very small among the great churches of the Lord. The fact is, there are only 160,000 of us, all told. But, then, you must remember we are only half as old as you are. Just fifty-one years ago, in Pittsburg, two bodies, divided for a century or more, and they had grown from little congregations of other bodies, came together on this basis, friends: The truth of God and forbearance in love. While it is true there were some other things considered, yet that was fundamental, the truth of God and forbearance in love. Fifty years! Let me tell you that bond of union had been tested as severely as any bond of union could be before that church was twenty-five years old. There came the question that had agitated our ancestors for four hundred years, as to whether or not we should use instrumental music in the worship of God. And you know what the convictions of Scotch-Irish people are, and they had them on both sides. That question came up, and they put it to a vote in the General Assembly; and, when they came to a vote; out of a vote of 1,200 from the presbyteries, there was just a difference of eight votes, 612 on one side and 620 on the other. [488] And they had agreed to live together according to the truth of God and through forbearance in love. And do you know there were some men that were ready to spill their blood in regard to that question, and yet, thank God, so real was that bond that, although it was decided by simply eight votes out of twelve hundred, that church did not lose a congregation and it did not lose a preacher, and they are more harmonious to-day than they ever were. So you see we are not only preaching it, as my brother said, but we are also practicing it.

      In the second place, we agree with you in this, that where God speaks, we speak; and we believe that God speaks in the Bible, as you do. We stand on the basis of the word of God as the sole rule of faith and conduct for men.

      Brothers, you know to-day it is a real question among some people and among some denominations of Christians whether God has spoken at all or not. Well, there is not any blasting at the Rock of Ages in our church, in our pulpit, in our synod, or in our schools. There are no traitors inside the walls getting ready to deliver the stronghold to the enemy. Why, I would just as soon that the Government of the United States would install over its men-of-war and in its forts men that they knew were traitors to the flag, as to have in the church men that were traitors to the old Book. Brethren, like you we have a Bible that has yet sixty-six books in it. And we have a Decalogue that has ten commandments in it. And we have a gospel that has a Christ in it.

      Then, in the third place, we agree with you in the command of our Lord to evangelize the whole world. Why, brethren, we are a little proud of the fact that it is one of our own that is going up and down over this country, and now even to Europe, to stir the men of the country and the church to evangelize the world in this generation. You know J. Campbell White is one of us, and J. Campbell White stirred our own church until, little body as we are, we had a convention here, the first convention for men that was held in the country, where we had more than a thousand delegates in Pittsburg four years ago, and organized the men of the church. And so we believe in the evangelization of the world. And we are doing something, and we are rather proud of the fact that we are a missionary church. May I just tell you a word about our missions? We have just two great missions. We have three, but one of them belongs to one of the others. We have a mission in India and a mission in Egypt. And that is an evidence of the unity of the church, that they have assigned given territory to bodies of Christians to evangelize. Now, mind you, we are only fifty years old, and we only began to shake the seed a little over fifty years ago; but in India we have 17,300 converts, and we have 15,000 young people in our schools. In Egypt we have 10,000 converts and over 20,000 students in our schools; and last year we had 2,000 converts in India and 800 converts in Egypt. Why, the church, last year, expended in its missionary enterprises $450,000. All told, last year, for all purposes, this little body of Scotch-Irish people raised about two and one-half millions of dollars. Now, you will be proud of this, you preacher men, that we pay our preachers per capita more than any other church in the United States. They get on the average over $1,700 a year. So we treat them pretty well.

      Just one thing more. We believe with you in the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, when the Lord's prayer is answered that they all shall be one. And we believe the last irresistible argument for the conversion of the world is the unity of the people of God. The greatest prayer that ever went up, sobbing from this world's darkness and sorrow, yonder into the light and brightness about the throne of glory, was the prayer of Jesus on the night he was betrayed, when he said, "That they may all be one, that the world may believe." And, I say, the world never will be one for Christ until God's people are one. Now, we might divide as to just where they should come together, but this is true, brethren, they will come together when they come to Jesus Christ. We look back beyond Luther and beyond Calvin and beyond Knox and beyond Wesley and beyond Campbell to Jesus Christ.

[CCR 487-489]