CLOSING SESSION, by Charles Reign Scoville, pp. 601-614.
• Address on the Rescue Mission by Melvin Trotter (Presbyterian), pp. 601-606.
• Address on the Evangelization of the World by J. Campbell White (Secretary of Layman's
  Movement), pp. 606-612.

      The chairman announced that there would be an overflow meeting in the vestry, presided over by W. J. Wright.

      "The Glory Song."

      Invocation by E. E. Violett.

      Hymn, "The Way of the Cross Leads Home."

      Scripture reading and prayer by the chairman.

      Hymn No. 10.

      The chairman announced that the two meetings would be the same, the two speakers alternating, and so delivering the same addresses in both rooms. Mr. M. E. Trotter would speak first in the auditorium and Mr. J. Campbell White in the vestry.

      Hymn No. 33.

      Mr. Scoville: I feel that we should know just a word about the man who is to come before us. As a climax to this great Centennial Convention, and especially this great evangelistic day, we have just tried to hold up two great things to-day--Christ and world-wide evangelism. To-night we have a man who has gone down into the depths. He can tell it ten thousand times better than any other man. Mel Trotter has gone out of that great city where he himself was reached by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, over to a city in Michigan (Grand Rapids) and purchased one of the worst dives--theater and saloon, the whole thing run together, as such things usually are--for $47,500, paid for it, and is having one of the largest works going on there--a great class of men for Bible study, and marvelous Sunday services. And he has repaired that building until it has cost $100,000, and is doing it to go out and reach prodigal sons and daughters. Don't you think that man is worthy of coming before this Convention? [Applause.] I think he is the kind of man we want. It is one of the happiest moments of my life to know that Mel Trotter is here to-night to speak to us of the work God has called him to do. [Applause.] [Chautauqua salute.]

      Mr. Melvin Trotter: If I want to preach, I must take a text [Laughter and applause], and my brother, who is older [601] than myself, says there is always three main points to every sermon I preach. First, I take a text; second, I leave it; third, I never get back to it. I would like to read the story, a very few verses, of the man of the Gadarenes. Jesus went over to the other side when he was going out of the ship. He met a man with an unclean spirit.

      Reads from [Mark 5:1-8]

      Now, finish the story; you know it better than I do. The devils said to Jesus, "Don't send us away." There was about two thousand hogs feeding, and they said, "Send us into them;" and they had a good deal more sense than the man, because they all went and committed

M. E. TROTTER.

suicide. You know he got some clothes on him and fixed up, and then he wanted to go with Jesus, and Jesus said, "No, go back and tell your friends what great things the Lord has done for thee," and he published it throughout all Decapolis, and by the grace and help of God that is my business. I am going to publish it. When the Lord saved me, I made up my mind he would never hear the last of it. [Laughter.] And I am going to keep at it hard.

      You know there is more being done to-day to lift men in this old world than ever before. More money is being spent by Pittsburg men for libraries to better the world than all the missions in the world cost last year. Do you know, I do not know of anything that is doing very much business outside the gospel. Somehow or other they never amount to very much because no man can tame these fellows. You take a man filled with the devil, you must get the devil out of him before he'll do much business. It is mighty hard to serve God with the devil in you. Some of you know that without my telling you. Some of you have tried your very best, but it won't work. The reason I don't want whisky is because God came in and cast the old devil out, and I never have wanted it since Jesus saved me.

      Thousands of men go through my hands. I am working with men right along. I never have but one message for men, one remedy for every soul, rich and poor, old and young, short and long--"the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse from all sin." Let the devil roar. I don't care. Men are trying something new every day. I want to make this statement to begin with: there is not a drunken man in the United States that wants to be a drunkard, that wants to be drunk now, that wouldn't be sober if he could be. Another thing: there is not a prostitute in the United States that ever intended to be a prostitute; there is not a woman in the United States living in the lowest life in the houses of ill fame that would not quit if she knew how, but she doesn't know how. You can try all the remedies you please, but they don't work. You know Carnegie is building libraries, and he says, Take these hoboes into the library; they never go in. Out in Chicago, where I was converted, Jane Addams says the thing that is wanted is a good social and to change his environment. If you put a pig in a parlor, it will be a pigpen instead of a parlor. Don't forget it. I have signed temperance pledges and put on the blue ribbon when I was drunk. Ribbons are not strong enough to hold a lobster like me. It takes something bigger than that to do the business. It takes the gospel of Jesus Christ.

      We have some friends in our country that came from down some place in New England, and they come along and say to the drunk man, "You are not drunk, you just think you are; there is nothing wrong with you." [Applause and laughter.] You are not drunk at all. All that is the matter with you is, that you are running for office and don't know it. Everything is all right with you. You know we have another crowd, don't have any of 'em down here; we have 'em over in Chicago University, and they say, "Just bring out the best in you. Go on down and bring out the best." The devil was in me; that was the best I had. It is hard to bring out righteousness before God puts it in. Try anything else. Just look what is being done--libraries, social settlements, new theology, Christian Science--and [602] none of them work. What are you going to do about it? I will tell you what you can do. I discovered it on the 19th of January, 1897, after trying every possible way in the world to handle myself and could not. I was not yellow. There was a good fight left in me, even when I was saved. I even thought then that if I could get somebody to stake me for a five-cent piece I could get along. Just as long as I had a hog in my heart I had to carry swill to him. Some of you folks have a pig in your heart, and a pig has got a way of making a hog of himself, don't you forget it. Anybody knows that there is no monkeying with that pig. Just as long as he is there you will be carrying swill to him. I went to the Pacific Garden Mission, boosted in from the outside, and Jesus said, "Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit," and I have had a great time serving God ever since. I love Jesus all through, I tell you that. It's great to serve him. [Applause.]

      You can't know how a man is fighting. If I could get some of you church-members, or preachers, or evangelists, to put yourselves in place of some of these poor fellows and just picture out what they suffer, and just look into their lives, and just put yourself in their places and see how they are fighting! Some of you that use tobacco, or take a little drink, quit it for two or three days. You can't; you know you can't. [Applause.] You know you can't. Take a poor cigarette fiend. I saw some of you fellows with badges on smoking cigarettes. I would quit one or the other, don't you forget it. [Great applause.] But I will tell you one thing, when you go to quit it, then you will begin to see what it means. Some of you good women, and wives and mothers; some of you mothers here that are the wife of one husband and loved and honored, listen! could you sit down for a few minutes and just picture some girl, raised by a good mother, but now down here with the fires of hell consuming her very fiber and being, with drugs and whisky and the very lowest kind and type of sin, and if she wanted to do better, there is not a soul in whom she can find help. You won't help, you have sons. "I won't help," says another; "I have daughters." Put yourself in their place. See your daughter in that crowd, and then you will beg the mission to come down and tell them about Jesus Christ. God never intended there should be any other remedy than his Son.

      The church is moving out of the downtown district faster than you can talk. They do it because they haven't any chance to stay downtown. The membership doesn't stay down, so pretty soon they can't live down here any longer. The mission must do your work. You know missions have always had an odor about them that makes the church stand off and wonder if it is all right. Jerry McAulay was converted in prison, and his soul lit up when he saw the light of God. He just set the prison on fire. The Governor pardoned him. He went down to New York. When he saw the inconsistency of the Presbyterians--I am a Presbyterian; I wanted just to say that because I don't believe a word of it--I say, when he saw the inconsistency of the thing, he went and got drunk again, and he went back into sin and prison, and finally, about thirty-seven years ago, he opened the mission at 316 Water Street, under Brooklyn Bridge.

      About thirty-three years ago last month, Mrs. and Colonel Clark opened the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. That is where I first saw Jesus. Glory be to his name. I love the old mission. There is no spot on earth quite so dear to me. The first place I go when I get in Chicago is to go to the very spot where I fell one night and found Jesus precious to my soul and saved me from sin. Bless the Lord for missions. If Jesus Christ should come to this earth, I think he would come to the missions, where the fishing is good. I noticed wherever I went I would say I was from a mission, and at once people would freeze up and begin to wonder if you was going to touch 'em for the price. I was selling goods on the road after I was converted. I began to make some money and wear pretty good clothes. I made up my mind, after much prayer, that the church of Jesus Christ was the one to carry the gospel downtown, and I have nothing to do with a mission only as it is representing the church in the downtown district. I try to get the ministers and the churches, not the church of Christ, not the Presbyterian and Methodist or Baptist church, but all of them. [603] I think our church buildings are in wrong, anyhow. I could build a building that would suit better than the ones you build. I would not spend ten thousand dollars for a steeple.

      I made up my mind the rescue mission was God's work and it was to go downtown and do the business, and with that in view I started alone. They said I couldn't make it go. The preacher said, "I know what you are trying to do; you are trying to come in and rob me; you are trying to undermine the church." I have been ten years plugging along. It has been a hard job. I believe, by the grace of God, the churches are not afraid of me now. They were awfully scared. They said I used slang. I started downtown in a little store building in Grand Rapids. In one year we built a building. We enlarged it, and finally we bought Smith's Opera-house, and we are building that over as fast as we can get the money. We started on the first part of it and built till our money was gone. Now we have a big work for men, for working girls, women and a large Sunday-school. We have Bible classes with a membership of twenty-one hundred. That is God's work. I can't help but say this.

      God forbid that I should say the least thing unkind. But I heard a man speak this morning--stand up and rake over the coals everything that is good in your own convention. He told some awful stuff. He said the meanest lot of stuff about evangelists and your work. I know pretty nearly every evangelist in the United States. If they don't know me, I know them. I don't know a grafter in the bunch, not one. [Applause.] We all agree on this. I heard you folks applaud that man when he rapped the evangelists to-day. You don't know what you are talking about.

      We all agree up to one point. The mission can preach Jesus to save from sin, and the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse from all sin. When we get a man saved by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, we turn him over at once to the church of his choice. We make him understand that he must obey God in the ordinances of the church and he must choose that church for himself. Our work is interdenominational, not denominational nor undenominational. I can preach to Methodists as well as to the church of Christ. I want to tell you one thing: everybody that is saved believes that it takes the blood to cleanse from sin. He can be baptized after that, and he will go to the church of his choice.

      I want to say one thing of your church--you are getting more of our converts than any other church in our city. [Applause.] I absolutely stop right there. "Now," you say, "you don't go very far." That is my business. That is far enough. But you say, "Why don't you lead them on into the church?" Why don't you? That's your business. [Applause.] If I get a man converted, get him dressed up and clothed in his right mind, and get him fit for publication, it is up to you to take him in as a church-member. [Applause.] After he gets into your church you should teach that immersion is the right way to be baptized, if it is; that is your business. Mine to get 'em saved; yours to baptize 'em. Jesus doesn't want any whisky. Jesus and whisky don't mix. Nor beer either. I am going to live to see the day--I am thirty-nine years old, married--now, you sit still [laughter]--I am going to live to see the day when there will not be a saloon under the stars and stripes. [Cheers and applause.] I try to lead them along the line of Bible study. We have one Bible class that averaged sixteen hundred last year; we have twenty-one hundred enrolled members. This year we will have twenty-five hundred enrolled every week studying the Bible. [Applause.] When you get men squared away on the word of God they leave all that other stuff. I wanted something to stand on when I was converted. I was away down in sin, given up all hope. The first drink I ever took, I took in a so-called Christian home. A girl gave it to me. I went on down into sin until I gave up all hope. I tried to stop. I signed pledges and broke them inside of twenty minutes. I did not do it because I wanted to. I tried to stay sober when my baby was dying. I came home and found him dead in his mother's arms. I promised with my hand on his cold head I would never take another drink, but was drunk before the funeral was over one hour. Did it just because I couldn't help it. I took one cure after [604] another. I was given three bottles of medicine and a hypodermic syringe to take the gold cure, but I traded 'em for three drinks of whisky, and never got sober until Jesus saved me.

      One night in Chicago--it was on Jan. 19, 1897--I heard them sing, "Throw Out the Lifeline." I stopped and listened, and do you know there was a man named Tom Mackey outside boosting. He is a little man with a big testimony; a little bit of a curly-headed fellow that can talk faster than I can and murder English faster than I can. He was outside hollering, "This is the Pacific Garden Mission, brightest spot in Chicago." That song or the speech, somehow, crowded me inside, and there I heard the greatest story I ever heard in my life. I went to sleep. When they sang again I woke up and heard the testimony of a man who had been drunk and Jesus saved him. He said, "Men, listen to me, God loves you." He kept pointing his finger at me. I heard Harry Monroe give the invitation. He said something like this: "Listen, fellows; God loves you, Jesus loves you, and so do I." You know, that broke my heart. I went down knocking chairs around, wanted to get on my knees and fell instead, and there I got the glimpse of Jesus I have never lost from that instant to this. Some folks may doubt their salvation. Some say they have discovered that Genesis is a myth [laughter] and some of these things, but, bless your heart, I know that Jesus saved me. I was there when it happened. He came into my life and helped me up. They started me off to a man's home. He put me in his bed. I wasn't alone. He fixed me up, gave me a bath, and helped me get down by my bedside and pray. And when I woke up I thought I was pinched. In a moment I came to myself.

      The next day I went to work in a barber-shop. You can imagine the shape I was in. My shoes didn't need any soles. Anyhow, they didn't have 'em. Didn't want 'em because I didn't have 'em. But I went to work. The very next week my wife joined me in Chicago. I never knew until a few years after how she knew about it or how she got the money to come. She had bid me good-by on the Mississippi. She had said, "Somewhere God will stop you. When he does, remember I am still your wife. Send for me." The love of a good wife is next to the love of God. [Applause.] There is nobody can tell me Mrs. Trotter isn't just a little the best woman that ever lived and ever will live. Let me sing you a little song, "There is only one girl in the world for your uncle muh." I know it, and don't you forget it. That is the wife that God gave me, and I abused her for six years, and she lived in a drunken home until she lost everything. After I was saved, we set up housekeeping in one room in Chicago. We had everything in one room--front parlor, back parlor, dining-room, garage--everything in one room.

      Mrs. Clark gave me a Testament. I started to read. I thought the only way was to read through the first chapter, and I got into that genealogy. Let me tell you, smarty, you can't name 'em either; I'll bet Scoville can't do it. [Laughter.] I started, and finally got over to the Sermon on the Mount. I could make it out by stumbling along. I made $4.20 the first week I worked; didn't make five dollars the first week because I was not in physical condition to make five dollars a week. I had $1,800 whisky bills, and I paid every dollar of them. I will tell you one thing, if you want to know how to do business with a soup bone, write Mrs. Melvin Trotter, Grand Rapids, Mich. She could take a five-cent soup bone and we would have it for three days. We liked it all the better because it was cheaper. We would have soup the first day, and then cold meat, and hash the next day. I tell you we got along. You know, they were the best days of all our lives. God wonderfully blessed me. The man I went to work for, said one day, "Don't you want to buy this shop?" I said, "Me, buy this shop?" He said, "Yes." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "I really mean it. I have been thinking a good deal about it. You are a Christian man and seem to be getting on pretty well. I tell you what, I am going to sell it to you for $300 and you pay five dollars a week until it is paid for, and I will take a chattel mortgage." I said, "You have sold something." I paid for it and bought a larger one and [605] sold that. I would go into the streets every night and tell the story, and go down to the mission and lead poor bums to Christ. God gave me a wonderful passion for the bums down and out. I would rather put my arm around an old drunken fellow and tell him that Jesus died to save him than talk to a great audience all fixed up and ready to criticise me. I have got more converts from Bumdom than anywhere else. Some of them would bring me Christmas presents. One of the boys in prison the other day sent me a little bit of a foolish paper knife made with his own hands. He said, "Trotter, that is the first honest work I have done in my life; I want to send it, as the first token of it, to you."

      So, I sold out my business and I kept on telling the story. Then I went on the road and traveled up and down the country selling goods, my own goods, with my name on, and a $150,000 firm back of me. The first thing I knew I had the name and they the money. I had the experience and they had the money. One day Monroe telegraphed me, and said, "Will you go to Grand Rapids?" I said, "Certainly." He used to take me out as a horrible example. He would take me to do the stunt and then take up a collection and we would walk home. I was in business then. I got over to Grand Rapids and they were talking about a rescue mission; they would like to have a rescue mission. I went about winning souls for Jesus. I got in the Y. M. C. A. and had a marvelous work with young men.

      They held meetings and got a lot of men to Christ, and one night they came to me and said, "Say, we are going to call you to superintend this mission." I had never led a mission meeting in my life. I was a year and seven months in Grand Rapids before I ever read Scripture in public; couldn't read good enough. My early education was sadly neglected. I have been through Pennsylvania University; it only took a few hours to go through. I know I didn't have very much education, but I have just gone ahead. I gave the invitation, and the first ones to come forward were three women. I had never led a woman to Christ down in Pacific Garden Mission. They said, "What will we do with these fairies?" I said, "I don't know," and just led 'em to Christ like men. Gave 'em the same Scripture (Isa. 53:6). We never have our house too full to take some poor girl home. There are six hundred thousand living in houses of ill fame in the United States. It takes twelve thousand every thirty days to keep the ranks full. You know, if we can't be friends to them, where in the name of God will they turn for friends? Why don't the church save them? I have seen them come to Christ by the hundreds. Some of the best women I ever knew are women saved from the lowest life of sin. You say, "Once down, always down." You ought to be ashamed to say that. I know very well they were born with all these evil things in them, but they can be born again without any of them. [Applause.]

      Prayer by Mr. Medbury for the work of Mr. Trotter.

      Mr. Scoville: Now, brethren, we have a man of national and international reputation, J. Campbell White, who stood this year, at Montreal, before four thousand men, representing the churches of Canada, who stood together and prayed the Lord's Prayer in one voice. Does it not sound as though Christian union, for which we have been praying and for which our fathers have worked and planned, is coming? Here is a man that is enlisting business men. It is our delight and our great pleasure to introduce the one, it seems to us, who is fit for this blessed and wonderful hour. God bless you, Bro. J. Campbell White. [Applause.]

      Mr. J. Campbell White: First of all, I have a very delightful duty from the closing session of the great convention now in session at Buffalo. I came away from a great Laymen's Movement Convention there to-day that is still in session, and they asked me, with a unanimous vote, to convey to this great Centennial gathering the cordial Christian greetings of that great assembly of twelve hundred men of all churches from Buffalo and the surrounding district. [Applause.] They received with great pleasure the greetings that were sent from this body to them.

      That is the first of a series of seventy-five conventions to be held throughout the United States this year to try to [606] interest the Christian men of this nation in the nation's world-responsibility, and it is along these general lines that I shall speak to you to-night.

      What is America's share in the evangelization of the world? Assuming that the North Pole has actually been discovered by one or other of these men, or both of them, what is the next biggest thing that remains to be done? They are doing some wonderful things in the way of flying; every day adds new records to the flying-machines and their power. And I am glad that it is becoming easier and easier to talk with our friends at a distance. A man in Cleveland called me up yesterday in Buffalo over the long-distance telephone and told me how they are getting along in Cleveland. We open a convention

J. C. WHITE.

there to-morrow night. We are making very wonderful strides in the way of fighting disease. We do not have any more scourges of smallpox or yellow fever. And it is wonderful that civil liberty is spreading through the world as fast as it is, that even Turkey and Persia and China and Japan are beginning to have their own parliaments and congresses and representative forms of government. That is a very great gain.

      But no one of these things, nor all of them put together, is the greatest thing that could happen in our generation. What is the greatest thing? Undoubtedly the goal of human history is the redemption of the world. [Applause.] And all of these great steps in progress along scientific and commercial and educational lines do not solve the problem of human sin and human salvation. There is only one way by which that problem can be solved. The disciples came to our Lord and said, "What shall be the sign of thy kingdom and of the end of the world?" and he said, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached throughout the world for a testimony to all the nations, and then shall the end come." The one great, divine event toward which all history looks forward and upon which all the universe waits, is the evangelization of this world. And this world is only being evangelized as it is being done by human beings like you and me. Have you stopped to think about that? Our Lord, knowing that, said, "The field is the world and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom"--ourselves, and it is only as human seed is planted in all parts of the world that there is a harvest following.

      Looking back over the nineteen centuries of history since our Lord gave his command, the fact is the kingdom of God has only spread in the world as somebody has gone to spread it. Isn't that so? And the other fact is equally strong that nobody has ever gone out to spread the kingdom of God in any part of the world without God fulfilling his promise to go with him and break down barriers and lead people out into the light and life and love of the Son of God. Barbarians, cannibals, savages, the lowest and worst of human beings in all the world, have had this message preached to them with this marvelous result. My friends, there is no authority in Christianity for thinking that the world may be converted apart from human witnesses. "And ye shall be my witnesses." The thing the Lord told us to do was to pray that laborers might be sent into the harvest-field. The laborers are few. Therefore, pray ye the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers into the harvest-field. God knows no other way of saving this world. It is his plan that it shall be saved that way.

      There are two theories of the Christian church. One is that it is a fort, that its members are guards and that they must hold the fort and keep the devil from making any fresh encroachment. I am glad this is not one of the churches that has that kind of a theory. The church of Christ is an army of conquest, every member of which is a soldier of Jesus Christ, and that army can not be satisfied, if it is true to its great Commander, until to every land his message has been carried and his banner unfurled and his truth made known, and the kingdoms of this world [607] have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

      It is a marvelous thing that during the last twenty years people have been changing their interpretation of the great commission. I remember very well when, twenty years ago, as a student in college, the Student Volunteer Movement came along with its cry, "The Evangelization of the World in This Generation." A great many people thought it was the folly of untrained and inexperienced enthusiasts. Our mission boards were rather shy of that interpretation. There were only a very few of the preachers who were ready to accept it, and it had a long time winning its way. When I went out to India to work as a layman among students in Calcutta, in 1893, I supposed that all the missionaries would be working on that theory that it is the business of the church to carry the gospel to the last man in the world and to do it now. I found very few of the missionaries who thought it was possible.

      I have lived to see that changed. I lived for ten years in India. I attended the great Decennial Missionary Conference at Madras where your missionaries and those of my church and all the Protestant churches gathered, and, looking back over the work of a hundred years, they said: "There is no reason why we can not make this message intelligible to the last person among these three hundred millions of people. We believe Jesus Christ wants us to undertake that task. If the churches in the home lands will send us missionaries enough so that there will be about one among every twenty-five thousand of these people, we will undertake that task." That is the attitude of the three thousand missionaries in India. And over in China, from the recent Shanghai Conference, on their centennial anniversary, the same kind of ringing appeal comes. They say there is not any reason why the four hundred and forty millions of people living in China now may not hear this message, if we will take hold of the task seriously.

      How far have we got in the whole undertaking? I think it will help us to look at that for a few moments. Last year the whole Protestant church throughout the world contributed a little less than $23,000,000. The United States and Canada gave $10,061,000 of that amount, and Great Britain gave almost as much--$9,265,000--although she has only half our population and half of our wealth, and all other countries combined gave $3,320,000. That looks like a large sum. How far did it go in occupying the world and supporting missionaries to preach the gospel among the heathen? Well, it supports thirteen thousand missionaries in as many districts, not counting, for the moment, the wives of missionaries, of whom there are about six thousand more. They are not counted here inasmuch as a family is ordinarily assigned to a district. Each family and each unmarried missionary is supposed to be able to occupy a territory of twenty-five thousand people; assigning to every family and to every unmarried missionary a parish of twenty-five thousand, we have provided for 325,000,000 of the non-Christian population of the world. The serious thing about it is, that there remain 675,000,000 of others absolutely unprovided for to-night. I do not know how that strikes you, but it is an exceedingly serious thing in the mind of Christ.

      I suppose you have been listening to my friend Trotter here, whom I delight to hear tell about how men and women have been rescued from the power of sin here in this country, and we have had a fresh impression of the value of one human soul. Here are 675,000,000 of individual men and women lost, waiting for the first message of Jesus Christ. I believe that is the most serious fact on which high heaven looks down to-night. And they are hopeless and helpless in their present condition. There is not one of these non-Christian religions that has any decent conception of the character of God, that has any reliable standard of morality, that teaches its followers to pray, that has any understanding of what salvation consists in. Now, these are terrible indictments to make. I wish I could say something that sounds a good deal better, but I have been face to face with these religions for ten years and dealing with these people, and I know.

      I believe that there is no other name given under heaven by which men may [608] be saved but the name of Jesus Christ, and I believe that the love of Christ is great enough and the cross of Christ is strong enough to include in their embrace every last man in the world, and it is only a question of our helping them to know the light there is for them in order that millions of them may accept it. This is the sad thing, my Christian friends, that the world is redeemed, but does not know it. A generation ago, in this country, there were several millions of slaves set free. Supposing they had not discovered yet that they are free. That would be pathetic enough, wouldn't it? It is infinitely more pathetic that nineteen hundreds years ago Jesus Christ paid the price for the world in its sin, and that 675,000,000 of people have not yet among them the first message of that liberty wherewith the Son of God sets men free.

      It depends tremendously on where a life is planted how much the harvest of it is. The good seed are the sons of the kingdom. Aren't there some here to-night that would like to spend your lives out in a field nobody else is occupying, where you would be the only one to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ among twenty-five thousand people? You had about that many folks here at this great event. We give every missionary on the field as big a field as that, and we have still got twenty-seven thousand fields waiting for the first seed. Won't some of you go? I have got five little children at my house, all born out in India. My highest ambition for every one of them is that they can go out into some of these unoccupied districts as quickly as possible. I would rather see them do that than become millionaires. I am not sure whether the money would not ruin them. I am sure mission work would bring them closer to Christ.

      There is a man here in one of these banks in Pittsburg that I think a great deal of. He is the cashier of the Union National Bank. He only has one child, a beautiful, tender, cultured girl. She came home to her father and mother a few years ago and said to them she thought God wanted her to go over and spend her life in Egypt. They had been praying that the Lord of the harvest-field would send out laborers, and they did not think that orphans had to do the whole business. They thought somebody's daughter and somebody's son would have to go, and they said to their daughter, "We will be very glad to have you go." They thought about it a little while, and they could not bring themselves to let anybody else pay their daughter's salary, and so they told the mission board they would pay their daughter's salary out in Africa. She is out there. I saw her in Cairo when I was there some time ago. [Applause.] One after another of their friends criticized them, saying it was terrible folly to encourage their daughter to bury her life away off in a heathen land. But to one after another of these critics these humble people said, "God has given his best to us; our best is not too good for him." You haven't anything too good for him to-night in this great Centennial anniversary. How much greater are we going to make the next hundred years than the last hundred years have been? How much greater is our consecration going to be? Do we go away from this just as we came? If God asks us to go to Africa or China or India, are we ready to go? I would advise you to stop praying the Lord of the harvest-field to send out laborers unless you are willing to go yourself in response to your own prayer. I do not think he will hear your prayer to send anybody else unless you are willing that your son or your daughter may go. Let us be in earnest in this business if we expect to win the world.

      Brother McLean was talking a few minutes ago about how the mission boards have backed up this effort we are trying to make to enlist the men. The mission boards for the last three years have been making an investigation of how many people the United States are responsible for in the fields that our missionaries are occupying, and there are 600,000,000 of them. Six hundred millions of people in Africa and China and Japan, and these other countries all waiting on American missionaries for the first message of Jesus Christ. Now, we have got 50,000,000 people here at home outside the [609] membership of all the churches. We must reach them. Let us not forget while we are reaching that 50,000,000 that there are 600,000,000 of others we ought to reach. If we give every one of the six thousand American missionaries on the field to-night a parish of 25,000 people, they can only reach 150,000,000 of that 600,000,000. And there remain 450,000,000 others for whom the American church is responsible, among whom to-night not a single messenger of Jesus Christ is at work. Dr. Scoville, if I could tell you about any place on this continent where there are 450,000,000 of people waiting for the gospel, I think your church would send out a few evangelists, wouldn't it? I can not understand how people keep back their lives from that kind of opportunity, and I can not understand how people keep back their money from that kind of opportunity.

      And how much money are we giving to this work? Last year the churches of North America gave $10,000,000 to it and $250,000,000 to work here in the United States. And, really, I think we ought to have spent more at home. But does it look as if we have entered very fully into the world-plans of Christ when we spend $250,000,000 at home and only $10,000,000 abroad, or $25 at home for every dollar we spend on the rest of the world? I do not believe that is trying very hard to carry out the great commission. There are thousands of churches in this country that from one Christmas to another never give a dollar to carry the gospel to the non-Christian world. Do you belong to a church like that? It is our opportunity, men, to put ourselves into this task and arouse the men of the nation to do their part in saving the world. I wish you would do all you can. You have got just as much opportunity as I have or as anybody else has in the world. Christ is calling on his men to undertake the task in his name and in his strength. If you will give your life to him, he would just as lief use you as any other man on this planet.

      I am very glad that a great many men are getting a vision of the opportunity of Christian manhood for this work. We sent a commission of laymen around the world to study missions and see whether it was a good investment. Over sixty of them went, at their own expense, looking into conditions, seeing the work and coming back to report. Some of them left nearly all their fortune on the field. I was talking with a man in Buffalo yesterday who left about a quarter of a million dollars on his track as he went around China, Japan and India. He could not help it. There is another man, Mr. J. N. Shenstone, who sends shiploads of farming implements all over the world, a man worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. He began to study this situation a year or two ago. He began to talk about it to his brother men. I was with him in Louisville, Ky., a few weeks ago and heard him say, "I have decided never to add another dollar to my capital, but from now to the end of my life to see how much I can make to give away for the extension of the kingdom of God." [Applause.] He is going into the business seriously for God. And I wish a lot of you men would learn that on this Centennial anniversary.

      I was supported for ten years in India by one man, a business man in Montreal. He not only paid all my salary during the ten years, but he had half a dozen other men scattered over the world. He was working away here at home, and his representatives were at work helping him preach the gospel to tens of thousands of people who would never have heard it otherwise. He might have been a multi-millionaire if he had lived to see how much money he could pile up, but he decided to do something a good deal better than that. He was stricken with illness a few weeks ago and taken down to a hospital in Baltimore, and died as the result of an operation, and I am just as sure as I am sure of my existence, that when he was ushered through the gates of glory, there met him thousands of people who were there because he cared. And I am sure that there are other thousands now living on the earth who heard the message for the first time through lips that were out in those fields because he supported them, and those people will be a stream going up to heaven to make heaven happier for my friend for many years to come, and I believe a thousand years from now, yes, ten thousand years [610] from now, he will be far happier in glory than he could have been if he had not lived in that kind of spirit. I tell you those people are tremendously worth saving.

      My friend, Dr. Lambuth, of Chattanooga, was telling me about a Chinese theological graduate when I was down there a little while ago. He had just come back from China. This man graduated from the seminary and asked the bishop whether he might make a request about the field into which he was to be sent. The bishop recognized it as a very unusual request, and expressed surprise to the young Chinaman, who said, "I know it is an unusual thing." These students generally go just where you send them, without making any requests. "But I have a very unusual reason for making the request." And the bishop asked him what it was, and he said: "My father and mother worked there in 1900 when the Boxer rebellion came. The Boxers gathered around my father's house and called him out into the street and threatened him with death unless he would give up his faith. He professed his faith in Christ to them and they chopped his body to pieces in the street. They called my mother and showed her what they had done to my father, and threatened her with a similar fate unless she would deny Christ. She said to them, 'You may cut out my tongue, if you will, but I will never use it to deny my Lord.' They cut out her tongue and they hacked her body to pieces beside that of my father. And then they called my two little sisters and subjected them to the same test, and treated them in the same way." And this young Chinese theological graduate said to the bishop, "I want to go back to that district where my father and mother and sisters poured out their hearts' blood in testimony of Jesus Christ, just to show those people that there is no hatred in my heart toward them, but that I want them to find freedom and peace in Christ as I have done." My Christian friends, I am glad to have a gospel to believe in that is capable of doing that for a Chinaman, and I believe when you and I live that way it won't be very long until the world is redeemed.

      There are two very special reasons why the Christian Church ought to be the leader of all our churches in this missionary business. One is, because you appear to be the most aggressive evangelical church here in this country [applause], and I do not see any inconsistency in being in earnest about saving the people of the United States. It does seem to me that if you are going to set an example to the rest of our churches in this country in going out to seek and to save the lost, the whole church needs an illustration of some church that is on fire to save the world, and I would like to see you start out to see how much this church could do to spread the gospel all over this planet.

      And then there is one other great reason why you ought to be leading, and that is because you talk so much about Christian unity. Do you know the foreign missionaries are getting together closer than anybody else? When I went out to India I was amazed at the lax barriers between the different churches. Why, in the face of heathenism it is very difficult to separate from your brethren in Christ. Your own missionary, Prof. W. M. Forrest, who went out to teach the Bible in India, lived in my house and sat at my table during practically all of his residence in Calcutta, and worked side by side with me [applause], and nobody would have known that we did not belong to the same church. [Applause.] Oh, that we might help Christ to realize the fulfillment of his prayer when he prayed that they all may be one that the world may believe. [Applause.] It looks as though he had linked together forever in his thought the unity of his church and the universality of his kingdom. And as we throw ourselves into the task of saving the whole world, the churches will melt into a common unity under the outpoured Spirit of God as nothing else in this world can melt them into that unity. [Applause.]

      It is well to do all you can in America, but let us remember that the field is the world, and Christ sees none of these artificial barriers between nations that we have set up: I believe we are living in the most hopeful era of all the world's history. It is perfectly marvelous how rapidly the kingdom of God is spreading. It took Morrison a whole [611] lifetime to win one convert in China, and he thought it would be wonderful if, after a hundred years, there might be a thousand converts. They celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of missionary work in China recently, and there were 200,000 Chinese converts. It took us one hundred years to win the first million converts out of heathenism. We passed the million mark in 1896. How long did it take to win the second million? We have won them already. We won the second million in twelve years. We passed the second million mark last year, 1908. [Applause.] How many did we win last year? One hundred and sixty-five thousand out of heathenism into full membership in the Christian church, and that is at the rate of a million in six years, not in twelve. But we won't have to wait for six years for the third million. I think we will probably have them inside of three or four years. Do you realize that every week there are three thousand or more people gathered into the Christian church out of heathenism? I suppose there is scarcely a building here that holds much more than three thousand. That is the kind of blessing God is giving to the church and he means to give far greater blessings in order that the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

      Mr. Medbury now took charge of the meeting.

      Mr. Medbury: I will ask that Brother Lloyd, who has a resolution to bring to the Convention, take advantage of this moment to present it.

      Mr. Lloyd: We have had great advantages from the splendid Carnegie Institute. Any fees we have paid there have barely covered expenses, and many favors have been granted, therefore,

      Resolved, That we express our sincere thanks and appreciation for the very great kindness and untiring courtesy of the superintendent of Carnegie Institute, Mr. C. R. Cunningham, and also Mrs. George H. Wilson, manager of Music Hall, and Mr. W. W. Fulton and all the employees of that noble institution. [Applause.]

      Resolution adopted.

      A Delegate: I haven't heard any resolution of thanks and high credit to our Centennial Committee for the great program and mighty work that they have done for Christ. I, therefore, move you that this Convention give heartfelt, prayerful thanks to our great Centennial Committee for the great work they have done for the kingdom of God.

      Carried unanimously.

      The Chairman: I want to have the honor and the very great privilege of presenting to you our honored and our loved and our tireless Centennial secretary, W. R. Warren, who is on this platform. [Applause.]

      Mr. Warren: Throughout four years, there is one word that I have striven, as you will all testify, to keep uppermost in our hearts, and one labor that I have striven to keep uppermost in our hands, and that is indicated in the heart and kernel of that supreme prayer of our Lord, "That they all may be one that the world may be saved." But in the multiplicity and complexity of our Centennial endeavors and aims, all have centered in this; and though I have not been able to attend the various sessions of this Centennial Convention, and none of you have been able to attend all of them, I am sure that through all of them, in the multiplicity and complexity of things, and in the imperfections of this great gathering, this is the heart of all, that we shall make the prayer of our Lord our own, and shall devote ourselves to realizing that prayer, "That they may all be one that the world may be saved." There is no other purpose, there is no other work for us, but to save the world. And there is no other way to save the world but to get together and to get at it in dead earnest. [Applause.] And the four years and the hundred years that have gone, and the past eight days that we have sat together here in heavenly places, have been utterly in vain for us, if they have not brought us to the place where we are determined, with all that is within us, to realize this prayer of our divine Lord in a measure that has never been done before, and to realize it by sacrifice that shall be counted a very fellowship in the sufferings of our Lord himself.

      Friends, I know all of you would like to see personally before you here this evening the men who have done [612] the real work of this Convention. I should like to introduce them to you, if we can find them around here, if their labors have not kept them elsewhere, if the exhaustion from the labors they have been engaged in has not kept them away--two or three of them are practically sick now. I would like, at least, to have the chairmen of the various committees of our Pittsburg churches stand before you for a moment. You have not been able to see most of them. I should like for you to know them. I wish there were time for each one of them to say a word. Of course that is impossible. I crave your indulgence that they may just come before you.

      One of the men you have been hearing from frequently and strongly and effectively is our press man, John A. Jayne. I will ask him to stand up. Is Brother Jayne here? He is probably writing up the story of this meeting for to-morrow. You will have to read it. You will see Jayne when you read it.

      A number of men have asked me, at different times, how this Convention was financed. We have a Finance Committee composed of some of the best business men in Pittsburg. W. R. Errett is chairman of that committee. Is he present? One of the most modest men on earth! Up there in the gallery to the right. [Applause.]

      With Brother Errett has labored tirelessly night and day, E. A. Hibler. The real active field work, the fruitful work of the Finance Committee, has fallen upon Hibler. Many of you, who have been about Music Hall, know that much of the handling of the great crowds has been upon his shoulders.

      The leader of our forces in western Pennsylvania for a quarter of a century has been R. S. Latimer, president of Western Pennsylvania Christian Missionary Society. He ought to be around here in the corner. [Applause.] Bring him out here.

      We have had some men laboring strenuously. Where is Bro. Thomas M. Latimer, the brother of R. S? He labored with this Finance Committee until the problem was solved. He labored at Duquesne Garden and at Luna Park preparing halls. He was chief of the hundred ushers at Forbes Field.

      We not only had to raise much money, but we had to be careful about spending it, and nothing over ten dollars was expended without the approval of the Expense Committee. Dr. Evans was chairman of that committee. Is he present?

      Just one or two more. All of you know about the Entertainment Committee, the Registration Committee and the Reception Committee. They are all one, and the chairman of the whole enterprise is Fred M. Gordon. [Applause.] If my instructions were followed and the door locked, Brother Gordon is inside here somewhere. Here he is. [Applause.]

      With him has labored as associate D. R. Moss. Let us see if he is here. He is not present, I am sorry to say.

      Brother Philips, chairman of the Music Committee, is here. We want to see him. [Applause.] Come forward, come up where they can see you. He has been giving his very life into this work. J. A. Joyce has labored with him.

      You will think this an interminable list. It is. We have had an interminable amount of work to do. In previous Conventions it has impressed me that the chairman of the General Committee has been the whole thing; in this Convention it had to be otherwise. Every chairman of every committee had to take hold of his work and be responsible for it. [Applause.] There was too much to be done. Otherwise it would not have been done. They have done it magnificently, if I do have to say it.

      Brother Winn, chairman of the ushers, is he present? [Applause.] He is back at the door, I suppose.

      Brother Knepper is chairman of the Pulpit Committee, and the words that have come from the various churches where our preachers delivered their message's last Lord's Day, if only part of them could be heard by you, would show you how well the work was done. Brother Dabney labored with him. There is Brother Thurgood [applause], the most devoted, consecrated, saintly soul that ever came from Australia to America. [Applause.] I wish you could see him. And Wallace Tharp, who managed that great communion service at Forbes Field on Sunday, the greatest occasion in the lives of any of us, I am sure, [613] till we stand before the great white throne. Where is he? [Applause.] Then, there is Brother Carpenter, and Cole, and Darby, who was the marshal of the parade. Stand up, back there. Brother Cramblet and Brother Brewster, of the Exhibits Committee, who prepared that great museum we have enjoyed, and looked after the conflicting interests dividing the space where each one of them wanted all the space at our disposal. Here is Brother Brewster, chairman of the Exhibits Committee.

      Then, there is the Committee on Halls. William H. Graham, member of Congress. Is he present? Col. Samuel Harden Church. We may not agree with his theology, but he knows about railroads. He knows about Pittsburg. He was chairman of our Transportation Committee. Some of the good things we have enjoyed are due to his favor and his zeal and his earnestness. He is secretary of the trustees of Carnegie Institute, and for the courtesies that we have enjoyed there, for which we are properly thanking Mr. Cunningham and Mrs. Wilson, we will go back of them and thank Mr. Church also. [Applause.] I wish he were present that you might hear him in a word that you would all agree to accept. This is the last of our chairmen, Brother Medbury, and these men have all performed their labors so effectually and so well that, in spite of all my blunders, in spite of all my inefficiency, we have gone through the thing fairly successfully. May the Lord be praised that his work always must succeed, and let us never dare to think that it can be anything else but success that crowns the labors of those who strive to do his will and to glorify his Son [Applause.]

      Mr. Medbury: We are almost at the close. Sister Long is going to sing the song, "Sowers and Reapers," which she sang at the close of the great Jubilee Convention of 1899, at a scene just like this.

      This afternoon a very gracious and beautiful thing was done by one of the members of the General Committee here, Wallace Tharp, who was the man who conducted that great communion service on Lord's Day afternoon: He alluded very feelingly to the debt of gratitude we owe to you, Brother Warren, for the service you have given us for this Convention. And Brother Tharp, in the closing moments, said that more than all of us, and more than any one of us, and more than all together, has the work been done and has the sacrifice been made by our chairman, W. R. Warren. [Applause.] And when a man serves a brotherhood like that, my friends, it was a big thing for Brother Tharp to say, "I want to be one of a hundred men to give ten dollars to send this man, if he wishes to expend the money in that way, on the Moninger tour to the Holy Land and to the East for a great rest and recreation in the honor and love of the great people whom he has served so well." [Applause.]

      The Spirit of God has brooded over us, the blessings of the Lord God have been upon us, his word has been found in honor, his work has been advanced, his world has been made better. Every man will be a greater man, every woman will be a greater woman, every home a greater home, every church a greater church, every downcast one of earth will be lifted up, when our hearts are more tenderly turned to the ends of the earth, our love will run to the salvation of those for whom our Master died. Great days in Pittsburg pointing to a day when over in the home land yonder we shall rejoice before God in another and a greater day in the presence of those whom our Master through us has given his message of light and life. All praise for Pittsburg, for the brethren who have served us, noble pastors, singers, preachers, faithful men who served this great Convention hidden away. God bless the men and women who have served this great Convention, noble men and women, great evangelists, noble pastors of this great brotherhood that has a love that is but a type of the love of God for all men and bids him lead on, and lead on, and lead on, in the pure gospel of the ministry, till the ends of the earth are reached and the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

      Shall we not bow our heads in prayer with C. C. Chapman?

      [Prayer.]

      Whereupon the Convention then adjourned. [614]

[CCR 601-614]