His instructions to the missionaries were very brief and simple. They were to preach the love of Christ in word and deed, seek to win individual souls for Him, and be guided, under varying conditions, by their own. good sense.

The progress of the work, notwithstanding all its weaknesses and blemishes, is without a parallel in the history of missions. Its faulty methods left the native converts too weak and helpless to constitute self-supporting congregations, and the failure to train native workers made the native churches too dependent upon the foreign missionaries. Slowly, and naturally with some difficulty, the Moravians have been laboring to correct this manifest mistake. Still the church, which today, in its three branches, in Germany, England, and the United States, numbers only about 37,000 souls, is carrying on mission work in the West Indies, Central America, South America (Surinam), South and West and German East Africa, in Labrador, Australia, India, the United States (Indians), and Alaska. Its present income from home sources is some $235,000; from the mission fields, $220,000; a total of $455,000. Its 150 ordained missionaries and 50 lay and women workers are ministering to over 102,000 converts and souls in mission lands.

The vigorous missionary life of this brotherhood is illustrated by the record of one of its families represented in the first mission, that to Greenland. After the Böhnisch-Stach family maintained laborers on various fields during five successive generations, a representative of the sixth generation has recently entered the mission service.

The most distinguished Moravian missionary of the eighteenth century is doubtless David Zeisberger, who

labored among our American Indians for more than sixty years (from 1745 to 1808). Moravian missionaries had begun work in Georgia as early as 1735, and from there the work was extended into New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada. Driven from place to place, their settlements frequently broken up and their mission property destroyed during the incessant wars by Americans and British alike, suffering repeated massacres of the most cruel and bloody type, these brethren endured, as seeing Him who is invisible, but whose kingdom endureth forever. Among his red children, whose fate he shared, Zeisberger was a beloved father and a revered patriarch.

Meanwhile the established churches of the fatherland stood haughtily aloof and looked down in disdain. upon these Christian mechanics and artisans and untrained missionaries who were raising the standard of the cross in many heathen lands and conquering the strongholds of Satan. Why did not such missionary heroism, such an illustrious example of missionary zeal and activity, rouse the apathetic churches of Europe from their lethargy and stimulate them to follow the example of this ill equipped and yet conquering missionary band?

Alas, the red blood of a living faith was lacking. English deism, French naturalism, and German illuminism and rationalism had eaten out the heart and befogged the mind of Christendom. It is a loud and lucid warning against the inroads which the new theology (old rationalism revived) is making in our day in many pulpits and churches. If the depleting and enervating process is not checked, the results will be the same. The emasculation of God's inspired Word, the dilution of the Gospel of Christ, the elimination of His vicarious

atonement, and all the rest of the pitiful scholarship and assured results of modern advanced thought and critical research, can have only one effect the prostration of living faith, and the paralysis of missionary endeavor. Let serious Christians take warning and hold fast that which they have, which they have received. as a heritage from the Reformation of the sixteenth century, that no man take their crown.

CHAPTER VI.

THE AGE OF MODERN MISSIONS.

LEADING PROTESTANT MISSIONARY SOCIETIES AND DENOMINATIONAL ENTERPRISES.

I.

Providential Preparation for Modern Missions. Notwithstanding the hopeful missionary enterprises that went forth from Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century, where Halle and Herrnhut were radiant centers of throbbing Christian life and missionary activity and examples which, under more favorable conditions, would have exerted far wider influence than they did, the first of the organizations that led to the larger development of modern missions arose in England. And so it has come to pass that Carey is usually mentioned as the organizer and leader of modern missions, rather than Ziegenbalg, or Francke, or Zinzendorf.

There is ground for the claim of priority on the part of England, but the situation should be properly understood in the light of the facts. The influence of the German leaders was limited by two factors. The one was their modesty and confinement to small circles. There was no lack of fervor and faithfulness on their part, but they were lacking in largeness of view that might have caused the leaven to spread more widely. The other and the larger factor was the apathy and hostility of the established churches and ecclesiastical authorities, a condition which, instead of yielding to the influence of faith working by love, grew worse, more rigid, more impervious, as the century wore on and

rationalism became dominant in the churches. The English leaders, on the other hand, manifested organizing talent on a larger scale. They laid plans for larger enterprises. And their plans met changed conditions which were favorable for their execution. The revival of religious life in England had been growing and spreading during the greater part of the century, and when Carey took the heroic lead in aggressive missionary enterprise his appeals found a readier response in wider circles.

Nineteenth century missions owe their success and extent to the conjunction of the two providential factors that were so prominent in the apostolic age and account for the Christianization of Europe in the middle ages. The two factors are: opened doors and awakened Christians. And it is the King of kings and Lord of glory who rules in both spheres, in the realm of nature and in the kingdom of grace. The times and seasons are under His sovereign control, even as He holds the world in the hollow of His hand. Men can no more force abiding development in the work of divine grace than the gates. of hell can prevail against the Church of God which He has purchased with His own blood. God opens the doors of the world and the eyes and hearts of the faithful: the one in His providence through His almighty power; the other through His Word, the vehicle of His saving grace. In the extension of His kingdom the open door has generally and naturally come first. It was so at the inauguration of every new missionary period. But in modern times the Christian missionary has often been the first to open the door for new discoveries, for the extension of commerce, and for the introduction of civilization.

We sometimes fail to take sufficient account of the