compromise with the looser opinions and practices which have become so fearfully prevalent in our times. The sacredness of the marriage relation as an institution of God must be maintained, and our undivided influence should be joined with that of all who stand on the solid ground of the holy Scriptures to beat back the flood-tide of licentiousness which threatens to overwhelm all that is pure in the frame-work of our social life. Every interest of morality and religion is involved in this question of divorce. Let not our efforts relax till our Church stands free from offense in this thing.

Not least among the evils we deplore as Methodists is the spirit of strife and division which, we are sorry to say, is not yet wholly eradicated from our Zion. Far be it from us to pronounce every division of the Church schismatical. There has been, doubtless, some providential ordering in the denominational organizations of Christendom, yet the multiplication of separate Churches on trivial grounds is not to be encouraged. We are happy to believe that the period of dissensions is well-nigh over. We hail the dawn of the better day, and rejoice in the rising spirit of fraternity which promises much for the future success of the cause we love. From this time onward our principal rivalries should be to excel in good works. We congratulate our Canadian brethren upon the success which has attended their movement for uniting the forces of Methodism in the Dominion. May their highest anticipations be fully realized. We of the States may not follow their example in consolidation, but we should not fall behind them in "endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.'

It gives us pleasure to observe that the peculiarities of our Church life are still cherished in the hearts of so many of our people. Customs change. Circumstances modify prudential usages, but the essential features of our system abide in their integrity. Our itinerancy, our conferences, lovefeasts, and class-meetings, and our happy experiences, all hold their place in our Churches. Our system is a growth. Additions come to it as necessity requires. The lyceum, the sociable, the library, the reading clubs, and leagues all indicate the expansion of our social life, and the readiness with which we adapt means to worthy ends. All these things call for the sympathy and care and the guiding hand of pastors and experienced men and women whose love for righteousness goes out in holy concern for the spiritual and moral development of the young. Here are fields of usefulness which our fathers could not command. We pray you to cleave to all these in the spirit of unselfish devotion, and make them means of grace indeed and helps to holiness.

You stand to-day where the fathers of a century ago could not stand. They were low down in the valley, with vision circumscribed only when they looked upward. You stand upon the mountain-top with boundless prospects on every side. Before you is an ever-widening horizon. The world lies at your feet. The nations await your coming. Will you respond to the call? The grand march for the conquest of all lands for Christ has begun. The voice of the Lord bids us go forward. We dare not accept a secondary place. With our schools and colleges, with our wealth and culture, with our social power and our vast numbers we must have a large share in the world's evangelization. Commensurate with our abilities are our responsibilities. We hold our place and our power for God and human

ity. "None of us liveth to himself." We inherit our privileges that we may make the most of them. Shall we prove worthy our heritage? Will our Sunday-schools be lifted to the greatness of their calling? Will our missions be pushed to the limits of their opportunities? Will our Church literature receive the patronage it deserves? Will our educational work receive the touch of a new inspiration? In a word, shall the throbbings of new life be felt in all the departments of our connectional agencies? Surely not, unless we are ready to lay our wealth, our learning, our social power, and all our influence, and all our sympathy and zeal in humble consecration before the Lord. We pray you, brethren, be in earnest. Think on these things. "And the God of all grace, who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen."

EVENING ADDRESSES.

Wednesday Evening, December 10, 1884.

MISSIONS.

HOPEFUL SIGNS FOR MISSIONS.

BISHOP C. H. FOWLER, D. D., LL. D.

THE Methodist Church is the greatest missionary society launched on the sea of the centuries since the close of the sacred canon; and John Wesley kindled more true missionary zeal than any other man since the death of St. Paul. Society seemed to be at its very worst when the new evangel was uttered from the lips of that great reformer. The Church had lost its hold upon men. Skepticism was almost universal. Immorality hardly blushed at the very altars of the Church. Drunkenness was rampant. The records of the Probate Office in Boston show, in 1678, at the funeral of Mrs. Mary Norton, widow of the celebrated Jos. Norton, one of the ministers of the First Church, in Boston, fifty-one and one-half gallons of the best Malaga wine were consumed by the "mourners." In 1685, at the funeral of Rev. Thomas Cobbett, of Ipswich, there were consumed one barrel of wine and two barrels of cider. Towns provided intoxicating drink at the funerals of their paupers. In Salem, in 1728, at the funeral of a pauper, a gallon of wine and another of cider were charged as "incidentals." In Lynn, in 1711, the town furnished half a barrel of cider for the Widow Dispam's funeral.

French skepticism and the licentiousness of the English Court flooded the colonies and submerged the convictions of the Puritans. Infidel clubs, cockfighting clubs, gambling clubs, associations for card-playing, horse-racing, and dog-fighting were to be found in most of the towns along the Atlantic Coast. Domestic infelicities and social infidelities desolated homes everywhere. The very foundations of society seemed giving way. This gloom and horror extended from New England to the Spanish border, and on to the most remote settlements. Bishop Meade, of Virginia, writing to the archbishop of Canterbury, said: "As to the unworthy, hireling clergy of the colony, there was no ecclesiastical discipline to correct their irregularities and vices." In Maryland "the Lord's day was generally profaned, religion was despised, and all notorious vices were committed, so that it had become a Sodom of uncleanness and a pest-house of iniquity." This was Maryland, My Maryland. Satan could say, "My Maryland." But now Methodism can say, "My Maryland."

The formal establishment of the Episcopal Church as the state religion, in 1692, only made things worse and more hopeless.

Party strife was more fierce at the close of the Revolution than has ever been known since. Washington was attacked, and the grossest mis(325)

representations were made, as Washington himself said, "in such exaggerated and indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to Nero, or a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." The most serious apprehensions of revolution and social ruin were entertained by Washington. A pastoral letter, issued in 1798 by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, after specifying the evils of the times, says: "Profaneness, pride, luxury, injustice, intemperance, lewdness, and every species of debauchery and loose indulgence greatly abound."

Into this boiling, seething pit of corruption Methodism sprang with the Gospel of purity and power, and the uplift from that dreadful day to our own is a little indication of the missionary work done by Methodism. Methodism, born in such an age, and trained in such environments, inherited a life of heroic conflict. It brought again into the world the missionary idea that came from the skies with the Prophet of Nazareth. For the missionary idea is divine. It came into existence with the infant Church; it was cradled in the manger of Bethlehem; its infant feet walked up and down Galilee; it was purified in the wilderness of temptation; it was sanctified in the garden of anguish; it was armed with the cross of sacrifice; it was plumed and pinioned on the Mount of Ascension. It was also fired with deathless purpose by the prayer and inspiration of Pentecost. It presented everywhere its divine credentials in teaching the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and in its miracles of healing and cleansing and transforming, until, flushed with supernatural victories, it stooped to the throne of the Cæsars, and lost its divine power amid its human ambitions. After a sleep, full of troubled and tormenting dreams, of centuries, the missionary spirit of the New Testament apostles revived in the Holy Club of Oxford among the apostles of Methodism.

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The nineteenth century takes up the work of the first, and, running through the world with the good news, cries everywhere: Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world!"

Born of such a spirit, inheriting such a work, and standing on the threshold of our second century, we have a right to go out to the conquest of the world without fear and without doubt.

We are in the midst of a vast undertaking. In our own land, beyond the mountains, are many thousands who are strangers to the covenants of promise, who follow the war-path and live by the chase, and estimate their greatness by the number of their scalps.

South of us, in the territory of "our next-door neighbor,” we find millions of people who have a religion that has lost out of it nearly every thing but its barbarism. It touches but to taint, conquers but to curse, rules but to ruin. At last the people, robbed, desolated, and despairing, have arisen in their wrath and cast out of their borders the principal representatives of the apostate faith. Old Mexico, to-day bound to us by railroads and many commercial bonds, yoking her destiny with ours, stretches out her hands to this northern republic for the bread of life.

Going along the Isthmus, and down into South America, we come to a great continent which God has placed within our reach and bound to us for all time. South America is the continent most intimately related to North America, and destined to share our future; and yet it is a continent further from us than any other continent on our globe, and concerning which we know less than we do of any other. If we want to go to