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we can reach and help the needy ones about us, from whom we have been so long separated. Most of all, we shall each understand with new emphasis that, notwithstanding our selfdistrust and unwillingness to believe that we have gifts of any value in the carrying on of God's work on earth, there is a place and opportunity for each of us, and that our ability will grow with use.

It is our devout hope that the meetings of this Congress will be so earnest, so deeply spiritual, and so practical that none of us will go away without a new impulse for service and a new consecration.

The greatly esteemed General Secretary of our Alliance, Rev. Dr. Josiah Strong, has lately published a new book, and as he is too modest to speak of it in his own address, I venture to commend it most warmly. It is called the "New Era," and like his former work, "Our Country," will, I am sure, exert a great influence for good. It is the result of years of careful thought and large experience. The theme underlying all its teaching is, that if God's kingdom is to come, and His will to be "done on earth as in heaven," we must work along the lines given in Christ's last tender words, "This is my commandment, That ye love one another even as I have loved you." This cuts deeper and means more than the Golden Rule. He left the joys of heaven. He suffered on earth. He died for us. When all the members of his church learn to love, and to suffer, and to work in this spirit, then the kingdom will indeed come.

But the work must be done wisely and carefully, not from impulse and sentiment. We must use all the resources at our command. Our time, our money, our learning must all be gladly laid on the altar. We must understand that God's way, which we cannot question, is that the world shall be redeemed by the message of the gospel carried to every creature by his church on earth. Not a gospel which shall save only in the life to come, but a full gospel which has glad tidings of hope and light for the life that now is-a gospel which will solve all social troubles, and bring gladness into every sad and suffering heart.

Fatalism in some of its forms has been the insidious foe of the church in all ages. Christians have seen ignorance and poverty and sin all about them, and have felt hopeless and helpless. They have rejoiced if now and then they could aid in helping

one sad soul into the light, but the great mass of trouble and vice and heathenism at home and in far countries has seemed beyond their power, and many have been willing to fold their hands and wait God's time. They forget that his will is that the work shall be done by them, and if they but put themselves and all they have unreservedly in his hands, he will furnish the power and open the way.

Modern science has taught us great lessons in this direction. For centuries the dread diseases which desolated the world, the plague, smallpox, cholera, and yellow-fever, were believed to be direct visitations from heaven, which could only be fled from or suffered. It is now understood in all the civilized world that care and use of proper means can ward off or stamp out these terrible visitants. So all the great social diseases and evils that confront us must be met by careful study of their conditions; the methods of science must be freely used, and light brought in from all successful experience with the certainty that practical ways will be found to overcome them. This is a supreme duty of the Christian church.

The true test of orthodoxy and union to Christ will always be found in souls saved from sin, and society redeemed from evil. So only will the world know that we are led by the simple teachings of Christ. Jonathan Edwards said, "There may be other ways of knowing that a tree is a fig tree, but the best and surest is that it bears figs."

Those who love Christ must lay aside minor differences even if they have cherished them so deeply as to make the yielding of them a real sacrifice. The various divisions of Christ's army, divided, scattered, and overlapping each other, without unison of purpose or true knowledge of each other, must become united and compact, working together with full consecration and earnest purpose. With each member feeling his personal duty, the church would be irresistible. Christian faith and practice must

enter into all the duties of life consistently and wisely. In God's eyes there is no difference between secular and religious. All life is sacred and holy, and the brightness and joy of life can only be known, when this is felt.

How can we expect to convert the heathen when every ship which conveys a missionary to foreign shores carries rum enough to destroy a tribe; when the example of those from Christian

countries who reside in heathen lands neutralizes all the teachings of devoted men; when opium and rum are forced upon unwilling people to increase the wealth of Christian lands?

The Christian public sentiment must be awakened, educated, and made dominant in all public affairs, until it is felt by all men that to send missionaries to convert the Chinese to Christ, and then to treat the Chinese who come to our own land with a barbarity and intolerance which pagans would be ashamed of, is making a farce of religion, and disgracing our country and our Saviour.

We rejoice in the large progress of the various branches of the church in foreign and home missions, in generous gifts, and in a fuller charity. We are glad to believe that there are new life and higher aims, but those who view us from the outside still see time and strength given to denominational differences, and to the man-made machinery of the church. They see us sometimes

intolerant to those who differ from us in what are not really essential points. They see we put the emphasis upon what certain men in a different age have said and taught about God's Word, rather than upon God's Word itself. They see us living in the past, rather than in the splendid opportunities of the present, or the glorious possibilities of the future. Above all, they do not believe we live up to the simple, direct teachings of our Lord. And we must ourselves confess that with all the great advances of the church of Christ in missionary and educational work, and with all the hopeful signs of new vigor, there are still vital points on which we have much to learn.

In all parts of the Christian world population is massing in great cities and manufacturing centres, but in these places with rare exceptions the Protestant church is not in touch with the wage-earning classes, and is becoming more and more estranged from them.

In some way our methods are wrong. The well-to-do build churches in the better parts of the town and provide cheap missions for the so-called poor. These missions do good rescue work, but do not reach the working-men. Even where successful evangelistic work is done in halls and special churches, definite plans are seldom adopted to bring into warm and close Christian communion those who have been reached or to drill them into useful workers. There is a want of brotherhood and common in

terest strangely at variance with the spirit of the gospel. This is not in accord with Christ's example or his teaching. The common people heard him gladly, and it was the charm of his life that he was in close sympathy with the lonely and needy. Our great city churches are practically for a special and favored class. They are kept up at great cost, and largely open only a few hours on the Sunday, and then to those who hold pews in them. They are silent and dumb-without hospitality or invitation, during all the week, while every force of evil is in full life. Our isolated country churches in the United States are rapidly weakening even in the older sections, and exerting less and less influence.

Our theological schools have hardly enough students to fill vacant pulpits, and the methods of education, admirable in themselves, hardly prepare men for work in the hard and poorly-paid places in our great cities and needy country districts. The rank and file of our churches are, as a rule, not drilled to personal aggressive work as a definite part of their Christian life, and our ministers are often content to be our teachers and comforters rather than our leaders.

These and many other problems do not arise from want of heart, but from want of knowledge. Our methods are not adapted to present conditions. In this Congress we hope to find some help and a new inspiration. Such gatherings as this give us an opportunity to take observations, and to find where we are. If God, who always gives new light and clearer vision to those who seek him, shall be with us here, we shall go away with a large faith and a high resolve.

ADDRESS OF WELCOME.

BY REV. SIMON J. MCPHERSON, D.D., PASTOR OF THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, CHICAGO.

MR. PRESIDENT AND BRETHREN: It is my honorable and pleasing privilege to welcome the Evangelical Alliance, with its distinguished officers and speakers, its delegates and all its visitors, to our city, our homes, and our hearts. The churches of Chicago salute you in the beloved name of our common Lord. We pray that the Father of mercies may gird your hearts with filial love and touch your lips with holy fire, that the grace of the Crucified may inspire the thought and work of all your sessions, and that the Spirit of power may quicken the influence of your Conference with his enduring benediction.

Our welcome is all the warmer because we can cordially congratulate you upon the noble record of the Alliance. Not to mention its earlier achievements, we gratefully recall the recent meetings in Washington and Boston which signalized a higher stage in the practical attitude of our American church. Mightily did they emphasize the national perils and needs still remaining in America four hundred years after its discovery, and clearly did they discriminate these perils and needs as essentially spiritual. In that way they challenge the church of Christ to recognize those opportunities which are incentives and obligations to his faithful followers, and to apply those remedies which he has himself provided for stricken men in his incarnate life, his royal law of love, and in his bloody cross, broken tomb, and quickening Spirit. Scathingly, however affectionately, they rebuked every American church that allows itself to be absorbed with speculating about metaphysical mysteries, with formulating Pharisaic and decisive subtleties of creed, or with sitting at ease in Zion, while immortal men are perishing from its neglect. That those meetings served their purpose is attested by the prevailing unrest of

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