and she is hopefully and cheerfully marching on, in both hemispheres, as an army of conquest.

The Society of Friends, though one of the smallest tribes in Israel, is a glorious society: for it has borne witness to the inner light which "lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; it has proved the superiority of the Spirit over all forms; it has done noble service in promoting tolerance and liberty, in prison reform, the emancipation of slaves, and other works of Christian philanthropy.

The Brotherhood of the Moravians, founded by Count Zinzendorf-a true nobleman of nature and of grace-is a glorious brotherhood: for it is the pioneer of heathen missions, and of Christian union among Protestant churches; it was like an oasis in the desert of German rationalism at home, while its missionaries went forth to the lowest savages in distant lands to bring them to Christ. I beheld with wonder and admiration a venerable Moravian couple devoting their lives to the care of hopeless lepers in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Nor should we forget the services of many who are accounted heretics.

The Waldenses were witnesses of a pure and simple faith in times of superstition, and, having outlived many bloody persecutions, are now missionaries among the descendants of their persecutors.

The Anabaptists and Socinians, who were so cruelly treated in the sixteenth century by Protestants and Romanists alike, were the first to raise their voice for religious liberty and the voluntary principle in religion.

Unitarianism is a serious departure from the trinitarian faith of orthodox Christendom, but it did good service as a protest against tritheism, and against a stiff, narrow, and uncharitable orthodoxy. It brought into prominence the human perfection of Christ's character, and illustrated the effect of his example in the noble lives and devotional writings of such men as Channing and Martineau. It has also given us some of our purest and sweetest poets, as Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, and Lowell, whom all good men must honor and love for their lofty moral tone.

Universalism may be condemned as a doctrine; but it has a right to protest against a gross materialistic theory of hell with all its Dantesque horrors, and against the once widely-spread popular

belief that the overwhelming majority of the human race, including countless millions of innocent infants, will forever perish. Nor should we forget that some of the greatest divines, from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa down to Bengel and Schleiermacher, believed in, or hoped for, the ultimate return of all rational creatures to the God of love, who created them in his own image and for his own glory.

And, coming down to the latest organization of Christian work, which does not claim to be a church, but which is a help to all churches,-the Salvation Army: we hail it, in spite of its strange and abnormal methods, as the most effective revival agency since the days of Wesley and Whitefield; for it descends to the lowest depths of degradation and misery, and brings the light and comfort of the gospel to the slums of our large cities. Let us thank God for the noble men and women who, under the inspiration of the love of Christ, and unmindful of hardship, ridicule, and persecution, sacrifice their lives to the rescue of the hopeless outcasts of society. Truly, these good Samaritans are an honor to the name of Christ and a benediction to a lost world. There is room for all these and many other churches and societies in the kingdom of God, whose height and depth and length and breadth, variety and beauty, surpass human comprehension.

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For, who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen."

THE CHURCH AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

PLEA FOR AN ENLARGED VIEW OF THE
CHURCH'S MISSION.

BY PRESIDENT E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, D.D., of Brown
UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.

THE Conviction is widely prevalent that the Christian church. is failing to fulfil the entire mission which God and men have a right to expect of her. Lack is felt not so much in that painfully slow progress is made in converting the heathen, as because of the church's feebleness, the meagre success of her ministry, in those fields where she possesses most strength and has had the longest time to exert it. No one denies that the church wields great influence. Its foes agree with its friends that it is still

a mighty force in human affairs, though most who oppose it, and I fear some who befriend, would call it a waning force. But such as ardently love it admit and keenly feel that its power is in no wise so great as it ought to be.

When we consider the sweeping promises of Scripture, the prophecies which seem to imply that the gospel was meant to triumph quickly, the rapidity of its spread in early Christian times, its marvellous victories even more recently, when nations have been almost literally born in a day; when we reflect, further, upon the tremendous resources of the church at present, its numbers, its wealth, its learning, its standing in society, its access to all men through the press, by means of agencies for travel and communication, and because old savagery and national barriers have given way, such thoughts force us to feel that if Christianity is the peculiarly divine thing which we believe it to be, it ought long ago to have become the universal religion. On the contrary, not only is heathendom still defiant and even aggressive, but it is possible to question whether a single one among the so-called Christian nations is a whit more Christian to-day than it was fifty years ago.

This long and sad delay in the coming of the kingdom has

occasioned two phenomena worthy of special note. One is the amazing progress of new Millenarianism, the swift multiplication of men and women as devout and intelligent as any in the world, who do not expect decisive victory for Christianity during the present dispensation or under the present means of grace. Saints, they believe, will never be radically bettered, or the fulness of the Gentiles be brought in, through such work as the church is now doing, though we must continue this till the great renovation comes, because it is the Master's will that testimony should be universally borne to the guilt of sin and the plenitude of his grace. Such is the view of a vast multitude among evangelical Christians now.

The other significant phenomenon to be noticed is the large and increasing number of people who pretend to be in some sort believers in Christ and well-wishers to his truth, who refuse to recognize the church as any longer, if it ever was, the special bearer of essential Christianity. Numerous members of the new ethical societies both abroad and in America would illustrate the class of people here meant. One could also point to the often very unselfish workers in the non-religious charities of so many American cities as representing the same attitude.

That Christ has his true followers in the church these people do not deny, but they emphatically deny that the spirit and teachings of Christ are now exemplified in the life and policy of the church as such. They berate the church for its apathy touching social and moral wrongs in general, just as the abolitionists were wont to denounce it for tolerating slavery. Most that Christ was interested in, they allege, the latter-day church as such, the church as seen in its public and official acts, cares nothing about; while most that seems truly dear to the church is what Christ either ignored or positively condemned.

A very large class of good people, doubtless in the main Christians, whom we all love, and strive to bring into our churches, might be mentioned with the above. They do not criticise the church so severely as the others do; they do not deny its special mission as Christ's herald. Yet it is in their minds so little exclusively identified with the work of Christ in the world that they see no special reason why they should join it, and therefore, in spite of all our importunity, do not do so.

I for my part believe not only in Christianity but in the

church as its divinely-ordained representative and custodian. All the more because of this faith I feel bound to heed the criticisms of those who look upon the church in a different way. The Israel of God may be an Israel indeed, yet more or less completely in captivity. A true servant of God may be astray, either involuntarily, through ignorance, or voluntarily, in consequence of sin. In neither case should his function as servant be denied. Instead, every effort should be made to bring him back into proper, loyal, perfectly efficient service. I also believe the church to be now in the midst of her winning and final dispensation. It is my conviction that we are to conquer the world by the very same means of grace that are now, however imperfectly, in use. The trouble is that we are dallying with these means. We are not sufficiently in earnest. We ought to awake from our lethargy, to take God at his word, to imitate Christ, to use rather than abuse those powers for the conversion of the world which have been so graciously confided to us.

I cannot in this brief paper discuss all the evils which conspire to delay the church's due victory, but I believe most of them connect themselves with a certain illegitimate and vicious narrowness in the view which Christians take of the plans and purposes supposed to have been cherished by the Head of the church in founding it. Our thought of the field and function to which the church is called to-day is wry and petty as compared with Christ's own thought. This failure on the part of the church rightly to see and magnify its office relates partly to polity and partly to doctrine.

The fault touching polity consists in the fact that every denomination or establishment within the church, instead of humbly regarding itself a facet of the one holy catholic church, lays claim in theory and in much of its practice to exclusive ecclesiastical legitimacy. Each, in effect, says, "I am the church, and all the rest of you to be in the church must come and unite with me." I know full well that individual Christians often, if not usually, ridicule assumption of this sort. Most of us, when we as individual believers pray for the holy catholic church, have before our minds a thought blessedly inclusive. We take into our affections Catholic and Greek, Anglican and Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Plymouth brother, and soldier of the Salvation Army, and probably no one of us in such a prayer ever