churches. Rice returned to urge the appeal on
their immediate attention, while Judson remained to enter on that noble
apostolate for which his praise is in all the churches.

To the widespread Baptist fellowship this sudden, unmistakable, and
imperative providential summons to engage in the work of foreign
missions was (it is hardly too much to say) like life from the dead. The
sect had doubled its numbers in the decade just passed, and was
estimated to include two hundred thousand communicants, all "baptized
believers." But this multitude was without common organization, and,
while abundantly endowed with sectarian animosities, was singularly
lacking in a consciousness of common spiritual life. It was pervaded by
a deadly fatalism, which, under the guise of reverence for the will of
God, was openly pleaded as a reason for abstaining from effort and
self-denial in the promotion of the gospel. Withal it was widely
characterized not only by a lack of education in its ministry, but by a
violent and brutal opposition to a learned clergy, which was
particularly strange in a party the moiety of whose principles depends
on a point in Greek lexicology. It was to a party--we may not say a
body--deeply and widely affected by traits like these that the divine
call was to be presented and urged. The messenger was well fitted for
his work. To the zeal of a new convert to Baptist principles, and a
missionary fervor deepened by recent contact with idolatry in some of
its most repulsive forms, Luther Rice united a cultivated eloquence and
a personal persuasiveness. Of course his first address was to pastors
and congregations in the seaboard cities, unexcelled by any, of whatever
name, for intelligent and reasonable piety; and here his task was easy
and brief, for they were already of his mind. But the great mass of
ignorance and prejudice had also to be reckoned with. By a work in which
the influence of the divine Spirit was quite as manifest as in the
convulsive agitations of a camp-meeting, it was dealt with successfully.
Church history moved swiftly in those days. The news of the accession of
Judson and Rice was received in January, 1813. In May, 1814, the General
Missionary Convention of the Baptists was organized at Philadelphia,
thirty-three delegates being present, from eleven different States. The
Convention, which was to meet triennially, entered at once upon its
work. It became a vital center to the Baptist denomination. From