kable providence of God in the presence, in the
country, at such a time as this, of so many representatives of the
great empire. Such providences are to be reverently heeded. They are
as the banners of the Almighty, meant to lead forth His loyal people
to the gracious conquest of the world. As for ourselves, what are we
disposed to do about it?

This conquest of the world for Christ is not to be achieved by
hap-hazard dashes. There is need of transcendent wisdom in the
strategic methods of the campaign. We have not wisdom enough for this
except as we have the wisdom to note which way the manifest hand of
God is pointing for us. Then is the time for assurance, for
obedience, and for enthusiasm in the fullest meaning of the term.

A few thousand Chinamen are here. The Chinese Empire is open to
us--and more too! To doubt the practicability of the Christianization
of the Chinese would be treason to the Gospel of Christ; would be
blindness to the facts of Christian history, as well as to the
foreshadowings of prophecy.

The success already in this department of the work of the American
Missionary Association has been signal enough to amount to a
demonstration. If suitably reinforced and pushed it might presently
be made vastly greater than it has as yet been.

It is the glory of this Society to do precisely this kind of work.
All its history and traditions, all the confidences and affection of
the people in our churches toward it, favor the most resolute pushing
forward of what has been undertaken.

The reactionary effect of this peculiar form of home-foreign mission
work upon the Christian character and culture of our own people is of
importance; of too much importance for it to be either safe or wise
for us to neglect it. Suppose this work were to be neglected, this
duty ignored, this clear providential summons slighted, what a
mockery it would be of our professed zeal for foreign missions. The
spectacle of what the Society is doing for the Chinese, especially of
what it ought to have the power and the commission given it to do, is
fitted to be peculiarly impressive, as an object lesson, to the
nation. The radical character of a nation comes out in no other way
so distinctively, as in the way it treats its weakest and most
helpless subjects.

A grand part of the good done by the American Missionary Association
has been in its influence, first on the conscience of the churches,
and then, through this, on the moral s