'a professor of godliness' out of our cities for the rescue of pagan souls from the certain (?) perils of hell!" "The Unitarian body, if it does forever criticize itself before the world, is at least free from this resolute contest with the most ghastly failure. For our part, we do not desire its organizations and its members to resolve themselves into a mutual admiration society." Such expressions declare their inspiration of what kind it is.

More than half the article in the "Examiner" is devoted to the finances of the board, and by small criticisms and great suppressions it labors to make its point that, financially, this effort of half a century is an "unquestioned ill success," a "most ghastly failure." It would seem that common candor and fairness could have found room for at least one paragraph of fact, that the receipts of the board have steadily increased from one thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand per annum; that during this half century it has collected and disbursed more than eight millions, without having experienced a defalcation or suspicion; and that its paper has been among the best commercial paper of the world. But this simply and obviously just statement of facts that lie upon the surface of the history of the board would have spoiled more than half the reviewer's work. "Every means has been resorted to for collecting funds, and yet none can be said to have succeeded." The writer seems unable to discriminate between a "most ghastly failure" and a variation or improvement in the modes of collecting. But if the trifle of eight millions is a failure, what is the Unitarian idea of success in collecting for Foreign Missions? And what is their experience?

"We had hoped," says the writer, "to discuss, in connection with this Memorial Volume,' the principles and working of the Missions themselves, their interior policy, and the service which they may perform, especially the kind of agencies which they should make use of; but we find almost nothing in regard to the matter in this volume." (p. 282.) This statement surprises us, since, of the four hundred pages in the body of the Memorial, one hundred and seventy-five are an exposé of this "the principles and working of the missions." very thing But all these faults in the review of the Memorial are minor and trivial compared with its vast omissions and suppressions.

Its original sin and depravity consist in "a want of conformity unto" the great facts of the volume. Indeed, we suspect that the theological status and the religious and spiritual mood of the critic did not qualify him to do such a work. The field to be reviewed seems to lie beyond the neighborhood of his thoughts, and perspective, and grasp. The missionary forces put into the fields of the Board are not stated and estimated in any moral balances; their Christian results are not reviewed and summed up; the principles, working, and interior policy of missions, occupying so large a part of the volume, are not touched; the educational fruits are not mentioned even in the gross; the broad field of missionary literature, a theme so inviting for a Christian examiner, receives no allusion; the moral contrast wrought out under the eye of the Board in its fields of labor between 1810 and 1860 is not sketched or hinted at; and the Christian worthies, who founded the institution and who have made it illustrious for half a century, are passed by with a perfect and profound silence.

For us, therefore, to accomplish our purpose in reaching the Memorial Volume, we must leave the "Examiner." But before taking leave we must advert to the reviewer's ideas on the duty of sustaining missions to the heathen:

"It is an error to say that missions, as such, are made obligatory by the law of the gospel and the words of Christ." "A mission beyond the sphere of clearly defined good opportunity, simply that we may think that we have done our duty in the matter of missions, is the serious error of many good men. Place a given church in the midst of a heathen community, and it must become, like the early church, a missionary organization. Not so placed, it cannot so readily undertake the work of missions." "Benevolent organizations, like that of the American Board, should confine their operations to gathering and administering funds in aid of those enterprises which can support their appeal by clear evidence of a good work already begun, and sure to be done to some extent even if no aid is rendered.".

pp. 283, 284.

That is, if we are made comfortable by Christianity, not being "in the midst of a heathen community," no matter what religion others have or how they fare. The early Christians were under no obligation to send and carry the gospel to our pagan ancestors, unless they saw a "clearly defined good oppor

tunity." If Madagascar is towed in and anchored off Cape Cod we are obligated by the opportunity to evangelize the island. But lying off as it does at God's moorings in the Indian Ocean our duty may not extend to so inconvenient a distance.

We have not so learned Christ in his last command. Our Christian sympathies are not so pent up. That "indefinite sentiment," of which the Board is said to be the organ, leads us into the effort to "preach the gospel to every creature." The "good opportunity" to labor where there is "clear evidence of a good work already begun," is said to be the only warrant for beginning a mission. So Paul confessed to a great mistake when he said: "So have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation." Eliot should not have founded his Indian churches. The pioneers of the Board had no right to Christianize the Sandwich Islands, or in any place to fulfil prophecy, and make the wilderness bud and blossom as the rose. The first Christians in any given locality must be autochthones.

The North American Review," whose article on the Memorial Volume we have indicated at the head of this paper, expresses our views and feelings on the duty of Missions so thoroughly and so admirably, that we in this connection make a quotation. The whole article is a noble and worthy tribute to the genius, progress, and success of this half-century enterprise. The broad Christianity, scholarship, and compass of the Editor, pressed by the onerous duties that a painful providence has suddenly imposed on him, find time to revel in his theme, and the grace of his pen is excelled only by the grace of his spirit.

"The quiescence from which the churches of our land were roused by the formation of this Board, was an utterly unchristian state. The legitimate gospel can have no statics, but only dynamics, so long as there remains a nation or a soul not under its influence. It is in its founder's purpose an unresistingly aggressive force. The church that makes of itself a close corporation, furnishes the means of religious nurture only to its pew-holders, its members bringing their own shallow cups to the fountain of salvation, and never proffering a

draught to a thirsty outside brother, has no title to be regarded as a church of Christ. The prime law of our religion is diffusive love; love imparts what it most prizes; and he can know little of the blessedness of Christian faith and hope who yearns not to make his fellowmen partakers of that blessedness."—p. 466.

We cannot appreciate these half-century records composing the Memorial Volume without first admitting to our mind some tolerable idea of the state of the Christian world as related to missions, and of the missionary field, when the Board commenced its work.

On the continent of Europe there was very little civil or religious liberty. Evangelical religion had barely an existence. We were just beginning to be known and felt as a member in the family of nations, being in our second vigintal, and with less than a fourth of our present population. We had no railroad, no telegraph, and but two or three steamers, coasting and creeping at five miles an hour. A few local Home Missionary and Bible Societies were doing something in a small way, but national organizations to give the gospel to the world were not thought of. Nor, indeed, was there any general idea in the American church that this was a Christian duty, and could be discharged. The morning light was breaking in England, specially among the Moravians, Baptists, and Wesleyans. Here and there could be found an English or Scotch missionary in Sierra Leone, South Africa, India, Tahiti, and the West Indies. But the American church at this time had no organization for foreign labor, and no foreign laborer for Christ. His friends. were ignorant and apathetic, while his enemies derided such an undertaking.

The missionary field was as vast and as dark as the friends of missions were few and feeble. The Moslem power was yet a terror in all the East. Turkey in Europe and in Asia, and all that region where are now our most successful missions, was under the pale light of the crescent, and the guard of bloody hands. Southern Asia, at widely separated border spots, showed a faint tinge of the coming dawn. But inland and direct to the arctic, or sweeping around through China's seas, with an inclosure of the millions of the Celestials and Japanese, there was scarcely one oasis. True, Morrison had planted a

solitary olive-tree outside the walls of the Chinese empire, but it was so small it could ill spare a single leaf for the inquiring dove. Africa, dark, stricken, bleeding Africa, still lay an almost unbroken offering to heathenism, and to the traffickers in human flesh. Two years only before the organization of the Board our government had forbidden the foreign slave-trade, we leading the nations in this crusade of mercy. The islands, from continental Australia to the smallest coral reef of the Pacific, were, with very few exceptions, in unmitigated and unvisited paganism. No comforting and saving words reached them from Him who "was in the isle that is called Patmos." In our own land the wigwam was still in Ohio. St. Louis counted scarcely her thousand residents, while from the mouths to the springs of the Mississippi, in all her tributary head waters, now the homestead of fifteen millions of whites, the paddle of the Indian was dipped without molestation, and almost without a rival. Cincinnati still numbered her inhabitants by hundreds, and it was not till two years later, 1812, that Buffalo rose to the magnitude of a frontier military post.

Such was the position of the church in the earth, and such the mournful state of the heathen world, when Mills proposed to his praying companions "to send the gospel to that dark and heathen land, and said, we could do it if we would." In connection with their wishes to go, and their necessities in going, the American Board was formed.

If the limits of this paper would allow, it would be a rare pleasure, a Christian enjoyment of the highest kind, to name and characterize the earlier members and managers of this Board. To begin to call the catalogue, with the memorialists for the charter, adding the first body of corporate members, and then the earlier corresponding secretaries, Worcester, Evarts, Cornelius, Wisner, stirs to new life and vigor our noblest qualities. All the better associations of our childhood are linked in with this institution and these men. We were taught, by the way in which it was annually presented, received, supported, spoken of, and prayed for, to place it next to an apostolical institution. Probably no single manifestation has done so much to give us a complete conception of the spirit and scope of the religion of Christ. As an educating power in the