HOME MISSIONS JANUARY TOPIC-AMERICA'S EVANGELIZATION. Opportunity and Responsibility To-day. By Charles L. Thompson, D. D. "In to-day already walks to-morrow." To recall the past twelve years of our history is to be conscious of a rapid movement. It is like riding on the Limited-things are whirling past. Twelve years ago we were people whose national thought was bounded by our part of the continent. We had what our fathers bequeathed us and were happy. But suddenly the destiny of expansion seized us. It was resisted, but it was inevitable. The Hawaiian Islands came to us under an appeal to have resisted which had been to be recreant to the trust reposed in us by the Almighty as the guardians of liberty on this continent. A few years later and again we tried to resist this destiny. Because war is alien to our principles, we resisted as long as national honor would allow. Then, again, we yielded and took up the obligations imposed, by accepting seven millions of people west of us, and one million east of us. And now it may be that the events of the past few weeks foreshadow still other responsibilities, which may be but the beginning of yet others vaster and more far-reaching. All this national outlook has direct bearings on the work of the Church of Christ. We have safely expanded thus far because pioneer and preacher have gone side by side. Our future will depend on the ability of the Church to keep up with the line of our country's progress. What now are some of our opportunities? We have an opportunity to establish Christian centers in every community between the two seas. There is no hindrance other than pertains to church work everywhere, and there are many helps. The people in every hamlet are accessible. They make no opposition to the preaching of the gospel. In many cases they give honest welcome. Even godless families seek something for their children.· The Sunday-school is welcome, and the missionary-if a manly man-finds open doors. The Board could wisely employ five hundred additional missionaries in western States and Territories, if it had the men and the money. They would not be sent to overlap other work, but to seek and minister to those who have no minister now. We have an opportunity to give the gospel to foreigners who, at the rate of nearly a million a year, are coming to us. Imagine a city with a million people springing into existence in our country every year, made up of populations alien to our institutions, and largely ignorant of our Christianity. What a rush of missionary forces would concentrate there! We would almost suspend other work till that was at least well in hand. But precisely that is the case. That they are not centred in one place, but segregated in many, does not greatly change the problem. We have an obligation. Sometimes when the work is hard and the progress slow, we doubt the opportunity. We wonder whether it pays. But it does. Though we partly fail in the first generation, we will succeed in the second. Public schools, mission schools and churches will do the work. And it must be done. Business pleads for it, patriotism demands it, social considerations require it. The gospel finds in it its best apologetic and its most glorious reward. The miracle of Pentecost will come again, when Parthians and Medes, the dwellers in Mesopotamia and Judea, strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, will speak in our tongue the wonderful works of God. Our Church has not awaked a day too soon to its duty to the foreigners. The road is a long one and many questions are to be faced, but the duty is imperative. There is an opportunity to make of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe an American stock which will be in harmony with American life. To that opportunity the Church of every name is called to-day. Let her put on her armor and go at it. There is an opportunity of peculiar promise. in our relations to our island possessions. Porto Rico will give illustration. The Board began work there in the summer of 1899. We now have twenty preaching stations, nine organized churches, ten ordained ministers, six native helpers, eleven teachers, seven hundred church members, five hundred pupils in schools, a hospital with three buildings, and four physicians and nurses. This work can be more than duplicated in the next four years. A similar opportunity waits us in Cuba. Thus on many sides the pressure increases, and "new occasions teach new duties." The measure of devotion to our country's welfare which served a generation ago will not fill up the demands of the present. And the obligation is not wholly nor mainly a money obligation. It rests on souls. It calls for consecrated lives. The prizes of business are alluring, but to the larger vision there is something more fascinating than business success. It is the growth of God's kingdom in and through our national growth. What an appeal our country's present and future makes to Christian young men and women! Into what harvest fields they walk who give themselves to make Christ known among our people! It is not a question wholly of ministers. The call is for missionaries, whether ordained or unordained. When boys and girls inquire how they can best serve their day and generation, they can be pointed to training schools for lay workers, which in a few years will fit them for missionary and evangelistic work. And for men and women so fitted, the calls for service abound. The great cities need them to seek out those who have experienced the solitude of the crowd, and who in "a whole city full" have neither good friend nor Christian helper. The foreign camps call for them to interpret Christ to the people of a strange tongue. The far-away hamlets plead for them to be a voice in the wilderness and a hand for the helpless. Thus in all places and grades the roads of missionary opportunity open. No consecrated soul need be without a chance to serve the Master. Young preachers need not wait for calls to churches-they have a call now to make churches, and that is better. No humble Christian man or woman, with a heart on fire for Christ, need fail of a mission. Glorious day, when opportunity and obligation are like adjoining rooms, with an open door between! To him whom Christ has made to feel the obligation, Providence throws back the door of the opportunity. The Evangelization of Our Own Land the Key to the Evangelization of the World. By Wilson Phraner, D. D. That ability and opportunity involve responsibility, is one of the cardinal principles of the Gospel. The peculiar and special blessings which we receive from our Heavenly Father in whatsoever form or measure, whether of talent or wealth, influence or power, are not given simply for our own advantage. They are special trusts which we are to administer for the benefit of others. True this alike of individuals, of churches, of communities and of nations. Our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers brought with them to this country the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and laid the foundations of this nation upon a Christian basis. This is our national heritage-a legacy given us in trust which we are to cherish, preserve and hand down unimpaired to those who shall come after us. Our free institutions which so distinctively recognize the value and dignity of the individual, and which to such an extent have given shape and character to our civilization, are CENTRAL CITY, COLORADO. A typical Colorado town in whieh the Board of Home Missions is assisting in the support of the Presbyterian pastor. The church building is hidden from sight because of a hill. the product of our Chrstianity. A free Gospel has given us our free institutions. Indeed, it is not too much to say that our national liberties and free institutions are conditioned upon the fact of our being and continuing a Christian people. Such institutions as ours demand, in order to their permanence and salutary operation, a measure of intelligence and virtue among the people, which pertains to no other form of government. So if we are to continue a free and prosperous nation, then must the principles of that Gospel which has done so much to make us what we are, be diffused throughout all the land, and dominate the mind and spirit of our people. The Church of Christ through her diversified agencies-religious, educational and philanthropic must continue her work until there is not a community unsupplied with her sacred beneficent ministrations. This obligation on the part of the Church to multiply her organizations and extend her influence, has been recognized from the beginning. Tens of thousands of churches have been organized, and about one hundred and fifty millions of dollars have been expended during the last century in the work of evangelizing our country, more than one-sixth of which amount has been expended by our own branch of the Presbyterian Church. But the work is not finished. New communities and towns are constantly springing up, our cities increasing in population, and the nation enlarging its boundaries, thus furnishing new fields for Christian work, and demanding new efforts to supply the religious needs of our people. There is yet much land to be occupied, and the future as the past, will constantly demand new provision for its wants. tide of immigration, our last General Assembly called the special attention of the Church and suggested earnest and special efforts to reach them with the influences of the Gospel. In the providence of God these multitudes are coming to our shores and settling in our midst, thus making the problem of Foreign missions in our Home land, one of momentous importance demanding the most serious consideration. The possibilities in this direction, not only for ourselves, but for humanity and the world at large, are almost beyond comprehension. The work is before us and the exigency and responsibility are upon us. The heathen are at our doors. For our own safety we must act, as well as for the highest welfare of those who are thus coming among us. Besides the natural increase of our population, vast multitudes are coming to us from other lands, not as hitherto from England, Ireland and Scotland, or from France and Germany and Scandinavia, but from eastern and southern Europe, an immigration quite different in its character and with less knowledge of and sympathy with our free institutions, and demanding special attention and provision for their instruction, lest with our easily secured franchise their presence should prove a menace to our national welfare. To this fact and to the character of this swelling What an appeal does the condition of things in our land to-day make to all thoughtful, patriotic and Christian people? With our increasing wealth and abounding prosperity and enlargement in so many directions tempting us to pride and luxury and extravagance and folly, how does it become the Church of Christ to arouse herself and lift up her standard! Instead of dwelling at her ease, shall she not address herself with a new energy to the solution of the mighty problems which now claim her special attention? Notwithstanding and in spite of all threatening dangers, this land must be saved for Christ. The power of His blessed gospel must here find illustration, and the value of a true Christian civilization must here be exemplified. Our birthright and heritage as a Christian nation must not be sacrified. We owe this to those who have gone before us; we owe this to those who shall come after us. But this can be done only as our Protestant Christianity and our distinctively Christian civilization is made more effective and dominant in all the land. But we owe this not only to ourselves-to the Fathers and to our children, but to humanity and the world for which we hold all in trust. Above all do we owe it to Him whose guiding hand has led us, and to whom we are indebted for all our prosperity, who in so marvelous a wav has led us forth into a large place and given us our present position as a nation among the great powers of the world. The record of our growth and enlargement in the brief period of our national history, is without a parallel in the history of nations. God hath not dealt so with any people. In a little more than a single century He has made us a great nation, and placed us in the forefront among the great world-powers, and assigned us an important and responsible part in the solution of the great world problems. Certainly God has not raised up this nation and thus made it great, to destroy it, nor yet to suffer it to destroy itself. He has use for it and evidently He intends to use it in connection with the execution of His great purposes of love and mercy towards our fallen world and our sinful race. Such is the honor and work and destiny which open before us, and to which God in his providence and by his Spirit seems to beckon us forward. Surely, if we have a mission in the world, it is as a Christian nation, to whom the command of the Master comes with a peculiar emphasis: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” That gospel which has done so much for us, which has been our crown and glory and benediction, we are privileged and commanded to carry to others. To whom God has given much, from them also will He require much in return. Ability, opportunity and responsibility are here commensurate. With our wealth and numbers, and prestige and position among the nations, is it not our privilege and our duty to send the gospel to the ends of the earth, and so accomplish our divine mission and realize our true destiny as an honored instrument in God's hand in the evangelization of the world? But as the preparation for and the condition of this, we must first truly and thoroughly evangelize our own land. In order to this, how diligently should we labor and how earnestly should we pray that God would make our own a truly Christian nation-Christian in the character of its rulers, Christian in all its legislation, in its jurisprudence, in its diplomacy, and in its educational work, Christian in its commerce, and in all its dealings and intercourse with the nations. So only shall we act worthy of our inheritance in the gospel, show true loyalty to the Master, and fulfill the destiny to which God summons us in his providence and by his Spirit. This nation, together with the rest of the Anglo-Saxon race, fully brought under the power of the gospel and in the spirit of a true consecration going forth to conquer the world for Christ, with God's presence and blessing would prove irresistible,-a power before which all the forces of ignorance and superstition would disappear, and the promised day of the world's emancipation and blessing be ushered in, when all men shall know the Lord and when Christ shall reign from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. An Armenian American Missionary. The close interlocking of home and foreign missions is vividly illustrated by the Rev. L. A. Tchorigian, a young Armenian Christian. He was educated in America, and less than two years ago, took charge of a mission in Oregon. It has now become an organized church, and he returns to take up a life work in Constantinople. Here is his own story of the recent months: "The day to which our prayers have been looking forward for the last two years is here. The Presbyterian Church of Monument was organized on Sunday, the 1st of November, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in the presence of a large congregation. This was exactly two years from the date of the commencement of our work here. There were thirteen charter members, eleven of whom were received on confession of faith. Eight of this number were the fruit of our labors here. One more was afterward received into the church on confession. Two of our baptized converts left Monument for Washington before the organization of our church. Our heart is warmed, and our soul is full of thanksgiving to the Lord, and we want you to be partakers with us of our joy. I could tell some of the wonderful things that God has done in our midst of late days. Verily the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. We began a series of evangelistic services on Sunday, October eighteenth, with three services, morning, afternoon and evening. For three weeks we had preaching daily, three services Sundays, and a prayer-meeting in some home every day. The Spirit of God was manifestly in our |