Business Men to Missions. There was also a general committee on Devotional Meetings and Music.

Besides the Programme Committee, the other committees specialized in the same way. The executive members of the Hospitality and Exhibit Committees were assisted by advisory and co-operating members nominated by the different societies.

As the time for the Conference approached, the executive officers were constituted a Committee on Emergencies, with which any special committee could confer when immediate action needed to be taken. In addition to these committees, it became necessary to appoint several secretarial assistants, more completely to centralize the work, so that in addition to the Chairman and Secretaries of the Executive Committee (one of whom, the Rev. S. L. Baldwin, D.D., was completely prostrated during the entire Conference) those who had the chief burden of the work were Miss E. Theodora Crosby, former missionary in the Caroline Islands; Rev. Henry O. Dwight, LL.D., of Constantinople; Rev. J. Hood Laughlin, of China; Rev. J. L. Dearing, D.D., of Japan; Rev. R. C. Beebe, M.D., of China, and Rev. Henry T. McEwen, D.D., of Amsterdam, N. Y.

Missionary Exhibit

The Exhibit Committee corresponded with some eight hundred missionaries and five hundred societies throughout the world in its efforts to collect such articles as would most vividly illustrate native life or customs and the work and environment of the missionary, as well as convey through the eye the material and educational results of Christian missions. The main Exhibit was by countries, each occupying a separate court or alcove, and the heads of these courts and their assistants were most happy in their explanations of the articles exhibited. In some cases they were natives or missionaries of the country, and dressed in the costume of the people. The Exhibit also contained a collection of missionary literature, maps, and apparatus used in the home Church for the circulation of information and the collection of funds. The library included the publications of the Bible and Tract Societies, and some eight hundred of the latest missionary books in the English, German, French, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages.*

The spacious Parish House of the Church of Zion and St. Timothy, where the Exhibit was held, proved too small for the collection. At a conservative estimate not less than 60,000 persons visited the exhibit during the eight days it was open. Multitudes who had little direct interest in missions and who did not care for the meetings, were captivated by this vivid illustration of non-Christian countries, and by the stereopticon lectures given twice daily in the Church of the Disciples.†

The experience gained by the committee has led to the following suggestions: First. as much material as possible should be secured at home before having recourse to the missionaries on the field; second, the work of making the collection should begin at least two years in advance: third, a liberal fund should be available to pay for articles.

The Exhibit has been incorporated as The Christian Missions Museum and Library. It has been placed. by special arrangement. in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The directors propose, with the assistance of the latter institution, to continue to add to the collection which may be regarded as permanent. and missionaries and others having suitable material are invited to send a description of the same to Rev. Harlan P. Beach, 3 West Twenty-ninth street, New York City.

Hospitality

The Hospitality Committee had the responsibility of providing entertainment for the foreign delegates and all missionaries. It was assisted in its work by sub-committees appointed by the larger denominations to care for their own delegates and missionaries as well as those of affiliated bodies abroad. The delegates of the American and Canadian societies were not entertained, but the Hospitality Committee aided them by establishing a Directory of Hotels and Boardinghouses, and making full arrangements for them when requested. Attendants, with conspicuous badges, met all incoming steamers, and were at the principal railway stations, while at Carnegie Hall a Bureau of Information and a branch of the New York Postoffice were established. The parlors were open to ali as a pleasant resting-place, and afternoon tea was served by the ladies from the various churches. A number of social functions were arranged by the denominational social unions of the city, and by other friends in their homes, while the British and Colonial residents of New York gave a reception to the British and Colonial delegates and missionaries. These gatherings afforded a pleasant opportunity for the reunion of friends and for personal acquaintance with fellow-delegates and the Christian people of New York.

The Press

The Press Committee began its work in the early fall, and continued it throughout the winter. Articles and notes for the press were prepared weeks in advance, bulletins were issued announcing the plans for the Conference, and these were sent to upward of seven hundred religious and secular papers in all parts of the world. A large number of photographs and sketches of representative missionaries and others who were to take part in the discussions were secured by the committee, and copies sent to all journals that desired to use them. The result was that there was scarcely a town or village, certainly not a city, in the United States of America, that did not have the Conference presented in its local press. The many missionary and secular magazines and papers had extended articles, some of them illustrated, describing the purpose and scope of the Conference and containing brief notes on its personnel. The New York dailies contained accurate accounts of the preliminary meetings, and detailed some of their best men to attend the Conference, while the Associated Press planned to report all the meetings in Carnegie Hall and most of the sectional meetings.

Applications for press tickets came in such numbers as to completely exhaust the supply; probably no religious convention was ever so fully reported; column after column was given to it in the Tribune, Times, Sun, Herald, and other great metropolitan dailies, as well as in other papers throughout the country.

One of the most important duties of the committee was that of securing an accurate and detailed account of the meetings, to serve as the basis of the Report. A corps of sixteen official stenographers was detailed to the various meetings, of which they took the minutes and

made verbatim reports of the discussions and of such addresses as were not in manuscript.

Besides these large and thoroughly organized committees, there were the smaller committees, whose duties were no less arduous. The Popular Meetings Committee, after organizing one set of alternate meetings, had to find speakers at the last moment for overflow meetings in neighboring churches, thus providing, as it were on the spur of the moment, for the great crowds that could not otherwise be accommodated, and yet who thus had the opportunity of hearing some of the most popular speakers at the Conference. Through the pulpit service," as it was called, in the care of Rev. J. L. Dearing, D.D., of Japan, a large number of churches in New York and vicinity were supplied with missionary speakers on the Lord's Days. Perhaps a greater number of people were brought into actual contact with the Conference in this way than in any other; certainly the churches entered most enthusiastically into the plan.

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A Daily Bulletin, with an average edition of six thousand copies, was issued each evening, containing the programme and announcements for the following day, and messages from honorary members and others, which could not be read aloud in the meetings. The editor arrived at her post every morning soon after seven, and left every night about eleven o'clock, gathering the information during the day and evening, amid incessant interruptions, so as to have the copy in the hands of the printer by eight o'clock the next morning.

The marvel was that so many persons entered so heartily into the work of the practical arrangements. As the necessity arose it seemed that Providence had the man or woman specially fitted for the work to be done ready to come forward and do it. Mr. W. E. Lougee, of the International Committee, Y. M. C. A., organized the whole ticket bureau, and within a week after the first notice had been sent out issued more than ninety thousand tickets for admission to Carnegie Hall and the alternate meetings. Mr. John Seely Ward, Chairman of the Hall Committee, had charge of the engaging of the Hall, and kept messengers on hand day and night for the use of the Executive Committee. Rev. H. A. Kinports, of the Christian Endeavor Society, provided volunteer ushers for the evening meetings. The Carnegie Hall employees and the policemen also became deeply interested in the Conference because of the character of the audience, and rendered most valuable assistance.

The Conference held its morning and evening sessions as a body in Carnegie Hall, while auxiliary to this main auditorium were six or seven neighboring churches used for the afternoon sectional meetings and the overflow meetings. At Carnegie Hall there was a ticket office, a bureau of information, a bureau of entertainment, a postoffice, and reception parlors, a transportation bureau for stamping return railway certificates, a book department for the sale of missionary literature. In the rear of the Hall were the general secretary's office, a registry for special delegates and missionaries, a pulpit-supply bureau, and headquarters of the press with its eight or more typewriter operators; then two blocks away was the Parish House, containing the Missionary Exhibit, with its attractively ar

ranged booths in charge of matrons and their assistants; all these departments enlisted hundreds of voluntary workers who gave their time freely and enthusiastically, although they knew that by so doing they would not themselves be able to attend the meetings.

Note on Previous Conferences*

The first Union Missionary Convention was held in this country in the city of New York on Thursday and Friday, November 4 and 5, 1854. Its occasion was the presence in America of Alexander Duff, the most prominent missionary of his day. Its object." as the Report says-and this language we adopt verbatim in description of the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions, held in the same city in 1900-" its object was to unite in cordial love and sympathy the friends of missions; to excite them to higher effort for the conversion of the world; and to discuss, in the presence of the greatest and most experienced of living missionaries, topics in which all missionary boards are equally concerned. And if the circulation and perusal of this report will, in any degree, excite and extend among the churches the warm, catholic, clevated, and pious feeling, which pervaded the Convention from its opening to its close, its object will be attained."

Alexander Duff came over in the Africa" of the Cunard Line, and landed in New York on February 15, 1854. Then began a triumphal progress through the Middle and Middle Western States and to Montreal, and just prior to his departure from the port of New York on the "Pacific" of the Collins Line, he was the central figure in this first union missionary convention, which numbered as delegates nearly three hundred evangelical clergymen. The resolution to hold such a meeting had been passed in Philadelphia on Tuesday, February 23; the names signed to the call embraced those best known to the Christian public of that day as living in New York and Philadelphia. Those from New York were: R. L. Stuart, Stewart Brown, Jonathan Sturges, William E. Dodge, William Colgate, Francis Hall, John T. Agnew, George D. Phelps, and John Paton. Those from Philadelphia_were: John A. Brown, William Welsh, Joseph P. Engles, Thomas Wattson, Colson Hieskell, Daniel Murphy, C. E. Spangler, Alex. H. Julian, George H. Stuart. and Robert Patterson. The call was sent out on April 1. The meeting was held in the lecture-room of the Rev. Dr. Alexander's church, on Fifth avenue, corner of Nineteenth street. ‡

The first session was held at 10 a.m.; the second at 7.30 p.m.; the third at 9 a.m., the next day. The call for the meeting was a timid document, intimating plainly how uncertain the success of the meeting was considered, but it was the opinion of all who attended the sessions that they were eminently profitable. Eight questions had been drawn up, nominally for general discussion, but no one is mentioned by name as taking part in the discussion, although the report says many did, and it would seem that Duff had it pretty much to himself. At all events, he drew up the answers to the first five of the eight questions, and upon the remaining three he, manifestly, was not qualified to speak.

As a contribution to the history of missions, we here present the questions, with Duff's answers, which are in the form of resolutions:

I. To what extent are we authorized by the Word of God to expect the conversion of the world to Christ?

Resolved, That without entering into any definition as to the technical meaning of such a term as conversion, and without entering into any statement as to the time, or succession of antecedent events, this Convention rejoice in unanimously testifying their single, heartfelt, undoubting faith in the emphatic declaration of God's inspired Word that men shall be pleased in Him," i.e.,

* Contributed by Samuel Macauley Jackson.

+ Proceedings of the Union Missionary Convention held in New York, May 4th and 5th, 1854. Together with the address of the Rev. Dr. Duff, at the public meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle. Published by order of the Committee. New York: Taylor and Hogg, 875 Broadway, 1854.

This church was subsequently moved up-town, stone for stone, and is now the Central Presbyterian Church on West 57th street, where the alternate meetings of the Conference of 1900 were held, not in the lecture-room as in 1854, but in the auditorium!

in Jesus Christ. "all nations shall call Him blessed," yea that the whole earth shall be filled with His glory."

II. What are the divinely appointed and most efficient means of extending the gospel of salvation to all men?

Resolved, As the general sense of this Convention, that the chief means of divine appointment for the evangelization of the world are-the faithful teaching and preaching of the pure gospel of salvation by duly qualified ministers and other holy and consistent disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ-accompanied with prayer and savingly applied by the grace of the Holy Spirit; such means, in the providential application of them by human agency, embracing not merely instruction by the living voice, but the translation and judicious circulation of the whole written Word of God-the preparation and circulation of evangelical tracts and books-as well as any other instrumentalities fitted to bring the Word of God home to men's souls-together with any processes which experience may have sanctioned as the most efficient in raising up everywhere indigenous ministers and teachers of the living gospel.

III. Is it best to concentrate laborers in the foreign field, or to scatter them?

Resolved, That while this Convention fully accord in the propriety and desirableness of diffusing a knowledge of the gospel as far as circumstances admit, or the providence of God may indicate, by means of a duly qualified and unrestrained itineracy-they yet as fully accord in the propriety and desirableness of seizing on strong and commanding stations, more especially in countries where hereditary concentrated systems of error have long prevailed, and there concentrating a powerful agency fitted by harmonious cooperation to carry on the different departments of the missionary enterprise, in such a way as to constitute them emanating sources of evangelizing influence to the surrounding multitudes, as well as the most efficient means of perpetuating the gospel in purity to succeeding generations.

IV. In view of the great extent of the heathen world, and the degree to which it is opened, is it expedient for different missionary boards to plant stations on the same ground?

Resolved, That considering the vast extent of the yet unevangelized world of heathenism, and the limited means of evangelization at the disposal of the existing evangelical churches or societies, it would be very desirable, that, with the exception of great centers, such as the capitals of powerful kingdoms, an efficient pre-occupancy of any particular portion of the heathen field by any evangelic church or society should be respected by others, and left in their undisturbed possession. At the same time, acknowledging with thankfulness to God, that heretofore there has been practically so little interference with each other's fields of labor.

V. How may the number of qualified laborers for the evangelization of the world be multiplied and best prepared?

Resolved, That in the absence of sufficient data to give a full deliverance on the subject, this Convention cherishes a deep conviction, that in order to the multiplication of suitable agents for the heathen missionary field, ministers of the gospel must strive more vividly to realize in their own souls the paramount grandeur of the missionary enterprise, in its relations to the glory of God as manifested in the design and consummation of the whole redemptive economy, and as the divinely appointed and divinely commanded instrumentality for the regeneration of the lost and perishing in every land; and to strive habitually through prayer to the Lord of the harvest, who alone can truly raise up and send forth laborers, as also through their public and private ministrations, to stamp similarly vivid impressions on the minds of Church members, and especially Christian parents, Sabbath-school and other Christian teachers, who may have it in their power to train up the young, in simple dependence on God's blessing, to realize the magnitude and the glory of the work of the world's evangelization, and lead them to consider personal dedication to the work as the highest of duties, and noblest of privileges. Moreover, that for the due preparation of candidates for the foreign field, it were very desirable that regular provision were made in our theological seminaries generally, for bringing the nature, history, and obligations of the missionary enterprise before the minds of the students; or what may be briefly designated a course of evangelistic theology.