At the beginning of the century the Church of Christ as a whole was actually opposed to missions. To-day every section of the Church of Christ feels it to be its duty to have its mission, its missionary society, and, though there are still a large number of people who, at heart, are lukewarm-the best of them lukewarm-yet it is respectable even for them to subscribe to missions. Now that is a very remarkable change of feeling.

I want you to notice how wonderfully the Church of Christ has taken up this work. First came missionary societies, little, earnest companies of people who, notwithstanding all the hostility of their friends and neighbors, were determined to carry on missionary work; that little Baptist company who were determined, although their leading minister at that time advised the churches to be a little cautious how they entered into this thing, because no respectable person seemed to be connected with it. There were little companies of men forming missionary societies, and God blessed their labors, and God opened the world to them, and God, through them, worked upon the heart and the life of the Church at home, and what do you see next? Why, the great Christian associations we call denominations took the next step and said, Well, now, foreign missions are a part of the work of the Church; the foreign missions committee is just as much a part of the work of the Church as the home missions committee; and so missions were put in their true place; and now, finally, at the end of the century we have the home organizations 1eproduced abroad. Our great British colonies have their own missionary societies, and in almost every principal mission field there are now missionary societies. formed by the converts for the purpose of maintaining preachers and evangelizing among their own heathen neighbors. So, wonderfully, throughout this century the missionary idea has sprung up, and grown, and blossomed, and borne fruit, and become a great tree in the earth.

This century has been a century of remarkable provision for the prosecution of foreign missionary work. Coincident with the waking and the growth of the missionary spirit in the Church have come two other lines of great movement outside direct church action at any rate. The first of these was the great industrial and commercial awakening, and the great industrial and commercial development of the nineteenth century.

In

In 1764, the spinning jenny was invented by Hargreave. 1766, the spinning mule was invented by Crompton. In 1768, the spinning frame was invented by Arkwright. Those three things together revolutionized all textile manufacture, made the production of clothing and all soft goods cheap, easy, and rapid, and suggested new markets in a very short time. Almost simultaneously with this revolution in textile manufacture came the application of the artificial blast in the iron furnace. That revolutionized the manufacture of iron. Thirdly, in 1765, Watt discovered the principle of the condensing cylinder, by which the steam engine was transformed from an uncertain toy into one of the greatest powers man has in his hand.

What has this to do with missions? Why just this: That during the next thirty or forty years, while God was moving the hearts of men under new spiritual influences, a new class was growing up in Great Britain, the industrial class, the manufacturing class, intelligent, observant, thoughtful, active, always ready to make new moves, always looking out for new opportunities to sell their goods. And all through this century God has been giving into the hands of the nations which have His Word, the nations which have known free Christian institutions, the nations which have experienced the great evangelical revival, this enormous power in the world, the power of production. This enormous stimulus to sell their goods and inventions went on from step to step until, in the year when our Queen came to her throne, in 1837, the first steamers crossed the Atlantic, and the Cunard Line, and the Peninsular and Oriental Line to India were established, revolutionizing the carrying power of the world, and becoming a preparation of the way of the Lord across the sea.

The other line of influence of the present century which has affected missions is political. There have been some very remarkable changes in the political relations of the world, and these are of profound significance. First and foremost, the development of this country, if it had continued simply in a colonial relation to Great Britain, could not possibly have been what it has been; throwing its ports open as a free people to the world, and separated from all the mischievous and cramping influences of the great monarchies, the great military powers and terrors of Europe. God has given you an opportunity not only of material expansion, but of educational expansion, and of the production of a great new amalgam, by the amalgamating together of many races in these United States under the influence of a free Christianity and your wonderful system of education and liberty of government. God called these States into being just at the time when He was calling His Church to her greatest work, and He has given you already a splendid share in that work.

Then, in the middle of the century, came another great movement, by which the rule over a magnificent empire was taken from a dividend-wanting company and put into the hands of our Queen. The East India Company was a wonderful corporation, and did in its way a wonderful work and raised some splendid men, but its first thought was its shareholders' dividends and profits, and that thought influenced all its relation to the natives. In the earlier days of the century it prevented missionaries from going to India. It led men in their places in the House of Commons to talk about the missions to India. Said one of them: "Why, I had rather send a shipload of devils to India than a shipload of missionaries "; and they acted in that spirit. The Imperial rule of Britain came in and it opened the door to mission work in India. God opened that door sadly. He taught us our duty by one of the most terrible things we have had in our recent history, the great Indian Mutiny. God opened the door, and at once came woman's work in India, medical

work in India, the Christian Literature Society for India, and Christian development of all kinds.

Then, thirdly, came the opening of China. Well, now, the opening of China, like a great many other things in the history of man, has its human side and its Divine side. Man thrust the door open that he might get his own trade in. God said: Very well, my Gospel shall go in; and so to-day, by a succession of very remarkable providences, that great, closed empire is open from end to end, and the missionary is free, and the Word of God is free, and the Christian book is free, and the preacher is everywhere proclaiming the tidings of salvation.

The opening of Japan and other openings have all been of this century, and have all been coincident with the opening of the heart of the Church and the eyes of the Church, and the turning of the attention of the Church to the cry of the perishing in all parts of the world. Coincident-is that all? Coincident-was there not a Divine purpose in it all? Did it not all point to this? God saw this great Anglo-Saxon race which He had raised up, to which He had given opportunity, and power, and dominion, and wealth, was fitted to do a magnificent work for Him in the world; and He said: Here is your chance. There is the world open. God could do no more. It is for us to consider now, at the end of the century, whether we shall respond. Of course, we may say, No. We may turn to selfish uses the great opportunity God gives. For great nations in this world have been before us who have had the same kind of opportunity; they have had their day and have gone. There was no nobler people in all the history of Europe in their day than those grand Spaniards, but God gave them the world at their feet and they abused their opportunity!

Oh, my friends! you and I to-day stand at the opening of a new century, with the finest equipment of appliances for great work men have ever had in this world's history, and the finest opportunity for great work men have ever had in this world's history, and the most solemn responsibility resting upon us; for with opportunity comes responsibility. May God make this Conference a clarion call to the Churches to rise and be doing!

CHAPTER XVII

WESTERN ASIA AND THE LEVANT

Persia-Arabia-Egypt-Syria-The Hebrews-Turkey

Persia

MR. ROBERT E. SPEER, M.A., Secretary Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in U. S. A.

I wonder if there is any other country in which so small a portion of the population, from the point of view of the kingdom of God, holds a position of such supreme importance. The population of Persia is about 8,000,000 in all, and is broken into two classes-the non-Mohammedan population, making up about one-fifth of the whole, and the Mohammedan population. I want to call attention to each of these two sections of the people.

First, in reference to the non-Mohammedans; the Armenians, Nestorians, Jews, and Fire-worshipers. This section of the population has done two things. It has made mission work easy, and also difficult. It has made it possible to do mission work in Persia among these little non-Mohammedan communities, where the missionaries have been able to get a foothold. Missionaries were tolerated by the Mohammedan power in the beginning, because they were working for a class of people who had already won a position under the Muslim rule, although they were not Mussulmans in their faith. While the presence of these people has made mission work possible, it has also made it difficult. Those of you who have read the introduction to Sir William Muir's "Sweet First Fruits," can see the difficulties in the way of the success, in these lands, of evangelical work which is tied to the old Churches. They have given to Mohammedanism a depraved conception of Christian faith and the Christian life. Among the Mohammedan peoples the Church Missionary Society has got its hold in the south of Persia, and our own Presbyterian missions in the north have planted themselves in Urumia, Tabriz, Teheran, and Hamadan.

I want you to notice two things as to the Mohammedan section of Persia. First-There exists among the Mohammedans of Persia a totally illogical condition, looking at it from the point of view of the Koran. Here is a Muslim state in which the Church is not the state; in which there is both religious and civil law, administered by different agencies which have often been in conflict and are not seldom in antagonism now. It is not as it is with Turkey. Second-Mohammedanism in Persia is seamed with schism. Every now and then some ignoramus holds up Islam as * Madison Avenue Reformed Church, April 23.

a rebuke to divisions in the Christian Church. He knows nothing of Persia.

With reference to the missionary work in each of the two sections of the Persian people: First of all, the non-Mohammedan peoples. In Urumia there are the Nestorians, among whom, but a few years ago, there were only three forces working-our own Presbyterian Mission, the Roman Catholic Mission (French), and the High Church Anglican Mission. About two years ago the Greek Church representatives came in. The whole Anglican work was absorbed by the Greek Church movement; the Nestorian people in the plains are divided now into three classes-a very smal! class of Roman Catholics, a larger class of evangelical Nestorians, and the others have been swept into the fold of the Greek Church. From the spiritual point of view, the Greek Church is meaningless. The influence of the Russian mission is ecclesiastical, not spiritual, and as yet, not political; but it makes it very hard for the evangelical influence of our own mission to make itself felt in the field.

So far as the Armenian work is concerned—and the Armenians outnumber the Nestorians in Persia-their nationalist dreams are steeling their hearts to what is truest and most spiritual; and every now and then some faithful missionary, discouraged, feels that it is time almost to turn our backs on the Armenian people of Persia. Where the nationalistic impulses have not penetrated' so strongly, the work has been more fruitful. In Hamadan, we have fruitful work among the Jews. Another church is made up of Armenian

converts.

Two great things are happening in Persia to-day. In the first place, the missions are pressing out of their old boundaries. Our friends of the Church of England have long since ceased to confine themselves to the cities where they could find a non-Mohammedan basis from which to work. They have boldly gone out to other bases, where their only justification is that they are attempting to reach Islam. Our missions hope to carry the Gospel to the Mohammedans themselves. Apart from this extension of the mission work among the Mohammedans, there has been an immense extension of it in its influence on individuals far beyond the geographical bounds of our mission work. The Gospels and the Scriptures have eaten their way underneath Mohammedanism, until, at the present time, there must be hundreds-some say even thousands-of secret believers, so far as intellectual conviction is concerned, among the professed Mohammedans in Persia. Then there is the great schismatic movement of the Babis, half Mohammedan, half reaching over for something else, showing that the Persians are not rigorously bound by Islam, but are willing, when a faith comes to them, which, however imperfect, yet seems better to them than Islam, to sacrifice even life for its propagation.

Arabia

REV. M. H. HUTTON, D.D., President Arabian Mission, Reformed Church in America, New Brunswick, N. J.*

Look first at the country. No one knows exactly how large it *Madison Avenue Reformed Church, April 23.