Earlier text: THE ARMY OF SALVATIONHints on Sabbath-School Work.
By Wm. Penniman
Perhaps a few suggestions on the subject of learning Bible lessons and on finding Bible books and passages quickly, may not be amiss in the REVIEW. By all means use the Lesson Sheet. Those who do not, “oppose themselves.” Some will say, “Why use the Lesson Sheet!” It should be used because it is an aid in understanding the Bible, and because it leads to uniformity of study and effort in the great work of Bible education. The questions are arranged upon the plan of reviewing often. This is a very good thing. If one would become a good scholar in any branch of education, he must not only study it thoroughly, but review, and review often. Just so it is with the Bible; we must study in earnest, and with a love for it, and the Lord will bless our efforts. If the memory is poor, then make a greater effort. Study the lesson, if possible, every day in the week. Think of it when you lie down and when you rise up; and be careful to have one lesson, if no more, always learned in advance. The best way to be able to find the books of the Bible readily, is to read the Bible much, and through by course often. But if this does not fix their locality in the mind, they can be memorized from Genesis to Revelation. To make this subject interesting the teacher can ask a class of children questions something like the following: Between what two books are found that of the woman who gleaned in the wheat fields, a record of honorable men, and the book of a spy? Where do we find in succession the books of a scribe, prophet, queen, and patient man? Where do we find the book of the poetic prophet, and where that of the weeping prophet? These questions can be varied as much as the teacher wishes, until all become familiar with the locality of the books. In regard to finding Bible passages quickly, we give a quotation from the Christian Age, as follows:— Scholars are usually so awkward and slow in turning to cross references that most teachers, after a few trials, give up the attempt to illustrate the lesson by the parallel passages. A great benefit will be conferred upon scholars if they can be helped to overcome the mechanical difficulties in the way of prompt and easy reference. Mark how an unskilled man counts a pile of bank-bills. He wets his fingers, clutches the upper bill in the middle, lays it over in a separate pile; discovers one or two others cleaving to it, lays down the rest to separate them; finds the bills, by “the perversity of inanimate things,” getting more and more mixed; begins again; repeats the process half a dozen times, only to find that the amount never comes out twice alike; finally, he hands the money over to an expert bank clerk, and the counting is done so quickly that the looker-on can hardly tell how. There is a like difference between a bungling and a dexterous use of the Bible. How often does the Bible reader neglect to turn to a passage he would like to refer to, because it is too much trouble to find it. Learn first, where there are no desks or tables, to hold the book on the outspread left hand and arm. By a little practice even a large Bible may thus be held firmly and easily. Then turn the leaves from the upper right-hand corner for looking forward, and from the upper left-hand corner for looking backward. Some may find it more handy to work on the lower corners. Practice the scholar in this until he can do it neatly, easily, quickly, and without creasing the paper. Next (assuming that he has already been taught the order of the books), let him try to open at exactly the middle of the Bible. The first quarter ends in 1 Samuel; the last quarter in Zephaniah. All of the New Testament is in the last quarter of the book. Then minor sub-divisions may be made in various ways, as the ingenious teacher can suggest. After this it will be found profitable to spend three or four minutes at every lesson in drilling the scholars to find the passages quickly. Tell them to find Job, and the dividing line between the Old and New Testaments. Then show that all the distinctly historical books come before that. Find the first of the epistles, the last, etc. This process should be continued until every book can be turned to at once, without any hustling the leaves back and forth in perplexity as to where in the world that book comes in. Such a mechanical drill will give the scholar a facility in finding places that will help him in Bible study all his life. Whenever you see anything above ground that is worth admiring, and that has any true stability or hope of permanence, you may be sure that there is a great deal below the surface just there, as the foundation of that which makes so goodly a show before your eyes. Whether it is in the world of nature, or of art, or of intellectual attainment, or of personal character, or of spiritual life, it is not all on the surface, not all in plain sight. If it is a graceful elm or a wide-spreading oak, you may be sure it has roots running down and reaching out into the earth below, to give strength and security to its sturdy trunk and its swaying boughs. If it is a majestic mountain rising in grandeur to the clouds, it rests on no quicksands, but has a basis broad and firm, and deep as the globe’s center. If it is a towering monument, or a massive pile of buildings, or a bridge spanning river and marsh, with vast and lofty arches, there must have been a preliminary sinking of shafts, and laying of strong foundations, and slow uprearing of subterranean walls, before the mighty structure which now commands attention began its upward stretch above the surface. If it is the finished work of a scholar in history or science; if it is a marvel of gracefulness and beauty in the sphere of literature—poetry or prose; if it is a triumph of power in the pulpit, at the bar, on the tribune, or in the realm of applied science or of professional skill,—all that is shown and seen indicates the existence of much that is out of sight; the success which is attained above the surface cannot be accounted for but by the fact that a great deal of preparation for this was made below the surface. If indeed it be a noble character or a saintly life,—a character of strength and beauty, of heroic courage and of sublime endurance, or a life of holiness and of radiating sweetness and purity,—it did not come by chance, nor was it “reached at a single bound;” it was a matter of growth as well as of grace; and the best and the most of that which is noted of good in the conduct or the countenance of the one admired and revered, was wrought silently and slowly out of sight and below the surface. Every once in a while some young man will be deluded with the idea that he can do as good work above-ground as those who have gone before him, without being at the trouble and delay of all their work below the surface. He can write smooth-flowing rhymes; why shouldn’t he at once be a poet? He has a vivid imagination and a pleasing style; what is there to hinder his now beginning the preparation of romances that shall give him fortune and fame? He finds no difficulty in leading a college prayer-meeting, or in holding a popular audience with an off-hand discourse on some religious theme which is familiar to him; is there any reason why he should wait and toil for years before entering on the work of the gospel ministry? And so in the one sphere or another a young man begins his work on the surface—and quickly finishes it there. As Lord Jeffrey says of such unprepared and surface workers: “They who begin by effect without labor, will end by labor without effect.” Dr. Holmes, writing of the slow development of Motley’s peculiar talents as an historical writer, says: “It took many years to train the as yet undisciplined powers into orderly obedience, and to bring the unarranged materials into the organic connection which was needed in the construction of a work which should endure. . . . It was already the high noon of life with him before his genius had truly shown itself; if he had not lived beyond this period, he would have left nothing to give him a lasting name.” And of those writers who are unwilling to do the needful work below the surface before they venture upon pretentious work above ground, this biographer adds: “Too many brilliant young novel-writers and lovers of poetry, excused by their admirers for their shortcomings on the strength of their supposed birthright of ‘genius,’ have ended where they began; flattered into the vain belief that they were men at eighteen or twenty, and finding out at fifty that they were, and always had been, nothing more than boys.” Many an author, or artist, or preacher, is a conspicuous failure in his maturity because he was not willing to be an inconspicuous toiler in his immaturity. There is wisdom in the counsel of one of the keenest of our satirical writers, when he says to the average young man of to-day: “I don’t want to see you try to build a six-story house on a one-story foundation.” It is not the question of the style of the superstructure, but of the character of the foundation, that decides the capability of the building to stand in all weather. It may be that, up to this time, your work is all below the surface. Thus far you may have commanded no attention by what you have done, nor by what you are. Neither in your character nor in your activities are you, perhaps, to the present hour, a positive and a beneficent force. But all this time you may have been in fittest preparation for your real life-work; and that work may yet be the rejoicing of generations, and a cause of your eternal thanksgiving to God. By your quiet and patient study you may have been acquiring that accurate knowledge which shall yet enable you to instruct one and another who are in their turn to be the teachers or the helpers of thousands. Through your multiplied sorrows and your repeated disappointments you may have learned lessons of submissiveness and faith which shall by and by find such expression in your every word and look that you shall be hailed as a messenger of Christ and as an angel of peace in all your sphere. It was not until Moses had lived forty years in the palace, and forty years more in the desert, and had been forty days in fasting and in sacred communion with God in the mount, that his face shone with the reflected effulgence of the Divine glory, and that his very countenance proclaimed the beauty and the holiness of the Lord’s presence. When you have had somewhat more than now of such preliminary training as that secured of God to Moses, you may have somewhat more in your countenance of the divine light which illumined his. Whenever you see an approach to that light on the countenance of a child of God, you may be sure that there has been something of this training going on below the surface in his mind and character. The severest toil of all well-doing, and the greatest cost of all well-being, must ever be below the surface, and out of sight. And that which has power or beauty above must ever depend on that which has been slowly and painfully performed or endured below, even, perhaps, at the price of life, as well as of ease and comfort. “You remember,” says one, “how corals grow. The reef is not a building constructed by them; it is their own life that crystallizes within them, and it is left behind them as they climb upward toward the light. And as they climb, the sea-bottom sinks beneath them, and the surface seems, perhaps, unattainable to their patient labors. Yet by and by it is gained, though the coral-makers die in reaching it, and over the records of their ceaseless toil [below the surface] appear at length the verdant fields and fruitful palms of islands that lie like gems upon the bosom of the sea.” “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”—S. S. Times. THE FIRST SABBATH-SCHOOL.
In view of the coming Sunday-school centenary celebration, we give an item of history which is perhaps not generally known, namely, that a Sabbath [seventh-day] school was established by the German Seventh-day Baptists of Pennsylvania, long before Robert Raikes commenced his Sunday-schools in this country. The late Dr. Fahnestock, in an historical sketch of his people, gives the following account of its establishment:— “Ludwig Hoecker, or Brother Obed, as he was designated, who was the teacher of the common school, projected the plan of holding a school in the afternoons of the Sabbath, and, in connection with some of his brethren, commenced it, to give instruction to the indigent children who were kept from the regular school by employments which their necessities obliged them to be engaged at, during the week, as well as to give religious instruction to those of better circumstances. It is not known exactly in what year the Sabbath-school was commenced. Hoecker came to Ephrata in the year 1739, and it is presumed that he began soon after he took up his residence among his brethren. The materials for the building were furnished, as is recorded in the minutes of the society, in the year 1749. After the Battle of Brandywine, the Sabbath-school-room, with others, was given up for a hospital, which was occupied as such for some time, and the school was never afterward resumed. Hoecker was at that time sixty years of age. To Robert Raikes is certainly due the honor of having projected and successfully introduced the present general system of Sunday-school instruction, but there is much credit due to the Seventh-day Baptists of Ephrata for having established and maintained in operation, for a period of upwards of thirty years, a Sabbath-school forty years before the first school was opened by the Gloucester philanthropist.”—History of Religious Denominations, by J. D. Rupp, pp. 109–123. See also Bailey’s “History of the Seventh-day Baptist General Conference,” pp. 257, 258.—Sabbath Memorial. The press has been regarded by S. D. Adventists as the right arm of our strength. Our field of labor is the world. And as the number of our efficient preachers is small, a large portion of the work of giving the last message must of necessity be accomplished by our publications. While on a tour through Northern Michigan by carriage, in the year 1868, our company, composed of several carriage-loads, was enjoying the second meal of the day in the shade of a pasture-oak, when kind friends from the nearest house gave us a call. Mrs. W. suggested giving them tracts. These they received with apparent gratitude. We were soon at the home of Sister Jeffrey, at Ithaca. To this faithful woman, who now sleeps, Mrs. W. related the circumstance of giving tracts to kind strangers, and remarked that the Lord had shown her that a great work is to be accomplished in the circulation of such reading matter, and that a book fund should be raised for this purpose. The statement touched the heart of this mother in Israel, and she left the room. Soon she returned with five dollars for the book fund, and as she handed it to Mrs. W., the donor wiped the tears that were rapidly falling. At our first camp-meeting, held at Wright, Mich., Sept. 1–7, 1868, the sum of $1,400 was actually paid into the book fund, and pledges were taken on the ground sufficient to swell the sum to $2,400. The publication and circulation of tracts received especial attention, and during the three years that followed not less than $35,000 was paid into this fund for the circulation of our religious and health tracts. The work rapidly increased, and became so extensive that organization of the forces engaged in the tract work seemed necessary in order to economize labor and means. The first State tract society was organized in the New England Conference, November, 1870. In this country there are now twenty-two State and Territorial organizations, embracing Maine, New England, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Dakota, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, California, Oregon, and Colorado. Local societies were organized in Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark in the years 1878 and 1879. The General Tract Society was organized August 15, 1874. The tract societies, in carrying forward their work during the past ten years, have employed not less than $150,000. Thousands of volumes of bound books have been placed in public libraries and on vessels. The number of pages of tracts and pamphlets which have been distributed by the societies, as near as can be gathered from printed reports, is 33,676,077. The number of periodicals distributed is 1,016,346. And let it be borne in mind that only thirty-seven per cent of the members of the societies have reported, and this is only eighteen per cent of the membership of the denomination. Had the full amount of all the work of the societies been reported, the number of pages would probably reach 50,000,000. Add to this the reading matter distributed before the organization of the societies, and by those outside of these societies, and the entire amount would probably reach 100,000,000 pages, besides periodicals and health annuals. The entire sum of the pages of books, pamphlets, and tracts published by S. D. Adventists on all their presses is not less than 250,000,000. Those only who have a lively interest in the tract work, and have taken part in it, have a just idea of its magnitude and extent. Through the agency of the tract societies, periodicals and publications have been sent to all the States and Territories of our country, to the Canadas, Nova Scotia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Holland, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Egypt, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, East and West Indies, Australia, Japan, China, Central and South America, Vancouver’s Island, Madeira Island, Cape of Good Hope, Finland, and to different points on the Mediterranean, Baltic, Red, and Black Seas. The great and good work which the Lord has accomplished through Eld. S. N. Haskell and his fellow-laborers in the tract cause will not be fully seen and appreciated in this life. Time can never reveal the importance of this work, which eternity alone will unfold. Those whom the Lord led out in the organization of our Conferences, the several associations and societies, and the equitable plan adopted by our people to raise funds for the support of the cause, had but a faint idea of the great and important work they were then doing. Neither can the friends of the cause now comprehend a tithe of the results of the Tract Institutes being held in the several Conferences. These schools are educating the members of the tract societies to do their work wisely and well. And this will create a demand for our publications such as the most sanguine have had but a faint idea of, and will constitute our presses indeed a power in the land. Mrs. W., in her article headed, Our Publications, in her Testimony to the Church, No. 29, speaks of our publications, their prices, their circulation, and the importance of training men for the work of canvassing, in these stirring words:— “Many of our publications have been thrown into the market at so low a figure that the profits are not sufficient to sustain our Offices and keep good a fund for continual use. And those of our people who have no special burden of the various branches of the work at Battle Creek, and at Oakland, do not become informed in regard to the wants of the cause, and the capital required to keep the business moving. They do not understand the liability to losses, and the expense every day occurring to such institutions. They seem to think that everything moves off without much care or outlay of means, and therefore they will urge the necessity of the lowest figures on our publications, thus leaving scarcely any margin. And after the prices have been reduced to almost ruinous figures, they manifest but a feeble interest in increasing the sales of the very books on which they have asked such low prices. This object gained, their burden ceases, when they ought to have an earnest interest and a real care to press the sale of the publications, thereby sowing the seeds of truth, and bringing means into the Offices to invest in other publications.” “There has been, on the part of ministers, a very great neglect of duty in not interesting the churches in the localities where they labor, in regard to this matter. When once the prices of books are reduced, it is a very difficult matter to get them again upon a paying basis, as men of narrow minds will cry speculation, not discerning that no one man is benefited, and that God’s instrumentalities must not be crippled for want of capital. Books that ought to be widely circulated are lying useless in our Offices of publication, because there is not interest enough manifested to get them circulated.” “The press is a power; but if its products fall dead for want of men who will execute plans to widely circulate them, its power is lost. While there has been a quick foresight to discern the necessity of laying out means in facilities to multiply books and tracts, plans to bring back the means invested, so as to reproduce other publications, have been neglected. The power of the press, with all its advantages, is in their hands, and they can use it to the very best account, or they can be half asleep, and through inaction, lose the advantages which they might gain. They can extend the light, by judicious calculation, in the sale of books and pamphlets. They can send them into thousands of families which now sit in the darkness of error.”},{ THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.
The Rational Appeal of May 15, 1880, publishes a lengthy article on this subject, entitling it, “An argument respectfully submitted to the clergy of the United States.” The argument, based on certain expressions made use of by the writers of the New Testament, which speak of the coming of Christ as at hand, which declare that there were some standing there who should not taste of death till they should see the Son of man coming in his kingdom, and that this generation shall not pass till all shall be fulfilled, is, that the coming of Christ was expected by them in their own day; and as Christ did not come, it is demonstrated that they made a radical mistake in this matter, and hence their writings are uninspired and unreliable. And on the strength of this argument the clergy are called upon to give up the idea of the inspiration of the Bible, renouncing the whole theory of the fall of man and the plan of salvation through Christ, and settle down on the doctrine that to love and do good to our fellow-beings is the sum total of religion. This strikes us as rather a broad and bold claim to make on the strength of the argument presented. The writer speaks like one who has first made the discovery that such phraseology as he quotes is found in the New Testament. But it has all along been there, and men have read these passages carefully and critically for the past eighteen hundred years; and if there is such an utter failure involved therein, the critics and scholars of all these years have been remarkably stupid, or the present age is blessed with a wonderful prodigy. Of the texts quoted, the following, Matt. 16:27, 28; Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27, refer to the transfiguration, the account of which immediately follows in each instance. On this point let us hear Peter, who was one of the eye-witnesses. He certainly must be admitted to be a more competent witness in regard to the meaning of the words of the Lord, “There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom,” than any man at the present time can be. But in his second epistle (1:16) he says: “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye-witnesses of his majesty, . . . when we were with him in the holy mount.” Verses 17, 18 show conclusively that he refers to the scene on the mount of transfiguration. This he calls an exhibition of the power, majesty, honor, and glory of the Lord, such as will be exhibited at his coming. Those who saw this saw a representation of the coming and kingdom of Christ. Some of those to whom Christ spoke the words above quoted, saw it. It was the fulfillment of his promise. But Peter does not claim that that was the real coming of Christ; for he speaks of that coming and the end of all things as still future when he wrote his epistle. It was, however, an accurate representation of the coming kingdom, as he refers to it in proof of what will be when the power and coming of Christ is really revealed. The passages referred to, therefore, were not spoken of the actual second coming of Christ, but were fulfilled in the transfiguration which shortly followed. As to the other passages, such as “this generation shall not pass,” “we which are alive, and remain unto the coming of the Lord,” “we shall not all sleep,” etc., it is sufficient to remark that by an interchange of tenses, a marked and legitimate characteristic of all prophetic writings, the first person is used for the third, and the present tense for the future. See Isa. 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” This is a prophecy of the incarnation, then more than 700 years in the future; yet the pronoun is in the first person, and the verb in the present tense. The child was not then born, and was not to be seen by those then living. Divested of this use of language, the passage would read, “Unto them a child shall be born.” We have said that this style is a characteristic of prophetic writings, but it is not peculiar to them. In historical works, how frequently, in animated description, we meet with the present tense used for the past. We open to Merivale’s History of the Romans, vol. v., p. 281, and there read: “We are arrived at a period when the personal character of their ruler has come to exercise a decisive influence on the sentiments no less than on the welfare of the Roman people.” Again, “Caius, now in the middle of his twenty-fifth year.” This is not a description of the situation in 1872, when the book was published, but away back in A. D. 37. An American writer, speaking of a famous Irish orator of the past, says: “Now he stands bolt upright like a grenadier. Now he folds his arms upon his breast, utters some beautiful sentiment, relaxes them, recedes a step, and gives wing to the corruscations of his fancy, while a winning smile plays over his countenance.”—Matthew’s Oratory and Orators, p. 297. No one misunderstands or criticises such forms of speech when found in ordinary books. Why, then, take exceptions to them or misinterpret them when found in the Bible? The article under notice says, “We should read that book [the Bible] as we read all other books.” So say we. And the failure to do this, both by believers and unbelievers, is just the thing that we deprecate. How natural for the prophets to pass along down the stream of time in their prophetic discourse, and speak as if contemporaneous with the events which they foretell. So when, in a long series of successive events, the seer comes to the time when certain great signs have appeared, showing the proximity of the end, he says, “This generation [which has seen these signs] shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.” When he comes to the last generation, he says, “We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord.” The overlooking of this principle of interpretation, the plainness of which makes the confident tone of the Appeal seem somewhat surprising, gave to the thought of the writer in question a false turn on the very start, and led him to produce an article that is wholly wrong. KEEP YOURSELF OUT OF SIGHT.
By Mark Guy Pearse
I WATCHED an old man trout fishing the other day, pull them out one after another briskly. “You manage it cleverly, old friend,” I said. “I have passed a good many below who don’t seem to be doing anything.” The old man lifted himself up, and stuck his rod in the ground. “Well, you see, sir, there be three rules for trout-fishing; and ’tis no good trying if you don’t mind them. The first is, keep yourself out of sight. And the second is, keep yourself further out of sight. And the third is, keep yourself further out of sight still. Then you’ll do it.” “Good for catching men, too,” I thought as I went on my way.—Rev. Mark Guy Pearse. A HOARY ERROR ABANDONED.
By Charles B. Reynolds
BY ELD. CHAS. B. REYNOLDS. The Rev. Myron Adams of Plymouth Church (Congregational) Rochester, N. Y., one of the most able and respected of the city's clergy, and pastor of a large, wealthy and influential church, on a late Sunday morning and evening edified and startled his hearers by declaring his change of views relating to the future punishment of the wicked. He declared his belief that God is in the Bible described as too merciful a being to doom any to the horrors of an everlasting hell. The greatest excitement prevails. The following is the leader from the Rochester Express of Tuesday, May 18:— One of the most prominent clergymen in this city has “come out,” as people say, in opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment. The gentleman is so well and so favorably known here that any expression of opinion from him is sure to command attention, and to deserve it. This will be especially the case on a subject of so much importance as the one named. Into the theological aspect of the case we cannot, of course, enter. But there are certain aspects of the question possessing so much general interest that they cannot well be passed over in silence. Is doubt on this doctrine in circles heretofore called orthodox confined to this gentleman and such members of his church as share in his views? This is a topic in which all our citizens are interested, and on which they have a right to be informed. Our esteemed contemporary, the Rochester Herald, in some remarks on this declaration of a Rochester pastor, speaks as follows: “Not that it would be difficult to find a number of clergymen in nearly every large town who hold irregular views on the subject of eternal punishment.” Does this city contain any of these men? We suppose it has its quota, if the above remark is true. These preachers holding “irregular views” ought to explain their position. They ought to inform us in what this “irregularity” that they indulge in, consists. Protestants complain of the Catholic Church because it refuses the cup to the laity and grants it to the priest. But are Protestant clergymen allowing themselves the luxury of doubting any doctrine that they choose in private and refusing this comfort to the laity? Many persons feel compelled, by certain scruples as to articles of faith, to leave a church to which they are tenderly attached. Others are kept outside its pale and deprived of its consolations from the same cause. Do preachers feel the same anxieties, the same hesitation, the same doubt, and keep it all secret? This charge is often made even more emphatically than by our contemporary above named. It should be boldly met. We think the present occasion one of which the evangelical clergy of Rochester could very well take advantage to define their position and proclaim it. Let the people know how they stand, not in vague and general terms, but exactly, so that there shall be no mistake. It is very easy for a man to say that he believes or disbelieves a certain statement. Or, if he has not made up his mind, it is not difficult to state that fact. The clergyman whose recent sermon has made this ecclesiastical sensation deserves credit, it is said, for his moral courage. But this is a virtue so essential to the first element of manliness, to say nothing of Christianity, that it would seem almost an insult to praise a minister of the gospel for possessing it. This minister in particular would, we are sure, disclaim very earnestly having done more than his duty in announcing to his people at the first opportunity the results of his investigations. Speaking of courage, it will require just as much of this quality, perhaps, for the orthodox clergy to avow their continued belief in the doctrine of eternal punishment as was needed in the case to which we have referred to pronounce against that dogma. The old-fashioned belief on that point is not at present popular, which, of course, is not saying that it is false or that it is true. But considering all the elements of the situation, the excitement in one of our leading churches on this subject, the remarks of our contemporary, a very correct exponent of public opinion in most cases, and the general theological unrest of the community, we do not see how the clergy of this city can well avoid defining their position on this subject. Let us redouble our diligence in laboring in the tract and missionary field, sowing the truth in humble prayer, and the Lord will give the increase,