Project Canterbury

  

God's Call and Faith's Obedience.

 

A SERMON

DELIVERED IN

ST. PETER'S CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y.,

Wednesday, December 15th, 1880,

ON THE OCCASION OF THE CONSECRATION

OF THE

REV. JOHN ADAMS PADDOCK, D.D.,

AS BISHOP

OF THE MISSIONARY JURISDICTION OF WASHINGTON TERRITORY.

 

BY THE

RT. REV. WM. BACON STEVENS, D.D., LL.D.,

BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF PENNSYLVANIA.

 

BROOKLYN, N. Y.
ORPHANS' PRESS--CHURCH CHARITY FOUNDATION.
1881.

  


"Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee. Go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee. Fear not, neither be discouraged."--Deut. i. 21.

"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and when he went out, not knowing whither he went."--Heb. xi. 8.

The words written by Moses in the first text ring out like a startling trumpet call of God, to prompt and earnest action. A summons that admits no parley, that allows for no fear or discouragement.

The words of St. Paul in the second text, seem, like the sudden apparition before us of one, who personally had heard the voice of God calling him away from home and native land, and who had personally and promptly obeyed that call; and who, by his fidelity and his obedience, won the enviable distinction of being "The Friend of God." Thus the order and the obedience, the precept and the example, are right before us, and they fit in, both ii language and in spirit, so admirably to the purpose for which we have met this morning, that I can but dwell on them as appropriate themes of thought and duty.

Let us try to take in for a moment the object of our gathering this day. God by his providence has called in an emphatic manner, our brother beloved, like Abraham of old, to leave his home and go out, at his bidding to a [3/4] land unknown to him, but which he is "after to receive for an inheritance." This call has come to him through the voice of the House of Bishops, moved, as we believe, by the Holy Ghost, in answer to earnest and united prayer for guidance in selecting the right person for so responsible a position. We cannot doubt therefore that our dear brother is called of God, as was Abraham, and as was Aaron. He has not taken this honor to himself, it came to him unsought and unexpectedly, without pre monition and with startling surprise and listening to it in that prayerful spirit which reverently asks, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" he has presented himself here to-day, to be invested by the Church with that out ward authority and consecration, which will enable him to go to a land which he has not yet seen, and work there for Christ and for His Church.

Thus the call of God has been answered by the prompt obedience to that call which nothing but faith in God could inspire. Faith that the call was from God; faith that there was work to do there for God; and faith that in order to do that work, he should break up home ties, and Church ties, and all the interlacing of social life, and go, hardly knowing whither he went, where God had thus so pointedly sent him.

There is no principle that is so powerful in shaping human life as faith. Faith, even in its worldly aspect; faith in man's word; faith in certain physical aspects and promises of good in this or that land, this or that occupation, this or that enterprise; faith in trade, in stocks, in mines, in the hundreds of schemes of men for making money, is the motive power of human action; and the absence of this faith would cause a collapse of the whole industrial commercial mercantile community. The working of this principle of faith, on this low plane of thought and life, is everywhere potential.

If we rise to a higher level, above the mere material [4/5] and subsistence of daily life, to the grade of literature and science, we see the same principle of faith at work there also. it is faith in alleged facts and reasonings; faith in deductions and generalizations; faith in the pro ducts of the laboratory and the observatory; faith in the veracity and integrity of educated mind; faith in laws already established, reaching out, to find by induction new laws and wider results; faith in the demonstrations of science and the 'utterances of philosophy; faith in the stability of physical laws, whether they regulate the life of the ant in the ant-hill, or the sun in the firmament; in each and all of these, and their co-related subjects, FAITH is the exciting and guiding power which leads to thought, to action, to discovery, and to the systematizing of all our knowledge in, the world of mind and of matter, brought within the scope of human intelligence. And as to gain a livelihood, and to make money, men will give up great present good, for a prospective better, and make great sacrifices of present comfort and peace, in the hope of reaching to a higher and wider life; and as, to gain a name among men of science, or literature, or art, men will toil and submit to discomfort, and exile, and untold labor, and great physical privations to rank with men world-renowned:--so should it be; so, in the highest sense, it is, in the Church. Here, on this loftiest of all earthly planes of human action, and on subjects which reach down deeper, and up higher, and out broader, than any earthly things of whatever name, because they go down to the lowest depth of our humanity, and up to the covenant-keeping God, and out so as to compass the destinies of the immortal soul in infinite space and in infinite time:--here, too, faith exists; exists in its highest perfection, and shows its most glorious work. But great as this is, there is yet a higher region still for faith; and a higher faith for this higher region.

That region, is the Church of the Living God: and [5/6] that faith is the faith of the minister of God acting under divine commands and for the furtherance of divine ends.

How, in few, but master strokes of the pen, does the Apostle, in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, bring out this thought! That chapter is the grand muster roll of Faith: Heroes, Faith Conflicts, Faith Triumphs. It is, in the Church of Christ, what the roll of Battle Abby is to the Norman nobility of England; what the Declaration of independence is, to the true nobility of our country. Each name represents a power and an act of faith; and each name becomes, lustrous through all .the ages, because found embedded there. So that eleventh chapter is the compendium of Old Testament faith, summed up and made known, for the purpose of teaching the Christian Church its nature, its influence and its victories. The new-born Christian Church needed just such examples, to cheer and to guide it in the trials, and perplexities of the new faith; and so this glorious chapter, illuminated with the persons and deeds of these Old Testament saints, stands out in its many colored beauty; like an oriel window in a grand cathedral, bedight with figures of Prophets, and Heroes, and Martyrs, ever looking down upon us in the holy place, through whose eyes shines the light of faith, and whose reflected images lie right across our path, and invite us, by their silent eloquence to like self-consecration, and like faith. It was the life-teaching of these old heroes nerved the faith of the Holy Apostles and led them to deeds of emprise and renown such as the world had never seen before. Could I take the case of St. Peter, the oft impulsive, the sometime vacillating, and even cowardly man, denying at one time the Lord with whom he had lived for three years, and of whose sacramental body and blood he had but a few hours before partaken: could I portray this Apostle, as, in after life, he was led by faith to give up home, ease, pleasure friends; liberty, [6/7] and to endure shame, and stripes; and imprisonment, and death for Christ; ever moving on to new conquests, to higher efforts, to greater sacrifices, until he followed the Lord he had once denied to the martyr death upon the cross!

Or, could I take the life of St. Paul, and trace it up in the same way, and show how the once bigot and the zealot, the hater of Christ and the slayer of Christians, under the power of this Faith in Christ became a new man, enduring untold horrors of torture and imprisonment; the very record of which, in his second Epistle to the Corinthians, makes one stand aghast at their number and greatness; until he also met a martyr's death, and won a martyr's crown! Could all this be elaborated as it might be, there would be seen running through all their lives this principle of faith; this trust in God because he is God; this rest in Christ because he is Christ; this ever seeing him who is invisible, and living so thoroughly Christ's life, that each could truly ay, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God."

As we read the lives of the Apostles of Medieval Europe, we cannot but note how they also, moved by faith, passed through seas of fiery trouble, often to a martyr's crown. They went out from their homes and their country, like Abraham, not knowing whither they went; obeying what each regarded as a heavenly call, to work in distant lands for Christ. Thus Columba set sail from Ireland in his osier-boat covered with skins, for the shores of Scotland. There he built his mission hut of clay and twigs; there he wrought in all kinds of work, now grinding the corn, now giving fodder to the cattle, now administering herbs to the sick, as well as preaching and teaching the barbarous Picts.

Thus Boniface "the Father of German Christian [7/8] Civilization," went out like Abraham, at God's call, to work among the Teutonic tribes in the lowlands and forests of Germany; abandoning ease and comfort in England, and bearing hardship and toil and opposition, until, having by his labors won a greater region to the faith of Christ, and a larger influence over the Teutonic tribes than any other man; he died a martyr's death, pillowing his head on a volume of the Gospels, and receiving then the stroke that destroyed his life.

Thus Anskar, left home and friends at the call of God, and went out, Abraham-like, to unknown countries that he might plant the Church in Scandinavia; and amidst the hostility of the heathen and the treachery of friends, and trials of faith severe enough to break the heart of hope itself he planted the faith in Denmark and Sweden.

Thus Augustine, though at first he turned back, and was irresolute, yet when re-nerved by the burning words of Gregory, he also went forth, not knowing the land to which he was sent; and dauntless amid danger, and unmoved by obstacles, he pressed on to the land of the Angles, landed on the isle of Thanet, in Kent, and entering Canterbury, "the earliest royal city of German England," made it the seat of his Archbishopric, now the see of the Primate of all England and the seat of the highest authority of the Anglican Church.

What a realization was given to the wide-spreading results of that faith which led Augustine to England, when a little over two years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sitting in the stone seat of Augustine, welcomed to the Cathedral of Canterbury the Bishops the Anglican Communion whose Dioceses represented all quarters of the globe, and all varieties of nations, as they came up, from the North and the South, the East and the West, to meet in the Lambeth Conference! It was one of the grand visible representations of the [8/9] power and glory of that religion, which, starting. out afresh from Christ Church, Canterbury, had in twelve hundred and fifty years made England the greatest Christian and Missionary Kingdom on earth; and the Church of England, through her living and wide, spreading branches, the most influential agent for the extension of the Redeemer's Kingdom which the world has ever seen.

What is true of the Apostles of Christ and the Apostles of medieval Europe, is also true of the Apostles of modern missions. Look into the lives of any of these holy men, and you will perceive how, moved by faith, Schwartz, and Martyn, and Williams, and Vanderkemp, and Livingstone, and Judson, and Boone, and Patteson, and a host of others, abandoned everything that made life dear at home, and went out, not knowing whither they went, to preach the Gospel in "the regions beyond;" not counting their own lives dear unto them, if they might but teach and preach, "Jesus and the Resurrection."

Every true missionary, whether he go away from his native land to a barbarous and different speaking people; or whether he goes to the outskirts of his own country (often perhaps involving more self-sacrifice and trials than the foreign field); every such missionary, is but re-acting that part of Abraham's faith, and Abraham's obedience, when at God's call, and in God's strength, he gives up an attractive present field of labor, and goes out to far off and isolated regions, to work in faith, and hope, and love, for results which may never meet his eye on earth; but which will be assuredly gathered by some future reaper, and garnered up into eternal life, when both he that soweth, and he that reapeth shall rejoice together.

All great mission heroes have been disciplined by great trials. The true elements of their character are purified and compacted and brightened by the furnace fires [9/10] through which they pass. By the alchemy of grace each sorrow, and opposition, and danger is made to minister to the increase of faith, and roots them deeper and stronger in the truth: and nowhere do we find such stalwart, robust, symmetrical Christians, men of thought, men of action, men of power, as in the faith-moved missionaries of the Cross. The faith that made them go, goes with them as they go. The very exercise of faith begets a momentum of spiritual force, which keeps them in the advance; and so they go on from one degree of strength to another; subduing kingdoms of darkness, working righteousness, obtaining promises, stopping the mouths of lion-like oppositions, quenching the violence of persecution, escaping the edge of the sword, waxing valiant in fight, and turning to flight the armies of the aliens; and with this faith is blended the promise of God, the presence of Christ, the unction of the Holy Ghost, endowing them with the three-fold strength of the Triune God.

I have dwelt long on this principle of Faith, because the occasion so emphatically demands it. It is the only solution we can give to the question, Why did the House of Bishops divide that missionary jurisdiction of Oregon and Washington Territory and create a new missionary field, and elect another Bishop? It was because the Bishops had faith to believe that the missionary jurisdiction was ripe for such mission, that the time had come for a separate jurisdiction, and also for calling and sending out another man of God as the Church's standard bearer on the Pacific coast.

Such is the call, such is the faith that has obeyed the call. Let us now for a moment look at the land which the Lord thy God has set before our brother, which He bids him "go up and possess it."

The missionary jurisdiction of Washington Territory occupies the extreme north-western corner of the United States. It is larger than any one of our Atlantic States, [10/11] and possesses agricultural advantages, timber lands, rich fisheries, minerals, water resources, and a variety of commercial products of immense value. It is a land rich in all the materials requisite for human toil and skill; and offers, through its long coast by sea and sound, and through its noble rivers, every facility that internal trade, or foreign commerce, can require. With a climate far more moderate than is found in the same parallels of latitude with us; and with a virgin soil that needs but the plow and the seed, to give back a crowning harvest; this inviting field lies before us in its manifold excellencies and attractions. Already, notwithstanding its hitherto almost inaccessible position, has it drawn thither a large and intelligent population. Not the reckless miner, or the daring ranche-man, but the sober farmer and the toiling artizan, men who have gone there not to gamble in mines and live in outlawry, but who have taken their families with them, and made homes in the vales and on the plains. The population is as staid and hardy and industrious as in any State; and their morality will not suffer by comparison with old established countries. It is a land that has a great heritage in its sea coasts and inland sounds; that has marvellous grandeur in its long and picturesque rivers, and in its snow-clad and lofty mountain ranges, which constitute, as it were, the vertebral column of the territory. In every sense therefore we can say, that the Lord our God hath set before us a good land, and that it is our duty to go up and possess it.

The question now arises what has the Church hitherto done towards discharging this duty? Let us briefly state it. Many years ago, the minister of a Presbyterian church in Savannah, Georgia, was complimented by one of his elders on the beauty and devout character of his public prayers. "They are not mine," replied the minister. "Not yours! Where did you get them [11/12] from?" "From the Episcopal Prayer Book;" answered the minister. "Ah I see how it is," said the astonished elder, "you are going to be an Episcopalian." "Indeed I am not," the minister replied. "I have been thirteen years in the Presbyterian ministry, and I am not going to change now." Not a little nettled at this remark of his elder, the minister determined to prove to him that he was not going to be an Episcopalian, by preparing a sermon showing that Presbyterianism was the scriptural polity of the Church. This, he thought, would set at rest all doubt as to his allegiance to the Presbyterian body. Accordingly he sat down, as he told me, to examine the matter. As he did so, with his clear and mature mind, difficulties arose which he could not solve. He wrote to the Rev. Dr. Smythe, then a very learned Presbyterian divine in Charleston, to help him in his studies. Dr. Smythe, who had but recently published a volume on "The Prelatical Doctrine of the Apostolic Succession," gave him such helps as he thought were requisite, and pointed out lines of investigation. These failing to remove the scruples. which his studies began to suggest, he again wrote to Dr. Smythe for further light. He was told that if what he had, did not settle his mind, nothing would. In this state of mind he turned to one whom he had known in former years, and who was a fellow alumnus of the University of South Carolina, Bishop Otey of Tennessee, and propounded to him his difficulties, and asked for a solution. Not to dwell on the intermediate steps, the. result was, that light began to break in upon his investigations; he saw more and more clearly a more excellent way than that which he then walked in; and with a courage that involved great personal sacrifices, and a conscientiousness that led him to promptly avow his strong convictions, he retired from the ministry of the Presbyterians, became a candidate for Holy Orders in our Church, and I was present at the services in St. [12/13] Paul's Church, Augusta, Geo., on the 12th March, 1843, when he was ordained Deacon, and listened to the same discourse from the same beloved Bishop Elliot, which he had preached but one week before, when I was admitted by him to the diaconate. That newly-ordained brother was the Rev. Thomas Fielding Scott, who in 1854 was elected by the General Convention the first Missionary Bishop of Oregon and Washington Territories.

This early and interesting association with Bishop Scott, drew my mind very strongly to those distant Territories, and I watched his toils and his struggles with great interest. When he was taken away, in 1867, after thirteen year of hard and faithful service, it was my privilege to aid in the election of one of the vigorous and active presbyters of my own diocese, Benjamin Wistar Morris, to succeed him. Bishop Morris was consecrated in 1868, and under his wise and efficient administration, and amidst difficulties and discouragements that would check any ordinary man, he has quietly worked on, until to-day another Bishop is consecrated for the northern portion of his former jurisdiction; thus doubling his strength, and fortifying and securing possessions already gained and held by him in that northern region for Christ and his Church.

When Bishop Scott left New York, in 1854, he wrote a few hours before the steamer sailed, these words: "There is one sorrowful fact in the midst of all these reflections, I have found no clergyman to accompany me to this field of labor. I go alone. True, there are three brethren already faithfully engaged in the mission; but what are these for the Territories of Washington and Oregon? I desire not to magnify the importance of this field above all others, but, looking at its position, and the circumstances of its population, every one must perceive that this is the moment to enter it most effectually, when a given amount of faithful labor will yield the largest [13/14] ultimate increase. Who," he asks, "will enter this open door? Very true," he goes on to say, "it is a distant field, and a field of labor; but what is that to him who seeks only for the privilege of honoring his Lord and Master in the salvation of men? Of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ by preaching the glorious Gospel of the blessed God? Such are the me," he says "we need to lay the foundations of the Church on the Pacific, to mould and develop the Christian character of its young States under the sanctifying power of the truth as it is in Jesus." The following year; owing to the withdrawal of two missionaries, he had in all his vast jurisdiction but two clergymen, but three organized parishes, and only one Church building, and that unfinished. Yet Bishop Scott well says, "However small may be our number, and however unpromising our prospect of large and speedy increase, let us remember that the Lord will not save by many, but by few. The promise of His unerring word is, 'He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.'"

One of those romantic and very striking incidents sometimes met with among the emigrants to the New World, occurred to the Bishop at his first confirmation at Cathlamet. At this, the first confirmation in his jurisdiction, he laid hands on a mother, her four daughters, and two grandchildren; while there stood by them the aged husband and father, who, sixty-six years before, in early youth had been confirmed in Scotland by Bishop Kilgour, who was the Primus and Presiding Bishop at the consecration of Bishop Seabury, in Aberdeen, in 1784. Thus the first confirmation in that Pacific jurisdiction was linked historically with the venerable Bishop who consecrated the first Bishop for Connecticut, three years before the organizing of the Protestant Episcopal Church in these United States.

[15] I need not dwell longer on the field, its great spiritual needs, and its cheering aspect at the present moment. I turn therefore to say a few words concerning him who has been selected to carry the standard of the Cross in that frontier Territory.

He is one well known to you all as a tried and faithful servant of Christ. He brings to the high office which he is to bear, ripeness of age, soundness of learning, solidity of judgment, energy in action, prudence in counsel, large hopefulness, and still larger love and faith. Every element of his character, mental and moral, has been tested by his more than thirty years of ministerial life. He has borne all these tests untarnished; he has come out of every furnace of affliction, purer, and brighter, and stronger; and he stands before us to-day, a man approved of God, "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." For one-quarter of a century he has gone in and out in this parish, with an eye single to God's glory, and. the building up of His Holy Church. How he has succeeded you have already learned in the record of the twenty-five years of his pastorate, as summed up in the anniversary exercises on that occasion. That record shows a strength of purpose, an unflinching courage, an ardent zeal, and a parochial working power, rarely ex celled. Under his ministry your church has been made a very hive of Christian activity. A real work-shop of parochial labor, teeming with all forms of missionary effort, and with all the bustling and practical activities that our religion both commends and commands. He has through you, as his "fellow workers unto the Kingdom of God," sent out ties and interlacing influences, which have touched and quickened into life distant parts, not only of our wide land, but of still more distant foreign fields. The rills of your benevolence, bubbling up fresh and clear in this well-spring of Christian zeal and work, have found their way to many far-off regions, and [15/16] made fertile oases in desert and parched lands. Few churches have so interlinked themselves with such varied and widespread instrumentalities for Church expansion; and few have more largely impressed their character and influence upon so wide a Church surface of thought and action.

You have, therefore, people of St. Peter's Parish, been preparing yourselves, under the wise leadership of your Rector, for just such a gift to the Church as you are now called upon to make. He has been training you to give your best to the Lord, not to offer for His Altar the blind and the lame of the flock. He has been training you to make sacrifices for Christ, not to offer to His cause that which cost you nothing. He has been training you to make ventures of faith, because of the largeness of God's promise, who is honored by the best and choicest gifts; and so all along, Pastor and People, have been educating each other, under the tuition of the Holy Ghost, for the very lesson of self-sacrificing devotion which you have been called to make this day; when you lead, as it were, your Pastor to the Altar and there pre sent him to the Lord, as your best, your highest gift, and the most self-sacrificing offering which you can make giving him, with all your heart's love, swathing him around as an atmosphere of affection, with all your conscientious commendations of his fidelity, crowning his head as with an aureole of praise; with all your social sympathies fastening themselves like tendrils to his pastoral character. You have brought him, with all these clustering around him, and through the consecration of the Pre siding Bishop placed him as your gift on God's Altar, ready for sacrifice or service:" well knowing that both will be required.

When Sir Humphrey Davy was relating the number and character of his chemical discoveries; discoveries, which placed him in the front rank of philanthropists, as [16/17] well as scientists; he said, "but after all, the greatest of my discoveries was Michael Farraday;" alluding to the greatest Chemist of this age. So beloved, when you, as a Parish, shall hereafter enumerate what you have given to Christ; what sacrifices you have made for him; what love you have shown for him; you can truly say, our greatest gift, our most self-sacrificing gift as a parish, and our most loved gift as a people, was the gift to the Great Head of the Church of our Pastor, to be the Bishop of Washington Territory. I congratulate this Parish, that it can make such a contribution to the cause of missions: a contribution a hundred-fold more valuable than all your pecuniary gifts. I congratulate this Parish also, that God has so honored it as to take its Rector, and anoint him with the seven-fold gifts of the Holy Ghost, and then send him, like Abraham, into a place which he shall after receive for an inheritance, as a consecrated Bishop in His Church.

And now, Brother Beloved, what shall I say to you on this the most solemn moment of your life? You are now to be invested with the highest office in the Church of God, and to have conferred on you the highest honor which a human being can receive. It is God who calls you as He did Aaron; it is Christ who commissions you as His Ambassador; it is the Holy Ghost who anoints you with Unction from on high and clothes you with Salvation. Thus called and equipped, you are soon to be presented by two Bishops to the Presiding Bishop, as "a godly and well-learned man, to be consecrated Bishop." One of those who will present you, [Rt. Rev. Daniel S. Tuttle, D.D.] has been for over thirteen years a Missionary Bishop, doing strong, healthful and faithful work in a jurisdiction festering with that moral ulcer of Mormonism, and which has blighted with its lust, its rapine, and its murders, [17/18] one of the fairest of our western regions. There, amidst difficulty, and opposition, and discouragement, he has stood like a faithful sentinel at his post, waiting, watching, working. He has built churches, planted missions, sent out clergymen, established schools; until the Church has become there a recognized power, and he has become a recognized benefactor of the Territory of Utah.

He stands beside you to-day, therefore, well worthy to be your Episcopal sponsor in this consecration; for he has proved his fitness by his valiant warfare, to be at once an example, and a support to you, in your arduous work.

The other Bishop who will present you is your brother, according to the flesh. [Rt. Rev. Benjamin H. Paddock, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts.] I will not pretend to speak of his feelings or yours, as you stand thus side by side on this occasion. The brotherhood of nature is now to be riveted and strengthened by the brotherhood of the Episcopate. The human, and the sacred relationship will thus be anointed with "blessed unction from above," and be welded together by the "comfort, life and fire of love." Sweet and holy brotherhood! each set apart and consecrated to the same high and holy office, in the same Catholic and Apostolic Church. Yet how wide apart are to be your fields of labor! the harvests of these fields, however, will be gathered into one and the same heavenly garner, of the One Heavenly Husbandman.

While the Diocese of one brother is washed by the waves of the Atlantic, and looks eastward to the rising sun; the Diocese of the other is washed by the waves of the Pacific and looks to the setting sun. Separated continent-wide in the flesh and in your work, your hearts will still be knit together, and the unseen telegraphic wires of brotherly sympathy and prayer, will span the continent with the outgoings and incomings of [18/19] your hearts; and you will find your daily meeting-place before the same mercy seat, and in the presence of the same Divine Christ.

And now, dear Brother, go up and possess this goodly land. "Be not afraid, neither be discouraged;" "The Almighty God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Go undismayed, because God calls you. Go fully armed, for the Church has equipped you for the fight. Go in loving confidence, for the arms of the clergy and laity on that distant coast are waiting to embrace you with strong affection. Go, for Westward the star of the Church, like "the star of empire," takes its way. The Orient is ever sending its light to the Occident. The face of the world, as it turns on its axis, is ever Eastward; but the rays which it welcomes as they come from the East do not stay in the East, they are ever hastening Westward; and no sooner does the sun seem to set in the Pacific, than lo! he bursts in full morning glory on "The Isles of the Rising Sun," and begins to light up "the Celestial Empire." So let it be with the Church. Already, as in the early morning by the sea of Galilee, the Risen Jesus is seen standing on the western shore, waiting for his Apostles. Already the Sun of Righteousness has risen on that land of promise to which you go; and though you may not live to see that day shine on you in meridian glory, yet you may live to see the beams of that light flash out far and wide from your jurisdiction until they shall shine over all those northern regions; and to that sunrise, there will be no sunset and to that bright day of Christian glory, there will be no weeping dew of the evening, and no gathering darkness of the night.


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