Addresses by Hugh Miller Thompson, Henry Benjamin Whipple and George Augustus Selwyn

FIFTH TRIENNIAL REPORT.
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THE Fifth Triennial Meeting of the Society for the Increase of the Ministry was held in Grace Church, Baltimore, on Sunday and Friday, October 8 and 13, 1871.

SUNDAY EVENING, October 8th.

At Grace Church, Evening Prayer was said by the Rev. A. Jackson, D.D., LL.D., of the Diocese of Connecticut, the Rev. J. Lloyd Breck, D.D., of the Diocese of California, and the Rev. Mr. Bangham, a Rural Dean of the Diocese of Lichfield, England; the Rt. Rev. William E. Armitage, D.D., Bishop of Wisconsin, reading the Creed and Collects.

The spacious church was crowded to its utmost capacity, the aisles, as well as the open space in front of the chancel, being densely packed, presenting a most impressive and animating scene. A large crowd gathered about the doors, unable to gain admission.

The Rev. Dr. Leeds, Rector of the Church, and one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, on rising to introduce the speakers of the evening, spoke substantially as follows:

The Society, on whose behalf we assemble in this church to-night, has but a brief, yet important history. Dating back its origin only to the year 1857, and properly commencing its career of usefulness quite two years [39/40] later, it has, nevertheless, in that short period of time, added to the ranks of our clergy nearly one tenth of their entire number. More than two hundred and forty recipients of its help have entered into Holy Orders. From Benicia on the Pacific, to Harvard on the Atlantic, and from Nashotah and Gambier near the lakes, to Sewanee near the Gulf, its Scholars are pursuing their studies in the academy, the school, and the college, while in every diocese of the country, clergymen are now laboring for the Master who have been taken kindly by its hand in their preparatory course.

Without detaining you, brethren, with further particulars, let me introduce to you one who has had much to do with the fashioning and moulding of young candidates for the ministry,--the Rev. Dr. Hugh Miller Thompson, of St. James's Church, Chicago, lately a Professor in the Theological Seminary at Nashotah.

THE REV. DR. THOMPSON'S ADDRESS.
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The duty of preaching the Gospel is a perpetual duty upon the Church of God; a duty for to-day, but a duty as well for all time; a duty laid upon her when the great commission was given to the Apostles representing her, "Go ye into the world and preach the Gospel to all people." A living Church, therefore, belongs to the future as well as to the present and to the past. Her workmen must not only be the workmen of to-day, but the workmen also of the days that are to come. She must have not only those already actively in the field, but those preparing to enter the field. She must not only have her fathers, but her sons; she must not only look to the past, but with these in her hands, bind herself also to, and take mortgages upon, the future.

[41] To train up, therefore, fit men for the holy ministry, to direct power and energy and youthful life and fervor and hope in that path, and prepare these qualities to take up the standard of the Cross, and bear it on when the hands that hold it now relax or are laid aside, is always one of the most important works that God's Church has to do, and that work, first of all, like all the work of God's true Church, comes down to the hearts and homes of men. The work must begin first of all, and ought to lie in its utmost sacredness, in the family itself. To the fathers and to the mothers of the Church that work comes home as theirs, and on their souls it lies to see that youthful hearts are turned to this grand work, and youthful lives are consecrated to God's altar. There can be no supply for any lack here. You owe your sons to God to serve God in His ministry. The father and the mother have it in their hands as none others have it. When the boy's eye kindles with hope, when the first stirrings of life awaken in the heart, when the youthful eye looks outward on the future, it is theirs to direct in the sacredness of home that life, that budding power and energy, to this the sacred work given by God to His Church. If there is ambition there awakening, they are to know that that ambition should be directed, not to earthly place or fame or name, but to a grander ambition, an ambition that may be shared in by God's angels, to write that name high, not in the dim Valhallas of the world, but on the white walls of God's Eternal Church, to stand there a centre of light, perhaps, and hope, when the clouds gather and the darkness comes. When there is the ambition to make a high place in the world, it is their duty to direct the youthful hope and energy from that to the grander place of wealth and honor in the land of the Everlasting, to the crowns [41/42] that are to be given undimmed forever, to the homes that stand in God's great kingdom in the heavens.

There have been days, years, eras, in the history of God's Church, when all this was done, and when the whole life and power and strength and fervor of a generation, all there was of intellectual force, of moral power, of weight of character, of power to control and guide men and events, went out naturally into the Church. I look back sometimes to that grand fourth century when Rome was conquered, when the victory was won, when on the proudest spot of all the world, the hill of the Capitol, was at last planted the conquering Cross, and the great Fourth Empire lay the Lord's. I look back to that fourth century, and see then how naturally and inevitably all there was of force, of power--intellectual, moral, controlling--in all that Roman world, sought the altar and the sanctuary; the days of Ambrose, statesman as well as bishop; the days of Athanasius, with power to rule an empire as well as conquer it, had he so turned the grand gifts of heart and mind that God gave him; the days of Augustine; the days of Jerome; the days of the Gregorys and Basil; the days when eloquence, statesmanship, and the power to rule men, all were consecrated by some powerful instinct to God's service at the altar.

But we have put our lives on lower levels now, brethren. Those days have passed. We train our children on lower levels, too. You are not doing your duty. You want not those high rewards for your sons. You want the rewards the earth gives. You train them to look for those rewards,--for the things that perish with the using, for the wealth, the place, the honor; the work that goes as the clouds go, the mists that pass away and leave no sign. That is what you are doing; and because [42/43] you are doing this, God's work languishes over all the world. Where do I find the father or the mother training as they have a right to train, biasing as they have a right to bias, the mind and thought of the boy, the hope of the family, toward the ministry? I see it nowhere. And now mark the old law. To whom belongs the eldest by that law? To the Lord, "and if ye will not give him, ye shall redeem him." That was the law. The eldest male child in every family in Israel was the Lord's, belonged to him, and the mother or the father must come and ransom that child and redeem him by an offering if they would not give him.

And so now it stands with you. It is in your hands. Christian fathers, Christian mothers, it is in Christian families that this question must be settled. Ye must give of the best ye have. Ye must search out the very best and noblest, the most hopeful, the brightest in mind, the purest in heart, the most fervent in spirit, and give him to the Lord; and if ye will not, if ye lead your lives, as I have said, on these low levels that we lead them on now, if ye want for him rather wealth and ease and pleasure and place in this world, then I lay upon you that other duty, that other bounden obligation, that ye must redeem him; and that is just precisely what this Society for the Increase of the Ministry proposes, as I conceive, to do. Its legitimate work, and its only legitimate work, is, to help you to redeem your children, to try to supply your faithlessness. If you will not give your children, then give your money. If you will not give your son, then step forward and redeem him by preparing the son of some other.

This Society comes, then, to look and gather up, now here, now there, one hopeful young life, one desirous to give that life to God, and help the young man to prepare [43/44] himself in scholarship, in training, in all-sufficient learning and preparation to enter on God's service at His altar, and do that service well. It becomes the almoner of the Church, in a degree, to help on in this work. It exists, brethren, just because of your unfaithfulness, and the unfaithfulness of almost all the fathers and mothers to-day in God's Church. It exists because in this parish and in other parishes throughout the land there are not the chosen out of all the flock, the best and the brightest ones, selected and consecrated to God. It is a mere makeshift, after all, and it comes to you, because it is so, with tenfold more of burden upon it, with tenfold more of power to speak. It asks no charity; it asks no paltry dole given and forgotten. It lays God's will upon you. If you will not do your duty as you ought to do, then the next thing, and the only thing that remains, is to do at least the small redemption of that duty which God accepts.

THE REV. DR. LEEDS: There is a model diocese, dear brethren, near the head-waters of the Mississippi, in which there are laboring at this time, or have been laboring within a few years past, nearly twenty missionaries, once befriended by this Society's aid, whose earnest, devoted, and heroic Bishop is present with us to-night, the Rt. Rev. Henry Benjamin Whipple, D.D., of Minnesota, who will address you for a few moments in its interest.

ADDRESS OF BISHOP WHIPPLE.
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There are things that require no argument. I hold that it is a self-evident truth, that if any man shall reach out his hand and grasp the hand of his Saviour, he will reach out the other hand to help some one else. The moment that you grasp the truth that this is a world [44/45] of sin and sorrow and death, and that God has redeemed it, then every motive of love and gratitude and loyalty calls upon us to send to these men the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I dare not hedge it in by race or clime, or caste or skin. As universal as the love of God, so boundless is the work of the Church of God.

This question is no question of supply and demand. Until the whole world is redeemed--until all the kingdoms of this earth shall bow to Christ, their lawful King--the question that will press upon the heart of the Christian world will be, How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard; and how shall they hear without preachers, and how shall they preach except they be sent?

I know not the nature of the present wants of other fields of labor; but I do know that that which makes the Western bishop old before his time is the heartache he endures as he looks upon unoccupied fields of labor. There are questions pressing upon us in that West which are to shape this nation and are to be felt throughout the world. Why, brethren, fifty years ago, almost from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, the West was a wilderness occupied by red men. To-day it has twenty millions of souls; fifty years hence it will have one hundred millions. Have we no questions to ask? Is it not a time for searchings of heart, for closet-work, for consecration of children, for large-hearted gifts to the treasury of God?

My good brother (the Rev. Dr. Leeds) said to you that the Society for the Increase of the Ministry had given to me twenty faithful laborers, and I thank God that they have encouraged us by training those men truly for the Master's work. They have seemed to grasp the truth that we must have men who know men; men who feel the beating pulse of this restless age; men who can keep [45/46] even step with the movement of the people, and go in and out telling them of Christ the Saviour. One of these men occupies a missionary territory of two hundred miles; another has eighteen missionary stations, another twelve; another preaches four times every Lord's Day, travelling thirty miles. We are gleaners where the Lord would give us the harvest, for the lack of men.

But I will not detain you to-night. You are waiting to hear the words of one whose words, I trust, will go straight to your hearts.

There are others who look to us for the Gospel of Christ, besides our own white men. May I mention an incident? A few months since, one who had been a heathen red man came six hundred miles to visit me in my home. As he came in at the door, he knelt at my feet. He said to me, "I kneel to tell you of my gratitude that you pitied the red man." He then told me this simple, artless story: "I was, a wild man, living beyond the Turtle Mountain; I knew that my people were perishing; I never looked in the face of my child that my heart was not sick. My fathers told me there was a Great Spirit, and I have often gone to the woods and tried to ask Him for help, and I only got the sound of my voice." And then he looked in my face in that artless way, and said: "You do not know what I mean. You never stood in the dark and reached out your hand and took hold of nothing. One day an Indian came to my wigwam. He said to me that he heard you tell a wonderful story at Red Lake, that you said the Great Spirit's Son had come down to earth to save all the people that needed help; that the reason why the white man was so much more blessed than the red man was because he had the true religion of the Son of the Great Spirit, and I said I must see that man. They told me [46/47] you would be at the Red Lake crossing. I came two hundred miles. I asked for you, and they said you were sick; and then I said, where can I see a missionary? I came one hundred and fifty miles more, and I found that the missionary was a red man like myself. My father, I have been with him three moons. I have the story in my heart. It is no longer dark; it laughs all the while." And he turned to me and said, "Will you not give me a missionary?"

Shame on us who claim to be the heirs of the primitive Church that I had to say to him, "We have not the man, and we have not the means."

My dear brother of Nashotah made an earnest appeal unto you to consecrate your children unto Christ. May I tell you another incident of a consecration that was made by one who had been a heathen? In the diocese to the north of me, in Rupert's Land, there was an Indian who had received the Gospel of Christ, and then was separated from his Christian pastor. He sickened. The pastor travelled a long journey through the wilderness to see him. He found the man on his death-bed. After ministering to him the consolations of our holy religion, the dying man said, "Raise me on my knees. I have a great request to ask of Jesus." "But," said the missionary, "you will die if I lift you from your bed." "Oh, I must kneel." The missionary laid his arm under the head of the dying man and raised him on his knees, and he reached out his hands and said, "O Jesus, I have one child; I give him to Thee. Make him Thy servant to tell my people of Thy love." In a few moments he said, "He has answered my prayer," and died. And that boy, then a child of eight years, is to-day one of the most fearless missionaries of the Cross in that vast country beyond us.

[48] Dear brethren, as one who has found this Society the right arm upon which we could always lean, I ask first and best of all your prayers. I ask your sympathy. If you give these, you will count it joy to take something you called your own, and carry it and lay it at Jesus' feet.

THE REV. DR. LEEDS.--It is known, perhaps, to most of this congregation, that the Bishop who has just addressed you has been asked by the authorities of our Mother Church in England to take the Episcopal supervision of the Sandwich Islands. Not the hardships, brethren, of that once heathen shore, have deterred him from accepting, or from asking the consent of the authorities of this Church to his translation to it,--but because he could not leave his noble opportunities in his present field, or break its ties. The field is one, however, both on continent and on island, both at home and abroad. And we have with us to-night a Chief Pastor in the Church, who, thirty years ago, or thereabouts, was sent, in "the morn and liquid dew of youth," into the far Southwest, on our Pacific seas, to the Island of New Zealand and the clusters round about it, where, after building upon foundations already laid indeed, but which, under God, he made broader and stronger, and having reared thereon a noble superstructure to the glory of His grace, he has been recalled by the Church to devote his talents, his acquirements, the lessons of wisdom he has providentially learned and the life in Christ which God has fully enriched, to the needs and demands of the vast work in Great Britain, in which, perhaps, he is preeminently qualified at this hour to assist. Invited to be present at our General Convention, and earnestly solicited with others of his brethren and sons to come, we have had already the pleasure of [48/49] listening once and again to his words. And if he will allow me to say it, they have both cheered and strengthened our hearts beyond our power to express, while his presence has created a new tie of sympathy between us and our Anglican Mother. We shall never cease to remember his visit as that of the first Bishop occupying a see in the British Isles who has ever trodden our shores, and one whose coming and countenance and counsel will be a blessing, we trust, for long coming time.

I introduce to you now the Right Rev, the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

ADDRESS
of the
RT. REV. GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN, D.D.,
Lord Bishop of Lichfield, England.
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My dear friends and brethren, the land from which I have come is more distant even than those Western lands, three bishops of which are now present in the midst of you. There is no land more distant from the fountain of salvation than the Islands of New Zealand, and, therefore, I think we may see in those islands the gracious fulfilment of the prophetic promises,--that God, in answer to the prayers of His Son, has given Him the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession. His sound has gone out unto all lands, and His words unto the ends of the earth. But, dear brethren, when we speak of the ends of the earth, let us not deceive ourselves. This is but as it were the advancing of the standard of the Cross, leaving these vast spaces of unoccupied territory to be filled up by the labors of Christian men whom God, in His own good time, will raise up for the conversion of the world.

But when we speak of this multitude of preachers, that also is the subject of prophecy, that "the Lord [49/50] gave the word, and great was the multitude of them that preached it." Where is that multitude? Our Lord himself has said that "the laborers are few;" and yet these words cannot be contradictory; the Word of God cannot contradict itself. If, then, at this present moment the laborers be few, it is no less certain that in good time, in God's own appointed time, He will send forth a multitude of preachers to proclaim that Word which He has given.

And this, dear brethren, teaches us what an effort must be made, how much self-sacrifice, how much devotion of heart will be needed, before these great and heart-stirring prophecies can be fulfilled. We have heard of the duty of self-sacrifice. Let me follow upon that lead; let me trace it to its highest source. Let us think of the Eternal Son of God, who, by the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God. There is the great pattern of self-sacrifice,--the Son offering Himself to the Father, consenting, for the work which His Father had predetermined from all eternity, to empty Himself of all His glory, to take upon Himself the form of a servant, to be found in the fashion of a man, to humble Himself even to the death upon the cross.

There, then, is our pattern. There on the cross that Blessed Son, who offered Himself without spot to God, seems to say to every one of us, "Go thou and do likewise." And followers of that Blessed Lord have never been wanting. At the first word of God the patriarch Abraham left home and kindred, and, what was more striking, he left his own family worshipping false gods, to go to the land which God had told him of. And as there was self-devotion in the father, so there was self-devotion in the son, for when that son was in the very prime of youth, when the father was well-nigh an hundred [50/51] years old, that son, at the command of the same God, consented to be bound, to be laid upon the altar, to be offered up as a sacrifice in order that the whole type might be complete; that as God gave His only-begotten Son, and as that Son of God freely gave Himself for us all, so the type of Abraham's self-devotion, and the self-devotion also of Isaac, might be a lesson, through all time, to bring us nearer to the comprehension of this great duty of self-sacrifice.

I have spoken of fathers. Now let us think of mothers. Who was the author of that book, a chapter of which has been read to-night? His very name denotes a child of prayer. His name was Samuel, one asked of God, one prayed for before he was born, and prayed for day by day after he was born. And when Hannah came to the temple to present that child to God, what were her words? "This is the child for which I prayed, and God has given me the petition that I asked of Him; therefore also I have lent him unto the Lord; as long as he lives he shall be lent unto the Lord." Can we believe that there are no children of Abraham here, none whom God has made the children of Abraham by faith like his? Can we believe that there are not mothers in this Israel of ours who are capable of acts of devotion, like that of Hannah? Why, then, should we doubt but that in God's own due time, in the course of His unerring providence, fathers and mothers will give their children to the Lord, and those children will dedicate themselves to Christ so willingly and in such numbers that great shall be the multitude of preachers to proclaim the word which God has given?

In this point alone, I cannot follow my dear brother who spoke first. I cannot accept of substitutes. I know that a great nation, but a few months ago, fell because [51/52] its able men, who were drawn by the conscription, bought off by money their own actual service, and so the standing army of France, in the day of trial, was found unequal in the struggle. No; I cannot think of substitutes. We must have personal service. We are all dedicated to God in holy Baptism. We are all signed with the sign of the cross in token that we would continue Christ's faithful soldiers unto our lives' end, and fight manfully under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil. Most of us, I trust, have made that promise and that pledge our own, by coming forward in the holy ordinance of Confirmation to take our baptismal covenant upon ourselves. We have there avouched that God only is our Lord, and that we will serve Him with all our heart, and with all our mind, and with all our soul, and with all our strength. There can be, then, no substitutes for that work which each one of us must discharge personally for himself. Whoever there is among us whom God calls to His own work, must be ready to answer, "Here I am; send me."

But then comes the doubt which will suggest itself to every humble mind. Jesus Christ by the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God. Who is there among us who can offer himself in that manner? Oh, let us humble ourselves first, that God may raise us up. Let us not talk of the exalted character of the missionary work or of the noble army of missionaries, before we have first humbled ourselves under the sense of our own unworthiness. Who is sufficient for these things? Who can dare to follow in the triumphant march of that Saviour, who is the Lamb without blemish and without spot? And yet the promise is that we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; that we must fix our eyes upon Him as Elisha fixed his eyes upon Elijah, now [52/53] that He is gone up on high, now that He is sitting at the right hand of God. There our thoughts, our hearts, must ever be fixed. We must follow Him first in His low estate as the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We must follow Him to Calvary, and there feel that He died for us, that by His blood we are cleansed. We must follow Him to His grave, and bury there all our carnal affections and sinful lusts; and then we may rise again with Him, with the joyful cry that the Lord has risen indeed to lift up our hearts to follow Him for a brief space on earth, and then to see Him caught up into the clouds of heaven, and to pray that a double measure of His Spirit may be upon us; that we may undertake with hope and in faith this great work, which but for Him would be impossible to be borne; that we may go forth in His name and in His strength, as the stripling David went forth against the giant Goliath: "Thou comest unto me with a shield and with a sword and with a spear, but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied."

We go forth, then, in that strength alone. This is the real secret of missionary success,--to bear in all humility our Saviour's cross, to hold up that cross to the heathen that sit in darkness, to tell them that they may all be cleansed by that precious blood which was freely shed for all men, to bid them come freely to that fountain of life, with the assurance that there is no one single soul under heaven, of any race or kindred or country, for which that precious blood was not freely shed.

Then, dear brethren, with this feeling of self-sacrifice, who is there at this present moment who would refuse to go wherever the Holy Spirit might please to call him, not thinking of his own sinfulness, but rather thinking [53/54] how all our sins are done away by that perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice offered for us upon the cross; how our very sins are the reason for following that gracious Saviour who has loved us; how we ought to show our love of Him, however unworthy we may feel, to serve Him, by the very humblest, the lowest services; that as He washed the disciples' feet, so we should be willing to undertake and to sit down in the lowest places of his ministry, till He himself bids us go up higher? Thus, dear friends, that thought will never stand in our way, that we are not worthy to do this work. We shall hear His voice saying to us, "My son, give Me thy heart." We shall know that that worthless heart has been cleansed by the blood of Christ, that it has been made the temple of the Holy Ghost, that in the power of that Holy Spirit we may go forth with strength and with confidence, knowing that we shall conquer through the power of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. We shall go forth in no pride of our own, but simply trusting that by faithful service, by earnest prayer, by steadfast faith, we may in the end obtain the blessed privilege of being among the number of that multitude of preachers who will proclaim God's Word even to the ends of the earth.

This Society, dear friends, can be supported only by that double self-sacrifice of which you have heard,--the sacrifice of means and the sacrifice of your children. I have declined to accept the thought of substitutes; but let me put it in this way: "All cannot be called to go forth into the mission field. God, we know, by the Holy Spirit, separates certain persons to the work of the ministry, but all alike are priests of the Church of God, all alike have their own vocation, their own duties to discharge, their own power and means of grace to enable them to fulfil those duties. It is not, then, that we obtain [54/55] substitutes to dispense with any one of our duties, but that we seek in earnest prayer for the mind of God, and for the leading of His Spirit, that those who are called by God to His ministry may be able to answer the question which will be asked them at their ordination: 'Do you believe that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministry?'" Others, guided and actuated by the same spirit, will take their part in this work of Christ. There will be faithful women, mothers in Israel, busied day by day in training up their children to holier thoughts and higher aims, pointing out to them the worthlessness of this world's goods, of the pomps and vanities of this lower world; and bright examples will ever be before your children, like the example of that good man whose works I have seen in England and whose works I have seen here, who gave such astounding wealth to the service of God and to His poor. I say there will not be examples wanting to show how little those men who have this world's wealth value it for its own sake, how much they value wealth only as the means of doing good to their fellow-creatures, and of working out God's work on earth. They will teach their children, then, that if God seems to call them to the ministries of earth, there will still be a blessing upon all they do, that in the midst of the crowded mart and in the haunts of business they may hear the music of the celestial chime, that their hearts may rise, even in the midst of worldly cares, above all worldly thoughts and all temporal aims, that everything that they get and gain they will give to God, who gave it to them, and that the more they give they gain, and the more they save they lose. As a presbyter of the Church, whom we must still claim as ours, John Wesley used to say, "Save all that you can, and give all that you save."

[56] Thus there will be no lack of means for such societies as these, which have the most beneficent aims that any societies can have; for what can be more fructifying in its nature, what more of the nature of a seedling gift than such a society as this, which, for every sum that is placed in its charge, may train up a young minister of the Gospel to go forth to sow and to plant new fields in the land of heathenism, where, by God's grace, the seed sown in faith will bring forth a hundredfold for this and for all future generations?

Dear brethren, these are the thoughts which will make no man wish to shake off his own personal responsibility upon others. Each of you, I am sure, will endeavor to search your own hearts, to seek by prayer to ascertain what it is God's will that you should undertake and do; you will follow the leading of God's providence; you will do everything that God commands you to do; if He bids you give, you will give; if He bids you go, you will go; if He bids you point out to your children the Christian ministry as the very highest calling of baptized and redeemed man, you will never put before your children any lower or any weaker thought; if they come to you and say, "I think that the Spirit of God has moved me to go to the far West, to place myself there in the midst of the wilderness to follow the wandering tribes of red men to their own wigwams, there to preach to them the Gospel which they have not yet heard," I am sure you will freely give them up. We shall praise the Lord for the people that willingly offer themselves. We shall thank God and invoke blessings upon the head of the son that is separated from his brethren. We shall send them forth with our prayers. We shall follow them with our alms. We shall watch with interest the reports of their work. We shall hail the coming of your [56/57] Missionary Bishops from the far West to tell us what your sons and daughters are doing in the cause of God. And as new fields open; as this vast increase takes place year by year; as your people multiply from the present twenty millions, of which we have heard, to the one hundred millions which will be numbered by the end of this present century, not one, we hope, of those multitudes which will people ere long the vast plains of the West, will be without his own shepherd, his own bosom friend, his own ministering priest, to bring forth to him the bread and wine, to baptize his children into our most Holy Church, to bring them to their bishop to be confirmed, that all the ministrations of our holy religion may be so abundantly bestowed as to cause that vast wilderness to blossom like the rose. May God of His infinite mercy grant that, in answer to our prayers and with His blessing upon our alms, the efforts of this society, and of all like societies, may be so abundantly prospered that no Missionary Bishop, in time to come, may ever go forth into any new field without being followed by a band of men whose hearts the Lord hath touched!

REV. DR. LEEDS.--I would state, before making the collection, that there are now fifty applicants waiting at the door of this Society asking almost in vain for help. Its means last year amounted, through the gifts of the Church, to $44,000. This entire amount was spent, and now, about to inaugurate a new year of work, it asks for a generous replenishing of its treasury. I hope that the contributions to-night will be such as to cheer the Society, be a worthy response to what has been said, and a pleasing gift in the eye of Him who has given us all we have and made us all we are, and for our poor souls has given Himself.

[58] A liberal collection was then made in aid of the Society.

The services concluded with prayer and benediction by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.

Thus closed the most spirited and successful services ever held under the auspices of this Society, which, we trust, may be said without disparagement to any former occasion. The rapt attention of the congregation throughout the services, the glow and unction of the addresses delivered, the manifest interest awakened in the noble cause, and the liberal offerings in its behalf, must have greatly cheered the hearts of the patrons and officers of the Society. Never before has such an impulse been given to the important work which they have in hand.

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