to all the world, under the heel of an enemy and an alien-a false prophet. I found the Christians scattered, divided, powerless.

Can you believe, brethren, that such is the state of those lands that were once the home and the origin of Christianity? And can you believe that this may be the state of the lands that are now the domain of Christendom? For 1300 years these countries have been under the power of Islam, and they will remain under the power of Islam until Christians join together and fight, shoulder to shoulder, in the cause of Christ.

When Christians first received the word of Christ, they commenced to. divide. There were Paulists, there were Apollosites, there were Cephasites, and there were Christians; there were Manichæans and Sabellians and Nestorians and Armenians and Copts and Maronites and Greeks and Jacobites. What a catalogue for us! And yet our catalogue is longer still. [Laughter.] Those people fought in the theaters and they fought in the churches, and they assembled, as Gregory said, "like cranes and geese," in their councils, and anathematized each other. They separated from each other; and then came the storm and the flood; then came blood and fire and ruin, and the church of Christ. went down in the dust.

What has been in the past may be in the future. The Christian church, after this, narrowed within its borders in the barbarian kingdoms of Europe, bereft of Northern Africa, bereft of Western Asia, bereft of Eastern Europe-of all its classical cities and all its centers of power--passed a thousand years in penitence and sorrow and obscurity before it arose again to enter upon the conquest of the world; and then the spirit of God came and reformed the church in Europe, and we set out once more for the world's conquest. What did we then do? We began again to divide, to anathematize, to separate, to fight one another, to unchurch each other, and in this guise we are going forth to the conquest of the world again.

We have heard much of what is taking place in our West, in our South, in the desolate places of our great cities; but I come here to plead the cause of the world lying in darkness. I come to tell you, Christian brethren, that your deeds here, of which you take the responsibility, are reacting in our mission fields. I come to plead the cause of a Mohammedan, who has been brought by persevering labor, by prayer, by instruction of the missionaries, to a knowl

edge of the truth as it is in Christ; and who has been brought, at the peril of his life, to confess the name of his Saviour; and who has stood up in our church in Beirout and taken upon himself the vows of Christ. He knows what that means. He knows that it means to him death, or expulsion from his home, and hiding in some place of obscurity in a distant land.

What is the result of that man's conversion? There comes an emissary from a Christian church in America and tells him, "Sir, you have joined the church of Christ, as you think, but that is not the church of Christ. Come to me and I will confirm you and introduce you into the church of Christ." And there comes another emissary from another Christian church in this country and tells him, "Sir, you have not been baptized. Come and I will immerse you under the water, and you will then become a Christian.” And there comes another emissary from a Christian church and tells him, "Sir, the Christian church is not an outward organization. You must come out of the church that you have joined and live a separate life." You think this is a thing of romance-a thing of fancy. I am telling you an actual fact, brethren. I am telling you things as they are, not things as I imagine them.

My Christian brethren, this is something that reflects the sentiment of the churches at home. This is a thing inflicted upon us by your divisions here. We stand on the picket-line, we stand at the front, we stand at the post of danger, we are lifting up the banner of the cross in the face of an uncivilized and unbelieving world, and we have succeeded in convincing them that Christ is the Saviour, and that under that banner they must fight. Then there come emissaries from you who tell them that it is all wrong, and that they must begin all over again.

Dear Christian brethren, will you suffer this thing to go on? [Cries of "No, no."] Will you suffer your Christian missionaries at the front to be paralyzed, to have their voices made silent, to have their testimonies made ineffective, by reason of your divisions? Dare you do it in the face of almighty God and in the face of a dying world?

I have heard something said about the possibilities of Christian co-operation; and I agree with the last speaker in regard to the advantage of parceling out a given district and dividing it among the churches. But, Christian brethren, I go further than that. I believe that there are circumstances under which we must

relinquish our denominational affinities, and our denominational education, and join heart and hand with other Christians, in a church which shall be the church of Christ in no distinctive denominational form. [Applause.] I do not speak as the result of inexperience, but I speak having in my mind a model of such a church, which we have in the city of Beirout, where I live.

Sixty years ago, when your pioneer missionaries went to that land they found a small community of people, consisting of Englishmen, Germans, Swiss and Americans. They desired to give them the ordinances of religion. I may say by way of preface, that the mission was one formed by the American Board, which was at that time a union organization between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists; but from the beginning those brethren were inspired. to establish a union church. They determined that they would give a model, if possible, to the future converts. There were Episcopalians, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians of both schools, then existing, and Congregationalists. There were also, at a later period, Plymouth Brethren and Friends. They organized that Anglo-American Union congregation, and it has lasted sixty years. At the time of our Civil War, when the sentiments of the English were somewhat hostile throughout the world to Americans-when the sentiments of Americans were divided, that church stood the shock of that war, and the division of public and private sentiment without for a moment faltering in its career. [Applause.] There it stands to-day, and, please God, it will stand there to the end of time.

There have come there some members of the Church of England, who cannot join in this work, and they have set up a little independent service there, and have invited the Episcopalians to separate from the other body and worship with them. A very few of them go off into a little room apart, and worship on the Lord's day. But, thank God, the great majority of the Church of England, residents in Beirout join heart and hand, and give of their means, time and influence to the support of this institution.

We have another specimen of union there. We have a hospital which was established by the Knights of St. John, that noble order of which the president is Prince Albrecht, and among the leading members of which are the Emperor of Germany and his son, and all the princes and nobles of that land that are members of the national church of Germany. They have put that hospital in the charge of

the professors of the Syrian Protestant College, and there we join heart and hand together, worshiping together with one impulse and with one love.

Now, Christian brethren, I have pledged myself not to prolong this meeting by prolonging my remarks beyond the time allotted to me. But I am going to say to you before we part, that I implore you in the name of Christian common sense-I implore you in the name of that mystic union which I know binds heart to heart, and which I see reflected from the eyes of all now in this audience-in the name of that Christ who said, "Let them be one even as we are one"-in the name of our great country, which we who have been forcibly separated from it, love more than you do, and in which we take more pride than you can-in the name of the heathen world lying in wickedness, bleeding from a thousand. wounds, in the name of all that is good and precious, rise up and carry to your homes the impulses of this meeting. Let it not be merely a place where we shall have talked of union, but where you will have made the solemn resolve to bring about union—that in this matter you will go hand in hand, as fellow-Christians, that you will go to your conventions, to your conferences, to your presbyteries, and to your associations, and that you will cause the bigots and fanatics to stand aside, in order that this great work may be accomplished. [Prolonged applause.]

GENERAL DISCUSSION.

DR. STRONG: I hold in my hand a letter from Professor George P. Fisher, of Yale Theological Seminary, who had expected to be present, at the invitation of this Conference, to say a few words. I will read his letter:

"NEW HAVEN, CONN., December 3, 1887. "Mr. WILLIAM E. DODGE, President of the Evangelical Alliance for the U. S. "A large committee, of which I am the chairman, was appointed, in 1886, by the National Congregational Council of the United States, to take measures for the promotion of inter-denominational comity. It was the judgment of the National Council that a method should be found, whereby the forces of Christ's kingdom should not only forbid all friction with each other, but should be har moniously united in an aggressive work against the kingdom of this world.' Our

committee were instructed to confer with the general ecclesiastical organizations of all other churches of the evangelical faith, in order to secure this result, and 'to save the needless expenditure of Christian force,' in reference especially to new territory that 'shall hereafter be occupied.' We were, also, to consult with other ecclesiastical bodies with a view to the holding of an inter-denominational congress, for the attainment of the desired end.

"In attending to the business committed to us, myself and my associates have been struck with the fact that in the Evangelical Alliance, we have already an 'inter-denominational congress,' one function of which is the promotion, by judicious means, of just that sympathy and concurrence of action which the national Congregational Council was anxious to procure. Hence, I have been authorized to communicate to you, and through you to the Alliance, the proceeding of the Council, as above related, and to ask that such action may be taken and such recommendations made by the Alliance as will tend to put a stop to that unseemly and hurtful competition and rivalship of different denominations in the propagation of the gospel in this country and abroad, which is to some extent a scandal in the eyes of the world, and an obstacle to the spread of the faith which we hold in common.

"I am, Very Respectfully Yours,

"GEORGE P. FISHER."

MR. DODGE: I am glad to know that just this spirit which comes to us from the great Congregational body is filling the hearts of the best men in all the various divisions of the church of Christ in this country.

I am now going to introduce to you one whom you all know, one who perhaps by his pen and his work, for years (and certainly by his long devotion to the Evangelical Alliance, so that he is almost its father) has done more than any other man in the country to acquaint Christian men with each other. That man is

REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., OF NEW YORK.

Foreign immigration was pointed out as one of our chief perils, and some speakers have taken a pessimistic view. I am an optimist on the ground of God's presence in history and Christ's promise to be with his church all days even to the end of the world. The Evil One is mighty, but God is almighty and over-rules the wrath of his enemies. Foreign immigration from the different nationalities and churches of Europe may for a while retard, but cannot arrest, and will ultimately benefit, our civilization and Christianity by widening it and infusing into it the best elements of the Old World