the support of his widowed mother; at nineteen he was military
inspector, with the rank of major; at twenty the governor of Virginia
sent him six hundred miles to ask the commander of the French forces "by
what authority he had invaded the king's dominions"; at twenty-two he
was colonel in command of a regiment under General Braddock, and in the
absence of a chaplain he read prayers daily himself. He saved the
remnant of that ill-fated army from annihilation, and fifteen years
after an aged Indian chief came to see the man at whom he had fired many
times and who was protected by the Great Spirit. At his entrance as a
member of the legislature of Virginia, the speaker greeted him with
thanks for his military services. Washington arose to reply and blushed
and stammered. The speaker said, "Mr. Washington, your modesty only
equals your valor." He was a member of the first Continental Congress
of whom Patrick Henry said, "Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, is the
great orator, but for solid information and sound judgement Col.
Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on that floor." When with
one voice Congress chose him to be the commander-in-chief, he said, "I
beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in this room, that I this
day declare with the utmost sincerity that I do not think myself equal
to the command I am honored with. No pecuniary consideration would
tempt me to accept this position. I will keep an exact account of my
expenses, those I doubt not you will discharge. I ask no more." The
nation applauded the prudence, the wisdom, the bravery and patriotism of
Washington. Frederick the Great said, "His achievements are the most
brilliant in military annals." Napoleon directed that the standard of
the French army should be hung with crape at his death. Fox said of him
in the British Parliament, "Illustrious man, it has been reserved for
him to run the race of glory without the smallest interruption to his
course." But the noblest eulogy ever uttered were the words of Gen.
Henry Lee: "First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his
countrymen." He had hoped to retire to private life, and wrote to
Lafayette, "I am a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, under
the shadow of my own vine and fig tree. I have retired from all public
employment and tread the walks of private life with heartfelt
satisfaction." The country would not permit it. He had refused to be a
candidate for the office of president and accepted the nation's
unanimous call with a heavy heart. His last act before leaving for New
York was to visit his aged mother, then eighty-two, and in the last year
of her life. We can picture that tender farewell to one to whom he owed
under God that beautiful faith which shed glory on his life. The
journey to New York was one continued ovation. His Virginia neighbors
and friend gave him a God-speed and benediction. Baltimore outdid
itself in generous hospitality. Philadelphia crowned him with laurel,
the bells rang out their joyous peals, cannons thundered and the people
with one voice shouted "Long live the President." Marvellous as was the
enthusiasm of other cities, the people of Trenton, who remembered the
cruelties of the Hessian in 1776 and their deliverance by Washington,
outdid them all. On a triumphal arch was written "Dec. 26, 1776. The
hero who defended the mothers will defend the daughters." At Elizabeth
a committee of Congress met him, and Caesar never had so beautiful a
flotilla as that of the sea captains and pilots who bore him to New York
on the 23d of April. A week was spent in festivity. It is the 30th of
April. In all the churches of New York there have been prayers for the
new government and its chosen head. The streets swarm with people as
the hour of noon approaches. Every house-top and porch and window near
to Federal Hall is packed with a dense mass. The president has been
presented to the two houses of Congress. The procession is formed.
Washington follows the senators and representatives to the balcony.
Around and behind him are his staff and distinguished patriots of the
Revolution. Every eye is fixed on the stately, majestic man. A little
over six feet high, his form perfect in outline and figure, a florid
complexion, dark blue eyes deeply set, his rich brown hair now tinged
with gray, firm jaws and broad nostrils, lighted by a benignant
expression. Such was the Father of his Country. The brave soldier
trembles with emotion as the chancellor of the State of New York reads
the oath; the hand of Washington is on the open Bible. Was it a
providence that they rested on the words, "His hands were made strong by
the mighty God of Israel?" The secretary would have raised the sacred
book to the president's lips. Washington said solemnly, "I swear, so
help me God," and then bowed reverently kissed the book. He went to the
senate chamber, and with stammering words, for his heart was almost too
full for utterance, he delivered his inaugural address, and then turning
to his friends said, "We will go to St. Paul's Church for prayers." It
had been the habit of his life. His pastor, Rev. Lee Massey, said, "No
company ever withheld him from church."' His secretary, Harrison, said,
"Whenever the general could be spared from the camp on the Sabbath, he
never failed to ride to some neighboring church to join in the worship
of God." He claimed no praise for his matchless victories, but
reverently gave all the glory to the blessing and protection of God. He
knew, in the words of my friend Robert C. Winthrop, that "There can be
no independence of God." The poet will sing and the orator describe
eloquently the pageant of that day, but no incident will so touch the
Christian's heart as the first act of the president of the United
States, kneeling reverently with his fellow-citizens in the public
worship of God. The service which had been set forth and was this day
used in St. Paul's Church by Bishop Provost, also a patriot of the
Revolution, and one who had suffered for his country's sake, was
substantially the same used by us to-day. Washington assumed office in
the midst of dangers. Edmund Randolph, one of the foremost members of
the constitutional convention, wrote to Washington, "The Constitution
would never have been adopted but for the knowledge that you sanctioned
it, and the expectation that you would execute it. It is in state of
probation. You alone can give it stability." There was a stormy sea
before the new ship of state. The bitter hatreds between Federalist and
anti-Federalist were not healed. Two states had not ratified the
Constitution--there were tokens in more than one direction of rebellion.
Without on dollar in the treasury, we were eighty millions in debt. The
pirates of Morocco had destroyed our commerce in the Mediterranean,
Spain threatened the valley of the Mississippi. Our relations with
England were full of bitter memories; a country larger than Europe was
to be protected, and we had a standing army of only 600 men. Washington
called around him as advisers Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of Foreign
Affairs; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury; Henry Knox,
Secretary of War; Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General, and John Jay, Chief
Justice, and by these men, under God, the crumbling confederacy was
cemented into one nation. Time forbids my reading you the words of
wisdom, "apples of gold in pictures of silver," of Washington's
inaugural and farewell addresses. I wish I had time to tell how, with a
prophet's eye, he saw the future of the West, and again and again urged
the opening of lines of commerce to bind East and West together. After
eight years of wise rule, such as befitted "the Father of our Country,"
he retired to the shades of Mt. Vernon, to be, as he had been through
life, the helper of the helpless, the friend of the needy and the
almoner of God. On the 12th of December, 1799, he was exposed to a
storm of sleet and rain, the severest form of quinsy set in; two days
later, the 14th of December, he died. As friends stood weeping around
his death-bed, he said with a smile, "O don't, don't; I am dying, but
thank God I am not afraid to die." As the hour of his death drew near
he asked to be left alone. They all went out and left him with God.
There are lessons for our hearts to-day. Government is a delegated
trust from God, who alone has the right to govern. He gives to every
nation the right to say in what form this trust shall be clothed. No
man has the right to be his brother's master. Take away the truth that
government is a trust which comes from God, and you have left nothing
between man and man but cunning and brute force. Burke said, "this
sacred trust of government does not arise from our conventions and
compacts," but it gives our conventions and compacts all the force and
sanction which they have. I shall be told that the name of God is not
found in the Constitution of the United States; it did not need to be
when it was written on the people's hearts.
While we commemorate the noble deeds of our fathers, which under God
were this day crowned with success, we gratefully remember that our
fathers' God has guided us through all dangers. What other nation has
come out of the horrors of civil war with victors and vanquished vieing
with each other in love for one common country? Where has the hand of
the assassin bowed the whole people by the leader's grave? This is no
day for boasting or to call over the roll of our great dead.
We have sinned deeply, and deeply have we paid the penalty. No hand but
God's could have over-ruled our mistakes and given us our favored
position to-day. We must not forget that no nation has ever survived
the loss of its religion. The year which saw Washington inaugurated
president, saw in the fair land of Lafayette the beginnings of that
holocaust of murder which turned France into a hell. "The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom." No high-sounding words about freedom,
no Godless philosophy, no infidel creed, which robs men of homes here
and heaven hereafter, can save this nation. "Not unto us, but unto Thy
name be the praise," must be our song, as it was the song of our
fathers.
There are clouds and darkness on the horizon for the future. I see it
in the impatience of law, in the jealousies between class and class, in
the selfishness of the rich, and in the misery of the poor, in bribery
and corruption in high places, and in the turbulence of mobs. I see it
in the foul monster of intemperance and impurity which stalk unabashed
through the land. But I see the greatest danger in that insidious
teaching which robs humanity of an eternal standard of right, which
makes morality prudence or imprudence, which limits man's horizon by the
grave, and takes from hearts and homes God and Christ and heaven. Yet,
I reverently believe that God has set us in the forefront of the nations
to be, as our text says, "a beacon on the mountain-top," to lead on in
His work in the last time. It may be that for our sins we shall walk
again into the furnace, as we have walked and come out of it purified
and fitted for the Master's use. I sometimes lose faith in men, but I
will not lose faith in God. It is ours to work and bide our time; so
did our fathers, and so will God give the harvest. I should wrong my
heart and yours to-day, if I forgot the daughters of the Revolution. We
might have had no Washington but for the lessons he learned at that
mother's knee, that his duty to God was to believe in Him, to fear Him
and to love Him with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul
and with all his strength, to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put
his whole trust in Him, to call on Him, to honor His holy name and His
word and to love Him truly all the days of his life; that his duty
towards his neighbor--was to love him as himself, and to do to all men as
he would have them do unto him, to love, honor and succor his father and
mother, to honor and obey the civil authority, to hurt nobody by word or
deed, to be true and just in all his dealings, to bear no malice or
hatred in his heart, to keep his hands from picking and stealing, and
his tongue from evil speaking, lying and slandering, to keep his body in
temperance, soberness and chastity. Not to covet or desire other men's
goods, but to learn and labor truly to get his own living and to do his
duty in that state of life unto which it should please God to call him.
We know this was the rule of his life. The Father of his Country found
his solace, inspiration and help, as many of us have found it, in the
love of a Christian wife. There are no fairer names in our country's
history than Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Schuyler
Hamilton, Sally Foster Otis, Alice DeLancy Izard, Jane Ketelas Beekman,
and many more, who made up the republican court of Washington; and we do
not forget humble names like Mollie Stark, whose lives were consecrated
to their country. Wives, mothers, daughters! none have places of
greater influence in shaping and moulding our country than you. Your
power is the power of a Christian mother, a Christian wife, a Christian
daughter. In the darkest hour look to God, believe that your mission is
a nobler one than to be a slave of fashion or the leader of a party.
Plant your feet on the rock of eternal truth--never speak with uncertain
voice of the verities of the Christian faith. For you St. Paul said:
"How knowest thou, O Woman, but thou mayest save thy husband and thy
child," and saving them a nation is saved.
III. _SERMON AT THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MISSIONARY COUNCIL
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., NOV. 13, 1888_.
"_The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of
His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever_."--REVELATION xi. 15.
THESE words are God's surety that the prayers, the trials and the labors
of His Church shall be crowned with success.
We are living in the great missionary age of the Church. Impenetrable
barriers have been broken down. Fast-closed doors have been opened.
There is no country where we may not carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Divine Providence has been fusing the nations of the earth into one
common brotherhood. Man has created nothing. The lightening would run
its circuit in the Garden of Eden as well as when Morse made it man's
messenger. In the fullness of time God has lifted the veil from human
eyes to see the mysteries of His bounty, and so prepare a highway for
the coming of our King.
I have no argument about the obligation of missions. It is eighteen
hundred years too late for this.
I speak to you to-day of the progress of the Kingdom of Christ. Pray
for me that the story may lead us to the foot of the Cross to consecrate
all that we have to His blessed service.
At the close of the last century a thoughtful young Englishman asked the
governor of the East India Company to go to India to preach the Gospel.
The answer was: "The man that would go to India upon that errand is as
mad as a man who would put a torch to a powder magazine."
A few years ago Chunder Sen, the great scholar of India, died. On his
death-bed a friend asked him what he thought were the prospects of
Christianity in India. He answered: "Jesus Christ has conquered the
heart of India." Not that great battles are not yet to be fought, much
weary work to be done, but with more than half a million of Christians
in India, which have been won in this century, we are certain that the
nation will be won to Christ.
I turn to that dark continent which has had more of human sorrow bound
up in its history than any place on earth. Forty years ago in a cottage
in the highlands of Scotland an aged man said to his son: "David, you
will have family prayer to-day, for when we part we shall never meet
again until we meet before the great white throne." David Livingstone
read the thirty-fourth Psalm, the key-note of that wonderful life, and
then poured out his heart to God in prayer, threw his arms around his
father's neck and kissed him; they parted never to meet again in this
world, and so he went to Africa. He did a wonderful work in the
Bechuana country. He was a carpenter, blacksmith, teacher, laborer,
physician and minister to these poor souls, but the man's heart was in
the interior of Africa. One day, with about as much preparation as I
take when I go to the north woods of Minnesota, he left for the interior
of Africa. His route was along the path of slave traders, and every few
days he came to some place where a poor woman had fainted in the
chain-gang and had been strapped to a tree with her babe at her breast
and left to be stung to death by insects. No wonder that he wrote in
his Journal, and blotted it with tears: "Oh, God, when will the great
sore of the world be healed?"
When you remember that the followers of the false prophet are the only
people engaged in this traffic in human flesh, and that to the poor
African it means slavery or death, you have the answer to the stories of
the progress of Mohammedanism in Africa.
I cannot tell the story of his life. One day he was found dead on his
knees in prayer in an African hut. That life had so impressed itself
upon the heathen folk that they did what will always be a marvel of
history. They wrapped the body in leaves. They covered it with pitch.
They carried it nine months on their shoulders. They fought hostile
tribes. They swam swollen rivers. They cut their way through
impenetrable thickets, and at last stood at the door of a mission house
in Zanzibar, and said, "We have brought the man of God to be buried with
his people." And so David Livingstone sleeps in Westminster Abbey.
Our Stanley took up Livingstone's work, and he laid Africa open to the
gaze of the world. He travelled nine hundred and ninety-nine days, and
the thousandth day reached the sea-coast. In all that journey he did
not meet a single, solitary soul who had heard that Jesus Christ had
come into the world. Stanley tells the reason why he went back to
Africa. He said:
"When I found Livingstone I cared no more for missions than the veriest
atheist in England. I had been a press reporter, and my business was to
follow armies and to describe battles; to attend conventions and report
speeches, but my heart had not been touched with sympathy for missions.
When I found this grand old man I asked: 'What is he here for? Is he
crazy? Is he cracked? I sat at his feet four months and I saw that a
power above his will had taken possession of his life, and given him a
hunger to lead poor heathen folk out of their darkness.
"I have heard the same voice speaking to my heart, 'Follow me,' and I go
back to Africa to finish Livingstone's work."
This was a few years ago. To-day there are fifteen Christian Bishops of
our communion in Africa. Eight were present at the Lambeth Conference.
One of them, Bishop Crowther, was captured when a boy ten years of age
on a slave ship, placed in a mission school, transferred to a high
school, then to the university, graduated with honors, and went back to
Africa as a Bishop. As I looked in the face of that black man and
thought of his wonderful history, I remembered another man from Africa
that carried the cross of my blessed Master up the hill to Calvary, and
that this aged servant of Christ was following in his blessed footsteps.
Another of these Bishops was one of the manliest men that I ever looked
upon; Bishop Smythies, the picture of manly beauty, honored by his
university, beloved by friends, a face gentle and loving as that of St.
John. When I thought of this man going on foot in the interior of
Africa, perhaps to die for Christ, I could not keep back the tears, and
I went to him and said, "My good brother, I cannot tell you how my heart
goes out to you in loving sympathy." He smiled and said, "Bishop, when
the Church in Jerusalem had more work than it knew how to do, the Holy
Ghost sent one of its ministers upon a long journey to convert one
African. Surely it is not much for the Christians of Christian England
to send a Christian Bishop to millions who never heard there is a
Savior."
And now I turn to the opposite quarter of the globe--Australasia, New
Zealand, and Polynesia. When I was a boy there was but one English
settlement, and that was known throughout the world as Botany Bay, the
abode of the most abandoned criminals of English civilization. There
are to-day twenty-one Bishops in those islands. I wish I could tell the
story inwrought in the lives of Selwyn, Patteson, Williams, and a host
of others, some of whom have laid down their lives for Christ.
To-day cannibalism is a thing of the past. Human sacrifices, thank God,
are to be found nowhere on the earth. There is not one of those islands
without its Christian church, and in some of them the last vestige of
heathenism has passed away. They have thousands of Christian men and
women under their native pastors. Surely this is no time to talk about
the failure of Christian missions.
Now I turn to Japan. Less than forty year ago one of our brave American
sailors, Commodore Perry, cast anchor on Sunday morning in the harbor of
Yeddo. He called his officers and crew together for public worship, and
they sang that old hymn of our fathers, "Old Hundred"; and the first
sound that this hermit nation heard from her younger sister of the West
was that grand old hymn.
Next year Japan will have a constitutional government. It has already
adopted the Christian calendar. There are more that a million of
children in their public schools. Many of these schools are under the
charge of Christian men and women, and it is only a question of a few
years when Japan will take her place beside other Christian nations.
This is more wonderful when we remember that until recently there was a
statute in Japan that, "if any Christian shall set his foot on the
Island of Japan, or if the Christian's God, Jesus, shall come, he shall
be beheaded."
I turn to China. I wonder that its doors are open to Christian missions
when I remember that Christian nations at the mouth of the cannon have
forced upon that people that deadly drug which drags body and soul to
death, that their names have been by-words and hissing in Christian
lands. The secret is that God sent to China a young Englishman whose
life was hid with Christ in God. Chinese Gordon saved the nation of
China, and his name will be a household word forever. Surely a people
where the poorest laborer can become the first prince of the realm if he
becomes the first scholar, and if his son is a vagabond sinks to the
place from which his father came, surely such a people have the elements
to receive the Gospel of Christ.
Time would fail me to tell the story of missions in North America; I
should begin at Hudson's Bay, where Bishop John Horden has lived
thirty-five years amid its solitudes and won every one of its Indian
tribes to Christianity. I should tell you of the Bishop of Athabasca,
whose home is within the Arctic circle, who could not attend the Lambeth
Conference because he could not go and return the same year. I should
tell of my young friend, the Bishop of Mackenzie River, when I knew that
he spent nine months each year travelling upon snowshoes and three months
in a birch-bark canoe; that the only way that he could carry to them the
Gospel was to follow them in the chase, hunt with them, fish with them,
lie down in their wigwams in his blanket and always have waiting upon
his lips the sweet story of the love of God, our Father. I told him I
wished he would give me his post-office address and I would send him
books and papers; he said: "Bishop, I am a thousand miles from a
post-office and only get one mail a year."
I should tell you of another, the Bishop of Rupertsland, Dr. Macrae, the
only Bishop in Christendom who has a university made up of a Roman
Catholic college, a Presbyterian college, and a college of the Church of
England; so large-hearted that almost by one consent the people of
Manitoba have made him the president of their entire educational system.
If I turn to our own land, it would be to tell you that one hundred
years ago the Church was a feeble folk, scattered along the Atlantic
coast and known as a people that were everywhere spoken against. Thank
God, to-day her voice is heard in the miner's camp, in the schoolhouse
of the border, in the wigwam of the Indians, and sturdy heralds are in
the fore-front of that mighty movement which is peopling this land with
its millions of souls. Marvellous as is the progress of Christian
missions and the work which has been done in this century, it has
largely been committed to the English-speaking race. In the providence
of God races of men have been selected by Him to do His work. Two
hundred years ago the English-speaking people of Europe were less than
many of the nations of the Latin races. Spain outnumbered England two
to one. To-day there are one hundred and fifty millions of
English-speaking people in the world, one-tenth of the entire human
family. When we think of the future, that by the close of another century
more than five hundred millions will be speaking one language, it leads
us to ask, on bended knees, why has this commission been committed to
this English-speaking race, and what are the responsibilities that rest
upon our branch of the Church of God? I reverently believe that it is
because on its civil side it recognizes as no other race that government
is a delegated trust from God, who alone has the right to govern. It
represents constitutional government, and it has done so since Bishop
Stephen Langton, at the head of the nobles of England, wrung the _Magna
Charta_ from King John, and henceforth recognized the sacredness of the
citizen, who has been clothed with an individuality unlike any being who
lives or will live in all the ages of eternity. On its religious side
it recognizes the two truths which underlie the possibility of the
reunion of Christendom--the validity of all Christian Baptism in the name
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that the condition of
fellowship in the Church of God is faith in the incarnate Son of God as
contained in the Old Catholic creeds. Surely we may hold up the olive
branch of God's peace over all strife and divisions among the disciples
of Christ, and say "Ye are brethren."
When we remember that in the providence of God the Greek tongue was
spoken throughout the civilized world to prepare a way for the coming of
His Son and the preaching of the blessed Gospel, we see in these facts
forerunning tokens of his preparation for the second coming of Jesus
Christ.
If I had time to-day, I would love to tell you the story that is
inwrought in the history of our noble Missionary Bishops; men who have
hazarded their lives for the Lord Jesus. I wish I could tell you of
their ventures of faith, foundations for Christian schools which they
have laid with prayers and watered with tears, and with a prophet's eye
looked forward to a future when the land will swarm with millions of
souls, that so by Christian nurture and Christian training the Church
may fulfil the Master's words, "Feed my lambs." I wish I could tell you
of the work, dear to every Bishop's heart, of the daughters of the
Cross; yes, and I would like to bring to this Council some of the
tempest-tossed and weary souls who have been led out of their darkness
to the rest and peace and gladness of Christian faith. I wish I could
bring here some from the northern forests and the prairies of the West,
the men of the trembling eye and the wandering foot, that they might
thank you for having led them out of their heritage of anguish and
sorrow into the light of the children of God.
I may not close without a word of tribute to those who have fallen
asleep. Since our last General Convention nine Bishops have crossed the
river and are waiting for us on the other shore. Unbidden tears come as
I remember the loving Elliot, our St. John; Welles, another holy
Herbert; Brown, with his Catholic heart that had room enough to take in
all the poor and the sorrowful of his diocese; Harris, every whit a
great leader in our Israel; Dunlop, the soldier on the outpost, often
debarred brotherly sympathy, who in loneliness and weariness bravely did
his work. Others who were patriarchs of the Church of God--Green, Lee,
Potter and Stevens--all men who were great leaders in the Church of God,
who bravely did their work, whose faces are upon every heart, and who
have entered into rest.
Since I entered the House of Bishops, fifty-three Bishops have laid down
their shepherd's staves and entered into rest.
A word, and I have done. Surely in such a day as this it is no time to
discuss shibboleths. Its is a time for brotherly sympathy and
great-hearted work. With such responsibilities around us there must be
no divisions among those who love the same Saviour and look for the same
heavenly home. I remember that at a critical period in our missionary
work the venerable Doctor Dyer said to me with tears in his eyes,
"Strife is an awful price to pay for the best results, but strife among
the kinsmen of Christ in the presence of those for whom He died, and
when wandering souls are going down to death, is almost an unpardonable
sin." May I not ask you to-day, dear brothers and sisters, what have we
done to help on in the great work which is to be done in the eventide of
the world? What lonely missionary have we remembered in prayer during
the past week? What wanderer have we tried with love to lead to the
Saviour? Have we given the cost of the trimmings of a dress? Have we
made any sacrifices for Him who gave Himself for us? May I not ask you
to-day here beside God's altar to consecrate all you have and are to His
service?
With some of us the eventide draws on. A little while, such a little
while, just time enough to do His work, and then the end shall come.
And when we reach that other home, next to seeing the Saviour, next to
having the old ties re-united, will be the comfort and the blessedness
of meeting some one whom we helped heavenward and home.
IV. _ADDRESS IN LAMBETH CHAPEL, AT THE FIRST SESSION OF THE LAMBETH
CONFERENCE, JULY 3, 1888_.