THE BAPTIST MISSI0NARY MAGAZINE. Vol. LXXIII.—JU LY, 1 8 9 3 . - N o . 7 . SEVENTY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION. D enver, Col., May 26, 1893. T h e sevent3r-ninth annual meeting of the American Baptist Missionary Union was lulled to order at ten o’clock a . m., in the First Baptist £hurch, by President Augustus *H. Strong. D. D., LL.. D., of New York. The congregation sang “ Jesus shall reign where’er the sun.” I The Scriptures, Psalm 2 and Revelation, chap. 5, were read by Rev. Robert jMcDonald of Massachusetts, and prayer was offered by Rev. A . K. Parker, D. D., of Illinois. President Strong then addressed the Union : — Fathers and Brethren : I count it a great and undeserved honor that I am called to preside over the meetings of the American Baptist Missionary Union. My predecessors in the chair have been men greatly revered and beloved, and I shrink from the attempt to follow them. Two things, however, give me encouragement. The first is that in becoming your President I enter into the heritage of many prayers, past and present, for the officers and servants of the Union. The second is that I know' I may rely upon your kind and cordial co-operation. Both the place and the time in which we meet should give us stimulus and hope. The star of Christ’s empire has been taking its way westward, and in this meeting the Missionary Union holds its first session in the Mountain States. Herein it asserts its claim to the boundless conti­ nent, and makes tributary to missions the invention, the commerce, the resources, of these rising commonwealths. Never before have we met so near to the setting sun. It is a proof that Bap­ tists, new and old, east and west, recognize'theic oneness in Christ, and their common obligation to make our whole land a missionary to the whole world. What a time is this ! We stand at the end of the first century of Baptist missions. One hundred years ago we were a feeble folk both at home and abroad. But God put into the heart °f William Carey the impulse to carry the gospel to the heathen, and missions have been our salvation. “ There is that scattereth and yet increaseth.” While we have accomplished more in the foreign field than any other American evangelical denomination, our growth at home has also been more rapid than that of any other. We enter upon our second century -with numbers and wealth marvellously increased. We have material resources of which the fathers never ^earned. Have we the liberality and the faith to use these resources aright? This has been the test question of the last twelve-month. Until this year, in spite of the fact that God had given us twice as many converts as any other society could show, more than one other society could point to contributions twice as great as ours. In our centennial year we have sought to rectify this Seventy-Ninth Annual Meeting. ' great deficiency. Our million-dollar enterprise was simply our effort to make our gifts to God correspond more nearly to God’s gifts to us. It is a wonder that we have succeeded so well; how well, the Chairman of our Centennial Committee will inform you. Enough for me to say that we have, with God’s help, given more than we ever gave before; we have added ninety-one per cent to the contributions of the preceding year; we have paid our heavy debt; we have secured funds for a considerable enlargement of our work. We have proof that God is with us. We are encouraged to believe that temporal prosperity will not be permitted to ruin us, and to trust that God will give us a liberal heart so that our great gains may be made a means of pro­ moting the progress of his kingdom. The alternations of hope and fear through which many of us have passed during the last few months have suggested to me the subject to which I would lead your thoughts in this opening address. I have felt that we must build our hopes on something more solid than money, and more permanent than popular excitement. Financial panic may sweep away our wealth; tran­ sient bursts of enthusiasm may be succeeded by comparative apathy. The grounds of our hope are not in man, but in God. I wish to point you this morning to one of these permanent grounds of hope, and I state as the theme of my remarks : The Purpose of God to give the World to Christ is the great Encouragement to* Missions. There is such a thing as the plan of God. Our restless age, with its pushing, its hurry, it^ change, has had but little time or inclination to think of the, divine decrees. In days of perse­ cution and defeat men think much of God ; in days of success and triumph they think much of themselves. But occasionally, in an interval of the world’s turmoil, we hear the still, small voice; we stop in the midst of the rush, and rejoice that there is something fixed; that behind the phenomenal there is the noumenal; that underneath the temporal there is the eternal. However men may come and go, God is forever and ever the same. Whatever men may imagine or plan, there are decrees of God, as eternal and unchangeable as himself. The universe is the unfolding of God’s plan; unless the hungriest creature and the minutest event are embraced in that plan, the universe is no longer a universe — an ordered whole — but a dreary, haphazard conglomera­ tion ; unless there is “ One God who ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event Toward which the whole crea'tion moves,” th§ progress of the world is as dreadful as the driving on into midnight darkness of an express train, without headlight or engineer, and sure to plunge sooner or later into the abyss. But if there be a great divine purpose, and if God works all things according to the counsel of his own will, we have an anchor to the soul sure and steadfast, that entereth into that within the vail. No storm can wreck our peace, since our faith holds to the immovable rock of God’s wisdom and truth and love. All this would be true, even if we did not know what that purpose was. Job could trust God though he could not interpret him. But we are better off than Job : we have an Interpreter of the divine counsels. In the second Psalm there is One who says: “ I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of m e , and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” , There is One who perfectly knows God’s purpose and whose mission it is to declare it. This is the meaning of that fifth chapter of the Revelation in which, as in the second Psalm, heaven is opened to our view. In the blaze of the divine Majesty and in the right hand of God himself there is a book sealed with seven seals. It is the book of God’s decrees. There is weeping because no man or angel can loose the seals or open the book. But at last One who sits on the right hand of God rises from his place of equality with God, takes the book fro® God’s own hand, and makes known the mystery of God. In Christ, then, we have the revelation Address by the President. 183 of the divine purpose. The omniscient Saviour, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lamb that was slain, he in whom gentleness and glory, sacrifice and power meet, he alone can read or declare the decrees of God. Let us weep not, for Christ hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof. To declare the divine decree is not simply to proclaim it, — it is to execute it also. In the second Psalm the Son is bidden not only to ask for power, but to exercise power. The chapters that follow that fifth chapter of the book of Revelation only describe Christ’s opening of one seal after another, and his translation of God’s decrees into the actualities of history. He who is omniscient to read every secret word of the book of God’s decrees, is also omnipresent and omnipotent to turn that word into living reality and to fulfil every letter of it. All the ongoings of the physical, mental, and moral universe, therefore, are but Christ’s fulfilments of the efficient or of the permissive decree of God. I am bound to see Christ in nature, executing the divine will and revealing the divine wisdom in the unfailing regularity of physical law. Doubt that there is design in nature? Why, nature is nothing but design! Seas and stars, the firmament and the floods, are nothing but a thin veil that hides the all-working Christ, in whom all things consist, and the whole universe holds together. Ought I, indeed, to say that these things hide him? Are they not the very mind and thought of Christ made visible to me, just as the human face or the human words reveal the thinking, feeling soul within ? “ For lo ! creation’s self is one great choir, And what is nature’s order but the rhyme Whereto the worlds keep time, And all things move with all things from their prime.” Yes, William Watson’s verse has in it more of truth than he himself intended; for nature, though only a partial revelation, is yet a real revelation of Christ, and of the thought and wisdom and will of God in him.