The Superintending Providence of God 329 is that scaittereth and yet increaseth, and there is that with- holdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty;” and Christ’s paradox is illustrated: “The life that is saved is lost, and the life that is lost is saved.” Bishop Phillips Brooks compared the church that apologizes for doing nothing to spread the good news on the ground of its poverty and feeble ness, to the parricide who, arraigned in court for his father’s murder, pleads for mercy on account of his orphanhood! The hundred years have demonstrated that “religion is a com modity of which the more we export the more we have re maining.”* The logic of events proves that the surest way to keep the church pure in faith and life, is to push missions with intelligence and holy zeal. MISSIONARY CHARACTERS What a distinct seal of God upon mission work is seen in the high ideals of character found in the missionaries them selves! If the workman leaves his impress on his work, it is no less true that the work leaves its mark on the workman. Even those who assail missions, applaud the missionaries; they may doubt the policy of sending the best men and women abroad to die by fever or violence, or waste their sweetness on the desert air; but even they do not doubt that the type of character, developed by mission work, is the highest known to humanity. In this field have ripened into beauty and fra grance the fairest flowers and fruits of Christian l ife ; and il lustrated, as nowhere else, unselfish devotion to Christ, un swerving loyalty to the Word, and unsparing sacrifice for men. Was it not Theodore Parker who said, that it was no waste to have spent all the money missions had cost, if they gave us one Judson? On the mission field are to be found, if any where, the true succession o f the apostles, the new accession *Mr. Crowninshield objected in the Senate of Massachusetts to the incorporation of the A. B. C. F. M. that it was designed to “export re ligion, whereas there was none to spare from among ourselves.” This is Mr. White’s reply.
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