The Superintending Providence of God 9 revived the apostolic church. Three principles underlay the whole life of the United Brethren: Each disciple is> first, to find his work in witness for God; second, his home where the widest door opens and the greatest need calls; and third, his cross in SELF-DENIAL for Christ. As Count Zinzendorf said: “The whole earth is the Lord’s; men’s souls are all H is ; I am debtor to all.” A SYMPHONY OF PRAISE The Moravians providentially molded John Wesley; and the Holy Club of Lincoln College, Oxford, touched by this influence, took on a distinctively missionary character. Their motto had been, “Holiness to the Lord;” but holiness became wedded to service, and evangelism became the watchword of the Methodists. Just then, in America, and by a strange coincidence, Jonathan Edwards was unconsciously joining John Wesley in preparing the way for modern missions. In 1747, exactly 300 years after the United Brethren organized as followers of Huss, at Lititz in Bohemia, Edwards sent forth his bugle-blast from Northampton, New England, calling God’s people to a visible union of prayer for a speedy and world- wide effusion of the Spirit. That bugle-blast found echo in Northampton in old England, and William Carey resolved to organize mission effort—with what results we all know. And, just as the French Revolution let hell loose, a new missionary society in Britain was leading the awakened Church to assault hell at its very gates. Sound it out and let the whole earth hear: Modern missions came of a symphony o f prayer; and at the most unlikely hour of modern history, God’s intercessors in England, Scotland, Saxony, and America repaired the broken altar of supplication, and called down the heavenly fire. That was God’s way of preparation. The “monthly concert” made that prayer-spirit widespread- ing and permanent. The humble Baptists, in widow Wallis’s parlor at Kettering, made their covenant of missions; and regi-
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