AT HOME AND ABROAD. PHILADELPHIA, JANUARY, 1888. EDITORIAL. A happy man writes from Knoxville, Tenn., to tell us about the recent birth into the Presbyterian family of the healthy Fourth Presbyterian Church in that thriving city. This church was regularly organized in the month of April, 1886, by the authority of the Presbytery of Union (happy-omened name!), with 18 members. Generously aided by Knoxville churches and citizens, and bravely helping themselves, the people had their house of worship so far advanced as to hold their first service in it November 7, 1886. Rev. E. A. Elmore was engaged as stated supply for one year. Within one year, viz., on November 6, 1887, they dedicated their church free of debt, with "a fund of $750 as a nucleus for a parsonage fund." The Ladies' Working Society also has $200 on A travelling business man, whose home is in the state of New York, writes us from Honesdale, Pa., as follows: I hand toward purchasing an organ. They have paid for church and grounds $4156.16; for pastor's salary and general expenses, $1200. The Presbytery of Union recommended them to the Board of Home Missions, and the Board offered them aid. "But," writes our correspondent, "we felt that we ought to help ourselves and trust the Lord for the balance. Thus we did not have to call on the Board, but have been able to contribute to all the boards during the past year." THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD welcomes the little new sister and wishes her a happy new year. May many just such vigorous and earnest churches be added to our number in this year of our Lord 1888. such a grand opportunity to answer the prayer they have been offering since they were taught it at their mother's knee, "Thy kingdom come." Never before has so wide a field been open, and never before were so many young men offering to go and occupy. Now is our opportunity. May every Christian feel it to be so, and do more this year than ever before for missions, even at some self-denial. Wife and I have resolved to do so, and I am trying to stimulate others, as I have opportunity, to do the same. I hope this spirit may be felt all along the line, and so vigorously acted upon that more than two millions will flow into the I am on the road eight months in the year, and am providentially here to-day. As an humble layman, I am trying to stimulate God's people, as I meet them in their churches, to greater interest in missions. am trying to persuade all I can to subscribe for THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD, and peruse it from beginning to end, and thus acquaint themselves with the wants and spiritual condition of the world, and to take a deeper interest in its redemption. Never before has God given to his people treasury this year. 1 THE PRESENT STAGE OF OUR MISSION WORK. Great enterprises, whether secular or sacred, which are to be carried on by the combined efforts of large numbers of people, are apt to be marked by quite distinguishable stages of progress. In all these stages no doubt the same great forces are pressing on the movement, and the specific influences characteristic of each are more or less blended in all; yet there may be enough to distinguish and characterize each epoch. We are apt to have, first, A PERIOD OF THOUGHTFUL CONSIDERATION. The facts which call for the movement, and the principles whereby those facts are. rationally expounded, are to be ascertained. and studied. These facts are to be communicated to the people; these principles are to be expounded and discussed; many run to and fro to discourse to the people; the public press is enlisted; all means of information are subsidized, to the end that knowledge may pervade and penetrate the popular mind, and that the popular mind may be wakened to attention and consideration. Next comes a period which may, with sufficient accuracy, be called A PERIOD OF FEELING. It is then swiftly evident that the popular mind is roused; that the popular heart is fired. Intense emotion is everywhere exhibited; the public prints head their columns with startling phrases; popular orators are ardent and vehement in their discourses; popular assemblies are like tumultuous waters; and perhaps immense crowds thronging public squares and parks, swaying and surging in awful passion, visibly manifest" the uprising of a great people" to do the great work which God foreordained for that generation. If this is a reality-if it is a real uprising of a great people to do a great work, and not a mere superficial and transient excite ment-the awful heat will generate a steady and mighty force; the tumultuous passion will settle soon into an even and determined movement. The roar and darkness of the tempest pass away, and we look upon a silent, deep, irresistible river. Then comes A PERIOD OF CALCULATION. At the beginning of such a period we feel a chill, and fear that the great movement is stopping, the great motive force dying away. It is an illusion. The calmness of even, though accelerated, motion is mistaken for a tendency to cessation. When the war for our national union had progressed beyond the first year of passionate and uncalculating effort; when the threemonths armies had expended their early enthusiasm; when many defeats had pained us, and many sanguine expectations had been disappointed,-the nation then settled into a movement far less passionate, far more steady, and which at length showed itself far more effective. The great feature of that new phase in the movement was calculation-a sitting quietly down everywhere with slates and pencils, with census-tables and tax-rolls and poll-lists, calmly and accurately to reckon the proportion of money and men which it belonged to each state to furnish each county, each township, each precinct, each household! Then each volunteer made up his mind very deliberately to enlist. Then the people of each neighborhood recognized their fair proportion of sacrifice, and realized, just as distinctly, that this should be the common sacrifice of the whole neighborhood, not the work of a few more quick and more ardent than their fellows. Then came the offer of bounties; the systematic provision for the support of families whose fathers went to the war; the adoption into neighboring households of children suddenly orphaned the prepara tion of homes for orphans when they became more numerous; and finally, the exact and exacting draft, sternly taking the successive quotas of men from their business and their homes-not dragging them away as reluctant conscripts, but coming to determine by the lot, the disposing whereof is of the Lord, which of the citizens they were who should go out to that stern warfare. Calm determination, superseding sudden and vehement impulse, and subjecting itself to patient, arithmetical calculation, successfully accomplished the war. In our church's work of missions, both foreign and domestic, the periods of consideration and feeling are past, and we have fairly entered upon the period of calculation. The facts and principles involved in the work have been fully ascertained; the heart of the church has been deeply moved; strenuous efforts have been made; and after divers experiments, the methods and agencies have been adjusted. Never did any organization stand better prepared and equipped for its work than this church now does. Naturally enough the fervor of early enthusiasm seems to have abated. The solemn purpose of the church to obey her Lord, and by his grace to fulfill her mission, has deepened. deepened. Be not alarmed by the diminished noise of her movement, nor by the diminished heat. It is not stopping; it is running more smoothly and with less friction. We are sitting down, with our slates and pencils, our rolls and maps; each section, each synod, each presbytery, is asking, and is asked, what is its fair proportion of the work, and how it should be distributed, to the end that it may be most effectually done. We are going to do it. OUR MILLIONS FOR MISSIONS. The General Assembly has asked its people to contribute this year one million dollars for foreign missions, and more than one million for home missions, viz.: to the Board of Home Missions, $800,000; to the Board of Missions for Freedmen, $150,000; to the Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, $100,000, applicable only to missionary work. These are purely missionary enterprises; their work is in every proper sense missionary work. Closely and vitally associated with these is the work of the church through its Board of Church Erection and Ministerial Relief, for each of which it asks for $150,000, and its boards of Education, and Aid to Colleges and Academies, for which it names no specific sum. It is not right to treat either of these as less essential than those branches of the Sabbath-schools? And then there are tens of thousands reverently attending our worship, and giving something to these funds, who are neither communicants nor members of Sabbath-schools. A million Presbyterian people-men, women and children-are asked to give $2,500,000 to carry on the work-principally a strictly missionary work-conducted for our church by its eight boards. That is $2.50 for each person. That would be less than five cents a week for each person. There may be some who ought not to give so much. There may be four or five children in a Sabbath-school, from one family, the father of which does not earn one dollar for every day in the year, although he works hard. If each of his children gives one cent on each Sabbath, it is probably more than all the rich men in that church give, as the Lord reckons. But how many of us are there who ought not to give five cents a week? How many who can give five dollars a week? How many who can and will give ten dollars or more? How many who must give $100 or more each week to be equal to those little children who give one cent, or to their hard-working father or mother? Let us answer these questions to him who sat over against the treasury (Mark 12: 41). EAST AND WEST. There should be only friendly and generous emulation between different sections of our country and different parts of our church. It is well for them to be acquainted with each other. There is some tendency in the older portions to think of the newer chiefly as recipients. We have long been aware that there is no less generous giving for church work and church purposes in the West than in the East. An elder residing in Nebraska sends us the following comparison between synods east of the Mississippi and those west of it: Some time since a circular was sent to western churches by the president and secretary of the Board of Home Missions, urging them to greater liberality in the direction of self-support. The following figures, in this connection, will be of interest, showing the contributions for the last fiscal year, per member, for congregational expenses, for the General Assembly fund and for the boards, as reported in the minutes of the last General Assembly: GOD AND CESAR. Our Lord's saying, "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's," being rightly interpreted for us, means, "Render unto President and Congress, to governor and legislature, and to all courts and magistrates, all that is due to them according to the constitution and laws." Our Lord set a limit to the civil power, and thus guarded religious liberty. The things of Cæsar and the things of God are to be distinguished from each other, but they cannot be separated from each other. To be a good citizen and to be a good Christian are two quite distinct things, but they cannot be two separate things. A good Christian cannot knowingly neglect his duty to his country; a citizen cannot do his best for his country if he disregards his religious obligations. He who disregards the things that are Casar's therein disobeys God. He who is regardless of the things which are God's is not helping to secure to his country the favor of God. All duties of citizenship are really religious duties. The Christian can no more exclude religion from his politics than from the training of his family. He should adopt his political opinions as conscientiously as his religious opinions. He should defend the former with as scrupulous truthfulness as the latter. He should go to the polls and to the primary meeting with as serious reference to the will of God as to the prayermeeting. He should choose his party as conscientiously as he chooses his church, and should have no connection with any party unless he honestly thinks that he can thus best promote whatever is true and pure and right. He may no more allow his party than his church to control his conscience or constrain him to violate his principles. The obligation to "render unto God the things which are God's" is as binding upon Caesar as upon his lowliest subject. Rulers have personally the same religious duties and needs as if they were not rulers; and there are obligations to God resting upon rulers as such, over and above those which rest upon them in common with other men. He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." This obligation rests upon every ruler, no matter in what way he has acquired his power-whether by birth, by conquest or by the choice of the people. It follows irresistibly that a free people ought always to elect rulers who are "just, fearing God." Every Christian citizen ought to give his vote and use his political influence as wisely as he can to this end. The government has no right to pursue a policy which prevents its subjects from rendering unto God the things that are God's. So far as worship and the profession of religious belief are concerned, this is well settled in our country. The people are unanimous and the national constitution is explicit in denying to our rulers the right either to require or to forbid the adoption of any creed or the practice of any religious rites whatsoever. But it would be a false view of religion to regard it as consisting only in creed and worship. If religion is not a spiritual power pervading practical life, it is worthless. The government has no right either to forbid or to command us to pray or to keep the Sabbath religiously; but it ought to protect us all in our right to pray and to keep the Sabbath holy. It does repress and forbid noisy demonstrations and the public prosecution of trades and business, which would destroy the quietness that is necessary for religious Sabbath-keeping. Our government has always done this, at least so far as to commit it to the principle, yet it does not consistently carry out this principle. The principle requires cessation from labor in |