Let Scripture admonitions, therefore, be cheerfully accepted. Let a difference be made, as the Bible enjoins, between the speaking of woman and that of man. If the head-covering, or the long hair, or the unprominent posture, or absence of gesticulation, or abstinence from discussion and formal preaching, or quickness to pause and "hold the peace" and yield the floor,if these or the like be the fitting tokens of womanly subordination according to Paul, then let them be conceded in child-like docility. But beyond this, there is a wide and blessed sphere for woman's voice in the church. The gospel view of this subject is thus seen to be a plastic. one, adaptable to the changing times. Under the apostle's teaching, a full supply of men fully occupying the time, may keep the women out of sight; as has been the case in older, larger churches. But all unoccupied time ought to be improved by women, or "the very stones may cry out." Scripture left this subject in such shape, that harsher times might keep less cultivated woman in the shade, as they have done; while still the advanced culture of these "last days" should have free scope, to receive developed woman's aid in the church, just so fast and so far as developed man himself is ready to accept it as not exhibiting insubordination. The Scripture principle does indeed make women absolutely "keep silence," where the men insist upon this as the only sufficient token of their subjection. But whenever the men give express invitation to utterance, this certainly relieves the women from all risk or hindrance in speaking properly in their presence. When the men of a church themselves come forward, as in many little mission churches, and ask, and even entreat the women to aid them in their worship, then surely they cannot accuse themselves of the insubordination here condemned, if they kindly and helpfully do their part. Nay, they are more in danger of incurring apostolic malediction, when, in such cirstances of requested aid, they fail to "come up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." ARTICLE VII.—ANDERSON'S HISTORIES OF FOREIGN MISSIONS. History of the Missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. By RUFUS ANDERSON, D.D., lately Foreign Secretary of the Board. The India Mission, 1 vol. The Sandwich Islands' Mission, 1 vol. THIS series of volumes is the admirable record of some of the best fruits of the ripest modern Christianity. The Board of Missions which it represents, stands confessedly in the forefront of missionary organizations, as one of the oldest, wisest, most catholic, most enterprising, and most efficient of them all. It originally combined the efforts of three great Christian communions, and furnished the earliest missionaries of a fourth. Its counsels have been conducted, on the whole, with singular harmony among its managers at home, and with its agents abroad. Its plans have been laid, in the main, with a statesmanlike wisdom, and pushed with an apostolic faith. Its financial credit, though hanging upon the individual wills of myriads of men, has been kept unimpaired. The providence and grace of God have averted many and great dangers. Its founders and active patrons have comprised a vast number of the choicest spirits of this nation. The consecrated business talent of Boston has managed its funds. The short roll of its deceased secretaries contains such honored names as Worcester, Evarts, Cornelius, Wisner, Armstrong, and Green. The long list of preachers who have uttered its annual messages of hope and cheer, begins with Dwight and proceeds with such as Appleton, Spring, Day, Nott, Griffin, Lyman Beecher, Rice, Alexander, and the like. Among its missionaries are registered a body of men whose practical wisdom, zeal, and power, show them to be no mean successors of the early evangelists. Where, in the history of the Church, are there to be found groups of nobler men than Newell, Hall, Meigs, Poor, Scudder, and Ballantine, in India; Bingham, Thurston, Richards, in Hawaii; Grant, Perkins, Stocking, Stoddard, Rhea, in Persia; Parsons, Fisk, and Eli Smith, in Syria; Dwight, Goodell, and Azariah Smith, in Turkey,-to say nothing of the living? What finer female characters than Mrs. Newell, Mrs. Winslow, Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith, Miss Fiske, and the great company of accomplished ladies that have diffused the Christian graces in benighted lands? What more remarkable scenes of awakening than those which have attended these missionary labors? What more marvelous exhibitions of the transforming power of the gospel of Christ? The history of this Board exhibits every form of Christian pioneering and activity, from the task of committing twenty languages to writing up to the founding of colleges and theological schools; from the first utterance of the Saviour's name to naked savages, up to the ingathering of those savages by tens of thousands, clothed and cleansed, into the Church of Christ; from the first union of two or three in the name of Christ, up to the marshalling of mission churches themselves for the missionary work. Nearly every conceivable form of Christian experience, almost every variety of gift and grace, and every kind of trial, heroism, and deliverance, stands here recorded. This record of God's doings is fortunate in its authorship. Few narratives of so broad a series of events have ever been written by one so amply fitted for the office. It would be difficult to specify a qualification in which the venerable author is lacking. He has from the beginning watched and accompanied the work he narrates, in all its aspects, from within and without. He was present when the first band of missionaries was ordained at Bradford by Woods, Griffin, Spring, Morse, and Worcester. A few years later he entered the service of the Board, was connected more than forty years with its foreign correspondence, took every missionary by the hand as he went to his destination, sat in the deliberations of the Prudential Committee, attended all the annual meetings at home, and made four official visits of investigation to the missions in India, the Sandwich Islands, and the countries on the Mediterranean. And now he has had access to all the sources of information whether in print or in manuscript. It would not be easy to mention a historian of greater opportunities. And would it not be equally difficult to mention one of more trustworthy qualities? The breadth of view, calmness of judgment, and sagacity of discernment that constitute a statesman and a leader, are joined to a conspicuous fairness of spirit, and to a distinctness of statement cultivated by long intercourse with clear-headed men, and by the constant necessities of careful and terse communication. Dr. Anderson never writes a hazy or an ambitious sentence, never warps fact for an effect, nor makes a statement that betrays a pique or a prejudice. He freely mentions the mistakes of the Board or its missions, and the short-comings of the converts. If he exposes the oppositions of enemies, it is done without bitterness. He frankly utters his own judgment, and at times pleasantly mingles with the narrative his own relations to the facts or the persons. And while disavowing the intention to write a philosophy of missions, he yet from time to time indicates the relations and significance of the facts in compressed statements of much interest and value. Thus his chapter on "The Opening of India," explains the state and progress of British sentiment more clearly and compactly than it can be found elsewhere. While these volumes may fail to attract the class of readers who are drawn only by "fine writing" and scenic effects, they will possess the highest value for those intelligent Christians who can be interested in a thoroughly trustworthy narrative, written in transparent English, of some of the most remarkable events in the modern history of Christ's kingdom. Such persons will give them a prominent place among the standard works of a Christian library. The chief regret they will feel, will be that the limits necessarily observed by the author exclude such an amount of the thrilling incidents and striking personal details that mark almost every stage of its history. Perhaps, however, they will be induced to seek these things in missionary biographies and correspondence. The missionary magazines have been full of them. Many will wish individually that for this purpose the size of these volumes had been doubled, while yet they recognize the wisdom of the restriction. Parts of this series have received suitable consideration as they appeared. But there are aspects of the subject, and those among the most striking, which are fully recognized only upon a survey of the completed whole. Here are lessons to be read and pondered by every young minister of the gospel, lessons most fruitful to the mind and heart. To enumerate them all, much more to set them adequately forth, would be beyond the province of a review. We can only suggest some of the more obvious. These histories present a most impressive and cheering illustration of the certain success of the gospel. They narrate, indeed, but part of the work of one Missionary Board. Yet. covering so wide a range of time, space, character, and circumstance, they enable us to measure the power and drift of the movement. We get away from the windings and eddies of the stream and out of the thickets that hide its course, and are able, as from an eminence, to trace its clear unmistakable flow toward the ocean. And how sure, and often how signal, has been the progress. The Divine Saviour has invariably proved to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. There has nowhere been a failure. Sometimes there has been long waiting. Hall toiled twelve years in India, and died, having scarcely seen a hopeful convert. Judson had labored long with little fruit when he declared the prospect to be "bright as the promises of God." And in due time, everywhere the harvest or the first fruits have come. The divine message has laid hold on the low, sensual Hawaian, the tameless Indian, the polygamous Zulu, the earthy Chinese, the Druze wrapped in hypocrisy, the keen, formalist Armenian, the demoralized Nestorian, the cultivated Japanese, the Brahmin and the Pariah at the top and the bottom of Hindoo society, and it has begun its work on the fierce and bigoted Mohammedan. No race, class, or character, has proved impervious to its power. And if it be true, as Dr. N. G. Clark has strikingly remarked, that the evangelical church-members of America are now far more numerous than those of all Christendom a century ago, it is perhaps also true that the hopeful converts now in the mission fields are already more than twice as many as all the evangelical churchmembers of America at that time. |