An old and faithful friend from Sag Harbor, N. Y., sends us thirty dollars to make a life member. At the same time he asks us to star the names of his two oldest children, who were among the first of the twenty whom he has thus added to our list. They have gone up higher. He concludes thus:
I was much interested in reading the article in December number, page 387, “Students Want to ‘Batch’—Who will Help?” I would like for my $30 to go to assist in building one of those $100 houses. Can’t you get some one to add the other $70, and put up one of those dwellings for those scholars who are so anxious to get an education to teach and to preach?
THE LORD’S WORK AND THE LORD’S COMING.
One of our friends, (Rev. T. S. Robie, North Carver, Mass.,) who was at our annual meeting at Taunton, remembering doubtless that the Prophetic Conference was in session during the same days in New York City, puts the two things together thus:
One comes from a meeting like that, through which glimpses are caught of opportunities for work, of openings by the Unseen Hand into spheres of service which stretch out into the future beyond the range of our human vision, with the overwhelming conviction that the Lord isn’t just at present to stop the wheels of this world. It is not like the Lord to give such problems to His people, which are pressing upon this Christian nation today with such power, and which demand time for their solution, and then to cut the Gordian knot by the sword of His “coming,” as if He had met with a tangled question which He himself could not untie. The red, blue and white and black marble, which Divine Providence has brought into this land, tell of a building of God grander than any Persian palace, the foundations of which seem to be just being laid, rather than the completion thereof to be nigh at hand. The vastness of the preparation points to the magnificence of the Lord’s dominion in the hearts and over the lives of men.
The Book of God’s Providence is as much inspired as the Bible itself. And whoever studies the former as prayerfully as the latter, must labor hard to stifle the feeling that the clock of earth, instead of getting ready to stop, is being wound up to keep good time for a thousand years, as a prelude to that perfect righteousness which shall dwell forever on the new earth and beneath the new heavens.
THE LONDON UNION MISSIONARY CONFERENCE.
The London Union Missionary Conference was held in November. The Congregational churches of America were represented by Dr. Clark of the American Board, and Dr. O. H. White of the Freedmen’s Aid Society, of London, who also represented the American Missionary Association, to which the F. A. Society is auxiliary. The last gathering of the kind in England was in 1860, at which one hundred and twenty-six delegates assembled. The sessions were mainly private, the societies represented were chiefly British, and plans were discussed rather than achievements reported. This later meeting was somewhat different in its character. Six hundred delegates were in attendance from various lands and denominations of Christians. It was not so much a conference on methods as a comparison of results. The sessions of the week were apportioned to the work in the various lands. A great mass of information was collected, which will doubtless be more impressive and complete in the volume of proceedings to be published, than it could have been in the hearing.