264 MOKEY AND THE KINGDOM. 



means the world Christianized." And, "If America 

 fail, " says Professor Park, " the icorld will fail." 

 During this crisis, Christian work is unspeakably more 

 important in the United States than anywhere else in the 

 world. "The nations whose conversion is the most 

 pressing necessity of the world to-day," says Professor 

 Phelps, "are the Occidental nations. Those whose 

 speedy conversion is most vital to the conversion of the 

 rest are the nations of the Occident. The pioneer stock 

 of mind must be the Occidental stock. The pioneer races 

 must be the Western races. And of all the Western 

 races, who that can read skillfully the providence of God, 

 or can read it at all, can hesitate in affirming that the signs 

 of divine decree point to this land of ours as the one 

 which is fast gathering to itself the races which must 

 take the lead in the final conflicts of Christianity for 

 possession of the world ? Ours is the elect nation for the 

 age to come. We are the chosen people. We cannot 

 atford to wait. The plans of God Avill not wait. Those 

 plans seem to have brought us to one of the closing stages 

 in the Avorld's career, in which we can no longer drift 

 with safety to our destiny. We are shut up to a perilous 

 alternative. Immeasurable opportunities surround and 

 overshadow us. Such, as I read it, is the central fact in 

 the philosophy of American Home Missions."^ 



What a consummate blunder to live selfishly in such a 

 generation ! What food for everlasting reflection and 

 regret in a life lived narrowly amid such infinitely wide 

 opportunities ! 



Says a New York daily paper : "A gentleman died at 

 his residence in one of our up-town fashionable streets, 

 leaving eleven millions of dollars. He w^as a member of 

 the Presbyterian church, in excellent standing, a good 

 husband and father, and a thrifty citizen. On his death- 

 bed he suffered with great agony of mind and gave 

 continual expression to his remorse for what his con- 



Frora letter read at the Home Missionary Anniversary in Chicago, 

 June 9th, 1881. 



