Had these marveling disciples had their way, the sect of the Christians would have been added to the sects of the Herodians and the Sadducees, and been buried in the same grave centuries ago.  The voice that talked with this Samaritan woman is heard round the globe now, and every century only adds greater authority to its divine utterance; and it is heard because it spoke with this despised Samaritan woman.  Our Lord did not ignore this race prejudice; he rebuked it.  And so these timid disciples, realizing only the temporary danger that threatened, marveled that he talked with this woman.  God pity them!  But how human they were.  So to-day, in India, the missionaries of the cross, true to their Lord’s great example, talk with pariah and Brahmin, and welcome them both to equal privileges in the kingdom of his grace—­and men marvel.  And so in Alabama and South Carolina, the missionaries of the cross, true to the same divine example, talk with black and with white, and welcome them both to the same privileges in this kingdom—­and even some timid disciples marvel.  But the principles of this divine kingdom do not change; the Lord of that kingdom, who talked with the sinful, weary, despised Samaritan woman, would, if here in bodily presence now, talk with the sinful, weary, despised black woman, no matter how much his worldly-wise disciples might marvel.  His kingdom is built upon this eternal truth of human brotherhood, and it will endure because it is.  Nothing short of this is of his kingdom, but will crumble to dust.

The Congregationalist

Forty-Second Annual Report Of The Executive Committee,

FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1888.

General Survey.

The field of missions is the world which lieth in darkness.  We have to do with that part of it for which we are doubly responsible.  It is in darkness and it is our own.

We look upon our own land, with its States equal in extent and capacity to foreign kingdoms.  When we know that they hold the certainty of a future influence of which their past power has been but a prophecy, our fears press hard upon our hopes.

Nor are our work and our fears an intrusion.  When the pestilence which walks in darkness brings the destruction which wastes at noonday, it is our call to feel deeply the distresses of those who are stricken.  But plagues consuming human lives are less grevious than those which abide, and which, walking in the intellectual and moral darkness of a people, waste the lives of men and the hopes of souls.  This is our call.

Remember that it is our own country where, in twelve great States, like empires, forty per cent. of the population cannot read, where, to-day, three-fourths of the illiteracy of the whole nation exists; where the darkness is increasing more rapidly than it is being lighted up; where much which passes for religion even among those who preach it, is a travesty upon Christianity, openly divorced from relationship with truth, purity, integrity and intelligence.