If it were not worth while to press our missionary effort among the Chinese right here in America, it would be absurd to talk of missionary effort among the Chinese in China.  The importance of this work cannot be measured by its bulk.  Nor is it to be estimated by any census of countable immediate results.  It is a kind of work, which, according as it is done, or left undone; or as it is done with slack and nerveless hand or with vim and vigor, will test the very character of our churches; will touch the conscience and well-being of the nation; and will, without a doubt, have vital and decisive connection with the future of that most populous empire on the globe.

There is China, with its four hundred million souls, subject to a single sovereign—­a heathen empire.  Here is America, Christian America; the foremost republic among the nations, and soon to be the leading power among the Governments of the earth.  It holds already the position of moral leadership in the far East.  What shall be done with this leadership?  Right here in our midst are some two hundred thousand representatives of that empire, every one of whom with hardly an exception hopes some time to return to his native Orient.  What will the Christianity of America do for them?

There is an unmistakable providence of God in the presence, in the country, at such a time as this, of so many representatives of the great empire.  Such providences are to be reverently heeded.  They are as the banners of the Almighty, meant to lead forth His loyal people to the gracious conquest of the world.  As for ourselves, what are we disposed to do about it?

This conquest of the world for Christ is not to be achieved by hap-hazard dashes.  There is need of transcendent wisdom in the strategic methods of the campaign.  We have not wisdom enough for this except as we have the wisdom to note which way the manifest hand of God is pointing for us.  Then is the time for assurance, for obedience, and for enthusiasm in the fullest meaning of the term.

A few thousand Chinamen are here.  The Chinese Empire is open to us—­and more too!  To doubt the practicability of the Christianization of the Chinese would be treason to the Gospel of Christ; would be blindness to the facts of Christian history, as well as to the foreshadowings of prophecy.

The success already in this department of the work of the American Missionary Association has been signal enough to amount to a demonstration.  If suitably reinforced and pushed it might presently be made vastly greater than it has as yet been.

It is the glory of this Society to do precisely this kind of work.  All its history and traditions, all the confidences and affection of the people in our churches toward it, favor the most resolute pushing forward of what has been undertaken.