their philosophy, their religion, and their civilization!  How much more difficult is our encounter with Confucianism, which claims to have laid the foundations of the most stable structure of social and political institutions that the world has ever known, and which to-day, after twenty-five centuries of trial, appeals to the intellectual pride of all intelligent classes in a great empire of four hundred millions!  And finally, how different is our task with Buddhism, so mystical and abstruse, so lofty in many of its precepts, and yet so cold and thin, so flexible and easily adapted, and therefore so varied and many sided!  The religious systems with which we are now confronted find their counterparts only in the heathenism with which the early Church had to deal many centuries ago; and for this reason the history of those early struggles is full of practical instruction for us now.  How did the early Church succeed in its great conquest?  What methods were adopted, and with what measures of success?

In one respect there is a wide difference in the two cases.  The Apostles were attempting to convert their conquerors.  They belonged to the vanquished race; they were of a despised nationality.  The early fathers also were subjects of Pagan powers.  Insomuch as the Roman emperors claimed divine honors, there was an element of treason in their propagandism.  The terrible persecutions which so long devastated the early Church found their supposed justification in the plea of self-defence against a system which threatened to subvert cherished and time-honored institutions.  Candid writers, like Archdeacon Farrar, admit that Christianity did hasten the overthrow of the Roman Empire.

But we find no conquering powers in our pathway.  Christianity and Christian civilization have become dominant in the earth.  The weakness of the Christian Church in its conquests now is not in being baffled and crippled by tyranny and persecution, but rather in the temptation to arrogance and the abuse of superior power, in the overbearing spirit shown in the diplomacy of Christian nations and the unscrupulous aggressions of their commerce.  There is also a further contrast in the fact that in the early days the advantages of frugality and simple habits of life were on the side of the missionaries.  Roman society especially was beginning to suffer that decay which is the inevitable consequence of long-continued luxury, while the Church observed temperance in all things and excelled in the virtues which always tend to moral and social victory.[22]

On the other hand, we who are the ambassadors to the heathen of to-day, are ourselves exposed to the dangers which result from wealth and excessive luxury.  Our grade of life, our scale of expenditure, even the style in which our missionaries live, excites the amazement of the frugal heathen to whom they preach.  And as for the Church at home, it is hardly safe for a Persian or a Chinaman to see it.  Everyone who