EVANGELICAL ACTIVITY.

While these storms were agitating the upper air, and the thunderous echoes reverberated through the mountains, the work on the plain went rapidly forward.  However the scholars and the theologians might decide the questions at issue between them, the working forces were profoundly convinced that the Gospel was the great need of the world, and they put out new energy and applied all the powers of the mind to devising new methods for its propagation.  The increased facilities of travel, the improved means of communication and, above all, the power of the printing-press, were all seized and harnessed to service in the dissemination of the Gospel.  No characteristic of this century is so prominent as this intense activity and aggressive energy.  From every secular movement, the church has taken suggestions for its own advancement.  Trade-unionism has suggested Christian Endeavor and the Evangelical Alliance; the public school system has developed the International Lesson system in the Sunday School; the political convention has taught the advantages of great religious conferences; the principles of military organization have been utilized in the Salvation Army.  If in some circles religion seems to have been a fight over doctrines and theories, in others it has seemed a ceaseless, untiring struggle for converts.  In no century since the first century of the Christian era has the zeal of propagation, with no element of proselytism in it, taken so strong a hold of the followers of Christ.  To translate the Bible into every tongue, to carry the Gospel message to every people, and to evangelize the masses at home, prodigious efforts have been put forth, and enormous sums of money have been expended.  Mental activity, uncompromising veracity, indefatigable energy, have characterized the Church through the century, and its closing years show no abatement in any of these characteristics.  A brief sketch of some of the more prominent of these developments can render the fact only more, obvious.

BIBLE REVISION.

One of the most important events of the century to the English speaking world is the Revision of the Bible.  Its full effect is not yet felt, as the book which was the product of the Revisers’ labors is but slowly winning its way into use in the Church and the home.  Like its predecessor, the Authorized Version now in general use, it has to encounter the prejudice which comes from long familiarity with the book in use and from the veneration for the phraseology in which the precious truths, are expressed.  Yet from the beginning of the century the need of an improved translation was felt and several persons, undertook to supply it, but with very objectionable results.  The principal bases of the need were serious.  One was that many words and phrases have in the nineteenth century a meaning entirely different from the one they had in the early part of the seventeenth