Post also has received the decoration of the "Red Eagle" from the Ducal House of Saxony for his services at the German Hospital of the Knights of St. John at Beirut. The Rev. George Grenfell, of the English Baptist Mission in the Congo Free State, has been decorated by the King of the Belgians as a knight of the "Order of the Golden Lion," and in addition he has received a decoration from the King of Portugal. Another recipient of a decoration from the King of the Belgians is the Rev. W. H. Bentley, of the same Mission, who has been made a Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Lion, in recognition of his literary services in the Congo languages. Mr. J. Buchanan, late of the Blantyre Mission, has received the distinction of being created a "Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George" by the British Government. The French Government has conferred upon the Rev. Francis A. Gregory (S. P. G.), of Madagascar, the "Cross of the Legion of Honor," for services to the native population and the French troops on that island, and to Dr. Sims, of Leopoldville, Congo Free State, the same honor has been accorded. The latter is also the recipient of a decoration from the Belgian Government for eminent service in Medicine. Bishop Hartzell has been made by the Republic of Liberia a "Knight Commander of the Order for the Redemption of Africa." The venerable Dr. Kropf, on the occasion of his Diamond Jubilee as a missionary of the Berlin Society among the Kaffirs, received the order of the Rote Adler of the third class from the German Emperor. The late Archbishop Machray, Primate of All Canada and Archbishop of Rupert's Land, conspicuous for his devotion to the missionary interests of his diocese, was appointed Prelate of the "Order of St. Michael and St. George," and was summoned to be present at the Coronation of King Edward VII. The appointment to the Prelacy of the "Order of St. Michael and St. George" was also given many years ago to Bishop Selwyn, of New Zealand.

Not a few missionaries have received tributes to their personal character and worth which accord them an eminent position among the benefactors of mankind. The Chinese cannot be deterred from prostrating themselves before the picture of the lamentd Dr. Kerr, and have petitioned for the opportunity to worship at

his grave. The late Dr. William Muirhead has a tablet erected to his memory entirely at the expense of Chinese Christians. One of the highest officials in India is reported to have said to Dr. Barton, during his recent visit to that country, that the authorities had "unbounded confidence in the missionaries of the American Board," and that they could "have anything they ask from the Indian Government, provided the Government has power to grant their request." Lieutenant-Commander Albion V. Wadhams, of the United States Navy, who has been a close observer of mission work in the Far East, declares that of all the men he has known in the world "none are nobler in character, and none are playing a more important part in the world's history, than foreign missionaries, and none are worthier of the high esteem and veneration of their fellowmen." Captain Francis E. Younghusband refers, in his volume entitled "The Heart of a Continent," to missionaries who by their lives of noble self-sacrifice and sterling good are surely influencing those about them, and, in a letter to The Times (London) of November 19, 1901, he mentions in terms of warm admiration and sympathy the missionaries and their work in the Chinese Empire.

The venerable Dr. Samuel R. House, over twenty years after he left Siam, where he had labored as a missionary, received on his eighty-first birthday a letter of affectionate greetings, and a substantial contribution of money, from friends and pupils of his missionary days. The gratitude which manifests itself in this way, after twenty years of separation, must surely be counted genuine and sincere. To Dr. D. Macdonald, of Canada, a similar tribute was paid upon the occasion of his leaving Japan to return to Canada. When the late Dr. J. P. Cochran returned to Persia, in September, 1899, after a visit to America, he was met at a long distance from Urumiah by a large concourse of people, including a number of officials, and accompanied into the city by a cavalcade of over two hundred horsemen and a procession of carriages in which rode high officers of the Government, while several hundreds of the people on foot completed the escort. From the Shah he had already received the "Order of the Lion and the Sun." A succession of missionaries in Syria-Van Dyck, Thomson, Cal

houn, Eddy, Bird, and Dr. Daniel Bliss, who has recently retired from the Presidency of the Syrian Protestant College-have all won the affection and esteem of the people. A life-size statue of the last-named, in Italian marble, has been presented to the College by the Egyptian graduates. A marble bust of Dr. Van Dyck has been placed by native admirers in the open court of St. George's Hospital, an institution not connected with Protestant missions, but supported by the Orthodox Greek Church.

Men of all creeds and classes and of various nationalities have united to place a large white marble memorial font, as a tribute to the late James Chalmers, in the Church of England cathedral on Thursday Island, in the Torres Straits, near the scene of his work in British New Guinea. A bronze tablet to the Rev. Hiram Bingham was unveiled in April, 1905, at Honolulu. Japanese friends and admirers have erected a monument in Aoyama Cemetery, Toyko, to Dr. Verbeck. Armenian students and friends in this country have paid a similar tribute to Dr. Hamlin; and on New Year's Day, 1901, a vast concourse of people of all classes assembled in Madras at the unveiling of a bronze statue of the Rev. Dr. William Miller, upon which occasion addresses were made by Lord Ampthill and Sir Arthur Havelock. In Westminster Abbey, as well as in Edinburgh, are lasting memorials of the great Scotch missionary Livingstone. Public monuments to Duff and Moffat have, moreover, been erected in Scotland at the birthplace of each of these distinguished men, of whose citizenship any nation might be proud. The conventional sneer at missions has been fully discounted, if not altogether discredited, by candid and intelligent people. The disparaging and seemingly malicious attacks which at times appear in secular journals are now regarded with genuine regret, or are viewed with scant tolerance, by the well-informed reader.

ART. VIII.-THE WORK OF THE GENERAL CONFERENCE COMMISSION ON AGGRESSIVE

EVANGELISM

LEADERSHIP of the pastor in evangelism has been the keynote of the present movement. There has been no disposition to discount the official or any other genuine evangelists, but of these there are not enough to go round. A list of these evangelists has been kept, but it has not been a part of the Commission's duty to endorse or disbar any evangelist. Those who secure their services do so on their own responsibility. Our persistent appeal has been to the Methodist pastor, through booklets, circular letters, periodical literature, Presiding Elders and Bishops, and by direct personal and official letters and addresses. Our determination is to do all in our power to help every pastor to realize that the supreme duty of the Church of Christ in this dispensation is evangelism, and that the pastor himself is primarily the evangelist. It was for evangelism that the church was founded, for universal witnessing the Holy Spirit was given. For evangelism the church machinery has been constructed, about this its great traditions cluster, by this its past successes have been achieved and its victories won. They conquered by the blood of the Lamb and their word of witnessing. A pastor is not called to preach as if a proclamation. were the sum of his duty, he is called so to preach that he win souls, and to win souls by his preaching. Preaching is a means, not an end. Even those who lay emphasis upon the thought that this is a dispensation of witness bearing, and hold that present agencies were not intended in God's plan to effect the conversion of all mankind, must acknowledge that the commission of the preacher has been from the beginning to make disciples of all nations, and that the effectual witnessing on the day of Pentecost is the example for all witness-bearers throughout this dispensation of the witnessing Spirit. That example evermore incites us to expect results in conversions; great and overwhelming results. The Commission has urged upon pastors, the heads of our educa

tional institutions-who have responded most nobly to every appeal-Epworth League presidents, Sunday school officers and teachers, and the whole body of laymen, the possibility and necessity of a spiritual awakening now.

Would we heal

We insist that evangelism is fundamental. wounds made by unbrotherliness in the church itself? Would we reconcile the church and the multitude? Would we bring laborers and capitalists to be brothers? Would we advance temperance and kindred reforms? Would we send the good news to the heathen nations that are willing in this day of God's power to accept it? All these things, and all other things that are right and obligatory, can be done best in the power of the Spirit. Evangelism, the preaching and teaching of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, will do more than anything else to solve all problems of society in the church, in the school, in the nation, in the city. The spiritual precedes the ethical, or, rather, it is the highest ethical. Fancy someone in Wales saying, "We must have an ethical revival first. We must enter upon a crusade against profanity, obscenity, prize fighting. We must close up the saloons, make kindling wood of the gambling tables, raid the brothels, before we can have a revival." Ah, No! All these infamies vanish before the Spirit's baptism like bats and owls before the light of day, like Shakespeare's storm that the sunbeams wrecked. Lecky, the historian of European morals, was surely right when he declared that the Wesleyan revival had the greatest influence upon the social and moral state of England. The Wesleyan revival paved the way for peaceful evolution in England as against revolution and bloodshed in France. A spiritual awakening would have averted the reign of terror in Russia to-day. The streets of Moscow would not be drenched with blood and filled with the slain. There can be no real progress in human society except on a spiritual basis, and human society is doomed where the life of the Spirit is excluded. As Professor Huxley said, in addressing a company of ministers of the Church of England not long before his death, "The man of science may be compelled at last to come back to the fortress of revelation. If so,