been thus taught to see the sin of lying, of licentiousness, adultery, drunkenness, gambling, and of polygamy—all are classed together-must be of the most aggravated and culpable type. But how can any one who holds that polygamy need not be renounced, but may be taken into the church, be other than a blind leader of the blind, both of whom must fall into the ditch and defile the church?

Time is not of the essence of some contracts, and it is not of this procedure. It matters not how short a time beforehand the light of the gospel may have illumined the mind of the heathen polygamist to see his sin, the time for renunciation and avowed entrance on a new life is before baptism, and not after it, before entering the church, or its seats may be filled with godless impenitents. The heathen does not enter the church in heathen darkness, nor in the twilight of the old dispensation, but in the bright sunshine of the new. The present missionary is a teacher, and not a proselyter.

I shall never recover from the amazement which I experienced when Dr. Ramsay, president of King's College, Tennessee, a member of the Synod of Virginia, took the rostrum and argued that the renunciation of all known sin, as a preliminary or condition of admission to baptism and church membership, would wreck our mission churches! I arose in my place, and, with the privilege, asked him if he would receive into the church any one who refused to renounce all known sin? He did not even qualify his position. But it was extended to home churches as well. And this surprise was intensified when an ex-Moderator of the General Assembly, Dr. Hopkins, endorsed Dr. Ramsay's position. I have hesitated to give the names, but think it best to do so. My memory and understanding are confirmed by others.

Whilst there is no possibility of these brethren satisfactorily defending themselves, do they not owe the church a disclaimer?

This novel occurrence was just before the vote on the overture, when 79 voted for the admission and tolerance of polygamy in the church to 14 against it. If the heathen is taught, as he should be, that the scripture condemns polygamy as a sin, then he knows it to be a sin, and the renunciation of all known sin would sweep it out of his life. Nor is it possible to find any room for it in the new life,-nor for polyandria, a kindred sin.

Said Dr. Cust, in the 1888 Conference, vol. 2: 59:

"Marriage is the type of the union of Christ with His church, and the relation of the sexes is the touchstone of the purity of the church. If once you allow polygamy in a church, away with its purity." Said another: "If we bring polygamy into our churches, we shall never get rid of it" (p. 75).

I am able to mention a case where a mission church did rid itself of polygamy, and it is a very instructive case. I learn of it from Herbert Kirby, M. D., for three years a medical missionary on the lower Congo, two hundred miles above its mouth. This Baptist mission has eight stations and 5,000 communicants. Rev. Henry Richards started the work in 1879. At first men were admitted with what wives they had, but were not allowed to take any more, the same course is now pursued at Luebo. After a dozen years, on this basis, the church was disbanded and an entirely new start was made, on the strict basis of monogamy and abstinence from palm wine. The people promptly accepted the monogamous condition, rejoined the church, and are now watchful of it and prosperous. During the past year one of the teachers

gave reason to the natives to believe that he had secretly departed from it, and he was expelled.

This Baptist mission on the Congo is a thousand miles from our Presbyterian mission on the Kassai; and it seems clear to me that it would be well for Luebo to follow the noble example it has set, and make a fresh start, if need be, to get rid of the blotch of polygamy; and it is probable that, on the reorganization, very few would be lost in numbers, and great spiritual gain would, as in that case, result. No doubt some of the present polygamous members would renounce it in order to be right and reassociated in the church on a sinless basis.

It may be restated that relatively the number of the polygamists in any community is a scanty few. The great mass of the people are poor and monogamous. Those who have plural wives are the well-to-do, or rich. Even in the Bible, plural families are named only in connection with the rich, as Abraham, Ishmael, Jacob, several kngs; and it is confessed that this aristocratic feature of polygamy has unfortunately a tempting influence on missionaries.

Mrs. W. M. Baird, a Presbyterian missionary in Korea, in attendance on the Missionary Conference, 1900, lifts the veil from the experience of a missionary life thus:

"Sometimes when years of faithful effort have been put in, with little or no results in broken hearts or changed lives, a sore temptation comes to the missionary. He feels that the church at home, whose agent he is, is watching him with impatient eyes, and wondering why his reports year after year continue to show little but hopes and anticipations.

"He sees natives around him, friendly and mildly interested, yet clinging tenaciously to their heathen

customs and beliefs, and a strong temptation comes to him to make it easier for them to become Christians by letting down the requirements of the gospel. He begins to think that Sabbath attendance at the neighborhood fair, either as purchaser or vender, is perhaps not to be absolutely prohibited, since the natives complain that not to go would subject them to serious inconvenience and financial loss. A compromise, of church in the morning and fair in the afternoon, begins to seem to him not altogether unreasonable. Or, here is a man who manifests his willingness to become a Christian if he can do so without disturbing his domestic relations, which happen to be plural. He is a leading man in the community, and the missionary feels that if he can secure him, numbers of the other villagers will follow. He begins to revolve the matter in his mind with a view to letting him in. Plausible reasons speedily suggest themselves. David and Solomon had concubines, and the Lord winked at the matter. This man had assumed these responsibilities in the days of his ignorance; was he warranted in denying them now? It would mean a great tearing up of the man's household; the missionary knows and likes him, and feels disinclined to impose hard conditions upon him. He loses sight of the fact that the option of making conditions was not left with him, and so it comes to pass that the gospel is conformed to the heathen, instead of the heathen to the gospel, and by and by we have the spectacle presented of a native church made up of Sabbath-breakers and adulterers.

"Better a thousand times the unbroken regions of darkness than such baptized heathenism as this. Better long years of fruitless labor than such sadly unchristian results. No appearance of prosperity, however flattering, can atone for such a sacrifice of prin

ciple. It is easier to keep out than to put out, and when it comes to admitting members into the church, a missionary can not afford to present other than an uncompromising front to the various forms of evil that show themselves, no matter how firmly rooted, in a heathen community."

XIV.

HARMONY OF OVERTURE WITH MISSION WORK.

7. I propose now chiefly to gather helpful information from the deliverances in these councils respecting certain missions which have been and are still conducted on the monogamous principle of the Overture, baptizing only such as renounce polygamy-thus excluding polygamy from the church. I have already mentioned the interesting Baptist mission on the lower Congo. I am told (by Dr. Kirby) that there are English Methodist and Swedish missions on the upper Congo pursuing the same course. But if we look at South Africa, missionaries have been laboring on this plan among the Hottentots, the Koramas, and the Bushmen for more than a hundred years. These were amongst the most degraded peoples. "I am not aware," says Rev. John Mackenzie, "I am not aware that human language could depict a more degraded people than the missionaries found them to be at the beginning of the last century. But now they are clothed and in their right mind. They are now fulfilling the duties of citizens in Cape Colony-and the offices of good subjects and good Christians and taking part in the management of native churches.'" The gospel was taken into Bechuanaland by Robert Moffit, followed by Livingstone. From the first it has been monogamous. In their polyg amous state several so-called wives have their separate es