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Finding the First Presbyterian Church already filled to over-flowing before the hour appointed for public service, I went with the overflow into the Collegiate Institute whose buildings are adjacent. Its convenient suite of rooms thrown open into one another was soon filled, and we listened to an excellent discourse from Rev. Mr. Pfanstiehl of Denver and united in services of song and prayer in which we realized the communion of saints.

At two P. M., I went to the Mormon Tabernacle and was one of the audience filling nearly all of its eight thousand seats. I sat in the gallery, at the opposite end from the great organ, before which sat a choir of five hundred singers, men and women. In front of these were the

seats of the high officials, including President Woodruff. The opening hymn was:

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in his excellent word! It was grandly sung by the great congregation led by the great choir. The choir afterwards sang admirably the admirably the Hallelujah chorus of the oratorio of Messiah. The prayer in which we were led by one of the bishops, was one in which we could heartily unite, and which was biblical in language and sentiment, in its ascriptions and its petitions.

The discourse of Counsellor Penrose was a remarkable one. His excellent elocution, with the remarkable acoustic properties of the building, enabled me to hear with extraordinary distinctness, every syllable that he uttered, although, with few exceptions, any one of the churches in which I have ever preached or listened to preaching, might have been set bodily between the speaker and me, leaving comfortably seated outside of its walls three or four times as many people as could be seated within it. Mr. Penrose said:

I have been requested to speak to the con

[July,

gregation this afternoon, and I rise to do so with pleasure, and also with some timidity. This is generally felt by our brethren, when called upon to speak in this large meetinghouse, from the fact that it is not our custom to prepare discourses for the occasion. So, like my brethren who are called upon from time to time to occupy this stand, I have to rely upon the faith and sympathy of this congregation, and upon the Holy Spirit, which I pray and desire may rest down upon me and upon all who are present, that our minds may be mutually enlightened, that we may be able to understand that which is brought before our attention.

We have this afternoon, as is our custom on the Lord's Day, to partake of the Holy Sacrament, to worship before the Lord, to sing His praises, and to be instructed-to have our minds drawn away from the common things of life and directed towards the objects of our salvation, toward God and His Son Christ, and to those things which have been revealed to us for our edification and obedi

ence.

The Latter-day Saints are a body of worshipers who believe in God. They believe in the God of the Bible. They believe in Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. They also believe that all men and women who dwell on the earth are the sons and daughters of God; but in a special sense they believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God- His only begotten Son according to the flesh. They believe also that by obedience to the commandments which God gives through Jesus Christ all mankind may be saved, and that without obedience to those things they cannot be saved and exalted in the presence of the Father. The Latter-day Saints believe that in these days, in the nineteenth century, God has manifested Himself again as He did in times of old; that Jesus who died on Calvary has revealed Himself, and that He has reestablished His Church in the same form and after the same pattern in which He established it when he dwelt on earth in the flesh. They believe that there is but one Gospel of

I bear testimony to you that I know this Church is the Church of Jesus Christ; that it has been built up by the power of God; that God Almighty has revealed it; that Jesus Christ, His Son, has manifested Himself, and that this Church is His Church, because He has built it up, and He guides and directs and controls it, through His servants who stand at the head of the Church. They are but men. We do not worship any man. We do not worship Joseph Smith, as some people imagine; but we look upon him as a very great Prophet, and we have reason for this. We believe that God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son appeared to him, and opened to him this last dispensation-"the dispensation of the fullness of times." We believe that Peter, James and

John came down and ordained him an Apos

tle of the Lord Jesus Christ, conferring upon him all the keys, authority and power which they held while they were in the flesh. We believe that that same authority and Priesthood are in the Church to-day. We believe that the man who stands at the head speaks for the Lord to the people. At the same time we believe in the right of every member of the Church to have the Holy Ghost and the light of God for himself or herself, that we may see eye to eye.

Mr. Penrose's "testimony" that he "knows" is not sufficient to make us know nor to justify us in believing so much as here rests on his mere assertion. No Christian is asked to believe that Paul or

Isaiah or Moses was inspired, on any

man's assertion that he knows it to be so. dence than his own assertion that Mr. Penrose knows what he affirms before we can regard it as "testimony." In this discourse, so excellent in its presentation of much important truth long ago established by valid evidence and accepted by all Christians, we find nothing but his simple and peremptory assertion to support all that is peculiar to the "latter-day

We must have some other evi

saints."

Mr. Penrose's statement concerning the rightful powers of civil government and its relations to religious liberty is as follows:

We believe that governments have a right to punish crime, we believe that they have a right to say what is crime. We also be

[July,

lieve in the rights of citizens to contest before the courts of this country every point of difference that they may have with the lawmaking power. But we believe that governments, societies and institutions should not try to interfere with religious freedom. We believe in religious liberty in the fullest sense of the word; not in license, not in breaking the law of our country, not in doing that which is essentially evil; but only in doing that which is good.

Our

This admission that the civil power to which the people of Utah are now subject. has a right to say what is crime, is very satisfactory. That power is not likely, voluntarily, to remit its responsibility in favor of a new civil power, to be called the State of Utah, while the constituency of that proposed State affirms the innocence. of what all the existing States in this Union, as well as all other States in Christiandom, define and punish as crime. Government and our nation demand no more than obedience to its laws and courts, which the Mormon President now declares that he teaches his people. Our Church and her sister churches ask no more than unrestricted opportunity, such as Mr. Penrose declares that his people. willingly accord, to preach the Gospel in Joseph Smith and of Brigham Young full kindness and love, leaving the disciples of liberty to convince as many as they can, by open presentation of evidence and argument, that those men or any of their successors are prophets of God, of equal authority with Paul and John and Moses.

Meanwhile, let not our fellow-citizens who name themselves "latter-day saints," ask of us any acknowledgment of the Book of Mormon as of equal authority with the Bible until we see evidence of it, such as

that on which we thus accept and revere the Bible. That is no question of courtesy or of liberty. It is a question of loyalty. to truth, Counsellor Penrose and President Eliot to the contrary notwithstanding.

H. A. N.

The

Moderator and Brethren :-THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD pays its respects to this General Assembly at the end of its eleventh volume, in the middle of its sixth year. Committee which the General Assembly of 1886 ordered to initiate this magazine and which each succeeding General Assembly has ordered to continue it, has now rendered its sixth annual report, and dutifully awaits your further instructions.

The permanent movement of bodies terrestrial, as well as of the celestial bodies, is usually a resultant of forces impelling in different, if not opposite, directions. The earth we live upon—so valid science assures us— holds its steady course along its orbit at safe and happy distance from the sun, basking in his vivifying and fructifying beams, moved by two forces, of which one, acting alone, would hurl it into the central consuming fire; the other acting alone would bear it away to returnless distance into the blackness of dark

ness.

Whether the creative energy which originates planets is the combination of two antagonistic forces, I am not aware that science has ascertained. But for half a decade I have had constant evidence that the CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD was struck into being by the impact of opposing forces, even the opposite convictions of earnest, conscientious men. And, Moderator and Brethren, have you ever seen or handled any sterner stuff than conscientious conviction wrought by Presbyterian education in Calvinistic theology?

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Happily no conviction is more firmly fixed in minds thus educated than that of the obli

gation to be obedient to all divinely constituted authority. The men who will go with firmest step to the stake or the scaffold in the purpose to "obey God rather than men" are of all men most obedient to all human powers which they recognize as "ordained of God," within the true limits of their authority.

Every one of the eleven volumes of the CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD, every one of its sixty-six monthly numbers has been the product of forces generated in the brains of a score of men all anxious to apply these sound Christian principles to the work which the Supreme Ecclesiastical authority to which they owe obedience has committed to them.

In this sincere endeavor these men, as was to be expected, have sometimes found that there were different views in their minds, urging to diverse, if not opposite, courses of practical administration. The problem of adjusting, modifying, harmonizing these intellectual and moral forces so as to result in safe, happy, beneficent movement, has sometimes caused anxious thought and solemn debate. We have had need of patience. We have had need of mutual charity. God has granted us them.

FACING THE FUTURE.

The report to which you have just now listened has shown you that the CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD is now ready to "forget the things that are behind and to reach forth unto those which are before."

Thus dismissing the past, but treasuring and utilizing all its experience, and hopefully facing the future, what may we expect?

Trusting you to correct, for yourselves, any

illusions which you may see to result from my particular position and angle of vision, I will frankly tell you what I seem to see in a future not very far off, and yet far enough to forbid any expectation on my part of being here to share the responsibility and labor, although I humbly hope to know and to share the joy.

As this beloved church shall pass into the twentieth century, I seem to see in some two hundred thousands of her people's homes, besides all the more frequently arriving journals provided by her enterprising and loyal sons and daughters, one monthly magazine chiefly concerned with faithfully mirroring and vigorously promoting her vast and various work, as she has considerately apportioned its several departments and fields, and as it is loyally carried on by those to whom she has entrusted its practical management. I see the million readers in those homes studying in its pages, the facts and figures and clear statements which illustrate the condition of each field, and the opportunities, resources and capabilities of each agency by which the church seeks to do her work, and also vivid descriptions, stirring narrations, cogent arguments and persuasive appeals of secretaries, of missionaries and of other instructive writers. Pastors, elders, laymen and women will confer with one another in its pages on questions relating to missions, to education, to all practical Christian work.

The habitual reading of those pages will steadily and consistently educate the young into intelligent interest in all branches and departments of our church's work at home and abroad, and will steadily win increasing numbers of mature minds to the support of that work.

WHERE ARE WE?

At what a point of advantage do we here

[July,

stand to survey the work of our church! Do we easily realize how far we are within that vast and mysterious solitude of which one of our country's poets sang, "Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashing?"-where now the Oregon, surnamed Columbia, rolls through fertile farms and prosperous cities, and hears the sound of his own dashing mingle with the scream of the locomotive and the rumble of heavilyladen wheels reverberating among the crags and cliffs that border his shores?

Five years ago there was printed in THE CHURCH AT HOME AND ABROAD what then seemed a remarkable record, that the General Assembly of that year met in Omaha, far beyond the western boundary of the land over which Washington had presidential authority. With what seemed western audacity, it was added, that perhaps some in that Assembly might live to be members of a General Assembly meeting in San Francisco or in Portland.

How almost common-place a reality is, this so speedy fulfillment of that daring prediction! So swiftly runs the current of history in the century now hastening to its close.

In the City of St. Louis, in one of its beautiful parks, stands a statue of the famous statesman who represented Missouri in the United States Senate, for thirty years of her early history. The strong face gazes westward, and the lips seem almost to pronounce the memorable words inscribed on the pedestal: "THERE IS THE EAST-THERE IS INDIA " -words that had been spoken by the living lips of that senatorial orator when, with statesmanlike foresight, he affirmed the practicability and the necessity of a national highway over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast.

When his vivid and masterly speech had led the genius of the Republic to the summit