St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-10-13
Delegates to the American
Board Preach to Mime
apolis Audiences.
c. D. Hess Says Some Inter-
esting Things About Am
erican Composers.
The Lowry Hill Church Dedi-
cated--More Electric Car
Accidents.
A Rainy Sunday--Minor Ey-
ents Chronicled by Vigil
liant Reporters.

The meeting of the American Board
of Commissioners of Foreign Missions
has come and gone. AS remarkable
body of men as ever gathered in Mime
apolis held sessions for five days in
Plymouth church and attracted but
little attention. This meeting well
illustrated the slender hold which re-
ligion has upon the Am rican people.
Plymouth church was we'll filled every
day of the meeting; sometimes it was
crowded; but few other than members
of Congregational churches ever went
there. These men came and went with
out any hullabaloo over their advent
or departure. Their mission is
work and they worked. They had no
desire to parade before the public and
the public had no desire to see them do
it. An assemblage of persons equally
eminent In other callingS would have at
tracted large crowds of spectators
through mere curiosity. But, some way,
the public is not Over-curiOus about
what is done in a religious way. At
these meetings of the board, not as
members of it but as mere spectators,
were men and women equally remark
able, although not as famous. There
were those who had passed months,
almost years. without setting
eyes upon a fellow Caucasian or
meeting any one who could speak in the
English language. They we're the mis-
sionaries who deem it the highest honor
attainable to leave home, friends and
kindred to carry the light of the gospel
to the unenlightened heather. Most of
them, by tonight, will have gone from
Minneapolis, and not One-third of the
inhabitants of this city realize that any
body but very ordinary mOrtals have
been within the gates.
This meeting of the board was prob
ably one of the most important sessions
of that body ever held. 1t marked a
crisis in the affairs of the board. For
many years to come the annual meeting
of this outstanding body will, un-
doubtedly, be devoted solely to the re-
ception and reading of reports, to the
settling up of the years business, to
preparations for extending missionary
work, to the election of officers
In fact to purely routine business. The
questions which have agitated the Ses-
sions of the commissions for years. and
which. at times, have threaented toalmOSt
disrupt the very organization, have been
settled, AS a house is shaken by the
premonitOry tremDlingS of threatened
earthquake, only to settle back upon its
foundations more firmly than ever, so
time of trial, and dropped to
the bedrock bottom of business.
The matter of allowing candidates
for missionary assignments to entertain
belief in probation after death has been
settled at least three times at annual
meetings.; but it has always come up
again under one form or another. This
year it was fixed for good and all. So
with the question of changing the
method of examining candidates; so
with the question of bringing the board
and the churches closer together; all
have been decided after having dis
1t was remarkable meeting of re-
markable body, and Minneapolis was
honored by its presence here.
Yesterday all the Congregational pull
pills in the city were filled by preachers
from abroad, who have been taking part
in the board meetings. Some of the
most eminent pulpit orators in the coun-
try preached to Minneapolis congrega-
tions. There were Rev. DR.. r. S.
Storrs, of Brooklyn; Rev. DR.. F. G.
Fisk, of Chicago; Rev. DR.. N. G. Clark,
of Boston; Rev. II. P. Burt, of China;
Rev. Richard Windsor, of India; Rev.
George FL. Guntherson, of India;
Rev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, and
many others, all of them
great eXpounders of the gospel. Other
puIpits, not Congregational, were oc-
cupied by Rev. DR.. William NJ. Taylor
and others. Never before have so many
able sermons been preached in Mime
apolis; many a long day will pass ere
the like will be heard again. And an
agreeable feature of these sermons by
these eminent divines, if their work
may be judged from the specimens Of
fered to Minneapolis, is the alb
sence of senSationaliSm. The Christ
ianity of the true Christian, if
that expression be permissible.
characterized their discourses, not the
Christianity of the man who views
the path of life through concave glasses.
Naturally. many of the sermons were
devoted to the subject of missionary
work, both at home and abroad, and
they were admirable expoSitiOns of the
need of more missionary activity on the
part of the laity. One of the most IN
teresting was that of Rev. Joseph Cook,
the famous Monday morning lecturer of
Boston, whose orthodoxy has often been
questioned, ON 1.-The CoDouests of
Christian Missions, by an Eye Witness"
1t was built upon the preachers tour
around the world. The difficulties of
the missionary were also ably illus
trated by others, participants in that
work. MinneapOlitanS should be
thankful for what they heard yesterday.