Is disaster a reason for withdrawal? When the American colonists found themselves involved in the horrors of the Revolution, did they say that it would have been better to remain the subjects of Great Britain? When, a generation ago, our land was drenched with the blood of the Civil War, did men think that they ought to have tolerated secession and slavery? When the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbour and Lawton was killed in Luzon, did we demand withdrawal from Cuba and the Philippines? When Liscum fell under the walls of Tien-tsin, did we insist that the attempt to relieve the Legations should be abandoned? Or did not the American people, in every one of these instances, find in the very agonies of struggle and bloodshed a decisive reason for advance? Did they not sternly resolve that there should be men, that there should be money, and that the war should be pressed to victory whatever the sacrifice that might be involved? And shall the Church of God weakly, timidly yield because the very troubles have occurred which Christ Himself predicted? He frankly said that there should ``be wars and rumors of wars''; that His disciples should ``be hated of all men''; that He sent them ``forth as sheep in the midst of wolves,'' and that the brother should ``deliver up the brother to death and the father the child.'' But in that very discourse He also said: ``He that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy of me.'' ``Go, preach,'' He commanded. ``Woe is me if I preach not,'' cried Paul. Hostile rulers and priests and mobs and the bitter Cross did not swerve Him a hairbreadth from His purpose; nor did the rending of the early disciples in the arenas of Nero, the burning of a Huss and a Savonarola, the pyres of Smithfield, the dungeons of the Tolbooth and the thumb-screws of the Inquisition quench the zeal of His followers. And in the like manner, the ashes of mission buildings and the blood of devoted missionaries and the tumult of furious men have led multitudes at home to form a high and holy resolve to send more missionaries, to give more money and to press the whole majestic enterprise with new faith and power until all China has been electrified by the vital spiritual force of a nobler faith. God summons Christendom to a forward movement in the land whose soil has been forever consecrated by the martyrdom of the beloved dead. Instead of retreating, ``we should,'' in the immortal words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, ``be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.''