Indeed, what is the Acts of the Apostles but a record of missionary operations conducted by inspired men, who were specially empowered and guided by the Holy Ghost, in which the preaching of Christ was the all-absorbing theme? Peter and James among the Apostles, and Philip and Stephen among the deacons, were illustrious preachers in their day, and models of devotion to the single purpose of winning men to Christ. Converts were multiplied, churches organized, and believers made to feel that the _one supreme_ work was to teach or to preach Christ. The movement began on the day of Pentecost by preaching Christ, and on that line it continued its triumphant way while the Apostles lived. They neither sought nor asked for anything more. They were content to wield the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. And so they preached Christ, “to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which were saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (3.) If we needed other evidence that this line of work is the true one, we have it in the historical _examples of other successful missionary work_ since the time of the Apostles. We only need to examine those great religious movements in history which not only lifted the Church, but started the human race forward on higher courses of thought and life, to satisfy ourselves that the Gospel was the quickening power, and furnished the motive and impulse to the astonishing results which followed. A single text ringing in the ear of the monk as he slowly and wearily climbed Pilate’s stairs at Rome, on his knees, “The just shall live by faith,” explains the Reformation. That was the key-note to all the preaching and writing of Luther and the Reformers. That truth lifted and saved men; that truth organized the free thought and the Protestant churches of Germany, and made the Reformation a success. The Puritan movement in England, to some extent contemporaneous with that in Germany, proceeded on the same principles. Men mighty in the Scriptures were raised up to preach the word. They relied on nothing but the simple Gospel of Christ. All the might of king and council and Parliament could not crush a movement having its sources in the word of God. It crystallized into dissenting churches; it flowed beyond the British Islands on to the continent of Europe and to the continent of America, taking possession of a new empire and a new world.