* * * * * ADDRESS OF REV. D. O. MEARS, D.D. Now the question comes right here: shall we give according to what we are, or what we have? One of the largest contributors in New England told me the story of his conversion the other day, and it was this, as we sat in the evening by his fireside. “My wife and I,” he said, “had acquired a competence; money seemed to be coming in. I had been brought up outside the Christian faith, and while such a one was preaching on one occasion I debated the question: Can I become a Christian? My wife found the light and for days I wrestled with the question. Light would not come. I knew what it was; it was my pocket book; shall that be included? When I decided my pocketbook for Christ, then light broke in; and,” said he in that narration, as a fit appendix to the whole, “I have never put my means in any place where I have ever lost in all my experience.” It is said that after the events at Pentecost, Andrew went down to China and preached and that Thomas also, whose finger ached to pierce the nail-torn hands of his Master and whose fist was almost doubled that it might be thrust into that pierced side, went down to China to preach the everlasting Gospel. Now 75,000 of that race, whose great engineering works were the world’s marvel 250 years before the call of Abraham, whose emperor wrote a classic a thousand years before David touched his sacred pen, are at our very doors; and if it was worth while for Andrew and Thomas to go from Jerusalem to China it is worth our work to preach to them and teach them and call them to us when they are so near, is it not? I remember it is written in the prophets, as I suppose Matthew read, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God,” and Ethiopia received the preaching of Matthew, so say many. I remember that Mark founded the church in the upper part of that dark continent. I remember that when our blessed Master fainted under the cross it was an African who put his brawny shoulder under it and walked by the side of our Lord, his Lord, to the crucifixion. And almost as a revenge, though not revenge, Simon, the zealot, who looked to Africa, was crucified himself in lower Egypt. If these thought it worth while to evangelize Africa, what shall we say of the 7,000,000 of Africa’s sons at our very doors?