I shall take it for granted that other means have been set before you and insisted upon—the one nearest always, money. That is a great necessity in missionary work. You have heard, I have no doubt, a good deal about that, and I merely wish to honor it as a means under God of the most pressing necessity. We can do nothing to send the blessings that God has put into our hearts abroad among our fellow men without means; and the first means is money. But all the money in the world will not serve our end. What is the next? We must have men. But all the men in the world won’t do missionary work, although we had them all enlisted in that work. Suppose we had all the money we could use and all the men that offered themselves and that we could procure; we would only have gone so far. What else is needed? We need fitness in the men as another great means. This is as necessary as money and men, this culture. But after we have the men, and after we have them qualified, there is still room for what in my theme to-night is called “the crowning necessity.” You may take Yale College as it stands, with all its culture, and you may turn out all our hundreds of young men down into the South this blessed night; what could they do in missionary work to-morrow morning? So you see that it is not the money, or the men, or the culture that alone is needed; something more is needed, and that is “spiritual vitality.” And now, beloved, to take the first step and to say the first thing that must be said, in my judgment (since I am called here to give my opinion), the first position that we must assume and which this Association has assumed from its very start—although it is one of the old things that Christ says a well-instructed scribe must take out of his treasury—we must begin with God. We are to stand in his presence, we are to summon him as our witness, we are to avow ourselves openly and frankly, every day we live, as doing this for him.