So I turn to the system of truth, which takes God for its center, his law as our rule, his gospel as our light, his Son as our Redeemer, and his immortality as the possible and glorious home of every created being redeemed by the Son of God and renewed by his Spirit; and I say here is the gospel of the ancient time and of the present time. You need not call it antiquated. Everything which is best in the world is old. Sunshine is as old as the earth itself and the sun when the fire-mist was rounded into an orb,—the same to-day, playing on the streets of Portland, as when it played on the bowers of Paradise. The air is old, pouring its refreshing currents into our lungs and renewing our life to-day as in all time past. The great arch of the heavens is old; it has not been taken down and built up again on modern brick-work since the creation. These doctrines are old but full of motion, full of energy as the river is full of movements,—full of life-giving power, as the sunlight and the vital air. They are the doctrines out of which the missionary work sprang,—doctrines in which is all its life and the spring of its power. They are the doctrines of Paul, that first great missionary, of whom we heard in the sermon the other evening. He had strong convictions. He did not doubt. He knew whom he had believed, and was persuaded that he was able to keep him and to save the world. And who is the successor of Paul? Who holds the same faith with him and teaches it with the same earnest fidelity? I do not care to know especially what he believed unless I believe it myself. I do not want any uncertain or broken ice-bridge of outward ordinations between me and the Apostle; I want to have his faith in my heart and to preach it with the emphasis with which he preached it, and then I feel myself a successor of the great missionary to the Roman Empire. [Applause.] Our fathers had these convictions and because of them they gave of their wealth; they prayed, they sacrificed, they gave themselves to the work. I remember as a lad in a distant school seeing that man to whom our president refers—Champion—who went out from a great fortune to lay his bones in Western Africa in the service of his Master; and though I was a careless boy, unmindful of these things, I remember that his face shone almost as the face of Stephen when he looked up and saw the Lord on high, and the vision of it has never failed to come back to me whenever I have heard his name. They gave themselves. The motive of their missionary work was found in this Gospel of Christ. This was the instrument by which they accomplished their work in other lands. This was the instrument by which Paul wrought his mighty work in his day, and those who followed him in the Empire and in barbarous tribes, wherever they could get access to men. It is this gospel which has built New England. It is this gospel which, under the power of the Spirit of God, is to change the earth—this gospel and nothing else.