METHODIST REVIEW.

SEPTEMBER, 1887.

ART. I.-WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

CRUCIAL PERIOD.

THE relation between the present and the future is intimate and effective. This thought sheds light upon the best method of controlling the future by the selection of appropriate agencies in the present. The future is wrapped up in the present as the oak in the acorn, and it is scarcely less truthful than prophetic to say, that the closing years of the nineteenth century will give tone and character to all succeeding ones.

Our best thinkers and most careful observers declare with singular unanimity that this is the potential and crucial period of Republican institutions and of American Christianity, and that the work of the Christian Church for the next twenty years will decide the question whether the form of government of the United States will be republican or monarchical, whether the pure principles of Christianity or the wild theories of anarchists and infidels shall prevail. The solution of this problem here will aid in its permanent settlement everywhere.

We are living in the most wonderful age of the world's history. No Christian nation has shared so largely as we in the bounty of God. All providences tell us plainly that we are called to lead on in the work of the eventide of the world. The perils which beset us, the mad cry of men who clamor for a brotherhood without Christ, and the boast of infidels who would dethrone our God, warn, as in thunder, of the battle. No nation has survived the loss of its religion.*

*Bishop Whipple. 41-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. III.