much that is helpful to the cause of Christ to be learned in this field
of research."

Rev. H. Blodgett, D.D., veteran Missionary of the American Board in
Peking, in accepting a similar honor, says: "My interest in these
studies has been deep and growing. It is high time that such a society
as you represent should be formed. The study of Comparative Religion has
long enough been in the hands of those who hold all religions to be the
outcome of the natural powers of the human mind, unaided by a revelation
from God. It is time that those who believe in the revelation from God
in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament founded upon the Old,
should study the great ethnic religions in the light derived from the
Bible."

Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D., long a Missionary of the Presbyterian
Mission in Beyrout, Syria, says in the same connection: "The great
missionary movement of our age has brought us face to face with problems
and conflicts which are far more deep and serious than those which
confront evangelistic efforts in our own land, and it is of the highest
importance that the Church at home should know as fully as possible the
peculiar and profound difficulties of work in foreign fields. These
ancient religions of the East are behind intrenchments, and they are
prepared to make a desperate resistance. Those who have never come into
close contact with their adherents, and discovered by experience the
difficulty of dislodging them and convincing them of the truth of the
Gospel, may very properly misunderstand the work of the foreign
missionary and wonder at his apparent failure, or at least his slow
progress. But I wonder at the success attained in the foreign field, and
consider it far more glorious and remarkable than it is generally
accounted to be. A fuller acquaintance with the strength, and resources,