I. SERMON AT THE OPENING SERVICES OF THE GENERAL CONVENTION,
OCTOBER 2, 1889.


"We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what
work Thou didst their days, in the times of old."--PSALM xliv. I.


Brethren: I shall take it for granted that there is a visible Church;
that it was founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and has His promise that
the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. We believe that ours
is a pure branch of the apostolic Church; that it has a threefold
ministry; that its two sacraments--Baptism and the Supper of the Lord--are
of perpetual obligation, and are divine channels of grace; that the
faith once delivered to the saints is contained in the Catholic creeds,
and has the warrant of Holy Scripture which was written by inspiration
of God. On this centennial day I shall speak of the history and mission
of this branch of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It was a singular providence that this continent, laden with the bounty
of God, was unoccupied by civilization for thousands of years. America
was discovered by a devout son of the Latin Church, whose name--
Christopher, Christ-bearer, and Columbus, the dove--ought to have been
the prophecy that he would bear the Gospel to the New World. It was at
a time when Savonarola, with the zeal of a prophet of God and the
eloquence of a Chrysostom, was laboring to awaken the Church to a new
life. No nation ever had a nobler mission than Spain. That mission was
forfeited by unholy greed and untold cruelty. It was lost forever.
Other nations claimed the continent for their own. In the providence of