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est in the enterprise, but their efforts all ended in failure, and seemed only to demonstrate the fact that neither civil nor military powers could be successfully entrusted with spiritual functions. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some progress was made, chiefly through the agency of good men who had gone out to India as chaplains, but the real beginning of the modern missionary movement dates from the noted call of William Carey,—a call from God which was direct and specific, and which was followed by similar calls on both sides of the globe, until in the fullness of time the Christian Churches of Europe and America became fully and definitely committed to this vast enterprise, and their combined efforts became known as one of the greatest movements of modern times. Every important Church is now committed to this sacred cause, so that every year the fields which are cultivated expand and the prospects which open to the view become more hopeful and inviting.

The Methodist Episcopal Church was somewhat late in entering the foreign field, chiefly because of the overwhelming de-