The Mission Field: a Monthly Record of the Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home and Abroad. September 1 1888

Is it necessary to contrast with this the apathy as regards religious ordinances of the Christian world of to-day or to draw attention to the multitudes of baptized and professing Christians who habitually neglect public worship ; to the still larger number of those who practically contemn the outward and visible sign of the Communion of Saints by entire or all but entire disuse of the Euchar [...] In order to establish this we may remind ourselves of the complaint made by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews that whereas those whom he addressed for the time ought to be teachers they had need again that some one should teach them the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God (Heb. [...] The cares of this world or the deceitfulness of riches the wild growth of uncurbed appetites and yearnings impoverish the work of Divine grace in the heart ; religious ordinances become distasteful and are dropped ; and yet these are to the Christian means of grace true organs of respiration to refresh and quicken his spiritual life and the consequence is scantier fruit and worse still canke [...] And elsewhere he speaks of our coming " in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ " (Eph. [...] The fire with the pots boiling the evening meal was before the door by the kitchen but ; the smoke ascended straight up into the calm night ; a surrounding group of old and young sat the outlines of face and form fitfully lighted up as the flames rose and fell nowsinto strong and individual figures and again light and night seemed to blend around the crouching company ; the old chatted and sm