idened beyond
all achievements. The planting of the church in the West is one of the
wonders of church history.

But this noble act of religious devotion was by no means a sacrifice
without blemish. The sacred zeal for advancing God's reign and
righteousness was mingled with many very human motives in the progress
of it. Conspicuous among these was the spirit of sectarian competition.
The worthy and apostolic love for kindred according to the flesh
separated from home and exposed to the privations and temptations of the
frontier, the honest anxiety to forestall the domination of a
dangerously powerful religious corporation propagating perverted views
of truth, even the desire to advance principles and forms of belief
deemed to be important, were infused with a spirit of partisanship as
little spiritual as the enthusiasm which animates the struggles and the
shouters at a foot-ball game. The devoted pioneer of the gospel on the
frontier, seeing his work endangered by that of a rival denomination,
writes to the central office of his sect; the board of missions makes
its appeal to the contributing churches; the churches respond with
subsidies; and the local rivalry in the mission field is pressed,
sometimes to a good result, on the principle that "competition is the
life of business." Thus the fragrance of the precious ointment of loving
sacrifice is perceptibly tainted, according to the warning of
Ecclesiastes or the Preacher. And yet it is not easy for good men, being
men, sternly to rebuke the spirit that seems to be effective in
promoting the good cause that they have at heart.

If the effect of these emulations on the contributing churches was
rather carnal than spiritual, the effect in the mission field was worse.
The effect was seen in the squandering of money and of priceless service
of good men and women, in the debilitating and demoralizing division and
subdivision of the Christian people, not of cities and large towns, but
of villages and hamlets and of thinly settled farming districts. By the
building of churches and other edifices for sectarian uses, schism was
established for coming time as a vested interest. The gifts and service
bestowed in this cause with a truly magnificent liberality would have
sufficed to establish the Christian faith and fellowship throughout the
new settlements in strength and dignity, in churches which, instead of
lingering as puny and dependent nurslings, would have grown apace to b