Matthew 20
RileyMatthew 20:1-34
OF . REWARDS, HONORS AND GRACE Matthew 19:27 to Matthew 20:34THE treatment of the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew is a task fraught with some difficulties. First of all, the chapter itself is mistakenly placed. The defensible breaks in the Book of God by chapter-makers, is a matter of increasing amazement to good Bible students.The preposition “for”, with which the twentieth chapter is introduced, connects it so absolutely with Peter’s question and the answers of Jesus recorded in Matthew 19:27-30, that one wonders why the chapter did not begin with the Apostle’s assertion, “Behold, we have forsaken all and followed Thee”, and his question, “What shall we have therefore”? The Master’s reply to that question was,“Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My Name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:28-30). That laid the very foundation for the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, and, in fact, it equally lays the foundation for the ambitious request of Zebedee’s children, recorded in the same chapter, and possibly throws an additional light on the grace of Christ in the healing of the blind men, with which the chapter concludes.It is impossible, therefore, to correctly interpret Matthew 20 apart from Matthew 19:27-30. By his question, Peter both provoked the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, and incited the ambitions of Zebedee’s wife and sons. We propose, therefore, to discuss this chapter under three themes: The Larger Justice, The Ignoble Ambition, and the Compassionate Response.THE LARGER JUSTICE. This is Joseph Parker’s title for that section of the chapter recorded in verses 1 to 16 inclusive. In many respects, it is a justifiable title. We shall not waste our time upon the difficulties of this parable to which Trench has so fully called attention—the difficulty of reconciling, for instance, the parable with the plain teaching, in another part of God’s Word, that men shall be rewarded according to the deeds done in the body; the difficulty of supposing that God takes no recognition of shorter or longer time in His service; the difficulty of adjusting justice, paying the same for men that had passed through the heat of the day and those that came but for a few hours in the cool of the afternoon; the difficulty of defending the giving of the first place to those who appeared last and did the least.Much time and energy have been spent upon these problems, and we find ourselves no nearer their solution after the last and most learned word is spoken. But there are great truths that run through this parable that cannot be gainsaid. They are truths upon which thoughtful men will forever find themselves in practical agreement. We shall expend our time in attention to these.
This much, at least, is clear: God’s engagements are not mere barters; His justice never fails; His generosity often surprises us; and He commonly reverses the established customs of men.God’s engagements are not mere barters. When He calls men to His service, He says little or nothing to them of rewards. The fact is, that Christ again and again, instead of putting appealing rewards before men who thought of following Him, flung at them every conceivable discouragement. He promised them nothing except thorns for their feet and a cross for their shoulders, and multiplied opponents, separation from father and mother, husband or wife, houses or lands; and the individual who comes into Christ’s service with no pledge of reward and with no expectation of big returns, is the individual who will prove steadfast and who will not behave as Pliable did upon encountering the first difficulty. And yet, if the mind is so disposed, it can make religion a mere barter; it can remind Jesus of His promise made in this very connection,“Everyone that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My Name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew 19:29). and thereby reduce Christian service to the basis of a barter.We have known church men after that manner— men, who, when they made their profession of Christ and joined the church, seemed to expect that they would get much more than they were asked to give up; and more than once we have had them complain that after years of church-membership they did not find their business any better; they did not find that the church had patronized them because of their relationship to it; they did not find that the church had given them any higher social standing, or had elected them to any ecclesiastical or political offices by way of reward for service, and sometimes they even charge the church of gross neglect of them. They have not been recognized as they expected, nor visited as often as they anticipated, nor treated like a brother or sister beloved. That all brings the subject of Christ’s service to a barter basis. It takes every bit of joy out of the Christian profession.In my experience of forty years in the ministry I have never yet met a man, who joined the church and engaged in the service of Christ in the interest of a personal, profitable return, who was either happy in his profession or high in the estimation of his brethren. The solution of the difficulties that seem to beset this parable is known only to the men and women who approach Christ in another spirit altogether; who see and see clearly that religion and rewards have little or no kinship; who feel the great fact, and fact it is, that the fight of the Christian faith has its sufficient reward in the spiritual victories won; that every moment in which one is thus engaged vibrates with a blessing as the lungs rise to breathing, and that the work itself is such a joy and brings such blessed returns to the engaged soul, that idleness is a loss, and the man who is compelled to lose most of his life before he enters upon the King’s service, is rather to be pitied for lost time, instead of having his pay reduced in proportion.But the further consideration of the parable reveals the second great and precious truth, namely, Christ’s justice never fails, but His generosity often surprises. Men here who wrought for a day received exactly that which had been agreed upon— a penny.
That is justice, and our God is a God of justice! No man can charge Him with doing less than He promised, nor even with niggardly bargaining.
There is no indication here that they were Jewed down. They appeared in the morning, asked for work, told what they wanted, and the agreement was made. They appeared at night and were promptly paid.In the Book of Deu 24:15, it was written, “At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it”. That was the law for the hireling servant, and righteous masters regarded it. Our Master is righteous. No servant of His will ever fall short of what was promised. You can call back every saint from Heaven and put to him the one question, “Did God keep His covenants with you? Did He remember and regard His Word?
Did He give you as much as He pledged you?’” and they will answer in a chorus, but with one voice, “Yes. He never failed us in a single particular.” But it is doubtful if a single one of those same witnessing saints would stop with that testimony. They would join with the eleventh hour company and say, “He promised us whatever was right. When He compensated us, He indulged in an unexpected generosity. Our deserts were disregarded; His grace came into play and we ourselves were embarrassed in the presence of our brothers by the fullness of blessing He bestowed upon us.” And I want to say, in passing, that I have not been able to sympathize with those professed followers of Christ who insist upon a quid pro quo in Christian service.I am entering today upon my thirtieth year as pastor of this church, and at the same moment, I am entering upon my forty-fourth year in the active ministry. I can imagine some young man, who, in ardor of spirit, heard the call of God and entered upon his ministry but twelve months since, and whose service was cut short by the gathering for him of the evening shadows, and he is already standing in the presence of the King to give an account of his earthly ministry.
Shall he hear less from his Lord than the “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”? If God should privilege me (as I am now rather hoping) to finish my fortieth anniversary in this pulpit, and my fifty-fifth in the ministry, and my seventy-fifth of life, before the shadows gather for me, shall I expect a higher encomium or a greater reward than was given to my glorious, yet perhaps more deeply devoted minister-boy brother?
God forbid! Such a spirit of jealousy and envy would well-nigh unfit me to come into His presence at all and would have a tendency, at least, to force my whole ministry to a barter basis instead of to the one of voluntary service and the animation of love Divine. This, to me, is the meaning of the parable!I am thinking now of a layman—once a member of this church—whose whole early life and mature manhood was given to the accumulation of money. He was a man well on in years, when, through an utter financial failure, he was thrown to the earth, and in that bruised and bleeding condition, made his appeal to God and came into His service with another spirit than that he had ever known—the spirit of humility, the spirit of personal consecration, the spirit of almost sleepless devotion. There were only a few years left for him, and in those he could do little else than pray; but pray he did. He prayed in the morning; he prayed at noon; he prayed at night, incessantly.
He breathed out his petitions to God. He begged for forgiveness for the past.
It was a grief to him that he had wasted his time in money getting and had so long and largely forgotten his God. It was an additional grief that he was broken in body and could now be so poorly active in the service of his King. The great majority of his time was spent in weeping. His prayers were baptized in his tears, and one day the evening shadows gathered and the working hours were done. Think you that he shall fall short of reward? Aye, verily, I believe that few of those of us who shall have spent a half century and more in the most intensive Christian activities can ever hope to hold a higher place than he holds in Heaven, or receive more generous treatment than was recorded to him when the day was done and the Master came to reward the laborers of the vineyard. For, after all, the most blessed thing in the life of Christianity is the spirit with which one surrenders himself, and the devotion of heart with which one serves, and the humility of soul in which one weeps and prays and works.See another truth! Our Christ commonly reverses the customs of men. The custom of men is to make the best barter possible, to pay the least for which they can get the service rendered. That custom is so universal that it has created the whole conflict between capital and labor. That custom is so universal that it accounts, in a large way, for the political movement known as “socialism”. That custom is so universal that even church men and professed Christians seldom rise above it. That custom has cursed many a city with cheap labor and undesirable citizenship, and it has accounted again and again for race riots, international complications and world wars.When, therefore, Christ heard of one householder who had departed in some respects from the usual world custom, and had given, not to a single company of men only, but to three out of four companies, more than was their right, He seized it as an illustration of His own intention in the kingdom.
In other words, it is the intention and the actual outworking of grace versus law, and of unblessed blessing versus a hard-driven barter.The Kingdom of God contrasts the kingdoms of this world. We have revolutions that do not correct anything, but when His Kingdom comes, what one writer calls, “the pettiness of selfish ambition” will be supplanted by the majesty of self-sacrificing love, and the supposed hardships of labor will give place to the dignity of aim, and the disposition to escape service to an answer of royal sacrifice. It is a very significant fact, is it not, that the world’s word for Knecht, or a knight, was a servant or a slave; but since Christianity came, knight has become a nobleman. So the slave in God’s Kingdom will be the nobleman of the same.“He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:11-12). “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” (Matthew 20:16). Many are the elect. Few are the select.But I pass now to the consideration ofTHE IGNOBLE . “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, “And shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify Him: and the third day He shall rise again. “Then came to Him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping Him, and desiring a certain thing of Him. “And He said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto Him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy Kingdom. “But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto Him, We are able. “And He saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with: but to sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father. “And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. “But Jesus called them unto Him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. “But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:17-28). We have already remarked that Peter’s question, together with the answer of Jesus, accounts largely for the contents of this 20th chapter.It will be remembered that Jesus said unto them,“Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye which have fob lowed Me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in His glory, ye also shall sit upon the twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Now when Jesus began to talk of going up to Jerusalem and of being betrayed into the hands of chief priests and scribes, and condemned to death, and then of His resurrection on the third day, the prospect of the throne of glory comes full before the Apostles, and with the mental vision of the same, the mother of Zebedee’s children and her sons, grow ambitious on the same subject of rewards and begin to wonder whether these two, long recognized as His special friends, might also anticipate unusual privileges and honors, even that of sitting on the right hand and on His left in that Kingdom.The answer of Jesus to this question is as interesting and as unexpected as it was to Peter’s query, and in some respects, far more discouraging.There are personal ambitions that should neither be disregarded nor dampened. Parents have a right to be ambitious for their children. History is replete with illustrations of the fact that many a father’s dreams and many a mother’s hopes have been realized in a child. Walter Scott’s mother was a woman of great literary tastes, and doubtless dreamed and hoped that her child would share the same. Napoleon’s mother was noted for her energy and her unbounded ambition. Those facts were reflected in her son.
Lord Bacon’s mother had a piety of the sort that incited her to pray that her boy might be a favorite of Heaven and first among his fellows.Christianity has long since recorded the ambitions of the mother of the Wesleys for her boys and the realization of her hopes and dreams. Benjamin West tells us that it was his mother’s approval upon his infant endeavors at art that made him a painter. When sons share with parents such hopes and dreams, success often attends their endeavors. Longfellow wrote,“The heights by great men reached and kept Were not obtained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. “Standing on what too long we bore, With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern—unseen before— A path to higher destinies!” But our text calls attention to Christ’s new and amazing method of exaltation. He answered, “Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with”?What does He mean by this cup? Let the Scriptures answer. When Peter attempted to defend Him against arrest in Gethsemane, Jesus said, “The cup which My Father giveth Me, shall I not drink of it”? In an earlier hour of that same day, He had prayed, “Oh My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me”!It was, then, the cup of suffering from which they must drink if they would share a throne with Him— the baptism of sorrow in which they should be immersed if they would sit with Him in the heavens.
That is the law of the Kingdom. The greatest souls the Church has ever known have been the souls who have passed through the most fiery trials, and have endured the direst of sorrows.
We do not forget that in John’s apocalyptic vision, he saw before the throne those who were robed in white robes, and when asked whither they came, the angel answered, “These are they which came out of great tribulation”. They had gone through suffering to success; they had walked by the way of the Cross to secure their crown.This essential is not always appreciated by the aspirants. It is seldom that the youth, destined to honor in the Kingdom of God, sees much of the suffering through which he will pass in coming to his Divine appointment. Youth always looks on the bright side of things. In Joseph’s dream, he did not apprehend the envy of his brethren; the pit did not come in to spoil his joy; slavery in Egypt was not even suspected; Pharaoh’s prison did not appear to convert his season of slumber into a night-mare; but his imagination leaped over all and went straight to the throne. The sheaves were bowing to him; the sun, moon and eleven stars were making obeisance.
And yet, the envy, the pit, the slavery, the Egyptian prison, were not accidents in Joseph’s life—as he himself afterwards saw—but rather the refining incidents essential to the fulfillment of his dream. It was a wise providence that kept these from the imagination of his timid youth; and a gracious Providence that made these, when once they came, contribute to the evolution of his character.“Choose for us, Lord, nor let our weak preferring, Cheat us of good Thou hast for us designed; Choose for us, Lord; Thy wisdom is unerring, And we are fools and blind. “Let us press on, in patient self-denial, Accept the hardship, shrink not from the loss, Our portion lies beyond the hour of trial, Our crown beyond the Cross.” This expression of suffering is seldom escaped by those who succeed, to share with Christ the throne. To pray for appointment to position with Him is one with asking the privilege of suffering with Him. It is significant that when the night came that Jesus entered Gethsemane, He left all of His disciples at the gate save three—Peter, who had asked what his reward should be for following Jesus, and the two sons of Zebedee, who had requested the honor of this text—them He took with Him into the garden of suffering. It is commonly so. So far as my observation goes, or my knowledge of history reaches, I think I may say it is always so, that the man who is to ascend with Him to Paradise must first hang with Him on the Cross.Phillips Brooks, in a sermon on “The Sea of Glass Mingled with Fire” says, “You may go through the crowded streets of Heaven, asking each saint how he came there, and you will look in vain everywhere for a man morally and spiritually strong, whose strength did not come to him in struggle.” And Brooks claims that the thoroughly prosperous man is no exception to this rule, since he must struggle against his very prosperity, lest it make him a slave, drive him, beat him, taunt him and mock him; so that even such is not an exception. “There is no exception anywhere. Every true strength is gained in struggle. Every poor soul that the Lord heals and frees goes up the street like the man at Capernaum, carrying its bed upon its back, the trophy of its conquered palsy.”When Paul would tell us the secret of his success, he says,“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. * * For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 2 Corinthians 4:17). But when this hour of suffering strikes, the true soul will steadfastly endure it. Peter once played the coward, but when the time to suffer really came, he is reputed to have said, “Crucify me with my head down.” The sons of Zebedee slept in the night of their Lord’s agony, when, through their sympathy, they should have shared His sorrow; but when the hour came that they needed to test the truth of their faith by the sacrifice of life, neither of them drew back from drinking the cup which their Lord had drained, nor from being baptized with the baptism of suffering, the waves and billows of which had gone over Him.Cranmer was a natural coward! Believing with the reformers, he preached the truths of the Word of God, when the dangers of so doing were not too great. Before excruciating experiences, he quailed, and even denied the “faith” over his own signature. And yet, when the hour of final test really came, he not only went to the stake, but remembering the false statement he had written, he said, “Forasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand, therefore, shall first be punished, for if I may come to the fire, that shall first be burnt.” And you will remember that when at the stake, he thrust that hand into the flame and without one evidence of shrinking, saw it consumed.Some people think that this spirit is no longer in the world, but when some years ago, a little company of Christian soldiers—English—were surrounded by a horde of Metabeles, and saw that escape was impossible, they grounded their guns and stood before the enemy singing, “God save the Queen,” till the last was stabbed to death. In the Boxer movement in China, men, women, and maidens, foreign missionaries and native converts to the faith, went to as dreadful a doom as was ever meted out to the early disciples; and suffered as heroically as did ever any follower of the Son of God, and the flame was God’s chariot of fire to carry them to Christ’s side.The war of 1914-1918 gave us scores of kindred illustrations. “And they overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death”.THE , In concluding this chapter we get another blessed view of our Lord, and His superiority to the sons of men shines gloriously as we study Him. The carping insistence of Peter about sufficient returns must have hurt the heart of Him who hated selfishness in every form. The envious attitude of servants who feared that somebody else would be shown a favor beyond them, that also is a trial to true men, and Christ was the truest of men. The bickering ambitions, even among His few chosen ones, for seats of honor, offices beyond their brethren, how that must have bruised His sensitive soul.And yet through it all He not only maintains His calm, gives answers that are free from even the suggestion of his own disappointment, but keeps His sympathy with sinful men, retains His fraternal contact with the great crowd and even His tender compassion for its most unfavored ones. And so we read,“And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude followed Him. “And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of David. * * “And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? “They say unto Him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. “So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him” (Matthew 20:29-34). Learn, therefore, in conclusion, the following facts:The multitude always holds the helpless. “A great multitude followed Him. And, behold, two blind men sitting by the way side”. No great crowd ever assembles but of them there are the sinful, the sick, the lame, the halt, the blind.Some one may take exception to this remark and say, “It is not true; we attend a very aristocratic church. We have none of these with us; our people are healthy, our people are happy, our people are all beautifully dressed. We do not believe in the foolish attempt to make a church out of the cross-sections of society; on the contrary, we think it better to take a lateral section instead, people of one class, and the best class at that, and be freed from these problems of sin, suffering, lameness and blindness and the rest.”Alas for superficial appearances. I can go into the best dressed church on the American continent this morning and with the eyes of Christ I will find blind men in that crowd; I will find women in that crowd that are spiritually paralyzed, if not actually dead in trespasses and sins; I will find men and women there whose hearts are burdened to the breaking point, and who, in spite of fair outward appearance, are in an utter anguish of soul.I spoke night before last to an audience that jammed every inch of space in the biggest auditorium in the city visited.
I was discussing a subject of social, educational and religious concern and as I looked upon that audience they seemed to be a well-dressed, a healthy, capable, contented crowd; but I was not deceived; no such crowd ever assembles. The lame are always there; the blind are always there; the sorrowful are always there.
There are men in every great assembly who, under the pressure of a load that nobody else sees or understands, cry, even though it be suppressed below a whisper, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Thou Son of David”, We have sometimes gotten the impression that the helpless are only in the lanes and by-ways, but history, and even personal experience, should correct that conception. They are everywhere.This is with us a happy day, celebrating our twenty-ninth anniversary together—a day that is commonly attended by praise, and has its occasions of thanksgiving, and its notes of joy; but even the congregation here assembled holds its disturbed spirits this morning, has its heart-breakings. Yea, there are those in this audience spiritually blind and consequently helpless; and oh, they have such need of God that the very pressure of their own crushing burden will compel the cry, “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Thou Son of David”.Now mark the next phrase, “The multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace”.The world has little time for the sick and the needy. “The multitude rebuked them”. The multitude have sought to find a philosophy that would relieve them of those members of society who are blind, and halt, and lame and burdened. Evolution has provided it. Darwin, the great father of this wretched philosophy, insisted that society might well rid itself of these cumberers of the earth, and by careful breeding be done with the lame, the halt and the blind.
Nietzsche, a philosopher of this same false faith, advocates an end to all human sympathies and declares that they are the marks of weaklings, the signs of soft natures and the source of social weakness.Thank God for a Christ who was not giving ear to the multitude, but who must have looked that day with disdain, if not with contempt, on these healthy, good-eyed men, who would silence the sick and shut the lips of the blind!Mark the last fact:Christ and Christianity give first attention to such. “And Jesus stood still, and called them, and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you f They say unto Him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him” (Matthew 20:32-34).That is Christ!
That is Christianity! That is the spirit of the True Church! No church has a right to live, and what is more, no church will live in spirit and mark growth and progress from year to year that disregards the sin that is in the world, and the suffering that is incident to it, and the sorrows of men and women who are compelled to cry to the compassionate Son of God. There are ministers who boast that they have no poor in their church. Such a church should not wear the Name of Christ. There are assemblies in which the halt and the lame and the blind are seldom or never seen.
They have been made to feel that they are unwelcome and have gone on their way to more cordial and congenial churches. Such churches have not the spirit of Christ; in fact, one is almost tempted to say that they are none of His.
And yet, lest we pass judgment—a thing which belongs only to Him—let us refrain our lips from the condemnation of our prospered brethren and leave them, to speak, with Christ, compassion toward them who are halt and lame and blind. After all, when Christ has touched the halt, and the lame, they shall walk and leap; and when He has spoken the word that opens the eyes of the blind, they shall see, and what men count the castaways of society, under His touch may come to constitute not only the church, but the most glorious and most successful church to be found among God’s people.Twenty-nine years we have wrought together as pastor and people. The principles enunciated in the beginning of this pastorate will never be forgotten by those who have been privileged these years together. They are simple, and as we believed then, Scriptural; and so we believe to-day.They are: The Word of God the rule of faith and practice—the Bible an inspired Book—Christ the Divine Son of God—the Blood atonement, the sinner’s only hope. In other words, a proposition to preach from this pulpit the old Gospel and the only Gospel.Along with that, we asserted from the first that as God was “no respecter of persons”, so His Church should keep open doors to the high and the low, the rich and the poor, inviting them to assemble in the temple of God and regard Him as the Maker of them all.From the first also we believed and taught that the great mission of the Church was one with Jesus Himself, namely, that of seeking and saving men. In these years God has blessed us beyond our deserts; He had increased us in number from 595 to 3100.
In this time God has added to this church 5446 souls—by baptism 2862; by letter, 2584. Our Sunday School enrollment in 1897, in the home school was 382, in our mission 486, a total of 718.
To-day our Sunday School in the active department Numbers 2180—cradle roll 60, home department 82, a total of 2322. In 1897 we expended for all purposes $14,762.19; for three years past we have exceeded annually the $200,000 mark. In 1897 we had a property valued at $160,000. To-day with eight buildings for Church and School, we have a property valued at $1,400,000. In the twenty-nine years we have given to all purposes $1,959,270; or, in round numbers, close to two million dollars. The Northwestern Bible Training School began with an enrollment of 7 twenty-two years ago; to-day we have two hundred in annual attendance. It would hardly seem necessary, therefore, for us to change our principles in the least; but it is vitally necessary that we employ them the better to the praise of our Christ and the progress of His Church, and the hastening of His Kingdom.