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Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overscers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.-ACTS XX: 28.

T would be the earnest of a great reward if it were

permitted to any pastor, or officer, or member of a church, reviewing the, past to take to himself the words of Paul, addressed to the elders of the church at Ephesus. Only the judgment day will show whether any of us can say of ourselves, "I have served the Lord with all humility; I am pure from the blood of all men. But Paul's example in turning to review the past, is profitable for us. In the remembrance of the great privileges and opportunities that God had bestowed upon him, he found wise lessons for his hearers, no less than joy and strength for himself.

Our

Ten years ago to-day, dear friends, we began our united life as pastor and people. They have been wonderful years in God's providence with the world. country was then in the midst of President Grant's first administration. The hopes for the immediate reconstruction of the South, and the complete reestablishment of the Union, which followed the collapse of the rebellion, were as yet barely shadowed with disappointment. The joy over the close of the war, and the good will toward all men that filled the heart of the North, now that no more blood was to be shed, had not yet given place to deep seated anxiety lest the long struggle had been in The full iniquity of carpet-bag government, the breaking down of the first schemes for the elevation of the negro and the regeneration of the South, and the inveterate hold which the heresy of state sovereignty and the right of secession had upon the southern heart, had not yet been learned. It seems hardly possible that a short ten years can embrace, the history of the South from

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that day to this. Over against Plaquemine and Bayou la Teche, Yazoo and Natchez, Canton and Columbia and New Hamburg, are to be set Atlanta, and Fisk, and Straight Universities, and Talladega, and Mobile, and Hampton, and all the influences that radiate from them, which are slowly but surely rebuilding the South upon an altogether new foundation.

Ten years ago the wave of repudiation, in the payment of the National debt in greenbacks, was sweeping across the land, carrying before it many a statesman upon whom the country had long leaned. Not only was that wave turned back, but we have seen the regular and rapid reduction of the public debt, the resumption of specie payments, and the elevation of the nation's credit to the first place in the markets of the world. Ten years ago the reform of the civil service and the abolition of the spoils system in politics were talked of as an impossible ideal. To-day we see ourselves making quiet but steady approaches toward a certain result. The Pacific Railroad was just opened, and the consequent changes in the thoroughfares of the world's commerce were but dimly prophesied. We have seen the thin lines, stretched across our country, become the great arteries through which the commerce of the nations now rushes, bringing to our shores its immense surplus of gold. Immigration into the newer West had only begun. We did not then understand the meaning of De Tocqueville's words, "This gradual and continued progress of the race toward' the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly and driven by the hand of God. This is a fact, new to the world, a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the imagination." We have already lived to see in the peopling of empty plains, in the opening up and settling of new territories, in the creation of new states, and in the rapid crowding of such older states as our own, those dreams of the imagination. become the common-place of daily occurrence. have closed the first century of our national life, and have

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gathered the nations to witness a prosperity which, even in the three years since the Centennial, has undergone amazing development.

But we are by no means alone in the records of the decade. France has witnessed the overthrow of the second Empire, the rise and fall of the Commune, and the crea tion and complete establishment of her Republic, an event more remarkable in the annals of history, than the career of the first Napoleon, the creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, or the Unification of Germany which has also occurred within the decade. England does not present as much that fills the eye; but abroad, in her control of the Suez Canal, her march into Afghanistan, her mastery over South Africa, her occupation of Cyprus and domination in Asia Minor, she has prepared for herself a new future which fills her friends alternately with hope and fear.. While at home, in her progress toward church disestablishment, in the growth of co-operation, and in the creation of her new system of public education, she has kept herself in the van of the century's progress. In these few years Italy has completed the work of establishing a new nation, which in the expulsion of the Austrian and the occupation of Rome she had then only begun, and Turkey has practically passed out of the list of the nations of Europe. While on the other hand it is hard to realize that though the discoveries of Livingstone and Stanley, within the same period the southern and central half of the continent of Africa has been called into being. India has placed the diadem of the empire upon the head of England's queen. China has by her commercial treaties taken her place among the great nations of the world, and has suffered the terrible and repeated famines which have opened the hearts and homes of the inaccessible millions of her vast interior provinces, to the preaching of the missionaries who came as the almoners of the charity of Christendom. Japan, that marvel of the nations, after revolutionizing her government, has undergone an intellectual new birth, and in

the zeal and consecration of her young churches has given to the world a new type of Christianity.

Turning our eyes homeward, what changes have we seen! Ten years ago Minneapolis had 14,000 inhabitants, now it has perhaps 55,000. Our present public school system existed only in embryo; the city was without gas, without sewers, without street cars, without established street grades, without numbers on the houses, without shade trees, without sidewalks, without fire engines, and without water, for the Holly system was just introduced. It is hard to realize that all our bridges, our larger mills, and nearly all our finer residences and permanent business blocks have been built during this period. The falls, from being the element of danger they were at the opening of the ill-fated tunnel nearly ten years ago, have become the substantial foundation of our city's wealth.

Our church edifice, endeared as it was by its associations with early days of trial, of loss, and of blessed revivals, was still a shabby, ill-painted, uncushioned wooden structure, on the corner of 4th St. and Nicollet Ave. Some of you will remember well its finger-smeared seats, whose white backs had long borne permanent record of the position of every worshipper, its smoky stoves, its cold floor, its uncontrolable draughts, its close air, its hearty greetings as all crowded in and out the single door, its old green carpet, and the dancing bellrope in the vestibule, which seemed to extend cordial welcome to the punctual, and to hang in silent warning for the tardy. We had 246 members, of whom 113 are with us now, an enthusiastic Sunday school and a single mission in the district school house in North Minneapolis. During the ten years we have received 244 members on profession, and 345 by letter, in all 589. We have 516 members now. Most of you know how the new chapel was built for the little mission school, in which it has grown into the vigorous self-sustaining Pilgrim church, our sister of to-day; how the Scandinavian school found its place, growing out of a class in the home Sunday

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