rayers and self-denial has been to extend its
power to be useful and give it much more to do.

And does not the LORD CLAIM from us this larger service? He has shown
the need of the heathen world more clearly, and made the argument
for instructing it unanswerable.

We have prospects for the future to which the gains of the past are
poor. With our skilled agencies, all shaped by experience, with plans
well-tried, with our versions and our literatures in every tongue,
with China opened widely in answer to prayer, with India deeply moved,
with Africa free, with Polynesia raised and civilized, with
Madagascar purified by fire--what tokens have we of manifest
blessing, of approval, and of divine help! The old systems have
fallen, or are paralysed, or are trembling with fear; and the young
life of the world is drawing towards freedom and truth. Our results
are incomplete; they are but an earnest of successes yet to be
gathered; and the full reward will be reaped more truly as the years
go by. But how noble that reward will be!

A pleasant custom prevails in India which will illustrate our
position. At all the military stations of the Empire, the troops are
summoned to parade in the early morning by the firing of a gun. The
night may still be dark; the restless sleeper may fancy it will yet
be long. But suddenly amid the stillness loud and clear booms out
the morning gun. The stars are still shining, and the landscape is
wrapped in gloom. But THE DAWN IS NEAR; and soon every eye is open,
every foot astir, and the busy, waking life of men again begins. The
fleecy clouds that hang on the eastern horizon grow ruddy with gold;
and the arrowy light shoots its bright rays athwart the clear blue
sky. The dust and foulness which the night has hidden stand revealed.
But in the forests and hills the pulses of nature beat fresh and full;
the leopard and the tiger slink away; the gay flowers open; the birds
flit to and fro, and with woodland music welcome the rising day. In
the city all forms of life quicken into active exercise. The trader
sits ready on his stall; the judge is on the bench; the physician
allays pain; the mother tends her child. The claims of human duty
come again into full force; benevolence is active; suffering and
disappointment, forgotten in sleep, press with new weight on weary
hearts. What a mighty change one hour has made!

Long has the night of heathenism and of wickedness ruled over the
world. "Darkness has c