in the struggles of his own soul.  He wrought out what the inward impulses of his own breast prompted him to work, and behold, before he was aware, he was in the midst of the Reformation.  So, too, it was with the Plymouth pilgrims, with their sermons three times a day on board the Mayflower. Without thinking of founding an empire, they obeyed the sublime teachings of the Spirit, the promptings of duty and the spiritual life.  God working mightily in the human heart is the spring of all abiding spiritual power; and it is only as men follow out the sublime promptings of the inward spiritual life, that they do great things for God.

The movement of not one mind only, but the consentaneous movement of a multitude of minds in the same direction, constitutes what is called the spirit of the age.  This spirit is neither the law of progress nor blind development, but God’s all-eternal, all-embracing purpose, the doctrine which recognizes the hand of God in all events, yet leaves all human action free.  When God prepared an age for a new thought, the thought is thrust into the age as an instrument into a chemical solution—­the crystals cluster round it immediately.  If God prepares not, the man has lived before his time.  Huss and Wycliffe were like voices crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for a brighter future; the time had not yet come.

Who would not be a missionary?  “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”  Is God not preparing the world for missions which will embrace the whole of Adam’s family?  The gallant steamships circumnavigate the globe.  Emigration is going on at a rate to which the most renowned crusades of antiquity bear no proportion.  Many men go to and fro, and knowledge is increased.  No great emigration ever took place in our world without accomplishing one of God’s great designs.  The tide of the modern emigration flows toward the West.  The wonderful amalgamation of races will result in something grand.  We believe this, because the world is becoming better, and because God is working mightily in the human mind.  We believe it, because God has been preparing the world for something glorious.  And that something, we conjecture, will be a fuller development of the missionary idea and work.

There will yet be a glorious consummation of Christianity.  The last fifty years have accomplished wonders.  On the American Continent, what a wonderful amalgamation of races we have witnessed, how wonderfully they have been fused into that one American people—­type and earnest of a larger fusion which Christianity will yet accomplish, when, by its blessed power, all tribes and tongues and races shall become one holy family.  The present popularity of beneficence promises well for the missionary cause in the future.  Men’s hearts are undergoing a process of enlargement, Their sympathies are taking a wider scope.  The world is getting closer, smaller—­quite a compact affair.  The world for Christ will yet be realized.  “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”