346 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 



persons have not so learned of Christ, who said, " What 

 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 

 his own soul ? " and who told His beautiful parable of 

 the one lost sheep straying in the wilderness, for the 

 sake of seeking and finding which the shepherd leaves 

 his ninety and nine sheep in the fold, in order to impress 

 upon men the blessed truth that it is not the will of the 

 Father in heaven that one of the least of His little ones 

 should perish. 



But it was not the salvation of a single soul only that 

 was involved. The Ethiopian eunuch was one of the 

 greatest African dignitaries. He was next in rank to the 

 Queen of Ethiopia ; and the influence which the con- 

 version of such a man to the Christian faith might be 

 expected to exercise, would, in the nature of things, be 

 immense and far-reaching. We know not as a matter 

 of history what effect had actually been produced by 

 the spiritual change upon his countrymen at the time. 

 But tradition ascribes to him the conversion to his new 

 faith of Candace and of many of her subjects. And if 

 we include in the territory of ancient Ethiopia, the 

 region now known as Abyssinia, it is possible that this 

 single conversion may have prepared the way for the 

 wonderful work which took place among the Ethiopians 

 at a later period, when the whole nation renounced 

 their heathen idolatries and became Christian, and the 

 ancient prophecies of Scripture, that Ethiopia would yet 

 lift her hands to God, were fulfilled. Valuable manu- 

 scripts of the Gospels and of the New Testament, that 

 go back to an early period, have been found in the 



