478 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 



The missionary's head will lie low, and others will have entered 

 into his labours, before his ideal is realised. The Future for which 

 he works is one which, though sure, has never yet been seen. 

 The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the 

 Lord. The missionary is a harbinger of the good time coming. 

 When he preaches the Gospel to a tribe which has long sat in 

 darkness, the signs of the coming of the Son of Man are displayed. 

 The glorious Sun of Eighteousness is near the horizon. He is the 

 herald of the dawn, for come He will whose right it is to reign ; 

 and what a prospect appears, when we think of the golden age 

 which has not been, but must yet come ! Messiah has sat on the 

 Hill of Zion for 1800 years. He has been long expecting that 

 His enemies shall be made His footstool ; and may we not expect, 

 too, and lift up our heads, seeing the redemption of the world 

 draweth nigh ? The bow in the cloud once spread its majestic 

 arch over the smoke of the fat of lambs ascending as a sweet- 

 smelling savour before God — a sign of the covenant of peace — and 

 the flickering light of the Shechinah often intimated the good-will 

 of Jehovah. But these did not more certainly show the presence 

 of the Angel of the Covenant than does the shaking among the 

 nations the presence and energy of God's Holy Spirit ; and to be 

 permitted to rank as a fellow-worker with Him is a mercy of 

 mercies. Love Divine ! how cold is our love to Thee ! True, 

 the missionary of the present day is only a stepping-stone to the 

 future ; but what a privilege he possesses ! He is known to 

 " God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, 

 preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up 

 into glory." Is that not enough ? 



Who would not be a missionary ? His noble enterprise is in 

 exact accordance with the spirit of the age, and what is called the 

 spirit of the age is simply the movement of multitudes of minds 

 in the same direction. They move according to the eternal and 

 all-embracing decrees of God. The spirit of the age is one of 

 benevolence, and it manifests itself in numberless ways — ragged 

 schools, baths and wash-houses, sanitary reform, etc. Hence 

 missionaries do not live before their time. Their great idea of 

 converting the world to Christ is no chimera : it is Divine. Chris- 

 tianity will triumph. It is equal to all it has to perform. It is 

 not mere enthusiasm to imagine a handful of missionaries capable 

 of converting the millions of India. How often they are cut off 



