APPENDIX. 479 



just after they have acquired the language ! How often they 

 retire with broken-down constitutions before effecting anything ! 

 How often they drop burning tears over their own feebleness amid 

 the defections of those they believed to be converts ! Yes ! but 

 that small band has the decree of God on its side. Who has not 

 admired the band of Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae ? Three 

 hundred against three million. Japhet, with the decree of God on 

 his side, only 300 strong, contending for enlargement with Shem 

 and his 3,000,000. Consider what has been effected during the 

 last fifty years. There is no vaunting of scouts now. No Indian 

 gentlemen making themselves merry about the folly of thinking to 

 convert the natives of India ; magnifying the difficulties of caste ; 

 and setting our ministers into brown studies and speech-making 

 in defence of missions. No mission has yet been an entire failure. 

 We who see such small segments of the mighty cycles of God's 

 providence often imagine some to be failures which God does not. 

 Eden was such a failure. The old world was a failure under Noah's 

 preaching. Elijah thought it was all up with Israel. Isaiah said : 

 " Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the 

 Lord revealed ? " And Jeremiah wished his head were waters, his 

 eyes a fountain of tears, to weep over one of God's plans for diffus- 

 ing His knowledge among the heathen. If we could see a larger 

 arc of the great providential cycle, we might sometimes rejoice 

 when we weep ; but God giveth not account of any of His matters. 

 We must just trust to His wisdom. Let us do our duty. He will 

 work out a glorious consummation. Fifty years ago missions could 

 not lift up their heads. But missions now are admitted by all to 

 be one of the great facts of the age, and the sneers about " Exeter 

 Hall" are seen by every one to embody a risus sardonicus. The 

 present posture of affairs is, that benevolence is popular. God is 

 working out in the human heart His great idea, and all nations 

 shall see His glory. . . . 



Let us think highly of the weapons we have received for the 

 accomplishment of our work. The weapons of our warfare are not 

 carnal but spiritual, and mighty through God to the casting down 

 of strongholds. They are — Faith in our Leader, and in the pre- 

 sence of His Holy Spirit ; a full, free, unfettered Gospel ; the 

 doctrine of the cross of Christ, — an old story, but containing the 

 mightiest truths ever uttered — mighty for pulling down the strong- 

 holds of sin, and giving liberty to the captives. The story of 



