480 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. 



Bedemption, of which Paul said, " I am not ashamed of the gospel 

 of Christ," is old, yet in its vigour, eternally young. 



This work requires zeal for God and love for souls. It needs 

 prayer from the senders and the sent, and firm reliance on Him 

 who alone is the Author of conversion. Souls cannot be converted 

 or manufactured to order. Great deeds are wrought in uncon- 

 sciousness, from constraining love to Christ; in humbly asking, 

 Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? in the simple feeling, we 

 have done that which was our duty to do. They effect works, the 

 greatness of which it will remain for posterity to discern. The 

 greatest works of God in the kingdom of grace, like His majestic 

 movements in nature, are marked by stillness in the doing of them, 

 and reveal themselves by their effects. They come up like the 

 sun, and show themselves by their own light. The kingdom of 

 God cometh not with observation. Luther simply followed the 

 leadings of the Holy Spirit 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 Preformation. 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, consti- 

 tutes 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 recognises 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 



