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REV. J. B. WHITING, M.A., ON 



Why did the monastic institutions provide men of leisure 

 to copy manuscripts of the Word of God? Why did the 

 invention of printing occur just when the revival of Greek 

 learning took place in Western Europe, and the thought of 

 making translations of the Scriptures into the language of the 

 people took possession of capable scholars ? Why did the 

 seventeenth century prepare for the eighteenth ; and the 

 eighteenth, with all its infidel philosophy on the one side, and 

 its evangelistic triumphs among our home population on the 

 other, prepare for the nineteenth, unless it was in the Plan ? 



On what other principle can we account for the fact that 

 a hundred years ago the minds of obscure servants of God 

 were moved to inaugurate the missionary agencies which 

 have since been so great ? The missionary impulse cannot 

 be traced to the political movements of the hour. It cannot 

 be traced to the intellectual tendencies of those particular 

 years. It was wholly distinct from the ideas which led to the 

 marvellous scientific discoveries, which at the same period laid 

 the foundations of magnificent inventions. 



Yet where would have been our missionary successes but 

 for the decisive battle of Waterloo, the abolition of slavery, or 

 the overspreading of India by the British power? The 

 practical application of steam and electricity have made the 

 missionary enterprise, and the printing and circulation of 

 many millions of the Holy Scriptures, possible. How could 

 the relation between the Church Missionary House in 

 Salisbury Square, or between the Committees of the other 

 great Missionary Societies, and of the Christian Knowledge 

 Society, the Eeligious Tract Society, and the British and 

 Foreign Bible Society, and the thousands of missionaries in 

 many hundreds of stations all over the globe, have subsisted 

 without the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, and the post, 

 or without the cutting of the Suez Canal, and the gigantic 

 power of England and the United States ?* 



It is not altogether reasonable to accuse the Church in 

 past ages as neglectful of the duty of evangelising the world. 

 There have always been great missionaries. But the Church 

 had other work to do — work preparatory for the appointed 



* While these pages were passing thiough the press an important step 

 has been made in extending the Kingdom of God by the joint action of 

 Lord Cromer and the Sirdar of the Soudan, in inviting the Church 

 Missionary Society to send missionaries to the Pagan nations of the 

 Upper Nile, now under British influence. — Editor. 



