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the fitness of the gospel

Zealand, Sierra Leone. Should we have doubt that yet nobler triumphs await her progress in new and opening fields among more susceptible and anxious people? I know that we often get discouraging words from the wise men of the world as to the prospective results of missionary labors. They look back with an inquisitorial eye, a carping mind, and a doubtful and denying spirit, at the long years of Christian zeal and energy from the time of Christ. They see the larger epiarters of the globe under the rule of Satan, and presumptuously demand, "Where is the promise of His coming? We do not see the signs of the earth's conversion. Heathenism still rules the masses of men. Even where your missionaries have been sent, and your mission schools and churches have been built, we can see no signs of the superior power of the faith you are preaching."

And yet it is a singular and striking fact that, with regard to those particular fields at which the sneers of doubters have been aimed, God there, on those very spots, has demonstrated the foolishness of man and the power of His Gospel, by the abundant ingathering of souls from among the heathen. Who is there here who does not remember the bitter, biting wit and the keen sarcasm with which a humorous priest in England once ridiculed the missionary zeal of Carey? And yet Sidney Smith lived to hear and know of the triumphs of the faith in India, of the strong and permanent establishment of Christ's Church amid the splendid monuments of Hindooism. So, only a year or two ago, a leading English review brought all the power of a proud intellect, all the