prolonged, with, alas! aggravations and intensities unknown in all her long previous eras.
And now but fifty years have elapsed, and all this history is being reversed. The dark curtain is removed, and a brighter scene meets the view. God seems to have compressed in this single half-century the work and the blessings of thousands of years. And now I say that, looking at these facts as they stand before us—comparing them with the history of Africa, nigh three thousand years of a previous era—they appear marked, distinct, and marvellous. I say, that if the providences of God may be regarded as indications of His purposes and will; then, inasmuch as these providences are, in a marked degree, peculiar, so we may regard them as highly significant.
I am aware that it is the part of a wise man not to be too sanguine. I know, too, that, looking at the untold, the unknown millions in Central Africa, upon whom the eyes of civilized man have never fallen, the work is yet but begun. But when I note the rapidity of God's work during the brief period I have mentioned, and know that God allows no obstacles to stand against Him and His cause, whether it be a pestilential shore, or a violent population, or a sanguinary king, or vindictive slave-dealers, or a slave-trading town like that of Lagos; when I see these things, I cannot but believe that we are now approaching the fulfilment of this prophecy. When I see, moreover, how this great continent is invested on every side by the zealous ardent missionary or the adventurous traveller; how, almost weekly, something is brought to our cars across the ocean, of new
