of peace or war, of open strife and agitation, or of secret intrigue, in armed bands, or in the wiles of diplomacy, God's purposes are working. It is not possible to travel in the East, and not feel the stir of the great preparation.

"The hum of either army stilly sounds!"

The wings of angels on their errands almost brush past you in the air, and you hear their voices. The same work of preparation is on its way in China, and there too the providence of God, in keeping that vast empire closed against the influx of the Roman Catholics, till Protestants should be ready to enter with the gospel, is worthy of admiring gratitude. We look with deep interest towards opening events in that region. It seems as if God were about to break down the wall of the Celestial Empire, and give free access to the gospel in every part of it.

on.

The concentration of interest upon Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, is remarkable. There are great signs in the division and decline of the Mohammedan power, the advance of the principles of toleration, and the complication of Oriental with European politics, just at the time when so many interior changes in manners and in feeling, preparatory to the reception of the gospel, are going In connection with these things, the position of the Jews, and the increasing expectation, attention and efforts of the Church in regard to them, are significant. We think we may see indications of the meeting of those two tides of glory spoken of by Paul, which are together to roll over the world. The lines of prophecy in reference to Jew and Gentile run parallel; we should not expect to see the fulfilment of the one, unless the attention of the world were turned upon the other; in proportion as the preparations of Divine providence for the one are accomplishing, the arrangements for the other will be completed in their train. If the coming in of the fulness of the Gentiles is to be the period for the conversion of the Jews, the calling again of the Jews, is also to be as life from the dead to the unconverted Gentiles. Here is a definite point. When it begins to appear, we may know that these things are nigh, even at the doors. Looking now across these vast and troubled waters, we think we see that circular central commotion,

which indicates the actual meeting of those two main

currents.

The struggle in the oriental world must be one of intense interest, were it only for the remarkable fact, that the Mohammedan Empire comprehends nearly the whole scene of the transactions recorded in the Scriptures. The spots connected with the most sacred associations in the world's history, the points that are the mind's landmarks of interest and glory through the waste of ages, from the garden of Eden to the garden of Gethsemane, are there. We can touch but lightly, in detail, upon any part of this vast field, but we may dwell for one moment on that strange land, where our own feet have been privileged to wander amidst the ruins of three thousand years; that marvellous land of pyramids whose tops pierce heaven; that land of early enchantments and divine miracles, the cradle of post-diluvian antiquity and knowledge, the womb of half the world's science, and almost its grave! The broad seal of divine truth is stamped on every evidence of its present wretchedness, and every vestige of its long past glory. The temples that remain, and those that have fallen; the structures that still command the mind's irrepressible admiration and amazement, and the mouldering sphinxes that the feet tread upon; the tombs untenanted of their antique dead, and those vast colossal statues, that, like mighty spirits of the past, stand as time's sentinels over buried cities ;-all proclaim the unchangeable veracity of the word of God. They tell what Egypt has been, in the period of its grandeur, as the greatest of earth's empires; and that exactly what God's truth predicted, God's power has accomplished, in its prostration as "the basest of kingdoms."

But they have another voice; it is one of promised mercy, even amidst wrath and desolation. Egypt enjoys a distinction among the nations, as great in her predicted regeneration, as in her present overthrow and ruin. Side by side in the word of God stand the assurance of his wrath and the assurance of his mercy. The wrath has fallen, the mercy is to come; the proof of the one confirms the hope and expectation of the other. You may stand amidst the ruins of Egypt's idolatry upon promises of her Christian greatness. You may take the definite predictions of God's grace yet unaccomplished, and plead them, if you will, at

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the very foot of her mutilated idols, that seem, as with the voice of three thousand years, wailing the predictions of God's wrath verified. We look back upon it as a moment of intense interest, when, alone, in the innermost and oldest sanctuary of that vast temple of Karnak, that belts half the plain of Thebes, we kneeled down upon a shattered granite column, to break the stillness with the voice of prayer-to plead that the promise might come to its fulfilment, even as the threatening; that there, where never, through all ages, had aught but idols reigned, the name of Christ might reign and be adored, in the realization of the prediction that "the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day; whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, "Blessed Be EgypT, MY PEOPLE." It was a moment of intense interest, a moment, for which alone one might be willing to cross the Atlantic, and traverse the Nile. Often, wandering in that romantic valley, did it strike the mind as a strange thing, that the church of Christ, in my native land, in all her missionary plans and supplications, had so totally neglected that definite promise to plead, and the nation, of whom it is recorded in the Scriptures. Thither the providence of God is now turning the attention of the world, and is preparing the valley of the Nile to become one of the brightest fields of successful missionary operation.

In the work of preparation, which God is thus carrying on with kings and empires, and the very elements of nature, his missionaries, under his own divine guidance, are co-operating, in the establishment of schools, the preparation of instruments to work with, the publication of lexicons, tracts, and translations of the Scriptures, the surveying of countries, and the selection of missionary stations. It is the same labor, which has always been found necessary at the foundation of every great enterprise, and at the commencement of every great era of God's dispensations in the world. It was necessary on a great scale previous to the coming of Christ upon earth; and the same voice, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," is now rolling over the nations. The ideas of the church have been greatly corrected by this laborious discipline. At the outset our views were both romantic and crude; both churches and missionaries seemed to feel as if any other work than the immediate preaching of the cross to all nations were beneath our regard. Experience is the

great teacher: for the preaching of the gospel neither a pulpit nor a set audience is necessary; God himself is setting the example, and correcting our opinions, in preparing his highways ere he pours out his Spirit. In this country a race of preachers has been training, Sabbath Schools have been in operation; Biblical literature has been advancing; the Spirit of God has been poured out in revivals; a great practical school for missionaries afforded; bands of missionaries provided; the Seamen's Friend Societies in successful operation; Tract and Temperance Societies established prosperously; all the elements of missionary power and greatness gathering together. Our commerce has been extending, and abroad, the enterprise of travellers, and the researches of missionaries already in the field, have increased our geographical knowledge, and from regions hallowed as the birthplace of the Scriptures, have brought back new light for their illustration. In all things the prediction of God is fulfilling, that the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun sevenfold as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people.

As the increase of light upon the Scriptures is one of the modes of preparation for the work of missions, a vast accession of light and knowledge for their illustration will doubtless result from that work; it will follow the application of the mind of those nations, to the study of the Scriptures, in the midst of whom the events transacted and the scenes recorded in the Scriptures had their origin. The whole oriental mind is yet to be awakened and disciplined by the Bible, and is then to turn upon the illustration of the Bible the peculiar powers so prepared and directed. Such an era would be somewhat like the application of a new speculum in the telescope, to carry the range of our vision still further than it has ever yet travelled among the heavenly bodies. When the Jewish mind, redeemed and returned from its waste and dispersion, purified from the blindness of infidelity, and armed with the power of faith, shall be concentrated, amidst the lovely hallowed plains and hillsides of Judea, upon the adoring study of those wonderful prophecies, so long veiled, and that wonderful subject of prophecy, so long rejected, can we possibly think that no new light will issue from the change? Or that, when the Indian mind, delivered from

the thraldom of its caste, its Vishnus, and its strange, prodigious superstitions, shall be turned with the same heavendescended discipline upon the same heaven-inspired records, there will be no results of interest in the quickening of our religious studies into new life? Or that, when a nation tinged by the mysterious peculiarities of thought and feeling induced by an abode of ages on the borders of the Nile, shall be employed with the same believing zeal upon the same holy volume, there will arise out of this order of students nothing to contribute to our store of knowledge, nothing to enlarge the horizon of our views? If each individual human mind is like a prism, that throws the clear sunlight with some new shade of beauty over every object on which it is turned, the individual mind of nations is so too; a prism vast and magnificent enough to reveal new wonders for the world's admiration. And as the Bible is God's book of instruction and education for the world in all its generations, and for nations, with all their distinctive peculiarities of character and habits, there is probability in the idea, that many a mount of vision is to be scaled, as yet unmeasured, and many a valley of thought to be laid open, as yet completely hidden, for the discovery of which we wait the application of particular national minds, or of minds formed under particular national influences.

England and America have taken the lead in the work of missions, but it is not these nations only, by whom God is now moving in these mighty arrangements. The Protestants in France and Switzerland are rising to the work. In that very nation, where, a few years ago, the sun and the stars seemed blotted from existence in the spiritual firmament, where infidelity was worshipped as wisdom, and death publicly proclaimed an eternal sleep, so great a change even now is witnessed, that Bible, Tract, Evangelical, and Missionary Societies are not only formed, but in energetic operation. The sons of them that afflicted the Church come bending unto Zion, and the picture in the 60th chapter of Isaiah's prophecy seems destined, even in its minutest details, to a visible realization.

It is not possible to look upon a more sublime spectacle than that which rises to the mind of a spiritual observer at the present crisis. A voice like the archangel's trumpet is crying, Cast up, cast up the highway, gather out the stones,