God leads us on.  Said Lincoln:  “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.  My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day.”  Like a vast Hand stretched against the sky of Time is the Hand of God—­a Hand writing, in these wondrous days, a destiny for generations yet to be!  Rising with us are all God-fearing nations—­the Teutonic, Slav, and Latin peoples.  Sitting yet in darkness, and massed against us, crouch sullenly the immemorial hordes of Asia, the wild blacks of the African swamps and jungles, and the dwellers of Polynesian seas.  Occident and Orient, the world’s battalions are forming for new encounters and new dismays.  Never since the strong-limbed Goths changed the face of Europe has there been a period of such tense anticipation, nor so great a possibility of volcanic change.  We are entering an historic period of reconstruction, when new maps of the world will be drawn.  The sceptre is passing into new hands:  to-day the throne of civilization is being arched above the seaway which joins London and New York.  To-morrow, it may be builded above Pacific tides, where our own shores look westward to the ports of Asiatic Russia.  For, rising on the world-horizon, are these two World-empires, Russia and the United States.  The dictators of these two countries will soon become the dictators of the human race.  They are brave and virile nations, with untold reserves of power!  As these two giants gird themselves for World-dominion, who but God shall gird the armor on, direct the onward course of change?

Much of the ancient wealth and beauty shall be done away.  In a few generations the shrines of thirty centuries will be no more.  Fane and temple and pagoda will disappear; carvings, images, and Sikh-guarded courts.  Long lines of yellow-robed priests will chant their last processional hymn to Buddha, and the smoking incense to waning gods shall be quenched forever.  Where Tao rites were celebrated, silence shall fall; where fakir and dervish tortured and immolated their lives, happy children shall play.  Instead of the lotos of the Ganges and the Nile, there shall bloom the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Vale.

But as the empires of Buddha and Muhammad fall, a new Empire shall prevail!

     “Kings shall bow down before Him,
        And gold and incense bring;
      All nations shall adore Him,
        His praise all people sing. 
      To Him shall prayer unceasing
        And dally vows ascend;
      His kingdom still increasing,
        A kingdom without end.”

IV.  THE WORLD-MARCH:  OF PRELATES AND EVANGELISTS

     [LYONS]