name of the Lord—­these are events which ought to exercise our faith and patience, to wean us from self-sufficiency, to teach where our strength lies, and where our dependence must be fixt; but not to enfeeble hope nor relax diligence.  Let us not “despise the day of small things.”  Let us not overlook, as an important matter, the very existence of that missionary spirit which has already awakened Christians in different countries from their long and dishonorable slumbers, and bids fair to produce, in due season, a general movement of the Church upon earth.  Let us not, for one instant, harbor the ungracious thought that the prayers, and tears, and wrestlings of those who make mention of the Lord, form no link in that vast chain of events by which He “will establish, and will make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”  That dispensation which is most repulsive to flesh and blood, the violent death of faithful missionaries, should animate Christians with new resolution.  “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”  The cry of martyred blood ascends the heavens:  it enters into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.  It will give Him no rest till He rain down righteousness upon the land where it has been shed, and which it has sealed as a future conquest for Him who “in his majesty rides prosperously because of truth, and meekness and righteousness.”

For the world, indeed, and perhaps for the Church, many calamities and trials are in store, before the glory of the Lord shall be so revealed that all flesh shall see it together.  “I will shake all nations,” is the divine declaration—­“I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come.”  The vials of wrath which are now running, and others which remain to be poured out, must be exhausted.  The “supper of the great God” must be prepared, and his “strange work” have its course.  Yet the missionary cause must ultimately succeed.  It is the cause of God and shall prevail.  The days, O brethren, roll rapidly on, when the shout of the isles shall swell the thunder of the continent; when the Thames and the Danube, when the Tiber and the Rhine, shall call upon Euphrates, the Ganges, and the Nile; and the loud concert shall be joined by the Hudson, the Mississippi, and the Amazon, singing with one heart and one voice, “Alleluia, salvation!  The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”

Comfort one another with this faith and with these words.

Now, “Blest be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doth wondrous things.  And blest be his glorious name forever:  Let the whole earth be filled with his glory.  Amen and amen.”

END OF VOL.  III.