Events have moved fast since the already distant day when the Colonial and Industrial Exhibition was ministering exultation to many a British heart by its wonderful display of the various wealth of our distant domains and their great industrial resources.  We were even then tempted—­as have been nations that are no more—­to pride ourselves on having reached an unassailable height of grandeur.  Since then our territory has expanded and our wealth increased; but with them have increased the evils and the dangers inseparable from great possessions, and the responsibilities involved in them.  We can only “rejoice with trembling” in this our second year of Jubilee.  Remembering with all gratitude how we have been spared hitherto, and mindful of the perils that wait on power and prosperity, let it be ours to offer such sacrifices of thanksgiving as can be pleasing to the almighty Ruler of the ways of men, whom too often in pride of power, in selfish satisfaction with our own achievements, we forget.

Many are the works of mercy, well pleasing in His sight, with which we can associate ourselves, even in this favoured land, whose ever increasing wealth is balanced by terrible poverty, and its affluence of intellectual and spiritual light by grossest heathen darkness.  Day by day, as our brief account has shown, are increasing efforts put forth by our Christian men and women to overcome these evils; and through such agencies our country may yet be saved, and may not perish like other mighty empires, dragged down by its own over-swollen greatness, and by neglect of the eternal truth that “righteousness exalteth a nation:  but sin is a reproach to any people.”