followed with his muskets and powder, his exciting firewater; with his brilliant beads, his gorgeous chintzes, his convenient cutlery; he followed with sugar, and coffee, and tea, which he was willing to exchange for karosses and deer-horns, and cattle; for teeth and tusks of ivory.  Aids to civilization such things might prove; but standing alone how could they elevate, when powder fed the wars; when the drink prostrated chief and people; and even Englishmen encouraged the sale of slaves.

True civilization springs from pure religion.  Where grace touches the heart of a man, it quickens all his powers.

   “The transformation of apostate man
    From fool to wise, from earthly to divine,
    Is work for Him that made him.”

Among a barbarous people the gospel effects changes in one generation which ages without its grace have failed to secure.  “In coming back to the station on the Kuruman,” says Livingstone, “from the tribes in the interior, I always felt that I had come back to civilization.”  It is the Gospel which has made the Kuruman; and what it is, other stations are already beginning to be.  Apart from its christian church and christian community; apart from the many who have lived a holy life and died in the Lord; apart from the well studied translation of the Bible to which Mr. Moffat has given the strength of his life,—­all over the northern territory the tribes which have heard the Gospel are waking up to new, strange thought; conscience is struggling upward into power; and life is taking for them a new form, and is exhibiting a higher purpose.  Peace is desired more than ever; towns and settlements are becoming seats of constant industry; waggons are purchased by chiefs and people; cottages and gardens multiply.  When Sechele and five thousand of his people hold a meeting to pray for rain, and gather again to offer thanks for the blessing bestowed, the influence of the rain-maker must be on the decline.  And when the Matebele hope that the successor of Moselekatse, wandering in other districts, will have learned the religion of the gospel, and rule gently according to its precepts, surely the time for their deliverance is nigh at hand.

X.—­MADAGASCAR.

[Illustration:  Map of the country 20 miles around Antananarivo, Madagascar.]

The Madagascar mission is peculiarly dear to the friends of the London Missionary Society; and not to them only, but to all the supporters of Foreign Missions.  It is the child of their affection; the object of their most tender compassion, their yearnings, and their prayers.  Its long trial of suffering, the grace given to its scattered members, their patience, their fidelity, have drawn to its churches the love, the confidence, the reverence of all christian hearts.  Its history is a very simple one.  Founded in 1818,