"HER REPORT HATH TRAVELLED FORTH INTO ALL LANDS." "THE COMING OF THE LORD DRAWETH NIGH." "EVEN SO COME, LORD JESUS, COME QUICKLY." PREFACE. OVER the continent of India, teeming with beings, whose destinies for eternity roll on with the stream of time, the Christian philanthropist has long cast his eye; and with an intensity of interest known to him who has felt the value of a Saviour, watched the united efforts of the Christian Church to arrest the abominations of idolatry, and witnessed with concern the zeal and life of missionaries, together with the funds of benevolence, poured out on the altar of faith, without producing those results which anticipation in the fulfilment of Prophecy delighted to recognize as near at hand. That, however, which the mere politician and sceptic would denominate a failure, is nothing more than the barrenness of the ground between the period of sowing and that of germination, and cannot, by the servants of the blessed Jesus, be regarded as the sterility of the soil. Holy men of God, and full of faith, like Brown, Martyn, Corrie, and Thomason, &c., have cast in the seed, and entered into rest, in the sure and certain hope, that the period shall arrive, when sower and reaper shall rejoice together, bringing their sheaves with them, Others are now humbly following in their track, and, though the season of sowing is not yet past, they are occasionally delighted to see, here and there, an oasis rising up in the moral desert (surely indicating the approach of Messiah's reign), and which shall encroach on the surrounding wastes, till the wilderness shall blossom as the rose, and the desert sing for joy. For Jehovah hath said it, that "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater ;-so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." (Isa. v. 10.) The Lord hasten it in its time! |