of a giant in seven-league boots, from mountaintop to mountain-top. China is in itself a world, containing a population larger than the whole world at the time of Christ. And yet in one year

that world of China was Christian missions.

made accessible to

Let us go still Westward. What is, during this same year, 1858, occurring in India, itself another great world of many languages and peoples and religions?

The mutiny of 1857, which, in the opinion of godless and greedy men who would make money out of traffic in human bodies or souls, was to rid India of the saints, opened India to them. God gave it to such Christian heroes as Sir John Lawrence and Sir Henry Havelock and Sir Colin Campbell, to save the British army from massacre. It was this formidable revolt of 1857 which called attention to the mismanagment of East Indian affairs by the East India Company, whose powers had gradually grown, until, long before its abolition, it had become a court from whose decisions there was no appeal. And the result of investigation was that, not only in this memorable year 1858, but in that same month, August (2d) all the territories previously under the government of the Company became vested in the British Queen, and Victoria became Empress of the Indies. This was a change that can be appreciated only by those who have studied minutely the history of

the Company, which from the year 1600 had been growing more and more despotic; who remember how, when the devoted Robert Haldane, in 1796, sold his estate at Airthrey and proposed to establish a new mission at Benares, the centre of Brahminical idolatry, at his own expense, the Company defeated his scheme, one director remarking that he "would rather a band of devils than a band of missionaries landed in India”; who remember how Wm. Carey and Henry Martyn had encountered the bitter hostility of this same East India Company, so that the flag of Britain, now the symbol of a Christian civilization and the pledge of both civil and religious liberty wherever it floats, was in India the signal for hatred and jealousy of mission work.

But now the 300,000,000 of India were brought under the sway of the British sceptre and made accessible to the mightier sceptre of the King of kings. Surely it was a momentous epoch in history which opened on the day when British courts, laws, and judges, churches, schools, and colleges, presses, books, and Bibles had freedom to plant over those wide domains the institutions of a Christian state! Here opened another world, almost as large and populous as China, and some think that an accurate census would show India to be the more populous, as it is undoubtedly the more important of the two-the pivot of Oriental life. Meanwhile, in that same India, another

transformation was taking place, scarcely less important.

We all know how heathen and pagan institutions have shut women out from all contact even with the uplifting influence of knowledge. The zenana, like the harem and seraglio, has stood for thousands of years as the polite name for a domestic and social Bastile, in which, without cause, at the will of a domestic despot, in India alone one hundred millions of women and girls have been effectually imprisoned.

Now that the zenana work has grown to such dimensions, there are more claimants for the honor of its origination than for the honor of cradling Homer; but, as near as can be traced, it was in 1858 that Mrs. Elizabeth Sale, of Helensburgh, Scotland, began work in Calcutta among the women, using needle-work embroidery as the key that unlocked these long-shut doors.* From that first attempt at organized work among women in the zenanas, the harvest has already become wonderfully fruitful.

And now, to the marvellous events already noted which make 1858 the Year of the Open Doors, we must add three more. In that year the revolutionary changes in Papal Europe prepared the way for Free Italy and Protestant missions; in that same year the revolution in Mexico under Benito Juarez paved the path of the Gospel in Central *Miss. Review, July, 1890, p. 554.

America; and in the same year David Livingstone sailed a second time for Africa to complete his explorations and pioneer a road into the interior for the missionary. Thus in Japan, China, India and its zenanas, Italy and papal Europe, Central America, and even Africa, 1858 was the great year when doors were unlocked for the Gospel.

Thus, at risk of tediousness, we have expatiated on the providential interventions in answer to prayer which show that the crisis in missions, which is the result and the sign of growth, is also the direct proof of a prayer-hearing God. And what follows? That what appears to be an emergency to which we are unequal, is in fact a divine challenge to renewed prayerfulness, consecration, dependence on God, and confidence and courage such as faith inspires. Such crises have occurred at various turning-points of Christian history; and everything depends on how the Church meets the exigency.

From the voluminous records of missions we select two representative instances of how everything hangs upon the spirit in which critical and pivotal conditions are met by the people of God, in hopes that we may learn the lesson of the hour.

The only way to meet such a crisis in missions is to appeal to God in believing prayer, and then take new courage. Even discouragements are thus transformed into incentives and incitements to duty. Where we have our Lord's plain com

mand, especially when backed by such providential openings and leadings, the apparent hopelessness of our task is only designed to try our faith and develop our courage.

First, we may find a representative and impressive example of this principle in the story of Tahiti. The missionaries seemed for fourteen years to have labored in vain and spent their strength for naught. Their zeal, their toil, their long journeys and faithful exhortations, did not even awaken interest or inquiry on the part of the natives. Not one instance of conversion had yet rewarded them. Not only so, but the missionaries, driven away from the island by war, their houses burned, were actually cut off from all communication with it. The first missionaries of the London Missionary Society had landed in 1797, and so many years had passed in fruitless effort that, about 1813, the directors, disheartened, proposed to abandon the mission altogether. A few firm friends of the work resolutely resisted all such proposals. Dr. Haweis, for example, added to his former donations another of two hundred pounds, and pressed the society to new efforts and more earnest prayers. Rev. Matthew Wilks, John Williams' pastor, joined with Dr. Haweis in remonstrance against such unbelief and abandonment of the Lord's work, and with his peculiar vehemence said, "I will sell the garments from my back before I will consent to give up this mission," and