THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
It seems to be a day of great bequests. While our country and others as well have been straitened by hard times, fortunes well planted have been growing silently, and those who have watched over them have been devising liberal things. The estate of Daniel Stone of Massachusetts, yields $1,000,000 for educational endowments; that of Asa Otis of Connecticut, at least $1,000,000 for foreign missions. Judge Packer of Pennsylvania leaves $2,000,000 to the Lehigh University; this in addition to $1,000,000 which it cost to found the institution. Gardiner Colby of Boston directs nearly $400,000 to be distributed among various Baptist institutions and societies. Dr. Hugh Miller of Scotland leaves some $140,000 for missionary purposes. Nor can we fail to mention here the $100,000 which Mr. Robert Arthington of England has given or offered to British and American missionary societies, of at least four denominations of Christians, for the planting of missionary enterprises in Equatorial Africa. The estate of Mr. R. R. Graves of New York, in addition to large gifts already made, has nearly $100,000 in process of distribution mainly for work in the South. These and others like them are significant facts, that from so many sources there should have been such large appropriations to such good work.
We are led to look, therefore, to the other end of the line. What is the motive which has moved these stewards of God to turn their benefactions in such directions in so large a measure? Rather, we ask, what is the corresponding providence which has called for them, or the preparation which has been making far away for their wise use, the signs of which were not seen, perhaps, by the givers at the time when they were thus carrying out the Lord’s will? What is the significance of it all in the divine plan?
Is it not that the world is suddenly opening for missionary work as perhaps never before in all its history? that in more than one direction the long twilight which has been slowly creeping over the eastern sky is breaking in a moment into glorious dawn? that the seed which has been growing secretly these many days has come to be the bud, and now is bursting into the flower? Such crises do come in the history of God’s world, in the progress of the Gospel of his Son.
Three illustrations of this truth are just now conspicuous——India is clamoring for the Gospel; missionaries are beset with eager throngs begging for the bread of life; whole villages are calling each for a Christian teacher to come and dwell among them and lead them to the Christ. Thousands have been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus during the past year. Japan, too, which succeeded in keeping itself secluded from all interference from without until so late a day, has taken down its official threats published at every crossroad against “the Jesus religion,” and, as it throws away its idol gods, is ready to accept either the materialism or the Christianity of Europe and America; and Africa is no longer a region of unexplored darkness, but has been forced to give up its secrets to the Christian explorer as well as to the Arab slave-trader, who heretofore alone has shared them with the aborigines. Africa is known, and already has followed the death-blow to the internal traffic in human life; missionary expeditions are winding along its rivers and across its swamps, and, with the Arab out, the Christian may come in. For us, this last great continent is of peculiar interest, and its opening lends a new and wider meaning and reach to the work we have been patiently doing in the South? Are not these the complementing facts which stand over against those stated first, and which explain them?
God has brought his church into a crisis by which he will try its faith and its faithfulness. He has opened the doors wide for its entrance into new fields. No longer does the missionary have to push himself into the midst of heathendom; but the cry is heard on every side, “Come over and help us.” And then the Lord of both the fields and the fountains has shown us by these illustrious examples of both the living and the dead, how he looks to the men who hold his wealth to administer their trusts, and to lead on the hosts of those who may swell the stream with much or little, as he has prospered them. Will the church of Christ bear the testing? Let us hope that these large gifts are only the great drops which tell us of the coming shower which shall fill all the pools. Nay, rather, let us pray that this may be the beginning of “the latter rain.”