The English West Indies were first forbidden to import slaves; next, all the slaves were set free; and there are now four Bishoprics for their black and white population. All negroes seized in the ships of other nations, on their way to be made slaves, are brought back to Sierra Leone, on the coast of Africa, there set free, and taught to be Christians under a Bishop of our Church; and the Christian blacks are beginning to carry the message of salvation into the other parts of Africa, where the climate is so hurtful to Englishmen, that only the negro race could there do the work.
South Africa has three Bishops to rule their English settlers, win the Dutch farmers to the Church, and convert the Hottentots and Zulus. And from them a Missionary Bishop has been sent out to the heathen tribes in the interior of the continent.
North America contains nine great Bishops' Sees, and the huge Island of Australia six. New Zealand, scarcely discovered till within the last fifty years, has three Bishops of her own, ruling over a population of English, and of Christian natives, men whose fathers were cannibals, but who are now hearty Christians; and it is the centre whence a Mission Bishop is seeking to gain to the Church the inhabitants of the beautiful islands that thickly dot the Pacific Ocean. Many of these islanders have become Christian, under the teaching of missionaries from the other Societies; and though great numbers still remain savage heathens, yet the light of the Gospel is in the course of shining upon all the islands far away. Everywhere the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, are being taught, and each convert is gathered in by baptism and fed by the Holy Eucharist, as when the apostles first went forth; and no one can mark the great spread of the Church within the last fifty years, without feeling that the blessing of God is with her. The Greek Church has done less; but though still enslaved in Turkey, in Greece she is free, and the yoke of the Mahometan is there shaken off, after her long patience and constancy.
There are dark spots in all this brightness, for Rome still teaches the same errors mixed up with the truth, and the spirit of unbelief is to be found far and wide, questioning and explaining away all the mysteries it cannot understand.
We know that it must be so, for it was to fight with sin that Christ came into the world, and left His Church there; and St. Paul prophesied that evil men and seducers should wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Daniel too, foresaw that the little horn should spring up, and do very wickedly; and all the tenor of prophecy in the Epistles declares that times of trouble and temptation must try the Church.
It seems that there has been, even from the Apostles' times, an evil spirit opposing himself to our Lord, and therefore called by St. John the Anti-Christ. His manifestations have broken out in many ways—in Arianism, in Mahometanism, perhaps in the great errors of Rome, and more lately, in Infidelity, and in Mormonism; and it would seem that there is to be some much more dreadful development of "that wicked one" exalting himself against Christ, and severely trying the elect. But we have a certain promise, that come what may, Christ will never forsake His chosen flock; and those who try to hold fast the faith once delivered to the Saints, and to keep the law of love, clinging to their own true branch of the Church, may be sure that He Who has redeemed them, will guard them from all evil, and that they will share in His glory when He shall come with all His holy angels to put all enemies under His feet. Then He shall sit on His great white Throne, and gather His elect from the four winds to dwell in the eternal Jerusalem, which needs neither sun nor moon, for the Lamb is the light thereof.
QUESTIONS.
LESSON I.
1. In what state was the Earth when first created?
2. To what trial was man subjected?