Parish Papers by Norman Macleod
page 233 of 276 (84%)
page 233 of 276 (84%)
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incurring punishment. Several societies labour in Algiers, Egypt,
Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, and Constantinople. The Euphrates is being dried up. The Mohammedan power is tottering, and ready to fall! When it dies and is buried, who will wear mourning at its funeral? And how strange is the meeting between the distant East and West, the distant past and near present, visible in the fact, that it is missionaries from America who now unveil to the dwellers in the land of the Chaldees, and to the wanderers among the mountains which shadow the birth-place of the human race, that blessed faith and hope which dwelt in Abram, as he journeyed at the dawn of history from that old land, and which has returned thither again in Christian men embued with Abram's faith, after having accompanied civilisation around the globe? God's blessing has signally attended the American mission among the Nestorians. The revival of religion in their schools and churches has been great and glorious. May we not exclaim, What hath God wrought! Yet how can any statistics carry to our hearts a sense of what has been done for immortal souls by the gospel during this eventful period? What homes have been made happy by it; what families united in the bonds of love; what sick-beds soothed; what dying beds cheered; what minds illumined, and what hearts filled with joy unspeakable, and full of glory! * * * * * In close connexion with mission work, we may state the progress made during the present century in leavening the world with the Word of God. Previous to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, there was not one society in existence whose sole |
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