Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/425

 In reviewing the history of the mission-work in the kingdom of Siam well may the Christian Church—the Presbyterian Church in particular—"thank God and take courage." Buried in the deepest shadows of heathenish night, it long seemed as if the day of Siam's awaking to welcome the light of the gospel would never dawn. But it came at last. The Lord had a people there whom he would call to the knowledge of himself, and there were men and women "willing to endure all things for the elect's sake," assured through all those years of almost utter barrenness that they or some one would yet "reap if they fainted not;" and then the Board, with everything to discourage it, never gave up, and so reinforcements were sent out and new fields opened and manned, and schools for girls as well as boys established and maintained, and the translation of the Bible carried on to completion, and Christian hymnals prepared, and catechisms and tracts, and the printing-press kept busy, and its issues distributed far and wide in city and hamlet, along the many rivers and canals, and the gospel message preached in mission-chapels and idol-temples and by the wayside, till now (1884) the truth has taken root in the land, and there are in the nine Christian churches in Siam and Laos, as we have seen, more than three hundred and fifty men and women, once idolaters and without