Page:The future of Africa.djvu/314

308 prolonged, with, alas! aggravations and intensities unknown in all her long previous eras. And now but fifty years have elapsed, and all this history is being reversed. The dark curtain is removed, and a brighter scene meets the view. God seems to have compressed in this single half-century the work and the blessings of thousands of years. And now I say that, looking at these facts as they stand before us—comparing them with the history of Africa, nigh three thousand years of a previous era—they appear marked, distinct, and marvellous. I say, that if the providences of God may be regarded as indications of His purposes and will; then, inasmuch as these providences are, in a marked degree, peculiar, so we may regard them as highly significant.

I am aware that it is the part of a wise man not to be too sanguine. I know, too, that, looking at the untold, the unknown millions in Central Africa, upon whom the eyes of civilized man have never fallen, the work is yet but begun. But when I note the rapidity of God's work during the brief period I have mentioned, and know that God allows no obstacles to stand against Him and His cause, whether it be a pestilential shore, or a violent population, or a sanguinary king, or vindictive slave-dealers, or a slave-trading town like that of Lagos; when I see these things, I cannot but believe that we are now approaching the fulfilment of this prophecy. When I see, moreover, how this great continent is invested on every side by the zealous ardent missionary or the adventurous traveller; how, almost weekly, something is brought to our cars across the ocean, of new