III. AFRICA.

IN the Dark Continent, in which so much interest has been shown during the last twenty years by the Great Powers of Europe, who have brought much of it under their sway and the rest of it as far as possible within their respective spheres of influence, there are now not a few centres of light. These are irradiating its high table-lands and its tangled river-courses to some extent. And it is given to us to entertain the hope that by their more speedy multiplication the one shall be seen from the other, as on the approach of the Armada beacon-fires lighted up the kingdom of England from Plymouth Sound to high Skiddaw. Then it was to warn the nation, to stir them up against an invading host and against a more dangerous foe in the form of priests and Jesuits and the abominations of Rome. The warning is not unneeded now, when the Romish Church is putting forth every effort to enshroud the land in the darkness of ignorance and superstition, and when many in our Protestant churches are abetting such efforts by their false and indiscriminate charity, by their sacerdotalism, and by their sinful unconcern as to Christian truth making progress in the world.

There is hope for Africa in its numerous mission

It

churches and schools planted by various sections of the Church of Christ, in which the Gospel of the grace of God is preached and taught, that it will become a land of light and liberty, and be no more a land of darkness and the shadow of death." The shadow of death has indeed fallen upon it in another sense. has been, like Rome and some other great cities, "edax hominum," a devourer of men. The number of mission-workers of various kinds who have been martyred for Christ, or who, not less martyrs, have died from malarial fever and from other causes, has been very great. Such deaths have taken place in Morocco, in Sierra Leone, round by Old Calabar to the Congo, in Nyassaland, and in Uganda, in every mission sphere. Yet many have been spared, and have done in their time, or are doing now, noble work for the Master, some of them it may be in "deaths oft." Do they grudge their trials, their sufferings even unto death? They may have times of sadness, of faintness of spirit, there may be a Gethsemane for them as for the Son of man-they would scarcely be human if they had not these. But are they not generally of the mind of St Paul? "I am ready not to be bound only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” A brilliant Oxford student, who might have made a great name in England, said on leaving to be a missionary in Africa: "I think it is with African missions as with the building of a great bridge; you know how many stones have to be buried in the earth all unseen to be a foundation. If Christ wants me to be one of the unseen stones, lying in an African grave, I am content, certain as I am that the final result will be a Christian Africa."

It is an expensive bridge, but is it not worth the risk, though it cost some money and not a few lives? The Forth Bridge cost nearly four millions sterling, a larger sum than is given in one year by the whole of Christendom to the cause of missions. And it cost some lives. Should the risks of mission work be made so much of, as they sometimes are, especially by those who hate such work, who look upon it as the outcome of wild enthusiasm, and as tending to nothing good for humanity? Yet those very people will praise Polar expeditions, discoveries in science, and some philanthropic schemes, which indeed without Christianity could never have been undertaken, or made, or carried out. In all these the risks are as great as in mission work, and sometimes greater, as far as human life is concerned. And yet surely their ends are not greater than that of all true mission work, the leading of sinful men to the love and friendship of the sinless God.

The methods of missionary work in Africa seem to differ in some measure from those employed in India, where there are complicated religious systems hoary with age, with millions of superstitious followers, and where there is much of that kind of civilisation which can exist apart from Christianity. And there are sacred writings in connection with them, for which these millions have as much respect as many professing Christians have for the Bible. The Malakoff and the Redan of Brahminism and Buddhism need various modes of attack. The preaching of "Jesus Christ and of Him crucified "-not, however, in the narrow sense which some give to these words-is always and everywhere the chief means of overthrowing heathendom. But under this, and permeated by this, other