ROMANCE

OF

THE MISSION FIELD.

I.

PRAYER ANSWERED.

Make things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats,
That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer,

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

"God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform."

TENNYSON.

o wrote Cowper, in that beautiful hymn, in which the inscrutable wisdom of Jehovah, working out the loving designs of His Providence, is described in strains that have carried with them abundant consolation and hope to many a desponding spirit.

The sentiment embodied in these words must have presented itself in great power and beauty to the eleven chosen "Apostles of the Lamb," as they contemplated the manner in which the Divine Head of the Church filled up the vacancy among them that had been created by the apostasy of "the son of perdition." Setting aside the mistaken

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arrangements of mere human wisdom by a method of His own, transcending all human anticipation, and in the exercise of His own sole prerogative, he provided a successor to Judas in the apostolate; going into the camp of the enemy, seizing upon the very head and chief of the persecutors, and transforming that embodiment of bitter, fierce, persecuting zeal into a bright flame of light and love, and changing the relentless, unscrupulous opposer into a faithful and dauntless friend. It was a development of His wonderworking Providence, fraught with richest instruction and encouragement to them in their great work. And it was calculated to open up to them enlarged views of Christ's mediatorial government and illimitable perfections, and abundantly to strengthen their faith in Him. It afforded a lofty and impressive illustration of the truth, that "His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts; "and, "as the heavens are high above the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts."

So it is in many of the great events which stand out prominently in man's history. Divine Wisdom selects and brings out the instruments suited to the accomplishment of its own beneficent purposes in a way that baffles and transcends all human sagacity and forethought. When the world lay slumbering in the lap of a corrupt apostate church, enervated and enfeebled and blinded by the spells she had succeeded in casting over the nations, and the man was wanted who should rise up in the energy of a renewed and sanctified nature to break the charm of her enchantments, and thunder in the ears of all Europe words of faith and power destined to shake the world, and initiate a new era of light and of religion, Jehovah knew where to lay His hand upon the agent He required. The all-seeing eye of Him who is on the throne beheld him in the secluded recesses of a German monastery. And Martin Luther, the obscure son of a village woodcutter, was called forth from the cell to which, in Popish ignorance and godly simplicity and sincerity, he had devoted the remainder of his life, to be a witness for God, and produce that Reformation which

shed showers

nas led to such auspicious results, and of blessing upon the nations of the world. Not amongst the wealthy and the great, but amongst the lowly and the poor, did Divine Providence look for and choose the instrument by whom the counsels of infinite benignity were to be fulfilled, for the benefit of the world.

So, when dense clouds had settled upon the British nation, and religion, degenerating into mere empty form, had well nigh died out in the land, and a slumbering church was to be aroused, heavenly light diffused through the land, and a revival of pure and undefiled religion to be wrought which should spread untold blessings over all the world, and subvert and overthrow all the false religions that debase and destroy man upon the face of the earth, the Divine Head of the Church selected and brought forth His chosen agent. He disciplined and prepared a despised Oxford student, and investing him with the wisdom, and the courage, and the piety, fitting him for the great work, sent out John Wesley to be a herald of mercy to the world, and give an impulse to His great work of restoring man, such as it had never before received since the apostolic age. Truly is it said, "Great things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend." (Job xxxvii. 5.)

The powerful government of the British monarch extends over many of the beautiful isles of the Caribbean Sea, which in the progress of wars waged by Britain, not always with wise. discretion, against the Continental powers, have fallen under the British crown. But at the period of our narrative all these fruitful lands where summer, unchequered by any of the cold blasts of winter, reigns with perennial glory, and clothes them with unchanging verdure, fruitfulness, and beauty, are cursed with the presence of slavery. Man holds property in man. Hundreds of thousands of the swarthy children of Africa, carried off by inhuman violence and wrong from their native land and borne to foreign shores under the protection of the British flag, are crushed down by oppression, lacerated by the whip, and wasted by unrequited toil, to enrich and

pamper those who make merchandise of the souls and bodies of fellow-creatures, heirs of immortality and redemption equally with themselves. There, too, darkness reigns. The wretchedness of the slave's lot is unrelieved by the consolations of religion. No light from heaven is suffered to fall across his path. For the soul must be kept in darkness, and all the nobler faculties of his nobler nature must be cramped and crushed down, that the fetters may remain quietly upon his limbs, and avarice plunder him at discretion.

There are men there, it is true, who call themselves clergymen. But they are slaveholders themselves, and recognize no right beyond that possessed by cattle, in human beings guilty of a dark complexion. There are also two or three Moravian Missionaries, who, in self-denying love for souls for whom Christ died, have found their way to these sunlit shores, and, as far as they are suffered, shed a few rays of light upon such minds as they can gain access to. But, subject to all kinds of humiliating restrictions through the jealousy of the slaveholders, on the few plantations where they are barely tolerated by command of absentee proprietors, it is but little they can do to help those around them. So that few, feeble, and far between are the rays of light that fall athwart the mass of darkness overspreading the thousands of human sufferers who are wasted) one generation after another, upon those blood-stained sugar plantations.

But the oppressed are not forgotten of God. The Lover of souls has thoughts of mercy concerning them, and it is in the purposes of His loving-kindness to bring to them, in their darkness and despairing misery, that heavenly light which is spreading over the mother-land. In His loving providence He is about to open up to them the bright hopes and consolations of the Gospel, to cheer them in their oppressions, and enable them to sustain the multiplied wrongs which are heaped upon them; that blessed Gospel which in its far-reaching influence shall in due time melt the chains which bind them, unloose the fetters, and make the oppressed go free. As in the case of the apostle chosen by