The Superintending Providence of God 323 Pagan philosophers regarded the milky way as an old, dis used path of the sun, upon which He had left some faint im pression of His glorious presence in the golden stardust from His footsteps. To him who prayerfully watches mission his tory it is God’s Via Lactea; He has passed that way, and made the place of His feet glorious. Brevity forbids more than the citation of instances suf ficient to demonstrate and illustrate these positions. The evi dence of divine co-working will of course be clearest where there is closest adherence to His declared methods of work ing. As to DIVINE PREPARATION FOR MISSIONS what events and what messengers have been His chosen fore runners? The first half of the eighteenth century seemed more likely to be the mother of iniquity and idolatry than to rock the cradle o f world-wide missions. Deism in the pulpit and practical atheism in the pew naturally begot apathy, if not antipathy, toward Gospel diffusion. A hundred and fifty years ago, in the body of the Church, disease was dominant and death seemed imminent. Infidelity and irreligion stalked about, God denying and God defying. In camp and court, at the bar and on the bench, in the home and in the Church, there was a plague of heresy and a moral leprosy. THREE GREAT FORCES How then came a century of modern missions! Three great forces God marshalled to co-operate: the obscure Mora vians, the despised Methodists, and a little group of interces sors scattered over Britain and America. There had been a consecrated band in Saxony for about a hundred years, whose hearts’ altars had caught fire at Huss’s stake, and fed that fire from Spener’s pietism, and Zinzendorf’s zeal. Their great law was labor for souls, all at it and always at it. God had already made Herrnhut the cradle of missions and had there
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