The Superintending Providence of God 21 obedience. In connection with this Gospel message He has given us certain prominent aids, which are by no means to be reckoned as belonging to a realm of minor importance, and among them Christian teaching, Bible searching, fervent prayer, and Holy Spirit power outrank all other conditions of successful service. The survey of the century is like reading new chapters in the Acts; no true believer can attempt it care- fully without finding a new Book of God in the history of this hundred years. Any man or woman who will take the score or more of marked quickenings we have outlined, and give a solid month to their consecutive study, will find all doubts dissipated that the living God has been at work, and that no field, however hard and stony and hopelessly barren, can ultimately resist culture on New Testament lines. In nothing do we need a new and clarified vision more than in the clear perception and conviction that the days of the super- natural are not past. Here is the school where these lessons are taught. Ten centuries of merely natural forces at work would never have wrought what ten years have accomplished, even when every human condition forbade success. A feeble band of missionaries in the midst of a vast host of the heathen have been compelled to master a foreign tongue, and often reduce it for the first time to written form, translate the Word of God, set up schools, win converts, and train them into consistent members and competent evangelists; remove mountains of ancestral superstitions and uproot syca- mine trees of pagan customs; establish medical missions, Christian colleges, create Christian literature, model society on a new basis; and they.have done all.this within the life- time of a generation, and sometimes within a decade of years! Even Pharaoh’s magicians would have been compelled to confess, “This is the finger of God!”
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