Solemn and significant lessons are taught, in the Word of God, as to national responsibility and accountability, duty and destiny.

The three momentous words, which struck dismay to the breast of that Babylonian King, Belshazzar, were meant to stand as an eternal warning to all human governments,

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tho emblazoned in constellations upon the midnight sky, forever shining out anew, even when clouds have for a time obscured their lesson to the eyes of men. Those three august and awful words-all mathematical terms-are: "NUMBERED," "WEIGHED," "DIVIDED." Every nation has its limit of time, in opportunity, its limit of law, in destiny. bility, and its limit of life, in destiny. When its full number of days is reached, the scales of judgment exactly put to the test its moral history, and, if the wrong side preponderates, division - disintegration comes. National existence is forfeit and the scepter of authority passes into other hands.

History vindicates prophecy, and events establish this forecast of God's administration. Many a nation, like many a man, has had a chance to be great and good, and the momentum of circumstances has borne it along, as on a current, to the very point of supreme occasion; and yet after being thus driven on toward greatness, the individual or the nation has proved recreant to duty, and lost the chance of ages, leaving another to take the lead and possess the vantage-ground of opportunity.

Consequently the story of six thousand years of national life reveals only a continually shifting center of political power and prestige. Bible annals, tho only an outline, show this rapid transition from one power to another. Egypt succeeds to the ancient empire of the Hittites or the Hethites, first introduced to us in Abram's day; then Assyria and Babylon succeed Egypt in supremacy; then Persia; then Greece takes the world scepter, and, last of all, Rome. In more modern, post-biblical times, it is the same process-the Governor of the nations, numbering, weighing, dividing. From Italy the sway of mankind passes to Germany, under Karl the Great; then to Spain, then to Austria, then to France, under Louis Le Grand. Then Prussia, Great Britain and the United States become controllers of human history; and, of late, such Oriental nations as Japan and China are contesting the honor of at least a rival supremacy, rapidly coming to the front in the family of nations.

But there are signs that a weighing process is still going on, and that, if even these great powers, dominant in our own day, are not careful to break off unrighteousness and cease from complicity with corrupting and destroying vices, the mystic Hand may once more write the same three words of doom on the walls at Westminster and Washington, Berlin and St. Petersburg. The pressing question to-day is, whether the power, entrusted to these nations by God, is temporary

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only, and the glory of these great peoples, also, may not become thing of the past.

If the Bible teaches anything surely about nations, it is that "The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever He will"; and that He setteth up a Kingdom of His own, which shall never be destroyed, but shall subdue and break in pieces all other opposing kingdoms.

Here, then, as we conceive, are the two grand principles of missions, as pertinent to the ruling powers of this world: First, God's own Empire is destined to be universal and perpetual; and, second, all others will last only so long as He wills, and therefore only so long as they serve the end of His higher Kingdom. National continuance is, therefore, dependent, ultimately, not on extent of territory, wealth, arms, numbers or intelligence; but on subordination to His eternal purpose. It is ultimately a question of assistance or resistance. That a hostile and godless people, for a time, survive and thrive, is no sign that the Most High God has abandoned either His throne or His plan. It is a sign of their probation, not of His approbation. He is lengthening the period of His forbearance; but the "numbering" is going on, and the "weighing" will be exact when His hour comes. Whether the great world empire of Britain is to survive depends, therefore, not on her coal or iron mines, her millions of money or of men, her great army or navy; but on her doing the will of God. The existence of the Republic of the West hangs likewise not on her having the

world's granary and treasury between the seas, but on her falling into place in God's plan, and subserving His eternal purpose.

And what is that plan? Nothing less than a world's salvation. Nothing, therefore, will more surely lengthen out the true tranquility of a nation than a truly missionary character and career.

The Scriptures give amazing space to the history of one of the obscurest and most despised people of history

the Jews. Great world-monarchies are passed by with incidental mention, while this little tribe that, at this day, numbers in all less than one hundredth part of the world's population, fills the prophetic and historic horizon. And nothing is more remarkable than the kindred fact, that, while every effort has been made for over twenty centuries to exterminate this Jewish nation, or absorb it in others, it remains to this day separate and surviving, tho scattered and despised! God put in the hands of the Hebrews, early in history, the destinies of the worldmade them custodians of His truth

and covenant, and gave them a sacred mission. And, tho they had their dwelling, literally, in the midst of hostile powers, ready like vultures to destroy them-Egypt, Phenica, Tyre and Sidon, Nineveh and Babylon, Moab and Edom, and Arabia, forming about Palestine a circle-a cordon-of foes, He kept them even from division, so long as they were not fundamentally untrue to Him and their mission; and, even now, He still preserves them because He has not done with them. As Adolph Saphir said, the Jews fur

nish not only the "miracle of history, but the history of miracle."

On the front of the Royal Exchange, in London, are carved the sublime words:

"THE EARTH IS THE LORD'S AND THE

FULNESS THEREOF "

It may be that the recognition of His Lordship, still surviving all destructive influences of materialism and rationalism, is the preservative secret of Britain's empire; and that, if this motto ever practically gives place to the lordship of greed for gold and grabbing for territory, the numbering may be full and the weighing of judgment follow. The hope of America in these days, when the corruption of politicians and financiers has had such awful exposure, lies in the fact that there is a strong popular demand for a clean. administration in government and in business. But, if ever such enormities as the slave traffic and the opium traffic, and the still worse traffic in virtue and honesty, become predominant, God's forbearance may well be at an end.

God's rule of this world is for man's uplifting, and the nations that would keep man down-trodden are. the foes of His plan. They fling themselves madly upon Jehovah's Buckler, and this can mean nothing, when His forbearance is exhausted and their iniquity is full, but national disintegration. This is the lesson which may be read in God's Book, and seen illustrated in the annals of the Race, that companion book of history.

The important practical inquiry is therefore suggested, how far nations,

as such, may be expected to cooperate with the work of missions and general human emancipation?

All thought of formal governmental action, in promoting a world's evangelization may be dismissed as hopelessly impracticable. At times, no doubt, such action has been, and may be, taken, as when, in 1813, the modifications to the new charter of the East India Company were carried in Parliament. That story deserves to be told again, "lest we forget," and is a permanent lesson on the subject.

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When, in 1793, William Wilberforce unsuccessfully sought to secure a modification of that company's original charter, there was a rebound toward even greater exclusiveness; the East India Company made more stringent its regulations as to the admission within its territories of merchants or others not of its own sending. A man without a "covenant," says Sir John Kaye,* was a dangerous person-doubly dangerous the man without a covenant," and with a Bible. When Carey embarked in a company's ship, the discovery of that fact, and that he had no "license," caused him and his baggage to be put ashore just before sailing. And when a Danish ship landed him in India, having no license from the company to reside in Bengal, he could get a foothold only as an indigo planter, with Mr. Udny as security, a hundred and fifty miles. from Calcutta, where in that capacity, for six years he lived, the sole representative in India of the British missionary spirit! It was that same East India Company that blocked

* History of Church Missionary Society, i: 96-104.

Mr. Haldane's way, when he had sold his estate of Airthrey, to devote himself and his property to missions; and thus the company prevented half a million dollars of money from going into India's evangelization. When, in 1799, four more Baptist missionaries would have joined Carey, they were at once ordered to leave the country-especially as a Calcutta paper had mistaken "Baptists" for "Papists"-and they had to take refuge in the Danish settlement of Serampore-called by Sir John Kaye a "sort of Alsatian receptacle for outcasts of all kinds." When the Danish governor was challenged to surrender these refugees, and refused, Carey saw his opportunity, and, leaving his indigo factory, joined them at Serampore so that it was under the shelter of the Danish flag that the great Serampore work in India found its beginning.

Meanwhile, Claudius Buchanan, and his "Star in the East," was turning attention anew to the great world of opportunity in India. And when, in 1813, the time came for the renewal of the company's charter, Wilberforce, undismayed by the long struggles of nineteen years to get the slave-trade abolished, determined, after another nineteen years since his defeat in 1793, to undertake in Parliament to get the East India Company's new charter so amended as to admit missionaries. Ile pronounced it a shocking idea that England should leave 60,000,000 of her subjects in India to remain in a state of barbarism and ignorance, slaves of the most cruel and degrading superstitition. This he regarded-the

slave-trade being now abolished

as the greatest by far of the nation's remaining sins.

The campaign opened April 12, 1812, with Wilberforce, Buchanan, Grant, Parry, and Pratt, etc., leading. A public meeting was held, at which four hundred gentlemen met, and many of them very influential. Eight hundred and fifty petitions were sent to Parliament. Powerful pamphlets were issued, and, altho vigorous opposition developed in Parliament, the cause of right won the day. In defense of the exclusive policy, arguments were presented so preposterous as now to awaken only ridicule for leaving the Hindus to the "benignant and softening influences" of their prevailing religion and morality, and against "disturbing and deforming institutions which appeared to have been the means ordained by Providence of making them virtuous and happy." (!!) Victory came at last to Wilberforce and his colleagues, June 22, 1813, at three o'clock in the morning-a triumph for which many good men had been praying all night. Parliament, in the new charter, opened the door to India for Christian missionaries! Then came to an end-and it was by governmental action, the bill receiving royal assent, July 21, what Prof. Seeley calls the period when Anglo-Indian life was "Brahminized"-when the "attempt was made to keep India as a kind of inviolate paradise into which no European and especially no missionary-should be suffered to penetrate." Wilberforce calmly said: "I am persuaded that we have laid the foundation-stone of the grandest edifice that ever was raised in Asia.”

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This, we repeat, was governmental action, however brought about. was Britain, as a nation, opening, before the Christian missionary, the two-leaved gates of her Indian empire. Did the God of nations acknowledge this act? Is it any accidental coincidence that, in the very autumn of that same year, Napoleon was totally put to rout by the allied. armies at Leipsic, and the Iron Duke drove Soult across the Pyrenees, delivering Spain from invasion? Was it again any chance correspondence that, in the very month of April, the year after, when the East India Act first came into full force, the Corsican, who was the terror of Europe, was banished to Flba, and peace was proclaimed?

Well does Eugene Stock, rehearsing these facts, add God's own words, "Them that honor Me will I honor."

These familiar incidents are spread once more before the reader as an example of how a nation, as such, may either hinder or help the cause of God; and that, too, without taking any offensively denominational, or even religious attitude, simply as a matter of advancing liberty, philanthropy, and political enfranchise

ment.

Perhaps it is not often that any nation, though nominally Christian, may be expected to become nursing father or mother to the Church of God.

The secular spirit is very prevalent and somewhat imperious. There is a strong trend in favor of religious impartiality, by which is meant giving all religious faiths and customs an equal chance.

But surely two things may be hoped for as both possible and rea

sonable: First, wherever there exists, within national territory, customs that are degrading and destructive, an enlightened government is justified in interference; and, secondly, governments may give help and protection to Christian missionaries as their subjects engaged in a lawful calling.

Of the former method of national interposition the suppression of the suttee, in India, is an example. Lord William Bentwick, in 1829, by a stroke of his pen, abolished this horrid, wholesale murder of widows, six thousand of whom had been thus burned alive in Bengal alone, in ten years! And, when the Brahmans remonstrated, and said, "You Britishers tell us to obey conscience, and Our conscience tells us to burn widows," his calm answer was, “Do as your conscience bids you; only, I forewarn you that an Englishman's conscience tells him it is murder, and that those who connive at it should. be hung. Obey your consciences and we will obey ours!" That stopped the horrors of the funeral pyre.

If there be any reason why, in any land, dominated by Great Britain or the United States, customs destructive of life, health and property, should not be abolished by law, the reason is not plain. Surely God's balances would not justify such a course on the part of a governing power as should encourage the continuance of such evils.

As to the aid and shelter given to missionaries prosecuting their legitimate calling in a peaceful way, it seems a simple necessity to good government that its flag and scepter shall be the guaranty of the safety