m come. Thy will be done on earth as it is
done in heaven!"

PROGRESS OF MISSIONS.

The beginning of the nineteenth century marks an epoch of revival in
the Protestant Church. It would be going beyond the limits prescribed
by our subject to consider the causes of that remarkable reaction into
indifference of life, or of positive error in doctrine, which followed
more or less rapidly the stirring period of the Reformation. Such
tides, indeed, in the affairs of men,--now rushing with irresistible
waves to the utmost limit of the land; then receding and leaving
behind but a few pools to mark where the waters once had been; and
again, after a longer or a shorter interval, advancing with a deep
flood over the old ground,--are among the most striking phenomena in
history.

The last century witnessed the Protestant Church at its lowest ebb. We
thankfully acknowledge that God did not leave Himself without holy men
as living witnesses in every branch of that Church. And we record,
with deepest gratitude, how, more than in any other country, He
preserved in our own country both individual and congregational
life, with orthodox standards of faith. Still, taken as a whole, the
Protestant Church was in a dead state throughout the world; while,
during the same period, infidelity was never more rampant, and never
more allied with philosophy, politics, science, and literature. It was
the age of the acute Hume and learned Gibbon; of the ribald Paine, and
of the master of Europe, Voltaire; with a host of _literati_ who were
beginning to make merry, in the hope that God's prophets were at last
to be destroyed from the earth. Rationalism triumphed in all the
Continental Churches. Puritanism in England became deeply tainted with
Unitarianism. The descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers had, to a large
extent, embraced the same creed in America. The Established Churches
in England and Scotland, though preserving their Confessions, and
having very many living men in the ministry, suffered, nevertheless,
from that wintry cold which had frozen the waves of the great
Reformation sea, and which was adding chill to chill. The French
Revolution marked the darkest hour of this time; yet it was the
hour which preceded the dawn. It was the culminating point of the
infidelity of kings, priests, and people; the visible expression
and embodiment of the mind of France, long tutored by falsehood and
impiety; the letting loose of Satan on earth, that