our
ability, or over the whole field which we can influence at home or
abroad, we seek to spread the name of Christ and the salvation that
is in Him.

III. We are debtors by benefits received.

I am speaking to men and women a very large proportion of whom get
their living, and some of whom amass their wealth, by trade with
lands that need the Gospel. It is not for nothing that England has
won the great empire that she possesses--won it, alas! far too often
by deeds that will not bear investigation in the light of Christian
principle, but won it.

What do we owe to the lands that we call 'heathen'? The very speech
by which we communicate with one another; the beginning of our
civilisation; wide fields for expanding population and emigration;
treasures of wisdom of many kinds; an empire about which we are too
fond of crowing and too reluctant to recognise its
responsibilities--and Manchester its commerce and prosperity! Did God
put us where we are as a nation only in order that we might carry the
gifts of our literature, great as that is; of our science, great as
that is; of our law, blessed as that is; of our manufactures, to
those distant lands? The best thing that we can give is the thing
that all of us can help to give--the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 'Who
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as
this?'

IV. Lastly, we are debtors by injuries inflicted.

Many subject-races seem destined to fade away by contact with our
race; and if we think of the nameless cruelties, and the iliad of
woes which England's possession of this great Colonial Empire has had
accompanying it, we may feel that the harm in many aspects outweighs
the good, and that it had been better for these men to be left
suckled in creeds outworn, and ignorant of our civilisation, than to
receive from us the fatal gifts that they often have received. I do
not wish to exaggerate, but if you will take the facts of the case as
brought out by people that have no Christian prejudices to serve, I
think you will acknowledge that we as a nation owe a debt of
reparation to the barbarians and the unwise.

What about killing African tribes by the thousand with the vile stuff
that we call rum, and send to them in exchange for their poor
commodities? What about introducing new diseases, the offspring of
vice, into the South Sea Islands, decimating and all but destroying
the population? Is it not true that, as the prophet wailed of old
about