you, open your ears, and hearts too, to the groans of a dying
world. Listen to the notes which, like the noise of seven thunders, peal
after peal, are rolling in upon your shores.

"Hark! what mean those lamentations,
Rolling sadly through the sky?
'Tis the cry of heathen nations,
'Come and help us, or we die!'

"Hear the heathen's sad complaining,
Christians! hear their dying cry;
And, the love of Christ constraining,
Haste to help them, ere they die!"

Yes, reader, haste to help them. Confer not with flesh and blood. Meet
all vain excuses with a deaf ear and a determined spirit. Let pity move
you, the love of Christ constrain you, and a sense of responsibility
urge you, to take that precious Gospel on which your hopes rely, and to
carry it, without delay, to the perishing nations.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SAVIOUR'S LAST COMMAND.

Let us suppose that all kindreds and people of the earth are assembled,
and that the inhabitants of Africa, Asia, the Isles of the Pacific and
the wilds of America, are called upon to speak, and to give in their
testimony _how far the Saviour's last command has been obeyed_.

The inquiry is first put to Africa:

"Africa, to what extent and for what purpose have people from Christian
lands visited thee, and thine adjacent islands? What have they carried
to thy shores? And what is the treatment thou hast received from them?
Tell the whole truth: let it be known to what extent the Saviour's last
command has been obeyed in respect to thee."

To this inquiry Africa replies:

"The truth I can tell, but the _whole_ truth cannot be told. I have
indeed been visited by people from Christian lands. Thousands and
hundreds of thousands from those lands have visited my shores. Some
have come to measure the pyramids, and to gather relics of ancient
literature and decayed magnificence; some to search out the sources of
the Nile and the course of the Niger; some to possess the best of the
soil; and a vast multitude have come, with a cruelty that knows no
mercy, to tear the husband from his wife and the wife from her husband,
parents from their children and children from their parents, brother
from sister and sister from brother--to crowd them together without
distinction of age or sex in the suffocating holds of their ships, where
a large proportion of them die, and to convey the remainder far away to
spend their lives in degrading servitude. They have brought beads and
trinkets; they