ominion of civilization in foreign lands, and to
supplant a waning culture by a richer, truer, and nobler way of life.
The first thought of each of us, entering these new lands, whether
merchant, soldier, educator, or missionary, should be to hold Christ
aloft, that all tribes may come to His light, and kings to the
brightness of His rising.

God leads us on. Said Lincoln: "I have been driven many times to my
knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My
own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for that day."
Like a vast Hand stretched against the sky of Time is the Hand of God--a
Hand writing, in these wondrous days, a destiny for generations yet to
be! Rising with us are all God-fearing nations--the Teutonic, Slav, and
Latin peoples. Sitting yet in darkness, and massed against us, crouch
sullenly the immemorial hordes of Asia, the wild blacks of the African
swamps and jungles, and the dwellers of Polynesian seas. Occident and
Orient, the world's battalions are forming for new encounters and new
dismays. Never since the strong-limbed Goths changed the face of Europe
has there been a period of such tense anticipation, nor so great a
possibility of volcanic change. We are entering an historic period of
reconstruction, when new maps of the world will be drawn. The sceptre is
passing into new hands: to-day the throne of civilization is being
arched above the seaway which joins London and New York. To-morrow, it
may be builded above Pacific tides, where our own shores look westward
to the ports of Asiatic Russia. For, rising on the world-horizon, are
these two World-empires, Russia and the United States. The dictators of
these two countries will soon become the dictators of the human race.
They are brave and virile nations, with untold reserves of power! As
these two giants gird themselves for World-dominion, who but God shall
gird the armor on, direct the onward course of change?

Much of the ancient wealth and beauty shall be done away. In a few
generations the shrines of thirty centuries will be no more. Fane and
temple and pagoda will disappear; carvings, images, and Sikh-guarded
courts. Long lines of yellow-robed priests will chant their last
processional hymn to Buddha, and the smoking incense to waning gods
shall be quenched forever. Where Tao rites were celebrated, silence
shall fall; where fakir and dervish tortured and immolated their lives,
happy children shall play. Ins