The light of the Gospel had risen upon Europe, and had already pervaded the central and southern portions of this quarter of the world. A new age had begun. The work of the Reformation was not done like that of a council, by articles of discipline; but by the proclamation of a Saviour, living and ever-present in the church; and it thus raised Christendom from its fallen state. To the church in bonds in the rude grasp of the papacy it gave the freedom which is to be found in union with God; and withdrawing men from confessionals and from cells in which they were stifled, it enabled them to breathe a free air under the vault of heaven. At the time of its appearance, the vessel of the church had suffered shipwreck, and the Roman Catholics were tossed about in the midst of traditions, ordinances, canons, constitutions, regulations, decretals, and a thousand human decisions; just as shipwrecked men struggle in the midst of broken masts, parted benches, and scattered oars. The Reformation was the bark of salvation which rescued the unhappy sufferers from the devouring waters, and took them into the ark of the Word of God. The Reformation did not confine itself to gathering men together, it also gave them a new life. Roman Catholicism is congealed in the forms of the Middle Ages. Destitute of vitality, possessing no fertilizing principle, humanity lay buried in its old grave-clothes. The Reformation was a resurrection. The Gospel imparts a true, pure, and heavenly life, a life which does not grow old, nor fade, nor disappear like that of all created things, but is continually renewed, not indeed by its own efforts, but by the power of God, and knows neither old age nor death. Time was needed for the Gospel, after being buried for ages by the papacy, to throw off all its swaddling-clothes, and resume its free and mighty progress; but its advance was made by an impulse from on high. After having restored to Europe primitive Christianity, the church which sprang from the Reformation overthrew the ancient superstitions of Asia, and of the whole world, and sent a life-giving breath over the fields of death. Churches everywhere called into existence, assemblies of men abounding in good deeds, these are the testimonies of its fertility. The missionaries of this Gospel, although they lived in poverty, spent their days in obscurity, and often encountered death even in a cruel form, nevertheless accomplished a work more beneficial and more heroic than princes and conquerors have done. Rome herself was moved at the sight of all the stations established, all the Bibles put into circulation, all the schools founded, all the children educated, and all the souls converted.