When the time indicated in the prophecy fully came, with the last decade of the eighteenth century, there was witnessed the upspringing of movements that have wrought mightily for the enlightenment and evangelization of the world. As the events of the French Revolution announced the closing of the long era of papal supremacy, so also another series of events at the same time announced the opening of the era of increasing knowledge. Speaking of these developments, Lorimer, a Scottish writer, said: "At the very time when Satan is hoping for, and the timid are fearing, an utter overturn of true religion, there is a revival, and the gospel expands its wings and prepares for a new flight. It is worthy of remembrance that the year 1792, the very year of the French Revolution, was also the year when the Baptist Missionary Society was formed, a society which was followed during the succeeding, and they the worst, years of the Revolution, with new societies of unwonted energy and union, all aiming, and aiming successfully, at the propagation of the gospel of Christ, both at home and abroad. What withering contempt did the great Head of the church thus pour upon the schemes of infidels! And how did He arouse the careless and instruct His own people, by alarming providences, at a season when they greatly needed such a stimulus."--_"Historical Sketches of the Protestant Church in France," p. 522._ Another writer, Dr. D.L. Leonard, historian of the century of missions, says: "The closing years of the eighteenth century constitute in the history of Protestant missions an epoch indeed, since they witnessed nothing less than a revolution, a renaissance, an effectual and manifold ending of the old, a substantial inauguration of the new. It was then that for the first time since the apostolic period, occurred an outburst of general missionary zeal and activity. Beginning in Great Britain, it soon spread to the Continent and across the Atlantic. It was no mere push of fervor, but a mighty tide set in, which from that day to this has been steadily rising and spreading."--_"A Hundred Years of Missions," p. 69._ The time of the prophecy had come, and the hand of providence was bringing into being agencies that have spread light and knowledge over all lands. "Look where the missionary's feet have trod-- Flowers in the desert bloom; and fields, for God, Are white to harvest. Skeptics may ignore; Yet on the conquering Word, from shore to shore, Like flaming chariot, rolls. Ask ocean isles, And plains of Ind, where ceaseless summer smiles; Speak to far frozen wastes, where winter's blight Remains;--they tell the love, attest the might Of Him whose messengers across the wave To them salvation bore, hope, freedom gave." --_Horace D. Woolley._