It seems to be a day of great bequests. While our country and others as well have been straitened by hard times, fortunes well planted have been growing silently, and those who have watched over them have been devising liberal things. The estate of Daniel Stone of Massachusetts, yields $1,000,000 for educational endowments; that of Asa Otis of Connecticut, at least $1,000,000 for foreign missions. Judge Packer of Pennsylvania leaves $2,000,000 to the Lehigh University; this in addition to $1,000,000 which it cost to found the institution. Gardiner Colby of Boston directs nearly $400,000 to be distributed among various Baptist institutions and societies. Dr. Hugh Miller of Scotland leaves some $140,000 for missionary purposes. Nor can we fail to mention here the $100,000 which Mr. Robert Arthington of England has given or offered to British and American missionary societies, of at least four denominations of Christians, for the planting of missionary enterprises in Equatorial Africa. The estate of Mr. R. R. Graves of New York, in addition to large gifts already made, has nearly $100,000 in process of distribution mainly for work in the South. These and others like them are significant facts, that from so many sources there should have been such large appropriations to such good work. We are led to look, therefore, to the other end of the line. What is the motive which has moved these stewards of God to turn their benefactions in such directions in so large a measure? Rather, we ask, what is the corresponding providence which has called for them, or the preparation which has been making far away for their wise use, the signs of which were not seen, perhaps, by the givers at the time when they were thus carrying out the Lord’s will? What is the significance of it all in the divine plan? Is it not that the world is suddenly opening for missionary work as perhaps never before in all its history? that in more than one direction the long twilight which has been slowly creeping over the eastern sky is breaking in a moment into glorious dawn? that the seed which has been growing secretly these many days has come to be the bud, and now is bursting into the flower? Such crises do come in the history of God’s world, in the progress of the Gospel of his Son.