Three illustrations of this truth are just now conspicuous——India is clamoring for the Gospel; missionaries are beset with eager throngs begging for the bread of life; whole villages are calling each for a Christian teacher to come and dwell among them and lead them to the Christ. Thousands have been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus during the past year. Japan, too, which succeeded in keeping itself secluded from all interference from without until so late a day, has taken down its official threats published at every crossroad against “the Jesus religion,” and, as it throws away its idol gods, is ready to accept either the materialism or the Christianity of Europe and America; and Africa is no longer a region of unexplored darkness, but has been forced to give up its secrets to the Christian explorer as well as to the Arab slave-trader, who heretofore alone has shared them with the aborigines. Africa is known, and already has followed the death-blow to the internal traffic in human life; missionary expeditions are winding along its rivers and across its swamps, and, with the Arab out, the Christian may come in. For us, this last great continent is of peculiar interest, and its opening lends a new and wider meaning and reach to the work we have been patiently doing in the South? Are not these the complementing facts which stand over against those stated first, and which explain them? God has brought his church into a crisis by which he will try its faith and its faithfulness. He has opened the doors wide for its entrance into new fields. No longer does the missionary have to push himself into the midst of heathendom; but the cry is heard on every side, “Come over and help us.” And then the Lord of both the fields and the fountains has shown us by these illustrious examples of both the living and the dead, how he looks to the men who hold his wealth to administer their trusts, and to lead on the hosts of those who may swell the stream with much or little, as he has prospered them. Will the church of Christ bear the testing? Let us hope that these large gifts are only the great drops which tell us of the coming shower which shall fill all the pools. Nay, rather, let us pray that this may be the beginning of “the latter rain.” * * * * * THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ANSWERED PRAYER. The obligation which comes from offered prayer is apparent. It implies a complete subordination of our will to God’s will——a readiness for any self-denial and effort on our part necessary to the answer, through whatever trying ordeal that answer may come. But the process is essential to the result.