It is often difficult, not to say impossible, to know just what success has been achieved by any special missionary effort. After years of faithful labor the missionary, if challenged to do so, may not be able to adduce a single satisfactory proof that he has not labored wholly in vain, so far as the results he has been seeking are concerned. On the other hand, changes so remarkable, so exactly in the line of what is sought and hoped for, follow the very first proclamation of the Gospel, which we gladly attribute to Divine grace; we grow confident that at last the promise is nearing its fulfilment when “a nation shall be born in a day.” Now, it should be understood that we are in danger of mistake as to the real condition of things in each case; a mistake which breeds despair where there may be good reason for rejoicing, or excites hopes that are fatally false on the other hand. Doubtless many a faithful toiler has spent his whole life in laying foundations, deep and broad, but out of the sight of ordinary observers, upon which shall rise, in magnificent proportions, a temple to our God after he has gone to his reward—to the reward of one who has been faithful, rather than of one who has been observed. The merest accident may place another in such relation to this man’s toils that he shall seem to be the creator of all the results for which he labored, while he bears no other relation to them than the minnow does to the swell and roar and irresistible rush of the wave by which it has been caught and upon which it rides. Again, men possessed of certain gifts, but devoid of needed restraints in their use, may arouse the enthusiasm of their fellows, sway their passions, play upon their imaginations, excite their emotions and propel them along certain lines of activity until confidence is created that now, at last, the kingdom is coming with millennial celerity and power. But a reaction from all this is certain, and the Gospel ship which just now was riding with grace and beauty upon the crest of the wave lies half buried in mud and sea-weed to await the rising of another tide. The whole movement has been that of an anchored boat, without the possibility of advance, and worse than useless, for in this case it has been with the waste of spiritual force. There are two facts which all who are laboring for the coming of the kingdom of our Lord should regard as fixed, and being fixed some good degree of fixedness will be secured for their hopes with reference to its progress. One of these is the amazing ignorance and wickedness of those over whom this kingdom of light and love is to be established; and the other is the Divine power of that kingdom and the Divine purpose to establish it, and hence the certainty of its establishment.