What an era of amazement was that! Worlds of vast extent and wonderful character, starting as it were into sudden creation before the eyes of growing, inquisitive, and ambitious Europe! Day after day, some news, astounding in its very infinitude of goodness, was breaking upon their excited minds; news which overturned old theories of philosophy and geography, and opened prospects for the future equally confounding by their strange magnificence! No single Paradise discovered; but countless Edens, scattered through the glittering seas of summer climes, and populous realms, stretching far and wide beneath new heavens, from pole to pole—
Another nature, and a new mankind.—_Rogers._
Since the day of Creation, but two events of superior influence on the destinies of the human race had occurred—the Announcement of God’s Law on Sinai, and the Advent of his Son! Providence had drawn aside the veil of a mighty part of his world, and submitted the lives and happiness of millions of his creatures to the arbitrium of that European race, which now boasted of superior civilization—and far more, of being the regenerated followers of his Christ. Never was so awful a test of sincerity presented to the professors of a heavenly creed!—never was such opportunity allowed to mortal men to work in the eternal scheme of Providence! It is past! Such amplitude of the glory of goodness can never again be put at one moment into the reach of the human will. God’s providence is working out its undoubted design in this magnificent revelation of
That maiden world, twin-sister to the old;—_Montgomery._
But they who should have worked with it in the benignity and benevolence of that Saviour whose name they bore, have left to all futurity the awful spectacle of their infamy!