Many of these islanders have
become Christian, under the teaching of missionaries from the other
Societies; and though great numbers still remain savage heathens, yet
the light of the Gospel is in the course of shining upon all the
islands far away. Everywhere the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, are being taught, and each convert
is gathered in by baptism and fed by the Holy Eucharist, as when the
apostles first went forth; and no one can mark the great spread of the
Church within the last fifty years, without feeling that the blessing
of God is with her. The Greek Church has done less; but though still
enslaved in Turkey, in Greece she is free, and the yoke of the Mahometan
is there shaken off, after her long patience and constancy.
There are dark spots in all this brightness, for Rome still teaches the
same errors mixed up with the truth, and the spirit of unbelief is to be
found far and wide, questioning and explaining away all the mysteries it
cannot understand.
We know that it must be so, for it was to fight with sin that Christ
came into the world, and left His Church there; and St.
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