Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... VI FROM THE CENTENNIAL PISGAH VI FROM THE CENTENNIAL PISGAH THE year 1812, lifted into such prominence by the inauguration of our world-famous work in a far country full of the habitations of cruelty, is now styled Annus Mirabilis. By reason of their issue some dates tower like mountains above the dreary annals that fall between. In our Christian history this is the range of highest peaks: A. D. 1, 33, 1492, 1620, 1776, 1812, 1863; the last date precipitated an unexampled work at home, the next earlier one brings distinctly before us those whose record as our advance guard will be read to the joy of the angels in the last day. Benjamin Franklin expressed the wish that he might return to earth after one hundred years. If that were granted to Judson and his early associates, what a transformation would greet their astonished sight! Taking our stand on this "hundredstoried height," with a century of missions and progress in our field of vision we may see that, politically speaking, 1812 was a doleful year the world around. Commerce had been hunted and driven from the seas, and the plow was forsaken for the sword. The appeal was to the bullet and not the ballot. Bayonet and saber and spur were the fashion everywhere. Outside of tiny Denmark peace had not a square mile of space that she could call her own. Our shipping, and we had ships in those days, was in the cross-fire between the British and the French. As England's best generals and troops were busily setting back-fires against Napoleon on the Spanish peninsula, our own country, without the sinews of war, inaugurated with the mother country its leaderless, inglorious campaign, whose crowning absurdity was the treaty of peace, which did not even mention the issues on which hostilities...
