ABSTRACT
“Often, perhaps, had the Christian voyager gazed on the rocky promontories of Burma, crowned with their whitened pagodas that glow amid the eternal verdure of tropical climes, but he little thought that the misty mountain-tops in the distance threw their shadows over the dwellings of a people that, generation after generation, had charged their posterity never to worship idols. Xavier had passed their mountain homes when he went to look on, but not to enter, inhospitable China, and found a surreptitious resting-place and grave upon its barren rocks. Swartz had laboured half a century to destroy the three hundred thousand gods of India without hearing of the nation that had rejected them all from the remotest ages. Carey had made his forty versions without a line for the people that were longing with hope deferred for the word of God. And Judson had lived seven years in Rangoon, preaching the eternal God, before a single Burman would admit His existence; 185while the poor unnoticed Karens were continually passing his door, singing by the way— “God is eternal, His life is long— God is immortal, His life is long: One cycle He dies not, Two cycles He dies not, Perfect in great attributes, Age on age He dies not.”
