16 AMONG THE PAGANS OF THE SOUTHERN SUDAN Sudan must be educated, and is pressing the C.M.S. to open schools in many districts, but if the Society is not able to take advantage of this invitation, what will it mean? The Government will not wait indefinitely. The great Sudan, which is 3500 miles in length and 600 miles in breadth, and of which the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan forms but a small part, is the largest unevangelized area in the world. Uncounted multitudes of its inhabitants are living as wholly ignorant of Christ as though He had never come to man; the land is still a ‘‘Jand of darkness.’’ God has given us a glorious opportunity of winning the Anglo- Reyptian: Sudan for Him, and through it, the vaster region of which it forms a part, but that opportunity is swiftly passing away.

Thirteen missionaries in a district larger than the British Isles, and the Gordon Memorial Fund exhausted ! The relief force which England sent out to Gordon arrived -too late; let us see to it that we do not wait until it is too late before we send our relief force to the Mission which bears his name.

Night has fallen in the land of the Dinkas. In a tiny mud hut sits a tired man—one of the pioneer missionaries —finishing a long letter home. [Tor a moment he pauses in his work, then adds a few last words.

‘When I began this letter the sun was just setting in magnificent splendour. Suddenly I heard the wail of a woman go up to heaven from across the river. I asked my Dinka boy what it meant, and he told me that a man had died that morning, and his wife was now crying: to Deng-dit. The wail continued for some time. I can only tell you that it stirred me more than any missionary meeting at home, and even now as I type this letter I look at my watch in front of me, .>.-.and: 1 see that at this very moment the great tines C.M.S. gathering is being held in the Albert Hall, and probably thousands are present. . . . Would that they all could hear that cry as I heard it—a cry for help, and what was worse, a cry for hope. They would not stay at home for another missionary meeting unless it was clearly God’s will that they should.’’

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