Chapter C: H. Richards,

F. P. WOODBURY,
A. P. FOSTER,
F. BASCOM,
J. F. DUDLEY,
D. PEEBLES,
U. THOMPSON.

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PROVIDENTIAL CALLS.

BY REV. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D.

It is just a third of a century since the American Missionary Association was organized. That period has been crowded with stirring events, working marked changes at the time in the opinions and history of mankind, and pregnant with other and far-reaching consequences. In no respect has this been more true than in regard to the races for whose benefit the Association was mainly formed. Thirty-three years ago slavery ruled in America with the iron hand, and with the purpose and prospect of enlarged sway; now the slaves are free, and the far-reaching consequences of that event are but beginning to be realized. Thirty-three years ago tropical Africa was almost as much unknown as in the days of Herodotus and Ptolemy; now its great central lakes have been traced and mapped, the great mystery of the Nile sources has been solved, and Stanley has traversed the continent from Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo. The far-reaching consequences of these discoveries to commerce and to Christian civilization we have not yet begun to realize.

The American Missionary Association was called into existence to take some humble part in these events. The wisdom of its existence was recognized at the outset by the few only; by the many—even of good men—it was regarded with indifference or hostility. We that took part in those stirring times find it difficult now to recall their intense earnestness—the inexorable control exercised by slavery over the pulpit, the press and the forum, the unbounded anxiety of conservative people to avoid or to crush the agitation, and their utter impatience with those who persisted in it. On the 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster made his famous speech in support of the Fugitive Slave Law, and it is humiliating to recall the fulsome eulogies of that speech that came from pulpits and theological seminaries, as well as from politicians and merchants, and it arouses anew a sense of indignation to think of the intimidation attempted toward those who opposed that infamous law. But there _were_ men in all the churches and in both political parties who were fully aroused to the guilt and danger of slavery—who felt that the hour had come when, through all opposition and danger, they must press for its overthrow. Among these persistent agitators were not only such stalwart leaders as John Quincy Adams and William Lloyd Garrison, but a large number who may be represented by our late and honored brother, Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn, who, though one of the gentlest, most amiable and most cautious of men, yet possessed a conscience so unclouded, and a sympathy with the slave so strong, that no fear of consequences could deter him.

Such God-fearing men had no commission merely to denounce and destroy. Their call was to aid in spreading a Gospel untinctured with the guilt of slavery, polygamy or caste prejudice. They strove earnestly to induce the most honored and loved of missionary boards, with which they had heretofore co-operated, to throw off all responsibility for slavery and its attendant vices. In this they were unsuccessful, and as they could neither cease to labor and contribute for missions, nor work with societies which they believed to be chargeable with that responsibility, they could do no otherwise than form one that should be free from it. In this way, and from this motive, the American Missionary Association came into existence. It was formed in no spirit of captiousness or fault-finding; not for discussion, but for work in the Master’s vineyard. Hence it soon established missions abroad—in Africa, Siam and among the recently emancipated slaves in the West Indies; at home—among the white population of the West, the Indians, and, even at that early date, among the Chinese in California, the refugees from slavery in Canada, and in the Slave States themselves.

Among the dark memories of those early days were the infidel tendencies in the anti-slavery ranks. The reformers were so goaded by the indifference and opposition of the orthodox churches that some of them retaliated with bitter denunciations against Christianity itself. From the outset the American Missionary Association took decided ground against this tendency and in favor of evangelical religion, and this not vaguely nor without temptation to swerve. At the convention in Albany in which the Association was organized, an influential Unitarian suggested the probable sympathy and aid of that wealthy denomination if the platform could be made sufficiently broad and “liberal” to admit of co-operation. Its response was given in its constitution, which required “Evangelical sentiments” as a condition of membership; and that there might be no mistake as to what it meant by “evangelical,” a star note was appended giving its explicit definition—a creed as commendable for its brevity as its sound orthodoxy. The elder Dr. Tyng once said: “I love the American Missionary Association because it is true to Christ as well as to the slave.”

Thus launched, and with this flag at its mast-head, the Association responded to its first call, and sped on its way, till from the terrific storm-cloud of war there sounded forth its second call. That next providential call was to the work among the Freedmen. It was so recent, and the response is so fresh in mind, that a brief rehearsal will suffice. Abraham Lincoln voiced the sentiment of the North when he said that the war was carried on to save the Union. God revealed His own purpose to be not that only, but also to free the slave. It was not two months after the first cannon shot fell on Fort Sumter till the escaping slaves found their way to Fort Monroe, and the force of circumstances, in spite of all reluctance, compelled their recognition as free men. Those escaping fugitives began their march from Egypt to Canaan. A few scattered bands headed the column, but soon its numbers swelled till the proclamation of emancipation, like the words of God to Moses at the banks of the Red Sea, said to four and a half millions of people, “Go forward.” When the sea opened to them and closed upon the armies of their oppressors, they were free; but they were, and are still, in the wilderness. Yet two lines of spontaneous enthusiasm broke forth—that of the ex-slaves for learning, and that of the North to supply it.

In that day there was no longer a question as to the need of the American Missionary Association, or of the wisdom of its existence. It was complimented with having “builded wiser than it knew.” Churches and individuals chose it as their channel for reaching this new field of patriotic and Christian labor. The Boston Council of Congregational Churches of 1865 recognized it as having been providentially raised up for the hour, and voted a call to the churches to give it $250,000 for the year. The Association promptly met this new responsibility, and organized the necessary measures for collecting funds at home and abroad, and with so much success that when the year was ended its treasury had received a little more than the great sum named. It has since moved forward with larger resources and a larger work. Its income for the fourteen years from its organization till the war began averaged $40,810.57 per annum; for the fourteen years since the war, $279,269.18 per annum.

A third call comes to the Association—the call of this hour. The early enthusiasm in the Freedmen work subsided. This new call springs from no sudden revival of that enthusiasm, but rather from that “sober second thought” that follows the reaction from it, and which comes from the pressure of hard, stern facts. I cannot, therefore, explain the present aspect of affairs without reverting to the cause of that decline of interest. The zeal of Christian people slackened when they found the work among the Freedmen could not all be finished in fifteen or twenty years. This was the general expectation at the outset, strange as it may seem—nay, amusing, if the mistake were not so serious. The orthodox and well-ordered Christian man has no doubt of the need of _perpetual_ help for the West, and he cheerfully aids it through the accredited channels, the Bible, Tract, Sunday-school, Education, College and Church Building Societies, and especially the honored Home Missionary Board; though those Western settlers have behind them the culture of more than a thousand years, with the personal education of New England homes, schools and churches, and also the business training among the shrewd and thrifty people. But these Negroes, who have behind them only untold ages of barbarism and oppression, and whose homes are huts, whose schools are few, whose ministers are ignorant, who have no capital and no business training—when these people loom up before this good Christian man, he is amazed and discouraged if a few years, a few books and a few teachers do not end all responsibility for them. His creed in regard to them is as brief as his patience, and may be given in the words of the poet:

“They need but little here below,
Nor need that little long.”

In like manner the well-ordered citizen lost his enthusiasm for the Freedmen. He had been so long under the strain of anxiety about the war that he was weary of it and of everything that reminded him of it. Then there followed a succession of events in regard to the Freedmen that played upon his hopes and fears till he was doubly weary of them.

First came the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency on the death of President Lincoln. Bright hopes arose. Lincoln was too mild; but the stalwart war-Governor of Tennessee, the unflinching Union man, the Moses of the colored people, as he styled himself, he would do what Lincoln’s amiability would have left undone. What a Providential ordering it was; the silver lining on the black cloud of the assassination. But alas, how soon the change! This Moses led the colored people not to Canaan, but delivered them over to the murderous bands of the Ku Klux; and the North, who again found the whole affair lying at loose ends, was very much discouraged. Then General Grant was elected, and hope again sprang up. The soldier-President would take care of the Freedmen. He did; but the troops stationed at the State houses of Columbia and New Orleans became at length an intolerable vexation to the South and an utter weariness to the again discouraged North. President Hayes brought again “the era of good feeling.” The troops were removed. There was a time of quiet for the colored people. Wade Hampton and Lamar pledged the reciprocal good will of the South. I believe that these leaders were sincere, but they little understood the import of their pledge, or the mighty power that slumbered in the elements beneath their feet, “We now witness the upheaval of that power, the sweeping away of those pledges like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, the crushing again of the Negro, his relief by flight to Kansas, and the symbols of Southern methods and purposes revealed in the Chisholm murder and the Yazoo tragedy.”

These facts, this serious aspect of affairs, and the palpable inefficiency of temporary remedies, are awakening the North to a fresh sense of responsibility and to the use of thorough remedies. One evidence of this is found in the turning tide of political affairs. A still more ominous one is foreshadowed in the enthusiasm gathered around the flag of the Union. In 1872 Charles Sumner—zealous Union man as he was—moved in the Senate that the names of victories in our civil war should not be inscribed on our national regimental flags, and in the decline of public interest those flags lay neglected in the cases where they were deposited. But a few weeks since the State of Connecticut removed her flags from the State Arsenal to the new Capitol in Hartford, when, lo, ten thousand veteran survivors and one hundred thousand spectators, making the grandest popular demonstration ever witnessed in the State, assembled to bear those flags with honor to their new resting place. I believe in the power of the ballot, and I revere the flag, but I want to raise my humble voice in warning against expecting too much from elections, and against the terrible effects of an appeal to arms. Has not the nation awaited with anxiety many times for election returns only to be disappointed in the permanent effects, and have we not felt enough of the dread evils of war to stand aghast at the thought of its renewal? Let me use the words of Paul and say, “Behold, I show you a more excellent way.”

I present three pictures:

The _first_ shows a gathering of colored people peacefully assembled to promote their political welfare. But see that rush of armed men, the brief unequal struggle, and the flight of those who met only to exercise a constitutional right. In the background of the picture is a jail broken open and the venerable Judge Chisholm and his little son clinging to his knees, and his heroic daughter endeavoring to shield her father, all butchered in cold blood. In that background is another scene. That strong man, the leader of Ku Klux bands, whose hands are dyed with the blood of innocent colored men, and who could show the medal which the grateful South had given him, is himself murdered in open day, because he dared to announce himself not as a Republican, but as an independent candidate for office. The worst of all is that there is no legal remedy for these crimes. The National Government cannot reach them with punishment, and the State governments will not. They can only be tried in Southern courts and before Southern juries, and these have acquitted the murderer of the Chisholm father and children and refuse to try Barksdale for the Yazoo murder. Thus does the South make itself solid, and wipe out in blood the least traces of dissent from its supremacy. The North is moved by all this—indignant, determined, and well it may be; for what now avails the four years of war and the fourteen years of attempt at justice and conciliation?

But I show you _another_ picture. It carries us back a few years. The Legislature of South Carolina is in session. Its members are mostly black men. They have generally no property and pay no taxes, yet they have taxed that already impoverished State to the verge of destruction, not for public improvement, but to lavish it upon themselves, in suppers, wines, personal perquisites, in jobs and in railroad schemes. No more scandalous or reckless plundering of a public treasury has ever been practiced in America, and that is saying a great deal. Why is this little handful of mock legislators allowed to do this? Why do not the people rush in upon them and hurl them from the places they so dishonor? Why? Simply because there stands as a guard a file of United States soldiers—not themselves sufficient in numbers to be formidable, but representing the National Government, and to touch them is to touch it. The South is indignant, determined, and do you wonder? The troops are now gone, the black legislators are dispersed and white taxpayers are in their places; and rising above all other considerations is the purpose of these taxpayers that, at whatever cost, and by whatever needed methods, be it by tissue ballots or by shotguns, those irresponsible plunderers shall never come back again into power. You blame them; but I fear you would do the same yourselves under like provocation. If the General Government, by means of a bloody war, should subdue the Western States, and then enfranchise in any one State enough Indians to outvote the whites, and those Indians should re-enact the plunderings of the Columbia Legislature, how long would the West bear it? I suspect that very quickly every Indian would be converted into a good Indian; but it would be in the Western sense—he would be a dead Indian. Brethren of the North, make the case your own. Put yourself in your Southern brother’s place, and judge him by your own impulses. What, then, is the true remedy for this great evil? To answer this we must honestly consider what the real evil is. These South Carolina taxpayers do not crush these black voters because they are black. They would do the same to the “poor whites” if they, having the numerical force, should enact the same wrongs. Nor is it because they are Republicans. It would be the same if they called themselves Democrats and did the same things. The trouble, therefore, is not with the man’s color or party, but with the man himself—with his ignorance, his degradation and his facility in being used as the tool of designing men. _The remedy, then, is not to change his color or his party, but his character._ All other remedies are delusive, and it is a national folly and crime to tamper longer with them. We have tried them; and to try them over again will be but to swing like a pendulum between the soldiers in front of the State house and the bulldozers at the elections. It is a shame and a grievous wrong to leave matters as they are. It is a wrong to the blacks to compel them to suffer in the South or flee to Kansas. It is unfair to the South to put them to the dreadful alternative of suffering or doing such great wrongs. It is a shame for an enlightened nation to keep itself thus embroiled, to the hindrance of its prosperity and the jeopardy of its peace.

Let me show you my _third_ picture, which presents “the more excellent way.” In the foreground is a school-house and near by is a church. Around and in the distance are pleasant little homes and well cultivated lands. These are the instruments for working the needed change; they will make the Freedman intelligent, virtuous and industrious; will give him property and responsible interest in the welfare of the State. But you say this is a long process. Admitted; but what if there is no other? A slave can be changed into a freeman in an hour, but to change him into an intelligent man will take years; to transform millions of ignorant, cringing and penniless men into intelligent and responsible citizens and Christians will require generations. The acorn favorably planted will germinate into an oak in a few days, and though small, it is a real oak; but it will be many years before its broad branching arms will give wide shelter, or its girth and strength of stem will yield heavy timber. A few such plants started in good soil and carefully tended will come forward rapidly, but the wide growth on arid plains or in cold swamps will long remain dwarfs. The rapid progress of some of these colored people under adequate training shows what _can_ be done; the backwardness of the mass shows what _must_ be done. Here is the call to this Association to bear its part in this great work in America. It is no light task and no short work. The North is once more aroused to its magnitude as well as its necessity, and in that great effort the better portion of the South is ready to join us. God forbid that any delusive scheme or guilty indifference should hinder its steady progress.

The wide Atlantic rolls between America and Africa, but a strange connecting wire links the two together. The battery at yonder end was charged with the dreadful electricity that arose from burning villages, slaughtered people and captured slaves. The sounds that swept along that wire were the wails of the “middle passage.” The delivery at this end was the toil, the tears, and the blood of the slave plantation. That connection is now broken. Does God mean to establish no other? Yes, the battery is to be placed in America, charged with the light of its learning and religion; the hum of the wires will be the song of the returning heralds of salvation, and the delivery will be the breaking forth of Gospel light in benighted Africa. Such a change is worthy of God’s wonder-working grace, and, thanks to His name, it has begun.

Converging lines of providential purpose have met. In 1856 Burton and Speke began the first movement in the great line of modern discovery in tropical Africa; in 1858 they first sighted Lake Tanganyika. In 1860 Speke and Giant set out on the second expedition from Zanzibar; in 1862 they caught their first glimpse of the Victoria Nyanza. Thence onward moved the heroic procession—Sir Samuel Baker, Winwood Reade, Col. Gordon, Livingstone and others, till last of all Stanley emerged at the mouth of the Congo in August, 1877. A marked line of American convergence also began in 1856 with the first shedding of blood in the struggle with the slave power in Kansas. John Brown’s raid came in 1859. The rebellion began in 1861; the slaves were proclaimed free in 1863, and their education began almost with the war. Other societies have their own coincidences in this great work, but this Association having the distinction of opening the first school among the Freedmen, it is a matter of special interest with us that about one month after Stanley reached the mouth of the Congo, we sent out our first company of _colored_ missionaries to Africa, all of whom had been born in slavery, were educated since emancipation, and, moved by the love of Christ and of their fatherland, had gone thither to preach the Gospel. This is to us the beginning of the other part of the great work to which this Association is called, for Africa and for America.

We have the appliances for the work in our schools, our theological departments and in our churches; in our experiences in tropical Africa of the terrible death-rate of white missionaries, and in the comparatively good health of the colored. Moreover, our decks are cleared for action by the removal of the debt that has so long hampered us. We can now handle our sails and our guns. May the winds of heaven waft us on our course! Then again we see a way of relief from the retrenchment enforced upon us by the debt and the hard times. Buildings were needed—some to be enlarged, others to be newly erected—but all such claims had to be sternly denied, much as it cost us to deny; but now, in the good providence of God, the generous benefaction of Mrs. Stone comes to our relief to supply just such buildings. The return of prosperity to the country encourages us to hope that the added expense in sustaining the enlarged work will be met. That return of prosperity—shall it be a curse or blessing? Shall it be the mad rush of muddy waters urged on by avarice and ambition, and bearing on its turbulent surface only reckless adventure, wild speculation, extravagant personal expenditure, unscrupulous public plunderings, ending at last and again in the dead sea of stagnation, bankruptcy, and, worst of all, in the wrecking of character, imprisonment, insanity, or suicide? Shall it not rather be consecrated, that it may be sanctified and perpetuated—like the beneficent waters of the Nile carried out into channels of benevolence, purified as it is quietly borne along and broken in smaller rills, bearing everywhere over this sin-parched earth the streams of salvation, making it to bloom with the beauty and fragrance of holiness and to bear fruit to the glory of God? Christian people ought to begin with the rising tide of this prosperity to enlarge the streams of their benevolence, lest, before they are aware, they be swept into the irresistible current. Especially do we ask the friends of this cause to recognize this auspicious era and plan to meet in some adequate measure the vast work before us.

The hour and the call have come. The nation is re-awakened to its great duty to the late slaves; they are themselves awaking to the glorious opening for them as citizens and Christians in America, and they are enthusiastic to aid in redeeming the land of their fathers. The possibilities of African regeneration are enkindling the hearts of Christians in Germany, in Great Britain and in America. God’s providence is opening the way and sending His commands along the lines. Well may it be said to the Church of Christ in America as Mordecai said to Esther, “Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

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THE PROVIDENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.

REV. E. H. MERRELL, PRESIDENT OF RIPON COLLEGE.

The significance of the negro in America cannot be understood without study in the light of the providence of God. It is not presumption to seek in the course of events the divine thought; it is rather presumption to assume that events occur without a divine purpose. “They that love to trace a divine hand will always have a divine hand to trace.” It is true that men have committed unspeakable folly in attempting to force the thoughts of the great God into the channels of their intellectual pettiness. Philosophies of history written with a provincial scholarship, under the eye of an unsound philosophy or the extravagancies of religious enthusiasm, must from the nature of the case be unsound; so a too particular and minute description of the ways of Providence in the interest of a preconceived theory of life, or of some specific reform or “cause,” leads to fanaticism and exposure to contempt. There are sins committed only by the good, if the solecism may be tolerated, and among them is a profane assumption of knowledge in regard to the purposes of God. But, on the other hand, it is greater folly to assume that God has left the world out of His thought and providential care, and that the course of the world is not made by the efficiency of His word. It is absurd, also, to assume that great providential courses are undiscoverable by the intelligence of man. “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering. O, ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but ye cannot discern the signs of the times.” We may make ourselves quite ridiculous in attempting to literalize the tails, wings, breastplates, teeth, hair, faces, crowns, shapes of the horse-like locusts of John’s apocalypse; but it is quite within the reach of our faculties to find the key to his book and to unfold its prophetic instructions and consolations. The use of the tabernacle as the dwelling-place of Jehovah’s glory it is possible to find by a simple exercise of the ken of philosophic interpretation; but the symbolic import of the coverings of fine twined linen and woven goats’ hair and rams’ skins dyed red, we must leave to the dogmatism of unlettered exegesis. It is not our fault, then, that we are looking too intently for the ways of God through the history of the world, but rather that we do not look aright. * * * * If it be true that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will;” that “He changeth the times and the seasons; He removeth kings and setteth up kings;” that “promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south; but God is the Judge; He putteth down one and setteth up another;”—if it be true that the Lord “that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth” by Himself also, “frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad;” that He “sayeth of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure,” surnaming him, and girding him, though he knew him not;—if, in short, the Lord is God, and His providence extends over nature, over nations, over individuals, over free acts, and over sinful acts,—surely we shall not gather the significance of any great matter in the world’s progress without such a study of the facts, and such an interpretation of them as shall disclose the main trend of the divine purposes.

I think I hazard little in saying that the foothold of the Negro in the United States is providentially significant in relation to a great onward movement for the evangelization of the world. And in this statement I have more in view than the Christianizing of the dark continent. In relation to this, it may signify much; but in relation to the whole kingdom of Christ, it signifies more.

(1.) The truthfulness of this statement holds our conviction when we view the facts in relation to the great end of all history; and this is no transcendental or visionary gaze. It is the perpetual characteristic of human folly to see events only in their immediate relations; whereas, the present moment can interpret nearly nothing. Philosophy concerns itself with remote causes and ends. “Providence,” says Guizot, “hurries not Himself to display to-day the consequence of the principle He yesterday announced. He will draw it out in the lapse of ages. Even according to our reasoning, logic is none the less sure because it is slow.” God’s thought is from eternity; but it is only because God has purposed that a science of history is possible, or the end of history discoverable. Its philosophy is often based on the assumption of the unity of the race; for the unity of the race it is better to say, the unity of the divine purpose. Said Augustine of old: “God cannot have left the course of human affairs, the growth and decay of nations, their victories and defeats, unregulated by the laws of His providence.” And as the latest deliverance of philosophy we have from Professor Flint, “The ultimate and greatest triumph of historical philosophy will really be neither more nor less than the full proof of Providence, the discovery by the process of scientific method of the divine plan, which unites and harmonizes the apparent chaos of human actions contained in history into a cosmos.” Suppose we assume, as the end of history, the establishment of a kingdom of righteousness, or the perfection of the members of the race for an endless society; that the increase of wealth, the extending of knowledge, the refinements of culture, have ultimate value only in relation to such a kingdom or society; that the method of procedure toward the attainment of this end involves the encouragements and chastisements, the rewards and disciplines, the pulling down amid building up, the slaying and making alive, which belong to the law of discipleship for character. Suppose, further, that we find ourselves living in a period when the Christian world is peculiarly stirred with missionary enthusiasm, and laboring to bring the whole world to membership in the everlasting kingdom; and yet, again, that we have brought to the midst of the most Christian nation millions of the most barbarous people, and put in such relation to that nation that the questions concerning them necessarily involve religious and missionary aspects—assuming all this, and taking into view the profound agitations, the vast numbers of beings involved, the enormous commercial interests that have been staked, the slow uprooting of inveterate race prejudices, the transforming of societies, the hot wrath of God in sweeping commonwealths with the besom of civil war, it becomes easily credible that the Negro in the United States signifies a great providential on moving the conversion of the world. To find in this Negro problem nothing but the lust which brought him to our shores, or the instrumentality of the wealth which he has been the means of accumulating, or the object of a sentimental pietism which would colonize him, or a nuisance for progressive abatement, is to attempt to solve the puzzle of a bewildering maze without the exercise of wisdom, or to have exit from a labyrinth without a clew. But, with the right end in view, all the mysteries of it are easily solved.

It has been recently said, by an able English writer, that the great plague of 1348-9 “is a totally new departure in English history, incomparably more important in its permanent effects than the conquest of William, the civil war of the fifteenth century, the civil war and the revolution of the seventeenth. It has left abiding results on the present condition of England. To it we owe the peculiar position of the English aristocracy and the equally peculiar position of the peasant. It created the poor law and the trades’ union. It was the origin of Lollardism, which was itself the precursor of the Reformation. Fortunately, it occurred after representative institutions had become a necessary part of English political life, or it would have destroyed them.” Under Providence, Lollardism and the Reformation were the final cause of pestilence, and it might have counted far more if the end had been more exactly understood at the time of the desolations.

(2.) But that the Negro in the United States means, under Providence, a forward movement in the work of evangelizing the world may be inferred from _the moral and Christian element he has forced into American politics_. The final cause of a special Providence may not be apprehended by the large part of those who are the witnesses of its procedure; but its drift may be noted from the things they are constrained, under God, to think and say and do about it. A nation may be girded to a task, even without recognition of the hand or purpose of Him who girds; but that nation will be saying and doing very significant things. Now, the great enthusiasms of our political life for the century following the achieving of our independence have resulted in one way or another from the presence of the Negro. And this is the same as to say that the Negro has been the unwitting cause of the moral and religious elements in politics; for there are no great enthusiasms which have not a basis in either morals or religion. The courts, Cabinet, Congress, legislatures, the pulpit, the platform, the hearth, have furnished the arena for debate, harangue and purpose, which have enlarged our views of the brotherhood of man, kindled an unexampled enthusiasm for humanity, and deepened those moral convictions which are the basis of sound character. But for all these superior achievements in virtue, the black man has been the occasion, and must have our thanks. Selfish men, irreligious men, profane men, under the guidance of an unseen hand, have become the stout advocates of the Christian principles of brotherhood and of duty to carry a Gospel to every Creature. * * * *

This advocacy of righteousness toward man, and of the rights of man as man, has become so much a matter of course with us that we are likely to overlook its vast significance. Even on our Puritan soil it was not from the beginning so. The “austere morality and democratic spirit of the Puritans” even did not keep them clear of sin of human bondage. “Their experience of Indian ferocity and treachery, acting on their theologic convictions, led them early and readily to the belief that these savages, and, by logical inference, all savages, were the children of the devil, to be subjugated, if not extirpated, as the Philistine inhabitants of Canaan had been by the Israelites under Joshua. Indian slavery, sometimes forbidden by law, but usually tolerated, if not entirely approved, by public opinion, was among the early usages of New England; and from this to negro slavery—the slavery of any variety of pagan barbarians—was an easy transition.” But at the time of the Declaration of Independence public sentiment had already greatly changed.

In the original draft of this document there was a specific indictment of George III., which was prophetic of the “furnace blast” beneath which the nation for a hundred subsequent years was to “wait the pangs of transformation” into a man-loving, mission-promoting people. Mr. Jefferson, in the draft of the immortal Declaration, reflected the public thought and feeling so closely that he has been accused by many of plagiarism. We seem thus early to find the pre-intimations of a nation in its public acts ranging itself on the side of a vast scheme of Providence. The indictment referred to is as follows: “Determined to keep an open market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the _liberties_ with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.” Mr. Jefferson, in his “Works,” says: “The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving of the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia;” and he adds, “our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for, though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.” It is as impossible, at present, as it is needless to proceed from this initial point through discussions for the formation of platforms and parties, and from these to specific laws, and from laws to the violation of them, and civil war. If a just God has been ruling among the affairs of the nation, it is infidelity to doubt that He has been guiding this vast and tumultuous slavery conflict to some great end for the enlargement of His kingdom in the earth. The moral and religious aspects of American political questions for the last three generations have a Divine significance unsuspected by the actors in our national drama.

(3.) But of greater significance still is the fact that the coming of the Negro incorporates a missionary element in our national life. In the large advance movement now making for the evangelizing of the race, it is evident that the colored people are not to go out through a Red Sea into a wilderness, to become a peculiar people to whom shall be committed the oracles of God, and from whom shall arise one like the Messiah. No person is now so superficial as not to see that, whether we will or not, the Negro has come to stay. He is becoming even more and more an element in the sum of those experiences which we call our national life. He has not come to fit himself to become an uplifter; he is rather here to do that work which shall fit and cause this new and great nation to become in a peculiar way the uplifter of peoples. It is the resistance of this idea which has been the fundamental reason of all our national turbulence. Providence meant one thing; the selfishness of man another. God has given unmistakably the “sign of the prophet Jonas;” man sees nothing but the redness of a lowering sky. Can we fail to be impressed with the fact that a being whose not remote ancestors were, if not savage, at least barbarian, has now come into the possession of every element of American civilization? The negro has our language, dress, civil customs, religion, domestic and social life, and in the main, our vices. He is a voter, law-maker, executive, educator, freeholder, priest, and head of a Christian household. He has reached high proficiency in many branches of learning, and is skilled in all the arts with which we are acquainted. In a vast number of cases, through crime be it granted, he is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. He is less a ward than citizen, and hardly more pupil than instructor. His absolute severance from fatherland,—his history, his tenacity of life and of race characteristics, yet, while retaining race characteristics, his greedy absorption of the best elements of civilization,—his poverty and his possibilities, awakening our sympathies and challenging our benevolent enterprise,—his tenacious hold upon our soil, our customs and our hearts,—these and many things beside indicate that he has come to stimulate, to lift us to a higher form of evangelical enterprise than that exhibited hitherto by any people. We are not merely to make missionaries of the black people; but we through them are to be ourselves made missionaries. It seems to be the will of God that the nation should set itself to the work of Christianizing the world.

(4.) To add yet another evidence that the signs of the times are to be interpreted in the line of advancing evangelization, I would mention the genius of the Negro for piety. Colonel Preston, who has written intelligently on the subject of the religious education of the Negro, says that he has adopted all the vices of the white race except suicide, duelling and religious skepticism. His voice is not more flexible and pure than, his faith is confiding and strong. And this is not a small matter. The world doubtless has great need of brains, but it has vaster need of character. Of the stones God can raise up children to Abraham; but it requires no miracle to raise up children to Plato. There is no fear for the brains of any race that will accept Christianity. To virtue, knowledge will surely be added. It is foolish for us Anglo-Saxons to assume that we have found the best expression of religion. It would be like the claim of the Pharisee, who assumed that the end of the law was fulfilled in himself. The worldliness of the church is at the present time more conspicuous than the churchliness of the world. A person who lives simply according to the doctrine of Christ is so singular as to get special notice in the church news of the religious press. So long as it can be truthfully said that “it is only by a special and rare experience that young men in the church settle the question of their life-work by the simple test of usefulness and duty; and if a young man is found pondering the question in this view, it is regarded as a case of unusual piety, and he is directed at once to the ministry; and if an older man begins to inquire how he can do the most good with his property, it is accepted as evidence of special growth in grace, a ripening for heaven”—so long, I say, as this can be truthfully said, it is perfectly within bounds to affirm that the current expression of the religion of Christ is nothing less than a shame. It is rational to hope that the Negro may help us to a fitter expression. I admit his crudities, extravagancies and immoralities, but he has a genius for religion nevertheless. It has been conjectured that there was a period when the ancestors of the Athenians were to be in no otherwise distinguished from their barbarian neighbors than by some finer taste in the decoration of their arms, and something of a loftier spirit in the songs which told of the exploits of their warriors. But these rude attempts were prophetic of their æsthetic triumphs; they had a genius for the beautiful.

It seems to me that Africa is the fitting continent in whose mysterious solitudes the greatest explorer of this generation should die in service and on his knees. He symbolized the possibilities of the Negritto race for the expression of the life of the Son of God, and mutely prophesied of the ages to come. This race, with its greed for civilization and its natural capabilities for religion, is in vital connection with the foremost nation of these latter times. Does not this signify the incoming of a more thorough righteousness, a loftier faith, and a great advance movement for Christianizing the world?

Whether I have correctly formulated the course of Providence or not, it is clear that the Negro is in the United States for a purpose, and that purpose is no petty one. He has been the occasion of the most exhaustive discussion of the subject of the rights of man, of the formation of a great national party, and of the largest civil war of modern times. He is now the most considerable element in national politics. If Providence is a scheme of means and ends, in which particular events are chosen to further great ends, and if a just God is presiding over the destiny of our nation, it is simply illogical to conclude that the foothold of the Negro on the continent is not a thing of vast significance. And if this be true, every question concerning him has a new importance. If Pharaoh had understood that the Hebrew bondsmen were a chosen generation, he would have carried on the brick business in a different way. This whole Negro question needs study in a new light, “lest haply we be found even to fight against God.” Governor St. John, of Kansas, in answer to a question from the South, how to stop the Negro exodus, has recently said:

“Rent the Negro land and sell him supplies at fair prices. Stop bulldozing him. Respect the sanctity of his family. Make him feel that he is just as safe in his person and family, and in all civil and political rights, as he can be in Kansas or any other Northern Slate. Then he will not want to come North. Unless you do this, the Red Sea will open before him and he will pass over dry-shod; and you of the South, attempting to stop him, will be overwhelmed, as was Pharaoh and his hosts.”

These are sharp words, and their rebuke is doubtless needed. It is probably not important to stop the Negro exodus. For both the Negro and the white race it is needful that large numbers be removed from the scenes of their old servitude. The Negro will rise faster and will more readily be the connecting and reconciling link between two antagonistic forms of civilization. This is but a stage in those wilderness wanderings by which he is being fitted to perform his part in the drama of the world’s renewing. In Kansas and everywhere he must have chance to develop according to what is in him, and there need be no fear that he will not act his part well.

This theme suggests many practical matters concerning the importance and the methods of home evangelization. These cannot be discussed in this paper; but I wish to raise again the question asked by large numbers of our most sagacious men, viz.: whether, in view of what seem to be vast providential designs concerning the inhabitants of this continent, our home work is not suffering comparative neglect? This is my deliberate conviction. For the colored man, at least, we are doing but a fraction of what it would be profitable to do. He is very far as yet from entering into his rest, and for long years yet we are to share with him “the pangs of transformation.”

“Before the joy of peace must come
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace,
Each in his place,
To bear his lot,
And murmuring not,
Endure, and wait, and labor.”

* * * * *

CHURCH WORK IN THE SOUTH.

BY REV. C. L. WOODWORTH.

The subject before us is “Church Work in the South.” This work, though it seems to be fundamental to every missionary organization, has yet been sharply challenged both as to its propriety and expediency. Put thus on the defensive, it may be well to recur to first principles, in order to satisfy ourselves that the church is the _unit idea_ in all Christian labor. And to unfold that idea in the conversion of men, and to make it potential in society, through the preaching of the Gospel and the sanctified lives of believers, is the end of the family, of the school, and of all the forces which go to civilize and uplift communities. That work which does not aim at the church as its end, however refining and ennobling it may be in itself, fails, utterly and infinitely, to realize the ideal of the New Testament, or the ideals of history as seen in the progress of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. When, therefore, a society like the one whose anniversary we are now celebrating presents itself for our suffrage and our support, it becomes our privilege, and perhaps our duty, to question its mission and its right to live. Should it appear that secular education is the object mainly aimed at, then we would say it has just as much right to live as there is reason for the work it is doing. But if, on the other hand, it should appear that the regeneration of men, and the founding of pure and intelligent churches, is its central thought and aim, and that all other instruments in its hands are but tributary to this, then we would say it has just as much right to live as there is force and authority in the last command of our ascended Lord. This will become evident if we examine:

(1.) The _Commission_ under which a society like this does its work. The warrant for a missionary society, as for all missionary effort, is found in the words of our Saviour to his disciples, just before he went up on high: “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Analyze these words, as repeated by three evangelists, and, we submit, they leave upon the mind the single, distinct impression that the work he commissioned his disciples to do was to teach or to preach Christ; was to call to repentance, and show how sin could be atoned and remitted through the blood of the Crucified. That message is given to this society—the most important ever committed to men; and to proclaim it freely and fully, all its resources of men and of money, of learning and of influence, should be put under contribution. This is the work than which nothing greater nor grander can be conceived.

(2.) This will further appear if we study the _model_ of missionary work, which is presented to us in apostolic labor and example. If the _words_ of our Saviour define the work to be done, the example of the Apostles defines and illustrates the _manner_ in which it should be done. And beginning at Jerusalem, we find that the Apostles and the company of the believers gave themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. When the endowment of power had come, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. They were now divinely empowered and set apart for their work. The Holy Ghost is now their inspirer and guide, and when the multitude came running together to see what this strange thing could mean, Peter, with the eleven, stood up and delivered that searching discourse which went with convincing and converting power to the hearts of 3,000 men.

Indeed, what is the Acts of the Apostles but a record of missionary operations conducted by inspired men, who were specially empowered and guided by the Holy Ghost, in which the preaching of Christ was the all-absorbing theme? Peter and James among the Apostles, and Philip and Stephen among the deacons, were illustrious preachers in their day, and models of devotion to the single purpose of winning men to Christ. Converts were multiplied, churches organized, and believers made to feel that the _one supreme_ work was to teach or to preach Christ. The movement began on the day of Pentecost by preaching Christ, and on that line it continued its triumphant way while the Apostles lived. They neither sought nor asked for anything more. They were content to wield the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. And so they preached Christ, “to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness, but unto them which were saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

(3.) If we needed other evidence that this line of work is the true one, we have it in the historical _examples of other successful missionary work_ since the time of the Apostles. We only need to examine those great religious movements in history which not only lifted the Church, but started the human race forward on higher courses of thought and life, to satisfy ourselves that the Gospel was the quickening power, and furnished the motive and impulse to the astonishing results which followed. A single text ringing in the ear of the monk as he slowly and wearily climbed Pilate’s stairs at Rome, on his knees, “The just shall live by faith,” explains the Reformation. That was the key-note to all the preaching and writing of Luther and the Reformers. That truth lifted and saved men; that truth organized the free thought and the Protestant churches of Germany, and made the Reformation a success.

The Puritan movement in England, to some extent contemporaneous with that in Germany, proceeded on the same principles. Men mighty in the Scriptures were raised up to preach the word. They relied on nothing but the simple Gospel of Christ. All the might of king and council and Parliament could not crush a movement having its sources in the word of God. It crystallized into dissenting churches; it flowed beyond the British Islands on to the continent of Europe and to the continent of America, taking possession of a new empire and a new world.

The Methodist movement, under Whitefield and the Wesleys, was still another uprising and following of the human mind after the simple truths of the Gospel. Though educated men themselves, they had almost a contempt for human learning and the wordly appliances on which other churches so much relied. The preaching of the word accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost was their _sole_ reliance. On that principle they organized their churches, literally preaching the Gospel to the poor, and, at the end of a century, had a membership outnumbering any Protestant church in Christendom. It would be easy to show that modern missions, at home and abroad, have been most successful as they have relied most fully on the simple preaching of the word, and that the building up of churches has been the saving power of communities _intellectually_, _morally_ and even _materially_.

(4.) Applying now the facts and principles barely glanced at in this review to the subject in hand, we shall find that, so far as the South is concerned, pure and intelligent churches are at this moment more a necessity even than schools are. The education of the intellect is vitally important; but for its own security it should rest on the broader education of the moral nature. The former will make keen, sharp men, shrewd in business and other transactions, but only the latter can be trusted to make honest, faithful, conscientious men. While we insist that _Christian schools_ are the true handmaid of religion, we must not be tempted to substitute science and culture for piety, nor to make schools stand for more than churches. The church alone is fundamental, but for the best results they belong together and should go together. Schools _can_ be made and _should_ be made helps to religion; but we mistake their nature entirely when we imagine that there is anything in the ordinary studies of the class-room—the classics, the mathematics, or the natural sciences—to sanctify the heart or subdue the will to God. The colored race is vastly more run down on its moral side than on its intellectual side. This is true of all degraded, barbarous races. The direct effects of slavery on the colored race were its moral effects. To be sure, it left the race poor and uncultivated; but _that_ might have been borne and easily repaired had it left the moral integrity of the race intact and pure. The school of slavery perverted the moral nature, and until _that_ is rectified, no process of intellectual education can lift the race on to the high level of a true manhood and a great future.

Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first morally great. The age of Pericles in Greece, and the Augustinian age in Rome, when the human mind in each of those countries reached its climacteric, was preceded by those great moral virtues among the people which made them severely simple, honest, brave and true. Greece had her Homer, her Solon, her Æschylus, her Euripides, her Sappho, before she had her Pericles. Rome had her Romulus, her Numa, her Cato, her Scipios, and for mothers, her Cornelia, her Marcia and her Portia, before she had her Augustus. England had her Alfred, her Bede, her Wickliffe, her Knox and her Reformers, before she had her Bacon, her Shakespeare and her Milton. Germany had her Luther, her Melanethon, her Calvin, her Zwingle, and her long line of Protestant confessors and defenders, before she had her Goethe, her Schiller, her Humboldt, her Herder and her Beethoven. The ancient nations, whose masterpieces in literature and art are still the models on which we form our taste, declined intellectually precisely as they declined morally. The great age of English literature was a greater age of moral heroism; and Germany’s highest intellectual development is but the consummate flowering of the moral forces which have come down from the Reformation. Both will decline as the moral supports on which they rest are weakened or undermined.

In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race, we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority, find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in holy things. It is in the Church, where men speak in the name of God, and where the soul is brought face to face with the claims of God, that the highest moral motives are pressed and felt. And hence we say, the Church _foremost_, and everything tributary to the Church, because the Church deals supremely with the moral nature, through which degraded races can alone be lifted.

(5.) There is a farther necessity for such churches, in order that we may save the present and coming generation of educated young colored men and women from skepticism and infidelity. The moment we educate a young man or a young woman to read intelligently, or to speak and write the English language grammatically, we have educated them out of the old colored churches. They will not listen to men whose vocabulary has more sound than meaning, and who violate with every sentence every law of correct speech. The white churches are not open to them in any such sense that they feel at liberty to enter them on any footing of Christian equality. Unless we provide for them something which is more pure and rational than their own churches, free from the clamors and excitements of mere animal passion, we send them into the streets and away from the house of God. After a young man or a young woman has remained in school long enough to see the ignorance of the colored preachers, and has gained sufficient intelligence to make moral distinctions, it is inevitable that he should turn from such teachers, and revolt from such moral and religious guides.

If they are compelled to judge religion only by the specimens of it which they see around them, why should not a common intelligence reject it altogether? Our education, therefore, must either lead our students out of the old churches into infidelity, or it must lead them into churches where an intelligent ministry and a pure worship will satisfy both intellect and heart. I can conceive no greater wrong we can do that race than to destroy their faith in the religion taught and practiced in their churches, if we do not supply them with a better. A race without a religious faith is lost; and, while our education destroys the old, let us be careful to put in the place of it the _new_ and the _true_.

(6.) And, finally, pure and intelligent churches are a necessity in order to create a reservoir of piety and ability sufficient to nurture and bring forward the young men and women needed for the work of redeeming Africa. If the colored race in this country is ever to be broadened to the full conception of saving Africa—is ever to be made capable of laying broad and deep the foundations of Christian States on that dark continent—if it is ever to be inspired to the effort of such an undertaking—the movement must begin at the foundations of character, in the moral sensibilities and convictions of the soul. And a movement that is wide enough and strong enough to sustain such an attempt must begin at the house of God, must have its roots in Christian homes, must be fed in the closet, at the family altar, with the word of God and the breath of prayer. The movement which saves Africa will be a race movement; will be the light and pressure of Divine truth upon the minds and consciences of the people, and a baptism of Pentecostal fire consecrating them to the work. But to what agencies shall we look for such mighty spiritual energies as are needed for the recovery of a race to Jesus Christ? The Church is the vast reservoir of spiritual forces, and she utilizes other instruments as they are needed to accomplish her work. But if it should happen that we should mistake instruments or methods for power, even schools for the Church of the living God, we should soon find that the body without the spirit is dead.

It would avail little if here and there one in our schools might be persuaded to enter the African field. What could he do without the prayers, the sympathies, as well as the moral and pecuniary support of his race behind him? And what certainly would there be of a supply or of a succession of laborers, unless the churches were holding their members to the work and were pushing forward their children to offer themselves in its behalf? The churches alone can create a race sentiment broad and deep and potent enough to bear up an enterprise aiming at the Christianization of Africa. It is the Gospel, ministered by holy men, which unifies and exalts communities. It is the Church, as the centre and representative of divine power, which stands for God, and the word and the ordinances entrusted to her keeping are his only visible hold upon the world. If we would have Christian scholars in training for Africa—as teachers, as preachers, or as statesmen—they should come from homes and churches in which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of missions was as the breath of life. On the one hand, we want the churches as the inspiring and sustaining power both for men and money, and on the other, as the motive and model for the work we are called to do. Our missionaries need to live and move in an atmosphere of holy self-denial and charity, to be empowered by the prayers and godly zeal of the great brotherhood of the saints, in order to a full consecration. We can expect men and money for the work in sufficient number and amount only as the churches, like mighty reservoirs, gather and hold all their forces of brain, of heart, of will, of wealth and of learning, of piety and of power, for Christ.

* * * * *

AFRICA.

* * * * *

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.

The report on the Association’s work in Africa, submitted to your committee, shows that the Mendi Mission has reached once more a degree of prosperity and promise. In its church, school and industrial work it has been prospered, and in the plan of preparing and using native helpers do we find the great principle of all successful schemes for disseminating the Gospel wisely adopted. Furthermore, the signal fact seems now already permanently established that the Freedmen are the providential missionaries for the dark continent. They endure the climate as Europeans cannot, and, as trained for their work in the seminaries of this society, they evince a capacity which fits them for a rare evangelical service in the land of their ancestors.

But the matter to which it is especially fitting that your attention be directed with unwonted seriousness is the conditional decision recently arrived at by the Executive Committee of this Association to accept Mr. Arlington’s offer of £3,000, and open in Eastern Africa a new mission station. That indicates what all interested in the great problem of Africa’s Christianization should welcome with thanksgiving and prayer, viz., that this Association is to take a new and advanced part in this latest missionary crusade. Now its work will have a higher significance and a wider reach; for under God does it more and more seem that to this Association is to fall the high part of preparing the needed missionaries for Africa. The relation of the educational work of the Association to this grand enterprise becomes impressively apparent. There is a compensation in God’s providence, and in this instance it is inspiring to believe that our Freedmen, as the best fitted agents, are to become the preachers of Christianity to the land from which their ancestors were cruelly carried away as slaves. Here, now, is something proposed which will tax our faith and test our courage and consecration.

The field for the proposed mission seems to be wisely chosen, and in the Nile basin, making one more in a chain of mission stations recently opened, will this Association have its place and do its share in redeeming the continent to which the entire church now is turning with a yearning heart. It is somewhat significant that the proposed field for this mission is in a portion of the continent most desolated by the slave trade. Pre-eminently appropriate is it that this society, so long the friend and advocate of the slave, should carry the tidings of “the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free” into the midst of tribes which have suffered from this terrible traffic.

The full and studied report of the Foreign Committee, in the April number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, on the character and promise of the special field designated by Mr. Arthington, makes it unnecessary for your committee to add anything touching upon this point. The careful investigation made in the first instance confirms the wisdom of Mr. Arthington in naming to this Association the field he has. His own letter, published in the March number, shows that he had conferred with the best authorities as to the location of the mission, and that he has chosen a district that offers unusual attractions for such a station as this Association should establish.

We believe your committee but voice the feeling of all friends of this Association when expressing the hope that the conditions on which this missionary advance depends will be promptly met, so that without delay measures can be adopted to enter this open door, and improve this latest and greatest opportunity of doing for the millions of the long-forgotten and long-despised continent. It is very evident that the foreign work of the Association is to become of increasing importance and magnitude, for to it has providentially fallen the high privilege of preparing the workers especially required in African evangelization. With its old mission on the West Coast rising now into fresh usefulness, on its new basis of depending upon Freedmen missionaries and native helpers, and the projected station south and west of Gondokoro, in a field full of promise, it will become a great evangelistic power in Africa. The springs and feeders of its work will be in those noble educational institutions established in our Southern land, for from these will go forth the colored men and women who will show of what holy sacrifice and achievements they are capable.

* * * * *

We should not forget that to this Association belongs the honor of inaugurating in this country the more recent phase of African evangelization. At the annual meeting in Clinton, Iowa, in 1874, was the first note sounded for a missionary advance into the heart of the dark continent, and in the annual gathering of 1875 and every year since has it been a prominent subject for consideration. Mr. Arthington was induced to make his offer to the Association because of its early and pronounced sympathy with this plan of interior missions in Africa, and we, of our own belief, would be disloyal to the flag we first gave to the winds of heaven if we did not gird ourselves for this new venture. This Association cannot afford to be absent from the Christian forces now entering the far land, for by Providence and the signal history of past years, and its peculiar relation to the African race, it is called to take its place, highest of all, in the lustrous belt of missions that now extend from the Zambesi along the chain of lakes to the region in the Nile basin which we are to man under the name of the Arthington Mission.