time. She could barely hold the ground she had gained. During the many years she had been directing the evangelical work among the negroes she had been training a body of colored ministers who were ready to take the places of the white itinerant and local preachers. Many of these retained their connection with the Church South; many of the ablest went with other bodies of Methodists. There was now aroused a great interest in the evangelization of the colored race on the part of the Northern people. They felt that every obligation required that they should do something for the negro, and at once they began the work. They found the field already prepared and white to the harvest. Preachers, leaders, and church buildings were at hand. Culture was needed, and especially organization for self-help, for hitherto the colored people had been provided for by others. They must now learn to provide for themselves. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had a corps of able Bishops, and a compact organization. So had the Zion Methodists, who differed from the African Methodists in but little more than name. The Methodist Episcopal Church, rich and powerful, also came into the field. The Methodist Episcopal Church established schools and colleges and has been liberal and energetic. The other bodies have shown the same zeal.

"The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, gave to the colored Church which it had set up- the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America — all the church buildings which it had erected for its colored members, and saw it organized for important and successful work.

"The effects of Methodism upon the negro race in the South, and of the Baptists, the only other body of Christians who had ever done much for the negroes, was seen during and after the late war. The negroes rose in no insurrection. They waited the issue patiently, and when the end came, and they were free, they accepted their freedom as of God. No Christian leader among them has ever been accused of any agitation that would issue in bloodshed. They felt that God, in his providence, had said to the Christians of the South: Take these sons of Africa and train them for me, and in my time I will call for them.' The congregations of colored Methodists, thrown upon their own resources, have nobly met the demands, and now day-schools and Sunday-schools and churches are found all over the country."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THESE AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND AFRICA.

WHAT

HAT is to be the grand outcome of this most remarkable of modern race movements? Can it be supposed for a moment that the tremendous energy of these numerous and vigorous African Churches is to expend itself in these United States, and almost exclusively among these six millions of Americanized Africans and their descendants? Can any thoughtful man suppose that this mighty Amazonian current of energy-energy material, intellectual, and spiritual—is in God's wide and great plans for the world limited to the negroes in this country? or that the only relations it sustains to any channels of life outside of its own are incidental and occasional overflows?

This would amount to saying: Providence brought them to America, and maintained them here in wondrous ways, "a peculiar people," in the midst of a strange race, of variant if not antagonistic tendencies, in order that they only might be redeemed from barbarism and brought to the knowledge of the truth.

To me it is simply unthinkable that in the plans

of Providence for the thousands of Africans in America the millions of Africans in Africa should have no place. To my view, nothing solves the problem of their providential coming to this country, of their providential maintenance as a race in process of civilization and Christianization, of their providential emancipation about one decade before Stanley found Livingstone-that glorious John the Baptist of African civilization-that leaves Africa

out.

Here in the United States they have come to Christ, the Lord of all; here they have multiplied, as did Israel in Egypt; here they have the fairest opportunity this world can give them to grow into the fullest stature of which they are capable; and here, where they now are, the great body of them will, I do not question, remain, if not to the end of time, yet long beyond the period when all doubt of their destiny will be solved, and all controversy concerning their relation to the white race will be happily ended. Here, in a climate that suits them, in the midst of a Christian population friendly to their development, under laws that protect them, under conditions the most favorable possible to them, they can grow into a strong people, "“made ready" by Providence for their great duties to the uncounted millions in their mother country; here they can realize, more perfectly than anywhere else under the sun, God's plan and purpose concerning

them; here they can grow to be all that they can be, and thus and then be ready to do all that they can do; here they can be taught till they can teach; here training-schools may be established, whence teachers and preachers may go forth from time to time to kindle great lights of learning and saving truth in the dark places beyond the sea; here, for holy conquests in Africa, they can gather and drill a great army of enlightened and Christianized men and women; and not teachers and preachers only, but farmers, mechanics, artisans, men in all departments competent to lead the civilization of the tribes and nations in Africa. From these shores colonies can depart from time to time, as God opens the way for the great undertaking. These colonies will follow the brave explorers who blaze out the highways for the inarch of that coming Christian civilization that will make of the "Dark Continent" one of the brightest and noblest lands of the earth.

What they need now is to strengthen their stakes and lengthen their cords, to get themselves ready, to gather up their energies for the greatest missionary movement that ever was undertaken in the history of the Church.

They are not ready now. God overruled slavery for most gracious ends. They learned the Gospel in slavery as they could not have learned it in their native wilds, as they could not have learned it had

they been made free upon their first landing upon our shores. When emancipation - anticipating Providence, it may be-came upon them, they were not fully ready for their new trials, dangers, and responsibilities. Unless we of the South had more generally and more fully realized our providential relation to them, may be they could never have gotten ready in slavery. But, granting whatever faults were in slavery, it is certain that their training, while in bondage, had done much for them. If their antecedents, surroundings, and resources be considered, it will be allowed that they have wrought wonders since their emancipation. Their very habit of obedience as slaves enters largely into the measure of their capacity for independent Church organization, as well as their capacity for citizenship. What could they have done with a Church, or with a ballot, or with themselves, had they been converted by cargoes and turned loose, free, upon their landing? But they are learning how to do Church work, and they are learning fast. They may lack the far-seeing sagacity of statesmanship, but they have what, perhaps, is better for the growth of a Church or a nation, the promptings of a prophetic instinct as to their duty and destiny. Moreover, let it be remembered, when we are tempted to doubt of this whole perplexed problem, that they have the guiding, though unseen, hand of God. What the Lord said of Cyrus may be