the most cultured of English-speaking people are superior to the Britons, long after Cæsar's in

vasion.

Seeing that the greatest fact of the history of African slavery in the United States is the Christianizing of hundreds of thousands of them, I conclude that Christianizing them was the grand providential design in their coming to this country. It is, by the way, a significant fact, that the wild Africans appeared on these shores long before there was a thought of a Foreign Missionary Society in the American Churches. Who knows but that the heathen who were brought to us largely moved the Churches to send the Gospel to the heathen in their own lands? He who cannot, through all the mists and clouds of this strange and troubled history, see the hand of God in their coming to this country, can hardly understand the "going down" of Israel "into Egypt."

God

Let us refer to that history a moment. would “raise up a peculiar people." The problem of a Hebrew race, of comparatively pure blood, could not have been worked out in Canaan, with its roving shepherd life. As far back as the "call" of Abraham out of "Ur of the Chaldees" we see the hand of Providence in manifold adjustments that issued in separating this one family from their fireworshiping kindred the other side of the Euphrates. The same design is manifested in God's dealing

with the larger family of Jacob. To preserve them a "peculiar people" they were, under pressure of famine, moved into Egypt, where, in many providential ways, they were cared for-" nourished" is Joseph's word-and protected till the family grew into a tribe, the tribe into a race, a nation within a nation, but yet not strong enough, in numbers or character, to be transplanted to the promised land. The problem needed Egypt, fertile and favorable to the rapid increase of the race, and, as the strongest of the nations, able to protect the children of Israel from their enemies. It needed, also, a people who, by tradition, hated "shepherds," and who, when they came to fear their increasing strength, made them slaves. The Hebrew slavery and the Egyptian caste-prejudice against foreigners and shepherds conspired to keep the races unmixed. If there had been free intermarriage the Hebrew race would have been absorbed within the first hundred years of their stay in Egypt, and the whole problem lost irretrievably.

A good deal has been said at random, and in a declamatory way, about the iniquity of caste. May be we have not yet reached the bottom of this. subject; may be, if God had designed any such commingling of bloods as would issue in one conglomerate race, there never would have been any such sentiment or instinct in the human breast.

Let us suppose now that one hundred thousand

Africansheathen all-had been set down in America about the time the children of the Pilgrim Fathers were getting a foothold in Massachusetts and the Cavaliers were establishing their settleinents in Virginia and the Carolinas; and suppose there had not been, as there was from the beginning, spontaneous and resistless, one instinct of caste attraction and repulsion, and that there had been no obstacle to free intermarriage. Very soon there would have been no African race in this country. The issue would have been largely different; there would have been no heathen African race to train to useful arts, sturdy strength, and manly character, to lift up and to Christianize; but a Christian white race might have been largely heathenized. How would such a mingling of bloods as is here supposed have effected the development of civilization in the United States? It is a question that one who loves free institutions and has hope that his country holds a blessing for the world, does not like to consider.

Furthermore, had such an issue followed the introduction of the heathen negroes into this country, there would have been for continental Africa, with her uncounted millions, no morning star of hope shining over the lowly cabins and humble sanctuaries of their Christianized brethren in America. For we must never forget the ultimate outcome of this vast movement; we must never forget that the

Christianizing of these multitudes of Africans here. looks, and must look, to the salvation of the vaster multitudes in Africa itself. And in order to work out these results, both here and yonder, it was necessary to preserve a comparatively pure African race in this country. In those cases where human sin has mixed these diverse bloods the divine plan, I must believe, has been so much marred. But, as to the great majority of them, the Africans in this country are, as we have seen, pure bloods. The caste feeling and the environments of slavery favored this design of Providence in a far greater degree than those persons suppose who do not thoroughly know the negro in the rural districts of the South, as well as in the towns and cities.

But why should the South be the chosen field for working out this stupendous race-problem that involves, as surely as the world moves or stands, the destiny of two continents? All the reasons I claim not to have discovered; some, doubtless, are as yet undeveloped; but some of them seem very plain

to me.

I. These African children, in the school of Providence, needed a warm climate. The South gave them a better climate than Africa could give. And one result among many is, the descendants of the wild Africans that first landed on these shores are, in every respect, a finer race than were their ancestors when they came, than are their kindred who

still inhabit the original dwelling-places of their people. In horticultural gardens tender exotic plants are sometimes hardened by frequent transplantings. So these Africans, who were brought to America, found a climate that was warm enough to suit their constitution, and that was yet free from the enervating heats of the tropics. The wisdom of Providence is justified in an improved and bettered race.

2. They needed, for a time, the guidance and protection of a stronger people. And they needed, in order that the best results might follow, in this stronger race, a people of homogeneous blood. They found such a race in the Southern whites as they could have found it nowhere else in the United States. Thus, in Georgia, according to the Census of 1880, there is a total population of 1,538,983. Of the whole number only 10,310 are foreigners. In further illustration it may be mentioned that in Louisiana, where there was not a homogeneous white race, the Christianizing process did not succeed nearly so well as in South Carolina, where nearly all the white people were English, or in Georgia, where, as we have seen, the foreign element in the population is, practically, an inappreciable quantity. How our difficult problem would be complicated were there in the States where the freed negroes are a dense foreign population! Only suppose an Irish ward in New York or Philadelphia, or a German ward in Chicago or Cincinnati, out