final settlement of the dispute. The gray light of the dawning of the twentieth century appears in the eastern sky; there is the song of morning birds in the air; presently the rosy day will burst upon us. In God's name let us every one-men of the North and men of the South-get ready for the coming day.

To the subject of African freedom, then, in all its relations to two races, to two continents, and to the world, I am willing to give my best attention, seeking the fullest truth in the purest light God may give me. And I know, by the authority of Christ, my Lord, that "the truth makes free." know, also, that nothing else makes free in this world. Arguments, laws, proclamations, amendments to constitutions, battles; these alone make no man free. The truth, and nothing else, makes free the souls as well as the bodies of men.

There are three parties in this great historic conflict that need freedom by the truth: the men of the South, the men of the North, and the negroes themselves. Let no man flatter himself that he knows all the truth of this deep and difficult problem. I know that I do not. "I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of my high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

CHAPTER VI.

PROVIDENCE IN EMANCIPATION.

N this discussion I have to do with African

IN

slavery only in so far as slavery was used by the mysterious but all-wise and gracious providence of God to prepare the negroes for their freedom. Nay, more than this, for what is of vaster import, to prepare them for their duties and destiny in the right use of their freedom. Is this a fancy? Is this a mere vagary of Southern prejudice? When I say that God used their slavery to prepare them for their freedom, am I only seeking a sort of last refuge for an opinion on the subject of slavery that I have affirmed that I have utterly given up and changed? Nay, verily, I recognize the obvious facts of the history of the negro race in America. Nor are these facts exceptional. God never gave freedom to any barbarous nation without first subjecting them, in some way, to a period and a discipline of preparation. No savage people ever sprang at a bound into the enjoyment of freedom, and held it long, or used it wisely. Most republics have failed because the people were not ready for them. Heaven judged that a period of four hun

dred years was not too long to prepare the Hebrew race for independent national life. The records of Exodus show that even they had not learned too well the providential lessons of their stay in "the house of bondage."

Let me ask, and let sober people answer, whether the wild Africans were fitted for freedom when they were first landed from the slave-ships that brought them from their savage homes to the plantations of this country. Were not their American masters, unworthy of their sacred trust as many of them were, better fitted, judged by any test, to prepare these people for freedom than were their African masters and conquerors who sold them to the slavers? For what is generally forgotten should be always remembered-most of the negroes sold into slavery in America were bought from slavery in Africa. And surely I do not go too far when I say, American slavery was freedom. compared with the slavery from which they were taken.

Some of them, I know, were not technically slaves in their own country; some were bought as captives taken in predatory wars; some of them were stolen from their homes. If slavery in Africa were considered by those who say so much of the evils of American slavery, they would at least find reasons to magnify the Providence that so overruled the cupidity and cruelty of wicked men as to

bring the divinest blessings, for both worlds, to the helpless victims of their sin.

The poor Africans were not, as every candid man will admit, as well fitted for freedom when the slave-ships first landed them in America as they were when God gave them their freedom in 1865. Only suppose they had been set free when first they came. Does any rational man suppose there would have been so good an outcome? We are not lacking in a historic parallel. The red men were here when the "Mayflower" came, and when the Cavaliers first founded their colonies. And they were always free. They have never been subjected to personal slavery. The Indians were never less civilized than were the Africans at their coming to our country. But what blessings has their freedom brought them? Were they not slain, tribe after tribe? Have they increased in numbers? Have they been Christianized? Has not this "Indian question" been, from the beginning, the shame and perplexity and despair of our statesmanship? Have we mastered this question after two hundred years of blundering experiment? Let any man imagine, who can and who dares, what would have been the fate of a few thousand Africans, ignorant, debased, and idolatrous, turned loose to freedom when their feet first touched our shores.

There can be no doubt that in the minds of nearly all of the negroes of this country that very

remarkable and historic man, Abraham Lincoln, is loved and revered as their deliverer. They accept and honor him as the "Moses" of their salvation. Never can I forget the countenance of a negro man I saw one day in March, 1875, contemplating a statue of Mr. Lincoln in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington city. Evidently he was not a resident in the city. Like myself, he was a visitor, seeing what he could. It may be counted a weakness or a want of taste in me, but no matter; of all things I saw in Washington city, that negro's countenance most impressed me, and it is now my most vivid remembrance. He stood still and silent before the voiceless marble, gazing at it as if he would read the very soul of the man it represented. His face and attitude moved me deeply. It was plain that the negro wanted to talk to the statue; that he longed to bless with loving thanks the man who made him free. I was not mistaken in his feeling. I know the negro face. There was something almost worshipful in the man's manner and expression as he stood in silent contemplation. He looked as if the sight of that marble statue was the fruition of a pilgrimage, and as if he felt that he stood on "holy ground." That man represented the feeling of his race. All over the South the name of Abraham Lincoln is, to the negroes, the name of a saint and martyr of God. They are in singular ignorance of the men and women who