more; we are going to do more.

Thousands of

our people will help them whenever they see the opportunity. Truth claims for our people more than they have received of recognition. After all, they have helped in many ways. There are few churches or school-houses in all the South, built for the use of the negroes since the war, in which the money of Southern white people has not been freely invested. Hardly any were built without their aid: some chiefly through their help.

This much let us understand on all sides, and, if it be true, let us act upon it: Our obligation to help the negro in his social and religious development, to help him in working out his destiny, does not grow out of his relation to "our party"or to "our Church," but out of our common relation to Christ Jesus, our elder Brother, and to God, our Father. Whether in our Church or his own, we must help him in all wise and brotherly ways to work out his problem and fulfill his mission. And this we owe to God.

NOTE.-In that noble tribute to John Wesley," The Wesley Memorial Volume," edited by the Rev. J. O. A. Clark, D.D., LL. D., and published by Phillips & Hunt, New York- received after this chapter was written-is an interesting and well-written article on "Wesley and the Colored Race," by Rev. L. H. Holsey, one of the Bishops of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America, from which I take the following extracts. Altogether noteworthy they are. Bishop Holsey says:

"The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, impoverished by the war, and scarcely able to survive the shock she had received, was unable to keep up the work she had begun and continued for so long a

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."

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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 Afri America the millions of Africans in Africa have no place. To my view, nothing sol problem of their providential coming to th try, of their providential maintenance as a process of civilization and Christianization, providential emancipation about one decad Stanley found Livingstone-that glorious Baptist of African civilization-that leave out.

Here in the United States they have Christ, the Lord of all; here they have mult did Israel in Egypt; here they have the fa portunity this world can give them to g the fullest stature of which they are capal here, where they now are, the great body will, I do not question, remain, if not to th time, yet long beyond the period when all their destiny will be solved, and all co concerning their relation to the white ra happily ended. Here, in a climate that su in the midst of a Christian population f their development, under laws that prot under conditions the most favorable po them, they can grow into a strong peopl ready" by Providence for their great dut uncounted millions in their mother coun they can realize, more perfectly than any under the sun, God's plan and purpose o

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 march 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