grew up in the midst of it; I saw its very aspects in my father's house. His slaves love and I loved them; and we love each other t Nor do I make any apology for saying, I d now believe in slavery. I have changed my ions; rather, new and purer light has changed "Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun."

But I will not denounce the "old master will not discuss slavery. It is infinitely mor portant to this generation, infinitely more im ant for the generations that come after us, th discuss the negro's freedom. On this subjec want light, clear and steady. We cannot s this lesson by the light of camp fires; we need pure white light of the sun. And it is a more cult subject than slavery; it is in a hundred involved and complicated. It is a subject that not be mastered in the heats of sectional or passion. It requires the poise of good sense the guidance of good conscience following, thr a tangled wilderness, the pure light of a fixed It is time now that men should study this ques in all its relations, calmly and justly. Nearly the life of a generation has been lived since echoes of the last battle of the horrible civil| died away. We are moving out of the cent which quarreled and fought and offered up lives of thousands of its best and bravest in

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." I 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 helpless victims of their sin.

The poor Africans were not, as every candid will admit, as well fitted for freedom when slave-ships first landed them in America as were when God gave them their freedom in 1 Only suppose they had been set free when they came. Does any rational man suppose t would have been so good an outcome? We not lacking in a historic parallel. The red were here when the "Mayflower" came, and w the Cavaliers first founded their colonies. And t were always free. They have never been subje to personal slavery. The Indians were never civilized than were the Africans at their coming our country. But what blessings has their freed brought them? Were they not slain, tribe a tribe? Have they increased in numbers? H they been Christianized? Has not this "Ind question" been, from the beginning, the sha and perplexity and despair of our statesmansh Have we mastered this question after two hund years of blundering experiment? Let any m imagine, who can and who dares, what would ha been the fate of a few thousand Africans, ignora debased, and idolatrous, turned loose to freedo when their feet first touched our shores.

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