AFRICA is one of the great divisions of the globe—the second in point of size, but the least important as regards civilization and progress. Until recently, this continent, so long a land of mystery, was inhabited by wild and barbarous tribes and untrodden by the foot of civilization. This great continent of the globe lies in the Eastern Hemisphere, South of Europe, and is separated from that continent by the Mediterranean Sea. No other land division of the globe has such a rounded and complete outline. The explorations of travelers within the present century have revealed all the leading topographical features of the country, and enabled us to form a fairly accurate knowledge of its configurations. Lying almost wholly in or near the equatorial regions, its torrid climate and enormous deserts render explorations perilous.

It is southwest of Asia, with which it is connected by the Isthmus of Suez. It may, however, be described in brief as an insular continent, since it has of recent years been disconnected from Asia by the Suez Canal.

The continent lies between 37 degrees 20 minutes north, and 35 degrees south latitude, and 17 degrees 33 minutes west, and 51 degrees 22 minutes east longitude. It is, therefore, almost wholly in the tropical regions. The greatest length of this mysterious land, when we measure from Cape Aquehas, just east of Cape of Good Hope to Cape Bon, which is near Bizerta in Tunis, is about 4,330 geographical miles; while the greatest width, taking Cape Verd on the Atlantic side and Cape Gardafin on the Indian Ocean, is 4,000 geographical miles. Figuring the entire length of the country, excluding Madagascar and other African islands, we have about 11,300,000 statute square miles. The explorations of the continent are slowly advancing year by year, but with earnest and unceasing progress.

The southern portion of Africa is a vast tableland not generally elevated, sloping on its northern side to the equatorial plane of Soudan, and thence to the lowland region which constitutes the greater part of Northern Africa. Senegambia on the west and Abyssinia on the east are characterized by mountaneous ridges and plateaus, which “stretch from the southern tableland like rocky promontories into a sea of level country.” The only other elevated region of importance is the Atlas range in the northwest. The coast line is about 16,000 miles in extent, or about two-thirds of the entire distance around the globe. The bodies of water which surround Africa are the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean on the east, the Southern Ocean on the south, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west.

This country has been looked upon as pre-eminently the land of deserts. The great Sahara stretches almost across northern Africa. It is not an unbroken sandy expanse, but full of variety, broken up by great oases and green stretches of land. Some of them are 120 miles in length and from three to five miles broad. In Southern Africa is another desert known as Kalahari. The plateaus of Southern Africa are fertile and thickly populated.

The extent of the mineral wealth of the continent is unknown, but the precious metals are only found in a limited area. Gold is found in Guinea, iron and copper are found in inter-tropical Africa, coal has been discovered along the Zambesi, and salt is everywhere abundant.

Dense forests with rankest vegetation, teaming with animal and insect life, pervade the equatorial regions. The most valuable productions of the vegetable kingdom are dates, oranges, olives, rice, cotton, indigo, bananas and grains.

The quadrupeds found in Africa cover a wide range of natural history. The chimpanzee and the gorilla, baboons and monkey abound in great numbers. The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus buffalo, giraffe, camelopard, zebra, quagga, antelope, lion, leopard, panther, tiger, hyena, jackal and camel are all at home on the “Dark Continent.” The camel is used as the principal beast of burden. There are five great mountain systems. The climate is more equable in the distribution of heat than that of America. There are many large and important rivers: The Congo, the Limpoppo, the Niger, the Nile, the Senegal, and the Zambesi. The Nile is the most famous and wonderful of all. Many of the lakes are vast inland seas, whose existence have been verified by recent explorers. The general form of Africa is triangular, the northern part being the base, and the southern extremity the vertex.

In the northern part of Africa the Mohammedan religion prevails, numbering perhaps two-thirds of the entire population. There are about 700,000 Jews, principally in the cities. Christianity pervails in Madagascar, Liberia, the British possessions of Southern Africa, Algeria, parts of Abyssinia and Egypt.

In the providence of God it seems that this great and glorious country is chiefly for the colored races, and especially for the negro. Centuries of effort and centuries of failure demonstrate that white men cannot build up colonies there. That portion of the continent lying between the Mediterranean Sea and latitude 20 degrees north, is settled principally by tribes not indigenous, such as Arabs, Turks, Moors and Frenchmen. They have gained possession of the country by conquest. Egypt is partly peopled by Copts, supposed to be descended from the ancient Egyptians, but they are probably a mixed race. The greater portion of Africa's population belongs to two races, the Berbers and the Negroes of Ethiopia. The former are nomadic occupying the mountainous regions of Barbary and the Sahara. They are sometimes called the Kabyles. The Berber nation is one of great integrity. They are warlike and predatory. Their religion is Mohammedism. In South Africa there are many Hottentots, entirely different from all the negro race. Central Africa is inhabited by the Ethiopic race. Mohammedanism and Fetishism are the prevailing religious of the continent. Some tribes offer human sacrifices. The principal negro nations are the Mandingoes, the Foolahs, the Yolofs and Ashantees. It is estimated by some writers that 150 languages are spoken in Africa, and that the population is about 200,000,000.

The principal divisions of the continent are as follows:

Algeria, Tripoli, Morocco, Tunis, Bambara, Senegambia, Liberia, Ashantee, Dahomey, Gando, Bornoo, Adamawa, Loango, Congo, Angola, Beuguela, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Madagascar, Mosambique, Zanquebar, Adel, Cazembe, Abyssinia, Darfoor, Kordofan, Waday, Soudan, Sennar, Neubia, Egypt, and Haussa.

The word negro is a name given to a considerable branch of the human family possessing certain physical characteristics which distinguish it in a very marked degree from the other branches or varieties of mankind.—International Cyclopedia.

The term negro is properly applied to the races inhabiting that part of Africa lying between latitude 10 degrees north, and 20 degrees south, and to their descendants in the old and new world. It does not include the Egyptians, Berbers, Abyssinians, Hottentots, Nubians, etc., though in popular language, especially in the older writings, it comprises these and other dark skinned nations, who are not however characterized by the crisp hair of the true negro.

The negroes are said to occupy about one half of Africa, excluding the northern and southern extremities, but including its most fertile portions. They have less nervous sensibility than the whites, and are not subject to nervous afflictions. They are comparatively insensible to pain, bearing severe surgical operations well; they seldom have a fetid breath, but transpire much excrementious matter by means of glands of the skin, whose odorous secretion is well known. His skin is soft and silky; hair, though called wool, does not present the characters of it, and differs but little from that of the other races except in color and in its curled and twisted form. He flourishes under the fiercest heats and unhealthy dampness of the tropics, where the white man soon dies.

In addition to Africa, negroes are found in the United States, Brazil, West Indies, Peru, Arabia, and the Cape Verd Islands. They are rare in Austria, Europe, and Polynesia.

Negroes were almost unknown to the Hebrews. They were unknown to the Greeks until the seventh century B.C. About twenty-three hundred years B.C. the Egyptians became acquainted with negroes, who helped them on their monuments as early as 1,600 years B.C.

The African negroes display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of weapons, in the working of iron, in the weaving of mats, cloth and baskets from dyed grasses, in the dressing of the skins of animals, in the structure of their huts and household utensils, and in the various implements and objects of use in a barbarous state of society.

Some of them worship idols, and believe in good and evil spirits, in witchcraft, charms and spells, omens, lucky and unlucky days. They make prayers and offerings to their idols, and have sacred songs, and festivals. They sacrifice animals and sometimes human victims. They have priests who are their doctors. They believe generally in an after life, without any distinct idea of retribution. They have great fears of ghosts and apparitions. They become ready converts to foreign religions. All tribes are passionately fond of music, and have many ingeniously contrived musical instruments. They have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and are of a cheerful disposition. Naturally they are kind-hearted and hospitable to strangers, and are ready to receive instruction, and profit by it. They are quick to perceive the beauty of goodness, and hence they generally appreciate the services of missionaries in their behalf, and but for intoxicating drinks brought by traders, they would probably soon become Christianized.

In the higher part of the Biscayan country instead of the swarthy complexion and black hair of the Castilians, the natives have a fair complexion with light blue eyes and and flaxen or auburn hair.

In the inter-tropical region, high elevations of surface, as they produce a cooler climate, occasion the appearance of light complexions. In the higher parts of Senegambia, which front the Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in fact, the temperature is known to be moderate, and even cool at times, the light copper-colored Fulahs are found surrounded on every side by black Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same parallel, but on the opposite coast of Africa, are the high plains of Enared and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the inhabitants of Southern Europe.

Do we need any better evidence of the influence of climate on man than to witness its effect on beasts and birds? Æolian informs us that the Eubaea was famous for producing white oxen. Blumenbach remarks that “all the swine of Piedmont are black, those of Normandy white, and those of Bavaria are of a reddish brown. “The turkeys of Normandy,” he states “are all black; those of Hanover almost all white. In Guinea the dogs and the gallinaceous fowls are as black as the human inhabitants of the same country.” The lack of color in the northern regions of many animals which possess color in more temperate latitudes—as the bear, the fox, the hare, beasts of burden, the falcon, crow, jackdaw, and chaffinch—seems to arise entirely from climate. The common bear is differently colored in different regions. The dog loses its coat entirely in Africa, and has a smooth skin.

We all see and admit the change which a few years produce in the complexion of a Caucasian going from our northern latitude into the tropics.—The Rising Sun.

THOSE who are conversant with the Hebrew language will agree with me in the statement that the Hebrew word Adam, the name given to the first man, means reddish or auburn color, as well as man; or better, perhaps, red man; the name designating the color. I therefore claim two points, which, to any reasonable person, are sufficient proof of Adam's color, namely: The color of the material out of which he was made, and this indicated his name. Is it not more reasonable to believe that a man made out of red colored material, and having a name signifying red color, was red, than to believe that he was white? And is it not strange that many men who seem consistent in making expositions on other weighty matters will agree that the first man was made of red clay, that his name signified red color, that it was given him because of his red color, yet he was white? Mystical inference! If the first man had been made out of chalk, and called Chivvah, which is the Hebrew for white, what rational man is there under the sun who would presume to gravely assert that, notwithstanding his formation from chalk, and his name which implies the color of chalk, yet the first man was red? But I must not cross the Rubicon before I come to it. Perhaps when I have presented my whole argument some opinions will have undergone a change. Was the first woman of the color of the first man? This is a question whose answer will determine my cause of procedure.

1. Is it possible that the color of the first woman was not of the same color of the first man? To say that it is impossible is to limit omnipotence and omniscience. The same wisdom that produced one color in man, could produce a different color in the woman.

2. It is probable that the first woman was not of the same color of the first man, from the presumption that God having manifested variety of color throughout the several kingdoms of nature would not make an exception of this rule in the heads of creation. To begin with, there is the black earth and the white light of the sun; and there is the black crow and the white crane; the black and polar bear; black and white beasts; the black dolphin and white fish. There is chalk, limestone and lead; coal, granite and iron; black and white stone and minerals; ebony trees and sycamore trees; black-berries and white cap berries; the dun pansy and the white rose, and so forth.

3. It is probable that the first woman and man were not of the same complexion, from the fact of the existence of divers colors in their offspring, to time whereof the history of man runneth not to the contrary, and the total silence of history, sacred and profane, at the surprise of any race, or individual of any race, in meeting another race, or individual of another race of a different complexion, justifies this probability yet more.

4. It is probable that the first man and woman were of different complexions, from the fact that all of Noah's children were not of the same color. The words alchemy and chemistry preserve in our own language this meaning of Ham or Cham. They literally mean the “black art,” from Kemia, chem—black. They came to us through the Arabs from Egypt. That Ham in Hebrew means swarthy or darkish all linguists are agreed and, as we have before intimated, that in the early history of mankind names given men frequently indicated peculiar physical features possessed by those who bore them, we are therefore to conclude that Noah's second son was of a complexion darker than that of either the oldest or youngest son.

Japheth, the name of the youngest son, was no doubt derived from Yaphah, which means “to be beautiful,” hence fair, that complexion being thought the ideal of beauty among the ancients. But for the children to be of different colors, it is necessary that the parents be of different colors, and again their parents must have been of different colors, and so on back to the diversity of color between Adam and Eve.

What was Eve's color? She could not have been red like Adam, otherwise their posterity would have all been red. If she were darker than red, or even Adam's color, their descendants, according to physiological law, would have been yet darker. If she was jet black, their children, by the same law, would have been a brown next to black. These results would have been as stated, provided their offspring had taken color after Adam, admitting Eve to have been red, brown or black, and thus, too, accounting for the yellow, brown, red and black races of those who hold that there are five distinct races of man. But how about the white race? It seems to have been left entirely out of the enumeration. There can be but one conclusion regarding it. If Adam was of a reddish color—as I think I have clearly shown him to have been—and Eve was of a color which was neither yellow, red, brown nor black, and as some of their posterity are a complexion different from either of these just named, and that complexion is the only one that she could possess, if we agree with Blumenback that there are but five races of men distinguished by their color, then we must conclude that Eve, the first woman, was white. The argument upon which this conclusion is founded is both scriptural and scientific, and from this basis, and none other, it proposes to declare a hitherto hidden truth. Having established the color of the first man by a draft on Scripture narrative, etymology and mental philosophy, I shall, in another chapter, establish the color of the first woman by the same means, perhaps using the argument of two or three affinitive sciences in addition thereto.—The Unity of the Human Race.

Next we will consider the complexions of the descendants of father Adam and mother Eve. At once the important question is proposed: “If Eve was white and Adam was red, none of their immediate descendants could have been white or entirely black. Some of them must have approximated a white color, some a color medium between white and red, and others must have approximated Adam's color, or the colors must have graded from nearly, or quite red, up to nearly white, in several fine shades. Where then is the source of full white and full black people?” This question is not difficult of solution. In answering it I shall show, however paradoxical the proposition may seem, that it is easier to account for the black and white children from a red Adam and a white Eve than it is to account for yellow, red, brown and black children from a white Adam and a white Eve, white and yellow children from a red Adam and a red Eve, or white, yellow, red and brown children from a black Adam and black Eve.

Knowing that there are different opinions as to the universality of the flood, I shall not insist that all human beings save Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, perished therein. My agreeing with those who affirm or those who deny this theory would neither strengthen nor weaken my argument asserting the divergence of color in the first human pair, and per force of reason in their descendants whether they were roaming the tableland of Nod during the flood, or rocking in the Ark upon the billows above Shinar. I have often stated that Noah's three sons, saying nothing of his wife or his son's wives, differed in complexion. The names of two of them indicate this. Ham (Hebrew Cham) means swarthy. Japheth (Hebrew Yaphar) means fair or whitish. Between Ham's swarthy complexion and Japheth's fair complexion it is not unreasonable to believe Shem's auburn complexion had place.

The Scriptures teach that Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years, but giving no account of his having any other children than those who survived the flood with him and his wife in the Ark. As the Scriptures are mute on this subject I shall be also. Not denying that Noah had other sons and daughters born unto him after the flood, but basing my theory of the re-peopling of the earth upon the fruitfulness of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and the fruitfulness of their children and their children's children, whose geographical distribution alone I shall notice.

I assume as a matter of course that the white complexion did not exist after Eve's death until centuries after the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the dispersion of the three grand divisions of mankind thence “upon all the face of the earth,” as the Hebrew has it, nor was the very black complexion known until the people distinguished thereby had subordinated themselves to the circumstances which produced it. To what do these statements lead? They lead to the inevitable conclusion that all the complexions except the white and black were the naturally direct result of the union of Adam's and Eve's complexions, but that these were produced by the “influences of the chemical solar rays, the altitude or depression of the general level, the difference of geological formations, the varying agencies of magnetism and electricity, as atmospheric peculiarities, miasmatic exhalations from vegetable and mineral matter, difference of soil, proximity to the ocean, variety of food, habits of life and exposure.”

What says the gospel of God? “As ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them likewise.” “Follow peace with all men.” “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are perhaps too prone to apply these wholesome precepts to the lives of others, forgetting for the time their direct bearing upon our own consciences and lives. It is to no purpose that we say that we once did our religious duty to the negroes. Satifying reflections on our past performances may soothe us into present neglect. Energetic resolutions to do our duty in the future may be a subtly delusive way of calming the cryings of an urgent conscience to-day. A shifting of responsibility that God has laid, is impossible, for the only method of discharging responsibility to God is by doing the duties demanded.

A condition of society exists to-day in the South the like of which has never before been seen. Ignorance and intelligence, poverty and plenty, have always existed side by side everywhere. But when in the history of the ages has a people who were never in bondage to any man, conferred on an alien race, once their slaves, the equal legal rights and privileges which they themselves have created and enjoy?

When we have set aside all political considerations and social fears, we find that the essence of the whole matter lies in the question of, How shall two men, equal before the law, behave towards one another? History is eloquent with illustrations, and the Constitution speaks with the voice of authority. But to consider this question, neither history nor the Constitution is sufficient. For the Christian, there is but one code of morals, but one yard-stick for measuring this cloth, but one voice—and that of law and love united—that has inherently the power of solution. Political expedients are, at best, mere temporary aids. The law is useful as an educator, but it has no power of producing in its own subjects sympathetic obedience. We must have a solvent more permanent than party platforms, more powerful than all law. Something is needed to arouse the conscience, engage the heart, and direct intelligent effort. There are three persons concerned in this matter—the white man, the negro and Almighty God. The [white man knows his weakness, the negro is expectant, and, unless the Lord show the strength of his right arm, the pessimism taught us by history and aggravated by the demands of an unfailing law, will soon change to discord and open strife. A learned divine once said, “Unless the gospel solve this matter, then it will be bang! bang!” Says the apostle “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth (endynamites) me.” What says the gospel? “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.” “For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth”—“Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So long as we walk in such light as that, there is no pessimism, not even a shade of doubt.

Again, says this same gospel, 1 Thess. ii. 3, 4, For our exhortation is not of error nor of uncleanness, nor in guile; but even as we have been approved of God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which proveth our hearts. That is, we were made by Christ, at his ascension, trustees of his Gospel, for the benefit of all mankind. Shall not this stir up our consciences? A trustee must be faithful. Have we, as individuals, or as a church of Jesus Christ, done our duty to the negroes? At the judgment seat of Christ it will be too late to attempt an answer. It is called to-day. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” said Jesus, “because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Man can have no higher duty, he can enjoy no more sanctifying privilege than to do the works and speak the words of God to men everywhere. Is there a finer field in our South-land for preaching Christ than is afforded by the negroes? Humble, bound by Satan in chains of lust, enslaved to sin, blinded by the god of this world, ignorant of the time of God's calling—among such, surely ought the gospel to be preached.

The Southern Presbyterian Church is just entering upon the great evangelistic period of its history. For the coming of this time God has been patiently preparing us. He has endowed us with a pure doctrine and an adaptable polity. He has enlarged our borders. He has filled our barns with plenty. He has unstopped our ears to the cry of the heathen. He has opened our eyes to the destitution at home. He has been perfecting us by the sufferings of persecution, dissension and discord from within and from without. Uniform and unified we stand before him to-day. In his own hand-writing he gives us our ploblems. The great home-problem is how to evangelize our colored fellow-citizens, who are our friends and neighbors. Surely, God's people will not halt now. To halt will be to retreat. With heart and head and hand, intelligently, wisely, humbly, patiently, cheerfully, sympathetically, for God's own glory, let us now do our whole duty to the negro. Let North, East and West be patient and charitable, while aiding us to adapt the gospel to these hitherto untried conditions. Let all the people conscientiously introduce God into this mighty problem. It will soon be solved then, and, until then, never.

When Christian faith and love said this redeemed people must now be educated and helped into worthy Christian manhood and womanhood, this was another step in the movement of divine providence.

When the race history began, it began at zero. Four millions of people had existed, but as yet there could be no history. That there may be history, there must be legal marriage, family name, continuity of family life, and possession of property. The Negro had none of these.

A score and a half years have passed and the Negroes number seven millions of people. Two millions have learned to read. Many have pushed on beyond elementary education, and a small percentage have made attainments which are prophetic of power and position for the race in the times to come.

While it is true that those who cannot read to-day are in excess of the original four millions when they were set free, and that the Negro left to himself has even degenerated from the Negro of slavery, it is also true that a single generation has witnessed in the life of hundreds of thousands a wonderful evolution in manhood and womanhood. The growth of the race in honorable self-hood has been for such, like the story of Narcissus in the myths of the ancients. Narcissus, you remember, had fallen from the knowledge of his high birthright as a descendant of the gods, and was living low down unmindful of his high origin. But one day at the water side for the first time he saw his own image reflected back to him as from a mirror. It was not a clear vision, but to him it was a revelation. He saw that he was not like the brutes. He felt that he ought to be more than he was. His thoughts within him were stirred. The sense of his high origin and birthright slowly came to him. One thought quickened another, and he found himself rising to his thought until he felt the fire of his divinity. He grew in his purpose toward that which he held in his mind. He cast aside what was low, and he resolutely left all that pulled him down. Thus leaving the things that were behind, he pressed forward, and so became transformed in thought, in character and in life, passing from achievement to permanent possession, until the glory of the gods was his, and he took his place among them.

Thousands upon thousands of the Negro people have had this vision and revelation. The idea of self-hood, and the reaching forth to it, in a single generation of the Negro race has been a wonderful prophecy of possibility in the significance and quality and nobility of life. This is seen to be the master key to unlock the door of caste and hindrance for their entrance to the rights of manhood and womanhood, and to the dignities of life. This is the power that is to settle at last the standing and the recognition of race. This is a gain greater than that which can be tabulated in statistics.

This is the highest achievement of this generation of the Negro race. It means a people who are capable of storing strength and character. It means the uplift of race life.∗

We are not to conclude, however, that a true and living progress of the race is to come easily or in a short period of time.

The fact that millions are in degradation and are not getting out of it, and that more children are growing up in ignorance than are being educated, is one of gravity, and must excite concern. It will trouble future generations more than it does the present one. It must not only qualify the progress of those who would rise, but it must also make the question of white and black people living side by side in peace and in respect for civil and Christian rights more difficult of solution, and more uncertain in respect to time.

We may expect no little trouble in such conditions. The alienation between the white and black people will be likely to widen and deepen. True peace and cordial relations depend upon conditions which as yet exist but in very small degree.

The moral evolution of mankind is a very slow process. The development of purity of mind and heart is a long way from perfection yet, in peoples most powerfully affected by Christianity. The development of conscience so that it shall rule the life of man has not been such as to make the best communities unduly elated. The development of civil society which depends upon the development of man, upon the expansion of his mind and the regulation of his moral nature, is slow even when the hindrances are fewer than the helps.

Consider now a people among whom chastity was an almost unknown virtue, among whom superstition overlaid conscience, among whom conscience was in the alphabet of development, among whom the first principles of civil society and duties were never thought of, and he would be unreasonable who should even in favorable environments expect any permanent progress which shall come in other than in long and patient years. Then remember that for the most part the environments are not favorable. There is the prejudice of race to be overcome—prejudice which lives cruelly and dies slowly.

The Negro people have not to make their first acquaintance with oppression and injustice, and no one can tell when they and their wrongs will part company. It will be a long time before the Negro race will have even-handed justice. The race will be tolerated, perhaps, and some Christian souls will cherish friendliness and give helpfulness. But to most the Negro will be a social and political burden. He will be discriminated against. If recent events in the South teach anything the negro may not expect his civil rights and perhaps not the protection of equal laws for many a year. We may hope for gradual amelioration with gradual education. We may hope that brute force and violence and personal cruelties will not long continue, but we have no reason to expect that the time of discipline is nearly over. This people are to remain a separate race, who cannot be absorbed with the people by the side of whom they are to live, and yet to live without a separate national existence—always in the minority—always the weaker among the stronger. Here, on the same soil the struggle of life must go on, are two races—the juxta-position of two nationalities—that differ in physical externals, in distinctive characteristics and in sympathies; the weaker condemned to the discouragements which grow out of their weakness, and with no alternative but the generosity of the stronger when any conflict of interest may arise. Until Christ shall possess the hearts of men as he does not yet, it requires no prophet to tell us that the history in many respects must be sad, and it may be fearful. There are difficult facts to meet when we consider the development of this race.

What shall we say as to the providence of God in this history?

Let us get our bearings. For the sake of comparison suppose we recall the history of the development of some other peoples during this period of two hundred and fifty years, peoples who were civilized when the first shipload of slaves landed in Virginia.

Our Anglo-Saxon people. It has not been always a sunny day and an excursion of pleasure in the forward movements of our own race. During this same period of time more people in England have lost their lives in their struggles to come where they now are, than have perished in this land through slavery. Not to mention ruder days, two hundred and fifty years past have witnessed stormy times in old England. The dethronement and beheading of a king, bloody wars under Cromwell, persecutions for opinions' sake; imprisonments and executions in the restored monarchy; insurrections in Scotland, conspiracies in Ireland, massacres in all three islands, and that on a large scale. How people suffered for their opinions! How property was taken from them! How families were exiled and scattered! It is a crimson history.

If we take France, e.g., in the same period, there are the Hugenot persecutions, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and its attendant horrors, St. Bartholomew's day and its murders, and for centuries men hunted down like beasts and driven from their country to keep their lives; the French Revolution; the Reign of Terror; the Goddess of Reason and the Scourge of Unreason. Germany with its continuous wars poured blood of men on the soil like water.

All this and more in many lands became history while the Negro was in the tobacco plantations and in the cotton fields. There is in the lesson of history certainly no ground for discouragement for the Negro people in the fact that stru