What claim on us of the Caucasian race—us of the Christian Church—have the Negro, the Indian, and the Chinaman, the three despised races in the United States? We, who have the leaven, what do we owe to those who have it not? We, who are the leaven, what to that which is a foreign and corrupting mass, that we may transform it into not only that which is leavened, but, as all which is itself leavened becomes, into leaven itself? What claim on us have they? We answer, the claim of _need_. We do not even say, of want, which is conscious need, but of need; the mere absence of that which we have to enjoy, the mere contrast of their want with our plenty, that of itself is, perhaps, the greatest of all claims. That is not the truest generosity which waits to be besieged with tears and cries for help, which lingers behind the closed door of its comfortable home, until it is called out by special application, and its sympathies are moved by loud appeals—as that is not the truest need which proclaims its wants most loudly—but that which goes and looks, and, knowing or suspecting want, seeks it out, patiently and lovingly, to relieve it. So God has treated this sinful world. He looked from heaven, he saw, he bowed the heavens and came down. It was the need, and not the prayer, of the world which brought the Lord Jesus to its relief. Once here, He sees a man lie in the porches of the pool Bethesda; He only sees him, and He asks at once, “Wilt thou be made whole?” He sees the multitudes in the wilderness, and it is only bread they lack, and He has compassion on them, and from the storehouse of the Father’s wealth, supplies their need. He sees the sins of the world, in which the world is taking pleasure and rejoicing, and against their rejection, their blasphemy, and their persecution, dies by their hands to free them from their sins. And if need _be_ a claim, then the claim is in proportion to the need. That is the loudest call which comes from the deepest depths. But what are these? Not poverty, for that may consist with all which is best and worthiest in this life—with intelligence, virtue, and faith in God. But the opposites of these—ignorance, immorality, and superstition. We need not tell you that the 5,000,000 of freed men in the South, the 300,000 Indians of the Northwest, and the, at least, 150,000 Chinamen on the Pacific Coast, are, by our standard, in this direst want. The negroes and the Indians, unlettered and unintelligent, given over by the habits of their lives, these to the vices which are found among the degraded classes which are domesticated, and those to the immoralities which attend a wild life, and in both cases, made worse by the neighborhood of those possessing greater knowledge and power, but who have used this knowledge and power only to depress them, and to make them serve the interests of intelligent greed and lust.