into channels of benevolence, purified as it is quietly borne along and broken in smaller rills, bearing everywhere over this sin-parched earth the streams of salvation, making it to bloom with the beauty and fragrance of holiness and to bear fruit to the glory of God? Christian people ought to begin with the rising tide of this prosperity to enlarge the streams of their benevolence, lest, before they are aware, they be swept into the irresistible current. Especially do we ask the friends of this cause to recognize this auspicious era and plan to meet in some adequate measure the vast work before us. The hour and the call have come. The nation is re-awakened to its great duty to the late slaves; they are themselves awaking to the glorious opening for them as citizens and Christians in America, and they are enthusiastic to aid in redeeming the land of their fathers. The possibilities of African regeneration are enkindling the hearts of Christians in Germany, in Great Britain and in America. God’s providence is opening the way and sending His commands along the lines. Well may it be said to the Church of Christ in America as Mordecai said to Esther, “Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” * * * * * THE PROVIDENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. REV. E. H. MERRELL, PRESIDENT OF RIPON COLLEGE. The significance of the negro in America cannot be understood without study in the light of the providence of God. It is not presumption to seek in the course of events the divine thought; it is rather presumption to assume that events occur without a divine purpose. “They that love to trace a divine hand will always have a divine hand to trace.” It is true that men have committed unspeakable folly in attempting to force the thoughts of the great God into the channels of their intellectual pettiness. Philosophies of history written with a provincial scholarship, under the eye of an unsound philosophy or the extravagancies of religious enthusiasm, must from the nature of the case be unsound; so a too particular and minute description of the ways of Providence in the interest of a preconceived theory of life, or of some specific reform or “cause,” leads to fanaticism and exposure to contempt. There are sins committed only by the good, if the solecism may be tolerated, and among them is a profane assumption of knowledge in regard to the purposes of God. But, on the other hand, it is greater folly to assume that God has left the world out of His thought and providential care, and that the course of the world is not made by the efficiency of His word. It is absurd, also, to assume that great providential courses are undiscoverable by the intelligence of man. “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering. O, ye hypocrites, ye