It seems to me that Africa is the fitting continent in whose mysterious solitudes the greatest explorer of this generation should die in service and on his knees. He symbolized the possibilities of the Negritto race for the expression of the life of the Son of God, and mutely prophesied of the ages to come. This race, with its greed for civilization and its natural capabilities for religion, is in vital connection with the foremost nation of these latter times. Does not this signify the incoming of a more thorough righteousness, a loftier faith, and a great advance movement for Christianizing the world? Whether I have correctly formulated the course of Providence or not, it is clear that the Negro is in the United States for a purpose, and that purpose is no petty one. He has been the occasion of the most exhaustive discussion of the subject of the rights of man, of the formation of a great national party, and of the largest civil war of modern times. He is now the most considerable element in national politics. If Providence is a scheme of means and ends, in which particular events are chosen to further great ends, and if a just God is presiding over the destiny of our nation, it is simply illogical to conclude that the foothold of the Negro on the continent is not a thing of vast significance. And if this be true, every question concerning him has a new importance. If Pharaoh had understood that the Hebrew bondsmen were a chosen generation, he would have carried on the brick business in a different way. This whole Negro question needs study in a new light, “lest haply we be found even to fight against God.” Governor St. John, of Kansas, in answer to a question from the South, how to stop the Negro exodus, has recently said: “Rent the Negro land and sell him supplies at fair prices. Stop bulldozing him. Respect the sanctity of his family. Make him feel that he is just as safe in his person and family, and in all civil and political rights, as he can be in Kansas or any other Northern Slate. Then he will not want to come North. Unless you do this, the Red Sea will open before him and he will pass over dry-shod; and you of the South, attempting to stop him, will be overwhelmed, as was Pharaoh and his hosts.” These are sharp words, and their rebuke is doubtless needed. It is probably not important to stop the Negro exodus. For both the Negro and the white race it is needful that large numbers be removed from the scenes of their old servitude. The Negro will rise faster and will more readily be the connecting and reconciling link between two antagonistic forms of civilization. This is but a stage in those wilderness wanderings by which he is being fitted to perform his part in the drama of the world’s renewing. In Kansas and everywhere he must have chance to develop according to what is in him, and there need be no fear that he will not act his part well.