In 1861 Russia emancipated nearly fifty millions of serfs. This was the result of a ground-swell of popular sentiment demanding some break in the iron-clad despotism of an absolute monarchy. The next year the empire completed a thousand years of national existence. In the joyful enthusiasm over these two great events, there arose a strong hope of the advent of constitutional liberty. The changes, however, were few and utterly disappointing; and the issue of emancipation scarcely less so, involving the ruin of most of the landed aristocracy, and the ignorance, idleness and intemperance of a large share of the serfs. And now, after twenty years of unrelaxed despotism and the continued deterioration of the masses, the educated people in Russia see no better remedy than Nihilism! In 1834 Great Britain emancipated 800,000 slaves in the West Indies, giving £20,000 as compensation to the masters, but making almost no provision for the education and religious instruction of the negroes. The hour of emancipation presented a touching scene in many places. Slavery ended on the midnight that ushered in the first of August, and the negro population, engaged in devotional exercises till that hour, were then on their knees and awaiting in silence the gift of the great boon of freedom coming from the hand of God! That was the auspicious era for beginning the work of elevating this inoffensive and willing people. But the golden moment was lost, for with inadequate provision for schools and churches, they gradually sunk in ignorance and superstition, back almost to African fetishism. So hopeless was the field that this Association withdrew its missionaries, and at length the British Government, aroused to its mistake, and after the loss of one third of a century of most precious time, established a thorough system of common schools. The tide begins slowly to turn. In remoter years God himself became the emancipator of about two millions of slaves. Even He did not attempt the task of leaving them on the soil to meet the scorn or the power of the masters. But He showed His appreciation of their need of education and religious training by halting almost immediately after setting out on their long journey and opening a church-school on Mount Sinai. That most wonderful of all schools was kept there for a whole year--God himself the teacher. And when their journey was resumed, He directed in the construction of a portable church-school edifice in which instruction was continued till their journey’s end. God’s appreciation of the need of homes for the ex-slaves is seen in the fact that He had employed gangs,--not of men, but of nations--for centuries in clearing the land, building houses, and planting olive-yards and vine-yards for them.