2nd. There is here a grand, perhaps unsurpassed opportunity for influencing men. I am not only a Home Missionary, but also a Foreign Missionary to Africa, and that last with special facilities. I am master of the language, and do not work at the disadvantage of a half-learned and half-murdered tongue. Neither is there any prejudice against me as a Foreigner because of my brogue, or my dress or my habits. Without the honors of a Foreign Missionary, I am also without many of his disadvantages, and my national and Yankee peculiarities, which might hinder across the sea, help on this side of the Atlantic. This is indeed a missionary field, but operated with special facilities. It is a double missionary field. For, 3d. The most pressing work in our own country is here. As surely as in 1861 our national peril is largely in the South. Ignorance is dense; immorality is rampant: lawlessness is wide-spread, while intelligence, morality and obedience to law form the only basis for such a government as ours. To save our country, we must save the South; to save the South, we must save the Southerners, and there are no Southerners more hopeful and more deserving than the late slaves. They are down but their faces are upward. Give them a hand and they will take it, especially if it be a “Yankee hand,” and a little lifting develops a good deal of spring in themselves. Thus it is that Patriotism as well as Humanity and Christianity keep me here, and no campaigning in our recent war seemed more a duty of loyalty than that in which I am now engaged. I am glad to be in the ranks and to still wear the blue. But, 4th. Looking beyond our broad land, I hope, standing here, to reach some portion of the “Dark Continent.” I regard this as a good _pou sto_ for moving Africa. Our students, more than those who have been life-long readers, use their memories. They are more impressible than the young of some other stock. They have a strong desire, as they are helped, to help others. Apparently the great missionary movement of the next few years is to be in Africa. The call is already heard for men. Some of these men are here, and the impressions now made, the very words we now speak, may yet be felt and heard in lands whence the fathers of these men were stolen, and in the jungles which the white man may well fear to tread.