Now, all of this, primarily for the sake of our country, is clearly, in the divine purpose, also for the sake of the world. Why did God just now make such a junction as that of the marvelous opening of Africa to science, commerce and the Gospel, along with the emancipation of the African slaves in our country? Everybody says, it must have been that these Christianized Africo-Americans might have an open way for carrying back to their native land, as pilgrims, the same blessings which the original pilgrims had brought to this new world from the old. Nothing could be grander than this process of helping our brethren of the South on to a degree of attainment that will fit them to become the Puritan element that may yet leaven that dark continent. Not simply may we send over there the cultivated professional men and helping women, but who knows but that, by and by, as Ireland has been emptied several times into this country—live freight being easier of shipment than dead—so may masses of our “Americans falsely called Africans,” as Lewis Tappan used to say, go over with intelligent purpose to take Africa for their home, almost transporting civilization in bulk. So our whole work on the California coast is a grand training school to fit native missionaries for China, not simply to raise up nominal preachers and teachers to go back to father land, but to make Christians of the many, who, by virtue of their discipleship, shall be commissioned of the Lord to go forth bearing the Gospel, even as the early Christians went forth everywhere preaching the Word. Such an infusion of Gospel leaven will be one of the most hopeful features of the Christian propaganda in the Celestial Empire. And so here we find the confirmation of the field and the work of this Association. We are put in trust with the care of these three depressed races dwelling by our side—in trust for their good, for our country’s welfare—in trust for the sake of Africa and China and all the world. As these three peoples are here to stay, and as they will ever need the foster care of their more favored brothers of the common family, we find herein the justification and the demand for far-sighted and long-continuous plans on the part of this body for the lifting up of all these three classes of lowly poor, in order to their own elevation, in order to the evangelization of our country, in order to the salvation of the world. Equally clear providential indications may yet point the way to a work among the Southern white people, as soon as the caste prejudice shall melt away under the benign influence of Gospel light and love. And thus all the races—as in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free—shall be united not only in Christian sympathy and fellowship at home, but in the blessed work of carrying the pure Gospel of Christ to all the lands and peoples of the world. * * * * *