These servants of God are not engaged in a forlorn hope. They have faith. Wherever they work there they expect results, not only in the saving of individual souls, but in regenerating whole races of men. A Christian woman, missionary to the poor whites among the mountains of East {159} Tennessee, under the inspiration of her great faith, writes home to her friends, "We can almost hear the bells ring in unreared steeples, and hear the songs from choirs that are as yet totally oblivious to the spirit of melody, and enter into the heart-worship of the prayer meetings that are to be when shall have been fulfilled the prophecy, that 'to the people which sat in darkness and the shadow of death, light is sprung up'." Such buoyant, hopeful faith as this, so clear and beautiful in its confidence in the promises of God, is one of the "radical forces" which command, while they inspire, this holy work. II.--A RADICAL LOVE. But what may be called the special characteristic of this Society among missionary organizations doing work in our own land, that which establishes its special claim upon hearts of Christian people, is the radical spirit of love there is in it. It exemplifies in a most practical way, the brotherhood of man. It repudiates caste. It is absolutely color-blind. It works for the despised. It helps those who are themselves the most helpless. This is no newly-discovered fact. I remember the first sermon I ever heard in behalf of this work, more than twenty years ago; it was drawn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The text was, "Who is my neighbor?" The address of the honored late President of this Association at the close of the last Annual Meeting which he attended, was in the trend of this very same Scripture. "This organization," he said, "is the Good Samaritan, loving to bestow its aid upon the poorest and most despised, the most severely wounded races of our country." The sermon, a score of years ago, told us that our neighbor was the Negro, just then made free. So said President Washburn, "If you can point out to this organization any race that needs its assistance, whether colored or white, there is the legitimate field of this Association."