Yet there is no maxim more true than that 'the gods help those who help themselves,' and in this great work of religious advancement we have nevertheless a part to act, a duty to perform. And the day is not far distant when the work of the missionary in our own land will overshadow that of the teacher in African climes. Here will be an ample field for all our exertions, all our contributions; and if we do our duty by our own people, we shall be forced, for a time at least, to leave the task of instructing the heathen of foreign lands to the Christian nations of the Old World. Our greatest responsibility is here, and it behooves us to look well to the religious culture of our own rapidly increasing population, that in after times they may be fitted for the task of Christianizing the world. Every nation has its crisis, when its existence trembles in the balance, and through which it must safely pass before it can be firmly established as a great fact in history, a tangible landmark of progress, a controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for all time, or of flying off into eternal divergence and hostility. Hence it was not to be imagined that we could escape the common lot: our crisis was to be expected, and now that it has come upon us it is to be manfully met, and so controlled by an iron will, a loftiness of determination, and a purity of aim, that it leave us not stranded among the breakers of disunion and political death. And if we shall succeed in so controlling the mighty current of affairs, we may rest assured that we shall be purified by the trial, and shall have established a position on earth that no subsequent events can shake, until God, in His own good time, shall bid us give way to some higher development of mankind, if such shall be His will. With a noble and worthy nationality; with an incontestable position of strength and political influence, a widely diffused skill and experience in military affairs, a fund of warlike invention, and unbounded physical resources, which shall free us from all annoyances and intermeddlings at the hands of foreign nations; with a purification from the errors of the past, and a deeper insight into the capabilities as well as the exigencies of the present and the future; with a regenerated and higher-toned press; with an _anathema maranatha_ for treason, in whatever shape it may assume; with a purer charity for the opinions of others, and a more graceful yielding of the obnoxious characteristics of our own; with a firmly established and health-giving system of finance; with a rapidly increasing population, bringing with it an increase of responsibility, and furnishing a broader