In nothing else does the African reveal his essentially moral nature more than in his immediate recognition and acceptance of the character of Jesus as the human ideal; although it is an ideal that traverses all his former conceptions, that subverts those ideas which are the basis of his dearest social customs, and condemns utterly that conduct which has been his very boast. Jesus is so immediately understood by the African that we are often asked whether Jesus was a black man. He is understood by every tribe and nation, because He unites in Himself the ideals of all. He also unites in Himself individual qualities of seeming incompatibility. In Him the most masculine qualities are united with those which are usually regarded as feminine, such as gentleness, patience, devotion. Christ redeems woman from oppression and bondage by rescuing from contempt those virtues in which she excels, and even giving them preëminence. He is the ideal of woman as well as man. But that which concerns us just now is the strange fact that the African immediately accepts the new ideal. He recognizes the character of Jesus as the authoritative standard even when he refuses to conform to it; and its authority is based wholly on his perception of its intrinsic superiority. The African finds in Jesus the complete definition of his own conscience. We shall not find a better explanation of this fact than that of the Bible; that he was made in the image of God and has not forgotten his origin. If this depiction of the mind and heart of the African be true, it will be almost a foregone conclusion that the gospel which inspires his faith and becomes the power of God unto his salvation is the gospel of the cross and the atoning Saviour. Those who are called to preach Christ to the most degraded of mankind are ever in accord with the persistent instinct of the Church in all ages, embodied in the beautiful tradition that the spear which wounded our Saviour’s side on Calvary had henceforth the power to heal every wound that it touched.