In the material ground-work of our civilization, its farming, its mining, its building of steamships, of railroads, of modern cities, the Teutonic races have taken the lead. They have builded the house. Now, it may be, when the finer problems arise of living in the home in harmony and helpfulness and in a high and holy spirit, it is the Slav who, in his turn, will take the lead. The Greek, the Italian, the Frank, the Spaniard, the Anglo-Saxon have successively held the premier place. The day of the Slav may now be dawning. Nor yet is our forecast of the Great Christianity complete. It may be that there awaits us, though in a more distant future, a still more striking illustration of how God chooses for honor the despised things of the world. Of all races the most despised, the most oppressed, has been the African, and that not for generations or centuries but for millenniums. Europe, Asia, and America have all made Africa their servant. The dark Continent stands pre-eminent in suffering and in service. But it is in suffering and in service that He, too, the Coming King, has been pre-eminent. One reason why Africa has been the hunting ground of the slaver from immemorial times is because in the African nature immemorially and inextinguishably is the readiness to serve. All other races love to rule; some of them, like the Latin and the Teutonic, have been intensely proud, greedy of power, and averse from service. The African race is the one race which has by nature the spirit of Him who came not to be ministered unto but to minister. The African race, too, is of all races the most child-like, the most care-free, the one most ready to delight in simple things and the things of to-day. The white races, in comparison, are old, vigilant, suspicious, anxious, care-worn. There is no question which, in these respects, is nearest the ideal of Jesus. The greedy, ambitious spirit of the Western nations, never contented, their delight in to-day always poisoned by the fear or the fascination of to-morrow, is far from the spirit of Jesus. It may be that the white man will yet have to sit at the feet of the black, and that, when Christ is glorified, it will be that race that has, beyond all other races, trodden Christ’s path of suffering and service which, beyond all others, will be glorified with Him. The re-action of the uncounted millions of Asia on Christianity--the contributions of the ancient and deeply experienced brown and yellow races to that religion in which alone they can find their fullest development--is another fascinating subject for enquiry and speculation; but these influences, potent and inescapable as they promise to be, fall outside the limits of the period considered by this book. CONCLUSION