relation which it sustains to the other races and nations of the earth.

For a long time it seemed as if this land was to be given exclusively to the English race. The Dutch who settled here were assimilated and absorbed; the Spaniards and Portuguese found a congenial clime in South America; the French, by the progress of events, were prevented from gaining a foothold in New England, and with the sale of so-called "Louisiana"—an immense area extending from the Gulf to British America,—France relinquished her last claim to ownership of any part of our domain. The period of history, from the landing at Jamestown and Plymouth to the war of 1812, and later, was the unfolding of events which pointed to the supremacy of the English in North America. Our religion was Protestant and English; our literature took root in English forms of thought; our free institutions were the outcome of principles which had been, and now are, influential in English politics; our common law was English, our traditions of liberty were English, and that union of liberty and law which makes us strong, we inherited from our English fathers. So that in 1820, two hundred years after the arrival of the Mayflower, we were essentially an English nation; old England broken away from old forms and precedents, the natural expansion of England under new forms of government and society.

Now it would have been pleasant, to human ways of thinking, if we could have remained always thus homogeneous. But God had a work for us to do. We were not left to sit down amidst the vast resources which the land affords for material prosperity, and just watch and foster our own growing and expanding life, but God gave us four problems to solve. These four problems came to us from the four quarters of the globe, the Indian of America on the North, the Chinaman of Asia on the West, the descendant of Africa on the South, and the emigrant of Europe on the East, who poured, in great masses, through our Eastern gates, the German unbeliever, the Irish Catholic, the Mormon convert, and representatives of every race of Europe.

The English race, which still represents the heart and brain of the nation, confronts these four problems. The problem on the North and South we brought on ourselves, as results on the one hand of our neglect and injustice, and on the other of our cupidity and cruelty. The troubles that come to us through our Eastern and Western ports, are drawn to us by the attractive influence of our free institutions and our material prosperity.

What are we to do with these alien elements? Do as Rome did. When Rome heard of a hostile nation on her borders, she conquered it, attached it to the Empire, and made it a new pillar of imperial power. So are we to conquer every element of darkness and attach it to the kingdom of light, making it an element of strength in our American civilization and our American Christianity. The difference in the method is the difference between paganism and Christianity, for while Rome conquered with a sword of steel, we conquer with the sword of the Spirit. We conquer by giving gifts unto men, the four gifts of law, land, letters and religion. We have given law to the African and the European with citizenship and the ballot; we have given land to the African and the European, and, thanks to Christian statesmanship, we will soon give it to the Indian in severalty; and to all will we give letters and religion.

It is the peculiar glory of this Association that it deals more directly than any other agency with the gravest and most urgent of these problems, the education of the colored race, so that while the Government gives the Negro citizenship, and permits him to own land, this society undertakes the work of fitting him for the ownership of land and for the responsibility of citizenship. And it is doing this in the genuine way, through the gospel of Christ, and education as the handmaid and helper of the gospel—that helper without which Christianity would be falsely conceived, and erroneously applied, and without which a failure would result in the ethical training of the colored race. The Association, by its educational work, is thus fulfilling the divine purpose in the call made to us as a Christian nation.

The report of the committee also suggests the heroic element in our work. It brings to mind the obstacles and difficulties which we are called upon to overcome. The illiteracy of the colored people is a fact immense in extent and dark in its prophetic significance. Your hearts were rejoiced, I know, by the statements of the changes going on in the education of the colored children in several States through free schools. The need of this movement will be appreciated when we remember the figures which bring before us the present illiterate condition of the people. I present the outline of a report made in January, 1885, based on reports of Albion Tourgee, and on articles in the North American Review. According to that report, seventy-three per cent. of the colored population of the South cannot read and write. In the eight Gulf and Atlantic States, seventy-eight per cent. are in the same condition. Over two millions of colored people in these eight States cannot read and write. But this is not all. We must take into account the rapid increase of the negroes. In three States of the South they already outnumber the whites. In eight States, they are about one-half the population. In all the Southern States they increase faster than the white population. From 1870 to 1880, in the eight States mentioned above, they increased thirty-four per cent., the whites only twenty-seven per cent. The immigration of foreign-born whites will not change the proportionate difference of increase, as the foreign-born white population has decreased 30,000 since the war, and the immigration of northern-born whites amounts to only a fraction of one per cent. According to the present rate of increase, the colored race in one hundred years from now will have a population many millions in excess of the whites, since, while it will take thirty-five years for the white race to double its numbers, the blacks will do so every twenty years. In less than twenty-five years from this date, the colored race in the South will outnumber the whites in nearly all the States, and then the world will witness a conflict of races, the aspiration of the negro against the caste-prejudice of the white, the end and result of which no man can foresee.

These facts all point to the greatness of the work undertaken by this Association. Christian education is the only education for a race having before it such a future. The illiteracy which we deplore must be overcome, but something more than that; that change must be provided for, when the Negro in large numbers will pass from the quiet and peaceful pursuits of agriculture to be massed together in mine and factory and the work of the mechanic arts, but something more than that; intelligence for the burden of citizenship must be given, but something more than that; incentives to the accumulation of property and the building of homes for themselves and their families must be encouraged, but something more than that must be done. If we were simply patriots, we would educate these people; if we were only philanthropists, or wise statesmen, or political economists, we would still feel bound to educate them. But we are more than these, we are Christians, and so there is one other thing we must do besides these I have mentioned, something which includes all these and so is greater than they all—and that thing is to make them Christian. Education is a part of the means to be used, and not the total end and aim.

For what is education? Not the mere accumulation of knowledge, nor the mere training of the powers of the mind, but the building of manhood. You have tempered your Damascus blade, but who is going to hold it—the patriot, or the rebel? You have your educated man with his