The possibilities of the influence of the evangelization of the Indians on foreign missions is a topic which I do not remember having seen or heard mentioned.  Yet it seems to me worth thinking about.

Mexico has four million Indians; Central America, one million five hundred thousand, and South America seven million.  Here is a foreign mission field of twelve and a half million souls.  How can it be otherwise than that, when once the Indians of our land shall come to have and appreciate the blessings of a Christian civilization, their hearts shall be stirred by the needs of their brethren according to the flesh, and that they will go to them with the gospel story?

There remains one other field—­the whites of the South and especially the “Mountain Whites.”  As a class, they are poor, ignorant and needy in every way—­materially, intellectually, morally and spiritually, but they are not the “poor, white trash” of the South.  As good blood flows in their veins as in the veins of the Northern people.  A wrong start and their surroundings have made them what they are.  Give them schools and pure and enlightened churches and they will awake into new life as fast as any people ever did.  They will show in years what missionary work can usually show only in decades.  In Williamsburg Academy, Ky., nearly every boy in the higher classes is expecting to prepare for the ministry, and that school is only a little over half a dozen years old and is the first one opened in our mountain work.

Give these mountain boys and girls a chance, and the people who gave the nation a Lincoln will give it ministers and missionaries, not only for the seven mountain States, but also for other home mission fields and for foreign lands.

If the Congregational churches will listen to the call of Christ and appreciate the opportunity which he has placed before them, there may be in these mountains, filled with their marvellous mineral wealth, Congregational churches which shall be not only self-supporting, but give generously for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom throughout the earth.  The most generous giver I know, is a native of the mountains and a member of one of our missionary churches.

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ROME AND THE NEGRO.

One of our most interesting exchanges is an “Illustrated Roman Catholic Quarterly edited and published by the Fathers of St. Joseph’s Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart,” its “Record of Missions among the Colored People of the United States.”

We need not say that we have no sympathy with Romanism and its errors, nor with the “Missionary Society of the Sacred Heart,” and its efforts to plant Romanism among the colored people of the South.

We can, however, but admire the fidelity of the church to its doctrines, and the Christian example it gives to all missionary societies in its recognition of man as man.  The quotations which we make from the Roman Catholic Quarterly will account for the strong hold that Romanism is beginning to secure upon the negro race.