This is the situation!  “How shall this problem be solved?  How shall we prevent the conflict between races?” A Southern author says:  “These problems have been solved in the past in four ways.  By reducing the weaker race to slavery, or by expulsion, or by extermination, or by the amalgamation of the races.  Slavery is out of the question—­that is settled.  Equally repugnant is expulsion or extermination.  Amalgamation is abhorrent.”  Therefore, the problem will not be solved by any historical precedents.  The two races must live here in the same sections, equal before the law, with mutual rights, and all rights must be sanctioned and confirmed.

The American Missionary Association is living with this problem day by day.  It is trying to see it with the look of Christ.  This Association foresaw this question forty years ago.  It took on itself the preparation for it.  It guided itself to meet the problem in the fields before the armies in the South were disbanded.  It went with its distinctive and unpopular principles.  It went in the patience and love of Christ.  For the most part it met a natural and unconcealed hostility.  It did not retaliate even in spirit, but it stood firm in spirit and in truth.  It has lived on in the South, and taught the same ever-living and everlasting gospel for all men, of whatever race or color.  Its record is before the churches.  They have never had reason to feel other than grateful to God for its work.  Beginning with a great number of little primary schools, and with thousands of beginners in the alphabet of learning, it has gradually passed into larger and more far-reaching influences by teaching teachers and preachers, who shall go, and who do go out and reach multiplied thousands.

In order that applied Christianity may have the power of self-help and self-care, industries are introduced.  In that the people are being fitted to save themselves.  All of our work from first to last is missionary, and instinct with the motive of salvation; our schools are means to an end; fitting preachers, teachers, mechanics, home makers to meet the problem and the peril.  It is not by education that the question is to be solved.  The missionary view is not simply the educational view.  This society is not an educational society.  Education is not the panacea for the ills of man.  Ignorance is a great evil, but it is not the worst one; sinfulness is worse and more difficult to cure.  The one who is educated may make trouble and not heal it; secular education can not meet the problem; State education can not protect against the peril, but sanctified education can, for it has in it the power of God.  This society is a missionary society which, like the American Board, teaches in order to save.  You can scarcely save ignorance.  This means Christian schools not only full of ethics, but vital with faith.  It means also the twin life of school work and church work.  To put these factors apart would be a great