I regard these churches of the American Missionary Association with their evangelistic and nurturing agencies, prime sociological factors for bringing in Christ’s dear kingdom in this land of ours.  It is their mission not only to remedy evils, not only to restore rights, but to be great constructive agencies of a new Christian civilization.  For when Christ came, he came preaching, not the gospel of the individual, not a gospel simply to save that man, that woman, that child, but the gospel of the Kingdom, the gospel which this great Association so effectually preaches and not only preaches but applies and administers as well.  And the time will not be far hence when this whole subject of the environment of the spiritual life will force itself so imperatively upon the study of the churches at home that they will take the type of their work and the inspiration for their new developments from the leadership of this and kindred missionary organizations which have set them these most brilliant examples of being ahead of the thought and the feeling of their day.

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ADDRESS OF REV.  C.W.  HIATT.

More than fifty years ago De Tocqueville gave utterance to these prophetic words:  “The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future existence of the United States arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory.”  I think that that prophecy has been iterated and reiterated before this convention until we ought finally to let it rest as an established fact.  I believe we are menaced by these eight millions of people, who are twice as great in number as were the people of the United Colonies when they broke from the mightiest naval and military power in history; but I believe that the peril that we are menaced by in the presence of this black man arises from his perils.  There is a peril from the black man, but it is a peril secondary to the peril of the black man upon this soil.  I do not apprehend any uprising by Uncle Tom; but Uncle Tom is dead, and his son is here and his friends of a younger generation.  These men are being gnarled and corrupted and imbruted, and are massing themselves, touching elbows one with another; and under the influences of the age in which we live are becoming a factor in our civilization which, unless we modify and change it under our Christian teaching, will render our Southland like that island on the north of the Caribbean Sea where to-day it is said that the name of Toussaint l’Ouverture, the original defender and liberator, is a hissing and a reproach.

It was a fine augury of the future when the work for the ex-slave began at Fortress Monroe in the atmosphere of religion.  Mary Peake, meeting the advancing multitudes of refugees, gospel in heart and primer in hand, as by divine suggestion, laid the pattern of all our succeeding toil.  Side by side of mutual helpfulness God has placed the alphabet and decalogue, the teacher and the preacher, the school-house and the church.  “What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”