come to place these leading schools upon a firmer foundation and to
make them more conspicuous as centres. For this they need to be amply
endowed and maintained with steadily advancing educational courses,
suited to giving those who are to become the leaders of a great
people a broad and comprehensive education, abreast with the best in
the times in which they are to do their work.

It is time to take comprehensive views and to plan for years to come.
Neither this generation nor the next is to see the end of the special
work to be done to fit the freedmen successfully to meet the
conditions of their freedom. It has required centuries to qualify the
Anglo-Saxon people for freedom; and we must expect that generation
after generation will pass, even with the benefits of our
experiments, experience and methods, before this people, upon whom
the duties of free men have been thrust, can successfully discharge
them. There is call for great patience, for far-reaching plans, for
large beneficence. This question of the training of these eight
millions of people is one of the most difficult set before the
American people, and is worthy of the best thought of statesmen,
patriots, philanthropists and Christians.

For our encouragement is the ardor of the people themselves; their
readiness to receive an education; their position in a republic now
far advanced; the progress already made; the growing interest in the
States where they are most numerous to provide for them the means of
a common school education; the army of teachers already in the field.

Believing in a wise Providence over-ruling the present and the
future, we regard the problems before us, though great, not insoluble
to faithful, wise and patient Christian effort along the lines upon