James Powell's Welsh blood was in his favor. His American boyhood and
training helped fit him for what was to come. That whispered word of
a Christian lady to a young man whose conversion, in turn, led to the
conversion of young Powell, proved to be a word of destiny. And his
experience abroad with the Jubilee Singers, in whose tones was voiced
the pathos of three silent centuries, had, also, not a little to do
in fitting him for the work God had in store for him.

It is, therefore, easy to see how fortunate this society was in
having such a man for its personal representative; and, how fortunate
the churches also were in having the most characteristic spirit and
motive and aim of the cause he stood for so fittingly impersonated.
That fond mother of the famous English missionary who is reported to
have said, that "as for her son, the race of God could find but
little to do in him," did not speak for James Powell. God had given
him splendid gifts to begin with, but it was the grace of God in him
that first saved him from making shipwreck of those gifts, and then
taught him how to use them so exhaustively in his service.

This Society represents above all things an educational enterprise.
It has many schools, chartered and unchartered, throughout the South
and West. We can never admire too much this far-reaching educational
undertaking. But, the Society is itself, in certain most fundamental
respects, the very "head-master" in the school of the churches, in
the school of the nation. And how beautifully, how superbly, how
effectively did this brother of ours shine and burn among the
churches of our land, as one commissioned of heaven to help teach us
the reality of meaning there is in this word of our Lord, how he
said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my