and when we stand face to face with opportunity, we must go forward or
be recreant to every trust.

Here is this man--the Chinaman--on our coast, for whom we are doing
exactly the same work that this Society has been urging us to do for the
black race, in raising up preachers amongst them to go back to the homes
in their own country and there become the proper evangels to their own
people. When we realize that this is our work, and this is the
opportunity before us, we shall talk of the Chinese question with more
seriousness.

We are like the two American boys. One says to the other: "My father is
a Christian; is your father a Christian?" The other boy replies, not
wishing to be outdone, "Oh, yes, my father is a Christian, but he is not
working much at it just now." That is about the way with this nation,
nominally a Christian nation; we are not working much at it in the way
we are treating the Indian, Chinese and colored man. We want the nation
to act out the principles it believes in.

Mr. Gladstone said he divided the English nation into classes and
masses. The masses, he added, have as little regard for the doctrines of
the Gospel, as the upper classes have for its precepts. Now we have not
only to give the precepts of the Gospel to the Chinaman, but we must
inculcate its principles in the heart beyond all danger of eradication.
If we do not do this, we shall act little better than the Chinese do
themselves. A man was once asked how much he weighed. He replied, "I
weigh 160, but when I am mad I weigh a ton." We need the madness born of
a great zeal, the enthusiasm kindled by the Gospel, then shall we be
able to lift up all classes and conditions of men.