adventure, love of power, love of man and love of God, are leading men
to look into the 200,000,000 dusky faces there from which the veil has
at last been thrown back. Meanwhile 8,000,000 of that race whose
Christianizing means the regeneration of a continent vaster than Europe
and the inauguration of a history perhaps to be more splendid than that
which Europe has wrought out in two millenniums, are here for you and me
to educate. Do you believe these facts are accidents? Do you believe
that He who maketh the wrath of man to praise Him and restraineth the
remainder of wrath has not ordained them according to the counsels of
his own will? There never can be a Christian education which does not
plant and foster the missionary spirit. Is it a dream? If so, let me die
before I wake. Is it a dream that among 8,000,000 of our fellow citizens
each of whom, as Dr. Strieby told us at New York, is qualified to live,
perhaps to thrive, in the climate which has proved a grave to
Anglo-Saxons, each of whom is qualified to visit Africa with a fair hope
of making himself received as a child returning unto his own household?
Is it too much to hope that, under the Christian education we may give
them if we will, enough will desire to preach Christ to the dark continent
to gem it with life and light as the sky is gemmed with stars?

I am too old to do it, but so complete is my conviction that the future
of the race in the coming century shall move toward Africa as in the
ages following Paul it moved toward the North and West of Europe, that
were I a young man, loyal and devoted to my Master, and trying as he
told his followers by Gennesaret to read in the morning and evening red
the signs of the times, I should not go to Africa, perhaps; I would go
to Tougaloo University, I think, and there devote all my energies and
powers to instructing black men in the meaning and scope and inspiration
and promise of the Master's words, "Go ye."