This work commends itself, also, because of its justice.  It appeals as a duty, to every enlightened conscience.  The ignorance of the Negro, and the degradation of the Indian, are more our fault than theirs.  We owe it to them, as a matter of simple justice, that we now make reparation, as best we can, for the wrong done to them in the past.  If we, as a nation, have helped push them down, we ought to help lift them up.  It is a burden which stern justice lays upon us.

But I turn from all such impressive arguments as these, to find another and altogether different motive to this work, one which the statesman may consider of little worth, the appeal of which mere conscience may not feel, but, which to the Christian heart must ever be more powerful and persuasive than all other motives that can be named.  This work commends itself to us, because it is a Christly work.  The spirit of the Master is in it.  The radical forces of Christianity are exemplified by it.  This Society may stand forth before the world to-day, and without any sacrifice of humility or reverence, opening the book and finding the place where it is written, it may say, in concert with the Master himself, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord that He might be glorified.”  And here is its strongest claim upon our sympathy and support.

That this representation is not an exaggerated one, and that the claim is in no way over-stated, we shall see more clearly as the comparison is followed out in detail.  The work which this Association has in hand will {158} bear the test of analysis.  It is not only a Christian work, it is a work which, from the beginning, has called into exercise the fundamental principles of Christianity.  It exemplifies Christianity in its most original and essential features.

 I.—­A RADICAL FAITH.

As I look into this work, the first thing that impresses me is the faith that inspired it.  It was a most sublime undertaking.  It began, so far as relates to its present fields of labor, with the millions of freedmen just emancipated from two and a half centuries of bondage.  What this bondage signified, this present generation will find it difficult to realize.  For years it had been a crime to teach them the alphabet.  They had been bought and sold like cattle.  Their lives were a daily school in sensual immorality, deceit and dishonesty.  Every manly aspiration, and womanly feeling, was smothered at its birth.  They had come from savagery to slavery, and in a day, without training or preparation, they were set free.  It is no wonder that they were ignorant, indolent, degraded and despised.  As one of their own number says, “We came into bondage naked and destitute of worldly goods, we went out of it penniless, homeless