toiling night and day, under the commission of this Society, for its
elevation.

In the same spirit, also, this Association has welcomed new labors and
entered into new fields. When Chinamen were to be Christianized,
immediately it had great faith for the Chinese. When the Indian
missions were laid upon it, then it saw wonderful possibilities in the
red man. And now, last of all, when some million or two of
long-forgotten and neglected "Mountain Whites" are brought to its
attention, it sees in these abjectly poor, dispirited and
superstitious people, only another opportunity for elevating humanity,
and proving the power of Christianity to restore the lost manhood of
every race.

These servants of God are not engaged in a forlorn hope. They have
faith. Wherever they work there they expect results, not only in the
saving of individual souls, but in regenerating whole races of men. A
Christian woman, missionary to the poor whites among the mountains of
East {159} Tennessee, under the inspiration of her great faith, writes
home to her friends, "We can almost hear the bells ring in unreared
steeples, and hear the songs from choirs that are as yet totally
oblivious to the spirit of melody, and enter into the heart-worship of
the prayer meetings that are to be when shall have been fulfilled the
prophecy, that 'to the people which sat in darkness and the shadow of
death, light is sprung up'." Such buoyant, hopeful faith as this, so
clear and beautiful in its confidence in the promises of God, is one
of the "radical forces" which command, while they inspire, this holy
work.

II.--A RADICAL LOVE.

But what may be called the special characteristic of this Society
among missionary organizations doing work in our own land, that which
establishes its special claim upon hearts of Christian people, is the
radical spirit of love there is in it. It exemplifies in a most
practical way, the brotherhood of man. It repudiates caste. It is
absolutely color-blind. It works for the despised. It helps those who
are themselves the most helpless. This is no newly-discovered fact. I
remember the first sermon I ever heard in behalf of this work, more
than twenty years ago; it was drawn from the Parable of the Good
Samaritan. The text was, "Who is my neighbor?" The address of the
honored late President of this Association at the close of the last
Annual Meeting which he attended, was in the trend of this very same
Scripture. "This organization