tlements, is a bright omen of the future.

Surely God's people should pray for Africa, moved by pity and by hope.
Christians in America can do more than pray--they can help to answer
their own prayers. They can raise up the sons and daughters of Africa,
trained in our schools, to go forth as missionaries and colonists to the
land of their fathers. The experiment has been tried with success.
Missionaries of African descent can endure the climate better, and can
more readily reach the people than those of the white race. There is a
call in these facts for the means to give special instruction in
Biblical truth to those who can thus be prepared for this great mission
work.

* * * * *

CONVENTIONS OF COLORED PEOPLE.

The proposed National Conventions of colored people to be held in
Chicago and Washington are significant facts. They indicate that the
colored people are suffering wrongs, and that they feel a call to seek
redress. Their right to hold such conventions is unquestioned; the
wisdom of holding them will be vindicated, we hope, by their just and
reasonable utterances and plans. Intemperate language and rash and
impracticable measures will not help, and we have so much confidence in
the discretion of our colored friends that we believe none such will be
said or proposed.

Our colored brethren must not forget that much is being done for them
and that they are doing much for themselves. It would be unwise to
overlook this in any attempt to reach something less tangible.

Their appeal to the justice of the Nation, to the Constitution and the
laws can be made invincible, but it will be well to keep in touch with
the sympathy of the North and with the conscience of the South, for in
spite of all the wrongs inflicted on the colored people in the South, we
believe there is a large and growing number of Southern people who look
upon this whole question conscientiously, and although perplexed desire
that the right shall be done.

For the colored people themselves, while conventions are good, yet the
accumulation of property, growth in intelligence, and character are
better.

* * * * *

SCHOOL ECHOES.

A boy in one of the arithmetic classes was given an example which began
with the statement, that a man deposited a certain sum of money in a
bank. He was asked if he knew what a bank was. He replied; "Yes, it is a
place where you dig coal."

"What is th