he new era. It answered the call, without, however, abandoning its
mission to preach the gospel to the whites also; and now, with its
schools and churches well established throughout the South, with an open
door to the whites, and especially to those in the mountain regions, it
hears the voice of God calling it thither. The ready adaptation of its
methods to these people, and the success of its efforts among them,
attest the validity of its call and the wisdom of its response.

4. The work of the Association is not a transient one. A New England
pastor at the beginning of our work for the freedmen, gave me a hearty
welcome to present our cause in his pulpit, telling me frankly he did so
the more cheerfully because he thought our work would soon be over--say
in twenty or twenty-five years. Now that good man believed that home
missions in the West, and in some of the older Eastern States, would be
needed well nigh on to the millennium, yet he imagined that the blacks,
just escaped from bondage, utterly poor, ignorant and degraded, would
(perhaps he hardly stopped to think how) rise in twenty-five years above
all need of help from any quarter in their upward struggle! But the
fallacy of such a supposition is realized more since these twenty-five
years have passed than it was then. It is now clearly seen that these
ex-slaves will require for three or four generations the most abundant
help to bring them up to the level of those Western settlers, including
the Swedes, Germans and Norwegians crowding in thither, who are
comparatively well-off and intelligent. And then, after that preparation
of the Negro has been made, the regular work of home missions will only
be fairly begun among them. The work for this people, therefore, is not
transient, and the missionary society that has it in hand has before it
not only a great but long-continued task.

And for that great work the Association has had a manifest call and
preparation, and has gained an experience and an influence of peculiar
value in its further prosecution. The Association has wrought itself
into the schools and churches, into the industries of the colored
people, the improvement of their homes, the preparation of their sons
and daughters for home and business life, and for teachers and preachers
and physicians; it has wrought itself into their better aspirations for
both this world and that which is to come. It has won upon the
confidence and respect of the white peo