ous conglomeration of nations and ideas
such as the world has never seen. Whether these diverse peculiarities
will by close contact and mutual attrition, by the advancing light of
education and refinement as well as by the progress of intellect, be in
time softened down, assimilated, and fused into a pure, elevating
religion, or aggravated till they result in a godless, materialistic
race, God only knows. For no man was ever yet able to prognosticate of
religion, or prophecy with the remotest degree of its future action. For
it is a thing of God, under his exclusive care, and subject to none of
the influences of human action. In His hands we must leave it, in the
earnest hope and belief that He will not suffer His divine purposes to
be thwarted, and this people, to whom He has intrusted the task of the
world's regeneration, to forget and deny their God, who has led them on
to power and prosperity and happiness, to go back upon the scale of the
soul's eternal progress, and become a race of wicked, corrupt, and
God-defying sensualists.

Yet there is no maxim more true than that 'the gods help those who help
themselves,' and in this great work of religious advancement we have
nevertheless a part to act, a duty to perform. And the day is not far
distant when the work of the missionary in our own land will overshadow
that of the teacher in African climes. Here will be an ample field for
all our exertions, all our contributions; and if we do our duty by our
own people, we shall be forced, for a time at least, to leave the task
of instructing the heathen of foreign lands to the Christian nations of
the Old World. Our greatest responsibility is here, and it behooves us
to look well to the religious culture of our own rapidly increasing
population, that in after times they may be fitted for the task of
Christianizing the world.

Every nation has its crisis, when its existence trembles in the balance,
and through which it must safely pass before it can be firmly
established as a great fact in history, a tangible landmark of progress,
a controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis
ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of
conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great
process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant
elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for all
time, or of flying off into eternal divergence an