I think I hazard little in saying that the foothold of the Negro in the United States is providentially significant in relation to a great onward movement for the evangelization of the world. And in this statement I have more in view than the Christianizing of the dark continent. In relation to this, it may signify much; but in relation to the whole kingdom of Christ, it signifies more.
(1.) The truthfulness of this statement holds our conviction when we view the facts in relation to the great end of all history; and this is no transcendental or visionary gaze. It is the perpetual characteristic of human folly to see events only in their immediate relations; whereas, the present moment can interpret nearly nothing. Philosophy concerns itself with remote causes and ends. “Providence,” says Guizot, “hurries not Himself to display to-day the consequence of the principle He yesterday announced. He will draw it out in the lapse of ages. Even according to our reasoning, logic is none the less sure because it is slow.” God’s thought is from eternity; but it is only because God has purposed that a science of history is possible, or the end of history discoverable. Its philosophy is often based on the assumption of the unity of the race; for the unity of the race it is better to say, the unity of the divine purpose. Said Augustine of old: “God cannot have left the course of human affairs, the growth and decay of nations, their victories and defeats, unregulated by the laws of His providence.” And as the latest deliverance of philosophy we have from Professor Flint, “The ultimate and greatest triumph of historical philosophy will really be neither more nor less than the full proof of Providence, the discovery by the process of scientific method of the divine plan, which unites and harmonizes the apparent chaos of human actions contained in history into a cosmos.” Suppose we assume, as the end of history, the establishment of a kingdom of righteousness, or the perfection of the members of the race for an endless society; that the increase of wealth, the extending of knowledge, the refinements of culture, have ultimate value only in relation to such a kingdom or society; that the method of procedure toward the attainment of this end involves the encouragements and chastisements, the rewards and disciplines, the pulling down amid building up, the slaying and making alive, which belong to the law of discipleship for character. Suppose, further, that we find ourselves living in a period when the Christian world is peculiarly stirred with missionary enthusiasm, and laboring to bring the whole world to membership in the everlasting kingdom; and yet, again, that we have brought to the midst of the most Christian nation millions of the most barbarous people, and put in such relation to that nation that the questions concerning them necessarily involve religious and missionary aspects—assuming all this, and taking into view the profound agitations, the vast numbers of beings involved, the enormous commercial interests that have been staked, the slow uprooting of inveterate race prejudices, the transforming of societies, the hot wrath of God in sweeping commonwealths with the besom of civil war, it becomes easily credible that the Negro in the United States signifies a great providential on moving the conversion of the world. To find in this Negro problem nothing but the lust which brought him to our shores, or the instrumentality of the wealth which he has been the means of accumulating, or the object of a sentimental pietism which would colonize him, or a nuisance for progressive abatement, is to attempt to solve the puzzle of a bewildering maze without the exercise of wisdom, or to have exit from a labyrinth without a clew. But, with the right end in view, all the mysteries of it are easily solved.