The discouragements we share with all the noble societies that have responded to the grand impulse inspired by the wonderful discoveries of Livingstone, Stanley and others; nay, with all who in every age have heard the Divine call for great enterprises in behalf of religion and humanity. God begins his great movements by preliminary trials and disappointments; in them only are heroes and martyrs trained. Persecutions were essential to the success of the primitive church. Bull Run saved the republic and overthrew slavery; and our confidence in the Divine purposes for Africa are all the stronger for the discipline at the outset. He means no holiday parade, but thorough, apostolic sacrifice and success. And lastly,
8. To pay that debt and to carry on our work, with its enlargements, its endowments and buildings, we have, in these three years, received into our treasury _six hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars_. If we add the sums received by our affiliated schools ($283,132), the amount is _nine hundred and ten thousand dollars_; and if we add to this the _one hundred and fifty thousand dollars_ received from Mrs. Stone, now rapidly to be expended, the total will be _one million and sixty thousand dollars_! The churches seem to have had confidence in us, and to have appreciated our work. For this, through you, we wish to thank them, and to ask continued confidence and the means to carry on the enlarged work that opens before us.
When we turn from what we have done to what we have yet to do, we are overawed at both its vastness and its pressing urgency.
1. Whatever other danger threatens this republic, or calls for the labors of its Christian people, that arising from the three colored races is, I do not say the greatest, but the most obvious. The vast influx of European peoples does indeed, awaken serious apprehension, for they bring with them infidelity or Romanism; yet thus far no overt peril has arisen from this source, for they have so spread themselves among the masses that their influence has gathered to no focal point. But the Indian has been an irritant throughout the whole history of our occupancy of the land, and in all parts of it. Blood has flowed freely in the track of our wrongs against him, and will do so until we act like Christians and he becomes one. The Chinamen on our Western coast are few, and yet how their coming has shaken the nerves of the nation! What other set of immigrants, so few in number, has excited so much irritation--not on their part, but among ourselves about them? But the great disturber--yet the utterly unintentional disturber--of the peace of this nation, is the negro. For nearly half a century the storm has raged around him, as around Elijah in Horeb--the wind of tempestuous discussion in pulpit, press and Congress; the earthquake, rending asunder trade-interests, religious denominations, dividing even the nation itself into two hostile sections; the lurid and awful fire of war, with its blood, carnage and desolation. Last of all came “the still, small voice,” and God was in it. But how little has it been heeded. The wind is scarcely lulled; the earthquake is quiet but the dreadful chasms remain; the fires are smouldering, but now and then a darting flame of Ku Klux outrage or a Chisholm murder reveals the pent-up heat below! Then as to the _anointing_! Elijah anointed the kings and the prophet--giving thereby the grace to do the Divine behests, whether of vengeance or mercy. We have _enacted_ the Freedman into a king where all are sovereigns, and a prophet where all the Lord’s people are priests, but we have not given him the knowledge or the spiritual grace that alone can anoint him as a king or priest.