selves, the happy Negroes have quietly dozed away the centuries in listless repose. While we have been wrenching our brains for inventions and improvements, they have contentedly let their well-enough alone. Nor should we deprecate their indolence. Had our home been in the same latitude, in all probability we should have been equally unprogressive. The wilting, prostrating, weakening influence of a warm climate has been experienced and reported by every Northerner who has felt the vertical rays of the sun. Here then we see one great and efficient cause why the African has remained stationary, while the European has advanced in civilization. Warmth and fulness have lulled the one to sleep, and cold and want have kept the other wide awake and stirring. The difference between us and them is not constitutional, but climatic.

Again; until a comparatively recent period, the Negro-land was practically almost out of the world. Shut in on each side by great oceans which no keel ever ploughed, and shut out from the stirring nations by the vast and nearly impassable desert of Sahara, the black man dwelt apart from the world and alone. No great Asiatic or European army ever crossed his isolated country. No Assyrian chariot, no Spartan phalanx, no Roman cohort, ever traversed his sultry plains. While the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean were thoroughfares for a moving world, along whose often bloody track, for many centuries, swept migrating, raiding, crusading hosts, carrying from land to land all their best thoughts and inventions, Nigritia remained in solitude. No courier brought her the news, no herald electrified her by foretelling coming danger or relief, and no conqueror came to incorporate her into the realm of civilization. If, as is said, modern Europe was begotten of the Crusades, the heart of Africa has remained inert and stagnant simply because it was an out-of-the-way place. Neither Saxons nor Franks would have done much better than the Negroes. The backwoods people, though often the brightest men in the land, seldom keep up with the times. Thus the poor African, both on account of his enervating climate, and

worse than insular location, is sadly in the rear of the

armies of progress. Before we can prove him our inferior by nature, we must outspeed him in a race wherein he shall have a fair start, and an equal chance with ourselves.

Admitting what seems to us clearly evident, that the Contraband is in every respect fully equal to the average standard of the human race, what is our duty in relation to him, and what is to be his destiny?

Amalgamation is out of the question. The blending of pure whites and blacks into a permanent race is simply a physical impossibility. Nature, by denying offspring to mulattoes after the third or fourth generation, forbids all such marriage-banns. No pure mind of either race can desire such a union. It is a crime against nature, justly forbidden by our statutes. The Negro must remain a Negro, and the Caucasian must remain a Caucasian, till extinction closes their history.

Sending all the blacks to Africa is out of the question. We have not the means to ferry them over the Atlantic; and if we had, they would refuse to go. This is their home and native land, as much as it is ours; and justice forbids enforcing expatriation except on criminals. The migration of four millions of people, men, women, and children, from this country to Africa, could not be effected without an immense amount of suffering and mortality. Besides, there is room enough for them here, their labor is needed here, and they wish to and will remain here. There is no hope nor prospect of their going away.

And if they remain here, unless there is a great change in public opinion, the great majority of them will continue to be slaves. From the first, Northern prejudice against color has riveted the chains of slavery. We of the North have ever been particeps criminis in kidnapping, importing, and enslaving the poor black. Equally with the South, we have sinned, and have not yet "brought forth fruits meet for repentance." It is true, many of us are anti-slavery, yet but few are pronegro. Indiana and Illinois by law forbid his presence on their soil. Most of the Free States do not allow him to vote, and in none can he hold an office of trust and profit. He is

universally slighted and avoided. He does now receive full pay as a soldier, but not full respect as a man. This war was not undertaken, nor is it carried on, to secure his freedom. Thus far it has done little for him except what it has wrested from Government as a "military necessity." There is no guaranty that even the brave black soldiers shall retain their liberty. There are many who yet think "a Negro is only a monkey with a voice," while even our churches and pulpits suffer from Negrophobia. If the war puts an end to legal slavery, oppression will still continue.

There is only one hope for the Contraband, and the world: that hope is in Christianity. The Golden Rule is diametrically opposed to slavery. The gospel regards all men as brothers, and commands kind treatment to all. If this and other great nations can be so far Christianized as to treat the Negro as they do other men, educate him, encourage him, employ him, protect him while here, and permit him, when he chooses, to return to his African home, there to promulgate the religion. he has here experienced, and to enjoy life in his own natural way, then he may flourish as a race, and perform his part in peopling the earth with happy candidates for heaven.

And the crisis is near in which his fate is to be decided. If the Southern Confederacy succeed in maintaining its independence, and be recognized by professedly Christian Governments as a distinct and separate Nation, founded and resting on the "great physical, philosophical, and moral truth, that slavery, subordination to the white race is the Negro's natural. and normal condition," then his hope will go out in rayless despair. Men-stealers will then continue to barbarize Africa, while both black and white at the South will sink alike into utter heathenism. But if treason be subdued, and the Constitution so amended that "slaves cannot breathe" in America; and if these immense gains be followed by a dissemination of the truth that the "Blacks are one of the best species of the human race," then the Negro will take his true manly place in society, the slave trade will cease, and the gospel exert its elevating influence in Africa. These are the conditions of his future.

The decision is still doubtful. We hope, and fear. Much brave work is to be done in word and deed before certainty arrives.

Reader, have you taken your proper position in this matter, and are you doing your duty to and for your brethren of the ebon hue?

ARTICLE XIX.

Faith and Works.

"Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."-PAUL.

"Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone."-JAMES.

Two opinions have always existed respecting faith and works, in the theology of the church. The controversy about them has been fierce and long. We shall attempt to show what relation they bear to each other, how they may be balanced and made to operate harmoniously and efficiently in the work of Christian salvation. Each performs an important part. They work conjointly; if separated they are useless. In the common mind the doctrine of faith and works is involved in much confusion; the difficulty is not however in the subject, but in the nice distinctions of students. Men are told that they are not saved by works, but by faith; and they naturally ask, Why exhort us then to Christian duties? Justification by faith has been preached so exclusively, that practical religion has appeared of little value. Let us throw aside the statements of creeds, forget the discussions of divines, divest the mind of the historical associations of this controversy, and endeavor to perceive and receive the simple truth concerning the offices of both faith and works. It is common and natural, when a speaker or writer is urging the importance of some one grace upon those who are deficient in it, for him to make

great account of it, while at the same time he will seem to depreciate a grace which they carry to excess. Thus was it with James and Paul. Those to whom James wrote made faith everything, and works nothing. He had no occasion to vindicate faith to them; they already held it in extreme. So he aims to defend works. He urges works as the one great essential, because it was works that they lacked. The case is reversed with Paul. The Jewish converts, for whom he wrote the epistle to the Romans, made everything of legal works, and nothing of faith. So he pleads earnestly for faith, and in so doing seems to lessen the value of works. The object of both is to restore the lost balance between the two.

Let us attempt now to reconcile the apparent contradictions between James and Paul. James says, after showing the necessity of works at some length, "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone." He does not say that faith is of no service, but that it not sufficient, alone. Paul, in a long and fervent appeal for faith says, "Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." It appears that among the disciples to whom James wrote, a diversity of opinion had sprung up concerning the relative vital efficacy of faith and works. James aims to point out to his brethren their errors. He assures them that good works are required. He tells them it is not enough to say, "Be ye warmed and fed," to the cold and famishing. He wished to have them feel and know that mere belief would be of little avail, if divorced from a life of active obedience and benevolence. He asks, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works; can faith save him?" If a brother or sister be naked or destitute, you must give what is needed, or faith will not profit. It is not enough to believe in God. The devils believe in him and tremble; but true faith shows itself in devotion to his service, in daily practical goodness. "Know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead." Yet notice that though he is urging the need of works, because that was the special grace wherein they failed, he does not despise faith,