hree considerations which give permanent importance to our work among the

despised races. The evangelization of six millions of people, one-seventh of our

entire population, cannot be safely left to the enthusiasm aroused by special pleas,
but must be grounded in such truth as shall make its prosecution a Christian and
patriotic duty of supreme and abiding urgency.
I.The Test of our Christianity.
If you please, let us call upon this platform four representative men. The first shall
be of Anglo-Saxon lineage, the inheritor by birth of our ripe Christian civilization,
and bearing upon him the marks of our characteristic civilized vices,a man self
sufficient, profane, intemperate and dishonest. Next him place an Indian, in all the
brutality, sottishness and despair to which our guardianship of two centuries has
brought him. The next is a Freedman, touched with his ancient race-superstitions,
and possessed by the usual vices of a subject people. Last in the group set a
Chinaman, just from the Joss House and the opium den.
Now, do you, who represent the Christianity of the nineteenth century, stand before
them with the gospel in your hands. Man of God, look upon these slaves of sin!
Nations and languages, look on this man of God! and do you tell us what
Christianity can do for these. What can it do for this white man? Triumphantly, you
answer, It can save him; can break down his self-sufficiency and pride, redeem
him from his cups, make him an honest man, and, if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him. What can it do for the Indian? It can save him; make him
sober and industrious, a servant of Go

REV. J. W. CHICKERING, D. D., BOSTON, MASS.

These numerous initials form the shortest mode of designating an interesting, if not
unique, meeting I had the pleasure of attending yesterday, in the Congregational
Church at Amesbury, Mass., Rev. Pliny S. Boyd, pastor.
They stand for Sabbath-school and Missionary Monthly Concert; the plan being
to let the scholars do the reporting and the singing, with prayers from several
teachers, and remarks from the superintendent, pastor and a visiting brother.
The triple work of the American Missionary Association was assigned for
this[228] occasion; and it was encouraging for the future of benevolent effort in the
church, to see how promptly class after class repeated the answers allotted them.
Each will probably remember through life his or her part in the programme; and,
from the whole, a very clear outline was furnished to the assembly of the numbers,
needs, and capabilities of the Indians, Mongolians and Negroes within our borders.
I was happy to be able to confirm and illustrate some of those statements, and to
urge upon that intelligent church, and the flourishing Sabbath-school, from which

seventy were received into communion last year, the pressing, may we not say
paramount? importance of that department of missionary effort.
If the four millions are suffered to live in vice and ignorance, and the superstition
whic