tical rather than speculative, political rather
than theological, established the _Civitas Dei_ where once stood the
_Civitas Roma._ This ecclesiastical masterpiece of human wisdom "may
still exist in undiminished vigor," says Macaulay, "when some traveler
from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his
stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul's." Truly the Church of Rome has left upon Christianity an
ineffaceable political impress.

The Teutonic mind--fresh, vigorous, even childlike in its simplicity
and love of reality, accustomed to enjoy the freedom peculiar to lands
where the national will is the highest law--would not brook the
inflexible dogmatism of the Greek nor the iron ecclesiasticism of the
Roman. The Teuton loved liberty in religion as well as in other
things, and asserted his right to stand before his God for himself.
The free spirit revealed in Christianity through Luther can never die.
"Christianity as an authoritative letter is Roman; as a free spirit it
is Teutonic."

The Saxon, pre-eminent in capacity for developing ideas, has so
assimilated Christianity as to become its noblest representative.
Enterprise and energy, vigor and thrift, striking characteristics of
this great race, are becoming part and parcel of our Christianity.
This is the missionary age, and it is the enterprising Saxon,
unchecked and undaunted by sword, flame or flood, that is encircling
the globe with a girdle of divine light.

And yet our Christianity is not complete. Notwithstanding its moral
stamina, its philosophic basis and its organic solidarity, its free
spirit and its robust energy, do we not feel there is something
lacking still? Does not our Christianity lack in its gentler virtues?
To what nation shall we look for the _desideratum_? Shall it not be to
the vast unknown continent? If the Jew has modified our religion by
his ethics, the Greek by his philosophy, the Roman by his polity, the
Teuton by his love of liberty, and the Saxon by his enterprise, shall
not the African, by his characteristic qualities of heart, bring a new
and peculiar contribution to Christianity?

The Negro is nothing if not religious. His religion touches his heart
and moves him to action. The result of his peculiarly partial contact
with Christianity in America is but an earnest of what his full
contribution may be confidently expected to be. The African's mission
in the past has been that of se