nizing era in the church,
we must return to the humble but memorable figure of Samuel J. Mills. It
was his characteristic word to one of his fellows, as they stood ready
to leave the seclusion of the seminary for active service, "You and I,
brother, are little men, but before we die, our influence must be felt
on the other side of the world." No one claimed that he was other than a
"little man," except as he was filled and possessed with a great
thought, and that the thought that filled the mind of Christ--the
thought of the Coming Age and of the Reign of God on earth.[256:1] While
his five companions were sailing for the remotest East, Mills plunged
into the depth of the western wilderness, and between 1812 and 1815, in
two toilsome journeys, traversed the Great Valley as far as New Orleans,
deeply impressed everywhere with the famine of the word, and laboring,
in cooeperation with local societies at the East, to provide for the
universal want by the sale or gift of Bibles and the organization of
Bible societies. After his second return he proposed the organization of
the American Bible Society, which was accomplished in 1816.

But already this nobly enterprising mind was intent on a new plan, of
most far-reaching importance, not original with himself, but, on the
contrary, long familiar to those who studied the extension of the church
and pondered the indications of God's providential purposes. The
earliest attempt in America toward the propagation of the gospel in
foreign lands would seem to have been the circular letter sent out by
the neighbor pastors, Samuel Hopkins and Ezra Stiles, in the year 1773,
from Newport, chief seat of the slave-trade, asking contributions for
the education of two colored men as missionaries to their native
continent of Africa. To many generous minds at once, in this era of
great Christian enterprises, the thought recurred of vast blessings to
be wrought for the Dark Continent by the agency of colored men
Christianized, civilized, and educated in America. Good men reverently
hoped to see in this triumphant solution of the mystery of divine
providence in permitting the curse of African slavery, through the cruel
greed of men, to be inflicted on the American republic. In 1816 Mills
successfully pressed upon the Presbyterian "Synod of New York and New
Jersey" a plan for educating Christian men of color for the work of the
gospel in their fatherland. That same year, in cooeperation with an
ea