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be civilized until the railroad age had come.

Others will give other reasons, but there is one answer to this question, which covers them all: God's time for Africa had not come. As I have said, Africa is the black man's continent and the black man has been the slave of semi-barbaric and civilized races from time immemorial. In our own day the great Christian nations have had a part in this world-crime against humanity. God did not open up the continent to the world until African slavery had passed away and until the moral sense of the leading nations of the world had risen high enough so that the black man could have a fair chance among his fellow-men. In the meantime, the Christian Church was advancing along the lines of high purpose and plan to carry the gospel to all men, as indicated in the wonderful missionary movements during the past century. To-day is God's fulness of time for Africa. The thoughtful world has come to understand that history has a missionary interpretation. In all the underlying forces which have founded thrones, and republics, and organized civilizations, and in turn annihilated them, spiritual and moral influences have been the chief; and we know that in the history, for example, of nations and continents, it is the long convergence of providential influences which has made great events possible and certain.

How marvelously has this "fulness of time" for Africa been emphasized in recent years by great events. No other continent in the world has, in the brief space of half a century, witnessed such remarkable events as has Africa. Exploration had done its work partially and we knew the coast, and a few great travelers had threaded their ways through different parts of the continent, but not until Livingstone journeyed north from Kuruman to the Zambesi, and west to the Atlantic, and back across the continent eastward, discovering on the way the wonderful Victoria Falls, and had written his story, burdened as it was with the convictions of a great soul, and full of exact information,

was the world really startled as to the possibilities of Africa. Since then, the exploration of the continent has been practically completed and we see it as a whole, not only in outline but in detail, and study its physical peculiarities and possibilities, as well as the conditions of all its people.

Then what a marvelous event, that a whole continent should be divided up between a few European nations, and those nations should enter at once upon the work of developing continental colonial empires, giving of her best statesmen and vast sums of money in carrying out their sublime purposes-and all this without war among themselves. At no other time in the history of the world was international diplomacy in such a state as to make this possible. Take the map of Africa and notice where the flags of these different nations fly. Italy has a little patch north of Abyssinia; Portugal has large possessions on both east and west coasts; Belgium has the great Congo valley, equal to another Mississippi valley. Would to God that the best men of that country could take possession of the Congo and rule it! The German flag floats over four protectorates which together are four and one-half times. larger than the German Empire in Europe; France has the largest number of square miles, over 4,000,000, and in North Africa is developing a colonial empire, the magnitude of which the world knows little of. Here France is seeking to regain her colonial prestige which she lost in America. It is interesting to note that the majority of the Muhammadans in Africa will be under the French flag. How thankful the Christian world should be that at the time when that vast colonial power is expanding, the French nation has broken from Jesuitism and stands for religious liberty.

The British flag floats over the largest proportion of valuable territory in Africa. I have already referred to her vast South African empire. On the west coast she has great Colonies, on the Gold Coast and in the valleys of the Niger. Here are empires of vast extent and wealth. British

East Africa, including the plateau region in which is located the Uganda region, and in Central Africa, beyond the valley of the Nile, where British influences dominate, are sections where, in the very near future, are to be marvelous developments. Last of all, by the late treaty between France and England, all Egypt is practically a British colony, and, under Lord Cromer, has in twenty-five years risen to a degree of prosperity and wealth hardly dreamed possible. In fifty years Great Britain's most prosperous Colonies will be in Africa. With the exception of little Liberia on the west, and Abyssinia on the east, the whole continent is under the flags of alien peoples, who, in the providence of God, have gone in to take possession of the continent, develop its resources and give the benefits of government to its vast population. It has been my privilege to be under nearly all these flags in Africa, and to know many of the governors representing different nations, and to study the policies representing the sentiment in the various European capitals. I am glad to be able to say that on the whole the men sent out are fair-minded men, not a few of them active Christians, and that the policies which they are given to carry out are not only wise in a commercial way, but seek to conserve the best interests of the natives. Some nations are better than others because more experienced in colonial matters. There is one notable exception, and that is the Congo Free State where the fundamental laws as relating to the natives are wrong, and where there is need of immediate and radical reform. But what a marvelous event it is, that in twenty-five years in this vast continent, governmental authority should be established throughout its entire vast domain, and that all those governments should be Christian!

Then consider a moment the methods of transportation between Africa and the other continents, especially Europe. There are over twenty steamship lines with nearly three hundred steamships, representing hundreds of millions of

capital, all engaged in carrying to Africa the products of human industry from the older centers of civilization, especially in Europe; and taking from Africa her products in gold, diamonds, ostrich feathers, copper, cotton and ivory, and, more than all, the products from the native forests of palm oil, and kernels, and fibers, and rubber, gathered by the native peoples and carried on their heads down to the coast. Only a beginning in this commercial development is made. There are hundreds of thousands of tons of copper north of the Zambesi, at one mine, waiting for shipment. In upper Abyssinia there are millions of pounds of coffee waiting for a railroad to the coast. Science is centering its beneficent influence upon Africa. It is the latest scientific methods of mining gold that have made the Transvaal the chief gold center of the world, and it will hold this record probably for a hundred years. It is the latest scientific methods of agriculture, with its steam plows and scientific study of soils, vegetation and irrigation, that are developing agricultural centers. Schools of medicine in Liverpool, London, Berlin and elsewhere, are mastering the malarial diseases of the continent, while Dr. Koch, the German, and other scientists, are mastering the diseases of cattle and of plants. Every phase of native life is being studied by specialists, and systems of education for both whites and native blacks are being introduced. What marvelous events are these, and how wonderful their significance! When God's time for a continent comes, how the forces of the civilized world center upon that continent and open the way for the kingdom of God.

Here then is Africa, vast in area, with multiplied millions of people, with civilized and Christian governments established, with lines of transportation developing, so that in a few years every part of the continent can be easily reached. Yet the Christian religion, outside of the white population in South Africa, and a few missions established here and there, has scarcely touched this vast section of the earth. Bar

baric heathenism reigns supreme in the midst of more than 100,000,000 people. The followers of the Crescent, entrenched by many centuries, are native Africans themselves, part and parcel of the continent, and, numbering their hosts by many millions, are determined to grasp Africa for Muhammadanism. Here is God's challenge to the Christian Church. Will she heed it?

The Home Department

BY DR. W. A. DUNCAN

I thank you, Mr. President, for your courteous and kindly introduction as "The Father of the Home Department," with the request that the "white lilies of Italy" blossom here to-night in this beautiful Chautauqua salute. And to you brethren, beloved members of this great worldwide convention, assembled here in Old Rome, for your enthusiastic response, greetings:

It is now twenty-six years since the "Home Class" movement was started by the speaker in New York State, in 1881. It was the first attempt to organize and recognize vagrant Bible study in connection with the Sunday-schools, and to offer through the "Home Class" and its “Home Class visitor," systematic study of the International Sundayschool lessons, stimulated by the visitation and supervision of a whole community.

"The purpose or aim of the Home Department is to offer the open Bible by the hand of the living Home Class Visitor to every home, man, woman, and child not connected with any other department of the Sunday-school." Its field of operation is found among those who for any reason cannot, or will not, attend the regular Sunday-school services. In most parishes, they number at least 70 per cent of the whole population.

Robert Raikes and all his followers bounded their schools by the four walls of a Sunday-school room. The Home

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