“How slowly, how surely has this plan been unfolding, even in those long days of slavery, when the eager and impetuous ones distrusted God’s mercy and scouted at His wisdom.
“But how else was it possible to have taken these ignorant ones from the jungles of Africa and made of them teachers and missionaries of Christianity and civilization to their own people?
“How else could the story of Christ’s life and Christ’s sufferings and risen glory have been so clearly revealed to them as when they were passing through deep waters and coming up out of great tribulations?
“Out of the wrath of men He made his will known. While they suffered they learned the fellowship of suffering as they could not by any tongue of missionary or teacher.
“While they were in bonds they learned something of the patience and long suffering of Him who endured.
“While the war was raging on each side of them and they passed unharmed out through the Red Sea, while the contending hosts fell about them on every side, they learned of the strength of the Lord, the sureness of His protecting care.
“While they were encamped in the dark wilderness between the house of bondage and the Promised Land, they learned to wait on the Lord.
“And in that long waiting they brightened up the sword of wisdom and the spirit so they could vanquish the hosts of ignorance surrounding the land from whence they were taken in their black ignorance, and to which they returned rejoicing, ready to work for Him who had redeemed them.
“I look into the future and I see the hosts of ignorance, and superstition, and idolatry falling before the peaceful warfare of these soldiers of the cross.
“I see the idols of superstition and bestial ignorance falling and the white cross lifted up and shedding its pure, awakening light over the hordes of savage men and savage women brought in, washed and made clean, to the marriage supper of the Lord.