The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

xvi INTRODUCTORY
this mistake, they will be like the dog in AEsop's fable, who
lost the bone in his mouth while diving after its reflection
in a pond; or like Israel when she gave up her God in order
to follow the poorer gods of her neighbors.
What then has the hand of Providence been doing in these
Islands, and what is He doing still, to prepare the Filipinos
to be, as President Schurman put it, "a Beacon of Hope for
all the benighted millions of the Asiatic continent?" Whence
came the Filipinos and whither are they tending? It is to
these questions that we now seek to find an answer.