yearnings for Africa. They are to go in communities with clergymen, physicians, mechanics, and laborers, and form themselves at once into organized settlements. An agent has been in this country seeking funds for the foundation of a college. An important society has been formed in England, under the patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the leading dignitaries of the Church, and great statesmen. Already two African youths are under a system of instruction for missionary usefulness.
The locality they have chosen is that rich and precious portion of the coast which lies south of Liberia, and which is contiguous to the powerful kingdoms of Ashantee and Dahomey; and thus, in a corporate state, they will be enabled, at an early day, to act with a civilizing power and a Christian influence upon all the wide spaces, yea, at the very heart of the great life which beats in that vast continent. And here you cannot but notice that which has struck my own mind as one of the most distinct, unequivocal, and peculiar providences of the Almighty, which has been seen during the last three centuries. It is now three hundred years since the commencement of the slave trade. During this period millions of negroes have been stolen from Africa, and subjected to all the bitter but unimaginable horrors of domestic slavery on the American continent and its isles. Why all this agony and anguish—continued from generation to generation, to the only portion of helpless humanity—dragging down the people of a single race on two continents;—why all this agony and anguish should have been permitted by the Divine will and
