This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
hope for africa.
319

and that it will have as its main object the glory of God!

The train of thought I have presented this evening furnishes ground, I think, for the following suggestions:

1. It shows, first of all, that the Negro race possesses strong vital power. I think the facts to which I have already called your attention evince this: they show that, amid the most distressful allotments, this race clings to life; and that God has most benignantly cared for them, in times past, notwithstanding all their fiery trials. The contrast between this people, in this respect, and some others, is most striking. Wherever European civilization has been planted, there generally the natives have vanished, as the morning mist before the rising of the sun. The Indians of North America are fast fading away. The natives of Van Dieman's Land are gone. The many millions that once peopled the clustering islands of the West Indian Archipelago hare vanished before the presence and the power of the white man, and will never again return from the deep repose of the tomb, until they arise at the final day for accusation as well as for judgment. The aborigines of the South Sea islands, of New Zealand, of Australia, are departing, like the shadow, before the rising sun of the Anglo-Saxon emigrant. It is said that no statesmanship, no foresight, no Christian benevolence can preserve the Sandwich Islanders. There is something exceedingly sorrowful in this funereal procession of the weak portions of mankind, before the advancing progress of civilization and