enlightenment! But amid all these sad general facts there seems to be one exception—the Negro! The ravages of the slave trade would seem sufficient to produce extermination: the mid-passage alone is enough to destroy any people! It has not destroyed the vitality of the Negro! The vast interior of Africa teems with the countless millions of an unnumbered population; and in the land of the Negro's enthralment, the race increases with a rapidity which surprises the keenest calculator, and which carries fear to the heart of the oppressor. These facts I take and mention as indications that Divine Providence designs a future for this people. They appear to me tokens and evidences that this particular section of the human species is not doomed to destruction, but that the elevation, the civilization, the evangelization of the Negro are determined purposes of the Divine mind for the future. "Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God."
2. The remarks I have made show us, in the second place, that God has given this race a strong moral character.
Although the Christian zeal and endeavor of the Church are by no means to be determined by the richness or the hardness of the soil in which the truth is to be planted, still it is cause of great encouragement, and an incentive to higher effort, when we find a people in whose nature there is congruity, so far as that can be in wretched humanity, with the spirit of our Holy Faith, and who desire the possession of it. The Negro race manifests this peculiar trait of character: it is a race, I think I may say, remarkably
