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18 civilization and Christianization of Africa. In fact, something akin to this is the ultimate hope of all foreign missions. It is not expected that missionaries will ever directly Christianize any country. Their aim is to form Christian nuclei in the shape of little native communities, whose influence will be the means of enlightening and converting the rest. African colonization differs from this in only one respect, which gives a great advantage. Instead of awaiting the slow process of teaching and elevating a portion of the savage nations, in order that they may become teachers and civilizers of others, colonization begins where the missionary leaves off, with a Christianized community, not strictly of natives, but of people of the same race, who will naturally exert as potent and favourable an influence on their African brethren as if they were all born on the soil. There are some pregnant indications in recent evolutions of the providence of God, which seem to indicate that the efficacious principle of colonization is to be largely applied in the world's conversion. California and Australia, as well as Liberia, are just now fields in which these remarkable indications are displayed. Had the discoveries of gold in these countries been made in the last century, no such sensations could have agitated the world as is now agitating it. Nations were then too isolated, and ignorant of each other. No such commingling of races and nations could then have taken place as we now behold in the gold regions, and more than this, the countries containing the hidden treasure were