Page:The future of Africa.djvu/113

Rh to America, and, at length, from both Europe and America, to the islands of the sea; yet Africa has remained, during the whole of the Christian era, almost entirely unvisited by the benignant rays, and the genial influences of our Holy Faith.

And then, standing at the very start of the Christian era, if we strive to penetrate the long lapse of ages, which anticipated the coming of the Lord, we meet vista upon vista of the deepest darkness, stretching out to the earliest dawn of the world's being. So far as Western Africa is concerned, there is no history. The long, long centuries of human existence, there, give us no intelligent disclosures. "Darkness covered the land, and gross darkness the people."

And, indeed, if you will examine the case, you will find no cause for wonder at this universal prevalence of benightedness through all Africa. I know, indeed, that the fact is often contrasted with the advance of both Europe and Asia in enlightenment; and the inference drawn, that is, of negro inferiority, as the cause of the seeming organic wretchedness of that vast continent. But you will remember that the civilization of all races has been conditioned on contact. It is the remark of a great German historian—perhaps the greatest historian of modern times: "There is not in history the record of a single indigenous civilization; there is nowhere, in any reliable document, the report of any people lifting themselves up out of barbarism. The historic civilizations are all exotic. The torches that blaze along the line of centuries were kindled, each by the one behind."