Page:The future of Africa.djvu/240

234 Wellington, and Metcalf, and the Laurences, and Havelock; and which has furnished the Church of Christ a field on which to display the apostolic virtues and the primitive self-sacrifice of Middleton and Heber, and Wilson, of Henry Martyn, of Fox, and Ragland. Without doubt God designs as great things as these for Africa, and among the means and agencies He will employ, commercial enterprise is most certainly one. To this end, however, high souls and lofty resolves are necessary, as in any other vocation of life. Of course the timid, the over-cautious, the fearful—men in whose constitution Faith is a needed quality, are not fitted for this service. If ever the epoch of negro civilization is brought about in Africa, whatever external influences may be brought to bear upon this end, whatever foreign agencies and aids, black men themselves are without doubt to be the chief instruments. But they are to be men of force and energy; men who will not suffer themselves to be outrivallcd in enterprise and vigor; men who are prepared for pains, and want, and suffering; men of such invincible courage that the spirit cannot be tamed by transient failures, incidental misadventure, or even glaring miscalculations; men who can exaggerate the feeblest resources into potent agencies and fruitful capital. Moreover, these men are to have strong moral proclivities, equal to the deep penetration and the unyielding tenacity of their minds. No greater curse could be entailed upon Africa than the sudden appearance upon her shores of a mighty host of heartless black buccaneers, (for such indeed they would prove themselves,) men sharpened up by