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262 To be Catholic-minded, then, does not imply a lack of patriotism. Large, yea cosmopolitan views do not necessarily demand a sacrifice of kinship, a disregard of race, nor a spirit of denationality.

Even so onr brethren in the United States, however manfully they claim citizenship in the land of their birth, however valiantly against all odds they stand beside their brethren in bonds, however nobly they may continue to battle for their rights, need not, nevertheless, feel less for the hundreds of millions of their kin "without God and without hope in the world," "in bondage to sin and Satan"; nor yet to put forth less generous effort for their well-being and eternal salvation. I turn from the point of duty to the question of your ability and power to take part in this great work. I do not know whether or not colored men in the United States would generally acknowledge that they could as a people do something for Africa; I assume, however, as most probable, the affirmative. At the same time, I must say that I do not think there is any deep conviction of either the awful needs of the case, or the solemn obligations connected with it.

I see, however, that this very question of your ability is both questioned and denied in some quarters. I see in the "Spirit of Missions," (October, l858.) a report of a speech of Rev. Dr. I. Leighton Wilson, Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, which is of this tenor. He says: "To withdraw our missionaries is virtually to consign those people to perpetual and unmitigated heathenism. The speaker