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306 him to come and settle in their midst; and he is almost the only man in East Africa, to meet the demand!

I have brought these facts before you, Christian friends and brethren, because to my mind they assume a most marked importance, and seem to me to have a most clear and striking significance. It is but probable that to your minds their import may seem less weighty, and that through peculiarity of position, my own view of them may appear exaggerated. I think, however, that a few considerations will show that I ought not to be regarded as sanguine; and will cause the remarks I have made to stand out before your own minds as possessing an almost wondrous significance, and as being among the first marked fulfilments of the prophecy, that "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." Just look at these facts—note the great progress of the African race. See the civil and religious improvement they have made alike in Africa and in the lands of their captivity. Mark the religious solicitude they are manifesting on every hand. Observe the peculiar providences which are just now occurring in connection with them; and then remember that nearly all these events, all this progress, has taken place during the short period of fifty years; while in all the centuries past of the race, from the very dawn of history, the intellect, the moral nature, society, and civil government, had remained dormant and inert! In his "History of the Decline and Fall of Rome," Gibbon remarks that "the rude ignorance of the Negro has never invented any effectual weap-