Page:The future of Africa.djvu/327

Rh docile, affectionate, easily attached, and when attached, ardently devoted—a race with the strongest religious feelings, sentiments, and emotions—a race plastic in nature, with a native mobility and adaptedness which at once saves them from those deadly shocks and antagonisms which destroy races when placed in juxtaposition with elements diverse from and stronger than their own—a race patient and enduring; ambitious as any other for freedom; but when, in the stern collisions of this forceful, heartless life of ours, stricken down by the iron hand of mere brute power, not given to despair, but content to use the genial teachings of Hope, and to wait for the future, in calm abidance and with confident assurance. These elements of character—these qualities and dispositions, show that God has kindly bestowed a nature upon this race, which is a gracious preparation for the entrance of His Gospel—a nature which seems the highest natural type of Christian requirement. 3. I remark, in the last place, that in His gifts of nature and in His preserving favor upon my race, we may see the training hand of God upon them, in all their scattered homes, for high ends and purposes, in the future, and also the Church's opportunity and her duty.

I need not dwell upon this point, for I have already, in a general way, disclosed the wondrous providences of God upon the race, in every quarter of the globe where they are living. Dark and dreary has been their way through their many avenues of pain, and distress, and agony, during the long centuries of their distressful pilgrimage, and yet they have not 14*