great future, and that Africa, its home, may become the recipient
of blessing, the foundation and preparation for which were made in
this country.

The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt was not an accident, but a
divinely ordered procedure, which had a striking bearing upon the
character of the Jew and shaped his whole after history. It was
a work of preparation, and it was not done in a short time, but
took two or three centuries to be brought to perfection. American
slavery, like this Egyptian bondage, will have its results on the
future or Africa.

In saying this, of course no reader will suppose that there is in
the thought a justification of slavery, any more than when speaking
of the great benefits which flowed from the bondage in Egypt to the
Jew, we justify the selling of Joseph, or the tyranny of Pharaoh.
It is God's wonderful work to bring the greatest good out of the
deepest evils; the Fall to issue in Redemption.

It is impossible to discuss the future of the black people in this
country without immediately being brought into contact with the
future of Africa. The one is closely connected with the other. The
movements of Providence are synchronous. How wonderfully events
are prepared in distant places, that they may be brought together
at the appointed moment! The fact that at just the time when the
great and absorbing questions which relate to this people in our
own land are forcing themselves upon our attention, the continent
of Africa is attracting more of interest in the way of discovery
and travel than any other portion of the earth, has, we think, a
meaning.