heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portuguese had a
kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was powerful and extensive in
its influence. With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was
a work," says Wilson, ( Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan . 1852), "at which
successive missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two
centuries. Among these were some of the most learned and able men
that Rome ever sent forth to the Pagan world. It was a cause that
ever lay near the heart of the kings of Portugal, when that nation
was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before the close of the
eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the contrary,
before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but
almost every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land,
and the whole country had fallen back into the deepest ignorance
and heathenism, and into greater weakness and poverty than had
ever been experienced even before its discovery." With a continent
wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved from
it here, may we not see a divine adaptation for the future, a
finger-pointing to some signal good for the church and the world?

If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard to
the negro race which we have now pointed out, we have this:--Here
is a nation with good mental endowments, peculiarly distinct and
seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile and ready to receive
the impression of all influences surrounding them, brought not
only in closest contact with one of the first races of the world,
but actually receiving a transfusion of its best blood, made at
least in part partakers of a very high civilization, and already
Christianized in a form where there is the least play of superstition
or error. Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people?
Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it,