ke the full
tale of brick when unsympathetic taskmasters withheld the usual and
necessary amount of straw.

Nehemiah, a captive cup-bearer of a heathen prince, won his confidence
and when honorably permitted to return and rebuild the wall of
Jerusalem, nobly answered his idle opposers, "I am doing a great work I
cannot come down to you."

Daniel, when a captive youth, "purposed in his heart not to defile
himself with the King's meat or the wine which he drank," or be swerved
from his fidelity to the living and true God by threats of the lion's
den. When the lives of the wise men of Babylon were in danger of being
suddenly taken by royal command, he is introduced to King Nebuchadnezzar
with the significant words, "I have found a MAN of the captives of Judah
that will make known to the King the interpretation." He was a man whose
power of vision enabled him to forecast the future correctly and
possessed the courage to act prudently. Though a captive and denied many
privileges, he proved himself an intelligent and trustworthy man and,
serving as a special counsellor of five successive heathen kings,
achieved for himself the worthy reputation of being the greatest
statesman of his age.

All of these men discovered, that their imprisonment or captivity was a
part of the divine plan, that providentially led and prepared them for
their real mission, which in each instance proved to be one of prominent
usefulness.

All of them were true patriots, but none of them were "office seekers"
or "corrupt politicians." They loved more than any other their own
native land, because of its sacred literature and religious
institutions, but they were loyal and true to those who ruled over them
in a foreign land. If any of them had manifested a political ambition,
the divine plan, in regard to their promotion and usefulness, would have
been immediately frustrated, and the memory of their names would have
perished with their generation.

A DIVINE MISSION

May we not believe that God had a plan and purpose, in bringing the
negro to the christian colonies, that established our government on the
fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty. His condition
during the period of servitude, which lasted 246 years, was perhaps in
many places but little worse than that of most of his kinsmen in Africa,
during this same period; while now, at the end of the first fifty years
of freedom, the condition and prospects of the intelligent and