the most zealous, the most unwearied and the most
efficient agent."[491] The French Protestant Guizot says: "There can
be no doubt that the Catholic Church struggled resolutely against the
great vices of the social state--against slavery, for instance. These
facts are so well known that it is needless for me to enter into
details."[492]

Speaking of the development of the colored race under Catholic
influence, Dr. Blyden, a noted Negro scholar, wrote in _Frazer's
Magazine_ for May, 1870, the following words, which he afterwards
incorporated into his _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_:

"The thoughtful and cultivated Protestant Negro, though he may,
_ex animo_, subscribe to the tenets of the particular
denomination to which he belongs, as approaching nearest to the
teaching of God's word, yet he cannot read history without
feeling a deep debt of gratitude to the Roman Catholic Church.
The only Christian Negroes who have had the power to successfully
throw off oppression and maintain their position as freemen were
Roman Catholic Negroes--the Haitiens; and the greatest Negro the
Christian world has yet produced was a Roman Catholic--Toussaint
L'Ouverture. In the ecclesiastical system of modern, as was the
case in the military system of ancient Rome, there seems to be a
place for all races and colors. At Rome the names of Negroes,
males as well as females, who have been distinguished for piety
and good works, are found in the calendar under the designation
of saints."[493]

Coming to America, we find that from the beginning of our history, the
Christian forces, which in the past strove to civilize and
Christianize the old world, have exerted themselves in behalf of the
oppressed in the New World. Catholic missionaries have always felt
constrained to carry out the injunction of the Divine Savior to his
apostles, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every
creature."[494] Their object was not to gain gold or worldly fortune,
but to bring the light of Christian truth to the minds of savage
aborigines; to win souls to Christ. To those missionaries, as the
Church teaches, the souls of the children of all races are equally
precious in the sight of God, whatever may be their individual or
racial character. It is for this that they left in young manhood,
their relatives and comfortable homes, with a probability of never
returning. I