one_!--if we may call all
the natives that occupy that vast continent a nation--two huge and
heterogeneous masses of contagion mingled together for the preservation
of each! One of these nations is so incorrigibly stupid, or unfathomably
deep in pollution, (for such is the argument,) that, although surrounded
by ten millions of people living under the full blaze of gospel light,
and having every desirable facility to elevate and save it, it never can
rise until it be removed at least three thousand miles from their
vicinage!--and yet it is first to be evangelized in a barbarous land, by
a feeble, inadequate process, before it can be qualified to evangelize
the other nation! In other words, men who are intellectually and
morally blind are violently removed from light effulgent into thick
darkness, in order that they may obtain light themselves and diffuse
light among others! Ignorance is sent to instruct ignorance, ungodliness
to exhort ungodliness, vice to stop the progress of vice, and depravity
to reform depravity! All that is abhorrent to our moral sense, or
dangerous to our quietude, or villanous in human nature, we benevolently
disgorge upon Africa for her temporal and eternal welfare! We propose to
build upon her shores, for her glory and defence, colonies framed of
materials which we discard as worthless for our own use, and which
possess no fitness or durability! Admirable consistency! surprising
wisdom! unexampled benevolence! As rationally might we think of
exhausting the ocean by multiplying the number of its tributaries, or
extinguishing a fire by piling fuel upon it.

Lastly. Any scheme to proselytize which requires for its protection the
erection of forts and the use of murderous weapons, is opposed to the
genius of christianity and radically wrong. If the gospel cannot be
propagated but by the aid of the sword,--if its success depend upon the
muscular power and military science of its apostles,--it were better to
leave the pagan world in darkness. The first specimen of _benevolence_
and _piety_, which the colonists gave to the natives, was the building
of a fort, and supplying it with arms and ammunition! This was an
earnest manifestation of that 'peace on earth, good will to man,' which
these expatriated _missionaries_ were sent to inculcate! How eminently
calculated to inspire the confidence, excite the gratitude, and
accelerate the conversion of the Africans! Their 'dread of the great
guns of the Islan