seem never to have aspired, to civilization. They worship idols and fetishes, have sacred songs and festivals, and sometimes sacrifice human victims to their gods. They live in fear of ghosts and apparitions, and in apprehension of being turned into a gorilla, or other beast, reptile, or fish, when they die. And thus, for thousands of years, through all the mutations of time, the rise and fall of empires, the advance of sciences and civilizations, they have remained the same degraded and miserable savages. Not a book, not a science, not a statute law, not a single step towards civilization, has marked their long, sad history.

What say we of all this? That the men who instituted and prosecuted the slave-trade were philanthropists, and merit praise? No. Their motive was money, not the negro's welfare. Let them receive merited condemnation. But He who makes the wrath of man to praise Him has made it an occasion of great good to the enslaved. They are here an elevated people, and enjoy a paradise of blessings, compared with their brethren in Africa. They are industrious and useful farmers, mechanics, and household servants; they have ample supply of their necessities, both in health and sickness; and many of them enjoy the hopes and blessings of the Gospel. They are generally contented and happy, and, under wise State regulations and suitable care, may steadily improve. What, then, is our duty respecting them? To throw them back into their savage state, or to hold them in perpetual bondage? Neither of these. There is a more excellent way. Immediate, universal, unconditional emancipation would be their inevitable abandonment to returning savagedom. No man with a decent head on his shoulders can doubt this. On the other hand, perpetual and inevitable servitude, in its present form, does not comport with our aspirations for the universal elevation and freedom of

undoubtedly, the safest and best. The relation of master and slaves should be sundered no faster than they are prepared for self-care, or a way provided for their improved condition. Emancipation under any other circumstances is a monstrous injustice and cruelty to the slaves. Slavery may be a great evil, but a greater evil will come in its place, when not removed in the right way. To the whites, no less than to the blacks, may the precipitate abolition of slavery prove disastrous. A sentinel, guarding our way and obstructing our passage, may be an evil; but his instant removal may be the signal for an influx of evils, which shall too late make us wish, a thousand times, that the stern sentinel were again back in his place.

Let us look the fearful problem in the face. Here are four millions of slaves. Our inferiors, and dependent upon us, they are especially entitled to our consideration and care. One of these four things must be done: First, we must emancipate them at once, at all bazards, and abandon them to their fate, irrespective of consequences; or, secondly, we must take them, as we do the Irish and other Europeans, into our social and civil status and intermarry with them; or, thirdly, we must permit them to become our masters, at least in the Gulf States, and thus reverse the present system from black to white slavery; or, fourthly, we must retain our power over them, and by humane and wise means, seek their gradual elevation and freedom and their ultimate position as a civilized Christian nation, either in their native Africa or in some portion of America, or in both.

Only a visionary dreamer, or a man reckless of all obligations to God and to his fellow-creatures, would for a moment advocate the first. Objections to the second are no less insurmountable. Mulattoes, so called from the mule, the product of two species, are generally, like mules, unproductive; and the off

spring of the mixed bloods never continue productive without a return, on the one side or the other, to the original pure white or black blood. It is not so with the different branches of the Caucasian family. On the contrary, health and productiveness are increased by the crossing. In the mingling of the white and black bloods, the one or the other must ultimately yield; for they will not permanently unite in one and the same species. The advantage is here on the side of the negroes; for with them the potency and vigor in both sexes is excessive.' The effect of amalgamation, on a broad scale, must therefore ultimately be the virtual extinction of the white race in the more Southern States. For the third alternative, the commutation of black slavery for white slavery, none but a frantic fanatic will contend. The fourth alternative is the one we advocate. We have no expectation that fighting, although we trust it will put down the rebellion and restore the Union, can of itself do much towards improving the condition of the negro. That cannot be done without peaceful, prolonged, self-sacrificing endeavors; a mutual understanding and sympathy between the North and South; and especially by the free consent and effective action of the States in which slavery ex

ists.

lightly of the destiny of the slaves. If we can only crush the rebellion and restore and perpetuate the Union, no matter, we are told, what becomes of the negroes. But this will not do. There is a God in heaven, who cares no less for the humble and oppressed than for the more favored of His people. As we deal mercifully and justly towards those in our power, so will He deal towards us. He will recompense us according to our righteousness. With the merciful He will show, Himself merciful. A people larger than were the people of the United States, at the time of the Revolution, just emerging from unrecorded ages of barbarism to civilization, is a spectacle of profoundest interest. Let us make their case our own; let us do unto others as we would that they should do unto us; let us give them, at least, a full and fair chance. As peace and union and the reign of good feeling shall return among us, which we trust will be ere long, only let Great Britain and the United States combine to plant and protect the institutions of a Christian civilization in Africa, aided by large colonies of our trained, ingenious, industrious negroes, and in due time a nation may be seen rising upon those vast, fertile plains and mountains, that will inaugurate a new era, and open an inviting asylum to the negro race for all

SOME years ago I read this brief, bold sentence: The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to SEE something, and tell what it saw in a plain way.'

This striking assertion was accompanied by no other commentary than this: 'Thousands of people can think for one that can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion; all in one.' The first impression is, that these are rather strong and sweeping statements; but reflection will justify them fully.

Seeing is the great thing in living. Seeing is the essential thing in science and the arts, in education, in poetry, in oratory, and in religion. Seeing is before doing; it is more than thinking, as facts and things are more than theories. To teach men to see-that is civilization and culture. But these assertions must be justified and established. Let us take a general view of this matter before we descend to particulars. We believe that infinite wisdom and infinite power have expressed and recorded themselves in the works of creation. We believe that God is continually working among us, within us, and around us; that His infinite fulness is pouring itself forth into human history as fast as the race will receive it; that God is creating and sustaining, directing and restraining perpetually. Then surely the greatest and best thing for the creature to do is to see what the Creator has done and is doing. There are myriads of objects that make their appeal to the eye for every one that is known by the ear, the touch, or the taste. The distant landscape may be filling and feasting the eye with its tuition and its glory, when it gives not one bird-note to the earwhen the anthem of the forests and the streams is utterly lost in the distance. The infinite wisdom and goodness have assuredly addressed vastly more to the eye than to any other organ of sense.

But we are not confined to this general view for the confirmation of our statements.

Is seeing, as asserted, the essential thing in science and in art?

Science groups facts together, classifies and arranges them, and then it presents us with its conclusions. Facts are fundamental; if these are not correctly observed, then the conclusions based thereon must be wrong. More than one pretender has published a volume whose scientific conclusions seemed unanswerable, because they were based on the author's asserted facts, the results of his observation. One such book, not long since, occasioned serious alarm for the safety and honor of the Bible and of Christianity. But soon a geologist, then a botanist, and then a physiologist, assailed and utterly demolished the essential facts upon which the conclusions of the book rested. Without careful painstaking and accurate research, science must be worthless. You all remember how the savants of London and Paris were confounded by the question: 'Why a vessel containing a given amount of water would not be increased in weight if a fish weighing a pound were put into it.' Many learned theories were propounded, and much able discussion was provoked; but at last one philosopher, more wary than the rest, determined to see for himself if it were really so, that the fish would add nothing to the weight of the water; and of course the mystery was at once solved: the water weighed exactly one pound more with the fish than without it. A less familiar and still more amusing illustration is given us by Fontenelle, the French satirist. In 1593, the report was spread abroad that, in Silesia, a child, seven years of age, had lost a tooth, and in the place of it there had come forth a tooth of pure gold! Horstius, Professor of Medicine in the University of Helmstadt, wrote

the history of this golden tooth, claiming for it a mixed origin, partly natural and partly miraculous! Soon after Rullandus wrote another history of this wonderful phenomenon! Two years later, Ingolsteterus, another profound and learned man, wrote to confute the opinion advanced by Rullandus on the origin of the golden tooth, and immediately Rullandus wrote a beautiful and able defence. Another savant, Libarius, collected all that had been written about the tooth, and added to it his own opinion. Meanwhile, one question only was unsettled in this learned and voluminous discussion: Was the child really possessed of a veritable tooth of gold? A goldsmith was sent for, and after a careful examination he discovered that a bit of gold-leaf had been applied skilfully to an ordinary tooth, and this deceived the wise men! They began with learned and scientific speculation, and ended with the examination of the assumed facts of the case. The goldsmith should have come first and the philosophers last! The moral of the amusing story is evident: see clearly and carefully if you would philosophize safely and surely! If you would know how much seeing is to science, you must estimate not only what the unaided eye of the patient student has discovered, but also what the telescope and the microscope have done for us, in adding to our knowledge and advancing our civilization, by simply help ing us to see more than would otherwise have been possible. The most impressive evidence of our progress in true culture is the fact that thousands upon thousands of earnest eyes are keenly scrutinizing every thing that God has made; by night pointing the 'grand artillery of science' toward the deep and crowded

a

heavens; and by day studying with microscopic care and thoroughness the atomies and animalcula of Nature's mysterious arcana. It may seem trifling thing that a naturalist should spend many years in examining the structure of a single minute insect; but it is not a trifling thing, for only so is it that

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we advance in knowledge and power. Whoever sees aught that has escaped observation before, or brings any new facts within the horizon of human knowledge, is a public benefactor-is a true devotee of science.

But how is it with the arts? It is claimed, with reference to them also, that seeing is the most essential thing. A true history of inventions would destroy the claims to originality, which have been readily conceded. The lines and angles and combinations which are most common and most essential in the useful arts have been suggested by what was discovered in the works of the great Architect. The dovetail, so necessary in the carpenter's work; the arch and keystone of the mason; and nearly all the architectural ornaments of the Gothic and Grecian styles, including the capitals of the Ionic, Corinthian, and composite orders, are exact imitations of fossil formations. Men have seen these things rather than invented them. Sir Samuel Brown was studying the subject of bridge-building; and walking in his garden one day, in deep reflection, he noticed that a spider had built a bridge across his path. His studies were ended; he had seen a suspension-bridge, and so he built the first one that man had ever known, and was called its inventor; but in reality he only saw the spider's work and imitated it. James Watt carefully examined the shell of a lobster that was served upon his table, and from its structure he learned how to make the iron pipes which carry water under the Clyde, along the uneven river-bed.

Brunel watched a ship-worm at work; apprenticed himself to the humble but skilful insect, and from it learned how to construct the tunnel under the Thames. The most intricate movements and combinations in machinery have been suggested by what has been seen in structures that have come from the Infinite skill. The best and most popular combinations of ornamental colors are those which the naturalist sees in the insect creation. In the history of calico-print