this, as I before observed, is shut up with the Lord, we cannot exactly tell, it will be proved in succeeding generations.—­The whites have had the essence of the gospel as it was preached by my master and his apostles—­the Ethiopians have not, who are to have it in its meridian splendor—­the Lord will give it to them to their satisfaction.  I hope and pray my God, that they will make good use of it, that it may be well with them.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] See Genesis, chap. xli. v. 40.

[2] v. 41.

[3] v. 44.

[4] v. 45

[5] Genesis, chap. xlvii. v. 5, 6.

[6] See Exodus, chap. ii. v. 9, 10.

[7] See Dr. Goldsmith’s History of Greece—­page 9.  See also Plutarch’s lives.  The Helots subdued by Agis, king of Sparta.

[8] See his notes on Virginia, page 210.

[9] See his notes on Virginia, page 211.

ARTICLE II.

OUR WRETCHEDNESS IN CONSEQUENCE OF IGNORANCE.

Ignorance, my brethren, is a mist, low down into the very dark and almost impenetrable abyss of which, our fathers for many centuries have been plunged.  The christians, and enlightened of Europe, and some of Asia, seeing the ignorance and consequent degradation of our fathers, instead of trying to enlighten them, by teaching them that religion and light with which God had blessed them, they have plunged them into wretchedness ten thousand times more intolerable, than if they had left them entirely to the Lord, and to add to their miseries, deep down into which they have plunged them, tell them, that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings, which they will be glad enough to recall and swallow by and by.  Fortune and misfortune, two inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which have from the creation of the world, and will continue to take place among men until God shall dash worlds together.

When we take a retrospective view of the arts and sciences—­the wise legislators—­The Pyramids, and other magnificent buildings—­the turning of the channel of the river Nile, by the sons of Africa or of Ham, among whom learning originated, and was carried thence into Greece, where it was improved upon and refined.  Thence among the Romans, and all over the then enlightened parts of the world, and it has been enlightening the dark and benighted minds of men from then, down to this day.  I say, when I view retrospectively, the renown of that once mighty people, the children of our great progenitor, I am indeed cheered.  Yea further, when I view that mighty son of Africa, HANNIBAL, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, who defeated and cut off so many thousands of the white Romans or murderers, and who carried his victorious arms, to the very gate of Rome, and I give it as my candid opinion, that had Carthage been well united and had given him good support, he would have carried that cruel and barbarous city by storm.  But they were disunited, as the colored people are now, in the United States of America, the reason our natural enemies are enabled to keep their feet on our throats.