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We find ourselves, in this interesting and touching narrative, on the southern borders of the Land of Kings and Prophets; and we are spectators of a scene in which is foreshadowed the method of the spiritual work which is to be done upon the Ethiopians and in the country of Ethiopia. We have here the type of the method and instruments of Africa's evangelization.

There is no people, except the Hebrews and other ancient inhabitants of Palestine, more frequently mentioned in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments than the Ethiopians, and there is no country more frequently referred to than Ethiopia; and the record of no people, whether in sacred history or in ancient secular history, has less of the discreditable than the record of the Ethiopians.

Let us see what is said of them in sacred history.

The first time that we meet with any distinct mention of the Ethiopian is in the account given in the twelfth chapter of Numbers, of the disagreement between Moses and his brother and sister in the matter of his marriage with an Ethiopian woman. The next mention of this people is in 2 Chron. xiv., where we read of Zerah the Ethiopian general, who commanded an army of a thousand thousand men and three hundred chariots. The next mention is in Jeremiah xxxviii., where we learn of Ebedmelech, who, having deeper spiritual insight, and understanding more the ways of the Lord than the king and all the other Hebrew inhabitants of Jerusalem, believed the unpopular utterances of the prophet Jeremiah, and rescued him from his unpleasant and perilous condition in the dungeon of Zedekiah. For his faith and spiritual perception he was rewarded in the time of trouble.

*A Discourse delivered in the Park Street Church, Boston, Sunday, October 22, 1882, on the invitation of the Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia, by the Rev. Edward Wilmot Blyden, D. D., LL. D., President of Liberia College.

A singular passage in 1 Chron. iv. 40, gives an important clue to the opinions entertained in those days, and by the sacred writers, of the character of the descendants of Ham. Describing a certain district to which the children of Simeon had migrated, the chronicler says: "They found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide and quiet and peaceable, for they of Ham had dwelt there of old."

The secular poets and historians of those times also bear witness to the excellence of the Ethiopian character. Homer, the prince of poets, and Herodotus, the Father of History, both speak in praise of them. "In the earliest traditions of nearly all the more civilized nations of antiquity, the name of this distant people is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full of them; the nations of inner Asia, on the Euphrates and Tigris, have interwoven the fictions of the Ethiopians with their own traditions of the conquests and wars of their heroes; and, at a period equally remote, they glimmer in Greek mythology. When the Greeks scarcely knew Italy and Sicily by name, the Ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets; they spoke of them as the 'remotest nation,' 'the most just of men' 'the 'favorites of the gods.' The lofty inhabitants of Olympus journey to them, and take part in their feasts; their sacrifices are the most agreeable of all that mortals can offer them. And when the

faint gleam of tradition and fable gives way to the clear light of history, the lustre of the Ethiopians is not diminished. They still continue the object of curiosity and admiration; and the pen of cautious, clear-sighted historians often places them in the highest rank of knowledge and civilization."*

When Cambyses, the Persian monarch, had spread his conquests over Egypt, had gratified the impulses of national envy and jealousy in the destruction of the magnificent city of Memphis, had disfigured the Sphinx with his battering-rams, and had failed, after two years' effort, to demolish the mysterious pyramids, he turned his covetous eyes to Ethiopia, and was anxious to pluck and wear the inacessible laurels, never before nor since his day worn by European or Asiatic brow, as the conqueror of Ethiopia. Before entering upon this dazzling enterprise, he took the precaution of sending his spies to examine the country and report to him. The account which Herodotus gives of the interview between the spies and the Ethiopian monarch, has forever embalmed Ethiopian character in history. The fragrance of the name, despite the distance of time and the counter-currents in the literary atmosphere, has floated over the fields of history,triumphantly lingering in the hostile air, and has come down unimpaired to us.

• Heeren's Historical Researches, vol. i. pp. 293, 294.

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