Africa! Liberia! What hardship and heroism in our time they represent. The dark Continent! The infant Republic! What memories of the past! What hopes of the future !

Providence turns heavy doors on the smallest hinges. No romance of fiction can equal the wonders of the way in which a divine purpose threads its course through all the maze of human history. From the first generations the trend of the human race has been turned hither and thither by things in themselves lighter than a feather.

God first partitioned the land and water and settled the geologic and climatic conditions and then divided the nations to their several estates- The third part of the Eastern hemisphere, according to tradition, fell to the sons of Ham in whose family there was an ancient curse.

But in the economy of Heaven there is no curse without a blessing-and often the blessing blossoms from the curse! Africa became the asylum of the two greatest figures in the annals of time.

A tear-drop on the cheek of a babe in a reed basket among the rushes of the Nile gave rise to the fortunes of a people out of whom came at last the world's Messiah!

When Christ was born, his infancy, like that of Moses, was sheltered in the land of Egypt. That was the only gate of ingress or egress which remained unshut round a coast of 16,000 miles. The seal of the continent like that of its great pyramid, was left unbroken for centuries.

About 400 years ago, the Portuguese, then the greatest sailors, began to pry around it. Explorations followed. The slave trade, early existing, was vastly augmented, by the discovery of America, Church and State, monarchy and merchandise, joined hands to make it re

• The Annual Discourse delivered at the Sixty-Ninth Anniversary of THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY, Washington, D. C., January 17th, 1886, by Rev. B. Sunderland, D. D. Published by request of the Society.

spectable. For the next three centuries European rapacity tore from their native soil the children of Africa and thrust them on the markets of the world.

One day in 1620 a Dutch ship came up the James river and landed the first score of Negro slaves at Jamestown, Virginia. That was the beginning of African slavery in this country, leading to long bondage, to civil war and final emancipation. It is estimated that from 1680 to 1786 England, chiefly, supplied to this country and the West Indies 2,130,000 Negro slaves.

"But there is a soul of good in things evil." One of the most conspicuous uses of this country thus far, was to bring these abject Pagans into contact with our modern civilization and to pack multitudes of them into the Christian church.

About the time of the Revolution, an idea entered the mind of a man in New England that the return of the Negro to the land of his fathers, would be in order. It caught fire and kindled in other minds in various forms in other parts of the country. Years went on and Paul Cuffee, an Africo-Indian, born at New Bedford, rising from poverty and obscurity to command money and a ship of his own, thought it was time to put this idea in practice. He carried back to Africa in his own vessel 40 of his people, costing him the sum of $4,000. This was in 1815. He seems to have been the first practical colonizationist.

The next year he returned to this country and died. A few months after, the American Colonization Society was born.

Seventy years are gone and Liberia, as she stands to-day, is the result. The Society has measured the alloted span of a human life and it remains now to be seen whether it is moribund or whether like the law-giver of Israel, its "eye is not dim nor its natural force abated."

To the intimate friends of Liberia her story is an oft-told tale. Great speakers at the annual meetings of the American Colonization Society at Washington and at other times and places have pleaded the cause of African colonization. The press has created a literature on the subject of more or less permanent character and value. We have had the narrative, the sentiment, the antiquity, the poetry, the heroism. the sacrifice, the struggle, set before us, copiously, eloquently and with strong conviction.

The semi-centennial of the Society was observed in 1867 and marked an epoch in its history. The volume of the proceedings of that year is accessible to those who would be informed. In addition to the addresses and discourses on that occasion, the book contains a copy of the Liberian Declaration of Independence, the full text of

the Constitution of the new Republic, a description of its flag and seal, the inaugural address of the first President of Liberia-Hon. J. J. Roberts, the annual message of President Warner in 1866, together with a list of all the agents and government officials who have acted through and for the American Colonization Society-a table of the emigrants and of the cost of colonization to that date, and, lastly, the honored names of the original members of the Society.

From these and from very many other documents, one great fact stands out clearly to our view and that is that the whole civilized and Christian world recognizes the relation of the Government of the United States to that distant infant African Republic as "her next friend."

Thoughtful and philanthropic men have in former times discussed and urged the emancipation of the enslaved blacks, and their removal to the father-land. Upon the broadest basis it has been shown that the people of this country have obligations on this subject of the most serious and controlling character, and when we declare that the United States is in a large historic sense the founder and necessary patron of the Liberian Republic, we assert only what may be known and read of all men.

The contests and suspicions to which the American Colonization Society was subjected in the period prior to 1861, have largely passed away. Emancipation came through a sea of blood, and in the last 25 years "the logic of events" has justified the wisdom of our work and vindicated for all time the name and character of this now venerable organization.

The imperial monarch of Spain, Charles V, issued a Royal license for the importation of African slaves into his American possessions. This was in the year of grace, 1516, just 300 years before the birth of the American Colonization Society, and it opened wide the gates of the slave trade from the western coast of Africa, the horrors of "the middle passage" and all the pains of Christian cruelty.

But Alfonso, the last king on the Spanish throne, whose Royal obsequies were chronicled but the other day, under date of February 11th, 1882, sent the following epistle to Gardner, the then President of Liberia:

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"Great and good Friend:

Desiring to give you a public testimony of my Royal appreciation and my particular esteem, I have had special pleasure in nominating you Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabel the Catholic. I am "pleased by this action also to furnish new proof of the desire which animates me to strengthen more and more the friendly relations which happily exist "between Spain and the Republic of Liberia, and with this motive, I repeat

to you the assurance of the affection which I entertain towards you, and with which, Great and Good Friend, I am

Your Great and Good Friend,

ALFONSO."

It is a little stilted and fulsome after the manner of kings, but it sounds cheerily beside the ruthless decree of Charles V.

No man can trace the footsteps of Providence in these latter days without being constantly surprised at the unexpected and marvelous turn of things. The world is more alive to-day than ever-as we discover through constantly accumulating official reports, diplomatic papers, missionary, scientific, exploring, educational and commercial accounts, which are daily concentrating a flood of light upon Africans and Africa. The change on the face of the world-even during the existence of the American Colonization Society, invests its work with a new and transcendant interest. Here at home a race of slaves have been clothed with the franchise of free men and are rapidly being educated in the spirit of our civil and religious institutions, and at this moment seven millions of people of African blood stand confronted with the future, and like Saul of Tarsus in the way to Damascus--are compelled to ask-"Lord what wilt Thou have me to do?"

True, there is a divided opinion among them. We have no wish to conceal the facts. There are many men in this country with African blood in their veins who rage at the faintest hint of what they are pleased to term expatriation. They have no special love for this venerable Society. To the prayer of Father Snowden--a colored preacher of Boston many years ago, they would shout a loud "Amen!"

"Oh, Lord, we pray Thee that that seven-headed and ten-horned monster, the Colonization Society, may be smitten through and through with the fiery darts of truth, and tormented as the whale between the sword-fish and the thrasher."

Yet to-day, half a million of Father Snowden's people are seeking light from the "ten-horned monster" and turning a wistful gaze on the far-off father-land.

The Society has done nothing to bring about this state of things. The only activity in this direction has been information imparted at the request of the Negroes.

But it is said they are all free born now--what more do they want? Why should they go to Africa? Is not America good enough for the colored people?

Answers to these questions are piled up month after month on the table of the Executive Committee of the Society, and we are forced to go over and over them and then lay them aside for want of means to

respond effectively and 'thus the years are passing away with too little done. They come from all quarters--as well from New England as from Texas; from New York as from Alabama-and they want to go. Take a specimen case.

The Rev. Mr. Brockenton, pastor of a Baptist church of more than 1,000 members, in Darlington, S. C., evidently a prominent man in his Church, in his State and county and town, in a letter of December 12th, 1884, says, that he, with his family and a large company of his people, wishes to go to Africa for the following reasons:

"1. Because I want to continue my good work for the Master. 2. Because I think my Christian influence is more needed there than here. 3. Because the harvest in Africa is great, but the laborers are few. 4. Because my children are trained teachers or mechanics and as such can assist in building up our father-land. 5. Because my condition as a man will be better established and my work as a minister better appreciated."

Sound and sensible reasons--reasons which are almost daily reiterated by the colored people who are waking up to the question of their future duty and condition.

President Roberts in a public discourse on his last visit to this country said: "I have no disposition to urge my colored brethren to leave the country, but as for me I could not live in the United States."

Professor Freeman of Liberia College while on a visit a few years ago at Pittsburgh, Pa., where he had formerly spent 12 years as a teacher in a college for the education of colored students, was offered strong inducements to remain and resume his former position in that institution, but he refused. The Trustees then asked. “What will you stay for, Freeman?" His reply was in substance this: "I will stay, gentlemen, for what either of you white men would consent to become a Negro for, and live in Pennsylvania and transmit his social status to his children."

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But this is not all. Every settlement in Liberia is calling for population from the United States. The Honorable Z. B. Roberts, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court writes as follows: Sinoe county was planted by your philanthropy in common with the other portions of Liberia. It is heavily timbered, has a fertile soil, a bar for shipping at all seasons of the year and a river abounding in fish, including superior oysters. Our evergreen palm-trees lift up their towering heads, waving majestically their glossy limbs and broad leaves, their trunks filled with crimson fruit for home use and for exportation. There is room here for Africa's sons in America to enjoy with us this God-given land. Emigrants are needed-those that will re