who is contriving and calculating (to speak according to human language) for ages and ages to come; who patiently waits centuries for His great purposes to be developed, and calls on slumbering futurity to arise and testify to His doings.
It is only by taking a very wide view, that we are enabled to form any conception whatever of the purposes of Divine Providence; and it is scarcely possible to have a distinct understanding of those purposes, until the time arrives when they are beginning to develop themselves in results. From facts which have within the last half-century come to our knowledge, and from events which have been taking place within the last thirty years, we are now able to have some comprehension of the probable designs of Providence in permitting the African slave — trade. The facts to which we refer are the particulars which have been made known to us by recent travelers concerning the interior state of Africa itself. From these we learn, that a great portion of the inhabitants of that country are, and have from the earliest periods been, in a state of slavery amongst themselves. The celebrated traveler, Mungo Park, informs us, that nearly three-fourths of all the inhabitants of Africa are in the condition of slaves. And this statement we can the more readily credit, when taken in connection with another, namely, that "hired servants — that is, persons of free condition, working for pay — are unknown "in that country, and that "the labor is universally performed by slaves."[1]
"A state of subordination," he remarks, in commencing his description of African slavery, "and certain
- ↑ Park's Travels in the Interior of Africa, chapters i, xxi.
