come truly free. All great things have small beginnings, — so had this; yet, beginning in this simple and humble way, this Society has been led on by Divine Providence to the accomplishment, already, of great deeds; and promises in the end to regenerate and bless with freedom and happiness two great Continents. Truly may we say, in the words of the distinguished Dr. Beecher,[1] that this is "God's Society." "I do not think," said he, in his Colonization address at Pittsburgh, "I do not think that a Society, heaven moved as this Society was, by such wisdom as Samuel J. Mills was blessed with, — by such wisdom as he commanded into its service, — moved on by such faith and prayer, and so blessed of heaven as this has been in its past labors, and still is, — could have been born of wisdom from beneath. I would say of this Society, it is God's Society. In its commencement it was his; in its progress it has been his; and the station it now occupies in the midst of all the difficulties which have grown out of inexperience and the peculiar nature of the subject — as well as its success in Africa — all show it to be his.[2]
The same vigorous writer — Dr. Beecher — in the following striking passage, presents a comprehensive view of the whole matter which we have been laboring to set forth in these pages — namely, the reason for the Divine permission of the slave — trade and slavery, the after-return of those slaves to Africa by the process of colonization, and the final civilizing and Christianizing of that whole Continent. "There is no such thing,"
