Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/74

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A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

plenished with "all the wisdom of the Egyptians;" — as the children of Israel were suffered to be held' long in bondage, far from the country of their fathers and the promised land, — that they might afterwards return thither, prepared to become instruments for restoring the true worship of Jehovah: — so have the thousands and tens of thousands of Africans been permitted, we may believe, to be taken away from their native land to the New World, — to the end that, in an after-time, they or their descendants might return, civilized and Christianized, prepared to become the favored instruments for introducing into that benighted continent the lights of civilization and of the Gospel, — breaking up at once the reign of idolatry and of slavery, and spreading far and wide the knowledge of the true God, and, with it, the true spirit of freedom. It was the only way in which that great end could be accomplished: and we can now see that it was the plan of profound and infinite Wisdom.