TO THE READER.
This little book is for the more wise to give counsel, wherein I fail, and the more ignorant stumble, for want of knowledge, for we must first learn what is right and then pursue it; I have no doubt that when this comes before the face of the public there may be many misrepresentations on this subject, but my soul is at stake for I stand as a minister of God, 2 Tim. 4 c. 1, 2 v and some may reject this on the account of my being a descendant of Ethiopia, and if so, then you may anticipate the feeling of your unworthy author; and he is well aware of the particular prejudice that still seems to exist from some whites towards that nation of people which is called Ethiopians, but my earnest prayer to God is that the time may soon come when that overruling prejudice of sin will die among all nations, and that the pure love of God may spring up in every heart and shine as the morning star, and that the Gospel may bear on the prejudice of man, and I feel it necessary to place my dependence upon the great Rock of Ages, in whose name and with whose words I come to you this day.
I choose to dedicate this little treaties to you, because sometimes those providences which appear rather out of the common line, are hard nuts in the mouth of a weak believer; but some of you have known me from the beginning and have been eye witnesses of most of the facts which I am going to relate, and if you will allow me to make an honest confession. My conscience has often lashed me for not keeping a diary, or rather minuteing down the many conspicuous providences of God, which have appeared to me in times of trouble; but like ungrateful Israel, I went the only way to forget his work and to be unmindful of the rock of my salvation, and now I have nothing to trust to, on this creation but my own treacherous memory, unless the Lord be pleased to send the comforter to me, and if he comes he will bring all things to my remembrance, whatever God hath said unto me in the way of providence. I am sure the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and all that is thereon, all the cattle of the forest are his and so are the flocks of a thousand hills, yea, the corn and the wine, the oil thereof, and the flax; yea, the wicked deceiver as well as the
