the highest praise which can be bestowed upon mortal man, as it is also an acknowledgment of the brightest conquest which Divine grace can achieve over the human heart.

But while he thus floated along through the vale of life, catching only the specks of dust which necessarily cleave to all human beings, he was carried as on eagle's wings' directly to the port of endless bliss-where we most devoutly pray that we may have the unspeakable pleasure of a re-union with him, in ascribing endless praise to Him • who hath loved us, and washed us in His own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and the Lamb.'

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY.

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THERE is no institution of benevolence, among all those which are now before the public, which is so strictly national in its character as the American Colonization Society. In its origin it engaged the hands and hearts of the purest patriots, the most exalted philanthropists, and the most enlightened Christians. And in its progress thus far, in furtherance of the grand and sublime purposes of its organization, it has called forth and exhibited an extent of labor, privation, suffering, and sacrifice, which Christianity alone could inspire, and to which Christian heroism can alone furnish a parallel in this world's history. And we may add, that, to the present hour, this society has had a success which far exceeds the hopes of its founders, and promises a rich harvest of blessing both to the African continent and to our own land.

For a

The subject of African slavery had long occupied the minds, and elicited the sympathies and prayers of American Christians. series of years benevolent men all over the land had felt deeply the evils of the system of slavery, both as connected with the wrongs inflicted upon its victims, as well as the mischiefs to posterity, of which the forebodings only have been realized. The conviction has been spreading and deepening, that to our Afric-Americans, both the free and the enslaved, we owe much-and to wounded and bleeding Africa much more. And although abolition has been effected in the northern states with great unanimity, where the evils were small, and the sacrifice inconsiderable; yet all eyes have been turned to the south, where slavery abounds, and the increase of the African population is so rapidly augmenting, as to present the most melancholy anticipations to every American and to every Christian.

But although the mighty importance of this subject had become apparent, and statesmen, philosophers, and divines were unitedly contemplating it with benevolent purposes; yet, it would seem, that by common consent, all had viewed the evil without discovering its remedy. And when the noble project of the American Colonization Society was announced, it seemed as the first ray of light which had dawned on this dark subject; and at once rallied around its standard those who had long felt deeply, but saw no hope until developed by

this noble and benevolent scheme. Accordingly we find among its earliest friends most of those who had distinguished themselves as the friends of the colored race, in every part of the land, and some of whom have since sacrificed their lives in the holy cause.

Among those who have long felt and labored for the temporal and eternal interests of the colored people, and especially of the slave population, the Methodist Episcopal Church acknowledges few rivals, and knows no superior. Our own Wesley first directed his mission to the slaves of Georgia; and Coke, Asbury, and their successors to the present time, have not ceased diligently and successfully to prosecute their missionary labors among the colored population of this whole country. Our Church now numbers about eighty thousand members among them; and united to the African race by the ties of our common Christianity, as well as those of fellow membership, it must be supposed that, on every subject materially affecting the colored population of this country, our ministry and membership have a deep and heartfelt interest. It was reasonably to be expected, therefore, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, having the confidence and affection of so large a portion of those for whose benefit the American Colonization Society was professedly laboring, would not be idle or indifferent spectators of such an enterprise. Accordingly our Church has from the first patronized the society, furnished very many of its emigrants, and rejoiced to contribute to its funds. For many years we have looked to this infant colony at Liberia, as presenting an open door for missionary enterprise, which we longed to cultivate, and have happily succeeded in planting a mission there, from which, we trust, great and lasting good will result, not merely to the colonists, but to the natives of the interior. And although our first missionary, Rev. M. B. Cox, and our beloved sister Wright, have fallen at the threshold of their heavenly employment, yet our Church are inspired with the epitaph of the first of these martyrs to colonization and to the mission

Let thousands fall before Africa be given up ;' and accordingly the mission will be continued by the labors of those already there, and others who will shortly embark to their help.

But, while we look to the colony itself as furnishing a nucleus for missionary labor-a focus, whence the lights of science and religion may be diffused for the regeneration of that unhappy continent-we are not indifferent to the wants or the happiness of the colored people at home. And as for these primarily the American Colonization Society is laboring, so we feel a large interest in the enterprise and in its success. Accordingly, at the last general conference, authority was given to our bishops to appoint from our itinerant ranks such agents for this truly national society as its managers might find occasion to employ; and very many of our annual conferences have warmly recommended the colonization cause to the patronage and liberality of the Christian public.

With the view of sustaining the propriety of this adhesion of our Church to this great enterprise, in these days of public clamor-when mere noviciates in the ranks of philanthropy are arrogating to themselves exclusive claims to friendship for our African population, and denouncing the American Colonization Society, and all who adhere to it, as the vindicators or apologists for slavery, and the enemies of the

African race-it may be proper briefly to present to our readers an outline of this great subject. And we deem this important at the present juncture, because an unhallowed and Anti-American conspiracy has been gotten up in the north and east under the imposing title of The American Anti-Slavery Society,' whose clamors for immediate abolition are calculated to impose upon the unwary; especially as its leaders make the colonization scheme the chief object of their revilings, and labor to abstract from it the claims to public confidence which it has ever maintained, and to which it is justly entitled.

The open and avowed object of the American Colonization Society is expressed in its constitution to be to colonize, on the coast of Africa, the free people of color, with their own consent.' This is its single aim, its only object; nor has it ever been moved from its adhesion to this first principle, by friend or foe. It occupies a ground, therefore, which has proved itself to be invulnerable. For although the advocates of perpetual slavery, on the one hand, have decried it as aiming secretly at emancipation-and the friends of instant abolition, on the other, have denounced it as a vile scheme of the slave holders, under the cover of humanity—the society has stood firmly to its principles, and pronounced its vindication by its acts, known and read of all men,' until by the suffrages of patriots and Christians in both hemispheres it has been acknowledged to be among the noblest enterprises of human benevolence.

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To the holy and enlightened minds of those excellent men who founded the society, no truth was more apparent than that for meliorating the condition of the colored population of this country, so stupendous an undertaking must be one altogether unexceptionable to benevolent men in the south and in the north; so that all such in the land could harmoniously and zealously co-operate. They knew that the aid of the general and state governments, or even the countenance of the public authorities, could never be secured, unless the constitution of the United States, and our articles of confederation, by which the glorious and happy union is preserved, be neither assailed nor impugned. And as the existence of slavery was recognized in our civil compact, and supreme authority on this subject secured to each sovereign state, they knew that no direct interference with that question would be permitted; but the very semblance of such interference would necessarily be fatal to any enterprise, however benevolent or praiseworthy and the experience and observation of these statesmen and philanthropists had convinced them, that slavery as it exists in the south under the sanction of law, has always been aggravated, in its physical and moral evils, whenever foreign interference has been attempted from any quarter. Humanity to the slave, therefore, no less than respect for their country, dictated that in their proposed scheme they should altogether avoid this delicate and exciting question.

But, while they thus disclaimed all reference to the question of slavery, and proclaimed their single object to be the removal of the free people of color, and this only with their own consent, they saw most clearly that voluntary emancipation of the slaves would be immediately and safely promoted as a necessary consequence of their success. It was well known then, as it is better known now, that very many of our southern brethren were ready to liberate their slaves,

even at the sacrifice of all their earthly possessions, so soon as they could be removed from the state; and except on this condition, it was and still is unlawful to emancipate them. Accordingly among the emigrants already sent to the colony are a large majority of emancipated slaves, who else must have been held in bondage to the present hour; and thousands more remain in slavery only because the society has not the means of removing them to the colony, their masters being anxious to free them, and they equally anxious to go.

It is plain, therefore, that, although this does not claim to be an anti-slavery society-but, on the contrary, absolutely declines to meddle with the slave question-yet it is nevertheless effecting emancipation more rapidly than all the manumission or abolition societies in existence have ever accomplished, having already emancipated hundreds, and prepared thousands for emancipation. How perfectly idle and preposterous, then, are all the foul aspersions cast upon the colonization scheme, as being adverse to abolition, only because it does not make this its primary object, and thus nullify itself.

But, let it be remembered, that it is only with their own consent, that any free persons of color are colonized by this society; and this is another fixed principle from which it has never deviated; and therefore the hue and cry which is maliciously and falsely made about forcible expatriation is superlatively contemptible. And if there should ever come a time when there are no free people of color who will consent to go to Liberia, the Colonization Society will then have nothing to do, but to exercise a care over those who have already gone; nor can it directly or indirectly affect the free colored people who choose to remain in this country, whatever be the causes of their non-consent. It is freely admitted, that the projectors of the colony looked forward to the time when the flourishing and prosperous condition of the colony, which should succeed the difficulties and discouragements of its settlement, would by its own attractions lead the whole colored population of America voluntarily to seek an asylum in the land of their fathers, where, free from prejudice and civil disabilities, they might enjoy liberty and independence; and very many of the friends of the society now indulge these bright anticipations. But the entire removal of the descendants of Africa from our shores is by no means necessary to the success of the society, either here, or on the continent, where their colony is located; so that all the speculations of the forum and the press, designed to show the impracticability of transporting the millions of our Afric-Americans to Liberia, is but vain and idle declamation. Suppose that we should only succeed in raising funds to plant ten or twenty thousand on the coast; and, after providing for their permanent freedom and independence, and the transmission of these blessings to their posterity, suppose the society should cease to exist? Would not this be an object worthy of all the labor, and sacrifice of life and treasure, necessary to such an enterprise?

Is it nothing to emancipate twenty thousand of our fellow beings from perpetual bondage? Is it nothing to have erected a republic of Christianized and civilized men on a continent of paganism? Is it nothing to have lined the coast for hundreds of miles with colonies, which all experience has shown present a certain and effectual barrier to the horrors of the slave trade? Is it nothing to have placed the

fires of civilization and the lights of Christianity permanently upon the shores of a continent, where millions are living in barbarism and enslaved by Mohammedan and pagan superstitions? And is a society, aiming at this, and promising nothing more, to be denounced, reviled, persecuted, and crushed, because it cannot do more? Forbid it Heaven! And yet such is the fact, that this unnatural warfare against colonization is even now waging under the garb of friendship to the African race, under the mask of humanity and benevolence, under the cloak of our holy religion! My soul, come not thou into their secret ; to their assembly, mine honor be not thou united.'

But let us estimate the colonization scheme in its ultimate results, by turning our eyes for a moment to what it has already accomplished, and this too with so limited means, and under all those discouragements incident to such enterprises, by whomsoever undertaken. On the western shores of Africa we see a bright spot, already settled with three thousand colonists. Beside the recaptured Africans, who have been rescued from miseries worse than death, thousands of the natives in the vicinity are already accessible to our teachers and missionaries, and in daily intercourse with the colonists. Already the odious crime of man-stealing is utterly annihilated from hundreds of miles of that very territory, where those pirates and demons in human shape once loaded their floating hells with their wretched and hapless victims from slave factories, on the precise spot where now stands the town of Monrovia. Under the auspices of the American Colonization Society the emigrants are placed under a government of their own; commerce has been established, and the Liberian flag become known and respected; schools have been organized; churches erected; agriculture and the mechanic arts are beginning to be cultivated; and a newspaper issued and printed in the colony; which gives evidence of general prosperity surpassing far the colony either of Plymouth or Jamestown in their infant establishment.

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No marvel that the great Wilberforce, in the full tide of his health and vigor, exclaimed that his heart had been gladdened by finding, that, warm as his anticipations had been, they were but cold and meagre compared with the reality, effected by this noble plan.' Nor need we wonder that these astonishing results called forth from the venerable Clarkson, the strong and appropriate language, that some demon must have stirred up the opposition to this noble institution, which has already done much good, is now doing more, and will do more yet!' And in the following extract from a letter under date of Nov. 1831, this excellent man, so eminent for his undeviating friendship to the colored race, expresses himself thus :

For myself, I freely confess, that of all the things which have occurred in our favor since the year 1787, when the abolition of the slave trade was first seriously proposed, that which is now going on in the United States under the auspices of the American Colonization Society is most important. It surpasses any thing which has yet occurred. No sooner had the colony of Liberia been founded than there appeared a disposition among the owners of slaves in the United States to give them freedom voluntarily, without one farthing of compensation, and to allow them to be sent to the land of their ancestors. This is to me truly astonishing! a total change of heart in the planters,