RETROSPECT. 723 



Mr. Moffat began to give the Bible — the Magna Charta of all the 

 rights and privileges of modern civilization — to the Bechuanas, 

 Sebituane went north, and spread the language into which he was 

 translating the sacred oracles in a new region larger than France. 

 Sebituane, at the same time, rooted out hordes of bloody savages, 

 among whom no white man could have gone without leaving his 

 skull to ornament some village. He opened up the way for me 

 — let us hope also for the Bible. Then, again, while I was labor- 

 ing at Kolobeng, seeing only a small arc of the cycle of Provi- 

 dence, I could not understand it, and felt inclined to ascribe 

 our successive and prolonged droughts to the wicked one. But 

 when forced by these and the Boers to become explorer, and 

 open a new country in the north rather than set my face south- 

 ward, where missionaries are not needed, the gracious Spirit of 

 God influenced the minds of the heathen to regard me with 

 favor ; the Divine hand is again perceived. Then I turned away 

 westward rather than in the opposite direction, chiefly from 

 observing that some native Portuguese, though influenced by the 

 hope of a reward from their government to cross the continent, 

 had been obliged to return from the east without accomplishing 

 their object. Had I gone at first in the eastern direction, which 

 the course of the great Leeambye seemed to invite, I should have 

 come among the belligerents near Tete when the war was raging 

 at its height, instead of, as it happened, when all was over. And 

 again, when enabled to reach Loanda, the resolution to do my 

 duty by going back to Linyanti probably saved me from the fate 

 of my papers in the "Forerunner." And then, last of all, this new 

 country is partially opened to the sympathies of Christendom, 

 and I find that Sechele himself has, though unbidden by man, 

 been teaching his own people. In fact, he has been doing all that 

 I was prevented from doing, and I have been employed in explor- 

 ing — a work I had no previous intention of performing. I think 

 that I see the operation of the unseen hand in all this, and I hum- 

 bly hope that it will still guide me to do good in my day and 

 generation in Africa. 



Viewing the success awarded to opening up the new country 

 as a development of Divine Providence in relation to the African 

 family, the mind naturally turns to the probable influence it 

 may have on negro slavery, and more especially on the practice 



