*It is very striking in this connection that Romanism has never made any progress or met with any permanent success in Africa. In the North where Mohammedanism prevails, (see Barth,) it is repudiated on account of its supposed proclivity to polytheism, and in other parts of the continent different causes have prevented its taking root. Indeed, West Africa presents the most striking instance on record of the utter failure of the Romish religion to benefit a heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portuguese had a kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was powerful and extensive in its influence. With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was a work," says Wilson, ( Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan . 1852), "at which successive missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two centuries. Among these were some of the most learned and able men that Rome ever sent forth to the Pagan world. It was a cause that ever lay near the heart of the kings of Portugal, when that nation was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before the close of the eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the contrary, before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but almost every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land, and the whole country had fallen back into the deepest ignorance and heathenism, and into greater weakness and poverty than had ever been experienced even before its discovery." With a continent wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved from it here, may we not see a divine adaptation for the future, a finger-pointing to some signal good for the church and the world? If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard to the negro race which we have now pointed out, we have this:--Here is a nation with good mental endowments, peculiarly distinct and seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile and ready to receive the impression of all influences surrounding them, brought not only in closest contact with one of the first races of the world, but actually receiving a transfusion of its best blood, made at least in part partakers of a very high civilization, and already Christianized in a form where there is the least play of superstition or error. Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people? Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it, if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one sufficiently glorious for itself? Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we think that we are justified when we say, looking over the facts in the case, that when they have removed from them the incubus of slavery, and start forth on a career of freedom, that their rise will be extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the elements of progress which they possess into consideration, it is simply impossible that it should be otherwise.