Let not this effort of beneficence be paralized by the plea, that it is an insignificant undertaking compared with the magnitude of the evil intended to be removed. Did you never see a cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, at its first appearance, finally overspread the whole horizon and pour a copious blessing on the thirsty earth? What plan of benevolence, in this fallen world, was not small at its commencement? Even the kingdom of God was once like _a grain of mustard seed_; but it has gradually increased and will continue to grow till it fills the world. The Herculean labour of abolishing the slave-trade, with all its bloody horrours, was commenced, within our recollection, by a single individual, in the legislature of a single nation, amidst the clamours of a host of opposition; and yet that individual has lived, and we have lived, to see the horrid traffick proscribed, not only by that nation, but by the civilized world, and the practice declared _piracy_ by several nations. What influence then can a consideration of the smallness of the means, compared with the end, have upon the benevolent mind in relation to this subject? It may indeed stimulate to increased exertion, but it surely can produce no discouraging effect. But even admitting that the efforts of this Society should never ultimately accomplish the object of its aim, _the entire abolition of American slavery_, there is one important result which it cannot fail to produce. Besides securing the blessings of freedom and self-government to some of those who had previously groaned under the chains of bitter servitude, it will afford a ready introduction of the blessings of civilization and the gospel to the benighted tribes of Africa. It is recorded in God’s sure word of prophecy, that “Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands to God,” while “the isles of the sea shall wait for his law.” In view of the numerous and simultaneous efforts of the Christian world to extend the blessings of the gospel to the ends of the earth, we may justly consider the exertions of the American Colonization Society as ultimately, though not directly, aiming at the same object; and we may with propriety regard the Institution as one important wheel in that vast system of moral machinery which, under the blessing of heaven, is destined to regenerate a fallen world.