The first, and perhaps the only, motive of the Society was to fulfill what they regarded as their solemn duty to the freed Negroes, and to do this in a way which they thought ought to be most agreeable to the Negroes themselves. No thought, apparently, was given to the tribes who would be neighbors of the new colonists. In the many years since the founding of the little Republic, the population of American Negroes has reached only the small aggregate of from 14,000 to 15,000, living in coastal regions. Contrary to expectations in America (and very likely also in Liberia), of a spontaneous movement of Negroes to Liberia after their emancipation, less than 2,000 have availed themselves, since the Civil War, of the privilege of returning to the land of their fathers. The balance of the population is made up of some 40,000 natives—some of them Christians—upon or within reach of the coast, and at least a million more who possess the interior. The greater part of these last are still savages, a few are Christians, while many have embraced the Mohammedan religion. It does not require a vivid imagination to picture the tragic condition of the earlier colonists as they arrived in the fatherland, and faced a wild country to be subdued, savage kinsmen who were their foes, a land without law, and a climate without kindness. These freed Negroes were, by training and experience, alien to the natives, and strangers to their fatherland. The story of those early years must be read elsewhere; but this merest hint cannot but call forth sympathy for the actors in the drama. For twenty-five years the colonization society directed the colonial policies, until, in 1847, the colonists declared Liberia free and self-governing, and fashioned a government modelled after that of their native America. Since then, the Republic of Liberia has held its place among the nations of the world, and its unique position as the only State in Africa over which the Negro exercises authority. All the rest of the continent has been divided among the European nations. Of the effort of the Church to supply this lonely colony with her ministrations, it is not our purpose to speak in detail. That has been done elsewhere. Our present object is to see what the Liberians themselves have accomplished with the assistance of the Church. We may therefore pass over, with very brief notice, the story of the Church in Liberia, until the time when she developed a bishop of the negro race.