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 THE 
 
 RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE SLAVES 
 
 IN THE WEST INDIA COLONIES 
 
 ADVOCATED A.N D DEFENDED. 
 
 SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE 
 
 THE WES LEY AN 
 
 METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY, 
 
 IN TUB 
 
 NEW CHAPEL, CITY-ROAD, LONDON, 
 APRIL 28, 1824. 
 
 RICHARD WATSON, 
 
 ONE OF THE SECRETARIES OF THAT INSTITUTION. 
 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 LONDON: 
 
 SOLD BY BUTTERWORTH AND SON, FLEET-STREET, 
 
 AND 
 KERSHAW, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
 
 The profits of this Sermon, published at the request of the Annual Meeting of the 
 Society, will be appropriated to the West India Missions.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 SERMON, &c. 
 
 1 Peter ii. 17. 
 HONOUR ALL MEN. 
 
 WE call Christianity, emphatically, a revelation. It is so. It 
 is a revelation of GOD, of a REDEEMER, and of a FUTURE LIFE. 
 But with scarcely less emphasis may it be entitled a revelation 
 of MAN. At its first promulgation, it placed him under aspects 
 new, at least, to the world of Gentiles ; and, to this moment, it 
 continues to stamp upon him this signature of his value in the sight 
 of God, I hat all the truths which the revelations of the inspired 
 Scriptures contain were made for his sake; that for him the veil has 
 been withdrawn from the attributes of God ; for him the Redeemer 
 left " the bosom of the Father;" and for him the manifestations 
 of immortality now bound the vanities of the present life with the 
 stupendous realities of another. 
 
 Its discovery of the solemn and consolatory relations in which 
 man stands to God, is accompanied also by a most interesting 
 declaration of the relation in which man stands to his fellows. 
 When two passages were recorded in our Scriptures by the 
 inspiration of their Author, views on this subject as novel as 
 they were tender and benevolent were opened on the world. 
 One affirms, that God " hath made of ONE BLOOD all nations 
 of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth ;" that they are 
 of one family, of one origin, of one common nature: the othrr, 
 that our Saviour became incarnate, " that he, by the grace of 
 God, should taste death for every man." Behold the foundation 
 of the fraternity of our race, however coloured and however 
 scattered. Essential distinctions of inferiority and superiority 
 had been, in almost every part of the Gentile world, adopted, as 
 
 B 2
 
 the palliation, or the justification, of the wrongs inflicted by man 
 on man ; but against this notion Christianity, from its first promul- 
 gation, has lifted up its voice. God hath made the varied tribes 
 of men " of one blood." Post thou wrong a human being? He 
 is thy BROTHER. Art thou his murderer by war, private malice, 
 or a wearing and exhausting oppression? " The voice of thy bro- 
 ther's blood crieth to God from the ground." Dost thou, because 
 of some accidental circumstances of rank, opulence, and power 
 on thy part, treat him with scorn and contempt? He is thy " bro- 
 ther, for whom CHRIST DIED ;" the incarnate Redeemer assumed 
 his nature as well as thine ; he came into the world to seek and to 
 save him as well as thee; and it was in reference to him also that 
 he went through the scenes of the garden and the cross. There 
 is not, then, a man on earth who has not a FATHER in heaven, 
 and to whom Christ is not an advocate and patron ; nay, more, 
 because of the assumption of our common humanity, to whom he 
 is not a BROTHER. 
 
 Thus " the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man 
 appeared." But here brutal ignorance and affected philosophy 
 agree to ask the question, " Who are MEN?" intimating, that, 
 if the benevolent principles just laid down are not to be disputed, 
 the application of them must be narrowed; and that, as to various 
 tribes which bear the human form, several of the tribes, for in- 
 stance, to which the charity of Missionary Societies is extended, 
 it is doubted whether they have this claim to brotherhood, because 
 it is doubted whether they have any title to humanity. A civi- 
 lized savage, armed with the power which an improved condition 
 of society gives him, invades a distant country, and destroys or 
 makes captive its inhabitants, and then, pointing to their contrary 
 colour and different features, finds his justification in denying 
 them to be men. A petty philosophy follows in the train, and 
 confirms the hesitating deductions of ignorance. Its theory is, 
 that the gradations of animated nature are gentle, and almost 
 imperceptible ; and, not content that the ape and baboon should 
 fill up the chasm which exists between the quadruped and man, 
 an intermediate link must be invented ; and thus the coloured 
 skin and the peculiar visage of the Negro and the Hottentot are 
 placed against their title to humanity, and millions, by the dreams 
 of a theory, have been struck out of the family of God, the cove- 
 nant of grace, and that fraternity which the Scriptures have 
 extended to the whole race of Adam. 
 
 But our Scriptures have not left us to determine the title of any 
 tribe to the full honours of humanity by accidental circumstances. 
 To man has been given the law, " thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart;" and to be capable of loving God is the 
 infallible criterion of our peculiar nature. So extensively has this 
 principle been applied by Missionary Societies, that the philosophy 
 in question is now refuted more by facts than reasoning. They have
 
 determined whether the races cast out and spurned by this theory 
 are our brethren, and, as such, entitled to our fraternal yearnings ; 
 they have determined who are men, by determining who are 
 capable of that universal and exclusive law to man, the love of 
 God. The Negro, through all his shades ; the Hottentot, through 
 all his varieties ; the Indians of America and the natives of New 
 Holland have all, in our own days, been inspired with the love 
 of God, through the Gospel : and again we see, that " in Christ 
 Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, 
 bond nor free, but that Christ is all in all." Thus have mis- 
 sionary operations not only enlarged the sphere of benevolence, 
 but extended the vision of a hoodwinked philosophy. 
 
 But what means the text, " HONOUR ALL MEN ?" That it is 
 to be taken in its most extensive range of application is clear 
 from what follows " love the brotherhood." All men are to be 
 honoured ; but Christians, who form but a part of mankind, are 
 to be loved with that special regard which is enjoined in the 
 special command of Christ to his disciples, " love one another" 
 The whole race is first mentioned, then a part of the whole ; 
 and thus, whatever the precept may imply, it comprehends, in its 
 obligation and in its object, men of every nation, and kindred, 
 and tongue, and people. 
 
 What, then, is the " HONOUR" which we are enjoined to pay 
 to " ALL MEN?" Should we, with some, confine it to external 
 courtesies and signs of respect, yet even this tends to impress 
 us with some great peculiarity in man; for who treats an inferior 
 animal with courtesy ? Why, then, this distinction between the 
 most degraded man and the most pampered brute, but that 
 between them " a great gulph is fixed," and that there is no 
 approximation at all in the two natures? Thus the very precept 
 in the text, if interpreted to mean nothing more than external 
 salutation and respect, rends asunder the fleshy veil in which 
 all that is eminently man is enveloped, and exhibits to us, as the 
 basis of the courtesies we are bound to render to " all men," with- 
 out distinction, a being of superior capacity and delicate feeling; 
 a nature which, in common with our own, has its sense of degra- 
 dation and of honour; which sympathizes with us in our joys and 
 sorrows, in the cheering influence of kindness, and the keen 
 resentment of neglect and contempt. But this would be a very 
 imperfect representation of the import of the text. To " honour, 1 ' 
 as the word signifies, is to estimate the value of any thing, and to 
 proportion our regards to the ascertained value. Apply this rule 
 to man. Estimate his value by his Creator's love and by his 
 Redeemer's sufferings; by his own capacity of religion, of 
 morals, of intellectual advancement, of pleasure, of pain; by his 
 relation to a life and to a death to come ; and you will then feel, 
 that to honour man is to respect him under these views and rela- 
 tions; to be anxious for his welfare; to contemplate him, not
 
 only with benevolence, but even with awe and fear, lest a prize 
 so glorious should be lost, lest a being so capable should be 
 wretched for ever. 
 
 These remarks have an intimate connexion with the subject 
 which I have been requested to bring before you in this discourse. 
 It is not for me to range over the wide field of the labours of this 
 Society, and to lead you into the varied scenes of human error and 
 diversified superstition on the one hand, or of missionary triumph 
 on the other. It is assigned to me to fix your attention upon one 
 branch only of the Society's exertions the Missions to the 
 Negroes of the West Indies; but, narrow as is the field, and uni- 
 form as is its aspect; though, in many respects, this part of your 
 work has become familiar to you, and wants that interest which 
 novelty and incident give to other departments of exertion, I con- 
 fess that I regret nothing in the task but my own insufficiency to 
 plead its principles, to display its urgency, and to exhibit its suc- 
 cess. But for that I should feel the greatest pleasure in offering 
 you my feeble testimony in behalf of Missions so signalized and 
 encouraged by the blessing of God, and so worthy of your prayers, 
 exertions, and liberalities. 
 
 With reference to your Missions to the Negroes of our West 
 India Colonies, I direct your attention, 
 
 1, To the objects of your Christian sympathy and care ; 
 II, To their civil condition ; 
 
 III, To the effects of past exertions; 
 
 IV, To circumstances which may encourage your zeal and 
 perseverance. 
 
 I. To the objects of your sympathy and care : they are 
 AFRICAN NEGROES. 
 
 1. In touching this subject, allow me one principle, and I 
 desire no more, in behalf of this class of our fellow-men. Allow 
 me, that, if, among the various races of human kind, one is to be 
 found which has been treated with greater harshness by the rest, 
 from its possessing in a less degree the means of resistance ; one 
 whose history is drawn with a deeper pencilling of injury and 
 wretchedness ; that race, wherever found, is entitled to the largest 
 share of the compassion of the Christian Church, and especially 
 of those Christian nations which, in a period of past darkness and 
 crime, have had the greatest share in inflicting this injustice, and 
 you concede to me the ground of a strong appeal in its favour. 
 That appeal I make for the Negro race, the most unfortunate 
 of the family of man. Abundantly has it multiplied, but only to 
 furnish victims to the fraud and avarice of other nations. From 
 age to age its existence may be traced upon its own sunburnt 
 continent ; but ages, which have produced revolutions in favour 
 of other countries, have left Africa still the common plunder of 
 every invader who has had hardihood enough to obdurate his
 
 heart against humanity, to drag his lengthened lines of enchained 
 captives through the desert, or to suffocate them in the holds of 
 vessels destined to carry them away into hopeless, foreign, and 
 interminable captivity. It has been calculated, that Africa has 
 been annually robbed of one hundred and fifty thousand of her 
 children. Multiply this number by the ages through which the 
 injury has been protracted, and the amount appals and rends the 
 heart. What an accumulation of misery and wrong ! Which 
 of the sands of her deserts has not been steeped in tears, wrung 
 out by the pang of separation from kindred and country ! What 
 wind has passed over her plains without catching up the sighs of 
 bleeding or broken hearts ! And, in what part of the world have 
 not her children been wasted by labours and degraded by 
 oppressions ! 
 
 2. To oppression has been added insult r : they have been 
 denied to be men; or deemed incorrigibly, because physically, 
 embruted and immoral. The former I shall not stay to answer. 
 Your Missionaries have determined that; they have dived into 
 that mine from which, we were often told, no valuable ore or pre- 
 cious stone could be extracted, and they have brought up the gem 
 of an immortal spirit, flashing with the light of intellect, and 
 glowing with the hues of Christian graces. But, if it be some- 
 what too late to chase the Negro out of the current of our com- 
 mon blood, and to sever his relation to Adam and to God, yet 
 may you all see, in publications written, 1 say not within a century 
 past, but within twelve months of the hour in which you meet to 
 promote the intellectual and moral improvement of this injured 
 race, that, at least, the Negro is so degenerate a variety of the 
 human species as to defy all cultivation of mind and all correc- 
 tion of morals. 
 
 Two descriptions of men come to this conclusion. The first 
 is composed of those who have had to contend with the passions 
 and vices of the Negro in liis purely pagan state, and have applied 
 no other instrument to elicit the virtues they have demanded than 
 the stimulus of the whip and the stern voice of authority. Who 
 can wonder that they have failed ? They have expected " to reap 
 where they have not sown," and " to gather where they have not 
 strewed ;" they have required moral ends without the application 
 of moral means ; and their failure, therefore, leaves the question 
 of the capacity of the Negro untouched, and proves nothing but 
 their own folly. In the second class are our minute philosophers, 
 who take the gauge of intellectual capacity from the disposition 
 of the bones of the head, and link morality with the contour of the 
 countenance ; men who measure mind by the rule and compasses; 
 and estimate capacity for knowledge and salvation by a scale of 
 inches and the acuteness of angles ! 
 
 And yet, will it be believed, that this contemned race can, as 
 to intellect and genius, exhibit a brighter ancestry than our own !
 
 8 
 
 that they are the offshoots, wild and untrained, it is true, but still 
 the offshoots of a stem which was once proudly luxuriant in the 
 fruits of learning and taste, whilst that from which the Goths, 
 their calumniators, have sprung, remained hard, and knotted, and 
 barren ? For is Africa without her heraldry of science and of 
 fame ? The only probable account which can be given of the 
 Negro tribes is, that, as Africa was peopled, through Egypt, "by 
 three of the descendants of HAM, they are the offspring of CUSH, 
 MISRAIM, and PUT. They found Egypt a morass, and con- 
 verted it into the most fertile country of the world ; they reared 
 its pyramids, invented its hieroglyphics, gave letters to Greece 
 and Rome, and, through them, to us. The everlasting archi- 
 tecture of Africa still exists, the wonder of the world, though in 
 ruins. Her mighty kingdoms have yet their record in history. 
 She has poured forth her heroes on the field, given bishops tojhe 
 Church, and martyrs to the fires; and, for Negro physiognomy, 
 as though that should shut out the light of intellect, go to your 
 national Museum, contemplate the features of the colossal head 
 of Memnon and the statues of the divinities on which the ancient 
 Africans impressed their own forms, and there see, in close re- 
 semblance to the Negro feature, the mould of those countenances 
 which once beheld, as the creations of their own immortal genius, 
 the noblest and most stupendous monuments of human skill, and 
 taste, and grandeur. In the imperishable porphyry and granite is 
 the unfounded and pitiful slander publicly, and before all the 
 world, refuted. There we see the Negro under cultivation; if 
 he now presents a different aspect, cultivation is wanting : that 
 solves the whole case ; for, even now, when education has been 
 expended upon the pure and undoubted Negro, it has never been 
 bestowed in vain. Modern times have witnessed, in the persons 
 of African Negroes, generals, physicians, philosophers, linguists, 
 poets, mathematicians, and merchants, all eminent in their attain- 
 ments, energetic in enterprise, and honourable in character; and 
 even the Mission Schools in the West Indies exhibit a quickness 
 of intellect and a thirst for learning to which the schools of this 
 country do not always afford a parallel. 
 
 3. But the Negro has been doomed to another degradation. 
 It was not enough that he should be stultified in intellect and 
 brutalized beyond correction in morals : he has been represented 
 as under a divine anathema, a part of an accursed and devoted 
 race ; and thus he has not only been denied the honours of a 
 human intellect, but excluded even from the compassions of God. 
 
 To this race has been applied the prophetic malediction of 
 Noah, " Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be 
 to his brethren," the descendants of Shem and Japheth; and 
 because they have been supposed to be under the ban of the 
 Almighty, it has been concluded that every kind of injury might, 
 with impunity, be inflicted upon them by his creatures. Nothing
 
 9 
 
 is more repulsive than to see men resorting to the word of God 
 for an excuse or a palliative for the injuries which they are in- 
 cited to inflict on others by their own pride and avarice ; going 
 up profanely to the very judgment-seat of an equal God, to plead 
 his sanction for their injustice; establishing an alliance between 
 their own passions and his perfections ; and attempting to convert 
 the fountain of his mercy into " the waters of bitterness." But 
 the case they adduce will not serve them. The malediction of 
 Noah, if we even allow it to be one, and not a simple prediction, 
 fell not upon tho Negro races ; it fell chiefly on Asia, and only 
 to a very limited extent upon Africa ; it fell, as the terms of the 
 prophecy explicitly declare, upon Canaan, that is, in Scripture 
 style, upon his descendants, the Canaanites, who were destroyed 
 or made subjects by the Israelites, and, perhaps, upon the Car- 
 thaginians, who were subverted by the Romans. Here was its 
 range and its limit ; the curse never expanded so as to encompass 
 a single Negro tribe; and, Africa! with all thy just complaints 
 against the practice of Christian states, thou hast none against 
 the doctrines of the Christian's Bible. That is not a book, as 
 some have interpreted it, written as to thee, " within and with- 
 out," " in lamentation, and mourning, and wo;" it registers 
 against thee no curse ; but, on the contrary, exhibits to thee its 
 fulness of blessings; establishes thy right to its covenant of 
 mercy, in common with all mankind; and crowds into the joyous 
 prospects which it opens into the future, the spectacle of all thy 
 various tribes " stretching out their hands unto God," acknow- 
 ledging him, and receiving his blessing. 
 
 But, if the prediction of Noah were an anathema, and if that 
 malediction were directed against the Negro races, yet, let it 
 be remarked, it belongs not to the Gospel age. Here the ana- 
 themas of former dispensations are arrested and repealed : for 
 no nation can remain accursed under the full establishment of the 
 dominion of Christ, since " all the families of the earth" are to 
 be " blessed in him." The deleterious stream which withers the 
 verdure of its banks, and spreads sterility through the soils it 
 touches in its course, is at length absorbed and purified in the 
 ocean, ascends from thence in cooling vapours, and comes down 
 upon the earth in fruitful showers. Thus Christianity turns all 
 curses into benedictions. Its office is to bless, and to bless all 
 nations; it is light after darkness, and quiet after agitation. The 
 restoring and the healing character is that in which all the Pro- 
 phets array our Saviour; and, if partiality is ascribed to him at 
 all, it is partiality in favour of the most despised, and friendless, 
 and wretched of our kind. The scythe has gone before, and, in 
 all ages, has swept down the fairest vegetation, and left it to 
 wither or to be trodden under foot; but " He shall come down 
 like rain upon the mown grass, like the showers that water the 
 earth"" all nations shall be blessed in him, and all people,"
 
 10 
 
 in grateful return, " shall call him blessed." Well may we ex- 
 claim with the Psalmist who recorded these grateful revelations, 
 " Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who only doeth" these 
 " wondrous things, and blessed be his glorious name for ever, 
 and let the whole earth be filled with his glory." 
 
 Prom these observations on the Negro race, I call your 
 attention, 
 
 II, To the civil condition of that portion of them which, in our 
 West India Colonies, claim our Christian care. They are in a 
 state of bondage, and in number amount to about eiyht hundred 
 thousand souls. 
 
 I approach the subject of West India slavery, not, as some 
 might suppose, with fearful steps, for 1 know that no danger can 
 arise from the sound and explicit views which you entertain on 
 this subject. I know the objects which you propose, and the clear 
 and Christian course which your Missionaries abroad have unde- 
 viatingly pursued for now near forty years, during which they have 
 been pursuing their important and benevolent labours in those 
 Colonies. I advert to it only as it is connected with Missions, 
 and under this relation the system of our colonial bondage may 
 be regarded in four views. 
 
 1. In the first place, it has illustrated the patient and submis- 
 sive character of the Negroes, and, on this account, has entitled 
 them to our good-will, and given them a claim upon our exertions 
 for their improvement and welfare. 
 
 Let us do the Negro justice. He has been our servant, and 
 he has not been a troublesome and unruly one. There is some- 
 thing affecting in that simplicity of the African which, on his 
 native continent, has invited rather than resisted aggression. 
 With a spirit more buoyant, suspicious, and resentful, the Negro 
 tribes would not have been for ages an easy prey to every plun- 
 derer and hunter of men. Their shores would have bristled with 
 spears and their arrows have darkened the heavens ; nor would 
 the experiment of man -stealing have been twice repeated. The 
 same simplicity and tameness of character distinguishes the 
 Negroes in their state of bondage. It has not required a violent 
 hand to keep them down ; their story is not that of surly submis- 
 sion, interrupted by frequent and convulsive efforts to break their 
 chain ; and the history of slavery nowhere, and in no age, pre- 
 sents an example of so much quiet, under the same or similar 
 circumstances, where the bondage has been so absolute, and 
 the proportion of the dominant part of society has been so small, 
 or so insulated from the body of the empire. But what do we 
 infer from this? Does it impress us with no respect for this 
 patient race of enslaved men? Does it not lay us under addi- 
 tional obligations to seek their benefit? Answers it not a thousand 
 ridiculous fears as to the effect of imparting to them the light of
 
 11 
 
 Christian instruction? If the Gospel taught compassion and 
 mercy to the Scythian of ancient times and the Goth of the 
 middle ages, and if it is now stealing with an emolient influence 
 over the fierce barbarism of the American Indian and the New 
 Zealander, shall the news of your sympathy, the voice of your 
 Missionaries publishing peace, and the implanted meekness of 
 your Gospel, rouse the pacific Negro into headlong revenge and 
 fury, and spread bloodshed and violence over the fields he has 
 tilled and through the habitations of his employers ? If we apply 
 a power so calming to the boisterous sea, will it lash into wild 
 commotion the lake slumbering within its hills? Were the 
 Negroes of an opposite character; were the experiment to be 
 made on men of harder nerve and sterner mould, you would make 
 it without fear; but, when the Negro race is in question, you may 
 well smile at all these predictions of mischief and misery. You 
 have replied to all these alarms by the facts which your Missions 
 have exhibited. For near forty years you have had Negro 
 societies and congregations in the West Indies, and not an in- 
 stance has occurred in which one of them has been found in re- 
 bellion or detected in conspiracy. You found docility, and you 
 implanted principle; you found patience, and you exalted it even 
 into charity. 
 
 2. This condition of servitude has rendered our neglect in not 
 instructing the Negro population of the Coloni-os in the principles 
 of religion the more criminal, because it has taken away the ground 
 of every excuse which may be made for the omission of so 
 obvious a duty. 
 
 As a nation, we are guilty of permitting so large a portion of our 
 fellow-subjects, of our very servants, to remain under the darken- 
 ing and corrupting influence of Paganism; nor can it be said, that 
 we have not been, till recently, reminded of our duty, or not 
 strongly urged to it. A public call was made upon the nation, 
 near one hundred and fifty years ayo, in a very able and powerful 
 work published by the Rev. Morgan Godwyn, a clergyman of 
 Barbados, and entitled, " The Negroes and Indian's Advocate, 
 suing for their admission into the Church."* This book, printed 
 'in London, in the year 1680, and dedicated to the then Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, contains an earnest and argumentative 
 appeal to Christian principles and to good policy on this impor- 
 tant subject; but the call was made in vain, and the great mass 
 
 * The title in full is," the Negro's and Indian's Advocate, suing for 
 their admission into the Church, or a persuasive to the instructing and 
 baptizing of the Negros and Indians in our plantations ; showing that as 
 the compliance therewith can prejudice no man's just interest, so the wilful 
 neglecting and opposing of it is no less than a manifest apostacy from the 
 Christian Faith."
 
 12 
 
 of the Negro population were suffered, to the shame of Christi- 
 anity and Protestantism, to remain unpitied as to their best in- 
 terests, and still excluded from the salvation of the Gospel. 
 
 I have said, " to the shame of Christianity and Protestantism," 
 for in our hands, and with respect to the Negro slaves, both 
 have been tarnished; and, if we have a due sense of the 
 honour in which we ought to maintain both, even that may 
 become a powerful motive to stimulate us to future efforts com- 
 mensurate with the case, and to remove" a reproach which time 
 has only accumulated. For it is impossible to turn to those 
 Colonies without blushing for the profession we have made of a 
 religion of zeal and charity. At different times, and in different 
 places, Paganism and Christianity have been seen in contact with 
 each other, but under circumstances which cheer the spirit and 
 elevate our confidence in the benevolent energy of our religion. 
 The first ages of the Church present scenes of this kind. Christi- 
 anity was constantly extending itself into the darkness around it ; 
 wherever it was introduced, it commenced its assaults on Pagan- 
 ism, and, though spurned and persecuted, though frowned upon 
 by power and resisted by mobs and magistrates, it turned not 
 away from the contest until it had hurled down one of the 
 proudest forms of established Paganism, and, in the triumph of 
 exulting charity, waved its banner over the mighty ruin. Through 
 ages of relentless persecution, it remained true to its own un- 
 compromising and aggressive principle, till, " out of weakness, it 
 was made strong," and, by patient faith and the omnipotence of 
 love, it had put to flight " the armies of the alien." At a lower 
 period we see the activity of the same principles and affections, 
 though under other circumstances. The Paganism of barbarous 
 nations had launched itself into Christian lands, and wielded 
 there the supreme dominion ; but the spirit of Christianity, though 
 decayed, was not extinct; zeal for the conversion of men had 
 not become an empty name; it seized upon the conquering 
 Goth, and, struggling with a ruder form of superstition than 
 that which pagan Rome had presented, at length subdued it to 
 itself. The irruption of these nations from the north was like a 
 snow-storm from the same rude quarter, driven wide and distant 
 upon fields warmed by milder skies, and still reverberating the 
 heat of but recently obscured suns ; and, wide as the drift was 
 spread, it no sooner touched the soil, than it began to yield to its 
 influence, and the rugged wintry waste was speedily changed 
 into a scene of refreshed verdure and renovated beauty. 
 
 If we turn to our Asiatic empire, Paganism and Christianity 
 are there also in contact ; but the scene is instructive and cheer- 
 ing. There the power is Christian, but it resorts not to carnal 
 weapons for the propagation of the faith; the idolater is not 
 coerced, and toleration of the evils which Paganism inflicts upon
 
 13 
 
 society is carried, at least, to its extreme limits. But Christianity 
 is not inactive. Under its patronage, the manly science of 
 Christian nations dawns upon the intellect of millions ; the Scrip- 
 tures pour their streams of sacred truth through the varied dialects 
 of an immense population; and the labours of the Christian 
 Missionary find a full protection and a cheering patronage in all 
 the gradations of authority. 
 
 But when we look at Christianity as planted in the midst of 
 the Paganism of the West Indies, again, I say, we may blush for 
 its dishonoured name and its withered honours ; honours never 
 so tarnished in any hands as our own, and those of a few other 
 protestant colonial powers. Look at Christianity and look at 
 Paganism as they coexist in the West Indies : are they (with a 
 few exceptions, modern in date and limited in extent) in conflict? 
 Has Paganism any fears of attack ? has Christianity any ardour 
 of conquest? Age after age passed away, and they still reposed 
 together in dull and slumbering harmony, f he form of Christianity 
 was there ; but it was destitute of life ; the heart was without 
 feeling, and the hand without activity. The Pagan felt that he 
 had no share in the care and compassion of the Christian, and 
 the Christian resigned the Pagan to his ignorance and spiritual 
 dangers ; as a matter of course, he was to remain untaught, 
 unpitied, and unsaved. There was Christianity, with her whole 
 apparatus of instruction and salvation, and hope and joy; but 
 not for the Negro : her temples rose, but to him they were not the 
 house of prayer: the holy fount of baptism was there, but not that 
 he might " wash away his sins, calling upon the name of the 
 Lord :" the broken sacramental bread was there, but not that he 
 might eat and live for ever : the ministers of Christ were there, 
 but the Negroes were considered " no part of their charge," nor, 
 from their limited number, could they be to any great extent. 
 What excuse, then, is there, what palliation, for ages of criminal 
 neglect by the nation at large? for this chill and heartless Chris- 
 tianity? If any be set up, that the Negro of our colonies is a 
 slave is the answer to it. He was wholly in our power ; no ob- 
 stacles to the kind and persevering application of the means and 
 ordinances of instruction existed, nor could exist, in such a state 
 of society. What, as a national act, is now proposed to be done 
 for the extension of Christian instruction, might have been done 
 a century and a half ago ; the accumulation of Pagan ignorance 
 which now exists might have been prevented ; and African igno- 
 rance and superstition been wholly banished from the Colonies. 
 That pious individuals and Missionary Societies have waked 
 whilst others slept is their praise ; that you have taken so large a 
 share, in late years, in this long unthought-of duty, is to your 
 honour ; but the debt we still, as a country, owe to the very 
 credit of our religion, and the deep arrears of obligation and
 
 14 
 
 Christian kindness to the untaught slaves which are yet undis- 
 charged, you will, T trust, feel to be commanding motives to a 
 quickened zeal and to undiscouraged perseverance. 
 
 3. The third consideration is, that, limited as the application of 
 the means of Christian instruction by Missions to the Negroes 
 has been, they have triumphed over all the obstacles presented 
 to moral improvement by a state of bondage, and have afforded, 
 by that circumstance, the most obvious evidence of their bene- 
 ficial tendency. 
 
 To my mind, there is nothing in the history of the Church which 
 so strikingly exhibits the power of our religion as its triumphs 
 over the moral evils so uniformly and necessarily inherent in a 
 system of slavery. That is a state in which no class of society, 
 the dominant or the subject, is not vitiated; vitiated in temper, in 
 principle, in conduct. All history is in proof of this ; and, if that 
 failed, language, as to the enslaved class at least, would supply 
 the testimony. We call that man a villain who unites baseness 
 and treachery with his crimes, and complicates vice with deceit 
 and cunning ; but the villain was our ancient slave, and villany, 
 in its original acceptation, is slavery. We find the same asso- 
 ciation in other languages, ancient and modern, all stamping it as 
 the fact of experience, that slavery is essentially demoralizing, 
 and that it compounds into the character all the faithlessness and 
 feculence of moral turpitude. There is a class of mere human 
 virtues, which may exist independently of the direct influence of 
 religion and principled morality. Such are, honour, honesty, 
 generosity, patriotism, and others, which, though but conventional, 
 and the shadows and images of real virtue, are corrective in their 
 influence upon society, and give it a higher tone and a purer 
 character; but even these cannot, except by very accidental cir- 
 cumstances, vegetate in this soil, nor flourish in the fog and 
 impurities of this stifling atmosphere ; they require a purer air, the 
 brisk wafting of the nobler passions, the excitement of hope, the 
 warmth of charity, and the mountain breeze of freedom. 
 
 Yet what is impossible to man is possible to God. Where 
 virtues of human offshoot and of earthly seed cannot strike, there 
 the Spirit of God, by his word, can mould the soul of man into a 
 productive soil, and make the desert of a slave's heart rich with 
 the verdure of, at least, the passive and the humbler graces. 
 Christianity effected this among the slaves of the ancient world. 
 It gave cheerfulness to submission, and patience to wrong; it 
 created charity where gratitude could have no place ; shut the 
 lip of reproach and silenced murmuring; taught " servants" 
 (slaves) to serve not with " eye service,!' but on the nobler prin- 
 ciple of " doing it to the Lord." And yet I do not think, that 
 the power of Christianity was exhibited among those ancient 
 slaves in aspects so marked and impressive as in producing the
 
 15 
 
 same effects among those of our own Colonies. The character 
 of that ancient bondage was different. In some respects, indeed, 
 it was more cruel, but in none so galling to the feelings. The 
 ancient slave was not cut off so absolutely from intellectual 
 improvement; he was not so insulated from the bustle and stirring 
 movements of a great empire ; he was not so put out of the range 
 of the domestic charities; above all, he differed not, usually, in 
 country and in colour from his masters, or that colour was not to 
 him the badge of physical shame and degradation. The abomi- 
 nation of caste, founded on the hue of the skin, did not exist, as 
 in modern Negro slavery, with its associations of disgust, on the 
 one hand, and of deep mortification, humbled feeling, and often 
 deep resentment, on the other. But religion in our own Colonies 
 has triumphed even over these. Its light has penetrated, so to 
 speak, the solid darkness of minds left without instruction; it has 
 struck the spark of feeling into hearts unaccustomed to salutary 
 emotions ; it has reconciled man to the degradation of colour and 
 feature ; it has produced charity towards those who have dealt 
 out to them the most humbling kinds of insult ; breathed over 
 passions which, when once awakened, are terrible, the calm of 
 resignation ; and taught the spirit, spurned from every other resting 
 place, to rest in God, and to wait for his salvation. If these have 
 been the triumphs of religion in modern slavery ; if all this was 
 achieved even at a time when the condition of our slave popula- 
 tion did not assume that hopeful and improving character which, 
 thank God, it does at present, you can despair of nothing. The 
 field of exertion is before you ; its most rigid clods have been 
 broken up and prepared ; and it only remains for you to sow, with 
 a hand more liberal, the seeds of truth, and peace, and righteous- 
 ness, to reap, year after year, a full-eared and unfailing harvest. 
 
 4. My last view of West India slavery, as connected with 
 missionary exertions, is, that the character and manner of its 
 termination altogether depend upon the infusion of Christian 
 principles into the minds of the slave population. 
 
 In the present circumstances of the world, nothing human can 
 be more certain than that slavery must terminate throughout the 
 British empire. No thinking and observant man, who looks 
 abroad upon society, and notices the current of opinion, both as 
 to its strength and direction, can doubt of this ; at least, I have 
 met with no one who doubts it; and, if the probability of the case 
 be so strong, nothing can be less wise than to refuse to look for- 
 ward to this approaching and, whenever it arrives, this important 
 result. 
 
 In one of two ways only will that state of society be terminated 
 in the West Indies : by the operation of bad principles and pas- 
 sions ; or by the salutary and controlling influence of Christianity, 
 co-operating with lenient government. Let each, for a moment,
 
 16 
 
 be considered, that you may discern more fully your clear path 
 of benevolent duty. 
 
 Slavery may be terminated by principles bad in themselves, or 
 bad as they are connected with inconsiderate and violent pas- 
 sions. Is this improbable ? When it is remembered, that the 
 West India slaves neighbour upon states which are breaking off 
 their connexion with European powers, and emancipating their 
 brethren ; that a large island presents to them a picture of a 
 sanguinary and guilty, but successful revolt; that in this country 
 principles destructive of order, and loyalty, and civil duty are 
 continually issuing from the press a press which, by various 
 means, reaches them ; that even just principles of freedom and 
 right are, and always will and ought to be, debated at home 
 with warmth and boldness ; we have, on the one hand, a view of 
 the excitement which is operating upon society in these Colonies, 
 and that with constantly increasing energy. On the other, let us 
 suppose this excitement to go on without the communication 
 of religious principles and the introduction of measures of civil 
 amelioration to regulate, control, or neutralize it, and that all 
 such attempts, upon a large scale, are resisted and discouraged ; 
 then an elastic fluid of tremendous power is condensed by every 
 stroke, and a surly application of that resistance to the evil which 
 mere power, without the aid of moral means can supply, will 
 only delay the explosion, to render it more expansive and fatal. 
 This is one method by which slavery may be extinguished one 
 which we all deprecate, and which every good man will exert 
 himself, with his whole might, to prevent. 
 
 The other is the gradual termination of this now increasingly 
 anxious state of servitude, by the influence of Christianity pre- 
 paring the slaves for those measures of wise and benevolent policy 
 which the local and the supreme Government may adopt for 
 their benefit, and co-operating also with them, in all their stages, 
 to render them efficient. This is not an end which we formally 
 propose, as the friends and supporters of Missions. Our object 
 is immediate, to do good by bringing men under the practical 
 and saving influence of religion. We form no ulterior plans; we 
 follow the direct course of instant duty to make men Christians, 
 whether Indian or Negro, bond or free. But it would be a folly, 
 on proper occasions and in proper places, not to admit, that the 
 Christianity which is so active in our world, in the present day, 
 is working onward to civil ends and to definite improvements in 
 the outward condition of men wherever it prevails, and, conse- 
 quently, in the West Indies. Indeed, it has several times been 
 observed, in official papers published by the Colonial Legisla- 
 tures, and in the course of the controversy which has been recently 
 carried on on these subjects, that Christianity must destroy 
 modern bondage, as it destroyed the slavery existing in ancient
 
 17 
 
 Europe ; and as to this silent and peaceful operation of its principles 
 some have judiciously refrained from expressing any alarm, and 
 have professed to regard the result even with complacency. The 
 view they have thus taken of the influence of our divine religion 
 upon society is founded in truth ; for though, in states very partially 
 Christianized, slavery may continue, as one of many evils not yet 
 fully reached by the remedy, yet, when the mass of a community 
 is leavened with its influence, the subjection of man to man, as a 
 slave, must cease. The reason of this is, that our religion, on the 
 principle of its own two great social laws, to love our neighbour 
 as ourselves, and to do to others as we would have them do 
 to us, makes it an imperative duty to render every man's condi- 
 tion as felicitous as the present mixed state of things, where the 
 rich and the poor must still exist, and toil and suffering cannot be 
 excluded, will allow. But the discipline which Heaven has im- 
 posed on sinful men, rigid as it is in many respects, is compatible 
 with the abolition of slavery. This is not, as experience in our 
 own and other countries has proved, one of those necessary evils 
 which must remain after all the triumphs of religion ; and, there- 
 fore, Christianity must abolish slavery throughout the world, in 
 the accomplishment of its own plans of benevolence and renova- 
 tion. It is a blot which cannot remain amidst the glories of Mes- 
 siah's reign. It is solely a punitive evil, not a corrective one, and 
 is, therefore, inconsistent with the dominion of mercy ; it implies, 
 in its most mitigated form, an injustice, and is, therefore, contrary 
 to the full dominion of righteousness. These are the principles 
 on which we assuredly conclude, that Christianity, largely and 
 efficiently diffused, cannot consist with this state of society. If 
 our neighbour is to be loved as ourselves, he cannot be left in a 
 condition which no man on earth, however miserable, would 
 choose the condition of a slave. If, as in the text, all men are 
 to be HONOURED, no part of them can be left in the degradation of 
 being the very property, the goods and chattels of others ; in a state 
 in which they are things, not men. But, strong as are these prin- 
 ciples of our religion, and I am not disposed to keep them out of 
 sight, or to disallow, for one moment, the force of the objection 
 often made to the Christian instruction of the slaves, that it must 
 diffuse principles and feelings inconsistent with this kind of servi- 
 tude, yet is there nothing alarming in this view of the tendency of 
 the Gospel. It connects itself with no violent revolutions, no 
 ensanguined instruments, no violations of order, no storms of 
 passion, no sweeps of vengeance. It is the Gospel of peace. It 
 teaches men to sustain injury with patience until they are relieved 
 by legal means, and to trust rather in that disposing of men's 
 hearts which belongs to God than in an arm of flesh. It does 
 not influence one class of society only ; but it advances, wherever 
 it is in progress, wilh a growing potency upon all. It is, like the 
 B
 
 18 
 
 stealing light of morning, soft, penetrating, and expansive : society 
 rises together; the governed and the governors are enlightened 
 and ameliorated ; power becomes protective, and laws righteous, 
 equal, and merciful; the standard both of right and of humanity 
 is raised; feelings of friendliness connect the extremes of society 
 in a common bond of good-will ; a regard to circumstances dictates 
 and regulates improvement ; and, in the case of slavery, the door 
 of freedom is set open, not forced by violence ; and he who, under 
 such prudent regulations as a paternal governing power may think 
 it right for the safety and interests of all parties to adopt, " may be 
 free," as the Apostle Paul observes, " chooses it rather." These 
 are ends which, as I have just said, you do notformally propose ; 
 these are objects which are to occupy other cares than yours, 
 the cares of men in situations of authority and influence, and of 
 the country at large, in the exercise of its public and civil duties; 
 but it stamps a value upou your exertions, and may operate as 
 no mean motive to your activity in them, that, by moralizing and 
 evangelizing a large portion of your fellow-subjects, you are 
 preparing them to the hand of a wise philanthropy, and the bene- 
 volence of the parent and colonial Governments, that they may be 
 invested with civil rights and the privileges of a Christian people. 
 
 III. Hitherto our observations have been general, or rather 
 your attention has been directed chiefly to that vast and wild 
 desert which is presented by, at least, seven hundred thousand 
 human beings in our West India Colonies, upon which the light 
 of the Gospel, as yet, has never shone, and in which no seed of 
 truth and righteousness has been planted ; but 1 now turn to the 
 effects produced wherever Christian care has extended Christian 
 cultivation. There are, thank God, fertile spots in this extensive 
 waste, and, wherever they meet the eye and cheer Ihe heart, they 
 are the creations of the Gospel. What, then, have been the 
 effects, I say not upon thousands, but upon tens of thousands 
 of this class of degraded men ? 
 
 Let us try the question : 
 
 1. By the communication of Christian knowledge. 
 
 I grant that the elements of Christianity only have been gene- 
 rally imparted, and that the opportunities of many of the slaves to 
 attend instruction have been, in comparison of our own, few, 
 and often interrupted. I grant, also, that we shall not find among 
 them 'the doctrinal disputant and the subtle casuist, or the power 
 of mastering many of the difficulties of Scripture ; but have we 
 considered what the communication of the elements of Christianity 
 to a Pagan mind imports, and that it is in its elements and Jirst 
 principles that its saving power consists? In the case of an 
 African slave, it has not, I allow, to displace those multiplied 
 perversions of truth which an erring but more cultivated reason
 
 19 
 
 creates, nor to dissipate those illusions of a corrupt but highly 
 wrought imagination with which Asiatic superstition fills and 
 bewilders the soul of man. Take it only that his mind is little 
 more than a mere blank, as to religious truth, yet how powerfully 
 does that appeal to our hearts ! It is a blank which excludes all 
 recognition of God, and all knowledge of his intercourse with 
 men; which shuts out the history of our Saviour's incarnation 
 and sacrifice ; which admits no moral distinctions ; which catches 
 no light from the immortality which rises before us in the Gospel, 
 in forms so impressive and influential. O sad condition of man, 
 when his case is considered thus negatively only 1 But, in the 
 minds of thousands of these slaves, this broad and utter blank has, 
 by missionary care, been filled up with that " excellent know- 
 ledge of Christ" which brings with it all those spirit-stirring, con- 
 trolling, and cheering truths to which I have just adverted. At 
 least ten thousand of their children in our Mission Schools, and 
 under the instruction of Missionaries, catch, with the first opening 
 of their understandings, the rays which break from this vast scene 
 of religious intelligence ; whilst numerous societies and con- 
 gregations of adults throughout the islands listen to them from 
 the pulpit, meditate on them at their labour, talk of them in the 
 hut, sing them in hymns, and, in admonitory advices, commend 
 them to their children. The light has not fully dissipated the 
 darkness; but that day has broke which never more shall close. 
 
 2. By the production of morality. 
 
 The want of principle, the absence of moral and even of decent 
 manners, and the practice of crime among the Negroes have been 
 the constant topics of complaint among men connected with this 
 species of property, and the facts, as to the Pagan slaves, are not 
 to be questioned. These are the effects, the necessary effects of 
 Paganism; and indeed we have heard, of late, in the heated 
 discussions which have occurred, that nothing better could be 
 hoped even from Christianity ; that to teach them religion would 
 produce precisely the same effects as the Heathenism of their 
 uninstructed state; that the result would be to relax the nerve of 
 industry, to kindle the angry and to nurture the vengeful passions, 
 to break the bond of obedience, and to spread devastation 
 throughout the Colonies. " Can the same fountain, then, send 
 forth sweet streams and bitter?" or, can you trace the same 
 effects to opposite and contrary causes? Are Christian light 
 and Pagan darkness equally the sources of vice and danger? 
 If so, we must lay our censures equally upon each ; and if we 
 hesitate to do this, then are we compelled to choose against 
 which of the two we will direct our cautionary expressions of 
 alarm as the cause of evil. To such persons we may say, 
 " ' Choose you whom you will serve : if the Lord be God, follow 
 him; if Baal, follow him.' If you attack Christianity as the
 
 20 
 
 mischievous agent of immorality, then be Christiaus in name no 
 longer, and go over to the purer and more peaceful Paganism 
 of the slaves you rule ; but if you refuse, then propitiate an injured 
 Christianity, and acknowledge that you have been ignorant of its 
 nature, and that you have mistaken all its tendencies." That is 
 the only alternative for such persons, whose judgment, not whose 
 settled principles, we may charitably hope to be in fault; but 
 for you whom I now address, the confidence which you have in 
 the beneficial influence of religious instruction upon the Negro 
 population of the Colonies has a full justification in open and 
 acknowledged facts and a long and extensive experience. What 
 has so generally raised the religious slaves into confidence and 
 offices of trust but their improved character? What has ren- 
 dered them more healthy, another fact, but their temperance ? 
 What has given the instructed slave a richer peculium than his 
 fellow, another acknowledged fact, but his quickened industry ? 
 What has enabled the Committee of this Society to say, that, for 
 forty years, no slave in your societies has been either a conspi- 
 rator, a rebel, or insubordinate, but the influence of the precepts 
 of obedience enjoined by the Gospel which he has been 
 taught? What has created so many excellent friends of Missions 
 among the planters of the Colonies generally, and most in number 
 where your Missions have been longest established, and are, 
 consequently, best known, but the obvious moral improvement of 
 their people ? What are the answers we have been enabled to 
 give to the calumnies with which we have been assailed? Not 
 hypothetic reasonings from abstract principles ; not idle declama- 
 tions ; not promises for the future to atone for the failures of the 
 past ; but facts detailed in the annual Reports of the Society, 
 confirmed by the frequent and ample testimony, not of Mission- 
 aries only, but of persons of the greatest observation and influence 
 in the Colonies, of the salutary and important effects of religious 
 care upon the temper, the happiness, and the conduct of the 
 slaves. 
 
 3. By the introduction and establishment of Christian worship 
 among this heathen and long-neglected people. 
 
 It may be truly said of the uninstructed slaves of our Colonies, 
 that they have no religion; that whatever mythology they had 
 originally in Africa, the Creole slaves, now the larger portion of 
 the slave population, know and practise, beyond certain super- 
 stitions which have no connexion or meaning, none of the forms 
 of Paganism, and have, therefore, no worship of any kind. I 
 know not how this consideration may affect you, but on me it 
 seems to make an impression more sad, and to convey the idea of 
 a desertion more complete, than if imaginary powers called forth 
 their hope and their fear, and than if the more innocent forms of 
 even a delusive devotion occupied their attention, and gave
 
 21 
 
 exercise to their intellect. For how dull and inert an object is a 
 human mind, when its powers lie unawakened by either a false or 
 a true devotion ! How fades from the sight the lofty distinction 
 between man and the inferior animals, that the former is capable 
 of converse with invisible powers ! Yet this is the case of many 
 hundred thousands of uninstructed Negroes. Other Pagans, 
 even though they greatly err, acquire ideas of greater or less 
 sublimity, and affections of some degree of force. Nature is not 
 viewed by them with stupid, senseless, inobservant gaze. But to 
 the Negro of the Colonies the heavens above are vacant, both of 
 the true God and of unreal divinities. To him no spirit whispers 
 in the woods, no patron power presides over the fountain ; his bless- 
 ings are connected with no invisible superior Benevolence; he has 
 no trust in imaginary guardians ; no refuge from trouble, delusive 
 as it may be, in the creations of his fancy, or in the legendary deities 
 of his ancestors. I know, indeed, that, -\s to moral good and the 
 hopes of a better life, nothing substantial and saving can emanate 
 from false religion ; but I am not sure, this life only being 
 considered, whether the Negro would not be a gainer in intellect 
 and quickened feeling by the introduction of some of the milder 
 forms of Paganism itself; and if so, we reach the deepest con- 
 ception of his religious destitution. What then shall we say, if, 
 to a considerable part of this deserted and neglected race, the 
 labours of Christian Missionaries have opened the glory, the 
 sanctity, and the comforts of even Christian worship ? This they 
 have done ; and nothing makes a stronger appeal in behalf of such 
 labours to the heart of a benevolent and pious man, than the 
 results of this kind with which they have been followed. The 
 true God has been revealed to their minds in the splendour of 
 his own revelations : the heavens have been taught to declare to 
 them HIS glory, and the firmament to show forth his handy work : 
 they know him now as their " Father in heaven," and have 
 learned that his watchful providence extends to them. Rising 
 suns, and smiling fields, and rolling thunders, and sweeping hur- 
 ricanes all speak of HIM to Negro hearts ; and Negro voices 
 mingle with our own in giving to him the praises due " unto his 
 name." The history of the incarnate God and the scenes of 
 Calvary have been unfolded to their gaze : they hear " the word 
 of reconciliation," are invited to a throne of grace," and there 
 " find mercy and grace to help in time of need." They have the 
 Sabbath with its sanctities, and houses of prayer raised by the 
 liberality of their friends, receive their willing, pressing crowds. 
 One to another they now say, " Come, and let us go up to the 
 house of the Lord;" and tens of thousands of them now, in every re- 
 ligious service, join us in those everlasting anthems of the universal 
 Church, " We praise thce, O God! we acknowledge thee to be the
 
 22 
 
 Lord!" " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the 
 Holy Ghost I" 
 
 4. By the effect produced by Christianity upon their domestic 
 habits. 
 
 It conveys a volume in a single phrase, as to the moral condi- 
 tion of the slaves, to say, that, before they were brought under 
 the care of Missionaries, marriage was almost entirely unknown, 
 and that it remains so wherever religious influence has not been 
 applied. In consequence, the purer affections could have no 
 place in their hearts; parental yearnings had little tenderness, 
 filial regards no foundation in esteem ; and a degrading and de- 
 structive immorality swept down decency, order, health, and 
 happiness. Jealousies, brawls, and fightings were the product 
 of every day ; the hut was the scene of revel or of strife ; and 
 the toil of the field only suspended the discord or interrupted the 
 revel to give new energy to the exasperated tongue, and vagrancy 
 to the midnight prowl. 
 
 It is amongst the noblest triumphs of missionary patience, that 
 these vices have been subdued in so many thousands. Without 
 the sanction of civil law, a sanction which to this hour does not 
 exist; by the simple force of religious instruction ; by the habit 
 of submission to the commands of Heaven which has been 
 formed ; by the creation of conscience and the fear of God ; all 
 the sanctities and moral and civil benefits of marriage have been 
 introduced. About twenty thousand Negroes, in the Wesleyan 
 Societies alone, are now living in this " holy state of matri- 
 mony;" and, within about four years, four thousand marriages have 
 been performed by their Missionaries. Many of these have 
 become the heads of families; distinguished from the rest of their 
 fellows by the existence of a superior relation between them and 
 their children ; by the strength which virtue gives to affection ; 
 by that care for each other which that affection and that relation 
 only can supply ; by more of respect abroad, and by peace at , 
 home. These are the result of your benevolent exertions, and 
 you may reflect upon them with unmingled joy the Zacharias 
 and Elizabeths of the plantations and the town " walking in the 
 statutes and ordinances of the Lord blameless :" children who 
 share the care of both their parents, the effect alone of regu- 
 lar marriages ; children whose morals are guarded by parental 
 example ; who feel themselves raised by their very legitimacy 
 above the spurious breed around them ; many thousands of whom 
 follow the steps of their parents to the house of prayer, are 
 taught in the Mission Schools, and who convey to the hearts of 
 Negro parents a thrill which never, in former times, spread its 
 delightful sensation through one of their race, when, at the public 
 examinations of the schools, catechisms and large portions of the
 
 23 
 
 Scriptures are repeated, and hymns of praise are poured forth, 
 in trilling accents, from their infant voices. These instances 
 of care for the Negro youth, on the one hand, and of their im- 
 provement, on the other, are not now, thank God, as formerly, 
 exhibited on a scale too small to attract public notice, though 
 then, perhaps, they had even the greater merit ; but these are 
 labours which, however opposed in some Colonies, have the 
 kindest patronage in many others. Planters, magistrates, go- 
 vernors, and presidents have often, of late, taken a part in 
 these examinations of the Negro schools, mingled in the delight 
 of those new scenes, and distributed commendation and rewards 
 for proficiency in the Scriptures, and for orderly and devout 
 behaviour in the house of God. 
 
 5. By the effects produced by their religion in trouble, sickness, 
 and death. 
 
 I say nothing of wrongt ; but, in the ordinary calamities of 
 life, what is the refuge of Pagan Negroes ? They have none ; 
 they are " without God" and " without hope I" Grief rises into 
 rage, or subsides into despair, till a new and sharper pang; 
 rouses the heart, and agony again relieves itself by expression., 
 But in this the beneficial influence of Christianity is strikingly 
 displayed, that it has taught those who knew no refuge, no 
 hope in trouble " to possess their souls in patience," by teach- 
 ing them that God " careth for them;" and to disburden an 
 oppressed and sinking heart, by " casting their care on him," 
 and resorting to his throne of mercy in their simple prayers for 
 succour. 
 
 Where religion is not, superstition still retains its place, and it 
 is generally of a gloomy, often of a destructive character. Such 
 is the superstition of the African slave. He believes in Obeah, 
 and often fancies himself under the power of the professors of that 
 art of destruction. His spirits sink ; his appetite forsakes him ; 
 he shuns society; the power of his imagination produces an 
 overwhelming dread of approaching calamity and death; and, 
 after lingering a short time, he dies the victim of his fears. So 
 common has this evil been, as to call for the severest laws against 
 the practice of Obeah, and law has done something to check 
 the evil, but religious influence more. So well is this known ^ 
 that when no other motive has, with some owners and managers, 
 existed to call in the aid of missionary exertions, they have been 
 sought as the remedy for this fatal superstition ; and where instruc- 
 tion has most prevailed, Obeahism has, for the most part, disap- 
 peared. The doctrine of providence has banished it; that has 
 erected the prostrate spirit of the Negro, taught even his feeble 
 mind to despise these occult powers, and saved his life by im- 
 planting within him a sure trust and confidence in God. 
 
 Sickness is the lot of all, and the Negro is subject to some
 
 24 
 
 peculiarly tedious and afflictive forms of disease. Paganism is 
 always selfish and unfeeling. This is its character among Negroes. 
 The slaves are taken care of by their owners in sickness, as a 
 matter of course ; but they are usually deserted by their fellows. 
 The nominal husband leaves his wife in hopeless affliction, and 
 seeks another ; the wife, in like manner, abandons her husband, 
 and forms a new connexion ; and thus the sick and the dying- 
 are forsaken by all, except those whose attendance is compelled. 
 The scene is changed wherever Christianity has extended its 
 influence. The sick have heard the voice, " Is any afflicted ? let 
 him pray ;" and his relatives remain with him, to minister to his 
 wants and to share and soothe his anguish. 
 
 The Negro funerals are a disgusting scene ; they are accompa- 
 nied with ridiculous gestures, noisy drumming and shouts, with 
 drinking and feasting; yet, now and then may be discerned a 
 spirit pierced too deeply to join the deafening riot hearts 
 which have felt the full pang of separation. The dead are not 
 always forgotten by the Pagan Negroes ; they resort annually to 
 their graves, and offer food and liquor to their departed relatives. 
 A Negro mother in Jamaica was known, for thirteen years, to 
 make this annual visit to the grave of her daughter, and, in an 
 agony of feeling, to offer her oblation. Thus " they sorrow 
 without hope." We respect the strength of the affection ; we 
 lament its downward earthly tendency : all the thoughts of that 
 poor mother were in the grave with her child, and the only object of 
 that unabated love was the mere dust of a dissolved frame. Such 
 is Heathenism ! Melting and mournful thoughts steal over the 
 recollections of the bereaved Christian mother too, and time has 
 no power to dry up the fountain of her tears : years may pass away, 
 but the memory of the forms over which she has hung with maternal 
 fondness suffers no decay ; it keeps its place to the last hour of 
 the most extended life. But, when she thinks of her children, she 
 thinks of them as in heaven, not as in the grave; she knows the 
 result, the resurrection from the dead ; and, urged onward by this 
 hope through her remaining pilgrimage, she hastens to embrace 
 them again in the kingdom of God. What a contrast in death 
 has been created among the sable population of these Colonies 
 by Christianity ! The harsh sounds of Pagan grief and carousal 
 have, in ten thousand instances, given place to the solemn hymn 
 of praise which celebrates the entrance of another redeemed spirit 
 into the mansions of light ; the storm of passionate grief, to the 
 calm resignation of piety ; and the sad pressure of despair, to the 
 lightened feeling of a hallowed hope. The Negro burial-grounds 
 have, during the last forty years, presented spectacles once un- 
 known funeral trains, preceded by the Christian pastor, con- 
 signing to the mansions of the dead those who, when living, had 
 been taught from his lips how to die, and pronouncing, with a
 
 25 
 
 confidence delightfully cheering to his future labours, " Blessed 
 are the dead that die in the Lord !" 
 
 This is a feeble sketch of the good effected by the Missions 
 in which you have, with so much zeal and benevolence, in- 
 terested yourselves; and, feeble as it is, and much as it falls 
 below an adequate representation of their efficiency, I am per- 
 suaded, that, by my thus recalling to your minds facts with which 
 most of you are familiar, you will be induced to bind yourselves 
 anew to this work of mercy, and, as a Society, to take your full 
 share in the exertions which yet are necessary to banish the 
 remaining darkness which broods over these interesting islands, 
 and to bring the whole slave population into the fold of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 IV. I call your attention, finally, to a few circumstances tend- 
 ing to encourage your zeal and perseverance. 
 
 1. The first is the public recognition which has been made by 
 Parliament and by the Government of the country, of the neces- 
 sary connexion between the Christian instruction of the slaves and 
 the amelioration of their civil condition. 
 
 This is a principle, the force of which has always been felt by 
 observant men ; it has been acknowledged and acted upon by 
 many benevolent planters abroad, and the effects produced upon 
 the character of the Christianized slaves by missionary labours 
 have bdfen an ample comment upon it. It is, indeed, certain, 
 that just and beneficent legislative measures can proceed but few 
 steps without supposing the previous or concurrent influence of 
 religion upon those for whom they are intended ; and of this the 
 Order in Council for Trinidad, which contains the plan of Govern- 
 ment for bettering the condition of the slaves, is itself a proof. 
 You legislate for the removal of the whip, as a stimulus to labour, 
 and the ground assumed is, that man is a being capable of being 
 governed by moral motives, and that it brutalizes him to treat 
 him as an irrational animal. The principle is sound ; but it is 
 just in proportion as religion discovers to man his immortal and 
 accountable nature, convinces him of the value of character, and 
 shows him his interest in the mercies of God, that he feels more 
 sensibly the distinction betwixt himself and the inferior animals, 
 yields more readily to human motives, and spurns, with a more 
 elevated feeling, whatever is offensive to the just dignity of man. 
 It refines, so to speak, the sense of humanity, and thus lifts up the 
 degraded class above the level of embruted character. You 
 legislate for the establishment of a Sabbath, that the worship of 
 God may be observed ; but this supposes both instruction in the 
 principle and habits of respect for the institution. Law may make 
 a day of rest from toil, but it can do no more : a day of real 
 worship, a Sunday, which shall exert a moral influence, is the
 
 26 
 
 sole work of religion. The same may be said of marriage, to 
 which the Pagan Negroes are most averse ; to the purchase of 
 manumission, which supposes an industry and a habit of economy 
 which never exist but as rare exceptions, where religion has not, 
 in some considerable degree, exerted its energy ; and to the giving 
 of evidence in courts of law, which necessarily supposes, in 
 order to the full communication of the privilege, both the know- 
 ledge and the fear of God. Look, then, at the whole of that 
 plan, and ask to what extent it can, by any possibility, be applied 
 with efficiency among totally uninstructed and Pagan slaves. It 
 supposes Christianity, in some degree, to begin with, and it de- 
 pends upon its diffusion for its full accomplishment. Religion 
 and policy are combined in it, and wisely. Wise and beneficent 
 laws can do little without Christianity, and Christianity is aided 
 by wise and benevolent laws. Law is not to wait until Christian 
 instruction is perfected ; Christianity is not to delay till legislation 
 has done its office. Both have their posts assigned them ; but, to 
 produce moral and civil amelioration fully among a slave popula- 
 tion, both must act together, and each will derive strength from 
 a mutual, simultaneous, and harmonious co-operation. All 
 this is recognised in the Order in Council, and that very plan 
 justifies your past efforts, and, indeed, tacitly applauds them. It 
 encourages your persevering exertions, and you will not remit 
 your efforts when you see them thus connected with all that is 
 benevolent and wise in the plans of your rulers, and all that is 
 hopeful in the advancing condition of your fellow-creatures. I 
 may add, too, that it will produce in you no feelings but those of 
 satisfaction, to see a project for employing additional labourers 
 in this long-neglected field emanating from the zeal of others. 
 For myself, on principle approving of an ecclesiastical establish- 
 ment, when connected with religious liberty and full toleration ; 
 convinced as I am of the great moral benefits which have resulted 
 from the national Church, and are still resulting from it, at home; 
 thinking it the solemn duty of every Christian Government to 
 place religious instruction within the reach of all its necessitous 
 subjects, I contemplate the plan of an Establishment for the West 
 Indies as the discharge of a long-neglected national obligation, 
 and augur great good from it, if not immediately, yet ultimately. 
 We have long been labouring in the work of Negro instruction ; 
 we have been almost exclusively so in the majority of the Colo- 
 nies ; but we welcome the Establishment into this field of toil, 
 reproach, and danger. Alas ! how much of it must, after all the 
 agents which can for a long time be sent out, remain untilled ! a 
 circumstance which would render party spirit on any side at 
 once injurious and detestable, and stamp it with its most odious 
 features of folly and of shame. 
 
 2. Another source of encouragement is the increased and
 
 27 
 
 increasing number of friends to the religious instruction of the slaves 
 in the Colonies themselves. This is to be acknowledged in thank- 
 fulness to God and in justice to men. When we speak of men 
 in masses, without discrimination, we must inevitably sin against 
 charity or against truth. The proprietors of slaves are to be 
 divided into two classes, and the same distribution may be made 
 of the Colonies themselves. Some are friendly to missionary 
 exertions, and others are hostile. There are " who love darkness 
 rather than light," and there are who love light rather than dark- 
 ness. This is a place and an occasion which, on the one hand, 
 forbids to flatter, and, on the other, to refuse " honour to whom, 
 honour is due." The majority of persons connected with slave 
 property stand chargeable with criminal neglect, or the great pro- 
 portion of slaves would not now be degraded and immoral 
 Pagans. Not a few have been still more criminally hostile and 
 persecuting. They have paced round their enclosures of dark- 
 ness and vice, intent upon nothing so much as to scowl away the 
 messengers of light and mercy, by whatever name they might be 
 called, and to seal up the wretched people under their power in 
 ignorance and barbarism. This has been the spirit of individuals 
 in some islands, and the spirit of the community in others, as in 
 Barbados and Demerara. But, still, in the Colonies collectively 
 religion has had its advocates, and slave instruction its fostering 
 friends ; and for a few past years the number has been increasing. 
 Pious and benevolent proprietors, at home and abroad, have felt 
 their responsibility to God, and have distinguished themselves by 
 a generous flow of feeling to man ; and to them the greater honour 
 is due from us, because they, too, have had to bear the reproach 
 of fanaticism, and have had to dare to be singular. By West 
 Indian liberality have many of our numerous Mission Chapels 
 been erected, repaired, and enlarged; our expenses relieved, 
 and our Missionaries in part supported ; and, under patronage of 
 the most respectable kind, they have often been protected from 
 the malice of their assailants, and cheered and encouraged in 
 their labours. In the midst even of the late agitations, the Society 
 has received a greater number of invitations to extend their 
 labours than at any former period ; and but that its funds will not 
 yet permit such an exertion, thirty additional Missionaries might 
 be sent out this instant, with assurance of acceptance and open- 
 ings for full and promising labour. This is surely a motive for 
 unabated and even quickened activity. It is only in two or three 
 of those Colonies that men calling themselves Christians stand 
 guard before every avenue of the kingdom of darkness, alarmed 
 at the approach of every foot which is " shod with the prepara- 
 tion of the Gospel ;" painfully and pitifully anxious that Satan 
 should " keep his goods in peace," and placing all their hope of 
 safety and prosperity in the perpetual exclusion of their slaves*
 
 28 
 
 from the light and hopes of the Gospel. All this alarm at peace- 
 ful men and the peaceful Gospel which they preach would be 
 ridiculous, did it not operate to obstruct a work of so much ne- 
 cessity and mercy. Better thoughts, we trust, will ere long pre- 
 vail among this class of misinformed or prejudiced persons. For 
 the Colonies generally, they are largely open to your work of 
 charity; in almost every place there are some who will give a 
 cheering welcome to your Missionaries, and in every place the 
 Negroes themselves are prepared to listen to the heavenly mes- 
 sage : for, let what else be said of them, this cannot be alleged, 
 that they turn away their ears from instruction. Plant your 
 Missionaries where you will, they will not fail to surround them- 
 selves with crowds of attentive Negro hearers. 
 
 3. A third source of encouragement is the improvement which 
 has taken place in the character of many white and free coloured 
 people in the Colonies. 
 
 To carry the influence of Christianity through a dark and 
 neglected population many agents are necessary, besides Clergy- 
 men and Missionaries. If we look around upon our own coun- 
 try, and observe through how numerous channels the stream of 
 instruction and moral influence is poured, and the impulses which 
 it receives in its course by the various operations of philanthropic 
 and Christian activity, we shall be convinced of this. Here 
 rank, influence, property, the intelligence and activity of thousands 
 in the middle ranks of life, and the hallowed offerings and valu- 
 able co-operations of the pious poor, are all combined to remove 
 the ignorance and correct the vices of society ; and with all this, 
 much remains to lament, and much to be accomplished. The 
 importance of this ample co-operation of many and various 
 agents is, however, manifest ; and as to home improvement, we 
 found our best hopes upon it. For a long period this was en- 
 tirely wanting in the West India Colonies, and still exists but 
 partially ; but it is growing up with that improving character 
 which distinguishes both white and coloured free persons, in a 
 few instances, in the worst of the Colonies, and to a very en- 
 couraging extent in the majority of them. There was a time 
 when the scene presented by West Indian society was almost 
 unmitigated; when it was an almost unvaried mass of human 
 suffering on the one hand, and dissipation and immorality on the 
 other; when little was seen but the harsh lord and the despairing 
 slave ; gloomy servitude and a proud and vexatious tyranny ; 
 when almost every youth who was sent from the parent country 
 to take up his residence there, however generous in his nature, 
 however fortified by his education, plunged into an atmosphere 
 thick with the moral infection, and lost, by a rapid process, his 
 humanity, his principles, and his morals. Here was the reaction 
 and the curse of Slavery ; it had its revenge in the corruption and
 
 29 
 
 moral death which spread around it. Men in possession of 
 Christian truth refused to apply the corrective to Paganism, and 
 Paganism turned its transforming power upon them : the white 
 man became black ; and the slaves over whom he ruled only 
 served to exasperate his temper, and to give vigour to his pas- 
 sions : they provoked his pride, irritated his anger, plunged him 
 in sensuality, obdurated his heart, and fixed upon the Christian 
 name the degrading marks of a Heathen character. But better 
 and brighter scenes have now, for many years past, been dis- 
 playing themselves, partly by the influence of the rising spirit 
 of religion in the parent country extending itself to the Colonies, 
 and partly by the direct operations of piety and zeal in the 
 Colonies themselves. The benevolent planter, the religious 
 manager are not unfrequently seen. Many persons resident in 
 towns, of respectable rank in society, have, for some years, given, 
 and are still giving, the influence of their station and the activity 
 of their endeavours to do good. The moral character of the free 
 coloured people, all of whom are intelligent, many of them well 
 educated and possessed of property, has, in many of the islands, 
 presented a visible and cheering improvement, in spite of the de- 
 moralizing effect naturally resulting from that most unchristian and 
 impolitic prejudice indulged by the whites generally against them 
 on account of their colour, and their being considered as a de- 
 graded class. A very large number of the females of this class, 
 especially, are rising into character under the influence of religion. 
 The concubinage to which formerly they were doomed, almost 
 without exception, to white men, or to men of their own colour, 
 has, in many instances, on the older Mission stations, given place 
 to honourable marriages : the character of this class of females 
 has been rescued from its former degradation : character hav- 
 ing been given to them, esteem has followed, and, instead 
 of the coloured women being as formerly, and as a matter of 
 course, the objects of seduction, in those islands where the 
 Missions have been longest established, there are many who, 
 for piety and delicacy of mind and conduct, are not exceeded in 
 any part of the world. From the matrimonial connexions which 
 have been thus formed, founded on mutual esteem, families are 
 now training up in the fear of God, and under the influence of 
 religious example and education; and it is among those eminently 
 exemplary and excellent females of colour, which your Missions 
 may place among their most interesting trophies, that we now find 
 teachers for our schools, patronesses and visitors of benevolent 
 societies, instructors and guardians of the virtue of female youth, 
 and active and talented agents for many other offices of pious 
 charity. 
 
 Finally, the blessing of God upon our work commends it to 
 our affection and perseverance.
 
 30 
 
 Were we now, for the first time, called to enter upon this scene 
 of labour, and to make the experiment upon the Negroes of the 
 Colonies and on their native Continent, undirected by experience, 
 uncheered by success, and surrounded with the chilling pro- 
 phecies of failure, it would still be our duty to set forth. The 
 solemn obligation to repair past neglects, to redeem our character, 
 and to show compassion to our perishing brethren, would all de- 
 mand that we should make the attempt in the face of the world's 
 scorn and the world's anger. To others was assigned that task. 
 Revered men ! they waked whilst the world and even the church 
 slept; they dropt the tear over scenes which all looked upon 
 with indifference ; they regarded as the purchase of the Saviour's 
 sufferings a race which others had chased out of the family of 
 man, or on which had been fixed the mark of Cain or the curse of 
 Canaan. Perhaps they trembled whilst they made the experi- 
 ment. Strong as was their faith, did it never falter, when not 
 only the insulting white, but the degradation of the pitied race 
 itself seemed to scoff the effort; and when, through every cham- 
 ber of that vast sepulchre of souls, dead in sin, a forbidding 
 voice seemed to issue, " Can these dry bones live ?" Perhaps it 
 did falter. The language of the anxious hearts of the first 
 Christian labourers, pressing forward in a work as yet uncheered 
 by a conversion, and often cheated by fallacious promises of a 
 success which only bloomed to wither, might, perhaps, often be, 
 " Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief ! " The prayer was 
 heard. Faith, small as a grain of mustard-seed, has the prero- 
 gative of removing mountains. They went out weeping, bearing 
 precious seed ; and the very earliest labourers came again " re- 
 joicing, bringing the sheaves with them." They opened the path 
 to their successors, who have carried out the work to the extent 
 in which it now presents itself, and thus it has descended to our 
 cares, stamped and charactered with the most obvious proofs of 
 a Divine sanction and of the special co-operation of God. What 
 else could have produced the effects which we now behold? 
 Unpatronized by power, uncheered by a smile, often persecuted, 
 always ridiculed, counteracted by demoralizing circumstances, 
 watched with suspicion ; this was its history for many years ; 
 yet in those years it had, from among a Heathen population, 
 raised up thousands, of whom one, who had a large acquaintance 
 with the fact, says, with a truth which might be established by 
 many specific instances, were you not familiar with them 
 
 " However debased by vice the slaves were in the days of 
 their ignorance, they are now sober, chaste, industrious, and 
 upright in all their dealings. Nor is this all ; they are eager, 
 punctual, and persevering in all the services of devotion. Their 
 domestic circle is distinguished by the daily exercise of prayer 
 and praise ; and the Sabbath is called a delight, the holy of the
 
 31 
 
 Lord, and spent in the solemnities of his sacred worship. This 
 is indeed wonderful ! In a country where the Sabbath is de- 
 voted to public traffic ; where, comparatively speaking, marriage 
 is not so much as thought of; and where it is common to indulge 
 in the most debauched inclinations, without the least restraint, to 
 see them keeping the Sabbath day holy, renouncing all their 
 criminal connexions, and standing forth as examples of purity 
 and religion, is manifestly the Lord's doing, for nothing short 
 of the power of God could obtain a victory like this over habit, 
 example, and such corruption of the human heart." 
 
 Into a work, thus marked by the Divine blessing, you are 
 called to enter with renewed vigour; and, since it has thus suc- 
 ceeded, and is still in vigorous and hopeful operation ; since it is 
 increasing yearly its friends and patrons, and has excited others 
 to commence similar enterprises of religious charity ; and espe- 
 cially since we see the cause of Negro instruction and protection 
 engaging the attention and interests of all classes of our country- 
 men, can we doubt but that the delightful time is hastening, when 
 Africa and all her sons shall partake, after ages of desertion and 
 injury, the full mercies of the Gospel? It is one of the most 
 cheering harbingers of this consummation, that the nations of the 
 earth are staying the ravages which have for ages wasted her 
 shores ; that two of the most powerful maritime states, our own 
 country and the United States of America, have at length raised 
 their principles to the only proper standard by which such out- 
 rages can be truly judged, and have declared the slave-trade 
 piracy. Thus " the shields of the earth, which belong unto the 
 Lord," have thrown the protecting shadow of their justice over those 
 defenceless coasts where the Christian name has been most deeply 
 dishonoured, and the rights and feelings of men have been most 
 criminally outraged. But the spiritual mercies branch off in 
 more numerous streams, and pour forth for Africa a more copious 
 current. We need no laborious and critical investigation to 
 determine whether " Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands 
 unto God;" no prying into the mystic counsels of Heaven, to 
 ascertain whether " The time to favour her, yea, the set time, 
 be come." Go to the Colonies, where her sons are in captivity : 
 scarcely is there one of them where this Society alone has not 
 one or two, in many five or six, sacred buildings for worship and 
 instruction devoted to their use, and which they regard as pecu- 
 liarly their own. One Colony I except. Sacrilegious hands there 
 rent it to the earth, and denied to the Negro his " house of prayer." 
 But that is a solitary monument of shame; for the rest, in those 
 crowded congregations, in those spacious edifices, Ethiopia already 
 " stretches out her hands unto God," and, led by the light which 
 creates our Sabbaths, meets us at the same throne of grace, and 
 receives, with us, the benedictions of the common Father and
 
 32 
 
 the common Saviour. And the prophetic promise is dawning 
 upon parent Africa also. Hottentots, Caffres, Boschuanas, 
 Namaquas, Corannas, Griquas, in the south, Bulloms, Foulahs, 
 and Mandingos, in the west, some of all your tribes are already in 
 the fold, and hear and love the voice of the great Shepherd ! We 
 hail you as our BRETHREN ! the front ranks of all those swarthy 
 tribes which are deeply buried in the vast interior of an unexplored 
 continent, you stretch out your hands unto God, as a signal for 
 the tribes beyond you; and the signal shall be followed, and 
 every hand of thy millions, Africa ! shall raise itself in devotion 
 to thy pitying Saviour, and every lip shall, ere long, modulate 
 accents of grateful praise to thy long- concealed, but faithful God. 
 
 God is eminently with us in this " labour of love;" nor is it the 
 least important of the indications of his presence, that he whose 
 prerogative it is to send forth labourers into this harvest is con- 
 ducting the steps of so many into the African field; that a number 
 of holy men, from year to year, have infused into their hearts a 
 special compassion for this race, and prefer to ease at home, and 
 the peace and credit of the Christian ministry in their native laud, 
 the danger, the toil, and the reproaches which still attend the work 
 of Negro instruction. Let the memory of those who have finished 
 their work be blessed ; of those who have burnt in fevers, lan- 
 guished in prisons, sustained, with meekness, the scoffs and jests 
 of the impious, and sunk into a premature grave. Their " reward 
 is on high" and their " work with their God." And, as to those 
 who now endure the Cross and glory in it, whether they labour 
 under the suns of the West Indies, or in Western Africa breathe 
 pestilential air, or in the southern parts of that continent toil over 
 hills and through deserts, " to seek and to save that which is lost," 
 let these be witnesses to us, on the part of God, that He is with 
 us. What gold could purchase such instruments ! What edu- 
 cation could form them ! What implanted principle of human 
 action, where wealth, and honour, and ease are all absent, could 
 send them forth ! They are the instruments of Heaven, prepared 
 to our hand and for our use, and indicating, by the very nature 
 of their preparation, the special use to which we are to apply 
 them. They are the agents to carry forth our charities to the 
 Heathen, to bear our light into the darkness we pity, and our 
 mercy into the misery over which we sigh. Without them we 
 should sigh in vain, and our sympathies would terminate in our- 
 selves ; by them we reach and relieve the case of destitute mil- 
 lions, and transmit the blessedness of which we are anxious that 
 all should partake. Thus man is made a saviour to his fellow, 
 and the creature of a day the instrument of conveying blessings 
 which have no bound but a limitless eternity itself ! 
 
 Enter, then, more fully into the spirit of the text, and " HONOUR 
 ALL ME^i." I love these brief and general sentiments of benevo-
 
 33 
 
 lehce which come upon us so suddenly and with such frequency 
 in the New Testament. They show fulness, and the fulness of a 
 more than human kindness. If uninspired man had uttered them, 
 he would have felt them to be so novel, so far removed out of the 
 common course of the thoughts and feelings of mankind, and would 
 have anticipated so many objections, that he must have thought 
 it necessary to accompany them with the ingenuity of apology 
 and the labour of argument. But their very manner shows that 
 they come from God. It is for Him to be authoritative, and they 
 are uttered in the appropriate form of law ; it is in Him only that 
 goodness exists in infinite fulness, and these precepts of charity 
 are its affecting manifestations the gushings of that yearning 
 tenderness with which he regards all his creatures. O God ! it 
 is from thee that we learn to love one another to love man, 
 because thou lovest him; to " honour him," because " thou hast 
 set thy heart upon him." When from these views and principles 
 we go forth into the world, what contrasts do we behold ! Is 
 man loved and honoured by man ? The fiercest beasts of the 
 gloomy forest are not to him what he is to his kind : theirs is the 
 ferocity of hunger, his that of malignity ; theirs is appetite, his is 
 passion. But there is a redeeming power at work in our world, 
 and that is the word of the living God, the Gospel of peace and 
 salvation. Wherever that comes, it is a shield to the defenceless 
 and a refuge for the oppressed. Orphans find in it a father, 
 widows a husband, slaves a Master in heaven, the wronged and 
 spurned " a Judge in his holy habitation." What sorrows has it 
 cheered ; what injuries has it arrested ; what benevolent crea- 
 tions has it spread around us ! How soft are its tones of pity ; 
 how loud its denunciations of wrong and violence ! The yearn- 
 ings of philanthropy, the ardour of missionary zeal, the active 
 love of our neighbour, the awful equity of law, the loftiness of 
 patriotism are all its own. These are the blessings which it has 
 conferred at home, and these are the effects which it is working 
 abroad. With this high commission, it is charged by its Divine 
 Author to visit every land, " to comfort all that mourn, to appoint 
 unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the 
 garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, to preach the accept- 
 able year of the Lord." O when shall this " glorious Gospel of 
 the blessed God" dawn upon all lands ; when shall it wipe away 
 all tears ; when shall floods clap their hands, and forests wave 
 instinct with the universal gladness, and hills rejoice, and valleys 
 sing, and the Gentiles of every lip and name " glorify God 
 for his mercy !" Said I " When shall it dawn ?" Where is 
 the land on which it dawns not? The illustrious morning 
 breaks, and the shadows fly away ! In the most distant wil- 
 dernesses and deserts of the world, deserts never till of late 
 vocal with the sound of salvation, the voice of the heralds of 
 c
 
 34 
 
 the universal Saviour-king is at length heard " Prepare ye the 
 way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our 
 God : every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill 
 shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and 
 the rough places plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be re- 
 vealed, and all flesh shall see it together, FOR THE MOUTH OF 
 
 THE LORD HATH SPOKEN IT." 
 
 In behalf of one branch of those great operations which the 
 Church of Christ is carrying on to hasten this consummation, 
 you have been now addressed. To your care and liberality the 
 Negro Missions in the West Indies are commended. Remem- 
 ber the immense number of Pagan and uninstructed slaves which 
 remain, and surfer me to leave upon your minds a strong impres- 
 sion of your duty respecting them, by closing what 1 have said 
 with an extract from the work I before referred to. Melancholy 
 it is, that, after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years, such an 
 appeal should be so applicable, and that so much should yet 
 remain to be done, and so many difficulties and obstacles to be 
 encountered. Thus the Author of " The Negro's Advocate" 
 pleaded in the year 1660, and, though dead, he yet speaketh 
 to us : 
 
 '* Let us consider, that we have no more dispensation for our 
 silence than the Apostles, with other succeeding holy Bishops and 
 Priests, had, who first planted and watered the Church with their 
 blood, and went about and preached every where, when it was 
 death to be a Christian. That faith is an active and prolific grace ; 
 and cannot remain in idleness, but must operate and employ that 
 heavenly heat which it receives from above, for the use of others. 
 That there is no neutrality in this war, and that whoever is not 
 actually in arms, prepared to fight against sin and infidelity, is to 
 be reputed a conspirator with them. That there is the same 
 heaven and salvation proposed for the conversion of slaves, as of 
 more illustrious grandees; the whole being but the saving of 
 souls ; the effecting of which upon but a very few is worth the 
 labour of many all their lives. Even we, no less than St. Paul, 
 are debtors ' to the Greeks and Barbarians, to the wise and to the 
 unwise.' And God hath, by an extraordinary providence, brought 
 these people to our very doors, to try our justice, and to see 
 whether we will pay his debt, unto which, if ever any did, each 
 soul of us does stand most firmly obliged. Look upon them, and 
 you cannot but see in their countenances the lively effigies of 
 St. Paul's Macedonian, imploring your help: and O! let not the 
 blood of souls cry from the earth for vengeance against us. 
 Reflect but upon the sad doom denounced against the fearful and 
 unbelieving, Rev. 21, and remember that the first great founders 
 of our faith were no cowards. Think what shame it is, that we 
 have given such just cause to the enemies of religion to reproach
 
 35 
 
 and triumph over our timidity, or, which is worse, our temporizing 
 for filthy lucre. Nor let the opposition and peevishness of un- 
 reasonable men dishearten us ; as knowing that our true portion 
 is to be sent forth as sheep amongst wolves ; and that success is, 
 for the most part, the companion of a restless industry. Even so 
 we, overlooking all difficulties, and pressing still forward to the 
 mark, if we faint not, may obtain that prize for which we set 
 forth, and accomplish a work greatly tending to the glory of God, 
 and to the happiness of these poor people's souls, no less than of 
 our own. And O, were our duty, as St. Chrysostom sweetly ex- 
 horteth of piety and a virtuous life, faithfully complied with, ' we 
 might soon, and even without miracles, couvert the world.' 
 ' Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees,' 
 as saith the Apostle. ' Let us be instant in season and out of sea- 
 son,' and keep back nothing of the whole counsel of God that is 
 necessary for the souls of men." 
 
 May these sentiments deeply affect us, and all whose connexion 
 with the West India Colonies especially binds them to uphold 
 the credit of the Christian profession, and to manifest the zeal 
 and kindness of Christian charity. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 T. Kaye, Printer, Liverpool.
 
 
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