Letter from John Day to Rev. A. M. Poindexter, April 27, 1858 and letter from John Day to Rev. James B. Taylor, May 4, 1858

MONROVIA Letters from John Day MONROVIA, LIBERIA April 27th, 1858 Rev. A. M. Poindexter: Very Dear Sir — I received yours of January 25, and am glad that you will not abandon this mission. I have been very much discouraged in view of the little done for the poor heathen. It is true that many of the colonists need a missionary as much as the heathen. * * * The mass is deeper sunk in degradation and ignorance than you are aware. ****** They need first the quickening spirit, then truth clearly set before them. They need to know what religion is, then the principles or moral character of the subject of that holy religion. They need sober truth — to have clearly set before them the evidences of the Bible, being the book of God; the evidences of Christianity, of the immortality of the soul; the doctrines of the gospel, with earnest but sober exhortations to turn to the Lord; with such appeals as seem to grow naturally out of the importance of the subject; no affectation — no ranting. I wish very much to see an interior mission connected with this mission of ours. You have every facility for the commencement of a glorious work, except men. Will not white men come and begin a work 100 or 200 miles interior? The country is comparatively healthy; the natives all which can be asked of a heathen people. Five hundred miles are now open before us with a principal station in Monrovia, just what we need, and all which we need for a commencement. It is the reserve of special providence. Its locality, its buildings, its farm, look to the interior as pointed by the finger of God, and in its prospect a white field for the harvest. Poor dejected Seymour! defaulter, insolvent, forsaken of friends, excluded from the church, goes far interior, followed by a few of David's kind; finds such friends, such nobleness of soul among the heathen that his soul overflowed with gratitude to God and his benefactor, and he began to point them to Heaven and the ways of civilized life. Mathews, poor crazy man, went farther still. He died; was buried decently and gold was given to his Son to cany him to Cape Coast Castle and to pay his way on an English steamer home.