Letter from Rev. A. P. Davis to Bro. Taylor, January 16, 1860

BUCHANAN Letter of Rev. A. P. Davis BUCHANAN, Jan. 16lh, 1860 DEAR BRO. TAYLOR: I feel to bless God that it has been his good pleasure to spare my worthless life in the midst of so many deaths. Your favour of September 24th came to hand about three months after date. * * * I read your last with peculiar pleasure. There was a spirit breathed that appeared to be wholly from the upper world. It impressed me with a state of heavenly mindedness not felt every day. I am not of opinion, under present influences, that much good cannot be done among the frontier natives, without one of two things-either boarding schools on the manual labour principle, or natives taken into families, and sent to schools from thence. Brother J. B. Davis, a young man I had the honour to bring from the horrors of superstition and idolatry to the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, who lives near the settlement, came to get some spelling books, to prepare some boys for school, with the intention to send them to day school. It is a matter of great difficulty to teach natives to submit even to a good practice, if it is contrary to a practice by which they are surrounded. The different denominations take sometimes native children for a tenn of years, and sometimes Americo Liberia children, and sometimes both, and it really turns out well, and is one of the advantages they have had of us. It is these precautions that give the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians more labourers in the field than we have. It is that which makes our children often seek these advantages among them. I drop these items now, because it may be when you hear from me again, I may, as many of my brethren of usefulness have done, gone to the spirit-land. Our labourers have been reduced to a very small number; but it may be my Master’s pleasure to make