MONROVIA
Letter from Rev. John Day
MONROVIA, Liberia
May 18TH, 1858
REV. A. M. POINDEXTER:
Dear Brother in Christ — I received yours of March 1 8th
with that delight with which I usually receive your letters. For,
although I never saw you, I feel an attachment which I cannot
account for, unless from an impression that you are the friend of
Mr. A. W. Clopton, my great benefactor and instructor in theology.
You say it is long since you received a letter from me. I was very
low the first part of this year, and could not write. *******
You say my letters breathe a spirit of Christian consecration, I
never intended it. I have been so disgusted with long-faced,
groaning hypocrisy, that I never indulge in any ostentatious show
of religion. The goodness of God, his endearing, eternal love, his
amazing grace to miserable offenders; the sufferings of Christ, are
to me overpowering, yea, melting subjects. Yet when my heart
would force a tear, I try to suppress it, and the effort makes a
weeping house. That sweetest of all communion, with my own
heart and my Father in heaven, that peace worth countless worlds,
that joy big with glorious anticipation, that good hope through
grace, with love of God abroad, seeking and labouring to work the
good of others. This is my secret, my private treasure, with which
a stranger intermeddleth not. When it has been thought I would
die, and some were standing to see and hear the last, I have merely
said I rest on the righteousness of Christ and his atoning blood. I
am a sinner saved by grace. But O! how precious is that grace to
me! What amazing grace, to subdue such pride — such corruption
as mine.
Home and Foreign Journal
September 1858
p. 12
