MONROVIA
Letter from Rev. John Day
MONROVIA, Sept. 25th, 1857
Rev. James B. Taylor:
VERY DEAR SIR ~ You will be pleased, I am sure, to learn that
on Sunday last I baptised six persons, 5 young women, and a young man,
belonging to our high school. Another young man of good family and
disposition had been received; but the day before baptizing, an opportunity
presenting, he went to Sierra Leone, where he was engaged as clerk in a
store, intending to be baptized there. There are several other hopeful
converts, among whom are one young man and two young women. A very
interesting state still continues.
You may judge of the state of my health, when I tell you that I
walked last Sunday from Day's Hope to the church edifice, half a mile, by
sun-rise, and after prayers, &c., went a quarter of a mile down a hill, say 80
or 100 feet high, baptized the six persons, and went up that hill; preached at
1 1 o'clock, and at three; then at night delivered an address and administered
the Lord's supper, the church house being full. A more solemn, impressive
time I have seldom witnessed. When it was time to break bread, I said while
I break the bread, silently and prayerfully, remember the broken body of that
blessed Saviour, whose blood is the ransom price of your salvation. Every
head inclined to the floor, every eye suffused with tears, bespoke the
presence of the Holy Spirit.
The last letter I received from Sierra Leone brings very interesting
intelligence from Cossu town. The school had increased to forty — the poor
natives were being converted to God. Brother Wicks was in high esteem
among them, and things were going on well there. At Free Town a man by
the name of Fitsgiles, a preacher, a deacon, and a bad man, had severed the
churches, and poor brother Brown, whose timid cautiousness unfits him for
such exigencies, is in trouble.
The most of the churches in Liberia are enjoying a refreshing from
the presence of the Lord, and I am thereby greatly encouraged. I have long
felt that we were under heaven's curse. A most singular event has happened
all along the coast, as far as civilized men have settled. A famine, the most
unaccountable, has pervaded the whole. The seasons have been as usual; we
have had our dries and our rains as usual; but now in the very season in
which rice should be abundant at S 1.20 a bushel, it is (and it is not to be had
