MONROVIA — LIBERIA
Letter of Rev. John Day
Monrovia, Oct 25th, 1 858
Rev. Jas. B. Taylor:
Very Dear Sir, — I am pleased to inform you that affairs in some parts of the Liberian
mission field are quite interesting. At Cape Mount, on the 17th and 19th inst., brother Richardson
baptized fourteen for that church. In Sierra Leone lately Mr. Brown, at our native Station in
Waterloo, baptized three, and in his church at Freetown, he baptized eight.
My church is in an interesting state. Some weeks ago a wild fire was kindled among my
people by some ranting brother, which has subsided into a genial heat, developed by attention
and tears.
I hear glowing accounts from Palmas, Sinoe, Bassa, and of some little warmth at Clay
Ashland. Poor Millsburg church! The stroke which felled poor White and Locket has left the
blight of death upon it. The only deacon worth the name has followed in their wake to heaven,
and left a good -natured preacher, without energy, weight of character, or any needful quality to
sustain the church but a poke-easy, whining piety; and a membership, worth for energetic
purposes in this world not one cent a thousand. Poor lambs of Christ! What shall we do for
them? They need to be carried in the heart, and on the shoulder, pressing heavily on the pocket.
I am looking with ‘great anxiety to the establishment of interior missions. If my
information is correct, there is a decided change of feeling in the native mind in reference to the
religion of Jesus Christ. The disposition for assimilation to colonists increases. Their desire for
education and the preached word also increases. Indeed every development seems to unfold a
God at work, and seems to say, “Thrust in the sickle.” If you were not sick of such statements, I
could tell what, a few years ago, would have delighted you. But the multitude of
disappointments and failures attending a missionary life, make a modest man fear to write when
a bright side is out.
Home and Foreign Journal
February 1859
p. 32
