or less, as they learned, chiefly through the violent speeches of their own masters or overseers, what was going on in their favor in England, it was missionary influence that moderated their passions, kept them in the steady course of duty, and prevented them from sinning against God by offending against the laws of man. Whatever outbreaks or insurrections at any time occurred, no Methodist slave was ever proved guilty of incendiarism or rebellion for more than seventy years, namely, from 1760 to 1834. An extensive examination of their correspondence throughout that lengthened period, and an acquaintance with their general character and history, enables one confidently to affirm that a more humble, laborious, zealous, and unoffending class of Christian missionaries were never employed by any section of the Church of God, than those sent out by the British Conference to the West India isles. They were eminently men of one business, unconnected with any political party, though often strongly suspected by the jealousies so rife in slaveholding communities. A curious instance of this occurred in regard to one who was firmly believed to be a correspondent of the Anti-Slavery Society in England. "I did not know," said Fowell Buxton, in the House of Commons, "that such a man was in existence, till I heard that he was to be hung for corresponding with me."

As a specimen of one for all the rest, of the circumstances in which the missionaries were often placed, and of their singleness of purpose and aim, we select the following from the Memoirs of the Rev. John Brownell, who was then stationed in the island of St. Kitts. In his journal he writes thus, March 10, 1801:

"In the forenoon of this day I received a letter from the late commanderin-chief, requesting me to attend him immediately at the council-room. On my appearance before him, an Address was presented to me, purporting to be written by the General Conference in America, to the body of people called Methodists, requesting them to petition the Legislature for the abolition of the slave-trade. This address was signed by Dr. Coke, Mr. Asbury, and several others, inserted in the newspapers, and published in the form of hand-bills. The Council imagined that it had originated with the English Conference, and by them had been transmitted to the Conference in America; and desired to know whether I had received any orders to carry it into effect. I informed the Council that the English Conference had no authority over the Methodist societies in the United States of America; and distinctly asserted that I had received no instructions in the matter, and that the English Conference had no desire or intention that the missionaries should interfere with the political affairs of the islands, our only design being to bring the people to the knowledge of God. On the following day there appeared in one of the public papers a vile letter, accusing the missionaries of seditious designs."

Tuesday, the 14th, I waited upon the commander-in-chief, in company with Mr. Shipley," (his colleague.) "We laid before him a considerable number of facts and arguments, to prove that we had not the slightest intention to interfere with the civil condition of the slaves. We were ready to

attest, upon oath, that we had never inculcated any doctrine tending to sedition; but uniformly exhorted as many servants as are under the yoke to count their masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.' That no principles contrary to these had been taught by us in any of the society meetings, we stated to be manifest from this consideration: that great numbers of whites, or free people of color, who held slaves, were in religious connection with us, and attended those meetings as well as the slaves; and yet such people, who would of course be tenacious of their own interests, so far from making any complaint against us, were anxious to prevail upon us to admit their slaves into society. We also pledged ourselves that we would rather quit the colonies than disturb the public peace; and further urged, that if these reasons were not satisfactory to the local government, the affair might be referred to the Duke of Portland, and an explanation required of the English Conference. This proposal was acceded to, and here the business ended. I afterward drew up a reply to the infamous letter which had been published against us. But the man who had given publicity to the unprincipled defamations of an adversary, had not the honor to print the vindication of the accused."

As was Brownell, so were his brethren; and such was the spirit, temper, and demeanor of the Methodist missionaries in carrying out their mission to the West Indian slaves. They were the negroes' true friends. "It is surprising," says Dr. Coke, “with what affection the negroes look upon us when we pass by them. One of them was overheard telling his companions, ‘These men were imported for us.'" The missionaries were quiet emancipators without aiming at it; for the Gospel is the forerunner of freedom. In the meantime they were conservators of the masters' interests, and especially on critical occasions, as will yet be made to appear. It was in that way Methodism acted upon slavery, so far as the missionaries themselves and their personal labors were concerned. The instructions furnished them by the committee in London run thus:

"As in the colonies in which you are called to labor a great proportion of the inhabitants are in a state of slavery, the Committee most strongly call to your recollection what was so fully stated to you when you were accepted as a missionary to the West Indies, that your only business is to promote the moral and religious improvement of the slaves to whom you may have access, without in the least degree, in public or private, interfering with their civil condition. On all persons, in the state of slaves, you are diligently and implicitly to enforce the same exhortations which the apostles of our Lord administered to the slaves of ancient nations, when by their ministry they embraced Christianity. Ephesians vi, 5–8; Col. iii, 22-25.”

These scriptures are quoted at length, after which is added: "In all cases you are to meet even unreasonable prejudices," (as to the hour and place of meeting,) "and attempt to disarm suspicions, however groundless, so far as you can do it consistently with your duties as a faithful and laborious minister of the Gospel." Again: "The Committee caution you against engaging in any of the civil disputes

or local politics of the colony to which you may be appointed, either verbally or by correspondence with any persons at home or in the colonies. The whole period of your temporary residence in the West Indies is to be filled up with the proper work of your mission. You are not to become parties in any civil quarrel; but are to please all men for their good to edification; intent upon the solemn work of your office, and upon that eternal state in the view of which the Committee trust you will ever think and act.”

Those extracts from the printed instructions, drawn up by the late Rev. Richard Watson, and put into the hand of every missionary on receiving his appointment, will show, more clearly than anything else can do, the precise and single aim of the missionaries to a slave population. No missionary was ever accused of violating those instructions; and their course was certainly more moderate than brethren of some other denominations thought to be right; and it occasionally exposed them to the reproaches of those whose zeal was more conspicuous than their "meekness of wisdom." It must be obvious that missionaries guided by instructions worded with so much accuracy and precision, could not possibly operate against slavery otherwise than by spiritual means; which, however, after all, are the safest, best, and most effectual than can be employed. The hope of the slave lies in the purity and power of the Gospel; and nothing short of the leaven of Christianity pervading political legislation, will insure the slave freedom, or prepare him to receive his right with advantage.

But although the missionaries were thus restricted to one object and one work, the Methodists in Great Britain were not under such restraint; although the public managers of missions were for a long season less active in the cause of freedom than they otherwise would have been, lest they should involve the missionaries in trouble and hinder their spiritual usefulness. It is now time to trace the progress of Methodistic action on the slave-trade and slavery in England. We must begin with Mr. Wesley. His attention was first directed to the slave-trade by a member of the Society of Friends, who put a valuable tract into his hands. Pre-eminent honor is due to that excellent community of philanthropists for their uniform testimony in favor of the oppressed of every race. Though themselves a small people in respect to numbers, they have been beyond all others powerful in influence in this great cause; for they have been a practical people, having completely purged themselves from any continuous participation in the evils of slavery. They awoke Wesley and the Methodists to a sense of duty. In his Journal, February 12, 1772, he says: "I read a book published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villainies, commonly called the slave-trade. I have read nothing like it in the heathen

world, whether ancient or modern; and it infinitely exceeds, in every instance of barbarity, whatever Christian slaves suffer in Mohammedan countries." From that time he never lost sight of the matter, or omitted what in his natural judgment he thought a fitting occasion for bearing testimony against it. And although it was the slave-trade to which he applies the strong epithet, "execrable sum of all villainies," yet he conjoined slavery with it in the tract entitled "Thoughts on Slavery," which he published in 1774; and which, according to Myles, went through five editions before his decease.

We may here pause to make a sober use of liberty of thought, and freedom of observation. The greater part of that energetic pamphlet of sixteen pages is admirable; but yet it cannot be maintained that everything advanced in it is strictly correct. Neither our abhorrence of slavery, nor our veneration for the writer, should prevent a calm critique on two particulars, in which his vehemence has carried him beyond the bounds of truth, and involved him in self-contradictions. The first is in the description of the morals of the Africans in their native country. Most certainly no people answering thereto were ever found in any heathen land. His authorities were certain authors who had lived among them, and with whom it seems to have been a favorite passion, as with some modern writers, to whitewash heathenism; yea, even to give in perspective a beautiful picture of the unsophisticated sons of nature. We cannot but wonder that so great a divine should have listened to them, and forgot Saint Paul. One of those writers says, as quoted by Mr. Wesley: "The man (among them) who wrongs another is the abomination of all." Again: "They are punctually just and honest in their dealings; and are also very charitable. Those that are utterly helpless they keep for God's sake." Another remarks: The whole of their manners revived in my mind the idea of our first parents, and I seemed to contemplate the world in its primitive state." Now that is about as pretty a piece of sentimentalism as was ever penned. The wonder is that the tide of emigration has not caused such a paradise to be by this time inconveniently full! And how was it that our romancers could ever bring themselves to leave such an exquisite region, and return to inferior associations with civilized men? Surely they had need rather to have remained, and persuaded men of such virtue to have the further goodness of undertaking a mission to the Christian world. Indeed, Mr. Wesley himself intimates something of this kind when he says: "Supposing these accounts to be true," only he adds with too easy credulity," which I see no reason or pretense

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to doubt of, we may leave England and France to seek genuine honesty in Benin, Congo, or Angola." Now for the contradictions. In another part of his pamphlet Mr. Wesley writes: "When the King of Barsalli wants goods or brandy, he sends to the English governor at James's Fort, who immediately sends a sloop. Against the time it arrives, he plunders some of his neighbors' towns, selling the people for the goods he wants. At other times he falls upon one of his own towns, and makes bold to sell his own subjects." Again: "Some of the natives are always ready, when well paid, to surprise and carry off their own countrymen." Now that is a poor specimen of "our first parents in their primitive state." Such abominations could have never prevailed if the majority of the people had been virtuous. Without at all extenuating that "execrable sum of all villainies," the slave-trade, or minifying what Wilberforce called the "complicated villainies" of Europeans engaged in it, still, it is impossible to believe that Africans could have been so easily induced to commit such gross outrages on their own countrymen, if "the man who wronged another had been held in universal abomination;" or that they were "just, honest, and charitable, and kept the poor for God's sake." Modern accounts of Dahomy, Ashanti, and the Gold Coast, as furnished by resident missionaries, do not tally with such a glaring representation of the virtues of the inhabitants of those regions. Nor did the first missionaries to the West Indies find any relics of such existing virtues among that down-trodden people, as many of their mournful letters concerning their moral wretchedness abundantly testify. On the other hand, the iniquitous slave-trader, with an almost unparalleled hypocrisy, drew in deepest shades the vices of the African, that he might be proved on that ground a fit article of merchandize, and show that he was not injured, but rather benefited by European robbery. In 1791 pamphlets were published in England, and circulated among members of the House of Commons, affirming that the Africans were "stupid and unenlightened hordes, immersed in the most gross and impenetrable gloom of barbarism, dark in mind as in body, prodigiously populous, impatient of all control, unteachably lazy, ferocious as their own congenial tigers, nor in any respect superior to those rapacious beasts in intellectual advancement; and being accustomed to destroy one another in battle, the slave traffic has proved a fortunate event to such miserable captives." Another writer, whose work passed through repeated editions, and who "speaks from a long residence" on the African coast, says: "It is a humane trade, preventing human sacrifices, and civilizing the people!" So the slave-trade was a charity, and the slave-traders