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Canada Mission: For The Signal Of Liberty

Canada Mission: For The Signal Of Liberty image
Parent Issue
Day
5
Month
January
Year
1842
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Messrs. Editors. - In the Signal of the 16th inst. my attention was interested by a letter of W. M. Sullivan, on the subject of establishing a Christian Mission among the colored people of Canada. - Having been a resident in that country some five years, and being acquainted with the condition of the colored population, my heart at once responded to the sentiments of the letter above named, especially as it respects our duty to investigate the question alluded to by Bro. Sullis van. His views on the subject are clear and distinct. There are fifteen thousand human beings scattered over the Canadas without schools - without places of worship - without stated employment - the greater part of them serving us menials, and groaning under the anathemas arising from prejudice against color, and reduced to the greatest straits to obtain employment. It is obvious to every rational mind, that such a course of life must tend to poverty, dissipation, and immorality. - It needs no prophetic vision to see the tendency of such habits in any people who have been taught practically the licentiousness attendant on American slavery. That such is the case with the greater part of them, I am perfectly aware. It will be found easy to colonize them and establish missions among them. Land can be purchased of government on ten years' credit, and the industry of the colonists can be made to pay for it, if that should be thought best. The missionary will have but little to sacrifice in going to his labor of love, when contrasted with the toils of those who have gone to foreign lands, among barbarous nations, where they meet with nothing bearing a resemblance to their native shores. There will be no billows of ocean to ride over,no barren sands to gloom their prospects, no vertical sun, with its scorching rays, prolific of disease and death to the European or American. Tho thousand obstacles that usually attend foreign missions being thus removed, and the imperative demands of their wants calling loudly for assistance, I believe, to make the enterprise successful, the missionary must not carry them the Bible, while in it is invested the price of blood. The missionary must prove himself to be a friend of the oppressed, or his labors will prove a gangrene on our holy religion. I hope every friend of the slave in the Methodist E. Church will think of this matter, and come up to our annual meeting prepared for decisive action. And I am confident our abolition brethren of other denominations, will not be behind in this holy enterprise. Come, brethren, come to the relief of those to whom you have professed friendship, by pointing them to the land of freedom. Most respectfully, Yours in the bonds of Peace, H. P. H.