CHAP. IX. ADVANTAGES OF SELF-SUPPORT. 247 



sustained by the Society at home for more than half a 

 century. The great and important political changes which 

 had taken place in the colony during that period had placed 

 the coloured people on a footing of civil equality with other 

 classes, and had secured to them the fruits of their enterprise, 

 industry, and skill, and thus placed within their reach the 

 means of sustaining the ordinances of religion amongst them- 

 selves, and leaving the Society in England free to extend the 

 knowledge of the Grospel to other nations. Something had 

 been done by the African Christians towards this latter object, 

 as they had for some years contributed towards the funds of 

 the Society in England, but their owoi pastors, and in some 

 instances the schoolmasters, were still supported, not by the 

 Churches themselves, though some of these had been or- 

 ganised forty years, but by the distant Society in England. 

 It had been for some time felt that a step still further in 

 advance might be made with advantage to the people them- 

 selves, inducing greater self-reliance and imparting stability 

 to the Christian institutions amongst them, by their under- 

 taking the recognised duty of sustaining the means of their 

 own spiritual improvement, yet retaining intimate Christian 

 and fraternal relationship mth the Churches in England, and 

 receiving such supplementary aid as their circumstances 

 might for a season still render necessary. To inquire as to 

 the practicability of this change, and to confer with the 

 missionary pastors and their respective flocks on the best mode 

 of effecting it, were the chief objects of the visit I had now 

 made ; and it had afforded me much pleasure to observe the 

 principle, that it was the duty of every Christian community 

 to maintain the ordinances of religion among its own 

 members, and then to extend the knowledge of the Grospel to 

 others, readily acknowledged, and to receive the most frank 

 and cordial assurance of sincere co-operation on the part of 

 the missionary pastors and their people in carrying out these 



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