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 Gospel 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 own 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 with 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 Gospel 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 
