LECTURE II.

THE PROGRESS OF THE GOSPEL IN THE

WEST INDIES.

(Preached at the Cathedral, Barbados, Jan. 22, 1832.)

2 THESS. iii. 1.

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you.

THE subject of my last lecture led to a brief consideration of the introduction of the religion of Christ, first, into the mother country, and at a later period, when the discovery of Columbus opened a new world to the spirit of adventure, into these distant and valuable appendages to the British empire. It was painful to me to advert to the culpable indifference, which, for almost two centuries, had

been a barrier to the reception of the gospel by the slave population of the British possessions in the West Indies, and to notice, in some instances, the undisguised and persecuting hostility to the religious and moral improvement of this portion of our fellow creatures. It was not in a spirit of unkindness, or with any view to excite feelings of irritation, that I drew your attention to evils so indefensible, of the times that are past. A recurrence to the history of faults committed by those who have lived before us is calculated to guard us against similar failures in our own duty; and though the past is irrevocable, and can therefore only be the subject of regret, yet the future is within our power, and former omissions may, in some degree, be compensated by a double portion of diligence exercised by ourselves, and by those who succeed us.

In continuation of the subject, I propose now to examine the system of instruction hitherto pursued in these colo

nies, and to state the success which has attended the attempt to bring our slave population into subjection to the law of Christ. I shall unavoidably be led to notice what is still defective in this important work; and it will be my duty freely to express my opinion on the means which may be adopted, without detriment to any private interests, and with unquestionable good to the community at large, for giving free course to the word of the Lord among your slaves and dependents. The instruction afforded by catechists, under the superintendence of the Bishop of the diocese, although retarded by local obstacles, has been productive of evident and acknowledged good. I mean not to say that this mode of imparting to the negro the first principles of our religion had not been attempted previously to the exercise of episcopal authority in these islands; but that which was before confined and partial in its operation, has become, under the regulations introduced by our

diocesan, comparatively general, and far more effective.

I am ready to admit that catechetical instruction is imperfect as a permanent system of teaching, and is very inadequate to the spiritual wants of the negro population around us: still with all its imperfection and disadvantages, it has been the means of working a perceptible improvement in the moral character and habits of many of our slaves. Where before there was almost total darkness, there are now many cheering rays of light; where before the name of God and Christ was seldom heard, but in the coarsest imprecations, there is now not unfrequently a firm persuasion, and sometimes an influential belief of the vital truths of revelation.

There is evidently an increased desire on the part of the slaves to join in the public services of the church, and we even behold them approaching, with every mark of sincere devotion, the table

of the Lord. In former times, (I speak from the report of those whose recollection will go back to the period of almost complete spiritual darkness among this class of our brethren,) their attendance in the house of God was very rare, and, except in the principal towns, neither expected nor desired. The limited accommodation of the country churches almost excluded them there, from a participation in the rites of public worship.

It was with a view to meet the influx of the slave and free coloured inhabitants into our churches, that additional places of worship, open to the free and the slave, to the white and the black, have recently been erected in this and in some of the neighbouring islands. These consecrated buildings, lately the ornament and just pride of this colony, and a pleasing evidence of the increase of piety among our people, have sunk under the desolating storm' of the past year. The Appendix F.

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