To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative by Verney Lovett Cameron;Sir Richard Francis Burton
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page 17 of 310 (05%)
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in 1792 had already brought amongst them Wesleyans, Baptists, and Lady
Huntingdon's connexion. This school, which differs from other Methodists only in Church government, still has a chapel at Sá Leone. Thus each sect claims 1792 as the era of its commencement in the colony. In 1811 Mr. Warren, the first ordained Wesleyan missionary, reached Freetown and died on July 23, 1812. He was followed by Mrs. Davies, the prima donna of the corps: she 'gathered up her feet,' as the native saying is, on December 15, 1815. Since that time the place has never lacked an unbroken succession of European missionary deaths. The Church Missionary Society, founded in 1799, sent out, five years afterwards, its first representatives, MM. Renner and Hartwig, Germans supported by English funds. In 1816 they devoted themselves steadily to converting the 'recaptives,' and many of them, together with their wives, fell bravely at their posts. In twenty years thirty-seven out of seventy died or were invalided. The names of Wylander and W. A. B. Johnson are deservedly remembered. Nearly half a million sterling was spent at Sá Leone, where the stone church of Kissy Road was built in 1839, and that of Pademba Road in 1849. The grants were wisely withdrawn in 1862. At the present moment only 300_l_. is given, and the church is reported to be self-supporting. The first bishopric was established in 1852. In 1861 Bishop Beckles instituted the native Church pastorate: its constitution is identical with that of the Episcopalians, whose ecclesiastical functions it has taken over. According to the last census-returns, Sá Leone contains 18,660 Episcopalians; 17,093 Wesleyans and Methodists of the New Connection; 2,717 Lady Huntingdonians; 388 Baptists, and 369 Catholics. These native Christians keep the Sundays and Church festivals with peculiar zest, and delight in discordant hymns and preaching of the most ferocious kind. The |
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