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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Baptist Mission in Jamaica. Fifty years ago, February gone, the first Baptist Missionary set his foot on these shores; and who, in looking back upon these years, has not felt that there is a force of reason and propriety in observing this fiftieth year as a year of jubilee? I. Commencement of the work by Slack Men from America.?How remarkable the manner in which the Baptist mission in Jamaica was begun! Christian missionaries from England were not the first to commence the work. When John Rowe landed in 1814, George Liele, and George Lewis, and George Gibbs, and Moses Baker? men of your own colour, and your own descent?black men, who had receivedthe gospel in America?had already been engaged in preaching it; and God had given many seals to their ministry and souls for their hire. These good and holy men were to the Baptist Mission what John the Baptist was to the Mission of Christ?they were the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. And, accordingly, when the first Baptist Missionaries arrived they found a people already prepared to hail their coming, to welcome their message, and to co-operate with them in their ministry. II. Eminent gifts of the Fathers and Founders of the Mission.?How eminently gifted the men whom God raised up as the fathers and founders of the Baptist churches of this land! Never, perhaps, were delicate tact and prudentmanagement, combined with uncompromising fidelity and dauntless courage, in greater demand, than in the commencement of the work of God in this very town. 1. John Rowe.?Yet, how singularly did these qualities unite in your first missionary pastor, John Rowe, so as at length to put his enemies to silence, and to obtain a legal licence for the publi...