The Oxford Methodists : $b Memoirs of the Rev. Messrs. Clayton, Ingham, Gambold, Hervey, and Broughton, with biographical notices of othersTyerman, L. (Luke)
History
The Oxford Methodists : $b Memoirs of the Rev. Messrs. Clayton, Ingham, Gambold, Hervey, and Broughton, with biographical notices of others
“P.S.—I have looked over several of the letters with great
pleasure, and heartily thank you for sending them. Glory be to
Him, who causes His gospel to triumph, and magnifies the riches
of His grace in getting Himself the victory, by soldiers, who,
out of weakness, are made strong. If Christ raise to Himself
a seed among the Negroes and Hottentots, I will honour them
beyond all the politest nations upon earth that obey not His
glorious gospel.”[102]
This Missionary Society, of which Ingham was one of the chief members,
though still in its infancy, had already accomplished a most marvellous
and blessed work. Its origin was remarkable. In 1731, Count Zinzendorf
visited Copenhagen, for the purpose of being present at the coronation
of Christian VI., king of Denmark. Whilst there, some of the count’s
servants became acquainted with a negro, from the island of St. Thomas,
in the West Indies. The negro told them of the ardent desire of many
of the slaves in that island to be taught the way of salvation; but
added, that their labours were so incessant that they had no leisure for
religious instruction; and that the only way to reach them was for the
missionary himself to become a slave, and to teach them during their
daily toils. This was related to the Brethren of Herrnhut; and the result
was, two young men, Leonard Dover and Tobias Leupold publicly offered
to go to St. Thomas’s, and even to _sell themselves as slaves_, if they
could find no other way of preaching to the negroes. Thus began the
Moravian missions to the heathen; and, within ten years, at the time
when Ingham proposed Doddridge as a corresponding member of the Society
for the Furtherance of the Gospel, missionaries had been sent to St.
Thomas’s, to St. Croix, to Greenland, to Surinam, to the Rio de Berbice,
to several Indian tribes in North America, to the negroes in South
Carolina, to Lapland, to Tartary, to Algiers, to Guinea, to the Cape of
Good Hope, and to Ceylon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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