Though it had been the consistent dream of Bishop Payne, and his steady labor to realize it, that Liberia should develop its own pastors,—that the tree should bear its own appropriate fruit,—it was not until negro volunteers in America came forward that he could dare to feel that the tree was ready for the fruit-bearing so needful to its life. In 1853, the staff of negro clergy was greatly strengthened by the coming of the Rev. Alexander Crummell, whose father was a native of the Gold Coast. The Republic soon established the Liberian College, of which Dr. Crummell was a distinguished professor. Throughout its history, College and Church have been closely associated in developing the Republic. Already, through the schools which had gradually grown in number as in attendance, the boys and girls had been preparing to take their places in the College, and as teachers and guides and pastors of their people. The coming of Stokes and Crummell and Pinckney and their Christian wives, furnished models in racial kind to both boys and girls, though Mrs. Thompson, widow of the first lay-reader, had long been a wholesome example. Speedily volunteers offered; and, in the Report of 1853, news was sent home of the admission of two candidates for Holy Orders from among the natives—Ku Sia, who, upon baptism, had received the name, Clement F. Jones; and Mu Su, renamed John Musu Minor. These men, ordained on Easter, April 16th, 1853, were the first products of the Liberian Church Schools. Following these ordinations, a stream of native applicants, small indeed as was natural, flowed steadily into the ordained ministry of the Church. * * * * * But evidently the negro colonists of Liberia had not yet proved their ability to organize and maintain an independent native Church. This was natural enough, for the colonists were poor and the Republic itself had not yet learned how to turn its natural resources to profitable account. Hence the Church in Liberia had to depend almost entirely on financial help from the American Church. In 1855, the Board of Missions in New York, through its Foreign Committee, took the following action, which changed the entire status of the work in Liberia. “_Resolved_: That the whole extent of the American Colonial Settlements in Western Africa, including the State of Liberia and the colony of Cape Palmas, is considered as a missionary station occupied by this Committee.” From this time on, the Mission of the Church was no longer the Cape Palmas Colony and its near neighborhood, but was co-terminous with the whole Province of Liberia.