CROWTHER JOURNAL OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

The Scots had begun work in Jamaica as early as 1800, but it was not until 1824 that they really began to build up their staff. Among the pioneers was Hope Masterton Waddell, whose arrival in 1829 coincided with the great years of Church growth in Jamaica. In the middle of those busy years came one of the most momentous events in West Indian history, the abolition of slavery. The slaves expressed their gratitude in terms of their newly found faith. The eve of freedom was spent by the people in their places of worship, to praise the lord for the peaceable termination of their weary slavery, and that night the hospitals were emptied of patients whose ailments were all miraculously cured. The song of Jubilee from every village awoke the next morning’s sun, and soon processions with appropriate banners were seen in all directions moving to the Church. In Africa, before 1838, the Presbyterians had started taking collection for African mission but their plan did not really begin to take shape until the appearance of a book by the well-known British abolitionist Thomas Buxton, entitled The African Slave Trade and its Remedy. Before the appearance of Buxton’s book, none of the Scots in Jamaica had very clear ideas about Africa, nor did they even know the first principles of an African mission. Buxton provided both in his book.

Open Full Text (PDF)