(3.) The history of the Christian Church in Guiana may yet be written. What he has read and heard leads the writer of this to think that, as to the British part of the country, it is not clearly remembered, or is sadly overlooked that John Wray first brought the Gospel to the negroes then in slavery. His published life will be a standing testimony —(a) to this; (b) a testimony also favourable to the efficiency of Christian Churches, though free from State connection or from State subsidies; (c) a like testimony to the fact that, be Independency or Congregationalism right or wrong, John Wray, himself an Independent, though a most catholicminded man and ever ready to welcome and work with Christians of other ecclesiastical forms, proceeded on the Congregational plan in forming the churches with which he had to do.*

(4.) The abandonment of estates has been laid at the door of mission work and of slave emancipation. Readers of Wray's life will find mention of many estates abandoned long before a missionary crossed them or emancipation was purchased; and of others that afterwards came to be abandoned through the cruel greed of speculators.

(5.) Followers of Christ in the past are often judged as lacking in devotion to the interests of humanity. Wray's life will add to the evidence showing how wrong this judgment is; that, as there were missionaries to leper asylums

* These, it may be remarked, have stood firm, notwithstanding the presence of other Christian communities that depend more or less upon the Colony chest. They once led the way in education and in the efficiency of schools, and it is to be hoped they will be enabled in the midst of great rivalries and temptations still, as free Christian churches, so to maintain their position and usefulness that, following the example of several West India islands, the Colony may be led to see it right and best that all Christian communities should be maintained by the free-will offerings of their respective members. For a while, the Congregational Union of England and Wales is at equal charges with the London Missionary Society in rendering some help to their brethren in Guiana. (See Appendix B.)

long before a Father Damien saw the light, so there was a patient, persevering "Enthusiasm of Humanity" before "Ecce Homo" was written, and a young lady willing to enter a London hospital to qualify as nurse that she might go to help the neglected and teach the ignorant in a distant land before an ever-estimable Florence Nightingale appeared.

(6.) Present day readers of Guiana history and missions need the explanation of John Wray's position and procedure. at the important crisis in both history and missions, of 1823, which the memoir affords.

(7.) It is right and dutiful, profitable and safe, for communities as well as individuals to consider their origin and history, as Israel was called to "remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee, &c." (Deut. viii.); to confess, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father, &c." (Deut. xxvi.); to "look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, &c." (Isa. li.) In all which the Memoir will be a help to the churches and people of British Guiana, neither small nor uninteresting.

(8.) Slave trade and slavery are not yet ended. Oceans and continents have, thank God, within a few decades been swept clear of their curse and cruelty; but lands and seas remain in which they are still rife and ruinous; and the struggle for their extirpation still goes forward amid a thousand difficulties and discouragements. To weary toilers and in the use of lawful means, what cheer is to be drawn from memoirs such as those of men eminent in the warfare— William Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton! nor less, perhaps, from those of men of lower degree, or who were not so directly at work upon these great evils, such as John Wray!

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH TO DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND.

DECEMBER, 1779-DECEMBER, 1807.

Birth and Family-Moral and Religious Condition of Holderness— Efforts of Hull Christians-Reaction between Foreign and Home Missions-Wray's Conversion and Church Relation-He Studies at Gosport-National Affairs-Efforts to Abolish Slave-Trade—Letter from Demerara-Hermanus Hilbertus Post, Esq.-Wray appointed Missionary-His Character and Anxieties-Rebecca Ashford-His Departure: Her Character and Enterprise.

VERY few are the particulars now known of the birth and earlier years of John Wray, even as reliable testimony to these particulars is but scanty and scattered.

That he was born at South Skirlaugh, near Hull, December, 1779, is the inscription on his tomb in lands far off; and that he was baptized at St. Augustine's, the parish church, we read, by the kind courtesy of the vicar, in its register, where the record simply is, "John, son of Robert Reay,* baptized 12th January, 1780." A brother was subsequently born and named Joseph, but as we find no second entry in the parish register, and as the Register of Missionaries of the London Missionary Society gives John as, "born in 1780, at Preston, Yorkshire" (slightly incorrect, it will be perceived, in two particulars), it seems likely

A blunder of clerk or sexton, whose writing the entry seems to be. Reay, Rea, Ray, and Wreay, are all surnames; but Wray is very common in the Hull neighbourhood.

that the household had quitted Skirlaugh and settled at Preston, about six miles south of their former home, and somewhat nearer Hull.

But the gain of a brother proved the loss of a mother, she dying at the time. "You inquire," writes Mrs. Tuckett, "about my father's relatives. He had only one brother; his mother died when this brother was born. His father and brother both died before my sister and I came to England to go to school. I know of no other relative."

As little do we know of John's training or of any intention with respect to future employment. An impression that the family was not one of great means or of high social position grows upon us as we read. Fond of nursery and garden work, his native neighbourhood would certainly furnish full opportunity of acquiring and cultivating the taste. "My father was especially fond of his garden," writes the same daughter, "and often in the early morning before the sun was hot, he was in his garden helping and directing the gardener; he planted fruit trees of all kinds; his garden was his only recreation."

A

More important, however, is the moral and religious atmosphere by which he would be surrounded, and whatever this was in the home, out of doors, if similar to much of Holderness at that time, it would be noxious enough. few pages in our possession, headed "Brief Account of the Religious and Moral State of Holderness," and printed about 1821, thus describes the condition of things as they were less than twenty-five years previously:

"Though this retired part of Yorkshire had once the happiness to enjoy the faithful labours of some of those ministers who were ejected by the Act of Uniformity, yet, since that period, it had fallen into a notorious disregard of religious institutions. A moral barbarism had overspread the whole region. The Sabbath openly disregarded; profane swearing; intoxication; ribaldry in discourse; scoffing at everything in the form of piety; ignorance

of God, and entire destitution of the knowledge of Christ, were sufficient indications of the affecting state of the people.

"The sight of this moral waste, just bordering upon a place so highly favoured as Hull, excited the strongest feelings of concern in the minds of the followers of Christ in that town. The sense which they entertained of its deep destitution, when contrasted with Hull, may be best understood by a quaint but forcible expression uttered by a good man about thirty years ago. It was with feelings of hopeless lamentation that, on meeting a pious friend one day, he exclaimed, 'Satan still keeps guard upon the North Bridge.' Up to that bridge the Gospel had indeed shed its light; beyond it, all was deep and frightful darkness, with scarcely a hope that it would be dispelled for ages. The first attempts of the Methodists were met by such determined opposition, that, courageous and persevering as they are, they were driven from the field."

Hull itself was indeed favoured with some truly devoted men and ministers both in the Establishment and out of it; men not likely to rest content in presence of such a gloom on their borders and of such a sentry on their bridge; or to cease attempts at passing or dislodging the one and dispersing the other. The influence of its eminent philanthropist too, himself indeed absent from his native town, but about to issue his long prayed-over and carefully prepared "Practical View of Christianity," would be all on their side; and it seems that the forces of life and light in the town began, at that time, to carry the entire position of this region of darkness and death.

Among these, and apparently among the foremost, were the Rev. George Lambert, a man eminent in evangelic labours, and some members of the congregation to which he ministered in Fish Street Chapel; and the "Brief Account" already quoted goes on to speak more particularly of the work undertaken by them in eighteen or twenty Holderness villages; concluding its few but interesting details with the following, among other notes of progress :—