Author
James B. Taylor
James B. Taylor was a nineteenth-century Baptist minister and historian whose biographical works documented the lives of pioneering American missionaries, particularly Luther Rice and Lott Cary, thereby preserving crucial records of early Baptist missionary enterprise and African American religious leadership. Through his memoirs and biographical writings, Taylor contributed significantly to Baptist historiography during a period of denominational expansion and theological development in the antebellum and postbellum United States. His scholarly attention to missionary figures reflected the broader nineteenth-century Baptist commitment to evangelicalism and the complex intersections of American religious identity with questions of race and colonization.
From Biography of Elder Lott Cary, Late Missionary to Africa
p. 9 That God is no respecter of persons, is a truth as well established, as it is grateful to the generous mind. No complexion or condition is thrown beyond the pale of divine benevolence, for in Christ Jesus "there is neither Greek, nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.'' While the rich*s of redeeming love may be shared alike by all, there is also a very equitable distribution of intellectual endowments among all classes of men. Like the pure gold buried amidst baser metals, the mind, vigorous in itself, may be allowed by him who gives it existence to remain undeveloped and unimproved — or, under most unfavorable circumstances, he may wake to action, energics which for a time have lain dormant, and exhibit to an ad p. 10 miring world, the spectacle of intellectual and moral greatness, unaccompanied by the tinsel of wealth, or the polish of etlucation.…
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Works in the Library 2
Biography of Elder Lott Cary, Late Missionary to Africa 1837
The life of Lott Cary, who bought his freedom in Richmond, became a Baptist preacher, and in 1821 went as a missionary to Liberia, where he served as pastor and colonial leader until his death.
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Memoir of Rev. Luther Rice, One of the First American Missionaries to the East 1840
The life of Luther Rice, who sailed for India with Adoniram Judson, became a Baptist on the voyage, and came home to rally American Baptists behind foreign missions and Columbian College.
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