Abolishing Slavery in the British West Indies

Abolishing Slavery in the British West Indies is presented as a major change in the conditions for Christian missionary work. The account states that slavery had been abolished and connects this change with the opening of Jamaica to missionaries, interpreting both as providential developments that removed an obstacle to preaching the gospel. It does not specify when abolition occurred or describe the political process behind it.

Conditions in Jamaica

The account places abolition against a recent background of persecution in Jamaica. It reports that Christian meeting houses had been destroyed, property taken, and disciples imprisoned or killed. It then contrasts those circumstances with the island’s present availability for missionary labor, describing missionaries as having entered a field ready for their work.

Abolition and Its Consequences

The author identifies the end of slavery across the British West Indies as a consequential change for people described as having suffered under the system. The passage does not explain how abolition was secured, name its proponents, or detail its implementation. Instead, it emphasizes a consequence the author considers central: the gospel could now be preached among those who had been oppressed.

Jamaica serves as the immediate example of this new opening. The text links the island’s availability to missionary activity with the broader abolition of slavery in the West Indies, but does not give a separate account of how the change unfolded in Jamaica or how formerly enslaved people experienced it.

Providential Interpretation

The author reads abolition and the opening of Jamaica to missionary work as part of Divine Providence. In this interpretation, political and social changes remove barriers to the worldwide spread of the gospel. The event is thus presented less as a history of legislation or organized resistance than as an instance of circumstances being directed toward a religious purpose.

This reading belongs to the book’s larger argument that history should be understood as a sequence of events whose combined effects serve purposes not necessarily intended by their human participants. The abolition of slavery is named as a consequential opening for missionary work, but the passage does not supply enough detail to assess the specific causes of abolition or the roles of particular actors.