We regret that statistics on Liberia are not as full as desirable; but we have found enough to convince us that the cause of religion, education, and republican government are in safe hands, and on a sure foundation.  There are now more than three thousand and eighteen hundred children, seven hundred of whom are natives;[111] and in the day-schools are gathered about two thousand bright and promising pupils.

Many noble soldiers of the cross have fallen on this field, where a desperate battle has been waged between darkness and light, heathenism and religion, the wooden gods of men and the only true God who made heaven and earth.  Many have been mortally touched by the poisonous breath of African fever, and, like the sainted Gilbert Haven, have staggered back to home and friends to die.  Few of the white teachers have been able to remain on the field.  During the first thirty years of missionary effort in the field, the mortality among the white missionaries was terrible.  Up to 1850 the Episcopal Church had employed twenty white teachers, but only three of them were left.  The rest died, or were driven home by the climate.  Of nineteen missionaries sent out by the Presbyterian Church up to 1850, nine died, seven returned home, and but three remained.  The Methodist Church sent out thirteen white teachers:  six died, six returned home, and but one remained.  Among the colored missionaries the mortality was reduced to a minimum.  Out of thirty-one in the employ of the Methodist Church, only seven died natural deaths, and fourteen remained in the service.  On this subject of mortality, Bishop Payne says,—­

“It is now very generally admitted, that Africa must be evangelized chiefly by her own children.  It should be our object to prepare them, so far as we may, for their great work.  And since colonists afford the most advanced material for raising up the needed instruments, it becomes us, in wise co-operation with Providence, to direct our efforts in the most judicious manner to them.  To do this, the most important points should be occupied, to become in due time radiating centres of Christian influence to colonists and natives."[112]

In thirty-three years Liberia gained wonderfully in population, and, at the breaking-out of the Rebellion in the United States, had about a hundred thousand souls, besides the three hundred thousand natives in the vast territory over which her government is recognized.  Business of every kind has grown up.  The laws are wholesome; the law-makers intelligent and upright; the army and navy are creditable, and the republic is in every sense a grand success.  Mr. Wilson says,—­