J. D. Ellis, 2 De Crespigny Terrace, Denmark Hill, [London], to [Joseph Angus, Baptist Mission House, London], 6 July 1842.

J. D. Ellis

1 De Crespigny Terrace

Denmark Hill,

6th July 1842.

My dear Brother.

   As I am not well enough to venture in town at the committee meeting to morrow, on the other side I have given an extract of a letter from Arracan, which may be suitable for the Missionary Herald, if you will kindly put it into the hands of the Editor,

                           obliging Yours affecty

                                       Jno. D. Ellis

Attached to Ellis’s letter is the following extract (in Ellis’s hand):

Extract of a letter from Rev. W. C. Comstock, American Baptist Missionary, dated Ramree, Arracan, 15th April, 1842. 

   “The work of the Lord still goes on powerfully among the Karens. Brother Abbot of Sandoway, Arracan in a month’s tour among them last cold season baptized 278 and I think the whole number he has baptized in the two years that he has been in Arracan must be about 500. Missionaries are still shut out from Burmah, and we know not when that empire will be opened to them again. The word of God is not, however, bound; but is having free course there especially among the Karens.”  To this, by way of explanation, we may add that the Karens are numerous interesting hill tribes, not Buddhists, (the general form of Burmese idolatry) who are thickly scattered over the highlands of Burmah, while many are found in Yehandwin and a few in Arracan, which two last mentioned are provinces on the sea coast of Burmah, ceded by the Burmese government to the East India Company at the close of the last war with that country, and in which provinces is now located the American Baptist Mission to the Burmese, as its agents have long been prevented residing in Burmah proper.

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 238-39 (annotated version); also MAW, Box 39 (BMS 846), John Rylands University Library of Manchester. W. C. Comstock (1809-1844) was an American Baptist missionary to Burma, 1835-1844.