 |
| Rev. Dr. Teke John Ekema, Executive President Cameroon Baptist Convention |
Joseph Merrick was born in Port Royal to a Scottish father Richard, and a Jamaican mother, Rosanna Mary Clarke, on August 25, 1818. On October 18,1818, he was baptized at the Anglican Church in Port Royal.
In 1829, BMS commissioned John Clarke to serve the Baptist churches at East Queen Street and Port Royal in Jamaica. While assigned to these churches, Clarke met the Merricks – Richard, the father, Rosanna, the mother, and Joseph and Diana, the children – all of whom started attending the Baptist Church in Port Royal.
Over the years, John Clarke had been a lover of languages. He was proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He spoke French and had some knowledge of Arabic. He was keenly interested in African languages. Coming under Clarke’s influence, Joseph Merrick developed a keen interest in languages and he discovered soon that he had an aptitude for languages. As a child, he learned Latin, French and Spanish. He apprenticed as a printer and progressed well in the trade while continuing his linguistic training. Little did he know that God was preparing him for his future mission.
Soon after John Clarke moved to Jericho in 1834, the Merricks moved to nearby Retirement in the parish of St Thomas in the Vale, where the elder Merrick later gave oversight to a small congregation attached to the Jericho Church. Meanwhile, Diana remained in Port Royal and Joseph, a teenager apprenticed as a printer, went to work in Spanish Town where he was put in charge of a newspaper called The Telegraph, which was published there.
In 1837, Joseph went to Port Royal to visit his dying sister, Diana, who, on her deathbed, pleaded with him to commit his life to the Lord. Diana also gave him her Bible, which Merrick studied and, in the process, came to faith. John Clark of Brown’s Town, the cousin of John Clarke of Jericho, baptised Merrick at Jericho Baptist Church on January 14, 1838 and Merrick preached his first sermon at Guy’s Hill on February 11, 1838.
John Clarke and his wife, Margaret, faced several health challenges while serving in Jericho. Their first two children died in childhood. Clarke also suffered a malaria attack. He barely escaped death and, upon reviving, in 1839, he and his wife and sole surviving child – a daughter – went on furlough, taking refuge first in America and then in England, leaving the Jamaicans – Richard and Joseph Merrick – in charge of the churches that had been under his care.
In 1840, while Clarke was in England waiting for greater improvement in his health, BMS appointed him to visit West Africa to identify a suitable place where BMS could launch a mission to Africa. He set out with Dr George Kinghorn Prince, arriving at the Spanish controlled Santa Isabel on the island of Fernando Po [Bioko, Equatorial Guinea], in 1841.
Meanwhile, Joseph Merrick and his father who had been ordained to the ministry in the Jericho Baptist Church in 1839, joyfully offered leadership to the churches in their charge.
In
1843, Joseph Merrick, resigned from the pastorate in the Jericho Circuit to
travel, with his wife, Elizabeth, on the Baptist Missionary Society/Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society sponsored mission to Africa. Clarke had fulfilled
leadership responsibilities in mobilizing Jamaicans for the mission to Africa
and it was not surprising that Joseph Merrick and several other Jamaica
Baptists decided to share in this mission.
Arriving in Fernando Po[i] in 1843, the Jamaican missionaries commenced their work, but shortly afterward, transferred to the Cameroonian mainland.
In 1844, after landing on the continent, with permission from King William of the Isubu people, Merrick planted a church and established a school in Bimbia on the southwestern Cameroon coast. Merrick set out to learn the local languages. He also established a brick-making machine and a printing press. Later, he used this press to publish his translation of the New Testament into Isubu, for which he had developed a writing system, and in Duala, another major language spoken in Cameroon which Merrick also codified.
In 1849, Merrick became ill and it was decided that, with his wife Elizabeth and his daughter, Rosanna, he would sail to England to seek medical help. After six days into the journey, Merrick died at sea.
Shortly before he died, on the journey from Cameroon to England, Merrick penned the following letter to his mother and sister:
MY
DEAR MOTHER AND SISTER,
It
is uncertain whether I shall reach land. I am so weak, so feeble, a watery
grave may be mine. All is right.
I
commend my dear Elizabeth and Rosanna to your constant attention, and hope you
will love and do all you can for them for me. I cannot write more.
All
my books and private property I leave to my dear Elizabeth; she is to order
them to Jamaica. All my private papers are at Jubilee, and to be sent to
Jamaica to my dear wife.
I
commend my dear wife and child to the care of our Committee and hope they will
remember them in all their cares and troubles. I leave this letter open to be
showed to our Committee or any other friend.
And
now, my dearly beloved wife, the wife of my joys and sorrows, of sickness and
health, I leave, I bequeath thee to Christ thy Saviour; to Christ, too, I
bequeath my beloved Rosanna, and mother and sisters, and all that are near and
dear to me. I can leave them to none more precious, more dear, more faithful,
more covenant keeping.
And
now, dear mother and sister, dear wife and child, and all that are near and
dear in Christ, I commend you to God and his grace, who is able to build you
up, and give you an inheritance among them that are sanctified, Amen.
Yours
ever in Christ Jesus,
Joseph
Merrick
At their meeting in London on January 15, 1850, the BMS Committee approved the following resolution:
That
it is with great regret the Committee record the decease of their missionary
brother the Rev. Joseph Merrick. Of African descent, and educated in the
Society’s schools in Jamaica, where it pleased God to call him by His grace, he
began to preach the gospel of Christ in 1837, and soon after was set apart to
the work of the ministry, as co-pastor with his father, of the church at
Jericho, he entered on mission work in Africa in 1843, where, until his death,
October 22, 1849, while on his passage to England in the hope of recovering his
shattered health, he laboured most diligently in the evangelization of the degraded
Isubus, in whose language he could speak with great readiness and precision.
He
has been called to his reward just as those attainments and labours were
producing fruit unto God in the conversion of some, in the patient attention to
the gospel manifested by many others, and in the translating and printing of
portions of the word of God in a tongue never before written.
While
grieving over the loss which Africa and the Society have sustained, the Committee
express with gratitude to the great Head of the church, their high estimate of
his piety, of the ability and devotedness he has shown in mission service, and
of the uniform and elevated Christian character of all his proceedings.
They
tender to his bereaved wife and fatherless child, and to his aged mother, still
living in Jamaica, their affectionate condolence and sympathy. It is their
prayer that God may comfort and bless them, and likewise raise up many such men
to carry on the missionary work among the heathen.
Rev Dr Charlemagne Nditemeh
It is pleasing to listen to leaders of the Baptist
community in Cameroon as they hail the contribution that Baptists from Jamaica
made to the start of Baptist work in their country. When he was studying in
USA, Charlemagne Nditemeh, who later would become leader of the Cameroon Baptist Convention,
visited Jamaica and was taken to Jericho to see the place from which Joseph Merrick
departed for Cameroon. He was elated.
Let us pray that God will raise up more Joseph Merricks for God’s kingdom work both in Jamaica and on the African continent. When this happens, we all ought to rejoice without ceasing.
_________________
Comments
Post a Comment