Columbia, Pa. April 16th, 1849.

Frederick Douglass:ーI find in your last two numbers a slight comment on this passage of Scripture, first by M. R. D. then by G. W. "first seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all other things shall be added." They both leave me in the dark, G. W. accuses M. R. D. with charging the church as falling into error. The church must be led astray, if we do not look and read as it is laid down by our Lord's command. The New Testament says Matt. vi. 33, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." I now ask my readers to look at this text for themselves, not by hearsay. It says, "these things," the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. What are these things? Luke xii. 32, gives the answer, not so broad as is supposed. See also Luke xvii. 21; and xiii. 18. Read for yourselves, and see what "these things" of the kingdom are; these are the things we want. They will set the captive free.

Yours in the cause of liberty and open to be instructed.

L. A. W.Williams, Leonard A.

Leonard A. Williams (c. 1815-?) was a minister who went to Liberia in 1851. Born in Maryland, Williams was a clergyman from Columbia, Pennsylvania, who went with a group of about seventy people from Reading to Baltimore to embark for Liberia. They were joined by some thirty more there before leaving for African shores. There, he seems to have discovered a coal deposit. “Letter from Liberia,” Lewistown (Pa.) Gazette, 2 January 1852, p. 2, c. 6; “Emigration to Liberia,” Baltimore Weekly Argus, 10 May 1851, p. 3, c. 1; “Coal Discovered,” New York Commercial Advertiser, 25 November 1859, p. 1, c. 6; 1850 U.S. Census, Columbia, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Thomas Fulller, Journal of a Voyage to Liberia (Baltimore: John D. Toy, 1851), 5; Charles L. Blockson, The Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania (Jacksonville, N.C.: Flame International, Inc., 1981), 88.