9. I mention, lastly, as a reason why it is desirable that there should be many land-owners among the negroes what good people will consider and lay to heart: it is best every way for their moral, social, and race development. I cannot conceive of a good man who does not wish the best fortune to all men of every race. I cannot conceive of a good man who would not rejoice to see the negroes more comfortable, intelligent, moral, useful, than they are. I should despise myself to have any other feeling toward any human creature. And let us remember always that in thinking of the providence of God, in his dealings with the negroes in this country, we must never confine our thoughts to those few negroes nor to this small section of the earth. We must think of the unknown millions in Africa and of the destiny of two continents. That the Christianized negroes in this country may realize their providential mission in the world, they have need to be anchored in the soil that supports them. For the Church no less than the State must, in the last analysis, find its resources of men and money in agriculture. The field and not the counting-room is at the basis of society. Africa must largely draw its missionary re-enforcements, generation after generation, from the land-owning negroes of the Southern States of our Union. THE AFRICAN CHURCHES IN AMERICA HAVE said that there are nearly one people of African blood communicants different Churches in this country.* The negro population has been brought largely the influence of religious principle and sentim I have had good opportunity to know the ious characteristics of these people. My old "Aunt Esther," was a Christian, if ever the one in this world. She lived and died in the ment and practice of religion. Her plaintive dies linger in my grateful memory to this My mother has with her now the same co had in 1851. "Aunt Mary" is a "stalwart odist;" the pictures of all her Bishops, Allen's in the center, hang in her room. She ed mightily the first time she listened to my *I might have said more than a million, as follows-thos mated" expressing the judgment of the best informed: 214 African Methodist Episcopal Church..... 112. 300, preaching, in 1858, while yet a student in Emory College. I have seen the negroes in all their religious moods, in their most death-like trances and in their wildest outbreaks of excitement. I have preached to them in town and city and on the plantations. I have been their pastor, have led their class and prayer meetings, conducted their love-feasts, taught them the Catechism. I have married them, baptized their children, and buried their dead. In the reality of religion among them I have the most entire confidence, nor can I ever doubt it while religion is a reality to me. Their notions may be in some things crude, their conceptions of truth realistic, sometimes to a painful, sometimes to a grotesque, degree. They may be more emotional than ethical. They may show many imperfections in their religious development; nevertheless their religion is their most striking and important, their strongest and most formative, characteristic. They are more remarkable here than anywhere else; their religion has had more to do in shaping their better character in this country than any other influence; it will most determine what they are to become in their future development. No man, whatever his personal relations to the subject, who seeks to understand these people, can afford to overlook or undervalue their religious history and character. Whatever the student of their history may believe on the subject of religion in general and of their religion in 1 lar, this is certain-it is most real to them. T God is a reality. So are heaven, hell, and th ment-day. Their Churches are the centers of their so religious life. No man has more influence w following than has the negro pastor. Some "shepherds" may be far from being "patte ensamples to the flock," but they have pow their people. Many of them are men who, devotion, and Christlikeness of spirit, are wo take rank with the confessors and saints of or Church. There is an old man in this from whom the wisest may learn and the may receive new inspiration in their religio Many times he has done me good. David will claim many stars in his crown of rejoici the old days many of the slave preachers we of marked character and religious power. will be their trophies when "the day" rev secrets of all men. Their skill in "exeges "dialectics" was limited, but their power hortation and application was notable.* education is doing its blessed work in ther perfectly, many of them are men of real inte *The following incident is historic. I suppress his name, respect him, and somebody might tease my old colored bro was preaching on the "Fiery Furnace and the Three Heb dren." His history and geography were confused, and chance he got his biblical history mixed up with some mytho power. Some names could be given that are known and honored on both sides of the Atlantic. The hope of the African race in this country is largely in its pulpit. The school-house and the newspaper have not substituted the pulpit, as a throne of spiritual power, in any Christian nation. I do not believe that they ever will. But for this race the pulpit is pre-eminently its teacher. Here they must receive their best counsels and their divinest inspiration. I say its pulpit; I mean this. White preachers have done much and ought to have done more; they can now do much and ought to do a hundred-fold more than they do; but the great work must be done by preachers of the negro race. Tongues and ears were made for each other; in each race both its tongues and its ears have characteristics of their own. No other tongue can speak to the negro's ear like a negro's tongue. All races are so; some missionaries have found this sense he had heard from the " college boys." He gave a most dramatic account of the scene and occasion-they excel in this sort of thing and managed himself and his theme tolerably well till he came to speak of the 'fourth" man whom Nebuchadnezzar saw “walking in the midst of the fire." Whereupon he delivered himself in this wise: "My brutherin, commontators differ as to who this fourth one wus. Some say it wus Moses, some say it wus Isaiah; but my opinion is he ware Jupiter." Yet this same man had power with men in exhortation and power with God in prayer. On questions of sin, repentance, faith in Christ, and religious experience he could touch the conscience till it quivered in agony, and move the heart till it melted with contrition or burst forth into songs of gladness. Moreover, he lived his religion. |