Part 4

Moreover,—and I beg you to ponder this also,—you owe a debt of gratitude, in the case of the Freedmen at least,—with whom this Association is chiefly concerned,—that has not yet been discharged. And now, is it imagined that I am speaking of something far-fetched and fanciful? Does any body suppose that I am about to summon you by a visionary and distant appeal? Or, if anyone guess wherein it is claimed that that debt consists, is it supposed that time has made that claim no longer valid? Some may so reflect; I cannot share the feeling, for I cannot so easily forget the days and the months when the scales of our national destiny hung in equipoise, or seemed to vibrate towards the nation’s overthrow. It seems incredible, I know, but such was the fact. We had put forth what appeared to us well-nigh the last resource for the national defense; on every side the prospect was dark; it seemed sometimes as if we should be driven to question whether we were not doomed to overthrow—the heavens black above us, the billows rolling, and the very earth beneath our feet trembling and being moved. For the enemy smote us in the field and the traitor betrayed us at home. And you remember with what unspeakable thankfulness we then saw those who had suffered so much at the nation’s hands coming to our rescue, forgetting their personal wrongs, and fighting for the flag that had hitherto been to them an object of dread. You remember with what eagerness we offered them at last their freedom, lest the enemy should offer it to them before us. Why, what were we not willing to pledge, and to do, for the Freedmen in those days? We felt that they were helping us to save this Republic, and that the balance of power was in their hands; and did we mistake? Does history say that in the excitement we misread the facts? No, the after events proved the correctness of our thought; and it stands written in simple, imperishable lines to-day, that among the saviors of the country, there were none more deserving than those of darker skin, who forgot their wrongs and stood in the breach for you and me.

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And so it comes to pass that, not only in obedience to the command of Christ but by _the threefold consideration_ of _repairing a wrong_, and _paying a debt_, and _averting a danger_, we are called to the continuance and the enlargement of the work of this Association.

I have suggested two lines of action, parallel and coincident; the one educational, and the other strictly religious. I want to say to you now, that the inspiration for those movements must come in large measure from the Christian North; for, if you ask the South to be wholly responsible for her own improvement, then you ask reformation to precede itself, and a disordered and perverse sentiment to be its own awakener and its own corrective. Should you suppose that a nation of Freedmen, after two centuries of bondage, would have the sufficient desire for improvement, not to say the means adequate for its accomplishment? I deem it to be perfectly clear that this Association is right in thinking that one great part of its work is in laying the foundations, and affording the facilities, for increased instruction among the Freedmen. It is undoubted good sense, I take it, to establish here and there a common school, and here and there a normal school, and a moderate number of colleges, to the end that in them, during this formative period of the Freedman’s life, you may train his future teachers,—not attempting to make the way of mental improvement over-easy; not attempting any pampering plan of encouragement; but simply affording opportunity to those who will struggle and practice self-denial. God bless the institutions at Hampton, and Carlisle, and Berea, and Nashville, and Atlanta, and Talladega, and New Orleans, and Tougaloo, and that institution that has the good fortune, sir, to have you for its presiding officer (Howard University). For, do you know it? the former students of those very institutions are to-day teaching one hundred thousand of their own countrymen.

And then the religious work, the saving of souls—what a call for enlargement in that work! for that underlies even the educational work. Every teacher I know is an ardent and an earnest worker for Christ, and all your attempt is to make the way to education, the way to the cross of Christ; but, besides that, there is the preaching of the Gospel, and the gathering of churches, and the opening of Sunday-schools. I used to wonder why you asked us to preach to the Freedmen. Were they not already religious? Were they not gathered in churches? But I came to know the terrible fact that religion among the Freedmen, was not the religion of the understanding mind and the consecrated heart, but, rather, in the olden time, of uninstructed impulse and uncontrollable passion; and to-day the prevailing testimony concerning those old-time churches is, that in them religion is not founded on a regenerate, or even a moral, life.

What a task then, to lift up those millions—more difficult, I sometimes think, than the conversion of the original heathen! And yet it must be done—done for the sake of the souls who else will perish in their sins; done for the sake of this country that we love; done, first and last and always, by thoroughly Christian instrumentalities; and yet done under motives that take hold on the concerns of our national welfare. Therefore, my friends, count all the past progress in this direction only the signal and the token of your future success and triumph. If to-day the doors are opened wide, let us, in the Master’s name, go up and possess this land for Him, and for the future of our united and Christian Republic.

So much for this land. And what shall I say of Africa, that dark continent beyond the seas? I think of Africa, and the longing burns in my soul, that out of the uplifted negroes there may speedily be trained those who shall carry Divine light into the very depths of her darkness. Is not Africa actually reaching out her hands to this Association, and to us who have in our care so many of her children? You say, ‘the last to be enlightened.’ I grant it; but, I assure you, God has a great future for that continent. Who shall say that there, there will not yet be developed a civilization and a manifestation of Christianity, the most bountiful, the most beautiful, of them all?

Ah, my friends, the cry comes to us not merely from Africa! This call for enlargement is wider still; it is from the four quarters of the globe. For the work is all one; and you will find, if you think of it, that the solidarity of the race, the oneness of the kingdom of Christ, is in the appeal that is made through this Association. The considerations of an illimitable future join with those of the present. The new heavens and the new earth await our preparation for their advent. Christ, in His kingly glory, is summoning us to the conflict and the conquest. Let us advance in His name. With unlimited devotion let us give, let us pray, let us work. For once hath God spoken, yea, twice have I heard it, to God belongs the power, even as to Him shall be the glory forever.

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SACRIFICIAL LIVING AND GIVING.

REV. AUGUSTUS F. BEARD, D.D., SYRACUSE, N. Y.

The kingdom of Heaven, in its ways, has many similitudes in the kingdom of nature. The law of the universe is, the giving of the lower for the sake of the higher. The worlds are built on the principle of sacrifice. At the bottom of the scale, we have, for example, lifeless matter. But this is put under contribution to force, and simple matter is organized into systems. And this giving comes under a law; we call it gravitation. Then this in turn comes under contribution to what is called a law of chemical affinity, and matter is diversified, and enters into many combinations in advance of what was. The forces, of which light and heat, electricity and magnetism, are different forms, also expend themselves. Then there is a step up by the contribution of what was, to this end, and we have the first organic process, vegetable life and its forces. The soil under these influences gives vegetable life, giving up a part of itself for a higher end. The vegetable, in turn, gives itself for the animal, and the human soul finds these all in sacrificial contribution to itself, every one giving for that which is higher, to lead up to the highest. Nature is packed through and through with illustrations of this. Thus the worlds are built upon this law. By the law of sacrifice, the lower rises into that which is higher. So Christ taught us it is, and is to be, in the realm of the soul. He taught us by word, by deed, by example, that sacrifice is not only the highest, the most satisfying, the most exhaustive expression of love, but is God’s way for man to reach up to God. It was the climax of this law that found expression in the gift of Christ, and we but follow God’s law in Christ’s way, when we are ready to sacrifice lower good for higher good, to bring into contribution lesser things for greater things. And life rises to its highest when it is sacrificial in its self-abnegations; in its renunciations, when souls are uplifted into heroic sufferings and self denials. In wives for husbands, in husbands for wives, in parents for children, in patriotic soldiers, in Christian philanthropists. Men who incarnate their love in sacrifice rise by their giving. They reach to nobleness upon the “stepping-stone of their dead selves.” They put off earthiness and put on heavenliness. It is God’s law from lowest to highest. That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_. To give is to live.

So we come to the Christian’s highest doctrine. It is that of the cross. We sing “In the cross of Christ we glory.” We accept it as the chief doctrine of our religion. We see the grandest exhibition of it when Christ gave himself for the sake of a greater good than could be if he did not give himself; and we teach that it is the personal reception of this which is _the_ mark of one who has a right to wear the name of Christ. To this doctrine the churches hold. Christians subscribe to it. We stoutly contend for it.

But now for our interpretations of this doctrine. When the exigencies of the world and the demands of a spreading Gospel call for willing hearts, to what degree do we find the principle in cordial and worthy practice? How many are the reasons for self indulgence! How ready to hide out of sight the great central doctrine when appeals come for its practical application! How arrangements are made in churches to cajole out of Christians what they will not give on principle! Who does not know many a church that squeezes out its charities,—if not a good part of its miserable support,—by fairs and festivals, by some wretched subterfuge in which one shall seem to get value received and make no sacrifice, to replenish its exchequer by tricks which appeal to no Christian principle. And how often churches come before the world, which they should be dying to save, as objects themselves of the world’s charities, dying to be saved. That which is ordained to be a dispenser of Christ-like benevolence and to develop the spirit of sacrifice, cannot rise into anything higher if it ignores the _only law by which it can rise_. The call for enlargement is the call for sacrifice. It is a call that religion shall not alone be a theory to be preached, but a life to be manifested.

* * * * * The call for enlargement of Christian work from every portion of the world, is a call to _all_. There appears to be no great lack of Christian men and women to go anywhere, to do anything for Christ. But how shall they go except they be sent? And here comes with emphatic intensiveness the appeal of Providence (and I hope with it may be heard the appeal of the Holy Spirit), that those who are engaged in other departments of life shall not forget _their_ service. Let me say it plainly, what is needed now more than men, is _money_, the consecration of property, the sacrificial life in men who accumulate property. I do not think that there is a more universally unpopular theme to discourse about than money. If we preach about the giving of men, the church weeps and prays, and says “Amen.” But when we preach about the giving of money, how many meet this at least with a mental shrug, and do not love to have the Lord’s days made common and unclean with the money question? That which they have been seeking for all the week should not be dragged in too often on the day set apart for _rest_. But if we pause a moment, we shall remember how full the Bible is of directions about giving, and how much of the Lord’s teaching had reference to a right use of money. The unprofitable servant “dug in the earth and hid his Lord’s money.” Ruskin, I think, somewhere says that we, in the spiritual application of this, say that, of course, this doesn’t mean _money_. It means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. And a very pleasant come-off there is for the most of us in this spiritual application. Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the benefit of our fellow creatures. But we haven’t wit. If we had influence, we would use _that_. But we are without political power. It is true we have a little money; but the parable can’t possibly mean anything so vulgar as money.

And yet it does mean what it says, plain money, good, hard, honest money. We are not to “hide the Lord’s money.” So also the parable of the talents means money, and we are to accept the meaning on its own terms, and not to dodge away under a metaphor.

If one man is richer than others, he has more “talents” to account for; and to use another’s words, “what he has acquired is the measure of what he owes.” Why is one man richer than another; that he may higher arch his own gates, pave better his own threshold, enrich more gorgeously his own chambers with all manner of costliness? No doubt, as a steward he may rejoice in his stewardship, but do we remember in just what catalogue inspiration places covetousness? Has any Christian a right to live for self, to cling to riches for self-aggrandizement, to consume riches upon his own lusts or set at naught the infinite urgency _of the world’s_ wants? No, friends. There is a kind of justice in a certain thought of communism. God’s law of life is a law of service. No man has a right under Christ’s law of life to heap up riches in order to lord it over men, only to serve them. Ye have heard, said Christ, how, among the Gentiles, they that will be great exercise authority; they use their strength to exact from others, but it shall not be so among you. He that will be great among you, let him serve others, and be ye ministers even as Christ came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And no one has a right to hoard for self-aggrandizement, or to use wealth to exact from others, and communism with all its wrongs has a truth here, but when those who have, use to bless those who have not, then that is the way of Christ. When causes like this before us call for enlargement, there is money enough which should be in the Lord’s treasury. It is there. It is the Lord’s. He gave the quickness of apprehension, the clearness of judgment, the strength of will which secures it.

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WORKING OUT THE EQUATION.

DISTRICT SECRETARY POWELL.

It is the dictate of economy that we push the Southern work of this Association. It is cheaper to fight ignorance and crime with Christian education, than to fight their certain outcome with military and police force. It is vastly cheaper to settle the bills for the services of the Christian teacher now, than to meet the settlement of accumulated wrongs in the outbreak of a war or rebellion by and by. And this is a kind of settlement that must be met. There is in the universe a law of recompense; God in the government of the world is always working out equations. He may require centuries to bring about the result; if so, he takes them. Men are not far-sighted enough to see the outcome. The wicked grow bold and defiant and boastful because of punishment delayed, while the righteous for the same reason are led to cry out, “How long, oh Lord! how long shall wickedness be allowed to go unrebuked?” but all the while the law of recompense is filling out the equation. The eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth principle is rolling up the answer. Only give it time, and right shall have triumphant, though it may be terrible, vindication. In the case of individuals, the working of this law is not so evident, because retribution follows them beyond the grave, but in the case of nations, since they have no other life than in this world, settlement must take place here; and it never fails. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generations, and there is no escaping the visitations.

I might appeal to the history of nations, the record of whose career has been completed, in illustration of this, but a pertinent illustration can be found nearer home, even in our own country. This nation cherished and protected by law the institution of slavery. With an open Bible in the land, with Protestant Christianity in the ascendancy, with the light of a free Gospel shining upon all questions of morals, with the sentiment of enlightened Christendom smiting heavily the iniquity of the sin; nay, with a constitution for its government, a preamble which declared that all men were created free and equal; right in the face of all this, and despite all this, the giant iniquity and monstrous contradiction was fostered and protected by the law of the land. But the equation was working out. The day of reckoning at length came, and, in the settlement, justice exacted full payment.

In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln expressed the sentiment, that, if it were God’s will for the war to continue “till the wealth piled up by two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil of the bondmen be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be repaid by another drawn by the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so must it still be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” This sentiment was prophetic, and ere the war ended the prophecy had been more than realized by literal fulfillment. Just see how it was fulfilled. Henry Clay once said that taking the slaves as they were—old and young, sick and disabled—the average value was about five hundred dollars per slave. The money value, at this estimate, of the four and a half million emancipated, would be two billion, two hundred and fifty million dollars. This amount, at ten per cent. interest for thirty years, or one generation, would yield, as value created by slave labor, six billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars, which amount, added to the market value of the slaves, makes the enormous sum of nine billion dollars, as representing the wealth “piled up by the unrequited toil of the bondmen,” and held by the oppressors in utter defiance of justice and right.

Nine billion dollars! Can it be that amount was sunk in the war? The answer is yes, and at least six hundred and fifty million dollars more! I take the figures from a responsible source, and they are these: To put down the rebellion it cost the North four billion seven hundred million dollars. To sustain the rebellion it cost the South two billion seven hundred million dollars; add now to this the market value of the slaves emancipated, two billion two hundred and fifty million dollars, and we have, as the total, nine billion six hundred and fifty million dollars, which this nation spent in order to rid itself of the curse of slavery. That was the equation in dollars. As to the equation in blood, justice was even more severe in the exaction. Every drop of blood drawn by the lash, it is no exaggeration to say, exacted for its canceling, not a drop merely, but a stream. A million graves moistened by the blood of those who fell on the field of battle, to say nothing of the blood that ran from the bodies of the wounded millions who survived, gave fearful emphasis to the divine equation. The wealth piled up by the bondmen’s unrequited toil was sunk, and much more in addition; the blood drawn by the lash was more than canceled by the blood drawn by the sword, and still, even in the presence of these awful facts, we are compelled to say, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

It would have been vastly cheaper, we can now see, for this nation to have paid every dollar of the money valuation of the slaves, and set them free before the war; it would have been better still had the iniquity been stamped out at the very formation of the Government, and this because right demanded it. But unfortunately, the standard of our national legislation has been expediency, not right, and under this cover slavery unwisely admitted within the defenses of our constitution, has proved to be the Trojan horse whence has issued so large a part of our national woes. And now, shall we heed the lesson this dearly bought experience teaches? The negro problem is by no means yet solved. There are questions pertaining to his social and political rights not yet answered. Let this nation try to answer them on any other ground than a full recognition of the negro’s rights as a man, and it will again come into controversy with Jehovah, and again be called sooner or later to pay the penalty of disobedience, dollar for dollar, blood for blood, over and over and over again. It pays for the nation to do right every time, and it does not pay for it to do anything else. Having made these people free, justice and self-interest say “educate them,” and it will prove as a matter of mere economy, far cheaper to do this now than to meet the bills that by and by must be paid in blood and money when God shall take the matter in hand to fill out the equation.

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THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D.D.,

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.

* * * * We note with pleasure the growing interest in our schools, and approval of them, by the best people of the South and the public men of the North; the recent erection of a fine building for Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas; the munificent gift of $150,000 by Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, to be expended in putting up additional buildings, greatly needed for institutions which have outgrown their present accommodations; the recent acceptance by Christian workers of high standing and rare fitness, of positions in our Southern field; the successful development of industrial methods in many of our best schools, notably at Hampton, Tougaloo, and Memphis; the influence of our institutions on the colored people, as seen in their interest in education, their willingness to endure self-denial as teachers, their hopeful, dispassionate and sensible utterances on their prospects and duties, and their courageous self-support; and once again, and most of all, do we note rejoicingly the prevailing religious sentiment that fills our schools and the colored communities which they reach, with its deep, quiet, but melodious undertone. Surely there is reason, in all these considerations, for profound thankfulness to God.