Part 6

Other denominations, too, are looking largely to the schools of the Association for ministers. And England, in her missions for Africa, naturally turns to the Freedmen of America for missionaries.

Your Committee would call the attention of the churches to the growing prominence of the religious question at the South, and would most earnestly advise the patrons of this Association to make fit provision and endowment for the permanent work of educating men for the ministry.

WM. J. TUCKER, _Chairman_.

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OUR DISADVANTAGES AND ADVANTAGES.

FIELD SUP’T J. E. ROY, D.D.

Our church work at the South has its disadvantages, its advantages, its obligations, its encouragements.

I.—ITS DISADVANTAGES.

1. One is that our church system is entirely unknown among the Freedmen. It is a singular fact that they should know absolutely nothing of the churches which had led in the anti-slavery reform, and which, through this Association, are now, as is confessed on all hands, doing more for the lifting up of these lowly poor than any other. The occasion of this ignorance is at hand. The doctrine of equality in Christ’s house, as based on his own words—“All ye are brethren”—precluded the setting up of this order of church life among a people, where master and slave should vote, side by side, upon all church business. I know that it will be said at once that the Baptists, with their congregational polity, did prevail all over the South. But theirs was, after all, not a Christian democracy, but an aristocracy of the white members. All right of voting was denied the colored. Even those two much-praised ancient Congregational churches at the South, the Circular in Charleston, and the Dorchester in Liberty County, Georgia, which took root in that soil, did so only by denying suffrage to the colored members. When one of the pastors of the latter, with the Bible in one hand and a whip in the other, drove his brethren as his slaves to their tasks, if that had been a genuine Congregational church, an appeal would have been taken to the brotherhood for an application of that Scripture: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.” One of the colored members of that church, now a worthy deacon, told me this bit of experience. His master, a fellow church member, had found him with a Webster’s spelling book in hand, trying to learn to read. For this crime he was tied down, with his face to the ground, his hands and feet made fast to four stakes, and then upon his bare back he received such a flagellation that, under the torture, he cried out: “Oh, massa, do stop, and I’ll never again look into a book as long as I live.” With a fine turn he said to me, “I GRADULATED THEN.” Now, if that brother had had the right of telling that trespass to the church, and if all the members had had the privilege of voting upon the case, that would have been a piece of pure Congregationalism. Evidently such a church system could not obtain in a slaveholding community. So it is entirely unknown in that region; and this fact becomes a disadvantage in introducing it now.

2. Another disadvantage is that the Freedmen are so largely wedded to other denominations. It is popular to belong to the church. The mass, although they may not be members, will call themselves either Baptists or Methodists. One of them on being asked, “Are you a Christian?” responded: “No, Sah, I’se a Baptist.” The spectacular element of immersion afforded by this church order, and the scope given by the other to the emotional nature, have proven a great attraction to these rude and simple souls. Then it is easy for their zeal to rise into sectarianism and superstition, bitter and hostile, such as leads them to denounce the new church as having no religion, because it has no dreams and visions, no physical contortions—such as lead them to sneer at our members as only “Bible Christians,” while they have, instead, direct manifestations of the Spirit. It is a surprising revelation to our teachers and preachers who go to the South with nothing but love in their hearts, and their hands full of the best things they could take, to find such heat of sectarian opposition as soon as it is proposed to set up the church life, which represents the educational effort that is so highly prized.

3. Another disadvantage for the time in setting up our churches, is the standard of intelligence and of morality to which we seek to bring them. The colored man who confessed that he had broken every one of the commandments, but blessed God that he had kept his religion, stood in part, at least, for a good many of his people. It is hard for us who come in contact with that state of things to accept the facts. Even then we would not wish to take the risk of making them public, only so far as is sustained by their own newspapers and official reports. The saddest part of it is the impropriety of the leaders, ministers, and official members. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch. Each, in self-protection, condones the other’s guilt. We know that the system of slaveholding is largely responsible for this divorce of religion from morality. But the fact, as we have to confront it, is all the same. If you propose to set up a church that shall be clean and be kept clean, in pulpit and pew, you have undertaken a difficult task. The gravity of depravity is against you.

II. ITS ADVANTAGES.

1. One is that our church system had not previously prevailed at the South, to become modified by the influences of slaveholding, and identified with it in the associations of the colored people. As individuals become intelligent enough to rise above the prevailing sectarianism; as they learn the anti-slavery history of our churches; and as they learn that the nature of our polity prevented it from coming South in the days of slavery, they turn to the Puritan way with avidity. It is to them a new discovery of friends, who had stood by them when they knew it not. Indeed, these people, whose ancestors were landed upon these shores the same year the Pilgrims came, appear to be the Yankees of the South. They fall naturally into the observance of Thanksgiving, and on that day they love to hear over and over the story of the Pilgrims and Puritans, their exile, their hardships, their poverty, their simplicity of life, their struggle for liberty. They soon learn that the Puritan ideas have taken possession of the North, are now penetrating the South, and are rising to a supremacy over the nation. As they advance in understanding they take in these ideas; and, more and more, will they be disposed to seek the church form which represents them.

2. Another advantage is the adaptation of this church system as an educating process for the colored people. Any one who considers the untutored quality of the communities in which the Apostles planted their self-governing churches, must give up the notion that they were New England people. Indeed, as one becomes acquainted with the qualities of mind and elements of character in these sable Christians, he can see that the Epistles of the New Testament were addressed to much the same sort of people. These can govern themselves as well as those. And, coming forth from the house of bondage, much more do they desire their largest liberty in Christ Jesus. The working of this autonomy of the churches is to them an educating process. It puts responsibility upon them. They must study its principles in order to exercise its function. Even such men as Senators Lamar, and Hampton, and Hendricks, in the _North American_, have argued that the elective franchise is not only the means of defense, but of education, among these new-made citizens. Precisely so does it work in church relations. Some of us, who have observed the process, have been surprised and delighted to see with what decorum and parliamentary skill they will handle a deliberative assembly. As, in the days of bondage, the only outlet for their native talent was the pulpit; and as their church was about their only arena for organic efficiency, so now they love most of all to handle their church affairs. And so does their self-governing fellowship become a means of education.

3. Another advantage comes from our preliminary educational work. At the first, it was thought by some that the Association was too tardy in advancing the church process. Soon it was learned that the right policy had been pursued in developing the educational interest, which was itself really missionary work, and which was the necessary preparation for a more organic way of Gospel propagandism. In connection with all our high schools and colleges, churches have been organized. These have been immediate sources of power and influence. They have also served as models and stimulus for others that have grown up around them. In almost every case our churches have been an outgrowth from these educational centres, or have been developed by the teachers and preachers who have been trained in them. Thus far, in the main, we have been preparing our machinery. I remember that our Elgin Watch Company spent its first two and a half years in erecting the factory and in manufacturing its own machinery. Now it is in competition even with London and Switzerland for the trade of Europe. We have been building up our Elgins—the Fisk, the Howard, the Straight, Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, and Berea. They are furnishing us their approved mechanism. This correlation of the school work to the church work is after the wisdom of all successful missionary enterprise in foreign lands. In India the American Board tried the experiment of dispensing with the school process, only to put the mission back for years.

4. Another advantage is that by their slower growth, we can the more completely assimilate and mold the material of our churches. Drawn together by affinities of character, the more readily do they receive instruction and take over the ideas and the style of our system; the more certainly can discipline be maintained, purity and sobriety secured. Heterogeneous masses would swamp church order. At one of our Conferences, some of the brethren were bemoaning the slow growth of our churches. A Baptist minister being present, turned the tide by asserting that, for the present, there were advantages in that state of things, and that his denomination had suffered somewhat from the embarrassment of numbers. He said that when as a farmer’s boy he stood at the tail end of a steam thresher for shoving away the straw, if left alone, he found himself unable to keep up, and was soon covered down with the accumulation. So they were sometimes bothered in handling their great numbers in the way of discipline, and of effort at moral elevation.

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THE NEED AND THE OPPORTUNITY.

PROF. WM. J. TUCKER, D. D., ANDOVER, MASS.

In the midst of the struggle and the difficulties attending work among the Freedmen, there has been one point about which we have allowed our minds to be at rest. As we have been vexed with the problems of education and with the problems of citizenship, we have said to ourselves, one thing is sure: the colored race is religious. And so we have allowed the religious question to remain comparatively in abeyance; we have said, this can wait; we have work in hand which we must attend to; by and by we will look after this.

But in that strange haste with which God has been forcing questions upon the American people as touching the Freedmen, we have come, sooner than we thought, upon the religious question at the South. I think we have made a mistake in that we have not given it more prominence heretofore. I think we shall make a grievous mistake if we do not carefully look this subject in the face now.

In what sense is it true that the colored race is religious? How far does the religion of the negro of the South fit him for the essential work which his race has now before it? His religion, it seems to me, has been peculiarly, by God’s providence, the religion of the slave, and now the religion demanded is the religion of the man. The most beautiful illustration in all history has been given us by the negro, of the words of Scripture touching God’s gift to his people: “He giveth songs in the night.” The great, happy heart of that people has been singing through all these dark years, while the great heart of the North has been heavy in its shame. The negro of the South has been living for half the century in another world than this. It his been literally true—“his citizenship was in Heaven.” He had no citizenship anywhere else. Now he is a citizen of this world, and the religion that fits a citizen of this world must be his, or he will fail religiously in the problem which is now working out in this country.

I think the question is very much, to-day, with reference to the Freedmen of the South, as it would be if the Christian of the second century could have been taken out from his persecution, from his sense of that other world, from his prayer for the speedy coming of Christ, and plunged into the hard, practical uses of this nineteenth century. We have taken the Freedman out of his Heaven where he was living with something of joy; we have brought him before the great duties of this world and this century. How is his religion fitting him for the change? I have said that his religion has been a religion of joy, fitting him to bear, fitting him to endure; but life has become something more serious than suffering—life has become to him a practical work. What De Tocqueville said to Charles Sumner in his youth, may be said to the young Freedman to-day: “Life is neither a pain nor a pleasure, but a most serious business, to be taken up with courage, to be laid down, if need be, in self-sacrifice.” The nation has made a change necessary in the type of his religion. He must be refitted religiously to the work which attends citizenship, its rights and its duties. How is he fitted for it? If we do not answer this question practically, ten years will show us how he is unfitted for it.

Meanwhile, too, we, as an Association, through our educational work, have been robbing him of his past religion. We have been letting in the light upon his superstitions; we have dissolved his dreams; we have put his Heaven a little farther off—he cannot fly into it so quickly as before; we have let in the strong, hard light of this world. We must give him something. If we simply give him education, even though it be so much of religious education as may be given in the schools, we are doing no more than sowing the seeds of scepticism—as when the Romanists of the old country lose their faith, it were better for them to stay in their faith with its tinge of superstition, than simply to be sceptics. We cannot afford to have this pure, tender, loving, spiritual life, developed during these last years, caught up by the scepticism of this century and hurried on into ruin. We have sceptics enough at the North; we have sceptics enough through the South; the nation is drifting fast enough into that way. Let us keep what religious sense there is in this race trained of God, pure, by making it strong, hard, substantial enough to stand the difficulties and the trials of their present condition.

The question then comes up, Can the Freedman be made a pure, honest, reasoning, intelligent Christian man? Can the type of piety be changed? Still his music if you will; take away something of the glow of his faith; push his Heaven a little further off—can he be made a man fit to live, and act, and do his work, in this our century, and assume the great duties of Christian discipleship here and now? Can he be made sufficiently moral, can he be made sufficiently intelligent, to do practically the work which all Christians must do, with clean hands and with pure hearts?

Well, Mr. President, there have been a great many theories on the matter, and very many men are ready to say, “You can do nothing with the Freedmen at this point.” I think it is the simple office of this Association to fly in the face of the theories of men in this century, to take one race after another, treat it for ten years, and then say to men, “There are your theories; here is the _fact_.” Men have said of the Indian, “He won’t work.” This Association takes men who say that, and quietly shows them the Indian at work. Men have said of the Chinaman, “You cannot change the type of his religion and give him any sense of faith in Christ,” and this Association is quietly showing souls won to the Redeemer. Men used to say, “The negro won’t fight; put him before the eye of his master and he will quail.” The negro saw his master in battle, he never quailed, he fell at his feet only in death.

A friend told me yesterday coming on the cars, that when the question was agitated as to whether a steamship could carry coal enough to cross the Atlantic, one of the scientific men of the day addressing a large audience in New York, made this statement, “If you load a steamship when it shall leave Liverpool with coal sufficient to last over the voyage, as you withdraw the coal, gradually the ship will lighten and lift, and by the time the ship is half over the sea the wheels will be out of the water.” Six days after he made that statement, the first steamer came plowing steadily up the Narrows into New York harbor. Men say of the negro, “He can’t do this, he won’t do that.” Meanwhile, the American Missionary Association is doing its strong work with him, and he is just plowing his way steadily into public notice and disproving everything flung in his face.

There are signs—and some of them very manifest—of the capacity of the Freedmen for great moral strength. Have you read Judge Tourgee’s reference to the fact that when the opportunity was given, after the war, for the negroes to register themselves for marriage—to be married by the laws of the State in wholesale—how eagerly they availed themselves of that opportunity, that they might have the form and reality of marriage, and the stamp of legitimacy upon their children? The negro knows what a home means; he has been wanting it; now he will have in time as clean a home as you or I may have. What do you think I discovered a few days ago in one of the historic towns of New England? A friend looking over the records of that old town, came upon the list of baptisms, and this fact came out: in early Puritan days in a town not twenty-five miles from Boston more children were born out of wedlock than in wedlock; and the Puritan says to the negro, “You don’t know what a home is.” Wait;—give him a chance.

You see how it is with regard to his industries. Men say he is lazy: why does he go to work as soon as he leaves the land which induces laziness? The reports come from Kansas that he is thrifty, that he is putting his hand to the plow, that he is doing the work he is given there to do. Individuals taken as types of the race are declaring their capacity for strong industrial development. You know his record in matters of education; you know he is beginning to make himself, so far as he has the chance anywhere, a power in citizenship. I believe that this question of morality will settle itself, that the negro can at least show, under right training, an average development in the morals of religion.

One question then remains: What is the true way of approach to this religious question of the South? Something has already been done through the strong, patient work, known as the _church work_ of this Association—taking the products of the school, young men and women as trained in the schools, and organizing them into churches, for the churches are merely the outgrowth of the schools. The old churches of the South are not fit to be transferred into the churches of this Association. We are all the weaker for any church that might be allowed to come in in that way. The greater approach—and that which I believe the Association, so soon as it has the means, will endeavor to carry out—is in the larger training of leaders, to meet what will be within ten or twenty years the enormous demand for Christian leadership through the South. In other words, give to the millions of the colored race at the South a sufficient number of trained, educated, common-sense ministers, and they will make that people in half a century the joy and the pride of our land.

We need to do this to save the bright, strong men among the negroes from going elsewhere. A young man of good parts came to his church five years ago, and said to them, “Take my name off the church-roll; I am going into politics.” His brethren said to him, “Wait a little; you do not want your name off the church-roll if you are going into politics. But must you go there?” They showed him the more excellent way, and to-day he is one of the most effective ministers in the South. We want to lay our hands, while we can, while we have the material, on the very pride of the youth of the colored race, and secure them to the ministry. We want hundreds of men—the best men, who have the instinct of leadership about them—men who have that strong, organizing, executive force, as well as the sympathetic power, by which they can build up churches in the name of the Redeemer throughout that country.

What is the furnishing for this at present? Here are four schools: Howard commands the north-eastern section, situated at Washington; Fisk, in Tennessee; Talladega, in Alabama; and Straight in New Orleans; and nearly a hundred men from these departments are in the process of studying for the Christian ministry. We want to enlarge, and that speedily; for, as I have suggested, the ratio of increase through the educational work within ten years will be enormous. We want to enlarge greatly this productive power for the ministry; and to that end I believe, as the report has stated, we need substantial endowment for permanent work of this nature. It has been suggested in the report that we need men for more than home affairs. England, with generous look, is ready to enter into Africa and do large work there for Christ. What she wants is men. Fisk University has consecrated itself largely to the work of supplying Africa with missionaries. We want to respond to England, with her generous means, by the gift of men, sending out worthy men, by which the two nations shall go hand in hand in bringing light into the dark continent.

Meanwhile, I say as I sit down, that, with regard to this whole question touching the South, there seems to me to be two aspects of it; the one of which will give us at present only discouragement, the other giving us the largest hope and joy.