The Colored Man in the Methodist Episcopal Church
9781465639127
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
It is a difficult matter to write of a battle while it is still raging. The combatants are not usually the best judges of the merits of their cases. Prejudice, education, preconceived notions of the right or wrong in the case, prevent the mind from weighing the arguments with equity. There are principles lying at the foundation of ethics which will not be denied by Christians. They come with the authority of a “Thus saith the Lord.” However distasteful these truths may be to the natural man, the obligation to receive them still remains. The Lord quoted certain proverbs which were authorities among the Jews, which they had observed as rules for their action towards others. One was “Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.” Christ gives another, and with divine authority: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.” Such teachings were not palatable in that day, any more than in the present. Human nature was no more ready to receive and practice such truths then than now. But the obligation existed then, and still survives. Then, too, the Savior taught another lesson equally unpalatable to the Jew. The man who fell among thieves was left by priest and Levite to suffer, but was delivered by the Samaritan, who was considered an enemy. “Who is my neighbor?” was the question that brought out this answer from Jesus with its illustration; viz., that every one needing help is a neighbor. The two great precepts of the same Teacher embrace all that is necessary in the practical treatment of the question of our relation to others: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself;” and, “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” Whatever apology there may have been for slavery in the past, in the days of ignorance, when God winked at it, as he did at polygamy, it is certain that the treatment of the slave as the New Testament requires would have destroyed slavery. To have educated the slave to read and write, and otherwise giving him the privilege to develop his mental faculties; to have secured him his wife—a God-given right; to have given these parents their rights, in obedience to the Divine command, to train up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; to secure to them their right of a fair compensation for their labor, and to use it as they chose for their own benefit; to have granted them the privilege of worshiping their Maker as heaven required,—would have destroyed the whole system of involuntary servitude as it existed in these United States. More than two centuries slavery continued, while the enlightened conscience of the nation protested against the system, against the traffic in human beings, against its demoralizing influences on the white, and its degrading influence on the black man. Methodism came into the country, and found slavery intrenched in its laws and civilization. Its preachers proclaimed a gospel of regeneration, of love to God, of a personal knowledge of forgiveness of sins, the witness of the Holy Ghost, of love to neighbors. The converts declared the religion of Christ: the “love that suffereth long and is kind.” It turned out the old man and let in the new. White and black shared alike in the new life. Down in the cabin, up in the “great house,” alike were heard the shouts of joy over this new-found pearl of great price. Tears of joy coursed down the ivory and the ebony cheek, as each spoke of redeeming love. Melted by this divine fire, fused into one spirit, there came to heart, to conscience, to understanding, as the white clasped the black hand with loving grip, the whispered voice of an inner consciousness, “Surely we be brethren.”
