John Bailey Adger

“ Here is a wide field for church extension in the South. Here is a missionary field which is competent, to rouse the enthusiasm of many a pious youth, who does not feel pressed into the ordinary service of the ministry, because the call to that work is not loud enough. Here is the work, my brethren, which will raise up a Southern Ministry. This business of preaching the gospel to our poor is what will fill your recently endowed seminary with students. Providence has been preparing our way. Brighter days will surely dawn on you, if you will but see that the gospel is pteached to your poor. ”

“ By being faithful to this duty, and not other wise, our own Christian graces will flourish. Christ, was a friend of sinners, the associate of publicans, the benefactor of the poor. If we do not seek the benefit of our poor, how can we be like Christ? An interest, a deep and lively interest, in the spiritual well being is this population, would be of incalculable spirtual advantage to ourselves. The missionary spirit is an element of the inmost life and potency in the moral constitution of any church. But a spirit of concern for the salvation of these our poor would be the missionary spirit. ”

“ Do not think that it is necessary that you should travel thousands of miles, or that you have immense oceans to traverse, before you can engage in a missionary work. There are wretched creatures in many parts of this town who are at as great a moral distance from the gospel, and from all its lessons, as if they had been born and lived all their days in the wilds of Tartary. ”

“ Unacquainted with the nature of our institutions—strangers to the prejudices, habits and peculiarities of the negro—incapable of appreciating his peculiar sympathies and associations—ministers from abroad, even if they were permitted to enter the field, could not be expected to cultivate it with the same succiss which is likely to reward the labors of our own men. The Committee, therefore, believe that God has imposed upon the churches and Christian people of the South, in a pre-eminent degree, the duty of spreading the Gospel among the colored population, whither slave or free. ”

“ To our poor the gospel ought to be preached. Christ's command has been given. We must answer to God if we neglect it. There is no possible excuse. All things are ready, if your hearts are ready. You have a duty to do as a church. Your Presbytery and your Session urge it on you. Good and wise men in this city unanimously approve. For the performance of this work, on your behalf, I offer you my services, if thought equal to their price. That price is nothing more than a place in which to operate, and a very few helpers in the work. The work is for the benefit of your poor. ”

“ The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and (to cap the marvellous climax) the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who shall not be offended in me. ”

“ God has committed the gospel to us, as Christians, for the very purpose, of our servingg that it is preached to the poor. Our business in this world, our very object in living, and God's purpose in keeping us alive, is that we may promote this end. ”

“ As ransomed souls—as justified and perfected spirits in Heaven—would they not be bright stars in our crown of rejoicing, and also in our blessed Saviour's diadem of glory—stars all the brighter for the thick gloom of that night in which they were wandering before? ”

“ This class of the community is committed to us; and leanness and barrenness must be—will be—entailed as a curse upon our Churches, if they suffer the multitudes of these poor, whom God has settled among them, to perish for the bread of life. From the very nature of their position they are dependant upon us They cannot form Churches among themselves, call pastors, and support the Gospel. ”

“ The mission is comparatively strong, and the Churches which have been planted seem to be permanent nurseries of the Gospel. The door, moreover, is open to the world—from any part of Europe or America the servants of God may go and labor there; but here we are restricted in our choice of men to a limited region, and a region in which the supply is small: and your Committee feel that Presbytery will not be justified in sparing a man to do what others can do as well when he might be commissioned to do wnat is not likely to be undertaken without him. ”

“ They are not like the poor in Ireland, having claims on all the world; the claim of these is on us, for we claim them as ours. They claim us, therefore, as theirs. And God knows the justice of the claim! and if we despise it God will judge us. The blood of these souls will be on us, if we neglect it any longer. ”

“ The colored people need teachers exclusively devoted to themselves—men who know their character, habits and associations and, at the same time, of large and liberal views—who can adapt the instructions of the pulpit to the intellectual condition of this benighted race The tendency of the colored people to mistake fervor for piety, passion for devotion, and zeal for faith, is so strong that too much care can hardly be exercised by the Church in selecting ministers to labor among them. ”

“ The Providence of God seems to shut him up to enter and work. Your Committee are persuaded, from the view which they have been aide to take of the facts, that Brother Adger, who is reported still to have some lingering doubts on the subject, ought to abandon the missionary field in which he has been hitherto employed, for the equally wine and important field which is now white for the harvest. The position of things in the East is such as not to require absolutely his presence. ”

“ Some man must be elected for that important duty; and he felt persuaded that the brethren from other sections would feel the importance of selecting him from the South or South-west. He hoped all the resolutions would pass unanimously. It would be a most felicitous conclusion to their deliberations. Looking to the everlasting salvation of those people whom God in His Providence had cast amongst us, he hoped the Assembly would see their way clear to pass these resolutions unanimously. ”

“ Without property, wiihout concert, without the means of co-operation and united effort, they must be supplied with God's word, as they are supplied with their daily bread, by the hands of their masters. They seem to be a sacred trust, which is to prove the faith, the charity, the self-denial and spiritual zeal of the Southern Church: and the most effectual answer which can be given to the calumnies of Abolitionists and misguided Philanthropists will be persevering diligence in training this people for glory, honor and immortality. ”

“ The tendency of the gospel is to soften all that is harsh in the relations of master and slave, to prevent the one from being a tyrant and the other a rebel; it will sweeten their intercourse—authority will cease to be severe and obedience cease to be a task.
Your Committee are delighted to learn that the attention of Brother Adger, of Charleston, has been turned to this subject, and that he seems to be disposed to embark in an enterprize to give more efficient, religious instruction to this class of the community. ”

“ Let them be induced, by such allurements as these, to crowd the place of worship; yet, be careful how they are suffered to crowd into the spiritual church. Invite them all to hear the gospel, but receive them only after careful and thorough examination into the membership. Let those who are admitted be built up in the faith, not only by suitable, preaching, but by the laborious and persevering catechetical teaching of them, in private. Indoctrinate thoroughly, their class leaders, that they may communicate sound doctrine to the others. Pay great attention to the youth ”

“ A minister of the gospel, now an this city, who makes it his constant practice to visit those shop-keepers, told me, that, when he calls ou some of them. on the week days, to speak with them of their souls, they have not time to talk with him, because they have so many customers to wait on, but that when he goes to see them on the Lord's Day, for the same purpose, the same difficulty still meets him. So many customers to wait on both on Sundays and on all the other days of the week, that the shop-keeper himself has no time to attend to his own religious interests! ”

“ These rough diamonds, worn, as they must necessarily be, on the bosom of our domestic life, the more perfectly they are freed from their natural incrustations of ignorance and corruption, will all the more enrich and adorn. ”

“ Reflect, I beseech you, how few of them come within actual reach of the truth, and yet how many temptations are clustering thick around their path in this crowded city. Take your evening walk over the suburbs, and see what dens of iniquity those are at almost every corner of the streets. ”

“ The faithful preaching of the gospel to these poor will be followed by great advantages to our own children. These people are in our very families, ind their ignorance and their irreligion must inevitably affect the morals of our own offspring. ”

“ These sheep of our Master are not supplied with spiritual food. The truth, as now dispensed, does not leach them, and they cannot reach it. Nor, in the present plan, can we ever hope to do our duty to them. We never can have galleries enough for them; and we never could gather them all into galleries, if we had them; and, unless a great change, in various particulars, shall take place in the feelings of both our white preachers and white congregations, we never can expect the ordinary and settled ministry of this city to satisfy and to supply both classes of their hearers. ”

“ Great advantages will follow, also, to the community at large. Dr. Chalmers says, of the system of schooling and preaching in Scotland, that it has "conferred the highest benefits on the one or two uppermost strata of society, but, overlooking and neglecting the lower, has left a smouldering fire among the very foundations of the commonwealth." In this city, too, as in every other Christian country, there are masses of practical Heathenism. ”

“ When, however, God was pleased to be manifested in human flesh, for human redemption, no other form did he choose for Himself to wear but the form of a servant. The incarnate Word is emphatically a friend and associate of the poor—nay, of publicans and sinners. ”

“ He would be at liberty to consult discreet and judicious men, but the responsibility of all measures of Government and discipline must fall finally upon himself. Another plan is to appoint a session consisting of white elders, who should have the oversight of this flock; but, then, the difficulty occurs—Who is to choose these Elders? According to our system, every Church has a right to elect its own officers; and these colored Presbyterians, if organized into a separate Church, could not constitutionally be deprived of this right. ”

“ Providence gives you a foreign missionary work in your own families. Can you turn your back on a subject which appeals to you on behalf of your own servants. Figure to your minds your dying servant, in humble but affecting tones, accusing you of having neglectedto have the gospel properly preached to him! ”

“ My friends, our poor are learning intemperance, and they are learning dishonesty. They are being corrupted and destroyed, both soul and body. One of our wealthiest and most intelligent planters lately told me that he loses every year $1000 or $1500 on the destruction of his servants by intemperance. ”

“ Inertness, incapacity, untraciableness, untrusiiness, wastefulness, supineness,—these are very great evils, affecting not only the particular individuals who exhibit these moral incrustations, but ourselves, with whom these individuals are so closely connected. Now, it is the gospel, and the gospel only, which will entirely remove from this people all these remains of their former barbarous and uncivilized condition, advancing to the very highest perfection ihose to whom, as operatives, we must necessarily look, in all our domestic and civil economy. ”

“ We cannot but think that the disease which was God's immediate agent in bringing our brother back to us, is to be regarded as an index of God's will, that he should now labor where his earliest impulses prompted him to put in his sickle. ”

“ They live with us—eating from the same store-houses, drinking from the same fountains, dwelling in the same enclosures, forming parts of the same families. Our mothers confide us, when infants, to their arms, and sometimes to the very milk of their breasts. ”

“ Should Brother Adger be induced to enter upon this field, your Committee are clear that he should endeavor to collect a separate congregation of the blacks; but, they are not prepared to recommend any plan, in reference to the organization of a Church and the administration of discipline Three schemes are conceivable, though all do not seem to be equally compatible with our distinctive principles as Presbyterians. ”

“ But, whether those places, closely packed, would or would mot contain more than ten thousand people, we may safely say that not more than 6000 of this people do actually find their way into those galleries. ”

“ These and other similar passages of God's word affectingly teach us that it ii a part of the divine arrangement to have ranks and orders in human society, aid that God expects the higher and more favored sons of Adam to care for their poor brethren. ”

“ Our brethren in other lands and other portions of our own country are exposed, and, for the most part, justly exposed, to so much suspicion and distrust that they cann<South. ”