Various

“ That work which does not aim at the church as its end, however refining and ennobling it may be in itself, fails, utterly and infinitely, to realize the ideal of the New Testament, or the ideals of history as seen in the progress of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. When, therefore, a society like the one whose anniversary we are now celebrating presents itself for our suffrage and our support, it becomes our privilege, and perhaps our duty, to question its mission and its right to live. ”

“ It is a shame and a grievous wrong to leave matters as they are. It is a wrong to the blacks to compel them to suffer in the South or flee to Kansas. It is unfair to the South to put them to the dreadful alternative of suffering or doing such great wrongs. It is a shame for an enlightened nation to keep itself thus embroiled, to the hindrance of its prosperity and the jeopardy of its peace. ”

“ And this is the same as to say that the Negro has been the unwitting cause of the moral and religious elements in politics; for there are no great enthusiasms which have not a basis in either morals or religion. The courts, Cabinet, Congress, legislatures, the pulpit, the platform, the hearth, have furnished the arena for debate, harangue and purpose, which have enlarged our views of the brotherhood of man, kindled an unexampled enthusiasm for humanity, and deepened those moral convictions which are the basis of sound character. ”

“ There is no fear for the brains of any race that will accept Christianity. To virtue, knowledge will surely be added. It is foolish for us Anglo-Saxons to assume that we have found the best expression of religion. It would be like the claim of the Pharisee, who assumed that the end of the law was fulfilled in himself. The worldliness of the church is at the present time more conspicuous than the churchliness of the world. ”

“ Simeon S. Jocelyn, who, though one of the gentlest, most amiable and most cautious of men, yet possessed a conscience so unclouded, and a sympathy with the slave so strong, that no fear of consequences could deter him.
Such God-fearing men had no commission merely to denounce and destroy. Their call was to aid in spreading a Gospel untinctured with the guilt of slavery, polygamy or caste prejudice. They strove earnestly to induce the most honored and loved of missionary boards, with which they had heretofore co-operated, to throw off all responsibility for slavery and its attendant vices. ”

“ And a movement that is wide enough and strong enough to sustain such an attempt must begin at the house of God, must have its roots in Christian homes, must be fed in the closet, at the family altar, with the word of God and the breath of prayer. The movement which saves Africa will be a race movement; will be the light and pressure of Divine truth upon the minds and consciences of the people, and a baptism of Pentecostal fire consecrating them to the work. But to what agencies shall we look for such mighty spiritual energies as are needed for the recovery of a race to Jesus Christ? ”

“ The school of slavery perverted the moral nature, and until that is rectified, no process of intellectual education can lift the race on to the high level of a true manhood and a great future.
Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first morally great. ”

“ We are to be tested as to the capacity of our civil institutions, and as to the power of our religion—no, not as to the power of our religion, but as to our power in it.
It is one of the most humiliating confessions that can be made, to say that these people cannot be granted room on our soil, with liberty and justice under our laws, with safety to ourselves. It is a still more humiliating confession to say that the attempt to Christianize them is a hopeless one. ”

“ If we would have Christian scholars in training for Africa—as teachers, as preachers, or as statesmen—they should come from homes and churches in which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of missions was as the breath of life. On the one hand, we want the churches as the inspiring and sustaining power both for men and money, and on the other, as the motive and model for the work we are called to do. ”

“ Providence meant one thing; the selfishness of man another. God has given unmistakably the “sign of the prophet Jonas;” man sees nothing but the redness of a lowering sky. Can we fail to be impressed with the fact that a being whose not remote ancestors were, if not savage, at least barbarian, has now come into the possession of every element of American civilization? The negro has our language, dress, civil customs, religion, domestic and social life, and in the main, our vices. He is a voter, law-maker, executive, educator, freeholder, priest, and head of a Christian household. ”

“ The Commission under which a society like this does its work. The warrant for a missionary society, as for all missionary effort, is found in the words of our Saviour to his disciples, just before he went up on high: “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth; go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” ”

“ It will uphold no candidate for office whom it believes to be unworthy of the support of honest men, and accept no platform which it believes to misrepresent or to contradict the true conditions of our national prosperity and greatness. As a newspaper The World, being the organ of no man, no clique and no interest, will present the fullest and the fairest picture it can make of each day’s passing history in the city, the State, the country and the world. ”

“ The education of the intellect is vitally important; but for its own security it should rest on the broader education of the moral nature. The former will make keen, sharp men, shrewd in business and other transactions, but only the latter can be trusted to make honest, faithful, conscientious men. While we insist that Christian schools are the true handmaid of religion, we must not be tempted to substitute science and culture for piety, nor to make schools stand for more than churches. The church alone is fundamental, but for the best results they belong together and should go together. ”

“ Our injustice and oppression of the Indian are not the slow growth of years, as they have been to-day shown to be in the case of the negro; they sprang into being full armed, bitter and destructive, like the spirits from Pandora’s box. As early as 1675 the devoted John Eliot wrote to Gov. Winthrop from the wigwams in which he was consecrating his culture and his life to their conversion: “I humbly request that one effect of this trouble may be to humble the English to do the Indians justice.” ”

“ To find in this Negro problem nothing but the lust which brought him to our shores, or the instrumentality of the wealth which he has been the means of accumulating, or the object of a sentimental pietism which would colonize him, or a nuisance for progressive abatement, is to attempt to solve the puzzle of a bewildering maze without the exercise of wisdom, or to have exit from a labyrinth without a clew. ”

“ It is rational to hope that the Negro may help us to a fitter expression. I admit his crudities, extravagancies and immoralities, but he has a genius for religion nevertheless. It has been conjectured that there was a period when the ancestors of the Athenians were to be in no otherwise distinguished from their barbarian neighbors than by some finer taste in the decoration of their arms, and something of a loftier spirit in the songs which told of the exploits of their warriors. ”

“ The hour and the call have come. The nation is re-awakened to its great duty to the late slaves; they are themselves awaking to the glorious opening for them as citizens and Christians in America, and they are enthusiastic to aid in redeeming the land of their fathers. The possibilities of African regeneration are enkindling the hearts of Christians in Germany, in Great Britain and in America. God’s providence is opening the way and sending His commands along the lines. ”

“ This is to us the beginning of the other part of the great work to which this Association is called, for Africa and for America.
We have the appliances for the work in our schools, our theological departments and in our churches; in our experiences in tropical Africa of the terrible death-rate of white missionaries, and in the comparatively good health of the colored. Moreover, our decks are cleared for action by the removal of the debt that has so long hampered us. We can now handle our sails and our guns. May the winds of heaven waft us on our course! ”

“ In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race, we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority, find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in holy things. ”

“ Even according to our reasoning, logic is none the less sure because it is slow.” God’s thought is from eternity; but it is only because God has purposed that a science of history is possible, or the end of history discoverable. Its philosophy is often based on the assumption of the unity of the race; for the unity of the race it is better to say, the unity of the divine purpose. Said Augustine of old: “God cannot have left the course of human affairs, the growth and decay of nations, their victories and defeats, unregulated by the laws of His providence.” ”

“ After a young man or a young woman has remained in school long enough to see the ignorance of the colored preachers, and has gained sufficient intelligence to make moral distinctions, it is inevitable that he should turn from such teachers, and revolt from such moral and religious guides.
If they are compelled to judge religion only by the specimens of it which they see around them, why should not a common intelligence reject it altogether? ”

“ The moment we educate a young man or a young woman to read intelligently, or to speak and write the English language grammatically, we have educated them out of the old colored churches. They will not listen to men whose vocabulary has more sound than meaning, and who violate with every sentence every law of correct speech. The white churches are not open to them in any such sense that they feel at liberty to enter them on any footing of Christian equality. ”

“ To add yet another evidence that the signs of the times are to be interpreted in the line of advancing evangelization, I would mention the genius of the Negro for piety. Colonel Preston, who has written intelligently on the subject of the religious education of the Negro, says that he has adopted all the vices of the white race except suicide, duelling and religious skepticism. His voice is not more flexible and pure than, his faith is confiding and strong. And this is not a small matter. The world doubtless has great need of brains, but it has vaster need of character. ”

“ Put thus on the defensive, it may be well to recur to first principles, in order to satisfy ourselves that the church is the unit idea in all Christian labor. And to unfold that idea in the conversion of men, and to make it potential in society, through the preaching of the Gospel and the sanctified lives of believers, is the end of the family, of the school, and of all the forces which go to civilize and uplift communities. ”

“ The orthodox and well-ordered Christian man has no doubt of the need of perpetual help for the West, and he cheerfully aids it through the accredited channels, the Bible, Tract, Sunday-school, Education, College and Church Building Societies, and especially the honored Home Missionary Board; though those Western settlers have behind them the culture of more than a thousand years, with the personal education of New England homes, schools and churches, and also the business training among the shrewd and thrifty people. ”

“ The same wrongs are perpetrated and endured, to some extent, wherever there are similar states of society. Ignorance is always at a disadvantage, whether it wants to work or to vote. It is always in bonds to some power and will beyond its own. New York, and perhaps even Chicago, knows something of abused labor and a controlled vote. The local causes which increase the evil may need thorough treatment, but that is not ours either to prescribe or to administer. ”

“ We are out of debt. We have the promise of a far better equipment for our work in the way of buildings. The Mendi Mission is fairly manned, and, we trust, on the way to a new and wide usefulness. The Freedmen call for all the aid we can supply. All motives of love for self, for country and for God conspire to urge us to increase our efforts for their Christian education. Africa is stretching out its right hand now, as well as the left, which we have been trying so long to fill, and Christian England comes to help us answer the plea. ”

“ The churches alone can create a race sentiment broad and deep and potent enough to bear up an enterprise aiming at the Christianization of Africa. It is the Gospel, ministered by holy men, which unifies and exalts communities. It is the Church, as the centre and representative of divine power, which stands for God, and the word and the ordinances entrusted to her keeping are his only visible hold upon the world. ”