Old South Church

“ There may be in the South a black [174] man belonging to a white church to-day but if so, he must be very old and very feeble. This anomaly—this utter denial of the very first principles of the ethics of Jesus Christ—is to-day so deep seated and unquestionable a principle of Southern Christianity that its essential heathenism is scarcely thought of, and every revival of religion in this section banks its spiritual riches solidly and unmovedly against the color line, without conscious question. ”

“ In the Old South, however, there were a few people, eight in number, who formed a "Society for Religious Improvement." They could not at first pray together; they only read the Scriptures and conversed on religious subjects. But they grew in wisdom, fervour, and zeal, and were eventually the means, not only of reviving religion in the Old South, but also of giving an impulse in Boston which is felt to this day. Church after church on orthodox principles has been instituted, till there are in Boston more than a dozen large and vigorous churches of the Congregational order ”

“ If, as a recent writer, who uses five years' residence in New York as the foundation of an appeal to High Churchmen to side with the North, alleges, there are only 400 Episcopal clergymen in the South to 1,600 in the North, with only twice as large a population, then all we can say is, that the Southern clergy seem to have been beyond proportion successful in the way in which they have leavened their population. Of course it must not be forgotten that in Louisiana and elsewhere in the South, our Church has had to contend with the antecedent establishment of the Roman communion. ”

“ When it is taken into account that these young churches are reformed churches, and that their church life is a new experience among the colored people, where they shine as lights in the world, it will be readily seen, we think, that this branch of our work augurs most hopefully a day of better things for the new South, and that the hearts and hands of these brethren, whose letters will be found elsewhere, should be strengthened, and their numbers largely increased. ”

“ Temperance and virtue are necessary to church membership, and as much cannot be said of all the colored churches in the South. The church building is commodious and pleasant, with reading-room and lecture-room in basement, cumbered with no debt, and upon its sweet sounding bell (the gift of the Sabbath-school) is engraved the fitting invitation, “Come, and let him that heareth say come.” For a church of its size I have never seen so many ready and efficient workers. Indeed, nearly all the members are workers, not drones, as has been thoroughly demonstrated during this revival. ”

“ There is no room in the South for our church system if its work be simply to transfer the people in bulk from other communions, with all their prevalent views and practices. Our brethren of the Baptist and Methodist churches are to be congratulated upon their large membership, and so upon their opportunity for doing good. They have the responsibility of purifying from within. Many are struggling nobly, as exhorted by the Christian Recorder, “to thin out the ministry of the church until there shall not be found an ignorant man, nor a bad man in the ranks. Thin out the church itself. ”

“ Nowhere as in the South do men so generally honor the house of God by their attendance and support. I make bold to say that upon any Sabbath day by count more men may be found in churches in Richmond and Atlanta than in Chicago and New York, though the combined population of the latter cities is ten times that of the former. These same churchgoing men of the South, following in the footsteps of their God-fearing fathers, are the members and supporters of Southern Churches, and are quick to resent innovation or disturbance of the old order. ”

“ To the young men who desire to preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified to their own people, we cannot deny the instruction in the word of God and in the truths of religion which they ask of us. All these, which are distinctively departments of Christian effort, must be kept up, and, especially, this work among the negro youth of the great South.
What we should be glad to make the great and characteristic work of the new year, is the Southern church work. ”

“ Of all the congregations of Christian believers that the lad had now visited, the Catholic impressed him as being the most solemn, reverent, and best mannered. In his own church the place did not seem to become the house of God till services began; and one morning in particular, two old farmers in the pew behind him talked in smothered tones of stock and crops, till it fairly made him homesick. The sermon of the priest, too, filled him with amazement. It weighed the claims of various Protestant sects to be reckoned as parts of the one true historic church of God. ”

“ Then it must not be forgotten that these churches represent almost infinitely more in the South than their small number would indicate. They are tonic in their influence upon all the other churches around them. Their simple New Testament polity, which encourages self-government and self-development, their high standard of ethics, which is a constant rebuke to an emotional religion apart from morality, make them peculiarly lights shining in dark places, and invest them with that quiet, but inscrutable transforming power that belongs to good leaven. ”

“ My conclusive answer is, if the Latter-day Saints do not constitute the Kingdom of God on the earth, the Church of Jesus Christ, it is no where to be found upon it. It is easily proved by the Scriptures that no other church, professing to believe in the Old and New Testament, bears hardly a resemblance to the ancient true Church in the fulness of the doctrines of the Lord Jesus. ”

“ It is an awful thought that we thus live over the action of these subterranean fires; but they are in the control of the Almighty, and all we have to do is to submit to God’s will and merciful providence.”
St. Paul’s Church, of which Uncle Richard was a vestryman, owed its origin to the separation of certain persons from the Congregational mode of worship, and the formation of a society for the resumption of the Protestant Episcopal pattern, as long ago as the year 1712. ”

“ It should never form some churches for black men and other churches for white men; but always Christian churches for Christian men and women. We should deprecate any line drawn in the Christian church based on difference in wealth, in social position, in education, in color, in sex, in previous condition. The only line to be drawn there is between those who give good evidence of renewed hearts and those who do not. We recognize this as the principle governing this Association, and therefore commend it as the adequate agency for the evangelizing work of our churches in the South. ”

“ The early settlers had little money to spend in adorning their churches, yet from the beginning there was a great difference between the bare and square wooden New England meeting-house and the quaint Southern church of brick or stone, recalling in every line the beloved parish churches of Old England. The churchmen, unlike the Puritans, found no sin in beauty or adornment. ”

“ As the merchants largely held the funds, as the great societies needed support, and as churches were built by respectable men whose prosperity depended mainly upon the peace and order of the South, the position that this church took was a bold and unpopular one. Those who did not live then can have no conception of what it was to form a church that should stand right out in the intense light of the time, and declare for universal liberty and for the right of the slave to the Bible, and to full religious freedom. ”

“ Real Protestants have always built rooms for their worship, or walled up the old churches, when they have fallen into their possession, into four or five distinct spaces, as in Scotland. But the separated church of England, though Protestant in position, in name, and in practice, has retained so much of the old traditions in her service, and is linked by so many ties to older and better times, that she naturally turns back to them with affection and reverence, and seeks, as far as her maimed rites and fettered position will admit, to restore the departed glory of the sanctuary. ”

“ Men ask after the Uncle Toms of the South—ask if it is all imagination. By no means. The Uncle Toms of the South are met just about as frequently as the Harlan Pages of the North.
Men say that the old churches largely stand in the way of their own people. People testify that one of the greatest obstacles in the way of this educational question is to be found in the pastors themselves of those churches. As a class, they do not want their flocks to know more than they do. This is one of the greatest difficulties to be contended with. We must have churches outside of the old ones. ”

“ Surely every true son of New England should hold the old church of Southwark, the parent of Congregationalism in England, only less dear to his heart than the old Plymouth church, the child of the Pilgrim church at Scrooby. ”

“ Each arch-deacon goes all about his own diocese, visiting the colored parishes and missions, consulting with the clergy, and opening out new fields. The clergy are doing just the same kind of work among their people that the white clergy are doing in their white parishes and missions, with the exception that the colored clergy are giving more of their time to educational work. ”

“ The South is pre-eminently the great missionary ground for our Congregational Churches; for Congregationalism means the school-house as truly as the church—and here in New England there is most enthusiastic sympathy with, and support of, the American Missionary Association in its great work in that section of our country committed to its care by the churches.
They want the A.M.A. to take Congregationalism into the South, and whether it organize churches mostly of whites or mostly of blacks, New England demands that a Christian of any color be admitted into any church because he is a Christian. ”

“ And now we repeat what we have so often said to our brother ministers, especially of the South, where they are brought in contact with this energetic body of men: Know, once for all, that the Church possessed of the best cultured heads and the best cultured hearts, is to win. That we are infinitely stronger in numbers to-day than are the Congregationalists, argues nothing for the future. ”

“ The day of prosperity for the South is at hand, and the great questions affecting its civilization are being rapidly settled, and the spirit of fraternity and mutual helpfulness among all moral and educational forces at the South is rapidly prevailing. The presence and success of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South have tended largely to these beneficent results ”

“ From this brief historical tableau we find that all the Christian sects now existing in the United States had their origin since the year 1500. Consequently, the oldest body of Christians among us, outside the Catholic Church, is not yet four centuries old. They all, therefore, come fifteen centuries too late to have any pretensions to be called the Apostolic Church. ”

“ They trust and safely trust to the domestic example, and to the Sunday teaching in the chapel, and chapel school, to keep the children in the special faith of their parents.... Those who say that the South Wales manufacturing population have a regard for the Church of England speak in utter ignorance of the matter. Their dislike to the Church, as an establishment, is very strong, and is yearly becoming stronger.'
It would be difficult to find a more competent and trustworthy witness. ”

“ The General Synod of the Associate Reformed Church is another connexion of Presbyterians, not acting in concert with either of the bodies above-mentioned. The Presbyterians are also numerous in the Southern States; and have several large congregations in South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. It is computed that there are about eighty seven Episcopal churches in New England. Those in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island were, in 1810, organized, and styled "The Eastern Diocess Of the United States of America." ”

“ The two churches which are pre-eminently American, which have grown out of the ideas, convictions and the religious wants of the people under the free institutions of this country, are the Methodist Episcopal and the Congregational. They have laid foundations in the north and west which will endure for all coming time, and both are now doing the same in the South. ”

“ Hear Parker Pillsbury: "We had almost to abolish the Church before we could reach the dreadful institution at all."
In the year 1818 the Presbyterian General Assembly, which represented the churches of the South as well as of the North, passed by a unanimous vote a resolution to the effect that "Slavery is utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves." But in a generation the views of the entire South, including the Presbyterian Church, had changed entirely. ”

“ While it will not be, as it has not been, the sole object of the Association to extend the form of church polity, to which most of the churches which contribute to it are attached, but rather to labor for the intelligent Christianization of the people who most need it, we are disposed to think that there will be found a greater affinity between the Southern people and the Congregational way than many have supposed. ”