Читать книгу Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D. ("The Black Spurgeon") - Silas Xavier Floyd - Страница 10

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From the time of his conversion, young Walker was an active and zealous Christian, and at once became prominently identified with every branch of church work—the prayer meeting, the Sunday school and the preaching service. He had not been long converted before he was deeply impressed with the thought that he was called of God to preach the gospel. He felt, nevertheless, that he must restrain this desire until he had acquired some education. He had been taught his A, B, C’s by his mother. She had also taught him to read the fourteenth chapter of John. He has preserved to this day the old Bible from which his mother taught him to read. It is needless to say that his mother’s Bible is to him a priceless treasure. Subsequently his entire schooling had been confined to two terms of five months each in the schools conducted in Augusta, Ga., by the Freedman’s Bureau. His first teachers were two Northern young ladies, Miss Hattie Dow and Miss Hattie Foote. In order to secure better school advantages, and in order to fit himself for his life work, he came to Augusta in 1874 and entered the Augusta Institute, a school which was specially designed for colored preachers. This school was presided over by the late Rev. Joseph T. Robert, LL. D. Dr. Robert was a native of South Carolina and had been a slaveholder. After emancipation, he felt moved of God to take up the work of training Negro young men for the Christian ministry. He wrought well in his day and generation; he made the Augusta Institute a great school; no man, before or since his time, has left a deeper impress upon the history of the Negro Baptists of Georgia; and there is no man whose name is more honored and revered among them. He was a polished and scholarly gentleman of the old school; he possessed a great degree of what is called personal magnetism; and, by his upright living and Christian fervor, he had the power of inspiring his pupils to higher and nobler things. In the autumn of 1879, Augusta Institute was moved to Atlanta, and the name was changed to Atlanta Baptist Seminary. More recently the name has been changed to Atlanta Baptist College. It is still the largest and most influential school for young men in Georgia, and is regarded as the headquarters of the Negro Baptist ministers in the State.

In school young Walker was soon celebrated for his thoroughness, his exemplary deportment, and for his native talent. He had only six dollars in money when he entered school. With this he rented a room in a private family, for which he paid two dollars per month. In this room he lived during his first year in the Augusta Institute. He did his own washing and cooking—cooking only twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. He did this in order to save time for study and to keep down expenses. He had only one suit of clothes, which he used on Sundays as well as on week days. When he had exhausted his six dollars, he picked up his little bundle, and was on the verge of leaving school, having decided to walk back to the country and find work to enable him to re-enter school at the opening of the next school year. Some of his friends among the students, finding out the reason for his proposed departure, remonstrated with him and, presenting him a small sum of money, urged him to be patient a day or two longer. One of his fellow students, the late Rev. E. K. Love, D. D., of Savannah, Ga., went so far as to agree to provide for Mr. Walker until other arrangements could be made. In the course of time this same Dr. Love came to be, all things considered, one of the brainiest and most brilliant Negro preachers in America, and as an organizer of men in religion, education, politics or business, he was probably unequaled by any of his contemporaries. For fourteen years he pastored the largest Negro church in the world—the First African Baptist Church, Savannah, Ga. At the time of his death in 1900, Dr. Walker, who came all the way from New York to Georgia to speak at his funeral, referred with much feeling and tenderness to the strong ties of personal friendship which had so closely bound them for years, and spoke with gratitude of Dr. Love’s ready assistance to him during his student days.

Through some of the students, Dr. Robert, the President of the Augusta Institute, was informed of young Walker’s sad plight, and, through Dr. Robert, three gentlemen in Dayton, Ohio—Mr. G. N. Bierce, Mr. A. B. Solomon, and Mr. E. B. Crawford—became interested in him, and, through the kindness of these three men, he was enabled to prosecute his studies at the Augusta Institute for five years. Two of these three gentlemen—Mr. Bierce and Mr. Solomon—are still living. Both are still very wealthy, and are among Ohio’s most successful business men. In November, 1901, Mr. Bierce went to New York to attend the Jubilee Dinner of the International Y. M. C. A. While in New York, he visited Dr. Walker at his home, went with him to the church which he serves as pastor, and also to the Colored Branch of the Y. M. C. A., 132 W. 53rd St., which was founded by Dr. Walker. In his speech at the Colored Men’s Branch, Mr. Bierce, among other things, said that he had made many investments in his life, but he believed that the money he had invested in Dr. Walker’s education had yielded the largest and best returns of any investment that he had ever made. He also told how he came to be interested in the elevation of the colored race. He said that during the late Civil War he was a soldier in the Union Army, and had drifted with his regiment into Kentucky. While there he was seriously wounded and left for dead on the battlefield. After many hours he managed to make his way to the house of a white Southerner, and asked for shelter and food. Seeing that Mr. Bierce was a Union soldier, the white Southerner denied him both, but called one of his colored servants and told him that he might take charge of the man and care for him, if he desired to do so. The colored man took charge of Mr. Bierce, and, in their lonely cabin, the colored man and his wife carefully watched and nursed the wounded soldier, and in a few weeks brought him back to health and strength. After the war, Mr. Bierce made many efforts to find these faithful Good Samaritans and reward them for their kindness. Failing in this, he decided that, as he owed his life to the attention and care of two members of the Negro race, he would let no opportunity pass to help any of the race who might need assistance. And true to his pledge, Mr. Bierce has been the steady and consistent friend of the colored people from that day to this. Dr. Walker is only one of many beneficiaries of his kindness, and Dr. Walker is a conspicuous example of what a little money, wisely placed in the education of one colored man, can do toward the elevation of an entire race.

Though Dr. Walker finished the prescribed course at the Augusta Institute, he was not graduated from that institution. No graduates were sent out from that school until long after it had been moved to Atlanta, the first class being regularly graduated in 1884. Subsequently, by vote of the trustees, it was decided that the names of nearly fifty young men who had finished the prescribed course prior to 1884, should be placed in the catalogue and marked “entitled to rank as graduates.” Dr. Walker’s name is in this number. But whether graduated or not, Dr. Walker easily excels any man who was graduated there, and no man, living or dead, has ever heard him express any regret that he does not hold a diploma.

In September, 1876, after two years in the Augusta Institute, and in the eighteenth year of his age, young Walker was licensed to preach. The first Sunday in May, 1877, he was ordained to the sacred office of the Gospel ministry.