Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 06, June, 1890 - Various - Страница 8

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J. RYDER

Nothing stimulates to good deeds more effectively than good deeds themselves. I copy the following notice, which was circulated on a neatly printed sheet among the members of a certain church in Boston:

The "Felice" circle of "King's Daughters" will hold a sale for the benefit of the Williamsburg Academy, established for the education of the "Mountain Whites" in Kentucky, on Friday, March 21, from 8 to 10 P.M., and on Saturday, March 22, from 3 to 10 P.M., at Miss Maxwell's, 37 Allen Street, Boston. Admission 10 cents.

The enthusiastic leader of this circle of "King's Daughters" thought that possibly she might raise $30 and so constitute one of their number a Life Member of the American Missionary Association. Imagine our surprise and delight when, as the result of this effort, $125 were brought in, as their splendid offering to this work!

Take another fact of unusual interest in the religious life in New England. Five leading pastors here in Boston chose a particular Sabbath, upon which they would each preach upon the Negro Problem. Several sermons were reported at length in our daily journals, and aroused much interest and comment. One found its way down into the South, and was commented upon by a Southern editor in true Southern style. Hard words were used with the recklessness that characterizes Southern editors, and often Northern as well. The funny thing about it was, that two gentlemen of the same name, who are both ministers and reside in Boston, were confused in this comment. The one, who had recently been South, but who did not preach the sermon, was read a severe lecture, because after partaking of the hospitality of the Southern people, he had spoken in so severe terms of them. It was an amusing blunder, but illustrates the fact that more and more even the Southern editor is coming to feel the importance of Northern criticism. It is a very hopeful sign. It is sometimes said that time will settle these monstrous inequalities that prevail in the South, but time never settles anything. Mischievous forces only increase in power, the longer they are permitted to operate. There must be set in operation beneficent forces, in order to make the element of time useful. Agitation is needed, patriotic, prayerful agitation, and such united effort as was made in these Boston pulpits, helps in this agitation.

The new book which comes from the pen of G.W. Cable, under the title of "The Negro Question," puts old truth in a new dress, and renders it more attractive and presentable. If any man has the right to write upon this "Negro Question," it is Mr. Cable. If I had to prepare a liturgy for the Congregational churches, I would put in it the following petition: "From the superficial views and misleading statements of tourists through the South, or those who reside in a single locality, good Lord, deliver us!" Mr. Cable is not of either of these classes. He speaks from an intimate acquaintance with, and a long residence in, the South; better than this, he is familiar with the whole territory, and not with a single locality simply. This little book ought to be in the hands of every conscientious student of this Southern problem. Take a single quotation:

"To be governed merely by instincts is pure savagery. All civilization is the result of subordinating instinct to reason, and to the necessities of peace, amity and righteousness. To surrender to instinct, would destroy all civilization in three days. If, then, the color-line is the result of natural instincts, the commonest daily needs of the merest civilization require that we should ask ourselves, is it better or worse to repress or cherish this instinct, and this color-line?" There are forces at work, regenerative and ennobling, that will lead the Southern white people to be ashamed of their attitude toward the Negroes, and not the least of these are the life and works of Mr. Cable.

A letter came into my hand, when I was in the South, which is not only a commentary, but also throws a ray of sunlight where there is much darkness. It was a letter from an old mistress to her former slave. He is now a successful business man in Chattanooga. This earnest, Christian woman, rising above her prejudices, wrote her former slave a cordial invitation to visit her in her home. Her husband, his old master, had died in the Confederate service. She had seen her servants taken away from her through the success of the Union armies. Her property had been depleted, and her fertile plantation overrun by the loyal troops. It must have been with great sadness and a bitter heart, that she looked out upon this ruin, wrought as she believed, throughout the invading of the sacred soil of Virginia. But in these years that have passed, this bitterness has largely gone, and this sweet, Christian letter comes to her former slave. The ex-slave told me with tears in his eyes that he paid her this visit, and that she welcomed him, not to the Negro quarters, nor to the kitchen-chamber, but to her best guest-chamber, and said: "I want you to feel that you are welcome to the best hospitality of my home." "And she treated me almost as tenderly as she would one of her own sons," said the colored man. And so light is coming, little by little.

Dr. Haygood expresses a regret that the white women of the South are so slow to appreciate the importance of the moral elevation of the Negroes, and so slow to join hands with their Northern sisters in his education. But such facts as this kind, Christian letter furnishes, lead us to hope and to believe that better times are coming, and that the Southern Christians, interested as they are in the Negro in Africa, will, little by little, appreciate and minister more and more to the terrible need of the Negro in South Carolina and Alabama.