Nor will it do to excuse ourselves from this work on the plea that there are other churches in the South to which the negro, by immemorial traditions and long association, is better accustomed, and still others which may be at first more attractive to him than ours. The question is not, what would the untutored negro prefer, but what will best secure his development and help him to a nobler life and character. The other method of argument would surrender him to the Roman Catholics at once.
As a matter of fact, the introduction of these churches of the pilgrim sort is found to have worked well in two directions. It improves our somewhat frigid method to be warmed up with the African ardor; and it improves the negro to be toned down and disciplined to self-control by our methods. A sound, healthy religious life has been developed in many of our churches in ten years, which could not have been developed in fifty years in those churches where the ebullient spirit of the negro is allowed to run to riotous excess unchecked.
It is a noteworthy fact also that our churches have had a large influence upon the other churches about them. They have been recognized as presenting a higher type of piety and character. Their quiet methods of worship have made the boisterous methods of their neighbors unfashionable. Their higher moral standards have been a tonic to the conscience in the others. They have set the negroes to clamoring for an educated ministry.
While, then, we would not multiply churches for the mere sake of multiplying them, we deem the time opportune for laying new stress upon this part of the work. We would increase our constituency in the South in Christian churches which shall share with us in the work of education and in home missionary endeavor, and in the newly-opening foreign field; and we would ever remember that to elevate the negro we must keep him in the glowing presence of the cross, red with the heart’s blood of Divine love, and of the crown, which may be his as well as his white brother’s, in that great kingdom where there is neither white nor black, but where “Christ is all and in all.”
C. H. RICHARDS, F. P. WOODBURY, A. P. FOSTER, F. BASCOM, J. F. DUDLEY, D. PEEBLES, U. THOMPSON.