When Mr. Charles Gibbons, in his stirring address to the Union League, shortly after the murder of Mr. Lincoln, described this murder and other crimes of the South as "representative acts of slavery," and logically referred to the wrongs done to the colored people in this city in the same connection, the conclusion of his address was pronounced "anti-climax." "After electrifying his audience," it was said, "he flatted right down to the small matter of the cars and colored people." Now while anything relating to the final position in this country of four millions of its people, a question which has already caused one war, and which may cause another, is contemptuously termed "small" by highly intelligent and influential men, we have much to learn and much to suffer before this question can be settled.
Another class indication of public feeling on this subject must not be passed by in silence. At a late series of large and excited meetings of our clergy and laity convened to remonstrate against the running of the street cars on Sunday, not a word was said by the remonstrants, though their attention was called to the matter, against the exclusion of colored people from these cars on week-days. Like the grand juries, they ignored the subject. Further, it is believed that only three of the white clergy of this city have spoken, either from pulpit or platform, in reprobation of this gross wrong; and if there are cases in which saying nothing is committing sin, this would seem to be one of them. But fair and reasonable men are tired of hearing clergymen berated for not doing that which, if they would still remain clergymen, they cannot do. It is easy and safe for a pastor to lay before his people a certain set of what may be called sins by common consent, such as over-worldliness, inattention to religion and the like. One portion of his hearers meekly bows to this reproof, and the remainder tacitly accepts it without argument. But when he earnestly calls on them to give up some darling sin, which they hug to their bosoms because they do not admit that it is such, his relations to them are apt, at once, to become such as were those of St. Paul to the beasts of Ephesus. And to expect a pastor fiercely to throttle each living, vigorous, but unconfessed, if not unconscious sin of his people, as it comes up, for $400 a year, (the average clerical pay, it is said, of the wealthiest sect in this State,) and then to lose this small stipend, which he is likely to do by dismissal, as the result of the conflict, is asking more than a fair day's work for less than a fair day's wages. Here and there may be found a man who can afford to enter into this fight. One, rich in natural gifts, holds his hearers, by the power of personal magnetism, while he pours into their ears a torrent of unwelcome truths, to which they listen, like the Wedding Guest, because they "cannot choose but hear," and then, not a few go away, like an awakened medium, uninfluenced by them. Another, whose voice neither denouncement nor desertion can silence, or make falter, because its words are but the imperative utterances of a great heart ever flowing in full tide, with good will to man, simply as man, always finds fit audience though few. But these are exceptions, and though courage might add to them, the great body of our clergymen must preach what their people are not unwilling to hear, or cease to earn bread for their families as clergymen. And here is the true reason of their silence, or hesitating speech, on such proposed subjects of reform as, at the time, have found but small acceptance; and as men and things go, this reason is sufficient. Their grave fault is that they keep it shut up in that dark, back cell of the heart, to which men never admit each other, and rarely themselves, and put forward such phrases as "secular subjects," "politics in the pulpit," and (a profanation of the Holy Word) "my kingdom is not of this world," in the place of it. Hence the chronic false position in which they stand to society. For from the very nature of their relations either to their people, an aristocracy, or their own order, the clergy are everywhere conservative and not progressive. When Luther began to be a reformer he ceased to be a monk. All that can reasonably be expected of them is not to break new soil, but to refrain from upholding old abuses, and (a most important trust) carefully to keep in order in the old way, but with a readiness to accept new principles and improved methods, the ground already fenced in. Their true type of reform is that of Mr. Lincoln. He never professed to move except at the word of the people, but he always watched for and joyfully obeyed the first sure signal to advance.