Church Meeting.
The missionary wrote: "Last Thursday I had an opportunity to observe the intellectual state of a considerable number of the brethren at a church meeting. I was surprised at their understanding and wisdom in regard to church order and propriety, and tone of discipline. As the church records had been burned up in the church edifice at Hampton, I inquired how far any of them could recall their contents. One or two replied that they could almost repeat the church regulations from memory.
"In the discussion, high ground was taken in regard to the Sabbath, the temperance cause, and other matters of Christian morality. In discipline, stress was laid on the propriety and duty of private admonition, in its successive scriptural steps, before public censure. On this point one brother said he had privately admonished a neighbor of the impropriety of taking articles to the camp on the Sabbath, and he had acknowledged his fault, and promised amendment. The duty of forgiving offenders, and undoing wrongs, was also insisted on. Several had been improperly excluded from church privileges through the influence of white power. It was, therefore, decided to-day that those who had the confidence of the church should be restored to church-fellowship unconditionally."
One of the members, and an aged leader, stated that he had on one occasion been seized by a white deacon, dragged down from the gallery, and threatened with thirty-nine lashes, because there was a little of the Methodist in his composition, and he had "got happy and shouted in meeting."
On another occasion, William Davis concluded some remarks as follows: "I hope that all of you, old and young, will learn to read, as I did. When I was converted, I was anxious to learn to read God's book. I kneeled down by my book, [he here kneeled by the table,] and prayed that God would teach me to read it—if only a little, I would be thankful. And I learned, and you can if you will, for you have no one to hinder you, as I had. We should all show that we are worthy of freedom. Only educate us, and we will show ourselves capable of knowledge. Some say we have not the same faculties and feelings with white folks.... All we want is cultivation. What would the best soil produce without cultivation? We want to get wisdom. That is all we need. Let us get that, and we are made for time and eternity."
Transcriber's Note:
All spelling is as it appears in the original text. The frontispiece illustration has been moved to follow the title page, and the 'Little Daisy' illustration has been shifted slightly so that it is not in the middle of a paragraph.