GEORGIA.
A Beginner’s Reflections—The Gospel—Congregationalism—The Negro.
REV. S. E. LATHROP, MACON.
I have been at this post for about three months, and as it is my first experience with the colored people, I may be pardoned for offering some impressions that have come to me since entering on the work. Having preached eight years to white people in the North, I was somewhat curious to compare the results of the same Gospel as applied to different races. The comparison thus far is entirely satisfactory. I am more than ever convinced of the priceless value of the Gospel as an elevating, purifying power in human hearts, no matter what is the color of the skin. Judging medicines by their results, we say that this or that is a specific for certain diseases; so judging Christianity by its results, as applied not only to different individuals but to different races, it is a specific for the deep-seated disease of sin everywhere.
As different doctors have formulæ of their own, differing more or less each from the other, so are the different sects or schools of religious thought. I, as a Congregationalist born and bred, the son of a Western Home Missionary, with Puritan ancestry running back to the days of John Robinson, am, as a student of human nature and of theological therapeutics, convinced more than ever of the value of our Puritan ideas, modified, mellowed and improved as they are by the additional light which has broken forth out of God’s word. I think Congregationalism is adapted to African as well as Caucasian Christians; both from its lack of iron-bound traditions and mannerisms, and “theological slang,” and also from its flexibility, its adaptedness, its “sanctified common sense,” which does not make a Procrustean bed of inflexible length for tall and short alike, nor like that which the prophet mentions, “shorter than that a man can stretch himself upon it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” Its covering is, like Christ’s seamless robe, broad enough to envelop in its generous fold every forlorn heart.
I have also verified what I had before heard, that the Negro race is not all composed of Uncle Toms—that, in fact, such transcendent characters are rare. The negro is neither a prince in disguise nor a hero in rags. He is exceedingly human, fallible, ignorant, childlike, fickle, improvident, thoughtless. We could easily lengthen this catalogue of failings, painful things which oftentimes tend to discourage the Christian worker. But hence is all the more need of the Gospel among them. Their animalism makes necessary the proper antidote of spiritual training. Their unsteadiness calls loudly for patience, perseverance, courage, on the part of teacher and missionary. Past centuries mightily influence the present. When I consider how far from perfect is our boasted Caucasian race, and how the home pastors and home missionaries toil unceasingly amid difficulties to teach sobriety, self-control and an embodied Gospel among the world’s dominant race, I can have more patience with the lower strata of humanity.
Remembering the defalcations, the immoralities, the outbreaking evils which so often come to light among the white Christians, who have many centuries of Christian ancestors behind them, I can surely have more charity for these sable people who themselves dwelt in bondage so long, whose ancestors were slaves, and whose history shades off into the dim, remote, unknown past of savage Africa. Even the Jews, that remarkable people, known as they always have been for shrewdness, intelligence and business prosperity, after being enslaved in Egypt for some hundred years, were fearfully debased and demoralized, wandering in the wilderness many years, and even when they had conquered their promised land, were in turmoil and confusion. Can we expect better things of the sons of Ham? No nation can be “born in a day” whose minds and hearts are degraded by bondage for so long.
But there is evident progress. The colored people of Macon deserve praise for their efforts after a truer life. There are 10,000 of them in this city, and among them is much poverty and want. But others have, “since emancipation,” laid up property and secured comfortable homes of their own. Their children in school compare favorably in most respects with white children. Some of them walk three or four miles each way to attend our Lewis High School. The extravagance and effervescence of religious gatherings is becoming more and more toned down as intelligence increases. They are more and more winning the respect of the whites, and I think there is more disposition on both sides to live peaceably than at any previous time since the war. Our church and school have had various trials, but now the prospect seems more favorable. One man has united with the church on profession.