CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE SOUTH.
4. Its Relation to the African Race.
DIST. SEC. C. L. WOODWORTH, BOSTON.
Beyond any sentiment of honor, or of ambition to do our share of the immense work thrown in an hour upon the churches of this land, is the higher aim to introduce our faith and our polity to the African race. Not only is it our reproach that we have been, almost exclusively, confined to a small part of the English-speaking people, but we shall deserve our littleness if we consent to be limited to this nation, or even to this continent. The world needs the principles we have in trust, and will not reach its best until it attains them. And, now, before us is an open field, rich in resources of life and wealth, all untilled. One-sixth of the human family waits to be moulded by Christian influence. A continent bares its bosom and asks Christianity for her strongest and best. Why should the Church, which took possession of one continent and gave it the most benign institutions earth ever saw, hesitate to lay hold of another, and plant it with the good seed of the kingdom?
There is something immensely stimulating in the thought of breaking forth after a lost race. All we need is an infusion of the enterprise which guided the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock. A new continent for Christ is what we need to take up as our watch-word, and pass along the lines till our membership is fired with a holy zeal to win its 200,000,000 unto the Lamb that was slain. And if we were intent on this, how easy it would be to connect the work here with the work there. If, when the door opened into the South, we had gone in with our plans to save the African race, we could hardly have done differently from what we have. We have planted our schools and our churches in the very centres of population and of influence. We have a large force of young men and women in our schools, and our churches are constituted almost wholly of young Christian scholars. How easy it would be to turn the whole tide of their study and thought and influence towards Africa! There is in the African mind of the South now a strong drawing toward the land of their fathers. The schemes of colonization afloat all through the South show it. The hundreds of young men and young women banded together in our schools and churches to go to Africa as teachers or as preachers, if the way shall open, show it. They only need the guiding intelligence to undertake to plant on Africa’s shores another Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay.
And this opportunity comes to the Congregational church and finds it well prepared to enter on the training of Christian scholars and preachers for this work. Our churches on the ground are few in number, but filled with young, fresh, intelligent, pure material, and co-operate with our schools to bring forward the teachers and leaders of the African race. Is it all chance that puts us in this position and gives us this advantage in laying the foundations of education and religion for another race and another continent? God’s plan may include black as well as white pilgrims, and it may be ours to impart the pilgrim spirit and prepare the men who shall make a new Africa, as our fathers made a new America. This is possible to us as a church, and we ought to work towards it with unflagging zeal. We can only lose our advantage by our own neglect and lack of enterprise. We are in the front of workers for Africa. Eight or ten of our young Christian scholars are already on African soil. They send back a call for reinforcements, and the reinforcements will be ready as soon as our churches furnish the equipments and give them marching orders. The work may be long and rough; our fathers found it so here. Congregationalism is used to that. Indeed, she does best when on the strain. She is grand when she leads the forlorn hope. Easy, comfortable, self-pleasing life is not the atmosphere in which she grows tough, sturdy, courageous and aggressive. Show her something to do for Christ, something calling for sacrifice, some mighty battle to be fought for her King, and she will cover herself with glory.
Out at the front—among the ranchmen, herdsmen, miners, soldiers, savages—she is at home. This Southern work, which has taken the feet of her toilers as near the thorns, and their heads as near the crown of martyrdom, as any work of the century, has shown her splendid qualities. Her faith and meekness, love and heroism, have won her praises even in the gates of her enemies. And now we ask her to make the whole African race the object of her endeavor. This is the mission offered to her; let her not decline it. Let her lead the hardest and perhaps the grandest movement in modern missions. The young colored scholars of the South have learned to trust her, and they will follow her.
Now is the time: Africa swings wide open her long barred gates; commerce and science are moving to possess the land; foundations are being laid for the centuries: let the church that can build so wisely and so well, build this new temple of a regenerated Africa.