WINNING BY PASSIVE VIRTUE.
Virtue, etymologically, has a masculine element, that of bravery, energy. Those qualities had a grand exhibition on both sides of our late civil contest. In the process of moral construction now following there is occasion for the exercise of the passive virtue of patient endurance. In the long run this courageous standing by moral convictions will come to a victory more resplendent than that of physical valor. He that ruleth his spirit is stronger than he that taketh a city.
Our missionary teachers and preachers have gone down South from year to year armed not with carnal weapons, but with spiritual—not under the impulse of martial prowess, but of high moral courage. This one thing they do: they give themselves exclusively to their work of lifting up the lowly and despised by the influences of education and of the Gospel. They do not go to engage in the political conflicts of that part of our country, thinking that a training in the higher elements of character and of citizenship will be the most effectual way of doing good to the body politic.
It is not necessary now, nor is it to our purpose, to detail the persecutions, the hardships, the social ostracism through which those cultivated and consecrated people, in this period, have had to pass. We, rather, take the more pleasant task of reporting how by their patient endurance in well-doing they have been winning the confidence, the favor, of the best people of the South. Each of our leading institutions in that region has the habit of holding an experience meeting upon the return of the students from their vacation work. Last year Fisk and Atlanta Universities sent out each one hundred and fifty young folks as teachers. These come into contact with a great number and a great variety of the white people. At those reunions they have reported from year to year an increasing amount of good feeling toward them and their work in behalf of their people. This is gratefully noted by their teachers. From our own observations the past year we are satisfied that there is a good deal of such latent approval which has not yet given itself expression in public. Our teachers and preachers for a long time have had complete immunity from personal violence, and largely from personal insult. As the quality of their work has become known in developing intelligence, industry, honesty, Christian character, they have received for it the highest approbation from an increasing number, especially from the Christian and the more substantial portion of the community. This has been accomplished by faithful service and quiet waiting.
In the matter of social recognition they still wait to win that fair recompense. In business and other relations on the street, and even, as in some places, at public gatherings, our gentlemen workers are receiving that meed of consideration. In one city, under the lead of one noble-hearted Christian man, that thin barrier has been broken down, and some of the best ladies of the place are on social terms with our teachers and the pastor’s wife. We are sorry to say that this is the only place where this social recognition has gone so far. At one other city, where some of our workers live in homes outside of the institutions, these have been treated with a measure of delicate and highly appreciated attention. The wife of one of our college presidents waited seven years for her first call from a citizen lady. Some of our elect lady teachers have been engaged ten or twelve years, at the same place, in their arduous and self-denying labor, without having had a single sisterly greeting. It seems pretty hard to hear these godly women, of the best that our churches can furnish, saying: “For so and so many years I have not been spoken to by a white Southern lady.” Our “Homes,” where these Christian people dwell, are avoided as though they were pest-houses. If the same people had been missionaries to Africa, they would be received with all deferential courtesy. If they were to go as missionaries to Natal or Calcutta or Constantinople, they would have for society the elite of foreign residents and their company would be courted.
But we will not complain. Our brethren and sisters, who are in these situations, make no ado about it. They bear this neglect meekly and hopefully, expecting that purity of life and devotion to their humane mission will yet win the tokens of regard which belong to them. One lady says that she expects that it will yet be counted an honor to her that she was the wife of the President of a Freedman’s College.
We grant that it may be hard to break the ice after so long delay. In a few cases there has been a disposition to make atonement by showing attention to the newly arrived workers, while the old ones are still overlooked. One fine, old Christian gentleman, who was prominent as a Methodist minister, broke his embarrassment, when calling late upon some of our missionaries, by stating thus: “I have heard that in some parts of the world the social custom prevails that whenever a new-comer arrives in a community, it is his prerogative to select from the citizens such as he and his would like to take into relations of social acquaintance, and to make the first call upon them.” The pleasantry served well in removing a barrier from between those who proved to be real friends.