CONVERSION VERSUS EDUCATION.
It was a wild and weird scene that we looked down upon from the gallery of one of the prominent colored churches in a Southern city a few months since. The preacher had, at 10 o’clock, p. m., finished his part of the service, having preached an excellent and very simple sermon, in which there was nothing calculated to produce the violent scenes which followed, and having come down from the pulpit, the brethren and sisters took the meeting under their own management.
Up to this time it had been as quiet and decorous as a deacons’ meeting in New England. A stentorian “son of thunder” now led the singing, and a general movement of the whole assembly at once began. Soon, nearly a hundred “seekers” were kneeling at the “mourners’ bench,” a row of seats extending across the church, in all stages of physical and spiritual abasement. Prayer and song followed each other in rapid and boisterous succession, while the congregation of believers marched and counter-marched, each one discharging at once his duty and a volley of counsel or encouragement to the mourners as he passed along the line.
Black was the ground and prevailing color. The lights were hardly sufficient to resolve this nebulous blackness into faces, black sun-bonnets of the sisters, and black-coated forms of the brethren moving to and fro through the room, while the singers sang, the exhorters exhorted, the mourners mourned in dismal howls, and the shouters shouted and leaped in ecstatic joy. Now and then, one would come to the surface of all this uproar, to tell what voices he had heard, what visions he had seen, what dreams he had dreamed, and receive the assurance from the minister: “I have no more doubt that he has got religion, than I have of my own existence,” which would be the signal for a general shout of “glory to God!” that made the preceding bedlam seem tame, and gave renewed impetus to the marchings and songs and prayers.
These meetings had been in nightly session for weeks, and continued for weeks afterward, prolonged often, as on this night, until 2 o’clock in the morning. As we left, about midnight, our driver, an intelligent negro, said: “You are going away too early. Things will get pretty warm after awhile. ’Ligion strikes a nigger first in the foot and then works up; it is just beginning to work, it will be lively after awhile;” of which there could not be much doubt.
One of our missionaries, some time since, was applied to by a colored woman for admission to the church. At her examination before the committee, she had a wonderful dream to tell as proof of her conversion. The committee, not deeming it sufficient evidence, refused her application. She went immediately to one of the old ministers, and the day of her immersion was duly celebrated by a great gathering, of which she was the heroine. As she clambered up the bank of the river, shouting aloud, she suddenly encountered one of the deacons whose church had refused her admission. Giving a sudden pause to her religious fervor, she thrust her clenched hand into his face, exclaiming: “There, I am baptized,” and followed up with imprecations upon himself, pastor, and church, which were, to say the least, not saintly, and then resumed her shout of glory!
To one who has seen the negro often under religious excitement, it is evident that he seeks it as many men do intoxication, for the mere pleasurable excitement; he neither feels nor hears, nor does he know of reasons for being a better man morally because of his religion; if it only makes him happier, it meets his need, and the only demand he has to make of it.
This is a just idea of what conversion was under the old-style minister among the negroes. Of course, there were many among them who preached a purer Gospel, and sought renewed spiritual lives among their people, especially before emancipation, but with freedom came the hope of political or other power, which could be gained most easily by the preacher, and many sought and secured such positions who were utterly unscrupulous as well as ignorant. It is such a ministry as this which, more than anything else, opposes to-day our work among the Freedmen.
Dr. Sears stated last spring, in his address at the School Superintendents’ Convention, that he knew of the presence of one trained normal teacher in a village to necessitate the dismissal of seven old-fashioned teachers. Contrast and comparison revealed sad deficiencies before unknown, and the committee was forced to get rid of the poor teachers. And so it is chiefly by what we compel others to do, that we are to estimate the value of our intelligent and largely undenominational work in the South. The Freedmen are beginning to see that religion is something different from dreaming dreams or seeing visions, or shouting, or anything of the kind; that it means honest, pure, industrious lives, inspired and controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ. Education is securing something better than such conversions, in fact is making them impossible with the new generation.