SOUTHERN TESTIMONY.
We insert the following from the Southern Presbyterian, as a recent testimony to the views, principles and work of the American Missionary Association. It will be all the stronger from the fact that it was not written for a testimony, but as a setting forth of facts by a Southerner to Southerners.
The old masters and the old slaves are now rapidly passing into eternity. In ten years more no one of our people, white or black, under forty years of age, will know personally anything of slavery. It then comes to this, that now and from this time forward, we white Christians must be impressed with the fact that we have here at our doors, in our houses, offices, stores and kitchens, and on our farms, not slaves, but a race of people, three-fourths of whom are but a little removed from savages in so far as their knowledge of religion is concerned. They have among them those whom they call preachers; they hold meetings, they halloo, they shout, but no saving truth is preached or heard from that source. The result is great animal excitement, but no moral elevation. Then many of them are receiving secular education. That sharpens their intellects but gives no Christian character. It does just the opposite; it fits them for rascality. They are increasing. There are probably eight millions of them now, and there will be many millions more. Those who are dying without Christ are dying here in a Christian land without hope.
The statement of a Congregational missionary recently made, is probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not altogether, heathen. They are not across the ocean; under God's providence they are here, where you can touch them with your finger. Why here? It will not do to say that nothing can be made out of them. Go to Texas, to Tennessee, and come right here to Atlanta now, and our most intelligent white men will tell you that on the prohibition question, negroes, educated, smart and very eloquent, have made, and are making, ringing speeches. There have been smart speakers on both sides. Some of their speeches would do credit to any white orator in the South. Dr. Sanderson, our late Professor at Tuskaloosa, stated on the floor of the Synod of Alabama last week, that he had taught a good deal, and that a young negro, twenty years of age, one of our divinity students at Tuskaloosa, was as smart a pupil as he had ever seen; that if he were in the State University he would be in its first rank of students, and that he heard him recently preach a sermon on the mediatorial work of Christ, such that he (Dr. Sanderson) would not undertake to make a better one on that majestic theme. * * *
In Dallas Presbytery, Texas, recently, a black man was examined for two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once. So the brethren there testify.
Then it comes to this: this race of people is here; the great body of them are heathen. Can anyone doubt that it is the purpose of the Almighty to prepare a large number of them, converted, educated and civilized, to go back to Africa to redeem that continent for civilization and for Christ? We are commanded to preach the Gospel to every creature, to teach it to all nations.