BLACK SAINTS AND WHITE.
Do colored folks retain their complexion when they go to heaven? This is a question of some importance to the members of the Diocesan Convention of the Protestant Episcopal churches of Charleston, S.C. Not long ago the Convention appointed a special committee to consider and report upon the subject of the admission of negro clergymen and laymen as members of that body. Their action was taken with the view of bringing the Charleston churches, if possible, into harmony with the other Episcopal congregations of the State. In 1887, the former had seceded in consequence of the adoption of a resolution which the Charleston brethren regarded as a virtual obliteration of the color-line.
Thursday, the report of the committee was made public. It proposes a separate convocation for the colored churches under the ministration of the bishop, and consents to the admission to the Convention of colored clergymen who have been associated with the church for twelve months prior to May, 1889. If the report is adopted, three negro ministers will sit as members, but no lay delegates will be eligible. The committee were willing to forego their prejudice out of deference to the holy office. They felt that the color of a clergyman's skin, although it was no doubt a very serious ground of objection when it happened to be black, should not overcome the respect due to the sanctity of his official calling. His cloth, so to speak, saved him, and what would have been denied to the man it was possible to concede to the priest.
Under these circumstances the gravity of the question, "Do colored folks retain their complexion when they go to heaven?" is obvious. The concession which the committee of the Diocesan Convention make is but a re-affirmation of the Charleston brethren's aversion to anything that smacks of an approach to association of the two races on terms of equality. If there are colored saints in Paradise, it will be utterly impossible for the Charleston white saints of the Episcopal denomination to feel at home there. The only chance of reconciling them to a heaven so liberally disposed would depend on the adoption of some such plan as that recommended by the committee as a modus vivendi in the church on earth. That is to say, if the colored saints were corraled by themselves—if their convocations were separate from the convocations of the white saints—if they were not admitted to the white circles of celestial society as equal partakers of the privileges of the heavenly kingdom—the Caucasian angels from Charleston might be willing to pass their eternity in such a place.
It is very essential for them, therefore, to know whether there are in fact any colored saints in heaven; and, if there are, whether the divisions of the Father's house into "many mansions" admits of an arrangement whereby the angelic brunettes may occupy one set of quarters and the Charleston blondes another. Until these problems are solved to their satisfaction, we do not see how our Christian friends of the chief city of South Carolina can contemplate a future life with any degree of equanimity. Their faith may be equal to the removal of mountains and their virtues may entitle them to all the felicity of the spirits of just men made perfect, but if it is the rule of the "happy land, far, far away" that a black saint is just as good as a white one, how much more rational it would be for them to prefer annihilation to immortality.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
PARAGRAPHS.
We would continue to remind pastors and churches of our Leaflets, which we will be happy to furnish, on application, to those taking collections for our Association.
The Daily Standard-Union, of Brooklyn, is a good judge. It says:
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY for April, published by the American Missionary Association, New York, is full of information useful and edifying to all interested in domestic missions.
The "Student's Letter" found on another page is worth attention. The writer, Rev. Spencer Snell, gives a modest and yet vivid picture of his struggles for an education, and he is now—we say it for him, as he does not—the able and acceptable pastor of our growing church in Birmingham, Alabama. We wish in a quiet way to suggest to our friends in the North that "it pays" to spend money to educate such men.
Rev. James Wharton, the evangelist, who has been efficiently preaching to the American Missionary churches in the South this winter, has left this country for England, where he will remain until the first of October, when he will return again to his specific work in which the churches have been greatly blessed. The churches which he has visited, and which have added to their numbers through his ministration, are Louisville, Ky., Sherwood, Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., Athens, Florence, Mobile and Montgomery, Ala., Jackson and Tougaloo, Miss., and New Orleans, La.
Many prayers will go with him across the sea, and many welcomes will greet him on his return.