The people were all well clothed,—many in elegance. The most of them in white and black; court mourning for the queen.
And then the grand old service began,—that wonderful world-encircling service of our old English Mother Church—always the same and always sufficient—and it was all so strange,—the feeling I had about that word “we.” There was a slow dawning in my soul that never before had the word “humanity” meant anything but a white humanity to me—a universal love for black, yellow, chocolate, brown, saffron humanity had never come fully into my consciousness. And, while I sat there in that vast, black assemblage, the long, terrible past of Jamaica arose before me, and, too, the doubtful future loomed up in gloomy outlines, and I wondered what would be the outcome of it all. Where would the Englishman be in another century in Jamaica? Would Jamaica revert back to the Haïtien type, or is some hand coming to uphold the island? It is far from my intention to touch upon the political situation in Jamaica,—especially as I don’t know anything about it. I can only tell you what I saw, and you can draw your own conclusions. All I can say is, where is the white man in Jamaica? What is his position, and what has brought him into his present deplorable condition? Has the white blood after all so little potency?
One needs but to glance at James Anthony Froude’s masterful book, “The English in the West Indies,” in order to see the why and wherefore of it all. His words have greater force to-day than even at the time of his writing, for the course of events has more than justified his predictions.
Our opinions of the situation were wholly unbiased, for we did not read Froude’s account until long after, so that our sensations, our surprises, at the Jamaican English Church service, were wholly original.
The service proceeded through the prayers—our prayers—and then came the sermon. I shall never forget the text. It was taken from that masterpiece of Biblical literature, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”