The allusion to the monarchy seems not a very obvious one, as it parallels the definitive rejection of a spiritual creed with the theoretical change of ancient notions regarding a concrete fact. At any rate we have it that his special religion, when concocted and disseminated, will have the effect of preventing the flesh and the devil from having too much power over Negroes. The objection to the [220] devil's sway seems to us to come with queer grace from one who owes his celebrity chiefly to the production of works teeming with that peculiar usage of language of which the Enemy of Souls is credited with the special fatherhood.
No, sir, in the name of the Being regarding whose existence you and your alleged "popular thought" are so painfully in doubt, we protest against your right, or that of any other created worm, to formulate for the special behoof of Negroes any sort of artificial creed unbelieved in by yourself, having the function and effect of detective "shadowings" of their souls. Away with your criminal suggestion of toleration of the hideous orgies of heathenism in Hayti for the benefit of our future morals in the West Indies, when the political supremacy which you predict and dread and deprecate shall have become an accomplished fact. Were any special standard of spiritual excellence required, our race has, in Josiah Henson and Sojourner Truth, sufficing models for our men and our women respectively. Their ideal of Christian life, which we take to be the true one, is not to be judged of with direct reference to the Deity whom we cannot [221] see, interrogate, or comprehend, but to its practical bearing in and on man, whom we can see and have cognizance of, not only with our physical senses, but by the intimations of the divinity which abides within us.* We can see, feel, and appreciate the virtue of a fellow-mortal who consecrates himself to the Divine idea through untiring exertion for the bettering of the condition of the world around him, whose agony he makes it his duty, only to satisfy his burning desire, to mitigate. The fact in its ghastly reality lies before us that the majority of mankind labour and are being crushed under the tremendous trinity of Ignorance, Vice, and Poverty.
It is mainly in the succouring of those who thus suffer that the vitality of the old creed is manifested in the person of its professors. Under this aspect we behold it moulding men, of all nations, countries, and tongues, whose virtues have challenged and should command on its behalf the unquestioning faith and adhesion of every rational observer. "Evidences of Christianity," "Controversies," "Exegetical Commentaries," have all proved [222] more or less futile—as perhaps they ought—with the Science and Modern Criticism which perverts religion into a matter of dialectics. But there is a hope for mankind in the fact that Science itself shall have ultimately to admit the limitations of human inquiry into the details of the Infinite. Meanwhile it requires no technical proficiency to recognize the criminality of those who waste their brief threescore and ten years in abstract speculations, while the tangible, visible, and hideous soul-destroying trinity of Vice, Ignorance, and Poverty, above mentioned, are desolating the world in their very sight. There are possessors of personal virtue, enlightenment, and wealth, who dare stand neutral with regard to these dire exigencies among their fellows. And yet they are the logical helpers, as holders of the special antidote to each of those banes! Infinitely more deserving of execration are such folk than the callous owner of some specific, who allows a suffering neighbour to perish for want of it.
We who believe in the ultimate development of the Christian notion of duty towards God, as manifested in untiring beneficence to man, cling to this faith—starting from the [223] beginning of the New Testament dispensation—because Saul of Tarsus, transformed into Paul the Apostle through his whole-souled acceptance of this very creed with its practical responsibilities, has, in his ardent, indefatigable labours for the enlightenment and elevation of his fellows, left us a lesson which is an enduring inspiration; because Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, benefited, in a manner which has borne, and ever will bear, priceless fruit, enormous sections of the human family, after his definite submission to the benign yoke of the same old creed; because Vincent de Paul has, through the identical inspiration, endowed the world with his everlasting legacy of organized beneficence; because it impelled Francis Xavier with yearning heart and eager footsteps through thousands of miles of peril, to proclaim to the darkling millions of India what he had experienced to be tidings of great joy to himself; because Matthew Hale, a lawyer, and of first prominence in a pursuit which materializes the mind and nips its native candour and tenderness, escaped unblighted, through the saving influence of his faith, approving himself in the sight of all [224] an ideal judge, even according to the highest conception; because John Howard, opulent and free to enjoy his opulence and repose, was drawn thereby throughout the whole continent of Europe in quest of the hidden miseries that torture those whom the law has shut out, in dungeons, from the light and sympathy of the world; because Thomas Clarkson, animated by the spirit of its teachings, consecrated wealth, luxury, and the quiet of an entire lifetime on the altar of voluntary sacrifice for the salvation of an alien people; because Samuel Johnson, shut out from mirthfulness by disease and suffering, and endowed with an intellectual pride intolerant of froward ignorance, was, through the chastening power of that belief, transformed into the cheerful minister and willing slave of the weaklings whom he gathered into his home, and around whom the tendrils of his heart had entwined themselves, waxing closer and stronger in the moisture of his never-failing charity; because Henry Havelock, a man of the sword, whose duties have never been too propitious to the cultivation and fostering of the gentler virtues, lived and died a blameless hero, constrained by that faith to be one of its most illustrious exemplars; [225] because David Livingstone looms great and reverend in our mental sight in his devotion to a land and race embraced in his boundless fellow-feeling, and whose miseries he has commended to the sympathy of the civilized world in words the pathos whereof has melted thousands of once obdurate hearts to crave a share in applying a balm to the "open sore of Africa"—that slave-trade whose numberless horrors beggar description; and finally—one more example out of the countless varieties of types that blend into a unique solidarity in the active manifestation of the Christian life—we believe because Charles Gordon, the martyr-soldier of Khartoum, in trusting faith a very child, but in heroism more notable than any mere man of whom history contains a record, gathered around himself, through the sublime attractiveness of his faith-directed life, the united suffrages of all nations, and now enjoys, as the recompense and seal of his life's labours, an apotheosis in homage to which the heathen of Africa, the man-hunting Arab, the Egyptian, the Turk, all jostle each other to blend with the exulting children of Britain who are directly glorified by his life and history.
[226] Here, then, are speaking evidences of the believers' grounds. Verily they are of the kind that are to be seen in our midst, touched, heard, listened to, respected, beloved—nay, honoured, too, with the glad worship our inward spirit springs forth to render to goodness so largely plenished from the Source of all Good. Can Modern Science and Criticism explain them away, or persuade us of their insufficiency as incentives to the hearty acceptance of the religion that has received such glorious, yet simply logical, incarnation in the persons of weak, erring men who welcomed its responsibilities conjointly with its teachings, and thereby raised themselves to the spiritual level pictured to ourselves in our conception of angels who have been given the Divine charge concerning mankind. Religion for Negroes, indeed! White priests, forsooth! This sort of arrogance might, possibly, avail in quarters where the person and pretensions of Mr. Froude could be impressive and influential—but here, in the momentous concern of man with Him who "is no respecter of persons," his interference, mentally disposed as he tells us he is with reference to such a matter, is nothing less than profane intrusion.
[227] We will conclude by stating in a few words our notion of the only agency by which, not Blacks alone, but every race of mankind, might be uplifted to the moral level which the thousands of examples, of which we have glanced at but a few, prove so indubitably the capacity of man to attain—each to a degree limited by the scope of his individual powers. The priesthood whereof the world stands in such dire need is not at all the confederacy of augurs which Mr. Froude, perhaps in recollection of his former profession, so glibly suggests, with an esoteric creed of their own, "crystallized into shape" for profession before the public. The day of priestcraft being now numbered with the things that were, the exploitation of those outside of the sacerdotal circle is no longer possible. Therefore the religion of mere talk, however metaphysical and profound; the religion of scenic display, except such display be symbolic of living and active verities, has lost whatever of efficacy it may once have possessed, through the very spirit and tendency of To-day. The reason why those few whom we have mentioned, and the thousands who cannot possibly be recalled, have, as [228] typical Christians, impressed themselves on the moral sense and sympathy of the ages, is simply that they lived the faith which they professed. Whatever words they may have employed to express their serious thoughts were never otherwise than, incidentally, a spoken fragment of their own interior biography. In fine, success must infallibly attend this special priesthood (whether episcopally "ordained" or not) of all races, all colours, all tongues whatsoever, since their lives reflect their teachings and their teachings reflect their lives. Then, truly, they, "the righteous, shall inherit the earth," leading mankind along the highest and noblest paths of temporal existence. Then, of course, the obeah, the cannibalism, the devil-worship of the whole world, including that of Hayti, which Mr. Froude predicts will be adopted by us Blacks in the West Indies, shall no more encumber and scandalize the earth.
But Mr. Froude should, at the same time, be reminded that cannibalism and the hideous concomitants which he mentions are, after all, relatively minor and restricted dangers to man's civilization and moral soundness. They can [229] neither operate freely nor expand easily. The paralysis of horrified popular sentiment obstructs their propagation, and the blight of the death-penalty which hangs over the heads of their votaries is an additional guarantee of their being kept within bounds that minimize their perniciousness. But there are more fatal and further-reaching dangers to public morality and happiness of which the regenerated current opinion of the future will take prompt and remedial cognizance. Foremost among these will be the circulation of malevolent writings whereby the equilibrium of sympathy between good men of different races is sought to be destroyed, through misleading appeals to the weaknesses and prejudices of readers; writings in which the violation of actual truth cannot, save by stark stupidity, be attributed to innocent error; writings that scoff at humanitarian feeling and belittle the importance of achievements resulting therefrom; writings which strike at the root of national manliness, by eulogizing brute force directed against weaker folk as a fit and legitimate mode of securing the wishes of a mighty and enlightened people; writings, in fine, which ignore the divine principle [230] in man, and implicitly deny the possibility of a Divine Power existing outside of and above man, thus materializing the mind, and tending to render the earth a worse hell than it ever could have been with faith in the supremacy of a beneficent Power.
NOTES
221. *"Est deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."—Ovid.