It would not be fair to suggest that all the inhabitants of Jamaica could be influenced by a jackanapes in a naval uniform and sword, riding on a donkey. There are of course a large number, a large majority, of really intelligent men and women who are properly religious. I mention extreme cases in order that it may be possible for you to gain some insight into the extraordinary character of the Black man. It is easy for any educated man to make great crowds of Jamaicans profess and call themselves Christians. To really imbue the people with a knowledge of the elementary duties of Christian people is a task of great difficulty. Sunday is their day of rest. The old people smoke their pipes and gossip in the shade of their doorways, the youngsters parade the town in all the glory of their gaudy finery. On Sunday the natural idleness of the coloured man is as it were legalised. Once a week their besetting sin of indolence becomes a real virtue. So the day is enjoyed to the full. It is never necessary to drive home to a nigger the fact that it is wicked to labour on the seventh day. The difficulty is to persuade him to work on the other six.
Everyone has heard of the Jamaican revivalist meetings, those weird religious orgies where men and women run riot in the name of great salvation. They are difficult services to witness; the people, especially
the parson people, are shy in the presence of the unbelieving. You can only enter a native synagogue by means of great cunning and an utter absence of self-restraint. The interiors of such synagogues are commonplace—you can see their furniture and fittings in any tiny bethel in poorer London. The difference lies in the people only; in Jamaica they are all utterly black and very happy. The preacher wears spectacles, and has a white beard and conventional clerical collar and white shirt. The congregation are attired in all the tints of a German Noah’s Ark, and show examples of half the costumes known to civilisation and Whitechapel. Of course there are more women than men, but still the males that appear are not less zealous than the most excitable of the ladies. When the service has half spent itself, order, and the souls of the people, have become really affected. The solemnity of the place entirely disappears, and pandemonium comes in like a rustling, choking tornado. Men and women dance and pray and sing and shout, and then fall backwards to the hard wood floor clutching the empty air in the agony of spiritual exaltation. The preacher abstains from flinging himself into the heat of the melée with infinite difficulty, and by exercising his power of self-restraint in a manner inspiring to behold. The congregation exhausts its frenzy and lies quiet and purified, in the manner of a snake that has exhausted its poison gland in attacking the sacking held by an experienced charmer. In this manner is a large proportion of the population of the island every week, with great regularity, saved from damnation. The parson is carried home to sup with the senior deacon, and the congregation disperses into little groups of devotees, each member anxious to examine the religious experience of his brother, or explain at great length his own sensations of salvation.
