After the examination we have made, and trying to scan the future, we see what has been gained by the colored members who remained in the Methodist Episcopal Church. They have been admitted to full membership, to communion at her altars, official relation as laymen, given work in the pastorate, presiding elderate, and given to understand that “color is no bar to an election to the episcopacy.”
“But these attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labors of the lengthened way;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes;
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”
Will a time ever come in the history of the Methodist Episcopal Church when she will tire of the race question, and abandon forever her work among and for the colored man? It is hardly conceivable that this will ever occur. The discussion of the race question becomes beautifully less at each General Conference. It is true that new phases develop now and then, and there follows a clash at arms; but it never, nowadays, amounts to more than a passage at arms, for the reason that the average agitator receives but comparatively little encouragement from those Churches in this country which have turned their backs upon the colored man. They tremblingly hope the Methodist Episcopal Church will make some awkward step that will eventually drive the colored man out; but they have seen her stand by him in the hottest contests unflinchingly, and in the face of a gainsaying prejudice that is as old as the venerated Constitution and as deep rooted as sin, and they fear to say yea or nay touching what it will or will not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church can never forsake the colored man, and be consistent. It declared in 1816, 1844, 1861, and 1872, by its actions, that the duty of the Christian Church was to stand by the colored man, by making him feel at home within it as much as possible. Now to go back, would be to say that the Church South in 1844 was right in defending slavery, and right in ridding itself of the colored man in 1870, and that that which the Methodist Episcopal Church did at those periods was wrong. This it can never do, and be consistent.
One other question at this juncture arises. It is one fraught with much interest, as it is one that would involve the entire eight millions of colored people in this country, that would naturally widen the chasm between the white and colored races in this country, and would sustain the same relation to a war of races in this country that the separation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, sustained in 1844 to the war of the Rebellion. It is, Will the colored members within the Methodist Episcopal Church eventually be separated from it? If the existing relations between the Church and her colored members remain as they are now, No. There could be no reason for a separation, since “there is no word white” known within the letter of the law of the Church to indorse invidious distinctions “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude;” there are no privileges accorded to any man of one race in the Church, that another of any other race within the Church is not entitled to by law. There is no church-building with the name of the Methodist Episcopal Church inscribed upon it, into which any person “having a desire to flee the wrath to come” may not go as a worshiper, or become a member. This is also true of any university, college, or school under the auspices of the Church. There is no annual conference of the Church to which the colored man has not a perfect right to belong; no position within the gift of the Methodist Episcopal Church, from janitor to bishop, to which any member, white or colored, may not aspire, be elected or appointed to, and discharge the functions pertaining thereto, without hindrance. In a word, the white and colored membership within the Church is, according to the enactments of the General Conference, equal in all that pertains to Church membership and privileges. Hence there is now no cause for the colored membership seeking separation from the Church. “We know not what a day may bring forth;” but, judging the future by the past, there will never come a time when it will be absolutely necessary for the Church to put away its colored membership, nor an absolute necessity for the colored membership to withdraw from the Church. The question of the inferiority of the colored man within the Church to the average white member within the Church, is fast disappearing, whether we speak of this in reference to General or annual conferences. The Methodist Episcopal Church is turning out enough young colored men from her universities, colleges, and schools, from Boston to Austin, Texas, each year, to form an annual conference. The graduates from her schools are everywhere joining the Church and conferences, and, to a certain extent, coping with those whose chances have been more favorable. No absolute necessity for separation exists, and, for that matter, may never exist. May it not be found more profitable, after a short time, for all the colored Methodists in this country to unite and form one grand united body of colored Methodists? This question has been urged by many different parties, with as many different motives at the bottom. Let us notice a few. In “Our Brother in Black” (by Dr. A. G. Haygood, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,) at page 226, we find the following touching the point at issue:
“The most remarkable tendency that has so far shown itself in the development of their ecclesiastical life is the strong and, as I think, resistless disposition in those of like faith to come together in their religious organizations. The centripetal is stronger than the centrifugal force. We have already a number of African Churches. Indeed, the great majority of them belong to Churches not only of their own ‘faith and order,’ but of their own ‘race and color.’... This disposition has become very pronounced, and has expressed itself on a very large scale since they were set free.”
At page 236 the good Doctor reaches his point when he says:
“If every colored Methodist in the United States were to-day in one organization, this would not change the grounds or nature of our obligations to them in any respect, so far as fraternal love, fraternal aid, and co-operation are concerned. It would then, as now, be our duty to help them in all possible ways; and considering their history in this country, and the providential indications of their relation to the salvation of Africa, just as much our duty then as now. If there were not one Negro in the Methodist Episcopal Church the Freedmen’s Aid Society would be as much needed as it is now. ‘The colored Methodist Episcopal Church of America’ that was ‘set up’—I hope not ‘set off’—needs the help of its mother, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, every whit as much as if they were still with us. Nay, all the more, because they are not with us. And we ought, before God, to help them.” We simply add, it is about time.