The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy

by Robert Elliott Flickinger

The principal results of the French Revolution may be briefly summarized as follows:

Good riddance of a half century line, of worse than useless, atheistic kings and queens; the suppression of the tyrannous feudal system, that prevented the common people from acquiring ownership of land, the suppression of the Bastille, a feudal prison and robber den, and of the guillotine; the suppression of religious persecution, and the separation of church and state in matters of government and support; and the adoption of a constitution, that provides for the people to have a voice, in the management of the affairs of the government.

LAND OF CALVIN AND LAFAYETTE

France is the land that gave birth and education to John Calvin, the pioneer advocate of civil and religious liberty, and in his day the good work of the Reformers had gained an encouraging foot hold in his native land, but after the lapse of a century of cruel extermination, one looks in vain to see the expected fruits of his great work. A century, of Bible suppression and persecution of Bible readers, has left the people in ignorance of the Word of God, which is the Light and Life of the World, and in its place catholicism and infidelity, like hoar frosts or destructive black clouds, have spread over the land. Oppressed with a feeling of need and seeking something not clearly defined, the people grope in darkness and stumble on events, as if playing blind-man's-buff. The one hundred and forty-nine Roman clergy in the first assembly are so lacking in intelligence and patriotism, they exert no special influence worthy of note.

Very different were the scenes that Lafayette witnessed, during the period he co-operated with the colonies of America, in their struggles for liberty and independence. Here he met many of the descendants of the very people, whom the bitter persecutions in France had driven to this country. Many of them, as early settlers in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, exerted a considerable influence, in moulding the character of the American people. He found all the people engaging intelligently in the cause of freedom. Their leaders knew what they were endeavoring to achieve, and every movement was characterized by good order, patriotism and superior wisdom.

ROMANISM BEHIND THE TIMES

This historic contrast of the good fruits of the open Bible among the people in America, with the sad and deplorable results of Romanism and infidelity in France, previous to the great revolutions, that occurred in both countries in the days of Lafayette, is certainly very interesting and instructive.

Other countries in which Romanism has been dominant and the Bible suppressed, as Ireland, Spain, Mexico, the Philippine Islands and the states of Central and South America, show a similar unfavorable contrast. In South America, where Romanism has suppressed the Bible for centuries, only two percent of all the college students in 1913, according to Bishop Kensolving of the Episcopal church in Brazil, "affirm their allegiance to any religious faith."

In Spain, according to a recent issue of the Herald of Madrid, there are 30,000 towns and rural villages, that are yet without schools of any kind. There are thousands of the people whose homes can be reached only by bridle-paths. They lack schools, roads and railroads. Seventy-six per cent of the children and youth are unable to read and write. In Spain, Mexico and South America, Romanism has proven itself to be, but little more than a pious form of paganism, an oppressive and widespread relic of ancient, pagan Rome.

During the two hundred years preceding the Revolution in France no one was ever persecuted for being an atheist, deist, infidel or Roman catholic, but all of these united in suppressing the general use of the Bible and the presence of Bible readers, to the great injury of the public welfare. If that country had not foolishly and wickedly exterminated the people, that were fast becoming Bible readers at the time of the Reformation, it would no doubt have been saved from many of the blind and bloody scenes of the period of the Revolution.