"The methods of carrying on the home instruction are various, and we are abundantly supplied with the needful facilities. We need not name the reading of the Bible; and judiciously selected sermons, to be read to the adults when they cannot attend preaching, should not be omitted. Catechetical instruction, by means of such excellent aids as our own 'Catechism for young children,' and 'Jones' Catechism of Scripture doctrine and practice,' will of course be resorted to; together with teaching them hymns and singing with them. The reading to them, for variety, such engaging and instructive stories as are found in the 'Children's column' of some of our best religious papers; and suitable Sabbath school, or other juvenile books, such as 'The Peep of Day,' 'Line upon Line,' etc., will, in many cases, prove an excellent aid, in imbuing their minds with religious truth. Masters should not spare expense or trouble, to provide liberally these various helps to those who take this work in hand, to aid and encourage them to the utmost in their self-denying toil.
"Brethren, the time is propitious to urge your attention to this important duty. A deep and constantly increasing interest in the work, is felt throughout the South. Just at this time, also, extensively throughout portions of our territory, an unusual awakening has been showing itself among the colored people. It becomes us, and it is of vital importance on every account, by judicious instruction, both to guide the movement, and to improve the opportunity.
"We commend this whole great interest to the Divine blessing; and, under God, to your conscientious reflection, to devise the proper ways; and to your faithful Christian zeal, to accomplish whatever your wisdom may devise and approve."
The Mobile Daily Tribune, in referring to the religious training of the slaves, says:[80]
"Few persons are aware of the efforts that are continually in progress, in a quiet way, in the various Southern States, for the moral and religious improvement of the negroes—of the number of clergymen of good families, accomplished education, and often of a high degree of talent, who devote their whole time and energies to this work; or of the many laymen—almost invariably slaveholders themselves—who sustain them by their purses and by their assistance as catechists, Sunday school teachers, and the like. These men do not make platform speeches, or talk in public on the subject of their 'mission,' or theorize about the 'planes' on which they stand: they are too busy for this, but they work on quietly in labor and self-denial, looking for a sort of reward very different from the applause bestowed upon stump agitators. Their work is a much less noisy one, but its results will be far more momentous.
"We have very limited information on this subject, for the very reasons just mentioned, but enough to give some idea of the zeal with which these labors are prosecuted by the various Christian denominations. Thus, among the Old School Presbyterians it is stated that about one hundred ministers are engaged in the religious instruction of the negroes exclusively. In South Carolina alone there are forty-five churches or chapels of the Episcopal Church, appropriated exclusively to negroes; thirteen clergymen devote to them their whole time, and twenty-seven a portion of it; and one hundred and fifty persons of the same faith are engaged in imparting to them catechetical instruction. There are other States which would furnish similar statistics if they could be obtained.
"It is in view of such facts as these, that one of our cotemporaries, (the Philadelphia Inquirer,) though not free from a certain degree of anti-slavery proclivity, makes the following candid admission:
"'The introduction of African slavery into the colonies of North America, though doubtless brought about by wicked means, may in the end accomplish great good to Africa; a good, perhaps, to be effected in no other way. Hundreds and thousands have already been saved, temporally and spiritually, who otherwise must have perished. Through these and their descendants it is that civilization and Christianity have been sent back to the perishing millions of Africa.'"
The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1859, says:
"In our colored missions great good has been accomplished by the labors of the self-sacrificing and zealous missionaries.