They were faithful to humble duty in the dark days of the South from 1861 to 1865. When Jefferson Davis had called for troops until he had well-nigh decimated the fair Southland, and even boys, in their devotion to the cause they loved dearly, were willing to go to the front, my young master came to my old mistress and asked to be allowed to go. Calling my Uncle Isaac, my old mistress said to him, "Isaac, go along with your young Mars Edmund, take good care of him, and bring him home to me." "I gwy do de bes I kin," was his reply. Off these two went, amid the tears of the whole plantation, and we heard no more of them for some time. One night we were startled to hear the dogs howling down in the pasture-lot, always to the Southern heart a forewarning of death. A few nights thereafter, my mother heard a tapping on the kitchen window, and, on going to the door, saw Uncle Isaac standing there—alone. "What in the world are you doing here?" was the question of my mother. "Whar's mistis'?" was the interrogative answer. My mother went to call the mistress, who, white as a sheet repeated the question. "Mistis', I done de bes' I could." Going a few paces from the door, while the soft southern moon shone pitilessly through the solemn pines, he brought the dead body of his young master and laid it tenderly at his mother's feet. He had brought his dead "massa" on his back a distance of more than twenty miles from the battle-field, thus faithfully keeping his promise. Such an act of devotion can never be forgotten while memory holds its sacred office. Not one case of nameless crime was ever heard in those days, though the flower of the womanhood of the South was left practically helpless in the hands of black men in Southern plantations.
"But as a faithful watch-dog stands and guards with jealous eye,
He cared for master's wife and child, and at the door would lie,
To shed his blood in their defense, 'gainst traitors, thieves, and knaves,
Altho' those masters went to fight to keep them helpless slaves."
Some have claimed that, instead of putting so much money in churches, the Negro, after the war, should have built mills and factories, and thus would have advanced more rapidly in civilization; but I rejoice that he did build churches, and to-day can say that of the three hundred millions he has accumulated, more than forty millions are in church property in the sixteen Southern States. This shows his fidelity and gratitude to God, and that by intuition he had grasped the fundamental fact that faith and love and morality are greater bulwarks for the perpetuity of a nation than material wealth; that somehow he was in accord with God's holy mandate that "man does not live by bread alone." Guided by a superior wisdom, he first sought the kingdom of heaven, and it does seem that "all these things" are slowly being added to him. Education and wealth, unsanctified by the grace of God, are after all, curses rather than a blessing. We are to rise, not by our strong bodies, our intellectual powers, or material wealth, although these are necessary concomitants, but by the virtue, character, and honesty of our men and women.
We are proud of our 30,000 teachers, 2,000 graduated doctors, 1,000 lawyers, 20,000 ordained ministers, 75,000 business men, 400 patentees, and 250,000 farms all paid for, as evidences of our possibilities, but proudest of the fact that nearly three millions of our almost ten millions of Negroes are professing Christians. It is true that the black man is not always the best kind of a Christian. He is often rather crude in worship, with a rather hazy idea of the connection between religion and morality. A colored man, on making a loud profession of religion, was asked if he were going to pay a certain debt he had contracted, remarked, "'Ligun is 'ligun, an' bisnes' is bisnes', an' I aint gwy mix um," yet I am afraid ours is not the only race that fails to "mix um," and he does not have to go far to find others with advantages far superior to his, who have not reached the delectable mountain. We, like others, are seeking higher ground, and some have almost reached it. Thank God we can point to thousands of Negro Christians whose faith is as strong as that of the prophets of old, and whose lives are as pure and sweet as the morning dew.
Our greatest curse to-day is the rum-shop, kept far too often by men of the developed and forward race to filch from us our hard earnings, and give us shame and misery in return. And a man who would deliberately debauch and hinder a backward race, struggling for the light, would "rob the dead, steal the orphan's bread, pillage the palace of the King of Kings, and clip the angels' pinions while they sing."
Right by the side of this hindrance, especially in the country districts, is our ignorant, and, in too many cases, venial ministry, for ignorance is the greatest curse on earth, save sin. The Sunday-school is destined to be the most potent factor in the removal of this evil. As our children see the light as revealed in the Sunday-school by the teachers of God's word, they will demand an intelligent and moral ministry and will support no other. Let me say to you that there is no agency doing more in that absolutely necessary and fundamental line than this God-sent association.
Wherever your missionaries have gone, there have been magical and positive changes for good, and the elevating power of this work for us can never be told. God bless the thousands of Sunday-school teachers whose names may never be known outside their immediate circles, and yet are doing a work so grand and noble that angels would delight to come down and bear them company.
There is a beautiful story told in Greek mythology that when Ulysses was passing in his ship by the Isle of the Sirens, the beautiful sirens began to play their sweetest music to lure the sailors from their posts of duty. Ulysses and his sailors stuffed wax in their ears, and lashed themselves to the masts that they might not be lured away; but, when Orpheus passed by in the search of the golden fleece and heard the same sweet songs, he simply took out his harp and played sweeter music, and not a sailor desired to leave the vessel. The sirens of sin and crime are doing all in their power to lure us from the highest and best things in life. Wealth, education, political power are, after all, but wax in the ears, the ropes that may or may not hold us to the masts of safety; but that sweeter music of the heart, played on the harp of love by the fingers of faith will hold us stronger than "hoops of steel." Let the great Sunday-school movement continue to play for us this sweeter music, and no sirens can lure us away from truth and right and heaven. The mission that will be of real help to us will be the mission dictated by love, for no race is more susceptible to kindness than ours. It must be undertaken in the spirit of the Master who said, "I call ye not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends." The Negro loves his own and is satisfied to be with them, and yet, the man who would really help him must be a man who has seen the vision. Peter was unwilling to go to the Gentiles, being an orthodox Jew, until God put him in a trance upon the house top, let down the sheet from heaven with all manner of beasts, and bid him rise up, slay, and eat. Peter strenuously objected, saying, "Lord, I have touched nothing unclean." But God said, "What I have cleansed, call thou not unclean." Then Peter said, "I see of a truth that God is no respector of persons, but has made of one blood all men to dwell upon all the face of the earth."
I pray, I believe, that you have seen this vision, and in this spirit have come to help us. Sir Launfal, in searching for the Holy Grail, found it in ministering to the suffering and diseased at his own door. Ye who are in search of God's best gift can find it to-day in lifting up these ten millions of people at your door, broken by slavery, bound by ignorance, yet groping for the light. If we go down in sin and ignorance, we can not go alone, but must contaminate and curse millions unborn. If we go up, as in God's name we will, we will constitute the brightest star in your crown. What religion has done for others, it will do for us. See the triumphs of King Emanuel in Africa, Burmah, China, and the isles of the sea. It was Christianity that liberated four millions of slaves, and brought them to their better position. Christian men, North and South, are helping them to-day. We could not rise alone.
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