The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because her worship is hearty, beautiful, uplifting and inspiring, though simple and easy, furnishing the greatest opportunity for active participation therein by the ignorant as well as the learned. The worship of the Episcopal Church harmonizes most beautifully with the strong religious fervor of the Negro, and as a vehicle for offering up those intense longings and aspirations of his heart, is without an equal.
The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because she believes so persistently and thoroughly in "a change of heart." Of all religious bodies not one lays such emphasis on the absolute necessity of "a change of heart" as does the Episcopal Church. Stamped upon every page of her divine liturgy, and permeating the beautiful prayers of her offices, and inwrought in her hymnology, is this deep and firm recognition and teaching with respect to a change of heart. All her sacraments, disciplinary offices, instructions and the like, are with the design of helping her children, through the aid of the Divine Spirit, in proving the genuineness of their change of heart by a conspicuous, powerful and beautiful change of life.
The Episcopal Church is adapted to the Negro because she offers a government that is congenial and pleasant to his sunshiny nature, and which, while it amply protects him in the enjoyment of all the blessed privileges of religious culture, saves him the disaster and confusion of a democracy, which, when realized, is but another name for anarchy and confusion.
The government of the Episcopal Church is jointly shared by her clergymen and laymen, and the stability and security of its government is firmly attested by the past ages of experience and notable achievements.
In conclusion the Episcopal Church is the church for the Negro, because she is both willing and able to supply his every need, and under her loving nurture and constant training in the end will graduate him into a well-rounded Christian man of symmetrical character and beauty.
SECOND PAPER.
ARE OTHER THAN BAPTIST AND METHODIST CHURCHES ADAPTED TO THE PRESENT NEGRO?
BY REV. JOHN W. WHITTAKER.
