The negro, religious, but full of superstition and sensuousness, whose religion consists largely in seeing visions and dreaming dreams, and singing songs of a heaven they are unfit for—a religion, too, which has been almost utterly divorced from morality. As General Armstrong says: “The story of the devout old Auntie who would go to the communion service, and not let one poor old goose (that she had stolen) come between her and her blessed Lord, shows how little a broken commandment disturbs the peace of the unenlightened.” The Indian, with a vague and dreamy notion of a Great Spirit, and a happy hunting ground, and a definite fear of the medicine men, who send evil spirits to possess them, and drive away disease with a dance. The Chinaman, with the remains of an ancient civilization, which has taught him to imitate and to worship his ancestors and to burn Josh-sticks to Confucius, and, though temperate as to the use of alcoholic liquors, has learned the worse drunkenness of the opium pipe, and to whom the thought of a Saviour from sin, and a life of doing good, is an unheard-of gospel. But we may not dwell longer here. This depth of need may only be hinted at. That it is real and pressing, no one can doubt.
It is a claim which these races have in common with all who are in want. We merely ask the question: Can you find needs more real, degradations more deep, and therefore claims more pressing, than these we need only not shut our eyes to see, for which we need not cross the ocean, nor even our own continent—the needs of the three despised, oppressed, and largely neglected races in these United States?
“THESE STUPID BLACKS.”
BY REV. G. B. WILLCOX, D. D.
That they are not altogether idiotic, is occasionally made to appear rather significantly. In a class in Yale College, not long ago, was a colored youth of high scholarship and fine promise. In the same class was a white student from South Carolina, with nearly or quite the same name, and consequently a seat at recitation next to the sable scholar. Anent which occurred, substantially, the following correspondence between the Southern father and a gentleman of the faculty:
“——, South Carolina.
“Prof. ——
“Dear Sir:—My son informs me that he is obliged to sit next a negro day after day, which is highly disagreeable to him and offensive to me. Will you please provide some different arrangement? Yours, etc.,