BY REV. C. M. SOUTHGATE, DEDHAM, MASS.
What I have to say will be upon this point: Why Puritanism is especially fitted to elevate the despised races. I say Puritanism; I might say Congregationalism; but that word sometimes means a polity, while this means something higher—clear thinking, strong believing, pure living, solemn and earnest acting; that spiritual life, in a word, which expresses itself in Congregationalism, not anything developed by its machinery.
(1). It has peculiar power and fitness to elevate the despised races. First, because we know so little of the capacity of either of these races. In the geographies of twenty years ago the centre of Africa was marked "Unexplored Region." The race that dwells there is still unexplored. When we say Persia, Greece, Rome, the word represents not only a people but an idea. Each of these nations has flashed forth before the world and left its mark upon it. But of Africa we have heard nothing; it has not displayed itself or impressed itself upon the world outside. It has given nothing of civilization or religion. And so of the Indians. Of their predecessors we learn much from the mounds they built; of themselves we know little. We know more of the former from their graves, than of the latter from their lives. The Chinese we have called our antipodes, in spirit as well as locality, and let them go at that, with this meager record, that grown men spend their lives in carving toys and find their pleasure in smoking opium. To lift up these races we want that power which conquered the conquerors of Rome, and put the destiny of the world into the hands of the Anglo-Saxon. We want the power which shall convince them of manhood within and God above, and bring them face to face with the Almighty.
(2). We want Puritanism brought to these despised races, because there is in them such a tendency to degradation. This is seen abundantly in all of them; let us speak of it especially among the Freedmen. The Association has no feelings of mere romance in doing its work. Those who have been engaged in it for years look with open eyes on depths of degradation which you at a distance can hardly comprehend. In the cities, the colored people are influenced by the civilization around them. In some cases they have made excellent progress by themselves, as in the old Dorchester settlement in Liberty County, Georgia. But as a rule, when left alone, there is a terrible settling downwards. It is seen in Louisiana on remote sugar plantations, where their cabins, if before the war like cattle-pens, are now pest-houses; in Mississippi swamps, where their worship is fetichism and their lives savagery. Slavery was a great leveler; it leveled many down, but it also leveled many up in physical condition. I sat one memorable week, day after day, in company with teachers who had spent eight or ten years in hard work with these people. As they gave their accounts of those outside their influence, it seemed like standing on a jutting crag at night, an inky sky above, an inky sea below, and wave after wave rolling in, black, with scarce a gleam of brightness. No ecclesiastical polity, no scenic shows, can do anything for a people sinking like this. We need a faith which grasps with intense reality the fact that sin leads to remediless destruction; that it needed the Son of God to die for its victims, and believes the Son of God did die for them; and with these convictions is not afraid of any darkness He bids it enlighten, or any devils He bids it cast out.
(3). We want, again, the power of Puritanism for these despised races, because it has done so much for them. We heard words of hearty praise this afternoon telling of the success of the work. They told hardly enough. But these efforts should be redoubled. We want more institutions like those at Atlanta, New Orleans, Charleston, and the other large Southern cities, where high culture and intelligence rule. The scholarship can be compared without fear with similar grades at the North. I never heard in our boasted common schools such recitations as I have heard from boys as black as the blackest. I know what Yale and Harvard and Dartmouth can show; but in Greek and Latin those colored students can rival their excellence. The culture in morals and manners is at least not inferior, nor the religious instruction less fruitful. The report from the churches shows as large and as healthy success as we can show here. The young men and women in these institutions have an intense longing to be at work for the Master. The desperate condition of their race rests upon them like a pall. God is making them His prophets and speaking through them, and sending redemption. It is Puritanism which has done this.
It seems to have been put upon us to prove what Christianity can do for these races. Our fathers came to this land, breaking the winter's silence with hymns of lofty cheer. After them came the negro, with groanings inexpressible and clanking of chains. Then the Chinaman, famine pressing him. Let us not forget that it was the great famine in Ireland which drove one hundred and fifty thousand emigrants to this country in a single year, almost as many as had gone out in a decade before; now, ten million Chinese have died of starvation, and a few seek this land that God gave to fugitives. These races, which have never done anything for themselves, nor had anything good done for them, which have been the tool, the victim, the plaything, the despair of civilization, are now brought face to face with us—us, with our indisputable Anglo-Saxon conceit, which cannot bear that others should differ from us, backed by Northern grit and Western energy, stirred by a solemn conviction that we have a destiny to fulfil in this matter, inspired by that command to preach Christ to dying men. Puritanism, as embodied in this Congregational Missionary Association, proposes to have a hand in shaping the fate of these races.
One of the earliest pictures in the annals of the world is that of an altar. Around it stand three brothers; behind them the ark and the deluge; in their midst the sacrifice of gratitude and consecration; before them the bow of promise on the face of the retreating storm. Ages pass on. The three brothers become three races. One goes to the East and hides himself behind his wall. One goes to the South and hides himself behind deserts and jungles. The third goes to the West, and becomes the torch-bearer to flash the light of Christ's glory over all Europe. In forty centuries they girdle the earth and come together once more upon its opposite side. Behind two of the brothers, little but the deluge. Behind the third, the ark. In their midst the great sacrifice, the cross of Christ. And before them—in the name of Puritanism, in the name of this Association, shall it not be said—before them ALL, the bow of heavenly promise.
RE-DEDICATION OF THE BEACH INSTITUTE.
REV. J. E. ROY, D.D.