The Methodist movement, under Whitefield and the Wesleys, was still another uprising and following of the human mind after the simple truths of the Gospel. Though educated men themselves, they had almost a contempt for human learning and the wordly appliances on which other churches so much relied. The preaching of the word accompanied by the power of the Holy Ghost was their sole reliance. On that principle they organized their churches, literally preaching the Gospel to the poor, and, at the end of a century, had a membership outnumbering any Protestant church in Christendom. It would be easy to show that modern missions, at home and abroad, have been most successful as they have relied most fully on the simple preaching of the word, and that the building up of churches has been the saving power of communities intellectually, morally and even materially.
(4.) Applying now the facts and principles barely glanced at in this review to the subject in hand, we shall find that, so far as the South is concerned, pure and intelligent churches are at this moment more a necessity even than schools are. The education of the intellect is vitally important; but for its own security it should rest on the broader education of the moral nature. The former will make keen, sharp men, shrewd in business and other transactions, but only the latter can be trusted to make honest, faithful, conscientious men. While we insist that Christian schools are the true handmaid of religion, we must not be tempted to substitute science and culture for piety, nor to make schools stand for more than churches. The church alone is fundamental, but for the best results they belong together and should go together. Schools can be made and should be made helps to religion; but we mistake their nature entirely when we imagine that there is anything in the ordinary studies of the class-room—the classics, the mathematics, or the natural sciences—to sanctify the heart or subdue the will to God. The colored race is vastly more run down on its moral side than on its intellectual side. This is true of all degraded, barbarous races. The direct effects of slavery on the colored race were its moral effects. To be sure, it left the race poor and uncultivated; but that might have been borne and easily repaired had it left the moral integrity of the race intact and pure. The school of slavery perverted the moral nature, and until that is rectified, no process of intellectual education can lift the race on to the high level of a true manhood and a great future.
Men and nations are lifted and made truly great through their moral qualities rather than through their intellectual. At any rate, if history teaches any lesson it is, that no nation has long exhibited great intellectual qualities which has not been sustained by greater moral qualities; and that no nation, ancient or modern, has become intellectually great that was not first morally great. The age of Pericles in Greece, and the Augustinian age in Rome, when the human mind in each of those countries reached its climacteric, was preceded by those great moral virtues among the people which made them severely simple, honest, brave and true. Greece had her Homer, her Solon, her Æschylus, her Euripides, her Sappho, before she had her Pericles. Rome had her Romulus, her Numa, her Cato, her Scipios, and for mothers, her Cornelia, her Marcia and her Portia, before she had her Augustus. England had her Alfred, her Bede, her Wickliffe, her Knox and her Reformers, before she had her Bacon, her Shakespeare and her Milton. Germany had her Luther, her Melanethon, her Calvin, her Zwingle, and her long line of Protestant confessors and defenders, before she had her Goethe, her Schiller, her Humboldt, her Herder and her Beethoven. The ancient nations, whose masterpieces in literature and art are still the models on which we form our taste, declined intellectually precisely as they declined morally. The great age of English literature was a greater age of moral heroism; and Germany’s highest intellectual development is but the consummate flowering of the moral forces which have come down from the Reformation. Both will decline as the moral supports on which they rest are weakened or undermined.
In the light of the past, it would seem clear that if we merely sought the highest intellectual development of the colored race, we would educate most assiduously their moral nature—their weakest and most neglected part. But this can be done effectually only through a pure and intelligent ministry of the word. In pure churches alone can moral instruction, based on Divine authority, find its highest sanctions. The secular teacher, indeed, may instruct in morals and religion, but his words do not carry the sanctity nor the authority of him who ministers at God’s altar in holy things. It is in the Church, where men speak in the name of God, and where the soul is brought face to face with the claims of God, that the highest moral motives are pressed and felt. And hence we say, the Church foremost, and everything tributary to the Church, because the Church deals supremely with the moral nature, through which degraded races can alone be lifted.
(5.) There is a farther necessity for such churches, in order that we may save the present and coming generation of educated young colored men and women from skepticism and infidelity. The moment we educate a young man or a young woman to read intelligently, or to speak and write the English language grammatically, we have educated them out of the old colored churches. They will not listen to men whose vocabulary has more sound than meaning, and who violate with every sentence every law of correct speech. The white churches are not open to them in any such sense that they feel at liberty to enter them on any footing of Christian equality. Unless we provide for them something which is more pure and rational than their own churches, free from the clamors and excitements of mere animal passion, we send them into the streets and away from the house of God. After a young man or a young woman has remained in school long enough to see the ignorance of the colored preachers, and has gained sufficient intelligence to make moral distinctions, it is inevitable that he should turn from such teachers, and revolt from such moral and religious guides.
If they are compelled to judge religion only by the specimens of it which they see around them, why should not a common intelligence reject it altogether? Our education, therefore, must either lead our students out of the old churches into infidelity, or it must lead them into churches where an intelligent ministry and a pure worship will satisfy both intellect and heart. I can conceive no greater wrong we can do that race than to destroy their faith in the religion taught and practiced in their churches, if we do not supply them with a better. A race without a religious faith is lost; and, while our education destroys the old, let us be careful to put in the place of it the new and the true.
(6.) And, finally, pure and intelligent churches are a necessity in order to create a reservoir of piety and ability sufficient to nurture and bring forward the young men and women needed for the work of redeeming Africa. If the colored race in this country is ever to be broadened to the full conception of saving Africa—is ever to be made capable of laying broad and deep the foundations of Christian States on that dark continent—if it is ever to be inspired to the effort of such an undertaking—the movement must begin at the foundations of character, in the moral sensibilities and convictions of the soul. And a movement that is wide enough and strong enough to sustain such an attempt must begin at the house of God, must have its roots in Christian homes, must be fed in the closet, at the family altar, with the word of God and the breath of prayer. The movement which saves Africa will be a race movement; will be the light and pressure of Divine truth upon the minds and consciences of the people, and a baptism of Pentecostal fire consecrating them to the work. But to what agencies shall we look for such mighty spiritual energies as are needed for the recovery of a race to Jesus Christ? The Church is the vast reservoir of spiritual forces, and she utilizes other instruments as they are needed to accomplish her work. But if it should happen that we should mistake instruments or methods for power, even schools for the Church of the living God, we should soon find that the body without the spirit is dead.
It would avail little if here and there one in our schools might be persuaded to enter the African field. What could he do without the prayers, the sympathies, as well as the moral and pecuniary support of his race behind him? And what certainly would there be of a supply or of a succession of laborers, unless the churches were holding their members to the work and were pushing forward their children to offer themselves in its behalf? The churches alone can create a race sentiment broad and deep and potent enough to bear up an enterprise aiming at the Christianization of Africa. It is the Gospel, ministered by holy men, which unifies and exalts communities. It is the Church, as the centre and representative of divine power, which stands for God, and the word and the ordinances entrusted to her keeping are his only visible hold upon the world. If we would have Christian scholars in training for Africa—as teachers, as preachers, or as statesmen—they should come from homes and churches in which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of humanity, and the spirit of missions was as the breath of life. On the one hand, we want the churches as the inspiring and sustaining power both for men and money, and on the other, as the motive and model for the work we are called to do. Our missionaries need to live and move in an atmosphere of holy self-denial and charity, to be empowered by the prayers and godly zeal of the great brotherhood of the saints, in order to a full consecration. We can expect men and money for the work in sufficient number and amount only as the churches, like mighty reservoirs, gather and hold all their forces of brain, of heart, of will, of wealth and of learning, of piety and of power, for Christ.