In the midst of the struggle and the difficulties attending work among the Freedmen, there has been one point about which we have allowed our minds to be at rest. As we have been vexed with the problems of education and with the problems of citizenship, we have said to ourselves, one thing is sure: the colored race is religious. And so we have allowed the religious question to remain comparatively in abeyance; we have said, this can wait; we have work in hand which we must attend to; by and by we will look after this.
But in that strange haste with which God has been forcing questions upon the American people as touching the Freedmen, we have come, sooner than we thought, upon the religious question at the South. I think we have made a mistake in that we have not given it more prominence heretofore. I think we shall make a grievous mistake if we do not carefully look this subject in the face now.
In what sense is it true that the colored race is religious? How far does the religion of the negro of the South fit him for the essential work which his race has now before it? His religion, it seems to me, has been peculiarly, by God’s providence, the religion of the slave, and now the religion demanded is the religion of the man. The most beautiful illustration in all history has been given us by the negro, of the words of Scripture touching God’s gift to his people: “He giveth songs in the night.” The great, happy heart of that people has been singing through all these dark years, while the great heart of the North has been heavy in its shame. The negro of the South has been living for half the century in another world than this. It his been literally true—“his citizenship was in Heaven.” He had no citizenship anywhere else. Now he is a citizen of this world, and the religion that fits a citizen of this world must be his, or he will fail religiously in the problem which is now working out in this country.
I think the question is very much, to-day, with reference to the Freedmen of the South, as it would be if the Christian of the second century could have been taken out from his persecution, from his sense of that other world, from his prayer for the speedy coming of Christ, and plunged into the hard, practical uses of this nineteenth century. We have taken the Freedman out of his Heaven where he was living with something of joy; we have brought him before the great duties of this world and this century. How is his religion fitting him for the change? I have said that his religion has been a religion of joy, fitting him to bear, fitting him to endure; but life has become something more serious than suffering—life has become to him a practical work. What De Tocqueville said to Charles Sumner in his youth, may be said to the young Freedman to-day: “Life is neither a pain nor a pleasure, but a most serious business, to be taken up with courage, to be laid down, if need be, in self-sacrifice.” The nation has made a change necessary in the type of his religion. He must be refitted religiously to the work which attends citizenship, its rights and its duties. How is he fitted for it? If we do not answer this question practically, ten years will show us how he is unfitted for it.
Meanwhile, too, we, as an Association, through our educational work, have been robbing him of his past religion. We have been letting in the light upon his superstitions; we have dissolved his dreams; we have put his Heaven a little farther off—he cannot fly into it so quickly as before; we have let in the strong, hard light of this world. We must give him something. If we simply give him education, even though it be so much of religious education as may be given in the schools, we are doing no more than sowing the seeds of scepticism—as when the Romanists of the old country lose their faith, it were better for them to stay in their faith with its tinge of superstition, than simply to be sceptics. We cannot afford to have this pure, tender, loving, spiritual life, developed during these last years, caught up by the scepticism of this century and hurried on into ruin. We have sceptics enough at the North; we have sceptics enough through the South; the nation is drifting fast enough into that way. Let us keep what religious sense there is in this race trained of God, pure, by making it strong, hard, substantial enough to stand the difficulties and the trials of their present condition.
The question then comes up, Can the Freedman be made a pure, honest, reasoning, intelligent Christian man? Can the type of piety be changed? Still his music if you will; take away something of the glow of his faith; push his Heaven a little further off—can he be made a man fit to live, and act, and do his work, in this our century, and assume the great duties of Christian discipleship here and now? Can he be made sufficiently moral, can he be made sufficiently intelligent, to do practically the work which all Christians must do, with clean hands and with pure hearts?
Well, Mr. President, there have been a great many theories on the matter, and very many men are ready to say, “You can do nothing with the Freedmen at this point.” I think it is the simple office of this Association to fly in the face of the theories of men in this century, to take one race after another, treat it for ten years, and then say to men, “There are your theories; here is the fact.” Men have said of the Indian, “He won’t work.” This Association takes men who say that, and quietly shows them the Indian at work. Men have said of the Chinaman, “You cannot change the type of his religion and give him any sense of faith in Christ,” and this Association is quietly showing souls won to the Redeemer. Men used to say, “The negro won’t fight; put him before the eye of his master and he will quail.” The negro saw his master in battle, he never quailed, he fell at his feet only in death.
A friend told me yesterday coming on the cars, that when the question was agitated as to whether a steamship could carry coal enough to cross the Atlantic, one of the scientific men of the day addressing a large audience in New York, made this statement, “If you load a steamship when it shall leave Liverpool with coal sufficient to last over the voyage, as you withdraw the coal, gradually the ship will lighten and lift, and by the time the ship is half over the sea the wheels will be out of the water.” Six days after he made that statement, the first steamer came plowing steadily up the Narrows into New York harbor. Men say of the negro, “He can’t do this, he won’t do that.” Meanwhile, the American Missionary Association is doing its strong work with him, and he is just plowing his way steadily into public notice and disproving everything flung in his face.
There are signs—and some of them very manifest—of the capacity of the Freedmen for great moral strength. Have you read Judge Tourgee’s reference to the fact that when the opportunity was given, after the war, for the negroes to register themselves for marriage—to be married by the laws of the State in wholesale—how eagerly they availed themselves of that opportunity, that they might have the form and reality of marriage, and the stamp of legitimacy upon their children? The negro knows what a home means; he has been wanting it; now he will have in time as clean a home as you or I may have. What do you think I discovered a few days ago in one of the historic towns of New England? A friend looking over the records of that old town, came upon the list of baptisms, and this fact came out: in early Puritan days in a town not twenty-five miles from Boston more children were born out of wedlock than in wedlock; and the Puritan says to the negro, “You don’t know what a home is.” Wait;—give him a chance.