I have an idea—I shall get bewildered here a little, because I am talking about education, and I never was educated myself—that education may not make a man a better Christian, but it will make him a more useful Christian. One poor woman, living in a smoky cabin, when asked how she could endure to live in such a smoke, said: “Why, honey, I’se thankful to de good Lord to get anything to make a smoke of.” There was a good deal of ignorance, but there was true thanksgiving. Another one said: “God whips you and leaves you alone sometimes, to see if you won’t work; but la, it’s just like a baby—as soon as you cry He hears ye!” Some of the most beautiful sentiments have been uttered by those who are the most ignorant; but when we are appointing men to preach the Gospel, my opinion is that education is needed, and we must so arrange the machinery of the American Missionary Association that hundreds of thousands of men who are now waiting the opportunity to preach the everlasting Gospel intelligently shall be brought into the field of labor.
O, it is a glorious work, this lifting, lifting up of the low, this ministering to those who are poor, this helping those who have no helper! It is a grand work, and I thank God that there is such an Association as this, stretching out its hands and its arms in every direction to lay hold on those for whom the world has cared so little.—John B. Gough, Esq.
The Negro Worth Saving.—It may be put down as a sure thing that our estimate of men, in the long run, determines what we do for them. Our theories of human nature are the measure of our philanthropies. I am not going to sacrifice much for any man whom I reckon as utterly and hopelessly insignificant. Christian philanthropy is not a sentiment, nor an emotion, but a practical principle; and principles are ideas vitalized and set in movement by convictions. Suppose, for instance, that you assume that men are incapable and cannot be made capable of self-government. I think your political philanthropy will not take a very democratic type. If a colored man—black, red, or whatever—is not fit, and cannot be made fit, for the political suffrage, then we shall have white men’s suffrage, and the question of fitness will inevitably determine the whole matter. If negro suffrage had any rational ground, and was not a wild and desperate venture, it was grounded in the theory that the negro could be made capable for the exercise of the political suffrage, and the men who had faith enough in him to give him the suffrage, assumed that there would be found men who would have faith enough in him to fit him for the exercise thereof.
Again, suppose you assume that the Christian churches are incompetent to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs within the limits of a true Christian and ecclesiastical fellowship. I think your ecclesiastical fellowship will not take a very Congregational type. Of course, we must have a strong central government that will manage the affairs of such incompetence. It has been assumed that the colored people of the South are unfit for the superior intelligence of our Congregationalism, or that Congregationalism is not sufficiently spectacular and sensational to fit the primitive wants of the colored people. I will not characterize such heresy as that as it seems to me it ought to be characterized. At any rate, I think it a most beggarly begging of the whole question; and if it be true, then the occupation, ecclesiastically at least, of this society is gone.
The truth is, friends, our ecclesiastical, like our political philanthropy, is grounded on faith in men—intelligent, Christian faith in the manhood, capacities and possibilities of men; and when that faith is gone, the bottom is out and we must have new foundations.
Or suppose we assume that the children in our homes are only animals, or are fit only for the mechanical drudgery of life. I think our domestic and educational philanthropy will not take, to say the least of it, a very civilized type. Yung Pow says that it is of far more importance whether an angel or a devil educate the child than whether a learned doctor or a simpleton teach him; that is, the virtue that educates is of far more importance than the intelligence that instructs—which, in a certain way, of course, is true. But what is the use of debating the relative importance of virtue and intelligence where they are co-ordinate? The highest virtue demands intelligence, and the highest intelligence demands virtue. But suppose it to be true that the child is very likely to find the doctor or the simpleton, as well as the angel or the evil demon, what then? Of course, we want the angel in our homes and in our schools; but I submit that we want the doctor, too, or his equivalent. We have got to look out for the devil in our homes and in our schools; but I submit that we have got to look out for the simpleton, too. It is not virtue, it is not goodness alone that educates; it is intelligence as well; and what we want is a broad, noble, manly and Christian intelligence that estimates aright the manhood possibilities of every man—that will assume the Christian standard of estimate, which is not, I submit, the materialist’s estimate, nor the secularist’s estimate, nor the politician’s estimate, nor the Pharisee’s estimate. We want a faith in men that will not prejudge either case against them, and undertake to determine on à priori grounds just the precise measure of men’s capacity, and just what they are able to accomplish. We want a faith that understands that we are not dealing with material substances nor merely mechanical aptitudes, but with a higher range of powers that are to fit the coming man or woman for a worthy service in the social and political world, and in the kingdom of our God.—Rev. L. O. Brastow, D.D.
A Glance at the South.—There is something interesting, as you go through the South at the present time, in watching the progress of events. It is a region, speaking of it as a whole, that strikes the Northern man with many peculiarities. One is, where is the population that made that stern resistance to the Northern arms? The cities are all small; there are no villages; whence came that force that withstood us so many years, and withstood us with such might? And then again, you are struck with many things so different from what we find at the North. You may ride whole days and find very few Southern people with whom you can have any opportunity of conversing. There is usually a car on the train which the colored people devote to themselves, but they only ride from station to station. You find but few of the white people traveling, and yet since the close of the war there has been a visible growth; and I am a firm believer in a new South that is dawning. There is coming to be a gradually renewed intercourse between the people of the North and the people of the South, and step by step we shall find new interests awakening and a closer linking than there has been for many a year.