ADDRESS OF THE REV. GEO. M. BOYNTON
AT THE BOSTON ANNIVERSARY, MAY 31, 1882.
There are four ways in which a race in the enjoyment of power and prosperity may deal with a race which is under the burden of weakness and temporary debasement; God forbid that I should say with an inferior race; for it is not ours to measure gifts until the scale of opportunity shall have been equalized; God forbid that I should say with a despised race, though that too nearly represents the fact among large portions of people, even in our own land and day;—I say, in dealing with races which are for the present weaker and in inferior position to our own. I used to read, when I studied geography, that the inhabitants of the world could be classed under four heads: as barbarous, half-civilized, civilized and enlightened. And I think the four methods in which this race may be treated correspond somewhat with these four divisions of human progress.
The first and barbarous cry which meets a weaker race is, “kill them; put them out of existence.” The first impulse of savage men—the question is when the savagery is all expelled from human nature—is to put out of the way that which is offensive, that which is in your way, that which seems in any way to compete with your full satisfaction and enjoyment.
The next way of dealing with those of a weaker race is to use them, subordinate them to your own service, make bondsmen of them, let them be your hewers of wood and drawers of water, command their labor and their persons, control even their instruction and their religion, and make them absolutely yours.
The third way in which a superior race may deal with a weaker race is by the gentler, but perhaps no less harmful, process of letting them alone,—withdraw from them, hands off! Shut them out, keep them away, make the barrier between yourself and them impassable.
There is one way more in which a race higher in circumstance and condition and endowment may treat those who for the time are weaker than they, and that is to lift them up to its own plane just so fast and just so far as God shall make it possible.
If we read in the Old Testament, as many are increasingly disposed to do, a progress of development which recognizes the training of mankind from its lowest possible basis up to its highest possible attainment, we may find illustrations of these four methods of treatment in that record. The first conviction of their duty, and with Divine consent, toward the races which occupied Canaan, was to exterminate the people of the land. At a little later stage, when Joshua had entered the country, he made his league with the Gibeonites and the people of the central confederacy, by which they became his hewers of wood and drawers of water. As we read on still further in the story, we find the Jews shutting themselves out from all mankind, and shutting all men off from them, having no dealings even with the Samaritans. But, when the Lord Jesus Christ came, bringing the light of the gospel and the character of God and heavenly opportunities on to the soil of our earth, his last command is, “Share my gifts in every land with every creature,” and the last word he promises that some of us shall hear before we enter into the lasting joy of heaven, is, “Because ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Our country has illustrated all these methods of treatment of the weaker races. Its cry has been toward the Indian—its characteristic cry almost from the very first—“Kill him; there is no good Indian but a dead Indian;” and that sentiment, that barbarism, has not yet altogether been exterminated from the land. Our country has said of the great African race, “Enslave them; use them; subordinate them to our own uses; make them our hewers of wood and drawers of water, our chattels, our breeders of children; use them without conscience; subordinate them to our own supposed good.” And even now our land, this land of freedom, to which we all came strangers at some past time, has issued its edict through its highest courts that the Chinaman shall be shut out from all access to our civilization and our Christianity. Brethren, the glory and joy of this American Missionary Association is that its work has been from the beginning to reach out to those who were weakest, who were most in need, who were most neglected. Thank God that there is one place where the sentiment may be centred and emphasized that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the whole earth;” and though it may be true that for a time “He hath fixed the bounds of their habitation,” yet it is not so sure that these bounds were in his purpose fixed to outlast the breaking down of those barriers which the progress of Christian civilization surely brings.