Rev. J. E. Rankin, D.D., who presided happily at our annual meeting, read an interesting opening address, from which we give the following extracts:
The Cross of Christ proves man’s universal brotherhood. If He is our brother-man, we are His brother-men.
When last night we took that bread and drank that wine, what did we do? We symbolized Christ’s human brotherhood. This He did for humanity’s sake. What taint of Judaism had He? What recognition did He ever make that He belonged to any single nationality, to any single tribe, to any single class? Is He brother-man to the Jew only, because he was born of a Jewish mother? Is He any less brother-man to the Gentile? When we ate that bread, we ate that which sets forth, what? God manifest in the flesh. God manifest in the flesh of humanity. Not because we are Anglo-Saxon, and have the Anglo-Saxon Bible, the Anglo-Saxon literature, the Anglo-Saxon civilization, the Anglo-Saxon freedom and manhood, of which we are so proud, have you and I a claim to this Brother-man? It is because we are on the same human level with the other races, from which we so much differ, and above which God has given us such an exaltation. For such were we. It is because we are brother-men to Frederick Douglas, and Sitting Bull, and the last Chinaman who has been smuggled from the Celestial kingdom, because the continent is too narrow for him and us. It is because we are so low and not because we are so high, that we had a right to sit there; to eat that bread, and drink that cup. That broken bread is the emblem, not of Anglo-Saxon humanity, but of lost, degraded, fallen humanity.
The Cross of Christ interprets man’s universal brotherhood. It needs to be interpreted. It is the last thing man learns here; that in Christ Jesus the humblest man is his equal. Ask almost any man if he wants the elevation of his brother-man; if he wants his brother-man in India, in China, in Japan, in the South, or on the Pacific Coast, made his equal, and given a chance to outstrip him, in the struggle for betterment? And he will usually answer, “Why yes, of course. Do I not pray for it and contribute for it?” But, will you sacrifice your prejudices for his sake? He needs different religious influences, different educational influences, different social influences, he needs to feel that he is no longer ostracised, and that he may aspire for himself and his children, just as you may. Will you adopt him into your religious, educational, social circles? But, you reply: “That is a society question.” It is a society question. And you belong to the Kingdom of God; to the unseen society, which, by the power of His Cross, this God-Man, who took the form of a servant, is gathering out of the nations; you have fellowship with Him, in His humiliation for humanity’s sake. And yet, you propose to decide this question according to the laws and usages of a society to which you do not belong, out of which God has called you, and against whose inhumanity to man, against whose worldly pride the Cross is a standard lifted up by God himself. You are under the most sacred of bonds to record your testimony as belonging to quite another society.
In what sense, after all, are we brothers? Can society answer this question? Can anything but the Cross of Christ? The Saviour gives us a picture of what it is to be a true neighbor in the parable of the Good Samaritan. “Who,” asks He, “was neighbor to him that fell among thieves?” He that thought it was a society question, a question of caste; he who came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side? He that put money into the contribution box for him, or sent some one else to help him to the hospital? No; only the man that set him upon his own beast, carried him to an inn, and took care of him. A man cannot live a neighbor to man if he is not living a neighbor to God, as he is in Christ Jesus.
Before the war, there was organized a benevolent society, whose anniversary occurs the present week—a society to preach the Gospel among the heathen. Its founders said, “We cannot take money that has been coined from slave labor. It is the price of innocent blood. It cries up to God for vengeance.”
What is the history of that society? Why, the smoke of our civil contest had hardly cleared away before it began to build up the waste places of the South, heaping coals of fire upon the people there. Under its auspices, the choicest daughters of New England (as though they had been angels of God) went down there, with the spelling-book and the Bible; took their share of the ostracism meted out to the recent bondmen, for Jesus’ sake; many of them laid down their lives there. There has scarcely been a foreign missionary field in the world which has had more perils, which has demanded greater sacrifices, which has developed spirits more heroic, more Christ-like. The same spirit which led our brave boys in blue to die to make men free, led their sisters to die to make them holy. And what do you see to-day? This society has done more to stay the tide of illiteracy, to lay the foundations of permanent civil and religious prosperity than all the other agencies put together. God’s secret is with them that fear Him. The men who, for Christ’s sake, said, “We cannot set apart to God that which has come from unpaid human labor; we cannot thus have fellowship with the works of darkness;” these men God has put into the fore-front of the great battle with ignorance and degradation—the great battle in which the South begins to ask the Nation which cannot protect the black man to come to her assistance, crying out, like Caesar to Cassius, “Help, Cassius, or we sink!” They got their baptism at the foot of the Cross. Look at the queenly institutions which they have planted. Look at the thousands of the sons and daughters of Ethiopia, whom they have developed into the mental, moral and spiritual stature of true manhood; whom they have polished after the similitude of a palace, fitted for professions, for business, for home life. Look at the churches they have planted. This is their conception of the brotherhood of man, as they have been taught it at the Cross, as the Cross has interpreted it to them.
I know no difference of race,
Of African and Saxon;
Of tawny skin, of rose-cheeked face,
Of hair of crisp and flaxen.
The soul within, that is the man,
There is God’s image hidden:
And there He looks, each guest to scan,
The bidden and unbidden.
One God in love broods over all!
One pray’r to Him is taught us;
One name for mercy, when we call;
One ransom, Christ has brought us.
One heart of meekness, lowly mind,
Life’s counter currents breasting;
One Father’s House, we hope to find,
Within God’s bosom resting.