BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
There is but one destiny, it seems to me, left for us, and that is to make ourselves and be made by others a part of the American people in every sense of the word. Assimilation, not isolation, is our true policy and natural destiny. Unification for us is life. Separation is death. We cannot afford to set up for ourselves a separate political party or adopt for ourselves a political creed apart from the rest of our fellow-citizens.
The Independent.
CHRIST OR CASTE.
BY H. K. CARROLL.
Shall we go into the South to exalt Christ or to surrender to caste? Shall we go to the Negro as to a being made a little lower than man, and reach down to him, not to lift him up to our plane, but to help him live better and be content on his own lower plane? Or, shall we go to him as to a brother of our own blood, unfortunate, degraded, despised, and strive thus to save him and improve him on Christ’s plan? If we go for Christ, we go inevitably to bear reproach, to submit to ostracism; we go to contend against untold difficulties, to meet with discouragements, to fail, it may be, for many years, of at least great numerical success. * * * The secret of much wrong thinking and wrong practice concerning mixed churches is the idea which both Dr. Curry and Dr. Wheeler seem to regard as universal, that the Church is a social institution. If this be once admitted, Dr. Wheeler is right in contending that the lines of social distinction which are drawn in the drawing-room will inevitably be drawn in the Church. Here is a basis quite sufficient to build white and colored churches upon; but it is just as certainly broad enough for other social distinctions, which Methodism, of all branches of the Church Catholic, has been the least willing to admit. Seeing, as Dr. Wheeler sees, that the employer and the laborer, the rich and the poor, the learned and the unlearned form different and more or less distinct classes in society, we cannot only justify churches organized on the color line, but we must be prepared to justify churches organized exclusively for the rich; churches for the poor; churches for the educated and churches for the uneducated; churches for merchants and distinct churches for clerks. The idea that the Church is a social institution, if rigidly adhered to, would give us a system of class distinctions as intricate as that of India. There are two great facts which make the whole human race absolutely equal, absolutely without distinctive claims or advantages, before the altar. The first is the fact of universal sin; the second is the fact of universal need of salvation. Men of all degrees, from the prince to the peasant, from the millionaire to the pauper, from the most profound scholar to the most unlettered backwoodsman, from the whitest European to the blackest African, meet in church on a common platform. They leave their social distinctions, their rank, and their peculiar privileges outside the church door. Here is the one place where all the sons of God may meet and work together as one family. The Duke of Wellington knelt at the altar with a plain farmer and received the sacrament. “Here,” said he, “we are brothers.” The Church is associational rather than social. It exists in society, is formed from society, and exercises the most powerful influence on society; but its province is neither to break down nor build up distinctions in society. It may inculcate principles, which men and women will carry into their social relations, for the cure of such evils as may exist in society; but it is not its province as an organization to form and regulate society. Its distinct work is to draw all men to Christ and help them to live a righteous and useful life.
The Independent.
THE CHRISTIAN LEAGUE.
BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D.
“This company must be a clean one, and there is no lack of sound and reputable men in our churches.”