"I have come to say my last word to you. It is this: None but Christ. Three times I have had my life in jeopardy for preaching the gospel to you. Three times I have broken the ice on the edge of the water and swam across the Cape Fear to preach the gospel to you, and if in my last hour I could trust to that or anything but Christ crucified, for my salvation, all should be lost, and my soul perish forever."[25]
Some of these ministers led an independent movement. Six years after Richard Allen, with a few followers, withdrew in 1790 from the Free African Society in Philadelphia,[26] and started an independent Methodist Church in a blacksmith shop, Negro members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New York began separate meetings. After pastoring a white church,[27] Josiah Bishop started the First Colored Baptist Church of Portsmouth in 1791. Finding accommodations in the white church of Richmond inadequate, the Negroes petitioned for separate meetings in 1823.[28] Harding, speaking of the opportunity of religious instruction and of divine worship allowed the slaves in Kentucky, says that "in every church-edifice, seats were set apart for the occupancy of colored worshippers.... Almost every neighborhood had its Negro preacher whose credentials, if his own assertion was to be taken, came directly from the Lord."[29]
What were the results of these contacts? The most important was that with its charming stories of the creation of the universe, of the Egyptian bondage, and of the journey across the Red Sea, with its New Testament emphasis upon the power, death, and resurrection of Christ, with its apocalyptic imagery, the Bible became to the slave the most sacred book of books. Upon its pages he saw the tears of men and women constantly fall, and from its truths he saw the pious preacher choose words suitable for exhortation. The peculiar interest of the Negro-slave in reading this book was soon apparent.
One old man, being secretly taught by a slave-girl to read the Bible, said, with trembling voice, while tears were falling from his penetrating eyes: "Honey, it 'pears when I can read dis good book I shall be nearer to God."[31] Another slave prayed thus: "I pray de good massa Lord will put it into de niggers' hearts to larn to read de good book. Ah, Lord, make de letters in our spelling books big and plain, and make our eyes bright and shining, and make our hearts big and strong for to larn.... Oh, Hebbenly Fader, we tank De for makin' our massas willin' to let us come to dis school."[32]
Upon a battlefield of the Civil War, another, a soldier, said: "Let me lib wid dis musket in one hand an' de Bible in de oder,—dat if I die at de muzzle ob de musket, die in de water, die on de land, I may know I hab de bressed Jesus in my hand an' hab no fear."[33]
How the text from Hebrews 2:9, "That He, by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man," became a part of his life, was told by Josiah Henson after becoming free: "This was the first text of the Bible to which I had ever listened, knowing it to be such. I have never forgotten it, and scarce a day has passed since, in which I have not recalled it, and the sermon that was preached from it. The divine character of Jesus Christ, his life and teachings, his sacrifice of himself for others, his death and resurrection were all alluded to, and some of the points were dwelt upon with great power.... I was wonderfully impressed, too, with the use which the preacher made of the last words of the text, 'for every man' ... the bond as well as the free; and he dwelt on the glad tidings of the Gospel to the poor, the persecuted ... till my heart burned within me, and I was in a state of greatest excitement ... that such a being ... should have died for me ... a poor slave...."[34]
Contemporaries assert that often while following the plow, gathering up the frosty corn, or driving the ox-cart to the barn, slaves, burning with enthusiasm, talked of how much sermons satisfied their hungry souls. Household and plantation slaves, gray-haired fathers and mothers with their children, crowded eagerly to hear the gospel preached. Thus Earnest says of one man: "His slaves came 17 miles to reach Mr. Wright's nearest preaching place."[35] Concerning the spread of the Christian religion among the slaves on the seaboard of South Carolina, it is affirmed that "the scenes on the Sabbath were affecting. The Negroes came in crowds from two parishes. Often have I seen (a scene, I reckon, not often witnessed) groups of them 'double-quicking' in the roads, in order to reach the church in time.... The white service being over, the slaves would throng the seats vacated by their masters...."[36] John Thompson, in the story of his life, says that, "As soon as it got among the slaves, it spread from plantation to plantation, until it reached ours where there were but few who did not experience religion."[37]
From the blighting, superstitious fears of a heartless universe, the heralds of Christianity brought to the slave words of hope and salvation, a message of companionship with a heavenly father. "You are poor slaves and have a hard time of it here," said they, "but I can tell you the blessed Savior shed his blood for you as much as for your masters.... Break off from all your wicked ways, your lying, stealing, swearing, drunkenness, and vile lewdness; give yourselves to prayer and repentance and fly to Jesus, and give up your heart to him in true earnest; and flee from the wrath to come."[38]
Fred Douglass relates that "the preaching of a white Methodist minister, named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free, were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels against his government; and that they must repent of their sins, and be reconciled to God through Christ.... I was wretched."[39]