But beyond and above all, the negro race in America is a Christian race. Here are four millions of Christians. We mean, of course, Christian in contradistinction from any other form of religious belief. Before this one fact we may stand in silent wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's native home. Yet here are millions of the same race maintaining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness, yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above their brethren in their original seat. The contrast in this regard between the race here and there is simply immeasurable. They have been taken out of the blackness of idolatry, and nurtured for two centuries in the light of an advance Christianity, so that heathenism has passed almost out of their traditions.
All this great result has been occasioned by slavery, sprung from cupidity and the origin of unnumbered crimes! Perhaps human history presents nowhere a more striking example of God's power to make the wickedness of man bring honor to his name.
Here, then, are a Christian people, with very much of superstition, with very much of ignorance, with, you may say, a low type of piety, but yet, after all, a Christian people. They are more, a Protestant people. Romanism has never obtained any extensive hold on them here. * May we not say that in this, that these four millions of blacks are a Protestant Christian people, there is an element of unbounded promise?
*It is very striking in this connection that Romanism has never made any progress or met with any permanent success in Africa. In the North where Mohammedanism prevails, (see Barth,) it is repudiated on account of its supposed proclivity to polytheism, and in other parts of the continent different causes have prevented its taking root. Indeed, West Africa presents the most striking instance on record of the utter failure of the Romish religion to benefit a heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portuguese had a kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was powerful and extensive in its influence. With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was a work," says Wilson, ( Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan . 1852), "at which successive missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two centuries. Among these were some of the most learned and able men that Rome ever sent forth to the Pagan world. It was a cause that ever lay near the heart of the kings of Portugal, when that nation was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before the close of the eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the contrary, before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but almost every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land, and the whole country had fallen back into the deepest ignorance and heathenism, and into greater weakness and poverty than had ever been experienced even before its discovery." With a continent wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved from it here, may we not see a divine adaptation for the future, a finger-pointing to some signal good for the church and the world?
If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard to the negro race which we have now pointed out, we have this:—Here is a nation with good mental endowments, peculiarly distinct and seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile and ready to receive the impression of all influences surrounding them, brought not only in closest contact with one of the first races of the world, but actually receiving a transfusion of its best blood, made at least in part partakers of a very high civilization, and already Christianized in a form where there is the least play of superstition or error. Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people? Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it, if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one sufficiently glorious for itself?
Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we think that we are justified when we say, looking over the facts in the case, that when they have removed from them the incubus of slavery, and start forth on a career of freedom, that their rise will be extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the elements of progress which they possess into consideration, it is simply impossible that it should be otherwise.
While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be understood as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are the legitimate results of slavery. Nothing could be farther from our intention. To substitute a cause for an occasion is a very common error: indeed some minds seem incapable of fully apprehending the world-wide difference. The legitimate effect of slavery is to thrust the victim as far down in the scale of being as is possible. The nearer the brute, the better the slave , is the true law of slavery. Slavery is the cause of ignorance, degradation, and crime. It, by a dreadful necessity, strips the slave of every attribute of manhood; neither soul nor body is his own; the one is kept in darkness as the other is sold in the shambles. What can a system that locks up all human knowledge, stalks through the soul trampling down all that constitutes the man, not accidentally, but by the necessity of its existence, what can such a system do for its victim?
There may be benefits such as we are now speaking of, coming to the slave in his slavery, but slavery does not give them. The laws which create slavery would shut out every thing, but they cannot. In spite of them all, the good will come. So it has been with the colored race in this country. This good can only be made to appear in a state of freedom.
Just here there is forced upon us another thoughht of tremendous significance. This gradual unseen, but mighty gathering of power in the slave in this land cannot be forever without one day coming into form. You cannot be evermore throwing electricity into the jar; by-and-by its overcharged contents will burst out in sudden explosion. While you may let the conductor take them safely and usefully away! No one cares to follow in imagination where the thought leads him. Emancipation must be given sooner or later, or all goes down in a hideous ruin; and no experience can calculate nicely when the last moment of safety is reached. It may come, and the crashing thunderbolt tell that it has gone.
Of the way in which this freedom is to be brought about, it is not the intention of this article to speak. To this writer, there seem perhaps no problem which approaches it in difficulty. Emancipation—it is easy to talk and declaim about, it is easy to prove right and to show desirable, but how to bring about, that is the labor. He is a rash man, who speaks very confidently on this matter. That it should be brought about, that the well-being of the two races, the interest of two continents, and humanity itself, the very existence of this American people demand it, no thinking man ought to doubt. It becomes this nation to address itself to this work, and see that it is done and done well.