“Those who doubt these things that you read in Holy Writ are like the infidel,—won’t believe unless you can see the cause. Well, let me tell you. The infidel says that when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, it was in winter, and the sea was frozen over. This is a mistake, or an intentional misrepresentation.” Here the preacher gave vivid accounts of the sufferings and flight of the children of Israel, whose case he likened to the colored people of the South. The preacher wound up with an eloquent appeal to his congregation not to be led astray by “these new-fangled notions.”
Great excitement is just now taking hold of the people upon the seeming interest that the colored inhabitants are manifesting in the Catholic religion. The Cathedral in Richmond is thrown open every Sunday evening to the blacks, when the bishop himself preaches to them, and it is not strange that the eloquent and persuasive voice of Bishop Kean, who says to the negro, “My dear beloved brethren,” should captivate these despised people. I attended a meeting at the large African Baptist Church, where the Rev. Moses D. Hoge, D. D., was to preach to the colored people against Catholicism. Dr. Hoge, though noted for his eloquence, and terribly in earnest, could not rise higher in his appeals to the blacks than to say “men and women” to them.
The contrast was noticeable to all. After hearing Dr. Hoge through I asked an intelligent colored man how he liked his sermon. His reply was: “If Dr. Hoge is in earnest, why don’t he open his own church and invite us in and preach to us there? Before he can make any impression on us, he must go to the Catholic Church and learn the spirit of brotherly love.”
One Sunday, Bishop Kean said to the colored congregation, numbering twelve hundred, who had come to hear him: “There are distinctions in the business and in the social world, but there are no distinctions in the spiritual. A soul is a soul before God, may it be a black or a white man’s. God is no respecter of persons, the Christian Church cannot afford to be. The people who would not let you learn to read before the war, are the ones now that accuse me of trying to use you for political purposes.
“Now, my dear beloved brethren, when I attempt to tell you how to vote, you need not come to hear me preach any more.”
The blacks have been so badly treated in the past that kind words and social recognition will do much to win them in the future, for success will not depend so much upon their matter as upon their manner; not so much upon their faith as upon the more potent direct influence of their practice. In this the Catholics of the South have the inside track, for the prejudice of the Protestants seems in a fair way to let the negro go anywhere except to heaven, if they have to go the same way.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Norfolk is the place above all others, where the “old-Verginny-never-tire” colored people of the olden time may be found in their purity. Here nearly everybody lives out of doors in the warm weather. This is not confined to the blacks. On the sidewalks, in front of the best hotels, under the awnings at store-doors, on the door-sills of private houses, and on the curbstones in the streets, may be seen people of all classes. But the blacks especially give the inside of the house a wide berth in the summer.
I went to the market, for I always like to visit the markets on Saturday, for there you see “life among the lowly,” as you see it nowhere else. Colored men and women have a respectable number of stalls in the Norfolk market, the management of which does them great credit.