American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United StatesDavies, Ebenezer
History
American Scenes, and Christian Slavery: A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States
Davies, Ebenezer
Slavery -- United States; United States -- Description and travel
In the afternoon of my first Sabbath at Baltimore I found, after much
inquiry, a congregation of coloured people, who were some sort of
Methodists. My wife and I were the only white people in the place. We
were treated with great politeness, and put, not in a pew apart by
ourselves, but in one of the best places they could find, in the very
midst of the congregation. A serious-looking coloured man opened the
service, with great propriety of manner and expression. He was the
regular pastor. A black man, a stranger as I understood, preached. His
text (he said) was, "Behold, I come quickly;" and they would find it in
the Book of Revelation. But chapter and verse were not given, nor had
he the Bible open in Revelation at all. I suspected that he could not
read; and that suspicion was confirmed by the amount of nonsense which
he soon uttered. At first his words were "few and far between," uttered
in a tone of voice scarcely audible. Soon, however, he worked both
himself and his audience into a tremendous phrenzy. The burden of his
song was--how John had lived to a very great age, in spite of all
attempts to put him to death; how his enemies had at last decided to
try the plan of throwing him into a "kittle of biling ile;" how God had
said to him, "Never mind, John,--if they throw thee into that kittle,
I'll go there with thee,--they shall bile me too;" how John was
therefore taken up alive; and how his persecutors, baffled in all their
efforts to despatch him, ultimately determined to throw their victim
upon a desolate island, and leave him there to live or perish as he
might. During the delivery of all this nonsense, the laughing, the
shouting, the groaning, and the jumping were positively terrific. It
was Methodism gone mad. How disgraceful, that American Christians, so
called, with all their schools and colleges, and with all their efforts
to send the Gospel to Africa, should leave these people at their very
doors thus to feed upon "husks" and "ashes!" Between 500 and 600 people
were listening to this ignorant man, giving as the pure and positive
word of God what was of very doubtful authority, intermingled with the
crudities of his own brain. I wished to stay through the service, and
perhaps at the close express my fraternal feelings; but I was so
shocked and grieved at this ranting exhibition that I felt it
unwarrantable to remain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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