Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
History
Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of; Slavery to the Present Time
African American orators; African Americans -- History -- Sources; Speeches, addresses, etc., American -- African American authors
The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be even superficially complete if
we did not take the religious side of his character into consideration.
By religion, we do not mean the faith he professed, the particular
tenets he believed, the especial catechism he studied, or any
hair-splitting doctrine he might have upheld, but that deeper ethical
side of manhood, without which there can be no true manhood.
Livingstone's religion was not of the theoretical kind, but it was a
constant, earnest, sincere practise. It was neither demonstrative nor
loud, but manifested itself in a quiet, practical way, and was always at
work. It was not aggressive, nor troublesome, nor impertinent. In him,
religion exhibited its loveliest features; it governed his conduct not
only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted
Mohammedans, and all with whom he came in contact. Without it,
Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high
spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master.
Religion had tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman; the crude
and wilful were refined and subdued; religion had made him the most
companionable of men and indulgent of masters--a man whose society was
pleasurable to a high degree.
If his life held for us no other message than this, it would hold
enough. Unfortunately the youth of to-day is apt to chafe when the
ideal of Christianity and manly religion is held up to him. He thinks of
the religious man as a milksop, a mollycoddle. He cannot associate him
in his mind with the doing of great deeds, the thinking of great
thoughts. His ideal of manhood is the ruthless Man on Horseback, with
too often a disregard of the sacred things of life. Sometimes, if the
youth of to-day thinks at all, he runs riot into ethics, forgetting
that, after all, there could be no ethics without a firm base of
religion. And so he wastes many precious years before he learns that all
the greatest men whom the world has known drew their strength and power
from the unseen and the spiritual.
We have noticed that Livingstone's religion was not aggressive nor
impertinent. Early in his career as a missionary, he recognized the
truth that if he were to exercise any influence on the native Africans,
it would not be by bringing to them an abstraction in place of their own
savage ideals. His influence depended entirely upon persuasion, and by
awakening within their minds the sense of right and wrong. "We never
wished them to do right," he says, "because it would be pleasing to us,
nor think themselves to blame when they did wrong." Worldly affairs, and
temporal benefits with the natives were paramount, so he did not force
abstractions upon them but, with a keen insight into human nature, as
well as into savage human nature, he reached their higher selves through
the more worldly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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