The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 10, October, 1879 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 10, October, 1879Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 10, October, 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
ethical and practical preaching is what the Christian people are
hungering for thereaway.
4. We have a common sympathy in Protestantism. The early Spanish
and French occupation in Louisiana and in Baltimore has made
those strong Catholic centres. But Romanism is not so generally a
prevailing power in the South as in the North. The drift of foreign
emigration has made this difference. Rome’s chance at the South is
now not with immigrants, but with natives, Africo-Americans; and
she is bound to make the most of it. But just here comes out our
unity in Protestant views. Southern Christians are anxious lest
the display and the mystery of the Roman system should captivate
these simple children of nature. They are as solicitous as we
that the same Providence which delivered our land from the early
domination of Romish nationalities, may save it from coming under
the supremacy of that spiritual despotism. When the Catholic bishop
at Richmond opened his cathedral, Sunday nights, to a free service
in behalf of the colored people, it made a tremendous stir among
white as well as colored Protestants.
5. Have we not had a common responsibility for the existence of
slavery? Striking in its upas roots at Jamestown, it was allowed
to spread over all the colonies. Samuel Hopkins, thundering at
the gates of the pens of the slave-trade in Newport, must yet
reverberate among those empty dens still standing. In 1872 I saw
in Connecticut an aged disciple who had once been a slave in that
State. My childish ears tingled with my father’s stories of slave
life as known to him in New Jersey. The system, by implication,
was recognized in the Federal Constitution. The Government allowed
it to sweep out over yet other empire areas at the South and West.
We had Federal laws, resting upon Northern public sentiment, to
protect the institution. We allowed our churches and our literary
institutions and our benevolent societies to come under the common
paralysis of conscience. Without any interest in slaves as personal
property, we allowed our great commercial affairs to be brought
under bondage to that system. Our measure of complicity in that
national wrong was indicated in part by the awful retribution meted
out in the sacrifice of half a million of precious lives and by the
offering of billions of treasure. We have had occasion to join our
brethren at the South and say, “We are verily guilty concerning our
brother.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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