Such in bare outline is the economic history of the South. It is the story of an attempt to degrade working men. It failed in 1860, after it had sought for centuries to reduce laborers to the level of purchasable cattle; it failed in 1870, after a fearful catastrophe while endeavoring to revive this system under another name; it has failed since then satisfactorily to maintain the present rural serfdom or to establish a disfranchised caste of artisans; and it will fail in the future to keep the stubbornly up-struggling masses of black laborers down, by shackling their souls and loading immigrants atop of them. It will always fail unless indeed, as sometimes seems possible, both Church and State in America shall refuse longer to listen to the teaching of Jesus when He said: "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls. "For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." * * * * * CHAPTER IV RELIGION IN THE SOUTH * * * * * CHAPTER IV RELIGION IN THE SOUTH It is often a nice question as to which is of greater importance among a people--the way in which they earn their living, or their attitude toward life. As a matter of fact these two things are but two sides of the same problem, for nothing so reveals the attitude of a people toward life as the manner in which they earn their living; and on the other hand the earning of a living depends in the last analysis upon one's estimate of what life really is. So that these two questions that I am discussing with regard to the South are intimately bound up with each other. If we have studied the economic development of the South carefully, then we have already seen something of its attitude toward life; the history of religion in the South means a study of these same facts over which we have gone, from a different point of view. Moreover, as the economic history of the South is in effect the economics of slavery and the Negro problem, so the essence of a study of religion in the South is a study of the ethics of slavery and emancipation.