high education, rich in special studies, who had in mind a great
sphere of usefulness, to do with this call but to take it to Him to
whom he had once for all consecrated himself, “with all sincerity
of heart”? In that little room, Oberlin, on bended knee, lifted up
his voice and prayed, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth,” and
in agony he listened for the still, small voice. He could not wish
to go, but he could not refuse to hear. And a great battle went on
in his soul.
There have been many battles in Strasbourg. The Roman armies fought
there; the Germans triumphed there; the tri-colors of France have
waved in the glory of victory there, but never a greater conflict,
perhaps, or a more glorious conquering, than this between faith and
sight, the issues of which God and the centuries were awaiting—a
great soul meeting the questions of this world and the questions of
eternity. When he arose from his prayer, he said: “I will go.”
Conviction was action. Soon among them, his quick eye perceived
that preaching to them in their condition would fall far short of
their needs. He must save souls, but he must also save men and
women. And here developed his missionary idea. It was not new, for
Christ taught it and lived it, but it was new, for Christians had
forgotten it. Christ was divinity in humanity, and the people must
realize the divinity in the humanity. He must save their souls,
but their souls are in their bodies. So he would not deal with
them as if they were disembodied spirits, but seeing them in all
their ignorance and material poverty, he would teach them how to
meet their physical destitutions and their mental destitutions,
and would go to them as persons who have a life in this world as
well as in the world to come. Salvation for this people was not to
rescue here and there merely a vacant mind, nor out of multitudes
of shipwrecked souls to save here and there one from the wreck; but
to him the Kingdom of God was like unto seed which a man put in his
ground and which should grow—he knoweth not how—by all kinds of
help, but which might call for long watching and long waiting.
Therefore he said, “Education is indispensable to the uplifting
of such a people,” and schools were planted. Home life must be
redeemed, and home industries were taught. They need the industrial
arts; hence he began to instruct them in carpentry, in masonry, in
smithing and in agriculture. He introduced the planting of trees;
societies of agriculture; instituted arbor days; taught them how to
drain their lands, how to irrigate them, how to enrich them, how
to make roads, and how to construct bridges across their mountain
streams.
There he went to stay, and among them built his own house
and brought into it a like-minded, large-minded, cultivated,
earnest-spirited wife, who with him taught the lessons of home
life, its divinity, its sacredness and its glory.
Remember, this was more than a century ago, when the world had not
the missionary thoughts of to-day. None, so far as I know, had as
yet such a missionary idea enunciated and systematized.
While thus he was laying the foundations for the regeneration of a
despised people, a still greater sacrifice presented itself. It was
to leave this missionary work for another in one of the Southern
colonies of far-off America, to live among a people more needy than
these despised ones, and more despised; to live among those who by
law were being robbed of the very rights of being, and for whose
degradation the forces of law were now operating.
Accepting the mission, he was ready to depart, when suddenly the
war for American Independence was declared, and his life was saved.
He could not then have lived a year in the South possessing his
ideas, much less to apply and expand them.
His path blocked by Providence, nothing remained but for him to
develop those ideas where he was, and to lift his voice from those
out-of-the-way hills against the sin of slavery. He would not
use sugar in his coffee, “for,” said he, “every granule of it is
tainted with the blood of the unhappy slave.” No article wrung out
of involuntary servitude should come into his house. No product
of slave labor would he touch. He was a prophet, for at this
date people in New England had not ceased to buy and sell their
fellow-creatures, and scores of years after this, ministers of the
gospel in this country were diligently searching the Scriptures to
discover and establish the divine foundations for human servitude.
Meanwhile the churches increase, the school-houses multiply, the
industries prove their value, and the mountain people are led
along, and led up from their abject poverty and misery to the
experience of comfort and prosperity. Then he worked and waited
for three-score years save one, and lived to see a rude and vulgar
and despised people regenerated and transformed, saved from the
dominion of vice to good morals and gentle manners, and many of
them converted to a personal experience of the grace that is in
Christ.
You may easily now examine the results of this life and service
after the long years have tested them.
Should you go with me to his house you would cross the _pont de
la charité_ by the way of his well-constructed road. When Oberlin
proposed to make this road, to blast the rocks along the mountain
side, the people did not see how it would look as we now do. If he
had suggested a step-ladder to the moon they would not have been
more amazed. They applied to him all the deprecatory adjectives
in their possession. It was impossible, and unreasonable, and
visionary. Assuredly he had lost his mind. Much learning had made
him mad. They positively refused to sustain him. He was altogether
out of his sphere. This would have been a good time for him to have
tendered his resignation, but the great soldier did not run away,
because he was needed. They could not starve him out, for he knew
how to starve.
But if the road were made it would be useless, they said, for
“how could we get across the stream?” He replied: “We will take
the rocks which we blast for the road and build a bridge.” This
confirmed them that the pastor’s mind was clean gone forever.
Such a departure from the old paths showed not only the danger of
theological studies, but also a capacity for speculative views
that would halt at nothing. Nevertheless, he led the way in
this enterprise, and the people looked on amazed when they saw
him picking and shoveling with his own hands. Then one came and
followed him, and another came and followed him; then a score who
soon were fifty, and next a hundred, until by the time they had
reached the bridge they all believed in it and always had! The
last man who was converted over to the majority undoubtedly went
home and told his wife that the original idea of the improvement
was his own; that he had it in mind long before Oberlin came, and
he himself would have proposed it to their leader but for the
conviction that ministers ought simply to preach the gospel and
leave the labor question alone. Perhaps the trusting soul believed
him.
As you enter the home where he was a father to this people who
were as children to him and brethren to each other, you feel his
protest against caste, and his teaching that if God is a universal
father this destroys caste and makes brotherhood a reality. In his
study in his own plain hand, you may find his missionary idea fully
expanded, and from that study you will no longer look out upon the
wilderness and the solitary place, because they have been made glad
by him. You will find happy children in good schools and happy
parents in good Christian homes.
Let me turn now from the influence of the life, to the life of
the influence. It is not always easy to trace the pedigree of an
idea or to track an influence. Sometimes we can in part, for they
all have their parentage, and their evolution has been so direct
that we can tell where and when they were born. Seven years after
the sorrowing people had gathered about the missionary’s grave,
two young men in this country—themselves having something of the
prophetic instinct—in acquainting themselves with the work of
this missionary prophet caught his spirit, and set themselves to
incarnate his ideas and his methods, in consecrating themselves
to the work of education in order to salvation. The influence
which Oberlin never thought to send so far, had winged itself from
his mountain tops across the wide sea to a little village in the
new State of Ohio. Then these young men who found themselves in
sympathy with his ideas of brotherhood, its obligations and its
needs, with his feeling towards the slave and to all who might be
uplifted, took upon themselves this moral and spiritual inheritance
and began the foundations of a school which should bear the name
of Oberlin and become the reproductive center of like ideas and
influences. I do not say that there were no other influences, only
that there was this one, dominant in spirit as well as in name. The
young college took on this stamp, a missionary character, sympathy
with people in low conditions, radical ideas of human brotherhood,
profound convictions of duty towards the oppressed and ignorant.
From the atmosphere of this influence, soon from the Professor’s
chair in this College there came forth a strong man girded for a
great sacrificial work.
A little Missionary Society, the embodiment of the idea which
Oberlin three-score and ten years before had proclaimed upon
the mountains, “No complicity with slavery,” consciously or
unconsciously, having adopted the same faith and spirit, needed
a leader. From the influences of Oberlin College came Rev. Dr.
Whipple to sound the bugle blast which went echoing through the
land: “We will not use the revenues of unrighteousness to do the
work of righteousness.” Was it anything more than a coincidence or
was it a providence, that with thirty years of singular sacrifice
this strong man in obedience to his mind and heart was working out
the same ideas which the great missionary prophet had so clearly
held forth?
I am not now attempting to assert heredity of ideas, or to decide
the precise degree of historic continuity that there may be in an
influence. I have the easier task of following a distinct stream
of influence, one among many which flow into the great river of
life. With no purpose to measure it I see the providence. Another
evolution from the same atmosphere of the same institution brings
to the American Missionary Association kindred ideas, kindred faith
and kindred spirit, in the second Corresponding Secretary, thus
connecting the history, and expanding and deepening the influence.
Yesterday’s Annual Survey exhibited, as well as figures may, the
work of the Society now after more than two-score years of history.
It is interesting as a fact, independent of any weighing of
influences, to note that in church work and in Sunday-school work,
in educational instruction and industrial training, in teaching
those who have not had the chances for life, how to think, how
to work, how to aspire and how to rise, we find ourselves, as if
working by a chart in the expansion of the missionary methods
of this prophet who gave his life to rescuing the despised,
teaching them how to live in the world that now is, while they are
taught the lessons that shall fit them for the world to come. The
education of the schools, the lessons in the establishment of good
homes, the industries, the churches, are pressing on in the plain
paths of providence until this day.
Already our eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.
Its aforetime degraded people are rapidly learning to work out
the decrees of God in the blessings of a Christian civilization.
Among the dark millions of the South, in the long passed-by cabins
of impoverished and ignorant mountain people in the heart of our
land, of our own race, among the long-wronged red men and the
despised Mongolians, the evolution of this missionary idea, and
the developments of this missionary influence are proving their
reproductive and fruitful energy in the sacrificial lives of noble
missionaries, men and women who are themselves often despised while
they are ministering to the ignorant and to those who are lowly.
They also are powers for other lives, while they are sustained
by a like devotion to the things that are eternal. As from this
unlikeliest mission, a hundred years ago the light of life shone
out, the influence of fidelity to convictions coursing down the
centuries, showing what enlightened consecration can achieve; so
now those who are working together with God for the same divine
ideas, though they may be hidden from the world’s praises, may be
confident that God will not forget them, nor fail to speed their
labors of love in the Lord.
As we gather here in the interests of a work so near to the heart
of Christ, like Him we may safely appeal to the confirmations
of history in the evolutions of providence for courage now, and
confidence for the future. How often when our Lord was testifying
to the reality and power of the kingdom of God on the earth, and
the faith which souls might have and hold in working in it and in
waiting for it, did He send the minds of people back to the days
of the prophets and righteous men that they might see how the work
goes on when the workers die, and how the influences of their lives
continue and enlarge in other lives, so that assurance might take
fresh courage to discover itself in the historic current of an
unmistakable divine purpose and in the evolution of the decrees
of grace. The constancy and compassion of God in the past are
cheering us, in that we have only to hold fast the beginning of our
confidence, steadfast unto the end. We shall not fail, and we need
not be discouraged.
Thus putting on strength, as we recall the care of God and power of
His truth, may we not from this high place of Christian convocation
send out our sympathies to those who have consecrated themselves to
this same prophetic work of bringing in the cast-out, of raising
up the cast-down, and of saving those who are out of the way. Much
of their work is very kindred in form and feature to this work
of Oberlin’s. It is remote, in conditions of rudeness, and in
separation from kindred society. They are living the truth of human
brotherhood. They are holding forth that which is not popular. They
are standing with and for the despised.
They may remember that we bear them in our hearts and in our
prayers; that they have the grateful recognition of the churches
in their self-denials and heroisms. God has accounted them worthy
to live lives that may well rebuke the selfishness and sinful
ambitions of those who live for themselves and those who seek only
high places. The greatness of Christian service is theirs. They can
never know where their influences may go, nor how far. Nor until
the roll-call of Eternity is made will it be revealed what great
lives they have lived, and what Christian deeds have been wrought
by these men and women, who from us have gone out and away from
the world’s vision in self-abnegation, and often in the world’s
scorn are like the prophet of the mountains, patiently laying
deep and broad the foundations of a new earth wherein shall dwell
righteousness.
And so long as our churches can produce this sacrificial spirit,
the work cannot do other than move forward, and the will of God
shall be done.
* * * * *
THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN; OR, THE THREE BROTHERS WHO SETTLED AMERICA.
BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.
This country was settled by Three Brothers. The first that came was
an Englishman, a Cavalier, who located himself at Jamestown; the
second was also an Englishman, a Puritan, who landed on Plymouth
Rock; the third was an African, and was consigned to the First
Brother.
These families multiplied exceedingly and at length came to be
numbered by millions. To them was committed a great duty—the
founding of an empire, and the taking of three grand steps in
the march of human progress, (1) the establishing of civil and
religious liberty, (2) the securing of personal freedom for all and
(3) the exemplifying of the Brotherhood of Man. The last step only
remains to be taken.
The parts of this great duty were unfolded in the due order
of development, and sprang naturally out of the heredity and
environment of the Brothers. The men and their surroundings given,
the results were inevitable. It seems singular that just these men
should have been selected by Providence, especially the black man,
but the result shows that they were wisely chosen. The black was
in the end found to be an essential factor.
I. Let me sketch these Three Brothers.
1. The First, the Cavalier, had been, in the old country, loyal
to king and church, a supporter of the House of Stuart and of
Archbishop Land. He was a representative of the rural population of
England, men who loved broad acres and field sports. In his home in
the new world his great ambition was to own a large plantation and
multiply the number of his slaves, and thus imitate the baronial
life of the mother country. He cared nothing for popular education,
and thanked God that there was neither a school-house nor a
printing-press in his domain.
2. The Second Brother, the Puritan, had become more accustomed
to city life, and was addicted to trade and commerce as well as
to farming. His zeal as a reformer in church and State brought
him into collision with the House of Stuart, and indeed he was an
exile in his new home on account of his religious and political
principles. He desired to have “a church without a bishop and a
State without a king.” He was earnest in promoting education as
well as religion, and his identifying mark everywhere was the
meeting-house and the school-house.
3. The Third Brother, the African, was not voluntary in coming to
his new home nor in the choice of his occupation. He was a slave.
He was strong in body, amiable in disposition, but at length became
the innocent cause of much ill blood between the other brothers.
II. The duties assigned to these men.
1. The founding of a great empire.
Never was there a more inviting opportunity—a continent almost
unoccupied, coast lined by two great oceans, with climate varied
and healthy, and with boundless resources in fertile lands, rivers,
lakes and mines; and never was an opportunity better improved—in
less than three hundred years the new empire has nearly double the
population of the mother country.
2. The second duty was to lead in three great steps in human
progress. (1), The first step was to secure and maintain civil and
religious liberty. This step was inevitable for the two English
brothers. They had planted colonies and organized States. They
had secured charters guaranteeing the rights of Englishmen. They
had thus a training in the arts of government and had learned to
value the blessings of constitutional liberty. In an evil hour the
British Government began to invade these chartered rights. The Two
Brothers were aroused. The Puritan was by inheritance and principle
a foe of arbitrary power. He, of course, was deeply stirred. The
Cavalier had indeed been a friend of the Stuarts. He could see no
objection to arbitrary power when it was practised by himself and
his party on others, but he naturally and suddenly came to see it
in an entirely different light when he and his party were the
victims; and for once the two brothers were in accord.
A contest was imminent. The British Government could settle
it peacefully, if righteously; if not, in blood. It _would
not_ restore chartered rights. Then came the Declaration of
Independence, the _Revolutionary War_, the new Republic, with the
truest definition and guarantee of civil and religions liberty
the world had ever seen. The first of the great steps in human
progress, to which these men were called, was taken.
(2.) The second step—the securing of personal freedom for all—was
plainly demanded by the taking of the first. The elements of the
new contest were embodied in the Declaration of Independence on
the one hand and Negro slavery on the other—a great principle
and a great fact at war with the principle. The antagonism was
seen from the outset. Expediency shut men’s eyes to it, but God
and conscience opened them. How skillful for a time were the
devices to escape the dilemma. It was said that the Declaration of
Independence was only for white men; that it was a mere glittering
generality; that the North had nothing to do with slavery, and
finally that slavery was right, justified both by law and the
Bible. But all in vain. God and conscience would not be silent.
Again a contest was imminent. The South could settle it peacefully,
if righteously; if not, in blood. The South _would not_ abolish
slavery, and hence the _Civil War_ and the overthrow of slavery.
The second step was taken.
(3.) The third step is to exemplify the Brotherhood of Man. This in
like manner is demanded by the results of the one preceding—by the
two great and opposing facts: Emancipation, and the Negro as he is.
On the one hand, every slave was emancipated; in the zeal of the
hour he was made a citizen, enfranchised and guaranteed “the equal
protection of law.” On the other hand, twenty years have shown that
these guarantees are in form and not in fact.
In other respects, too, his condition is seen to be deplorable,
full of discouragement to himself and of danger to the nation.
Let me point out some of the facts in regard to his condition:
(1.) He does not enjoy his guaranteed rights.
I wish to give due credit to the extent and to the localities in
which he does enjoy these rights, but speaking broadly they are
largely denied to him. He was deprived of the ballot at one time by
violence, and is now by fraud; in all cases where his vote would be
decisive in State or National politics, it is not counted—in other
words, the race is practically disfranchised. In the courts he
seldom finds a standing as a lawyer or a juror; in the chain-gang
only does he enjoy a monopoly. In the church, the school, the shop,
he does not, as a rule, have equal rights; he cannot join any
church he pleases, cannot choose the school to which he will send
his children, cannot enter the shop to learn a trade or to work
as a journeyman. He cannot, everywhere, ride in the street car, on
the railroad or steamboat with the white man, though he may buy
the same first-class ticket; he cannot, in many places, attend the
theatre, concert or lecture with the white man, nor with him eat a
lunch at the restaurant, nor lodge in the hotel. He is confronted,
hindered and insulted at every step he takes towards enjoyment
or improvement—a flaming sword guards the avenues of knowledge,
industry and virtue against him. His guarantees of equal rights are
a mockery.
2. He is left in ignorance and vice.
Here again I wish not only to admit but to rejoice in the progress
made. More than a million of the colored people, of ten years
old and upward, can write; but, alas! more than _three millions_
cannot! It is these that awaken our fears, for they are in
danger themselves and are a danger to the nation. Owing to their
illiteracy they cannot keep the accounts of their earnings in the
lowest kinds of employment; they cannot enter upon the higher
and more profitable avocations; and they cannot rise to the
intellectual dignity of a true manhood. Then, too, they are in
bondage to their vices. When they escaped from slavery, many of
them did not escape from lying, stealing and licentiousness; when
they entered freedom many were captured by idleness, improvidence
and intemperance. These are the victims of designing men who take
advantage of their ignorance to defraud them, and of their vices
to enrich themselves or to gratify their lusts. The danger to the
nation is from the contagion of vice which spreads beyond race or
locality, and from the schemes of political demagogues who can sway
to their own ends the millions of these ignorant voters, who have
no property to be taxed and no character to maintain.
3. He is under the ban of caste prejudice.
This lies at the bottom of the whole difficulty. This refuses to
see his good qualities, denies his capacity for improvement, shuts
to him the doors of knowledge, cheats him at the polls, wrongs him
in the courts, and consigns him perpetually to the position of
a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, thus enstamping the race
distinction broad and permanent, and awakening in his heart either
utter discouragement or implacable hatred.