_that_ the worst, but while acknowledging that there is great room for
improvement, let us recognize in the vast mass of multitude who, in
education, morals and religion, are the equals of any people.
The correspondence between the profession of the heart and the outward
life is often not what it should be, but is not that true also of many
Christians of any race? There are Christians of highest education who
enjoy abundant and varied opportunities of enlightenment and culture
who fail to show in all their outward life what they profess in their
heart to be. Some do fall into the error of trying to separate between
the religion of the heart and that of the life, but generally they are
learning the better way. Where so large a percentage of the people
cannot read and write, how can you expect of them the highest degree
of moral and religious life? Taking into account the disadvantages and
limitations under which they labor, you rather wonder that they have
reached so high as they have in Christian living. We must consider the
past history of the race, its present disadvantages, environment and
opportunity, if we would justly estimate its Christianity. We must
base our judgment upon the developed Negro if we would be fair.
Education helps us to be better Christians just as it helps others
and, and as we get more knowledge of Bible truths such as education
can give us we will be better Christians. Educated ministers are fast
displacing the uneducated, and those whose moral and Christian
character fall below the standard are being crowded out, and schools
and colleges are sending out every year hundreds of educated Christian
men and women who raise the standard of right living in any community
where their lot is cast.
The material prosperity of the Negro may be placed in evidence as to
his Christianity. With all the odds against them and starting up from
absolute poverty, the race now owns farms, homes, schools, churches,
bank accounts and personal property amounting to five hundred and
fifty million dollars. It is remarkable that this has been acquired
in forty years. God's word teaches that nations prosper in material
things as they get close to God.
Thus looking upon the brighter side we are led to commend in many
things the Christianity of the Negro race and to believe that as a
people higher ground is aimed at. Though yet a long way off from
perfection, yet ever onward and upward are they tending.
SECOND PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. L. B. ELLERSON, A. B., A. M.
[Illustration: Rev. L. B. Ellerson]
REV. L. B. ELLERSON.
Rev. L. B. Ellerson, A. M., was born at Cheraw, S. C., in
1869. Mr. Ellerson's father having died when the son was but
an infant, Mr. Ellerson was left to be reared under the
fostering care of his mother alone. He spent his youthful
days in the public schools of his native town until he was
sixteen years old. At that time he was happily converted to
Christ and received the impressions that he was called to
the gospel ministry. At the same time he united with the
Presbyterian Church. In 1886, Mr. Ellerson entered Biddle
University at Charlotte, N. C., to pursue such a course as
would prepare him for the ministry. He remained at Biddle
University until 1893, when he graduated from the classical
course with honor, taking the Philosophical Oration. In '92
Mr. Ellerson was the successful contestant for the medal
given by the Alumni to the Junior Class. During his course
at Biddle, Mr. Ellerson spent his summer vacations, teaching
in the district schools of North and South Carolina. In
June, 1893, Mr. Ellerson was employed to do missionary work
near Asheville, N. C. He continued in this work until
September, 1893, at which time he entered the Theological
Seminary of the Presbyterian Church at Princeton, N. J., for
the purpose of completing his course for the ministry.
During the first two years of his course of Theology at
Princeton he continued to come South in summer and engage in
teaching during vacations. He graduated from Princeton
Theological Seminary in 1896. He and two others being the
only colored students in a class of sixty-nine young men.
Besides keeping up the studies of the last year, Mr.
Ellerson supplied the pulpit of Dwight's Chapel at
Englewood, New Jersey. Here he remained until September,
1896, when he came to South Carolina and was ordained to the
full work of the gospel ministry by the Fairfield
Presbytery, the same Presbytery having licensed him the
preceding year.
During Rev. Ellerson's course at Princeton he was at one
time engaged to supply the pulpit of Siloam Presbyterian
Church at Elizabeth, N. J. At another time he was employed
to assist the Rev. H. G. Miller, pastor of Mt. Taber
Presbyterian Church, in New York City, during the illness of
the pastor. Upon his ordination by Fairfield Presbytery in
1896, Rev. Ellerson was placed in charge of the church and
school work at Manning, S. C. Here he worked very
successfully preaching and teaching until November, 1898,
when he was called to the pastorate of Berean Presbyterian
Church at Beaufort, S. C. At the same time he was made
principal of Harbison Institute. Rev. Ellerson labored with
a marked degree of success on the Beaufort field from
November, 1898 to April, 1901, when he was urged to accept a
call from the Laura Street Presbyterian Church at
Jacksonville, Fla., where he is at present prosecuting the
work of his church with success. For a young man of his age,
Rev. Ellerson evidently stands high in the estimation of his
fellow Presbyters. This is evinced by the fact that he has
already filled some of the highest offices in the gift of
his brethren. In 1898 he was unanimously chosen moderator of
Fairfield Presbytery at Camden, S. C. In 1899 he was made
the choice of Atlantic Synod for moderator at Columbia, S.
C., and in 1900 he was unanimously elected to represent the
Presbytery of Atlantic in the General Assembly which met in
St. Louis, Mo.
He has filled each of these offices with credit and ability.
The degree of A. M. was conferred upon him by Biddle
University, his Alma Mater in 1900.
If it is true that man is naturally a religious being, then it is
pre-eminently true in the case of the Negro. If the Negro is anything
at all he is religious. It matters not in what walk of life you find
him or what may be his personal or individual character, it is a very
rare case indeed when you find a Negro who indulges in doubt as to the
existence of a supreme being or the existence of a future state of
rewards and punishments. With him these are fixed points of belief.
But as much as may be justly said regarding the Negro's natural piety,
it must be observed and admitted by all who know the Negro best that
his religion is very much defective in its practical application to
the principles of right conduct and living. And this, we perceive, is
the main point at issue, for when we discuss the Negro as a Christian
we must of necessity feel called upon to distinguish between his
native piety and his applied Christianity. We wish it understood, too,
that the general observations made here refer to the masses of Negroes
rather than to the individual.
We unhesitatingly affirm that individuals of our race have risen to as
true and as high a Christian status as has mankind anywhere. And
although we know and confess that the masses of our race have not yet
come up to the genuine standard of the New Testament
Christianity--even in apprehension--yet it must be observed that their
religion contains many features that are highly commendable. Chief
among these features are, first, his simple, child-like, unwavering
faith in God. Nor can this condition be wholly attributed to ignorance
or thoughtlessness, as some might hold; for, indeed, we have produced
some men of as rare ability as move among the human throng; yet it is
almost as difficult to find an atheist, an agnostic, or an infidel of
any sort among us as it is to find a "needle in a haystack." The Negro
believes in the God of the Bible.
Second. Because the Negro is naturally emotional he is usually earnest
and fervent in the exercise of his religious worship, as far as that
goes. He likes the strong, passionate appeal which for the time being,
at least, tickles him into laughter or moves him to tears and sweeps
him off his feet in its flight. The earnestness and fervency are all
right but too often these run to the extreme and so constitute by far
too large a portion of his Christianity.
Third. Again, the Negro's religion is characterized by benevolence. I
believe that history has no record of a people who, out of their want
and poverty, have given so much to benevolent causes as have the
Negroes in this country. Is it not wonderful to reckon the millions of
dollars that have been given by us for erecting and maintaining church
edifices, schools and other benevolent institutions since
emancipation? It is perfectly safe to affirm that no people have
exceeded us along this line. But with all of these good things that
can be justly said to the credit of our religion, the fair-minded must
still admit that when we come to the daily application of the
principles and practices of Bible Christianity we are lacking. If this
be true, there is a cause. What is it? We believe that the cause was
stated in part when we referred to the natural emotional element in
our makeup. That element too often causes us to run off with the
sentiment, having left the substance behind. Another cause, and,
perhaps the main one, is to be found doubtless in the same way in
which we find the causes of defects in our race along other lines, i.
e., from defective leadership and instruction along this particular
line. We would be understood. The crying need of our race to-day _is_
and has been a _competent_ ministry to lead and instruct the masses in
the application of the principles of right life and conduct from the
standpoint of Bible Christianity. To-day the church, especially in our
race, is the center of both our social and Christian life. Like
priests, like people. All honor to the pioneers who did their best in
their circumstances and who served well their day and generation. But
this is another age; this, a brighter day--one that demands
improvement along all lines, and especially in the pulpit of my race.
The pew is advancing, hence the pulpit had better push on. The key to
the situation, then, is nothing more nor less than a more
consecrated and intelligent Christian ministry for our race throughout
the length and breadth of this land. And we are hopeful; for the
"signs of the times" portend the coming of better things. Already
bright streaks of gray high up upon the eastern horizon herald the
dawn of a new and brighter day. Every branch of the Christian church
in our race is putting forth strenuous efforts to supply the pulpits
of the race with competent ministers. Let this glorious day be
hastened and soon Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God.
THIRD PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. WALTER H. BROOKS, D. D.
[Illustration: Rev. W. H. Brooks, D. D.]
REV. WALTER H. BROOKS, D. D.
Rev. Walter H. Brooks, D. D., has a very unusual and
interesting history. He was born a slave in Richmond, Va.,
August 30, 1851, his parents belonging to different masters.
In 1859 his mother's master died, and arrangements were made
to sell her and her six children, she being allowed to
select a purchaser if she could find one. Through a white
friend his father bought Dr. Brooks' mother, together with
two of the youngest children. Walter H. Brooks and an elder
brother were bought by a large tobacco manufacturing firm in
Richmond. In 1861 the breaking out of the war affected the
tobacco trade, and many of the tobacconists were obliged to
sell or hire out their slaves. Walter and his brother David
were hired by their mother, who, each quarter of the year,
managed to pay the amount agreed upon. For the next three
years both of the boys worked, thereby aiding their mother
in paying their hire. After the war Walter H. Brooks, for a
short time, attended a primary school in Richmond, taught by
a young lady from the North.
In October, 1866, he had received one year's instruction
when he went to Lincoln University, Chester County, Pa. He
remained there seven years, graduating in 1872, and then
entered a theological class for one year. During the second
year of his seminary life he was converted and became an
elder in the Presbyterian Church. He expected to become a
Presbyterian preacher, but in 1873 his ideas having made him
a subject to baptism, he joined the First African Baptist
Church of Richmond, Va.
For a short time he was a clerk in the postoffice at
Richmond, Va., but in 1874, having resigned his position, he
entered the service of the American Baptist Publication
Society in the State of Virginia. Having been ordained in
December, 1876, in April, 1877, he accepted the pastorship
of the Second Baptist Church of Richmond, Va., where he
succeeded in paying off the entire debt of the church. In
June, 1880, he was sent as a delegate for the Virginia
Baptist State Convention to the Baptist General Association
in session at Petersburg, and he was the first Colored
delegate received by that body. In September, 1880, he
resigned the charge of the church and went to New Orleans,
La., to commence work in the American Baptist Publication
Society's employ, but his wife's failing health caused him
to return to Virginia in 1882.
In November, 1882, he was called to the pastorship of the
Nineteenth Street Baptist Church of Washington, D. C., where
he has been ever since.
Roger Williams University, Nashville, Tenn., and State
University, Louisville, Ky., both honored him with the title
of Doctor of Divinity; while his alma mater, in June, 1883,
conferred upon him the degree of M. A.
Recently he was elected a trustee of the United Society of
Christian Endeavor, to represent the Colored Baptists of the
world.
Dr. Brooks has distinguished himself as a temperance
advocate, and for a number of years has been the Chaplain of
the Anti-Saloon League of the District of Columbia.
His article, printed some years since in the "National
Baptist" of Philadelphia, Pa., on "George Liele, the Black
Apostle," and his more recent paper on the "Beginnings of
Negro Churches in America," have won for him many praises.
For twenty-eight years Dr. Brooks has been in public life,
and his power as a speaker still gives him a commanding
influence in the pulpit and on the platform.
Dr. Brooks married Miss Eva Holmes, of the family of Rev.
James H. Holmes, of Richmond, Va., and this union resulted
in the birth of ten children--eight of whom are living, four
boys and four girls--the oldest born being 27 years of age,
the youngest four years.
The Christian religion is eminently adapted to the wants of humanity.
It has always had a charm for lowly and oppressed peoples. It was,
therefore, the one thing, above all others, which gave comfort and
hope to the American Negro during the night of his long bondage.
The story of the enslavement and marvelous deliverance of God's
ancient people; of Daniel, the prophet, and the Hebrew youths, whom
God protected and honored in the house of their bondage; the psalms of
David, the sweet singer of Israel; the inspired narratives of Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christ of God; the Biblical account of the faith,
sufferings and triumphs of the apostles; and the manifold promises of
God, made to all who served Him in truth, and patiently wait for their
fulfillment, could not fail in influencing the conduct and life of
America's Negro slaves. It was in circumstances like these the
Christian Negro, many years ago, sang out his hopes, his sorrows, and
his soul-yearnings in melodies peculiarly his own, whose plaintive
strains have been echoing around the globe for a generation and more.
The balm of Gilead was never so soothing to the wounds of an Israelite
as the Gospel of Jesus Christ was, in the dark days of slavery, to the
oppressed and sorrowing soul of the unfortunate Negro. It is not
surprising, therefore, that at least one-fourth of the entire Negro
population of the country was devout Christians forty years ago, while
the entire Negro population was nominally believers in the living and
true God, and in Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
Whether the Negro Christian has lost some of his old-time love for
Christ, and his zeal for the sanctuary, is, in the minds of some, an
open question. We, however, believe that the Savior and the sanctuary
are dearer to the Negro than ever. Indeed, so far as the census, which
was taken by the United States in 1890, proves anything as to the
matter of religion, the Negro is the most religious citizen of the
country. Here is an extract from that report: "The Negro population of
the country, exclusive of Indian territory and Alaska, according to
the census of 1890, is 7,470,040. As the churches report 2,673,197
Negro communicants, exclusive of Indian territory and Alaska, it
follows that _one_ person in every 2.79 of the Negro population is a
communicant. Excluding Indian Territory and Alaska, the total
population is 62,622,250, and the total of communicants 20,568,679.
The proportion here is 1 communicant in every 3.04 of the population.
In other words, while all denominations have 328.46 communicants in
every 1,000 of the total population, the colored organizations
reported have 357.86 communicants in every 1,000 of the Negro
population." According to this showing, _more than a third_ of the
entire Negro population of the country was enrolled as active members
of the churches, ten years ago. At the same time, _less than a third_
of the white population was connected with the churches of the land.
It remains to be seen whether the census of the United States, which
is now in process of completion, will show any change in the relative
strength of the Negro and white churches of the country.
It is certain that the Negro Christian is displaying commendable zeal
in erecting spacious houses of worship; in acquiring school property;
in giving the Gospel to the heathen in Africa, and in other parts of
the world; in raising funds for the cause of education, and in
providing himself with a religious literature of his own making.
In the quality of his religion, we dare say, there is room for
improvement. But the changes mostly needed for his highest good are
intellectual, material, social, commercial and political in nature,
rather than religious.
The Negro Christian is as a rule as good as he knows how to be. He
often errs, _not knowing the Scriptures_. He sometimes plunges
headlong into the ditch of shame, because his spiritual adviser and
instructor is a "blind leader of the blind."
Christian schools, however, are giving us better leaders every
year, and the time is hastening when the Negro Christian of America
shall be respected and loved because of his intelligence, his
Christian piety, his zeal for God's cause, his manly bearing, his
general worth as a moral and material contributor to the well being,
both of the state and of the country which claim him as a citizen, and
because of his excellent spirit and gentlemanly deportment.
FOURTH PAPER.
THE NEGRO AS A CHRISTIAN.
BY REV. H. H. PROCTOR.
[Illustration: Rev. Henry H. Proctor]
REV. HENRY H. PROCTOR, B. A.
Henry Hugh Proctor was born near Fayetteville, Tennessee,
December 8, 1868. After completing the public school course
of his native town he studied in Fisk University, Nashville,
Tenn., from which school he was graduated with the degree of
Bachelor of Arts, June, 1891. That fall he entered the
Divinity School of Yale University, graduating three years
later. He was assigned by the faculty to the post of honor
among the chosen orators of the class. He at once entered
upon the pastorate of the First Congregational Church of
Atlanta, Ga.
Mr. Proctor has lectured extensively in many parts of the
country, his best-known lecture being "The Black Man's
Burden." He has been active in preventing legislation in
Georgia adverse to the colored race, especially measures
designed to restrict the franchise and cut down public
school facilities of the Negro. He is correspondent for a
number of Northern periodicals, and extracts from his
sermons are published weekly in the "Atlanta Constitution,"
the leading daily of the South. At his recent seventh
anniversary as pastor many letters of congratulation came
from all parts of the country, one being from Principal
Booker T. Washington, whose esteem and friendship he enjoys.
In the historic development of Christianity race and religion have had
a reciprocal relation. Conversion has involved a mutual conquest. The
religion has modified the race, and the race has modified the
religion. Every race that has embraced Christianity has, by developing
that element of truth for which it has affinity, brought to the system
its own peculiar contribution.
In the Semitic race, the high priest of humanity, Christianity, was
born. "Salvation is of the Jews." Israel's code of ethics was the
highest known to antiquity. It was but natural that the Hebrew should
leave upon the new-born system the impress of his genius for ethics.
Hellenism may be regarded as the complement and contrast of Hebraism.
Hebraism revealed the transcendence of Jehovah. Hellenism declared the
divinity of man. The Greek, pre-eminent, in philosophy as a pagan,
became, as a Christian, pre-eminent in theology. He blended the
complemental conceptions of divinity and humanity. If the contribution
of the Hebrew was ethical, that of the Greek was theological.
The Latin mind, practical rather than speculative, political rather
than theological, established the _Civitas Dei_ where once stood the
_Civitas Roma._ This ecclesiastical masterpiece of human wisdom "may
still exist in undiminished vigor," says Macaulay, "when some traveler
from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his
stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.
Paul's." Truly the Church of Rome has left upon Christianity an
ineffaceable political impress.
The Teutonic mind--fresh, vigorous, even childlike in its simplicity
and love of reality, accustomed to enjoy the freedom peculiar to lands
where the national will is the highest law--would not brook the
inflexible dogmatism of the Greek nor the iron ecclesiasticism of the
Roman. The Teuton loved liberty in religion as well as in other
things, and asserted his right to stand before his God for himself.
The free spirit revealed in Christianity through Luther can never die.
"Christianity as an authoritative letter is Roman; as a free spirit it
is Teutonic."
The Saxon, pre-eminent in capacity for developing ideas, has so
assimilated Christianity as to become its noblest representative.
Enterprise and energy, vigor and thrift, striking characteristics of
this great race, are becoming part and parcel of our Christianity.
This is the missionary age, and it is the enterprising Saxon,
unchecked and undaunted by sword, flame or flood, that is encircling
the globe with a girdle of divine light.
And yet our Christianity is not complete. Notwithstanding its moral
stamina, its philosophic basis and its organic solidarity, its free
spirit and its robust energy, do we not feel there is something
lacking still? Does not our Christianity lack in its gentler virtues?
To what nation shall we look for the _desideratum_? Shall it not be to
the vast unknown continent? If the Jew has modified our religion by
his ethics, the Greek by his philosophy, the Roman by his polity, the
Teuton by his love of liberty, and the Saxon by his enterprise, shall
not the African, by his characteristic qualities of heart, bring a new
and peculiar contribution to Christianity?