Great battles sometimes settle the fate of a country, and transfer
in a day whole provinces from one dominion to another. There are
no such decisive battles in the struggle for the intellectual
and moral elevation of man. By no stroke of policy and by no
combination of forces can you revolutionize the individual
character of a whole people at once. It happens occasionally,
however, in the contest between good and evil, that some convulsion
occurs which in its influence on the mental and moral condition
of a whole people is hardly less decisive than those political
contests by which provinces are transferred from the control of one
nation to that of another. Such a convulsion was our late civil
war. It left the States where it found them, parts of the Union.
It left all races morally and intellectually where it found them.
But for the colored people of the South it had swept away in every
direction, from zenith to horizon, the impenetrable clouds of more
than Egyptian darkness which had brooded over them, and it had made
it possible for the light of the sun to reach even these slaves.
Then, indeed, the people which sat in darkness saw a great light,
and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, to them
did light spring up.
The civil war made it possible for us to educate and Christianize
the colored race at the South. It remained for us to take up the
burden which the providence of God had laid upon us, and to do what
we could to lift up these people to our level of civilization.
But need this education be _Christian_ education? I answer
emphatically, yes. The world undoubtedly is making great progress
in thought, in discovery, in invention. More and more the dominion
of nature is being conquered and her methods understood. Education
is not the same as it was a century ago. Even religion is not to us
quite the same that it was to our fathers. But whatever discoveries
may be made or whatever progress attained, there are some things
which the world can never advance so far as to be able to do
without, and I but voice the sentiment of this audience when I say
that one of these is Christianity.
And now who are these that in our Southern States are stretching
forth their hands and begging us to come over and help them? They
are those whose minds and hearts are not pre-occupied, but like
those of children, receptive, ready for the seed which may be
sown, and promising, if good seed is sown, a bountiful harvest at
no distant day. They are placed, in the providence of God, at our
very door, and are made a part of the governing force of this great
republic. For them Christian education cannot be secured through
the family, for there is little Christian family life; the father
and the mother are as ignorant as the child; all are children. It
cannot be secured through the State, for the State has no business
to teach religion as these millions need to have it taught. It
can be secured only through organized charity—by the help of such
agencies as the American Missionary Association. What the fathers
and mothers of New England have done for the Christian education of
their children, the American Missionary Association must do for the
South.
I have emphasized the word Christian as I have spoken of Christian
education. Let me not in any less degree emphasize _education_.
Matthew Arnold is not far wrong when he says that the object of
religion is conduct, and that conduct is three-fourths of life. It
is simply doing what we ought. But one of the things which a man
ought to do is to make the most of himself as a power for good in
the world, and that he cannot do without education. Man, without
education, is a clumsy machine. The educated man is force which
drives machines. This force, if uncontrolled, becomes destructive.
The educated man, without principles, is more dangerous than the
uneducated. The latter may become at the worst a brute; it takes
the former to be a demon. But we do not on this account think less
of education; we only insist that the force it generates shall be
controlled by Christian principle. Thus controlled it is always
beneficent, like fire and water and air, which, nevertheless, when
uncontrolled, may become agents of the most fearful destruction.
The necessity for Christian education at the South may be looked
at and clearly seen from two different points of view. To the
Christian, these millions of the South are human beings, for whom
Christ died and to whom He has commanded us to carry the Gospel.
Properly developed, intellectually, morally and spiritually, they
will be a part of the Kingdom of God, and will become powerfully
influential in establishing that kingdom throughout the world. They
are accessible, eager for knowledge, ready to accept the truths
of Christianity, peculiarly impressible, lacking stability only
because undeveloped, and they offer to us an assured hope of a more
complete, immediate and glorious harvest than seems likely to be
gathered in any other part of the world. Nowhere else on the round
globe will your money or your efforts bring such returns as they
will at the South. You have not to contend with an impregnable
hostile faith, as among the Mohammedans or Buddhists. You have
only to lift the clouds of ignorance, and to overcome the natural
depravity of man—a depravity greater, perhaps, than in some other
places, but on that very account more easily recognized, felt and
repented of.
Nor can the necessity for Christian education at the South appear
less imperative to the patriot. There is no element so dangerous to
the stability of the republic as ignorance and its associated lack
of principle. It is by votes that rulers are elected, laws made and
the country governed. Just so long as we have a large element of
ignorance in the republic, whose votes can be bought at the caucus
or at the polls, will the most unscrupulous men rise to prominence
in our politics, for they are the only men who will utilize this
ignorance.
And now what of the future? We have tried all sorts of
reconstruction measures with the South and all kinds of policies
with the South, and all have proved in a greater or less degree
failures. They stand as monuments of our lack of the keenest
foresight. The best reconstruction measure which we can now adopt
is to fill the treasury of the American Missionary Association full
to overflowing, that it may carry forward at once and triumphantly
this work of Christian education in the South. What it has done is
sufficient assurance of what it will do, if the means are placed in
its hands. It cannot establish throughout the South a common school
system like that which blesses the North; it cannot carry education
to every cabin in the South, nor open college halls, free of
expense, to all who may desire a liberal education; but it can and
will qualify large numbers of these people to carry education and
Christianity to the rest; and that, after all, is the best thing
possible, for no lesson is more needed by these people than that of
self-reliance. Teach them to take care of themselves in the best
way, and we shall have done for them the best that is possible. The
day will not be far distant, then, when the common schools of the
South will provide education for the white and the black alike as
at the North, and when the church of God in the South shall hear
the voice of God saying, “All souls are mine. Take heed that ye
despise not one of these little ones.”
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