Page:Daniel Minort Baxter - Bishop Richard Allen and His Spirit (1923).pdf/86

78 make laws in general conferences. They are as much amenable for misconduct, malfeasance and ultra vires in office as the humblest member in our church. They can be unfrocked as the governor or the president can be impeached; our discipline is our constitution, and if we are to live and grow in Alien’s spirit all of us must obey it.

I love the church because of its history. My mind reflected and the images of the fathers who had toiled and suffered passed before me as I was filled with the air of Allen’s spirit standing by his tomb. I saw in the spirit, Absalom Jones, William White and Darius Jinnings in the clutches of race prejudice in Philadelphia, and then I saw Daniel Coker, Henry Harden, Jacob Matthews of Baltimore, catching the sympathetic strain; Morris Brown and Daniel Payne of Charleston, persecuted and driven from their homes, joining in the refrain crying, Let us rise up and build a religious, educational and economic home for our children’s children. I love the A. M. E. Church because it offers equal chance for all to rise who have character and fitness for service and will serve.