Page:Ecclesiastical Relation of Negroes.djvu/11

Rh squarely done, and yet social equality can be denied? Do you tell me that after you have admitted this negro thus to your debates, your votes, your pulpits, your sick and dying beds, your weddings and funerals, you will still exclude him from your parlours and tables? Credat Judæus Apella! I tell you, Sir, this doctrine, if it does not mean nothing, or if it does not mean Yankee hypocrisy, means ultimately, amalgamation. What more emphatic evidence did ever a traveller bring back to us, of the utter confusion of bloods in Spanish America, than to tell us that he there saw black priests to white people? But now, when the negro is grasping political equality, when he is no longer an inferior and in servitude, when his temper is assuming and impudent in many cases, when in many sections he outnumbers the whites, it becomes both Church and civil society to guard this danger with tenfold as much jealousy as when they were our servants.

Are we then shut up by principle to this most repugnant thing? Do the Bible and our standards require us in consistency to introduce black men into all our Church courts as our equals, and as spiritual rulers of the laity of the superior race? This, Moderator, is the cardinal question. If God and duty require any sacrifice, let it be made. Fiat jastitia, ruat cœlum, I trust I shall not be behind any of my brethren in temperament or conviction, when the true necessity arises for acting upon this severe maxim. But I have desired that you should have fully before you the true extent of the concession demanded of you, that if it shall appear the logical exigency is imaginary, and the argument demanding it a transparent sophism, you may be delivered from so cruel an error.

It has been argued here that the gospel is a religion for universal man, and that participation in the blessings of redemption is decided, not by any reference to race, class, or social grade, but by the person's faith and repentance alone. This blessed truth, it is presumed, every true christian joyfully believes. We have been reminded of the apostle Peter, who was taught by vision not to "call that common which God had cleansed," and was thus forced to overcome his prejudices of caste, and receive Gentiles to an equal place in the Church with Jews.

And this instance reminds me of a truth, which I beg leave to commend to gentlemen of the other side; that our brother Peter found, very soon, that this consequence was natural and necessary, which they so stoutly disclaim; namely, that the eccleastical equality involved social equality. Peter, after admitting Gentiles to an equal footing in the Church, was obliged to admit them on an equal footing to his table and parlour; and was found "eating with the Gentiles." "But when certain came from Jerusalem, he dissembled, and withdrew himself." So, I predict, will these our brethren be found "dissembling," when they are brought face to face with the awkward consequences of their present position. And I pledge them, that I shall not fail to be their Paul, to rebuke them for their inconsistency, and insist that they face the musick of their own levelling doctrine. But this by the way.

They quote for us also, such passages as these; that in Christ "there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all in all." Hence, they jump to the inference, that not only the blessings of redemption, but the