Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/433

Rh protruding; upon the whole not at all good-looking. But when he began to speak, the congregation hung upon his words, and I could not but admire his flowing eloquence. He admonished the assembly to reflect on the present need of their brethren, to pray for the fugitive slaves who must now in great multitudes leave their acquired homes, and seek a shelter out of the country against legal violence and legal injustice. He exhorted them also to pray for that nation which, in its blindness, could pass such laws and thus oppress the innocent! This exhortation was received with deep groans and lamenting cries.

After this the preacher drew a picture of the death of “Sister Bryant,” and related the history of her beautiful Christian devotion, and applied to her the words of the Book of Revelations, of those “who come out of great afflictions.” The intention of suffering on earth, the glorious group of the children of suffering in their release and with a song of thanksgiving as represented in so divine and grand a manner in the pages of Scripture, were placed by the negro-preacher in the light as of noonday, and as I had never before heard from the lips of any ordinary minister. After this the preacher nearly lost himself in the prayer for the sorrowing widower and his children, and their “little blossoming souls.” Then came the sermon proper.

The preacher proposed to the congregation the question, “Is God with us?”—“I speak of our nation, my brethren,” said he, “I regard our nationality. Let us examine the matter.” And with this he drew a very ingenious parallel between the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, and the negroes in America, and those trials by which Providence evinced His especial solicitude about the chosen people. After having represented the fate of the Israelites under Pharoah and Moses he went on to contemplate the fate of the negro-people.