Part 68

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.

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?

The Negro is nothing if not religious. His religion touches his heart and moves him to action. The result of his peculiarly partial contact with Christianity in America is but an earnest of what his full contribution may be confidently expected to be. The African's mission in the past has been that of service. "Servant of all" is his title. He has hewn the wood and drawn the water of others with a fidelity that is wonderful and a patience that is marvelous. As an example of patient fidelity to humble duty he stands without a peer.

His conduct in the late war, which resulted in his freedom, was as rare a bit of magnanimity as the world ever saw. The helpless ones of his oppressor in his power, he nobly stayed his hand from vengeance. And at last, when he held up his hands that his bonds might be removed, his emancipator found them scarred with toil unrequited, but free from the blood of man save that shed in open, honorable battle.

His religious songs are indicative of his real character. These songs embodied and expressed the only public utterance of a people who had suffered two and a half centuries of unatoned insult, yet in them all there has not been found a trace of ill will. History presents no parallel to this. David, oppressed by his foes, called down fire, smoke and burning wind to consume his enemies from the face of the earth. But no such malediction as that ever fell from the lips of the typical American slave; oppressed, like the Man of Sorrows, he opened not his mouth.