Ps. cvii; Vs. 13-16.13 Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses.

14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.

15 Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!

16 For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunders.1

(1) This sermon was preached, by special request, before the three congregations, -- 15th St. Presbyterian Church, and the two Congregational Churches in Washington; and is published by the request of the "Ministers' Union," in whose presence it was afterwards read.

The Psalms of David are, for the most part, songs of praise and thanksgiving for the gifts and mercies of the Almighty. The special peculiarity of this 107th Psalm is, that it is a continuous utterance of adoration for the deliverance of the children of Israel from the land of bondage; for their protection from their enemies in the wilderness; for their rescue from divers dangers and misfortunes, by flood and field; from drought and famine.

The sense of gratitude was so vivid and so glowing that the Psalmist bursts forth, not once or twice, but over and over again, into the exclamation,--"O that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men."

So similar, in several ways, has been the providence of the Almighty in the history of our race in this country, that I have chosen the text just announced, as the base of remarks pertaining to the future prospects stretching out before us. My subject to-day is--"Incidents of Hope for the Negro Race in America."

The trials and sufferings of this race have been great for centuries. They have not yet ceased. They are not likely to cease for a long time to come. It may take two or three generations for the race to get a firm and assured status in the land.

Nevertheless there are, I maintain, underlying all the past, present and future attritions and tribulations of our condition, certain large and important incidents, which are pregnant with hope, and which are fitted to serve as stimulants to high ambition and indomitable energy.

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There is need, just now, for such encouragements. For, in some quarters, there seems to be despondency; as though the car of progress was tardy in its movements; many forgetting that it is impossible to extemporize a full civilization for any people; impossible to leap, at a spring, into a lofty elevation. Hence the dark cloud of despair which overhangs a moody group, leading almost to repudiation of their race.And then, from another section, come the insensate screeching and screaming tones which call upon us to flee to Africa.

For my own part I regret these views as idle and unreasoning. Not blind. indeed, numerous difficulties, I see, nevertheless, gracious providences in our case; and I am anxious to set before you what I deem some sound and solid grounds of Hope.

1. Consider, first of all, the fact of Negro vitality as an important factor in his destiny. There must be a physical basis, a material substratum for the mental and moral life of man. "A sound mind in a sound body" is an old adage, applied to a promising individual. The adage recognizes the relation of mind to body; the correlation of flesh and spirit; the connection of the soul of man with animal conditions; which shows itself in all the masterful peoples in human history. Grand intellectuality in the races of men, has been generally connected, more or less, with robustness, life-tenacity, and strong vital forces. Weak people, for the most part, are weak in both body and mind; run a short race; have but a slight hold upon life, and soon vanish away.

It is a characteristic of the Negro race that it seems, everywhere, to have a smack of the immortal. Amid the rude conditions of the fatherland, shut out for ages from the world's civilization, fecundity and vital powers were immemorial qualities. Never, until the ravages of the slave-trade, was there known a disturbance of this vital feature.

During the last two hundred or more years, a large section of the race has been in a captive state, on the continent and the islands of America. But not even the severest conditions of bondage have been able to bar out this quality. The Negro, everywhere, is a productive factor on American soil. The slave-trade was, for the most part, put an end to, in 1809. The slave populations of the West Indies, of the American States, of Brazil and the other South American States, at the time of the great 00055Emancipations which have taken place in this century, were less than half of their present numbers under freedom; and hence our increase, under the British, American, and Brazilian flags, cannot be attribute to the supplies and reinforcements of the slave-trade.

And yet here is the fact, that this race, under the unsettled and abnormal conditions of a new freedom, has gone on increasing, at, at least, as rapid a rate as any people on the continent.2

(2)Two facts may be noticed under this head-- (a) That the Negro has supplanted the aboriginal populations, in several quarters, on the American Continent and its Isles: (b) That there is not a spot on which he has been placed but what there he lives and thrives.

In the West Indies, the white race, in many quarters, decreases. By the census of 1880 the rate of our increase, i.e. in the United States, was said to be fully 6 per cent greater than that of the whites. That census report has since been repudiated as incorrect. Nevertheless the last returns of the Census Bureau, though placing us considerably below that of the white population of the land, sets forth the fact of an actual increase of our numbers; though, relatively, less than that of white Americans. The disparity, however, can easily be accounted for by the unsettled conditions of a newly emancipated and antagonized people.3

(3) I must leave it to each reader to judge for himself the census reports of 1880 and 1890:--Percentage of Increase White.Negro. 1870 to 1880-29.22. 34.85. 1880 to 1890-26.68.13.51.

Here then is the fact of persistent vitality, under the difficulties of poverty, bitter repulsion, and political suffering. It is not a fact which stands separate and apart from ideas. Vital force has always some potent underlying principles. There must be thrift, or economy, or a measure of family virtue; or conscious, or unconscious Hope; some, or most of these; or otherwise, a people,--any people,--will die out. Spiritual ideas do, more or less, attend the persistent life of the humblest classes. The Negro lives and grows; because vitality, in his case, springs from internal sources.

The averment may be made--"Your increase is only an evidence of the sheerest animality. It has no relation to the inner life, which is the true criterion of manhood, the only promise of futurity."

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2. But this taunt is easily refuted. It is refuted first, by a view of its intellectual aspect; and I will take up spiritual phase later on.

Now I maintain that the mental progress of the Negro has run parallel with its persistent and vital continuity.

The special point to be considered, just here, is the fact that in all the places of our servitude every effort has been put forth, by legislation, to shut out the light of letters from the intellectual eye of the black man. The Statute books, in every State and Nation, on this Western Continent, bristle with the laws which interdict the teaching of the Negro; which forbid, with severe penalties, his instruction in letters. And yet intellectual aspiration has characterized the race in all the lands of their servitude. The laws themselves testify the fact. And, thus, for two hundred years there has been a struggle for the Alphabet; the Primer; the Newspaper, and the Bible.4

(4) See "Stroud's Slave Laws."

"Put out the light: and then put out the light" has been the common cry of slavery: in Virginia, in the Carolinas; in Mexico, in Peru, and in Brazil; in Jamaica and in Bermuda.

But the answering cry has gone up from multitudinous plantations, during the entire reign of slavery--"Light! Light!" And so, through murky darkness, despite law and penalties, in cane brake, in slave hut, in the seclusion of the forest, in the deep of night by the embers of dying fire-light; thousands of slaves have clandestinely groped, and stumbled, and plodded on; struggling to emerge from the darkness of ignorance, to attain, if possible, the ability to read, and the illumination of letters.

Thus it came to pass that even in the darkest days of slavery, not seldom, whole groups of men reached, dimly to light of letters. Right from the gloomiest precincts of servitude sprung such geniuses as Phillis Wheatley Banneker, Ward, and Garnett and others. Some, without doubt, were encouraged in their intellectual desires by generous, liberal-minded masters and mistresses. But even thus, the proffer of a gift is a nullity if there is no glad receptivity in the taker. The receptive, yearning faculty was in the Negro; and hence the anxiousness which constantly disclosed itself, in the domain of slavery, for light; and which everywhere met with the effort to reach it!

00077

Just go back with me, a moment to the year 1620. Stand up beside me, and look at that unfortunate captive! He is the first victim of the slave-trade; just landed on American soil. He is a naked pagan! For thousands of years, his ancestors, on the soil of Africa, have lived in a land of ignorance and benightedness; their intellectual life, never, during the ages, stirred by a breeze or a breath of mental inspiration from the world of letters. Through him, the race he represents, is now for the first time, brought into the neighborhood of cultivation, placed in juxtaposition with enlightened civilization.

It is two hundred years and more since this civilizing influence and you must remember that it has been only incidental; it has been unintentional; always tardy and reluctant; that it has been carried the severest and narrowest limitations.

Join to this another fact. It is indeed a fact of contrast, but it has its special significance.

At the time when the black man came in contact with the civilization of the Western World, there was a large group of nations, tribes, and peoples, on the Continent and in the Pacific and Atlantic seas, mostly, in precisely the same semi-barbarous condition as the Negro; with not a few, however, on a higher plane of elevation. There were the aboriginal Mexicans and Peruvians, south of the States. There were the Caribs of Hayti, Cuba, and Jamaica. There were the Mares of New Zealand. There were the Gauches of the Canaries. There were the divers tribes of Australia. All these peoples were, nevertheless, crude and uncivilized peoples at the time of the discovery of America.

All were then, touched, for the first time, with the rising rays of civilization. And so it happens that we, with them, have run the same difficult course of enlightenment, which has been so grudgingly given the ruder peoples of the world.

How do we stand today, relatively, in the problem of attainment and of progress? I challenge any man to the comparison.

Go back again with me to that untrained, mind-shrouded, and naked African, a captive and a stranded slave on these shores.

Turn back again, on the instant, to his descendants, in the West Indies, and on this American soil. What is the sight which meets your eyes?

Here, remote from the land of their forefathers, is a race, 00088numbering nigh thirty millions of people,5 a people to a large extent lettered and enlightened; thousands of them cultured persons; in some of the lands of their captivity, merchants, planters, scholars, authors, magistrates, rulers. And, in two of the provinces of their former servitude, masters of the situation; having driven out their former owners; and, wrestling from them the staff of authority, have become, in their own race and blood, Rulers of the land.6

(5) The following may be regarded as a fair estimate of the American Continent, and Islands: United States 8,000.000. Brazil6,500.000. Cuba1,500.000. South and Central American Republics2,500,000. Hayti3,000,000. British possessions1,500,000. Dutch, Danish and Mexican400,000. French350,000. (6) Hayti and St. Domingo.

Within the period of these two hundred years this same Negro race, despised, trodden upon, sold as beasts and cattle, oft-times murdered by overwork and cruelty, has, nevertheless, by almost superhuman energy, risen above their crushing servitude: and in the very lands of their oppression, produced historic names and characters. Out from the very limitations and agonies of slavery have come cultured civilians, accomplished gentlemen, Physicians, Lawyers, Linguists, Mathematicians, Generals. Philosophers; and from the Coast of Africa men eminent in attainments, in great Universities; not seldom holding professorships in the great schools of Europe. Among these-Henry Diaz, an experienced and commanding officer in Brazil; Hannibal, Lieutenant-General in Russia; Don Juan Lateno, Lattin Professor, at Saville; Anthony William Arno, Doctor of Philosophy of University of Wittenburg.

How stands the case with the divers races and peoples, living in Pagan isolation at the time of the discovery of America? Why, the breath of European civilization seemed too strong for nearly all of them! Down they went, tribe after tribe, race after race, to utter oblivion! Some of them are utterly extinct! Once I was shown a Bible in the Library of Andover Seminary, translated, by Elliott, into the tongue of a New England tribe of Indians. 00099There is not a man living on earth who can read it! The tribe has utterly perished!

Not so with the Negro. Not one of the then humbler races has stood the ordeal as he has. Terrible as has been that ordeal, through the murderous invasion of slavetraders, on the coast or Africa; by the horrors of the Midpassage; and through the sufferings of slavery in the lands of our exile; still the Negro lives!

Neither have these other peoples surpassed this race in progress! Not one of them has pressed through direful agonies, up to the hopeful attainments and the promising destiny which seems clearly opening before us.

3. Allied to this intellectual outgrowth, is another incident of hope for the race,-- its moral and spiritual perception.

I do not pretend angelic qualities for our race. Such a claim would be ludicrous. The common human depravity is our heritage with all the rest of humanity. Moreover slavery has brought forth its fruitful progeny of special enormities for the depravation of the Negro.

But it is a difficult thing to obliterate aboriginal qualities. The history of man shows how innate tendencies abide in a people, notwithstanding the most adverse, and even deteriorating circumstances. It is thus, through this peculiarity, that the Negro has held on to those special moral qualities, to those high spiritual instincts which were recognized by ancient Pagan writers as qualities of the Hamitic family; and which have been noticed by discerning Christian philosophers and philanthropists in all subsequent times.

Back of all the moral infirmities of nature and of the special vices bred of ignorance and servitude, there are certain constitutional tendencies in the race which are without doubt, unique and special. A high moral altitude is a primitive quality, antecedent to the coming of Christianity; and which has developed into more positive forms, in Christian lands, under the inspiration of Christian teaching.7

(7) The religious growth of the race is closely shown by the following statistics:-- Dr. H. K. Carroll, in "The Independent," says that the aggregate of colored church members in the United States is, in round numbers, 2,674,000 distributed as follows: Baptists, 1,403,559; Methodists, 1,190,638: Presbyterians, 30,000: Disciples of Christ, 18,578, and Protestant Episcopal and Reformed Episcopal together, somewhat less than 5,000. According to the census there has been an increase of 1,150,000 colored church members during the last thirty years, which Dr. Carroll thinks is unparalleled in the history of the Christian Church. The value of Negro church property is $26,626-000, and the number of edifices is 22,770.001010

The race is essentially religious. Even in his pagan state the spiritual instinct always has had the ascendency. Homer perceived this quality; for he speaks of the Gods visiting and feasting with.

"Ethiopia's blameless race."

The great African travellers of modern times speak of the same moral characteristic. The testimony of Adamson who visited Senegal in 1754 chimes in with that of Homer. "The Negroes," he says, "are sociable, humane, obliging and hospitable: and they have generally preserved all estimable simplicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged." In similar terms speaks the other great travellers into Africa; Mungo Park, Livingston; the great Stanley of our own day; that extraordinary personage, Mrs Sheldon French, and others. Kinmont, in his "Lectures on Man," says "that the sweet graces of the Christian religion appear almost too tropical and tender plants, to grow in the soil of the Caucassian mind; they require a character of human nature of which you can see the rude lineaments in the Ethiopian." Dr. Wm. Ellery Channing, many years ago, declared--"We are holding in bondage one the best races of the human family. * * * His nature is affectionate, easily touched; and hence he is more open to religious impressions than the white man. * * * When I cast my eyes over our Southern region the land of bowie knives, lynch law and duels--of chivalry, honor and revenge--and when I consider that Christianity is declared to be which seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil and endureth all things'--can I hesitate in deciding to which of the races in that land, Christianity is most adapted, and in which its noblest disciples are most likely to be reared?"

It will be a great mistake to regard these native qualities of the race as merely negative qualities, divorced from strength and robustness. It was first here, if I mistake not our friend, Dr. Blyden, erred in his learned and interesting Lecture, the other evening. He seemed to think that passivity is the normal, aboriginal quality of the race. The Negro, however, is brave as well as gentle; courageous as well as amiable; a gallant soldier as well as a patient sufferer and an enduring martyr. The quiet and submissive qualities of the race have been, not 001111seldom, the butt of redicule and the sneer of the jester. How constant, down to the present day, is the purpose, in the common American mind, to make the term Negro the equivalent of a ludicrous Simian! One instance is quite conspicuous. If you visit the east corridor of the Capitol, on the Senate side, you will see there a noted picture of the naval battle on Lake Erie. That picture is one of the most disgraceful prostitutions of Art in modern times! It is an attempt to stamp a libel and a lie on the dark brow of an innocent, a suffering, but a brave race.8 There, the Negro is represented as a frightened grimace and coward; where as we have the record of his prowess, and the eulogy of his bravery, in this very battle, in the archives of this Government. This picture is not only disgraceful to the vulgar creature who painted it; but it is disreputable to a nation which fastens, embazons and perpetuates a gross mendacity upon the very walls of its National Capitol!

(8) Commodore Perry was the great Hero in the great naval battles on Lake Erie and Champlain. A goodly number of Negroes were sent to the Commodore, reinforce his marines. He took uinbrage, and complained at the sending of many Negroes to his ships! But such was their bravery and efficiency in the engagements, that, in his reports, he afterward speaks of these black naval heroes in the warmest and most enthusiastic manner.

Moreover the fact is historic that, in the Revolutionary war, and in every conflict of this Nation with a foreign or domestic foe, the black man, whether as soldier or sailer, has been a hero; eulogized by Generals and commodores for his prowess.9 General Lord Wolsely, next to On Moltke, the greatest Captain of the age, declares that "the Negro makes one of the bravest soldiers in the world."

(9) The Honorable C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina, in his day, celebrated as an Orator and Statesman, in the memorable debate on the Missouri question, made the following statement:--"In the Nothern States, numerous bodies of them [the Negroes] were enrolled, and fought, side by side with the whites, the battles of the Revolution. "Numerous bodies!" The statement is literally true. In many cases they fought, in the ranks with whites: but aside from this regiments where enlisted, in Massachussetts. New Hampshire, Rohde Island, Connecticut, New York, who fought and died for the independence of the colonies. History assures us of the conspicuous valor of these men, at Bunker Hill, Fort Griswold. Red Bank, Valley Forge, &c., &c. So much for the Revolutionary War. In the war of 1812, they showed the greatest gallantry. At the conclusion of the war General Jackson issued a proclamation in which he spoke in glowing terms of their bravery, declaring--"I expected much of you. * * * You have done more than I expected."

001212No one who has read the history of St. Domingo and the grand struggle of the brave Haytiens, under Touissant, can do otherwise than concur with Lord Wolseley's opinion. Where, elsewhere, in the annals of War, a grander martial spirit can be discerned, than under the mighty chief of Hayti, I know not. Nobody will deny the burning. blazing prowess of the black troops in our late civil war in the South. That prowess led to the enrolment of Negroes in the standing army of the Nation: and, year by year, we are receiving the reports of American Generals, of the grand qualities of the Negro Cavalry; whether in action, in conflict with the Indians; or in the camp, in order, discipline, and high soldierly bearing.

These moral and manly qualities are indications of a noble future. Moral qualities are prophecies. Their predictive elements are strengthened by the facts of progress and of mental advancement which I have brought to your notice; and by the persistent vitality which itself reaches over to the future.

I say therefore that we have every reason to thank God and to take courage. That we have not gone up like sky-rockets, at once, to the highest Empyrean, in the brief period of a generation, is no cause for surprise in our own ranks, nor for the carpings of unthinking critics who delight in disparagement of the Negro. Every thoughtful reader of history knows, thoroughly well, the almost universal fact that the first, the almost immediate result of any great revolution, or, any large Emancipation is the decadence of a people. Freedom does not generate a spontaneous elevation, a prompt and extemporaneous development. It always takes an emancipated people TIME to draw themselves together; to get to know themselves, to learn to know their powers and their responsibilities. The children of Israel, after their deliverance from Egypt, went down, down for four hundred years; and never became anything until the times of David and Solomon. The modern Greeks, after their bloody severance from Turkish oppression, have had, down to the present, stagnant and unprogressive existence; and today are almost nobodies! See these petty South American Republics! What wonderful things have they done since their Emancipation?

And now I ask--Why should the Negro-haters of America demand a miraculous, a superhuman development in us? Contrary to the general trend of history we do 001313show progress; and that should suffice, for just and reasonable men.10

(10) The simple contrast of a homeless, houseless unlettered race, thirty years ago: with the growth of this people into some 30.00 teachers, nigh 2,000,000 pupils: many Academies and Colleges, and Seminaries, since the day of Emancipation: should satisfy any one of the onward march of the race.

At the same time we must remember that we have reached no place where we can say--"Rest and be thankful!" Nor should we forget that our heritage, for an age or more, is repulse and opposition. Great trails are, without doubt, yet before us as a people; long vistas of thorny roadways, we have yet to travel; many wounds, sore lacerations; and the suffering of many martyrdoms!

For a long time you will have to meet the assaults of that large brutal class which would fain sweep us out, as remorsely as they would trample out a nest of ants! And then you will have to resist the insidious influences of that weak pious class, which is ever prophesying the failure of the Negro; and then, Jesuitically, strive, by sneers, limitations, and cruel neglects to fulfil their own atheistic prophecy!

But you must never listen to the tones of discouragement, come from whatever quarter they may. Least of all may we give heed to the despairing tones of hopeless men in our own ranks, nor to the scepticism of those who confidently assert the narrowest limitations of Negro capacity.

They may tell you--"You have indeed made progress. We admit that you stand on a higher plane than your ancestors;--but have gone as far as you can go! You are incapable of reaching the higher platforms of human achievement. The place of the Negro is, forever, a secondary and inferior one."

But don't listen, for a moment, to the delusive dictum of finality. It is all a folly and a snare. You have risen from a most prostrate condition, to freedom. That was one step. You have pushed forward from freedom to manhood. That was another and a higher step. You have advanced somewhat from manhood to culture and monetary assurance. And now I ask--"Where in what section of your constitution has been planted the law of belittling limitation? Into what cell of the Negro's brain has Almighty God dropt the stagnant atom of finality?

My friends, there are no ascertained bounds to the growth of any active, energetic, hopeful and ambitious race. In the world of Art, Science, Philosophy and Letters,001414there is no pent up monopoly, which excludes any section of the great human family. And no spell has fallen upon the intellect of the Negro which confines his capacity to narrow and contracted grooves.

I am drawn to these suggestions by certain oblique tendencies of the day. Just now we are in danger of being hoodwinked by specious, but unreal teachings, pertaining to the education of the race. Certain pseudo-philanthropist who pity the Negro, but cannot learn to love and to uplift him are endeavoring to fasten upon his brain the "cordon of narrowness." Their counsel is, in substance, this:--"Keep the Negro in a narrow groove! His brain is narrow. Give him but a little learning! Then bind him down to the merest manual exercises! Keep him, perpetually, a clown in the fields!"

No such limitations, however, are suggested for the miserable, ofttimes brutalized immigrants, who, by tens of thousands, are landed upon our shores!

"No pent-up Utica may contract their powers." They, debased, not seldom hald-paganized as they are, are to enter every avenue of culture in the land; to reach forth for the grandest acquisitions of both erudition and ambition! But the Negro must be kept in the humblest places; must be restrained to the narrowest systems of training!

For my own part I utterly repudiate all this spacious policy. It is nothing but Caste, and that of the most injurious character! I ask indeed that there shall be "common sense, in a common schooling;" that there shall be no waste of money, or, of means, upon Incapacity; that a whole host of noodles shall not be sent to Universities of Colleges; that manual labour shall be the duty and the destiny of the ordinary and unaspring.

But, when you fall upon a Scholar, an Artist, or a Genius, in any line, if even he be black as mid-night, open wide the gates; clear the pathways, for his noblest gait and his swiftest career! He has the right, by virtue of his endowments, to mount to the highest rounds of the ladder! Cheer him on his way! Give him every possible encouragement to reach the levels; and to rival, if possible, the most ambitious intellects of his age, be they as white as snow!

In the world of mind we are to tolerate neither exclusiveness not caste. In all humanity and self-restraint we are, as a people, to find our own place in the scale of nature, in the ranks of society, and in the order of the State.

But we must find it ourselves; not be forces into it by 001515others! Hence we should resist the arrogance of that whole class of Americans, both in Church and State, who think they have a divine commission to thrust the Negro into a special place, as an underling, in American society.

Meanwhile we must study the situation in all quietness, soberness, with non-disturbance of soul, yea, even with a goodly quantum of stoicism. Withal, however, we must cultivate the spirit of Hope, perseverance, high self-reliance, and unfailing trust in God.

"Zealous, yet modest, innocent, tho' free,Serene amidst alarms, inflexible in faith!"

The great need of our race in this generation is sobriety, a deep sense of imperfection, diligence in all pursuits, simplicity in manners, and a deep and pervasive influence of the religious sentiment.

If this people get crazed by the possession of a little liberty; if they become intoxicated by inebriating and destructive politics; if they get carried away by the attainment of dazzling learning; if they are soon puffed up and made pompous by the grasp of a little wealth or property; and then begin to exaggerate their importance, to disgust their friends, to forget God, and so become blind to the high virtues--all hope for the future departs!

The race, in this country, is still at school. If they can learn to put away lightness, the love of pleasure, and the mere gratification of sense;

"If they can scorn delights, and live Laborious days;" if they can bring themselves to see that the life of a race, is the same as the life of a family, or the life of a man;--that is, that it is a trust from God, for the noblest purposes of humanity, and for the glory of God; then they are sure to run a glad and a glorious career, if even it be a trying one; to attain the highest excellence of man; to achieve the grandest results in the majestic work which God has committed to the care of his creatures on earth.