less, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy
first love.”
There are in this class of people, activity, zeal, unflinching con-
scientiousness, clear intellectual discriminations between truth
and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness; but there
is a want of that spirit of love, without which, in the eye of
Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower
--wanting in life and perfume.
Yet this blessed principle is not dead in their hearts, but
only sleepeth; and so great is the real and genuine goodness,
that when the true magnet of divine love is applied, they always
answer to its touch.
So when the gentle Eva, who is an impersonation in childish
form of the love of Christ, solves at once, by a blessed instinct,
the problem which Ophelia has long been unable to solve by
dint of utmost hammering and vehement effort, she at once,
with a good and honest heart, perceives and acknowledges her
mistake, and is willing to learn even of a little child.
Miss Ophelia, again, represents one great sin, of which, un-
consciously, American Christians have allowed themselves to be
guilty. Unconsciously it must be, for nowhere is conscience so
predominant as among this class, and nowhere is there a more
honest strife to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience
of Christ.
One of the first and most declared objects of the gospel has
been to break down all those irrational barriers and prejudices
which separate the human brotherhood into diverse and con-
tending clans. Paul says, “In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew
nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” The Jews at
that time were separated from the Gentiles by an insuperable
wall of prejudice. They could not eat and drink together, nor
pray together. But the apostles most earnestly laboured to
show them the sin of this prejudice. St. Paul says to the
Ephesians, speaking of this former division, “He is our peace,
who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall
of partition between us.
It is very easy to see that, although slavery has been abolished
in the New England States, it has left behind it the most bane-
ful feature of the system--that which makes American worse
than Roman slavery--the prejudice of caste and colour. In the
New England States the negro has been treated as belonging to
an inferior race of beings; forced to sit apart by himself in the
place of worship; his children excluded from the schools; himself
excluded from the railroad-car and the omnibus, and the peculi-
arities of his race made the subject of bitter contempt and ridicule.
This course of conduct has been justified by saying that they
are a degraded race. But how came they degraded? Take any
class of men, and shut them from the means of education, deprive
them of hope and self-respect, close to them all avenues of
honourable ambition, and you will make just such a race of them
as the negroes have been among us.
So singular and so melancholy is the dominion of prejudice
over the human mind, that professors of Christianity in our New
England States have often, with very serious self-denial to them-
selves, sent the gospel to heathen as dark-complexioned as the
Africans, when in their very neighbourhood were persons of dark
complexion, who, on that account, were forbidden to send their
children to the schools and discouraged from entering the
churches. The effect of this has been directly to degrade and
depress the race; and then this very degradation and depression
has been pleaded as the reason for continuing this course.
Not long since the writer called upon a benevolent lady, and
during the course of the call the conversation turned upon the
incidents of a fire which had occurred the night before in the
neighbourhood. A deserted house had been burned to the
ground. The lady said it was supposed it had been set on fire.
“What could be any one's motive for setting it on fire?” said
the writer.
“Well,” replied the lady, “it was supposed that a coloured
family was about to move into it, and it was thought that the
neighbourhood wouldn't consent to that. So it was supposed
that was the reason.”
This was said with an air of innocence and much unconcern.
The writer inquired, “Was it a family of bad character?”
“No, not particularly, that I know of,” said the lady; “but
then they are negroes, you know.”
Now, this lady is a very pious lady. She probably would deny
herself to send the gospel to the heathen; and if she had ever
thought of considering this family a heathen family, would have
felt the deepest interest in their welfare, because on the subject
of duty to the heathen she had been frequently instructed from
the pulpit, and had all her religious and conscientious sensibilities
awake. Probably she had never listened from the pulpit to a
sermon which should exhibit the great truth, that “in Christ
Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond
nor free.”
Supposing our Lord was now on earth, as he was once, what
course is it probable that he would pursue with regard to this
unchristian prejudice of colour?
There was a class of men in those days as much despised by
the Jews as the negroes are by us; and it was a complaint made
of Christ that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. And if
Christ should enter, on some communion season, into a place of
worship, and see the coloured man sitting afar off by himself,
would it not be just in his spirit to go there and sit with him,
rather than to take the seats of his richer and more prosperous
brethren?
It is, however, but just to our Northern Christians to say that
this sin has been committed ignorantly and in unbelief, and that
within a few years signs of a much better spirit have begun to
manifest themselves. In some places, recently, the doors of
school-houses have been thrown open to the children, and many
a good Miss Ophelia has opened her eyes in astonishment to find
that, while she has been devouring the Missionary Herald, and
going without butter on her bread and sugar in her tea to send
the gospel to the Sandwich Islands, there is a very thriving
colony of heathen in her own neighbourhood at home; and, true
to her own good and honest heart, she has resolved not to give
up her prayers and efforts for the heathen abroad, but to add
thereunto labours for the heathen at home.
Our safety and hope in this matter is this: that there are
multitudes in all our churches who do most truly and sincerely
love Christ above all things, and who, just so soon as a little re-
flection shall have made them sensible of their duty in this
respect, will most earnestly perform it.
It is true that, if they do so, they may be called Abolitionists;
but the true Miss Ophelia is not
afraid of a hard name in a good
cause, and has rather learned to consider “the reproach of Christ
a greater treasure than the riches of Egypt.”
That there is much already for Christians to do in enlightening
the moral sense of the community on this subject, will appear if
we consider that even so well-educated and gentlemanly a man
as Frederick Douglass was recently obliged to pass the night on
the deck of a steamer, when in delicate health, because this
senseless prejudice deprived him of a place in the cabin; and
that that very laborious and useful minister, Dr. Pennington, of
New York, has, during the last season, been often obliged
seriously to endanger his health, by walking to his pastoral
labours, over his very extended parish, under a burning sun,
because he could not be allowed the common privilege of the
omnibus, which conveys every class of white men, from the most
refined to the lowest and most disgusting.
Let us consider now the number of professors of the religion
of Christ in New York; and consider also that, by the very fact
of their profession, they consider Dr. Pennington the brother of
their Lord, and a member with them of the body of Christ.
Now, these Christians are influential, rich and powerful; they
can control public sentiment on any subject that they think of
any particular importance; and they profess, by their religion,
that “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”
It is a serious question, whether such a marked indignity
offered to Christ and his ministry, in the person of a coloured
brother, without any remonstrance on their parts, will not lead
to a general feeling that all that the Bible says about the union of
Christians is a mere hollow sound, and means nothing.
Those who are anxious to do something directly to improve
the condition of the slave can do it in no way so directly as by
elevating the condition of the free coloured people around them,
and taking every pains to give them equal rights and privileges.
This unchristian prejudice has doubtless stood in the way
of the emancipation of hundreds of slaves. The slaveholder,
feeling and acknowledging the evils of slavery, has come to the
North, and seen evidences of this unkindly and unchristian
state of feeling towards the slave, and has thus reflected within
himself:--
“If I keep my slave at the South, he is, it is true, under the
dominion of a very severe law; but then he enjoys the advan-
tage of my friendship and assistance, and derives, through
his connexion with me and my family, some kind of a position
in the community. As my servant, he is allowed a seat in the
car, and a place at the table. But if I emancipate and send
him North, he will encounter substantially all the disadvantages
of slavery, with no master to protect him.”
This mode of reasoning has proved an apology to many a
man for keeping his slaves in a position which he confesses to
be a bad one; and it will be at once perceived that, should the
position of the negro be conspicuously reversed in our Northern
States, the effect upon the emancipation of the slave would be
very great. They, then, who keep up this prejudice may be
said to be, in a certain sense, slaveholders.
It is not meant by this that all distinctions of society should
be broken over, and that people should be obliged to choose
their intimate associates from a class unifitted by education and
habits to sympathise with them.
The negro should not be lifted out of his sphere of life
because he is a negro; but he should be treated with Christian
courtesy in his sphere. In the railroad-car, in the omnibus and
steam-boat, all ranks and degrees of white persons move with
unquestioned freedom side by side; and Christianity requires
that the negro have the same privilege.
That the dirtiest and most uneducated foreigner or American,
with breath redolent of whisky, and clothes foul and disordered,
should have an unquestioned right to take a seat next to any
person in a railroad-car or steam-boat, and that the respectable,
decent, and gentlemanly negro, should be excluded simply
because he is a negro, cannot be considered otherwise than as an
irrational and unchristian thing; and any Christian who allows
such things done in his presence without remonstrance and the
use of his Christian influence, will certainly be made deeply
sensible of his error when he comes at last to direct and per-
sonal interview with his Lord.
There is no hope for this matter if the love of Christ is
not strong enough, and if it cannot be said, with regard to the
two races, “He is our peace who hath made both one, and hath
broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”
The time is coming rapidly when the upper classes in society
must learn that their education, wealth, and refinement, are not
their own; that they have no right to use them for their own
selfish benefit; but that they should hold them rather, as Fenelon
expresses it, as “a ministry,” a stewardship, which they hold in
trust for the benefit of their poorer brethren.
In some of the very highest circles in England and America,
we begin to see illustrious examples of the commencement of
such a condition of things.
One of the merchant princes of Boston, whose funeral has
lately been celebrated in our city, afforded in his life a beautiful
example of this truth. His wealth was the wealth of thousands.
He was the steward of the widow and the orphan. His funds
were a savings' bank, wherein were laid up the resources of the
poor; and the mourners at his funeral were the scholars of the
schools which he had founded, the officers of literary institutions
which his munificence had endowed, the widows and orphans
whom he had counselled and supported, and the men, in all
ranks and conditions of life, who had been made by his benevo-
lence to feel that his wealth was their wealth. May God raise
up many men in Boston to enter into the spirit and labours of
Amos Lawrence!
This is the true socialism, which comes from the spirit of
Christ, and, without breaking down existing orders of society,
by love makes the property and possessions of the higher class
the property of the lower.
Men are always seeking to begin their reforms with the out-
ward and physical. Christ begins his reforms in the heart.
Men would break up all ranks of society, and throw all property
into a common stock; but Christ would inspire the higher
class with that Divine Spirit by which all the wealth, and means,
and advantages of their position are used for the good of the
lower.
We see, also, in the highest aristocracy of England instances
of the same tendency.
Among her oldest nobility there begin to arise lecturers to
mechanics and patrons of ragged-schools; and it is said that
even on the throne of England is a woman who wee
kly instructs
her class of Sunday-school scholars from the children in the
vicinity of her country residence.
In this way, and not by an outward and physical division of
property, shall all things be had in common. And when the
white race shall regard their superiority over the coloured one
only as a talent intrusted for the advantage of their weaker
brother, then will the prejudice of caste melt away in the light
of Christianity.
CHAPTER VIII.
MARIE ST. CLARE.
Marie St. Clare is the type of a class of women not pecu-
liar to any latitude, nor any condition of society. She may
be found in England or in America. In the northern free States
we have many Marie St. Clares, more or less fully developed.
When found in a northern latitude, she is for ever in trouble
about her domestic relations. Her servants never do anything
right. Strange to tell, they are not perfect, and she thinks it a
very great shame. She is fully convinced that she ought to
have every moral and Christian virtue in her kitchen for a little
less than the ordinary wages; and when her cook leaves her,
because she finds she can get better wages and less work in a
neighbouring family, she thinks it shockingly selfish, unprinci-
pled conduct. She is of opinion that servants ought to be per-
fectly disinterested; that they ought to be willing to take up
with the worst rooms in the house, with very moderate wages,
and very indifferent food, when they can get much better else-
where, purely for the sake of pleasing her. She likes to get
hold of foreign servants, who have not yet learned our ways,
who are used to working for low wages, and who will be satis-
fied with almost anything; but she is often heard to lament that
they soon get spoiled, and want as many privileges as anybody
else--which is perfectly shocking. Marie often wishes that she
could be a slaveholder, or could live somewhere where the lower
class are kept down, and made to know their place. She is
always hunting for cheap seamstresses, and will tell you, in an
under-tone, that she has discovered a woman who will make
linen shirts beautifully, stitch the collars and wristbands twice,
all for thirty-seven cents, when many seamstresses get a dollar
for it; says she does it because she's poor, and has no friends;
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