442 Methodism and the Negro in the United States. incipient steps for a college for colored people." In two years Wilberforce University, near Xenia, O., was established, with fifty-two acres of land and large and commodious buildings. The next year the Visiting Committee of the Conference reported the school in a flourishing condition, and said: "The examinations showed conclusively that the minds of the present class of students are capable of a very high degree of cultivation." Under the presidency of Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., the school was successful until financial embarrassment compelled suspension in 1863. One reason given was "the rebellion, and the consequent difficulty of obtaining funds from the South." From the beginning the friendly cooperation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was encouraged and received. Fortunately, the leaders of that denomination were able to assume the indebtedness, which was a nominal sum as compared with the value of the property. The lands and buildings were transferred with the good wishes and prayers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, ministry, and people, and Wilberforce University became, and continues to be, the chief educational center of African Methodism in the United States. SLAVERY AND SOUTHERN METHODISM. Freed from all embarrassment of connectional relations with Northern Abolition sentiment, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, became a still more powerful factor in directing and molding the sentiments of the Southern States. Its views on the subject of slavery brought it in perfect harmony with Southern leaders in politics and social order. It regarded slavery as a civil institution, discarded all responsibility for its existence, or for its abuses, or for laws for its protection which were incompatible with good morals among the slaves; as, for example, the law forbidding legal marriage. Southern Methodism was thus prepared, under the protection of Southern slaveholding practice and sentiment, to continue and enlarge regular missionary work among the slave population. She was splendidly equipped in leadership. Her doctrines and polity were Methodistic in every particular. Her territory was rapidly extending westward and southwestward, population was increasing and wealth multiplying, and the Southern States were in control of the nation. Her total membership from 1846, when Southern Methodism became fully organized, to 1861, when the war began, rose from 449,654 to 703,295. This was, in fifteen years, an increase of 253,681. Dividing this increase by races we find that among the whites it rose from 330,710 in 1846 to 493,459 in 1861, being an increase of 162,749; and that for the same period the Negro membership rose from 118,904 to 209,836, an increase of 90,932. These fifteen years brought great prosperity to Methodism in the South in increase of members and property. Her great mission field was among the slaves, who, in 1860, numbered 3,950,000. Southern Methodism was the only branch of the Methodistic hosts in America which had access to fully nine tenths of this vast Negro population. Her bishops and ministry realized the tremendous responsibility which had come to them. Efforts to increase the Negro membership in connection with the regular charges, everywhere, were continued with encouraging results, and the plantation mission work was prosecuted with still greater zeal and with gratifying success. As already stated, in 1861 her records showed a Negro slave membership of 209,836. Her plantation mission work closed practically with 1864. The largest figures were reached in 1861, when there were 329 missions throughout the South, 327 missionaries, and 66,559 members. It was estimated that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, from 1844, when a separate Southern Methodism was decided upon, to 1864, when freedom came, expended $1,800,000 on special plantation mission work among the slaves of the South. Methodism and the Negro in the United States. EMANCIPATION AND FREEDOM. 443 The sudden emancipation of 4,000,000 of slaves in the South, followed quickly by their enfranchisement by the national government, thrust new and tremendous issues upon the Christian Church of America in relation to the Negro. The denominations of the South-including, of course, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South-shared very largely in the demoralization and prostration caused by the war. They had neither the men nor the financial resources; and if they had possessed both, it was unreasonable, if not morally impossible, to expect them to attempt to do for the free Negroes what they had done for the slaves. Convictions and fixed habits of thought and action, which underlie civilizations, change only by the slow processes of time and providential leadings. The overwhelming gravity of the Negro problem, as confronted by the Southern white people at the close of the war, will grow upon the careful student of American history many years to come. From the North there at once began a philanthropic and patriotic movement on behalf of the freedmen, unparalleled in the history of Christian missionary effort. For more than twenty-five years a steady golden stream of a million dollars a year has gone into the South from the North, directed by a prayerful and unwavering purpose to educate and evangelize the freedmen and their children. The Methodist Episcopal Church and the two branches of African Methodism were in the forefront of this movement. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had at first its chief increase in the South along the Atlantic seaboard, especially in South Carolina and Florida. Bishop Arnett, the statistician of that Church, estimates that 75,000 of the Negro membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, transferred their church relations to that denomination. The African Zion Church had its chief beginning in the South, in North Carolina and Alabama, and it is estimated that at least 25,000 of the Southern Methodist Negro members united with this branch. Both of these sections of African Methodism have continued to prosecute their work of evangelization and education throughout the South, as well as the nation, and, as already stated, have become powerful factors in the evangelistic forces of American Methodism as related to the Negro. About four fifths of their present membership are in the Southern States. WORK OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. The policy of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, toward the freedmen took definite form in 1866. At the General Conference, held that year in New Orleans, provision was made for the organization of its remaining Negro membership into "separate congregations, districts, and Annual Conferences," and if the colored people should so desire, and two or more Negro Annual Conferences be formed, a separate ecclesiastical autonomy should be granted. The result was that, in 1876, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America was organized, to be composed exclusively of Negroes, and officered entirely by colored men. Here we have the beginning of a third large section of African Methodism, the daughter of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The new organization started with 80,000 members, nearly all that remained in the Southern Methodist Church of the 209,000 former slave communicants. We have seen that 100,000 went into the other African Churches. The remaining 29,000 went largely into the Methodist Episcopal Church during the first years of its missionary work in the South. The reasons for the organization of this new separate Negro Methodism are given 444 Methodism and the Negro in the United States. in its Book of Discipline over the signature of its first four bishops. They say that the Southern Methodist Conference "found that, by revolution and the fortunes of war, a change had taken place in our political and social relations, which made it necessary that a like change should also be made in our ecclesiastical relations." It would be very interesting here to speculate as to the probable results, could the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, have continued its heroic and splendid work among the freedmen, which it had for years carried forward with such excellent results among the slaves; but it is no part of this paper to criticise or philosophize. This branch of Methodism, second in numbers and influence in the nation, now has 1,215,000 white communicants, nearly all of whom are in the Southern States. A few hundred Negro members"mostly sextons," as stated by one of its bishops-continue in this communion. Commencing with 1883, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, took definite and forward steps for the education of the Negro. A Board of Trustees was appointed in cooperation with the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1884 Paine Institute was founded at Augusta, Ga., and the Church has contributed to that institution $71,796.41, and has also given about $1,000 to Lane Institute, Jackson, Tenn. Bishop Haygood says in a letter, August 5, 1893: "Our people have only kind feelings for the Negro; and, for the secular common school education of more than a million youth, the white people pay ninety cents on every dollar that supports these schools, and Southern Methodists are now about 1,300,000 of the people who pay it." The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in 1892 had 1,800 pastors, 130,824 members, 1,961 Sunday schools, and 3,196 churches, valued at $1,200,000. Its principal school is Paine Institute, at Augusta, Ga., in which there are 150 students in attend ance. WORK OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. When freedom came this Church had (1864) 18,139 Negro members, principally in Maryland, Delaware, and adjacent territory. The entire present membership of this Methodist host is 2,442,627. Of this number 247,439 are Negroes. As the way opened after the war to reach the masses of the South, both white and colored, the Methodist Episcopal Church began the work of reorganization in that territory. She went to do the whole work of a church among both races, wherever Providence opened the way. Her bishops and other Church officials organized Conferences, and began the founding of schools. Each benevolent society aided in its special field. The support of pastors was supplemented by the Missionary Society; the Church Extension Society aided in building churches; the Sunday School Union and Tract Society gave their cooperation, and the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society was organized in 1866, to meet the demands for educational work. With unwavering and magnificent purpose for twenty-eight years; with fraternity and cooperation for all other churches working in the same field; and impelled by a conviction of duty to needy millions irrespective of race, this great Church has participated in the work of education and evangelization among Negroes and white people of the Southern States. The results are most excellent, both in property and in their farreaching influence among multitudes in intellectual and moral power. The white membership has grown on what was slave territory from 87,804 in 1866, to 265,188 in 1892. Following the wishes of the colored people themselves, the policy of separate Annual Conferences has been carried out in nearly all the territory. The first Conferences organized among colored people were the Delaware and Washington, in 1864; then the Lexington in 1869, and so on until, in 1893, there are seventeen Annual Conferences among the colored people of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with 1,627 pasto:s, Methodism and the Negro in the United States. 445 179,832 Sunday school scholars, 247,439 members, 2,890 churches, and 725 parsonages, valued at $3,934,030. Educational results have been equally remarkable. Besides a large number of institutions among the white people, 22 schools of high and secondary grades are maintained among the colored people. In these latter schools are 225 teachers, 5,396 students, and property valued at $1,285,500. At several centers are departments in theology, medicine, law, dentistry, pharmacy, pedagogics, and trade schools. While the Annual Conferences and schools are "among colored people," it is to be understood that, by the law of the Church, whatever separation there is is based upon the mutual preference of the people themselves. Here is the distinguishing feature between the three main divisions of American Methodism as related to the Negro. African Methodism has only Negro officers and pastors, and while white members would not be refused, its communicants are colored. Southern Methodism joins, as we have seen, in the separation policy to the extent of independent church organizations for the free Negro, while, as we have also seen, she preferred to have the Negro slaves meet in the same congregation with whites. The Methodist Episcopal Church, from the time that Betty, the colored servant girl, sat in the first congregation in New York, has held that the Church of God was for all alike. Whatever divisions may be thought necessary in congregations, Conferences, or schools are by mutual consent of the people in the territory interested. All Conferences, churches, and schools have access alike to every benevolence and sympathy of the whole Church, and have the directing help and inspiration of the bishops and general officers of the denomination. This great missionary movement of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South, since freedom came to the Negro, has required the expenditure of large sums of money. No mention is here made as to what has been spent among Southern white people. The purposes of this paper are met by the following summaries, showing: EXPENDITURES BY THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH AMONG THE FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH FROM 1865 to 1893. For the establishment and maintenance of institutions of Christian learning through the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society..... Educational endowments.... Support of ministers in charge of churches through the Missionary Society. Loans... $3,100,000 00 500,000 00 1,800,000 00 .$274,433 98 457,630 46 150,000 00 Subsidies and donations for publication of newspapers and circulation of Church literature by the Book Concerns, East and West.... To aid in establishing Sunday schools, and furnishing the same with literature and distribution For support of superannuated Negro ministers from Book Concern dividends and Chartered Aid given to worthy young colored men in securing education by the Board of Education... 75,000 00 75,000 00 30,000 00 $6,187,630 46 The diversified lines of Christian work represented in this outlay of money, running through twenty-eight years, indicate far-reaching purposes for the kingdom of God on earth. One fact is certainly remarkable: the value of churches and parsonages, and the endowments, with the lands and buildings of institutions of learning, now represent a sum nearly equal to the whole expenditure. 446 Christ's Soul-Saving Service. Thus much we can see, but only a divine mind can compute the unseen and by far greater results following from these years of preaching and teaching, by many hundreds of faithful workers, white and black, in this vineyard of the Lord. 661 T CHRIST'S SOUL-SAVING SERVICE. BY REV. ERNEST GEORGE WESLEY. HE United States government has given orders that all life-saving stations. are to be manned by September 1." Such was an item I read a few days since. I ask myself, Will the order be obeyed? Who doubts that on that date every station will be fully manned; men enough recruited to fill all vacancies; the stations equipped; rations, clothing, salaries, etc., all ready, and hundreds of faithful, vigilant, brave men patrolling our coasts on the night of September 1? Has there not been given to the Church of Christ an order very similar in its intent, issued from a much higher authority-the authority of Christ, whom tens of millions acknowledge as their King? Is there to-day upon all the coast line of heathendom one part of the coast as fully patrolled as it should be? Comes not the cry continuously for more stations, more men, more supplies, more support? The distance between the Gospel soul-saving stations is far too great for effective work here and there. In the immediate vicinity of the station, occasionally some distance off, good work is being done-grand, heroic work, when we consider all the conditions-but the coast line without patrol and the coast line with but imperfect patrol far exceeds the part which is held by the servants of the Christ. The best manned might be better manned, would be better manned if the call for recruits and supplies were better obeyed by the Church. Recruits are seldom wanting for the work of the United States Coast Patrol; brave men everywhere offer themselves; the duty of our government is rather to select than to draft. Yet there are very few government stations, especially along the more dangerous parts of our coast where ease, comfort, body, and life are not more imperiled than in any missionary station existing to-day (with few exceptions). As far as actual peril, hardship, privation, heroism, suffering, self-sacrifice, etc., are concerned, for their time of service the United States Coast Patrol demands more than do most of our mission fields; and, let us remember, our missionaries go forth in the name of Christ, under the certain protection of Jehovah, supported by his exceeding great and precious promises, sure of eternal life if this life fails, certain to receive an exceeding abundant |