The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1868-03-11


ly see that it was their opn homogeneouSness
which was the difficulty. If these negroes
were admitted, they would according to Con-
gregational government, have vote man
hood suffrage In church discipline, would SIT
in judgment about receiving or excluding the
wives and daughters of white people, and
would probably claim a pew beside them on
the lower floor. Hmc alce lachyyne. The
Thinkers absolutely refuse to admit negroes to
their churches, the real reason, no doubt, be-
ing that according to their rules they would
have to give them the kiss of charity. So
DR.. Boynton, with the brethren and sisters,
loves the negroes almost to distraction, but
then they don't want the distraction to come
too close.
8. Whilepriyate members have always been,
and are now everywhere welcomed to thecom-
munion of our Church, we have no doubt that
it is often better, under present circumstances,
that negroes should have separate churches.
We had occasion a year ago TO express our
views fully on that point The degree of re-
straint imposed by our General Assembly at
Memphis affected the question of negro
church officers. The action of the last Assem-
bly, left the whole matter where the constitu-
ton of the Church places it, and where the
other Assembly should have done-under the
discretion of the Presbyteries, subject to such
| forms of supervision as our church govern
ment provides in other things.
But what we desire chiefly to remark here
| is that for this measure of restraint in ordain-
ing them to office, our Church was denounc-
ed in certain quarters as committing an un-
heard of outrage upon the poor negro, and the
law of Christ itself; although we were acting
substantially as experience had taught other
| Christian bodies among US, which do not allow
that people ecclesiastical equality in office
When we turned upon one of these papers
with an array of facts under which it stagger-
ed and fell, it still rallied. What has it now to
say of DR.. Boynton and his church in not al
lowing to this class of people such priUate
membership? This thing is done under the
eye of the world; it well known; but where
is the outcry against it? We have waited for
more than month, but with few feeble ex-
ceptions those peculiar friends of the negro
are as silent as the grave. Is not consistency
jewel?
! The truth is that the way a Massachusetts
abolitionist treated these two negro men, who
would have been at once received into the com
munion of any Church in the South, is simply
a sample of thousands and thousands in the
same section We do not wish to Judge un-
righteousy or Unfortunately, or condemn
all. By no means; but facts too plainly reveal
it. and coming years will write it as upon the
face of the sky, that the great mass Of those
blatant, professed negro. lovers, hate them with
a cruel hatred. They even now do substantial
ly as DR.. Boynton does-manage to keep them
out of their churches. Richard Grant White
of New York, tells of clergyman whom he
describes as gentle, firm, wise, with large
soul and wide sympathies, who came to the
South in the last year of the war, on a tour
of observation, and was placed in authority as
far as slavery was concerned, over a considera.
district, by one of our most eminent generals.
For years before the war, he had been one Of
our strongest anti-savery men, and had by his
writings done as much as any one person in the
country, who was not professed journalist OF
politician, to bring about the state of public
feeling that provoked secession. l met him
on his return home, and L had not talked with
him three minutes before he said to me, /
come back hating slavery more than ever, but
Loathinq the negro 1cth-es, t,ttttea-v-19--4se.4-
ing
Precisely 70. Yet these are the men who
have filed the earth with protestations that
have made much of it believe the negro
is the darling of their hearts How much are
churches, cursed with the presence of swarms
of such hypocrites, going to do in admitting
him to their hurchfeilOwship in any form
The veil has one day, and not far distant, to
be lifted from this deformity, when the world
will see that it was but "whited sepulchre, F"
beautiful outward, but within full of rotten
ness and dead mems bones.