New-York tribune., 1874-10-20
FETISH FOLLIES.

A singular story of the dOings of the colored
people of Augusta, Ca, is narrated In news
paper of that city. In one of the churches
there a new ceremony, called " Marching out
"of Egypt" has been introduced 1t is an
exhibition of pedestrian Dicty. About O'Clock
D. m sOlemnly chanting, the wOrshipers pace
round and round and those who endure until
daylight are regarded as the predestinate
fayortes of God, with their future felicity
assured. Those who break down are held to
be in parlous condition, such weakness of
the flesh indicating corresponding weakness
of the spirit. HOusekeepers occasionally expe-
rience great inconvenience from this muscular
manifestation, especially when the cook is too
much exhausted by the nocturnal agitations
to prepare an early breakfast. There is moth
ing new in this tendency of extreme religious
emotion to manifest itself in protracted bodily
activity. 1t comes from the East, and is
copied from the performances of the dancing
dervishes.
Every day, it is painful to admit adds to
the evidence that the black population of the
South, full as it is of fervid religious tenden-
ces, controlled by a grotesque idealism and
by an clinical tendency to material religious
practices, has been left by emancipation in
condition requiring the wisest Christian guild
ance. Its merely emotional capacities of the
religious kind are at once plentiful and po-
tent. 1t seeks ceremonial with Oriental eager
ness. 1t rushes into worship with kind OF
nervous insanity, and prays not only in
voice of thunder, but likewise with its legs
and arms. Its songs of praise are weird an
thems of which the tom m-toms coarse, strange
music is the natural accompaniment. 1t revels
in the mysterious until it is half mad. 1t
seeks strength in charms and an ally in the
lowest forms of witchcraft 1t preserves traces
of the barbarOus ritual of its Congo ancestors,
and of tendencies which the civilized assOcla-
tions of more than two centuries have failed
altogether to arrest. 1t is fascinated by Its su-
nernatural conception of death; and 1t Is
thoroughly literal in its doctrine OF special
providences.
That this unsatisfactory state of religious
feeling is unnecessary, and that it might have
been avoided by wise instruction and rational
treatment, is proved by the great number OF
colored Christians who are as sensible and
steady as need be in their ecclesiastical prac-
tices. These black enthusiasts are such, be-
cause they have been too much left to them
norance authorized and enforced by law, and
continued through many generations. 1t Is IN
fpitey to be regretted that now, when Eman-
cipation has brought the largest opportunities
of n better culture, these poor blind people
have been to such an extent left TO the
leadership of the blind. We are
not unmindful of the work which has been
pbilanthropically accomplished by Christian
men and women laboring in this new field
The task. however. of guiding and training
the emancipated slaves is enormous; and
nropress in the right direction is necessarily
slow. In many parts of the South the Blacks
have been under very bad guidance and have
been grossly misled by political adventurers,
whose best policy was to keep their followers
still, in condition of moral seryitude. We
might well be disheartened by the many and
gross mistakes, not to use q harsher word,
which have already been committed. What
we need il faith in the general good infu-
ences of the whole country-in the force OF
its best thought Of its enlightened con-
science, and OF its persistent humanity. These,
which have already abolished Slavery indi-
rectly, will in time reach much of the
Black race as may remain. Let us reserve
our impatience and our indignation for the
greedy spectators who have complicated our
difficulties by their INSCRIPTIONS selfshness.
These slave-drivers, too. u time. we shall
abolisht